Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

Ducky: “Unfinished business will always come after you. Whatever you fail to kill will hunt your children, or the next generation.” - Samuel T Padmore

[March 10th, 2010 7:30 PM]

Agent Gibbs pulled up in his car outside of the apartment building where one of his agents lived. It was already dark, and the rain wasn’t helping. He stepped out, flashlight in hand and started looking around at the crime scene. Crime scene tape blocked the building’s main entrance and formed a perimeter around a silver sedan parked outside with the driver’s side door still wide open. Gibbs turned and watched as an ambulance with its lights and sirens on drove away into the blackness of the night. A few minutes later, he was joined by Tony and Ziva. 

“Boss, what do we know?” Tony asked. 

“How could this have happened?” Ziva asked.

“So far not much, McGee took two rounds to the chest when he got out of his car. The bastard who did this shot from a high vantage point, my guess is, it was probably one of those trees over there,” Gibbs said, pointing to a small group of large, mature trees just outside the parking lot in front of the building. “They got him by surprise, McGee never had a chance to return fire.” 

***

[NCIS Headquarters, 9:15 PM] 

Almost two hours later, Gibbs rode the elevator down to the forensics lab on the basement level, with a 44 oz Caffpow in his hand. There was still no word on McGee’s condition, and very little else to go on until Abby processed the evidence. Something about this just isn’t right. Why McGee, why now? Why does this feel so damn familiar? He asked himself. Hopefully, Abby will be able to tell us what type of gun was used from the shell casing DiNozzo found at the crime scene, maybe, if we’re real lucky, she’ll get a print off it that’s actually in the system.

When he walked into Abby’s lab, she was balancing her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she typed at her computer. Whoever she was calling, it went straight to voicemail.

“…please leave a message,” said a male voice Gibbs didn’t recognize. 

“Seriously? Are you kidding? Why aren’t you answering? This is the sixteenth time I’ve called you. Where the hell are you? Pick up the damn phone! …please…” Abby said, ending her message with concern in her voice. 

“Abbs,” Gibbs began, “Who you trying to call?” 

“McGee’s cousin, he’s McGee’s emergency contact, and he lives in that apartment building,” Abby said. “Someone needs to tell him what happened tonight before he goes home and finds it, plus, I don’t want McGee to be alone at the hospital either.”

“If he lives there, wouldn’t he already know what happened? Maybe his phone’s off because he’s already at Bethesda,” Gibbs suggested. 

Abby nodded hopefully.

“As for the hospital, Ducky’s already there and he's not going anywhere. You can join him once you're done with the evidence. What did you find so far?’ Gibbs asked. 

“I traced the trajectory of the shots based on where McGee would’ve been standing and you were right, they came from the upper branches of the trees right outside the parking lot. The shooter was probably laying in wait when McGee got home. He had no idea he was walking into a trap,” she explained. 

“What about the bullet casing?” he asked. 

“It’s from a hunting rifle, I won’t know exactly what kind until I get the bullets it put in McGee’s chest. But, we got extraordinarily lucky. It was just sheltered enough, that I managed to pull a DNA sample and a partial print. The DNA is making its way through CODIS and I’m running the prints now too.” She explained. 

“Any hits?”

“Not yet, but it’s only been about forty-five minutes since I got my hands on the evidence Gibbs, these searches can take hours or even days,” she reminded him, but just as she said the words, her computer started beeping. 

“What is it Abby?” 

“Just a second, we got lucky, we got a hit on the partial fingerprint I found. It matches a bunch of stuff from our cold case files. Apparently there were a series of murders in the late seventies up until the early nineties, the last case was… oh God…” 

“What is it Abbs?”

“The most recent fingerprint match, why didn’t McGee ever tell us that is mother was murdered? Leah McGee, says here she was found raped, beaten, stabbed, and strangled in her home. She was left naked and splayed out on the living room floor. The body was discovered by her seventeen year-old son, six year-old daughter, and ten year-old nephew.” She read aloud. Abby’s blue eyes were transfixed by the case notes on her computer screen but Gibbs saw a few tears escape from them. “I’m pulling the files of every case linked to this, just give me a sec.” She said, typing away. She entered her pass-code to access each of the cold case files she’d found, but there were some she was denied access to. Her jaw clenched. “I do not have time for this, what’s the deal?” She asked, then she looked a little closer at the access-denied screen and got her answer. “Oh…” 

“What is it, why can’t you pull the files?” Gibbs asked. 

“I can pull some of them, but not all. The ones I can’t get into weren’t ours, they’re listed as part of an FBI case.” Abby said. 

“Fornell?” Gibbs asked.

“No, not him, it says the case agent on the FBI side was an Agent Jason Gideon from the Behavioral Analysis Unit,” she replied. “On ours, it says Mike Franks took the lead investigating Mrs. McGee’s murder, but this was 1992, you were already with NCIS by then… and you were Franks’s probie. That means…” 

“Yeah, I was there that day Abbs,” he said, then he turned and walked out of the lab without a word. 

“Where are you going?” Abby called after him. 

“I’m not letting this bastard slip the net a second time,” he answered. 

Before Abby could reply, Gibbs was already in the elevator. His mind was flooded with images from that day, eighteen years ago, when he and Franks had arrived at the Admiral’s house to find his wife dead and three terrified kids holding onto each other as if their lives depended on it. Now that the same person had shot McGee, Gibbs knew exactly what this bastard was about to do next, and he wasn’t about to let that happen. 

When he got back to the bull pen, he grabbed a copy of their case file on McGee’s shooting and threw it down on Tony’s desk, where he sat making a list of anyone McGee had ever put away or who was connected to someone who was, who might have an ax to grind. 

“DiNozzo, I want you to take the case file to FBI headquarters, locate the leader of of the Behavioral Analysis Unit and ask them to work with us on this.” He said, 

Tony looked up, open mouthed, and stared at Gibbs as though he were trying to figure out if it really was him. “Boss, you’re suggesting we form a joint task force, by choice?” he asked. 

“That’s right,” the older man replied.

“Boss, I’m not even finished compiling a list of people who might have it out for McGee,” Tony replied. 

“It’s not about that. Abby got a partial print that matches an old case, the murder of McGee’s mother back in 1992, it was connected to the Hopper investigation.” Gibbs told him. 

“Wasn’t he that the guy who kept switching between navy or marine corps families and civilians?” Tony asked. “I remember that case, I was in high school when it happened, which means, McGee was too. I remember his mom dying, but I didn’t realize it was connected to that case.” 

“Well  it is,” Gibbs said. “I’m pretty sure I know how it’s connected to what happened to McGee tonight, but if we want to find the bastard, we’re gonna need the FBI’s help. They’ve got the rest of the files from the original investigation, the ones we don’t have access to.” 

“Right, plus, McGee’s cousin is in the BAU,” Tony replied. 

"I know," Gibbs said.

“Boss, I don’t want him to find out about this by going home and finding a crime scene outside his front door, and I don’t want to tell him over the phone either,” Tony said. 

“All the more reason to get your ass over there and see if his team’s willing to help us,” Gibbs said. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

[FBI Headquarters 10:00 PM]

The six field agents of the BAU filed off the elevator on the sixth floor of FBI headquarters, having just returned from a case in New Mexico.

“Ok, guys, I know it’s late. Let’s dig in, get the reports finished up on this last case, and then we can all go home,” said their Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner. 

As the team was about to make there way into the bull pen and get started, the seventh member of their team and their technical analyst, Penelope Garcia came toward them. “Actually Sir, we’ve already got another request. This one’s local. An agent, Tony DiNozzo, is waiting in the bull pen.” she explained. 

“You know this guy Hotch?” Morgan asked. 

“No,” he replied. 

“I do,” Reid piped up. “He’s an old friend. I met him in high school, as far as I know, he’s part of NCIS.” 

“What the hell is NCIS?” Prentiss asked. 

“The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, they’re an agency, not unlike the Bureau, except they specifically investigate crimes involving US Naval and Marine Corps personnel and their families, but they usually play it pretty close to the vest. I have no idea why they’d be asking for our help,” Rossi answered. 

“Neither do I, especially Tony’s team. I’ve heard quite a bit about their unit chief over the years. He’s not the type to ask for help from other units in his own agency, let alone the Bureau, so whatever this is about must be really important,” Reid theorized. 

“You could say that,” Tony said as he came through the glass doors into the hallway. “Good to see you Spencer, really wish it wasn’t like this.”

“What do you mean?” Reid asked.

 “We need to talk, we can go somewhere a little more private if you want but, the rest of your team is gonna need to know what’s going on,” he replied. 

“Just tell us.” Reid said. “Tony, why are you here?” he asked. 

“Ok then. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.” He paused, looking down for a few seconds as if trying to find the right words to say what he was going to say next, then he looked up and spoke directly to Reid. “There’s no good way to say this, Tim was shot earlier tonight, about three hours ago.” 

“Oh my God, what?! Where? How? Why? Where is he, is he alright?” 

“Who’s Tim?” Hotch asked. 

“He’s my cousin,” Reid said, fighting back tears and resisting the urge to run down the staircase and out the door. “He’s also an NCIS agent and he and Tony are on the same team. Plus, Tim and I are neighbors, same building, different floor.” Reid said, then he turned to Tony. “What happened? Just please tell me he’s still alive.” 

Morgan took a step closer to Reid and put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Gibbs sent us all home for the night, we had just finished a case of our own. Tim went home, parked his car, but whoever did this had to be waiting for him because he didn’t even have time to close his car door before he was shot twice in the chest. He was off duty and until tonight we had no reason to think anyone was after him so he was alone, no vest, no backup,” Tony explained. “As for your second question, Spencer, yeah, he’s alive. Lucky for him, one of you guy’s neighbors heard the shots, looked out the window and called 911. The Ambulance beat us to him and he was on his way to Bethesda Naval Hospital by the time Gibbs, Ziva, and I arrived on scene. He’s in surgery now. Right now, that's all I know, but we found some evidence on the scene that’s just really weird.” 

“Such as?” Hotch asked. 

“There was a shell casing, most likely from the gun that was used, it was found under a tree at the edge of the parking lot and we think the shooter was perched in that tree. Our forensic scientist, Abby, pulled a partial print off it that matches a bunch of unsolved murders, half of them are NCIS cases, but the other half were handled by the FBI. We don’t have full access to the FBI side of things, but it looks like these cases all happened between 1978 and 1992, all of them in Quantico Virginia,” Tony replied. “It actually gets even weirder than that, the most recent case that the print gave us a match to was an NCIS case, the 1992 murder of Leah McGee, Tim’s mother.” Tony explained. 

“Wait a second, this Unsub killed a woman, then circled back eighteen years later and shot her son on his way home from work?” Rossi asked. 

“That’s what it looks like, this is the first time the bastard has waited more than a few weeks between kills, but based on the other cases we do have access to, the entire family gets targeted. The mother first, then the children, one by one from oldest to youngest, then the father last,” Tony replied. 

“Dave, have you seen this kind of thing before?” Hotch asked. 

Rossi nodded. “I know who did this.” 

“Alright everybody, conference room, now. You too, Agent DiNozzo. 

***

“If everything Agent DiNozzo has told us is correct, then this unsub, is the Hopper,” Rossi said. “The Hopper was the name given to a serial killer who was active in Quantico in the late seventies up until he went dormant in the early nineties. He was a family annihilator who would kill the wife or maternal figure first, in a very specific and personal way. He’d bash her head in to gain control, then he’d torture her by raping and strangling her before finally stabbing her and leaving her there for her husband and children to find. Then in the weeks and months after the wife’s murder, he’d shoot the children at long range in either the heart or the head, oldest to youngest. He’d always save the fathers for last. The press called him ‘The Hopper’ because he would target a civilian family, then he’d pick a family where the husband was in either the navy or the marine corps. He was controlled and patient though, he wouldn’t move on to a new set of targets until he was done with the previous ones.” he explained. “The families he targeted had one thing in common across all of them, every single one,” Rossi continued. “They all had multiple kids, most had at least three, a few only had two, but he never targeted a family with an only child.” 

“That fits,” DiNozzo said, nodding at Rossi. “Tim’s mom, Mrs. McGee, had her head bashed in, she was raped, strangled, and stabbed just like all the others. She was found in the living room of her home by Tim, who was seventeen at the time, his sister, Sarah, who was only six back then, and,” Tony didn’t finish his sentence audibly, he just looked directly at Spencer and gestured toward him. 

JJ looked from Reid to DiNozzo in confusion. “Wait a second, this happened here, Spence, you were still living in Las Vegas at the time weren’t you?” she asked. 

“Actually no,” he answered. “After my dad left, which was only a year before this happened, my mom sort of went of the rails for a while. She stopped taking her meds, spent a lot of her time hyper-fixating on writing in her journals or sitting in a recliner in our living room, almost catatonic. After a few months of that, my extended family became concerned and Tim’s dad, my Uncle John, asked her to send me to stay with him and my Aunt Leah for a while. I lived with them for about nine months before this happened,” Reid explained.

“Where was he during all of this?” Morgan asked. 

“Overseas,” Tony answered, "According to the file, Admiral John McGee was bouncing between the middle east, Africa, and Eastern Europe from December of 1991 until June of ‘95.” 

“Which is why for the majority of that time it was just us and Aunt Leah,” Reid added. 

“The question is, why go dormant instead of killing the three of you like he’d done before?” Rossi asked. 

“That, might have been because he couldn’t,” Tony said. “By this time, NCIS had caught on to what this guy was doing. The file I read said that the McGee family were in protective custody for months after the murder. Maybe he didn’t move on to the Tim, Spencer, and Sarah because they were too well protected,” he suggested. 

“If that’s the case, perhaps he was forced into dormancy, maybe he has a compulsion that won’t let him move on to a new family until he’s done with the previous one, even if he can’t get to them,” Hotch theorized, 

“Then why resurface now after all this time?” Reid asked. 

“That’s what we need to figure out. Reid, you and Morgan, go with Agent DiNozzo to the hospital where your cousin is being treated, the rest of us will go to NCIS and coordinate with them,” Hotch said.