"You gonna shoot me, Probie?" Tony asked once he found his voice. His eyes flicked from McGee's to Kessler's to the barrel of the gun still pointed at his chest.
"No, I just… I—" McGee stuttered.
"Then drop it, McGee," DiNozzo said in a voice usually reserved for scumbag suspects.
McGee holstered the weapon, realizing that he felt like scum after what he had allowed himself to be talked into. Tony would never have allowed this to happen, he thought wildly, watching his partner's green eyes glitter with … rage?
That thought was confirmed when DiNozzo reached out and grabbed McGee by the arm, prepared to haul him out of the room. "You stay here," he barked at Kessler, who still sat on the floor, watching the angry exchange.
McGee started to protest but stopped when DiNozzo wrenched his arm up behind his back and marched the younger agent out of the room and into the kitchen. He released McGee's arm, but spun him and pinned him to the wall. "The fuck were you thinking, Probie?"
McGee bristled at the nickname, but he couldn't remember a time when Tony had used it with such disgust in his voice. "I didn't… I just…"
"You didn't think?" DiNozzo said, his voice low and deadly calm. McGee would never admit it, but the tone reminded him of the terrifying intensity his partner was capable of. "Yeah, McGee. I figured that when I walked through the door and saw you kissing a rape victim with your hands around her neck."
"She said… she said she needed to remember," McGee said, his anger rising when he realized she had remembered. McGee shoved DiNozzo off him and straightened. "And she did. I thought it was crazy, too, and I said no, but she insisted. And now we have a name. That bastard kept calling her 'Adelle.' "
DiNozzo eyed his partner before getting back in his face. "You want a pat on the head and a 'good job'? Yes, you got a lead, but that was not the way to do it." Tony had a hard time keeping the disgust out of his voice. All he saw were McGee's hands on Kessler's bruised throat.
McGee shoved again and glared at his partner. "Back off, Tony."
"It was my idea."
DiNozzo forced the rage out of his expression before facing the woman. "He didn't have to go along with it."
"But I remembered the name," Kessler said, not backing down from the barely concealed anger in his green eyes.
"So the ends justify the means?" Tony asked, forcing himself to calm down.
"I think so," she answered simply.
Tony eyed her for a long moment, then turned back to McGee. His expression softened when he saw the sick look on his partner's face. The rage was all but gone when he said, "Go home, McGee. He didn't take the bait with Ziva. There's nothing to do now. Get some rest."
"But—"
"Go. Home. McGee," DiNozzo said, grinding the words through clenched jaws. "Cool off. Go home. And I won't tell Gibbs just how you two remembered the name."
McGee shot daggers at Tony and went to gather the laptop.
"Leave it," DiNozzo said, his tone neutral. McGee was struck again by just how quickly DiNozzo could mask his emotions. "I'll start searching on Adelle."
McGee swept past DiNozzo and leaned down to Morgan. "I'm sorry," he whispered and slammed the door on his way out.
Tony stared at the door until he felt Kessler's eyes on him. He turned, not expecting the anger he saw in her eyes.
"He's a highly trained federal agent, and you're…"
"A victim?" she supplied angrily.
"Hurting," Tony said softly.
The anger melted from her eyes, and she returned to the couch, curling her legs beneath her smallish frame. She tucked a dark strand of hair behind her ear and looked up in surprise as Tony settled a blanket over her. She hadn't realized she was shaking.
Tony sat on the opposite couch, straightening his sore knee and propping it on the scarred, old coffee table. "He needed to be the one thinking clearly, and he wasn't."
She sighed. "I needed to know what he was calling me. It was making me crazy."
"Did he suggest any other ways to help you remember?"
"No," she conceded, picking at the hem of the blanket in her lap. "Do you think it will matter? My remembering the name?"
Tony nodded. "It's a lead. I'm guessing the name means nothing to you?"
She shook her head, frustrated tears pooling in her dark eyes.
"Let us worry about that," Tony said gently, seeing the tears. "You just concentrate on getting yourself through this."
They were quiet, Morgan lost in thought and Tony tapping away at the laptop in what he knew was a blind search. Still, he searched, surreptitiously watching Morgan starting to crumble from the corner of his eye.
He set aside the laptop. "You know they're making a movie about Amelia Earhart? Those kind of movies aren't really my thing, though. It's like 'Titanic.' James Cameron is a genius and they built a grand, sweeping story there, but really, what's the point?" He paused. "You know the boat's gonna sink."
She surprised him by laughing out loud at that. He smiled.
"I hope that's not a metaphor for my predicament, Agent DiNozzo," Morgan said, the ghost of a half-smile on her pretty face.
"Anyone who calls what you've been through a 'predicament' isn't going down without a fight," he answered. "And it's Tony, please."
"Well, Tony, thanks for not trying to make me feel better with useless platitudes. I really appreciate it."
"I've been a cop for a long time. I've seen this destroy people and I've seen people fight their way out. You strike me as a fighter."
A hint of red tinged her cheeks at his directness. "What's the difference? Between those who make and those who don't?"
"I wish I had an answer," he said seriously. Then he smiled. "I'd bottle the stuff and sell it, if I knew."
"You wouldn't sell it," she said, her dark gaze meeting his green one. "You'd give it away."
He held her gaze, suddenly realizing why McGee was so drawn to her. It was the same reason he wasn't attracted to her. She had a world-weariness that he knew only too well but he was sure seemed exotic, intoxicating even, to the younger agent.
"Maybe it's intestinal fortitude," she mused, staring off into a darkened corner of the room.
"And here I thought that's what kept me from tossing my cookies at gruesome crime scenes," Tony joked.
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly, but she turned intense eyes on him and asked, "What's the worst thing you've ever seen?"
He found himself struggling not to squirm under that dark gaze, which was surprising considering he could brush aside even Gibbs' most intense glare. The thought of the two of them in a room together made him shiver.
"Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have asked."
"Kids. Kids are always the worst," Tony answered. "And as bad as seeing their broken little bodies is, and as selfish as it is of me, I hate the parents. I don't hate them. But I hate that I have to talk to them, to make them remember, to tell them little Jimmy's never coming home."
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I can't imagine what that must be like."
"Don't spend too much time trying," he said, standing. "It's cold in here, isn't it?"
She nodded and he fiddled with the thermostat until they heard the heat kick on.
"Thanks," she said.
"No problem. I'm freezing my face off, too."
She smiled, knowing he knew she wasn't talking about the heat.
"You want to try to sleep?" he asked, noting the darkness under her eyes. "You can take either bedroom."
She shuddered. "I don't really want to be alone right now. Maybe I'll try to sleep here. I slept almost all day, though." She sighed, knowing she was rambling. "I can't believe this is happening again."
Tony was scanning names on the laptop and almost missed that last part. He looked up. "Again?"
"Yeah. Don't ever get on a plane with me, Tony. I don't know what the statistics on plane crashes are, but I bet they're not too different from the chances of being raped twice."
Tony was on his feet in an instant despite the lingering pain in his knee. He went to his jacket and retrieved his notebook while Morgan gave him a confused look.
"Did you report the first rape?" he asked, looking up from his notes from interviews with the first two victims' families.
"Yes. It happened when I was nineteen, back in Denver."
"They catch the son of a bitch?"
"Yeah, well, kind of. It was my boyfriend. I tried to break up with him, and he wasn't having any part of it. He raped me at knifepoint, and I got the knife and stabbed him. I didn't mean to kill him, but I did what I had to so he didn't kill me first. He was very 'if I can't have you, no one can.' "
Tony watched her recount the rape and murder with hardly a blink of an eye and a tone devoid of emotion.
"I'm over it," she said, seeing the look. "It took me a long time, but I know now that I did what I had to do. And now I have to start all over."
She quickly wiped away the tear that slipped down her cheek. "I'm going to try to sleep."
"I'll be right here," he said.
Tony waited until she was breathing evenly and got up and headed to the kitchen. He pulled out his cell and called Gibbs, wincing at the sleepiness in his boss's gruff voice.
"Sorry, Boss," Tony said, leaning against an ancient countertop. "But this couldn't wait."
"Is everything okay? Kessler?"
"She's fine… now. But she told me she had been raped before. This wasn't the first time. And when I talked to Cpl. McCormick's mother, she mentioned that she noticed Andrea went through a really dark period about a year ago. She totally withdrew from her family, her friends. The mother thought it was a bad breakup, but then realized Andrea was sleeping around the clock and missing work. She never found out what it was, but I'm thinking maybe she was raped. Maybe Sanders, too. That would explain what Ducky said were self-inflicted cuts on her thigh."
"We need to talk to Ziva and see if she got anything from Sanders' family," Gibbs said, fully awake. "I'm sending an agent over to relieve you. Go home and get some sleep so you're fresh in the morning."
"Gibbs, I don't think we should put her with yet another unfamiliar face. She's tough, but waking up to another strange man might not be so good."
"I'll send a female agent," Gibbs said.
"Can I stay here? I'll sleep when the backup gets here. Just in case."
"Fine," Gibbs said. He paused. "DiNozzo?"
"Yeah Boss?"
Gibbs was silent, biting back the pride he felt that his agent cared so much about the feelings of a woman he barely knew. He settled for a gruff, "You're not falling for her, are you?"
Tony laughed softly, but all humor faded when he remembered McGee kissing Morgan on the floor. "It's not me we're gonna have to worry about, Gibbs."