AN: Thanks for the reviews — they made an insane few days at work much easier to take. Some overdue replies to guest reviewers: NCISfan: Thanks! Yes, Abby loves going undercover. And thanks for your comments on their voices! Yes, what is the motivation for all of this. The team's going to be wrestling with that for a while. Guest: Thanks! Yes, lots of questions, and more than seem to pop up every time they answer one.

Chapter 10

Vance followed Abby into the small stucco church a few blocks from the shelter.

"Are you Sr. Martha?" Abby asked the nun inside the door.

"You must be Abby," she said. "Sr. Jerome has told us so much about you over the years."

"This is my father's friend, Leon," Abby said. "He's retired Navy, so when he heard I had offered to help out at the shelter, he wanted to come along, too."

"I thought Sr. Jerome said your father was coming?" the nun asked.

Vance held his breath, but Abby's cover was flawless.

"Oh, Dad had to go out of town for work," Abby said. "That's the other reason Leon volunteered to help — he knew Dad felt horrible about having to cancel on me."

"You're a good friend, and a good person," the small nun said to Vance. "Now, normally we walk over to the shelter, but with the weather what it's been, we've been driving."

"I have room for two more in my car, if you'd rather save on the gas," Vance said.

"Thank you, that's most generous," Sr. Martha said. "Sr. Cecelia and I greatly appreciate it."

As Vance led the way to the car, followed by Abby and two nuns, he had a brief moment where he wished Jackie was still around — she would have loved to hear this story. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, and wondered if he'd ever get to a point where thinking of her didn't blindside him — and then decided he wasn't sure he ever did want to get to that point.

When they walked into the shelter, Marques was waiting for him. Vance didn't recognize any of the other faces from the ones he'd seen while prepping for the op, but he hadn't looked at every employee. Once introductions were done, Vance was quick to volunteer to bus tables.

"Reminds me of my days growing up and helping with the bills for my momma and daddy," he told the elderly nun.

"Such a nice young man," Sr. Martha said.

Vance nodded and took the apron Marques offered him, then started working his way around the room. He wore the glasses, since Abby said the nuns would wonder why she had them on since they weren't bowling. He hadn't wanted to ask.

"Anything unusual, director?" came the voice in his ear.

"Nothing," Vance muttered, keeping his voice low. He started out at the edges of the room, clearing places without disturbing the people still eating. There were just a couple of people who were done already, ones who had inhaled their food. Vance took the dishes back to the kitchen and set the bucket down on the counter. He headed for the entryway to the shelter, where the offices and entrance to the sleeping areas were located. He approached Marques, who was helping one man with his meal. The man leaned heavily on a battered metal cane, a dent in one side making a sharp V in the metal tube. Vance made a note to see if he could find anything that he could "retire" from the undercover wardrobe room that would be in better shape for the man.

"Do you need some help?" he asked Marques.

"We're good, but check in the front, see if anybody else could use a hand," Marques said. "Night like this, we get everybody in here, no matter how they're moving."

Vance nodded and continued on his way. But the front of the shelter was empty. Vance took advantage of the window to look in all the offices, scanning around, then moving on. "You getting this, DiNozzo?" he asked quietly.

"Bishop's analyzing the footage now," DiNozzo said. "If our weapon's in there, we'll find it."

Vance had just finished with the last office when the shelter door opened and half a dozen men came in, bundled up in mismatched clothes, their faces red. One limped heavily, another hobbled along with a wooden cane, dragging one foot a bit. A third had a faded scar slashed across his face.

"Son of a bitch, it's cold out there," the man with the scar said. "Let's hope they have something to warm us up."

"We've got beef stew tonight," Vance said. "The sisters brought it over."

"If they could stick to food and stop bringing those damn beads we'd be a sight better off," the man with the cane said as he headed for the food line.

They had to dodge men starting to come out of the mess area, so Vance headed back in before Marques started wondering what he was really doing.

He took his time cleaning the tables, careful to listen to the conversations around him.

"You hear about the guy who got himself killed?" one person said to the men around him.

"What was he doing down that way?" the man with the scar replied. "It ain't safe down by that bridge. If the cars don't get you, the punks will."

"Foolish," a third man said. "Shoulda known better. Got him killed."

More conversations, more comments wondering about Briggs' death. Nobody seemed to know the man well, but they'd all heard he was dead. He hadn't heard anything that would help solve the case, though, and he hoped Abby was having better luck.

Vance was on his third trip to the kitchen with dishes when two guys at the table in front of him got into it, arguing over something. One of the men in front of him jerked away and stumbled into Vance, sending the dirty dishes flying. Vance managed to stay on his feet, but his apron was a mess and so was the floor around him. He looked around for a mop and saw Abby, hands in the air, backing up. His hand drifted to where he'd hidden his SIG.

~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~

Abby followed Sr. Martha into the main room, then into the kitchen.

"You'll handle the vegetables, won't you dear?" the nun asked her.

"Of course," Abby said. As the men came through the line, she watched to see if anybody was acting unusual. Although as she saw the number of people with behavioral quirks, she realized that deciding what was unusual would be tough to quantify. She looked up and saw Vance in the dining hall section of the room, clearing tables after the veterans had finished. He looked every bit the busboy in his T-shirt, jeans and apron, and Abby saw him stopping to talk with the men as he went, a smile on his face. He looked much less scary when he smiled.

A clank in front of her brought her back where her attention should be. The man leaned his wooden cane against the metal table from where it had fallen, his balance shaky as he straightened up.

"I'm so sorry," Abby said. "I should have helped you with that — I just wasn't paying attention."

"I don't need help," he said, scowling. "I need carrots."

"Oh, right." Abby dished out some of the steamed carrots in the dish in front of her. "Would you like green beans, too?"

"They taste like nothing, not like real green beans," he said. The traces of a southern accent edged his voice, and Abby had to smile.

"Once you're used to Southern green beans, these just don't seem the same, do they," she said. "My mama made the best green beans in Jefferson Parish."

"Louisiana girl," he said. Then a tray crashed to the ground behind them and he jerked, the movement sending his cane to the floor again. "Damn noisy people. No respect. This isn't a barn; people shouldn't treat it like one." But he kept looking around, and his shoulders hunched in. "It's a trap."

"I've got it," Abby said, bending over to pick up the knobby wooden stick.

"No! Back off." The man crouched in on himself, his hands balled up into fists. Abby stepped back.

"It's OK," she said.

"Stay back," he said.

She stepped back, her hands held up in front of her so he could see them. "I will," she said, trying to keep the shakiness from her voice.

"Is everything all right?" Sr. Cecelia asked. The tiny nun joined them and Abby didn't know how to answer her. "Kenneth, would you like more beef stew?" she asked.

"Get her away," he said, pointing at Abby.

"Now, Kenneth, I'm sure Abby's just trying to help you," Sr. Cecelia said. The tiny nun held out a bowl of stew. "Go eat it while it's hot," she said.

Abby held her breath, but the man took the bowl from her and put it on his tray on the table. She let him bend over to pick up his cane without trying to help this time. He straightened up as she put a few more carrots on the tray.

"Here you go," she said, making sure to have a big smile on her face. "That's a nice walking stick."

"Found it outside a brownstone in Georgetown when I was up there once," he said. "Somebody was just throwing it away. Neighbor said the old man who'd lived there had croaked, guess it was his." He moved on, one hand gripped over the knobby top of the cane, looking back over his shoulder a few times. "Don't you go stealing it now."

Abby moved back behind the table and returned to serving the men as she tried to see what was going on near the director. He had something smeared all over his white apron, and she could see Marques over there with a mop. The director caught her eye, and she smiled at him. Maybe she could keep him from telling Gibbs about that little incident. After all, she was never really in danger.

~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~

Tony cranked up the heat as he started the ignition, drove two blocks and waited in the van for Vance and Abby to drop the nuns off and rejoin them. The side door slid open less than five minutes later, sending a rush of cold air into the van that was just starting to warm up.

"Everybody OK?" he asked.

"Messy, but unhurt," Vance said. "Did you find anything?"

Bishop shook her head. "I can go over the footage again back at the office, but I didn't see anything that looked like the murder weapon Abby described."

"Did anybody act suspiciously?" Tony asked.

Vance tapped a finger on the console. "Pull up the video feed from when I was helping the men inside the lobby," he said.

Bishop reached over and found the right spot, then hit play. They listened.

"He didn't like the rosaries," Tony said after the one man spoke.

"But listen to him walk," Bishop said. "With his foot dragging, you can hear him coming even on this feed."

"Briggs couldn't," Tony said.

Abby nodded, her normally pale cheeks pink with cold. "The city outside is noisy at night, even in winter. The sounds would have all blended into a buzz or a hum for the petty officer, especially if he didn't have a visual to go along with them. One of my cousins, if he doesn't see anything to cue off of, his hearing's almost as bad as some of the people in my family who are completely deaf."

Bishop found a clear, full-body shot of him and started running facial recognition.

"Wait, that's it," Abby said.