Deep Lacerations: Chapter 26
A/N: So, I was going to tell you who the fingerprint belonged to but...you're going to have to wait another day. Sorry. Except I'm not really sorry. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter.
Sonja Gracy raised her eyebrows in surprise as she caught sight of Agent Gibbs rounding the corner toward her room: Gibbs, one arm supporting her son at his hip, the other carrying a tray with five large coffee cups. "Good morning," she said, still blinking in surprise. "I take it he fell asleep in the car?"
"He always falls asleep in the car," Maddie replied indignantly as she followed Gibbs and Nate into the room. Gibbs smiled thinly as he lowered Nate to the floor before handing her a cup. He stepped out to continue his coffee delivery service.
"I made you a card," Nate said proudly, holding out a folded piece of what looked like old, feeder-type printer paper, decorated with ballpoint pen. He glanced guiltily over to his sister, who was glaring at him. "Maddie helped."
"Agent Gibbs had to help me with some of the spelling," she admitted, leaning forward to get a better look at the card. "But he didn't know how to spell in German, so I had to guess how to spell 'Wie lieben dich.'"
Gracy had to smile at her daughter's attempt. "Good job," she said, mentally reminding herself to spend more time teaching her kids to read and write German.
"Is DiNozzo allowed to drink coffee yet?" Gibbs asked from the door to her ICU room, the coffee cup in question in his hand. Ziva David was standing right behind him, sipping from her own cup and looking almost well-rested.
"Probably not," Gracy replied with a frown. "But you could always—"
"Just means more for me," Gibbs interrupted before she could say that they could ignore the rules and give Tony his coffee. "Why did you have me get a triple shot mocha?"
"Oh, that's for Ensign Guggenbiller," she replied, taking the coffee and walking toward the conference room. Gibbs followed her with his eyes, a very puzzled expression on his face.
"Ensign Guggenbiller?" he asked Ziva, who looked amused.
"It is a long story."
"Agent Gibbs? Can we give Agent DiNozzo his card?" Nate asked, his expression serious.
"Well, he did want to meet you," Gracy replied before Gibbs had the chance, reappearing from her very quick coffee-delivering mission.
"Make it fast," Gibbs informed her. "Abby told me we got a hit on the fingerprint." The two kids, not noticing her sudden amazement or how it froze her in place, entered DiNozzo's room without her.
Tony glanced up as he heard the sound of the curtain being pulled, just in time to see Gibbs say something to Gracy and to see her freeze in response. Whatever it was that was said, though, he had no time to contemplate, as he found himself face-to-face with a very short person with dark red hair, shockingly light blue eyes, and freckles everywhere.
"Hi," he managed in his surprise.
"Hi," the boy replied. "I'm Nate. That's my mom." He half-turned to point at Gracy, who was now looking into the room. She gave DiNozzo a half-smile when she realized he was looking at her.
"Nice to meet you, Nate," Tony finally said, his eyes going from the four-year-old to his older sister. Blue eyes and freckles, he mused, thinking about Ziva's comment about them being part-Jordanian. He wasn't completely sure he was remembering his geography correctly, because he was pretty sure Jordan was somewhere near Israel, and he hadn't heard of many Middle Easterners with blue eyes. Or freckles. Of course, they were also half-German, and Germans did have blue eyes. Still, he caught himself glancing over at Ziva, taking a second to contemplate her dark brown eyes and black hair and wondering if he could imagine her having blue-eyed children. Of course, that required imagining Ziva with children, which just…
His mind snapped back on-topic when he realized Nate was talking to him. "Maddie and I made you a get-well card," he said, sounding excited as he moved even closer to the head of Tony's bed. "See? Maddie wrote all the words, 'cause I can't spell, and she helped me with some of the drawings. Here's you, and Agent Gibbs, and my mom, and Off'cer David, 'cause Agent Gibbs said that if I make a card with you, then Off'cer David has to be in it, too."
"Oh, he did?" Ziva asked from her position near the corner, shooting her boss a quick glare. He ignored her.
"Thank you for the card," Tony finally said, smiling slightly at the words on the inside, realizing Gibbs must have told them to write 'Don't think this gets you a vacation'. "Thank you, too, Maddie."
"You're welcome," she said, her words oddly formal for a seven-year-old. He gave her a wide grin; she looked away in response.
"Agent Gibbs said my mommy went in the water to get you out," Nate continued, oblivious to his sister's discomfort. He had the type of stern expression on his face that Tony had seen on other children as they lectured an adult about something they had been taught. "Mommy says that you should never swim without a buddy, 'cause it could be dangerous."
DiNozzo chuckled, fighting the urge to cough at the sudden discomfort in his throat. Damn oxygen, he thought, wishing he could take off that nasal cannula without being scolded by half a dozen doctors and nurses. "I'll be sure to remember that from now on," he said. Nate nodded solemnly.
"You do that," he said, emphasizing his words with a shake of his index finger. DiNozzo had to fight the sudden urge to start gushing about how 'adorable' that was.
"Nate, Maddie," Gracy interjected, still standing in the doorway. "Say goodbye to Agent DiNozzo. It's time for us to get to NCIS." They bid their goodbyes as they headed out of the room. He thought he heard Maddie saying something going to school, but Gracy told her not to worry about that today.
"Ziva," Gibbs said, stopping as they waited for the elevator. "I need you to stay here and keep an eye out for anything suspicious. You haven't taken out any doctors on accident yet, have you?"
"Only three," she replied automatically. "And two were interns, so I believe they do not count."
He couldn't help the twitch of his lips at her dead-panned words. "Oh, and Ziva?" he said, turning to face her before stepping into the elevator. "I'm glad you were able to get some sleep last night. Hope your snoring didn't keep DiNozzo up." He didn't miss her shocked expression just before the elevator doors closed behind him.
The ride from Bethesda to NCIS was fairly quiet; Nate had fallen asleep again and Maddie was reading her book. Agent Gracy continued to sip at her coffee and wish Gibbs had grabbed her something more professional than a college hoodie and jeans to wear at the office; Gibbs, for his part, drove reasonably close to the speed limit and didn't break more than half a dozen traffic laws the entire drive. Granted, it was a short drive.
Agent Tim McGee was already seated at his desk in the bullpen when the four arrived. As if sensing her temporary confusion about where to put her stuff without even looking at her, Gibbs said, "Use Ziva's desk for now. Elf Lord, can you watch Maddie and Nate for a few minutes so Agent Gracy and I can check in with Abby and Ducky?"
"Uh, sure, Boss, but, uh, I'm already working on the fingerprint," he said quickly. He reached for the remote for the plasma screen, but Gracy was faster.
"Not now," she hissed. She hoped her eyes carried the message she was trying to send: she didn't need her daughter seeing a picture of one of the men who might have been involved in her husband's death, possibly the man who held a gun to Maddie's head while Sonja performed the autopsy.
"Right," he said slowly, drawing back his arm. "I'll, uh, watch the kids and continue to try to track, uh, our suspect while you're downstairs—"
"Thanks, McGee," Gracy called back, already stepping into the elevator. McGee slowly looked up from his computer to see two sets of blue eyes watching him curiously.
"Uh, hi," he said slowly. This was not shaping up to be a great morning.
Having gotten a better feel for how Gibbs operated in the last few days, Gracy was hardly surprised when he hit the emergency stop button in the elevator on their way down to the lab. What came after that, though, was unexpected.
"Nice house."
She blinked in surprise. "Thank you?"
"It has, what, five bedrooms?"
"Four, actually. The study doesn't technically qualify as a bedroom. No closet." She shrugged. "At least, that's what the realtor told me."
He nodded. "I guess they were paying Army pathologists more than I realized."
She blinked again, frowning as she attempted to process his words. "I got paid a little more than your average O-4 with my years in service, I guess, but that's just because of my specialty pay. It was only about fifteen grand more a year. Why the hell do you care how much I was getting paid?"
He slowly turned to face her. "You were a major, your husband was a major, you have two kids to put through college and who knows what after, and you live in a million dollar townhouse with a live-in French nanny and drive a BMW SVU."
Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying. Not even giving herself the time to stop and think about what she was doing, she reached up and slapped him across the face with full force. "You bastard!" she exclaimed, her eyes blazing. "Du verdammt Arsch! It's not enough for you that you have to accuse my husband of folding under torture and giving terrorists information used to kill his friends. I hate, I hate the thought that that could be true, but hell, I'm a doctor, I know what the body can take, I know torture is used because it works, so I can't argue with you, can't tell you that Scott would never—." A small sob escaped her throat, but she wasn't done. "There is no way that Scott would sell anyone or anything for anything. No way. That million dollar—actually, one point three million dollar, if you're interested—townhouse is mortgaged to the hilt, and that BMW is eight years old, a combination 'congratulations on graduating from medical school' and early baby shower gift from my parents, who are German and would never buy a car that wasn't made in Germany." She took a deep breath, her eyes still fixed on him, still furious. "You left the Corps in what? Ninety-one, ninety-two? What was your Serviceman Group Life Insurance then? One hundred fifty, two hundred thousand?"
"Something like that," he replied.
"Yeah, that's what I figure, since it was a hundred in 1983, when Staff Sergeant Nathan Gracy died while guarding the US Embassy in Beirut. Yeah, the one that was blown up. That money went toward Scott's college fund, which Dr. Aroob Gracy spent the next ten years adding to, and Scott never had to touch, with his ROTC scholarship and all. My parents also spent some time building up a reasonable college fund for me, which a full-ride swimming scholarship followed by the support of the United States Army kept me from using. Scott and I both grew up solidly middle-class, Gibbs, so when it came time to buy our first place after we got married, we took those two untouched college funds and splurged a little. Then, when his four hundred thousand dollar SGLI check came, and I realized I couldn't live in that place and not have a complete mental breakdown, I sold that place that we splurged on together and moved into the most secure area within commuting distance to base." Her eyes narrowed to a glare, her voice low with barely-contained anger. "But I would give it all back—the townhouse with its state-of-the-art security system, the Swiss nanny, the private schools, the Beemer, everything, if I could have my husband back." She reached over and hit the stop button decisively, starting the elevator again. "Don't you ever speak another word to me."