I'm in Love with My Stalker
By: Don David and Sasha Cartwright
Chapter 3
A/N Don and I are glad to see the interest in our story. It starts picking up a little more in this chapter and the next one, so bear with us. Please don't forget to review so we can know how we're doing. Thank you for your interest and support. Enjoy.
Knowing that he was already on his boss's bad side, McGee dashed off, leaving more than a few questions unanswered and one very upset Anna Campbell.
'What have I done, why do I keep doing this to a woman I hardly know.' thought McGee.
"Tony, he has that look on his face... again. Maybe you should talk to him considering you know EVERYTHING that there is to know about a relationship between a man and his lover." said Ziva
"Zee-vah, I would love to. You know I would, but I think little Timmy is old enough to figure this one out on his own," noted Tony.
"Ha!" exclaimed Ziva
"Ha what?" asked Tony
"You are JEALOUS!" she said
"Me, oh honey, look at who you are talking to. I am KING!" said Tony
"If it pleases the King, we are here... GET OUT!" said Gibbs
"Oh, you, eh, heard that, huh?" said Tony.
"DiNozzo, I am old, not deaf. Yes, I heard." said Gibbs.
The team waited around for further instruction.
"David, tape off the scene, DiNozzo, bag and tag, McGee, shoot and sketch!" growled Gibbs.
Catching as case so early in the morning was doing nothing to improve his usually gruff manner.
"Boss, there's nothing here," said McGee, examining the scene before him.
"Down there, McGee," said Gibbs, pointing to the ravine that lay about twelve yards away.
McGee took the camera and did as he was told.
"Boss, you don't have to be so hard on the kid," said Tony, defending McGee.
"I know, DiNozzo. This ain't my first rodeo that involved love-struck young men. You had a few years like that when you first started out too." said Gibbs.
"If you two are done, I think McGee is requesting our help in the ravine," said Ziva.
"Ah, David, hang on. We're comin'. Don't get your panties in a wad," smirked Tony.
"You had to say that." muttered Gibbs.
Just then, Tony found a knife whirling by his head.
"Hey, Boss," called McGee, pulling the other three from their banter. "I found something."
As Gibbs, Ziva, and Tony made their way down the ravine, they found McGee with the very wet and very ragged remains of what looked like their missing Corporal Eli Stoddard.
"All right," sighed Gibbs, knowing what they had to do next. "Duck, Palmer, we found the corporal. Careful coming down."
"Yes, quite, Jethro," nodded Ducky, taking the ex-marine's advice and cautiously stepping down the steep hillside down to what they knew to be a crime scene.
"This reminds me of when Mother's second cousin, Rutherford, decided that the ravine the existed in the woods behind their aunt's home in West Virginia would be a good place to hunt raccoons. That trip down the hill cost him a severely broken tibia of the left leg and a fractured radius and ulna in his right arm," described the medical examiner with his usual abundance of detail while Palmer tried desperately to catch up.
"Cause of death, Duck?" wondered Gibbs, as the medical examiner reached the scene with Palmer straggling behind.
"Well, it is difficult to say, Jethro, my dear fellow," explained Ducky, examining the unfortunate corporal before him.
"Any guesses?" asked Gibbs, his patience running out.
"Well, until we get the corporal back to NCIS for an autopsy and Abby has cleared the toxology, then no," said Ducky.
"Load 'em up, Palmer," said Gibbs.
"Yeah, you heard him, Autopsy Gremilin," said Tony.
Palmer gave a sad look to Ducky.
"Just go, Mr. Palmer." said Ducky.
Jimmy walked all the way up the side of the ravine, back to the ambulance to grab the gurney in hopes that it would not cost him a rough ride down the hill.
"Today, Mr. Palmer, if you don't mind," urged Ducky politely, but knowing that they didn't have all day to wait for the gurney.
"Yes, Doctor," said Jimmy, struggling, but continuing up the ravine.
The second that Palmer got back down the ravine with the gurney, everything became a whirl of activity: Ziva was taping off the crime scene which could very well have stretched for a mile since they had ruled this place out as the original scene of the crime, Tony was bagging evidence, and McGee was taking pictures of and sketching the gruesome scene before them.
Even after they returned to Headquarters, the work didn't even slow down: Tony was calling the corporal's friends and family, McGee was checking the dead man's phone records for any possible leads, and Ziva was checking the Marine's credit card history to find out where he was last to see if they could locate their primary crime scene.
The day seemed to drag on as each of their possible leads fizzled out into nothing.
At nine o' clock that night, Gibbs finally declared, "All right. We'll pick it up tomorrow morning."
As Ziva and McGee gladly shut off their computers and headed for the door, Gibbs noticed that Tony was still typing furiously into his keyboard though there was little he had to work with.
"That wasn't a suggestion, Dinozzo," stated Gibbs calmly.
Tony's head jerked up from the screen at the sound of his boss's voice.
"I know, Boss," the senior field agent assured with one of his luminous smiles.
"I'm just trying to see if my last lead is heading anywhere," Tony explained, his green eyes dropping back to the screen.
The very last thing that Gibbs wanted to encourage was slacking off, but Tony had already been following said lead for over five hours, no closer now than he had been.
With a slight shake of his head, Gibbs walked towards the elevator, leaving Tony to his work.
After talking to all of the corporal's family, crazed ex-girlfriends included, Tony got extremely bored.
He looked around for anyone that still could be in the building.
It was a ghost town.
'Geez' Tony thought to himself.
So he began to go through the records again and wondered if he could just slip them back on to Gibbs's desk and not even worry about them until tomorrow.
He glanced at the clock and decided that it was time for him to go home, down the elevator he went and into the garage he strolled.
He walked to his car and fumbled with his keys.
Just then, he heard a woman's voice come behind him.
"Hey, Honey, did you miss me?" she said, "I SURE MISSED YOU."
A/N Thanks for reading. Please remember to review. If you don't, we won't know what you liked and won't be able to make the story better.