Tony groaned as he opened the door of the last room at the end of the hall. He stepped over several Matchbox cars and assorted action figures as he poked his head into the closet. He jumped backward as someone lunged at him. The tip of his gun contacted the inflatable punching clown right on its big red nose. He let out the breath he'd been holding and gave the clown a solid smack for good measure. "Damn clown." Walking back to the hall, he saw Ziva emerging from the next door. "All clear. Kid's room. The guy has a kid."

"He has three, Tony." She pointed to a family portrait hanging over a spindly-legged hallway table. A smiling Dr. Franklin sat, surrounded by a smiling wife and three smiling children, two girls and a boy.

"They look happy."

"Happy families are all alike, as they say."

He considered for a moment before asking, "Have you accomplished the impossible task of quoting a movie I haven't seen?"

"It may be in a movie, but I'm actually referring to the novel."

"You seem to be very well-read for an international secret agent. When did you have time to snuggle up with a good book? Did you set aside an hour in the imperial library between the dry martinis at happy hour and the grand ball in the evening?"

She rolled her eyes. "We're not going through the James Bond thing again. A lot of my work involved surveillance. Have you ever done a, what do they call it on your police shows? A…beef-out? No, that's not right…"

"Stakeout. Cops go on stakeouts. And it's stake, like through the vampire's heart, not steak, like, I'll have mine medium rare."

"Right, stakeout. Very tedious sometimes, yes?"

"Yup. Lot of waiting. And watching." They had yet to move from the family portrait. He exhaled forcefully. "Good thing they weren't here when it happened."

"I somehow doubt they'll take much comfort in that." She cocked her head as she inspected the photo. "They live with their mother."

"And you know this how?"

She pointed to the room she'd cleared last. "Teenage girl's room. Enough clothes in the closet and drawers for about a week, and no shoes. And one entire side of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom is bare. He's a neurologist with a busy career, treating patients and doing research and it just got to be too much for her to stay at home with the kids and never see him, so she asked for a divorce."

"You got all that from looking in a few closets?" She winked at him before walking back toward the stairs. They were on the ground floor before he smacked himself in the forehead. "Franklin told you all that when you talked to him."

"Now that's using your investigating skills." They rounded the end of the stairs on their way back to the kitchen to check in with Gibbs.

He was on the phone. "That's good work, Tim. Why don't you come down here with the truck." He snapped the phone shut, turning to his two agents. "Anything?"

"Yeah, looks like whoever was here took some stuff from the office."

"Stuff, DiNozzo?"

"There is a monitor, mouse and keyboard, but no CPU," Ziva said. Gibbs looked at her quizzically. "CPU, that's the big box that everything plugs into."

"Be glad you got the technical description from her and not McGee, boss." Tony grinned.

Gibbs shined his flashlight through the plate glass of the back door. "Does it look anything like that, DiNozzo?"

Illuminated in the beam was a smashed black box that had lately been a computer. "Uh, not ideally." Ziva made a face at him. "Good thing McGee is on his way to provide critical care. Hey, if he's coming here does that mean we know where the email came from?"

"Security office in the Callaghan building. We're going there as soon as we finish up here. Anything else I should know about from upstairs?"

Ziva continued to look at Tony sardonically as she replied, "The lock on the file cabinet was forced, but we have no way of knowing what, if anything, was taken. Everything else looks to be in order."

"All right. Ducky should be here soon. You two go sweep the basement. Second door on the left." He pointed to a hallway off the kitchen.

"How do you know that's the basement, boss?"

Gibbs shook his head in irritation. "Because it's the only door down here that doesn't lead to a closet or a bathroom. Go!"

Ziva was already standing at the door. "If it's full of cleaning products, we'll know we picked the wrong one." She opened the door and flicked a light switch, illuminating both the stairway and the room below. "Oh look, basement." She paused before descending the carpeted stairs. "You smell something?"

He'd yet to step back after almost colliding with her yet again. "Yeah. Do you use Herbal Essences?"

She huffed and walked cautiously down the stairs, gun drawn. He followed her, deciding that he preferred the view when she was going up stairs. She paused again when she reached the floor. He peeked over her shoulder. "Damn, that's a big TV." Looking the other way, he noted, "Pool table and wet bar, too? This is one hell of a rec room."

She pointed across the room at the couch. "There." He aimed his gun and decided he probably wouldn't need it to defend them from the little pile of black material she was indicating.

Ziva crouched by the overstuffed sectional. A small, charred pile glowed with a few dying embers. "I knew I smelled something burning."

Tony poked the ashes with the tip of his gun. "I guess someone wanted to destroy some papers."

"Hence the fire."

He met her stare with a look of displeasure that soon turned into a reluctant grin. "I meant that maybe whatever disappeared from the file cabinet upstairs ended up in our little campfire down here."

"You had to bring up the campfires?"

"What, you don't miss them?" She gave him the most bemused look she could muster. "Okay, you don't, but I bet McGee does."

"Make sure you ask him first thing when he gets here." She stood, looking toward the rear wall of the room. There were four closed doors.

Tony pointed at each one in turn. "Water heater and furnace, laundry, bathroom, evil clown."

She placed her hand on the knob of the first door, but didn't turn it. "Evil clown?"

"Don't ask." He took up his position and nodded. She swiftly yanked the door open. "Oh, one for one. Bathroom!"

"You said this would be the furnace."

She regarded him as he opened the medicine cabinet. "I wasn't picking the specific doors, just the possible contents of the rooms."

"Sure."

"Fine. Next one's the laundry room. You owe me lunch if I'm right."

She stepped closer, getting in his face. "And when you're wrong?"

"If," he corrected. "You get the satisfaction of a moral victory." She pinched the skin of his inner arm through his jacket. "Okay, okay, I'll buy you lunch."

She grasped the knob of the second door. "Something that I consider lunch, too, not just one of your greasy burgers."

"It's not gonna matter because…" He nodded and she pulled the door open. "Damn. Furnace."

"Excellent." She patted his cheek as she stepped into the small room to check behind the heating equipment. "I've heard good things about that new Indonesian place across from the Navy Yard."

He frowned as she stepped back into the main room. "New deal. If the next room is the laundry room, I'll still buy you lunch, but it'll be from that deli we like."

"Fair enough." For the third time, she wrenched the door open while he aimed his weapon.

"Yes! Laundry! I mean, laundry room. Clear." He looked at her warily. "You know what that leaves, right?"

"Evil clown? Do you want to open the door while I take point?"

"No, no. I've seen a horror movie or two. I should be able to protect you from the unimaginable ghastliness lurking just beyond this thin panel of wood composite." He was doing what sounded like a bad impression of an actor she couldn't quite recall. She tensed in spite of herself as she pulled the final door open. She actually flinched when he let out a brief but melodramatic shriek.

Looking into the small closet, she lowered her gun before giving him a healthy punch in the arm. "It's a safe."

"Yes. A safe. On a table." He gave her a maddening grin. "Not an evil clown."

"I could paint a red nose on it if it will make you feel better." She was aware of some stiffness in her tone. His little scream had apparently rattled her more than she'd originally thought. She tried to shake it off by scanning the room again. Clear.

He holstered his gun as he leaned forward to examine the large metal box. "Looks like tool marks." He indicated several shiny scratches in the dull metal near the bolt. "Can you get in there?"

She bent to examine the safe. "I doubt it."

"I'd have thought this would be easy for a veteran locksmith such as yourself."

She smiled as she reached into her pocket and produced a pair of handcuffs. "I guess you haven't learned your lesson."

"Oh, you're not fooling me with that one again."

"So you didn't like being handcuffed? I'll remember that." She watched him fidget as she took longer than necessary to look him up and down.

He tried to distract her by patting the top of the safe. "So why can't you crack this bad boy?"

"It's got a digital lock. Abby or McGee should be able to get into it."

Tony suddenly stood up straight. "Hey, did you hear…"

The sound of a gunshot filled the underground room. Ziva's eyes widened as a bullet clanged against the safe. Even more surprising was the blood splatter that accompanied it. The bullet dropped to the floor, apparently not having hit the safe with sufficient force to embed itself.

Time slowed as she turned, swinging her gun up in a graceful arc. Tony had dropped to his knees as he tugged his gun from its holster. She had fired three times before he managed to level it. The bullets seemed to hang in the air as they traveled toward the shooter. She willed them to go faster, to catch up before they missed him. He was going to get away before her shots had a chance to hit him. He was already on the first step, the second…

The man's corpse was sliding back down the stairs when she slowly knelt, letting go of her gun and pressing her hands over the bloody exit wound on her lower abdomen. "Nobody shoots me, you son of a bitch."