A/N: Just what has everyone's favorite Probie been up to…now we find out! FYI I have very little computer programming knowledge so I just made a bunch of stuff up. Don't know if any of it is possible, but it sounded good to me!
Gibbs bided his time. Letting introductions, and pleasantries get out of the way. Then he looked over to Ducky.
"DiNozzo! David! With me." Said Gibbs.
Excusing herself Ziva got up to follow them into the hallway. With a silent nod of understanding the older gentleman distracted Abby, Sarah and the young Grace.
"So how did you manage to get Jethro up here, let alone into the building?"
Grace smiled and said. "Oh, that was all Abby!"
Once they were out of earshot Gibbs got straight to the point. "What the hell is going on DiNozzo?"
"Well Boss…I uh…Well I don't really know. When I told Faith what had happened she said they needed to come with us. She didn't really elaborate, just quietly insisted. Seeing as how what McGee said made some kind of sense to her I didn't argue. I got the feeling that she would explain once we all got here and settled." Tony said in a rush, not wanting to incite the anger of Gibbs.
Before Gibbs had a chance to reply Ziva spoke up. "I think we need to tell Sarah what is going on. We cannot leave her alone, she is a witness, and besides that she is far from stupid. She will begin to notice something is not right. Up to now she has not had time to think properly. She will soon figure it out."
"She's right Boss." Tony interjected. "Sarah is a mini-McGeek only without most of the geek."
"Yeah, and unlike her brother she will push us for answers." Gibbs said with a wry smile. "Tony, what how much do you think the kid knows?" He continued, his mind back on the task at hand.
"Who Grace? I got the feeling that she knows a whole lot if not everything. When her mother told her to get her bag, she just nodded and was ready in like 10 minutes. That's way faster than any teenager, let alone woman I know. They were prepared for something like this Boss." Tony explained.
"Do you think she would stay with Ducky and Sarah while we talked to the mother?" Holding up his hand before Ziva could object. "We need to know what we're up against before we tell her anything."
Once they were all in agreement, Tony walked back out to the waiting room. Looking up Faith saw him and as if reading his thoughts gave him a small nod of assent and got up.
"Grace, I am going to get some coffee. Will you be okay here with Sarah, Abby and…I'm sorry I forgot your name sir."
"Please, dear, just call me Ducky."
"Ducky? Alright, would any of you like anything?"
A small chorus of no's were sent her way. She smiled gently and crossed to follow Tony out of the room. She was unsurprised when he led her into an unused exam room a few feet down the hall.
Before any of them could speak she motioned for quiet. "If you would indulge me for a moment."
Pulling a slim black sensor of some kind out of her pocket, she proceeded to cover every inch of the room. Nodding with apparent satisfaction she turned it off and replaced it.
"Thank you." Seeing their faces, she explained. "It's a bug detector, my own design actually. I would now be happy to explain and answer any questions you may have."
At the three distinctive looks she got; one puzzled, on an intense stare, and the last a look of patience, she sighed.
"I see I need to start at the beginning. My name is Faith Chandler. For the last 20 years I have been working as an encryption specialist for the NSA. About 5 months ago the project I was working on began to stall. It was soon discovered that there was someone selling information out of our office. This project, and I will explain that later, is of top priority for our nation's communication networks. My superiors decided that it would be best for my family and I to disappear so I could finish my work away from prying eyes. I had the encryption skills, but I needed someone with programming and hacking skills to finish, so Grace and I were moved here to Washington. I found out later that your Director Vance owed my boss a favor, and apparently he called it in. The next thing I knew we were living next door to one Special Agent Timothy McGee of NCIS. No, Agent DiNozzo," she said seeing the small leer on Tony's face. "There is nothing romantic between Tim and myself. I'm married. My husband is a Navy Seal Commander, currently deployed to God only knows where. The plan was to keep him in the field, or training until my work was finished. It would have been very hard for him to up and vanish without suspicion, and he would be very easy to trace to us while on leave. So except for the odd letter or secure phone call he is staying away for our safety."
Ziva looked curiously at the woman. For a civilian she seemed awfully accepting of her current situation, so she asked. "It must be difficult for you and your daughter to hide who you are and where you are from, yes?"
"For me it is simply keeping my family safe while serving my country to the best of my ability. For Grace, well for her putting on another face is easy." Faith's eyes glowed with pride. "She is often times to smart for her own good, and has an uncanny ability for lying. As a mother that pains me, but in this case it makes me feel safe knowing that she could and would be able to talk her way out of most confrontations."
Thinking he already knew the answer Gibbs asked. "Why McGee?"
"When your Director contacted me upon arrival he explained that he had several programmers that were up for the job technically, but he had one that had been an active member of a field team. I went through the files he gave me and ended up agreeing that a trained field agent, especially one as brilliant as Tim would be more likely to sense if something was off before just a normal tech. It seems that he had anticipated my decision because my instructions were to wait for contact to be made, and that night Tim knocked on my door and invited Grace and myself to dinner. After Grace went to bed, he explained who he was and joked about how handy it was that we were neighbors."
"Smooth Probie…" Tony joked, then winced and rubbed his head. "Sorry Boss."
"So what exactly have you been working on, and what does this have to do with that damn dog?"
Laughing Faith answered. "Actually the whole Jethro thing was simply a way for Tim to alert Grace and myself that something was wrong. If Jethro didn't have a collar on that meant that someone was on to us. Kind of like a safe word you know? If he was caught or interrogated he would say that the information was in Jethro's collar. Then Tim came up with the idea that if something were to happen to him physically or on the job he would try and let us know by sending someone from his team to get him. You see, every time he left the house Jethro came to our apartment, that way no one would catch us by surprise."
"Smart. McGee's really good at this sneaky thing." Quipped Tony bracing himself for the head slap, it never came.
"Anyway, to put it simply I was working on a new way of encrypting secure messages. I was trying to use a morphing encryption that could only be decrypted by a specific code entered in a specific time frame. The significant part of this is that the decryption code is only given to the person receiving the message and by using a random morphing program there is no pattern to find. If intercepted the encrypted message will keep changing at random for up to 8 years without repeating the same code twice. It also never stays in one long enough to be frozen for someone to try and decipher the coding. For everyone's safety the specific time frame is entered by the person sending the message." Faith explained using the simplest terms she knew.
"I take it you and McGee are the only ones who know which code goes with which cipher? Gibb questioned a worried look coming into his eyes.
"Actually no. I would pick a cipher at random. Then assign a numeric ID. Tim did the same for all of the codes. Then he wrote a program that would automatically match the cipher to the code with the same ID."
"How close are you to completion?" Ziva asked.
"Very. That's why I insisted Grace and I come with you." Then smiling at Tony, "and why I packed so many electronics and had Abby do the same at Tim's apartment. Once the project is done and out of our hands there is no way to recreate exactly what we did. Even if someone managed to get their hands on both of us, if we no longer have the data there is nothing for us to give them. Unfortunately for Tim, the last part is mostly his. Agent Gibbs, we have to finish this. It would take months if not years for someone else to become familiar enough with his work in order for it to go into affect."
At her last words, things became clear. The only one who could finish this was McGee, and someone wanted to slow him down. If not stop him all together. Taking in the shocked and slightly shaken faces of his other two agents he just closed his eyes, there was no way this could get much worse. At that moment Gibbs cell phone began to chirp.
"Gibbs. When? What was the cause? Well was anyone hurt? Fine. Let me know what you find." Clicking his phone shut he looked at Faith. "Well it seems that someone really didn't want you to finish this. I'm sorry, but there was an explosion of some sort in your building. Both of your apartments are gone."
Looking shaken, but resigned Faith stated. "Then it's a good thing I brought everything with me."
Knowing they couldn't really do anything until McGee was out of surgery and they knew just how bad it was, they all began the walk back to the waiting room. Everyone was lost in his or her own thoughts.
Tony was thinking about how they were going to manage some secret escape to a safe house for a seriously injured man.
Faith couldn't help but think about how this might possibly soon be over and hoping that she didn't lose a really close friend in the process.
Ziva's thoughts were focused on the technicalities of keeping someone safe inside a hospital where it was ridiculously easy to get in and out unobserved.
And Gibbs…well he was wondering just what in the hell they were going to tell Sarah McGee.