Author's Note:

Here we are… the beginning of the good stuff. I hope you all enjoy!

Oh, and your reviews are all so wonderful. They make my day, no lie.

Chapter Seven

"Extended Vacation"

Tony sat back on his couch, fighting every urge he had to not go into the kitchen for a glass of liquid stress reliever. He closed his eyes and could taste the fire as it coursed its way down his throat and through his tired body. Enough of it, and everything clouding his brain could magically disappear. The idea was unbearably tempting, but not enough to give in to. Tony had promised himself that he wouldn't keep using alcohol as a crutch, and he intended to keep that promise. It wasn't hard until he lied down at night and saw Jenny's blind eyes staring up at him from a cold tile floor covered in her own blood.

And now. Now, it was hard. Now that he considered the fact that his own idiocy might have put an entire investigation in jeopardy. He wondered idly if he would get fired. Why not? He'd already botched other assignments, one of which ended in his own broken heart and the other ending with the life of a good friend being taken prematurely. This was his third strike, and he was certain Vance would throw him out. Federal agencies didn't have room for fuck-ups like him.

What would he do? He could go back to being a metro cop, if they would have him back. He didn't exactly hate the work, but he liked NCIS better. His family was there, as trite as it sounded. Gibbs was like a father where his own father hadn't been, and Abby and McGee were his dorky but lovable siblings. Ducky was the quirky uncle who can't keep his stories to himself. And Ziva? he thought. Where was she in this analogy?

The thought of losing all of them again had his stomach rolling far more than the idea of being fired had. He had gotten up to get a bottle from the kitchen when a knock sounded at the door. Taking the interruption philosophically, he looked through the small hole in the top of the door to see Ziva standing on his doorstep. Although surprised, he opened the door to allow her in.

"Ziva," he said, watching her walk in. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to return this," she said, holding his cell phone out in her hand. "You left it on the bar."

Tony stared at the device with abject terror rising like bile in his throat.

"Oh my God. Gibbs is going to kill me."

"Not if you hurry and call him back," she pointed out and he nodded, swallowing the trepidation that had built up in his chest.

He turned the phone on and found that he had three voicemails and seven missed calls from McGee. Two missed calls from Gibbs. Between his behavior that night and ignoring the phone calls, Tony was certain that he was getting fired. He couldn't seem to do anything right lately. It killed him to think he might have been better off as an agent afloat.

"I am guessing you know nothing new about the case, then," Ziva said, sitting on the arm of his couch.

"I'm about to," he said, wincing as he dialed Gibbs' number. He wasn't exactly surprised when the voice on the other end sounded nothing short of hostile.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs yelled into the phone. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Home, boss," he said as apologetically as he could without saying the actual words. "I left my phone at the bar. Ziva just brought it to me."

"Get here, DiNozzo," he ordered and Tony heard the line go dead.

"Yes, boss," he said and closed the phone, turning to Ziva. "Apparently my presence is required."

"Just as well," she said. "I am going home."

"I'll call you later," he said, grabbing his jacket and keys. "Maybe we'll have some new evidence on Drew before the end of the night. Any luck, and we'll have him locked up by Wednesday."

Ziva stopped. "What did you say?"

"New evidence on your boyfriend," he joked, but suddenly wished he could take it back when he saw the look on his partner's face. It was a cross between frustration and absolute fury. "Whoa. I was kidding. I didn't mean he was your boyfriend." Because I'd kill him, he added silently.

"Why is it that you always assume the men who pay attention to me are guilty of something?" she asked.

Instead of backpedaling, like any self-respecting man would have done, Tony saw fit to challenge her right back.

"Are you defending him, Zee-vah?" he asked, taunting her. He knew exactly which buttons to push; a side-effect of working with her for so long. It worked like a charm, though he had no idea if he was happy about it or not.

"I believe he is innocent, Tony," she said.

"Yeah, okay," Tony mocked. "Except for the fact that he was seen talking to the victim minutes before he collapsed, and he was nowhere to be found for a space of about ten minutes. It's plenty of time for a drug deal."

"There were no drugs recovered at the scene," she said immediately. She'd been watching the evidence collection carefully.

"Okay, it was in his glass, then," Tony said. "Either way, he had plenty of time to do it while we weren't watching him."

"And why were we not watching him, Tony?" she asked. "Because instead of staying away, staying silent, you thought it would be a good idea to approach him and get into your little urinating competition."

Tony paused, but didn't feel the humor. "Pissing match."

"Whatever," she said, exasperated and angry. "If you had stayed where you were, one of us might have seen something. Instead, I had to worry about convincing Leslie that you were not a cop and that I had nothing to do with the investigation."

Her words stung him a bit. Probably more than they would have if they hadn't been the truth.

"I know," he said quietly. "I know I screwed up. But that doesn't mean that Drew isn't our best suspect right now. You need to put whatever feelings you have for him aside and figure that out before it's too late."

"Leave me out of this," she seethed. "This is about your issues, not mine."

"My issues?" he laughed. Sarcasm dripped from every word. "I'm just fine. You're the one who's sticking up for a serial killer."

"He is not a serial killer," she said strongly. She suddenly found herself more forceful than she would have considered when it came to Tony. "And you are just jealous. Just because you cannot stay objective does not mean that I am incapable as well."

"I am perfectly capable of being objective," he defended, knowing somewhere deep down that it wasn't exactly true. He chose to ignore the comment about being jealous, seeing as how it was mostly right.

"Except with Jeanne," she said. It was the truth, and yet it stung. It hurt even more when it was Ziva who threw the words at him to begin with.

Tony blinked, surprised. "I see. Remind me again, how did everything turn out with Roy?"

It was a low blow. He knew it, and did it anyway. He tried telling himself that it was justified, but all the prods in the world about Jeanne wouldn't do the same damage. Jeanne was alive. She was off somewhere, going on with her life, but she was alive. Roy wasn't. The haunted look that came into Ziva's eyes for the quickest of moments reminded him of that all too well. But the words were there, hanging malevolently between them, and there wasn't a single thing he could do to take them back.

Ziva remembered the last time Tony had brought up Roy. It had been in the men's restroom at NCIS, and it had hurt her just as much then as it did now. She'd healed; his memory didn't stab through her like it used to. If anyone else had brought it up, she could have answered ambivalently and pretended that she'd never loved a dying man. But anyone else didn't bring it up; Tony did. The one man she was willing to put every barrier aside for was the reason she needed them in the first place.

They stared at each other for a moment, saying nothing. They both wondered if the damage just incurred was permanent. At that moment, Tony would have given anything in the world to take away the pain he'd brought to her face. He remembered thinking every other time she'd adopted the same expression, that he would have killed anyone who'd done it to her. He never would have thought that meant he would hate himself the same way.

Ziva just wanted to disappear. The man she loved had purposefully thrown an old wound in her face and she didn't think she had the strength to face him. He would see the heartbreak, and he would pity her. Pity had never been something she wanted or needed. Especially from him.

"Goodbye, Tony," she said quietly, breaking him into a thousand tiny pieces. He wanted her to yell, to scream, to hit him. He would sit and take it while she beat the hell out of him if it meant that she wouldn't walk out of his life. But walk was exactly what she did; she was gone before he had the presence of mind to make her stop.

He listened to the echo of the door closing for a long minute before he realized that she wasn't coming back.

--

Ziva climbed in her car and turned the key in the ignition, immediately turning off the radio. She didn't need the noise; her mind was loud enough. Tony's patronizing voice was still ringing in her ears, reminding her that this was the man she'd fallen in love with. The one who could hurt the easiest was the only one she wanted to be with. At that moment in time, she despised herself. She loved Tony despite his words, but she hated herself.

It would be so much easier if she didn't want him. She could take his little comments at face value, give him a black eye for the insolence, and go on her way with a smile on her face. If she didn't care, it wouldn't have been his face she saw every night in Israel. He wouldn't have occupied every thought for months. If she didn't love him, the pain buried deep in her chest wouldn't be there.

These thoughts continued for her entire drive home. She drove slower than usual, content to wallow in her thoughts rather than set a land speed record. She hardly remembered parking the car or locking it; her brain didn't kick back in until she was almost to her door. Her senses hadn't completely kicked in until she had walked through the door and she felt the kiss of cold steel against the small of her back. Instinct kicked in then, and she moved to rid her would-be attacker of his weapon. They anticipated the move, however, and pushed her forward. She stumbled and turned around to face him, reaching to her hip for a gun that wasn't there.

"Not so fast, Anna," Kenny said, keeping the barrel of the Glock aimed directly at her face. "Take it easy."

"Kenny?" Ziva asked incredulously. "What are you doing?"

"Self-preservation, sweetheart," he said. He held up the badge she'd left lying on a table. He read the name aloud, and brutalized its pronunciation. "Ziva David, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I guess Leslie was right. You are a cop."

She turned up her chin defiantly and looked him square in the eye. She had a gun in a drawer only a few feet away; if she could get there, everything would be fine. She could shoot the bastard, point Gibbs and the rest of the team in the right direction, and the case would be closed. All she needed was an excuse to open the damn drawer.

He eyed her curiously. "What are you thinking about, Ziva?"

"The quickest way to kill you," she said honestly, indifferent to whatever action he decided to take. Men like him hadn't scared her in a long time.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that," he said. "See, I have this backup plan all worked out. If I don't check in at a certain time with a certain phone number, someone dies."

"Are you going to kill me, Kenny?" Ziva asked, almost amused.

"Oh, not you," he said, shaking his head. "You're just going to disappear for a while." He grinned manically. It reminded Ziva of a piranha. "It's your buddy that's going to get it."

"Buddy?" she asked conversationally, using her misunderstanding to hide the fact that her heart had leapt into her throat. "Do you mean Drew?"

"No, the other one," he said and scratched his head in thought. "Oh, what the hell was his name? Oh! That's right... Tony."

Sudden, paralyzing fear gripped her so hard she couldn't breathe and time seemed to slow as she watched Kenny laugh at the horrified look on her face. All she could think of was the fact that the last time she saw Tony, they'd fought. She'd said terrible things to him, with the intention of hurting him. She had no escape plan now; she wasn't going to risk moving even a muscle if it meant Tony's life and not her own.

"Do you have him, too?" she heard herself ask. She didn't know how she'd managed to speak; as far as she knew, she had yet to breathe.

"Tony? Nah," he said nonchalantly. "He's at home, probably working off steam from that argument you had." He paused to appreciate the look on her face. "That's right, I was there."

"Are you going to kill him?"

"Not planning on it," he said. "Unless you decide to fight us. My friend's keeping an eye on him for now. I don't check in, Tony gets plugged. You resist, try to pull anything, and it's the same deal."

"They will look for me," she informed him. "You cannot expect a federal agent to disappear and no one notice."

"Yeah, see, I had time to think about that while you and lover boy were duking it out," he said. "Way I see it, they don't investigate people who just take off."

She eyed him. "What do you mean?"

"This is how it's gonna go," he instructed, leaning against the doorway with his gun still aimed carefully at her. She could tell by his stance that he wasn't playing with the weapon; the man could probably aim well enough to fatally wound a moving target. "We're gonna go back there, and you're going to pack your bags."

She stared at him curiously. "You cannot be serious. I am taking luggage?"

"Call it an extended vacation," he said with the ghost of an amused smile. "We'll take the bags out to the car, real nice like, and we'll take a little drive. You cooperate, and Tony wakes up in the morning fit as a fiddle."

"And what happens to me then?" she asked pointedly. She was no martyr; she had no intention of dying needlessly.

"We'll talk about that when we get there," he said. "No use in worrying about something that might be quite a ways ahead."

"Then you leave me no choice," she said, resigning herself with a tired sigh. She kept her eyes locked on his gun. "Do not shoot. I am moving to pack my things."

"Ladies first," he said with a sly smile, following her down a dimly lit hallway. He didn't worry too much about her jumping him; she seemed pretty spooked at the idea that the other guy could get hurt. Confident that the night would go smoothly, he hummed a tune as he walked and let a little bounce come into his step. The whole kidnapping thing was turning out to be a lot easier than he'd thought.

He watched carefully as she pulled suitcases out of a large closet and at them on the bed, watching for anything that could have been considered a signal to the rest of her team. She worked quickly and quietly, all her movements brisk and efficient. She folded clothes with military precision and placed them in the suitcase until the suitcases were full. He watched her pile in a few pairs of shoes with little interest and zip up all the cases, saying nothing as she went. She looked up at him when she was done.

"I am finished," she said. "What now?"

"Let's take a walk," he said, gesturing toward the bedroom door. "Oh, wait a second. I forgot something."

Ziva stopped in her tracks, a suitcase in each hand. "What now?"

"Cell phone," he said simply, extending a hand for it. Ziva stared for a moment before placing the desired device in his open palm. "They have GPS in everything, nowadays. Can't take any chances."

She watched, saying nothing, as he took the battery out and tossed the two pieces on the bed. They had almost walked out of the room when, to Ziva's dismay, he turned back around to pick up the phone.

"Forgot," he said simply and pulled his shirt sleeve over his fist to rub the phone down. "Fingerprints and all that. Go ahead and touch it a few times for me, will you?"

Ziva complied, though she wasn't quiet sure why. It bothered her that Kenny kept his tone so congenial, it was unnerving to think that the madness they had surrounded themselves with sounded like ordinary conversation. She wanted him to scream, to curse, to lunge at her. Instead he walked back down the hall with his gun hanging at his side, humming a song she didn't know. It was no comfort at all to know that he was in his right mind. Sometimes the sane ones were the ones you had to worry about.

They had almost walked out the door when an idea occurred to her. It may not work, but if anyone understood it would be Tony.

"Wait," she said, stopping in her tracks.

Kenny turned. "Don't start causing problems now, sweetheart. You've been so good."

"I am not," she said and brought a hand to the gold Star of David around her neck. "I have to leave this."

He stared, curious. "Why?"

"It is a GPS locator," she lied, albeit flawlessly.

"Why would you tell me that?" he asked, eyeing her. If it was a trick, he didn't know where it was going. If the look in her eyes was any indication, there was a good chance she was telling the truth.

"You have my partner," she said. "If you had found out later, he would die. I am not willing to risk his life for my rescue."

Kenny only smiled. "Good thinking, pretty girl. Go ahead, then."

Ziva pulled hard on the pendant, feeling the links snap and fall to the ground. She bent to pick them up and sat them aside on a table to her left. Kenny followed the movement with his eyes, resting finally on a random object she'd almost forgotten she had.

"Hmm," he said, eyeing it and turning the title to face him. "Good movie."

"I have not seen it yet," she said, and picked up the handle of her suitcase. "I still hope to, eventually."

Kenny chuckled. "Honestly, sweetheart? I wouldn't count on it."

She let him lead her out the door and locked it behind her, leaving her fractured pendant lying atop the DVD Tony had given her days before.

Hostage.