Chapter 3

The door to the small concrete room swung inward with a mournful groan. Tony raised his head.

There was no way to pass the time here and he found himself looking forward to each visit, and the pain it brought. The boredom and the hunger had been the worst torture when he was first here-he had distracted himself with images of the chocolate cake he had left carelessly on the kitchen bench. Why had he not eaten it?

But after a while of not eating, the hunger pains passed and so did the nausea. Now the mere thought of food was distasteful, and he had nothing to distract himself with.

A blurry shape entered and switched on the light. A male voice emanated from it, light- perhaps late teens or early twenties? It was definitely young. "How are you feeling?"

"Who are you, Good Saint Nick?"

"Tony, tony, tony. I don't want to hurt you. I just want to talk."

"Right. You want to help. Of course, silly me."

"I'm worried about you. They have been putting you through a lot- they won't tell me exactly what." Was his accent British? Cockney, Tony decided. That accent had always annoyed him.

"Look, I don't doubt you really care how I feel-actually, I do- and I don't doubt that you're really quite a nice guy- actually, I doubt that too. But I'd really thank you to leave me alone. Now."

There was silence for a moment. "How can I convince you?" he asked quietly.

Tony laughed bitterly. "Believe me. You really can't."

Gibbs entered the bullpen and took a long chug from his coffee cup. "SO what have you got for me?" he asked.

McGee shook his head. "I'm having a lot of trouble with the crime scene. We still haven't turned anything up since the last time you checked. Which leads me to believe that…"

"That what?" asked Gibbs, taking another gulp of coffee.

"That either it was someone he trusted, or whatever they said or did shocked him so badly he didn't do anything about it."

Gibbs shook his head. "That's not a nice thought. Not at all."

Ziva shook her head along with him, then took up McGee's slack. "The search I'm putting up is becoming quite tedious. I need years to interview all these people," she added in her soft accent. "But I only have days, and perhaps no time at all."

Gibbs looked away for a moment then back. "We can only do what we can," he said in what was meant to be a strong, fortified voice but came out rather tired and a little sad. "Only what he would do for us."

Tony watched and listened for the door to open again. He wasn't sure what had just happened- but what he was sure of was that he had concussion. A bad one at that- he could barely see. He felt himself slipping into sleep and closed his eyes gratefully, begging for his tired soul to heal.

Abby looked around the lab. She wished she were at her flat. At the moment, the blank, stark walls of the lab were pushing in on her, and she wanted to get out. But she knew that she had to be there if there were any developments on Tony. She owed that to the rest of the team.

Timmy came I through the door- she recognized his footsteps without even turning around. His face was set into lines of sadness. "Tony's on," he said quietly.

She nodded and they left the lab.

On the screen, there was a picture of Tony. Tied to the chair, not blindfolded, but obviously not whole either. He seemed to be asleep.

Abby was confused at first- where were the others? Where were the devices of torture?

But then the dark-haired man walked onto the screen and Abby's insides froze with sympathetic terror.

Tony felt the warm breath on the skin behind his ear and jerked awake in his sleep.

"Why should you sleep?" asked the man quietly. "My son sleeps for eternity, and yet he will never again have sweet dreams. By the time I finally kill you, you'll be begging me for rest."

It was then that the sounds came.

The sounds of his team speaking.

They were speaking in normal voices, about normal, run-of the mill things, and Tony assumed consciously that these were tapes of his team back when he was still with them. But a little voice inside of him, the one that could only ever live in the moment, asked with a broken voice why they weren't looking for him. Why they didn't even care.

The man was still behind him, and he echoed his thoughts, breathing in his ear. "They never really cared about you. They never gave a damn. They worked you, used you like a loyal dog, and now you're gone, they'll get another."

Tony shook his head silently, trying to imagine Abby ever doing something so cold.

They don't care about you, a voice whispered. All those times you called McGee "probie", all the times you didn't tell them you cared.

Ziva doesn't care about you.

She never did; she never will now.

Ziva…

Gibbs faced the screen and watched as the door to the cell slammed shut, as his Senior Field Agent melted into silent tears.

"Ziva…" he whispered.

A disturbance in the air at his shoulder told him that the Israeli had gone.

He couldn't allow himself even that. It would be like turning his back on Tony.

He made himself watch.

Abby followed Ziva at a discreet distance, trying to ascertain her destination. The bathroom, she decided, and when she got there the door was already locked.

She was worried about Ziva.

Of course, she was worried about all of them, about what would happen to their team now Tony was gone, Tony, who was Timmy's and her big brother, Gibbs' son, and Ziva's… maybe something more.

But most of all, she was worried about Ziva.

Ziva never like to let on anything much, and Abby wasn't sure how she had been dealing with Tony's capture. Judging plainly from her disappearance into the bathroom, it wasn't good.

Abby had no idea what to do.

McGee came down the corridor and dropped down next to her. He looked into her eyes.

"It's going to be okay," he said simply.

Abby nodded and reached out to him, nestling into the softness of his embrace. She let herself cry.

Inside the bathroom, behind the locked door, sitting on the cold tiles, Ziva wanted to cry. But she wouldn't let herself.

Tony wouldn't want to be cried over, she thought. He would want to be found.

But she couldn't stop herself from raining little drops of pain on the tiled floor.

She didn't make a sound.