Disclaimer: We really don't own NCIS (which might really be a good thing. . . ) Also we don't own Shakespeare's work, since it was kinda written way, way before we were even born.

A C T II

s c e n e i

"Well?" Gibbs demanded as he strode into the bullpen, Tony in tow.

"It's like they've disappeared Boss," McGee replied, looking up from his desk. Gibbs just glared at him and he quickly added, "but they have to be somewhere, and so we'll find them."

"Since their mother died several years ago, the boys have been declared the sole beneficiaries of Admiral King's estate," Ziva informed them.

"So, they decide to off their old man at a Christmas party?" Tony asked skeptically as he settled into his chair.

"Perhaps they believed that the suspicion would fall on one of the Admiral's colleagues," Ziva said with a shrug.

"Ziva go talk to their friends, family, hell, everyone they know," Gibbs barked, "and take DiNozzo with you."

Tony made a face, "Aw, come on boss," he moaned. "Do I have to go with her? I'll do anything else you want. I'll run their credit cards, phone records, go down to Abby's and listen to her techno-babble, fetch you a toothpick from the farthest—"

"DiNozzo," Gibbs snapped cutting him off. "Why the hell would I want a toothpick?"

Tony paused and tilted his head in confusion. "I, uh, I don't really know Boss," he replied after a moment, still sitting at his desk.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs barked pointing in the direction of the elevator.

"Right Boss. Going," Tony replied jumping up, and gathered his gear.

"And when you're done DiNozzo, you can go down to Abby's and listen to her techno-babble!" Gibbs yelled after him.

Tony sighed and glared at Ziva as he reached the elevator. "I'm driving," he announced.

"Really?" Ziva asked innocently, "And how do you plan on doing that?" she questioned, as she twirled the keys around her finger.

Ziva easily pulled the keys back, as Tony made a predictable grab for them, and giving him a satisfied smirk she dropped them into her pocket.

It was several hours before they returned to NCIS, and they had gathered very little new information, as no one had seen or heard from the King boys since their father's murder. Both agents were starting to get a little frustrated, and as a result were bickering. Again. Or rather, still, seeing as they had been arguing on and off all afternoon about Ziva's driving.

"We are alive, are we not?" Ziva demanded as they stepped back into the elevator upon their return.

"Barely," Tony replied flippantly, pressing the button for Abby's lab. He moved to lean against the back of the elevator.

"Had you driven, we would still be out doing interviews," Ziva added.

"At least I know what it means when the little light turns red, Zee-va."

Ziva glared at him, but did not respond as the elevator dinged and opened. As usual music was playing from inside Abby's lab, only this time it was some strange christmassy-metal piece. The fact the such music existed disturbed Tony a little.

Tony and Ziva were half way through the door when Abby halted them with a raised hand.

"Abbs?" Tony asked.

She gestured upwards, and Tony tilted his head back to find a piece of mistletoe hanging above his head. He looked back at Abby, then to Ziva next to him.

"I do not think so," Ziva said shortly, stepping through the doorway.

"Yeah, never know where she's been." Tony added easily, as he pushed past Ziva into the lab.

Abby pouted, "You guys, you're so 'Ba-humbug'."

Ziva raised an eyebrow questioningly. "How can I be a 'humbug' for not taking part in traditions that are part of a holiday I do not even celebrate?" she asked.

Abby cocked her head appearing to give the matter careful thought. "I don't know," she said at last, "But you are." With that, she spun around to face her computer. "So, what do you want to hear about first?"

"Everything Abby," Tony replied coming to stand next to her at the computer. "We've hit a dead end here."

Abby raised her eyebrows like she was about to make a snide comment – probably something along the lines of their matching dead Christmas-spirit – but she chose to simply delve into the evidence instead.

"Well, your admiral had a blood alcohol content of .24 percent, and for his size that means he would have been completely drunk when he died. I'd be surprised if he could stand up on his own."

"That could explain why he did not fight back," Ziva commented thoughtfully.

Tony frowned. "Doesn't that sort of beg the question as to how he got out of the main party room and into the bedroom in the first place? I mean, if the guy was hammered and about to crash, how'd he make it up the stairs?"

"Perhaps his murderer helped him along," Ziva suggested.

Tony rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "His son said he saw the admiral go upstairs alone and no one else saw the man leave. . . how convenient."

He was disappointed to find that neither Ziva nor Abby looked impressed by his deduction.

"I've got more guys," Abby chirped cheerfully, preventing any awkward silence from pentrating the lab. For, as it was well known, awkward silences of any shape or form were absolutely not allowed in Abby's lab. "There were fingerprints in the blood on the admiral's arms and shirt. I ran them and they came up a match to recently promoted Captain Mac Scott."

"Doesn't help us," Tony said dismissively, "Captain Scott already admitted to touching the body before NCIS arrived."

Abby was not deterred. "But I have more!" she insisted eagerly, "There was another set of fingerprints pulled from the blood in the bedsheets near the admiral's body. I ran them against the prints initially collected from witnesses at the house by Logan's team, and guess what?"

There was a brief pause before Tony picked up on the cue and was spared her wrath by guessing. "They belong to to one of the admiral's sons?"

"Wrong!" said Abby with gusto. It seemed she had been waiting for him to say something like that. "They belong to Captain Scott's wife."

Tony and Ziva exchanged surprised looks, but then Ziva said, "Mrs. Scott was the one who found the body. It is possible she touched it too, and neglected to inform us."

"Couldn't hurt to talk to her again," Tony mused. "Let's go tell Gibbs." He nodded briefly to Abby as Ziva turned to leave. "Thanks, Abs."

Abby frowned, her dark lips pushing out in something of a pout. "That's all I get? You guys really are grinches!"

Tony shook his head, grinning. "Really? In that case, maybe I'll just keep this to myself." And somehow, he pulled a giant red and white Caf-Pow cup from behind his back.

Abby's eyes went wide and she grinned even wider. "How did you hide that? That was so sneaky – it was almost Gibbs-style sneaky."

"I have my ways," Tony said mysteriously, but the effect he was going for was ultimately ruined when Ziva called from the door.

"He stole that one from your fridge, Abby."

"Tony!"

Abby's eyes narrowed into a deadly glare, and Tony nearly sprinted from her lab to get away. He knocked the mistletoe to the floor on his way out.

A C T II

s c e n e ii

"Grab your gear," Gibbs called dropping his desk phone into place just as Ziva and Tony arrived back in the bullpen.

"Where are we going?" Ziva questioned as she grabbed her gear.

"Lieutenant-Commander Banks' body was just found in his home. Stabbed."

"He was one of the admiral's men wasn't he?" Tony asked catching up with Gibbs who was already half way to the elevator.

Gibbs just nodded tersely as he punched the button for the elevator much harder than necessary. "The ex-wife called it in when she stopped by to pick up her son."

Tony grimaced. "The boy?" he asked.

"They haven't been able to find him," Gibbs replied darkly.

"Kidnapping?" Ziva wondered aloud, as the elevator arrived with a ding.

Neither Gibbs nor Tony had an answer for her.

It was not long before they arrived at the scene, mostly due to Gibbs' driving which even Tony admitted was worse than Ziva's. Once there, it took even less time for Gibbs to go into full pissed-off-agent mode as he quickly tossed the responding cops onto the street and away from his crime scene.

Sending Tony to deal with taking the distraught mother's statement, he instructed McGee and Ziva to begin working the scene in the living room, where Banks's body lay in a dark blood pool, while he waited for Ducky to arrive.

Due to the fact that Ducky was driving, and because Ducky was not Gibbs, coupled with the fact the Palmer was likely navigating, Gibbs estimated it would be nearly twenty minutes before the autopsy van pulled up in front of the house. So while his team handled the evidence he headed to the second floor to look around the lieutenant-commander's home.

It was in the hall between the master bed room and the missing boy's room that Gibbs was sure he heard a muffled sound. Stopping in the hall, he looked around, there had been nothing in the master bed room, as far as Gibbs could tell, so he quickly moved into the boy's bedroom.

It was about what one would expect in a four-year-old's room. The walls were a deep blue and an assortment of toys were scattered about the floor. A red toy chest sat in one corner of the room and, besides the closet which stood open, it seemed to be the only possible hiding place in the room.

Gibbs quickly covered the distance across the room and opened the toy box expectantly. Inside a variety of plastic cars and several stuffed animals greeted him, and Gibbs could not help but feel the sting of disappointment, not that he showed any outward sign of it. Sighing he turned to head back downstairs to see if Ducky had arrived.

He was half way back to the stairs when he passed the narrow linen closet in the hall for the second time. Stopping, Gibbs moved back until he was in front of the door, and then he heard the same muffled sound.

Slowly opening the closet door, he knelt down so he could see the bottom shelf. There, nestled between the towels was the missing Freddie Banks, his eyes red rimmed with tears, and his small thumb in his mouth half-silencing his sobs.

"Hey there," Gibbs said, speaking quietly so as not to startle the poor boy. "It's okay," he added. The boy just stared at him and sniffed loudly, so Gibbs continued, "Your mom's just outside, she's been looking for you."

This seemed to get the boy's attention, as he withdrew his thumb from his mouth, but still remained silent. Finally, after a long moment he crawled out of the closet and then buried his tear stained face in Gibbs' shirt.

Gently, Gibbs lifted the boy into his arms, and carried him downstairs. Checking carefully that his little charge wasn't looking, Gibbs slipped past the living room, and soon had the boy outside and handed off to his waiting mother.

"He say anything Boss?" Tony asked keeping his voice low as they moved away from the little reunion.

Gibbs shook his head, and glanced back toward the boy. "I get the feeling he saw something though."

"There does not appear to be signs of forced entry," Ziva reported, coming up to the other two agents. "It would seem that whoever attacked the lieutenant-commander was let into the house."

"Well, we may have a witness," said Tony, glancing sidelong at the boy who was being held by his mother. Once the they had both calmed down somewhat, Gibbs rejoined the two of them, crouching down so that he was at the four-year-old's eye level.

"Hey buddy." The child looked at him, eyes dry but red-rimmed, and said nothing. Gibbs didn't expect him to talk, not yet - maybe not for a while. But hopefully, he could still tell them something. "We want to catch the bad guy who did this," he told Freddie seriously, "Would you like to come down to our office and help us?" He glanced briefly up at the mother as some form of asking permission, and she looked down at her son.

"You don't have to, Freddie," she said.

But the boy nodded, staring wordlessly at Gibbs. Gibbs worked out a small smile for the kid, and dug into his pocket for his badge. "Here, why don't you hang on to this for me for now, for being so brave. When you get down to our office, we can see about getting you a badge of your own."

The boy took the badge and looked at it, while Gibbs stood up and gave directions to his mother. He strode back to the house where his team seemed to have finished gathering evidence.

"Boss," McGee called, having joined the other two at their impromptu convening spot outside the deceased lieutenant-commander's house. "The APB just came back on the admiral's sons. The local police picked up Donald King at a station in Halifax. He was trying to catch a Greyhound to Carolina."

Gibbs's face hardened. With hardly a beckoning gesture, he turned and made a beeline for the sedan just as the autopsy van came trundling down the road.

"We'll meet you back at the office, Ducky!" Tony called.

Ducky and his assistant Jimmy Palmer glanced at each other as the rest of the team drove off, and Ducky raised and eyebrow.

"Do you get the feeling that we missed something, Mr. Palmer?"

A C T II

s c e n e iii

The local police had Donald King dropped off at NCIS headquarters, and no sooner had Gibbs arrived than the seventeen-year-old was thrust into the interrogation room.

"Where is your brother?" he demanded, relatively calmly given how incredibly pissed-off his team knew him to be.

Donald King merely shook his head. He might have meant to say something, but the words seem to die in his throat at the sight of Gibbs's face.

"Why did you run?" Gibbs demanded, slamming his hands down on the metal table between them. The teenager visibly flinched. This was more the reaction Tony and Ziva had been expecting, as they watched the interrogation from the observation room. Agent McGee, of course, had been assigned the more important task of getting updates from Abby.

Donald's voice quivered as he tried to answer. "I didn't – Dad – we had to..."

"You listen to me," Gibbs said sternly, dropping his folder on the table but not yet producing pictures. "You might think you can get off on this because you're underage – and maybe you can – but your brother is nineteen so when we find him, and we will find him, he is going down for two counts of murder—" the boy looked up, startled, but Gibbs went on, "—unless you tell me what the hell is going on."

"W-what do you mean two? Someone else is dead?"

Gibbs only glared at him. The kid shrunk in his seat.

"Y-you guys don't really think. . .? Listen, Malcolm d-didn't kill Dad."

Gibbs continued to glare.

"He said – he said someone had been threatening Dad, and that we were next, so we had to run. I – that's the only reason we left. He said the feds wouldn't understand. . ."

"Where is he now?" Gibbs asked sharply.

"I don't know. He told me to get to Carolina and stay with our Aunt for a while, and he'd meet me once he'd cleared some things up," the kid told him helplessly. "He kept saying he didn't want me to know too much in case that put me in more danger."

"Or so you couldn't rat him out while he went off to kill one of your father's men," Tony commented from observation, despite being well-aware that Donald King had no way of hearing him.

"You think it is possible the older brother is the only one involved?" Ziva questioned.

"I think it's quite impossible that the kid was in the area at the time Banks was murdered, that's all," said Tony. "We picked him up in Halifax, remember, Zee-vah?"

When they looked back however, they saw the kid sitting alone in the interrogation room, head buried in his hands. Gibbs had already left. With barely a glance at each other, Tony and Ziva rushed back to the bullpen to meet him. McGee was already there.

"Abby says that no DNA or prints found from the crime scene matches either of the King boys," he relayed to Gibbs. "She did, however, find a match to both Captain Scott and Lieutenant Duff on prints in the doorway and on the bottles found in the living room."

Gibbs nodded. "Let's go," he said tersely, but he hadn't even turned to head to the elevator when it opened and Freddie Banks and his mother arrived. With a glance at his team, Gibbs sent them on without him.

As the elevator doors slid shut, blocking the bullpen from sight Tony turned to Ziva, a wide grin on his face. She fixed him with a look, "What?" she asked, clearly not sure she wanted to know.

"Oh, nothing, Zee-va," Tony replied cheerfully.

Ziva narrowed her eyes dangerously, but said nothing, futilely believing that would end whatever game DiNozzo was up to now.

Instead Tony just smirked wider and leaned against the back of the elevator in his overly cocky playboy way.

Pointedly Ziva turned away, intent on ignoring him, only he started humming the theme to some obnoxious movie. At least that is what Ziva assumed he was humming. Rounding on him she glared, "What?"

Behind her the elevator doors slid open and Tony brushed past her into the parkade. Annoyed, Ziva followed, McGee trailed behind them both, wisely staying out of whatever was going on between them now.

They reached the sedan and Ziva headed for the driver's side, reaching into her coat pocket for the keys, only to come up short as she realized they were missing. She frowned, confused as she checked her other pocket, sure she had left them in her coat.

Behind her Tony cleared his throat loudly, and she turned to look. He held out the keys tauntingly. "This time, I drive," He said moving past her to open the driver's door.

Ziva glared at him, but after a moment stormed over to the passenger side and got in. McGee slipped quietly in the back.

A C T II

s c e n e iv

They arrived at Lieutenant Duff's house first. The driveway was empty and no answer came when they knocked on the door.

"Looks like nobody's in," Tony commented, searching round for any likely candidates to be hiding a spare key. He knelt down to reach under the welcome mat and only just barely pulled his hand out of the way in time as Ziva nearly stepped on it.

"Ziva!" he hissed, "That was my hand!"

"Perhaps you should not be crawling about in the dirt like a rat – oh wait. That is what you are."

"I was looking for a spare key, Miss David," Tony snapped. "Or would you rather use your super Mossad assassin ninja skills to break in and set off an alarm?"

"Actually," McGee called, clearing his throat to get their attention, "The door's unlocked. . ."

Tony and Ziva glanced at each other with expressions of surprise and confusion. Quietly, they each pulled out their firearms and entered the house.

"Lieutenant Kevin Duff?" Tony called, "This is NCIS."

No one answered. The three agents prepared to split up and search the building when Ziva gestured to get Tony and McGee's attention. There was a smear of blood on the wall leading to the living room.

Cautiously, they followed it.

Only to come across three more bodies.

"Damn, the bodies are really piling up on this one," Tony said, without a trace of his usual humour in his voice.

Two of the bodies were women. One looked to be the lieutenant's wife, in her mid-thirties perhaps, hair still wet from a shower and an unwound towel fanning around her head. She lay in a pool of her own blood by a coffee table. Not far from her was the body of a pre-teen boy, probably her son, stabbed repeatedly. The second woman was middle-aged, wearing a housekeeper's smock. A cell phone was clutched in her hand, the emergency number half-dialled on the screen.

Tony ordered Ziva to clear the rest of the house and sent McGee to inform Gibbs and call Ducky. With a grim expression, he began snapping pictures of their newest crime scene.

~tbc~