Wanna hear a funny story? Remember the bogus DVDs I was whining about getting? Well, we complained to the company and got our money back PLUS twenty-five more dollars. For free, I can live with the occasional subtitles. WINNING.
Thanks to my readers and reviewers:
1Styx and Stones1
Kikilia14
Snapshot: Tony sitting on Ziva's hospital bed with a glass of champagne in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
The two agents exchanged glances before they cautiously worked their way down the rickety old stairs. Gun still extended, Tony cautiously felt around the wall for a light switch. Finding the switch on the wall behind him, he flipped it on.
Instantly, he wished he hadn't. The room may have smelled bad, but it looked worse. In one of the far corners, a hole in the dirt floor was masquerading as a toilet and a pile of dirty rags in the far corner looked to be the bed for all nine of the girls. One of them still lay there, one leg stretched out awkwardly to accommodate the chain that connected her to the rest of the group. Aside from that, the room was bare.
Tony was glad that the two suspects were in the car. Gibbs looked like he really wanted to shoot someone…and Tony didn't blame him.
"Who did you two say you were again?" A voice with a thick southern draw twanged. The girl at the far end of the fetter, a skinny green-eyed brunette, was apparently the leader of the rag-tag gang.
"We're NCIS," Tony said, holstering his weapon and squatting down to take a closer look at the shackle.
In union, all the standing girls took at hop backwards away from the agents. One of them, the one with the really long hair, was now chattering in a high-pitched voice in what Tony thought was maybe Spanish, looking more terrified by the second.
"Yo me llamo Tony," Tony said with a grin, reaching back to his Spanish One days.
Instantly, the girl burst into tears. "Uh," Tony looked around desperately for some sort of distraction; he couldn't handle crying kids, especially not girls. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a somewhat linty strawberry Life Saver. "Would you like a piece of candy?" he asked, waving it out in front of him.
Just as quickly as her tears started, they dried up and she snatched the candy, ripped off the wrapper and shoved it into her mouth with a grin.
By this time, Gibbs had the shackles off all the girls but Tony's new best friend and he stood over the girl in the corner. She was a tiny little thing, reminded him a lot of Lacey, but her hair was a soft blonde. Lying in the center of the blankets, she was curled up tightly, her eyes scrunched up as if to block out the horrors around her. Gibbs gently unlocked the shackle and felt her neck for a pulse.
There wasn't one.
Three hours later, all of the girls had been bathed, clothed, fed, and tucked into hospital beds in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Five of them had parents or grandparents who had been contacted and were currently on their way, the youngest two didn't know anything other their names and Abby was running through the Missing Persons files, and the hospital staff was still trying to get a translator who spoke any form of Mayan dialect. Needless to say, it wasn't very easy.
Adana Mendoza, the oldest brunette who had been interrogating Gibbs when he and Tony arrived, had the most detailed account of the events that had transpired. She had been kidnapped from her grandparents' home in Arizona almost two years ago when she was thirteen. She had been driven north hidden in the back of a semi for almost two weeks.
After that, she had been taken to a warehouse where there had been seventy or more other girls in different rooms. After maybe a month, the entire warehouse was cleared out and the girls loaded on to eight or nine different trucks. Other than the ten girls she had been in the truck with, she never saw any of the others again.
They had been in the same large house for nearly a year, and then a week and a half ago, they were all suddenly hustled into the back of a regular pickup truck. They had left two behind. Adana confirmed the two names, Megan and Lacey, and also gave some insight as to why they had been left behind. Lacey, the little one their captors hated, had been deemed 'unfit for selling'. Megan had only been at the house for about five months, and she hadn't 'learned the rules yet'.
Adana had shaken her head solemnly, "She just couldn't keep her mouth shut. She had to go and tell 'em to go to hell. She shoulda known better."
Gibbs had conducted the interviews in his gentle, silent manner, not forcing anything out of the girls but the way he stalked into the interrogation room where Wayne Talbot had been waiting for three hours, Tony was betting this interrogation was going to be…explosive, to put it mildly.
"So, we finally get to see the fabled 'Gibbs Interrogation,' " Tatyanna Rodríguez cackled happily, rubbing her hands together in glee. Since her escapade in her partner's shirt, she had stolen a t-shirt from a desk of a random agent between her desk and Interrogation.
Tony gave her an odd look, "What do you know about Gibbs' interrogation technique?"
"We hear things about Washington, even way down the Panhandle," Hunter grinned.
Looking rather confused, Tony opened his mouth just to be shushed by Rodríguez, "He's starting!"
Gibbs had spent only about five minutes giving the suspect his 'true loathing' face. He was way to pissed-off to be patient. He leaned back in his chair, thinking he was going to enjoy breaking this sucker almost as much his team was going to enjoy watching it.
"Are we going to sit here all day or you gonna ask me a question or something?" Wayne Talbot asked, coolly glancing around the room, giving of an aura of being very nonchalant about this whole arrest thing.
"Well, why don't we start with you explaining how you knew Corporal Lee?"
Talbot shrugged, "An ex. Not to great in the bedroom if ya wanna know the truth. We were just business partners for the last couple years."
Gibbs nodded, "Alright, next question, why you had eight little girls locked in your basement?"
Talbot grinned wickedly, leaning forward like Gibbs was an old friend he was telling a half-assed secret to, "I didn't know they were there. They must have crawled through a hole in the wall."
Gibbs resisted the urge to bash his face in. He nodded, "So why was one of them dead?"
Talbot seemed to pale a little, but he kept on grinning, "Those kids looked a lot like sewer rats. They die all the time. It's not like they're worth anything to society."
He really should have stopped at 'sewer rats'. In a flash, Gibbs was across the table and had the scumbag against the wall, his hand at his slimy throat, "What kind of a person looks at a six year old girl and is physically capable of starving her to death in his basement while he eats steak upstairs? You're a piece of filth, and you have exactly ten seconds to tell me who your boss is, what you're doing with these girls, and where the rest of them are or else I will break you neck."
Talbot snickered, which sounded more like he was choking, and grinned his buck-teeth at Gibbs, "You can't kill me, it's against the law."
Gibbs leaned menacingly closer to Talbot's face, whispering in a deep, terrifying tone, tightening his grip with each word, "And you think that any judge in the entire world have any sympathy for a child-abusing piece of scum like you? You've got seven seconds."
Talbot was starting to sweat and his lips were looking rather blue, "Alright," he rasped finally, "Alright, I'll tell ya! His name is Ronnie Montoya, he sells the brats for a couple grand a pop for slaves or whatever the buyer wants and I don't know where any of the others are, I only get information on my shipment. There are ten guys across the country who do the same thing I do. I'm just a middle man, I just deliver the kids and pick up the money!"
Selling children into slavery, or worse, every person in the room shuttered and Gibbs could hardly bear to let go of the dirt bag's neck. But with one final squeeze, he did. Talbot collapsed to the floor as Gibbs grabbed the file from where he had dropped it on the table.
Ignoring the cries of indignation behind him, he stalked from the room, leaving some of the younger agents to escort the prisoner back to hell where he belonged.
Lacey grinned like crazy when Gibbs finally got back to his desk. She held up a picture and suddenly it felt like the problems of the day had been lifted of his shoulders, for a minute at least. The picture was of one tall, gray haired stick figure holding the hand of a shorter one with brown curls and both were smiling.
Gibbs knelt beside his desk, "Is this us?"
Lacey nodded enthusiastically, then reached into the pile of her drawings and pulled out another picture.
This one made Gibbs laugh out loud. It was his team, through the eyes of a child. There was the director with her spikey orange hair, Ducky with glasses and a bow tie, Abby drawn all in black, Palmer next to Ducky, and Tony in the back with a ridiculous grin on his face. Even Tatyanna Rodríguez and Hunter Allen stood together in the back. "I'd really like to hang these two up, is that alright with you?"
Lacey nodded and pointed to the empty space on the divider behind his desk where she thought her artwork should hang. "Good choice."
All the while Gibbs and Lacey were hanging up artwork, Jen stood leaning against the railing upstairs, watching them; Gibbs' talent with children never ceased to amaze her.
Glancing at the file in her hand, she steeled herself for what she had to do next. "Agent Gibbs," she called down, "Can you come up here, I need to speak with you."
Both Lacey and Gibbs looked up at the sound of her voice. Gibbs said something to Lacey, patted her gently on the back, and then headed towards the stairs at a jog, clearly in a good mood.
"What's up Jen?" he asked with that smile again.
She held out the folder to him, "I just got this from Abby," He skimmed over it quickly, his emotionless façade descending as what he had just read sunk in. "That bastard," he cursed, spinning around and retracing his steps down the stairs, Jenny just behind him.
"Jethro! Wait-" Jen stopped herself, it there would be no stopping him now.
She went to his desk instead, smiling sweetly at the little girl. "Hello, Lacey. Will you show me what you're drawing?"
After Talbot's first interrogation, Tony had slipped out of the NCIS building. He stopped only once to grab a dozen roses, a bottle of champagne, chocolates, and a 'Get Well Soon' balloon. He even had the mind to put two wine glasses and a cork-screw into his bundle. The case was closed. And he was going to wow his partner with all the goodies and the tale of the case itself.
"Hello my ninja!" He said, sweeping into her room with his most charming grin.
She dropped the novel she had been reading to her lap, "What is all of that?"
"Gifts," he said, handing them her one by one.
She cocked a dark eyebrow in his direction, "And why, pray tell, did you bring me gifts?"
He flashed another smile, holding up the champagne, "Champagne?"
"You are ignoring the question."
He reached into his pocket for a cork-shrew, "I'll take that as a yes."
"Tony," Ziva began as Tony opened the bottle with exaggerated flourish.
"Zee-vah," Tony mocked, handing her the glass.
She took a sip without taking her eyes off of him. He sighed and plopped down on the bed beside her. "We solved the case."
Her eyes flashed something, but whatever it was was covered up as quickly as it had appeared, "Tell me about it."
Tony launched into a drawn out oracle that would have made Ducky proud, pausing only to refill his or Ziva's glass, take a sip of the champagne, or to answer a question. He was just getting to the part about Gibbs' interrogation when his cell phone rang. He listened for a second and his face got a little paler, "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"What is it?"
Tony cringed, "Gibbs. They got some new lintel on Lacey."
"What?" she asked again.
"She's Talbot's and Corporal Lee's daughter."
Snapshot: Tony sitting on Ziva's hospital bed with a glass of champagne in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
There. Did ya see that coming?
The next chapter will be the last, it will wrap everything up nice and neat!
~Striker