Set near the end of episode 7.3, The Inside Man

Nobody knocked on the door to Abby's lab. Nobody. For one thing, barring times when she wasn't there or when she was sequestering herself to work on top-secret projects, it was nearly always open. For another thing, assuming she was in her lab, she'd have her music going, and good luck getting heard over the dulcet tones of Android Lust. Which was what happened to be playing when Agent Susan Grady knocked on the open door of the lab.

In Susan's defense, her parents had raised her to be extremely polite, and her throat-clearing had had no effect whatsoever. Neither did the knocking, but she was not one to give up easily. She slammed her fist against the door so forcefully and so repetitively that Abby paused, listened carefully for a few seconds as though perhaps she had just never noticed the driving bass on this particular track of the CD, then turned around curiously.

"Susan?" she said. She picked up her remote and lowered the volume on her stereo by about twenty decibels. "You left the polygraph room?"

Seeing Susan Grady out of the polygraph room was like seeing Abby out of her lab—rare and slightly disorienting. Both women were obsessive about the machines under their care.

Susan nodded. "Yeah. How's Major Mass Spec?"

Abby cast a loving look at her mass spectrometer. "Peak condition. Cracker?"

"Cracker" was the last name of Susan's polygraph machine (first name "Pollyanna"), and her preferred term of address for the device. She had had to stop calling it that out loud, though. One day her supervisor had walked in to her complaining over her computer that "that Cracker is way off today...what are we going to do about it?" Her supervisor was not an understanding man and it had taken the better part of half an hour to explain herself.

"Sharp like a whip and stings like the truth," said Susan.

Abby's grin faded into a dubious grimace. "So...not a chance she might've been wrong about McGee?"

The other woman shook her head ferociously. "Far more likely Agent McGee was wrong about her."

"How so?"

"People fear her, you know. They fear her because they can't fool her."

Maybe Ziva would've questioned that statement, would've suggested that surely sometimes a polygraph provided an inaccurate reading, but Abby's heart and soul was bound up in her lab and she knew that to question a beloved and well-cared-for machine was to question the person who cared for it. Still....

"I don't think McGee's the cowardly type," she said defensively.

"He doesn't fear his polygraph test?"

Abby hesitated. "Well...okay, well, so he does, kind of, but it's a completely irrational fear. He can be totally brave when he's not thinking about it."

"Agent DiNozzo told me that Agent McGee had died."

"What?" Abby asked, incredulous. "And you believed Tony?"

Susan shook her head. "Abby. Please. I haven't been partnered with Cracker for this long without learning a few things. Of course he was lying..."

"Joking," substituted Abby.

"Either way, it indicated that Agent McGee is avoiding his polygraph. That sort of thing won't look good on his record."

"You're not gonna...."

"I'm not here to discuss Agent McGee's test results, or potential test results," Susan rushed on. "Assuming, that is, that he can ever finish his test. He ran out right in the middle of the last one." Her eyes glazed over as she recalled the closeness of the room, the recorded spike in his heart rate as she intentionally slid her hand alongside his. She coughed, clearing her head of the images. "You've spent a lot of time with him, Abby. Is he usually so irresponsible?"

"So he has a little test paranoia, that's a long way from being irresponsible. Nobody likes tests."

"You love tests."

Abby grinned sheepishly. "I do. But I'm a very confident person. Plus, I love machines. Not that McGee doesn't love machines. He does." Her brow furrowed as she realized what else she'd said. "And not that he isn't confident, he's just not very…he's better with PCs than polygraphs."

"Seems to show a certain level of emotional cluelessness, though, would you agree?"

"Hang on a second," laughed Abby. "Is he in trouble, or are you just stalking him?"

Susan looked at her steadily, and Abby flushed.

"It's the latter," Abby muttered to himself. "Wow. They're coming out of the woodwork."

"Woodwork?" asked Susan.

"It's just that with all these women after him, it's like Tim's the new Tony." Abby turned back to her desk and grabbed her Caf-Pow. "He's steadier than Tony ever was, obviously, but he could...."

"Could what? Be swayed?"

Abby took a long quick pull at her Caf-Pow, then another, and another. At the gurgling of air in the straw, she sighed deeply. The ice in the cup rattled as she waved it in farewell on her way out of the lab. "Nice catching up, Susan, I've gotta go for a refill, see you around."

Even in the abstracted state that enveloped her after that incident, Susan was careful to close the door of the lab behind her when she left. She was so absorbed in thought on the way back to her room that McGee had his hands on her shoulders before she noticed he was there.

"Whoa," he said. "You okay?"

She looked down at his hands and he pulled them away.

"Sorry. It's just...you almost ran into me."

"It's all right," she said. She looked into his face and saw that he knew, now, why she had been asking him to come for another polygraph. He knew what she was after, and he seemed to be okay with it. The phrase "coming out of the woodwork" echoed in her brain. Not a pleasant self-image.

"I was just visiting Abby," she said.

Gauging his reaction proved interesting. His eyebrows shot up and his breath hitched before he replied, "Abby Sciuto?" It was an unnecessary clarification, as there were no other women named Abby at NCIS.

"Yes," she affirmed. "I'm surprised she manages to get any work done at all in that room, what with that noise blaring and all the Caf-Pow she guzzles."

"Her taste in music is different, I'll grant you that," he said, and she noticed the slight emphasis he placed on the word "music." "But she doesn't drink as much Caf-Pow as you might think. I don't think I've seen her get her own in months. I thinks she's been living off the ones Gibbs brings her." Susan quirked an eyebrow. "For rewards," McGee went on. "Gibbs likes to bring her a Caf-Pow when she's done a really good job on a case. They have a special kind of relationship."

"Hm," she said, looking at him oddly. "It sounds like they do."

He stared at her, started to open his mouth to say something decidedly off the topic they had been discussing, but she cut him off.

"Well, Agent McGee, your test came back all right after all. There was a calibration problem, but I fixed it after you came in last time. You're free to go."

He looked crestfallen. "Oh. In that case, it sounds like you have some time on your hands. Would you like...."

She shook her head. "Not really. I have a lot of reports to run. Good evening, Agent McGee." And she sidled past him into the polygraph room and shut her door in his confused face.

Susan Grady was not one to give up easily, but her parents had raised her to respect other people's territory.