As soon as Gibbs had left the squad room, Tony shot out of his chair and headed over to Gibbs' desk. The doctor's note McGee had handed Gibbs lay on top of his desk in plain view, and Tony's fingers were itching for it.
"What are you doing?" Ziva hissed at him, looking around to see if anyone was watching.
"What?" Tony defended himself, "You don't want to know?"
"Not like that," Ziva said, but Tony had already unfolded the note. After a moment of silence she asked, "Well, what does it say?"
Tony scanned the paper. "Special Agent Timothy McGee is to remain on desk duty for two weeks and is to retain active duty only after medical evaluation… blah, blah, blah. In other words, nothing, nicht, nada, njet, nil, zip und zilch." Disgusted, he threw the note back on the desk.
"Wow, I didn't know you were such a talented linguist, Tony," Ziva said sarcastically.
"I'm just full of delicious little surprises, Ziva, you should know that." He flashed her a toothy grin as he headed over to McGee's desk.
"You are not going through McGee's things," Ziva told him angrily when she saw where he was heading. He'd already picked up McGee's backpack, and she tore it out of his inquisitive hands.
"Ah, come on." He made a grab for it, but she moved it out of his reach.
"No."
"Please," he said, drawing the word out in a petulant whine as he made a lunge for the backpack. "Aren't you curious?"
"No!" Ziva said, turning around and shielding the backpack with her body.
Tony made another lunge. "Just give it to me."
"It's not yours," Ziva countered, twisting her body away from him again.
An odd basket ball-type match ensued, with Ziva playing defense, blocking Tony's passes, foreseeing his feints, trying to stay one step ahead. But in the end, Tony's many years of practice won and Ziva felt the backpack being ripped out of her arms.
"Aha," Tony said triumphantly as he held it well above her head, ignoring her angry glare, knowing she would be too proud to make a jump for it.
Just then the elevator dinged and half a second later the backpack had disappeared under McGee's desk, leaving Tony with empty hands and his most innocent look.
But the passengers in the elevator were only Abby and Quinn. Tony visibly relaxed, a state you couldn't accuse Quinn of being in. Tony wished he'd lived in a cartoon, then he would've been able to see smoke coming out of the other man's ears as Quinn rushed past them, quickly disappeared up the stairs towards Director Shepard's office.
"He doesn't look very happy," Ziva commented, looking after him.
"What's he up to?" Tony asked Abby who'd come up to them.
"Pre-emptive strike I would say," she answered him. "He's gonna try to stop Gibbs from taking his case. I stalled him as long as I could, I even lured him down to the garage, even though I'm nowhere near processing the car that the bodies were found in yet."
"The double homicide?" Tony asked with raised eyebrows. "Why would Gibbs want that?"
Abby's eyes grew big. "You haven't heard?" she asked breathlessly. "They were killed with McGee's gun."
"McGee shot two marines?" Tony asked incredulously and was subjected to a dual head-swat from his annoyed co-workers.
"Of course not, are you insane?" Abby said. "The gun was reported stolen Saturday morning. I read that in the database when I was tracing the bullets."
"Maybe that's when he got hurt," Ziva mused.
"McGee's hurt?" Abby sounded upset, twirling around, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. "Why didn't anyone tell me? Is he okay? Where is he?"
"He's with Ducky and we think he's okay," Ziva said, calming her. "He's here, moving, talking."
"What happened?" Abby demanded.
"We don't know," Ziva said. "He won't tell us, keeps saying that it's private and embarrassing."
"Oh, maybe it happened during sex," Abby said, waggling her eyebrows.
Ziva groaned as Tony exclaimed excitedly, "That's what I said! Besides, what else could be so embarrassing?"
"It's McGee," Ziva said. "He gets embarrassed over such trifle matters."
"True," Tony agreed. "Of course… if Gibbs is trying to steal this case," something none of them thought he'd fail in, "then we should get a jumpstart on the investigation. Did it say in the database how the gun was stolen?"
Abby shook her head. "No, it was really just a notation."
"But there would be a police report, right?" Tony continued. "I wonder what the fastest way to see such a report would be…" He looked conspiratorially at Abby.
Abby smiled broadly at him. "Follow me, oh curious ones," she said. She moved around Ziva's desk, plopped down on the chair and started typing. Tony and Ziva crowded around her to see what she would find.
They heard the elevator ding on the floor above them. When the doors opened they revealed Gibbs, who looked, if possible, even more pissed than Quinn. He strode across the floor towards Shepard's office, determination in every step. Their eyes followed his progress, and they shuddered at the thought of the battle of titans their director would have to weather.
As soon as Shepard's door closed behind Gibbs and the distraction was gone Abby returned to her task. She wasted no time dipping into the vast computer resources available through her talented fingers and before long a triumphant "Aha," signaled that she had accomplished her goal. With greedy eyes they started reading the account of McGee's Friday night and early Saturday morning.
But soon their initial elation at finding the answer to the riddle turned to shock and then to horror as some of the worst moments of their friend's life were dissected in the report's crude police language on the screen before them. They read in silence, time stretching and bending around their reality as they lost themselves in an account of horrors they wouldn't wish on their worst enemy.
Abby hesitatively broke the shocked silence. "There… there are pictures." She was close to tears and her voice trembled as she moved the cursor over to the icon, letting it hover there.
"Do it." Ziva's voice was hard.
Abby double-clicked to open the file with the pictures, but as soon as the first picture showed on the screen, she whimpered and turned away. "I can't watch this," she said.
Tony too was feeling rather nauseous by now, and his throat felt unnaturally tight as the images were slowly and irrevocably burned into his mind. Without even realizing it, both his fists and his jaw were clenched tightly enough for his skin to turn white.
The back elevator signaled that it was about to make another stop on their floor, and this time its lone passenger was McGee. Immediately upon entering the squad room he was met by his teammates' faces, still huddled together by Ziva's computer. They showed a mixture of horror, sadness, pity and guilt as they stared openly at him.
McGee stopped cold. "Oh, god," he gasped. "You know."
"We read the police report," Tony confirmed somberly. "Why didn't you-"
But McGee interrupted him angrily. "How could you? I asked you to leave it be. I asked you to stay out of it."
Tony took a few steps towards him, his eyes suddenly ablaze. "How could we? No, McGee, how could you? How could you keep this from us?" Tony met his angry accusations with some of his own. Ziva put her hand on his arm.
"Tony…" she tried to calm him down.
"No." He shook her hand off, still looking at McGee. "We're your team! Some maniac puts you in the hospital and you can't even be bothered to pick up a phone? What kind of friend does that make you?"
"Tony," Ziva said again, sharper this time.
"Whatever." McGee just turned his back on him, picked up his backpack and turned around again. Abby came up to him and put her soft arms around his neck, her cheek against his.
"I'm so, so sorry," she whispered in his ear, but he pushed her away, deliberately misunderstanding what she was sorry for.
"No. You had no right to violate my privacy like that." He took a few steps. "Tell Gibbs I went home."
"You're not going anywhere, McGee."
They all turned and saw Gibbs coming down the stairs, Director Shepard following him.
McGee slowly let his backpack slide down his arm and back down onto the floor. He knew that look on his boss' face. It meant that the case was Gibbs' now and he would sink his teeth into it like a badger and not let go until he was well and truly finished with it, one way or another. Whatever control McGee had thought he'd had over the situation was now gone, and he felt overrun and completely washed out.
He backed up until he was standing with his back to Ziva's desk, his body slumping down in misery. The others surrounded him on all sides, cutting of all his escape routes. A feeling of entrapment and helplessness grew in his chest as he looked around and saw their faces. He just wanted to run. He wanted to be far far away where no one knew him or cared about what had happened to him. He wanted to lick his wounds in private, not in public.
Abby once again came up to him, wanting to hug him and this time he let her, hiding his face in her shoulder to get away from the looks on his teammates' faces.
"It wasn't your fault, McGee," Gibbs said gently.
"How can you say that? You don't even know what happened." Agitated he pulled back from Abby who reluctantly released him, but she stayed close enough to keep physical contact, wanting to comfort them both.
"Then tell us," Tony implored, having lost him momentarily shocked rage and now felt rather ashamed for having blown up at McGee when he needed it the least.
Looking around him, McGee realized that he no longer had a choice. They wouldn't rest until they knew everything. Maybe it would be better if they found out from him. No matter how unwilling and humiliated he was, he was going to have to tell them.
He was suddenly very aware of the ringing phones, the clattering on keyboards and the people milling around the big squad room.
"Not here," he pleaded.
"My office then," Director Shepard invited and McGee reluctantly nodded.
There was no turning back now.
TBC…
