Fetid

Tony was beginning to wonder if things could get any worse. Gibbs and him had been running things their way and Sabrina had been fitting in well, but with Ziva’s espionage and McGee’s less than stellar performance combined with the latest FBI debacle things were starting to become rather fetid. Tony was beginning to wonder if Gibbs and him had gone too far and this was the universe’s way of telling them to stop.

They were no closer to figuring out who was behind the attacks on the admiral. They person or people responsible seemed to have gone into hiding. None of their underlings were talking either.

Either the underlings truly knew nothing or there was something big going on that they were missing out on. All of the information the FBI had on the man after the admiral dried up and vanished after the bust. It wasn't just that they couldn't figure out wherever to find the man now.

Everything was gone. All their previous evidence, simply gone. Even the files backed up to the central database had been wiped out completely.

He supposed he couldn't blame the FBI for being too distracted to notice a missing prisoner in the mess of chasing their own tails. Still it would have been nice to have a heads up that Ziva had escaped. McGee had apparently gotten the scare of his life when she'd shown up at NCIS headquarters looking for Tony and Gibbs.

Fortunately, McGee had managed to give them a heads up so they were expecting her sometime soon. Unfortunately, McGee wasn't able to stop her from leaving NCIS. She seemed to blame all of them for her prison stay, though, McGee indicated that what she really wanted was to find her father.

McGee hadn't told her where to find them, but they were sure she would eventually figure it out. So now they had to protect the admiral from her as well as whoever was after him. They’d sent Sabrina home to get some sleep as they couldn’t all be running on no sleep, so she didn’t know about Ziva.

Tony only hoped that Ziva hadn’t found out about her. He had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn’t take being replaced easier than Kate well. Sabrina was good, but she didn’t have the combat skills Ziva did. Tony was pretty confident that Ziva could take Sabrina in a fight and he hoped it didn’t happen.

He wondered what Ziva’s end game was now. He wondered how she tied into whoever was after the admiral or if she’d just taken advantage of the FBI’s distraction. He supposed they’d find out soon.

Right now, they needed to focus on finding who was behind the admiral. At this point even using the admiral as bait was unlikely to get them the information they needed. McGee had been working hard at finding something for them to go on, but he’d had no luck.

Everyone was running on fumes at this point. Tony had caught McGee sleeping under his desk a couple of times when Gibbs had sent him back to NCIS to research something while Gibbs and the FBI stayed with the admiral. Gibbs had reverted to his normal growly bear as usually happened when cases weren’t going well.

As Sabrina was still sleeping, though she was due back soon, and McGee was at headquarters while Tony and Gibbs stayed with the admiral, Tony was getting the brunt of Gibbs temper. He wasn’t overly happy with Gibbs and his display of temper and kept sending him looks which only infuriated Gibbs more.

Every time they thought they were getting close to finding something, they’d find out they were too late. Tony was beginning to suspect they had a mole somewhere. He was waiting for the right moment to tell Gibbs.

Knowing Gibbs, he already knew. Still Gibbs, despite mainlining coffee, was clearly feeling the effect of so many sleepless nights. Tony hoped that if Gibbs got some sleep that he’d lose the temper, but he knew suggesting sleep would just piss Gibbs off more, right now.

Sometimes the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He’d have to talk with Gibbs as to what his problem was, later. Hopefully they could get this case wrapped up soon before Tony lost it too.