As the tall brunette walked down the hallway, everyone turned to stare. No one was sure why, but there was something about her presence that demanded attention. She turned left and entered a room where an older, ginger-haired man was bent over the desk. "Still trying to find my transference papers, Lieutenant?" she asked. The man smiled.

"Nice to see you too, Jess," he replied. "And you don't have to be so uptight and formal."

"Okay, Dad." A woman of Columbian descent picked that moment to walk in.

"Horatio, everyone's waiting for… oh. Hey Jess."

"Hey Aunt Yelina. I forgot you worked here as well. How's Ray Jr.?"

"He's doing fine. What brings you to Miami?"

"A job opportunity and a change in the scenery. Well, I guess we should be going then. Introductions should be fun." Horatio smiled. His daughter was always full of wit and sarcasm. He led her to the break room.

'New town, new faces, same old routine' Jess thought to herself. The introductions had been made, and she was now observing her new coworkers while waiting to be assigned to a case. Their reactions were normal to her by now. Moving all over the place to get jobs with the fathers in her life had made the gasping and staring predictable.

"Jess, You've got a 419 with Mr. Wolfe," said Horatio, pulling her out of her thoughts.

"First day on the job and you give me a dead body. You must be playing favorites," she remarked. The room filled with laughter at the remark. "Which one of you is Mr. Wolfe, again?" she asked.

"That would be me," replied a man who looked to be in his late twenties. His brunette hair was long, with a few locks getting dangerously close to his eyes.

'Damn,' she thought. 'He's hot.' She walked over to him. "So, do you have a first name, Mr. Wolfe?"

"Ryan," he told her.

"Well, then. Shall we go to the crime scene, Ryan? I'm sure the ME's waiting patiently." They walked out the door, climbed into the Hummer, and drove off to the scene.

"So, where are you coming in from?" Ryan asked.

"Quantico."

"No way. You're a Feeb?"

"I prefer my branch to not be called that, but yes, I worked with the FBI."

"Why move to Miami?" he asked

"The big reason? My stupid stalker ex-boyfriend. I can't seem to go anywhere without him showing up. I've had so many aliases, none of my former coworkers know who I actually am."

"Yeah? And who would that be?"

"Jessica Marie Caine, born September 13, 1980."

"What else have you gone by?"

"Well, I generally keep my first name the same, but in Vegas, I went by Jacqueline Grissom, but everyone called me Jack. The other reason I decided to move here is my best friend was murdered."

"Who would your friend be?"

"Tim Speedle." They sat in silence other than the soft music playing from the radio for five minutes. "Oh good god," she said. "Do you mind if I change this? I can't stand Paris Hilton."

"Go right on ahead." She started flipping through channels before settling on a mix station.

"And now we bring you the newest hit single from the All-American Rejects, 'Dirty Little Secret.'"
"Oh my god, I love this song." She turned it up as the first verse started. It got to the chorus and Jess started rocking out. She stopped short when she heard Ryan singing along. "I thought I was the only one dorky enough to know the lyrics to this song." she said

"I guess that's something we have in common." Ryan said. "So explain something to me."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"How can you biologically be Horatio's daughter? I mean, the hair color…" His voice trailed off.

"Oh. Yeah. Well, red hair is either a heterozygous or a homozygous recessive allele, so as long as one parent has brown hair, which my so-called mother does, it's possible." They arrived at the scene.

"Hey Alexx, what have we got?" asked Ryan. The forty-something-year-old African-American woman looked up from the male Caucasian lying in the grass.

"Looks like a gunshot wound to the chest, and it's in there pretty deep." She looked up and noticed the newcomer. "Hi. You must be Miss Caine."

"You can just call me Jess. I thought Dad was the only one who knew about me."

"There are some people you can't keep secrets from, honey," replied Alexx.

"Sorry to cut short the introductions, but do we have an ID on the body, Alexx?" asked Ryan as he started searching the area for evidence.

"I was waiting for you guys before looking in his wallet." She opened up a brown leather wallet and pulled out an ID. "Says here his name is George Waters, 39, living at 1209 East Sunset Boulevard."

"Well, there seems to be no evidence he was shot here," said Ryan.

"That's strange, he's got double lividity," replied Alexx.

"Which means this is a dump site. Alexx, where did he work?" asked Jess.

"He worked at," she pulled out the ID again. "He worked at the Miami branch of some shipping company." "That," said Jess, "is where we are going to be."

"Well, I can't tell you much about Mr. Waters, but I can take you to his desk." Jess and Ryan had arrived at the building and were being walked through it by the secretary, a twenty-five-year-old by the name of Maria, looking to be of Brazilian descent. "He mainly kept to himself unless you were in a higher position than, well, me." She walked them to a cubicle. "Here you go."

"Thanks." Jess started looking around. "Ryan, why don't you go through his filing cabinet. I'm going to try to get into his computer." She tapped a few keys. "No luck. He's password protected. You find anything?"

"Nope." A man looking to be in his mid-fifties walked up to them.

"Maria told me we had some visitors. May I ask what you're doing in my building?"

"Name's Jessica Caine, this is my coworker, Ryan Wolfe. We're with Miami-Dade PD. And you are?"

"Name's Mitchell. I am the CEO of this branch. What is this about?"

"Your employee, George Waters, was shot this morning. We're trying to figure out who and why."

"Ok. Go ahead and take whatever you need from his cubicle. If you want anyone else's stuff, you're going to need a warrant."

"Thank you sir. Ryan, help me get this computer to the lab. I've been dying to meet your computer tech."

"Well, there isn't much on here, just some stuff for his job." They were back at the lab talking to Jensen, the computer tech.

"So, if we want to find out more about the man, we go directly to the source," Jess muttered to herself.

"Where would that be?" asked Ryan.

"His apartment building."

They arrived at the address on the ID and knocked on the door. A man in his mid thirties wearing a t-shirt and khakis answered the door.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah. We're with Miami-Dade PD. Did you know a George Waters?"

"Yeah, he's my roommate. He isn't in any kind of trouble, is he?"

"No sir, he's dead. May we come in?"

"No, you cannot. You don't have a warrant." He slammed the door in their faces

"What a charmer," muttered Jess. Ryan laughed. "You want to call the judge?"

"It'll be my pleasure." An hour later, they were serving the warrant to the roommate.

"We're going to have to ask you to wait outside, Mister…?" asked Jess.

"Oh. Johnson. Brian Johnson." He stepped outside.

"If I was a crime scene, what would my first piece of evidence be?" asked Jess.

"In this case? A blood pool," was Ryan's reply. They started searching the house for any signs of blood, but to no prevail.

"So, if I was a murderer, I would clean up the mess if it was in my house…Ryan, why don't you hit the lights and close the blinds."

"Using the Alternate Light Source, are we?"

"It's my favorite tool." They each grabbed one from their kits and started scanning the floors of apartment until Jess yelled out from the kitchen, "Found it!" As Ryan walked into the kitchen, he noticed Jess' face almost touching the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"We're not going to get any DNA from this," she replied.

"Why not?"

"It smells slightly of bleach, which means he used a household cleaner and diluted it with water. But it is enough to hold him."

"Great. Now all we need is why and the gun."

"Well, normally for motive, I check the computer records." They went over to the computer and logged in. "This guy is sonot serious about security." They checked the computer's records but…

"Nothing. Not a damn thing," said Ryan in frustration.

"Looks like we need to visit Jensen again."

"Now, here's the thing about deleting files," said Jensen. "If you just send it to the recycling bin, it'll still leave different parts of whatever you recycled."

"Right, it's like a paper shredder. It rips apart whatever was put through it, but there is the chance of somebody being able to put it back together again," was Jess' reply. "What did you, my cybernetic puzzle-solving little friend, find on our boy's hard drive?"

"Well, I can tell you one thing. I'd rather be dealing with a snuff film than this."

"Well, there are a few things more disturbing than a snuff, but that doesn't help. What did you find?" Jensen inhaled deeply.

"Porn."

"And there is only one kind that would make a male Audio/Video tech cringe, and is worth killing over."

"Oh yeah? What is that?" asked Ryan.

"Child pornography. And that, gentlemen, that is our motive."

"We still need the gun, though. Without it, it's still considered circumstantial." Marilyn Manson's (S)aintsuddenly filled the room. Jess grabbed her cell phone and answered. After a few moments, she hung up.

"Calleigh's got our bullet."

"Well, I took a look at it. It appears to be a .38 caliber, probably from a pistol. But without the gun, I can't tell you more."

"Looks like it's back to the house."

"Okay, where would you hide a gun?"

"Are you asking me, or are you just talking to yourself again?" asked Ryan.

"I was actually asking your opinion."

"Oh. Um, I personally would put it in a drawer for safekeeping. As for hiding it from the cops, I'm at a lost." Jess sighed and looked up, then got a look on her face. She took off her shirt and opened up her kit.

"Okay. What the hell is going on?"

"Tell me what you see above you."

"A vent looking to be about four feet by four feet, leading to the next door neighbor."

"Exactly." She stood up, holding a Philips-head screwdriver in her hand. "Could you give me a boost?" He went over, grabbed her by the waist, and hoisted her up.

"What gave you this crazy idea?"

"I remember working a case in Vegas. We found larvae in a vent. It wasn't the body, but it lead us to the killer, who had stuffed the corpse in the water heater." The vent cover came down. She hoisted herself up into the vent and started crawling around. After a minute or two, she jumped down. In her hand was the pistol.

"Nice. Now, why couldn't you use a chair to get up there?"

"Because they're all part of the crime scene."

"Uh-huh. One more question. Why take off the shirt?"

"Last time I got stuck investigating a tight space, I ended up ripping a perfectly good shirt beyond repair. Let's get this to Ballistics."

"Two shots!!" cried Jess. She was in the ballistics lab, test firing the gun. After firing, she took off the headphones and put the safety goggles on top of her head. She then grabbed the magnetic wand and fished the two bullets out of the tank of water.

"Trying to take my job, are we." joked Calleigh, her southern accent becoming prominent.

"Oh. Sorry," said Jess as she put the two bullets in two separate envelopes. "You were out in the field, so I figured I'd do this. Did you want to make the comparison?"

"Well why not." She took one of the envelopes and ran it over to a microscope, Jess close at her heels. "Where's the original caliber?"

"Right here." She handed over the original envelope. Calleigh slit it open, dumped the bullet out and put it next to the test round. She then peered into the microscope.

"Well, what do you know. Perfect match."

"Thanks. Now I have to see a tracer about a download."

"Just finished tracing the download. Of course, being as you need an email for this site, it was a hell of a lot easier to find him. The account belonged to Brian Johnson."

"The roommate. Thanks." She grabbed her phone and punched in a few numbers. After the second ring, Ryan picked up. "Let me guess, our suspect just became the defendant?"

"You know it."

Half an hour later, Jess was in the observation room watching Ryan interrogate Brian Johnson. So far, though, he seemed to be unsuccessful.

"So all of that stuff just happened to appear in your house? It seems highly unlikely that those would be the circumstances."

"I don't know what to tell you."

"Someone else is going to come in to deal with you." He stormed out the door and leaned against the wall next to Jess. "You want a crack at him?"

"I was just waiting for the invitation." She walked into the interrogation, sat down, put her feet up on the table, and stared intently at Brian. He started to squirm around in his seat. After five minutes, he started pacing nervously.

A moment or two later he screamed, "Alright! I did it! I killed George!"

"One question: why?"

"He was going to go to the cops about the porn! I couldn't let him do that!"

"Well, because you couldn't let him go to the cops, you earned yourself an even longer sentence. Congratulations, you bonehead." She left the room to rejoin Ryan.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"Being around Dad, Gibbs, and Ziva will do that to you."

"Who are Gibbs and Ziva?"

"Right, sorry. Gibbs is my stepfather and former supervisor in D.C. and Ziva was a coworker there." By this time, they had reached the locker room. "If you think that was impressive, you should see Dad interrogate. He once had a 37-minute-long staredown with a suspect. From what I heard it was amazing." She grabbed her purse and shut her locker door.

"One thing before you go. You do realize you have goggles on top of your head, right?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah, I know." She smiled and walked out the door.