"We have to move her to NCIS. Now."
"But Boss. I've already-"
"We need to move her now, McGee."
"Why now?"
Gibbs stopped in the corridor. "Because the chances are that this girl's mother murdered her father. What is there to stop her coming after her daughter?" Gibbs' shout made McGee flinch. When he next spoke it was softer; almost to himself. "I'm not going to let her die."
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"You're going to find my mum, aren't you?"
Gibbs nodded.
They were sitting in the NCIS van. They were driving slowly through the dark, the street lamps flashing occasional bars of orange which lit them all up unnaturally.
Alex was still in her tartan pyjamas. Her hair still tousled. Kate had found a blanket in the back of the van, and Tony had given her his NCIS jacket. He was the one that had broken the news. Hadn't volunteered. Just went and did it.
Your mum bashed your dad's head in when she realised another woman was having his baby.
Alex stared at the road ahead. Tony took a turn-off from the highway, and she watched him, as if giving the turn a mark out of ten.
"I thought it was just going to be an ordinary holiday. You know. Skiing. Mum. Dad. Friends."
You know. Kelly was always saying that. You know, daddy; I'd love a horse. Daddy, have you fixed the you know? You know I love you, daddy. And he did.
"Now my mum's a murderer and my dad's dead."
She lay back in the seat, pupils flickering as she watched the purplish-black landscape go past.
"Think I'll ever get to meet my half-sibling?"
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As far as M. DiNozzo was concerned, there was nothing a few thousand dollars of surgery couldn't deal with.
They sent him to hospital. Fifth time that year. Riding accident, they said. Again.
Doctors must've though he was the world's crappest rider.
Stayed there two weeks to get his ribs sorted out again. His dad's driver came to pick him up. The one with the bald head and no neck. The one who was always watching Tony and never watching the road.
That night when he got back, he just went straight upstairs the back way. Didn't want to see his dad. It was quiet, like before. He could hear the clocks ticking. All off rhythm slightly so it made one long, fat tick.
But then the shouting started. It was fuzzy and unclear at first, and then he'd been able to make our the words. And he'd laid in his dark bed and stared up at the ceiling. And listened.
The next morning the maid wasn't there any more. She'd just left. Forgotten. Replaced. In all her duties.
But Tony didn't forget.
One day, they were at dinner. Family dinners build character. Right.
"Was it a girl or a boy?"
"Who the hell are you talking about?"
"Your other kid. Was it my half-brother? Or half-sister?"
There was nothing a few thousand dollars of surgery couldn't deal with.
As his father left him back at the hospital that night with the welts still raw from being 'mugged', Tony whispered after him. "Will I ever get to meet them?"
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"Do you want to?"
Alex smiled. "Truthfully; not really. I don't think I'll be meeting anyone if I don't sort out my clothes," she plucked at her pyjamas.
Kate's head appeared in the hole above the seats. It sucked to be outranked.
"I'm sure we can take some of your clothes out of evidence."
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"What do you need?" said McGee, watching Alex struggle to a sitting position on her makeshift bed under the plasma screen in the bullpen.
"Caffeine," groaned the Brit. "They gave me elephant pee at the hospital and said it was tea."
McGee laughed. She sounded like his sister. "I'll talk to Ducky. He keeps a box of Earl Grey somewhere in autopsy.
She pulled a face. "Can't stand Earl Grey. Don't you have any Lipton?"
"I'll ask."
A message scrolled across McGee's screen. The computer gave a delighted beep.
Alex peered up expectantly from the floor.
"We've got a hit on your mum." McGee waited for Alex to ask what that meant. She didn't. Film buff.
"Where?"
"A parking in Bethesda."
Recognition sparked in Alex's eyes. "That's where the hospital is, right?"
McGee nodded, typing an excited message to the LEO who had answered the bolo.
Alex sat and stared at her feet. Kate had fished out some flipflops from the evidence locker.
"There isn't a loo anywhere, is there?"
McGee stared. Alex was plainly trying to hide her embarrassment.
"A what?" he said, after a few seconds of thought.
"A loo. You know. Toilet. Bathroom."
McGee blushed. "Oh. Well. I. Er. Yeah, I guess."
He had hoped to root out Gibbs to give him the info on the bolo. Frowning slightly at the dilemma, he shot off a print out. "It's, um, this way," he said, collecting it as the printer spat it out.
She kicked off the blanket and scuttled after him, the back of the flipflops smacking against her heel.
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"Boss! We've had a hit on the bolo!"
McGee was jogging down the corridor after the striding Gibbs.
Gibbs nodded. "Bethesda."
McGee frowned. "How did you…?"
Gibbs smirked. He watched McGee calculatingly. "Where is she?"
McGee looked around him, alarmed. "She's in the bathroom, Boss. Just over there."
Gibbs stared over McGee's shoulder, pointedly, at the bathroom door. It swung gently shut.
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"I think she's in a car," Abby said. Kate nodded.
"Woman like that… She's gone West," said Tony.
"How can you tell?"
"She's committed murder. She wants to get away from the cops. She knows she can't go East because that's the easiest way out of the country but she knows she can't get past the boarder police. So she thinks, if that's the most obvious way; I'll go the opposite."
"I still don't understand why she couldn't have gone North or South," said Kate.
"She could be in Philly," said Abby. "It's closer."
Tony shook his head. "You have to understand her psychology. She's a sixty year old woman with a weird accent…"
"Lots of people have weird accents. Look at Ducky."
The conversation was shattered by the sound of splintering glass in the next lab.
Tony and Kate stared at each other. Their guns were upstairs. In their desk drawers.
Tony gestured for Kate to follow him. Careful not to make a noise, he padded to the arch which divided the labs, and peered in.
There was no one there but a broken window. The evening breeze was fluttering in, and with it a small bit of paper. Tony picked it up.
Abby,
IOU for the window. A.
Tony turned it over. There was nothing on the back.
"She's gone," he said.