Chapter 11
Washington, D.C.
Navy Yard

Tobias Fornell walked off the elevator onto the third floor of NCIS headquarters, hoping that everyone he needed to talk to was in the building and not out working a case.

Although Detective Jane Rizzoli and Dr. Maura Isles weren't NCIS employees, Fornell wouldn't put it past Leroy Jethro Gibbs to drag them along to a crime scene - especially if he knew Fornell was looking for them.

Fortunately for Fornell, Gibbs wasn't playing hide-and-seek this afternoon.

Special Agent Kate Todd was at work at her desk; Special Agent Tony DiNozzo wasn't around, but Detective Jane Rizzoli was sitting at his desk, working remotely on paperwork from a cold case, and an email to her supervisor. Special Agent Tim McGee was hard at work at his desk.

And, as if on cue, Special Agent in Charge Gibbs made his way down the stairs to the bullpen.

"Looking for someone, Tobias?" Gibbs said, walking to his desk.

"I think you know the answer, Gibbs," Fornell replied. "Where's Dr. Isles?"

"Working with Abby," he replied, as Jane, Kate and McGee looked up from their desks.

"I see Rizzoli over there at DINozzo's desk," Fornell said. "Not even a full day and you're already putting them to work. What's next?"

"Why do you ask, Tobias?" Gibbs asked. "Recruiting? FBI looking for detectives and medical examiners?"

Fornell looked over at Jane. "I do need to talk with Detective Rizzoli and Dr. Isles," he said.

"I'd like to go home, and so would Maura," Jane said, standing up from DiNozzo's desk and walking to Fornell, who was standing in front of Gibbs' desk. "You mind telling me what this is about? Is something going on?"

"You can talk to me, Tobias," Gibbs said, then nodded his head toward the elevator. "I got time."

Fornell looked back at Jane, then followed Gibbs, who was walking to the elevator. Jane looked at them; Gibbs caught her eye, then nodded with a slight elevator dinged, and both men stepped in.

"Okay, Kate," Jane said. "You've been around those guys far more than I have. What's going on?"

"Fornell wants to talk to you and Maura, and Gibbs is going to find out why," Kate told her. "That nod? His way of letting you know he's got your back."

"My back?"

"Your back. And Maura's, too."

RI&K

Gibbs hit the button for the ground floor, waited a few moments, then hit the kill switch, stopping the elevator and dimming the lights. This was standard operating procedure for Gibbs and his team whenever they wanted to talk in absolute secrecy - such as now, with the conversation between Gibbs and Fornell.

Gibbs had wanted to talk with Fornell first, then talk with and prepare Rizzoli and Isles before allowing Fornell to talk with them. Fornell beat him to the bullpen, and now that Rizzoli was aware of Fornell's intent to question Maura and herself, Gibbs wanted to get to the bottom of whatever the FBI agent was up to.

"Gibbs," Fornell said. "Are you and Agent Todd an item?"

That came out of left field, Gibbs thought.

"You come up here, tell Rizzoli you want to talk to her and Dr. Isles, just to ask me that?" Gibbs said. "What do you want, Tobias?"

"I'll ask again, Jethro. Are you and Kate together?"

"Do you think we're 'together'? Kate and I are dating? Rule 12, Tobias. I haven't broken it with any member of my team."

"No, just with the assistant director of NCIS when you worked with her in Europe. You being straight up with me, Jethro?"

"Tobias, what the hell is this about? You wanna talk with Rizzoli? Wanna ask Agent Todd out on a date yourself?"

"Jethro, I'm not joking around."

"Neither am I. Why ask the question? Why do you want to talk with Jane and Maura? Are the two connected?"

"Jethro. Why has Ari been stalking Kate, and Dr. Isles, and those other women? Why has he been tailing her, and sending her those letters and emails?"

"Tobias, you saying Ari thinks Kate and I are an 'item'?"

Fornell looked at Gibbs, saying nothing.

"You think Ari thinks Kate and I are a couple," Gibbs said, Fornell nodding. "Why?"

"The way you talk to her," Fornell said. "You don't talk...roughly to her like you do DiNozzo and McGee, and for that matter most people you come across. You don't even talk to her like you talk to Abby."

"And how do I talk to Abby, Tobias?"

"Like a daughter."

"You profiling me, Tobias?"

"No, I'm trying to show you a connection."

"Connection?"

"You're more gentle with Kate than with anyone else, as gentle as Sciuto, but different than a daughter. If not for the age difference I'd think you would have made your move already. Ari profiled you and your team-"

"So that means he's connected me and Kate 'together'?"

"That means his actions indicate he believes you love her, Jethro, or at least like her a lot. He wants to kill you, Jethro, and has threatened Kate. If he kills her, he makes you hurt."

Gibbs couldn't argue with that, although Fornell's assertion that Haswari thought of he and Kate as a couple came out of nowhere.

"Tobias...there is nothing between me and Agent Todd," Gibbs told him. "I'll...acknowledge that I treat her differently, more gently, than I do DiNozzo or McGee. For that matter differently than I treat Abby or Ducky...has he made another threat?"

"Nothing we're aware of."

"Tobias, I think I'd know if Ari thought of us as a couple."

"Kate is staying with you, Jethro."

"Because he's staked out her apartment, Tobias. She's safer with me."

"You're not sharing a bed?"

"Tobias...no. We're not sharing a bed. Now that I know you think Ari sees me and Kate as a couple, what do you want with Rizzoli and Isles?"

"I was about to get to that," Fornell replied, "although I'm surprised you hadn't picked up on Ari thinking of you and Kate as a couple."

"Didn't say I hadn't thought of it," Gibbs retorted. "Also didn't say I thought anything of it."

"Well you better, because that's the opinion of FBI and probably every other agency," Fornell said. "Ask Morrow."

"What I want to ask you, Tobias, is what this has to do with Rizzoli and Isles."

"Gibbs...you and your team aren't the only ones Ari's profiled."

"He's profiled them?"

"And he's guessed, as have we, that they really are a couple."

So had Gibbs, though he wasn't going to admit that, yet, to Fornell. "So he's going after people he thinks are couples?"

"Couples that resemble the couple he sees you and Agent Todd as being," Fornell said. "Only them, so far. There's been rumors in Boston police about Rizzoli for years, even though she and Dr. Isles have a history of dating men. They also have a history of being close friends-"

"If that makes them a couple, then lots of women are couples."

"We've...surveilled them over the past couple of months. We've seen...instances of intimacy between them. Let's say second base."

"FBI. The FBI has been spying on those women."

"You would too, Jethro, if you thought it was necessary."

"So they're a couple."

"We think they are, and we think Ari thinks they are...Dr. Isles has been stalked almost to the same degree Kate has been."

"Letters?"

"And emails, to her home, her work and her email address."

"To harass her, like the other women on the list."

"More than that. We think he may be planning to kill her and Rizzoli."

"Kill?"

"As a message to you. Ari thinks of Jane Rizzoli as the Gibbs in the relationship, Maura Isles as the Kate. He kills Maura, hurts Jane, then kills Jane to show you that he'll kill you and Kate."

"How long you been sitting on this, Tobias?"

"A week-"

"A week? You should have told me, Tobias! Or at least told Boston PD."

"They showed up here today, and I'm telling you now, and Cavanaugh in Boston already knows."

Gibbs hit the kill switch again, and the elevator resumed moving downwards. "Let me talk with Rizzoli and Isles," Gibbs told Fornell.

"I need to verify it with them, and they deserve to know Ari is after them," Fornell replied, as the elevator stopped at the ground floor. Three people got on, and the two men remained silent all the way back up to the third floor.

"We talk to them together," Gibbs told Fornell as they walked off towards the bullpen, where Rizzoli and Maura Isles awaited.

RI&K

Gibbs had the conversation take place in the conference room upstairs, near Director Morrow's office and the MTAC room, with Gibbs sitting at the head of the table next to Jane, and Maura opposite Gibbs next to her, and Fornell right across from them.

Fornell explained what FBI intelligence had picked up about Ari Haswari's theory of Gibbs and Kate Todd being a couple and how it tied into the so-called Kate List. Then he explained why FBI intelligence believed Maura had been targeted so intently by Ari, and what it had heard not only from sources embedded within Ari's circle, but from within the Boston police department.

"You think Maura and I are a couple?!" Jane shouted at him. "What the hell do you think you're saying?"

"Jane!" Maura put her hand on Jane's arm to quiet her, but Rizzoli wouldn't have it.

"What the hell kind of question is that?" she screamed. "That's it-Maura, we're going home-"

"Jane," Gibbs said, quietly, then looked over at Fornell and spoke forcefully. "Agent Fornell. You will tell Detective Rizzoli and Dr. Isles the opinion of the FBI or you will leave."

Fornell looked at Gibbs for a moment, then turned to Rizzoli and spoke.

"Detective," he said, firmly. "It is not my business, nor the FBI's, to harass citizens, and certainly not anyone it wishes to protect, like you and Dr. Isles. Ari Haswari views Agent Gibbs and Agent Todd as a couple. He has a history of harassing and stalking women who resemble Agent Todd, and we believe this is with the intentions of sending messages to Gibbs and to Kate.

"We also believe he views the two of you as a couple - you, Detective, as the Gibbs in the relationship, and you, Dr. Isles, as the Kate.

"As I said, it is not our business or our intent to harass you. Your privacy is your right, and youre relationships are your business. However, Ari Haswari has clearly violated that privacy for his own purposes, and to the point of threatening both of your lives, and in order to provide you our best protection in this matter, the FBI needs to know for certain the status of your relationship. So I'll ask again. Are you friends, or more than friends?"

Jane looked incredulous, and frightened, and a little rattled, Maura calm and collected.

"I promise you we are not voyeurs," Fornell told them both. "If he thinks you are a couple and you're not, you're already in danger. If he knows you are a couple and you are, you're in even more danger. Because we believe he will go after you to prove a point to Gibbs, and to satisfy his own murderous urges."

Jane and Maura looked at one another.

"Jane," Gibbs said gently. "It doesn't matter whether you're together, or just good friends. What matters is catching that bastard, and you - all of us - living through this. It doesn't have to go past here."

"The FBI will honor your privacy, I assure you," Fornell told them.

Jane looked at Maura, still uncertain. "Maura?"

Maura nodded, and looked directly at Fornell.

"Jane and I are friends, Agent Fornell," she calmly said, reaching over to grasp Jane's hand.

"Best friends. Life long best friends, forever.

"And yes, we are lovers."

Maryland

The very late lunch/dinner Officer Frankie Rizzoli Jr. had at the truck stop hadn't filled his stomach, so he munched on a bag of corn nuts as he drove the U-Haul through Baltimore.

Gabriel Dean, an FBI agent assigned to Boston - where Rizzoli was a Boston police officer - followed right behind him.

And, about 100 feet behind them, was the Somalian, who thought he had managed to not get made this far into the trip.

He was mistaken; Dean was right on top of it, and called ahead to colleagues waiting two exits ahead to join the caravan.

Boston

Eddie said all the right things, did almost all of the right things, to embed himself fully into Paddy Doyle's organization.

A handyman by trade, the 25-year-old came from a long line of Irish-descended, working-class Bostonians, some of whom were legitimate, outstanding citizens of the community.

Eddie was part of the criminal portion of the family, and to him getting in with the most notorious crime boss in Boston was, perhaps, the crowning achievement of his life.

Unfortunately for Eddie, he wasn't above taking bribes to further his interests, and it finally caught up to him.

Stupidly, he thought nothing of it when he took $500 from an African man to divulge what he overheard Paddy discussing earlier in the day: a Boston police source telling him that Dr. Maura Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli were under federal protection in Washington, D.C., and Detective Rizzoli's officer brother had left to drive clothes and other personal belongings to them.

For the next, and final, 12 minutes of his life, chained to a radiator in the basement of a run-down central Boston house, Eddie would regret having taken the cash and not walking away.

"You were better off getting shot to death by that terrorist," Paddy yelled at him, between blows to Eddie's skull from the pipe he was beating him with. He was alone with Eddie in the basement, his lieutenants monitoring the door to the basement, the house and the neighborhood.

"You sold my daughter out to a terrorist! A terrorist!" Paddy screamed.

Eddie was too out of it to comprehend what Paddy was saying, and certainly to understand that Paddy's anger wasn't about Paddy, it was about selling out Maura to a man whom, if he wanted to, could be the next bin Ladin and seemingly wanted to put her to death.

Paddy Doyle dealt with Eddie - like all who had betrayed him - as only Paddy Doyle could.

As he opened the basement door, he told two of his goons to clean up the mess below, then made a phone call to one of his top lieutenants.

"Get that kid from BCU to hack into the FBI," he said. "Find out where Maura and Rizzoli are, and find out more about this Haswari bastard...nobody threatens her! You hear me?!...find out where he is...we take down his men...and when he shows up, we take him down too."