After calling Gibbs to avail him of the things he and Tony had just learned, and to tell him what they were about to do, McGee called the number on Audrey Wildwood's business card. She answered quickly, and when McGee reached the part about Eli being involved, she agreed to meet the agents at a local café. Maybe it was McGee just being jumpy, but Audrey's fast response made him a little wary.

As usual, Tony was on another planet, and when McGee looked over at him, rolled his eyes.

"Spit it out, man."

"Breakfast At Tiffany's is Ziva's favorite date movie."

"And Sarah loves it, too. What's your point?"

"Well, the person we're about to meet, her name is Audrey Wildwood—that's the name of the star of the movie, and the last name of one of the movie's more iconic characters, probie!"

In truth, McGee had seen Breakfast At Tiffany's more times than he cared to admit, because not only did Sarah love it, but so did Abby, Clementine, and even Rubyjane. That meant it was on at the house often. Hopefully, when baby Riversong was older, he or she would side with him, and prefer action movies, like he did.

"So… what? Are you saying that because this journalist's name is Audrey Wildwood, she might bring us even more of a break than Eli did?"

"Well, hope springs eternal, and Wildwood is an actual surname, so you never know. I just want this case to be over, already."

McGee sighed. "So do I, but especially for my sister, so she can move past it."

Tony made to make a comment about his partner being a thoughtful brother, but was interrupted by the arrival of a woman. She was younger than they were, in her twenties, at the most, and was dressed in bright colors that put him in mind of a cartoon character. All the same, she meant business, which led Tony to wonder how she'd met Eli David in the first place, and what had happened to make her fall under his definition of 'good friend.'

Coming back to reality, he stood with McGee at their table in time to receive her.

"Special Agents McGee and DiNozzo?" she asked tentatively.

McGee nodded, and showed her his credentials. "I'm McGee, and he's DiNozzo. Audrey Wildwood, I presume?"

"That's me." she sat, and the men sat opposite her. "What's all this about? Is Eli in trouble?"

"No. What makes you ask that?"

Audrey coughed nervously. "Eli is my friend: I was introduced to him when I was doing a project in Tel Aviv last year, and we've kept in contact ever since. I'm a foreign correspondent for The Daily Trumpeter, and next, I'm off to Tokyo for a month. What is all this about?"

Tony cleared his throat. "Right. We're investigating a homicide, Audrey, and your name came up."

"What?! How?!"

"The deceased crossed paths with Eli last night, and Eli had plans to send him your way today."

Audrey kept listening, against her better judgement. "Really? What was this guy's name?"

But Tony only got as far as showing the picture that he'd shown to Eli before she recoiled in shock.

"Ian is dead?!"

"Woah, Audrey." Tony said in surprise. "How do you know him?"

She was shaking her head now, and standing up. "I have to get out of here!"

Tony tried again. "How do you know Lance Corporal Ian Baranski?"

"He approached me last month when he was visiting from New Orleans—he said he knew bad things about the man that he worked for." Audrey glanced over her shoulder. "I have to go!"

"Do you at least remember the name of Ian's boss?"

"Hildebrand!"

McGee held out his card to her. "Will you at least take this?"

Audrey did, but she looked at the card and then at McGee, something clicking in her brain. "Are you the big brother that Sarah Cartwright talks about?"

"Yes, but—"

This raised a red alert for Audrey, so she turned on her heel and promptly exited the café. She was gone as quickly as she'd come, like a spooked horse.

The agents both stared after her.

"Tim, what the hell just happened?"

McGee had a small turn at Tony using the shortened version of his given name—he almost never did, but when the occasion arose, it was because peril was close at hand.

"I don't know how to answer that. What I can say is that we're all officially in over our heads."

McGee also wanted to go back to NCIS, to find Abby so he could just hold her, but he didn't get to hang on to even that thought for too long, because his phone rang with a call from Gibbs about a new dead body to investigate. When the call was over, however, he hung up and turned to Tony in disbelief.

"Don't tell me that someone else is dead." Tony griped.

"There's always going to be another dead body, Tony, but try who it is this time—Senator Hildebrand, himself."

"But didn't Audrey just tell us…?"

"Yes, unfortunately."

"And wasn't it Hildebrand's mansion in Louisiana where Sarah lived, and met him and Baranski?"

"Yes." McGee repeated. He stood and stretched. "Come on—we need to go to the new crime scene, but we also have to tell Gibbs about what happened here, and why we'll probably see Sarah and Clementine, Audrey, and Eli, or any of them in an official capacity in the next twenty-four hours or so."

Tony gathered his things and then fell into place astride McGee as they headed for the main café door. "Ziva won't be happy. She loves her father, but doesn't take too kindly to him getting involved with other people's drama."

"And now, there's Audrey."

"Yeah." Tony agreed. "Buckle in, Tim. This is going to be a bumpy ride."

Adding yet another bump in the road was the fact that the crime scene was in the hotel where they had attended the party, the night before. This time, however, Tony and McGee found themselves riding the lift nearly to the top floor. The luxury suites were located here. The one that they were looking for, according to what McGee had learned from Gibbs, was at the end of the hall. The last one on the left.

"What do we have, boss?" McGee asked Gibbs once they'd ducked under the crime scene tape.

In response, Gibbs just met his underlings both with an arched eyebrow. They reacted like a pair of guilty schoolboys.

Immediately, McGee spoke in a tone of backpedaling. "Well, we had no idea that Audrey Wildwood was going to react the way that she did, and if we go to the paper again, she'd just flee somewhere else. It would also be going in a gigantic circle."

"Ziva's father also told us everything he knew," Tony added. "And we believed him. Do you want us to go make that Eli and Audrey aren't off scheming, or something?"

"No, DiNozzo! What I want to know is why you two chuckleheads haven't called Ziva yet! She called me because apparently, she called both of you, but neither of you picked up!"

He watched Tony and McGee mentally retrace their steps, going over what they'd done since leaving the Navy Yard, trying to see where they had gone wrong. They both arrived at the conclusion simultaneously.

"Whoops." Tony said when he checked his phone. "This was on silent."

"Mine, too," McGee followed up. "But I always have mine on silent when I go into a café. I just forgot to turn it back when we left because of everything that just happened…"

How words died away when Gibbs' expression became steelier than ever. Spotting his camera equipment bag that had been brought up from the MCRT van, McGee broke eye contact with Gibbs and hurried off.

Tony took a step back when Gibbs turned his gaze on him. "I will go call Ziva, and pray that she doesn't curse me out in Hebrew again."

Without another word, he left the suite for the hotel hallway, passing Ducky on the way out. The old man seemed preoccupied.

"What's on your mind?" Gibbs asked him. "Where's Palmer?"

"He is back at the morgue, finishing up with Lance Corporal Baranski."

"But…?"

Ducky turned to face him. "But, for a moment we couldn't find an exit wound for the bullet that ended his life."

"Excuse me?"

"We shall all reconvene in Autopsy later. The part that is presently bothering me is that when we went to wash our guest's body, Mister Palmer and I encountered something rather odd."

"You couldn't find an exit wound for a GSW, and that isn't unusual?"

Realizing that his friend's patience was waning, Ducky continued on. "He was covered from the shoulders down, in some kind of oil, not unlike something that one would find in a massage parlor."

"Are you telling me that our victim had time for a massage before he died?"

"Well, not directly before, but some time in the few hours beforehand, yes. Abby is analyzing a sample in her lab now." Ducky looked around. "Where is the poor senator now?"

Gibbs motioned for him for follow. "Through here, in the bathroom."

Senator Clark Hildebrand was on the floor of his bathroom, in his pajamas. He was very dead, and lying flat on his front, facing away from the others, a look of shock on his face. Ducky didn't see this until he moved over to investigate this, but he also saw the cause of the senator's death.

"Oh, my." Ducky sighed heavily. "It appears as though he met the same demise as our guest in Autopsy."

"Shot, execution style?"

"Mhm."

"Hildebrand is a surprise, I'll admit, but if this keeps up, then it looks like the people being wiped out are ones connected to him or who know exactly what it was that he was up to in the first place."

"I beg your pardon, Jethro?"

"Like you said—we'll reconvene later."

"Very well." Ducky capitulated. "You know, I saw Tony out in the hallway, on the phone, but he could scarcely get a word in edgewise with the other person. Whom did he call?"

"Ziva. I told him to tell her about what he and McGee learned while they were out, but she was probably chewing him out because he forgot to call her until I reminded him."

Chuckling, Ducky returned to investigating Hildebrand's body further, but after just a few moments, he had paused at a new observation.

"What, Duck?" asked Gibbs.

"This, for starters."

He was pointing at a gun on the other side of the body, just out of Gibbs' line of sight.

"Until Abby can prove otherwise, this is a suicide; the gun is at an angle that would make it seem so."

"And what is my thirty-ninth rule? I think you would know that one, after all these years of working together."

"That one is, 'there is no such thing as a coincidence,' and that is all good and well, old friend, but I haven't any other idea how to phrase it. Just what have we stumbled upon?"

"I don't know. Anything else giving you pause?"

"This. The senator is married."

Ducky showed Gibbs the victim's right hand, and a gold wedding band was clearly visible.

"The next order of business is finding his w—"

But they were interrupted by a loud voice, out in the hallway.

"DON'T TELL ME NO! MY HUSBAND IS IN THERE!"

Gibbs left the bathroom for the hallway, and found Tony facing a lavishly-dressed woman. Her entire style was very sophisticated, all the way down to a Chanel bag she carried over one shoulder; this turned out to be a carrier for a Yorkshire Terrier, who seemed to be watching the scene very intently. Also surveying things were four young children—three girls and a boy. They each bore their own looks of trepidation.

Suddenly, the boy sidestepped the sister closest to him. "CHLOE, NOT AGAIN! WHY AREN'T YOU EMPTY? AIM AT THE PLANTER!"

Chloe spotted the planter closest to her, and just in time, because she vomited into it. Understandably, her brother and sisters expressed their disgust and gave her a wide berth. Chloe began to cry. Their mother just groaned and hung her head.

Tony was at a loss for words because life with kids was flashing before his eyes. Maybe he and Ziva and the baby would only ever be a family of three. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea…

Gibbs approached the new person. "Missus Hildebrand?"

She looked at him and nodded. "I'm Julia Hildebrand. Senator Clark Hildebrand is my husband."