(Disclaimer: I don't own any of the CSI or any other characters.)

Grissom sat at his desk going over files from the last case. Warrick walked in and interrupted.

"I finished the shooter case."

"Good."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just finishing some paperwork."

"Ok. See you tomorrow." Warrick walked down the hall and turned the corner, as Grissom's phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Grissom its Brass. We just had a homicide. 38-year-old at 1395 strait."

"On my way." Grissom hung up the phone and headed to the crime scene. Grissom arrived half past twelve.

"Melissa, her daughter saw everything. She locked herself in a closet and nobody can get her out." Brass showed Grissom to the closet the girl had hid in.

"Melissa?" Grissom knelt down and started talking to the door.

"Go away." He could hear sobs.

"Melissa, I know you're scared, but there is nobody out here who is going to hurt you. You can help us catch the guy that did this."

"He said that if I sing he'd kill me too." Melissa sniffed and sneezed.

Grissom knocked on the door. "So will you come out?" The lock to the closet door clicked and the door slowly slid open. Melissa crawled out.

"He was her boyfriend. But they broke up a week ago. He's been calling but mom didn't return any of them. We were gonna leave when he busted through the front door and strong armed my mom." Grissom stood up then helped Melissa up. New tears fell from Melissa's eyes. She fell into Grissom's arms and cried harder. She finally stopped crying so Grissom drove her back to the station.

"I'm sorry you lost your mom. But anything you tell us can help us nail him." Grissom sat across from Melissa in an interrogation room. "My team found this." He showed Melissa a necklace with a bloody snake pendant on it. Melissa grabbed the necklace in the plastic bag and threw it at the window, then she scrambled to the farthest corner from the pendent and set her head on her knees and started to cry again. Grissom still sat in his chair. Brass stood by a uniform at the door. Brass walked to Grissom whispered something in his ear and the two of them walked out of the room, leaving the uniform behind.

in the hall

"What do you wanna do with her?" Brass asked Grissom, noticing that he wasn't paying very much attention.

"Sorry. A psych evaluation is next."

"Ok. I'll find Sarah to take her." Brass brushed by Grissom, but Grissom grabbed him by the arm.

"I'll do it." Grissom had Greg do a DNA on the blood on the necklace with the moms and the girls. The blood didn't match the mom or the girl; but it did match the boyfriend, it was compared to the semen found at the scene. He also had Greg run the blood on the necklace through CODIS to see if there was a match. Grissom walked back into the interrogation room. Melissa still in the corner.

"She hasn't moved." The uniform told Grissom.

"The blood on the necklace was his wasn't it?" Melissa just nodded. "I'm going to take you to the hospital to make sure your ok." Then Grissom noticed a bruise on her arm in the shape of a hand almost being covered up by the shirt she was wearing. The hand was too big to be her moms. He took a mental note and drove Melissa to the hospital. He let the social worker take Melissa to get the psych evaluation done.

"Get a rape kit done as well." Grissom whispered to the social worker before she left.

"Ok, Then when the results come back I'll call you." The woman walked away with Melissa walking a little behind she was five feet from Grissom already. Then Melissa stopped and turned toward Grissom.

"Please don't make me go." She ran and grabbed his arm as tight as she could. Silent tears ran down her cheeks. The social worker had to pry Melissa off him.

"If you need me, call me and I'll be right there."

Back at the lab

The graveyard shift sat in the conference room.

"Ok. This case is the primary case. Right now this is the only dead body in Las Vegas. Sarah I want you to go back to the crime scene and see if there was anything we missed, Cathy go with her, Warrick look for this boyfriend; and Nick I want you to go with Warrick." So the graveyard team was off.

Just as Grissom walked out of CSI his cell rang.

"Grissom."

"Come back." Grissom heard a scared little voice.

"Melissa?"

"I need you to come back."

"I'm on my way." Grissom started his truck and drove back to the hospital to get the results. He met the social worker.

"Well?"

"The child psychiatrist thinks she might never be the same because of the trama, and she goes nuts when she sees any kind of snake. And the rape kit indicates that she wasn't raped, but badly beaten. The DNA from the bruise was sent to your lab for comparison."

"Ok thanks."

"No problem."

"Where is she?" The social worker pointed to a room where Melissa sat drawing with markers. He went in and sat with her.

"What are you drawing?" She looked at him but didn't answer then looked back at her drawing. They sat for a few minutes in silence.

"He didn't kill her. I did."

"How did you kill her?" Melissa looked at Grissom with a blank face.

"When he busted through the door he grabbed my mom and started to beat her. Then I tried to hit him but I just wasn't strong enough, he threw mom across the room and grabbed me..."

"I know what he did to you."

"And then he rummaged through the kitchen and found a butcher knife and started to hit her with it." Melissa looked back to her drawing, one tear fell from her eye and hit the paper making a water stain in the black marker. "He came for me, but she got in the way."

"It's not because of you your moms dead." Grissom put his hand on her shoulder and she then leaned into his chest and cried. After an hour she fell asleep and Grissom carried her to his truck and drove back to the lab. He carried her into the lab and laid her on the couch in the lounge and covered her with his coat. Warrick walked in.

"I..."

"Shhh." Grissom cut him off. "She's asleep."

"Is that the girl that was in the closet?" Warrick whispered walking behind Grissom into the hall as he shut the door behind him.

"Yeah."

"I've never seen you get emotionally involved in a case before."

"I'm not getting emotionally involved."

"Looks like it to me."

"What do you have?" Grissom pointed to the file Warrick held in his hand.

"The girl's medical files. Her mom was going to send her to her dad so he could pay the medical bills for her chemo." Warrick handed the file to Grissom.

"Chemo?"

"Yeah the girl has a brain tumor."

AN: Hope you liked it. I got board one day and just let my fingers do the talking. Plz R&R