Chapter 27
Ziva knew that Tony was upset that she was still ignoring him, but it was something that she felt she had to do, mainly because even with them being engaged he still withheld information from her, he never once told her about any of the things he had been getting, any of the threats or anything else. She thought that they were being honest with each other and that they relied on each other and instead she found out that he was hiding something extremely important from her. Something that would have made a huge difference in what her decision would have been when it came to their engagement, which was why he kept it a secret she figured.
"Ziva, you can't stay mad at me forever." Tony said softly as he looked at her across their dining room table, where they were currently sitting there eating some takeout for dinner.
Ziva just glanced up at him and sighed before lowering her eyes back to the food on her plate. She hadn't really spoken a word to him since finding out what he was hiding from her, and she knew it was driving him insane because it had been two whole days of the silent treatment, and she could already tell it was also causing him to panic about the wedding, because he was afraid she would just cancel the entire thing, for good. She wasn't going to lie, she had thought about that, but she knew that she couldn't see herself with anyone else, she loved Tony and even though it might take her a while to forgive him, she didn't want to cancel the wedding.
"Look, I get it, it was stupid to hide something like that from you, but I knew you were under a lot of stress as it was, I didn't want to add to it." Tony said softly.
Ziva was about to answer him, for the first time, when there was a knock on the door. She watched as Tony got up to answer it, probably figuring it was shift change on the agents that were on their protection detail and the new ones were checking in. Ziva figured the same thing, so she was really shocked to see their friends and co-workers walking into the room. Ziva saw Ducky, Palmer, McGee, Abby and Gibbs standing there and it was clear that they had something they wanted to talk about.
"Ziva, you and I are going to go and talk in the back bedroom and let the guys here talk out here." Abby said as she walked over and grabbed Ziva's hand, pulling until she got to her feet and then Abby practically dragged her into the bedroom.
Gibbs could tell that Tony was still having a rough time getting through to Ziva, but Gibbs also knew that if Ziva wasn't going to forgive him, she would have left by now, so it was clear she just wanted to be angry for a while, nothing to really worry about. As the guys all sat around the living room, Gibbs knew that Tony was confused, and he couldn't blame him, but something had come up on someone else's case, something that Ducky had found during an autopsy and so they had all decided to come and talk to Ziva and Tony about it, separately.
"What's going on?" Tony asked as he looked at all of them in the room.
"Another NCIS Agent had a weird case that popped up, Ducky was doing the autopsy when he found this in the stomach of the victim." Gibbs said as he tossed the evidence bag to Tony and watched as Tony studied the object and then watched his eyes widen as he realized what he was holding.
"Do we know how he got this? Do we have any connections between him and any of our suspects or any of us?" Tony asked as he set down the object. "Are we possibly talking about a dirty Agent who had been on our detail?
"So you do recognize the object?" Ducky asked as he sighed in disappointment. They had all been hoping that it was a mistake that they were making, that there was no chance that this object had any connections with Ziva or Tony.
"I do." Tony said nodding his head slowly.
He was laughing as he looked over all the names of the people he was close to. He had a lot of people in place that were more than willing to help him with his new plan, and Ziva and Tony had no clue what they were about to face. He was good at getting people to do what he wanted them to do, even if it meant betraying someone important to them or someone that they owed their own lives to. He had broken several people recently, and that meant that he was most likely going to get to Ziva a lot faster than he originally thought. He wanted to kill someone else, someone that Ziva would feel so guilty about that she would beg him to kill her to rid her of the pain. At the same time he had another plan that was even more important to him, he had a plan to kidnap someone, or maybe more than one someone's, and use them to get Ziva to come to him. He knew who to go after, he knew how to get everyone to know that they had to let Ziva come to him, to save the lives of a very certain person, someone everyone would know couldn't handle pain or torture, and he was pretty sure he was going to be able to get his Ziva soon, and he would make her pay.
Ziva could tell that Abby was worried about telling her whatever it was that she wanted to tell her, but she stayed patient and waited. Over the years that she had gotten to know Abby she had learned how to deal with her friend and she had learned that patience was very essential in dealing with her. Abby wasn't like most people, and that meant you had to get to know her, to know that patience was the only way you were going to be able to tolerate Abby, and become friends with her. Ziva was glad that her patience was paying off though, mainly because it was wearing thin because of this case.
"Another Agent was working a case and Ducky found this during the autopsy." Abby tossed a photograph of a piece of evidence on the bed between the two of them.
Ziva picked it up and felt sick to her stomach. There was only one way that this object could have been found in a dead body, and there was only one reason that it would be found in there as well. "He is making a statement. He has gotten someone close to us to betray us and his message is clear, it won't be long before he uses someone else close to us to kill me."
"Do you know who?" Abby asked her.
Ziva had a feeling she knew what the plan was going to be, and as she looked from the photograph to her good friend, Ziva wasn't sure if telling Abby what Mossad trained their people to do in situations like this, because if Ziva was right, then it was going to be an innocent person who would be used to draw Ziva out into the open, and Ziva wasn't sure who it would be, but she had a sick feeling in her gut that she might know the candidates and how he planned to get his hands on them.
