Author's Note: So this is my second CSI fic. My first one was "Make the Sparks Fly" and it was a full story, with a case to solve and everything. This story doesn't involve a case exactly, so if you're into that part of everything, this fic may disappoint you. Also, this a Greg & Morgan centered fic, so keep that in mind. This is set sometime during season 15…
Disclaimer: I don't own anything and I have no money for you to take, so…
Chapter 1
"Greg and Morgan!" D.B. shouted down the hallway. Greg was in the break room, finishing a cup of his Blue Hawaiian coffee. Morgan was putting her purse in her locker. Both jumped at the shout of D.B.'s voice. Both of them made their way to his office, meeting in the hallway on the way there. Greg still had his coffee in his hands.
"What do you think this is about?" Morgan asked Greg.
"It could be anything. Are you caught up with all your cases?"
"Yes, are you?"
"Yeah…" Greg trailed off. They stopped in the doorway of D.B.'s office. He was spraying his mushrooms with water, so Greg coughed to get his attention.
"Ah, there you are. The file on my desk is your next case." He said, glancing at the two of them and then pointing at the file. They walked in and Morgan picked the file up, flipping through it while Greg downed the rest of his coffee in a gulp.
"Red Rock Canyon? That's out in the middle of nowhere!" Morgan exclaimed.
"Maybe so, but Rangers found a crime scene at a camp site in a pretty remote area and I need you two to go out there to process it. You're the only ones caught up with everything else and this looks like it's going to take some time. Make sure you take the newer Denali, though, those roads might be a little rough."
"Sure thing." Greg said. They left his office and gathered their kits and Morgan grabbed a light jacket from her locker. Greg grabbed the keys to the newest crime lab vehicle and they walked out to the garage together.
"Who's driving?" Greg asked, unlocking the car. Morgan was looking up directions on her phone to transfer to the vehicle's navigation system. She looked uncertain.
"Could you drive? Those winding canyon roads make me nervous, especially at night."
Greg opened the driver's side door. "I never thought I'd see the day when Morgan Brody didn't argue about who gets to drive. Has Hell frozen over?"
"Yeah, yeah…" She said, laughing as she climbed in.
~XXXXX~
"According to the GPS, it's going to take us forty-five minutes to get there." Morgan said, putting the directions from her phone into the car's system and buckling her seatbelt.
"So, what are we going to do to entertain ourselves in the meantime?" Greg asked, pulling out of the garage and merging onto the main highway out of Vegas and west to the canyon.
"Good question. Oh! We can sing songs from the radio!" She said enthusiastically, flipping through the stations until she found one she liked.
"Singing?" Greg asked doubtfully as a song unfamiliar to him played.
"Why not? I'm pretty good at it. In fact, I was in acapella choir in high school and college. I'm a strong alto. What about you?"
Greg shrugged. "I usually do air drums."
Morgan laughed. "I bet you're better than you think you are. You have a good speaking voice, so why not a great singing voice?"
Greg made a face. "I appreciate the encouragement. I'll do my best, but I can't guarantee anything. I wasn't in choir at any point in my life and my high school years were spent playing chess and skipping grade levels."
"Wow, skipping grade levels? Way to make a girl feel like an underachiever." Morgan said, folding her arms across her chest and acting insulted.
"Yeah… uh, I was a huge nerd."
"Was? As in… past tense?"
"Hey, I'm not singing if you're going to taunt me the whole time about my incredible intelligence." Greg fake pouted at her and she grinned.
"No more taunting, I promise. Cross my heart." She put her hand over her heart.
"Okay, then I suppose we can sing." Greg relented.
She turned the radio up and they waited for a song they both liked before belting out the tunes as loud as they could. Greg wondered how many people driving by stared at them and laughed. He was surprised by how good Morgan really was. Her voice was beautiful and he stopped singing after a while, just so he could listen to her without his own voice getting in the way. Eventually, she noticed.
"You aren't singing." She said, giving him a look and turning down the radio.
"You're so good, I didn't want to ruin it with my voice thrown in there." Greg admitted.
Morgan sighed. "How long have I been singing by myself?"
"For the last three songs." Greg admitted with a sheepish grin.
"Oh, well now you have to sing the next three without me so I can judge the quality of your voice without mine thrown in." Morgan said. They argued about whether or not this was fair for about five minutes before Greg gave in and decided to sing the songs.
"Fine, I'm singing." He waited for the next song on the radio. He sang along with the lyrics while Morgan listened intently. It made him less nervous to have the music in the background and he knew he wouldn't be able to do it without it.
When he finished singing three songs, he went silent, waiting for Morgan's judgement on his voice. She was smiling, so he knew it couldn't have been that bad.
"You remind me of that guy, Hozier." She said finally.
"Really? The 'Take Me to Church' song?"
"Yes. Your voice is very similar to his. If you spent time working on it, you could be very good. We could do karaoke night!" She said excitedly, thinking of the time she, Sara and Finn did it… before the drama started, of course. Maybe this time they could invite Nick and Greg along. She knew that it would be fun.
"I'd have to be drunk before doing karaoke and I'm betting Nick would agree with me." Greg said.
"Even better." Morgan agreed. They sang more songs together to pass the time, but when the radio started repeating songs they'd already heard, they stopped. The GPS was warning them that they were getting close to the canyon.
"So, it says that the campsite is up on a scenic trail on one of the mountains. I'll call the rangers to make sure they're already there." Morgan said.
She dialed the number and talked to them while Greg stopped at park entrance and showed his badge to the attendant. They were waved through the entrance and continued up the road until they got to a point where it divided into several directions. Greg followed the vehicle's navigational instructions and went to the left toward road seven as Morgan hung up her phone and slipped it back into her pocket.
"The rangers are at the scene, it's been taped off. David is already there, so everyone's waiting on us." Morgan said.
"Great."
"He warned me that it's difficult to get to, so be careful." Morgan said.
"Aren't I always?"
~XXXXX~
Greg had been driving through the narrowing, winding roads for almost twenty minutes. The GPS told them that they were going the right way, so he continued on that path, but he had no real way of knowing if that was true. Trees hugged the sides of the road in some areas, only to disappear and reveal a steep drop off into darkness in others. Greg had driven these roads only once before, but that was in the day time. He turned on the bright lights to make the road easier to see.
"I bet Dave had a hard time getting the coroner van up these roads. That thing isn't exactly agile." Morgan said, staring out the window at the stars. You could see so much more of them this far out, without the lights of the Vegas strip to blind you to everything else. It was amazing how much different everything looked away from the city.
"Yeah…" Greg said, slowing down to make a sharp turn. Morgan thought she heard a distant rumble come from somewhere above or around them.
"Did you hear that? Was that thunder?"
"Just what we need, a thunderstorm in the middle of nowhere at an outdoor crime scene." Greg said. Morgan listened for it again, but didn't hear anything. She chalked it up to her imagination and watched the road.
"Do deer come up here?" She wondered, looking for a sign.
"I haven't been up here enough times to know. Did you see one?"
"No, I was just wondering. This crime scene is farther away than I thought it would be." She said. After a couple of minutes of silence, she heard the rumbling again. She pulled out her phone to check the weather, but she couldn't get a signal. Irritated, she put it back into her pocket. The GPS on the navigation system in the Denali went out at the same time.
"Location not found!" The woman's voice on the GPS exclaimed.
"Of course it isn't. These things never work when you really need them." Greg said, tapping at the screen in frustration. Morgan heard more rumbling and looked out the window. She couldn't see any clouds blocking the moon or the stars. Where was that sound coming from? She didn't want to say anything else about it and sound like she was worrying too much, but the rumbling got louder and louder. She switched off the radio to listen.
"What…?" Greg started to say, when she shushed him.
"You hear that?" She asked. He nodded, staring at the road ahead of him. He didn't want to take his eyes off of it to look around, but he could hear something. It didn't sound like thunder, though.
POP!
Morgan yelped and sat abruptly back in her seat. A rock bounced off the windshield, making a small crack in the driver's side.
"Damn." Greg muttered, "D.B. is going to be mad about that." Morgan frowned, listening to the noise again.
"It sounds like… a stampede." Morgan said finally.
Greg was about to ask her how many stampedes they had in Los Angeles, but he never got the chance. A loud crash thundered around them and red rocks and boulders collapsed onto the roadway like rain. Greg slammed on the brakes and even pulled the emergency brake, but the rockslide had gained enough momentum that it slammed into the driver's side of the Denali, shoving it to the right and into the guardrail.
Morgan screamed, covering her face. Some of the boulders were larger than the SUV and they shattered the glass windows on Greg's side of the vehicle. All the airbags deployed and the Denali was pushed over the steep ravine's edge, breaking through the metal guardrail to roll down the side of the canyon in a tornado of twisted metal and rocky debris, dragging Morgan and Greg along with it.