JD collected his thoughts as he walked back towards Gibbs’ team’s work area. He had been listening with half an ear to Gibbs all morning as JD worked on the computer problem. The man was demanding of his staff, at times seeming to set impossible goals, yet at the same time seemed fair.
When JD heard him speaking to Tim, questioning the reasons that this particular company was being used, JD knew eventually he would have to introduce himself as a representative of that company. From his discussions with Tim and Abby last night he knew Gibbs was a technophobe. He also knew from those same discussions, that Gibbs took a very dim view of people breaking the law. He wondered what the reaction would be when he’d told Gibbs that it was likely that someone in the NCIS IT department was taking kickbacks or manipulating the books.
Tampering with proprietary software, while a white collar crime, was still a crime. It also could be very profitable. The amount his company lost was nearly $100,000, just in the software alone not counting the maintenance fees and training fees for the different software. The amount the government had lost both in theft and in lost productivity was much more.
JD left Ezra to call his sister, well that’s how JD thought of her. He hoped that she would be able to come up to DC and take this job.
JD took a calming breath and squared his shoulders. It was time to face the music. He paused, one more phone call, a call to one of his newest computer buddies, Abby. He had a feeling he would need her running interference for what he was about to tell her boss.
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Gibbs sat at this desk fuming. This is why he hated computers. They broke down and then you were stuck, at the mercy of some technical support geek. Someone who had no idea of the type of job that he did. Someone who pushed pencils for a living and never had to face life and death situations. They would come to fix the problem with the computer and then because they were unaware of the dangers that the Agents here faced daily, they wouldn’t fix it correctly and have to come back. An endless vicious cycle. A cycle that could endanger one of his people.
Unknown to Gibbs this particular computer geek had been shot at many times. Had been in life and death situations similar to the ones that Gibbs own team frequently faced.
The height of irony was that as Gibbs railed internally about geeky no nothing computer techs. The tech who would be working on the case was a recently wounded NYPD cop. The owner of the company was an ATF agent. Not your typical computer geeks.
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After JD had left them to speak to Gibbs, Ezra grabbed his cell to make a call to Mel. He was fairly certain she would jump at the chance to have something to do. He knew she was used to being active both mentally and physically and this enforced rest period had been slowly driving her insane.
Then there was her mother’s hovering. He knew it well all, the times he had been shot and forced to recover in Florida he remembered Mary hovering. Worrying about the health of one of her “chicks”
Mel had not really ever had that experience. The one time she was seriously injured she had not spent much time in the hospital and due to a shortage of police manpower in the first few days post 9/11, she was back at work albeit on desk duty much more quickly than usual.
She was nearly back to full health now, though she still needed a cane to walk and had PT a few times a week.
“Mel I have a proposition for you…”
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Chapter End Notes:
Short chapter , sorry it took so long!