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Abby grinned happily as she pulled DNA from the hair that McGee had found on the rooftop where he had been shot at. The DNA was fresh and the root was still intact, so it must have been pulled out of the shooters head when he/she had tried to escape, their haste making them bungle the getaway. Well they were not going to be on the run for long! Once she ran the DNA, and the finger prints she had pulled from the bullet casings, she would have an ID to give to Gibbs, and he would go out and kick this guy's ass for trying to hurt Timmy. Well, actually it looked like it was going to be a woman, since the hair was 8 inches long, although it could be a man with long hair… well they were going down anyway. She grinned wickedly and took a long draw on the straw in her Caf-Pow.
McGee was sitting next to her, running through the security tapes from the coffee shop, looking for the point at which he entered. He sighed as he cast a glance at his laptop, laying in an evidence bag with a huge hole in it. It was completely useless now, and he thanked his lucky stars that the bullet had gone through the screen and not into the motherboard, so he could still get his information off of it. He would probably still have found a way, even if it had destroyed the circuitry, but he was glad he didn't have to try.
"Hey, there you are!" Abby pointed at McGee's figure on the computer screen as he entered the shop and ordered a coffee. "Aww, Timmy. You look so glum." McGee slowed the playback and sadly watched himself set up his late laptop by the window.
"You would too if you had just been dragged into Vance's office so he could try and turn you in to some sort of Tattling-Spy." She picked up her Caf-Pow and drank the last, and then she threw it in the garbage and took out her spare, offering McGee the first drink from it, to cheer him up. He took the straw and gave Abby a smile, showing her it was appreciated and then gave it back to her. Abby turned back to her own computer as it dinged, telling her that a match from the fingerprints was now available. She brought up the result and stared at the person it displayed. Trent Kort? She had heard that name before, but couldn't figure out where from.
"Who is Trent Kort?" she gave Tim a tap on the shoulder.
"CIA handler for La Grenouille. He came into NCIS once, back when we thought Tony had died in that explosion. Why?" Abby pointed at her screen with a predatory smile.
"His prints were on the bullet casings. Guess we know who the shooter is!" She patted his back and then froze as a small figure appeared on the tapes, stopping sharply in front of the coffee shop window and then walking quickly across the street.
"There! The-Timmy, there!" she pointed frantically at the screen and McGee rolled back the footage to the point at which they had a clear shot of the persons face. The longish red hair and distinctive facial features that they had seen nearly every day for three years taunted them from the recording. They both stared at the picture, willing it to change or at least take a different route, away from the building across the street. Abby shook her head slowly. "No, that's not possible."
"Jenny?" Tim enlarged the shot of the face, the features becoming clearer, his memory struggling to remember if the voice of the shooter could be Jenny's, and failing, the one word spoken to him was too little for him to ID.
"No, it must be someone that just looks like her, she's dead and we know she is! The prints weren't even hers, so she probably wasn't even on the roof. Maybe she forgot something and went across the street as a short cut to… somewhere!" Just then the DNA search on the hair dinged, and Abby pounced on the button bringing it up and praying that it was some felon, so she could prove that this was madness, probably from the stress of Timmy being shot at. The file it brought up however did not belong to a felon.
"I don't believe it…" Tim stared at the picture of Jenny Shepard in horror. He had been shot at by a dead woman? No, no it couldn't be. "I must have… contaminated the scene somehow…"
"With a look alike who also happens to have the exact same DNA? It's a 100% match."
"With a hair." he said, wondering if he could have picked up a hair that she could have left maybe in her office since he had been in there moments before leaving for a coffee. "I was in her office."
"Vance had the place sterilised when he moved in, remember?" they both fell silent and stared at the evidence telling them a dead friend had tried to kill one of them. "What do we tell Gibbs?"
--
Jenny pulled her hood over her head and tried to blend in with the crowd of pedestrians, staying just a few steps behind her quarry. Trent hadn't been especially understanding of her absence last night, in fact he had been positively aggressive towards her, forcing the syringe into her arm the second she walked through the door. Well that had stung both her arm and her pride and she damn well wasn't going to let him do that to her again! She had pretended to take it herself this morning, sticking it in to a hidden wad of tissue that she had stuffed up her sleeve, and releasing the liquid into the absorbent paper, effectively making it seem that she had taken the drug when she hadn't. She didn't really want to rebel against her brother like that, or get Gregory into trouble, but she had to know if that stuff was making her better or worse.
She had thought long and hard about her memory, and she had realised that Trent had just been acting, pretending to not know or like her, and she must have been undercover as someone else. She had also decided that while she couldn't kill Tim, she could take out the Hamas terrorist. Hamas were dangerous at the best of times, but this one was well dug in. She had to choose her moment carefully, or the assassin would turn around and slaughter her. She wasn't going to give her the chance. She kept enough of a gap between them for her to watch the Israeli woman's every move, but enough of one so she could have a better chance of getting away if she was discovered.
The Hamas woman appeared to be on a mission herself, walking around the rundown streets near the coffee shop where Jenny had shot at Tim last night. She appeared to be looking for something. Jenny followed a little closer as the woman turned down an alley and walked down it towards the fire escape. What could she be looking for down here? Jenny split away from her and walked down the adjacent alley, knowing that if ever there was a chance to take the woman down without being seen, it would be now, while she was away from the public eye. Jenny swiftly climbed the fire escape that she had climbed down last night and got up on the roof top. She crept to the edge and watched the woman approach a doorway at the middle of the alley, gun drawn. Jenny pulled out her own gun and sat down at the edge, looking through the sight, just in time to see the woman's dark hair whip through the doorway.
"Damn it!" Jenny muttered angrily as the perfect shot just passed her by. She sat back and pulled her hood off shaking her hair out, the sun baking her in the dark, cover-all clothing she had decided to wear. She would have to wash her hair again when she got in, the freshness from her shower that morning had passed already, and the heat made her hair stick to her head. She wound her hair into a knot and then pulled her hood back up. What was the woman doing in there? She hadn't gone anywhere near that door, so the woman wasn't following her trail. Just then the door slammed open and the Israeli tumbled out, locked in a struggle with a huge, muscled man covered in tattoos, the loser obviously going to be not long for the world. He punched the woman in the stomach and threw her to the floor, pulling out a gun as he moved to stand over her. The woman attempted to kick him away, but he dodged and raised his weapon. Jenny whipped up her gun and fired, not even thinking about what she was doing, the situation happening so fast. The big man fell, blood trickling out of the hole in his head and the Israeli woman jumped up to her feet, her gun back in her hands and her eyes scanning the area. Jenny shrank back from the edge of the building, her mind a mess of confusion. She had shot the wrong target, hell; she had aimed for the wrong target! What's wrong with me? She shook her head and cursed herself, her mistake, because she was sure it was one, allowing the Hamas to realise she was being tailed. Jenny tried to sneak away, however the Israeli saw her and took off towards the fire escape to the building she was on. Jenny panicked, she turned to climb down the stairs and then saw the woman climbing up it towards her. She couldn't pull the same trick she had last night, the only rooftop near was higher than the one she was on currently. She was stuck, or maybe not…
Jenny broke the window closest to her and quickly climbed through it, and ran in to the room she had just broken into. Rather than running through it however, she waited, and then smiled as she heard a corresponding tinkle of breaking glass from below her. The Israeli was trying to cut her off at the stairs inside the building. Jenny turned around and climbed back out the window and took off down those stairs as fast as she could, running away from the building and towards the hustle and bustle of the city, blending in with the crowd. It wouldn't help her as well as it did last night though, particularly not if the woman had caught a good glimpse of her, so she walked as fast as she dared directly away from the building, hoping her skills would keep her safe and hidden.
--
Gibbs watched the footage that Abby was playing for him silently, the figure on screen unmistakable to him. That was Jenny, alive and well, stalking his Agent and trying to kill him with bullets that belong or belonged to Trent Kort. Well that answered the question of whether Jenny was really alive or not. It was probably the answer to whether Jenny had killed Todd too. He exchanged a glance with Ducky and the elderly ME produced the autopsy pictured that they had been looking at just yesterday. He put the folder on the table in front of him and brought everyone's attention to it. Abby, McGee, Tony, Cynthia and Palmer all looked at the folder curiously.
"We already suspected that Jennifer was alive, the body that was autopsied was not hers and these pictures prove it, however, we did not have any evidence that she was alive. Any real evidence." He added at Gibbs' hard look.
"Since she seems to be targeting McGee, we thought you should all know the whole picture, just in case this is some sort of 'revenge against NCIS' killing spree." Gibbs pointed to Cynthia who pulled out the glass, which they had gotten their first bit of evidence from. "This is one of Jenny's glasses, which she used to drink her Bourbon from. We found that it also contained a large amount of drugs, which were designed to make her think she was dying." Confused glances were shared by those who didn't already know.
"So… she wasn't?" Tony asked, slightly incredulously.
"No. She went to see a neurologist, since the symptoms she was showing were for a brain tumour, and that neurologist was Todd Gelfand." McGee dipped his head as the news broadcast returned to the forefront of his mind.
"The dead guy?" Gibbs smiled a little and nodded.
"Yes, and he died three weeks ago, same as Jenny. We had to get this glass from Cynthia, because Vance threw out the decanter and the other glasses when he got the office, probably during the sterilisation." He spat the last word like it was poisonous and all present agreed with the sentiment. Tony turned to Cynthia enquiringly.
"You had it? Why didn't you wash it?" Cynthia smiled sadly and cradled the glass fondly.
"If I had it would just be another glass, I wanted it to still be Jenny's, so I left it as I found it." he shrugged his shoulders and wandered over to the folder, the first to open it and pull out the pictures.
"The pictures from the autopsy report, as was previously stated, are not of Jenny." Gibbs repeated to him.
"I thought Ducky did the autopsy." Abby asked, shooting a penetrating glance at the ME, who sighed.
"Vance had her body transferred to another ME." They all looked at each other; Vance had been mentioned one too many times for their liking. Tony turned to his left, about to say something and then closed his mouth, looking around wildly.
"Where's Ziva?"
--
Ziva watched the figure wend her way through the crowds, looking like just another pedestrian, but she knew better. The hunter was now the hunted, she thought, and turned off her phone so a sudden call wouldn't give her away. She had decided to take another look for the second bullet, which had according to McGee, hit the steps, but it hadn't been there when she and Tony had searched for it. she had decided to look further down the street just in case the bullet had bounced that far down, and had ended up overhearing a conversation about a hit. She had gone to investigate, thinking it may have been about McGee, and had found instead a man on a phone with a dead body in front of him, obviously having just completed his own hit. The last thing she had expected while she had been grappling with the guy was for the shooter she had been trying to find to save her, but then the woman acted like she had made a mistake, so she had probably just missed. Ziva kept her distance, letting the shooter think she was getting away and followed her, wondering where they would end up.
