Make Me Feel Not Alone - Chapter 4
Disclaimer: SyFy owns "Warehouse 13" and all related characters; Donald Bellisario owns "NCIS" and all related characters; Aaron Sorkin owns "The West Wing" and all related characters; I own nothing.
Warnings: Suicide
Spoilers: Through Warehouse 13 season 2, NCIS 7.01, and all of The West Wing.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Chapter Four
August 18, 2010 - Washington, D.C.
Claudia resisted the urge to fidget as she and Tim rode the elevator down to where the NCIS forensics lab was. She wasn’t fully comfortable with how quickly Tim and Tony had decided to send her to this Abby person. She knew that they had already tried the most direct way to access her and Pete’s records and failed, but it didn’t mean that they wouldn’t find some other way to get the downlow on them. She just hoped that they were less like Macpherson in their ability to get past the blocks Mrs. F put on their files.
They stopped in the lobby to pick up a giant sized “Caf-Pow”, some sort of energy drink for this Abby-person. Tim offered to get Claudia one, but she decided to play it safe and get a bottle of water instead. Jet lag hadn’t hit her yet, but when it did, she’d rather go with a mocha.
“Oh, just a heads up,” Tim said as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “Gibbs likes to use the elevator as a private conference room. He’ll pull the emergency stop when he wants to talk to someone and wait until he gets the answers he wants before starting it up again.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Claudia answered, smiling a little. She had been getting good vibes from Tim already, but this cemented him as her favorite of the NCIS people she had met so far.
As soon as they exited the elevator, the sound of what only could be death metal of some kind assaulted Claudia’s ears. She glanced up at Tim, but his non-reaction gave her the impression that this type of thing was normal for whoever worked down here. Following him to the source of the music, she found herself in a light-filled room, full of various instruments and machines that she vaguely recognized from some of the CSI shows she would catch on reruns. In the center of the room, standing in front of a series of computer screens, was a woman with a white lab coat over an all-black ensemble and her black hair pulled into pigtails on top of her head. Hearing the footsteps, she turned around, the smile on her face freezing at the sight of Claudia.
“McGee! What are you doing bringing a strange person down to my lab?” she asked, grabbing Tim’s arm and dragging him away from Claudia. “Does Gibbs know?” She looked like she was about to add something when Tim handed her the Caf-Pow, which she took with a suspicious glare.
“Claudia, this is Abby Sciuto, our forensic analyst. Abby, this is Claudia Donovan. She’s helping with our latest case,” Tim explained, glancing at Claudia before turning back to Abby. Claudia gave the older woman a little wave and what she hoped was a friendly smile. Abby sipped at the drink in her hand and turned back to Tim. “Look, Abby, she’s dealt with these types of cases before. She might be able to help you.”
“Fine,” Abby answered grudgingly. “Just don’t touch anything unless I say you can.”
“I’ll leave you two then,” Tim said, giving Abby a kiss on the cheek and walking out. Claudia watched him go before turning back to Abby and giving her another tentative smile.
“So, is there anything I can help out with?” Claudia asked, pointing at the computers.
“Not unless you can run tox screens or vocal recognition software or anything that would explain why these people would go nuts,” Abby said, slipping on a pair of white gloves and starting to go through a box of what Claudia guessed was evidence from one of the suicides. “Nothing about this makes sense,” she muttered, laying items out on the table. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Do you have samples from the victim’s bodies?” Claudia suggested, grabbing a pair of the purple artifact-handling gloves and putting them on. She had a theory about artifacts that she had never been able to test, given that they weren’t exactly forensic-central at the Warehouse. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to see if she was right.
“Yeah, why?” Abby asked, looking up at Claudia.
“Well, there might be some kind of residue, or some kind of trace elements of what caused the psychosis,” Claudia explained, trying to figure out how to put it in terms that wouldn’t bring down the wrath of the Regents on her head. “Something that’s out of place. Like not a little out of place, but out of place in a major way.”
“That could just work,” Abby said after thinking a moment. “Give me two minutes to put these in Major Mass Spec, and we’ll see what he spits out.”
As Abby went to do that, Claudia pulled out her laptop and waited for it to warm up, sitting on the floor. She had been running searches to see if there was a pattern similar to this in the past, and if so, where, but she hadn’t made much progress. It beat out trying to match the symptoms to a potential artifact, though. That was migraine inducing on way too many levels, especially when there were too many possibilities to match the criteria she had.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Abby asked, going back to her boxes of evidence.
“Mainly patterns, to see if this type of thing has happened before,” Claudia answered, looking up from her screen. “I’ve got nothing yet, although it’s been going slow since there’s a lot of information to go through.”
Abby nodded, and they continued to work in relative silence, the loud music Abby was playing not as distracting as Claudia would have initially guessed.
“Do you do your hair yourself?” Abby asked, startling Claudia. Given Abby’s earlier reaction to seeing her, she had expected the older woman to just work around her and pretend she wasn’t there.
“Um, yeah,” she replied, wondering where the question had come from. Most people didn’t really comment on the hair, other than Artie occasionally griping about it or her foster father’s very vocal condemnation when she had first started dying it. “I didn’t feel like dying the whole thing, and it lets me play around with colors this way.”
“I like it,” Abby stated, a happy smile on her face. “It works for you.”
“Thanks,” Claudia said, returning the smile. “I like your tattoo. Where’d you get it done?” she asked pointing at the spider-web tattoo peeking out from under Abby’s shirt.
“One of my best friends in college did it for me,” Abby told her, walking over to where Claudia was sitting and sliding down to join her. “It was our way of celebrating the end of the finals from hell.”
“Better than getting drunk, I guess?”
“Oh, we did that too,” Abby added with a laugh. “Those were the best days. Where do you go to college? You look around that age.”
“I’ve been doing online work at a local university,” Claudia answered after a pause. “I was going to try to go somewhere this fall but stuff... happened, I guess, and we’re shorthanded, so I’ll be staying put for now.”
“That sucks,” Abby sympathized. “College is, like, the best time you’ll ever have. The parties and the friends and the classes and just everything about it rocks.”
“So I’ve heard,” Claudia replied, trying not to think of the person who had pushed her to take the classes in the first place. She knew that Myka would have been all on-board her trying to go someplace for a while and get a degree, but given the circumstances, now just wasn’t the right time to think about it.
“Come on, we can talk while we go through the evidence,” Abby said, getting to her feet.
“Wait, you want me to help? But I don’t know anything about forensics other than the extra-exaggerated stuff they show on CSI, and I don’t think that’s really that accurate,” Claudia protested, only to have Abby shake her head.
“Well, you’ll be learning from the best,” she answered with a wide smile. “Come on. Lots of work left to do before we’re ready for Gibbs to show up and we have results to give him.”
“And we wouldn’t want to be caught with our pants down,” Claudia muttered, feeling less than thrilled at that prospect. Before getting to her feet, she quickly set up a search program on the records to see if it could find any previous times something like this had happened. It would be slow and kill her laptop’s memory, but at least she would be able to do two things at once. “I’m ready to be instructed in your ways,” Claudia said, grabbing a pair of artifact handling gloves and going to join Abby at the table.
“Well, first, you need to tell me where to get a stash of those,” Abby began, pointing at the purple gloves Claudia was wearing. “Second, come over here and I’ll show you how to log evidence.”
~*~*~
Sitting on the couch in the Poppins residence, Jethro sat silently as Lattimer quietly questioned the grieving family. This was the last home on their trip, and so far, there had been nothing the families had said that aroused any suspicion. He had noticed Lattimer walking around the homes during the interviews, but the younger man had yet to give any indication that he had found whatever he was looking for.
“She was going to grab some dinner, since we were both working late dealing with paperwork,” Frank Poppins said, gripping his wife’s hand tightly. “She was acting normally when she came back, but she started hallucinating about thirty minutes later before...” He paused and took a deep breath. “We tried to get her to the hospital after we tried everything we could, but she ran into the street before we could stop her.”
“Is there... is there anything you can tell us about what happened?” Jenny Poppins asked, picking up where her husband left off.
“Not at this time,” Jethro answered before Lattimer could speak as he got to his feet.
“If there’s anything, anything we can do, please let us know,” Frank Poppins said, standing up as well and giving each of the agents a firm handshake.
“We’ll call you when we have more information,” Lattimer promised as they were escorted to the door.
The heavy, moisture laden summer air hit Jethro hard, and he found himself wishing for the dry heat of the Iraqi desert. Even though that had been enough to dry a man out to the bone, it was better than feeling like he was going to drown in his own sweat.
“That was about as helpful as the last two,” Lattimer muttered as he got into the car, and Jethro couldn’t find much that would make him disagree with the other agent.
Nothing that they had gotten from interviewing the families themselves had shed any further light on what had caused this type of hallucinations seen among the victims, and it was starting to make Jethro annoyed. There was something that he wasn’t being told, something that was central to solving this case and it was frustrating him to no end.
The only reason he was continuing to cooperate as much as he was with Lattimer and Donovan was due to a conversation he had with Leon after returning from the original crime scene. The director had told him point blank that there were people pressuring Sec Nav on this case, people powerful enough that Leon didn’t have high enough clearance to know who they were.
Jethro had gritted his teeth at being ordered to work with people he neither knew nor trusted, but after Leon told him that unless there was cooperation, the case would be taken from their jurisdiction, Jethro had agreed. That, combined with the almost certain knowledge that he wasn’t given the full information he needed in order to solve this case, was leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I forgot how much I hated summers here,” Lattimer commented, trying to fill the silence that filled the car. Lattimer struck Jethro as the type of person who felt the need to have some sort of noise or conversation around him at all times, not unlike DiNozzo. He had been trying to engage Jethro in conversation throughout their trip to visit the victim’s families, but Gibbs either ignored it or gave him sort, to the point answers that
“I’ve been in worse,” Jethro told him curtly, getting on the freeway that would take them back to the Naval Yard.
Lattimer shifted in his seat and looked at Jethro, frustration on his face. “Look, I get that you’re not thrilled to have Claudia and I on this case,” he said, his tone annoyed and slightly confrontational, giving Jethro the impression he had been holding this particular rant in for most of the day. “And trust me, there are plenty of other things I’d rather be doing, but until this is solved, we’re stuck with each other. So would it kill you to at least be civil until then?”
“This is me being civil,” Jethro told him, trying to keep his voice as even as he could and not let too much of his anger show through. “You’ll know when I’m not. And I don’t like being forced to work with unknown factors in a case where I’m already missing too many of the pieces. I can’t do my job like that, Lattimer.”
“Point taken, but that still doesn’t get over the fact that you’re going to have to work with me and Claudia until this is over,” Lattimer argued back.
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to get used to my being civil, then.”
Lattimer shook his head but thankfully remained silent. Jethro was certain that there was going to be another confrontation between himself and Lattimer before this case was over, but he would rather it not be in the car while he was driving. He had no intention of being killed because some Secret Service agent with a sense of entitlement over jurisdiction a mile long and a partner who was too young to even buy a drink distracted him.
Thinking of Donovan caused Jethro to frown slightly. Even without her reaction to him factored in, he was uncomfortable with her participation in this case. She was far too green, despite what Lattimer had and would say on the subject, and with the team already being short a person, he didn’t have anybody to spare to babysit her. Her obvious discomfort around him only made him even more certain that she shouldn’t be any way involved in this case. It made her unpredictable, unreliable if she couldn’t be around him without either ignoring him or refusing to engage him directly. It also made him wonder whose face he was wearing and what connotations it had for her.
He hadn’t forgotten the reaction of the White House senior staff that day when he went to meet President Bartlett and how they looked at him like he wasn’t truly real. Special Agent Butterfield had told him afterwards that Jethro bore a startling resemblance to a Secret Service agent who had been killed two years before, which partially explained the reactions he had received. Talking with Kate had given him the rest of the story, that the agent in question had recently been assigned to protect Ms. Cregg, and rumor had it that they had grown very close during that time. The strength of Donovan’s reaction made him almost certain that there was a similar ghost in her past that had his face.
They made it back to the Navy Yard in silence, and although Jethro was tempted to push the emergency stop button, he voted against that idea. If he was going to do that, he would rather it be with both Lattimer and Donovan so he wouldn’t have to repeat any conversations.
“McGee. DiNozzo. What do you got for me?” he barked out as soon as he exited the elevator. The two agents looked up, startled, and immediately began shouting out information.
“Not much so far, Boss, although we did find one thing in common for all the victims minus Lieutenant Ferguson,” DiNozzo started, going to the screen as McGee did whatever he did to pull up the information they had found. “All three of them within the last month ate at the same restaurant about a week before they went crazy. Jaleo, right by the arena.”
“The problem is, though, that they ate at different times, and we’re having problems verifying who was working those shifts without actually going to the restaurant,” McGee continued, getting to his feet and joining DiNozzo. “We’re trying to get payment records, but we’re waiting on a warrant so we can pull them.”
“Keep looking, then,” Jethro ordered, ignoring DiNozzo’s sigh of disappointment. He knew that DiNozzo wanted to get out of the office, but he needed them to keep looking for any possible connections between the victims other than this restaurant.
“Where’s Claudia?” Lattimer asked, looking at the desk where she had been sitting before looking back at McGee and DiNozzo.
“She’s with Abby down in the lab,” McGee said. “And, since she hasn’t come back, I’m guessing they’re getting along, although she might have Claudia duct-taped to a chair. You never know with Abby.”
Jethro nodded and started walking over to the elevator, motioning for Lattimer to follow him.
“Just the kind of reassurance I needed,” Lattimer muttered as he followed Jethro. They quickly stopped in the lobby so that Jethro could get Abby his traditional gift of Caf-Pow before going down to Abby’s lab. Loud music greeted them as they stepped out, and he could hear Abby excitedly explaining something to Claudia.
“Oh, there he is, just like I told you,” Abby’s voice said as they walked in. “Right on time!” She had on a pair of the purple gloves that Lattimer and Donovan used and both of them were wearing surgical hats that Abby had decorated.
“What do you got for me, Abs?” he asked, walking over to the table where she and Donovan were standing. It didn’t escape his notice that Donovan, who had been smiling and laughing with Abby, had quieted and become withdrawn at the sight of him. While it looked like Abby put her at ease, it wasn’t enough to overcome whatever was going through her head when she saw him.
“Well, there’s a lot to go through, and we’re still processing a lot of what we got from the victims, but Claudia here had a great idea,” Abby started, grabbing the younger woman’s arm and pulling her over to the computer. “We ran samples that Ducky sent us through the mass spec and got some bizarre results. Look,” she said, pulling up the breakdowns on the screen. “All of them have this trace element that I’ve never seen before. And the odd thing is that there seems to be more of it in the more recent victims, like it’s becoming stronger somehow. We’re working on trying to identify it, but no luck so far.”
“We started testing the evidence to see if there’s traces of whatever this is on what we have here, but it’s slow going,” Donovan continued, gesturing at the evidence laid out on the table. “And before you ask, Pete, I’m still going through old cases to see if there are any matches to what’s going on now. So far, nada.”
“Well, that would be asking for too much, wouldn’t it?” Lattimer asked, walking over to Donovan and looking at her hat. “Can I get me one of these?”
“You like them?” Abby asked, turning to face him and pointing at her own.
“Well, I was actually thinking about getting one for the boss next time he sees his doctor lady friend,” Lattimer began before Donovan punched him in the arm. “Nice to know somebody’s picking up the ‘punch Pete reins’,” he added quietly, rubbing his arm.
“Somebody has to.”
“Anything else for me, Abby?” Jethro asked, ignoring Donovan and Lattimer’s exchange. It only confirmed his suspicion that Lattimer’s partner wasn’t just on a leave of absence.
“Not yet, but give me a few more hours and I might. Oh, and Ducky stopped by! He said that he wanted to talk to you about something,” Abby added hastily, adjusting her hat so that it was tilted at a jaunty angle.
“Thank you, Abs,” Jethro said, handing her the Caf-Pow and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She took it eagerly and began drinking as she turned back to her computer.
“Donovan, Lattimer, I’ll meet you upstairs,” he continued, turning to face the two agents. “We’re going to check the restaurant.” Before either of them could respond, he was on his way back to the elevator to go see Ducky. He wanted to know what the ME had to say about Donovan.
“Ah, Jethro, there you are. I’ve been expecting you,” Ducky’s voice called out as Jethro exited the elevator. The older man was sitting at his desk, paperwork laid out in front of him, a cup of tea in his hand. “I was wondering when you would make your way over here.”
“Hello to you too, Duck,” Jethro said, walking into the autopsy room. “What do you got for me?”
“Well, after close examination of all four victims, the only similarity between them is that they all died by their own hands, so to speak,” Ducky explained, before detailing how each victim had died. “I’ve found nothing to indicate that they were somehow under the influence, although Abby might have more details once she’s finished her analysis.”
“What’s your take on Donovan?” Jethro asked, going directly to the conversation he wanted to have.
Ducky sighed and turned to face him.“Yes, I suspected that was the real reason you came to visit me,” Ducky stated, sitting back down at his desk. “She’s quite young to be working with the Secret Service, I must say. Although, she does remind me of this young man I met...”
“Duck,” Gibbs interrupted the doctor before he could start off on one of his tangents.
“Very well, Jethro,” Ducky sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose underneath his glasses. “Miss Claudia Donovan fits the profile of somebody who has lost many of the people she cares for, creating a sense of constant abandonment, one that hasn’t left her despite finding a group that she considers to be her family. She recently lost a person she identified as a member of this new familial group, which in all likelihood exacerbated her reaction to you. You remind her in some way of a person she lost and that she has yet to come to terms with. She’s also desperately afraid of being left alone.”
“Anything else, Ducky?”
“Other than that, she’s a highly intelligent, incredibly capable young woman, not unlike our Abby. It’s unsurprising that they hit it off like they did,” Ducky answered, his eyes meeting Jethro’s. “I just wish I knew what exactly caused her adverse reaction to you, Jethro.”
“You and me both, Duck,” Jethro replied, heading back to the elevator. “Thanks for the help.”
~*~*~
“So, did you get anything on your searches?” Pete asked Claudia as they rode the elevator back to the main level of the NCIS headquarters.
“Nothing so far, but I still have a lot of the older stuff to go through,” Claudia answered as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “But nothing that matches the exact parameters of our current case, and nothing close enough to make me think that something about this artifact has changed over time. So, where are we off to?” she asked, stopping at a corner underneath the stairs.
“Probably the restaurant DiNozzo and McGee came up with,” Pete replied with a shrug. “It’s the only real lead we have so far, unless Artie buzzes us with something we can follow-up on after we shake the cowboys.”
“Do you think we’re going to have to let them in about the artifacts?” Claudia asked, voicing the question that had become stronger as she worked with Abby. She was surprised that the older woman hadn’t encountered something artifact-like before, but she had a feeling that now that it was on Abby’s radar, she wouldn’t leave it alone until she had solved the puzzle it presented to her. At least by telling them, Claudia figured they could somewhat control what NCIS found out about what they dealt with.
“Hopefully not, although that might be wishing for too much at this point,” Pete replied after a lenghy pause, glancing around. “Gibbs knows something’s up, and he’s not the type who will let this go without getting some sort of resolution. And if I were a betting man, I would lay money on his team following his lead with little second-guessing. So not only would we have to solve the case, but also find a way to make what’s going on not sound completely crazy.”
“I call dibs on not explaining to Mrs. F why they know more than they should,” Claudia said.
Pete mock-glared at her. “Not fair. At all. Why do I have to talk to Mrs. Frederic?” he demanded.
“Because I called dibs, that’s why.”
“If you two are done arguing, we have a restaurant to visit,” Gibbs voice interrupted them before Pete could respond to Claudia.
They both turned around to see him standing in front of the elevator, an annoyed look on his face. Granted, Claudia was starting to think it was stuck on variations of the annoyed theme, so it was really that he looked irritated-annoyed rather than any other type.
“Claudia and I will go in our own car,” Pete told Gibbs as he walked by. “We need to drop our stuff off at the hotel.”
Claudia, who had waited half a beat before following, was touched. They didn’t need to check in right now, but Pete was giving her a reason not to be in an enclosed area with Gibbs. She knew that her reaction to him was bordering on the irrational, but whenever she looked at him, she kept going back to that last phone call she had with Uncle Simon, when he promised her that he would come to her science fair, only to be killed minutes later.
“Fine with me,” Gibbs answered, striding through the aisle in his team’s area.
“Boss, where are we going?” Tony asked, starting to get to his feet.
“You and McGee are staying here to see if you can put together any more leads,” Gibbs said, walking past the desks. “Be creative.”
“On it, Boss.”
Claudia shot a sympathetic look at Tim as she walked by and he smiled back. Remembering what he had told her about Gibbs and elevators, Claudia did her best not to show her hesitation as they entered. She wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but Gibbs wound up standing between her and Pete. She stared at the wall in front of her, silently praying that he wouldn’t do what McGee had mentioned as his signature move, activating the emergency stop and stranding them there until he got the answers he wanted from a person. Whatever guy high atop the thing must have been listening to her, because they made it to the lobby without any problems.
The walk to the parking lot was just as silent as the elevator ride. Leaning against the passenger door of their rental, Claudia watched as Pete and Gibbs talked quietly, probably about where the hell they were going.
“So, what’s our lead?” Claudia asked Pete when he walked over and they got into the car.
“A restaurant that all the victims ate at within a few weeks of coming in to contact with the artifact,” Pete explained driving a little faster than Claudia was comfortable with as he followed Gibbs’ car. They were taking side roads, trying to avoid the traffic that was already starting to snarl the freeways.
“So it could be something in the restaurant, but wouldn’t we have more cases then?” Claudia asked.
“Pretty much, which means we’re probably dealing with one person handling the artifact. Hopefully, it’s an employee, which will make things easier. We’re going to talk to the owner to see if there’s any possible connections with the times that the victims ate there.”
“While you do that, I can look around to see if there’s anything that looks artifact-esque,” Claudia volunteered. “Cover all the bases.”
“Works for me. After that, we’ll drop our stuff off, talk to Artie about what we should do about telling the NCIS agents about the artifacts, and then see what happens next.”
“With our luck, the worst possible scenario.”
“Yeah, I’m hoping we break that curse.”
“At least there’s no zoo involved,” Claudia said with a sly glance at Pete, who groaned in response.
“Who told you about that?” he demanded. Claudia paused, but that was all the answer Pete apparently needed and they lapsed in to awkward silence.
“I miss her, Pete,” Claudia said quietly, looking out the window. “It’s not the same without her.”
“I miss her too, Claudia,” Pete answered after another pause as they waited at a red light.
“Do you think… do you think she’ll ever come back?” Claudia asked, playing with the hem of her shirt. This was the first time she and Pete had talked about Myka leaving the Warehouse, and yet they were still avoiding her name, like saying it out loud would make it that more real.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He didn’t sound hopeful, though, subtly echoing what Claudia silently feared.
“I guess until then, it’s Team Clete,” Claudia suggested, trying to lighten the mood.
“Clete? I thought we decided way back when that if we ever teamed up, we would be Pedia,” Pete replied, a smile tugging at lips.
“Yeah, Leena and I vetoed that on further consideration,” Claudia countered, even though it had been her and Myka who had discussed the name. She had just moved the conversation away from that topic, and she wasn’t about to bring it back around.
Claudia and Pete argued over the merits of Clete versus Pedia for the rest of the trip, still going strong when Pete pulled into a parking spot about a block away from their destination.
“Look, Pete, I don’t care what you say, Pedia just sounds wrong,” Claudia told him for the fifth time as she got out of the car.
“Like Clete sounds that much better!” Pete protested, leaning over the car roof. “Let’s put this discussion on pause until we’re done with the restaurant. Gibbs is starting to get an impatient look on his face.”
“Deal, although we both know I was winning.”
“In your dreams.”
Gibbs was waiting for them at the front door, his expression impassive. “Lattimer, you’re with me,” he told Pete curtly.
“I’ll just look around then,” Claudia volunteered when Gibbs made no mention of what she should be doing. Through the window, she spied several waiters, which might be a better source of information than the manager Pete and Gibbs were about to talk to. Following them inside, she glanced around before walking up to the seating hostess.
“If I wanted to throw a party, what would I need to do?” she asked, leaning against the stand. “Who would my people, ok scratch that, who would I call?”
“That would be Joel,” the woman answered in a bored voice, tapping her ringed fingers against the wood. “What’s the occasion?”
“Well, my brother just got engaged, but it’s to this other guy and the old man is throwing a hissy fit,” Claudia lied, silently asking for Joshua’s forgiveness for bringing him into this. “I mean, he’s more of a step-father than a father, but he loves his tapas, so I’m trying to pull out all the stops to see if I can draw the heat off of Josh.” Several of the waiters had moved over to where Claudia was standing, blatantly listening in to the story she was telling.
“Was that them who just came in?” one of the waiters asked, motioning with his head at the door Pete and Gibbs had just entered. Claudia nodded.
“Yeah, like I said, the old man isn’t too happy,” she said. “So, what’s it like working here?” she asked, changing the subject, not wanting to get caught in the lie she just told. “I need to get some money to pay for books and stuff, and somebody told me waitressing was the way to go.”
“It’s not too bad, although this place legit needs to invest in direct deposit,” another waitress complained. “It’s a pain in the ass to have to come here on your day off to get the check. Otherwise, this place is about as good as you’re going to get in terms of jobs.”
“Sometimes the chef lets us try out the new tapas he’s experimenting with,” the first waiter said as a third waiter joined them. “He’s a genius. Did you know he beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef?”
“I did not, although it’s good to know,” Claudia answered. “Anything you would recommend for a party menu?”
Claudia talked with the waiters for the next five minutes, and although she didn’t catch their names, she did learn bits and pieces about Jaleo that could be helpful with the case, like the fact that with large parties or special celebrations, the assistant manager would help wait the tables. She was in the middle of being talked through how to ace the application process when the office door opened and Pete and Gibbs stepped outside. Neither had a happy look on their faces, but that did play into what Claudia had just told everybody else.
“Time to go, Claudia,” Pete said. To his obvious surprise, the waiters and a few other employees who had overheard Claudia’s story began clapping him on the back, telling him good luck while the hostess slipped him a card. Before he could ask what was going on, Claudia grabbed his elbow and dragged him outside, Gibbs trailing behind them.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked as soon as they were several steps away from the restaurant.
“I kinda may have told them that you were getting married and that we were siblings and that the old man wasn’t too pleased about it,” Claudia explained in a rush, barely pausing between words.
“You said I was getting married?” Pete asked, his voice rising slightly.
“I had to think of something, and that was the first thing that popped into my head. It was that or a retirement party for Artie.”
“Did you get anything from them?” Gibbs asked, coming to stand a little closer to Claudia than she was comfortable with.
“For special occasions and parties, an assistant manager helps wait the tables and to organize something like that, you need to call somebody named Joel,” Claudia answered, forcing herself to meet Gibbs’ eyes. There was something else that had struck her as important when she heard it, but for some reason it was slipping her mind right now. It was there, right on the edge, but it was just out of her grip. “I didn’t get a whole lot,” she added, looking back at Pete. “And there was nothing there that really seemed out of place.”
Pete, understanding her oblique way of saying that nothing there called out to her as artifact-y, turned to Gibbs.
“Claudia and I are going to head over to the hotel and we should be back within an hour or so, depending on traffic,” he said, a slightly distracted look on his face.
“Fine by me,” Gibbs answered with a shrug. Claudia and Pete watched him go back to his car before Pete turned to face the restaurant again.
“You getting a vibe?” Claudia asked quietly, recognizing the look Pete got whenever his spidey-sense went off.
“Yeah, but it’s hard to place,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck with a worried look on his face. “It’s tied to this restaurant, but other than that…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “Let’s get to the hotel, and we can call Artie and Leena to see if they have anything on this place,” he continued, moving over to their rental.
Twenty minutes later, they had checked into their hotel and had just gotten off the Farnsworth with Leena. Artie, it turned out, was currently on his way to Australia, where they had just gotten a ping on the artifact detector. Leena had promised to look into the owner of Jaleo, along with any history of the building that could be relevant.
“Is it just me or is it hot in here?” Pete asked as Claudia closed the Farnsworth.
“I think the heat’s starting to get to you, old man,” Claudia answered, grabbing a few bucks and the key card. “I’m going to go grab a soda. Do you want anything?”
“Just get me some ice from the machine. I think I’ll stick with water for now,” Pete answered, wiping his face. “I’ve been forgetting how much the heat here sucks.”
“Well, I’ll grab the ice, you drink your water, and then we’re off to the land of the cowboys once again,” Claudia said, grabbing the ice bucket and heading down to the end of the hall.
As she waited the bucket to fill up, she closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. It had been a long day and she was more than positive that it was just going to get longer. They still had to go back to NCIS headquarters to go over what Pete and Gibbs had gotten at the restaurant, she still needed to finish looking through finals, and she and Pete were due for a long discussion about why eating chili when sharing a room with somebody else was a terrible idea. Oh, and she was betting heavily on Mrs. F showing up before this whole mess was over.
Claudia was on her way back to the room when a loud crash echoed in the hallway. “What the hell?” she muttered, jogging over to her door. Fumbling for the key card, she tried twice before it slipped into the slot and the light changed to green.
“Pete?” she called out, glancing around the room. “Pete?”
“I’m fine, I just tripped,” Pete’s voice answered from the other side of one of the beds.
“I’m now wondering if you driving is such a good idea,” she muttered as Pete stood up. “Give me the keys.”
“Claudia?”
“What, I’m a good driver.”
“Claudia, did you just slip out again? Claudia?”
“Oh, God,” Claudia whispered, a shiver running down her spine. No. This couldn’t be happening.
“Claudia, this isn’t funny!” Pete shouted as Claudia scrambled towards him. She tried grabbing his wrists, but he shook her off, causing her to fall against the bed and roll over to the other side. “Where the hell are you?”
She tried grabbing at him again, but he was starting to become more violent. In the back of her mind, Claudia noted that this proved their theory about the escalation of the attacks on the artifact victims, but she quickly let go as she ducked a wild swing from Pete and darted under his arms towards his bag.
“Where is it, where is it?” she muttered as she frantically dug through the bag, desperately searching for the one thing that might slow him down. Feeling something cold and metallic, she pulled out the Tesla and whirled around to face Pete, who was flipping over mattresses in an attempt to find her.
“Where did you take Claudia?” he shouted. “Come out, I know you’re here! Where…”
Before he could finish, Claudia pressed the trigger on the Tesla, sending an arc of electricity straight at him. His body jerked straight before crumpling to the ground. With shaking hands, Claudia lowered the Tesla and carefully walked towards him, her hurried breathing loud in the otherwise silent room. Kneeling down, she checked his pulse and felt it beating faintly against her fingertips.
Rocking back on her heels, Claudia reached for one of the Farnsworths on the floor. She was trembling so much it took her three tries to open the lid and another two to dial the first person who came to mind.
“Dr. Vanessa?” Claudia asked as soon as the woman on the other line answered. “We have a bit of a problem.”
September 8, 2004 - Washington, D.C.
Standing in the entryway of the White House, Jethro allowed himself to feel overwhelmed for a brief moment before reining in his emotions. Beside him, Kate Todd stood talking to one of the security guards as they waited for their escort to arrive. He had just finished getting Kate’s hiring approved by the director when Special Agent Ron Butterfield had called, telling Jethro that President Bartlett wanted to personally thank him and Kate for their actions aboard Air Force One and was extending an invitation to the White House to the two agents.
That had been two days ago.
He had tried to use his current case as an excuse not to attend, but Director Morrow was having none of it and ordered the reluctant Gibbs to go.
“Special Agent Gibbs, Special Agent Todd,” a tall, thin man with a balding head of brown hair said, appearing at the other side of the security checkpoint. He gave Jethro an odd look, but didn’t say anything as he held out his hand in greeting. “Ron Butterfield, head of the Presidential Protection Detail.” Jethro returned the handshake, giving the man a nod, who turned toward Kate. “Special Agent Todd, it’s good to see you again.”
“Good to see you too, sir,” she replied, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
Kate hadn’t talked much about leaving the Secret Service after her relationship with Major Carey had been brought to light, but Jethro knew that she mourned the potential loss of respect among her former colleagues. The fact that Butterfield appeared genuinely pleased to see her meant a lot to her.
Jethro was silent as Kate and Butterfield talked about people that worked in the Secret Service as the agent led them through the back hallways of the White House towards the Oval Office. Staffers walked around them in a rush, talking as they moved to wherever they were going. It didn’t escape his notice that at least two of them gave him startled looks before rushing away, as if they had seen a ghost. It was similar, but more obvious than the look that Butterfield had given him moments before.
Before Jethro could determine what the most likely answer could be, they arrived at desks that preceded the doors of the Oval Office.
“Charlie, is the President in?” Butterfield asked the young man who was sitting at one of the desks. “Special Agents Gibbs and Todd from NCIS are here.”
The young man looked up, eyes traveling from Butterfield to Kate before stopping on Jethro. His face didn’t change, but something in his eyes reflected the expressions Jethro had just seen in the hallways. After a few seconds, he turned to face Butterfield again.
“He’s currently in a meeting with some of the senior staff, sir,” he said. “Including CJ,” he added, his eyes traveling towards Gibbs before returning to the Secret Service agent.
“I see,” Butterfield began before being interrupted by the door opening and voices filtering out.
“... be nicer to Donna, Josh,” a female voice said as a man who Gibbs vaguely recognized strode through with a scowl on his face.
“I’m plenty nice to Donna!” he protested, turning back to talk to the first voice. “Just ask her!”
“I did and she said there’s definitely room for improvement.” A tall woman, close to his own height of six feet followed him, looking at a folder full of papers. Looking up, she froze, the teasing smile she had been wearing slowly sliding off to be replaced with a look of shock and disbelief.
“CJ?” the first man asked as an older man filed out of the room, pausing to see what was happening. “Are you...” he began before stopping as well and following her line of sight. Shock registered on everybody’s face, and the second man reached for her, only to have his hand shrugged off.
“I have a press briefing in twenty,” she said slightly breathlessly, snapping out of her daze, and walking away as quickly as she could.
Jethro felt the weight of the gazes of everybody in the room rest on him before another voice called out from the office door, breaking the tense moment.
“Ron, are they here yet?” the president called out, his silhouette filling the door. As if on cue, the three men turned away from Jethro and walked out, although he could sense them stealing glances over their shoulders. Watching them for another moment, Jethro followed Kate into the Oval Office to meet the man whose life he had saved only a week before.
Walking back to her office, CJ Cregg ran her hands through her hair and wondered the best possible way to escape. She didn’t know how, but she managed to make it through the press briefing without collapsing from shock. Fortunately, news of Simon’s doppelganger hadn’t spread, which meant that the only people she had to worry about avoiding were Josh, Leo, and Charlie. Making up her mind, she stopped at Carol’s desk and composed herself as best she could.
“Carol, I’m taking the rest of the day off,” she told her assistant. “I think my flu’s flared up again. Can you let Leo know?” Carol nodded, concern on her face as she picked up the phone and dialed the extension to Leo’s office. CJ quickly gathered her things and fled the office, barely hearing Carol’s shouted good-bye.
How exactly CJ managed to make it back to her townhouse without crashing would forever remain a mystery to her. The intervening time from leaving her office to collapsing on the couch in her living room was a blur, making her wonder if what had just happened was all just a dream, that she didn’t just see Simon’s face outside the Oval Office.
The shrill ring of her home phone startled her. Jerking upright, she debated answering it but decided to let it go to voicemail. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody right now.
“Hey, CJ, it’s Josh. Um, look, I just wanted to see how you were after, well, you know. Carol said you rushed out and had gone home, and well... Just call if you need somebody to talk to.”
Minutes after Josh had finished leaving his message, her phone rang again, this time from Leo. It was short and to the point, much like the Chief of Staff, asking if she was okay. By the third time the phone rang--this time from Donna--CJ waited patiently for it to finish recording the message before disconnecting the line. While she was touched that her coworkers cared enough to check in on her, she wasn’t in the mood to listen to one message after another asking if she was fine.
She didn’t know how long she lay there until a sharp knock snapped her out of her daze. She shifted, determined to ignore it, when Toby’s muffled voice shouted through the heavy wooden door, “I know you’re in here, CJ! I’m going to keep knocking until you come to the door.”
Groaning, because she knew that with Toby there were no idle threats, CJ rolled off the couch and stalked to the door.
“Yes?” she demanded, opening the door a crack and peering through it. Toby looked back at her, his face blank. “What do you want?”
“Well, are you going to invite me in?” he asked, gesturing at the room behind her.
CJ thought about it for a moment before opening the door wider and letting him through. He didn’t immediately sit down, instead going to where he knew she had a bottle of scotch reserved for his visits. She waited as he poured both of them a drink before going to join him at the kitchen island, clearing away some of the clutter so she didn’t accidentally spill on some briefing or another. Toby took a sip, watching CJ intently as she studied the amber liquid in front of her before picking up the glass and draining it in one gulp.
“His name is Leroy Jethro Gibbs,” Toby stated, his voice calm as CJ put the glass down, feeling the scotch burn its way down her throat. “He’s one of the NCIS agents assigned to investigate death of the guy carrying the football on the president’s trip to LA.”
“The one where I got the flu from hell and couldn’t go,” CJ commented softly, playing with her glass.
Toby nodded, pausing a moment before continuing. “President Bartlett didn’t get a chance to thank Agents Todd and Gibbs on Air Force One after they stopped the assassin, which is why they were there today. Nobody had any idea how much Gibbs would look like...”
“Look like Simon,” CJ finished after Toby’s voice trailed off. She took a ragged breath, holding it for a moment before releasing it. It didn’t make her feel better, but it gave her time to compose her thoughts, to figure out what was going through her head. “I was moving forward, Toby,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “I was at the point where I could think about him, and think about what we had without wanting to curl up and cry. I could think about him and actually smile. And now...” She paused and shook her head, the tears she had been holding in finally starting to flow.
Out of everybody in her life, Toby was the one she didn’t have to constantly look strong in front of. It was the benefit of their long and slightly convoluted friendship. He had seen her in every emotional state and was always there for her when she needed a friend.
“It’s like a scab’s been ripped off and I’ve been put in a barrel of salt with no way to climb out,” she continued, meeting Toby’s eyes for the first time. “I feel like I’m back to standing outside that theatre, with Ron telling me that Simon’s dead, and I don’t know if I can go through this again, not on top of everything else.”
“You’ll get through this, CJ,” Toby reassured her, taking one of her hands and giving it a firm squeeze.
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, her voice breaking. “How do you know?”
“Because you’re CJ Cregg,” he answered, as if it were that simple. “And I don’t have the time to waste to get one of your deputy’s up to your level of wrangling the press, especially not with the midterms coming up.”
CJ couldn’t help herself, laughing weakly at Toby’s last statement. She smiled at him, weakly but it was still there.
“Thank you, Toby,” she said, returning the squeeze. They sat there for nearly an hour, neither of them saying much, but by the time that he left, CJ felt that a weight had been removed. The shock from seeing the NCIS agent was still there, but the wound that had been so abruptly reopened no longer felt as raw or as gaping. Reconnecting the phone, she looked at it for a moment before going to her bedroom and turning on the TV. Just because it felt like her world had been turned upside down, it didn’t mean that she ever truly stopped working.
Chapter Five
Warnings: Suicide
Spoilers: Through Warehouse 13 season 2, NCIS 7.01, and all of The West Wing.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three
Chapter Four
August 18, 2010 - Washington, D.C.
Claudia resisted the urge to fidget as she and Tim rode the elevator down to where the NCIS forensics lab was. She wasn’t fully comfortable with how quickly Tim and Tony had decided to send her to this Abby person. She knew that they had already tried the most direct way to access her and Pete’s records and failed, but it didn’t mean that they wouldn’t find some other way to get the downlow on them. She just hoped that they were less like Macpherson in their ability to get past the blocks Mrs. F put on their files.
They stopped in the lobby to pick up a giant sized “Caf-Pow”, some sort of energy drink for this Abby-person. Tim offered to get Claudia one, but she decided to play it safe and get a bottle of water instead. Jet lag hadn’t hit her yet, but when it did, she’d rather go with a mocha.
“Oh, just a heads up,” Tim said as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “Gibbs likes to use the elevator as a private conference room. He’ll pull the emergency stop when he wants to talk to someone and wait until he gets the answers he wants before starting it up again.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Claudia answered, smiling a little. She had been getting good vibes from Tim already, but this cemented him as her favorite of the NCIS people she had met so far.
As soon as they exited the elevator, the sound of what only could be death metal of some kind assaulted Claudia’s ears. She glanced up at Tim, but his non-reaction gave her the impression that this type of thing was normal for whoever worked down here. Following him to the source of the music, she found herself in a light-filled room, full of various instruments and machines that she vaguely recognized from some of the CSI shows she would catch on reruns. In the center of the room, standing in front of a series of computer screens, was a woman with a white lab coat over an all-black ensemble and her black hair pulled into pigtails on top of her head. Hearing the footsteps, she turned around, the smile on her face freezing at the sight of Claudia.
“McGee! What are you doing bringing a strange person down to my lab?” she asked, grabbing Tim’s arm and dragging him away from Claudia. “Does Gibbs know?” She looked like she was about to add something when Tim handed her the Caf-Pow, which she took with a suspicious glare.
“Claudia, this is Abby Sciuto, our forensic analyst. Abby, this is Claudia Donovan. She’s helping with our latest case,” Tim explained, glancing at Claudia before turning back to Abby. Claudia gave the older woman a little wave and what she hoped was a friendly smile. Abby sipped at the drink in her hand and turned back to Tim. “Look, Abby, she’s dealt with these types of cases before. She might be able to help you.”
“Fine,” Abby answered grudgingly. “Just don’t touch anything unless I say you can.”
“I’ll leave you two then,” Tim said, giving Abby a kiss on the cheek and walking out. Claudia watched him go before turning back to Abby and giving her another tentative smile.
“So, is there anything I can help out with?” Claudia asked, pointing at the computers.
“Not unless you can run tox screens or vocal recognition software or anything that would explain why these people would go nuts,” Abby said, slipping on a pair of white gloves and starting to go through a box of what Claudia guessed was evidence from one of the suicides. “Nothing about this makes sense,” she muttered, laying items out on the table. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Do you have samples from the victim’s bodies?” Claudia suggested, grabbing a pair of the purple artifact-handling gloves and putting them on. She had a theory about artifacts that she had never been able to test, given that they weren’t exactly forensic-central at the Warehouse. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to see if she was right.
“Yeah, why?” Abby asked, looking up at Claudia.
“Well, there might be some kind of residue, or some kind of trace elements of what caused the psychosis,” Claudia explained, trying to figure out how to put it in terms that wouldn’t bring down the wrath of the Regents on her head. “Something that’s out of place. Like not a little out of place, but out of place in a major way.”
“That could just work,” Abby said after thinking a moment. “Give me two minutes to put these in Major Mass Spec, and we’ll see what he spits out.”
As Abby went to do that, Claudia pulled out her laptop and waited for it to warm up, sitting on the floor. She had been running searches to see if there was a pattern similar to this in the past, and if so, where, but she hadn’t made much progress. It beat out trying to match the symptoms to a potential artifact, though. That was migraine inducing on way too many levels, especially when there were too many possibilities to match the criteria she had.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Abby asked, going back to her boxes of evidence.
“Mainly patterns, to see if this type of thing has happened before,” Claudia answered, looking up from her screen. “I’ve got nothing yet, although it’s been going slow since there’s a lot of information to go through.”
Abby nodded, and they continued to work in relative silence, the loud music Abby was playing not as distracting as Claudia would have initially guessed.
“Do you do your hair yourself?” Abby asked, startling Claudia. Given Abby’s earlier reaction to seeing her, she had expected the older woman to just work around her and pretend she wasn’t there.
“Um, yeah,” she replied, wondering where the question had come from. Most people didn’t really comment on the hair, other than Artie occasionally griping about it or her foster father’s very vocal condemnation when she had first started dying it. “I didn’t feel like dying the whole thing, and it lets me play around with colors this way.”
“I like it,” Abby stated, a happy smile on her face. “It works for you.”
“Thanks,” Claudia said, returning the smile. “I like your tattoo. Where’d you get it done?” she asked pointing at the spider-web tattoo peeking out from under Abby’s shirt.
“One of my best friends in college did it for me,” Abby told her, walking over to where Claudia was sitting and sliding down to join her. “It was our way of celebrating the end of the finals from hell.”
“Better than getting drunk, I guess?”
“Oh, we did that too,” Abby added with a laugh. “Those were the best days. Where do you go to college? You look around that age.”
“I’ve been doing online work at a local university,” Claudia answered after a pause. “I was going to try to go somewhere this fall but stuff... happened, I guess, and we’re shorthanded, so I’ll be staying put for now.”
“That sucks,” Abby sympathized. “College is, like, the best time you’ll ever have. The parties and the friends and the classes and just everything about it rocks.”
“So I’ve heard,” Claudia replied, trying not to think of the person who had pushed her to take the classes in the first place. She knew that Myka would have been all on-board her trying to go someplace for a while and get a degree, but given the circumstances, now just wasn’t the right time to think about it.
“Come on, we can talk while we go through the evidence,” Abby said, getting to her feet.
“Wait, you want me to help? But I don’t know anything about forensics other than the extra-exaggerated stuff they show on CSI, and I don’t think that’s really that accurate,” Claudia protested, only to have Abby shake her head.
“Well, you’ll be learning from the best,” she answered with a wide smile. “Come on. Lots of work left to do before we’re ready for Gibbs to show up and we have results to give him.”
“And we wouldn’t want to be caught with our pants down,” Claudia muttered, feeling less than thrilled at that prospect. Before getting to her feet, she quickly set up a search program on the records to see if it could find any previous times something like this had happened. It would be slow and kill her laptop’s memory, but at least she would be able to do two things at once. “I’m ready to be instructed in your ways,” Claudia said, grabbing a pair of artifact handling gloves and going to join Abby at the table.
“Well, first, you need to tell me where to get a stash of those,” Abby began, pointing at the purple gloves Claudia was wearing. “Second, come over here and I’ll show you how to log evidence.”
~*~*~
Sitting on the couch in the Poppins residence, Jethro sat silently as Lattimer quietly questioned the grieving family. This was the last home on their trip, and so far, there had been nothing the families had said that aroused any suspicion. He had noticed Lattimer walking around the homes during the interviews, but the younger man had yet to give any indication that he had found whatever he was looking for.
“She was going to grab some dinner, since we were both working late dealing with paperwork,” Frank Poppins said, gripping his wife’s hand tightly. “She was acting normally when she came back, but she started hallucinating about thirty minutes later before...” He paused and took a deep breath. “We tried to get her to the hospital after we tried everything we could, but she ran into the street before we could stop her.”
“Is there... is there anything you can tell us about what happened?” Jenny Poppins asked, picking up where her husband left off.
“Not at this time,” Jethro answered before Lattimer could speak as he got to his feet.
“If there’s anything, anything we can do, please let us know,” Frank Poppins said, standing up as well and giving each of the agents a firm handshake.
“We’ll call you when we have more information,” Lattimer promised as they were escorted to the door.
The heavy, moisture laden summer air hit Jethro hard, and he found himself wishing for the dry heat of the Iraqi desert. Even though that had been enough to dry a man out to the bone, it was better than feeling like he was going to drown in his own sweat.
“That was about as helpful as the last two,” Lattimer muttered as he got into the car, and Jethro couldn’t find much that would make him disagree with the other agent.
Nothing that they had gotten from interviewing the families themselves had shed any further light on what had caused this type of hallucinations seen among the victims, and it was starting to make Jethro annoyed. There was something that he wasn’t being told, something that was central to solving this case and it was frustrating him to no end.
The only reason he was continuing to cooperate as much as he was with Lattimer and Donovan was due to a conversation he had with Leon after returning from the original crime scene. The director had told him point blank that there were people pressuring Sec Nav on this case, people powerful enough that Leon didn’t have high enough clearance to know who they were.
Jethro had gritted his teeth at being ordered to work with people he neither knew nor trusted, but after Leon told him that unless there was cooperation, the case would be taken from their jurisdiction, Jethro had agreed. That, combined with the almost certain knowledge that he wasn’t given the full information he needed in order to solve this case, was leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
“I forgot how much I hated summers here,” Lattimer commented, trying to fill the silence that filled the car. Lattimer struck Jethro as the type of person who felt the need to have some sort of noise or conversation around him at all times, not unlike DiNozzo. He had been trying to engage Jethro in conversation throughout their trip to visit the victim’s families, but Gibbs either ignored it or gave him sort, to the point answers that
“I’ve been in worse,” Jethro told him curtly, getting on the freeway that would take them back to the Naval Yard.
Lattimer shifted in his seat and looked at Jethro, frustration on his face. “Look, I get that you’re not thrilled to have Claudia and I on this case,” he said, his tone annoyed and slightly confrontational, giving Jethro the impression he had been holding this particular rant in for most of the day. “And trust me, there are plenty of other things I’d rather be doing, but until this is solved, we’re stuck with each other. So would it kill you to at least be civil until then?”
“This is me being civil,” Jethro told him, trying to keep his voice as even as he could and not let too much of his anger show through. “You’ll know when I’m not. And I don’t like being forced to work with unknown factors in a case where I’m already missing too many of the pieces. I can’t do my job like that, Lattimer.”
“Point taken, but that still doesn’t get over the fact that you’re going to have to work with me and Claudia until this is over,” Lattimer argued back.
“Well, I guess you’re just going to have to get used to my being civil, then.”
Lattimer shook his head but thankfully remained silent. Jethro was certain that there was going to be another confrontation between himself and Lattimer before this case was over, but he would rather it not be in the car while he was driving. He had no intention of being killed because some Secret Service agent with a sense of entitlement over jurisdiction a mile long and a partner who was too young to even buy a drink distracted him.
Thinking of Donovan caused Jethro to frown slightly. Even without her reaction to him factored in, he was uncomfortable with her participation in this case. She was far too green, despite what Lattimer had and would say on the subject, and with the team already being short a person, he didn’t have anybody to spare to babysit her. Her obvious discomfort around him only made him even more certain that she shouldn’t be any way involved in this case. It made her unpredictable, unreliable if she couldn’t be around him without either ignoring him or refusing to engage him directly. It also made him wonder whose face he was wearing and what connotations it had for her.
He hadn’t forgotten the reaction of the White House senior staff that day when he went to meet President Bartlett and how they looked at him like he wasn’t truly real. Special Agent Butterfield had told him afterwards that Jethro bore a startling resemblance to a Secret Service agent who had been killed two years before, which partially explained the reactions he had received. Talking with Kate had given him the rest of the story, that the agent in question had recently been assigned to protect Ms. Cregg, and rumor had it that they had grown very close during that time. The strength of Donovan’s reaction made him almost certain that there was a similar ghost in her past that had his face.
They made it back to the Navy Yard in silence, and although Jethro was tempted to push the emergency stop button, he voted against that idea. If he was going to do that, he would rather it be with both Lattimer and Donovan so he wouldn’t have to repeat any conversations.
“McGee. DiNozzo. What do you got for me?” he barked out as soon as he exited the elevator. The two agents looked up, startled, and immediately began shouting out information.
“Not much so far, Boss, although we did find one thing in common for all the victims minus Lieutenant Ferguson,” DiNozzo started, going to the screen as McGee did whatever he did to pull up the information they had found. “All three of them within the last month ate at the same restaurant about a week before they went crazy. Jaleo, right by the arena.”
“The problem is, though, that they ate at different times, and we’re having problems verifying who was working those shifts without actually going to the restaurant,” McGee continued, getting to his feet and joining DiNozzo. “We’re trying to get payment records, but we’re waiting on a warrant so we can pull them.”
“Keep looking, then,” Jethro ordered, ignoring DiNozzo’s sigh of disappointment. He knew that DiNozzo wanted to get out of the office, but he needed them to keep looking for any possible connections between the victims other than this restaurant.
“Where’s Claudia?” Lattimer asked, looking at the desk where she had been sitting before looking back at McGee and DiNozzo.
“She’s with Abby down in the lab,” McGee said. “And, since she hasn’t come back, I’m guessing they’re getting along, although she might have Claudia duct-taped to a chair. You never know with Abby.”
Jethro nodded and started walking over to the elevator, motioning for Lattimer to follow him.
“Just the kind of reassurance I needed,” Lattimer muttered as he followed Jethro. They quickly stopped in the lobby so that Jethro could get Abby his traditional gift of Caf-Pow before going down to Abby’s lab. Loud music greeted them as they stepped out, and he could hear Abby excitedly explaining something to Claudia.
“Oh, there he is, just like I told you,” Abby’s voice said as they walked in. “Right on time!” She had on a pair of the purple gloves that Lattimer and Donovan used and both of them were wearing surgical hats that Abby had decorated.
“What do you got for me, Abs?” he asked, walking over to the table where she and Donovan were standing. It didn’t escape his notice that Donovan, who had been smiling and laughing with Abby, had quieted and become withdrawn at the sight of him. While it looked like Abby put her at ease, it wasn’t enough to overcome whatever was going through her head when she saw him.
“Well, there’s a lot to go through, and we’re still processing a lot of what we got from the victims, but Claudia here had a great idea,” Abby started, grabbing the younger woman’s arm and pulling her over to the computer. “We ran samples that Ducky sent us through the mass spec and got some bizarre results. Look,” she said, pulling up the breakdowns on the screen. “All of them have this trace element that I’ve never seen before. And the odd thing is that there seems to be more of it in the more recent victims, like it’s becoming stronger somehow. We’re working on trying to identify it, but no luck so far.”
“We started testing the evidence to see if there’s traces of whatever this is on what we have here, but it’s slow going,” Donovan continued, gesturing at the evidence laid out on the table. “And before you ask, Pete, I’m still going through old cases to see if there are any matches to what’s going on now. So far, nada.”
“Well, that would be asking for too much, wouldn’t it?” Lattimer asked, walking over to Donovan and looking at her hat. “Can I get me one of these?”
“You like them?” Abby asked, turning to face him and pointing at her own.
“Well, I was actually thinking about getting one for the boss next time he sees his doctor lady friend,” Lattimer began before Donovan punched him in the arm. “Nice to know somebody’s picking up the ‘punch Pete reins’,” he added quietly, rubbing his arm.
“Somebody has to.”
“Anything else for me, Abby?” Jethro asked, ignoring Donovan and Lattimer’s exchange. It only confirmed his suspicion that Lattimer’s partner wasn’t just on a leave of absence.
“Not yet, but give me a few more hours and I might. Oh, and Ducky stopped by! He said that he wanted to talk to you about something,” Abby added hastily, adjusting her hat so that it was tilted at a jaunty angle.
“Thank you, Abs,” Jethro said, handing her the Caf-Pow and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She took it eagerly and began drinking as she turned back to her computer.
“Donovan, Lattimer, I’ll meet you upstairs,” he continued, turning to face the two agents. “We’re going to check the restaurant.” Before either of them could respond, he was on his way back to the elevator to go see Ducky. He wanted to know what the ME had to say about Donovan.
“Ah, Jethro, there you are. I’ve been expecting you,” Ducky’s voice called out as Jethro exited the elevator. The older man was sitting at his desk, paperwork laid out in front of him, a cup of tea in his hand. “I was wondering when you would make your way over here.”
“Hello to you too, Duck,” Jethro said, walking into the autopsy room. “What do you got for me?”
“Well, after close examination of all four victims, the only similarity between them is that they all died by their own hands, so to speak,” Ducky explained, before detailing how each victim had died. “I’ve found nothing to indicate that they were somehow under the influence, although Abby might have more details once she’s finished her analysis.”
“What’s your take on Donovan?” Jethro asked, going directly to the conversation he wanted to have.
Ducky sighed and turned to face him.“Yes, I suspected that was the real reason you came to visit me,” Ducky stated, sitting back down at his desk. “She’s quite young to be working with the Secret Service, I must say. Although, she does remind me of this young man I met...”
“Duck,” Gibbs interrupted the doctor before he could start off on one of his tangents.
“Very well, Jethro,” Ducky sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose underneath his glasses. “Miss Claudia Donovan fits the profile of somebody who has lost many of the people she cares for, creating a sense of constant abandonment, one that hasn’t left her despite finding a group that she considers to be her family. She recently lost a person she identified as a member of this new familial group, which in all likelihood exacerbated her reaction to you. You remind her in some way of a person she lost and that she has yet to come to terms with. She’s also desperately afraid of being left alone.”
“Anything else, Ducky?”
“Other than that, she’s a highly intelligent, incredibly capable young woman, not unlike our Abby. It’s unsurprising that they hit it off like they did,” Ducky answered, his eyes meeting Jethro’s. “I just wish I knew what exactly caused her adverse reaction to you, Jethro.”
“You and me both, Duck,” Jethro replied, heading back to the elevator. “Thanks for the help.”
~*~*~
“So, did you get anything on your searches?” Pete asked Claudia as they rode the elevator back to the main level of the NCIS headquarters.
“Nothing so far, but I still have a lot of the older stuff to go through,” Claudia answered as the elevator dinged and the doors opened. “But nothing that matches the exact parameters of our current case, and nothing close enough to make me think that something about this artifact has changed over time. So, where are we off to?” she asked, stopping at a corner underneath the stairs.
“Probably the restaurant DiNozzo and McGee came up with,” Pete replied with a shrug. “It’s the only real lead we have so far, unless Artie buzzes us with something we can follow-up on after we shake the cowboys.”
“Do you think we’re going to have to let them in about the artifacts?” Claudia asked, voicing the question that had become stronger as she worked with Abby. She was surprised that the older woman hadn’t encountered something artifact-like before, but she had a feeling that now that it was on Abby’s radar, she wouldn’t leave it alone until she had solved the puzzle it presented to her. At least by telling them, Claudia figured they could somewhat control what NCIS found out about what they dealt with.
“Hopefully not, although that might be wishing for too much at this point,” Pete replied after a lenghy pause, glancing around. “Gibbs knows something’s up, and he’s not the type who will let this go without getting some sort of resolution. And if I were a betting man, I would lay money on his team following his lead with little second-guessing. So not only would we have to solve the case, but also find a way to make what’s going on not sound completely crazy.”
“I call dibs on not explaining to Mrs. F why they know more than they should,” Claudia said.
Pete mock-glared at her. “Not fair. At all. Why do I have to talk to Mrs. Frederic?” he demanded.
“Because I called dibs, that’s why.”
“If you two are done arguing, we have a restaurant to visit,” Gibbs voice interrupted them before Pete could respond to Claudia.
They both turned around to see him standing in front of the elevator, an annoyed look on his face. Granted, Claudia was starting to think it was stuck on variations of the annoyed theme, so it was really that he looked irritated-annoyed rather than any other type.
“Claudia and I will go in our own car,” Pete told Gibbs as he walked by. “We need to drop our stuff off at the hotel.”
Claudia, who had waited half a beat before following, was touched. They didn’t need to check in right now, but Pete was giving her a reason not to be in an enclosed area with Gibbs. She knew that her reaction to him was bordering on the irrational, but whenever she looked at him, she kept going back to that last phone call she had with Uncle Simon, when he promised her that he would come to her science fair, only to be killed minutes later.
“Fine with me,” Gibbs answered, striding through the aisle in his team’s area.
“Boss, where are we going?” Tony asked, starting to get to his feet.
“You and McGee are staying here to see if you can put together any more leads,” Gibbs said, walking past the desks. “Be creative.”
“On it, Boss.”
Claudia shot a sympathetic look at Tim as she walked by and he smiled back. Remembering what he had told her about Gibbs and elevators, Claudia did her best not to show her hesitation as they entered. She wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but Gibbs wound up standing between her and Pete. She stared at the wall in front of her, silently praying that he wouldn’t do what McGee had mentioned as his signature move, activating the emergency stop and stranding them there until he got the answers he wanted from a person. Whatever guy high atop the thing must have been listening to her, because they made it to the lobby without any problems.
The walk to the parking lot was just as silent as the elevator ride. Leaning against the passenger door of their rental, Claudia watched as Pete and Gibbs talked quietly, probably about where the hell they were going.
“So, what’s our lead?” Claudia asked Pete when he walked over and they got into the car.
“A restaurant that all the victims ate at within a few weeks of coming in to contact with the artifact,” Pete explained driving a little faster than Claudia was comfortable with as he followed Gibbs’ car. They were taking side roads, trying to avoid the traffic that was already starting to snarl the freeways.
“So it could be something in the restaurant, but wouldn’t we have more cases then?” Claudia asked.
“Pretty much, which means we’re probably dealing with one person handling the artifact. Hopefully, it’s an employee, which will make things easier. We’re going to talk to the owner to see if there’s any possible connections with the times that the victims ate there.”
“While you do that, I can look around to see if there’s anything that looks artifact-esque,” Claudia volunteered. “Cover all the bases.”
“Works for me. After that, we’ll drop our stuff off, talk to Artie about what we should do about telling the NCIS agents about the artifacts, and then see what happens next.”
“With our luck, the worst possible scenario.”
“Yeah, I’m hoping we break that curse.”
“At least there’s no zoo involved,” Claudia said with a sly glance at Pete, who groaned in response.
“Who told you about that?” he demanded. Claudia paused, but that was all the answer Pete apparently needed and they lapsed in to awkward silence.
“I miss her, Pete,” Claudia said quietly, looking out the window. “It’s not the same without her.”
“I miss her too, Claudia,” Pete answered after another pause as they waited at a red light.
“Do you think… do you think she’ll ever come back?” Claudia asked, playing with the hem of her shirt. This was the first time she and Pete had talked about Myka leaving the Warehouse, and yet they were still avoiding her name, like saying it out loud would make it that more real.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He didn’t sound hopeful, though, subtly echoing what Claudia silently feared.
“I guess until then, it’s Team Clete,” Claudia suggested, trying to lighten the mood.
“Clete? I thought we decided way back when that if we ever teamed up, we would be Pedia,” Pete replied, a smile tugging at lips.
“Yeah, Leena and I vetoed that on further consideration,” Claudia countered, even though it had been her and Myka who had discussed the name. She had just moved the conversation away from that topic, and she wasn’t about to bring it back around.
Claudia and Pete argued over the merits of Clete versus Pedia for the rest of the trip, still going strong when Pete pulled into a parking spot about a block away from their destination.
“Look, Pete, I don’t care what you say, Pedia just sounds wrong,” Claudia told him for the fifth time as she got out of the car.
“Like Clete sounds that much better!” Pete protested, leaning over the car roof. “Let’s put this discussion on pause until we’re done with the restaurant. Gibbs is starting to get an impatient look on his face.”
“Deal, although we both know I was winning.”
“In your dreams.”
Gibbs was waiting for them at the front door, his expression impassive. “Lattimer, you’re with me,” he told Pete curtly.
“I’ll just look around then,” Claudia volunteered when Gibbs made no mention of what she should be doing. Through the window, she spied several waiters, which might be a better source of information than the manager Pete and Gibbs were about to talk to. Following them inside, she glanced around before walking up to the seating hostess.
“If I wanted to throw a party, what would I need to do?” she asked, leaning against the stand. “Who would my people, ok scratch that, who would I call?”
“That would be Joel,” the woman answered in a bored voice, tapping her ringed fingers against the wood. “What’s the occasion?”
“Well, my brother just got engaged, but it’s to this other guy and the old man is throwing a hissy fit,” Claudia lied, silently asking for Joshua’s forgiveness for bringing him into this. “I mean, he’s more of a step-father than a father, but he loves his tapas, so I’m trying to pull out all the stops to see if I can draw the heat off of Josh.” Several of the waiters had moved over to where Claudia was standing, blatantly listening in to the story she was telling.
“Was that them who just came in?” one of the waiters asked, motioning with his head at the door Pete and Gibbs had just entered. Claudia nodded.
“Yeah, like I said, the old man isn’t too happy,” she said. “So, what’s it like working here?” she asked, changing the subject, not wanting to get caught in the lie she just told. “I need to get some money to pay for books and stuff, and somebody told me waitressing was the way to go.”
“It’s not too bad, although this place legit needs to invest in direct deposit,” another waitress complained. “It’s a pain in the ass to have to come here on your day off to get the check. Otherwise, this place is about as good as you’re going to get in terms of jobs.”
“Sometimes the chef lets us try out the new tapas he’s experimenting with,” the first waiter said as a third waiter joined them. “He’s a genius. Did you know he beat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef?”
“I did not, although it’s good to know,” Claudia answered. “Anything you would recommend for a party menu?”
Claudia talked with the waiters for the next five minutes, and although she didn’t catch their names, she did learn bits and pieces about Jaleo that could be helpful with the case, like the fact that with large parties or special celebrations, the assistant manager would help wait the tables. She was in the middle of being talked through how to ace the application process when the office door opened and Pete and Gibbs stepped outside. Neither had a happy look on their faces, but that did play into what Claudia had just told everybody else.
“Time to go, Claudia,” Pete said. To his obvious surprise, the waiters and a few other employees who had overheard Claudia’s story began clapping him on the back, telling him good luck while the hostess slipped him a card. Before he could ask what was going on, Claudia grabbed his elbow and dragged him outside, Gibbs trailing behind them.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked as soon as they were several steps away from the restaurant.
“I kinda may have told them that you were getting married and that we were siblings and that the old man wasn’t too pleased about it,” Claudia explained in a rush, barely pausing between words.
“You said I was getting married?” Pete asked, his voice rising slightly.
“I had to think of something, and that was the first thing that popped into my head. It was that or a retirement party for Artie.”
“Did you get anything from them?” Gibbs asked, coming to stand a little closer to Claudia than she was comfortable with.
“For special occasions and parties, an assistant manager helps wait the tables and to organize something like that, you need to call somebody named Joel,” Claudia answered, forcing herself to meet Gibbs’ eyes. There was something else that had struck her as important when she heard it, but for some reason it was slipping her mind right now. It was there, right on the edge, but it was just out of her grip. “I didn’t get a whole lot,” she added, looking back at Pete. “And there was nothing there that really seemed out of place.”
Pete, understanding her oblique way of saying that nothing there called out to her as artifact-y, turned to Gibbs.
“Claudia and I are going to head over to the hotel and we should be back within an hour or so, depending on traffic,” he said, a slightly distracted look on his face.
“Fine by me,” Gibbs answered with a shrug. Claudia and Pete watched him go back to his car before Pete turned to face the restaurant again.
“You getting a vibe?” Claudia asked quietly, recognizing the look Pete got whenever his spidey-sense went off.
“Yeah, but it’s hard to place,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck with a worried look on his face. “It’s tied to this restaurant, but other than that…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “Let’s get to the hotel, and we can call Artie and Leena to see if they have anything on this place,” he continued, moving over to their rental.
Twenty minutes later, they had checked into their hotel and had just gotten off the Farnsworth with Leena. Artie, it turned out, was currently on his way to Australia, where they had just gotten a ping on the artifact detector. Leena had promised to look into the owner of Jaleo, along with any history of the building that could be relevant.
“Is it just me or is it hot in here?” Pete asked as Claudia closed the Farnsworth.
“I think the heat’s starting to get to you, old man,” Claudia answered, grabbing a few bucks and the key card. “I’m going to go grab a soda. Do you want anything?”
“Just get me some ice from the machine. I think I’ll stick with water for now,” Pete answered, wiping his face. “I’ve been forgetting how much the heat here sucks.”
“Well, I’ll grab the ice, you drink your water, and then we’re off to the land of the cowboys once again,” Claudia said, grabbing the ice bucket and heading down to the end of the hall.
As she waited the bucket to fill up, she closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. It had been a long day and she was more than positive that it was just going to get longer. They still had to go back to NCIS headquarters to go over what Pete and Gibbs had gotten at the restaurant, she still needed to finish looking through finals, and she and Pete were due for a long discussion about why eating chili when sharing a room with somebody else was a terrible idea. Oh, and she was betting heavily on Mrs. F showing up before this whole mess was over.
Claudia was on her way back to the room when a loud crash echoed in the hallway. “What the hell?” she muttered, jogging over to her door. Fumbling for the key card, she tried twice before it slipped into the slot and the light changed to green.
“Pete?” she called out, glancing around the room. “Pete?”
“I’m fine, I just tripped,” Pete’s voice answered from the other side of one of the beds.
“I’m now wondering if you driving is such a good idea,” she muttered as Pete stood up. “Give me the keys.”
“Claudia?”
“What, I’m a good driver.”
“Claudia, did you just slip out again? Claudia?”
“Oh, God,” Claudia whispered, a shiver running down her spine. No. This couldn’t be happening.
“Claudia, this isn’t funny!” Pete shouted as Claudia scrambled towards him. She tried grabbing his wrists, but he shook her off, causing her to fall against the bed and roll over to the other side. “Where the hell are you?”
She tried grabbing at him again, but he was starting to become more violent. In the back of her mind, Claudia noted that this proved their theory about the escalation of the attacks on the artifact victims, but she quickly let go as she ducked a wild swing from Pete and darted under his arms towards his bag.
“Where is it, where is it?” she muttered as she frantically dug through the bag, desperately searching for the one thing that might slow him down. Feeling something cold and metallic, she pulled out the Tesla and whirled around to face Pete, who was flipping over mattresses in an attempt to find her.
“Where did you take Claudia?” he shouted. “Come out, I know you’re here! Where…”
Before he could finish, Claudia pressed the trigger on the Tesla, sending an arc of electricity straight at him. His body jerked straight before crumpling to the ground. With shaking hands, Claudia lowered the Tesla and carefully walked towards him, her hurried breathing loud in the otherwise silent room. Kneeling down, she checked his pulse and felt it beating faintly against her fingertips.
Rocking back on her heels, Claudia reached for one of the Farnsworths on the floor. She was trembling so much it took her three tries to open the lid and another two to dial the first person who came to mind.
“Dr. Vanessa?” Claudia asked as soon as the woman on the other line answered. “We have a bit of a problem.”
September 8, 2004 - Washington, D.C.
Standing in the entryway of the White House, Jethro allowed himself to feel overwhelmed for a brief moment before reining in his emotions. Beside him, Kate Todd stood talking to one of the security guards as they waited for their escort to arrive. He had just finished getting Kate’s hiring approved by the director when Special Agent Ron Butterfield had called, telling Jethro that President Bartlett wanted to personally thank him and Kate for their actions aboard Air Force One and was extending an invitation to the White House to the two agents.
That had been two days ago.
He had tried to use his current case as an excuse not to attend, but Director Morrow was having none of it and ordered the reluctant Gibbs to go.
“Special Agent Gibbs, Special Agent Todd,” a tall, thin man with a balding head of brown hair said, appearing at the other side of the security checkpoint. He gave Jethro an odd look, but didn’t say anything as he held out his hand in greeting. “Ron Butterfield, head of the Presidential Protection Detail.” Jethro returned the handshake, giving the man a nod, who turned toward Kate. “Special Agent Todd, it’s good to see you again.”
“Good to see you too, sir,” she replied, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
Kate hadn’t talked much about leaving the Secret Service after her relationship with Major Carey had been brought to light, but Jethro knew that she mourned the potential loss of respect among her former colleagues. The fact that Butterfield appeared genuinely pleased to see her meant a lot to her.
Jethro was silent as Kate and Butterfield talked about people that worked in the Secret Service as the agent led them through the back hallways of the White House towards the Oval Office. Staffers walked around them in a rush, talking as they moved to wherever they were going. It didn’t escape his notice that at least two of them gave him startled looks before rushing away, as if they had seen a ghost. It was similar, but more obvious than the look that Butterfield had given him moments before.
Before Jethro could determine what the most likely answer could be, they arrived at desks that preceded the doors of the Oval Office.
“Charlie, is the President in?” Butterfield asked the young man who was sitting at one of the desks. “Special Agents Gibbs and Todd from NCIS are here.”
The young man looked up, eyes traveling from Butterfield to Kate before stopping on Jethro. His face didn’t change, but something in his eyes reflected the expressions Jethro had just seen in the hallways. After a few seconds, he turned to face Butterfield again.
“He’s currently in a meeting with some of the senior staff, sir,” he said. “Including CJ,” he added, his eyes traveling towards Gibbs before returning to the Secret Service agent.
“I see,” Butterfield began before being interrupted by the door opening and voices filtering out.
“... be nicer to Donna, Josh,” a female voice said as a man who Gibbs vaguely recognized strode through with a scowl on his face.
“I’m plenty nice to Donna!” he protested, turning back to talk to the first voice. “Just ask her!”
“I did and she said there’s definitely room for improvement.” A tall woman, close to his own height of six feet followed him, looking at a folder full of papers. Looking up, she froze, the teasing smile she had been wearing slowly sliding off to be replaced with a look of shock and disbelief.
“CJ?” the first man asked as an older man filed out of the room, pausing to see what was happening. “Are you...” he began before stopping as well and following her line of sight. Shock registered on everybody’s face, and the second man reached for her, only to have his hand shrugged off.
“I have a press briefing in twenty,” she said slightly breathlessly, snapping out of her daze, and walking away as quickly as she could.
Jethro felt the weight of the gazes of everybody in the room rest on him before another voice called out from the office door, breaking the tense moment.
“Ron, are they here yet?” the president called out, his silhouette filling the door. As if on cue, the three men turned away from Jethro and walked out, although he could sense them stealing glances over their shoulders. Watching them for another moment, Jethro followed Kate into the Oval Office to meet the man whose life he had saved only a week before.
Walking back to her office, CJ Cregg ran her hands through her hair and wondered the best possible way to escape. She didn’t know how, but she managed to make it through the press briefing without collapsing from shock. Fortunately, news of Simon’s doppelganger hadn’t spread, which meant that the only people she had to worry about avoiding were Josh, Leo, and Charlie. Making up her mind, she stopped at Carol’s desk and composed herself as best she could.
“Carol, I’m taking the rest of the day off,” she told her assistant. “I think my flu’s flared up again. Can you let Leo know?” Carol nodded, concern on her face as she picked up the phone and dialed the extension to Leo’s office. CJ quickly gathered her things and fled the office, barely hearing Carol’s shouted good-bye.
How exactly CJ managed to make it back to her townhouse without crashing would forever remain a mystery to her. The intervening time from leaving her office to collapsing on the couch in her living room was a blur, making her wonder if what had just happened was all just a dream, that she didn’t just see Simon’s face outside the Oval Office.
The shrill ring of her home phone startled her. Jerking upright, she debated answering it but decided to let it go to voicemail. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody right now.
“Hey, CJ, it’s Josh. Um, look, I just wanted to see how you were after, well, you know. Carol said you rushed out and had gone home, and well... Just call if you need somebody to talk to.”
Minutes after Josh had finished leaving his message, her phone rang again, this time from Leo. It was short and to the point, much like the Chief of Staff, asking if she was okay. By the third time the phone rang--this time from Donna--CJ waited patiently for it to finish recording the message before disconnecting the line. While she was touched that her coworkers cared enough to check in on her, she wasn’t in the mood to listen to one message after another asking if she was fine.
She didn’t know how long she lay there until a sharp knock snapped her out of her daze. She shifted, determined to ignore it, when Toby’s muffled voice shouted through the heavy wooden door, “I know you’re in here, CJ! I’m going to keep knocking until you come to the door.”
Groaning, because she knew that with Toby there were no idle threats, CJ rolled off the couch and stalked to the door.
“Yes?” she demanded, opening the door a crack and peering through it. Toby looked back at her, his face blank. “What do you want?”
“Well, are you going to invite me in?” he asked, gesturing at the room behind her.
CJ thought about it for a moment before opening the door wider and letting him through. He didn’t immediately sit down, instead going to where he knew she had a bottle of scotch reserved for his visits. She waited as he poured both of them a drink before going to join him at the kitchen island, clearing away some of the clutter so she didn’t accidentally spill on some briefing or another. Toby took a sip, watching CJ intently as she studied the amber liquid in front of her before picking up the glass and draining it in one gulp.
“His name is Leroy Jethro Gibbs,” Toby stated, his voice calm as CJ put the glass down, feeling the scotch burn its way down her throat. “He’s one of the NCIS agents assigned to investigate death of the guy carrying the football on the president’s trip to LA.”
“The one where I got the flu from hell and couldn’t go,” CJ commented softly, playing with her glass.
Toby nodded, pausing a moment before continuing. “President Bartlett didn’t get a chance to thank Agents Todd and Gibbs on Air Force One after they stopped the assassin, which is why they were there today. Nobody had any idea how much Gibbs would look like...”
“Look like Simon,” CJ finished after Toby’s voice trailed off. She took a ragged breath, holding it for a moment before releasing it. It didn’t make her feel better, but it gave her time to compose her thoughts, to figure out what was going through her head. “I was moving forward, Toby,” she finally said in a quiet voice. “I was at the point where I could think about him, and think about what we had without wanting to curl up and cry. I could think about him and actually smile. And now...” She paused and shook her head, the tears she had been holding in finally starting to flow.
Out of everybody in her life, Toby was the one she didn’t have to constantly look strong in front of. It was the benefit of their long and slightly convoluted friendship. He had seen her in every emotional state and was always there for her when she needed a friend.
“It’s like a scab’s been ripped off and I’ve been put in a barrel of salt with no way to climb out,” she continued, meeting Toby’s eyes for the first time. “I feel like I’m back to standing outside that theatre, with Ron telling me that Simon’s dead, and I don’t know if I can go through this again, not on top of everything else.”
“You’ll get through this, CJ,” Toby reassured her, taking one of her hands and giving it a firm squeeze.
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, her voice breaking. “How do you know?”
“Because you’re CJ Cregg,” he answered, as if it were that simple. “And I don’t have the time to waste to get one of your deputy’s up to your level of wrangling the press, especially not with the midterms coming up.”
CJ couldn’t help herself, laughing weakly at Toby’s last statement. She smiled at him, weakly but it was still there.
“Thank you, Toby,” she said, returning the squeeze. They sat there for nearly an hour, neither of them saying much, but by the time that he left, CJ felt that a weight had been removed. The shock from seeing the NCIS agent was still there, but the wound that had been so abruptly reopened no longer felt as raw or as gaping. Reconnecting the phone, she looked at it for a moment before going to her bedroom and turning on the TV. Just because it felt like her world had been turned upside down, it didn’t mean that she ever truly stopped working.
Chapter Five