Author's note: If you haven't had a chance to go back and read Finding the Way, or if you haven't read it in a long time, you should be caught up on the main things you need to know by the end of this chapter.

Chapter 4

"Dawes," Gibbs said to Wilson as he pulled the Charger out of the Navy Yard.

"Petty officer at Anacostia, in the supply depot," Wilson said. "Up for promotion next year, clean record."

"Background?"

"Based on the files Tony pulled, looks like he enlisted at 18, originally from Connecticut. It's an area where you're more likely to see a kid go to an Ivy League school than enlist, which suggests he might not have been the strongest student," Wilson said. "If he just wanted to serve, he probably would have gone ROTC someplace."

Gibbs nodded. Good deduction on Wilson's part. Kid was learning. "Tours?"

"Two on carriers, one in the Sea of Japan, one in the Med. He's worked supply at Mayport, Coronado, Great Lakes, Rota, Dam Neck, Pearl, New London, Gulfport, Naples and now Anacostia." Wilson read them off quickly.

"Ten bases?" Gibbs asked.

"Yeah, that's…" Wilson paused. "That's more than normal for a petty officer with 16 years experience."

"Plus tours," Gibbs said.

"Two tours, so between a year and 18 months for those, plus boot and A School, leaves him at…" Wilson must have been doing the math in his head. "An average 16 months per station."

"Clean record?" Gibbs asked.

"Yeah, that doesn't match all those reassignments," Wilson said. He pulled out his phone and by the time Gibbs pulled into the guest lot at Anacostia, Wilson was done talking to DiNozzo.

"What've we got?" Gibbs asked.

"Not much, at least not yet," Wilson said. "Tony and McGee are going to dig deeper into the timeline around his postings, though, see if there are any open cases that fit the pattern of the ones we already know about."

Gibbs thought for a minute. "How long's he been here?"

Wilson checked the file. "Looks like a year last month."

"Let's find his CO, see if he's started to wear out his welcome." Gibbs headed toward the building the security guards at the gate had directed him to.

~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~

"Requisition forms already, Mr. Palmer?" Ducky asked as he walked into Autopsy that morning.

"No, should I be working on those?" Jimmy asked. "Because these are cold cases, so if we need to do requisitions-"

"No, no, not at all," Ducky replied. "Infernal things can wait until another day. I merely thought the stacks of folders you have were the beginnings of that monstrosity." He lay his fedora on top of the coat rack, unbuttoned his cuffs, and started rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Paperwork is never pleasant, but since this is not paperwork..." He let his voice trail away in a question, then listened as young Mr. Palmer explained the idea he and Abby were exploring.

"That, Mr. Palmer, is excellent logic," Ducky said. "So these cases?"

"Are all ones where you weren't the ME," Jimmy said. "And of course, the ones with bodies. Because if there aren't any bodies, we don't have anything that might help. I mean, not that your psychological autopsies don't help, but-"

"Yes, quite right," Ducky said. "Best to wait on the psychological excavations until we have dealt with the more prosaic cases." He pulled a stool over to the steel table. "So, which pile should I start with?"

Jimmy pointed to the taller stack. "Those are all the files where NCIS didn't do the autopsy," he said. "Most are local medical examiners or coroners, but a few are FBI or other agencies." He patted the top of the other stack. "These are cases where there was a military autopsy, but it was done by somebody else, either in another location, or by another medical examiner."

"Yes, we used to have two here," Ducky said. "I started when Dr. Walter Magness was the ME. Quite a nice fellow, and very knowledgeable. After he retired in 2000, they promoted me and filled the position, but after 9/11, the Navy moved that position over to be shared between Bethesda and Dover, as they needed additional medical examiners. Since then, I've made do with just an assistant, first Gerald, and now you."

"Which stack do you want, Dr. Mallard?" Jimmy asked.

"Why don't you start with the outside agencies," Ducky said. "I'll review the military cases, but I don't expect we'll have as much luck there. If they had thought a body might provide more evidence, they would have sent it to us in the first place."

~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~

"Hey, Tim, have you worked your McGoogle magic and found any other cases that connect to our potentially murderous petty officer?" Tony asked.

"Still searching," McGee replied. "How about before he joined the Navy?"

"Hard to say," Tony said. He thought back over the calls he'd had so far. "I'm not getting a creepy serial killer vibe about him from people, but there's definitely something a little off."

"The creepiest serial killers are the ones who seem normal," McGee said. "Remember the exploding crypts?"

Tony shuddered at the reminder. "The odd job man with as many ways to kill as he had business cards and the butcher who really liked butchering? Yeah, good point. He was a little weird, but she seemed perfectly normal."

"Exploding crypts?" Josh's head popped up from behind the divider. "What?"

"You don't want to know," Tony said.

"He's right, you really, really don't," McGee said. "Even Abby got creeped out by those two."

"Enough said," Josh replied. "Hey, McGee, can you come look at this? I either found something, or I messed up somewhere."

Tony joined McGee as they crowded in by Josh's desk. "What do you think you found?" McGee asked.

Josh looked around, then said quietly, "So, I was running analysis on the metadata of the cold case files, looking for patterns. I ran some queries just on the cold cases out of this region, but then realized I should look at all cold cases so I'd have something to compare it to."

"Controls are always good," McGee said. "It's hard to spot the anomalies if you don't know what's normal."

"Right," Josh said. He tapped a few keys and pulled up some charts. "I wasn't seeing anything. Then I thought about what Tony said earlier, about Director Vance having something specific in mind. Instead of just analyzing the metadata for all the cold cases, I figure there was a group of them I should focus on." He tapped a line of code on his monitor. "That's when I found something.

"Which cases?" Tony asked.

McGee was leaning over Josh's shoulder to look at the screen, and Tony tried to see what he said.

"Oh. You're right," McGee said. "That's…" He straightened up, and Tony jerked back before he got a mouthful of McGee's hair. "I'm going down to Autopsy for a minute. Why don't you guys go get coffee, and I'll meet you there. We can talk on the way back."

He left, and Josh turned to stare at Tony. "Why Autopsy?" he asked.

"Don't look at me. You're the one who found something," Tony said. "Come on, not here." He raised his voice. "McGee's right, too much staring at screens and of course you'll hit the wrong buttons. Let's go find some caffeine before Gibbs gets back."

He led Josh toward the elevator, then outside the building, shaking his head almost imperceptibly when Josh started to ask a question. The kid took the hint. Good, he had learned something this summer.

Once they were outside, away from prying ears, Tony asked, "So, why not Autopsy?"

"Because what I found didn't have anything to do with cases involving bodies," Josh said. "It was different."

"Different how?" Tony forced himself to be patient. No headsmacking the intern.

"So, if Vance has something in mind, I figured there might be common threads among the cold cases he looked at recently," Josh said.

"Good thinking," Tony said. He was about to say more, but they were at the coffee shop, no sign of McGee. "Hold that thought."

By the time they had their order, including a latte for McGee, he was waiting outside for them.

"Let's take the scenic route back," McGee said.

"So, what was so important in Autopsy?" Tony asked as soon as they were away from other people.

"Nothing," McGee said. "But if all three of us had left together after you asked us to look at something, it might have made people wonder."

"What did you see?" Tony asked.

"That an unusually high number trace back to California," McGee said.

"That makes sense, though," Tony said after a minute. "Vance was based in San Diego as assistant director, the way Granger is now. He knows the California cold cases in a way we wouldn't."

"But that's the thing," McGee said. "They weren't cases from when Vance was running the office. They were cases from before that."

"Yeah, but he was stationed there for a while after he first joined the agency." Tony said.

"And how do you know that?"

"Oh, put the McEyebrow away, Tim. Like I said on the Ethan LaCombe case, you guys have all the techno mojo and you never peeked at the man's file?" Tony smirked at his husband's eye roll.

"Not when it's the one director we've had who hacks almost as well as I do," McGee said. "So what, we think he saw something then and couldn't do anything about it?"

"You want to rise up the ranks, sometimes you can't rock the boat," Tony said. "During the Domino fiasco, SecNav said something about giving him the post because he said he would get the house in order."

"But that was about Lee," McGee said.

"Who?" Josh asked.

"Traitor. NCIS agent. Bad case. Bad problem." Tony said.

"Yes, but she's dead. Has been for almost two years. And we shut down the rest of that operation."

"I still don't get what this has to do with cold cases," Josh said.

"What if there are other problems in the agency?" Tony asked. "We know Jenny played things fast and loose. Maybe while she was leading the Frog hunt, Vance caught something else."

"So why wait until now?"

"No time?" Tony started ticking things off on his hands. "If it was connected to Jenny, he couldn't do anything while she was in charge. He doesn't take over until she's in trouble over the Frog, then she winds up dead from another mess she left behind, one that goes back years. He has to straighten that out. Then he has the mole hunt, with us scattered to the four winds. We finally get that sorted out and the Israelis start making trouble and Rivkin goes rogue, Ziva goes missing and by the time that's stopped being a problem, the Reynosa cartel was gunning for Gibbs."

"OK, you may have a point."

"May?"

"Yes, Tony, you're right. If the director spotted something, he's had his hands full until now. And if this is another problem with a time-delay fuse like Decker—"

"So where do we start?" Josh asked.

"We start with California," Tony said. "Josh, run a couple more query-thingys when we get back. Look at the cases Vance looked at based on who was director at the time, compared with all cases and all cold cases. Also break them down by region, and who the special agent in charge was."

"Sure," Josh said. "Anything else?"

"Look at the agents on each cold case and figure out how many of them served in California at some point, either when they were working the case or at a different time. If it wasn't during the cold case, was it before or after?"

"And did they ever work with Vance, or at least in the same office," McGee added. "If it's an agent who screwed the pooch, Vance might have been tipped off by something he saw working with them, or near them."

~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~

Ziva left not long after Sarah arrived home, and decided to walk to the Metro and take the subway to her appointment. There was a stop near the therapist's office, and if she could not bear to go home right away after this, the Metro would be a handy excuse for a delay.

However, only her long training at not lingering where she could be a target got her to go inside the office, located in the garden level of a rowhouse. She did not want to do this, but she must. It was the right thing to do.

"So, how long have you been with NCIS?" Dr. Sophia Rojas asked once they were settled in her office. The sunny space at the back of the building looked out over a small garden, and a small glass vase on the windowsill held the same flowers as bloomed outside.

"I have been part of my team there for five years," Ziva said, shifting slightly in the upholstered chair. She named the rest of the team for Dr. Rojas. "The first four were as a liaison officer, and in October, it will be one year since I became an NCIS agent." The memory of the moment Gibbs put the letter on her desk still made her smile.

"Which agency were you with before NCIS, when you were a liaison officer?" Dr. Rojas sat opposite her, in another chair, rather than behind her desk.

Ziva hesitated, but forced herself to just say the facts. "Three months ago, I became an American citizen," she said, consciously keeping her hands relaxed in her lap. "I was born Israeli, and I was a Mossad operative from the time I turned 17 until I took the liaison officer position, and then again for a few months before I joined NCIS."

"What made you choose Mossad as a career?" the doctor asked.

Ziva was not sure how to answer her, not without creating more questions. Those questions are the ones she must ask, that you must answer, she reminded herself. "It was something of a family business," she said after a minute. "We were raised knowing that, and after my sister was killed by a suicide bomber, we did not question that we would go into the family business."

"We?"

Ziva thought back to that moment on the stairs to Gibbs' basement, gun heavy in her hand. "My half-brother, Ari, also was Mossad. He was undercover, in Hamas. He came to America on a mission, and my team at NCIS was assigned to the case. I was his handler."

"So you and your brother worked with your current team?"

Ziva laughed, because if she did not, she did not know how to react. "No, they were trying to catch him." She hesitated, then took a deep breath and forced herself to continue. "He killed one of the agents on the team, Kate. He targeted others. At the end, he waited in Gibbs' basement for him, with his own sniper rifle, ready to kill Gibbs." She swallowed. "Gibbs knew he would come. I hoped he was wrong. When he was not, I did what I had to."

"What you had to?"

"As Ari prepared to shoot Gibbs, I shot him." She closed her eyes, remembering. "Gibbs did not know, until then, that he was my brother. He did not know what he had asked me to be prepared to do."

"And yet, you joined his team after that?" The therapist sounded surprised.

"I asked to, yes," Ziva said. "In the moments before his death, I learned that Ari was not working for Mossad anymore. We shared a father. His mother, a doctor, was Palestinian. She was killed by a missile strike on the West Bank, where she worked. Ari also was trained as a doctor. He was not there that day, because he was in Tel Aviv with my father."

"You said it was a family business."

Ziva nodded. "Yes, my father was behind the missile strike. He wanted to give Hamas a reason to believe Ari would help them. At the end, Ari believed that my father had this plan from the beginning, that he had been destined to become a mole before he was born." She recalled his words, the ones that still sent a shiver down her spine.

"He never knew how much I hated him. I wish I could see his face when he realizes he created not a mole but a monster."

"Gibbs said to me once that my father wasn't a good man," Ziva continued. "He was right. NCIS was a way for me to get away from his influence. Fifteen months ago, I went back, made my aliyah, and…" She forced herself to swallow away the burning in her throat. "I had a mission, one that went badly. One of my team was killed, the others wounded. Our leader wanted to turn back, but my father had said we must complete it by any means necessary, so I went on alone."

"Did you?" the doctor asked.

"Did I what?"

"Complete the mission?"

Ziva smiled. "No, I did not," she said. "I was captured and held for many weeks. Then my team — my team here — found me, killed the terrorist whose camp I had infiltrated, and rescued me."

"How many weeks?"

"I-" Ziva paused. "I do not know." She thought. "It was late May or early June when I arrived at the camp, and we landed at Andrews in the middle of September."

"So you were held in a terrorist camp for more than three months."

"I-" Ziva forced herself to count weeks in her head. "Yes, that is right."

"And when you returned, did you see anybody?" Dr. Rojas asked. "Somebody like me, that is."

"I had to undergo the standard psych evaluations before I could become an agent," Ziva said.

"But nothing else?"

Ziva shook her head. "Once I passed, all I wanted to do was feel normal again. Get back in the field and begin again with NCIS, but this time as an agent."

"And talking about it wouldn't have been normal?"

"No. When you grow up in a war zone, you soon learn that life is hard, and cruel. Bad things happen to good people, and good people do bad things to survive," Ziva said. "It does no good to talk about it, and talking means thinking about it. You cannot stay sharp and able to react when bombs are falling if you are thinking of the past."

"What changed?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're here, now," Dr. Rojas said. "You are talking about it. You don't want to, but you have answered all my questions without deflecting, even when doing so is painful." Her face was serious, but Ziva could feel warmth in her expression. "Something changed. Knowing what it is will help me help you."

Ziva wanted to talk about the case, the one where the sailor was caned, but she knew that was not what had changed. It was just the — what was the term? — hay that broke the horse's back.

"My team, we are a family," Ziva said, focusing her gaze on her hands, folded in her lap. "Many of us do not have any family of our own, or, like me, they are all but dead to us. The ones who do, they share with the rest of us." She swallowed back the tears that threatened to rise. "McGee's younger sister and I have been roommates for several months, since she left a cheating ex-boyfriend. Sarah is nothing like Tali, and yet, she is as much my little sister as Tali was when she lived." Ziva forced herself to meet the doctor's eyes. "Sarah is carrying a baby, one she did not want. McGee and Tony married several months ago, and they are adopting the baby. It was Sarah's choice, a way she found to create some good from a bad situation." Ziva forced herself to continue. "I am glad they have found a way through this, but living with Sarah, I am reminded often."

"Of what?"

"When I was in Somalia, the men in the camp, they did what men do," Ziva said. "I might have been a 'filthy Jew' but that did not seem to matter to them. Like many zealots, they had twisted the root of their beliefs to allow them to do what they wished." She swallowed. "I soon was pregnant, and then, when weeks had gone by and they realized, they beat me until I no longer was. The doctors tell me I probably never will be again." It felt like ripping away a scab to say it, yet Tony had been right. It was easier the second time. Not easy, but easier.

"Easier?" the doctor asked.

"Oh, I did not realize—" Ziva could not believe she had not realized she was speaking out loud. "Last night, I told my—"

"Your...?"

"He is a friend," Ziva said. "We both know, and want, it to be more. When this all became too much, when I needed to convince myself and everybody else I was fine, I seduced him into more, even though I was not ready."

"Did he know that?"

Ziva shook her head. "He does now," she said. "He is not mad at me, which I do not understand. Angry, yes, but not at me."

"You think he should be?"

"I hurt him, and I did what I did knowing I was trying to deceive him. He is a good man, and he did not deserve that."

Dr. Rojas set down the pad of paper she'd been using to take notes. "What did he say?"

"That… That I do not have to deserve love." A single tear rolled down her cheek, and she did not try to wipe it away. "That I should not have done what I did, but that he does not blame me now that he knows why."

"Do you believe him?"

"I would like, very much, to believe him," Ziva said. "I would like to be happy for Sarah, and that Tony and McGee are getting a daughter they very much want."

"But?"

"I am trying, but at night, I find myself back in Somalia, reliving what they did to me, and how it changed my future." Ziva looked out the windows at the garden filled with colorful wildflowers. "Gibbs told me once that the ruthless, soulless killer my father raised me to become had died in the desert. I left behind more than just that, and I am starting to think I will never be able to accept that and move on."