"That is like one of my fantasies coming true," Tony exclaimed enthusiastically, while Gibbs cuffed the commander's hands on his back harshly, not reacting to Tony's joyful comment and the way he literally drooled while watching his colleague in the elegant dress and the maid in lingerie fight.
Suddenly, Anna ended the fight momentarily by punching Kate directly into the face, then she jumped up and ran out of the room. Kate moaned, holding her head, and after a short moment that she needed to recover from the direct hit that had left the world spinning in front of her eyes, she started after the woman with a muttered 'bitch'. When she almost fell down due to her high heels, she muttered another, very unladylike curse. Angrily, she pulled off her shoes and stormed out of the room barefoot. Tony looked at his boss.
"I'm sure you can handle the situation here... I will go and see if Kate needs help. I just have to see this!" And with a grin on his face he stormed out of the room to follow the two fighting women.
"Dinozzo!" Gibbs yelled after him, for a moment too bewildered at the younger agent's behavior to be seriously angry. He already knew that it was futile to stop the young man the instant he yelled after him. Once Tony Dinozzo caught glimpse of a woman's skirt, there was nothing that could hold him. And with the prospect to watch two attractive women fight, he seemed to be no longer responsible for his own actions.
Gibbs shook his head, then noticed a movement in the corner of his eye. He grabbed his weapon from the ground next to him and directed the barrel at the admiral, who was about to crawl over the bed and leave the room.
"Stay just where you are," Gibbs ordered grumpily. "I want to know exactly what happened to Isabella Fuentes, and I am warning you. Do not lie to me!"
"Agent Gibbs, you can't tell me that you believe this... this murderer!" The admiral laughed ironically, but his laughter died very quickly when he saw the murderous expression on the investigator's face. "It didn't happen as he said! That little bitch flirted with me! She encouraged me in that bar. You know how those latino sluts are..."
"As a matter of fact, I don't!" Gibbs replied, his tone cold and distant now. "Enlighten me! What did she do that justifies a rape in your opinion?"
"I didn't rape her!" The admiral exclaimed, but his body language revealed to the experienced investigator that he became more and more nervous by the second. "She wanted to sleep with me! Everything in her behavior said that she did!"
"She simply talked to you," the cuffed commander at the ground hissed out. "Just as I told her to! I sent her to him, Sir," the man now addressed Gibbs. "We wanted to prove that my accusations were true. I have been trying to convict him on the sexual harassment accusations for months! It was our plan that my fiancée indulges him in a conversation and lures him to follow her outside, where I and two other commanders would run in on them. We knew he wouldn't comply if she told him to stop..." The commander stopped speaking, when he felt his voice break.
"I see," Gibbs nodded, his eyes focused on the broken man who was lying cuffed on the ground. "The plan was for you to save her and have witnesses for an attempted rape at the same time. What went wrong?"
"He disappeared with her through the back exit! Neither of us could know, and by the time we realized they were gone, it was too late! We only found her fifteen minutes later in one of the backyards near the bar. That pig just raped her and left her there!" The commander fought against the cuffs, the wish to kill the admiral standing in his eyes again. "We brought her to a hospital, but the next day she ran away from there. And when I finally found her, it was too late. She just couldn't stand the shame of having been raped and then called a liar by that man!"
Gibbs got up and pushed the admiral against the wall, cuffing his hands to his back. "Admiral, you are under arrest."
"You have got to be kidding!" The admiral snapped enraged. "You have no right to..."
"Oh, believe me, I have every right!" Gibbs replied dangerously lowly. "And I hope for your own sake, that the DNA that was found on Isabella Fuentes body and that is already in the hands of my best analyst, won't match yours. Because if it does, I will personally investigate every single complaint of sexual harassment that was ever filed against you. And I am going to question every woman that has ever served under you... and you can trust me if I tell you that then the view of the yard of Lavenworth out of a prison window is the only thing you will see of the outside world for the rest of your life."
He pushed the man onto the bed and left him there while he informed McGee of the happenings and ordered him to call the local NCIS investigators to take the two men into custody.
He was just about to leave the room and search for his other two agents, when the door opened, and a widely grinning Tony entered the room. "Hey boss," he greeted joyfully. "You have no idea what you missed!"
"No, but I have an idea about what you are going to miss while you will be writing reports for the next two weeks," Gibbs simply replied neutrally and the grin vanished instantly from Tony's face.
"Oh, come on boss, you can't do that! That's not fair!" Tony complained in a whiny tone.
Gibbs shot him an annoyed glance to prevent Tony from making nonsense justifications and expectantly asked, "Where is Kate?"
"I'm here," a voice behind Tony answered.
Gibbs had to hide his surprise, when she pushed a cuffed Anna Fuentes into the room, then ran her hand through her ruined hair to bring it back to order. His eyes went over her outfit. She looked completely disheveled, but in a very sexy way.
"Agent Todd put very physical effort into catching our refugee here," Tony informed him with folded arms, the mischievous gleam still standing openly in his eyes. He ducked his head in await of a head-slap, when Gibbs glared at him warningly.
Kate pushed the young woman towards the bed and then turned to her colleague. "Tony, if you ever dare to tell anybody, I am going to kill you..."
Tony smirked and approached her. "Oh, believe me Katie, what I saw there will be in my fantasy for a long, long, loooong time."
"You are a pig, Tony!" she informed him bruskly, which drew a laugh from him.
"Oh come on, you know I can't let it go! It would be like finding the holy grail and not tell anybody about it!"
"Ok, fine..." Kate nodded and held his eyes, her face only inches from his. "You tell this story, and the whole office will learn that you kissed a guy. What am I saying, not just the office... everybody I know. And I will make sure that every woman that you will ever date..."
"Okay!" he interrupted her, pouting slightly and lifting his hands in defeat. "I get the point!" Then, after a few more seconds, his face lightened up. "But since Gibbs already knows that I kissed a man..."
"Tony!" Kate exclaimed in protest, but to no avail. She should have known that Tony wouldn't be able to keep it to himself – just as her tattoo and her dating life were issues that he loved to discuss with the whole team.
"Boss, you remember, how I always said Kate was conventional?" Tony started and paced around the young woman, while he grinned at his boss, not caring for the annoyed expression that crossed the elder men's features. "Well, I could not have been more wrong. I am telling you, this dress is nothing against the underwear that she is wearing underneath... I have never seen..."
"Dinozzo, what exactly in my expression does signalize you that I am interested in hearing that story?" Gibbs interrupted him grumpily and Tony shut up at once, muttering a "Sorry boss" and catching a triumphant smile from Kate, who was glad for the unexpected support from her boss. Discussing her lingerie was nothing that she was keen to do with her colleagues – especially when Gibbs was present. His opinion of her mattered a lot to her, and she was sure, the way Tony would describe her underwear would leave her more slutty than anything else.
While Tony was still pouting, undoubtedly thinking about the limited number of people that still qualified to be told the story to, the agents patiently waited for the backup to arrive. Every now and then they had to yell at the admiral or Anna Fuentes, who had started a heavy discussion and cursed at each other.
Gibbs sighed for a moment and slowly paced to the door, silently wishing for a cup of strong coffee. The amount of caffeine in his blood had become to low over the past few hours for him to be able to stand a yelling woman – that reminded him too much of his ex-wives, a thought which he could only stand with a decent dose of caffeine in his hand, or his bloodstream.
Aside from that, he slowly felt unable to focus his mind. Tony's indication about Kate's underwear didn't exactly help him there. He forced aside the thoughts and the rage that swelled up in him when he imagined how much exactly Tony had seen. He would bet that the younger agent had stood next to the rumbling women without making the slightest effort to end their fight. One of these days, Gibbs decided, he would send Tony undercover into a monastery. Even if there was no reason, he would make one up – just for one month. He had to chuckle at the thought.
When the backup finally arrived twenty minutes later, all of them were relieved. It was already beyond 10pm and they all longed to finish the reports, deliver the arrested persons into the custody of the local NCIS office at the near Naval Airbase, and at least get a few hours of sleep.
Gibbs was even more relieved when McGee showed up and handed him a large cup of freshly brewed coffee. He grabbed it out of the agent's hand and took a huge sip, not bothering to thank the young man. But McGee didn't take it personal. He already knew that 'thank you' and 'sorry' were words rarely used by his boss. Being not snapped at was enough of a reward for him.
While Gibbs gave the orders and instructions on how to proceed to the NCIS agent in charge of the local office, Kate and Tony helped the two younger agents to drag the prisoners out of the room – a task that proved harder than expected, since Anna Fuentes repeatedly tried to pounce on the admiral.
When they were finally out of the room, taken care off by the local NCIS agents, the team closed the door and returned to their temporal headquarters, too floors below.
After McGee had unlocked the door, they entered the room.
Kate let out a relieved sigh and sank onto the bed. "Wow, what an evening..." she murmured and rubbed her ankles, that were sore from the high heels that she had been wearing all evening.
"Indeed," Tony nodded and grinned at her lasciviously.
"Damned Tony!" Kate cried out in anger and threw one of the pillows from the bed at him. "Will you let it go?"
"I will... if you tell me something!" the man said with a somewhat witty undertone, sitting down next to her and shooting her a clandestine glance. "Is that what you wear underneath every day – even in the office – or..."
"Tony!" Kate interrupted him. "I will not discuss my lingerie habits with you."
"Why, it was just a normal question... I would discuss my habits with you!" he replied with an almost offended undertone and was just about to open his mouth to further pursue the issue and get his female colleague to give him an answer, when the barking voice of his boss interrupted him.
"I don't think there is time to rest! We have to pack and finish our reports. We don't want to waste our budget longer than necessary, do we?"
"Come on, Gibbs..." Kate moaned, but before she could even start to reason with him, Tony stepped in.
"You think that staying a day longer and enjoy the pool would be a waste? Oh, boss, you should learn to enjoy the good sides in life... like a pool with dozens of women dressed in sexy bikinis and..." He shut himself up when Gibbs shot him one of the looks that usually preceded a good old head slap. "Or we just pack and enjoy our fly back home..." He hurried to add and ducked away to help McGee unplug the computers.
Kate observed him, then looked at her boss who was returning her glance, silently expecting her to get moving as well. "Gibbs, do we really need to finish those reports tonight? I mean, it's been a long day and we're all tired and still suffering from that damned jetlag anyway. Of course you don't feel the effects with that amount of caffeine that must be running through your bloodstream. Seriously, how can you drink that much and not start shaking!"
Thoughtfully, he looked at her a moment then nodded. "You're right. It's been a long day and we've done a pretty good job – most of us. We can still use the flight to write the reports. That will, at least, spare me from listening to Dinozzo's stories." He stated gruffly.
Both, Tony and Kate, gasped for air in protest – the former one insulted by his boss' comment, and Kate outraged about the 'most of us' part of his statement, that had obviously been addressed at her and the mistake that she had made when she hadn't reported the waitress.
"McGee, I expect the equipment to be packed in the morning!"
With those words, Gibbs didn't pay any more attention to his subordinates, but took a sip of his coffee and left the room. They had booked three separate rooms. One double room, the one that served as their headquarters and was shared by McGee and Tony, and two single rooms, one for Kate and one for himself.
He was already on the corridor, walking towards his own room that was on the other end of the floor, when he heard somebody follow him hurriedly.
"Gibbs," Kate addressed him, still a few meters behind him. She was wearing her shoes again, and silently promised to herself that she would throw them into the next waste container that she passed, once they were back in D.C. Although they locked beautiful, they killed her – and aside from that, she was annoyed by the fact that she couldn't keep up with the speed of her boss while she was wearing them.
She wanted to settle their discussion now, before he would blame her for another week for having been distracted on a mission. She knew that she was a professional, and aside from that, neither of them had paid attention to the admiral, therefore to her it seemed unfair that he blamed only her.
Since he didn't slow down, she had to catch up with him. "About earlier..." she started, "I'm sorry... I know I should have reported to you and..."
"Yet you didn't!" he interrupted her matter-of-factly. "Which could have killed the admiral."
"Okay, this is just unfair!" she snapped out, her voice betraying her anger, while she ignored the threatening expression that crossed Gibbs' features. "I made one tiny slip, but I had my reasons! I didn't consider Anna Fuentes a thread at that moment. If I had..." She stopped. The point was, that she should have checked, and she knew that she failed to do that. Instead she had relied on an assumption. "You are right, I should have checked her, but I can't undo that mistake. Are you going to blame me forever, or can we now agree that I learned something, and just let it go?"
They had reached their rooms by now and Gibbs shot her a look that would have made McGee back off at once. He fumbled with the keycard, that served to unlock the door to his room – or at least should serve. He pulled it through the reader repeatedly, but the small lamp that signaled the status of the lock was still red instead of turning green.
Kate sighed and turned to her own room that was opposite to his. Her door unlocked at once and she was about to enter, when she heard him mutter a curse. She turned and saw that his door still wouldn't open. Hiding a smile, she went to him and took the card out of his hand.
"These machines really seem to hate you!" she murmured, the hint of amusement present in her voice, and he growled with hidden anger.
"That feeling is mutual. What was wrong with the good old keys?"
Kate gave a soft laugh and pulled the card through the reader. The door unlocked at once. She turned around, holding up the card with a half-amused, half-triumphant smile.
"You should try to think a little more positive! Abby once told me that computers can sense it if you hate them!"
She wanted to hand him back his card, when she realized, how close they were standing to each other. "Here," she somehow managed to murmur, her eyes locked with his. He didn't say anything, just returned her look in this mysterious way that made her feel nervous.
She waited for him to move aside, since she was standing in the frame, her back touching the wood of the door to his room, and he was blocking her way out.