Hey guys, brand new multi chapter fic! First one in a long time! There will be 7 chapters tp this total (use to be 8, but I combined two of them. Please let me know what you think!
Enjoy!
The pop music rings loudly in her car as she speeds around the corner, making a quick stop at the targeted house comes into sight. Spotting her brother's car parked in the driveway to the house, she pulls in behind him, hastily turns off the engine, and jumps out of the car. Running over an hour late she is surprised he hadn't called her.
Walking around the back of the semi, she slips into the back door. "Steve!" She calls. "Sorry I'm late, there was an accident off of Main, many people are late for work because of it. You wouldn't believe the number of emergency vehicles across the northbound, even part of the southbound was blocked!" Ashley continues, walking through the house. "Hello? Steve?" Stepping into the living room, she freezes, her hands shaking as they raise to her mouth. Less than a moment passes before she lets out a high-pitched scream. On the floor before her lays a man, her brother, with a single gunshot through his head.
Tony was becoming more and more like him every day. He didn't mean to, it just… Happened. He walks into the squad room with a coffee in his right hand and a folder in his left. Tossing the folder onto the desk across from him, he addresses his newest agent. "Do it again, O'Riley." He didn't see the jaw drop on the young man, instead taking a swig of his drink and turned towards his desk, sitting down to check his emails.
O'Riley looks over to McGee, the file in his hand. "Again?"
"Don't take it too hard, Josh. Everyone has to rewrite their case report at least twice." The senior field agent reassures the young man.
Tony laughs. "Don't lie to the boy, Timmy." He catches his friend's eye, "You never had to rewrite yours." O'Riley visibly deflates before him.
McGee smirks. "But you had to rewrite yours three times, ain't that right, boss?" Tony stiffens and glares at him. Out of the corner of his eye, the newest agent sighs in relief.
On the other side of the bullpen, Agent Johnson smiles, her hand folded in front of her. "Don't worry Josh, I also had to redo mine."
O'Riley opens his mouth to reply but is cut off by the phone on Tony's desk ringing.
"DiNozzo," McGee looks over to his boss, taking in the signs and putting things away. "Yeah, got it." Hanging up, he grabs his coffee and his bag. "Grab your gear."
McGee was the first one to leave his desk, closely followed by Johnson and last, O'Riley running after the team and into the elevator.
Tony walks into the living room of the semi, his mind elsewhere as he takes in the pictures of a man with his parents and sister, and even a few with his friends. The pictures reminding him of a certain Israeli woman, and the photos she had on display at her apartment before she packed it all up and left it behind. His heart still hurts from that day she told him she was going back to her birthplace, and still broken from the day he had left her behind there, all those years ago.
A flash from the camera brings Tony back to the present moment, blinking away the blindness. "Sorry Boss," the young agent apologies, lowering the camera. "I thought you saw m- I should have waited."
"Careful O'Riley, you've been an agent for two months now, you should know to keep an eye all around, and not just what's in front of you. Got it?" He nods, shifting on his feet before returning to the crime scene.
Tony looks around the scene, watching McGee dust for prints along the door. "Got anything, Tim?" He says quietly, his voice just above a whisper, crouching down to a level with his Senior Field Agent.
McGee hummed, taking a picture. "Just one." Taking the crime scene kit to dust around the evidence he has found. "Just this bloody print. Looks like there was a child involved, considering the size." He says, finding nothing to go along with the first print. "But other than this, it looks like a clean job, I don't see a single print anywhere near this door besides the bloody one."
"If there was a child involved, it wouldn't be one from this household, the guy has pictures of everyone except a child. Doesn't even look like he's married." He looks over at his longest coworker, both giving each other a confused look. "You positive that this is a child's fingerprint, McGoo?"
Rolling his eyes, the man answers. "I'm positive Tony, this finger is too small to be a woman's print. It has to be a child." McGee pulls out a swab to sample the blood on the doorframe. "And from the lack of prints. I'm determined that this might just be a professional hit." Tony didn't need to say anymore, knowing that the other man would dust for prints all over the house.
Tony looks around the room, particularly the floor. Something was missing. "McGee," The man looks up in question. "Did you already collect the shell?"
He shakes his head, lowering the brush. "There wasn't any, Tony, the guy must have policed his brass."
Tony nods, agreeing with his earlier assessment. "Johnson!" He calls for his final agent, who walks into the room with Palmer right behind her. The Medical Examiner gets straight to work by himself, getting assistance from Josh.
"Yes, boss?"
He steps over to the woman, out of McGee's way. "What did the witness have to say?"
Sandra clears her throat, flipping open her notebook. "Ashley Morgan, sister to our victim, Stephen Morgan, was supposed to have breakfast together, last heard from him when she had left her house at 7:30 this morning, through texting, got stuck in traffic and was over an hour late. At 9:30, she came through the backdoor to find him dead in the living room."
He nods to his agent before calling over to Palmer. "Jimmy, when did this guy die?"
"Uh," The medical examiner hesitates. "Death between two and three hours ago." Between seven and eight this morning.
"It matches up with the witness' statement, she last talked to her brother at 7:30, Palmer, must have been shortly after that." Making quick notes, Tony orders Sandra to help McGee to dust the house. Tony wanders around the small house checking for anything that might be out of place. It didn't take long before he stopped in front of O'Riley. "Josh, what seems odd about this situation?"
The young man looks around the room, taking notice of the furniture. "The house is clean?"
"Well, besides that, O'Riley."
"It doesn't look like there was a struggle."
"I can second that." Palmer jumps in.
Tony nods to the two. "Exactly. In what world would a man who has a gun pointed at him, not struggle to get away?"
"Well, actually boss, there are many-"
"That was a rhetorical question O'Riley, keep up!" He knew the boy was still getting used to how he handled the team, but being part of a co-op group with a different team didn't get him much in learning how Anthony DiNozzo lead his team. He would be lost if Gibbs hadn't retired. "You don't just let a stranger into your house, especially if they are armed, and not struggle. That could only mean one thing…" He leaves the end of his statement open for his probie. After a moment the boy was still silent. He jesters to Josh, hoping to give him a clue.
"Oh!" O'Riley straightens his back. "He knew his attacker!" It will take time, but the boy was growing into a decent investigator. Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, he had a lot of work to do with this Probie.
With his third cup of coffee in his hand, Tony walks into the squad room to see his team hard at work. This is what he likes to see, and what he guesses what Gibbs liked to see before he retired all those years ago. But it was coming onto lunchtime, and the team should have enough information on the victim. "What do you got?" He asks before taking a sip.
Around the bullpen, the team quickly gets to their feet, and the plasma screen switches on, McGee grabs the clicker, standing in the lineup beside their boss.
They start.
"Sergeant Stephen Morgan, age 27, lives with a roommate, Carl Romone, currently serving in Afghanistan and won't be back for another five months. Other than Carl, Stephen is single and lives alone."
"His only family is his younger sister, Ashley, who found him this morning after a brief conversation with him only minutes before his death. Both of his parents died in a car crash when he was 18, he stepped up and took care of his sister."
"Stephen lives off of his military salary as all the money they would have inherited went towards their mother's gambling debt."
Tony scans over the evidence in front of him, pondering. "Anything on the bloody print we found?"
O'Riley hit the clicker, pulling up the print with a question mark photo beside it. He hid his smirk. "We are still waiting on the results from Abby."
The ding of the bell indicates to him, he was in the basement, armed with a Caf-Pow, he and McGee walk into the Forensic lab. He walks to the beat of the music, his senior agent bobbing his head. "New music, Abs?" He asks the woman in the lab coat.
Abby spins around in her spot, her skirt flaring up as she twirled. "Uh, huh! It's my friends' band, Franken Matter!" She says loudly, probably going deaf after years of concerts.
"Franken-"
"-Matter?" The two men question, glancing over at one another, brows arching.
"Yah-huh!" The woman continues to talk to McGee about the twins.
Tony takes a pace around the room, watching as the machines worked on their assigned duties as the two catch up. The room has changed little in the last twenty-five years, but the upgraded equipment fawns over and treats like her children. Something that the woman never had, and will probably stay that way. Out of all the members of the team, McGee and Palmer were the only ones to really settle down and have a family. Maybe it was his biggest regret, but that ship sailed when the love of his life passed away in a house fire.
He blinks twice, focusing his mind back on the present. "Do you got anything, Abby?"
She twirls around, her gaze landing on him. "There wasn't much evidence to work on, as you guys said, the house was rather tidy for a murder to take place. The only fingerprints I got were from the victim, his sister, and our mystery child, so I'm just waiting on that. The blood is an 'A' Positive, doesn't match Stephen Morgan or his sister."
"Did Jimmy retrieve the bullet?"
"Yes," Abby faces her computer screen, pulling up the squished bullet fragment. "But we have little to work with, if we had the shell case, I could have gotten more from it."
"But we don't..." He says with a frown.
"But we don't." She repeats. The room goes quiet for a minute before Tony hears the beeping of Abby's computer. He glances over to see '100% Match' written across the screen. With a couple of clicks of the keyboard, she comments. "This isn't right."
Realization dawned on him when he looks up at the screen. It couldn't possibly be correct, the person on the screen couldn't possibly exist.
Before him was a picture of a little girl with dark brown curly locks and emerald green eyes. Her name none other than Talia A. David.