"McGee," Agent Gibbs commanded as he stepped out of the elevator. The young agent looked up at him expectantly. "I need you to track down the members of Sergeant McLaughlin's team. We need to talk to them about who would want McLaughlin dead."
"Um, Boss?" McGee asked. "I thought Colonel Mann's team was doing that."
"Well, they're not doing it fast enough," he declared, not even breaking stride as he passed his desk and kept walking. His three investigators looked at each other.
"What's that about?" McGee finally asked.
"I don't know, but I'd do what he said if I were you, Probie," DiNozzo replied.
"Don't bother, McGee." All three looked up toward the voice to find NCIS Director Jenny Shepard looking down at them, Lt. Colonel Mann standing silently by her side. "Where's Gibbs?" They all pointed in the direction their boss had gone, none saying anything further. The two women headed for the upstairs elevator without another word.
"Looks like the boss is in trouble," DiNozzo finally remarked.
"You think, Tony?" David replied sarcastically.
Abby Sciuto glanced up from her microscope to see Special Agent Gibbs in the exact position he had been in for the last five minutes, seated on one of her lab stools, calmly sipping his coffee. He had walked in and sat down without saying a word, just silently watching her work. She was glad she had already fired Kelly Gibbs' M40A3 rifle before he came in; she didn't want to see the look on his face as someone else fired his daughter's gun, especially considering how much she struggled with the left-handed action.
Her head snapped up in surprise a few minutes later at the sound of her lab doors sliding open. She could tell by the looks on Director Shepard's and Colonel Mann's faces that this was not going to be good, and she guessed that it was Gibbs it was not going to be good for.
"Agent Gibbs," Director Shepard said, her voice icily angry. "What are you doing?"
"Drinking coffee?" he replied, holding up the cup as testimony.
"Don't be cute, Jethro," Shepard snapped. "The deal was that your team got to be involved this case, not you. If you can't separate yourself from this, I'm going to have to suspend you until the investigation is over. Your very presence compromises the investigation. If this goes to court and the defense finds out that you were in the lab while Abby was analyzing your daughter's weapon—"
"It wasn't the gun used to kill Sergeant McLaughlin," Abby blurted out. All eyes instantly snapped to her to see her grinning widely. "The bullets don't match. Kelly's gun wasn't involved."
"You're sure?" Director Shepard demanded. Abby's grin turned into a pout.
"Director, you wound me," she said, clasping her hands together over her heart. "Of course I'm sure! I can't believe you have to ask. If you want to check for yourself…" She moved aside from the microscope to allow Director Shepard access.
"I told you Kelly had nothing to do with this," Gibbs said, his voice low.
"We've ruled out the weapon, Jethro, not the suspect," Mann said. "We're still going to have to bring her in for questioning."
"Questioning about what?" he asked. "An email she didn't send? A weapon she didn't fire? What about your other suspects, Colonel? Have you even been looking for other suspects?"
She flushed at the implication that she was doing a poor job, but Director Shepard saved her from having to answer. "You're not involved in this, Gibbs. Let Holly run her investigation. And stop telling your team who and what they should be looking in to."
"I wouldn't have to if it was being done already," he pointed out angrily.
"That's enough, Gibbs," Shepard snapped. "Go home, and don't come back until you can control yourself."
He laughed. "Are you putting me in time-out, Jen?"
"Think of it however you like, Gibbs, but if you're not out of the building in fifteen minutes, I'll have your badge. If you think I'm bluffing, I'd like to see you try it." Her steely gaze told Gibbs that pushing was not the best idea at the moment. He turned and left the lab and didn't look back.
Lt. Colonel Mann was silent as she followed Director Jenny Shepard back to her office. She could tell the NCIS director was fuming, and to be honest, she wasn't in the best of moods herself. Being called incompetent by a man she thought she loved had a tendency to do that to her.
"So," Shepard finally said as she took a seat behind her desk. "When did he tell you?"
"Tell me?" Mann repeated with a frown.
"That he had a daughter," the director explained.
"Ah," Mann replied, understanding. "Six months ago, and that was only because she showed up at the house while I was there." She paused. "You?"
"Last day we were in Paris," Shepard replied. "August 17, 1999. We had just finished an undercover op. It was stressful, and long, and they extended it a month while we were there. We were in the airport waiting for our flight back to D.C., and he wandered off without a word, like he does, so I went to find us coffee. I found him at a bank of payphones a few gates down from ours. I couldn't hear most what he was saying, but he had this tortured look on his face, like he wished he weren't having that conversation over the phone. He finished by saying, 'We'll be back in a few hours, and then I want to hear all about it. I love you, Kell.'" Shepard took a sip from a bottle of water. "He turned around and saw me standing there, and that's when he explained. Kelly was sixteen and just competed in her first President's National Rifle Match. He was supposed to go with her, but the op was extended and he missed it. She still made President's Hundred—twentieth place."
"At sixteen?" Mann didn't know why she was surprised; after all, the girl was an Olympic bronze medalist at twenty-one. "I've known career snipers who couldn't make President's Hundred."
"Gibbs probably couldn't," Shepard said with a tight smile. "But he doesn't compete in rifle matches."
"He says he can't think of shooting a rifle as a sport," Mann finished with a thin smile of her own. It was a conversation she had had—once—with Gibbs.
Shepard nodded. "And yet that's what he taught his daughter to do." She took another sip of water. "Kelly was even more blunt then than she is now, if you could believe it. I guess four years of the Naval Academy taught her to bite her tongue every once in awhile. The first time we met, after we got back from France, she asked if I was her father's new partner, new girlfriend, or both." She paused. "Kelly had been living with her grandparents—Shannon's parents—in Philadelphia while we were in Paris. After that, he said no more foreign missions, at least until she graduated from high school. He said if he wanted to be shipped off and separated from his daughter, he would have stayed in the Corps."
"She's why he left," Mann stated. She had wondered why he left the Corps when he was so close to having twenty years—and thus full retirement—but never asked. Shepard nodded.
"His deployment with Desert Storm was cut short when Shannon was killed. He took an assignment as the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Scout Sniper Basic Course. When Kelly was twelve, he was going to be deployed to Somalia. Instead, he left the Corps and joined NCIS. When our assignment came up to go to Paris, he tried to get out of it, on account of Kelly, but that didn't work. When we got back, they gave him MCRT. I got a team in the Middle East."
Mann wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to ask. "How did it happen? Shannon's death?" She tried asking Gibbs once, but he changed the subject, refusing to talk about it.
Shepard stared at the CID officer for a moment before getting up and crossing to the file cabinet. Without a word, she handed a thin file to Colonel Mann. "You keep a copy of Shannon Gibbs' NIS report?" Mann asked, disbelieving.
"It helps me when I need a reminder of who the man working for me is," Shepard explained, no apology in her voice. Without waiting for Mann to read it for herself, she continued. "Shannon Gibbs was a witness to a homicide and was shot by a Mexican drug dealer while she was driving Kelly home from school. Kelly was hurt pretty badly and was in a coma for a couple of days. She was still in the hospital by the time they tracked down Gibbs in Iraq and got him home." She paused. "The official story is that the drug dealer was shot by a rival, which ended NIS' investigation."
"And the true story?" Mann asked quietly.
"The true story, Colonel, is that Gibbs didn't visit Kelly in the hospital for two days, and nobody was able to get a hold of him," Shepard replied, her voice leaving little question as to what she thought happened in that time. "He was recruited by the NIS agent who investigated Shannon's death, but the last thing he wanted was an assignment aboard an aircraft carrier or anywhere else that would take him away from Kelly. He said that things would be more stable for her if he stayed in the Corps."
"She does seem rather well-adjusted," Mann agreed, then smiled slightly. "As well-adjusted as a competitive riflist, third-year medical student dating a Marine can be."
"Gibbs is a good father," Shepard said, "and Kelly's a good kid. I'm not going to tell you how to run your investigation, but I hope for your sake you're looking into other options."
Mann smiled thinly, beginning to feel like she had inadvertently walked into the middle of the Kelly Gibbs Society. "Don't worry, Director," she replied. "I have it covered."
