She watched as they walked to the living room, packed up their kits, and went out the front door, closing it quietly behind them. For a full thirty minutes she sat looking at the door, making sure they were really gone before she stood up and made her way to the bakers rack. The shelves were fuller than before. One by one she removed the cookie jars and potted violets until nothing was left but a large philodendron. She picked it up and put it on the table and then slid the rack to the side.


The sudden burst of light in the previously pitch black darkness nearly blinded Nick after he pulled the light chain over his head. He quickly shut his eyes tightly and clutched at the wall for balance. It took him a minute or two before he felt steady enough to open his eyes again, and when he did he found that he still could see nothing but the stone on either side of him. Below him, the walls gave way to the rest of the root cellar, but he could not see much until he descended the stairs, and that was going to take some time. He slowly sat down and looked toward the bottom of the stairs. He noted that there was blood on the wall which caused him to look at his hands. Sure enough, there was blood there too from where he had wiped at his head and face earlier. He must have gone head first right into the wall when he fell. The pain in his arm reminded him that his probable concussion was not his only injury. Now in the light, he wanted to examine the limb to see what kind of damage it might have suffered, but he still had his jacket on. Maybe it's better not to find out...sure not worth trying to take the jacket off right now. So he held his arm close to his body, took a deep breath, and then began scooting down the stairs one at a time.

By the time he reached a point on the staircase where he could see throughout the room, he was winded enough again to have to rest before looking around. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath. In just a few seconds he felt himself drifting off...succumbing to the bliss of oblivion. But a sudden commotion in the room brought him full to full alert again. He jerked his head up and looked toward the source of the sound.

The light above the stairs was bright, but it couldn't quite reach all of the dark corners of the cellar. Still, it was enough so that Nick could finally make out something. When he looked toward the area where he had heard the earlier noises and now this, he saw a small, folding card table with a couple of plastic cups on it. There were no chairs, but there were several pillows stacked up near the table. And there was a blanket. Nick had to blink his eyes and lean forward as he thought it looked odd...lumpy…as though there were more pillows underneath it. And it was moving.

In spite of the dire situation, he almost smiled at the thought of the children hiding from him, practically in plain sight. But he knew they might actually be hurt under there. Or restrained. Regardless, there was one thing he knew for sure. They were scared.

"Allison? Sean?" The blanket seemed to shrink, pulling back tighter against the forms beneath. "My name is Nick. I work with the police department. I'm just...we've been trying to find you...to take you home. You don't have to be afraid." He saw some more movement under the blanket, but there was no response. "Hey...listen...I'm over here on the stairs...sitting down. I'll stay here. And you can just stay there, okay? You can just peek out and take a look and see that it's okay. I'll stay right here."

Nick stayed in place and waited. It only took a few minutes before he saw the edges of the blanket slowly come down, exposing a mop of mussed up blonde hair. Two seconds later and Sean Elliott's blue eyes were staring across the room at him. Nick smiled, although he wasn't sure how well the boy could see him in the sparse light. "Hi, Sean," he said kindly.

The little boy ducked quickly back under the safety of the blanket, and Nick could hear murmuring underneath. A moment later the blanket lowered again and this time Sean was joined by the dark hair and brown eyes of the little girl. "Hi, Allison."

The two children stared at the newcomer for several minutes before turning to each other, heads together, and quietly conferring about this sudden change in circumstances. Nick waited silently, allowing them to size him up and decide what they were going to do. Their heads turned to look at him once more and then they huddled again. This time Nick could hear the whispers.

"Ask him."

"No, you ask him."

"No...you."

The exchange amused Nick as he waited for them to come to some decision, but the next words, spoken timidly by a very wide-eyed Allison as she still clutched the blanket, broke his heart.

"Are you the bad man?"


Sheriff Rory Atwater threw the copy of the Las Vegas Sun down on the table in the breakroom of the crime lab. "Somebody want to explain that to me?"

The entire grave shift team along with Captain Brass sat around the table, and everyone cringed without even looking at the paper. They knew the press had been all over the story about the missing children, and now that a member of the police department had disappeared as well they were even more determined to get a good story. Sensationalism sells papers, and this situation was just begging for it.

Grissom reached out and put his fingers on the paper, sliding it toward him, and looked down at the headline blaring from the front page. "Bermuda Triangle Neighborhood Claims Another Victim," he read it out loud.

"Keep going," said Atwater, arms crossed.

The CSI supervisor pursed his lips and then continued, "In the normally pleasant Bryant Street neighborhood where two children recently vanished without a trace, the mystery deepened Tuesday as one of the investigators searching for the children went missing as well. A source close to the case reports that the police have no clues in the disappearance of one of their own, CSI Nick Stokes, who was canvassing the area along with other officers when he disappeared." He stopped and looked at the sheriff. "What do you want me to say, Rory?"

"Skip to the bottom there."

Grissom looked back down at the newspaper and scanned to the end of the story. "Understandably, frightened neighbors are asking why there hasn't been any progression in this case, and this reporter has to agree. If the police can't protect themselves, how are they going to protect the citizens of Las Vegas?"

Atwater paced back and forth as he spoke. "Now one of you explain to me how I'm supposed to keep this city feeling safe when 3 people have disappeared into thin air and you guys have nothing to go on."

"C'mon, Rory..." Brass started but was quickly stopped by the sheriff.

"Jim...save it." Atwater held up his hand. "I've got a press conference in an hour, and I want to hear something from this team that I can say to keep people feeling safe and the press satisfied. They're calling it the Bermuda Triangle for Christ's sake! Grissom...give me something...anything. Tell me you found something in the search today that's gonna help solve this thing."

"I wish I could," Grissom said calmly. "But all of the evidence isn't in yet."

"What evidence? That's the problem here, people...no clues...no sign of anything. That's what people are afraid of." The sheriff leaned over with his palms on the table. "Somebody run it down for me. What did you find today?"

The team was silent, each one looking at the other before Catherine sighed and then spoke up. "Okay, well...Gil and I went to Shelly Southern's house. She's a 'desperate housewife' without the husband. Her place is a wreck, her kids are bratty, but...we didn't find anything. We got a lot of DNA from her bed and the...furniture...around it..." She cleared her throat. "But it was all hers or unknown males...nothing matched the kids or Nick. And there were no signs that they had been in the house recently."

Sara took over next. "We didn't find anything at the old lady's house either. She said Nick came back to get his phone and then searched her attic and basement. We found the stuff downstairs...like she said he found when he looked...the fort and the toys...but there was no evidence of him or the kids down there. We checked the attic too and the rest of the house. There are a lot of places kids could hide, but...nothing."

"Steele was telling the truth." Warrick fumed as he spoke the sex offender's name out loud. "All of the samples from his house were his. Hell, we didn't even find any porn flicks or magazines...kiddie or otherwise."

"He might have cleaned house," said Brass. "He knew we'd be back."

"Maybe," Warrick agreed. "Doesn't matter...porn or no porn...there wasn't any evidence Nick had been there...or the kids." He crumpled his coffee cup and threw it hard at the corner waste basket for emphasis. "Damn it! I was sure it was him!"

"It still might be. Are you guys ruling these three people out as suspects?" asked Atwater.

Brass shook his head. "We're not ruling anybody out, but...I don't know how many times we can keep going back over the same places without finding anything."

"Well we need to be doin' somethin' besides sittin' around a table yappin'!" Warrick stood up and began pacing back and forth.

"All right, look..." Brass ran a hand across his face, his fingers lingering on his tired eyes for a moment. "Besides you guys searching those three houses, we had almost the whole force out there looking, and that's on top of the searches they did for the kids."

"And don't think I'm not hearing about that too," said the sheriff pointedly. "The press is already throwing questions at me about how we don't care about the kids anymore...that we're going all out looking for our guy instead of trying to find them."

"I think if we find Nick...we find the kids," offered up Catherine.

"Then let's fuckin' find him!" Warrick was still livid as he paced.

"All right, Warrick, calm down." Grissom looked up at Atwater. "Look, Rory...I don't know what else to tell you right now. We went back through all of the trash from when the kids went missing. No clues there, and this week's trash had already been picked up before we realized Nick was gone. Archie's trying to dig up some background on people in the neighborhood besides what we already know...see if anything suspicious stands out, but until then..."

"Until then what?"

"Until then...we wait."


Allison Ruh's question, asked so innocently and yet fearfully, had been like a knife in Nick's heart. Are you the bad man? Both children still huddled together under the blanket with only their eyes visible...watching him. "No." He shook his head. "No, Allison...I'm not the...a bad man." Why had she said the bad man? "I'm here to help you."

The kids looked at each other before Sean spoke up. "She said he was looking for us...that he wanted to take us away...he was mean and he would hurt us."

"Who told you that, Sean? Mrs. Bruner?"

The little boy nodded and pulled the blanket closer.

"Do you know what man she was talking about?"

The children's eyes shifted so that they were looking at each other and then went back to watching Nick. "Our daddy," Allison piped up meekly.

Nick wrinkled his brow. "But that doesn't make sense. Why...how could...?" He stopped when he realized that the children were still cowering under the blanket, clearly still not certain that he was not there to hurt them. He smiled at them. "Okay...well...no one is here right now to hurt you or take you away, and I won't let anyone do that if they try. Okay?" When they hesitantly nodded at him, he said, "You guys can come out...if you want. I'll stay over here."

The little girl started to push the blanket down off of her but was stopped by Sean. He looked warily at the man sitting on the steps. "How do we know you're really a policeman?"

"Well..." Nick looked down at himself. He hadn't worn a vest or brought a kit, and the old woman had taken his gun and radio. But his jacket bore the LVPD logo on the upper left side. "I'm not really a policeman, but I work for the police department. I'm an investigator. I help the police solve crimes."

"Like Scooby Doo?" Allison asked excitedly before Sean hushed her.

Nick laughed. "Sort of...I guess. Hey, look...it says so on my jacket here." He turned a little so that the light hit the logo. "I'd take it off and toss it to you, but...I hurt my arm when I fell, so it's kind of..."

"She pushed you."

Sean's matter-of-fact statement caught Nick off guard. "What?"

"She pushed you," the boy repeated. "Mrs. Bruner."

"Yeah...yeah, I guess she did." Nick wondered what the children had been through since their abduction and just what the old lady had told them, but he wanted to tread carefully into that territory with them. Allison seemed to be timid but also quick to want to accept him. Sean was more cautious and appeared to be taking on the role of the younger child's protector. Nick looked him in the eyes. "Sean, did Mrs. Bruner hurt you or Allison?" When the boy shook his head, he asked, "You guys are okay? Have you had stuff to eat?"

"Peanut butter sandwiches!" Allison exclaimed. "And cookies!"

The boy gave her an annoyed look before answering Nick. "Yes...she feeds us okay." Then he narrowed his eyes and asked suspiciously, "You said you were looking for us. How come you let her get you too?"

The kid was smart. Once Nick gained his trust, he thought that he might be able to get some useful information from him about what was going on, including why Ruth Bruner would tell them that their father was out to harm them when they didn't even have the same father. Might as well tell him the truth. "Well, she tricked me. I trusted her."

Sean nodded. "Us too."

"I'm playing hide and seek with her!" said Allison. "But...I never hid this long before. She said we have to be quiet so he won't find us."

Nick nodded. "You said she meant your dad?"

"Yeah." Now the little girl looked sad, her brief burst of enthusiasm gone. She looked at him, her lower lip sticking out in a small pout, and shook her head slightly. "But my daddy's a good daddy."

"I'm sure he is, honey." He smiled at her for reassurance. "Sean? What about you? Is your dad…." He stopped speaking suddenly as a sound from above caused him to turn his head and look up the stairs. Someone was opening the door.


"He's clean, Warrick." Archie spoke over his shoulder at the tall CSI looming there.

Warrick leaned over to get a closer look at the computer screen. "What? C'mon, man…there's gotta be somethin'."

"Nope." The AV tech hit punched a few keys and Clayton Steele's photo popped up on the screen along with his criminal record file. "He has the conviction for the two offenses six years ago…served his time and hasn't violated his probation since. Not even a traffic ticket."

Warrick huffed in response.

"Even if he did have something else in there…doesn't mean he had anything to do with Nick's disappearance. The guy's small time…he's a shitty asshole…but he doesn't look like the kind of guy who could take Nick on and win." When Warrick didn't answer him, he went on, "He's lived in that house for three years…never married…works construction for Harris Brothers Contracting."

"All right, all right…what else?"

"Ruth Bruner…not in the LVPD system at all. She and her husband owned an antique store…sold the business and retired. They bought their house in 1964…he passed away eight years ago…they had one daughter. Again…nothing standing out here."

"What about Shelly Southern?" Warrick sat down in the seat next to Archie.

"Now her…" He pulled up a mug shot of the divorced mother. "She's got a few misdemeanors for drunk and disorderly. Before she and her ex split up two years ago there was also a domestic assault situation…both of them were arrested for knocking each other around."

"Anything with the kids? Any abuse against them or have they been in any trouble?"

Archie shook his head. "No. Nothing like that." He sighed. "I'm expanding out now…checking out the rest of the neighborhood, but…the police report map doesn't show much in that area aside from a couple of noise complaints and a dog bite."

Warrick got up from his seat and headed for the door. "All right…give me a call if you find anything."

"You heading home?"

The CSI didn't stop to look back on his way out. "Nope. I'm goin' back out there."


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