2 Days Earlier…

Gibbs, Tim and Ziva stood around the plasma screen in the squad room, each one of them extremely annoyed and anxious (Gibbs and Ziva more so than McGee), determined to find their teammate and attackers. Ziva had been left, Gibbs and Tim had quickly realised, at the same place that Sandy and her mother had been held hostage years ago, with no wounds except from a few bruises from the earlier fight. Her sig sauwer had quickly been recovered from a second train carriage after the team had arrived, and Ziva had swiftly recovered the whole story to them, right up until the point that she was knocked out.

"Sandy Watson, as Abby found out after you were gone yesterday," McGee informed, "has been a rogue for years, with countless investigations linking back to her and turning out as cold cases. It has been discovered that she sits right at the top of her own crime network, which many different branches of US police have been continuously trying to get close to and failed. Boss, she is no longer the innocent little girl that we all knew her as."

"I got that McGee," Gibbs snarled, forever the protective father figure when it came to his team.

"Have you been able to trace and find anyone linked to the network?" Ziva enquired sharply, swiftly saving Tim from the rath of Gibbs.

"As a matter of fact," Tim replied thankfully, "I have." He pulled up a mugshot on the screen of a threatening looking man with dark hair, a slim jaw line and a pair of wicked green eyes. "Alfie Johnson, the network's second-in-command after Sandy herself- up until a year ago, that is."

"What happened?" Asked Ziva, confused.

"He slipped up," Gibbs butted in, already guessing what Tim was about to reveal. "Where's he being held?"


Tony didn't remember falling asleep, but somehow he found himself waking up in his hotel room on the same couch that he'd woken up on the day before. Sitting up slowly, he rubbed his eyes and observed the room, taking his surroundings in.

He noticed while doing this that there was a pile of clothes on the arm of his couch (which included a shirt that was way too big, a pair of trousers and some oversized shoes), and a sig on top of the piano. Without hesitation, he hurried over and grabbed it, recognising it as his own that had been previously confiscated. He was about to go and warily inspect the clothes in closer detail when he noticed something: the door to his room was open and the hallway outside was completely clear.

As he edged towards the door, sig held out in front of him in the traditional investigative fashion, Sandy's words began to whirl around in his head.

"You won't get hurt, Agent DiNozzo, unless you try to escape."

Screw that.

He slipped out of the door.


Gibbs and McGee arrived at the jail in which Alfie Johnson was being held less than an hour after their discovery, Tim feeling thoroughly sick due to Gibbs' violent driving. They were now sat in the cell along with Alfie, McGee standing by the door while Gibbs sat right in the fiend's eye line glaring fiercely.

"Alfie Johnson," he snarled.

"NCIS." Alfie smirked wicked eyes glowing in the dim cell, "I expected you to be here sooner: I called."

"Well, we're here now. What do you want?"

"You're missing an agent, aren't you? What's his name, Tommy?"

"Tony, Special Agent DiNozzo." Gibbs grimaced. "How do you know that he's missing?"

"Sandy's insane; she's been fixated on your team for years. I've seen my fair share of pictures of all of your agents; I couldn't help but notice that your best one was absent." Tim's expression turned noticeably jealous at this statement- it wasn't that he didn't know that Tony was the best agent on the team; it was just that he didn't like it being mentioned.

"Fixated? How so?"

"She wants to end your team the way you ended her family: badly."


Cautiously, Tony crept through the labyrinth of corridors in the seemingly abandoned hotel, snapping around corners, creeping along pressed against walls, crouched down beside pieces of dusty furniture. Strangely, he encountered no one, which was both frightening and relieving as navigating himself through the place was hard enough: all the hallways looked identical, and he had no idea how to get back to his room. He had the horrible feeling that someone was messing with him.

Suddenly, he heard frantic footsteps coming from around the corner and stopped dead. Slowly and silently, he edged along the wall and turned the corner, gun pointed directly at the other person's head. There was a gasp of shock from the other person as they also rounded the corner, gun drawn out in front of them and pointed directly at his weapon.

"Drop your weapon!" Tony and Kate cried simultaneously, neither of them lowering their weapons.

Now it was Tony's turn to gasp as he laid eyes upon his previously dead partner. Kate was thin, her dark hair longer than he remembered and bedraggled, her eyes big and panicked as she pointed her gun at him. "Kate?" He whispered, instantly lowering his gun from her head as he realised that he didn't want to be responsible for an accidental headshot. She did the same.

"Tony," she fretted, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing!"

"Tony, this is a trap, I came to warn you! You need to go back to yo…"

Her words were cut off as Sandy arrived behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder as three men with rifles appeared next to Kate.

"Caitlin." She nodded at Kate, who scowled, but Tony could see true fear in her eyes. "DiNozzo. I see that you two have met." She threw back her head and let back a psychopathic cackle. "Now, you will learn the consequences of those who break the rules!"


"What do you mean insane?" Gibbs demanded.

Alfie smirked. "6 months after Mike was incriminated and sent to prison, he was found dead in his cell, a hangman's cloth around his neck. People guess that he did it because of the guilt he felt towards his wife and daughter and the hardship that he was suffering- he was severely bullied in jail from what I've heard."

"Bastard." Gibbs muttered under his breath.

"Mrs Watson lapsed into grief about a month after his funeral. She began taking any drugs that she could find in obscene amounts, drinking until she was beyond drunk. Sandy had to sit there and watch the whole thing, while sometimes being affected by her influenced mother. A couple of weeks later, the mad woman overdosed on a drug that drove her mad for good, causing her to attack and abuse her daughter until she fell into an uncontrollable seizure and died. Of course, Sandy was blind, so all she could remember of the attack were the sounds of her mother screaming and yelling, the pain that had been bestowed upon her, and the smell of her own blood and drugs." The criminal continued.

"Sandy spent the remainder of her childhood up until the age of 13 in dozens of various care and foster homes, but inevitably never stayed in the same place for more than a few months, and never got over the fact that her own mother had attacked her before collapsing on the floor and dying in front of her. Those were the painful memories that drove her to insanity, and caused her to run away and off the grid as soon as she became a teen. She vowed to end the people who ruined her parents, from the innocent replacement of her father to the team who bought her world crashing down.

"And now," Alfie summarised, "your best agent has gone missing. I suggest you hurry up and find him, because if I know Sandra Watson as well as I think I do, than it's not going to be pretty if you don't."


Tony could do nothing as he and Kate were dragged into yet another room, empty this time, and he was held back by his arms by two men who were abnormally huge. He could however, yell and struggle and attempt to break free as three other guys cornered his partner and began to lay into her as if she was a human punch bag.

Though Kate was a strong fighter- her Secret Service training made sure of that- she was rusty, and hadn't fought properly in a while. When it came to it, she could hold off one attacker, possibly two, but not three.

After gaining bruises all over, a split lip (and other bloody cuts and wounds), and being unable to hold back tears of physical pain, Kate collapsed to the floor in unconsciousness, beaten broken.

Sandy walked over to her and crouched down beside her, and Tony's heart froze, unsure of what she would do. Thankfully, she just stared at the helpless woman, before turning to him, a short chuckle escaping her lips. Though rage was burning inside of Tony, he still felt curious at the fact that she knew where everything was, despite her complete blindness.

"Poor little Katie," she taunted, increasing Tony's anger as she called her by the name that Kate had hated but he loved to call her by. "Such an unfair fight, even with top level skill." Sandy laughed again heartlessly, "Oh well, it's your turn now, Agent DiNozzo."

Tony's knees buckled as one of the guys who'd been holding him back delivered a powerful blow right to the centre of his stomach before kicking his legs out from underneath him. Kate's attackers came to join his two, and he ended up being tossed around and battered until he felt like a ragdoll. He felt the skin split up his left side and blood soak his shirt as one of them pulled out a small pocket knife and began to play around with it.

One minute, the darkness was lurking above him, harmless and unexpected, the next it was smothering him as he gave way to it, leaving the light behind.


A/N: GASP: I actually uploaded on time on a Wednesday?! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Follow/favourite if you want more!

Louise :)