Rain soaked his clothes, hair, and skin as Greg was pulled out of the car. He felt and urge to cry: he really was being kidnaped. He remembered when he was little when his mother would tell him not to take candy from strangers. "I should have applied that idea to job offers, too," he thought miserably. "This is all my own fault."

Waters held him firmly by the arm, threatening the use of his .33 caliber if he tried anything "funny." "And don't even think about calling one of your friends," he muttered in Greg's ear, "or I'll see to it personally that you'll be reading their names in the obituaries tomorrow."

A man got out of the second car and lit up a cigarette. Waters went over to greet him. "Dave," he said, "here's the CSI I promised you. Now, can I have that money that you promised me?"

Greg was now scared and confused. Why the hell would this guy, Dave, want a CSI? Maybe this was a gig after all...some people did drastic things to find out how a loved one died, even kidnaping someone to collect evidence and solve the case. How unfortunate this theory wasn't correct.

"Excellent," said the man called Dave. "I can now see to it that the Las Vegas Crime Lab gets what's coming to them and goes down a notch. We'll just watch as the CSI's can't even solve the death of one of their own. Hand him over, Roger."

Greg's face went pale as he was pulled forward into the hands of someone who meant to kill him. Overcome by fear, he couldn't feel any other emotion: not the outrage that Waters had used a fake name; not the regret of leaving home; not the confusion of why he was going to be killed; nor the desperation of whether anyone at the Lab realized he was gone.

David grabbed Greg by the face to take a look at him. Greg caught a glimpse of a man in his mid 30's with glasses and longish blonde hair before he was pushed back.

"It's just a kid!" David said, tossing his cigarette to the ground. "You're not getting any cash out of me for this one. No."

"He is not 'just a kid,'" said Roger, and if Greg were in the right state of mind, he would have said "damn straight!" "Go on, Gregory, tell him."

All eyes and the barrel of a gun were on Greg. He didn't know what to do. He didn't want to keep his mouth shut for fear of getting killed. He didn't want to tell this David that he was a CSI trainee for fear of getting laughed at. This whole matter was laughable - a criminal relying on the victim to confirm that he had indeed held up his end of the bargain. Suddenly feeling braver than he had all night, Greg answered.

"Only if you first tell me what you're planning to do with me."

Grissom himself did a thorough search of Greg's office, but found no trace of where he might be. After a few minutes of analyzing the desk, he said "Alright. Let's think about this logically."

"How would a kidnaper just walk in here and walk out without being noticed?" asked Warrick, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded. He stared around. This had never happened before, as far as he knew. If someone had gotten in and drawn a weapon on a CSI, they usually had backup. But no one was around today, and Greg had no weapon. Poor guy didn't stand a chance...

"The kidnaper must have known that no one would be around to back him up," said Nick, voicing what Warrick was thinking.

"We can't be sure of anything," said Grissom, "but until we know something, we're gonna treat this office like a crime scene. So, Sara, get up. Come on."

Sara was still sitting in the middle of the floor, holding Greg's field kit. But she nodde din obedience and stood up to follow the others out of the room.

"You three, work as hard as you can possibly work, and get him back here in one piece," said Grissom. "Put him on the Missing Persons database, check every detail of the Lab. Do whatever it takes."

"Where are you going?" asked Nick.

"I'm taking over your triple homicide, Nickie," said Grissom. "Someone has to solve that case, too. Good luck." He left.

Nick, Sara, and Warrick sat, stunned. They stared at one another, thinking of where to start, what to do. This was going to take all the effort they could give, and more. Their thinking was interrupted by Catherine's return, and she looked in on them.

"Well, you're a happy group," she said. "Waiting for DNA results I suppose. Have you seen Greg? Mia's a bit backed up."

"No," answered Warrick. "He's been kidnaped."

"Really?" said Catherine, but she seemed more intrigued than horrified. "Well, his car's still here. Maybe you should search that instead of just sitting here like lumps."

Sara sat up. "Car?" she said, and ran out the door. Nick and Warrick shrugged, and followed her again. This time, she was bent over a set of tire treads leading from the parking lot. Nick sat down next to her. "Would you stop doing that?" he said.

Warrick smiled. Sara photographed the tracks and lifted them for comparison in the database. This was the first step to finding their co-worker. You could even call him...a friend.

"Right!" said Nick, shaking out of shock. "We've got to pull ourselves together. The more we stall, the later we'll find Grego. Sara, go run that through the database - and while you're at it, add him to Missing Persons. Warrick, you go talk to security. I'll check the tapes. Let's go!"

His energy was annoying, but nevertheless, he had a point. They couldn't sit here sulking if they wanted to find him before tomorrow. They had to take action. So, they followed Nick's orders and went into the building.

Half an hour later, Sara and Warrick met Nick in the studio, where he was staring at the same 20 seconds of tape over and over again. He turned around when they approached him. "So, you guys get anything?"

Sara was the first to bring the news. "Okay...I got a match to the tires." Nick smiled, which made her quickly say, "Nick, don't. It's a Nissan Altima, one of the most popular cars in the country. But..." she flipped through some papers she was holding. "...the good news is that no one in the building owns one, so it's probably the kidnaper's car. Plus," she added, holding up a 7-stapled page booklet, "I printed out a list of all the owners of the car in Nevada. Just in case something rings a bell."

Warrick took his turn. "I showed a picture of Greg to the security guard. He said he saw him leaving with a tall brunette guy. But here's the weird part." He paused. "This guy had an ID badge from a Crime Lab in Nevada. Not this one, but still. And get this - the guard says that Greg followed him out."

"What!" Sara cried. "That means he wasn't taken out by force! He wanted to go."

"Hmm.." said Nick. "That's what the video says, too."

He turned back around to show the others his discovery. The screen showed two people walking out the front door of the Lab - a tall person with flat hair and a shorter person with spiky

hair following.

"Wait, go back to where he first comes in," said Sara, leaning over Nick's head and clicking the mouse so that the tape went backwards. She waited until someone she didn't recognize appeared on the screen, then she clicked the mouse again, making it stop. She smiled. "Caught on tape." She enlarged the stranger.

"I don't see a gun," said Warrick. "He was unarmed when he entered the building."

"No doubt about it," mumbled Nick. "Greg left the Lab of his own free will."

"He had an ID, whoever he is," said Sara. "He had authority over Greg. He could have said that he was a suspect, and he needed to come with him to rule him out."

"He could have said anything," said Nick, frustrated. "It doesn't matter how and why anymore. It just matters who and where."

"Well, we have an idea of the who," said Sara, enhancing the face of the culprit on the screen. "He can lead us to the where."

"Okay, so our only evidence is tire tracks and a blurry picture," said Nick. "What should we do now?"

"I thought you were going to tell us," said Sara. "You've been ordering us around and acting like you're our head."

"Excuse me," said Nick, turning his chair around again to face the other two. "But it we had it your way, we'd all be sitting around in a circle, regretting all the wrong we've done to Greg recently."

"Children, stop fighting!" said Warrick, holding Sara back from her attempt to pummel Nick. "Settle down, both of you. We have to solve this important case, and you two are bickering like a bunch of angry British chaps. So either stop, or I'll report you both."

Sara stopped struggling against her restraint and fell silent. Nick sighed, put his hand on his head and asked, "Okay. So what do you suppose we do?"

"We should do what we would do in any other case," he said. We'll go back to the crime scene and re-evaluate it. See if we missed anything." Crime Scene. It seemed weird calling Greg's office that. It made it sound like he was dead. He hoped he wouldn't be when they found him.