This one is short, but chapter 3 is pretty much ready to go so it'll be up soon.

Gibbs walked out of the elevator, coffee in hand, and sat down at his desk. A look of irritation crossed his face as he looked from one empty desk to another. Where the hell was his team? McGee and Tony had both been working long hours for the past few weeks. No one was able to relax and enjoy time off from work while Ziva was missing. They hadn't heard anything from her for three weeks and it could only mean one thing. Ziva was in trouble. Where were they now, though?

His desk phone rang. "Yeah, Gibbs" he paused briefly then said "On my way." He slammed down the phone and headed upstairs to MTAC. McGee met him at the door. "Boss, uh, its not good news." The pain on his face had already told Gibbs that. "Is she alive, McGee?"

"Well, uh, we think so. Abby has the disc now and she's working to see if… if there's any clues as to when it was taped and where she is being held."

Gibbs' shot a look at Tony, and he stood up, and then sat back down again, clearly at a loss as to what he should be doing. "Have you seen it yet, boss?"

"No, DiNozzo. How could I have seen it? No one called me." He reached down to retrieve his cell phone, realized it wasn't there, and said "Damn." He walked over to Tony, put a hand on his shoulder and said gently "How bad is it, Tony?"

Tony drew in a shaky breath. "I… It's bad." He shook his head. He paused for a moment, and then looked away from Gibbs; unable to make eye contact. "They raped her. They raped her and sent the video to me. At my house… They sent it to my house, boss."

Gibbs closed his eyes for a second then started barking out orders. "Get Ducky up here. I want him to assess her injuries."

"He's on the way, boss." McGee said.

"Pull it up on the screen. Get Abby to run facial recognition on this guy. I want to know who it is that I am going to have to hunt down and kill."

"Guys" Tony said quietly. Gibbs looked back at him. "It wasn't one guy. There were at least ten that I saw, and I didn't, I couldn't, watch the whole tape."

Ducky came running into the room just as the video started. They watched it in absolute silence.

Tears poured down McGee and Ducky's faces. Director Vance looked away after a few minutes and didn't look back. One of the technicians ran to the trashcan and threw up. Gibbs remained stone-faced. The only thing that gave away his feelings were the white knuckled grip he had on the railing and the tenseness in his shoulders. Tony was seemingly in shock. His breathing was too fast, too shallow. He had seen this once already and it was almost too much for him to stand. Still, as hard as it was for him to see, his eyes never left the screen.

An hour later, when the video ended, Tony turned to Gibbs, his voice breaking. "We have to help her, boss. We have to get her no matter what she said."

Vance snapped his head around to look at Tony. That statement didn't make any sense. When the tech glanced in his direction, clearly puzzled, he just shrugged his shoulders. Apparently the strain was getting to the young agent. Ziva hadn't said anything. Not one word. She hadn't begged the men to stop hurting her, she hadn't offered any information, and she definitely hadn't said that she didn't want help. So when Gibbs' answered Tony, everyone was puzzled.

"I know, DiNozzo. We'll get her." Gibbs saw the confusion on Vance's face and said, very impatiently, "Trap. It's a trap. Don't come." He looked around the room and saw that everyone in the room was just as confused. Exasperated, he yelled "She used sign language. Didn't anyone notice?" Tony picked up his gear and left the room, Gibbs following.

The truth was everyone had missed it; everyone but Tony and Gibbs. Vance looked after the two of them and shook his head in amazement. It was easy to forget how talented agent DiNozzo really was. He had absorbed knowledge and habits from his boss that he was able to put to excellent use. If anyone was going to save Ziva, he knew that it would be the two of them. They had an uncanny ability to see details and put facts together that most people lacked. They hadn't said anything about Ziva's message during the video, because they both knew the other was seeing it. They just expected that everyone else would too.

It would be easy to excuse all the other people in the room by saying that they were just too shocked at what was happening to pay attention. It would be easy to say that her hand movements were too subtle to notice. It would be easy to say that they were too emotionally involved; too close to the case to see clearly. But it would not excuse them in Gibbs' eyes. Vance knew that Gibbs would not allow McGee to make these excuses, but he also knew that McGee would not let this happen again. Gibbs was training him and he would be hard enough on McGee to ensure that he never made a slip up like that again.

Vance sat at his desk thinking all these things, and realized that there was no excuse for his own failure to catch Ziva's message. He was not a probationary officer, fresh off the street. He was the director of NCIS and he should have been looking for her to send them a message. She knew she was being taped. She had looked directly at the camera several times, probably to let them know that she saw the camera, he reflected.

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