There was a certain amount of relief that flooded into him when Abby's report was laid on the table, though it probably didn't seem that way to the woman who placed it there. Sometimes, people saw what they wanted to see, and relief wasn't even on Hart's radar of things to look for in Gibbs at that moment. He was relieved, though, to see proof that Abby had followed through on sending the report. When neither Alejandro nor Vance had seen it, he'd been a little concerned. Ok, a lot concerned, but that had made him feel guilty for not trusting Abby to do what he'd asked (well, ordered was probably a more appropriate word). But she had, and nothing that came of this fiasco could come back on her.

Once that relief had run its course he had a brief tug of guilt for being in the process of missing Ziva's ceremony, but she too was on the list of people he needed to protect, and right now he wasn't sure M. Allison Hart wasn't someone he needed to protect them from. So her stayed put, and he listened to her as she continued to place things in front of him on the table.

"I've got my own code." He finally answered when she had finished.

"No, that doesn't work. This is the bullet that should end you," she leaned in, putting her hands on the table. "Do you think I want that?"

He tilted his head, trying to figure out what she did want. "I didn't ask you to stop it," he responded, making her back up a little. "What do you want, Allison? A thank-you? An apology?" He half-smiled at the last, bitterly.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I've got a…rule…against it."

"Well, it's a stupid rule."

He could see the hurt there, and started to think there were more casualties in this than he'd realized, even if some of them couldn't exactly be considered non-combatants. Maybe she'd made a mistake in trusting Bell, but maybe…maybe…he could have made one in not trusting her. He wasn't quite ready to go that far, but she seemed to be telling him the truth, and that, on top of so much else that was happening, was enough to make him start to wonder. He gave her a slight nod. "Maybe it is."

"I wanted to know who you were. Who you are. As a person." Gibbs looked away, her words resonating too much of what Abby had said before, that night in his basement. Abby was with Ziva, where he should be, hopefully safe, but here he was, breaking one of his one rules. "Speaking as an officer of the law," she drew his attention back to Abby's report by laying a hand on it. "I think we can beat it."

She walked away, leaving the report in front of him. A sign of the trust Abby had put in him, something he was trying terribly not to betray again. The best way to do that was to simply not go to prison. And to do that, he might just have to break one of his own rules with Miss Allison Hart.