Note: Congrats to the NCIS Team and everyone associated with it for their 300th Episode, and one heck of a penultimate season finale episode! I think this storyline should have a Surgeon General's Warning: "Exercise Caution While Watching if you Suffer From Chest Pains, Lack of Bladder Control, Vertigo, Separation Anxiety..." We'll Miss You, Michael Weatherly!

Down in the Lab, McGee hung up his cell phone, announcing, "Tony just called. Gibbs is on his way down. With our suspect, who's apparently no longer a suspect." As Abby shot him a confused stare, McGee nodded. "You're not going to believe this! Gibbs knows him!"

"What? How?"

"I don't know, but he's looking for pictures this guy took of the shooting."

Abby shook her head as she investigated the antiquated plastic box before her, the one that had nearly blinded her when she first picked it up. "I think this is a camera, but I honestly can't tell! Where's the film? I can't open this up, and I don't want to risk breaking it if its owner knows Gibbs somehow." She stabbed angrily at the item. "I hate that we don't have anything to give him! Gibbs is going to come down here and ask what we have, and I'll have to tell him that we have a whole lot of nothing. I'd at least like to find those pictures Tony told us about!"

McGee picked the small black box up and rotated it. "I wonder if I can find any information on the Internet about it… This thing looks old enough, though, that the Internet wasn't even around when it was built!"

Abby perked up when she heard the elevator's tell-tale 'ding' over the clacking of McGee's fingers on the keyboard. "Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs!" she exclaimed, rounding to greet him as he strode through the door.

The former (?) 'suspect' walked in with him, and Abby looked him over. He looked absolutely exhausted, like he'd been on the run for a week. Moving past that, her eyebrows rose in appreciation of his athletic good looks. There was something familiar about the smooth, ageless face and the sandy hair worn on the longish side. When he met her gaze, he lit up wth recognition and a delighted smile curved boyishly on his lips.

Abby stepped right up to him, her nose only an inch away from his own. Her frosty emerald eyes met his warm brown ones for a long moment before she stepped back. "McGee, you're not going to believe this, but I know him too! But where do I know you from?" she demanded, squinting at him. When his only response (the only response he could have fit into the millisecond she offered) was an expectant smile, she again bounded up to him and stared deeply into his eyes. "Who are you?"

He gave her an extra second to figure it out, then grinned widely. "Abs, I could almost be hurt that you don't remember me! I'll give you a hint; what's the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?"

"Huh?" McGee couldn't help but ask.

Even Abby looked confused, but when he tossed her what looked like a farewell wave, an old memory rose to the surface. "One you see 'later', and the other 'after a while'…" Her dark lips parted, then her face brightened with realization. "MacGyver from the Phoenix Foundation! Oh, I can't believe this! This is so amazing! After all this time… Oh, wow!" she squealed in delight, throwing her arms around him

"Abs!" Gibbs exclaimed, catching MacGyver as her enthusiastic embrace buckled his knees. "Abby, cut that out! Explain!"

She let MacGyver go so quickly that he lost balance and nearly tipped over while she danced in a quick circle, repeating, "MacGyver, from the Phoenix Foundation!" She beamed at the two baffled agents staring at her. "When I was in High School, there was this multi-faceted environmental study being conducted. My school offered those of us in the science field a chance to volunteer, and I jumped at it! I worked with him on that, both in the field and in the lab!"

"Abby Scuito from Jefferson Parish, my right hand in the consecutive Levy Repair and Alligator Repopulation projects. You were the brilliant bouncing ball of energy that helped me design and implement the sonic barrier to keep the gators out of the construction area."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed. "I watched you 'MacGyver' a fix for our inflatable raft with an acetylene torch and a raincoat when that gator chewed a hole in it!"

He grinned as the details came back to him. "I remember that! You didn't panic… and that was probably the only reason we got out of that without being eaten!"

"And when the levies kept getting sabotaged?" Abby reminded him.

"You helped me figure a way to ID those responsible. That mud was not easy to make a footprint mold of!"

Noticing the pleased surprise on Gibbs' and McGee's faces, Abby beamed at them, then returned the brilliance of her smile back to her former mentor. "I want to thank you, Mac; your encouragement of my goals to be a forensic scientist really helped me when others tried to persuade me to change majors!"

Mac was actually blushing. "Aww, wow. You've done yourself proud, Abby! I knew you were going to go far… and look at you now!"

"I'm glad to see you're still with the the Phoenix Foundation… but would you mind telling me why the Foundation won't release any information about you?" Her dark eyebrows lowered as one of her computer screens flashed a red box, and she turned away to read the screen. "I had a hard time running your fingerprints…"

Stretching his long fingers out to examine them, Mac admitted, "I don't have many prints left."

"But I managed," Abby steamrolled. "What I had of your prints are in the system, but they're classified. And I still can't figure out why you have only one name."

"Abs," Gibbs sighed, signaling for her to get back on track. "We've got more important things to do."

As only Abby could, she switched gears instantly, whirling back to the table and picking up the plastic item before them. "We found… this, whatever it is… in the Jeep. We can't seem to figure out how to process the film…." She broke off in defensive surprise as both Gibbs and MacGyver started chuckling. "What?"

Gibbs tried to hide his amusement to spare her feelings. "It's a Polaroid, Abs!"

It was obvious that still didn't clarify matters. MacGyver made an attempt while following Gibbs' cue and swallowing his grin. "The whole point of a Polaroid is that it develops its own film on the spot. Did you find any square photographs?" When Abby shook her head, Mac scrunched his eyes up in an attempt to remember where they might have ended up. "Try the yellow envelope that was next to the driver's seat. I dumped them in there when they fell out of the camera."

Abby whipped around so fast her pigtails lashed against her neck. "We hadn't gotten to that yet. We were too busy trying to figure this out." She dug the envelope out of the plastic evidence bag, pouring the enclosed photos out onto the desk.

"They stopped making this brand and style over a decade ago," McGee mentioned, holding the ancient camera up and reading the results of his Internet search on the item. "Where on earth do you buy film for this?"

"Buy? You can't buy that anymore. I have to make my own."

Even Gibbs turned to stare at him in confusion. "Why don't you just get a new camera?"

Mac shrugged. "This one still works?"

Gibbs snorted. "The Jeep? The Polaroid? You really don't change, do you?"

"Thank God, no!" Mac laughed. "Appreciate the classics, but embrace the new, right? It's a hobby of mine, although I do stay on the cutting edge of modern technology…" He glanced at Abby and McGee, noticing with trepidation that his laptop was on the table, sprouting wires like an old potato. "I know you have to go through everything, but please be careful with that."

"Absolutely!" Abby insisted. "We're treating it with kid gloves as we process it!"

McGee gestured to the laptop. "Speaking of 'Cutting Edge'...What's with the security on this? Might make it easier for us to process if you give us access."

"You tried to mirror the hard drive, right? Well, that's what locked it up. Did you guys notice the sensors on the letters 'a' and 'k'?" He couldn't help a grin as Abby and McGee nearly bumped heads as they dove to examine the laptop. "When I use the keyboard, it picks up..."

"Your biometrics," Abby interrupted as a lightbulb went off. "Basically, you are the one and only key to the encryption! That's handy, but what if something were to happen to you?"

"There is a decryption program built in to the software, but it has to be unlocked from the Security Department at the Phoenix Foundation first, and then the same code used with the laptop within five minutes of generation."

When an expectant silence followed his words, Mac glanced at Gibbs. "Did I miss something?"

Gibbs gestured towards the computer. "Unlock it!"

Mac carefully disconnected the leads and put his fingers on the keyboard. He tapped the keys a few times, then shook his head. "I hate to say, but you guys tripped the 'dead-man's lock'. The computer thinks something's happened to me, and that you're trying to fake your way in using my prints... such as they are," he said, wiggling all ten long digits. It was obvious that, while he still had full use of them, most of his fingerprints had been burned off over the years.

Gibbs reached over to the desk and handed Mac the receiver from Abby's phone. "Make your call."

MacGyver replaced the receiver gingerly, giving Gibbs a pained smile. "Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I'll need my phone to do it."

Gibbs turned back to Abby and McGee. "Get him his phone," he directed.

Both of them sifted through the evidence bags on the table. "I don't remember seeing a phone," McGee admitted.

"I don't either," Abby said, reading over the list that had come in with all of the boxes from the crime scene.

Mac looked genuinely nervous. "I really need to call in, Gibbs. There will be a lot of people worried about me, and I need to tell them that I'm all right. If it's not here, it must still be back at the crime scene."

Gibbs tugged his phone from his pocket and dialed. "DiNozzo! You pick up that footage yet? Good. Head back to the crime scene. Mac's cell phone isn't in Evidence. Find it." He hung up and jammed the phone back into his pocket before listening to DiNozzo's answer.

"Your conversational skills still amaze me," MacGyver said with a shrug. "I hope he finds it. You do not want to jump through the hoops necessary to do this the hard way."

McGee's jaw dropped incredulously. "This is the easy way?" When their guest nodded, Tim grew curious. "What's so important about the encryption on your phone? Why not call in on a regular line, and have them scramble it from their end?"

"Long story, there," MacGyver sighed. "Let's just say that there's a lot about the Phoenix Foundation that is highly classified, and now that the laptop's programming thinks it's been compromised, there's only one way to get access without jumping through unimaginable hoops."

Gibbs again made a gesture that incited everyone to get back on track. "The pictures, Abs." Turning back to MacGyver and noting the unease on his face, Gibbs nudged him in the ribs. "DiNozzo'll find it. Focus on this first."

Abby had arranged the square photographs on the desk before her, and at Gibbs' nod, she slid a few of the photos under her microscope, putting the captured images up on the plasma screen. "Surprisingly, these are clear enough that I can probably run facial recognition on them. It looks like our Petty Officer knew his attacker."

"Or at least thought he did," Mac added as the next images were projected. "That's The Cougar, a singularly unpleasant man with an even more unpleasant occupation. Oh, good; I got a clear shot of his car… Please run the plates on that, Tim. It looks to me like Andy was going into this meet with an idea of who he was meeting with…" He gestured for Abby to swap out the next picture. "…and this guy here wasn't what he was expecting. He's back-pedaling here, turning to run, and then…"

"Boom," Abby agreed as the next picture showed the literal 'smoking gun' moment.

"An inch higher, and I might have been able to save him," Mac mumbled, his voice dropping as he looked down.

Gibbs slid a look at him out of the corner of his eye. "Don't start."

Mac's expression grew challenging. "You're going to tell me there was nothing I could do? I'd been following this kid for three days. I had a pretty good idea what he was aiming to do, and I was too far away to stop him… and you're going to tell me I couldn't have done anything else?"

A sharp nod accompanied an even sharper, "Yup." Gibbs stabbed a finger at the screen. "Why were you following this kid in the first place?"

"A favor to an old 'friend'. You remember Jack?"

"Dalton?" Gibbs groaned. "Jeez, Mac!"

"I know, I know!" Mac protested, throwing his hands up. "Even Pete couldn't ever figure out why I kept getting mixed up with him..." He noticed the confusion on Abby and McGee's face, and clarified, "Pete Thornton was my old Director, as well as my best friend." Wincing under the weight of Gibbs' disapproving glare, Mac attempted to defend himself again. "I hadn't seen Jack in years, and I guess I'd blanked out most of those memories… I kinda hoped he might've grown up a little bit."

Gibbs' expression clearly indicated his thoughts on that subject, and they weren't favorable. "So, Jack asked you to tail this kid?"

"Yeah… Turns out he was the son of one of Jack's pilots. They were afraid he was getting into trouble, and they wanted me to see what he was up to."

"Yeah?"

"Obviously, he was in trouble," Mac concluded. "Still not a hundred percent sure what he was involved in, though. Jack wasn't too clear on the details, if that comes as a surprise to you." He couldn't help a snort of wry amusement at Gibbs's heavenward gaze.

"You said, 'one of Jack's pilots'?" Gibbs backtracked.

Mac spread his hands wide in a gesture of disbelief. "Yeah, Dalton Airlines is alive and running. Out of the Caymans, but it's alive and running!"

...

Note: So, is this the "Mystery Friend In Common"? For those who say "No!" you have just won yourselves an imaginary box of paperclips. Small ones. The Jumbo size will be awarded later.