Hey Lovelies! It's been a hectic week, but I finally got a chapter written! Thanks so much for your speculations as to who was behind all of this! This one is Gibbs and the team, but I promise Chapter 4 is goingto be Jen again! Enjoy!
Chapter 3 – A Briefing, A Frog, and A Scream
"Gibbs wants you guys up in the Director's office, now." She was looking at Tony as she spoke, but Ziva was the first to her feet.
"Come on you two, there is something going on. Cynthia, did he ask for Abby and Ducky too?"
The girl just nodded and Ziva took the stairs leading to Jen's office at a run. She never should have left her alone that morning. She came to a halt when she realized that Gibbs was alone. She was expecting a distraught Jenny, or at the very least a sniffling one. "Where is she?" He didn't seem to have heard her. She looked towards the bathroom but it was dark. "Gibbs," she snapped her fingers in front of him and his eyes focused on her, "Where is she?"
"I don't know Ziva." It was the way he said it that made her heart sink. It wasn't just that he didn't know, it was that something had happened to her. "I don't know." He rubbed the back of his neck, "Let's wait until everyone else gets up here and I'll tell you everything I know."
Slowly everyone filed into the office. When they realized Jenny wasn't there they started to become anxious. Ducky was the last to arrive, "What did you call us all up here for Jethro if Jennifer isn't even here?"
"I called you up here because she's not here Duck. I got a phone call right before I had Cynthia come and get you. It was from Jen's cell, but it wasn't her. Instead it was a woman with a rough French accent." Ziva sucked in a breath and all eyes turned to her.
She shook her head, "No finish first."
He nodded and kept going. "The woman said that Jen was in a car crash and that she was unconscious. She said something about the crash being caused by a bullet, my gut is telling me that it's too late to save her driver." He could see that Cynthia was getting tears in her eyes, and he switched tactics. "Abs." He nodded towards the girl and Abby wrapped her in a hug.
"It'll be okay Cynthia." Abby tried to reassure her. "I'm sure the Director is fine. We are going to get her back safe, right Gibbs?"
He could see by the look in her eyes what she needed him to say, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. He couldn't lie to her just to make her feel better. "I hope so Abs." His gaze shifted back to Ziva who was pacing nervously around behind Jen's desk. "Okay, we don't know anything yet. I want you all waiting in the bullpen in an hour for the phone call."
"Got it Boss." Tony ushered everyone out of Jen's office in front of him and looked back when Ziva wasn't there. "Ziva? What's up?"
"Hmm?" She turned to look at him, but she didn't stop pacing. "Nothing is up. Why do you ask?"
Gibbs shook his head, and Tony let it go. "Never mind. We'll be ready Boss." He turned and with one last look at Ziva he left them alone in the room.
"Ziva." Gibbs' voice stopped her pacing. "What do you know that I don't?"
"Nothing for sure." She met his eyes as she continued."You said the woman was French?"
"Yeah, why?"
"When I first met Jenny she was angry, vengeful. She was out to get someone, but for some reason his name escapes me. All I know is that it was distinctly French."
Gibbs sighed, this day kept getting better and better. "His name is René Benoit, though most likely she referred to him as La Grenouille."
"The Frog?"
"Yeah. He's the man that she believes is responsible for killing her father. She's wanted to avenge that death for years. I wouldn't doubt that this is somehow connected to that, she's been talking about La Grenouille since Paris."
"Gibbs, if it is Benoit, what are we going to do?"
"Take out an arms dealer." He stepped forward and opened the door to head downstairs. His gut was telling him that Ziva wasn't being completely truthful, that there was something else she was keeping from him. He would have made the French connection on his own, there was something he was missing.
"Gibbs," her voice was low as she moved past him, "we will get her back." He nodded, but didn't trust himself not to demand more from her.
Forty minutes later the team had reassembled in the bullpen and they were waiting for the call to come in. It had been nearly an hour since Jenny's kidnappers had talked to Jethro. "Are you ready Boss?" McGee was setting up the system to try and trace the call when it came in.
"Yeah McGee, how hard is it to answer the damn phone?" He knew that McGee didn't deserve his anger, but for lack of a better target he was getting it.
"Sorry Boss." McGee let the topic drop and they all stood in silence watching Gibbs' phone sit on the desk. When it finally rang they all jumped. Gibbs looked quickly over at his junior field agent, who nodded.
He glanced at the caller ID, Jen. Taking a deep breath he flipped the phone open, "Where is she?"
"Now, now Agent Gibbs, what would be see point in telling you dat? You would show up to rescue 'er, and I am not done with 'er yet." It wasn't the woman that he talked to earlier, this time it was a man, and he was certainly French.
"Then why,"
The French man laughed darkly. "Because the head of a federal agency makes for pretty good leverage."
"What do you want Beniot?" Gibbs was growing more and more frustrated, he looked at McGee who shook his head, he couldn't get a fix on Jenny's cell.
"I see you 'ave determined who I am, good. Am I correct in assuming you know dat your lovely Director 'as been trying to kill me for years?" When Gibbs didn't answer he moved on. "I am an arms dealer, I 'ave business all around zee world. I can not keep looking over my shoulder. I want you to stop looking into zee drug circle you 'ave found, and I want you to convince Jennifer dat I was not zee one dat killed 'er father."
"But you did!"
"No I did not. Now, I want everything dat you took from that barn back, including my crew."
"How do I get them to you if you won't give me a location?"
"Ask one of your sergeants, dey will know where zee best place to find me is." There was a pause and a scuffle on the other end of the line, but he didn't dare break the connection. In an instant La Grenouille's voice returned, "Agent Gibbs, you have until sunset, and then I'll finished what I started all those years ago."
Just as Gibbs was about to break the connection he heard it, the most gut wrenching sound he would ever hear in his life. A scream that seemed to echo through the phone in an all too familiar voice, "Jethro!"
He hung up the phone and glared at McGee, "Did you get anything?
"No Boss. Whatever phone he was using must have been disabled so that we couldn't track it."
"He's using her phone McGee! Her name comes up on my screen when he calls!"
"He Boss?" Tony raised his eyebrow at Gibbs, "I thought the caller was a woman?"
"It was the first time Tony," the younger agent turned to look at Ziva, "but she was not the one responsible for this. The man we are dealing with is René Beniot, a French weapons and drugs dealer. Although Jenny refers to him as,"
"La Grenouille." Ducky's face fell even further. "I remember, I consulted on the autopsy on her father. She was determined it wasn't a suicide." He looked up at Gibbs, "She was right."
"Yeah Duck, she was, and if we don't give him what he wants by sunset he just threatened to finish the job." He heard both Abby and Ziva take in sharp breaths but he stayed looking at Ducky.
"Then what does he want Jethro?"
"Everything we took from that barn this morning, including the two men lying in your autopsy room."
"Oh dear, what are you going to do?"
"We are going to get her back." All eyes shifted to Ziva as she stalked silently towards the stairs and up out of sight.
