A Picture Worth a Thousand Words-Chapter 2

Tony walked into the bull pen, coffee in hand, "Good morning, Zee-vah." As usual, he stretched out her name just to annoy her.

"Good morning, Tony," she looked at him skeptically. "Why are you so happy? It is Monday. You hate Mondays." It was true. Monday was Tony's least favorite day of the week because they never had any good cases on Mondays. All they did was paperwork. All day long.

Putting his backpack down behind his desk, he looked at Ziva with his trademark DiNozzo smirk, "What makes you think I'm happy? Can't a man simply say good morning to his co-workers?" He wasn't really sure why he was so happy this morning anyway. Maybe it was because he watched Terminator last night. He didn't really know, but traffic was really light today, so maybe he wasn't as annoyed as he usually was in the morning.

"Sure, but it is not normal for you. In the morning you usually seem like you woke up on the wrong end of the bed," Ziva said with a shrug.

Chuckling, Tony corrected, "It's wrong side of the bed, Ziva." Her idioms were getting worse lately, if that was possible.

"Do you really have nothing better to do? You know, like paperwork?" Ziva questioned him, looking over to the foot tall stack of old case reports on his desk.

Before Tony could answer, Gibbs walked into the bullpen, "Gear up. Gotta dead petty officer," He tossed the keys to the charger in the air. Somehow, Ziva had jumped out from behind her desk before Tony and grabbed the keys. "Where's McGee?"

Right on cue, McGee sprinted out of the elevator, out of breath, "Right…here…boss… sorry, traffic was bad on Connecticut," Gibbs simply nodded before walking into the elevator. As the doors closed, McGee asked to no one in particular, "He's gonna kill me, isn't he?"

Ziva smirked, "Severely injure, yes. Kill, probably not."

McGee nodded grimly, trying to convince himself that she was kidding, even though he knew very well she wasn't.

"By the way, I'm driving," both McGee and Tony groaned at this. Why did Gibbs always get the second Charger to himself?

An hour and several broken laws later, they made it to Baltimore. A petty officer had been shot twice on the way to his car coming from a nearby park; once in the chest, once in the shoulder. He had been shot early in the morning, around 2 am, so he had bled out before anyone could find him.

Getting out of the car, Tony said what he said every time Ziva drove, "You are never driving to a crime scene again. I think I might have gotten whiplash on one of those turns a while back."

Ziva simply rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to waste her breath on what she said almost weekly. Somehow, Gibbs had gotten there before them and was already talking to the head police officer. When he was done, he walked over to the trio, "Ziva, photos. Tony, talk to the witnesses. McGee, sketches."

"What about you, boss?" Tony asked stupidly. All he got in return was a glare. "Right, I'm gonna go talk to the witnesses about what they saw," Ziva chuckled and pulled out the camera.

The petty officer's name was Joshua Morgan. He looked as though he was about 27, fit and very handsome. His body was positioned next to a slide. His wallet and watch were missing.

Ziva had started to take pictures of the body when she saw a blood trail leading around the side of the playground that led towards the trees. She followed and took pictures of the trail, not noticing the minute amount of movement behind one of the trees. The blood trail started on a paved running trail not far from the playground. Ziva guessed that he had been shot in the shoulder, then tried to run towards the parking lot when he was taken down under the slide. It was most likely a mugging, she thought.

All of a sudden, she felt someone grab a handful of her hair and put a knife to her throat, "You're getting worse. I thought the ninja could hear people coming from a mile away," It was a woman's voice. Ziva knew she had heard it before, but she couldn't place where, "Don't you remember me? I was sure Tony would have told you everything about me."

"Jeanne."

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