The only sound Tim heard upon entering the lab was the hiss of the doors. Although his throbbing head was grateful for the silence, he found himself wondering where Abby was. It wasn't until he stepped further in that he saw her dark head bowed over her computer, her fingers motionless.
"Abby?"
She spun around and launched herself across the room at him. "McGee! Thank God you're all right!"
"Abbs, shh, please, my head is killing me." He wrapped his arms around her as she hugged him fiercely.
"What the hell happened out there?" She pulled back and looked him over, eyeing the bandage that covered the gash the sharp shard of rock made. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine." He held up his reason for being there, two evidence bags. One containing seven slugs retrieved from ground around the rock where he and Gibbs had been pinned down that morning, and one containing the note found with Michaelson's body.
"God, McGee, were you shot?" Shock colored Abby's voice as she took the bags and carried them to her workbench, stopping to retrieve a pair of gloves along the way.
"Not exactly. I was hit by a piece of flying rock." When she simply stared at him, he broke down and related the entire story.
"Well, there's at least one piece of good news in all of this, you know?" Abby said as she finished removing the letter from the evidence bag and placed it in the fuming chamber.
"What's that?"
"Tony won't dare headslap you for a while." She grinned at him as she started removing the jars containing the slugs from the remaining evidence bag.
He gave a light laugh and put his hand to the bandage. Sobering, he continued their previous conversation.
"The property was deserted, I'd have sworn it. And then all of a sudden someone starts shooting at us. It was as if we were lured out there to be targets. It was bizarre, Abbs."
"Why do you say that?"
"We were in the middle of a wide open field with only one safe place to hide and they didn't start shooting until we were near enough to take cover."
"You mean they wanted to shoot at you but not hit you?" Abby had lined all seven jars up and extracted the first bullet from its protective enclosure. She carefully placed it under her ballistics microscope so she could see and compare the markings to the remaining slugs.
"Exactly. If that note's anything to go by, I think they just wanted to scare us. Whoever 'they' are." Tim's voice held a tinge of anger rather than fear.
"So what's next?" Abby turned from her scope and looked at Tim.
"Find whoever owns that property," he answered grimly. "Somebody has to know something, Abbs. I'm going to find that somebody."
The usually bustling squadroom was eerily silent as three agents sat, heads intently bent to their work. Gibbs, irritated at the pace the investigation seemed to be taking, glanced over at the two younger men, determined to light a fire under someone's ass.
"McGee? Whatcha got?"
"I've traced the property ownership through a couple of holding companies back to a Maria Elena de la Cruz, a Guatemalan national living in this country, but I can't connect her to anything else, Boss. She looks clean as a whistle."
Gibbs saw Tony perk up at the mention of Guatemala. "What, DiNozzo?" He took a drink from the cooling cup of coffee on his desk and grimaced in distaste.
Tony glanced around quickly. "McGee, weren't you the one who did the workup on the Muñez family? Don't they have a gun-running business out of Guatemala?"
"Actually, Abby did most of the work on Paolo's family. But, yes, Tony, that was the first thing I checked. Maria Elena de la Cruz has no connection to the Muñez family." To Gibbs, though, McGee's statement sounded wrong. He could feel his gut begin to churn even as Tony stood up, a slightly predatory gleam in his eye.
"What did you check?" Tony sat on the corner of the other man's desk.
"Marriage license, driver's license… passport…" McGee's words slowed as he caught Tony's eye and the two men shared a look. "All papers that can be forged, can't they?" Both men nodded.
"I think we need to meet with Senorita Maria Elena de la Cruz, McGee. Don't you?"
"On it, Boss. I'll pull her financial records as well." McGee turned back to his computer as Tony stood.
"What about you DiNozzo?" Gibbs turned his attention to his senior field agent.
"Boss, I got nothing. Oh, I have piles of information on Purcell's business, what's still operational, how much money they're making…" he shrugged as he trailed off. "Problem is, I've got no way in." He walked over to sit on the filing cabinet by his boss' desk.
"Sure, I could probably infiltrate the prostitution rings pretty easily," he said with a smirk. And received a smack on the head for it. "Ow, hey, I was serious! Those are the easy ones to break. Forgery's next to impossible to crack."
Gibbs sighed. He knew Tony was right, but they needed to get some inside information on the forgery ring.
"You know, it's a real shame Ketterer had to play chicken with the cell block badass two months into his sentence. He'd be a lot easier to question if he were still alive," Tony sighed.
Gibbs merely raised one eyebrow and stared for a beat before responding. "Ketterer wasn't playing with a full deck when he went in. I suppose it was only a matter of time before he did something suicidal."
"Gibbs," McGee stood, waiting.
The older man swiveled his head to stare at the agent.
"I've got info on de la Cruz, but you're not going to like it," he said with some hesitation
"And why's that, McGee?"
"According to INS, she's no longer in the country. Seems she traveled from DC to California two weeks ago—"
"What was she doing in California?" Gibbs leaned forward and pinned the younger man with his eyes.
"I'm still pulling her credit card records from her trip, Boss. It's going to take a few more minutes for the data to download. In the meantime, I can tell you that three days ago she boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Guatemala."