Tony hadn't wanted to give them his email address; even conceding such a small thing felt like he was giving up and letting them win. He'd already gotten himself kidnapped, he didn't want Gibbs to think he was weak on top of that. But as the punches landed, assaulting his head and torso, he forced himself to think reasonably.

They weren't asking for his work email address; by giving them that, they could potentially access restricted files, depending on their knowledge of computers. Abby was always checking her email account, so he knew that even if she was at home, they'd still find the photo Jacob and Henry were planning to send. The selling point, though, was that it would let Gibbs and the team know that he was still alive. The 'change of plans' Jacob mentioned left him with a bitter feeling that they weren't planning on having any further contact with the Feds, they were willing to forget about the drugs and money seized. What any of it had to do with his father was truly beyond Tony and his fuzzy head, but he knew it couldn't be good.

So he told them what his email address was and his password, and in a matter of minutes Henry had brought a laptop into the room, slid the SD card from the camera into the slot and sent the photo off into the depths of the internet. Tony knew little more about computers than Gibbs, but he hoped McGee and Abby would be able to trace it, then Gibbs could come and kick Jacob and Henry's asses.

-----------------------------

"What are you waiting for?" Gibbs asked tersely, barely giving himself a moment to recover from the sight of Tony's bruised and battered body on the screen in Abby's lab.

"On it, Boss." McGee said, sitting down on the stool and typing fervently. "Tony's email address is a Yahoo account, so it should be pretty easy to get past the privacy and security barricades, then we can trace it back to the IP address."

"How long?" Gibbs had no idea what McGee just said, but McGee had sounded pretty hopeful about it.

"Ah… thirty minutes at least, sorry Boss." McGee flashed him an apologetic look over the shoulder before returning his attention to the computer.

"Make it twenty." Gibbs pried himself away from Abby's vice-like grip, pushing her and her chair towards the computer. "Abs, Tony needs your help."

She nodded, straightening up her pigtails. "Move over McGee, let the pro get to work."

McGee grinned, willingly making space as she began hitting the keys even faster than he had been.

"Gibbs, if you want results, you're gonna have to leave us alone for a bit," Abby called back, all business. "And I need a Caff-Pow or three."

--------------------------------

Anthony DiNozzo walked into his office to begin what for all purposes and intents looked to be a supremely ordinary day. He'd arrived early, managing to avoid the morning traffic. His assistant, Denise, had a cup of coffee (one sugar, black), waiting on his desk next to a Danish and a piece of paper outlining his schedule for the day. A meeting with the partners at 9:00, an early lunch with a prospective client at 11:30, video conference at 2:00pm.

With more than an hour before his first appointment, Anthony DiNozzo closed himself in his office and decided to take the opportunity to get his personal affairs in order. Waiting for the computer to turn itself on, he opened the paper, turning to the stockmarket and business pages. Once that was done, he opened his inbox and started scrolling through the dozen-odd emails that had accumulated overnight. Most of them were work-related; business briefings, memos and the like. One was from his wife Annalessa, a list of potential holiday destinations. He smiled at that one, then buzzed Denise into the office and asked her to organize a bouquet of roses to be delivered to Annaleesa while she was at the spa.

Husbandly duties taken care of for the moment, he continued clicking through the emails. One caught his eye. His first thought was to delete it, dismiss it as spam. The email address:

very special agent at yahoo . com

definately didn't belong in his address book. It was only the subject line; AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ANTHONY DINOZZO that convinced him to open it.

He frowned immediately. According to the email, the name of the sender was 'Big D'. He wondered how this person had accessed his personal email address. It was only given out to associates and family. All other correspondence went through Denise first.

There was an attachement, and a paragraph of text.

We have something of yours. If you want it back, it will cost you. Five million dollars in unmarked bills. We know you can pay it, and we know you have immediate access to the money. If you are foolish enough to contact the police, not only will we kill him, we will bring you down too. We know things about you. We'll be in touch very soon.

Anthony DiNozzo fought back the wave of nausea that had come over him while reading the message. Clenching his teeth in nervous anticipation, he clicked on the attachment. It was a photo. As the computer downloaded it and ran the virus-scan, his mind ran over possible scenarios. Whoever was behind this obviously knew something about him. They knew he was the Executive Officer of the bank, that was clear in their request for the money. But this was something more, something almost personal.

Annaleesa was still at the spa, she'd gone there with two girlfriends and had stayed overnight in the resort rooms. She'd called him while he was in the car, she wasn't expected home until the evening. The email had arrived at 7am, which was before she'd called, so he knew she was safe at least.

The computer chirped, signaling that the file was safe to open. He clicked on it.

It was a man, stripped of his shirt and restrained, strapped down to a wooden chair in an otherwise completely ordinary room. The only thing that really hit him was the blood, the volume of it caked over the man's arm and pooled on the floor around the chair.

Rather than hunt for his reading glasses, he magnified the picture, zooming in on the man as he searched for the significance of the photo.

The man's head was limp, hanging back against the chair as if baring his neck to the world. His mouth was pink and bloody and Anthony DiNozzo had no trouble imagining he'd recently been beaten. He clicked the zoom in button again, scrolling up to the man's eyes.

It hit him suddenly and he gripped the arms of his chair, hard. Those eyes. He could never forget them. He'd only ever met two people with eyes as vibrantly green and passionate as the ones staring out of the photograph.

One person was his wife. His first wife, not any of the 5 replacements he'd had since. She died many years ago, leaving him with a crater in his heart that no amount of scotch would fill.

The other person was his son. A boy, no, a man now, a man he hadn't spoken to, much less seen, for more than fifteen years.

Feeling a sudden tightness in his chest, Anthony DiNozzo zoomed out so he could see the man's face in it's entirety. He could see it now. His son had the same face, the same nose and expressive eyes and cheekbones he'd had as a noisy little boy growing up. Behind the caked blood, even with the grainy resolution, he could recognize it.

Rubbing at the tension gathering in his chest, he pressed the button for the intercom, telling Denise that he wouldn't be attending the 9:00 meeting. He cut her off, ignoring the half-asked question on the other end of the wire, and picked up his phone, dialing the number to reach the operator.

He'd done his best to keep tabs on his son over the years, tracing his path from Peoria to Philadelphia to Baltimore and then to Washington DC. The ramifications of contacting the authorities rang loudly through his brain, but Anthony DiNozzo had learnt some things through a lifetime of work in finance. Sometimes you had to trust others, and as much as it went against everything ingrained in him, he knew it was true in this case. His son had broken his two-year employment record, had finally found a place to call home after so many years. He'd had his people look into it, and he could understand why. Anthony DiNozzo Junior had people he could trust now. And now Anthony DiNozzo Senior was going to have to trust them too. Trust them with his son's life.

The operator responded, shaking him out of his thoughts.

"Connect me to NCIS, Washington DC. I need to speak to Leroy Jethro Gibbs."

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A/N:I guess email addresses don't work on this website. Ah well. There'll be more Tony next chapter, I promise. Thanks for reading, and to the awesome reviewers. Based on your responses, nobody was expecting Daddy DiNozzo to appear. That's good, I like to keep you guessing :) Hopefully this chapter's sparked a few more questions. All will be revealed... in a few days :) Let me know what you think.