A/N: This chapter is short; sorry to those of you that were looking forward to a longer one, but when I tried to expand it, it lost its impact.
On a different note, I just realised I've been writing this for 2 months now. How crazy! That makes it my longest running story. So thank you to everyone who has kept reading for so long. I appreciate it. F.
Getting Adams to confess wasn't quite the challenge that Tony had been hoping for. After what he'd done to McGee, after trying to kill so many of his colleagues, Tony wanted to sweat the confession out of him, tie him in knots until he broke. He'd been put back into the holding cells once the building had been cleared; Tony had him brought upstairs to Interrogation. He was intending to leave him there for a while and let him stew. But Adams had other ideas. As if a dam wall had burst, Adams was singing like the proverbial canary. Tony signalled frantically for the Observation room tech to start recording, not wanting to miss anything significant, then made his way into the Interrogation room.
Adams had a manic gleam in his eyes that hadn't been there before the bombing. Quietly and calmly, he recounted how he'd stolen the C4; how he'd tried to set up Lieutenant Francis; how he'd obtained more C4 through the black market to rig the bomb in the emergency assembly area. After a lengthy session in the Interrogation room, Tony emerged feeling faintly sick. Ziva and Gibbs were waiting for him, leaning against the wall outside the room
"He's some piece of work, Boss. He's proud of it all."
Ziva nodded. "I have seen this before. He reminds me of some of the terrorists Mossad has captured."
Gibbs straightened up. "Come on; let's get these leads followed up."
...
"How's it going, Duck?"
"Slowly, Jethro." The elderly medical examiner glanced up from the cadaver he was working on. Behind the face shield, he looked tired and harried. Gibbs looked around. "Where's Palmer?"
"I sent him home. Poor young man was exhausted, as well as being rather shaken up." Gibbs nodded in understanding; he doubted the ME's assistant had seen anything like what had happened today.
"How many, Duck?"
"6 so far, Jethro. Not all of them from NCIS. One from legal, two from cybercrimes, one of the evidence technicians from downstairs, one visiting naval warrant officer and one John Doe. I'll need Abby to run his prints through AFIS when she returns."
"She'll be back tomorrow." Gibbs checked his watch. "Later today" he corrected himself. "Tony's gonna pick her up."
"That reminds me, Jethro. You need to keep a close eye on Anthony. I doubt that yesterday's efforts were enough to assuage his guilt."
"Guilt over what, Ducky? He saved a lot of lives yesterday."
"He still blames himself for Timothy's injuries, Jethro. And I doubt that Abby getting hurt will have helped matters."
...
Tony looked blearily around the darkened bullpen. Gibbs had disappeared almost an hour ago; at first they'd assumed he was going for coffee, but now Tony suspected he'd gone to see Ducky. Ziva was asleep, her head pillowed on her arms; and McGee's desk was unoccupied, the desk lamp off. Tony's gaze lingered on the empty desk. He'd failed McGee; otherwise that desk wouldn't be empty right now. And despite his best efforts, he hadn't been able to prevent Adams from killing innocent people; and hurting Abby. He could barely keep his eyes open now; as he lay his head down on the desk, he wondered how McGee was going with Abby's hourly checks.