Sorry it's been a while guys. Been a crazy busy week. Hope you enjoy this chapter. Maybe a new one by the end of the week. Maybe. Don't hold me to anything. :/ Review to make me happy?

Love, Ryleigh

The next day, stress was running high in the Gibb's household. Everyone was feeling tense, and had scattered to their own amusements. Grace played quietly with her stuffed animals in her room, Alyssa was reading and listening to her iPod. Neither had shown up for breakfast, and it was nearly lunch time now. Gibbs had been working on his boat all morning, thinking about the case, but reluctant to leave the girls home alone. He was pulled from his musings by a ringing cell phone.

"Yeah, Gibbs."

"Hi, Gibbs! Guess who?"

"Watcha got, Abs?"

"Well. Don't play, then."

"Abby…"

"Right. As much as it pains me to say this, and it does, I have nothing. It's pretty hinky… This guy, he must have lived in latex gloves. There's not a single print on any of the pictures. The box, however, is covered in them. It looks like every postal worker in the United States touched this thing. I ran all the full prints I could get through IAFIS without a single hit." Gibbs sighed. "My sentiments, exactly. Hi, Tony!" Abby said loudly.

Gibbs pulled the phone away from his ear. "Put me on speakerphone, Abs." A soft beep and echoing sound informed him that he was. "DiNozzo."

"Hey boss! That Jason guy just got here…"

"Why didn't you call me?" Gibbs said angrily as he rose from his chair where he had been working on the boat and rushed upstairs.

"The line was busy-"

"Don't start questioning him without me." He flipped the phone closed. "Alyssa!"

Alyssa appeared from around the corner, smiling. "Yeah, boss?" He glared at her silently, but she just laughed. "What's up, Gibbs?"

"I'm going to NCIS." He pulled a jacket from the coat rack by the door and slipped it on. "I'll send DiNozzo over when I get there."

Alyssa stopped him by standing in front of the door."Please don't do that. Tony has the humor of a four year old, and the X-rated thoughts of an eighteen year old. If you send him to 'protect' us, I will literally shoot myself."

Gibbs grinned at her accurate description of Tony. "Ziva, then, or McGee."

"No way. Listen, you need your team, and they need you. So you go to NCIS, and figure out what the he-" Her sentence broke. "Heck is going on, and I'll watch Gracie. We'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" His crystal blue glare was piercing.

"Positive."

Grace came into the room then, wearing a pink tee shirt covered in skull crossbones and a black tutu. A sparkling tiara was perched on her curly blonde pigtails. The six year old had adapted some of Abby's style with her own unconventional twist.

She stopped twirling around when she noticed the pair standing by the door."Are you leaving?" She looked up at Gibbs solemnly.

"Yep, but I'll be back real soon."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Pinky promise?" She stuck up a tiny pinky finger, nails painted a chipped black.

He wrapped his significantly larger finger around hers and squeezed. "Pinky promise." He unwrapped his hand and pointed sternly at Alyssa. "Call me, every hour, at least.

"Got it."

"Don't-"

"Leave the house or answer the door?"

"Right."

"Noted. Go catch some bad guys." Alyssa lifted Grace into her arms and together, they waved as Gibbs drove away to NCIS.

Four hours later, Alyssa sat on her bed, her iPod turned as loud as it would go. The volume was hurting her ears, but she preferred it that way. It drowned out the rest of the world, the rest of her worries.

It had been a long day, and it was only two o'clock. Even after Gibbs had left, Grace had retreated back to her room. Alyssa had even offered to play Grace's favorite game, Pretty Pretty Princess, with her, but she had refused even that.

She had thought that surely her sister was mad at Gibbs. Alyssa herself had been furious. How dare he lay a hand on her sister? Maybe her tantrum had been a bit dramatic, and she had been frustrating Alyssa to no end, hanging on her twenty four-seven. But, still. His reaction had been completely inappropriate. Right? But then, when he left, Grace seemed upset. That didn't make any sense, did it?

Alyssa shook her head, pulling herself from her musings, and looked at the clock beside her bed. It was almost four o'clock. She could feel her stomach rumbling, so she got up to fix peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Grace and herself. She danced out of the room and down the hallway, listening to her iPod and jamming to music so loud it could be heard feet away. Rocking out and singing along, she spun out of the hallway to see the barrel of a gun pointed at her forehead. She gasped, yanked the headphones from her ears.

"Hello, Alyssa. It's been a while." The man in front of her was tall, strong, bulky, and ugly. A black baseball cap shaded his eyes, and he wore a blue non-descript tee-shirt with jeans and dirty Nikes. Alyssa could only see the bottom of his face, sweating and fat, but she immediately recognized him as the man driving the SUV that had killed her mother. With one tattooed arm, he held a flailing Grace up from the floor, where she kicked and fought frantically against him. His hand wrapped around her mouth, but Alyssa could still hear her cries. Why hadn't Alyssa heard her before? And where was Gibbs when you needed him?

Alyssa tried to keep a cool head. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"Thought that CSI guy you're stayin' with would've updated his security since you two arrived, but I guess he's been too busy, what with that box I sent and all. I'm afraid I can't tell you my name, darlin'." He said gruffly, Southern voice loud to be heard over Grace's cries. "Never know who could be listenin' in." He glanced around the perimeter of the room, as if looking for an audio or video recording device. Alyssa wondered if there was one that she hadn't noticed before. He waved his gun over his shoulder, towards the back door. "Time to go."

"I don't think so." Alyssa looked around for something she could use a weapon, but saw nothing she could reach. Nothing that would be any defense against his gun, anyways.

The gunman directed the barrel away from Alyssa to Grace. Alyssa slowly raised her hands into the air in the universal sign of surrender. "All right, okay. I'll do what you want."

"That's what I thought." The strange man smiled creepily and tightened his grip around the squirming girl in his arms. "Let's go."

Two hours later, Alyssa's hands were tied behind her back to a chair, and she had been gagged and blindfolded. She was inwardly kicking herself for not having taken some kind of self-defense class. A rough hand pulled the blindfold from her eyes and revealed the same strong man that had carried her away like she weighed nothing after she had started to fight back. She had been tied and thrown into the back of a van as her sister sat crying in the front seat.

Now Alyssa was being contained in a small, dirty room, only a little bigger than a closet. A single light bulb hang from a wire on the ceiling, providing barely any light. The room smelled of mildew and sweat.

Alyssa fingered the rough rope tied tightly around her wrists as the man removed her gag. She could just reach into the back pocket of her jeans. She wished she had kept a knife there. Wasn't that one of Gibbs' rules? Dang. She was good at breaking those. "So, since you're not going to tell me you're name, I suppose I can just call you Dick. You know, like Richard. That's okay, right, Dick?" Alyssa smiled sarcastically. She almost wondered that she could still manage sarcasm in such a traumatic situation, but figured it was too ingrained into her brain to stop now.

'Dick' grimaced. "Sure, Alyssa. We can stick with that." This guy was heinous, but suprisingly unbreakable.

"Okay, Dick." Alyssa stopped smiling. Fury rippled through her words. "What do you want from me?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" He grinned. Alyssa fought against the restraints, trying to kick him where it would really hurt, but the ropes were too thick. "Feisty, aren't we?"

"Where's my sister?"

"Oh, she's fine, Alyssa. I wouldn't worry about her. She, unlike you, has been very cooperative."

"You were driving the SUV." She said, and he nodded. "You killed my mother."

"You're a smart kid. Smarter than I gave you credit for." He chuckled slightly, twisted the gun in his hand.

Alyssa was unintimidated. "And my father?"

"Yep, him too.

"Why?" Each word that left her mouth was ice cold and chillingly calm.

"You ask a lot of questions, missy, you know that?" When Alyssa stayed silent, he continued. "Suppose there's no harm in tellin' ya now. It's not like you're going to get the chance to tell anyone else." Dick smiled eerily, pulled another chair from the corner of the room. He straddled the back of it, sitting directly across from her but still keeping his distance. "The story starts back a good, oh, twenty or so years ago. Your mom and me, when we were in high school. Maria, she was such a pretty girl. Looked a lot like you do now. That pretty gold hair." Using his free hand, Dick reached up and pushed a sweaty strand from Alyssa's face. She twisted away and sent him a glare full of hatred. "Big ol' temper like yours too. Anyway, Maria and me went out a few times through school. But then the summer before she went to college, she met that marine fella, Daniel. I told her, he was no good. I was the right guy for her, I knew it, but she didn't believe me!" His eyes flashed strangely, telling Alyssa he was reliving a memory of years ago. She felt a chill run down her spine. "I said, 'don't stay with him, Ria, he's no good.' But she didn't listen. She went and married him. But I told her, I did. I said, 'if you go off with him, I'll kill him'." His eyes flashed again, and he looked up at Alyssa. "And I did. And everything was fine for a few years. I watched you and Gracie growing up, watched Ria take care of ya'll. And it made me happy, it really did. Just to see her so happy with you. But then that guy, Jason. He was gonna take her away again! I thought, if she can't be with me, she can't be with anyone. It hurt me, really, to try to kill you two, but I didn't have any options. She had to die, and you were too old by then. I was going to take Gracie, that little image of her momma, and take care of her."

"Don't you dare touch Gracie!" Alyssa growled, straining harder against her bonds than before. She could feel the rope cutting through her skin as she fought to keep tears from spilling from her eyes.

"Now now, Alyssa. Everything's almost over now. No need to get worked up." Dick smiled a wicked grin. "I don't plan on keeping sweet Gracie anymore. That was a silly idea to begin with. A little girl like her is just too much trouble. Silly me..."

He paused, and Alyssa spoke up. "Are you done with your monologue now?"

"Yes, I am, sweetheart." He stood up and moved the chair back to its place. "Just one last thing." He bent over slightly, his sweating face inches from Alyssa. She cringed but didn't say anything. "I want you to know that I did what I had to do. Now I'm just tying up the loose ends." With that final note, he turned and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Alyssa thought for a moment, contemplating all that he had said. This man was absolutely crazy. And now he was alone with Gracie. She screamed in frustration, but there was no response that she could hear.

Alyssa fidgeted more against her binds, hitting the back pocket of her jeans. She scoffed. "That guy may be crazy, but he's also really stupid." She said softly to herself. Slowly she removed her cell phone from her back pocket. With her hands tied, she couldn't move enough to see the screen. She silently thanked the hours she had spent not paying attention in class and sending text messages blindly from her pocket instead. She went at the keys faster than she ever had before.

Six-six-six-seven-seven-seven-six-six-six-enter-down-enter.

Now she only had to wait for a reply.