"Who is this?" Sam looked down at Jessica with a friendly smile. Jessica looked up at him, too traumatized to be willing to make new friends. She clung to Gram's hand and wouldn't let it go.
"This is Jessica, Warrick's little girl." Catherine explained. "And his grandmother, Grams."
"He has a little girl?" Sam frowned. "She doesn't look much like him. I didn't know any of your co-workers had children, besides you."
"You'd be surprised." Catherine smirked, not willing to tell him about Gemma's relationship to Gil. She didn't know if she could fully trust the man. She wanted to keep some of her secrets until she needed to share them. "He's married. His wife was attacked."
"And you want me to keep the kid safe?" Sam studied her.
"Yeah. Lindsey too." For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he was somehow involved with all this. As always, Sam could read her.
"I don't hurt kids." He defended himself. "I'm not in on any of this missing kids thing. Kids are to be protected, at all costs."
"Thank you for that, Sam." Catherine sighed, feeling slightly relieved that he wouldn't use Jessica to his advantage.
"Warrick." Sam shook his head, frowning. "I thought there was something going on between you and that young man."
Shooting a glance at Grams, Catherine shook her head and smiled. "Yes, friendship. He's one of my best friends. I love his wife, too."
"Ant Cattwin?" Jessica revived herself, enough to tug on Catherine's pants.
"What Sweetie?" Catherine knelt down to be at her level.
"Will you wash my clothes? Mommy will be mad cuz I got it messy." The little girl asked nervously. Catherine frowned at the blood smeared shirt, knowing that it would never come clean. "The bad man gotted bwood on it."
"I know, he hurt Mommy. When you touched Mommy, you got blood on your pretty shirt." Catherine reached over and played with the girls hair. "Mommy won't be mad."
"It's not Mommy's Ant Cattwin." Jessica insisted. "Bad man's bwood."
"Honey? How did you get the bad man's blood on you?"
"I bited him. Hard!" Jessica looked uneasy. "Made him bweed. You gonna tell Daddy? He say it bad to bite. He gonna be mad at me!"
"No, honey, he's not going to be mad at you." Catherine pulled the girl into her embrace. "He's going to be so proud of you! You were protecting Mommy! You're the reason we're going to catch this bad man!"
Twenty minutes later, Catherine left with Jessica's shirt secured in an evidence bag. This was the break they needed to catch these monsters. Arriving at the lab, she found Hodges there in the Trace lab. "What are you doing here? I thought you were watching Warrick?"
"Sara's there." Hodges shrugged, looking at her hands in interest. "Got something for me?"
"Jessica's shirt. She bit the bastard! She bit him! She said this is his blood!" Catherine gushed. "That poor little girl was embarrassed that she bit him! If this is his blood, she's cracked open our case! Not only was she wearing evidence, but that bastard has her teeth marks on the back of his thigh!"
"Let's hope you're right." David took the shirt. "And that he's in the system. Won't do us any good to have DNA without something to compare it too."
"It'll be there, it has to be there." Catherine insisted with a sigh. "Rush?"
"Of course, you don't have to ask me that. It's Gemma and Warrick." David sniffed, offended that she would even ask. "Nothing would stop me from running this."
"I know." Catherine realized she had hurt his feelings. "I'm sorry, I'm just……excited."
Warrick sat beside his sleeping wife, weeping softly. Although her injuries were not life threatening, her pain was so sever they had an I.V. drip of pain meds running into her. The doctor had tried to break the news of the miscarriage as gently as possible, but he had felt like the doctor had ripped out his heart.
Gemma had been so doped up on meds that he doubted it had even registered. He didn't look forward to telling her about it. The only saving grace in all this was that Jessica had come out of it unscathed. He sat there, fuming in his helplessness. He wanted to find the animal who did this, and he wanted to rip his heart out with his bare hands.
Nick sat slouching in the chair across from Grissom. Never one that enjoyed being called to the principal's office, he waited for Grissom to get on with it. Grissom was tired and upset over Gemma, his eye's bloodshot and he rubbed his head as if he were in pain.
"You took a possible suspect to the crime scene?" Grissom finally ground out. "What were you thinking?"
"Technically, she took us to the scene. Greg and I were stranded without a mode of transportation." Nick decided that perhaps the blame wouldn't be solely on him. "I was against it, but Greg-"
"Greg? Nick, you are the Senior CSI. It's your job to show him what should and should not be done." Grissom growled.
"I know, but….this isn't the normal case. It's evolved into something bigger. Your daughter is laying in a hospital right now all because of some case that we can't solve."
"Nick we've been trough this before. We can't let our personal feelings get the best of us. We look at every case the same way. Follow the evidence, no matter where it takes us."
Nick took a deep cleansing breath, trying not to lose his cool. His boss and mentor, didn't know any other way to go about it. "I don't work that way. You know it, and I know it. I'm not going to change. Warrick is my best friend, my brother, and that makes Gemma my family. I can't pretend she's not someone special. That baby was going to me my niece or nephew. They killed it and I want them to pay. I can't let them get away with hurting my family."
"Warrick must have been on to something." Grissom frowned, changing the subject as if Nick hadn't just made an impassioned speech. "I want you to retrace his steps, see what he was looking into. That may be the key to this case."
"I don't think it was Warrick." Nick shook his head. "It was a known fact that the four of us were doing the investigating. Warrick was the only one they could get to."
"What?"
"Think about it. What do you and I have that we care about? You have Gemma, but no one outside of our team knows that. Do either of us have something that means anything to us? Or Greg? Nothing. Hell, we don't even have pets, outside of your bugs. We live, eat and sleep for our job. Warrick's not like that anymore. He's got Gemma. He's got Jessica." Nick explained. "He's got a weakness now. So, they went after him."
"You could be right. I've went over his notes. Nothing was panning out." Grissom picked up Warrick's folder and then threw it back down in disgust. Catherine came flying into the office without knocking. Looking up at the flushed woman, he said in a sardonic tone. "Yes, Catherine, come on in."
"She bit him! She bit the bastard!"
"Who? Who bit whom?" Gil gave her his patented Grissom look.
"Jess! She bit the man that attacked Gemma!" Catherine threw the words at him in a rush. "She bit the sucker hard enough to draw blood! She has his blood on her shirt. The bastard has her teeth marks on him! Hodges is running trace on it! We've got the bas-"
"Whoa!" Grissom held his hands up in surrender. "Slow down. This is a four year olds word your running with."
"She's not one to lie." Nick cut in, excited.
"She was afraid she'd get in trouble." Catherine prattled on, ignoring Grissom's cynicism. "That little girl has already accomplished more than any of us trained CSI's have."
"Let's just wait until we get word from Hodges, on whether we start planning our victory party." Outwardly, Grissom was calm, but he started feeling the excitement building inside. He quickly tamped it down, he would not show them that he could feel emotions.