A/N: FINALLY! What a better time to update than on the Labor Day weekend? I can never thank you all enough for your patience and interest. The first two winners from the last question are Hawkeye4077 and purpledragonfly74!!! Though, I feel like that question was way too easy, so I think I'll ask another question at the end of this chapter--so get those Google and Wikipedia tabs ready! And thank you especially to the friends I recently made--you know who you are ;) SO, the next chapter will have potentially four guests/walk-on roles. I've delayed the guest-ing again, but for a good reason. I mostly worked on this while being sick with the recent flu virus that's been going around :( On top of school, it's been challenging to update, but I've finally got this installment done at least! The next coming chapter(s) makes way for a number of "guest" opportunities. Anyway, here's the long-awaited Chapter 7... (~Annie)
McGee winced. His frozen hand still held the phone by his ear. He knew all too well by now the deafening power of silence. McGee checked his phone, and sure enough his boss had left their brief conversation on an uncertain note. Either the call was dropped, or Gibbs didn't need to listen to more. Or want to listen. The latter sounded more like his elusive boss.
"So? What'd he say?"
Tim McGee spun around to the melodic voice, and slid his phone in his pocket. Jamie held a strange, entrancing quality about her. Yes, she was pretty, but she held a je ne sais quoi that had McGee's attention. He realized she was waiting expectantly for a peep from him, and so he opened and closed his mouth and stuttered for an answer, like he normally would. "I, um, Gibbs, he, uh—"
"He's not a happy camper, is he?" Jamie tilted her head and smiled wryly.
"Not at all," the agent was able to say.
Jamie shrugged and frowned. "Had a hunch."
McGee walked over to Jamie and stood next to her in front of the evidence table. Her choker and earrings sparkled from her own skin's glow, it seemed.
"Shall we, Agent McGee?" Jamie playfully socked his arm.
The young agent was even more fascinated by the replacement. His mouth stayed open for a few seconds before testing the waters. "Now I know who you remind me of…"
Jamie raised a brow, but she smiled again and wrinkled her fairy nose. "Who could that be?" she asked.
McGee thought. "On second thought, I'm not...really sure." He paused, then said it anyway. "If you have a sudden urge to hug me at some point after this, then I'll know for sure."
Jamie's laugh rang pleasantly in his ears. "Does it have to be a hug…?"
McGee's head snapped up. "Uh…"
Jamie shrugged again. "Whatever. I want to make sure we've got a better picture before he gets here – Special Agent Gibbs…" She shuddered at the name and couldn't finish.
"Right," McGee understood.
"Right," Jamie smiled back at him.
The two of them gazed over the table of evidence. McGee adjusted his suddenly tight collar. All the bloodied clothes were put away in their bags and boxes. He watched Jamie pick up the bag of the box-cutter knife in her gloved hands; she had gathered enough samples from it earlier. "The weapon of choice – the hardware store box-cutter knife," Jamie said in awe. She held it above her head so she could look up at it. "I could only find Sciuto's prints on them…" She looked at McGee, an empathetic twinkle showing in her eyes. "But…in my educated opinion, I guess, some of the surface on the plastic handle suggests it might have been wiped a bit before Ms. Sciuto gripped it. Might. It's a bit of a stretch."
McGee had to shift his eyes away and put them on something else. Either everyone, even the new forensic specialist, took a silent communication course from Professor Gibbs, or McGee's face was a children's picture book. He needed to fix that.
"Interestingly..." Jamie continued her inventory check. She pulled over one of the boxes and took out the deadweight that drove Abby and the seaman halfway to death. "Ms. Sciuto touched this too." She opened the toolbox and squinted inside. "But we will give this address on the box to Agent Gibbs once he gets here."
"Yes…" The agent glanced over his shoulder to see an empty doorframe. "Yes, yes we will," he said more confidently.
"Hmm. That address does look familiar though," Jamie commented. "Though I think I've seen the addresses to a million warehouses since I started working in metro forensics, so I dunno."
McGee chuckled.
Jamie twirled around to the computers and pulled up some of the pictures from the crime scene. "I did take a closer peek at those snipped brake fluid cords, and it looks like they were cut by one of the cutting tools in the box..."
"That's when I came in. Though, the tools are all wiped clean of prints," McGee finished. "Or they're all brand new."
"You were there, Agent McGee, they are brand new," Jamie confirmed. "This is just...kinky."
The agent thought he'd heard her wrong. "Uhm, sorry, pardon?"
"Y'know, kinky," Jamie emphasized. "Full of kinks. Like this whole case so far, y'know? This is just one kink that's got me seriously...lost." She reached for her baseball cap, put it on snuggly, and started pacing between the computer desk and the evidence table. "All of the tools were new, but I was able to find wire snips that had residue from the brake fluid—" She threw McGee a hopeless look. "Her prints and dried perspiration were on it, too. Prints on the weapon, the toolbox, the tool—saliva on the victim's face, jeez—the last thing I want to assume is an attempted murder-suicide." Her pixie nose crinkled in contemplation. Jamie started tapping her fingers on the corner of the desk. "Agent McGee," she squeaked, "what happens when you don't do your job right under Special Agent Gibbs?"
McGee was startled by her question. "Please, call me Tim," he tried to calm her.
"Okay..."
"I'm pretty sure he won't do anything half as bad to you..." McGee cringed, although it was true. "...as he does to me."
Jamie looked more concerned about, what McGee assumed, would be her punishment for possibly incriminating Abby. She took a cleansing breath. "Sorry, Tim. Needed to, y'know. Let that out."
"Oh, no, don't be sorry—" McGee reached out.
"But I am sorry. Or I sure will be."
McGee didn't know what else to say to make her frantic face go away. He took a step nearer to her. "I'll be glad to listen, whenever you need to...let something out."
Jamie half-smiled; it was half as bright as her smiles minutes before. "Thanks, Tim."
"Ms. Leigh," he nodded and smiled.
"Jamie," she glanced up from under her cap. "Please."
"Yes, Jamie... Any time." He smiled widely. It was her eyes; her hazel eyes definitely intrigued him most.
She didn't seem to notice his inward, drooling awe. The forensic specialist walked back to the table, where McGee was patiently waiting for her.
"Now…back to Ms. Sciuto's phone," she announced, still a little shaken.
McGee ogled at the familiar cellular device with her. He felt his chest sink and his mind flow with new ideas.
Abby's red Razr had been scratched on the back, possibly from dropping it. The chalky scratches were dark gray at the impact area near the bottom corner – most likely due to the cheap wearability of the red paint.
"Hmm." Jamie was especially interested in this detail. "Hold this, pretty please." She handed the phone to McGee's already gloved hands and twirled around him to fetch a fresh test tube. "This is getting kiiiiiiinky."
*** *** *** ***
"Have you ever read any of Agatha Christie's works, Mr. Palmer?"
Jimmy Palmer was in the middle of taking off his lightly stained gloves. "Uh...back in high school, yes Doctor," Palmer answered.
Ducky's spectacled eyes lit up. "Then would you be familiar with Murder on the Orient Express?"
Palmer threw away his gloves. "Vaguely." He shrugged and walked over next to Ducky, who was standing at Seaman Knight's side. "Does this remind you of it?"
"Why most certainly." Ducky gazed at the victim's stab wounds with an unusual wonder. "In that Hercule Poirot mystery, the victim was stabbed twelve times—only because the twelve people that killed him thought he deserved it. A true crime of retribution, yes... However, by the apparent severity of these lacerations—" He pointed at the vivid wounds. "—only one, retributive person could have killed this seaman with such consistency…" The ME, who was still wearing gloves, turned the victim's head a few degrees to see the lipstick stain on his cheek. "And that one person, I strongly believe, is still out there. Remind me to clean this off when we're done."
"Will do, Ducky."
Ducky and Palmer turned and saw Gibbs entering the morgue.
"Ah Jethro," Ducky greeted. "I always thought a personal appearance was better than a virtual one."
Gibbs walked up to the opposite side of Seaman Knight. The dark lipstick distracted him from the darker cuts on the victim. "Tell me everything."
Ducky noticed his friend's blank stare at the seaman's face. "Considerable blood loss from the multiple wounds was a major contributing factor," he tried to get Gibbs to avert his gaze. "From the angle and the lack of precision in these wounds, the killer probably didn't care if the victim would die the first go. So many vital points were hit in the killer's fit of rage. One scratch, might I call it, is different from the others, however." He pointed to one of the lighter cuts on the seaman's chest—around the collarbone. "This one looks more like the killer was swinging the blade at the seaman threateningly, swinging the blade this way and that, like this." Ducky waved an imaginary knife left and right at Gibbs. "Except more vigorously and violently, perhaps. The trail continues on the seaman's face riiiight here..." He pointed at a very minute scratch on the left cheek bone.
"What about these bruises?"
"Struggle," Ducky said grimly. "It was the only conclusion I could arrive at, seeing as those were not made post mortem. They were most likely made by a gloved pair of hands—no finger- or handprints. It appears the killer and his victim grappled—which explains the mild bruising on the arms—before the killer tried to strangle him. I didn't conclude anything for this other discovery..."
Gibbs kept watching and listening to Ducky, one detail following the other from his esteemed colleague and friend. If the killer and the seaman were caught in a fight, what was Abby doing then...? Unless Abby was caught fighting the seaman.... Gibbs shook his head and squinted at whatever Ducky was pointing at. He had to stop thinking that way, at least for this case. No...he wanted to, but he had to consider every possible explanation. He wanted to think his keeping Abby in the interrogation room was for her own safety, and for nothing else. Then again, he had yet to re-visit Ms. Leigh in the forensics lab, and McGee's words weren't very promising.
"...and the Loch Ness monster emerged from the Atlantic and slayed all the townsfolk with its—"
Gibbs whipped his head around. "What?"
"Ah, good, those ears of yours are still sharp as ever," Ducky remarked. "I'll repeat if you wish." One look from Gibbs confirmed so. "Well then, Jethro. I hope you don't scare Ms. Jamie too much, because she's still waiting on results for this mystery substance lodged in the back of the seaman's head." The ME turned Seaman Knight's head to a certain degree and pointed near the base of the skull; there was a dull cut-like ridge deep in his hair, where the very dark, murky-green substance was. Some of it looked powdery, but some of the other minute pieces resembled tiny shards of glass.
"Knocked out with a bottle?" Gibbs simply asked.
Ducky looked at his friend. "That's what I think," he agreed. "But the color is off, possibly from the blood. And you know what they say about assuming things, Jethro..."
Gibbs glanced over the body before starting to leave. "At this point, Duck, I'm more of an ass than you'll ever be."
He left the room, still as tense as he was when he entered the morgue. Palmer was still standing off to the side, watching anxiously as Gibbs departed without acknowledging Jimmy at all. The assistant relaxed once both the sliding morgue and elevator doors closed, and he went back to Ducky's side. Ducky wore a perplexed face that was hard to pass up.
"What's wrong, Doctor?" Palmer asked.
"Should I have taken that as a compliment?" Ducky inquired rather quietly.
*** *** *** ***
Gibbs took another cursory check at his cell phone. He'd put it on silent (after a battle with the button configuration, the stupid technology) since he was attacked by three or so phone calls at the same time back at Plush 9. He looked again as he was standing in the elevator. Ziva had called him a few times after he hung up on her. In a way, his mossad agent was right. Not even 24 hours had passed since the crime, but Gibbs definitely thought he should have had this all figured out by now. He looked at the buttons in the elevator and briefly considered going to the interrogation room... The longer his eyes lingered on the button for that floor, the more he wanted to see her, until he could feel an unfamiliar ache in his gut. He shook his head when the elevator bell rang, and the doors opened.
"You lying son of a bitch!"
Gibbs rocked back on his heels.
Jamie Leigh was leaning against the left side of the red hallway. Gibbs could see the steam coming out of her ears. She gripped her phone with an ungloved hand that had earthy, organic-looking jewelry. Jamie's back was facing Gibbs, but he could hear her as if she were shouting at his face. Abby's replacement spun around nonetheless on her ballet slippers and looked at Gibbs with a deer-in-headlights stare. She was also wearing her St. Louis "thinking cap" as he recalled.
Gibbs arched a brow. "Need the elevator?" he pointed behind him.
Jamie looked between him and the elevator car and shrugged. She covered her phone receiver. "McGee's waiting for you in the lab, I have to deal with this moron first—" she hurried to say before she segwayed back to her heated conversation. "—I DON'T CARE! Why didn't you tell me before!?"
Gibbs made way for Jamie, who stomped into the elevator and punched the close-door button. A feeling of suspicion fleetingly passed over the agent. He turned around, the doors starting to close in front of Jamie.
"Who is that?" he mouthed.
Jamie stopped in mid-bark. "Soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend," she silently hissed. The elevator doors seemed to close in Gibbs' face. After three ex-wives, he still didn't know much about women.
As Ms. Leigh had said, McGee was standing in the lab at the evidence table. The lab was unusually silent, and the silence was strangely deafening. Gibbs was tempted to walk over to the Bose stereo next to Abby's desk, but the object in McGee's hands pulled him in the other direction. His field agent didn't seem to notice him yet, as the Elf Lord was engrossed with his tinkering work.
Gibbs crept up behind McGee. "You better have something good, McGee," he growled.
McGee nearly dropped Abby's phone. "Boss," he gasped. "I-I was just trying to turn on her phone—"
The small screen lit up with the phone service's logo.
McGee glanced at the phone, then back at Gibbs. "Well, while that boots up, I'll show you what we've been working on."
Gibbs listened to everything McGee said with a scowl that was impossible to erase. Abby's ID picture came up so many times on the computer screen during McGee's presentation. When his field agent walked over to the deadweight toolbox, Gibbs saw the address on the inside cover before McGee could babble on further.
"Where is this?" he questioned and cut off McGee.
McGee hesitated; he felt like he was running across a mine field, and Gibbs would explode in his face at any second. "Lemme pull up the search results." He walked over to one of the computers and started typing furiously and opening windows. "Jamie said it was a small warehouse within our original target area." He pulled up a map pinpointing the address from the toolbox. "It's exactly at the edge of our range—just enough blocks to set the car and let it…" He didn't finish his sentence, for Gibbs' stare was burning right through him.
"What about the samples from Ducky?" Gibbs tried to ask calmly.
The mass spectrometer beeped on cue. Both men turned to the machine, with Gibbs looking back at McGee keenly. The cyber agent looked back at his boss cautiously. "Jamie said there was some of that unknown substance on Abby's phone, so she put both samples in for examination." He walked over to the computer next to the mass spectrometer and pulled up the results.
"I'll take over from here," someone squeaked.
Gibbs and McGee looked to see Jamie slowly enter the lab. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks were reddish against the rest of her paler skin. McGee pulled back sharply; Gibbs continued to look at her when she took McGee's place at the computer.
"Whaddya know," Jamie sniffed and wiped her eye. "Traces of iron oxides, and on the phone, enough traces of hydrocarbons to make up…motor oil. Weird." She turned to Gibbs. "Iron oxides are used to color glass—in this case, it was green glass, or a color close to it. But I dunno about the motor oil…" Jamie's yellow eyes suddenly pounced on the evidence table. "Oh, Tim, you got the phone to work—yay!" Her nose scrunched up in a delighted smile, which contrasted greatly with her tear-streaked cheeks. She danced away to get a new pair of latex gloves.
McGee sighed in relief, seeing Jamie happier, though he couldn't ignore the strange look on Gibbs' face.
A ghost of a smirk appeared across his boss's lips. "Tim?"
McGee took a sudden interest in looking at his shoes.
"Lessee here…interesting background…" Jamie held the phone like she was ready to text a novel. "The last person she called was…" Her eyes widened and she spun around, holding out the phone to the two men. "I…I dunno if this should be a good thing," she said with a truly confused expression.
Gibbs looked at her, but grabbed a glove and hastily put it on. He took Abby's phone and squinted at the list of recent calls. The last call listed was…his cell number. Before that was 911, and then his cell number again—all three entries the only ones dated from yesterday. Gibbs tried to see more information, but the dang buttons wouldn't cooperate. He saw both McGee and Jamie approach him, offering to assist him, but he turned away from them. He finally was able to find the times of the three calls. The first one to his cell phone was within 2400, around the time they left Plush 9. The 911 call followed a minute after the first. The second and last time his number was dialed was around 0200. The timing didn't make sense. The struggle couldn't have lasted that long…
"Here." Gibbs handed Abby's phone back to Jamie and ripped off his glove.
The desk phone rang from Abby's desk.
"God damn," Gibbs sighed. "McGee."
McGee was already jogging to Abby's desk. Gibbs checked his own phone again: 5 Missed Calls.
"Forensics," McGee answered. He immediately looked at Gibbs and held out the phone.
"Dammit, McGee, just tell her to wait!" Gibbs barked at him. Jamie jumped from where she was standing. "Meet me in the squad room in five with that address!" He stormed away and added under his breath, "Who knows what Tony does when he's alone…"
Jamie and McGee looked at each other; when they looked back to see Gibbs, he was gone.
He took the flight of stairs and made it to the bullpen faster than he thought. He'd left Tony to watch the security tapes, and the senior field agent even made a bag of popcorn when Gibbs left to go see Ducky. The buttery smell entered his nose when he walked into the empty bullpen.
"DiNozzo…" Gibbs glared at the vacant desk with the half-eaten Orville Redenbacher popcorn bag. The TV screen on the AV cart showed paused footage from the dance floor, which was on the second floor of the club. Gibbs peered at the screen and saw, in the middle of the crowd, Abby with Seaman Knight. Abby had her arms wrapped around the victim, whose hands were on her waist. Their lips were inches—mere breaths from each other.
Gibbs had to look away.
Riiiiing-ring! Riiiiing-ring!
His desk phone called him from his daze, but the ringing made him snap. He strode across the pen and didn't bother to check the caller ID. As he yanked the receiver, an obscenity burned the tip of his tongue.
"I am on your six, Gibbs."
As far as he could sense it, no one was really behind him; but it felt like Ziva was holding him at gunpoint. Gibbs licked his lips and clenched the receiver.
"Why?"
"Because I see no sense anymore in watching one of our own," Ziva snapped. Before Gibbs could let out his anger, Ziva stopped him. "Abby needs you, and you have abandoned her. The one who should be in that glass cage is you—"
Gibbs threw down the receiver and yelled out something unintelligible. The back elevator opened up and McGee entered the squad room, with the address written on a post-it note. The cyber agent screeched to a halt when he laid his eyes on Gibbs.
"Boss?" McGee moved into his desk warily. He was halfway into his desk chair.
"Get your ass over here," Gibbs barked. "You and Tony are going to that warehouse—"
"Where's Tony?" McGee's eyes wandered around the pen.
Gibbs didn't answer. On his way out the pen, he managed to toss the bag of popcorn to McGee without spilling it. "Not doing his job."
McGee glanced at the popcorn and back up at Gibbs vanishing into the red corridor. He was left with the magical mystery of Tony's desk, and the feature presentation on the AV cart. After taking a good look at the screen, he could see why Gibbs was even crosser than he usually was. McGee couldn't eat one kernel.
*** *** *** ***
Ziva hung up her phone and started for the door.
"Whoa, where do you think you're going?" A hand held her arm.
Ziva glared at Tony's hand, then his face. "If no one's going to be with Abby, I will be the one."
"But you can't, Gibbs is rocking Abby." Tony made a face, to which Ziva returned. "You know....Gibbs's handy dandy technique."
"Where his 'hands do the talking'?" Ziva mocked and drew quotes around her words.
"No," Tony gave her a look. "'Rocking the Baby.' He does it to all potential suspects..." Tony trailed off in regret and braced for the worst from Ziva.
The liaison cussed in another language and rolled her eyes. "Why did you even come here?"
"To see...Abbs," Tony answered carefully. He peered through the one-way window and raised his brows. He hadn't really paid a good amount of attention until now. The dark angel was curled up in a ball on the table and held her stuffed hippo Bert close to her heart. Her eyes lacked luster and stared vacantly back at him and Ziva. She squeezed the stuffed animal and let out its usually comforting fart sound. Tony covered his mouth.
"You see it, too," Ziva stated rather than asked.
Tony shook his head. "Usually Gibbs would bust through the door and catch her off guard....how long has she been here?"
"Since you went to that club, I think, but it feels much longer." Ziva tilted her head. "And usually, from what I have seen, it is Abby that catches Gibbs off guard." She tapped her foot impatiently. "I am going in there, and I don't care what Gibbs thinks."
Ziva's dark waves brushed across Tony's face before he could hold her back again. "Hey—" he interjected. "At least let me tell you some background info before you go in and...mossad her."
The mossad squinted at him incredulously. "Mossad is Hebrew for 'institution.'" She stuck her neck out at him and called him something in Hebrew, most likely something unflattering. "And I am not going in there to question her." And she opened and slammed the door without hearing more.
Tony turned to see Ziva entering the interrogation room. Abby sat up on the table and gasped, hugging and making Bert fart again.
"Oh God, Ziva?" Abby got off the table and shied away. "Gibbs must think I'm a mass-murdering f—"
"Abby."
Abby then gaped at her. She recognized that inflection to her name. "Were you the one...?"
Ziva nodded. "Please. Sit down." There must have been something wrong in her "American" accent, because Abby robotically sat down and kept her arms tightly around her stuffed hippo. The girl kept her now petrified eyes on the table and away from Ziva, who sat down with Abby at the table. The fear in her eyes became washed over with heartache.
"If you're here to warm me up, what's Gibbs gonna do with me?" She looked up at Ziva. "Where is he, Ziva?"
"I'm not here to warm you up," Ziva uncrossed her arms and folded her hands on the table's surface. "And...I don't know where he is at present." She glanced to her left, remember who was behind the one-way glass.
Abby looked at her cagily. "He sent you to watch me," she stated. "That's gotta mean something."
Ziva paused. "Yes. But, Abby—"
"I don't think I could even touch you, Ziva," Abby said, putting down Bert, "let alone try one of your kung-fu-assassin moves on you."
Ziva laughed. "I know you will not hurt me," she let a small smile stay on her lips. "You are too....nice," she couldn't find another word that could describe her.
A similar, phantom smile appeared across Abby's cheeks. "Thanks, Ziva," Abby chuckled. "I wish others thought the same right now." She let out a sigh that drained her of the very life left in her.
Ziva wanted to reach out and touch her, at the very least, but she kept her fingers laced. "I...I'm sorry, Abby."
Abby perked up and took Bert in her arms again, this time more affectionately and relaxed. "For what?"
"That I must keep you here."
Abby looked away again and squeezed Bert, but with less intensity. "You're just following an order," she shrugged. She let her head rest on the hippo's head. She started humming tune completely alien to Ziva.
The door busted open. Abby and Ziva jumped in their seats, with Bert farting along in surprise.
"An order you just violated."
Ziva's eyes were slit. Abby's maroon lips frowned.
Gibbs stood in the doorway and kept his eyes only on Abby. Abby looked back into his eyes like he had just hurt her. In a way.
"Sorry Ziva, I tried," Tony's voice came over the intercom. "But you know how it is—"
Ziva shot a glare at her reflection in the window, before transferring it to Gibbs. "You did not say I could not speak with her."
Abby watched Gibbs stride to Ziva and stare her down. "I can get technical with you, too, if that's what you want. And DiNozzo—" He called without leaving Ziva's beady glare. "—you know where you're going. Now."
Tony groaned. "To McGeek, as we speak." Tony's exit was audible through the open door of the interrogation room.
"Interrogation observation," he continued with Ziva. He gestured toward the door with a nod of his head.
Ziva didn't move for a second, but she slowly rose, keeping her brief distance with Gibbs, and lingered behind him before she stepped through the doorway.
"On your six," she murmured, only for him to hear.
Gibbs listened to her footsteps and the adjacent door's opening and closing. He closed the interrogation room door.
"Ziva," he had to make sure one last time.
Her voice came over the speakers. "On your six," she said in affected cheer.
Gibbs sat down. This was going to be one of the hardest parts. He had already sensed it in her eyes.
Abby put away Bert next to her overnight bag and rested her hands on her lap. She seemed to shrink while she looked at him, with her puffy eyes, behind her dark lashes.
"Don't slouch," he said softly. "It's not good for you."
A line appeared between her brows. She straightened up, her hands still hidden under the table, and she looked down. She didn't look like she was ready to strike up a conversation, like she usually would.
Gibbs moved his hands closer to her across the table. "How much do you remember from last night, Abbs?"
Abby's eyes became half a shade greener at the sound of her name. "Not a lot," she admitted. She finally looked at him; her eyes brushed over his, but they stopped at his nose instead. "Flashbacks come and go...but the feelings..." She absentmindedly put a hand over the stitched broken heart on her shirt. She started shaking her braids. "No, not much at all, Gibbs."
"Try."
Abby looked into his eyes doubtfully. "I've tried so hard, I get headaches, Gibbs. They're so vivid, but I can't hold onto them."
"Try harder."
"I am!" Abby cried.
Gibbs leaned on his elbows on the table. "Then you would remember."
Abby shrank back from him. Her eyes searched through the fragments of her memories on the table surface. He could hear her breathing get faster, her chest rising and falling and her shoulders tensing up.
Gibbs closed his eyes and took a deep breath himself. "What do you remember—starting from when you and...Seaman Knight left the club."
Abby's eyes widened. They did go to a club—Plush 9! Yes, that much came back to her. The dancing, the kissing—it happened there. "We were leaving..." She kept her eyes on the table, still rummaging through her memory. She suddenly blushed. "I...I kissed him on the cheek before that." She pointed at her own cheek. "Then....then it gets real blurry after that."
"Think, Abby. What did you do after you left with him?"
"I don't know," Abby frowned.
"You do know." Gibbs tried to find a way to jog her memory. The evidence... "Your prints were on the murder weapon and the toolbox on the gas pedal. Ducky found green glass in the back of the victim's head—does that strike a chord?"
Abby's mouth hung open. She peered at the invisible fragments on the table...
Her hands grabbing him. Shattering glass... Jason barely had time to scream.
Abby covered her mouth with her smilie-face hand.
A flash of red...plastic perhaps. Her hand gripped around it. Shadowy movement... One swift swipe at Jason. The shattering glass again.
"Oh no," she moaned.
"What Abby?" Gibbs wanted to hold her hand.
An all-too familiar feeling began to resurface. Abby trembled. "Oh my God, oh my God..."
"Abby!"
The knife. It was red. Like the blood on her hands. Jason's body....the first cut suddenly crystal clear.
"I cut him. Right here." She pointed across her collar bone. "I...I stabbed him. I did kill him, I did. With a box-cutter—" Tears brimmed her eyes. Abby covered her face and cried. "The pain...it was too much."
Gibbs listened and watched her crumble all over again. "Why..." he choked. "Why would you kill him? You seemed happy from what I've heard."
Abby started pouring out to him, more than he had wanted. "I didn't know he was in the Navy...I...I was angry. The pain, there was too much pain....oh God." She buried her head in her arms and sobbed into the table.
Gibbs rose from the table and walked to the one-way glass, trying to look only at his reflection. "And the glass?"
"Some kind of wine bottle...in a parking lot—Gibbs, please, lock me up now!"
Gibbs turned away from his reflection and back at Abby. He got a confession, just not from the person he wanted.
You're not giving up on her, Gibbs, a voice in his head mentally slapped him in the back of the head. There has to be more, there always is.
But she just confessed...and the evidence...
Screw the evidence!
Ziva could see the internal turmoil through Gibbs' shaking head and shifting eyes. If she had stayed in the room with them, she would have at least held her hand. Ziva folded her arms at the whole picture; something just wasn't right.
Much against Ziva's expectations, Gibbs disappeared from the room, and abandoned Abby once again. Abby sobbed even more.
"He hates me. He hates me," she wept.
A/N: And everyone's probably gonna hate me for writing that ending XDDD It's gonna have to get worse before it gets better, I guess. Gah. Anyways, here's another shot at having a "walk-on" role. Remember: you have to be the first or second person to answer it right. Sorry if I didn't clarify that earlier :( Now, here is the question:
Both Pauley Perrette (Abby) and Cote de Pablo (Ziva) have been in commercials for what car company?
For some reason, I feel like that's another easy question :S I wish I could put everyone in this story, lol! Don't know when I'll be able to update next, though, hopefully sooner than later. Still love you all, as always :] (~Annie)
P.S. Reviews are also love ;)
