Disclaimer: I don't own them.

A/N: So, first things first... I had, in the Chapter 'Moving Forward' had Grissom make Warrick a CSI 3, because I was pretty sure the show didn't cover it... and when watching 104 today to write the upcoming chapters, I realized I was wrong. Sooo, I edited a small section of that chapter. It used to say:

"Warrick seemed happy too… said we needed the help, and it would be nice to have a team of all level 3's…"

"He got promoted, then?"

He nods. "There was a B&E earlier in the week…" etc...

And now it says:

"Warrick seemed happy too… said we needed the help, and it would be nice to have a team of all level 3's…"

"He got promoted, then?"

He nods. "He will be. There was a B&E earlier in the week..."

Anyway... I'm sorry for that. I usually check and double-check details, but I'm still trying to post daily, so it's getting harder. I'll try to avoid more mistakes, but feel free to point them out when I make them--I appreciate it.

Also, I want to thank everyone who congratulated me! We're very excited, and it meant a lot!

...Whew! Okay, here's the next chapter. Let me know what you think. Also, I'm thinking about trying to do less, in the upcoming chapters that overlap episodes, because I feel like I'm mostly summarizing them, but I don't want to miss those moments either... so tell me if you like me covering the episodes, dislike it, think I should do it less or more... feedback is appreciated. :) Hope you enjoy!


Chapter 6: Joining the Team

The weird thing I learned about working the graveyard shift was that you rarely worked only your normal shift… because the rest of the world slept at night. This is why I found myself, exhausted and pounding coffee like nobody's business, stalking into the crime lab just before noon the next day. It was going to be hard enough to adjust to sleeping days, without the extra obligations…

I head toward the break room, catching sight of G-Grissom as he practically bounces into the room ahead of me. …I haven't seen him looking so happy since… our first three weeks together. I enter a second later, catching the end of his enthusiasm—Catherine's daughter's birthday was today, and Grissom had gotten her a present that he was clearly very excited about.

"…What's the rule? How long do I have to be here before I start kicking in for gifts?" I joke, mostly to cover the fact that I feel bad for not getting Lindsey anything, even though no one had told me there was apparently a party for her. Then again, maybe I wasn't invited…

"When the spirit moves you Sara, so, I guess, in your case, never." She said back—and though her tone is slightly teasing… it's also biting. I raise an eyebrow and look down, drinking deeply from my coffee cup. Catherine was so hard to read… sometimes she would be the exact type of woman I disliked—the grown-up version of the girls I'd hated in high school—and other times she was funny, quirky, and even rather friendly.

But then, the girls I'd disliked in high school had also been able to be quite likable when they put their minds to it. …I was, thus far, undecided about her.

G-Grissom, however, continues the conversation, wrapped up in his present of choice. "I got one of these chem. labs when I was six… I almost blew up the whole house!" He laughs a little boy's laugh, and I wonder why I didn't know that about him… did I know anything about him that dated back past…Vegas… other than which geographic location he had existed in and in which order…?

"I, uh… hope you can return it, 'cause, ah… Lindsey doesn't want a party."

"Yeah, what kid doesn't want a party?" Had he wanted a party, as a little kid? Did he get his chem. lab as a sixth birthday present?

"My kid." Catherine says, too sharply. Maybe her animosity today wasn't directed at me in particular…

Nick sweeps into the room at that moment, "Hey Catherine, what time is your little girl coming by?"

"She isn't."

"Yeah, but I got her a chem. set…"

G-Grissom and Nick exchange glances at each others' presents, and I grin at Nick. He's probably the only member of Grissom's team that I know I like. I sense that there will be moments in which we don't exactly see the world in the same light—his Texas accent and Mama's boy appearance tell me that much… but still, he's a nice guy.

"You keep that, you might learn something."

"Stop flirting with me." He fires back, a smirk trying to hide on his face. "Cath, really, when's the party?"

"What do I have to do, put it on the bulletin board?! There is no party. My daughter doesn't want a party."

My eyebrows rise again, but a myriad of beepers go off to save us from Catherine's wrath—and we all head off in different directions.

I went to process the crate she'd been buried in—I got a few good prints, but that wasn't what stood out to me… the box was from the Garris Winery… which meant that… what? Either Mrs. Garris was abducted by someone who not only knew the layout of the house and her husband's schedule, but also had access to his winery storage… or the kidnapper had received a lot of help.

The man Brass had arrested last night for pulling the money from the drop spot had been Mr. Garris' personal trainer, so he would know layout and possibly schedule… I brought the prints to the print lab to run against the suspect… yet it still seemed suspicious.

The prints were a match, but I still listened to Brass interview the man—his excuse for the presence of his fingerprints was having helped Mr. Garris move crates to his garage. …I wasn't ready to rule him out as a suspect, but if this was true… and the crate had come from the garage… it would have been harder to get a hold of, probably. The kidnapper, again, would need help…

I went to our suspect's truck, which had been impounded the previous night, and moved immediately to the passenger seat, finding long brown hairs trapped in the upholstery of the seat and practically running to compare them to the hair Grissom had pulled from the duct tape and I myself had found in the crate. Without skin tags, the comparison needed to be done on a microscopic level… Usually a trace technician would run it for me, but… well, in truth, I wasn't certain who did trace in the lab… there seemed to be a tragic shortage of lab rats here, and I was perfectly capable of doing it myself…

And while I was there, it certainly couldn't hurt to check what trace evidence was on the clothing Grissom had retrieved from the hospital… the clothing she'd been buried in. There was sheep skin fiber—matching his upholstery—on the back of her sleeves.

I find G-Grissom in the audio lab, and ask him to come out and confirm my theory—because I know, I just know, I have information that will break the case wide open. …I want to be the one to do it, because I know I can gain his approval in this way, despite lacking it in our personal relations…and there's still a part of me that wants to be his best student, regardless of what we had shared on an intimate level…

The hairs were a match… the sheep skin was on her sleeves… this meant that...

Mrs. Garris had been in the passenger seat… not only in the seat, but sitting upright, and unbound. She hadn't been kidnapped at all… she had helped someone, probably our suspect, fake a kidnapping and… he had turned on her.

…I wait by the car, clinging to a roll of duct tape, for what seems like an inordinate amount of time, but which is probably only five minutes—and then hear his voice from the hallway. He's walking with Catherine.

"Yes, I'm her mother," Catherine says, "She mimics me." I step back as they're passing the door to the garage I'm in, listening intently.

"Then she'll be fine. I mean… look at you." G-Grissom says, his voice just a little deeper, and familiar… it wasn't quite the tone he'd used when intimate with me but… closer to that than anything I'd previously heard him utter in the lab. I swallow hard.

Eff-ing blondes.

I take a deep breath and step out into the hallway behind them, holding up the duct tape.

"Hey Grissom!" He turns, and I grin. "Could you come tape me up?" And I slip back into to room, catching only the beginning of the surprised look on his face. I know it was… a little bold, for the lab, but… I wasn't about to let the Barbies of the world take over because I wasn't filling to fight for my little corner of it.

He enters the room not thirty seconds later, a silly smile on his face… and I hand him the tape, moving to sit on the passenger seat of the truck. He leans in closer, almost standing between my knees, to tape my wrists the way Mrs. Garris' had been, and we both smile sort of awkwardly—too happily for the situation—at the proximity. …I wonder vaguely if this whole bondage thing is a fetish I'd never known about. He seems to be enjoying it… a lot.

"So, you found Laura's hairs…here, passenger side, front seat."

"Right. Not in the back… which made me ask, 'What kind of a kidnapper puts a woman bound and unconscious in the front seat?' The back of my arm isn't touching the sheep skin, see?"

"Yeah. So?"

"But… there is sheep skin fiber on the back of Laura's sleeve. That tells us Laura sat back, like a normal person would. Cut me, Mack." I extend my arms and he cuts the tape with a smirk, so I can demonstrate.

"Like this." I move my arms back against the seat. His head is tilted, his eyes thoughtful.

"So… she wasn't bound at all?"

"Correct. But… Would a kidnapper risk putting an unconscious woman in the front seat of his car, even unbound? The answer is usually in the question, you taught me that, so… Was she unconscious? We found Halothane on the patio, Halothane knocks you out… if you take it." I say, waiting and watching for his reaction. He doesn't seem as surprised as I expected… and he's smiling, strangely.

"So, you're saying that she never inhaled the Halothane?"

"Proof would be in her blood. Halothane stays in the system up to forty-eight hours…" I say, trying to impress him with my extensive knowledge and plan to solve the case… to catch the woman, despite the unexpected twist the straight-forward kidnapping had taken.

"How pleased am I that I got a sample of her blood?" He asks, a too-knowing smirk on his face. I scoff, closing my eyes and letting my head fall forward—he had known, or… suspected, at least. "So you can go check at the lab, see how it turned out…"

"Damn it." I stand, closing the distance between us, "I wanted to carry the ball over the line…"

He looks down so that our faces aren't in such direct proximity, but grins, and nods, "I know…" He doesn't trust himself, with me so close.

I move away, out of the room, trying not to be too upset that I hadn't truly given him any insight he was lacking… I would keep trying, though. Someday, I would catch something he hadn't…

I got the results back just minutes after Grissom returned from his lunch break, looking like he'd taken a shower and changed clothes… something that sounded amazing, just now, but would have to wait, now that the tox results had come in.

I open his door, but he doesn't notice—he's listening to something on a portable CD player. I grin. "Grateful dead CD?"

He looks startled and pulls the headphones off one of his ears. "Who's dead?"

I shake my head, and tell him there's no halothane is Laura Garris' blood… which means that she and Chip had faked her kidnapping… which didn't make any sense at all, because Laura Garris had access to the money all along… and even if she wanted to avoid the hassle of divorce, she had ended up buried alive and black and blue…

Grissom gives a cryptic explanation—"Greed"—and we leave to go talk to Mrs. Garris… well, talk to her… arrest her… you know, whichever.

To my surprise, Gi-Grissom lets me lead, for the most part… spelling out what we know and how we know it… proving to the poor, unsuspecting, clearly lovesick husband that his cheating tramp of a wife cared so little about him that she didn't have the decency to leave him via divorce—upfront and honestly—even knowing she would probably take half of his money that way anyway.

Grissom steps in, when she makes a snide comment with too much eyebrow movement—a sure sign someone's lying… and being a bitch. God, I didn't like this woman. I couldn't believe I'd been so upset over her burial, which was cruel, but now, I knew, not entirely undeserved. What was that saying… No heroes amongst thieves?

I watch her being taken into a police car after rubbing her infidelity in her husband's disbelieving face, and had a sense of a sort of divine retribution in the universe. She had been made a true victim because she pretended to be a real one… and when the altruists of the world saved her, and pitied her… truth won the day, and she was be punished.

I stood as close to Gi—Grissom as I felt he would allow without pulling away or giving me a strange look, and drew in a deep breath. It felt good to believe, just this once, that the world was a just place, after all.