OK, wow. Thank you so much to everyone who has read, favourited, followed or reviewed this story so far, I'm glad you seem to all be interested in what's to come here…
Team Gibbs stared at their boss in amazement at his statement. However, there was no lie in what he said.
All four of them could see Jennifer Shepard in a video thumbnail.
"How can it be her?" asked Ziva, "Is this some ill joke?"
"Sick," corrected Tony automatically, "and yes, it's definitely a sick joke."
"I don't think it's a joke guys," added McGee, "she looks older in this image than I remember her looking here. And the video has a timestamp from half an hour ago."
"It's a video?" asked Gibbs, finally speaking but not taking his eyes off the image on his screen.
"Yeah, see the little triangle, that means-"
Tony quickly cut in, knowing that Gibbs had no patience for technology.
"It means that Gibbs wants you to play it Probie. Now."
"Oh... right, sure, now. On the screen?"
"I don't think this is something that needs to be shared around the agency yet," shot back Ziva sharply, suddenly scared about what was happening to her long thought dead friend.
McGee shook his head at his own stupidity as he clicked play.
The video grew to fill the entirety of Gibbs' computer screen and the team watched as the video began, the camera turning on to show Jenny in a chair, her arms clearly secured behind her back, although it was unlikely she would have been going anywhere even if she hadn't been secured.
It seemed that there was not a single inch of Jenny's body that was not bruised or bloodied.
Her once cream vest top was crusted with dried blood and had several rips across her body.
Although they could not see below her knees, the tan skin on show under her shorts was covered in bruising and blood smears.
Her hair, a lighter golden red than it had been previously, lay tangled limply around her shoulders.
But Gibbs was most upset and angered when he saw her face.
When he saw the image on the message she had a half smile playing around her lips but looked perfectly healthy.
It was clear to Gibbs that whoever was holding her had avoided marring her face, which in itself scared him with the connotations. A gag pulled tight between her teeth was the only difference between the two images now.
The entire image would have been gruesome enough it if wasn't their former boss and friend. But looking at Jenny, looking quite so vulnerable caused all of them to feel sickened in a way they had not in a long time.
All of this flew through their heads in the few seconds that it took them all to evaluate the situation as they had been trained.
There was around ten seconds of footage of only Jenny before a man walked into the frame, his face masked.
Walking right to Jenny's side, the man grasped a handful of her hair, pulling her head back sharply, straining her neck.
Jenny's pained whimper, audible even through her gag, made Gibbs grasp at the edge of his desk, trying to control his emotions to watch the video.
"Hello there Gibbs, I'm gonna call you Gibbs cause that's so much better than Leroy, and I feel that Jenny here is one of the few people that gets away with calling you Jethro. Yes, we know all about you both. Not that we did before. You see, I didn't know that Jenny here was indeed Jenny. As far as I'm aware, this is Kat Joshua, resident of Miami Beach. She unfortunately decided to act like Superwoman and save this cute little thing in an alley behind a bar last Saturday Night."
Gibbs automatically worked out that she had been held by these guys for four days. That meant that Jenny had been in danger for 96 hours and he hadn't known.
"See the cute little thing was our next girl; we'd been watching her for a couple of weeks. But, whilst she got away, we followed this one instead and decided we'd keep her. I mean, she's feisty, and hot for an older one, wouldn't you say Gibbs?"
The man ran his hand down Jenny's cheek but when she tried to flinch away from his touch, he slapped her hard, causing her to grunt in pain and causing Gibbs' heart to contract painfully.
"Well we brought her back to our place and ran her prints. Imagine our surprise when she turns up as the deceased Director of NCIS. Lame federal agency to be in charge of but still, she looked good for a dead woman walking. So, we did some more digging, and we found out that she seemed to be in a lot of photographs with a certain Agent Gibbs. Which is how you came to receive this message."
Gibbs watched Jenny's face whilst her captor continued to elucidate his plans.
"See, you have a choice here. I know that you don't know that she's alive, I saw the images from the funeral. Very touching. So you could just ignore this video and leave pretty Jenny here with us."
The man's hand moved from her cheek to her breast and the man cruelly squeezed at her flesh, causing her to groan in pain once again.
"Alternatively, you can pay a ransom. Now, we aren't sure about the going rate for former Directors of federal agencies but I'm pretty sure she's worth a pretty penny. So let's start at half a million. If you pay that in the next... 12 hours, then you'll get her back. But it'll rise to 750,000 for 24 hours and a cool million for 48 hours. If you don't give us the money in that time, we'll assume you don't want her and she'll join the family business. So your choice Agent Gibbs... get thinking fast."
The video cut almost immediately after he finished talking, and McGee absently noted out loud that there must have been at least two assailants.
"Ya think McGeek? Why else would he be saying 'we' all the goddamned time?"
"Could've been a red herring, trying to make us think he's part of some organisation instead of some crazy, lone wolf."
"Hmmm.…got a point there McGee. So, we now know that there are at least two kidnappers. What we now need to do i- Boss?"
Tony's sentence stopped abruptly as Gibbs stood, almost violently pushing his seat away, and headed up the stairs towards the Directors office.
"Oh shit, I would not want to be the Director right now," said Tony as they watched Gibbs storm into the office, throwing the door shut behind him.
"You think he knew?" asked Tim.
"Of course he did Tim," said Ziva, sliding into Gibbs' seat and beginning to attempt to trace the email, "he wouldn't let us see Jenny's body in the diner when we arrived, he was the only one who could have possibly known that she was still alive. And someone had to help her settle into WitSec."
The team fell into silence, the new information sinking in as they realised that they had been lied to for years.
"Hi guys!" Just then, the doors to the lift opened and Abby stepped out, walking into the bullpen.
"What's up? McGee, hello? Is it another body?"
"No. Abby, I think you should sit down."
Tim pulled his chair out from behind his desk and guided Abby to sit in it, the latter of whom was looking increasingly bemused by the morose looks on her friends faces. Tony stepped in front of Abby and began to speak softly.
"Abby, we need to tell you something, something important."
"OK, shoot Tony, I'm ready."
"Jenny's alive."
"Jenny? Who?"
"Jenny... Director Jennifer Shepard..."
"No, that's not possible, she died three years ago, she was shot. Are you guys sure you're OK? I think this group hallucination could be caused by gas exposure, or eating certain types of mushroom or-"
Abby tailed off as Ziva opened a still image on the large screen in the bull pen.
"Oh my god, Jenny... look at her, she's hurt." Abby jumped up and ran to take a closer look at the image of the redhead whilst Ziva continued the explanation.
"And a lot more," added Ziva, "these men have been holding her for four days now, and only just have decided to send Gibbs an ultimatum. They did not originally know what jackpot they had stumbled upon when they kidnapped Jenny, also known as Kat..."
"Joshua," supplied Tony when Ziva looked for help remembering, "she's been living in Witness Services since the shooting as far as we're aware."
"You OK Abs?" asked Tim as she remained silent.
Seeing their goth shake her head as she tried her best to hold back her tears, Tim quickly moved to her side and held her close, letting her know he was there for her.
"Where's Gibbs?" Abby suddenly realised that their boss was not there and she knew that he would be deeply affected, not only by the news that she was alive, but also by the fact of her being in imminent and very real danger.
"He stormed up into Vance's office. He clicked real quick that the Director had to have known that Jenny was still alive and kicking somewhere in the world."
"Oh I wouldn't want to be him right now," said Abby, echoing Tony's sentiment from moments earlier, and this time no-one could disagree.
"Gibbs, what can I do for you today?" asked Leon wearily as his door flew open, the seemingly irate Special Agent blowing into his office.
"Jenny Shepard. She's alive and you didn't tell me. Why? What the hell happened that you didn't think you could trust me to keep that secret?"
"Jenny Shepard died in the diner three years ago Gibbs, I don't know what you're talking about."
"OK, sorry, Kat Joshua is alive, barely, somewhere near Miami. Better?"
At hearing Jenny's alias, Leon's eyes grew wide, knowing that Jethro did indeed know the truth.
"How did you find out?" he asked sharply.
"I was just sent a lovely hostage video of Jenny - sorry, Kat - having been beaten and god knows what else for the past four days. She's holding on but these guys mean business. They want 500,000 in the next twelve hours, or the money increases for the next 48 hours until they will then sell her into what I'm pretty sure is human trafficking and prostitution. And I ain't letting that happen Leon, I swear to God!"
Gibbs' voice rose steadily in volume until he was shouting at Leon who had the common sense to not even attempt to explain his reasoning to Gibbs. He was, however, highly concerned by the news that Gibbs had just imparted.
"Someone kidnapped Jenny?"
"Yep, four days ago. And she looks like hell. Not that you care. She's been missing for four days and that didn't throw up any red flags in WitSec?"
"We had minimal contact with Jenny to keep her safe."
"La Grenouille is dead, so is everyone else that was involved with him, or they're in prison. And Svetlana and everyone involved in the shootout at the diner is also taken care of. What more reason is there to keep her in WitSec? You get to keep your cushy job?"
"Not at all Jethro, I can't believe you think so little of me. But there have been other threats that were made on her life that she couldn't deal with. So she needed to disappear. The FBI have been in charge of the investigation into the threats ever since and have almost completely guaranteed Jenny's safety should she return. But she knew she would still be under protection for the next six months at least."
"OK, I can believe there being more enemies. But tell me Leon, why didn't you tell me? Why did I have to find out through a hostage video?"
"I'm sorry Jethro, we just couldn't afford one single leak or slip up."
"Yeah well, thanks to technology that's exactly what has happened, and now I know, and now this scum have sent us a video and an email address to contact about the ransom."
"Jethro, you know that we don't negotiate with terrorists, which these guys clearly are."
"I know, and I don't plan on doing any sort of negotiation. We will just do as they say and give them the money and get Jenny back."
"We can't do that Gibbs, where are you going to get the money?"
"We have plenty stashed in the reserves Leon, and don't tell me otherwise cause unless you've spent a couple of extra billion dollars on suits and cars then that money is still there. Jenny made sure there was a slush fund."
Gibbs' knowledge of the private slush fund that the federal agency directors had access to in emergency situations unnerved Leon as he suddenly realised that there was perhaps something to the rumours that had spread around NCIS about the nature of the relationship between Gibbs and Director Shepard.
"Gibbs, I know that you have some personal feelings for Jennifer-"
"You're damn right I do. I've lost her twice now Leon, I sure as hell ain't making it an unlucky third. So you just do whatever you have to do to get that money. I think you owe it to her."
Leon chose his next words very precisely.
"I'm afraid the rules are very clear Special Agent Gibbs, we do not deal with terrorists. Even when it involves the Former Direcotr of NCIS. I'm sorry."
Gibbs turned sharply to leave the office but Leon called out, stopping him in his tracks.
"Where are you going now Gibbs?" he asked. Gibbs turned back to look at his boss, a steely determination in his eyes.
"I'm going to get Jenny, even if it's the last thing I do as an NCIS agent."