I'm so sorry that I haven't updated in forever! I kinda hit writer's block for the first time in my life.....
Here is the next chapter for ya'll. Hope you enjoy it.
Gibbs and Ziva sat in the waiting room two hours later, waiting for Jeanne to return with an update on Tony's condition.
"It's not your fault, Ziva," Gibbs said, breaking the silence in the room.
"You do not know that, Gibbs," Ziva replied. "I should have known who he was. I know all about Vladimir Banica. One of my previous assignments was to find him, but he evaded us. Jeremy looks just like the man; I should have realized it from the beginning. I was not thinking," she rambled.
"The best thing you can do right now is forget about the coulda, shoulda, woulda," Gibbs said, recalling the phrase Shannon used to use all the time. "Focus on finding the man and figuring out what his plan is. There's more to all this than just killing Tony," Gibbs explained.
"How can you be sure?" Ziva asked before lifting her hand. "Never mind, I know the answer: your gut." Gibbs cracked a smile at that, and Ziva thought to herself that it was one of the only times she'd ever seen the Marine smile. "Do you think he will be okay?" Ziva asked, quietly.
"He doesn't have permission to die," Gibbs said simply. "Besides, I have a feeling he has some unfinished business," Gibbs said his eye twinkling. "All I ask if that you keep it out of the office. If I so much as see an intimate look between the two of you, I will kick your sixes to Greenland," he warned.
"Understood," Ziva smiled, and turned her eyes to the waiting room door, urging it to open with Jeanne walking in with good news.
It was only five minutes later that Jeanne walked in. Immediately, Ziva could see the relieved look in the woman's face, and knew that the news would be better than before.
"Is he out?" she asked.
"Yes," Jeanne said, smiling for the first time since walking into the room. "Dr. Andrews expects him to make a full recovery, but it will be a gradual process," Jeanne cautioned. "He said there was a lot of bleeding, so he does not expect Tony to wake up for a few days, allowing his body time to heal. Dr. Andrews also noted some bruising on Tony's stomach that he believes happened before Tony was shot," Jeanne told the two.
"He had an altercation earlier in the day," Gibbs explained not mentioning Jeremy's name. "Thanks for helping us, Ms. Benoit. After everything you've been through, I'm sure this has not been easy on you."
"No it hasn't, but in a way I am glad this happened. I know now that I can fully move on and forget about everything," Jeanne told the two. "I need to get going. I have a meeting with your director about three hours from now," she explained, looking at her watch. "Wow, I can't believe it's already five," she exclaimed. "My shift ended five hours ago."
"Thanks for everything," Ziva said. Jeanne smiled in return, knowing exactly what Ziva meant.
"Take care of him," Jeanne told her before leaving the waiting room for good.
As time passed, Ziva felt her eye lids grow heavy, and she slowly fell asleep. She'd tried fighting it for as long as she could, but her body was exhausted.
Gibbs watched the Israeli as she slept, and knew it was probably the best thing for her to do right now. Soon, they would have to head back to work and find the man responsible for all this. However, they could afford a couple hours of relaxing, after all, they weren't going to be worth anything if they ran themselves ragged. That would only give Jeremy a better chance at escaping.
An Hour Later
Ziva awoke with a start, and it took a moment for her to regain her surroundings. Looking to her left, she say Gibbs sitting by the window looking outside. "Why did you not wake me?" she asked, stretching to get the kinks out of her body. "We need to find Jeremy."
"You're no good to us exhausted," Gibbs explained, drinking from his coffee cup. "Doctor said we could go back and see Tony for a few minutes before we left," he told her, standing up. "If you don't want to, then that's fine," Gibbs said, gently.
"No, I want to," Ziva said, nodding her head in affirmation.
As the two agents walked towards Tony's room, both silently prepared for what they would find. Approaching the door, Gibbs stopped and said, "I'll let you have a few moments alone."
Ziva looked at him, but didn't say anything. She didn't want to admit that her nerves were getting the best of her, and she was trying to calm herself down. She knew that on the other side of that door right in front of her was the man she'd loved but refused to admit it.
Walking into the hospital room, Ziva saw Tony lying pale on the bed in the middle of the room. He did not look like the Tony she was used to seeing. The humor on his face was gone; all that was left was a ghost of a face. Staring at him, Ziva saw what she'd been missing the past few months. She saw the stress lines that had formed on his face.
"Hi, Tony," she whispered gently, walking closer to the bed. "You need to wake up," she urged. "I do not think I can stand it if you die because of me. I should have known Jeremy was capable of this. I just did not want to believe it. I thought that by ignoring him, and keeping him away from you I could keep everything fine. I am sorry, Tony," she continued. "I promise I will find him and make him pay for doing this. I should have been there for you this past year. I did not realize how much stress you been dealing with," she traced his hairline gently. "I could tell you were hurting after the team was split, but I did not try to help. Instead, I took care of my own selfish needs. Please wake up, Tony. I need you," she said before bending down and kissing his forehead gently.
NCIS
"Have you found anything?" Gibbs asked, walking into Abby's lab where Abby and McGee were huddled over their keyboards.
"We tried to triangulate the number you gave us last night," McGee explained.
"It's a satellite phone so encrypted it would take days to find its signal," Abby spoke up.
"What else you got?" Gibbs asked.
Abby turned to her computer, "Jeremy Holdset traveled to Romania a year ago, returning three months later. It looks like nothing but a simple visit with family. However, during that time, there were three bombings in Greece, Italy, and France with the same MO as Vladimir Banica's previous attacks."
"Jeremy took over his uncle's business," Gibbs figured. "Have you found anything about the uncle?" he asked.
"It's like he fell off the face of the earth," Abby said. "I'm trying to back-trace Jeremy to five years ago, but it's proving just as complicated."
"I will call my contacts and see what they can find out," Ziva said, leaving the lab to go to her desk.
Two hours later
Gibbs walked in the bullpen after going for another round of coffee. "Do your contacts know anything?" he asked stopping in front of Ziva's desk.
"Mossad has been investigating Jeremy for the past five years. There were rumors that led them to believe Jeremy took over his uncle's business after Banica's death five years ago. Apparently these surfaced after I was taken off the case to keep track of Ari," Ziva explained.
"Why didn't they notify the U.S.?" McGee asked. "After all, Jeremy is an American citizen."
"You will learn, McGee, that countries do not always cooperate with each other like you think. Each wants the glory for themselves," Gibbs explained. "What are we missing?" Gibbs asked, staring at the picture of Jeremy on the screen in front of him. "McGee, I want to know everything about Jeremy's father that you can find. What's his connection?"
"On it, Boss," McGee said, getting to work.
"David, you spent more time with Jeremy lately than anyone else. What ulterior motive would he have for all of this?" Gibbs asked. "He has more planned than shooting DiNozzo, and we need to figure that out."
Ziva racked her brain trying to think of six months worth of conversations. "He had meetings all over the place. I assumed they were clients, since he told me he was a lawyer. Have you tried his cell phone records?" she asked McGee.
"Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The only number he called more than a handful of times was yours," McGee explained.
"Give them to Ziva, maybe a name or something will pop out to her," Gibbs ordered.
"Gibbs, look at this," Ziva said thirty minutes later. "Jeremy called ten different prepaid cell phone numbers in the past two months. If I were planning an attack, that is exactly what I would do."
"Keep changing burn phones so that it would be harder to trace," Gibbs added. "McGee, is there any way we can locate where these calls were made?" he asked, pointing at the screen.
"It may take some time, but I think so," McGee said, beginning to type on his computer.
"Gibbs, I found something," Abby exclaimed, running into the bullpen. "McGee told me you wanted Jeremy's father's background, so I decided to help out. He wasn't the perfect citizen. He led a group of students in 1965 protesting the Vietnam War. The next year he was being investigated for helping plan the bombing of a local recruiting office, but there was not enough evidence to convict him. Two months later he moved to Romania and married Andreea Banica,' Abby explained. "Even after he returned to the U.S. in 1975, he seemed to push the law as far as possible. In 1992 the FBI began investigating a possible connection between James Holdset and everyone's favorite international arms dealer," she said, pointing to the plasma where she pulled up a photo of La Grenouille.
"Did they find one?" Ziva asked.
"CIA blocked the case when Kort infiltrated," Abby said.
"Good job, Abs," Gibbs said, kissing her cheek on his way to his desk.
"I got more, Gibbs," Abby smiled slightly. "I ran the bullet McGee found in Tony's apartment through the database. I planned on settling down with a bowl of popcorn to wait for the results, but I got a match before my popcorn even finished popping." She stopped rambling at the look Gibbs gave her. "It was shot from a Bravo-51. This particular gun was found in pieces in dumpsters throughout a three mile radius of Tony's apartment. The shooter was careful to not get any fingerprints on the gun."
"The owner?" Gibbs asked.
"As far as I can tell, it never had one," Abby shrugged her shoulders. "I traced the parts back to a factory in the south of France, but I hit a dead-end. The VIN number on the gun is not listed in any database I could find."
"You don't think Jeremy Holdset is in the arms-dealing ring, do you, Boss?" McGee asked and Gibbs looked at him.
"He's in more than we know," Gibbs started. "What we have to figure out is what he is planning to do. Whatever it is, he's going to do it soon," he told the team. "McGee, have you found where those calls were made yet?" he asked, walking over to McGee's desk.
McGee typed a bit on the keyboard in front of him, pulling up a map on the plasma for everyone to see. "All of the calls were made within a 50 mile radius of Richmond," he explained. "That's as close as I could get," he apologized.
"That's as close as you need," Vance said, walking into the bullpen. "I believe I know where Holdset is planning to attack.
