Chapter Four

Shiny Cellphone

Grissom was still pacing around the interrogation room. Sara had reinstated her position at the head of the cold, steel table in the middle of the room, and continued to munch silently on her broccoli.

"Grissom, why are you so uptight? You were the one who called them in to do the job in the first place!" Sara mumbled to him, licking her two front teeth to dislodge a piece of vegetable stuck in the gap.

"I know, I know, it's just…what's it been now?" He glanced to the digital clock high on the far right wall. "It's been an entire twenty minutes and I'm starting to get worried."

"Did you take your pills this morning?" Sara asked him. She lifted a suspicious eyebrow in his direction, a 'gotcha' kind of smirk on her face.

"I do not need them, for I do not have an anxiety disorder." Grissom declared—his eyes widening in a lofty, almost arrogant pose.

"Of course you don't…" Sara returned to eating.

"Sara, really, do you have any ideas? Warrick and Catherine are 'incommunicado'. Nick is missing! And now those people from Chicago are gone too!"

"Doesn't there have to be a 24 hour window before someone is actually 'missing'?"

"That's beside the point. Do you have any ideas?"

Sara paused; doing nothing more than let the spork in her right hand go limp.

"Well the way I see it, we have two options. One: We could go looking for Nick and find those people from Chicago on the way or…I still have to think up the second option."

She took another huge mouthful of broccoli.

Grissom only stared.

"Well…I suppose that's a logical idea."

"Then let's go."

Liz sat up with a soft moan; her eyes closed and head pounding. She was on the ground somewhere, but this accursed headache was keeping her from thinking properly. The last thing she remembered was herself yelling at Mindy for something—Mindy! Her eyes shot open and she frantically took in her surroundings, scanning the land around her for Mindy.

She, herself, was on the very edge of a coniferous forest.

'Wait, that can't be right. We were just driving through a rainforest.'

Liz rubbed her eyes, as if she was seeing things due to a concussion. When she reopened them, she was indeed, sitting on the edge of a coniferous forest. Giant, towering pine trees formed a border on three sides, framed on the fourth end by doubly towering mountains, the square they formed creating a gently sloping green hill in the center.

Some moans to Liz's left distracted her from taking in the sights and she turned to the noise. Mindy was sitting under a bush, her red hair swept into flyaway mats. Her glasses were askew, and her eyes looked crossed, their expression dazed.

"Whoa..." she groaned.

"Are you all right?" Liz asked her, her hands moving to her own hair to double-check her ponytail hadn't come down at all. It was beginning to slip, so she tightened it.

"Yeah…" She sounded confused.

"Where's Molly?"

Mindy shrugged and glanced around. "DUDE! We're in…a…not rainforest!"

"Wonderful observation Mindy." Liz said sarcastically. She stood up and brushed off her khakis and the back of her cream-colored sweater. Liz checked herself over for injuries, found none, and then turned the forest she had flown out of the vehicle.

She couldn't help but think, 'Should have worn a seatbelt…' as she walked into it. She strode further but found nothing, not even a hint of the European jeep. Eventually she realized that she was walking deeper in than she had been thrown. Had she perhaps walked passed the jeep? Liz walked a few more yards then decided something very strange was happening where she had somehow passed the jeep and turned around.

When she reached the boundary between the forest and the grassy slope, Mindy was still sitting looking rather disorientated.

"Mindy, have you found Molly yet?"

Mindy shook her head then stood her chubby body up, tugging her snug jeans up and her taut shirt down.

"I don't know where she is."

Liz looked around in a very slight panic, when suddenly a call answered her question.

"I see freaky dead people!"

The call came from above and Liz's gaze turned to the tree branches above. Mindy too looked up. Molly was sitting on one of the branches, her dark clothing contrasting in a way that made her almost impossible to see.

"Molly, come down from there." Liz commanded. She put her hands on her hips and mentally wished her normally soft, calm copper eyes to harden into an almost black.

Molly grunted and disappeared into the brush cover of the pine tree. The next moment, after numerous rustlings of the tree, she appeared at the foot of it, her hair entwined with pine needles.

"All right girls, we're CSI's. Anybody have any ideas of how to get ourselves out of this mess?"

Molly did nothing but grunt. Liz hadn't expected her to be any help anyway, so she turned to Mindy, who was still gazing with her jaw dropped up towards the sky.

"Mindy! Any ideas?" Liz snapped. Molly too looked at the redhead whose blonde side had begun to take effect.

Liz waited impatiently, her arms crossed against her chest and her foot tapping on the dried out needles covering the ground. Mindy continued to stare.

"Mindy, come on, say something before we think you're dead!" Liz barked.

"Th-th-the..." Mindy stuttered.

"Whaaat...?" Liz raised an eyebrow and halted her foot.

"Th-the...eagles..."

Liz and Molly both trained their sights towards whatever Mindy was looking at, and there they saw them— numerous flying eagles, that could have easily been mistaken for buzzards, despite the fact they were clearly meant to be eagles.

"They're going to eat us!" Mindy shrieked, her arms snapping to her head in a defensive position.

"The eagles are not going to eat us Mindy." Liz groaned, taking her finger and thumb to her temples and rubbing. The throbbing headache was demanding her attention, but she didn't have any to spare. They were stranded somewhere in the middle of a coniferous forest in the middle of a rainforest, in the middle of Nevada. What were the chances?

"Let's just...go find somewhere to sit and think or something...maybe take a look around."

They were here to find Nick, and that was exactly what they were going to do. Nick's jeep crashed right where they had crashed. He had to be somewhere close by, right?

Liz set off on foot, Molly followed silently, and Mindy trailed distantly after Molly, arms still clamped over her head, muttering erratically about the eagles that were supposedly about to come swooping down at their heads to peck their eyeballs out.

Liz wasn't sure what the heck she was doing, except that they were completely and utterly lost. They were here to find Nick, but in the process, had gone missing themselves. The group moved out across the hill, Liz's eyes wide open in the hopes of finding the missing subject. Nothing. Finally, they reached the very center of the knoll; Liz took another long look around then sat down with her legs crossed.

Molly grunted, as if she were saying, 'What are you doing now?' but without protest, she sat down. Mindy too managed to control herself long enough to sit down with them. Once she situated herself on the ground, she curled into a fetal position, her arms still over her head, and began to rock back and forth, muttering manically. "The eagles, they're going to eat us...they're going to eat us...they're going to eat us..."

Molly sat stoic, Liz sat thinking as best she could with Mindy's ramblings, and Mindy muttered on...

About twenty-five minutes later, Liz had had enough.

"Mindy! Shut up! The eagles are not going to eat us!"

A time very poorly chosen, for at just that moment, a small chickadee landed daintily on a tall blade of grass a few yards in front of them, and the next second an eagle had swooped down and grabbed the bird up in its claws of steel.

Mindy moaned hopelessly and Liz threw her hands up in surrender.

"What did I do? What did I really do to deserve this oh mighty overlord of misery?" she cried cynically.

Molly grunted then whispered, "I see freaky dead people."

Liz responded sharply, "Shut up."

Then, quite suddenly, a loud beeping noise filled their ears. Liz's eyes snapped to Molly's—cold, hard, and menacing without her even making an effort.

"Molly—we've been stranded here forever—why didn't you tell anyone you had a cellphone?"

Molly ignored her and reached into one of her enormous pockets to get at her phone. She flipped it open and put it to her ear, offering a grunt as a means of greeting.

Liz hung on bated breath as Molly listened and just when thoughts of being rescued and brought out of here entered her head, Molly hung up the phone, threw it forcefully to the ground, and began to stomp on it.

"No!" Liz shrieked. She launched herself forward, pushing Molly and her foot of doom aside and scooped the phone up into her hands. But it was too late…the cellphone had been broken into two useless pieces. Liz's hands went limp and she hung her head. She turned her eyes to Molly who sat there emotionlessly.

"Why did you smash your phone?" Liz asked.

Molly grunted, though Liz, who had worked with Molly for years, knew exactly what it meant. Telemarketer. Liz hung her head again and stared down at the destroyed phone. She moved it around in her hand, the light from the sun above them glinting off it.

200 feet above their heads, one of about twenty or so eagles gliding through the air caught a glimpse of the reflected light and stopped in mid-flight, searching for the shiny object that had caused the flash.

When he spotted the broken pieces of phone, one thought raced through the animal's feeble mind: 'Shiny...' And he dove.