A/N Oh . My. Goodness! I am overwhelmed. Thank you for all of the reviews and story alerts. Less than 12 hours after I posted this story there was already 100 subscriptions and 1000 hits on the story! I didn't think I would have this many people interested in it, especially since this is my first published story. I really hope the story lives up to everyone's expectations. Thank you to everyone who left a review or a suggestion. I tried to send a little note to everyone who reviewed, but some of you had your private messaging disabled and I couldn't do so.

Disclaimer: Still don't own them. I'm just playing with them for a while. The only thing I can claim are the original characters.

Chapter 2

"Agent DiNozzo, are you still there? Hello? Hello, are you alright? Agent DiNozzo!" He heard his name being called from a distance and realized it was the social worker still on the phone with him.

"Yes ma'am I'm here. You just gave me a huge shock. Give me a second. Did the woman give her name?" He spoke softly in the phone. His voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper, while at the same time trying to figure out who the mother could be. He may be a ladies' man, chasing any pretty thing in a skirt, but he was always careful.

"No sir, she didn't. She said she wanted to remain anonymous. There are many things we need to address but that would be better done in person. Would you be able to come to the hospital to talk about them?" was her reply.

"Yes, I'll grab my gear and be there in about an hour at most. Is she OK?"

"Sir she is very tiny. The doctors believe she is pre-term and we can discuss her condition after you get here. Have me paged when you arrive.

Thirty minutes later he found himself walking into the front entrance of the hospital, standing at the information desk about to ask for help when a red headed woman who was at most five feet tall and weighed at maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet touched his arm. "Excuse me, are you Mr. DiNozzo?" On the pocket of her blouse was a name badge that identified her as Sandy Thurman, Department of Family Services. She was not what he had been expecting at all. In his mind he had pictured an older, weary, slightly rumpled woman who had been at her job all day with too many children to oversee and not enough hours in the day. Not this tiny, perfectly neat, spitfire who was looking up at him. Sharp green eyes studied him intently and her stare was eerily similar to Gibbs. In other words it could read you like a book. He had a feeling that if you got on the wrong side of her she could hold her own no matter her size.

"Yes ma'am, Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo at your service, you can call me Tony."

"You can call me Ms. Thurman and don't call me ma'am. I work for a living. You had better get it together quickly because you will get nowhere flirting with me. In fact I can make your existence miserable and will do so if you mess around. Come with me. We have a doctor's consultation room waiting to discuss this in." He followed her and a uniformed officer quietly to a secluded room and sat down. "Lets start back at the beginning. Some of this will be a repeat of what we discussed on the phone, but I feel it best for everyone if we start there and fill in all the details as we go. It helps prevent confusion later on. I expect total honesty from you in all things Mr. DiNozzo. I will be taping this interview. If you have a question, ask. I will answer if I can. But understand this, my responsibility is to that baby girl upstairs, and not soothing ruffled feathers. I could care less if I offend you or anyone else. Now let's get started. About 4PM this afternoon a newborn girl was brought to the ER by a woman and left using what is commonly called the Baby Moses Law. She handed the nurse this card and said it belonged to the baby's father. Is this your card Mr. DiNozzo?" Tony looked at the card and recognized it immediately.

"I give these to witnesses when I am out on a case so they can contact me if they need to. I work for NCIS. It's the civilian police for the Navy and Marine Corp. I only give them for work related reasons, never to girlfriends. I suppose someone could have fished one out my wallet. I will be honest here and tell you that I don't know who the mother could be. I have been thinking about the women I slept with in late February or early March and I know none of them were pregnant. That's when I would have had to of done the deed for a baby to have born now, if I calculate this right."

"Mr. DiNozzo, remember the baby is premature so that might not be accurate. In order to establish that you are or are not the father we will have an independent lab do a paternity test. It takes three to five days to get the results once we take the necessary samples for the lab. I need to ask before we go any further if you wish to be a part of this child's life, provided it is shown that you are the father." Tony looked at her and felt a calmness come over him that he hadn't been feeling since the phone call and answered her without any hesitation. "If she is my daughter I will do whatever it takes to be the best Dad I can be."

"Then Mr. DiNozzo lets see if the Doctor can come and speak with us about your daughter's condition. She dismissed the uniformed officer as she had come to the conclusion that Tony wasn't a threat. "Now since she is a preemie there are medical issues that need to be addressed and the doctor is the best one to speak to about that. There are some other things you should know before he arrives. At this time she has been placed in protective custody with me as her social worker. She will remain this way until your paternity is proven and Judge Bowers approves your petition for custody of the baby. He is the family court judge, by the way and handles the custody cases. I recommend you hire a lawyer of you own to protect your interests. I will be the one to make medical decisions until Judge Bowers says otherwise. My job is to be her advocate and I will do what I believe is best for her. Before I called you this evening I checked with a friend who works with Metro PD and asked for any information he had on you. You have a good reputation in the law enforcement community and he vouched for your character. For that reason I will put your name on the approved visitor list. For now those visits will be supervised. I would not have even told you which hospital she was in if you had a record or he had thought you might harm her in any way. I would have called you into the office and had the paternity testing done before I allowed you to see her. Both of them turned their heads to the door at sound of knocking.

A tall man entered the room. "Hello, I'm Dr. Mark Hill, but everyone calls me Dr. Mark." He sat down across from Tony and looked at him with kind eyes."I am your daughter's neonatologist. She was brought in about 4 PM this afternoon. She was not more than a few hours old and she is quite small. She only weighed a little over 4 pounds and was breathing well. Because she is breathing so well on her own we believe her to be somewhere between34 and 36 weeks. If she was less than 34 weeks she wouldn't of had the lung maturity to breathe on her own. She is not on a vent, but we do have her on oxygen to make it easier for her to maintain her oxygen saturations. We don't want her to have to work hard and use all of her energy just to breathe. She seems quite comfortable and was sleeping when I left her to talk to you. We tested her sucking reflex and while she does suckle she tires quickly, which is quite common. Right now we want her to use all her energy to grow and mature. We have placed a NG tube to feed her supplementally. It is a tube that goes up through her nose and into her tummy. She will have to be fed several times a day in small amounts since her stomach is so small. She appears to be otherwise healthy at this time. There is no record of a infant of her age and size leaving a local hospital in the past week. She was still wet with blood and fluids from the birth, so she had to have been born at home sometime this afternoon. Because of the apparent circumstances of her birth and her being preterm, she is at higher risk for infection. She is in a special area of the NICU so that if she does get sick she won't pass it on to the other babies. Do you have any questions or comments before we go see her?"

"Doctor, what are her chances of survival?"

"She is going to need some special care for a while, but I am confident she will eventually go home. How long the stay is going to be remains to be seen. It will depend on how well she does and if any complications come up. I am sure you will have more questions later. Feel free to ask anything at anytime. Now, let's go see her.

Tony followed the doctor and Sandy to the locked doors of the NICU. All he could think was "My daughter is in there, my daughter is in there. Over and over again, like a record that had been scratched and played the same phrase repeatedly. As he approached this tiny clear plastic box where the smallest baby he had ever seen was laying, it struck him this she was his. His offspring and future was laying in front of him covered in tubes and wires. She had a thick crop of dark hair on her head and his mothers nose and eyes. To be honest she looked exactly like his baby pictures and he had been the spitting image of his mother. He knew without the DNA test she was his. He reached out with a trembling hand and stroked her cheek and started to hum a tune his mother had sung to him. She was the softest thing he had ever touched. His heart melted right then and there. As he stood stroking her cheek she began to seize. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself in the waiting room outside the NICU. Looking at his watch realized it was already 10 PM. Somehow he had already been at the hospital two and a half hours. Right now he wanted someone to be there and to tell him it was going to be OK. Then it struck him, he didn't want his biological father. Picking up his phone and dialing, he called the man who had been more of a father to him than his own dad. The phone only rang twice before it was picked up.

"Gibbs, …DiNozzo are you there?"

"Yeah boss, I'm here. I'm at the hospital and I need your help."