Chapter 1

Navy Officer Pete Duncan and his wife were on their way home when they realized that they had to make a fuel stop. In celebration of her birthday, he surprised his wife Alice with dinner in the most popular restaurant in the city. Of course, it had been quite hard work to make sure that he would get an available table but he knew how Alice had dreamed of eating at McCarthy's diner, so he worked hard to get it done and in the end, his persistence had paid off. As he had finally filled the tank of his car with the desired amount of fuel, he went to the cashier desk in the small gas station to pay. Meanwhile, Ronald Meyers, a low light criminal was frantically pacing his little apartment: He needed money, two thousand dollars to be exact and he needed fast. He made the dumb mistake to think that it would be a good idea to lend money from Max Archer, a famous and notorious loan shark in the city. He had gotten himself in this mess in the first place because he had done some gambling with the recent money, he had earned from his recent drug deals, and at first, things were going well at the slot machine.

But when there was one unwritten law in the world of gambling: Never count on your luck to hold on forever. For whatever reason, he decided to ignore this old saying and of course, he lost most of the money that he had won. Of course, he had to be so naïve to think that Max Archer would be gracious enough to give him a long extension of the deadline:

"You have until the end of this week to give me my money or I will put a bounty on your head. Dead or alive I will get my money, don't forget that!" He pushed Ronald to the wall, grabbing him by the throat and the low-light criminal could only nod in response as he wasn't able to get out one single word because of the lack of air he had.

Two days later

As Navy Officer Pete Duncan had just left the Bank, he stopped dead in his tracks as a masked man stood right in front of him pointing a gun directly at his head. Before Duncan could ask the masked man what all this was about, the stranger with the gun said:

"Give me all your money and your mobile phone, right now!"

Of course, Duncan didn't try to put up any kind of resistance, as he didn't want to provoke the man who was threatening him by aiming directly at his head with his gun. He handed his wallet and his mobile phone to the masked robber and then said:

"Here's everything you wanted, now please let me go ok?"

But the masked man wasn't about to let go of his victim, because he knew that taking the men's money and his mobile phone was just a nice bonus.

"Sorry buddy but you're going nowhere, as that was never part of the plan and this is business nothing personal." With two well-aimed shots, he shot Navy Officer Duncan right in the head and had a good feeling that his mission had been accomplished.

NCIS Headquarters, Washington DC

Tony was busy with finally taking care of a seemingly endless mountain of paperwork that needed to be done no later than by the end of this week. He still wasn't a big fan of doing this kind of stuff, but in the end, he was glad to have all of his hard work pay off.

In a short conversation, Gibbs congratulated him for receiving the promotion and also said that he always wanted to take over the team after he had decided to end his career at the agency. A took a short break from his work, to take a short look at his team: Taking over her old desk again, his lovely wife Ziva, Agent Bishop was sitting at McGee's old desk and last but not least there was Agent Torres who had taken over Tony's old desk.

His thoughts were interrupted as his phone rang and as he picked up the phone handset he said:

"This is Special Agent DiNozzo speaking." The person at the other end gave a summary of what was the reason for the call and Tony listened to every word very closely.

"Grab your gear! We've got a body in Rock Creek Park." Tony said to his team after he had ended the short phone conversation. As the team entered the lift, McGee stood in front of his office on the first floor and couldn't help but think about the times when he, Tony, and Ziva investigated cases together: Sure I miss being out there in the field with them but the job as the director means a little bit more time with my family than I would have as an NCIS Field Agent. If anybody would have told me five years ago, that I would be the new director of NCIS I would have called him crazy but I guess your priorities start to shift when you decide to have children with your wonderful wife. McGee and Deliah knew from the beginning that it wouldn't be easy to raise two children: McGee still had a time-consuming office job and Deliah not being that mobile anymore since she had been confined to the wheelchair. But both of them knew that if they had been able to get through all the other turbulences in their lives so far, they would be able to be good parents to their children.

Retired Special Agent Jethro Gibbs was busy working with wood, but not building a boat this time like he usually did for all those years. Instead, he was working on building a new wardrobe for his daughter Kelly, since the very old one from his basement was broken as one of the doors had been ripped off its hinges. Three years ago his wife and his daughter had surprisingly returned to his life, which caused him to declare the end of his career at NCIS. I'm happy for Tony to finally get that promotion that he deserved and I'm confident that there was no better choice than him to hand over the team to.

AN: Thx to McGiva for inspiring me to write this story by posting this challenge. Please read and review