Nick and Greg came back to work on the fourth day after their car accident. The bruises and scratches this accident caused were still visible, but they felt much better and ready to get back to work.
Their shift was about to start in ten minutes and they were sitting in the break room, waiting for the rest of the team. They were talking to each other when Julian came in.
"Hey guys!" he said with an upbeat mood, walking to the coffee machine.
"Hey," both replied, picking up their conversation again.
Julian walked up to Greg with a mug in his hand and placed it in front of him. "How are you doing?"
Greg looked surprised at the mug and then at Julian. "...Good, thank you."
"These bruises look horrible. I hope you're not in any pain..."
He shook his head. "I'm fine, it probably looks much worse than it actually is."
Julian sat down opposite Greg. "Do you need anything? Pain medicine, a shoulder to cry on, or something else?"
Greg looked helpless to Nick, but he just shrugged and said sarcastically, "I'd go for the pain killers."
"Thank you Julian, but I don't need anything," he said while kicking Nick's leg under the table.
"Ouch!" Nick gave him a look.
Julian looked at Nick rather annoyed. "Do you mind? We're talking here."
Both Greg and Nick looked at him a bit shocked. He's always been rude, but even this seemed kind of odd for Julian.
Sara and Ray entered the room, seeing Greg and Nick's shocked faces. "Hi. Everything alright?"
"Sure, we're just having fun," Julian said laughing.
The boys still looked a bit shocked and confused and weren't really sure what to think of Julian right now. He was always creeping them out a bit, but today all the more.
Catherine came in, greeted everybody and then sat down on the table, looking annoyed and exhausted.
"Are you okay, Cath?" Nick asked concerned.
She nodded. "Ecklie's getting on my nerves, but other than that, I'm fine," she replied rather sarcastic. "How about you?"
"We're good. It was a good idea to take a few days off, though."
She smiled at them. "Well, we have some news concerning you accident. We have two suspects in custody, but they claim they have nothing to do with your car crashing."
"But they confessed to the others," Ray explained.
"Others? You mean there's more than us? How are they doing?" Nick asked surprised.
"Two people died, but the others are fine..."
Both Nick and Greg didn't say anything for a minute. They just realized how lucky they were.
"We don't have any evidence that links them to your car, but we didn't find any evidence at all on your car. My guess is that they were wearing gloves when they manipulated your car, but we can't prove that." Catherine gently touched Nick's hand. "I'm sorry, I don't think we'll get a conviction."
Nick nodded appreciative. "That's okay, as long as we know they'll go to jail and won't do it again..."
"That's outrageous!" Julian said disgusted. "They almost killed Greg and won't be held accountable for it?"
Everyone looked kind of surprised again. Julian never cared about anything too much, but when it came to Greg, he was quite compassionate.
"It doesn't matter, Julian... They'll go to jail, anyways. They killed two people," Greg said a bit sheepish. He was embarrassed that Julian stood up for him like that and completely ignored that Nick almost died, too. "And who knows, maybe they didn't even do it."
"And who did, then? Who would want to hurt you?"
Greg looked around the group a bit helpless. Not knowing what to say to this, he just shrugged and said, "I don't know."
"Let's just hope they did it, we have to lay this case to rest, there's nothing we can do now," Sara chimed in, trying to help Greg.
"I don't think that copycats did it. The media didn't know about how the cars crashed," Ray said.
Catherine looked at her watch. "We need to go to work now, anyways..."
The whole team – except Catherine – were assigned to one case. It was a bank robbery, but they didn't know yet whether or not anyone got hurt or killed.
Nick was getting ready to get out in the field in the locker room, but he had a problem. His locker wouldn't open.
Sara and Greg went in, grinning when they saw Nick trying to open his locker forcefully.
"You need a hand there?" Sara asked with her typical grin.
"The door is jammed," Nick said irritated.
"It's not jammed, you just need to be more gentle with it." Greg grinned and walked over, helping him. After trying to open it a few times, he turned to Nick. "The door is jammed, Nick."
"Oh really?" Nick said sarcastically.
"Let me get the Janitor, maybe he can help," Sara offered with a smile on her face, but Nick just kept trying to open the door.
"Come ooon..." he whispered impatient.
"Nick, relax, it's gonna open somehow," Greg said, trying to calm him down after he noticed he was quite serious and not in the mood for any jokes.
"Nothing... will work these days!" Nick said angry, giving up on opening that locker door.
"Are you okay?" Sara asked worried.
Nick nodded without looking at either Sara or Greg. He sighed. "Some teenagers almost kill us, 'for fun', and they won't even have to stand up in court for it. What has the world come to?"
"They're going to get what they deserve," Sara replied, trying to comfort him.
"That won't help the two people they killed, though."
"We can't help the victims much, we can only try to find the people responsible for all the mayhem going on out there and keep them from doing it again. That's how it works. Isn't that good enough?" She put her hand on his shoulder.
"I guess..." He turned around to his locker to kick it.
"Any possibility that that's how the door got jammed in the first place?" Greg said with a smile on his face, trying to lighten up the mood.
After getting the Janitor to open the locker for Nick, they all drove to a bank in North Vegas. It was one of the simpler cases, for a change. The robbers have already been arrested and all the CSIs had to do was collect the evidence to support the case. But they all already knew they'd get a conviction.
This simple case gave Nick a chance to calm down again. He was very frustrated when he heard there's no proof that the people responsible for a fatal accident were also responsible for Nick and Greg's car accident. He wasn't quite sure why it was important to him, but it was. Right now he felt better about it, but it still sucked.
When the team arrived at the lab again, Catherine was walking up to them with her phone on her ear, signing them with her finger to wait until she's finished talking.
Hanging up the phone, she looked at her team. "That was Brass. He found wheel nuts in the suspect's homes. Now all we need to do is match them to the cars."