"I don't get it Bert." Abby said, leaning against her lab table which was void of anything but her stuffed hippo. "Why doesn't anybody ever think that they can tell me anything? It's not like I'm going to have a mental breakdown or something if just once they decide to tell me what the heck is going on around here. I mean, sure, I did start crying when McGee told me about Ziva, but that doesn't count because I only started crying because I jumped to the conclusion that she was dead." She sighed, now resting her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand. "What do you think?"
"I think that I'm going to hurt McGee for making you worry." a voice came from behind her.
A smile slipped onto Abby's face as she stood up straight suddenly. The eccentric forensic scientist picked up the hippo and said with mock surprise, "Why Bert, you sound an awful lot like Gibbs."
Gibbs walked around Abby, into her view and set a Caf-Pow on her lab table, along with a small evidence bag, containing a bloody USB drive. Abby set down Bert and jumped up and down in place, clapping her hands excitedly.
"Gibbs, I love you! I've been dying of boredom." She froze when he gave her a slightly reproaching look. She froze and took a deep breath to calm herself. "Right. No clapping at bloody USB drives. Rule number…Ya know, that isn't a rule."
"What's a USB drive?" Gibbs watched as Abby didn't respond but pointed to the blood coated object inside the evidence bag. "Well yeah, I figured that. But what is it."
Abby picked up the bag and examined its contents as she spoke. "It's a little chip that stores documents, videos, pictures, etcetera. You plug it into your computer…Dare I ask why it's covered in blood?"
Gibbs was already starting towards the door now. "Found it inside of a woman's neck. I want the woman's names, finger prints, and whatever the hell is on that UBS drive."
"USB!…Gibbs." It was pointless to say, because he was already gone.
It was hardly twenty minutes later when Tim and Tony were walking through Abby's lab door after getting a call from her. Gibbs was busy speaking with Vance. What about, he'd failed to mention. That left the other two men to figure out what Abby was so frantic to have them know.
"My god you guys, this is terrible." she said, her hands shaking slightly and her face showing that she was obviously troubled.
"Did you find a match for the DNA?" Tony asked, hurrying to her computer screen. "Do you know who our dead Jane Doe is?"
He'd been acting weird since they'd gotten back to the office and realized that they had basically no leads on who was responsible for putting Ziva in the hospital. He was absolutely nothing like himself. He hadn't cracked a single joke or made the slightest remark against McGee. He just focused on his work.
"I didn't match any DNA, but I do know who are Jane Doe is.." Abby responded, earning a confused expression from both of the boys. She ignored the looks and went over to her computer, bringing up a screen containing two files. "I took blood from the drive, checked for prints- there were none- and yadda yadda yadda. Then I put the drive in my computer." She double clicked the first file and a picture of a driver's license popped up on the screen. "Does that look like your Jane Doe?"
"Either that, or it's her twin." McGee responded, nodding.
Tony leaned close to the screen, reading what was written on the license in the picture, "Carla Camden."
"What's the other file?" Tim spoke up again.
Abby now bit her lip, turning back to the computer. She brought the mouse to the second file but she hesitated. It seemed like she was just going to give up on clicking the file. Tim put a hand on her shoulder.
"What is it Abs?" he asked.
"A video." She responded, then went on. "I've seen a lot of messed up things, working around here. But this just…gets to me."
Tony didn't want to be as patient and understanding as McGee was at the moment. He moved Abby's hand out of the way and took the mouse from her control, quickly double clicking the second file. It was a video that popped up. Tim's hand remained on his friend's shoulder as it started to play. A woman who, despite being blindfolded was so obviously Carla Camden, was seated in a chair, a baby being held in her arms as her body shook with the sobs she was giving.
"P- please." she cried, "Just let me go!" She paused, taking in a shaking breath. "Just let my baby go. Please!"
There was laughter, and the screen went black as silence filled the room. Now Tony and Tim knew why Abby had looked so unnerved when they'd walked into the room.
"Has Gibbs seen this?" Tony asked, starting towards the doorway.
"No." Abby replied just as Tony walked out of the room.
Abby's eyebrows were drawn close together as she stared at the black video screen. Tim closed the page with the video on it and slid his arm over his friend's shoulder, giving her a light squeeze to his side.
"You okay?" He asked her.
Abby shook her head. "I hate this job sometimes."
It was around one in the morning when the last of the team finally decided to call it quits for the day. The weather outside suited the feelings that had spread inside of the building. Rain was falling hard and Tony's windshield wipers were working double time to keep his view of the road clear. As soon as he was home safely he stripped out of his clothes, leaving himself in just a pair of boxers, and climbed into bed. He was asleep within minutes.
Tony groaned, rolling onto his side to look at the alarm clock next to his bed. 4:39, is what it read. There was a loud boom filling his house. A boom like someone knocking on the door.
"Who the hell is up at this hour?" He asked, obviously to himself because he was the only one in the house.
He stumbled through the dark, only getting glimpses of what was ahead of him when lightning flashed outside. He made it down four or five steps perfectly fine and stumbled on the one after that. His feet slid out from under him and he slid down the ten or eleven steps on his behind. He let out an irritated grunt and pulled himself to his feet while rubbing a sleep-filled eye. The knocking had stopped but he continued towards the door for fear that whoever it was hadn't given up and left, but instead was just waiting to knock again.
It took the agent a minute to figure out how to unlock his own front door because he still seemed to be half asleep.
"What do you w-" he started when he was finally pulling open the door, but nobody was there.
With an eyebrow raised he tried to peer through the rain to see who it was, but all he could see was an empty sidewalk, lit up by a few dim street lights. Tony went to step forwards out of his door and maybe get a better look around, but his foot hit something and suddenly a cry went up into the air. Tony's gaze quickly dropped downwards. An infant's car seat sat on his doorstep with a blanket covering it. The agent leaned down and pulled back the blanket, revealing a baby. Its jaw was dropped and its face wrinkled as it let out a series of loud cries. Tucked beside it was a white envelope. Tony leaned down, picking up the envelope and examining its contents. He was wide awake now.
He left the baby in the car seat on his living room floor after flicking on a few lights, and went off to find his telephone. He punched Gibbs's cell phone number into the phone and held it to his ear. The baby was still crying and Tony finally took the blanket off from over it and left it off. The infant had the beginnings of brown curls sprouting from its head. Quite honestly, Tony wasn't sure whether it was a boy or a girl.
"Dinozzo, are you trying to give me a reason to kill you?" were Gibbs's first words when he finally answered his phone the second time Tony tried to call him. "Is that a baby in the background?"
"Yeah, Boss. Somebody left it on my doorstep." Tony replied.
Gibbs heaved a loud sigh, "Then call child protective services, not me. Goodnight, Dinozzo."
"Boss, before you go, I've got a question."
"What?" Gibbs was obviously far past annoyed now.
"How do you think child protective services will react when I show them the thumb drive and picture of a dead Carla Camden that was with the baby?"
