Chapter 4

[phoof]

Looking surprised, Tim stares at the pebbles and shells in his hand.

[/phoof]

It was the growling of his dog that woke Tim less than an hour after he'd dropped off to sleep. "Jethro?" Tim called, quietly, and then listened. Jethro was not in the bedroom.

Quietly, Tim got out of bed and crept out of the bedroom. His cellphone face plate gave him enough light to see by. Since Jethro hadn't erupted into protective mayhem, this meant that the threat was outside. Tim allowed himself a minute to get his sig out of his locked drawer in the living room.

Sure enough, Jethro faced the apartment door, 79 pounds of bristling threat. "What's out there, boy?" Tim whispered. He had a good peephole in the door, one he'd installed himself, that blocked out light from within the apartment. Not even his eyeball would be visible to whoever was outside in the apartment building hallway.

Bad news. The hallway was dark. Someone had tampered with the lights. Tim could just make out one…no, two dark shapes. One was very close to the door.

A slight touch on the door, perhaps the knob. Tim felt it. That was enough to make Jethro explode in a storm of barking and lunging at the door. Above that, Tim thought he heard a soft curse from the hallway, and the two shapes disappeared from view.

When Jethro had calmed down and trotted away from the door, Tim at last became aware that his pulses were racing. The threat was over, at least for now, but what was behind it?

He knew what protocol demanded. He'd been lying and holding back enough lately, but didn't want to get in trouble later for not following regulations. With a still shaking hand, he thumbed through his directory to Gibbs' phone number.

They were all at his place in under half an hour. "You are all right, McGee?" Ziva asked, concern in her dark eyes.

"I'm fine. I never opened the door to them. Jethro scared them off."

Tony was dusting the door and the knob for prints, while Gibbs searched the hallway. "You should tell your playmates not to come over when you're trying to sleep, McSlumber. You have your bedtime to think of. You need your beauty sleep. I need my beauty sleep." Tony yawned.

"DiNozzo…"

"Shutting up, boss."

They convened inside Tim's apartment, with the doors closed. Tim told the story of how Jethro's growling at the would-be intruders woke him up.

Gibbs gave the dog a pat. "Give this boy an extra dog treat tonight…Got some prints off the light fixtures in the hall," he added. "I'll take them to Abby in the morning."

"They got through your building's security locks fairly easily," Ziva said. "Those locks are at least 10 to 15 years old. You should talk to the owner about getting something more modern."

"You did the right thing to call, Tim," said Gibbs. "Do you know why anyone would suddenly be threatening you?"

"No," Tim said quickly, although he was always sensitive to possible threats, even if he wouldn't admit to it. He couldn't do his job if he lived in fear. "Everything's just been…routine lately." And it had been, for the most part.

Gibbs gave him a quick look, and Tim tried to keep his face neutral. Surely, Tim thought, this isn't related to Kinsky case? Must be some other old enemy looking for me…as if that's a comforting thought.

"All right, then," said Gibbs. "I think we've got everything we can get here tonight. I'll have an agent watching your building, 24/7."

"Is that really necessary—"

Gibbs cut off the protest with one wave of the hand. "You have to sleep sometime. So does your dog. Until this threat is eliminated, we'll have your place under surveillance. Not open for debate, McGee. This is protocol."

"McGee, would you like a ride to work in the morning?" asked Ziva. "Well…about five hours from now?"

"That's okay, Ziva. I'm sure I'm safe."

"Take her offer, McGee, or else you're moving in with me," Gibbs said bluntly.

"Fine. Thanks, Ziva. I'll be ready at six."

The team left to salvage some hours of sleep.

The attempted break-in, if it was that, was still on Tim's mind when he and Ziva arrived at NCIS the next morning. He forced his mind back to the Kinsky case, even while his hand sought out the pebbles and shells which he'd again put in his pocket. He'd grown fond of them.

All seemed to stall until Ducky had news on Kinsky's cause of death. Despite slight pressure from Gibbs, Ducky said he was at a loss to figure it out. If only Gibbs could bring him some sort of action surrounding the sinking of the body, then maybe…And if only Ducky could determine how Kinsky died, Gibbs responded, then maybe…

"I could go back out to the boondocks, boss," Tony volunteered, reluctantly. "Question all the Hamsel Rafting Co. people. I could take McGee with me, and use him for a compass in case I get lost out there. Moss grows on his north side."

"Too far to go on just a hunch," Gibbs said, shaking his head. "I want you to go to Norfolk and talk with the seamen he worked with. Someone must have seen something; seen Kinsky in possession of large sums of money, even if he didn't say anything. Also check his housing unit."

"On it." Tony picked up his bag and left.

Gibbs had Tim try to force more information out of Kinsky's online, phone and bank records. Tim didn't bother grumbling that they'd already gone through them once…this, sometimes, was part of the job: finding what they might have missed. Ziva, meanwhile, tried again to trace Kinsky's path from Norfolk to West Virginia,

After lunch, Tony returned with little to show for his trip. "Only guy that saw Kinsky with a wad of cash was one Seaman Angelo Martinetti." Tony pulled up his particulars on the plasma. "I get the feeling there was bad blood between the two of them, so I don't know how credible a witness he is. Martinetti flat-out said he didn't like Kinski. Called him a dweeb. Still, Martinetti was the only one who seemed to know that Kinsky had cash, so I wouldn't discount him altogether. And he does have an alibi for Friday: he spent all of Friday and Saturday on a painting detail with two others in the officers' lounge."

"What was wrong with Kinski?" Ziva griped. "Why was he not like everyone else, spending all his free time posting on Facebook and Twitter?"

Tim looked stunned. "I only thought to look under the name of Kinsky for Facebook and Twitter accounts, but what if he used an alias…?"

He plunged into computer action, his teammates watching over his shoulder. "He did not have a computer…" Ziva said.

"That we know of," said Gibbs. "But there was his phone."

"There wasn't any record of him posting on either site from his phone," said Tim. "But he went there to read."

"Then how could he…"

"On duty?" Tony mused."

"Yeah," Gibbs mused. "Yeah. McGee—"

"I could drive down there, make a copy of his duty station drive," Tim said. "Then—"

"No. We've done enough driving down there recently. I'll have one of our agents do it and drive up here with it. I'll call the Captain; get it cleared."

"Want me to talk the agent through what we need?"

"No. I want everything that's on that computer. Kinsky didn't have the security clearance to be working on a computer with classified information. There's no need to excise anything."

So it was back to hurry up and wait.

Relief came half an hour later when the clock struck three and Gibbs told everyone to take a break. Tim took the opportunity to go see Abby, just for a chat and to see if she'd come up with anything from the fingerprints taken from his hallway. If she was in a good mood, maybe he'd inveigle her into going to the park with him; the day was fine and fresh air was a good thing to be in.

She saw him before he even walked through the lab doors. "Heya, Tim!" she called cheerfully. "Found any more sunken bodies lately?"

"No, but I haven't been looking for—"

As he stepped into the lab, his voice was cut off by sudden loud alarms and flashing lights. "What is—" he tried shouting. The lab glass doors automatically slid shut, but that didn't stop the alarms.

"Hazard!" Abby yelled. "I don't know what—" She tried getting information from her computers, but she had several large programs running on them and these were in the process of saving data before shutting down, rending her attempts ineffective. "Oh, bad word fail safes!" she screamed.

"Stay calm," Tim said, though he too was worried. "It's probably a false reaction…" But that was a hope, and not a belief. He tried to wrest control of another computer, but it, too, was doing what Abby had it programed to. It could be tens of minutes before…

There came a pounding on the door. Tim and Abby turned to see Gibbs, Ducky and Tony in yellow hazmat suits. "We're opening the door!" Gibbs yelled to them, as he punched in the code for the override. In a moment the three had rushed inside. "Are you two all right? You look all right," Gibbs said, touching each in turn on the arm as if to convince his eyes. "Radiation alarms went off. It doesn't look like a threat, though…"

Now the computers were quiet, awaiting instructions. Abby used them to turn off the alarms.

Tony had a Geiger counter in hand. "Boss…" when he waived it over Abby, he got only normal background readings. But over Tim…the results were high.

"Stay calm," Ducky implored. "Everyone, please stay calm!"

That was hard to do when the danger was unknown. "Abby, leave. Tim, strip," Gibbs ordered.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "No one throws me out of my lab," she insisted. But then at Gibbs' steely look, she only mumbled, "First time for everything," and went out.

Tony scanned Tim more carefully before he stripped. "Probie, you got something unusual in your pockets?" he asked, a trace of worry in his voice. "Like a teeny-tiny atom bomb?"

"Don't be silly," Tim said, and then looked surprised as he drew out the pebbles and shells he'd been carrying. The Geiger counter clicked like a million munching locusts.

"Holy cow, Tim…"

"Call 911," Ducky directed. "He'll need radiation treatment at hospital."