Previous part of Ghost.

***

Monday Afternoon 01:32 PM

Jim Brass had his gun in his right hand and his back to the wall next to the door of room 471. With a silent nod to Officer Wyatt, who also had his gun drawn and was standing on the other side of the door, Jim began to pound with his fist.

"Mr. Stankowski?" Brass yelled. "Police! Open the door!"

There was silence on the other side. Brass listened for a few more seconds and then relaxed a little. He turned to the hotel security guy who had accompanied them and said, "Okay, open it."

Using an electronic pass key, the security guard opened the door and stepped back quickly. Jim entered the room with his gun held out in front of him. Together, he and Wyatt made a thorough sweep of the small hotel room and bath before holstering their weapons.

Jim called to the security guard, who moved into the room. "Can you get me the maid who works this floor today?"

"Sure," the young man said and then began to speak into his walkie talkie as he stepped back out into the hallway.

Brass did a cursory visual scan of the room. A gym bag lay half open on the folding luggage rack, and the notepad next to the phone had several pages torn off of it. It looked as if the maid had already serviced the room for the day. Either that or their suspect hadn't been there in a while.

Jim turned to Wyatt. "Call it in and get forensics here. I want someone watching this room every second until this guy shows up again."

With a "Yes, Sir," Wyatt moved off to notify dispatch.

The security guard returned with a middle-aged Hispanic woman wearing a maid's uniform. "Captain, this is Rosa Domingez," he introduced her. "She's working this floor today."

"Thanks," Jim said, turning his attention to the maid. "Rosa?"

"Si," she replied.

Jim came to the point. "Did you clean in here today?"

Rosa nodded. "Si. An hour ago. Why? What is wrong?"

"Nothing," Jim assured her. "I just want to know if the room looked lived in. Do you think the guest who has this room was here last night? Did you see anyone in here today at all?"

She looked past the Captain at the room beyond as if trying to jog her memory. She must clean fifty rooms a day. He couldn't expect her to remember every guest who stayed at the hotel. Her eyes lit up upon seeing the gym bag. "Si, I remember. The bed was messy and the shower was wet. I did not see a man. He was not here when I knocked. I just cleaned and left."

"But you know the guest in the room is a man?" Jim asked.

Rosa gave him a rather motherly look. "Women are not so messy as men. They don't leave the sink full of beard."

That made Jim smile. Men are pigs, no doubt about that. "Thank you, Rosa."

The maid left, and Officer Wyatt moved towards him. "A forensic team is on the way, and dispatch is sending another cruiser."

"Right," Brass said. "Now all we have to do is hope he comes back."

Monday Afternoon 02:21 PM

Sara had found no evidence that anything except the occasional nocturnal animal had been at the back of the building. There was no indication that anyone had gone through the back door of the processing center complex in months, perhaps years. It was locked. She had followed the edge of the building around the other side before entering through the same broken door Nick and Catherine had used.

Together, the three CSIs had combed the main floor and then the second floor of the office portion of the building. Nick had taken a precarious walk across the catwalks that were mounted above the main floor of the plant. At one time large heating ovens and crushing machines had sat on the concrete floors of the plant's large interior. Now, the main building was nothing more than an empty husk.

They met up at the open doorway and looked back out at the sun-baked parking lot where Warrick was finishing up. "Anything?" Catherine asked Nick.

"No," he sighed, placing his hands on his hips. "No one's been up there for a while. That's not a bad thing, either. That catwalk is a bit rickety."

"Good thing you're a lightweight," Sara kidded.

Nick gave her a sidelong look. "Look who's talking, toothpick." Then to Catherine, "Seriously, it'd be real easy to get hurt in here."

Catherine shrugged. "There'd be a hue and cry from the community to protect the kids if there WAS a community around here. Right now all anyone needs to worry about getting in here are the jackrabbits and rattlesnakes."

"Rattlesnakes?" Sara looking around nervously.

Nick grinned. "They just love a cool place to snooze after a hot day of hunting. This building would be a perfect place for it."

Just as Sara was about to retort, Warrick joined them. "I found two sets of tire tracks that look pretty fresh. Both enter at the main gate." He pointed out to the opening in the fence at the access road and then gestured toward the north end of the building to their left. "They go to the end of the building complex and back out again. I'm pretty sure it's the same car." He looked back at the group. "I made four molds for comparison with the Toyota. Should be able to tell more when we get back. What about in here?"

"Struck out," Nick said.

"What's on the north end of the building?" Catherine asked.

Sara looked at her notes. "There's an old gas pump and what looks like the remains of an old crane of some kind. I took some pictures."

Catherine headed out of the door and walked around that end of the building. They all followed her.

They found the old gas pump, the rubber hose now gone and the glass facing broken on both sides. The tire tracks that Warrick mentioned disappeared as the ground down asphalt/dirt turned into a concrete drive path along both sides of the pump. Whoever had driven up here had not backed the vehicle out put had pulled through and made a wide turn to the left before pulling back in front of the building. Catherine followed the tire track paths on foot until she came back to the pump station again.

Nick had discovered something interesting under a large metal support post. "I think I found something," he said to no one in particular.

What he had found was what looked like a long low pile of crushed black glass - perlite. Beyond the crushed unprocessed ore, there was a dried dirt puddle next to the metal post.

"Probably urine," Catherine said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," Nick said, "and to use this post as an outhouse he had to stand on this pile of perlite."

"Transfer," Sara agreed. She placed several small pieces of the crushed black rock from the low pile on the ground in a bindle and labeled it.

"I'll take a sample from the dirt here. We might get lucky." Nick offered.

"Urethral cells?" Warrick asked.

Nick looked at him. "Maybe."

Approaching footsteps heralded the arrival of the two police officers. "We didn't find anything," O'Riley said. "Just a bunch of scrub brush and rocks." He looked at Nick, who was collecting the soil sample. "Did you do any better?"

"Tire treads and urine," Catherine informed him.

"Bathroom stop?" Trooper Blair wondered aloud.

"Possibly. Could be nothing," Catherine said. "Could be our guy. The bits of rock we found at Grissom's suggest that this could be where our suspect stopped."

"But he didn't bring Grissom back here," O'Riley said.

"Doesn't look that way," she agreed.

"Where does that leave us?" O'Riley asked.

Catherine sighed and looked out at the desert that surrounded them on all sides. "With another very small piece of the puzzle and the clock still ticking."

***

Monday Afternoon 02:30 PM

He must be having auditory hallucinations, a sure sign the dehydration was becoming severe. Early delirium. Damn. Gil could not explain it any other way to himself. He was hearing voices. And not just any voices either. He would swear he had heard Catherine, Sara, Nick, and Warrick. He even thought he had heard Ray O'Riley and another man who he thought could have been Jim Brass. He heard cars also – the crunch of tires on gravel.

Hope had built in him and his heart had pounded in his chest the first time he thought he heard them. Gil had stopped believing anyone would reach him in time. As the day had wore on he could feel that his body was losing the battle. Then the sounds reached him, or he thought they did. He had wanted to shout but his voice had long since gone, his tongue a sore swollen mass in a dry mouth. He had tried to use the sling but lacked sufficient strength.

The sounds of familiar voices taunted him in his fatigue, coming and going in snatches over the past few hours. Then, just a few minutes ago Gil had heard the sound of vehicles again. Now all was quiet.

Cruel hope faded as he finally realized that he probably hadn't really heard anything. Dehydration was now causing his mind to play tricks on him. This was the final battle he would wage. The loss of a rational mind, even above ultimate death, frightened him. A line from Hamlet leapt to his tired mind.

Poor Ophelia,

Divided from herself and her fair judgment

Lying on his side, trying to conserve as much energy as he could, Gil found himself fighting to stay lucid. If death was coming, let it find him aware.

Monday Afternoon 02:51 PM

Local Las Vegas Channel 3 news didn't mention the story during the noon newscast. He had watched the whole thing on the television above the bar at Shooters. The teaser for the evening news that ran just now mentioned 'a missing law enforcement employee' – missing, not dead.

Paul frowned. With any luck, the cops might never find Grissom. He had come a long way to do this guy. He wanted the bastard dead but wanted his death to be slow. In retrospect, perhaps a simple bullet to the chest would have been better.

Yes, he thought, to the chest, not the head. Paul wanted Grissom to know he was dying. As it was, Grissom must know he was a dead man - or he was already dead. Paul figured that was good enough. Time in the joint had taught him patience if nothing else. It had certainly given him time enough to think about the whole thing.

Sandy had been raised in Jean, Nevada. He was Paul's last cellmate before Paul got out. Sandy was the one who told Paul about the abandoned mineshafts that dotted the desert out here by the score. Though not an aqueduct access shaft, a mineshaft was close. The abandoned pit was easy enough to find once that old plant was located. Someone just had to know where to look. Sandy's description of the area had been perfect even after ten years of being in the joint.

It was nearly three o'clock now and there was no more mention of the missing law enforcement employee on TV. He was a bit tired after spending much of last night and this morning at the craps table. Luck had not deserted Paul since he had left his dump in Fresno and headed to Vegas. With several hundred extra dollars cash in his pockets, he decided to take a nap. He'd watch the evening newscast in his hotel room and then head downtown.

Tossing a tip onto the bar and downing the last of his beer, Paul rose to go back to his room at the casino across the street.

The walk had taken only a few minutes, and he was soon entering the spacious main casino floor. Musical notes played by myriad slot machines and the steady buzz of excitement, anger, and laughter told Paul that the locals who loved to hang out here were having a good time despite the fact that it was Monday.

Of course, he thought, when you're in the joint, Monday is just like every other day. He made the turn away from the casino and into the hallway leading to the hotel elevators. The security guard at a small podium in front of the elevators asked to see his hotel door key card. Damned Bin Laden and those bastard hijackers had created such a furor that the security conscious public made it harder to get just about anything done. The world outside prison was a much different place than it had been when he was sent up.

Boarding the elevator, one thing struck him as funny. Elevator music was still as bad as it had ever been. The short ride ended as the doors slid open on the fourth floor. Paul headed down the hallway toward his room. He didn't recognize the short guy in the gray suit that rounded the corner and was moving along the hallway just a few steps behind him. Probably a local business man getting his dick tickled after lunch.

He stopped at the door to his hotel room to put his key card into the lock. He didn't get the door open before the guy spoke to him.

"Paul Stankowski?"

His gun was tucked into the back of his jeans were he always carried it and was well hidden by his jacket. He reached toward it as he turned to face the man. Only a cop would know who the hell he was.

The business man did turn out to be a cop, and he was a tricky bastard to boot. The cop's piece was already in his hands and was leveled at Paul's face. "Don't!" the suit told him.

Looking at the cop's face, Paul knew it was possible for this guy to blow him away. You can always tell who has the balls for killing and who doesn't. It was all in the eyes. This cop could pull the trigger without a second thought.

Within seconds cops had materialized out of every nook and cranny in that hallway and Paul was surrounded. He had paused with his hand halfway to the goal and was trying to decide what his odds of getting a single shot off were.

"Don't make me tell you twice," the cop in the suit told him. His face darkened and Paul knew that he was pushing the wrong buttons with this guy.

Paul lowered his hand back to his side and asked an obvious question. "How do you know who I am?"

The cop's eyes narrowed as he said, "It's my job to know the scum who come to my town."

Scum. Paul guessed he had always been thought of as scum by cops. He had learned to hate them all when he was young, and his opinion of them hadn't improved. As the cops behind him took hold of his arms, he felt one of them find his gun and yank it out of its hiding place. An ex-con with an unregistered gun was an ex-con in jail. Shit.

"What the fuck do you want with me?" he shot back to the suit.

Jim Brass put his gun back in the holster on this belt and looked back at Stankowski. "You're going to do me a favor, Paul."

"Like hell I am," Paul practically snarled.

"Oh, you are," Brass told him coldly, with no attempt to hide the anger in his eyes. "You're going to tell me where Gil Grissom is."

Monday Afternoon 03:12 PM

After a brief discussion about the merits of splitting up, the team had decided to do just that. Currently, Nick and Warrick were on their way to the second perlite processing center on Nick's list. This one was just forty-two miles from Goodsprings. Sara and Catherine took the samples collected in Goodsprings back with them to the lab. They hitched a ride with O'Riley and would arrive back in Vegas in another fifteen minutes, traffic allowing.

Sara had spent the drive time looking over the case file she had received from California. She had called the office and found out that the coroner's notes from the Campbell case had been received. Sara hoped there was something in the notes to suggest what Stankowski might have done with Grissom. Assuming, she thought, that Stankowski hadn't just killed Grissom as soon as he had gotten him out of town.

O'Riley had informed them that the search of the area around where the Toyota had been found off Blue Diamond Road had turned up nothing. There was no sign that Grissom or his body had been dumped within ten miles of the site. What Blue Diamond Road had offered to whoever dumped the car was easy access to transportation back into Vegas. There were two gas stations and a casino within five miles of the dump site. A bit of a hike but not too bad. Plus, with increasing traffic along that stretch of Highway 160 from Nye County, the guy could easily have caught a ride into town.

She sighed and turned her attention to the increasing signs of civilization passing her rear seat window as they neared Las Vegas. Up in the front seat, Catherine's cellphone was ringing.

"Willows," Catherine spoke into her phone.

She listened for several seconds with only an "All right." and a "You got it." Sara hoped something good was happening somewhere. Her heart was telling her that they were very short on time. Grissom needed a real break and very soon. They all did.

When Catherine hung up, she turned in her seat so she could look at both Sara and O'Riley. She came right to it. "That was Brass," she told them. "They've found Paul Stankowski."

***

Monday Afternoon 03:43 PM

Sara stood with her arms crossed and her jaw clenched, looking through the one-way glass into the interrogation room. She had wanted to see the man, to look at his face. Catherine had joined Brass at the table. O'Riley stood with his back to the door. Paul Stankowski slouched in a chair, drawing invisible designs on the tabletop and ignoring the questions Brass was asking.

"We have your prints in two stolen vehicles and on the front door of Gil Grissom's house," Brass told Stankowski. "You want to tell me how they got there?"

Stankowski switched the digit he was using to draw on the tabletop from his index finger to his middle finger. The gesture wasn't lost on Jim or Catherine.

"Miss Sidle."

Sara turned to find that the Sheriff had joined her in the observation room. He was holding a file folder. "Sheriff," she said.

"I brought the file from the Los Angeles Coroner's office. I thought you might want to see it as soon as you got back," Mobley offered her the file.

She frowned slightly. The Sheriff seemed an unlikely delivery person, but she wasn't about to tell him that. "I do. Thanks," she said taking the file from him.

"So this is Mr. Stankowski?" the Sheriff asked.

"That's him," she replied.

Inside the interrogation room, very little progress was being made. "We have enough to convict you of felony assault, grand theft auto in two states, possession of an illegal weapon, and possibly murder," Jim Brass was informing Stankowski. "I guess you really missed prison, huh."

"Fuck you," Stankowski muttered.

"I hope you find what you need in those notes," Mobley told Sara. "I don't think Mr. Stankowski is going to be at all helpful to our investigation."

He looked at the young CSI and saw the anger and fear on her face. This was what being involved with the criminal element was like. The information needed to solve crimes was often held by those who were least willing to offer it. The challenge had always been to be smarter than the bad guys. Sometimes smart wasn't enough. Sometimes there was no substitute for luck. If Grissom were in the room with them, he would probably argue about that. Brian suspected that Gil didn't believe in luck. Right now, staring at the face of the man who was probably responsible for killing Grissom, Brian prayed that he was wrong. Luck might be all they had left unless the information in the file he had just given Sara was pure gold.

Sara inspected the face of the Sheriff closely. She was sure there was a genuine sadness there. Maybe even regret. She guessed there were a lot of people feeling that way right about now. Sometimes it takes missing someone to realize how they've impacted your life. And Grissom was missing. Not dead, Sara told herself. He can't be. She couldn't think that.

She took a deep breath and looked back down at the file. "I'll let you know," she told the Sheriff and headed toward the conference room. With luck, Grissom would be able to tell them what Stankowski wouldn't. Grissom just might be the only one with the clue to where he could be found.

Monday Evening 04:09 PM

The Cal Neri Mining Company just outside Searchlight, Nevada was still in business, but on a very small scale. Their processing plant was efficiently run and employed a single shift year round. Sometimes, during the summer months, they ran two shifts. Warrick and Nick had no problem with the plant manager when they asked to take a look around the small building complex. They were joined by another State Trooper, Steve Allan. This complex was smaller and more streamlined than the Crystal Gorge Mine Company had been.

No one who worked at the plant remembered seeing the Toyota or an unfamiliar face in the past week. For that matter, no one could remember seeing anyone unusual in months. Searchlight wasn't exactly a tourist destination.

A search of the grounds around the plant building yielded them nothing. There was no indication that anyone who didn't belong at the plant had been there. The fence surrounding the complex was in good repair. The security guard on duty searched the logs for the past two weeks for any indications of the unusual. As far as the company's records were concerned, nothing untoward had happened.

Nick had thanked the plant manager and joined Warrick and Trooper Allan at their vehicles. "Well this was a strike out," he said.

Warrick shook his head. "Not entirely. At least we can be reasonably sure Stankowski wasn't here."

Nick took a deep breath and nodded. Damn, he was tired. This had been one long-ass day and there didn't seem to be an end in sight. "Yeah," he said as he pulled out the list the State Mining Commission had faxed to him. "That leaves us with one more processing plant within a hundred miles of Vegas."

"Where's that?" Trooper Allan asked.

Nick consulted the list. "Panaca."

Warrick whistled. "Man, that's got to be eighty, ninety miles from here."

"More like a hundred," Allan told them. "That's way outside my patrol area. I'll try to find out who's patrolling out there this afternoon."

"Hey, thanks man," Nick said as the Trooper moved off to place the call to dispatch.

Warrick turned to his partner. "I think you'd better drive."

It was Nick's turn to shake his head. "I was about to say the same thing to you. "

Before they resorted to a game of rock-paper-scissors to determine which of them would drive, Nick's cellphone rang.

Monday Evening 04:53 PM

Sara tapped the eraser of a pencil impatiently on the pad of paper she had been taking notes on. She listened as Nick's cellphone rang a second time.

"Stokes."

"Nick, Sara," she began. "Where are you guys?"

"Just finishing up in Searchlight," Nick's voice said. "We were thinking about heading up to Panaca. That's where the last processing plant on the list is located."

"You better put off that trip," Sara told him. "Catherine wants you both back here ASAP."

"What's up?"

"Well, Stankowski isn't talking but Grissom might be."

***

Monday Evening 06:22 PM

The conference room table was practically filled to capacity with Chinese take-out, coffee cups, soda cans, and paperwork. Arrayed around the table were six employees of the Las Vegas Police Department, all in varying degrees of exhaustion, frustration, and preoccupation. The four senior night shift CSIs were joined by Greg Sanders and Jim Brass. They were trying to sift through the evidence they had collected so far, clear their respective heads, and figure out a game plan for what to do next.

Catherine had insisted that they all eat something. When she had called to check on Lindsey, her sister had asked her if she had eaten a meal recently. Catherine had admitted that it had been a while. If that was true for her, it was probably true for the whole team. Each of them was already fighting fatigue. They shouldn't compound that by neglecting to provide even the most basic of their own needs. Her other suggestion - resting in short shifts - was met with immediate defiance, so she shelved that for now. If this case went on much longer, there would have to be limits set. Catherine just didn't think now was the time to push the matter.

The other issue that pressed on Catherine was the need to update Grissom's mother. She had sent several emails to Mrs. Grissom throughout the day, telling her that they were still working on the case. It wasn't enough, and Catherine knew it. Hopefully, this meeting of the minds would give her a direction to head the team. All Catherine had been able to tell Mrs. Grissom was that Gil was still missing and that they were working on several different leads. It seemed fruitless to tell Mrs. Grissom about Paul Stankowski. Finding him had not brought the team any closer to finding Grissom, so how would telling Gil's mother help her to deal with the ongoing terror of a still-missing son?

Catherine sighed and brought her attention back to the discussion at hand.

"So you got a warrant?" Nick was asking Brass.

"The prints in the Toyota got us the warrant for a DNA sample, no problem." Jim said.

Greg nodded. "It was a clean match, too. The urethral cells were in good enough shape. Your suspect was at that processing plant."

"Yeah," Warrick added, "and Denise was able to match the treads from the casts I took from the parking lot to the Toyota."

"And we know that at some point Grissom was in the back seat of that car," Nick offered.

"But we don't know if Grissom was in the car when Stankowski was at the processing plant," Catherine countered. "We don't have a good timeline for the sequence of events."

Jim was shaking his head. "What I don't get is why our man Paul was even out there? I mean, Goodsprings is pretty far off the beaten path. What was the attraction?"

Nick pointed his fork at the detective. "That's a good point. There must have been some reason for him to go out there." Nick swallowed the last of the food in his mouth before continuing. "We just assumed that his only purpose in coming here was to find Grissom. What if he was here for another reason?"

"Like?" Catherine asked.

Nick shrugged. "To meet someone else?"

Warrick nodded slowly. "Something he was looking for, maybe?"

"Or some place," Sara interjected. Up to now, she hadn't been participating much in the conversation, opting instead to keep reading through Grissom's notes from the Campbell case. She had found these to be extremely detailed and thorough, much more like a seasoned veteran would write than a novice investigator. Early in his career, Grissom had shown all the signs of becoming an extraordinary criminalist.

Glancing up, Sara realized that everyone was looking at her. It occurred to her that she was the one who had been reading the case notes. The rest of the team was depending on her to share any pertinent information. Grissom had been talking to her through his notes but, until now, she hadn't really understood the message. "Listen to this," she said and began to read from the case notes she had been studying. " 'The victim was found to have abrasions of bilateral palms and fingertips. Corresponding clawing blood markings were found on the south and west facing concrete walls.' "

Nick's face showed his confusion. "This is the guy Stankowski was convicted of murdering?"

"Yeah, Chad Campbell," Sara said. "The Sheriff's Department had search and recovery teams out looking for the victim. Grissom was on one of those teams and found Campbell's body in a remote access shaft of the Los Angeles Aqueduct."

"That's right," Brass agreed.

"So how'd he wind up in the access shaft of an aqueduct?" Greg asked curiously.

"According to the police report," Brass informed them, "Chad Campbell was a known dope dealer. Our man Paul was seen trying to make a buy on the night Campbell was reported missing. Apparently, Pauly didn't have enough money for the dope and the situation got heated. They fought. Chad lost. An eyewitness stated that our suspect put the victim in his car and drove off."

"Tire tracks found at the dump site matched the tires on Stankowski's car," Sara continued. "The victim had blood type O positive which was a match to the blood found in the back seat of the suspect's car. Also, type A positive blood was found on the victim's shirt and jacket. Guess what blood type our suspect is?"

"That's easy," Greg responded. "He's A positive."

"Bingo," Jim said.

"Chad Campbell was alive when he was tossed down in that shaft," Sara told them. "But he was dead when they found him four days later."

Catherine put the scenario together. "So Campbell and Stankowski got into a fight over a drug buy gone bad. Campbell was knocked out and Stankowski put him in the back seat of his car. Then he took him to this access shaft and dumped him there, knowing that if and when Campbell woke up he wouldn't be able to get out without help. Campbell did wake up and tried to climb out but couldn't. He died down in the shaft before anyone could find him."

"That's about it," Jim said grimly.

"What was the cause of death?" Nick asked quietly.

"According to the autopsy report," Sara replied, "exposure. He died of severe dehydration and hypothermia."

This last bit of information brought an uneasy hush to the room. Everyone at the table had done the mental math. Grissom had been missing for nearly three full days. And this was the desert….

It was Catherine who finally broke the silence. "What has all this got to do with our case?" she asked softly.

Sara leaned forward. "What if Stankowski came here for revenge?" She paused to look at the faces around the table. "A report filed by the Assistant District Attorney states that Grissom's testimony was pivotal to obtaining a conviction. What if Stankowski was so angry at his conviction that he planned retaliation? What if he went out to Goodsprings to search for a dump site?"

"You mean someplace he knew Grissom wouldn't be able to get out of," Jim theorized.

"Not an access shaft," Warrick stated. "There's nothing like that around there. Another kind of shaft."

"Like an old mineshaft," Catherine offered.

"That's it," Nick said, and as he did it was as if someone had thrown a light switch on. Almost as one everyone came to their feet.

"I'll contact the State Mining Commission and get a list of abandoned mineshafts in southern Nevada," Nick said as he headed out the door.

"Good," Catherine said.

"I'll call the Sheriff," Jim told her. "He'll have Search and Rescue out in five."

"Thanks," Catherine said. She turned to Sara. "We'll need the night scope."

"I'm on it," Sara said. "I'll be on the first chopper out of here. We can begin to sweep known mines even if we don't have the exact location of the shafts. The scope can pick up body heat even if the body is underground."

"Get going," Catherine told Sara unnecessarily. Sara was already moving out of the room.

Turning to Warrick, she said, "I want you and Nick on the first ground units to leave Vegas as soon as Nick gets the maps."

"We're there," Warrick said and headed out to find Nick and make sure there wasn't any delay in getting the maps they all needed.

"What do you want me to do?" Greg asked.

Catherine looked at the eager lab technician. "Pray," she told him.

***

Monday Night 07:09 PM

They finished the second sweep of the Apex Mine, and Sara gave the pilot a thumbs down. Nothing. Next, they would move on to the Sloan Mine and then to the Weiser Quarry. Search and Rescue had set up a strategic search pattern. They were the experts, Sara knew that. What she wanted was an instant find. Her head told her that any moment they could find the man they were searching for. Her heart told her that every second that ticked by was one second too long. Her gut told her that the hourglass sand had nearly run out.

The SAR helicopter banked to the north and sped toward the next search zone. Sara kept her eyes glued to the night scope sensor's display. "Give me something two legged," she whispered. And still breathing, she added silently.

Monday Night 07:11 PM

The map light attached to his clipboard illuminated the precise areas of the desert surrounding the Las Vegas basin that were home to abandoned mining shafts. Some of these had undergone reclamation, but that notation had not been made to the map. Damn, Nick thought. His SAR team had just left such a location. With every fruitless stop they made, precious time was wasted.

The information that he had received from the State Mining Commission was the most accurate he could get, Nick knew that. Companies were continually working with the State Commission to complete reclamation of old mining sites. Not all the clean up and hazard removal work was immediately reported to the Commission. If there were many more sites like this one, Nick thought, we could lose whatever window of opportunity we might have had.

Hang on, Gris, Nick thought. We're coming.

The SAR truck sped away with bright search lights glaring into the desert dusk, headed for the next search target. The receding daylight gave the impression of receding success. Nick fought the urge to shout his frustration as he watched the desert terrain move by.

Monday Night 07:14 PM

Catherine listened to the continuous squawk and chatter of the SAR channel of the police band and watched the pavement rush past as she stared out of the window of her SAR team's truck. They were headed east out of Las Vegas along Highway 160 toward their search targets in Pahrump Valley. Mountain Springs pass was just a few miles ahead. Her ears popped as they rode quickly up the mountainside, lights and sirens pushing commuter traffic to the shoulders as they moved past.

You better still be alive when I find you, Catherine silently told Gil. Her throat felt tight. She clenched her teeth to hold back her rising anger. Whether she was angry at Grissom for letting himself get so caught up in this mess, with herself for not being able to figure out what was happening sooner, or at Stankowski for just being the bastard he was she didn't really know. She was angry, and by God if Gil wasn't alive when she found him, she'd kill him.

Monday Night 07:16 PM

"It's north of here," Warrick told Danny Ellis, the SAR officer driving their team's truck. "I make it about seven miles."

Ellis nodded but didn't take his eyes off the landscape visible through the windshield. The terrain was rugged but nothing the SAR truck couldn't handle. Driving into the setting sun made the going slow. As soon as the sun finished dipping over the horizon, the search lights would make things easier. For now they would have to keep it slow to avoid dumping the truck into an unexpected ravine. The access roads in this area of the desert weren't well maintained and were often washed out by flash flooding during heavy rains.

Warrick wanted to yell at Danny to go faster but knew they were making as much progress as they could while remaining safe. It wouldn't help Grissom at all if their team were close to him but too incapacitated by carelessness to help him. He settled for making sure they stayed on course. He also thought it might be a good idea to resist the urge to jump out of the moving vehicle and try to run ahead.

Monday Night 07:19 PM

He placed a red pin on the map at the coordinates he had received from Nick and another at the coordinates radioed in by Sara. Stepping back, Jim looked at the growing pattern of red pins – the misses. The SAR Commander was keeping track of the misses as well. For the Search and Rescue guys, a miss was another piece of the big puzzle, helping to narrow the focus of a large scale search like this one.

They had hundreds of square miles to search and very little time to do it in successfully. Of course, that was Jim's own definition of success. The search might very well find Grissom after he was dead. For the SAR guys that would be a success of sorts. No one likes to find the lost after their dead, but a recovery is a recovery.

As far as Jim was concerned, nothing short of finding Grissom alive and able to testify against that son of a bitch Stankowski would be good enough. It wouldn't hurt if Grissom were found alive and completely uninjured either.

Yeah, Jim thought darkly, and it wouldn't hurt one damn bit if Santa Claus walked up and gave me that Radio Flyer I asked him for in 1962.

Monday Night 07:25 PM

The lab felt like a tomb. Greg found that the most soothing place for him to be was in Grissom's office. He stood looking at the tarantula and wondering if spiders could recognize the differences in the people who cared for them. Maybe he was anthropomorphizing too much. Maybe he didn't give a damn if he was.

"Think good thoughts, buddy," Greg told the tarantula. "They're gonna find him real soon."

God, Greg prayed silently, let him be just fine when they do.

Monday Night 07:37 PM

The light had almost completely waned. Night was approaching again.

God, he was tired.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Gil knew that the fatigue was overwhelming him. The ever-present thirst had finally faded, and his hands and feet felt numb. He knew that meant that he was in shock. The pain from his wrist and side seemed dull and far away but continued enough to be a constant reminder to his weary mind that this was all happening. His peril, closer now, was very real.

What was it the Buddha had said? "Even death is not to be feared by those who lived wisely." The question he had to ask himself was had he lived wisely? He honestly didn't know.

Dehydration was taking the last of his strength and would soon render him unconscious. The scientist in him wasn't upset by the knowledge. The insects he had learned to love and appreciate through study would return his body to the earth in due course. His mother would grieve. He regretted that. Sons should lose mothers, not the other way around.

What about his other family? Gil had never been prone to maudlin or morose circumspection. He did wonder, though, how his life might have impacted them. Well, he hoped. That was all any man could hope for. Someday they might figure out what had happened to him. Not that it mattered. They would move on. Life would demand that of them.

Horatio's line from Hamlet floated into his thoughts:

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about: so shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgments, casual … something …

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

Something ... something ….

He couldn't remember the rest.

"How does a man choose death as his profession?" he was asked once. "It chose me," he had answered. And so it had.

His prison was completely dark again. God, he was so tired ….

***

Monday Night 08:21 PM

Warrick shined his flashlight down into the shaft. This was the third of the abandoned perlite mineshafts the state had listed as possible hazards in the Goodsprings area. Since this community was very sparsely populated, it had not yet reached the top of the Abandoned Mine Land Hazard Abatement Program list. The danger signs that should have been posted to warn of this mineshaft's presence were nowhere to be found. What amazed Warrick was how hidden this shaft was. The opening was only a few hundred yards from the processing plant they had visited earlier that day, but it had taken nearly fifteen minutes of searching to find the opening in the dark from the details on the topographical map.

Warrick knelt down by the opening and looked over the edge. There was a significant amount of disturbed earth about eight feet below the collar of the shaft on what looked like the end of some kind of ledge. "I've got something," he shouted back over his shoulder.

"GRISSOM!" Warrick shouted down into the shaft. His voice echoed hollowly back up at him. He waited for a few seconds and tried again. "GRISSOM! ARE YOU THERE?"

Alan Rogers, a SAR officer was at his side almost instantly and was shining a search light down into the shaft. The scarred earth was more noticeable in the amplified light.

"See that?" Warrick asked Rogers.

"Yeah," Rogers replied. "Something's been down there recently."

Warrick grabbed the thermal-imaging night vision binoculars from his belt. He panned from the collar of the shaft down toward the end of the ledge eight feet below them. Something much farther down from the ledge was glowing.

"You're right. Something's down there," Warrick said and handed the binoculars to Rogers.

Rogers took a brief look through the binoculars and then reached for his radio. "Not something," Rogers said, getting up quickly and heading back to the rescue squad for his rappelling equipment, "someone!"

Warrick stared after the officer for a moment and then looked back down the mineshaft. "GRISSOM!!" he shouted again.

Rogers was already calling it in as he ran. "Dispatch, three eighty Bravo. We have a possible four eighteen, abandoned mineshaft approximately three miles northeast of railroad track marker six-nine-one outside Goodsprings. Request immediate backup and Air-Evac."

Monday Night 08:33 PM

The entire team had changed their listening frequency to Tac 2, waiting for the information they all wanted to hear. All the communication between Danny Ellis, Alan Rogers, and Warrick could be monitored by anyone with a police scanner tuned to the right frequency. There were a lot of eager ears in southern Nevada listening in.

"Let out the slack," Rogers was yelling. "I'm almost there."

Tac 2 squawked static for a few seconds before Rogers was heard again.

"Okay, I'm there! I've got him. Send down the med-pack."

"Do you need a board?" Ellis asked.

"Affirmative," Rogers replied. "Hold on."

There was several more seconds of static and then Rogers' voice could be heard shouting. "MR. GRISSOM! GRISSOM, CAN YOU HEAR ME?! GRISSOM!"

Somewhere in the air, Sara was holding her breath. Be breathing, she demanded.

Nick had his eyes shut tight. The sound of the SAR truck's engine roared as they raced toward Grissom's location. "Come on," he whispered. "Tell us something good."

Sheriff Mobley sat across the table from Jim Brass in the SAR command center. They looked at each other with the same mixture of hope and dread. This could go either way, and neither man was willing to give in to the hope before they knew for sure there was little else to dread.

"I want them to call me with a name as soon as possible," Catherine was nearly shouting into her cellular phone. "We're on our way back but we're at least an hour from there."

Krista took notes as fast as her hand could write. "I'll get on it immediately," she told Catherine.

"Call me back!" Catherine replied.

Mandy nearly ran over Greg as she rounded the corner and raced into the conference room. She held up her hand in a silent gesture of apology. The room was packed with wall to wall people. Except for the buzz and squawk of the police scanner, it was as silent as a church.

"Why don't they tell us?" Larry asked, annoyed.

He was immediately hushed by half a dozen individuals. Greg had to fight the nearly overwhelming desire to pummel him.

"Is he breathing?" Warrick's voice asked.

There was a click and then Rogers said, "I've got a thready pulse. He's breathing."

"Thank God," Warrick was heard to say.

"Amen," Jim Brass whispered.

"Oh thank God," Sara said, not bothering to worry about the tears of relief that rolled down her cheeks.

"YEAH!" Nick shouted, pumping his fist once and grinning at the two SAR officers with him. They both smiled back.

The conference room erupted into a cacophony of cheers. Greg didn't shout. Instead, he leaned back into the wall behind him and dropped his head. "Thank you, God," he said quietly. "I owe you one."

Mandy threw her arms around him and gave him a jubilant hug.

Conrad Eckley turned to look at the police scanner that sat on the shelf beneath his office fax machine as if it had offended him in some way. He hadn't really hoped that Grissom would be harmed - not really. But it sure the hell would have been nice if he didn't have to compete with Grissom anymore. Would it have been so bad for Grissom to be lost forever, alive and well, but lost?

Catherine turned her face to the window so the two SAR officers with her in the truck wouldn't see her tears. The pressure had been building for so long. Catherine hadn't realized how badly she needed to hear the report that Gil was alive. She didn't just want to hear it, she needed to hear it. Her heart was racing and her chest ached. She desperately wanted a moment to just cry, but like so many other things this past twenty-four hours, it would have to wait. Her cellphone rang almost immediately.

She wiped her face with one hand before answering.

"Willows."

Monday Night 08:46 PM

Warrick paced back and forth beside a state police cruiser. He wanted to be down in that pit with his boss. Grissom was unconscious but breathing. Alan Rogers had gone down into the mineshaft to help him and had been down there almost twenty minutes. He had been joined by two other members of the SAR team when they arrived by chopper. Warrick knew there were important safety procedures to follow to make sure that Grissom and his rescuers got out of the shaft alive. He just didn't like the feeling of helplessness the waiting caused.

Sara stood a few feet away watching the work that was going on at the shaft collar's edge. "He's going to be okay," she said firmly, trying to reassure herself as much as Warrick.

He didn't reply. They listened to the radio traffic coming out of the shaft. Grissom had been placed on a backboard and was being prepared for the trip up out of the shaft. They both heard Rogers say Grissom was in shock.

"Hang on, Gris," Warrick whispered.

Just when Warrick didn't think he could stand the wait another second, he heard the shout. He ran toward the group leaving the opening to the mineshaft. Sara was right behind him. He could just make Grissom out. His unconscious body was cocooned in a rescue litter and this was being loaded onto an air ambulance gurney. The medical flight team had surrounded him immediately.

Warrick and Sara stepped up to the unconscious form of their friend as the medics secured the litter to the gurney. Grissom had a cervical collar on, his left arm was in a splint, an IV was already started in his right arm, and they had placed him on oxygen. His face was covered with dried blood and dirt and he had several days' growth of beard. He was pale. The worst of it was how still he lay in the litter.

Sara reached out and brushed a few stray strands of hair away from his forehead. He felt hot.

"Gris?" Warrick called softly.

A flight nurse placed a hand on Warrick's shoulder. "We've got to get him out of here," he told both CSIs.

Warrick nodded and backed away, gently pulling Sara back with a hand on her arm. The medics wheeled the gurney away. Within a few short minutes the doors of the Air-Evac helicopter were closed and locked and the chopper lifted its wounded cargo into the night sky and sped away.

***

Monday Night 11:02 PM

There was something about being in a hospital. Sara hated how it made her feel. Unhappy things, hard things, scary things went on in hospitals all the time. The worst thing, by far, was how helpless she felt. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and pray.

He had felt so hot. Sara closed her eyes. For the first time since this case began, she felt tired. The image of her boss floated in her mind. He had been so still – unconscious, his eyes sunken and his skin so pale. The hushed anticipation in the waiting room bore down on her. What was happening? How was he? Sara needed to know. They all did.

The group that waited with her had increased steadily over the past hour. Nick and Warrick took turns pacing around the waiting area. Jim Brass sat with his head back and his eyes closed. No one made the mistake of assuming he was asleep. Greg Sanders kept silent vigil over the emergency department door for any signs of a doctor. The wild card of the lot was Sheriff Mobley. He wandered into and out of the waiting area, keeping tabs on the goings on in the department by phone, while the occasional uniform arrived to give the Sheriff a message. The Sheriff had made sure the doctors knew how important information about Grissom's condition was to the whole department. The team waited with varying degrees of patience. The only member of the team that seemed to be preoccupied with anything other than waiting was Catherine.

Sara watched from up the hall as Catherine spent the last hour playing phone tag with God only knew who and why. Catherine hadn't been sharing with the team and none of them felt like it was their place to ask. Of all of them, Catherine seemed to be taking the situation the hardest. Perhaps it was the extra responsibility that she carried. Perhaps it was something else. Sara didn't know.

Hanging up from yet another mysterious cellphone conversation, Catherine was headed back to the waiting room when a doctor came through the emergency room door.

"Are you all here for Mr. Grissom?" the doctor asked.

The physician was almost immediately surrounded by the waiting throng. Sara and Warrick, Nick and Jim Brass, Greg Sanders who hugged the wall silently, the Sheriff, and Catherine, all approached the doctor. "What can you tell us, doctor," Sheriff Mobley asked.

"We think he's going to be okay," the doctor began. This news was followed by an immediate collective sigh of relief from the group. "But, his condition is still serious."

"How serious?" Catherine wanted to know. Her expression mirrored everyone's. Serious was too elastic a term for her liking.

The doctor, whose identification badge told them that his name was Dr. Harrington, put his hands in his pockets and looked from face to face before addressing himself to Catherine. "We've treated him for severe shock. He is very dehydrated. We are giving him fluids, but if we rehydrate him too rapidly we could cause more problems than we solve. Additionally, we found two broken ribs and compound fractures of his left wrist. He'll need surgery to reduce the wrist when he's more stable. He has a slight concussion and with the dehydration it may be a while before he regains consciousness."

"How long?" Nick asked.

Dr. Harrington met Nick's eyes. "We don't know. We'll be sending him up to ICU soon. We'll continue to give him fluids and monitor him closely tonight. Maybe by morning." He looked back at Catherine and the Sheriff. "Mr. Grissom is a lucky man. He came very close to dying tonight. I understand he had been missing for some time."

Sheriff Mobley nodded and glanced back over his shoulder at the team gathered behind him. "He had a dedicated team looking for him."

The doctor smiled. "I'm pleased for him," he told them all gently. "You saved his life. Dehydration is nothing to take lightly, especially in the desert."

Sara took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She asked what they all wanted to know. "Can we see him?"

Dr. Harrington thought about that for a moment. The patient wasn't going to know they were there, but this visitation wasn't so much for the patient as it was for the spirits of these people. "I think I can arrange that," he told them. "I'll send a nurse out for you as soon as possible."

"Thank you, doctor," Sara said.

There were multiple thanks all around as the doctor moved away.

Sheriff Mobley turned to Catherine and they stepped away from the rest of the group a few paces. "Do you know what our ETA is?" he asked.

Catherine looked at her watch. "An hour or so," she informed him.

Brian nodded. "I'll have everything ready."

"Thanks," she said softly.

The rest of the team present had no idea what Catherine and the Sheriff were talking about. They eyed the duo with a mixture of interest and confusion. Whatever was happening, they were all sure it involved Grissom in some way. Unless and until either Mobley or Catherine was willing to tell the team anything, they would all just have to wait to find out what was up. For now they would content themselves with the chance to see Grissom alive with their own eyes – something that would go a long way toward soothing their hopeful hearts and weary minds.

Monday Night 11:30 PM

The nurse had informed them that they could see Grissom as a group but that he was still not awake. The small group filed quietly through the door and into the trauma bay where Grissom was awaiting his transfer to ICU. The room was large and filled with emergency equipment and supplies. The lights above the gurney where he lay were bright. Some of the dirt that had covered his face had been cleaned away to allow the medical team to assess the extent of his injuries, but he still had some dried blood and dirt in his hair and beard.

His left arm was in a temporary cast and propped up on a pillow, the elevation was to reduce the swelling the nurse informed them all. A heart monitor blipped steadily. His heart rate was rapid and his blood pressure was still a little on the low side. They were told this would improve with the fluids they were giving him through multiple IV lines. He was still on oxygen which would help give his vital organs the support they needed to recover from shock. An empty Foley catheter bag hung at the bottom of the gurney. Despite all the care he had received, Grissom still appeared very pale.

His clothes and other belongings had been removed and placed in a bag. These Warrick took. They were evidence.

Catherine stepped up close to the gurney. She looked at Gil's face. This was the first time she had seen him since last Friday. The difference in her friend was a shock to her even though she had been prepared by the doctor and the report she had received from Warrick and Sara.

Grissom's visitors stayed only a few minutes. He was alive and in good hands. This was all any of them could hope for at the moment.

***

Monday Night 11:49 PM

After they had all seen Grissom, the Sheriff had headed back to his office and he had taken Brass with him. Calls had been coming into the department and the hospital from various local news reporters and concerned citizens. The Sheriff would have to deal with the media and citizenry. An assault against a member of law enforcement can frighten a vulnerable public. He would have some damage control to do.

Jim Brass still had to finish dealing with Paul Stankowski and complete the necessary paperwork to hold him until they could file the assault charges. Brass would head home for some much needed rest once his initial report was finished and check back at the hospital in the morning. He wouldn't be able to ask Grissom about the assault until he was conscious. It would help if the detective in charge of the case was coherent as well.

Catherine was all that remained of the CSI team at the hospital. It had taken some arguing, but she had managed to send the rest home without pulling rank on them. She had been prepared to do so if need be. Thankfully it hadn't come to that. They all had agreed to stay at the hospital in shifts. After she had provided multiple promises to notify all of them should Gil's condition change, they had left to shower and rest.

Sara would be back at the hospital in a few short hours, Catherine knew. They all probably would. That was okay. She would have all the time she needed to do what she needed to do. A mother was coming to find her lost child.

Tuesday Early Morning 00:41 AM

Sam Braun stood with his arm around Catherine's shoulder. They waited a few feet inside the doors of the Intensive Care Unit. Just outside Grissom's ICU room, a nurse was speaking to two women. One of these was Gil's mother, the other an ASL interpreter.

"Thanks for everything, Sam" Catherine said softly, not taking her eyes off Mrs. Grissom. "I owe you one."

Sam had been amazing. When Catherine had heard that Mrs. Grissom intended to drive to Las Vegas late at night after being scared half to death all day, she had called Sam. Once she had explained to him what her concern was, Sam had done everything. He had arranged for the LVMPD to send an interpreter from Las Vegas aboard Sam's personal jet to pick up Mrs. Grissom in California. He then had her flown to the Executive Terminal at McCarran and had brought them both to the hospital in his limousine. Brian Mobley had approved the plan and provided the ASL interpreter after Sam had insisted that he be allowed to use all the resources at his disposal.

Sam had also insisted on providing Mrs. Grissom with a suite at the Tangiers for the length of her stay in Vegas, and he had made sure that she wouldn't receive a bill for anything. It was a lot and it meant even more to Catherine. As a mother, this was something that she knew had to be done.

"Don't say another word about it, Mugs," Sam gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "It's not often that I get a chance to do something this right."

They fell silent and watched as Gil's mother stepped into her son's room and stood next to his bed. She gently stroked his face as silent tears fell down her cheeks.

Catherine was trembling, her emotion and the fatigue finally catching up with her. Sam steered her out of the ICU and into the corridor outside the unit. He wrapped his arms around her. Safe in Sam's protective embrace, Catherine let herself cry at last.

Tuesday Morning 09:13 AM

Jim Brass and Catherine stepped through the ICU door and immediately encountered three anxious colleagues. Warrick, Nick, and Sara were waiting for them.

Warrick pointed at the door with his chin. "How's he doing?"

"He's still very weak," Catherine told them.

"Did he ID him?" Nick asked.

"We got a firm nod," Jim confirmed, tapping the folder he was carrying.

Catherine nodded to Warrick. "What did you find out at the lab?"

"Oh," Warrick began, "the Red Wings that Stankowski was wearing when he was arrested were a perfect match to the shoeprints from the stairwell. Greg is trying to see if there's anything usable from Gris's clothes. With the evidence we have now, I think we can put him away even without an ID."

"Excuse me," a woman's voice behind them said.

Turning, the team found that they had been joined by two women: one, an older lady in her late sixties, the other a thirty-something Hispanic. It was the younger of the two women that had addressed them. The elder of the two tapped the younger one on the arm and, after getting her attention, began to sign to her.

Everyone on the team exchanged looks except Catherine. She was paying close attention to the older woman.

After a moment, the Hispanic woman, obviously an ASL interpreter, began to speak to them. "Mrs. Grissom would like to thank all of you for the wonderful work you have done to find her son."

"Mrs. Grissom?" Sara asked, confused. "This is Mrs. Grissom? Grissom's mother?"

The interpreter signed Sara's words for Mrs. Grissom. Gil's mother smiled and began to sign again.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself," she said through the interpreter. "It's just that I feel like I know all of you so well. Gil has told me so much about you."

They exchanged surprised looks again.

"There's no need to thank us," Catherine was saying. "We all wanted to find your son. He's not just our boss or a colleague, but a friend."

There was only a brief delay as the interpreter paused from translating and watched Mrs. Grissom's reply. "And that's why I want to thank you. You've all meant so much to Gil that I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate everything you've done for him."

Mrs. Grissom pointed to Sara and nodded to her interpreter before beginning to sign again. "You are Sara. Gil was so pleased that you agreed to move to Las Vegas and work with him here. Thank you for your hard work."

"You're welcome," was all a surprised Sara could think of to say.

Mrs. Grissom turned to Nick. "You must be Nick." She smiled at him. "My son has told me what a fine investigator you've become. He was certain you would do well. I'm very grateful to you for helping to find him."

Nick blushed slightly. "My pleasure, ma'am." His Texas drawl was a bit heavier than usual.

She touched his face briefly and then turned to Warrick.

"And you must be Warrick," she said through the interpreter. "Gil told me about the wonderful time he spent with you on the rollercoaster. He only shares those rides with friends. I'm so thankful to you for all your hard work."

"You're welcome," Warrick said softly.

Turning at last to Jim Brass, Mrs. Grissom touched his arm gently. "You must be Captain Brass. The Sheriff told me you are in charge of the case against Mr. Stankowski," the interpreter was saying. "Gil has had nothing but the highest regard for the work you do. I can't tell you how often he has been thankful for your help. Now I understand why."

Catherine looked at Jim and was certain she saw a hint of moisture in his eyes.

"I'm just glad he's going to be okay, ma'am," Jim told Mrs. Grissom. "We all want to make sure nothing like this happens again."

"Thank you," the interpreter said for Mrs. Grissom.

With that, Gil's mother turned to Catherine. There were tears in her eyes now. She gave Catherine a hug and then stepped back to sign to the interpreter. "You've been so wonderful. I don't know how I'll ever thank you enough."

"You don't have to thank us," Catherine said, not just for herself but for the whole team. "Gil means a lot to all of us."

The rest of the team nodded and voiced their agreement. Grissom would have done no less for any of them. It was the nature of their friendship with a man who was much more than a supervisor or co-worker. Gil was family, pure and simple.

Wednesday Afternoon 12:38 PM

Nick and Warrick spoke infrequently and in hushed tones. It was the unwritten code about visitation in a hospital room, especially when the person being visited was asleep.

They could only visit Grissom two at a time and for fifteen minutes. Those were the rules for visiting someone in ICU. The setting was a bit intimidating, to say the least. The two CSIs didn't want to wake their friend and contented themselves with just being near enough to hear him breathe. The doctor told all of them that he would recover fully. The surgery to set the broken bones in his wrist earlier that morning had been a complete success. They would be moving Grissom out of intensive care that afternoon. He had been extremely lucky that his injuries hadn't been worse. Luck aside, it would be a few weeks before Grissom could be back at work, and that would most likely prove to be the biggest challenge their friend had to face. Nick was saying as much when he heard Grissom's voice.

"Who won?"

Gil's voice was hoarse and his throat hurt with the effort exerted to speak, but he was pleased to know that he could talk at all. Opening his eyes, he found the surprised look he had expected on Warrick's face. Nick wore the same expression.

"Hey, Gris," Nick said tentatively. "You're awake."

Gil smiled weakly at Nick's comment. He must look like hell. People always made statements of the obvious when they didn't want to mention how bad something was. He decided to repeat his question. "Who won?" This time, his voice was a bit stronger.

Warrick and Nick exchanged a confused look. They weren't sure what to say. This was the first time they had been able to talk with Grissom since he had regained consciousness. He had been too weak to talk much before, and they weren't sure he was completely lucid.

"Won?" Warrick asked.

"The Series," Gil said.

This time Nick and Warrick exchanged looks of surprised understanding. Both younger men realized instantly that they had worried for nothing. Of course, Grissom had no way of knowing the outcome of the World Series, and baseball was his favorite sport.

Warrick smiled. "Anaheim in seven," he informed his friend.

Gil gave them a slight smile. "I hope you didn't lose too much, Nicky."

Nick laughed. "Not too much."

"I told him smart money was on Anaheim, but he just wouldn't listen," Warrick chided jokingly.

"That you did," Gil said. This last brought a cough on and with the cough was the pain. His ribs were still very sore. His grimace caused immediate concern from his companions.

The concern in Warrick's voice was edged with fear. "Gris? You okay?"

It took a moment for the pain to subside. All Gil could really manage right away was a weak nod. He was okay. The pain reminded him that he was alive. Not for the first time, he found himself grateful for that.

***

Epiloge

It had been nearly three weeks since Grissom had been found. His mother had gone home to California three days after he had been released from the hospital. He had called the lab every day for the last two weeks and twice a day for the past few days. Catherine didn't think anyone would be happier to see Grissom get back to work than she would. That was until she saw the look of pure childlike delight on his face when he stepped into his office.

"Is this still my office?" Gil asked, looking to make sure his name was still on the door.

"Why, are you afraid you've lost your job?" Catherine joked, moving around from behind his desk and stepping up to face him.

"Not if I still get to be a part of all the fun," Gil told her.

By the smirk on his face, Catherine knew Gil was feeling much better. She had been concerned that he was coming back to work too soon. She should have known that the best medicine for a man like Grissom was to do what he loved to do. For Gil, that meant getting back to the work at the crime lab.

Catherine visually inspected his face. The bruising had almost completely faded, and there was only the barest hint of darkness about his eyes to suggest how close to death he had come. As a matter of fact, the only overt sign of his brush with the hereafter was the as yet pristine white cast on his left forearm. This would have to remain in place for at least another four weeks, making Gil's contribution to CSI almost purely supervisory for the time being. But being a part of what was happening at the crime lab in any capacity was better than sitting at home another day as far as Grissom was concerned.

"Right," Catherine finally said. Her face took on a serious expression and she sighed deeply before continuing. "Are you sure you're ready to be back at work?"

Gil sobered immediately. "Why? What's happening?"

Catherine hesitated. "I don't want to push too much at you too soon," she said gravely.

"I'm fine," Gil insisted, a bit frustrated with the way everyone wanted to protect him. He wasn't a child. He was perfectly capable of telling them what he could and could not handle. "What's going on, Cath?"

She studied him for the briefest of moments before nodding. "I guess you know what you're doing," she told him, "It's your call. Follow me."

Intrigued, Gil followed her down the hall. They passed the evidence room and rounded the corner of the hallway by the DNA lab. Catherine moved toward the closed door of the conference room and placed a hand on the doorknob, pausing.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" she asked one last time.

"Open it," Gil told her.

Catherine shrugged. "You asked for it," she said, pushing the door open.

"SURPRISE!" everyone in the room shouted.

Gil stood rooted to his spot just outside the doorway to the conference room. The entire night shift seemed to be gathered around the conference room table, which was covered with a tablecloth. In the center of the table was an enormous cake with "Welcome Back, Gris" written in icing across it.

"I hope I'm not late," Doc Robbins said from behind Grissom, making him jump slightly. Turning, Gil saw the laughter in the coroner's eyes.

"You're in on this, too?" Gil asked the ME.

"Wouldn't miss it," Robbins told him. "I even brought my own pen."

Now Grissom was confused. "Pen?"

"For the cast signing," Robbins informed him.

Gil looked back into the conference room and realized that there was a large collection of Sharpie markers on one corner of the table. "I never said anyone could sign my cast," he said weakly.

"Like you get a choice," Sara laughed.

"Come on, Gris," Nick told him. "Everyone's gonna think you're a spoilsport."

Stepping into the room, Grissom looked from one smiling face to the next and realized how glad he was to be there. He found himself smiling, too. "We can't have that, can we?"

"Not if 'we' know what's good for 'us,'" Warrick said.

The cast signing and welcome back party continued for the better part of the evening. Grissom would go home in the morning with a cast covered in glyphs, get well wishes, and signatures from just about everyone at the lab. Jim Brass stopped by to welcome Gil back to the lab and was happy to add his name to the cast as well.

"What are you going to do with it when the cast comes off?" Brass asked Gil.

"I think I'll mount it on the wall next to my Big Mouth Billy Bass," Gil told his friend.

"Well," Jim intoned, "it's good to see you haven't been changed by everything that's happened."

Gil raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Your taste in office décor hasn't improved at all." Jim said flatly.

Fini

***