"Why are you laughing?" DiNozzo asked.

"She told me that you would fix my English, that is all. I find this funny," the girl responded. "Nobody has dared to correct my English where I worked before. They were afraid of me, with my background. I am Special Agent Ariela Aliyah David. I go by Aria."

"David?" Tony asked.

"I was told that you would question me to no end. I want to warn you now, it is to no use," Aria said quietly. "I will not talk unless I learn to trust you myself. Ziva has told me that I can trust you, but I must see so for myself."

Aria's face was dangerous and Tony remembered that look too well. He was remembering a lot from his early days of knowing Ziva and this girl had to be her sister.

"You called her just now?" he asked.

She smiled and nodded her head. "She does have a comment to make to you, Tony," Aria said. "She is simply surprised that you have not broken down and called her yet. I feel as though she may have been disappointed but also proud. Disappointed because she expected you to break your word to her on that and proud because that means you are coping better than she expected."

"Should I call her?"

"Listen to your heart is all I can tell you on that subject," Aria said quietly. "That is all that there is to tell. As for now, I must tell you that there is danger for Ziva in Israel. Danger that she knows nothing of. She is in danger where she is and I tried to warn her without telling her that. I tried to tell her that it was better if she returned home to Washington, where she had a family that loved her. She did not listen to me; but why should she? I am her younger sister and should not need to look out for her as well. She feels horribly for getting me involved in all this, but it is ongoing and that is what you do not know and what she does not know. The danger to me is only an extension of what the danger was to all of you several weeks and months ago."

"What are you talking about, Aria? And what agency do you work for?"

"NCIS," Aria responded. "I have been working with the Los Angeles team for a couple of years. I should probably call them regarding my absence."

"Probably," Gibbs said. "Come with me to MTAC. We'll talk to them together."

"That will be fine," she said with a nod and slid off Ziva's desk again.

Before she left the squad room with Gibbs she handed a thick envelope to Tony and nodded to him. She knew that it was a letter but hadn't read what it said. Tony nodded appreciatively and watched her disappear before turning his eyes toward the envelope. It only had his name written on the back in Ziva's clear handwriting.

"Why are we trusting this girl?" Bishop asked. "She comes from nowhere and anyone with that strong of an Israeli accent can't be trusted. I don't think I like her."

"We don't have a choice if the boss is choosing to trust her, Bishop," McGee said. "What's that say, Tony?"

Tony was focused on the letter that he had just unfolded and opened. There were tears in his eyes before he ever began reading, but as he read they only grew thicker, until they spilled onto his cheeks. McGee had never seen Tony quite like that before and he realized that the letter must be from Ziva and that there was definitely something that he hadn't shared about his time in Israel with Ziva for those tears to still be present in his system so two months later.

McGee watched as Tony's eyes raced back and forth across the page, slowly moving down toward the bottom of it and flipping to the next page. Then, when he finished he flipped to the first page again and continued to read what was written for a second time.

Both McGee and Bishop sat watching Tony. McGee was watching him carefully, waiting for him to crack and walk away, or pick up the phone and call her or say something, anything would have been nice. Bishop, on the other hand, who had only heard about Ziva David, her predecessor and the owner of the chair that she was supposed to be sitting in, was watching him as though he were nuts for accepting anything from this girl that they didn't know and claimed to be a Special Agent of NCIS. She was suspicious of the girl and she was suspicious of her predecessor, Ziva David. She didn't think that either of these women were good news.

Bishop turned her eyes to her computer before Tony spoke. She began to look up everything she could on Ziva David and Ariela David. She also looked up everything she could on Eli David. She wanted to know what they were involved in and she wanted to know what the girl could possibly be doing in Washington, DC if she worked in the Los Angeles office and what she had been doing in Israel before that. She wondered why Gibbs would trust her blindly when Gibbs still didn't trust Bishop after two weeks of working with the team. It wasn't right or fair.

Tony began reading the letter for a third time, forgetting that he was at NCIS and that he had at least one coworker watching him as tears poured down his cheeks while he read the letter in his hands. He wanted very much to read this letter over and over until he had it memorized, but he would be brought back to reality by the end of reading the letter this time around. He felt as though his heart had stopped beating upon seeing her words written on the page and knew that they were meant sincerely.


A/N - I hope you are enjoying this. Please let me know.