DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of NCIS.
Chapter 4: Life and Death
Gibbs could tell his team had finally adjusted to their dynamics, when it became 'Kate's desk' and 'Kate's job' again. When the coffee had cream in it again. When lunch had tofu in it, and breakfast had ham in it. When he was more likely to find an upset agent in Abby's lab than in Ducky's autopsy room. When the stuff left lying around were sketch pencils and notepads, when there was scandalized shrieks of 'DiNozzo!' and not DiNozzo's yelps of surprise at 'stealth ninja moves'.
It had taken them the better part of six months since her return. And yet it still felt as though there was an enormous gap, something crucial missing. Maybe it was just the old fogey in him that wanted the familiar, wanted the routine he had lived for three years. He still missed Ziva.
Something had been bothering Kate for a few months. He had first noticed it when she spent her spare time at work searching databases, trying to find files of some kind.
"Kate?" he finally asked one day, as he was gathering up his coat and bag to leave for the night. "What are you looking for?"
Kate sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I don't know, Gibbs. I don't even know why I'm still looking."
"Go home, Kate," Gibbs said firmly, shutting off her lamp. "Go get some sleep, you look terrible."
"Yeah. Yeah, maybe I will."
"Don't maybe, Agent Todd. Do it. That's an order."
"Would you quit pacing around already?" Tony asked tiredly, stretching out on Ziva's couch lazily and turning on the TV. "God, I feel like I'm at the Hoover building just watching you. Oooh, Magnum. Come sit down, watch some Magnum. This is one of the best episodes, you know."
Ziva looked him in exasperation, and he leaned his head back against the arm of her couch.
"On second thought, change out of work clothes, let your hair down and maybe that'll clear it up," he said. "Come on, you work in FKAD, how bad could it have been?"
Ziva shook her head and sighed, heading back towards her bedroom. He didn't get it. He would never get it: just how much she had sacrificed for NCIS, what she had given up, had resorted to just to be here, with him. She had left behind her country, her home, her people, her friends. She had risked her father's wrath, she had given up the work she loved. She had put him at risk when she had revealed the truth to her father: that she was not his pawn. That she had betrayed him when she had killed her brother to save an outsider, an American.
Pulling off her blazer and blouse, Ziva took out the pins and elastics holding back her hair. Shaking out the curls, back to the freedom she preferred them in, she pulled out a tank top from her drawers and pulled it over her head, switching her dress pants for a pair of jeans.
She saw the laser through the corner of her eye, hovering at her heart. Gasping, she ducked just as the shot shattered her window, the bullet ripping through her shoulder instead of her heart. She cried out in pain instinctively, stumbling back to the bed as she tried to stop the bleeding. "Tony!"
"What the hell was – Ziva!" he exclaimed, stopping in the doorway.
"Murder the lights, Tony!" she gasped through gritted teeth. "Stay low."
"The expression is 'kill the lights', my poor misguided Israeli, but now's not the time," Tony said as he switched off the lights. "What the hell is going on, Ziva?" he demanded, sitting down next to her. "You've been shot."
"No, really?" she snapped irritably. "I had not noticed, Tony, thank you for sharing that information!"
"Okay, now that was just bitchy. Come on, we gotta get you to a hospital."
"Stay low," Ziva said again, biting back a gasp of pain as Tony pulled her to the ground by the arm. "They may have night vision scopes."
"Why is a sniper shooting into your bedroom, Ziva?"
"I will explain later, Tony."
"Oh, you'd better believe it."
The next morning, Tony walked into NCIS, but instead of going into the bullpen, he went straight upstairs. "Director," he said, going into her office without announcement.
"Agent DiNozzo, you become more and more like Gibbs every day."
"Why the hell does Mossad have Ziva on their hit list?"
Jenny looked up. "I wouldn't know, Tony, you'd have to ask Mossad, but I doubt they'd tell you."
"I spent the night in Emergency stitching up her shoulder. I have to dig a Sierra .06 hollow point bullet out of Ziva's bedroom wall when I get off tonight. The only reason she went to Emergency and not to the Hoover building's morgue was because she spotted the laser before they shot and ducked."
"Tony, I wish I could help you, but I don't know anything about Mossad's hit list. Now I suggest you get back downstairs before Gibbs arrives."
"Whatcha doing?" Tony asked Kate, looking over the top of her computer screen.
"None of your business," Kate said quickly, changing screens.
"Is our good little girl Kate trying to hack into Mossad's computers?" Tony asked disbelievingly. "You should get Probie to do it. He's good at that sort of thing. Hey, McGoogle!"
"What, Tony?" McGee said peevishly.
"Hack into Mossad for Katie. Tell me why Ziva's on a hit list while you're there."
"Ziva's on a hit list?"
"Must be, her shoulder's nearly blown apart and there's a sniper bullet buried in her bedroom wall."
"A sniper bullet?" Kate asked in surprise.
"Is she okay?" McGee asked.
"Other than being stuck in a sling for the next two months, yeah, probie, she's fine. Royally riled that she's one-handed," Tony replied, a slight snicker escaping. "Me, personally? Loving it." He smirked at Kate. "Have to do everything for her. And I do mean everything."
"DiNozzo, I don't need to hear about your sex life," Kate replied pointedly. "There's a thing called personal business, and that's part of it."
"All right, got in," McGee said quickly.
"Yeah, but I can't read that," Tony and Kate both protested.
"You told me to hack in, not translate. Get Abby to do that. I'm done."
"Wait a second," Kate said, hitting a few keys on her keyboard before typing in ziva david into what was probably a search engine. Hebrew characters replaced the Roman lettering. "Still have Hebrew on this damn thing," she explained.
The search took barely fifteen seconds before what looked like the officer dossier popped up. Multiple links ensued. The first one seemed to be a list of hits she'd done in her career, as each individual string of characters brought up a different dossier. The second link looked like a list of assignments, since each string of characters again brought up different dossiers, each marked with a different Israeli embassy's seal and the insignia of a different country's agency. Brazil, China, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, South Africa, Switzerland, Austria, England, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Argentina, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Kenya, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, Sweden... the last dossier had the Washington embassy and the NCIS insignia on it, quickly followed by the FBI insignia.
"Wow," Kate said in surprise. "She's a well-travelled girl."
"This one's probably what we're looking for," McGee said, pointing to the large red lettering beneath it. Kate moved her mouse and clicked it.
Not only Ziva's photo popped up in the dossier that followed the link. Tony's did too.
"Oh, God, I'm on their hit list!" Tony exclaimed. "E-mail that to Abby and get it deciphered pronto. If I'm getting whacked by the Israelis, I want to damn well know why."
"Know what, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked.
"Nothing, boss."
"Tony's on Mossad's hit list and he doesn't know why," Kate spoke up. "Probably guilty by association, Tony."
"What's this?" Gibbs asked with a frown as he looked over Tony's shoulder.
"A sniper fired into Ziva's apartment last night, boss," Tony explained quietly. Gibbs' face darkened, and their boss pulled out his cell phone and hit speed dial.
"Fornell, get your damn ass down here now! Bring Ziva with you!"
"They've been in that elevator a long time," McGee commented quietly to his colleagues. Ziva, her arm supported by a sling, was watching out the window of NCIS, having been ordered to stay right where she was by Fornell. "You think it's a fight to the death?"
"Not funny under the circumstances, McGee," Tony muttered, eyes locked on Ziva's face.
"Point taken."
"Jethro, my bosses are not happy with me," Fornell hissed. "I convinced them to take Officer David as a liaison, and now she's a security risk! They're a day away from booting her ass back to Israel!"
"Is this the face of somebody who cares, Tobias?" Gibbs snapped. "Leave Ziva here, we'll keep her in protective custody with DiNozzo."
"Works for the Hoover building," Fornell shrugged. "She's your problem, Jethro."
"Ziva was never my problem, Tobias," Gibbs said coldly. The two men walked out of the elevator just as the glass of the window shattered into tiny shards, Ziva dropping to the ground almost in slow motion.
"Ziva!" everybody yelled, Tony reaching the fallen Israeli first.
The bullet had pierced dangerously close to her heart this time, ripping through the sling with deadly precision.
Ziva was fading fast, cursing in slurred Hebrew. Tony pressed down on her chest wound, talking rapidly to her.
"Obviously weren't trained very well," he said with a wry smile. "That's the second time they've missed."
"Corpsmen are on their way," Kate reported, kneeling down next to Tony. "You got a thing for snipers or something, David?"
"More like snipers have a thing for me, yes?" Ziva replied thickly.
She fell unconscious not long after the corpsmen had whisked her off to Bethesda, Tony bulldogging his way onto the ambulance with the rest of the team racing behind the ambulance.