Reedited by my beta AsItThunders!
Chapter 1:
Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo zipped up his backpack with a feeling of satisfaction. It was eleven thirty-two on a Friday, and he was finished for the weekend. He had three dates, four new movies to watch, and it was a four-day weekend to boot. So what if Gibbs was a little pissed that he had taken a half-day? Gibbs had to be pissed at someone, and it might as well have been him since he wasn't going to be there.
Tony stood, gabbed his bag, and was about two steps from his desk when his partner Agent Ziva David sashayed past him back towards her desk.
"Why are you in such a good mood Zee-vah? You're not the one who has the afternoon off."
"You will not have for much longer," she fairly sung.
DiNozzo looked sick for a moment. He spun around to head towards the elevator, but a voice echoing over the bullpen stopped him. "Where do you think you're going DiNozzo?"
"Home, boss. I have the afternoon off."
"Not anymore. We've got a dead Marine in Carolina County."
"But boss—" Tony began with a whine.
Slap!
"Never mind, boss," Tony said glumly as he followed the rest of his team towards the elevator.
"Whiney baby," Ziva laughed.
"Cry baby," McGee corrected.
Ziva looked lost. "He is not crying, he is whining."
McGee shrugged. "I know, but the term is cry baby."
"Americans and their idiots."
"Idioms," correct Tony as the elevator doors closed.
"No, I meant idiots."
Located about an hour and a half from Washington D.C., Carolina County was not the most happening place. It was small. In fact, it was so small that the population density was less than fifteen people per square mile. There was only one elementary school, middle school, and high school in the whole county. One grocery store, a strip mall with three stores, a gas station, and a couple bars were the only places to go, and there was one factory and little run down church where everyone had worked at one point or another. The people were low class citizens—not too rich, not too happy, and not too bright. There was a high rate of alcoholism, pregnant teens wild Friday nights, trailer parks, and the tangible urge to just get out. Carolina County was one of those places where people reach graduation and either leave without looking back or stay to have half a dozen kids and regret it for the rest of their lives.
Three of the county's smartest teens were the ones who found the body of the female Marine one day in early November. The eldest was seventeen-year-old Cole Dalton who was handsome with short blonde hair and green eyes. He was wild, hell bent on blowing this town on his eighteenth birthday; Cole didn't have any plans beyond a road map stuffed under the seat of his junkyard truck.
His companions were twins, born to a fourteen-year-old mother with an axe to grind, named Cain and Abel Haze. Cain, who usually went by CeCe and was older by seven minutes, was born with her father's black hair and her mother's blue eyes, but she'd never really known just how pretty she was. She was working toward a college scholarship because she wanted out of that town so badly she could taste the sweetness of freedom on her tongue. That liberty would come just a month after Cole would split unless she could convince him to wait and take Able and herself with him. Of the pair of them, she was the one who would defend her mother, even if she had left when Cain and Abel were just four.
Abel looked a lot like his sister, the same hair and the same eyes, but he lacked the energy to try and earn his way out of the town. He wasn't as smart as Cain, but he could deal with that. Not everybody went to college, right? Besides, fixing cars didn't require a college degree, and that boy was good with cars; he'd been jacking them since he was thirteen. Brother-sister twins aren't always very close, but Cain and Abel were like each other's other half. Abel would follow Cain out of the town, and Cain would stay for her brother. Cole was the only person who really didn't care that he got both twins for the price of one.
When the NCIS team finally arrived, they found the three local law enforcement officers huddled around the bed of a rust Chevy, apparently "interrogating" three surly teenagers.
At the sound of the team's truck engine, the sheriff left the group and approached Gibbs' team, "Y'all those Marine police?"
"That's us. Where's the body?"
The sheriff spat a long stream of tobacco juice between Ziva's feet as he leered at her. Luckily for the sheriff, Ziva was not longer a Mossad agent, or she probably would have killed him on the spot. "The body's over yonder by that White Pine."
The team began walking, and Tony asked, "Who found the body?"
"A couple local kids out huntin'."
"McGee, start taking pictures. DiNozzo, go interview those kids. Ziva, bag and tag."
Tony DiNozzo strode confidently to where the three teens stood around the tailgate of the Chevy. His first impression was that these kids had just stepped of the set of The Outsiders. They were dirty, scabby, rough around the edges, and, from what he could hear of their conversation, spoke with heavy Southern accents.
"What are you blamin' me for? It wasn't my idea to go huntin' down here," the girl grumbled.
"It was your brother's idea to hike all the way down here—" the blond kid started.
"So why are you blamin' me?"
DiNozzo cleared his throat, gaining the kids' attention. "Special Agent DiNozzo, NCIS. Are you the three kids who found the body?"
"Yup," answered the black haired boy.
"Can I have your names and ages?"
"Cole Dalton, seventeen," replied the blond boy with a sneer.
"CeCe and Abel Haze," the black haired girl said motioning to the second boy, "We're both seventeen."
Tony raised his eyebrows a little at the names, but mentally shrugged and continued on with his questions. "Well, did you see anything odd or out of place when you when you came across the body?" Tony asked.
"No. Not unless you count the one-antlered buck we were huntin', which, by the way, we didn't even catch!" Abel said, glaring at the blonde haired boy.
"I stepped on the freakin' body! All I did was scream. You'dve peed yourself," he said throwing his hands in the air.
"You scream like a girl," CeCe said chuckling.
"Like you'd know about being a girl, Cain."
"Shut up, retard."
"Make me."
Suddenly, the girl was hurling herself at the other boy, fists flying. It all happened so fast that Tony really didn't even know what was happening until the girl (CeCe, or was it Cain?) had Cole backed against the tailgate, beating the crap out of him. Her brother stepped forward, but as he was reaching out for her arm, the girl whirled around and shoved him backwards with both hands, sending him sprawling into the mud at Tony's feet. Spinning back to Cole, she finished with a sharp jab to his stomach before shoving him into the mud as well.
"Miss—" Tony stepped forward to intervene as she kicked Cole who was splattered with mud. CeCe just twirled around and swung at him with her bony little fist, pulling back her punch just before it connected with the agent's nose… But not before Tony let out a very, very girly screech.
"The big, tough fed afraid of a seventeen-year-old girl?" CeCe taunted.
"Is there a problem here, DiNozzo?" a voice echoed.
He cringed and said, "No problem here, boss."
Gibbs didn't look convinced, and Tony cleared his throat. "So why were you kids hunting down here in the first place?"
"Abel wanted to see the Carney House," Cole muttered from where he sat in the mud.
"What's the Carney House?"
"It's this old Victorian house 'bout a quarter mile down the road that people say is haunted. There's always screamin' and chains rattlin' and stuff," replied Abel from where he sat on the ground, pointing to a leaf-littered trail where McGee was crouched taking pictures of fresh tire tracks in the mud.
"It's being torn down in a few weeks," CeCe added, "we wanted to go inside and see if there was anything good left."
Tony exchanged a look with his boss. They had both come to the conclusion that the Marine had probable headed there because there really wasn't anything else around for miles. "I think we should check out this house, boss."
Slap!
"You think, DiNozzo?"
Some days, Gibbs was glad he was in charge, and today was one of those days. From his position in the rear, he watched as his agents followed the group of muddy and sullen teenagers. Well, the muddy, teenage boys. The girl was no worse for wear. This may have been strange or even perverted for any other man, but Gibbs studied teenaged girls.
He didn't look at their exterior though; Gibbs looked at their attitudes and posture, their likes and dislikes, and tried to place Kelly among them. Would she have been moody and sullen and punkish like CeCe Haze? He didn't think so. As hard as he tried, he couldn't ever place Kelly, but he really couldn't stop the thoughts. He'd see a group of girls walking downtown and would try to see Kelly with them. Whenever he saw Maddie, he tried to place a twenty-something Kelly beside her.
Gibbs may have looked like he had move on or at least begun to heal, but it was all an act. Behind those steel blue eyes was the soul of a very broken man.
The house looked like it had fallen out of one of DiNozzo's horror movies as it sat on a hill looking out with empty eyes over the rural, empty valley full of trees dressed in their best fall colors. The paint might have been blue at one time, but it had long since faded and peeled away, leaving behind a rotten brown color with only three black shutters left. Most of the windows were missing or cracked, and the front door lay flat on the porch. The chimney leaned precariously against the house, and as the agents cautiously approached the dilapidate structure, a shimmering black crow flew out of a window on the top floor.
"The Psycho House," Tony hissed.
"What?"
"Alfred Hitchcock, circa 1960. Said to be one of his best films. It stars Anthony Perkins as the 'psycho' Norman Bates, who, dressed as his mother, kills the beautiful Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh. The Psycho house still stands at Universal Studio Hollywood, lot number 97."
No one looked particularly impressed.
The group trekked onto the porch with Gibbs taking the lead. As he opened the door and stepped inside, his gut was telling him that there was something very off inside of this house, something evil
His agents were feeling the same thing. Without needing to be told, they spread out: McGee to the left, Tony to the right, Ziva straight past the stairs to the back of the house, and Gibbs—motioning for the local deputy to check outside and the kids to say put—headed towards the stairs.
He didn't get very far.
Snapshot: Gibbs, gun drawn, on the third step on a set of stairs, looking back towards the direction Tony had just gone.