Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
A.N.: Thank you to Mrs. Elizabeth Gibbs, black widow mistress, HesMines and MissJayne for reviewing!
Tobias Fornell rubbed his hands over his face tiredly, staring at the screen in front of him. He had stayed at NCIS through the night with Gibbs and his team, trying to narrow down the house to house search by contacting the estate agents and landlords that had sold the houses, and asking them for any pictures they might have of the person who had bought a house from them. The pictures had been faxed, emailed and express-posted to them, and they had quickly gotten busy sorting through them. For every picture that didn't match their guy or any know associates, they crossed the house off the list. Unfortunately, a lot of Estate agents didn't have pictures of any kind of the buyers, so they couldn't go through the entire two hundred and four that way, but they had shaved off fifty seven, leaving only one hundred and forty seven to go. Ziva threw down a wad of pictures on her desk and growled in frustration.
"Why have photos of some people but not all?" she asked irately.
"They think these people look suspicious or like they could be trouble, so they take pictures of them." Tony answered, throwing down his share of the pictures. "It's just a shame that the people that look suspicious usually have a spotless record, like Mr. Ashton here; not even a parking ticket." He said picking up one picture and showing it to her.
"Then why take a picture of him?" she wondered why the people that sold houses never did background checks. They just snap a picture and hope everything is fine.
"Stereotyping. He's covered in tattoos, so he must be a felon." He threw the picture off his desk in annoyance. "This was a waste of time."
"Fifty seven houses down Tony." McGee reminded him from his desk. He was typing away on his keyboard and had been for hours. Tony didn't know how he did it, or why.
"I never said it was a complete waste of time." He said, leaning back in his chair.
Just then the elevator stopped at their floor and Agent Sacks (Sachs?) stepped out. He looked around the bullpen and then started towards Fornell the moment his eyes landed on him. Fornell glanced up from Gibbs' computer and glared at the younger Agent as he moved closer. He had trusted him, but he hadn't even fought for him when he had been taken off the FBI case, he had just accepted it. He had better have a good reason for being here. The younger agent stopped in front of Gibbs' desk and addressed Fornell, ignoring Gibbs and his team entirely.
"Tobias, I sincerely hope you aren't doing what I think you are doing." He said, pointing at the computer that Fornell had been staring at for the past few hours.
"So what if I am?" Fornell answered challengingly. He wouldn't be told off by his own rookie. Sacks sighed and leaned over the desk.
"Tobias, the FBI detected your clearance being used to access the case file, but was unable to find the source." Gibbs looked proudly over to McGee, who had been busy scrambling Gibbs' computer connection from outside sources. McGee sat a little straighter in his chair, the only outside show of his preening under Gibbs' gaze. "They will be coming over here to forcibly remove you from the building and shut down NCIS's investigation into our case." He looked over his shoulder to the elevator and nervously back to his superior. "I'm supposed to be looking for you at your house but I figured you wouldn't be there." Tobias looked at his rookie with a certain gratitude that he usually never showed to anyone. He had come to warn him.
"They can't remove him unless they find evidence that we are investigating their case, and they won't find any." Gibbs clicked his fingers and pointed at the pile of photos strewn over Tony and Ziva's desks. The two Agents immediately began to gather them up and slip them into a card wallet, which Tony then labelled 'Holiday snaps'. Gibbs turned to Tim next and pointed at the computer. "McGee?"
"I've already made our connection untraceable, all I need is for Agent Fornell to close whatever he is viewing in the FBI mainframe and I can wipe the site history." He said confidently, his pride over Gibbs' unspoken praise making him more self assured.
"Do it." he said, closing the evidence report that Fornell had been viewing and then moving out of the way, pulling Tobias with him, so that McGee could get to his computer. Just then Jenny stormed out of her office, along the catwalk, down the stairs, moved right past the bullpen without acknowledging them and then she stepped into the lift. The fury radiating from her made Team Gibbs glad they weren't the ones she was going to go shout at. Something had obviously gone wrong with one of the other teams and she was less then pleased about it. They refocused on the task at hand, hoping that FBI Agents wouldn't step out of the lift until they were done.
Jenny glared at the team assembled before her on the sidewalk, near to Harrow's body and walked away, towards Ducky who was seeing to the body. When she had gotten the call, she hadn't been able to believe what she had been told. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying to calm herself. 'Follow, do not engage', how difficult a task was that, really? Agent Taylor's team had picked up Goliath without any hitches, they had gotten him to disclose who was selling Ares and then they had found that man. She had been more than pleased with their performance during this case and had been hopeful that the rest of it would run as smoothly, but it hadn't.
The call had been Taylor's team reporting the man that was selling Ares, Charles Harrow, was dead. How had they managed to kill an unarmed civilian? She took a deep breath and checked her phone, only about ten minutes had passed since that phone call but it felt like hours. She had hurried here immediately, not believing what she had been told until she could see it with her own eyes. What would she do now? With Harrow dead there could be no auction, no auction meant no buyer, no buyer meant no meeting, which meant she had lost yet another chance to catch… but it didn't matter, did it? There would be another chance to get him, ten years of following him had proven that.
"Ah Director, I assume you want to know the cause of death?" Ducky asked once he saw her coming towards him. She held her tongue for a moment, the urge to bite his head off simmering just under the surface of her controlled façade. She didn't want to take all of the anger this case had provoked in her out on Ducky, he had just arrived like she had, but Taylor's team had wound her up so far. They couldn't even give a good enough answer as to why they had chased him to death, 'he saw us' was the best she had been able to extract.
"Yes Doctor, I would." She said after a moment, and he looked up at her knowingly. He could see her control was close to snapping, so he decided a joke might be in order.
"Myocardial infarction, brought on by a high fat western diet and the mistaken belief he could run up all those stairs. Rigorous for most, rigor-mortis for him." he dropped his tone at the end and she couldn't help the small smile that escaped her. It was just the two of them there, well, and Harrow but he didn't count anymore, and she could feel herself relaxing. She didn't always have to be strong with Ducky, he had patched her up when she had been crying and screaming in pain from a bullet to the thigh so she really had nothing to hide emotionally from him. She could relax and be herself, more so then when she was alone with Jethro, because she couldn't afford to let him see how she felt about him, but Ducky already knew all about that.
"Thank you Ducky." She said and turned her gaze heavenward. What was she going to do with this case?
"What's really on your mind, Jennifer?" Ducky asked, startling her from her thoughts. He was bending to pick up the body and place it on a gurney and she decided to try diverting his attention from his question by helping him. "Thank you, but you know that didn't work." He said when he extended the gurney to its full size so he could wheel it to the van. She smiled and rolled her eyes at herself for thinking it would.
"I really needed this case to go well, Ducky. Harrow was just a pawn in a larger game, but without him I can't get at the real prize." She answered cryptically, not wanting Ducky to get involved in her struggle.
"What, or rather who, is the real prize?" he asked and she shook her head slightly at his intuitiveness, he was good, she had to give him that.
"An arms dealer I've been after for a long time, a decade in fact, so imagine how many people have died because of him in all that time. This was my chance to stop him once and for all, but…" she waved a hand at the gurney and Ducky nodded. "I've lost my chance."
"Not really Jennifer, after all… you just need a sixty eight year old Englishman." He said meaningfully and her eyes lit up. Ducky was willing to do that for her? She lost the spark in the same moment, remembering that Harrow hadn't actually concluded the auction.
"If he had declared a winner and we could see when and where the exchange would be, I'd take you up on that Ducky, thank you, but we don't. I'll talk again with Agent Taylor's team, but I think that this is where this case ends." She said sadly and he put his hand on her shoulder encouragingly.
"Don't count on it Jennifer, money is a great motivator, I would wager he concluded his business as soon as he could." He pushed the gurney to the van and she watched him go, and then walked back to where Agent Taylor's team was. They hadn't budged an inch from where she had left them. She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes in annoyance and then approached them.
"I expect a full and detailed report on Mr. Harrow's movements to be on my desk within the hour." She ordered and then stalked off to her car. She hoped Ducky was right about Harrow's greed, because she really needed to kick this obsession before it killed her.
Hollis Mann glanced up at the large building before her and mentally prepared herself to enter NCIS headquarters. Gibbs had faxed over a picture of the man they were hunting and a list of houses that needed checking out, but unfortunately she couldn't just start looking. Her Director had tried to call Director Shepard, but had been told she was out, so she had been sent to formally accept the request of aid that NCIS had given Army CID. The thing was that she had a feeling Director Shepard didn't know she was on her way. Gibbs had a reputation for doing things before asking, or telling, his Director about it, something she had witnessed firsthand, so she was expecting to be regarded with surprise rather than expectation, which was an awkward feeling.
She had, however, sent her officers out with the list and picture as soon as it had arrived, not wanting to shorten the life expectancy of the child because she had to play politics for her very busy Director. She shouldn't have, but she had, and she knew she wouldn't regret anything if they found the child dead. She had started her part of this as soon as she could; the outcome was out of her hands.
She entered the building and took the lift up to the bullpen. Upon stepping out she saw Gibbs team all suddenly freeze and then heave a sigh of relief, before scrambling around again. She raised her eyebrows when she saw Fornell sat behind Gibbs' desk with a nervous looking FBI Agent stood next to him. She moved towards Gibbs and greeted him.
"Agent Gibbs, has there been a break in the case?" she indicated the flurry of activity that his agents were all caught up in and he smirked before becoming very serious.
"No, the FBI might be coming over to take the case away from us." Her eyes widened and she looked over at the two FBI Agents currently in the room. If they were coming to take it away, why were there two of them here now? Fornell she could understand but what about the other one?
"Why would they do that? Unless…" she glared at him, suddenly realising what the flurry meant. "Unless this is one of their cases that you are investigating without their permission." She glanced at Tobias and felt a twinge of guilt for her outburst, the man looked broken, but that didn't give Gibbs the right to risk her job, and the jobs of her officers, by dragging her into an investigation that they had stolen from the FBI.
The elevator dinged again and everyone froze, turning to look at who exited. It was Director Shepard and she walked swiftly up the stairs and across the catwalk, only turning to look into the bullpen when she was nearly at her office. She did a double take when her eyes landed on Hollis, and the blonde sighed. Yep, she had no idea that she was involved in this investigation. She started towards the stairs when Gibbs' voice halted her.
"Where are you going?" he asked her and she turned to him, letting her frustration at the situation he had put her in, out in her words.
"My Director has sent me to officially accept NCIS's request of aid, and that is what I am going to do." He nodded and then when she set off to Jenny's office, he fell into step with her. She rolled her eyes. If this was anything like the last time she was not looking back when she walked away after this investigation. He was sweet and charming, handsome and sometimes charismatic, but other times he was like this; manipulative, arrogant and cruel. Was it really worth the possible emotional pain to get involved with him fully?