What was Right? What was Wrong? What distinguished Doing from Not Doing? If I were to have my time again, the old King thought, I would bury myself in a monastery for fear of a Doing which might lead to woe. T. H. White
.***.
"Ugh! You are so frustrating!" Abby hit McGee with the back of her hand and shook a finger at him, quite serious, "No backseat typing!"
"I'm not!" McGee protested, and Tony snorted from his own desk. "I'm not!" This time his voice was a decibel higher, "I'm just suggesting some searches you can try."
"We already have the car, McGoogle, no thanks to your fancy searches." Tony's voice was strained, his tone snappish. Abby had been at McGee's desk since early morning, making sure he didn't try to flounce doctor's orders and use his sling-and-bandage-bound arm, and the two had been making his headache worse with their constant banter.
"Aww…" Abby glanced at him from over the computer. "I think someone is upset that they weren't invited out to play."
Tony harrumphed. He was just itching for field work. "It makes sense for Probie to work the desks. He got shot. I was, like, scratched in the line of duty."
"And you'll be in the field next week, Tony, count your blessings." McGee had little pity for the other man, not when his own prognosis was for three weeks of intense physical therapy before field duty was even discussed.
Tony scrunched further down in his chair. "I just don't see why Gibbs left me here with you two…we need to find these kids."
"We will, Tony, but once we find them where will they go? McGee and I have been through every missing persons database three times and there are no hits – and there are some pretty clear pictures of these kids faces." Abby poked the hand that was creeping near the keyboard with one sharp fingernail. "Aren't you supposed to be an invalid?"
McGee leaned back and let out a long sigh, feeling completely useless, not even able to follow up on a hunch on his own. "I was just thinking that maybe the kids were homeless. If they were on the street, it would be easy for them to be picked up by Murphey and whatever cronies he had in on the whole thing."
"And no one would have put out a missing persons report, because no one would have noticed they were missing." Tony was nodding, stopping in his work with a hand pressed to his head. He'd suffered concussions before and he probably would again, but that didn't make the throbbing headaches accompanying them any worse.
"Hey," The trio looked up as Jimmy Palmer hurried in, still wearing blue autopsy scrubs. "What'cha doing up here Abby?"
"Apparently barking up the wrong tree." Abby got up, "Evidence from the dead guy?"
"Fingernails, and maybe a partial fingerprint." Palmer handed the package of evidence over, blushing as he detailed their findings. He'd been the one to spot the fingerprint, mostly hidden in a mottled bruise on the side of the victim's neck.
Abby moved towards the elevator, turning around to blow a quick kiss at McGee, "Feel better, boys!"
McGee pulled his chair up to the computer, trying to manipulate his left arm so that it rested comfortably on the computer. "Should you be working McGee? Weren't you just shot, like, two days ago?"
"It's an important case, Palmer, and it's not like I'm doing cartwheels over here." His voice belayed his frustration at his injury and he winced when the slightest movement sent shooting pains up his arm. When next he looked up, the ME's assistant had disappeared, leaving a small bottle of low-level pain killers on McGee's desk. The gesture made the field agent smile a little bit as he attempted to negotiate the computer one-handed.
Tony got off the phone, which he'd been working all day. "I got us a new lead."
"Great," McGee said, and meant it. The whole idea of this case was making him sick – a navy officer who ran a whorehouse? Who would sell off boys every night? The quicker they wrapped this up, the sooner NCIS would breathe easy.
Tony put an image up on the screen, "Jim Sherman, twenty-seven, navy lieutenant. From all accounts he and our dead Murphey were tight." He smirked at McGee, "And doesn't he just look familiar?"
"Yeah," McGee said hoarsely, staring at the face of the person who'd shot him two days before.
"I put a BOLO out on him and an APB for his car, but guess what?" Tony was insufferable when he stumbled on a lead first, he was nearly bouncing out of his chair, "He lives in an apartment two streets down from Murphey, but also owns a plot of land in Virginia."
"Any buildings?" McGee asked, interest piqued.
Here Tony stopped moving, letting loose a shit-eating grin he always wore when he broke a case, "Not according to the official reports, but Google Earth tells a different story."
Even McGee had to smile a little at the thought of such a simple program giving them a lead. "Call Gibbs."
"But I want to check it out." Tony whined, "Can't we just -"
"No. I can't even carry a gun, Tony, and I'm not following you into another supposedly abandoned building." He jabbed his good hand in Tony's direction. "Call. Gibbs."
Tony was already on the phone, planning out how exactly to wheedle his boss into letting him do something other than sit behind a desk. "Hey, boss, we found out the name of the guy who shot McGee, he owns property in Arlington."
"Get one of the other teams to check it out." Gibbs' voice was laced with frustration. "We're stuck in at least two hours of traffic. There was some kind of pile-up."
"Did Ziva cause it?" Tony asked, jerking the phone away from his ear as the Mossad agent protested.
"We can't wait on this one, DiNozzo, I won't leave those kids there for another night." Gibbs hung up, leaving Tony staring at the phone.
"C'mon, McGoogle."
"What – Tony, no, we can't check out the house." McGee was standing up, though, because some part of him knew that Tony always got his way. "You can barely stand up straight and neither of us have been cleared for field duty."
"We're not going inside, McGee, we're just going to make sure those kids aren't being chained to the wall." Tony was already out the door. "Then we'll call for backup." Then, because it seemed like McGee would need more coaxing than that, he said, gently, "these are little boys, McGee. Do you really want them to have another night wherever they are?"
"Of course not." McGee said, using his good arm to lever himself to his feet. "Let's go."
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