He opened the door to his apartment and stepped in, tossing his backpack to one side. Tony was exhausted, his shoulders hurt and his neck was stiff. That was what all night stakeouts did; and the car they pulled from the lot had a bad spring in the seat that kept poking him.
At least McGee was good company tonight; he brought hand held video games for both of them while they waited to see if Petty Officer Monroe was the Navy's most proficient meth cooker. And sure enough at 4am Tony and McGee followed Monroe to an old dry cleaners where they found his set up. "No meth for you today," Tony had said before cuffing him and two accomplices.
Gibbs would be happy – later. Tony had every intention of taking the rest of the afternoon to sleep and putter around the apartment. It was Friday; maybe he'd take the entire day off and start his weekend early. And he wouldn't have to go into the office and listen to Bishop chatter on about having wished she was there to bust the meth cookers.
Tony was so very grateful to Gibbs; Gibbs took to pairing Tony up with McGee or himself regularly and Bishop was left as Gibbs or McGee's problem. It wasn't easy breaking in a newbie. She was so much the eager beaver…or was that platypus? Tony smiled.
Tony went and showered and changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He picked up the phone and ordered food from the Grill and went to the sofa to pop in Arsenic and Old Lace muttering, "Egads, there's another one!"
He looked over at the piano seat and saw the tickets he bought for the Arsenic and Old Lace limited run. They were two months away from the play. He bought six tickets; for Abby and McGee, Gibbs, Ducky and him and Ziva. But if she wasn't back in time he'd let McGee take his new little squeeze – not that Abby was all that happy about it but maybe she'd get off her butt and do something about it. He kept trying to tell her – time was not a friend.
Tony glanced over to the side of the couch; there were a pile of presents there. Presents for her birthday, presents he'd bought her just because he saw something he thought she would like and presents for her homecoming. Gibbs had bought the first homecoming present and then everyone had dropped one off.
One of the gift boxes was mangled and he hoped there wasn't anything delicate inside but he'd gotten angry one night and the poor box was the focus of that anger.
Ten months and counting – he wasn't sure how much longer he could take this. He tried to find his center but that was hard when his center was God knew where South America.
Gibbs did his best to keep him busy with work – sometimes too much. And a couple of months ago Jeanne had showed up out of the blue. In a way, Tony was grateful Ziva was not here when Jeanne appeared.
Ziva might have been a target – Jeanne didn't take too well to Tony's wedding ring. Jeanne had come on the pretense she wanted Tony's help to rid herself of all her father's business dealings. But what she and her brother really wanted was revenge. Trent Kort had been a target as well and had been injured in those weeks; couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
In the end, Gibbs shot and killed Jeanne and Tony killed her brother. When he looked down at Jeanne's body he felt nothing but pity and he walked away wondering the same thing he wondered every moment of every day – where was Ziva?
Tony had been to Argentina twice in the last few months and Columbia once where he spoke with Monique. Monique believed she had a bead on Ziva but if Ziva had been there she was long gone by the time he and Monique arrived. That was a hard day because he swore he could smell Ziva's scent on a shirt left behind.
The tracking programs lost her – the satellites never picked her up; she was out there and Tony didn't know if she was dead or alive. But he believed her alive and would believe it so until he saw her body.
So he waited and tried to keep the pain at bay; and thanked Cary Grant for leaving him a beautiful memory.