Chapter 1—Miles Away

Las Vegas: Heaven on Earth.

Gil Grissom stumbled over those words as he skimmed the Chamber of Commerce welcome guide. "Where the streets are paved with gold," he remarked under his breath as he slid the magazine into the chair next to him. Gil sighed and closed his eyes, imagining what the air would smell like walking along the beach at Martha's Vineyard. He hadn't allowed himself those fantasies in a long time. His mind wandered. It had been an especially tough double-shift for everybody on the team. A kindergartener had accidentally shot his brother, and Greg and Sara were struggling to work the case without killing the train-wreck parents that had kept the loaded guns under the bed. Greg had in fact already earned some complaint calls when he decided to play detective with the neighbors who looked the other way. Warrick and Nick had bitten off more than they could chew taking on a gangland slaying and had been calling him with questions all day. Catherine meanwhile was in the break room filling out the infamous "Your Supervisor and You" survey. He had a feeling it would be substantially less kind than his "Your Employee and You" survey he had filled out before his shift. Still, that wasn't the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

That straw was Ecklie.

"Gil, I want to talk to you about your performance lately." Ecklie hissed from the doorway.

"Mi oficina es su oficina." Gil said.

A slick grin erupted across Ecklie's face. Gil knew he was in trouble.

"I snuck a peek at some of your team's evals, and…"

Gil interjected, "Conrad, I am very very busy today. These requisition forms and testimony reports won't write themselves. Could you come back when you've actually read the evals?"

"That's it Gil. That's it right there. That's what I want to talk to you about. You're testy. You're testy with me and you're testy with your team…"

In his head, Gil couldn't piece together what Ecklie had said next. All he heard was his own inner voice saying with a snarl, "Bite me, Conrad." He still couldn't remember if he said it out loud or in his head. What he heard next was clear, though.

"Gil, I won't let you hide behind those forms anymore. Damn it, either you put in for some of that vacation time you've piled up or I pull you on mental grounds. And you know the kind of rumors that'll stir up."

Now, Gil knew better than to call Ecklie on that virtual blackmail. Still it took all his strength to keep from lashing out.

A sudden jolt knocked Gil out of his less-than-pleasant remembrance. The receptionist at the desk knocked the telephone off the hook. It clanged against her modernistic metal desk several times before she hung up her cell phone and picked it up. Gil looked around him. He was still firmly planted in the waiting area of Deseret Travel. He looked outside the huge glass doors to his left. The patrons of the hottest thing in Vegas swung their shopping bags quickly as they hustled to see all that Oasis Springs Mall had to offer them. His bored eyes turned to the USA Today he grabbed from the fake little newsstand on his way through the mall. "Threat Level Elevated on West Coast" screamed the headline. He knew it would mean an awkward mandatory conference for the team. Something he was glad he was avoiding.

He put down the paper, closed his eyes, smiled a deceptive smile and started humming a few bars of an old familiar tune, "American Pie", picking up at "…the three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the muuuuuusic…"

"Died."

Chapter 2—Chaos Encore

In a matter of milliseconds, three sounds melted together in Grissom's ear.

First came the low and pleasant hum of the last note of the verse he was singing in his head.

Second came the deafening hollow sound of a massive explosion.

Third came the painful high-pitched whine ringing out seemingly from the center of his head. It was a sickening silence.

The next few moments would later blend together like clouds ahead of a storm. The jarring force of the explosion shattering the glass doors of the office, the wall behind his back shaking, causing the magazine rack above his head to rain down on him a downpour of travel magazines, the sight of black smoke rising up from the atrium below.

The receptionist silently mouthed a desperate "What the hell?" as Gil rose to his feet. He lunged forward and pulled the young woman away from a lurching file cabinet as it toppled over with a burst of papers. Still squeezing her arm with a strength that surprised him as much as her, he first noticed the electronic wheeze of the fire alarm creeping back into his hearing.

"Get everyone out of here and run towards the Target at the far end of the mall. Go now!" he said as employees filed past them. Gil watched them run out of the office as sharp pain hit him. He reached up and touched his forehead. When he brought his fingertips to his eyes, he saw they were covered in blood.

"Not now, old man." Gil said to the empty office.

In a second he flew down the escalator and was on the ground floor. Ground Zero. He scanned for survivors through his squinted and watery eyes. All he took in was the burned out shell of what, in a former life, was a bank. Beyond that, bellowing the majority of the smoke that was smoldering in his eyes was the twisted girders that had marked an Endless Summer sporting goods store.

He stumbled toward a pile of metal following the vague shape of a human. When he reached the crumpled up metal of the coffee cart he wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve to awake to the sight of a pretty teenage girl sprawled out on the cold tile. Her matted hair covered the peaceful expression on her face, but the blood trickling across the Starbucks logo on her apron told Gil she was beyond help. What should have been disgust, shock, fear, materialized as nothing more than a fuzzy haze. He knew there were others. He knew something was wrong. Still, something about the scene struck a chord deep within his soul and his body merely followed the order.

For the first time in his life, Gil Grissom ran from the scene of a crime.

Chapter 3—Uncertainty

Sara Sidle sat in the break room munching a donut. She was looking over the case she had just all but closed. It was a procedural case. She knew it was an accident the minute she and Greg arrived. She flipped past the pictures she had to take, the blood samples she had to pick up, and it was all too sad. She sighed as she closed the folder. She looked up wistfully at the ceiling. "Greg…" she sighed under her breath. He had always been a goofy kid to her, but he blew her away when he decided to play it Bogart with the neighbors. His tough Sam Spade routine was so…so…tough and..., even if it would earn her a talking to for not keeping a lid on him. How could she have stopped him? She was having too much fun playing along! She let her mind wander, and soon she was miles away.

"Earth to Sara!" Nick called playfully from the doorway.

"Um…er…ah…this case…" Sara stammered, trying to recover from the surprise.

She was just about to try to spin a cover story for spacing out, when the a series of dramatic tones interrupted her...

"This is a KALV News Alert.."

Sara turned toward the TV as Nick moved in and placed his coffee cup absentmindedly on top of her case file.

"Reports are coming in of a large explosion at the Oasis Springs Mall. No word yet on whether this is an act of terror, but the police department confirms that Homeland Security is on the scene. There are large numbers of injured being taken to local hospitals, but no word on any possible casualties. We are getting a report from the scene…please stand by…"

Sara gasped and knocked Nick's coffee to the floor as she turned toward the TV. Nick was too transfixed to notice the coffee lapping at his sneakers. Both stared at silence as the anchorwoman struggled to compose herself.

"Hey guys, did you turn in your…" Catherine trailed off as her eyes moved from her survey to the television. A small crowd was gathering behind her as the anchorwoman was replaced by a sky cam showing smoke billowing over south Vegas.

Her heart skipped a beat as the headline "OASIS SPRINGS BOMBING" filled the area at the bottom of the screen.

"Oh my God!" she sputtered, as eyes shifted to her. "Lindsay!"