AN - Much appreiciation for your continued support for this little story. All your comments and contributions have provoked my muse so there will be more after this .. how much more I've frankly given up guesstimating. I'll keep writing until to paraphrase MW I'm ready to stick a fork in this and call it done.
"How do you know this Dowling?" Ziva asked as they made their way towards the staircase on the opposite side of the Hotel to where the Hostages were being held. This would allow them to access the floor where the Hostages were without spooking Dowling before they could make verbal contact. "Has he done security work for NCIS?"
"When are our lives ever that easy Ziva?" Tony queried as he held open the door to the stairwell for her, letting her pass through, before following, allowing the door to swing in McGee's face.
"Please don't let this be another totally unrealistic story of 'when I was a cop in Baltimore'," McGee scowled, as he barely stopped the door from hitting him, the delay forcing him to hurry to catch up. In the time he had been working at NCIS he had heard endless stories about DiNozzo's prowess during his two years at Baltimore working homicide, narcotics, undercover, traffic and who knew what else. McGee had long since suspected that most of Tony's stories about his previous career were simply designed to fit the situation and extract whatever information he needed at the time, which was fine just so long as he didn't expect to fool his own team mates."Just what exactly did you do when you worked there anyway?"
"I saved Gibbs' life." Tony glared at him over his shoulder.
Behind him McGee exchanged a look with Ziva not entirely sure how to take that. She simply shrugged, before returning her attention to the task in hand. She could see by the set of Tony's shoulders that he was worried. This Dowling was obviously a real threat to Gibbs not to mention the other hostages. She narrowed her eyes slightly as she considered that, even accounting for their Boss's willingness to talk himself into trouble, there were other far more high profile figures at the conference if this Dowling wished to draw attention to his issues and bring pressure to bear.
"He knows Gibbs," She realised. "This is about Gibbs."
"Never thought that keeping the lists of those who are attending these conferences Top Secret was actually a security risk," Tony confirmed her suspicions as he kept his focus on climbing the stairs. "If I had known Dowling was coming I would never have let Gibbs attend."
"Please," McGee rolled his eyes. "Since when did anyone ever 'let' Gibbs do anything."
Tony stopped dead and turned to fix his subordinate with an icy look. Ziva almost winced. The words might have a grain of truth but flagging up the obvious flaw of Gibbs' headstrong personality when the Italian was already feeling the weight of his responsibilities was hardly helpful.
"I'm the senior field Agent," Tony focused on McGee. "It's my duty to point out to our esteemed leader when he currently has his head up his ass. And if that doesn't work, then I do what Riker always does for Picard, McStarfleet. I wait and I worry and then I do whatever it takes to save him from himself.
"Oh," McGee swallowed.
He hadn't thought the Senior Field Agent had known enough to correctly understand the criticism that Starfleet had pulled out the Captains chair for the First Officer four times and Riker had refused to sit down. He may have been wrong about that. McGee couldn't deny that DiNozzo had been a fine second in commend, never afraid to go toe to toe with Gibbs and going out of his way to shield his teammates from the ex-marines wrath, which only made it all the harder to understand why he would settle for second best.
"So this Dowling has had dealings with NICS before?" Ziva pressed for information, as they continued to climb.
"One of my earlier cases with Gibbs," Tony nodded. "Not long after the Boss approved Dawn Robert's transfer and before he was forced to accept Steven Brooker's transfer TAD from California. We solved it but at a price. Dowling's sister and her children had to go into witness protection. He was deployed overseas at the time and came home to find that they had simply vanished. He had never married, his parents were dead, his sister and her children were his only family. He hasn't seen them since."
"This is what he's been waiting for, someone to bring his sister here?" McGee queried.
"That or Gibbs' head on a platter," Tony was succinct. "He blames him for encouraging Maureen to testify. He thinks that if he hadn't been out of contact on some super secret super mission he could have protected her and there would have been no need for the witness protection programme."
"So really he blames himself for not being here to protect his family?" Ziva deduced.
"And Gibbs is a convenient scapegoat." McGee put in. "Easier than blaming himself."
"Yeah," Tony sounded unexpectedly irritated. "And you know how Gibbs is. If there is any blame to be dished out he is right up there wanting it all for himself."
"But it was Dowling's fault he wasn't there." To McGee's mind it was logical. There was nothing more important than family. He had risked his career and Gibbs' wrath to protect his little sister, although, his mathematical mind also had to vector in the man's service to his country. "Well not his fault exactly, as he was probably out saving lives, and protecting the world as we know it but .."
"Gibbs would not see it that way." Ziva spoke up.
The unspoken knowledge that Gibbs still blamed himself for not being at home to prevent the deaths of his wife and daughter hung in the air between them. His sense of justice might drive him to want the sister to testify but he would understand the soldier's pain at the loss of his only family.
"Except, it wasn't Gibbs fault," Tony surprised them. "It was mine."
"You screwed up?" McGee couldn't hide the note of glee in his voice.
He had to be honest with himself, transferring to Major Crimes as a Field Agent had been a dream come true. That the legend that was Leroy Jethro Gibbs would personally handpick him for his team had seemed like the pinnacle of his career. Except, the reality of the situation had quicklyn sent him crashing back down to earth, oh he had been able to shine when the team needed technical support, although Abby was one of the few people he had ever met who could give him a run for his money there, but Gibbs had hired him as a Field Agent and he had only been prepared to cut him so much slack for being the newbie. McGee simply wasn't used to being out of his depth.
All through school his studies had come easily to him. He quickly learnt to avoid things that were not his forte and channelled his energies into areas he could excel like the scouting movement. So, failure rarely happened to him. As an Agent on Gibbs' team he was forced to confront things, the way dead or dismembered bodies made him nauseous, his inexperience in reading a suspect or a crime scene. He had constantly felt like he was lagging behind DiNozzo and to some degree Kate, whose own backgrounds made them far more suited to those kinds of skills. To the best of his knowledge no-body had ever called the ex-FBI Agent or former Homicide Detective "Probie."
"Yeah," The flat emotionless tone from the usually exuberant DiNozzo caught McGee by surprise. "I did. And now Gibbs is paying the price."
"You think this Dowling will kill him?" As usual Ziva was brutally direct.
"Not if I have anything to do with it," Tony's tone was hard as iron. "Gibbs already stepped up to the plate once to cover my ass. I'm sure as hell not going to let him carry the can this time."
"If we are to prevent that, then we need to know exactly what happened." Ziva pointed out.
Tony's shoulder's tensed and as they walked the next few flights in silence McGee thought the Italian wasn't going to answer her. Which was a little unusual for whatever you might say about DiNozzo he was the first to admit that he had messed up, McGee couldn't help but admire him for that. When he did finally start talking, in a low, controlled, voice, it was the last thing McGee expected to hear.
"What Dowling doesn't know is that his sister wasn't the witness. She said she saw nothing, she knew nothing and so NCIS had no real case. We had her boyfriend in interrogation for the rape and murder of a Petty Officer and he was all set to walk. Gibbs told me to take the kids for ice-cream while he had another crack at the mother. We were workinmg the case two-handed so he didn't have many options but me and kids is never a good idea so I bribed Abby with Caff Pow to come along."
"The children were the witnesses," McGee realised. "Dowling's sister put her family into witness protection because she was protecting her children."
"She wasn't stupid," Tony agreed. "Her boyfriend came from a rich and powerful family with long arms and even longer memories. If they testified against him nothing would ever be safe. Her job, her fitness as a parent, hell even the kid's admission to College, there was nothing this man and his relations couldn't sabotage."
"So she did not talk," Ziva nodded. "That is understandable."
"But one of the children talked to you?" McGee was understandably surprised. Tony didn't have the best rapport with children. "Kids hate you."
"The little girl needed to go to the bathroom. Abby took her. They had to wait in line. It took a while. Apparently, she couldn't understand why I hadn't made her go with me. Apparently, Mommy's boyfriend always took her to the bathroom when they went anyplace. That was how he showed her how much he loved her." Tony's tone was bitter.
"The little girl talked to Abby?" Ziva frowned. "That would not constitute a witness statement. She would need to repeat her allegation to a Federal Agent. It would need to be recorded."
"She was four years ZIva," Tony hissed. "Do you really think she would be capable of making that kind of stuff up? I wrote it up and between us Gibbs and I fixed it so the kid didn't have to go to court. Sarah was both devastated and terrified. She knew what boyfriend's family were like and all she could think about was getting her children as far from their reach as she could. That's when she signed up for witness protection."
"But you did a good thing. You protected her family," McGee was confused. "What makes you think you screwed up?"
"Because Gibbs convinced Dowling that it was down to him that Sarah and her kids went into witness protection and it wasn't. That was all down to me and now Gibbs' head is on the block becuse of it."
Tony's body language did not encourage any further conversation and Ziva was too busy with her own thoughts. So it was McGee's slightly breathless observation which finally broke the silence between them.
"Is there a good reason we didn't just take one of the elevators?"