Just My Luck

Summary: 7 years ago, Ari Haswari murdered Annabelle Todd's big sister, Kate. After the case, she resigned from NCIS and accepted an offer at the FBI. When the decomposed body of a Navy Petty officer is found and taken to the Jeffersonian, her partner Seeley Booth, calls in the NCIS MCRT, without her knowledge. How will Annie react to seeing her old team, and why is one of them not surprised to see her there? – Set I don't know when…Rated T coz I'm paranoid!

Disclaimer

Me: *sighs* As much as I wish I did, I don't own either NCIS or Bones. They belong to CBS and Fox respectively. *Throws self onto my bed, sobbing, muttering incoherently about Tiva, and feels and Sweets*

Annie: Oooookay… She's even weirder than usual… Alrighty, then. On with the story!

A/N: Hey guys! Another chapter up, and another chapter closer to the end of this story. Thanks, all of you for all sticking with me for this story, especially Kagome Avalon for their warm wishes and kind encouragement every single chapter. I'm dedicating this chapter to them, and all of you other readers who have stuck with me and left nice reviews. I love you all, and you mean the world to me. Thank you guys so much, because without you I wouldn't feel even the slightest bit motivated to update this story as often as I do (even though it isn't that often!), but meh, technicalities!

Chapter 7

The group decided to reconvene at the Jeffersonian at 8 am the next morning, as they had decided that they could do no more that night without rest.

Annie, on the other hand, never went home, nor did she rest. She went back to her office at the FBI Academy and stayed up all night going through all the evidence that they had collected, calling in a few favours from different departments, ultimately coming up empty even with help from her genius profiler friend Dr Spencer Reid with the BAU (who happened to be on the trail of a serial killer in Atlanta at the time of her call, and unfortunately didn't have the time to help, no matter how much he wanted to), and drinking way too many caffeinated beverages (both venti double shot banana lattes and jumbo Caf-Pows) in the process. So by the time she arrived at the Jeffersonian, still a good two hours before the group had agreed upon, she had a definite caffeine buzz, and possibly a slight caffeine induced tick in her left hand.

Annie walked up the stairs to the catwalk and the break area to put the percolator on, to refill her coffee, though admittedly not the smartest idea considering how much caffeine she had consumed over the last 10 hours, but it was a short break from the case files, and the reading, and sitting staring her phone, waiting for one friend or another to call her back.

Dr Brennan arrived at 7.15am, which she thought would be early enough to get started on her re-examination of the bones without anyone else in the lab to distract her when she heard the sounds of someone pacing up in the break area and the occasional utterance. Dr Brennan knew that Annie had probably been pacing up there for a while, and as she climbed the stairs to leading to the break area, her suspicions were confirmed, when she saw Annie with an FBI file in her hand, pacing backwards and forwards occasionally sipping from her "World's Best Auntie" mug that she'd received from Parker Booth and Emily Fornell the previous year for her birthday.

"Annie? How long have you been here?" Dr Brennan asked, and Annie jumped and whipped her head around to face her friend. Dr Brennan took in her friend's appearance and noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the slight twitch of the file in her left hand. Annie's clothes were slightly creased like they had been folded in the well-packed go-bag she kept in the trunk of her car, a leftover habit from the time she spent with the BAU 3 years ago, which lead Dr Brennan to the conclusion that Annie didn't go home last night.

"Just over an hour," Annie answered quickly. "Did you want some coffee? It's relatively fresh." Brennan nodded, still looking over the young woman. Annie walked the few steps to the percolator, and poured her friend a mug, handing it to her.

"You didn't go home last night. Why?" Dr Brennan asked, taking a sip of the caffeinated beverage that the younger woman had handed her. Annie shrugged.

"I just couldn't. I wouldn't have slept anyway, and I wasn't gonna keep Callum up, with me working at home. He'd feel obligated to stay up with me. He just got home, he needs his rest, so I went to my office." Annie explained, flopping down on one of the couches, tapping her foot repeatedly on the floor, alerting Brennan to the fact that maybe, just maybe, Annie had ingested a little bit too much caffeine.

"Then perhaps I should take this from you," Brennan suggested, reaching over to her friend, and relieving her of her mug, before standing back up, and pouring the remaining caffeinated beverage down the sink. Annie's eyes widened as she watched her precious coffee get poured down the sink. "No more coffee for you. You've already had too much."

"My coffee." Annie whimpered, looking like a child who had lost her favourite toy. She stared at her empty mug that was now sitting on the side of the sink, and let out another small whimper.

"What's wrong with Annie?" Angela asked as she finished her climb up to the break area with Hodgins trailing not far behind her.

"I cut her off. She's had too much coffee and no sleep." Brennan explained as Angela and Hodgins made their way over to the percolator.

"Annie." Angela half sighed, half laughed at the look on the younger woman's face, and then her gaze travelled from her face to the twitching left hand, still holding the file.

"Why are you lot here so early?" Annie asked quickly, shooting one last longing glance at the percolator and her empty mug. "I thought we agreed to meet here at 8 am."

"Well, I had a few ideas on how we can narrow down the knife used, and Hodgins wanted to come in and see if there was anything else he could find in the soil samples, or risk having to turn the title of 'King of the Lab' over to Abby," Angela explained, pouring herself a cup of the coffee that Annie was currently staring longingly at. A few seconds later, Annie's head whipped around from the percolator, and to the stairway, where multiple sets of footsteps were ascending to the break room. A few seconds later, Booth walked up with the NCIS team, minus Abby, and Cam, chatting about the case, and everything that had to be done in order to catch the bad guy and get some closure for Annie and the rest of Petty Officer Amos' friends and family.

As soon as Ziva walked up into the break area, her eyes zeroed in on her best friend and she heaved a sigh. She could tell Annie hadn't gone home, nor had she slept, and she looked like she'd been mainlining caffeine. And she was not the only one that noticed. Cam's and Gibbs' eyes had locked onto Annie's left hand holding the FBI file.

"Have you been here all night, Annie?" Ziva asked, and Tony and McGee looked on slightly worried and Booth looked nervous. When Annie pulled all-nighters on a case, she was either hyper due to her mass consumption of coffee, or quick-tempered and oftentimes even her quick mind and her normally easy-going nature deserted her and she had little tolerance for Hodgins and the Squintern's experiments and scientific jargon, even with her two college degrees of forensic science and computer forensics, she became almost as irritable as Tobias Fornell on his good days.

Annie opened her mouth to answer when Abby came sprinting up the stairs yelling "Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs!" Annie's mouth snapped shut, and her head snapped around to Abby, her eyes narrowing at the eccentric goth. It appeared that Short-Tempered-Bitchy-Annie was going to make an appearance. Ziva sent a sharp look at her friend, needing no words to tell Annie to watch her mood, and because it was Ziva, Annie actually listened.

"I was able to isolate a larger sample of the blood from the wounds on the Petty Officer's body that didn't match his blood type. Hodgins helped me extract it and we're currently running it through AFIS and CODIS now. We might have a better chance at getting a match now." Abby continued, as she came to a skidding stop in front of Gibbs, and the rest of the people up in the break room.

That means we're one step closer to catching who killed your friend, Annie." Ziva stated, reaching out and grabbing Annie's hand, squeezing it reassuringly. Annie squeezed back gratefully.

"How long until the sample has finished running?" Gibbs asked, glancing sideways at Annie, to see her tapping her foot impatiently, with a worried look on her face, trying to figure out some way to help the young agent whose life had once again turned on its head.

"I've got it on rush, but it'll still be a good 4 hours, at least, especially with how early it is," Abby explained.

"Maybe we could head back out to where the Petty Officer's body was dumped, and see if the knife was tossed? If the assailant cut themselves on it, they might have dumped it, as a precautionary measure? I don't know, it's just a suggestion." McGee said, earning a grateful look from Ziva when Annie's expression visibly relaxed at the idea of finding something to do, instead of twiddling her thumbs, re-reading all the case files, and notes.

NCISxBONESxNCISxBONES

So it was decided that while Abby and Hodgins worked on trying to extract more of the foreign blood from the sample they had, Angela worked on her theories of narrowing down the blade, Ziva, Tony, Booth and Gibbs commandeered Dr Brennan's office to go over the case file and notes again, as well as delving into Petty Officer Charlie Phillips-Stone's background to try and discover what he was hiding, to give Annie some piece of mind, and Dr Brennan herself sequestered herself in the Bone Room, to try and obtain any more information from the bones, Annie would take McGee, and the two of them would go to the site the body dump, to collect more samples and work their way out from the crime scene to see whether there was anything the FBI crime scene techs missed on their initial sweep.

"So, how are you holding up, Annie?" McGee asked the woman currently fidgeting in the passenger's seat, as he drove them to the crime scene.

Annie looked over at her companion and contemplated her answer. How exactly was she holding up? She was currently investigating the murder of her best friend, all the while reconciling the fact that her former team, people that she had once considered family (and if she's honest, she still does), are assisting in said murder investigation. The merging of her past and her present. Not to mention, it felt really, really awkward being alone with Tim, considering their history.

They had dated for almost a year, back when Annie had been with NCIS, and it had been Annie's first real relationship, the first relationship that Annie had experienced where she could imagine a future with a guy. That relationship was one of the reasons she had left NCIS. When Kate had died, Annie had expected the team, Tim included, to grieve, but she hadn't expected her boyfriend to almost completely ignore her when she needed him the most. No matter what she had done, nothing could get his attention, and so she gave up. She left for Kate's funeral earlier than the rest of the team, and on her flight, she decided she couldn't do it anymore, and wrote a Dear John letter, addressed to McGee, and gave it to him when the team was leaving the cemetery, never saying anything, and walking away towards her best friends, without looking back once at the man that meant so much to her at the time. She didn't know whether Tim held a grudge or not, or what sort of feelings he had about seeing her again, and that worried her.

"Annie? Earth to Annie? Anybody home?" McGee tried again to get the young woman's attention.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I'm okay. I think. My head's a mess right now, I guess." Was Annie's response.

Tim nodded in understanding, and he could definitely forgive her for that. This was the first time they had been alone together since Kate's funeral, and she handed him that letter and walked away. Sure, he'd been mad, and heartbroken at the time, and for a while afterwards, but he understood why she ended things, and why she chose the method of the Dear John letter and had long forgiven her for it. He noticed her fidgeting and the way she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye like she couldn't look at him directly. She was nervous to be alone with him, he realised. Now he just had to bring her out of it. A shock should do the trick.

"So, Annie. How long have you and Callum been together?"

Annie whipped her head to Tim, facing him directly for the first time the whole drive. Why was he asking that? That was one of the subjects she wanted to try and avoid. She wasn't sure whether Tim was in a relationship or not, but she didn't think her ex would want to hear about her relationship with her current boyfriend. Tim laughed at her reaction, and she narrowed her eyes at him, needing no words to show him she wanted an explanation.

"What? It's been 7 years, Annie. I don't have any hard feelings. You did what you needed to do. I treated you terribly after Kate, and you had every right to do what you did." Tim explained, and Annie let go of the breath she had been holding. "Please don't be nervous around me. We were friends once, really good friends, and I'd really like to get back to that."

"I'd like that Tim. I really would." Annie breathed, her breath catching a bit. Tim could always read her so well, and it hadn't changed in their 7 years apart.

"So, come on. Spill. How long have you been together?" Tim pushed, smiling when Annie shoved his arm slightly, a small smile on her face.

"About 5 years. But I've known him since I moved to DC when I was 16. He was actually the first person I met when I moved here." Tim smiled, happy that Annie had found someone to share her life with, because the way Annie had looked at Callum when he'd come into the Jeffersonian yesterday, and the way he looked at her, McGee could see Callum and Annie would be together probably the rest of their lives. "What about you, Timmy? Have you got anyone special in your life right now?"

"Not currently, no. But I'm happy with the way life is treating me right now. " McGee said, not just to appease Annie's curiosity, but because it was true. He had a great job, good friends, a good life. And for now, that was enough.

The two agents settled into easy conversation, one that they had both missed, if they were completely honest with themselves, and as walked up to the crime scene, they were discussing the pros and cons of a new video game that had been released recently. When they reached the spot that Petty Officer Amos' body found, Annie stopped dead.

"Okay, Tim. This is where Stephen's body was found." Annie said, as she pulled out her phone, and pulled up the crime scene photos, and gesturing from the wide shot showing the whole body, and it's surroundings, to the actual crime scene. The Petty Officer's body had been found half covered by an overgrown bush by a runner trying out a new route. The killer had clearly rolled Stephen's body under the bush in an attempt to conceal the body, and it had worked. This route was fairly well travelled and the only reason Madeline Mace had found the body was because she had stopped to tie her shoelace that had snagged on a bush and had come loose. People had been jogging past the body for two weeks, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. "So, what if we fan out from where the body was found, and see if we can spot anything the crime scene techs missed."

"Sounds like a plan, Annie. Shout if you find anything, okay?" McGee said, as he started walking south of the crime scene, and Annie started walking to the north, both agents keeping their eyes peeled on their surroundings for anything that didn't belong.

As Annie walked in a fairly straight line from the crime scene, eyes sweeping the ground, her thoughts turned back to those thoughts that had been whirling around in her head since she, Gibbs and Ziva had finished talking to Charlie the previous day. Charlie had been acting off, and not just because he was sick. He showed all the signs of lying, or at the very least hiding something. Charlie would have been the last person to see Stephen alive, on their weekly run. And Natalie had definitely confirmed that Stephen had left the house early the morning of his disappearance in running clothes, saying that he was meeting Charlie for their run, but Charlie said that the last time he saw Stephen was the day before that, at the base. So, why was he lying? What happened on that run? Some pieces might have started clicking together in Annie's head.

"Annie! I found something!" Tim called out, and Annie broke out of her thoughts and made her way back to Tim. When she returned to Tim's side, Annie followed his gaze down to the ground before them. A bloody tactical knife lay on the ground before them, partially concealed by twigs and debris. Tim started methodically photographing the knife from multiple different angles, and Annie reached into her field kit to grab a pair of latex gloves, pulling them on before pulling an evidence tube out of her kit, and waited patiently for Tim to get the shots he needed. As soon as he was finished, Annie bent down and retrieved, what the pair was 90% sure, was the murder weapon, placing it in the tube. While Annie was tagging the tube with the required information, Tim pulled on a pair of latex gloves from his own field kit and proceeded to take a sample of soil from underneath where the blade had been, as per Dr Hodgins' request.

Hopefully, now, some of their many questions would be answered.

A/N: And that's a wrap on another chapter of Just My Luck (Not the best ending, I know, but I just wanted to get this chapter finished, because it has been sitting on my computer, unfinished for so long!)! I know it's been soooo long, and you guys have probably all forgotten about Little Lilli and her random crossover, but I still love and appreciate each and every one of you, for the follows, favourites and reviews that I have received. You guys are all awesome, and thanks so much for sticking with me and this story.

See you round guys,

Lilli xx