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Tony slammed on the breaks in his temporary black sedan rental car as he neared the crime scene and realized the gray vehicle was coming right for him. It was too late, however. The gray vehicle hit Tony’s rental car at an angle, spinning the car around until it was sideways as Tony failed to get out of the way with his attempts to dodge the oncoming car.
He heard the sickening crunch as his car hit the parked car on the side of the street and flinched. This wasn’t going to do anything good for his insurance. On the other hand, what was that fucker up to?
There was no way that was an accident. Tony opened the car door, raising his gun just in case, and quickly got out, determined to give the idiot a piece of his mind. When he reached the gray car there was no one there.
Tony stared at the empty driver’s seat in shock. Who the hell had been driving that car? There was no way that they could have escaped without him noticing. So where the hell were they?
This was going to make him so late. On top of that, his insurance company would never believe him. This was so going to suck.
First, the police arrived. He had to call the rental agency and explain what happened and work out the details with them since it was their car. It was a huge mess, but he was finally able to make it to the crime scene, sans car.
Gibbs growled, “Where were you?”
Only then did Tony realize he had no idea where his cellphone was. “Sorry, boss. I literally got in an accident less than a mile from here.”
“Finish collecting the evidence and take it to Abby.”
“Yes, boss.”
Tony wondered if his phone was in the rental car somewhere still. That would just make his day, really. First, though, the crime scene and taking stuff to Abby.
Oh god. Abby. She was going to kill him when she found out he’d almost been injured in a wreck.
Tony climbed into the evidence van after making sure all the evidence was in there and hoped that there wasn’t a repeat of what happened on his way to the crime scene on his way back to headquarters. He still wasn’t sure what to think of this bootless crash. What did it gain someone to kill his rental car?
There was literally no advantage to this. It didn’t make sense. Yet, it was clearly planned.
There was no other way for the driver to vanish so quickly without Tony seeing him. That meant it had to be intended for him. But why?
Tony had no clue. As far as he knew, no one had been released recently that he’d put away and he hadn’t pissed off anyone recently. He had no idea what was going on nor how to even begin figuring out what was happening.
Before he could worry about it or his lack of cellphone any further, he pulled into the NCIS evidence garage. He turned the truck over to the baggy bunnies to log in and went to visit Abby. He wasn’t sure he was ready for Abby, but better to get it over with quickly.
Putting on a face that hopefully wouldn’t reveal anything, Tony entered Abby’s lab. “Hey Abby!”
“Tony! What are you doing here?” Abby squealed running towards him and giving him a huge hug.
“Brought the evidence back for you.”
“Gibbs made you do that? Why? What did you do piss him off?”
“Yeah.” Tony scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “I showed up late to the crime scene.”
“What? Tony that’s not like you. What happened?”
“Some idiot slammed into me when I was almost at the crime scene. I have no idea who, either. They were gone by the time I made it to the other car.”
“What? Are you ok?” Abby stepped back and started patting Tony all over looking for injuries.
“I’m fine, Abbs.” Tony brushed her hands away.
“You always say that. Does Gibbs know?”
Tony shrugged. “I told him. Hey Abbs?”
“Yeah?”
“Do me a favor?”
“What?”
“In the mess of the accident, I lost my phone. Can you trace it for me?”
“Tony! That’s Gibbs rule #3.”
“I know, Abbs. That’s why I need you to find it.”
“Right! I’m on it!”
Tony watched as Abby started up the tracking program and punched in his information. Then they both stared at the screen as the cell phone started moving across it. Apparently it was in a moving vehicle.
Damn. That probably meant it was in the rental car. This was going to suck. Gibbs was going to kill him for being unreachable.
“Let me know when it stops moving, Abby. I’ll try to see if I can pick it up before Gibbs get too pissed at me for rule 3. I’d better go help the baggy bunnies.”
“I’ll come with. I can check out anything that I need to process then.”
“Ok.”
Once they got all the evidence sorted, Tony gave Abby a goodbye hug. “I better check in with the boss.”
“I’ll call you if I get anything.”
Tony nodded and headed up the stairs to the bullpen. The first thing he did when he reached his desk was to call Gibbs and update him. Gibbs ordered him to start on the background for their dead petty officer while they finished up at the crime scene.
Gibbs hung up before Tony could say anything else. Tony shrugged and started running some searches. He’d need more information from the crime scene before he could do much, but he’d get started.
His desk phone rang. “DiNozzo.”
It was Abby. “Tony! Your phone has stopped moving.”
“Great. Where is it?”
“It appears to be at AA Towing.”
“IM me the address, Abbs. I’ll go pick it up before Gibbs notices I’m missing. If they get back and he asks where I am tell them I went on a coffee run.”
“Will do, Tony.”
Tony hurried down to the parking garage and checked one of the vehicles out of the motor pool. He then quickly headed to the tow shop address Abby gave him. He sighed in relief when they had his phone waiting for him at the front desk.
He was able to quickly get out of there. He had to swerve hard to the right after pulling out into traffic to avoid the car that was barreling for him. That was the second car today.
What was going on? The guy behind him wasn’t so lucky. Tony rushed to the scene, again with his gun out hoping to catch the bastard red handed, to see if the driver was actually in the car this time. Tony wanted more than anything to know who was behind this.
Again, there was no one in the driver’s seat. Tony sighed. He handed the unfortunate soul involved in the accident his card and told him to have the police call him as a witness if it was needed.
Tony shook his head, climbed into the NCIS vehicle and headed back to headquarters. This was getting ridiculous. What on earth was going on?
Why was he being targeted? How were the drivers getting away? None of this made any sense.
He knew he’d have to tell Gibbs. If someone was targeting him, it could mean trouble for the entire team or it might just be related to the current case somehow. He had no idea.
He did know that if Gibbs found out about it and Tony hadn’t told him, he’d be in even more trouble. Tony sighed in relief as he arrived at headquarters without further incidents. This day was fast becoming a nightmare for him.
Now, he was beginning to wonder if the original accident involving his personal vehicle had actually been an accident. Tony started some searches on the guy that had t-boned his car when he got back to the office. Maybe that would give him something to go on.
Gibbs and team weren’t back, yet, for which Tony was thankful. He wasn’t looking forward to having to explain any of this to Gibbs. At least, he had his cellphone now.
Tony startled as his phone started to ring. He blinked as the phone showed a blocked number.
”Next time, we won’t miss.” Click.
Well that wasn’t ominous at all. Now, he really needed to find out why he was being targeted. That phone call made it clear they were actually targeting him.
He still had no idea, why, however. There was no way he could keep this from Gibbs. Tony hoped that they returned soon.
He redoubled his effort to figure out who had been driving the cars and why he’d been targeted. However, it did no good. All his searches were coming back with no results.
He had nowhere to start looking for why he was being targeted. This didn’t make sense. Federal agents weren’t randomly targeted.
“DiNozzo!” Gibbs barked as he entered the bullpen.
“Yes, boss?”
“What have you got for us?”
“Not much, petty officer led a pretty boring life according to his Navy files. I called his captain and a couple of the other petty officers that he was close to and they couldn’t tell me anything about why this would have happened to the petty officer.”
McGee went over what they’d found at the scene. Gibbs snarled at the lack of information they had about the victim and the perpetrator. “Someone get me a lead.”
McGee, Ziva, and Tony all put their heads down and tried to find something anything to help solve the case. While Tony was calling and searching everything he could think of, he received an IM from Abby, “I got something for you.”
“Boss, Abbs has something.”
Gibbs nodded and gestured for Tony to go with him down to Abby’s lab. Tony started to open his mouth to try and explain to Gibbs that he was being targeted, but every time he looked at Gibbs he closed his mouth.
Finally, Gibbs got annoyed, “What is it?”
“It’s nothing, boss,” Tony murmured as they headed into Abby’s lab.
“Tony! Where’s your phone?” Abby cried out.
Tony blinked, “Right here, Abbs. Why?”
“What you told me about the crime scene got my radar going. I think I know how they’re tracking you, but I need to see your phone to confirm.”
“What’s going on?” Gibbs demanded.
Tony handed his phone to Abby as she started babbling, “It’s super hinky, Gibbs. Someone crashed Tony’s rental car this morning and then tried to hit him again when he went to pick up his phone.”
Tony sighed. “Abby.”
“Whoops. I wasn’t supposed to mention any of that. Sorry, Tony.”
Gibbs turned his attention to Tony. “What is Abby talking about?”
“Someone appears to be targeting me. On top of what Abby said I got a phone call from a blocked number that simply said ‘Next time, we won’t miss’.”
“What? Tony you didn’t tell me that.” Abby hugged Tony. “You be careful now, Tony. It’s not nice to worry Abby.”
”The even stranger piece? Both cars that went after me appeared to have no driver. I rushed over to them as soon as I could and there was no driver to be found. I saw no one leaving them either.”
Gibbs nodded. “You’ll stay on searches and information gathering from headquarters.”
“What? Gibbs, you can’t bench me over this.”
“Until we have more information we can’t chance you in the field.”
Tony glared.
“I’m not losing you on accident, Tony.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “So what did you call us down here for, Abbs?”
“I was right, Tony. Someone put a tracker on your phone.”
“What? Can you find out anything about it?”
”I’ve already taken it off, which should make it harder for them to track you and I’ll start tracing the manufacturer and figure out what’s going on.”
“Thanks Abbs.”
“You have anything on our case, yet, Abbs? Or did you just call us down here for Tony?”
“Of course, I do, Gibbs. Did you know your crime scene was staged?”
“What?” Gibbs barked.
“Abbs, what do you mean by that?” Tony questioned.
“Every single piece of evidence that I’ve looked at so far has had trace evidence that couldn’t have come from where you found it. I’m still tracing down where it actually came from, but it’s pretty obvious the scene was staged.”
“Good job, Abbs.” Gibbs complimented.
Tony followed Gibbs as he left the lab. “Do you think whoever is targeting me also set up the crime scene?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Solve the case.”
Gibbs nodded.
As they walked into the bullpen, Gibbs barked, “DiNozzo, start making a list of people who could be targeting you.”
“Boss?” McGee asked confused.
Gibbs gestured for Tony to explain. Tony dropped his cellphone on McGee’s desk. “The last call I received. See if you can trace it. It was a blocked number.”
“What happened, Tony?”
“Someone tried to take me out, twice, today. They called and told me they wouldn’t miss next time.”
“Why?”
Tony shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, Probie.”
“So we’re coming at this case from two angles, one the evidence, and one who might be targeting Tony. Get to work.” Gibbs growled.
McGee, Ziva, and Tony nodded, turning to their computers to try to find some answers. Tony was wracking his brain for anyone who might be targeting him. He’d been a cop before NCIS, so it wasn’t like there was a shortage of people that he’d sent to jail, but he didn’t understand what could have triggered any of them.
He had a list of like 200 people, but most of them were still in prison and those that weren’t had been out for a considerable amount of time, so seemed unlikely culprits. He put the list down to focus on the case and see if he could make any headway there, but the case was similarly confusing and lacking in direction. Ducky hadn’t had a chance to complete the autopsy, yet, so they didn’t have a cause of death or even a murder weapon.
None of the people that knew the petty officer could think of any motive why someone would want to kill him. This was usually the time where Tony would start drawing inspiration from movies and would come up with something out of thin air, but he couldn’t think of even one movie that was anything like their crime scene.
Tony snarled and decided he needed to work off some of his excess energy before he ended up smashing his fist into his computer or something. “Going to the gym.”
Gibbs eyes flashed as he met DiNozzo’s eyes, but finally he nodded in acceptance. ‘McGee. Get with Abby find out everything you can about Tony’s morning, see if something from that leads to a break in the case.”
“On it, Gibbs.” McGee scurried out of the bullpen eager to be anywhere other than there. The tension had been building since they returned and he didn’t want to be there for the explosion.
“Ziva, get in touch with your contacts. See if someone’s put a hit out on DiNozzo for some reason.”
“Yes, Gibbs.”
Meanwhile in the lab, Abby and McGee’s fingers were flying over keyboards as they tried to make sense of what Abby had found so far. They’d found traces of substances that could only have come from another country. On top of that, there were a couple others that could only have come from some of the Mountains in New Jersey.
It didn’t make any sense. Who could have possibly been to all of these places to stage their crime scene? McGee was doing his best to try to find some correlation between those places and their petty officer, but wasn’t having much luck.
Abby had originally been helping him, but when they’d come up with little she’d returned to processing the evidence hoping that more evidence would give them better clues. So far, though, it had just added more confusion.
“Gibbs?”
“What, Ziva?”
“There is a hit out on Tony.”
Gibbs nodded. He’d begun to wonder if that were the case, nothing else had made any sort of sense. “Who?”
“Jeanne Benoit, but I don’t understand why she would do this.”
“A woman scorned will do many an unimaginable thing.” Tony announced cheerfully as he returned from the gym.
“Tony!” Ziva protested.
“Ziva, darling. She believes I lied to her. Of course, she will do many unimaginable things.”
“DiNozzo, focus on Benoit. Figure out what happened to bring her after you now.”
“On it, boss.”
“Ziva, go back to the case. Look at the financials and see if there’s anything to tie Benoit to this case.”
“Yes, Gibbs.”
As Tony dug into Benoit and what was going on in her life, he realized that she had all the reason in the world to come after him. What had been a strong practice for her had somehow taken a turn for the worse after the frog op and now she was after Tony with a vengeance. Well that at least explained the people determined to take him out.
Neither he nor Ziva were having any luck tying Benoit to the case, but Tony had a feeling she was involved somehow. She had all the makings of a desperate woman. With her father gone and her job practically destroyed, she had to be completely immersed in the dregs now and desperately attempting to claw her way out.
Tony started looking into her practice to see what had happened. She’d been a well known doctor at a hospital and Tony had thought her a good doctor, at that. He didn’t understand what could have changed so drastically for her.
There may be more threads interwoven in this story than simple revenge from a woman scorned. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had framed him. The FBI had arrested him enough times over such things to prove that.
“Gibbs. I think I have something.”
Gibbs gestured for Ziva to continue.
“A lot of the evidence in Abby’s lab appears to be associated with some of Benoit’s most recent patients.”
“Jeanne is killing her patients and then staged a crime scene with pieces from them?” Tony blurted incredulously.
“No, I do not think so. I believe someone else is attempting to discredit Miss Benoit.”
“That ties with what I’m finding out about why her practice is struggling and why she no longer works at the hospital.”
“Good, Keep looking. I don’t want speculation. I want proof.”
“Yes, Gibbs.” Tony and Ziva chorused.
Just then McGee rushed into the bullpen. “Abby and I found something, boss.”
“What is it, McGee?”
”Abby and I just finished tracing all the evidence, particularly the traces that couldn’t possibly have come from where the body was found.”
“And?” Gibbs demanded impatiently.
“All of them can be traced to the locales that Dr. David Woods has visited recently. He also happens to be the doctor that the petty officer was seeing while he was on leave.”
“Find out why the petty officer needed to see a non Navy doctor.”
McGee nodded and started typing away on his computer.
“Did you say Dr. David Woods, Probie?”
“Yes. Why, Tony?”
“He’s Jeanne Benoit’s current husband.”
“Is that significant?”
“Apparently. She’s placed a hit out on me.”
“Damn. That sucks, Tony.”
Tony shrugged. “I guess I really made an impression on her.”
Ziva shook her head. She would never understand Tony. He could make a joke out of anything even when it was his life on the line.
Gibbs clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Back to work people. Let’s get to the bottom of what’s going on.”
Tony felt like they were finally onto something. Gibbs had vanished for coffee. McGee was busy compiling folders and folders of evidence related to David Woods, the crime scene, Jeanne Benoit, and her practice going under. Ziva was doing some digging of her own.
Hopefully they would have enough information for when Gibbs returned. Tony knew the boss would want an update as soon as he arrived. The elevator doors opened and Tony rushed to the TV, McGee doing the same with his folders.
Ziva stood up in an aborted attempt to stop Tony and McGee from crashing into each other in their attempt to be the first one to explain what they found. “I’m the Senior Agent. I go first, Probie.” Tony stared down McGee.
Not caring about the tension amongst his team, Gibbs barked, “What do we have?”
“Jeanne Benoit blames me for her practice going under and has placed a hit out on me. Her husband, a Dr. David Wood, has dipped his toes into the criminal world more than once.”
McGee continued from there, “Dr. Woods has through an intermediary taken the contract that his wife put out on DiNozzo. Benoit seems unaware that her husband has any dark business dealings. We’ve also found significant links between her husband and the ‘accidents’ that have been hurting her business.”
Gibbs nodded, “Ziva?”
“Woods has hired a couple of well known assassins for hire to take out Tony.”
“McGee, Ziva. Go get Woods and bring him into interrogation. Tony, call Benoit and have her come in too.”
The team quickly moved to do Gibbs’ bidding and soon they had Woods in interrogation with Benoit in the observation room. Woods had no idea Benoit was there. Tony was going to start the Woods interrogation.
Gibbs wanted to see Benoit’s reaction to what they had on Woods. He wasn’t convinced that she was completely innocent in this, but they currently only had her for putting a hit out on DiNozzo. Something like that she would get off essentially scot free and Gibbs wanted to make sure she wasn’t more involved before he let her get away so easily.
Tony calmly sat down across from Woods. “Jeanne can be hard to live with, can’t she? All those hours she has to work as a doctor. It’s bound to take a toll on your relationship.”
“What are you talking about? My relationship with Jeanne is fine.”
“Really? Your actions would indicate otherwise.” Tony opened one of the folders he’d brought in with him, landing on a page that showed Woods in Jeanne’s office ‘adjusting’ a piece of equipment.
“How did you get that?”
“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”
“I erased all evidence.”
“Well clearly not all. You might want to consider keeping your day job. You’re a better doctor than you are a criminal.”
Jeanne’s eyes had widened during this and Gibbs sighed. So she really hadn’t known what her husband was up to.
“What I want to know is why you were trying to discredit the wife? You see I have a bet going with my coworkers. I think you just couldn’t handle that your wife was a better doctor than you. McGee thinks you just hated her long hours and thought this would force her to work less hours. Ziva has you down for jealousy because Jeanne wouldn’t stop talking about me, so which is it?”
Woods glared. “I want a lawyer.”
Tony shrugged. “No problem, but a lawyer isn’t going to stop you from going to prison for a very long time. You tried to kill a federal agent granted it was your wife that put out the hit, but you were the one who was following through. What was it? Did you get tired of Jeanne talking about me and decide to get rid of me for good and her hit gave you a good excuse to make her take the blame? Or was it something else? Were you doing this to rid your wife of someone she hated? Tell me.”
“I’m not saying anything more without a lawyer.”
Tony sighed, but gathered the folders and nodded. Sticking his head into interrogation, Tony ordered, “McGee get him a lawyer or let him call his.”
”Tony, wait!” Benoit called out.
Tony paused in the hallway, but he didn’t turn around.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t realize, my own husband was against me.”
“I guess you just have bad choice in men.”
“Not necessarily, I chose you, right?”
“Did you?”
“You’re the one who broke it off with me, Tony.”
“You couldn’t handle my putting NCIS over you. It was the best decision for both of us.” Tony explained as he walked away, completely done with this conversation.
Jeanne watched him go with a regretful look on her face. Ziva and Gibbs left interrogation and just watched her. Finally, Gibbs offered, “You’re free to go Mrs. Benoit.”
“Thank you, Gibbs, and tell Agent DiNozzo, thank you too.”
Gibbs just grunted and headed for the bullpen. Ziva followed. Miss Benoit glanced at the interrogation room where her husband remained, shook her head and left.
When the lawyer arrived, everyone moved back to the observation room except for Gibbs who stepped into the interrogation room with the lawyer. “I’ll give you a few minutes to discuss and then I’ll come back.”
When Gibbs returned, the lawyer explained, “I told my client to deal.”
Gibbs nodded. “I just want to know why.”
“At first, it just annoyed me that she made more money than me, but then her comments about DiNozzo started. Eventually, the jealousy reared its head and between the two that’s why.”
“Ok. We’ll write up the confession and you can go over it tomorrow to make sure it’s accurate.”
With that, Gibbs had someone take Woods back to his cell. He returned to the bullpen and accepted the team’s reports before sending them home.
Tony figured since Benoit knew the truth and the mastermind who had taken the bounty was behind bars that he would be safe driving home. Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that that wasn’t going to be the case. There was a silver sedan trailing him.
It hadn’t, yet, attempted to crash into him, but Tony was sure it was only a matter of time. Quickly changing his destination, Tony headed for Gibbs house. If he was going to be attacked, he wanted backup.
Plus, Gibbs’ house was relatively free of civilians stupid enough to get involved. He just hoped that he could get to Gibbs’ house before they decided to try to run him off the road. Of course, he couldn’t be that lucky.
He noticed the silver car approaching him fast on the left. That wasn’t the worst of his problems, however. There was another vehicle approaching on his right.
He was pretty sure they were going to try to crush his car between them. Tony waited until they were on him and slammed on his breaks. Both cars shot past him and he quickly turned into an alley to start taking back roads.
For a while it worked, but they were on him again shortly before he pulled into Gibbs’ neighborhood. He’d fired off a text to Gibbs and hoped the man was home and ready for whatever was about to happen. The breaks squealed as Tony swerved into Gibbs’ neighborhood.
Tony watched the cars approaching him too fast to stop and dived from his car right before they slammed into it. The cars exploded as they crashed into each other and a couple other men dove from the cars that had been chasing him as well. Tony pulled out his gun, noticing that Gibbs had a rifle out and was watching from the door.
“Why are you still after me? Surely you know your employer will be heading to jail soon?”
“Thanks for that. Now, we can get the full amount from his wife.”
“Benoit hasn’t withdrawn the bounty on my head?”
The men shook their heads and grinned evilly as they approached, guns out as well.
“I’d think very carefully about your next move if I were you,’ Gibbs growled, raising his rifle.
“What’s it matter to you, old man?”
“He’s a federal agent. If you take him out, you’re not going to live long enough to enjoy the money you’ll get.”
“If you’re smart, you’ll leave now.”
They stepped closer, raising their guns instead. Before they could get a shot off, Gibbs raised his rifle and made two shots. Tony had also fired.
Both men went down. Tony checked and made sure they were dead.
“You think it’s over?” Tony asked Gibbs hopefully.
Gibbs shook his head. “Won’t be over until Benoit takes down her bounty.”
Tony sighed, “Yeah. What are we going to do about that?”
“Let me handle it. I have some ideas.”
Tony nodded, entering Gibbs’ house and collapsing on the couch. He was so glad to be done with this case. He would be glad when the heat was off and he could go back to his more normal life where the main threat to his life came from cases rather than exes that have been out of his life for years.