Author's Note: I only own Arianna DiNozzo and anyone you don't recognize. The rest are borrowed from the wonderful world of television.
DiNozzo's Christmas Present
Snow fell softly on the sidewalk as people walked in and out of the First National Bank in Washington, DC. It was two weeks before Christmas and people were busily cashing their Christmas Bonuses. The bank was busy so no one noticed the two masked figures enter the bank, at least, not until a gun went off, aimed for the ceiling.
"This is a hold up! Everyone on the floor! Hand over the cash and no one gets hurt!" the leader of the two said. Everyone did as they were told as the second went to the tellers to gather the money.
A figure walked in. She hid herself against a wall around a corner and watched, cussing silently. She just had to be in D.C. that week for a conference. She was representing her unit at it. She took out her phone and called 911. The police were on their way. If it weren't for the men shooting a man, she wouldn't have acted the way she did next.
The young brunette woman reached for her side and remembered her gun was in her car. She looked around and seen the guard's. She put her purse down and picked his up quietly. She took a deep breath, and aimed. "Freeze, Federal Agent!" she yelled. One of them aimed and she shot at him.
Her green eyes flashed and then the lights went out. Another man had come in to join the robbers.
"Cops man! We got cops!" he said. He was the wheel man.
"Grab her, they won't shoot one of their own. Take her hostage! Get something to tie her up!" the leader of the group said, holding his shoulder. The man getting the money grabbed a phone cord as he finished gathering the money. They tied her up as she was starting to come around. The woman started to fight until the one she had shot had put a gun in her face.
Holding the woman, they drug her outside, along with their money. The cops were still down the road, making their way toward the bank. As they turned in the robbers got in their car and took off. They caused a car accident as they pulled out and down the road, preventing a chase.
* * * * * * * * *
"I wonder where Probie is," Agent Tony DiNozzo asked, looking around the room. He noticed a new gadget sitting on McGee's desk."Oo Tim got a new toy," he said.
"I wouldn't if I were you," Agent David said, watching carefully.
"Why not?" He smiled at her and picked it up. He yelped and dropped it having been shocked by it.
"Let that be a lesson to you Tony," McGee said, standing above. He'd been watching from the upper walkway. It'd been only a matter of time before DiNozzo picked it up.
"What is that thing?" DiNozzo asked, a frown on his face.
"A bark collar, also known as a shock collar Tony. Jethro has been barking incessantly at night at a cat at the window, so I bought it for him." He didn't add the fact that he'd thought it would teach Tony a lesson about going through his stuff.
"Gear up," Gibbs said, walking into the room. "We have a missing NCIS agent, kidnapped during a bank robbery, and a dead marine." Everyone grabbed their gear at once and headed for the elevator.
* * * * * * * * *
When they arrived, Tony and Ziva started collecting evidence while McGee started taking photographs. Gibbs went to talk to the police who were at the scene.
"So tell me what happened?" Gibbs asked the officer as they walked away from the witnesses that his officers were questioning. The police were doing the questioning outside due to the inside being a crime scene. It was cold, but no one seemed to want to be inside the bank where there was a dead body.
"The robbers entered the bank at 0930. One shot the ceiling. They began taking jewelery and money from the people in the bank while the other man started taking the money from the tellers. The hostage called 911 on her cell phone. A man refused to hand over his watch so he was killed. Apparently fearing for the other people, she picked up the guard's gun. She announced herself as a federal agent. One of the men took aim and she fired. It was a direct hit as you can see. A third assailant came inside and hit her in the back of the head, alerting them that we were on our way down the street. They tied her up and took her with them as insurance." the officer explained.
"Name?" he asked. They had gone inside to the crime scene, and Ducky had just arrived for the body.
"The dead victim's name is Samuel Jergins, and the woman who was taken is named Arianna DiNozzo."
"Did you just say DiNozzo?" he asked as they walked into the building. The name mad him glance over at Tony. Then he looked at the local LEO again.
"Yes sir. We found her purse near the doorway. It had her badge inside." he replied.
Gibbs walked over to where Tony was standing, bagging evidence and tapped him on the shoulder. "Tony, I need to talk to you for a moment," he said, taking the younger man away from the other two. "I need to know if you have anyone in your family whose name is Arianna."
"No Boss, not to my knowledge." Tony replied. "Why?"
"Our missing girl's name is Arianna DiNozzo." he said. "When we get back, I want you to find out as much as you can about her. It might help us find a way to help her."
"Sorry it took us so long to get here, Jethro," Ducky, the medical examiner said, walking over. "But Mr. Palmer still doesn't know how to navigate the streets of Washington it would seem."
"It's alright Ducky." Gibbs said as they walked over. "What do you think?" he asked.
"Well the cause of death is clearly evident. He was shot once in the head." Ducky pulled out the liver probe and inserted it. "he's not been dead long, maybe an hour." he said, pulling it out.
Gibbs nodded his head. There was no telling how far the robbers had gotten, or if the woman they had with them was still alive or not.
* * * * * * * * *
Three hours later, everyone but Ziva was back at headquarters. Ziva had been left behind to field information and help with witnesses while Tony looked up information on Arianna, and McGee did work on finding out anything about any similar bank robberies in the area.
Gibbs meanwhile was downstairs in autopsy.
"What do you got Ducky?" he asked, walking over to the doctor.
"Well, my primary findings at the crime scene do support my findings about how he died. He does have bruising around his left wrist from having a watch forcefully removed, and a mark around his neck from having a necklace removed. His dog tags were left behind which helped law enforcement to identify him. I think he would have been smarter just to give up the watch and necklace in the first place. If he had, he wouldn't be visiting with me."
Gibbs nodded. "Anything else?"
"Well I didn't remove a bullet, it was through and through, however, he was shot in close proximity due to the powder burns around his wound."
"Thanks Ducky," he said. He then proceeded to go up to Abby's lab.
Abby was in the middle of looking over the evidence when Gibbs walked in. She had already scanned the prints into the system as well as the bullets.
"What do you got for me Abbs?" he asked, holding a large cup of Caff-Pow.
"Nothing yet Gibbs," she said, then got a ding. It was on the gun. "Well yes I do," she grinned at him. "It looks like the gun was used in six previous robberies." she said, scanning through the information. "This is the first time that someone was shot though." she informed him. "And the first hostage. Each robbery was within the tri-state area but these robbers are good. Never any physical evidence left behind which is really odd, really strange. You see, they always wear gloves and masks and army fatigues. What is nice is they haven't switched their guns yet which is really weird but of course there is the old three day waiting period for guns and all that. They probably didn't get new ones off the street."
Gibbs handed her the Caff-Pow and nodded. "Anything else Abbs?" he asked.
"Not yet Gibbs, sir!" she said, grinning. She loved her work.
* * * * * * * * *
DiNozzo meanwhile was upstairs, looking through Arianna's files. Then he found something that struck him oddly. "No, that can't be right," he said and blinked a few times before looking again at the name of Arianna's mother. "I know her, that's our old maid! One of my old Nannies." he chuckled. Then frowned. Her name was DiNozzo, not Antinucci. He began looking for her birth certificate. He'd always wondered why his father had let Marie go. He guessed he'd found out.
"DiNozzo, what have you found?" Gibbs asked, walking in. McGee moved and put it up on the plasma screen and Tony took the clicker. "Well, Boss, it looks like our missing NCIS Agent is from Wilmington, Delaware, just north of the Dover Airforce Base where our dead marines get shipped. Her mother's name is Marie Antinucci and uh... Boss... there's a chance she is my half sister," Tony said, clicking the button as a picture of Arianna's birth certificate came up.
"Boss I also found something," McGee said after several long moments of silence. "One of the kidnappers had a tattoo on his arm. It looks like a Navy tattoo," he added, pulling that up on the plasma. He enlarged the tattoo and pointed it out. "Looks custom."
Gibbs nodded. "And Abby was able to match the bullets to six other crime scenes from the past two years. Have you been able to run a search on the get away car?"
"Yeah Boss." McGee said, clicking the button. "It was stolen a mile away from the bank, two days before -" Gibbs' phone started to ring. He answered it and then hung up.
"Get your things, the car was found a half mile from where it was stolen from."
McGee and Tony both grabbed their things as Ziva walked in. Seeing Gibbs and the fact the others were gathering their things, she turned around and walked right back to the elevator.
* * * * * * * * *
The abandoned get away car was located under a tree in a mostly decent neighborhood. Each of them grabbed their guns to clear the immediate area. Slowly they came up on the car. There was a person sitting inside of it.
"Freeze!" Gibbs said, pointing the gun as he came into the sight of whoever it was. He opened the door, gun still drawn and wasn't surprised to find the person inside was dead. "Clear," he said, holstering the gun. "He's dead. Call Ducky, and canvas the area for clues."
"Yes Boss!" the three younger agents replied, scattering.
When Ducky appeared, the agents had found not a clue except a spent shell casing. It was on the floorboard at the dead man's feet. Powder burns circled a gunshot wound to the head. A gun was sitting in the man's lap. There was also a second gunshot wound to the shoulder.
"Looks like our man sustained two gun shot wounds," Ducky said, starting to do a once over of the body as Palmer got the gurney ready. It was a surprise that for once he didn't get lost on the way to the scene. He inserted the liver probe, waited a few moments, and then removed it. "Dead four hours," he added. "I'll know more when we get him back."
"Alright Ducky," Gibbs said, watching the doctor and his assistant pull the body from the car. "McGee, DiNozzo, there's a shell casing over here. I want it bagged and tagged."
The two agents walked over at their boss's call, DiNozzo with a camera, McGee with a pair of gloves, tweezers, and a bag. Carefully they documented the shell casing, photographing it with a small ruler and a marker, and put it in a bag.
"He was probably killed by his buddies because he was wounded in the bank robbery." Gibbs said, speaking up when they were done. They continued searching the area for another hour but found nothing. It was agreed that McGee would stay behind and wait for the flat bed, while DiNozzo and Ziva went back to the office with him. He would have left Tony to wait for the truck to transport the car back to the evidence garage, but he wanted to keep an eye on him. It wasn't every day that a man found out he had a sister he didn't know about, especially when he didn't really have family to count on. He wanted to make sure Tony didn't become emotionally compromised in the case. He would have already been removed from the case if he had actually known about his sister.
* * * * * * * * *
Arianna DiNozzo sighed. She was locked in a musty old room, tied to a chair. Her kidnappers were not in the room; they had left the room a half an hour before. They had been drilling her almost nonstop about NCIS, their procedures at crime scenes, and anything she knew about their past robberies. The answers weren't very helpful to them, she knew it. She had been as vague as possible, and she hadn't been involved with the investigation into their crimes so she couldn't answer those questions. Each vague or unhelpful answer had been met with a sharp slap to the face.
Silently she went back to working the ropes loose. She was good at that. Finally she felt one of them slide loose, making her smile. She was almost loose. Slowly she tugged a little more and that hand was loose. She pulled the blindfold off and then turned to loosen the other hand. She was soon free. It made her smile. Now came the hard part. The actual escape.
* * * * * * * * *
"Shame we had to kill George," a tall blond said, laughing as he smoked on a cigar. "He was a good leader and all, but he just couldn't be trusted, wounded and all."
"Too much of a liability," the other man, a redhead said. "I agree with you completely Leo."
"I know Damien." the first man replied, laughing. "So what shall we do with the girl?"
"Shoulda waisted her with George probably, but she'll be a lot of fun. Maybe we could try and stockholm her? Could be a lot of help in the future." he said. He didn't know she was sneaking out of the room she was locked in, behind them, and sneaking out the kitchen door. The first clue was the slamming of the kitchen door.
The house they were in was situated near a main road, Arianna was startled to realize. Usually a hideout was in a more abandoned area. These guys were either very good or very stupid. She started running toward the highway.
"The door is open, she's getting away!" Leo yelled, seeing the door to the small room swing open. Damien was already running toward the door and out it.
"Hold it right there!" he yelled at her. She didn't stop. He started to chase. She ran out into the highway, barely missing being hit by a car. As Damien started to run out into the highway, he was hit by a vehicle... he was hit by a bus.
"Damien!" Leo yelled, running for the highway. He had to catch her!
Tony, Gibbs, and Ziva were on that same highway. THey had slammed on the brakes as Arianna ran infront of them. By the looks of her, they knew she was in trouble and had been beaten.
"Freeze!" Gibbs yelled, throwing open his door, not caring if they were in the highway. "Federal Agents!" Tony and Ziva had followed suit. Traffic had ground to a halt so the agents got out of the car.
Leo started to run in the opposite direction. He knew his goose was cooked. Tony and Ziva took off after him while Gibbs moved to make sure the young woman who had run in front of the cars was alright.
It didn't take much to tackle the suspect who proceeded to pull a gun out. Ziva immediately kicked it out of his hand while Tony pinned him. "You're under arrest buddy boy for assaulting a woman," Tony said.
"Uh Tony," Ziva interrupted. "I think he may be one of our suspects. Look at the tattoo. One of the witnesses described it earlier at the bank."
"And you're under arrest for bank robbery."
Meanwhile, Gibbs had sat Arianna down in the car and pulled his phone out. He called for an ambulance for the man who got hit by the bus and then gave her his full, undivided attention.
"I'm Agent Gibbs, NCIS," he said gently. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm Agent Arianna DiNozzo, also with NCIS." she replied. "Those men kidnapped me earlier during a bank robbery."
"I know, my team was assigned to the case." Gibbs told her. He looked up, past her, and seen the others bringing the uninjured bad guy at them. Thankfully when Gibbs had "parked" he had swung across the lanes, effectively blocking the new crime scene.
* * * * * * * * *
Arianna was still sitting in the car after the criminals were taken away. Ziva rode with the bad guy that was in the ambulance, and the local LEOs took Leo away, transporting him to the local prison for holding.
"Agent DiNozzo," Gibbs said, walking over. "This is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. He'll be taking care of you for the moment, taking you back to NCIS and getting your statement."
Arianna's mouth fell open a little in surprise while Tony examined her. Her nose had been bloodied earlier it was clear, and her lip was swollen. Her cheek had a bruise on it, but even with all that, he could still tell she was his sister. The resemblance was too much to ignore.
"You're my big brother," she whispered, having been taking Tony in the same way, with his brown hair and blue eyes. Her hair was the same color. She gave a big smile, just like Tony's famous DiNozzo smile.
Tony nodded as she stood up, and they hugged. "You're going to the hospital before NCIS." he whispered in her ear. He was already playing the roll of big brother. "I know you told Gibbs you don't need a doctor but I want to be sure." She nodded and grinned again.
* * * * * * * * *
Director Sheppard was staying late that night, mulling over an idea she'd had. She knew that Tony had just found out he'd had a sister, and she knew that he wanted the opportunity to get to know her. Tony was among her favorite agents, as were the other agents of team Gibbs. She also knew that the woman would be staying with Tony for the time being doing just that, but how well could you get to know someone over a period of a week? If Tony was any indicator, Arianna was probably itching to get back to work, and that would have meant going home.
Jenny had already talked to the head of the office where Arianna was stationed. She had asked about how well Arianna did her job, if there were any problems, and if they would have problems if she was reassigned. Thankfully, the answers she got were the ones she wanted to hear.
The director wanted to give the siblings a chance to really get to know one another, and as far as she was concerned, team Gibbs could use another member. From what she gathered from her phone conversation previously that evening, Arianna was smart. She would be a perfect match as Agent McGee's partner. Gibbs' team would get more done with another member... and maybe she could keep Tony from picking on McGee a little more, or at least minimize the pranks. At the worse case scenario, she would join Tony in the pranks, but she didn't think that would happen. From what she had gathered, Arianna was fiercely loyal to those around her too, just like her brother.
Decision made, Director Sheppard picked up the phone and dialed a number, a smile on her face. She just hoped that her decision wouldn't interfere with Tony doing his job... although the team did seem to have family dynamics.
The End
