Stealthily, Gibbs reached out and turned off the alarm. It was 0500, almost his normal wake up time, but he wanted Tim to sleep as long as possible. He didn't have a clue how to mute the alarm on Tim's phone so he settled for taking the battery out of it before settling back down to watch the other man sleep.

Carefully he brushed Tim's hair back, avoiding the stitches, then dropped his hand immediately when Tim stirred. Instead of waking, Tim shifted restlessly before latching onto Jethro's hand and tucking it under his cheek before stilling once again. Somehow the solid feeling of Tim's fingers tangled with his own and his breath caressing Jethro's knuckles was more intimate than any planned move they'd made. He could have stayed like that forever if he hadn't heard a car pull into the driveway. Regretfully, he slipped away, pressing a soft kiss against Tim's temple as he stood.

Through the window he could see Fornell climbing out of his car, so Gibbs tugged on a pair of jeans before heading down the stairs.

"You're here awfully early, Tobias." Gibbs held the door open as Fornell walked through.

Fornell took a second look at the door. "Maybe, but you've got a locking door all of a sudden. What haven't you told me?" Walking through, Fornell came to a sudden halt at the sight of the large, wall mounted television. "I guess you finally have something in this old place that's worth protecting, Gibbs."

He did, but it certainly wasn't the electronics. "Was there a reason you're here at o'dark early this morning?"

Knowing it would never work, Fornell crossed his arms over his chest and gave Gibbs his most intimidating stare. "What in the hell is going on, Jethro? This is a hell of a lot more than trouble with a suspect. McGee was attacked at his desk according to your pit bull, DiNozzo. That says either a dirty agent or Sutton has a hell of a lot more connections than we thought."

"My pit bull?" Gibbs couldn't help but smile at the description of his senior agent. "Has he been bugging you?"

"Hell, yes. My forensic people have spent half the day and night going over what's left of that monitor. Whatever is not shattered into a thousand pieces is melted into a solid mass. They're not miracle workers and it's going to take time. Now, give it to me straight, what's going on?"

Gibbs barely registered the last question, his attention on the figure unsteadily coming down the stairs. "Hey, it's early, what are you doing up?" He reached out and pressed his palm gently against Tim's undamaged cheek as he looked him over.

Not awake enough to notice their company, Tim leaned into the cupped hand. "Bed was cold. If we're up, I need coffee."

Still unnoticed, Fornell watched the younger man wander towards the kitchen, Jett waking up to follow him. Shifting to a more relaxed stance, he leaned against the wall, grinning. "So, asking for it 'straight' might not have been the most accurate question."

"Tobias..." Gibbs rubbed his forehead, "it's complicated."

"Like I told you before, I hope you know what you're doing. Just be careful for both of your sakes, because if DiNozzo is right and the monitor wasn't an accident, then somebody is gunning for you and McGee." Fornell stepped around him, giving his arm a squeeze. "I don't want to be going to a funeral."

Gibbs locked the door behind Fornell and made his way to the kitchen. McGee was leaning against the countertop, empty cup in hand, breathing the steam as it came off the coffee maker. "And they say I'm the coffee addict."

"Very funny."

"You know you don't have to go in today. Nobody will think less of you if you take a day of sick leave." While he was talking, Gibbs handed Tim the antibiotics and pain pills they'd brought home from the hospital.

After pouring himself a cup, Tim downed the antibiotics, but didn't open the pain pills. "Like I said last night, I'm not giving them the satisfaction of chasing me out of there." He poured a second cup of coffee for Gibbs before digging through the cupboard for a bottle of extra strength Tylenol.

Gibbs idly wondered what happened to the timid man he'd brought onto the team. He was proud of the man Tim had become, but there were times he wished that stubborn streak wasn't quite so wide. "Okay, you win, but sit down and let me make breakfast this morning."

After Tim was sitting at the table, Gibbs turned the the refrigerator, digging out a carton of eggs and a package of bacon.. "Okay, I can do either fried eggs and bacon or bacon and fried eggs, which would you like?"

Tim managed to keep a neutral face. "Surprise me." He almost asked about the amount of bacon Gibbs was cooking, until the older man conveniently dropped several slices in Jett's food bowl.

-NCIS-

Tony waved a breakfast burrito under Ziva's nose as she dozed at her desk, just managing to get out of the way as she shot upright. "Whoa, it's just a burrito. Did you get through all the surveillance tapes already?"

"Yes, all of them except for the one that is blank." She started wolfing down the sausage and egg burrito while Tony digested the information.

"Blank? One of the tapes is blank?" Tony sat on the edge of her desk, his own breakfast forgotten. "How did that happen?"

"I do not know, Tony, but it supports the theory that this was not an accident." She picked up one of the tapes off the stack on her desk. "I am meeting with a video specialist at the FBI in a few hours, perhaps there is something on here that can be salvaged, assuming it was recorded and then erased."

Tony picked up on her thoughts. "If not, then someone was able to get into the agency surveillance system and stop one of the cameras from recording and that's going to be even harder to track."

"Usually when an agent is attacked, it is because of a case, but we have no pressing active cases at the moment." She hesitated, not wanting to vocalize her suspicions.

"You think it's because they were outed." Tony pressed his lips together as he shook his head. "Damn it, if that's the case, then this is my fault."

"No, it's not." They both looked up as Tim arrived, Gibbs just a few feet in back of him. Tim very deliberately walked to his desk and sat down in the new chair and booted up his computer. The rest of his team watched carefully as both monitors came to life, but everything seemed normal. After a few minutes they returned to their desks and their duties, while keeping a close watch on McGee.

-NCIS-

By the time Ziva returned from meeting with the AV technician at the Hoover Building it was lunch time and Vance called them up to his office for a working lunch to review what they had.

Tony was frustrated as he tore his sandwich apart. "Damn it, the FBI lab has had the monitor for almost twenty-four hours and they still can't tell me anything."

"Perhaps if you let them work for more than an hour at a time without calling them, they would be more efficient, yes?"

Since Ziva was eating a meal that required a knife and fork, Tony wisely let it go, letting her tell of her own visit with the FBI. "They cannot retrieve any images because there are none to retrieve. There is a block of time where the feed from the squad room camera was cut off from the recording equipment."

Gibbs swore under his breath while McGee took a more practical approach. "How long was the camera offline?"

Ziva checked her notes. "Forty-nine minutes, is that significant somehow?"

Of the five of them around the conference table, McGee was the most experienced at the limitations of the in-house system. "If it had been a quick break in the recording then there would have had to been more than one person involved."

"How do you figure that?"

Tony was putting the pieces together and answered Gibbs' question as he thought out loud. "One person would have to get into the security room, disable the camera, go do the deed with the monitor, and then go back and re-enable the camera. That takes time, but two people would eliminate the travel time between the squad room and the sub-basement."

"Exactly." Tim wiped his fingers and then tossed his napkin onto the table. "Plus there's a new protocol that an alert goes out if a camera is offline for more than sixty minutes, no matter what the reason or who's logged into the system. Plus there's a sweep of the system at the beginning of each hour."

Tony's phone vibrated and he turned away from the table to answer the call as Vance laid out what they knew. "The timing is too convenient, but without some proof that the monitor was tampered with, my hands are tied."

"Got the proof." Tony was grinning as he shoved his phone back in his pocket.

Ziva sat up straight. "They discovered how it was sabotaged?"

"Nope, it's not McGee's monitor. The make and model are the same, but the serial numbers don't match up. That one was in storage waiting to be hauled off to the recycling center. They probably figured the fire would destroy the number on the bottom of the plastic case, but didn't know it was also engraved into the metal frame."

Vance gave a slight nod. "You must admit, it was well thought out. McGee's assigned monitor is probably sitting in storage, right where that one was."

"But I get to keep the new flat screen one, right?" The rest of his team choked back their laughter, remembering his expression when he saw the oversized LCD monitor sitting on his desk that morning. Vance just rolled his eyes.

"Yes, McGee, you get to keep the new monitor."