McGee sat on the edge of the nearest workbench, his hands resting lifelessly in his lap. His head sagged wearily but his eyes watched his "cellmate" as he searched the chaos of the garage.

"Anything useful?" he asked the older man. Rick picked up a metal pipe from a pile of metal and then tossed it back down on the ground, causing the clattering sound to echo and McGee to wince slightly.

"Nope," Rick replied, finding a new pile of trash to rummage through. "You always have so much garbage here?"

McGee shrugged. "I think those are the remains of a car we pulled out of the Potomac a couple of weeks ago, two dead sailors, well we think there were two; too many body parts to tell them apart."

Rick eyed the junk warily before moving quickly on to the shelves that lined the far wall. "Wrench, wrench, wrench, screwdriver, hammer, wrench," Rick listed the items as he found them. "Screwdriver, funny screw thing, nuts, bolts, hack saw, ah-ha!"

McGee's head snapped up at Rick's exclamation. "What?"

"Torch." Rick twisted the end of the torch and a single beam of white light lit up Rick's face. "Cool huh?" He waved the light at McGee who flinched as the light hit his eyes. The bright light quickly faded to a feeble dim glow. Rick smacked the torch against the palm of his hand. "Damn batteries," he muttered to himself.

McGee sighed. "All we have to do is break out of here, get the power back on and hope that the rest of my team is okay," McGee said despondently.

"Hey, what's with the attitude? My partner's working on the power situation and, from what I've heard, your team is pretty capable of looking after themselves."

"I know, I'm sorry, it's just….I have no idea what to do. I've never been cut off from Gibbs like this before. He would know what to do."

"What about your cell?"

"Battery's gone; forgot to charge it."

"Hasn't your boss ever told you to always be prepared?"

McGee shrugged. "I'm a probie, so sue me."

Rick chuckled. "One night, doing this job, me and my partner at the time, Nick, got stuck in this huge traffic jam. We had this drunk guy shouting his head off in the back and torrential rain outside. Of course, I was unprepared and I forgot my cell phone. Thing was, my wife had just gone into labour with our third child. She was pretty pissed at me when I turned up three hours later soaked to the bone."

McGee laughed. "Rick?"

"Yeah?"

"You had a partner named Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"Nick and Rick?"

Rick smiled. "It was a thing," he explained with a shrug.

"What happened to him?" McGee asked, genuinely interested.

"Retired when a scumbag shot out his knee."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Have you even been shot?"

Rick sighed. He walked slowly over to McGee and sat himself down next to him. He placed the torch in between them. "Once."

"What happened?"

"I was stupid," Rick answered. McGee stayed silent, giving the older man a chance to explain himself. "I was looking after this really nasty guy a couple of years back. The kind of guy who would do anything to get out of a prison sentence. So here I am, holding onto this guy while we wait for the van and I let my guard down for one second. In that one second, he'd knocked me over, grabbed my nine mil from my belt, and shot me. Lucky for me, he was a bad shot and only got me in the side." Rick lifted up his black t-shirt and pointed to a small circular scar on his side. "It missed all the major stuff but I lost a lot of blood. I was out of commission for a couple of months."

"I've never been shot," McGee spoke quietly. Rick pushed his t-shirt back down and turned his head towards McGee. "I've been shot at and I've seen other people shot, but I've never been shot."

"Count yourself lucky kid, count yourself lucky."