A/N As much as I'd like them to be mine, these characters do not belong to me, just Beth is mine.

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Beth closed her eyes, reliving the moment. Greg had been talking to her one minute, and only a few short minutes later, he was gone. Beth hoped against all odds that he was alive, but things were looking grim. She was a scientist. She analyzed facts and data for a living. All of the facts in this case pointed to one conclusion: she would never see Greg again. Her mind was at war with itself, and it was tearing her to shreds. On the one side, she wanted Greg to be alive; she wanted to see him again. On the other side, she knew that it would take a miracle to bring Greg back, and the scientist inside of her did not foresee a miracle in the near future. She breathed a sigh of defeat and shifted in Grissom's arms.

"Grissom?" She whispered softly, so that the others couldn't hear her.

"Yes, Beth?" He whispered back.

"Do you think I will ever see Greg again?"

Grissom heard her question, but hesitated in answering. He looked over the faces of his friends and co-workers. They wanted nothing more than to see Greg alive, but they had no clues as to his whereabouts. The only information they had to go on was what Beth had shared with them, and that was hardly sufficient. His eyes fell on Catherine, a mother who protected those near her, and he knew what he had to do. He was not a very emotional man, but there were certain things that affected him. The suffering of those closest to him was one of those things. He had been through a near-fatal encounter with Beth and Greg, and he counted them to be his closest friends, closer even than Catherine. If this had been a case where he knew neither the victim nor the family, he would have told the truth saying that it was very unlikely that the missing person would be found. But in this case, he knew the victim and was part of the family, and although he knew the truth, he couldn't bring himself to say it. He now understood why the living victims needed to be told that everything was going to be okay.

He took a moment to compose himself, then spoke with confidence. "I know that you will see Greg again. We are going to work our hardest to bring him back, safe and sound. But we're going to need your help if that's going to happen. Can you do that?"

She accepted his words with the faith of a child and a familiar spark of life returned to her eyes. "If you think it will help bring him back home, I'll do whatever it takes." With that, she seemed to come back to life, shaking off the shackles of the hold that the situation had on her. She now had hope, and that was all she needed.

Grissom and company knew they had a tough road in front of them, and the fact that Beth was holding their only clues made it tougher. But now that Beth was able and willing to work with them, their work was made that much lighter.