Chapter 4

Tea and tales

17 years previous (working on the assumption Tim is about 35 present time)

Tim stared around at his new room at Johns Hopkins: small, basic, but liveable. He set up all his computers on the desk in the corner and paused as he heard a loud clamouring from outside his room. He moved to open his door as the clamouring came again.

Outside, on hands and knees, was a young woman with dark hair which fell to her waist, gathering up some hard back books, on human anatomy and circulatory systems. Tim knelt down beside her. "Here let me help." He said politely.

"Oh, thank you. Damn box, bottomed out. Knew I packed it too full." The woman said, her voice revealing her to have a Scottish lilt.

"You're Scottish?" Tim asked as he took a few bigger books off of her. He rose to his feet.

"Yes, my father and I moved here when I was 3, after my mum died. I'm Catriona, but you can me Katie." The woman smiled, tucking a loose strand of her auburn hair behind her ear and raising her emerald eyes to meet Tim's.

"Tim. Nice to meet you Katie," Tim smiled back, instantly taken with her. "Studying Biology?"

"Medicine, actually. I want to be a medical examiner."

"Wow. That's impressive. Your dad a medical man?" Tim asked as the girl fumbled in her purse for her dorm key.

"Yes. He is. What are you studying?" She asked as she let him in her room.

"Is this alright on the desk?" Catriona nodded and Tim put the pile of books on the desk in the main room. "Bio-medical engineering and then I plan on going to MIT for computer forensics. My dad's in the navy."

"Not following in his footsteps?"

"No, we're never really got on. Well, I'm just across the hall if you need me... Need anything... You know what I mean." Tim stumbled over his words and was shocked when Katie smiled.

"Thank you, Tim..."

"McGee. Timothy McGee."

"Thank you, Tim McGee. I know this is sudden and we've only just met, but I don't know anyone here, perhaps we could get a drink together sometime- as friends?" Catriona asked, leaning in the doorway to her dorm room, Tim in the corridor.

"It would be an honour to be your friend, Katie.."

"Mallard. Like the duck."

"Katie Mallard, a honour it will be." With that the pair shook hands and it was the start of a wonderful friendship which lasted through the years. In all that time, Catriona never told Tim about her adoption and the true nature of her parentage. It wasn't that she was ashamed, it was because she had never known any other parent except Ducky.

Catriona sat with her hands around her pink china tea cup in her father's autopsy room. Her father sat across from her so her back was to the body bag, Jimmy Palmer had rolled in on the gurney from the medical examiner's van from New Orleans.

"Catriona... I hate to ask... How close were you and Andrew?" Ducky began, watching his daughter carefully.

"We were work colleagues and friends, papa. Not how you're thinking. Sometimes I would stay at his in his large estate house when he worked late on a case but that's because he didn't want me driving back to the French quarter late at night. Papa what do I do?"

"About what, Catriona?" Ducky asked, curious now.

"He's left me everything, with family left, he's left everything to me. The house, his car... Everything. Said I understood what true loyalty, beauty and compassion was." Catriona smiled at that.

"It is up to you what you do with the house and his belongings... But why bring him to me?"

"I don't trust anyone else to do it and because, he was murdered and I want his killer caught."

"How do you know he was murdered?"

"I heard it all down a phone line. He called me just before the bullet was shot through his brain by a man. He was foreign by his accent." Catriona's voice broke and she burst into tears, the third bout she'd had since her father had taken her from the bullpen in the squad room. Ducky took her hand and held it tightly in his own.

"There there, duckling. Gibbs will get him, I promise," Catriona nodded, unable to speak. "How about some more Ceylon tea?"