McGee sat back in his chair, waiting. That was the one problem with running a computer search: the waiting. Waiting for the numbers to crunch, waiting for the correlations to finish correlating—that was the downside to doing his investigations online. He leaned back, feeling bored, letting his gaze wander around the nearly empty room. Can't even play solitaire. That would take up too much attention from the CPU and slow things down.

Gibbs: gone. He and FBI Special Agent Fornell had headed off for the airport, following up on the spotting of Captain Black. McGee hoped that the lead would come through; that would solve a lot of problems, even if the FBI refused to turn the man over to NCIS. Gibbs would get his crack at the man, and they'd be able to solve the case. Hopefully Gibbs would be able to drag out of the man why he'd gone after Abby and Ziva. Knowing Gibbs, Black didn't stand a chance in interrogation.

DiNozzo: gone. With nothing better to do, he'd gone after the cameras that McGee and Ziva had set up to try to catch someone in the act of altering the barcodes. It would have worked, McGee consoled himself, given enough time. There was always the chance that someone else was doing it, perhaps another suspect. McGee tried to look forward to scanning the tapes that DiNozzo was bringing back.

Ziva: gone. She'd gone downstairs to Abby's lab to look over what the forensics expert was working on, to try to figure out what it was that had Black so upset that he'd tried to kill them. It was a good spot for the Mossad officer; Gibbs wasn't about to let her out on the street with an arm in a sling and yet this would help move the case forward.

That brought Abby to mind. McGee wondered how she was, knowing that if anything serious was happening Ducky would be calling. He was glad that she was going to be all right—all right, that was, if they could get Black behind bars. McGee was under no illusion that either Abby or Ziva would be safe until the Black question was resolved. McGee was grateful that Ducky was with the hospitalized forensics specialist. The medical examiner was getting on in years, but the stories that McGee had heard…

Bored. The computer whirred quietly away, promising an answer in the next three hours. McGee contemplated his options: get coffee. Maybe get coffee and visit the men's room.

His eyes lit on DiNozzo's wastebasket, and he smiled. There was a single rose perched forlornly inside, wilting and turning black with dehydration. DiNozzo had responded beautifully to the discovery, dropping the thing into the trash as if it had cooties. It hadn't been the right time to offer a few choice bon mots, but McGee had patience. He could find out the name of the visitor who'd left the rose, simply by visiting the front desk. Yeah, that would be a good way to pass the time.

Moments later he was back, a smirk on his face. Theodore Cray, that was DiNozzo's not so secret admirer. The details were in the casebook in Ziva's neat handwriting, how Cray had revealed that he'd broken up with Lapini, when Lapini was more of a suspect. Ziva, with her own smirk McGee had no doubt, had added a single line about how Cray had tried to make a play for DiNozzo. 'Mr. Cray', she had written, 'appears to be what is known as a cop groupie, attempting to attach himself to a law enforcement officer. Since his affair with a naval guard was recently rebuffed, Mr. Cray attempted to cast his net toward Special Agent DiNozzo. Special Agent DiNozzo,' she added for safety, 'conducted himself with the utmost professionalism.'

'Utmost professionalism'. Right. McGee wanted to laugh out loud. No wonder the rose got dumped into the trash.

This could get really good. McGee chose not to interrupt his own computer, instead opening up DiNozzo's box and logging on.

It didn't take long for a routine search to come up with some interesting details to taunt DiNozzo. McGee began to catalog them, preparing them for those times when he'd need them to deflect DiNozzo's own gibes. Cray himself had been in the military, honorably discharged after injuries sustained in some sort of an accident. McGee peered at the screen, getting interested despite himself. What the heck; his own computer was still struggling to gets its electronic arms around the hunk of data he'd fed it. It wasn't as though McGee had anything better to do. Well, actually, his latest novel was calling to him, but the rough draft was at home and McGee was stuck here.

What sort of accident? The record wasn't clear, and McGee started to get a clue. Cray, it appeared, had been struggling with his personal life. Some of his fellows took offense to his struggles and responded in a way that put Cray into traction at Walter Reed. The very quiet honorable discharge had occurred as soon as Cray could walk.

McGee could read between the lines. Cray made a pass at someone and paid the price. Not the way life ought to happen but then, there were a lot of times that life didn't go the way it ought to. Look at Seaman McDonough: killed for guarding a warehouse. According to Ducky, he should have died a few years hence from liver failure. Someone had cheated McDonough out of three years of life.

Past history. Cray had been out of uniform for two years. It wasn't clear what he'd been doing for those two years. McGee peered at the address on the man's driver's license. Not a bad part of town; he must have landed a decent job after discharge. That went along with what he remembered about how Cray had been dressed when the man had deposited the rose onto DiNozzo's desk.

McGee whistled silently to himself, perusing the demographic data. Cray had been doing better than merely okay: he'd earned enough to be able to afford some property outside of the D.C. area, a nice little vacation home for himself. How had he done it? McGee's interest was whetted; professional curiosity, he told himself. McGee was an NCIS agent, and looking at people's backgrounds was what he did for a living. Besides, McGee was a novelist. Taking hints from real life to meld into new and unique sorts of characters was a novelist's stock in trade. Two birds with one stone. McGee could dredge up a whole bunch of clichés to fit if he put his mind to it, but the data on the screen was far more interesting.

Very interesting. Try as he might, McGee couldn't determine the source of Cray's income. Inheritance? Maybe, although nothing of that sort popped up. Son of a rich family, enlisted for a tour so that he could go into politics and use that as a campaign slogan: 'vote for me; I defended my country.' If that was the case, it didn't quite work out the way Cray would have wanted. Somehow, 'vote for me; I defended my country and got beat up for making a pass at my fellow sailors' didn't have nearly the same impact in a country wrestling with a moral compass.

There was always the ruby ring, McGee recalled. If Seaman Lapini were to be believed, Cray had given it to Lapini, which meant that Cray had gotten the stolen item from somewhere. Not McGee's job; DiNozzo was supposed to turn the whole thing over to D.C. Metro so that they could follow up. Petty theft was not what NCIS had time to deal with, not if it was done by a civilian.

***

Escape. It would have been nice if DiNozzo could have accompanied Gibbs and Fornell to Dulles to apprehend Black, but it wasn't going to happen. Fornell had the upper hand on this one. DiNozzo sighed, trying not to feel too bad. NCIS had bested Fornell previously, so it was only fair that Fornell win this round and, if DiNozzo was going to be honest with himself, the FBI had a lot more manpower to surround and contain. Black—and DiNozzo doubted if that was the man's real name—wasn't going anywhere. Gibbs would get whatever details he needed from the guy including just why he felt the need to crunch two of NCIS's finest, and the man would go away for a minimum of ten to twenty if not life.

Better be life in prison, just to keep the criminal safe. Ziva they expected to occasionally get scorched around the edges; the woman was a field agent and a damn good one. But Abby? Sweet little Abby? DiNozzo felt his blood boil just contemplating the injustice. If Gibbs didn't go after Black, then DiNozzo would and that only if he beat Ziva to whatever sly and devious scheme she'd cook up on the spot. No, the soon-to-be-dishonorably-discharged Captain Black had better hope that he'd be able to keep a few dozen iron bars between himself and the NCIS team.

Warehouse 352 loomed dark and large. DiNozzo parked in the lot, noting that at this hour, with the sun descending behind the massive buildings across the Potomac, the shadows were growing and melding into each other. There were a couple of cars, only one parked sensibly under the light; DiNozzo surmised that the owner had arrived much earlier when the choice spots were available. This lot serviced more than just this warehouse. DiNozzo could see a couple of lighted offices in the building two blocks down, officer types working late.

Not what he was after. No, DiNozzo had been reduced to pick up and delivery. Why couldn't McGee retrieve the cameras? DiNozzo felt like grumbling out loud, so he did. "Why couldn't McGee get assigned to this? He put 'em up. He should take 'em down."

DiNozzo knew better. McGee, with his vaunted MIT degree, was playing with his beloved electronic marvel, trying to narrow down the window of opportunity for escape for Black. Gibbs and Fornell were using that intel to actually apply handcuffs to a very deserving set of wrists.

Pick up the cameras, and the tapes along with them. With a lot of luck that DiNozzo wasn't counting on, they'd catch Black on tape switching the barcodes on the crates. DiNozzo snorted. Fat chance! Black had been ahead of them every step of the way. No, all they needed the cameras for at this point was to maybe pick up a little more evidence for the court-martial, but again: DiNozzo wasn't counting on it.

Although…DiNozzo's brain was working furiously. If Black didn't know about McGee, if he thought that Abby would be the one to review the tapes, then perhaps that's why he went after Abby. Although that wouldn't make sense, because the cameras went up after Abby went down, and anybody with any intelligence would realize that NCIS would just bring in someone else to review the camera tapes—

It wasn't a fist. It wasn't a crowbar, or a bullet, or any of a dozen hard-edged things that DiNozzo could name without thinking twice.

It hurt just as much. It stung his eyes, his nose, his lungs as he inhaled with the shock of it all.

It hurt even more as DiNozzo realized what was happening. Someone had just sprayed something directly at him, directly at his face, something that was rapidly shutting down his ability to breathe. Something that was shutting down his ability to think, to process oxygen. Something was shutting down his ability to live.

Blackness closed in, leaving one lingering image:

Teddy Cray.

What the—?

***

"That him?"

"That's him," Gibbs confirmed. Both men picked up their pace, not trying to seem overly obvious but subtlety had been discarded in favor of need. Dulles Airport was crowded at this time of the evening, with the short business flights from Atlanta and New York all converging and the erstwhile passengers hurrying through the exit gates. There was a surfeit of dark black trench coats and leather computer bags hanging over the shoulders of those trench coats: the businessmen were traveling light, quick in and quick out, home to the upscale two bedroom condo that was all that was left after the divorce. It was an existence for too many people convinced that their job was more important than family.

It was not the existence of Special Agent Gibbs, nor Special Agent Fornell, and it was not the reason that they had arrived at Dulles International. They did not carry computer bags. They did, however, carry handguns, legally licensed to use them. Both cautiously felt for the hardware, a casual reflex that neither one was truly aware that they had done.

Neither knew what their target would do. Best case scenario: a jerk of surprise as the two agents from different organizations closed in on either side followed by a sigh of resignation and a short walk to the waiting car. Worst case: neither agent wanted to visit that thought. It was enough that muscle memory knew what to do and would respond rapidly if it came down to that.

Words: waste of time and energy. A single glance between the two sufficed, carrying the details of the plan. Gibbs parted ways with Fornell, heading to cut off one of the corridors, noting the two agents that had been stationed at the entrance to another. Fornell, he saw, was moving toward the main exit. No escape there. Surround and contain: Black was going nowhere.

Maybe. Captain Black had dressed himself in civvies, trying not to stand out in the sea of trench coats. He even carried the obligatory laptop bag, and Gibbs spared a moment to wonder what was in that bag. Not that it mattered much; if it was a computer, McGee could weasel out whatever was in there—assuming that the FBI didn't grab the thing first. On the other hand, there was an equally good possibility that Black had something else in there, something like a sheaf of small green papers with some presidents' faces on them and the Treasury Secretary's signature signifying that they were worth something. Gibbs blessed the vigilance of the agents stationed in the airport; it would have been easy to let this man walk onto a plane and disappear forever.

Black stood up, automatically sliding the 'computer bag' back behind his hip. Gibbs hastened his step; had something alerted the man? He couldn't see what, but how many times had Gibbs himself had that sneaky little suspicion that not everything was right? This man had survived for a very long time by doing a lot of things right. Underestimating him now was a recipe for failure.

The target moved toward the exit where the two FBI agents stood and pretend to read their magazines. One of them oh-so-casually turned his magazine around; he'd been 'reading' it upside down. Was that what had tipped off Black? There would be words exchanged if Black escaped the net. Gibbs lengthened his stride.

Black moved. His pace was too fast for someone heading toward a boarding gate. They'd been spotted; Gibbs was sure of it.

The two FBI agents abandoned any pretense of waiting for their own flight. They tossed their magazines into the nearby trash, heading directly for Black who was aiming for the center of the vast corridor leading elsewhere.

Move, counter-move. Black grabbed a passerby—a woman with an ultra-expensive pink over-sized bag for her laptop and lipstick—and shoved her at one FBI agent. The agent grabbed at the woman in an attempt to keep his balance, and they both went down in a flurry of arms and make-up. Black pushed another arriving passenger—an older man, this time—and the second FBI agent met the same fate, even as to the lipstick. Gibbs noted the surprising item emerging from the older man's pocket and dismissed it as unimportant.

No more hiding. Fornell broke into a run, pulling out his piece. "FBI! Stop where you are!"

Was it any surprise that Captain Black failed to heed a lawfully delivered order to cease and desist? Black darted through the oncoming throng, seeking to lose himself in the midst of the innocent civilians, knowing that none of the FBI agents nor the NCIS man would shoot. There were too many people around, all of whom had taken note of the situation. Screams and curses abounded, with people running like a school of fish with a shark mowing its way through the center.

Lose Black in the crowd? Not gonna happen. Gibbs himself went for the high speed chase, following Black's progress by the number of people shoved aside.

Black darted onto the moving walkway, using the flat escalator-like affair to increase his forward movement. It didn't work out quite as fast as he wanted—there were too many others that he had to dart around or push out of the way—but it still meant that the distance between himself and the FBI agents was widening.

Not so for the NCIS special agent. Gibbs wanted that man! Captain Black had taken a shot at Officer David and had mowed down Gibbs's forensics specialist, and he damn well wasn't getting away!

In his youth, Leroy Jethro Gibbs had been a college football player and he hadn't forgotten all the old moves. Muscles that were decades older still remembered how to dodge through crowds, how to move into tight spaces and emerge unscathed. Bodies went down, pushed back and out of the way. There was no football to move toward the goal line but Gibbs had a more important goal in mind: Captain Black.

Tiny little woman in high heels: shoved to the side, squealing and going down to the dirty tiled floor. Leap over the five year old in his path. Almost trip over the rolling week-ender. Black was getting away! Gibbs doubled his efforts, dodged an obese man who out-weighed every linebacker that Gibbs had ever gone up against.

Vision narrowed down to one thing: the fleeing man. Black himself darted around people, leaving curses and bruises in his wake. The end of the moving walk way was coming close and beyond it three different options for escape.

Not gonna happen.

Captain Black pushed his way off of the walkway, running flat out, the computer bag flapping against his side. He spared a fast glance to see where his opponent was.

Big mistake. It slowed Black down for the fraction of a second that it took for Gibbs to make the most important tackle of his life. Gibbs left his feet, flying through the air.

He crashed into Black. People screamed, running away from the spectacle. Gibbs was pleased; less innocents to get hurt or get in the way. Black twisted as they both went down, reaching for the gun in Gibbs's hand.

Not happening. Gibbs was not about to hand this renegade captain a weapon. Black grabbed Gibbs's wrist, arms not long enough to reach the metal barrel. Gibbs hung on.

Black tried another tack. He smashed his case into Gibbs's face. Gibbs rolled back, feeling the blood gushing over his eye. Gonna have a shiner to match Abby's, that's for sure. Crazy what thoughts rolled through a man's brain during a fight. Where the hell was Fornell? Gibbs rolled to his feet, a micro-second after Black.

Black grabbed again at the gun. Gibbs used it as a club, bringing the barrel onto Black's own forehead, trying to give the suspect a black eye to match the one Black had already given Gibbs. Missed; too high. Gonna need stitches only.

Black rammed his knee into Gibbs's gut, forcing the air out. Gibbs curled in, straightened out in time to block a knuckle sandwich. Return blow—Black staggered back, and Gibbs dripped a bloody grin. That was for you, Ziva. Now for Abby. Gibbs moved in. Bastard's not getting away.

Black swung his computer case at Gibbs. Gibbs dodged. The case missed his head—but knocked Gibbs's own gun out of this hand. It skittered away along the dirty tiles, out of reach for both. Not a bad thing for Gibbs. There were times when a man needed to feel his hand smashing into a bastard's nose.

Then Black changed the rules. He darted his hand into his pocket, came out with a small but deadly handgun. He aimed.

No way was Black going to miss. Not from a distance of six feet.

And the worst part was that Abby wasn't going to get her payback.

Blam!