A/N: Thanks to all those who reviewed! I hope you didn't believe the story is finished yet; there's still more to come! This chapter is one of my favorites, I hope you like it too!

Chapter 14

When Kate woke up in the morning she kept her eyes closed and sighed in pleasure. She felt Tony's body all around her. One of his arms was wrapped tightly around her waist and held her against him so that her back was pressed against his chest and stomach. His breath tickled her neck. It felt so good that she had no idea how she was supposed to get out of bed today.

She opened her eyes slightly to look at the alarm clock on her bedside table. It showed 6:30 in the morning. Thank God, it was early enough to be able to stay in bed at least a little bit longer.

Slowly Kate turned in Tony's arms to face him and was surprised to find him already looking at her. "Hey", she said softly and smiled when he touched his forehead to hers.

"Good morning", he whispered. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes. But it wasn't so much the sleep which made last night so … interesting."

A broad smile appeared on Tony's face. One of his hands came up to cup her cheek and his thumb gently touched her bottom lip. "Wasn't it?" he teased. Then he leaned closer and touched his lips to hers in a gentle kiss. When they broke it, the loss of contact almost caused physical pain to Kate, so she quickly leaned forward again and captured Tony's lips once more.

"God, I hated waking up without you", Tony whispered, gently nibbling her earlobe. He kissed the sensitive skin under her ear, then slowly worked his way down to her shoulder. He loved the scent and taste of her skin in the morning and the soft sounds she made. Her responding kisses and her hands on his body made him shiver.

When one of his hands ran down her body and traced a feathery light path over her stomach, Kate giggled and started to squirm under his hands. "That tickles", she squealed. But Tony only chuckled and continued what he was doing. "Stop it!" Kate gasped and turned away from him, but Tony caught her around the waist and pulled her to him so that her back was pressed against his chest.

"Where do you think you're going?" he teased her. Now his hands stroked her skin soothingly and he felt her shudder when he kissed the back of her neck. His hands wandered down her body again, stroking her lower abdomen and her thighs. Soon she was becoming restless and started to squirm again. She wanted to turn, but Tony didn't let her, securing her with one arm around her waist and kissing the soft skin between her shoulder blades. "Stay where you are", he whispered into her hair. "I've got you right where I wanted you."

Kate turned her head and Tony bent over her to kiss her lips.

"Tony?" she cooed seductively.

"Yes, my love?"

"What would you say if we took this to the shower?"

"Hm…" He breathed down the side of her neck, making her shudder again. "Sounds good."

---

When Kate had finished her make-up and had dried her hair Tony was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. She sneaked up to him while he was standing in front of the stove and closed her arms around his waist.

"I see it, but I don't believe it", she said, rising on her toes to look over his shoulders. "Are you making pancakes?"

"Yep. Is that such a big surprise?"

"You've never made pancakes before. You've toasted bagels – and toast – made eggs, but pancakes …"

"Only the best for my favorite girl." He sent her a charming smile over his shoulder. "It has stopped raining", he said then, nodding towards the window.

Resting her cheek on his shoulder she looked out into the early sunshine. The grass and leaves were still wet and the tiny drops of water were glistening in the light. What a beautiful day!

"You want some coffee?" Tony asked indicating the freshly brewed pot.

"Aw! You really are the best." Kate took a cup from the drying rack and filled it. Then she sat on the counter and watched Tony flip the pancakes and then pile them up on a plate.

When he was finished he turned off the oven and put the pan aside. He carried the plate with the pancakes over to the kitchen table then came back and stepped between Kate's knees. She set the cup down and slowly snaked her arms around Tony's neck. Since she was sitting on the counter she was higher up than he was and took advantage of it by kissing the tip of his nose before laying her lips on his. She brushed her tongue over his lips teasingly, but drew back when he started to respond.

"Tease!" he exclaimed. "Do you seriously believe you'll get away with that?" Saying that, he placed both his hands on her waist and looked at her threateningly.

"Tony, don't you dare!" she hissed, but then shrieked when he started tickling her.

They ended up on the kitchen floor, both laughing so hard that they couldn't get up anymore.

"Truce", Tony finally gasped.

Kate, who was efficiently pinned to the floor under his weight, held up both hands in front of her. "Accepted."

"We have to seal it", he said, slowly touching his forehead to hers.

"Of course we do", she whispered, catching his lips with hers.

---

They managed not to be much too late for work. Gibbs answered Tony's mumbled apology with an angry glare, which Tony chose to ignore.

"How did Sandra Maloney take the bad news?" Susannah asked when he had sat down.

"Not good", Tony sighed. "I had to call her mother to come and look after her. What have we got?"

"Not much", Susannah answered. "Ducky confirmed that the gun was the same caliber as that in the Reynes case. But it was a through and through, so we don't have the bullet. He also confirmed that, like Adriana Reynes, the victim was starved over several days, but otherwise unharmed."

"Nothing under the fingernails? In her hair?"

"If there was anything, the water has washed it all away."

"Damn!" Tony cursed. "And what are we supposed to do now?"

"We need a way to narrow down our search for suspects", Gibbs said.

"Narrow down? From what? Every inhabitant of the state Virginia?"

Gibbs glared at him. "Everyone who is working at the base – since that's the only connection we've got between the two women."

"That's some thousand people!" Tony exclaimed.

"That's why we have to narrow it down!" Gibbs barked.

After that Tony was quiet for some time. Suddenly he had an idea. It would hopefully help them with the case and – very hopefully – help with the other thing that was on Tony's mind. He had to try it.

"Gibbs", he said. "Do you agree that we might be looking for a serial killer?"

Gibbs raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. "Two victims are not enough to make a serial killer, but it's very likely all the same."

"And you do know that to catch a serial killer profiling has already very often proved to be a highly efficient method?"

Gibbs took his hands away from the keyboard and leaned back on his chair, looking over at Tony. "I see where you are aiming at, DiNozzo", he growled. "It's not going to work."

"This isn't some kind of trick, Gibbs", Tony said agitatedly. "We need help with this case. We have nothing so far. You wouldn't even have to take her back on the team – just let her have a look at the case. If she doesn't find anything – well, then we will be where we are now. But if she can help us …"

Gibbs' expression had changed from disapproving to thoughtful.

"What are you talking about?" Susannah didn't ask the question aloud, but formed the words with her lips. Tony signaled her with one hand to wait. He felt that Gibbs was on the best way to accept his suggestion. They must not disturb his thoughts now.

Finally Gibbs looked back over at Tony, stared at him for some seconds then said: "Get her over here!"

Immediately Tony jumped to his feet and crossed the office within seconds. Kate looked at him questioningly when he appeared in front of her desk. "It's a little early for our first coffee break", she joked.

"You are going to love me", Tony said, grinning widely.

"I thought I'd made clear that I already do?" She smiled sweetly at him.

For a moment, Tony forgot why he had come and only smiled back, but then he remembered and said: "Gibbs wants to see you."

"And that is such a good thing?"

"Oh yes, believe me." He took her hand and pulled her to her feet then bent forward to whisper in her ear, "I've got a plan."

"Wouldn't it be good to inform me about it before I talk to Gibbs?"

"I convinced him that we need help for our case", he whispered, bending a lot closer to her than it would have been necessary. "Profiling help – you understand?"

"And he agreed?" Kate asked incredulously.

"He's desperate. He hates not being able to solve a case. And since we have no hard evidence, we need another approach."

They went to Gibbs together. Tony gentlemanly offered Kate his chair, which he rolled in front of Gibbs' desk, and remained standing beside her while Gibbs looked at her with a stern expression.

"You know about the case we're working on, right?" he finally asked.

Kate nodded. "Tony told me about it. But I don't know the file, of course."

"From what you already know – do you think it would be possible to profile our killer?"

Kate nodded again. She had already thought a lot about the case. "It would be possible", she said. "The profile would not be very precise, but I think that there are some characteristics to your killer that could help you."

"Could you do it while working with Agent Santo's team?"

"No. I'd need to be in on the case. Get a feeling for it. During an investigation there can be details that no one ever mentions in a report, because they don't seem important, but for a profile they can be essential."

Gibbs nodded slowly while considering her words. But then he stood up and walked towards the stairs leading up to the higher level.

"Where are you going?" Tony asked.

"To the director. I'll have to make arrangements to borrow Kate from Agent Santo. And in case you haven't listened: I said borrow. You'll go back to the other team when this is over."

"Understood." Kate nodded.

When he was gone, Tony leaned on the desk in front of Kate and smiled smugly.

"What?" she asked amusedly. She gesticulated in the direction of the director's office, where Gibbs had gone to. "He only borrows me. That means nothing."

"It means he just admitted that he needs you. We can use that against him."

"Oh Tony, now you're sounding like someone who's planning a major military attack."

"You may be laughing now, my love, but I can tell you, you are going to thank me later." He bent down and kissed her forehead before putting his hands on the backrest of her chair and rolling her over to his desk. "Come on, I'll make you familiar with the file."

---

By the end of the day Kate was in on all the details. She'd spent the whole day with the case file, interrogation reports and personal notes of the team. Gibbs had had Tony and McGee transport her desk over from where Agent Santo's team was working to stand between his and Susannah's – which used to be Kate's, but she didn't claim it back. Their part of the office was pretty stuffed now, but Kate used the close proximity to the others to ask all kinds of questions that she didn't find answered in the file.

Each time she asked a question and got an answer, the others wanted to know what this detail told her. And each time Kate said that she couldn't talk about it yet. She needed to have the whole picture in front of her before she could describe it accurately.

When it was time to go home, Gibbs turned in his chair to face Kate. "Is there anything you can tell me yet?" he asked.

"I will give you the preliminary profile tomorrow morning, right after I get here."

"Then why not now?"

"There are some things I still need to think through. Tomorrow morning, 8 o'clock, that's a promise."

Gibbs only sighed and dismissed her with a grumpy nod of his head. Kate looked over at Tony and gave him a questioning look. He nodded in response and they both grabbed their stuff and left the office. They were alone inside the elevator, so Tony snaked one arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. "Do you really have to work this evening?" he asked.

"M-hm", she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. "But I wouldn't mind some company." She turned her head to look up at him and smiled.

Tony dropped a quick kiss on her lips, then let her go when the elevator stopped in the basement. They walked out and left the building in the direction of the parking lot.

"I'll go to my apartment and get some clothes", Tony said. "Then I'll do some grocery shopping, come to your place and cook dinner for you."

"Really? You already made breakfast", she reminded him.

"Yes, but you have work to do and I don't. Besides, I like cooking for you."

"If it makes you happy …" Kate let her voice trail off while a wide grin started on her lips. "See you later, then", she said and reached for his hand to squeeze his fingers.

But Tony didn't let her get away so easily. He brought one hand up to the back of her neck and pulled her close for a serious kiss that made her head spin and left a light, floating feeling in her stomach that didn't leave her even when she was already seated in her car.

---

Tony arrived at her house with a sports bag that held his clothes and a huge paper bag full of ingredients, which he put on the kitchen counter.

"What are you going to cook?" Kate asked, trying to look inside the bag, but Tony playfully slapped her fingers away and with both hands on her shoulders he pushed her out of the kitchen.

"You get your work done", he said. "I want to hear your report later."

"Why would I tell you before I tell Gibbs?" she asked from the living room.

"Because you love to discuss ideas", he replied, before starting to unpack the groceries.

Kate sat down in front of the coffee table where she had spread out all the papers she needed. Tony was right. The best ideas always came to her while discussing a problem with somebody and she was already looking forward to discussing the case with him later. She would never tell Tony, of course, but she found the serious federal agent side of him extremely sexy.

For dinner Tony prepared fish with rice and salad and served ice cream with fruit as dessert. It was delicious and Kate told him so more than once.

When they had put their plates into the dishwasher they went to sit on the couch with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. After filling her glass, Tony gestured towards the coffee table, where half of the file was still spread out. "Wanna tell me something about the direction of your thoughts?"

Nodding, Kate took a sip of wine before answering, "Our guy left us very little to work on. His modus operandi is very simple, a shot to the head and then dump the body in a river. The only thing that's really significant is that he keeps the victims for a week before he kills them – and that he doesn't give them any food over several days, but doesn't harm them in any other way."

"Until he kills them."

"Of course." Kate took another sip of wine before shifting closer to Tony and curling up against his side. "He kept both victims for precisely the same time, seven days, so it's obvious that this number is significant. The question is whether the starvation is a side-effect of their imprisonment, or if he actually keeps them for seven days in order to have time to really make them feel the starvation."

"What?" Tony's voice made clear that he hadn't understood a word of what she had just said.

Kate thought for a moment for a better way to put it, then she started to explain: "I mean that in the first scenario – that in which the starvation is due to the imprisonment – there is some exterior reason for not giving them any food. Maybe he's afraid that by entering their cell, or whatever he keeps them in, he might give them an opportunity to overpower him and escape. So he keeps the door locked. Or maybe he keeps them in a place that is hard to reach, but that is not very likely."

"Because it's not logic to keep them for a week if he doesn't have a possibility to see them regularly."

"Exactly. Very good." She padded his hand that was resting on her thigh. "He wouldn't keep them in a place he can't go to whenever he wants."

"And what about the other possibility you mentioned?"

"The other possibility is that not giving them food has a meaning for the killer. He does it because for him the starvation is a necessary part of his method."

"And what could the meaning behind it be?" Tony asked. He was really impressed that after one day Kate had already come up with things that had never occurred to him before.

"That's a very difficult question", she said. "It could be a lot of things. Weaken them both physically and mentally. Torture them. It could be punishment for something. I don't really know."

"So we'll keep the question in mind", Tony said. "What else have you got?"

"I've been thinking a lot about the victims. There's always a reason why a certain person falls victim to a crime. Of course, sometimes they only are at the wrong place at the wrong time, but that's not the case for the victims of a serial killer. He chooses them among hundreds of other people and when we find the reason why he wanted them and no one else, it brings us a lot closer to our killer."

"We know that he must have been watching them over a certain time. He knew where they lived, when they'd be at home alone, how to get inside their homes."

"That's right. And it proofs that he really handpicked the two women. But why?"

Tony shifted uncomfortably. That was exactly the question he had been thinking about ever since the second victim had been abducted. Why these two women?

"We don't know why", he said. "There's not one single connection between Adriana Reynes and Laura Adams – except the place where they were working and that's not enough since there are several thousands of other people working on Norfolk Naval Base."

"It's not a direct connection that we are looking for", Kate said. "But for the killer there is something that makes them similar. It could be something as simple as green eyes or red hair."

"I'm sure it's nothing physical. They didn't resemble each other at all."

Kate nodded, playing with the glass in her hands. "I know. It was only an example. But there must be something."

"But I don't see what it could be", Tony said, shaking his head. "It must be something that's quite obvious with both of them because we are quite sure that the killer didn't know them personally, so he can't have known about some really big secret. But how can it be something obvious if we're unable to find it?"

Kate lifted one hand and started stroking his hair tenderly. She could sense his tenseness in every word he was saying. "It's not obvious", she said. "It needn't even be logic. The fact that some maniac thinks it justifies killing them doesn't mean it makes any sense."

Tony nodded slowly, emptied his glass and put it on the coffee table before leaning back and wrapping both arms around Kate. "What are you going to tell Gibbs?" he asked.

"We are looking for a white male between twenty-five and forty-five. He doesn't have a criminal record and people who know him would even swear that he's not capable of committing a crime. He's a very reliable person, does good work, is thorough and precise. But he doesn't have a lot of contact to other people and no one knows much about him."

"Kate?"

"Yeah?"

Tony put both hands on her shoulders and carefully pushed her away from him to be able to look at her. "How the hell did you find these things out?" he asked incredulously.

Kate only shrugged. "I can tell by the way he abducted them without leaving any trace, also by the fact that he must have followed them for a very long time without them noticing. And he's not a violent person, otherwise he would have hurt them while he kept them imprisoned. There's a lot of other implications. It's psychology. It would take forever to explain it all – that's why people go to college to learn it."

"Very funny", Tony pouted. "Go on."

Kate quickly kissed him on the lips before snuggling up to him once more. "Where was I?"

"Not much contact to other people."

"Right. So let's talk about the way he kills them."

"We already talked about it after Adriana Reynes was found dead", Tony interrupted. "Remember?"

"Yes. I said that a shot to the back of the head is very cold and doesn't point to a crime of passion."

"It's as if the killer didn't have any more interest in his victims and simply wanted to get rid of them", Tony said. "Like an execution: it's something he has to do."

"Right", she nodded. "An execution is punishment for something. That matches what we said about the starvation. Maybe he punishes his victims for something. The starvation is what he does to make them suffer and then he ends it with a clean shot." Kate had lifted her head and was looking at Tony thoughtfully. This possibility hadn't occurred to her before.

"But what did they do wrong?" Tony asked. "Why did he have to punish them?"

"That's the same question we were asking before: How does he choose his victims? What did they do wrong to appear on his radar?" She sighed. "I cannot answer that. I'm sorry."

"But you already did great", Tony said immediately. "Tomorrow you tell the others everything you told me and then we compare your profile to the male staff of the base."

"We will come up with several hundred possibilities", Kate said.

Tony shrugged. "Gibbs asked us to narrow down the suspects. That's what we're doing. And besides, I'm sure that you'll be able to answer the remaining questions very soon. After all you've only spent one day working on the case so far. I really did a great job convincing Gibbs to borrow you from Agent Santo."

"So if I catch your serial killer, you'll take the credit for it?" Kate asked, raising her eyebrows.

Smiling innocently, Tony raised his hands, palms turned upwards. "You only work the case because of my initiative, so I think I earn the credit."

"Tony", Kate said threateningly. "You know, the truce we sealed this morning. Was there a time limit on it?"

"Why?" Tony asked carefully.

"Because …", she said very slowly, pushing him back against the backrest of the couch, straddling his lap in the process, "… I think one of us really needs to be taught some respect!"

Tataa! That was fluffier than most things I've written so far. I could get used to it! And nope, story's still not over! But while you're waiting for the update you could review!!!