Fic: Rock and a hard Place 3/10
<<-- Chapter 2
.-#-.
Rule 3: Respect each other’s opinions
“What do we know?” Gibbs had, after glaring hard at the rickety table, folded the thing
and deftly put it outside in the front yard. He was now leaning against the counter with
the rest of his team sitting in the chairs. They took their hard-backed field clipboards
and arranged themselves in an improvised lecture room setting.
McGee used scotch tape to hang a few documents on the whiteboard. “According to
this time-line, two days ago one of the residents, Mrs. Greenham - wife of Sergeant
George Greenham who is currently deployed - found the body of a unidentified
Caucasian male behind her house at 2130. She called the MPs and told them that
she saw a black panther run away. The body shows signs of decomposition and deep
wounds that have been caused by animal teeth. Their M.E. has the corpse in his
morgue.”
The last pictures the computer geek added were photos of the body and it wasn't a
pretty sight at all. Tony would take any bet that even the man's own mother would have
problems identifying him. But one thing was clear: whoever he was, he hadn't died just
two days ago. No chance, no how - there was too much decomposition, even to his
untrained eyes.
“Real big feline predators like panthers won't eat carrion unless they are starving to
death,” Cait cautiously added, sparing a quick glance at Tony.
Looking at gruesome pictures like these was one of the less appealing aspects of being
in law enforcement. Tony fought his nausea by concentrating on the details and not the
whole picture, and then pointed at a few things he found strange.
“No, a hunting cat wouldn't. And this was not done out of hunger. Look at where the
bite marks are - they are very random and none of the main muscle groups like the
thighs seems to be missing, just torn apart. The first thing most predators dig into is the
abdomen. Why spare energy for digesting something if your meal is halfway pre-made?”
“Tony!” Cait scowled at him out of disgust, but Gibbs was listening intently.
“The stomach area is not especially torn apart.”
“Nope Boss, it isn't,” one of the first things Tony had voluntarily studied, after they had
come for him and dragged him to the Stables, was every fucking detail he could find that
made him different from real cats. He’d revel in the smallest differences he could find.
Of course he had amassed a lot of other knowledge as a result - “Scavengers don't hunt
down big prey; they prefer to take what is left. Even bone marrow if it comes down to
it, but larger muscle masses that take longer to decompose are filling and preferred. No
sane predator would just bite into carrion for the fun of it. Plus, a Feline's digestive tract
works like that of a normal human. In a pinch both full humans and Felines can survive
on fresh raw meat, but it is not healthy long term. Whatever, or whoever
did that is not sane.”
“Since black panthers are not native to Miami, and no circus or wildlife park has
reported a missing big cat, this leaves us with a Feline, who is likely insane,” McGee
glumly summed up for them. “Just great.”
Gibbs studied the photos, his cold blue eyes analytical and dissecting. “Let's not jump
to conclusions. We will talk to the witness and get that body sent back to DC. I want to
know the cause of death since it's not listed in the report. Check the local news outside
the base for animal attacks - if our attacker is insane, this wouldn't be the only sighting.”
Phone calls were one of the few things they could actually do from their currently
cramped quarters.
.-#-.
Faced with the bed shortage Tony had very reluctantly offered to spend the night on
the floor and leave the big bedroom to Gibbs and McGee, since his tiger form would
mind the hard linoleum floor in the living room the least out of the four of them. There
would be no chance at getting intimate even without the space problem - the walls of
this hovel looked paper thin. Though he would have loved to curl up beside Jethro, just
to sleep. Tony was by now used to the soft snores and slight movements of a sleeping
Gibbs and this would be the first night in four weeks they would spend apart.
However, McGee had assured them that he could take the floor for one night. “Thank
you very much for the offer Tony, but I'm a Scout Leader. I’m used to camping, so I’ll
survive.”
The two younger men shared a long look at that. ‘Better the floor than the Boss,’ Tim's
eyes said. ‘The other way round for me,’ Tony's answered, and that was the end of the
issue.
Nobody was stupid enough to ask Cait if she wanted to take one for the team. The
female agent might insist most of the time to be treated just like one of the boys, but
that didn't prevent her from drawing the line at certain situations.
The sounds of Cait getting ready for bed in the next room told Tony that he had been
right to curse the cheap, thin-walled heap of a house, but for one night they would
manage.
Tony sniffed the blankets, ignoring the part incredulous, part bemused look Gibbs was
throwing while observing him as the older man changed into his sleeping clothes. “They
are clean.” was the final verdict.
“Tony, the rest of the house is clean as well, just old and really small. That bathroom
sparkled, before you set it under steam. The Army might not be the Marines or the
Navy, but they do have a standard to uphold.”
For peace’s sake Tony didn't recite some of the stories the other two agents had told
him about Iguanas, cockroaches and filth on their own bases, and crawled under the
blankets instead. “Do you think the President sees us as his personal Feline Criminal
Investigative Squad? Might sound selfish of me, but I would prefer normal cases. Or
as normal as they get anyways.” Though, mummies in bombs and fresh corpses in old
graves, honestly...
The bed dipped dangerously to one side when Gibbs joined him; it seemed as if the
mattress wasn't the newest either. “I hope not. Williams sent me some files and there
are less than two dozen incidents a year across the States, most of them false alarms.
Most cases will be handled by the usual division but if he needs military affiliated
investigators...”
“He'll call for us, and you just don't say no to the President,” Tony grumbled and took his
preferred sleeping position, curling up against Gibbs’ back.
He felt Gibbs laugh more than he heard it. “Well, I'm quite happy with not saying no on
one special occasion.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tony punched his lumpy but fresh smelling pillow into shape, a big
smile on his face, before snuggling down. Take that, Colonel Mann.
.-#-.
Tony wasn't hiding. Honestly, he was not. Miami had the perfect weather to wear his
sunglasses and it was a windy day so the NCIS cap had a purpose as well, keeping his
bangs from being constantly blown into his face. He would cut it shorter, but it tended
to grow back very fast whenever he morphed so there really wasn’t a point in doing
that. Plus - and it was really a little side thought - interviewing people who were already
freaked out about an insane jungle cat while looking at them with a pair of predator's
eyes would just aggravate their witnesses needlessly wouldn't it?
Promptly at six in the morning Colonel Mann sharply knocked on their door. After
reassuring them that someone would collect their things and deliver them to their new
quarters, she had divided them up into two groups and driven them to the house of
their main witness. Tony made sure to be in the same car as his boss.
Maybe Mrs. Greenham was used to early mornings. Maybe she had been expecting
them, or maybe she was just too nervous to sleep, but she opened her door promptly
after the first knock. She was in her forties, her eyes were red rimmed and she was
wringing her hands.
Being the wife of a soldier wasn't easy, as danger was her partner's constant
companion, but that was a different sort of stress than finding mutilated human remains
in your backyard. Tony could understand why she was rattled. The print outs of photos
from the file had been bad enough. He luckily had had some warning about what he
would see beforehand and, most importantly, didn't have to smell it as well. If he
had learned something in his short time at NCIS, it was that death was an olfactory
nightmare - especially for a Feline that had been blessed with a very sharp nose.
Standing in the front yard of this house, Tony could still smell something in the air
that made the short fur on his neck stand in irritation, even after the corpse had been
long removed.
Tony watched, his nose tingling, how his boss calmly tried to get more details out of the
nervous woman. Gibbs was always more considerate when questioning dependents of
soldiers than with anyone else, and his gruff but honest behavior tended to make them
open up to him. It didn't take the former Marine long to make Mrs. Greenham lead
them out to where she had first spotted the corpse and walk them through everything
she had done from that point on. One thing she insisted on was that she hadn't
dreamed the black panther; she showed them where he had sat and in what direction
he had run away after spotting her. According to the report, Army CID hadn't found any
paw prints.
The ground around the house consisted of hard-baked earth, carefully trimmed and
tended winter lawn, cement and asphalt. The lack of prints was not exactly a surprise.
“What do you hope to find, Gibbs?” Mann asked after their witness had offered to
get them something to drink and gone back into her house to fetch the beverages.
The Colonel had been silent until now, just observed the NCIS team and the way they
worked. “We did our best to find and collect what little evidence there was, and there is
nothing left here.”
“I want to extend the perimeter search. Nobody is missing from the base but that body
had to have came from somewhere. This is not where he died,” Gibbs answered, noting
the lack of sufficient blood on the ground when the body was found.
“Nobody had been reported missing during the last two weeks that matched the
description of the dead man,” McGee added.
“Your own people commented on the poor state of his nails and that the clothes he
wore were old and ragged. It would point to a vagrant or homeless stranger passing
through-” was Cait's contribution. “I wonder how he got into a gated community
without being noticed, but if he hid in the vicinity we might be able to find his hiding
place or at least someone who remembered seeing him.”
Tony hesitated and gulped as he shuffled his feet, which caught his owner’s attention.
An idea that had popped into his head wouldn’t make him happy, but it might just work.
Ideas that worked would make Gibbs a happier lead agent.
“Tony?”
Great. Now all eyes were on him.
“Boss. Give me a sec,” Tony didn't wait for a reaction; instead, he bolted to the house,
taking off his sunglasses on his way in.
“Mrs. Greenham? I haven't introduced myself, have I?” his friendly smile had made
coeds melt in college without him even trying, and he hoped that his nervousness didn't
spoil the effect. Not that he wanted to make her melt, but according to his buddies the
goofy smile made him seem harmless too, not just attractive.
The lady of the house was standing at her sink, a big cup in her left hand and a towel in
the other. “No, but...” she trailed off and stared at him.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Tony hastily asked and it made her eyebrows rise. “I need to
use your bathroom. Eh, that came out wrong.”
Suddenly an amused grin broke out on the woman's face and transformed the rather
bland, scared housewife into a humorous, lively woman. “Your team leader is an old
hand at his job, but you, you are quite new, hmm?”
“Yeah, but I'm a genuinely nice guy and wouldn't hurt a fly, so if I ask you not to freak,
you won't, yes? You see, it's like this...”
.-#-.
Tony followed Mrs. Greenham out of the house, regally holding his head high and
making sure that he didn't trip her. The boss would scold him if he made the nice lady
spill the good coffee.
Of course, his teammates had seen him in his tiger form before, albeit only for those
first two days at work. After that he had always accompanied his boss in human form
and restricted the tiger to their home and back yard. Mann was the only one new to this
appearance, and it had her standing there for a very satisfying second with her mouth
wide open.
“Tony wanted me to take a look at his tiger and then tell you differences. The cat I
saw was smaller than him by a good bit. It is hard to judge, him being a tiger and the
other one a panther, but the shoulder was not as high and the limbs were gangly, like
with a younger animal. And I remember now that the panther was clumsy, stumbling
over his own paws,” Mrs. Greenham serenely offered her tray to the waiting men and
women. “Your coffee? I made it just like my George likes it.”
McGee grinned proudly as if Tony's idea had been his brainchild. “Nice idea Tony!”
The Feline couldn't join in his friend's good mood. It wasn't the Junior Agent's nose that
had to stand the reek that permeated the surroundings; transforming into his tiger had
made his sense of smell sharper. Even the strong coffee, or the Colonel's rampaging
hormones - the tiger spared her a pointed glare - could cover the sickly sweet odor of
rotting flesh.
“Is he sniffing the ground? Like a hound?” Mann came closer, interested, and bent down
as if she could judge better that way.
Tony took a few, hasty steps back to give her a wide berth to check another spot, and
then ran back to the house to morph in private. He had found out what he had hoped
to, so there was no reason to torment his other form's superior senses any longer.
A hound! How dare she! That's why he had been reluctant to use his tiger nose - he
wasn't NCIS’s answer to Lassie, faithfully sniffing and purring out clues. “I am not a
hound, Colonel. My nose is better than a human's, but it’s nowhere near as advanced
as a dog's. That corpse was days old and we already know that. It smelled sick, and the
stink is nearly overwhelming, covering everything else. All I could get was that there was
indeed another Feline. Felines have a specific scent pile different from a cat's, and it is a
smell I recognize easily,” after nearly seven years in his cat form, he should.
“So I wasn't imagining things!” relieved triumph colored Mrs. Greenham's voice; the
prospect of her brain playing tricks on her had obviously troubled her greatly.
“Yes, but the scent is strongest over there, by the fence where you saw it, and not here
where the body was found. The Feline is a male and, from the pheromones in his scent,
not fully grown. He would have left more near the corpse if he'd really taken the time to
rip into it,” and that possibility was something that had troubled Tony greatly. To meet a
Feline who was so far gone that he did something completely against their nature… the
thought made him sick to his stomach.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes, his nod barely discernible, but the warm approval it
conveyed made Tony feel like the king of the world. Now if he could get that look with
conventional means as well…
“Unfortunately, we only have your word that a Feline is involved. It helps to narrow
down the possibilities, but without solid evidence, it won't impress any court. That being
said, it's a starting point,” Mann said, finally, as she straightened up.
.-#-.
Chapter 4 -->>
.-#-.
Rule 3: Respect each other’s opinions
“What do we know?” Gibbs had, after glaring hard at the rickety table, folded the thing
and deftly put it outside in the front yard. He was now leaning against the counter with
the rest of his team sitting in the chairs. They took their hard-backed field clipboards
and arranged themselves in an improvised lecture room setting.
McGee used scotch tape to hang a few documents on the whiteboard. “According to
this time-line, two days ago one of the residents, Mrs. Greenham - wife of Sergeant
George Greenham who is currently deployed - found the body of a unidentified
Caucasian male behind her house at 2130. She called the MPs and told them that
she saw a black panther run away. The body shows signs of decomposition and deep
wounds that have been caused by animal teeth. Their M.E. has the corpse in his
morgue.”
The last pictures the computer geek added were photos of the body and it wasn't a
pretty sight at all. Tony would take any bet that even the man's own mother would have
problems identifying him. But one thing was clear: whoever he was, he hadn't died just
two days ago. No chance, no how - there was too much decomposition, even to his
untrained eyes.
“Real big feline predators like panthers won't eat carrion unless they are starving to
death,” Cait cautiously added, sparing a quick glance at Tony.
Looking at gruesome pictures like these was one of the less appealing aspects of being
in law enforcement. Tony fought his nausea by concentrating on the details and not the
whole picture, and then pointed at a few things he found strange.
“No, a hunting cat wouldn't. And this was not done out of hunger. Look at where the
bite marks are - they are very random and none of the main muscle groups like the
thighs seems to be missing, just torn apart. The first thing most predators dig into is the
abdomen. Why spare energy for digesting something if your meal is halfway pre-made?”
“Tony!” Cait scowled at him out of disgust, but Gibbs was listening intently.
“The stomach area is not especially torn apart.”
“Nope Boss, it isn't,” one of the first things Tony had voluntarily studied, after they had
come for him and dragged him to the Stables, was every fucking detail he could find that
made him different from real cats. He’d revel in the smallest differences he could find.
Of course he had amassed a lot of other knowledge as a result - “Scavengers don't hunt
down big prey; they prefer to take what is left. Even bone marrow if it comes down to
it, but larger muscle masses that take longer to decompose are filling and preferred. No
sane predator would just bite into carrion for the fun of it. Plus, a Feline's digestive tract
works like that of a normal human. In a pinch both full humans and Felines can survive
on fresh raw meat, but it is not healthy long term. Whatever, or whoever
did that is not sane.”
“Since black panthers are not native to Miami, and no circus or wildlife park has
reported a missing big cat, this leaves us with a Feline, who is likely insane,” McGee
glumly summed up for them. “Just great.”
Gibbs studied the photos, his cold blue eyes analytical and dissecting. “Let's not jump
to conclusions. We will talk to the witness and get that body sent back to DC. I want to
know the cause of death since it's not listed in the report. Check the local news outside
the base for animal attacks - if our attacker is insane, this wouldn't be the only sighting.”
Phone calls were one of the few things they could actually do from their currently
cramped quarters.
.-#-.
Faced with the bed shortage Tony had very reluctantly offered to spend the night on
the floor and leave the big bedroom to Gibbs and McGee, since his tiger form would
mind the hard linoleum floor in the living room the least out of the four of them. There
would be no chance at getting intimate even without the space problem - the walls of
this hovel looked paper thin. Though he would have loved to curl up beside Jethro, just
to sleep. Tony was by now used to the soft snores and slight movements of a sleeping
Gibbs and this would be the first night in four weeks they would spend apart.
However, McGee had assured them that he could take the floor for one night. “Thank
you very much for the offer Tony, but I'm a Scout Leader. I’m used to camping, so I’ll
survive.”
The two younger men shared a long look at that. ‘Better the floor than the Boss,’ Tim's
eyes said. ‘The other way round for me,’ Tony's answered, and that was the end of the
issue.
Nobody was stupid enough to ask Cait if she wanted to take one for the team. The
female agent might insist most of the time to be treated just like one of the boys, but
that didn't prevent her from drawing the line at certain situations.
The sounds of Cait getting ready for bed in the next room told Tony that he had been
right to curse the cheap, thin-walled heap of a house, but for one night they would
manage.
Tony sniffed the blankets, ignoring the part incredulous, part bemused look Gibbs was
throwing while observing him as the older man changed into his sleeping clothes. “They
are clean.” was the final verdict.
“Tony, the rest of the house is clean as well, just old and really small. That bathroom
sparkled, before you set it under steam. The Army might not be the Marines or the
Navy, but they do have a standard to uphold.”
For peace’s sake Tony didn't recite some of the stories the other two agents had told
him about Iguanas, cockroaches and filth on their own bases, and crawled under the
blankets instead. “Do you think the President sees us as his personal Feline Criminal
Investigative Squad? Might sound selfish of me, but I would prefer normal cases. Or
as normal as they get anyways.” Though, mummies in bombs and fresh corpses in old
graves, honestly...
The bed dipped dangerously to one side when Gibbs joined him; it seemed as if the
mattress wasn't the newest either. “I hope not. Williams sent me some files and there
are less than two dozen incidents a year across the States, most of them false alarms.
Most cases will be handled by the usual division but if he needs military affiliated
investigators...”
“He'll call for us, and you just don't say no to the President,” Tony grumbled and took his
preferred sleeping position, curling up against Gibbs’ back.
He felt Gibbs laugh more than he heard it. “Well, I'm quite happy with not saying no on
one special occasion.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tony punched his lumpy but fresh smelling pillow into shape, a big
smile on his face, before snuggling down. Take that, Colonel Mann.
.-#-.
Tony wasn't hiding. Honestly, he was not. Miami had the perfect weather to wear his
sunglasses and it was a windy day so the NCIS cap had a purpose as well, keeping his
bangs from being constantly blown into his face. He would cut it shorter, but it tended
to grow back very fast whenever he morphed so there really wasn’t a point in doing
that. Plus - and it was really a little side thought - interviewing people who were already
freaked out about an insane jungle cat while looking at them with a pair of predator's
eyes would just aggravate their witnesses needlessly wouldn't it?
Promptly at six in the morning Colonel Mann sharply knocked on their door. After
reassuring them that someone would collect their things and deliver them to their new
quarters, she had divided them up into two groups and driven them to the house of
their main witness. Tony made sure to be in the same car as his boss.
Maybe Mrs. Greenham was used to early mornings. Maybe she had been expecting
them, or maybe she was just too nervous to sleep, but she opened her door promptly
after the first knock. She was in her forties, her eyes were red rimmed and she was
wringing her hands.
Being the wife of a soldier wasn't easy, as danger was her partner's constant
companion, but that was a different sort of stress than finding mutilated human remains
in your backyard. Tony could understand why she was rattled. The print outs of photos
from the file had been bad enough. He luckily had had some warning about what he
would see beforehand and, most importantly, didn't have to smell it as well. If he
had learned something in his short time at NCIS, it was that death was an olfactory
nightmare - especially for a Feline that had been blessed with a very sharp nose.
Standing in the front yard of this house, Tony could still smell something in the air
that made the short fur on his neck stand in irritation, even after the corpse had been
long removed.
Tony watched, his nose tingling, how his boss calmly tried to get more details out of the
nervous woman. Gibbs was always more considerate when questioning dependents of
soldiers than with anyone else, and his gruff but honest behavior tended to make them
open up to him. It didn't take the former Marine long to make Mrs. Greenham lead
them out to where she had first spotted the corpse and walk them through everything
she had done from that point on. One thing she insisted on was that she hadn't
dreamed the black panther; she showed them where he had sat and in what direction
he had run away after spotting her. According to the report, Army CID hadn't found any
paw prints.
The ground around the house consisted of hard-baked earth, carefully trimmed and
tended winter lawn, cement and asphalt. The lack of prints was not exactly a surprise.
“What do you hope to find, Gibbs?” Mann asked after their witness had offered to
get them something to drink and gone back into her house to fetch the beverages.
The Colonel had been silent until now, just observed the NCIS team and the way they
worked. “We did our best to find and collect what little evidence there was, and there is
nothing left here.”
“I want to extend the perimeter search. Nobody is missing from the base but that body
had to have came from somewhere. This is not where he died,” Gibbs answered, noting
the lack of sufficient blood on the ground when the body was found.
“Nobody had been reported missing during the last two weeks that matched the
description of the dead man,” McGee added.
“Your own people commented on the poor state of his nails and that the clothes he
wore were old and ragged. It would point to a vagrant or homeless stranger passing
through-” was Cait's contribution. “I wonder how he got into a gated community
without being noticed, but if he hid in the vicinity we might be able to find his hiding
place or at least someone who remembered seeing him.”
Tony hesitated and gulped as he shuffled his feet, which caught his owner’s attention.
An idea that had popped into his head wouldn’t make him happy, but it might just work.
Ideas that worked would make Gibbs a happier lead agent.
“Tony?”
Great. Now all eyes were on him.
“Boss. Give me a sec,” Tony didn't wait for a reaction; instead, he bolted to the house,
taking off his sunglasses on his way in.
“Mrs. Greenham? I haven't introduced myself, have I?” his friendly smile had made
coeds melt in college without him even trying, and he hoped that his nervousness didn't
spoil the effect. Not that he wanted to make her melt, but according to his buddies the
goofy smile made him seem harmless too, not just attractive.
The lady of the house was standing at her sink, a big cup in her left hand and a towel in
the other. “No, but...” she trailed off and stared at him.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Tony hastily asked and it made her eyebrows rise. “I need to
use your bathroom. Eh, that came out wrong.”
Suddenly an amused grin broke out on the woman's face and transformed the rather
bland, scared housewife into a humorous, lively woman. “Your team leader is an old
hand at his job, but you, you are quite new, hmm?”
“Yeah, but I'm a genuinely nice guy and wouldn't hurt a fly, so if I ask you not to freak,
you won't, yes? You see, it's like this...”
.-#-.
Tony followed Mrs. Greenham out of the house, regally holding his head high and
making sure that he didn't trip her. The boss would scold him if he made the nice lady
spill the good coffee.
Of course, his teammates had seen him in his tiger form before, albeit only for those
first two days at work. After that he had always accompanied his boss in human form
and restricted the tiger to their home and back yard. Mann was the only one new to this
appearance, and it had her standing there for a very satisfying second with her mouth
wide open.
“Tony wanted me to take a look at his tiger and then tell you differences. The cat I
saw was smaller than him by a good bit. It is hard to judge, him being a tiger and the
other one a panther, but the shoulder was not as high and the limbs were gangly, like
with a younger animal. And I remember now that the panther was clumsy, stumbling
over his own paws,” Mrs. Greenham serenely offered her tray to the waiting men and
women. “Your coffee? I made it just like my George likes it.”
McGee grinned proudly as if Tony's idea had been his brainchild. “Nice idea Tony!”
The Feline couldn't join in his friend's good mood. It wasn't the Junior Agent's nose that
had to stand the reek that permeated the surroundings; transforming into his tiger had
made his sense of smell sharper. Even the strong coffee, or the Colonel's rampaging
hormones - the tiger spared her a pointed glare - could cover the sickly sweet odor of
rotting flesh.
“Is he sniffing the ground? Like a hound?” Mann came closer, interested, and bent down
as if she could judge better that way.
Tony took a few, hasty steps back to give her a wide berth to check another spot, and
then ran back to the house to morph in private. He had found out what he had hoped
to, so there was no reason to torment his other form's superior senses any longer.
A hound! How dare she! That's why he had been reluctant to use his tiger nose - he
wasn't NCIS’s answer to Lassie, faithfully sniffing and purring out clues. “I am not a
hound, Colonel. My nose is better than a human's, but it’s nowhere near as advanced
as a dog's. That corpse was days old and we already know that. It smelled sick, and the
stink is nearly overwhelming, covering everything else. All I could get was that there was
indeed another Feline. Felines have a specific scent pile different from a cat's, and it is a
smell I recognize easily,” after nearly seven years in his cat form, he should.
“So I wasn't imagining things!” relieved triumph colored Mrs. Greenham's voice; the
prospect of her brain playing tricks on her had obviously troubled her greatly.
“Yes, but the scent is strongest over there, by the fence where you saw it, and not here
where the body was found. The Feline is a male and, from the pheromones in his scent,
not fully grown. He would have left more near the corpse if he'd really taken the time to
rip into it,” and that possibility was something that had troubled Tony greatly. To meet a
Feline who was so far gone that he did something completely against their nature… the
thought made him sick to his stomach.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes, his nod barely discernible, but the warm approval it
conveyed made Tony feel like the king of the world. Now if he could get that look with
conventional means as well…
“Unfortunately, we only have your word that a Feline is involved. It helps to narrow
down the possibilities, but without solid evidence, it won't impress any court. That being
said, it's a starting point,” Mann said, finally, as she straightened up.
.-#-.
Chapter 4 -->>