I recently stumbled over the fact that it seems like Jenny's last name is actually written "Shepard". I was too lazy to check it on the show, but I will keep it "Sheppard" for the sake of continuity in this story. Hope that is ok with you.
And thank you for the reviews!
Chapter 6: Secrets
It was like the words Ziva had just spoken were manifesting themselves in front of his eyes, the script blurry, but with blinking lights that made him dizzy. Jenny's daughter. Jenny's daughter. Jenny's daughter. Jenny's daughter. Jenny's daughter. Jenny's daughter.
"Oh wow," Tony summed it up.
When the surprise slowly wore off the anger came and then quickly turned into fury. If Jenny hadn't already been dead he might have killed her that second. She had a daughter and had never told him. However she wasn't there anymore to be yelled at and so he turned to the messenger. His blue eyes were so full of uncontrolled rage that the assassin took a step back and involuntarily changed her stand, so she could fight off an attack.
"Why do I only find out about this now?" he yelled at her. A few times she opened her mouth and seemed to lose her voice or the words until she spoke.
"It was the only thing that Jenny ever made me swear I wouldn't tell anyone. And that didn't end after her death," Ziva said quietly, but with conviction. "I swore I wouldn't tell anyone," she emphasized.
He knew she was telling the truth, but it didn't really quench his anger.
"Ziva with me, my office," he hissed and jerked his thumb in direction of the elevator. "And you find me that girl!" he ordered the rest of the team.
In the elevator he hit the stop button when it had barely started moving.
"What the hell were you thinking? You knew this all along and are only telling me this now? Swore, my ass. Jenny is dead, someone is killing everyone who ever had a connection to her and you sit on your damn promises," he went on yelling at her and couldn't keep himself from slamming his fist against the metal wall beside Ziva's head. She gave him the satisfaction of flinching. "Explain yourself," he went on, in a dangerously quiet voice.
"When I saw the set up I suspected that Mossad or some other highly trained agents were involved. But only when I saw the message in Jenny's bathroom did I make the connection. However, I thought it couldn't be true," Ziva defended herself. "I hoped it wouldn't be true," she added with more passion.
"You should have come to me when you first suspected," he barked at her.
"And tell you what? That maybe Jenny's sixteen year old daughter is out there killing people for god knows what reason? That the girl she died protecting is now a killer herself, because my father turned her into one and I couldn't stop him?" Her voice was shaking when she yelled at him this time.
"I want to know everything. Every detail and you better not leave anything out," he warned her and then flipped the switch again. For a few seconds they rode upwards until Ziva reached over and stopped the elevator again.
"If Mossad finds her, they will kill her," she said out loud what she was worrying about.
"Then we better find her first," he replied and flipped the switch again.
"Twelve years ago I met Jenny and Livvy for the first time. My father owed someone at NCIS a favor and they called it in by asking for protection for Livvy. Joelle Liv Sheppard became Joelle Levi and at the same time all traces of her existence were erased in the US. I don't know what made Jenny suspect that someone was after her daughter, but she sure wasn't taking any chances. " Ziva started telling what she knew, while the team sat in the real conference room to get briefed. Even Ducky, Palmer and Director Vance had joined them. "Jenny went back to work after some months, which she needed to get Livvy settled in. From then on she stayed with my family, mostly Ari's side," she went on. "When I came here she swore me to secrecy again and we never talked about it afterwards." She looked up to see if he had any questions, but he just sat there, taking it all in.
"Go on," he requested calmly.
"Jenny never wanted that her daughter had anything to do with Mossad. She said that she hadn't sacrificed so much in order to keep her safe, just to have her fight the war of others. But my father always wanted her for the agency. Livvy was bright, and a great athlete. What made her invaluable though, was her ability to detect lies. I have never seen anyone like her. Gibbs, your gut... she's better," Ziva said with a small smile full of admiration and Tony snorted.
"Jenny , didn't give in though," he knew.
"Neither did my father. Every time Jenny was gone again he trained Livvy with riddles that prepared her to decipher codes. She learned to build and disarm bombs instead of playing with Lego. He left her blindfolded somewhere in the wilderness and she had to find her way back. He raised her like he raised his own kids," Ziva recounted and kept her yes on the table because she didn't want to see the sympathy in the eyes of the others. "For Livvy it was fun, like an adventure game. She never had to torture small animals or shoot her own pets. He knew Jenny would find out." She ignored Abby's gasp of outrage. "When Jenny died however he suddenly had free reign. When I stayed in Israel last, after Michael's death, I saw her for the last time. She told me that Eli wanted her to go on her first Mossad mission, but that her mother had forbidden it. She was scared, I could tell, but I couldn't help her at the time. Before I left for my own mission she warned me. She said that my father wasn't a good man and that I should look out. She was right again," Ziva finished. They were all silent and took in what she had just told them.
"Twelve years ago... that's roughly around the time Jenny left me the Dear John letter on the plane," he spoke up, knowing that his team long knew about his prior relationship with Jenny anyway. And if they didn't know they were suspecting.
"I don't know if those two events were connected," Ziva replied and shrugged.
"Back then she didn't know Eli David and he couldn't owe her a favor. She must have had help," he went on, thinking back to the old days. "Who helped her hiding her child?" he asked, not expecting an answer.
"I did," Leon Vance suddenly spoke up and all eyes were on him suddenly. When no one spoke and everyone just stared at him, he elaborated. "Five years before she had been assigned to my team in L.A. for personal reasons. Turned out the personal reasons were a pregnancy. I kept her on my team as long as she could work, she went on maternity leave and shortly after she had the baby she returned to work. Then her father was dead and she came to me, saying that she knew it hadn't been suicide. Her father had made business with an arms dealer named La Grenouille and had screwed him over. Grenouille had sworn to destroy his family," Vance added his part of the story. "She was hysterical back then, scared for her daughter and that he would find out. So we took everything off the records to calm her and I told her that if she had any indication that La Grenouille had found out about her child she should come to me and I would help her. She did four years later. Eli owed me one and I called in the favor for her."
"She came to you? She was my probationary agent, then my partner, even during her leave for L.A. Why didn't she come to me?" Gibbs asked him.
"I don't know, she never told me. I always suggested however that her sudden transfer to L.A. had something to do with you," Vance said pointedly. And he was right. Before she had left for L.A. she had been his probationary agent and during a stake out one night one thing had led to another while he had still been married. He had told her he couldn't do this and she had left shortly afterwards. When she had returned to his team eight months later he had been divorced and she had been assigned his partner for an undercover mission in Europe. The dates and timelines suddenly slapped him hard in the face and fear settled in his stomach. Livvy couldn't be... Jenny wouldn't have...
"I've always admired your way with children. Ever think of having any?"
" Is that an offer Jen?"
"No, it wasn't an offer, Jethro. It was merely an observation."
"You know why I get along with kids so well? Because when they lie, they don't have the guile to get away with it."
"Livvy's father?" he pressed out and couldn't even form a full sentence. It just couldn't be...
"I don't know. Birth certificate said 'unknown'," Vance replied, but the way he looked at him he knew he suspected the same thing. Looking around he realized everyone did.
"What do we do, Gibbs? We can't let Jenny's baby be killed by bad Mossad people," Abby asked.
"We need to find her," he repeated his earlier statement to Ziva.
"But how?" Abby requested and sounded helpless.
"We need to find out what she's planning next, maybe we can get her there," he thought out loud.
"I will call Eli and tell him that I want that girl alive. That way he knows we are looking for her and can't just make her disappear," Vance decided.
"I will see if I can find anything on Jenny's shawl and the picture. Maybe some particulates can tell us where Livvy was," Abby had her mind back on forensic evidence.
"Tony, McGee, go back to Jenny's place and see if you can find anything that might help us," he decided. "Ziva, you work with Ducky. I need a psychological profile on her so we can get into her head. Right now, you're the only one here who even knows her," he finished his instructions.
"Jethro, judging by what I heard so far, I feel obliged to point out that the girl is most likely scared out of her mind. In that condition she is a threat to others. With her training she will not hesitate to shoot if she feels trapped. If you find her, be careful," Ducky spoke up.
"Livvy knows me and I know her. She will not kill me," Ziva insisted.
"Ok, if you find her or think where she is, no one goes without Ziva," Gibbs decided, his feeling telling him that the new American was right. Everyone got up and left to get to their tasks as quickly as possible, except for him. The director was the last to leave and he stopped him before he could walk out the door.
"Leon?" he asked and his boss turned around again, closed the door behind him when he saw the expression in his eyes.
"Do you think..." he didn't finish the question. Vance knew what he was asking however.
"I don't know, Jethro. I always suspected... her initials are J.L. after all." he paused. "Then again, she looks nothing like you," the director said the last part with a small smile.
"All Jenny?" he asked.
"All Jenny. Except for her dark hair," Vance grinned, opened the door again and left the room.
TBC