A/N: Did you enjoy the cliffhanger on the last chapter? Evil, wasn't it?
Thanks to Trina109 for beta-ing this, and for picking up on the mistakes I make when I try to type too fast when I'm tired. F.
Seeing an unconscious Tony being dragged into a cell spurred Tim on to redouble his efforts to free himself.
He'd tried every angle he could think of to try and get his hand through the cuff, rubbing his good wrist red raw in the process, and now he was running out of ideas. He couldn't get the cuff over his thumb, and he couldn't get his fingers free without getting the cuff over his wrist first. The only thing he could think of to get free was to attempt to dislocate his thumb... but that meant he'd be even more incapacitated than he already was. He wouldn't be able to grip anything once it was done, and he had grave doubts of his ability to fight back. Considering they had them all on camera, beaming the footage into each cell, it was only logical that they were monitoring the cells themselves. They'd know he was free as soon as he dropped down from his hanging position against the wall, and send someone in to deal with him.
He looked back at the screen, at the forms of the people that were closer to him than his own family. He had to do this.
...
It was quicker for Ziva to go directly to Tony's apartment, but Gibbs was unwilling to expose his last remaining agent to any more danger. Before she reached headquarters, Gibbs got the call he'd been dreading.
"Agent Gibbs!"
He looked up to the mezzanine to see Director Vance leaning on the railing.
He jogged up the stairs to meet him.
"I just got a call from Metro PD. They've found the body of one of our agents."
"Who?"
"Agent Mark Reilly. He was assigned to-"
"DiNozzo's protective detail."
"That's right."
"I'll get Ziva." He turned to leave, but was stopped by Vance's voice.
"Not so fast, Agent Gibbs. Metro PD is transferring the body and all the physical evidence here. I want you and Agent David to remain here, in this building."
"My team-"
"Your team, by and large, is missing, Agent Gibbs. You, Agent David, Palmer and all of your protective details are to stay here. That's an order, Agent Gibbs."
...
Gibbs walked back down the stairs, his mind already turning over ways to get around Vance's order. It went against the grain of any Marine to ignore a direct order, but this was his team, and these crazies were after him. He didn't trust anyone else to go in and get them out of whatever godforsaken hellhole they'd been put in.
Because of him.
The mission to kill Yuri Novikov had been one of the many undercover missions he'd undertaken in his time with the European office. He'd had reservations about that particular mission from the beginning; Novikov had been a noted arms dealer and drug kingpin, and Gibbs agreed that his organisation needed to be taken down. But he also knew that removing the head of the organisation didn't necessarily mean that the organisation would collapse. These things were like the mythical hydra; you cut one head off, and another one grew back in its place.
...
With Ducky missing, the Director had called in Dr. Jordan Hampton to take care of his duties until he returned to work. She was methodical and thorough; Palmer knew that Dr. Mallard approved of her and her work.
She quickly started the autopsy on Agent Reilly, sending the single slug she found to Palmer in the forensics lab. Ballistics wasn't his strong suit; luckily for him, the slug was relatively undamaged, having destroyed mainly soft tissues in killing Agent Reilly. He put the slug under the microscope, same as he'd seen Abby do many times, set the resulting images to match against the appropriate database, then returned to attempting to enhance the stills taken from the video so that he could try and help Gibbs and Ziva locate the missing members of Gibbs' team.
He didn't know how Abby managed to do things like this. The people in these photos weren't abstract; they were people he knew, people he cared about. Dr .Mallard was his mentor; he'd learned so much from the elderly man. McGee was the closest thing he had to a friend in the building; and he had to admit to having a crush on Abby. He had to help get them back.
A frantic series of 'dings' from the ballistics computer drew his attention away from the photos. He looked over to see that it was showing a match. As soon as the significance of the results sank in, he picked up the phone and called Gibbs' desk.
...
Gibbs hung up on Palmer, cursing loud enough to draw a look from Ziva. He got up from his desk, jogging up the stairs to the mezzanine and Vance's office. He opened the door with his usual lack of ceremony.
"Agent Gibbs. Why do I bother even having a door?"
Gibbs ignored him. "Got a match on the bullet that killed Reilly."
Now he had Vance's full attention.
"It came from Agent Shapko's weapon. Shapko is missing, along with Tony."
"So either Shapko's weapon was taken and used on Reilly..."
"Or we have a traitor inside NCIS."