Sorry for such a hiatus. College got a bit in the way. Hope you'll stay with me.


Chapter Eight

Six-Fifteen in the Evening, Thursday, September 23rd

The charger driven by Gibbs with McGee in the passenger seat pulled in behind Tony and Ziva and, behind them came two more cars filled with Oceana NCIS agents and military police for back up. They immediately began to set up a perimeter.

Not only seasoned in any rescue operation, but also experienced in pulling out one of their very own, Tim, Gibbs, Tony, and Ziva slipped on bullet proof vests and loaded their guns before the last of their backup had even had the chance to get out of their respective cars. Tony and Ziva took the back door with McGee and Gibbs heading up the front stairs. They each knocked once, again announcing themselves before Ziva kicked down the back door and McGee, the front.

Instantly, McGee and Gibbs were confronted by two armed assailants moving down the inside stairs. Shots fired from both sides as the suspects moved backwards inside the house. McGee was able to get the taller, better shooter, in the shoulder and from then on it was difficult for the man to even lift the gun to shoot, let alone shoot straight at Gibbs and McGee.

The smaller man was clearly less experienced, and rather than stay put and fire shots at Gibbs and McGee, he turned and ran, only to be confronted by the gun wielding dynamic duo of Tony and Ziva – entering through the rear kitchen.

With less than three more shots fired, both assailants were taken down and cuffed. As McGee and Tony cuffed the men and read them their Miranda rights, Gibbs and Ziva scoured the house for any signs of Rachel or Megan Bradley.

They raced up the stairs and tore threw empty bedrooms and bathrooms, frantically yelling clear each time they determined the emptiness of a room.

Ziva couldn't help but feel a pit developing in her stomach. What if Rachel had been found sometime between hitting the panic button and their arrival at the scene? It had been almost ten minutes. Anything could have happened.

She exchanged a frantic look with Gibbs as they both realized that neither their newest teammate, nor their missing teenager were inside the rundown looking farmhouse.

Downstairs, Tony and McGee had handed their suspects over to the local NCIS agents and military police.

"They are not here," Ziva called as she trotted down the stairs, Gibbs following close on her heels.

"McGee," he snapped, "I thought you said that GPS thingy had a small radius."

"It does," McGee responded, looking genuinely confused and displeased with what he thought would be his newest favorite device. He pulled the GPS companion out of his pocket and examined the coordinates again. The red dot was still flashing. "It's here," he said, "She's got to be here."

The team moved back through the house, opening closets and large cabinets to make sure that they hadn't missed anything. Outside, Tony and McGee crawled under the raised deck and still came up empty-handed.

Then Gibbs spotted the matted down bush further back in the yard. He waved his team over and they navigated through the overgrown brush until a small shed came into view.

Ziva's heart rate skyrocketed. This was when she would find out whether or not Rachel was safe. Tony edged in front of her and the look between them silently agreed that Ziva shouldn't be the first one to see what they were about to find.

"Federal Agents!" he announced.

And then the door was down.


Two-forty-eight in the Morning, Sunday, October 10th

Tony's first coherent thought was that he swore that he'd turned his alarm clock off. And then he realized that he wasn't at home, but in a hospital and that that beeping wasn't an alarm clock, but Ziva's monitors.

He was awake and out of his chair before another thought crossed his mind. The relief that flooded him when he realized that she wasn't coding was tempered by his realization that her heart was racing because she was in the depths of a terrible nightmare.

Callie was inside the room before he even reached the side of the bed. She clicked the alarm off and reached for the code button, but Tony cut her off.

"It's just a nightmare," he said.

"Agent DiNozzo, her heart is racing," she said, putting on the most authoritative voice he'd ever heard come from her mouth.

"Trust me," he said, kneeling down in front of Ziva. "It's not the first time." He brushed the hair off her face and rubbed his fingers down her cheek.

Callie nodded, though she felt like she was violating some medical oath, and stepped back.

"Come on, Zi, come on, baby," He gently shook her. "Ziva." If she really was coding, he was wasting valuable time by trying to slowly and gently wake her up.

Ziva broke from her sleep with some unsettling combination of a mangled sob and a gasping breath.

She didn't know what was going on, but then she settled her sights on Tony.

Callie's eyes flicked from the monitors, which were slowly returning to normal, to Ziva, back to the monitors – now in normal range. She raised her eyebrows at Tony before stepping out of the room. She conceded herself to the notion that the boyfriend knew a thing or two.

Ziva took a few deep breaths and then closed her eyes again. The shadow of a hand looming across her face slid in front of her lids and she waited for the calming motion of his hand running down her hair.

She took a heavy breath as his fingers came up for their second pass, but this time, he let them linger, slowly caressing her forehead.

"You're back," she breathed.

"Is that what you dreamed about?" he asked, pain straining his voice, "That I d-didn't come back?"

She closed her eyes again, "No." She waited a beat. "I was just back in … with Saleem."

"You're here with me." He reminded.

"I know," she said. She opened her eyes and stared at him for a moment. "You're clean," she observed.

"So are you," he remarked, his eyebrows rising just a little.

"Callie forced me. I did not want to get out of bed."

"How'd being on your feet feel?" His voice lightened at the prospect of her improving health.

"Heavy, tiring."

He pushed himself off the ground, his knees aching, and sat down on the bed in front of her. "Well you better muster up some energy because I'm taking you home tomorrow. We've been here long enough."

"Hasn't it only been twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-five hours too long."

She nodded and rested her head back against the pillow, a soft sight escaping from her chest.

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead before pushing himself off the bed and sitting back in his chair. He watched her regretfully close her eyes and attempt to snuggle back into the pillows and hospital sheets.

Within a few seconds, his eyes closed, too.

"Tony?" She asked a moment later.

"Yeah, Ziva?" He opened his eyes.

She'd never tell him, but sometimes she liked when he called her by her name above all of his other terms of endearment. He took such care with her name – like he'd never let it get hurt. It made her feel so safe and cared for that in that moment she swore she'd never feel pain again.

"I don't … never mind." She abandoned her statement, realizing that she had done it plenty of times before and she would probably have to do it again in the future.

"Ziva." He pressed.

"I just wish we were home tonight. It would be nice to be able to … feel you next to me. That is all." She tried to convey that it wasn't a big deal to her, but he knew it to be the opposite – especially if she had said it aloud.

He paused for a moment – rolling the idea around in his head and then got up and stepped outside the sliding door. "Callie?" he asked.

She turned in her chair and look at him.

"Would there be…. Is it okay… Can I crawl into bed with her?"

Callie observed the woman behind the glass and then looked at the man in front of her. She nodded. "Yeah, sure." She smiled warmly at him before reaching up and shutting the blinds in front of her. She had everything she needed on the computer.

Tony nodded and thanked her before slipping back into the room. He shut the door behind him and walked over to Ziva's bed, slipping off his shoes in the process.

He didn't know what she thought he'd been doing out there but when he set one knee on the bed and gently scooted her body over, she twisted her neck to look at him in bewilderment.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Making room for myself, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Are you sure that you can do that –"

He settled in behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist, his hand firmly holding her hip. "Shh, Ziva." He kissed the back of her neck. "Sleep."

"I don't think I can," she whispered back after a few silent beats.

He noted the regret in her words and moved his hand from her waist to stroke her arm. "Which question do you want me to ask?"

"I do not even know." She shifted so that she was lying on her back, wincing when her IV tugged.

He moved the hair off her face. "Tell me something that you're thinking."

She closed her eyes for a moment, "That I haven't had a nightmare like that in months."

"Something else." He prompted.

"That I'm glad you're here."

He ran another hand down her cheek.

"That I'm scared I'll forget you're here and remember other things."

"I'll hold you tight," he promised.

"Thank you."

"Hey," he whispered, "I wouldn't want it to be anyone else holding you tight and I wouldn't want to be here holding anyone else." He looked at her. "You know that, right?"

"Yes." She smiled though the glow never reached her eyes.

"Just checking." He contented himself with tracing patterns along her hairline as she stared at the ceiling above them. He knew that there was any number of things that she was thinking about that she would never tell him.

"When was the last time we stayed up all night and talked?" She asked, suddenly twisting her face to look at him.

"Ziva." He groaned. He knew what she was doing. She'd done it before.

"You don't remember?" she asked.

"I do remember, actually, Zee-vah." He traced her lips with his pinky. "We were on Martha's Vineyard. It was our first night and after a lovely candlelit dinner overlooking Edgartown Harbor, I made sweet, sweet, fiery love to you and then, we stayed up all night talking."

"You do remember."

"Yes, I do." He kissed her cheek. "Now, as much as I would like to repeat that night, I don't think here is the place. You might keep people up with your –"

She kneed him in the groin and though her force was considerably weakened, it still hurt and he didn't mind that because she got some joy out of the fact that she could still hurt him even at her weakest.

"That was a fun weekend," she mused. Her eyes flickered to him.

"Yes it was. I particularly enjoyed the following day, too. Do you remember what we did?" He asked. He would play along for a few minutes. He did enjoy talking to her.

"That was when you slept on the beach all day."

"If I remember, you took a nice nap on the sands of South Beach as well, my ninja."

"Only when I knew you were awake, you know it killed me not to be able to stash my gun anywhere."

"Oh, I know."

"We should go to the beach more often. It is nice and…relaxing."

"We'll make it a habit, baby." He promised. He would probably promise her anything right now.

She sighed and nodded and he sensed that she was dreading closing her eyes and succumbing to the darkness.

"Ziva, you need to sleep so that I can take you home and love you and take you to the beach. I can't control what goes on in your head, but I can promise that I will do everything I can to prevent it and stop it. Okay?"

She moved again, this time turning into Tony, burying her face into his chest.


Sunset, Thursday, September 23rd

Rachel was about to slip into unconsciousness, her body depleted from long workdays with little sleep and the drugs that she'd been infused with prior to ending up handcuffed to the wall, when she heard movement outside.

Her head snapped up.

"That's them," Megan gasped, "I think we're in the woods or something."

"What happens when they come?" Rachel asked, she needed to have as much information as possible; she needed to have as much of a hand as she could. "And who are they?"

"I don't know!" Megan cried, "Two guys. They just asked me all about my family – beat me up when I wouldn't tell them anything."

Rachel nodded. "Okay, Okay." She heard the movements, the footsteps getting closer. "I got this. Just play along."

Megan nodded before squeezing her eyes shut. Rachel watched the girl's lips slowly begin to move and she swore that she must have been praying. Truth be told, Rachel would have been praying too, but right now she needed to figure out a lie to sell to these people.

There were more footsteps then and they were right in front of the door and Rachel could tell that, this time, there were definitely more than two people coming to see them. She didn't think that that was a good sign for either her or Megan.

But suddenly a familiar voice erupted from the other side of the door and he told her through two simple words that today was a success. She'd done her job – she'd saved the innocent girl and maybe, though she'd never tell anyone it had been part of her motivations, earned a little more respect from people who thought they needed to keep an eye on her.

At the end of the day, though, she had to admit, it was better than her previous situation.

A foot connected with the rotted wood door, snapping the frame open and Megan's screams filled the air as Tony's face and outstretched gun came into view.

Her team had come for her.


Let me know what you think.

Cara