The rest of the workweek was fairly interesting. The power finally came back on late the following afternoon, which his entire team was happy about, and they managed to find out that the lieutenant had been undercover.

Lieutenant Paxton's car was found near a shipping container and when the team went into it they found a set-up suggesting she was a covert operative.

Jethro interrogated the lieutenant's husband, Anthony, who told Jethro that he actually suspected his wife of having an affair and had her followed. Anthony then provided the team with tapes the man had that showed her whereabouts. Jethro and McGee noticed the same disguised man kept popping up in all the different photos.

McGee managed to get fingerprints from a wall that the man had leaned against and gave them to Abby to match.

Of course, they couldn't run the electronic AFIS database, so that meant his agents had an all-nighter ahead of them. McGee, DiNozzo, and Ziva helped Abby sort through hard copied fingerprint cards to match them to the print McGee had brought her. It had taken all night, but they had managed to match the print to the correct print card and the corresponding photo that match the sketch of their suspect.

Jethro took his entire team to the suspect's home and they found both the man and his accomplice dead on the floor. With everybody who broke into SwiftCast now dead the trail seemed to have ended.

Things took an interesting twist though because the team quickly found out that they weren't the only ones there. Commander Sarah Resnik, Lieutenant Paxton's seemingly clueless commanding officer, was at the house too. It turned out that the commander was with the National Security Agency as was the lieutenant.

The commander was, thankfully, able to help Jethro and his team piece together a few details - she and Lieutenant Paxton both apparently had backdoor access to all the iris scanners, giving them access to secured rooms all over the world. Initially, they and the commander had been concerned that the lieutenant had betrayed her country, but that wasn't the case. Lieutenant Paxton had been kidnapped so that she could be used to open the server room at SwiftCast.

The trail led back to the security guard that had been shot during the break-in. The man had engineered the power outage so that he could switch out one of the servers and then sell the information to the highest bidder.

He eyed his Senior Field Agent. "Book 'em, Dan-Nozzo."

"Nice Hawaii Five-O reference, Boss!" DiNozzo quipped, pushing the former security guard against the wall and cuffing him. "What are you looking at?"

He pulled out his walky-talky. "Hey, McGee."

"Red-handed?" the agent replied over the walky-talky.

"Oh, they don't come much redder,"' he said. "Kill it."

And just like that, the backup generators turned off, throwing the SwiftCast building back into darkness.

That had been a very satisfying arrest, although he still had to have the conversation with the husband about everything; the man deserved some answers.

"Who is he?" the husband asked, Jethro having decided to let Anthony Paxton into the observation room to get some answers.

"Dimitri Verenikin," McGee explained. "Used to work for Russian counterintelligence, until two years ago."

"And then he decided to freelance," Jethro added.

"We think he learned about your wife while she was on an op in Kiev," McGee said.

"And he found an asset he could exploit," Jethro continued.

"With the National Security Data she gave him access to," McGee said, "he could name his price to our enemies. Your wife tried to stop him."

"And when she couldn't," Jethro said, "she cuffed herself during the break-in. She knew we'd find her body. She knew we'd dig deeper."

"There's a lot I never knew about Emma," the husband said, "but one thing's for sure, she was a fighter. Stubborn as hell."

"Yeah. Been there." Jethro couldn't help but think back to the multiple conversations that he and Shannon had had all those years ago regarding Oceanside and her desire to testify against Pedro Hernández.

"Emma had to do it, right?" the husband inquired. "She didn't have a choice?"

"No," he said, "she had a choice. That's what makes her a hero."

Anthony Paxton glanced at Jethro for a brief moment before his gaze landed back on Verenikin in the interrogation room. "A hero."

It wasn't long after that when the power finally came back on, and the reactions of the members of his team were quite amusing. All of them were beyond thrilled they could use their phones and computers again.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Ducky had invited everyone over for Thanksgiving dinner at his place after work that day. It was a slow day all around, so Ducky was gone by 1400 and everybody was at Ducky's house by just after 1600.

Friday was a slow day as well, the team just working on some of their cold cases. As such, Jethro sent his team home and was leaving work himself by 1700. That worked out perfectly for him as Michael Walsh was coming over to their place for dinner that night so that Jethro could finally meet the boy while he was on liberty.

Jethro pulled into his driveway and quickly ascertained by the truck that was parked in front of the house that Kelly's friend Michael was already there.

As Jethro walked in, he saw a young man who he assumed was Michael chatting rather animatedly with both Shannon and Kelly in their living room. His daughter was playing with her hair and couldn't seem to take her eyes off the boy.

Shannon looked over at him as he walked in and smiled. "You're home."

"Hi, Dad!" Kelly said happily. The young lady then rose from her spot on the couch, her friend doing the same, and started to formally introduce them, gesturing for Jethro to approach and not just stand by the door. "Dad, this is my friend Michael Walsh. Mikey, this is my father, Leroy Jethro Gibbs."

Jethro quickly assessed Michael, taking stock of him. Michael wasn't in uniform, having opted for civvies instead that evening, but the young Marine was nonetheless clean-cut and seemed perfectly presentable.

Kelly was clearly feeling a tad nervous about his meeting Michael and he had a pretty good guess as to exactly why that was. Jethro was definitely going to have a sit down with and talk to his daughter later.

Michael swallowed, evidently slightly nervous, but didn't hesitate at stand up and greet Jethro. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir." Michael took a step towards him as he spoke. The young man then basically stood in front of him at attention and, looking Jethro directly in the eye, offered him his hand.

"Michael," Jethro said with a curt nod. He too was standing up Marine straight as he extended his own hand out to the boy. He stared right into the boy's eyes trying to see exactly what this man his daughter had feelings for was made of. As Jethro shook the boy's hand, he didn't flinch and Jethro was quite impressed with the firm shake that he received. "It's good to finally put a face to the name."

Michael nodded. "That it is, sir."

Jethro simply smiled back at the boy, opting not to correct Michael on calling him that. He normally would have, but in this case, he'd make an exception.

He noted that his daughter seemed to immediately release a breath in relief once his little inspection of Michael was over.

Shannon, stepping up beside Jethro, started to rub his back. "So, Mike, why don't you finish that story you were telling us earlier?"

"Yeah!" Kelly exclaimed, leaning into Michael as she spoke. "But let's walk and talk. I have it on good authority that Mom made scallops."

"Of course!" the young man agreed with a grin. Jethro noted that the young man had the same look in his eyes that Kelly did. "Well, you see..."

As Kelly and Michael made their way to the dinner table, he glanced at his wife and raised an eyebrow, not voicing anything.

Shannon leaned in close to him. "I told you."

"You did," he agreed.

Tonight was definitely going to be interesting.