Author's note: Sorry about the extended absence, if anyone missed me. :-) To make up for it I'll be posting another chapter either later tonight or tomorrow.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but if anyone didn't see the first chapter of a second NCIS story I've been insprired to write...well, there's a first chapter of a second story up here. You should go, like, read it and stuff.

Tony liked NCIS better in the half-lights at night. He liked the quiet phones, the shadows everywhere. The skeleton crew, the chance to settle in and really focus without worrying about impressing anyone with his wit or skill.

But the squad room wasn't empty when he walked out of the elevator, and his eyebrows flew up when he saw who was there.

She was so focused on her computer that she didn't seem to have noticed the elevator arriving, and he peered over the wall and got just a glimpse of what looked like bank statements or financial records on her screen.

He cleared his throat just to watch her jump, and smirked as he moved around her desk and to his own. "Working late, David?"

She glared at him for a moment, but nodded at her screen. "Gibbs says they were planning to escape somewhere. Perhaps Colin still wishes to go."

"Gibbs doesn't think so."

"Gibbs thinks Colin wants McGee dead – I agree with that. But afterwards? Colin is not insecure with his own abilities, particularly his ability to kill. He has too much ego to regard it as a suicide mission."

Tony thought about that. "Might be onto something there. So what are you checking?"

"Pam Ayers' credit cards and bank account. McGee said something about ordering tickets, and it's fair to assume they would impose on the woman's hospitality enough to buy tickets from her funds." She sighed and pushed at the keyboard. "But there's nothing."

Tony dropped into his chair, jabbing the button to turn his monitor on. The background on his desktop was old mugshots of the three Dougherty brothers – it wasn't his usual style to want to be reminded of a case that way, but this one had been different even before they grabbed Tim.

He stared at the display for a moment, thinking about leaving Gibbs' house, leaving Tim in bed trying to sleep after being woken up by nightmares.

Thinking about Tim.

He lifted his hand and looked at it for a moment, feeling Tim's shivering hand clenched to it. He could see that last shy smile, that quiet 'thanks'.

Tony still didn't know what all those bastards had done to him.

"Tony."

He looked up and across to Ziva's desk. "Mmm?"

She studied him. "Are you all right?"

He shrugged, pasting on a grin. "Just trying to think of where to start to track this bastard down."

She sat back, dark eyes staying on him as though he was on the other side of an interrogation room table.

Tony raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"Nothing. It's just that I am almost...impressed, actually. By you."

Tony grinned. "I'm impressive. Don't you hear the legends they tell about me around here?"

"I'm choosing to ignore those so I can maintain this sudden good impression I have of you." She smirked at him before turning back to her keyboard. "I have seen you joke your way out of many situations that you should take seriously. It's gratifying that for all you tease McGee, you do not attempt to make light of this case."

"Jesus." Tony rolled his eyes, thinking of Abby. "What is it with you guys? You really thought I was going to brush this off? I really think I have grounds to be offended by that."

"Your history paints a pattern, Tony. Admit it."

"I have taken things seriously before."

Ziva smirked, and looked ready to retort. But the smirk faded and she looked back at her screen.

Tony turned to his own, but there he was stuck. They didn't exactly have a lot of leads, and he didn't have any evidence to tear apart. Nothing but that house and the hysterical old girlfriend's statement.

But she'd been no help – and he still didn't trust her entirely. She had been a little too loud in her reaction when they came busting through the door. Maybe it was genuine hysterics. Maybe it was a way to warn the brothers.

Meantime, Colin had taken a stolen car to and from the hospital, had to have stolen a different one by now, and was no doubt shacked up in some motel that didn't ask questions and wouldn't watch the news for mugshots of wanted men.

Which meant they had nothing. Unless they wanted to dangle Tim out in the open like a carrot and hope he took the bait, it was his move. And Tim wasn't about to be Dougherty bait.

He sighed. "We got that woman's witness statement around here anywhere?"

Ziva looked up. She flashed him a sympathetic look and hefted a few sheets of clipped papers. "Would you like to save yourself twenty minutes of reading? Apparently she indicates that the Doughertys are not very nice men."

Tony grimaced. "Gee, that'll help."

Ziva smiled in shared frustration and turned back to her monitor.

Okay. Tony turned back to his screen, urging his brain to fire up and get to work. Okay, Pam was a dried-up lead. His search of local friends and family had turned up next to nothing. Where to look next?

"Thanks."

He'd never seen Tim smile like that before. At the risk of being needlessly girly...it was kind of sweet. A sweet look. Sort of shy, sort of awed.

Tony's eyes were on his monitor again, but he wasn't really seeing it. He was trying to hold on to that one brief moment. That one little smile.

He'd had too many bad images to picture lately, he wanted to picture something good.

Anyway, he didn't necessarily have a crush on Tim. Just because he was feeling a little overprotective of him lately...hell, that wasn't exactly surprising. Tim was...he was like Tony's kid. Like his student or something. The green techie nerd Tony had reared up into a full-fledged agent. Tony felt responsible for the guy.

Just because he was somehow certain all the sudden that it was going to be a life's ambition to make Tim flash that sweet, shy smile again as often as possible...didn't mean any damned thing at all. It meant Tony was a friend to the guy.

A friend who held his hand and brushed his hair out of his face, and obsessed over the idea of him watching gay porn in his apartment.

God. He seriously wasn't even fooling himself a little bit.

But come on. Just because he liked Tim didn't meant he liked Tim. Tim was...was a pasty little dork with a permanent pout and the tendency to ramble on and on and on and on about the most boring crap in the entire world.

Even if Tony was starting to let himself get drawn to guys again for the first time in almost a decade, Tim McGee was not his type by any stretch of the imagination.

Tony dated beautiful women and men who...who were as much like Tony as possible. He liked strikingly good-looking people. He liked cut jaws and designer threads, styled hair and charming smiles. He liked men who talked like money, and women who talked like gold-diggers. He was shallow, damn it. He always had been, and it had worked out pretty well so far.

When he tried to get in deeper with someone he got Jeanne. Lesson fucking learned there, right?

Tim was a good-looking guy, but not in that generic, magazine-ad way that Tony liked. Tim was too smart, too serious. Tim attracted strange women who usually turned out to be nutcases or killers. Or Abby.

Tim wanted to be needed. That's what Abby said. Tony wasn't needy. Not at all.

The laughter in his brain after that particular thought was so sharp he nearly echoed it out loud.

Okay, yeah, he was a needy bastard. Fine. What he needed was attention, and flattery, and validation. Tony was self-aware, he knew he could be needy. He craved compliments, he wanted any woman in a mile radius to be constantly aware of him, even if he wasn't interested in them. He wanted...

He wanted intensity.

And okay, if the Abby voice in his head didn't stop sighing out the word 'intense' every time he got close to the thought, he was going to stab himself in the fucking eye.

Tony wanted to be adored, and Tim was am honest, sincere, sweet guy who probably bought flowers for his dates and blushed a lot and kissed on the cheek. That wasn't adoration the way Tony craved it. It was nice, probably, but it wasn't passion.

Jesus. He had a fucking case to solve, a psychopath to hunt down, revenge to seek. He did not need to be thinking about McGee and intensity and passion all at the same time.

He didn't even know where these thoughts first came from. Why the hell couldn't he turn them off?

Colin Dougherty glowered from Tony's desktop, and Tony glowered back for a moment before he looked up and across the aisle.

"Hey."

Ziva hummed in answer, pecking at her keyboard with a furrowed brow.

Tony sighed. "You ever have a thought...like a realization about something, and it just all at once changed everything, and...and all you want to do is go back in time an hour and never have the damned thought in the first place?"

Ziva blinked, looking up and over at him. "You're speaking of...epiphany? Is that the word?"

"Yeah." Tony thought about it. "I guess. Like when your parents told you there was no Santa Claus. All at once all these stupid childish dreams are blown, and you never look at things the same, and it seems like it'd be better if they never told you the truth. And yes, David, I see you playing with your damned necklace. Fine, not Santa Claus, but you know what I mean, right?"

Ziva's slowly growing smirk bloomed into a smile as she let her fingertips fall from tracing the Star of David worn so faithfully around her neck every day. "I know what you're saying, but I don't agree."

"You think it's better to know the truth, even if it makes things worse?"

Ziva shrugged. "The truth kept you from being a grown man who still believes in Santa Claus." She sat back, seeming to sense that he was trying to speak seriously. "It is a uniquely American obsession to want to beautify and soften the world around you, even if you render it unrecognizable. But truth is not ugly, Tony. Truth is never a bad thing. It's in one's reaction to the truths about the world where the damage is done."

"Mmm." Tony frowned at his computer screen.

"Men such as Colin Dougherty, as ugly as they seem, can only exist because the capacity for such ugliness is in all of us. If it wasn't present in human nature as a whole, it couldn't exist in individuals."

Tony clicked up his email just have something covering up those three faces. "That supposed to make me feel better? Knowing we're all potential Doughertys?"

"It isn't supposed to make you feel anything. It is truth. It isn't changed by whether or not you feel better or worse. It simply is. The capacity for that evil is in all of us, but look at how few people actually indulge in it. Colin Dougherty is all the more horrible to us because he is a rarity. Because we don't see this sort of evil every day."

Tony thought about that. He shot her a frown from over his computer. "This is the most complicated optimism I've ever been witness to."

She rolled her eyes at him, venting a small, contained sigh. "I am trying to answer your question, that's all. You asked if I ever had a moment of discovery that I wanted to go back and not have simply because it made the world seem more complicated. And no, I have never wanted to unlearn a truth. Not even a hard truth. Because whether I know of that truth or not, it exists. If we had never run across this case, Colin Dougherty would still exist. I would rather know of such things than go around in some blandly glittering world where we all love each other and everything is fine."

"Well...some people don't need their innocent glittering worlds ruined." Tony scowled at her. "Isn't that why we do what we do? So innocent people don't have to get touched by ugly things like killers and Doughertys?"

She raised her eyebrows. "We do what we do so the killers and Doughertys can be stopped. We are not responsible for protecting the innocence of ordinary citizens." She regarded him, as if trying to tie all his words down into some specific thing so she'd know exactly what was bothering him.

"I've never understood the concept that the weight of a crime could go up or down depending on the level of innocence of its victim. Murdering a civilian is no better or worse than murdering an officer. Murdering a child is no more or less tragic than murdering an adult."

Tony humphed. "A lot of people wouldn't agree with you about either of those."

"Perhaps. To people like us, the death of a fellow officer will always cut deeper. To a parent, the murder of a child will always seem like the worst evil imaginable. But those things are relative. What is true for all parents is not then true for the entire world. Murder is murder, an evil thing no matter who the victim is."

She tilted her head suddenly, as if she was on the trail of what his real issue was. "A crime committed against McGee would be no worse than the same crime committed against you."

Tony hadn't quite been ready for that turn. He was hinting and hiding one sudden overcomplicated feeling, he didn't realize the other overcomplicated feeling he couldn't shake would get brought up.

"Tim's innocent," he said, faint, even as he knew that argument was just what she was disagreeing with.

"And if he were not so innocent, he would have deserved it?"

Tony's eyes jerked over to her, sharp. "I didn't say that."

"You think it. Because you think that you yourself deserved to take on his pain, because you're not as innocent as he is. It's the same sentiment, Tony, whether it involves you or not."

Tony glared at her. "You are fucking annoying, David."

She blinked, but smiled a moment later. "You did begin this conversation."

"I wasn't even thinking about this kind of thing when I began this conversation," he groused, turning back to his computer and idly pulling up his useless list of old Doughtery friends and family who still lived in Maryland or Virginia.

"What were you thinking of, then?"

"None of your business."

"Mmm."

Tony didn't trust that answer, but he hunched over and stared at his screen as if there was anything of use on it. He could feel Ziva's eyes on him, but he ignored her. She could pry answers from him too easily, and he wanted some time to sort his head out before he went telling people.

Except...

Maybe it would help to talk to someone out loud about it. In Tony's experience saying things out loud tended to either make them more real or reveal how false they were.

But not Ziva. There was someone better, someone who would dig right to the truth of the situation. Someone who wouldn't be shocked and possibly offended by the very idea of it.

He glanced at his watch. Almost four AM. Practically morning. Abby might be in by then. He stood.

Ziva looked up instantly.

Before she could quiz him on where he was going, though, Tony's attention was drawn by a phone ringing.

Tim's phone.

It was strange to get any calls at four in the morning – NCIS wasn't like a police station that way, at least. Who'd be calling at four in the morning, when they knew the phone wouldn't be answered? And calling Tim of all people?

There was one very obvious answer to that.

Tony met Ziva's eyes for a sharp second and then practically dived from his desk to Tim's, grabbing the phone before it could go into voice mail.

"NCIS," he said, voice low.

There was a moment's pause – surprise, Tony thought. Whoever it was wanted to leave a message.

But a moment later came the voice he had suspected he'd hear. "Back at work already, hero? You think you're gonna find me before I find you?"

Colin Dougherty's voice caused a real, physical reaction in Tony. His stomach seemed to lock, his face flushed with heat. His spine was ramrod straight as he clenched the phone against his ear.

"You're not going to find him, Dougherty. You hear me? You had your chance, and he got away from you. You're not getting him again."

Ziva was out of her chair by then, but had grabbed her phone and was speaking urgently and quietly – getting the switchboard to record and trace the call, same as they would have done that first time, when Tim passed his desperate message to Gibbs.

"This isn't the little hero then? Not Gibbs either. Must be that other one, the smart ass."

Tony grinned, right and fierce. "That's right. The one who's going to put a bullet in your head if you so much as threaten my partner again."

"I'm not threatening anything. I'm telling the fucking future. He's dead, smart ass, and if you want to get in my way you can be just as dead as he is."

"What's wrong, Dougherty? You that ticked off that someone got away from you? Just can't accept defeat gracefully?"

There was a slight pause. Wherever Dougherty was – and Tony wasn't picking up any kind of sounds that would offer a clue – he obviously felt free enough to raise his voice.

"Your partner killed my brother. He's a dead man and I don't care who I have to run through to get to him."

"Your brother? Oh, right. Clancy. The one you threw out like trash. The one all bloated, stinking up our morgue downstairs."

Tony's words to Tim earlier hadn't been false – he would have gone through the whole thing to protect Tim. He sure as hell didn't mind provoking Colin now, getting some of his attention away from Tim.

So he kept speaking, smirking into the phone. "Poor Conor, huh? You don't care about getting the guy who killed him? Oh, I bet you didn't even know he was dead."

"Conor is dead?" The words were cold, hard. Dangerous.

Tony didn't give a shit. "Don't be upset. Think of it this way – he's keeping Clancy company. I bet they got to take the same handbasket down to hell. At least, that was the idea when I planted the bullet in his skull."

"You..."

"That's right. Me. So I tell you what – you knock off the chicken shit phone calls and come pay me a visit in person. We can work out all our differences face to face."

"You just moved up to second on my list, fucker. Don't worry about that. You'll get me face to face."

"Why not right now, Dougherty? Be a man and face me."

"Second, smart ass. There's still one name ahead of yours. And I'm not dumb enough that I don't see you're trying to distract me. Or keep me on the phone for a trace. Tell your partner I'll be seeing him soon."

Tony winced at the click ending the phone call. Fury made his knuckles tighten around the phone until his entire hand ached, but that moment gave him enough control to lower the phone and look at Ziva.

She frowned right back. "Not enough time to trace it, I'm sure. But we'll have most of it on tape."

"Great. So Tim can hear it first hand." Tony looked at the silent phone, hand twitching at the sudden urge to pick it up and throw it across the fucking room.

But the heat of anger cooled, and he set the phone in its cradle on Tim's desk, resigned.

"I'm going to kill him." He looked back at Ziva.

She tilted her head, her dark eyes serious.

He frowned. "I know it like it's fact, like it's already happened. He isn't going to live through this. No way in hell."

Ziva moved back to her desk, her face grim but her lack of argument telling. "First we have to find him."