Notes: Well, after noticing that a some of you who wanted to review but had already reviewed couldn't review, i removed the fic and replaced it. So you could review. ;)

Disclaimer: We don't own. You don't sue.

More notes: This is a joint fic, so any perceived plotholes and inaccuracies are purely figments of your active imagination. Rhi and RK9 are professionals. (smirks) We dont make mistackes. We rool.

Chapter 1

It was amazing, how quickly they grew. One moment you were holding a tiny baby, a miniature human being, with fingers and toes so small it was almost unimaginable to think one day those fingers and toes would belong to a living, breathing, functioning member of society who went out and worked and loved and maybe, someday, had a little miniature human being of their own. Lee Nha sighed to herself, all these thoughts running through her head as she watched her five-year-old son, Jason.

Jason had been born exactly five years ago at the Desert Palm hospital in Las Vegas, shortly after Lee Nha had arrived in America. He'd had ten fingers and ten toes, with brown hair, Chinese features...and beautiful blue eyes that he had inherited from his father.

Who, unfortunately, was out of the picture.

Lee Nha had met Jason's father at a forensics conference held in China six years ago. The conference had been held in the hotel where she had been working as a maid, and when she had been clearing up the mess in the conference room, he had returned for some notes he had forgotten.

They had dated a while, fallen in love...and then he had to leave for Las Vegas, where he had come from. Where Lee Nha had fled China for after her parents rejected her, and the child she had been carrying.

The young woman had arrived in Vegas afraid, unable to find the father of her child, and desperate. She had taken a job as a grocery store clerk, where her affinity for accounts made her popular with her boss, and soon, she was able to buy a place to live, and food to eat, and things to help her care for her soon-to-be-born son.

Eventually, she had given up on finding the father of her child. She knew it would cause complications - for both her, and him. Besides, she had a good life set up here, her old one far behind her now.

Lee Nha held no resentment towards the result of her ill-fated liaison. Jason was her whole life, which was as it should be for any mother. She worked hard to give Jason all the things he needed, and he was a healthy boy; happy, though sometimes when they went to the park, he would watch the families that had fathers and have such a confused look on his face, as if he couldn't understand why he did not have a father as well.

The young woman sighed, and closed the door quietly on her sleeping son. She had work to do. Being a clerk at a nearby grocery store meant that she needed to work hard to support herself and her son, but she was no stranger to hard work. Right now, she could hear the shop accounts calling her name, and she trudged downstairs, flexing her tired muscles.

It was 5am and still dark outside. As Lee Nha sat down at the kitchen table, she glanced out the nearby window at the horizon. The sun was rising slowly, bathing the landscape in the golden light of dawn, made slightly milky and off-color by the smog in the atmosphere. Lee Nha smiled slightly to herself as the new day dawned, and opened one of the account books stacked in front of her. She had two hours until she needed to take Jason to kindergarten, and another half hour after that until work. Her life was made up of routines, the routines of a working mother, but Lee Nha didn't mind. She had carved out her little niche in life and was content to live it. She had Jason, and he was what mattered most to her.

About ten minutes into her accounts, a sharp noise outside made Lee Nha whip her head up and listen intently. It sounded like...someone had stepped on a twig outside. Silence greeted her, however, and she concluded it was either the wind, her imagination, or her neighbors. It might even be Jason...she dismissed that, if it was he'd come bouncing into the living room demanding breakfast.

Turning back to her work, Lee Nha massaged the back of her neck with her hand. A loud crashing noise outside made her get up, walk to the door...

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Jason shot upright in his bed. Three loud reports outside his door made the five-year-old's eyes widen. Instinctively, he dove under his bed at the fourth gunshot. For a while after that, there was silence, but something made the little boy stay right where he was under his bed.

Footsteps sounded outside his room, and the little boy saw a shadow fall across the floor as a figure stood in the doorway of his bedroom. A snort sounded, and whoever it was walked away. Trembling, the little boy closed his eyes and stayed right where he was. He didn't dare to move or call out, so he just curled up into a tight little ball and started sobbing quietly.

He was not sure what had just happened, but the loud noises had frightened him, and the fact that Lee Nha had not come to comfort him scared Jason to his very bones. A horrible, leaden feeling in his gut that he could not quite identify told him that his mother wouldn't be taking him into kindergarten that day.

Or any other day.

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"Why didn't you let me drive, Grissom?" Warrick Brown looked over at the Night Shift supervisor as he carefully maneuvered the Chevy Tahoe into the busy stream of traffic. Gil Grissom's eyes were focused on the road, and he gave no indication that he had heard Warrick.

In the back seat, Sara Sidle spoke up. "'Cause you drive like a crazy person, Warrick." She laughed. Warrick shook his head, and noticed Grissom's lips twitch in that peculiar half-smile of his.

"Did Brass give you the name of the vic?" Sara asked, leaning forward, straining slightly against her seatbelt. Grissom answered in his quiet, measured voice, an expert hand guiding the steering wheel as he pulled off the highway and headed towards one of the more run-down neighborhoods of Vegas.

"No. But he said he'd meet us at the scene." Grissom pulled onto a side-street, and Nick, sitting in back with Sara, sighed.

"Did he give you any details?"

Grissom shrugged. "You know Brass. He was being his usual vague self. He said there was something there I might want to see."

Catherine Willows, the only CSI not present in the already-crowded Chevy, was attending to a minor assault case out in Henderson. It had been a relatively quiet night in Vegas where crime was concerned, so when Brass had informed Grissom of the 419, he had decided to bring along the three remaining CSIs. None of them had objected. If Brass was being vague about the case, it meant it was important - and important cases needed as many people as possible working on them.

The early morning sun greeted Grissom and his team as they exited the vehicle, and the CSI supervisor lifted a hand to shade his eyes as he looked up at the house that was now their crime scene. A strange feeling that something was going to happen soon came over him, and he frowned, not knowing why.

"Gris?" Warrick turned to face him. "You coming?"

Grissom forced a smile. "I'll meet you there."

And the entomologist got his kit and trotted dutifully up to the front door. Little did he know that what was waiting inside would change his life as he knew it...forever.

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