"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Catherine Willows yelled, her red hair flying as she charged into the office of Sam Braun, owner of the Rampart Casino and Hotel.

"Hi, pumpkin," he replied, leaning back in his desk chair and putting on his best smile.

"Don't you dare pumpkin, me! You don't care about me. You never cared about me. And that's fine. I can live with that. But why Grissom, huh? Is this payback?"

"All I did was offer to pay his bail," Braun said, looking innocent. "I thought that's what you wanted? To have your boyfriend out of jail? Just say yes, and I'll do it right now." He reached for the phone.

"Eeeeeehhhhhhh!" Catherine threw up her arms and screamed. "You can't do that! I won't let you do that!"

"Why?" Braun asked, his hand on the receiver.

"Don't play me, Sam," she spat out. "I know exactly what will happen if you pay that bail. Everyone will believe that Gil Grissom has been in your pocket right along, and that's why he let you walk on the murder charges. It will ruin him!"

"Catherine, he's already ruined."

"You fucking bastard!" She threw her purse at him and he ducked.

"Harsh words from my only daughter," Braun said, releasing the phone.

"In the first place, you have never been a father to me!" she screamed, pointing an accusing finger at him. "I didn't even know you were my father until I ran a DNA test and confronted you with it. And in the second place, it's all completely true. You bail out Gil, you destroy Gil. That simple."

Braun leaned back in his chair, fingers pressed together thoughtfully.

"Anyone can post bail," he said, calmly, smiling.

Catherine froze, stunned.

"That's why you called me, isn't it?" she asked. "You weren't planning on posting his bail. You just wanted to get me down here and threaten me with it. Well, Sam, I'm here. What do you want?" She sunk into a chair.

Sam reached behind the desk, picked up her purse and offered it to her. She snatched it out of his hand.

"Not much, really," he said. "A relationship with my daughter would be nice. Maybe some quality time with my granddaughter. How is Lindsey these days, anyway? I heard she got straight As on her report card last semester."

"You have soldiers everywhere, don't you?" Catherine charged.

"Not soldiers. Just friends. But, yes, I have them everywhere."

Catherine, fuming, closed her eyes for a second.

"Do we have a deal?" Braun asked.

"I can't believe this. You're blackmailing me into having a relationship with you, and all I have to do is make sure the man... That Gil stays in jail for murder." She glared at him.

"Sounds like a win-win to me," he said.

"Not for Gil. And not for me."

Braun stood up and came around his desk towards Catherine. Leaning over, he gently patted her arm.

"You know, pumpkin, you just might get to like your old man."

Goosebumps ran up her arm, and her mind was working overtime.

"You really have 'friends' everywhere?" she asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"Gil is in prison. You know what will happen to him there. He needs protection."

"Okay," Braun said. "Gil stays safe in jail, I don't post bail, and we get to do some bonding. Deal?"

Catherine felt like she was selling her soul. Worse, she felt like she was selling her daughter's soul. The only bright spot was that one day, god willing, Gil would be back home and this nightmare would be over.

"Deal," she said. "But the minute anyone lays a hand on him, it's all over."

While she sat bargaining Gil's fate in the penthouse office of the casino, Gil Grissom, wearing the spare pair of glasses he had kept in his desk at work, was trying to have lunch in the jail cafeteria. Miller, whom he'd met before at the courthouse, grabbed a tray and joined him.

"I thought I creeped you out," Grissom said, fighting to keep his hands steady, as a thousand pairs of eyes borrowed into the back of his head.

"They're scared of you," Miller said, leaning close and half- whispering. "They think you're some kind of Hannibal Lector or something."

"Good," Grissom said, and continued eating.

"How did you start? Eating bugs, I mean?" Miller asked.

"At college. I had a professor who had traveled to the Amazon and returned with all kinds of interesting things. One day, he was reviewing some of my research in entomology -- that's research about bugs -- and he asked me if I'd ever eaten bugs. I said no. And he said -- I remember it like it was yesterday -- he quoted Mark Twain and said: 'Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the unwary, it dies happy.' I said I thought that was pretty weird. Then he offered me some fried grasshoppers, and I've been eating them ever since."

"Is this guy bothering you, Dr. Grissom?" asked a burly man with thick tattoos running down both arms. He was staring down on Miller.

"No," Gil said slowly, examining the artwork. "And who might you be?"

"Sam sent me," the inmate said. "Anyone wants a piece of you gotta go through me to get it."

Grissom was torn between being furious at Sam Braun and grateful for the protection.

"Thank you," he said, reasoning that it wouldn't be a good idea to tick off his new bodyguard.

He glanced quickly around the room and saw other detainees studiously avoiding eye contact with him. He wondered how long that would last.

It didn't last long.

The men were given an hour to walk around outside and get some fresh air. Grissom, with Miller now permanently attached to his side and tattoo man taking up the rear, recognized the faces of at least a half dozen men he had collected evidence against. As it came time for the men to line up and go back inside, Grissom's attention was pulled to two men jostling each other a few feet away. As the situation escalated into a full-fledged fight, Braun's man stepped between the fight and Grissom. At that instant, Grissom felt a cold blade puncture his jumpsuit and skin and bury itself in his side. He cried out and reached around behind him, grabbing Miller as he fell.

"Why?" Grissom gasped, as he went down. Before he could pass out, he saw Miller raise the knife a second time. The bodyguard plowed full force into Miller, snapping the man's neck.

********

Anyone can post bail. Those were the words Catherine carried away from her meeting with Sam.

"We need to raise Gil's bail, and we need to do it now," Catherine said to the team gathered in the break room. She had just gotten off the phone with Martinez. Thanks to Bruan's bodyguard, the attacker never finished the job and Grissom was mending. But with Miller dead, no one knew who was behind the attack, or when they would try, again. Catherine didn't have the heart to tell the CSIs about the incident, though. Especially Sara. They would find out soon enough.

"What about a bail bondsman?" Warrick asked.

"Can't get one to touch it," Catherine said.

"I wish I could help," said Jacqui. "But I'm mortgaged up to my neck."

"Well, I got some money saved up," said Sara, looking thinner and paler than ever.

"How much?" Catherine asked.

"About thirty thou."

Nick whistled.

"How did you do that? Save that much money on our salaries?" He was staring at her in admiration.

"Easy," Sara said. "I don't eat, I don't sleep, I don't date, and I put in a lot of overtime."

"We really need to do something about that," Nick teased her.

"Well, I can put in two hundred thousand," Catherine said.

It was everyone's turn to stare at her.

"It's what I have left. I've spent the rest."

"Sam Braun's money?" Warrick asked.

"Yes. Sam Braun's money."

"Now, that's irony," said Nick.

A husky woman's voice came from behind them, totally unexpected. "I can make up the difference," she said. Catherine turned to find Gil's favorite dominatrix, Lady Heather, standing in the doorway behind them.

"Sorry to barge in, guys," Heather said. "But I thought you could use my help."

"You can barge in anytime," Nick said, only partially under his breath, as he admired the woman's striking dark beauty. "I don't know if you remember me. Nick Stokes?" He offered his hand, smiling foolishly.

Catherine shook her head at the predictability of the male sex. She then proceeded to introduce Heather around to everyone else.

"Let's get this show on the road," urged Sara, impatient to see Gil, again.

The three women then left to arrange for Grissom's bail, leaving a roomful of men leering after them.

"Oh, put your damn tongues back in your mouths, will you!" Jacqui snapped, before heading back to her lab.

"What's her problem?" Warrick asked.

"I don't know," Nick said, shrugging. But he couldn't get that stupid grin off his face.

-- TBC --