Sunday, he and Shannon spent the day with Joann. Aside from the fact that it was the older woman's birthday, his wife wanted to spend time with her mother.

Jethro liked Joann well enough, she was a decent person, but his mother-in-law had a knack for knowing exactly how to get on his nerves. He managed to bite his tongue for the most part, though, Shannon did give Jethro a look that said, "Don't!" at multiple points. A look that he'd learned well over the years.

Still, they managed to get along well enough and enjoy themselves.

Monday meant they were back to work, NCIS working a run-of-the-mill sexual assault case, if there was such a thing, alongside Special Agent Maureen Cabot of the agency's Family and Sexual Violence Unit.

The victim was rather cooperative, and they'd managed to find another junior officer who'd been assaulted to corroborate the story. So, with that and the two rape kits that had been done, they were able to get the XO to confess. Though, not before he ended up working rather late, which Jethro knew Shannon wasn't a fan of.

Jethro wasn't a fool, though. The court-martial was going to be rough. They always were when it came to those types of crimes.

Tuesday morning, The MCRT woke to a shooting at Marine Corps Base Quantico at the residential housing on the main side of the base. The twenty-three-year-old, Corporal Daniel Teichroeb, was living there. Corporal Teichroeb served as a rifleman assigned to Charlie Company at The Basic School where he was an enlisted instructor–advisor.

The shooting had been called in just after midnight Monday morning and the Provost Marshal's Office as well as Fire and Rescue personnel rapidly responded, finding the corporal at his residence, unconscious.

The MPs then closed off the crime scene after the corporal was pronounced dead on scene, keeping the scene closed off and secured until NCIS got there shortly after the sun finally came up.

Jethro left the initial investigation to his Senior Field Agent though, having been asked by Vance to teach an 0800 field training class.

He was on location early to set up the fake crime scene with Alexandra Quinn who was assisting him as they trained a bunch of probies how to process a scene.

There were ten probies in the current class, and more than a couple of them managed to instantly drive him nuts. One just really wasn't cut out to be an agent whatsoever in Jethro's opinion, and the other... well, the young man definitely belonged in the Cyber division and not doing fieldwork, but would make a pretty solid technical asset for the Agency.

Jethro was back at the Navy Yard by noon, class finished and the fake scene cleaned up and, downing some coffee, he walked into the squad room.

Jethro rolled his eyes as he instantly spotted his Senior Field Agent happily shoving a piece of pizza down his throat. How the younger man wasn't completely sick of pizza by this point, actually kinda baffled Jethro. DiNozzo had eaten it for lunch the day before as well. "Update. What've we got?"

"Not much!" his Senior Field Agent quickly informed him. "Corporal Teichroeb's file... Well, we could've got more from reading The Washington Post."

"Although," McGee stated, "we did learn that the corporal had an altercation last week with one Lance Corporal Christopher Hall."

He dipped his head slightly. "What do we know about Hall?"

"Still working on that," McGee said, "but as far as I can tell Lance Corporal joined the Corps right out of high school and has recently been written up."

"He has an NJP?" he inquired. "For what?"

"Reporting late for duty," McGee informed him.

"Alright," he said, "I want to talk to their CO."

Jethro then headed down to autopsy where Ducky quickly confirmed what they had all suspected, that the cause of death was the GSW to the head. Now he was just waiting on the ballistics from Abby, who was juggling a few things for a couple of different teams at the moment.

In the meantime, Jethro had to meet with Director Vance, SecNav, the Commandant, as well as a representative from Marine Corps Base Quantico's Public Affairs office, all of whom were, and rightfully so, concerned about having a murderer on base.

The Commanding Officer, Colonel Matthew Nielsen, wasn't much help aside from them being able to officially confirm what they'd already suspected. The man's death wasn't related to an assignment he was working on.

As for Jethro, he was getting more and frustrated by the lack of any real progress. And he wasn't the only one. Many of the higher-ups were as well and Jethro found himself pulled into yet another secured briefing, everyone wanting to see serious progress on the case as quickly as possible.

Jethro was getting into the elevator, heading down to check in with Abby, when he was caught by surprise. Shannon was standing on the left-hand side.

He blinked. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"Your cell phone kept going straight to voicemail," she said without missing a beat.

"Yeah," Jethro replied, "I was in a secured meeting." He'd been in MTAC for almost an hour and cellphones were a definite no-go while inside. "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she said. "You really don't know why I'm here?"

He looked at his wife a tad apologetically. "Shan, I can't really talk right now."

Shannon eyed him. "I just got back from Dad's."

It took a moment and then it clicked. Mac had asked them both to - and they'd agreed to - lend the older man a hand with some maintenance things around his place that he couldn't physically do anymore but that still seriously needed to get done.

He sighed. "I should've called."

"Yeah," his wife retorted, "you should've." She then proceeded to give Jethro a rather pointed look. "Babe, you said you'd be there."

"I know," he told her. "Today's just been -" Jethro sighed. "I'm in the middle of a case, and I'm not real focused right now."

She was definitely irritated. "Jethro."

"I was busy," he said. "It just slipped my mind."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I'm serious," he said, not overly in the mood to argue about it with her.

Shannon pinched the bridge of her nose. "Alright, I know that your work is important to you, but I really don't think it's too much to ask that you pick up the damn phone when you need to miss something."

"No," he agreed, conceding the point, "It's not." She wasn't wrong. Jethro'd just spent so long not really having to be accountable to anyone else that it genuinely slipped his mind to contact her about it given how busy he was.

There was a slightly tense pause and then Shannon leaned in and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I know that you're busy, Jethro, so go. We'll finish this when you get home tonight."

As she left and he resumed making his way down to forensic, Jethro sighed. He wasn't all that concerned about the disagreement, but he still didn't like it. Especially when he had to admit that she had a point. It wouldn't have killed him to pick up the phone or to send a quick text explaining things were busy at work. And, he'd broken several of his rules in the process: Rule #1: Never screw over your partner; Rule #3: Never be unreachable; Rule #8: Never take anything for granted.

God, it was going to be a long night.