A/N: I'm going on vacation for a week starting tonight. I hope I'll be able to post another chapter from my friend's house, but I don't know yet what their internet's like. So if you don't hear from me, I haven't abandoned the story. I'm working on the next chapter as we speak, and in Chapter 6 the identity of "Mr X" will be revealed.
II
Abby had been kidnapped. It was his fault.
Someone had ripped her ring off her finger. It was his fault.
They had taken scissors to her hair and cut away a lock. It was his fault.
She was blindfolded and tied up. It was his fault.
All of this, everything that had happened, was because of him. Someone was out to get him, and they were using Abby to get it. Whether by accident or design, they had picked the perfect person. He would do anything to get her back. Anything. Standing in the elevator with no one to pay witness, Gibbs swore that if anything happened to Abby, he would make the bastard pay in a slow and excruciatingly painful way.
II
She had run away from home once. When she was ten years old her teacher had read the book i My Side of the Mountain /i to her class. Charmed by the idea of living in a tree and fending for herself, she had packed a bag full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Hershey bars, and a couple of changes of clothes. Early on a Saturday morning she had snuck out of the house and walked to the bus stop, intent on having an adventure in the wilderness.
She had returned the next day. Not only was the Louisiana swamp full of bugs and small animals, but it was also devoid of people. Abby liked people. She liked talking to them, listening to them, watching them. There was no one to talk to in the swamp. There was no one to talk to here either.
Shortly after she had been dragged from the car she had been directed to stand up. A few shuffling steps to the right and she was again seated, this time on a hard wooden chair. Before she had a chance to complain, or at least shift to a more comfortable position, a rope had been wrapped around her waste and knotted firmly. Very firmly. For what seemed like hours she had been tugging and squirming but the ropes hadn't loosened. For that same amount of time she hadn't heard a sound. The man, who she had privately decided to call Mr. X, had stood in the center of the room for a few minutes, and then left through the same door they had entered through.
She was bored. She couldn't see, could barely move, and there was nothing to listen to but the sound of her own voice.
"Okay Abby, it's time to play a little game," she muttered to herself. "Let's call it i How am I going to get out of this mess /i ? Think. You work with people who deal with this kind of stuff every day. All you need to do is think the same way that they do."
She immediately dismissed McGee, because anything he would have thought of she had already tried. Ziva would have killed the guy the moment he touched her, so that wasn't an option either. Tony would have flirted with the woman and punched the man. At this point he'd be making wisecracks or figuring out a movie that this compared to. What she really needed to do, Abby decided, was to figure out what Gibbs would do in this situation.
II
"I had everything, and you took it all away." Ducky peered over Gibbs' shoulder and read the first line of the note out loud "Well that's not very specific, is it? Does he mean you physically took something, some possession, or is it a more liberal use of the word? Someone you sent to prison, perhaps? Of course, that's a terribly long list. It could be..."
"Ducky." Gibbs said. The single word, softly spoken, was enough to stop Ducky's rambling.
"Do you have any idea who the letter is from?" McGee asked without looking away from the letter. Staring at the black letters on the white paper, he counted thirteen words. He wondered if Abby would consider that a good or bad omen.
"Would I be standing here if I did?" Gibbs tone was enough to make McGee flinch in expectation of a head slap.
"Of course not." McGee answered immediately. "I just thought you might have a list or something. You know, the most likely suspects."
"I have a list all right. The problem is it's longer then the list of women DiNozzos' slept with," Gibbs answered harshly.
Leaving McGee to supervise the processing of the letter, Gibbs motioned Ducky to follow him to the elevator.
"How are you holding up, Jethro?"
"I need you to stay here, Duck," Gibbs said without answering his friend's question.
"Here in the lab? Whatever for?" He was intending to stay anyway. He might not be as good in the lab as he was in the morgue, but he knew his way around the equipment. Without Abby around, they were going to need all the help they could get.
"Not in the lab, Duck; here at NCIS. Unless you have an escort, you are not to leave this building."
"Do you really think that's necessary?"
"Someone took Abby to get at me. I'm not taking any chances that they'll stop there."
Gibbs had tried to put himself in the mindset of the man who had kidnapped Abby. If he had done his homework as well as Gibbs was afraid he had, then Ducky was the next logical target.
II
It was like a horrible case of deja vu. Tony scanned the printout of Abby's credit card purchases, marking anything unusual with a highlighter. There were a lot of highlighted lines. Less then a year ago he had done the same thing. The only difference was that then, despite his concern he had known that Abby was safe. Now he had no such reassurance.
"How can one woman spend so much money on makeup?" Tony asked rhetorically when he came across the third credit card charge to a cosmetic company.
"Don't ask me," Ziva remarked. "I wouldn't know."
"How does that not surprise me?"
They lapsed into silence until the phone rang a few minutes later. Tony answered it, and when he hung up his expression was grim.
"That was the police. They've found Abby's car."