Here's chapter five! Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Five

Tony stepped out of Ziva's car in the NCIS parking lot and grabbed his bag. He stood silently, waiting for Ziva to gather her things and lock the car.

Ziva walked around the car to stand beside him. She reached for Tony's hand and he took it gratefully.

"Are you ready?" Ziva asked, looking up at him.

Tony took a deep breath. "I think so." He said before he started toward the building.

His grip on Ziva's hand tightened as they got closer to the doors.

"Are you alright?" Ziva asked.

Tony shrugged. "Just don't let me stop walking." He told her.

Ziva squeezed his hand tightly. "Deep breaths." She told him as she opened the door for him.

Tony took her advice, inhaling deeply before he stepped into the building.

Tony hit the call button for the elevator and looked over at Ziva.

"I love you." He told her softly as the elevator dinged.

Ziva looked up at him, a bit surprised. That wasn't what she expected him to say. They stepped into the elevator and she brought her hand up to his chin, tilting his head toward her.

"I love you too." She said before pressing her lips against his.

The elevator doors slid open and they stepped into the squad room. They turned the corner and were surprised to see Abby running toward them.

Abby crashed into Ziva, hugging her tightly before she turned to look at Tony, who already had his arms open for the scientist.

"You're back!" Abby exclaimed as she hugged Tony tightly.

"I'm back." Tony said as Abby let go of him.

She led Tony and Ziva into the squad room and Ziva dropped her bag beside her desk.

Tony nodded toward McGee. "Morning Probie."

McGee rolled his eyes but smiled. "It's good to have you back." He told Tony honestly.

"How are you feeling?" Abby asked as Tony took his coat off and hung it over the back of his chair.

Tony sat down, smiling. "Good as new." He told her. It was sort of true. "Morning boss." He called toward Gibbs as the older man walked toward his desk, coffee in hand.

"Grab your gear." Gibbs said as he unlocked his desk drawer to retrieve his weapon.

Ziva, McGee, and Tony all stood, grabbing their weapons and bags.

Gibbs walked over to stand in front of Tony's desk. "Not you." He said firmly.

"Right…" Tony said, remembering that he was on restricted duty. It wasn't even a conscious decision anymore. When Gibbs told them to gear up, he did. It was a reflex.

Ziva was glad she hadn't had the time to take her coat off yet. She watched as Tony dropped his weapon back into its drawer and sat down.

Gibbs and McGee walked toward the elevator.

Ziva walked over to Tony's desk quickly, leaning over it to kiss his cheek.

"Be safe." Tony reminded her as she walked away. He knew it was just a crime scene, and it would produce little to no danger, but he couldn't explain the nervous feeling he had as he watched Ziva jog to catch Gibbs and McGee in the elevator.

Tony leaned back in his chair and looked up at Abby.

"Glad to be back?" Abby asked.

Tony nodded. "Yeah. I think I am." He told her.

XXXXX

"So how are you doing?" McGee asked Ziva as he turned right when the GPS told him to.

Ziva shrugged. "I am fine. Why wouldn't I be?" She asked.

McGee shrugged. "Just making sure." He told her.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"Is Tony ready to come back?" McGee asked suddenly.

Ziva turned to look at him. "I am not the one you should be asking." She said.

McGee shook his head. "I know you won't lie to me. Tony will."

Ziva sighed. "I do not know." She told him honestly. "I think he needs to be doing something, so it isn't all he thinks about. That is what I did."

McGee nodded. "That makes sense."

The rest of the drive was silent, both parties lost in thought.

McGee hit the brakes when he saw Gibbs' car sitting on the side of the road, with a small red car sitting in front of it.

He pulled in behind Gibbs and turned off the truck. Ziva climbed out of the truck and grabbed her bag. She started walking toward Gibbs, who was standing beside the car, looking in through the open window.

"That is a lot of blood." Ziva mumbled as she walked up the stand beside Gibbs. "Where is the body?" She asked.

He looked up at her. "Not sure. Probably in there." He said, pointing toward the forest on the other side of the ditch.

Ziva nodded. "Lovely." She said sarcastically. "Why were we called? This isn't a Navy vehicle."

Gibbs shrugged. "I don't know. Call Tony, ask him to run the plates." He told her.

"On it." She told him as McGee walked past her with a camera.

She grabbed her cell phone out of her back pocket and dialed Tony's number.

"Very special agent Anthony DiNozzo speaking, how may I be of assistance?" Tony said when he answered his phone.

Ziva laughed lightly. "You could run a license plate number for me." She told him.

Tony smiled. "Of course, lay it on me."

Ziva stepped around the car so she could see the license plate clearly. "Victor, Romeo, golf, six, one, one, eight." She told him.

"Alright." Tony hit enter to start the search and sat back in his chair, waiting.

"Have you managed to start catching up on your paperwork?" Ziva asked playfully.

Tony rolled his eyes. "I opened a file and closed it, if that counts." He told her.

Ziva chuckled. "Such a hard worker."

Tony smiled. "You're absolutely right, and I found the car. It's registered to Lieutenant Rose McDonald, thirty-three, currently stationed in Norfolk." He told her.

"Alright, thanks Tony." Ziva said before she hung up.

"The car is registered to Lieutenant Rose McDonald." Ziva told Gibbs and McGee.

"Her ID isn't in the car, so it has to be with her." McGee stated.

"Ziver, you're with me, start searching the woods." Gibbs said. "McGee-"

"Shoot, sketch, and wait for Ducky. Got it boss." McGee interrupted.

Ziva nodded and pulled her backpack onto both shoulders. She followed Gibbs through the ditch and into the tree line.

"She can't have gotten too far after losing that much blood. You go east, I'll go west?" Ziva suggested.

Gibbs nodded and headed east.

Ziva turned to walk in her own chosen direction. She tried to walk as quietly as she could, listening for anything that could be around her. It was hard to do at eight o'clock in the morning in November. The ground had a layer of frost on it, and Ziva was almost regretting not wearing more layers.

She stopped when she heard a small noise. Maybe a bird. She thought.

She heard it again. She waited a moment before she heard it a third time and realized that no, it wasn't a bird, it was a person. She darted toward a pile of brush that looked like it had been cut down because it was leaning too close to a powerline.

She pushed a pile of branches to the side and found a blonde woman, covered in blood and gasping underneath.

"I FOUND HER! CALL AN AMBULANCE!" Ziva yelled back in the direction she had come from.

She knelt down beside the woman and tried to find where the blood had come from.

"Lieutenant McDonald?" She asked calmly.

The woman nodded.

"What hurts, where is the blood coming from?" Ziva asked. It was everywhere. Her shirt was covered, her skirt was torn, and also soaked in blood.

"Stomach." The Lieutenant mumbled through gasps.

Ziva heard Gibbs and McGee running up to her and they both slid onto their knees to help her.

Ziva lifted her shirt and sure enough, that's where the blood had come from. The Lieutenant had two stab wounds in her abdomen.

"Gauze, McGee." Ziva spat, praying that McGee had had the sense to grab the first aid kit from the truck.

She was thankful when he handed her a pile of gauze. She pressed it against the two wounds, soaking it quickly.

"The ambulance should be here soon, we aren't that far out of town." McGee told her.

Ziva nodded. All she had to do was keep her alive until the paramedics got there. She could do that.

"More gauze McGee." She said. "And make sure you put this in an evidence bag." She told him, holding out the bloody gauze squares.

McGee did as she asked.

They heard sirens in the distance and Gibbs turned to McGee.

"We got this McGee, go wait for the ambulance, bring them down here." Gibbs told him.

McGee nodded and stood, and Ziva hadn't ever seen him run as fast as he did when he ran back toward the truck.

Gibbs kept handing Ziva fresh gauze and bagging the used gauze until he heard footsteps behind him.

Three paramedics surrounded them and Ziva yielded her position to one of them.

Ziva, Gibbs, and McGee watched as the paramedics worked, putting on a temporary bandage and lifting her onto the backboard.

"Let's move." The tall, dark haired paramedic said.

The three of them lifted the lieutenant up and began to walk out of the woods with her. The team followed.

"Where are you taking her?" Gibbs asked.

"George Washington." One of the paramedics told him.

Gibbs nodded. "McGee go with them. Call me if anything happens."

McGee nodded. "On it." He said before he followed the paramedics to the ambulance quickly.

When Ziva and Gibbs emerged from the forest, climbing up onto the road, Ducky and Palmer were standing there, beside their own gurney, confused.

"She's still alive?" Palmer asked.

Ziva nodded. "She is."

"Lucky girl." Ducky said.

"With whatever happened to her, I doubt she feels lucky." Ziva said.

XXXXX

Ziva stepped out of the elevator and walked around the corner toward her desk. Tony spotted her out of the corner of his eye and did a double take when he saw that she was covered in blood.

He stood up and walked toward her. She could see the look of worry on his face.

"It is not mine, I am fine." She told Tony before he even had the chance to ask.

"Whose?" He asked.

"Lieutenant McDonald. She's still alive." Ziva told him. "Can you grab my bag? I don't want to touch it until I've washed my hands." She told him.

She held up her hands, which were covered with exam gloves, but underneath they were clearly bloody.

Tony bent over and grabbed Ziva's bag and followed her to the change room. She opened the door to let him in.

"You know that's the women's change room, right?" He asked.

Ziva nodded. "Would you prefer it if I used the men's? I need your hands for a minute." She told him. "No one is even in here."

Tony thought for a moment before he stepped into the change room after her.

"I think I have an extra evidence bag or two in the front pocket, can you grab them for my clothes?" Ziva asked as she peeled the gloves off of her hands.

Tony took the large evidence bags out of her backpack and pulled one open. Ziva dropped the gloves into the bag and peeled her jacket off. She folded it neatly before it followed her gloves into the bag.

"Next one." She said as she peeled her shirt off. She stood, holding the shirt for a moment while Tony did up one bag and opened the other.

The blood had soaked through her coat, and her shirt in some places, and she placed her shirt and bra into the evidence bag, along with her pants and underwear.

"Can you take those down to Abby please?" Ziva asked.

Tony nodded. "Yeah sure." He stepped closer to her. "Are you okay?" He asked.

Ziva nodded. "I am fine. I am just going to shower and then I will be out." She told Tony, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

Tony nodded. "Alright. Scream if you need anything. Well maybe just text." He said, laughing lightly.

Ziva chuckled. "I will."

Ziva walked toward her locker, she always kept a spare change of clothes for situations exactly like this. She opened the locker and pulled out what she needed, including a small travel bottle of her body wash and shampoo and locked it back up again.

She stepped into the shower and turned on the water. She hated showering at work because she could never get the temperature just how she liked it. So, she settled for slightly cool and made quick work of washing the lieutenant's blood off of her body.

Once she had gotten herself into fresh clothes, she pulled her hair up into a tight bun and grabbed her backpack and walked back to her desk.

Gibbs was back now and sitting at his desk, talking on his cell phone.

Ziva sat down at her desk.

Gibbs hung up the phone.

"Find anything out?" Tony asked from his desk.

Gibbs nodded. "It's worse than we thought." He told them. "McGee says she has cuts, all over her body, fresh, whoever tried to kill her did it. No damaged organs, she's getting stitched up now. She told a nurse that she had been raped."

Ziva tried not to make it obvious as she looked up at Tony. He looked a bit tense, and he noticed her watching him. He nodded slightly, trying to tell her that he was alright.

"Has McGee talked to her yet?" Ziva asked.

Gibbs shook his head. "Not yet, after the doctors are finished. DiNozzo, start going over her phone records, Ziver, track her movements for the last forty-eight hours, I want to know where she was before she ended up in the woods." He told them firmly.

Ten minutes later Gibbs' phone was ringing again.

"Yeah?" He asked as he flipped his phone open.

"It's me." McGee told him. "Lieutenant McDonald is refusing to speak to me."

"Well why not?" Gibbs asked.

McGee shrugged. "If she was speaking to me I would know that. Maybe you should send Ziva over, let her talk to a woman." He suggested.

"Yeah, will do." Gibbs said shortly before he hung up the phone.

"Ziva." Gibbs called.

Ziva looked up from her computer screen.

"Go over to the hospital, the lieutenant won't talk to McGee." He told her.

Ziva nodded. "Sure." She said as she stood up and started to gather her things.

Gibbs turned to Tony. "Are you cleared to drive?" He asked.

Tony looked up at him. "Me?" He asked.

Gibbs nodded.

"Yeah, why?" Tony asked.

Gibbs tossed him a set of keys. "Follow Ziva, go pick up McGee." He told Tony.

Tony nodded. "Got it."

XXXXX

Twenty minutes later, Tony and Ziva were parking beside each other in the hospital parking lot. They got out of their respective cars and began to walk toward the sliding doors of the Emergency Room.

They walked down the hallway to the nurse's station.

Ziva held up her badge. "Special Agent David, this is Special Agent DiNozzo, we're here to see Rose McDonald." She told the blonde nurse sitting behind the desk.

The nurse nodded. "Right over there." She said, pointing to a room across the hall.

Ziva led Tony toward the room and she knocked lightly before they walked in. McGee was standing in front of the pull around curtain which was shielding the lieutenant.

"Tony?" McGee asked. "I thought you were on desk duty."

"I'm just here to drag you back." Tony told him.

McGee nodded and handed his notepad over to Ziva to look over.

"Thank you." Ziva said as she read his messy hand writing.

"We should go. I don't feel like being head slapped because there's no one there to work." Tony said. "I'll see you later." He told Ziva, leaning over to kiss her temple before he led McGee out of the room.

Ziva took a deep breath and stepped around the curtain.

"Lieutenant McDonald?" She asked gently.

The lieutenant looked up at her. "Rose, please." She said. "I remember you. You're the agent who found me, right?" She asked.

Ziva dragged the chair in the corner of the room over to sit beside the lieutenant's bed.

"Yes, I am. My name is Ziva." She told her. "How are you feeling?"

"Thank you. You saved my life." Rose said.

Ziva nodded, unsure of the appropriate response.

"You're here because I wouldn't talk to the other agent, right?" Rose asked.

Ziva nodded once again. "We need to know what happened so we can catch the person responsible for this." She told her.

Rose sighed. "His name is Owen Ramsey." She told Ziva.

"Is he Navy?" Ziva asked.

Rose shook her head. "No."

"He is your boyfriend?" Ziva asked.

Rose nodded. "Well he was, until about a week ago. I broke it off because I was set to deploy next week. Six months on the Eisenhower."

"Was it serious?" Ziva asked.

Rose shook her head. "Not to me it wasn't. I didn't think it was to him either."

"And you were with him this morning?" Ziva asked.

Rose nodded. "He showed up at my apartment with coffee. I was running late, and he wanted to talk, so I told him I'd drop him off near his place because it was on my way." She said.

"What happened after you got in the car?" Ziva asked.

She watched the lieutenant carefully. Her eyes had closed, and her fists were clenched as she remembered what had happened to her.

"He was trying to convince me to get back together, and when I told him no, and kept telling him no, he pulled a folding knife out of his pocket. He told me to pull over, so I did." Rose told her, her voice shaking.

"What happened next?" Ziva asked gently.

"He stabbed me, here." Rose told her, her hand moving to her side. "And I tried to get out of the car to run, and he stabbed be again, so I stopped." She said.

"You told a nurse that you had been raped." Ziva stated.

Rose nodded. "I don't really remember how I got from the car to the woods, everything hurt so much. I just have little flashes of what happened. I was in the car, and then I was in the woods, and he was on top of me, and then everything went black." She explained quietly. "And when I woke up again, you were asking me where the blood was coming from."

Ziva nodded as she wrote down what the lieutenant was telling her quickly.

"Are you comfortable having a rape kit done?" Ziva asked.

Rose nodded. "Yes, I was told that the SANE nurse would be in soon." She said, trying to seem more confident than she looked.

Ziva nodded. "Alright. Is there anyone you would like me to call to come sit with you?" She asked.

"Can you actually just hand me my cell phone out of… my purse isn't here…" Rose said.

Ziva pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. "Use mine." She told her. "I'm just going to step outside to talk to the nurses." She said before stepping out of the room.

She pulled the door of the room shut and collided with someone as she turned around.

"Ziva?" The woman asked.

Ziva stepped back to get a clear look at the smaller woman. She smiled a bit.

"Sarah, how are you?" She asked.

Sarah shrugged. "As good as I can be I suppose." She said as she held up the evidence collection kit that she assumed was going to be used for Lieutenant McDonald. "How's Tony?" She asked.

Ziva smiled. "He is getting better, today is his first day back at work." She told her.

"That's great! I'm glad he's doing better. I'm assuming I'm gonna be sending this to you guys?" She asked.

Ziva nodded. "Yes please." She said.

Sarah nodded. "Sure thing." She said before she pushed the door open. Ziva followed her in.

"Grabbing my cell." She told Sarah.

She stepped around the curtain and Rose held out her cell phone.

"Thank you, for everything." She said.

Ziva smiled. "No problem." She said before she walked out of the room.

She walked back through the parking lot to her car and sat down inside. It was still fairly warm from her drive over to the hospital, which she was thankful for. She started her car and pulled out of the parking spot to head back to work.

XXXXX

Tony walked into the bedroom that night after Gibbs had insisted that Ziva took him home, because he and McGee could handle going to pick up Ramsey, and they could all sense Tony's anxiety.

Tony sat down beside Ziva on the bed and looked over at her, surprised to see her writing in a notebook.

"What's that?" Tony asked curiously.

Ziva shrugged. "Just a journal. Nothing special. It helps to sort out my thoughts on cases sometimes." She told him.

Tony sat back against the headboard, watching her write quickly. She must have had a lot of thoughts about this case. She finished her sentence and closed the book, and dropped it into the drawer of her night stand.

"You okay?" Tony asked as she sat back beside him. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"I think so. I just wasn't expecting this to be our first case back." Ziva said.

"I was talking about you finding her." Tony said softly. "McGee said it was pretty scary." He told her.

Ziva shrugged. "It was not what I was expecting. I thought she would be dead." She told him honestly.

Tony nodded. "You saved her life."

Ziva nodded. "Yeah." She said simply.

"Can I tell you something?" Tony asked.

Ziva nodded. "Of course."

Tony kissed her forehead softly. "I was terrified when you stepped out of the elevator… there was so much blood, and I thought that some of it was yours…" He trailed off.

Ziva lifted her head off his shoulder to kiss him softly. "I am okay." She reminded him.

He nodded. "I know. I guess it just made me think of how easy it would have been for you not to be." He admitted.

Ziva wrapped her arms around him. "I will always do everything I can to come back to you. No matter what." She told him firmly.

Tony pulled her closer to him. "So will I."

Ziva smiled a bit. "Come on, we should get some sleep. We do have to work tomorrow."

Tony nodded. "I want to watch Gibbs interrogate him." He told her.

Ziva nodded. "I do too." She said as she laid her head down on her pillow.

Tony laid down beside her and they wrapped their arms around each other. They both still sound it kind of funny that before they had started doing this, neither one of them liked to cuddle, but together they couldn't get enough of it.

"Goodnight." Tony said, sliding close to her.

"Goodnight love."