NCIS Squad Room. Very Late Friday Night.
Tim is frowning at something on his computer screen when his concentration is broken by the ringing of his phone. "Special Agent McGee."
"McGee I need your help."
"Ziva is that you? I can hardly hear you."
"I really need you to come and help me. You know Gibbs sent me to the Naval Records Facility to look for information on the commander's history."
"Yes."
"Well it is much more complicated than we first thought and now I'm bound up in red tape and I really need your help."
McGee sighs. "I know paperwork is a nuisance. All that filling in forms in triplicate but I'm the only one here. Gibbs and Tony went to interview the CO. Can't you take care of it on your own?"
"If I could I would not be calling you would I?" Assuming this is a purely rhetorical question McGee doesn't bother to reply. "Please will you come and help me?"
"Sure. When I finish..."
"Now McGee!" She hangs up. McGee gathers his gear, shuts down his computer and heads out.
Naval Records Facility.
After showing his credentials to the guard on the front desk McGee heads to the section where he knows Ziva should be. He enters a large room like an airport hanger that is filled with shelving that is covered in boxes and dust. "Ziva."
"I'm down here McGee." He walks to the end of the hanger and turns a corner his eyes widening in disbelief at what he discovers there.
"Are you O.K.?"
"Sure. Just a bit embarrassed. Help me out here would you?"
As he takes out his knife and begins to cut away at the tape binding her hands he can't resist saying "I see you weren't joking about the tape."
"Why would I joke about that?"
"Well...actually never mind. What happened?"
"I think the clerk that has been helping me the past few days either knows something or was paid to prevent me from finding information. He kept offering to help and bringing me cups of coffee. I suspect he slipped a drug into something he gave me at lunch. I passed out and when I woke up I was tied up like this."
"So how did you call me?"
"I managed to free my feet and used them on the wall phone to call you. Of course I had to put it on speaker to be able to talk to you." She sits up and rubs at her wrists.
"Of course."
"So I guess we need to find that clerk and find out what the hell is going on."
"Yeah. We should also get you checked out too." They begin to walk back through the building. "Look Ziva I'm sorry I didn't take you seriously at first when you mentioned red tape and really someone should have come with you to..."
"It is O.K. McGee. You could not have known what would happen. None of us thought anyone here might be involved or that there was the potential for one of us to be hurt or at least tied up." She smiles at him. "We all had this down as a fraud, an intellectual crime by geeks, a white shirt crime."
"Ah, Ziva. It's actually..."
"What?"
Considering what she's just been through McGee decides it's probably prudent to delay an explanation of the expression white collar crime to another time. "Nothing Ziva. Nothing at all. Let's get you back to Ducky."