Chapter 26 - Trace
"Bastered!" Sara shouted at the phone, standing up so fast her chair fell over. Catherine shut the phone and threw it on the table for the second time that night. She put her head in her hands and tried to keep the tears back.
Warrick walked back into the room, shutting his own phone. He had called Brass and asked him to trace the call. "What did he say?" he asked after seeing that they were no longer on the phone.
"Nothing important. We know Nick is alive though," Catherine said in a monotone voice.
"You spoke to him?"
"Yeah. He put him on." Her voice was getting shaky again so Warrick put a hand on hers. Sara had taken her phone out and was calling Grissom.
"Brass traced the call. He said he would get back to me." Warrick tried to present come kind of comfort. Catherine nodded.
"Grissom. We got another call," Sara said into her phone.
"What did he say?" Grissom asked.
"Nick is alive. We don't know where but he talked to us." Sara's voice was getting shaky as she talked about Nick.
"Ok…where are you?"
"Break room."
"Ok. I'll be right over."
Grissom walked in about 3 minutes later. They filled him in on what the kidnapper had said. Warrick's phone rang a few seconds later.
"We've got the trace," Brass said in Warrick's ear.
"Where?"
"Out near Sloan Road. Off the Las Vegas Boulevard." Brass had excitement in his voice. "We have a location."
"Ok. I'll meet you at the police station."
"Bring everyone," he said before hanging up.
"Brass traced the call!" Warrick said, getting excited. "Come on, he's going there now!" Everyone went wide-eyed and sat there a second looking at each other before all getting up at the same time, following Warrick out the door.
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Nick lay on the bed. He was starting to get uncomfortable lying on this lumpy mattress but that was the least of his worries. It was getting very hot in this room and Nick was sweating profusely. It was now day time and he could see most of the room. He was in some kind of basement. The window was close to the ceiling and the walls were all rock. The floor looked like cement and the bed he was lying in was up against the wall between the window and door. The room didn't have much in it. Nick could see a few boxes on the other wall but not much else.
He was thinking a lot about that call to Catherine. He had tried to talk to her bu George had hung up the phone too quickly. He thought that Warrick or Sara were probably in the room when he was shouting.
He had gotten a chance to take a closer look at his hand cuffs. He had already tried getting them open without much luck. He didn't really know what time it was but he suspected it was before noon when he rolled over. The chains had enough length to them to let him roll onto his side but when he did he rolled back over. There was something in his pocket that dug into him when he leaned on that side. He couldn't remember what it was so he went searching. It was hard to get his hands in his pocket but he did eventually. He came out with his key chain. He looked at it a second.
"This could work," he said to himself. He put the keys in his right hand and tried just shoving any key inside. All of them were too big so it didn't work. After trying multiple times he put the keys down at his side and gave up. He thought maybe there was something else he could use in his pocket so he went digging again. He came out with his pocket knife.
"Not much of a kidnapper," he said to the knife. "He let me keep my knife."
Nick opened the knife as best he could without cutting himself and tried to shove it into the keyhole of the cuffs. That didn't work so he tried a smaller knife. That didn't work either. He started mumbling to the knife as he tried other attachments in the key hole. "Come on…come on you can do it." He had been through nearly all of them when he got to a little attachment he never knew the use for. He shoved it into the key hole and wiggled it and pulled and pushed up and down. When he heard a click he stopped short.