A/N: It's Thanksgiving week here in the US, and I'm thankful for a place to share my stories about these characters we love so much and thankful for readers who leave such lovely reviews and messages, I hope you'll all continue to enjoy the story!

Grissom pulled to a stop behind an identical Denali, and slid out into the sweltering night. He walked around the vehicle, immediately assessing the house and the neighborhood. It was a typical middle class subdivision. This house was one of four in a quiet cul de sac. Each of the houses in the neighborhood were obviously variations on the same few designs: two stories, three or four bedrooms, two car garages, and small front lots with nearly identical xeriscaping. The only thing that set this house apart from the others was the presence of a black and white police car in the driveway and two black crime scene SUVs parked along the curb in front.

At the start of the shift two hours earlier, he had sent Nick and Greg to a trick roll and assigned Catherine, Warrick, and Sara to this missing person case. He had intended to get caught up on some paperwork and take anything else that came in during the shift. And that's exactly what he would still be doing if he hadn't gotten a call from the Sheriff informing him that the missing woman, Sandra Clarke, was his daughter's sorority sister, and he'd promised her he'd give the case special attention. Grissom had tried to insist that he already had his best guys on the case, but it was clear that Atwater expected his personal involvement. He had been accused of being politically inept plenty of times, but he had no reason to resist this request and no desire to spar with Atwater.

He found Warrick working the perimeter and nodded a greeting.

"You get bored, boss?" Warrick asked with a grin.

"Got railroaded," he replied. "Missing woman is a friend of the Sheriff's daughter."

Warrick laughed and focused his attention back on the ground. "Nothing interesting out here. The girls are inside working the house."

Grissom turned up the walk to the front door, thinking idly that Warrick was lucky neither Catherine nor Sara was there to hear him refer to them as "the girls".

Inside, Officer Mitchell was interviewing a man he assumed to be Mr. Clarke. The man was still wearing a business suit, though his tie had been loosened and the rumpled coat had been slung over the back of an armchair. He was running his fingers through his hair, shaking his head in frustration at whatever question Mitchell had just asked. A sleeping toddler lay on his chest, head pillowed on his shoulder.

The daycare had called Mr. Clarke when his wife failed to pick up their daughter by the close of day at six o'clock. He had rushed to pick up his daughter and then come home to find no sign of his wife. There had been no messages from her, no signs of foul play, no ransom request or reason to suspect kidnapping. Her phone was going straight to voicemail and there had been no activity yet on her credit cards. Normally there wouldn't be much call for police involvement this early, but Mrs. Clarke was, by all accounts, a devoted wife and mother who would never abandon her child at daycare. That, along with her husband's insistence that there were no problems in the marriage and no reason to believe she would run away, had convinced them to open an investigation.

Mitchell nodded a greeting, then jerked his head toward the stairs, and Grissom took that to mean Sara and Catherine were upstairs processing. He climbed the stairs slowly, taking in the family photos that littered the living room and lined the walls of the stairway. Upstairs, he found Sara in the master bedroom, looking through dresser drawers.

She looked up when he entered and smiled, a quiet, private greeting that made being called out to the crime scene worth it. He raised an eyebrow silently, and she gave a tiny shrug and went back to her search.

"Catherine's in the bathroom," she said quietly.

As if summoned, Catherine appeared in the doorway from the master bath, her eyes narrowing when she saw him. "You checking up on us?" she asked archly.

"I've been summoned by the Sheriff," he said, his displeasure evident. "The missing woman is a friend of his daughter's."

Catherine rolled her eyes. "This is a waste of time. There's nothing here. I don't know what they expect us to find. Her car, phone, and purse are all missing. No one has seen her since she dropped the baby off at ten this morning."

"She never made it to work?" he asked.

Catherine shook her head. "She works from home. She's a freelance writer. Husband says she's between articles right now, and usually she doesn't take the baby into daycare unless she's writing. He thought they were spending the afternoon at a mommy and me playgroup, but Mitchell called the woman who hosts the playgroup, and she says Sandra called yesterday and said they wouldn't be there."

"And she didn't say anything when she dropped the kid off at daycare?"

Catherine shook her head again. "They said it was a totally normal drop off. She seemed happy and upbeat." Catherine snorted derisively. "Ten bucks says she's shacked up with a boyfriend."

In the mirror above the dresser, he saw Sara's brow furrow as she continued searching the drawers and came up with nothing of interest.

"Based on?" he asked.

"She made plans. She told her friend she wasn't coming to the playgroup. Why else does she drop the baby off at daycare and skip town looking all upbeat?" Catherine asked with a look that said the answer was obvious.

"Maybe she was just looking forward to a day to herself," Sara said without looking up. "Maybe she was going to go…do whatever moms do when they don't have their kids. Hair cut? Manicure? Coffee?"

Catherine rolled her eyes. "When Lindsay was that age, if I had a surprise day off work and available childcare, I'd have spent the day sleeping."

Sara shrugged. "Maybe that was on her agenda too. Maybe she never made it back here."

Catherine didn't look convinced, but offered no further arguments.

Sara had finished with the drawers and moved to the nightstand. Beside a framed wedding photo sat a book with a drawing of a beach on the cover and a large bottle of lotion with a French label. Sara picked up the bottle.

"Nice stuff," Catherine said. "Expensive."

"Sandra swears by it," a voice said from the hallway, drawing their attention. Roland Clarke stood in the doorway. "Sorry, I was just putting Allison in her crib. I didn't mean to interrupt. If there's anything I can…. If you have any questions…."

"Thanks," Sara said gently. "We'll let you know."

"I bought her that lotion for the first time on our honeymoon," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the bottle. "She raved about it. Used it every day until it was gone. For months after that, she tried lotion after lotion, but she swore none were as good."

Sara nodded encouragingly. "When I moved to Vegas, I had no idea how hard the dry air would be on my skin."

Grissom had a sudden flash of Sara sitting on her bed in her pajamas applying lotion. It was a familiar sight these days, an invisible part of their routine. But he remembered the first time he watched her do it, when the simple domesticity of it had nearly bowled him over.

Clarke nodded vigorously, as if Sara had imparted some great wisdom. "Sanda hates when her skin feels dry. She loved that lotion. I wanted to order her more from France, but I didn't know how. Then one day I was meeting clients at the restaurant at The Paris, and there it was in the gift store window. I brought home a bottle that night, and you would have thought I hit the jackpot."

He looked up, his gaze drifted to each of them in turn, his eyes red and bloodshot. "Please help me find her," he said, his voice cracking. "She wouldn't leave me. She wouldn't leave Allison. Something happened to her."

"We're going to do everything we can to find her," Grissom said gently. "Catherine, why don't you go with Mr. Clarke and see about getting access to her cell phone records."

Catherine nodded and followed Clarke out of the room. He listened as their voices faded down the hallway and turned his attention back to Sara.

"I don't think she's having an affair," Sara said softly.

He raised an eyebrow, ready to remind her to reserve judgment.

"There's a diary," she said, tilting her head toward a moleskine notebook in an evidence bag. Beside it a purple day planner sat in an identical bag. "I haven't had time to read all of it, but I flipped through the last few days. It's mostly cute stories about Allison mixed with some run of the mill gripes about work stress and a birthday party she's planning for Roland."

He nodded, listening.

"There are no notes, no receipts, no ticket stubs. Nothing out of place in the house."

"Atwater said there's no indication of foul play. They are just an average couple. Nothing that would attract kidnappers. No enemies."

Sara shook her head. "It doesn't feel targeted. Whatever happened to her, I think it's random."

"Uniforms have checked the hospitals?"

She nodded. "No Jane Does."

"They put a trace on her credit cards and her phone. If someone uses them, we'll know."

"Do you need me here?" she asked. "I don't think there's anything to find. I'd like to head back with the diary and the day planner."

"Go ahead," he said, fishing his keys out of his pocket. "Take my truck. I'll ride back with Cath and Warrick."

"Thanks," she said, reaching for the keys. Her fingers lingered on his palm almost imperceptibly as she picked up the keys, and he stifled a smile as she turned to leave. He hoped, for her sake, that this woman would be found safe. He could already see that she was more invested than she should be. She had gotten better about not fixating on her cases lately – now that she had finally found a diversion, he thought wryly. But they all had cases that got to them, and this one was already getting under Sara's skin.

Sara was, thankfully, right after all. Six hours later – after they combed through diaries and day planners and credit card bills and phone logs – the case solved itself when Sandra Clarke woke up in a hospital in Pahrump. She had apparently spent her day off secretly scouting locations for her husband's surprise thirtieth birthday party and was rushing back to pick up her daughter from daycare when she was t-boned by a drunk driver. She had spent the evening in surgery to stop some internal bleeding, and somehow a miscommunication between Pahrump police and hospital staff had led to a failure to contact her next of kin. The detectives on the case in Vegas had contacted all the local hospitals looking for unidentified women in their twenties, but the accident had occurred well outside their jurisdiction, and everyone injured in the accident had been taken to a hospital in Pahrump. As soon as she was conscious, she was asking for her husband, who was at her side before the sun came up.

"So…no boyfriend after all," Grissom teased Catherine as they all lingered in the breakroom at the end of shift.

Catherine shrugged. "Hey, sometimes it's good to be wrong. Her husband seems like a nice guy. He never doubted her for a minute. He knew something was wrong and was sure she wouldn't leave him."

"Must be nice to be so sure," Warrick said, and Cath huffed out her agreement. Sara's face twitched as she watched the pencil she was tapping on the table, but she said nothing, and he wondered if she had that level of faith in him. If she might someday. She lifted her face, and her eyes met his, but her face was unreadable.

"Well, a case that solves itself. I think this calls for a celebration," Greg said jovially. "Who's up for breakfast?"

Sara smiled and rolled her eyes at Greg's enthusiasm, but she was the first to concede. "Why not?" she said.

Nick capitulated next, wheedling until Warrick and Catherine agreed too.

"Come on, Grissom," Nick said, turning his charm on his boss. "The gang's all in. It's not the same without our fearless leader."

He was about to beg off, when Sara caught his eye and gave him a hopeful look that would make him agree to anything.

"All right," he agreed, and then felt a flush of embarrassment when the whole team perked up, clearly both surprised and happy to have him join them. "I need to give Atwater a final update. Go ahead. I'll meet you there."

Sara shot him a quick smile, and then turned her attention to Greg, giving him a hard time about inviting them all out in the hopes that someone would pay for his breakfast.

"Hey, a guy can dream!" Greg said with a wide smile.

When he joined them at the diner twenty minutes later, Sara and Greg were still bantering, though the topic at hand now seemed to revolve around an upcoming movie release in a popular superhero franchise. Warrick scooted over, closer to Catherine, to make room for him in the booth, and he sat, watching the conversation across the table bounce back and forth as Nick weighed in as well.

"What in the world are they talking about?" he asked Warrick, as Sara launched into a passionate argument about the physics of flight.

Warrick shrugged. "I think they're arguing about the best super powers."

"Nerd alert," Catherine said, rolling her eyes, but she was smiling fondly at the younger members of their team.

"No way!" Nick said, drawing their attention back. "Grissom. Back me up. Would you rather fly or be invisible."

"Invisible," he said immediately. He had spent most of his life cultivating his own form of invisibility. Nick nodded in agreement.

Sara narrowed her eyes at him and smirked, and he knew she knew exactly what he was thinking. It was a fitting response from the only person who had ever truly seen him; the only person he had ever wanted to truly know him.

"Not me," she said, giving them all a crooked smile, her eyes settling on him for just a fraction of a second before raising to the sky beatifically. "I want to fly."

"You would, daredevil," Nick parried immediately, but Grissom barely heard him over the roaring in his ears. Just last week, he had spent a delicious morning exploring her body, exalting as she cried his name again and again and again. Until finally, trembling, she begged him to stop. Afterward, he held her and asked if she was all right, and she laughed and told him she was more than all right…that she felt like she could fly.

Sara studiously avoided his gaze, but he knew her comment had been no coincidence. It was a rare risk, this hidden flirtation, made all the more enticing because it was so clandestine. They were always so careful around their coworkers, so circumspect about the way they treated each other at work. It was ironic, he thought, how for years they had flirted and teased and argued and generally let their personal relationship — or lack thereof — intrude on their professional relationship, only for that to cease once their personal relationship blossomed.

When they had first begun dating, when he could resist the siren call of her no longer, he had been sure his feelings were writ large over his face, obvious to all the world. He was wild for her, his every thought consumed by her. He spent mornings in her presence, eating breakfast and talking and touching, and then making love to her with a tenderness he hadn't known himself capable of. And then he would climb reluctantly out of her bed and drag himself out into the oppressive heat of early afternoon through the city to his townhouse and into his shower where he tried to wash away her scent along with all evidence of his need for her.

Like a curator handling precious artifacts – donning mask and gloves in a climate controlled room – he held her at arm's length outside the cocoon of her apartment. At work, he schooled his features carefully, lest one smile or wink give them away, exposing them to the elements that would tarnish and destroy this precious thing between them.

Eventually, though, it was not enough to keep her hidden away, under lock and key. And so he asked her to dinner. He invited her into his home. He built a life with her. He trusted her to help him keep their secret, and with time, he stopped worrying that their feelings were obvious to everyone around them, and their interactions at work mellowed into an easy camaraderie. They were so careful to avoid the open flirtation and risque innuendo that they might have toyed with once upon a time. But every once in a while, like now, she still found a way to take his breath away.

As he wrangled his libido under control, Catherine fielded a text from her mother informing her that Lindsay was staying home from school, claiming a stomach ache.

"I don't know what to do with her," Catherine said with a heavy sigh. "I understand that she's at that age where she wants to push boundaries, and it's not cool to hang out with her mom anymore. But she's just so…mean. It's like I'm living with a pint-sized bully."

"I seem to recall you admitting to being a bully in high school," Warrick said with a grin, obviously trying to keep Catherine from spiraling into a funk about her contentious relationship with her daughter.

"That was high school," Catherine said. "She's twelve!"

"Middle school mean girls are the worst," Sara said, eyes on her pancakes.

Catherine looked at her skeptically, and Sara lifted her head and met her gaze with a smirk. "You probably don't remember because you were one. Trust me, the tradition of twelve year old girls making the lives of everyone around them miserable is a tale as old as time."

Around the table, everyone made noises of agreement, and Catherine's gaze bounced between them, her brow still furrowed with concern.

"I wouldn't worry too much," Sara said casually, spearing another forkful of pancakes. "She clearly comes by it honestly, and you turned out pretty okay."

"Pretty okay?" Catherine said incredulously as Sara shrugged one shoulder and took a bite of pancakes. On either side of her, Nick and Greg coughed and snorted in a failed effort to hide their laughter. Even Warrick began to grin once Catherine rolled her eyes and let out a short, sarcastic laugh. "Well, thank you for that ringing endorsement."

"Don't mention it," Sara said, her mouth tight with the effort of suppressing a smile.

Catherine shook her head and let out a real laugh, and Grissom noticed that the stress lines around her eyes had melted away.

"Enough kid talk," Nick said, reaching past Catherine to spear a piece of sausage from Warrick's plate. "I want to hear more about Miss Tina."

"Hey, hey. Eat your own breakfast," Warrick said, waving a fork at Nick's retreating hand.

"Ooh, yes. Do tell," Greg piped in. "I heard she's smoking hot."

Warrick shifted in his seat.

"Heard from who?" Nick asked, eying Greg suspiciously.

Greg hesitated, then shrugged, obviously caught out. "Hodges." A collective groan went up from the table. "Hey! Sometimes he has good intel!"

Sara shook her head. "Anyone who runs their mouth that much is bound to be right occasionally. It's not good intel. It's just good luck."

"Come on," Nick said, turning back to Warrick with an eager grin. "Tell."

"There's not much to tell. We've only gone out a few times. But yes, she's gorgeous. And she's smart too. And she has four brothers, so she can hold her own and doesn't take shit from anybody."

"Feisty!" Greg said. "I like it."

Grissom watched Sara watch Warrick grimace. Then her head tilted to the side, and she turned her attention to her right. "Greg… didn't you have a date last week? As I seem to recall, you were convinced she was going to be the woman to bear your children. But I haven't seen any wedding invites in my mailbox."

Greg sighed dramatically, lifting a hand to cover his heart as if mortally wounded. "Alas, she was as gorgeous as promised, but that is where the attraction ended."

Beside him, Warrick relaxed and joined in the laughter. "What happened?"

"Nothing," Greg said. "That's what we talked about at dinner. Nothing. She could barely hold a conversation about anything that wasn't shopping or makeup. I tried to explain what I do for a living three times, but she just kept saying "ew, science". I wasn't even talking about gory crime scenes because I didn't want to scare her off. I was just explaining the lab work! How am I supposed to create a family of super geniuses with someone who says "ew, science"?!"

Even Grissom was laughing now at Greg's obvious displeasure.

"You know," Greg said, turning to Sara with a lascivious look. "I'm still game if you are. Just think how smart our little Ivy League babies would be."

The look of horror on Sara's face was so hilarious, Grissom couldn't even bring himself to be jealous.

"I guess you'll just have to keep searching, Greggo," Nick said.

"So that's it for Miss Beauty No Brains?" Sara asked with a laugh.

Greg grin turned hesitant. "We're going out again this weekend," he admitted. The table exploded in a chorus of disbelief, and Greg waved his hands at them to quiet the roar. "Hey! Just because she's not going to be the mother of children doesn't mean we can't have a little fun!"

Grissom sat back in his seat and smiled as the team bantered back and forth, allowing himself to enjoy having all his favorite people back in one place. The last year had been so hard on them, with the team split in two, and then the horror of Nick's kidnapping. The summer had been a healing time for all of them, and he knew so much of that was Sara's influence. She had been tireless in her support of Nick, making sure to spend time with him regularly outside of work, and keeping an eye on him for signs of stress. It was Sara, too, who helped Greg find his place in the group, not just as his mentor during his transition from the lab to the field, but interceding on his behalf with the rest of the team when they underestimated him or left him out. Even today, when Greg had suggested breakfast as a team, it was Sara who had been the first to agree, and it had been Sara who had convinced him to join them.

He watched her, still giving Greg a hard time, and felt a surge of affection for her. He had always admired her, the way she was so passionate about everything, so willing to take risks. As her boss, he had warned her about getting too invested in her cases; too attached to her victims. But secretly he loved the way she cared so deeply. Only lately had he started to understand how carefully she loved and cared for everyone around her. She hid her affection in teasing barbs and casual asides, but it was so obvious once you knew to look for it.

Around him, the table hummed with laughter, and he realized this perfect moment was all because of her. Not only had she persuaded them to come, but she had masterfully soothed Catherine's concerns about Lindsay and diverted the attention from Warrick, who clearly didn't want to joke about his new love, to Greg, who always craved the spotlight. Somehow, almost invisibly, she had managed to make everyone feel comfortable and happy.

Over the years, he had reassured her many times that she made the world a better place with the work she did. But the truth was that it was their world, his world, that she improved the most.