Posting Chappie 2 to keep you happy!

Hope ya'll enjoy it.

And remember! Reviews!

-----------------------------------

Chapter Two: Investigation and Letters

"So, what's going on?" Warrick asked, strangely calm.

"Ellie, Susan, Beth, Summer, and Lindsay are all gone," said Brass, "What about you Gil? Who'd he take from you?"

"Summer..." Grissom whispered so quietly that no one but Sara was sure he'd even said it..."that's who..."

"Alright, so can we assume that it was the same guy who got all of them?" Greg asked, "If they all went missing today, and we all got a phone call..."

"Ellie said something about Summer being with her," said Brass, "said she was..." He let his voice trail off, with a glance a Sara.

"Said what?" both Grissom and Sara demanded.

"She said the girl was hurt..." Brass finished. "She didn't say how bad."

Sara bit her lip, and turned towards Grissom, who embraced her. Her words didn't even register to the group then, "why our little girl, Grissom?"

"I don't care why he did it," Catherine spat, "I just want my daughter back... And soon."

"So," said Nick, "We investigate all of the scenes... There's got to be something that can lead us to him. I mean, no one can kidnap five people without leaving something behind..."

"Nick's right," said Grissom, over Sara's head, "We need to move, fast."

----------------------------

It was Summer's scene that was investigated first. Sara knew the looks she was getting when she and Grissom took Nick, and Catherine to their home... But she ignored them. They took a sample of the blood, so they could find out whose it was... Be it Summer's or her assailant's. They dusted for prints, in Summer's room, and found one on the inside of the closet, that was too big to be Summer's, and another on a bloodied piece of glass from a lamp. Other than that, there wasn't much. The four CSIs stood there looking at the room. Sara could almost envision what happened.

It was almost time for bed, and Summer walked into her bedroom to start getting ready, when the closet door was flung open, and a strange man grabbed for her. She dodged, and he hit the lamp instead, and broke it. He grabbed a piece of it, and cut her. The girl slipped and fell. She stayed on the floor long enough for a small pool of blood to form. Then she was up again, running. Leaving a trail of bloody foot prints behind her.

Sara unconciously turned towards the living room. She could almost see Summer, running by.

Summer ran and dove under a coffee table to get away from the man. Then she wriggled out, and hid behind a chair. The man knocked things over as he tried to catch his prey. Then he finally got hold of her, and drug her, kicking and screaming, out the front door.

"Hey, Guys, look at this," said Nick, picking something out of the fold of the blankets on the bed. It was an envelope. Nick opened it carefully, and read it aloud.

Gil, Sara,

Surely you are wondering where Summer is. I assure you, your daughter is alive. Yes, I know she is Gil's child. You may be able to hide that fact from your coworkers, but anyone who looks close enough can see you in her.

You must be wondering why, as well. I'll answer that question... The reason is I want to test your skills. If you can follow the clues, you get little Summer back... If you can't, then I'm afraid you'll be finding her body, along with the others, at the foot of the mountains. And I don't think Sara would care to see what had been done to Summer... All those cases of sexual abuse she deals with would look like nothing-

Nick paused a moment, and took a breath. He noticed Sara was chewing on her lip, something she did when trying to keep herself under control. And Grissom was staring straight ahead, avoiding meeting anyone's gaze. But it was pointless, everyone knew he was taking it as hard as Sara. Nick himself was having trouble... He had been "Uncle Nicky" to Summer... He continued reading.

will look like nothing compared to what will be done to Summer... I have three companions who would love to get to know her better.

You have until Saturday at 10 p.m. before I move Summer, and everyone else to a new location, and you will have to try again.

Puzzle Master

Catherine was thankful that the note ended. She wasn't sure that she could hear anymore. And it wasn't even her daughter that was being talked about. She looked in Grissom and Sara's direction, and couldn't help but look with even more pity at Grissom, than she had before. Because now she knew, it was his daughter that was missing too.

"If he does it," Sara spat, "I'll kill him... I'll hunt him down, and I'll kill him..." she looked up at Grissom, "If we don't find our baby, I'll..." She stopped there, and just stared angrily at nothing.

----------------------

Across town, in Ellie's place, Warrick, Greg, and Brass found a similiar note...

Detective Brass,

I understand you're worried about Ellie, after all, she is your daughter... Or is she? I'd bet anything, that she's not. That you don't really have a daughter... And if you and your CSIs aren't smart enough, you won't even have Ellie anymore.

If you can't find her in time, she'll be found dead of an overdose on every drug imaginable. It won't be any less than what she deserves, after being a crack whore in Los Angeles. And just to give you a little more reason to find her: she was cleaning her act up, for you. Hoped that maybe you'd forgive her for messing up her life, and yours. Hoped maybe you'd give her a second chance.

Guess she won't get that second chance now, unless you give it to her, Jim. You and your team are the only ones who can save Ellie, and the other four.

But, tick-tock says the clock. you have until Saturday at 10 pm untill she and the others are moved to a new location. Find the clues I've hidden... Remember, when you can't find something... It's almost always staring you right in the face.

Puzzle Master

Brass resisted the urge to crumple the letter... He knew it was evidence, that it might help find the missing people... Might help find Ellie. Warrick and Greg scoured the place for any sort of evidence as to where Ellie might've been taken. So far, they were finding nothing. A line from the note came to mind When you can't find something it's almost always staring you right in the face. He thought on that for a second, and turned to his right. There was a small oval mirror, just big enough to reflect his face.

Wondering if it could have been that easy, he grabbed the edges of it, and pulled it off the wall. Nothing on the wall, but taped to the back was a small plastic back, filled with a black substance. Felt like sand when Brass pulled the back off.

"Hey guys, Got something."

Warrick and Greg came into the room, and checked it out. "I'll get it back to the lab," said Greg, "Find out what it is... Then, we need to get to Susan, Lindsay, and Beth..."

Brass and Warrick nodded. Indeed they did. "And call Grissom. The others should probably know to look for something like this," said Warrick.

------------------------

At Nick's they found no note... Only one of Susan's drawings stuffed in an envelope. The drawing was one that had always depressed her, and Nick. A nightmare she'd had, of a woman (herself, she always said) locked in a dark room, with light filtering in through a small hole in the wall. Drawing what she saw in dreams or nightmares, had been a long time hobby of her's. The nightmare drawings went into a box, beneath the bed, where they wouldn't be seen.

Suddenly getting an idea. Nick went after the box, that Susan called her "box of nightmares", and began to dig through it. He found two drawings that weren't Susan's... They weren't her style. No, these were crude, drawings, done by an amatuer, at the most. But they were still frightening. One was of three women, and two girls, one rather small, the other looked more like a teen, huddled in the corner of what appeared to be a factory. There was a name scribbled over each head. Susan, Ellie, Beth, Lindsay, Summer. The other was a roughly drawn banner. Written on it was Show it to the others.

So he did...He showed it to Catherine, Sara, and Grissom. It didn't help any. It didn't help Nick either. It only worsened matters for him. He leaned against the kitchen counter, looking at nothing in particular.

"Hey," said Sara, putting a hand on his shoulder, "How you holding up?"

"If I said I was doing fine, it would be a lie," Nick replied, "What about you? You're seeming awful calm, now, for a woman who's lost her daughter,"

" 'Now' is the key word, Nicky..." said Sara, "You saw me earlier... And when I heard her voice on the phone...When she sounded so scared. She said that the boogey man from her closet got her, and all I could remember was telling her before I left, that there was nothing to be afraid of, that there were no boogey men, hiding in her room, and she swore she had seen something... And I didn't believe her."

"it's not your fault, Sara," said Nick.

"I know..." Sara replied, "But I just can't help but think, 'what if?' What if I'd done what she had her daddy do, and check, just to make her feel better..." she sighed, "Anyway, What about you? What are you thinking about?"

"About what I was going to do when the shift ended..." he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small ring box, "I was going to do it this morning, but she was already at work... So I decided to wait until I got home. And my 'what if?' thought? What if I'd asked her this morning... We would have both taken the day off, gone to dinner, and she wouldn't have been at home, having to call, and apologize that she didn't make it to the party..."

"Guys," said Cathering, entering the room, "I think we're all done here... Brass called, said that he found some sort of black substance at Ellie's, and they took samples from the blood. Said to get what we have back to the lab, and leave it with Hodges, and then get to the last two scenes."

"Right," said Sara and Nick at the same time, "Let's go then."

---------------------------

The teams changed up a bit this time... To the Brown residence went Catherine, Warrick, Sara, and joining them was Sofia. While to the Sanders residence went Brass, Grissom, Nick, and Greg.

The Brown house was the same as Catherine and Warrick had left it, when they'd gone back to the lab. It was still a shock, seeing it like that. Warrick had been hoping it had been a nightmare, and that they would get there to find Lindsay sitting there, wondering why he and Catherine were home so early. But she wasn't. The place was still trashed, and Lindsay was still gone.

"Okay..." said Sara, "Let's get to work... We've got five people depending on us, so we have to do the best we can." She sounded like she was reminding herself of it, more than them.

But either way, they nodded, and went about collecting evidence. The back door was the point of entry, that much was obvious from the fact that it had been kicked in. There was a science book, lying on the living room floor. It had probably fallen there, since the pages were all crumpled. The flower vase that normally sat on the table in front of the couch was knocked over, and broken in half.

"So," said Catherine, "The door gets kicked down, and Lindsay drops her book. When she gets up, she knocks the vase over." she paused, and kneeled next to a pile of shattered glass, then pointed towards the nic-nac shelf, "She saw her attacker, and used the first thing she could reach as a weapon; the glass." She got up and went to the kitchen, "When she ran out of that, she went for the kitchen... " She opened the drawer that a 9 mm starfire handgun was normally kept in. It was gone, "She threw the knives, until she hit him, then went for the gun...He overpowered her, took the gun, and her."

"That does look like what happened," said Sofia, "What about what was found at the other scenes? The letters, and the clues... shouldn't something like that be here too?"

"We won't know," said Sara.

"If we don't look," Warrick comepleted. "Let's look then... I'm not sure if I want to find something or not..."

"If it'll help us find Lindsay, I want to find it," said Catherine.

They found an envelope taped to Lindsay's bedroom door. Warrick and Catherine hesitantly opened it, and read it.

Catherine and Warrick,

You would be proud of the way Lindsay fought before I managed to subdue her. Quite a little scapper. Beautiful too. It's really to bad I have my rules, about what's done to certain subjects. For example, it was really hard to pin something that would affect Cath the most... There are so many things, none of them that even I would do to such a gorgeous girl.

So, I had to look to Warrick for my answer. Remember Holly Gribbs, Warrick? If you don't find Lindsay in time, she will be shot, just the same as Holly was. But unlike Holly, she won't get to die, asleep in a hospital room. She'll get to suffer...

And then, you'll find her, just like you'll find the the others. Dead.


the Puzzle Master

PS: One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish

------------------------------------

Greg's apartment was much the same as the others, Trashed, with no clues as to who had done it. The planted clue was found in on the balcony/patio, held down on the table by a small potted plant, that Greg said shouldn't have been there. It was a small square of paper. Written on it was

The man who invented it doesn't want it. The man who buys it doesn't need it. The man who needs it doesn't know it. What is it?

"Oh great..." said Brass, "More riddles. And what's with the plant?"

"That's a Joshua tree," said Grissom, "Grows in Arizona and New Mexico for the most part. Some here in Nevada, and California."

"Hey, Griss, you're good with riddles, what's this one?" Greg asked.

"I'd need more time to think on it. In the meantime, here's one for you to think on; When you've got it, you want to share it, but if you share it, you haven't got it." Grissom replied.

"A secret," said Nick, "Need to get some new ones, Griss."

Grissom only shrugged, "Right... Well, we need to figure out why he put a Joshua tree here, and what's with the riddle. Then, we need to put everything together, and see if we can find out what they all mean."

"I have the feeling we aren't going to be sleeping for a while, Boys," said Brass, "so you'd better enjoy what rest you can get while Hodges is running the DNA, fingerprints, and that black stuff we found."

"Somehow, I doubt that we'd want to sleep anyway, Brass," said Greg, "But we can try."

-------------------------------

Well?