Chapter 18

The soft squeak of a show on the floor brought Ziva immediately to consciousness. "Who's there?" she demanded softly. She pointed her gun at the shadowy figure standing at the end of the hallway.

"Sorry, Officer David. It's Agent Gyllenskog. I was just coming to check in with you and Agent DiNozzo." The FBI agent had his hands high in the air as he stepped into the light. "Shift change."

"I see. I thought you and Agent Lowe didn't switch off for another couple of hours."

Gyllenskog grinned sardonically. "Lowe requested an early change. He says he's going to file a complaint against you."

"I wish him luck," Ziva said, completely unconcerned.

"Uh, do you think you could put your gun away? Or at least point it somewhere other than at my head?"

Ziva looked with surprise at her hand. She had kept it trained on him without a conscious thought. "Of course." She smiled with a hint of malice. "It's a habit."

Gyllenskog's eyes were wide. "I'll keep that in mind. I'll be over here if you or Agent DiNozzo need me. Way over here."

"Thank you. I'll let you know." Once Agent Gyllenskog was out of sight, Ziva stretched and yawned widely. She was getting soft. All this easy living in DC was getting to her. She used to go for days without sleep, but now she was dozing after less than a day. She stood and started to pace to get her blood going again. There had been no sign of another attack, but of course, there wouldn't be until the attack started. No one had managed to find the first assailant. He was obviously good enough to avoid an entire team of FBI agents. No one had even known where the shots came from.

Impatiently, Ziva shook her head at her reflection in a window. Even though she had more or less settled into her position at NCIS, there was still a part of her that wanted to rush out and kill the bad guys, not wait docilely for them to attack. It seemed backward. She decided that Tim was going to help them out tomorrow. Ready or not, they needed him to analyze this data Terence had discovered. The FBI hadn't found anything, but that was no comfort since the mole was somewhere in that organization anyway. He or she could easily have manipulated the results. With Abby at that conference in...wherever it was, Tim the only really good computer geek they had. Besides, it would help him to get his mind off the accident. It had been all over the news, and she sincerely hoped that Tim had not seen it because nothing had been very kind to "the unidentified driver of the Porsche." She shook her head again, this time in disgust at the way people were assuming they knew what had happened.

"Ziva?"

She whirled around, gun at the ready.

"Hey, slow down, turbo!" Tony said.

Ziva put her gun back in her holster. "What do you want, Tony?"

"Shift change? You in the room, me out here? Ringing any bells?"

She blinked and looked down at her watch. Covering her dismay at her distracted thoughts, she said nonchalantly, "Of course. Have fun. Agent Gyllenskog already started his shift. Apparently, Agent Lowe didn't like our first meeting."

Tony chuckled softly. "I can imagine." He watched as Ziva walked back into the room. She had looked so serious staring into the window. He wondered what she had been thinking about. He sat down in the chair and started to think about this case. True, it wasn't their job to solve it, but something about it just felt off. Everything that had happened didn't point to simple espionage. They needed Tim to look through the cases. It would have been nice to have Abby as well, but she was gone to that forensics conference. He smiled as he remembered her bubbly excitement about the upcoming trip. She had talked about it nonstop whenever anyone was in the lab. He couldn't bring himself to suggest that she cut it short. She was the keynote speaker. He sighed to himself and settled in to wait out the remainder of the night.