Chapter 1

Jennifer Moore rushed in the Las Vegas Crime Lab's locker room. It was her second day and she was already running late. Between her hair not cooperating with her, her keys hiding from her, and the stupid automatic garage door that didn't want to open, she had just moments to spare before checking in with her supervisor.

She breezed past a man, pulling a shirt over his head. Nice abs, she thought absently as she muttered an apology for catching him half naked. Then she hurried on to her locker not really giving him a second thought.

"No problem," Nick Stokes replied to the back of her unfamiliar head, which sported a ponytail of wavy red hair. "If I was easily embarrassed I wouldn't be changing here."

A smile spread across her lips as she recognized his voice. It had been a while since she'd actually heard it, but it still sounded exactly as she remembered. She half turned her head to reply, "Yeah, joining the force got me over my self-consciousness pretty quick."

"You were on the force?" Nick asked. "In Vegas?"

She closed her locker and turned to face him, trying hard not to grin too stupidly. "Seattle, actually."

"Well, welcome to Vegas," Nick said as he gave her a scrutinizing look. She was young, in her mid-twenties no doubt. She had high cheekbones with perfect almond eyes that were the color of peridot. Her eyes struck him as familiar, but he couldn't place her.

"Since it's not 'welcome back' I can tell you don't remember me. Do you?" she asked as she started walking back out. She wasn't going to say anything, but she had noticed the look of concentration on his face.

Her gave her an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, I don't."

She let out a giggle and internally rolled her eyes at herself. She wasn't a teenager anymore. "It's alright. It's been ten years."

"Ten years?" Nick rubbed his chin. "You must've been a teenager then."

She smiled wide. "Yup, 16." She realized she hadn't given him her name and so stuck out her hand. "Jennifer Moore, but everyone calls me Jenn. Although you might remember me as Simone," she quickly added remembering the folly of her youth.

He grabbed her hand and shook it. "Simone Moore," he repeated her name, trying to remember her.

"I looked different back then. I was kinda in to the goth thing, so my hair was black," she told him, trying to help jog his memory. Hoping she didn't appear too idiotic.

The faint tickling of a memory played at the corner of his mind. "Your mom is Jessica Moore?"

"Very good," she replied, surprised he had remembered that much. She opened her mouth to say something else, when her phone went off. She fumbled with the thing, trying to check it. After looking at it, she told him, "I have to go. Late on my second day!"

"Maybe we can catch up sometime," Nick suggested. It would be interesting to find out what she had been doing for the last ten years. Obviously she'd been well, she was a CSI now.

"That'd be great," Jenn enthusiastically agreed. "It was nice to meet you—again," she added as she left the room.

Nick shook his head after she left. His memory of her had come back and he remembered the insolent teen she had been ten years ago. He wondered what had happened to change her attitude. And from her keen reply, he had a feeling he'd soon find out.

Jenn Moore pulled in behind the SUV she'd followed to the scene. It was a simple b&e, so she didn't expect the scene to take too long. It would be a good first scene to process.

She found it interesting how differently she had to approach the scene as a crime scene tech versus a police officer. When she was on the force she was mainly in charge of securing the crime scene, making sure that it wasn't tampered with. Now she got to 'tamper' with the scene herself.

She grabbed the kit out of the back of her vehicle and then walked in to the house.

"Print the back door," ordered the CSI she was on scene with.

Jenn strolled down the hall that ran along the staircase to the second floor. She could see the door from the hallway and already noticed the broken out pane of glass. She imagined she wouldn't find many prints. From what she saw of the house so far and the fact that the owners were on vacation, the burglary appeared to be well organized.

She placed her kit on the ground, and then got out her fingerprint powder. She had some practice at it. Back in Seattle, she was interested in the crime lab stuff and got one of the techs to show her how it was done. Most people would think you just brush it on, but there really was an art to it.

As she was going to dust the broken pane of glass, she noticed something on a shard sticking down. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a small piece of skin and a little bit of blood. What luck! She thought. Some possibly definitive evidence of who committed the crime.

Jenn knew this was one of the reasons she didn't want to be a beat cop anymore. She liked helping solve crimes and she wanted something less subjective than detective work. Being a CSI, it was all about the evidence and evidence doesn't lie.

Jenn and her mentor finished the scene in a pretty uneventful manner. They had found some interesting evidence that they hoped would lead them to the person who took this family's valuables. Jenn thought she did a spectacular job for her first scene. She realized, though, that they all wouldn't be that easy. And her second scene proved that.

She had just gotten all of her evidence to the proper departments when her phone went off again. Jenn was excited to be going out again and this time it was a dead body. She quickly found her partner and they were off.

Jenn had seen her fair share of dead bodies, being first responder on a lot of scenes. But this one, she had never seen anything quite like it. The victim was a man, or she assumed it was a man from the body size, not to mention the hair on the arms and legs.

The face was totally unidentifiable. It appeared the face had been disfigured with acid, along with the fingers and toes. The teeth had been smashed out. The chest held what appeared to be a multitude of stab wounds and the waist and pelvic region were covered with a bloody sheet.

"I don't think the maid service is going to be able to get that out," Jenn mumbled to herself. Then she wondered how many people would stay in this motel room in the future and not know the gruesome sight it once held.

"Print everything in the room," her partner told her. "Don't miss a single surface."

Jenn nodded and then got to work. This room was a lot harder to print, because there was other potential evidence all over the room that she didn't want to mess up. She didn't want to let a killer get away because she got sloppy.

Hours later, Jenn was back in the locker room, her head resting against her locker. She was trying to remember if she had turned everything in, going over the scene in her head, making sure she didn't miss anything.

"Weren't you here when I left?" the voice of Nick Stokes broke through her thoughts.

She turned her head to look at him. "Yeah, I was," she tiredly replied.

"Rough shift?" he questioned.

She moved away from her locker as she shrugged her shoulders and then gave him a weary smile. "Being that it is only my second shift, I really having nothing to compare it to. For all I know, it could be normal."

Nick let out a small chuckle at her reply. "Good point."

"And may you have a good night," she said as she left, to worn out to make small talk.

"Night," he called after her, sorry that she left so quickly. Although, after more than 12 hours working, he didn't blame her. He'd just have to catch up with her a different time.