AN: I was not intending for the update process to be this long. Though it usually is, sorry. But I do have the next chapter done, I will post that beginning of next week. And I have a request to all the wonderful readers out there: every review I get, will add a 100 words to chapter: 4. And I apologize for anyone who favorited, or added an alert, thank you. Normally I thank every single thing, but I was flooded with them, so here is a obvious late thank you. Also thank you to those who reviewed without a pin-name. A huge thanks to my beta: DarkRook! This would be filled with grammar errors without him. :)

Tony was standing in the path of a truck. Gun out and ready to fire, he stared at the person in the driver's seat, who glared right back at him. It was that blond kid who drank half a bottle of whisky. He flinched as soon as he saw Gibbs, and managed to start the truck before Tony could stop him.

Gibbs caught up not too much later and stood next to the driver's door, his gun drawn and pointed at the kid. Everyone was still for the next few moments, the cold air making their breath come out in white plumes.

Tony's cell went off, the ringing shattering the silence. He pulled it out of his pocket, realizing that it was his work and not his personal phone. "Hey, Ziva. I'm a little busy right now; this better be important," Tony said as he shifted his feet. He held his gun tightly in his right hand, aimed at the kid in the driver's seat.

"It is important, probably more so than what you're doing. Our colonel's dead," Ziva's voice said through the other end of the phone.

"Are you sure?" Tony asked as he looked at the kid in the truck, who shifted in his seat. Tony stepped forward, but Gibbs already had it handled.

"Put your hands on the steering wheel then step out slowly."

"Yes, I am quite sure. He and his daughter are not breathing. How much more proof do you need?"

The kid did exactly what Gibbs asked, his hands raised in the air. His shoes touched the cement. Gibbs grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. He glared at Gibbs, but Gibbs did nothing to acknowledge it.

Gibbs beckoned for Tony to come over. Tony did so. "Search him," Gibbs said and he took Tony's gun.

"Tony, have you found anything wherever you and Gibbs are?"

"Yes," Tony said as he searched the boy. He was not finding anything. That was strange. Didn't kids normally have phones on them, or some cash?

His fingers brushed against something in one of the kid's pockets. 'Here we go,' he thought.

As he pulled out the wallet, he felt something else brush against his fingers. Tony froze, and slowly slid the wallet out. After handing the wallet to Gibbs, he briefly eyed the kid before grabbing the hem of his bloody sweatshirt.

He pulled it up, careful to not get any blood on his hands and his breathing faltered at what he found.

"Uh, Ziva, how about you ask around? And call Ducky while you're at it. Kay, bye," Tony said in a rush, not giving Ziva a chance to respond. Tony closed his phone and pocketed. He glanced at Gibbs.

"Who called you here?"

"A friend. Why?" Gibbs asked.

Tony sighed and grabbed the item under the boy's sweatshirt. "You can thank him for helping us solve this murder," Tony said as he produced a gun. It was covered in blood.

Ziva sighed angrily and closed her phone.

"What did he say?"

Ziva turned her attention to McGee, who had asked the question. She shook her head and started to dial Ducky. "He wants us to ask around, figure out if anyone saw what happened as well as get Ducky down here."

Ziva silently waited for Ducky to pick up. The ringing buzzed in her ear, annoying as it was she could think of far more irritating things.

"Ducky speaking."

"This is Ziva, Ducky," Ziva said as she shifted her feet.

"Ah, Miss David. How are you?"

Ziva smiled slightly, it was just like Ducky to ask others if they were alright. "I am fine. However we may need you for the night, have a few dead bodies up here. Do you think you and Palmer can make it?"

"Certainly, we will be there right away. See you soon Ziva." He hung up the phone. Ziva stared at it and wondered if the abrupt hang ups were going to be an everyday occurrence now. At the moment it was aggravating her to no end.

Ducky and Palmer arrived in no time at all. Ziva pointed him in the direction of the backyard, where the girl was located.

"It seems more and more youths are dying nowadays, a real shame it is," Ducky said as he got on one knee to examine her.

"Hey, Ziva, how many bodies are there?" Palmer asked as he examined at the ground. He pulled out a flashlight and shined it on the concrete.

"Two. Why?" Ziva moved closer and Ducky did the same.

"Well, it looks like there is more blood. A lot of blood. None of it seems to belong to the girl."

The flashlight, although dim, illuminated the puddles of blood. They were several paces away from the girl and alarmingly larger than the puddles pooling around her body.

"So there were other injured?" McGee guessed.

Ducky shook his head. "No, this is far too much blood to be an injury. If it was, they would have been in quite a bit of pain. The reasonable answer, I would say, is that your person got out of here only to die shortly after."

"So how many people were killed and where are the bodies?" Ziva asked as she glanced at McGee. She couldn't have missed one, or even two, badly injured people walking away, which meant they escaped before she and the rest of her team arrived.

"We would need blood samples for that one," Palmer answered. "But my guess would be at least two people from the amount of blood present."

"When did they die?" Ziva asked Ducky, maybe it would give them leeway into the case.

Ducky pierced the girl's liver with his thermometer. "This child died not much longer than three hours ago. It seems as though your killer shot her and then continued on. Did you say there was another body?"

McGee nodded and led the way into the house. "Mr. Palmer," Ducky said to his colleague. "I want you to collect the blood samples and make sure the body gets back safely. I will see you first thing tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, Doctor Mallard, I won't be late."

"Be sure to see to that." Ducky nodded towards him and continued into the house where Ziva and McGee were waiting.

With the lights on Ducky could easily see the body, as well as a pool of blood a short distance away from the body. "Well, let's have a look at you, shall we?"

Ducky examined the body and confirmed that he had died not long after the girl did. He looked at the dead man's face with an odd expression. Streams of blood had run off and dripped down from his face; the same thing had happened with his chest.

"It seems as though colonel got shot in the chest. Someone grabbed his face while he was bleeding out though. It is confusing to say the least."

"Alright. McGee and I are going to find some witnesses. Can you wrap it up here?" Ziva asked.

"Yes, go on and do what you need to do, I will be fine."

"We just going to play the waiting game. Or, actually, get a confession," Tony told Gibbs before continuing, "I have no clue who this kid is but he can't deny that he killed those people. I mean he had a gun, and just look at him he's covered in blood. Not to mention that he had the colonel's truck in his custody."

Gibbs and Tony were in the interrogations media room. They had driven back while the boy sat in the back, staring out the window in silence. They finally got here and asked him his name, but he wouldn't answer.

And here they were, watching the kid on the other side of the non-reflective glass. He kept staring at the table. They had told him to take his hood off and had turned the bright lights on so they could easily commit him to memory. Not only did he have dried blood on his clothes and hands, but his blond hair was also crusted with blood.
"We'll wait until he cracks, or until we get more information from Ziva," Gibbs said. "But I don't want to accuse him of anything. He may have done it or he may have gotten caught in the crossfire. Either way, we want hard evidence, so he stays here for the time being." He walked towards the door.

"Where you going, Boss?" Tony asked as he remained where he was, glancing between Gibbs and the kid.

"Talk to Abby," he said briefly, before closing the door. Tony sighed and stared at the kid, only to jump when the door opened again.

"Give the kid a new outfit and collect the ones he's wearing for evidence," Gibbs said with his head poked through the door. The door closed again and he vanished from sight.

Tony grumbled and was about to grab the kid and escort him to the nearest bathroom when his phone went off.

"Thank you," McGee said to Mrs. Kin, the next door neighbour, as they walked out the door.

"Not a problem. I hope that information helps you," she said. The door closed.

Ziva and McGee headed down the street a few houses away from 's. Once they left the colonel's house they had turned up at the neighbours' houses to see if they had anything that would help them. They had found out from Mrs. Kin that less than two hours ago she heard gunshots. And when she glanced out the window she saw a familiar figure run away from the scene. She couldn't remember who it was until Ziva asked her if anyone new had come into the neighbourhood.

That was when she remembered that a college boy had moved in a few weeks ago, and that he was very kind and friendly. Within the first week of his arrival he was babysitting Mr. Lawson's daughter, Becky. When asked why she didn't contact the police she said she was afraid to. A few minutes after the boy had left, some guys came and took away bodies. Once she saw that, she had locked her door and retreated to the basement, only to come out when McGee had knocked on the door stating that they were N.C.I.S. and needed to question her on anything that happened in the past few days.

She had pointed them in the direction of a blue house, a single story with dead flowers by the stairs. Currently, Ziva and McGee were standing in front of it.

McGee noticed the lone flower pot, holding dead flowers just like she had described, on the ground near the stairs. He understood why a young man in college didn't have time to keep flowers alive when his primary concern would probably be making himself dinner. It was especially necessary if he was living alone.

He and Ziva slid their guns out as a precautionary measure. After all, this kid was seen fleeing the crime scene. Ziva knocked on the door, and once again there was no answer. She sighed and shot the handle. The door swung open and banged against the side of the wall.

The foyer led into a huge living room, which also held a small kitchenette. Off of that was a hallway. McGee headed farther into the house, towards the kitchen, observing that the place was absent of clutter. Ziva made her way towards the adjoining hallway.

She found herself in front of two doors. With her gun raised, she opened one, finding a bathroom. Turning to the other, she tried opening it, but it was locked. She sighed, brought her gun up, and shot the lock. Again.

Behind the locked door, there was nothing but an office. She had been expecting something strange, like a torture chamber, or at least a simple bedroom. Not something so innocuous. Walking into the large room, she noticed a glass desk positioned on the far side of the place, situated away from the bay window, which had the blinds drawn over them, and blocking out the view of the non-existent backyard.

Ziva walked over to the desk and sat in the small folding chair. The desk's translucent surface was cluttered, with five books and dozens of random papers strewn about it. Ziva guessed that this college student had some tests coming up.

McGee appeared in the doorway and let out a breath of relief when he saw Ziva sitting at the desk. "I thought something bad had happened, or good depending on how you look at things."

Ziva raised an eyebrow as she scanned the rest of the room. There was a wall-to-wall book case filled with various books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as textbooks for school. There was also a small end-table next to the door. A lamp and a chess set were set on it.

"Alright, so what would the good or bad situation be?"

"The good being you caught the person who ran off by shooting him. The bad being you found the person when you were off guard and he shot you. So you see my wariness here."

"The door was locked."

McGee nodded and walked into the office, scanning the bookcase. He picked up a book and smiled. "At least someone likes my books." McGee held up a book, the cover reading Deep Six*. "He has the whole series."

"Yes, McGee, your book is popular with the criminals we work with everyday. Congratulations," Ziva smirked as she said this, then glanced down at all the papers scattered about the desk. "Looks like our college kid was busy. What did you find in the living room and kitchen?"

"Nothing much, stuff any normal college kid would have. Except for maybe the flat screen. Other than that there was a simple couch, scraped coffee table, and small kitchen with ramen packets filling the cupboards. Have you found anything interesting in here?"

"Not much to see here," she said as she ran her hands underneath the desk. She stopped when she felt something. She pulled on a latch, and a smooth surface was drawn out from underneath the desk alongside her hand. On the surface was an expensive looking laptop. She glanced at McGee, who came over and opened the laptop. In the meantime, she examined the books that filled the other side of the room. They were mostly school book, or books on theories and equations.

She saw a small glint off to the side of the bookcase. Getting up, she surrendered the uncomfortable chair to Tim while trying to determine what would shine like that. Once she got to the other side of the room, she wasn't really surprised by what she saw.

It was a black safe with a complicated locking mechanism attached to it. She frowned and turned back to McGee to see how he was doing with the computer's password.

"Damn," McGee mumbled as he sat in the cheap chair and stared at the computer screen. Ziva came up behind him, worried. McGee rarely cursed; if he did it meant there was a serious problem. And it should not have been hard to break into a kid's computer. After all, McGee was their computer techie right next to Abby.

"It is beyond locked," he told her.

"What does that mean?" Ziva was confused; computers were not her thing. Sure, she could do the basics, but that was about it.

"It means that there is a password on here, which is fine. I could probably crack it in an hour or so. But if you put in the wrong password, like I just did, it shuts down for an hour, which is why the screen is black. I have never heard of any computer turning itself off after the first wrong entry; on high-tech computers it does so after about a dozen times. But even then it's a risk for the owner, one wrong mistake and you are without a computer for a good hour. And the time only rises from there," he explained, staring at the blank screen.

"Well, I found a pretty impressive safe over in the corner. Want to call Tony to see how they're doing with the suspect?"

"Why not? It looks like we're done here."

Ziva nodded her head and took her phone out, dialing Tony's work phone.

"Yeah?" Tony's voice answered.

"Hi, Tony, wanted to see if you caught the perpetrator."

"Not really sure on that one; he's not talking. But so far the evidence is against him. Why?"

"Does he look like a college kid?" Ziva asked, knowing if she got a yes than they would be so much closer to completing this case.

"How did you know?"

"Lucky guess. No, we asked around and one of the ladies on the block said she saw a boy run from the scene. He just so happens to be the neighborhood babysitter; he attends a nearby college and lives a few doors down. I don't know how more accurate you want this case to be."

"Right. Well, did you check out the house? Anything strange?"

"Everything seems pretty normal, except that he has a few expensive items. Let me put you on speaker." Setting the phone down on a book perched on the edge of the desk, she pressed a button on its side.

"Hi Tony," McGee said as he stared at the portable computer with hatred.

"Alright, so tell me what you guys found."

"A flat screen television in the living room seems to be the only high priced item in the house. Well, except this laptop of course," McGee said.

"Probably loaded. McGee decode that laptop and see if you can find me anything useful, fast. And Ziva, what did you find?"

Before Ziva spoke up, McGee interrupted, "Tony, this computer is impossible to get in without the proper equipment. And even then I might need Abby to help me."

"Fine, you are now demoted back to probie, McGeek. Now, Ziva, did you find anything useful?"

"Not much, just an office as big as the living room. It has a safe too, but one look at it says it needs equipment, same as the laptop," she said to the phone before turning to McGee. "Was there an extra door somewhere in the kitchen?"

McGee shook his head, "No, just a small kitchenette, why?"

Ziva thought a second before answering. "There is no bedroom."

"Well, he is a college kid, maybe he crashes on his couch? Have you guys found anything else important?"

"Tony has a point about the couch," McGee told her.

She nodded. "Nothing much, the office is quite the sight for a college kid. Oh, wait, he has copies of Tim's books."

"He what? Perfect," Tony grumbled. "I'll watch out for Abby. Probie, you write any more books we don't know about?"

"No." McGee had a slight frown on his face.

"Great. You guys wrap it up, bring the laptop and the safe, as well as anything else lying around that looks important." Tony was silent for a minute before speaking up again. "Oh, and grab all of Probie's books." And then he hung up.

McGee's frowned deepened. "I'll get these papers, the laptop, and my books. You grab the safe; I'll meet you in the car."

AN: Thank you for reading! Please drop a review, I want to make a long chapter 4, and I want to know how this story is going.

*Deep Six: I honestly could not resist. It was a perfect place to tie a few loose strongs, plus it was a huge book shelf. It had various books on it, McGees novel's just happened to be a few of them.