Here we are people! Chapter 2, I hope you like it... I really have nothing else to say. I can't think of anything. That's definitely a first. Really, feel good, I'm not going to bore you for how long with my words! I'll shut up now.

Two

I will not kill this kid, I will not kill this kid. Tony kept up the mental chant as long as his headache would allow. "Do you even have a last name?"

Ever since he brought Jamie into the station house, he had been giving the cop the silent treatment. He wasn't exactly talkative before, but now he was just being petulant. And it was pissing Tony off.

"Would you rather I fingerprint you? 'Cause I gotta tell you that's gonna take a while. You'd have to stay here. I can't let you stay in the crib, I'd have to lock you up." He looked over at the cage at the edge of the squad room. There was one guy in there. It wasn't their latest killer, he had already been taken away. But he was big and slimy. "And you look like Bubba's type." Tony had no idea what the guy's name was, or his nickname for that matter.

Jamie didn't budge. He just kept looking down at his sneakers, pealing the rubber off the soles. Tony sighed heavily. "Alright." He grabbed a small jar of ink and a fingerprint slip. "Hold out your left hand."

He wasn't surprised when Jamie ignored him. I will not kill this kid. "Either you can cooperate, or I can force you. Your choice." He kept his voice low, with a hard tint to it. It came out extra gravelly.

Jamie finally looked up to meet his eyes. He was sneering. But, he pulled his hand away from his shoe, dipped his left thumb into the ink and rolled it across the paper. He did it with everyone of his five fingers before shoving his hand into the pocket of his sweatshirt.

Tony felt smug. He just bullied a teenage homeless kid, but he still felt smug about it.

He took the slip to scan it through the databases. Hopefully, he'd eventually find the kid. He turned to head back to his desk when he saw his partner stride into the bullpen. He was crisp and clean and his hair was wet. Tony felt a pang of jealousy. His over expensive clothes were rumpled and he smelled like beer. He would have loved to be able to take a shower. Maybe brush his teeth. Wipe the taste of peppermint out of his mouth.

"Den!" He called. Denny looked towards him a second before he started moving. "Thanks for coming."

"What's up?" He kept his voice low, though why, Tony couldn't be sure.

"I was coming home with a date when I saw Jamie Doe asleep in my hallway."

"Jamie Doe?"

Tony shrugged. "Wouldn't give me his last name. Ended up having to take his fingerprints."

Denny chuckled. Tony was not in the mood for humor. He was tired and he lost the chance to get laid tonight. Granted the woman was good looks and nothing else, he was still looking forward to ripping her clothes off and banging her until she couldn't move for a week.

She was just one in a string of girls that came—literally—and went through his revolving bedroom door. Although he was a little picky at the moment. He refused to sleep with a woman with blue eyes or light brown hair. And he liked them on the tall side. When he was with these women, he was in complete control. Everything he did drove them crazy, made them beg for more. He was starting to really get off on the power trip.

"Talk to him. Find out where the hell he comes from and what he was doing in my hallway," his voice came out harsh and angry. He saw a flash of hurt run through Denny's eyes. It almost made him feel guilty. Denny was his best friend. He'd say he was like a brother to him, except they were closer than that. Denny had two brothers—half brothers—but he was closer with Tony than he was with either of them. Tony didn't like yelling at him, he didn't like arguing with him period. But these days, he just couldn't really care anymore.

The hurt left his partner's eyes, to be replaced with anger. "What makes you think he'll talk to me?"

"Because you're a big brother, you know how to talk to kids." He made a shooing motion. "Go talk, bond, mingle. Be caring." He pushed Denny towards his desk where Jamie was still waiting, still in a foul mood.

Denny sat down in Tony's chair so he could be on Jamie's level. With a roll of his head, Tony stepped back and leaned on another cop's desk with his arms folded over his chest.

"Hey, Jamie, right?" Denny started, already going into sympathetic mode. "I'm Detective Dennis Morgan. Can you tell me how old you are?"

Jamie didn't say anything. Tony's already short patience was breaking with every second with this kid.

Denny leaned back and crossed his hands behind his back. He looked at the boy with his cocky grin. It was the grin that typically got him in trouble. "Alright, don't talk. I really don't care." He dropped his head back and shut his eyes. "Just so you know, the longer you go without talking to us, the longer you're stuck in our company." Still, the boy was silent. Denny turned to Tony. "How was your date?"

Tony shrugged. "The kid interrupted."

"Ouch," the older of the two cringed.

"Not really, she was a lousy kisser."

"So why'd you bring her home?"

"She had a nice ass."

"You ever heard the word shameless?"

"You ever heard me not caring?"

Denny laughed. He opened his mouth to respond when somebody else spoke. "Detective DiNozzo?" It was a woman, a heavy set dark skinned woman wearing a long trench coat. Her black hair was pulled into a bun at the back of her head.

Tony raised his hand. "Over here."

She crossed the room and held out her hand. "Gloria Smith. I'm with Social Services." Her badge was displayed proudly on the front of her trench coat. It looked legit.

Tony's forehead creased in confusion. "Well that's convenient, because I never called social services."

"No, but your captain did." Tony looked towards Carnec's office. He hadn't even spoken to his boss yet about the boy. He didn't even think that Carnec was in. Papers were thrust into his hand. "Everything is all set. I've been given permission to take the boy into my custody and put him into a group home for the evening."

"He doesn't even have a name yet."

"Many of our children don't have full names detective. But it's late, and I don't think that Jamie wants to stay the night in a police precinct."

Denny stood up, his anger was rising. "You can't do this."

"And you can't keep him." She turned away from the two cops towards the boy. "Jamie?" She said with a smile. "I'm Mrs. Smith. Would you like to come with me?" She sounded like she was talking to a baby.

Jamie looked into her brown eyes, his face completely void of emotion. "No."

Tony had to hide the smile that spread across his face. Mrs. Smith's own smile fell. She turned to Tony with a glare. "Once Jamie has had a decent night sleep, I will personally bring him back in the morning."

Tony didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. A woman showed up out of nowhere, claiming to be social services and demanding to take the kid. True, he really didn't have a lot to hold the kid with, by all rights, this was a social services matter, but it didn't mean he liked it.

He turned on his brightest smile. It was the one that always got him out of the trouble that Denny's grin put him into. "Give me one second." He turned on his heel and headed for his captain's office.

He didn't bother knocking. He just stepped over the threshold like it was nothing. Sure enough, Carnec behind his desk, apparently engrossed in whatever was on his desk. He didn't bother looking up. "Social Services show up yet?"

"So you did call them." Tony shut the door quietly, even though he wanted nothing more than to slam it shut.

"You brought an underaged boy into the precinct, that's generally social services' area."

"How do you know he wasn't a killer, or a witness to a murder?"

Carnec finally looked up. What little gray hair that he had was sticking up in several different directions. He also decided a few weeks ago that he was going to grow out a mustache. It too, was completely gray. "If he were, you would have come to me first thing."

"The kid was sleeping in the hallway of my apartment building."

"Which means that he should be in Social Services' custody," Carnec repeated.

But Tony still wasn't listening. "I'm a little curious about why he was there in the first place."

"Hand it over to missing persons."

"The kid's not missing."

"Apparently, he is. If he wasn't, he'd be in his own bed instead of pissing off you and your partner."

"Cap—"

Carnec cut him off. "This is not a homicide case, DiNozzo. He's probably a run away, in which case, I don't need my two best detectives wasting their time trying to find his parents when they could be doing something useful."

"You gave us the weekend off."

"Then get the hell off my clock and stop wasting the city money." It was said jokingly, but Tony still wanted to slug the man.

He honestly liked Carnec. He was understanding, and he was the reason that Tony and Denny were detectives. He jumped through hoops for them.

A little over a year ago, the two of them were involved in a hostage situation. A man named Neil Ellerbe lost everything he had when he was wrongfully accused of rape and murder. His wife left him and took his young daughter with her. Neil turned to drugs. One day, high as a kite, he went over to his ex wife's house to beg her to come back. The two argued, and he bashed her head in. Tony and Denny were still only uniformed officers at the time, but when Neil was first arrested, they were the only ones who believed that he was innocent. So when everything went down, the only person Neil was willing to talk to was Tony. After three hours trying to convince Neil to come out of the house, Tony finally coaxed him out.

Only a minute later, Tony was putting a bullet through his eye. It was something that's haunted him ever since, but it was also the kind of thing that careers are built on. His first hostage situation, and he handled it calmly and effectively, and when the time came, Tony was able to take out his gun and shoot the man. And Captain Carnec wouldn't shut up until Tony and Denny were made detectives and assigned to his unit. A feat in and of itself, considering Tony was only twenty-eight and Denny was twenty-nine.

"Cap, you can't ask me to just—"

Again, Carnec cut him off. "I'm not asking anything, detective. I'm telling you. Go home, get some sleep. Forget about this kid." He sighed heavily. "Let social services do their jobs."

Tony sighed heavily. "This is bull, and you damn well know it." Before Carnec could yell at him for being insubordinate, he stormed out of the office, slamming the door on his way out.

Gloria Smith was still there. And she looked smug. She knew that she won. Tony decided that he hated that woman. Passionately.

Tony didn't say anything. But his silence was all the answer the woman needed. "I'm glad we could get this all straightened up, detective." She said far too proud of herself. She turned back to Jamie again. "Come along, Jamie."

The boy stood up. The kid had barely said a word all night, he pissed both Tony and Denny off multiple times, but when he looked at Tony now, he wasn't blank. He was pleading with his eyes. The cop wished he could do something. Anything to help the boy out. But his hands were bound.

Mrs. Smith ushered Jamie out of the bullpen. His eyes stayed glued to Tony until he was completely out of sight.

He felt like crap. He wanted to help the kid, and he failed. Denny turned to him, anger flashing before his face. "You call me out of bed to help you with this kid, and then you let that bitch just walk away with him?"

"It was out of my hands!" He didn't like it any better than Denny did, but he didn't have a choice. Neither of them did. "Captain's orders."

"What about the kid? He probably has family out there!"

"Carnec said to hand the case over to Missing persons'."

Denny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, they're really gonna care about Jamie. He's already been found, the only thing they need to do is see who he belongs to."

He had a point. Missing Persons were trying to find people that nobody could find. They would be their first priority. In the meantime, a kid like Jamie would be stuck in a group home for who knows how long while they cleared their schedule. Jamie could turn eighteen before they found his family.

Something on Tony's computer pinged. He looked down at his monitor as the words 'Positive Match' flashed across the screen. "Well that was fast." He almost forgot that he ran Jamie's prints.

Denny wheeled away to give him better access. He groaned. "Well that will make things easy for Missing Persons."

Tony clicked the flashing message with his mouse, bringing up… Holy shit.

"This isn't good."

Denny leaned forward, suddenly curious. "What's up?"

"Jamie Taylor," Tony read aloud. "Age sixteen. He went missing four months ago." This definitely wasn't good. "He's wanted in connection with the murder of Marine dependent," he paused. This couldn't be true.

"Tony!" Denny yelled, trying to get his partner's attention.

Tony turned to face him. His face showed how bad this was. "Marine dependent Karen Taylor and the attempted murder of Sergeant Philip Taylor. This kid attacked his parents."

Denny's jaw dropped as he absorbed what he was told. "And we just handed him off to Social Services?"

"Call back Gloria Smith, tell her to bring Jamie back here, now!" He jumped to his feet and ran a hand through his hair. This was no longer a missing persons' case. This was a homicide. That made it his jurisdiction. And while it was a bit messed up, he was looking forward to shoving that in Carnec's and Smith's faces.

"Detective DiNozzo?"

He wheeled around at his name call. Standing a few feet away from him was a woman, mid forties maybe. She was thin, thick dark, curly hair with light brown eyes that matched her skin tone. For an older woman, she was pretty cute.

"Yeah, can I help you?"

"I'm Maria Rodriguez, I'm with Social Services. Captain Carnec called me about a teenage John Doe?"

Tony turned back to his partner. Denny slowly rose to his feet, his eyes glued to the woman in front of him.

"Social Services already came for him."

That confused the woman. "That's not possible, Captain Carnec called me personally."

Tony never felt so stupid in his life. You could never get a social worker out at this time of night without an emergency. Finding a teenage punk asleep in a hallway definitely did not qualify as an emergency. He should have known that something was up with that woman.

Denny was the first to speak. "If you're here for Jamie, then who was the woman who took him?"

Next chapter, I swear there will be Gibbs. Fear not. Well, what do you think? Does it intrigue? I would like to point out my knowledge of police matters is very limited, so I'm taking a few creative liberties. I hope you enjoyed, and once again, talk to me!

Bob