Disclaimer : I own nothing, but the typos. Oh and the OCs.
Warnings : Rated T for language.
-oooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooooooo-
7:48pm – Ronald Regan Community Park, Washington, DC – Kingman Park Neighborhood –
Standing at the edge of the soccer field, Tony watches a group of unis sweep the parking lot and the sun-dried for field grass for any scrap of evidence. Sparr is right on their heels, barking orders like a drill sergeant. Her keen eyes are glued to the ground as though she might miss something if she looks up.
Tony fiddles with his hands, desperately aching to just do something. Anything.
Sparr told him to go home when Zoe came to pick up the kids. Go get some rest, she suggested. She promised to call as soon as they had something useful.
But Tony never was one to walk away in the middle of an investigation.
Even though he's been benched—nothing more than a witness, Sparr said, because the brass decided he was too close to the case—he still can't leave. When she does discover a clue, he knows they stand to lose precious minutes in the time that it would take for her to call him. So he chooses to haunt the space between the squad cars and the investigation like the ghost of a washed up federal agent.
Like it could make them work any faster.
Tony attempts a steadying breath. He uses his foot to decapitate a rogue dandelion. It explodes on contact, sending its white seeds skirting away in the hot, humid breeze. They float, twirl, and dance like drunken ballerinas as they race to close the distance between him and Sparr.
She glances up, holds her hand high to shield her eyes against the dying sun. Her smile is quick and tight. Tony wants it to be reassuring, but it just says that they're coming up empty so far.
That they both know there isn't anything here.
Tony works his hands into sweaty fists.
Before he has a chance to ask her what he can do—again—his cell jingles.
The world suddenly jolts to a stop and he is the only one left on the face of Earth. He scrambles to get to the message as though it could spontaneously combust before he reads it.
It's just a text from Zoe, Everything'll be okay, Spider. Have faith in Sparr and yourself. Just in case you come home, the girls and I will be at the McGee's tonight. Delilah didn't want to be alone. Come by later, if you feel up for it. I love you. And I know exactly what you're thinking, but none of this is your fault.
Then a split second later, PS – That dog is at home.
Tony chuckles humorlessly at his phone as he slides it away without replying.
How could Zoe say that it wasn't his fault?
If he had been a split second faster. If he were twenty pounds lighter. If his knees hadn't felt like they were about to crumble underneath his aging body. If he had just beaten Tim in the race, maybe none of this would have happened.
Instead, Tony is pretty sure that he and Sparr would be at the station booking those dirt bags for attempted abduction while Tim went home with Goliath and the kids. Then Tony and Sparr would've finally closed their cases before they headed to the bar to celebrate. And who knows, maybe Tim might have even joined them for that drink.
But now…
Tony pinches the bridge of his nose so hard that he is pretty sure he might just shove his eyebrows straight into his brain. Maybe if he's lucky it'll knock some synapses together and connect the dots that he can't on his own.
What do two dead guys in a subway tunnel, a bunch of jump drives with cooking recipes, a cache of weapons under an RV, Tim's abduction and Team Gibbs have to do with each other? From Tony's perspective, the whole situation is more like a bad punchline than an actual case.
The world grows darker and hotter with every passing second, the air more suffocating. The sun dips below the tree line, tucked into the horizon by a cloudless, black sky. The street lamps flicker bathe the park and the unis in a sickly, sulfuric yellow glow. Mosquitoes abandon their hiding places to make Tony their evening meal.
Sparr finally stalks over to join him. Her face is grim, her jaw rigid underneath a sheen of sweat. She wipes her dirty hands on the front of her jeans, continues straight past him towards the squad cars.
Tony trips over his own feet as he falls in-step with her.
Despite already knowing the answer by the look in her eyes, he still asks: "Did we find anything?"
Shaking her head, she keeps careful watch on the unis. "Cigarette butts, old beer cans, candy bar wrappers. It's just litter. Nothing that I think will help us find Tim."
"Shit," he whispers.
She studies him out of the corner of her eye. "Walk me through what happened again."
He pushes a breath through his teeth. "Come on, Sparr. We've already been through – "
"Let's try it again anyway," she whispers. "You and I both know how going through things with a witness multiple times can knock loose something they might've otherwise forgotten."
His nose wrinkles in disgust and it makes her smile.
"It's no fun being on the other side, is it?" she replies.
"I just feel like none of it is helping. It's been hours since Tim was taken and what do we have to show for it?" He sighs, looks away. "Absolutely nothing."
"What we have is accounts from three separate witnesses, descriptions of the perps, a search on Tim's cell, and a BOLO on the SUV. Plus, the brass made this top priority until Tim turns up." She squeezes his forearm, hard enough to pull him out of his pity party. "I know how hard it is to watch and wait, but I need you to help me."
Tony stares out at the soccer field. The flashlights of the unis' bounce around in the dark like fat, lazy fireflies as they canvass every inch of grass for the umpteenth time.
Slowly, in a voice he barely recognizes, he recounts the story about how he and Tim were playing catch with the kids before the SUV showed up. Then he tells her everything that happened play-by-play in that excruciating detail that detectives always wish for, but never get. But there isn't anything new in this rendition…just like there wasn't in the last three hundred rehashings.
Sparr shifts her weight. "That was good, DiNozzo."
"Yeah, sure." He rolls his eyes. "Whatever."
When he feels his skin crawl, Tony meets Sparr's contemplative stare. Her eyes burn in the darkness.
"What?" he asks.
"Is there something else you aren't telling me? Because if you and Tim were working an angle on that behind my back – " Crossing her arms, she stands taller " – now would be the time to come clean."
"I…we didn't do anything behind your back. I've told you every…" The color drains from his cheeks as he snaps his fingers. "The jump drive. Tim downloaded the information off a jump drive when Agent Gibbs stopped by. He left it running in his office. It should be done by now!"
Sparr starts to reply, but Tony bolts across the soccer fields towards the van in the far parking lot. He doesn't have to look over his shoulder to know that she is right there, ready to follow him to wherever the hell they might just end up. The uniforms blankly watch them.
Sparr's breathless voice carries on the wind. "You're in charge, Davies! Call me as soon as the scene is cleared!"
"Yes, ma'am," comes the reply.
"And for fuck's sake, don't call me ma'am!"
By the time she lets her retort fly, they're already at the van and the unis are too far away to hear. Tony slides into the driver's seat while Sparr collapses into the passenger side. She crosses her arms as though she's afraid that might just catch something if her fingers graze more than the seatbelt.
Tony breaks every traffic law on the way to the police station.
Minutes later, they're trying to break into Tim's office. Of course, the door is locked. When Sparr says that she'll find a janitor for the key, Tony stops her. He turns up a pair of paperclips on the dirty carpet. It doesn't take much effort to pick the lock with them.
Sparr stares at him, gobsmacked. "Where'd you learn to do that?"
He half-shrugs. "You-tube."
Inside, Tim's office is as still and silent as the morgue. The computer monitors on the wall behind the desk are dark. A lone tower on the floor laments to itself why it's always left to do all the work. The air is cold enough to leave a layer of ice on every surface. It reminds Tony of a lair where a super villain would spend his days pondering world domination. And for a moment, Tony can almost picture Tim sitting in his chair, fingers steepled as he tries to figure out a way to take over the station.
Goosebumps rise to Tony's exposed arms as he moves straight to Tim's desk.
Sparr heads into the darkness to search for a light switch.
When Tony bumps the mouse, the computer monitor bathes the room in a hazy, blue glow. Ever the paranoid computer nerd, Tim has his desktop password protected too.
Tony tries the first thing to pop into his head: Matthew. But it doesn't work. Neither does Delilah. Nor BearySmiles1989. On a whim, he even tries: AppleSucks and PCs4Lyf with no success.
Making a face, Tony fights the urge to chuck the keyboard against the wall.
Suddenly, the fluorescent lights flicker overhead before bathing the room in their harsh brightness. Sparr joins him, leaning over Tony's shoulder to stare at the screen.
"What did Tim find?" she asks.
Tony shrugs. "I don't know. I haven't even gotten into the computer yet."
"Did he really password protect it?" When Tony nods, she lets out a labored sigh. "You've got to be shitting me. We're in a freaking police station for Christ's sake. Does he think someone is going to swipe stuff that we're supposed to have access to?"
"Probably."
"Fuck," she breathes. "Should we go get one of the other nerds to get into it?"
Biting his lip, Tony wavers. If they wait for—well, whatever the hell that thing Abby and Tim used to use to crack passwords—to do the work for them, they will be here all night.
"Why don't we give it a try first?" Tony smiles at her. "Two kick ass detectives should be able to crack one IT guy's computer, right?"
Sparr's eyebrows furrow like she's just humoring him. With another sigh, she tries to open one of the desk drawer, then another and another. All of them are locked. Crouching down, she mutters to herself about that crazy, paranoid geek while she searches for a key.
Tony presses his hand against his lips, searches the desktop for any clues. There are a bunch of Post-Its detailing Tim's to-do list for the next day, a couple of odd casefiles, and pictures of the McGee family over the course of Matty's life from a fat, grinning baby to a gangly, awkward tween.
But it's a small, loose picture tucked into the corner of a larger one that catches Tony's attention. It's an image of an older man in Navy dress whites with Tim's eyes and smile holding a blue swaddled baby like it's a national treasure.
That must be a picture of Tim's dad and Matty. I wonder if they get along better here.
And that triggers a memory to resurface from Tony's NCIS days when he poured over Tim's personnel file before he joined the team. The middle name that Tim dropped right before he went to FLETC. Something he might regret doing if he and his dad reconnected here.
"Farragut," Tony whispers.
Sparr freezes. "What?"
"Tim's middle name. It's some dead Admiral. But maybe - " Tony crosses his fingers " - just maybe."
Even though it's nothing more than a Hail Mary pass from the 70 yard line, Tony types Farragut into the dialogue box. Instantly, the screen pops up with a background of a steampunk clock face with huge gears and more programs than Tony cares to count.
"I'm in." Tony laughs like a mad scientist. "I finally hacked the great McGee's computer."
After Sparr gives him a high-five, he clicks on the most recent tab that Tim was working on. An Excel spreadsheet takes over the screen with names, phone numbers, and seemingly random numbers.
Sparr leans forward. "What the hell is that?"
"Whatever they are," Tony says. "There's got to be at least a hundred of them."
"Do you have any clue?"
Tony makes a face. "Tim was going to try…" He sighs. "Tim was going to try doing something with it later. But I have no clue idea."
After a quick nod, Sparr shoos him away from the mouse. She clicks frantically. Across the room, the printer whirrs to life.
When she turns to him, he knows exactly what she's about to say.
He holds his hands up. "I'm not leaving. I have to – "
She touches his forearm and he instantly stills. "We don't have any reliable leads right now. I'm going to take this to the nerds down the hall and see if they can't make some sense of it. You're no good to me tired and wound up. Go get some sleep. I'll keep you in the loop, I swear."
Tony just stares at the computer screen. Even though he knows that she's right, he still believes he needs to keep working until they find Tim or he drops from exhaustion.
"As soon as I get something, you're the first person I call. Always." She squeezes his arm. "And remember, if the chief asks, you were never here."
After he gives her a half-hearted nod, she climbs to her feet. She goes to the printer to retrieve her copy of the data before she returns to his side and slips something into his hands. There's a squeeze of his shoulder and then, she's gone.
When he looks at the pages in his hands, he realizes she printed him a copy too.
-oooooooo-ooooooooo-ooooooooo-
10:58pm – 648 Cherry St. NE, Washington, DC – Kingman Park Neighborhood –
Even though he hates to admit it, Sparr is right. Tony is worthless to Tim—and the force—dead tired and barely functioning on the fumes of yesterday's adrenaline. While he wants to rip apart the city to find his friend, he has no real lead other than a list of few hundred names. There is no way that he'd be able to get through more than two or three before he dropped dead from exhaustion.
With a heavy heart, Tony pulls the van into his driveway. The house is dark, uninviting unlike the McGee's next door whose lights burn brightly in the night. In the front window, he has a view of Delilah staring hopelessly at their living room while Zoe sits on the arm of the couch, comforting her.
Any plan he had to stop by like Zoe suggested evaporates into thin air.
He kills the engine and grabs his gun out of the locked glove compartment. Then he slips out into the sweltering night. The darkness envelopes him with its loving embrace and comforts him as he heads across the yard. When he slips inside the house, he doesn't bother with the lights. He doesn't need Zoe or anyone else to know that he's home.
He just needs some space, some time to think. To be alone.
When he closes the door behind him, he leans against the cool wood. He takes a slow breath as though it could help. The scents of baby powder, spaghetti sauce, and cap gun powder welcome him home.
A low growl echoes from the living room.
"Knock it off, Goliath," he says. "It's just me."
Then there's the jingle of dog tags as Goliath settles back down on the couch or floor or wherever the fuck he is lurking. Not that Tony cares anyway.
A familiar craving burns through him with more intensity than the blazing summer sun. After every hard case and trying day and difficult suspect, Tony always comes home to the same thing.
Alcohol.
He rips the house apart looking for his alter-ego's stash. Back in his world, it used to be housed in an elegant bar that he found at antique store in Alexandria. He always the best of the best on hand: single malt Scotch, spiced rum, crystal clear vodka, bottles of perfectly aged red wine, and Bourbon that made Gibbs' look like paint thinner. With a back-up bottle of gin in his piano bench for "unforeseen emergencies" and "Acts of G-d."
Here, there's nothing but toys and dolls and baby stuff in every drawer, on every surface, every-freakin'-where.
Underneath the sink, he finally discovers a liquor bottle behind Zoe's cleaning products. The label is peeled and gummy underneath his fingers. He sweeps away the layer of dust to figure out that it's an ancient bottle of bottom shelf gin. He shrugs to himself.
I guess I keep the same thing on hand for emergencies. Beggars can't be choosers.
When he unscrews the lid, the smell of cheap booze makes his eyes water. He holds the bottle to his lips, ready to take a sip, before he stops dead. Regret takes the alcohol's place in his throat.
What the hell am I doing? I'm no good to Tim drunk. Or hell, even hungover.
He recaps the bottle, then stares at it in the darkness.
It doesn't seem like I drink here. Why don't I? When did I stop needing it?
He throws the entire bottle into the trash before he has a chance to think better of it.
Then he heads down the hall to the bedroom. Goliath follows him, his nails clicking on the hardwood. Tony tucks his gun in the gun case, then he retrieves the flashlight from the nightstand. He settles onto the bed to go through the list of names.
Before he even makes it through the first page, he drifts into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Morning comes quicker than Tony expects. He wakes up face down in the middle of his papers, still wearing yesterday's clothes and sneakers. He checks his phone first, but there's nothing from Sparr.
When he notices it's almost seven, he jumps to his feet.
After a quick change of clothes, he grabs his gun out of the case and cell phone off the night stand. He barrels through the house, hellbent on getting to the station. He almost makes it to the front door before he realizes he isn't alone.
The whole house smells like bacon and scrambled eggs. It sets his stomach growling.
He heads into the kitchen to find Zoe at the stove.
She turns to face him. "Hey Spider."
"Hey," he says tersely.
"How is it going?" she asks quietly. "Any word on Tim yet?"
He just shakes his head. She crosses her arms, looks away.
"How are the kids?" he asks. "How is Delilah?"
"They're really shaken up." Her frown deepens. "Matty didn't sleep at all last night. And Delilah won't put down her phone just in case someone calls her." When she goes quiet, Tony presses his lips together. "You really should come by the house. Riley and Phoebe would like to see you."
Tony smiles sadly. "Right now, I think it's better for everyone if I stay away until we close the case."
With a tight nod, she returns to her project. Scrambled eggs and bacon on a toasted bagel. She wraps it in waxed paper before passing it to him along with a travel mug full of coffee. Tony feels a little guilty like he doesn't deserve this, like he doesn't deserve any of this.
She turns back with her arms open, beckoning him. And he draws her close, loses himself for just a moment in her. She hugs him back as though she'll never let him go, as though he could've been the one last yesterday, as though this could be their last embrace.
"What will you and Sparr do now?" she whispers.
"I don't know," he admits.
She looks up with her beautiful, concerned eyes. "I never thought I'd hear you say that."
"I got pulled off the case because I'm a witness. The brass is concerned that it would compromise the investigation." He leaves out the part how the dirt bags actually came after their family and Tim was just the collateral damage. "Sparr is feeding me what she can, but you know how it is. I need to work my own lead."
Zoe's face goes panicked. "Are you sure you should be doing this alone? Isn't there anyone who can help?"
It takes a moment for Tony to register what she said. After a split second, he blurts out: "Jesus, Keates, you're brilliant!"
"I am?"
He kisses her smack on the lips, but she is too dumbfounded to reciprocate. She just watches him fumble to put his breakfast on the kitchen table and pull out his cell phone. He dials a number that's been ingrained in his brain for the past thirteen years.
A gruff answer comes on the first ring. "Yeah, Gibbs."
"Hey, boss. Errr…Gibbs. It's Tony." He cringes. "Agent Gibbs, this is Detective DiNozzo. I need your help concerning our mutual case."
"Send your request to – "
"Tim McGee was abducted last night." Tony lets the words soak in before he continues: "I'm pretty sure it's related to our case."
There's a long pause, then: "Meet me at the diner by the Naval Yard in ten."
Without giving Tony has a chance to reply, Gibbs ends the call. So Tony picks up his breakfast and coffee while Zoe just stares after him. He rushes over to plant another hasty kiss on her lips.
"You're brilliant and beautiful and…" he sputters "and…and I love you."
"Love you too, Spider," she says, still not understanding what's going on. "Now, go bring Tim home."