Tim finished off her work as fast as she could without making any stupid errors, tidied her desk, packed her bag, said goodbye to the team, ignored Tony's waggling eyebrows and headed to the elevator.

These were the days she loved. The days were there was no dead body to collect, no murderer to find and they could leave at their regular time without asking Gibbs for his permission.

As she stepped into the metal box and turned she caught sight of Tony watching her like she was the most interesting thing on the planet. It was irritating.

Wanting to head down to autopsy but having no desire for her nosy teammate to know this she pressed the button for the lobby. Once the door opened again she stood where she was, received an odd look from some of the agents just milling around and pressed the button for her true destination.

The windowless and sometimes gloomy (despite the bright lighting) environment had taken her a while to get used to, but now that she had become so close to the Medical Examiner who ruled over it she found it almost comforting. Her taste buds tingling at the thought of tea with plenty of sugar.

The doors whooshed open and she hitched her bag onto her shoulder better as she stepped into the slightly chilly room.

She smiled a hello at Jimmy as the assistant raised his head from where he was polishing up a table and he waved with the cloth before returning to his task– things were slow down here too it would seem.

Ducky was sat at one of the other tables, paperwork filling the entire shiny surface, the lamp above it shining brightly despite the fact that the whole room was already brighter than the bullpen.

It wasn't until the doors whooshed shut behind her that Ducky glanced up from his papers. The slightly faraway look in his eyes telling her that he had been deep in thought. It took a moment or two for his expression to clear and when it did his eyes lit up and he smiled at her.

"Timothy, my dear," he pushed himself away from the table and stood from the stool.

"Hi Ducky, I'm just heading out now," she told him, once again shrugging the bag higher onto her shoulder. Annoying thing!

"Ah yes, indeed, tonight is the night," he chuckled.

She laughed nervously.

"Yeah, um, I was wondering if I could use your phone. I didn't want to use the one at my desk, Tony is being a bit…um…"

"No need to say anymore, my dear. My telephone and desk are at your disposal,"

Andy had the flu. Most inconvenient.

Tim had been racking her brains for a replacement since she had hung up on Lowery. She knew the rules.

You were allowed to make one change within the team – something that had already been done by her taking his place in the act (who knew how that was going to turn out) – and if someone dropped out you had to find a replacement from another agency. The idea had been to stop too many last minute changes of the 'sorry it has been a busy week and I want an early night' variety, but there was no leeway for genuine illness. It simplified things. But right now it made her life very complicated.

In her line of work everyone collected contacts, like kids collected cards or stickers.

It didn't matter who or what you were. Director. Agent. Computer Tech. Scientist. Lawyer. Everyone had their own little network to call upon. And as she had her foot in more than one camp and with more than one agency her pool of associates was a little more varied than was to be expected from someone in her position.

As NCIS was out completely. Their team had been cemented over six months ago when they had submitted their form. Damn it. There was something else she would have to do. She would have to go online and submit a 'Last Minute Screw Up' form.

CIA was out also. Her only regular contact there was out of the country and the team tended to get a little too competitive. If she brought in one of their own there was no telling what they would do. Tim could not be bothered with the drama.

FBI? That might work. She sorted through her mental list of names and faces. She giggled at the thought of Fornell up on a stage being serenaded to.

Another name, another face. Nope.

And another, and another.

Nope. Nope.

Langer! Brent Langer. He had worked at NCIS for a while – a little before her time true – and she knew him mainly through her assisting the FBI on the occasional cyber case. He seemed nice enough whenever she came across him and when he had been involved with a case involving NCIS he hadn't acted like they knew each other. She could just imagine how Tony would have reacted to that.

Bingo.

Now, all she had to do was get in contact with him.

Langer yawned and looked at his watch.

Time to head home. It had been a dull day of paperwork and the whole office trying to fix their own computer problems – something about the IT and Cyber department working on a skeleton staff for the day and evening. Funnily enough he could vaguely remember something like this happening the year before. Were they all being sent on some sort of regular course?

He shrugged. It didn't matter. Things would be back to normal next week and no more agents would be pulling out their hair because they tried to do something above their intelligence level on their computer.

He began to close the open windows on his screen when his desk-phone rang.

A part of him was tempted to ignore it. It would be something that would have him kissing goodbye to his beer and steak. He could sense it. But years of habit couldn't be ignored and he picked it up.

"Langer," he spoke into the receiver.

There was a moment of silence until a soft voice finally spoke.

"Um, Brent Langer?"

"Yip,"

He began to shut down his computer. If it was important they would not be beating about the bush like this.

"This is Timothy McGee, I don't know if you remember me or not. We've, uh, we've worked together a couple of times,"

"Yeah. Sure I remember, NCIS right?" he spoke casually but his heart skipped a beat.

He remembered her all right. She was Fornell's little project and she had been brought in quite a few times to crack a code or follow a trail that their own had found impossible to do.

He had found her cute. The way she would focus on the task at hand the way she did. He was sure the building could burn down around her and she would still keep her eyes glued to the screen and her fingers flying across the keyboard.

He had flirted with her slightly, enjoying the way she blushed at the attention, until Fornell had warned him away with threats of pulling weekends and nights for the next year.

Langer had toned down the flirting and found that the woman had opened up a lot more and had been a pleasure to be around when they started talking.

He would be lying if he said he hadn't been very surprised to find she was on Gibbs' team but he kept his mouth shut as it was obvious that her team (and her team leader) were unaware of her being loaned out to the FBI on a semi-regular basis. He had to admit, he found it adorable that she could still blush after working with DiNozzo for so long.

It had been a few months since he had last worked a case she had been brought in on and he wondered if that blush was still in existence.

"Yes, that's right," came her soft reply.

"How can I help you, Agent McGee,"

"Umm…well…"

Langer hung up the phone and just stared at it for a moment or two before he began to laugh. It started of low and grew until he was leaning back in his chair with his head thrown back.

Other agents simply glanced up from their own work, frowned at him and returned to what there were doing.

Eventually he calmed down and finished packing up for the night.

Once he was alone in the elevator on the way to the ground floor he began to chuckle again.

"She wants my body," he wheezed, smiling madly.

I liked Langer :) and I just couldn't resist getting him in to these one-shots-that-aren't-quite-one-shots-anymore.

Have a grand evening/day everyone and take care.

Hope you enjoyed having a new face thrown into the mix. :)

PS – Gibbs will become aware of the attempted theft of HIS agent by Fornell in a future chapter. ;)