ROAD IN NEW YORK
"What do you think we're going to find in Stockwell's files?" Cate asked as the car continued down the freeway. "Watch out."
Gibbs swerved expertly, avoiding the car cutting in front of him.
Cate let out her breath. "There's a turn signal in the car for a reason," she commented about the car they'd just managed to avoid, then muttered under her breath, "I hate cities."
Gibbs chuckled.
"So. What do you think we're going to find in Stockwell's personal files?" Cate repeated.
Gibbs shrugged. "A turncoat."
Cate sat back for a moment. Then she said quietly, "You don't think it's Lin."
Gibbs looked at her briefly. "Do you?"
Cate shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe her family's totally deluded."
Gibbs shrugged. "Is that what you got?"
Cate sighed in frustration, throwing up her hands as she peered out the window. "I don't know what to think. You should've seen her brother and her sister-in-law describe her. She's like some...cyborg." At the questioning look Gibbs shot her, she tried to clarify. "Talks business with them when she's not joking around, didn't shed a tear at her fiance's funeral." The agent paused. "By their recollection, she hasn't said 'love you' to anyone in the past...several years."
"C'mon, Cate, 'I love you' is overrated."
Cate rolled her eyes. "Speaking from personal experience?"
Gibbs didn't reply to her answer but continued, "She shows she cares by taking responsibilities she doesn't have to take and being faithful to them. You don't have to SAY anything to show that."
"Well, a word here or there would be nice," Cate muttered.
"Lovelace."
"What?"
"'To Lucasta - '"
"' - on Going to the Wars.' Oh c'mon, Gibbs, you don't really think she buys into - " Just then Gibbs' cell phone rang, and he motioned for Cate to pick it up. "Todd. ... Yeah. OK, can we have some directions? We're on the freeway coming in from Long Island. ... She flipped open her small notepad and scribbled. "OK. ... OK...left...got it. See you in a bit." She snapped the phone closed. "That was Tony."
"Yeah?"
"FBI just got called in; a bomb blew up one of the trash receptacles outside the...UStore storage warehouse. Found traces of blood on the floor, and some plastic handcuffs that were cut open."
"So?"
"Here're the directions," Cate handed him the notepad. "Somebody matching Lin's description was seen leaving the complex just after the bomb went off."
"No body?"
"He doesn't know, but there was no mention of one."
USTORE WAREHOUSE
The five agents looked around the large, empty storage room. There was a small heater on the side, its side cover having fallen off already; a metal desk chair lay on its side beside it. Across the room was a small table.
Gibbs snapped on his plastic gloves as Martin and Tony moved into the center of the room to look, and Cate went over to poke at the heater. "What did the LEOs say?" he asked as Samantha approached.
"Somebody heard a window shattering and came to look; just a minute later the bomb went off. Blew up the trash receptacle."
"The stench must be fun," Gibbs chuckled.
Samantha chuckled and continued to read. "He was running away from it when he saw...somebody...about five-four-to-six slipping away from the compound. He said he could see a ponytail, and that he yelled for her...or him...to stop, but the person didn't. And the trash receptacle was still on fire."
"How'd he know her height?" Gibbs asked incredulously.
"Uh," Samantha checked her notes. "She ran past one holding dock they use. There's a dumbwaiter, and the top of the elevator was about at her neck. The elevator's five feet tall. They saw her at the southeast entrance, gave chase, but she got away."
"Yeah, they would," Gibbs replied. "If she's a trained Marine, she'll lose her tail. What about the bomb squad?"
"Uh," Samantha checked her notes. "They looked over the place when the bomb went off, and saw the broken window right above it, so they came up here. There was some residue left over on that table, which most likely should be analyzed with the reports on the bomb. Viv is talking to the witnesses."
Gibbs nodded. "Let's see if we can't pull prints off of here."
Samantha frowned. "Don't you want to look at the bomb residue first?"
Gibbs just looked at her. "It's not going anywhere. What I want to know is who threw it out the window, if that's the case, and where this 'who' is." He looked around and said quietly to Samantha, "All these LEOs are going to contaminate the crime scene. Get them out of here."
She nodded and headed over to the police chief to speak with him.
Martin walked up to where Tony was standing, staring down at the concrete. "What?"
"Do you see anything?" Tony asked quietly.
"There's a drop of blood," Martin pointed out the obvious. "And a few here."
"No, not just that," Tony said vaguely.
The two men bent down to examine the smooth concrete floor. Up close, Martin saw what Tony had. "Scratches...here and here...looks like something metal banging against it. And these scuff marks up here. A struggle?"
"Yeah." Tony pulled out his things and started analyzing the chinks.
"The wiring is mangled," Cate commented as Gibbs approached. From where she knelt by the heater, she pointed to the coil. The heating coil had been yanked out of its place at one spot, almost pulled straight, so that it hung out of the heater frame. "Hey, what's that?"
Gibbs careful peeled the little white residue from the heater and dropped it into the bag Cate was holding open. He took it from her and shook his head. "Just looks like a piece of plastic. Melted."
"The handcuffs," Cate said suddenly. "There were two plastic handcuffs we found on the floor." She quickly found them in the evidence box.
"She melted the cuffs," Gibbs replied, holding up another bag. There was a tiny hint of admiration as he looked to the spot where the heating coil had been pulled straight. "That's how she got out of them."
Cate, holding the cuffs, slowly fitted them together. One pair made a smaller ring than the other pair. "This one" she held up the smaller pair "must've been on her wrists. She must've pulled the wire out of the coil so that she could melt the handcuffs," Cate clarified as she caught on to Gibbs' train of thought. "But she pulled the coil out with her fingers?"
"Rather burnt fingers than a blown up body," Gibbs replied.
"How very MacGyver-ish," Cate chuckled as she crouched back down next to Gibbs to examine the wire.
Gibbs turned to look at her, amusement written on her futures.
"Richard Dean Anderson was cute," Cate defended herself, still smiling. "I wouldn't have minded working with him."
"The blond Anderson?" Gibbs wore his trademark trace smile as he turned back to the heater.
"Yep. But I'm not picky about hair color. He could've been a brunet."
Gibbs snorted. "Anderson's graying now."
"Like I said," Cate smirked, "I'm not picky. He just can't be - "
" - a bastard?" Gibbs' smirk grew wider.
"Yep." Cate grinned.
Martin stood up and looked around the room, thinking as his eyes swept the room. They swept past Gibbs and Todd, who were working on lifting prints from the heater area, and then past the chair, to the -
The chair.
Martin stands just about five feet away, watching.
A ghostly form of the major is squirming, struggling against her bonds. A thick, almost viscous line of sweat runs down from her temple to her cheek and is soaked up by the gag. Her eyes are wide with a mix of fear and concentration; they drift to the table holding the bomb, just a few feet away.
She pauses a moment, calming down. Her head turns, taking in her surroundings.
Martin sticks his hands into his pockets, still watching.
Suddenly she begins to rock her chair, straining forward, and then rocking backward. The chair doesn't budge at first, but soon it is rocking hard, and she falls onto her back.
There was a muffled cry of pain as she lies on her back, staring straight up at the ceiling, for an instant.
She squirms a little, but her ankles had been tied together and then to one of the bars underneath the chair. She slowly pushes herself onto her side, bruising her right arm.
She then flips herself slowly onto her knees. The chair is still bound to her back, and her hands are bound to the back of the chair. Her entire body, plus the chair, shake as she tries to catch her breath. For what seems to be an eternity, she sits there on her knees, hunched over, the chair strapped to her back.
As Martin watches, a single drop of thick sweat hits the floor.
He almost didn't notice when Samantha appeared next to him. "Martin?"
He snapped out of it for a moment, then looked across the room. "Be right back," he said, heading across the room and picking up the chair with his gloved hands. He ignored Todd's questioning look and brought it back over to where Tony was still checking the cracks.
Tony popped up his protective glasses. "Certainly something metal." He looked over at the chair Martin had in his gloved hands. "That would work."
Martin set the chair down upright next to the scuff marks. "Look. The scuff marks, they're the same distance apart as the chair's legs."
Samantha and DiNozzo crowded nearby. "So they are," Tony murmured.
"Samantha, sit down in the chair," he instructed. The woman gave him an odd look but obeyed. "Tony, could you hold the back two legs for me? Make sure they don't move." The NCIS agent nodded and gripped the two chair legs, holding them down.
Martin grabbed the back of the chair and slowly started letting it down. Samantha nearly jumped out of her seat. "Martin!"
"Trust me, OK?" Martin grinned. "Have those 'team trust' seminars taught you nothing?"
"I haaaate those," Tony groaned from the floor, and Martin grinned.
"Me too," Samantha said tensely. "I don't understand how jumping off a rock climbing wall and expecting my teammates to catch me is supposed to build trust."
"It doesn't. It breeds stupidity," Martin replied. He stopped halfway from letting the chair down and glared at the woman in the chair, who was gripping the edges of the chair tightly. "Samantha, will you just trust me on this one?"
Sam made a face. "You better not break anything."
"Put your hands behind your back, like you were handcuffed."
Samantha obliged, and Martin continued to let the chair down slowly until the chair - and his colleague - were on their backs. "Don't move," he said as he stood an turned to Tony. "Those scratch marks line up?"
Tony leaned in to examine the marks. "They're lining up just fine." He paused for a moment, thinking as he looked at Samantha and then at the small red marks on the floor. "Lin must've knicked herself on the way down, or when she hit. The blood spot is roughly where Samantha's head is." He paused, a slow grin forming on his face. "Yeah."
Samantha's eyes widened as she figured out what they were saying. "They tied her up in the middle of the room, and most likely left her," she said, still lying on the chair, back down. "They set the bomb and left."
"So she throws herself backward onto her back," Tony nodded, then winced. "Ouch."
"Well, she's a smart girl. She most likely held her head forward as she did that," Samantha said, turning her head sideways to look at the NCIS agent. "Just to prevent it from hitting the floor."
"The blood spot?"
"Maybe she hit her head, still, a little. Or maybe she was already bleeding from a wound," Samantha replied. Martin held out a hand to her, and she slowly extracted herself from the chair and let herself be helped up.
Gibbs and Cate came over, having seen what was going on. Tony stood up, a huge grin on his face.
"What've we got?" Gibbs asked.
"Seems our Major hails from the Nine Lives School," Tony replied. "That bomb was most likely meant for her."
"Tell us something we don't know."
"The chair was most likely here," Martin replied, pointing at the scuff marks on the floor. "We're guessing she was left tied up in the chair here in the middle of the room."
"Her captor - captors - set the bomb and leave," Samantha continued. "When they're gone, she pushes herself backward until the chair falls onto the back." She demonstrated with the chair. "From here, she can turn onto her side, and then, we're guessing, onto her stomach."
"She's still got her arms behind her back," Cate replied.
Martin clarified, "She's got a chair on her back, her hands behind her back, and just her knees."
"And most likely her face," Tony muttered. "Whew."
"Now the question is, where do you go?" The three agents looked over at Gibbs and Cate.
"To the heater," Gibbs replied, holding up one of the bagged and tagged handcuffs and the melted bit he'd plucked off the heater. "She pulled out the coil of the heater with her hands. Then she must've put that bent point against the handcuffs. The heat melted the plastic enough."
Tony winced. "So she worms her way on her knees...and what, her shoulders? Her chin? From here" he pointed across the large room to the heater "to there?" He winced. "Ouch. Talk about carpet...floor...burn."
"She must've had to do some fancy manuevering to get her hands close enough to that coil. She would've have to turn herself around," Samantha muttered.
"So she gets out of the handcuffs," Gibbs said, bringing them back on topic. "And then she goes to the table and tosses the bomb out the window."
"And takes off," Samantha finished.
"Yeah, but if you run, you have to run SOMEWHERE," Tony replied. "So where is she going?"
"Or to whom," Samantha muttered.
"She's injured. Where would she go for help?"
"Not to Stockwell," Gibbs replied. "Let's check out the residue, bag and tag everything and get it onto the truck." As everyone dispersed, Cate stood off to the side, numbly.
Tony's eyes flickered to his boss, who too had noticed, and then to Samantha, who he saw watching them. As the other police and agents on scene worked to clear the area out, Cate crouched down where the chair had been.
Tony looked to Gibbs with a questioning look, and his boss gave an imperceptible nod. Tony made his way over the door towards their colleague.
Samantha walked up behind the senior NCIS agent as Tony moved out of earshot. "Is Cate OK?" she asked softly.
Gibbs didn't reply.
"Cate?" Tony approached from behind. Her head snapped up so fast Tony actually backtracked. "Whoa, it's just me."
"What do you want." Her voice was uncharacteristically flat.
"We, uh...we're going to be going in a bit." When she didn't move, Tony cleared his throat. "Cate, are you OK?"
"Fine." When Tony looked hurt, she tried to soften her voice. "I...I just want to double check something, tell everyone I'll be out in a few minutes."
Tony nodded and retreated.
Cate's mind was a whirl as the room spun around her. As she stared at the heater, she could almost see the major there, lying on her side, pulling out the wire with her fingers, trying to ignore the pain. She could almost hear the first sizzle of the coil against the plastic, and she could swear she almost smelled slightly singed flesh.
Why couldn't she have done it? When that terrorist had locked her up in the body cooler, she just couldn't think. Why couldn't she have figured a way out? She'd gotten in, there had to have been a way out. Why hadn't she thought of it?
She was dimly aware that Tony, Gibbs, and Samantha were most likely watching her, and she heard it when the door to the warehouse opened and Martin came in, oblivious. She heard him talking and mention their victim...she snapped out of her thoughts and hurried over just to hear the end of it.
Martin shook his head. "Look, I don't know," he insisted, looking as surprised and in disbelief as they rest of them.
"Don't know what?" Cate asked.
Martin blew out a breath. "Why Major Lin just turned up at the clinic at the naval station."
NAVAL STATION CLINIC
Jack and Danny strode into the clinic. The secretary was about to protest, but they went right past her into the examining rooms.
Inside, on one of the tables, lay an ethnically Chinese woman, tightly cropped black hair in almost a man-ish cut. She smelled the slightest bit of gunpowder. Her clothes were dirty and scuffed, and there was dirt and grime all over the knees of her pants. Her arms were bruised, and her chin was red and scratched up. One of her hands lay palm-up, her fingers burned.
She looked pretty bad. Even if they had had a photo of her, which they didn't, Jack wasn't sure they could even identify the woman by the picture. The major looked like she'd been through hell - her face generally was one big bruise, although at least it looked like the bruise was healing.
Stockwell skidded around the corner and came in. "Agent Malone."
"This is Danny Taylor, one of my agents," Jack introduced shortly. He tilted his head at the woman on the bed.
"I can speak for myself," she retorted as she sat up slowly. "Kate Lin."
Stockwell sighed. "I'm sorry to have had to drag you into all this, Agent Malone, Agent Taylor. It appears that everything is all right now."
Jack's eyes darted between Lin and Stockwell. "I'll determine that. Major? How're you feeling?"
"Good to be alive, sir."
"Can you tell us what happened?"
She looked up at Stockwell, who replied, "You talk, and I'll stop you when I think it's too much."
She nodded and slowly tried to sit up, helped by the doctor and Stockwell. "I...I had been sold out by one of the guys I was supposed to be working for," she said quietly. "Jacob Wittenstein."
Danny pulled a photo out of his pocket and showed it to her. She nodded. "Yeah. I figured if I showed up at the station any more, he or somebody else would try to kill me."
"So you decided to skip out," Jack replied.
She nodded. "I couldn't call, because everything was being tracked."
"How'd they find you?"
"They were waiting for me when I tried to go back to my apartment," she said quietly. "I entered and found them going through my things, my closet, everything."
Danny's eyes flickered to Jack's. Her uniforms. That would explain why the schmucks had the uniforms dry cleaned.
"I...didn't make it out fast enough, and they took me out to that storage spot and tried to blow me up."
Just then Danny's phone rang, and he moved outside to take the call.
"So why come back here?" Jack asked.
She looked surprised. "I'm reporting to Stockwell," she said in a puzzled tone. "Of course I'd come here."
"Didn't you fear Wittenstein?"
"Oh," she replied, understanding. "When they caught me, they told me that Wittenstein had been shot in Washington. They figured I'd done it, or that Stockwell had found out about him and swept him. I guess they told me as part of payback, since they figured I'd die. It wouldn't matter whether or not they told me." At their nods, she looked up at them. "If there's anything else?"
"You still planning to do this pickup tomorrow?"
She shrugged. "Yeah."
"Don't you think it won't work, now that you've been sold out once?" Danny asked, having just returned.
She shrugged. "We'll see. If it doesn't work, no sense in worrying about it now."
Jack chuckled. "Spoken like a true soldier," he said, getting a tiny smile in return. He reached out, patted her knee affectionately, and said, "I'm glad this one ended well. The Marines are lucky to have you."
She smiled.
"Do you need anything else, Agent Malone?" Stockwell asked.
"No."
"Can I...have my files back?" Stockwell asked.
Jack sighed as if NCIS had been his latest migraine. "I'll talk to Gibbs, but I can't control NCIS."
Stockwell nodded.
NYC FBI OFFICE
Samantha turned in her seat. "Where're Gibbs and Viv?"
"They're talking to Webb about what happened, why?" Cate asked.
"Danny called. It appears they've found Major Lin. Bruised - in all the right spots, too - and she told them as much as she could - Wittenstein sold her out, so she disappeared because she was afraid somebody would come after her. They found her anyhow - told her Wittenstein was dead, tried to blow her up, and when she escaped, she went straight to Stockwell."
"So it's over," Tony replied.
"That was a little easy," Martin muttered, a tone of suspicion in his voice.
"Yeah, it appears Stockwell AND Lin both weren't turncoats." Samantha shrugged. "Listen, um, Martin and I are going to wrap this up, and then when Viv and Gibbs come up, could you let them know?"
Cate nodded.
Samantha rolled over to Martin's desk. "OK, I'm going to read you these numbers, and you put 'em in."
Martin nodded.
"Guess our boss' golden gut was only bronze this time," Cate muttered.
Tony shook his head. "Gibbs won't buy it."
"Well, I hate to break it to you, Tony, but Gibbs CAN be wrong," Todd said in an annoyed tone, turning to look at her colleague.
The man groaned. "Cate, are we going to get into this AGAIN? Why can't you just accept that he's right? Like all the time?"
"Why do you always make him out to be GOD?"
Some ways away, behind the cubicle wall which blocked Martin's computer from the general view of the office, Samantha and Martin exchanged looks. Samantha winced and quietly pulled a chair over to sit, so that she wouldn't be seen over the partition.
"Well, Gibbs is close to it in terms of NCIS," Tony retorted.
"Shoot me now, then," Cate moaned, flopping over her files. "Gibbs as God."
"She really hates her boss," Martin muttered, looking a little surprised but amused.
Samantha shook her head, a small smile crossing her face. "No, she likes him just fine. He just annoys her." At Martin's disbelieving look, Samantha shrugged. "Trust me."
"Aw c'mon, Cate, it can't be that bad."
"Oh, right. Let's see. If Gibbs were God, all the rivers would run coffee instead of water and no one would ever talk to each other."
"This is a bad thing?" came a third voice.
Samantha and Martin exchanged 'uh oh' looks and, as one, slowly peeked around the corner. Gibbs was standing behind Cate; the two NCIS agents obviously hadn't seen the senior agent come in. Or heard, for that matter. Not that anyone else had - he seemed to just materialize out of nowhere.
Martin winced, but he couldn't help the grin crossing his face. "Busted."
"Uh, 'course not, boss," Tony could be heard replying. "Coffee rivers sound good."
Cate rolled her eyes at Tony, then turned around to face her boss, somewhat awkwardly. "They found Major Lin, and she told Agents Malone and Taylor everything. Do you still want to look at Lin's LESs?"
"I don't know," Gibbs said, shrugging at her. "Have you figured out where...Mister Webb is in this whole thing yet?"
Cate nodded a little nervously and then held up the packets. "These are all Lin's LESs going back five years. Every state department assignment is in yellow highlighter, DIA green, and any oddities in blue."
Gibbs nodded and picked up Cate's cup of coffee from the table and drank it as he listened to her.
Cate forgot all her awkwardness at being overhead and made a face. "I was drinking that!" she protested.
"No you weren't."
"Yes I was," Cate insisted belligerently. "Bastard," she muttered.
"Yep. Leave the files on the desk. I'll read 'em when I get back. I'm going - "
"For coffee?" Cate asked, looking at her cup.
" - to the head." With that, Gibbs strode back out of the office.
"Oh, I know what else Gibbs would have done if he were God," Tony suddenly commented.
"What, make a palm-size portable head?" Cate muttered, eyeing her coffee with a disgusted look.
"He would've made Eve a redhead."
NYC STATION, OUTSIDE
"That's not Major Lin," Jack commented categorically as they emerged from the building.
"How do you know?" Danny asked, puzzled and then intrigued. "She looked pretty beat up to me, and she fits Martin's description - scratched up face, bruises on her forearms, a lot of dirt on her knees. And those bruises on her face - they're not fresh, which fits what we've been finding."
"Did you actually see her knees?" Jack asked.
Danny slowed. "No."
"I patted her on the knee," Jack replied. "She didn't flinch whatsoever. And there were no bandages under those pants, which weren't that thick." He watched as realization dawned on his junior agent.
Danny's expression hardened. "So where's the real Major Lin?"
x x x x x
Lovelace: "I could not love thee, deare, so much, loved I not honor more."
x x x x x
Chapter End Notes:
"Nine Lives, Part II" is "NCIS" only. posted to FF.net 3/21-4/2/04