THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO REVIEWED!! I never knew an email could brighten my day so much!! I'm not sure if any of you will review again because of the crappyness of this chapter-but please don't abandon me-just hang on 'till the next chapter! HANG ON!!!! Special thanks to: pseud0me, Raven31 (thank you SO much for adding me to your favourites list!!blushes), Sandersgirl, Carkey, cupotrevor, angelbaby (that's too funny that you said that, because after I posted, I was reading it over and thought that myself!!..well at least she didn't call him her precious), Arkee, Tabicat and Sillie
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
Alrighty, now onto Chapter 2...if I haven't driven you away already...
CHAPTER TWO
The door to the break room slammed closed, causing Sara to jerk awake, her head snapping up from where it had been resting on the table. Through bleary eyes she saw Nick standing in front of the now closed door, his hands on his hips and a smile on his face.
"Did I wake you?" She scowled at him and set her head back down on the table with a groan.
"How can you be so chipper at this hour?" His grin got wider and he strode over to the coffee maker and began rummaging loudly for a cup.
"Easy," he said, raising his voice over the ruckus he was making, "I had yesterday off...aha!" he produced a cup from the back of the cupboard, dusted it off and poured him self some coffee. "So now I'm all rested up and ready to go..."
"Yeah, well, I was suppose to have today off..." Sara said, her head still resting on the table. Nick laughed and walked over to sit across from her.
"Oh ho! Grissom screwed you again didn't he?" She looked up and frowned again at his obvious enjoyment of her misery.
"I feel like I haven't slept in three days..."
"That's probably because you haven't slept in three days." He flashed a wide grin at her and held up his cup of coffee. "Cheer up! Have some coffee..." and he took a sip.
And spit it out. "Jesus!" He wiped his mouth and looked in the cup as if he suspected it to be green and moldy. "That is terrible!" Sara leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, a sudden smile appearing on her face. Nick, his features still twisted in a grimace looked over at her, his face suddenly becoming ruefully slack with realization. "You knew didn't you?" She nodded, her smile growing wider. He tisked with disgust, and shaking his head moved to go dump the remaining coffee down the drain.
"Hey, serves you rightÉ" Sara said, decidedly more amused then she was a few minutes ago, "ruining my beauty sleep. I would've told you butÉ" she shrugged her shoulders and tried to repress a laugh as he began to gulp down water straight from the tap.
"Thirsty Nick?" remarked a new voice with amusement. Nick jumped and spun to see Grissom standing at the doorway, a stack of files in his hands.
"The coffeeÉ" he tried to explain, "it was reallyÉbad, andÉ" Grissom raised an eyebrow and Nick looked to Sara for help. She only looked at him as if she was also waiting for an explanation, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "Well where the hell is Sanders?" he burst out. "Doesn't he always make new coffee around this time?"
"He usually does," remarked Catherine, who strode past Grissom into the room and over to the fridge. "Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be around right now..." Grissom, who had been flipping through a stack of papers from one of the files now discarded on the table looked up at Catherine in surprise.
"What? Wasn't he suppose to be shadowing you on the double homicide?"
"Well he was," she bent and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge before closing the door and leaning against it. "But he never met meÉI ended up just going by myself." Grissom set down the papers, his forehead creased as he thought. He looked at Sara and then at Nick.
"Have either of you seen him since yesterday?" they both shook their heads no. "Last time I saw him was when we got off shift yesterday morning..." Sara said, "but he was excited about somethingÉand he said something about not going home...?"
"Did he say why?" Catherine asked, and as Sara opened her mouth to answer, Grissom interrupted with,
"I sent him out to a scene." There was a shocked silence in the room, which Nick broke with,
"You did what??" and Sara closely followed with
"You wouldn't let me go solo until I had shadowed for at least-" Grissom held up his hands,
"It was just a B and E, and I sent him to take some shots of the point of entry-"
"But do you really think sending Greg was a good idea?" Catherine voiced, "I mean he's a smart kid, but-"
"One of Ecklie's guys took samples of primary evidence from the perimeter before he was forced to leave because of food poisoningÉEcklie asked for someone from my team to help him out, and since Nick, you were on vacation, and Sara, you were going on vacation, and you" gesturing to Catherine, "and Warrick and myself were all busy with other cases, I had to send Greg." He paused, and when a silence met the pause, he continued. "I have full confidence in Greg's ability, and all he had to do was take pictures-he knew it was strictly hands off."
"Sorry Grissom," Nick said after a moment of silence passed.
"I wasn't trying to question your judgment," Catherine said steadily and Grissom gave her a small nod and smile that said 'I know'.
"But that still doesn't answer where Greg is nowÉ" Sara spoke up, and as if in answer to her comment, Grissom's phone rang. Jumping a little and quickly patting his pockets in search for the source of the ringing, he finally pulled his cell out and answered.
"Gil Grissom," Knowing they should be doing something else and unable to, the others leaned in closer to better hear the one sided conversation. "What?...how long had he beenÉwell is there any sign of him?" Nick sensed a crack in Grissom's normally cool exterior, which made him feel slightly sick. He looked at Catherine and saw that, though her face betrayed no emotion, her knuckles had gone white from gripping the bottle in her hands. Feeling the cold grip of panic start to take hold of him, he swallowed hard and forced himself to turn back to Grissom, who ended the conversation abruptly with, "We're on our way."
Grissom looked at them and they knew that in the silence that hung between them he was collecting himself. And hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, they waited.
"That was Brass," he began, the calmness of his voice surprising himself more then anyone. "There was an...accident at the scene Greg was at-"
"Oh God," Catherine whispered harshly.
"No, there's no sign that he's dead," Grissom continued, flinching at the sound of the word 'dead'. He had become accustomed to discussing the technical and biological aspects of death, but when it was linked with someone you knew, he realized was unsure of how to deal with the emotional side.
"Well what is it then?" Sara asked impatiently, frustrated with being in the dark.
"It appears...he's been taken..."
88888888888888
They pulled up to a small one story house on a quiet secluded street, the pavement and neighbouring houses illuminated by the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance and police cars. Amidst the chaos of the crime scene, they could make out one figure, standing a few feet away from where their car had parked, waiting for them. Brass remained stoic in his greeting, although they could tell he was shaken by what had taken place. As they walked over to the house, pushing through the crowd that had gathered, he brought them up to date.
"It was a routine breaking and entering, which only calls for one uniform to be on the scene, plus one CSI," they all paused for a second as the paramedics pushed an empty gurney past them. They all froze, the realization of what that meant dawning on them. That the paramedics had found the person dead on arrival, and that the deceased had been left for them to analyze. Brass cleared his throat harshly and continued walking,
"The DB is officer Jack Thompson..." They had reached the house and Brass turned to look at them, "he was a good guy...good officer, good man..." He paused for a moment and then looked Grissom straight in the eye, "Find something to catch the son of a bitch who did this, will you?" Grissom nodded,
"I'll try..." and moved past him to open the door. As they all walked past him, Brass called out,
"Oh, and watch your step!" Raising an eyebrow at the warning, Grissom pushed the front door open, and they realized why Brass had spoken.
The door swung open to reveal a large room. There seemed to be no wall dividing the house into separate rooms, just one wide-open space. But that was not the strangest thing about the house. The strange part was that more then half of the floor had caved in, revealing a dark, gaping pit situated about 8 feet from the front door.
"Jesus," remarked Nick, letting out a low whistle. "What the hell happened here?"
"That's what we're here to find out Nicky." Said Catherine, pushing past Grissom and Nick into the house, stepping carefully on the wooden floorboards as she did. Pulling out their flashlights and following her, the others moved slowly into the house as well, automatically splitting up into different directions.
Nick slowly approached the hole in the floor, and cautiously peered over the edge.
"Here's our DB." He said, shining his flashlight down onto the immobile body of a tall, red-headed, stocky man in a police uniform, the artificial beam of light glinting off the shard of glass in his back.
"Can you get down there?" Asked Grissom, who was standing next to a broken window to the left of the front door.
"I think so," answered Nick, as he sat down on the edge of the hole, and then dropped down onto the debris below, coughing as a cloud of dust billowed up to greet him. Waving his hand in front of his face in a vain attempt to clear the air, he looked around. Broken furniture and wooden floorboards covered the hard concrete of the basement floor. He sighed. It was going to take forever to process all of this, and every second they wasted was a second Greg and whomever had him got farther out of their reach.
As he scanned the ground he noticed a void in the wreckage, situated in about the middle of the floor. Walking unsteadily over the remains of what seemed to be a coffee table, he made his way over to it and knelt beside it. It seemed to be the size of a person, as if someone had fallen, and then the house had fallen on top of them, surrounding them with debris. As his eyes scanned the floor, something caught the beam of his flashlight, and reflected it back at him. Pushing some of the broken wood aside he pulled it out. A nametag. Greg's nametag.
888888888888888 ahhhhhh!!!.sorry this chapter is so crappy...the next one will be soooooooo much better, I PROMISE!!