Disclaimer: Belisarius Productions owns NCIS. I don't even own Abby. Frack!
The locations and persons depicted within are entirely fictional. There is no similarity to any person, living or dead.
Perspective: This story is my Second Full Length NCIS Mystery and takes place a month after 'Superheroine Affair, in early July.
Rating: T – or NCis-17. Descriptions of violence, autopsy, forensics and frank adult topics.
Jurisdiction
by JMK758
Chapter One
Sugar and Spice
It had been a good day's hunting, and as he approached through the woods he caught sight of his prey's lair. Moving silently, carefully through the last of the brush, he examined the terrain carefully. The last of the brush ended in a clearing set with a picnic table, raised pool and tool shed. There was a twenty foot circumference laundry wheel, and from the lines hung a festive bouquet of clothing; lacy demi-bras promising a good sized quarry, tiny thong panties, short shorts, halters, a veritable cornucopia of feminine intimates in every color of the spectrum. All spoke of a sensuous indulgence that would make this capture and subjugation all the more satisfying.
There was no male clothing displayed on any of the lines. It was a bright, warm, late morning and the hunter settled in, patiently awaiting his prey. The laundry was already dry.
It took less than a half hour, during which the hunter made and refined his plans, before the back screen door to the cottage opened and closed with a bang.
The woman looked to be about twenty. Her long blonde hair fluttered in the gentle breeze. She wore a blue tube top that seemed to be knitted onto her so it hugged her generous assets without confining them. The blue denim 'Daisy Dukes' painted onto her outlined and offered a captivating prize, and her white sneakers did nothing to distract from her long, tapered legs.
She wore a set of earphones and wiggled to the sensuous beat, providing him with a tantalizing view that almost drove him to take her down right now. But that was no part of his plan. Instead, the earphones muffled his stealthy passage behind her to the unlocked screen door. She removed pins from bras, thongs and tiny dry clothes, placing each item into the large basket she held at her right hip. She never heard the door.
He crossed the screen enclosed blue porch to the inner door. As he let himself in, he found a large kitchen and living room combination only partially broken by a half counter extending from his right. There was a bedroom before him, bathroom immediately to his left and another larger bedroom to his right off the kitchen, reaching behind him the length of the porch beyond the door behind him. Having little time to choose, he ducked into the bathroom at his left, immediately next to the porch door, preparing to spring the trap.
When his prey entered, he would be ready.
x
Dawn Caldwell was lost in the strains of some of her favorite Classical compositions as she worked, turning the drying wheel, using her left hand to gather and unclip her clothing, depositing each piece in the large basket held against her right hip. She had to reach quite far to hold the opposite edge of the wicker basket, nearly too far, but it was actually preferable to leaving it on the ground and dropping the clothes into it.
There were quite a few indulgence pieces on the revolving line. Being here on vacation alone for the first time, she had packed with the intent of 'having a good time' on her trips into town. School was out, and as much as she could it was her chance to indulge her sensual as much as her fun-loving sides, a combination she could not manage from September through June, when she had her image to uphold.
There were quite a few pieces she didn't dare get caught wearing in the city, at least not collectively. Up here in the Virginia hills, however, she could get away with indulgences. And if those indulgences resulted in her strolling down the road to the beach, or along the streets in any of the surrounding towns, in clothes that were eye catching and quite a bit less than modest, so much the better.
Dawn was twenty two, vibrant and vivacious, a lovely blonde with long flowing hair and a figure that could stop traffic, or at least be the cause of considerable rubbernecking.
And if, in any of those strolls, she should encounter someone who inspired her to thoughts her mother wouldn't approve of, well again so much the better. She intended to be ready for anything that might come her way.
Lost in the strains of the 'Blue Danube Waltz', she allowed the rhythm to guide her movements, her left arm working in accord with the music, her body swaying slightly, giving herself over to chords and melody.
When she finished, she turned and started back to the house, still allowing the music to guide her. In her childhood she had dreamed of being a ballerina, but classes had only pointed up that her body persisted in lacking the skill her mind said should have been hers, and ultimately the path of her life had taken her elsewhere. But she never gave up her love of music, or the desire to move with it.
Pulling open the screen door, she entered the enclosed porch, still moving easily to the music. This was her favorite part, where the waltz built to a thrilling crescendo before it would ultimately calm to the final prevalent strains before concluding with a recurrence of the main melody that bore her along with it, and she gave herself over to the music, moving much as she had been taught to long ago, dancing to the music as she pulled open the inner door and entered the kitchen, allowing her eyes to half close as the music carried her along.
x
His left hand clamped tightly over her mouth and his right about her body, trapped her against him. His hand clenched her left breast. Dawn screamed into his hand as she dropped the basket and pried at the strong hand clamped over her mouth.
She couldn't budge it as he squeezed her breast more tightly.
"You do what I say – exactly what I say!" he said over the lovely music, his harsh voice a horrible counterpoint to the beauty. She tried to struggle, tried to scream, panic giving her strength but not enough! "Understand?" He twisted her crushed breast and she shrieked.
She wore out her breath in muffled screams. His left hand came down and his thumb and fingers pressed to the front of her throat. His fingers pinched her trachea as he yanked her upward and back against him.
She was silenced, couldn't even gag. Not a breath could escape. Her airway was sealed.
She tugged desperately at his fingers pressing her throat, strained to get the slightest bit of air into her empty lungs. She couldn't. She couldn't scream, couldn't call for help, couldn't make a sound!
He clenched her breast until she feared he'd crush it.
She tried to pry his hand from its grip of her trachea even as her head swam. She strained for breath but couldn't get the tiniest measure of air past his fingers. She suffocated, silenced, while in her ears the final strains of the 'Blue Danube' built to their thrilling climax in horrible counterpoint to her terror!
By the time she could think to fight the horrible distracting agony in her breast enough to use even one hand again at the fingers squeezing her windpipe it was too late.
Her vision dimmed, her body started to collapse. He bore her face down to the floor, lay on top of her. She tried to gasp, desperate to pull his hand away, to free her breast from the agony that distracted her. Her empty lungs screamed from her straining. She fought to
pull air in and her vision darkened and blurred. Trapped under his weight, pinned to the floor, the torturous grip on her breast made her want to scream but she had nothing to scream with. She strained to gasp even the tiniest draught of air into her starving lungs. Agony became her world as she watched the floor before her go black.
xx
Dawn awoke to blackness more terrible than death. She had no idea how long she'd been unconscious but she remembered the horror, the pain. Something covered her head, left everything black. It was tied about her throat and left her in the utter blackness of the grave. Her arms were stretched and crossed high over her head, something thick and immobile hurt her forearms, pressed into her flesh with merciless force. Her legs were spread wide apart, so far the pain in her tearing thighs had woken her. No matter how hard she strained she couldn't move.
In Cheerleading she had done splits but never without preparation. Now the muscles in her thighs tore under the strain.
She was on something hard. The floor? Something touched her vagina and terror unleashed itself in a scream. A heavy body came down upon her. A strong hand clamped hard over her mouth. Something solid and meaty stabbed into her.
She shrieked.
xxx
Leroy Jethro Gibbs looked up from his desk, noting in a glimpse the clock on the wall to his left, 1000 hours, and started to address Agent Tim McGee but found his desk across the bullpen vacant. He looked to his right to Officer Ziva David, Mossad Liaison worked. "Where's McGee?" It was one shade short of a demand.
"I am not sure," she admitted. "I think he is still helping Abby in her lab."
The Forensic Scientist had returned at 0700 from a month's vacation, and had charged into Operations an hour later livid as an vampire bat over the changes her temporary substitute had made to her lab. McGee had offered to help her set things right before she gave new depth to the term 'ballistic'.
"She's only back from her vacation three hours. How much help could she need?"
Hoping it was a rhetorical question, Ziva tried not to answer.
"Get them both up here."
x
It was only three minutes before the tall Agent returned to the room, followed a moment later by Sciuto.
"Yes, boss? Sorry to be gone so long."
Tim McGee always figured it was better to start off with an apology when the Supervisory Special Agent was in his current mood – even if the man had told him on numerous occasions not to do so; that it was a sign of weakness. This time it was better to seem 'weak' than to risk raising the man's wrath any higher.
He and Abby were a study in contrasts. Tim McGee always seemed to strike that odd balance of stuffy and casual. Today it was tweed jacket with brown tie and slacks. Abby, on the other hand, beneath her white lab coat, was shocking. So 'Goth' she could give East Village New Yorkers lessons, she wore a silver spike studded dog collar, black t-shirt with day-glow red letters proclaiming that 'Vampires are not the only ones who do it in the dark', a pair of spike studded wristbands, a short (really short) leather skirt festooned with silver chains; some strung in curves, a dozen hanging as 6 inch tassels to form a false hem. A pair of black fishnet stockings seemed to reach invitingly upward and black leather boots with soles at least four inches high had her tower over the otherwise taller Agent in front of her.
Gibbs knew she had chosen the fishnet stockings after learning last month about Tim's personal preferences. This morning they seemed to be working.
She hugged each of her friends in turn, but with McGee, when she completed the circle back to him, it couldn't be missed that she lingered for an extra second, her chest pressed to his for a moment even after she pulled back.
"Welcome back," Gibbs said with heavy irony. She was definitely calmer than the whirlwind that had torn through the room earlier, this time he could greet her. She had gone on a vacation, a.k.a. 'Medical Rest Leave' following the shocking affair at the Hotel Meritz last month. It had not been a voluntary vacation, and had been such in name only.
"Thanks Gibbs, it's good to be back." But even as she said it, the glint in her eyes gave extra depth to her words. He'd given her a choice, Vacation or Termination and she'd made the wiser choice.
"I'd expected you would have checked in to me this morning." Her earlier visit had not been a check in.
"I'm sorry, Gibbs. I would have, I really am grateful for everything you did in getting me some rest, but when I got in and saw my Lab I got – distracted."
"Really? What 'distracted' you?" He sent McGee back to his desk with a look, then locked his gaze on Sciuto.
Abby could come up with several answers, all of which were true, but she realized nothing she could say could justify this breach, so she wisely said "Nothing, sir."
"Don't let it happen again, Abby." But even if the words were severe, the tone wasn't so, and he couldn't hide a smile. He may have to reprimand her for a breach, but he was happy to see her.
"I won't, sir."
"Don't call me 'sir'."
"No, Ma' –." He stopped her with a glare she could see was false ever before his expression relaxed into an ultra-rare grin.
"I'm glad you're back."
"Me too."
x
"How was your vacation?" Tony asked.
"Fanfrackingtastic!" she enthused, turning to him. "Cruise down to Palm Beach, then hop a jet to the Bahamas and finish up in Hawaii! Everywhere I went I hooked up with the best Goth clubs. Days on the beaches, nights of mad, passionate, completely uninhibited sex with a different partner every night – it was fantastic!"
The others could hear his gulp. For someone who lived for the last of her litany, it was painfully unfair. "Well, I hope you used protection," he barely managed to stammer out the stock line.
"Of course," she smirked. "I kept a cat-o-nine-tails under my pillow."
McGee and Ziva almost felt sorry for the man as they watched him envision the sight. "I've got the tiniest tan lines you've ever seen," she continued as enthusiastically as ever.
"I don't know; I've seen some pretty small ones," he countered, refusing to fall into her trap, or at least trying not to. It was so clear to all that she had the advantage.
"I found this beach where as long as you kept certain things covered, you can wear whatever you want. So I found these appliqués; two little hearts like you put on greeting cards, each about an inch high," as she described them, she indicated with thumbs and forefingers exactly where the two one-inch-high hearts were placed, "and this great b-string." She lowered her hands and his eyes burned a hole through her microskirt.
"Don't you mean g-string?" he tried to quip. Normally he was the one ready with a quick flirt, but it was quite evident that the image caused him to lose his aplomb. He'd worked with the woman for five years, and had never seen her…
"Nope; b-string. I found this little rubber bat - you know, the kind that hangs from a string on a pole - and attached it with strings off the wing tips and tail. I've got the greatest tan spot! And when I walked, it looked like it was flying out of the batcave!" She barely managed to keep from bursting into laughter as she watched his reaction. "Well, I've gotta run!" she exclaimed with a merry wave and was gone, her boots shuffling along the carpet, Tony unable to tear his eyes off her retreating form.
Gibbs picked up a file. "Meeting with the Director." As he walked out, his hand came out and smacked DiNozzo on the back of his head.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"For letting her get to you," he said as he kept walking, his tiny smile concealing that he had been as entertained as the others had been.
x
When the woman was gone, things returned to normal, at least for a short while. This was an unusual period for the NCIS Agents. The last pressing duty they had had was an embezzling case, fairly easily solved, and now much of their attention was focused on monitoring worldwide activities for any terrorist action, a duty which had them researching numerous, seemingly unrelated and possibly insignificant events.
The search for Al-Qaeda and other possible threats was on-going and any branch of Defense or Intelligence not actively engaged in pressing matters devoted its downtime to accumulating and sifting data for Homeland Security, NIA or any other forces. Thus, this NCIS team had been researching potential clues which run a range from vital and urgent to unlikely, devoting the same diligence to each.
It was a half hour later that DiNozzo spoke up. "Anyone agree this is a waste of time?"
"Nope," McGee countered. "There's always something to be learned, even if it's trivial – now."
"You would be surprised, Tony, how much time is spent in the Mossad doing this," Ziva admonished
"I admit it's important – but I'd rather know what I'm looking for. Just looking for 'anything' gets pretty tedious."
"Use your imagination," Ziva advised.
"Don't tell him that," McGee countered. "Gibbs'll come back and find him scanning Playboy dot Com."
"Hey, you never know how many foreign beauties have something. Present company excepted, of course," he concluded. She mimed a bite.
"Well, I know what I can do." McGee stood up. "I'll be on 'lunch detail'. What'll you have?"
"I'd tell you to get a Philly cheese steak on rye, but I'd want you to go to Philly for it."
"I'll bring you back the Washington version, baloney. How about you, Ziva?"
She stood up, tucking her black t-shirt deeper into her pants. "I'll come with you. I hate ordering without a menu." They both headed toward the elevator.
"Great. What'm I supposed to do 'til you get back?"
Ziva favored him with an over the shoulder smile. "Stay off 'Playboy'."
x
Tim and Ziva boarded the elevator, the dark haired woman stepping deep into the car. When it had dropped for several seconds, passing the main level, the forensics lab and almost reaching the garage, Tim flicked the 'Emergency Stop' switch.
The car jerked to a halt, the lights dimmed and the emergency lights came on. He turned around, his fist closed about the front of the black t-shirt the woman wore and he pulled her forward, turned and backed her into the corner.
She didn't fight his attack and an instant later his lips were on hers, silencing any protest she might have made. His hands sought her body through her clothing and her own hands began an equally passionate search.
Far from thinking about resisting, this was the lunch she had been hoping for when she'd decided to accompany him.
Ever since the end of their last big case at the Hotel Meritz they had grown very close. This catching of a private moment served to take some of the edge off their passion until they could reach one of their apartments for more leisurely lovemaking. For now their secret encounters made up in fiery ardor what they lacked in time.
It was wrong, it was illicit, it could get them either reprimanded or worse - and that added extra spice to the act.
McGee tugged Ziva's shirt, pulled it out of her pants even as their kiss broke and his lips attacked her neck, making her cry out. His hands slipped under her black shirt and closed gently over her firm bare breasts, his fingertips teasing her already hard nipples as she tugged the zipper of his pants, her smaller hand slipping into the opening thus provided. Her breaths were tiny cries of lust that increased sharply as his hands explored her heating body.
He pushed her shirt up, bared her breasts and his lips slipped down to her left nipple, gently licking and sucking the sensitive nub as she clamped her lips shut for fear of screaming out her pleasure. But she couldn't keep silent long, her fervent cries filled the car as her hand closed and moved along his hardened shaft.
His other hand pulled open the latch of her pants, tugged her zipper down and slipped in to touch her, pushed her pants off her hips. She shifted upward, inviting him to reach her. When his fingers brushed along her labia through her panties, feeling her moistening heat she screamed into her covering hand, her free hand yanking at his clothes as he continued licking and sucking on her left nipple while his other hand stroked her right breast, squeezing it gently, thrillingly–
The car shook sharply and the lights came up. They started to ascend.
"Tim!" Ziva gasped. "We're moving!"
He pulled away from her. "Someone must have used the override." The car was already passing the lobby level, heading for Operations.
Frantically they rushed to repair their clothing, zipping and pulling and yanking into place, working as fast as they could as the car passed the Operations level. It seemed too short a time but they managed to finish. They assumed a casual posture and stood about a meter apart facing the door in a bored attitude an instant before the doors parted.
x
Leroy Jethro Gibbs stepped into the car, turned and stood between them. Both tried to act as casually as they could as he pushed the button for Operations. Their own selection of Garage was still lit. Ziva glanced down for an instant, and was mortified to see her t-shirt was wrinkled where McGee had gripped the material at the start of his attack. It was true that her high firm breasts would eventually smooth the tight material, but they had not done so yet. The shirt was pushed forward, tipped with the tiny telltale projections of her hard nipples. She glanced past Gibbs at Tim and noticed his color was as high as hers probably was. She prayed desperately that Gibbs would not have noticed. They would be together for only ten seconds.
"On lunch detail?" Gibbs asked as the doors closed.
"Yes, sir, boss," Tim answered.
"Good, I'll have a ham on white with American and mustard, and a large coffee."
"You got it."
He hadn't noticed anything amiss. They were actually going to get away unscathed! Then she remembered that the elevator had resumed its operation because the override switch had been engaged.
The car stopped on their floor, the doors slid apart and Gibbs stepped forward. As he did, both hands came up and slapped them in the backs of their heads. He didn't slow as he headed toward his desk. The doors slid shut again.
Tim and Ziva looked at one another, chagrined, as the car started to descend. "It was worth it," Ziva declared with a salacious grin.
"Yep."