My Bell Chapter 12
Title: My Belle
Characters: Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Tony DiNozzo, and the whole gang; along with more than a few OCs.
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Rating: PG-13/probably higher as I go.
Warning: None for the moment.
Spoilers: None really, just a few allusions to the past. o_0;
A/N: Oh dear, life what can I say. Well it's here now, yay?? =3 Again, I don't have a beta, but if you point out my mistakes I will definitely fix them. Let me know what you think~.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
It had been a month and a half since The Virus, thankfully Tony had been right and it'd cleared Michelle’s system within days. Much to Pandora's amusement when she'd finally gotten all 12 messages Gibbs had left on her phone, Gibbs wasn't surprised she'd laughed. He'd have laughed at himself, but he'd half dead from staying up all night and not in the mood for laughing at all.
The fact that Pandora had no reaction to Tony's sudden childcare skills had only made Gibbs head hurt worse. In the end he'd let it rest, and then he'd spent countless hours attempting to convince himself to not look into it; he wanted Tony to want to tell him, which was obviously not going to happen anytime soon. So Gibbs laid in wait plying Tony with more and more paperwork, he was well aware that if the younger man was allowed too much time to get really bored all hell would break lose in the office.
But finally the day come when Tony was allowed to go back on active duty; which hadn't been a good day for any of them. Their case had come in early, and had lead them to of all places a swamp so it'd been doubly nice to have Tony back with all his bouncing energy and quick quips as he shot photos of the scene.
The body was half submerged and covered in mud, the only reason the LEOs had called NCIS in at all was the very obvious military ID that had been stuffed down his shirt. Ducky made a face and held up a hand before Gibbs could even bother, “He’s been dead at most 6 hours, I wont be able to say any closer than that until I get him back to the morgue. If I had to take a guess at the cause of death it’d be this lovely stab wound.”
McGee frowned, “Then why did he have a gun holster? I mean…”
Tony smirked, “Rule 8 probie, never take anything for granted.”
McGee grumbled and bagged the holster; Gibbs shook his head at the two, some things never changed. He watched silently as Ducky and Palmer loaded the body, preparing to take him back to autopsy. Something was niggling Gibbs about the case, and as he caught a glance at Tony unawares and knew his second felt it to.
~~``~~
“His name was Daniel Iseman. He’s just over 23 years old, and just docked about a week ago; the only member of his family that’s been in contact in the past 4 years is his younger sister Elisa who is currently studying law at the Golden Gate University in San Fransico. He was apparently estranged from his parents who prefered Harvard to the Navy, and haven’t talked to them since his enlistment.” As Gibbs listened to McGee prattle on about what he’d dug up about their victum he studied the man’s military file. It was almost too clean, and that bothered him.
Gibbs looked up as Tony’s voice rang out, “Well we impounded his car and we’ve gone over it 5 times. There aren’t any prints except his, not on the notebook, backpack or anything else we found. And whatever the hell shorthand he was using, it’s taking Abby forever to crack it.”
“We’re lucky she likes puzzles.” Ziva’s tired drawl made McGee sigh and nodd, “And it doesn’t help that this young man’s handwriting was like pigeon scratch.”
None of them felt like correcting her, Gibbs shook his head “When is the sister due in?”
“She’s flying in tomorrow afternoon after a test that she couldn’t miss; she didn’t sound too good on the phone though, I don’t think she’ll be much help.” Tony’s sigh was almost inaudible, but Gibbs shot him a look anyway.
Gibbs shook his head but filed the information away to add to the list of things to mull over, “Any suspicious calls on his phone bill?”
McGee shook his head, “Not really, He didn’t call many people at all, I mean he was on board for over 9 months, and he’d only been home a week. All calls made were to his sister, a few friends from his company, and various Take-out joints. Well there were two or three from a burn phone, but that could just be another friend.”
Tony shook his head, “We’re missing something boss, we’re missing something big. Why would he have an apartment off base anyway? He was dew for another deployment in less than a month, why would he keep a fancy apartment just for it to sit empty; and how did he pay for it. It’s in an up-scale area, and his pay wasn’t that good. It makes no sense.”
Ziva frowned, “Gibbs-“
She was cut off by the shrill sound of Gibbs’ phone which they all turned to stare at. It never went off, unless they had a case. Gibbs checked the caller ID and frowned, it wasn’t someone he knew; but he answered it anyway. The hesitant feminine voice on the other end made him freeze, “I-is Antony DiNozzo there sir?”
Gibbs felt his eyebrows rise as he looked at Tony, “Who is this?”
There was a slight pause then, “You won’t know me and he won’t have mentioned me and I’m really sorry if I’m interrupting something but can I talk to him if he is there, it’s an emergency.” Her voice was hurried and cracked it on emergency and Gibbs heard her clear her throat in an obvious attempt at stifling a sob.
Tony confusion was almost palpable as Gibbs tossed him the phone, but Gibbs attempted to ignore him as he pointed at Ziva, “Continue.”
She blinked but nodded, “Well sir, I’ve taken a look at these photocopies of the journal and they bear a striking resemblance to some of the log books my combat trainer kept on his student so I was wondering…”
She was cut off again when Tony clicked the phone shut and stood abruptly, “I have to go.”
Gibbs caught the phone that came flying his way with ease, “Ziva, take that idea to Abby and see if it doesn’t pan out. McGee, check over the laptop again; there’s something there I want to know everything that man did on there, websites, emails, messenger-dodads, the works.” Before either of his agents could respond he was gone, following Tony.
He barely caught the younger man at the elevator, and he practicly heard the other tense up as he slid in at the last moment. They stood in silence for a moment, “So, do you give all your girlfriends my number?”
Tony winced, “No. No I don’t.”
Gibbs gazed at Tony silently for a moment, “Where are you going?”
Tony shrugged, “At the moment, I don’t know. I have to call her back from my phone, I didn’t realize I’d left it in the car after coming back from the vic’s apartment.”
Gibbs nodded, “When will you be back?”
Tony winced, “At this point, I don’t know.”
Gibbs bite his tongue and glared at his second for a moment, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Tony’s face twisted in a grimace, “Not right this second, the story’s too long and I don’t have the time.”
As the elevator doors opened Gibbs grabbed his elbow, “Tell me I won’t see your car explode or something this time.”
Tony sent him a halfhearted smile, “Naw, not this time Boss.” And with that he was gone. Gibbs cursed as he punched the button for the labs, he needed to talk .
~~``~~
“It’s official Bossman, your vic was keeping a fight log.” Abby’s happy chirp did nothing but set him on edge, but he bit down the terse response and tried to be patient. “Once Ziva pointed it out it was all so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out earlier. Though he still used codenames so I can’t tell you who he went to fight this morning; but I can tell you he won more than he lost, he’d fought the person before, and he’d beaten this guy before.”
Gibbs nodded slowly, attempting to drag his brain back to the present “Has he listed a fight with this person in the past 9 months?”
Abby sighed, “Nope, sorry Gibbs man. He did have fights on board though, 9 to be exact. To be exact he fought with 3 different guys; Misters Shiny, Rhino, and Frog.”
McGee frowned, “Frog? Rhino? Shiny?”
Abby shrugged, “I didn’t come up with them. I can tell you that the only person he lost to was Shiny, and they only fought once.”
Gibbs nodded slightly, “They shouldn’t be too difficult, who was he listed to fight this morning Abbs?”
She bit her lip, “All he put was X.”
Gibbs didn’t respond as he turned to leave, McGee sighed “That isn’t obscure at all.”
“Sooooo Timmy,” McGee blinked before turning to look at her, and gulping at her smile, “Where’s Tony?”
~~``~~
Ziva was uncomfortable; she preferred to leave dealing with the bereaved loved ones to Tony, or McGee, or anyone but her really. She understood how they felt, and she even knew how she was supposed to act in order to reassure them; all of these things seemed to melt away every time she actually was forced to sit in front of a member of a victim’s family. It also didn’t help that she’d barely caught an hour of sleep the night before; so sitting in front of a sobbing Elisa Iseman was the last thing she wanted to be doing.
She tried to catch a glimpse of her watch without being obvious and wished Tony hadn’t disappeared the day before.
~~``~~
Gibbs wasn’t pleased. Tony was officially missing, he hadn’t made contact in over 48 hours and it didn’t matter how many times McGee and Vance told him that his second had only taken a few days off Gibbs refused to look at it any other way. The younger man wasn’t at his apartment, Abby couldn’t get a trace on his cell phone, and Pandora was refusing to tell him all he knew. All this was on top of the case going absolutely no where. Gibbs slammed his coffee down before standing, it definitely wasn’t his day.
It only seemed to get worse when he came face to face with Fornell outside the elevator, Gibbs bit back a growl. But the other man just gave him a tired smile, “I’m here in peace Gibbs, I just wanted to Thank you.”
Gibbs felt his eyes narrow, “What the fuck for?”
Fornell frowned, “You let DiNozzo out didn’t you? I was a bit surprised, but I guess under the circumstances even you wouldn’t mind.”
Gibbs felt his eyes narrow even further as he poked Fornell in the chest, “What circumstances.”
“You don’t know? I knew DiNozzo lived dangerously but…” The other man trailed off and shook his head, “Look, this isn’t my business; I just came to say thanks, so thanks.”
Gibbs grabbed Fornell’s arm before he could escape to the elevator, “You are going to tell me everything you know about where Tony is. Right. Now.”
Chapter 13