Abby knew it was serious as she saw Jimmy hoovering in the door of her lab. "Spill your guts Jimmy." she said as she turned down the music and walked towards the man.
"I am really sorry Abs." he said as he opened his arms to hug her. She accepted the embrace without hesitation. "Who is it?" she asked, but continued before Jimmy could answer. "It's Tony, isn't it? It is because, let's be honest here, it is always Tony. What did he do this time? Did the bossman had to drag him off to the hospital again?" Abby looked up but Jimmy didn't answer.
"I am so sorry." he said after a few minutes as he gathered the nerve to tell her. "It was McGee. They had cleared the house, but apparently there was still someone hiding. They took him."
Abby takes a step back and squints at his face. His sincerity is enough for her to realize that he is telling the truth. "They will come in in the evidence garage any minute now to give you the evidence." he says as he grabs one of her hands. "I wanted you to know so you could prepare yourself." He desperately wanted to comfort her but she was gone before he even realized it.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
She waited in the evidence garage for that door to open and the truck to drive trough. As soon as it did she ran to the drivers side and almost dragged Gibbs out of the car, hugging him tightly.
"Tell me it isn't true Gibbs." she sobbed. "Not Tim! It is never Timmy. He stays with me as you guys do dangerous things, he comforts me as you end up in the hospital once again. Did you see his face Gibbs? He has a baby face. He isn't made for things like this!"
Gibbs doesn't even bother with an answer. He just holds her close and lets her go for a while. It takes her some time but eventually she is collected enough to face everyone again. "We are going to figure this out." she says and tries to fake a smile but she avoids looking at Gibbs, Ziva and Tony knowing that they could see how fake it was.. "Bring the evidence to my lab, I will be there in a minute." she orders before running off.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Tony waits with the evidence until Abby comes back, he would rather be in the bullpen to make some calls, update the bolo or anything other than waiting here for Abby to return, but he has to follow chain of evidence and Gibbs would have his ass if he didn't check on her. he hears her before Tony sees her and can't hold back a laugh if he finally sees her. She carries an evidence box, completely filled with caff-pow. He estimates that there have to be at least 15 containers in the box. She walks over to Tony and signs the evidence forms. "Go find my boy." she says before pushing him out the door.
He took the stairs up to the squad room, Gibbs was already standing in front of the screen talking with Ziva about what they had discovered so far. The man they had to pick up had been a suspect in some drug-deal. The case had been easy and obvious, tons of clues and evidence pointing towards that man in that house. To easy, Gibbs realized in hindsight. "McGee is our connection here." he said, it has to be, why go trough all this trouble and wait until he could take McGee when Palmer would have been a much easier choice."
"Palmer should not have been there in the first place..." Ziva murmured as she walked over to her computer. Suddenly Gibbs' phoned rang and he snapped it open. "Talk to me Abs."
Tony heard her shrieking over the phone and Gibbs ran towards the stairs, Ziva and Tony on his heels. They almost ran down the stairs and where in the lab a minute later. Abby was standing on front of her computer screen. "They hacked my baby Gibbs." she said, still not turning around. Gibbs walked over to her, his face showing no emotion as he realized what he saw on the screen. McGee was standing in some sort of dark room. He was tied to the wall, cuffs around his wrists and ankles holding him up. He head was hanging down and his shirt was shredded. His torso was covert in bruises and Tony had to swallow. This sort of thing happened to him, or Gibbs, not to Tim.
Suddenly a voice ran trough the room. "So, there it is, the great agent Gibbs." Abby typed anyway on her other computer, no doubt trying to locate the signal. "As you see I have had some fun with your boy. He is not going wake up anytime soon, but that is fine."
"What do you want?" Gibbs cut him off, not willing to hear the details of agents' status. "I want to you drop the case involving Lieutenant Benn and the drugring. Release the man you have in custody and you will get your agent back. "
Suddenly McGee's head snapped up. "Merry freakin' christmas Abs." he said, his green eyes locking on the camera. Then the screen went black and came back to live with the program's that Abby had been running.
"He must have been delusional." Ziva said, breaking the silence. "No" Tony said. "The man has a brain as big as a dinosaur. It must have been a message to Abby."
They all turned around to look at Abby who was staring at the computer. "Oh gosh, Timmy." she said before she started typing again. "Tim and I have been dating again for a few months." she explained while pulling up youtube. "A few weeks ago he turned up at my door in the middle of the night, all serious and stuff. He said that if someone ever asked me if I knew him. Someone I don't know." she clarified while pulling up a video on YouTube. "I should call him and he told me that he had to go, to keep me safe. It was all weird she said." She grabbed a mug from her desk, it said I heart nerds, and the big red heart was probably resembling a nerd, Tony thought, with the big glasses, fixed with tape. He focused back on Abby.
"He wasn't willing to say any more. But you know me, I want to know everything, so I might have used sex as an interrogation technique." she giggled for a second. "To much information Abs." Gibbs said, willing her to continue. "Anyway" she said "It turned out that Tim had found out that his father was involved in a drug war. He is pretty high up the food chain by now, so high that other drugkartels suspect that he might pay a high price for his family."
Tony's eyes where wide in shock and he wondered why he had never heard about that. He made a mental note to look up McGee's family as Gibbs interrupted. "How are you so sure that it is about his dad?"
"Because Gibbs." Abby said as she started playing the song. He got impatient but Abby would bug and they all listened to this somewhat strange song. It was about a boy who found out that Santa wasn't real while he was 19. "It's Tim's favorite Christmas song, Merry Freaking Christmas by calibretto 13." she said as she wiped a tear out of her eye. "Anyway, guess when Tim found out that his father was a criminal? That's right, during Christmas, while he was 19."
"He figured that his childhood had been a lie." Ziva said softly.
"Good Job Abs." Gibbs said as he gave her a kiss. "Tell me as much about his location as you can from the video, we are going to dig into McGee's family." Gibbs announced as he walked out of the lab. Tony and Ziva quickly encouraged Abby to run after their boss and get the elevator before the doors would close.
It didn't take them long to find out that McGee's father was a person of interest at the FBI. Gibbs wasn't happy with that because the man was a marine, it was NCIS' jurisdiction. But the would fight that fight later, right now he had an agent to find and paying a visit to Alex McGee was currently his best bet.
The three of them went. Gibbs sat in front of McGee sr. while Tony walked around behind the man, slipping in an out of his blind spot. Ziva sat on the corner of his desk, completely ignore everything that was going on while playing with her knife, her biggest knife.
Alex McGee tried to deny the fact that he was involved with drugs, but Gibbs told him that he didn't care about that right now. He still didn't give in and suddenly he was pushed against the wall, Gibbs too far in his personal space while Tony had his gun at his head.
"I don't give a flying fuck about you, your business or what ever. You are now going to give me the information I want so I can safe my agent and you better do it quick, Miss Mossad over here can kill you and make it look accidental. Plus the NCIS corner would be more than happy to hide any evidence..." Gibbs hissed before letting the man go.
"I will make some calls, please wait." he said as he slipped back behind his desk, still shaking a little from Gibbs' forceful approach.
Twenty minutes later he was done. "There are rumors that the Bull has someone they want to use to get back to me. It are still rumors but it is your best bet." He frowned his brow for a second and Tony saw the exterior of a man that could be McGee, his McGee, in 25 years. "You know the new shopping area, the bullring?" he asked and Ziva wrinkled her nose. "The one with the horrible building?" she asked.
"Yes, the one with the shiny silver plates. That building is their headquarter, the shops are only there for show. Rumors is that they have a dungeon for holding people and torture." The three agents on a mission left the man alone, not even saying goodbye, knowing that he would pack his bags and be gone before someone would have the change to arrest him.
Gibbs gave Vance a call, giving him an update on the situation. Vance decided that they would wait until the mall was closed in an hour, to avoid panic or accidents under civilians. Meanwhile Vance would gather a swat team, they had an hour before they could do anything and the thought alone was driving the 3 of them crazy.
With a grunt Gibbs pulled in the parking lot of a small dinner. "We might as well eat while we wait." he said, ignoring the odd looks from his team. Tony opened his mouth to protest, but he couldn't think of an argument that was good enough, sighing he closed it again and walked after Gibbs trough the door.
They sat in silence while they ate, it wasn't like them to sit around and do nothing while one of their own was in danger, but Vance had been right, as hard as it might seem, it was the best thing they could do right now.
Their meal was eaten in silence, everyone lost in their own thoughts as suddenly Gibbs' phone rang. "Whatcha got Abs?" he asked, feeling a little ashamed that he had failed to tell her about their discovery. He put her on speakerphone so he wouldn't have to repeat her.
"So, I did some analyzing of the tape, and I couldn't find much, but they I analyzed the soundtrack with extracting Hertz and everything, and I could hear metro's go by. I wrote down every time I heard one and then analyzed it with the city's timetable. I had a few options, but then I made a time table, figuring out that they couldn't be more than 15 miles away for the crime scene given the time they had needed to hack my computer, torture Timmy and drive to that place. So I have one option for you!" "Good job Abs." Gibbs said.
"I send the coordinates to Tony's phone, please bring him home Gibbs! Bring my Timmy home."
Gibbs just closed his phoned and sighed, pushing his half eaten dinner away.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
At this moment, Tim McGee really didn't care so much about himself or the fact that he was beaten up and even might have a few broken ribs. No, none of that, he was frightened tough, terrified that the people who had him would go after his friends or his coworkers, who where in fact his friends, or Abby. He had thought long and hard about what he should say to Abby during the video call if he got the change.
After he had said his messages the man had been really mad, He had used his baseball bat to punish Tim for the stunt he pulled, but Tim hadn't really cared, in stead he had prayed that they would figure out his clue that they would get him out as soon as possible. He was hanging in his cuffs, barely holding on to his consciousness.
When the bat his his head for the seconds time he slowly felt himself slip out of consciousness.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
Tim's return to the land of the living wasn't exactly what you would call peaceful. The room was filled with smoke, guns where blazing and someone was tugging on his limbs, trying to get him to move. "How about you work a little with me huh, McLazy? Don't let Gibbs see you sleeping on the job."
"Ouch Tony." he wheezes as he realizes that they found him. "hurt."
Tony chuckles and somehow it makes Tim feel better. Tony being there, his arms supportive around Tim's waist. It feels real and it is all Tim needs to get his head back in the game. He sees a swat team, gunning down some other people, people that had hurt him. Ziva is dragging a man out of the door, the one that Tim suspected was in charge. He didn't see the boss though but he knew that the man had to be somewhere close.
Tony dragged him out the door, trough a maze of halls and suddenly he was outside. He was safe and he couldn't help but throw himself in Tony's arms, slipping back in unconsciousness again.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
When he was waking up the second time around he was lying in a hospital bed. Abby was in a chair next to him, clutching his hand but obviously asleep. Tony was sitting in an other chair in the corner, Silently watching him. He felt several bandages on his body and he suspected that his good feeling came from the painkillers they had probably given him.
"You good?" Tony asks, his eyes sincere. "Yeah." Tim answers. "I am." And he drifts back in to a world with computers, codes and loving people, dead to the real world.