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A.N.: Thank you black widow mistress, MatteaAM, Huddly, Mrs. Elizabeth Gibbs, HesMines, MissJayne, Pixie-Galaxy-Dust and YourFavoriteLabPartnerEver for reviewing! Thanks so much everyone!
Tobias Fornell stormed down the stairs from the Director's office and into the bullpen, not caring about the stares being directed his way from Gibbs' confused team. He walked straight to Gibbs' desk and sat down at his computer, quickly typing in his password so he could get into the FBI mainframe. They hadn't taken his clearance off the case, good. He opened the case notes from the new investigation and read through them, clenching his fists in fury. They were looking in the wrong places for this guy. Did his team not listen to him when they had tracked him down last time? Did they work with their eyes closed?
He took a deep breath and released it slowly, attempting to regain some measure of control and then opened the evidence report. They hadn't found much, though the most they had found was centred on Diane herself; she had been killed on the stairs and then rearranged on them post-mortem. The monster had moved her into the most dramatic pose he could, played around with her body and presumably then taken Emily past her. He shook his head mutely at the audacity of the man, shocked that anyone could be so cruel to his little girl.
"Alright, so how did you find this guy before?" Fornell jumped and looked up into Gibbs' face. He was expecting an answer to his question, so Tobias tried to empty his mind of what he had just read. He needed to keep cool or he could be thrown out by Jethro. He stood and rounded the desk, letting Jethro take his desk back and read through everything he had just seen before answering.
"I check housing estates for houses that have been bought but not lived in until a day or two after the last murder. He doesn't need them until he leaves the one he's in. He usually stays off radar for a day or two but I'm guessing that having Emily with him will put off his schedule slightly." Fornell ran a hand over his face helplessly, drawing the already rapt attention of Gibbs' team.
"Housing estates? What's going on boss, we got a case?" Tony asked, looking between his boss and the FBI Agent he was usually fighting with.
"Yes DiNozzo, we have a case." Gibbs filled in his team on the specifics of the case as quietly as he could. He didn't want to give the other teams something to gossip over whilst Tobias was here to overhear it. Fornell opened his file and tried to ignore the sympathetic glances and the pity that team Gibbs were shooting his way. They couldn't understand this, they couldn't know how this was affecting him, so he hoped to God they wouldn't offer their condolences. Only Gibbs could understand and from the looks of things he was trying his damnedest not to. He felt Gibbs' presence by his side and looked up from the file briefly.
"He only rapes boys Tobias, she'll be fine." Gibbs whispered to him. He knew that he was just trying to make him feel better but somehow that made him feel worse.
"Really Jethro? How the hell would you know that? You know as well as I do that child molesters hang around with other child molesters. He might not want her, but his friends might." He practically growled back at him.
"He has friends?" DiNozzo asked. He was attempting to lighten the mood but his words fell flat. Fornell rounded on him furiously, one part of him raring for a fight, the other already ashamed of his behaviour.
"Of course he does DiNutso; they form groups for self preservation. He'll invite them to his house to help him settle in. I want her out of there before they get there or no power on this earth will stop me from tearing them apart with my bare hands!" Tony watched Fornell walk away, wide eyed at how the older Agent had reacted to his words.
"O-kayyy…" Tony muttered, sending a 'be careful what you say' glance to his team mates. He knew all that stuff already, he wasn't some rookie that needed shouting at to keep him in line, he was an Agent, a damn good one and before that he had been a cop. He knew better than some Agents here what perverts did and how they acted. Ziva shook her head at him and then decided to ask a question of her own.
"Why housing estates?" she enquired, and both Gibbs and Fornell turned to answer her.
"It makes it easier to find the boys he wants to molest. Since he is part of the community, they trust him far more than they should. He invites them in to his house one day and then…" Gibbs answered, trailing off to indicate something terrible. Ziva shivered uncomfortably.
"Surely the parents wouldn't let their children go to a stranger's house alone?" she asked, wondering just what the parents could be thinking. This time Tobias answered, moving slowly towards her as he did so.
"That's the frightening part officer David. They integrate themselves quickly, become respectable people to their neighbours and gain the trust of the parents. You never know just what kind of person they really are until it's too late." Ziva opened her mouth to speak but he waved her off. "It's alright saying that it should be obvious but I could bring seven such men in here right now and after only a few minutes with them, you would never suspect them of such crimes." Ziva watched him turn back to Gibbs, and then she looked over to Tony. He nodded to her in agreement with Fornell's words.
"Back in Baltimore I had more than my fair share of molesters to deal with. One of them even tried to convince me to throw out the evidence on the case. I almost did too, but thankfully I had a bad feeling about what I was doing. I went to my supervisor, expecting to be reamed out, but he understood. Took me off the case, but he didn't hold it against me. I've never let another suspect play me like that." Ziva raised her eyebrows at him, not expecting a confession like that but understanding better how easily these men, and women, took advantage of the trust the people around them put in them.
"Checking for housing estates with non lived in bought houses…" McGee typed away on his computer, muttering to himself when his search brought back the numbers he had requested. "Wow, there are over a thousand." Fornell nodded, he'd had his own agents run the numbers a few times, he knew how many they had to sift through.
"Now look for houses that have been moved in to, starting from last night." He said, rounding the desk to stand behind McGee, watching the results as they popped up.
"Two hundred and four houses have been moved into in the last three days, I'll narrow it down to men-" McGee began, but Fornell cut him off.
"No don't bother; he threw us off last time by having his house under a woman's name. He could do it again." He said, annoyed that his own team over at FBI headquarters hadn't even begun sifting through the housing database yet. What were they doing over there? He wondered for a moment if they knew where he was and what he was doing, if they were letting him do all the work for them and then they would get there before him to get all the glory. He shook himself from those thoughts; he'd never seen or experienced anything like that from the FBI in all the years he had been with them. He was just getting snide and paranoid.
"How are we going to check two hundred and four houses? We don't have the man power for that and the FBI won't cooperate with us on this. They're more likely to have us impeded." Tony said, throwing his hands up in exasperation at the situation. They would never find Emily if they had to individually check each house. It would take them weeks to find her, even if they split up and took a house each and by then she would almost certainly be dead.
"Then we appeal to a force with more man power." Gibbs said, pulling out his phone and walking away from his team, moving towards the windows for a measure of privacy. "I've got a call to make." He punched in a number and then held his breath. This was the last thing he had expected to be doing any time soon since he had already accepted not seeing her again. He listened impatiently to the ringing on the other end and then the phone was picked up.
"Hello?" a female voice said on the other end. She seemed amused and yet cautious; as if she wasn't sure she wanted to pick up the call. Gibbs felt a momentary pang of guilt before he pushed it aside. They were both professionals, they could work together without their fling getting in the way.
"Hollis, I need to ask you a favour."
Jenny looked through the Intel that had been delivered to her just moments ago, her heart fluttering in excitement. This could be it, the moment she had been waiting over a decade for. She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. The team she had wanted to put on the case was working on another important one, namely Fornell's case, so she had decided to give this one to the next team that she trusted, Agent Taylor's. He was a good Agent, by the book but not rigidly attached to it that he won't take chances. His team were all hard working and efficient too, so they could probably pull this off just as well as Gibbs' team could. Cynthia buzzed the intercom and Jenny sat straighter in her chair, accepting the buzz.
"Yes Cynthia?" she asked, hoping that Taylor would be more prompt with his appearance than Gibbs, who seemed to delight in annoying her. She knew she was an easy mark when it came to him though, she had fallen hard for him seven years ago and she could quite honestly say she had never gotten over him. He was the one she wanted most, he fit with her so perfectly, their tempers and personalities were perfect halves of the same whole, and she fought off a blush as she remembered that their bodies were too.
She couldn't help but want him, love him, and he seemed to be taking advantage of that whenever possible. She closed her eyes and calmed herself, trying not to think about Jethro and that Hollis woman. She wouldn't last, Jethro couldn't keep a woman around for long, but it was salt in her broken heart to watch them together. She was just glad they didn't have any other cases together so she won't have to endure the sight of them checking each other out again.
"Agent Taylor and his team is here Director." Cynthia's voice brought her back out of her self-pity and she cleared her throat.
"Thank you Cynthia, send them in." The door opened and Agent Taylor walked in, followed by his team. They all sat in front of her desk when she indicated they should, pulling chairs from the conference table, and then turned to her expectantly. She smiled at them and then pulled out the file she had just been looking at, handing it over to Taylor. "I have an important assignment for you; it's quite a delicate matter so you shall have to be discreet. I trust that is acceptable?" Taylor nodded, his team following his lead and copying his movements. Jenny smothered a grin at them, they acted like Jethro's team did when she was around, always making sure it was okay with their leader, before agreeing with her.
"Of course Director. What's the assignment?" he asked, curious about the secrecy. He'd had a few covert cases before, but this one didn't feel like one of those, there was something different about it. Jenny watched his face and nodded to herself, glad she had chosen him. He wasn't an idiot, he knew this case was special and that meant he was intuitive, for a male. A very good quality, one that he would need for this assignment.
"I need you to pick up this man for questioning." She pulled out a photo and showed it to them. "His code name is Goliath."
Hollis listened to Jethro's plea for aid with a man hunt, and mentally turned over the pros and cons. This would be a good case to apply for retirement after if they saved the child, and it would be her chance to see if she and Jethro were actually going anywhere and she could decide what to do about him better. However it could kill her career if they failed to save the girl. The pros were tantalising though.
She wasn't going to wait around for Jethro if he didn't really want her, she was too old to believe in 'learning to love' and quite frankly she deserved better than to be used and cast aside when he found something better. She would happily sever all ties to him after this mission if he was still just using her to hurt his Director. She had seen what was going on there the moment she had entered the room, she was just amazed that they didn't seem to see it.
Oh but yes, she had seen the hurt on the other woman's face when Jethro had begun using innuendo in his report to her, and Hollis resented the fact he had been flaunting their not-quite-a-relationship just to cause someone pain. She wanted to retire, to settle down and start a family. If he didn't want the same there was no point in sticking around. She barely knew him and hadn't exactly invested a large amount of time in him, so she could gladly walk away if she felt he wasn't as interested as he should be.
"Alright Jethro, I'll ask my Director if he'll spare as many people as possible."
"Thanks Hollis." He said and then hung up. She looked at her phone for a few moments and then sighed. Time to get to work.