1A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Sorry it took me awhile to update. Hope ya'll are enjoying the story! Please keep reviewing!:)

Chapter 6: The Case Begins

Tony and Kate ended up working all day Friday, into late night, and all weekend. The only time they got to leave the office was to go to their house, shower, catch a couple hours of sleep, and then go directly back to NCIS. The same went for McGee and Abby. No one was even sure if Gibbs was leaving the office. They figured he probably stayed there all night, because every time any one of them would come in at strange hours he was already there, drinking his coffee and going over files.

Tony was nominated to clean up Gibbs' desk after the prank that Annie pulled, and it took him quite awhile to unstick the most important things. The rest of the things Gibbs told him just to leave because it wasn't imperative that they get unstuck at that moment, but it was imperative that he start helping with the case.

No one knew what Gibbs had said to Annie either. Kate had questioned her about it on the way to their friends house, but Annie just told her that it was a secret. Tony even tried to ask Gibbs what he had told his daughter, but Gibbs told Tony the same thing, that it was between him and Annie, at least for now. Kate figured it must not have been something too terrible, because Annie didn't start crying or anything, and that was definitely a good thing.

The current case they were working on had to do with a serial killer they had been after for the past month. He kidnaped women, raped them, and then brutally murdered them. They had been assigned the case when the first murder was committed in their town. But after some phone calls they found out that it wasn't his first murder, but his fourth. The profile of how the young woman was murdered fit exactly the same profile as that of a murderer in Florida. He killed his first three women in Fort Lauderdale over a two month period, then disappeared, it seemed, until the murder of Elizabeth Adams three and a half weeks ago. They then began profiling the murderer, who had now been considered a serial killer. Kate put together a profile of the serial killer. She figured he was probably ex-military with some type of vengeance against women in the navy. She figured his age to be mid-forties seeing as how he was retired and probably did so in his late thirties or early forties. She also assumed him to be well fit physically, since it seemed there was no signs of struggle from his previous victims.

Gibbs had them working nonstop so that they could catch this guy before he murdered again. By the profile they had of the man, there were four suspects who had retired from the military in the last 10 years, who seemed to have disappeared from the database. With McGee researching that area, he found that one of the men resided there and was working in an auto shop right outside town. He also found another one who was living in Miami. Since McGee found two out of the four he was nominated to fly to Miami with Tony to interview the man. While Gibbs and Kate checked out the one at the auto shop.

When Gibbs and Kate reached the auto shop, they found it hard to believe that this ex-air force pilot was retired and working here. The shop was hardly a shop, it was more like a run down shack with two car garages to work on the cars that would stop there, and there was one gas pump outside that looked like it was thirty years old. Gibbs and Kate looked at each other before stepping out of the car.

"Well I can tell you one thing. I would definitely not stop here by myself, or even if I had my kids with me." Kate commented to Gibbs as they walked up to the men in the garage.

"Good girl Kate. I'm glad that you have learned something in the last twelve years of working with NCIS." Gibbs responded with a smirk.

"Well, well. What do we have here?" one man said as he stepped up to Gibbs and Kate.

"We have a few questions we would like to ask someone who works here." Kate answered, looking at the man.

"Got something caught in your undercarriage you want me to take a look at." the man said as he stepped closer to Kate.

"Only if you want your ass kicked" Kate replied, narrowing her eyes.

"Well we don't get many pretty things like yourself out in these parts." the man said, reaching out his hand to touch Kate's face. But as he did Kate grabbed his wrist and twisted it around and then kicked him in the groin.

"Like I said, I will kick your ass" she responded pushing him onto the ground.

"Should of listened to the lady. She's a federal agent." Gibbs smiled, looking down at the man who was laying on the ground in pain, 'Now, we are looking for a Jeffery Mitchell. Does he work here?"

"That's me," a man who looked about 45, answered, stepping out from behind one of the cars that was there.

"Roger there is actually pretty harmless, but I'm sorry about that. Now what can I do for you."

"I'm Agent Gibbs, this is Agent Todd, with NCIS. We have a few questions about your retirement and your whereabouts from the last five years."

"Well you do know, Agent Gibbs, that I was forced to retire because of a missile mishap. They told me I could either retire with my pension as soon as possible or I would be discharged and charged with endangering innocent civilians. So of course I chose my pension."

"What exactly happened Mr. Mitchell?" Kate questioned.

"I was in charge of the test bombing and a couple of the guys and I decided to goof off when we were through for the day. Unfortunately I forgot to disarm my fighter jet. I hit the button and sent a bomb into a village in Cambodia. Only five people were killed, but it was five too many."

"What happened to the other men that were with you?" Gibbs asked

"One was asked to retire along with me, and the other one was only 25 so he was reprimanded, but allowed to sty."

"Well thank you for your time. If we have any further questions we will contact you." Kate told the man, as she and Gibbs turned to walk back to the car.

"What do you think Kate?" Gibbs asked as they got into the car.

"Well he definitely keeps in shape. And he seems big enough that women would have a hard time fighting him off if they tried. And that incident that he told us about could have been planned. I think we should check it out to see if he is telling us the truth."

"Good observation Kate. Lets get back to the office and see how Tony and McGee did."

They contacted McGee and Tony as soon as they arrived back at the office. They didn't find anything suspicious. The man, Thomas Gibson, was retired from the army and lives on a boat in Miami, and takes people deep sea fishing. He was an average size guy, but Tony said he didn't seem to work out regularly, which meant he didn't fit the profile. Gibbs told Tony and McGee to catch the next flight back.

Meanwhile Gibbs kept searching for any records of the other two men that still weren't accounted for. One whose name was Tyler Huggins, an ex-air force pilot, who retired eight years ago, and a Michael Williams, who had retired five years ago from the marines. Neither one had current addresses and there was no present information in the database about either of them.

Kate was still busy finding out everything she could about Jeffery Mitchell, making sure his story was truthful. She found that his story was true according to his superiors, but that didn't mean he didn't lie to them about what really happened. He was reprimanded for another similar incident five years before that one. And when he first joined the air force at 18, he was known as one of the trouble makers and had quite a few run ins with the law for drug possession and underage drinking, and almost got kicked out of the military. But by the time he was 20 he had cleaned up his act and was rising up the ladder quite fast for a kid his age. And other than those two incidents, there really wasn't any other trouble he had caused.

After Kate had relayed the information to Gibbs, he told her they would keep any eye on him, but they also needed to locate the two men who were still missing all current information from the database.

Kate and Gibbs were working well into that Monday night, when Tony and McGee finally arrived back at 10pm.

"Hey Boss, Agent Todd," Tony said, getting off the elevator, winking at Kate with that charming smile.

"Tony," she replied smiling back at him.

"Where the hell have you two been," Gibbs asked, "I told you two to take the next available flight and that was six hours ago."

"Well the 5 o'clock flight was booked. They had some sports team on it." Tony answered looking at Gibbs.

"And McGee made us miss the 7:15 flight, so we had to take the 8:55 flight."

"It wasn't totally my fault Tony," McGee began.

"I don't care whose fault it was," Gibbs said, "But I do care about catching this ass. So McGee, do everything you can to find the information on Huggins and Williams. Tony, Kate, make phone calls to all their superiors to see if they know anything or know anyone who might."

"Tonight Boss?" McGee asked, looking up from his desk.

"Yeah Boss, I'm really tired from the flying today." Tony added looking over at Gibbs from his desk. Gibbs just stared down both of them with his look, and McGee and Tony both responded,

"Tonight. Right. We will find out everything we can."

They all went back to work and Tony looked across his desk at Kate and threw a paper clip at her, hitting her square in the nose. She looked up at him and he was smiling at her, and she smiled back. He then mouthed 'I missed you', but she mouthed back 'I didn't' with a smirk and then she winked at him.

"DiNozzo, Todd. Shouldn't you be making phone calls," he said, not looking up from his computer.

"Right Boss." Tony responded, giving Kate one last smile.

"On it," Kate answered, smiling back at Tony.

They didn't find out much on Michael Williams, only that he was known to break a few rules. They also found out he was forced to retire because of something that happened, but nobody knew exactly what, because his superior died a week later. But they also found out that his superior was a woman. And as far as Tyler Huggins, they found out he was killed in an automobile accident two years ago. So that left them with two prime suspects, Michael Williams and Jeffery Mitchell. McGee did everything he could to find out the whereabouts of Michael Williams so that they could interview him. Finally he got a hit off a credit card that was used by a Matthew Williams. And according to his file, Michael had a brother named Matthew. Gibbs and McGee went to check it out, while Tony and Kate were allowed to go home, shower, and change, but they were to be back at the office in one hour.

Tony and Kate arrived back at their house around 2am. They each took turns catching a short nap while the other showered. They both noticed that the house felt so empty. The kids were all at Kate's brothers house, since they were not sick anymore, and tomorrow their babysitter was supposed to be back, hopefully. Kate felt bad having to leave her kids at her brothers, again. But she knew he didn't mind, and at least the kids got to play with their cousins. Once they had finished getting ready, they fed the animals and grabbed their stuff to head out.

"Kate," Tony said as they walked to their SUV.

"Yeah," she answered, looking over at him.

"Don't you think there is something wrong with us," Tony asked, as he unlocked the SUV and opened Kate's door for her.

"What do you mean," she questioned him, as he got into the SUV from the drivers side.

"We just had the entire house to ourselves, and we didn't even take advantage of it." he said, smiling at her.

"Tony it's not like we had that much time, and besides, I'm too tired. I don't even want to go back to work. I just want to go to sleep."

"Actually that sounds like a great idea. Why don't you call Gibbs and tell him we are too tired to come back to work."

"Right Tony. Like I would ever call Gibbs and tell him that." Kate rolled her eyes as she turned her head back around to look out the window, "Besides I doubt he would believe we were actually sleeping."

"That's true," Tony responded, as he turned his attention back to the road.

When Tony and Kate finally arrived back at NCIS, Tony looked over at Kate and saw that she was fast asleep. He brushed her hair out of her face and tucked it behind her ear, before he carefully shook her. He hated to wake her up. She looked so peaceful. She slowly opened her eyes to find they were already back at work. She looked over at Tony, who was just staring at her.

"What?" she said, with a smile.

"I love you Katie" he said, looking deep into her eyes and smiling.

"I love you too, Tony" she replied, with a smile, "But we better get inside before Gibbs gets back. And Tony, don't call me Katie."

"Right" he answered her as they got out and headed up to their floor. When they stepped out of the elevator, they noticed Gibbs, McGee, and Abby all going over some files and talking about something very intensely. As Tony and Kate got closer Gibbs asked,

"Where have you been?"

"Boss, we're only five minutes late" Tony replied, looking at the others.

"Well at least you are already in character" Gibbs said, turning and looking at his two agents.

"Gibbs, why are you looking at us like that?" Kate questioned

"You two are going undercover" Gibbs answered, before smiling and handing her and Tony both a file.

"Kate you are going in as Navy Lieutenant Kate Lawrence. You just came back from a one year tour in the Atlantic. And Tony you are going in as Anthony Taylor." Gibbs told both of them.

"Where exactly are we going undercover at?" Kate asked, looking at Gibbs, "And why are Tony and I both going undercover?"

"McGee and I interviewed Matthew Williams and he claimed he hadn't seen or heard from his brother in three years. It seemed like he was lying, so we followed him to an apartment building. He met with a man similar to him in looks. We went to ask him some questions, but they both ran. We searched the whole area, but we couldn't find him." Gibbs said, filling them in.

"Okay what does this have to do with us going undercover" Tony asked

"We interviewed a couple people at the apartment building, and they said Matthew Williams owned it and that his brother was living on the third floor, and is working construction just down the street." McGee added

"So Tony, you are going in as a construction worker who just moved here from Arizona. You were looking for a place to live when you came across that apartment building. Abby rigged everything so you and Kate should be neighbors." Gibbs finished, looking around at everyone.

"Wait a sec, is the plan for Kate to be the bait?" Tony asked, looking seriously at Gibbs.

"Tony we have to catch the bastard in the act, Kate can handle herself, all she needs to do is draw him in, get him to notice her, and get him to find out she is in the navy. That's why we are sending you in as her neighbor. You can still watch out for her, while at the same time you'll be working with Williams, so maybe you can get close enough to find out some more information." Gibbs responded, looking at Tony. He could tell Tony was not thrilled with this plan at all. Gibbs didn't blame him, but Kate was the only one they had to go undercover as the bait, and it was the only plan he could think of to catch the bastard.

"I don't think this is a good idea. Actually I think it is a bad idea." Tony stated seriously, looking over at Kate.

"Tony I'll be fine. I can handle myself. Besides if you're my neighbor you'll be right there if I need anything" Kate said to Tony with a smile, trying to convince him it would be alright.

He just stared at her face for a moment, searching her eyes to make sure she was okay with this plan. Kate knew he would do that so she gave him the bravest look she could, trying to muster her true feelings. Then without taking his eyes off of her, he said to Gibbs,

"If anything suspicious happens, or one of us gets an uncomfortable feeling, I'm pulling us out."

"That's fine Tony. We just need to find out as much information as we can about Williams." Gibbs responded. Tony then looked at Gibbs and said,

"Okay when do we start?"

"First thing in the morning. Everyone go home and get as much rest as you can. We will meet back here in the morning around 9:00. One of you will go in in the morning, the other one tomorrow late afternoon. We will take the morning to go over the background of your new identities. So both of you pack some stuff tonight and be ready to move tomorrow."

With that everyone left the building and it was now almost 4:30am. Everyone went their separate ways. Tony and Kate didn't talk about their assignment at all. They went home and crashed. They didn't even feel like packing their stuff. They figured they would get up in the morning and pack. They went directly to bed and fell asleep in each others arms.

A/N: Okay so I didn't include a flashback yet, but I definitely will in the next chapter. Hope you enjoyed!