Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

March 7, 2004, Yards Park Washington, DC:

“Not that I don’t find your company ‘charming’ Jethro, but is there a reason you’ve invited me out on a day when the ‘real feel’ is about two degrees above freezing?” Tobias Fornell groused unhappily at the NCIS agent. A damn cup of coffee, even on Gibbs’ dime, wasn’t worth this, even if it was two to three times better than the breakroom coffee back at Quantico.

“Yeah.”

...

“And that reason would be?” Fornell gave in, forcing himself to go along with Gibbs’ damn silent marine act, even though Gibbs had been the one to ask him to meet up - presumably for a favor; it was just too damn cold to be bothered with power plays and shenanigans.

“My gut.” Gibbs sighed with no further explanation.

Fornell would have scoffed, if Gibbs' gut feelings hadn’t been proven too accurate, too many times in the past to question without contradicting evidence. “Okay, and…a little more detail would be helpful here?”

...

...

~~~Aww. To hell with that!~~~ Fornell grimaced at the lack of response - shivering again - after taking a sip of coffee that seemed to be cooling down faster than he was warming up.

“Look, Gibbs, keep the coffee.” He complained, setting the cup down by the man. He didn’t really think that Gibbs would be inclined to drink after him, but the man was a marine, so who knew; besides, sometimes gestures were just as important as words. “And keep whatever secret you’ve got to yourself until you’re actually ready to talk about it, then call me; and when you do, if the meet up isn’t some place warmer. next time, don’t hold your breath waiting for me to show...”

Matching actions to words, Fornell pushed himself up and stalked away, only getting several feet away before Gibbs was beside him. He cursed under his breath, understanding that his friend / rival / ex’s-ex would have let him go if whatever was bothering him wasn’t serious... of the marine’s-invade-first-and-ask-questions-later-kind-of-serious… the kind of serious that had the I’d-rather-professionally-castrate-you-than-share-a-case-Gibbs asking for help usually implied the ugly kind of cases that Tobias would have preferred to stay far, far away from.

“Aww, Damn it! Jethro, what is it? And don’t say your gut.” Fornell demanded, not slowing down. They may have had a better chance of avoiding anyone seeing them together or overhearing them in the intelligently-emptied, near-freezing park, but Gibbs had given up the chance for that naturally increased security by making Fornell drag the favor GIBBS wanted to ask, out of the recalcitrant agent bit-by-bit.

“You heard about the agent that got into NCIS, and got away?” Gibbs asked needlessly.

Fornell had, and Gibbs had to know he had. It had barely been a week, and the man had broken into a Federal Agency, shot two agents (including Gibbs, who probably should have still been wearing a sling and brace to immobilize his shoulder till the wound healed), held two others hostage, and got away without a trace. It was going to take something big to make that kind of gossip go away.

“Of course,” he answered when Gibbs waited him out. “What about him?”

“He’s not done, yet.”

And - that - seriously deserved the raised eyebrow Fornell gave his annoying associate; because seriously? From all accounts, the man had to have been a professional - despite his agency and foriegn power being unknown regardless of some educated speculation - and professionals almost never finished with the game until they were verifiably six-feet under.

“With NCIS… my team… me!” Gibbs added, clearly picking up Fornell’s unsurprise with his previous statement.

Interesting. From what Fornell was seeing, though, it looked like there was an equal or greater chance of Gibbs not being done with the foriegn agent than there was of the reverse being true; although, all due credit given, Gibbs’ gut was usually right.

“What makes you think so?”

“My gut… his attitude… how much he knew about me, Kate, and Ducky.”

“Okay… so what are you doing or have you done to find him?”

“Have feelers out with all my contacts, 24/7 facial recognition searches, info requests with NSA and DIA… so far it’s all turned up squat. The bastard’s in the game. I know it. Someone should have something on him. Six days old, and I’ve found more info on decades old cold-cases than on him.”

“What about your profiler?”

“Her?” he grumbled, “She doesn’t have her head on straight.”

“Really, I would have thought with Secret Service training, she would have been …” Fornell pushed.

“Ducky said she had the chance to stab him and didn’t.”

“Well, Dr. Mallard may not have grasped the full picture that…”

“Duck’s RAMC ... knows what he sees when he’s seeing it.”

“I see,” which wasn’t entirely true, but Gibbs’ assurance didn’t entirely surprise him. He knew the coroner had to be ‘made of sterner stuff’ as Tobias’s Nona would say, just to tolerate Gibbs, and the two men had reportedly struck up a fairly good friendship; though, Fornell hadn’t had many opportunities to see the two men interacting outside of crime scenes - where it was hard to discern whether their interactions were cordial or simply professional.

“Still, she was trained as a profiler and may have some insight.”

Gibbs’ response was closer to what Fornell would have expected from a growling dog, so Fornell dropped the issue. Either Gibbs would take his advice or he wouldn’t, just like he’d take Fornell’s help or he wouldn’t. Fornell finally sighed. He honestly didn’t expect to find anything more than Gibbs had - not by himself- but there was one source he could tap, who might be able to find something out. Until he sounded the man out, though, Fornell didn’t want to raise Gibbs’ expectations. He knew better than most - thanks to Sacks’s big mouth and heavy handed tactics’ - that if Di… WC… if WC wasn’t interested in digging into the matter, they didn’t have the leverage to make him interested.

“Send me copies of your notes, and I’ll see what I can find.”

“Here.” Gibbs answered, slapping a jump drive into Fornell’s hand almost before he had the chance to hold it out. It went without saying that it was probably everything Gibbs had. It would make things easier, at least. Tucking the drive into his pocket, Fornell glanced up intending to toss another snarky comment at Gibbs, but the man was already gone, leaving Tobias not entirely sure whether he should still be cursing the man out under his breath, or just grateful that he could get back into somewhere with central air and heating.

Waiting for his contact to answer the buzzer, Fornell huffed softly, trying to figure out how to phrase the favor he was going to ask. The last favor he’d appealed to the young man for - to give Deputy Director Ryan a chance - had ended up putting WC (admittedly not his real name, though Fornell understood why he insisted in using the moniker) on the radar of some coworkers who hadn’t had the common sense to recognize something good when they saw it, but who had more than enough control issues to make themselves true nuisances.

Of course, Fornell had only heard about that earlier that morning, after visiting Ryan’s unit, in hopes of speaking to WC, only to find that while she hadn’t taken his hint to hire Tony as a mentor for the hackers she was trying to turn around in her program, she had pegged WC as someone who bore additional surveillance and interference with if he stepped over the narrow margins of her moral directives. How WC was likely to greet him after that, Fornell had no idea.

“Unless you have Slacks or Blondie hiding in your trunk, Toby, you’re welcome to pull on in.”

“Nope, just little old me.” He answered with a smile.

The snort that earned was - all in all - a good sign.

“Fine, come on up.” WC answered, and the mechanical gate lifted slowly, barely high enough for his car to go underneath, before lowering immediately behind him.

A broad driveway cobbled with slate paving stones followed a gentle s-curve up to a sprawling, but otherwise, almost nondescript craftsman style ranch house set to the back of the property - manor style - with graduated hedgerows blocking the view of the home from the street and surrounding areas. Near the end of the driveway as it reached the home, the end of the s-curve split taking on a stylistic ‘serif’ with the left split curling inward, momentarily paralleling the home’s wide front until it split again with the split closest the house tapering into a slate stoned, gently sloped walkway that only someone familiar with the home’s owner would probably realize was a wheelchair ramp, while the split further from the house curled back onto the main driveway. Meanwhile, the right split of the driveway stretched along the northeast side of the house and gave guests almost closer access to the broad front entrance than the ramp gave the owner.

Pulling close to the house, Tobias sighed as he closed the car door behind him. While the agencies and districts regularly relied on and traded on favors between members of other agencies, even agents and agencies of foriegn powers, there were unspoken warnings against going outside those boundaries to independent contractors… even ones with top secret and comparmentalized secret information (TS/CSI) clearances, even if they were regularly hired by the relevant agencies. Regardless of their field and experience, these contractors were rarely shown even the respect shown mercenaries and were regularly excluded from the better graces of the intelligence community - regardless of their skills and backgrounds. If he weren’t already certain of Gibbs’ access to skilled cyber-hunters and SOC specialists, not to mention his pet goth, Fornell would have taken the drive Gibbs had given him back to Quantico and called in a marker or two with the FBI cyber squad.

FBI pride aside, Tobias was all too aware that the best of the FBI’s organized crime unit and the best of the best of the region’s cyber squads had tracked every single phone, computer, and credit card account associated with the Macaluso Crime Family - for over five years - and turned up nothing, until an SAC from the organized crime taskforce overheard an independent SOC analyst, hired to run a security check, discussing the perceived weaknesses of the computer searches that he and another analyst had observed and decided to call the man to the carpet for his remarks. Instead of putting the independent contractor in his place as the SAC had intended, he found himself eating his words after challenging the man ‘to do it better’, which the contractor - WC - almost immediately did. Within three months, the contractor’s investigation built a case that brought down the core of the Maculuso’s empire and holdings. It was impossible to argue with that kind of success, especially when the contractor followed up with proof gained through the portion of the investigation he had been hired to do, which confirmed a number of higher ups suspicions, that the reason they hadn’t gotten anywhere - previously- on the Maculuso and several other organized crime investigations was largely but not entirely due to compromised agents that IA hadn’t been able to ferret out.

Fornell had met WC when the contractor’s investigation turned up corrupt agents in his own office and Fornell was tasked with gathering proof. He couldn’t say that they’d struck up a friendship, through the ordeal, anymore than he really thought of what he had with Gibbs as a friendship, but they had reached enough of an understanding that when the Witsec Marshall assigned to guard WC, after the Maculuso case went to trial, had - months into the assignment - turned up on the payroll of a money launderer, whose computer use the analyst had been hired to investigate to determine if and what back doors the petty officer might have taken advantage of to hide activities that had only been discovered after a shipmate reported an overheard illicit phone call, WC turned to Fornell. Not exactly trading on favors, but showing the beginnings of a working relationship - he hoped.

It was one of the reasons that he’d sounded Deputy Director Ryan out about hiring WC for her unit. With the younger man’s skill and experience, not to mention irreverence, in Fornell’s opinion, the SOC analyst would have excelled in turning the still young and impressionable ‘black hat’ hackers Ryan was targeting back onto a better path and likely even producing valuable assets for the FBI… and the additional protections that holding a position as a federal officer would have given WC were only what was due considering the primary threats to the man had come from his un-contracted work on the Maculuso case at the FBI’s behest. Why she hadn’t been able to recognize WC’s potential value to the department, he had no idea.

“Socks... “ WC reminded him as he opened the door, gesturing to a porch bench beside the door.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.” Fornell offered, sitting on the bench to remove his shoes and slip them under the bench. It was a bit of a nuisance, but not without just cause, and Fornell recognized the practicalities of the request.

“So you say, but your words would be a lot easier to believe if you weren’t standing at the door, staring into the distance when I opened it.”

“You may have a point.” Tobias agreed, picking out a pair of ankle socks waiting for guests in a basket under the first bench and sliding them on over his dress socks. It might be overkill, he supposed, but he’d been to a crime scene earlier in the day and at the park with Jethro so couldn’t guarantee that nothing had slipped into his shoes to be tracked in. WC’s appreciative smile was a good clue that he’d made the right decision.

“Okay, come on in. What do you have for me?” WC asked, already turning directly into his private office - to the left of the door- and holding his hand out as he reached for a clipboard hanging just inside.

“Have you heard about the break-in at NCIS, last week?” Fornell asked even as he held out the jump drive Jethro gave him. “An associate was involved in it and is running their investigation. Those are his notes, reports, video clips, voice prints … he says everything they have on it. He’s frustrated that they haven’t come up with anything yet, and asked me to see what I can turn up on it.”

WC raised his eyebrow at Fornell’s explanation, and Tobias was expecting to hear some comment on who would be turning the information up, which he had to admit was deserved. Instead, WC remarked, “He’s investigating an incident he was involved in? … And just how involved was he?”

And … ~~~That was justified too ~~~ The phenomenon of Gibbs was sometimes hard to explain.

“He was the highest field officer available on the scene, familiar with the other parties involved, one of his team members was among the hostages, he’s reportedly close to the older medical examiner being held hostage, and he was shot during the stand-off with the foriegn agent.”

“Soooo, no possible conflicts of interest there.” WC assessed sardonically, continuing, “And no one at NCIS sees a problem with a direct victim of the break-in leading the investigation into it?”

“I’m sure someone’s probably told him that the investigation should be handled by another agency, but… Gibbs is… difficult to explain sometimes and others reactions to him - even harder. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying; he is a good agent and a gung-ho marine who believes in justice, but when it comes to protecting people he considers his own…”

“He goes all ‘Dirty Harry’? How likely is that, here?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. He’s convinced that the intruder isn’t done with his team or himself. If the man does come back to threaten them, Gibbs’ll do whatever it takes to prevent that, but if the man stays away, Jethro would probably be almost content to hate him from afar.” Fornell explained, stifling his amusement when he watched WC mouth ‘Jethro’.

“It’s worse,” he chuckled, “Gibbs’ full name is ‘Leroy Jethro’.

“That is worse,” WC chuckled, handing the clipboard to Fornell for him to read and sign. To Tobias’s surprise, it was a federal contractor’s chain of custody verification form, noting that a copy was being made of the entirety of the jump drive with a description of the drive’s contents.

“Kid, I don’t have authorization to hire you for this.” Fornell protested, certain he’d hit a roadblock.

“Chain of custody doesn’t need it, Toby, but if there’s a chance of this going to court, then the copy of the drive’s contents will be covered. Your friend is presumably a federal agent who presumably gave this directly to you, a federal agent, who just handed it to me, an SOC investigative analyst with TS/CSI clearance… Wa La, an unbroken evidence chain. You’ll notice that I left cells above for him to record compilation of the drive and for the two of you to sign off on its earlier transfer. … Unless you're telling me there isn’t a chance of this going to court?”

~~~ And - There - was the roadblock.~~~ But it was one Tobias could respect. It was even almost classy… letting Fornell know that if he was planning on using WC’s skills in a revenge plot, Fornell was going to be taking - documented - responsibility for it, so wouldn’t escape the consequences… without hinting in any way shape or form what those consequences would be or making any sort of direct threat. One wasn’t necessary, anyway, at least not to anyone who was aware of how effectively WC had separated the compromised FBI, WitSec Marshalls, and the then LEOs from their careers after discovering their malfeasance.

“Not sure how the higher ups will proceed with whatever discovered, they may end up including it in whatever monthly grievances go out between the oval office and whatever consulate applies, but it’s a good precaution either way.” Tobias answered signing the sheet, not completely dismissing the concern, but trying to allay it. He had been telling the truth, though, if the intruder came back and tried to get at one of Gibbs' team, Gibbs wouldn’t hesitate to end him, but it wouldn’t be a revenge mission. Hopefully that would be enough, because - as WC pointed out - the investigation was very, very close to skirting the edge of unsanctioned… and Tobias really couldn’t see himself doing anything else in the years remaining until his retirement.

WC handed the original jump drive back to Tobias and gestured him toward the lounge, offering, “If you remember how to work the coosno, there’s beer in the lounge. I’ll take a look at what you have here, and let you know if I have any questions.”

“I think I can figure it out, thanks.” Tobias accepted, heading to the smaller lounge that sat just on the other side of the door, watching while WC rolled over to his workstation in what would have been the living room of another ranch house. The wide-screen wall-mounted computer monitors, conference phone, mobile keyboard and smart-tech hub on his workstation left no question to the room’s purpose, though... at least not any more than the coosno ‘smart coffee table’ with a revolving refrigerator drawer and waiting preset-Netflix tablets left any question of the lounge’s purpose: namely, to keep him out of WC's hair while he waited.

Well, he’d been put on hold in less comfortable manners, so Tobias grabbed a beer (It turns out he did remember how to work the hi-tech robot-ish looking coffee table.), grabbed a tablet, and settled back in one of the over-soft sectionals.