A/n - a short chapter for now because this is the way things worked out. Next chapter is practically done, but I probably won't post until tomorrow. both my sons have concerts today. The high schooler is performing in a few minutes and his brother is with the symphony tonight. Enjoy.

"Welcome back, Timothy." Ducky leaned over to put himself in McGee's line of sight as the young agent awoke. Green eyes slowly cleared and looked around.

"Ducky, why is there a chandelier in my room?" Gibbs walked in at just that moment.

"You can thank my ex-wife for that one, McGee."

He turned his head and blinked some more, still not fully aware of his surroundings. "Your ex-wife decorates the hospital?" He continued to look around. "Wait, I'm not in the hospital, where am I? What happened?"

Ducky quietly slipped out and Gibbs pulled a chair up to the side of the bed. "One of your attackers tried to finish you off yesterday. Officially, he succeeded. You're at my place."

Tim took stock of how he was feeling. He was tired and hurting, a bit more of each than the last time he remembered. "Am I okay? What did they do to me? How'd they get past our security?"

Gibbs started with the last question first. "He was dressed as a doctor. Luckily, the nurses in the unit didn't recognize him and yelled out, but by then he was right up on Agent Miller, knocked him unconscious. He injected you with a drug to stop your heart. It was pretty touch and go until they gave you something to counteract it. Ducky can give you the medical details, but you're going to be fine. You're probably sore from the CPR, and you'll be feeling pretty weak for a while, but with everything else you may not notice the difference."

"I'm not going to have to delay my PT, am I?" Tim shifted and pulled himself a little bit more upright as he asked.

"Maybe you shouldn't push right yet, McGee."

"Boss, I can't just lay here." He found the bed controls and raised himself into a sitting position, ignoring the spinning of the room. "People are getting hurt trying to protect me. I have to do something."

Gibbs saw the dizziness, but he also saw the determination and was proud of it. "I'll talk to Ducky about your physical therapy. In the meantime, I have something else for you to work on as soon as Ducky gives you the okay." He patted the blanket covered leg closest to him as he stood up. "I'll send him in to check you over."

While Ducky was examining McGee, Gibbs walked into the living room where Kate and Abby were set up with the disc and files from Fornell. Abby was frowning at the laptop she was working on. "Well?" Kate shook her head while Abby began working her way up to a full rant.

"This is really hard core encryption, Gibbs. I can't even get past the first layer and who knows how many more layers there are after that." She sighed as she looked at him. "It's gonna be a while. How's Timmy?"

"Ducky is looking him over, but he seems pretty good, considering." The man in question came out of the temporary hospital room as they spoke. He didn't even wait for the inevitable questions.

"Under the circumstances, he's doing quite well. There's some bruising from the CPR yesterday, which is to be expected, but other than that, he seems to have come through the experience virtually intact."

Better than us, thought Gibbs as he looked around at the team scattered around the room. The tension was thick as they waited for either a break or another attack. They would never survive another attack on McGee, so they needed to break the case open. His gut was telling him the answers to why were hidden in those encrypted files Fornell had worked so hard to uncover. A plan started to develop that would possibly kill two birds with one stone.

"Abs, Kate, take all that to McGee and let him look through it. See what suggestions he has for you." He knew there would be objections and it didn't take long for them to be voiced.

"Gibbs, no, he's still too sick. He needs to rest, not worry about all this right now." Abby may have been upset, but Kate understood the reasoning behind his order.

"Abby, he needs a chance to feel like things will be normal someday, a chance to take back some control of his life. Tim's a genius at this kind of work, you said so yourself. If he wasn't hurt, he would be the one working on this, not us. He needs a reminder of that."

"Kate's right." He wrapped his arms around Abby and kissed the top of her head. "He'll probably only stay awake for a few minutes looking at it, but it'll make him feel like he's still part of the team."

"But he is, right?" She turned and looked at him questioningly. "He's still part of the team. We're not going to lose him, are we?"

"Not if I can help it, Abs." He pointed to the laptop. "The sooner we can get him to believe it, the better his chances are."

---NCIS---

While Kate and Abby reviewed what they had with McGee, Gibbs put Tony to work helping him fix lunch. Ducky snagged the first grilled cheese and bacon sandwich as it came off the stove and headed out the door. The sight of the proper Scotsman driving off in Gibbs' pickup gave both the other men a needed laugh. Once a stack of sandwiches were done and the soup was hot, they carried the food in and joined the three studying the mystery records.

"Hey, Boss." McGee looked tired as he expected, but he also looked more in control, as Gibbs had suspected. Instead of a verbal report of what they had found so far, McGee handed Gibbs a paper. He glanced at it and it looked more like a shopping list than anything to do with a connection to the CIA.

"What is this?" As he asked, Gibbs handed the injured man a mug of tomato soup, waiting to make sure he had a good grip before letting go.

Knowing it was expected, Tim drank down a few swallows of the soup before he answered. It may have been canned, but the soup was better than anything he had been fed in the hospital that week. "One laptop isn't powerful enough to break through that file. I can put something together that can work though." When Gibbs didn't immediately reply, just studied him, McGee tried to be convincing. "I can do this Boss, besides it will give me something to do other than staring at the ceiling all day. Your ex isn't that good of a decorator."

The rest of the group didn't understand the comment or the laugh it got from Gibbs, but they all felt the atmosphere lighten at his words.