Missing Scenes, "Yankee White" and "Hung Out to Dry"

by Sammie

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. If I did, would Kate be dead? bares fangs
Rating: K, T max.
Spoilers: "Yankee White," "Hung Out to Dry."

Author's Notes: This was actually written last year, last spring. I thought it was dorky, and all it was was a way of working out how I thought Kate (and to a lesser extent, Fornell) - as a non-NCIS agent - would deal with what NCIS did, and about how it worked out when she finally started at NCIS. I didn't think about posting it - and then they killed Kate.

"Kate!"

Kate quickly trotted the last few steps to her desk and dropped her coat on her chair before turning around and nearly running into her old friend. "Marcy, hi."

"I heard about what happened," her friend replied concernedly, laying a gentle hand on her friend's arm. "Are YOU okay?"

"I'm fine," Kate reassured her, smiling. "Nothing wrong with me. Went on quite a ride, though."

"Yeah, rumor is that NCIS hijacked Air Force One," Marcy said eagerly; now that her close friend was all right, her curiosity at what happened took over.

X X X X X

When the report first came in that Saturday morning, headquarters had truly 'freaked out.' Although the President's doctor had said the commander had died of a stroke, the Secret Service agents had felt uneasy. It wasn't that they didn't want to believe the president's physician; but Marcy had met Cmdr. Ray Trapp before, and he was hardly one to die of a stroke. The tension at headquarters had been thick and heavy.

It couldn't get worse than that, right?

That night, they heard shouting coming from Director Mark Tomson's office. Mark Tomson was one of the calmest, most easygoing directors to walk the earth; most had to be, to deal with interagency politics. He was a hard boss, there was no doubt, but he always worked as hard as the rest of them - and he always had a fantastic sense of humor. Marcy had never remembered him yelling in frustration or anger; the only time he ever raised his voice was at the Secret Service annual baseball games. Sure, Director Tomson got angry sometimes, but angry Director Tomson never yelled, oddly enough.

But here it was, a YELLING angry Director Tomson...and with good reason.

Kate Todd, as junior as she was, was one of the few who still dared to look into the face of Mark Tomson when he was angry. Her quiet confidence had gotten her on the presidential detail early, and while some of the agents resented it, it was hard to hate Caitlin Todd. But now, even Marcy wasn't sure their confident Kate would look at the director, especially because his ire was directed at her. It was a good thing she wasn't there at the time.

The story was almost unbelievable: the FBI director had called in fury, telling Director Tomson off and asking what was going on. His senior agent had been locked off Air Force One. By NCIS.

NCIS...only 1200 agents. Marcy knew they didn't even have their own plane, and that's when her investigative instincts kicked in. The NCIS agents had to fly in to Wichita from Washington; she checked the lists, and of course, there was no direct flight. They'd have to change at DFW - Dallas/Fort Worth. The president's plane had landed right around Saturday noon in Wichita.

How had they held AF29000 there that long? And now they managed to lock the FBI off? So they had managed to hold the plane there, get on it, get the FBI to get off it, and somehow get Stonewall Kate to take off without the FBI?

Director Tomson had been hissing about someone saying "the AF29000 flight was overbooked." Marcy had actually found it somewhat amusing.

X X X X X

She snapped back to the present and looked at her friend expectantly. Kate shook her head, smiling. "NCIS is pretty crazy," she replied enigmatically. Marcy made a face at her, knowing that the agent purposely was keeping details from her.

"Oh, Baur wants to talk to you," she suddenly remembered, her enthusiastic interest flagging. "He just called in a couple minutes ago, wants to teleconference the minute you get in."

"TELEconference?" Kate asked in surprise.

When she saw her friend's puzzled look, the Secret Service agent shook her head. "All I know is that he said to get you in there right away. And the director was muttering something about wanting to talk to the both of you afterwards."

Kate sighed, rubbing her temples, and Marcy could see the NCIS-induced headache was returning. Come to think of it, Kate looked a little sick in general. "You okay?"

"Fine," Kate replied, almost a little too quickly, then went on, "I am going to be walking the president's dog for the rest of my career." She straightened her jacket. "Maybe I should just quit now," she groaned as she started heading out.

"You could go to NCIS," Marcy kidded. "I heard Agent Gibbs is really hot." When Kate turned around at the doorway, staring at her in disbelief, she shrugged defensively. "We...looked up the team when we heard you were stuck with all of them on the plane."

Kate shook her head as she headed toward the telecom room. "He's not worth it," she called out laughingly as the door shut behind her.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

Baur frowned down at his junior agent from the telecom screen. Even over the camera, he could see her wary and slightly surprised look. She looked like she didn't know what he was going to say, but how couldn't she? He mentally shook himself and then said, "NCIS has the body."

There was a moment pause as Kate stood in front of him, obviously in complete shock. He could see the questions flashing on her face as quickly as they must have gone through her mind: 'They got the body? How did they get the body? I pushed the gurney to the FBI truck myself...'

"Gibbs. Bastard," came the small whisper, but even Baur heard it. "How did they get it?" Kate finally managed to speak.

"The FBI called," Baur replied, his voice softening when he saw the genuine confusion on his junior agent's face. "They don't have the body. Kate, what happened."

Kate shrugged in total bewilderment. "Sir, I don't know. I turned the body over to the FBI like you told me to."

"What happened after you got off the phone with me?" Baur asked.

"I went downstairs, and the body was gone," Kate said slowly, recalling. "I figured Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo and Dr. Mallard had moved the body to the off ramp so they could get away with it."

"And?"

"I told Gibbs that I had been ordered to turn over the body to the FBI, and he..." Baur watched his junior agent pause. There was obviously something she wasn't going to say, but he hadn't been in the business for this long not to know.

Baur wasn't stupid. NCIS had used the local coroner to delay AF29000's departure; they had managed not only to gain Kate's cooperation but also to keep the FBI out. He had no doubt Gibbs most likely tried to get Kate to help stall the FBI until they could get the body off the plane.

He had to admit, even in all of this, he was secretly proud of his junior agent. He knew about Gibbs - the man had a reputation, to say the least - and he didn't think for a moment that Kate didn't give him a run for his money. If Gibbs could lock the FBI off the plane, he had no doubt Gibbs likely threatened to throw her off, too. Despite the missing body, Kate had done pretty well.

Kate was continuing: "...Agent Gibbs wasn't happy about it, but he didn't put up a fight. I then made sure I was back there before Gibbs was, and I personally watched the body bag until the FBI showed up. Sir, I pushed the gurney to the FBI truck."

"NCIS agent Gibbs didn't put up much of a fight," Baur repeated in disbelief, a tiny smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"Yeah, I didn't believe him either." Kate paused, shaking her head. "I still don't get...I still don't get how NCIS got the body," she puzzled.

"I can answer that," interjected a voice. Kate moved aside as Mark Tomson nodded to her and then sat down near the telecom camera. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it, looked up at Kate with the corners of his mouth twitching. Baur watched as he folded his hands and looked down at the table a moment.

Thank goodness he wasn't angry any more.

"NCIS had two body bags," Tomson said shortly in explanation.

"What?" Kate exclaimed.

"I managed to squeeze the story out of Tom and Charlie," he replied, referring to the directors of the NCIS and of the FBI. "Apparently Agent Gibbs and Dr. Mallard put Agent DiNozzo in a body bag and hid Commander Trapp's body until the FBI left." He turned to Kate. "You gave the FBI DiNozzo in a body bag."

"I'm surprised he kept the ants in his pants drugged enough not to move," Kate muttered.

"What happened?" Baur's curiosity got the better of him. "What happened after they found out?"

"They tossed him out on his rear," Tomson replied with a straight face.

There was a long silence on both sides of the telecom, and then suddenly the teleconference technician in charge of the call snorted in laughter.

Tobias Fornell, entering, saw Secret Service Agent Todd adjust the visitor's tag on her suit jacket as she waited for the elevator to take her to the NCIS bullpen. She must've felt him approach, because although she didn't turn around, she greeted him: "Morning, Agent Fornell."

"Agent Todd." He didn't want to talk about it, especially when he could see the amusement written all over her face. She at least had the grace to try to suppress a smile, as unsuccessful as that attempt was.

The door opened, and the two agents stepped onto the elevator. Kate hit the button for the third level, and the elevator doors closed. Fornell could tell she was just bursting with laughter.

He really ought to take this with grain of salt. Agent Todd had likewise been duped by Agent Gibbs in terms of the body bags, and yet she could still be amused.

Of course, reminded a little voice, he was supposed to be better. Kate Todd was young, a junior Service agent, but she alone had figured out who Gibbs' men were before he and his entire FBI team had; she had managed to broker a deal so that she could remain on board; and Gibbs had apparently thought highly enough of Todd to think that he needed an elaborate ruse to trick her in order to take the body.

Not so comforting. But slightly amusing. "Go ahead and laugh," Fornell replied in a half-forlorn, half-annoyed tone.

"Just one question," the woman asked as calmly as she could, laughter ringing throughout her tone. "How did you find out Agent DiNozzo was in the body bag?"

Fornell hedged, then finally a tiny smile crossed his face, and he shook his head in amusement as the two of them began to laugh. When he finally calmed enough to speak, he replied, "Gibbs called him. His cell phone was ringing in the body bag. Imagine our surprise when we found out it wasn't our phones - and when we heard the body talking." Come to think of it, it was funny. Fornell paused a moment, then smiled. "Not a word."

"Not a word," Kate promised as the elevator doors opened to reveal the NCIS bullpen. "It would only inflate Agent Gibbs' ego."

Fornell chuckled in agreement and held out an arm as the doors opened, waving for Kate to go first. They were just entering the bullpen when Gibbs greeted them. "Agent Fornell," he greeted with a smile of amusement. Yeah, punk. He could afford to smile and look so amused.

"Agent Todd," Gibbs greeted the woman, and Fornell could have sworn that the NCIS agent's expression softened just the slightest.

"No hard feelings?" Gibbs asked, looking from Todd to Fornell and then back.

"I'm sure you'll give us many other reasons to have them," Kate replied sweetly.

Fornell chuckled and watched as Gibbs smiled, his blue eyes dancing at her with amusement.

Kate lounged in the comfortable chair, reading by the light coming from the afternoon sun. She paused to check the clock again - he still had roughly ten minutes to arrive.

"Agent Todd."

Ten minutes he didn't need. Kate uncrossed her long legs and set the magazine aside as she got up. "You made it," Kate said as she saw Gibbs come through the turnstile, having finally passed through the Secret Service checks.

"Did you think I wasn't going to come?" He looked amused.

She motioned to a fellow agent, who again checked Gibbs over with a hand-held sensor. "I left my weapon at NCIS. You saw me leave it in my desk."

"Gibbs, everyone going on board has been vetted by us for years - except you."

"I'm not going to do anything."

"Good, because I'm responsible for you. You try anything like you did the first time, and your a$$ is mine."

He quirked an eyebrow at her, a mischievous - on any other man, she might even have counted it as flirting, but she doubted Jethro Gibbs even knew what the word meant - smile on his face. She did not expect the next words out of his mouth. "Are you tempting me, Agent Todd?"

Kate was stunned for just a split second, and then her eyes narrowed slightly; Gibbs still wore that that same expression on his face, the half-smile. Then the Secret Service agent heard a small snort of laughter from her fellow Service employee. He quickly shut up when she glared at him.

She woke with a small start, and found herself covered with a thin flannel blanket. She looked down at it and frowned; she didn't remember asking for one. Kate then looked next to her. Gibbs smiled slightly, another cup of coffee in-hand. From the steam coming out of the top, it was fresh.

"Another cup?" she asked incredulously, the last vestiges of sleep still lingering in her voice.

He just shrugged, the small grin still on his face.

Kate narrowed her eyes slightly. "What did you do?" She sat up and looked around, her sharp eyes taking in every inch of the plane.

"So suspicious," he replied lightly, looking amused.

"Must come from having seen you work," she muttered.

Gibbs gave her that same half-smile, and she felt his eyes sweep over her again in appraisal. "They left a ginger ale for you," he replied, indicating the can of Canada Dry sitting in the cupholder before him. "It'll be easier for your stomach."

That was actually kind of sweet, mused the little voice in her head before she could stop it. She had to have been asleep when the steward asked, and Kate knew well enough that they hadn't left the beverage; he had requested it for her. It was kind of nice: he remembered her rather ugly reintroduction to her meal on the flight home to Washington. She'd had boyfriends who obviously had cared so little they couldn't remember if they'd seen her just two days ago. "Thank you," she murmured.

He just smiled.

3 DAYS LATER

There were whispers and looks as she packed up her few things. She didn't have many things at her desk - none of them did, as they were always flying, and a lot of stuff had to be mobile. Marcy paused, and then came over to her old friend and soon-to-be former colleague.

Kate had been her friend for so long; she was going to miss her. There weren't that many women in this business, and even less single women. "I'm...uh...I'm sorry about Tim," Marcy said quietly. "I know you were close."

Kate nodded, shifting a few items in the box to make it settle more firmly.

Marcy paused, and suddenly she blurted, "Kate, you can't really be doing this. I'm sure Baur would let you retract your resignation."

Kate sighed as she set the full box down and pushed the elevator button. "Marcy, I resigned because it was the right thing to do. I'd rather have it that way and be unemployed than otherwise." She paused and looked at her friend, and they hugged. As they separated, Kate smiled weakly. "Keep in touch?"

""Course. Take care of yourself, Kate." Marcy smiled. "Let me know how the job search goes."

Marcy smiled, and the two women hugged again. Kate picked up her box and stepped into the elevator, and the doors began to shut. "Oh," she said, quickly sticking an arm out and stopping them. "Hopefully I can pack away my tailored suits!"

Marcy grinned as the doors slid shut.

Missing Scenes, "Yankee White" and "Hung Out to Dry"

by Sammie

Disclaimer and all other notes in Part 1.

The phone rang again, and Kate grabbed her pillow and covered her head with it. It was a Monday, and if that wasn't bad enough, it was the first day she'd finally have to face up to her unemployment; she wasn't made of money, she had to look for a job. The stupid caller could have at least allowed her a couple more minutes of sleeping in on a Monday, a luxury she hadn't had recently.

The answering machine picked up, and Kate felt a pang at hearing Tim's voice on the machine: "Leave a message." She had been trained well enough to know not to leave her name or her number on machine, and as an extra precaution, she generally had her father or her brothers do the recording; after a freak blackout (and the digital phone didn't save the recording), Tim had done the recording for her.

The phone beeped, and she the click of a hangup. Good. Maybe the person thought she wasn't home. Stupid caller.

The phone began ringing again.

"Aaaaarrrggghhh," Kate groaned, and finally snatched up the receiver without looking at the caller ID. "WHAT."

"So you are home," came the familiar voice, lightly.

Gibbs. Change 'stupid caller' to 'complete bastard.' Kate wondered snippily if she could get that registered in her caller ID. "Agent Gibbs," Kate replied as diplomatically as she could, but she was not in the mood to deal with him. "May I politely ask what the h-ll you want?"

"Why aren't you in work?"

"I quit the Secret Service, in case you forgot."

"I offered you a job at NCIS, in case you forgot."

Kate stopped short, and after the initial surprise, she softened. She had thought over that offer many times since, but since she had never received any other confirmation of it - she hadn't even gotten a response from him that night when she asked him if it was a job offer - she had assumed it was some kind of joke, or an offhand offer that he made and later regretted...and thus hadn't contacted her. She was not a groveller - she had made a mistake, but she still was a good agent, and she was not about to go crawling to and begging for a job from someone.

Especially from Jethro Gibbs.

"I don't make offers I don't mean," he said.

Kate suddenly had a horrible thought: had she said all of this out loud? She turned it over quickly in her head - no, she was sure she hadn't, so how did he know what she had been thinking? It was a little creepy. "I just assumed you weren't serious when I didn't hear anything else afterwards," she replied finally, having recovered.

"I thought you would want some time...alone," came the voice over the line, softly. "You took off pretty quickly after Major Kerry's funeral."

Kate winced and was silent.

Thursday afternoon she stood next to her former supervisor, Agent Baur, as they quietly delivered Cmdr. Trapp's body to his parents and his girlfriend. Dr. Mallard had done a fine, gentle job of cleaning up the body and making it presentable, but it was no easier for them. They were taking him home to bury him.

Friday morning she stood alone at Tim's funeral. It had been well-attended by many in the Secret Service, and although she had gotten some greetings from her former coworkers, she had felt awkward there. It wasn't as though they had known about her relationship with Tim, but she still felt out of place. Agent Baur had given her shoulder a fatherly, understanding squeeze. He had told her, not long after she resigned, that he was proud of the work she had done with the Secret Service; what was left unspoken was the fact that she had broken the rules. She had made the decision much easier for him by resigning, and his encouragement even then had been welcome.

She had noticed Agent Gibbs at Tim's funeral, and for a brief moment wondered why he was there - it would be crazy to attend the funeral of every victim whose case he had solved, after all. It then felt almost mean to be thinking about someone else at Tim's funeral (she tried to reassure herself it was purely platonic curiosity), and set the thought aside.

Afterwards, she had tried to make it out as fast as she could; she had only stopped to talk to Marcy and to Deb, Rick's wife - and only briefly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gibbs speed up just slightly as he headed toward her, apparently realizing she was leaving. Unluckily for him - but luckily for her - he was cut short by Baur, who stopped him to talk. She was almost grateful for the reprieve, stealing the chance to slip away. She could feel Gibbs' eyes still on her as she disappeared into the crowd and out to the parking lot.

She had gotten no calls on any of those days, and since he hadn't even given her an affirmative answer when she had asked that night, Kate had decided he didn't want her at NCIS. That was fine, and she was ready to hit the wanted ads.

But here she was now.

"Kate?" Gibbs' voice over the line brought her out of her thoughts, and she thought he sounded guardedly concerned.

"Yeah," Kate replied.

"Would you still want to work this job?"

For a moment, Kate was positive she was imagining it, but it sounded almost...uncertain. She hadn't had profiling training for nothing, and while most would just hear the usual, nonchalant question, the slight hesitation nearly blew her away. She hadn't known that Gibbs could be uncertain - she had assumed he didn't know what it even meant.

She set aside the thought. There would be more time to think about that once she got to know her boss better.

Kate sat up, shocked at that thought. When had she decided that Gibbs was going to be her boss? Had she already decided she wanted the job? "Yes. I'll be there in an hour."

"Good." Kate dismissed what sounded like slight relief over the line. "Otherwise DiNozzo would whine about having to clean off your new desk for nothing."

Kate laughed a little at that, and it felt good to do that after the week she'd had. "I'll have to thank him."

"Don't egg him on. He took over both empty desks - the one next to his and the one next to me. The one next to his - Viv left him some of her things, and he assumes he can have the desk, too. It's his own fault." Kate hears a brief protest on the other end, and then a distant WHAP and DiNozzo whining. "You need the clean desk to file your paperwork to get your badge and ID. I'm not doing it."

Kate made a face. It was supposed to be his paperwork. Leave it to Gibbs to be a bastard.

"Are you coming?" he asked again.

"Yes, I'm coming."

END