Kate sat on the floor of her living room, papers spread across the coffee table. Crime scene photos spilled over the edge of the table and gathered in a pile on the floor.
She picked one up and examined it closely. It showed Petty Officer Cohen lying on the floor of the Norfolk locker room. She was dressed in the standard summer white service uniform. Her short sleeve blouse was left unbuttoned and her white pencil skirt had been pushed up around her hips. Her hands had been secured behind her back with duct tape.
Kate put the photo down and picked up a similar one from Lieutenant Peyton’s crime scene. She had to be missing something. She set the photos side by side to compare and began to take notes, writing up a potential profile of the suspect based on the crime scene.
Tony paced back and forth across the lobby, muttering quietly to himself. His hands moved with his thoughts as he tried to organize them.
“Maybe she’s not there...but it’s eleven o’clock...maybe I should...” thoughts traipsed in and out, barely staying long enough to finish.
“Uh...Sir?” A voice startled him out of his daze. He looked up at the owner. “I just wanted to know if you’d like me to let Miss Todd know you’re here.”
Tony chuckled for a moment, “Miss Todd”. He wasn’t used to the “Agent” part being absent.
He then brought himself back to the current question he intended to answer this time. “No...thank you. I’ll just go up.”
A knock at the door woke Kate from her deep concentration. She looked at the clock, eleven pm, who was visiting at this hour? She looked at the mess around her, files and crime scene photos everywhere, and was almost tempted to call “Come in!” to avoid tiptoeing around the mess but her agent instincts kicked in and she warily got up and went to the door.
“Tony!” she said, an honest tone of surprise in her voice. “What are you doing here?”
He looked confused for a moment as if he couldn’t remember and then held up a file. “This!” he said triumphantly.
Kate stared at him expectantly but he said nothing more. “Is...” she urged.
“Oh...a file...” he trailed off.
“About?” He looked blank for a moment and then opened the file. “Tony! Is this actually important or did you just come over here to waste my time?” she snapped, finally exacerbated with his strange behaviour. The harsh words seemed to snap him back into his normal self.
“Ah, Kate...you know me, I take every moment available to help out with the wasting of your time. In fact I live for the wasting of Kate Todd’s time!”
“Tony!” Kate warned.
He grinned and held up the file. “But this...is not one of those moments. I think I may have found a lead on a suspect.”
“Finally,” Kate muttered and stepped back for Tony to enter the apartment.
He had never been in her place before and took a few moments to look around. It was neat, impossibly neat by his standards, though it didn’t surprise him. The hall led directly into a living room kitchen combination on the right and continued on to what he assumed were the bedrooms and bathroom. He strolled into the living room, surveying the only untidy part of the whole place.
“Still working hard I see,” he said, gesturing to the piles of papers and photos.
She nodded. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure, just water please.” He took a seat on the couch and rifled through the files on the coffee table. Kate joined him minutes later.
“So what’s this lead you have?” Kate inquired.
Tony opened the file he brought with him. “Seaman Robert Havener. He works in the legal office at Norfolk with Cohen and Peyton.”
Kate looked at the photo of Seaman Havener. He had dark brown hair, cut in a traditional short Navy style, brown eyes and a grim expression on his young face.
“He couldn’t be more than twenty five” she thought to herself glancing through his file, he was in fact only twenty three. “He looks vaguely familiar.” But she brushed off the thought as a trend in her thinking; everyone was looking familiar to her on this case.
“I thought we interrogated all the men who worked in the legal office. I don’t remember him.”
“We didn’t interrogate him. He only started working in the same office as the victims the other day.”
Kate shook her head. “So he wasn’t even working there when the Petty Officer and Lieutenant were murdered?”
“Yes!” Tony grinned at Kate.
“How is this a lead Tony?!”
He placed a finger over her lips and she glared at him. “Well, if it wasn’t someone the victims knew then it must have been someone they didn’t know.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “How very observant of you Tony.”
Tony mused for a second; finally starting to feel normal and happy; the conversation of the day’s earlier events hadn’t come up. He settled down, ready to actually discuss the information he’d found.
“Havener worked in the building across from the legal offices as a mail boy.”
“A mail boy?”
“He joined the Navy six months ago; you got to start at the bottom, Kate.” She nodded and he continued. “He had originally applied to work as Lieutenant Peyton’s assistant but guess who she gave the job too.”
“Petty Officer Cohen,” Kate answered. “But that’s hardly enough to murder two women over. It was just an assistant position.”
“According to his Navy record he has a history of violence. Picked a fight with three Petty Officers on his first day. He’s gotten multiple warnings but no action was taken against him.”
“Well it’s not much to go on but it’s better than nothing. We should let Gibbs know, get Havener into NCIS first thing tomorrow morning,” Kate said, reaching for the phone.
Tony’s hands caught hers before she got to the phone. “Kate?”
She sat back down and looked at him. His expression had changed from the I’m-actually-being-serious-and-doing-some-work face to one she recognized immediately.
“Tony, stop. We don’t have to talk about it.” She looked down at her hands, afraid to look up into his eyes.
“Just because we ignore it doesn’t mean it will go away.”
“Yes, it does. And besides what’s there to ignore? It was just a kiss Tony, it wasn’t like it meant anything,” Kate said as she finally managed to look up at Tony. She watched as his face fell at her words and she immediately felt guilty.
He desperately tried to reign in his emotions and put on a straight face. “Right, it was just a kiss,” he repeated her words half heartedly.
“Tony?” Kate asked carefully, placing a hand on his knee. “It was just a kiss, right? Did you think it meant more?”
Tony sighed heavily and looked at Kate, trying to put on his signature grin. “Nah Kate! I go around kissing my co-workers all the time, no big deal.”
“Seriously Tony...” Kate started but was cut off by Tony jumping up from the couch.
“Hey look at the time. I should get going.” He leapt over the piles of photos and paper and headed for the door.
“Tony, wait!” Her words stopped him in the doorway, his back to her. “I didn’t know this would mean so much to you.”
He whirled around to face her. “How could you not know?” Tony yelled, now unable to keep his emotions under control.
“Well I’m sorry if bragging about every other gorgeous woman you sleep with on a weekly basis doesn’t scream ‘I’m in love with you,’ to me!” Kate yelled back.
Tony paused for a second at Kate’s words. He’d never actually considered what his feelings for her were, only that they were there. But now having the words screamed back at him he finally recognized the feeling.
“I’m in love with you,” he whispered to himself, his realization making him forget about Kate standing only a couple feet away.
“What?” Kate said almost inaudibly. What she’d said only seconds ago had been in the heat of the moment, she too had never even considered the fact that he might actually love her.
“I love you,” Tony said, this time directed at her, and a small smiled formed on his face. He moved forward, crossing the space between them in only a few small steps, and slipped one hand around her waist while the other crept behind her neck. He pulled her in toward him and closed the gap between their lips within seconds. He was gentle this time and slower, unlike their frenzied kisses on the roof that afternoon.
Kate felt her body beginning to melt into their kiss but pulled herself together, just before the point of no return, and pushed him away. “Tony, we can’t,” she breathed.
“Why not?” he asked, taking a step toward her again.
She stepped back and looked around uncomfortably, trying hard to avoid his gaze.
“Kate?” he said when she was still silent. She shifted a little farther away from him and still said nothing. “Kate?”
He reached out and grabbed her shoulders, bringing her back to him, and lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Why not?” he repeated.
“Because...because...” Kate trailed off and looked down at her feet. “I don’t love you,” she finished in a whisper.
Tony’s arms dropped from her shoulders. His smile disappeared and he stepped back a little. “No,” he said angrily.
“Excuse me,” Kate looked up, a scowl forming on her face.
“No. I don’t believe you.”
“Tony! This isn’t...”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me,” Tony cut her off, his angry tone quickly turning into begging.
“Tony...”Kate warned, she was not in the mood for this.
“Tell me, Kate!”
“Fine!” she yelled, her temper finally breaking. “I don’t love you! I will never love you! Whatever you think you saw in me, forget it, because it will never work between us! Is that what you wanted to hear, Tony? I don’t love you, okay?”
He looked devastated.
Unable to continue watching her partner fall to pieces right in front of her she moved backward to the couch and sat down, her head in her hands. The room was silent for the few moments it took Tony to move down the hall to the door and slam it behind him.
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.