AN: Sigh... I've not posted in a week, and here we are, another filler. Well, I can't keep the whump coming all the time...

Prime Real Estate

Chapter 8

For a while there was complete silence, heavy and painful. Finally, Patch broke it. "It's all hot air," he said bleakly. "We all know my Dad's a coward. A complete coward. He threatens and blusters, but he won't do anything." He fell silent again, his face stiff with misery.

Fortunately, neither he nor Polly was practised in reading Gibbs and Tony's silent conversations. As she reached for her husband's hands and squeezed them, and he put his head on her shoulder, they didn't see the look that flicked between the two agents. Hastings alone couldn't do anything, but who was he mixed up with? And why? Predictably, it was Tony who hastened to reassure them. "No, you're right. But even so, I'd feel a lot happier if you were on that plane to Kentucky in the morning. If he came here... well, whatever, we don't want him anywhere near you."

He tapped the call log button on the answering machine, and wrote the number down. A few moments later he had the location from Abby. "Motel, Boss. Scranton – about halfway between here and Ogdensburg Prison."

"Is that where he is? Scranton?" Polly glanced nervously at the door.

"No," Gibbs said honestly. "He'll have moved as soon as he used his brain enough to know we could trace that number. I doubt he could get here by morning, whatever transport he's using, but we're going to stay here tonight anyway, and we'll get you on the plane tomorrow. You don't want to involve Spence, not now we're here. Did you book in your own names?"

Patch managed a brief smile. "No... we've been around Tony long enough to have thought of that. We're the Kidd family. Patch – pirate – yeah? And we're flying to Louisville, then we'll get a shuttle back to Lexington – you don't have to pre-book." He grinned awkwardly. "It 's not so much for us... and I'm not scared of him... it's for Mom. She's so much happier, and she never wants to have anything more to do with him. With... my Dad." His smile disappeared abruptly. "I have to make sure she knows he can never find her."

"What about the things he says he wants?"

"There aren't any. If he listened to his lawyer, he'd know. The house was sold; his share of the money, the buy-out and everything – what he agreed to, Mom wasn't greedy and he sure won't starve – is in a bank account administered by his bank. He agreed that they should do it. I have no idea how he's supposed to access it, that's between him and them; there's no way I can help. The things he wanted to keep from the house, clothes, everything," he sighed, "Mom really didn't want much... they're in a storage facility in Arkansas, he agreed to that too. He knows all that, he has the address. Or he knew it when he signed the agreements. He doesn't listen; he only remembers what he wants to."

He sighed. "No-one could ever accuse him of using common sense. I don't know what he thinks he's going to do when we finally do meet... I've tried to stand by him, but I'm not inclined to put up with his antics, and I'm not letting him anywhere near the girls."

Gibbs nodded. "Both of you," he said, "Get some sleep. You too, Tony. I'll take first watch."

"Boss -"

"Do as he says, DiNozzo," Polly said wearily. "You think we haven't noticed you're the colour of chalk? And quiet? I'm not even going to ask."

Tony just grinned back. Inside it was a different matter. Good. Don't, dear Pol, because you don't want to know, and I sure don't want to tell you.

She patted his shoulder. "Whatever... I'm glad you're here, in spite of whatever it is you've been up to."

He sat innocently down on the couch, and pulled the cushions towards him, but as soon as the couple left the room, he got up again, and crossed to where Gibbs was checking the window catches. His voice was low and urgent. "Boss..." There was something he knew about Hastings that he'd not passed on to anyone yet.

Gibbs put a hand on his shoulder; that always seemed to steady Tony, and held up a finger. "I know, Tony. Things are getting intense, and we're not much closer to knowing the whole picture than we were the day all this started." He pulled out his phone. "Get some sleep. We'll see the family safely away, and talk to everyone in the morning."

Tony stood his ground, looking mistrustfully at the phone.

Gibbs rolled his eyes, and tapped the keys. "Abby? Are the other two with you? Is McGee OK? Mmm. Stop what you're doing, all of you. Get some sleep. Yeah, we're fine. Going to be busy tomorrow though. Abs... tell me in the morning. Nothing we can do about anything right now. Get some rest." Click. He raised his eyebrows. Satisfied?

Tony smiled wryly. Gibbs was right, it would keep. He went back to the couch, kicked his shoes off and lay down very carefully, burying his head in the cushions. Gibbs went round the rooms checking windows and doors, including Lucy's room where she snuffled contentedly, stopping to watch her for a while. Then he went to the back door, opened it silently, and sat down on the step. He took the phone out again. "Hello, Kath..."

NCISNCISNCISNCIS

The sky was beginning to lighten, in an unenthusiastic, bleary way, as Thorley Swinson reached the outskirts of Washington. The weather forecast had said cloudy, with intermittent showers, and the grey cast to the dawn light seemed to agree with that prediction. The unattractive snoring of the large man in the passenger seat of the Jaguar added to Swinson's inner mix of anger and frustration.

Hastings was a liability. Swinson was a smart and shrewd man, and that wasn't just his own assessment; he was furious that his shrewdness hadn't been able to predict this. The man was a weird mixture of business acumen and bovine stupidity; and absolutely incapable of doing as he was told, even when it was clearly in his own best interests.

Swinson's plan had been to set him up as the head, or at least figurehead of a construction business, amalgamating all the interests currently run by his four – no, three cohorts, Kenyon, Da Silva and Flammand, who were getting in over their heads, and better suited to the application of coercion. Upwards of five hundred houses, and as soon as he had more land there'd be more... he was on the way to being a millionaire, and this idiot couldn't see that a part of that was his for the taking. At least, until he sent him back to prison, that was... Swinson didn't intend for him to see that bit of the picture until it was far too late. He'd at least needed to have him take over Ackerman's projects now, but he couldn't even trust him with that. Shame about Ackerman...

He'd heard Brock grumbling about his mother's old, bulky SUV, and that gave him an idea.

Ackerman was making too many mistakes... The organic dairy wasn't ever going to be a suitable target because planning permission had already been granted for another small organic food plant to be built next door. He'd hired crew on one site who were nothing but a gang of thieves. He hadn't checked that Caroline Yorke would be alone when they visited, he'd lost it and threatened her, and now the law had seen his face. Worse, they'd seen his own face, and the one thing he wanted to stay was unseen.

He'd powered up the laptop he used for one purpose only. (He called it BB, as in Big Boss, and smiled thinly at his own joke. He seldom indulged in levity, it was a waste of time, but this machine was the head of his little empire.) It was the only way, except for his own visible role as a mouthpiece, that the 'Boss' communicated with his men. "Take the old car," he'd had Da Silva instruct Brock. "It's OK, if you wreck it the Boss says I can buy you a new one. I'll call Ackerman and send him out to the site at Burke Lake, and I want you to give him a real scare on that steep forest road."

"You... you mean, run him off the road, Mr. Da Silva?"

"That's what he asked me to tell you. You want to go on working for him, don't you? He's a good Boss... who else would help you to get your mother's house sold so quickly so you can return home to South Africa?"

"Er..." still reluctantly, "yeah. Yeah."

It had been easy; he'd told Da Silva that simply stressing what the man wanted most would ensure his co-operation. When his henchman had emailed to say Brock had called later and stuttered almost incoherently that Ackerman's Tahoe had disappeared down a ravine and been swallowed up, he'd simply mailed back, 'Tell him call Swinson.' He'd been outwardly soothing, "Da Silva told me what happened. It's OK. Just do nothing, it'll be fine, go to your job as usual," inside he'd been elated. Problem solved, and once again, no-one could trace it back to him.

He glanced to his right, screwing up his face in disgust as Hastings made a sound between a gargle and a snort. Now this problem... The oaf wasn't even grateful that he was out of prison; seemed to take it as his right. He couldn't be trusted an inch to co-operate... the more he thought about it, the more angry he became at the size of the mistake he'd made. He was tempted to open the car door and just heave the man out in the middle of nowhere and wash his hands of him, but although anyone Hastings might complain to would understand exactly why, and Swinson knew he could easily talk his way out of trouble, it would be drawing yet more attention to himself. Things were not going according to plan.

He had to be at his desk at 8.30 am as if nothing had happened; he was pretty certain he'd receive a visit from NCIS sooner rather than later, so his unwanted package had to be found a shelf somewhere. After a while he pulled up outside Angela Brock's house, woke Hastings without ceremony and hustled him inside. 8.00 am; the construction workers would be on site by now, he was counting on Brock to be back to stop Hastings from taking off somewhere, and where the hell was the man?

NCISNCISNCISNCIS

Tony hadn't been surprised when he woke, to find he hadn't moved, at 6.30 am. He had been, and somehow hadn't been, surprised to hear low voices from the rear of the house; Gibbs... and Kath Wigg. He rose carefully, very carefully, with an arm wrapped round his middle, and padded out towards the back garden in his socks. Kath and Gibbs were sitting side by side on the back door stoup, and Tony knew better than to attempt the impossible by sneaking up on the Marine.

"Morning Boss, Kath," he said quietly as they looked round. "You said you'd take first watch, not the lot," he added accusingly.

Gibbs shrugged. "I'll sleep when I need it," he said unconcernedly. "You get enough?"

Tony could be just as non-committal. "I got what was available. I'll be fine." He'd stopped, listening as two things happened at once. An alarm clock beeped in one bedroom, and a baby giggled in another. Tony was through the door instantly, and emerged a few moments later, exchanging sappy, doting grins with his god-daughter.

It hadn't seemed any time at all, he reflected sadly, before they were escorting the family right onto the aircraft for the flight to Kentucky, and he'd wondered when they'd meet again.

Now they sat in Jeanette's domain; a room that usually seemed quite spacious – but with almost two teams and Abby there, and even the window-ledge commandeered for seating, maybe that wasn't quite the right word any more. The one missing person entered; Ollie, staggering under the weight of breakfast, and everyone fell on the contents of the box he carried. Gibbs waited with barely, no, Tony thought, unconcealed impatience, but an army marches on its stomach...

"So," he finally said heavily. "What have we got?"

Ziva nodded at Roy Fordham. "We went to Swinson's home, intending to ask him what he knew of the 'shadowy boss' that Brock spoke of, and what had prompted him to work for Arthur Hastings' release from prison. He was not there; it was late but we wondered if he was still working, so we went to his offices. He was not there either; we will try again this morning. We also need to find out if he has any idea of Hastings' whereabouts. We have put out a BOLO on Hastings, but we have no idea of what he is driving."

Roy held up a hand to forestall the next question. "Yes, we did call the Scranton motel; they 'knew nothing'. Local LEOs have gone to pick up any security film they can; they'll get it to us for Abby, ASAP."

All eyes went to the forensic scientist, but she shook her head. "Hey... don't look at me! I'd had no physical evidence since the air rifles until I got what Brock attacked you guys with. Fingerprints were his. End of story. I'm just here to keep an eye on McGee."

It was Kath's turn. She said irritablyly, "Ollie and I spent most of the evening trying to track down Ackerman, with no luck. There's a BOLO out on him as well. The next thing's to talk to the other three guys that Jinny identified; the problem is, unless we dig deeper, maybe, we've got nothing that would stand up in court to accuse them of. Where threats were made, no witnesses. Where damage was done, ditto. Everywhere we look, asses have been covered. And we're having to do all this in our spare time, in between cases."

"Except for me," Jinny said happily, the most cheerful person in the room, and Ollie gave his two co-conspirators a grateful grin. "I'm officially still on sick-leave," his wife went on gleefully, so I can work as much as I want." She held up a finger, and went into a lecture. "Now, class... I have identified – ah, forget it." She went back to being Jinny. "I looked at the seven – that's seven, guys – someone stands to make a fortune – construction sites that those four lovelies are already operating; in every case it's houses that are going up; in every case there was a small business there. It may be worthwhile seeing if any of the owners of those businesses are willing to talk about why they sold up. I think they may have been easy to intimidate; there's no record that I can find of any of them having made a complaint to the police."

There was a murmur of agreement. "Nice work, Jinny," Kath said.

Tim straightened in his chair, and cleared his throat loudly. "And I," he said with the most smug grin he could muster, "have found someone who is willing to talk."

That got everyone's attention.

"Father Charlie mentioned sabotage to an organic dairy," Tim began.

"Dang," Tony said. "I heard him say that, and I just forgot with everything else that was going on."

"You and me both, DiNozzo," Gibbs growled.

Tim grinned. "I found it, well, Chris Coppi did, it's in Virginia. He was actually about to send the file over when I called him. I spoke to the owner last night; he said he'd not been bothered for a couple of weeks now, and the land next door had been bought to start another organic food business. He'd spoken to the owners of that and they hadn't been bothered at all. Looks like the heavies gave up because they couldn't take them both on. Anyway, the guy's very willing to tell us what he knows, and when I said I couldn't drive just now, he said he'd come over this morning."

"Hmm," Gibbs said with grumpy pride, "Good work, McGee."

Everyone thought for a few minutes, then Kath said thoughtfully, "So – we've got the Prime Real Estate thing," she made quotation signs, "and we've got Hastings senior. Are they connected by anything other than the coincidence of the same lawyer?"

Tony frowned. "Gibbs doesn't believe in coincidence. "Apparently he survived in prison by toadying to some fairly heavy guys -"

"You been checking on him, DiNozzo?"

"Yes, Boss." Tony was matter-of-fact. He was pretty certain that Gibbs knew, cuz Gibbs knew everything, that he regularly checked on an assortment of jailbirds with possible grudges against team members, and hell, he knew that Gibbs knew there wasn't much he wouldn't do for Lucy. "That's what I was going to tell you last night. I still think he's not man enough to act alone, or be one of Shadow Boss's heavies though." His voice had a chill to it, for all that his words were light. "Well, we find the old windbag and ask him."

"We, DiNozzo? Is that the royal 'we'?" Kath asked severely. "You let the able-bodied ones do the finding."

Tony gave her the slow sideways sort of glance that always made Ziva feel twitchy. "I am able-bodied, Kath," he purred.

"I might have believed you if I hadn't spent most of the night talking to your Boss," she replied in the same tone, which made Tony grin, Gibbs look inscrutable, and everyone else fidget as badly as poor Ziva.

The Israeli spoke reprovingly. "Before Roy and I take ourselves off in search of missing lawyers, I should like to know what we intend to do next. I do not think from what has been said so far that we should still be doing this in our spare time."

"Agreed," Gibbs said. "I'll talk to Vance."

"I'll talk to the Chief," Kath agreed.

"McGee and I -"

"Will stay at your desks, Tony." The younger man, opening his mouth to protest, was stilled, as Gibbs knew he would be, by the use of his first name. "See if you can raise any of those owners that Jinny found, and get anything out of them."

Tony nodded, although he wanted to argue the toss further. He looked across at Tim, remembering how the younger agent had had to gingerly straighten up before he spoke. McGee was in just as crumpled and second-hand a state as he was himself, and he knew he couldn't expect his friend to take it easy if he wouldn't. Gibbs saw the glance, and looked at Tony. His eyes said Good. Look after him and you'll look after yourself. Aloud, he said, "Come on. I'll take you guys back to base. Then I'll find Hastings for you, DiNozzo."

Tony sighed. "Don't damage him, Boss. I want to do that."

"Sure."

They were all about to troop out of the room when Jinny's desk phone shrilled. "Jeanette Cadogan... Hi, Chris..." She listened for a while, with only the odd 'Mmm', said goodbye and disconnected. "Chris Coppi, if you hadn't realised. Gasoline flowing into Burke Lake... they followed it upstream. Found a Tahoe in the bottom of a gully, plunged a hundred feet down from the road, registered to a Victor Ackerman. Ackerman inside it, very dead."

TBC...