A Dare, Or Something More Sinister?
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS... I'm just taking the characters for a spin!
Author's Notes: Thank-you all for the reviews, I'm glad you all like it... as always a few more wouldn't go unnoticed! Please!
Again a humongous thank you to Kate for her brilliant work and inspiration!
Tony was greeted by loud music as he walked into Abby's lab. He turned her music down and gave her a cup of caff-Pow!
"Abs, whatcha got for me?" he asked
"Hey Tony, well, McGee and I properly rebooted the system again this morning and now it's running as smoothly as…"
"Abs!" Tony said, looking slightly irritated
Abby rolled her eyes and smiled slightly, "Right. I got the tox-screen back from the Lt. His blood-alcohol reading was .08, but other than that, he was clean"
"Yeah, that matches Petty Officer Colmer's story that he was in the bar last time anybody saw him" Tony said, "What else?"
"Not a lot, whoever did this knew what they were doing. They left almost no fibers or anything…"
"Almost, no fibers…So you got something?" Tony asked
"Kinda. I picked up a partial print on Lt Mitchell's dog-tag, but when I ran it through the database, I got nothing"
"Nothing?" Tony asked, surprised
"Well, not nothing, I got something, but it was nothing. The partial matched at least 350 officers, of those, 14 are officers on the ship."
"How can a single print match so many people?" Tony asked
"It's only a small portion of the print, usually we get people's prints by taking various points, the more points you measure from, the more precise it is. The print that I have has a small number of points, hence a larger number of people." Abby explained, then took a long sip of her caff-Pow, "Ok, but that's not the interesting part. I also found somebody else's DNA in there. Turns out the system didn't pick up on the sample before because it was running slow, or whatever, but one of the blood stains found in the cabin belonged to somebody else"
"Who?" Tony asked, coming around to look at the monitor
"Don't know, it's still scanning"
"Abs, it's been scanning for 3 days"
"Actually, Tony, it's been scanning for 3 hours. It was reset this morning, and before that, I hadn't run the sample yet" Abby replied, then more to herself than anybody else said "Not that it would have made much difference, it was running so slow before, you could barely play a game of minesweeper, let alone run a test."
Tony walked out of the lab and called over his shoulder, "Ring me when you get something"
Tony walked into the bullpen to find that McGee had disappeared. Tony frowned and leaned his head on the side, seeing a pair of feet under McGee's desk.
Tony smiled, then loudly said, "Probie! On your feet!"
He heard a thud as McGee's head hit the underside of his desk and watched as McGee emerged, rubbing his head and glared at Tony. "Very funny, Tony" he grumbled
"I thought it was. You can play hide and seek in your own time, I suggest you don't do it in company time. Now, what have you got for me?"
"I was looking for my bus ticket, thought I may have dropped it" McGee explained, "Anyway, there's 20 sea-men with the first name 'Anthony'" he said, then put a picture on the plasma, "Only 6 of them had contact with our marine, 3 and a half of them are married…"
"Half?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow
"Yeah, one's engaged. Anyway, this," he gestured to the screen, "is Petty Officer Anthony Thompson. He's only been on-board for the last six months, Lt Mitchell was his supervisor. His record is clean, seems like a good bloke…"
"Yeah, that's what people say about their neighbour who is actually a murderer" Tony said
McGee rolled his eyes, then continued, "His civilian record is almost as spotless, apart from an incident 3 years ago," McGee changed the picture on the screen, to one which showed a riot, "Before he joined the corps, he was heavily involved in rallying for rights for homosexuals. He was arrested in this rally-turned-riot, no charges were laid though"
"Why not?" Tony asked
"Because the arresting officer was his dad. In the report, he said that there was some kind of extenuating circumstances or something. The other officer is Lt Anthony Brown," McGee changed the picture again, "Look familiar?"
"Yeah, that's the guy who met us when we got off the chopper and showed us around" Tony replied
"Correct. He was a model for 2 years before joining the navy. He trained at Norfolk with Lt Mitchell and was posted onto the ship a few months after Mitchell. Nothing in his civilian record, apart from a few parking tickets and speeding fines. He was put on report 4 months after he was posted on the ship for starting a fight in the bar. Apparently Lt Patterson said something demeaning to Mitchell, Brown punched Patterson, knocking him out and putting him in hospital with a concussion. He would have done more damage if he hadn't been restrained."
Kate picked at her food and occasionally looked back up at Shane and tried to listen to what he was saying, but her mind was somewhere else. She thought back to what Gibbs had said before she left. She had left the house without saying anything further, he had made her speechless, she hadn't known what to say. What could you say to something like that? She thought of several responses to what he said, "Didn't take you for a religious man", that would've gone down well, and diffused some of the tension. She rolled her eyes as she thought it made sense that she could only think of a response an hour later, usually she was on a ball and was quick with a come-back. She could've asked where she would find a man like that… that could have been interesting.
"Kate?" Kate came back to the present when she heard Shane calling her name. Kate apologized and Shane continued his monologue
Kate picked up her glass of wine and downed the rest of it, then poured herself another glass. She continued picking at her food and let her thoughts run off again
Gibbs had a sip of his glass of Jack and continued sanding his boat. He felt his strength returning after he'd eaten something and decided to work on his boat to take his mind off what he'd said to Kate. He was glad he'd gotten that off his chest, but he hadn't expected it to happen like that, or Kate's response. Dammit! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut? It was gonna be weird working with Kate now. This is exactly why romance between agents never worked. Gibbs growled under his breath and pressed down harder on the wood. He had felt something for Kate back on Air Force One but knew it would never work; it never did, experience had taught him that, and taught him well. So why after all this time, did he say something now? Something that might give away his true feelings for her?
Gibbs finished the rest of his glass of Jack and poured himself another one. He picked up the sander and continued sanding. At this rate, he'd have the boat finished within the next two weeks.
That's it for chapter 10... I hope you like it! Please review, pretty please!