Prodigal, part nine
Prodigal
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On LJ: One | Two| Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
The following morning, Hollis was alone in the bullpen with David and on the phone to her office when Sheppard returned with friends. Lorne's team, dressed in civilian clothing and looking remarkably fresh for having traveled all night, stood waiting to get permission to visit him. Dressed in civilian clothing, the marines looked both more and less dangerous in person than they did in their official photographs -- defiant and faintly abashed all at once, ready to either fight or apologize or both.
David said something to Safir in Hebrew and he responded in kind; whatever he said wiped the cautiously friendly expression off of her face.
"Be nice, Doc," Staff Sergeant Ortilla chided. "We don't get to see the Major if you piss off the fuzz."
Sheppard turned around. "Don't make me have you wait in the car."
"We took the train," Safir replied evenly. Sheppard rolled his eyes, clearly in on the joke even if Safir wasn't.
McGee had been down at Abby's dealing with an unrelated case and he came out of the elevator without looking, stopping short once he saw the group and then almost taking a step back once he realized who they were.
"They're on their best behavior," Sheppard assured easily.
McGee raised an eyebrow, either at the assurance or the tone with which it had been delivered. Sheppard was almost comically casual, the uniform and the situation seemingly mattering not at all. Most of it was an act, but not all of it. It was the kind of attitude that worked in Special Ops and nowhere else, not even in the Air Force. In Sheppard's case, O'Neill would probably tolerate a lot for results.
Hollis asked McGee to have Lorne brought up to Interrogation; he did so without hesitation or even giving the faintest glimmer of looking like he was about to suggest they wait for Gibbs. Or maybe extra security.
After other preliminaries, she asked David to escort them downstairs, but then tagged along. She wanted to see how everyone interacted, get a better feel for the suspects that were still suspects although nobody was treating them as such. Lorne was still being held on the murder of Baxter and the break-in at Kim's and there was no way he accomplished everything he'd done that they couldn't prove without these men, but here they were, not even being charged with breaking into NCIS headquarters and assaulting McGee, which could be proven. (As opposed to the break-in at Meade, which could not, at least not beyond a reasonable doubt.)
"Do we need to go in shifts?" Sheppard asked as they approached.
Hollis shook her head. "Your people are more of a threat loitering in the hallway."
"Or going to the bathroom," David added not-quite sotto voce.
"How long do we have, ma'am?" Staff Sergeant Ortilla asked.
"Depends on if we say something interesting," Safir answered brightly. "If we get Lorne to confess to murder, we can stay all day."
"Nobody's getting Lorne to confess to murder," Sheppard told them, like they might have otherwise seriously considered doing so. "It'll take us years to figure out his filing system if he's in the pokey and your company commander is pissed off enough as it is."
From the guards standing outside, Hollis could tell that Lorne had already been delivered. She wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad one that the guards didn't even blink at an Army officer and a Mossad agent bringing in a half-dozen military (and paramilitary) men to visit a high-risk prisoner. Perhaps this went a bit toward explaining how the three marines had gotten in and out on their first visit.
Hollis and David waited for them to enter. Sheppard opened the door and the others filed through.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," Sergeant Reletti murmured as he passed.
They waited for the door to close before heading over to the observation room.
Safir and Sheppard were in the chairs opposite Lorne; the three marines were positioned along three walls so that they had clear views of the door. Suarez was leaning against the mirror and Ortilla was facing it, standing behind Lorne and making him look smaller than usual. The positioning was defensive, but the mood in the room was not tense. Lorne's team was clearly not worried about Sheppard's ire, which Hollis took to mean that Sheppard had probably already said his piece. He was undoubtedly the kind of commander who reamed his people out in private.
"--teams. Figure out which one's the bad guy and take him down before anyone else gets hurt," Sheppard was saying.
"Are they sure that's it, sir?" Reletti asked. "There's not a fifth choice somewhere out there?"
Sheppard, his back to them, might've made a face, but Hollis could only see the shrug. "Colonel Carter seems to be sure. We're going to have to go with that."
"I don't like it, sir," Ortilla said with a frown. "There's too much we don't know -- or we didn't know until it was too late to do anything about it."
"Just because they're Air Force doesn't mean they can't figure out which end of the rifle to point at the bad guy, Staff Sergeant," Sheppard sighed. Ortilla made a frustrated face, like he wanted to clarify his point, but Sheppard continued on. "They've been doing this for a while -- longer than you have. From all reports you guys did a thorough hand-over briefing. Let them run with this. If nothing else, they've got numbers and resources on their side."
"Quality over quantity, sir," Suarez retorted cheekily. Sheppard turned around and gave Suarez a baleful look, one that spoke of inter-service rivalry debates of long standing as well as the comfort level between the men in the room.
"The sooner they catch this guy, the sooner we can take the Major and go," Reletti said, then paused, as if he'd just thought of something. "Do you know how he got your knife, sir?"
The tone was one of genuine curiosity, but Hollis didn't doubt that this was for her benefit.
Lorne frowned. "Best I can guess, it happened during our... hiatus. I was keeping my kit in the locker room; it wouldn't have been that hard for anyone to break in and swap out a knife. I thought something was weird with it at some point -- it was sharpened differently than I usually do it -- and I meant to ask my junior guy if he'd taken it to the armorer or something, but I forgot about it."
Plausible and unprovable, just like everything else. Hollis was maybe a little more inclined to believe it after two days of O'Neill's people glaring daggers at each other, but until they got a new and better suspect, anything Lorne said had to be taken in context.
"When this is all over," Safir began, "I think I will take some vacation time."
Sheppard turned to him. "You're kidding me, right?"
"No," Safir replied. "This is my first trip back since the High Holidays. I would like to go home and see my family."
Hollis looked over at David, who shook her head slightly. This was not the first indication that Sheppard, Lorne, and his team were not posted on US soil, but they hadn't been able to get anything on anyone. Safir's passport, like the marines' and Lorne's and Sheppard's, showed none of the activity that a foreign posting would require, nor did it seem like they were carrying official secondary passports. Which left a raft of other options, legit and not, but it gave Hollis and NCIS no leads on where they were operating from or what was going on.
"When this is all over, you are going straight back and explaining yourself to Carson," Sheppard told him. "Who, for the record, is as overjoyed as everyone else by what has gone on."
"Does this mean we can't take leave, either, sir?" Suarez asked.
Lorne fought off a smile as Sheppard made a frustrated noise.
"This means that you all have been forgiven on paper," Sheppard said sourly. "But you still have to settle up your accounts with everyone you've worried and pissed off over the course of this adventure."
"That's a 'wait a few weeks' or a 'no', sir?" Ortilla ventured.
"We'll talk about it later, Manny," Lorne said, ending the discussion. "I've got a lot of apologizing to do first. And it's not like you guys haven't been calling home regularly anyway."
They hadn't bothered tracking calls from any of the marines or Safir; none of them were currently paying for cell phones and it had been deemed a waste of resources to try to track them otherwise. Nobody had expected a seasoned special ops team to be calling their parents (or child; Ortilla had a son) while on a high-risk mission. Of course, nobody had expected a unit run by such types as O'Neill and Sheppard, where rules were for other people so long as the mission was accomplished.
"What do you make of all this?" Hollis asked David. "Circus or status quo?"
David frowned thoughtfully. "I believe it is both," she said after a moment. "They are interacting as they normally would, but with the knowledge that there is an audience that is not on their side. They are carefully feeding us information."
Which was what Hollis thought, but a second opinion didn't hurt.
"What do you make of Safir?" She didn't ask what David had said to him; it was probably irrelevant.
"The Mossad will be kicking itself that they did not scoop him up out of the army," David answered, then her expression turned bitter. "On the other hand, perhaps they tried and he said no."
"I'm sure they'll be taking an interest in him now," Hollis said mildly; she knew of David's complicated ties to her home agency.
She was watching the room as she spoke and maybe it was just the weeks of little sleep and the blinking lights on the console behind her reflecting on the glass, but she could have sworn that she saw Lorne's eyes glow for a second as he stood up suddenly and looked at the door.
Sheppard and Safir stood as well and the marines pushed off of the walls, alert and anticipatory when they'd been casual a moment before. In the observation room, Hollis nodded at David, who ran into the hallway to alert the guards.
"Sir?" Ortilla asked warily, taking a step toward Lorne. To hold him back or something else, Hollis didn't know.
Lorne shook his head, like he was clearing it, but kept his eyes on the door. "He's here."
"Who's here?" Sheppard asked. Lorne turned and gave him a meaningful look. "Fuck. All of our shit's upstairs."
Hollis turned to the tech sitting at the far wall. "Is there a security breach?"
The tech looks up at the inactive red-covered light near the ceiling. "Nothing's been reported. I'll call up."
"Thanks," Hollis said, turning her attention back to the scene in the interrogation room. She wondered if this was the start of another escape attempt.
"--going to tell them? Their murder suspect's Spidey-Sense is tingling and the real murderer's in the building while he's sitting around with the men responsible for a brig break?" Sheppard was asking. The voice was sarcastic, but the devil-may-care posture was gone. This was the real Sheppard. The question was whether he was leading a defense or an offensive rush. "We can't do anything, so we wait."
David was still in the hallway, one foot holding the door open. Hollis called to her.
"Anything out there?" she asked.
David shook her head no. "Just the guards. Should there be?"
"I don't know," Hollis replied. "They seem to think so."
"Security's got nothing, Colonel Mann," the tech reported. "Would you like me to report anything?"
Hollis looked at the tense tableau on the other side of the mirror and she hated that her instincts couldn't tell her whether this was a ruse or something she couldn't fathom.
"Not yet," she finally said. "But see if they can spare a couple of extra guards. We've got a lot of able men in that room."
It was five more minutes before three more guards came down. Along with them came Gibbs.
"What's going on?" he asked, looking at both Hollis and David.
"Our visitors seem to think that the 'real' murderer is somewhere in the building," David replied.
"And you believe them?" Gibbs asked, incredulous. "Aren't those the guys who beat up McGee in the head?"
"That's why there are five guards outside their door," Hollis told him. Removed from watching it play out in real time and falling for it, even a little bit, even if by some miracle it was true, made her feel angry with herself and, by extension, annoyed with Gibbs for pointing out her foolishness.
On the other side of the glass, Ortilla and Reletti were standing next to Lorne, a half-step away from being able to hide him completely from the door. On the other side of the table, Suarez stood closest to the door with Sheppard and Safir waiting behind him.
Gibbs made a disgusted noise and turned away.
"He's gone," Lorne said.
"Gone-gone or off-your-radar gone?" Sheppard asked. Nobody moved or relaxed.
Across the observation room, out of the corner of her eye, Hollis could see Gibbs turn back to face the mirror.
"I don't know that there's a difference," Lorne answered, a frustrated look on his face as he closed his eyes.
"Are you sure it's him?" Safir asked.
Lorne opened his eyes. "It's him."
"Any chance you know who he looks like on the outside?" Sheppard asked, but he didn't sound hopeful.
Lorne shook of his head.
Hollis exchanged a look with Gibbs; it almost sounded like Lorne had some kind of means for detecting something. He'd been physically searched and passed through at least three metal detectors while in their custody, so it wasn't as if he could be carrying anything. Maybe it was just a realization snapping into place. Or, judging by the look Gibbs was giving her, maybe it was just to screw with the audience.
"What the hell is he doing here?" Ortilla asked.
"Casing the joint?" Reletti offered. "He going after us or the fuzz?"
"Why would he go after the fuzz?" Suarez retorted. "They're the ones shutting us down."
"So he's going after us?" Reletti made a disbelieving face. "That doesn't make any more sense. Why wait until we were here? We're under guard and he has to get in and out."
Ortilla gave Reletti a look that was clearly a reminder that they themselves had done just that and Hollis idly noted that they almost had a confession, albeit for a case they'd never prosecute.
"He'd be trackable if everyone knew he was coming here," Reletti countered, pointing down to indicate the interrogation room. "It would've made more sense before we got pulled in by Higher."
"He knows where we are now," Suarez said.
"We've already been debriefed," Reletti argued. "He's gotta be here for the Major."
"The frame job was supposed to get you off his case and it worked," Sheppard said to Lorne, not challenging the assessment. "You have any other piece of the puzzle that you haven't shared yet?"
There was an edge to the question; Sheppard wasn't quite as okay with being fooled as he'd said he was.
"If I do, I don't know what it is," Lorne replied, shaking his head. "I've done my part. Carter's putting together the tech side, so he's already failed at trying to stop us at the discovery phase. I'm hardly going to be necessary with implementation."
"Are you?" Sheppard asked pointedly and Hollis wished this conversation came with subtitles because they were speaking in a code that was visible insofar as it was obvious that they were carrying on on multiple levels, but not so that any of those other levels were accessible to outsiders. "The regular, lovable, Luddite you, sure, but…"
"That was never part of the plan," Lorne replied.
Sheppard sighed. "I'm going to get in touch with the brass. I don't think there were any contingency plans in case he came here. We're not really dressed for the occasion and our hosts aren't going to be much help."
"Sir?" Ortilla prompted carefully, gesturing with his chin toward the mirror.
"Screw'em," Sheppard replied, not even bothering to turn around. "We weren't their favorite people before."
"Still think I'm a fool?" Hollis asked Gibbs.
Gibbs didn't answer, which meant that the answer was no. He left without saying anything, going around to the interrogation room and getting confronted by Sheppard, who wanted his cell phone battery back. Hollis had tried to confiscate their phones before letting them go anywhere, but Sheppard had refused to hand his over -- "What, so you can data-mine the thing as soon as I'm out of sight?" -- and they'd ended up compromising by having the visitors hand over the phone batteries.
"You're not getting anything until you tell me what you're playing at," Gibbs replied. "You think we're just going to let you people run riot in here?"
"I'm trying to keep my people alive," Sheppard said. "Beyond that, I'm not sure what you think or whether it matters to me."
Sheppard was calm and dismissive, confident that Gibbs posed no threat. It was the same attitude that everyone from O'Neill's unit had, even Mitchell in that moment when they'd caught him off-guard. The cockiness was perhaps merited - O'Neill had largely gotten what he'd wanted - but it still rankled.
"Who do you think are you protecting him from?" Gibbs asked. "Us? Casper the Friendly Ghost?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Sheppard replied, unwilling to be goaded. "If you'll excuse me, I need to go make a phone call."
"I'm not letting you back down here," Gibbs warned as Sheppard took his first step past him. "This isn't a hospital with visiting hours and that's not a revolving door."
"Then they're staying," Sheppard said, gesturing behind him to Lorne's team, "and I'll go. And we probably pick this up when our bosses start shouting at each other."
If that was a promise to drag this over both of their heads, Sheppard had badly misstepped.
"They're not staying," Gibbs returned evenly. "Not unless you want us charging them for the last time they came down here."
Hollis exchanged a knowing look with David; Sheppard should have known better than to threaten Gibbs on his native turf.
"I'll be fine," Lorne told Ortilla, who looked like he might be weighing the option of getting booked if it meant he'd be able to still keep an eye on Lorne. "Go get this guy."
The marines and Safir left without a word, nodding to Lorne and following Sheppard out of the room.
"Take them upstairs," Hollis told David. "Take a couple of the guards and don't let them get the drop on you."
Gibbs waited for the door to close and then sat down at the table. Lorne did the same.
"What is this, some kind of mafia thing where you think you can run the show from a jail cell?" Gibbs asked. "You're still a murder suspect."
"Innocent until proven guilty, even under the UCMJ," Lorne replied patiently, if maybe not quite as easy as always. "I'm not trying to run anything, at least not anymore. It's all above my pay grade now."
Gibbs's, too, he didn't have to add. Hollis doubted the extra reminder would go over well.
"If this is a scam, I'll have you on everything you've ever done," Gibbs promised. "Covert op or not, I'll get it and I'll use it."
"I'm not running a scam," Lorne sighed. "I'm not trying to make you look bad, I'm not trying to bust out of here, I'm not trying to be any more difficult than I have to be beyond the nature of what I do for a living."
"You're doing a crap job of it," Gibbs told him sourly.
"I am," Lorne agreed. "But not for my own enjoyment."
The door to the observation room opened and DiNozzo appeared. "I heard I missed all of the fun stuff," he said as he drew up next to Hollis by the window. "Phantom suspects and ESP and all sorts of things that makes me think Patrick Swayze might be right behind me hoping that this is the moment when I'll see the real killer he's been trying to point out all along.... He's not, is he?"
Hollis made a show of looking behind him. "No."
"Good," DiNozzo sighed. "I've got enough trouble with people sneaking up behind me."
"Ditto," she replied, then allowed a small smile when DiNozzo did a double-take.
"You're not..." he trailed off chuckling and waggling his finger. "You're sly, Colonel."
"Not sly enough," she said sourly, gesturing with her chin toward the glass. "Lorne's got something and it has to do with whatever these murders are about."
DiNozzo cocked an eyebrow. "Beyond his prints on a murder weapon?"
Hollis shook her head. "Lorne was willing to fall on his sword until his higher command swooped in and decided to rescue him. He still will if they tell him to. That's not the same as actually being guilty."
"You think he's not?"
"We all think this is hinky," she pointed out and DiNozzo grimaced in agreement. "And the more time I spend watching him and his people and everyone in this program, the more I'm convinced that they're not playing us. They're playing around us. They've got something else going on and they've been giving us little bits once they're sure we can't do anything with them."
Which would have explained Lorne's earlier attitude toward his chances.
"So you think they screwed up by giving us Lorne?" DiNozzo mused. "They thought they were done with him and they weren't?"
"They didn't give him to us - we got him, fair and square," Hollis corrected. "But they let us keep him because they thought he'd done his part - he thought he'd done his part. Except maybe they were all wrong and Lorne's not done. Or the game has sufficiently changed that he's back on the board. It doesn't matter, really. They realize they've made a mistake and they're going to try to get him back now."
"Let 'em try," Gibbs said from the doorway. "Won't get 'em anywhere."
"I don't know about that, Boss," McGee's voice carried in from the hallway. Gibbs turned so that McGee could join them. "Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Matthew Holden is missing."
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On LJ: One | Two| Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
The following morning, Hollis was alone in the bullpen with David and on the phone to her office when Sheppard returned with friends. Lorne's team, dressed in civilian clothing and looking remarkably fresh for having traveled all night, stood waiting to get permission to visit him. Dressed in civilian clothing, the marines looked both more and less dangerous in person than they did in their official photographs -- defiant and faintly abashed all at once, ready to either fight or apologize or both.
David said something to Safir in Hebrew and he responded in kind; whatever he said wiped the cautiously friendly expression off of her face.
"Be nice, Doc," Staff Sergeant Ortilla chided. "We don't get to see the Major if you piss off the fuzz."
Sheppard turned around. "Don't make me have you wait in the car."
"We took the train," Safir replied evenly. Sheppard rolled his eyes, clearly in on the joke even if Safir wasn't.
McGee had been down at Abby's dealing with an unrelated case and he came out of the elevator without looking, stopping short once he saw the group and then almost taking a step back once he realized who they were.
"They're on their best behavior," Sheppard assured easily.
McGee raised an eyebrow, either at the assurance or the tone with which it had been delivered. Sheppard was almost comically casual, the uniform and the situation seemingly mattering not at all. Most of it was an act, but not all of it. It was the kind of attitude that worked in Special Ops and nowhere else, not even in the Air Force. In Sheppard's case, O'Neill would probably tolerate a lot for results.
Hollis asked McGee to have Lorne brought up to Interrogation; he did so without hesitation or even giving the faintest glimmer of looking like he was about to suggest they wait for Gibbs. Or maybe extra security.
After other preliminaries, she asked David to escort them downstairs, but then tagged along. She wanted to see how everyone interacted, get a better feel for the suspects that were still suspects although nobody was treating them as such. Lorne was still being held on the murder of Baxter and the break-in at Kim's and there was no way he accomplished everything he'd done that they couldn't prove without these men, but here they were, not even being charged with breaking into NCIS headquarters and assaulting McGee, which could be proven. (As opposed to the break-in at Meade, which could not, at least not beyond a reasonable doubt.)
"Do we need to go in shifts?" Sheppard asked as they approached.
Hollis shook her head. "Your people are more of a threat loitering in the hallway."
"Or going to the bathroom," David added not-quite sotto voce.
"How long do we have, ma'am?" Staff Sergeant Ortilla asked.
"Depends on if we say something interesting," Safir answered brightly. "If we get Lorne to confess to murder, we can stay all day."
"Nobody's getting Lorne to confess to murder," Sheppard told them, like they might have otherwise seriously considered doing so. "It'll take us years to figure out his filing system if he's in the pokey and your company commander is pissed off enough as it is."
From the guards standing outside, Hollis could tell that Lorne had already been delivered. She wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad one that the guards didn't even blink at an Army officer and a Mossad agent bringing in a half-dozen military (and paramilitary) men to visit a high-risk prisoner. Perhaps this went a bit toward explaining how the three marines had gotten in and out on their first visit.
Hollis and David waited for them to enter. Sheppard opened the door and the others filed through.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," Sergeant Reletti murmured as he passed.
They waited for the door to close before heading over to the observation room.
Safir and Sheppard were in the chairs opposite Lorne; the three marines were positioned along three walls so that they had clear views of the door. Suarez was leaning against the mirror and Ortilla was facing it, standing behind Lorne and making him look smaller than usual. The positioning was defensive, but the mood in the room was not tense. Lorne's team was clearly not worried about Sheppard's ire, which Hollis took to mean that Sheppard had probably already said his piece. He was undoubtedly the kind of commander who reamed his people out in private.
"--teams. Figure out which one's the bad guy and take him down before anyone else gets hurt," Sheppard was saying.
"Are they sure that's it, sir?" Reletti asked. "There's not a fifth choice somewhere out there?"
Sheppard, his back to them, might've made a face, but Hollis could only see the shrug. "Colonel Carter seems to be sure. We're going to have to go with that."
"I don't like it, sir," Ortilla said with a frown. "There's too much we don't know -- or we didn't know until it was too late to do anything about it."
"Just because they're Air Force doesn't mean they can't figure out which end of the rifle to point at the bad guy, Staff Sergeant," Sheppard sighed. Ortilla made a frustrated face, like he wanted to clarify his point, but Sheppard continued on. "They've been doing this for a while -- longer than you have. From all reports you guys did a thorough hand-over briefing. Let them run with this. If nothing else, they've got numbers and resources on their side."
"Quality over quantity, sir," Suarez retorted cheekily. Sheppard turned around and gave Suarez a baleful look, one that spoke of inter-service rivalry debates of long standing as well as the comfort level between the men in the room.
"The sooner they catch this guy, the sooner we can take the Major and go," Reletti said, then paused, as if he'd just thought of something. "Do you know how he got your knife, sir?"
The tone was one of genuine curiosity, but Hollis didn't doubt that this was for her benefit.
Lorne frowned. "Best I can guess, it happened during our... hiatus. I was keeping my kit in the locker room; it wouldn't have been that hard for anyone to break in and swap out a knife. I thought something was weird with it at some point -- it was sharpened differently than I usually do it -- and I meant to ask my junior guy if he'd taken it to the armorer or something, but I forgot about it."
Plausible and unprovable, just like everything else. Hollis was maybe a little more inclined to believe it after two days of O'Neill's people glaring daggers at each other, but until they got a new and better suspect, anything Lorne said had to be taken in context.
"When this is all over," Safir began, "I think I will take some vacation time."
Sheppard turned to him. "You're kidding me, right?"
"No," Safir replied. "This is my first trip back since the High Holidays. I would like to go home and see my family."
Hollis looked over at David, who shook her head slightly. This was not the first indication that Sheppard, Lorne, and his team were not posted on US soil, but they hadn't been able to get anything on anyone. Safir's passport, like the marines' and Lorne's and Sheppard's, showed none of the activity that a foreign posting would require, nor did it seem like they were carrying official secondary passports. Which left a raft of other options, legit and not, but it gave Hollis and NCIS no leads on where they were operating from or what was going on.
"When this is all over, you are going straight back and explaining yourself to Carson," Sheppard told him. "Who, for the record, is as overjoyed as everyone else by what has gone on."
"Does this mean we can't take leave, either, sir?" Suarez asked.
Lorne fought off a smile as Sheppard made a frustrated noise.
"This means that you all have been forgiven on paper," Sheppard said sourly. "But you still have to settle up your accounts with everyone you've worried and pissed off over the course of this adventure."
"That's a 'wait a few weeks' or a 'no', sir?" Ortilla ventured.
"We'll talk about it later, Manny," Lorne said, ending the discussion. "I've got a lot of apologizing to do first. And it's not like you guys haven't been calling home regularly anyway."
They hadn't bothered tracking calls from any of the marines or Safir; none of them were currently paying for cell phones and it had been deemed a waste of resources to try to track them otherwise. Nobody had expected a seasoned special ops team to be calling their parents (or child; Ortilla had a son) while on a high-risk mission. Of course, nobody had expected a unit run by such types as O'Neill and Sheppard, where rules were for other people so long as the mission was accomplished.
"What do you make of all this?" Hollis asked David. "Circus or status quo?"
David frowned thoughtfully. "I believe it is both," she said after a moment. "They are interacting as they normally would, but with the knowledge that there is an audience that is not on their side. They are carefully feeding us information."
Which was what Hollis thought, but a second opinion didn't hurt.
"What do you make of Safir?" She didn't ask what David had said to him; it was probably irrelevant.
"The Mossad will be kicking itself that they did not scoop him up out of the army," David answered, then her expression turned bitter. "On the other hand, perhaps they tried and he said no."
"I'm sure they'll be taking an interest in him now," Hollis said mildly; she knew of David's complicated ties to her home agency.
She was watching the room as she spoke and maybe it was just the weeks of little sleep and the blinking lights on the console behind her reflecting on the glass, but she could have sworn that she saw Lorne's eyes glow for a second as he stood up suddenly and looked at the door.
Sheppard and Safir stood as well and the marines pushed off of the walls, alert and anticipatory when they'd been casual a moment before. In the observation room, Hollis nodded at David, who ran into the hallway to alert the guards.
"Sir?" Ortilla asked warily, taking a step toward Lorne. To hold him back or something else, Hollis didn't know.
Lorne shook his head, like he was clearing it, but kept his eyes on the door. "He's here."
"Who's here?" Sheppard asked. Lorne turned and gave him a meaningful look. "Fuck. All of our shit's upstairs."
Hollis turned to the tech sitting at the far wall. "Is there a security breach?"
The tech looks up at the inactive red-covered light near the ceiling. "Nothing's been reported. I'll call up."
"Thanks," Hollis said, turning her attention back to the scene in the interrogation room. She wondered if this was the start of another escape attempt.
"--going to tell them? Their murder suspect's Spidey-Sense is tingling and the real murderer's in the building while he's sitting around with the men responsible for a brig break?" Sheppard was asking. The voice was sarcastic, but the devil-may-care posture was gone. This was the real Sheppard. The question was whether he was leading a defense or an offensive rush. "We can't do anything, so we wait."
David was still in the hallway, one foot holding the door open. Hollis called to her.
"Anything out there?" she asked.
David shook her head no. "Just the guards. Should there be?"
"I don't know," Hollis replied. "They seem to think so."
"Security's got nothing, Colonel Mann," the tech reported. "Would you like me to report anything?"
Hollis looked at the tense tableau on the other side of the mirror and she hated that her instincts couldn't tell her whether this was a ruse or something she couldn't fathom.
"Not yet," she finally said. "But see if they can spare a couple of extra guards. We've got a lot of able men in that room."
It was five more minutes before three more guards came down. Along with them came Gibbs.
"What's going on?" he asked, looking at both Hollis and David.
"Our visitors seem to think that the 'real' murderer is somewhere in the building," David replied.
"And you believe them?" Gibbs asked, incredulous. "Aren't those the guys who beat up McGee in the head?"
"That's why there are five guards outside their door," Hollis told him. Removed from watching it play out in real time and falling for it, even a little bit, even if by some miracle it was true, made her feel angry with herself and, by extension, annoyed with Gibbs for pointing out her foolishness.
On the other side of the glass, Ortilla and Reletti were standing next to Lorne, a half-step away from being able to hide him completely from the door. On the other side of the table, Suarez stood closest to the door with Sheppard and Safir waiting behind him.
Gibbs made a disgusted noise and turned away.
"He's gone," Lorne said.
"Gone-gone or off-your-radar gone?" Sheppard asked. Nobody moved or relaxed.
Across the observation room, out of the corner of her eye, Hollis could see Gibbs turn back to face the mirror.
"I don't know that there's a difference," Lorne answered, a frustrated look on his face as he closed his eyes.
"Are you sure it's him?" Safir asked.
Lorne opened his eyes. "It's him."
"Any chance you know who he looks like on the outside?" Sheppard asked, but he didn't sound hopeful.
Lorne shook of his head.
Hollis exchanged a look with Gibbs; it almost sounded like Lorne had some kind of means for detecting something. He'd been physically searched and passed through at least three metal detectors while in their custody, so it wasn't as if he could be carrying anything. Maybe it was just a realization snapping into place. Or, judging by the look Gibbs was giving her, maybe it was just to screw with the audience.
"What the hell is he doing here?" Ortilla asked.
"Casing the joint?" Reletti offered. "He going after us or the fuzz?"
"Why would he go after the fuzz?" Suarez retorted. "They're the ones shutting us down."
"So he's going after us?" Reletti made a disbelieving face. "That doesn't make any more sense. Why wait until we were here? We're under guard and he has to get in and out."
Ortilla gave Reletti a look that was clearly a reminder that they themselves had done just that and Hollis idly noted that they almost had a confession, albeit for a case they'd never prosecute.
"He'd be trackable if everyone knew he was coming here," Reletti countered, pointing down to indicate the interrogation room. "It would've made more sense before we got pulled in by Higher."
"He knows where we are now," Suarez said.
"We've already been debriefed," Reletti argued. "He's gotta be here for the Major."
"The frame job was supposed to get you off his case and it worked," Sheppard said to Lorne, not challenging the assessment. "You have any other piece of the puzzle that you haven't shared yet?"
There was an edge to the question; Sheppard wasn't quite as okay with being fooled as he'd said he was.
"If I do, I don't know what it is," Lorne replied, shaking his head. "I've done my part. Carter's putting together the tech side, so he's already failed at trying to stop us at the discovery phase. I'm hardly going to be necessary with implementation."
"Are you?" Sheppard asked pointedly and Hollis wished this conversation came with subtitles because they were speaking in a code that was visible insofar as it was obvious that they were carrying on on multiple levels, but not so that any of those other levels were accessible to outsiders. "The regular, lovable, Luddite you, sure, but…"
"That was never part of the plan," Lorne replied.
Sheppard sighed. "I'm going to get in touch with the brass. I don't think there were any contingency plans in case he came here. We're not really dressed for the occasion and our hosts aren't going to be much help."
"Sir?" Ortilla prompted carefully, gesturing with his chin toward the mirror.
"Screw'em," Sheppard replied, not even bothering to turn around. "We weren't their favorite people before."
"Still think I'm a fool?" Hollis asked Gibbs.
Gibbs didn't answer, which meant that the answer was no. He left without saying anything, going around to the interrogation room and getting confronted by Sheppard, who wanted his cell phone battery back. Hollis had tried to confiscate their phones before letting them go anywhere, but Sheppard had refused to hand his over -- "What, so you can data-mine the thing as soon as I'm out of sight?" -- and they'd ended up compromising by having the visitors hand over the phone batteries.
"You're not getting anything until you tell me what you're playing at," Gibbs replied. "You think we're just going to let you people run riot in here?"
"I'm trying to keep my people alive," Sheppard said. "Beyond that, I'm not sure what you think or whether it matters to me."
Sheppard was calm and dismissive, confident that Gibbs posed no threat. It was the same attitude that everyone from O'Neill's unit had, even Mitchell in that moment when they'd caught him off-guard. The cockiness was perhaps merited - O'Neill had largely gotten what he'd wanted - but it still rankled.
"Who do you think are you protecting him from?" Gibbs asked. "Us? Casper the Friendly Ghost?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Sheppard replied, unwilling to be goaded. "If you'll excuse me, I need to go make a phone call."
"I'm not letting you back down here," Gibbs warned as Sheppard took his first step past him. "This isn't a hospital with visiting hours and that's not a revolving door."
"Then they're staying," Sheppard said, gesturing behind him to Lorne's team, "and I'll go. And we probably pick this up when our bosses start shouting at each other."
If that was a promise to drag this over both of their heads, Sheppard had badly misstepped.
"They're not staying," Gibbs returned evenly. "Not unless you want us charging them for the last time they came down here."
Hollis exchanged a knowing look with David; Sheppard should have known better than to threaten Gibbs on his native turf.
"I'll be fine," Lorne told Ortilla, who looked like he might be weighing the option of getting booked if it meant he'd be able to still keep an eye on Lorne. "Go get this guy."
The marines and Safir left without a word, nodding to Lorne and following Sheppard out of the room.
"Take them upstairs," Hollis told David. "Take a couple of the guards and don't let them get the drop on you."
Gibbs waited for the door to close and then sat down at the table. Lorne did the same.
"What is this, some kind of mafia thing where you think you can run the show from a jail cell?" Gibbs asked. "You're still a murder suspect."
"Innocent until proven guilty, even under the UCMJ," Lorne replied patiently, if maybe not quite as easy as always. "I'm not trying to run anything, at least not anymore. It's all above my pay grade now."
Gibbs's, too, he didn't have to add. Hollis doubted the extra reminder would go over well.
"If this is a scam, I'll have you on everything you've ever done," Gibbs promised. "Covert op or not, I'll get it and I'll use it."
"I'm not running a scam," Lorne sighed. "I'm not trying to make you look bad, I'm not trying to bust out of here, I'm not trying to be any more difficult than I have to be beyond the nature of what I do for a living."
"You're doing a crap job of it," Gibbs told him sourly.
"I am," Lorne agreed. "But not for my own enjoyment."
The door to the observation room opened and DiNozzo appeared. "I heard I missed all of the fun stuff," he said as he drew up next to Hollis by the window. "Phantom suspects and ESP and all sorts of things that makes me think Patrick Swayze might be right behind me hoping that this is the moment when I'll see the real killer he's been trying to point out all along.... He's not, is he?"
Hollis made a show of looking behind him. "No."
"Good," DiNozzo sighed. "I've got enough trouble with people sneaking up behind me."
"Ditto," she replied, then allowed a small smile when DiNozzo did a double-take.
"You're not..." he trailed off chuckling and waggling his finger. "You're sly, Colonel."
"Not sly enough," she said sourly, gesturing with her chin toward the glass. "Lorne's got something and it has to do with whatever these murders are about."
DiNozzo cocked an eyebrow. "Beyond his prints on a murder weapon?"
Hollis shook her head. "Lorne was willing to fall on his sword until his higher command swooped in and decided to rescue him. He still will if they tell him to. That's not the same as actually being guilty."
"You think he's not?"
"We all think this is hinky," she pointed out and DiNozzo grimaced in agreement. "And the more time I spend watching him and his people and everyone in this program, the more I'm convinced that they're not playing us. They're playing around us. They've got something else going on and they've been giving us little bits once they're sure we can't do anything with them."
Which would have explained Lorne's earlier attitude toward his chances.
"So you think they screwed up by giving us Lorne?" DiNozzo mused. "They thought they were done with him and they weren't?"
"They didn't give him to us - we got him, fair and square," Hollis corrected. "But they let us keep him because they thought he'd done his part - he thought he'd done his part. Except maybe they were all wrong and Lorne's not done. Or the game has sufficiently changed that he's back on the board. It doesn't matter, really. They realize they've made a mistake and they're going to try to get him back now."
"Let 'em try," Gibbs said from the doorway. "Won't get 'em anywhere."
"I don't know about that, Boss," McGee's voice carried in from the hallway. Gibbs turned so that McGee could join them. "Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Matthew Holden is missing."