a/n - And so it begins. Lots of clues coming up in these next few chapters.

It was a tense breakfast as the seven of them crowed around the two tables the waitresses had shoved together. Ziva and Tony flanked Tim as they sat, preventing Mink from getting next to their friend, while Gibbs and Vance had taken the seats across from him. Fornell quickly dropped into the chair next to Gibbs, leaving the only open seat next to Ziva, who gave a calculated smile to Mink as he sat.

Still remembering the feel of the gun pressed against his head, Mink wisely remained quiet as he watched the others fuss over McGee. The only eye contact he had with any of them was when the waitress asked for drink orders. Fornell glared at him until he ordered coffee instead of the much wanted Bloody Mary.

Coffee was the order all around, Gibbs adding a glass of orange juice as he pointed at McGee. The younger man blushed slightly, but obediently drank the juice under the approving watch of his team. In such a public setting, the only mention of the case was a discussion of transportation. The two FBI agents would take one car, while the NCIS team would divide up in two additional cars. Ziva wasn't thrilled to be driving Director Vance, but she knew better than to argue with Gibbs.

Peggy, the waitress, arrived with a tray filled with assorted plates, watching in amusement as the only woman in the group placed her side order of fresh fruit in front of the pale young man next to her. The quick-witted man that had been flirting with her earlier did the same with his side order of bacon. The baby faced young man they were feeding just rolled his eyes as he smiled, while three of the four older man looked on in amusement. Peggy glared at the fourth man. He was rude and a lousy tipper, and she didn't feel bad at all when she accidentally slopped coffee onto the edge of his plate.

---NCIS---

"Good morning, my dear." Ducky strolled into the lab, carrying the Caf-Pow Gibbs had instructed him to deliver every day. He found her almost in tears as she prepared to run DNA samples, the latest delivery from the west coast scattered on the tables around her. "What on Earth is wrong?"

Instead of answering right away, Abby held out a picture of McGee. He was laughing at someone off camera, a carefree expression on his face. Ducky quickly donned a pair of gloves and took the photo. She had moistened the dried splatter to remove a sample and the odor was unmistakable. "That monster had pictures of Timmy, Duckman. Current pictures, somebody is following McGee around and taking pictures of him and then somehow Kehoe is getting them."

She started pacing, waving her arms as Ducky tried to calm her down. "We're going to find out who's doing this, and in the meantime, he's in good hands with Jethro and the team."

"And Mink."

"Yes, well," Ducky paused, clearing his throat before telling her about the early call he'd had from Fornell. "We're to look at him a little more closely. Agent Fornell found out last night that he may have had a child the FBI knew nothing about. He hopes that knowing what happened to the boy may explain his obsession with Timothy."

Abby pulled off her gloves and threw them in the trash. "It might explain it, but nothing will ever justify what he's been doing to Timmy. What if he's the one that's been giving all this stuff to Kehoe?"

"We're going to help them find out." Ducky escorted her to her computer station. "Let's get started, my dear."

---NCIS---

Three cars pulled up in front of an abandoned homestead northeast of Barstow. After two hours of rough dirt roads, all seven of them were glad to get out and stretch their legs. The barn had been sacrificed to the elements many years ago, and only one wall remained upright, the rest pulled down by the weight of the collapsed roof. The house was in better condition, but the shiny padlock on the front door was still in contrast to the weathered wood. Vandals had left the place alone, driven off by both the boarded up windows and the knowledge of what had happened behind the barriers.

McGee climbed out of the back seat and rested his crossed arms on the roof of the car, staring at what had been his prison for almost two years. Tony stayed close, a digital audio recorder tucked into his shirt pocket to capture every painful memory Tim recalled. With any luck, he would never have to give another statement. Gibbs watched him from the other side of the car. "Does it look different, McGee?"

He shook his head. "I never saw the outside, Boss. I was unconscious when he brought me here, and I was too weak to open my eyes when they brought me out."

"You were still conscious?" At the time Vance had assumed Tim lost consciousness right after Joe touched him.

Tim had a far away look in his eyes. "Yeah, I remember hearing all of you talking. Agent Bidwell thought it would have been kinder if I had died, and you..." He smiled slightly as he turned to face Vance directly. "You promised me that I'd be alright."

Vance nodded and returned the smile before turning to the heavy duty lock. Dust and grit made it difficult for the tumblers to fall into place. Off to the side, Mink looked at anything but the two of them. By then everyone knew that Mink's badgering of Tim had begun that afternoon, as he was being carried out to the ambulance.

As Vance worked the lock, Fornell and Gibbs pulled out a portable generator from the back of one of the cars. It took just a few minutes to get it tied into the house and fired up, lighting up the inside just as the door swung open.

After they all filed in, Tim took the lead, Gibbs right at his elbow, Tony a step behind, as he walked through the rooms, telling the few fragments he remembered.

"I woke up on the bed." Tim stood in the doorway to the bedroom, staring at the bare mattress. "He'd taken off my clothes and had me dressed in this old-fashioned nightshirt. There were dried bloodstains on it. My wrists..." He stumbled in his recollections as he rubbed his lower arms. "...my wrists were tied to the headboard, and he was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching me."

"That night was the first time he molested you?" Gibbs hated this. He hated to see Tim relive these memories, he hated being the one to ask such painful questions, but most of all he hated having Mink standing there, listening.

"My grandfather lived with us when I was little." This was certainly not the answer Gibbs was expecting, but he stayed quiet and let Tim tell it in his own time. "He'd been a POW, did you know that?"

It was a rhetorical question, so they waited, even Vance, who probably knew more about Tim's experience than anyone else. "Grandpa used to tell me stories about being in the camps and how they'd try to trick you into giving up information. Just give us the cypher for the code and you can have hot food and sleep in a real bed, they'd tell him. He knew, though... he knew it was a trick. Once he told, he'd be dead, and he'd be taking hundreds of other sailors to the grave with him if the enemy could decipher the code."

They still didn't understand the connection, but they waited as McGee stepped further into the room. He didn't stop until he was standing next to the bed. "Kehoe told me I could go home, that all I had to do was..."

"Was what, Tim?"

McGee didn't seem to have heard Gibbs' question as he turned to Vance. "He still claims he wasn't a rapist, doesn't he?" Vance nodded, Kehoe had claimed the children that he'd abused were with him willingly. It was one of the many mysteries of the case and the monster. From Vance, Tim's gaze traveled the room. Mink was the most excited, finally getting the answers he'd waited years for, while Fornell's face showed embarrassment and shame at Mink's behavior. The rest of the men were watching him, confused, but supportive. Only Ziva seemed to be putting the pieces together, her knowledge of interrogation techniques combined with an understanding of the depravity of mankind gave her a unique perspective.

Ziva never took her eyes off McGee as she stepped in front of Mink, blocking him partially from Tim's view. It seemed to help as he gave her a shaky smile before returning his attention to Gibbs. "In his twisted mind, it was a seduction. The beatings and the isolation and the starvation, it... it was like some sick form of foreplay for him. If I willingly submitted to him, he said he'd let me go home, but I knew... Boss, I knew."

"What did you know, Tim?" The pieces were falling into place for Gibbs, as horrifying as they were.

"He was lying, just like in the POW camps. He wasn't going to let me leave. He never let any of us leave, at least not alive."

Fornell had been listening quietly, putting the puzzle together like the rest of them, and thought he understood. "It was a game to him, wasn't it? It was all about the hunt, about gaining the submission, but the final act never could satisfy him. He'd lose interest and dispose of them afterward."

"Your grandfather made it out of the prison camp because he never broke and you survived the same way." Tony reached out and gently squeezed Tim's arm. "You beat him at his own game."

"No, I just outlasted him."

---NCIS---

"Hey Ducky, Fornell was right, Mink did have a kid." Abby stared at the files she had put up on the lab's plasma as Ducky and Palmer came up behind her. Ducky moved closer and raised his glasses to read the fine printing through the bottom of his bifocals.

"The boy wasn't one of Kehoe's victims, was he?"

Abby shook her head as she pulled up another file. "Nope, but he did vanish on his way home from school and has never been found."

"I'm probably wrong," Palmer looked back and forth between Ducky and Abby. "But wouldn't it be against protocol to let the father of a missing child work a case so similar to his son's?" Ducky nodded encouragingly, Jimmy was beginning to notice more and more, a trait necessary in their line of work.

Abby filled in the blanks for both of them. "Mink and his wife divorced before he joined the FBI and her new husband adopted the boy."

"Most unusual, Mink would have had to give up all parental rights." Abby and Jimmy listened as Ducky thought out loud. "He may have felt massive guilt after the son he abandoned later vanished. If none of his current friends or coworkers were even aware of the boy's existence, he would have internalized his pain and grief."

"He hates McGee for surviving?" Palmer still didn't understand.

"Yes, but he hates himself even more for failing his own son when he helped save Timothy. Unfortunately, something is still driving that hatred, and until we know what that is..."

"Timmy will never be free of him."

"I am afraid you are right, Abigail."