Chapter Four
“Well it certainly doesn’t look much different,” Kate said looking around the squad room. Kate had merely set her bag down next to her old desk before Abby ran across the room screaming.
“KATE!!!” She said before plowing into her, tears falling down her face. “Oh my God, KATE! I missed you so much!” Abby said beginning to sob hysterically. Kate didn’t know what to do other than just pat Abby on the back.
“It’s good to see you too, Abby. I missed you.” She said smiling brightly.
Abby pulled back from Kate’s grasp for a moment to observe her. There were a few noticeable scars on her arms, and even a few on her face. “The glory of being in the Middle East for 2 and half years,” Kate said, as if she had read Abby’s mind.
“Where’s Ziva and McGee?” Gibbs asked as he rounded the corner, walking in the direction of his desk.
“Oh, um. I’m not sure,” Abby said trying to remember what exactly happened. Her thoughts were soon interrupted by the ding of the elevators from which Gibbs, Tony, and Kate had just entered through.
The doors slid open, casting a silvery light on the floor in front of them. McGee stepped out of the elevator briskly, looking directly at the team. While the elevator doors closed behind him, he looked at each of them, pausing for a moment at Kate. “Kate?” he said, surprise sounding through his voice.
McGee began walking closer to the team when Gibbs finally asked, “Where’s Ziva?”
McGee began to open his mouth, but was interrupted by the ding of the elevators once again. Ziva, nearly running out of the elevators, shouted to the entire room “Rivka Koncheva is dead.” Her face and attitude completely stern, she pushed past all of them and threw her belongs, including a bullet-proof vest which contained a bullet in it, right on her desk.
Her mind was so preoccupied that she hardly noticed that Gibbs, Tony, and Kate were there. She merely moved her head in a circular motion, making a popping noise in her neck. The rest of the team stared at Ziva, waiting to see how long it would take her to realize that everyone was back. “I need coffee,” she said as she walked back to the elevators.
“We’re gone for an afternoon, and she’s already turned into you, boss,” Tony said, his eyes wide in an attempt to study the “new Ziva”.
**********
McGee paced up and down the hallways, breathing heavily, and staring intently at the intricately designed carpet. Up and down. Up and down. He paced the hallway debating whether or not he was about to make the right decision. He knew he wanted to do it. Hell, he’d wanted to do four five years. He just never thought he would actually do it.
‘C’mon Tim. You can do this.” He thought in an attempt to give himself a pep-talk. ‘You’re just…you know…confessing your love to the most wonderfully, amazing, beautiful woman you’ve ever met.’ McGee said, beginning to get discouraged once again.
This was, without a doubt, the most difficult thing he’s ever tried to talk himself into doing. This wasn’t the first time he’d paced around Abby’s Lab. It was, in fact, steadily becoming a bi-weekly ritual. ‘O.k. Tim. Think back to what Johnny the Ogre said,’ McGee racked his brain trying to recall his “safe words”.
‘You’re a ferocious Elf Lord, lion-heart, with the wits of a wizard and strength of a warlock.’ And with that, McGee was prepared to face any adversary, be it a Grendel, the water demon, or the prospect of sweeping the woman of his dreams off her feet.
He confidently entered Abby’s Lab. “Oh Hey, McGee.” She said smiling brightly. McGee walked straight up to her, grabbed her from the back of the head and her side, dipped her, and placed a long, enduring kiss on her lips.
“Whoa, McGee,” Abby sighed, not believing what was happening.
“I just wanted to tell you Abby,” McGee said staring dreamily into her eyes. “That you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met, and I love you,” and with that McGee kissed Abby again.
Abby wrapped her arms around McGee’s head, glad that after all this time he was finally able to admit it. The two stood up straight, looking intently into the other’s eyes. “I love you too, McGee” Abby finally admitted to him. The two embraced one another, connected in a powerful, deep kiss.
**********
Gibbs knocked on the stainless steel door three times, awaiting Jenny’s reply. “Enter,” came Jenny’s voice from the other side of the door.
Gibbs placed his hand on the doorknob, giving it a soft twist, and entered the dimly lit room. Gibbs looked to the blinds on the window and noticed that they were drawn. “Light sleep last night, Director?” Gibbs asked taking a seat in front of Jenny.
“I guess you could say that,” she said removing her glasses and rubbing her already red eyes. “I was up all not on a teleconference in MTAC with the Secretary of the Navy. They’re all up in arms about Agent Todd’s undercover mission. Apparently somebody forgot to inform him.”
“That’s how the CIA works,” Gibbs said in an ascending voice. “Would you like the good news first or bad news?”
Jenny rested her head upon the desk and mumbled, “Good news,” without lifting her head to meet Gibbs’ gaze.
“Ziva caught Rivka Koncheva,” Gibbs said with the all-too-familiar smirk upon his face.
Jenny immediately lifted her head, her mascara slightly smeared, “And the Al’Qaida cell?” she asked eagerly.
“That’s the bad news,” Gibbs replied with a tilt of his head.
Jenny sighed and placed her head back on her desk, “Any news concerning the whereabouts of this cell?”
“I have Tony and Kate working on it,” Gibbs replied softly.
“No, Gibbs.” Jenny said, a hint of demand in her voice, “You get your entire team working on it, now!” Jenny ordered Gibbs.
“What’s the rush, Director?” Gibbs chuckled as if the conversation was amusing.
“That’s need to know,” Jenny replied, not meeting Gibbs’ gaze once again.
Gibbs merely raised his eyebrows, giving Jen that same smirk he always had given to charm her.
Jenny exhaled before reaching to her side and grabbing a manila folder to which “Need To Know” was printed on the cover. “I suppose you are included in the ‘Need To Know’ category, and I’m sure I can convince Don, the Secretary of the Navy, to see it that way too.”
Jenny went on to read the entire contents of the folder to Gibbs, to which described a suspected attack on the Navy port in Norfolk sometime Wednesday morning. “So that gives you about 12 hours to track down an Al’Qaida cell.”
And with that, Gibbs got out of his chair and headed for the door, but not before Jenny called out to him. “Gibbs?’
Gibbs stopped, with his hand on the doorknob, and turned to face Jenny. “Yeah, Jen?”
“Do you ever think about Paris?” she asked him, looking as if they were chatting about the weather.
“Paris?” Gibbs said, returning to his seat to face Jenny again. “Sometimes,” he replied, staring at a stack of pencils on her desk.
“Do you regret how things turned out?” She asked, once again with a tone of informality.
Gibbs stared intently at the pencils. In all honesty, he didn’t know the answer to that question. He had loved Jenny, he knew that much. But did he still love her? Or better yet, if they had stayed together, would he still be in love with her?
“I think you if you truly fall in love with somebody,” Gibbs finally began after thinking hard on his reply, “You never really fall out love.”
At this, Jenny raised her eyes and stared into Gibbs’ empty ones. His eyes had changed somehow since Paris. They weren’t the same. “Sometimes, though, people change. And they no longer are the person you were in love with.” The Director replied, a single tear falling down her cheek.
Wiping it away, she quickly busied herself, with tidying up her desk. “Well, Jethro, I think it best for you to get to work on tracking down that Al’Qaida cell,” she said, her nose sniffling slightly, not daring to look into Gibbs’ eyes again.
Gibbs got out of his chair and walked to the door for a second time. This time he opened the door, and upon the threshold, he turned to face Jenny once more. He just looked into her eyes, and he too noticed that there was a change in them. “You’ve fallen in love again,” he merely stated.
“So have you, Jethro,” Jenny replied, writing a note down on a post-it.
Smirking, Gibbs took the remaining steps out of Jenny’s office and closed the door behind him.
**********
A slightly disheveled looking McGee approached Gibbs with a large smile on his face. “What? Would you like a hug McGee?” Gibbs said, slightly irritated with McGee.
“Oh, um, no boss,” McGee said, adopting a more professional look on his face.
“Good, fix your tie,” Gibbs said, walking past McGee, slapping the back of his head as he passed.
“Hey, boss, I tracked down Koncheva’s credit card records. Well, of course it was under the name Harp. But anyway,” McGee started, looking over a few pieces of paper he had in his hands.
“To the point, McGee,” Gibbs said, taking a seat in front of his desk.
“The point is, Koncheva only used her credit card in this fifteen-mile radius, so I’ve narrowed down the location of the cell, but it’s gonna take me a bit longer to get much further,” McGee said sounding rushed, having picked up on Gibbs’ irritability.
“Boss, I’ll go and pick up surveillance tapes from these stores that Koncheva has been shopping at,” Tony said grabbing his equipment.
Close to an hour later, Tony returned to find that the team had made close to no progress to finding the cell. Tony passed out different tapes for each of them to go over. Halfway in the middle of watching the tapes, Ziva stopped hers and made a very valid point.
“Something’s not right, Gibbs,” Ziva said, getting up from her desk (Kate having adopted the desk next to McGee’s). “We found the receipt belonging to Heather Harp in Clark’s bunk. But, he was on a forty-eight hour leave. He hadn’t gone back to the Abraham Lincoln, nor had he made any contact with the cell until after Tony was taken by the CIA, so how did the receipt get there in the first place?”
“You know, you’re right,” Tony said with a quizzical look on his face. “How did the receipt get there?”
“Someone must have planted it there,” Kate suggested. Kate then received a phone call and was unable to elaborate on her theory.
The team then offered up a wide variety of speculation before Kate demanded everybody’s attention. “Guys! That was Metro P.D.” She said with a grave look upon her face. “Susanna Clark has committed suicide,” she said tossing her cell phone on her desk.
**********
Hours had passed since Kate had received the phone call from Metro P.D. and still the team had made very little progress. Ducky was asked to stay late to perform the autopsy on Susanna Clark. It wasn’t until 0200 hours on Wednesday that the body finally arrived.
“Mr. Palmer, could you tie up my scrubs in the back, please? I find that I have quite a sore shoulder this evening,” Ducky asked politely.
“Why, of course, Doctor.” Jimmy said merrily.
“When is your graduation again, Jimmy?” Ducky said as Jimmy tied a knot in Ducky’s scrubs.
“Um, that would be on Saturday.” Jimmy said tilting his head back and staring at the ceiling as he tried to recall the date.
“Yes, I remember when I received my Medical Degree. I was Valedictorian, of course, just as you are. I struggled and struggled to gather a speech together, but I was always known to be quite the procrastinator. I wrote the entire thing the night before! Haha!” Ducky mused as he and Jimmy unzipped the body bag to observe Susanna’s body.
“Speech?” Jimmy asked. “There’s going…going to be a speech?” Jimmy seemed utterly perplexed at the idea.
“Well, of course there is! Valedictorians are always required to give a speech!” Ducky replied, insinuating that Jimmy was acting in an utterly absurd manner.
The two quarreled on for several minutes, preparing Susanna for autopsy. Ducky, in honor of Jimmy’s graduation, allowed him to perform the autopsy under his supervision. Jimmy performed the Y-cut while he and Ducky continued to talk about Ducky’s early experience with Thailand’s fowl.
“Yes, I studied the Grebe fowl more than any other. Yes, they are very common in shape and size to an American duck. Unlike some America ducks, however, they submerge their entire bodies underwater to search for food, not just their upper torso,” Ducky rambled on, barely paying attention to the surgery Jimmy was performing.
“Um, Doctor?” Jimmy asked, interjecting Ducky’s digression.
“Why, yes Mr. Palmer, what is it?” Ducky questioned.
“Can you smell that?” he asked, a concerned look upon his face.
“Why, Jimmy, you have been working here for many years now, I would expect you to be used to the smell of decomposition,” Ducky said with a slight chuckle. “Another thing I studied as a scholar was the population of the Whadjuk tribe in Western Australia,”
“No, Doctor. This is different. Come smell this,” Jimmy demanded.
“Oh, Alright,” Ducky said, walking around the table to the opposite side Jimmy was on. The two leaned forward at the same time and inhaled the scent of the rotting innards of Susanna Clark.
“Oh my, Mr. Palmer,” Ducky said, his eyes wide with anxiety, “Good work, Mr. Palmer,” and with that, the two gentlemen walked across the room, into the elevator, and up three floors to Gibbs’ office.
Ducky and Jimmy entered to see everybody in the room completely silent, straining their eyes on their computer screens, pouring over files, or watching the surveillance tapes from stores that Koncheva had been to in McGee’s fifteen mile radius.
“I’m afraid, I have run into a slight problem,” Ducky said as everybody looked up at Ducky, complete with his autopsy attire. “Well, more formally, it was Mr. Palmer that noticed it,” Ducky corrected himself. “You see, Ms. Clark did not kill herself,”
Ducky then glanced over at Jimmy, as if giving him permission to finish the statement. “She was poisoned.”
**********
His eyes strained to focus. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he asked himself. He could feel tubes in his arms, patches on his chest, and even a tube going down his throat. The room was dim, possibly even nighttime, which made even more difficult to realize what was going on.
He felt something in his hand, and gripped it firmly. It made the sound of a buzzer, and shortly after he could barely make out the image of a silhouette entering the room, a blinding flash of light shining around it, as if it was on the threshold to heaven.
It was all so very confusing. The last thing he could remember was going to see a movie with his sister. Then he ran into those assholes. Giving him a hard time just because he’s gay. He had spent his entire life trying to flee them, only to come back to see his family and have to deal with it all over again.
But, what happened after that? He couldn’t seem to remember. But then, it hit him. Those CIA agents, or FBI or whatever they were. They took him and questioned him. They were going to let him go. Why didn’t they? It was all still very fuzzy in his mind, but he thought he wouldn’t have too much trouble remembering if he could just sleep a little longer. The silhouette pulled on the tube that travelled down his throat. It was the most awkward sensation he had ever felt as the tube was pulled out of his throat.
The silhouette then spoke as it shined a bright light into his eyes which made him wince. It was a bit unclear, but he was fairly certain that it had said, “Mr. Clark? Are you awake?”
-To Be Concluded-
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.