"Gibbs and the director seem very friendly," Tony mused thoughtfully, tapping his pen against his chin as he swiveled his chair back and forth. "You don't think we'll be getting a stepmother, do you, McGeek? Because I hate stepmothers."
"Tony, I'm sure they're just friends. And stepmothers aren't always like they are in the movies, you know," Tim said patiently as he continued typing away at his report. The elevator doors dinged open.
"Who said anything about the movies? I was talking about my dad's ex-wives. They never seemed to like me much."
"I cannot imagine why," a familiarly accented voice said.
Tony spun to see Ziva David standing by the elevator surveying the bullpen.
"Work begins earlier here than I expected. I thought being here by five would be ample."
"It is. We were here all night with Gibbs," Tim said slowly.
Tony cut him off. "What are you doing here again?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Gibbs did not tell you? I have been assigned to your team as a Mossad liaison." She set her backpack down on Kate's desk.
"That's not yours," Tony said sharply. "And considering how much fuss he's been kicking up over it, I doubt he added you in just like that."
Ziva looked around. "I shall need to sit somewhere. Why not this desk?"
Gibbs appeared from around the corner. "That's Kate's desk." He did a double take and pulled to a halt. "What are you doing here?"
"The director did not tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Gibbs growled.
Tony grinned from the safety of his desk. Anyone who knew Gibbs would be backing down right about now. Ziva was still naive enough to stand firm although even she was starting to look uncertain.
"She has added me to your team. I look forward to working with you."
Gibbs stared at her for a long moment, ignoring her outstretched hand before turning around and stalking up the stairs towards the director's office.
"That was unfortunate," Ziva muttered. "Is he always like this?"
Tony thought about Gibbs patiently teaching all three of them how to throw a football and allowing himself to be tackled by three giggling ghosts. He thought about steaks cooked any way they liked and hours at the gun range where he never once lost his temper with their slow progress. He thought about him patiently tucking them in each night, no matter what had happened that day.
"Pretty much," he told her brightly. "You sure you want to work here?"
Tim knew better, of course, but he didn't say anything to correct him.
They weren't about to reveal any of Gibbs' vulnerabilities to a Mossad assassin, after all.
And, more selfishly, there were some aspects of Gibbs that they wanted to keep for themselves.
Gibbs didn't bother knocking on Jen's door. If she wanted him to respect her new position, she needed to start respecting his. It was his team, not hers, and he didn't need or want her butting in on it.
He especially didn't want her assigning a professional spy who was probably more loyal to her than to him. If Jen wanted someone to tell her how his team was running, she should ask him, not send in someone who had the skills to learn far too much about his team and the ruthlessness to use the information.
Jen looked up as he slammed the door closed. "I see your manners have not improved, Jethro." She pushed her seat back and stood. "Your glare's become even more impressive, though."
Gibbs slammed his hands down on her desk and leaned into her personal space. "Care to explain why there's a Mossad ghost assassin assigned to my team, and I didn't know about it?"
Jen refused to lean back. "She'll be an invaluable asset."
"Any case she's involved in will get thrown out of court!"
"Her position as Mossad liaison will protect us from that. No one will even know what she is unless they go looking, and if they do, they'll find every 'i' dotted and 't' crossed. Believe it or not, I do know what I'm doing."
"Then do it with some other team," Gibbs demanded. "I don't want her."
Jenny raised an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you're so prejudiced, Jethro. Weren't you the one that pushed for Dr. Mallard to be allowed to hire Mr. Palmer?"
"I don't care what she is, I care who she is," Gibbs gritted out. "And she's not someone I can trust."
Jen just took her seat again and leaned back with a smile. "Well, trust, like relationships, takes time to develop. I'm sure you'll warm up to each other soon."
"You forgotten my rule about assumptions already, Director?"
A hint of frost crept into her voice. "My decision is final, Special Agent Gibbs. Live with it."
He slammed the door shut with the force of a gunshot. The secretary gave him a look as he stormed out.
Gibbs couldn't have cared less. He slammed the outer door too and stormed down the stairs in a cloud of fury.
"Officer David, my office. Now."
She followed him to the elevator without question, but he could see the questions forming in her mind when instead of punching a floor number, he hit the button to close the doors and then hit the emergency stop switch.
"Your office, sir?"
There was more than one thing they'd have to straighten out, apparently. "Don't call me sir."
"Noted. Does this mean I am on your team?"
He leaned up into her space just as he had with the director. "You'll follow my orders and my lead. You report to me and no one else. You protect this team no matter what happens, and if you've got a problem, you come to me. You follow my rules, and you'll be fine. Understood?"
"Understood," she said firmly. "Any other rules?"
He flipped the emergency stop switch back into place. "Fifty of 'em." The doors slid open. He started towards his desk.
She hurried after him. "What are they?"
"You'll learn 'em as we go."
"She's staying?" Tim blurted.
"You got a problem with that?" The words came out as a challenge, but he meant them. If his team had a problem, he'd do what he had to, and that included telling the director to go jump in a lake.
"Nope, I'm good," he said hastily.
"Good." The phone rang. Gibbs grabbed it and listened for a minute before setting it back down. "We've got a dead navy officer at the Smithsonian. Grab your gear."
"The Smithsonian, Boss?" Tony asked skeptically.
Gibbs shot him a look.
"Right. Smithsonian. Great place for a body dump. Finally, a criminal with class."
"Officer David," he snapped.
She turned to his desk. "Ziva, please."
"Weapons," he said.
"What?"
"Weapons. If you're going out into the field, I'm gonna need your weapons first."
Her eyes narrowed. "Fine." She pulled her gun from her holster and slapped it down on the desk.
"Backup."
She pulled a gun from her back reluctantly.
"And your other backup."
She was glaring now, but Gibbs didn't much care.
He did raise an eyebrow when instead of reaching for her ankle like he'd expected, she sent her fingers straight through her thigh and pulled out a gun from there.
She met his gaze steadily with a hint of defiance. "Being dead is not without its advantages."
Tony whistled. "Gotta admit, that's a cool trick."
"And the knives."
One from her belt, one from her boot, and one withdrawn from inside her arm.
He handed her the last one back before grabbing his gear and heading for the elevator.
"Rule nine," Tony explained to her as they hurried after him. "Always carry a knife."
"I would rather have a gun," she grumbled.
"Is our little Mossad assassin admitting she can't kill people as well with just a knife?" Tony mocked.
"I'm not your little anything," she hissed.
This was going to be a long car ride.
"So, how was your first case with her?" Jenny's smile encouraged him to give a gruff admission that things had gone better than he expected.
"Well. Assuming you count her endangering McGee by charging a man holding them at gunpoint and her stabbing herself after killing a suspect as 'well',"
Jen's smiled didn't completely disappear, but it did freeze into something almost painful looking. "I beg your pardon?"
Tim hadn't truly been endangered by the bullets which was the only reason he wasn't already yelling, but the attitude behind the action needed to be solved. "She doesn't understand how to work on a team, Jen." She was used to working alone, no doubt.
"But stabbing herself?"
Gibbs tensed a little. "Apparently, it's a Mossad technique." He tried not to let his full feelings on that loose since this wasn't actually Jen's fault. "A little bit of iron does wonders for keeping the blood madness down, and I've been told it doesn't hurt nearly as much as salt." Still painful, by the look on her face, but the blood lust had flowed out of her along with her strength. She had shrugged it off as if it were nothing.
Expected. Routine. Nothing unusual in either the death or her coping method.
Jen sighed. "I assume this means you still want her off your team, then."
And let some other team leader get a hold of her? One that wouldn't trust her or be able to teach her better ways to handle things? One that hadn't gotten McGee to hack into her file and thus one who didn't know exactly how young she was?
Eight years, nine months. Just a bit younger than Kelly had been.
She was dangerous, and if one of his boys got hurt because of her, he would salt her himself because she wasn't his yet, but -
"Never assume," he reminded her and turned to go.
"Jethro," she called just as he got to the door. "Is that it?"
He turned. "Is what it?"
She raised her eyebrows. "You haven't talked to me since the promotion."
He raised his hands in a gesture of frustrated innocence. "We just did!"
She got up. "You know what I meant."
He did.
"Supper tonight?" she offered. "Rooftop Grill, my treat."
"I've got plans," he told her.
Her face hardened just a little. "Another ex-wife in the making, Jethro?"
"Family," he corrected and slipped out the door before she could propose another time.
He checked his watch as he headed down the stairs. If he was going to make the lasagna he had promised them, they needed to go soon.
"It's getting late. Head home," he said for Ziva's benefit as he entered the bullpen.
"One minute to finish my report, Boss?" Tony requested, glancing up from his computer screen.
"You got sixty seconds, DiNozzo."
Ziva paused in the process of gathering up her stuff. It had been left scattered on the top of the desk since she still didn't have the key to it. "Is there some rule about not being here without supervision that I should be aware of?"
Tim paled. Tony sent his report to the printer triumphantly and flashed Ziva a grin. "Nah, just a carpool. We live so close together, it doesn't make sense to take separate cars. You want in?"
The lie - which was only a lie by what it implied when he thought about it - fell naturally from Tony's lips. Ziva's face cleared. "No, thank you. I prefer to jog to work." She paused by the elevator. "I will see you tomorrow?"
The question was directed a little pointedly at Gibbs. "Don't be late," he said gruffly. She nodded and disappeared through the doors.
Tim let out a long breath once she was gone. "That was quick thinking, Tony."
Tony shrugged and grabbed his gear. "It's sort of true, anyway. And it sounds better than that two federal agents never learned to drive."
"We've got licenses."
"Yeah, from Abby," Tony scoffed.
"We'll work on that," Gibbs promised. "Come on."
He could feel them both staring at him as they hurried to follow.
"Really? You mean it? Of course you mean it, you never say stuff you don't mean . . . " Tim's voice stuttered to a halt.
"You gonna be the one to teach us, Boss? 'Cause I hate to say it, but if so, it's a good thing we've already got licenses, 'cause there's no way we'd pass any driving test known to man."
"Ziva managed to pass one," he pointed out. "And it's me or Ducky."
Tony winced as he got into the elevator. "Point and double point."
"What's wrong with Ducky's driving?" Tim asked in confusion.
"Nothing," Tony said as the elevator reached the parking garage. "It's the music he always plays on the radio." He shivered. "It's like - Oh, hey, Duck! You heading home too?"
"Yes, indeed, and there's nothing wrong with my music choices. I'll have you know that I spent one memorable summer in London working with a composer there . . . "
"You know, I'm not really sure this apartment is worth having a housewarming party over," Tony muttered to Tim as he glanced around Ziva's apartment.
"There are not many buildings that do not check for a pulse," Ziva said defensively from behind them.
Tony spun, wide grin at the ready. "Ziva! There you are. I have to admit, despite it's . . . flaws . . . you've done great with the place."
Gibbs wasn't exactly an interior decorator, but he even he thought Tony's assessment was a little overly optimistic. He'd already caught at least three building code violations, and Ziva's attempts at decorating were aimed more at defense than aesthetics.
It wasn't his problem, though, so he turned back to Abby who was worrying over the dress code Jen was trying to enforce.
"I'll fix it, Abbs," he promised her.
He couldn't fix the half burned meat that was served for supper, but he ate it anyway and glared Palmer into submission when it looked like he was about to speak up. Ziva's smile was almost nervous, and food was food. As long as it wouldn't give them food poisoning, it didn't matter, and Palmer didn't have to worry about that anyway.
There was, however, one thing to argue about, so while the kids set up a Twister mat, whatever that was, he cornered Ziva in the tiny corner that passed as a kitchen.
"Rough neighborhood," he commented.
She shrugged. "I can take care of myself, Gibbs."
That was true enough, so he allowed it to pass without comment. "Nice if you to invite us all over," he said, putting just a little too much emphasis on the word all.
If she'd been undercover, Gibbs would have given her credit for not flinching as she waved the comment off graciously. As it was, it just woke the anger that had been lying dormant all night.
The others were laughing loud enough that there was no way they could hear this, but Gibbs lowered his voice anyway. "This stops now."
"The party?" Ziva asked with the perfect note of confusion.
"The games," he said with a look that dared her to pretend that she thought he meant Twister. "The lies. I don't know how you did things in Mossad, but while you're on my team, you'd better act like it."
Ziva kept steadily washing the dishes. "I thought we already had this conversation."
"We did," he said, gaze sharpening. "And we won't be having it a third time. You want a night alone? Fine. You want to invite a teammate or two over? Fine. You want all of us here? Fine. But you do not invite everyone but one. Being partners means watching your partner's six and trusting them to watch yours. You think this kind of thing builds trust?"
"It was a mere oversight, nothing - "
"You finish that sentence, and you'll have lied to me. You do not want to go down that path."
She looked up at him with a touch of defiance. "Tony showed up anyway. There was no harm done."
Gibbs was considering adding another hole to the ones dotting her wall. This was the woman Jen thought she could replace Kate with?
"Because Tim lied to him and said he'd forgotten to pass on your invitation," Gibbs said through gritted teeth. It felt like disappointment and grief were carving permanent lines on his face.
Something afraid and very young crept into Ziva's eyes as he shook his head, but it didn't stop him from turning away.
The tricky thing about gunfire was not that it could hurt him, but that he had to avoid it so that Ziva wouldn't discover that it couldn't hurt him. A ghost's Sight might be superior enough that they could see even the faintest wisp of a ghost, but that didn't make them bloodhounds that could sniff out their own kind. If they'd grown strong enough to pass as living to normal people, a ghost wouldn't know any different either. As far as Tony knew, his and Tim's secrets were still safe, and he intended to keep it that way.
He ducked behind one of the metal containers on the dock for cover. "There's an open container about twenty yards to our left," he told Ziva.
"Or I could just run out and shoot them," she said calmly.
"NCIS wants to keep you under the radar, remember?" There was a pause in the staccato rhythm of gunshots. He peered around the corner and fired rapidly at the two gang members he could see. One went down with a hole in his leg. His friend fired in return.
Tony ducked back to safety. "Besides, I don't want you to go all blood mad on me."
She rolled her eyes. "I will be fine."
"Yeah, if you stab yourself. That can't be healthy."
"I am dead," she said flatly. "Health has already - how do you Americans say it? Hit the lowest stone?" She spun to fire at the man trying to creep up on them. Three bullets hit him dead in the chest.
"Rock bottom," he corrected automatically. "Look, just humor me, okay? Oh, and cover me. That too."
He didn't want to leave her alone, but this was the best way to lure her into the storage container with him. He didn't care about the cover (much), but he did care about getting her away from more potential kills. He didn't like the look in her eyes.
Whatever her opinion of his plan, she did cover him as made a run for it. He returned the favor despite the face he knew she must be rolling her eyes.
Two boxes had been blocking the entrance. He hopped up on one and leaned out to return covering fire until Ziva joined him.
"That was completely unnecessary."
"Ziva, you do know how close we are to the ocean, right? One wrong move and you're in a puddle of salt water."
"I can deal with pain."
"Yeah, well - Don't!" He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him, dragging them both further back the line of boxes that led to the wall instead of onto the center of the floor like she had been moving towards.
"What?" Ziva snapped.
Then she looked down.
A wire net stretched across the floor. In bare feet, it would be uncomfortable for someone living.
But even from here, Tony could feel the chill.
"Iron," Ziva hissed. "More of it than I would like."
The gunfire went quiet. The sound of beeping and voices picked up instead.
Then the doors started to swing closed.
Tony lurched forward, but the footing on the boxes was uneven. He slid, falling hard, as the doors latched closed.
His hand was an inch from the floor.
He pulled himself up slowly and turned to look at Ziva. "They friendlies or hostiles, do you think?"
"We cannot risk it. They sound as if they are already moving off; they would not hear us anyway."
"Fair enough." He looked at the walls speculatively. "I don't see any wire there. What do you think the chances are?"
She touched one carefully. "I cannot tell. There could be something layered in the middle." She hesitated. "I would prefer not to risk it."
So would he. "Options, then?"
"Perhaps there is something useful in one of the boxes? At the very least, we might discover what it is those men were attempting to protect."
"Maybe, but I'm a bit reluctant to start ripping up what we're standing on."
"There is nothing to prevent you from stepping down onto the floor and then opening one. I will remain over here."
He tried a smile on her. "But we're having so much fun!"
"This is no time for games!" A thought occurred to her and she frowned. "You are not hurt, are you?"
He let out a breath in a big gust. "Nooo . . . "
"Then what possible reason could you have for not wishing to - " She stopped.
Let no one ever say that Mossad raised 'em dumb.
"You are dead." It wasn't a question.
"You know what, as long as we're careful, there's no reason we can't start opening some of these. Your knife's better at prying. Pass it over, will you?"
She held out a sheathed one mutely. His hand trembled a bit as he reached for it.
He snatched his hand back. "That's the knife you used to stab yourself with. Not that one. The other one."
"Tony," she said insistently.
She wasn't going to let this go. He had to give her something, or she might take it further up the food chain.
"You are dead," she repeated.
"Maybe just a little." He held up his fingers to indicate a tiny amount. "Eensy weensy bit dead. Nothing to worry about. Can I have the knife now?" He snatched it from her when she drew it out. "Thank you." He got to work on a box to his right.
"You need to tell Gibbs."
At least something was going right in all this mess. She still didn't know about the others. "I'm not telling Gibbs." The top of the crate was starting to come loose.
"He cannot make good decisions if he does not know what his team is capable of."
"He can't get charged with complicity either." The top popped open. "Got it!" He peered inside. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have . . . DVDs!" He picked one up and flipped it open just to make sure that was what was really inside. "I understand wanting to protect a good movie, but why bother with a ghost trap?"
"There could be something more incriminating in a box further back," Ziva said.
"Good point." He considered the open floor with the scattering of tall crates across it. "How do we get there to check?" After the initial line of boxes, there weren't any in stepping distance, and the nearest ones were tall enough to make jumping difficult.
Ziva sprang. She flew through the air for terrifying second before she landed on the next box, hard.
"The floor is lava," he muttered before gritting his teeth and jumping after her.
He didn't jump quite high enough. He banged against the box. His fingers desperately scrabbled for purchase on the edge. His legs swung a half inch over the floor.
Ziva grabbed his arms and pulled. He pushed his legs against the box to help her and managed to scramble up.
"Bad lava," he panted. "Thanks, Ziva."
She frowned at him. "The floor is iron, not lava. If it were lava, there would be no problem."
There was his literal Mossad assassin. "It's a kid's game. Didn't you play it as a kid?"
"No." She started considering their next jump.
"Did you play anything as a kid? Or is fun reserved for people who aren't baby assassins?"
"I was not yet an assassin," she said absently. "And of course I had fun. I have very fond memories of my father taking my brother and I out to the forest." She didn't quite have room to stand up on the taller crate. Instead of jumping, she stretched until her shape was barely recognizable as human before arching over to it like a Slinky.
"Okay, that was cool. Disturbing, but cool. Can you teach me?"
She melted back into her normal self. "I doubt it," she said flatly. "You have not killed as many as I."
"Right," he muttered. He jumped, letting himself slip into intangibility as he fell. He crashed through the wall of the crate and pushed himself up until he was on top of it. He solidified slowly. "So, forest with your dad. Camping?" Probably best to leave her brother out of it.
"He would leave us there and see if we could make our way back alone." She considered her next jump. "There are two boxes close to one another in that corner. If we jump to the closer one, we can pry open the other."
"Left you there," Tony repeated. The words felt bitterly familiar on his tongue. "That seems dangerous. Anything could have happened."
Ziva jumped. The box wasn't really big enough for two, so he stayed where he was.
She started attacking the next box.
She still hadn't said anything.
Oh.
"You know," he said carefully. "That's how I died. My dad left me alone at a hotel when I was ten. Probably would have been fine - I mean, hey, I was old enough to order room service, right? Except I was sick. Really sick. You?"
"I was foolish," she said. Her voice had gone distant and hard again. "I had made my way through the forest safely before. I was nearly back to my father. I grew complacent." She peered inside the box. "More DVDs. I suppose there could be something hiding in the bottom." She started to throw them out onto the floor.
Kate would have known what to say. Kate had been good at that.
He swallowed hard and said, "Hey, stepping stones! Toss some of those over here. We can walk on top of them."
Ziva frowned thoughtfully. "We could damage the contents."
"As much as I hate the thought of destroying copies of a perfectly good movie, I'm more worried about damaging us. Come on, if you feel that badly about it, you can pay for them when we get out of here."
Ziva shrugged and started tossing DVD cases onto the floor.
Tony slid down off the crate and landed on two of the cases. The discs snapped under cases slid on the iron wire and shifted under his feet.
He caught the edge of the crate. Okay, he could do this. It would just take some practice, that was all.
He crouched carefully and picked another case up with his fingers. He held his breath until he had pulled it safely away from the metal. He could feel the chill even from his relatively safe position.
Tony dropped the case a pace in front of him. He stepped onto it, balancing carefully, and then reached back for another one.
Just like pretending the floor was lava. He'd played that game a lot. It had been fun, leaping from designer couch to antique table and seeing how many rooms he could get through without touching the carpets he'd been warned not to get mud on. His mother had always laughed whenever she'd found him crouched and considering his next move. One time she'd joined him.
She'd been drinking, and it hadn't ended well, but it had been fun while it lasted. He had good memories of that.
Step, step, jump, drop . . .
His father had caught him once, too. He'd lectured him until he'd been distracted by a business call.
He had fond memories of that too. It was the longest he could ever remember his father paying attention to him at one time.
Admittedly, it hadn't been all fun and games. One time he'd misjudged the size of the room and had crashed into the wall.
The size of the room.
He stopped in front of the back wall and glanced back at the door. How big was it?
What about when compared to the outside?
"It's smaller on the inside."
"What?" Ziva looked up from her crate.
"The dimensions are off. I think there might be something behind this wall."
Ziva slid off her crate - a lot more gracefully than he had - and started picking her way across the floor on the DVD stepping stones. She carried a stack of DVDs for additional bridge building materials in case they proved necessary.
She ran her fingers over the wall. "There." She pressed an almost invisible depression. A door to the back swung inward.
There was a thin line of unlined floor where the door would rest when closed. The smugglers had been smart enough not to let people become suspicious by iron wire running under the door.
They had, unfortunately, started up a new net on the other side.
Ziva dropped the first of the cases she carried and made her way inside. It was darker in there. There weren't any of the small windows near the roof to provide light and ventilation that there were in the main area. Tony passed up his flashlight to her and followed her into the small space as best he could.
Another crate took up the majority of the space. Ziva handed him back the flashlight, dropped the DVDs, and started working on the latch.
It popped open quickly. She pushed the lid up -
"Ah!' The lid banged back down onto the crate. She drew her fingers back close to her chest for a moment, hissing.
"Ziva?"
"Iron," she said tersely.
"What do you need?" Tony asked immediately.
She waved him off. "I am not so weak as to disappear at a finger brush of iron." She gritted her teeth and used her knife to push the lid of the crate up. Tony handed her the abandoned stack of DVDs to prop it up with.
Ziva peered inside. "Money," she announced. "One hundred dollar bills stacked deep enough to fill the crate."
That . . . was a lot of money. He frowned. "Can you reach one without touching the iron?"
"Yes." She pulled one out and handed it to him. "You suspect it may be counterfeit?"
"Can't hurt to check. I don't suppose you're carrying a lighter?"
Her face brightened a bit. "One moment." She dug around in her upper left arm before pulling one out triumphantly.
"How much stuff are you carrying around like that?" he demanded.
She blinked at him. "As much as is necessary. Here."
Shaking his head, he flicked the lighter open and held the bill to it.
Fire immediately caught in the lower right corner. The bill curled up as a small stream of smoke started.
He dropped it to the ground and almost stomped on it before he remembered why that was a bad idea. Well, it was a metal storage container. It would burn out soon enough.
He looked at Ziva. "Trick I learned on the History channel. Real money doesn't burn."
"So we now know what they were doing here, but how are we to get out?"
Tony walked back into the main room and glanced at the windows. "How do you feel about pulling your little Slinky trick again and going for help?"
Blood didn't worry Gibbs. Guns didn't either.
He wasn't worried about trying to find two ghostly members of his team at a saltwater port. He was moving quickly, he was snapping at anyone who got in his way or looked at him funny, and he wasn't sure what he would do if he found a gunman that was still breathing, but he wasn't worried.
"Boss, you don't think . . . " Tim looked out at the dark water in the harbor.
"No," he bit off.
Tim's nod was more like a flinch.
"They're okay, McGee," he said, gentling his voice with a hard effort. "Trust me."
They were okay, because they had to be. They were okay. He wasn't going to lose them too, they were fine -
He shut that line of thinking down and kept moving. Without a concrete trail to follow, they had to follow the trajectories of bullets fired from SIGs and hope for the best.
"They were caught in pretty heavy crossfire, Boss," McGee said nervously.
Gibbs raised an eyebrow that conveyed his message of "And?" pretty well. Heavy crossfire wouldn't bother either of them. Except -
"Ziva doesn't know."
McGee caught on immediately. "So Tony'd have to pretend. He'd tell her that they should go for cover." He looked around. "Like a storage container."
That didn't narrow it down much, but best he could tell, they'd been heading east towards the harbor, a fact that he'd yell at them for later.
The sound of a truck beeping as it backed up to pick up its cargo caught his attention.
He turned towards it it time to see a long twisting shape arc out of one of the tiny slots in the container that might be called windows.
"McGee!" he yelled, already running towards it. "Federal agents! Stop!"
They weren't far from it. When McGee's voice joined in the yelling, the truck slowed before rolling to a stop. The driver poked his head out in confusion. "What's going on?"
Gibbs left Tim to deal with him. He ran to the alley formed by two containers where the twisting shape had fallen.
He found Ziva picking herself up from the asphalt and brushing herself off. Some of her gear had come loose and lay scattered around her like the debris from a meteorite crashing to earth.
"Ziva. You all right?"
She nodded briskly. "I am fine, Gibbs, aside from a small brush with some iron."
Iron. Gibbs' gut clenched. "Where's Tony?"
"Still in the storage container." She hesitated. "Gibbs . . . "
"He hurt?" Gibbs demanded.
Something decided itself in Ziva's eyes. "No. Thanks to him, we found a large cache of counterfeit money."
The driver lowered the container back down. McGee threw the doors open as they started to walk back towards it.
"You all right, Tony?" Tim called.
"I'm fine. Just give me a minute, McHurry," Tony grumbled from inside the container. "The footing's tricky."
Ziva had an odd look on her face.
"You sure you're all right?" Gibbs asked her.
She smiled. "I am fine, Gibbs. I . . . think I understand better about what you said. About being a team."
He studied her face. "Good."
Tony's head peeked around the door. "Oh, hey, Boss. Did you miss us?"
"What d'you think, DiNozzo?"
He didn't know Ziva well enough yet to know how she'd interpret it, but Tony beamed like he hadn't for a long, long time.
"You didn't tell Gibbs," Tony said quietly. He and Ziva had the bullpen to themselves. Tim was making faces at himself in the mirror for five minutes in the bathroom so that their co-workers wouldn't get suspicious, and Gibbs was talking to the director. It was too late for anyone else to be there.
She shrugged. "Either he would have salted you, or he would have been in danger of losing his job. Neither of those options appealed to me."
A grin slowly spread across his face. He sat on the edge of Kate's desk. "Ziva David, did you just say you would miss me if I was gone?"
"Perhaps." She shrugged. "You have grown on me. Like some sort of fungus."
As compliments went, it wasn't much, but he'd take it. He tossed the key in his hand into the air. It flipped three times before smacking back onto his palm.
She wasn't Kate by a long shot. As a replacement, she was hopelessly inadequate.
But she was Ziva, and as a team member in her own right - an addition, not a replacement - she had definite potential.
He tossed the key one more time before handing it over to Ziva. "A gift. Use it well, young padawan."
She stared at it for a long moment.
"It goes to the desk," Tony prompted.
She nodded. "Thank you."
He shrugged. "I figured if this went on too much longer, you'd just pick the lock." He deflected the brewing sentiment as best he could and went to kill time on his computer until Gibbs showed back up.
Counterfeit plot foiled, progress made with Ziva, and a Johnny Depp marathon waiting at home.
All in all, a good day, he decided. Of course, he still had to explain to Gibbs that their secret was well on its way to being out.
He was not optimistic about that conversation.
A/N: Contains references to "Silver War", "Boxed In", and "Hide and Seek", including a few lines more or less directly from "Boxed In". For some reason, I'm thinking Ziva's fungus line was in the show too, but I have no idea where so . . . Take it with a grain of salt? Unless you're a ghost, of course.
I know Ziva is taking longer than any of the others to join the family, but I felt like that would be more realistic for her character. She'll get there eventually, just give her a while.
Next chapter title: Franks.