Wrong Number

Chapter Three

On the final stretch of the car trip to Ziva's apartment, exhaustion finally got the better of her and she allowed sleep to enfold her in its embrace. Even though she was asleep, her phone continued to buzz even more than before. As soon as they parked outside of her apartment, Tony sneaked his hand into Ziva's purse and took her phone. An incessantly buzzing cell phone wouldn't do her any good, he figured as he slid it into his coat pocket.

"Hey, uh, we're here…" Tony said nervously, lightly tapping her on the shoulder but quickly pulled his hand back. Touching her while was awake could be a dangerous risk. While she was asleep, the consequences could be even more severe. Especially if she was in a bad mood, which was why the idea of carrying her to apartment was right up there with jumping off the NCIS building. He never even wanted to know what would happen.

"What?" Her voice was heavy with sleep and the word almost came out a slur. She straightened in her seat, with a degree of reluctance, and yawned.

"We're outside your apartment," Tony explained, anxiety lacing his voice as he watched her stretch in her seat. Her curls had spilled out of the ponytail she'd worn them in this morning and hung loosely around her shoulders. With the angle of the sunlight, she was almost silhouetted and it lightened her hair slightly, something he thought suited her. But, then again, he thought almost any color would look good on her.

"Oh, thank you, I think that I can get up to my apartment without any help. You've been wonderful so far," Ziva said, sleepily as she unconsciously leaned forward towards Tony as though she was going to kiss Tony. Slowly, she shook her head slightly and moved back, a little surprised with herself. Tony's lips tingled as though she had kissed him just from the proximity. He'd seen that look in her eyes before, when they'd gone undercover as a married couple and that first time they'd kissed. For her, he knew it had all been an act. Or that's at least how she passed it off whenever he brought it up. Tony suspected they both held mixed feelings towards that time.

"Are you sure?" Tony asked him. "I think that maybe I should go with you up to your apartment, just in case."

"No!" Ziva snapped, a little too quickly that it surprised even her. Tony pulled away as though he'd been physically struck by her words. She turned away, sorrow and anxiety mixed in her eyes. Wordlessly, she climbed out of the car. Icy fall air, as cold as her tone, rushed into the car to replace her. Sitting in the chill, Tony watched as she rushed into the apartment in a flurry of windblown hair and wild eyes. Something was wrong, he'd known her long enough to understand that and he thought he had an idea of just what it was.

In his coat pocket, Ziva's phone buzzed and a wave of guilt washed over him as he leaned across the car to close the passenger side door. The smell of her shampoo—a tangerine citrus that was as sweet, but tough as she was—still clung to the seat mixed with the chamomile tea he knew she loved. For her birthday, last year, he'd bought her a package of the tea from a little shop he'd taken a long time to find. Since then, she'd been hooked. He'd first figured it out when she asked him where he'd gotten in and directions for how to get there. The fact the smell of it seemed to always mingle with the minty tooth paste smell was always on her breath.

Guilt eating away at his insides, he slid out the phone and unlocked it, letting out a sigh of relief that she didn't have a pass code on her phone. As he clicked onto her text message inbox, he reminded himself that this was for her good. Whoever was sending her these text messages was seriously harming her. It was making it impossible for her to sleep and stressing her to the point of sickness. As a friend, he wanted to help her even if it meant that she never spoke to him again, but he hoped that she would realize that he was trying to help. The more he'd seen the case unfold, he'd started to wonder if whoever the killer was and whoever the anonymous sender was might be the same person. If they were, he needed to know who they were and why Ziva was protect them.

"But…" The word fell from his lips in a soft whisper as his mouth fell open at the sight of the name of the sender. He tossed the phone into the seat beside him, like it was a venomous snake that was going to bite him. Jaw set, he drove away with one thought on his mind; I have to get this to Abby.

From the window of Ziva's apartment, the young dark haired woman watched Tony drive away as fast as he could. Hazel eyes narrowing, she closed the curtain and turned back to the front door, impatience flickering across her face. Tight blue jeans hugged her legs tightly, partially covered by the oversized gray hoodie that almost seemed to drown her small frame. The hood had been tossed back to show her wavy brown hair that had begun to frizz from the humidity. Dark circles lay under her eyes, masked slightly by her tan skin but that did little bit hide the exhaustion in her almost amber eyes. The air of feline grace around her was obvious as she began to pace, soundlessly. The only noise in the apartment was her cell phone, which she tapped against her hand every five seconds, counting away the minutes with the clapping of her phone hitting her palm.

Clap; five seconds.

A key slid into the lock with a painstaking slowness as the woman on the other side of the door sighed. Tears misted her eyes, blurring her vision to the point where it was almost hard to see the numbers on her apartment door. Thoughts clouded her mind in a swirl of confusion, making it almost hard to remember which way to turn the key. Pictures flashed through her head as she tried to turn the key. A giggling baby with a tuft or brown hair, little dark haired girl with a wide smile on her face, waving a crayon drawing, and a body, burned beyond recognition, lying on a metal table. Since she'd seen that body, she'd never gone into a morgue unless she absolutely had to. While she loved Ducky dearly, the biting memories made it impossible for her to go in their very often even just to talk with him.

Clap; ten seconds.

The clock opened with a click and the two women locked eyes, hazel meeting brown with mirrored expressions of shock. Moving as though she was in a dream, Ziva moved forward her chocolate eyes filled brimming with joyful tears. They stood inches apart, the smaller, tanner woman with tears streaming down her cheeks. With a clatter, the phone crashed to the floor, battery and back flying off to the side as the screen went black.

"I just can't believe it," they said in unison, laughing at the fact they did. "It's you."

Ancient trees stretched towards the sky, nearly barren branches acting as a canopy with only one or two leaves desperately hugging them. One of these leaves was ripped from its branch by a strong gust of wind, drifting down towards the two agents who stood over a body. Gibbs brushed the leaf from his silver hair as he picked his way through the knot of gnarled roots towards the body. A sickening mixture of blood and entrails littered the ground around him in a grotesque shape. Slash marks in the shape of X's had been cut into his stomach—allowing whoever had done this to rip out his insides. Blood and guts had been splattered out across the leaves into the shape of four letters: NCIS.

"How did they get him out of the morgue without anyone seeing?" McGee wondered aloud as he looked down at the destroyed carcass of Petty Officer Cooper, who had been somehow taken from the morgue. McGee reminded himself that Abby was searching the footage from the surveillance cameras to see who could have done it. So far, her search had turned up nothing since it seemed someone had managed to trick the cameras.

"Hey, McGeek," Tony said to him as he strolled into the clearing, nearly tripping over several roots in the process. The second time he stumbled, he accidentally squished a piece of Cooper's digestive system under part of his boot. Making a disgusted face, he walked away, hoping Gibbs wouldn't notice.

Gibbs' hand caught him in the back of the head harder than he'd expected and he stumbled forward, careful not to step on anymore of Cooper's spilled guts.

"Don't destroy evidence, DiNozo," Gibbs told him.

"Sor—" Tony began to say, until Gibbs cut him off again just like he had with the head-slap.

Gibbs stared down at him, almost emotionlessly. "Rule Number 6; never apologize—it's a sign of weakness."

Gibbs' phone began to buzz and he picked it up, nodding quietly as he listened to the person on the other end.

"Abby found something."

The picture of a young tan woman flashed onto the screen of Abby's computer, long dark hair cascading down around her shoulders. It exactly matched the black and white surveillance footage of a young woman walking out of the NCIS building. Dressed in a white blouse tucked into a gray pencil skirt, she looked like every other agent going into or out of the building. Only she wasn't, she was a killer; a monster. And from the texts on Ziva's phone, it was blatantly obvious that she was at Ziva's apartment.

"What have you got, Abs?" Gibbs asked, walking into her lab to see the forensic scientist's face much paler than usual. Some of her make-up had been smear, but she'd put on black lipstick and new eyeliner to put herself back together a little bit.

"Something that you won't believe," Abby told him solemnly as he set a Caf-Pow down beside her, but she ignored it. The amount of danger that her close friend was in made even Caf-Pows seem undesirable.

"What happened?"

Abby sighed and swallowed nervously, "I think that Ziva knows the killer and, because Tony dropped her phone off, I think that the killer is at Ziva's apartment right now."

"Who is the killer?" Gibbs asked.

"Her name is Tali David," Abby started. "But here's the part that doesn't make any sense, she supposedly died years ago; when she was sixteen years old. She died when a bus she was on was bombed and the body was burned beyond recognition, but the DNA testing identified her as Tali. She's Ziva's sister so why is she trying to kill her and what did she have against Petty Officer Cooper?"

Halfway through Abby's speech, Gibbs had picked up his phone and called Tony, telling him to get to Ziva's apartment as fast as he could with no questions asked.

A/N: A huge thanks to dvd123, pirate-princess1, prince-bishop, NCIS Tiva Fan Forever, reio, and CityPlanetProductions for reviewing. Another thanks to the 12 people who favorited this story and the 29 people who are following it, you're so awesome. Just to let you all know, reviews make me write faster.