A/N - just a quick warning, this is where things start to get a little bit angsty (is that a word?). There are a couple of quite sad moments coming up but please keep reading! Thank You!

Chapter Ten – Sanders the hero.

Greg smiled to himself as he sat in Grissom's car. Despite the impending crime scene, he felt positive. This was something that didn't occur very often when approaching a crime scene. One always felt a sense of trepidation that this might be their toughest crime scene yet either professionally or emotionally.

He was relieved to be able to talk to Harriet on a more friendly level. It made living and working together so much easier. Not that he had cared what she thought of him before but in a way he supposed he had, subconsciously. Then again, no one likes to be hated by someone no matter how mutual that hate is.

'So, did you see your lady friend last night?' Grissom asked, pulling Greg from his state of contentment.

'What lady friend?' Greg asked.

'The one who was responsible for you being ten minutes late last week?' Grissom said.

'Oh, no she never called me and it wasn't what you think. I was late because we were on a lunch date and I lost track of the time,' Greg explained.

'How do you know that wasn't what I was thinking?' Grissom asked, with his usual unreadable expression on his face.

'I thought maybe you thought I was late because we were…umm…you know,' Greg tried to say but was to embarrassed to mention the 'S' word in front of his boss.

Grissom raised an eyebrow at him as he pulled up in front of the crime scene. A typical suburban home, cordoned off with the infamous yellow crime scene tape one always sees on television.

Upon leaving the vehicle and collecting their kits, Greg and Grissom were greeted by Captain Brass who gave them a brief synopsis of what they were dealing with.

'We've got a 419, male Caucasian victim, thirty years old, head wounds. Also, we have yet to rule out a possible kidnapping,' Brass was explaining.

'Kidnapping?' Greg interrupted.

'Yeah, the deceased has a five year old son, we checked the house – he's not in there but from what the neighbours have told us, the Vic was separated from the child's mother so he may be with her. We have yet to get confirmation of that,' Brass explained.

Grissom thanked him and he and Greg entered the house, finding the victim on the floor of the living room. Whilst Grissom spoke to Dr Robbins, the coroner, Greg did a quick scan of the living room. Leading from the living room was a short hallway. Shining his torch, he spotted a small blood spatter. It was quite a distance from where the victim was lying. Greg walked up to it, took a photograph and looked at the direction it was pointing. It looked to him like it was leading away from the victim, suggesting that it was someone else's blood.

He walked further down the corridor and into the first room on the right. This was clearly the child's room judging by the toy trucks that were scattered across the floor and the children's drawings that hung on the walls. What didn't fit was the telephone handset lying in the middle of the floor a foot away from the bed. Greg took another snapshot and picked it up. There was a small bloody fingerprint on the nine and one buttons. Too small to be an adults. Greg felt a warm feeling rising in his throat. He couldn't abide children being victims. Not that anyone being a victim was a good thing but with children he always felt it was worse.

Greg was kneeling on the floor, about to take a fingerprint from the handset when he heard a small noise. He stopped and listened, heard it again. It sounded like a whimper. Slowly, he put the phone back onto the floor and looked to his right where the bed was. The blankets on the bed were hanging down over the sides, obscuring whatever was underneath the bed. He quietly moved towards the bed and lifted up the blanket. He couldn't see anything, and began to wonder if he was imagining it. Despite this, he clicked on his torch and shone it under the bed, almost jumping out of his skin when he saw a pair of brown eyes looking back at him.

The little boy whimpered and looked at him. His eyes were wide and he looked terrified as Greg took a few seconds to register what to do next. He put his hand out towards the child who whimpered and tried to scoot away from him.

'Don't kill me,' the little boy said, sniffing back tears.

'I'm not going to kill you,' Greg tried to reassure him.

'You got a gun,' the little boy said, looking at Greg's belt where the gun was sitting in its holster.

'That's only there in case the bad guys try anything,' Greg said with a small smile.

'Are you a cop?' the little boy seemed to calm a little.

'Sort of,' Greg said 'I help the cops catch the bad guys. My name's Greg. What's yours?' He continued, holding out his hand.

'Mikey,' the boy said, quietly and gingerly held out his own hand.

'Nice to meet you, Mikey,' Greg said, shaking his hand. 'Are you hurt?'

'My head, he hit my head,' Mikey replied.

Greg looked at him; he had been so focussed on the boy's eyes and trying to calm him that he had missed the blood that was trailing down the boys face and neck.

'Just on your head?' Greg confirmed.

Mikey nodded and his bottom lip trembled. Greg squeezed his hand.

'Don't worry little guy I'm gonna get you out of here o.k?'

Mikey nodded and Greg slid him closer to the edge of the bed so he could get him out. When he was out from under the bed, Greg slid an arm under his legs and Mikey instinctively put his arms around Greg's neck as Greg stood up, cradling him like a baby.

'O.k. I'm going to take you outside so someone can take a look at you. I don't want you to touch anything on the way and I need you to close your eyes o.k?'

Mikey nodded and Greg started to walk out of the child's room. He saw Grissom look up at him as he approached the living room, an expression of surprise washed over his face and he shouted for a paramedic. Greg felt Mikey flinch against him, scared by the shouting.

'It's o.k. Just keep your eyes closed.' He reassured him.

Mikey scrunched his eyes shut tighter and Greg walked out of the house towards the ambulance that had just been preparing to leave after assessing the dead body of Mikey's father.

Greg laid Mikey on the trolley the paramedics pulled out and told the boy to open his eyes. He felt his stomach tighten and his eyes stung with tears when he saw how afraid the child was. Mikey was clutching on to his hand and wouldn't let go.

'I need my hand back,' Greg smiled at him, trying not to cry 'These nice paramedics are going to take you to the hospital and fix you up o.k?'

'Can't you come with me?' Mikey pleaded.

'I'm sorry, little man, this nice policeman is going to go with you. I have to stay and look at your house.'

'Are you gonna catch the bad guy?'

'I certainly am and when I can I'm going to come and see you at the hospital.'

Mikey nodded and let go of his hand. Greg stood and watched as the paramedics loaded up the ambulance and drove away. He took a deep breath and looked down at his gloved hands, they were shaking quite a bit. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Grissom standing there.

'Well done Greg,' Grissom said 'that was great.'

'It doesn't feel great,' Greg said.

'Are you going to be all right to continue working this scene with me?'

'I'm fine,' Greg said, flatly.

He walked past Grissom, back into the house. His heart was beating hard and he suddenly became aware of the small patch of blood that was soaking his shirtsleeve. Mikey's injury must have been worse than it looked but Greg wasn't a doctor, he couldn't tell. He just hoped the kid would be all right. Taking a deep breath, he returned to the child's room and began to take prints and swabs from the phone.

'He's got a brand new car, looks like a jaguar.' Harriet sang to herself, along with her CD player as she drummed on the counter and looked into the microscope.

She was working on a fairly large batch of DNA samples that Sara and Catherine had brought in earlier and it was taking some getting through but she didn't mind. She was in a good mood. Living with Greg was so much easier now they weren't arguing and she felt like she had really made a good friend. O.k., so they had only been on good terms for a couple of days but she actually looked forward to him dropping by the lab every now and then with things for her to analyse.

'I need these running ASAP,' a voice said.

Harriet looked up and smiled at Greg.

'Hey Greg, how's it going? I'll get to yours as soon as I've done these. Sara and Cath gave me a collection of samples that's even taking me some time to get through.' she said, cheerily.

'Run them now,' he said, coldly.

Harriet looked at him. He looked very distant and she couldn't sense a trace of his usual laid back attitude.

'I'll get to them as soon as I can, I promise. I need to get these ones done first or I'm going to get behind,' Harriet said.

'Do them now; you'll catch up on the others. You're supposed to be a genius,' he said with a hint of bitterness in his voice and walked out of the lab stating that he would be back in an hour.

Harriet looked at the space he had recently occupied, dumbfounded. Was he in a bad mood? He had seemed fine this morning. She caught Grissom looking at her. He nodded to her as if to confirm that she should run Greg's samples first so without questioning what had just happened, she got to work.

A/N - again, I am not very good at the whole forensics bits so apologies if they seem really unrealistic when they are featured. Thank You!