A/N: Apologies for the long wait. An odd school schedule and a need for a break prompted a sheep hiatus.

Gibbs ignored the phone ringing in his pocket, just as he'd done the past three or four times it had rung. Whatever DiNozzo wanted to complain about could wait. He pressed the gas pedal into the carpeting, demanding that the car get to Chantilly faster. There was something about this case that was really getting under his skin. Or a lot of things…and not all to do with the case.

Without turning his head, he glanced at Sampson, the new probie. He'd decided that Jen had left him with the kid so he'd have an outlet for his anger over losing one of his team members just in time for a case. He had also decided he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. If she thought she could screw with his team dynamics and miss the fallout because she was away on some damn…thing…

He yanked the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a school bus. The near miss pulled him out of his trance and prompted him to slow down. He pulled to a smooth stop at a red light just as Sampson answered his cell, "Hello? Oh, Agent DiNozzo, I…He's right…Who?" After a moment he held his hand over the mouthpiece. "Agent Gibbs, someone named Abby wants to talk to you."

He gestured for Sampson to hand over his phone. "Abby?"

"Gibbs!" He pulled the phone away from his ear to save it from her happy squeal. "I was so worried when you wouldn't pick up your phone! Are you mad at me?"

"Why would I be mad at you?"

"Well…because I made a mistake. Of course, you wouldn't know about it until I told you, but I thought you got one of your gut-o-grams that told you I was calling with bad news. Well, not bad news, because that would imply something negative, which this would be under other circumstances, but…"

"Abby…"

"Right, daytime minutes. Comatose Bridget wasn't pregnant."

Gibbs let out a deep breath, feeling slightly better. "So it was just a screwed up test?"

"Not exactly. Her hCG was elevated and that's usually a sure sign of pregnancy."

"I'm no expert, Abs, but even I know there's no such thing as 'kind of' pregnant."

"Of course not, Bossman. Only people on sitcoms say that. I was just trying to tell you that, statistically, the reason for increased hCG is a BITO."

"BITO?"

"Bun in the oven? No? Well, McGee and Tony are laughing. Anyway, the point is she wasn't pregnant."

He had to admit he was pleased about it, but kept his tone neutral. "And this was the urgent development you had to share with me?"

"Well, I heard you were on your way to talk to the boyfriend. I just wanted to save you the trouble of beating the snot out of him for something he didn't do."

"Snot?"

"We thought that's why you took Sammy – y'know kill two birds with one stone by terrorizing the suspect and the probie at once?"

"We?"

"Well…"

"Smack DiNozzo for me, Abs." He snapped the phone shut and tossed it back to Sampson. "Cpl. Flannery wasn't pregnant. There was some problem with the test."

"So that's good news?"

"It is for Coleman McCormick," Gibbs muttered, pulling into a parking lot across from a construction site. Ten minutes of arguing with the foreman later, he shoved Sampson and McCormick into the trailer that was serving as the on-site office. "Right, so you're McCormick?"

He removed his hardhat, revealing a mat of sweaty red curls. "Yeah, and I just want to say that whatever that prick told you is a lie."

Gibbs tapped his fingers against the desk he was leaning on. "Do you wanna tell me why you think we're here?"

"Oh, come on. Navy cops? That asshole who hit me at Pax River last week is obviously trying cover his ass by blaming the accident on me, even though he ran the stop sign. You should see how he fucked up my truck!"

"Why were you at Pax River?" Sampson asked before Gibbs could stop him.

"I was working on the new hangar. Job was almost finished so I switched over to here. I think the foreman was worried there might be trouble, but…seriously, I just want someone to pay for the work on my truck. Why did that little prick say about me?"

"We're not…"

"Agent Sampson, just take notes," Gibbs interrupted. He turned back to McCormick. "How long were you working at Pax River?"

"I dunno, about…well, since the job started about three months ago, right up to last Friday."

"And you haven't been there since then?"

"No reason to. I live in Tysons Corner, so this site is a lot more convenient for me anyway. Look, I don't know what's going on, but…"

"You know a Cpl. Bridget Flannery?"

McCormick was clearly blindsided by Gibbs' question. He swallowed hard a few times before saying, "Yeah, I…she's my girlfriend. Or she was. Now she's just…" He rubbed his hands over his face. "I always think I should see her more often, but every time I do, it's like, I almost wish I wasn't there. I know the machines say she's alive, but the doctors say…well, I believe them when they say she's never gonna wake up. Unlike her family," he finished with some venom.

"You don't get along with her family."

"No, they don't…ah, shit." He began to pace the small open space in the trailer, causing Sampson to back up to the point of pressing against the wall. "Did they find out I've been visiting after hours and report it to you guys? I just…Agent Gibbs, you have to understand that I love her and even though it kills me to see her like she is now…I still love her. We've been together since junior year of high school and…look, I haven't tried to fight them about the life support since they made the final decision and…"

Gibbs laid a hand on McCormick's shoulder. "Cpl. Flannery is dead."

Tony sat down and propped his feet on Ziva's desk, deciding he could wait for a call just as easily from there as he could from his own desk. "That better?"

"You're still staring at me," McGee complained.

"Yeah, but it's from a different direction now."

"Can't you find something useful to do?"

"Hey, I called the parents." Tony shuddered at the recollection. He could have handled the crying and demands for explanations if they hadn't been preceded by a moment when Patrick and Maureen Flannery thought their vacation had been interrupted by someone telling them their daughter had miraculously woken up. "That should have been enough to get me the rest of the day off."

"You made one phone call and then annoyed me for forty minutes!"

"I made two phone calls!" Tony protested. "You're just jealous of my superior delegating skills."

"Delegating what? Gibbs was the one who told me to dig up whatever I could on McCormick!"

"I hope you're arresting that rat bastard!" a man who had just walked into the bullpen shouted.

Tony jumped out of his chair as McGee rushed to block all the information that had been displayed on the plasma. "Uh, can we help you with something?"

The man gave Tony a belligerent glare, running a grimy hand through his greasy brown hair before saying, "I got a call from my father saying that Bridget had died and that some joker at NCIS had called to tell them."

"Yeah, that would be…" Tony trailed off with a glance at McGee. He corrected himself, "I'm Agent DiNozzo, and this is Agent McGee. I'm sorry, but your parents didn't mention your name when…"

"Can you blame them? You call on their vacation to tell them that Bridget is dead and that you're investigating it? I'm telling you right now that it was that pissant McCormick, emphasis on Mick. And he probably got some help from that raghead that works at the nursing home. Bet he wanted to finish the job his buddies over there started."

"Uh, right. Well, if you'd like to, uh…" Taken aback by the unexpected vitriol aimed in all directions, Tony grabbed Gibbs' chair and dragged it over to his own desk. "Uh, have a seat, Mr. Flannery…"

"Ryan." He reached out to shake Tony's hand.

Tony discreetly wiped it on his pants as he sat behind his desk and took out his notebook. "Right, Ryan. Why don't you tell me why you think Coleman McCormick has something to do with your sister's death?"

An hour later, Tony was actually relieved to escort Ryan Flannery to the morgue, at his request. He hoped the patently unlikable guy wouldn't have any racial epithets to fling at Scots when Ducky met them at the automatic door. "Dr. Mallard, this is Cpl. Flannery's brother."

"Yes, Timothy let me know you were on your way down. My condolences on your loss, Mr. Flannery." Flannery looked suspiciously at Ducky's gloved, outstretched hand. "Right, well, she's right over here." He lifted the sheet just enough to uncover Cpl. Flannery's face.

"Huh. I…I thought she'd look different." Flannery reached out to touch his sister's cheek, displaying an emotion other than intense loathing for pretty much everyone for the first time. "Is it wrong that I think she looks the exact same way she has for the past few months?"

"As I understand it, she's been comatose since returning from Iraq?"

"Yeah. Mom and Dad were sure she was gonna wake up and I almost believed it too sometimes, but now…you're gonna catch whoever killed her, right? I mean, whoever killed her here?"

Tony nodded. "We'll do our best. I'll, uh, escort you out." At the main entrance, he said, "You'll let us know if you're going to be leaving the area."

"Oh, you can bet I'm not going anywhere until McCormick goes to jail." Flannery shook his hand again and made his way across the parking lot to a sad looking Datsun.

Tony stopped in the bathroom to wash his hands before returning to the squad room. Gibbs and Sampson were there, exchanging notes with McGee. Gibbs interrupted McGee mid-sentence to ask, "What was the brother's reaction when he saw the body?"

Caught slightly off guard, Tony fumbled for a moment, "Well, he, uh…it was…he said she looked pretty much the same. You get anything from the boyfriend?"

"Too early to tell. We've got a lot to confirm before we start making decisions."

"No gut feeling?"

"Other than the one telling me to smack you for doing nothing while…"

Tony reached into his pocket for his ringing cell phone. "Hold that thought, boss." Five minutes later, he hung up with a triumphant grin. "Well, remember how Comatose Bridget left the home in an ambulance? My old buddy at Baltimore PD has possibly tracked it down for us at an impound lot. Company name matches the one they gave us, but the company, much like the nursing home they moved her to, no longer exists." He winked at McGee. "Like I said, delegating."

He hunched his shoulders as Gibbs slapped him in spite of his breakthrough. "Go check it out. Take Sampson."

Tony grabbed his gear and gave Sampson a friendly punch in the shoulder. "Looks like you're getting to go on all the field trips today, huh, Sammy?"

Jenny stared at the monitor, watching the man sitting in a bare room. With his arms tied behind him in a stark wooden chair, Sahrawi looked far less intimidating than she remembered. She bit her tongue as one of the NCIS agents interrogated him. The main technique the man seemed to be employing was a lot of shouting in Sahrawi's face. "Is this what you've been doing for the past few days?"

Agent Saunders, the lead on the mission, nodded enthusiastically. "We've been giving him minimal rations and asking him a lot of questions. The Israelis don't think we're working him hard enough, but…"

"You aren't," she cut him off. Before he could defend his sanctioned interrogation tactics, she walked out of the room. She found Ziva down the hall sitting in an improvised lounge-type room, sipping water and chatting with the Moussad team. "Officer Arad?"

The man on Ziva's left pushed himself off what could generously be called a couch and walked over to Jenny. "What can I do for you, Director Shepard?"

"You and your people are taking over all aspects of the interrogation here. Saunders?" She turned on her heel to face that man that had followed her out of the command center. "Take your team and continue looking for Safad."

"What…where?" he sputtered. "We were supposed to…"

"We're supposed to be apprehending terrorists. Go pick up the trail wherever you can."

Saunders grabbed her elbow and nearly pulled her shoulder out of the socket as he dragged her into the hallway. "Ma'am, I really don't think you should hand the prisoner over to Moussad. They're a little too good at this stuff, if you know what I mean."

Jenny was in no mood to be patronized. "Do you find something about your instructions unclear, Agent Saunders?"

"No, Ma'am. I'm just telling you my concerns about…"

"Your concerns are noted. Now get your team together and get on Safad, if you think you can manage that."

"Director…"

"There will still be an NCIS presence here in Officer David and myself and the Marines will remain to provide security. There is still a dangerous terrorist on the loose and Sahrawi is no longer your responsibility. Am I making myself clear?"

Saunders silently fumed for a moment before responding, "Crystal, Director. Will the Moussad team be rejoining us once they're finished here?"

"Yes."

"We'll keep you updated." He didn't wait for her reply before stalking down the hall.

A snort of laughter from the doorway of the lounge drew her attention. Ziva was leaning against the frame. "Subtle."

"I thought you of all people would want this to be over sooner rather than later."

She smiled. "I did not say I don't approve."

"So you aren't going to reprimand me about potentially driving a wedge between my team and yours?"

"I thought we were all on the same team, Jen."

"You know what I mean. We both know that Moussad is better equipped than NCIS to handle these types of situations. Saunders and his agents are great trackers, but…" she trailed off.

"I will pretend you're trying to pay a compliment." Ziva walked toward the command center. "We should probably go see what Lior is doing. I think his personal record is three minutes."