Chapter 16

Beeping. Rhythmic. Quiet. Hospital. Tony floated for a while listening to the beeping. Hospital was good. Hospital was safe. Peter didn't have beeping machines or he'd have used them before now.

Tony's eyes flipped open. Peter. "Gibbs!" he exclaimed. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed with sandpaper, but he couldn't wait.

"Yeah, Tony?" Gibbs said.

"Where's Peter?"

"We don't have him," Gibbs said.

At the same moment, another voice spoke from the other side of the bed, "Everything's under control."

Tony turned in shock to look at a man he hadn't seen in over a year. "Father? What are you doing here?"

"How can you ask that, Anthony?"

Tony stared at his father, then shook his head, turning back. "What do you mean you don't have Peter?" he asked. "What about Lola?"

Gibbs shook his head. "I don't know that name."

"How did you get me, then?"

"I paid the ransom, son." Tony turned back towards his father, but he couldn't absorb it.

"That doesn't matter," he said, and his father's eyes widened. "He said . . . he told me he wasn't . . ." He turned back to Gibbs. "I saw their faces, Boss, and Peter said . . . Peter . . ." He realized that he was shaking, and he could feel his heart rate speeding up in time with the beeping. "He wasn't going to let me go."

"You're safe, Tony," Gibbs said. "He did let you go."

"But . . ." Tony shook his head. "He said . . . he . . . where am I?"

"Wayne County Regional Medical Center," said an unfamiliar female voice with a southern twang. Tony looked up. It would be so easy to slip Lola in as a nurse. He could feel his heart rate increasing. "You need to calm down, Mr. DiNozzo." She started looking over his numbers. Her name tag said Belinda.

"Tony," Tony said automatically. "Mr. DiNozzo's my dad." She glanced over and Tony remembered that his dad was sitting beside him. That was very weird. But now that he thought about it, not that shocking. A ransom had been paid. The money was what had gotten his dad down from Long Island. Ransom. Peter! "How did I wind up here? Where did he leave me?"

"You were left here, DiNozzo," Gibbs said.

"After the ransom was paid, he brought me to the hospital?" Tony asked, shaking his head. He'd seen all their faces. He knew for a fact that Butch wouldn't have gone for it even if Lola had. "But . . . Boss, that doesn't make sense."

Gibbs looked down at him with an odd expression. "Actually, they left you at the hospital the night before the ransom was paid."

Wayne County, she'd said. He started to ask which state, but then what Gibbs had said sank in. "Before?" He took in a deep breath and started coughing. The movement made his ribs and throat and lungs ache.

"Tony, quiet down," Belinda said in her soft southern drawl. He shook his head. There was no way Butch or Lola would have agreed to letting him go before the ransom was paid, and Peter . . . Peter didn't want to kill him so he wouldn't want him to die . . . which meant taking him to the hospital was about making sure he lived so Peter could find him again. Belinda had kept speaking soothingly, but now she said something that spiked his panic higher. "I'm going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave. Tony seems to –"

"No!" Tony exclaimed. Gibbs was getting to his feet. He reached out and seized the sleeve of Gibbs' jacket. "Boss! Gibbs! Don't go!"

Slowly, Gibbs sank back into the chair, and Tony felt a reassuring pressure on his hand. "Not going anywhere, Tony," he said. "Relax. You need to calm down."

Tony gazed into his eyes, willing him to understand. "He's after me, Gibbs. He said he wanted to keep me."

"He let you go, DiNozzo," Gibbs pointed out.

"I know," Tony said, his breath coming short. "But there's no way the others would have gone for it." He heard Gibbs talking to Belinda, but he tugged on Gibbs' sleeve. "Butch would have killed me first."

"Who's Butch?" Gibbs asked. Belinda had gone, and Tony's father had come around the bed to stand behind Gibbs.

"Big guy," Tony said. "The one who beat me up on the video."

Gibbs dug in his pocket and held out a photograph of Butch. "This guy?"

"Yeah," Tony said, hope flaring. If they had Butch's picture, maybe they had something to go on to get Lola and Peter. "He'd have killed me before he let Peter let me go. He wanted to kill me when they moved me the first night."

"He's dead, Tony," Gibbs said, waving the picture. "This man is dead."

Tony stared at Gibbs for a long second, struggling to comprehend. "Butch is dead?" Suddenly, an image flashed on his mind's eye. Butch standing at the foot of the bed, a .38 in his hand, sighting down it at Tony's head. "Oh God," he muttered, half aware that he was speaking aloud. "Oh God. That's not good. Not good at all."

"What is it, Tony?" Gibbs asked.

"Butch was going to shoot me . . . I remember seeing him . . . he had a gun . . . and then there was a shot and it was like . . ." He covered his mouth with his hand.

"Tony, stay with me."

Tony looked up at Gibbs. "It was like warm rain," he said, and Gibbs' eyes widened. "I must have passed out because I don't remember anything after that." He still had his hand on Gibbs' shirt. "Gibbs, he wants me. Peter. He let me go so I wouldn't die."

"Tony?"

Tony turned to find Dr. Pitt coming into the room, Belinda just behind him. "Brad," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking after you," he said. "I thought I was going to be going home soon, but if you're going to work yourself up, I'll have to stick around."

"You don't understand," Tony said. "Peter's going to come back after me. He's going to want me back. He said he was going to keep me."

"Peter is not here, Tony," Dr. Pitt said. "You're safe, and you need your rest." He turned to Belinda and gave an order, and she hurried off.

"What does Peter look like?" Gibbs asked, and Tony saw Dr. Pitt give him a dark look, but he had a needle and was inserting it into the IV line.

He turned to Gibbs. "Peter MacNicol," he said. "He . . ." He rested his head against the pillow. "He looked like Peter MacNicol."

"And Lola?"

Tony had started drifting. "Whatever Lola wants . . . Lola gets . . . Peter has a warped sense of humor." He heard Gibbs speaking, but the drugs pulled him down into dreams of Peter's Lola dancing in the costume from the movie, using a pink taser for a prop.

Once Tony was asleep, Dr. Pitt beckoned Gibbs away from Tony. They didn't leave the room, but they moved off somewhat. Gibbs was aware of Leonard DiNozzo following him. "Agent Gibbs, what's been going on here?" Dr. Pitt demanded in an undertone. "You can't question a man in his state."

Gibbs grimaced, but before he could speak, DiNozzo senior went on the attack. "He couldn't have done anything else," Tony's father said.

"He didn't have to keep asking him questions," Dr. Pitt replied earnestly. "I understand that –"

"You don't understand much, young man," DiNozzo snapped. "How well do you know my son?"

"We have drinks together once in a while, and I see him whenever there's an issue about his lungs," Dr. Pitt said. "I don't know that I know him well, but what's your point?"

"He wasn't going to stop talking, doctor," DiNozzo said. "The combination of drugs and anxiety turn him into an unstoppable stream of words. At least by directing the stream, we got some use out of what he had to say."

Pitt gazed at him suspiciously for a moment, then turned to Gibbs. "Is that what you were doing? Directing the flow?"

Gibbs shrugged. "He seemed pretty panicked, and DiNozzo doesn't generally panic unless there's a reason, and drugs do make him more talkative." Pitt's brows rose. From Kate's complaints after their stay in the hospital together, Gibbs knew Pitt had an idea how much DiNozzo could talk. "Now, is anything you've got him on likely to stir up paranoia or delusions?"

Pitt shook his head. "And he's been on a lot of it before, when he was recovering from the plague, so we'd know."

Gibbs nodded. He stuck his head out the door. "McGee?" The young agent was dozing on a nearby sofa, though how he could manage it Gibbs wasn't sure. It looked like it had been designed by a sadist.

"Yes Boss?" McGee said, coming very nearly to attention.

"I need you to look two things up for me. I need a picture of Peter Nickel."

"MacNicol," DiNozzo senior said from behind him.

"Peter MacNicol," Gibbs corrected. "And I need you to look up the sentence 'Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.' I don't know what it means, but it sounded like a quote."

"It is," DiNozzo said behind him. "McGee, look up Damn Yankees."

"Sure," McGee said, looking puzzled.

Gibbs closed the door and turned to Dr. Pitt. "How soon can he be released?"

"Released?" Pitt exclaimed, glancing over at the shallowly breathing man. "We're moving him out of ICU shortly, but he still needs observation."

"Can we move him to Bethesda?"

Pitt shook his head. "Not yet, though I will have to go back soon."

Gibbs scowled. "His own doctor is in DC, and you'll be going back to Maryland. I want him where I trust the people looking after him – and where there's a little security."

"Security?" Pitt repeated.

"He's convinced that his kidnappers will come after him again, and his reasons make a certain amount of sense," Gibbs said. "And I don't want to take any chances."

"I could take him to a private clinic in New York," DiNozzo suggested.

"That would take him away from both his doctors," Gibbs said. "No, I want him at Bethesda."

"What you want isn't the point, Agent Gibbs –" DiNozzo started, but Dr. Pitt broke in.

"If you two are going to have an argument, I am going to have to ask you to step outside," the doctor said. "In fact, let's discuss this outside." He opened the door and Gibbs walked out. DiNozzo followed unwillingly. "All right, I can arrange an ambulance to take him to Bethesda for security reasons," he said.

Gibbs nodded. "Please do."

"Now wait a minute, Gibbs, we haven't settled this," DiNozzo said before Dr. Pitt could go anywhere.

Gibbs looked at DiNozzo. "It makes no sense to take him away from his doctor and put him a five-hour drive away from his apartment." DiNozzo didn't look convinced. "I think if you asked Tony, you'd find that he'd rather be close to home."

"What's going on?" Joyce asked. Ziva and McGee were watching with wide eyes and no comments.

"I want to bring Anthony to New York for his convalescence. I was thinking of St. Marie's."

Joyce's brows went up. "Then I suppose we'll be having a number of house guests," she said. "I'll have to call Consuela and have her get things set up for that."

"What do you mean?" DiNozzo demanded.

"We can hardly ask his visitors to stay in hotels when we have plenty of space."

"Joyce –"

"Starting with his doctors. I'm sure they can't stay all the time, so I'll arrange for Jacob to pick them up from the train or plane or whichever transport they use." She turned towards Gibbs. "Agent Gibbs, please accept my invitation to stay with us as long as –"

"I suppose it isn't really practical," DiNozzo senior said ungraciously, and she turned back to him with raised eyebrows. "Fine, Gibbs, Bethesda. Joyce, find a hotel near the hospital and book us a suite indefinitely." With that he turned and went back into Tony's room.

"McGee?" Gibbs said. "You get that info?"

McGee turned his laptop to face Gibbs. "This is Peter MacNicol," he said, and Gibbs blinked at the photograph. It showed a small man, slight and very ordinary looking with curly hair.

"That's him?" Gibbs said incredulously. That was the guy who had Tony half-panicked?

"Yeah. What's the significance?"

"That's what Tony says the main kidnapper looks like." He scowled. "What about the Lola thing?"

"It's a quote from a song, from Damn Yankees, sung by a woman who works for the devil."

Gibbs blinked contemplatively. "Thanks, McGee. Let the guards and Fornell know what that Peter looks like . . . like Peter MacNicol."

"Sure, Boss," McGee said, and Gibbs retired to Tony's room. DiNozzo senior looked at him sourly, but didn't comment, and they resumed their separate activities.