As the tape ended, Gibbs turned to his team, “McGee, take that video to Abby, and get me something useful. DiNozzo, David, What did you find on Finnegan and his wife?”
McGee grabbed the DVD and headed back down to Abby’s lab. Tony stepped forward and held out his paper for Gibbs to look over, earning himself another glare from Ziva. “I found something from back when they lived in Ireland. Finnegan was in the military there, and he was a member of a"”
Ziva cut him off, still angry about being hit by the door, and not willing to let Tony take all of the glory for the find, “Top secret operation gathering intel on Hammas.”
Not to be outdone, Tony jumped back in, “The reason he came to America was someone found out what he was doing and threatened his family. The threats were directed at every member from the daughter and wife, to the dogs. I guess that explains why the dogs were killed. Anyway, they were hoping that the threats would stop if they left Ireland, and they did for a while"”
Ziva, getting more competitive with every second, cut Tony off again, “But within the last month, they have started again. He did not want to tell us because he was afraid that they would hurt his daughter if he said anything.”
As she finished, the door to MTAC opened, and the director strode over to them, a determined look on her face, “Lance Corporal Finnegan is demanding to know what is going on, and I would like to know too. We’re getting mysterious packages, you are all running around like chickens with your head cut off, and you left a witness sitting in interrogation for more than an hour and a half without so much as a bottle of water. What in the world is going on?”
Gibbs was on the verge of turning to leave without answering when Ziva began to talk again, “The package contained a video of Colleen Finnegan and her captor. They made no demands yet, but they informed Finnegan to expect a call from them in two hours with further instructions.”
Acknowledging Ziva with a nod, the director turned to Gibbs, who headed for the door, with her right behind him “Who do you have at the Finnegan’s house to answer the phone?”
Gibbs didn’t break stride as he answered her, “Well madam director, before you came barging in, we were headed in that direction. We have to bring Finnegan with us. He has to be the one to answer the phone, or they may not talk.”
Once they had retrieved Finnegan from the interrogation room and headed for the car, the director took her leave of them and made her way back to her office. Gibbs insisted on driving, and Ziva quickly claimed the front seat, leaving Tony to sit in the back with Finnegan, both of them holding on for dear life.
As they drove toward the Finnegan house, Ziva let her mind slip back to the events surrounding her addition to the team. She had an entirely different set of memories about those times than the others, but they were no less painful. There were very few people who knew it, but she too had lost someone very special to her.
Sure, she knew what Ari had done, and she knew who he really was, but that didn’t change the fact that he was her brother. He had been the one who had always been there for her when she was younger. He always made it to her and Tali’s dance performances, even when their father didn’t. He was the one who had helped her with her school work, and taught her how to fight back when she was picked on at school. In other words, he did everything a good big brother was supposed to do.
Ziva would never be able to forget the betrayal she felt when she found out the truth about Ari, or, the moment when she had taken her brother’s life in order to save a man who was a virtual stranger, Gibbs.
She was glad that Gibbs was the only other member of the team who knew her relation to Ari and the truth of who his killer was. The others would find out eventually, she knew that, but she was not going to tell them until she had to. She knew they were past blaming her for Kate’s death, or at least she hoped they were, but she had worked hard to gain their trust, and she knew that trust would be completely destroyed when they found out she had been hiding the truth from them for almost three years.
She was jerked from her reverie when the car screeched to a halt in the Finnegan’s driveway. Tony rushed inside to set up the tap on the phone, leaving Gibbs and Ziva to escort Lance Corporal Finnegan, who was technically still a suspect in NCIS custody, inside.
As they stepped through the door, the first thing Ziva noticed was the smell, or more specifically the lack-there-of. The crime scene cleaners did a good job getting the smell out. It was a good thing they had too, because the phone was in the kitchen. As they caught up to Tony, a flash of memory made her shudder. The massacre of the family’s dogs had been brutal, and it had gone way beyond wanting Finnegan to suffer, whoever was responsible for this had wanted him to know they would make good on their threats, and that no one was safe from them.
When Kate woke up on the floor of her room, the first thing that came back to her was her hearing. She could hear the footsteps in the hallway outside, the rumble of the generators, and a sniffling sound that she could not quite place. She forced her eyes open, and found herself staring into a pair of scared green eyes. Colleen. That explained the sniffling she had heard. It did not however explain why she was on the floor, or why she couldn’t remember how she got there. She tried to sit up, and Colleen scrambled backwards, using her good arm. Kate had to muffle a scream as pain shot through her, and the last two hours came back in a flash.
Baria had left for a minute, and when she had come back she had a black gym bag. Paul and troy followed her in, one carrying a small table, the other carrying the same video camera they had used to film Colleen. They set up the camera so it was facing Kate, and Baria turned to her with a grin, “What do you say we put on a show for your friends back at NCIS? I’m going to leave Paul and Troy in here with you for exactly two minutes before we make our little movie, they have some issues they need to work out, and I think you would be the best person to help them.” She turned on her heel and walked out, closing the door behind her.
Paul walked behind Kate, pulling a key out of his pocket as he moved, “Every time you look at us, I can see in your eyes that you want to hit us, that you would hurt us if you ever got the chance. Well, here it is the one chance you are going to get to fight back. It makes no difference if you fight or not, either way we will hit you, but I find it is always more satisfying to hit someone when they have caused me some pain, knowing that what I am doing to them is more than fair payback.”
As Kate glared at him, massaging her wrists, trying to get the blood flowing into her hands properly again, he unlocked the cuffs holding her feet to the chair. She didn’t waste a minute; she swung her left foot up to connect with his ribs. As Paul went down, Troy hooked his ankle around the chair leg and pulled it out from under her. Kate hit the ground with a thud, landing on her shoulder, knocking it out of the socket. Not one to give in to pain, Kate pulled her knees under her and pushed to her feet. Turning to face Troy, she brought her right leg up to connect with the back of his knee, bringing him crashing to the floor. He and Paul wasted no time getting back to their feet, and the three of them squared off again. Paul moved up behind her and yanked on her right arm, sending a jolt of pain through her dislocated shoulder, and Troy aimed a fist at her face. The punch was not as hard as she would have expected, but it still split her lip. Paul, who still had a grip on her arm, pulled it up behind her and forced her to her knees, “You are lucky that Baria needs your face to be recognizable for the video, Troy has to hold back on the face hits. Unfortunately for you he doesn’t need to hold back for any of the others. You do however have time on your side, so let’s make this last little bit memorable.”
Kate barely had time to register what that meant when Troy’s foot connected with her stomach, and Paul let go of her arm, leaving her to sag to the floor, trying to regain the use of her lungs. As Kate fought to control her breath, the door opened and Baria walked back in, surveying the small room and its three occupants.
Walking over to Kate, she pulled her up off of the floor, and motioned for Troy to right the chair. She forced Kate back into the chair, and cuffed her again, causing Kate to hiss with pain when she roughly pulled her right arm behind her. Before moving away from Kate, Baria pulled a roll of duct tape from a side pocket of the bag and covered Kate’s mouth. She then pulled out a cloth bag and covered Kate’s head, so that her body was visible, but her identity was hidden. Setting the gym bag on the table, Baria motioned for the others to leave the room. Paul and Troy left, smirking at Kate as they closed the door.
Turning the camera on, Baria situated herself between it and Kate, blocking her from its view. “Hello NCIS. I hope I am talking to the members of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ team, because I have a special surprise for you. Most of you do not know who I am, but at least one of you has met me before. You may not recognize me now; it was many years ago, you were not much more than a child really, but we will get back to that later.
Gibbs… I heard that name a lot in the past. It is a name that will forever haunt my memory, the name of the man who is the reason I lost my husband. He was obsessed with making you suffer, but what he did not realize was that I was suffering too. But that is history, and we are here to talk about the present, and the future. I know you are searching for Colleen Finnegan, and let me assure you now, she is fine, relatively speaking, and she will not be harmed any further, she was merely a means to an end, I just needed to catch and keep your attention. As long as you do what I say, she will be back with her father before end of day tomorrow.
Turning to face Kate, but still blocking her from view, she spoke to Kate loudly enough for the camera to pick it up, “There are four basic mediums for torture, and over the next four days we will explore each of them, while your team watches, unable to help.” Baria opened the bag and pulled out a set of knives, “The first medium is sharp objects. This is the most basic and least creative method, so we will begin with it and work our way to the others.”
Baria moved around behind the chair and Kate could feel the cool steel of the blade against her neck. Baria made a very shallow, short cut in the skin over Kate’s collar bone. She continued to make small shallow cuts over Kate’s neck and shoulders. When this failed to elicit a response from Kate, she moved around to the side and drew the blade across the top of her leg, just above the knee, making this cut deeper and longer than the others. She made more cuts parallel to this one, and matching ones on Kate’s other leg. When Kate finally began to shift in the chair, in a vain effort to pull away from the blade, Baria stopped for a moment, and turned back to the camera, “I’m sure by now you’re all wondering who this poor woman is, and what she has to do with you aren’t you? I’ll show you, but that is all you get for now, when I am sure that you have seen this video I will send a messenger with my next instructions.”
Baria moved behind the chair once again and grasped the top of the bag that was covering Kate’s head. As she pulled the bag up and off, revealing Kate’s face, she pulled the knife back, and sank it into Kate’s lower back on the left side. Kate slumped forward and Baria walked around to the camera and shut it off before turning back to her victim. Kate struggled to pay attention to what “The blade was short, and did not pierce any vital organs…” Kate knew Baria was still talking, but her words were no longer making any sense, and the room was starting to spin. The last thing that Kate heard was, “He will suffer,” and then she let the welcoming blackness claim her.
Gibbs, Tony, McGee, Ziva, and Lance Corporal Finnegan waited around for more than an hour for the phone call from Colleen’s captors. McGee had hooked the phone up to his computer in order to generate a trace on the call, and they had set the phone to speaker, so they could monitor what information was passed on. Finnegan had been given explicit instructions on what to say by Gibbs, as soon as he had an opening, he was to demand to talk to his daughter, and he was to tell them that he would not follow any more of their instructions until he had proof that she was alive and well. They were completely ready, and had been for the last hour, now it was just a waiting game.
The phone did ring a few times in the interim, making them all jump, but they were inconsequential calls, and Finnegan got off of the phone quickly each time. When the call they were waiting for finally came in, they all sat forward in their seats, eager to hear get this ordeal over with.
On Gibbs’ signal, Lance Corporal Finnegan answered the phone, his voice shaking, despite obvious attempts to sound strong and sure. “Hello?” The word sounded more like a question than a statement, even to Finnegan’s own ears.
A mechanical voice answered, obviously not just disguised, but a recording as well, “The blue metal garbage can two blocks over to the left, look for another video.” As soon as the recording finished the person on the other end hung up.
That was all they got, less than 10 seconds of recorded voice. The call was nowhere near long enough to trace, and it would take Abby and McGee a good while to get anything from the recording.
As they sat there in a confused silence, Gibbs looked to his team, “Well, what are you waiting for? You know where to look, so go look!”
They jumped up, as though their chairs had suddenly grown quills, and rushed to the door. As they reached the sidewalk, Ziva turned one direction, and the guys turned the other. Looking back over his shoulder, Tony called out to her, “Where do you think you are going Zee-Vah?”
She looked at the other two with a bemused expression, “I am going to get the video of course. I think the better question is where you are going.”
They met back in front of the house, and McGee, trailing behind Tony, joined the conversation, “No, they said to go left, and if you are looking at the house, this way is left, so we should go this way to get the video.”
Ziva rolled her eyes before replying, “No, they said to leave the house and go left, meaning that you are going the wrong way.” With that she turned and walked away, leaving Tony and McGee to stare after her. Turning to the senior agent, McGee asked uncertainly, “Do we follow her even if she’s wrong?”
Tony scoffed and turned back in the direction they had been originally headed. McGee trailed after him, glancing over his shoulder uncertainly after Ziva.
A quarter of an hour later Tony and McGee arrived back at the Finnegan house, the latter covered in random bits of rubbish, and smelling like he had bathed in sour milk. Gibbs just glared at them, and then looked to his right where Ziva was sitting, triumphantly holding up a small brown paper package.
Tony smirked at her and turned to McGee, “I told you we should have gone the other direction, but no, Mr. MIT thinks he knows everything.”
McGee started to stutter a protest, but Gibbs interrupted him by standing and grabbing his kit and heading for the truck. The others hurried to follow suit, Tony and Ziva keeping a good distance between themselves and McGee. As they climbed into the truck, McGee in his usual spot, Tony turned the air on full blast and opened both of the windows. They hadn’t gotten very far when Ziva, again sitting in the middle between Tony and Gibbs, reached over and rolled up the windows again. When Tony glared at her, she just smiled innocently at him, “I’m cold. If the smell bothers you, breathe through your mouth.”
Wrinkling his nose, Tony turned to Gibbs, gesturing to the window between the cab of the truck and the back “We should get them to put glass in the window back here.”
Without removing his gaze from the road, Gibbs replied, “You didn’t seem to mind the smell when you were making McGee sift thorough the trash DiNozzo.”
Not wanting to provoke Gibbs, Tony shut his mouth and tried to picture himself anywhere else but the smelly truck. His mind drifted again to Kate, and to the vacation they had been planning. They had finally decided that they would tell Gibbs that they were together. Tony had wanted to keep it a secret for a while, but Kate had been insistent, and she was right when she pointed out that Gibbs was a trained investigator, it would not take him long to notice, and although he would not be happy about the situation, he would probably take it better if they told him rather than if he found out on his own. Besides, Kate desperately wanted to tell Abby, and they both knew the bubbly Goth wouldn’t be able to keep it from Gibbs for long.
They had decided though that it might be safer for them if they both took a week off after they told Gibbs so he could have a chance to come to grips with the fact that they had broken rule number 12 without them there.
They had not decided where they were going to go yet. They couldn’t agree on the destination, Tony wanted to take her to Italy, to show her where his family came from, but Kate wanted to go to Alaska. She had been almost everywhere else in the US and many places outside of it when she was with the Secret Service, but she had never been to Alaska, which she told Tony, she had heard was beautiful. Had the dispute gone on much longer, Tony would have given in, he knew, but it was a habit for him to argue with Kate, and old habits die hard.
Tony was jolted out of his thoughts of a vacation with Kate when they pulled back into the garage at NCIS. Shaking his head to clear it, he tried to re-focus his mind on the task at hand. The last thing he needed in the middle of a case was to get distracted; it could only lead to someone getting hurt. As soon as they got to the elevator, Gibbs hit the button for the third floor. As McGee tried to follow them in, Gibbs gave him a silent stare, and McGee stepped back to take the stairs, and to change before joining them in MTAC. They brought Finnegan to the conference room and made sure he had something to eat and drink, then headed for MTAC, stopping to let the director know what was happening on the way.
When McGee had finally joined them, Gibbs gestured for the video to start, and then moved back to sit by the director to watch the newest installment in their ever growing video collection.
A woman’s face filled the screen, surprising them, they had been expecting the same man from before. In a soft, but menacing voice, she spoke, “Hello NCIS. I hope I am talking to the members of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ team, because I have a special surprise for you.” This caught their attention. Who was this woman, and how did she know Gibbs’ team? She continued, “Most of you do not know who I am, but at least one of you has met me before. You may not recognize me now; it was many years ago, you were not much more than a child really, but we will get back to that later.” They all looked around to each other, each of them trying to figure out if they were the one who had met her in the past.
Gibbs… I heard that name a lot in the past. It is a name that will forever haunt my memory, the name of the man who is the reason I lost my husband. He was obsessed with making you suffer, but what he did not realize was that I was suffering too.” Gibbs started to think back as soon as she said this, trying to figure out who her husband was.
“But that is history, and we are here to talk about the present, and the future. I know you are searching for Colleen Finnegan, and let me assure you now, she is fine, relatively speaking, and she will not be harmed any further, she was merely a means to an end, I just needed to catch and keep your attention. As long as you do what I say, she will be back with her father before end of day tomorrow.”
She turned away from the camera, obviously speaking to another person in the room, blocked from their view, “There are four basic mediums for torture, and over the next four days we will explore each of them, while your team watches, unable to help.” This took a minute to sink in, and when it did, it did nothing to lessen the confusion they were all feeling. Who was she talking to? What member of their team did she have with her? They all glanced around as though to confirm what they all knew, that none of them were missing. The woman opened the bag and pulled out a set of knives, “The first medium is sharp objects. This is the most basic and least creative method, so we will begin with it and work our way to the others.”
She moved around behind the chair and laid the blade against the neck of another woman shackled to a chair, with a bag over her head. She made a very shallow, short cut in the skin over the prisoner’s collar bone. She continued to make small shallow cuts over the neck and shoulders. Tony flinched with every cut she made, almost as though he could feel the blade himself. He knew what it felt like to be tortured, and he hated thinking of anyone else going through it. The woman moved around to the side and drew the blade across the top of her captive’s leg, just above the knee, making this cut deeper and longer than the others. She made more cuts parallel to this one, and matching ones on the other leg. When the prisoner finally began to shift in the chair, in a vain effort to pull away from the blade, the woman stopped for a moment, and turned back to the camera, “I’m sure by now you’re all wondering who this poor woman is, and what she has to do with you aren’t you? I’ll show you, but that is all you get for now, when I am sure that you have seen this video I will send a messenger with my next instructions.”
She moved behind the chair once again and grasped the top of the bag that was covering the captive’s head. As she pulled the bag up and off, revealing the face, she pulled the knife back, and sank it into the other woman’s lower back on the left side. The other woman slumped forward and her captor walked around to the camera and shut it off, a vindictive grin on her face.
No one spoke for almost a minute, all of them to stunned to think. Ziva was the first to recover from the shock, “Rewind and freeze the video on the prisoner’s face,” The video tech did what he was told, and they all stared at the screen again.
Tony couldn’t tear his gaze from the image frozen on the screen. He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The hair was longer, the face was battered, bruised, and half covered in a gag, but he knew those eyes. They were eyes had promised himself he would never forget.
…Kate
Everyone stared at the screen in stunned silence, none of them believing what they were seeing. Gibbs froze in his chair, eyes locked on the screen. McGee looked around as though hoping someone would either yell, “April Fools” or someone would begin to explain the impossible situation to him. Tony backed up to the chairs by Gibbs and the Director and sank into one, his mind reeling. Ziva looked from the picture frozen on the screen to the faces of her team members. Director Jenny Shepard looked from the screen to the package that the DVD had come in. The Director was the first to come back to herself, and she stood and turned to face the team, “What do we know about this? Do we have any idea who the person is who is running the show? Do we know what they want? She mentioned that she had met one of you in the past, do any of you know who she is?”
They all shook their heads mutely; none of them were able to recall having met her at any time in the past. Jenny turned to Gibbs, whose gaze was still fixed on the screen. “We need to find out who this woman is, and what she wants with your team. We know her husband has or had a connection to you, so we will start there.”
Gibbs finally tore his gaze away from the screen, and focused on the director. He was silent for a second, taking a moment to gather his thoughts before replying to her instructions, “I know how to run my team madam director, I do not need you to tell me how to go about figuring out what is going on.”
The Director returned Gibbs’ glare twofold, “I know very well that you know how to run your team Agent Gibbs, I was simply trying to help, and seeing as the woman who is threatening you is trying to make you believe that she is holding captive a member of your team who was killed almost three years ago.”
Kate had bandaged her wound the best she could with the sheets from the bed. Colleen had helped when she could, with her one good arm. Sometime later in the night, when they had both been asleep, someone had left a bag inside the door with proper bandages, and some other medical supplies. When Kate woke up, she unwrapped the wound, and examined it the best she could, seeing as it was on her back. Baria had told the truth when she had said the wound was shallow. The wound was barely half an inch deep, but it was at least three inches long. Baria had been playing to the camera, and she obviously did not want Kate hurt extremely badly, so she had made it look like she was stabbing Kate, while the blade only went in a little, and sliced sideways instead.
Along with the bandages, the bag had included a tube of super glue. Kate had been dubious about using the super glue to seal the wound, but then she remembered something that Tony had told her, when she had sliced her finger cutting up vegetables for dinner, “That’s what super glue was designed for, sealing up cuts.” She hadn’t believed him at first, but when he had used the super glue to seal the cut, and it had felt better immediately, she had realized how well it worked. Recalling this, she used the super glue to seal the wound, gritting her teeth against the sting. Once the glue had dried, she bandaged it, just incase the glue did not hold. She used the glue on the smaller cuts as well, glad for the relief it brought when the glue finally dried.
With her cuts sealed, and her mind a little clearer now that the pain had lessened, Kate had a bit of time to think before Colleen woke up. She thought back to what Baria had said in the midst of the torture. She shuddered at the thought of the other torture methods that Baria had mentioned, she was not sure what they were, but seeing as sharp had been, in Baria’s eyes anyway, was the least interesting, Kate was sure the others were going to be very unpleasant.
Pushing the unpleasant thoughts to the back of her mind, she concentrated on the other things that Baria had said. Kate knew more about Baria than Gibbs and his team did, so she was pretty sure that she had a better idea of what the other woman wanted than the NCIS agents did. She knew why Baria was gunning for Gibbs and the rest of the team, and she knew why she was being used as bait. Kate let her mind wander for a moment, wondering when Baria was going to tell Gibbs and the other members of the team who she was and what she wanted. Baria had said that she would send further instructions when she was sure that they had viewed the video. Kate was sure that Baria would be sending those mentioned instructions within the next hour or so.
Kate was sure that Gibbs and the rest of the team would find a way to figure out what was going on, even without further communications from Baria, but two things had her worried. The first thing that she was concerned about was the fact that Baria had showed her in the last video. There were several questions that stemmed from that fact, the first being, what would the reaction of the team be when they saw the video; would they believe that it was her? If they did, what would they try to do about it? Kate just hoped that none of them would do anything stupid to get to her.
The second thing that was bothering Kate was something that Baria had mentioned in passing, during the creating of the video. Baria had mentioned that one of the members of Gibbs’ team had met her in the past. Baria had told them that they probably would not remember meeting her, that it had been a long time ago, and that whoever it was would probably not remember having met her. Again, several more questions stemmed from this first one. Which member of the team had met Baria in the past? Was it Gibbs, Tony, or McGee? Or, Kate considered, was it someone she had not met? She didn’t like to think about it, but she knew that with her gone, the team would be one member short, and that they would need to replace her sooner or later, whether they liked it or not. She knew that there was a good chance that the person Baria had talked about was a person that was unknown to Kate.
Kate stood up gingerly and walked slowly to the table, picking up the book she was in the middle of reading. She knew that no matter how long she went over and over the past few days in her head; it was not going to do her any good. She couldn’t get out, she knew that from prior experience, and even if she could, she wouldn’t do anything that would put Colleen at risk. The last thing thought that crossed her mind before she got lost in the book was, “I hope they don’t do anything stupid to get to me.”
Tony’s mind was having a hard time wrapping itself around the events of the last hour. He was sitting at his desk, staring around the empty bullpen. His eyes scanned the room, not really settling on anything. He laid his head on his folded arms, and closed his eyes. He tried to collect his thoughts, but they were all spinning around in his head, none of them settling long enough for him to latch on to it.
Tony massaged his temples, trying to catch one of the thoughts. The first one that he caught was the memory of Kate’s eyes. It was really two thoughts combined into one, the first was the memory of Kate’s eyes from the day she had died, open, staring, and clouding over in death. The other memory was more recent. He saw her eyes staring at the camera, scared, trapped, and very much alive. The two memories spun together, and were starting to give Tony a headache. What was really getting to Tony was not knowing; not knowing whether the woman in the video was really Kate, not knowing who the other woman in the video was, and not knowing what to do to find out the answers to his other questions. Tony shook his head, and pushed the thoughts of Kate and the questions about the situation to the back of his mind. Gibbs, Ziva, and McGee had taken the video down to Abby, hoping that she would be able to figure out the answers to one, if not both of the questions that were spinning around in Tony’s mind.
Tony considered the other information they had been given in the video. The woman had talked about her husband’s obsession with Gibbs and his team. This gave them a place to start. Although they had all encountered their fair share of crazies in their time with NCIS, and even before, there had been considerably less that they had actually considered to be obsessed with any of them, let alone Gibbs in particular.
The other lead they had been given was that one of the members of the team had met this mysterious woman sometime in the past. They had no idea who or when, so it was not much to go on, but it was something, anyway.
Tony couldn’t take the silence any longer. He got up and headed for the elevator. He decided that a walk outside was exactly what he needed to clear his mind. After he pressed the button for the ground floor he let his mind wander again, so when the elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened, he automatically began to walk out, not apying attention to where he was going, which resulted in him running strait into the person stepping onto the elevator. As he shook his head to clear it again for the umpteenth time today, he realized that the elevator was not even at the floor that he wanted, and that he had almost knocked Ziva over, yet again.
From the moment that the second video began, Ziva's mind was racing. One thought piled on top of another, so that by the time the video ended, she was beginning to get a headache. When the video ended, Ziva was expecting the usual outburst of ideas and theories that would normally come from this group, so the complete silence took her by surprise. She looked to all of her team mates, only to find them staring at the now blank television screen. She looked back at the black screen, thoughts whirling around in her head again. The importance of what they had just seen was not lost on her, but it took a moment for the true meaning to sink in. Ziva knew that she had seen the woman in the chair before, but it took a moment for it to sink in where.
As soon as Ziva realized where she had seen the woman before, she turned to the computer tech and told him to rewind the video, and to pause it on the image of the face of the woman restrained in the chair.
Ziva had never met the woman in the image, but she had seen a number of pictures of her, and had heard many stories about her from the other members of Gibbs’ team. The image paused on the screen was a picture perfect copy of the woman that Ziva had been brought in to replace, Special Agent Katelyn Todd.
Ziva went willingly with Gibbs and McGee to Abby’s lab to see what the brilliant Goth could pull from the video that might help them figure out who their tormentor was, or what she wanted. As they made their way to the lab, she let her mind drift to the other woman in the video.
They had no name as of yet, but they did know a bit about the woman, even if she had not told them much. There were a few small things that she had told them that would help them narrow down who they were looking for. The first thing that came to Ziva’s mind was the fact that the woman was married, or at least that she had been married in the past. She had also mentioned that her husband had been obsessed with Gibbs, which would help them narrow it down even further.
The biggest piece of information that they had on her was something that she had given to them. She had said that someone from their team had met her in their past. The woman was obviously Middle Eastern, which narrowed down the options. None of the others had recognized her when they were watching the video, but Ziva had a bad feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that she was the one who had met her. The woman had looked familiar to Ziva, though she could not actually recall having ever met her. It troubled Ziva to no end that she could not place the woman anywhere in her past. It meant that if she had indeed met her, it had to have been in the very distant past, when Ziva was just a young girl.
Ziva’s mind was brought back to the present when the elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened with a ding. Gibbs and McGee stepped out, and turned to look back at her when they realized that she had not followed behind them.
She smiled at them apologetically, “Sorry, I was thinking. My mind was elseways.”
McGee glanced at her nervously, softly correcting her, “Its elsewhere, Ziva.”
Ziva nodded, and moved past him to join Gibbs on his way into Abby’s lab. Had it been Tony, she might have shot back a smart comment, but she knew that Tim was only trying to help.
They found Abby hard at work, the music pounding through the lab per usual. When Gibbs reached out and turned the music, Abby turned to them, her usual smile on her face. She bounced over, and took the disc from Gibbs, “Is this another video? I take it you want me to find anything that I can from it?”
Gibbs nodded, and walked with Abby to her computer, watching her put the video in, and press play before he spoke, “Abbs, before you watch that video, I think you need to know…” He trailed off, not sure what to say, and as he spoke, he pressed the pause button. Abby looked at him, confused. It was not often that Gibbs was unsure of what to say. It worried her, making her think that maybe there were unpleasant things, which she would not want to see on the newest video. “Gibbs, what’s up with the tape?”
He looked at her for a second before he answered, “Abbs, there’s someone on the video that you might recognize. We aren’t sure what exactly is, as you said, up with the video, which is why we brought it to you. I just wanted you to be warned.”
She stared at him for a second longer, and then turned back to the computer. “Ok, thanks for the warning I guess, though it would be nice if you could be a little less cryptic next time. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
As she started the video, Abby discreetly studied the faces of her co-workers. There was something that none of them wanted to tell her, and she knew it had something to do with the newest communication from Colleen’s kidnappers.
She turned back to the video, and watched as the unfamiliar woman delivered her speech. A couple of the phrases jumped out a Abby, as they had done with everyone else. Nothing caught her attention that she thought could help them figure out where Colleen was being held, so she knew that she would have to go back over the video in more depth. Abby winced as she watched the blade of the knife slicing into the skin of the woman restrained to the chair. She might be able to find answers in some of the most gruesome clues, but she hated seeing anyone, even someone she didn’t know being hurt.
Abby’s mind, which was always whirling, even when she was asleep went completely blank for maybe only the fourth time in her life when the bag was pulled off of the head of the woman in the chair. As soon as the screen went black, she rewound it and paused on the face. She stared at the impossible picture for a minute, and all of a sudden her mind started whirling at top speed again. There were two questions that came above all of the others, who was the woman taunting Gibbs’ team, and who was the woman in the chair, because as Kate had been dead for almost three years, it could not truly be her.
Abby jumped when she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She spun around to find Gibbs looking at her with concern. “Abbs, I know it’s hard to understand"”
She cut him off quickly, “It’s not hard to understand at all Gibbs. Someone either used plastic surgery, or maybe computers to make the second woman in the video look like Kate.”
Gibbs, Ziva, and McGee stared at Abby for a moment, almost as stunned by her nonchalant reaction to the news that had blown them all away as they had been by the news itself. McGee was the first to talk, “Umm, Abbs, you were paying attention to the video right?”
Abby gave McGee a scathing glance, “Of course I was Timmy. Like I said, it’s just a fake. I admit, it’s a really good fake, but that’s all it is.”
Gibbs nodded slowly, the truth of what she had said sinking in. Of course it had to be a fake. Kate had been dead for years, what else could it be but a fake? He was almost ashamed that they had all been so taken in by a fake.
Eyes by Willow_Eris