Before…

Shepard sat in her Study toying with a snifter of bourbon. Positioned behind her Father's desk, she had nothing but an unloaded gun and a full magazine clip for company. Her lip curled at the recent past and she took an aggrieved sip.

After an exacting day at the office, she had come home to find the sanctity of her Georgetown home invaded by a man she had been tracking for a dozen years or more. It was ironic in a way to find the man they called La Grenouille on her doorstep, after all, he was a close second to the real reason she had stayed in Europe at the end of her official tour. She wondered if her then partner, Gibbs, would ever forgive her for making him leave without her. She had to forgive herself for it first, she reminded herself.

Never in her wildest nightmares had she imagined this reality. 'The Frog' as it translated, had left her house a free man. Hunted, granted, but free nonetheless. Free to face his enemies with his wits and without her help. Rene Benoit barely needed it she reasoned. He had enough money and contacts to disappear within the hour if that was what he wanted. She snorted to herself, he would do it too unless everything he was, in becoming one of the foremost arms dealers, was all a set up by the CIA. She could imagine the stink that would cause on the Hill, if it came out that the CIA was running guns. She shook her head ruefully, it would never come out, not officially at least. That wasn't how the Game was played.

She leant back in her chair, allowing her focus to drift over the items on the desk blotter. Gibbs had left almost immediately after Rene. It would have made her feel better if Gibbs had slammed the door after he stormed out, with his long coat flapping in his wake. It would have provided a kind of punctuation to the typically one sided conversation she had had with Gibbs that went something along the lines of him stating, with nothing more than the look on his face, 'I just stopped you from doing something stupid. You can thank me later.' As it was, the culmination of the conversation was him slapping a full magazine clip on to the desk in front of her from his own SIG Sauer, to replace the empty one in her own gun.

In her role as Director, they butted heads more times than she cared to recall, mostly based around how he thought she should be doing the job, despite the fact that he never wanted the position himself. Gibbs didn't just call her out on her decisions, he took the way she dealt with situations as a personal affront if she didn't make the same choices he would have. He was infuriating, not least because he was frequently right, albeit in the wrong way.

She considered where her old partner might have gone after leaving her house, clearly disgusted at her behaviour. She told herself she didn't care on either count. He was officially off the clock and she was above his distain. There was no way he would let La Grenouille roam his patch without trying to cover off every bolthole that bastard had. She could have saved him the trouble if she had been able to drop him where he stood. She had a niggling sensation that if her own and Gibbs' position had been reversed, he would have had no problem taking the Frog out. The stiletto stab of his accusation still winded her though, not least because it felt like Gibbs doubted her judgement. Rage surged in her again, not about her interaction with the Frog, with Gibbs. If she was the snake, he was the stick and vice versa.

Gibbs' question still hung in the air. She had replied that now, they would never find out. It was audacious of him to even ask the question she thought. It wouldn't have been the first time that she had taken down an unarmed mark, or at least had been expected to. She told herself he had no idea what she was really capable of. She was single minded in the pursuit of her end-game she admitted to herself. He had another word for it, 'obsessive' she thought. No, something infinitely more dangerous, 'reckless.' She felt like the Queen piece on a chess board, her sweeping moves to rule the board stifled by her own stumbling pawns, stalled in all the wrong places.

Gibbs had probably gone for the warrant he had urged her to obtain so that they could take the Frog into custody – the word 'protective' was optional as far as she was concerned. She wanted him dead. He was the last link in the well publicised mystery surrounding her Father's death. She turned her mind away from the subject with a grimace.

Without looking, her hands reached for the unloaded weapon and shed the empty magazine. What she hadn't said to Gibbs was that she knew it was unloaded the instant that she'd pulled it from the drawer. She didn't consider it a unique skill. She might have been out of the field for a time, but her firing practice was up to date and her muscle memory knew exactly what an unloaded weapon felt like, compared to a loaded one.

The bullets had a weight that anyone experienced in firearms would have noticed missing. Gibbs would have known that too, even if she hadn't figured out that the first thing Rene would have done was frisk the place for weaponry and render himself safe in its presence. For a man who dealt with the instruments of death every day, Benoit had a surprising ability to distance himself from his most deadly cargo.

But it was important, not least for the look of the thing, that she had raised her arm with the useless weapon, unable to resist the opportunity to sight down the barrel of a gun at that smug sonofabitch, Benoit. In a way she was disappointed that the Frenchman hadn't appeared more affected by the gesture, perhaps because in his line of work, an irate woman pointing a gun at him was an everyday occurrence.

Gibbs probably thought he had stopped her from making a career changing decision. She had recognised Gibbs comment for the cattle prod that it was. He had accused her of a lack of professional judgement in letting Rene leave as he had come – under his own auspices, whatever they might be. She allowed in this moment, that he might be right. She wondered idly if he had managed to materialise in the nick of time because he had been following Rene, or just as likely, her. He was good at his job, she thought, she wouldn't have had a hope of knowing if he was tailing her, if he didn't want her to know.

The ghost of a smug smile graced her lips. As opposed to the times that he tailed her home, so obviously that it was impossible to miss. Neither of them ever mentioned it, but in the office the morning after, he would have that amused, inviting look in his eye that she recognised, wordlessly querying, 'did you miss me yet?' She would raise her chin and turn her head as if she had seen nothing out of the ordinary, before giving him one last glance over her shoulder while she ascended the gantry, to find him following her movement out of the corner of his eye. She would reply in her own silent way, 'maybe I will enough, by next time.'

Her mouth echoed the half lift his would take on, a mirror of the private smile they would share that set tongues wagging. She was gambling on the fact that there would always be a next time. She bided her time, knowing at some stage they would push each other's buttons far enough that he would ask the question, in person. It wouldn't be verbal, he would simply turn up unannounced.

He would stand in front of her, wherever their paths met, probably move with her to stand in front of her again if she tried to side step around him. Around them. He would let her tow him somewhere private, after a pause just long enough to make sure she knew he was doing her a favour by tagging along. Her answer wouldn't be the same now that Colonel Mann was out of the frame, she knew it in her bones. She had a suspicion he did too, but it hadn't happened yet. Tomorrow, she thought to herself. He wouldn't be able to resist, tomorrow. If there was ever anyone dying of curiosity about why people did what they did, it was Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He was ten times worse when he thought he already knew the answer.

The empty magazine dropped on to the leather inlaid desk with a soft thump. She reached for the full clip Gibbs had left, sliding it into place and pulling back the firing mechanism with a practiced movement. A subtle click, clunk told her the action was complete. Inside the chamber, the loading action readied the first bullet in the magazine for firing and left a microscopic graze in its side. She laid the weapon flat on the desk, with the muzzle pointing towards the door. It was unlikely either man would return tonight. She allowed herself a small smile, reaching to salute the empty room with her glass and said quietly to herself, "good hunting." She didn't mean Gibbs. She meant it for herself.

La Grenouille was out there somewhere. She had a hunch she knew where he might be from something his daughter, Jeanne, had mentioned earlier in the day. Her Father, the Frog, had a boat. She had the name of the Marina stored carefully in the back of her mind. She had been there before, her Father had kept a small skiff there in his time. It would be cold on the water his time of night, she thought.

Benoit had called her, moments before she had entered her house. Provided he hadn't ditched his cell, she could contact him. She was banking on the supposition he would take a call from an unknown number, pretty sure he would do it if he was desperate enough. She could explain her earlier actions at the house as something borne out of the unwelcome surprise of finding her in her home. She would explain that she preferred to keep work 'at work.'

She had the additional ammunition of Gibbs having been an unwelcome witness, it was more true than he could possibly know. She could say that a secret, say an arms dealer being offered sanctuary, was something kept between as few people as possible. He would buy it, she was sure of it. She pictured Gibbs face as if she were describing her thought process to him, adapting his rules for her purposes would make him furious.

She took another sip of bourbon, swilling the acrid liquid around her mouth while she ruthlessly raked through her options. If she did nothing, it was likely Rene would succumb to his enemies' resources and they would finish a job twelve years in the making. She would make sure she had her mawkish moment of celebration when he turned up for ritual dismemberment on the Medical Examiner's slab. It would get the job done, she considered, but didn't feel much like retribution, she craved something more personal. It was possible he would disappear and she would never know if he was dead or alive. It certainly wasn't beyond possibility that his enemies could make a corpse disappear, particularly since once of them was the CIA.

There was an outside chance that he would escape, in which case she would receive a dozen red roses and an insanely expensive bottle of brandy from him as a nose thumbing gesture. It had happened before, when he was at the top of his game. She sincerely doubted this time there would be a gift and flowers at the office in the morning, he had looked genuinely afraid. She had refused to offer him asylum, and any lead he could have had must have been halved in the time he lost canvassing her for it. She quashed any sympathy she might have felt, reserving it instead for his daughter, Jeanne. Jeanne had stumbled into this topsy turvy world not of her own making and been badly burned in the process. Her scars were Shepard's doing, she admitted to herself with a pang of remorse. She knew how parental betrayal felt first hand.

Shepard's Father had allegedly been involved in illegal bribes related to arms dealing. She glanced at the picture she kept of the Colonel on the desk. Her Father was pictured in full military regalia, same as the day that he had died. La Grenouille was supposed to have been the arms dealer. There was a Russian connection she had chased to ground and had a name, that individual was now also dead.

Jasper Shepard was long since deceased, in an apparent suicide, but Shepard knew better. A closer inspection of the circumstances had led the report on his death to indicate CIA stamped all over it, not that it said it in as many words. She gave a small snort of derision. She had been a junior agent when it had happened. It had made her reconsider her own career path a dozen times or more. Every file for every job she went for would carry parental details, including life, and death. Even with her lack of experience, she had known what he was accused of could potentially change everything. In following the connections to La Grenouille, she confirmed everyone's assumption that her behaviour was nothing more complicated than a vendetta. In reality, La Grenouille could be used to prove that her Father's death was no suicide. It was murder.

She glanced at her wrist watch and leant back in the chair. Another five minutes and she would check the street outside, from the unlit shadows of an upstairs room. In ten, she would have changed into something dark and nondescript, taking just a moment to make a 'phone call. In fifteen, she would have exited the safety of her Georgetown home and be on her way, unidentifiable in form hugging leathers and a motorcycle helmet, with the night and its work ahead of her. She kept a small motorcycle down a side street at the back of the house for emergencies. In her own mind at least, the current situation more than qualified.

A/N: These characters and the background story does not belong to me, CBS owns it. I'm just filling in the gaps.