"If I was an international arms dealer, where would I hide out?" McGee muttered. "Look at this stuff, there's even a yacht."
"Do you think he's a yacht type?" Ziva queried.
McGee made a grab for his phone, rapidly punching numbers from his screen.
"NCIS, I'd like to talk to the Harbour Master please. Yes, I know what time it is. It's urgent." He put his hand over the mouthpiece and hissed at Ziva.
"Get Gibbs!"
Ziva stood up, raking the distance between the area housing the desks and the elevator banks. The steel doors were just starting to open.
"We don't have anything yet."
"I have a feeling," McGee grumbled.
"You have a gut?"
"Feeling," McGee corrected crossly. "I have a gut feeling. You have to stop him."
Ziva weighed her options. "It still has to go through legal."
"But it will go faster with Gibbs behind it," McGee insisted, "yes, the Mauretania, anyone look like they might be living on it?" he added to the phone. McGee's head started to nod and his adam's apple bobbed frantically. "Nationality? Alone?" he fired. "Which pier? Are there any cameras. No, no that's ok, don't approach the vessel, but if you can get someone to keep watch? Yes, I'll call back."
"Ziva?..." McGee stood up, just in time to see the end of her long black ponytail disappear between the closing doors of the elevator. He balled his hand into a fist and did a mini pump. "Yes!"
…][…
Shepard let the scalding hot water drum against her bare skin, concentrating on how the needle like pain had muted into a burn her body had become accustomed to – just like how she had accommodated the events in the brothel and the aftermath. There should be nothing now, because La Grenouille was dead. There should be, but there wasn't. The evening caught up with her in a whirl of colour, sensation and sound.
She had shared the meagre contents of her stomach with the toilet bowl already tonight, this time it was a mouth full of bile that found its way to the bottom of the shower stall, followed by the gut wrenching squeeze of drier retching. She rested her forehead against the non-judgemental cool white of the tile wall, trying not to think of anything at all.
The healing stroke back then had been Gibbs.
She probably looked like a drowned rat. She had been walking and then it had started raining. Or maybe it had been raining before. The weather soaked through her coat, through her blouse, skirt, nylons and slopped in her shoes. The cold meant that she no longer felt the evening air as anything other than hurrying droplets down her body. The Paris sidewalk pattered beneath her feet, lit garishly by the neon lights from the hotel foyer. She turned towards them.
Her room key didn't work. Hands shaking she tried again, scraping metal against the keyhole and landing her shoulder against the door with a soft thump. She waggled he door knob uselessly, sniffing and swallowing to keep her rebellious insides inside. She imagined she could still taste him. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and pulled the door towards her, hoping to free the latch.
'Espèce de merde,' she heard herself say it over. Piece of shit, piece of shit, like the Frenchwoman had whispered, narrow as a boy, while the pasty faced Russian exhausted himself against the woman's bony rump. The dapper Frenchman turned the woman onto her back and spat into his hand to make sure she could take him, as if Shepard's mouth had been too dry. He flattened himself against the woman's body, legs splayed out behind him, flexing at the knee at every thrust, like he was doing the breaststroke out of water.
The door handle ripped itself clean out of her hand.
Gibbs.
She let her eyes drift up to his face, away from the round neck of his pristine white tee bisecting the base of his neck. Tension showed itself in tight tendons and the set of his shoulders. His eyes narrowed from the bottom up and his head jerked back when she met his eyes, as if she had slapped him in the face. His hair was darker, it made him look younger, angrier, sharpening the distinctive planes of his face. Wordlessly he held the door open and stood aside. The heat his eyes held took their warmth with them. She stumbled in, leaving the key, only to halt seconds later, disorientated. There were papers left out on the bed, a man's shoe on its side, an open trouser press. Wrong room. His room, she should be next door.
Gibbs reappeared in front of her, gripping her upper arms lightly and giving her a small shake to make her look up. It made her teeth rattle, or maybe it was the cold.
"You ok?"
He had that look in his eye which meant that any answer was going to be the wrong one. She answered hoarsely.
"Cold."
He propelled her towards the shower. His shower. Still warm with steam and smelling of soap, he must have not been long out of it. She stood off to one side while he turned on the jets.
"Get in." Brusque words brushed past her.
She heard him stop when she stepped into it fully clothed, heard the short, open mouthed huff he made. The kind that belonged to moments when he was trying to come to terms with something that took him unawares. She couldn't bring herself to care, the water was too hot, like pinpricks, the air was saturated, almost too heavy to breathe. She leant her forehead on the tile, along with a palm and almost closed her eyes. Would have, except that Gibbs had gotten in beside her, fully clothed.
"What happened?" Gibbs low soft rumble warmed her ear, his large hands dragging at the collar of her coat eased it off her arms.
"I made a mistake."
"You're probably lucky to be alive."
"Am I?"
"What did you see?"
The fact that he was debriefing her registered vaguely. She clung to the cadence of his voice, the normalcy of 'this is what happens when you get out, get back.' His deft fingers slid the blouse buttons through their retainers, slipping it off her shoulders. It gave her something to focus on.
"The shipment is Arms. I couldn't tell if he was a middleman or the destination."
"Who?"
His thumbs were under the waistband of her skirt, both sides sweeping to the back, feeling for the closer. It made her shiver.
"The dealer."
"Name?"
"La Grenouille," she said bitterly.
She took a shaky step out of the pool of clothing, reaching to roll the nylons off and dropping them where they may.
"Did you hear them called anything else?"
"I know his name." Vitriol splashed across every word. She knew his name, much more than his name in fact.
His hands closed over her shoulders, his voice close to her ear. "If you ever, ever do that again."
"The case is further forward," she stated, strength returning to her voice. She tore herself away from the self-loathing threatening to overwhelm her, repositioning an idea. Planning. "We know what to look for. Who we are looking for." If it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to make that man pay.
"We? You, are not doing anything." His fingers dropped away.
"I was doing my job!"
"You put the whole operation in jeopardy!" His voice was rising, strident and accusative. She turned to face him, reaching behind herself to unclasp her bra, suddenly strangled by the remaining clothing and in a hurry to scrub herself clean. The discrete holder clipped inbetween the cups flapped open as it fell.
"I was fine!" She flung the offending garment to the floor and reached for her panties.
"You were nowhere!" He bellowed, leaning in so that his face was inches from hers. The last time he did that she had kissed him. Sex was the last thing on her mind, but it still took every shred of control to not look at his mouth.
Shepard stared into his deadly blue gaze instead. "Maybe I stayed out to get some," she hissed. The muscle above her right eye twitching forced her to blink and break the stare.
She stepped free of her remaining underwear. The soap found its way into her hand, she put it across her belly, up over one breast, then the other, briskly rubbing to raise a lather.
There hadn't been anything since Marseilles. She hadn't been expecting wine and roses, but he was all business by the time they'd hit Paris. It wasn't that he said anything, 'don't touch' was all over his body language. It was like waking up in an alternate reality where Marseilles had never happened.
He caught the wrist of the hand holding the soap. "Where's your knife?"
"I left it with a friend," she said sweetly. His eyes narrowed shrewdly, moving his hand to align their fingers. She didn't resist when their combined hands drifted between her legs.
"I need to know if I'm looking at damage control here." His voice had grown coarser, harsh enough to send a prickle scrambling up her spine.
The callouses on his fingertips slid smoothly over her sensitive skin. Goosebumps coursed up her back and down her arms. Whatever he was looking for wasn't damage control, it felt more like patrolling his territory for evidence of incursion. The first hint of a flush warmed itself at the base of her throat.
"No, you're not." On some level she recognised her own voice, but the timbre was deeper and she was short of air all of a sudden. But then the air between worlds was supposed to be thin.
She let herself move into his space, trapping his wrist with her thighs and withdrawing her own hand. She could feel her eyes closing when he didn't pull back. She reached up to tug at the back of his neck, whispering into the heat of his skin to do her bidding.
"Don't stop."