AN: I'd say this is the chapter you've been waiting for, except I think I'm going to be dodging rotten tomatoes at the end of this.
Chapter 21
Brad watched the team at the scene from behind the police tape, and he didn't like what he saw. McGee was pale enough to look like he could use a couple of units of blood, and Jimmy wasn't any better. Brad could see the ME's assistant's hands shaking as he helped Dr. Mallard examine the body. Dr. Mallard himself looked like one of his patients. Gibbs looked gray and exhausted in a way Brad had never seen before. The probie they'd brought along was nervous, and Ziva seemed wound tighter than Brad could remember seeing her in the few times they had met. Tony was all business, his usual good humor gone as he helped the rest of the team with the crime scene, and once he seemed to have to force himself to stand from where he had crouched to examine the ground.
Brad thought he had seen the team run ragged before, when Gibbs was chasing down Hannah Lowell. They had looked like paragons of health then compared to now, even Tony. He moved over near the medical examiner's van and waited until Jimmy was rolling the body toward it.
"Oh, Dr. Pitt." Jimmy stammered as he fumbled for words. "How- Are you-? What-?"
"Relax, Jimmy," Brad said. "I'm the one who called Tony about the body — I saw the commotion from my office. He called earlier to warn me about the serial killer."
Jimmy nodded. "It's crazy. I mean, not that we don't normally get crazy cases, but this one is weird even for us." He shivered. "Weirder when you know you're the target."
"This is the first victim that's standing in for you?" Brad asked.
"I don't know how McGee can handle them having killed a couple of times for him." Jimmy looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. "I'm worried about Dr. Mallard — he's trying to do his psychological analysis on this sicko, so I've been trying to deal with all the bodies, and now we've got two more, possibly three. He needs to take a real break, but I know he won't."
"You all need to take a break, Jimmy." Brad rested a hand on the assistant medical examiner's shoulder. "I think Tony looked better the first time I met him."
Jimmy's eyes widened. "That's not good."
"I know." Brad walked away, wondering how he could convince the team to take a break before one of them keeled over from some combination of stress, exhaustion and caffeine poisoning.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Vance kept one eye on Sciuto as she set up her lab and started running tests on the forensics that arrived by chopper from Norfolk. It hadn't escaped his notice that she was the only one who hadn't been targeted, and he knew it was too much to hope that the killer had skipped her because he couldn't find any Goth sailors.
Between that and working his way through the social network searches, Vance was not prepared for the beeping that erupted from his computer.
"Miss Scuito!" Vance stepped back from the machine.
"You got a ding, Leon!" Abby bounced over, her smile temporarily restored. "I didn't even realize- Oh!" Then she looked at the monitor. "Oh."
"Would you care to elaborate?" Vance asked.
"This is a search Ziva and I set up today. Or yesterday? Or last night? Sometime when we actually remembered the last time we slept. Anyway, we decided to pull all the cases of female personnel who had died and run them against the profiles of the various female agents who have been part of the team, even going back to Viv. It just got two matches." Abby hit a couple of buttons and the printer started whirring.
"Two?" Vance crossed his arms.
"Uh-huh." Abby read through the first one. "This was is Naval Intelligence, an analyst. She died of heart failure, but I'll bet if we tested the samples, it would be the same drug that caused our cryptographer's death." She frowned. "She's a young woman, with a husband who was left brain-dead by a car accident while she was deployed on the Enterprise. The Navy moved her back to DC and she died less than six months later."
"Nikki Jardine." Vance remembered the details he'd seen in her personnel file. "It her case it was her brother and an IED, but that's too much of a coincidence for me."
Abby nodded, but her pigtails barely moved. "And then there's this one." She sent a file to the plasma screen.
Vance read the sailor's file, then glanced over to see Scuito had wrapped her arms around herself and was squeezing more tightly than Kayla ever held her teddy bear as a child.
"This research scientist means everybody's been targeted," Vance said. "After today's body, Mr. Palmer was the last one."
"Does that mean we're next?" Her voice was so quiet he had to strain to make it out, something he never thought he'd say about the exuberant forensic scientist.
"This son of a bitch is not getting anybody on this team." But even as he said it, he was pulling out his phone to call Gibbs, make sure the team was safe. They needed to get back here, now. Before the killer struck again.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Within the hour, the entire team, including Dorneget and Brad Pitt, were in the bullpen. When Vance and Abby walked in, McGee tugged on her hand and pulled her close, feeling her tremble as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He watched as Vance lifted an eyebrow at Gibbs after scanning the group assembled.
"Brad insisted on coming, said he wanted to check us all out." Gibbs didn't give anything away, and McGee wondered if Gibbs thought the doctor was overreacting. And if he didn't, what did that mean?
"Nice to meet you, Dr. Pitt," Vance said. He surveyed the group. "As I'm sure you all know by now, Miss Scuito's searches turned up two more bodies while you all were at Bethesda, and Agent McGee believes he's found another body from a comment by the guards at Bethesda. Our killer has now targeted each member of this team, as well as past team members."
McGee could feel Abby's trembling moving into full-blown shakes, and he moved to stand behind her, his arms wrapped around her. Dorneget looked scared out of his mind, and Ducky looked older than McGee could ever have imagined.
Vance looked at each person in turn. "We do not know what our serial killer will do next, but I do know that having you outside the building is more of a liability than a help right now." He stepped up to face Gibbs. "As I'm sure Dr. Pitt will agree with. I'm bringing in Balboa's team to help with the fieldwork and running down leads, possibly Krone's team if needed. You each need to get some rest, and work on what we can do from inside the building."
McGee couldn't help but ask. "What if it's somebody inside NCIS? We still haven't ruled that out."
"Correct, McGee. But we have much more control over the situation here." But before Vance could say anything more, Ducky's cell phone rang.
The medical examiner looked at the phone and leaned against Gibbs' desk. "Excuse me one moment." He answered the phone, and his shoulders seemed to shrink as he listened to the person on the other end. But McGee couldn't tell from the conversation what was going on. Finally, Ducky disconnected and put the phone down.
"That was Malia Jackson. Gerald Jackson, young Mr. Palmer's predecessor, was fatally shot on his way home from work this afternoon." Ducky paused. "He was shot in the same shoulder whose injury caused his departure from NCIS."
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Gerald Jackson. I had his death planned since the day he left the team. He did not know it, but he has been the key from that moment, the gateway to the final stages of my plan. Now, they know. They realize that each of them, in turn, will be a target. With this one, Number 15, this is where the hunt begins in earnest. They know. I've given them enough information that they can start to learn just how thorough I've been. Leroy Jethro Gibbs doesn't realize it yet, but he's running out of chances. Three more. Three kills. And then I strike at his team. His current team. With each of the remaining kills, his fear will grow. And his ability to catch me will be less and less. Will he break before I finish? Or will he still be an NCIS agent in good standing when I deliver the final blow, the one that puts me ahead even of my hero?