The outside of the house looked like every other base house. The lawn was well kept, there was even an inviting "Welcome" sign hanging beside the front door. But, Tony suspected the interior would be much different. This was the house of a man who had killed 2 people in the past week and was "known" to be the biggest methamphetamine dealer in the area. Now, he just had to figure out why a cell phone registered to McGee was doing in this house.

"Why couldn't Probie just be awake to explain this for himself?" He regretted it the second after he thought it. This wasn't McGee's fault, he had nothing to do with this madness, he couldn't, and it was his Probie for God's sake. McGee did not choose to get shot and have to go into surgery for over 8 hours to recover all the bullets. Tony was determined to find out what happened to McGee.

"Tony, are you coming?" Ziva asked, a little impatient with the dazed agent. She knew they had all been under emotional distress since McGee's shooting, but there was work that needed to be done to solve this.

"Yes, yes, sorry. Let's go. It doesn't look like anyone is home, wanna pick a lock today?"

"You don't want to try to find the "hidden key" everyone seems to have?"

"No, let's just go in."

The inside of the house was atrocious, to be kind. There were beer bottles all over the floor, poker chips strewn everywhere. It looked like a frat house that hadn't been cleaned in years. There were cigar stains on almost all items there, the couches, the walls.

Tony and Ziva did a check, everything seemed to be clear. They started looking around for clues. And the mysterious phone. Tony was in the kitchen, Ziva in the living room.

"Found anything yet Ziva?"

"Nothing, it's just very dirty, like a rat's pen."

"You mean a pig's sty."

"Right, whatever."

Tony opened the pantry, nothing in there, not even food. He moved on to what he thought was a broom closet. As he opened it he was conked over the head with a dustpan.

He quickly responded, but clearly not quick enough as his attacker, kicked him, sacked him and knocked him to the ground. Ziva waited at the threshold of the living room, for the attacker to escape, prepared to get them. When they rounded the corner, Ziva clotheslined them. But, the attacker recovered, and managed to pin Ziva to the ground and then flee the scene out the front door.

Tony and Ziva quickly jumped up again, a bit hazed and dashed out the front door after their attacker. She hadn't got too far, she was just rounding the corner of the street when they pulled their weapons. "NCIS, stop!"

The girl immediately stopped, turned around and walked back towards them.

"Had you clearly identified yourselves when you entered the house, this mess would not have been necessary."

She sat in the interrogation room while Abby watched from the other side. She was finding the prospect of this young girl being involved with this scheme not very plausible. But this was where the evidence had led her, they had found the cell phone on the girl, and she was going to do anything to catch who hurt her McGee.

She was pretty, in a rough trimmed kind of way. With a thick, long, curly mane of auburn hair, deep green eyes and a slender but muscular body. Her face was filled with cuts and bruises and from what Abby could see from between her ripped jeans and t-shirt, so was a good percentage of her body. She didn't know what to think of this girl, she looked so scared and hurt, but maybe it was a charade, she could just be playing them. Abby ran to her lab to go get more information on this mysterious girl.

Tony stormed into the interrogation room, with Gibbs not in the building following other leads and checking up on McGee periodically, it was his interrogation.

"What did you think you were doing assaulting two federal agents?" He shouted.

"You…you..you hadn't clearly identified yourself, I thought you were part of Dwayne's crew."

"And why would you beat up Dwayne's crew? Aren't you a part of them?" Tony knew he could be using better interrogation techniques but he just wanted answers. And he wanted them now.

"No."

"Then what were you doing in his house, hiding in the broom closet, ready to fight?"

"That's my house…..Or at least it was."

Tony just looked at her, nodding at her to proceed. For a girl who just attacked him and Ziva, she seemed pretty willing to answer his questions.

"My mom is Dwayne's wife."

"So he's your stepdad."

"He is NOT my stepdad, my mother being married to him and me having him as a fatherly influence are two separate things."

"So you were hiding from your st- Dwayne's crew? Why?"

"I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. The closet only opens from the outside."

Gibbs sat in the waiting room, dreading the arrival of McGee's parent and sister. He didn't want to have to be the one that told them that McGee was in surgery for extensive gunshot wounds and the doctors were unsure of whether he would survive. He just couldn't. He didn't want to see the sadness and grief in their eyes, he didn't want to face that he may lose another agent today.

Gibbs had been to question Petty Officer Jones and Petty Officer Lancedon's parents once more, hoping to get a bit more information about what they were like. He was trying to piece together how these boys got caught up in the drug world. Everything that everyone told him about them seemed to say they were not those kinds of kids, that they were upstanding citizens. His meetings with the parents went no better. Gibbs was going to return to NCIS once Tim's family arrived.

Abby was typing faster than she ever had. Almost at the speed McGee could she thought. She sighed, she missed having him here. And what made the longing for him even worse was knowing how in danger he is, how he could die. She couldn't even think about it if she was going to continue her work.

She was piling through the evidence a mile a minute, bullet casings from the crime scene, meth samples from the Petty Officers' scene and DNA from the mystery girl. She knew Tony was going to give her all that info when he came down after the interrogation, but she wanted to, she had to be one step ahead of the ball.

Abby had sampled some blood smeared over Tony's shirt from the altercation with the girl. Tony and Ziva had been left with no scrapes, just a few bruises and sore limbs, so she was certain the blood had to be from the girl.

Running it through AVFIS she had finally got a hit, but it was never what she expected. She was trying to take it in when Tony stormed into her lab.

"Emmalise Seymour."

"What?"

"Emmalise Seymour, that's the girl upstairs, her mother is married to Dwayne. And I'm quite certain she is being abused: by both Dwayne and her mother."

"Oh my God, really? Are you sure?"

"She was locked in a closest for over 12 hours; I was what got her out of there. And when I poked and prodded a little bit more she alluded to being used as a punching bag more than once." Tony never liked the people they brought in, but he could not stand child abusers, his blood was boiling on this one.

"I asked her about the cell phone but she wouldn't say a thing about it, she is hiding something, it's like she doesn't trust me with this one piece of information. And I don't know how to make her at ease to tell me." Tony sighed.

Throughout this entire exchange Abby had just stood there dumbfounded, staring at the computer screen. Tony peered at what she was looking at.

"A 50% DNA match. Whom for?"

"I took the blood from your shirt and ran it through AVFIS, just in case the girl, Emmalise, didn't give us her name. AVFIS just came in with a semi-match, it matched her parent's."

"Oh, her mother's got a criminal record, doesn't surprise me?"

"No, look at the name Tony."

And there on the computer screen a huge piece to the puzzle had been found. 50% match : Timothy McGee.