Chapter 4

Right at the moment when Ziva had spotted the suspicious vehicle in front of the house, she had called HQ dictating to Bishop the plates of the car over the phone. At the other end of the line Bishop had entered the plate into the database, as Torres and Ziva watched the mysterious person drive away both of them hoped that they had just gotten the first promising lead in this delicate murder investigation/ national security matter.

"The car was reported stolen a week ago in Norfolk and it belongs to Mark Anderson."

"Ok thanks for the information Ellie and we will make our way back to HQ now," Ziva replied after Bishop had just notified them that the potential lead turned out to be a dead end, but she was sure that whoever followed them would turn up again at some point when he thought that the time was right. Even if you want it or not, you will make a mistake and then we will be there to stop your plan. Of course, Ziva had no proof right now of how that person was involved, but her gut feeling told her that the sudden appearance of this man in front of the house of Pete Duncan's widow was no coincidence. Meanwhile, Frank Peyton parked the dark blue car at a junkyard, and to make sure that his involvement in this plan wouldn't be discovered, he knew what he had to do right now: Get rid of the car and make sure that the confidential data from the US Navy would successfully get into the hands of his Client- The Chinese Intelligence Service. He was aware of the fact that it was easier said than done when it came to making sure that NCIS wouldn't be a threat to their plan because he had to do some little guerilla attacks on them when he would get the feeling the exchange was about to fail. After Ziva and Torres had returned to the NCIS HQ, the appearance of the mysterious person in front of Pete Duncan's widow's house was the number one topic for the team:

"Even if we don't know yet how this mysterious person is involved in this case, I think it is already clear at this point that we need to make sure that this won't compromise our investigation. It feels like whoever resorted to those drastic measures to get this sensitive data, wants to make sure that we won't be able to get it back." To Tony, it was clear that the organization that pulled the strings in the background was going to get actively involved in the investigation to their disadvantage.

The question is when will that happen and not if it will happen at some Point.

"Ziva and Bishop, I want you two to check in with your intelligence service contacts about any recent chatter concerning any foreign intelligence services selling confidential US Military data."

Steven was pretty satisfied with himself: Not only had he finally gotten his revenge on that snob Pete Duncan, but also the murder of Duncan helped him to get a thousand dollars as a reward from an unknown giver. Of course, a lot of people would call him a cold-blooded murderer, especially as he had not thought about one second how this unknown giver profited from his enemy's death and just wanted to get a thousand dollars. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, this is such a wonderful saying I would say and perfectly fits my situation.

At the moment he enjoyed a delicious dinner with his girlfriend Maria and it was such a blessing to be finally able to spend time with her after they had been separated from each other this long. He was thankful for the fact that his relationship with her was still intact, as it wasn't self-evident that women would even start to invest time into a long-distance relationship.

Meanwhile, Delilah was busy preparing lunch for John and Morgan. Of course, a lot of things had changed over the last years: Delilah had stopped working for the Department of Defense and was confined to a wheelchair since she had been severely injured during a terror attack on US Soil. Also had she and McGee two children together and even though his job still consumed most of his time, they both tried their best to at least talk as much as possible on the phone over the day. It had been very difficult for her at the start to handle her daily chores because of her new personal condition, but of course, Tim had been such a big help to her in making things a lot easier for her. Since she wasn't able to do all of the work at home anymore, they decided to hire a household help.

The team was right in the middle of discussing everything they knew so far and all of the little hints they had uncovered so far, had led to dead ends when the ringing of Tony's desk phone interrupted this little brainstorming session. The whole team listened closely to what Abby had to say after their boss put the Goth on speaker:

"It looks like the bad guys messed up big time because the DNA results from the battle scars on Pete Duncan's body are in the database. His name is Mark Clifton, a former member of the Navy who got dishonorably discharged after those two had a fight with each other in a bar during a land vacation they had when they served together."

"Thanks for the information Abby." Tony just replied before he ended the call and of course, he knew what he had to do next.

"Bishop and Torres make your way to Clifton's address right now but prepare for everything as we still have to assume that he's still not a big fan of the Navy. Sure Clifton has a motive when it comes to killing Duncan but at this point, it's pure speculation if he's that kind of guy that holds a grudge against a man for that long.