Disclaimer: Um still not a middle aged guy, so, no. I don't own these characters.

Special Agent Gibbs stood in the corner of the restaurant watching the FBI agent. It wasn't that Gibbs was paranoid necessarily, okay fine he probably was paranoid by most psychological standards, it was just that he didn't trust people easily. Or at all if he could help it.

Gibbs was always suspicious of everyone. It made social interactions a little bit difficult, but he was still breathing, so that was something. It made him uncomfortable to work with anyone he didn't know especially if they were from an agency that wasn't NCIS.

He wanted to find out more about Agent Booth before they got into the more hairy part of the investigation. Tobias Fornell swore Booth was a good man, and an even better agent, but Gibbs prefered to make that kind of call for himself.

Gibbs waited until Agent Booth had finished taking his phone call before approaching. He sat down next to Booth, "Was that an important phone call?"

To Booth's credit he didn't jump or show any sign of surprise that Gibbs was there. Instead he just took another bite of his food and shook his head, "No not very important."

"Who was it then? Because there are two things I don't believe in, mixing personal and professional situations, and coincidences."

"Is that all? You have a bit of a reputation. The Gibbs Rules, they're kind of infamous in agency circles." Booth asked.

"No I have more rules I just don't think they need to be brought up right now."

"Should I be carrying around a note pad? Do I need to write these rules down?" it was only kind of a joke. Booth had suspicions about working with new people too, and Gibbs had a reputation that was definently infamous. Booth had no idea what to expect, other than the unexpected.

Booth decided to just slam the information out to Gibbs and see what would happen, "Okay fine, lets skip the sneaky interrogation crap while you try to figure out who I was talking to. It was a friend of mine, his name is Sam Axe. You can check him out, he's an ex-SEAL who I worked with a couple of times. You can check him out on the computer."

Gibbs opened his mouth to ask another question but Booth lifted his hand to cut him off, "Before you ask, he called me because he heard about the dead marine, he heard the FBI was taking a look and he lives in Miami. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do to help. I told him to call if he heard anything, but otherwise to stay out of it."

Booth had some of his drink and then turned to Gibbs, eyebrows raised. "Anything else you want to know about my personal life? First date? Arrest record? What color socks I'm wearing? Or, are we done for the day?"

Gibbs couldn't help a slight smile. Booth was good. He had anticipated the next question and answered it. Also, with the right training you can learn a lot about someone from the manner they answer questions with. What Gibbs had learned was that Booth had either been in the military or the navy. It wasn't much but it was more than what he'd had.

"What where you?"

Booth stopped chewing, "What do you mean?"

Playing dumb to stall. It was a fairly standard tactic. "What where you? As in Military or Navy, because you were definently one or the other."

Booth was throw momentarily before answering, "Rangers, I was a sniper." Booth glanced at Gibbs. "Like you."

Now it was Gibbs's turn to be thrown but he just stayed silent. Booth lifted his hand and pointed to the side of his trigger finger. "You have a lasting callus on the index finger of your left hand. I have one too. It's a dead give away for a sniper. You were with the marine core right?"

"Gunnery sergeant at first."

"Nice. I was always in the Rangers."

"Why did you decide to be a sniper?" Gibbs asked.

"Why did you? The short version was that I had good aim. One night some buddies of mine bet me I couldn't hit a target set at a distance. Our drill sergeant just said that if we were so damn determined we might as well give it a try." Booth shrugged and finished the last bite of his lunch. "The night ended with me forty dollars richer and having my first target."

Booth paid and Gibbs's cell phone rang. "Yeah McGee."

"Boss, I've got something on this Michael Westen guy. You'd better get up here." Gibbs snapped his cell phone shut. "McGee found something let's go."

"Did he say what kind of something?"

"Something about Michael Westen."

With that the two of them left the restaurant.

"What have you got McGee?" Gibbs asked when he and Booth entered the room.

"Well boss, it's more what I didn't get."

"What?" Booth and Gibbs asked in synchronization.

Tony looked pointedly over at Ziva who rolled her eyes and handed him a twenty.

"I mean the file is completely encrypted. I've never even seen some of this type of password protection. The file is totally black."

"So what does that mean McProby" Tony pipped in.

"It means there's nothing. It's like this guy existed in theory for about ten seconds of his life before disappearing."

"He pulled a Bourne Identity. Only he still probably remembers things." Tony said.

"I fail to understand that reference but given what I know about you I believe I am correct in assuming that it is a movie." Bones said.

McGee ignored these comments, "The codes on here are CIA based so this guy was probably a spy of some type."

Booth groaned. "I hate working with the CIA. They're all such pompous bastards."

"Can you hack the codes McGee?" Gibbs asked.

"Well I can try, and I already called Abbey but I don't know. This coding is some pretty serious stuff." McGee said doubtfully.

"Why don't you send a copy to my people at the Jefferesonian? I believe Angela has skill in hacking, perhaps she can help where you suffer ineptitude." Bones suggested with her usual lack of tack.

"I didn't hear the hacking part." Booth told her.

Bones was confused, "But, your hearing is excellent."

"It means that hacking is illegal so the fact that Angela is a good hacker, is not something anyone needs to know that I know."

"I'm still confused."

Booth sighed, "Never mind."

"Who am I sending this to?" McGee asked.

"Angela Montenegro at the Jeffersonian Institution."

"Okay," McGee looked up at Gibbs. "I'll keep working on this. The rest of you should probably try to get some rest until I have something for you guys to work with. I know it's only 5:30 but it's hard to tell when we all might get to sleep again."

Everybody nodded and retired to their respective bed rooms while McGee kept on typing and far away in D.C. other scientists were doing the exact same thing.

A/N: What do you think? Was the interaction between Booth and Gibbs good? I was kind of worried about that since Gibbs doesn't actually talk very much. Any way, review for me! :)