Ch. 22

Krisalyn watched Nick pacing back and forth. She knew something was really wrong as she waited for him to tell her what was wrong. She was about to ask him when she finally saw him stop and face her.

"Brass is missing. He and Catherine went to process our house and he just disappeared. Grissom thinks it's our guy." Nick said crossing his arms in front of him.

"So now he is kidnapping a police captain." Krisalyn said worriedly. If this guy was willing to kidnap a police captain in broad daylight there was no telling what else he was capable of doing. "How did he knew who was going to be at the house?"

"I don't know. There is no proof that Brass was his intended victim at all." Nick said shrugging his shoulders.

"Well he has him now." Krisalyn said biting her lower lip. "There has to be some way that we can help him out."

"We've all been thinking about a way to help him but so far without any leads to go on there is nothing we can do." Nick said shaking his head.

"Nobody saw anything at all?" Krisalyn asked confused. "What about Catherine?"

"She didn't even realize he had disappeared till she went to look for him and realized he wasn't around. His car is still sitting in our driveway so he didn't just drive away." Nick told her trying to run though the details in his mind as well.

"All right so we can be sure that this guy is up to something really big however we have no clue what it could be that he is up to." Krisalyn said biting her lower lip nervously.

"Kris, I think you should take Ella and get out of town." Nick said as he took a deep breath and faced her full on.

"Not gonna happen. We both know this guy is going to freak out the minute any of us leave town. For whatever reason he has decided to target you and I and that means that both of us need to stick around and solve this case or something really horrible could happen. Ella isn't going to grow up without her father." Krisalyn said annoyed.

"She isn't going to grow up without her mother either." Nick said nervously.

Brass looked at the man standing in front of him. He could feel the blood trickling down the side of his face from the wounds on his head. He knew that he was losing a lot of blood but that wasn't going to matter to his captor. He struggled against the ropes that held his hands behind his back but realized it was useless almost immediately. There was no way he could get his hands free or even loosen the ropes. He could already tell his life was slipping away and soon he would be dead and no one would know what happened to him. He thought of Elle and gulped knowing she wouldn't be there for him. Elle hated his guts and would probably be happy to hear that he was deceased.

"Is there something on your mind Captain?" The man asked with a smirk on his face. "Are you thinking about how none of your friends are going to survive? Are you thinking about how painful and slow your death will be? Come on Captain, tell me, what's on your mind?"

"I think you are going to pay!" Captain Brass spat angrily.

"I think you are delusional." The man said shaking his head.

JJ was looking around as she walked through the door towards the DNA lab. She held her report in her hand, trying to find Grissom. She frowned when she realized it was only the people she often referred to as 'lab rats'. She walked up to the nearest person, putting on her most serious face she asked them where the entire team had disappeared to.

"Where is everyone?" She asked with a sigh.

"Well let's see most of the team is working Captain Brass' disappearance and Grissom is sitting in at Warrick's bedside for the moment. I think they said something about Warrick finally waking up or something like that." The back up DNA person stated simply without glancing up to see who she was talking to.

"Captain Brass has disappeared?" JJ asked getting more and more annoyed that no one had bothered to let her in on that fact one bit. "Why is it that no one bothered to call me and let me know which scene to be at?"

"Because no one likes you." The lab person said finally glancing up at her with a smirk.

"You are just a lab rat, what would you know?" JJ asked snottily as she walked out the door.

Krisalyn looked over at Nick and noticed he was staring out into space. She bit her bottom lip nervously as she studied him attempting to read his expression. She knew his mind was on this serial killer who now had a friend of his and was targeting his family. She tried to think of something she could say that would help him through this but she knew there was nothing.

"Nick you know that we are going to get Brass back and we are going to make sure that this guy faces everything he has ever done." Krisalyn said simply.

"He has to have a connection with someone. There has to be a specific reason that he would want to harm us over anyone else. Why would he come to Vegas to target us? Why do what he's doing here?" Nick asked thinking outloud.

"Maybe he just through a dart at a map and it landed on Vegas." Krisalyn said making a weird face. "Look this guy is clearly psychotic."

"But there has to be a method to his madness. There has to be something that is driving him to do the things he is doing. I just don't get why he would target us to be the ones to work this case unless he felt like he needed to kill us." Nick said crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"But Nick we aren't going to let him kill either of us so there is nothing to worry about." Krisalyn said rolling her eyes.

"Yeah well there has to be something we can do to make sure he doesn't have any chance to kill again." Nick said walking over and sitting at the table inside their hotel room. Ella was fast asleep in the portable crib, completely unaware of the chaos that their parents were going through.

As much as he really wanted to kill the police captain now and show everyone he was the boss he knew it would be so much better for them to worry and wonder about what he could possibly be going through. However he did need to kill someone. There was just something about knowing you had the power to take someone's life that seemed to help him feel so much better about himself. He walked over and picked up his new file and studied his next victim. He turned and noticed the captain studying him out of half closed eyelids.

"You might as well give in. It's not your time to die yet." The man said laughing at the police captain. "You should know my enough by now to know that I only kill when I am ready."

"And you aren't ready to kill?" The captain asked confused.

"Not you." The man said simply before he walked over and gave the captain a taste of his right hook.

He looked at the unconscious and chained up man and laughed as he walked out of the room. It was time for him to go and find a new victim, someone who wasn't expecting to be a target, someone who didn't have any connections at all to his intended main victim. He would make sure that the crime scene investigators realized he wasn't someone they wanted to mess with if they hadn't already figured it out.

Sara groaned as the lights in Nick's house were turned back on. She stared at Catherine and Greg and shook her head. They had found absolutely no trace evidence about what could have happened to their friend.

"There is nothing here!" She said out loud, extremely frustrated.

"There has to be something that will help us." Catherine said ever the optimist.

"Do you see anything? Have you found anything?" Sara asked jumping to her feet and pacing back and forth. "There is nothing here that is going to help us out."

"Sara there is always something. Maybe we just need to step back from the situation and re-evaluate. Maybe the reason we can't find anything is because we are looking to hard." Catherine said as she glanced around the room.

"Or maybe Brass wasn't taken inside the house." Greg offered up. "Maybe he was taken outside."

"In which case we are looking in the wrong area and the evidence is outside." Sara said as she glanced at the front door.

Grissom sat next to Warrick in the hospital and watched as one of his top CSI's slept peacefully. Earlier Warrick had come to and Grissom had explained everything that was going on to him. Warrick was upset that he couldn't help collect the evidence or help find Brass but Grissom had convinced him he was better off here in the hospital where he could be easily taken care of. Grissom glanced up when he heard a knock on the door and it took all of the patience he had remaining not to go off on the woman standing there.

"JJ now is not a good time." Grissom said simply.

"I want to know why I wasn't brought in on Captain Brass's disappearance." JJ said angrily. "Why is it that everyone else knows what's going on and gets important jobs and I don't?"

"JJ they all know Nick's layout of his house, they've been there many times. They are going to know when something is out of place and you won't." Grissom said simply. "As your supervisor I decide which assignments people do and I decided you would only get in the way on this one, so get over it."

JJ was fuming as she stomped out of the hospital room. She wasn't sure what she was going to do but she knew that she had to do something and she had to do it fast. She didn't tell Grissom that she had a lead on the serial killer case. She was going to make him and whole team look really bad when she brought this guy down and proved that she was the best CSI and then she would get Nick on her side.

He stared at the victim that he had tied up in the trunk of his car. He could tell that she was trying to scream but the duck tape over mouth prevented it. He smirked as he saw the fear that was reflected in her eyes. He reached out and stroked a piece of brown hair behind her ear and whispered in her ear all the things he was going to do to her. He took the woman back to a warehouse and laid her on the ground in the middle of the concrete floor. He tightened the ropes on her wrists and ankles and then he sat in a chair and watched her squirm against her bonds. He glanced over his shoulder when he hard a noise from outside and he frowned as he stood up and glanced over to the entrance. His eyes widened in surprise as a female walked into the room with a gun pointed at him. He shook his head at the naïve woman and smirked.

"Two for the price of one, how in the world did I get so lucky?" The man said laughing.

"You didn't." The woman said simply pointing the gun at his chest.

"Actually I did." He said as he moved quicker than she could react. Soon there was nothing she could do but realize that she was in big trouble.