Twenty-Four Hours

"Take it slow." Grissom pleaded with his team. "We can't afford to make any errors. We're going to need all the evidence we can get." The supervisor decided.

"Nick-swab the doors for prints. Cath, check for footprints." He ordered further. The two went to complete their tasks as quickly as possible, to send any preliminary evidence back to the lab.

"I've got two sets over here." The blonde CSI shouted. "Maybe they just walked away." Greg suggested hopefully.

"Sara was wearing heels." She reminded the optimistic lab tech. "these two prints are definitely male." She opined, pointing at the prints.

"What do we know?" Grissom asked, he liked facts not guesses or opinions.

"What I know, is that Sara didn't walk out of here." Catherine's words caused Grissom's heart to sink into his stomach. "And Warrick?" He had to ask. "Not likely." She sighed frustrated, shaking her head.

"Outside of the car is cleared." Nick called before opening the back door of the limo. He sprayed the inside of the limo with a thermal heat spray to detect where they had been positioned. As the liquid turned to dust and settled, there appeared two outlines of the two bodies, one across the back seat, and the other on the floor.

"There doesn't appear to have been a struggle." Catherine observed over Nick's shoulder.

"Why's that?" Grissom probed. "No fingerprints on the windows or door handles, no pieces of clothing left behind. It's all clean." Catherine replied.

"Maybe there was something in their drinks." Nick offered his theory, seeing the open champagne bottle and one glass still half full.

"This outline appears to be Sara. She was lying on the bench with her left arm hanging off. Her champagne glass is on the floor." Greg added as he noted where her body had been positioned.

"It's broken." Grissom noted as he bent down to retrieve the glass and put it in a bag. "But no traces of blood anywhere." He commented as he scanned the carpet.

"Maybe it fell on Warrick. His outline is on the floor." Greg suggested.

"What was he doing on the floor?" Nick inquired bewildered.

"If there were something in their drinks, Sara would be affected quicker, seeing as she weighs less than Warrick." Catherine stated factually.

"Again, why was Warrick on the floor?" Nick wanted to know.

"I'd venture to say, knowing Warrick, that he probably was checking on Sara before he collapsed on the floor." Grissom guessed, following Catherine's logic.

"So, if their drinks were sabotaged, than they had no idea they were in trouble." Nick continued on with his theory.

"And no chance to escape." Catherine added in, starting to believe in that theory.

"We'll find out once we test the champagne." Grissom sent an officer back to the lab with the bottle they recovered from the limo.

Okay, so what happened after they got here?" Catherine asked, looking to explore the crime scene beyond the limo. "How did they leave?" She wondered.

"Hey!" Greg shouted from a few feet away. "What is it Greg?" Grissom asked as he walked quickly to the CSI in training.

"I think I found how they left the scene." He declared, pointing at the tracks on the ground. Catherine took photographs of the evidence while Nick studied it. "They're not fresh." The Texan mused out loud.

"Which means it fits our timeline. The limo hijacked them from headquarters, knocked them unconscious, and abandoned the limo here." Grissom explained as some facts started to line up. "It's about a forty minute drive so, they left here after 7:30pm last night." He concluded logically.

"Which means they are twenty fours ahead of us." Nick stated reluctantly. His statement urged the rest of the team to work faster and harder, knowing time was precious.

"War." She mumbled as she forced her eyes open only to face a dimly lit darkness. She noticed the cool air that woke her up instantly and the hard floor beneath her. "Warrick." She repeated more alert this time as fear threatened to take over as she searched in vain for her friend.

"Over here Sara." He called out finally. Squinting her eyes she saw him leaning against the far wall. She struggled to her feet and quickly scurried to his side. She found him with her feet first, her eyes still getting used to the darkness and toppled over in her heels to land awkwardly on Warrick. Luckily he was ready for her fall and caught her with his arms and gently lowered to the ground beside him. "Are you okay?" she whispered as she held tightly to his hand to reassure herself that he was there and that he was alright since she could only see a shadow of him.

"Yeah." He muttered. "How's your hand?" Warrick remembered her bleeding before everything went black. "Fine." She lied even as she ignored the searing pain. She was more concerned about him and getting out of there rather than her own injuries, which she thought to be inconsequential.

"Sara." He repeated slowly even as he reached for her. Her recoil gave her away as she pulled her hand away. "You've been bleeding out since the limo." He said in concern. He proved that when he felt the sticky liquid on her hand as he gently caressed it to check for any other injuries.

He didn't have to wait long for her protest. "It hasn't been that long." She protested weakly, suddenly realizing she had no real concept of how long it had actually been. Her statement caused him to pause from ripping his shirt to check his watch. He blinked to make sure he wasn't seeing things. 'Maybe it's broken.' He wondered hopefully, before the soft ticking contradicted that thought.

"Warrick." Sara's soft voice snapped him out of his trance. He wanted to lie to her but he knew it would do neither of them any good. They needed to be honest and realistic in order to get through this ordeal.

"It's been over twenty four hours." He stated in response to her unspoken question. His mind reminded him of the task at hand, and he was worried when he realized that she had been bleeding for just as long. He wrapped his shirt gently over her wounded hand but didn't move to let it go.

'For such a strong man, he was so gentle.' She thought as she lost herself for a moment in his touch. She threw that thought out; disgusted with herself for letting down her guard when they needed to be on top mentally to figure a way out of the mess they were in.

He noticed her reaction but didn't admit to his own feelings. 'This is not the time Brown.' Regardless of how they both felt, they could not use the time now to indulge themselves. He forced himself to think through their situation.

"Shift started an hour ago. I'm sure they noticed we're not there and went looking for us." He said trying to convince himself and Sara.

"I don't know. The only thing Grissom and Catherine have been noticing is their high profile case." Sara argued bitterly. He didn't bother to correct her, knowing she needed someone to blame, since their captors were phantoms to them.

"How are they going to find us?" Her voice cracked as fear got the best of her. "We have no idea of where we are, who took us or why!" She shouted as she started pacing the small cell they were enclosed in.

"Sara!" Warrick spoke loudly to stop her tirade. He grabbed one of her flailing arms as she passed by and tugged gently. She reluctantly let him draw her back down. "We know better than anyone, that they'll find the evidence and us." He declared confidently.

"Yeah." She whispered as she let her head fall on his shoulder. She was grateful he was being so calm, especially when her emotions were out of control. The two sat in silence, Sara returning to her usual rational self as her mind raced to make sense of everything that had happened.

"Let's recap." Grissom suggested as he gathered the rest of the team around the limo. They had collected all the evidence from the scene and were about to return to the lab to process the evidence.

"Sara and Warrick left the building yesterday in the limo at 6:40pm." Catherine began repeating the timeline Grissom had created.

"Assuming they didn't stop anywhere, "Nick commented, "They were knocked unconscious in the limo and driven here." He finished.

"Then they were taken by another vehicle somewhere else after 7:30 pm." Greg added. What was left unsaid was the fact that it was now twenty-four hours later. Grissom knew that people don't just disappear. If, and it appears that's what happened, they were taken, they were in real danger.

The group was silent as they drove back to the CSI building. Nick sighed and prayed that the evidence would lead them to Sara and Warrick. All other cases were forgotten as their minds raced to make the pieces fit. However the pieces were few. Right now they had more questions than answers. Hopefully the next few hours would help put them together and make sense of this terrible puzzle.