It's my 7th anniversary on fanfiction. Good lord. Two or three years too many, yes?

"What the hell is taking them so long?"

McGee looked up from his computer screen to look over at his partner. Tony was staring thoughtfully at Ziva's desk. Or was that suspiciously? "You think they're up to no good?" he joked. "I know you're jealous of Ziva and Borin's play time, Tony, but they're probably not going to get themselves into a shootout without calling for backup—" He stopped mid-thought and frowned as Tony looked over at him nervously. McGee cleared his throat and revised his statement. "Actually, that definitely sounds like something that Ziva would do on her own. But maybe Borin will be a calming influence on her."

Tony snorted. "I'm yet to meet the person who has a calming influence on Ziva David."

"What about her friend Schmiel?"

McGee wasn't sure, but he thought a flicker of amusement crossed Tony's face. "Schmiel is not a man. He's some kind of God of wisdom."

"Who has a calming effect on Ziva," McGee said, making his point more obviously.

Tony's brow furrowed as he looked back at Ziva's desk. "No, I don't think he calms her, exactly. He just makes her…happy." He paused and then murmured to himself. "I wonder how he does that."

McGee was not looking to get into any kind of discussion revolving around Ziva's happiness and how Tony could be a part of it, so he moved the conversation along. "I'm sure they're fine, Tony. They're probably just grabbing lunch on their way back."

Tony perked up as his thoughts turned from concern about their whereabouts to interest in being fed. "I wonder if they'd pick me up a gyro."

"Or perhaps a nice grilled chicken salad."

Tony and McGee looked up as Ducky entered the bullpen. With his white lab coat on and folder in hand he looked every part the doctor. But Tony didn't like the nutritional advice he was dispensing.

"Salad, Ducky?" he questioned, and screwed up his nose in distaste.

Ducky looked down at him with a practiced frown of disappointment. "Your cholesterol is still a touch too high, Anthony," Ducky told him sternly. "I would be more comfortable if you were to bring it down a point."

Tony dropped his head back tiredly and let out a frustrated groan. "Give me a break!" he begged. "I dine el desko at least five days a week. It's hard to eat properly in this environment."

Ducky didn't seem swayed by his argument. "Then perhaps you should take more exercise."

Tony screwed up his face again. "Does it have to be one or the other?"

"It should be both," Ducky told him over McGee's chuckles.

Tony groaned again and then shot a glare at McGee. "Shut up, McFlurry."

"My cholesterol is fine," McGee argued.

"Yes, but you're low on iron," Ducky told him. "You need more green, leafy vegetables and red meat."

"Iron deficiency?" Tony mused. "Isn't that something that women usually suffer from, Ducky?"

McGee rolled his eyes at Tony's smirk.

"Yes, it's far more prevalent in women," Ducky replied. "But hardly unheard of in men. Now, it is not your medical records that I wish to discuss." He waved the folder he was holding in the air. "Where is our fearless leader?"

"Coffee run," Tony and McGee replied in unison.

"He was getting jittery waiting for more news to come in, so I guess he decided he needed more caffeine to help," McGee said.

"Gibbs logic," Tony added.

"Ah."

"Is it possible to measure a man's Arabica levels, doctor?" Tony asked. "Because I bet Gibbs' coffee level is worse than my cholesterol."

"His blood pressure is perfectly normal," Ducky replied, albeit with a small smirk of disbelief.

Tony frowned, not buying it. "That can't be right," he protested. "He lives on coffee and steak, he's angry ninety per cent of the time, and people are always shooting at him. How is he dealing with his stress?"

"By smackin' you," Gibbs replied as he breezed through the bullpen and made for his desk.

Tony winced to himself at being caught out again. "Of course, boss," he said quickly. "I'm a human stress ball."

Gibbs shot him a look that suggested he'd do well to drop it, and then gestured at the folder in Ducky's hand. "What's that?"

Ducky held the folder up before handing it over. "The medical files for Ensign Crawford that Agent David was able to procure from the cruise ship and the hospital in St Croix. There is not much in either record to assist us, I'm afraid. The symptoms described in both are consistent with the ingestion of some sort of poison, but whether it was from something he willingly ate or was given to him without his knowledge, I can't say."

Gibbs sighed and lifted his eyes to the ceiling, lamenting the dearth of useful information.

"I also looked over his Navy records," Ducky went on. "Consistent with his wife's account, Ensign Crawford appeared to be in perfect health in the months before he died. No injuries, no ongoing medical issues, not even a cold."

"Allergies?" Tony asked hopefully. If they couldn't pin his death on the salad bar, maybe they could pin it on peanuts at the wet bar. But Ducky shook his head.

"There is nothing in his file regarding allergies. He was, for all intents and purposes, a perfect specimen of male health and fitness." He tapped the folder in Gibbs' hand with the arm of his glasses. "Whatever killed him snuck up on him quickly and quietly."

"Tox screen?" Gibbs asked.

Ducky nodded. "I'm yet to receive his blood sample from the hospital in St Croix, but I expect it tomorrow evening. I shall make it a priority. Assuming, of course, that it has been stored and shipped correctly and is still a useable sample."

"Is that unlikely?" McGee asked.

Ducky leaned towards him. "You would be surprised at the mistakes that so-called professionals make."

McGee was left to wonder at that when his phone rang and he excused himself.

"So what if the sample arrives and it's degraded?" Tony asked.

"Then we'll have to get creative," Gibbs told him, and then handed the folder back to Ducky. "Where're Ziva and Borin?"

"Still on the road, boss," Tony replied.

Gibbs looked annoyed. "Did she get security tape from the ship?"

"She asked about it," Tony assured him, trying to head off a Gibbs hissy fit. "They don't have any tapes from that cruise anymore. Apparently they only keep them for about a month."

"I went on a cruise once," Ducky told them. "Two weeks between Amsterdam and Budapest. I met a brilliant young forensic archaeologist named Carlotta." He rolled his tongue over her name. "We spent evenings in her cabin and talked about Juan Vucetich."

Tony didn't have a clue who that was. He looked past Ducky's shoulder to Gibbs for help, but the boss just shook his head tiredly and sat down. He looked back at Ducky. "Was that her husband?"

Ducky gave him a dirty look.

McGee hung up his desk phone and rejoined the conversation. "That was Ziva," he told her. "She said Klein fingered Paulson for his attack, but that he still doesn't actually remember the attack."

"That's not helpful," Tony commented.

"She got copies of all of his photos from the cruise so we can check for Paulson or anyone else who might've been hanging around." He looked at Gibbs. "Maybe we should try to get some photos from Mrs Crawford as well and compare them. See if there are any repeat faces or anything else hinky."

Gibbs considered that for a moment, and then nodded and stood again. He gestured at McGee. "Come on, then. With me."

Tony watched McGee gather his bag and coat and prepare to leave. "Did Ziva say anything about getting me lunch?"

"Shockingly, she didn't," McGee replied sarcastically.

Tony pouted to himself and rubbed his empty stomach. He supposed he would have to get his own damn food.

…

"Agent Gibbs! Have you found something already?"

Gibbs gave Alicia Crawford what he hoped was a comforting smile. "Not exactly," he said, and gestured vaguely between himself and McGee standing on her porch. "Can we come in?"

Alicia stepped out of the doorway and made room for the two agents to step into her parents' house. "Of course."

"This is Special Agent McGee," Gibbs introduced in the foyer.

Alicia held out her hand, and McGee had no choice but to shake it. "It's so good to meet you, Agent McGee," she said, and turned the handshake into a double-hander.

"I'm sorry for the circumstances," McGee replied.

Alicia gave him the gracious but sad smile of a widow, and steered them through to the formal sitting room. "Please, make yourselves comfortable," she said with a grand sweep of her arm.

McGee wasn't sure if that would be possible. The sitting room reminded him of the one at his dad's house. Floral wallpaper, brass sconces, walnut coffee table and a stiff couch striped with deep green, red and gold. These kinds of rooms were supposed to show visitors how wealthy the owners were, not welcome them to get comfortable and spend some time lounging around. Not that he and Gibbs were looking for that.

Alicia sat perched right on the edge of one couch, and leaned towards them eagerly. "What have you found, Agent Gibbs?" she asked.

"Our investigation is ongoing," Gibbs non-answered.

Disappointment settled on Alicia's face, but she tried to smile through it. "I guess I shouldn't hope for an arrest after only a day."

McGee pulled out his notebook. "Mrs Crawford, it could be helpful if you provided us with a list of the other passengers you spent time with on the cruise. People you met in the bar or had dinner with. Anyone you made friends with, or anyone who you kept seeing as you went about your day."

Alicia stared at him for a moment and then frowned. "You mean, all of them?"

"We're trying to work out if there was anyone hanging around," Gibbs told her.

"The Paulsons," Alicia said, as if it were obvious.

McGee dutifully noted them down. "Anyone else?"

"Have you got photos?" Gibbs asked.

The frown lifted from Alicia's face and she suddenly stood up. "Yes! I have lots. Videos, too."

"Can we see them?"

"Of course. I'll be right back," she said, and then rushed out of the room.

Silence fell between McGee and Gibbs as they waited for her to return. After nearly ten years together, McGee knew he should be comfortable with the quiet by now. Gibbs didn't chat to pass the time. He didn't comment on the weather to fill the silence. The only time he did speak was when he really had something to say. Usually, McGee was comfortable with silence as well. That was until he was with Gibbs. For some reason, Gibbs' brand of silence made him nervous.

"Nice place," he heard himself say. Gibbs didn't respond, and McGee knew he wouldn't. But that didn't stop him from talking some more. "Reminds me of my dad's place. Maybe it's an admiral thing."

"You talk to him lately?" Gibbs asked, and McGee was so surprised that he almost jumped.

"Last week."

"He doin' all right?"

McGee shrugged. "Not exactly." He gave Gibbs a wry smile and explained. "Penny's staying with him."

The corner of Gibbs' mouth pulled back in a knowing smirk, and McGee allowed himself to smile wider. While there wasn't a whole lot of humor in his father being sick, there was a lot in the uptight admiral being looked after by his bohemian mother.

They heard Alicia coming before they saw her. Her heels clacked and necklace jangled as she rushed back into the room with a laptop in her hands. Instead of returning to her previous seat she nudged past McGee and sat between him and Gibbs on the couch. She rested the laptop on the coffee table and hit a key to bring it back to life.

"I actually have hundreds of photos," Alicia said. "Even though it was only a few days. I get incredibly snap happy, you know?" She paused and smiled sadly. "Will always made fun of me for it."

McGee gave her a smile of understanding and looked at her laptop screen. Her desktop image was a photo of her and Will taken at their wedding. She'd been a beautiful bride, and the two of them looked almost giddy as they pressed their cheeks against each other to fit both of their faces in the frame. McGee felt a pang of sympathy for her.

Alicia navigated to a folder that McGee noted had 312 items in it, and then started flipping through them quickly. "I was taking so many that I was backing them up on the laptop every night," she told them. "But I haven't gotten around to sorting them yet. I haven't been able to."

McGee appreciated an organized hard drive. But he didn't think that would help them much on this case.

She stopped on a photo of herself and Will with a couple McGee recognized as their best suspects. "This is John and Sacha Paulson," Alicia told them, pointing at the laptop screen for emphasis. "It was taken on our first night."

"You met them pretty quickly," McGee commented.

"Almost as soon as we stepped on board," Alicia said. "We were standing together at the safety briefing." She flipped through a few more photos and then showed them one of Alicia and a blonde woman at a bar. "Erika North. She was traveling with her husband, Tomani."

McGee made a note in his notepad.

"This is Andrea and Justin. I can't remember their surnames."

McGee made another note, and another and another as Alicia went through about 20 photos of people she and Will had spent time with. As she spoke, McGee could feel Gibbs getting increasingly restless. Honestly, he was a little restless himself. He was beginning to fear that Alicia had made friends with everyone on the ship. But when McGee had about two-dozen names on his list, Alicia stopped on one last photo of Will and the Paulsons. It was taken at a dinner table, and the three of them looked to be in more formal clothing.

"John and Sacha were super intense that night," Alicia told them, as if the memory was only just returning to her. "Me and Will were excited because we were getting dressed up for a formal dinner. We never do that. We'd arranged to sit with John and Sacha a few days before when we were getting to know them, but Will wanted to change plans that night because of whatever beef he had with them. It was too late, though, and when we arrived they were asking Will so many questions about our shore trip to Samaná."

"That was where you thought your husband witnessed some kind of crime?" McGee checked.

Alicia nodded slowly. "Yes. Will got sick the next night after we left San Juan."

"Was it just you and the Paulsons at the table that night?" Gibbs asked.

"No, there were two other couples," Alicia said. "Eliza and Tomani and, um…Julie and Martin something."

"Did the ship's security talk to them?"

Tears welled in Alicia's eyes and she shook her head. "No. They didn't talk to anyone, Agent Gibbs. They were completely convinced that he had food poisoning."

"The night he got sick," McGee started, "do you remember what he was drinking?"

Alicia frowned and tried to rub the memory into her head with her fingertips on her temples. "Cocktails. I can't remember what kind. Something the ship had on its menu."

"Did you see anyone messing with his food or drink? Waiters?"

"No," she replied, shaking her head. "But I wasn't paying attention, Agent McGee. I thought we were safe in the restaurant. I thought we were safe on the whole ship."

"You leave your drinks unattended at all?" Gibbs asked.

Alicia swung her head around to look at him. "I don't know. Maybe? I went to the bathroom once, but Will stayed at the table. I assume he was there the whole time but I never asked."

McGee thought it over. Every new piece of information they got on this case made the circumstances murkier, not clearer. It was going to be tough to crack. "Is there anyone else in the photos you'd like us to look at?"

Alicia sniffed back her tears. "No. That's pretty much everyone I'd consider important," she told him. "I mean, there were lots of other people we'd say hello to when we passed them every morning, but I don't know their names."

McGee nodded to reassure her she'd given them what they needed. "That's fine. This is very helpful."

"If you say so."

"Can we take copies of these?" he asked, and pulled a thumb drive from his pocket.

She shrugged and waved her hand at her laptop. "Yeah, I guess."

McGee plugged the drive into her laptop and started copying the folder. Then he had an idea. "Do you have a Facebook page?"

"Of course."

"Did you upload any of these photos?"

Alicia nodded slowly, and then faster as she caught on to where he was going. "Yeah. And I tagged a bunch of people."

McGee felt a flutter of relief. That would make tracking all these people easier. When the transfer of photos and videos was complete, McGee unplugged the drive and then gave Gibbs a nod to let him know they were done.

"Thank you for speaking with us again," Gibbs told Alicia. "We'll keep you informed of our progress."

Alicia regarded him with skeptical grey eyes. "You don't think Will was murdered. Do you?"

Gibbs wasn't one to lie. "I don't know what I believe yet," he told her. "We don't have all the evidence."

Her gaze didn't waver. "I'm not crazy, Agent Gibbs."

"I don't think you are," he replied evenly.

Alicia turned her gaze on McGee. "What do you think?"

McGee stuck the thumb drive in his pocket and turned what he hoped was an open and trustworthy expression on her. "I think that we owe it to your husband to get to the bottom of what happened. And we will."

…

For a voyeur like Tony DiNozzo, trawling through other peoples' photos when they weren't around should have been a whole lot of fun. And when faced with the backdrop of beaches, bars and bikini babes, the fun factor should have been bumped up considerably. But through Ken Klein's photos, Tony was finding out that the image of cruising he'd developed in his head over the last two days of hot girls lying by the pool and sipping cocktails was completely off base. Yes, there were a lot of photos of people in swimwear. There were a lot of cocktails in hand, and a lot of skin on display. But more often than not, the skin was burned and stretched over the paunch of men in their 50s and 60s. When Tony had joined Ziva and Borin in the conference room to go through Klein's photos on a more private plasma screen, he'd been expecting to see Hollywood glamour. The reality was, well, disappointing reality.

When it came down to it, most people looked a whole lot better with all of their clothes on.

"It literally makes no sense to me," he told Ziva and Borin as Borin flicked from another random crowd shot to the next. "My brain cannot comprehend how it is possible to be that pale and not have all your organs showing through your skin."

Ziva sighed and rolled her eyes. "Some people are just pale, Tony! McGee would be the same in the dead of winter."

"I'm the same in the dead of winter," Borin shot in, and then sucked some soda through her straw. "Actually, I'm still that pale at the height of summer."

Tony shook his head, refusing to believe it. "No, not like that," he said, gesturing at a cruise passenger in the foreground of the photo who almost blended into the white wall behind her. "You wouldn't glow in the dark like Casper."

"Casper didn't glow in the dark," Borin corrected. "But if you want to see me shine a light with my body in the dark, just turn off the lights and I'll show you."

"Lights stay on," Ziva insisted. "We need to get through this."

She brought up the next photo, and for a moment they all just stared and it and tried to work out what they were seeing. The main focus of the picture taken inside a cabin was Klein's wife, but in the foreground was a column of pinkish-white flesh that was obviously connected to Klein. They just couldn't work out what body part they were looking at.

Tony was the first to find his voice. "Is that…?" he started before trailing off. Suddenly, he felt extremely inadequate.

"No, that would not be possible," Ziva said firmly.

"But if it is, it would go some way towards explaining how Klein landed a hot wife like that," Tony argued. He received twin looks of disgust in response.

"Looks are not always important to a woman, Tony," Ziva told him.

Tony scoffed. "Uh, yeah. They are. Women try to act all high and mighty and above the superficial, but in the end you're as bad as us."

"You get dates, don't you?" Borin drawled.

Tony gave her a bitchy smile in return.

"It is his thigh!" Ziva suddenly exclaimed. "See? That is his knee, not the top of his—"

"Ohhh," Borin and Tony sing-songed together.

"I'm not as impressed now," Tony said.

"I'm not as horrified," Borin counted. "My friend used to date a guy she dubbed Baby Arm. Any kind of sex was almost impossible."

Ziva winced and crossed her legs, and flipped to the next photo as McGee walked in.

"Oh. You're all in here," he said.

"Do you glow in the dark?" Tony asked him.

McGee paused as he walked towards them and opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to frame a response. "Uh…what?"

"You know, because of your…" Tony gestured up and down McGee's frame. "Affliction."

"My what?"

"Tony," Ziva admonished, and sat forward in her chair as she looked at McGee. "Did you get photos from Alicia?"

McGee pulled the thumb drive out of his pocket and slid it across the table to her. "Just a few hundred. Plus videos."

"A few hundred?" Borin echoed. "They were only on the cruise for a couple of days."

McGee shrugged. There wasn't much he could say to that. "I'm going to start looking at Facebook pages."

"McGee?" Ziva called. "Do you remember seeing a name on the passenger manifest that was something like Mike Rowe?"

"The Discovery guy?" Tony asked.

McGee tried not to roll his eyes at her. "Do I remember? No, I don't remember. But I can check."

"Klein said Paulson had a friend with him," Borin said.

"And his name is Mike Rowe?"

"Something like that."

"I'll start with Paulson's Facebook," he said, and left them with Alicia's photos to look through.

Ziva plugged the thumb drive into the computer attached to the plasma, and then opened the folder of Alicia's photos.

"Crap," Borin muttered when she saw them all.

"Perhaps we could get Abby to run some kind of program that pulls out repeat faces?" Ziva suggested.

"Sounds entirely sensible," Borin replied.

"Why's your Facebook blocked?" Tony suddenly asked.

Ziva and Borin looked over at him to find him looking down at the phone in his hand.

"Whose?" Ziva asked.

"Borin's," Tony said, and waved his phone at her. "What're you hiding?"

"All my personal information from people I don't know," Borin said obviously.

"I'm sending you a friend request," Tony said.

"Prepare to be denied," she replied.

Tony looked up at her, offended. "What? Why?"

"I don't want you in my business, DiNozzo."

Tony arched an eyebrow that was meant to remind her just how deeply into his business she'd pushed herself the other night. "Oh. Would you consider that crossing the line?"

Borin pursed her lips over a smile, and then shrugged. "I guess not. But you should be warned. My life is very boring."

"You should see McGee's," he said. "It's all blah blah computers, blah blah books, blah blah video games."

"Sounds like he has a lot of hobbies," Borin said.

"McGee has a very well-rounded life outside of work," Ziva told her.

Tony groaned and grabbed the clicker from Ziva's hand to go back to Klein's shots. They were almost done, and he had a list of recurring faces, including Jug Face, Green Bikini, Hitchcock in a Speedo, Tan Lines and Chronically Drunk Bro that he wanted to check out before the end of the day.

He clicked to the next photo, and all three of them gasped and covered their eyes against the image of a buck naked Ken Klein taking a selfie in the bathroom mirror.

"I called it!" Borin cried from behind her hand. "Ziva's my witness. I knew this was coming as soon as he started looking uncomfortable."

"I would congratulate you, but I had wished you were wrong," Ziva said. "Tony, next photo. Please."

Tony clicked to the next one, which was the same as the last but from another, less flattering angle. "WHY?" he cried and clicked to the next. It was the same. "WHY DOES HE DO IT?"

"For his wife?" Ziva said hopefully.

Tony clicked to the next photo, and he found it way too graphic for his sensibilities. He let out a disgusted, strangled cry and slid the clicker back to Ziva before pushing back from the table and standing up.

"I'm done," he announced. "Gonna help McGee." He practically ran to the door and then slammed it behind him.

Ziva looked at Borin and arched an eyebrow. "Who would have thought amateur pornography would break him so quickly?"

…

At 1750 that evening, Tony started preparing to leave. He had a semi-fruitful afternoon, digging through Facebook pages of a couple of the passengers who had appeared on the manifests for both the cruise that the Crawfords had taken and the one Ken Klein had been on. A lot of people had their pages set to private, so that was annoying. But for those people who had public profiles, Tony had taken copies of the cruise photos that had been posted. He didn't really know if it would help, but he reasoned that the more photos they had, the bigger picture they would have of what happened on the ship and who might've been behaving shiftily.

McGee had managed to find the 'Mike Rowe' that Ken Klein had been talking about. Martin Rose was on the passenger manifest for the most recent cruise on which Klein had been attacked, and a man by that name was friends with Paulson on Facebook. A top level dig into Rose's affairs showed that he, too, was a repeat cruiser. His Facebook profile suggested that he worked as a motorcycle mechanic, but photos of his home suggested he was taking home more than minimum wage. His name was added to the list of possible suspects with the others, but there wasn't much more they could do about it until they had some evidence that they were involved in Will Crawford's death. At this stage, there was nothing at all to link them. So Tony decided to deal with it by going home for the night and sleeping like the dead. It wasn't like the case was active. And anyway, it was Sunday. Sunday on what was supposed to be the team's weekend off. Leaving at 1800 was completely justifiable.

So, of course, that was when Ziva and Borin returned to the bullpen after their marathon slide night, and brought with them a bit of excited energy.

"I think we found something," Ziva announced as she joined the rest of the team in the bullpen.

"If it's pink and fleshy, I don't want to see it," Tony told her.

"What if it's pink and fluffy?" Borin asked.

Tony made a face. "Then I'd see a doctor as soon as possible."

Ziva sat at her desk and hit a few keys until a video came up on the plasma screen. "This is from Alicia," she told them as the whole team gathered around the television screen. "It was taken in Samaná where Alicia thought Ensign Crawford witnessed a crime."

The team watched the video of Alicia sitting at a table that looked to be almost right on the beach. The sky behind her was clear and a deep blue, palm trees swayed in a gentle breeze, the sand was bleached white and, from the angle they had, the water looked to be as blue/green and crystal clear as it looked in travel brochures. Unlike in Klein's photos, the people on the beach were skewed heavily in the tall, thin and beautiful direction, and everyone was tanned and smiling. This was the kind of thing Tony expected from a cruise.

In the foreground, Alicia talked and laughed with the cameraman, assumed to be Will. She looked as happy and carefree as anyone would expect a young woman on vacation with her husband to be, with no idea that in 24 hours' time, she'd be a widow.

"What are we supposed to be looking at?" Gibbs asked.

"It's coming," Borin told him, and held her hand out a little way from her body as she prepared to point at the screen. "There!"

Ziva paused the tape, and Borin stepped forward to tap on the far left of the screen. Tony squinted at what she was pointing to.

"Is that a monkey?"

"Standing on a bicycle?" McGee added.

Ziva and Borin both looked at them like they couldn't be serious. Tony couldn't speak for McGee, but sadly, he was serious.

"It is John Paulson," Ziva told them impatiently, and then used the clicker to zoom in on the area. "And he is with another man. Paulson is carrying what looks to be a large pink teddy bear, and his friend is carrying a brown one."

Now that she'd explained the image, Tony could see it perfectly. "Oh! The bike is the fancy fence thing behind them." He cuffed McGee on the arm, and McGee nodded.

"Okay, I can see it now," McGee said.

"Ken Klein said he saw Paulson and his friend buying stuffed bears in Samaná," Ziva told them, making sure everyone had caught up to why this video was important. "They took them off the ship in Key West, and when he re-boarded, he didn't have them."

"So, they buy lots of stuffed bears when they go to the Dominican Republic," McGee said.

"Does the Dominican Republic have a reputation for the quality of its stuffed animals?" Tony wondered.

"No," Borin told him. "But they have a reputation for their drugs."

"They stuff the bears with drugs and give them to children in Key West?" Tony deliberately misunderstood. "Well, that's plain evil."

Gibbs shot him a steely glare because he was too far away to land a slap to the back of his head. Tony mouthed an apology, and Gibbs returned his attention to the plasma screen. "Don't s'pose there's a shot of the store they come out of?"

"No," Ziva said dejectedly. "Klein said it was across the road from the beach, but…there are a lot of shops across the road from the beach."

"Do we know who that is with him?" Gibbs asked.

"Mike Rowe?" Borin tried.

"Oh, his name is Martin Rose," McGee told them. "And it's hard to tell on the video, but that guy is roughly the same height and weight as him. Me and Abby can work on getting a better shot of his face for comparison."

"Tomorrow," Gibbs said. "We'll pick up again tomorrow. Everyone head home. Have the night off."

With word coming down from on high, Tony didn't feel as guilty as he had done previously about wanting an early mark. Gibbs was clearly not feeling this case, and he probably wouldn't until they found some harder evidence. Until then, Tony would take advantage of the two more hours of sunlight outside.

Borin left quickly, saying she'd be in touch tomorrow. Gibbs followed her, and McGee took a few more minutes to pack up his desk and take off. Tony made a couple more notes about the Facebook pages he'd been looking at and bookmarked a few, and then stood up and clipped his badge and gun to his belt as he prepared to leave.

"Tony?"

He jumped and looked up at Ziva calling his name. He knew she was there in the bullpen. He just didn't know she was right there in front of his desk. The frickin' ninja got him again.

"Agh-hi," he covered. "Didn't see you there."

She looked around herself as if trying to work out where 'there' was. "I did not mean to startle you."

"I wasn't startled," he lied.

She didn't look like she believed him, but didn't call him out on it. "Do you have plans?"

"Right now?" he asked, and then answered anyway. "Not really. You want to get a drink?"

"Or dinner?" she suggested.

He shrugged a yes and smiled. He could get down with a dinner not-date with Ziva right now. And maybe, if all the stars aligned and he prayed to the right god, they'd fit in another movie snuggle before bedtime. "I need to eat," he said agreeably.

Ziva's eyes flicked south to his stomach, and she gave him a coy little smirk that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "So, we will eat," she said, and then lead him out the door.

And he didn't know why, but Tony felt as if he'd agreed to more than just dinner.

So there's a little T/Z + bonus Borin fun for you. And yes, the next chapter will be heavy T/Z. Thanks for your patience.