Work Text:
When Alex Rider arrived at the Navy Yard, he was wearing a borrowed blazer, a school tie that no longer belonged to any school willing to claim him, and the expression of someone who had already decided the day was going to be a waste of time.
The blazer had been Smithers’ idea, which meant it fit perfectly and looked almost offensively harmless. The tie had been Mrs. Jones’s idea, which meant Alex hated it on principle. The paperwork had been arranged through three layers of liaison bureaucracy and one very expensive-looking diplomatic email. It described Alex as an observer attached to a youth outreach and interagency work-experience initiative between the British government and an American federal agency.
It did not mention MI6.
It did not mention megalomaniac billionaires, SCORPIA, or the fact that Alex had been shot at more often than most soldiers twice his age.
It definitely did not mention that “observer” was intelligence shorthand for expendable asset with plausible deniability.
NCIS, apparently, had read the first page and stopped there.
“Anthony DiNozzo,” said the man who met him at reception, offering a grin that belonged on someone who thought charm was a professional qualification. “Call me Tony. You must be the intern.”
Alex looked at him.
There were several possible responses to that. He could have explained that he was not an intern. He could have asked why an American federal agency was allowing a supposed civilian teenager into a secure building without better verification. He could have pointed out that if MI6 had sent him here, then somebody had either made a mistake or wanted him standing near one.
Instead, Alex adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and said, “I’m Alex.”
“Right. Alex.” DiNozzo glanced at the visitor badge clipped to Alex’s blazer, then at the intake sheet in his hand. “Sixteen?”
“Last time I checked.”
“British?”
“That tends to happen when you’re from Britain.”
DiNozzo blinked, then grinned wider. “You’re going to fit right in.”
Alex doubted that very much.
The bullpen was exactly what he expected from an American agency and not at all what he expected from a competent one. There were desks arranged with the casual confidence of people who had worked together long enough to stop caring about territory. There were phones ringing, agents moving, conversations overlapping, and a large plasma screen mounted where everyone could see it.
A silver-haired man stood near the center of it all with a coffee cup in one hand and the stillness of someone who did not need to raise his voice to be obeyed. A thin liaison folder lay open on Gibbs’s desk, already creased at one corner as if he had been annoyed by it before Alex even arrived.
That would be Gibbs, Alex thought.
He had read the file on the flight over. Leroy Jethro Gibbs, former Marine sniper, NCIS supervisory special agent, multiple marriages, reputation for solving cases through instinct and intimidation. Alex had seen enough men like him to know that the file would be both accurate and incomplete.
At another desk, a woman with dark hair looked up from her computer as DiNozzo approached. She saw Alex, took in the blazer, the school tie, the bag, the visitor badge, and the way Alex’s gaze swept the room before settling anywhere.
Her mouth twitched.
Alex noticed.
More importantly, Alex recognized her.
Not properly. They had never spoken or been introduced. But there had been a night in Prague when MI6 and Mossad had both been circling the same arms broker, and Alex had spent twenty minutes in a service corridor pretending to be a lost teenage tourist while two men with suppressed pistols searched the wrong floor. A dark-haired Mossad agent had passed him at the stairwell, looked directly at his face, and made the deliberate decision that she did not see him.
That woman was now sitting in the NCIS bullpen, looking at his school tie like it was the funniest thing she had seen all week.
Alex held her gaze for half a second.
Her amusement sharpened.
Neither of them said anything.
“Boss,” DiNozzo called, “our intern is here.”
Gibbs turned.
The look Gibbs gave Alex was brief, assessing, and sharper than DiNozzo’s introduction deserved. He took in the school tie with obvious suspicion, then reached for the folder on his desk. Alex waited. Adults were always more comfortable when they believed there were documents involved.
“Spencer?” Gibbs asked.
“Yes.”
DiNozzo leaned sideways to look at the folder. “Alex Spencer. That sounds very boarding school.”
“I didn’t choose it,” Alex said.
The dark-haired woman’s smile sharpened. “No. I imagine someone chose it for you.”
Gibbs looked up from the paperwork. “You know why you’re here?”
Alex considered several answers and chose the least incriminating one. “Experience.”
DiNozzo made a sound that suggested he found this charming. The dark-haired woman’s smile deepened by a fraction.
Gibbs did not smile at all. “You observe. You don’t interfere. You don’t touch evidence. You don’t leave the building without an agent. You don’t get in the way.”
Alex nodded.
The rules were reasonable. That made them more annoying.
“This is Special Agent DiNozzo,” Gibbs said, though Alex had already received an introduction from the man himself. “Special Agent McGee.” A younger agent at the next desk gave a distracted wave. “Officer David.”
“Ziva,” the dark-haired woman said.
Israeli accent. Controlled posture. Hands still, but not relaxed. Former Mossad, according to the files, though Alex had learned early that former tended to be a flexible word when intelligence agencies were involved.
“Alex,” he said.
“Yes,” Ziva said. “I know.”
DiNozzo looked between them. “You two know each other?”
“No,” Alex said.
“At a distance,” Ziva said at the same time.
Gibbs’s eyes narrowed.
Alex gave Ziva a flat look.
Ziva smiled at him with immaculate innocence. “I have read a great many briefing files.”
“About British interns?” DiNozzo asked.
“Some interns are more memorable than others.”
Gibbs pointed toward an empty chair beside McGee’s desk. “Sit. Watch. Don’t wander.”
Alex sat.
For the first hour, NCIS treated him exactly like what they thought he was: a work-experience student placed somewhere inconvenient by a bureaucrat. McGee explained the database system in a careful tone adults use when they assume teenagers understand computers but not the consequences. DiNozzo asked whether Alex had ever fired a gun, then laughed as though the question was absurd. Gibbs ignored him unless Alex moved too quietly, which happened twice and earned him a look both times.
Ziva, however, watched.
She watched when Alex’s eyes flicked automatically to every exit. She watched when he identified the secure evidence corridor before anyone mentioned it. She watched when Gibbs received a call about a dead Navy petty officer found in an alley and Alex’s posture changed before the details were even on the screen.
It was a small change. Most people would have missed it. Ziva did not.
“Have you been to America before?” she asked while DiNozzo and McGee argued over jurisdiction.
“Once or twice,” Alex said.
“Tourism?”
“No.”
Ziva leaned back in her chair. “School trip?”
“No.”
“Family holiday?”
Alex looked at her. “Do you always interrogate interns?”
“Only the interesting ones.”
“I’m not interesting.”
“That is very rarely said by people who are not interesting.”
Across the bullpen, DiNozzo turned. “Ziva, please don’t scare the child.”
Alex looked at him, then at Gibbs. “Does he do that a lot?”
“Talk?” Gibbs said. “Yeah.”
“I meant badly.”
McGee choked on his coffee.
DiNozzo looked offended for nearly three seconds before recovering. “Okay, Tiny Bond has teeth.”
Ziva’s eyebrows rose.
Alex kept his face blank.
Tiny Bond. Brilliant. He had been in America for less than three hours, and already someone had found the most irritating possible nickname.
The case moved quickly after that. A petty officer named Daniel Marsh had been found dead behind a warehouse outside Alexandria. No wallet, no phone, no visible weapon, and bruising that suggested either a fight or a staged attempt to make it look like one. The police had kicked it to NCIS the moment his Navy ID turned up under a dumpster.
Alex listened from his chair while the team went through the facts. He did not interrupt when DiNozzo suggested robbery. He did not interrupt when McGee pulled the traffic camera footage. He did not interrupt when Gibbs decided they were going to the scene.
Then Gibbs looked at Alex.
“You stay here.”
Alex nodded.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
The team left.
Alex waited until the elevator doors closed, then looked at the plasma screen, where McGee had left the preliminary map of Marsh’s movements visible. He stood, walked to the edge of the bullpen, and studied it.
There were three cameras with partial coverage of the area near the warehouse. Marsh had appeared on one at 21:14, walking east. He did not appear on the next, which meant he had either turned into the alley voluntarily or been intercepted before reaching the corner. The alley itself was a dead zone. Convenient, but not unusual. The route from the naval facility to the warehouse district was too direct for a random mugging and too exposed for a professional hit unless someone knew the layout of the cameras.
Alex leaned closer.
There was a second route, narrower and less obvious, running behind the row of buildings. It was the kind of route someone used if they were local, cautious, or following someone without wanting to be seen.
“Finding anything useful?”
Alex did not jump. He turned his head.
Ziva stood at the edge of the bullpen, jacket on, keys in hand.
“I thought you left,” Alex said.
“I did. Then I came back because Gibbs forgot his phone.” She held it up. “He does this less often than Tony claims and more often than Gibbs admits.”
Alex stepped away from the screen.
Ziva’s gaze flicked to the map. “You were told to stay.”
“I am staying. This is still the building.”
“That is a very lawyerly answer for a schoolboy.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“I imagine you have.” Ziva walked closer, studying the screen. “What did you see?”
Alex could have shrugged. He could have said nothing. He could have played the harmless teenager until the end of the day and let NCIS spend several hours finding what was already obvious. That was usually safer.
But Ziva David was not DiNozzo, and she was not fooled. Worse, she seemed willing to be entertained by the situation rather than alarmed by it.
“He didn’t walk into the alley because he was being robbed,” Alex said. “He turned off before the second camera. Either he was meeting someone, or he saw someone he recognized. If he was forced, it happened before he reached the alley, which means the killer knew the camera coverage.”
Ziva said nothing for a moment.
Then she smiled.
“Oh,” she said softly. “This is going to be fun.”
Alex sighed. “Please don’t.”
“Do not worry. I am very discreet.”
“You don’t look discreet.”
“That is because I am enjoying myself.”
Gibbs’s phone buzzed in her hand. Ziva glanced at the screen, then answered. “Yes, Gibbs. I have it. Yes, I am bringing it down. Also, our intern has thoughts.”
Alex closed his eyes.
There was a pause.
Ziva’s smile widened. “Yes. Useful ones.”
By the time Alex was brought to the crime scene, Gibbs looked like he was one bad answer away from sending him back to London in a cargo hold.
The alley smelled of damp brick, old rubbish, and the sour metallic residue of recent blood. Alexandria police had taped off the entrance, but NCIS had taken control of the scene. Ducky, the medical examiner, was crouched near the body with the calm manner of someone who spoke to the dead more politely than most people spoke to the living. A younger woman in pigtails and platform boots was photographing the area with theatrical focus.
“Abby,” DiNozzo said, catching Alex’s glance. “Forensic scientist. Try not to look directly into the Caf-Pow.”
“I heard that,” Abby called.
Gibbs stopped beside the body. “Spencer.”
Alex looked at him.
“You had something to say. Say it.”
It was a trap of sorts. Not a dangerous one, but a test. Adults liked tests. They thought it gave them control.
Alex looked at the alley first, instead of the body.
The walls were close enough to channel sound. Fire escape on the left, rusted but usable. Broken pallet near the bins. A smear of dirt against the brick at shoulder height. The ground was damp from earlier rain, but the body had been placed on a dry patch under an overhang. There were drag marks, though faint. The blood pool was wrong for where Marsh lay.
“He wasn’t killed there,” Alex said.
Ducky looked up with interest.
DiNozzo’s brows rose. “You got that from standing there?”
Alex ignored him. “The blood’s too neat. If he’d gone down where he was hit, there would be more spatter on the brick, unless the wound was post-mortem, which it wasn’t.” He looked at Ducky. “Was it?”
Ducky’s expression brightened. “No, my dear boy, it was not.”
“He was moved from somewhere nearby. Not far, because they didn’t use a vehicle inside the alley. The drag marks start there.” Alex pointed toward the darker mouth of the service passage. “They wanted him found here, but they didn’t want anyone looking there.”
Gibbs stared at him.
Alex stared back.
Behind Gibbs, Ziva looked delighted.
McGee moved toward the service passage and shone his flashlight down the narrow space. “Boss.”
That single word changed the air.
They found the phone behind a loose brick halfway down the passage. It was cracked, powered off, and wiped clean badly enough that Abby muttered something insulting about amateur hour. They found a smear of blood on a metal door leading into an abandoned storage unit. They found a spent casing under a drainpipe, though Marsh had not been shot, which meant someone else had been firing earlier or the casing had been planted.
Alex watched from where Gibbs had ordered him to stand, which was far enough from the evidence to satisfy procedure and close enough to see everything that mattered.
“Tell me again why the intern found the secondary scene?” DiNozzo asked under his breath.
“Because the intern has eyes,” Ziva said.
“I have eyes.”
“Yes,” Ziva said. “But perhaps his are connected to his brain.”
Alex almost smiled.
Gibbs caught it anyway.
On the drive back, Alex sat in the back of the NCIS sedan beside Ziva while DiNozzo drove and complained about being shown up by a child. Ziva seemed entirely untroubled. She had taken Alex’s presence as a gift from the universe and was unwrapping it slowly.
“So,” she said, “what does your government call this sort of internship?”
Alex looked out the window. “Experience.”
“That is a very broad word.”
“It’s a very broad program.”
DiNozzo’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “Is this some kind of gifted-kid thing? Does the British government just loan out prodigies to federal agencies now?”
“No,” Alex said.
“Oh, good.”
“Usually they prefer museums.”
DiNozzo stared at him in the mirror. “That was a joke.”
“Was it?”
Ziva turned toward the window, shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly.
At NCIS headquarters, the mood shifted from amused curiosity to operational focus. Abby pulled data from Marsh’s damaged phone and recovered fragments of deleted messages that pointed to a meeting with someone named Rook. DiNozzo and McGee traced Marsh’s recent calls to a contractor with access to naval logistics. Ziva reviewed surveillance from the surrounding streets and found a man in a grey jacket entering the service passage twenty minutes before Marsh disappeared.
Alex remained in the bullpen and said nothing unless asked.
He was asked more often as the afternoon went on.
It happened gradually. McGee wanted to know whether the phrasing in the recovered messages sounded British. It did not. DiNozzo asked whether the meeting location looked as if Marsh or Rook had chosen it. The answer was Rook, because the route favored someone familiar with blind spots. Ziva asked whether Alex thought the casing was planted. Alex said yes, badly, probably to imply an armed robbery interrupted by a third party.
Gibbs did not ask anything.
Gibbs listened.
By evening, they had a name: Marcus Keene, a private security consultant with former military connections, current debt, and recent access to shipping manifests. Marsh had flagged irregularities in a weapons transport contract three days before his death. Keene had arranged the meeting, killed him when Marsh refused to hand over evidence, and tried to stage the body as a robbery.
The problem was that Keene had disappeared.
The larger problem was that Alex recognized the pattern.
A dead whistleblower. A missing consultant. A weapons transport with paperwork clean enough to pass inspection and dirty enough to be worth killing over. MI6 had not loaned him out for experience. They had loaned him out because someone in London had noticed a familiar shadow and decided it would be easier to put Alex near it than explain what they knew.
Alex was almost impressed by the laziness.
Almost.
He waited until Gibbs was in MTAC, DiNozzo was annoying Abby, and McGee was buried in financial records. Then he walked to Ziva’s desk.
She looked up. “You are about to do something foolish.”
“I need to use a phone.”
“There are many phones here.”
“I need one that your system won’t log.”
Ziva studied him for a long moment. “That is not a request a civilian should make.”
“No.”
“And yet you are making it.”
“Yes.”
She leaned back. “Prague?”
Alex’s expression did not change. “You saw me.”
“I saw a boy who was much too young to be in that corridor. I also saw three dead men downstairs and a broker who vanished before my team reached the roof.”
“I didn’t kill the men downstairs.”
“I know.”
That made him pause.
Ziva’s voice softened by a fraction. “But I remember the look on your face.”
Alex glanced toward the stairs. “Keene is connected to something my side didn’t put in the liaison packet, and if I use an NCIS line, your system flags it, your boss hears about it, and then everyone wastes time arguing over jurisdiction while Keene leaves the country.”
Ziva’s amusement faded into something more serious. “What connection?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You are lying.”
“Yes.”
For some reason, that made her look less annoyed.
Ziva opened a drawer, removed a phone, and placed it on the desk. She kept her hand on it. “If this causes problems, I will deny everything.”
“I assumed.”
“I will deny it very convincingly.”
“You seem good at that.”
She handed him the phone.
Alex dialed from memory.
Mrs. Jones answered on the fourth ring. “Alex.”
No surprise. Of course not.
“You knew,” he said.
There was a pause. “You’ll need to be more specific.”
“Keene. The weapons contract. Marsh. Whatever this is tied to.”
“I knew there were irregularities.”
“You sent me here because of irregularities?”
“You were sent there because NCIS had jurisdiction, and we had concerns.”
Alex looked across the bullpen, where Gibbs had reappeared at the top of the stairs and was watching him with the expression of a man who had discovered a lit match near petrol.
“Your concerns just murdered a petty officer,” Alex said.
Mrs. Jones was silent.
Alex lowered his voice. “What is Keene connected to?”
“An intermediary network we’ve been tracking since Cairo.”
Jack’s car exploded in his mind, bright and silent and impossible to stop.
Alex’s hand tightened around the phone.
Ziva noticed. Of course she did.
“Alex,” Mrs. Jones said carefully.
He breathed once through his nose. “Name.”
“We don’t have one.”
“Don’t.”
“We don’t, Alex. Keene may be a courier, rather than a principal. If he is moving the manifests, he may be meeting the buyer tonight.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
Alex ended the call.
For a moment, the bullpen sounds seemed too loud. Phones. Keys. McGee typing. DiNozzo talking in the distance. Gibbs walking down the stairs.
Ziva took the phone from Alex’s hand before Gibbs could see it clearly.
“That,” she said quietly, “was not a pleasant conversation.”
“No.”
“Is Keene leaving tonight?”
“Probably.”
“Do you know where?”
Alex looked at the plasma screen, where McGee had a map of Keene’s known properties, bank withdrawals, and vehicle sightings displayed in separate windows.
“No,” Alex said. “But he does.”
McGee looked up when Alex crossed to his desk. “What?”
“The withdrawals,” Alex said. “Can you pull them with timestamps?”
McGee hesitated, then glanced at Gibbs, who had reached the bullpen and was now standing very still.
“Do it,” Gibbs said.
McGee did it.
Three withdrawals in two days. Two near Alexandria. One near a marina.
Alex pointed at the third. “That one.”
DiNozzo arrived behind them. “Why that one?”
“He’s not flying. Too exposed. He can’t drive far if NCIS has his plates. If he’s moving manifests tied to weapons shipments, he needs someone who can get cargo out quietly. Marina gives him boats, private storage, fewer checks.”
Gibbs’s eyes were cold. “You get that from cash withdrawals?”
“No. I got it from your suspect being exactly the kind of man who thinks water means escape.”
For a second, nobody spoke.
Then Gibbs grabbed his gear. “DiNozzo. Ziva. McGee. With me.”
Alex reached for his bag.
Gibbs turned. “No.”
Alex met his eyes. “If Keene’s connected to the network behind the contract, he may recognize federal procedure. He won’t recognize me standing in the wrong place looking useless.”
DiNozzo stared at him. “You are sixteen.”
“I know.”
“You say that like it’s not insane.”
“It’s not my favorite part either.”
Gibbs stepped closer. “You are staying here.”
Alex could have argued. He was good at arguing. He had learned from experts, most of whom had been trying to kill him at the time. But Gibbs was not MI6, and Alex was tired of adults who thought giving orders was the same as taking responsibility.
“Fine,” Alex said.
Gibbs stared at him for another second, then left.
Alex waited until the elevator doors closed.
Ziva remained behind.
Alex looked at her. “You’re supposed to be with them.”
“I forgot my knife.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No,” she agreed. “I did not.”
They regarded each other across the bullpen.
Then Ziva picked up her jacket. “If you are going to disobey Gibbs, you should at least do it with someone who knows the way.”
Alex considered pretending he had no idea what she meant.
Ziva’s expression made that feel pointless.
“Is this where you tell me it’s dangerous?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “This is where I tell you that if you run from me, I will catch you, and then I will be irritated.”
Alex picked up his bag.
The marina was quiet in the way places became quiet when they had too many hiding spots. The evening had settled into a humid darkness, turning the water black and the dock lights yellow. Boats shifted gently against their moorings. Ropes creaked. Somewhere, a radio played too softly to make out the words.
Gibbs’s team arrived through the main entrance.
Alex and Ziva came in from the service road behind the storage sheds.
“You know,” Ziva murmured, “Gibbs will be angry.”
“He seems to enjoy it.”
“He does.”
They moved along the shadows between the sheds. Alex had changed out of the blazer in the car and pulled on a dark jacket from his bag. Ziva had noticed but said nothing. He suspected she had seen the lock picks, too. She had definitely seen the compact ceramic blade Smithers had hidden in the lining.
NCIS still thought he was an intern.
Ziva did not.
Keene was exactly where Alex expected him to be: near the private storage units by the water, arguing with a man beside a white van. There were two more men near the dock, both armed badly and standing as though they thought that made them professionals. A boat idled at the end of the pier with its lights off.
Ziva stopped beside Alex behind a stack of crates.
“There are four,” she whispered.
“Five,” Alex said. “One in the van.”
She looked again.
The van shifted slightly as someone moved inside.
Ziva’s mouth curved. “Good eyes.”
“They’re connected.”
“Eyes?”
“People in vans.”
Ziva almost laughed.
Across the marina, Gibbs and DiNozzo were approaching from the front. Keene saw them too soon. He shoved the man beside him, shouted something, and bolted toward the pier.
Everything happened at once.
The man by the van pulled a gun. Ziva moved before he finished raising it, a clean, fast strike that sent his arm wide and his body into the side of the storage unit. Alex ducked under the second man’s swing, drove his shoulder into the man’s ribs, and used his momentum to send him into the crates. The man in the van kicked the door open with a pistol in his hand.
Alex threw the ceramic blade.
It hit the man’s wrist, not deep enough to maim, but enough to make him drop the gun with a shout. Ziva was already there, slamming him back against the van.
“Intern,” DiNozzo shouted from somewhere behind them, “what the hell?”
Alex ignored him and ran for the pier.
Keene had a head start, but he was older, heavier, and panicking. Panic made people fast in straight lines and stupid everywhere else. Alex cut across the neighboring dock, jumped the gap between two moored boats, and landed hard enough to jar his ankle. Pain flashed up his leg. He kept moving.
Keene reached the boat at the end of the pier and turned with a gun in his hand.
Alex dropped.
The shot cracked over him, loud enough to split the night. He rolled behind a mooring post as wood splintered near his shoulder.
Gibbs shouted something.
Keene cursed and stepped onto the boat.
Alex saw the rope before he thought about it. He grabbed it, looped it once around his hand, and pulled with everything he had. The boat lurched sideways. Keene lost balance, hit the rail, and the gun skittered across the deck. Alex surged up, crossed the last stretch of pier, and jumped.
He hit Keene low.
They crashed onto the deck together. Keene was stronger, but he was frightened and untrained in the specific kind of violence that happened when someone smaller decided pain was background noise. Alex drove an elbow into his throat, twisted away from a clumsy grab, and slammed Keene’s wrist against the deck until he stopped reaching for the fallen gun.
Then Gibbs was there, hauling Keene up and cuffing him with brutal efficiency.
For a moment, the only sounds were Keene coughing, the water slapping against the hull, and DiNozzo breathing hard as he arrived at the pier.
Gibbs turned to Alex.
Alex sat on the deck, one hand braced against his ribs, and looked back.
“You didn’t stay,” Gibbs said.
Alex blinked. “Technically, I stayed in America.”
DiNozzo made a strangled sound. “That is not going to help you.”
Ziva stepped onto the boat behind them, entirely too composed for someone who had just taken down three armed men. “It was very educational.”
Gibbs gave her a look.
She smiled.
“I learned a great deal about British internships.”
The aftermath was loud, bureaucratic, and deeply unpleasant.
Keene was taken into custody. The van contained stolen manifests, burner phones, and enough cash to make McGee whistle under his breath. The boat contained a concealed storage compartment with sealed documents, two passports, and a satellite phone that made Alex go very still when he saw the first number in the call log.
Ziva saw that too.
Fortunately, she had already stepped between Alex and the rest of the team by the time Gibbs turned.
Alex sat on the back of an ambulance, refusing medical treatment with the calm determination of someone who had done it too many times. His ankle hurt. His ribs hurt. His shoulder was bleeding where a splinter had cut through his jacket. None of it was worth the paperwork.
Abby appeared at the scene halfway through and stared at him as though he had personally betrayed her. “You threw a knife?”
“It was small,” Alex said.
“That does not make it better!”
“It made it easier to throw.”
DiNozzo pointed at him. “See? This is why I said Tiny Bond.”
“Call me that again, and I’ll tell Ziva you screamed when the crab moved.”
“It touched my shoe!”
“We are on a marina.”
Ziva stood nearby, laughing silently.
Gibbs did not laugh. Gibbs watched the evidence tech bag the satellite phone, then turned toward Alex with the controlled anger of a man who knew he had been lied to but had not yet found the seam in the lie.
“You want to tell me why a civilian intern knew where Keene was going?”
Alex looked at the ambulance floor. “Pattern recognition.”
“Try again.”
“I’m good at pattern recognition.”
DiNozzo, still recovering from the crab accusation, pointed at him. “That part is true, boss. Creepy, but true.”
Gibbs did not look away from Alex. “You disobeyed a direct order.”
“You’re not my boss.”
“No,” Gibbs said. “Lucky for you.”
Alex thought of Blunt, retired into comfort after years of sending a child into danger. He thought of Mrs. Jones, who at least sounded tired when she did it. He thought of every adult who had used the word necessary as though it absolved them of imagination.
“Yes,” Alex said. “Very lucky.”
Gibbs heard something in that. He did not ask about it, which Alex appreciated more than he expected.
Ziva came to stand beside them. “For what it is worth, Gibbs, he was very useful.”
“That’s not the point.”
“No,” Ziva agreed. “But it is why this went better than it might have.”
Gibbs glanced between them. “You knew he was going to run.”
“I suspected,” Ziva said.
“Because?”
“Because he looked like someone who had already planned three exits and disliked all of them.”
Alex looked at her.
She did not look away.
That was the thing about Ziva David, Alex thought. She found the situation funny, but she did not find him funny. There was a difference. She understood too much to be careless with it.
Gibbs looked back at Alex. “You need that ankle looked at.”
“It’s fine.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I’m still not your agent.”
“No,” Gibbs said. “You’re a kid with bad habits and worse supervision.”
Alex went still.
The words landed too close to something he did not want touched.
Ziva’s expression sharpened, but Gibbs did not soften the statement. He simply stood there, coffee cup absent for once, eyes steady and grim.
Alex could have said a lot of things. He could have said that Gibbs did not know him. He could have said that no one supervised him so much as pointed him at disasters and acted surprised when he survived them. He could have said that being treated like a child by people who only noticed his age after using him was beginning to feel less ironic and more exhausting.
Instead, he said, “You should keep that out of your report.”
“I will.”
Alex believed him.
That was almost funny.
The next morning, Alex returned to the Navy Yard in the same blazer and school tie because Smithers had only packed one set of harmless clothes, and Alex had not had time to burn them. The bullpen went quiet when he arrived.
DiNozzo looked up first. “Tiny Bond returns.”
Alex gave him a flat look.
“Right,” DiNozzo said, holding up both hands. “Officially retired.”
McGee smiled awkwardly. Abby rushed in from the lab and shoved a paper cup of hot chocolate into Alex’s hands with the kind of force usually reserved for arrests.
“You look like you need sugar,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s what people say when they need sugar.”
Ziva was at her desk, reading what looked like a heavily redacted file. She glanced over the top of it. “Good morning, Alex.”
“Morning.”
Gibbs emerged from behind him with coffee. Alex had not heard him enter, which was annoying.
“Spencer,” Gibbs said. “Director wants you in a debrief.”
“Of course he does.”
“After that, medical.”
Alex opened his mouth.
Gibbs pointed at him. “Don’t.”
Alex closed it.
DiNozzo leaned back in his chair, studying him with new interest. “So what do we call you now? Because intern feels inaccurate, and the murder child committee has apparently vetoed Tiny Bond.”
“Alex works,” Alex said.
Ziva’s smile returned. “How modest.”
“How practical.”
“Practical would have been telling us you were an alarmingly useful prodigy before we took you to a crime scene.”
“No,” Alex said. “Practical was letting you underestimate me until it mattered.”
That made the bullpen quiet again, but not in the same way as before.
Gibbs looked at him for a long moment. Then he gave a short nod, as if accepting the answer even though he did not like it.
Alex took a sip of the hot chocolate. It was too sweet, too hot, and probably the first thing he had consumed that morning that was not spite.
Ziva watched him over the redacted file.
“You know,” she said, “Tony will be telling this story for years.”
“He’ll get half of it wrong.”
“Yes,” Ziva said. “But I will correct him.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It will be very entertaining.”
Alex looked around the bullpen, at the agents who had mistaken him for something harmless and were now trying to decide what to do with the truth they had invented for themselves. Teenage prodigy. Strange British intern. Gifted observer. A boy with too much nerve and too little self-preservation.
It was not the worst cover he had ever worn.
Gibbs jerked his head toward the stairs. “Debrief.”
Alex set the hot chocolate on McGee’s desk, then picked it up again when Abby made a threatening noise from across the room.
He followed Gibbs toward the elevator.
Behind him, DiNozzo said, “Seriously, though, does Britain have a summer program for kids like that?”
Ziva answered before Alex could.
“Yes,” she said. “It is called trauma.”
The elevator doors closed on Gibbs’s glare, DiNozzo’s offended protest, McGee’s startled laugh, and Abby’s delighted gasp.
Alex looked at Gibbs.
Gibbs looked at Alex.
After a moment, Alex said, “She’s not wrong.”
Gibbs pressed the button for the director’s floor. “No,” he said, voice rough with irritation and something almost like regret. “She’s not.”
For the first time since arriving in Washington, Alex allowed himself the smallest hint of a smile.
It disappeared before the doors opened.