Virtual Threats

All were sat in silence, looking in the direction of Gil Grissom, who was once again looking pensive.

"Gris?" Catherine said, breaking the silence. "Are you going to say something? The tension in here is so thick you could slice it with a knife."

"Yes, sorry Cath. People we have a serious situation on our hands here…"

"Of course we do! Greg's gone missing!" Nick rose to his feet, but a nudge from Warrick made him quickly retake his seat.

"As I was going to say, this case now goes top priority, I want you all to work in shifts, we will all be working on this case in between others, and I want you all to put your maximum into this! We need to find Sanders. Sara, Cath you two are the first to work on the Sanders case, the rest of us will collect our case files and continue with what we do." The team nodded and slowly filed out, taking various folders as they left.

Just as Grissom was about to leave himself, his cell phone rang, the Caller ID showed an unknown number, he answered cautiously. A gruff voice sounded in his ear.

"Supervisor Gil Grissom?"

"This is him… Can I ask who this is?"

"No you may not, now call in the rest of your lackeys, I mean team, we all need a little chat…"

"Who are you to call the shots in my lab?"

"I am the one who will be making all the decisions now Mr Grissom, because otherwise, there will be bad consequences…" Not knowing how to react, Grissom leant out of his office door and hollered for his team, who immediately returned to the office and reassumed their seats. Grissom set the phone down on the desk and pressed the speaker button.

The gruff voice was heard again,

"I assume that you have all 5 members of your team, including yourself Mr Grissom?"

"I do indeed, now would you be so kind to tell me, who you are and why you are making this call."

"Well, seeing as you asked so nicely, I will answer those questions. My name, well you don't need to know that, so just call me X, and as for this call, well I have a certain little monkey who wishes to talk to you…" The team heard a door slam and shuffling movement, the next voice they heard was quiet, jittery but they recognised it at once.

"Guys, i-its me… You have to do s-something, quickly, I'm in… aaahh!" the sound that came from Greg was one of pain, the gruff voice swiftly replaced Greg.

"You see, one toe out of line young man and you will be punished… Now my dear CSIs are you prepared to do as I say, or do I need to persuade you more?" The team heard a thud and another moan from Greg.

"Stop it! What's he done to you?" Sara shouted.

"Ah well, dear Sara… You see young Greg here is the perfect bargaining chip, because if you find him he'll be dead and unable to do anything, and if within three days you don't find him then a friend of mine will be free to go." A sinister sounding laugh sounded on the other end of the phone. "Got any ideas yet?" and the phone went dead.

"He knows my name… He knows my name… How??" Sara stood up and went out into the corridor to gaze out of the window. Warrick followed her, laid a hand on her shoulder and she turned around. He saw her eyes were wild with fear, he could feel her arms were shaking.

"Calm down Sara, it's going to be alright, we'll find Greg and everything will be back to normal."

"Will it Warrick? How can you be sure, what if we've lost Greg forever, what if one of us is next?" Warrick could see she was scared and fighting to hide her emotions.

"It's gonna be alright… Come here," He held her for a few moments before taking her back to Grissom's office.

As the pair entered Grissom's cell phone rang once more, Grissom answered, hit speakerphone and put the cell back on the desk, the gruff voice echoed round the room,

"Oh and one last thing, I will be calling again… at various times, just to let you know how your little hedgehog is doing… I'm sure your looking forward to hearing from him again aren't you?" the phone clicked and went dead again. Grissom stood up slowly, turning to Catherine,

"Cath I need you to do me a favour… Go down to Brass and tell him that all the calls on my work cell are to be monitored and recorded, we can try and catch the kidnapper on his next call, get a location and maybe even a voice clip for comparison."

"I'm on it," She left the office motioning for Sara to accompany her and headed for Brass's room.

"Now the rest of us will get back to our jobs… People won't stop for us, so why should we stop for them?" Grissom took his case file and left leaving Nick and Warrick to their next case, but they couldn't stop the thoughts of Greg niggling in their minds.