Thanks to my beta Kristen! Almost forgot to update tonight...
Chapter 7: Hope and Faith
Gibbs stood outside in the blazing sunshine, staring at a building that Lily had dragged him to.
He might have been to Paris before, but he had never entered Sacré-Coeur. It was impossible for him not to have seen it though: it stood on top of the highest point in the city. And the white stone from which it was made dazzled in the sunlight.
His gaze passed over the domes to the two green horsemen that seemed to guard this place.
Someone crashed into the back of him.
He turned and was not surprised to find that no one was there. A huge crowd of people were gathered around the front of the basilica; some looking at the spectacular view, others waiting in groups for their tour to continue. People were darting this way and that, making it difficult to navigate through them.
Although Lily seemed to be finding it easy. To top it off, her head was down and she was mouthing wordlessly the words on a piece of paper she held.
Gibbs shook his head softly. Lily was still an enigma to him, although he wasn't quite sure whether it was due more to her stated desire to annoy him at every turn or because she didn't seem to live in the real world. His other idea was that she liked to be something of a mystery because she enjoyed the kick she got out of it.
He still didn't trust her completely. Sure, he trusted her to watch his back in a firefight, but not to drive his car, watch his house, keep an eye on his team, keep her eyes on a suspect – mainly because the minute he turned his back, she would be flirting with said suspect – not kill someone, play mind games, and definitely not to stay where he told her too.
Thus, when she had dragged him away from the back of an ambulance and told him she planned to go see someone, and if he was supposed to be protecting her then he had better come along as well, he had thought it was a game of some sort. When she had started up the incredibly steep hill with a grin on her face, he felt his gut feeling had been confirmed.
But now she seemed to be focused. She had not had the paper in her hands when she had arrived and he suspected a contact had given it to her. With a bit of luck, they would finally find out what was happening. He was getting fed up of her false leads.
Even if it was exposing a side of her that he had never seen before.
Normally, she was impatient, threatening to shoot anyone and everyone if things didn't go her way immediately. Now, she was focused, determined, and waiting for something to come along. Although he could tell she just wanted this to be over, he admired her restraint.
He didn't fancy being around when her restraint wore off.
She smiled as she reached him. "A name," she stated.
"Anything good?" he asked.
"Pierre Leraye," she answered. "Low level guy from what I can tell."
He managed to get a glimpse of the paper and cursed silently when he realized it was in French. When this was over, he was going to get Jenny to teach him as much as possible.
"And my contact reckons he's still in the city, which is fine by me," Lily continued.
"On with the wild goose chase?" he checked.
She grinned impishly. "Sure."
As he followed her away from the basilica, he decided to try to address the topic of her upcoming nuptials again. He was aware of how scared she was, remembering his first remarriage after Shannon and how he had been a bundle of nerves for the whole thing. He wanted to help her to think everything through.
"After Saturday," he began. "You going to leave your job? Settle down somewhere and live out the rest of your days in peace?"
She snorted. "You'll have to drag me kicking and screaming from the CIA," she warned. "I'm not leaving that place without a fight."
He chuckled. Although Lily no longer mentioned it now, he knew she had been planning to leave the CIA after her son's birth. When her first husband died, everything had been thrown out of the window as she went after his killers. If she left the CIA after marrying a second time, Lily would consider it an insult to her dead husband.
He was getting surprised at how much he was enjoying her company out here. It helped that there was no one else for her to show off to – not that it normally stopped her, but she did enjoy an audience. For the moment, they were doing quite well. Her cell phone going off made him grin again.
"Shepard," she answered.
He was prepared to bet any money that this was going to involve her wedding.
"What do you mean; you've sold my ring to someone else by mistake?"
He winced. How many more things could go wrong? If he were a superstitious man, he would have said these things were bad omens. But he didn't believe in such things.
"Then I want you to either get my ring back from her or make me a new one. I don't particularly care, as long as it's all sorted for Saturday."
He made a mental note that when he eventually did marry Jenny, if he ever did, he was going to get a complete list of everyone Lily had used for her wedding and then avoid them all.
"Because I am fully prepared to drill holes in your knee-caps, that's why." She ended the call abruptly.
"Wish you were back in the States?" he carefully queried.
"Very glad I'm here," Lily groaned. "If I was in the US, I would be torturing everyone and slowly losing my mind."
"I'm booking that padded cell for your honeymoon," he joked.
"Thanks," she replied, seriously.
Tony DiNozzo glared across the table at Jackson Daniel.
What kind of idiot handed himself into a traffic cop? The man had practically begged to be arrested, according to the report he had seen. Thankfully, someone somewhere had recognized Mrs. Mallard from the BOLO and sent both of them along to the Navy Yard.
Even so, who in their right mind handed themselves in? Daniel had kidnapped someone, kept her hidden for 48 hours and then decided to jack it all in suddenly. What would possess him to do such a thing?
And then Tony remembered that the kidnapped person was Mrs. Mallard, who upon seeing him five minutes ago had commented that he needed to lose a lot of weight. He personally couldn't put up with the woman for half an hour; Daniel should be given a medal, considering how long he lasted.
It was obvious that the man sitting across from him wasn't the brains of the outfit. To keep the cops off his tail, he should at the very least have dropped her off somewhere and run away. Or kept her drugged up. Or gagged her when she became too much to handle.
Mrs. Mallard had been left in the capable hands of Abby, who seemed to be one of three people in the world who could stand her. The others were Ducky, naturally, and Gibbs. But with the Boss on foreign soil and Ducky testifying in court at the moment, Abby had been the only one left. She had happily taken Mrs. Mallard into her lab and the Probie had been ordered to try to take a statement from her.
Sometimes Tony liked being in charge. He got to give all the bad jobs to the Probie. He knew that if Gibbs was here, he would end up with the old lady. Gibbs had an evil streak.
Jenny had left her office to go to the court, ready to tell Ducky the good news the minute she was able to. Ducky was going to be amused to learn that his mother had been located within minutes of him turning his cell phone off. Meanwhile, Ziva was waiting behind the glass window, ready to observe his interrogation.
He took a moment to study Daniel. The younger man was visibly nervous, aware that he was looking at a long prison sentence. He was rocking backwards and forwards slightly; Tony hated people who couldn't sit still.
Even though he couldn't either.
"Jackson Daniel," he spoke. "Twenty one, resident of Maryland, been arrested a few times for drug possession."
"I'm clean now," Daniel stated.
Tony had a funny feeling he was lying, but decided not to call him on it. Yet. "And you handed yourself in for kidnapping. Not the brightest bulb in the box, are you?"
"Huh?"
He rolled his eyes. Great. He'd got someone who probably had problems tying his own shoelaces. At least flipping him should be a lot easier.
"I couldn't take her anymore," Daniel confided. "I needed to get away."
"Right…" Tony drawled. "So, who hired you?"
"No one," Daniel lied.
"Okay, Einstein," Tony smirked. "Well, you took her across state lines, so I can add those charges to the mix as well. Let's see how long you're looking at…"
"Wait a moment," Daniel begged.
Tony resisted the urge to smile. Sometimes it was so easy.
"It was a guy. I never saw him before, but his name was Frank Cromwell. He hired me to kidnap her."
