That Thursday morning, Jethro woke up early, splashed some cold water on his face, made himself a cup of coffee, dressed in a white crew-neck t-shirt, through on his red USMC hoodie, a pair of black sweats, threw on his sneakers, and headed outside. The Marine veteran was going to do something he hadn't done in quite a while. Run.
He'd got a message from Tobias saying that Emily had liked her birthday gift, so that was some good news, at least. He and Shannon had bought the eleven-year-old girl a Crayola Melt 'n Mold Factory for her birthday.
The early morning air stung his cheeks slightly as Jethro sped down the quiet, nearly abandoned, streets, but it helped him to feel less like he was climbing the walls and to clear his head a little.
Walking back into the house after his run, Shannon was standing about halfway down the stairs. She smiled down at him. "Good morning."
He smiled back at the very chipper redhead. "Good morning." His expression softened. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Shannon waves his comment off. "Oh, you didn't. You didn't." She gestured upstairs in the direction of the second bathroom. "Had to powder my nose."
"Ah," Jethro said, not entirely sure if he believed her.
"Coffee?" Shannon suggested.
He raised an eyebrow. "By the gallon."
The redhead chuckled. "Gee, I'm shocked."
Jethro smirked in response and then gently pulled his wife in for a deep kiss. Their dog Bailey jumped up on him excitably, interrupting the kiss, the couple shoving Bailey off with a laugh and kissing each other once again.
Once they broke apart, Jethro placed his right arm around her and they headed to the kitchen for some breakfast and hot caffeine.
The pair then showed and got ready for work, relaxing downstairs with their daughter for a few minutes as she joined them downstairs. Kelly didn't work until 0900 but she was wide awake already regardless along with the rest of them.
His daughter eyed him quizzically. "So, you decided to take up running again?"
Jethro gave a little shrug of the shoulders. He felt a lot better now but he wasn't about to put his stress from work onto Kelly. That wasn't remotely fair to her. Jethro was the parent here, not her. Besides, he had already talked with Shannon a bit about it. "Nah. Just felt like a run is all."
"You have more gumption than I do," Kelly said in jest, shovelling a spoonful of cereal into her mouth right after.
He rolled his eyes at his daughter. "Because vet school was a cinch, Kellz."
The twenty-nine-year-old smirked across the table at him. "I know, right?"
Jethro shot Kelly another eye roll.
"Keep rolling your eyes," his wife drawled, "maybe you'll find your brain back there."
He gave a little snort. "Thanks, Shan."
Jethro had ordered his team not to come into work until 0800 when he dismissed them the night before, giving them a bit longer to sleep, so hopefully, that would do his team some good. Unfortunately, 0730 quickly came around and he had to run out the door if he wanted to meet with the director briefly before his team got in.
Nothing had really got done at first, but by 1225 that morning Jethro had met up with Lieutenant Commander Burke at an elementary school in Alexandria, the chaplain now introducing him to a teacher named Emily Goodwin who had agreed to meet with them to discuss things during her lunch. It was a little chilly outside, but Jethro wasn't about to let that stop him. This teacher could prove quite useful.
"I left teaching to join the Marines," the kindergarten teacher stated. The woman had very short, dark red hair. "Left the Marines to go back to teaching."
"Emily was in the first FET to go to Afghanistan," the chaplain explained.
"You knew Flores?" He questioned.
"Can't say that I did," Emily replied. "Can say I probably understand some of what she was going through over there." She glanced back briefly at all of the children that were laughing and running around on the playground a couple of feet behind them. "Seeing them laugh like that, part of me feels so happy but it makes me think of the kids I left behind. Wasn't like this for them. Especially the girls."
That was something Jethro understood easily given his own experiences in the Middle East. Jethro was more than a little familiar with how certain sects of the culture there perceived their women and girls.
"Tell him about the notes," the chaplain urged.
"We tried to set up some sort of informal education for girls," Emily explained to him. "Our two potential teachers dropped out, thanks to 'night letters.'"
"Death threats?" Jethro clarified although he was pretty sure he knew the answer.
Emily gave a little hum at that. "That wasn't the worst of it," she said. "A little girl was carrying a workbook we gave her. Insurgents threw acid in her face." The teacher then proceeded to caution Jethro. "Everybody thinks of insurgents as disorganized bands in the wilderness." She shook her head as she continued to talk. "They are fully capable of advanced strategy when they have a clear target." She shot him a pointed look yet again. "That's what a girl school is to them. It's a clear target."
Wrapping up their meeting, Jethro headed back to the Navy Yard, the missing piece he was looking for slotting firmly into place for him when he'd heard the words 'advanced strategy' said during his and Emily's little chat.
Jethro immediately had both Ziva and McGee accompany him down to Abby's lab. He was hoping that the first lieutenant's dictaphone had picked up something he'd missed the first time he'd listened to it.
He walked in and shoved the dictaphone at the forensic scientist. "Abs, play this."
"What is it?" the goth asked.
"A picture of what was going on around Flores," he explained.
"It's an audio recording," McGee tried to correct him. "There is no picture."
He gave McGee a sarcastic look. "Uh-huh."
Abby pulled up the audio file. "Gabriela Flores. Freelance article info, continued."
"Now go forward," he ordered.
"A few days ago..."
Abby fast-forwarded through the file until he told her to stop. "There."
The forensic scientist pressed play again. "So, our little project has become a de facto boarding school for girls. If you can hear that..."
"There," he said. "Isolate the background."
"… it's some of the locals helping us build an addition to the school." As Abby isolated the background they could finally make out several men chatting in the background.
DiNozzo eyed Ziva. "What is that - Farsi?"
"It's Pashto," Ziva corrected.
"Number nine on the David language list?" DiNozzo asked in jest. It was hard to keep track sometimes of what all languages Ziva spoke. "Our very own Beauty of Berlitz."
Ziva eyed DiNozzo. "I think of Pashtu more as number seven, actually."
Ziva was able to translate the Pashto after Abby cleared up the audio slightly for her to make it more intelligible. The long and short of it was that the insurgents who targeted the school were some of the exact same men who had been helping with the building of the new extension to it. First Lieutenant Flores knew them and they knew her.
Jethro immediately set another meeting up with Captain Quincy.
