"Good evening team, this is what we've got for tonight," said Catherine Willows breezing into the break room to hand out assignments to the rest of the graveyard shift team.

"Where's Grissom? It's not his night off," asked Sara Sidle in a slightly perturbed voice.

"Warrick, Nick and Sara, you guys get what looks to be a murder-cum-kidnapping in the suburbs. Here you go," said Catherine handing out the folder.

Nick Stokes reached for the file even though Sara was the nearest person to Catherine. It didn't look like she was going to take it from the senior CSI.

Sara started to look very annoyed that her question had not been answered. She wanted to protest about Catherine handing out the assignments again. It wasn't her job. She was not the supervisor, Grissom was.

Warrick Brown stood a little to the side and watched the scene quietly but with a wary look on his face. He really hoped they could get to their jobs before this turned ugly.

Sara looked ready to argue with Catherine. But before she could even start, Grissom came in.

"Before you go, I need to introduce you to someone," said Gil Grissom without any preamble.

The other CSIs saw a pretty young woman with black hair and probably of mixed parentage trailing behind Grissom. Catherine gave her a cheery smile which she tried to return with a slightly shaky smile of her own.

"This is Drina Lewis. She has been transferred here from Chicago because as you all know, the county found out that it could afford another CSI. She will be following Cath and I tonight but she'll probably follow one of you tomorrow so I need you all to get acquainted, okay?" said Grissom in a distracted manner, already half buried in the file he was reading about his case for the night.

Catherine rolled her eyes at her supervisor's abruptness. She had already met Drina so she didn't introduce herself again.

Instead Nick and Warrick came up to shake hands and say welcome. Sara followed a bit later after casting a few glances at Grissom, which he never noticed.

In fact Grissom was already so involved in the night's assignment, he simply left the room after a few minutes. He didn't bother to call Catherine, he knew she'd catch up like she always did. She was better at handling new arrivals than him anyway.

He didn't notice Catherine sighing fondly as he left. She knew how involved he could get. She also knew it was up to her to help settle Drina in. Drina wasn't as inexperienced as Holly Gribbs had been but it was a totally new lab for her. It would take some adjusting.

"You already knew about her?" spoke Sara, when she noticed Catherine simply watching and not introducing herself to the newcomer. Her voice interrupted Catherine's thoughts.

"I met Catherine in Mr. Grissom's office earlier," stated Drina.

Sara looked at Catherine with increasingly hostile eyes. Catherine groaned internally. Not again, Sara needed to adjust her attitude or she was really going to get it one day. She had just come into the office earlier because she was bored, for crying out loud! Also she was a senior CSI anyway.

"Sara, let's get going," broke in Warrick.

Nick took the cue and left after saying goodbye to Drina. The new CSI had a slightly puzzled look on her face. Even she could feel the tension between the two women and she wondered why.

Sara looked like she wanted to continue the discussion, but Warrick stared her down. He had wisely waited for her to precede him out of the room. She gave him a defiant look, then left. Warrick let out a breath and followed her.

"See ya," said Catherine, silently thanking him with her blue eyes.

Warrick nodded slightly and said "Catch ya later, Cath, Drina," as he left the room.

"So ready to start work here?" asked Catherine with a smile, turning her attention to the younger woman.

"Yup, lead on," grinned back Drina. She really liked Catherine, thankfully. She was still quite in awe and a tiny bit afraid of her new supervisor, Grissom. She was glad Catherine was around and she appeared to be the second-in-command.

Drina was curious about the scene she had just witnessed though. Apparently there was some kind of tension between the two female members of her new team. She wondered how the statement that she made saying that she had already met Catherine could increase Sara's hostility towards Catherine. It was such an insignificant event. She certainly hadn't meant to, but she sensed that her statement had caused that reaction in Sara.

It would be interesting to find out what that was all about, thought Drina idly. Office politics probably. Every lab would probably have its own internal affairs, so to speak. Human relationships were immensely interesting. She carefully listened to Catherine telling her about things around here as they walked out towards the parking lot.

Drina knew enough not to ask directly about what had happened between Catherine and Sara. But she guessed as she started spending more time with these people, she'd figure it out eventually. From experience, she knew that she'd just have to be patient.

Arriving at their crime scene, Grissom, Catherine and Drina climbed down from the vehicle. Drina was told to take pictures of the scene. She sucked in a breath at the carnage that lay before her.

It was a very bloodied kitchen. Blood was spattered on nearly every available surface. There was broken bits of glass and a complete mess of things all over the floor. There had definitely been some struggling in the once pristine kitchen.

Drina quickly took her pictures. She was pondering the lack of a body in the kitchen. It did not look like they had found any bodies. There looked like enough blood for at least two bodies to show up. But there was none.

She then noticed a perfect white square-shaped space in the middle of a bloody wall. She took a picture, then alerted the rest.

"Hey, it looks like someone removed a painting or something from the wall. That part is way too clean," said Drina.

"Right, so whoever did this didn't bother to clean up at all but came to remove a picture? Why?" asked Catherine.

There were no answers yet.

The case turned out to be much more complicating than had seemed at first. The occupants of the house were all located, safe and sound. They had been out for an overnight trip to a lake nearby. They were very surprised to find the police all over their house when they returned.

"So someone came in to do what? Have a fight in the kitchen? The rest of the house wasn't even rifled through, why break into a kitchen?" asked Drina with a perplexed look.

"That is what we need to find out," said Grissom.

They had a very long night processing all the evidence. Still there was no sign of any bodies. What had happened?

"Hey, so how's you first case going?" asked Nick with a smile as he saw Drina in the locker room.

"It's not really my first case. Just my first one here," she reminded him.

"Ooops, sorry, my mistake," said Nick with another charming smile.

Drina couldn't help smiling back, "Not so good, there is no body at all just lots and lots of blood all over the place. Doesn't make much sense," she admitted.

"Hmm, tough one. Well, good luck. Sounds very interesting though," said Nick as she went out.

"It is," she replied, leaving with a wave.

Drina was busy on her second straight shift, there was just so much evidence to go through, even without a body. She was running some tests and while waiting for the results she went out to get a drink.

She passed by a lab in which Catherine and Grissom were conducting their own experiments. She simply observed them on her way. It was a habit she had taken up since she had first discovered Sherlock Holmes. She habitually observed the people around her as practice to constantly sharpen her observation skills.

Without breaking stride, she could see that Catherine was seated on a stool observing something intently. Grissom was looking over one of her shoulders with one hand grasping the table on his side and the other arm more or less around Catherine, stabilizing himself by gripping the other side of the table with his other hand. He was practically hugging his colleague as they studied the evidence. Their faces were quite close to each other and they appeared to be conferring.

Drina thought that they must have a very comfortable relationship to be able to work like that. They were both very much in each other's personal space. As a matter of fact, they seemed to do so quite frequently. They stood quite close to each other even at the crime scene, with Grissom nearly always looking over Catherine's shoulder.

Actually to some women, it could be considered sexual harassment. But she knew for sure Catherine didn't see it that way. She probably initiated the close contact as much as Grissom did.

Drina made her way back to her own lab. Before she turned her mind completely onto the case at hand, she had one last thought. `They look like a comfortably married couple.' Then she effectively switched her mind from such idle thoughts to the work she needed to do.

"Still on that bloody kitchen case?" asked Warrick, as he saw Drina a few nights later. They were both entering the building and he opened the door. Ever the gentleman, he allowed Drina to go in first.

"Oh yeah, but we are nearly done. Just need to find one more person whose blood was also on the wall. This person seems to have done a really good disappearing act," said Drina.

They both saw Sara in the locker room as they went to put away some stuff.

"Hi Sara," greeted Drina with a smile. Warrick greeted her as well.

Sara smiled and said hello in reply. They all made small talk as they closed their lockers and walked towards the break room together.

Drina felt more at ease with her new team now. Sara seemed like a generally nice person aside from her show of hostility on the first night she had arrived here. But after that, all that Drina had seen of her indicated that Sara had no other problems with the rest of the team. There had been no other scenes of the like so far.

They rounded the corner to the break room. Drina had been listening to Warrick but was in a position to look at his face and Sara's. She suddenly saw a fleeting look of annoyance cross Sara's face, as she saw something.

Drina immediately turned her eyes in the direction Sara was looking. They were looking through the glass window, into the break room. Grissom was sitting down with a cup of coffee, a pencil in his hand and an open book on the table. Catherine sat opposite him, also with a cup of coffee but it looked like she was reading a magazine.

This was getting rather curious. Drina wondered about the history of these people. `I must be missing something here,' she thought. How could such a common, boring scene annoy Sara? And more importantly why?

But they had reached the break room. Drina entered with a "Hello, are we early tonight?"

She noticed that both Catherine and Grissom looked up from whatever they were doing simultaneously. `They are really in tune with each other,' was her subsequent thought.

Catherine smiled and looked at her watch "Nope, on time more or less, where's Nick?" she asked.

Grissom had begun to arrange the folders to be given out.

It struck Drina that these two people constantly worked in tandem with each other. While Catherine greeted them, Grissom got ready to hand out the assignments. That way they did not waste much time and could quickly get to the job at hand by each handling what they did best. It was quite flawless symmetry.

"I wonder how long they've worked together," said Drina to herself.

She was not allowed to wonder long. Duty called. She would have to save those thoughts for another time.

"Gil, get that off me!" said Catherine loudly, with a grimace at the spider that had landed on her jacket.

Grissom calmly reached over and plucked off said spider. Drina watched in amusement. A thought occurred to her and she voiced it out.

"How come you're so calm about it though?" she asked.

Catherine and Grissom turned their eyes on her in askance.

"I mean, I can see that you really hate that thing but you don't try to shake it off or anything. You can actually handle it quite calmly," clarified Drina.

Warrick heard her question from upstairs, where he was working. He listened closely for the answer. To him it was a pretty good question. He figured that he knew why, but it would be nice to hear the answer from Catherine herself.

Catherine huffed, "I have worked with Mr. Bug-Man here for a long time, kiddo. You're right, I still hate them, but I have had to learn to at least tolerate them. It was either that or quit." The last part was directed teasingly at Grissom himself.

Grissom shrugged. "They can't hurt you," he said and turned back to poking around in the musty old basement.