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Anthony DiNozzo strode down a hallway, trying to remember everything he could about Captain Jonathan Kincaid, commanding officer of Naval Air Station Pensacola. The former pilot had been in that position for two years. It seemed like the other NCIS agents liked him. He had at least two sons in the navy.
Alright, he didn’t know much about him. They hadn’t met. In fact, Tony had only seen him across a room twice.
He hoped the case wasn’t investigating him. Or worse, investigating his murder.
Tony wasn’t sure he could handle a murder case yet.
Turning a corner, Tony found the Captain’s office. He rapped on the door twice before pulling it open. The frosted glass in it rattled.
He stepped into the outer office. On the left side of the room, a seaman—no doubt the Captain’s assistant—was jumping to his feet behind a desk. On the right side, a blonde woman was sitting on a comfortable looking leather couch.
“Special Agent DiNozzo?” the seaman asked.
“That’s me!” Tony flashed them both a bright smile.
The woman raised an eyebrow. He wondered what a pretty twenty-something like her was doing in that office.
The seaman hurried to the door in the wall opposite from the one Tony just came in.
“They’re expecting you, sir.”
Tony nodded and strode forward, giving the woman a wink as he went by. A smile flickered over her face and he counted it as a win. He schooled his expression at the last moment.
“Agent Blake, Captain Kincaid,” Tony greeted with a nod for each of them.
His boss nodded back.
The Captain shook his hand firmly, then gestured for him to sit. “Agent DiNozzo, I’ve heard good things about you. Let’s get you up to speed.”
“I’m flattered,” Tony grinned, taking a seat.
Agent Blake flipped back a few pages in a small notebook. “Ok, we’ve got a case that appears to be, at minimum, theft of classified information. It was reported from a naval contractor at Northrop Grumman that a set of missile plans was downloaded piece by piece over the course of 6 months. That should’ve been caught by their technology security team, but wasn’t for some reason. The engineer who discovered it reported it to us instead of internally in case the Northrop security team happened to be compromised.”
“Smart,” Tony murmured.
The Captain nodded his agreement.
“Yep. The Director of the Niceville branch of Northrop Grumman is a friend of the Captain’s, and after discussing the issue with him, we came up with a possible method of investigation,” Blake continued.
“Wait, hold up. Can I see the evidence first to get my own idea of the case?”
The Agent in Charge and the Captain exchanged a quick look. Tony felt he wasn’t going to like what they had to say.
Blake cleared his throat. “We don’t have any evidence.”
No evidence? “What?”
Captain Kincaid rubbed a hand across his weary face. “The engineer wasn’t able to gather any evidence. She would’ve been caught by the technology security team if she’d made any kind of copy of the log and tried to smuggle it out. It’s a secure area and phones aren’t allowed, so she couldn’t take a picture either. We have her report of what she saw, but that’s it.”
She. Perhaps the woman in the outer office? Tony studied the Captain’s tense posture for a moment, then scanned the office itself. An old family photo was nearly hidden behind some commendations, but Tony could see enough of it to realize, “she’s your daughter.”
Tony’s boss nodded, but Kincaid just blinked.
“What makes you say that?”
Tony pointed to the photo. “Women don’t usually hang out in commanding officers’ offices for no reason. She could just be here to see you, but then she could just have easily gone to your house to wait, so she’s not here for a family visit. She’s the engineer who reported it, and you believe her without question.”
Agent Blake chuckled. “See what I mean? He’s quick.”
“Yeah, I’d say,” the Captain agreed.
Tony waited. He was quick enough to realize their plan was directly connected to him.
Blake cleared his throat again. “Since we have no evidence, we’d like you to get some. A full, open investigation isn’t the right call for a few reasons”—Tony could think of a few immediately: the perpetrator could run or cover their tracks before they solved anything—“so we thought maybe we could put you there undercover with an excuse to be in everyone’s business.”
Not a bad idea. He was good at identifying things that didn’t belong, and his expert testimony would count as evidence even if they couldn’t get much physical evidence. Fitting in at Northrop might be a problem though. “I’d love to, but I’m not exactly an aerospace engineer.”
“We’d say you were a project manager,” Blake offered.
That could work. He’d still have to learn about the process of building missiles though. “That’s promising. Is there a plan for me to learn about the job?”
Captain Kincaid rose from his chair. “We have a resource for that if she’s willing. Excuse me a moment.”
He disappeared into the outer office. Blake took the opportunity to study Tony’s face. “You good with this? It’s a lot to take on.”
It suddenly occurred to Tony that Blake had been giving him easy cases on purpose. He’d been giving him space to recover or grieve or something. Tony’s stomach churned uncomfortably. He ignored it. “I’m up for it. Sounds like an important case and going undercover is always interesting.”
Blake wasn’t impressed with his answer. He huffed and frowned. “You know what I mean, DiNozzo.”
What did he want him to say? That he’d dealt with all his issues he’d left behind in DC? How could anyone truthfully say that?
The office door opened. Agent Blake and Tony rose to their feet as Captain Kincaid ushered in his daughter. “Mae, this is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. Agent DiNozzo, Mae Kincaid. She’ll be your aerospace engineering expert.”
Mae had a firm handshake like her father’s. They also shared their blonde hair and great posture, but otherwise Mae must have taken after her mother.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kincaid.”
“Nice to meet you,” she countered, sizing him up.
“Think I can pull off ‘project manager?’” he asked lightly.
She smiled at being caught. “Maybe. You’ll have to lose the gun, obviously. And definitely get rid of the suit jacket. Slacks and a button-up with a tie, and you’ll blend right in.”
Tony faked a shudder. “Never mind. I can’t do it.”
Mae laughed, but Blake and the Captain did not.
“Now speaking of work,” Mae glanced at her watch, “I have to be there tomorrow morning which means I should head home. It’s an hour drive.” She met Agent Blake’s eye. “I assume we can schedule a follow-up?”
“Yes, we’ll be in touch. If you could just leave your contact information…”
She wrote her number on Blake’s notepad, taking her time to adjust her purse afterward. Finally, after a long pause she set her shoulders and looked at Captain Kincaid.
“Bye, dad. I’ll, uh, let you know if I need anything else.”
“Of course. Drive safe,” was his stilted reply.
They watched her leave in silence.
What was that? Her goodbye to her father was less comfortable than the offhand ‘bye’ Tony got. He looked again at the family photo Captain Kincaid had framed. It had to be at least ten years old. Mae was a teenager sporting braces. The captain wasn’t a captain yet. Two young men he assumed were Mae’s brothers wore naval uniforms like their father, but they looked hardly old enough.
Something had happened to drive Mae and her father apart, but not the whole family. There were more recent pictures of the brothers. Wait, he couldn’t see an updated picture of the Captain’s wife. Maybe she and Mae left for some reason.
“DiNozzo?”
“Yes, boss?” he responded automatically, then flinched so hard he grabbed the back of a chair to catch his balance.
“You ok?”
He tried to grin. “Peachy.”
“Cut the bullshit, Tony.”
Anger like fire burned through him in half a second. “Look, I’ve had a hell of a year, but I can still do my job, and if you keep punting all the easy cases to me I’m gonna lose my mind. I’m bored. Let me work.”
He should probably try to calm down. Blowing up on his boss in front of the Captain was a bad idea. Blake was looking at him like he might bench him.
“What happened?” Captain Kincaid asked bluntly.
Tony wanted to tell him to mind his own business. Pain slid through his chest like his lungs were full of knives. “I was so sick I almost died. When I was recovering, I lost my team.”
It was horrible to say it. Every time he had to say it reality set in more firmly. They were never coming back.
“I’m sorry, Agent DiNozzo,” the Captain murmured. The sympathy in his eyes was real. Either he’d lost a fellow sailor at some point or someone else close to him.
“Thanks.” His thank yous were hollow, but he had nothing else to say.
Blake sighed and lost some of his tension. “I just don’t want to put you in over your head.”
“I’ll be pretending to be a project manager, not trying to infiltrate the mob. Blake, I’ll be fine.”
His boss looked like he wanted to argue, but chose not to. “If you’re sure, then alright. Let’s pick this up tomorrow. We’ll have a lot of planning to do.”
Relief flowed in, blunting the knives in his chest. He didn’t realize how desperate he was for a real case.
“You got it.”
Blake shook hands with the Captain and stepped into the outer office. Tony offered his hand. Captain Kincaid took it and held on.
“Look after Mae when you’re there? She never thinks she needs help.” He blinked several times, his gaze wandering into middle distance. “She gets that from me I’m afraid.”
Abruptly he came back to himself and dropped Tony’s hand.
“Yes, sir. I’ll make sure she’s safe,” Tony promised, watching red embarrassment creep up the Captain’s neck.
“Thank you, Agent. Have a good night.”
Tony found only the Captain’s assistant in the outer office, so he headed home, wondering not what was going on at Northrop, but what had happened to the Kincaid family.