Well, here it is folks, the last chapter before the epilogue. It's a long one too. About ten pages in total. So, I'm gonna be nice and keep this short. Enjoy!
Twenty-Two
Stan and Dennis got off the highway as soon as they could and took back roads the rest of the way. Stan drove, going about ninety miles an hour in thirty-five mile limits. Dennis kept his eyes shut and ignored all the cars honking around them.
"How much longer until we get there?" He asked after a sharp right turn.
"About twenty minutes, give or take."
"Can you get there faster?"
"Sure," Stan paused. "If I drive faster, you open your eyes and give me shortcuts to the park."
Dennis groaned. "You really can't do this without me, huh?"
"Will you stop being a woman and open your damn eyes!"
With a groan, Dennis popped his eyes open just in time to see their car swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid a collision. "Where the hell did you learn how to drive?"
"Gibbs."
Naturally, Dennis thought. He said a quick prayer and started directing Stan down shortcuts and back alleys.
"You think Jamie's still alive?" Stan asked as they finally pulled into the park. The ice rink was on the other side.
Dennis shrugged. "For Graham and Huntington's sake, he better be."
Stan didn't say anything else. He came to a screeching halt just outside of the rink.
Almost immediately, Dennis saw his car. But as he scanned around the area he saw no sign of his partner or Gibbs. He silently groaned again. The two of them missing could only mean one thing.
"They're already inside." He pushed his door open and exited the car. Almost immediately, he pulled his gun.
"Gibbs can be a real pain in the ass sometimes." Stan said as the two of them made for the main doors.
Dennis refrained from commenting on how similar Tony and Gibbs were.
With practiced ease, they slithered in the building and started checking every place for their teammates and victims. But after checking every office, storage room, locker and row in the rink, all they found were two dead bodies and a few bullet shells.
They made it to the back where the Zamboni was kept before they stopped, confused.
"You think they started chasing on foot?" Stan asked, scratching his head.
Dennis just shrugged. He really didn't know what else to say.
Then they felt the ground shake with an ear-shattering rumble.
"What the hell was that?" Dennis screamed over the sound.
"Sounded like an explosion." Stan looked around the room, his face wild with worry. Dennis rolled his eyes. He almost commented when Stan spoke again. "That came from below us." He pushed his way through a bunch of crap towards a door. Dennis hadn't even seen it there.
Stan practically ripped it off its hinges before he took off down the stairs. Denis was right behind him the entire time.
Before they even reached the bottom, dust and smoke slammed into their faces. Stan hesitated only a second before he jumped off the stairs entirely.
Dennis was completely shocked when his feet found solid ground again. Half the room was destroyed, and smoke was thicker down here. He saw flames at random places. There was no solid fire, but with the amount of wood and cardboard, it was only a matter of time before the whole place was engulfed in flames.
His heart clenched. The only thing racing through his mind was that Tony was probably in there.
He darted forward as fear consumed his entire body. In his mind, the only thought he could form was 'Please God, don't let him be dead.' He heard Stan call after him but he couldn't make out the words. He just kept moving forwards toward the center of the explosion.
"DiNozzo!"
Dennis stopped. That was Gibbs' voice. And he sounded panicked. And in pain.
"Tony answer me!"
With a new destination, Dennis started moving towards Gibbs' voice. He kept a hand over his mouth to stop from breathing in all of the smoke, but even still, some of it soaked into his lungs. All the while, Gibbs kept calling out for Tony. The more the agent called, the more frantic Dennis got.
Why isn't Tony answering?
He finally spotted a grey head with a bad hair cut matted with blood. He slowed down and crouched low. Gibbs looked a little shaken, a few injuries, but otherwise fine.
"Where's Tony?" Dennis yelled. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Boss!" Stan kneeled down next to Gibbs. "Boss are you alright?"
"DiNozzo," he said again.
"Where is he?"
But Gibbs wasn't looking at either of them. He kept staring straight ahead. He tried to move forward, but his body was too beaten up.
Dennis looked ahead. He missed it before, but he saw a bloody hand resting a few inches away from a charred up head and torso.
He crawled over and pushed the flat wood off of Tony. Immediately, Dennis felt a wave of relief when he saw Tony breathing. He was still alive.
"Tony," he breathed. Gently, he shook the other man's shoulder. "Tony wake up."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gibbs and Stan slowly climb to their feet. "Boss, we gotta get you outta here," Stan said, keeping a hand of Gibbs' shoulder to support him.
Gibbs waved him off. "Call an ambulance," he started. "And Ducky." He was staring at the torso as he said that.
Tony groaned lightly. Dennis breathed a sigh of relief and squeezed his hand. Then he turned back to the remains. The sigh of relief turned to one of regret. "That's Jamie Taylor, isn't it?"
Gibbs shrugged. "Could be. Could be Angela Samson."
Stan pulled out his cell phone to start making those phone calls as Dennis tried to pull Tony to his feet.
.
Tony sat in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, staring straight ahead without really seeing anything. He was too lost in thought.
They were so close. Jamie was right there. Tony kept replaying everything, trying to figure out where he went wrong. Did he hit a trip wire? Was there a timer? What happened?
Someone moved to stand in front of him. He knew it was a male, but that didn't narrow anything down. The scene before him was a total sausage fest. He couldn't see a single woman. For once, it didn't matter. He was too tired to flirt.
Gibbs kneeled down in front of him, probably realizing that Tony wasn't going to look up into his face. "Tony," he started quietly. Instead of finishing, he sighed heavily.
"You talk to the bomb squad?" Tony asked, trying desperately to avoid the conversation. He wasn't sure how long it had been since Denny dragged him out of the ice rink, but there were ambulances around, fire trucks and the standard gawkers. He had the oxygen mask thrust into his face that he was only allowed to move if he spoke. A part of him wanted to know why Gibbs didn't have one. But he didn't ask.
Gibbs nodded. "Yeah. Bomb was attached to a timer. They always planned to kill Jamie. There was nothing we could do."
Tony didn't say anything. But he kept thinking thater there was a lot they could have done. They could have gotten here sooner. They could have realized that Graham was dirty faster. He could have let Huntington live so he could have disarmed the bomb.
He sighed heavily, wiping a hand over his soot covered face. It was a pain in the ass with the mask in the way. He pulled it away again. "One thing still doesn't add up, Gibbs."
Gibbs nodded again. "Why were Graham and Huntington going after prostitutes?"
"Just to let a prostitute stay with 'em."
Stan stepped forward. He looked just as guilty as Tony felt. He was also covered in soot, but he wasn't as bruised and battered as Gibbs and Tony. He stood with his hands on his hips and his chest was puffed out. "Well, actually, boss, we know that too."
.
The EMTs tried to convince Jethro to go the hospital, but he waved off the concerns. He was standing far enough away from the blast to not get seriously injured. He hurt like hell, but he'd survived worse. And last he checked, DiNozzo was down in Autopsy getting Ducky to take care of his injuries. He almost pulled his weapon when the EMTs tried to force him into the ambulance. At that point, Ducky stepped forward and reluctantly agreed to treat the young man's injuries.
So, once again, Jethro found himself in an interrogation room. His anger was boiling again, and that was the only thing staving off the pain. Jamie was dead. An innocent boy was killed for no logical reason. Somebody was going to pay.
He sat down across from Corporal Pam Darklin for hopefully the last time. After this, he never wanted to see his woman again.
"Jamie Taylor is dead," he said. He didn't waste any time. As soon as his ass hit the seat, he told her the grim news.
Darklin reacted in shock. Her mouth fell open and her face paled. Obviously that wasn't part of the original plan.
"What?" She said after a moment. "How? Why?"
"Huntington and Graham blew him up." He left out how the explosion nearly killed him and DiNozzo. For now.
"Oh my god." She started shaking again.
"You told Graham and Huntington to kill those prostitutes. To try and scare your friend out of the business."
She looked up, appalled. "What? No!"
"You thought that if she was afraid for her life, she'd leave the game and settle down like you did."
"I told Agent Burley I didn't have anything to do with this. They did this to help me, not because I asked them to."
Jethro wasn't sure how he kept from shaking this woman down to her very core, but somehow he did. "That night at the Taylor residence, you showed up to see if they got rid of Jamie like they were supposed to. But when you got there, Jamie was gone, Phil was unconscious and Karen was dead. And you found out that Jamie got away before Graham and Huntington even showed up. So you came up with this new plan to find him before he could talk. Anybody he did tell, you had killed. He talked to a social worker from Baltimore, so you ran her car off the road. Corporal McCane hired a Private Investigator to find him. And Huntington shot him when he got close enough. You were afraid that if Julia found out you were the one who killed her friends, she'd sell you out to the authorities, and all of you would rot away in prison for the rest of your pathetic lives."
"Julia was my best friend!"
"But then she did find out the truth about Jamie. Maybe even about all of her dead friends. That's why she talked to us. Jamie Taylor was the only one who knew who the killers were. She told us that he was innocent to give him some credibility. Agent Burley told you that she had been talking to us, so you called Graham and told him to take care of it. You didn't know he was going to kill her, Julia wasn't supposed to die, was she? That's why you changed your story to sell out Graham today. You wanted to avenge your friend.
"Huntington claimed that he was taking leave to take care of his sick grandmother after he found out Marcus Tatum located Jamie. After he killed him, he picked up the trail. And when he was finally going to grab Jamie, Detective DiNozzo came home and brought Jamie into the precinct. So you convinced Angela Samson, Julia's Madame to pose as a social worker to get him back. You told her that Jamie was the one responsible for the death of her girls, and she wanted revenge." At this point, Jethro was just speculating. He knew that Angela Samson was a victim, considering that she was tied up and killed along with Jamie. But he wasn't one hundred percent sure how they managed to convince her to go along with their scheme. This seemed like the most likely scenario.
She shook her head firmly. "No."
"Except Graham and Huntington are both dead." Again she paled. "And you're on the hook for everything. Now I don't care if you confess or not. I got everything I need to convict you."
He watched her face closely. Slowly the shocked, scared mask that she was wearing for so long faded into cold determination. She was giving up. But she wasn't going down without a fight.
Jethro had to admit she was a hell of an actress. She should have been a conman, or a spy. She was able to convince two Marines to become serial killers and she had everybody here convinced that she was innocent. Even Jethro had been fooled.
She leaned back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. "I want a deal."
"Hell no." Jethro only dealed in extreme circumstances. Corporal Darklin had nothing to offer him.
"You got most of the finer details, Gibbs. But you're forgetting a chief character. I wanted to get Julia off the streets, this is true. But it was his idea to kill those whores. Graham and Huntington went along with the plan for some cash and free sex. But this bastard did it because he liked it. He was the one who killed those whores. He posed them." She no longer sounded scared for her life. She sounded like the cold blooded killer that she was. "And I am the only one left alive who knows who he is."
Damn. That was a pretty good reason. "Give me a name."
"Give me a deal and I'll give you a name."
Jethro thought about that for a while. On the one hand, he wanted this woman to suffer for all the pain she caused. She was responsible for the death of at least fourteen innocent people. But on the other hand he couldn't sit back and not arrest the actual murderer. "I'll ask that they go easy on you."
She chuckled. "You gotta do better than that, Agent Gibbs."
"That's all you're gonna get!"
She chuckled again. Then she had the audacity to zip her lips up.
Jethro sighed heavily. He had it. He couldn't hold his temper in any longer. He looked behind him at the security cameras just as the little red light flicked off.
He smiled. He was going to have to give Stan a raise.
Jethro stood up and circled the table. Darklin looked at him with that smug little smile on her face.
Jethro kicked her chair out, grabbed her collar and heaved her to her feet. He slammed Darklin against the wall and crowded her small frame. The smug grin was gone. In its place was raw fear.
"You are a pathetic excuse for a Marine and if you think for a second that I'm afraid to hit you because you're a woman, you got another thing coming!" Woman or not she was still dangerous. And still a killer. And Jethro wasn't going to hold back because she thought she could get away with it. "Now you tell me who he is!"
"Alright! Alright! I'll tell you!"
Too easy.
.
Tony and Gibbs walked into the room to see Sergeant Taylor fast asleep. Tony slowly limped closer. His body was hating him. Every ounce of him was in pain. First there was the beating by McCane, then three fights with Denny, followed by an explosion. When this was all over, he was taking a week off of work to recuperate.
They stood on either side of the sleeping man's bed. Tony looked into Gibbs' injured face. The old bastard still looked better than Tony did. Gibbs carefully tapped Taylor's forearm.
The Marine jerked and blinked sleep filled eyes up at them. "Agent Gibbs?" Taylor asked through a yawn. "What happened, did you find Jamie?"
Tony felt another pang of guilt coarse through him as Gibbs answered. "I'm sorry, your son is dead."
He watched as an array of emotions flitted across Taylor's face. First shock, then confusion, then anger. He screamed out, his head falling back against his pillow as tears fell down his cheeks. Tony took a step back and turned his head away. "Why? Who the hell would," he choked up another sob. "You tell me you caught the son of a bitch who did this."
Gibbs nodded. "Two are dead."
Taylor breathed a small sigh of relief. "Good, I hope they suffered."
"And I'm looking at the other one."
Taylor's head snapped up. His anger grew. The tears dried up and he glared at the federal agent. "Are you insinuating that I had anything to do with this?"
"Your son found out about your little scheme," Tony said. He tried to keep his voice neutral and his face blank. He wasn't sure how well he succeeded. As far as he was concerned, Taylor had killed his own son. "You had no intention of sending him away to Military school. Graham was supposed to get rid of him that night."
"How dare you!"
"He wasn't supposed to die, though," Gibbs interrupted. "Was he?"
Taylor looked between the two of them. "I don't know what you two are talking about. How could you possibly think I had anything to do with my son's death? I want you to leave. Now!"
Gibbs slammed his hands on the bed and got into Taylor's face. Normally, Tony would have tried to reel the man in, but not this time. Hell, Gibbs could have shoved a pillow over Taylor's face and all Tony would do was guard the door. "Graham murdered your son. He's dead because you wanted to protect a secret. Well the secret's out. We know about everything. The women you viciously butchered."
Taylor looked at him in complete shock for a while. He evidently didn't know what to say. After another minute, he started crying again. His hand went to cover his mouth and he fell back on his pillows. "He wasn't supposed to die. He was never, none of this was supposed to happen."
"What was Graham supposed to do with Jamie?" Tony moved closer. He needed to know what was going on with this man. How he could have hatched this plan. "Ask him really nicely not to blab to NCIS?"
"We just wanted to talk to him. We just wanted him to understand!"
Tony smiled evilly at him. "Knock some sense into him?"
"What could he possibly need to understand?" Gibbs asked. "That his father's a scumbag?"
Taylor looked at them, insulted. "It was an accident. It was never supposed to go down like that."
"Which part? Jamie's abduction, or the women that you murdered in Dale City?"
Taylor surged forward, bringing his face within inches of the agent. "Those weren't women. They were the scum of the earth. They deserved to die!"
Tony felt nausea rise up his esophagus. He pulled out his handcuffs and latched one cuff around Taylor's left wrist and the other around the bed rail. "Sergeant Taylor," Gibbs started, keeping his eyes trained on the Marine's face. "You are under arrest for murder."
"I was doing a service, Agent Gibbs," Taylor growled while Gibbs continued to read him his rights. "Those whores deserved to die!" Tony stepped back and limped out of the room as Gibbs finished up. Taylor screaming after them the entire time.
Gibbs turned to the MTs standing by the door. "Nobody goes in, and he doesn't leave. Got it?"
"Yes sir."
Gibbs didn't spare them another look as he started down the hallway. He kept his pace slow for a change, probably realizing that Tony couldn't move that fast right now. "Why is it that every time I work with you, I end up with a leg injury?" He meant it as a joke, but after the words left his mouth, he realized how they sounded.
Gibbs wheeled on him. Tony expected to see anger, or something equally hard from the agent. But for once, Gibbs' eyes were soft. They were holding so much pain that Tony couldn't look directly in them. Not while simultaneously keeping his strength up.
"I am sorry, Tony."
That was a shock. Tony shook his head. "For what?"
"For what happened with Kitty. I'm sorry I couldn't help you."
"Whatever happened to apologies being a sign of weakness?"
"Sometimes they're important."
Tony sighed heavily. "I never blamed you, Gibbs. I appreciate everything you did for me."
Gibbs sighed heavily. "This wasn't your fault. There wasn't anything that we could have done to save Jamie. He was dead four months ago."
Tony turned his eyes away. "I feel like I should have done more."
"You did everything that you could have."
When Tony looked back up to meet Gibbs' blue eyes, his were full of tears. "Do you feel that way about the butcher shop?"
Silence was his answer.
Gibbs nodded and swallowed a lump in his throat. Then he turned and walked away. For the first time in three days, Tony didn't follow him.
Next is the epilogue! Now, everybody, be honest: who expected that? Some of you might have guessed Darklin, but did you guess Taylor?
Bob