It was mid-afternoon before Gibbs and DiNozzo returned to NCIS with boxes of collected evidence, leaving several more agents guarding the location. They entered a quiet lab as a tearful Abby sat staring at her computer screen.

"Abs?" Gibbs set two boxes down on the metal table before wrapping his arms around the young goth. She angrily brushed her tears away as she turned to face him.

"Who would do something like this to Timmy? He wouldn't hurt a fly, and somebody beat him, Gibbs. They beat him and they hurt him…" She dissolved into tears again, but this time she was willing to let the older man comfort her. Gibbs just held her and rode it out, knowing she had to get it out of her system before she could focus anymore on the task at hand.

Tony stood awkwardly next to them. He almost envied Abby's tears and the comfort she was receiving as part of him wanted to rant and scream at the injustice of the day. They had been at the paperwork stage of the cases they were working; absolutely nothing had indicated they should have worried when they left the squad room the Friday before. Nothing had suggested any of them were walking into danger when they went their separate ways. His head knew Gibbs was right, there was no possible way he could have predicted what had happened, but his heart hadn't caught up yet.

Abby pulled away and took a deep breath, straightening her pigtails. "Ducky had Palmer bring evidence back from the hospital, and Kate has called twice. He's in intensive care and he's still not breathing yet. They have him on a ventilator."

"Do they know why he's not breathing?"

She nodded as she answered DiNozzo. "They wanted him dead. He was given what should have been a fatal dose of Rohypnol. It depresses the respiratory system until the body no longer is capable of spontaneous respiration."

"Fatal? So they wanted him dead before he was found?"

"Looks that way, Gibbs."

Gibbs looked at the two exhausted and stressed faces in front of him, then made his decision. "Abby, the most important evidence right now are the fingerprints. Get a search running on those while I update the director, then we will all go to the hospital and see McGee for ourselves. DiNozzo, you give her a hand with them, I will be back in a few minutes."

Abby's enthusiastic hug and DiNozzo's grateful and exhausted thanks told the older man he had made the right decision as he headed up to the director's office.

---NCIS---

"He's still alive."

"How is that possible?"

"Agent McGee was able to summon help before he succumbed to the drugs. He is very stubborn and his team is very loyal."

"Should we send a clean-up team to finish the job?"

"Not yet. Let's see just how good NCIS is first."

---NCIS---

"The Director will see you now." Gibbs gave the briefest nod of recognition to the woman as he entered the office, not stopping until he was standing in front of Director Morrow's desk. Morrow finished up the phone call he was on and gave his full attention to his top field agent. "What do we know so far?"

"The last anyone saw McGee was Friday night having a late dinner with DiNozzo and Todd at Guffy's. All indications are that he was grabbed that night. He was tortured by unknown assailants until sometime this morning when he was dumped in a field in a rural area of Virginia and given enough Rohypnol to shut down his breathing. He managed to stay alive and awake long enough to call for help." Gibbs had to stop and clear his throat before continuing. "Moments after we found him, he lost consciousness and stopped breathing. He is unconscious, paralyzed, and on life support until the drugs clear his system. We found where he was held prisoner, Abby has all the evidence collected."

"Damn, poor kid. Do we have any idea what they were after, why he was targeted?"

Gibbs shook his head. "We're not even sure he was the actual target. Agent Todd discovered a flat tire on her car when she left Guffy's. McGee stayed behind to change it for her, so it is entirely possible that…"

"Someone was waiting to grab her and McGee's presence there stopped them." Tom Morrow finished for him.

"Yes, sir."

Morrow thought for a moment about how many things either McGee or Todd would have access to or knowledge of at NCIS. McGee's abilities with the computer were widely known and exploited within the agency. The rookie was just too nice to tell anyone no, even if it wasn't his team or his case. That normally was fine, but it meant that even more of the agency's activities were now at risk. He called his assistant into the office. "Notify the cybercrime unit to start going through our system. Have them look for any breech or anything out of the ordinary." Her response was instantaneous.

"They're going to ask for Agent McGee's help."

"If he was physically capable of helping, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Once you are done with them, notify all teams – if they have had any assistance from Agents McGee or Todd, the case involved may be at risk. Until we know why either of them were targeted, we have to assume the worse." Another thought occurred to him and he returned his attention to Gibbs. "I received word this morning that Homeland Security wanted your team to join forces with the CIA on an op. It's possible that is the target."

"Crap." The last thing Gibbs wanted to do on a good day was play nice with the CIA. Today was not a good day. The CIA would probably use the assault on McGee as a reason to keep NCIS out of the information loop. He didn't want anything to interfere with the hunt for McGee's assailant, but it was instinctive to complain about being cut from an operation. Before he could mount an argument to convince the director they could do both, his phone rang. He almost ignored it, but the display read 'Abby'.

"What have you got, Abs?"

"A big problem, Gibbs."

He hung his head. If her findings were a big problem in comparison to the day so far, Gibbs wasn't sure he wanted to hear it. "Abby, I'm in with the director, so I'm going to put you on speaker." Just a few seconds later Abby's voice echoed in the room.

"I got a possible match on the partial print you found on the padlock, but I got booted from the system before I could confirm it."

Director and agent shared a concerned look. "Booted by whom, Miss Sciuto?"

"By Langley, sir."

Morrow nodded to Gibbs as the director continued to question Abby. "You mean the CIA?"

"Yes, Director. Now I am completely shut out of AFIS. That's never happened before."

"Keep trying, Miss Sciuto. I'll make some calls and see who is pulling the strings." The last of his words were addressed to both Abby and Gibbs. As Gibbs disconnected the call, Morrow knew exactly where he was headed. "I'll set up a meeting with the Deputy Director of the CIA for later tonight. For now, go check on your man."

tbc...