Chapter 18

The trip to DC went without a hitch. Ducky took one of the seats in the DiNozzos' chopper. Fornell and Sacks drove in front of the ambulance while Ziva and McGee drove behind it. There were no unexpected delays, no attempts to waylay the convoy. All went as planned. Dr. Pitt was ready when they arrived to smooth their way into Bethesda, and Jenny was waiting with the DiNozzos.

Dr. Pitt and his staff politely ejected him from the room while they got DiNozzo resettled, and the minute he was out, Tony's father hurried up. "Did he say anything?"

"He didn't really wake up," Gibbs said.

"Do we know any more about what happened, yet?" Jenny asked.

"Nothing that I haven't already told you," Gibbs replied. "So far as we can tell, the woman who dropped Tony off at the hospital joined Peter in a car two blocks away, and they made a clean getaway. Waynesborough doesn't have traffic cameras, they avoided ATM machines and convenience stores, and left nothing behind but a few grainy images of the woman on the hospital camera. We have composites put together by the hospital staff and by Miss Heather Ryan, but that's about it."

"And Abby's already running them against facial recognition software. The only hit so far on the man is Peter MacNicol."

"And the woman?"

"Dozens," Jenny said. "There's just nothing about her face that stands out, unfortunately. What we really need is for DiNozzo to wake up so we can get more information from him."

Gibbs grimaced. "Right."

Beeping. Again. Tony hated hospitals. They made so much noise. There were the beeps of the machines, the squeaky shoes of the staff on the linoleum floor, soft chimes when elevators reached their destinations, random office noises, and the wheels on the food carts went round and round forever and followed him into his dreams.

He opened his eyes and looked around nervously, not sure what to expect. He wasn't sure what was going on. The first face his eyes landed on startled the living daylights out of him. "Dad?"

"Anthony!" His father smiled broadly and leaned towards him. "How are you feeling?"

"Like crap," Tony said. "What are you still doing here . . . and where am I now? This isn't the same hospital, is it?"

"We're at Bethesda Naval Hospital, son," his father said. "Agent Gibbs insisted you would prefer it to a clinic in New York, but if he was wrong, we can move you in a trice."

"Why would I want to go to New York?" Tony asked, unclear about just what was going on.

"It doesn't matter." Tony stared at his father, still stunned by his presence. "Joyce is here as well, being watched over by Ziva."

"Good. Ziva's good." Tony shook his head. His throat still hurt, his chest ached slightly, but he didn't really feel all that bad. "Why are you here?" he asked.

"Anthony, you were abducted!" his father exclaimed quietly. "I don't understand why you keep asking me that."

"I've asked you before?" Tony asked, blinking. At his father's nod, he shrugged. "Maybe because the last time you showed up to the hospital to see me was in 1984, and I've been in hospitals a few times since then. Did . . ." He vaguely remembered his father mentioning a ransom. "Did you get the money back?"

"All but three million, but that doesn't matter, Anthony."

Tony blinked. "All but three million? How much did you pay?"

"Fifteen."

The door to the bathroom opened while Tony was still trying to get a handle on the idea that his father had actually paid that much to retrieve him. He turned towards the figure entering the room with a smile. "Boss," he said.

"Good to see you awake, Tony," Gibbs said. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," Tony said frankly.

"Well, you look better than you did with the plague," Gibbs remarked.

"So just pathetic and wan, not pathetic, wan and dead?"

"You feel up to telling me what happened?"

Tony closed his eyes. "I'm trying real hard not to think too much about that, Boss," he said.

"We really need to know what you can tell us, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied.

"Anthony, you've got to tell us what happened!" his father exclaimed. Tony opened his eyes in time to see Gibbs direct a glare in his father's direction. "He does!" his father added defensively.

Tony sighed. "Can I have some water?" he asked, unprepared for the immediate movement on the parts of both men. Once Gibbs saw that his father was pouring him a glass, Gibbs stopped, and Tony was mildly amused. That explained some of his father's presence. In person, a DiNozzo wasn't going to be outdone in any way by a mere boss, even if he had been repeatedly in the past in absentia. His father held the cup for him and let him sip from the straw. Gibbs seated himself to the side of the bed.

When he'd had enough to drink, Tony rested his head against the pillow. "You got a tape recorder?" he asked.

"Just waiting for you to be ready," Gibbs said.

"There's no need to be so curt," Tony's father said, and Tony turned to him in surprise.

"It's fine, Dad," he said, then a tickle in his throat made him cough. He expected to feel ripped apart by it, but evidently he'd gotten past that stage. He needed more water afterwards, but then he was ready to begin. "I assume you traced my movements on Sunday night, Boss?"

"Your wallet and gun were found in a garbage can not too far from Ziz," Gibbs said.

"Right." Tony closed his eyes. "I was walking back to my car when I heard a woman screaming down an alley. There was a blond girl struggling with a masked guy while another girl looked on, screaming. The one making all the racket was Lola."

"Who is Lola?" Gibbs asked. "You mentioned her before."

"She's Peter's gal Friday," Tony said. "Cute in an ordinary sort of way, brown hair and eyes, and absolutely terrifying."

Gibbs pulled a sheet of paper out of a folder sitting on the bedside table and handed it to him. Tony looked with disfavor at the composite sketch. "Well, that does look like her, but the eyes are too . . . warm."

"We'll have an artist come and sit with you later," Gibbs said, and Tony nodded with a sigh. "So, what then?"

"Then Lola produced her handy dandy pink taser, followed by a hypodermic."

Gibbs blinked at him. "Pink?"

Tony nodded. "Pink. Next thing I knew, I woke up naked in some kind of basement on an air mattress. If it hadn't been for the radiator, I would have frozen to death."

"We've been there," Gibbs said.

"I wondered." Tony swallowed. "That move didn't seem very planned. I still don't . . . they let me see their faces, Gibbs. All three of them."

"Do you remember me telling you Thornburg is dead?"

Tony recalled the spray of blood hitting his face. He really didn't like that sensation. "Yeah," he said shortly. "I remember."

"Go on."

Tony took in a breath, but this one caught in his throat and his father leaned over with the water again. "Drink, son."

Tony took a couple of swallows, then looked over at Gibbs. "This isn't over, Boss. Peter was freaky from the start. I mean, after they finished beating up on me to convince Dad they were serious, he had a catered dinner brought in and ate with me."

"Catered?" his father repeated. "By a restaurant?"

"Well, I don't know where it came from exactly, but it was steak medallions, nicely prepared veggies and mashed potatoes – not from a packet. You don't exactly cook that up on a camp stove in a basement."

"You could, I imagine," his father said. "It just wouldn't be very good."

"This was very good," Tony replied. He turned to Gibbs. "Boss, it was like a date dinner. Very weird."

"A date, DiNozzo?" Gibbs repeated, eyebrows going up.

"Yeah," Tony said. "He made it absolutely clear later on that he wanted to be . . ." He contemplated the right way to put it. "He wanted to be more than just friends." Both his companions stared at him in stunned silence for a moment. "I know how weird that sounds," he said quickly, interpreting their reactions as disbelief. "But he wasn't precisely subtle."

"Did he touch you?" his father asked.

"He helped kidnap me, Dad," Tony said impatiently. "He touched me."

"I meant . . . ." His father flushed. "Did he . . . assault you . . ."

Tony opened his mouth to point out that any unwanted touch could be construed as assault, but Gibbs tapped him gently on the back of the head. "You know what he means, DiNozzo."

Tony swallowed. "Not unless you count kissing me on the forehead," he said. A sudden thought occurred to him, and his mouth went dry. "At least not that I'm aware of," he added.

"How could you miss it, Anthony?" his father asked.

"I was unconscious more than once," Tony said, his skin crawling. He reached out and grabbed the plastic glass from his father and took a deep sip of water.

"Is there any chance you misinterpreted him?" Gibbs asked.

Tony shook his head. "I really don't think so, Boss."

"Okay, let's go back and take the events in order. You woke up on the air mattress."

Tony took Gibbs through his two failed escape attempts and the charming videotaping session before he began to fade out again. Gibbs suggested a break when he started having trouble keeping his eyes open, and Tony didn't have the energy to object. He couldn't keep awake, but thinking of Butch made him remember nightmare images of the man's death. Delirium did not improve the experience of witnessing death by gunshot wound to the head. And knowing that he was only alive because someone had committed murder made him feel very peculiar. He lay for a while, drifting on the surface of sleep till finally, the undertow swept him down deep.