Disclaimer: Still don't own NCIS...
But I do own three OCs in this chapter, which I can only hope you enjoy as much as I do as the story goes on. I am sad that I didn't have reason or opportunity to tell you more about them.
Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo was trying not to clock-watch, which was why he glanced down at his cell phone to check the time. Better to not be too obvious in front of his junior agents, although he doubted he was really fooling them. They were trained investigators, after all, and he had never been quite as good as Gibbs at keeping things inside.
"Going somewhere, Boss?" The casual question posed by his Senior Field Agent, Lena Sanders, confirmed DiNozzo's doubts.
"Not your business, Sanders," Tony snapped, half regretting it the moment the words had left his mouth. The question wasn't unfounded, and he usually enjoyed messing around with his team, but the prick of worry that had been bothering him without apparent reason for most of the afternoon had him on edge. He tried to focus on the case file in his hands, tried to forget that he hadn't seen or spoken to Ziva since 1130 that morning, but it was a lost cause. After a few moments of wasted effort, he dropped the file on his desk and left the bullpen without a single word or gesture to his agents.
"What's with the Boss today?" Agent Rob Bowman hissed to Lena as soon as Tony was out of earshot.
"Probably just wants to get home - Ziva and Adina have the whole afternoon off without him. I'd be impatient, too, especially since we're between cases." The response came not from Agent Sanders, but from Special Agent Heather Canton, newest member of the Major Case Response Team.
Lena shook her head. "There's more to it than that," she murmured, gazing absently at Tony's abandoned desk. "The Boss's gut is working overtime, I guess, though I haven't a clue what it'd be working on."
"Maybe he doesn't either," Bowman mused.
"Which would explain the temper," Lena replied, looking back to the papers on her desk. "Rob, how much can I pay you to finish this case file?"
Agent Bowman crossed the bullpen to examine the reports, photographs, and interrogation transcripts spread across Lena's desk. When he identified the case she was working on, he laughed out loud.
"The Garrett case?" he chuckled, leaning against the edge of Lena's desk and crossing his arms over his chest. "You can't pay me enough to even touch that thing again!"
Feeling Lena's eyes shifting in her direction and anticipating the all-too-predictable path of the conversation, Canton didn't wait to be asked. "Don't bother, Lena," she said, not looking up from her computer screen. "The answer is, 'No.'"
***
Tony hadn't had a plan in mind when he'd left the bullpen, but as soon as he was alone in the elevator he slammed down the emergency stop switch and yanked his cell phone free of it's holster. He tried his home number first, but, as had been the case almost an hour earlier, there was no answer. Cutting the voice mailbox message short, he dialed Ziva's cell phone next.
"C'mon, Ziva," he murmured into the phone as he listened to it ring. Maybe it was silly. Maybe he was over-reacting, but if he could just hear Ziva's voice reassuring him that she and Adina were okay then at least he would know. And it was always better to know that one had become an over-protective fool than to assume that the two most precious women in the world were safe.
Tony's left hand became a fist of its own accord when his call was once again diverted to voice mail. He punched the emergency switch, then the button that would take him to Abby's lab. To hell with what anyone else thought or said, he had to know that his wife and daughter were alright.
***
Cringing at the ear-splitting volume of Abby Scuito's newest favorite album, Tony hurried through the lab and Abby's office, interrupting the forensic scientist in the middle of running ballistics for another team's case.
"Abby!" he shouted, just as the black-haired woman fired another round from the shotgun she was holding. "Jesus!" Tony yelped, surprised that the report of the weapon could be heard at all above the blaring music. Seeing that Abby was lining up to fire again, Tony lurched forward and grabbed her by the arm.
"Abby!" he yelled again.
"Tony!" the goth shouted in return, a huge smile lighting her face. She put the shotgun down and reached into the pocket of her lab coat for the remote control to her stereo system. The silence that fell over the lab was almost disconcerting, but Abby didn't seem to notice, pulling her head set off and dragging Tony back through her office. "What can I do for you, Very Special Agent DiNozzo?"
"Abbs, I need you to trace Ziva's cell phone," Tony replied.
"What?" Abby said, whirling on Tony with her hands on her hips. She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "Why? Is she okay?"
"I don't know." Tony barely kept his voice level, so he took a careful breath before going on. "I've been trying to call her but she's not answering, and I just don't have a very good feeling about this!"
"Say no more, Tony," Abby interrupted, seeing that allowing him to wind up further would be a very bad idea. "I'll do it. It won't take five minutes." Without wasting another second, Abby attacked her keyboard and activated the appropriate program. Pretending to watch the screen carefully, she actually observed Tony out of the corner of her eye. He was pacing in front of her refrigerator, running a hand repeatedly through his already unruly hair, and breathing way too hard for someone doing nothing more than retracing the same ten feet of her floor over and over again. Abby had only a moment to wonder how long her friend had been bottling up his worry before the machine before her beeped, indicating that it had pin-pointed the location of ZIva's cell. Tony closed the distance between them quickly and examined the screen himself.
"That's our house," he said, his voice flat.
"Yes, it is," Abby confirmed, waiting to see what Tony would say next.
"Then why isn't she answering the phone, either phone?"
"Maybe she's in the shower," Abby suggested.
"What about when I called her an hour ago? She didn't answer then either."
"Listening to loud music," Abby tried, shrugging her shoulders defensively when the Italian shot her a glare. Tony stepped closer to the screen, staring at the blinking mark that indicated the location of Ziva's phone as if he expected it to offer the answers he needed, as if by looking hard enough he would see Ziva through the screen, home and safe and with their daughter.
"Tony?" Abby said softly, when she felt that the silence had dragged on long enough. Her voice seemed to shake DiNozzo out of his intense stare. He turned and made to march out the door, but Abby called after him. "Where are you going?"
Tony paused in the doorway to look back at the scientist. "There," he said, pointing back at the screen. "I have to see them for myself." Then he was out the door and gone, and Abby turned back to the still-blinking screen.
"Ziva, you had better be alright," she scolded, shaking her finger at the computer as if her Israeli friend were there inside it. "You had better be!"
***
Tony intended to stop at his desk only long enough to grab his badge and weapon from the top drawer and make an excuse to his sure-to-be-curious team, so he almost didn't answer the phone when it rang. He was on the verge of turning away when a gnawing sense of responsibility overrode his irritation and made him turn back and snatch the phone off it's hook.
"Agent DiNozzo," he growled into the mouthpiece, causing his agents to cringe on behalf of the unfortunate soul on the other end of the line. Lena and Rob were both brave enough to keep their eyes on the Boss's face, but only Lena noticed the way that Tony paled slightly as he listened to the caller.
"Address?" Tony demanded. He pulled a pad of paper across his desk and scribbled down whatever information the caller was giving him. Now even Rob could see the shift in DiNozzo's expression, although he wasn't any closer to guessing what it meant.
"Male or female?" Tony's next query caught the eavesdropping agents off-guard, and apparently startled the caller as well. "Are the bodies male or female?" Tony re-iterated with an intensity that was far beyond impatience. Lena thought she caught a wave of relief cross her boss's face in response to the reply. DiNozzo slammed the phone down then, hard enough that he thought he might have broken it, but he didn't waste time checking.
"Gear up," he said, already heading for the elevator. He pushed the piece of paper on which he'd copied the address onto Lena's desk as he walked by. "Take the truck. I'll meet you there."
Bowman stopped halfway to leaping after DiNozzo's flight to the elevator, and exchanged a quick glance of surprise with Lena as the elevator doors shut between them and their Boss.
"That's different," Agent Canton commented into the awkward silence that followed Tony's departure. "Where are we going?"
Lena, who was standing behind her desk looking at Tony's phone with suspicion, reached for the paper DiNozzo had given her and held it before her eyes.
"Oh my God," she muttered, when she recognized the address.
"What, Sanders?" Rob demanded, taking a few steps towards Lena, ready to grab the paper out of her hand if she didn't reply.
"This is Tony and Ziva's address," she said.
The useless scrap of paper, bearing information that they were too familiar with, slipped through her numb fingers and fell to the floor unnoticed.
A/N: Now, pretty-please click the little old review button and tell me what you think. Do I need to put a cherry on top?