Title: Classified
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I'm not making any money.
Author's Notes: This chapter has Tony/Kate undertones, but I don't know where we're going to wind up. Maybe Tony will get the girl. Maybe he won't. Maybe he doesn't want what he thinks he wants any way. I don't know. I'm letting the characters lead me where they want to go. : D
Chapter 1
*****
"Idiots!"
Gibbs is a little irritated. Of course, that's not uncommon. I'm just glad he's not irritated with me.
Jumping up from my desk, I sprint over to Gibbs. "Agency not cooperating, Boss?"
"They're a bunch of self serving…" Gibbs trails off, trying to get his temper under control. "So much for inter-agency cooperation."
"Yeah." I nod in agreement.
We've been working on the murder of a Marine found dead in Alexandria. Everything seemed normal about him (except for the fact that he had been murdered) until we noticed that about two years ago, his file started missing a lot of information. There were times that nobody really seemed to know what Major Allen Pickett was up to. And nobody seemed to care.
And nobody seemed to care what he was doing in Alexandria the night he was killed.
So, we started digging a little deeper, and finally found one of his fellow Marines who suggested that Major Pickett might have been on loan to the Agency. The man was pretty vague, but the vacancies in Major Pickett's record, along with the general lack of knowledge all of his so-called friends had about him, seemed to confirm that Major Pickett might have been living a double life.
"What did they say, Boss?" I ask.
Gibbs exhales. "They said that they can neither confirm nor deny that Major Allen Pickett ever worked for the Agency."
I grin. "So, he definitely worked them, huh?"
"Pretty much."
"So, what now?"
Gibbs leans against the nearest desk. "Now, Tony, we keep rattling cages until we get answers."
"Cool."
"Hey, guys!" A cheery voice says.
"Kate, you're back from Williamsburg," I say, grinning.
"And you're observant," she teases.
Kate went to Williamsburg to interview Major Pickett's girlfriend. She's a grad student in History at the college there.
"Any luck with the girlfriend?" Gibbs asks.
She frowns. "She's a mess, Gibbs. The poor thing."
Kate tends to get emotionally involved with victims, witnesses, and even suspects. It's one of the things I love about her.
"Did you get any information?" Gibbs prods.
"Nothing much. Just that he's been acting strange. The last time he visited, he was paranoid. She asked him if something was wrong, and he said he couldn't talk about it."
"So," I say. "He was on a case, and it got too heavy?"
Gibbs nods. "Or maybe he knew something he shouldn't have, and somebody wanted to shut him up."
"Did the Agency give us anything?" Kate asks.
"You're on a need-to-know basis Agent Todd," I grin.
Gibbs shoots me a look. I guess he's irritated with me after all.
"We got stonewalled, Kate," Gibbs says. "No surprise." Letting out a breath, Gibbs turns toward his office. "You two keep digging."
*****
I lean back in my chair and stare at the just-hung-up phone. Another dead end. Letting out a breath, I reach up and start to knead the muscles in my shoulder.
"You all right?" Kate asks casually.
"I slept wrong," I say. "You have some aspirin or something?"
"Yeah," she says. "Hang on." Kate digs around in her purse for a while, mumbling something inaudibly. Then she holds up a bottle, shakes it, and says, "Ah-ha. Knew these little buggers couldn't hide from me."
Kate walks over to my desk, hands me a couple aspirin, and then walks around behind my chair. Her perfume drifts through the air as she moves. She smells great.
My muscles tense involuntarily when I feel her hands touch my shoulders. She hesitates for a moment, and then starts to rub my shoulders and neck.
"You're a bunch of knots back here," she says.
I lean into the massage. Briefly, I think about making some kind of joke about Kate using my sore muscles as an excuse to finally get her hands on me, but I figure she'd cut the massage short, and it feels too good to lose just for a snarky comment.
"You making any headway?" I ask, closing my eyes.
"Not so much. You?"
"Nothing."
"DiNozzo," Gibbs' voice ends our conversation. "When Kate gets done with your spa treatment, I want you check Major Pickett's phone records."
"I'm on it, Boss. How far back?"
Gibbs stares at me, his face devoid of expression. But I'm pretty sure he's still irritated with me. "Three months."
"Still no luck with the Agency, Gibbs?" Kate asks.
That's good, Kate, I think. Remind him why he was in a bad mood in the first place.
"Nope," he says shortly.
Kate stops rubbing my shoulders and walks to her own desk. She bites her bottom lip, like she's trying to remember something. "You know," she says. "I used to date this guy. Our jobs conflicted with us having a real relationship. And we were better friends, anyway…" She trails off.
"Your point?" Gibbs says brusquely.
"I wonder if he could help."
Gibbs shakes his head. "Kate, unless CIA, I seriously doubt it."
"Well, he is," she says matter-of-factly.
I sit up in my chair. "Are you telling us your ex-boyfriend is CIA?"
She tugs at her bottom lip. "Well, he's more of friend. We just tried dating a couple of times."
"Are you saying your friend is CIA?" I ask.
Gibbs exhales loudly, getting both Kate and me to give him our undivided attention. "So," he says impatiently. "You're saying you have a contact at the Agency, and it didn't come up during all those other times we could have used a contact at the Agency."
I smile slightly. Gibbs is irritated at Kate now instead of me.
"Well," Kate says slowly. "It didn't occur to me. I mean, he's a friend. I don't think of him in terms of his job." She shrugs sheepishly.
'Are you on good terms with him?" Gibbs asks.
She nods. "We haven't seen each other in a while. We were supposed to have lunch a couple months ago, but I had to cancel. He canceled the time before that. But yeah, we're still friends. And he's been known to work with the Navy once in a while…"
"Call him," Gibbs says.