Both Jethro and Tobias wanted some answers as to what was going on so, leaving the observation room, the two team leaders followed the NCIS director as well as Diane up to the director's office for a much-needed briefing.
Jethro still had half a mind to set Diane straight for using his name as an alias the way she had, considering how disrespectful to Shannon he found it. On the other hand, he was tempted to just tip Shannon off and let her handle it. That'd serve Diane right.
He was a tad shocked that they didn't get any answers right away, though, his ex-wife merely taking a seat at Vance's desk and hopping on the phone with someone.
The snippets of conversation that they could hear didn't make much sense at all due to the very notable lack of context. All they did was leave them with more questions than answers, given the holes in the conversation.
"Yes, Sir!" Diane chirped. "I understand, Sir. Thank you, Sir." The rather smug redhead then roughly hung up the director's desk phone. "Idiot."
The director swiftly turned to her. "Satisfied?"
"I'm satisfied I'm cleared to talk," she drawled. Her gaze then subtly flickered between Jethro and Tobias. "I am unsatisfied that now I have to talk to them."
There's no way that means what it sounds like. "Cleared?" he asked.
The director eyed him and Tobias as he proceeded to explain. "Mrs. Sterling was telling you the truth, at least partly." He was feeling even more confused after that comment. Where's this going? "She did go back to work for the IRS, just not as an auditor. She's been promoted to a GS-11 position in Enforcement."
He wasn't sure what to make of that comment. That's the same pay grade as DiNozzo. The director's not seriously saying that Diane's a CISA for the IRS now?
Tobias clearly didn't want to believe it yet either. "Which means...?"
Diane pulled out what was unmistakably a federal law enforcement badge and placed it down on the NCIS director's desk as she smugly addressed her second ex-husband's question. "It means that you two aren't the only ones with a badge."
So, she is an IRS Special Agent. "Wow."
Apparently, Tobias was feeling the same way as he was about this turn of events. "My breakfast burrito is about to say 'hello.'"
The director cut both of their no doubt unappreciated reactions short. "The IRS Deputy Commissioner called when he heard that we had -" Vance gestured to Diane with a tilt of the head. " - one of their agents."
Tobias looked incredulous. "Agents?"
Why the hell did she go and do that? "Wow."
"And the Lord wept," Tobias mocked.
"Yes, agent." Diane picked her badge back up off of Director Vance's desk. "And I was undercover when you two bumbled into the bar."
"Undercover on what?" he demanded.
"Big tax-fraud case," she explained. "Somebody's stealing identities, filing fake returns and making off with a boatload in fraudulent refund checks."
"Costs the IRS billions each year," Vance added.
"We have traced several identity thefts to the bar," Diane continued to explain as she finally walked out from behind Vance's desk. "My plan was to I.D. the thief and follow him back to the ringleader." Okay, that actually sounds reasonable. "I was posing as a buyer so I could interview the employees on the DL."
He shot Diane a questioning look. "You were posing as Mrs. Fornell."
"Budget cuts," she replied defensively. "A fake I.D. is expensive. I was improvising."
"Improvising?!" Tobias near-immediately exclaimed. "Your improvising almost got me killed!" The FBI agent did make a pretty solid point. "You must have ruffled the wrong feathers, Agent Fornell." To Diane's credit, she seemed to take Tobias' outburst on the chin. "And those feathers thought I was part of your op and put a hit out on me!"
"Sorry?" she said a tad uncertainly.
Apparently, that didn't satisfy Tobias. "Sorry?!"
"Alright, calm down." Vance eyed the three of them. "If there was a hit put out on you, it means Agent Sterling is getting close, which also means she's in danger too."
"I want to see your files," Tobias demanded.
"No way!" Diane refused.
"It wasn't a request," Jethro barked.
Diane eyed them both. "Oh, I'm so sorry, let me rephrase that. Go..."
The director clearly wasn't in the mood to deal with their drama. "I said, 'calm down.' Everyone." Putting a pin in it for the moment, all three agents turned to Vance. You'll have plenty of time to review her files." Leon's going to order the three of us to work together. Damn it. "Since this case now spans three federal agencies, your bosses and I have decided that the three of you will be working on this case together."
God, this was turning out to be one hell of a week. Jethro had no desire to spend more time with his ex-wife than he got to spend with his current one.
Shaking his head slightly, he followed Tobias and Diane back down to the squad room. Regardless of their feelings, they had a job to do.
"Here she comes," DiNozzo said under his breath.
"Here I go," McGee said as he stood up.
"Gibbs told us to stay put," Ziva pointed out.
Tobias eyed the field agents. "Better you should run for the hills."
"You know," Diane retorted, "I am not any happier about this than you are, so can we please make it as painless as possible."
Tobias shot their mutual ex-wife a look. "So says the Queen of Pain."
"What is going on?" Ziva inquired.
"New assignment," he explained curtly. "Special Agent - " He pointed to Diane while he made his way over to his desk. " - Sterling will you bring you up to speed."
DiNozzo laughed. "What…" The younger agent swiftly found Diane's badge shoved right in his face. "Oh, that's-that's... very cool."
Satisfied she'd made her point, Diane turned to McGee. "Chucky, would you pull up the IRS mainframe, directory: dsterling; password: Tobias cheap."
He rolled his eyes at the slight dig as he watch McGee pull everything up onto their big plasma screen. She just had to get a dig in.
"As I told Frick and Frack already," Diane stated smugly, "somebody is running a major fraud operation against the IRS, stealing hundreds of identities, submitting thousands in fake tax returns. We've traced the identity thefts..."
"To the Navy bar where Gibbs and Fornell bumped into you?" DiNozzo suggested.
"And you think someone there was lifting driver's license info," Ziva added.
"Probably Seaman Brown.," McGee said knowingly. "As a bouncer, he would've checked every I.D. that came through the door."
Visibly impressed, Diane turned to face him. "You must be very proud, Leroy."
He smirked, quite pleased with his team's performance.
Diane turned back to the group and then addressed them all. "Clearly Brown is not the mastermind behind this operation." Jethro could agree with that. "He doesn't have the accounting chops. We're looking for somebody else."
"Did you run down the addresses of the fake tax returns?" he asked.
"Yeah," Diane confirmed easily. "All P.O. boxes, all dead ends." The perps are obviously not amateurs. "They keep rotating them out for new ones."
"Where are the perps cashing the refund checks?" Tobias asked.
"Well," Diane told them, "various storefronts on the opposite side of town. I've already run down a whole bunch, but I got a bunch more."
Tobias eyes him. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
He nodded curtly. "Yeah."
"Gibbs and I are gonna double-check the P.O. boxes," Tobias informed the redhead as Jethro grabbed his badge and weapon. "Just in case you missed something."
"And me?" Diane asked as both team leaders started to walk off.
"Check-cashing outlets," he called back.
"Opposite side of town," Tobias said gleefully.
Thankfully, at least part of the canvas bared fruit. The check-cashing outlet where the refund cheques were cashed more than anything. The manager, Gordon Fremont, ended up being surprisingly helpful, but that could have been because he was chatting to two women. Jethro couldn't help but wonder if the man was being a bit too helpful, however. At least, the two women had more luck than he and Tobias did.
Fremont told them that the guy cashing the checks was Oliver Lambert. The man was an accountant, and the security cameras also showed him cashing the aforementioned cheques, usually with what looked to be a betting sheet in his pocket.
Since there was a hit out on Tobias, it was safe to assume that Diane was in danger as well so it was best if the woman didn't go back to her apartment just yet. That fact led to the discussion he and Tobias were currently having down in Abby's lab.
"Speaking of which," Tobias said, "Diane is probably on his hit list too. It's getting late. With Lambert on the loose, she should probably... sleep at your house tonight." The man turned around to leave. "I'll talk to you later."
He instantly moved to block his friend from leaving. "No, you're right, she shouldn't be alone, but since you married her last, I think that means your place."
"This is gonna be good," McGee whispered to Abby.
"I've got no clean sheets," Tobias countered.
"Hey, I have a wife." Jethro didn't want Diane staying at his place. "If Diane stays over there'll be a dead body in my living room by dawn. Probably mine!" If Shannon doesn't kill me, Diane will. That's if they don't kill each other.
"It won't be that bad," Tobias tried to reassure him.
"Yeah, it would be." He threw both of his hands up. "Besides, my heater's broken."
"And that's what blankets are for," Tobias countered without missing a beat. "Anyway, I've got toxic black mould in my kitchen."
"I'll let these two figure it out," McGee said in amusement, "since I know the one place she's definitely not staying."
With the younger field agent still chiming in from the sidelines, Jethro and Tobias both turned towards McGee and shot him a look.
Needless to say, McGee learned that foolishly making remarks from the cheap seats as Jethro and Tobias bickered wasn't going to overly work in his favour. The younger man got stuck with Diane crashing at his place for the night.
Feeling rather pleased with the solution, Jethro dismissed his team for the night before hopping into his pickup and headed home to his wife. He gave her a small hand in the kitchen, sat down for dinner, and then started to discuss their respective days.
School was out for Christmas break as of Friday, so everyone was having class parties and different activities for the holidays; on top of trying to wrap up some still ongoing units classes were working on. So, Shannon's day had been good but busy.
As for Jethro, he eventually dropped the metaphorical ball and explained the situation with Diane. As expected, she was less than thrilled when she learned the other woman was going around posing as Mrs. Gibbs. His wife had been polite enough with Diane in the past, but Diane had definitely crossed a line this time. "Sorry, she did what?!"
He eyed her. "You heard me."
His wife got up from her seat. "Where is she?"
Jethro sighed. "Let it go, Babe."
Shannon raised an eyebrow, crossing both of her arms. "Not happening." Throwing her light grey puffer jacket on, she grabbed her keys. "She's hearing about this."
He tried to talk his wife out of it, but lost that particular battle and soon found himself in the passenger Shannon's car so that he could, at least, play referee and keep things from getting too terribly out of hand.
Shannon was a firecracker when something set her off, and well, Diane was Diane. He wasn't surprised when McGee saw Shannon's face when she barged in and decided to bow out of the situation almost immediately.
"Are you always such an idiot?" Diane snapped as the ladies' damn argument got well and truly started, "or do you just show off when I'm around?"
"Why don't you check eBay and see if they have a life for sale, Becky?" Shannon fired right back without missing a beat.
"I have better things to do than listening to you," Diane retorted.
Shannon shook her head in irritation. "You entitled little…"
Diane was visibly offended. "You don't have to be so rude about it."
"Me? Being rude?" Shannon retorted incredulously. "This coming from the woman who three minutes ago said -" She sighed. "You went and dragged my family into your damn mess and -" His wife pointed directly at him. " - used him as an alias!"
Diane whined. "Cut me slack, Felicia."
Shannon violently rolled her eyes at that comment. "I'm trying my absolute hardest to see things from your perspective, but I just can't get my head that far up my ass."
Diane's eyes narrowed. "Remember when I asked for your opinion? Well, me neither."
Shannon gave Diane a condescending smile as she proceeded to send another shot at her. "Wow, you're really smart! Have you tried -?"
"Enough!" he barked. "We need to all put a pin in it." He turned to his wife. "Shannon, breathe." He then eyed his ex-wife. "Diane, you are burning that damn I.D."
"Fine," Diane grumbled.
Shannon was a lot calmer but remained just as determined to make her point. "Diane, let me put it this way… if someone looks into or asks after a Mrs. Gibbs who's it exactly that they're going to find? Who's address is on that I.D?"
"I didn't -" Diane started.
"Didn't think things through?" Shannon finished. "That's obvious. I know you didn't go out of your way to make Tobias or anyone else a target, don't get me wrong, but that is still the result. You don't go behind someone's back like that."
Diane nodded, unable to really argue the very solid point.
"On a much more personal note," Shannon said, "I'm Jethro's wife. Not you. And given the fact that you two do have a history, I am not comfortable with you walking around and posing as his wife." She eyed Diane. "I need you to respect our relationship."
His ex-wife swallowed. "I can do that."
"Good," Shannon said as she grabbed her purse. "That's all I ask." She started making her way over to the door of McGee's apartment. "Let's go, Babe."
He nodded, more than happy to leave. "Night."
Shannon gave both Tim and Diane a smile. "Have a good night, you two."
God, this was going to be one hell of a week. With any luck though, the worst of it was over and they could just focus on the IRS fraud case and get this mess dealt with.
