Chapter Two
Get her out of here
Gibbs slams the Exit door to the huge maze out of his way. It crashes into the brick wall with a loud bang and he follows his Sig into the labyrinth. The sight that greets him does little for his nerves.
He'd run around the corner of the wide building and saw the two women heading toward him and the white van that stood between them. They'd tried to run, but high heels on uneven ground had been their downfall - in the blonde's case literally so. He'd caught up to her when the brunette ran off, and she gave him little challenge. Face down, right wrist cuffed back to slim left ankle had ended her escape.
The brunette, having half a minute head start while he'd secured her cohort, was slightly more of a challenge, but within a quarter kilometer on grass he'd brought her down and secured her with his reserve cuffs to a three hundred pound generator. Then, ignoring pleas and screams alike, he'd run back to the maze building.
The back door has a panic bar on the inside, nothing at all on the outside, forcing him to run to the front where he'd run into the Security Guards in their jeep and sent the anxious men toward the first of his prisoners while giving orders for Metro Police aid and an ambulance.
Now inside the clear maze he pulls up his Sig, takes in the scene at a glance. Palmer's midway up the far right white wall, laying on her back (Why? Unconscious?) DiNozzo's at the far end, tied to a chair. He also notices the bullet holes in the glass panels beyond Palmer. She'd tried to shoot. Did she take herself out with a ricochet? She's too far away for him to see blood.
He sees the arrow near the entrance which directed Palmer to her right, but he's at the exit and turns left, straight to the far left corner, then a right to skim the length of the building all the way to the far corner.
His hard run ends with a right turn and DiNozzo.
He hurries to the bound man, notes as he arrives that the tube is kinked over, the flow of liquid stopped - until for some reason it takes that moment to unbind.
He clenches the tube in his right fist, with his left hand he fishes the folding knife from his back pocket, opens it and severs the tube a half inch from DiNozzo's arm, quickly knots the tube to stem the flow that washes over his hands. Abby - no, Ruby Rae - will need all she can get to analyze this stuff so they can get the antidote.
He glances back long enough to see Michelle Palmer sit up. She doesn't look wounded. Why didn't she get here?
He shelves this question, turns to cutting DiNozzo's ropes.
Where the Hell are the EMTs?
x
Michelle Palmer sits up, not at all an easy thing after an Astral Projection. She should take time to run through the reintegration process to rejoin soul to body but adrenaline helps get her up where Wiccan Magic doesn't.
She pushes herself to her feet, sees Gibbs cutting Agent DiNozzo loose, and staggers to the side, slams into the glass corner. This is all that keeps her from falling again.
When Gibbs had arrived, from her forward perspective seeming to appear out of thin air, her focus on the tube had slipped and she watched it open and him grab it. Then he stepped into the same space she was in. She felt the momentary disturbance of his being inside her in a way nowhere as pleasant as sex - and it flung her back into her own body.
There are three ways to end an Astral Projection: the proper way through willed reintegration, the spontaneous return if something touches her quiescent body and then this way, the slightly sickening intrusion of another living being into her. The first way is natural and somewhat pleasant, the second way slams her back inside her body like a Warner Brothers cartoon character colliding head-on with a brick wall... and then there's this way.
Normally she can withstand it and not break, this time she's so disturbed by anxiety that she can't control the instantaneous return that leaves her spirit ringing as though her physical body were a large bell vibrating too much for her to do more in reintegration than to feel nauseated.
"PALMER!" Gibbs is looking back to her, but his voice sounds like it's working through cotton wadding.
"Yessir?" she calls, trying to balance without the Earth tilting her off. Agent Gibbs has Agent DiNozzo freed and is easing him onto the floor. She'd join them but something is very wrong with this reintegration, worse than any slam-bang she's ever known.
"Get outside. When the Ambulance arrives, send them in the Exit, left and straight on in."
He turns his attention back to the still man on the floor and Michelle, looking to the opposite side of the room and realizing how horribly she's been fooled, turns and carefully works her way, with still too many wrong turns and uncertainties, back toward the Entrance.
xx
Within twenty minutes the flashing blue and red lights of too many Metro PD units sting Michelle's eyes and she must hold her hand to block the more painful lights from her squinting eyes. Ziva had arrived seconds before the ambulance, Tim skidded his silver/grey Porsche Boxster to a stop while the EMTs check DiNozzo in the far end of the maze. By now, everyone who needs to knows the solution to the maze and she feels more idiotic by the minute.
She's been ordered to hold the perimeter from any intruders, but with almost a dozen Metro units and an ambulance, who is she holding it against? She knows Gibbs' mind; he's angry, frustrated as she had been earlier, but there's no one to lash against. There's not even a perp to gather evidence about to use in the hunt. The women are captured and McGee's been sent to interrogate the cuffed prisoners already inside two of the Metro units. She wishes she'd been sent as well.
She'd failed. She'd tried to save Special Agent DiNozzo, had been desperate to save him, and she'd failed. She'd gotten lost in a puzzle designed to challenge school children and vacationers. Gibbs had solved the puzzle in three seconds. She'd spent - wasted - so much time. So much time.
What if she'd wasted too much?
x
The sky is black and overcast, no friendly stars look down. Overcast darkness seems to inhabit her soul as she waits and waits and waits. Finally, the exit door opens. Ziva holds it aside for two white shirted men who wheel a gurney between them and angle with their too still burden toward the ambulance. Ziva accompanies them, her stony grim expression telling Michelle more than she wants to know.
Gibbs stops beside her, watches silently as his friend, their partner, is loaded into the ambulance, seeming little more than luggage for all the life he displays. Ziva climbs aboard after him, the door is closed and half a minute later the wailing siren demands right-of-way out of the park, bearing its too still cargo.
"Where are they taking him?"
"MedStar Medical Center is the closest." Only then does he turn to her. "What happened in there?"
"Sir, I mean Special–" His glare down to her shuts her up. This isn't the time for nervous stammering. She takes a deep, lung rupturing breath, holds it, lets it out. "Sir, I tried to save him, I tried, but I kept getting lost. Kept getting held up. I tried to shoot the glass, but it wouldn't break."
"When I got in there, you were flat on your back. What happened? Did you faint?"
She hears the warning. 'If you fainted and DiNozzo doesn't recover, you'll prefer death.'
"No, sir. I didn't faint."
"Then what happened?"
She would give her life rather than say the words, but there's no way to lie, not about this. "When I couldn't get to him, I tried to use magic to pull the needle out. I tried, tried hard, but I couldn't."
The look in his eyes is the same one she'd imagine he'd give her if she'd announced she'd stopped to make a pizza.
x
"When I couldn't get the needle out and couldn't get to him I Astral Projected to reach him. When I did, I found out why I couldn't pull the needle and instead I pinched–" She can see her death in his volcanic eyes.
"You're saying instead of helping him you wasted more time on your magic while he was dying?"
She falls a step away from the battering force of his rage. She's known Gibbs to be angry, to be furious, but he's scarlet-faced with rage. "Sir, I did." She looks toward the ambulance. "I was–"
A hammer smashes into the back of her head, stuns her as she staggers, wobbles on her high heels and barely keeps on her feet when she stops seven paces away. The pain in the back of her head is so devastating she's afraid she's about to lose consciousness.
She turns, right hand to her head, and looks back and up to the mountainous man backlit by the towering lights that leave his face in shadow. His hand is up between them and he's looking as much at it as past it to her. She can still make out his face and the look in his eyes is absolutely terrible; fury coupled with the realization of what he's done.
This wasn't like his usual 'wake-up' calls that she's been spared for a year.
"Boss?" Tim's voice comes from behind Gibbs, a moment later he steps into view but she can't take her eyes off Gibbs. "Is something wrong?" he finishes uncertainly. Did he see, or is he only seeing now?
Gibbs doesn't look at him but points at her, his hand like a cannon about to fire. "Get her out of here."
"I'm sorry!"
But the glare he gives her only warns how sorry she's going to be.
xxx
Tim McGee feels the silence a burden that rests heavily about him as he drives the silent woman toward Georgetown. Michelle stares straight ahead, her body rigid. He sees, in the alternating lights of the streetlamps, tears glistening on her cheeks and can't contain the question any longer. "What happened back there?"
"I failed," she says, her voice breaking miserably. "Agent DiNozzo's going to die and it's my fault."
"How?"
"I got lost. I got lost in that maze and I couldn't get to him. I tried. I TRIED!"
"I know you did."
She turns on him. "You weren't even there!"
"But I know you. I know you'd try."
The fight falls out of her. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't get to him."
"And Gibbs did?" She nods, the tears flowing down her cheeks. "So why's he mad at you?"
She fights to stop crying, fights get the words out. "I tried to Spell the needle out. I couldn't see that it was taped to his arm."
x
He looks to her, divides his attention carefully between her face and the street. Fortunately he only has to keep his hands still. "Spell?" She nods. She couldn't have meant... He checks the street; mid-street, still a straight block. He can look at her. "You mean you tried to use Witchcraft?" She nods, even more miserably, her eyelids clenched to lock the tears. "Michelle, how could you?"
"I did my best. When I couldn't get the needle out I Astral Projected, managed to hold the tube bent double until Gibbs got there and got the needle out."
"Well, that's good." Looking back to the street, crossing an empty intersection, he realizes a moment later the implications of what he's said. Differing Faiths is one thing, that's a PC issue and if Shav won't condemn her for believing in Witchcraft then he won't either, but this is saving Tony from some unknown poison.
Faith is one thing but falling back on something as fanciful as Witchcraft when a man's life is at stake is more than unpardonable. It's insane.
But she'd said she held the tube closed. But if it worked, however it worked - did it work? - then why's she crying? That's what he chooses to ask her.
"Gibbs hit me."
'Well, that truce lasted longer than I thought.' "Gibbs hits all of us. Welcome back to the club."
x
She leans closer to the limit of her strap. "No. I mean he hit me. Hard! He nearly knocked me off my feet." He glances at her for as long as he dares, not wanting to believe. "He hit me so hard he nearly knocked me out."
Tim tries to balance watching the road with looking at her, the image conjured by her exclamation leaving him feeling absolutely incredulous. He can barely picture the moment, but it had to have happened. When he'd turned Gibbs and Michelle had been standing staring at one another, but when he'd stepped up to the pair Gibbs had looked as devastated as Michelle had.
"And the worst thing," she continues, barely able to articulate the words, "is that he might be right - that if I'd looked harder and found the solution to the maze Tony might still be alive!"
"Now hang on." He slows the car. He's not going to go this far. "Tony was alive when they drove off. I don't know what went on back there but he's not dead until the doctors say he's dead."
She turns forward in the seat again and though she's silent, hand covering her eyes and her upper body shaking, he knows she's still crying and he's run out of words.
xxx
Michelle lets herself into the dark living room, holds off turning on a light until she sees the bedroom door at the end of the left hall is closed.
She doesn't feel like trying to sleep. She wants to get in early.
'If those bitches don't confess immediately I'll show them real magic. I'll tie their fallopian tubes in knots!'
x
She stops short. Not only is that thought completely unlike her, abhorrent to anything a practitioner of Wicca should think, but she realizes with a stab of guilt that she'd meant it.
'No. This is nuts, I'm tired - and I'm scared as hell - and Wicca doesn't have hell.'
She'd love to sleep, but doing it for two or three hours will only leave her feeling more exhausted - as though she could feel more emotionally exhausted.
She decides all she can do, this long before sunrise, is pray. She'd never imagined she'd be praying for Tony DiNozzo, but she's never imagined any part of this night.
'But everything's in the bedroom.' All her supplies are inside the wheeled table she uses as an altar. But she doesn't even feel like Casting a Circle or any formality at all. Time to choose the practices of her Episcopalian half.
She uses the coffee table to ease herself down on aching legs. She should have been home by 1700, not...
'No. Clear the mind. Push aside resentment,' she thinks, remembering lessons drummed in for years. 'Pray.'
'Pray what? Nothing's coming.' She clenches her fists but forces herself to open them again. Anger makes her want to do it again. She forces it back. It won't go back.
'Let's see. Goddess, please save Tony. No, that's not right. Siobhan says prayer shouldn't be formal. Words don't matter. Just pray. Pray what? I'm not Siobhan, Siobhan has a prayer at the tip of her mind for every possible occasion. It's not fair. It's not fair! Tony's going to die and I can't even come up with one lousy, stinking–'
"Hi, honey."
She whirls on her knees. He's at the hall entrance, just in his boxers and smiling at her. "KNOCK DAMN IT! KNOCK, CAN'T YOU?"
He backs away from her furious scream into the hallway and looks as shocked as he does scared. She's not sure what prompted that scream – or rather is sure and longs to take it back.
"'Chelle?"
She gets up, hurries across the room and hugs his warm bare body desperately.
"Oh, Jimmy - I've killed Tony DiNozzo!"
xxx
By the time McGee drops Michelle off in Georgetown it's after one o'clock and at best, if he drives Gibbs-speed which he won't, he has another forty five minutes before he can get home to Sligo Ave between Georgia Ave. and Fenton St. in Silver Spring.
Gibbs is likely to remain with Ziva at MedStar with Tony. Agents have transported and secured those women to Holding Cells and he hopes that if he gets in early enough he can take a crack at one or both of them before Gibbs arrives in the morning.
Michelle will be in then as well. She's probably safer at a distance from Gibbs until Tony's out of the woods - whatever woods whatever those women did to him put him in - but there's no chance of that.
The morning will be horrible no matter what any of them do. The only thing they may be sure won't happen for any of them is sleep.
xx
He lets himself into his apartment, being very quiet, but as soon as the door opens he sees it's an unnecessary precaution. The living room light is on, as is the kitchen's, and no sooner does he close the door when Siobhan steps out from the kitchen's entrance.
She's wearing her green robe and the moment he sees her eyes he knows things have gone wrong. He'd called her after pulling Michelle out of the evening Counseling Session with Jimmy Palmer to tell her why he'd be really late and had advised her to go home and to sleep without him.
One glance into her emerald eyes and he knows it's the most wasted advice he'd ever given her. If things had gone better, he wouldn't be so late.
"How is he?" she asks even before she reaches him for a hug and kiss. The hug is long.
"I don't know. In MedStar hospital. Gibbs and Ziva are with him. That's all I know."
"I've been praying for him."
"I know."
"You've heard nothing?"
"You know Gibbs."
She nods, a single sharp motion she won't add words to. They won't know anything until there's something to know.