Locus of Control by Angie
Summary: The case of a murdered JAG officer stirs up painful memories for Tony when he is charged with protecting her teenaged son. Some Gibbs and Tony father/son moments, team interaction. No slash.
Categories: Gen Characters: Abby Sciuto, Anthony DiNozzo, Donald Mallard, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Original character, Timothy McGee, Ziva David
Genre: Action, Angst, Case, Drama, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 2 Completed: No Word count: 7584 Read: 4540 Published: 05/23/2009 Updated: 05/24/2009

1. Locus of Control by Angie

2. Chapter 2 by Angie

Locus of Control by Angie
Author's Notes:
The case of a murdered JAG officer stirs up painful memories for Tony when he is charged with protecting her teenaged son. Some Gibb and Tony father/son moments, team interaction. No slash.
Locus of Control

by Mamapranayama

*******

Prologue

Friday 0945, Norfolk, VA

Commander Annette Boyd laughed at the email her mother-in-law sent her. It was a cute picture of a cat sitting on a railing with it's legs tucked underneath it and a caption that read 'monorail cat'. She had to admit it was funny , but unlike her mother-in-law, she had no intention of sending it off to five of her closest friends like it instructed her to do. Those chain e-mails usually irritated her when she received them, most of them claiming that bad luck would befall you if you didn't forward it along to clog up others' in-boxes, so she passed on the opportunity to annoy her closest friends and family members and deleted it.

She read through several more emails, mostly junk about PTA, some announcements from church, another damn chain email and when she was finished she closed her laptop and looked around the house for something else to do.

The week of leave she had from her job as a Navy JAG defense lawyer that she had been planning on and looking forward to for nearly two months was almost over, but she had come to the conclusion after the first two days that she was ready to get back to work.

She had planned on spending her week at home enjoying the quiet, getting some reading done, working on her scrapbook and just relaxing a bit while her son was on a school trip and her husband was in the field for training exercises, but after that first night of quiet solitude, she was completely and utterly bored. Thankfully, her son would be coming home that night and that would give her something to do. Even though Jason was every bit the teenager and spent most of his free time either playing video games, blasting his music or ignoring her, she had missed him while he and his baseball team traveled to Florida for spring training.

Sighing, she decided to make a fresh pot of coffee and then clean the kitchen again, even though it was already spotless. Her husband and son always claimed that she had some form or OCD due to her insistent desire for cleanliness. But for her, cleaning had always been a way for her to turn off her mind for a little while and focus on things other than her cases and the stresses that came with being in the military. Everyone had to have an outlet for their stress, some people drink, some people smoke and some people seek solace in food. She cleans.

Just as she finished filling the coffee carafe, the front doorbell rang. Living in base housing like they did usually meant that everyone knew everyone else on the block and Annette had always felt safe knowing that her neighbors where military and looking out for each other. So, thinking it to be one of her neighbors, she set down the coffee pot and without fear or hesitation, went to the door and opened it.

The hand that came over her mouth kept anyone around from hearing her screams.

Later that evening....

“She's not answering.”

Flipping closed his phone once again, sixteen year old Jason Boyd sighed then turned to his coach. As the last kid still waiting for someone to pick him up, he really wished his Mom and Dad had allowed him to go to driver's training when he turned fifteen then he could have just driven himself home. But, being the irritatingly over-protective parents that they were, they wouldn't allow him to go to Driver's ed until he was senior.

He had bitterly fought their decision and thought that they had to be the most lame and uptight people ever. Not only did they insist on listening to that god-awful music from the eighties, but they both seemed to have no idea that they were ruining his adolescent life by holding him back from driver's training, claiming that sixteen was much too young to get a license. He knew his mother was the main force behind that decision as she was all to quick to point out the statistics on teen crashes and fatalities.

He knew it was a losing battle as she was a lawyer after all and knew all kinds of strategies for getting people to see things her way, so now here he was, stuck waiting on the sidewalk of the high school with his baseball coach nearly an hour after the bus had dropped them off. It was a little out of character for his mother to not be there at the appointed time for their return as she was always admonishing him to be on time for everything. Hpwever, knowing that she was still on that 'at-home vacation' that she had been blubbering about for the last couple of months, he figured she probably decided to take a nap or lost track of time reading one of her boring books.

“Tell you what, Jase. I'll take you home.” Coach Avery offered, seeing the sun begin to set.

“Thanks, Coach.”

Pulling up to his home ten minutes later, he saw the lights were off despite the darkened sky and his mother's car still sat in the driveway, sending up weird vibes through his body. He was worried, but brushed it off, thinking that she probably just went for a walk, even though she didn't usually go out on her own for walks after dark, even in their safe little neighborhood.

Exiting his coach's car, the older man called out to him before he headed for the house.

“You got a key to get in? Doesn't look like anyone's home.”

“Yeah, I got one, thanks for the ride, Coach.”

“No problem, see ya at practice Monday.”

Jason waved to his coach as he drove away then headed for the door. He was a little surprised to find it open and unlocked, it was definitely strange for his mom to just leave the door like this, especially if she was going out.

Walking into the living room, the house was eerily dark and quiet.

“Mom?” He called out, even though it seemed pretty obvious that she wasn't home.

He headed for the kitchen and opened the fridge looking for something to eat, but found nothing to his liking. Going to the cupboard where the snack food was stashed, he was about to open it when he saw the coffee carafe full of water sitting on the counter top by the coffee pot.

Now he was just getting weirded out. His mom never, ever left anything out. She was a neat freak to the nth degree and was constantly getting on his case to keep the counters clean and the house spotless. He abandoned his idea of getting a snack, his stomach turning over as he left the kitchen and headed for the hallway towards the bedrooms.

Seeing the door to his parent's room open, the butterflies in his stomach began to go crazy. His mom never left their door open as they had always claimed it to be a private zone where he wasn't allowed.

“Mom?” he called out again, feebly this time as he neared the open room. He could just make out her feet hanging over the edge of the bed. “You awake?”

With his hand, he gently pushed the door to the bedroom open the rest of the way, then promptly fell to his knees in shock.

Chapter One

“Where the hell is DiNozzo?” Grumbled Gibbs as he strolled into the bullpen with his coffee in one hand, but ready to use the other one should the need for a head-slap arise. Ziva looked up and pointed to Tony's desk.

“Down here, Boss.” Tony answered from below.

Gibbs stepped over to Tony's desk and looked over the top of it to see his senior field agent on his hands and knees, closely examining the floor.

“Do I even want to know what you are doing on the floor?”

“I'm looking for something.”

“Well, obviously.”

Tony sat back on his heels and sighed in defeat.

“It's gone. I'll never find it.”

“Find what?”

“My lucky penny.” He went back down to the floor to continue the search.

“A penny, DiNozzo?”

“Yeah sure...” Tony looked up seeing the crossed expression on Gibbs' face as he sat on the carpet, he shrugged. “Well, it means something to me... in a sentimental way, ya know?...”

Walking back to his desk with a sigh and a shake of his head, Gibbs took a seat.

“Quit wasting time, DiNozzo unless you want to lose your job as well as that damn penny.” He called out from across the bullpen.

“Going back to work now, Boss.” Tony darted up, not wanting to get on Gibbs' bad side, especially since he had been pushing it earlier when he replaced all of McGee's pens with ones that had their tops super-glued on. Coming up, his head made hard contact with the underside of the desk top with a loud thud, causing McGee to smirk and Ziva to giggle a little.

“Ow!” He rubbed his head as he came up then sat back down in his desk chair, shooting glares at Ziva and McGee both.

Gibbs watched with little amusement. He trusted Tony with his life and knew that the younger man was as completely loyal to him as a tenacious bulldog, but here were times when the younger man irritated the heck out of him with his juvenile antics and smart-ass attitude. Today just happened to be one of those time where for some reason he had been in full-on jackass mode and Gibbs was reaching the limit of his tolerance. He half listened to his team's continued conversation, tempted to just put a stop to it, but also semi-interested in hearing the story of Tony's penny as he pulled out a few files, took a long sip of his coffee then began working.

“So why is this penny so special, Tony?” Tim asked.

“It's stamped with my birth year, for one thing....”

“And how does that make this particular coin lucky?” Ziva questioned.

“Well....I guess it doesn't.” He shrugged “but, it's always brought me good luck so that's all that matters.”

“Oh really? How so, Tony?” McGee asked.

“I found it in the parking lot my junior year at Ohio State before a basketball game. I stuck it in my pocket and we ended up winning that night. After that, I had it on me every time we had a game and we ended up going to the play-offs that year. Coincidence, you might ask? I think not. Because, the one time I forgot to have it on me after that was for the Buckeye/Wolverine football game the next year. I broke my leg in the fourth quarter and was out of sports for the rest of my senior year. So now I don't go anywhere without it.”

“I do not understand how an object like a penny can bring anyone luck.” Ziva complained

“Hey, it could be worse....” Tony explained. “In high school, our basketball team wore the same socks for each game, thinking it would bring us luck.”

“That doesn't sound too unusual.” McGee added. “I always wore the same shirt whenever I had a chess tournament. I guess I always thought of that as my lucky shirt.”

“Lucky chess shirt, McDork? Let me guess, did it have an iron-on of Spock on the front?”

McGee sighed. “It was a polo shirt and no, it did not have an iron-on of Spock or an other Star Trek characters on it. ” Then a light went off in McGee's head “Wait a second, you wore the same socks for every basketball game? You did wash them, right?”

“Of course not. You can't wash lucky socks, all of their luckiness will get rinsed out.”

“Now, that is disgusting.” Ziva made an offended face.

“Ewww.” McGee added with a wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah, the smell wasn't all that great after the first few games.” Tony agreed with a nod. “But, not nearly as gross as the athlete's foot I had all season.”

Gibbs had finally had enough of the trite conversation and was about to order everyone back to work, but the phone beat him to it, ringing loudly across the bullpen. He answered gruffly, then when finished with the call, he stood up, grabbed his coat, weapon, badge, and everyone's attention.

“Forget your penny, DiNozzo and grab your gear everyone, we're heading to Norfolk. Got a dead JAG officer.”

OOOOOOOOO

Tony's day had been going pretty well until he lost his lucky penny. He never really put too much stock in any sort of luck it might actually bring him, but it was a reminder of all of those good times he had in college.

He could honestly say that those four years were the best years of his life and it wasn't just because of the fact that had lived at the awesomest fraternity ever nor that he had been a popular, good looking and athletic guy at the time with no problem getting plenty of tail. No, those years were the first years where he truly felt like he had finally gotten out from underneath the thumb of his father and his family, making a clean break of things and escaping that dark cloud that he had always felt had followed him wherever he went. He had come into his own during those years and despite his father's assurances that he would end up in the gutter one day, he had proved him wrong and that's what mattered the most: The great Anthony DiNozzo Sr. was wrong.

Even now, that thought alone would bring a smile to his face.

“Oh C'mon, Ziva. Are you telling me you've never had any sort of good-luck charm?” Tony asked as they hauled their gear out of the truck still stuck on the subject of good luck charms.

“One does not need luck if they have skill, Tony.” She stopped on her way up the sidewalk to the home of their crime scene and turned on him with a slight smile stirring across her face. “Therefore, I have never needed one, unlike you.”

“Okay, what about that necklace of yours, what do you call that?” He asked looking at the small, star of David pendant she always wore. Ziva's eyes narrowed and he saw the flash of anger and sadness that came to them all at once and he knew he had gone too far.

“I call it a gift from my mother.” Without another word, she turned on her heel and left him standing outside feeling like a jerk. His shoulders slumped as he realized just how far he had shoved his foot into his mouth this time.

“Damn.” He muttered to himself as he watched her backside disappear into the home. Now he was going to have to smooth things out somehow or working with her was going to be frightening for the rest of the day.

“You coming sometime tonight, DiNozzo?” Gibbs yelled from the front door.

“On my way, Boss.” Tony double-timed it to the house and entered the nicely furnished and immaculately clean living room.

“Body's in the bedroom down the hall. McGee's already taking pictures. Tony, you sketch. Ziva, bag and tag.” Gibbs ordered them before he went to sit on the couch next to a young boy, who had to be no more than sixteen. Tony caught the look in the young man's eyes as he stared straight ahead, lost in his own thoughts and memories and he knew right away that he had been the one to make the discovery. He'd seen that look too many times to count.

“Who's the kid?” Tony asked Ziva before they walked down the hall, watching Gibbs as he quietly questioned the boy.

“Jason Boyd, he found the body. It is his mother.”

“Oh...” Tony let it go at that as he felt a strange stirring inside of him, setting him on edge. Something about all of this was so familiar to him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Ziva started down the hall while he stood for a moment, his sight lingering upon the boy's blank expression until Gibbs caught his eye and he hastily turned away to follow her. He found it hard to brush off the intense feeling of Deja-Va he was suddenly struck with, but as he followed Ziva to the bedroom, it was nothing compared to what awaited him inside.

Laying face down on the top of the perfectly made bed was a dark-haired woman, dressed in her pajamas, pale skin contrasting sharply against the dark fabric of the bedspread. Her hair splayed out in curls around her face, green eyes staring vacantly out to the side.

It was the eyes that got him. They looked just like....

A flash came across his vision and he was ten years old again, walking into her room, seeing her laying motionless on the bed as he called out to her, her sightless eyes aimed back at him, but seeing nothing.

He gasped involuntarily, recalling all of the sights, sounds, smells of that terrible day so many years ago. All of it rushing back to crush him where he stood as though a rope had just snapped that held a piano dangling over his head.

How had he forgotten all of that?

“Tony?” Hearing his name snapped him out of his fugue.

He blinked, not even realizing that Ziva had gone all the way into the room while he had been magnetized to his spot, his legs refusing to budge as a sweat broke out across his forehead.

“Huh?”

“You okay?” McGee asked with genuine sincerity. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

“Ha...I uh, just forgot something in the truck....Be right back.” Tony stammered. Without much thought about how it might look to his teammates, he backed out of the room in a hurry, leaving a bewildered Ziva and McGee behind as he walked out the front door, by-passing Gibbs and the still traumatized boy along the way.

He didn't stop until he reached the truck and flung open the back doors, allowing them to provide the cover he needed to shield anyone from his racing thoughts and emotions.

It's not her, he told himself. Get a grip. No, it's definitely not her. She died a long time ago... She just happens to look exactly like her and was laying on the bed exactly like her.... her hair... her eyes....

He put both hands down onto the back bumper of the truck and willed his heart to stop racing. Why was he being such a head case? How come he hadn't remembered all of this until just now?

After taking a few deep breaths, he was feeling a little better, but also ashamed of his reaction to the body. After all, this wasn't his first time seeing a woman lying dead on a bed and rationally, he knew that his reaction had been way overblown thanks to his overactive memories. He hadn't been prepared for it, that's all. He just needed at second to get over it, then he'd be fine and he could get the job done.

It was the eyes...The voice in his head reminded him. She had those same eyes....

Shut-up. He told that same voice as he searched the truck for something to take inside to make it look like he hadn't left the scene in a panic. Grabbing a few pencils, he hoped that would suffice as a good enough cover story for leaving the bedroom.

Shutting the truck back up he turned to go back to the house, but was met instead by two blue, piercing eyes.

“Something wrong, Tony?” Gibbs asked simply, concerned by the suddenly pale face of his senior field agent and they way he had left the house so quickly without so much as a word to him.

Tony grinned, trying to blow it off, but knew his smile couldn't quite make it all the way to his eyes.

“Nope...Just needed a few extra pencils, Boss.” he explained, holding up the bundle up for a second until he realized his hands were shaking.

“Do you really need six pencils, DiNozzo?” Gibbs questioned looking into his eyes and Tony knew he was catching him in a lie, but he wasn't about to go confessing to his tough-as-nails boss that he had nearly lost his lunch seeing a dead body.

“Yeah, you know... sometimes I press a little too hard and it's easier just to have a few spares rather than having to sharpen them all the time. Well, better go and get to work...scene won't sketch itself....” Tony explained hastily before he was grilled any further, feeling Gibbs' stare as he walked back towards the house and steeled himself for spending more time in that room, trying to act as normally as possible and that it didn't bother him that the woman lying on the bed looked just like his mother.

OOOOOOOO

Ziva wasn't used to seeing Tony so quiet. While she had only known him a few months, she had come to expect a certain level of boisterousness and jocular high jinks while at a crime scene. Normally by now he would have teased or slapped McGee for something or another and then gone on to harass her as well. But as he crouched in one corner of the bedroom, silently sketching the scene, she knew that his mind was elsewhere and it all started the moment they entered the room.

Something about this scene disturbed him and she wanted know what was eating him.

“There is something here that bothers you, no?” She asked, trying to seem casual about it. “or is it her?”

“Just another dead body, Ziva.” He responded flatly, flipping shut the sketch book. “They're all the same.”

He stood up just as Ducky walked into the room with his usual amount of cheer.

“Ah good-evening Anthony, Ziva and Timothy.”

“Hello, Ducky.” Ziva returned the greeting, seeing Tony slip out of the room from the corner of her eye.

“Hi Ducky.” McGee greeted as well.

“Jimmy!” Ducky called out to his assistant behind him. “Come along now, I'd like to get this over with quickly. I promised mother I would be home in time for Friday Night Smackdown and I don't plan on disappointing her.”

“Coming, Doctor.” Jimmy announced, weighted down with supplies as he dragged as much gear into the room as he possibly could and plopped it beside the bed.

Ducky knelt beside the bed and peered into the face of Annette Boyd.

“Ah. My dear. We shall take good care of you. Come and give me a hand turning her over if you would please, Mr. Palmer.”

Jimmy and Ducky took positions on either side of the corpse and rolled her over to her back. Purple coloring marked the half of her face and body that was in contact with the bed.

“Lividity seems to suggest that she died in the position she was found in.” Ducky spoke out loud to no one in particular. Reaching into one of the bags, Jimmy produced a liver probe and handed it off to the doctor, who promptly inserted into the woman's abdomen.

“You got a time of death yet, Duck?” Gibbs asked as he strolled into the room.

“I just started getting a temp now, Jethro. I'm afraid I can only work as fast a the equipment, but judging by the amount of rigor mortis in the muscles I'd guess she's been dead for several hours already.” The probe beeped and Ducky pulled it out and read the temp then looked to his watch for the current time, mentally figuring the time of death. “ Ah, yes. I'd say she died probably somewhere between 10 am and noon.”

“What about the cause?”

“Well, the Subconjunctival hemorrhages, the petechiae under the eyelids and the bruises around the neck would suggest strangulation, but...”

“You'll know more when you do the autopsy.” Gibbs finished for him with a nod.

“As usual.” Ducky grinned until something caught his eye and he reached for a small slip of paper that was still wedged between the bed and the victim's thigh.. “Well, well, well...what do we have here?” He asked asked as he pulled it out and read it to himself.

“Oh dear...” Ducky breathed.

“What is it?” Gibbs asked.

“See for yourself.” Ducky held out the paper as Gibbs whipped it from his hands and read the four words neatly typed onto it in the center:

The boy is next

TBC....
Chapter 2 by Angie
Chapter 2

Gibbs' face darkened reading the note, then he turned to his team watching behind him. The case had suddenly taken on a new dimension, they weren't just looking at a random act of violence anymore. Commander Boyd had been targeted. But now the questions remained: Who was after her and her son and why?

He also knew that finding the answers to those questions paled in necessity when it came to keeping her son out of danger. Someone wanted this family dead and they had already succeeded once, but he wasn't about to let that happen again.

Without turning around, Gibbs barked out commands to his team.

“McGee, you go back to the office and dig into Commander Boyd's personnel file and past cases, see if there have been anyone that made any sort of threats against her. Ziva, you're staying here with me, we'll finish processing the scene then question all the neighbors and see if they noticed anything unusual this morning” Ziva and McGee nodded and headed out of the bedroom to get started on their tasks, leaving Ducky and Palmer to bag up the body and get it read for transport. Carefully placing the note inside of a bag, Gibbs tagged it for processing later when he brought it back to Abby's lab.

Gibbs then turned around, looking for his senior field agent, but he was nowhere in sight. Still concerned about the way Tony had been acting earlier, he thought it best to give him a job that would send him out of the scene, but it was one that he knew would be best suited for him.

“DiNozzo!” He called out. Tony poked his head back into the room, his eyes darting involuntarily back towards the body, his discomfort with being in the room not going unnoticed by the older man. Gibbs decided then and there that he'd have to keep an eye on DiNozzo, whatever the problem may be.

“Yeah, Boss?”

“You take Jason back to the office and stick to him like glue. Don't let him out of your sight, got it? Our killer wants him next, so he's under our protection until we get a safe-house set up or we catch this bastard. He's you're responsibility, got it?”

“Uh, Boss...you think that's such a good idea? I mean, me and kids?...You know how I am with them...we just don't mix....”

“He's sixteen, Tony. You don't need to change his diapers, just keep an eye of him.” Gibbs turned and glowered, cutting him off. “I also want you to find Commander Boyd's husband, according to Jason, he's in the field. Talk to his CO and have him sent to us ASAP, he might be a target too if this is a some kind of revenge killing. Also, see what you can get out of Jason, he might have more info about his mother's work that might help us.”

“Got it, Boss.” Tony relented and turned to leave.

OOOOOOOOOO

Ziva had been standing just outside the bedroom door, watching her partner and she didn't miss how he hesitated to go back into the room as he talked to Gibbs and as he turned to leave after getting his instructions, she took that opportunity to grab his upper arm and stop him, locking onto his eyes and finding them unsettled.

“Are you certain that you are okay?” She asked pointedly, but with genuine concern. “You seemed a little...'off' in there”. Tony shrugged out of her hold and grinned a fairly dim rip-off of his usual mega-watt smile.

“I'm fine.” He replied, meeting her gaze and telling her with his eyes just the opposite. “I gotta go.” Breaking eye contact, he then headed down the hall again, pausing before entering the living room to collect his young charge.

At the other end of the hall, McGee stood by watching Tony until he was out of sight then closed the distance between them, addressing Ziva in a hushed voice.

“Is Tony acting weird or is it just me?...Not that he ever acts normal, but....”

“No...you are right, he is not his usual self.” She agreed with concern.

“What should we do? Think we should tell Gibbs?” Ziva raised her eyebrows and turned to give Tim a look that said all that he needed to know. “Right, he's Gibbs...he already knows.”

OOOOOOO

Jason sat with his hands folded in between his knees, seemingly unaware of all of the activity happening all over the house as the investigation continued. Tony watched from the hallway, hesitating before approaching, he wasn't sure what he could say that break through to the kid. He knew there wasn't anything that could help him at this particular moment. Words of comfort would only be hollow platitudes and useless to a young man that just discovered his mother's body, they couldn't bring this mother back to him, which Tony knew was all he wanted.

Tony knew he was lost. His mother had just been torn from his life and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

Tony took a seat beside the young man, eliciting no response from him.

“Hey... it's Jason, right?” Tony tried to ask casually to put the boy at his ease, but didn't get very far as Jason continued to ignore him.

“My name's Tony.....Look, I need to take you back to our headquarters. We'll call your dad when we get there and have him brought back as soon as possible, okay?”

Jason made no move to respond or acknowledge his presence, continuing his vacant stare forward.

“I know, it doesn't really help right now....but we'll find out who did this...see, my boss back there isn't the kind of guy that gives up very easily, so we'll catch the guys responsible.” He told him with all sincerity.

Jason was quiet as he closed his eyes.

“You promise?” Was all he asked quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I do, Jason.” Tony replied just as quietly, letting the truth come out in his voice. “We will find out who did this... I promise.”

That seemed to connect with Jason and after that, it didn't take too much prodding to get him to follow Tony to the car outside. McGee came along as well and took up the passenger seat as Tony drove. He could see that the boy was numb to everything and he could have led him over the edge of a cliff and not have received so much as a questioning glance as Tony knew he was still swimming in a sea of emotions. After all, he had been in his shoes before and knew what he was feeling. That's when it clicked in Tony's head why he was seeing so much of himself in Jason. He had been just like him.

For Tony, that lingering memory that had struck him earlier hadn't left him as he drove them back to the office, it seemed to flash in front of him more and more as they continued on. He tried his best to push it aside, but the silent presence of the boy sitting behind him and McGee's lame attempts at small talk did little to push those thoughts behind him. If anything, they only made them that much more pronounced.

He was beyond disturbed that he had suddenly remembered seeing his mother nearly twenty-five years ago, lying much the same way Commander Boyd had in her bed, her glassy eyes staring straight at him when he hadn't recalled all of this before until that evening. Was it even possible to forget something like that and then suddenly remember it like it was yesterday just because a woman looked a little bit like her?

McGee was still talking as he pulled onto the expressway, but Tony wasn't paying any attention to his babble and after a few more minutes of uncomfortable talk about nothing of consequence like the weather and traffic, Tony snapped at McGee to shut up and demanded that he give up trying to fill the vacuum of quiet inside the car.

"God, what's your problem anyway, Tony?" Mcgee asked in a mixture of concern and annoyance. "You've been acting weird all day. What gives?"

"Maybe my problem is you yammering on about stupid things that have nothing to do with getting our job done, Probie. So how about you do a whole lot less talking and a ton more shushing." Tony snarled back as he gripped the steering wheel tightly until his knuckles turned white. After that, McGee refused to say anything else, but uneasily shot Tony several sidelong glances in his directions until quiet settled upon them like a fog and Tim took to looking out the window.

Now that it was silent again in the car, Tony couldn't stop his thoughts from coming back to the woman lying on the bed back at the scene. He couldn't even recall if she really did look anything like his mother. If he tried to come up with a mental image of what she looked like all those years ago, all he could come up with was a fuzzy feeling, not a clear picture of what she actually looked like. He knew she had dark hair and green eyes, but he didn't think he even had a photo of her anymore to refer back to, much less a clear memory of her face.

While things had always been fuzzy surrounding the day when she was found and it had always been a blind spot in his childhood that he had never dared to examine too closely, he could remember clearly the sights and sounds of the days after his mother died. Those days had been burned into his memory like a brand. He remembered going to her funeral, placing a rose on her coffin and his father telling him not to cry as they watched her casket being lowered into the ground because he wouldn't tolerate a DiNozzo being a crybaby.

He guessed he always just blocked it all out because it just had been easier to forget about it all and for most of his life, he tried not to dwell on the fact that he couldn't recall much of the day she died.

But what confused him most now about these newly minted memories was the discrepancy between what he was recalling now and what he had always been told had happened. So were these even real memories?

One time a few years ago, he had been curious to know more and he had dug into the police reports when he was still working in Philadelphia. He knew that it had been reported that Rosita, the household maid had found his mother unresponsive in bed and that she had called the paramedics but she was already dead by the time they got there, or at least that's what the police report had stated. But now, in this new flash of memory, he could remember walking into his mother's bedroom, seeing her sightless eyes....then the rest was still a blur, like there were still pieces missing to the puzzle and he still wasn't seeing the complete picture. But, wondered now if Rosita had in fact been the first one to find her, was everything he had thought had happened wrong or a lie?

Was there something else that had been left out of his memories that he would remember too? And that also begged the question: Why now? Was he going crazy?

For now, he knew he would have to push these thoughts and questions away as he still had a job to do. Sorting out his messed-up brain would just have to wait until the case was put to bed, whenever that would be. In some ways, he prayed that he would be distracted enough by the case to forget his unwanted memories again, then he wouldn't have to deal with them anymore, but with the silent reminder of his childhood pain sitting right behind his seat, he figured that would probably not happen anytime soon.

Tony was so immersed in his own thoughts as he drove, that he hadn't even realized that he had driven them all back to headquarters on autopilot until he pulled up to the front gate and showed his ID to the Marine guard.

Finding the parking spot for the sedan, Tony looked behind to Jason, who made no move to leave the car.

“We're here.” Tony announced.

Jason made no sign that he had heard Tony, so he got out of the driver's seat and opened the door for the kid. McGee came up behind Tony and helped Jason out of the car with a gentle grasp of his arm.

Tony led them to the elevator and a few moments later it deposited into the bullpen. McGee went right to his computer to begin his search into Commander Boyd's history while Tony grabbed Ziva's chair and pulled it up to his desk.

“Have a seat Jason, I'm going to get a hold of your Dad, okay?” Tony swept around to the other side of his desk to look up the file on his computer.

“He's not my Dad.” Jason spoke with a sad sigh, correcting Tony's assumption. “He's my step-dad. My real dad died when I was little.”

“Oh...Sorry.... But I still need to call him. He's in the field right?”

“I don't know...I'm not sure where he was going this time....Mom just said that he'd be gone for a couple of weeks.”

“Well, we'll get him here from wherever he is.”

"Whatever...." Jason muttered, looking away. Tony caught a sense that all was not perfect between he and his step-father.

Ten minutes later, Tony located the step-dad's unit and where they were currently training, speaking with a gravelly voiced Colonel that told him that he would inform Major Sanders of his wife's death and would put him on the next transport out of the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fork Polk Louisiana, but that the next flight wouldn't be until the next day.

After hanging up the phone, Tony looked to Jason, seeing him staring despondently out the window. Sighing and feeling a headache coming on, Tony realized he was going to have the boy attached to his side for at least the rest of the night.

At least that meant that there would be plenty of time to fulfill Gibbs' other instructions to get the sixteen-year old to talk to him and glean as much info from him about his mom as possible. It wasn't going to be easy to break through the trauma he had experienced and the shock he was still in, so there was only one thing Tony could think of that might make a connection between them as the silence stretched on.

“You hungry?” He asked the boy.

OOOOOOOO

It was nearly an hour later when Gibbs and Ziva strode into the bullpen. They hadn't learned much from the neighbors, who hadn't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. Also, Gibbs was disappointed that there really hadn't been much in the way of physical evidence from the crime scene aside from the note that helped them out much yet, at least not until Abby had a chance to go through it all and Ducky performed the autopsy.

Even though there was still a lot of missing pieces to this puzzle, Gibbs had come to the conclusion that whoever did this was a pro. There was no sign of a forced entry and it appeared that the killer was most likely allowed in then took the victim by surprise. It was that fact that disturbed Gibbs and sent his mind whirling the most. If someone had been targeting the family because of something related to Commander Boyd's job as a defense lawyer, she apparently had no idea of any threats made against them nor was worried about any of her former cases coming back to haunt her.

Without much to go with from the scene, he hoped that McGee or Tony might have found something by now from the commander's background and help fill in some of those unanswered questions. Gibbs was already in a pissy mood when he walked in thanks to a lack of caffeine that evening, but seeing Tony's empty desk and Jason nowhere in sight, made him all the more irritated.

“McGee.” He barked. “Where's DiNozzo?” He nearly raised his voice to a shout and McGee was on his feet a heartbeat later.

“Ah...Tony took Jason to the conference room to give him some privacy and feed him some dinner. I think he was going to try and get some more information out of him, but he's not talking much....”

“He just found his mother murdered in her bed, no one's expecting him to be sociable, McGee. Now, tell me something I don't already know.” Gibbs demanded of his youngest agent.

McGee came from around his desk as soon as he saw the look of frustration on Gibbs' face and headed for the plasma with the remote. Gibbs and Ziva walked up to the large screen.

“Well, I looked up Commander Boyd's file. She's been assigned to the JAG office at Norfolk for the last two years.” McGee brought up a file photo of Commander Boyd in her white naval uniform from her military ID. “her husband is a Marine Major stationed with MARFORCOM.”

“MARFORCOM? What is that?” Ziva asked as she was still struggling at times the American military's obsession with acronyms.

“Oh, uh...It stands for the Marine Force Command, it's the Marine component of the USJFCOM.”

“USJFCOM?” She was lost again.

“Oh, sorry.... US Joint Forces Command. They work with the other branches of the military for deployment readiness training with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast..."

“McGee!” Gibbs, cut his explaination off, losing patience with his agents as time was slipping away from them and he sighed impatiently then gestured to the monitor for him to continue relaying the info he had learned.

“Sorry Boss...” McGee cleared his throat to move on. “Anyway, her husband is Major Nathan Sanders and he's overseeing a joint exercise right at the moment. Tony contacted his commander and he should be heading back tomorrow morning from JRTC in Louisiana.

“JRTC?” Ziva asked, confused again b yet another acronym, but when Gibbs shot another annoyed look at his agents she let it go, she'd look up later. “Then Jason is not Major Sanders' son?” She asked.

“No, he's his step-son. Jason's father was killed in a car crash about ten years ago. According to her CO, Boyd and Sanders met on base at Norfolk eighteen months ago and were married about six months later. Apparently, Commander Boyd had requested leave for this week to coincide with her husband's training and her son's baseball trip. Seems that she wanted to have a week of peace and quiet to herself at home and she had been talking about it to her colleagues for quite some time. Her friends seemed to think that she'd been under some stress lately, all of them saying that she was happy in her marriage, but that she had been having some trouble with her son.”

“What sort of trouble?” Gibbs asked.

“The usual teenager stuff. Mostly arguments with him over grades. He was close to being kicked off his baseball team for academics, but has been allowed to stay on probationaly as long as he keeps a C-average. She also complained to her colleagues that Jason and his step-dad didn't always get along."

“Nothing too unusual there. You check out her prior cases yet?” Gibbs asked.

“Ah...well...I'm still waiting on the files to come in from Norfolk...” McGee began with an apologetic face as he tried to explain.

“Then light a fire under their asses and get those files here ASAP, we're wasting time.” Gibbs ordered.

“It's just that it's getting close to 2100 already, Boss. Boyd's CO was going to get someone to go and retrieve them, but, uh....”

Gibbs only had to step a little closer into McGee's personal space to get him moving.

“But, I'm getting right on it.” McGee hurried off to his desk to call Norfolk once again.

Gibbs turned to Ziva.

“Dig a little deeper into Sanders' and Boyd's personal lives. Bank accounts, emails, everything. There's someone out there that has a score to settle and we need to find them before they even think of going after the boy.”

“I shall do my best.” Ziva responded with a quick nod, going back to her desk.

Leaving Ziva and McGee to their tasks, Gibbs headed for the conference room to find his senior agent and maybe get a few more answers from Jason Boyd. The teen hadn't been able to give more than a few yes or no answers at the scene and Gibbs hadn't pushed for much then as the trauma of finding his dead mother was still too fresh. However, Gibbs knew that despite DiNozzo's claim that he wasn't good with kids, which was true for the most part for kids under the age of ten, he had a feeling that Tony would get him to open up since he was at most times, little more than a teenager trapped in an adult's body. That had been his main motivation for assigning him to Jason in the first place.

He just hoped that whatever had been bugging Tony at the crime scene wouldn't keep him from finding that connection with Jason. He hadn't been blind to Tony's pale features and tremulous hands when he caught him outside by the truck after storming out of the house. Whatever it was that had set him off, it had been bad enough that Tony had tried and failed miserably to brush it off with a joke and that more than anything had Gibbs worried. When Tony couldn't make light of things, they had to be bad.

TBC....
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