Thanks to my beta Kristen!

Chapter 12: A Few Good Answers

Ziva David stared at the house in front of her. It was yet another oddity in this strange town.

She had woken up that morning to find Lily was missing. It had not surprised her; the redhead was obviously not sleeping well. She had seen Gibbs pottering around in the kitchen as she had left for a run.

Was she surrounded by insomniacs? Gibbs and Jenny survived on less sleep than was possible for anyone to stay sane on, Lily seemed to be throwing herself down the same path, while she herself needed her early runs every morning.

Although she had smirked when she had passed the boy's bedroom and heard Tony's snores through the thick door. Her heart went out of McGee; she hoped he had been able to sleep.

Gibbs had given everyone orders over breakfast. Quite how he had managed to unearth that Mayborne had a girlfriend in the town was unknown to the Israeli, but she had volunteered to find the address and talk to the woman. Tony had immediately offered to join her and she had agreed. She was not good with emotional women, and Tony had had a lot of practice over the years.

And so she found herself outside a little house, tucked in a corner and surrounded by other little houses. There was a large patch of grass that was shared by all the neighbors and it made her smile. This was a little community. While other people did not know their neighbors, these people probably got on well with each other.

The road was tucked between two main roads and was strangely quiet. Tony had described it as a cul-de-sac, but she was not sure what the term meant. Regardless, she wished she could live somewhere like this.

She allowed Tony to knock on the green door in front of them. She smiled when a head appeared from an upstairs window.

"Hello," she called.

The woman frowned slightly. "Who are you?"

"We, erm…" She did not know what to say. They had no jurisdiction.

"We're investigating Ryan's death," Tony called. "We just have a few routine questions for you."

The woman frowned again before disappearing back into the house.

"Did you have to tell her the truth?" she hissed at Tony.

"We're clearly not door to door salespeople," he retorted, his face returning to a smile when the front door was opened.

"I want to see some identification," the woman demanded.

They obeyed. It was not as though they could barge past her into the house anyway.

A few minutes later, they were settled in the front room. The woman had introduced herself as Sam McKenzie before leaving to make some tea. Ziva had tried to protest that they did not need any, but Tony had shot her his most charming smile and thanked her.

Sam smiled at them as she returned with the tea. "NCIS, right?" she inquired.

Ziva nodded, impressed. Few people had heard of them in America and it was odd to hear the acronym from an Englishwoman's lips.

"I was told to give you something should you ever stop by," Sam admitted. She reached up around her neck and removed a chain. On it lay a key.

"Do you know what that's for?" Tony questioned, sounding as confused as Ziva felt.

Sam shook her head. "When he came to see me last, he said that he had stolen something and I needed to look after this key for him. He said I could only give it to NCIS. Does it have something to do with what happened to him?"

"We do not know," Ziva told her. "But we will find out."


Jenny was worried. Seriously worried.

She had woken up to find Jethro missing. Concerned for him, she had slipped out of bed and set out to find him. It hadn't been hard – he had been right outside the front door of the cottage, talking with her sister. Knowing that she hadn't been seen, she had slipped back to bed, happy that Lily was opening up at last.

Her good feeling hadn't lasted. Although she had been able to fall asleep for a little while longer, she had finally got up again for good. Jethro had given her a mug of coffee when she entered the kitchen, earning him a smile and a quick kiss. She had stayed in the background for the impromptu meeting over breakfast, allowing Tony and Ziva to volunteer to locate the girlfriend and McGee to offer to see if they had missed anyone else in Mayborne's life.

While she and Jethro washed the dishes between them, his team had filtered out. And then he had drawn her to one side and told her everything Lily had told him.

Her heart had broken. All this time she had been assuming that her sister was grieving for her husband and now she knew exactly how much trouble she was really in. It explained why Lily was simultaneously clinging to her presence and pushing her away. And it scared her.

When Gibbs had left to try to locate Lily, she had wandered through into her own room. The sight in front of her had brought a faint smile to her lips.

Lily was curled up in the middle of her bed, fast asleep. Somehow she had managed to sneak into the cottage without any of them realizing. Jenny wanted to wake her sister up, to hold her tight and promise to look after her, but she knew how exhausted Lily must be for her to be sleeping with the sun streaming through the windows.

So she stood in one corner and watched the gentle rise and fall of Lily's chest. Each movement reassured her that her sister was still alive.

She started as Lily shifted softly. She whimpered in her sleep, but settled down again. Jenny crossed the room, placed her mug of coffee on the bedside table and lay down next to her sister. She slipped an arm over her and smiled when Lily snuggled into the embrace.

The cottage was filled with the little noises: the creak of floorboards, the drip of a tap in the kitchen, the birds singing in the garden. She couldn't remember feeling so peaceful in a long time. Even with her children across an ocean, she was not concerned. For now, everything was right with the world.

And when the going got tough, as she knew it would soon, she would cling to this moment.


Timothy McGee sighed as he disconnected the call.

Gibbs had tasked him with finding out if they had missed any other people in Mayborne's life. It was not a job McGee had liked, being aware that it meant they had failed before. If they had been doing their best, they should have found out about Mayborne's girlfriend.

And now he had to search through a dead man's life on his own. At first, he had left the cottage and settled into the local library. It was not what he had expected.

It was an old building and looked more like an office block from the outside. Inside, everything was old, including the computers. The Internet speed was annoyingly slow and he had found the information available to be useless.

So he had given up on that idea and called Abby instead.

It had been nice to talk to the Goth, even though he had been sitting on a cold bench at the time. She had happily babbled on about everything that had happened in their absence, including the news of Agent Richards' divorce, Ducky's new teapot, and Acting Director Wofford finding a disturbingly large supply of coffee beans hidden away in the Director's office.

She had been the one to come up with the bright idea of asking Mayborne's friend on the base if he knew of any other people their dead man could have talked to.

It had been easier said than done.

First, he had needed to find the telephone number. He had tried asking for a phone book in the library, but they claimed not to have one. He had ended up hacking into the RAF Waddington records using the useless computers to locate the number he needed.

And then he had been forced to wait until Rabb had finished his shift before they could talk. McGee had been incredibly happy that he had not stayed in the cottage. He would be risking the wrath of Gibbs for taking this long.

Eventually, he managed to get through. Rabb had racked his brains and he had sat on the cold bench. After a good deal of prompting, which made McGee wish he was on the base and conducting the interview in person, Rabb had remembered Mayborne mentioning a friend in Lincoln.

And now he knew he would have to trek back to the library, try to locate a Jayne Hughes with the little information he had, and then return to the cottage and inform Gibbs.

He rose from the bench, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face for as long as he could. The library was dark and although it had huge windows, very little natural light made its way through them.

After flashing his badge for the librarian again, and being forced to write his name and a great many personal details down on another scrap of paper – something he was getting increasingly frustrated about because he had dealt with the same woman the previous two times and he was fairly sure nothing had changed in four hours – he found himself in front of an even older computer than the last time.

He sighed again. All he knew about Miss Hughes was that she was a student in Lincoln. This was going to take a long time…