New Chapter of Nightfall
Note: The author would like to express her deepest apologies for any and all typos to be found within this chapter, as she found herself typing it up until the wee hours of the morning and couldn't be bothered to spellcheck it properly beforehand.
Also, this chapter is really long, and will most likely be divided in two before it's posted at ff.net...whenever that happens.
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In a perfect world, Timothy McGee would have been tucked up cozily beneath the covers of his bed, drifting lazily off to sleep. In a really perfect world, there might have been another someone lying beside him, tucked in just as snugly as they clung to his body. In a not-so-perfect but manageable world (or what McGee happened to call “real life”), he would have been tucked up slightly less comfortably beneath questionable hotel sheets on a lumpy hotel mattress, counting the cracks in the ceiling and hoping Gibbs didn’t get it into his head to wake his agents up before dawn…again.
In this current reality, however, McGee was not in a bed at all, let alone reclining comfortably as he floated off to sleep. He was sitting upright in the front seat of a rental car parked across the street from the nightclub known as Cloud Nine. In his hands he clutched night-vision goggles through which he occasionally peered, with eyes kept forcibly open through a dosage of caffeine so high that it probably wasn’t even legal in this state. From his right came the sound of Abby breathing faintly as she dozed in passenger seat beneath a tattered blanket they had manage to scrounge up. McGee tried not to feel bitter as he glanced over at her, sleeping peacefully. She had offered to stay awake with him, but he, always trying to be the gentleman, had insisted she get some sleep. After all, keeping an eye on the black Jaguar believed to belong to their suspect wasn’t her job; it was his.
Since he was already working on trying not to be bitter, McGee also tried not to think too hard about the situation at hand. The scenario was this: a car all but positively identified as one belonging to their suspect was parked in front of the nightclub. The simplest, most straightforward solution would have been to go inside and grab him.
Honestly, sometimes McGee wondered how it was even possible that after these past years spent working for Gibbs that his brain could still even waste time with the simple, straightforward solution.
The problem in this case was that they currently had a local authority breathing down the backs of their necks, and Gibbs was determined not to let him have an inch more than he had to. Specifically, he was interested in not having this Sergeant Holcomb there when they finally cornered their suspect. He refused to say why, but McGee had a sinking feeling that he already knew; in case it was Tony (which McGee still adamantly insisted to himself was not, could not be, the case) Gibbs wanted a chance to try and talk to him before taking him in. And that was a chance he would never get with the head of the Boston homicide squad standing there with his gun ready and aimed. So they were going to have to play with this one out slowly instead of immediately calling in the cavalry.
Which rounded them back to the present, with McGee’s orders being not to lose the car and/or whoever might end up inside it. Once Gibbs was certain Holcomb didn’t have his eye on them anymore they’d be ready to swoop in and make an arrest, but until then McGee was going to have to watch and wait.
And wait. And wait.
Yeesh, McGee found himself thinking at about ten past one. The nightclub parking lot was all but empty, and the black Jaguar still hadn’t left. Whoever’s in there must be a real party animal.
Uh huh, some much snider part of McGee burbled up from deep inside of him, and who do you know who fits that description to a “t”? As in, a capital “t”, which stands for…
“Shut up,” McGee hissed vehemently under his breath. It occurred to him that he was talking to himself, and he realized upon examining the idea that it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it probably should have. He stole another furtive glance over at Abby, checking to see that she wasn’t awake to bear witness to the event of him losing his mind.
At which point he saw movement from the nightclub parking lot, and McGee immediately snapped his head back around and pressed the goggles to his eyes. Two people were approaching the Jaguar, a man and a woman. Despite the assistance of the goggles, McGee couldn’t quite make out the details of their faces from such a distance away, but he could pick up a few other things. The woman was fair-haired, wearing a slinky dress and stiletto heels under a dark suit jacket that was probably a donation from the man. The man’s clothes were dark in color, dress slacks to match the jacket and a button-down dress shirt. From what McGee could see, he appeared to be a fair-skinned brunette.
And the newest NCIS agent on Gibbs’ team tried to tell himself that it was just his imagination that even without a face to see, the man who now held the door of the Jaguar open and helped the woman (who was teetering a little drunkenly) climb inside of it looked very, very familiar indeed.
_________
“Nice hotel,” McGee observed, stealing a glance around the lacquered walls and rich upholstery of the lobby.
“Uh huh,” Gibbs replied indifferently. He kept walking towards the front desk, Kate staying close by him. McGee looked back from where a particularly opulent tapestry had grabbed his attention just in time to see the other two agents walking away without him, and he quickly hurried to catch up.
“I mean, seriously,” McGee murmured to Kate, not ready to let the subject drop, “this has got, what, a six star? Five star, at least.”
“The kind of place where a black Jaguar wouldn’t draw too much attention sitting in the parking lot,” Kate reminded him.
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Excuse me,” Gibbs had reached the front desk and was now talking to the man behind it. He pulled out the picture of Tony again. “Does this man have a room here? He probably came in late last night.”
“Information about our patrons, sir, is strictly confidential and…” the man cut off mid-sniff as Gibbs flashed his badge. “Do you have a warrant?” he asked begrudgingly after he’d had a moment to compose himself.
“No,” Gibbs said casually, leaning against the desk. “Would you like me to get one? Of course, I’d have to leave my agents here in case our suspect showed up.” He jerked his head meaningfully in McGee and Kate’s direction. “They’d probably hang around the lobby, interview all of your staff and guests…”
“He came in early last night,” the clerk snapped, getting the message. “Paid for the room for two nights, took the key, but didn’t go up.” He sniffed again. “He came back much later, accompanied by a…friend.”
“A young lady friend?” Gibbs prompted.
“Yes,” the clerk scowled. There was a pause.
“The room number?” Gibbs finally demanded, giving the man a look of pure impatience.
“I’ll get it for you,” the clerk grumbled, tapping a few keys on his computer to bring it up. “Here we are. Seventh floor, room 703. One-bedroom suite with a balcony view.”
“Could I get a key?” Gibbs’ tone made it very clear that, despite his phrasing, it was far from a request. The clerk gave a long-suffering sigh and thumbed through the desk drawer for a spare.
“What do you suppose that runs for?” McGee muttered to Kate. The two of them had come up closer to the desk, directly behind Gibbs. “In a place like this, I’ll bet even two nights is…”
“A significant chunk of my yearly salary,” Kate finished for him, looking impressed in a begrudging sort of way. Meanwhile, the clerk had produced a card key, which Gibbs took and wordlessly handed over to McGee.
“And the credit card number?” Gibbs didn’t even bother looking up as he got out his notepad and prepared to write.
“There isn’t one,” the man behind the desk told him bluntly. That caused Gibbs to look up. “He paid in cash,” he elaborated. McGee’s jaw dropped open and Kate made a small choking sound.
“And that didn’t strike you as odd?” Gibbs asked in the soft tone he used when he was forcibly restraining himself from yelling at someone.
“This hotel caters to quite a few wealthy clientele, sir,” the clerk told him, the faintest of wry grins playing around beneath his mustache. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but having money does little to quell one’s eccentricities. If anything, it promotes them. A patron wanting to cover his bill in cash upfront is quite possibly the least bizarre thing I’ve seen here over the years. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he turned away smoothly, “I have work to do.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” Kate exclaimed as they got into the elevator on their way to the seventh floor. “Who carries that kind of money on them?”
“Well, if he knew he’d have to check into a hotel and didn’t want it to be traced, it’d make sense,” McGee remarked.
“The clerk said he only checked in here last night,” Gibbs muttered. Kate and McGee turned to look at him.
“Um, so?” McGee asked tentatively.
“So if the valet from that other nightclub was telling the truth, he’s been here for at least four nights,” Gibbs stated. “Where was he staying before?”
“Another hotel?” Kate offered.
“Good luck finding out which one,” McGee sighed. “Boston’s not exactly lacking for hotels.”
“Probably also paid for that one in cash,” Gibbs guessed.
“Again, who carries that kind of money with them?” Kate sounded borderline disgusted. “Who even has that kind of money to carry with them?” McGee could only shrug. Gibbs appeared too lost in his own thoughts to answer. The elevator door slid open with a musical chime a second later, and the three agents filed out. It didn’t take them long to locate room 703. Kate pressed her ear to the door.
“I hear the shower going,” she told McGee and Gibbs softly. “Doesn’t sound like anyone else is moving.
“The girl left?” McGee inferred.
“Or he killed her,” Gibbs said bluntly. He took the card back from McGee and slid it smoothly through the door, unlocking it, and he pushed it open. Gibbs walked through the door without pause, not drawing his gun. After exchanging a look, Kate and McGee did the same. The room was done in shades of dark blue with golden trim, every bit as elegant and expensive-looking as the hotel lobby down below. The bed looked like it had been slept in, the sheets and comforter strewn about.
“Well, I don’t see any blood,” Kate muttered softly, pulling the sheets aside to look. “Or anything else, for that matter.”
“Looks like someone had a good time last night,” McGee pointed out an empty bottle of champagne and two glasses sitting on the desk.
“And how,” Gibbs quipped, spotting three used condoms in the wastebasket. Before either of the other agents could reply, the sound of the shower running from the bathroom abruptly stopped. The three agents froze, then turned to face the door just in time for it to swing open and a curvaceous bleached blonde clad in nothing but a towel walked out.
“Oh!” she squealed, stopping dead with wide eyes. The NCIS agents did likewise.
“Um…hi,” McGee finally stuttered lamely, when the silence got to be too much to bear. The blonde blinked at him in confusion, slowly turning to look at the other two agents as well.
“Are…are you Antony’s friends?” she finally asked, apparently unable to come up with any other solution. “Because he’s not here.”
“Yes ma’am, we are,” Gibbs replied without missing a beat. His face was a complete, confident blank, which was more than could be said for the expressions of Kate and McGee. McGee was gaping like a fish, while Kate stole a wide-eyed look over at him and mouthed “Antony?” in obvious confusion. “Do you know where we could find him?” Gibbs continued, seemingly oblivious to the state of his agents.
“Oh, no, sorry,” the blonde told him, seeming to calm down once there was an explanation for the strangers in her room. She didn’t even question it in the slightest…it was quite apparent that describing her personality would probably involve the phrase “not too bright”.
“He didn’t tell you where he was going?” Gibbs pressed her gently.
“Nope,” the blonde shook her head, adjusting her towel slightly as she sat herself on the end of the bed. “We just came back here, played for a few hours” (she smirked and lowered her eyelashes in a sultry way at the word “played”), “and then he left. Said I could use the hotel room for the rest of today, though.” She gave a flirty giggle and mussed with her hair. “Don’t know why…it’s not like he had anything to make up for.” Her face took on an expression of lustful reminiscence. “Not after last night. Oooh…”
“His car is still in the parking lot,” Kate finally found the tongue to speak, mercifully cutting the other woman off before she could go into any details.
“Well, he’s not here,” the blonde told her, shrugging carelessly. “Don’t ask me.”
“Thank you for your time,” Gibbs said politely. The three agents quickly filed out of the apartment and into the hall.
“When you find Antony, tell him Jessica says hi,” the blonde called after them eagerly.
“Will do, ma’am,” Gibbs told her before pulling the door closed. The three of them stood there in the hall for a moment.
“Well, that was…odd,” McGee blinked slowly, his expression unreadable.
“And more than little mortifying,” Kate chimed in.
“She seemed nice,” Gibbs remarked in an offhand way that made it impossible to tell whether or not he was being serious.
“Not exactly the brightest bulb on the tree,” Kate muttered as they made their way back to the elevator.
“A pretty face, a buxom bod, and not much going on upstairs,” Gibbs summed up, punching the button for the first floor.
“Yeah,” McGee bit his lip as he begrudgingly said aloud what they were all thinking, “just the way Tony liked them.”
_________
“One week ago, our first three suspects picked up the call girl known as Valentine, took her back to a hotel room they had already paid for, had sex with her, and killed her,” Kate stood in front of the whiteboard in the room at the Boston police department that the NCIS agents had temporarily claimed as their own. McGee and Abby sat across from her at the conference table, watching as she gestured to the rough timeline she had made on the board. “Two days later, our fourth suspect,” Kate pointed with the briefest of grimaces to where she had taped Tony’s picture to the board, “arrived in town and picked up a rental car, the black Jaguar we’ve been tailing.”
“I talked to the people at the rental agency,” McGee put in as he absently tapped his pen against the tabletop. “The rental fee was paid for in cash, and the car was checked out for a week. Didn’t bother buying the insurance from the agency, and didn’t hesitate about putting down a deposit.”
“What’d they say when you showed them Tony’s picture?” Kate asked quietly, looking as if she didn’t really want to hear the answer. “Were they able to identify him?”
“Sort of,” McGee winced. “They said it ‘looked like him’.”
“Well, that doesn’t help us any,” Kate frowned. “What about you, Abby? Able to get anything off of the car?”
“Fingerprints,” Abby offered. She looked oddly hesitant. “All over the steering wheel and the dashboard. I ran them and…” She bit her lip. “Well, they’re all Tony’s again. Mostly. I picked up a few partials that matched those other prints on the second body.”
“So the other three were probably in that car at some point,” McGee inferred.
“You find anything else?” Kate asked.
“Some blood on the floor by the driver’s seat,” Abby confessed. “It’s male and human, but other than that unidentified.”
“How much blood?” McGee gulped.
“A couple drops, so I don’t know,” Abby shrugged. “Could be a paper cut, could be splatter from someone getting their throat torn out.”
“Terrific,” Kate turned back to the whiteboard and crossed out the few lines she had jotted down about the car. “Well, it’s in our custody now, so obviously the car isn’t a lead anymore. Okay, back to the timeline. After our…fourth suspect,” Kate phrased carefully, still hesitant about saying Tony’s name, “got the car, he went down to the Red Hot Spot nightclub. Went in alone, came out with two unidentified girls.” She looked back at McGee and Abby. “Neither of them match the description of our one female suspect, and so far no dead bodies have turned up that sound like them either.”
“What’d I miss?” The door swung open and Gibbs sauntered in.
“You lose him?” Abby turned around in her seat to gaze curiously at her boss. The reason Gibbs had been MIA at the beginning of their meeting was because he was otherwise occupied trying to shake a certain Boston sergeant off of his tail.
“Oh, I lost him almost half an hour ago,” Gibbs told her coolly, finding a seat at the head of the table.
“Then why’d you take so long to come back?” McGee asked, puzzled.
“I had to get coffee,” Gibbs held up a Starbucks cup, giving McGee a look like it was perfectly obvious. Abby grinned.
“Uh, right,” McGee muttered as he looked away again, suitably cowed.
“Another dead hooker turned up, all the way across town,” Gibbs informed them all. “No ID on the body, and none of the local girls recognize her.”
“What’s she got to do with our case?” Kate asked in a business-like tone, uncapping a marker in preparation to add to the whiteboard.
“Not a damn thing,” Gibbs shrugged as he took a sip of coffee. “But Holcomb thinks she does.”
“Ah, the old bait and switch,” Abby realized, giving Gibbs a look of admiration. “Very crafty.”
“Right,” Kate sighed as she put the marker away. “So, back to the timeline. Sometime between his appearance at the first nightclub and the murder of the second prostitute our fourth suspect must have met up with the other three, because they all worked together to kill her.”
“How did he meet them?” Gibbs asked quietly, drawing the attention of the others.
“Maybe he already knew them?” Abby offered. She had her arms folded on the edge of the table and her head resting to one side on top of them. “Goths, wannabe vampires…those kind of people tend to travel in their own private circles.”
“But what the hell would Dinozzo be doing moving in those circles?” Gibbs muttered darkly to himself, frowning in deep thought as he took another sip from his cup. It wasn’t the kind of question he was looking for an answer to from the others, assuming they even could have provided one. McGee gave the two girls a look that spoke volumes, mainly along the lines of “He’s getting worse”. Abby scowled at him disapprovingly. Kate did nothing. She honestly didn’t know what she thought about this case anymore. All she knew was that she wanted it solved, and fast.
Maybe then she’d be able to sleep well at night.
“A day after the second murder,” she continued on with her timeline like nothing had happened, “or, last night, as the case may be, our suspect showed up at the Cloud Nine night club, picked up our new friend Jessica, and took her back to an expensive hotel room that was apparently rented just for the occasion.”
“She said his name was Antony,” another distracted murmur from Gibbs had them all looking again. “Why’s he going by that name now?”
“You know, that is weird,” Abby commented, lifting her head off the table. “I mean, if you’re going for an alias, you’d think you’d want something a little harder to trace than a variation on your own name.”
“Maybe she just heard him wrong,” McGee suggested.
“Maybe,” Gibbs agreed. “After all, seems pretty obvious they didn’t do much talking.” McGee gave a strangled sort of cough and looked away, his expression a little flushed.
“Anything else?” he quickly asked, looking back at Kate.
“Not really, no,” Kate sighed dejectedly. “We’ve hit dead ends on everything. There are no leads left to follow.”
“How are we going to find them again?” McGee said in desperation.
“I know how,” Gibbs got up calmly.
“You do?” Kate and McGee asked as one. Abby merely raised her eyebrows.
“According to what the locals tell me,” Gibbs explained, making his way to the whiteboard and taking up a marker, “this is what’s considered the nightclub district.” He circled a large square area on the pinned-up map of the city. “Dinozzo was first seen at this club here,” he drew a smaller circle inside the square, “and then last night at this club here.” He drew a line between the two points to illustrate their distance. “At completely opposite ends of the board.”
“Well, sure,” McGee stated. “Makes it less likely he’ll be seen by the same people that way.”
“Ah, but there’s such a thing as being too careful, McGee,” Gibbs told him. He waved a hand at the squared-off area. “In theory, he could next appear at almost any club in here, making his next move impossible to predict. But he won’t, because he’s limiting himself. He’s trying to put as much space between where he is and where he’s been before as possible.” Gibbs drew two lines diagonally upwards from the two opposite sides of the nightclub district and made a circle there, forming a crude triangle. “There’s really not as many options as you’d at first think.”
“So we narrow down the search to clubs within this area,” Kate concluded out loud, tracing the triangle with her eyes, “and then…”
“We start surveillance of them,” Gibbs finished. He took a final swig from his coffee cup and tossed it into the wastebasket, a perfect slam-dunk. “Tonight.”
_________
Kate stood in front of the doorway to the trendy club, rubbing her arms against the chill of the night. The light jacket over dark wine-colored dress and matching heels was really too thin for this kind of weather, but it guaranteed she didn’t look out of place while on surveillance. It was the kind of outfit favored by just another woman out for a night on the town, the part of the character Kate was currently playing for the fourth night in a row.
Of course, it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t seen anything on the first night. Neither was it unexpected when their was no sign of their suspect on the second. By the third night, however, Kate had allowed herself to hope.
Now here it was, just one night later, and she was already losing that hope again.
She tried not to think about it. Set her shoulders determinedly, played with her hair, and made her way inside. Smiled at the bouncer as she paid her cover charge. Plastered a look over her face like she didn’t have a care in the world. Like she was just another single woman out looking to dance, have a few drinks, and maybe pick up a cute guy if she got really lucky.
This was her job. This was what she did, what she was paid to do. This was her duty.
So it didn’t matter that something deep inside of her was ready to scream at the utter futility of it all. Didn’t matter that she was equal parts dreading both finding their suspect and not finding him. Didn’t matter that she didn’t honestly didn’t know anymore whether the idea of coworker still being alive filled her with hope or fear.
For a little while, Kate milled. Sat at the bar for a bit under the guise of waiting for someone. Moved slowly back and forth across the throng on the dance floor. Politely turned down four offers to get her a drink. Occasionally, she’d move off to a more shadowy part of the club so she could talk to the others on her earpiece without drawing odd looks. Gibbs and McGee were having no more luck than she was. Ducky and Abby were out sitting point in the van; through their conversation it was inadvertently revealed that they’d started a game of cards, news which Gibbs didn’t react very well to. Kate “accidentally” lost the signal for a few minutes so that she missed the chewing-out; tonight, she just wasn’t in the mood.
The night was half-over, the club in full swing. It was a little over four hours until sunrise. So far, none of the suspects had been seen at any time other than night; Abby had declared them to be “purists” and “hardcore vamps” that probably didn’t set a foot outside into the light of day. Not looking forward to the remaining hours of surveillance waiting for her, Kate ducked into the ladies room to freshen up and catch her breath. She touched up her make-up, hoping that the tired look in her eyes was just a trick of the garish florescent lights in the bathroom. She killed a few more minutes fiddling with her earpiece to make sure it was hidden and checking to see that her gun and badge were still safe in her jacket where she’d stored them. Finally, there was nothing left to do but return to the club.
For a minute she paused, blinded by the much darker lighting of the club and deafened by the pounding music on the dance floor. As soon as she had her bearings, Kate started to move towards the back of the club where a few couples lurked out of sight at their tables. She didn’t get very far, however, before she was stopped dead in her tracks. Underneath the booming baseline of the dance mix, she could just make out the tail end of a very familiar laugh. Kate slowly turned, looking back towards the bar from which the sound had emanated.
He was sitting near the far end of the bar, chatting up the female bartender. It was obvious she was reacting to him, leaning in just a little further than was necessary to hear him over the music and giving him a flirty smile as she refilled his drink. He was wearing the same leather jacket from the other night over a dark blue dress shirt and black slacks. When he moved his hand to gesture as he spoke, there was the faintest flash of a silver wristwatch. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of what even Kate could tell were designer shades, but even then there was no mistaking him this time.
In the end, it was that mischievous grin that really gave it away.
“Gibbs, I have a sighting,” Kate spoke softly into her earpiece, trying to fight off the feeling like she had just been given a hard right hook straight to the gut. She still had a job to do.
“Which one?” Gibbs’ voice asked her in a crisp, firm tone.
“It’s him,” was all Kate could say. Gibbs didn’t ask anything else, and neither did McGee. She wondered distantly if it was the shake to her voice or something else that gave it away.
“Don’t move. We’re on our way.” That was Gibbs again, all business even as the world was coming to an end. Kate nodded even though they couldn’t see her, looking back at the bar. The bartender had moved reluctantly on to deal with some of her other patrons, and he was leaning resting one hand on the bar top as he took a swig of his drink, still grinning to himself.
“Tony,” Kate whispered inaudibly to herself, not wanting to believe her eyes, but knowing full well that she had to. This wasn’t some darkened alley. She wasn’t feeling the heat of the moment, stress tricking her into seeing what wasn’t really there. This was reality, clear-cut and simple. Her supposedly deceased coworker Anthony Dinozzo, sometimes a colossal pain in the rear and sometimes a reluctant friend, was alive and well after being believed to be dead for over a very long year.
Alive, and now a prime suspect in a woman’s brutal murder. That was the kind of thing that tended to taint what should have otherwise been an overwhelming sense of disbelieving joy.
Suddenly, Kate saw Tony stiffen in his seat, like he had suddenly heard someone call his name. Of course, he couldn’t have; she hadn’t even made enough sound to hear it herself. Not to mention she was standing practically across the room of a nightclub filled with music loud enough to drown out any conversation that wasn’t taking place directly in front of your face. But still he set his drink down and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder.
To look directly at her.
Kate couldn’t quite interpret whatever emotion it was that next came over his face, but it certainly wasn’t a happy one. She blinked out of pure reflexive shock, and the next thing she knew he was out of his seat and all but sprinting towards the door.
“Stop!” Kate yelled, by pure instinct using the voice of an NCIS agent calling for a suspect to halt rather than the voice she would normally use to call to a friend. She took off after him, moving as fast as she could in a dress that came just past her knees and a pair of high heels. He wasn’t that far ahead of her, making his way towards the parking garage next door. Probably where his car had been parked, since the club’s small lot had been filled up almost as soon as it had opened. Kate spared the briefest of moments inside her mind to wonder what kind of car he was driving now. Another Jaguar? A sports car, maybe?
Seven flights of stairs at a breakneck speed, and Kate hoped to God that they stopped soon as she panted heavily around the stitch that was starting to form in her side. Obviously Tony had been spending some of the past year working out, because heels or no heels there was no way the Tony she had known could have kept this far ahead of her for this long. Finally there came the sound of a door being shoved open, and Kate rushed after him, sucking in a sharp breath of air as the cold of the night descended upon her again. He didn’t slow down and neither did she.
“Tony, wait!” Kate yelled, not using her professional voice anymore. Now she was a friend, pleading for attention. “Tony!” Behind her she heard the door slam open again, and two pairs of feet came pounding across the concrete floor. McGee and Gibbs, it had to be. Kate was too grateful to wonder how they’d managed to find her. Maybe they’d arrived just in time to catch sight of her and Tony sprinting across the tarmac, or maybe there was a homing device in her earpiece that Abby had neglected to mention.
“Dinozzo!” Kate couldn’t help but feel mildly offended that the sound of Gibbs’ voice succeeded where hers had failed. Tony froze, coming to a dead halt and slowly turning back around to face them. Kate stopped as well. Behind her, she could hear the other two agents as they slowed to a walk and continued forward. Tony took one hesitant step backwards, and then stopped. There was a conflicted look on his face, like he really wanted to run but something was holding him back.
“Tony…” Kate took a few slow, careful steps towards him, looking at him beseechingly.
“Stay away,” Tony snapped, the harshness of his voice cutting her off and stopping her dead in her tracks. He didn’t move away again, but there was a sense of distance around him that more than made up for it. “Just…just stay away from me, all right?”
“Why?” Kate asked sadly. In the dim lighting of the parking garage it was impossible not to notice how pale Tony had gotten, his dark jacket and glasses standing out even more prominently against his skin. Despite the coldness of the night Kate was sweating after their dash, but it didn’t look as of he was. Kate amended her earlier observation from “working out” to “working out a lot”, because she couldn’t even see that he was breathing hard.
“Just go away,” Tony pressed, looking pained. Behind her, Kate could hear that Gibbs and McGee had stopped moving. She guessed they were probably a few yards back from where she was, most likely wary of crowding around Tony in case it pushed him to bolt. “Forget you even saw me.”
“Tony, no,” Kate insisted, using her best talking-a-jumper-down-from-the-roof voice, even as her heart quickened its pace for no reason at all. There was something about the way Tony’s voice sounded, something about that eerie air of finality. “Come back with us. We can talk this over.”
“Come back with you? Talk this over?” Tony stared at her in disbelief. “Are you serious?” His face abruptly changed; now he looked angry, annoyed. “Oh, come on. Haven’t you realized what’s going on here? What’s happened?” He glared at her and Kate surprised herself by having to use her willpower to keep from taking a step back. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet. Don’t tell me you haven’t guessed. Not after what you saw.”
“What do you mean?” Kate asked without fully meaning to. She had been playing a mind game with herself, keeping from believing that she had actually seen Tony that night in the alley. Even after realizing he was still alive, she had told herself there had to be some logical explanation that ended in her not really seeing what she knew she had seen. Now she was filled with a sense of dread as she realized she was backed into a corner against reality, knowing that what Tony was about to say would cause her last desperate hopes to crumble and die.
“You saw me, Kate,” Tony said coldly. “You saw me kill that woman.” Even knowing what had been about to come, the words still felt like a slap to the face. Kate staggered back, one hand pressed over her mouth as she stared at the ground. Behind her she heard a sharp intake of breath from Gibbs and a flat-out gasp from McGee. She didn’t full register either of them, her head reeling.
“Well now,” a smirking voice came from the shadows. Kate’s head snapped back up as Sergeant Holcomb calmly sauntered into view, his gun pointed right at Tony. He pulled a toothpick out of his mouth where he had been chewing on it and flicked it away. “I’d say this wraps things up quite nicely.”
“Holcomb, you bastard” Gibbs hissed. Kate looked over her shoulder at the cold fury on her boss’ face.
“Now, now Agent Gibbs,” Holcomb raised his hands slightly as if in surrender, “no need to get all upset that you’re not quite as good as keeping people off track as you’d like. Nice effort though, by the way. The murder of that other prostitute was a clever red herring.” Gibbs started to walk forward. “Ah ah ah,” Holcomb chided. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He clicked the safety on his gun off meaningfully, the click echoing in the parking garage with surreal loudness.
Gibbs stopped, face a twisted mask of fury at his current helplessness. Short of actually pulling a gun on the cop, he and McGee were too far away to do anything. The only one close enough to stand a chance of taking Holcomb down was Kate, and even then it was hopeless. She was just far away enough that the police sergeant would have plenty of time to fire the kill shot, maybe even two.
“Now are you going to come in quietly, boy, or am I going to have to do this the hard way?” Holcomb demanded, his eyes locked steadily on his target. Kate found herself unable to look away from the scene playing out in front of her. For the second time since this case had started, she found herself wishing it were all a nightmare even as she knew it wasn’t. She prayed that she would wake up at any given moment, even as she knew there was nothing to wake up from.
“Put the gun down, you idiot,” Tony snapped. He sounded irritated, like the cop was doing something incredibly stupid and pointless. Kate gaped at him. If this had all been happening back when they were still working together, this would have been the point where she asked Tony if he was crazy.
The sick part of it, however, was that she honestly couldn’t be sure what the answer to that question was anymore. She had seen Tony kill, seen him bite a woman’s neck and then bash her brains out against the side of a brick wall. It was an action that had no justifiable purpose, no rational meaning. Maybe he really had gone insane. It would be, sadly, probably the most logical explanation for everything that had happened.
“Excuse me?” Holcomb asked. He sounded bemused. Well, at least he thought it was funny; Kate was practically ready to scream out loud, herself. Bloody visions of Tony lying facedown on the concrete with blood pooling out from between his eyes danced through her head.
Against her will, she remembered again her dream.
“I said, put. The gun. Down,” Tony repeated, biting off every syllable with a vehemence that betrayed the fact that he was losing patience by the second. “Now.”
“Frankly, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be giving orders,” Holcomb said lazily. He took a step forward, the gun still aiming dead on at Tony. “Now why don’t you put your hands over your head like a good boy? I’m sure you know the drill; you’ve probably had to run it enough times yourself from the other side.”
“Do you even know what you’re threatening to shoot, buddy?” Tony demanded. He sounded positively irate, like Holcomb was the world’s biggest fool. “You either drop that gun right now, or so help me…”
“I’m not going to ask you again,” Holcomb snapped, getting into some irritation of his own. He steadied his hands on the trigger. “Now, I’m gonna count to three.” Kate was faintly aware that she had stopped breathing. “One…two…”
Tony whipped off his sunglasses, glaring dead-on at Holcomb. His crimson eyes burned wickedly in the faint lights set overhead. He growled slightly, baring his lips in a snarl to reveal a nasty looking set of gleaming white fangs.
“Holy mother of God,” the cop swore in one breathless rush of horror. Tony took a step towards him. ““Y-you…you…” It sounded like Holcomb was having a hard time breathing all of a sudden. "You really are a mother-fucking v-!” His hand shook as he clutched at his gun. Kate knew he was going to fire, or at least he intended to try. He never got that chance.
It was a lucky thing her eyes were frozen wide in horror and shock, because if Kate had blinked, she would have missed it. Tony rushed at Holcomb in one swift, graceful movement, grabbing the cop by the shoulder and wrist and forcing the gun out of his hand. Holcomb let out a scream of terror as his weapon clattered to the floor. His shrill cry was cut off abruptly, however, in favor of a sickening, loud crack as Tony grabbed the side of his head and twisted, snapping his neck like a twig.
Kate let out a wild, animal moan of terror, backing away rapidly with both hands clutched tightly over her mouth. No denying it now. No more fake-outs, no more lies. Just like she hadn’t been able to deny that it was really Tony in the club a short while before, now there was no denying what it had become.
It didn’t matter that it was surreal. It didn’t matter that it was impossible. She had seen him drink that woman’s blood, seen him kill with a strength no human being was supposed to possess. He had the fangs and the eyes of something no longer human. Something no longer alive. He was a monster. A vampire. A soulless, damned, inhuman monster.
He wasn’t Tony anymore.
Somehow, Kate found herself with her back pressed hard against the nearby wall, her eyes staring blankly in terror. Distantly, she was aware of Gibbs and McGee standing still in their places, frozen like a pair of statues as they gaped at Holcomb’s motionless body. Tony stood over the dead cop, shaking his hand slightly like he had touched something dirty. He still had that irritated look about him, but other than that he was behaving as if nothing was wrong. As if he hadn’t just killed a man with his bare hands.
As if he didn’t even care.
“They never listen,” Tony sighed faintly to himself, giving a faint shake of his head. Like it was all just some bothersome nuisance. He looked up, and blinked as he caught sight of Kate’s expression. “Hey, are you okay? Kate?” He almost, almost looked like Tony, the real Tony, and that was made it even worse. “Kate?” And then to her utmost horror he began to move towards her.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All she could do was stare as that…thing, that red-eyed creature came walking towards her, one hand slightly out-stretched, faint concern knitting his features. He was going to come to her, he was going to touch her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn’t reach her gun, tucked away within her jacket pocket as it was. Not that that would have done any her good anyway; she was no horror movie buff (not like Tony, some ironic part of her brain said faintly) but even she knew you didn’t kill a vampire with a gun. Too bad she didn’t happen to have a wreath of garlic handy. Or a wooden stake.
Or a cross.
She felt the faintest touch of cool metal from the little golden crucifix where it hung against her neck, where she always wore it. It wasn’t silver. It wasn’t blessed. But it was her God, and she Believed.
That had to be enough, right?
In one swift movement, Kate clutched the crucifix’s chain tightly in her fist just above the cross and thrust it in Tony’s direction, just as his hand got close enough to reach out to her.
There was a burning flash of fire, a heat so intense Kate could feel it along the length of the gold chain. Tony screamed, a high inhuman howl of pain, as tiny flames licked along his flesh, sprouting from where the cross was now sizzling directly against the skin of his palm. He jerked back, pulling himself away from her, falling to one knee as he shook, clutching his wounded hand by the wrist. The flames had stopped the instant he had gotten away from the crucifix, but small wispy plumes of smoke still rose from his skin. His face was a mask of pain and shock as he stared unblinkingly at the charred tissue of his palm, making small frantic sounds like a wounded animal.
Kate slid to the floor, legs giving out beneath her so she landed hard on her rump. She let out a desperate sob of relief, still clutching her cross’ chain in one hand. The metal still was hot to the touch to where it almost threatened to be painful, but she didn’t dare let go. She didn’t think she could even if she wanted to. The sound of footsteps came pounding in her ears as Gibbs and McGee rapidly unfroze and rushed towards where she and Tony lay. What were they going to do? Come to her aid? Come to his? Kate didn’t know; didn’t care. She was far past thinking at this point anyway.
And then the terror started all over again.
Kate’s first thought was that they were having an earthquake. The lights overhead flickered wildly, sparks flying like the very electricity was enraged. The ground wasn’t shaking, but it almost felt like it was. Something came rolling at them in a wave.
Not the wind. Not anything physical. It was more of a feeling, like a tidal wave of energy and emotion was rushing at them. Whatever it was, it was very strong; Kate drew in a deep gasp, and for a moment she even blacked out completely. There was a loud screech followed by a metallic bang. The elevator doors of the parking garage had thrown themselves open with such force that they had broken, the very metal twisting itself out of shape.
What followed was a deadly silence as the flickering lights stopped and the wind disappeared completely, a silence broken only by the faint sound of heels walking purposely across the concrete.
“Cassidy…” That was Tony, and Kate felt a jarring sense of familiarity as she heard the apologetic, almost groveling tone in his voice. She could still hear him saying, “Boss, I screwed up” in that exact same voice, back when things were sane and normal. A time that seemed so impossibly far away as to leave her almost thinking she might have imagined the whole damn thing.
“Stay down, Antony.” A woman’s voice, cool and indifferent with a thick accent that sounded almost Greek but not quite. The heels kept clicking against the ground, getting louder, getting closer. Finally, they stopped…right in front of Kate. She swallowed hard, squeezing her crucifix even tighter, and looked up.
The woman stood over her, looking down with an almost blank expression that was marred only by the faintest mixture of amusement and indifference. She had a pale, smooth face framed by thick locks of dark brown hair. Her eyes were the eyes of a predatory cat, a gleaming, autumn moon yellow. There was something in those eyes that burned deep within them, emanating outward in a tangible way. The same force that had rolled over them moments before filled those eyes with power, a power held in check by only the faintest amount of willpower.
“We can deal with you later,” the woman said dismissively, and Kate wasn’t surprised to see a flash of fang when she spoke. “For now…” She blinked, and then that faint wall that had been holding her power back a moment before was gone and the energy rushed forward into Kate, filling her, overwhelming her, drowning her, threatening to swallow her whole as it rushed through her body and mind, taking everything away and pulling her down into the abyss…
“Why don’t you get some sleep?”
Also, this chapter is really long, and will most likely be divided in two before it's posted at ff.net...whenever that happens.
*******
In a perfect world, Timothy McGee would have been tucked up cozily beneath the covers of his bed, drifting lazily off to sleep. In a really perfect world, there might have been another someone lying beside him, tucked in just as snugly as they clung to his body. In a not-so-perfect but manageable world (or what McGee happened to call “real life”), he would have been tucked up slightly less comfortably beneath questionable hotel sheets on a lumpy hotel mattress, counting the cracks in the ceiling and hoping Gibbs didn’t get it into his head to wake his agents up before dawn…again.
In this current reality, however, McGee was not in a bed at all, let alone reclining comfortably as he floated off to sleep. He was sitting upright in the front seat of a rental car parked across the street from the nightclub known as Cloud Nine. In his hands he clutched night-vision goggles through which he occasionally peered, with eyes kept forcibly open through a dosage of caffeine so high that it probably wasn’t even legal in this state. From his right came the sound of Abby breathing faintly as she dozed in passenger seat beneath a tattered blanket they had manage to scrounge up. McGee tried not to feel bitter as he glanced over at her, sleeping peacefully. She had offered to stay awake with him, but he, always trying to be the gentleman, had insisted she get some sleep. After all, keeping an eye on the black Jaguar believed to belong to their suspect wasn’t her job; it was his.
Since he was already working on trying not to be bitter, McGee also tried not to think too hard about the situation at hand. The scenario was this: a car all but positively identified as one belonging to their suspect was parked in front of the nightclub. The simplest, most straightforward solution would have been to go inside and grab him.
Honestly, sometimes McGee wondered how it was even possible that after these past years spent working for Gibbs that his brain could still even waste time with the simple, straightforward solution.
The problem in this case was that they currently had a local authority breathing down the backs of their necks, and Gibbs was determined not to let him have an inch more than he had to. Specifically, he was interested in not having this Sergeant Holcomb there when they finally cornered their suspect. He refused to say why, but McGee had a sinking feeling that he already knew; in case it was Tony (which McGee still adamantly insisted to himself was not, could not be, the case) Gibbs wanted a chance to try and talk to him before taking him in. And that was a chance he would never get with the head of the Boston homicide squad standing there with his gun ready and aimed. So they were going to have to play with this one out slowly instead of immediately calling in the cavalry.
Which rounded them back to the present, with McGee’s orders being not to lose the car and/or whoever might end up inside it. Once Gibbs was certain Holcomb didn’t have his eye on them anymore they’d be ready to swoop in and make an arrest, but until then McGee was going to have to watch and wait.
And wait. And wait.
Yeesh, McGee found himself thinking at about ten past one. The nightclub parking lot was all but empty, and the black Jaguar still hadn’t left. Whoever’s in there must be a real party animal.
Uh huh, some much snider part of McGee burbled up from deep inside of him, and who do you know who fits that description to a “t”? As in, a capital “t”, which stands for…
“Shut up,” McGee hissed vehemently under his breath. It occurred to him that he was talking to himself, and he realized upon examining the idea that it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it probably should have. He stole another furtive glance over at Abby, checking to see that she wasn’t awake to bear witness to the event of him losing his mind.
At which point he saw movement from the nightclub parking lot, and McGee immediately snapped his head back around and pressed the goggles to his eyes. Two people were approaching the Jaguar, a man and a woman. Despite the assistance of the goggles, McGee couldn’t quite make out the details of their faces from such a distance away, but he could pick up a few other things. The woman was fair-haired, wearing a slinky dress and stiletto heels under a dark suit jacket that was probably a donation from the man. The man’s clothes were dark in color, dress slacks to match the jacket and a button-down dress shirt. From what McGee could see, he appeared to be a fair-skinned brunette.
And the newest NCIS agent on Gibbs’ team tried to tell himself that it was just his imagination that even without a face to see, the man who now held the door of the Jaguar open and helped the woman (who was teetering a little drunkenly) climb inside of it looked very, very familiar indeed.
_________
“Nice hotel,” McGee observed, stealing a glance around the lacquered walls and rich upholstery of the lobby.
“Uh huh,” Gibbs replied indifferently. He kept walking towards the front desk, Kate staying close by him. McGee looked back from where a particularly opulent tapestry had grabbed his attention just in time to see the other two agents walking away without him, and he quickly hurried to catch up.
“I mean, seriously,” McGee murmured to Kate, not ready to let the subject drop, “this has got, what, a six star? Five star, at least.”
“The kind of place where a black Jaguar wouldn’t draw too much attention sitting in the parking lot,” Kate reminded him.
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Excuse me,” Gibbs had reached the front desk and was now talking to the man behind it. He pulled out the picture of Tony again. “Does this man have a room here? He probably came in late last night.”
“Information about our patrons, sir, is strictly confidential and…” the man cut off mid-sniff as Gibbs flashed his badge. “Do you have a warrant?” he asked begrudgingly after he’d had a moment to compose himself.
“No,” Gibbs said casually, leaning against the desk. “Would you like me to get one? Of course, I’d have to leave my agents here in case our suspect showed up.” He jerked his head meaningfully in McGee and Kate’s direction. “They’d probably hang around the lobby, interview all of your staff and guests…”
“He came in early last night,” the clerk snapped, getting the message. “Paid for the room for two nights, took the key, but didn’t go up.” He sniffed again. “He came back much later, accompanied by a…friend.”
“A young lady friend?” Gibbs prompted.
“Yes,” the clerk scowled. There was a pause.
“The room number?” Gibbs finally demanded, giving the man a look of pure impatience.
“I’ll get it for you,” the clerk grumbled, tapping a few keys on his computer to bring it up. “Here we are. Seventh floor, room 703. One-bedroom suite with a balcony view.”
“Could I get a key?” Gibbs’ tone made it very clear that, despite his phrasing, it was far from a request. The clerk gave a long-suffering sigh and thumbed through the desk drawer for a spare.
“What do you suppose that runs for?” McGee muttered to Kate. The two of them had come up closer to the desk, directly behind Gibbs. “In a place like this, I’ll bet even two nights is…”
“A significant chunk of my yearly salary,” Kate finished for him, looking impressed in a begrudging sort of way. Meanwhile, the clerk had produced a card key, which Gibbs took and wordlessly handed over to McGee.
“And the credit card number?” Gibbs didn’t even bother looking up as he got out his notepad and prepared to write.
“There isn’t one,” the man behind the desk told him bluntly. That caused Gibbs to look up. “He paid in cash,” he elaborated. McGee’s jaw dropped open and Kate made a small choking sound.
“And that didn’t strike you as odd?” Gibbs asked in the soft tone he used when he was forcibly restraining himself from yelling at someone.
“This hotel caters to quite a few wealthy clientele, sir,” the clerk told him, the faintest of wry grins playing around beneath his mustache. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but having money does little to quell one’s eccentricities. If anything, it promotes them. A patron wanting to cover his bill in cash upfront is quite possibly the least bizarre thing I’ve seen here over the years. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he turned away smoothly, “I have work to do.”
“This is getting ridiculous,” Kate exclaimed as they got into the elevator on their way to the seventh floor. “Who carries that kind of money on them?”
“Well, if he knew he’d have to check into a hotel and didn’t want it to be traced, it’d make sense,” McGee remarked.
“The clerk said he only checked in here last night,” Gibbs muttered. Kate and McGee turned to look at him.
“Um, so?” McGee asked tentatively.
“So if the valet from that other nightclub was telling the truth, he’s been here for at least four nights,” Gibbs stated. “Where was he staying before?”
“Another hotel?” Kate offered.
“Good luck finding out which one,” McGee sighed. “Boston’s not exactly lacking for hotels.”
“Probably also paid for that one in cash,” Gibbs guessed.
“Again, who carries that kind of money with them?” Kate sounded borderline disgusted. “Who even has that kind of money to carry with them?” McGee could only shrug. Gibbs appeared too lost in his own thoughts to answer. The elevator door slid open with a musical chime a second later, and the three agents filed out. It didn’t take them long to locate room 703. Kate pressed her ear to the door.
“I hear the shower going,” she told McGee and Gibbs softly. “Doesn’t sound like anyone else is moving.
“The girl left?” McGee inferred.
“Or he killed her,” Gibbs said bluntly. He took the card back from McGee and slid it smoothly through the door, unlocking it, and he pushed it open. Gibbs walked through the door without pause, not drawing his gun. After exchanging a look, Kate and McGee did the same. The room was done in shades of dark blue with golden trim, every bit as elegant and expensive-looking as the hotel lobby down below. The bed looked like it had been slept in, the sheets and comforter strewn about.
“Well, I don’t see any blood,” Kate muttered softly, pulling the sheets aside to look. “Or anything else, for that matter.”
“Looks like someone had a good time last night,” McGee pointed out an empty bottle of champagne and two glasses sitting on the desk.
“And how,” Gibbs quipped, spotting three used condoms in the wastebasket. Before either of the other agents could reply, the sound of the shower running from the bathroom abruptly stopped. The three agents froze, then turned to face the door just in time for it to swing open and a curvaceous bleached blonde clad in nothing but a towel walked out.
“Oh!” she squealed, stopping dead with wide eyes. The NCIS agents did likewise.
“Um…hi,” McGee finally stuttered lamely, when the silence got to be too much to bear. The blonde blinked at him in confusion, slowly turning to look at the other two agents as well.
“Are…are you Antony’s friends?” she finally asked, apparently unable to come up with any other solution. “Because he’s not here.”
“Yes ma’am, we are,” Gibbs replied without missing a beat. His face was a complete, confident blank, which was more than could be said for the expressions of Kate and McGee. McGee was gaping like a fish, while Kate stole a wide-eyed look over at him and mouthed “Antony?” in obvious confusion. “Do you know where we could find him?” Gibbs continued, seemingly oblivious to the state of his agents.
“Oh, no, sorry,” the blonde told him, seeming to calm down once there was an explanation for the strangers in her room. She didn’t even question it in the slightest…it was quite apparent that describing her personality would probably involve the phrase “not too bright”.
“He didn’t tell you where he was going?” Gibbs pressed her gently.
“Nope,” the blonde shook her head, adjusting her towel slightly as she sat herself on the end of the bed. “We just came back here, played for a few hours” (she smirked and lowered her eyelashes in a sultry way at the word “played”), “and then he left. Said I could use the hotel room for the rest of today, though.” She gave a flirty giggle and mussed with her hair. “Don’t know why…it’s not like he had anything to make up for.” Her face took on an expression of lustful reminiscence. “Not after last night. Oooh…”
“His car is still in the parking lot,” Kate finally found the tongue to speak, mercifully cutting the other woman off before she could go into any details.
“Well, he’s not here,” the blonde told her, shrugging carelessly. “Don’t ask me.”
“Thank you for your time,” Gibbs said politely. The three agents quickly filed out of the apartment and into the hall.
“When you find Antony, tell him Jessica says hi,” the blonde called after them eagerly.
“Will do, ma’am,” Gibbs told her before pulling the door closed. The three of them stood there in the hall for a moment.
“Well, that was…odd,” McGee blinked slowly, his expression unreadable.
“And more than little mortifying,” Kate chimed in.
“She seemed nice,” Gibbs remarked in an offhand way that made it impossible to tell whether or not he was being serious.
“Not exactly the brightest bulb on the tree,” Kate muttered as they made their way back to the elevator.
“A pretty face, a buxom bod, and not much going on upstairs,” Gibbs summed up, punching the button for the first floor.
“Yeah,” McGee bit his lip as he begrudgingly said aloud what they were all thinking, “just the way Tony liked them.”
_________
“One week ago, our first three suspects picked up the call girl known as Valentine, took her back to a hotel room they had already paid for, had sex with her, and killed her,” Kate stood in front of the whiteboard in the room at the Boston police department that the NCIS agents had temporarily claimed as their own. McGee and Abby sat across from her at the conference table, watching as she gestured to the rough timeline she had made on the board. “Two days later, our fourth suspect,” Kate pointed with the briefest of grimaces to where she had taped Tony’s picture to the board, “arrived in town and picked up a rental car, the black Jaguar we’ve been tailing.”
“I talked to the people at the rental agency,” McGee put in as he absently tapped his pen against the tabletop. “The rental fee was paid for in cash, and the car was checked out for a week. Didn’t bother buying the insurance from the agency, and didn’t hesitate about putting down a deposit.”
“What’d they say when you showed them Tony’s picture?” Kate asked quietly, looking as if she didn’t really want to hear the answer. “Were they able to identify him?”
“Sort of,” McGee winced. “They said it ‘looked like him’.”
“Well, that doesn’t help us any,” Kate frowned. “What about you, Abby? Able to get anything off of the car?”
“Fingerprints,” Abby offered. She looked oddly hesitant. “All over the steering wheel and the dashboard. I ran them and…” She bit her lip. “Well, they’re all Tony’s again. Mostly. I picked up a few partials that matched those other prints on the second body.”
“So the other three were probably in that car at some point,” McGee inferred.
“You find anything else?” Kate asked.
“Some blood on the floor by the driver’s seat,” Abby confessed. “It’s male and human, but other than that unidentified.”
“How much blood?” McGee gulped.
“A couple drops, so I don’t know,” Abby shrugged. “Could be a paper cut, could be splatter from someone getting their throat torn out.”
“Terrific,” Kate turned back to the whiteboard and crossed out the few lines she had jotted down about the car. “Well, it’s in our custody now, so obviously the car isn’t a lead anymore. Okay, back to the timeline. After our…fourth suspect,” Kate phrased carefully, still hesitant about saying Tony’s name, “got the car, he went down to the Red Hot Spot nightclub. Went in alone, came out with two unidentified girls.” She looked back at McGee and Abby. “Neither of them match the description of our one female suspect, and so far no dead bodies have turned up that sound like them either.”
“What’d I miss?” The door swung open and Gibbs sauntered in.
“You lose him?” Abby turned around in her seat to gaze curiously at her boss. The reason Gibbs had been MIA at the beginning of their meeting was because he was otherwise occupied trying to shake a certain Boston sergeant off of his tail.
“Oh, I lost him almost half an hour ago,” Gibbs told her coolly, finding a seat at the head of the table.
“Then why’d you take so long to come back?” McGee asked, puzzled.
“I had to get coffee,” Gibbs held up a Starbucks cup, giving McGee a look like it was perfectly obvious. Abby grinned.
“Uh, right,” McGee muttered as he looked away again, suitably cowed.
“Another dead hooker turned up, all the way across town,” Gibbs informed them all. “No ID on the body, and none of the local girls recognize her.”
“What’s she got to do with our case?” Kate asked in a business-like tone, uncapping a marker in preparation to add to the whiteboard.
“Not a damn thing,” Gibbs shrugged as he took a sip of coffee. “But Holcomb thinks she does.”
“Ah, the old bait and switch,” Abby realized, giving Gibbs a look of admiration. “Very crafty.”
“Right,” Kate sighed as she put the marker away. “So, back to the timeline. Sometime between his appearance at the first nightclub and the murder of the second prostitute our fourth suspect must have met up with the other three, because they all worked together to kill her.”
“How did he meet them?” Gibbs asked quietly, drawing the attention of the others.
“Maybe he already knew them?” Abby offered. She had her arms folded on the edge of the table and her head resting to one side on top of them. “Goths, wannabe vampires…those kind of people tend to travel in their own private circles.”
“But what the hell would Dinozzo be doing moving in those circles?” Gibbs muttered darkly to himself, frowning in deep thought as he took another sip from his cup. It wasn’t the kind of question he was looking for an answer to from the others, assuming they even could have provided one. McGee gave the two girls a look that spoke volumes, mainly along the lines of “He’s getting worse”. Abby scowled at him disapprovingly. Kate did nothing. She honestly didn’t know what she thought about this case anymore. All she knew was that she wanted it solved, and fast.
Maybe then she’d be able to sleep well at night.
“A day after the second murder,” she continued on with her timeline like nothing had happened, “or, last night, as the case may be, our suspect showed up at the Cloud Nine night club, picked up our new friend Jessica, and took her back to an expensive hotel room that was apparently rented just for the occasion.”
“She said his name was Antony,” another distracted murmur from Gibbs had them all looking again. “Why’s he going by that name now?”
“You know, that is weird,” Abby commented, lifting her head off the table. “I mean, if you’re going for an alias, you’d think you’d want something a little harder to trace than a variation on your own name.”
“Maybe she just heard him wrong,” McGee suggested.
“Maybe,” Gibbs agreed. “After all, seems pretty obvious they didn’t do much talking.” McGee gave a strangled sort of cough and looked away, his expression a little flushed.
“Anything else?” he quickly asked, looking back at Kate.
“Not really, no,” Kate sighed dejectedly. “We’ve hit dead ends on everything. There are no leads left to follow.”
“How are we going to find them again?” McGee said in desperation.
“I know how,” Gibbs got up calmly.
“You do?” Kate and McGee asked as one. Abby merely raised her eyebrows.
“According to what the locals tell me,” Gibbs explained, making his way to the whiteboard and taking up a marker, “this is what’s considered the nightclub district.” He circled a large square area on the pinned-up map of the city. “Dinozzo was first seen at this club here,” he drew a smaller circle inside the square, “and then last night at this club here.” He drew a line between the two points to illustrate their distance. “At completely opposite ends of the board.”
“Well, sure,” McGee stated. “Makes it less likely he’ll be seen by the same people that way.”
“Ah, but there’s such a thing as being too careful, McGee,” Gibbs told him. He waved a hand at the squared-off area. “In theory, he could next appear at almost any club in here, making his next move impossible to predict. But he won’t, because he’s limiting himself. He’s trying to put as much space between where he is and where he’s been before as possible.” Gibbs drew two lines diagonally upwards from the two opposite sides of the nightclub district and made a circle there, forming a crude triangle. “There’s really not as many options as you’d at first think.”
“So we narrow down the search to clubs within this area,” Kate concluded out loud, tracing the triangle with her eyes, “and then…”
“We start surveillance of them,” Gibbs finished. He took a final swig from his coffee cup and tossed it into the wastebasket, a perfect slam-dunk. “Tonight.”
_________
Kate stood in front of the doorway to the trendy club, rubbing her arms against the chill of the night. The light jacket over dark wine-colored dress and matching heels was really too thin for this kind of weather, but it guaranteed she didn’t look out of place while on surveillance. It was the kind of outfit favored by just another woman out for a night on the town, the part of the character Kate was currently playing for the fourth night in a row.
Of course, it wasn’t surprising that they hadn’t seen anything on the first night. Neither was it unexpected when their was no sign of their suspect on the second. By the third night, however, Kate had allowed herself to hope.
Now here it was, just one night later, and she was already losing that hope again.
She tried not to think about it. Set her shoulders determinedly, played with her hair, and made her way inside. Smiled at the bouncer as she paid her cover charge. Plastered a look over her face like she didn’t have a care in the world. Like she was just another single woman out looking to dance, have a few drinks, and maybe pick up a cute guy if she got really lucky.
This was her job. This was what she did, what she was paid to do. This was her duty.
So it didn’t matter that something deep inside of her was ready to scream at the utter futility of it all. Didn’t matter that she was equal parts dreading both finding their suspect and not finding him. Didn’t matter that she didn’t honestly didn’t know anymore whether the idea of coworker still being alive filled her with hope or fear.
For a little while, Kate milled. Sat at the bar for a bit under the guise of waiting for someone. Moved slowly back and forth across the throng on the dance floor. Politely turned down four offers to get her a drink. Occasionally, she’d move off to a more shadowy part of the club so she could talk to the others on her earpiece without drawing odd looks. Gibbs and McGee were having no more luck than she was. Ducky and Abby were out sitting point in the van; through their conversation it was inadvertently revealed that they’d started a game of cards, news which Gibbs didn’t react very well to. Kate “accidentally” lost the signal for a few minutes so that she missed the chewing-out; tonight, she just wasn’t in the mood.
The night was half-over, the club in full swing. It was a little over four hours until sunrise. So far, none of the suspects had been seen at any time other than night; Abby had declared them to be “purists” and “hardcore vamps” that probably didn’t set a foot outside into the light of day. Not looking forward to the remaining hours of surveillance waiting for her, Kate ducked into the ladies room to freshen up and catch her breath. She touched up her make-up, hoping that the tired look in her eyes was just a trick of the garish florescent lights in the bathroom. She killed a few more minutes fiddling with her earpiece to make sure it was hidden and checking to see that her gun and badge were still safe in her jacket where she’d stored them. Finally, there was nothing left to do but return to the club.
For a minute she paused, blinded by the much darker lighting of the club and deafened by the pounding music on the dance floor. As soon as she had her bearings, Kate started to move towards the back of the club where a few couples lurked out of sight at their tables. She didn’t get very far, however, before she was stopped dead in her tracks. Underneath the booming baseline of the dance mix, she could just make out the tail end of a very familiar laugh. Kate slowly turned, looking back towards the bar from which the sound had emanated.
He was sitting near the far end of the bar, chatting up the female bartender. It was obvious she was reacting to him, leaning in just a little further than was necessary to hear him over the music and giving him a flirty smile as she refilled his drink. He was wearing the same leather jacket from the other night over a dark blue dress shirt and black slacks. When he moved his hand to gesture as he spoke, there was the faintest flash of a silver wristwatch. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of what even Kate could tell were designer shades, but even then there was no mistaking him this time.
In the end, it was that mischievous grin that really gave it away.
“Gibbs, I have a sighting,” Kate spoke softly into her earpiece, trying to fight off the feeling like she had just been given a hard right hook straight to the gut. She still had a job to do.
“Which one?” Gibbs’ voice asked her in a crisp, firm tone.
“It’s him,” was all Kate could say. Gibbs didn’t ask anything else, and neither did McGee. She wondered distantly if it was the shake to her voice or something else that gave it away.
“Don’t move. We’re on our way.” That was Gibbs again, all business even as the world was coming to an end. Kate nodded even though they couldn’t see her, looking back at the bar. The bartender had moved reluctantly on to deal with some of her other patrons, and he was leaning resting one hand on the bar top as he took a swig of his drink, still grinning to himself.
“Tony,” Kate whispered inaudibly to herself, not wanting to believe her eyes, but knowing full well that she had to. This wasn’t some darkened alley. She wasn’t feeling the heat of the moment, stress tricking her into seeing what wasn’t really there. This was reality, clear-cut and simple. Her supposedly deceased coworker Anthony Dinozzo, sometimes a colossal pain in the rear and sometimes a reluctant friend, was alive and well after being believed to be dead for over a very long year.
Alive, and now a prime suspect in a woman’s brutal murder. That was the kind of thing that tended to taint what should have otherwise been an overwhelming sense of disbelieving joy.
Suddenly, Kate saw Tony stiffen in his seat, like he had suddenly heard someone call his name. Of course, he couldn’t have; she hadn’t even made enough sound to hear it herself. Not to mention she was standing practically across the room of a nightclub filled with music loud enough to drown out any conversation that wasn’t taking place directly in front of your face. But still he set his drink down and slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder.
To look directly at her.
Kate couldn’t quite interpret whatever emotion it was that next came over his face, but it certainly wasn’t a happy one. She blinked out of pure reflexive shock, and the next thing she knew he was out of his seat and all but sprinting towards the door.
“Stop!” Kate yelled, by pure instinct using the voice of an NCIS agent calling for a suspect to halt rather than the voice she would normally use to call to a friend. She took off after him, moving as fast as she could in a dress that came just past her knees and a pair of high heels. He wasn’t that far ahead of her, making his way towards the parking garage next door. Probably where his car had been parked, since the club’s small lot had been filled up almost as soon as it had opened. Kate spared the briefest of moments inside her mind to wonder what kind of car he was driving now. Another Jaguar? A sports car, maybe?
Seven flights of stairs at a breakneck speed, and Kate hoped to God that they stopped soon as she panted heavily around the stitch that was starting to form in her side. Obviously Tony had been spending some of the past year working out, because heels or no heels there was no way the Tony she had known could have kept this far ahead of her for this long. Finally there came the sound of a door being shoved open, and Kate rushed after him, sucking in a sharp breath of air as the cold of the night descended upon her again. He didn’t slow down and neither did she.
“Tony, wait!” Kate yelled, not using her professional voice anymore. Now she was a friend, pleading for attention. “Tony!” Behind her she heard the door slam open again, and two pairs of feet came pounding across the concrete floor. McGee and Gibbs, it had to be. Kate was too grateful to wonder how they’d managed to find her. Maybe they’d arrived just in time to catch sight of her and Tony sprinting across the tarmac, or maybe there was a homing device in her earpiece that Abby had neglected to mention.
“Dinozzo!” Kate couldn’t help but feel mildly offended that the sound of Gibbs’ voice succeeded where hers had failed. Tony froze, coming to a dead halt and slowly turning back around to face them. Kate stopped as well. Behind her, she could hear the other two agents as they slowed to a walk and continued forward. Tony took one hesitant step backwards, and then stopped. There was a conflicted look on his face, like he really wanted to run but something was holding him back.
“Tony…” Kate took a few slow, careful steps towards him, looking at him beseechingly.
“Stay away,” Tony snapped, the harshness of his voice cutting her off and stopping her dead in her tracks. He didn’t move away again, but there was a sense of distance around him that more than made up for it. “Just…just stay away from me, all right?”
“Why?” Kate asked sadly. In the dim lighting of the parking garage it was impossible not to notice how pale Tony had gotten, his dark jacket and glasses standing out even more prominently against his skin. Despite the coldness of the night Kate was sweating after their dash, but it didn’t look as of he was. Kate amended her earlier observation from “working out” to “working out a lot”, because she couldn’t even see that he was breathing hard.
“Just go away,” Tony pressed, looking pained. Behind her, Kate could hear that Gibbs and McGee had stopped moving. She guessed they were probably a few yards back from where she was, most likely wary of crowding around Tony in case it pushed him to bolt. “Forget you even saw me.”
“Tony, no,” Kate insisted, using her best talking-a-jumper-down-from-the-roof voice, even as her heart quickened its pace for no reason at all. There was something about the way Tony’s voice sounded, something about that eerie air of finality. “Come back with us. We can talk this over.”
“Come back with you? Talk this over?” Tony stared at her in disbelief. “Are you serious?” His face abruptly changed; now he looked angry, annoyed. “Oh, come on. Haven’t you realized what’s going on here? What’s happened?” He glared at her and Kate surprised herself by having to use her willpower to keep from taking a step back. “Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out yet. Don’t tell me you haven’t guessed. Not after what you saw.”
“What do you mean?” Kate asked without fully meaning to. She had been playing a mind game with herself, keeping from believing that she had actually seen Tony that night in the alley. Even after realizing he was still alive, she had told herself there had to be some logical explanation that ended in her not really seeing what she knew she had seen. Now she was filled with a sense of dread as she realized she was backed into a corner against reality, knowing that what Tony was about to say would cause her last desperate hopes to crumble and die.
“You saw me, Kate,” Tony said coldly. “You saw me kill that woman.” Even knowing what had been about to come, the words still felt like a slap to the face. Kate staggered back, one hand pressed over her mouth as she stared at the ground. Behind her she heard a sharp intake of breath from Gibbs and a flat-out gasp from McGee. She didn’t full register either of them, her head reeling.
“Well now,” a smirking voice came from the shadows. Kate’s head snapped back up as Sergeant Holcomb calmly sauntered into view, his gun pointed right at Tony. He pulled a toothpick out of his mouth where he had been chewing on it and flicked it away. “I’d say this wraps things up quite nicely.”
“Holcomb, you bastard” Gibbs hissed. Kate looked over her shoulder at the cold fury on her boss’ face.
“Now, now Agent Gibbs,” Holcomb raised his hands slightly as if in surrender, “no need to get all upset that you’re not quite as good as keeping people off track as you’d like. Nice effort though, by the way. The murder of that other prostitute was a clever red herring.” Gibbs started to walk forward. “Ah ah ah,” Holcomb chided. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He clicked the safety on his gun off meaningfully, the click echoing in the parking garage with surreal loudness.
Gibbs stopped, face a twisted mask of fury at his current helplessness. Short of actually pulling a gun on the cop, he and McGee were too far away to do anything. The only one close enough to stand a chance of taking Holcomb down was Kate, and even then it was hopeless. She was just far away enough that the police sergeant would have plenty of time to fire the kill shot, maybe even two.
“Now are you going to come in quietly, boy, or am I going to have to do this the hard way?” Holcomb demanded, his eyes locked steadily on his target. Kate found herself unable to look away from the scene playing out in front of her. For the second time since this case had started, she found herself wishing it were all a nightmare even as she knew it wasn’t. She prayed that she would wake up at any given moment, even as she knew there was nothing to wake up from.
“Put the gun down, you idiot,” Tony snapped. He sounded irritated, like the cop was doing something incredibly stupid and pointless. Kate gaped at him. If this had all been happening back when they were still working together, this would have been the point where she asked Tony if he was crazy.
The sick part of it, however, was that she honestly couldn’t be sure what the answer to that question was anymore. She had seen Tony kill, seen him bite a woman’s neck and then bash her brains out against the side of a brick wall. It was an action that had no justifiable purpose, no rational meaning. Maybe he really had gone insane. It would be, sadly, probably the most logical explanation for everything that had happened.
“Excuse me?” Holcomb asked. He sounded bemused. Well, at least he thought it was funny; Kate was practically ready to scream out loud, herself. Bloody visions of Tony lying facedown on the concrete with blood pooling out from between his eyes danced through her head.
Against her will, she remembered again her dream.
“I said, put. The gun. Down,” Tony repeated, biting off every syllable with a vehemence that betrayed the fact that he was losing patience by the second. “Now.”
“Frankly, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be giving orders,” Holcomb said lazily. He took a step forward, the gun still aiming dead on at Tony. “Now why don’t you put your hands over your head like a good boy? I’m sure you know the drill; you’ve probably had to run it enough times yourself from the other side.”
“Do you even know what you’re threatening to shoot, buddy?” Tony demanded. He sounded positively irate, like Holcomb was the world’s biggest fool. “You either drop that gun right now, or so help me…”
“I’m not going to ask you again,” Holcomb snapped, getting into some irritation of his own. He steadied his hands on the trigger. “Now, I’m gonna count to three.” Kate was faintly aware that she had stopped breathing. “One…two…”
Tony whipped off his sunglasses, glaring dead-on at Holcomb. His crimson eyes burned wickedly in the faint lights set overhead. He growled slightly, baring his lips in a snarl to reveal a nasty looking set of gleaming white fangs.
“Holy mother of God,” the cop swore in one breathless rush of horror. Tony took a step towards him. ““Y-you…you…” It sounded like Holcomb was having a hard time breathing all of a sudden. "You really are a mother-fucking v-!” His hand shook as he clutched at his gun. Kate knew he was going to fire, or at least he intended to try. He never got that chance.
It was a lucky thing her eyes were frozen wide in horror and shock, because if Kate had blinked, she would have missed it. Tony rushed at Holcomb in one swift, graceful movement, grabbing the cop by the shoulder and wrist and forcing the gun out of his hand. Holcomb let out a scream of terror as his weapon clattered to the floor. His shrill cry was cut off abruptly, however, in favor of a sickening, loud crack as Tony grabbed the side of his head and twisted, snapping his neck like a twig.
Kate let out a wild, animal moan of terror, backing away rapidly with both hands clutched tightly over her mouth. No denying it now. No more fake-outs, no more lies. Just like she hadn’t been able to deny that it was really Tony in the club a short while before, now there was no denying what it had become.
It didn’t matter that it was surreal. It didn’t matter that it was impossible. She had seen him drink that woman’s blood, seen him kill with a strength no human being was supposed to possess. He had the fangs and the eyes of something no longer human. Something no longer alive. He was a monster. A vampire. A soulless, damned, inhuman monster.
He wasn’t Tony anymore.
Somehow, Kate found herself with her back pressed hard against the nearby wall, her eyes staring blankly in terror. Distantly, she was aware of Gibbs and McGee standing still in their places, frozen like a pair of statues as they gaped at Holcomb’s motionless body. Tony stood over the dead cop, shaking his hand slightly like he had touched something dirty. He still had that irritated look about him, but other than that he was behaving as if nothing was wrong. As if he hadn’t just killed a man with his bare hands.
As if he didn’t even care.
“They never listen,” Tony sighed faintly to himself, giving a faint shake of his head. Like it was all just some bothersome nuisance. He looked up, and blinked as he caught sight of Kate’s expression. “Hey, are you okay? Kate?” He almost, almost looked like Tony, the real Tony, and that was made it even worse. “Kate?” And then to her utmost horror he began to move towards her.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All she could do was stare as that…thing, that red-eyed creature came walking towards her, one hand slightly out-stretched, faint concern knitting his features. He was going to come to her, he was going to touch her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn’t reach her gun, tucked away within her jacket pocket as it was. Not that that would have done any her good anyway; she was no horror movie buff (not like Tony, some ironic part of her brain said faintly) but even she knew you didn’t kill a vampire with a gun. Too bad she didn’t happen to have a wreath of garlic handy. Or a wooden stake.
Or a cross.
She felt the faintest touch of cool metal from the little golden crucifix where it hung against her neck, where she always wore it. It wasn’t silver. It wasn’t blessed. But it was her God, and she Believed.
That had to be enough, right?
In one swift movement, Kate clutched the crucifix’s chain tightly in her fist just above the cross and thrust it in Tony’s direction, just as his hand got close enough to reach out to her.
There was a burning flash of fire, a heat so intense Kate could feel it along the length of the gold chain. Tony screamed, a high inhuman howl of pain, as tiny flames licked along his flesh, sprouting from where the cross was now sizzling directly against the skin of his palm. He jerked back, pulling himself away from her, falling to one knee as he shook, clutching his wounded hand by the wrist. The flames had stopped the instant he had gotten away from the crucifix, but small wispy plumes of smoke still rose from his skin. His face was a mask of pain and shock as he stared unblinkingly at the charred tissue of his palm, making small frantic sounds like a wounded animal.
Kate slid to the floor, legs giving out beneath her so she landed hard on her rump. She let out a desperate sob of relief, still clutching her cross’ chain in one hand. The metal still was hot to the touch to where it almost threatened to be painful, but she didn’t dare let go. She didn’t think she could even if she wanted to. The sound of footsteps came pounding in her ears as Gibbs and McGee rapidly unfroze and rushed towards where she and Tony lay. What were they going to do? Come to her aid? Come to his? Kate didn’t know; didn’t care. She was far past thinking at this point anyway.
And then the terror started all over again.
Kate’s first thought was that they were having an earthquake. The lights overhead flickered wildly, sparks flying like the very electricity was enraged. The ground wasn’t shaking, but it almost felt like it was. Something came rolling at them in a wave.
Not the wind. Not anything physical. It was more of a feeling, like a tidal wave of energy and emotion was rushing at them. Whatever it was, it was very strong; Kate drew in a deep gasp, and for a moment she even blacked out completely. There was a loud screech followed by a metallic bang. The elevator doors of the parking garage had thrown themselves open with such force that they had broken, the very metal twisting itself out of shape.
What followed was a deadly silence as the flickering lights stopped and the wind disappeared completely, a silence broken only by the faint sound of heels walking purposely across the concrete.
“Cassidy…” That was Tony, and Kate felt a jarring sense of familiarity as she heard the apologetic, almost groveling tone in his voice. She could still hear him saying, “Boss, I screwed up” in that exact same voice, back when things were sane and normal. A time that seemed so impossibly far away as to leave her almost thinking she might have imagined the whole damn thing.
“Stay down, Antony.” A woman’s voice, cool and indifferent with a thick accent that sounded almost Greek but not quite. The heels kept clicking against the ground, getting louder, getting closer. Finally, they stopped…right in front of Kate. She swallowed hard, squeezing her crucifix even tighter, and looked up.
The woman stood over her, looking down with an almost blank expression that was marred only by the faintest mixture of amusement and indifference. She had a pale, smooth face framed by thick locks of dark brown hair. Her eyes were the eyes of a predatory cat, a gleaming, autumn moon yellow. There was something in those eyes that burned deep within them, emanating outward in a tangible way. The same force that had rolled over them moments before filled those eyes with power, a power held in check by only the faintest amount of willpower.
“We can deal with you later,” the woman said dismissively, and Kate wasn’t surprised to see a flash of fang when she spoke. “For now…” She blinked, and then that faint wall that had been holding her power back a moment before was gone and the energy rushed forward into Kate, filling her, overwhelming her, drowning her, threatening to swallow her whole as it rushed through her body and mind, taking everything away and pulling her down into the abyss…
“Why don’t you get some sleep?”