NCIS: Live For Ten (7/9)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Live For Ten
Chapter Thirteen
"I see nothing that isn't good."
Dr. Marquardt delivered the news with the brightest smile Gibbs had seen on her face since he'd met her. "Your chest x-rays look great, Tony. Your lungs are clear, all of the fluid has moved away from your heart, and your blood pressure is holding steady at 103/62. I wouldn't mind that being a bit higher, but I'm not going to complain. Your blood volume is just over 90%, so we're going to discontinue all of the fluids and allow your body to finish replenishing that on its own. Now, before that shot I just gave you kicks in, how's your pain?"
Tony opened his mouth to answer her, but Gibbs caught his eye and shook his head.
"Tell her the truth, DiNozzo."
Tony sighed. "My shoulder hurts a little bit."
"Dislocated shoulders will do that." She palpitated the injury carefully. "How badly does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten?"
"Um … like a two." Tony grimaced as Dr. Marquardt pressed on a particularly sensitive spot. "Maybe a four, or …" She pushed again, right above the joint, and Tony went white. "Nine!"
Dr. Marquardt pulled her hands away, and Tony sank back into his pillow.
"Ow." He lifted his right hand and gently rubbed his shoulder. "What'd ya do that for?"
Gibbs smirked. "Got the truth out of you, didn't she?"
"Rude," Tony muttered.
Dr. Marquardt smiled again. "I'm going to order an MRI, just to be safe. I don't think there's any serious ligament or bone damage, but now that the swelling's gone down some, I want to get a clearer look at it. Either way, you're keeping that brace on for at least a week, and you'll be in a sling for a few weeks after that. If you try to use that arm for anything other than physical therapy before I release you, you're going to aggravate it, and you'll run the risk of messing it up permanently. Understood?"
"Got it. Don't use the shoulder."
Dr. Marquardt tilted her head and looked slightly confused. "Believe me, you're not going to want to. If you think it hurts now … anyway, it shouldn’t be that hard to remember."
Tony's attention was wandering rapidly. He was moving the fingers on his right hand up and down and staring at them in near-fascination. Dr. Marquardt looked even more confused than before, and Gibbs swallowed the urge to smile.
Dr. Marquardt cleared her throat. "So, for now, if no one's pushing on it, the morphine keeps the pain under control?"
"Morphine's great!" The grin on Tony's face was almost more than Gibbs could handle. He didn't laugh, but he did allow himself a small smile. "Don't know why I say I don't want it. Because I do. Because it's awesome."
Gibbs coughed.
The confusion in Dr. Marquardt's eyes had turned to alarm, and she glanced across the bed. "Agent Gibbs?"
"Painkillers." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead before he looked back at her. "This is why he doesn't like painkillers. They make him … loopy."
"He's been on a morphine drip all day. He hasn't been like this, has he?"
Gibbs shook his head.
"Needles are worse." Tony's voice was still dreamy-sounding, but it was obvious that he was trying to follow their conversation. "Don't like needles." Gibbs and Dr. Marquardt turned to face him. He lifted his hand and shook his finger at them. "Needles are worse."
Dr. Marquardt nodded in understanding. "Injections hit you harder than a drip does. That makes sense."
"Yeah. I do that sometimes."
Gibbs cleared his throat to pull Dr. Marquardt's attention back to him. "So, what are we looking at, Doc?"
She nodded quickly and got back on topic. "I'll make the final decision after I see his MRI, but unless something really unexpected comes up between now and morning, I'm going to be releasing him after breakfast."
Gibbs closed his eyes and shook his head. Dr. Marquardt picked up on his thoughts immediately.
"Agent Gibbs, I know that you don't …"
"Release me where?"
"Home." She looked down at Tony and smiled.
The goofy grin vanished. "No," he whispered. "I can't. Can't go home." He grabbed Gibbs' arm and pulled himself up from the bed. "Boss, I can't …"
"Calm down before you hurt yourself, DiNozzo."
"Why can't he go home?"
Gibbs looked across the bed at Dr. Marquardt. "The guy who did this … he took off with DiNozzo's ID and keys."
"Oh. I didn't realize …"
"Took my gun, too," Tony put in. "I can't even shoot him."
Gibbs opened his mouth to tell Tony that he wasn't going to be shooting anyone, but Tony kept talking.
"I can go to your place, Boss. That's always … oh. Wait. I can't go there, either, can I?"
Gibbs shook his head again. "Fornell hasn't released the crime scene yet, so no. We can't go there."
"So where am I gonna …?"
"We're both staying at Ducky's."
Tony's eyes lit up again. "Oh, Ducky's. That'll be awesome." The crooked, dopey grin was back. "I love being an Italian gigolo furniture mover."
Dr. Marquardt looked to Gibbs for an explanation, but he only shrugged. "Long story."
She turned back to Tony. "Okay. Now that it's all settled where you're going to be staying after you're released, I'm going to go order that MRI. I'll check on you a few more times overnight, but you should try to get some sleep. You're going to need it."
"Sure," Tony murmured as he settled back into his pillow. "Go to sleep. So a nurse can wake me up. To tell me to go to sleep. So another nurse can wake me up."
Dr. Marquardt grinned as she walked around the bed and toward the door.
"I'll be right back," Gibbs said. "You good?"
"Yep." Tony yawned and closed his eyes. "I'm sleeping."
Gibbs turned and followed Dr. Marquardt across the room. He caught up to her just as she opened the door, and he reached out to hold it open for her. They stepped into the hallway, and she turned to face him as the door closed behind them.
"I know what you're going to say, Agent Gibbs. And the answer is no."
Rivers was standing off to the side, doing his best to pretend that he wasn't eavesdropping on the conversation. Gibbs pointed at him and then at the hallway around the corner. Rivers dropped his head and shoulders and walked away.
"I don't think you understand, Doc."
"No, I do understand. I do. Dr. Simms told me about the excitement this afternoon. I know what happened, and I know how concerned you are about Tony's safety. I also know you're about to ask me to keep him here until you catch the man who tried to kill him."
"It's the safest place," Gibbs said. "We can keep it locked down, and we can …"
"That's part of the problem, Agent Gibbs," Dr. Marquardt interrupted. "You can't keep it locked down. This is a hospital, not a prison or a safe house. Do you know how long it took me to get upstairs tonight? How many times I got stopped? How many people refused to let me go where I needed to be until they saw my identification?"
Gibbs nodded, both in answer and in satisfaction that the agents he'd assigned to the security detail were doing their jobs right.
"What if I'd been responding to an emergency?"
He hadn't thought of it quite like that.
"What if someone was having a heart attack? What if one of my patients coded? What if it was Tony, and I was downstairs, and I couldn't get to him because one of your guards, following your orders, refused to let me come up?"
Gibbs sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temple.
"I wish I could help you. I really do. There's nothing I care about more than the health and safety of my patients, and believe me, the last thing I want is Tony ending up in my OR again because this guy comes back. But there are 400 patients in this hospital, and I have to think about their health and safety, too. Even ignoring the fact that there was a murderer walking my halls this afternoon, Tony's presence here is a risk."
Gibbs' eyes shot open, and Dr. Marquardt raised her hand.
"If he was still in real medical danger, I'd keep him. But he's not. And I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs, but I can't justify it. Those guards might be protecting him, but they're not doing much for the other patients and their loved ones. And if, God forbid, something were to happen here, what should I say to the families of the innocent people who got caught in the crossfire?"
"His health might not be in danger out there," Gibbs forced out through clenched teeth. "But his life sure as hell is. Does that not matter?"
"I have 400 other people to worry about, so I'm going to trust you to take care of him." Dr. Marquardt was keeping her voice low and steady, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that the conversation was upsetting her. "If something goes wrong and he gets hurt again, or if he starts having trouble breathing or having chest pains, you bring him back to me. But unless and until that happens, he's out of here in the morning."
"Doc, listen to me …"
"No." She shook her head and stepped away. "Because this decision is hard enough, and I'm not going to let you make it any harder. I can't help you. I'm sorry."
"Doc, please."
She changed direction quickly and walked back toward him. "You keep saying that it's your job to protect him, right? So do it." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Do your job, Agent Gibbs, and I won't have to do mine."
“So what are you telling me here, Charlie?" Leon Vance pulled his car into the parking lot at George Washington University hospital. "Can you help me out or not?"
"I can't give you DelMar, Leon."
Vance turned the car off and leaned back in his seat. "You're the director of the FBI," he said into the phone. "I doubt there's anyone you can't give me."
"Look, I get what you're saying. And if this had happened to one of my people, I'd be just as pissed as you are. But I can't give you an innocent man, and Stefano DelMar is innocent."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"Because he's been in a safe house since Saturday morning. That's how."
"A safe house? Like the one Jack Kale was supposed to be in the day my people found him in Michael Strauss' apartment?"
A long-suffering sigh sounded in Leon's ear. "Okay, yes. That's a fair point. But he's in Virginia, Leon. And he hasn't been alone for more than fifteen minutes in the past four days. There's no way he could have even gotten out of the house without it being noticed, let alone get all the way back to D.C., spend a couple of hours kidnapping and torturing your man, kill Marco Santori, and hang around the hospital today."
Leon pinched the bridge of his nose. Ducky had, for all intents and purposes, eliminated DelMar as a suspect in the attack on NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, but there was still the matter of the ten-year-old, unprosecuted attempted murder of Baltimore detective Tony DiNozzo. Nothing could change the fact that he had to face Gibbs, and nothing could change the fact that he had to tell him that someone in his agency - under his command, under his roof - wanted DiNozzo dead. But he'd have much preferred to preface that conversation with, 'We have Stefano DelMar.'
"So why is the newly-crowned king of D.C. organized crime in your safe house?"
"Because someone's started offing Azari's higher-ups, and he got scared. He came to us Friday afternoon, right after the second body was found. He knows that the media are attributing the murders to him, and he's fine with that. He just doesn't want to be the next dead mafia guy on the news."
Leon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "You know he's tried to kill DiNozzo before, right?"
"No." He opened his eyes and prepared to launch into the story McGee had told him, but he never got the chance. "I know that we fed DiNozzo and the Baltimore PD a story about Stefano trying to kill him, and I know that they bought it. But he didn't do it."
"What?"
"The guy who tried to bash DiNozzo's brains in in Baltimore was a kid named Benjamin Rossi. Stefano knew DiNozzo as a half-starved nineteen-year-old homeless kid named Tony Pagano. He found him in an alley, and he always felt responsible for him. Hell, even after he found out he was a cop, he still looked out for him. He's the one who stopped Rossi, and he called the cops and the ambulance. Stefano didn't try to kill DiNozzo that night; he saved his life."
Leon shook his head. "Then why does DiNozzo think …?"
"Because he doesn't remember what happened, and that's what we told him. Rossi's fingerprints and DiNozzo's blood were all over that pipe. Stefano never touched it."
"So where is this Benjamin Rossi?"
"He went down with Macaluso. He's in prison, and he's never getting out. You can take my word for that. As far as Stefano goes, Leon … the night Rossi tried to kill DiNozzo, after the raid was over and everyone had been arrested, Stefano asked for me. I was working organized crime back then, and he knew me. He was seventeen years old, he'd witnessed a murder and an attempted murder in less than twelve hours, and he was scared. He was the one who brought DiNozzo to Macaluso in the first place, so he was in a really dangerous position. He needed a cover story that would sound good to Macaluso, and we needed information that he had, so we worked a deal. He's been a CI for ten years."
Vance was dumbfounded. Everything they thought they knew about DelMar was a lie cooked up by the FBI to protect one of their assets?
"Why hasn't Fornell seen fit to tell us any of this?"
"Because he doesn't know."
Vance narrowed his eyes in anger, though he knew the man he was talking to couldn't see it. "You had an informant inside an organization that one of your men has been investigating for twenty-five years, and you didn't think you should share that fact with him?"
"Stefano's role was never to feed us information on Azari. It was to feed us information on the other organizations that Azari had relationships with. Fornell wasn't part of the larger investigation. There was no reason for him to be told."
Vance shook his head in disbelief, but he didn't say a word.
"I want to help you find this guy, Leon. I do. If there's any way that I can help, I will, and you should know that. You've already got Fornell and his team, and I've got my best artist working with your witness. DiNozzo may be a cocky, annoying son of a bitch, but he's a damn good agent, and he didn't deserve this. We take care of our own, and this is no different. If you think of anything else I can do, just ask, and you've got it. Okay?"
"What do I tell Gibbs about DelMar? Because he's liked him for this from the very beginning."
"Yeah, I know, and I understand why. To tell you the truth, Leon, based on what you and Fornell have both told me, it sounds like someone knew that torturing DiNozzo that way would put Stefano in the frame. The whole damn thing smells like a set up, but I don't blame Gibbs for a second for falling for it. If I didn't know where Stefano has been for the past four days, I'd probably have believed it, too."
"So what do I tell him?"
"Tell him the truth," Charlie answered simply. "Read him in. Read them all in, even Fornell. I know how Gibbs gets when he's protecting his people, and I don't want them hunting Stefano down for something someone else did ten years ago. That wouldn't end well for anyone."
"Understood, Director Vance. Thank you. And good luck with Gibbs."
Fornell pressed the button that ended the call a bit more forcefully than he needed to, but nowhere near as forcefully as he wanted to. He looked up at Ziva, Tim, Abby and Ducky and shrugged.
"If it's any consolation, the FBI's intra-agency cooperation is no better than it's interagency cooperation is."
Tim turned away from Gibbs' desk, breaking the tight circle they'd formed around it when Director Vance's call came in, and walked over to his own. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and all of the pictures and information they'd gathered on Stefano DelMar disappeared from the plasma, leaving only a blank screen. The silence in the empty and mostly-darkened squad room was deafening.
"And back to nothing we go." Tim flopped in his chair tiredly and ran his hands through his hair.
"Not nothing, Timmy," Abby said. "It can't be nothing. You have to have something."
He rubbed his eyes quickly and leaned forward on his elbows. "Why? Have you got anything? Other than Tony's blood all over Gibbs' basement? Or the most common mold in existence on a piece of rope that could have been bought at any hardware store on the Eastern Seaboard? Or a picture of the back of some tall guy's head?"
"That's not fair."
"What about you, Ziva?" Tim stood up and stalked back toward the group. "Those fantastic, mysterious 'contacts' of yours hear anything? Find anything? Know anything?"
Ziva shook her head slowly. "No."
"Ducky? Can you tell us anything else about this guy? Other than the fact that he's not Stefano DelMar and he really hates Gibbs and Tony? Anything?"
Ducky pressed his lips together and straightened his back. "As I told you, he is a member of law enforcement, and he has direct knowledge of the Brewer investigation."
"Oh, that's right. So he might be an NCIS agent, or another employee, or he might be a D.C. Metro cop, or an FBI agent, or a reporter, or a friend of Brewer's or Kale's or ... in other words, we have a suspect pool of roughly 15,000 people. That's a big help."
"It might be a large sampling," Ducky said calmly. "But 15,000 people is better than a hundred and fifty million, don't you think?"
Tim drew a deep breath and pulled his shoulders back, and Fornell decided to step in before the obviously frazzled man went any further.
"McGee!" He pushed himself to his feet and walked around the corner of the desk. "Gibbs' office." Tim gave no indication that he'd be moving any time soon, so Fornell put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him toward the elevator. "Now!"
Tim pulled his arm away angrily and stormed out of the squad room with Fornell following a short distance behind him. When he reached the elevator, Tim turned back around and glared at the FBI agent, who smiled patiently in response and pushed the call button. When the doors opened, Fornell held his hand out as if to say, 'After you,' and Tim stepped inside.
They rode the elevator down two floors in absolute silence before Fornell hit the stop switch. Then he turned, leaned his back and shoulders against the wall, and crossed his arms.
"So," he said. "What's up?"
Tim huffed in irritation. "Nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I don't know." Fornell kept his voice light and non-accusatory. "Maybe because you're tearing around like Gibbs after someone spilled his coffee?"
"I'm fine."
Fornell shook his head. "You've been the one telling us all - from the very beginning - not to get too invested in DelMar. You've been the one saying it might not be him and we should be looking for other suspects, too. To be completely honest, McGee, I don't think I've ever seen anyone get so pissed off about being proven right before."
Tim ran his hands through his hair again. "But eliminating him leaves us with nothing. We can't question him about any of this, and even if we did, he wouldn't be able to help us. And Tony deserves to … he just … he deserves more than nothing."
Fornell studied the younger man's face as he talked. "When's the last time you slept, Tim?" He got a shrug for an answer. "Have you slept at all in the past twenty-four hours?"
"No."
"And how long had you been up before Gibbs called you last night? Sixteen, seventeen hours?"
"Twenty." Tim coughed self-consciously. "I was up early writing."
"So you're coming up on forty-eight hours with no sleep, running the way you have been? You've been making everyone else take naps, but you haven't bothered to take one yourself?"
Tim pulled away from the wall and stood straighter. "I'm the senior agent right now, and it's my …"
Fornell cleared his throat. "Not for nothing, kid, but I'm pretty sure that I'm the senior agent."
Tim bristled, and Fornell raised his hand in surrender. "I get it. You're the ranking member of Gibbs' team, and that makes you responsible for taking care of everyone else, right? Even DiNozzo?"
"Especially Tony," Tim muttered.
"Okay. Well, I'm responsible for you right now, Tim. And if there's one thing I know about Gibbs, it's that he gets really pissed when you borrow his people and don't give them back in the same condition you got them in. Which means if you work yourself into the ground, it's my ass he's going to take a chunk out of, not yours. Understand?"
Tim nodded reluctantly.
"What's going to happen now is we're going to go back upstairs, and you're going to calm down. You're going to take a breath, take a nap, and look at this whole thing with a fresh eye and a new perspective, okay?" Fornell searched Tim's face for some sign of agreement, and it didn't take him long to find it. He flipped the emergency stop switch and pushed the button to send them back up to the squad room. "And you're wrong. We don't have nothing. You've been working too hard for us to have nothing. What we have is a hell of a lot of something; we just don't understand who or what it means."
Tim closed his eyes and dropped his head. "Someone in law enforcement. Someone big. Someone who hasn't known Gibbs and Tony long but hates them already. Someone with knowledge of the Brewer investigation and access to the …"
Fornell shook his head. "Didn't I say after a nap?"
"Access to our security feed." Tim was mumbling, but his voice was just loud enough for Fornell to make out the words. "He was watching the security feed. The cameras." Tim raised his head, and excitement flashed in his eyes. "Someone with access to our security cameras!"
The doors opened, and Tim was through them and running toward his desk before Fornell even moved. "McGee!" he called out. "I thought I told you to sleep!"
The younger man was still mumbling and muttering to himself, but Fornell couldn't hear him anymore. He was typing frantically at his keyboard, and the three other members of his team were gathering around him.
"Timothy?"
"You have found something, McGee?"
"What is it, Timmy?"
Fornell walked up and took his place between them. "McGee, unless you want to spend the next six months picking up dog crap on the National Mall, you will lay the hell down and …"
Tim lifted his head as he hit one last key on his keyboard. "Law enforcement background, check. Graduated from the police academy three years ago, washed out of FLETC ten months ago. Works here, hasn't been here long. He's only been here for seven months. Knows Gibbs and Tony, was working the day we went out on the Brewer murder. Had access to the security cameras. Just so happened to abandon the monitors at the exact moment Tony was attacked, and didn't bother to review them when he came back. That's one hell of a coincidence."
"And we all know how Gibbs feels about coincidences," Ziva said.
"Who, McGee?" Fornell had all but given up on his plan of getting McGee to sleep, because it was obvious that he wasn't going to do it.
A picture popped up on the plasma, and everyone turned toward it. Fornell had never seen the man before, but it was plain that everyone else had. Abby's jaw dropped, and she looked between the picture and Tim with something close to awe on her face.
"Robert Duncan."
Fornell turned around, and he was somehow unsurprised by the wide smile that suddenly dominated Tim's expression.
"We need to find Robert Duncan."
Chapter Fourteen
"Well, that's just … I'm confused."
Gibbs sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Yeah. That was kind of how I felt when Vance told me."
"So after all these years, me thinking Stefano got away with trying to kill me, it wasn't even him?"
"According to the director of the FBI, no. It wasn't."
"Huh." Tony stood up from the edge of the bed and walked toward the bathroom. "Ya know, I remember thinking, when they told me, that it didn't seem right. It didn't seem like something Stefano would do. Ben Rossi makes a lot more sense."
"You knew DelMar pretty well, then?"
"Better than he knew me, I guess." Tony pulled his clothes out of the closet and walked back into the room. "Or not. I never would have made him for CI material. He worshipped Mikey."
Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Tony's casual and familiar use of Macaluso's first name, but he didn't call attention to it. "So what happened that day? What could have scared DelMar enough to go to the FBI?"
Tony put the clothes on the bed and looked down at them. Neither of them had thought to tell McGee what to bring, and it was obvious from the expression on his face that Tony was trying to figure out how he was going to change into the jeans and Navy sweatshirt by himself. Gibbs pushed away from the wall and walked toward him. "Drop 'em."
Tony looked up and blinked in confusion. "Um … what?"
"Pants. Drop 'em."
Tony coughed and turned back to the clothes. "I've been getting myself dressed since I was three, Gibbs. I think I can handle this."
The tone of voice was one that Gibbs hadn't heard from Tony often, but it was enough to make him raise his hands and back away. Tony needed to know that he didn't think he was incompetent. Offering to help him change his pants probably wasn't the best way to accomplish that.
Neither was standing there watching him try to do it himself.
"I'll wait in the hall." He turned to do just that, but a quiet, frustrated sigh stopped him.
"No."
Gibbs turned back with a question in his eyes. Tony held the jeans out to him, and he took them. "You're right." Gibbs stepped forward as Tony stepped out of his scrub pants. "Just remind me to headslap the hell out of McGee for this."
In an effort to distract Tony from what he obviously saw as an humiliating weakness, Gibbs turned back to the conversation they'd been having before. "So, DelMar. What scared him so much?"
Tony put his right hand on Gibbs' shoulder for balance as he stepped into the jeans. "Well, we did watch Mikey murder someone that day. That might have done it." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "It sure as hell freaked me out."
Gibbs fastened the button before he stepped back. "Who'd he kill?"
It took three attempts, but Tony managed to get the zipper up by himself. "The guy who told him I was a cop."
"Why'd he do that?"
Tony picked the sweatshirt up, looked back and forth between it and his shoulder, and sighed. Gibbs stepped forward without a word, took the sweatshirt, and pulled it over Tony's head. Tony smiled shyly in thanks as he pushed his right arm into the sleeve.
"It's a long story."
"Sounds like." Gibbs nodded his head in silent acknowledgement of Tony's gratitude. "You'll have to tell me some day."
Tony had told him some of the story before. He'd told him that the six-month op had been blown all to hell less than twelve hours before the bust, and that he'd spent the better part of two weeks in the hospital because of it. He'd never provided any specifics, and Gibbs had never pushed him for them. But the events of the past two days had made it evident that there were potentially dozens of people out there who'd be more than happy to see DiNozzo dead, and Gibbs wanted to know all of their names.
"Yeah." Tony's agreement was reluctant, but it was clear that he understood where Gibbs was coming from. "I will." He looked down at his left arm, which was still strapped tightly to his chest, and at the sleeve that dangled loose at his side. "I hate this," he said, waving the sleeve in the air. "I'm used to having two arms. This has me all off-balance."
Gibbs shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You still have two arms," he pointed out. "You just can't use one of them."
"I know." He dropped the sleeve and shot Gibbs a frustrated expression. "That's what I hate about it."
Tim slammed the phone down again. "I've tried everywhere. His apartment, his mom's house, his girlfriend's place, his dad, his sister … He's not using his credit cards, he's not using his phone, and apparently, he's not driving his car. The BOLO hasn't had any hits. I can't find him." He pushed himself out of his chair in frustration and walked to Ziva's desk. "Have you had any luck?"
"I have not." She looked up at him. "Perhaps he has gone to dirt?"
"Ground. Gone to ground." He rolled his shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension between them. "But whatever you call it, he shouldn't be able to do it this well. There's nothing in his past that indicates he has the skills to just disappear."
"The BOLO has only been out for seven hours, and it was overnight."
Tim shook his head. "He hasn't been seen or heard from, or made a phone call or touched his bank account, since he left here yesterday morning."
"You believe he has help, yes?"
Tim nodded. "Just like he did here on Monday night. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is. He couldn't have been the other man who attacked Tony in the parking lot, because one - he's not tall enough, and two - he was at the front gate the whole time. Both video and witnesses put him out there. But he had to have been involved. The chances of someone calling in a fake security breach at the exact second Tony got on the elevator to leave, it's just … well, it's so unlikely it's close to impossible."
"Yet Duncan is our suspect."
"He's a person of interest." He perched himself on the edge of her desk.
"A subtle way of saying he is a suspect."
"He's not the one in the video, but he is our only lead to him. He knows who that man is."
Ziva looked distracted, as though a new angle had just occurred to her. "There are security cameras here in the squad room?"
Tim nodded. "Oh, yeah. They're all over the building."
"Do they have microphones?"
Tim tilted his head slightly. "I don't know. It would make sense, but they're all up so high, I don't know if it would do any good." He pointed at the camera that had the clearest shot of Tony's desk; it was in the corner above the stairs to Vance's office. "The video of the parking lot didn't have any audio on it. Why?"
"How did he know that Tony was leaving for the night?" Ziva stood up and walked toward Tony's desk. "He would have seen him getting on the elevator, but he could have been going anywhere. Had they called in the diversion too early, the attack would have been discovered. I do not believe they would have taken that chance."
As she spoke, she knelt down and started inspecting the cabinets behind the desk closely.
"You think they heard him say it?" He stood up and walked to Tony's desk, too. "They had a mic on him?"
She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and reached into the small space between the two file cabinets. When she held her hand up for Tim to see, there was a small wireless microphone in it. "I would say that is a certainty." She stood up and walked toward the elevator. "I will get this to Abby. And I will come back with an electronic surveillance detector."
Tim watched after her, shaking his head as she walked away. There had been a microphone in their squad room for who-knew-how-long, broadcasting their every word to who-knew-where, and none of them had known. "Unbelievable."
"Hey, McGee?"
It had been so long since Fornell had spoken that Tim had forgotten he was there. He was standing in front of the plasma next to Gibbs' desk, looking at the pieces of the investigation that they had assembled after the revelation that DelMar wasn't involved.
"Yeah?"
"What are these numbers?" As he spoke, he pointed at the scan of the handwritten note that Ducky had brought up to them.
It was a list of Tony's injuries, and next to each of them, Ducky had written which of Gibbs' tools were most likely used to inflict them. Tim hadn't been surprised to find out that the screwdriver missing from the set he had given Gibbs was the one removed from Tony's leg at the hospital. Ziva's hammer matched several of the bruises on his chest and back. Though no one would ever tell her, the cuts on Tony's arms had been made with one of the chisels Abby had given Gibbs, and the cuts on his chest were the exact same width as the blade on Ducky's plane. The most upsetting part was finding out that Tony's gift, the antique handsaw that he almost hadn't given, was used to carve Gibbs' name into his back.
There was no way anyone outside the six of them would have known where those tools had come from or who had given them to him, but it was one hell of a coincidence.
At the bottom of that note, Ducky had written four numbers - three, six, nine, and five . They were what Fornell was asking about.
"That's how many wounds Tony had." He stepped forward and explained in more detail. "Ducky thought they might have been a pattern, because they were grouped together. Three on his right arm, six on the right side of his chest, nine on the left side, and five on his left arm." He shrugged. "He thought they might mean something, but if they do, I'll be damned if I know what it is. I've tried dates, addresses, I've even fed them into a computer program that runs every combination possible against anything that might be relevant … I've got nothing."
"Do you have pictures?" Fornell seemed strangely interested in something the McGee had all but dismissed as relevant. "Of the actual groupings?"
"Pictures of Tony's arms and chest?" Fornell nodded. "Yeah. Of course I do." He walked over to his desk, shuffled through the pictures Dr. Marquardt had given them until he found the four Fornell wanted, and handed them to him. "I don't know that they'll do you much good."
Fornell tilted his head and shrugged. "Ya never know. Maybe a fresh set of eyes will see something that you don't."
Getting out of the hospital and into the Challenger took more out of him than Tony thought it should have, but he wasn't going to complain about it. He was too glad just to be out. He spent the first half of the drive to Ducky's with his eyes closed and his head leaned back, but he couldn't rest. His mind was running faster than it had in two days, and without the morphine messing with his head, he could keep up with it.
Unfortunately, his thoughts kept taking him to the same place, over and over again, and that was a place with more questions than answers.
And he hated that.
"So." He spoke hesitantly, but he opened his eyes and turned his head toward Gibbs as he did it. "Do McGee and Fornell have any other suspects?"
Gibbs didn't take his eyes off the road, but he did tighten his fingers around the steering wheel. "If they do, they haven't told me about it."
"Edgar's the only witness?" He'd had the feeling, since Gibbs had told him, that he shouldn't have been surprised to find out Edgar Collins had seen them that night. He just couldn't figure out why he thought that.
Gibbs nodded. "Fornell sent his guys back out to canvas the entire neighborhood. No one else saw anything."
He took a deep breath before he spoke again. "I don't like that, Boss. That's too much pressure for Edgar to handle. Plus, the defense attorney will …"
"I know." Gibbs' voice was tight and controlled. "But he's the only witness we've got."
Silence descended around them, and Tony turned to look out the window. He knew what he wanted to say, and he knew why. He just didn't know how. He took another deep, shaky breath and decided to dive in.
"No," he said softly. "He's not."
"Okay, then." If it was possible, Gibbs' voice was even tighter than it had been. "He's the only witness we've got who can actually remember what he saw."
"He has dementia. Who's to say that what he remembers is what really happened?"
"And you were drugged and bashed your head a time or two. You can't remember anything."
Gibbs was getting angrier by the second. Tony knew what he wanted to ask for, knew what needed to be done, but he would have to handle Gibbs carefully if he was going to get it. He moved his gaze from the side of the road to the windshield, and he lowered his voice even further.
"What if I can?"
Gibbs shook his head. "Tried that. Your lungs damn near seized up, and you could barely breathe. Remember?"
"Muscle spasms," he answered. "The potassium helped, and moving around is going to keep it from happening again."
Gibbs shook his head again, but he stayed silent.
"I've got something in here, Boss. I have to. A sound, or a smell, or …"
"The taste of your own blood?"
Tony flinched away slightly and swallowed hard. Damn, Gibbs was pissed. "Maybe. The point is, there has to be something that will jump start it. Even in the hospital, even as bad as it sucked, I got something, didn't I?"
"Yeah. You got until they shoved that needle in your neck and stopped you from ever remembering the next three hours." Gibbs sighed deeply, and it looked like he loosened his grip on the wheel. "You know how that stuff works. It's not blocking memories that exist. It stopped your mind from creating memories in the first place."
Gibbs' voice had lost a little of its edge, and Tony sat up a bit straighter in his seat. If he was starting to get Gibbs to consider what he was saying, then he needed to push a bit more.
"But that's not always true. We've had drugged victims remember things before. A lot of my memories of what happened the night of the Atlas case came back, too."
"Yeah?" Gibbs glanced over at him and raised his eyebrows. "You remember what happened between calling me from the parking lot and waking up in the sewer?"
Tony looked down at his feet. "Well, no."
Gibbs smiled tightly and turned his eyes back to the road.
"But I was unconscious when Vanessa dragged me down there. Monday night, I wasn't."
Gibbs pulled to a stop at a red light, and he looked at Tony in open disbelief. "How do you know that?"
"Because." He turned his gaze back out the side window again.The light turned green, and Gibbs pulled forward. He closed his eyes for just a second and pretended he didn't feel the shudder that went through him. "What's the point of torturing someone who can't feel it?"
Gibbs nodded, and Tony wondered if he'd seen the tremor that he'd tried to hide. He probably had. Gibbs saw everything.
"How do you feel, Tony?"
He forced a fake smile onto his face and turned away from the window. "Oh, ya know. I'm fine. Shoulder's a little sore, but other than that, I'm just …"
"DiNozzo."
He sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. He was demanding that Gibbs be honest with him, wasn't he? Why couldn't he do the same in return? What was he gaining by lying, other than making himself feel worse than he already did?
"I'm scared." He dropped his hand into his lap and looked back out the windshield. "I'm scared, and I'm weak, and I'm wobbly, and I hate it. I don't know who this guy is. I wouldn't know him if he was standing right next to me. And I can't live like that. And if I can fix it, if I can figure out who he is and make this all go away, then I have to try."
Gibbs stopped at another red light and turned toward him. Tony made himself look him straight in the eye.
"I need to do this, Boss."
Gibbs nodded once, in both understanding and agreement. "Okay."
"Why did he say three?" Fornell looked down at the photos once more, and then back up at Tim.
Tim sat back down at his desk and reached for the phone. It was time to call Duncan's mother again. "Because there are three, probably."
"No, there's not." Fornell walked toward him, and Tim put the phone down. "Look. On his left arm, he's got five, and they're all on his bicep. On his right arm, he's got three, yeah, but one of them is on his forearm."
"Two different groups." Tim stood and took the pictures from Fornell's hand. "Not a three. A one and a two."
"Right. So it's not 3-6-9-5. It's 1-2-6-9-5."
"Why didn't I notice that?"
Fornell gave him a look that would have melted butter, but he softened it into a smile. "Maybe because you haven't slept in two days?"
Tim sighed and nodded his head. "So what does that give us? I still don't know what it means."
"No, but I think I do." Fornell took the pictures back and moved to Gibbs' desk quickly. "I've seen it before. Recently, too. Give me a minute to check it out."
"Abby will call us when she has answers about the microphone." Ziva announced her return as she walked around the partition. "She also believes she is close to matching the handwriting on the note left on Tony's door."
"Why didn't you stay with her?" He stood and tailed her to her desk, but she kept walking. "Ziva?"
"The FBI just sent us the composite sketch that Edgar Collins gave them. I was told that it is vital that we see it immediately. I am going to get it."
Tim stood in the center of the bullpen with his arms at his sides, just watching the activity going on around him. Everyone was doing something. Fornell was on the phone with someone, asking about the numbers. Ziva was getting the composite. Abby was in her lab, running more DNA tests and trying to match handwriting. Even Ducky and Palmer, still down in autopsy, were going back over Marco Santori's body, trying to find some clue that they might have missed. And there he was, watching them work, adding absolutely nothing of value to the investigation.
Maybe it was time for him to take that nap after all.
He headed back to his desk to do exactly that, but just as he reached it, his phone started to ring. Hoping that it might be someone calling him back about Robert Duncan, he picked it up quickly.
"McGee."
"Agent McGee! You've got to help them!"
"What?" The voice sounded familiar, but it was panicked. It took his mind a few seconds to process who, exactly, had called him. "Who is … Duncan? Is this you?"
"Yes! Listen to me! You've got to …!"
Tim's heart skipped more than one beat. After all of his searching, the man he most needed to talk to was on the other end of the phone. There might be hope for the investigation yet.
"No, Duncan, you listen to me. We know that you were involved in the attack on Agent DiNozzo, and we need to …"
"Yes, I was. I admit it. I'll admit to anything you want, but you've got to stop him. He's going to kill them!"
"McGee!" Fornell was suddenly standing in front of his desk, waving the pictures of Tony's wounds around. "I know what these numbers are. We've gotta move."
"McGee, Agent Fornell." Ziva walked briskly around the corner, and she had something in her hands, too. "You must see this."
"Timmy!" And then Abby was standing there, bouncing up and down in excitement. "I matched it! I know who wrote the note!"
"Listen to me! He's following them to Gibbs' house."
"Why are they going to Gibbs' house?" He was getting overwhelmed with all the information flying at him, but he forced himself to concentrate on Duncan. "And how do you know that?"
"I don't know. All I know is that they are, and he called me, and he's going to kill them. It was a joke. He told me it was a joke. He just wanted to mess with him, show him that he wasn't a screw up. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. I'm on my way there now, but he's right behind me, and …"
"It's a badge number, McGee. An FBI badge number. And it belonged to …"
"Edgar Collins could not have described him so perfectly. As far as we know, he has never seen him before."
"I found it in the security logs, but it wasn't Duncan's. It was …"
They were all speaking at once, and Tim held his hand up to stop them.
"Who?!"
Four voices answered in unison, three in front of him and one through the phone.
"Bruce Rivers!"
Gibbs was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, watching Tony closely for any sign of distress. Tony, for his part, was standing stock still in the middle of the basement, right under where he and Ducky had found him. The crime scene had been released overnight, and Fornell's cleaners had a done a decent job getting rid of the blood. But at least in Gibbs' eyes, there was still a faint stain where the majority of it had pooled.
He didn't know if it was real, or if he was imagining it, but it didn't matter anyway. He'd probably always see it.
"You getting anything?"
Tony had his eyes closed, and he was holding his right arm out to his side. It brought back plenty of memories for Gibbs - all of them bad - but he had no intention of stopping him. If that was what Tony needed, then that was what they would do.
Tony shook his head slowly. "It smells like …" He stopped for a few seconds and sniffed the air. "Bleach."
Gibbs nodded slowly. "Yeah. I noticed that. Think it's going to interfere?"
Tony dropped his arm, opened his eyes, and turned toward him. "I don't know. I mean, the real smell is still there. It's just … it's deeper. Like it's buried."
"What's the real smell?" Gibbs pushed himself up from the stairs and walked toward him. The longer they were in the basement, the more he thought Tony had a real shot at remembering something that could help. It had started as soon as they'd walked into the house. Tony had frozen in the doorway and muttered, 'Not real.' It took Gibbs a few seconds to get him grounded in reality again, but Tony finally said that he remembered thinking he was imagining being in the house that night.
Gibbs' gut was turning and churning, telling him that they needed to leave, that something really bad was about to happen, but he chalked it up to residual nerves and ignored it. He couldn't deny that, at least on the surface, Tony's idea seemed to be working. If nothing else, it was giving Tony back some sense of control, and he needed that.
Tony smiled. "Sawdust." He snorted out a short laugh, then continued. "Bourbon." He closed his eyes again and let his mind focus on the scents he usually associated with the basement. "Musty, but clean. Wood stain. Eight years of memories. It smells like you. And …"
He trailed off, but Gibbs picked up on what he wasn't saying. Remembering what Ducky had said to him in the hospital, he offered a suggestion of his own.
"Safety."
"Yeah." Tony opened his eyes, but he looked down at his feet almost immediately. "Kinda lame, huh?"
He shook his head. "No. I want it to smell like that." He smiled, but only for a second. "I want my kids to feel safe here." He reached out and put his hand on Tony's shoulder. "I want you to feel safe here."
Tony lifted his head, looked him in the eye, and nodded. "I do."
It was one of the things that had bothered him the most since he'd first come down the stairs on Monday night. They'd invaded his home, yes, but they'd done more than that. They'd hurt Tony, badly, in the one place he should have felt the safest. Should have been the safest. They'd tried to destroy the sanctuary that he'd created, both for himself and for the people he cared about. And he was still afraid that they'd manage to do it.
"You sure?"
Tony nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure." He must have seen the hesitance in Gibbs' eyes, because he kept going. "They can't take this away, Boss. I won't let them."
He squeezed Tony's arm just once, then let go. "Okay, so why don't we try …?"
A loud banging from upstairs cut him off, and they both looked up toward the sound. The pounding continued, and Gibbs recognized it as someone insistently knocking on his front door. He rolled his eyes. Everyone who knew anything about him knew that the door was unlocked, which meant this was someone he didn't know well.
"Stay here," he said as he turned. "I'll be right back."
He didn't like leaving Tony alone, but it was the best choice he had. It would have taken too long to get Tony back up the stairs, and if it was just the mailman or a nosy neighbor, he'd exhaust himself for nothing. Besides, he'd only be gone for a minute. Just long enough to get rid of whoever that was trying to beat his door in.
He put his hand on the gun at his waist as he opened the door, and then he stopped in surprise when he saw who was standing on the other side. He recognized him immediately, but he had no idea why the man McGee had gotten fired was standing on his doorstep.
"Duncan? What the hell …?"
"You have to leave." The man's face was red, as though he'd just run a long distance, but Gibbs could see his car outside. He was frantic, nervous, bouncing from one foot to the other as he took a few steps into the house. "You can't stay here. It's not safe."
"Get out of my …"
"He's coming. He's right behind me! Where's DiNozzo? You've gotta get him out of here before …"
If the gunshot surprised him, the suddenly lifeless body that toppled into his foyer surprised him even more. And the man who was standing on the sidewalk, holding the gun that shot had been fired from, left him absolutely floored.
"Rivers! What the hell are you doing?"
Rivers stepped around Duncan's body, sparing only a glance at the blood that was seeping out from what remained of the man's throat and spreading all over the hardwood floor.
"It was him," he said simply. "Duncan. He's the one who attacked Tony in the parking lot."
"What? How did he …?"
"He did it." Rivers was wearing a damned annoying smile that Gibbs wanted nothing more than to slap off his face. He was sure it was meant to be ingratiating, but it was grating. "He set Tony up. He helped them get into the Yard, and he told them when he was heading to his car. He was behind the whole thing. He was coming here to finish him off."
There was something not right about what Rivers was saying, and he knew it, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He should have been able to think a bit more clearly, but there was a dead man bleeding all over his floor, and the one lead that they might have had to who tried to kill Tony was gone.
"So you just killed a suspect?" The smile fell from Rivers' face, and his eyes narrowed. "You stupid son of a …"
"I was protecting Tony." His voice had gone from irritating to low and tight. "Isn't that what you want? Is that what you always want? Protect Tony at all costs?"
"Not like that!" Gibbs' phone started to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket. "Put that damn gun away before I shoot you." He glanced down at the screen and flipped the phone open.
"McGee …"
White-hot pain exploded in the back of his head, and everything went black.
Tony heard the sound of raised voices from upstairs, but he didn't get alarmed until the he heard the gunshot.
He started toward the stairs, but he realized quickly that he'd be of no use to Gibbs with only one arm. He pulled his shirt up, undid the straps securing his left arm to his chest, and let it fall to his side. Pain shot down into his fingers and up into his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it.
The voices upstairs had grown even louder, and they were starting to sound angry. Then Gibbs starting cussing. He had to get up there.
It cost him precious seconds to push his arm into his sleeve, and he bit off a cry of pain as he straightened muscles that hadn't moved in thirty-six hours, but he managed. He moved to the stairs and started up as quickly as he could. He had to hold the railing to keep from toppling over, but he forced himself to keep climbing.
The voices from upstairs had stopped. The house was silent. He had just reached the landing when a familiar face appeared in the doorway.
"Hey there, Golden Boy."
He'd been wrong about needing smells to help him remember what had happened Monday night. He'd needed a sounds. Specifically, he'd needed to hear that voice speak those two words.
"Bruce. You …"
He saw the gun in Rivers' hand as he raised it, and he felt it when it came down against the side of his face. He knew he was falling, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The last sound he heard was his own voice screaming as his left shoulder slammed into the concrete floor.
Part Eight
Chapter Thirteen
"I see nothing that isn't good."
Dr. Marquardt delivered the news with the brightest smile Gibbs had seen on her face since he'd met her. "Your chest x-rays look great, Tony. Your lungs are clear, all of the fluid has moved away from your heart, and your blood pressure is holding steady at 103/62. I wouldn't mind that being a bit higher, but I'm not going to complain. Your blood volume is just over 90%, so we're going to discontinue all of the fluids and allow your body to finish replenishing that on its own. Now, before that shot I just gave you kicks in, how's your pain?"
Tony opened his mouth to answer her, but Gibbs caught his eye and shook his head.
"Tell her the truth, DiNozzo."
Tony sighed. "My shoulder hurts a little bit."
"Dislocated shoulders will do that." She palpitated the injury carefully. "How badly does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten?"
"Um … like a two." Tony grimaced as Dr. Marquardt pressed on a particularly sensitive spot. "Maybe a four, or …" She pushed again, right above the joint, and Tony went white. "Nine!"
Dr. Marquardt pulled her hands away, and Tony sank back into his pillow.
"Ow." He lifted his right hand and gently rubbed his shoulder. "What'd ya do that for?"
Gibbs smirked. "Got the truth out of you, didn't she?"
"Rude," Tony muttered.
Dr. Marquardt smiled again. "I'm going to order an MRI, just to be safe. I don't think there's any serious ligament or bone damage, but now that the swelling's gone down some, I want to get a clearer look at it. Either way, you're keeping that brace on for at least a week, and you'll be in a sling for a few weeks after that. If you try to use that arm for anything other than physical therapy before I release you, you're going to aggravate it, and you'll run the risk of messing it up permanently. Understood?"
"Got it. Don't use the shoulder."
Dr. Marquardt tilted her head and looked slightly confused. "Believe me, you're not going to want to. If you think it hurts now … anyway, it shouldn’t be that hard to remember."
Tony's attention was wandering rapidly. He was moving the fingers on his right hand up and down and staring at them in near-fascination. Dr. Marquardt looked even more confused than before, and Gibbs swallowed the urge to smile.
Dr. Marquardt cleared her throat. "So, for now, if no one's pushing on it, the morphine keeps the pain under control?"
"Morphine's great!" The grin on Tony's face was almost more than Gibbs could handle. He didn't laugh, but he did allow himself a small smile. "Don't know why I say I don't want it. Because I do. Because it's awesome."
Gibbs coughed.
The confusion in Dr. Marquardt's eyes had turned to alarm, and she glanced across the bed. "Agent Gibbs?"
"Painkillers." He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead before he looked back at her. "This is why he doesn't like painkillers. They make him … loopy."
"He's been on a morphine drip all day. He hasn't been like this, has he?"
Gibbs shook his head.
"Needles are worse." Tony's voice was still dreamy-sounding, but it was obvious that he was trying to follow their conversation. "Don't like needles." Gibbs and Dr. Marquardt turned to face him. He lifted his hand and shook his finger at them. "Needles are worse."
Dr. Marquardt nodded in understanding. "Injections hit you harder than a drip does. That makes sense."
"Yeah. I do that sometimes."
Gibbs cleared his throat to pull Dr. Marquardt's attention back to him. "So, what are we looking at, Doc?"
She nodded quickly and got back on topic. "I'll make the final decision after I see his MRI, but unless something really unexpected comes up between now and morning, I'm going to be releasing him after breakfast."
Gibbs closed his eyes and shook his head. Dr. Marquardt picked up on his thoughts immediately.
"Agent Gibbs, I know that you don't …"
"Release me where?"
"Home." She looked down at Tony and smiled.
The goofy grin vanished. "No," he whispered. "I can't. Can't go home." He grabbed Gibbs' arm and pulled himself up from the bed. "Boss, I can't …"
"Calm down before you hurt yourself, DiNozzo."
"Why can't he go home?"
Gibbs looked across the bed at Dr. Marquardt. "The guy who did this … he took off with DiNozzo's ID and keys."
"Oh. I didn't realize …"
"Took my gun, too," Tony put in. "I can't even shoot him."
Gibbs opened his mouth to tell Tony that he wasn't going to be shooting anyone, but Tony kept talking.
"I can go to your place, Boss. That's always … oh. Wait. I can't go there, either, can I?"
Gibbs shook his head again. "Fornell hasn't released the crime scene yet, so no. We can't go there."
"So where am I gonna …?"
"We're both staying at Ducky's."
Tony's eyes lit up again. "Oh, Ducky's. That'll be awesome." The crooked, dopey grin was back. "I love being an Italian gigolo furniture mover."
Dr. Marquardt looked to Gibbs for an explanation, but he only shrugged. "Long story."
She turned back to Tony. "Okay. Now that it's all settled where you're going to be staying after you're released, I'm going to go order that MRI. I'll check on you a few more times overnight, but you should try to get some sleep. You're going to need it."
"Sure," Tony murmured as he settled back into his pillow. "Go to sleep. So a nurse can wake me up. To tell me to go to sleep. So another nurse can wake me up."
Dr. Marquardt grinned as she walked around the bed and toward the door.
"I'll be right back," Gibbs said. "You good?"
"Yep." Tony yawned and closed his eyes. "I'm sleeping."
Gibbs turned and followed Dr. Marquardt across the room. He caught up to her just as she opened the door, and he reached out to hold it open for her. They stepped into the hallway, and she turned to face him as the door closed behind them.
"I know what you're going to say, Agent Gibbs. And the answer is no."
Rivers was standing off to the side, doing his best to pretend that he wasn't eavesdropping on the conversation. Gibbs pointed at him and then at the hallway around the corner. Rivers dropped his head and shoulders and walked away.
"I don't think you understand, Doc."
"No, I do understand. I do. Dr. Simms told me about the excitement this afternoon. I know what happened, and I know how concerned you are about Tony's safety. I also know you're about to ask me to keep him here until you catch the man who tried to kill him."
"It's the safest place," Gibbs said. "We can keep it locked down, and we can …"
"That's part of the problem, Agent Gibbs," Dr. Marquardt interrupted. "You can't keep it locked down. This is a hospital, not a prison or a safe house. Do you know how long it took me to get upstairs tonight? How many times I got stopped? How many people refused to let me go where I needed to be until they saw my identification?"
Gibbs nodded, both in answer and in satisfaction that the agents he'd assigned to the security detail were doing their jobs right.
"What if I'd been responding to an emergency?"
He hadn't thought of it quite like that.
"What if someone was having a heart attack? What if one of my patients coded? What if it was Tony, and I was downstairs, and I couldn't get to him because one of your guards, following your orders, refused to let me come up?"
Gibbs sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temple.
"I wish I could help you. I really do. There's nothing I care about more than the health and safety of my patients, and believe me, the last thing I want is Tony ending up in my OR again because this guy comes back. But there are 400 patients in this hospital, and I have to think about their health and safety, too. Even ignoring the fact that there was a murderer walking my halls this afternoon, Tony's presence here is a risk."
Gibbs' eyes shot open, and Dr. Marquardt raised her hand.
"If he was still in real medical danger, I'd keep him. But he's not. And I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs, but I can't justify it. Those guards might be protecting him, but they're not doing much for the other patients and their loved ones. And if, God forbid, something were to happen here, what should I say to the families of the innocent people who got caught in the crossfire?"
"His health might not be in danger out there," Gibbs forced out through clenched teeth. "But his life sure as hell is. Does that not matter?"
"I have 400 other people to worry about, so I'm going to trust you to take care of him." Dr. Marquardt was keeping her voice low and steady, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that the conversation was upsetting her. "If something goes wrong and he gets hurt again, or if he starts having trouble breathing or having chest pains, you bring him back to me. But unless and until that happens, he's out of here in the morning."
"Doc, listen to me …"
"No." She shook her head and stepped away. "Because this decision is hard enough, and I'm not going to let you make it any harder. I can't help you. I'm sorry."
"Doc, please."
She changed direction quickly and walked back toward him. "You keep saying that it's your job to protect him, right? So do it." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Do your job, Agent Gibbs, and I won't have to do mine."
“So what are you telling me here, Charlie?" Leon Vance pulled his car into the parking lot at George Washington University hospital. "Can you help me out or not?"
"I can't give you DelMar, Leon."
Vance turned the car off and leaned back in his seat. "You're the director of the FBI," he said into the phone. "I doubt there's anyone you can't give me."
"Look, I get what you're saying. And if this had happened to one of my people, I'd be just as pissed as you are. But I can't give you an innocent man, and Stefano DelMar is innocent."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"Because he's been in a safe house since Saturday morning. That's how."
"A safe house? Like the one Jack Kale was supposed to be in the day my people found him in Michael Strauss' apartment?"
A long-suffering sigh sounded in Leon's ear. "Okay, yes. That's a fair point. But he's in Virginia, Leon. And he hasn't been alone for more than fifteen minutes in the past four days. There's no way he could have even gotten out of the house without it being noticed, let alone get all the way back to D.C., spend a couple of hours kidnapping and torturing your man, kill Marco Santori, and hang around the hospital today."
Leon pinched the bridge of his nose. Ducky had, for all intents and purposes, eliminated DelMar as a suspect in the attack on NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, but there was still the matter of the ten-year-old, unprosecuted attempted murder of Baltimore detective Tony DiNozzo. Nothing could change the fact that he had to face Gibbs, and nothing could change the fact that he had to tell him that someone in his agency - under his command, under his roof - wanted DiNozzo dead. But he'd have much preferred to preface that conversation with, 'We have Stefano DelMar.'
"So why is the newly-crowned king of D.C. organized crime in your safe house?"
"Because someone's started offing Azari's higher-ups, and he got scared. He came to us Friday afternoon, right after the second body was found. He knows that the media are attributing the murders to him, and he's fine with that. He just doesn't want to be the next dead mafia guy on the news."
Leon took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "You know he's tried to kill DiNozzo before, right?"
"No." He opened his eyes and prepared to launch into the story McGee had told him, but he never got the chance. "I know that we fed DiNozzo and the Baltimore PD a story about Stefano trying to kill him, and I know that they bought it. But he didn't do it."
"What?"
"The guy who tried to bash DiNozzo's brains in in Baltimore was a kid named Benjamin Rossi. Stefano knew DiNozzo as a half-starved nineteen-year-old homeless kid named Tony Pagano. He found him in an alley, and he always felt responsible for him. Hell, even after he found out he was a cop, he still looked out for him. He's the one who stopped Rossi, and he called the cops and the ambulance. Stefano didn't try to kill DiNozzo that night; he saved his life."
Leon shook his head. "Then why does DiNozzo think …?"
"Because he doesn't remember what happened, and that's what we told him. Rossi's fingerprints and DiNozzo's blood were all over that pipe. Stefano never touched it."
"So where is this Benjamin Rossi?"
"He went down with Macaluso. He's in prison, and he's never getting out. You can take my word for that. As far as Stefano goes, Leon … the night Rossi tried to kill DiNozzo, after the raid was over and everyone had been arrested, Stefano asked for me. I was working organized crime back then, and he knew me. He was seventeen years old, he'd witnessed a murder and an attempted murder in less than twelve hours, and he was scared. He was the one who brought DiNozzo to Macaluso in the first place, so he was in a really dangerous position. He needed a cover story that would sound good to Macaluso, and we needed information that he had, so we worked a deal. He's been a CI for ten years."
Vance was dumbfounded. Everything they thought they knew about DelMar was a lie cooked up by the FBI to protect one of their assets?
"Why hasn't Fornell seen fit to tell us any of this?"
"Because he doesn't know."
Vance narrowed his eyes in anger, though he knew the man he was talking to couldn't see it. "You had an informant inside an organization that one of your men has been investigating for twenty-five years, and you didn't think you should share that fact with him?"
"Stefano's role was never to feed us information on Azari. It was to feed us information on the other organizations that Azari had relationships with. Fornell wasn't part of the larger investigation. There was no reason for him to be told."
Vance shook his head in disbelief, but he didn't say a word.
"I want to help you find this guy, Leon. I do. If there's any way that I can help, I will, and you should know that. You've already got Fornell and his team, and I've got my best artist working with your witness. DiNozzo may be a cocky, annoying son of a bitch, but he's a damn good agent, and he didn't deserve this. We take care of our own, and this is no different. If you think of anything else I can do, just ask, and you've got it. Okay?"
"What do I tell Gibbs about DelMar? Because he's liked him for this from the very beginning."
"Yeah, I know, and I understand why. To tell you the truth, Leon, based on what you and Fornell have both told me, it sounds like someone knew that torturing DiNozzo that way would put Stefano in the frame. The whole damn thing smells like a set up, but I don't blame Gibbs for a second for falling for it. If I didn't know where Stefano has been for the past four days, I'd probably have believed it, too."
"So what do I tell him?"
"Tell him the truth," Charlie answered simply. "Read him in. Read them all in, even Fornell. I know how Gibbs gets when he's protecting his people, and I don't want them hunting Stefano down for something someone else did ten years ago. That wouldn't end well for anyone."
"Understood, Director Vance. Thank you. And good luck with Gibbs."
Fornell pressed the button that ended the call a bit more forcefully than he needed to, but nowhere near as forcefully as he wanted to. He looked up at Ziva, Tim, Abby and Ducky and shrugged.
"If it's any consolation, the FBI's intra-agency cooperation is no better than it's interagency cooperation is."
Tim turned away from Gibbs' desk, breaking the tight circle they'd formed around it when Director Vance's call came in, and walked over to his own. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and all of the pictures and information they'd gathered on Stefano DelMar disappeared from the plasma, leaving only a blank screen. The silence in the empty and mostly-darkened squad room was deafening.
"And back to nothing we go." Tim flopped in his chair tiredly and ran his hands through his hair.
"Not nothing, Timmy," Abby said. "It can't be nothing. You have to have something."
He rubbed his eyes quickly and leaned forward on his elbows. "Why? Have you got anything? Other than Tony's blood all over Gibbs' basement? Or the most common mold in existence on a piece of rope that could have been bought at any hardware store on the Eastern Seaboard? Or a picture of the back of some tall guy's head?"
"That's not fair."
"What about you, Ziva?" Tim stood up and stalked back toward the group. "Those fantastic, mysterious 'contacts' of yours hear anything? Find anything? Know anything?"
Ziva shook her head slowly. "No."
"Ducky? Can you tell us anything else about this guy? Other than the fact that he's not Stefano DelMar and he really hates Gibbs and Tony? Anything?"
Ducky pressed his lips together and straightened his back. "As I told you, he is a member of law enforcement, and he has direct knowledge of the Brewer investigation."
"Oh, that's right. So he might be an NCIS agent, or another employee, or he might be a D.C. Metro cop, or an FBI agent, or a reporter, or a friend of Brewer's or Kale's or ... in other words, we have a suspect pool of roughly 15,000 people. That's a big help."
"It might be a large sampling," Ducky said calmly. "But 15,000 people is better than a hundred and fifty million, don't you think?"
Tim drew a deep breath and pulled his shoulders back, and Fornell decided to step in before the obviously frazzled man went any further.
"McGee!" He pushed himself to his feet and walked around the corner of the desk. "Gibbs' office." Tim gave no indication that he'd be moving any time soon, so Fornell put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him toward the elevator. "Now!"
Tim pulled his arm away angrily and stormed out of the squad room with Fornell following a short distance behind him. When he reached the elevator, Tim turned back around and glared at the FBI agent, who smiled patiently in response and pushed the call button. When the doors opened, Fornell held his hand out as if to say, 'After you,' and Tim stepped inside.
They rode the elevator down two floors in absolute silence before Fornell hit the stop switch. Then he turned, leaned his back and shoulders against the wall, and crossed his arms.
"So," he said. "What's up?"
Tim huffed in irritation. "Nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I don't know." Fornell kept his voice light and non-accusatory. "Maybe because you're tearing around like Gibbs after someone spilled his coffee?"
"I'm fine."
Fornell shook his head. "You've been the one telling us all - from the very beginning - not to get too invested in DelMar. You've been the one saying it might not be him and we should be looking for other suspects, too. To be completely honest, McGee, I don't think I've ever seen anyone get so pissed off about being proven right before."
Tim ran his hands through his hair again. "But eliminating him leaves us with nothing. We can't question him about any of this, and even if we did, he wouldn't be able to help us. And Tony deserves to … he just … he deserves more than nothing."
Fornell studied the younger man's face as he talked. "When's the last time you slept, Tim?" He got a shrug for an answer. "Have you slept at all in the past twenty-four hours?"
"No."
"And how long had you been up before Gibbs called you last night? Sixteen, seventeen hours?"
"Twenty." Tim coughed self-consciously. "I was up early writing."
"So you're coming up on forty-eight hours with no sleep, running the way you have been? You've been making everyone else take naps, but you haven't bothered to take one yourself?"
Tim pulled away from the wall and stood straighter. "I'm the senior agent right now, and it's my …"
Fornell cleared his throat. "Not for nothing, kid, but I'm pretty sure that I'm the senior agent."
Tim bristled, and Fornell raised his hand in surrender. "I get it. You're the ranking member of Gibbs' team, and that makes you responsible for taking care of everyone else, right? Even DiNozzo?"
"Especially Tony," Tim muttered.
"Okay. Well, I'm responsible for you right now, Tim. And if there's one thing I know about Gibbs, it's that he gets really pissed when you borrow his people and don't give them back in the same condition you got them in. Which means if you work yourself into the ground, it's my ass he's going to take a chunk out of, not yours. Understand?"
Tim nodded reluctantly.
"What's going to happen now is we're going to go back upstairs, and you're going to calm down. You're going to take a breath, take a nap, and look at this whole thing with a fresh eye and a new perspective, okay?" Fornell searched Tim's face for some sign of agreement, and it didn't take him long to find it. He flipped the emergency stop switch and pushed the button to send them back up to the squad room. "And you're wrong. We don't have nothing. You've been working too hard for us to have nothing. What we have is a hell of a lot of something; we just don't understand who or what it means."
Tim closed his eyes and dropped his head. "Someone in law enforcement. Someone big. Someone who hasn't known Gibbs and Tony long but hates them already. Someone with knowledge of the Brewer investigation and access to the …"
Fornell shook his head. "Didn't I say after a nap?"
"Access to our security feed." Tim was mumbling, but his voice was just loud enough for Fornell to make out the words. "He was watching the security feed. The cameras." Tim raised his head, and excitement flashed in his eyes. "Someone with access to our security cameras!"
The doors opened, and Tim was through them and running toward his desk before Fornell even moved. "McGee!" he called out. "I thought I told you to sleep!"
The younger man was still mumbling and muttering to himself, but Fornell couldn't hear him anymore. He was typing frantically at his keyboard, and the three other members of his team were gathering around him.
"Timothy?"
"You have found something, McGee?"
"What is it, Timmy?"
Fornell walked up and took his place between them. "McGee, unless you want to spend the next six months picking up dog crap on the National Mall, you will lay the hell down and …"
Tim lifted his head as he hit one last key on his keyboard. "Law enforcement background, check. Graduated from the police academy three years ago, washed out of FLETC ten months ago. Works here, hasn't been here long. He's only been here for seven months. Knows Gibbs and Tony, was working the day we went out on the Brewer murder. Had access to the security cameras. Just so happened to abandon the monitors at the exact moment Tony was attacked, and didn't bother to review them when he came back. That's one hell of a coincidence."
"And we all know how Gibbs feels about coincidences," Ziva said.
"Who, McGee?" Fornell had all but given up on his plan of getting McGee to sleep, because it was obvious that he wasn't going to do it.
A picture popped up on the plasma, and everyone turned toward it. Fornell had never seen the man before, but it was plain that everyone else had. Abby's jaw dropped, and she looked between the picture and Tim with something close to awe on her face.
"Robert Duncan."
Fornell turned around, and he was somehow unsurprised by the wide smile that suddenly dominated Tim's expression.
"We need to find Robert Duncan."
Chapter Fourteen
"Well, that's just … I'm confused."
Gibbs sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Yeah. That was kind of how I felt when Vance told me."
"So after all these years, me thinking Stefano got away with trying to kill me, it wasn't even him?"
"According to the director of the FBI, no. It wasn't."
"Huh." Tony stood up from the edge of the bed and walked toward the bathroom. "Ya know, I remember thinking, when they told me, that it didn't seem right. It didn't seem like something Stefano would do. Ben Rossi makes a lot more sense."
"You knew DelMar pretty well, then?"
"Better than he knew me, I guess." Tony pulled his clothes out of the closet and walked back into the room. "Or not. I never would have made him for CI material. He worshipped Mikey."
Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Tony's casual and familiar use of Macaluso's first name, but he didn't call attention to it. "So what happened that day? What could have scared DelMar enough to go to the FBI?"
Tony put the clothes on the bed and looked down at them. Neither of them had thought to tell McGee what to bring, and it was obvious from the expression on his face that Tony was trying to figure out how he was going to change into the jeans and Navy sweatshirt by himself. Gibbs pushed away from the wall and walked toward him. "Drop 'em."
Tony looked up and blinked in confusion. "Um … what?"
"Pants. Drop 'em."
Tony coughed and turned back to the clothes. "I've been getting myself dressed since I was three, Gibbs. I think I can handle this."
The tone of voice was one that Gibbs hadn't heard from Tony often, but it was enough to make him raise his hands and back away. Tony needed to know that he didn't think he was incompetent. Offering to help him change his pants probably wasn't the best way to accomplish that.
Neither was standing there watching him try to do it himself.
"I'll wait in the hall." He turned to do just that, but a quiet, frustrated sigh stopped him.
"No."
Gibbs turned back with a question in his eyes. Tony held the jeans out to him, and he took them. "You're right." Gibbs stepped forward as Tony stepped out of his scrub pants. "Just remind me to headslap the hell out of McGee for this."
In an effort to distract Tony from what he obviously saw as an humiliating weakness, Gibbs turned back to the conversation they'd been having before. "So, DelMar. What scared him so much?"
Tony put his right hand on Gibbs' shoulder for balance as he stepped into the jeans. "Well, we did watch Mikey murder someone that day. That might have done it." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "It sure as hell freaked me out."
Gibbs fastened the button before he stepped back. "Who'd he kill?"
It took three attempts, but Tony managed to get the zipper up by himself. "The guy who told him I was a cop."
"Why'd he do that?"
Tony picked the sweatshirt up, looked back and forth between it and his shoulder, and sighed. Gibbs stepped forward without a word, took the sweatshirt, and pulled it over Tony's head. Tony smiled shyly in thanks as he pushed his right arm into the sleeve.
"It's a long story."
"Sounds like." Gibbs nodded his head in silent acknowledgement of Tony's gratitude. "You'll have to tell me some day."
Tony had told him some of the story before. He'd told him that the six-month op had been blown all to hell less than twelve hours before the bust, and that he'd spent the better part of two weeks in the hospital because of it. He'd never provided any specifics, and Gibbs had never pushed him for them. But the events of the past two days had made it evident that there were potentially dozens of people out there who'd be more than happy to see DiNozzo dead, and Gibbs wanted to know all of their names.
"Yeah." Tony's agreement was reluctant, but it was clear that he understood where Gibbs was coming from. "I will." He looked down at his left arm, which was still strapped tightly to his chest, and at the sleeve that dangled loose at his side. "I hate this," he said, waving the sleeve in the air. "I'm used to having two arms. This has me all off-balance."
Gibbs shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed. "You still have two arms," he pointed out. "You just can't use one of them."
"I know." He dropped the sleeve and shot Gibbs a frustrated expression. "That's what I hate about it."
Tim slammed the phone down again. "I've tried everywhere. His apartment, his mom's house, his girlfriend's place, his dad, his sister … He's not using his credit cards, he's not using his phone, and apparently, he's not driving his car. The BOLO hasn't had any hits. I can't find him." He pushed himself out of his chair in frustration and walked to Ziva's desk. "Have you had any luck?"
"I have not." She looked up at him. "Perhaps he has gone to dirt?"
"Ground. Gone to ground." He rolled his shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension between them. "But whatever you call it, he shouldn't be able to do it this well. There's nothing in his past that indicates he has the skills to just disappear."
"The BOLO has only been out for seven hours, and it was overnight."
Tim shook his head. "He hasn't been seen or heard from, or made a phone call or touched his bank account, since he left here yesterday morning."
"You believe he has help, yes?"
Tim nodded. "Just like he did here on Monday night. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is. He couldn't have been the other man who attacked Tony in the parking lot, because one - he's not tall enough, and two - he was at the front gate the whole time. Both video and witnesses put him out there. But he had to have been involved. The chances of someone calling in a fake security breach at the exact second Tony got on the elevator to leave, it's just … well, it's so unlikely it's close to impossible."
"Yet Duncan is our suspect."
"He's a person of interest." He perched himself on the edge of her desk.
"A subtle way of saying he is a suspect."
"He's not the one in the video, but he is our only lead to him. He knows who that man is."
Ziva looked distracted, as though a new angle had just occurred to her. "There are security cameras here in the squad room?"
Tim nodded. "Oh, yeah. They're all over the building."
"Do they have microphones?"
Tim tilted his head slightly. "I don't know. It would make sense, but they're all up so high, I don't know if it would do any good." He pointed at the camera that had the clearest shot of Tony's desk; it was in the corner above the stairs to Vance's office. "The video of the parking lot didn't have any audio on it. Why?"
"How did he know that Tony was leaving for the night?" Ziva stood up and walked toward Tony's desk. "He would have seen him getting on the elevator, but he could have been going anywhere. Had they called in the diversion too early, the attack would have been discovered. I do not believe they would have taken that chance."
As she spoke, she knelt down and started inspecting the cabinets behind the desk closely.
"You think they heard him say it?" He stood up and walked to Tony's desk, too. "They had a mic on him?"
She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and reached into the small space between the two file cabinets. When she held her hand up for Tim to see, there was a small wireless microphone in it. "I would say that is a certainty." She stood up and walked toward the elevator. "I will get this to Abby. And I will come back with an electronic surveillance detector."
Tim watched after her, shaking his head as she walked away. There had been a microphone in their squad room for who-knew-how-long, broadcasting their every word to who-knew-where, and none of them had known. "Unbelievable."
"Hey, McGee?"
It had been so long since Fornell had spoken that Tim had forgotten he was there. He was standing in front of the plasma next to Gibbs' desk, looking at the pieces of the investigation that they had assembled after the revelation that DelMar wasn't involved.
"Yeah?"
"What are these numbers?" As he spoke, he pointed at the scan of the handwritten note that Ducky had brought up to them.
It was a list of Tony's injuries, and next to each of them, Ducky had written which of Gibbs' tools were most likely used to inflict them. Tim hadn't been surprised to find out that the screwdriver missing from the set he had given Gibbs was the one removed from Tony's leg at the hospital. Ziva's hammer matched several of the bruises on his chest and back. Though no one would ever tell her, the cuts on Tony's arms had been made with one of the chisels Abby had given Gibbs, and the cuts on his chest were the exact same width as the blade on Ducky's plane. The most upsetting part was finding out that Tony's gift, the antique handsaw that he almost hadn't given, was used to carve Gibbs' name into his back.
There was no way anyone outside the six of them would have known where those tools had come from or who had given them to him, but it was one hell of a coincidence.
At the bottom of that note, Ducky had written four numbers - three, six, nine, and five . They were what Fornell was asking about.
"That's how many wounds Tony had." He stepped forward and explained in more detail. "Ducky thought they might have been a pattern, because they were grouped together. Three on his right arm, six on the right side of his chest, nine on the left side, and five on his left arm." He shrugged. "He thought they might mean something, but if they do, I'll be damned if I know what it is. I've tried dates, addresses, I've even fed them into a computer program that runs every combination possible against anything that might be relevant … I've got nothing."
"Do you have pictures?" Fornell seemed strangely interested in something the McGee had all but dismissed as relevant. "Of the actual groupings?"
"Pictures of Tony's arms and chest?" Fornell nodded. "Yeah. Of course I do." He walked over to his desk, shuffled through the pictures Dr. Marquardt had given them until he found the four Fornell wanted, and handed them to him. "I don't know that they'll do you much good."
Fornell tilted his head and shrugged. "Ya never know. Maybe a fresh set of eyes will see something that you don't."
Getting out of the hospital and into the Challenger took more out of him than Tony thought it should have, but he wasn't going to complain about it. He was too glad just to be out. He spent the first half of the drive to Ducky's with his eyes closed and his head leaned back, but he couldn't rest. His mind was running faster than it had in two days, and without the morphine messing with his head, he could keep up with it.
Unfortunately, his thoughts kept taking him to the same place, over and over again, and that was a place with more questions than answers.
And he hated that.
"So." He spoke hesitantly, but he opened his eyes and turned his head toward Gibbs as he did it. "Do McGee and Fornell have any other suspects?"
Gibbs didn't take his eyes off the road, but he did tighten his fingers around the steering wheel. "If they do, they haven't told me about it."
"Edgar's the only witness?" He'd had the feeling, since Gibbs had told him, that he shouldn't have been surprised to find out Edgar Collins had seen them that night. He just couldn't figure out why he thought that.
Gibbs nodded. "Fornell sent his guys back out to canvas the entire neighborhood. No one else saw anything."
He took a deep breath before he spoke again. "I don't like that, Boss. That's too much pressure for Edgar to handle. Plus, the defense attorney will …"
"I know." Gibbs' voice was tight and controlled. "But he's the only witness we've got."
Silence descended around them, and Tony turned to look out the window. He knew what he wanted to say, and he knew why. He just didn't know how. He took another deep, shaky breath and decided to dive in.
"No," he said softly. "He's not."
"Okay, then." If it was possible, Gibbs' voice was even tighter than it had been. "He's the only witness we've got who can actually remember what he saw."
"He has dementia. Who's to say that what he remembers is what really happened?"
"And you were drugged and bashed your head a time or two. You can't remember anything."
Gibbs was getting angrier by the second. Tony knew what he wanted to ask for, knew what needed to be done, but he would have to handle Gibbs carefully if he was going to get it. He moved his gaze from the side of the road to the windshield, and he lowered his voice even further.
"What if I can?"
Gibbs shook his head. "Tried that. Your lungs damn near seized up, and you could barely breathe. Remember?"
"Muscle spasms," he answered. "The potassium helped, and moving around is going to keep it from happening again."
Gibbs shook his head again, but he stayed silent.
"I've got something in here, Boss. I have to. A sound, or a smell, or …"
"The taste of your own blood?"
Tony flinched away slightly and swallowed hard. Damn, Gibbs was pissed. "Maybe. The point is, there has to be something that will jump start it. Even in the hospital, even as bad as it sucked, I got something, didn't I?"
"Yeah. You got until they shoved that needle in your neck and stopped you from ever remembering the next three hours." Gibbs sighed deeply, and it looked like he loosened his grip on the wheel. "You know how that stuff works. It's not blocking memories that exist. It stopped your mind from creating memories in the first place."
Gibbs' voice had lost a little of its edge, and Tony sat up a bit straighter in his seat. If he was starting to get Gibbs to consider what he was saying, then he needed to push a bit more.
"But that's not always true. We've had drugged victims remember things before. A lot of my memories of what happened the night of the Atlas case came back, too."
"Yeah?" Gibbs glanced over at him and raised his eyebrows. "You remember what happened between calling me from the parking lot and waking up in the sewer?"
Tony looked down at his feet. "Well, no."
Gibbs smiled tightly and turned his eyes back to the road.
"But I was unconscious when Vanessa dragged me down there. Monday night, I wasn't."
Gibbs pulled to a stop at a red light, and he looked at Tony in open disbelief. "How do you know that?"
"Because." He turned his gaze back out the side window again.The light turned green, and Gibbs pulled forward. He closed his eyes for just a second and pretended he didn't feel the shudder that went through him. "What's the point of torturing someone who can't feel it?"
Gibbs nodded, and Tony wondered if he'd seen the tremor that he'd tried to hide. He probably had. Gibbs saw everything.
"How do you feel, Tony?"
He forced a fake smile onto his face and turned away from the window. "Oh, ya know. I'm fine. Shoulder's a little sore, but other than that, I'm just …"
"DiNozzo."
He sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. He was demanding that Gibbs be honest with him, wasn't he? Why couldn't he do the same in return? What was he gaining by lying, other than making himself feel worse than he already did?
"I'm scared." He dropped his hand into his lap and looked back out the windshield. "I'm scared, and I'm weak, and I'm wobbly, and I hate it. I don't know who this guy is. I wouldn't know him if he was standing right next to me. And I can't live like that. And if I can fix it, if I can figure out who he is and make this all go away, then I have to try."
Gibbs stopped at another red light and turned toward him. Tony made himself look him straight in the eye.
"I need to do this, Boss."
Gibbs nodded once, in both understanding and agreement. "Okay."
"Why did he say three?" Fornell looked down at the photos once more, and then back up at Tim.
Tim sat back down at his desk and reached for the phone. It was time to call Duncan's mother again. "Because there are three, probably."
"No, there's not." Fornell walked toward him, and Tim put the phone down. "Look. On his left arm, he's got five, and they're all on his bicep. On his right arm, he's got three, yeah, but one of them is on his forearm."
"Two different groups." Tim stood and took the pictures from Fornell's hand. "Not a three. A one and a two."
"Right. So it's not 3-6-9-5. It's 1-2-6-9-5."
"Why didn't I notice that?"
Fornell gave him a look that would have melted butter, but he softened it into a smile. "Maybe because you haven't slept in two days?"
Tim sighed and nodded his head. "So what does that give us? I still don't know what it means."
"No, but I think I do." Fornell took the pictures back and moved to Gibbs' desk quickly. "I've seen it before. Recently, too. Give me a minute to check it out."
"Abby will call us when she has answers about the microphone." Ziva announced her return as she walked around the partition. "She also believes she is close to matching the handwriting on the note left on Tony's door."
"Why didn't you stay with her?" He stood and tailed her to her desk, but she kept walking. "Ziva?"
"The FBI just sent us the composite sketch that Edgar Collins gave them. I was told that it is vital that we see it immediately. I am going to get it."
Tim stood in the center of the bullpen with his arms at his sides, just watching the activity going on around him. Everyone was doing something. Fornell was on the phone with someone, asking about the numbers. Ziva was getting the composite. Abby was in her lab, running more DNA tests and trying to match handwriting. Even Ducky and Palmer, still down in autopsy, were going back over Marco Santori's body, trying to find some clue that they might have missed. And there he was, watching them work, adding absolutely nothing of value to the investigation.
Maybe it was time for him to take that nap after all.
He headed back to his desk to do exactly that, but just as he reached it, his phone started to ring. Hoping that it might be someone calling him back about Robert Duncan, he picked it up quickly.
"McGee."
"Agent McGee! You've got to help them!"
"What?" The voice sounded familiar, but it was panicked. It took his mind a few seconds to process who, exactly, had called him. "Who is … Duncan? Is this you?"
"Yes! Listen to me! You've got to …!"
Tim's heart skipped more than one beat. After all of his searching, the man he most needed to talk to was on the other end of the phone. There might be hope for the investigation yet.
"No, Duncan, you listen to me. We know that you were involved in the attack on Agent DiNozzo, and we need to …"
"Yes, I was. I admit it. I'll admit to anything you want, but you've got to stop him. He's going to kill them!"
"McGee!" Fornell was suddenly standing in front of his desk, waving the pictures of Tony's wounds around. "I know what these numbers are. We've gotta move."
"McGee, Agent Fornell." Ziva walked briskly around the corner, and she had something in her hands, too. "You must see this."
"Timmy!" And then Abby was standing there, bouncing up and down in excitement. "I matched it! I know who wrote the note!"
"Listen to me! He's following them to Gibbs' house."
"Why are they going to Gibbs' house?" He was getting overwhelmed with all the information flying at him, but he forced himself to concentrate on Duncan. "And how do you know that?"
"I don't know. All I know is that they are, and he called me, and he's going to kill them. It was a joke. He told me it was a joke. He just wanted to mess with him, show him that he wasn't a screw up. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. I'm on my way there now, but he's right behind me, and …"
"It's a badge number, McGee. An FBI badge number. And it belonged to …"
"Edgar Collins could not have described him so perfectly. As far as we know, he has never seen him before."
"I found it in the security logs, but it wasn't Duncan's. It was …"
They were all speaking at once, and Tim held his hand up to stop them.
"Who?!"
Four voices answered in unison, three in front of him and one through the phone.
"Bruce Rivers!"
Gibbs was sitting on the bottom of the stairs, watching Tony closely for any sign of distress. Tony, for his part, was standing stock still in the middle of the basement, right under where he and Ducky had found him. The crime scene had been released overnight, and Fornell's cleaners had a done a decent job getting rid of the blood. But at least in Gibbs' eyes, there was still a faint stain where the majority of it had pooled.
He didn't know if it was real, or if he was imagining it, but it didn't matter anyway. He'd probably always see it.
"You getting anything?"
Tony had his eyes closed, and he was holding his right arm out to his side. It brought back plenty of memories for Gibbs - all of them bad - but he had no intention of stopping him. If that was what Tony needed, then that was what they would do.
Tony shook his head slowly. "It smells like …" He stopped for a few seconds and sniffed the air. "Bleach."
Gibbs nodded slowly. "Yeah. I noticed that. Think it's going to interfere?"
Tony dropped his arm, opened his eyes, and turned toward him. "I don't know. I mean, the real smell is still there. It's just … it's deeper. Like it's buried."
"What's the real smell?" Gibbs pushed himself up from the stairs and walked toward him. The longer they were in the basement, the more he thought Tony had a real shot at remembering something that could help. It had started as soon as they'd walked into the house. Tony had frozen in the doorway and muttered, 'Not real.' It took Gibbs a few seconds to get him grounded in reality again, but Tony finally said that he remembered thinking he was imagining being in the house that night.
Gibbs' gut was turning and churning, telling him that they needed to leave, that something really bad was about to happen, but he chalked it up to residual nerves and ignored it. He couldn't deny that, at least on the surface, Tony's idea seemed to be working. If nothing else, it was giving Tony back some sense of control, and he needed that.
Tony smiled. "Sawdust." He snorted out a short laugh, then continued. "Bourbon." He closed his eyes again and let his mind focus on the scents he usually associated with the basement. "Musty, but clean. Wood stain. Eight years of memories. It smells like you. And …"
He trailed off, but Gibbs picked up on what he wasn't saying. Remembering what Ducky had said to him in the hospital, he offered a suggestion of his own.
"Safety."
"Yeah." Tony opened his eyes, but he looked down at his feet almost immediately. "Kinda lame, huh?"
He shook his head. "No. I want it to smell like that." He smiled, but only for a second. "I want my kids to feel safe here." He reached out and put his hand on Tony's shoulder. "I want you to feel safe here."
Tony lifted his head, looked him in the eye, and nodded. "I do."
It was one of the things that had bothered him the most since he'd first come down the stairs on Monday night. They'd invaded his home, yes, but they'd done more than that. They'd hurt Tony, badly, in the one place he should have felt the safest. Should have been the safest. They'd tried to destroy the sanctuary that he'd created, both for himself and for the people he cared about. And he was still afraid that they'd manage to do it.
"You sure?"
Tony nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure." He must have seen the hesitance in Gibbs' eyes, because he kept going. "They can't take this away, Boss. I won't let them."
He squeezed Tony's arm just once, then let go. "Okay, so why don't we try …?"
A loud banging from upstairs cut him off, and they both looked up toward the sound. The pounding continued, and Gibbs recognized it as someone insistently knocking on his front door. He rolled his eyes. Everyone who knew anything about him knew that the door was unlocked, which meant this was someone he didn't know well.
"Stay here," he said as he turned. "I'll be right back."
He didn't like leaving Tony alone, but it was the best choice he had. It would have taken too long to get Tony back up the stairs, and if it was just the mailman or a nosy neighbor, he'd exhaust himself for nothing. Besides, he'd only be gone for a minute. Just long enough to get rid of whoever that was trying to beat his door in.
He put his hand on the gun at his waist as he opened the door, and then he stopped in surprise when he saw who was standing on the other side. He recognized him immediately, but he had no idea why the man McGee had gotten fired was standing on his doorstep.
"Duncan? What the hell …?"
"You have to leave." The man's face was red, as though he'd just run a long distance, but Gibbs could see his car outside. He was frantic, nervous, bouncing from one foot to the other as he took a few steps into the house. "You can't stay here. It's not safe."
"Get out of my …"
"He's coming. He's right behind me! Where's DiNozzo? You've gotta get him out of here before …"
If the gunshot surprised him, the suddenly lifeless body that toppled into his foyer surprised him even more. And the man who was standing on the sidewalk, holding the gun that shot had been fired from, left him absolutely floored.
"Rivers! What the hell are you doing?"
Rivers stepped around Duncan's body, sparing only a glance at the blood that was seeping out from what remained of the man's throat and spreading all over the hardwood floor.
"It was him," he said simply. "Duncan. He's the one who attacked Tony in the parking lot."
"What? How did he …?"
"He did it." Rivers was wearing a damned annoying smile that Gibbs wanted nothing more than to slap off his face. He was sure it was meant to be ingratiating, but it was grating. "He set Tony up. He helped them get into the Yard, and he told them when he was heading to his car. He was behind the whole thing. He was coming here to finish him off."
There was something not right about what Rivers was saying, and he knew it, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He should have been able to think a bit more clearly, but there was a dead man bleeding all over his floor, and the one lead that they might have had to who tried to kill Tony was gone.
"So you just killed a suspect?" The smile fell from Rivers' face, and his eyes narrowed. "You stupid son of a …"
"I was protecting Tony." His voice had gone from irritating to low and tight. "Isn't that what you want? Is that what you always want? Protect Tony at all costs?"
"Not like that!" Gibbs' phone started to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket. "Put that damn gun away before I shoot you." He glanced down at the screen and flipped the phone open.
"McGee …"
White-hot pain exploded in the back of his head, and everything went black.
Tony heard the sound of raised voices from upstairs, but he didn't get alarmed until the he heard the gunshot.
He started toward the stairs, but he realized quickly that he'd be of no use to Gibbs with only one arm. He pulled his shirt up, undid the straps securing his left arm to his chest, and let it fall to his side. Pain shot down into his fingers and up into his shoulder, but he gritted his teeth and ignored it.
The voices upstairs had grown even louder, and they were starting to sound angry. Then Gibbs starting cussing. He had to get up there.
It cost him precious seconds to push his arm into his sleeve, and he bit off a cry of pain as he straightened muscles that hadn't moved in thirty-six hours, but he managed. He moved to the stairs and started up as quickly as he could. He had to hold the railing to keep from toppling over, but he forced himself to keep climbing.
The voices from upstairs had stopped. The house was silent. He had just reached the landing when a familiar face appeared in the doorway.
"Hey there, Golden Boy."
He'd been wrong about needing smells to help him remember what had happened Monday night. He'd needed a sounds. Specifically, he'd needed to hear that voice speak those two words.
"Bruce. You …"
He saw the gun in Rivers' hand as he raised it, and he felt it when it came down against the side of his face. He knew he was falling, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The last sound he heard was his own voice screaming as his left shoulder slammed into the concrete floor.
Part Eight