Holy crap this got a lot more attention than I ever thought it would! Because of that, I can't even properly respond to all you guests! All I can do is say that I have read all of your comments, I thank you for them, and I hope you enjoy this! It took me longer to write than the first chapter due to a few factors. The most important is this is actually only one of five projects I have going on right now, one of which is an original novel. So updates will not come exceedingly quickly.

Also, I must warn all who are reading now: I am not a fuzzy writer.

My original update might have been happy, but my natural style is dark and serious. If I am going to continue this, there may or may not be a lot of bad things going down before we get that happy ending. So with that in mind, to chapter 2.

Disclaimer: The TV show NCIS belongs to CBS.

"Slow down, DiNozzo."

"She's alive, Boss."

Gibbs flipped the switch on the elevator, stopping his ascent into the Squadroom. He had two Petty Officers who'd been shot and killed at the apartment they shared. He didn't need this right now—Tony calling him up to talk about his theories and suspicions about Ziva. Gibbs had his own, but he needed Tony to heal before bringing them up. Talking about them now could hurt Tony more, if Gibbs ended up being wrong.

That certainly wasn't stopping DiNozzo from coming up with his own answers.

"We've been over this a few times already, Tony," Gibbs said.

"She made contact," Tony replied, voice slightly fuzzy since Gibbs was in the elevator. Its metal walls liked to interfere with the signal, or so Tim said. Gibbs didn't care about the specifics.

"You've said that. How?"

"A note. Ziva's handwriting."

"In grief we see the things we want to. You did in Paris when you told me you saw Ziva walking by on the street."

"This time it's not just some local with the same hair color. This note came with a stuffed animal, Gibbs. Tali's stuffed animal. Her favorite. The note explained how often I should tell Tali stories with it."

That was definitely not a detail an outsider would know. "You the only one who read it?"

"I'm not crazy, Boss." Gibbs felt a surge of pride when Tony said that, seeing right to the heart of the question. "I had Senior look it over, too. Says it's exactly as I read it out."

"Exactly?"

"Right down to saying she loves me."

Gibbs' gut pushed him to act. To storm into the Squadroom, demand everyone's attention, and have them start looking for leads on a dead woman. But he didn't. And he couldn't. He needed to find who killed those Petty Officers and why.

He couldn't drop the case. Nor could he ignore what Tony was saying.

"Okay," he said. "What else did it say?"

"Something about having more to end. And that I should never let Tali out of my sight."

Cryptic, yet protective. Much like Ziva had been in life.

Or still was.

"Where are you staying?" Gibbs asked.

"The Ritz-Carlton," said Tony.

A five-star hotel. Frequented by people with lots of money. Mossad was certainly generous. "Don't leave that hotel, Tony."

"What are you thinking, Boss?"

"I'm thinking I need coffee."

Gibbs hung up and started the elevator again, mind running through what he knew. Ziva had been hit directly by an HE mortar while she slept. Her death had been an unforeseen consequence of Trent Kort's quest to destroy evidence that proved he sold nuclear secrets. Her daughter and Tony's, Tali, had survived the explosion and the fire that resulted because the mortar had hit the other side of the house. Tony had left NCIS to take care of Tali.

Tony had received a note by someone claiming to be Ziva.

The information within the note could have only come from Ziva.

There were a lot of missing pieces to this. Pieces that part of Gibbs didn't even think existed. His gut kept bringing up the parts of Ziva's death that didn't make sense.

Tali couldn't have survived that fire. Not for as long as Mossad said. Gibbs had once burnt chicken he was cooking in the oven when Kelly had been Tali's age. The smoke had left her in a coughing fit, and he and Shannon had to take her to the ER. Tali had been perfectly healthy when she arrived.

The farmhouse couldn't have been consumed in an inferno like he'd seen in so short a time. Someone had to have used an accelerant to speed up the process, but the tests Mossad gave them were negative for accelerants.

The body found inside the wreckage was unidentified. Too badly destroyed to be, even for a gender. Someone who stood five six to five ten. Mossad said it was Ziva based completely on how the body's pieces had been found in what remained of her bed.

Something was missing.

The elevator door opened to the Squadroom. Gibbs stepped out at his usual brisk pace and entered the Bullpen. "Whadda do you got?"

"Boss," Bishop said as he walked by, hanging up her desk phone. "According to their superiors, Johnson and Bradley were both unusually jumpy for the last week."

"Jumpy?" Gibbs asked.

"Nervous. On edge. Sus—"

"I know what jumpy means. They say why?"

"Just that it was unusual for both of them."

"I might," said McGee, typing at his computer. Two documents came up on the monitor between McGee's and what used to be Tony's desk. "In the last six months, nearly $130,000 appeared in the personal accounts of both Petty Officer Johnson and Petty Officer Bradley."

"That's a lot of money for a couple E-4 programmers," Bishop said. "But by all standards, they were highly skilled in what they did. Contract work on the side?"

"Nothing in their apartment gave any indication they'd done work for any companies or organization. The last time either of them worked outside the Navy, they were at the same Department Store in high school."

"Loans from relatives?"

"Accounts used to transfer the funds are untraceable. Didn't come from family."

"So where did they get that sort of cash?"

Gibbs stared at the images of the two dead Petty Officers—Johnson a tall African-American with a smile that could light up a room, and Bradley an average-sized Caucasian with intense green eyes that could chill the same room. Best friends since kindergarden. Both top-of-the-class in college. Both tested highly in Marksmanship, Hand-to-Hand, and Leadership. Both considered by their coworkers as dependable, loyal, and model Petty Officers.

Both hiding something from the rest of the world.

His gut was still trying to figure it out.

"Gibbs."

Gibbs looked up. Vance at the railing at the second floor, looking down into the Bullpen. The Director had his best stern face on. "MTAC. Now."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. Why was was calling for him at MTAC? He didn't have any cases that involved Top Secret information, or cases that required communication across the world or with other agencies.

"Boss?" McGee asked. He looked as confused by the summons as Gibbs was.

Gibbs just gave him a look. "Find out how our Petty Officers got their money."

Vance had already entered MTAC by the time Gibbs ascended the stairs. He brought his eye to the retinal scanner, and opened the outer door when it opened for him.

He stepped forward, opened the inner door, and entered the room.

Then he found out why he'd been summoned to MTAC.

The main screen displayed a webcam of Mossad Director Elbaz sitting at her desk. She did not look happy.

"Director Elbaz was just informing me of how you've been encouraging DiNozzo's bad habits," said Vance, wearing his political face. He had a good one. Gibbs only knew Vance wasn't angry because they'd been working together on an everyday basis for eight years.

Gibbs walked into the center of the room and faced Elbaz's image. "Mossad listening to my phone calls, now?"

"Only former Agent DiNozzo's," Elbaz said, her form dark. It was the middle of the night in Tel Aviv.

"There a reason why you're spying on one of my people?"

"He's not one of yours anymore, Agent Gibbs."

"NCIS protects their agents, both current and former," said Vance.

Elbaz raised an eyebrow. "Are you changing sides, Director Vance? Was it not your idea to monitor Anthony after he left your agency?"

Gibbs sent a look Leon's way.

"We've lost a lot of former agents, Gibbs," Vance said, defending himself against the accusation Gibbs hadn't said. Gibbs loved and hated how easily Vance could read someone. Especially when he was the one being read. "I'm not going to let DiNozzo become a statistic."

"You're making sure he doesn't go after the hired gun who destroyed the farmhouse."

"Exactly," said Elbaz. "And you're going against that by encouraging DiNozzo to keep holding onto the theory she survived."

Gibbs' eye twitched. An ever-so-small movement that didn't show up through a webcam, but Gibbs knew Vance noticed from the way he raised his head up from the slight forward angle it usually was. "You listen to our entire conversation, Director Elbaz?"

"We did."

"Then why haven't I heard anything about the note DiNozzo told me about." It wasn't a question.

It was a demand.

Elbaz shook her head. "Agent Gibbs, you cannot honestly be considering that note as authentic."

Vance frowned. "What note?"

Gibbs quickly filled Vance in on the package delivered to DiNozzo, and the note within it.

Vance's frown deepened. "Why didn't you tell me about this note, Director?"

"Because it cannot be authentic," Elbaz said, shaking her head again. "Believe me when I say I'd have half of Mossad out looking for her if I thought that note was real."

"It has information in it that only Ziva would know," Gibbs said. He wasn't ready to believe she was alive, but he felt he couldn't let Elbaz dismiss it. There was something both NCIS and Mossad were missing, and they both needed to find it. Not one, Not the other. Both. That was what his gut was screaming at him.

"It is very vague. There are a dozen people over here who Ziva asked to help her with Tali at some point. Any of them could have written it."

"And why would they write it? What good would they get from posing as Ziva?"

Elbaz shrugged. "Unknown. I am going to be investigating the matter tomorrow."

"You mean interrogating your own people."

Elbaz shrugged again. "We are Mossad, Agent Gibbs. We don't hold back, not even with our own."

"But only when there's a good reason," Vance said. "Would this qualify as such an occasion?"

Gibbs' eye twitched, and he gave Vance a look. But then he caught the barely-noticeable signal from Vance. The slight twitch of his right eye that looked like a wink. Gibbs knew then to take a step back.

Vance had an angle.

"In the years she spent at her father's farmhouse, Ziva became one of my dearest friends. Almost like a daughter to me," Elbaz said, and Gibbs knew she meant it; the signature Mossad poker face had vanished. She was being genuine. "Whoever is daring to use her memory to play games with DiNozzo needs to understand the weight of my displeasure."

"Sounds like you want to get to the bottom of that note as much as DiNozzo."

"I do."

Vance gave the wink-signal again, and by now, Gibbs knew what he wanted Gibbs to say. "Then why not cover all your bases?"

"What are you asking?"

"That NCIS and Mossad run a cooperative investigation into this note's origins," Vance said. "With you investigating whether the note came from Mossad, while we investigate the possibility that Ziva David is still alive."

Gibbs caught the flair of Elbaz's nostrils. The sudden coldness in Elbaz's eyes. She was angry. "Absolutely not. Ziva David is dead. I buried her weeks ago. She is gone."

He could tell she was genuine, but his gut still said there was something they were all missing. Something more. "Then our investigation will only strengthen what you find."

Elbaz was silent. She glared through her screen at he and Vance, working her jaw. "Fine. We will speak again this time tomorrow. We shall share the results of our investigations then."

"24 hours isn't enough time for Agent Gibbs and his team to go over all the evidence you collected from the farmhouse," Vance said.

"I will be sure to send Miss Sciuto the results of all the tests we ran."

Gibbs shook his head. "We need more than that to conduct an investigation, Director."

"Test results are all that is relevant. We shall speak tomorrow."

The feed cut.

"We lose the connection?" Vance asked an MTAC technician.

"No, sir," the technician said, turning his head to look at Vance. "Director Elbaz ended the connection at her end.

Gibbs' eye twitched. Elbaz didn't want them investigating Ziva's death. Not because she feared being implicated, no—his gut said it was for a worse reason: she feared what they would find.

Elbaz was emotionally involved in this, and she wasn't managing it as well as she wanted others to believe. She had cared greatly about Ziva, and her death was affecting her more than she wanted to admit. The signs were there in how she said she'd buried Ziva, as if she'd dug the hole herself.

She didn't want to give herself the hope that Ziva might be alive.

"Director Elbaz isn't seeing this clearly," Vance said.

"Yeah," said Gibbs.

"Think picking apart their test results will be enough for Elbaz to send us everything they have?"

"No."

"Well, you need to find something that will."

"And no access to evidence that might do it."

"Then get creative. If Ziva David is really dead, I want to lay all doubts to rest as soon as possible."

"And if she's alive?"

Vance put a toothpick between his teeth. "Then I sure as hell want to get her back home. You're on a twenty-four hour clock, Gibbs. Get to work."

Gibbs made his way back to the Bullpen. "Listen up."

McGee and Bishop straightened immediately, looking at him. Waiting for his direction. His orders. His lead.

Like soldiers looking to their captain.

"Petty Officers Johnson and Bradley are now our secondary case."

Bishop and McGee looked confused, McGee more so than Bishop. "Then what case are we working on, Boss?"

"Ziva David's death. Find something that brings the truth of that statement into question."

His agents went still, blinking rapidly. They shared a shocked look. Like they couldn't believe what they just heard.

Gibbs whistled, and he had their attention again. "Hey, get to work."

His agents were typing before he closed his mouth. Their eyes were focused, hands flying over their keyboards at a speed that made his aged fingers ache. The rate he saw them navigating their screens gave him a headache.

Headache.

Gibbs turned and walked toward the elevator.

He needed coffee.

There you have it. Not long, but I wanted to get this done and posted so that all who are wondering if this one-shot was going to turn into a story. The answer is yes.

This is mostly set up for the larger plot, so I apologize if it is disappointing to not see something with a little more to it. That will come in time.

Thank you for reading, please let me know what you thought.

See you soon.