A/N: Sorry, this is a very long chapter. But it's Gibbs in interrogation and I couldn't figure out how to cut it. Hope you make it to the end!

28 I hope that burns

Gibbs is outside interrogation, looking over his notes. "You sure you want to watch, Ziva?"

"I need to hear it for myself."

"Okay."

"No lectures about my personal revenge mission?"

"You did fine today. No lecture." He touches her shoulder, and then goes in.

Poor Mark Green and Win Hancock have been given the job of babysitting the office. Allen and Burns are already in observation. "We figured this would be an educational experience," Burns says.

"It will be."

Tony hadn't hired Hamilton, but he'd agreed to take him because he speaks fluent Spanish. He had never liked him, though Ziva has never understood exactly what Tony disliked so much. His gut told him, she thinks now.

"Peter," Gibbs says quietly. "Is it Peter, or Pete?"

"Peter."

"Peter. I'm Special Agent Gibbs, from Washington. I was brought in to straighten out this mess. And it has been a mess. You want some coffee? Because I know I sure need it."

Peter frowns, but then nods, and Gibbs leaves and comes back with two paper cups. He sits down again. "Here's the important thing," Gibbs says. "Somebody cared an awful lot about seeing that this little girl got home safely. I've worked quite a few abductions, and I never saw a child returned like that, without even a scratch. That's going to count for a lot."

Peter doesn't have anything to say.

"The more I look at this," Gibbs says, "it almost looks like a prank to me. A prank that someone thought up, not to hurt anyone, and someone else got involved and made it a whole lot worse. But I keep coming back to that little girl, and that's why I think this started as a prank."

Behind the glass, Allen says, "Going for the out. I'd rather shoot his nose off, but I guess it's a good choice."

"Yeah," Burns says. "He'll fall for it. He thinks he's smart enough to talk his way out of this."

Back in interrogation, Gibbs changes tack. "So tell me why DiNozzo fired you."

"He just didn't like me."

"Why?"

"I'm not like him. I'm not some frat boy jock. I'm an intellectual."

Gibbs smiles. "There's a lot of that in law enforcement. Guys who never get over being jocks in high school or college. I bet you heard that story about the Wisconsin game a dozen times. I know I heard it about a thousand."

"You know him?"

"I was his boss for ten years. Believe me, that was a full-time job. Did he tell you how he'd have gone pro if Brad Pitt hadn't broken his leg?"

Peter rolls his eyes. "As if Brad Pitt had played football."

"Well, you know, once a quarterback, always a quarterback. DiNozzo's the type that has to run everything. Hey, I see you guys have a basketball court. You all ever play some pickup?"

"A little."

"He was a ball hog when I knew him."

"Still is. You should see Tawan and the other guys sucking up to him on the court. They're all the same, all frat boy jocks."

Burns says, "My college sport was bridge."

"Bet you looked great in the uniform," Allen says.

"Too many pleats in the skirt. Made my ass look big."

Gibbs: "So you weren't as impressed with DiNozzo as the others. Why did you want to go into law enforcement, Peter?"

"I'm a cum laude graduate in anthropology. My studies have given me unique insight into human motivations. I think policing could be made much more thoughtful and effective through the application of cultural insights."

"Oh, God," Burns says. "Here comes his honors paper again."

"Interesting. So how did your methods work?" Gibbs asks.

"I wasn't given an opportunity to implement them."

"No, I guess not. DiNozzo's old-fashioned, like you said. That's why he's here and not back in DC. You ever meet Director Vance?"

"No."

"Very cutting-edge. I'm sure he'd have found your ideas interesting. He wasn't happy that you were let go."

Peter frowns. "But he didn't stop it."

"Regulations. Not much that can be done when a supervising agent, even a bad one, fires a probationary agent."

Behind the glass, Allen says, "I get the technique, but I think he's going a little too far."

"It's not personal, it's business," Burns says. "Building a false sense of trust. So much more fun when it breaks."

Ziva stiffens. She understands the technique better than either of these two. She has seen Gibbs do it many times, Tony as well; she has used it herself. But she knows that Tony had left DC believing this is Gibbs's real opinion, and she's glad that he's not here.

"Okay, that helps me understand a lot better, Peter. So how did you hear about the carjackings down here?"

"From Sarah," Peter says.

Allen: "Ooh, smarty pants took his first wrong step."

"Pretty simple crime. Shouldn't be that hard to solve. But they weren't having much luck solving them, were they?"

"Not from what I heard."

"So carjacking the special agent in charge would be pretty funny, wouldn't it?"

"I didn't carjack anyone."

"No, but you know who did. Here's the thing, Peter: like I said, I think this is a prank gone wrong. But your fingerprint is on the little girl's backpack. That's bad for you."

"I might have touched it in the office."

"She just got the backpack when she started school. You haven't seen her since then, unless you've been hanging around her school."

"Of course not. I'm not a pervert."

"So your fingerprint's on her backpack. You're tied to this crime, Peter. Another agent might be content to just pin this whole thing on you. But I don't think you're the bad guy here, Peter. Are you?"

"No," Peter says.

"So," Gibbs says. "You thought you'd teach DiNozzo a little lesson, carjack him, and then see him run around with his pants on fire, not even able to find his own car. Sounds like a pretty good joke to me."

"I told you, I didn't carjack anyone."

"I know you didn't, but there's a really bad guy out there, Peter. Help me find him and all anyone will remember about you is that little girl got home safe. You'll just be the guy who did the right thing even though he'd been treated like crap."

Peter hesitates. "His name is Sergio Garcia."

"Sergio Garcia. Spanish?"

"From Barcelona."

"How'd you meet him?"

"We were temping together." Peter tells a story of striking up a friendship, sharing bad boss stories. He'd mentioned the carjackings one day, as Sarah had just mentioned it. Sergio had had the idea that it would be funny to carjack DiNozzo. Just as a joke, he said, to show him up. Sergio even offered to do the carjacking. He'd steal the car, ditch it in the woods somewhere, and then they'd watch NCIS run in circles.

"So what went wrong?" Gibbs asks.

"The girl was still in the car. Sergio said it had just gone bad, and he'd panicked. I wanted to send her back right away, but Sergio said I was implicated."

"What about the ransom?"

"Sergio never meant to collect it. It was just to distract everyone so I could get an opportunity to take her back."

"Okay. So this Sergio Garcia. Ever meet any of his friends? Family? Roommates, anything like that?"

"No, just Sergio."

"Okay, Peter, this is very helpful. I've been writing this down. I want you to look it over and sign it if it seems right to you."

Peter looks it over and signs.

"That's great. But I think there are still a few problems, Peter."

"I told you everything I know."

"But you must have known this Sergio's not Spanish. Tony heard him speak one sentence and marked him as Russian. Any idea where this Sergio is now?"

"No idea. He said he was going back to Seville last night."

"Does he have a car?"

"No, I drove us down from Seville."

"How did he get back to Seville?"

Peter swallows. "I don't know."

"It's a long cab ride."

"I told you, I don't know."

"Okay. He left last night—when? Around midnight?"

"Midnight, I guess."

"Why did you wait so long to bring the little girl back?"

"We—we decided to wait, until things had died down."

"Did Sergio think it was funny, to let a woman stand in a field, waiting for the return of her child? Did he think it was funny to let her go through the night believing her five-year-old child was dead? Did you think it was funny, Peter?"

"Of course not. Like you said, I did everything I could to protect Rebecca. We were just so flustered about the carjacking going wrong. I—I didn't think about Ziva."

"You didn't think she'd already be worried enough about her husband?"

"I didn't know about the stabbing. Sergio didn't tell me."

"You didn't know? It was all over the news about an American agent being stabbed. Did you think two American agents were carjacked in Rota yesterday?"

"I never watched the news yesterday. Or today."

Gibbs frowns. "But wasn't that the point? To carjack Tony and make him and his office look like fools? Why weren't you watching?"

"I was worried."

"Okay. The ransom. Who sent the email?"

"Sergio."

"Where did he get Ziva's email address?"

"I don't know. The addresses here aren't that hard to figure out."

"Okay, Peter, that's been very helpful. I've just made a few additions to your original statement. If you're okay with them, initial them, and we can just about call this a night."

Peter initials. Ziva can see a fleeting smile cross his face. Not yet, she thinks.

"There's one thing that really bothers me, Peter," Gibbs says. "You haven't asked about Sarah."

"Why would I?"

"She's your girlfriend, isn't she?"

"Yes, of course."

"How long?"

"Since May."

"You weren't dating when you worked here?"

"No. Why would I ask you about Sarah?"

"Her relationship with you is going to cost her her career."

"But why?"

Gibbs sighs. "No one will ever believe she wasn't involved. It's one thing for you to play a prank. It's another for her to conspire to help, or to not report it. And when the carjacking did go bad, she didn't report it."

"She didn't know anything about the carjacking. She couldn't report it."

"Okay, well, go ahead and add that to your statement."

Peter adds. Gibbs looks it over. "This is great, Peter. Just one more thing and then I think we're done." He pulls out Guyadev's mugshot. "Tony says this is the guy that carjacked him. Is this Sergio Garcia?"

Peter looks at the photograph, trying to decide how to answer. Finally, he says, "It looks like him."

"Okay, that's very helpful. We're done here. You know why? Because this statement is all the proof I need that you're a lousy liar and guilty as hell."

"It's true."

"It's crap. You've left out the most important part. The digital frame."

"What frame?"

"The frame you gave to Sarah. The frame that you loaded with pictures from Ziva's photography account. The frame that you got from Sergio Garcia—or Sergei Guyadev, as it turns out."

"I—if there's something wrong with that frame I didn't know about it."

"No one's going to believe that, Peter. You helped plant it and then you conspired with Sergei to act on intel you gathered from that bug. Ask yourself, Peter: how do I know?"

"You can't know that."

"Sergei Guyadev tried to execute an attack on this base today. He failed. He's in custody right now. I'll let you guess how much he's already told me."

Peter is very pale and still. "So you're being charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion, and conspiracy to commit crimes of mass destruction. You got used by a pro, Peter. Old Sergei'll have something worth trading. You? You're nothing. You'll be lucky to get life with no parole."

"I'm not a terrorist!"

"No, you're a nasty little perv who wanted to get back at a boss who didn't buy your act. You were willing to kill a man and terrify his wife and child. You were willing to risk the lives of every soldier, sailor, and dependent on this base. And you know what, Peter? That boss you think is so old-fashioned, so much dumber than you? He figured this out from an ICU room. At your best, with the help of a Chechen pro, you're still no match for a half-dead Tony DiNozzo. I hope that burns."