Chapter Seven

"Agent Gibbs?"

He was starting to get sick of waking up without remembering falling asleep.

"Doc." He pushed himself up from the chair and stood. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Dr. Marquardt was standing on the other side of DiNozzo's bed, checking the monitors and making more notes in his chart. That chart was going to be enormous by the time all was said and done. "We discontinued the Versed about twenty minutes ago, and he'll be waking up soon." She glanced back at him with a smile, by far the most genuine one he'd seen on her face all night. "I thought you'd want to be awake for that."

He nodded and looked down at DiNozzo, but he looked back up almost immediately. "Discontinued the Versed? I thought you said you couldn't do that."

"Technically, we could have. But for his comfort, I didn't want to," she said. "Not so long as he was on the vent."

Gibbs caught her meaning instantly, and he stood straighter. "His lungs?"

"They're clear," she said. "No signs of pneumonia. There is still a chance he could develop it, but that risk is much smaller than it was six hours ago, and the antibiotics he's receiving should take care of any infection. Plus, the swelling in his throat is starting to subside, so if he should have any problems, we'll be able to secure an airway without any trouble."

He looked back down at Tony. There was a pinch between his eyebrows that hadn't been there before, and the muscles in his face weren't as relaxed as they had been.

"His saturation levels aren't as high as I'd like them to be, so he's still going to need oxygen, but we're going to use a mask. It'll be easier on him."

"Blood pressure?"

"Stabilized. It's at 95/60 now. It's still lower than I want it to be, but it's on its way up. It's going up slowly, but that's much better than the way it was jumping around two hours ago."

"What about his heart?"

Tony's eyes were moving around under his eyelids, and the muscles at the sides of his mouth were twitching. He was definitely waking up.

"Also better," Dr. Marquardt said. She stepped closer to DiNozzo's bed, and Gibbs looked up at her. "There is still some fluid, but most of it's gone. We'll keep the head of his bed elevated, and we're going to keep the diuretic going for a while longer, but I feel confident saying that the danger has passed."

Gibbs nodded and turned back to Tony. "So he'll be able to go home in a week or so?"

"Oh, no. Not a week. At this rate, he'll be able to go home tomorrow."

Gibbs snapped his head up. "What?"

Dr. Marquardt nodded and smiled once more. "Once we get him off the vent, if he doesn't have any other complications, we'll keep him for twenty-four hours for observation, but that's it. We'll watch him for infection, to make sure the CHF isn't coming back, and for any potential increase in intracranial pressure. But honestly, Agent Gibbs, the odds of any of that happening are incredibly low. Once his blood pressure is above 110/65, his blood volume is over 90%, and his sats are above 95% without supplemental oxygen, there's no reason for him to stay."

"That's insane." He shook his head in denial and confusion. "Seven hours ago, he was fifteen minutes from dead."

"I know it seems crazy," she admitted. "But it's not. Like I said last night, the only immediate threat to his life was the blood loss, and that ceased to be a danger as soon as we stopped him from losing more and started replacing what he'd already lost. So long as he continues recovering from the minor complications he's encountered and doesn't develop any more, he'll be fine."

He wanted to argue with her more, wanted to explain to her exactly why it was vital to Tony's continued survival that he not be released from the hospital, but he didn't have the chance. Tony's eyelids fluttered again, his eyebrows lowered, and within seconds, Gibbs was looking directly into a pair of green eyes that were clouded with confusion, widened in fear, and glassy from painkillers.

"Hey, DiNozzo."

He wanted to smile. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to tell Tony that it was over and he was safe and that everything was going to be okay. But he couldn't do any of those things. He'd made a promise, and he had a job to do. He couldn't just tell him; he had to show him.

"It's about time you woke up."

Someone was going to die.

Okay, maybe not die. But someone was going to seriously regret the day they were born. Or maybe just the day they pissed him off. Or maybe just the night before when they'd shown up for work but hadn't bothered to do their damn job.

He really didn't care.

Tim hadn't even waited for the elevator. As soon Abby had calmed down enough that she wasn't shaking and crying in his arms anymore, he'd headed for the stairs and run all the way to the squad room. He'd gone straight to his desk, loaded up the security footage, and forced himself to sit through the entire thing. Repeatedly.

Twenty-three seconds. That was how long it had taken for the first man to strangle Tony into unconsciousness and a second man to walk up and stick a needle in his neck. It took another thirty-six seconds for them to pick up Tony's weapon and keys, throw him into his car, and drive away

Fifty-nine seconds. That was it. Fifty-nine seconds had brought a perfectly normal night crashing to a halt. Fifty-nine seconds had left Tony alone in the hands of two men who tortured him nearly to death in Gibbs' basement. Fifty-nine seconds had almost cost Tony his life.

Fifty-nine seconds that someone should have seen.

He glanced at the clock on his computer. It was 5:30 in the morning. Tony had been attacked at 8:09 the night before, and the security guards worked twelve-hour shifts.

Tim jumped up from his chair and ran back down the stairs, but he didn't go to the lab. His mind was whirling, the images that he'd seen on the computer screen playing over and over again. He burst through the door on the main level and made his way across the lobby. The few people who were there that early in the morning looked up at him, several of them smiled, and a few called out a greeting, but he stalked right past them and ignored them all. He had a purpose and a goal. He had a destination. He had an objective.

He had a target.

He pulled open the door to the security center roughly and without announcing himself. The guard behind the desk - a man named Duncan, Tim remembered, Robert Duncan - looked up from the video monitors in front of him and smiled.

"Agent McGee," Duncan said brightly. "Is there something I can …?"

"Did you work the cameras last night?"

Duncan's face was instantly clouded with confusion. "What?"

Tim stepped closer to him and lowered his voice. "Did you work the cameras last night?" he repeated, pausing after every word.

"Yeah, I …"

He didn't wait for any more. He grabbed Duncan by the front of his jacket, pulled him out of his chair, and slammed him into the wall.

"Where the hell were you?!"

"What? I don't … what …?" Duncan stammered and sputtered, and the expression on his face was one of pure shock.

"At 20:09 last night!" Tim yanked Duncan toward him, then shoved him into the wall again. "Where were you?"

"At 20:09? I think I ... wait." Tim pulled him forward again, and Duncan held up his hands in supplication. "Wait!"

Tim didn't shove him again, but he didn't let go of his jacket, either.

"Where?"

"We got a call," Duncan said. "About 20:00 hours. A report of someone trying to breach the front gate."

"And?" His patience had done more than worn thin; it was completely gone. He wanted answers, and he wanted them yesterday.

"And I responded with everyone else. It turned out to be a false alarm. There wasn't anyone there, or any sign that there ever was. We're trying to track down who it was that called it in. I was back in here by 20:15. I reviewed the tapes from while I was gone, and I saw no …"

"You reviewed the tapes?" Tim couldn't keep the disbelief out of his voice. "All of them?"

Duncan nodded his head quickly. "For those fifteen minutes I was out front, yes."

He slammed him into the wall again.

"What?" Duncan's expression had changed. There was no confusion, shock, or uncertainty left on his face. There was fear.

"You'd better hope that I just caught you lying," Tim said through clenched teeth. "Because if you're telling the truth, I'm going do a lot more than have more than your job."

"I don't understand!"

"It's simple." He leaned forward until he was only inches from Duncan's face. "Either you didn't follow protocol, and you didn't review the tapes, or you watched Agent DiNozzo be attacked in the parking lot, strangled and drugged and kidnapped in his own damn car, and you did nothing about it." Tim narrowed his eyes and locked them on Duncan's. "Which is it?"

Duncan opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out.

"Which is it!"

Duncan's entire face fell. He closed his eyes and lowered his head. "I didn't review the tapes," he said quietly.

"You stupid son of a …"

"I was only gone fifteen minutes!" Duncan protested. "And I swear to you, I swear, Agent DiNozzo's car never left the Yard!"

"Oh, it didn't?" Tim let go of Duncan's jacket and took a step back. "Then how did it end up parked in front of Agent Gibbs' house?"

Duncan shook his head. "No. You can check the logs yourself. He never signed out at any of the gates that were open last night."

Tim tilted his head slightly. "The south gate," he said, almost to himself. "The south gate is still closed from Kale busting through it."

"Yes," Duncan said.

"Was anyone guarding it?"

"Of course!" Duncan answered. "The guard booth was damaged, and the camera is offline, but Gary was on foot patrol."

"Has Gary checked in yet this morning?"

"Yes. And he checked in every hour all night long, just like he was scheduled to do. The gate is barricaded. No one can come in or go out. Everyone has to go through the other gates, and I'm telling you, Agent DiNozzo never did."

Tim shook his head and stepped forward again. Duncan assumed that just because the south gate was barricaded, no one would use it. But to people who were trying to get in and out without being seen, an unmanned gate would seem like an open invitation, barricade or no. One man on foot patrol would have been easy for the men who'd attacked Tony to evade. Tony hadn't seemed to hear them, which meant they were skilled at stealth, and they obviously knew their way around the inside of the Yard.

"You're an idiot."

"Hey! Now, look, I don't know what happened to DiNozzo, but whatever it was, it wasn't my fault."

That was the final straw. Tim grabbed Duncan's jacket with his right hand and pinned him to the wall. He clenched his left hand into a fist and pulled it back.

"Timmy!"

Abby's voice surprised him, and he dropped his hands to his sides and turned to face her. She looked as shocked as Duncan had earlier, but she looked excited, too. "What, Abby?"

"I've got something."

He had no idea what she had, didn't even really remember what she'd been working on when he'd left her lab, but it whatever it was, the fact that she'd come to find him herself rather than just calling him told him it was important. He turned his back on Duncan and walked toward the door, but he wasn't finished yet.

"Your shift ends in an hour," he said without looking back. "When you leave, you clean out your desk, you turn in your badge, and you don't come back."

"You can't fire me!"

"No, but Director Vance can, and I promise you that he will." Tim stopped next to Abby and turned back around. "You left one man on foot, with no surveillance or backup, to guard a trashed gate, and at least two unauthorized people made it into the Yard. Those two men attacked and kidnapped an NCIS agent in the parking lot. You might have stopped them, if you'd been paying attention, might have saved him, if you'd reviewed the tapes, but you didn't. You didn't follow protocol, you didn't do your job, and you almost got a man killed. That man is one of Director Vance's agents," he said. "A member of Agent Gibbs' team, and my partner. My friend. You're done."

He put his hand on Abby's arm and led her out the door. He slammed it behind him before turning to face her.

"What have you got, Abs?"

"I know who attacked Tony!"

"Agent DiNozzo?"

Dr. Marquardt leaned down over Tony's bed. He turned his eyes away from Gibbs and toward her, and she smiled at him. "Can I call you Tony?"

DiNozzo nodded his head ever-so-slightly. "Okay, Tony. I'm Dr. Marquardt. I'm your surgeon. Do you know where you are?"

He glanced around the room, locking eyes with Gibbs briefly as he did, then looked back at her and nodded again.

"That's good," she said. "Now, I don't imagine having that tube down your throat is very fun, is it?" A slight head shake was the answer. "How about we get it out of there, then? Have you ever been extubated before?" When Tony shook his head again, she looked up at Gibbs.

"They didn't put him on the vent when he had the plague," he explained. "He came close to it, but they didn't."

"That's okay," Dr. Marquardt said. "It's really pretty easy. I'm going to count to three, and I need you to blow out as hard as you can, okay? Don't inhale, though. Just blow out. Got it?" Another nod. "On three then. One. Two. Three."

It only took a second to get the tube out. Tony, in true DiNozzo fashion, immediately turned toward Gibbs and opened his mouth to talk. His first inhale caused a coughing fit that doubled him over, pulling his shoulders and upper body up from the bed. Gibbs knew the second the strained muscles in his chest, ribs, and back made themselves known, because Tony went white. The increased pain made him inhale deeper, which in turn made the cough worse.

No amount of promises made to Ducky could stop Gibbs from reaching out to grab Tony's shoulders and push him gently back against the bed. "Easy, Tony," he said. "Slow down before you rip yourself in half."

"Talking is probably not a good idea right now," Dr. Marquardt added. "I know your throat is irritated from the tube, and it's still pretty badly swollen. It's going to hurt for a while, so let's try to keep talking to a minimum."

Tony nodded at her silently as he concentrated on slowing his breathing down, and his eyes watered as he tried – and failed – to swallow another cough.

"Agent Gibbs." He looked up, and Dr. Marquardt handed him a Styrofoam cup with a spoon in it. "Ice chips," she explained. "They'll help."

Gibbs wondered what Ducky would have said, if he'd seen him spoon-feeding Tony ice chips. It wasn't something he'd ever done before, and it really didn't fit with the whole 'bastard' thing, but from the look on Tony's face at that moment, it didn't much matter.

"That better?" he asked after the second spoon.

Tony let his head sink into his pillow and closed his eyes. "Ow," he whispered.

"You're in pain, Tony?" Gibbs rolled his eyes at the question; to him, the answer was obvious. Tony nodded again. "I'll get something for that. We're going to be moving you into your own room in just a bit, and it'll be a lot easier for all of us if you're not hurting when we do it."

She moved away and headed for the nurse's station, and Tony turned to Gibbs.

"What …?" His voice was breathy, haggard and broken.

"It's morphine," Gibbs said. "And you need it, so no arguing."

Tony shook his head, and his eyes widened. "No," he whispered. "What … happened?"

Gibbs stood straighter, but he never took his eyes off of Tony. "What happened?" he echoed. "You mean what happened to you?"

Tony nodded and looked up at Gibbs expectantly. Gibbs had made a mistake reading Tony's eyes when he'd first woken up. There was no fear in them; there was nothing but confusion. He wasn't scared, because he didn't know there was anything to be afraid of.

"You don't remember."

Tony shook his head silently.

Dr. Marquardt returned with a syringe in her hand. "That's perfectly normal, Tony," she said. She slid the needle into his IV line and pressed the plunger without pausing in her explanation. "The medication that we used to keep you sedated while you were on the vent can affect short-term memory. You also have a substantial head injury. That could be contributing to it."

Tony's eyebrows lowered again, and Gibbs realized that the whole time he'd been trying to read Tony's reaction, Tony had been studying his. Ducky had been right about what Tony would be looking for, and he wasn't finding it. He knew something was wrong, and he'd already picked up on the fact that something was off about how Gibbs was acting.

"What?" Tony asked again. "Bad … isn't it?"

He took a deep breath and forced himself back into his normal detached mode. "You've had worse," he said. He didn't believe it himself, couldn't think of any time – aside from the plague – when Tony had been hurt anywhere nearly as bad. But Tony had a history of believing every word he said, whether or not it was true. "You're fine."

"Don't ... feel fine."

Of all the times for Tony to argue with him, he had to choose that one.

Dr. Marquardt picked an oxygen mask up from the table beside her, stretched the strap out, and reached down to put it in place. "We need to get your oxygen levels up, Tony," she said. Gibbs didn't know if she was trying to distract Tony on purpose, but he was grateful to her all the same. "No more talking. I want you to concentrate on breathing."

"No." He lifted his right hand and weakly pushed her hands away. "Boss ..."

"Hey." Gibbs grabbed Tony's arm and put it back at his side. "What did she just tell you about talking?"

Tony's eyes narrowed, and the steady beep of the heart monitor sped up. He was getting agitated.

He was getting pissed.

"You," Tony said as he looked Gibbs directly in the eye. "Tell ... me."

He glanced at Dr. Marquardt, and he could see the sympathy in her eyes. She knew that even though it would fall to her to explain to Tony the generalities of his injuries, when the time came to fill him in on the specific details, it would be Gibbs who would tell him. She looked as uncertain as he felt, but their reasons were different. She thought Tony was asking what his injuries were. Gibbs knew he was asking what had been done to him, who had done it, and had Gibbs caught them.

He took a deep breath, turned slightly so his hip rested against the bedrail, let go of Tony's hand, and crossed his arms across his chest.

"I can't, Tony."

"Why ... not?"

He let his head fall forward slightly, and looked down at the floor. "Because I don't know."

Tony's head sank more deeply into the pillow, and he let out a pained sigh. Dr. Marquardt took the opportunity to settle the oxygen mask in place and adjust the knobs on the machine it was attached to.

Gibbs' mind was filled with a thousand different implications of what Tony had said. If he didn't remember what had happened to him, then there was no way he could tell them who'd done it. He couldn't tell them who grabbed him, where, or when. He couldn't tell them what they'd said. He couldn't identify their faces or their voices. He couldn't tell them anything, because he didn't remember.

Without Tony's testimony, they had nothing. They couldn't convict DelMar on nothing more than circumstantial evidence, disbelief in coincidences, and gut feelings. Tony had been the sure thing, the one person who Gibbs had been counting on to nail the bastard. What kind of a case were they going to be able to build without him?

Gibbs shook his head and made himself look Tony in the eye one last time.

"I don't know."