Having taken the red eye back to D.C, Gibbs had gone straight to NCIS headquarters, heading inside without even signing in, walking past security. He slipped into the elevator just as it closed and he looked over at the young woman staring at him. He reached up and rubbed a hand over his unshaven face-there was no time for that, though. Waiting until the woman stepped out at her stop, Gibbs hit the floor the basement, heading down to the morgue.
He was only planning to go see Ducky and found himself pleasantly surprised to find them all gathered and talking-about him, even. "Hope who shows up, Abby?" he asked, stealing McGee's coffee out of his hand and taking a sip.
"Gibbs!" Abby cried gleefully, almost as though she'd forgotten why she had asked him to come in the first place. She rushed past Ziva and McGee, who were blocking her path to Gibbs, and practically launched herself at the older man, throwing her arms around his neck in a tight hug. "I wasn't sure you'd come! You just hung up and now you're here!"
"Abby, you might want to let him breathe before we find ourselves with an even bigger problem on our hands," Ducky advised, having been on the receiving end of one of those death grip hugs.
Not even smiling, because of the situation, Gibbs pulled away and gave the coffee back after making a face. "What have you got?" he asked briskly, getting right to business.
"Boss, we think we have their location..." McGee started to say, already pulling out a case file from his bag and passing it to Gibbs as spoke.
"You think, McGee?"
"Well, we're waiting for confirmation..." McGee explained, swallowing hard.
"Confirmation from who, McGee?"
It was Ziva who jumped in this time, knowing more about the situation than any of them. "One of my contacts. These men... they're friends of my father, and my father is not a good man. But there are some of them that are more loyal to me than to my family and they've told me that they might know whe-" She stopped, noticing the look she was getting from the older man. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"How do you know they're loyal? I won't take any chances. This is one of my team," Gibbs said forgetting that he'd just left them and wasn't even on the team anymore-he just would always consider himself a part of it. "How do you know?" he asked stepping closer to her, his tone having a biting edge to it now, Gibbs not sure if he could trust her people after what had happened with Ari. Jenny may have hired her before he'd left but it didn't mean he had to trust her 'contacts'. Trust had to be earned, not given freely.
Having earned that trust from the rest of the team, Ziva wasn't used to this sort of suspicion any longer and her jaw clenched as she stepped forward. "You know what I've been through, Special Agent Gibbs," she told him in an equally biting tone. He had been the one to get her the job, for crying out loud! Why would he have done that if he hadn't trusted her judgement? "I know better than anyone to watch my back. I would not go to just anyone with this situation, especially when my father is the one behind it in the first place. I trust them with my life," she told him seriously.
"Good," Gibbs replied and turned away from her, holding the case file out in front of him, having left his glasses with his stuff. He turned to Tim and handed it back to him. "Give me the short version, McGee."
"We think they're located downtown in an old storage warehouse," McGee told him, showing him some of the photos that had been taken. "It doesn't looked to be heavily armed, but appearances are deceiving. But I'm sure you already knew that..."
"Then what are we waiting for?" he asked them almost angrily before he was heading towards the doors of the morgue. "And someone get me a coffee."
"On it, Gibbs!" Abby told him with a salute, using the wrong hand to do so as she started out of the lab past them.
"Abby," Gibbs stopped her and nodded at Ducky who was over by his table looking worried. "Work with Ducky on keeping that new director distracted," he told her before he was grabbing up his stuff and then leading Ziva and McGee out of autopsy and into the elevator.
Though Abby looked disappointed about not being able to go and help find Tony, she knew that the director would have to be kept distracted, so she saluted him once again as the three of them left. "Good to have you back, Gibbs!" she called after him, just before the elevator doors closed so that she wouldn't get any argument.
When they'd stepped off the elevator, McGee veered off to get Gibbs some coffee, leaving him and Ziva to discuss the case more thoroughly. Ziva jumped right into it now that she felt as though Gibbs had a little bit more confidence in her.
"The men that I saw aren't the most dangerous, so I'm sure Tony is still alive," she assured Gibbs in a hushed tone as they headed for the exit, knowing McGee would follow them once he'd gotten the coffee. "But they're still very ruthless, and I'm sure he's already up shit creek without a pedal, even though they haven't had him in their custody for long," she said seriously, not catching that she'd messed up the phrase since Tony wasn't there to correct her.
The corner of Gibbs' lips curled up in amusement, the older man pushing open the door and letting Ziva through before following after. "Well, I guess we'll have to be just as ruthless," he said and pulled out his sidearm, double checking that it was in order before he was slipping it away again. There was a serious look on his face as he pulled the keys from his pocket, unlocking the rental car. It was a lot smaller than he would have liked, but they would manage. He didn't get in, waiting for McGee.
"Can you do that for me, Ziva?" he asked her, giving her a look that was granting her permission to use any means necessary to get Tony out of there.
"I think we both know that I can, Gibbs," Ziva affirmed seriously. "Would you like me to be discreet about it, or is discretion not an issue this time around?"
Before Gibbs even had a chance to answer, McGee was opening the back door of the car and slipping into the small space, passing a large cup of coffee through the space between the seats. "Here you go, Boss," he told him, disregarding the fact that Gibbs was no longer his boss.
Finally getting into the car, Gibbs paused a moment. "There's no need for that, they weren't discreet when they took Anthony," he said, taking the coffee from McGee. Knowing it would be too hot, he put it in the cup holder and started the car, Ziva getting into the passenger seat and looking over at Jethro.
"Anything you say, Gibbs," Ziva said, already planning the things she'd do to the idiots who had taken and hurt Tony. "They'll be walking like cows when I'm done with them."
"Uh, Ziva..." Tim started as he put his seat belt on, just in time for Gibbs to pull out onto the road with a squeal of the tires. "It's 'walking like cowboys'... at least that's what I think you meant."
"They'll be lucky to be walking at all when I've finished with them," Ziva told McGee with a bitter laugh, doing up her own seat belt, although Gibbs drove much better than she did.
"Remind me not to piss you off," McGee mumbled before pulling up the coordinates on his phone, having gotten them from Abby before leaving. "Alright, Boss, you're going to turn left at the second light and follow it all the way down to the road just before the highway. I'll tell you where to turn once you're on that road," he told him, watching the GPS as Gibbs swerved around a slow moving vehicle, taking a left like directed.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.