Sunday, 0437, NCIS Headquarters

Gibbs stared at him, firebombs going off in his head. Fornell recognized the reaction and hurried to explain himself. "Look, Gibbs, I agree that Harris needs to be dealt with, and it's obvious to me that he's been abusing DiNutso, but you got to see it like a lawyer's going to see it."

"And how's that?" Gibbs demanded.

"Your witnesses are Mark Simons, a convicted sex offender and petty crook, Terence Hamlin, a career con artist, Jeanne Benoit, your victim's former girlfriend who confessed to lying in a federal investigation on her last go round with the FBI, and DiNutso himself, who can't seem to make up his mind what he thinks is going on."

"Don't forget Palmer," Gibbs said.

"Oh, right, Palmer, your only completely credible witness." Fornell shook his head. "Do you really think he'd hold up under pressure on the stand?" Gibbs glowered at Fornell. "Line these folks up against a decorated cop with no history of complaints, add in the homosexual relationship with the potential for persecution based on it, and what you get looks more like a witch hunt than a serious prosecution." Fornell shrugged. "If you hadn't handled the investigation from the start, we might have a better chance, but any defense attorney is going to look at you and see a vindictive bastard."

"So I should have called you earlier, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, Jethro, that's what I'm saying. I'll do my best to rescue it, but –"

"Right, Tobias, because DiNozzo would really have opened up to you and told you what happened."

"How much of this really came from DiNozzo directly?"

"We wouldn't have found Hamlin and Simons without DiNozzo's composites, and Palmer didn't know Hamlin was connected to DiNozzo till he saw them, so he had no reason to mention the bastard." Gibbs shook his head. "I barely got him to talk to me, Tobias. If I'd put you in that room, he'd have clammed up tight."

"He's going to have to talk to me now."

"Now he's asleep," Gibbs said. "If you're so convinced that moving forward is a bad idea, I don't see any reason to wake him up in the middle of the night."

"I can sympathize."

Gibbs scowled. "I just hope Benoit doesn't tell him that I promised to have the bastard locked up by noon."

Fornell grimaced, but he shrugged. "Look, I can go talk to Harris, Jethro, see what he says, but that's going to blow this whole thing wide. The relationship will come out in the open, your whole team – possibly the agency as a whole – will be in bad odor with DC Metro, DiNutso's reputation will be mud, I don't know that we're ready to go there."

Gibbs shook his head. He could see the force of Fornell's arguments, and he knew what DiNozzo would say – or at least he thought he did. "I don't want this to disappear without a ripple, Tobias," he said quietly. "The bastard's not going to stop, and I've got three people at risk here, at minimum."

"Which three do you see? DiNutso, obviously. Who else?"

"Palmer and Abby," Gibbs replied.

Fornell shook his head. "Palmer, yes, but I don't see Sciuto as a target. From what I've seen, I'd say that he accepted DiNutso's explanation for their relationship. Otherwise there would have been some sign that he'd targeted her between that kiss and now."

Gibbs shook his head. "I'm not going to ignore the possibility."

"No one's saying you should, but she's a possibility, not a likelihood. I wouldn't worry more about her than, say, David."

"David can protect herself," Gibbs retorted. "Who do you see as likely targets?"

Fornell shrugged. "Frankly, after DiNutso and Palmer, you're the next most likely, then maybe Benoit."

"Me?" Gibbs replied skeptically. "Why would he be after me?"

Fornell gave him a dour look. "Well, he might just have gotten the impression that you want to keep him and DiNutso apart."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "If that's what he thinks, he's right."

"Hence, likely to attack you," Fornell said.

"Whatever. DiNozzo's being released tomorrow," Gibbs said. "If he has any sense, Harris won't go near him."

"So far he hasn't shown much sense," Fornell observed. "If Palmer would make a better witness on the stand, that incident alone could get him into serious trouble. He wasn't even on duty, so he'd have needed more than speeding or running a light to pull the kid over, and I doubt Palmer was even doing either of those things."

"Palmer drives like a granny," Gibbs said.

"Not like my granny, I'll wager," Fornell said with a snort. "She was a ball of fire, but that's neither here nor there. I won't say I like the idea, but we'd be better off if Harris doesn't show any sense. If we could catch him doing something unexplainable, we'd have him for sure."

Gibbs didn't like the sound of that, and he wasn't done in any case. He hit the switch to turn the elevator back on and opened the doors. Striding into the bullpen, he stopped at McGee's desk. Pitching his voice quietly, because he knew his request was strictly illegal, he said, "I want you to find out for me exactly where Harris is at this moment."

McGee's brows went up, but he just nodded and got to work. Gibbs might have been amused had the situation been somewhat less serious. McGee was simply setting aside one illegal task for another. Gibbs had had him trying to break into the CIA file on Harris for hours now. If Harris had been observed doing this before, there would undoubtedly be names. Those men could provide an invaluable resource if McGee could just get into the file.

"How's he supposed to find him?" Fornell asked as they crossed to Gibbs' desk. Gibbs raised his eyebrows, and Fornell shook his head. "I probably don't want to know, do I?" Gibbs shrugged and Fornell gave him a very dirty look. "Just don't compromise what case we have, Gibbs."

"What's your next step, Fornell?"

"My next step would be interviewing the victim, but his boss doesn't want me to wake him up."

Gibbs shrugged again. "I've heard his boss is kind of a bastard." His desk phone rang. He picked it up. "Yeah?"

"Gibbs, it's Abby, I need you to come down here right now." She hung up before he could respond, so he turned and headed back towards the elevator. Fornell stayed with him.

When they reached the elevator and got on, he said, "Where are we going, Gibbs?"

"Abby's lab."

"She got something?" Gibbs shrugged. He assumed so, but she hadn't actually said that. "So why are we going?"

"I'm going because she asked me to. I'm not sure why you're going." Fornell muttered something nearly inaudible about bastards and pains in the butt, but Gibbs pretended not to have heard him.

Abby was facing the door when they came in. "Gibbs, your radar is really on the fritz. I found this five minutes ago, and you didn't come. I even waited to see if you would, but you didn't. You've got to get that looked at."

"Working on it, Abbs," Gibbs said. "What do you have?"

"I found a website idolizing Tony," she said, and Gibbs raised his eyebrows, drawing closer. "But I can't tie it to Harris yet." She hit some buttons on her computer and the large screen lit up with a two by four grid that consisted of pictures of DiNozzo. There were no captions, no words of any kind, just photos. The first was a headshot that looked pretty current, Gibbs thought it might have been a DMV photo, but he'd have to get a look at – "That first one is Tony's current driver's license photo," Abby said suddenly. "I checked. Each one of these is a link." She clicked the DMV photo, and that pulled up another grid of photos. They were all headshots of various types. Gibbs recognized his ID photos from current and past NCIS badges, other pictures that were probably old driver's license photos, and as Abby scrolled through them, he saw even older photos that were somewhat alarming.

"Are those yearbook shots?" Fornell asked.

"I think so," Abby replied. "I don't have access to Tony's yearbooks, so I can't check." She hovered her pointer over the last picture, one of DiNozzo in a very mid-80s haircut. He looked about fourteen or fifteen. "This one looks like it's the oldest, so I'm thinking they're in something approximating reverse date order, but with no captions it's hard to be sure." Without waiting for instructions, she went back to the first screen. "Each one of these pics is a link to another pages of pictures, Gibbs," Abby said, turning to him. "Themed pages."

Gibbs walked forward, looking at the photos in the grid. The first row was the ID photos link, what looked like a family portrait in which DiNozzo couldn't be more than ten, a picture of DiNozzo in a basketball uniform, in mid-jump, making a basket, and finally, a picture of DiNozzo next to the car that had blown up last year. "Themes, Abby?" he asked.

Using her mouse cursor to point, she went through the top row. "Headshots, family pictures – which includes stuff I don't think anyone here has seen, Gibbs – college pictures – both sports and fraternity stuff in this one – and this last one is pictures of Tony with his cars." Gibbs nodded. "Then it's party pictures." This was a photo of DiNozzo wearing a party hat at what Gibbs would swear was an NCIS New Year's party. "The clubbing life," Abby added, pointing to a picture of him dancing in some kind of a nightclub. "Tony at work." This was a picture of DiNozzo in his NCIS hat and jacket, sitting at the desk in Air Force One. Gibbs remembered that picture, it had been taken the day they'd first met Kate. "And finally, we have the creepy category." She pointed to the last of these photos which appeared to be a shot of DiNozzo at the beach. He was shirtless and seemed to be sunbathing. "This is the smallest collection, but it includes at least two pictures that I'm guessing were taken without Tony's knowledge." She clicked before Gibbs could even formulate more than a vague theory about what the theme of this collection might be, and he almost swallowed his teeth. There were four photos, two that were similar to the first, but in the last two, DiNozzo was completely nude. In one of them, he was lying on a bed that Gibbs recognized as the one in his apartment, his arms clutching a pillow, and he appeared to be asleep. His face wasn't visible, but other parts of him were due to the way he had one of his legs bent. The covers could be seen at the foot of the bed, and they looked as if they had been pulled back and dropped, not as if the sleeper had kicked them off. Abby clicked the last picture, and it suddenly loaded across the whole screen. This one was also in DiNozzo's apartment. DiNozzo was on his feet, walking away from the camera. The picture was off-center and slightly out of focus, as if taken with haste, and Gibbs suspected that Harris had seized an opportunity when DiNozzo wasn't paying attention to snap the photo.

"That's disturbing," Fornell said. "What's this website called?"

"MyMan dot org ," Abby said.

"Who owns it?"

Abby grimaced. "Unfortunately, whoever it was ponied up the extra cash to hide their identity, so unless we can get a warrant, we're going to have to find out the sneaky way."

Gibbs nodded, turning back to study the photograph, trying to divine as much as he could about the man behind the camera.

"Whoa!" Gibbs turned to find McGee, flushing scarlet, head turned away from the screen. Ziva was behind him, but she was looking at the picture with her eyes narrowed. "Boss, I located Harris," McGee said in a strangled voice.

"Where?"

"It looks like he's hanging around outside the hospital. At his approximate coordinates, there is a bar, a restaurant and a bookstore, and I can't parse it down any closer than that."

Gibbs ground his teeth, considering his options. "McGee, two assignments. First, find out who owns that website. Try to get a warrant, but start digging whether you get one or not."

"Yes, Boss," McGee said.

"And keep an eye on Harris's location. If he looks like he's going to go home, I want you to give me or Ziva a call."

"Sure, Boss, where will you be?"

Gibbs gave him an incredulous look, and McGee shut up.

"Fornell, what are you planning to do now?"

"I think I'd better check in with my superiors and let them know what's up."

"Don't let them reassign you, Tobias," Gibbs said, walking up close to his old friend. "I do not want some stranger coming in to question DiNozzo. He's going to have enough trouble being open with you."

"I'll do my best."

"Do better," Gibbs snapped. "Ziva, you're with me." She fell in behind him without a word, and he let her take the driver's seat. She started the car and pulled out of the parking lot without speaking. "I assume you already have the address?" he asked.

She smiled serenely. "I ran it into MapQuest yesterday," she said. "He has a house, so I thought we should approach from the rear?" Gibbs nodded.

Within thirty minutes, they had pulled up about three blocks away from their destination. Ziva led the way into an alley with fences along both sides. Some were chain link, but most were privacy fences in keeping with the new suburban attitude of minding one's own business. It was four in the morning, so the only residents they saw were feline. A couple of dogs showed interest in their progress, but nothing loud enough to cause alarm in the sleeping households they passed. Ziva opened a back gate and they slipped into a featureless green yard. There was a street lamp one house to the west of Harris's that lit the yard adequately. They moved quickly to the back porch and Gibbs stood watch while Ziva picked the lock.

"Piece of pie," she said softly, and Gibbs was glad that neither DiNozzo nor McGee was present. Neither one seemed capable of letting irrelevant idiomatic errors slide. They went inside the house and Gibbs flipped on the kitchen light. Ziva was already pulling on a pair of gloves. Gibbs followed suit and started opening drawers and cupboards. He didn't expect much from the kitchen, and he wasn't surprised. They moved on through the house, checking through everything carefully while leaving as little sign as possible that anyone had been there. The dining room clearly hadn't been used in some time. The sideboard and the table were both exceptionally dusty, and the chairs had sunk into the pile carpet sufficiently to leave deep dimples when moved. Ziva opened the drawers in the sideboard and looked through them, but Gibbs went on into the living room.

There he found something he had not expected. A sweater he recognized as DiNozzo's lay on the coffee table. Nothing DiNozzo had said thus far indicated that he'd ever visited Harris at his place. He would have to find out if there was any chance DiNozzo could have left this behind. Gibbs lifted it carefully. Underneath it there was a brochure on ski vacations in Europe. Gibbs blinked at it a few times and lowered the sweater again, attempting to preserve its original folds. So, Harris wanted to take DiNozzo to Switzerland. Interesting.

Like DiNozzo, Harris was clearly a movie buff. There were nowhere near as many movies here as at DiNozzo's place, but there were several prefab DVD shelving units lined up along the wall. Gibbs looked to see if Harris owned The Untouchables or The Fugitive. He didn't see either of them on the shelves.

"Gibbs?" He looked up at Ziva's voice. She had moved into one of the bedrooms. He paused in the doorway to take in the ambience.

The primary piece of furniture in this room was a desk with a computer on it. There were two monitors, both of which were in screensaver mode. Ziva stood by the desk, next to a piece of equipment that looked kind of like a really small copy machine. "Look here," she said. He walked up behind her and found that she was flipping through a yearbook. "I know these are on a shelf at Tony's, or they were the day before yesterday."

Gibbs reached down and flipped to the back of the book, showing her all the signatures. "'Marty, have fun in Paris,'" he read aloud. "'Marty, maybe if you find a hot girl in Paris, you won't be such a geek next year.'" Gibbs snorted. "Looks like Marty didn't treasure his high school memories."

"I imagine Harris scanned the pictures of Tony into his computer," Ziva said. She lifted the lid on the scanner, which Gibbs now recognized. Inside there was a single page that looked like it was from a magazine. Ziva picked it up very carefully. "Vanity Fair, date says October, 1981," she said. "Look at this."

Gibbs looked with mild dismay at the photo of a stunningly beautiful woman with her arm around a boy of about nine. The caption read, 'Socialite Marguerite DiNozzo with son Anthony.' DiNozzo was wearing a sailor suit and grinning his trademark sunny smile at the camera. If Gibbs wasn't mistaken, however, even then it was a mask.

"Make notes about the set up," he said, and she nodded. When she closed the yearbook, it made the mouse bounce, waking the computer out of screen saver. Gibbs blinked at the wallpaper that stared at him from both screens. It was DiNozzo at a crime scene in the streets of the capital, pad of paper and pen in hand. He stood facing the left hand side of the screen, but he had turned partway around, as if someone had called his name, so his torso faced the viewer with his head turned slightly farther to the right. For once, he was not wearing his hat, and the NCIS logo on his jacket was obscured. He looked sober, professional, extremely handsome. Gibbs cleared his throat. "Since he's obviously not password protected, see what you can find."

She nodded and he left the room. The next room was the bathroom. Nothing of interest there, so Gibbs went on into the bedroom. The first thing that caught his attention was a framed photo of DiNozzo sitting on the bedside table. It was a candid shot, outdoor, and Tony was caught in mid-laugh, looking happy and carefree. It was a look Gibbs couldn't remember seeing since his own trip to Mexico. Guilt swept him. If he had not given in to self pity and left DC, DiNozzo would never have wound up over his head in an undercover op, and he might still be the man in that picture.

He shook off the guilt – now was not the time to wallow – and crossed to the bedside table. His focus shifted from the framed picture to the pile of photos that lay beneath it. He picked them up and flipped through them quickly, dismay turning to disgust and anger. The nude photos that had been posted on the web were not the only ones, apparently, but Harris hadn't wanted to share these with the world. These were bedside viewing.

Twenty-five photos, several different poses, but Gibbs suspected that they were all from the same shoot. In each picture, DiNozzo appeared to be asleep, a clear indication to Gibbs that Harris had somehow drugged his victim. In nine of the photos, DiNozzo was lying across a pile of pillows, his head resting sideways on his folded arms, his knees on the surface of the bed, spread somewhat. There was no way an unconscious DiNozzo could have gotten himself into that position, nor that he could have fallen asleep that way. The pictures had been taken from different angles. There were bruises visible on his hips and legs, a bite on his right shoulder blade, and his buttocks had handprint-shaped bruises much like those he bore currently. Other pictures showed DiNozzo on his back, arms tucked underneath him, largely not visible. His knees were raised over pillows to hold them up, displaying his assets clearly. DiNozzo's face was slack, and Gibbs could not imagine him sleeping through the amount of manhandling these positions would have required.

Gibbs studied each photo carefully, then returned them to their pile under the framed picture, his gut twisting at the thought that he'd have to tell DiNozzo about them. He continued to look around the room, and found the two movies he'd missed in the living room. Both boxes lay beside a small TV/DVD player on the dresser, one with a movie in it. The other movie, The Fugitive, was inside the DVD player.

Ziva appeared at the door to the bedroom as Gibbs finished up. "You had better see this," she said.

He followed her back into the office. She opened the door to the walk-in closet to reveal a dartboard. Over the rings of the traditional scoring pattern, a photo had been pinned, one of Gibbs' face. It was much marked with holes where darts had struck the target through it. Quite a few of those holes were in the eyes. "He's a good shot," Gibbs remarked. Faces of enemies placed over dartboards were as old as dartboards, so he didn't find it as disturbing as Ziva appeared to.

"That isn't all," she said, and she guided him over to where a file folder had been opened up. Inside were dozens of pictures from NCIS crime scenes. Gibbs wondered where Harris had gotten them, but as Ziva started flipping through the pictures, the saw that they all had a few things in common. Gibbs and DiNozzo were always the prominent subjects, Gibbs was often seen to be directing DiNozzo, and in each one, Gibbs' face had been scribbled out with such ferocity that the paper had been damaged or destroyed. "He wants you dead," Ziva observed dispassionately.

"Good," Gibbs said.

"What?" Ziva exclaimed, losing her calm exterior briefly.

Gibbs tilted his head. "Who would you rather he focused on?" he asked her. "Me, or Palmer?"

"Until earlier this morning, he thought of Palmer as an ally," Ziva said.

"Yeah, so we keep him focused on me." He looked around. "You got what you need here?"

She nodded, and they took their departure, carefully locking the door behind them when they went. "Where to now?" she asked when they were back in the car.

"Bethesda," he said.

They traveled in silence for some time, then Ziva cleared her throat. Gibbs turned towards her curiously. "How is Tony, really? If you have told him what Harris did, he cannot have taken it well."

Gibbs shook his head. "No, he didn't."

"How is he?" When Gibbs didn't answer, her tone got sharper. "He is my teammate. I believe I have a right to know." Gibbs shrugged and didn't respond. Her driving deteriorated slightly, but she didn't display any other reaction.

Once they reached the hospital, Gibbs led the way up to DiNozzo's room. He paused at the nurse's station to check on DiNozzo's status, and found that he was to be released by ten o'clock. Considering that, he walked back to Ziva. "I want you to take Dr. Benoit to get cleaned up. DiNozzo and I will meet you both at the office."

"Yes, Gibbs," she said, looking faintly rebellious. Gibbs gazed at her for a long moment, a little concerned. She had that half-wild air that she'd often had early in her time at NCIS, an emotional instability that he associated with uncertainty and insecurity.

"Ziva, I'm not telling you because it's Tony's decision who to tell," he said.

She looked up at him, eyes dark with distress and anxiety. "He will not tell me. He will not tell anyone. You only know because you were there."

Gibbs shrugged. "I can't help that," he said, but his worries abated some. Her edges had softened again. He chucked her under the chin. She smiled up at him, and he turned to go into DiNozzo's room, opening the door quietly so as not to awaken him if he still slept.

DiNozzo lay on the bed, his eyes open and bloodshot. He was looking at Benoit, a soft, hopeless expression on his face. The door had opened so soundlessly that DiNozzo didn't seem to have noticed Gibbs' entrance. He cleared his throat, and DiNozzo looked up, his expression going blank. Benoit started and sat forward, rubbing her eyes.

"Dr. Benoit, Ziva's waiting in the hall to take you so you can get cleaned up and change."

"Oh," she said, blinking owlishly at him. She turned to DiNozzo. "You okay with that?" she asked. DiNozzo's brows knit, and he nodded wordlessly. Benoit rose, walked across and kissed DiNozzo on the cheek. "It's going to be okay," she said, cupping his chin in her hand and raising his face up so his eyes met hers. DiNozzo nodded again without speaking, and she squeezed his shoulder before leaving the room.

Note: FF dot net ate the website name Abby says. It was originally written the way people normally write web addresses. Just FYI.