Chapter Warning: If you are a die-hard Leroy Jethro Gibbs fan then my recommendation would be to skip reading this chapter in its entirety because I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend you and elevate your blood pressure. Proceed at your own risk!

A/N Well I have to say thank-you so much for all the wonderful reviews and the support that people have shown in following this story. I love getting your reviews (well okay, I don't know any writer who doesn't it really feeds the motivation to write) but although most of this story was pretty much in draft stage already, your comment, questions and insights do sometimes pull me up and make me think, mmm fair point and I'll tweak things slightly to address questions you have, so keep them coming. Some of you have expressed the hope that we might get to see Tony in full blown spy mode. Probably not going to happen in this sequel... but I was already floating the idea that this incarnation of Tony (spy masquerading as a movie star) could form the basis of a series of stand alone fics if I can come up with plots that I like. I already have one story line in mind but am open to suggestions so feel free to suggest. :D No promises but hopefully I can come up with a few scenarios that fire up the imagination.

One finally question; someone wanted to know what happened to the money that he earned from movies. Currently, Tony is building up a cover-story and having to live a certain lifestyle to do so. As he builds up his profile, his bosses expect him to collect the typical entourage that big stars seem to travel around wit,h for local colour. They will expect him to finance those expenses and flashy lifestyle from his earnings so at this stage, the short answer is yes he gets to keep it. However, if he was to make the really big bucks, they may revisit funneling excessive monies into investing in Carter's reality TV company (i.e. back into the agency). In chapters 5 & 6 we get to see some of the ways he spends his pay cheque. Think that is it for now :)

Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI who knew that spat the dummy was an Aussie idiom but's that's what Beta's are for lol. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.

What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours

Chapter 3

Senior Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs: One Year Later

Leroy Jethro Gibbs sighted his target and stilled his breathing, attempting to completely calm his elevated heart rate before firing, only to feel irritated beyond belief to see his last shot go wide. While he'd hit the mark, he'd been off by almost half a millimetre, which for anyone else who wasn't a sniper, a Marine and especially LJ Gibbs, wouldn't be a big drama, but he demanded perfection when it came to his sniping, hell he demanded perfection in everything and everyone. And the infuriating thing was he was here, trying his damnedest to relax because his team was driving him to drink, and according to his latest physical last week, his blood pressure for the first time ever was dangerously high. High enough that the quack wanted to start hypertensive medication, and when he'd refused to agree, the idiot had given him two weeks to lower it by alternate means or start treatment.

The jumped up little quack had told him if he refused to cooperate, he'd bench him from field work. So here he was, trying to have some R&R on the rifle range and lower his blood pressure. Yet because he was so tense due to the numb-nuts that called themselves his team, he was also too tense to fire his trusty rifle perfectly. Which in turn just made him more furious, which instead of relaxing him, was adding to his stress. At this rate he was going to have to resign himself to taking handfuls of medication everyday if he wanted to stay in the field. There was no way he was going to be chained to the desk, that was for damned sure!

Gibbs couldn't believe how much everything had changed in the last year. They had a new medical examiner because Ducky had retired from NCIS in a misguided case of self-indulgent guilt, directly after the unsuccessful prosecution of Lieutenant Rixon Wells. That was the case that had caused such a shit-storm about their harmless little joke 'bout DiNozzo which that weasel Jefferies made into a mountain instead of a molehill with his meddling and courtroom machinations. He had made the bastard pay though, since everybody lies or has secrets they want to stay… well, secret, and Gibbs had made it a point to discover his. Still, it couldn't undo what had been done.

Yet he'd taken a certain amount of satisfaction in mailing rather incriminating photos of the jerk to each of the partners of the law firm where he now worked in DC after he'd left JAG. It seemed that the former Lieutenant Commander, Mr. Howard 'White Bread' Jefferies, had a secret sexual fetish to dress up and act like an infant where his mistress kitted him in out a diaper and a onesie. He'd heard initially that the partners had been somewhat sympathetic until they discovered that all the jurists in the DMV had received the less than flattering photos, too. Now, he had it on good authority that the jerk was stuck in a pokey office writing wills and pre-nuptials for the well-heeled clientele of the firm and wasn't a happy camper. Jethro decided revenge was pretty damned sweet, even it didn't change anything.

DiNozzo had still melodramatically resigned, stating that his reputation was now tainted and he was now a liability rather than an asset. Gibbs had scoffed and accused him of being a drama queen and wanting to hurt his team because his feelings had been ruffled. That was after he'd swanned into the office to resign and effectively told Gibbs' and his teammates to kiss his ass. But it hadn't stopped him walking out on them… on him, and he placed the blame squarely on that damned pile of crap, Jefferies. He tried to tell DiNozzo that he shouldn't listen to Faith Coleman's opinion about his reputation either. She was one of those people to cause the whole stupid mess in the first place, but DiNozzo was one stubborn bastard and he wouldn't listen.

Then when Ducky had insisted that he couldn't continue to carry out his duties after betraying the Hippocratic Oath to first do no harm that he'd taken, Gibbs wanted to hunt DiNozzo down and hurt him seriously for making such a fuss about nothing and heaping so much guilt on the elderly ME. It wasn't 'til last month when he'd been yet again DiNozzo bashing for the disintegration of his much hyped team, that Tobias had finally snapped and pinned him to the wall of his basement and given him a bruising and vitriolic tongue lashing. According to him, DiNozzo had sought advice from not just Faith Coleman, but the Judge Advocate General in person, and the Attorneys' General of DC, Virginia and Maryland, and the Federal Attorney General himself. All of them, and the fibbie had emphasized ALL OF THEM, had concurred that his continued presence and participation in law enforcement could hinder prosecutions and even threaten past convictions, with lawyers launching appeals. Their opinion was that despite the allegations being proved to be groundless, dirt sticks!

Fornell continued, his furious brown eyes drilling into Gibbs' as he railed against the constant badmouthing of Gibbs' former trusted senior field agent.

"And just so you know, DiNozto was so not a "Drama Queen" you bastard. My bosses withdrew their standing invitation to a job after news of the NPD debacle circulated… as did other agencies and various PD's. Yeah, he might have still got a job in some dinky two-bit town as a sheriff… maybe… but it's a big if. He had no choice but to resign, being the honourable man that he is. Ironically, the only thing he was guilty of was being the only one of the much vaunted MCRT that wasn't a narcissist. Frankly, I'm not sure how or why he put up with y'all as long as he did," he finished in disgust.

He then proceeded to storm out without giving his old friend the Intel that he'd come to deliver. Much to his disgust, it took Gibbs 36 hours of badgering before the FBI agent finally decided to give up the data, since he was still so pissed off.

Of course, Gibbs had refused to listen to Fornell, not being one to take that sort of crap from anyone, even an old friend…especially an old friend. Still, as his world continued to crumble and everything that he had spent so much time and effort building up seemed like it was withering right before his eyes, he was forced into introspection. DiNozzo hadn't bothered to share with him that he'd sought legal advice about whether his law enforcement career had been salvageable, damn him. He could have said something!

According to Fornell, he'd also been inundated with ambulance chasers as well as a few hotshot attorneys who'd wanted to sign him up as a client and sue both NCIS and his former teammates for destroying his reputation and livelihood. It had sort of shaken him up a bit, but he'd also been hurt and angry that Fornell knew details that he didn't. Since when did he care about what happen to DiNozzo? He'd tried to arrest him for murder, twice!

He wished he could talk this all over with Ducky and get his spin on the new information, but the irony was that when Ducky had insisted on falling on his sword in the wake of DiNozzo's resignation, Gibbs had also had a massive falling out with his old friend. He had thought it was an enormous over-reaction on Ducky's part, and had told him so in no uncertain terms. Duck, for his own part, had been incensed by Gibbs' stubborn refusal to apologize to DiNozzo, apart from his carefully worded testimony in court.

After pleading with him to make peace with DiNozzo, or at the very least, offer a sincere apology, which he'd rejected outright, Ducky had returned home to Scotland in disgust. He was planning on spending some time with distant cousins and to take up a position as a guest lecturer at his old alma mater at Edinburgh Medical School. Although he had yet to sell Reston House, Gibbs was not sure that Ducky would ever come back to the States, and Gibbs missed him. He was one of a few individuals who had been prepared to put up with his difficult personality.

At work, things were much changed, too. The ME that was Ducky's replacement was middle aged, dumpy and utterly humourless. She delivered her verbal reports in a monotone with an absolute minimum of words, and apart from giving her reports, she wasn't interested in chit-chat. In short, she was everything that Ducky was not, everything that Gibbs admired, succinct, only interested in delivering a report with a brevity that Duck never had and with no desire to engage in gossip or anecdotes, and Gibbs hated her with a passion. Of course, the fact that she wasn't in awe of him, or at the very least terrified of him, like pretty much everyone else at NCIS, could have had something to do with his feelings for her. He missed the old ME something fierce, and it shocked him that he'd never understood just how much Duck had come to mean to him.

Then there were Abby and Jimmy Palmer, who had only remained working as an ME's assistant long enough to he finished his final exams, resigning even before the ink had dried on his diploma. It had always been tacitly understood that he would take over when Ducky was finally persuaded to retire, albeit kicking and screaming as they dragged him out of Autopsy for the final time. Moreover, before he left them, the shy retiring ME's assistant became a distant memory. He treated the members of the MCRT with scorn, and when it was necessary to actually interact with them, handled them with an icy politeness, although for Gibbs he reserved a special serving of contempt that he found particularly intolerable. It was also difficult to comprehend such a drastic Jekyll and Hyde-like change in the frightened rabbit of a kid who could barely look him in the eyes in the good old days.

Equally terrifying, in its way, were the changes the last twelve months had wrought in Abby Scuito. Gone were the Goth accoutrements that had long been the manifestation of her eccentric personality. While she continued to dress predominately in monochrome hues of which black was dominant, the bats, skulls and black and red make-up, the chains, spikes and over the top jewelry were merely a distant memory. Her new 'uniform' of black jeans and generic black or white tee-shirts and nondescript running shoes seemed wrong on so many levels. As was her strict avoidance of Caff-pows, indeed anything containing caffeine, which was beyond hinky as far as he was concerned. It was like Abby had been abducted by aliens and a pale imitation left in her place.

When Gibbs called Abby out on the drastic changes that she'd had made, she explained that it was her penance for taking away the livelihood of one of the best friends she had ever had. According to Sister Rosita, by forfeiting something that she held dear for a period of time, it was a way of expressing contrition. In typical Abby Scuito fashion, she had accepted the misguided advice, and like Ducky, had taken it to the nth degree

She told him that she felt she deserved to pay for her terrible behavior, and Gibbs' exasperation with her, too, made their relationship tense where it had always been so natural. In fact, Ducky and Abby's self-recriminations really got on his wick. The former ME with his self-flagellation and Abby with her sack cloth and ashes routine were overt yet constant reminders that they felt like he had also sinned. There was the unspoken implication that he should apologise, which made him furious, and he became even more of a bastard than usual, if that was possible. It wasn't his fault if he'd believed a bogus psychological report in DiNozzo's confidential unofficial file; there was no reason on earth to think that it was a fake.

It was really DiNozzo's fault anyway for being such an exhibitionist, not to mention an out and out hedonist, too. The stupid idiot was obsessed with being the centre of attention all the time with his movie quips, grandstanding and his obsession with all things designer with the silks, linens and cashmere, not to mention high end Egyptian sheets and towels. Seriously! He had nothing to apologize for… nothing at all. In Gibbs' opinion, if it walked like a duck and talked like a duck, then who could blame him for seeing a duck?

Well, apparently, a lot of people. Top of the heap was Leon Vance, who had never been a fan of the former agent, but apparently he was getting complaints from all the other leaders of teams and their Senior Field Agents. Seemingly, they'd been using DiNozzo as a sounding board to ferret out leads on cases when they'd reached a roadblock. Damned lazy bastards! Who knew, since DiNozzo never said, which was in itself a bit surprising? And scuttlebutt had it that the Director was getting flak from the rest of his peers in the Law Enforcement community for wasting a highly valued resource, which Gibbs thought was a bit hysterical and over the top. Yet maybe the most difficult for Gibbs personally to stomach was the loss of respect DiNozzo's resignation seemed to have created in the Washington office, for his team, and for him specifically.

For months after DiNozzo's departure, signs adorned people's desks with pronouncements about their personality, mental status or health. 'Hello, my name is Nikki Jardine and I'm a germaphobe. Feel free to mock me behind my back if it helps you bolster your own pathetic sense of self-worth' was a typical offering, and the team was infuriated by it. Gibbs especially wanted to hurt someone, but surprisingly, people now seemed to be immune to his evil glare and temper that had made him such a figure of fear in the past. It seemed instead to provoke pity or mirth, but perhaps that was in part due to the loss of their status as the team with the highest closeout rate for the first time in many years. Gibbs had never been concerned about people liking him, but he did pride himself on the fact that lesser mortals were in awe or feared him, yet he strongly suspected that that wasn't the case anymore.

And despite what Abby and Duck said, he wasn't the only one that thought it about DiNozzo, either. McGee and Ziva couldn't even claim sighting that bogus psych report as mitigation, but they both thought DiNozzo had NPD, and weren't losing any sleep over a bit of harmless joking around. Their job was stressful and humour, as his former SFA well knew, was a good stress reliever, and DiNozzo really was asking for it. So, he refused to feel guilty… after all, it wasn't as if DiNozzo was suffering or anything.

He left them all behind without so much as a backward glance, with no regard for loyalty or the fact Gibbs had spent years mentoring him. He'd gone and simply cut all ties with him. No, he was living the high life, with not a thought to his former colleagues, still fighting the good fight!

Gibbs had always considered his team to be talented and professional, provided he was there to ride their tails and give them regular boots up their butts, but for some reason that technique didn't seem to be effective anymore. Their closure rates had slipped dramatically down from 98 to 92 percent, and while they had always bickered, he'd always thought that it was mostly DiNozzo razzing them up. Still, after he'd gone and McGee stepped into the role of SFA, it actually seemed to have stepped up a notch. Ziva seemed to think that the job should have gone to her, conveniently forgetting that even if she was in line for the job, she was still an officer of Mossad, not to mention the fact that she had neither the temperament nor the experience for such a position.

But his agents were making him crazy. Somehow, the constant sniping at each other, on top of them picking on whatever probie was brave enough to apply to work with the team this month, was driving him up the wall, especially as it reflected in inferior job performances; infuriating an already feral Gibbs, who was already struggling with all the changes. Getting called up to the Director's office like a naughty boy really got on his wick. Having to defend himself and the team for going through probies faster than any of them bothered to learn their names was frustrating, and the Director was muttering dire threats. Especially when he made sarky comments like 'come back DiNozzo, all is forgiven', which Gibbs though was pretty ironic, even if maybe there was a grain of truth in there.

Frankly, there were days when he longed to turf both of his agents out on their butts, except that he needed them, unfortunately. Neither was up to the task of working solo with him like he'd done with DiNozzo. Hell, they weren't even up to working on a three-man team, as reflected by the decline in their closure rate and the fact that McGee had ultimately ended up with an anxiety disorder. Gibbs had to admit that he was surprised at that, seeing the new SFA had been on the team for almost five years and had done the job for four months a few years ago. Even Stan Burley had managed to last as his SFA for five years before succumbing to a peptic ulcer and crawling off to a life of obscurity and a Gibbs-free zone as an Agent Afloat. McGee had only been able to stick it for six months and that didn't say much for the size of his balls, and he wondered why he hadn't notice it before now.

Even more puzzling to Gibbs, was McGee's complete ignorance of dealing with at least 80 percent of the paperwork that was part and parcel of the job description for SFA. When he interrogated him about it, it seemed that during his previous time as SFA, DiNozzo hadn't turned over most of the clerical work to McGee, which surprised him since he always whined long and hard about paperwork. Yet when Gibbs checked, all the paperwork demanded by the pencil pushers during his sabbatical had been completed on time, so the only conclusion to be drawn was that DiNozzo had done it all.

Never had him pegged as a control freak, micro-manager, though. And if he was here, he'd kick his ass for not bothering to train his Probie SFA up properly so that Gibbs wouldn't have to contend with the HR, accounts, admin and requisitions departments who were constantly on his case about McGee's late or missing paper work. God knows he hated to be nagged, and it did nothing to improve his demeanor, either.

Honestly, that Delores woman was driving him to drink with her constant harping on about, "DiNozzo had always done such an exemplary job on the administrative aspects of his job and was so kind and polite."

And then finally, when he'd got McGee trained up to the point where he knew what he had to get done, which was half the battle, his SFA had to go and have a 'psychotic break' and develop an 'anxiety disorder'. What was the matter with the quacks and shrinks? What the Hell was wrong with calling a spade a spade and labeling it for what it was - a nervous breakdown and suffering from nerves, for crying out loud? All that claptrap about marginalization, alienation and stigmatizing labels, they were just going to have to come up with new labels in a few decades to replace psychotic break and anxiety disorder with some new psychobabble.

Meanwhile, he didn't have a senior field agent, and he hadn't been happy, especially since Vance announced that he was going to handpick McGee's replacement. So then the whole MCRT was pissed, since McGee was angry about having to surrender his promotion again and Ziva, who had been momentarily cheered when McGee was stood down, was now in filthy mood. Seems she seriously expected to get the job because of her spy skills and her connections, once again forgetting that she wasn't even an NCIS agent, but a liaison officer. The bullpen hadn't been a happy place for a long while now!

Gibbs was used to taking it for granted that he got to handpick his own team, at least until first Jenny Shepard and then Leon 'Dumbass' Vance came along. And he knew that this was yet another example of the Director exhibiting his dominance and power. Just as splitting up the team when he'd taken over the directorship and sent DiNozzo away as Agent Afloat and refused to recall him to the team had been his less than subtle attempt to tell Gibbs he wasn't running the asylum anymore. This was just further punishment for Gibbs doing an end run around him to bring the ungrateful bastard home, and it was ironic that DiNozzo's resignation had given Leon the ammunition to wield power… again. Of course, the fact that their phenomenal close out rate had dipped so badly was also a contributing factor, but then again, whose fault was that?

Yet as bad as the first six months had been after Ducky and DiNozzo left them, it's possible the last six months had been even worse. The Director's new golden boy, Special Agent Adam Hayes, had joined the team and become instantly hated by all three team members. He was tall and thin with sandy hair, bushy eyebrows and brown eyes. Ichabod Crane was his nickname round the office, and he was taciturn and by the book. By the book… what an understatement! He'd already written up the junior members of the team for various minor infractions and complained constantly to Gibbs and the Director about McGee and Ziva's gross insubordination and failure to follow his orders, and he had actually threatened to bring formal charges against Officer David.

Hayes didn't seem to understand her political connections, even though they'd been explained to him several times, or perhaps he just simply didn't care. Vance was furious and ordered Gibbs to rein her in, but Ziva seemed to blame him for not getting McGee's job and was borderline insubordinate to him, too. She was careful to remain just this side of truculent, but her body language spoke volumes, and her delay in responding to orders before finally acknowledging them were intended to convey her disdain. She was also openly contemptuous and defiant when Hayes ordered her to do things out in the field, and Gibbs was ready to wring her neck. She may have saved his six when it came to Ari, but that particular favour was rapidly wearing rather thin, and it was fast becoming dangerous.

Meanwhile, he wished that his new senior field agent had more social skills. While he wouldn't ever profess to be a people person himself, his new 2IC made him look good by comparison, which meant he now had no one to smooth over any ruffled feathers that he and the team managed to leave in their wake without even trying. It seemed that his new SFA, Adam Hayes, didn't do familiar, not even with his team, referring to everyone by their titles, wouldn't recognize a joke if it leapt up and bit him on his scrawny ass, and was about as interesting as a chia plant.

Well, that wasn't strictly true; chia plants made some people smile! But to add insult to injury, the humourless git was always quoting the NCIS procedural handbook at him… constantly. For someone who barely opened his mouth, he could sure spout rules and regs like no one Gibbs had met before. He was having fantasies daily about bumping him off and hiding his ectomorphic body… see Duck, I really was paying attention to that interminable diatribe on body morphology. Man, did he miss the verbose and outgoing former ME and his friendship.

He still couldn't believe it when at the end of his first week as senior field agent, Hayes had left a pile of uncompleted paperwork on Gibbs' desk. Scowling, he'd dumped it back on Hayes' desk, and was shocked to find it back on his desk with a short terse post-it note attached to say that these forms were not the purview of the senior field agent but the responsibility of the senior supervisory agent, and therefore he was not obliged to complete them.

Initially wanting to knock Hayes' block off, Gibbs had been certain that DiNozzo had always done them, and without pitching a fit about it, too. Finally, he'd swallowed his pride and spoken to Abby about it, expecting her to side with him, after all Hayes was a stranger and she didn't cope well with change. Instead, she'd shrugged and said that just because Tony had done much of his paperwork to keep the peace, didn't mean that Hayes would want to take on the thankless job, too, and he'd have to suck it up.

Gibbs finally recalled working late one night when DiNozzo was just settling into his promotion to SFA. They'd been alone in the bullpen after Viv had gone home, finishing up the weekly reports. He'd stomped off in disgust to go and get a caffeine boost, returning an hour later to find that DiNozzo had finished up for him, and from that point on Tony had unobtrusively taken it upon himself to complete all of the paperwork that didn't have to be filled out by the team leader, such as performance evaluations. And he'd done it without whining, pouting or looking for validation apparently, which seemed extremely out of character for such an attention seeker. It seemed that perhaps he had been messing with Gibbs' head… maybe.

So Gibbs was forced to spend endless hours doing paperwork that he hadn't done in years and had taken for granted he would never have to do again. Now that Hayes had refused to do any extracurricular activities, Gibbs, instead of feeling grateful for all the extra time he'd been spared doing mind numbing paperwork, was feeling churlishly angry at Tony. He was pissed that he'd left and forced him into doing extra work and had created so much havoc within the team. And Hayes was such a boil on his butt that he was seriously thinking of enlisting Ziva and Abby to bump him off and hide the evidence. Honestly, the new SFA had seen him giving McGee a head slap, and he'd had the audacity to give Gibbs a warning, telling him that corporal punishment was not permissible. As if that wasn't bad enough, he'd threatened that if he did it again, he would be forced to report him to HR, IA and the Director, who his father had apparently attended Annapolis Naval Academy with.

Gibbs couldn't believe the front of the guy, nobody had ever dared to call him on his Gibbs slaps before, and without them he was finding his temper ever more difficult to contain, because they had always been a way of letting off steam during cases. DiNozzo had always borne the brunt of them, and it wasn't as if the slaps had done him any harm, after all. How the Hell was he supposed to stay calm and sane while working a case and still maintain control over the team? It had been a good enough method for his predecessor and mentor, Mike Frank,s to discipline the MCRT before him, so it should be good enough for the current team. Hayes was a techno-geeky, intellectual, touchy-feely new age agent, and he was driving Gibbs to drink way more than his regular ration of Jack every night, and honestly, that wasn't doing his blood pressure any favours, either.

Then, in the last few weeks, things had gone from bad to worse. It seemed that Adam Hayes was a paranoid SOB because he had decided suddenly that Ziva was not to be trusted. He'd always been openly questioning of the feasibility of having a Mossad officer on the team and having dual allegiances, insisting that it was like letting the fox guard the henhouse. But after Gibbs and McGee had come back from a joint mission with the California OSP, something had happened and Hayes had gotten a real bee in his bonnet. They'd always clashed, probably because Ziva refused to obey his orders, but since his return, the tension between the senior field agent and Ziva David was magnified tenfold. Hayes was convinced that Ziva was not being honest with them and was holding back information.

Working that joint case with the FBI and ICE over the death of the ICE agent at the SecNav's 'poker game' with his interagency cronies, Hayes was openly incredulous when the ICE agent's death was ruled as natural causes. He continued to investigate after the case had been closed and found, with Abby's help, that the laptop that had belonged to the terrorist cell that they assumed had infiltrated the poker game and caused the death of a federal agent, had actually accessed the internet signal from Ziva's apartment. Hayes claimed that finally he had sufficient grounds to bring Ziva in for questioning. Since the MCRT had gone off duty and Gibbs had been off drinking bourbon and chin-wagging with SecNav about Leon Vance, Hayes called the on duty team and also organized extra backup from Metro PD. He had been determined to take Ziva into custody for questioning regarding the death of the federal agent.

Ziva was apprehended along with a Kidon operative, Michael Rivkin, who had entered the country illegally. The self-same Mossad officer that Gibbs had encountered in LA after he'd killed suspected terrorists, no doubt from the same cell as the case tied to the death of the ICE agent. The very same Mossad officer who Gibbs had instructed to leave the country, but was instead holed up in Ziva's apartment apparently playing grab ass. Rivkin was also the one that Ziva had personally vouched for when Gibbs had been in LA.

Damn it, Hayes was right all along about her being deceitful, since she didn't reveal that she was sleeping with Rivkin or had been in touch with him. Further evidence discovered by Abby showed that the listening device assumed to have been used by the terrorist cell had in fact come from Mossad. It was their attempts to spy on an Intelligence meeting of their Allies that had resulted in the death of the ICE agent. Worse still, Ziva had been supplying classified Intel on the LA op and the ICE agent's death, from both NCIS and her apartment.

It looked as if Eli would exert enough political clout to have Ziva and Rivkin deported back to Israel. Gibbs was shattered when he discovered that the woman who had become almost like a daughter to him, had lied to him. Yet when she begged him to give her a second chance, pleaded with him not to send her back to Tel Aviv and Mossad, she reminded him of his debt to her. How she'd chosen him over her brother and taken the life of her own flesh and blood. Much as he hated what she'd done and how she'd deceived them all, he'd gone to Vance and asked him to intercede on her behalf, only to have the Director laugh in his face.

Oh, yeah, Vance had taken great delight in informing him that Officer David had played him from day one. Her orders all along from her father had been to take out Ari because Mossad knew that he was a rogue agent. She also was under instructions to do so in a way that would garner loyalty and favour from Leroy Jethro Gibbs and worm her way into his affections and gain his trust. A mission in which she had succeeded at only too well, because Gibbs didn't suspect her for a second, and now he was looking like a real horse's ass for being suckered by a pretty female crying on his shoulder.

And that also begged the question, why the Hell hadn't Ziva taken the bastard out BEFORE he killed Cate? Or was Ari following Eli David's orders to kill Special Agent Caitlyn Todd to create a place on his team for his daughter? God damn it, no wonder his blood pressure was as high as a Manhattan skyscraper. And damn DiNozzo for leaving him with no one he could trust to watch his six anymore!

Next up: Our favourite Mossad Liaison officer Ziva David