Chapter 10

"Let's hope our copycat is home." Tony said as they all got into position. "NCIS!" Tony didn't really give them time to open the door. He kicked in the door using his pent up anger from the last few days. "Hands up in the air. Peter Sears you are under arrest."

"For what? I didn't do anything." He said as he steps away from the body wrapped in plastic wrap. Tony pushed him up against the wall and began to cuff him. McGee quick began checking the victim. Ziva began checking the rooms. Gibbs looked around the room seeing all the posting of the Port to Port Killer.

"You have the right to remain silent or I can shut you up myself."

"Take it easy DiNozzo." Gibbs said turning his back to Tony.

"You also have the right to an attorney so they can tell you that you weren't hugged enough as a child."

"Boss, we have a problem." Tony and Gibbs turned to look as McGee pulled off the plastic wrap off a manikin.

Tony walked into the hospital room. Ducky was sitting down next to Linda as she was asleep. "Where is Will?"

"He got a phone call saying that Floyd was arrested so he went to go deal with the paper work."

Tony sat down in the chair on the other side of Ducky. He took her small hand in his large hand. "How is she doing?"

"She is in less pain now with the pain medication."

"Thank you Dr. Mallard for being here,"

"It is no problem my dear boy. And please call me Ducky."

"Thank you Ducky." Tony pushed back the hair from her face.

"I'll give some privacy." Ducky said, getting up to leave the young couple alone.

Tony brought her hand to his lips. "You can stop pretending to be asleep now. It is just you and me."

Linda's eye slowly fluttered open. I had a very nice nap. Ducky is a quite a story teller. You should have him tell you about the time he and Agent Gibbs were on the run. From the sound of it, having Gibbs have your back is a great thing."

"I will make sure I hear that story now."

"I feel bad for pretending to fall asleep on Ducky but there is only so many stories you can listen to before falling asleep."

Tony gave a small chuckle. "I'm sure he understands. Did they call your family already?"

"Yeah, they called when I brought in and I called again after they checked me out. My mom and my oldest brother are on the first flight out here."

"Well, the way you talked about your family, I'm a little surprise they all didn't fly out here. You are the baby of the family after all." Tony said teasingly. Tony had heard her complain enough time about how much she hated being the youngest of seven children.

"They would have come if our mom allowed them too. They all still have work and family to take care of so my mom told they couldn't come."

"Well, I'll meet them at our wedding."

"So did you get the bad guy?" Linda asked with a small yawn.

"We caught up with Floyd. He denied knowing anything about…" Tony did.

"Well, you know how criminals are." Linda said, trying to stop Tony from thinking.

"Gibbs doesn't think that Floyd is lying about not knowing. Gibbs thinks it might be the guys he is working with. Floyd won't tell me their name."

"I'm not to worry about it right now. I know that you'll catch those guys who broke into our house and find whoever is in charge."

Tony kissed her forehead, "I'm so so—"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence."

"It's not your fault. This is Floyd and his buddies fault." Linda let out another little yawn. "I should probable tell you this before I forget. The Major came by to take my statement. I forgot to mention this detail. The one who kicked me, when he pushed up his sleeve I could kind of see a tattoo. I could tell that he put on makeup to try and hide it but I could still see it. On his wrist there was a scorpion."

Tony squeezed Linda's hand tighter. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Tony stood up and kiss Linda on the forehead again. "You go back to sleep. The next time you wake up all the bad guys will be put away."

"I love you." Linda said as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

"I love you too."

Tony hoped that he could put this behind him and everything that this case has brought forth to mind. Having interview the creep, Tony gut was telling him that he hadn't murder Danny.

"Sears alibi checks out. He's an IT consultant but works part time as a birthday clown. He was twisting balloon animals at the time price was being killed." Ziva said as she hung up the phone.

"We still need a lead."

"I think I have that." McGee said as he walked into the bullpen. "The Ohio state police just arrested two men for grand larceny. One of them want to make a plead barging, said that he has some information on a robbery at the fortunate cookie company in Baltimore."

"Call the prosecutor."

"On it," Ziva said getting back on the phone.

"I went through Sears's laptop as well. I know how he learned about the constrictor knot and it's not from an NCIS file."

"Where?" Gibbs asked impatiently.

"Right before Barrett left for Hawaii, she issued an update on the Port to Port Killer profile to all law enforcement in the local area. This included Palmer's typo. Sears stole a copy while he was doing IT work at a police station."

"Which mean that our copycat had accesses to that report."

"I got something" Tony said as he walks in. "I found my cell. I left it at EJ. A lot of miss calls, only one worth mentioning from a few days ago."

Tony turn up the volume on his phone that they could all here. "Hey Tony, it's Danny. Long time no speaks and I understand why. I've been thinking about things lately. I just…There was more to what happen that night. We need to talk."

"McGee, check Danny's phone records. Perhaps he had talk to his killer."

McGee quickly worked, pulling up the phone records up on the plasma. There was three phone numbers on the short list of number. He highlights the first number. "This is a call Price receive the night before he was murder. It lasted about five minute."

"Who was the caller?" Tony asked.

"Linda Kim." Tim said, carefully watching his partner. He could almost swear he could see the pins and wheel turn in his partner head. "She told us that she had seen or spoken to Price since he was kicked out of her office building."

"Well, maybe she just forgot to mention it." Tony said quickly coming to her defense.

"Bring her in." Gibbs said to McGee and Ziva.

"Boss, you know she couldn't have done this." McGee and Ziva stop to watch the interaction between the two men. This has been the second time they have seen Tony defy their boss and it was for the same woman. "She doesn't have the information to put this on the Port to Port Killer."

"She's the DA. She works with the police and she could have gotten the report easily," said Ziva.

"Go bring her in." Gibbs said once more. McGee and Ziva quickly left to the elevator. They knew better than to have Gibbs repeat himself a third time.

"Gibbs—"

"DiNozzo, you are too close to this."

"Are you benching me?"

"Yes," Gibbs didn't say anything else to his senior field agent. He just walked away. He had to go update Vance about the new lead.

It has been a few rough days for him and he hope now things can start settling down now. He sat down on his couch with his TV dinner and a bottle of beer. He took a small drink from his bottle and felt himself relax. His moment of relaxation didn't last too long. His partner busted into through the door. "Were you born in a barn? It's freezing out. Close the door."

"DA said that we have enough to get a murder conviction against Floyd."

"You came all this way to tell me this?"

"I stop by the hospital after we caught Floyd. I talk to Linda and she saw something that I didn't see. Something I pretended not to see in Floyd's eyes when you got the drop on him." Tony said through his seething anger.

"And what's that?"

"Betrayal," Tony answered, "because he knew you."

"Tony—"

Tony pulled out his gun. "Linda saw your tattoo. I thought that maybe I was wrong so I pulled up your phone records. Fifteen calls in the last two months. I know there are plenty of ways to explain that right? But there is only one reason not mention it."

"What's that?"

"Because you're a dirty cop," Tony answered once more.

"Come on." Danny said as if what Tony was accusing him of was ridiculous.

"Be very careful because I'm not feeling the love right now." Tony said pointing the gun at Danny.

"Okay," Danny said. He knew he was caught. "I was sending potential clients in Floyd direction. If they laundry money through him, I got a kick back."

"And breaking into my home?"

"I was just trying to get you to back off of Floyd. Linda wasn't supposes to be hurt. We were just supposed to rough her up a bit to give you the message. The thug I hired got upset and so I did the only thing I could think of. I hurt Linda some more so I could save her life. I know how much she means to you."

Tony pushed Danny back down on the couch and shoved the gun in his face. "Yeah, you knew how much she means to me and so you beat her. I could have left things go if you had rough me up but you attacked her. You made me watch and you threaten to kill her."

"Thing just got out of hand."

There was loud creak by the door and he turned to see that it was Agent Gibbs. He had his hands up in the air and slowly took a step closer to them. "You followed me?"

"Nope," Gibbs said calmly.

"How long did you know?" Tony said thinking back to everything the man had said in the past few weeks.

"I didn't."

"Just a hunch," Tony said, turning the gun back to Danny. "What are you going to do?"

"He is your partner." Gibbs said as if Tony didn't have a gun in his partner's face.

"Yeah, what am I going to do?" Tony knew that whatever was going to happen next was his decision now.

"Think about what Linda would do." Tony knew what she would do. He knew what he had to do now.

AN: Sorry about taking so long to update but I needed to edit this chapter a lot. I am got this case all written and wrapped up, I just don't know how to end it. Hope you all enjoy and review.