Nine Lives, Part Two

by Sammie

Disclaimer: Own...? "That's funny, Gibbs. Funny. WRONG. But funny." "NCIS" is not mine, and neither are Clayton Webb and Sarah MacKenzie. They are they only two non-"NCIS" characters in the story, and they get full introductions in the story. There are some verbatim quotes.
In addition, because of the amount of fanfiction I've read, there are most likely scenes and statements that look familiar. I apologize beforehand. I had no intention whatsover of ripping anyone off - your story was so incredible that those little things stuck out clearly, even in my Swiss-cheese memory.
Kathryn, Peter, and Jaime Lin are mine, and that's it.

Same thing about "Kate" Todd being spelled "Cate" Todd.

Summary: A Marine major disappears just days before her undercover assignment and winds up dead; now NCIS wants to know why. (Part One is in the "Without a Trace" section as a crossover.)

---

NCIS HQ

"I take two days off and look what happens." Abby's eyes went wide as she came in to see everything spread out over her tables and her floor. "What's all this?"

"Well, Abby, Major Lin, if we are lucky," Ducky replied, a little darkly. "You were quite fortunate to have missed the unloading process a few days ago."

"Isn't Dover going to help?" Abby asked, peeking into one box.

"They already are. The FBI bagged and tagged as many human remains as they could identify and boxed them all specially and shipped them directly to Dover Air Force Base. We're here to sort through everything else."

Tony winced as he looked it over. "Why do I have a feeling this puzzle is going to be one of those 5000 piece deals?"

"All the President's men couldn't get Humpty Dumpty back together again," Gibbs replied.

Abby shook her head. "This is worse than Dorn."

"Yeah, at least that puzzle had only six big pieces," Cate replied.

"How'd she die?" Abby asked, snapping on a pair of gloves.

"Blown to high heaven," Tony replied. "Bad enough to be even a pyromaniac's nightmare."

Abby made a face at the boxes. "Must've used a lot of explosives."

"It was a succession of explosions," Cate replied. "We're guessing the timed explosive attached to the hull was the starter, and after that, it was like dominoes."

"Tony, keys." Gibbs held out a hand, and Tony tossed the keys to him. "Do a background check on that fishing boat, find out anyone who was on it, and cross check them with any of Lin's previous cases. Cate, you comin'?"

"Where are we going?"

"Lin's funeral," Gibbs replied as he washed his hands in the sink, then tossed Cate the soap and started heading out.

"Why?" Cate asked, scrubbing down. At his look, she hurried after him.

"How are they having a funeral, without a body?" Abby asked as the three left settled down to work.

"Memorial service, more, I suppose," Ducky replied, then looked at the boxes and shuddered a bit. "I doubt Dover will ever find any body enough to bury."

"So why is it being held so soon?"

"Her CO and the man she was reporting to on this assignment wanted it that way," Tony replied, looking over the boxes as he gathered up his things.

"That sounds hinky."

"Considering her assignment appears to still be open," Ducky replied, "it would be logical to take care of this business quickly and then move on."

At Abby's confused look, Tony explained, "Colonel Weir and Clayton Webb are the process type. Methodical, Cate said. They take of business in the order they come in. They will take care of Major Lin's funeral first and as fast as they can so they can deal with the rest of the assignment."

---

ARLINGTON CEMETARY

"Don't you think it's a little gauche to be interrogating people at the funeral?" Cate asked as they made their way through the large Arlington Cemetary, toward the place where the funeral would take place.

"I'm not going to question her family," Gibbs replied. "And we are here to pay respects." His voice was unusually heavy, not the generally lighter tone she was used to.

Cate looked over at him, puzzling for a moment, and suddenly understood. Lin's death hadn't been his fault; she wondered briefly if he felt that guilty about all this cases, then stopped. Most of the time, their victim was already dead by the time they even started the case. Lin had been an exception.

As they were nearing, he tensed.

"What?" Cate asked, looking from him to the small party on the hill.

"You go on ahead," Gibbs replied, still watching the party. "We'll meet back at the car."

"What about you?" Cate asked, thoroughly puzzled.

He ignored her question. "Only if they ask, then tell them you're NCIS, and that you were working on the case before she died. Don't tell them about me or about DiNozzo, and don't tell them we're still working on the case." With that, he hurried off, leaving a bewildered Cate behind.

Cate approached the funeral site, and felt almost sorry for the major. There was barely anyone there. Lin's brother and his wife; after them, just Webb, Colonel Weir - her CO, and a Marine lieutenant colonel she didn't recognize. JAG corps, she figured, from the insignia.

"Agent Todd!" Jaime Lin turned around, looking at her with a small, weak smile. Cate could tell the younger woman had been crying. At that, her husband turned around, and Cate could see the defeated expression on his face.

"Mr. Lin, Mrs. Lin," she greeted them quietly. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to meet again, at least like this." She got a few weak, sad smiles of agreement. "I'm...I'm very sorry. We, uh, we were - "

Peter shook his head. "We know it's not your fault," he mumbled. By the expression on his face, it looked as if he believed it in his head, and was desperately hoping to believe it for real.

Cate just nodded quietly.

"Special Agent Todd," Webb addressed her warily. "What brings you here?"

Cate put on her best innocent face and shook her head. "I...I just came to pay my respects." She turned to Lin's CO. "Colonel Weir," she greeted quietly.

"Agent Todd."

Webb looked suspiciously at her. The other woman came up. "Clay?"

"Sarah, this is NCIS Special Agent Caitlin Todd," Webb introduced, still watching her with a suspicious eye. "Agent Todd, Lt. Col. Sarah MacKenzie."

"Mac," the woman said warmly, reaching out a hand.

"Cate, please," Cate responded, shaking it. "I...I was working on Major Lin's disappearance. Before this."

'Mac' nodded.

"I'm...uh, I'm sorry," Cate replied in embarrassment, successfully masking her attempt to get a little more information. "I'm sure I must've come across your name somewhere, I just didn't - "

"No," Mac smiled warmly. "I only knew her briefly." Just then her phone rang, and she picked it up. "MacKenzie. ... Yeah, sure. Be there in a bit." She smiled apologetically. "I'm really sorry, but I have to run."

Clay nodded, still watching Todd suspiciously. They eventually moved away. Soon after, Peter and Jaime Lin followed.

The colonel stood at the gravesite, staring at the headstone silently. "She was a good Marine," he replied quietly, when they were finally alone.

"Yes sir."

The man turned to her. "Look, I don't know what she was doing over there at the State Department," he said. "But she wasn't dirty."

"I never said she was, sir."

"Well, somebody is." The colonel crossed his arms. "Who is covering the investigation on the explosion?"

Cate just straightened, and remembered what Gibbs had said. 'Don't tell them we're still working on the case.' "That is up to Director Morrow, sir."

The colonel nodded a silent goodbye and head down the hill, leaving Cate alone. She could still hear the car leaving as she stood next to the grave, looking down at the simple markings. She couldn't believe it - that at the woman's funeral, not even ten people had shown up.

---

NCIS HQ LAB

"What've we got?" Tony asked as he bounced back into the lab. "We even got stuff sorted here?"

Abby made a face. "It looks like my little brother's Lego box."

Tony grinned. "Well, my Legos, they were all nice and organized, each different part put in a different little pocket," he bragged.

Abby looked at him, a mixed expression of surprise and disbelief, then grinned. "Tony, did you even open the boxes you got?" When Tony got a 'caught' look on his face, Abby grinned.

"I opened some of them," Tony defended himself. "Whatcha got, Abby?"

"Unfortunately, a direct ID, right here," Abby replied, holding up a melted ID card. Everything looked blurred and the colors were running together.

"You can tell whose it is from that?" Tony asked incredulously.

"Look at this." Abby waved at the big screen, calling up the program which enhanced the images. "What do you see?"

"A...K...Lin...USMC." Tony sighed. "So she really died on board, huh."

"Was there any doubt?" Abby asked.

Tony sighed. "Well, I was kinda hoping." He trailed off.

---

PARKING LOT

"Well?" Gibbs asked as she slid into the passenger's side.

Cate buckled her seatbelt and sat back in the seat. "There were only a few people people there. Her brother, her sister-in-law, the chaplain, Colonel Weir, Webb, and some Lieutenant Colonel Sarah MacKenzie. JAG Corps, I believe, from the insignia."

Gibbs started up the engine. "Hey, look at that. New kid on the block's been doing her homework."

"How do you know I didn't screw up the insignia? And why wouldn't you go?"

Gibbs' eyes quickly scanned the entire parking lot, and he didn't answer.

"You going to tell me what's going on, or are we going to play twenty questions?"

Gibbs pulled out of the parking lot as fast as he could.

Cate, thinking he wouldn't hear, mumbled something under her breath about another woman going after him with a piece of sports equipment.

Once they were on the highway, Gibbs finally said, "To answer your first two questions: I knew you knew the insignia and I didn't attend the funeral because I recognized the Lieutenant Colonel."

Cate was taken aback. "Colonel MacKenzie?"

"DiNozzo and I worked on a case about a year ago," Gibbs replied as they continued down the highway. "A JAG lawyer from the Falls Church office was murdered. The suspect was the JAG golden boy - he and the Colonel, his words, 'are old friends.' Closer, I expect, than either'll admit."

"And you didn't want her to see you."

"Yup."

"What difference would it have made?"

"Well, it appears that right now our Colonel is singing the theme from 'The Spy Who Loved Me,' and if we need some information out of Mr. Webb, we might be able to get her to play good cop for us."

Cate made a face.

---

NCIS HQ

"What've we got?" Gibbs asked as he came into the bullpen, Cate following close behind.

Tony and Abby looked up from his computer. "Uh...a small fishing boat for the Delaware. Like we found out earlier, Erik Johannson, 78, single, really mad about his boat."

"What connection?"

"We questioned him back in Philly, boss. He said he didn't know Major Lin or anyone else."

"The boxes?"

"Ducky and Gerald are still trying to identify everything - including potential body parts the FBI missed - and so far they figure they've got stuff from two of the three other people on board the boat at the time of the explosion - IDs, part of a sidearm, that sort of thing. We also have Lin's ID, melted but still readable."

Gibbs nodded. "Abby?"

"We're still searching through the stuff," she replied. "Tony said, by all interviews, there were most likely three other people on board. Searching through all that" she waved at where everything had been spread out "we've got at least two different people, and I'm working on a third. I have a feeling we'll find number four, too. Well, the major."

Tony shuddered.

"Four deaths," Abby replied. "Now that's overkill." She twirled around in the chair she was sitting in, just to find the three NCIS agents giving her a look. "What?" She shrugged. "One of you was going to say it."

"Cate," Gibbs called as he left, "double check on Lin's phone records and LES's, see if anything was added in the last few days. Tony, check back with Malone, see if they have anything else."

Tony furrowed his brow, watching his boss' retreating back. He turned to Cate. "He seems a little chipper."

Cate rolled her eyes as she settled down at her computer. "Apparently he just figured out that somebody at the local JAG office has ties to our mysterious Clayton Webb, and he plans to use her to get to him if needed."

"Really? Who?"

"A Lt. Col. Sarah MacKenzie."

Tony grinned. "She was hot."

Cate made a sound of exasperation.

"So...how was the funeral?" Tony asked, more soberly this time.

"Sad," Cate replied shortly. "More ways than one. The only people there were Lin's brother and his wife, her CO, Webb, Col. MacKenzie, me, and the chaplain."

"That's it?"

"Uh huh."

Tony made a small face. "I hope more people attend mine."

---

Gibbs sank into a chair in Ducky's examining room, watching as the man poured over a small bit of who knows what they had found. It wasn't Lin's, but one of the others who had been on the boat at the time of the explosion.

He scooted forward and looked at the ME. "Can we get prints off that?" he asked.

Ducky sighed. "Jethro, we've already tried."

Gibbs gave a rare groan of frustration and rubbed his hand through his hair.

Ducky put down his magnifying glass. "This one is bothering you, isn't it."

Gibbs sighed and leaned back in his chair. "You should see her file," he replied as he turned himself from side to side. "Blown up, shot, you name it, it happened to her. That incident in New York? She crawled on her belly, with a chair on her back, to get to a heater. Then she melted off plastic cuffs and got out before being blown up."

Ducky nodded, looking at the agent. "You find her death too simple."

"Yeah. You'd figure somebody like that would be more careful." Gibbs gestured in frustration.

Ducky sighed. "All those years looking over her shoulder, sleeping with one eye open...she was bound to have been tired, Jethro."

Gibbs just looked at him, then sighed.

---

Gibbs walked back into the bullpen, only to be met by Cate and Tony, who looked like cats who had just eaten the proverbial canary. Or a lot of them. "What?"

"Major Lin...made a phone call to Mr. Webb just ten minutes before being blown away," Cate said, a huge grin covering her face.

"Let me guess, it wasn't a 'good-bye' call," Gibbs replied dryly.

"It seems we might have our turncoat," Cate replied. "Or something, anyhow."

"Actually, I've got it right here so you can listen to it." Tony waved their boss over to his computer to play the message.

Gibbs put on a pair of headphones and started to listen.

"'Hi Clay. ... Sure, I'll be sure to bring it to your house. I'll make sure to avoid the Colonel. ... No, it wouldn't be good. ... All right. See you later.'"

He looked up. "'Hi Clay'?"

"That's what I said," Tony replied. "Way too friendly. Waaay too friendly."

"And it doesn't sound like business." Cate grinned. "Abby just took a copy downstairs to clean it up and see if she couldn't figure out what all the background noise was."

Gibbs nodded to Tony. "Have Abs make me a copy too."

"Okaaaay," Tony replied, obviously not sure why. "Why?"

"We're going to pay Lt. Col. MacKenzie a little visit. With the tape." Gibbs rounded his desk, heading out. "Tony, you're with me. Cate, you go and see what Abby gets cleaned up."

---

"What else have we got, Ducky?" Cate asked curiously, looking over at the different things distributed over three tables.

"We've got 'em divvied up," Gerald explained as he carried another bit of something and set it on the second table. "The first table is anything we think is victim 1, top of table two is victim 2, bottom of table two is victim 3 - "

" - I thought Abby said you hadn't found anything on #3 yet."

"Oh, we found something."

"What?" Cate asked curiously, coming over to look. "Ewww," she exclaimed, looking at what looked to be a body part on the table. "I can't believe the FBI missed that."

Gerald just chuckled. " - and table 3 is going to be our Major."

Cate looked them over. Table 3 had just a few things on it. "That's not a lot for a dead major," she commented.

Ducky shook his head. "No, it is not. Gerald and I, however, still have several boxes to search. Our major may be in one of them."

"Hey Ducky, hey Gerald," came Abby's voice as she bounced in. "Oh hey, Cate!"

Cate turned. Seeing Abby in autopsy, she smiled. Abby grinned more widely at her, then turned to Ducky. "Ducky, I checked out that piece of cloth you sent down to me. I have good news and bad news."

"Oh Abigail, I hate it when you do this. All right, let's get it over with."

"The good news is that it was intact enough to analyze. And it looks certainly like it was...some piece of a woman's clothing."

"You can tell that from...that?" Cate asked, pointing at the bit of cloth in Abby's gloved hand.

"See? This is a button hole, in this ridge right here. This part is from the bottom corner of the shirt, and it's on the left. Hem on the left. Woman's shirt." Abby beamed.

"So what's the bad news?" Gerald asked.

"Victim #3 might've been a woman. There was a melted ring in one of the boxes, but it was way too small for our major's hand, even if you could...unmelt it."

"So, still no Major," Cate confirmed.

"Yeah. Oh, and this." Abby bounced her eyebrows. "Dover called. They've positively identified two people on board, and they think they have a third."

---

JAG HQ

"...I...I didn't know her that well," Mac finally finished, shrugging. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help."

"Had you ever met her?" Gibbs asked.

"Just a few times. First was at some...social function in Washington that they made us go to," Mac replied. "Most of what I know about Major Lin is from Clay. He thinks very highly of her abilities."

"Has he ever said anything about how he met her? How many cases they've done together?" Tony asked.

"No...I'm not really supposed to know that kind of stuff," Mac replied. "He is CIA," she added in a 'duh' tone. "I do know that they've known each other a couple of years."

"How WELL do they know each other?" Tony clarified.

"Well." Mac sighed. "It's a different...'know.'" Gibbs and Tony gave her surprised looks, at which she rolled her eyes. "Not THAT kind," she retorted. "Men," she muttered. After a moment, she said quietly, "she understands his actions in ways I don't." At their puzzled looks, she shrugged. "The...detachedness...the cold rationalization, analysis." She paused a moment, looking down at her ink blotter on her desk. "Even with loved ones."

"You seem to know this personally," Gibbs said pointedly.

Mac sighed and sat back in her chair. "I...had a run-in...with somebody," she said slowly.

Tony sat up, looking over at Gibbs, who turned his piercing gaze onto the Marine. "Colonel," the older agent said quietly. "I know this may be difficult, but we need to know."

"I...was stalked by a terrorist I trailed last year," she said quietly. "I shot and killed him. I...was having some behavioral repurcussions, and so everyone wanted me to see a shrink."

"And you wouldn't."

"I went a few times," Mac said defensively.

"And Major Lin?" Tony cut in as gently as he could.

"After...some stuff happened between Webb and me, he suggested I talk to her. Officially she was out on a case, but she was in Washington temporarily and agreed to meet with me."

"Sounds like another shrink appointment," Tony muttered.

"Yeah," Mac rolled her eyes, "that's what I said."

"Anything happen?"

Mac shrugged. "We ordered Chinese in. I talked. She listened." When they waited for more explanation, Mac sighed. "She swore a couple times under her breath, gave me the same clinical psychobabble that Webb did, and muttered something about not letting me take more assignments like that, and it was over."

"That's it?" Tony asked, a little incredulously.

"Yeah." At their looks, Mac finally said, "Look. It was just different having somebody else who was totally untouched by the matter just to listen, and...it was different hearing it from her." At their questioning looks, she sighed. "I mean, I know this sounds ridiculous, but...she's a Marine, she's had the same training I did, and it was just some small measure of comfort knowing that she most likely would've done the same thing I did."

"Not ridiculous," Gibbs replied as he made some notes. He sat up, eyed the closed door, and then asked, "Would Webb see her outside work? Socially."

Mac's eyes darted between them. "Why?"

"Just covering my bases," Gibbs replied genially.

"Clay isn't like that," Mac replied warily. "He doesn't date his coworkers."

"He's dating you," Tony pointed out.

Gibbs shifted a little as he continued to watch her. "I'd like you to listen to something, Colonel."

---

NCIS HQ

"So what if this whole thing...isn't about her case?" Cate replied as she watched Abby cleaning up the dialogue.

"Like, this was about our James Bond having a bunch of different women?"

"Yeah, but all in the same port," Cate replied. "Col. MacKenzie said she knew Maj. Lin."

"That's cutting it close," Abby commented.

"That would take the cake," Cate muttered. "Having this all turn out to be a murder just to knock off one of the women."

"Do you really think either of the Marines would fall for that smooth talking?"

Cate sighed. "I hope not."

---

CIA HQ

"That's low, Gibbs, using Sarah to try to get to me," Webb hissed as he turned around to face the two men in his office. "And then using that ridiculous story about me seeing Lin non-professionally."

"Well, that explanation you gave to her was pretty enlightening," Gibbs replied, crossing his arms and smirking. "It got me what I needed to know, didn't it?"

"And, well, we had to explore all our options. That phone call was a LITTLE cozy," Tony replied.

Webb rolled his eyes. "Please. I don't date my associates."

"You're seeing Col. MacKenzie," Gibbs replied, shrugging nonchalantly.

"That was after assignment," Webb pointed out coolly. "Unlike some," he replied, the insinuation in his voice obvious as he repeated himself, "I don't date my associates."

Gibbs just raised an eyebrow at the CIA agent, daring him to continue.

"And where did you find that information?" Tony snorted. "NCIS Soapdish?"

"Please, Agent DiNozzo, I work for the CIA." Webb crossed over behind his desk. "Apparently we have some scruples over here."

Gibbs walked up, leaning over the desk so he was nose to nose with the other man. "You read secondhand trash and you think you know somebody," he said in almost a whisper, his voice dangerously low. "You don't."

"Who was the Colonel in the call?" Tony asked sharply.

"Her CO. He's been hounding me for months after he heard that there might be rogues on the case. He wanted me to pull her."

"You didn't."

Webb gave them a 'duh' look of exasperation.

"Why was Lin aboard that fishing boat?"

"She was doing a pickup for me. I told you that in New York."

"Of what?"

"That's need-to-know."

"Well, I need to know." Gibbs took one step forward towards the smaller man.

"We spent a whole week in New York," Tony retorted. "We were looking for her without even really knowing why she was there. Some real answers now would be nice."

"You know those nine Marines being held by Serb rebels?" Webb asked, looking up from his chair.

"Yeah?"

"Well, now you know," Webb said sarcastically.

"She was picking up the ransom to pay for them," Gibbs confirmed, and watched the CIA agent roll his eyes. "And now she's dead."

"That project has been plagued by our go-betweens all turning on us," Webb replied.

"That's why you brought in somebody from the outside."

The CIA agent shrugged. "Not that it matters anymore."

Gibbs frowned. "You don't seem all that concerned that your agent just got blown to hell," he said, his voice rising a notch.

Webb rolled his eyes. "Casualties, Gibbs. At least the money wasn't lost. That's what I'm concerned with. If there's nothing more?"

Gibbs stood and stared down at the other man, snapping his jaw shut.

---

NCIS HQ LAB

"She appears to have been in some open air...something...during the conversation," Abby replied as she brought up the sound. In the background, they could hear cheering and hooting.

"What is that, Abby?" Cate asked.

"I cleared it up, and an opening statement...it sounds like some kind of hoagie eating contest." Abby grinned.

"Hoagie eating contest?" Cate asked incredulously.

"Oh, but it's more than that," Abby grinned. "Tony told me once that he'd won tickets to a Philadelphia Eagles football game in one of 'em. So I looked it up. Apparently the local radio station holds these contests every other week during the summer."

Cate chuckled. "They aren't even that good. Where?"

"Penn's Landing." Abby called up a map and pointed.

Cate frowned as she examined the map. "Penn's Landing is here?"

"Yeah, why?"

Cate looked more closely. "The explosion was here," she said, pointing further down the river.

Abby shrugged. "She could've made it down there in 10 minutes. It would've been close, but she could've made it."

"Not with the crowds that day," Cate replied, bolting for the door.

---

"You making progress on the death of Major Lin?" Morrow asked as he and Gibbs started up the stairs of the NCIS headquarters.

"Some, sir."

"Who's your prime suspect?"

"In the direct death, sir, or all those who lead up to it?"

Morrow stopped and turned to him. "Explain."

"She was ostensibly reporting to a man named Stockwell, who was reporting to a higher up. She, however, was secretly reporting directly to Stockwell's boss," Gibbs replied. "Then this agent in charge tells her to do a pickup on a boat that was wired with an excessive amount of explosives - there was barely anything identifiable after that explosion. All of our inquiries have been shot down."

"It's covert ops."

"We went to see the man. He was also rather unconcerned that Lin was just killed," Gibbs replied.

Morrow crossed his arms and looked at his agent expectantly. "So what're you thinking?"

"The major is officially DIA, loaned out to the State Department about seven years ago. Last year, she was pretty much assigned permanently to the State. Her LESs show she was paid exclusively by them," Gibbs replied. "Her boss on this one was Clayton Webb. She's directly worked two cases with him before, possibly more."

The director nodded. "I know the name. Continue."

"Webb was demoted right before she was assigned to the State Department for real. He had given JAG in Washington classified information about about the Angelshark sub. He was out in South America for a year; she works for the CIA. Suddenly now he's moved back into his original position and she disappears?"

The director nodded. "Sounds like the two are tied together."

"I don't believe in coincidences, sir."

"Do you think she is a turncoat?"

"No," Gibbs replied. "He's acknowledged on several occasions that she's not the one selling out."

"So why allow everyone else to think that?" Morrow asked.

"I don't know," Gibbs muttered. "Maybe he hopes that'll keep people looking down the wrong path. Or maybe he's the turncoat."

Morrow shook his head. "I don't think so."

Gibbs straightened. "Are you sure, sir?"

Morrow sighed. "You remember Cmdr. Rabb at the DC JAG?"

Gibbs nodded.

"You know Lt. Col. MacKenzie too, then."

Gibbs nodded. "Agent Todd saw her at Major Lin's funeral. Just her and Webb."

Morrow nodded. "The Colonel has made a name for herself from the work she did in Paraguay, posing as Mr. Webb's pregnant wife and tracking down the terrorist Sadik."

Gibbs frowned. "I'm not following, sir."

Morrow crossed his arms as he shifted on his feet. "The CIA has been having trouble with some rogue agents. We ran into Jack Canton. The Paraguay assignment was in part to test Mr. Webb."

Gibbs straightened. "How do you know all this, sir?"

"Sadik would make it tangentially NCIS business. I was kept updated."

Gibbs nodded, and let him continue.

"The Colonel was assigned to aid Webb because of her personal contact with him - first, she was a Marine and friend and wouldn't turn on him; second, putting her into the mix was insurance that Webb wouldn't try anything." The director watched as his agent's lips pressed into a thin line. "I didn't like it either, and it's a good thing her CO didn't find out.

"The long in the short of it is that Webb proved himself, enough to regain his position in the CIA as the Director of Operations. With the housecleaning they're doing, they needed to assure themselves of people they could trust.

"Now," Morrow replied, looking at Gibbs. "My question is, why bring in the Colonel? From your report, Major Lin wasn't doing anything then. Why not bring her in?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Unless SHE's a turncoat," Gibbs finished his thought, albeit with an unhappy tone.

Morrow nodded.

"I don't buy it, sir," Gibbs said quietly. "Neither does her CO."

Morrow raised an eyebrow.

---

"What've you got?" Gibbs asked Tony as he entered the bullpen.

"Not much. Most of it's the same stuff that we went over when she disappeared," Tony sighed, as frustrated as Gibbs was.

"Where's Cate?"

"Dunno." Tony shrugged and turned back to the papers. He ran a hand through his hair, and fidgeted.

Gibbs couldn't help a small smile crossing his face. The younger man was getting restless from sitting so long in the desk. "Tony, go check out those same locations we tromped over last time," Gibbs replied. "Look for anything that is different from the last time we checked."

Tony looked up, looking pleased. Yes, he was getting out of the house! "Thanks, boss!" He bolted out of his chair.

Just as he disappeared out of the bullpen, Cate came in, a serious expression on her face. "Gibbs, I think you should take a look at this."

Gibbs frowned and followed her over to the board she had been working on.

"Abby cleaned up the phone call, and in the background, there's a hoagie-eating contest going on." Gibbs gave her a look. "I'm serious. I swear."

"All right."

"Tony had told Abby once that he won tickets to a Philadelphia football game in a hoagie-eating contest, so she looked it up. The local radio station would sometimes hold hoagie-eating contests so that people could win tickets to the Philadelphia Eagles games."

"Yeah, they have pretty loyal fans," Gibbs chuckled. "Loyal to a fault."

"They were holding one that day, right at the time of the phone call. That puts her at Penn's Landing" Cate pointed at the spot on the map "10 minutes BEFORE she supposedly died in the explosion, down here." Cate moved her finger down the map. "You remember how crowded it was that day. We could barely move even after we pulled our weapons and starting yelling about being LEOs."

Gibbs crossed his arms, slowly figuring out what she was saying.

"There's more." Cate handed him a folder. "This is a file on Lin's second case with Webb from five years ago, involving a room temperature superconductor a Japanese scientist had developed. The CIA was going to smuggle the conductor and the scientist into the US."

"And?"

"One of the CIA agents sold out to the defunct DSD - Paul Candella. After that happened, Webb went it alone - or so the report goes. I tracked down all of the calls made during that case by both Webb and Lin."

She handed him a fat stack of papers. "The night the bust went down, Lin received a phone call from your JAG lawyer, Cmdr Rabb, on his cell phone; it only lasted about 15, 20 seconds."

"Rabb." Gibbs looked at her in disbelief. "What's he callin' her for?"

"I tracked the phone call." A slow, knowing smile crossed Cate's face. "It's not Rabb's voice on the line, it's Webb's." Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "He was telling 'Kate' to send somebody somewhere, but then there's a gunshot, and the call's cut off."

"So Webb's been turning to the major as a backup when he couldn't trust somebody else," Gibbs murmured.

"Yeah."

Gibbs looked up from the records, his brow furrowed as he stared at the map of Philadelphia. "So why, if he trusts Lin, did he bring Lt. Col. MacKenzie to Paraguay? Why not bring Major Lin."

"Well," Cate replied in understatement, "Webb has a little problem since Lin doesn't speak Spanish or Arabic or Farsi."

Gibbs mulled over the file for a moment, then said slowly, "Plus, Webb...was demoted after the Angelshark incident. He most likely didn't have the clout to dictate who he wanted on the assignment." He shook his head. "Still, if they're friends...." He left the conclusion unstated.

"Maybe he didn't want to ask her," Cate shrugged. "She'd just finished a major case and had taken some leave time."

"Did she do anything then?"

"No. She went to see her brother and his family." Cate handed him a small clipping, a small smile gracing her lips. "Print out of a clipping from the local Kentucky paper. Her sister-in-law had triplets. I saw 'em when we went out there to question them."

Gibbs read the blurb incredulously. "She spent her leave time - in Kentucky - playing nursemaid to a pregnant woman," he said incredulously. At Cate's grin and nod, Gibbs shook his head, his chuckle turning into an outright laugh at the amazing absurdity of the situation. "People are figuring this break in her record, and Webb's taking MacKenzie to Paraguay, are because he figured she was dirty," he replied, still almost amused by the entire thing. "Instead, she's babysitting."

"Yup," Cate replied, her smile getting wider.

"What else?"

"Oh." Cate pointed back to the folder. "It gets better. Back to the Candella case." Cate looked over the edge of the folder Gibbs was holding and flipped up the top couple of pages. "Look at these. Newspaper clippings, some notes."

Gibbs leafed through them, reading all the headlines about the explosion on board the Japanese freighter, and the deaths of those on board. "One of them's Webb," he murmured, then frowned in confusion. The man was quite obviously alive.

"Take a look at the autopsy report," Cate continued, pointing at it.

"According to the ME, his body was sufficiently burned by the explosion on board the freighter so as to be only identifiable through dental records...this report was then signed and delivered to the State Department THREE days later by...a Captain Kathryn Lin."

Cate just looked at him, a small, triumphant grin on her face as she nodded.

"Those bastards," Gibbs muttered. "This whole thing is a hoax!"

As for the "JAG" backstory: if I were going to bring Webb into the mix, I would have to use "JAG" episodes. I hope, however, that they were explained clearly enough for non-"JAG" fans (by way of the "NCIS" characters who wouldn't have known the backstories) and just a cute thing for "JAG" fans who remember the episodes.I will say that I like Webb, which is why he creeps in here. As for the Webb and Mac storyline, however - I haven't been watching "JAG" regularly anymore, although I once did - I'm not going to touch that storyline even with a hundred-foot pole. No comment.

Now that I've actually written out this part (saying anything any earlier would have given it away), I can say it - I got the name "Kate" from exactly that, the short phone call Webb makes on Rabb's phone near the end of "Webb of Lies." (At least, that's what I recall the name being.)

---

---

CIA HQ

"What does my office look like, the drive-through at the Dairy Queen?" Webb growled as Gibbs flung open the door and came in, Cate right on his heels.

Gibbs dropped the folder in front of him, an accusatory finger pointing down at the articles. "You lied to us. You faked her death, just like you faked yours five years ago," he hissed.

Webb rolled his eyes. "I didn't have to lie about anything," he replied. "I just didn't say she wasn't alive."

"So where is she now."

"Need to know."

"Has she called you?"

"Need to know."

"Is she safe?" Cate cut in.

"Need to know."

"Do you realize," Gibbs growled, "that right now the entire intelligence community thinks that she is a rogue agent and will most likely shoot her on sight? And all because she is supposedly dead with the money on some boat?"

"What's it to you?" Webb replied sourly. "It's not as though anyone's losing military benefits because her death most likely wouldn't count for an honorable discharge."

"Where. Is. She. NOW."

"You've gotten your answer, Gibbs," Webb retorted. "You stay out of this. She's still working an assignment for me."

Gibbs stared at him a moment, then straightened, a slow smirk crossing his face. "You have no idea where she is. You're as in the dark as we are."

"And if I am?"

"Then you wouldn't even be able to know if she went rogue or not," Gibbs replied. "For all you know, maybe she took the money and ran...maybe she's lying wounded in a ditch somewhere...maybe she's been captured and is being pressed for information...and that makes it our business."

---

NCIS HQ

Gibbs came into the lab where Tony was watching the computer as Abby worked. "Find anything?"

"Oh hey boss," Tony greeted and handed Gibbs a large manila envelope. "I found these in her safebox at the bank. They're photos of six military funerals in Arlington. They weren't there before."

"Different?"

"That's what the labels on the back say."

Gibbs furrowed his brow in confusion and quickly removed the photos. They were obviously taken from a distance, although most likely with some kind of zoom camera. The 8.5" by 11" panoramic photos took in a lot of area; each person on the photo was very small.

On the back of each was a typed label, naming the deceased being buried and the date. One Air Force pilot, one naval officer, and four Marines. He narrowed his eyes when he saw the last two. "These are two of the Marines who were being held by the rebels."

"Yeah. Apparently they already killed two of the nine they were holding." Tony's tone was one of frustration.

"Prints? Abs?"

"They're all Major Lin's," Abby replied, turning around. "Except this one." She hit a button on the keyboard, and a new picture popped up. "But there's barely enough there to identify it."

"How do you know it's not hers, then?"

"Well, she'd have to be holding the photo in a really weird way," Abby replied. "Plus, it's got a weird little hook right there" she pointed at it with her mouse "but none of Lin's prints have it."

"So somebody else has been handling these photos," Gibbs murmured.

"Oh, some psycho," Tony replied, holding up some large envelopes, the kind for holding 8.5" by 11". "These were in the safebox, too. It seems that somebody has been SENDING the photos to her."

"What?"

"No prints," Abby cut in. "I'm having a friend do a handwriting check, but it doesn't look like hers."

"Postmark?" Gibbs asked, squinting at the fading stamp.

"Same post office as she would use. It's the closest one to her apartment."

"There's excess postage on this," Gibbs commented, eyeing the envelopes. The one had two 37 cent stamps, although it didn't seem that heavy. "All 37 cent stamps. They most likely put extra postage on it and just dropped it into the blue post office boxes so they wouldn't be seen with them."

Tony nodded.

"What about the photos? Anything common in them?"

"They all pertain to Major Lin's assignments. The people being buried were all coworkers who died on assignment with her. Plus." Tony leaned over his boss' desk, looking at the photos upside down. "Hm. I saw it the first time." He flipped the photos so they were right-side up for him, and Gibbs came around his desk and stood behind him. "Ah, here we go. Look."

He pointed out a tiny figure, dressed in black pants and a long, black coat. His short, dark hair was covered by a hat and he stood some distance away from the others at the funeral. Tony pulled out the second photo. "He's here." He picked up the next photo. "And here." Next one. "And here." Next one. "And here." Next one. "And here." He looked up at Gibbs with a satisfied, expectant look.

"Who's the mystery man?"

"Not a clue."

"Can you blow this up, Abs?" Gibbs looked at her.

"I can try, but I don't think it'll be much help. It's too small."

"Lin's apartment?" Gibbs turned to Tony.

"I'm headed there now."

"Be careful."

"That's kind of touching, Gibbs, looking out for my welfare." Tony grinned, then dropped his smile at Gibb's look.

---

"Hey, Duck," Gibbs greeted as he came into the examining room. "Who's that?" he pointed at the body the ME was working on.

"Oh, this is Chief Petty Officer Mary Bourbon," Ducky replied. "A pretty thing, she was. It's for Agent Tomlinson's murder case."

Gibbs nodded, then chuckled. "We haven't given you enough work, eh, Duck?"

"No." Ducky chuckled softly as he worked. "Gerald is still sorting, but it has reached the unenviable point where we can't be sure if certain things are body parts or boat parts or explosive parts. It appears I'll never meet the famous Major Lin, or even a section of her."

Gibbs chuckled. "Yeah."

Ducky looked up from the body. "Jethro, go home, get some sleep. You can't spend all day in the office."

Gibbs nodded.

---

LIN'S WASHINGTON APARTMENT

Tony looked around the darkened apartment, searching through with the things with his gloved hands. Nothing. Nothing that wasn't there from before.

He was about to turn around when he felt the cold barrel of a gun against the base of his neck, and a voice hissed, "Who are you?"

Tony gulped. "Uh, NCIS," he replied vaguely.

The hammer cocked. "Name!"

"Tony DiNozzo," he blurted, keeping his hands in the air. "Look, I'm not who you think - "

Suddenly there was a sound of glass shattering, and whoever it was that had put the gun to his head pushed him forward to the ground. A few more shots were fired into the darkened apartment. Tony began to scramble up and try to find a way out when he felt a hand yanking his collar. "This way!"

---

GIBBS' HOME

Gibbs blew the sawdust from the boat's rib and ran his hand over the edge. Satisfied, he was about to move on to the next one when his cell phone rang. "Gibbs."

"Uh...hey boss," Tony's voice came over the line. "I've got some stuff I want you to see."

Gibbs furrowed his brow in confusion. "So bring it in."

"It's, um...it's pretty big, actually. I think you ought to come have a look."

Gibbs frowned. "DiNozzo, you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Just fine. I'm fine...just...come by, will ya?"

"Where?"

"The warehouse on Linden and Chestnut."

Gibbs was suspicious now. Something was up. The warehouse had been abandoned over three years ago when the company had closed, but he played along. "Sure. Give me a half hour."

"Oh, uh, boss, come alone, OK?" There was a small, indignant gasp on the other end, then a click to indicate Tony had hung up.

---

Some miles down the road, Gibbs looked to his passenger. "We're nearing the warehouse," he replied shortly as he continued to drive. "Get down under the seat."

Cate nodded and slid down the passenger's side, folding herself up under the dashboard until she couldn't be seen. The darker interior of the car and her own dark clothes made her blend in.

"I'm going to park with the passenger's side near the side of the road, in the dark. It should be less obvious if you open the door. Watch your step."

A couple of minutes later, Cate felt the car stop. She looked up briefly to see Gibbs looking down at her, his face drawn. He snapped a new magazine into this Sig Sauer. "Give me five minutes, then get out, and do it quietly."

Cate nodded, and then she heard the door open and then shut. She checked her watch.



Inside the warehouse, DiNozzo sighed. He was pretty sure now his hostage-taker wasn't going to shoot him, but the cold barrel of the sidearm stuck against his back wasn't very comforting. Well, it wasn't THAT cold anymore, having been so deeply burrowed in his back for the last hour. Where the heck was Gibbs?

He heard a tiny squeak of a door, and he hoped that the guy with the gun hadn't heard it; no such luck. The weapon dug deeper into his back.

Gibbs came in, alone. DiNozzo was surprised, then curious. Maybe Cate was lurking in the background because no one would expect her. Or maybe Gibbs wanted to protect Cate and hadn't called her to come with him - Gibbs came alone. He'd done stupid things like that before - leave them out of the loop to "protect" them.



Gibbs' eyes scanned the quiet building, taking in the stacks of abandoned crates in some corners. He didn't see Tony, and he wasn't about to shout out and give himself away - although the door squeak most likely already had.

He noticed a movement in the a far corner, and he settled himself in to point his weapon at it.

Tony came out, with what was only a hand holding a gun on him. It wasn't a clean enough shot for Gibbs to take; all he'd be doing was shooting the hostage-taker's hand off, and who knows what he - or she - would do to Tony in that time.

Tony gave him a sheepish smile. "Hey boss."

"Gibbs," came a harsh voice from behind his junior agent, "put the gun down." When Gibbs hesitated, the voice rose. "Now!"



Cate slowly pulled on the handle to the car door, opening it ever so slightly and slipping her lithe frame through the open door. She shut it just enough to get the lock to click but not loud enough to attract attention, and sneaked around the back, her weapon drawn. As she neared, she noticed Gibbs had conveniently left the warehouse door open just enough for her to get through, so she did just that.

In the middle of the room, she saw what looked like just Tony and Gibbs; it was obvious, though, that there was somebody behind Tony. And that somebody was using Tony as a shield so well she could only really see a dirty hand holding a sidearm to his head.

"Where's your backup?" Cate, as she crouched behind a pillar, noted the speaker was a woman.

Gibbs shrugged, his hands up in the air, his weapon having been slid across the floor to Tony - and the hostage-taker's - feet.

"Blackadder!" the woman shouted. "Get out here now!"

Cate flinched. Obviously the woman wanted her to come out...but who was 'Blackadder'?

"Agent Blackadder went back to the FBI," came Gibbs' voice, low and calm. "She left almost a year ago."

"Smart woman," snapped the hostage-taker. "Call your backup out here. Now."

"I came in here alone."

"Don't play games with me, Gibbs." The woman decided to change tack again. "GET OUT HERE, NOW! Before I pop LoverBoy, here!"

Cate stepped out, letting her weapon swing down her fingers and holding her hands up. "I'm here, I'm here."

"Slide your weapon over here and shut the door."

Cate obliged, all the while keeping a wary eye out for Tony.

When the door was shut, the smaller woman wrestled DiNozzo to a vacant crate and sat him down hard, continuing to hold the gun against his back, and thus revealing her face for the first time. Even with the grime, the oversized, torn clothes, and the generally messy appearance, it was obvious who she was.

Gibbs and Cate just stared.

"I told you I got a big break," Tony replied, slightly smug and more annoyed when the woman dug her weapon deeper into his back. Was all this manhandling necessary?

After a long, shocked pause, Gibbs finally commented to Major Lin, "You're a hard woman to find."

"Major, that doesn't look good," Cate said, looking down at what was a clumsily bandaged wound on her leg. "We need to get you to a hospital."

"Just a flesh wound," she replied, never taking her eyes off of them. "How did you find me?"

"It wasn't easy," Gibbs began.

"It wasn't supposed to be," she retorted, glaring at Gibbs. "So, Tweedledee, wanna tell me why Tweedledum here was snooping in my apartment?"

"What am I, yesterday's leftovers?" Cate muttered.

The major obviously had pretty good hearing, because she heard it and snapped, "You can be their manager. You'd make a pretty buck showcasing these two idiots." She shoved her weapon deeper into Tony's back. "Answers! Now!"

"We're investigating your, quote unquote, 'death,'" Cate replied.

"Well, I'm not dead, so you don't need to investigate anymore."

"We'd like to know why you were pretending you were," Gibbs replied with just a hint of sarcasm, crossing his arms.

"What do you think?"

"Easier to move around," Tony supplied from where he was sitting.

"One point for Einstein here," Lin retorted.

"Webb doesn't seem to know where you are," Gibbs tried, watching her closely.

"So?" At his look, she laughed harshly. "I'm not rogue."

"How do we know?"

"Just 'cause I don't call him doesn't mean I went rogue."

A small smile crossed Gibbs' face. He knew he had her. He'd use Webb's weak spot to get some answers - using Sarah MacKenzie to find out what Lin's phone call to Webb really meant. The major's weak spot was not wanting to be branded as a turncoat.

"It's a little...hinky," he replied, still eyeing her. "Especially when he ditched you for Col. MacKenzie on the trip to Paraguay."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't speak Farsi or Spanish."

"So? She's a JAG lawyer."

"I was busy changing diapers in Booniesville," she retorted. "Happy?"

"Look," Tony interjected. "I'm kinda cold, here. Can we go?"

"Not unless you want to die," Lin retorted. "You just stepped right into quicksand, coming to my apartment."

Tony straightened. "Whaddya mean?"

"Well, not only do they now know you're still on the case, they know I'm alive." She shrugged. "And now they know you know it, too."

---

NCIS HQ

In the light of Ducky's autopsy room, it was definite she was the Major Lin they had been searching for. When Ducky was treating the wound on her calf, he had pulled up her pants leg, and they'd seen her knees - scratched and bruised. Her face looked like she had run into a door, repeatedly, and her chin was scratched badly. The fingers on her left hand were still blistered from having fought with the warehouse heater back in New York, and there were still some burn marks on her wrists, most likely where she accidentally bumped her arms into the heating coil while trying to melt the handcuffs off.

She looked like she'd just come out of a war zone.

"Well, Major, it's a pleasure to finally meet you." Ducky smiled as he moved about the examining room, attending to the young Marine. "Although I expected you in a slightly...different...form."

The woman smiled in a rare gesture of softness that she seemed to reserve only for the elderly ME. "I'm on your tables anyhow," she said, making the ME chuckle as he pulled out the needle and thread.

"Yeah, except this body'll talk back," DiNozzo muttered.

"How bad's the wound?" Cate asked.

"Not bad," Ducky replied as he stitched up the Marine major. "But it was getting a little infected, and I found little bits of leaves and twigs caught in it." He shook a chastising finger at the young woman. "You shouldn't be running around the way you are."

"Don't have a choice."

"These aren't your clothes, are they?" Ducky asked as he cleaned up his tools.

"No."

The four watched as the major slowly sat up, looking weary and groggy, her hair still mussed and matted with dirt. The clothes in question were torn and muddy, and certainly too large for her. They waited for her to continue with her answer. When she didn't, Tony asked in a joking manner, "So how'd you get 'em? A la Michael Biehn in 'Terminator'?"

Cate couldn't help a small smile of amusement.

"No," the major replied curtly as she winced slightly, swinging her legs around the edge of the table. "I don't rob stores."

Tony's grin slowly faded. "You're wearing a dead man's clothes?" He shuddered.

"It's not like he needed them," she replied sarcastically. At four inquiring looks, she finally replied, "A la Arnold Schwarzenegger, OK?"

A thought suddenly occurred to Tony, and he backed away a little, his joking tone turning wary. "You...shot him for his clothes?"

She rolled her eyes and replied with an even heavier sarcasm evident in her voice, "I liked his Rolex." She slid off the table and turned to Ducky. The sarcasm was gone, but it was still a detached, albeit polite, tone. "Doctor, thank you very much for your help."

"You can't be walking around with that wound, Major," Ducky protested.

She only looked at him and went to get her jacket, for a brief moment weaving unsteadily, something noticed by the others.

"When's the last time you slept?" Cate asked softly.

"I can catch up when I'm dead," she replied shortly, slipping her arms back into her coat.

Gibbs looked at Ducky. It seemed that the Major had a soft spot for the grandfatherly ME, and at the moment it appeared only Ducky, if anyone, could get the Major to do anything.

The ME nodded, understanding what Gibbs was signaling, and approached the woman. "Major, just for tonight. We'll wake you in a few hours, but sleep here in the room. We'll lock all the doors, and no one should be coming in at this hour, anyhow."

For the first time, the weariness in her face showed, and without argument, she limped back to the table.

Gibbs turned her back to the Major and said out loud, "Get a blanket from storage, Cate." To Tony, he mouthed, "Get Webb."

---

"Did you find him?" Gibbs asked when Tony reappeared, now in the bullpen, and grabbed his coat.

"Yup. He's coming right now. I'm going to the door to let him in before anyone starts asking questions."

Gibbs nodded and continued to work. Next to him at her desk, Cate typed away.

A soft voice coughed slightly, and both agents looked up to see a serious-looking Ducky, who looked a little weary.

"Did you get any food into her?" Gibbs asked, finally looking up.

Ducky shook his head. "I gave her some crackers, the least stimulating food I could find. She vomited it all. I'm afraid our Major's weak stomach was made all the worse by the fact that she hasn't eaten for a few days. I think I'll try something later, though. I will have to go to the supermarket."

Cate got up out of her chair and grabbed her coat. "If you give me a list, I'll go get whatever it is you need."

Ducky shook his head. "Perhaps later, Caitlin. The poor child has finally fallen asleep, and I think that's more necessary than anything right now. Although, I think there is something you should see."

Gibbs got up without another word and strode around his desk. As he passed by Cate's, he gave her a silent look - "Aren't you coming?" She got up and hurried after the two men.



Outside the door to his examining room, Ducky stopped. "Look."

Gibbs and Cate peeked in through the small window, and Cate gasped. "She's gone. How'd she get - "

"She's in the corner," Gibbs interrupted.

Lin was sitting in a corner, her back to the walls, right across from the doorway. The blanket they had swiped and given to her was wrapped tightly around her, but one arm hung out from underneath it, and Cate could see her sidearm in her hand. She was obviously asleep, her head leaning against one wall, her mouth slightly open.

Cate turned to her boss and saw Ducky looking expectantly at him as well. Gibbs just pressed his lips together into a thin line.

"Hey, what're we all lookin' at?" DiNozzo announced in his usual, blustery manner as he came in, followed by the smaller CIA agent. He poked his head into the spot where Cate's had been. "Hey, she's gone."

"She's in the corner," Gibbs repeated again. He turned to Webb. "Made it."

Webb only shrugged. "Is that door locked?"

"She asked it to be," Ducky replied. He handed the man a key.

"I need two large cups of hot water, and a third empty cup," Webb replied without explanation. They looked puzzled, but Tony finally slipped away to get it. Ever so gently and quietly, the agent opened the door - almost silently - and slipped inside.

"Why's he got Gatorade and Ensure?" Cate asked.

The CIA agent had barely stepped in when Lin, startled out of her sleep, pointed her sidearm at him instinctively. She then looked confused when she saw him. The agent went over, and the two slipped into a hushed conversation.



Webb looked down at her, frowning. "You eat within the last 48 hours?"

"Yes. Some Saltines."

Webb crossed his arms. "And when was the last time before that?"

Her eyes shot daggers at him, then muttered, "Three days before."

"Let me guess," Webb said sarcastically. "You vomited when you ate." Her silence confirmed his statement. He pulled her to her feet and pushed her into one of the chairs in the examining room. "Sit. You know you're supposed to eat," he retorted.

The woman's eyes flashed. "Well, between being almost blown up and shot at, I was a little pressed for time."

"Then you MAKE it. You know you have a weak stomach and bad blood sugar." He saw her shift in her seat. "Your stomach's killing you, isn't it." He smirked knowingly when she didn't reply. "Did you go see the GI doctor I recommended?"

"You asked me that last time I was in Washington."

"You didn't go, did you."

"No time."

"You'll make time, or I'll call your brother."

"Is that a threat?" She paused, then smirked, "Peter doesn't push me to do anything. He'll worry, but he won't push."

"Yeah," Webb retorted smugly, "but your sister-in-law will. She'll tie you up and throw you into the trunk of her car if that's what it takes." When her silence acknowledged the truth of it, he smirked. "I knew I liked her."

"I'm not going," the major said stubbornly. "Waste of time."

"How is that a waste of time?!"

"Oh come on. All they're going to ask is, 'Does your job give you stress? Have you considered changing occupations?'" She rolled her eyes and leaned back in the chair, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her.

Webb just watched her steadily for a moment, then said quietly, "You should consider it."

She sat up with a frown, her brow furrowed suspiciously.

"Jeff would kill me if he found out what you're doing now," Webb commented softly.

"Well," she retorted, although without the requisite force, "he's not alive anymore to do that, now is he." She leaned back again, not looking at him, essentially ending the conversation.

Just then the door opened and in came DiNozzo. His eyes flickered from one to the other, and he twitched a little, getting the sense that he had just walked into a private conversation. He slowly set down two steaming cups of hot water and gave the extra empty cup to the agent. Webb took it without so much as a thanks and changed the subject. "They know you're alive, I guess."

Lin glared at DiNozzo. "Yeah."

"How?"

"I went back to my apartment," she replied shortly. "I thought maybe they might have been watching it, so I wanted to check to see."

Webb furrowed his brow as he twisted open one of the Gatorade containers. "Why would they watch your apartment?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I would. Wouldn't you?"

Webb just shrugged. "How did you end up here?"

Her venomous look came back. "NCIS apparently decided to continue their investigation."

"You can't blame Gibbs," Tony argued, his eyes beginning to flash with annoyance. "If you faked your death, you didn't do it all that well. Gibbs' gut was still churning."

"That's why they make Maalox," Lin retorted.

Webb gave DiNozzo a look, and the NCIS agent retreated, still staring somewhat angrily at the Major. "Why didn't you call?" Webb asked sharply as he poured some of the hot water into one of the other cups.

"Somebody's been tracing my cell calls."

Webb handed the hot water to the major. "Drink. Slowly." He took a container of the Gatorade, then poured some into the third, still empty, cup and poured some hot water into it and swished it around. "Start drinking this, not too much tonight. Make sure you mix some hot water with it so it settles more easily on your stomach; it's a little cold. The Ensure is for later. Should give you enough energy and keep you from throwing up. Everything it taken with hot water to make it warm."

She nodded.



"She OK?" Cate asked when DiNozzo came out of the examining room.

"Oh yeah, she is FINE," DiNozzo retorted. The other three looked a little surprised at the angry tone.

"Learn anything?" Gibbs asked.

"Only that she thinks you should take Maalox when your gut churns," DiNozzo snorted, obviously not happy with the major. "And that she is PARA-NOID. She's convinced people are watching her apartment and tracing her cell calls, even though she's supposed to be dead."

The four of them watched as the well dressed CIA agent stood and conversed with the Marine, as she forced herself to gulp down whatever was in the cup.

"Wilderness of mirrors," Cate murmured. "I...I'm going to go get some coffee."

The three men continued to watch the scene in the examining room for a couple minutes before Gibbs too turned and headed out.

"What's that, Ducky?" DiNozzo asked. "Wilderness of mirrors?"

"Wilderness of mirrors," Ducky replied. "It was coined by the great British poet T. S. Eliot in his poem 'Gerontion' and used often by James Angleton. It is used to describe the general world of intelligence - of the spy, if you will - but also the specific problem of paranoia displayed by some intelligence officers when they believe they have no one left to trust."

"A little like what Gibbs' old CO had? Colonel Ryan?" At Ducky's nod, Tony looked at him with an unreadable expression. "Do you think she's got the same thing? Schizophrenia?"

Ducky looked at the young woman inside. "Well, she may be paranoid, but the truth of the matter is that people were watching her apartment and tapping her cell phone. And she's not shown any signs of schizophrenia."

Tony acknowledged that. "Yeah."

"I don't know what's sorrier," Ducky murmured, watching the two in his examining room. "If the major would be schizophrenic or if there really would be that many people out to get her."

Tony watched as the ME's shoulders drooped ever so slightly as he walked away.

---

Cate held the cup of coffee in her two hands, trying to warm them. Beside her, Gibbs silently poured himself a cup. "I thought you didn't like this coffee," she said, her attempt at some humor coming out flat.

Gibbs shrugged, and looked at her steadily. "You all right?"

Cate fell silent, sipping her coffee for a moment. "Do you...do you think she might be...maybe she's suffering from some psychological disorder?" she asked quietly, still looking down into her cup. "These guys chasing her are all in her head?" Her unspoken question hung between them.

Gibbs' eyes searched her face, and he replied bluntly, "Like Colonel Ryan."

Cate sighed. She hadn't meant to open up THAT can of worms, but since Gibbs opened it, it was fair game now. "Yeah. Kind of."

Gibbs looked at her steadily for a moment before answering her initial question. "No. Not yet, anyhow."

---

Webb ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "So they know you're alive."

"Not all of them. And the explosion was pretty believable."

"I'm going to have to send somebody else in."

"No."

"They'll shoot you on sight. Whoever is working for Stockwell knows that you know about them."

"You told them you had a female who could speak Serbian," Lin retorted. "You change on them, and they'll know that you know I'm alive. Blows the whole works. Everything rides on the fact that they think you don't know what they're doing."

"So we find another female who speaks Serbian," Webb replied. At Lin's incredulous look, he shrugged. "We'll have to look hard." He paused a moment, then narrowed his eyes. His voice held a tone of discovery as he said, "Agent Todd."

"What?"

"Cate Todd. I looked up all the agents looking for you while you were missing. Todd speaks Serbian."

"Gibbs'll NEVER let you use her," Lin replied, almost amused by what she considered a ludicrous idea.

"You're going to have to sell it right," Webb replied, a trace smile crossing his face.

"It was your idea," Lin protested. When Webb only grinned, she rolled her eyes. "You really are cutting me loose right in the lion's den."

"Daniel survived." A small grin appeared on Webb's face.

"He had help," Lin retorted, but even she couldn't help at the small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "A lot of it. And very good help - way better than yours."

Webb crossed his arms, and then chuckled. "You're afraid to ask him."

"Yeah!" At his smirk, she shrugged, defensively and slightly embarrassedly. "Gibbs'll never let you get away with this."

"You're going to have to sell it just right," Webb repeated.

---

NEXT MORNING, NCIS HQ

"Hey Tony," Cate commented as she walked into the bullpen.

"Uh huh?"

"Who was that person that Lin was calling for - when she told Gibbs to call for his backup?"

Tony furrowed his brow at her. "What?"

"Black...Blackadder, or something." Cate shrugged. "Who's that?"

"Ah. Viv." Tony grinned. "Viv Blackadder. She was a beaut," he said, causing Cate to roll her eyes. "She was with us just a couple months, though. Went back to the FBI."

"FBI." Cate grinned. "That why Gibbs hates the Fibbies so much?"

"Nah. He never liked 'em."

"That why Blackadder left?" Cate asked.

"You're asking if Gibbs chased her away?" At Cate's look, Tony shook his head. "Nope."

"So, what?" Cate smirked. "You tried to hit on her too many times?"

"Ha! Funny, Cate." DiNozzo made a face. "No...I think she was most likely feeling kind of bad. She almost got Gibbs killed once," he said in a low voice. "Well, all of us, but Gibbs was in front."

"On purpose?" Cate asked, a little more brightly than usual.

"Nooo," DiNozzo replied, looking slightly horrified at the prospect of Viv trying to kill anyone intentionally, especially Gibbs.

"Too bad," Cate commented, just so she could see DiNozzo's face when he heard it. Sure enough, Tony looked even more horrified. She chuckled to herself. Too easy. Way too easy.

"What?" Gibbs asked, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

"Uh, nothing, boss," Tony replied. "Just discussing the case." He and Cate exchanged small smiles. Whew.

"So, what are we going to do with Lin now?" Cate asked. "We can't just keep her here."

"Well, we still don't know who was on that fishing boat, do we?" Gibbs replied, still working on his computer.

Cate nodded. "Nope."

"Cate." She looked up. "Blackadder accidentally blew our cover. That's how we were almost killed."

Cate and Tony exchanged looks.

---

Gibbs finally stopped pacing the tiny interrogation room where they had sequestered the major. "So who was blown up?" he asked, crossing his arms.

"If we figured right, hopefully three of the schmucks who sold me out."

"So you still didn't get the pickup," Cate said for confirmation.

Lin shook her head. "It became a double job - preparing for this new pickup and trying to figure out who's been undermining the whole thing in the meantime."

"'Became'?" Gibbs asked, referring to her use of the past tense.

"Well, Webb was playing dumb with Stockwell, pretending that I was dead and promising somebody else to do this rescheduled pickup. That's why I couldn't call him, because somebody was tracing my cell phone calls. The deal was that I was going to do the pickup again, under disguise. That was why I was 'killed off' the first time, just so Stockwell would think I was really dead." Lin ran a frustrated hand through her hair.

"So who's going to do the pickup, then?" Tony asked.

"Oh. I was thinking...one of you."

Tony laughed out loud, and Cate chuckled. Gibbs only stared at the Marine stoically; he had the sinking feeling that she was serious.

When the woman only raised a smug eyebrow, the other two fell silent. "You're serious," Cate replied.

"Well, yeah," she replied.

"Why can't you do it?" Gibbs asked shortly.

Lin gave him an incredulous look. "I just explained that."

"They know you're alive and that you know something. They'd most likely shoot you on sight," Tony mused, understanding dawning.

"Einstein's got two points now."

"Yeah, but this doesn't concern NCIS," Gibbs replied coldly. He ignored the indignant look of protest on Cate's face and Tony's surprised look at his tone. He knew that Lin was going to pull a stunt with his agents, and he wasn't about to let it happen.

The Major shrugged. "Well, besides our 'bad guys' and Webb, you're the only ones who know I'm alive."

"So why doesn't Webb just arrange somebody else to do the pickup?"

"After the boat was blown up, he told them he had arranged for another person to do the rescheduled pickup. They still think that he doesn't know what's going on - they still think that he thinks I'm dead. If he attempts to contact anyone else about doing the pickup, they'll think he knows something." She paused. "Did you catch all that?"

"Who did he say was going to do the pickup?" Gibbs asked in exasperation.

"I was chosen because I speak Serbian. He told them they would have another female who speaks Serbian for the new pickup."

Cate sat up a little straighter. "I speak Serb - "

"Don't you think Stockwell would've been suspicious in the first place if there was another Serbian-speaking female to do the pickup?" Gibbs interrupted Cate and eyed Lin suspiciously.

"Well, not after that explosion," she retorted. "But now, yes."

"There aren't any other officers who can fill this place," Gibbs said in a tone of utter disbelief.

"Not unless you want seven more Marines blown to hell by a delay," she replied caustically.

Tony and Cate were watching the exchange as it grew more heated. Tony was obviously nervous enough, seeing how infuriated Gibbs was. Cate was nervous as well. She plucked Tony's sleeve. "I think...I want some coffee. Don't you?" Tony looked at her puzzledly, then followed.

"You can't have her," Gibbs hissed the minute Cate and Tony were gone. He stepped closer to tower over the woman.

She was wholly unbothered; in fact, she looked almost amused as she smirked. "What makes you think I was talking about Agent Todd?"

"We're not in your military chain of command," Gibbs replied. "You can't make it an order for Cate to go."

"Oh," she said airily, a slow, ferally dangerous grin spreading on her face. "I wasn't going to resort to that."

"I'd like to see you try," Gibbs challenged. "I don't put my agents in the life of fire unnecessarily, particularly for another agency."

She shrugged and replied coolly, "There are worse things than being in the line of fire."

Gibbs only raised an eyebrow.

"Being fired from NCIS for fraternization," she clarified cheerily, as if talking about the weather. "Agent Todd unfortunately already has a mark on her record about why she had to quit the Secret Service." She shook her head in mocking sorrow. "Bad way to go."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Dissing my agents is not the way to curry my favor."

Lin ignored him and continued on. "I mean, she'll be alive, but leaving TWO agencies for getting involved with her colleagues?" She pursed her lips thoughtfully and shook her head. "Not good. Certainly not good."

She went on as if weaving a story on the spot. "Really, that whole case leading up to her Secret Service resignation...the naval commander, the Marine major who died.... I'm sure it's still puzzling to everyone as to why Agent Todd even allowed you to take Alpha Foxtrot 29000. You know, her Secret Service supervising agent indicated in his report that she defended you VEEEERY nicely on the phone." She bounced her eyebrows at him.

Gibbs' jaw worked slowly, his ire rising. He had a sinking feeling he knew where this was going.

"And then she lets you return with her to pick up the President from Los Angeles?" Lin laughed in mock amusement. "Everyone else was vetted by the Secret Service for years...except for you. With what just happened, why would she even let you on board?"

Lin pretended to think some more, as if thoroughly enjoying this storytelling. As a matter of fact, Gibbs couldn't be sure she wasn't. "Then, of course, there was the report from a Major Pritchard, who was carrying the football that day. Quite an interesting read, actually." She pretended to be think. "Something about you two in a bathroom" she raised her eyebrows in mock interest "and you two right after you shot the terrorist." She paused with an amused grin. "That's one interesting report. You should read it," she added brightly.

"Any tabloid would have a field day with that one." She leaned back in her chair and held up a hand in the air, as if motioning to an imaginary paper. "Can't you see the headlines? Of course, it would be something about NCIS keeping apart two people based on some...'silly'...regulations. Isn't it always? Stupid rules," she said in a sarcastic tone that obviously showed she thought the rules were right. "Heaven forbid that an agency try to keep supervisors from making rash decisions about junior agents they're dating. Of course, that's not how it's going to look to the public."

Suddenly she sat up, as if she just thought of something. "And what if your director sees this story?" she asked in mock horror. "Right on the front page of the Enquirer as he's waiting in the supermarket lane to buy a candy bar?"

Gibbs watched her steadily, his eyes icy. "There are facts, and then there are stories."

At that, she laughed mirthlessly. "And facts can be spun into stories."

---

Tony looked over at Cate as they sat in the cafeteria. "You all right?"

"Was I...like...that...?" Cate asked, somewhat fearfully and nervously. "I mean, y'know, all...."

"Mean, ungrateful sack of excr - "

"Yeah."

Tony shook his head. "Nah." He paused at her disbelieving look. "Well, not like THAT anyhow." At her doubtful look, he nodded, his voice getting a little more earnest. "You were protecting your turf, and pretty well, too. I've never seen Gibbs work that well with another agency yet." Tony wanted to reassure her. Cate had taken out the time to talk to him when they had gone out to the carrier and met Stan Burley, and he wanted to repay her kindness.

Plus, it wasn't like what he was saying wasn't true. Most women were either scared of Gibbs, when he didn't feel like being nice, which was most of the time, or overly infatuated with him - the redheads, when he decided he wanted to charming. Cate was one of the few who was neither - even after joining NCIS, she said stuff to Gibbs that neither Tony nor, he was sure, even Abby would say.

Tony nodded. Yeah, he was sure now. "I bet that's why he hired you, because you mark your territory and protect it."

Cate nodded, her heart warmed a little by Tony's words. She was almost afraid that she had been as cold and as much of a pain in the rear as Lin was now. As she mused over what Tony had said, she shook her head as she smiled. "You make me sound like a bulldog."

Tony grinned and then decided to yank her chain. "Is that your tattoo? A bulldog?" He thought it over a moment. "You're certainly not a bulldog girl."

Cate groaned audibly.

Tony snorted. "Are you kidding? He grinned. "You know the day you and Fornell came in to the office to talk about Trapp?" At Cate's nod, he chuckled. "After you allowed Gibbs to come along, and the two of you left, you should've seen Abby's face." He imitated the lab tech. "'Wow. Gibbs said PLEASE.'"

At that, the woman couldn't help but smile, and Tony grinned, happy to have put her back into a good mood. "Nah, don't worry about it. I think the only thing we'd have to worry about is where to hide the body if Gibbs kills Major Lin...and then, well, it wouldn't be that hard to sneak her into her coffin."

Cate just laughed.

---

"Of course, I suppose this wouldn't reflect AS badly on Agent Todd," Lin suddenly commented with mock disappointment. "She is, of course, the junior, not the supervising agent," she continued, looking pointedly at Gibbs. "For somebody who messed up pretty badly on the Secret Service detail," she slowed a little, smirking as her words sank in, "you sure picked her up REAL fast." The dry rasp in her voice gave double meaning to her words.

Gibbs only stared back, not even allowing himself to twitch. Few things angered him, but her insinuations were infuriating. The way she was putting it, it sounded like - well, he wasn't going to say. He knew that the woman wanted Cate to do the pickup and was attempting to blackmail him into not objecting. Yeah, he would allow Cate to do the assignment - over his dead body.

He wondered briefly whose idea this was - hers or Webb's. Or both.

"Such a shame," Lin sighed in mock disappointment. "Two brilliant careers...at the mercy of Internal Affairs...no, maybe Office of Public Relations. Is it OPR here or IA?" she asked in pretend puzzlement. "I don't remember."

She smirked. "But that's all it would take, isn't it? One anonymous comment sent into the those guys, and bam!" She paused to smile ferally. "You know what they say, Agent Gibbs...romance between agents never works." She paused again, then added saucily, "Especially with your boss."

The woman paused contemplatively. "Poor Agent DiNozzo...wonder who he'll be left to. Once you and Agent Todd are gone, he'll be reassigned, of course. I'm sure Director Morrow would do everything in his power to settle him with an appropriate boss, even if just out of respect for you," she said with mock solemness. "But Agent DiNozzo...he just doesn't seem to get along well with other supervising agents." She sighed theatrically. "It's such a shame what a...a simple rumor can do. Rumors are powerful, powerful things, Agent Gibbs."

Gibbs resisted the urge to reach out and shake her. He'd never laid a hand on a woman before, even in anger, and he certainly had no intention of doing it now. This was, though, the closest he'd ever come to it. "I'm surprised you'd stoop that low, Major."

She stopped spinning around in her chair to look at him in surprise, although Gibbs was pretty sure this was a show for his benefit, too. "You don't think...," she said in disbelief, then suddenly laughed mirthlessly. "Please, Agent Gibbs," she said with sarcastic amusement. "Just because Clay wears a three piece suit and I wear Marine greens doesn't mean we're that different."

Gibbs shook his head. He had to admit to being somewhat disappointed. He'd spent that much time and energy searching for...this? He'd gone to New York, wrangled with the FBI, seen FBI Special Agent Vivian Johnson nearly get a bullet in the head, nearly gotten himself and Cate blown up, nearly gotten Tony shot, for...this?

As if reading his mind, she smirked. "Webb told you to stop looking." She shrugged. "You wouldn't, and now you're going to have to deal with consequences."

"Speaking of consequences," Gibbs replied icily, "you don't seem more worried I'll turn you in for blackmail."

She looked at him a moment and just snorted amusedly. "In case you forgot" she paused to chuckle "a dead woman can't be sued for blackmail."

Gibbs just stared back at her, almost speechless with anger.

Her face turned into a smug sneer. "So, Agent Gibbs." She sat back in the chair, interlocking her fingers behind her head in a relaxed stance, her voice giving her next statement the definite leering tone she'd wanted. "I'm sure all the men want to know if Agent Todd is really...THAT...good." She raised a smug eyebrow in question.

Cate came up to the secured interrogation room, where Lin was being held until they could safely get her to a safehouse. She found the woman looking over the six photos of the funerals, the ones Tony had pulled from the bank. "Hey. I, uh, brought you something to eat."

Lin nodded in thanks as Cate set down the plate. She'd gone for soft, blander foods, having heard from Webb and Ducky not to give the Major things that would upset her stomach.

Cate sat down at the table across from her. "You - you want to tell me about those photos?"

Lin shrugged.

"You take 'em?"

"No." Lin sighed. "No, they were sent to me."

Cate's brow furrowed. "By whom?"

"I don't know. Hopefully somebody I blew up this time," Lin replied, looking down at the photos.

Cate sat back and watched her carefully. Her profiling instincts told her that Lin was now serious, but a little voice warned her that Lin was an undercover agent who most likely had several different faces. The major had sported a huge smirk on her face when she and Tony had returned from getting coffee. In addition, Gibbs was obviously infuriated; Tony had taken one look at their boss and looked like he was ready to run. From the look on Lin's face, she'd managed to get Gibbs that angry all by herself.

Cate had to admit she was curious about what the major had done. Tony refused to ask Gibbs, seeing how annoyed he was. Gibbs in turn had refused to answer any of her questions, just pinning her with a piercing, unreadable gaze before he left the room. It was at that point she noticed the major's smirk grow even wider.

At the same time, Cate had a gut feeling that right now, for the first time, she was seeing the real Kate Lin - the one that her brother and her sister-in-law had described.

"What happened?" Cate asked softly.

"These" she pulled out two of the pictures "are two of the nine Marines for whom the ransom was supposed to be." She pushed the photos over to Cate, keeping her eyes on the photo the entire time. "Corporal Jefferson has a baby girl," she said quietly. "She was born just the week before he died."

At that, Cate looked up immediately, her eyes flickering to the Marine's face. Although the woman kept staring at the photo, Cate could see her expression and was shocked to see the pain there. She had seemed so hard and uncompromising before, but now, it was different.

The woman suddenly seemed to sense that the NCIS agent was watching and quickly collected herself. She pointed out another photo. "This one was Cmdr. Michael Theron. He and I were assigned to bring a Chinese scientist who was defecting out of Beijing. I was undercover for five months prior." Cate watched her carefully as the Marine continued quietly. "It was going well, you know. I grew up speaking Mandarin at home, can speak it without an American accent. They'd gotten me a voice coach, and I developed a Beijing accent. For five months I passed as a native, and everything was going fine."

She snorted derisively. "I used the formal term for 'one' instead of the regional term," she said. "That was it. That's all it took. Blew the whole works. They dug deeper and figured it out." She stopped, and for a long time the two women just sat in silence.

For an intelligence agent, Cate thought to herself, the major was carrying a load of guilt, all built in seven or so years. She'd be crushed in just seven more.

The Marine shook her head, as if she still couldn't believe it. "Cmdr. Theron and I were almost to the embassy with the scientist when they found us. He was providing covering fire, and I had the scientist. We made it in; Theron didn't."

"I doubt that was the only thing," Cate immediately replied, trying to comfort her. She straightened up in shock when she saw a pair of dark eyes look up at her, the weariness evident. "I mean," she said slowly, "I - I don't think you screwing up a word got him killed."

Lin acknowledged her statement, but Cate knew that didn't change anything. After the Suzanne MacNeil case, she'd gone through that same self-blame. Still did. It wouldn't have mattered if anyone had said anything to her to make her feel better - she wouldn't have. She knew what it was like to make a mistake and have it cost lives, and really, whatever was said never really helped all that much.

"I had to bring home his body to his parents and his fiancee," the Marine finished quietly. "She was a Navy doctor. She told me that's how they met, at Bethseda. He, uh, had been hurt. He had been on an assignment." She fell silent for a moment, then finished quietly, "Like the one we had been on."

They sat in silence for several minutes, and Cate didn't say anything. What were you supposed to say to something like that? She finally leaned forward. "Major," she said gently. "Major, do you know who this man is?" She pointed out the mystery man in the pictures.

Lin looked at the photos. "Most likely just a mourner."

"He shows up in all six," Cate replied, keeping her eyes on the major as she spread the photos out in front of her. "Does he have something to do with the photos?"

"Well, he can't be taking them," Lin replied, looking up. Seeing Cate's look, she shrugged. "Maybe he's somebody working in the department. Without having pictures of him at some funeral not tied to me, I don't know. It's kind of a bad habit, I suppose, but some people attend the funerals of these people, pay their respects out of duty."

Cate sat back, watching her carefully. "This is really bothering you, this assignment."

"Two of the nine are already dead," Lin replied sharply, turning her intense gaze back on the other woman. "First they're tortured. Then they're shot in the back of the head, execution-style, and then chopped up and sent back in a crude wooden box. We've had Dover seal the caskets so the families don't see them. The rebels have been threatening to do this to a Marine every two weeks we don't get the bail money. You tell me why I shouldn't be bothered by this assignment."

Cate winced visibly.

---

"Well?" Webb asked, holding the cell phone to his ear. "Don't worry, it's secure. And NCIS can't trace it."

"I talked to both Gibbs and Todd," came Lin's voice over the line.

"What did you do?"

"Blackmailed Gibbs. You know how he is. He'd never let somebody else's reputation be tarnished, especially for him."

Webb chuckled. Gibbs wasn't that hard to figure out. "Nice. I don't think he'd agree any other way." He paused. "DID he agree?"

"I doubt it." There was a pause. "Hopefully he's been thrown off-kilter enough, though, to miss us getting Agent Todd and Director Morrow to agree. I've got a meeting with Morrow this afternoon, and I'm going to need you to talk to him, too."

"Will do. What about Todd?" Webb waited for an answer, but there was no response on the other end. "Kate, what did you say to Todd? She's the key, here."

There was a long silence. Webb pressed the phone more tightly to his ear, trying to keep out the noise of the streets. "Kate, are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm still here," came an unusually tiny voice.

"Will Todd do it?"

There was another long pause. "I think so."

Webb was about to hang up - he got what information he needed - but when the other agent at the other end made no move to do so, he stiffened. "Kate, are you all right? Where are you?"

"I'm fine. I'll go now." *click*

---

"Gibbs!" Cate protested as she followed him around the corner, coming into one of the back rooms in autopsy. "I can do it. I can."

"Well, you're not." Gibbs slammed down the papers he had to give to Ducky, making the older man jump. Gerald looked at Gibbs and then Cate, his mouth slightly open, his earphones to his CD player sitting in his hand, forgotten.

"Gibbs, there are seven Marines who will die if we don't do this pickup. They'll - "

"They'll die because somebody else killed them," Gibbs retorted. "We are not directly responsible."

Cate's mouth fell open in shocked protest. That didn't sound like Gibbs. "Gibbs! It's just a pickup!" she exclaimed as she continued to follow him.

Gibbs finally stopped what he was doing and turned around to stare her down. "NO." The emphasis shocked her for a moment, and she stopped and fell silent.

When he turned around and continued to head out, he saw Lin just sitting in a chair in a hidden corner of the autopsy room, looking at him smugly. She raised one eyebrow and smirked, then reminded in a low enough voice so only he could hear, "Yao yan."

The agent narrowed his eyes at her, knowing full well what she had said and meant. He stalked to her chair, and leaned down so he was nose to nose with her. "You say one thing," Gibbs replied in a deliberate, low voice, "and I will hunt you down and rip your throat out."

---

Cate opened the door and stepped into the director's office, about to head straight for Morrow's desk when she saw Gibbs already sitting in one of the chairs. She stopped, and when she resumed her trek across the carpet, her pace had slowed considerably. "You called for me, sir?" Cate asked as she approached.

"Have a seat, Agent Todd," Morrow replied. "I'll cut to the chase. I understand there is some disagreement between you and Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo concerning the Lin case."

"Yes." Cate nodded firmly. If she was going to lose her job at NCIS, she might as well go out with dignity this time. At least it was a case conflict with her boss, and not something personal, like dating against regulations.

"Well, explain."

Cate looked surprised for a moment. "I thought...Agent Gibbs had already told you," she replied, a little nonplussed.

"I want to hear what you have to say."

Cate paused a moment, gathering her thoughts. "I believe that the assignment Major Lin was on at the time of her supposed death to be one of the utmost importance. We, however accidentally, set back the progress she was making in finding who was sabotaging the pickup of the ransom money. I think that I can adequately fill the role of the agent who should be conducting the pickup, the role the major was intending to do herself until she was discovered to be...well...undead."

"This is a CIA matter."

"Sir, there are nine Marines, and two are already dead. This makes it a NCIS matter!"

"You do understand the risks in this undertaking, do you not." Morrow folded his hands and sat back in his chair.

"Major Lin has been very clear that there are still, she is guessing, at least two rogue agents who betrayed her but whom the CIA has not yet found and swept. Mr. Webb, reinstated deputy Director of Operations - Counter Intelligence Center, has confirmed her statement."

"You are not an intelligence officer, nor have you been military-trained," Morrow said doubtfully.

"No, I have not. But I have been a Secret Service agent and I speak Serbian, sir, a requirement that eliminates several agents from this job," Cate insisted. "In addition, right now I am only one of two women who know that Major Lin is alive, and Abby is certainly not cut out for this." She leaned forward earnestly. "Sir, to risk contacting another female agent outside of the small circle that knows about the Major's being alive is to risk botching this assignment! Again."

Morrow pursed his lips, tapping a pen against the notepad. Gibbs continued to sit there with an unreadable expression on his face.

Cate tried one last appeal. "Sir," she said quietly, her voice softening. "Sir, two families have already gotten coffins - sealed, by Dover, so the families won't see the fact that they've been chopped into pieces. There are seven more, and they are going to be tortured and killed one by one until something is done."

Gibbs sat up, his brow furrowing. "Lin didn't tell me this."

"Most likely because it wouldn't change your mind," Morrow said, saying out loud what all three were thinking. He knew that Gibbs would do the assignment without a moment's hesitation if he were the one the intelligence agents wanted. But he wasn't - they wanted Todd - and so Gibbs was being a bear. "Both Major Lin and Mr. Webb did tell me, though."

He then sat back in his seat and looked at the woman in question, eyeing her critically. He could tell that she was a little intimidated, but to her credit she held his gaze firmly. Morrow almost chuckled to himself. Jethro had been right when he said she had balls; he knew now why the silver-haired agent had hired her.

Morrow knew that Cate had left the Secret Service under less than ideal conditions. She had made mistakes there and at NCIS, but no more than those made by some of his other agents. She had proven her ability to profile and do it well, especially for somebody who had spent most of her time on a non-criminal detail. She was quite a catch, and Morrow was certainly worried that she would be killed on this assignment. That would be a loss for the agency.

It would be a big loss for Gibbs' team, too. DiNozzo was a good agent and neither Gibbs nor Morrow were about to let him go, but it was difficult to find somebody, especially a woman, who didn't complain every other week about the ex-cop's comments. They hadn't heard a peep out of Todd about DiNozzo since she came. If she were killed, Gibbs would have to start all over.

Morrow rubbed his hand over his face. "You can go." Both stood up. "I will make a decision by tonight. Jethro, could you stay a moment."

Cate looked between the director and her supervising agent, then nodded and left.

Morrow looked up at the older agent, who was standing in front of his desk. "I see no reason why I shouldn't allow her to do this. I have assurances that both Clayton Webb and Kathryn Lin are...on the up-and-up and clean. Even if we were to disregard the urgency of the case, this assignment would only help Agent Todd's standing in Washington." He stopped and looked at Gibbs expectantly.

Gibbs did not respond.

Morrow continued, "Even without Director Webb and Major Lin actually telling me so, I knew this assignment is only going to enhance Agent Todd's reputation within NCIS and among the Washington agencies in general. This job is only available to those with a extremely high security clearance, which is why Major Lin was slated to do the same assignment twice. There were very few people with her qualifications and security clearance. The major might irritate you, but she's good. And both she and Director Webb think Agent Todd can do this."

"Sir." Gibbs finally spoke. "Agent Todd already has Yankee White clearance. How much higher do you want hers to go?"

"Yankee White's different, you know that," Morrow replied. "She doesn't have your clearance, so obviously she can still move up. In addition - " the director shrugged " - Cate has the linguistic abilities."

"She's not trained for this kind of thing, sir. Major Lin herself has been working in the field for several years and she considers this assignment very dangerous. I don't think we should just give in to Major Lin, even if Cate is qualified."

Morrow looked up at the man. They stared at each other in silence for several minutes. "Is there something I should know about, Jethro?" he hinted.

Gibbs stared back unwaveringly. "No sir."

The director frowned. "You know you can tell me. Did Major Lin or Director Webb say something to you? Threaten you?"

Well YEEEEAAAH, but it wasn't as though he could tell Morrow what Lin had said she'd do. "No, sir," Gibbs replied.

Morrow sighed. "Nothing is wrong?" he asked for confirmation.

Gibbs paused for a moment, then finally said, "I just prefer my agents transporting body bags, sir, not being transported in them."

Morrow sighed. "Look. I don't like it either, but Director Webb, Major Lin, and Agent Todd have presented incontrovertible arguments."

"It's still your call, sir."

"And I am unfortunately inclined to say yes to the three of them," he replied. When he didn't get a response from the agent, he sighed. "I'll give you my decision tonight."

x x x x x
yao yan: rumor (Mandarin)
x x x x x

"Here's the plan," Webb continued to Cate. "Tonight we meet at the safehouse. I'll have my people drive you out, and we'll meet there. Dinner, then right after that, we drive to the safehouse in Philadelphia. Pickup is in the same place as it was last time, this time at the boathouse."

"Who's driving you?" Gibbs asked shortly.

Webb, Cate, and Tony, who was standing silently in the background, looked up to see the NCIS agent in the doorway. "You're not going," Webb said categorically to Gibbs, easily reading what the NCIS agent had in mind.

"That's not what I asked," Gibbs replied, turning his 'just try me' gaze on the CIA agent as he came in. "I asked who was driving."

"And I'm not answering your question," Webb retorted. "I'm telling you that you and Agent DiNozzo are staying in Washington. It's not like either of you are trained for this, and you're not required for the job. I'm not going to substitute either of you as drivers and Kate won't, either."

"You take one of my agents," Gibbs replied, his tone brokering no argument, "you take me." He moved so he was toe to toe with the shorter CIA agent, daring the man to say otherwise.

"And me." Tony refused to be left behind.

"When did this turn into a fraternity road trip?" Webb retorted. "No one is going except Agent Todd."

"That is not up for debate, Mr. Webb," Gibbs replied, his voice getting lower and lower as he dared the other man to continue. "I asked, who is driving?"

"Clay is going one hour before us. One passenger, one driver," Lin replied as she entered, then thunked a box down. Inside were Kevlar vests. "Agent Todd and I will be following one hour later, one driver, two passengers."

"What, you think I'm going to let one of my agents ride alone with you?".

"So shoot me."

"I am seriously considering it," Gibbs replied, his voice lowering even more, his eyes ice blue. "Tony, you go with Cate. I'm going in the first car out."

Tony nodded nervously. He knew what Gibbs was going to do - go on ahead and make sure everything checked out. He saw Webb look at the major, and her subsequent expression of exasperation indicated that the man had managed to communicate to her everything that had just happened without so much as saying a word. Tony, to calm himself, walked over and popped open the box Lin had just brought in. He frowned. "There are only two vests in here."

"Yup." Lin was checking over the list.

Gibbs looked from Lin to Webb. The original plan was three passengers, with Cate doing the pickup, so why was there only two...? "She's not going." When they looked up, he stared back at them. "She doesn't wear a vest, she doesn't go."

Webb gave him an exasperated look. "She only has to pick up the money and check it. They're not going to shoot the messenger."

"Whatever happened to 'this is pretty dangerous'?" Tony exclaimed. "They tried to blow up your previous messenger."

"Cate can't wear a vest," Lin replied as she looked up from her reading, "because they're going to search her. Thorough pat-down, at least. You have a vest, they'll feel it in a second. Then they'll think that you're doing more than just being a dumb messenger girl, and they shoot you. They've got good enough guns to make the Kevlar useless." She shrugged. "I didn't wear a vest the one time I did this."

"The pickup didn't even go down," Tony retorted.

Gibbs yanked the folder the Major was reading from her hand and tossed it aside. "I don't care whether you INVENTED the vest," he said in a slow, dangerous tone, his voice barely above an angry whisper as he stood toe-to-toe with her. "Cate is not going."

Lin just smirked. "Why don't we let her decide?" She leaned over and looked at Cate. "Agent Todd?"

Cate's eyes darted between her boss and the Major. "I'll do it," she said quietly, her voice much tinier than she'd hoped.

---

SAFEHOUSE, WASHINGTON, DC

The front door to the Washington safehouse banged open, and in walked Webb, toting a large bag. Behind him came a man dressed in a plain jacket and pants. "Dinner."

The six of them gathered around the table, alternately dishing out food and handing out plates and napkins.

"Whaddya get?" Lin asked, finally sitting down.

"Spring Garden's," Webb replied shortly.

"No MSG?" Lin asked.

"No."

"Aw," Tony groaned. "That's the best part!" He got a look from Lin and Cate. "What?"

"I thought you were trying to eat healthy, Tony," Cate kidded, although her nervousness showed.

"MSG makes me sick to my stomach," Lin replied as she handed out bottles of water. At a few odd looks, she added, "Literally. You want me throwing up all over the place and botching the assignment?"

---

Cate fidgeted in her seat on the plush car. Up in the front riding shotgun was Tony, who was twitching. She wondered if he had to go the bathroom, like she did.

Dinner had been much spicier and saltier than she'd expected, and she had been guzzling water all night, long after the meal was over. Tony, too, had been drinking water like it was his job. No one else seemed to have been affected, though; just her and Tony. Now she was paying the price; neither she nor Tony had had the chance to use the restroom before going.

Gibbs and Webb had left an hour earlier, right on schedule. She had noticed Webb and Lin having a short discussion right before the two men had shipped out, with Gibbs replacing the initial driver, just to keep the count down to what it had been originally. She wondered briefly if anyone would notice that there were three passengers and a driver in her car, as opposed to what was just supposed to be two passengers and a driver.

Next to her, Lin looked sidelong glance at her and said to the driver, "Stop here."

Cate shrugged. "What, I'm fine."

"This is the last clump of trees for miles. If you want privacy, you'd better go now. I'm going to stretch my legs."

Satisfied, Cate opened the door and headed out, Tony already several feet in front of her. Lin was moving slowly inside the car, most likely because of the wound on her leg.

Suddenly there was a loud bump. The door to the backseat opened, and Lin stepped out painfully, taking her weapon and pulling the silencer off it as she shut the door to the backseat and moved around to the driver's side, where she reached down and pushed the button to open the trunk.

Cate stared in shock at the driver of the car, who was now slumped over the seat, dead. DiNozzo looked just as concerned and horrified.

Lin opened the front door. "We don't have all day," she replied, as if she were Gibbs merely waiting for a case report.

Cate spoke first. "You just SHOT him!" she hissed, her voice a mixture of anger and shock.

"He was a mole," she said, as if that explained everything. She pulled out clothes from the back trunk - identical to what the driver had been wearing - and tossed them to Tony. "I'll need some help moving the body to the trunk. Then you put these on and drive."

DiNozzo and Cate shared nervous looks.

---

SAFEHOUSE, PHILADELPHIA

Gibbs paused at the doorway to the living room. They had all arrived safely to the Philadelphia safehouse, he and Webb an hour earlier than his agents and the major. Both Cate and Tony hadn't said more than a weary "hello" to him and ignored Webb and the major completely. He figured something had happened to them on the way to Philadelphia, but no one had been talking at that point.

If Gibbs hadn't been looking more closely into that living room, he would have missed the bit of hair resting on the top of the back of the chair. He stepped quietly into the room, and as he approached, he saw Cate sitting curled up in the high-backed chair. She didn't say anything when he came in, but she wasn't startled when he spoke.

"You all right?" Gibbs asked quietly as he crossed around so he was standing next to her, looking down concernedly.

There was a moment of silence, and Cate nodded, still not moving. Gibbs sat down in the chair across the small coffee table from her and waited patiently.

She got a stubborn look on her face, and Gibbs guessed she didn't want to say anything to him, but he was going to wait her out. Finally she sighed and gave up, and then said softly, "The major...we...we stopped along the way...to go to the bathroom," she said quietly. "Just by the side of the road. The major...she must've planned it."

Cate shifted restlessly and drew her knees up to her chest. "After Tony and I got out of the car, she...she just...she shot the driver. Just bang, like that, then came out talking like she'd just ordered a meal at a restaurant or something." Cate dropped her forehead to her knees, then looked back up at the fire, hugging her legs to her chest.

Gibbs dropped his eyes to the floor for an instant, his lips pressed in a thin line. He looked back up at Cate's profile, her face illuminated only by the flickering from the fireplace. He had noticed that Cate hadn't used "Lin," which was how they were all referring to the Marine major, although Cate had begun to use it as a familiar nickname.

He couldn't figure out why he was defending the Major, but it came out of his mouth anyhow. "She's a Company woman, Cate. The guy sold out the project, so he had to go. She'll do anything she has to do to finish the assignment." He paused. "Lin's focused."

Cate chuckled mirthlessly as she continued to stare into the flames. "Yeah, I can see that," she replied bitterly, and plunged on seemingly without thinking. "Your kind of woman, I bet. Focused. No frills. I bet if she were a redhead that would cinch it." The angry disappointment and hurt in her voice shone through briefly, and she suddenly seemed to realize what she'd just said. She looked up at him finally with a horrified expression on her face. "Gibbs, I - " she began to apologize.

Gibbs shook his head, cutting her off, although he had to admit he was somewhat taken aback at the venom in his agent's voice. When he looked at her again, she was staring back at the fire, seemingly lost in it.

The incident had obviously colored Cate's initial opinion of the Major to a huge extent, and Gibbs was a little sorry for that. He knew that the Major had it in her to just shoot and kill somebody point-blank. She was focused, for sure, Cate was right about that. That was why Lin was a Company woman and not working some other detail.

Gibbs thought back to the time he had confronted Cate about Major Kerry's death; he'd been cruel in order to find out how she would react when confronted with that kind of news. Her reaction had told him first that she was innocent, but also that she had genuinely cared for the Marine. He doubted something like that would have worked on Major Lin. To be quite honest, few women scared him the way Lin had. He wasn't afraid of most women; he had respect for a smaller number of them; but women like Lin...could really be a terror.

"No," he finally said quietly, seemingly more to reassure himself than to reply to Cate. "I like women with a little more heart."

---

There was a soft knock at the door, and Tony looked up as Gibbs came in. "Hey boss."

Gibbs moved around the still untouched bed and sat down on it, looking at Tony carefully as the younger man sat on the desk chair, spinning himself from side to side. "Cate told me what happened."

Tony stopped and sighed. "Yeah." He looked up at his boss. "Is she OK? She, uh, she seemed kinda shaken up."

Gibbs only nodded, watching his junior agent carefully. It appeared that Cate wasn't the only one slightly off kilter after what happened. "She'll be fine." He fell silent, continuing to watch his agent.

Tony could feel his boss's eyes on him, and he shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. "It was a little creepy, sittin' right there in the driver's seat where a guy had just died," he tried to joke, albeit a little weakly. "Even weirder than when Lin held a gun to me and made me drive from her apartment to that warehouse - y'know, that time I found her."

Gibbs nodded.

The two men sat in silence for awhile, and then Tony said in a quiet voice, "I'm just glad I don't have to work in Langley."

Gibbs nodded and got to his feet. "Go to sleep, Tony."

Tony nodded, then cheekily grinned. "Yes, Dad."

Gibbs rolled his eyes as he headed out.

---

Cate quietly crept down the stairs, taking care with each step, particularly as she passed Gibbs' room. She was positive that he had purposely picked his room so that it was right next to the stairwell, just so he could most likely watch and listen.

She made it down the stairs and headed for the kitchen, padding quietly across the floor. She stopped short in the doorway but didn't move away fast enough before the major turned around and saw her. Great. Now she couldn't just leave.

Cate just looked at her and then went into the kitchen as nonchalantly as she could. She wasn't sure she could spend time around a woman like that. It had seriously made her reconsider everything she'd learned about the major, including the time she'd spent with the woman's brother and her sister-in-law, and that one time where she and Lin had discussed the photos. Everything just didn't seem...right.

The major watched her warily as she came in, then offered her a mug. "Want some?"

Cate was surprised at the unusually soft tone, and against her will, she found herself reaching out for the mug.

"Hot chocolate." Cate sniffed at it, a little suspiciously, and looked up to see an amused Marine watching her. "I didn't spike it, if that's what you're wondering."

Cate raised an eyebrow. "You're admitting you spiked our food."

"I didn't SPIKE it, spike it," Lin replied, a small smile of amusement on her face. "Webb and I just put more spices and salt in it."

"To make us drink all that water," Cate replied.

"Uh huh." The unspoken reason and consequence hung between them. "There was no reason for anybody to have to see that."

Suddenly it clicked. The discussion Lin and Webb had must have been over who would have to sweep the rogue driver. Because Gibbs hadn't fallen for their food-and-water trick and thus couldn't be lured out of Webb's car, it had fallen to Lin to do the job. "Did you have to shoot him?" Cate suddenly blurted. "Ask for another driver? Bring him in on charges?" Her frustrated questions suddenly poured out.

"Of course," she replied agreeably. "Right after I delivered you both in body bags to Agent Gibbs." Then she added as an afterthought, "If I had been alive to do it."

"Just wounded him?"

Lin turned to make herself another mug. "You don't shoot to wound. Too dangerous. Go for the head, it keeps from going to appeals."

Cate looked down, sipping a little at the hot, milky chocolate. Lin hadn't made it with water, and it tasted much better this way. It soothed her nerves a little...just a little. She shivered unconsciously as her mind drifted back to what had happened just a few hours earlier...just a thud, and the unsuspecting driver was dead. Lin hadn't hesitated in the slightest.

Suddenly the terrorist's smirking face appeared in Cate's mind, and she closed her eyes, trying to block out his image. It still bothered Cate. She didn't know why she had hesitated. She didn't WANT to know why. If Lin had been in her situation, would any of that had even happened? Cate had hesitated and then Gerald got shot, Gibbs got shot, the terrorist escaped. Maybe Lin was what she needed to be on this job. Emotionless.

The thought made Cate shiver. She wasn't one to let that stop her, though, and she was about to open her mouth and ask when Lin cut in.

"It's not easy to turn your emotions off."

Cate looked up with a disbelieving look and wondered if all her thoughts were being tattooed right onto her forehead as she thought them. "You speaking from experience?"

The major just watched her steadily, ignoring her question. "Emotions can't be turned on and off at will, Cate," she said again, quietly, using the agent's first name for the first time.

"You do it."

"Emotions can't be turned on and off at will," the Marine repeated. "When you learn to turn them off, they never turn back on again in quite the way they were before, even if you want them to." She paused for a moment, and her voice got even quieter. "It's not the same."

Cate blinked, then looked at the major carefully in puzzlement.



Gibbs lay on his back in his bed, wondering why he'd just awakened. Something wasn't right.

He remembered vaguely hearing Cate's footsteps - too light for DiNozzo's - heading across the hall. He figured she was going to the head, but either she hadn't actually gone there or was stuck inside.

Gibbs picked up his weapon from the side of his bed and crept out of his room, careful not to wake Tony in the next room down. Not that he wanted to see Tony woken up...that once at Gitmo was way more than enough.

Gibbs put the thought aside and slipped down the stairs quietly. He heard two female voices in the kitchen and frowned. He crept around so that his back was to the wall of the kitchen; unless they came into the hall, they wouldn't see him.

Cate should be sleeping. She had an assignment that evening - technically, early morning.



"...bothering you?" the major asked mildly.

Gibbs watched as his agent just sat, then slowly straightened. "No."

The major obviously wasn't buying a second of it. "You're asking me about shooting people," the major replied, a slight retort in her voice. "I'd say it was something."

There was a long silence, and then Cate's voice came, sounding disturbingly tiny. "Do you...do you ever get nightmares?"

The major didn't look surprised, but she leaned against the sink counter, studying the NCIS agent carefully, as if trying to figure her out. "Who doesn't?"

Cate was a little surprised at the response. She would have figured that somebody like Lin would never get nightmares; after all, she herself never had for a long time. Cate snorted. "Well, me, for awhile." The major just waited expectantly. "It was...it was one of our cases," Cate said quietly, then paused. She obviously didn't want to talk about it. "I haven't told anyone. Not even my colleagues."

The other woman cocked her head to the side, looking at the NCIS agent. "Might be easier telling it to a total stranger, somebody removed from whatever happened."

Cate watched the woman carefully, debating whether or not she should say anything. "I...was in a hostage situation," she said quietly. "At one point the hostage-taker was so close to me I could feel the bulletproof vest under his shirt. I had...one of Ducky's medical knives, I could've killed him and I hesitated."

When the major didn't respond, Cate waited a moment, then shrugged expectantly.

The major shrugged back. "So?"

Cate sat up indignantly, and Gibbs was amused to hear the spit and fire back in her voice, hushed as it was so as not to awaken the others. "'So'? That's all you can say? What could I have done, where did I screw up? I'm not telling you these things to amuse you, I'm trying to ask for advice, here."

"I wasn't there. I can't tell you what you should've done." It was so detached. Cold. Gibbs saw Cate ran a frustrated hand through her hair and then heard the major continue, almost in amused merriment, "And, well, I don't know who told you you could kill somebody wearing a Kevlar with a...a dissecting knife."

Cate frowned and decided she was ready to go. She had had enough of this and was about to slide off the kitchen stool when the major spoke again, this time softly and more gently. "What about the dreams?"

"I...." Cate was sure she DIDN'T wanted to tell the major now, especially after that last comment about the scalpel, but she couldn't help it. So she plunged on. "Sometimes...I'll be freezing. He put me in one of the body coolers in the autopsy room. Sometimes...I'll" she shuddered "feel him...searching me." She paused for a moment and looked at the major, who was watching her steadily.

That wasn't the dream that was bothering her. Sure, they were nightmares, but they were never the worst one.

Cate tried to quash the thought. She decided then and there not to tell the Marine about the last one, but she couldn't stop the images from coming up. She didn't even know where those pictures in her head came from; it wasn't as though she'd actually witnessed anything. She had been locked up in that cooler; she hadn't seen anything, although she did hear about it later. The dream was like any dream - a jumble of events, not necessarily in order, illogical actions, everything.



She is in the elevator, headed down for the autopsy room with the box of evidence from Qasam's room. The doors open and she looks into autopsy. Instead of the usual clinical white and very pale blue, it is swathed in red. She sees Abby, crumpled over in the corner; Gerald is lying on the floor, shot in the shoulder and in incredible pain; Ducky is being pushed into one of the cooler trays; Tony is sprawled out on the floor, a bullet to the back.

She hasn't noticed Gibbs or the terrorist until after seeing the others; her eyes drift back into the middle of the room, and she suddenly sees Gibbs and the terrorist standing just a few feet from each other, two tables separating them. For a brief instant Gibbs is standing, then turns to look at her...a shot...and then he isn't there anymore.

Cate flinches. The box of evidence is no longer in her hands, but there is an unused dissecting knife, the one that she had been thinking of using against the terrorist but hadn't. Her hands are covered with blood - instinctively she thinks it's her colleagues'. Without thinking, she rushes into autopsy to the sink, trying to wash her hands off, but no matter how she tries, it doesn't come off....



"He's not your problem."

Cate looked up in surprise. She hadn't realized she was speaking out loud until the major responded. It took Cate a moment to realize she'd just told the woman the whole dream, and then another moment to process what the major had said. At that point, she turned incredulously to the woman. "How is he not the problem?!"

The major, sensing her confusion, shook her head at Cate. "Your nightmare isn't about that guy in particular. You don't actually see his face or think about him. Your focus is on your colleagues. Your nightmare is about not being able to protect them and blaming yourself for what happens to them. That won't ever go away. This first guy's dead, the next time it'll be another crazy maniac, doing other stuff to your coworkers. That's what I mean when I say HE's not actually your problem."

Cate groaned aloud. She had read Gibbs and Tony's notes from their interview with Col. MacKenzie, and the JAG lawyer had mentioned that the major had given her a lot of analytical psychobabble; from what Cate could gather, she was getting the same sort of thing. It was still a different feeling, though, to say it out loud to somebody else. She felt a little better. Just a little. She eyed the major and then muttered, "Well, thank you, Dr. Freud."

Gibbs noted that the major at least had the normality to smile amusedly at the comment. She shook her head and continued, "Secret Service trained you to protect lives, not take them in hand-to-hand combat." The major shrugged, then snorted. "Particularly with a dissecting knife."

Cate scowled. The woman was obviously much amused by the knife thing.

The NCIS agent looked into her mug, a few tiny marshmallows that hadn't melted still bobbing up and down. "How do you do it?" she asked softly. "Get to the point where you don't hesitate, just...like you did tonight." The major gave her a plainly exasperated look; Cate knew that Lin didn't want to tell her, but the NCIS agent was determined to know, especially if it would keep Gibbs and Tony, and Ducky and Abby and Gerald alive. "I want to know," she insisted.

"You don't need to do that in your job," the major replied shortly. "No matter what other people say."

"How?" Cate insisted.

"You know our driver? Never met him before in my life. You think he even had any idea what was going to happen tonight? You want to learn that?" Lin asked sharply.

Cate fell silent.

"Everyone makes mistakes, Agent Todd. Somebody is always going to jump on your case - you're too soft the first time around, need to be harder. Second time, you're too hard, need to be softer. You'll never please everyone. You're doing fine. I've seen your records. There's no need for you to learn whatever it is...you think...you need to learn." She waved a hand impatiently. "You and that JAG lawyer," she snorted. "She's afraid she's turning into me and here you are wanting to."

Cate's eyes flickered from her mug to the major and back down.

The major thought for a moment. "I don't think your colleagues would find it worth it, either."

"Don't tell me they wouldn't find being ALIVE worth it," Cate replied, a retort growing in her tone.

Lin watched her silently for several long minutes. The clock hanging over the sink generally was barely noticeable, but its ticking seemed thunderous to Cate as she waited.

Then the Major reached into her pocket, casually flipping out a slim, wallet-like pocketbook and holding it open for Cate to see. Inside was a small photo of Lin and her late fiance. "See her?" the major said conversationally, indicating the younger version of herself in the photo. She looked at it briefly and then continued, almost like a teacher reading a story to a kindergarten class. "I've got her hair, her eyes, her face...her name." She paused a moment to give a nonchalant shrug. "I killed her about seven years ago."

Cate's fingers folded around her mug as she watched the major tilt her head, looking at the photo. "If her fiance were ever to come back?" The major trailed off and fell silent, then drifted into an almost a faraway tone. "He wouldn't know me from the next woman on the street."

"That's not true," Cate whispered.

"Isn't it?" Lin asked questioningly, snapping out of whatever thought she was in. When Cate didn't respond, she continued, "Person learns to kill the way I do, and you don't think they'd take a turn for the worse?"

Cate looked down at her mug, not wanting to agree but not finding much reason not to. Despite everything, she found herself liking the Marine. "It's not too late," she said softly. "There's plenty of time for you start over."

Lin shook her head as she put the wallet away. "That's how the cards have fallen."

"Players can make the cards do what they want," Cate replied.

"You're only as good as the hand you're dealt," Lin returned. When Cate didn't reply, she continued, "Play long enough, that perfect hand comes along." She stopped.

Cate looked up, waiting for her to go on. When she didn't, the NCIS agent replied, "And then?"

The Marine shook her head and smiled a little, staring at the countertop. "Then, though, you can't hesitate. You have to bet big. Don't...don't put things off. This life isn't that long."

"To be born is to die," Cate murmured, and the major just smiled in agreement. The NCIS agent looked up at her. "You waited?" she asked.

"I hesitated," she replied. "By the time I realized how much I should have bet, it was a dead man's hand."

Cate bit her lip. She knew the major meant it literally - she was talking about Quinn. "And now?" she asked softly, after a moment of silence.

The major sat thoughtfully for a minute, obviously a little surprised at the question. "I don't know." She chuckled a moment. "I don't even think I'm playing cards anymore. Maybe...Scrabble or something." Even Cate couldn't help a small smile at that.

There was a long silence, and then the major said quietly, "I don't think I know HOW to play cards anymore." At that, Cate looked up at the woman and was contradict her when the Marine shook her head. "You can't save everyone, Agent Todd."

Cate pursed her lips, not wanting to concede the point.

"You can't think that learning to be...like this doesn't kill somebody. It doesn't matter if it's me, or Webb, or another operative. It's not worth it, Cate. Especially when you don't need it for your job."

Cate nodded, looking down at her mug, twirling the spoon in it.

After a moment of silence, the Marine said softly, almost to herself, "And as long as we stay alive to do another assignment, no one else has to."

Cate looked up immediately. The major was staring past Cate into space, lost in thought, a small, contemplative smile on her face. The two women sat in comfortable silence for several minutes, and then a small chuckle escaped the Marine. Cate shrugged. "What?" Lin's expression had changed into one of utter amusement.

"I think Agent Gibbs - and Director Morrow and your other colleagues - would kill me if I turned you into even a vague shadow of who I am." Her eyes danced with obvious merriment at the thought.

"He most likely wishes I would learn something from you," the NCIS agent muttered. To her surprise, the major just shook her head, trying not to laugh. "What?" she asked in utter puzzlement.

"No he doesn't," the Marine replied firmly, the grin that was still puzzling Cate firmly on her face. "Trust me. Gibbs doesn't."

Cate narrowed her eyes suspiciously and thought for a moment. "Does this have something to do with whatever you said to make him so mad the other day?"

At that, the major looked up in surprise, then amusement. "You're good. You're very good. Don't let Clay know or he'll come to find you for a job."

Cate smiled, then asked curiously, "What did you say to Gibbs?"

"Curiosity killed the cat," Lin warned, her eyes laughing.

"Cats have nine lives," Cate returned, a smile crossing her face.

But the major didn't give in. "He didn't tell you?" When Cate shook her head, the major just smiled. "Then neither will I."

Cate made a face of mock annoyance, but she couldn't stop the smile from returning. "Oh come on. I thought we were communicating here."

At that, the major's smile grew and she lifted the mug to her lips, taking another sip. "I have no desire to be shot full of lead, Agent Todd."

"Gibbs isn't trigger happy."

The major just grinned, setting the mug down. "Not right now," she managed, chuckling. There was a comfortable, companionable silence for awhile, and then suddenly Lin said, "You should go back to sleep."

"What about you?"

"I don't have a major pickup tomorrow." In his mind's eye, Gibbs could see the major's smirk grow wider. "And I'd prefer not to give Agent Gibbs yet another reason to shoot me when he finds out you were down here talking to me."

Cate just smiled. "He won't know. He's sleeping."

The Marine just snorted softly.

Gibbs moved silently away from his spot and took refuge in the foyer, a spot where Cate wouldn't be able to see him when she went back upstairs. After a pause, he heard his agent say good night and head upstairs. When he heard the soft click of the door - his eyesight might be going, but his hearing was as good as ever - he waited a little longer and then emerged from the foyer. As he started towards the stairs, he looked into the kitchen.

For a moment he and the Marine stared at each other, like two opponents sizing each other up. The latter wore a knowing smirk on her face. Without a word, he silently returned to his room.

"All right, Agent Todd, let's get this show on the road." Webb gestured to the small economy class car.

Cate nodded nervously.

Lin pulled her cap low and was about to get into the car when Gibbs pulled her aside. "Nothing better happen to my agent."

Lin looked at him for a moment and silently touched the brim of her cap in acknowledgment. She slid down into the bottom of the car.

Webb shut the door to the driver's side. "We'll be watching, Agent Todd."

Cate nodded, started up the car, and drove off.

---

PHILADELPHIA

Tony listened on the intercom and squinted through the darkness. Far below his spot in the rafters, he could make out some movement, but it wasn't easy to see, even with his good eyesight. Luckily Cate was wearing a light colored shirt under the black jacket, so he could see locate her easily. Gibbs was on the floor, and Webb's agents were monitoring the area. Lin was somewhere, although Tony had no idea where.

"Do all of you really need to cop a feel?" came Cate's irritated voice over the line, and it set Tony's mouth into a hard line. "Who do you think I am, anyhow?"

"That's not Lin," leered one man. "Lin's got a smaller chest."

"Not that you'd ever know for sure," Cate replied sweetly.

Tony admired Cate's restraint. If he'd been in Cate's shoes, he most likely would've decked them all by now.



Cate was handed a large briefcase, and she popped it open. She flipped through the money, checking several packets to make sure it was all filled with real currency.

"It's real," the one said impatiently.

Cate just gave him a look and continued to flip through the decks, then took out a pen light to examine the cash. Her Secret Service training allowed her to recognize the bills quickly, and they looked pretty authentic to her.

She knew Tony and Gibbs were watching, and that Lin was somewhere nearby, and the thought was comforting.



Gibbs and Tony continued to scan the perimeter, the former down on the ground and the latter in the rafters, watching and waiting. Suddenly Tony noticed a tiny flash across the room from him. "Sniper. Sniper!"

Tony panicked, although he outwardly remained calm. Gibbs was already running towards where Cate was meeting with the insurgents, but Tony was sure he'd never make it before the sniper fired.

There was a shot, and Tony watched in horrified shock as Cate jerked backwards, most likely from the blow of the bullet. His heart sank as he watched her hit the wall and slide down to the floor bonelessly.

Gibbs appeared below him almost twenty feet away, having reached too late.

Tony continued to provide covering fire as Gibbs crossed the floor, but half-heartedly. Webb's men had already located and pulled the sniper down, anyhow.



Gibbs hit the wall and dropped down to where Cate was lying. There was blood under her head, and her small form was twisted into the corner. Some feet away lay Lin, but his concern was for his own agent first.

He quickly put two fingers to Cate's neck. A pulse, and a strong one...Gibbs admitted shock at finding her alive. The shot had looked to be pretty good. "Cate?" He slipped arm under her shoulders and gently lifted her up, supporting her head. He felt something warm trickling onto his hand, and noticed a slow seep of blood from her head. He pressed his hand hard against it as he fished out a handkerchief and folded it with his other hand, then pressed it against her head. "Cate."

The agent groaned and put a hand groggily to the back of her head. "What hit me?" she rasped, looking pained as she opened her eyes and tried to sit up. The world tilted wildly, and her eyes widened for a moment as she tried to regain her balance. "I feel like I got hit by a semi." She blinked. "My head is KILLING me," she mumbled as she clumsily pushed at the hand Gibbs was holding against the small wound. "What are you doing?"

"Your head's bleeding," Gibbs replied, seating her with her back firmly against the wall. "Hold still and stop trying to push my hand away."

Cate acquiesced without a fight, still a little woozy. Gibbs guessed she must have struck her head hard when she hit the wall. Suddenly Cate sat up a little straighter, as if thinking over something. "Hey, where's Lin?"

Gibbs heard some whispering a few feet away and turned to look over his left shoulder. He could see where the sniper's bullet had struck into the brick of the wall, tinged with blood. It had obviously gone through somebody, but it hadn't been Cate. He had a feeling he knew who the somebody was.

Even though the NCIS agent could only see the man's back, he saw that Webb had rolled the Marine major onto her back. The Company man was kneeling by the body, blocking most of her from view, but Gibbs could still see a dark reddish-purple pool spreading under the major's head. Wide, unblinking eyes stared straight up.

Gibbs pressed his lips together and turned back to Cate, but it was too late.

Cate was in shock, sitting up enough just to see over his shoulder. "Lin? Lin! Kate!" She tried to stand up, but Gibbs held her down with his free arm, struggling to keep his other hand over the bleeding. "Let me go," she insisted. When his grip tightened and he glared at her, she fought. "Let me go, you bastard!"

Tony arrived then, running towards them at top speed, a look of sheer relief crossing his face as he saw Cate sitting up. He followed Gibbs' grim eyes to the scene several feet away, and the look of relief changed into one of shock. He looked from Lin's body back to Gibbs, who motioned him over. "Stay with Cate," he said shortly, "keep your hand on her head wound." Tony nodded.

Gibbs walked over just in time to see the the agents loading the body into a bag on the gurney. He pressed his lips together thinly, watching as the CIA agent slowly closed the Marine's wide, sightless eyes and zipped the body bag closed. At that point the agent turned around to face Gibbs. Webb's three-piece suit and his hands were splattered all over, and the man's face was drawn. "We'll clear out this place," he said. The two men stared at each other. "You were never here. Any of you."

Gibbs only nodded.

"Lin?" Cate could be heard asking from a distance.

Webb looked back at where DiNozzo was sitting with Todd, pressing a hand to her head, then turned back to Gibbs. "She OK?"

"Just a head wound," Gibbs replied. "Nothing major." The older man looked at the weary-looking agent and asked, "When's the funeral?"

"I'll let you know." Webb started to walk away, following the men pushing the gurney, but then turned around. "Things like this happen, all the time. That's the way it goes." He then headed out.

Gibbs stood alone, watching as sweepers cleaned up. Wherever they touched, it was as if it were new; there was not a trace of what had happened minutes before.

Cate was alive at the major's own expense; not that if he'd gotten there any earlier, it would've been different. There was a lot of blood the sweepers were cleaning up, and it looked to have been a good shot. The Marine had been good to her word that she would do her best to keep Cate alive, and it softened the major's parting image in his mind. Not that he liked the woman any more than before, but it wasn't right to speak ill of the dead.

He looked up to see Tony and Cate both watching him, Tony staying close to Cate as he'd been instructed. "Let's go."

---

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE

From her seat way across the hangar at the base, Cate watched as the seven Marines stepped off the plane. They were thin and haggard but happy, and there was a lot of crying as their families rushed forward to greet them. She couldn't help a small smile. She knew that the same grin had to be on the faces of Gibbs and DiNozzo, sitting next to her.

She winced slightly. Her head still hurt once in awhile, but it was much better now. When the major had slammed into her, she'd been thrown straight back against the wall, hitting her head pretty hard against the bricks. She'd gotten a concussion and the bleeding needed some stitches, but otherwise she was right as rain.



Cate had gone to the funeral. This time, it was only Webb. No Colonel Weir. No Colonel MacKenzie. She suspected Webb hadn't told any of them the first funeral was a fake. Besides him, there was just the chaplain performing the ceremony.

She wondered briefly if Webb had made that phone call to Peter and Jaime Lin, letting them know that Kate had still been alive after the first funeral. Most likely not. Why make them just go through this twice?

After Webb, it was just the five of them: her, Gibbs, Tony, Abby, and Ducky. It surprised her some - Tony didn't like Lin, and Gibbs disliked her even more. Ducky hadn't had much contact with the major anyhow, and Abby nearly nothing. She suspected they were partly here for her. It was a pathetic group, just the six of them and the chaplain, with five having known her less than a week.

It was a wonder Lin hadn't been lost in the wilderness of mirrors.



As they watched the happy reunions some distance away, a familiar figure strode toward them, his long coat open to reveal his immaculate three-piece suit. As he neared, he looked over his shoulder at the Marines reuniting with their families. "Safe and sound."

"Yeah, but at what price," DiNozzo murmured.

"Seven for one. That's the kind of math you do," Webb replied. He finally turned back to them. "Thought you'd want to know how everything turned out." He paused and corrected himself. "How it turned out in general."

Despite himself, Gibbs couldn't help a small smile. "We're all ears."

"Did you catch the other guys you're still looking for?" Tony asked what they were all thinking.

Webb chuckled. "There were the three on the boat. Stockwell was swept two nights ago," he replied. "You know his accomplice Wittenstein is already dead. Scribner, your driver, is gone. We've only got one more, and we've gotten a lead on him, but he's been pretty slippery. We're pretty sure he was there that night." He stood up a little straighter. "Not that he'll be giving you any trouble; only Kate was in any danger from him, and that's been taken care of."

"You refer to her getting killed as 'been taken care of'?" Tony asked incredulously.

Webb rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored him. "We'll notify you if there is any possible complications from that night."

Gibbs watched the younger man for a moment, and a trace smirk crossed his face. "Did Major Lin make you promise that?"

Webb only raised an eyebrow, barely showing his surprise. Tony and Cate bought the act, but Gibbs' grin just grew a little wider at the Company man's silent acknowledgement of the truth of his question.

"Hey," Tony said, suddenly thinking of something. "Did you catch the creep who was mailing her those photos?"

"It was Stockwell," Webb replied. "We found copies of the photos in his house darkroom. It was a psychological thing, he was hoping to unsettle her enough to get her to screw up. There won't be any more of those photos, now that he's swept."

"Why?" Gibbs asked.

Webb got a look of exasperation on his face, although it was obvious the annoyance was with Lin and not Gibbs. "Kate...has a reputation...for taking failure very personally, especially when it involves sending bodies back to parents, spouses, children." He rolled his eyes. "She views her coworkers' safety as her personal job, even though it's not."

Gibbs nodded. That he could see - he'd seen her do it with Cate - and understand personally. It was akin to what he had said back in New York about Lin's taking responsibility for her brother and his family.

Webb continued, "She and Stockwell have never gotten along; she was always sure that he wasn't clean. She's very thorough in her work, and Stockwell knew if she were ever assigned to research him he'd be dead."

Cate smiled. "You mean like how you assigned her to watch Stockwell on this case?"

Webb nodded. "He didn't know why I really assigned her. He thought she was there to do the pickup, but I'll bet he knew that she would be suspcious of him regardless. It's all about mind games, and Stockwell knew where to hit to distract her. That's really the only thing that ever bothers her." He shook his head, rolling his eyes. "She doesn't belong in this business," he muttered, obviously still annoyed. "She gets too attached to her coworkers."

Gibbs smirked. "And you don't?" His smirk grew wider as Webb glared at him. "What about the man who was at all the funerals?" Gibbs asked, crossing his arms. Tony nodded, also eager to know.

"It's covert ops, who knows." Webb shook his head and shrugged. "Thank you to you all." He turned to Cate. "May I have a word with you in private?"

Cate pretended to think, tilting her head from one side to another, much as she had when Gibbs had first asked her if he could tag along on the President's return trip from Los Angeles.

Webb nearly laughed out loud. "NCIS landed a real gem," he commented. "Don't worry. I'm not trying to recruit you."

At that, Cate looked up with amusement. "Did Major Lin make you promise that?" she asked with a cheeky grin, then left, following him some distance away.

Tony sat in his seat. He was glad it had turned out all right in the end, but much as he thought the major was crazy, he was a little sorry she was dead. He knew Cate was, anyhow; she was perhaps the only one, besides Ducky, who remembered the major with any fondness. Suddenly a thought occurred to him; his brow furrowed and he leaned over to Gibbs. "Boss," he said in a hushed voice. "Why did Webb refer to Lin in the present tense?"

Gibbs slowly turned to look at his junior agent, slowly realizing what Tony was hinting at.



Cate turned to Webb. "Please don't tell me the money I picked up was fake."

"This has nothing to do with the case," Webb replied. He sighed, then shifted a little, hedging.

Cate was totally puzzled now. "What?" She shrugged.

Webb sighed. "I know you talked to Kate that night. She mentioned it before the pickup. She didn't tell me what you talked about, but whatever it was - " he twitched and hesitated, as if he didn't know how to put it or he had never said it before " - thank you. From me...personally." He shrugged and crossed his arms, avoiding her gaze.

A dimpled smile crossed Cate's face, and she almost chuckled at how uncomfortable the CIA agent looked. She bet he had real issues apologizing, too. It had most likely taken a lot for him actually to say this to somebody. "You're welcome, although, I'm not sure what for and I'm not sure it does her much good now."

Webb shrugged in contradiction. "If anyone asks, I'll deny I ever said anything." At that, Cate laughed. Webb shook her hand and, gracing the woman with a rare smile, said, "if you ever find yourself in need of a job."

Cate's smile grew wider. "I thought you weren't going to recruit me."

"I'm not. I'm saying that in case you need a job, you know where to go." Webb flashed a smile as a goodbye and then headed for the doorway.

Cate chuckled to herself.



Gibbs didn't seem to notice when she had returned; his eyes were sweeping the room. Tony looked from Webb's retreating back to Cate. He waited for her to say something, but she didn't, and he looked back towards Webb.

Suddenly Tony sat up. "Gibbs. It's the man in the photos." Gibbs and Cate turned to look where he was looking, and the three watched suspiciously as Webb approached the person in question.

The man was in a dark suit and dark coat, with a dark hat pulled low over his face, just as in the photos. They could only tell that he was turned towards the Marines, watching them with their families. Otherwise, none of them could see anything clearly because Webb, who was talking to him, stood partially blocking their view.

Gibbs was just about to pull his weapon and go over when the CIA agent moved away, allowing them a perfect view of the man.

From underneath the hat, a familiar pair of eyes sparkled laughingly, and Major Lin turned from watching the Marines and gave them a small wave and a smirk. Webb, with his characteristic smile, looked briefly over his shoulder to check to make sure they'd seen her.

One of the Marine families passed in between the three NCIS agents and the two intelligence agents; when the family had passed, both Webb and Lin were gone.

After a moment of stunned silence, Tony snorted in relieved and surprised laughter. "THAT is nuts. That's crazy!"

Gibbs chuckled. "Nine lives."

Cate just couldn't stop smiling.

---

NCIS HQ, NEXT MORNING

Tony grinned in anticipation as the mail was dropped on his desk, which included a letter that reeked so heavily of perfume Cate could smell it from her desk. She just rolled her eyes, waiting for another story about his weekend activities - stories that really no one wanted to hear, but he told anyhow. Maybe he was picking it up from Ducky, but at least Ducky's stories were informative.

The carrier handed her a package. "Agent Todd."

"Oh." Cate was surprised. "Thanks."

Tony was immediately curious, his own mail entirely forgotten. Cate looked at the package...there was no return address. She was dying of curiosity, but with Tony watching, there was no way she was going to open it. Just to torture him, she set it aside and was immediately rewarded with a noise of impatient indignance coming from Tony's desk.

"What?" she asked innocently.

"Oh, c'mon Cate."

"I don't want to open it now. I have to work to do."

"You want me to open it for you?" Tony asked hopefully, coming around to her desk.

"Ha. Funny."

"DiNozzo!" At the sound of Gibbs' voice, Tony scrambled for his desk. "You done with the report yet?"

"Uh...no."

Gibbs just gave him a 'what are you waiting for' look. "Mail?"

"Nothing today, but Cate got something," Tony said brightly.

Gibbs looked wholly uninterested.

"She's not going to open it, though," Tony continued, hoping to egg Cate on enough for her to open it.

Gibbs just looked at him. "That's her choice," he said pointedly as he sat down in his chair with his coffee.

"Thank you," Cate replied from her desk as Tony finally accepted defeat and moved on to his report.

When he finally decided to go out and stretch his legs, Cate quickly tore open the box. Inside was a smaller box, almost like a jewelry box. She carefully lifted the lid.

On the inside of the lid was printed in silver script letters, "Nascentes morimur." Inside was a long bullet which had obviously already been fired. Her breath caught. It was obviously from a sniper's rifle, and she was guessing this was the bullet that had, God willing, missed both her and the major.

Underneath the jewelry box was a plain white card, with a simple sunset. Inside it was blank except for Lin's scrawl, so familiar from the team's having searched through her things: "Sto mozes danas ne ostavljaj za sutra. KJL" Cate smiled for a moment, remembering.

She could feel Gibbs' eyes on her, watching her concernedly. "Oh, uh, I was sent...a gift." When he frowned, she clarified. "It's not a bad thing. Not like those creepy photos Lin was getting," she said as she handed him the small box. "It's from a...new friend." Gibbs' nod showed he understood who it was from.

The older agent opened the box and saw the bullet. "Kind of morbid sense of humor."

"What's morbid about it?" Cate asked. It all made sense to her, given the conversation they had had about 'betting big' on the right hand, and given the card.

"Do you generally give people bullets and then write 'to born is to die' on the box?"

Cate acknowledged the truth of the statement but was more surprised about the fact that Gibbs had understood the silver lettering. "You can read Latin?" she asked in surprise.

"Are you saying I'm some kind of barbarian, Cate?" Gibbs asked with a teasing smile as he handed back the box.

"That's not what I meant," Cate replied, and Gibbs just chuckled.

She was ready to throw out the packaging when she noticed a regular brown envelope in the bottom. All it had written on it was 'Gibbs.' She slowly got up and moved around to her boss' desk. "This is for you." Although she desperately wanted to know what Lin had put in there for Gibbs, given their hate-hate relationship, she retreated to her seat. Gibbs had given her her privacy, and she would likewise.

Gibbs looked as puzzled as she had felt as he slit open the envelope. He looked inside and scowled.

Inside was a full-body picture of Morrow, such as would be taken for an official NCIS photo. A mini Snickers bar was taped to his hand, and somebody had used big black marker to draw a comical look of shock over the director's face in the photo - Morrow's eyes were popping out of his head and his mouth was in a big O. Also inside was a copy of the National Enquirer with two large Chinese characters in black: "yao yan," and a huge smiley face.

The NCIS agent could almost see the major's characteristic smirk, and he suddenly had the urge to shoot something. Repeatedly.

Gibbs growled something incoherently and threw the envelope into a desk drawer irritably. Tony was just returning, and both he and Cate were staring at their boss in complete confusion as he shoved his chair back and got up to go.

"I need coffee," Gibbs grumbled as he stalked out of the bullpen.

x x x x x
Nascentes morimur: To be born is to die. (LIT: Being born, we die. Latin)
Sto mozes danas ne ostavljaj za sutra.: What you can do today do not leave off for tomorrow. (Serbian)
yao yan: rumor (Mandarin)
x x x x x

END