Disclaimer - I am no way in association with the CSI franchise; I don't own any of the characters except Jess.
Chapter 1 – It All Begins
Jess was sat in her rental. Her own car would be here next week. Along with the rest of her possessions. That hopefully would fill her less than homely apartment. That for some miraculous reason was in moderately decent condition. Considering it's asking price. She'd slept of most of the jet lag the previous night. After all, any hope of sleep on a Trans-Atlantic flight would be asking too much. With all the screaming kids and cranky parents it was amazing she lasted the crossing. She'd wanted to do nothing more than flash her badge at the hostess and hope they'd be kind enough to upgrade her. But of course life could never be that nice, especially to her. So instead she was now sat in the less than perfect Denali. That had come complete with it's very own dent. Her neck recuperating from it's seemingly constant cramp that had developed on the flight. That's what she got for being a cheap-skate.
Jess had been in Las Vegas for two whole days and she was already finding the desert heat hard to adjust too. London was at least twenty degrees colder. In the middle of summer. And here she was seven pm taking advantage of her air-conditioning. Hours before she'd been sat in her hotel. The only decent thing she'd forked out on upon her arrival in America. Straightening her hair to perfection and scrubbing her teeth of any post-flight gunk was how she'd spent her afternoon. The twenty-five year-old now found herself looking at herself in the pull-down mirror. Checking for anything she may have overlooked. She wasn't exactly the prettiest person the world had ever seen but there was something about her. Something no-one could quite put there finger on. She was above-average height for her age and under-weight. But her high metabolism had something to do with that she could eat dozens of Ben and Jerry's and still have nothing to show for it. Being born and raised in London however had its advantages. She knew how to handle herself. She couldn't handle herself well enough however. And up until now Jess had worked amongst the best in British Forensics only leaving when she was offered a place at the most prestigious lab in the world. Not just Britain or the EU. Nope the world.
This honour had presented itself in the form of letter. The letter that was now scrunched into her khaki bag that lay beside her. She'd taken and passed her fire-arms test days before she arrived and it too was folded away in her bag. Amongst her belongings and general junk. She pulled her beanie out of her bag and settled it onto her auburn hair. She swept her fringe out of her eyes and behind her ear. Of course it seemed as stubborn as she and fell back into place as soon as her hand was removed.
'It's now or never.' She breathed in deeply and pulled her keys from the ignition. As her feet touched the ground her toes curled inside her converse. Locking the car, she walked across the lot and toward the gleaming building. Twilight setting across the steadily cooling desert.