Horatio and Speedle investigate the slaying of a hooker who is found dead under a bed in a plush beachside cottage, her naked body having been stabbed 23 times. But the crime scene yields few traces of blood because the killer bathed the victim in the cottage's tub with cardamom soap. Across town at an urban gas station, Calleigh and Delko attempt to uncover why a German tourist was gunned down in an apparent carjacking. They learn that a masked assailant approached a vacationing couple's rental car, shot and killed the husband, but left the wife unharmed and then fled the scene.

The investigation into a drug heist offers brief glimpses into the private lives of the CSIs, whose nerves are on edge when they become suspects in the crime they're trying to solve. A police convoy headed across town includes an unmarked truck filled with confiscated drugs being taken to an incinerator to be destroyed. The trip ends abruptly when thieves hijack the vehicle, kill its driver and shoot Speedle, who was riding shotgun. It's hard for Horatio when the media draw comparisons to a similar case several years ago in which his brother, an undercover cop, was killed. But it's worse for his team when Internal Affairs decides that one of them tipped off the robbers about the delivery.

When a teen tennis phenom is abducted from her bedroom, the investigation leads to the waterways when a girl's arm is recovered in the belly of a alligator. Delko calls for an expert - his old college buddy and now alligator expert Jeff Corwin to assist.

A gas man is engulfed in invisible flames and dies during a qualifying race at the Grand Prix Americas.

A security guard is found dead after shots ring out at a rap star's concert and the CSIs must investigate. Rap star 10-Large won't talk to the police regarding the murder or why someone would try to kill him. But when evidence suggests that perhaps 10-Large's bodyguard was the intended target, the CSIs must look into the dangerous world of personal security. Meanwhile, Alexx gets the shock of her life when a supposed cadaver from a recent car accident wakes up in her morgue, suffering only from hypothermia.