A/N (forgive the length): This story started as crackfic at the end of season 10 when I was joking with some other peeps about what Ziva, Tony and McGee would do over the Summer of Unemployment. The idea of them opening a detective agency seemed so lame to me that it was hilarious, so I started writing for my own amusement. Then it turned into something else entirely, and I ended up with this. It's not crackfic anymore, and hopefully not too ridiculous a concept for you to swallow.
IMPORTANT: The story takes place in two timelines, and flips back and forth between 2013 and 2015 in each chapter. So pay attention to the date cues or you'll get lost. It should be easy for you to follow if you pay attention to the dates. I will insert solid lines in between each switch of dates to make it easier.
MORE IMPORTANT: After Famiglia I said I'd never start posting a story again before I finished it. But here I am, breaking my promise. That's partly because I'd aimed to have it published before the start of season 11 so that it was still relevant. Now I just want it out there before all the Ziva/Tiva fans run away (as I fear most already have). I'm almost there. I promise I'll finish it.
Much love and thanks to jsq and Pitselehvv.

CHAPTER 1

Tuesday, December 15 2015

There was nothing about the house on Bluebird Lane that made it stand out from any of the other houses in the Falls Church neighborhood. It was two stories of red brick Cape Cod style, with large shuttered windows downstairs, picture windows upstairs, and an old chimneystack that, despite the freezing temperature, wasn't producing any smoke. Although it appeared oversized even on its generous lot, the house had a welcoming façade with a huge, ancient oak tree on the lawn and manicured hedges lining the path that ran from the street to the front door. A blanket of fresh snow covered the roof and lawns of number 1326, although the driveway had been cleared earlier in the day. Christmas lights bordered the windows from the inside, a pine wreath tied with red ribbon hung on the front door, and a small plastic Santa Claus stood guard by the mailbox. It was middle-class suburban perfection, and the kind of scene that Ziva's imagination had conjured up when she was a child in Israel and thought of America.

In the ten years that Ziva had lived in the United States, she had seen plenty of picture perfect houses like this one. What had once seemed exotic was now almost mundane. But a decade after beginning her investigative career with NCIS, she had yet to find the mundane in a crime scene.

Ziva didn't know exactly what she was walking into or what to expect when she passed through the front door into the Christmas wonderland gone bad. In a morbid way, she had always found this part of the investigation the most exciting. Everything was new. Everything you laid your eyes on was a fresh piece of the puzzle. The investigation could lead in any direction, and it could be over in a day or two or stretch out for months. This was the part of the investigation where your actions had the potential to guarantee your success or failure at solving it. It was a clean slate, even in the messiest of scenes.

A quick glance around as she stood in the foyer suggested this scene would be fairly clean. There was an open doorway to her right that looked like it led to a formal dining room. Ahead of her was a staircase leading up to the second floor, with walls lined with decades of family photos. Beside the staircase was a hallway to the back of the house, and on her left was another doorway that mirrored the one across the foyer. The room beyond that was where the body would be, according to the local police who had arrived on scene first and then briefed Team Gibbs when they arrived. From where she was standing Ziva could not see the dead woman NCIS had come to see. The back of a white fabric couch obscured her view. But she could see the Christmas tree under which the dead woman supposedly lay.

A dead body left under a Christmas tree. The ghoulish symbolism was not lost on her.

The local police had informed them that the primary crime scene appeared to be in the kitchen. It was where Ziva would start her work, and she hefted her crime scene bag from her right to her left hand before looking over her shoulder at Gibbs. He met her eyes as he crossed the threshold into the house, and his white eyebrows barely lifted. Those who didn't know him might not even register that his expression had changed. But after spending ten years on his team, the question on his face was as apparent to Ziva as if he had yelled it at her.

"I will start in the kitchen," she told him.

Gibbs nodded and then gestured towards the man standing behind her right shoulder with his chin. "Take Quinn," he told her, and then regarded the fourth member of their team. "McGee, head upstairs. Make sure there's nothing up there that's been missed. Then start on checking every entry point."

"Got it," McGee said, and brushed between Gibbs and Ziva to head up the stairs.

Ziva looked over her other shoulder at Special Agent Dane Quinn, a blonde, brown-eyed man in his late 20s who stood slightly taller than McGee. He shot her a quick smile of acknowledgement before they headed down the hallway beside the stairs and went in search of the kitchen.

"Nice place," Quinn commented to her as he looked around and took it all in. "Very homey."

Ziva gave him a knowing smile. "House hunting even at crime scenes?"

Quinn had talked a lot in the last few months about his search for a new house with his girlfriend, Yasmin. They'd been living in a small, cold and leaky apartment since moving to Washington DC 18 months ago. They'd only ever intended for the apartment to be temporary, but they had never gotten around to moving. But now, halfway through their second winter in the icebox, the Southern California natives couldn't bear it any longer.

"A place like this is probably a little out of our reach," Quinn told her. "But I like what they've done with the heating. You know, in that they actually have it."

"I thought you said you didn't mind the cold because it means you are forced to snuggle together," Ziva said as they entered the kitchen.

Quinn shrugged. "Sure. I like snuggling. But I also like being able to feel all my fingers and toes."

"It has not even been that cold this year."

Quinn shot her a disagreeable look. "You've been living in DC too long."

Ziva smiled to herself and then switched back into work mode and looked around the room. The kitchen was large, shiny and white, and filled with large, shiny and stainless steel appliances. A counter peninsula created a break between the kitchen and an informal meals area with a blonde wood table and six matching chairs. One of the chairs lay on its side on the floor, and Ziva and Quinn carefully stepped over to take a look at the only part of the room that appeared to have been disturbed.

"That's our primary crime scene?" Quinn asked. He seemed skeptical, perhaps even a little underwhelmed. Ziva could understand why. Aside from the knocked over chair, the only evidence that something out of the ordinary had happened in there was a thin pool of blood roughly the size of a saucer on the floor, and half a dozen blood drops.

"Hmm," Ziva grunted.

Quinn crouched with some difficulty, fighting the stiffness in his joints from his college football days. "The cops said she was dead, right?" he checked. "Drugged? Suffocated?"

"Perhaps we should refrain from trying to determine the cause of death before we even begin the investigation," Ziva said pointedly, and put down her bag.

He threw her a crooked smile. "Is that your Ducky impersonation?"

She threw him a smile and crouched as she opened her bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. Quinn followed suit and then retrieved the camera as Ziva pulled out a ruler to place beside the blood pool for reference.

"You see any obvious weapons around?" he asked her.

Ziva glanced around the immediate vicinity. The room was so clean and uncluttered that it was easy to tell that nothing was out of place. "No. We will need to go through the kitchen carefully."

Quinn took half a dozen shots and paused to look around the room. "It's going to be a shame to mess up all this clean with fingerprint powder."

She picked the fingerprint brush out of her kit and twirled it in her fingers. "I am sure the family would appreciate you cleaning up after us when we are done."

"I'll try."

They spent the next 45 minutes in relative silence as they worked their way methodically through the scene. Photos were taken, blood samples were collected, surfaces were dusted and dozens of fingerprints were lifted from the table, counter, door frames, drawers, chairs and walls, and then tagged. Ziva made a note of a paring knife missing from the knife block, checked the dishwasher for a weapon (hey, you never knew what you'd find unless you looked), and swabbed the sink drain for blood residue. Despite the number of fingerprints, which was to be expected in a residential kitchen, and the obvious blood on the floor, there wasn't a whole lot of physical evidence left behind. Ziva hoped there would be more to find on the body.

She looked over at Quinn as she peeled off her gloves and secured them in the crime scene kit. "Can you finish up with the rest of those?" she asked, gesturing at the evidence bags in front of him waiting to be collected.

Quinn gave her a vague salute and a smile. He was always smiling. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. He was the most relaxed investigator Ziva had ever known. "No problem," he said. "I got this."

"I am going to look at the body," she told him, and headed back to the hallway.

"Meet you there soon," he called after her.

The house felt too quiet and still as Ziva waked back to the living room. Local police and everyone else who wasn't NCIS had cleared out before they arrived, and now the house felt empty, cold and sad, as if it had taken on the grief and fear of the act that had started in the kitchen. She got a funny feeling in her stomach that could have been sympathy, but which she thought was more likely to be trepidation. But she ignored it and entered the living room.

Ducky and Jimmy were standing over the body of a young blonde woman, as Gibbs stood by and took notes of what he heard the medical examiners discuss. Only Jimmy looked up to toss her a smile as Ziva joined them, but she took no offence and focused on the woman lying beneath the Christmas tree. The first thing she noticed was the blood seeping through her blue jeans over her thighs. Not much, but enough to confirm an injury. The t-shirt she wore laid her arms bare, showing off fresh purplish-red bruises around her biceps and deep cuts and slashes from her wrists to her shoulders. The blood from the deeper wounds stained her pale blue t-shirt and seeped into the cream-colored carpet beneath her. More angry bruising marred the pale column of her throat, along with a few shallow nicks from a blade. Red rings around her wrists suggested she had been bound at one point. Ziva wondered if she'd been restrained against the upturned chair in the kitchen.

"She certainly didn't bleed to death, Jethro," Ducky was saying, leaving Ziva with the impression that he and Jimmy had only recently arrived on scene. "The wounds to her arms would have certainly required medical attention, had she lived. But they never would have killed her."

"They missed her large veins and arteries by a mile," Jimmy added.

"Strangled?" Gibbs guessed.

Ducky looked down upon the woman with sympathy. "Perhaps." He leaned over her to gently open her eyelids. "There appears to be some petechial hemorrhaging. Autopsy will confirm."

Ziva stepped forward to take a look for herself. It was something she did at every crime scene without thinking twice about it. But this scene was inexplicably different. When Ziva looked down at the victim, there were a few moments when she couldn't make sense of what she saw. She was overcome by a sense of familiarity that turned her blood to ice, and she blinked a few times to try to get her brain to kick into gear so that she could understand what was going on. Finally, she got there, and she gasped quietly to herself and took an involuntary step backwards.

"Where is McGee?" she suddenly asked, interrupting Gibbs mid-sentence.

The three men crowded around the body looked up at her curiously. Gibbs seemed primed to give her a quick reprimand for butting in, but his expression softened to something in the realm of concern when he saw her face.

"Checking for an entry point," he replied.

Ziva's eyes flicked back to the victim. She took a closer look at her face to make sure she was right about what she thought she knew. Her stomach cramped and her throat grew tight and sore, and when she realized that her hand was shaking she quickly balled it up in a fist.

She turned her head towards the front door. "McGee!" she called out.

Gibbs approached her as she took another small step away from the body.

"Ziva?" Gibbs said quietly. "What do you see?"

Ziva glanced at Gibbs and back at the woman. Her heart had picked up speed and she started feeling hot and prickly all over, and for a few moments she indulged in the beginnings of a panic attack. But then Gibbs laid his hand gently on her shoulder, grounding her, and Ziva shook her head and forced her emotion to the side.

"I think I know her," she told him, and then looked up as both McGee and Quinn came into the room. "McGee!'

The senior field agent came around the side of the couch to her and looked down at her with the same concern that Gibbs aimed at her. "What's wrong?"

Ziva gestured at the dead woman with her chin. "Have you seen her?" she asked.

McGee looked over at the body. "No, not yet. I've been outside."

"Take a closer look."

McGee carefully stepped over the woman's legs and then crouched down by her chest. Ziva watched his eyes wander over her body—an investigator looking for clues—before settling on her face. For a few seconds his expression was blank, and then he frowned sharply and snapped his head around to look at Ziva. It was all the confirmation she needed that she was right, and she sighed with heavy sadness.

"Bonnie Stewart," McGee said.

Ziva swallowed hard and nodded, and Gibbs flipped page a page or two in his notebook.

"Special Agent Bonnie Stewart, aged 26," he told them. "Probie who started with NCIS just a month ago."

The information got him twin looks of surprise from Ziva and McGee.

"She is NCIS?" Ziva asked.

"That's what her mother said," Gibbs told her. "And that's what NCIS says."

"You've met her before?" Quinn guessed.

"Yeah," McGee replied, holding Ziva's sad gaze. "Summer of 2013."

Ziva gave him a bittersweet smile, heavy on the bitter. "Bonnie Stewart was our first client."

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Ziva felt a sense of relief when she turned the corner onto her street and laid eyes on her house 100 yards away. She had been running for about an hour, and while normally that wouldn't test her fitness too much, the shoulder injury she'd sustained when Bodnar drove his car into Tony's sedan two months ago hadn't healed as she'd hoped. Lately she had noticed a stabbing pain in her shoulder after only about 20 minutes of exercise. Her common sense told her to take it easy and maybe see a physiotherapist. But her stubbornness told her to just suck it up and cope while it healed. And anyway, if she saw a doctor about it or otherwise admitted to the injury in any way, Tony and McGee would be on her back about it. That kind of scrutiny was hard to avoid these days; even more so than the days when they all worked together for 60+ hours a week.

She took a few minutes on the street before she went inside to stretch and cool down. Then, when she was sure that she wouldn't make any wincing faces when she moved her arm, she walked up the path through her small front yard, climbed the steps and then walked into the lovely old brownstone home that she had bought on a half-crazed whim a month ago. There was music coming from the kitchen, and a moment later she heard the bickering she'd become accustomed to hearing in her home over the last few weeks. It was comforting. And annoying. But mostly comforting.

"It's not supposed to make that noise," Tony was saying. "I'm telling you. You're going to break it and she's going to get mad."

"Would you just relax?" McGee shot back. "Have some faith. I know what I'm doing. It's just a machine."

Ziva frowned to herself as she quietly closed the front door and wondered what the hell McGee was in the process of breaking.

"Nope, uh-uh, not supposed to do that," Tony argued immediately before there was a short, sharp burst of noise that sounded like they were taking an angle grinder to the kitchen bench. "MCGEE!"

"Okay. That didn't sound right," McGee conceded.

Fearing the worst, Ziva rushed down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house. Her two quasi-roommates were standing over her coffee machine. McGee's expression was thoughtful. Tony's was one of trepidation, and then, when he looked up and saw her, it turned to feigned innocence.

"Oh. Hey, there," he said casually as his eyes quickly flicked over her Lycra-clad body. "Uh, me and McGee were just going to make you coffee."

McGee's body snapped to a straight line as he turned to face her. He tried to look innocent too, but he'd never had a very good poker face. "Cappuccino?" he offered.

Ziva walked over to the coffee machine and stood between them. "What did you do to it?" she demanded.

"Nothing," they replied in unison.

"I heard a bad grinding noise."

"Well, it grinds coffee, right?" Tony tried.

"I just pressed the wrong button," McGee said reassuringly.

Ziva gave him the stink eye and leaned over the Saeco. "Did you put enough beans in it?"

"I think so."

Ziva opened the top of the machine, noted the lack of beans, and gave McGee and gentle whack on the arm. "You need to fill this."

"Oh." He went to the freezer, pulled out the bag of coffee beans and brought it back over. "To the top?"

"Yes."

"Got it. Thanks."

As he had a second go at making the machine work, Ziva went to the fridge for a bottle of water. She felt Tony's eyes on her, and turned quickly enough to catch his eyes in the vicinity of her legs. But he didn't seem particularly embarrassed at being caught.

"When did you leave this morning?" he asked.

"Only an hour ago." She took a few sips of water and looked a little more closely at him. He was in a grey t-shirt and track pants, and his hair was a little more mussed than he was usually comfortable with. "Did you just wake up?"

"Not just," he said defensively. "Half an hour ago."

The two of them had stayed up very late the night before watching The Godfather trilogy. With no job as such to go to anymore, it didn't matter so much when they stayed up to three in the morning talking or watching television or sharing some drinks. Ziva was still trying to keep to some kind of regular routine. Tony was enjoying sleeping in. And since Ziva had moved into the three-bedroom brownstone, he enjoyed sleeping in a couple of times a week in the bedroom he had to himself upstairs.

Ziva looked to McGee. "Did you stay here last night? I did not hear you come in."

"Uh, yeah," McGee said as he successfully got the coffee machine going. "You guys were sleeping through the Pope's death when I poked my head into the living room."

"Oh."

"Did you have a nice date with Delilah?" Tony purred.

McGee smiled at the mention of the girlfriend Tony and Ziva were still yet to meet, but played it close to his chest. "Yes. It was very pleasant."

"Pleasant?" Tony repeated. "Wow. Sounds…hot."

"When are you going to introduce us?" Ziva asked.

"It's been months," Tony added.

"She is obviously special to you," Ziva continued. "So she is special to us."

"And we want to know what she looks like," Tony said.

Ziva shot him a quick frown that warned him to stay away from the blatant truth and instead help her fight the battle from the position of caring about McGee's happiness. "Maybe you could bring her over for dinner one evening," she suggested, turning her gaze back to McGee. "I need to break in the kitchen, yes?"

McGee gave them each a wry smile. "Well, thanks for the offer, Mom," he said to her, and then looked at Tony. "Dad. But I'm going to keep her away from you for a while longer."

Tony dialed up his hurt. "Are you saying you're embarrassed by us?"

"Yes," McGee replied without a trace of humor.

Ziva rolled her eyes and filed the Delilah argument away to work on another time. "Fine. Just know that you are welcome to bring her over at any time."

"Thank you."

Ziva took a final sip of water and put the bottle back in the fridge. "I am going to take a shower."

…

Twenty minutes later Ziva had just finished drying off and was starting to towel dry her hair. Her thoughts were running towards what she should do with her day. Something constructive, she decided. All she had done yesterday was sit in the small, shady courtyard at the back of her house and read. It had been good for her soul, but not necessarily for anything else. Particularly her bank balance. She had bought the house outright with the money her father had left for her, and she had enough savings to keep her going for a few more months if she lived frugally. But she was still worried about the financial implications of long-term unemployment. And not just for her. Tony and McGee were in the same boat. McGee still had some savings from his time as the New York Times' best-selling author, and he got small sales checks delivered every now and then. Ziva knew he had decided to start on another book, and chances were that with his nom de plume on the cover it would sell as well as the last. But not until he had finished it, and that was months away. As for Tony, Ziva knew he was hurting the worst out of all of them. He'd given his father loans over the years that had eaten into his finances, and he couldn't afford to be without a steady paycheck for much longer.

That was part of the reason that the three of them were here and spending so much time in this house. In the days after they had quit NCIS, they had gotten together several times to talk about what to do. They had hope that Gibbs would be able to get them all reinstated at NCIS, but they couldn't guess at how long that would take. In the month that they had been gone they hadn't heard a word from him. They knew he was on assignment, but no one—not Abby or even Ducky—knew what the assignment was. Or where he was. They all tried to make out that they were not all that worried. Gibbs knew how to handle himself. They trusted that Vance would not send him to his death. But honestly, they were worried. Very worried. And so when they got together in those first few days of unemployment, they drank to calm themselves down. Drank until they were stupid drunk. And while they were stupid drunk and talking about what to do with their time until their lives went back to normal, they all sort of talked their way into the idea of starting their own private investigation business. The idea was silly, really. But when they'd sobered up they couldn't think of a better idea.

So here they were.

They had a business registered. They had office space in the basement of Ziva's new house. They had loosely defined roles (McGee would do the computer stuff, Tony would do the talking stuff and Ziva would do the action stuff). But the one important thing that they didn't have was work. With a full day of nothing scheduled ahead of her, Ziva thought it was probably time that the three of them started using their contacts to get the word out that they were open for business. And would take on anything. Except private security—Tony had drawn a very clear line in front of that one. He wasn't going to be a rent-a-cop.

She started making a list in her head of people to get in touch with when someone knocked on the door to her en suite.

"Hey, Ziva?" Tony said from the other side.

Ziva wrapped her towel around her and went to the door. She would have to open it herself if they were to have a conversation. The three of them had only been semi-living with each other for about three weeks (Tony and McGee still had their own apartments, but often spent the night in their own bedrooms here), but already there had been a few too many unappreciated walk-ins. Particularly between Tony and McGee, who had to share a bathroom. After the fourth time it happened they vowed to be more respectful.

She opened the door and looked up at Tony. "Yes?"

His eyes drifted down her body again but he brought them up again quickly. But not before Ziva's stomach flipped with want, and then twisted with regret. The two of them were still hands off. Best friends with a complicated history and an unclear future. But they were working on that.

"Sorry to interrupt bath time," Tony was saying. "But I have good news."

Ziva arched an eyebrow and leaned against the doorframe. "Oh?"

Tony nodded and gave her an unburdened smile, the likes of which she hadn't seen in weeks. "Oh, yeah," he replied. "I just took a call. A business call."

Ziva frowned with surprise as she felt a little flutter of hope in her belly. "This business?"

"Our business," Tony told her. "A woman with a stalker problem is on her way in to see us." He paused and flashed her a bigger smile. "You better get dressed, because we've got our very first client."

Tuesday, December 15 2015

Ziva was snapping photos of footprints in the snow beside Bonnie Stewart's driveway when she heard McGee's familiar gait approaching her. His footsteps stopped about five feet behind her, and Ziva swallowed her tight throat away as she waited for him to speak. When he didn't, Ziva considered ignoring him. But that wasn't how their relationship worked these days. She tried not to give people—particularly people she loved—the cold shoulder when she was feeling scared and needed to get a hold of herself. No matter how much she wanted to.

She snapped a photo and then turned around to face him. McGee was watching her with concerned green eyes that simultaneously made her want to tell him to leave her alone, but also hug him. She chose to give him a weak smile.

"I am okay," she told him.

McGee sighed and took two steps towards her. "It's a shock," he stated.

Ziva let out a humorless chuckle. "A shock," she repeated. "I did not even know that she was training to be an NCIS agent."

McGee eyed her knowingly. "Me neither. But I can't say I'm surprised."

"Why not?"

He shrugged and let his eyes wander away, giving her the illusion of space that he probably guessed that she needed. "I guess she struck me as someone who was interested in helping people. And who got angry at the crappy things people do to each other."

Ziva lifted her chin towards the house. "Someone did something crappy to her. Again." Her thoughts drifted to the first time she had met Bonnie, and bile rose in her throat. Unconsciously she wrapped her arms around herself and swallowed hard. "She was strangled, McGee," she said. "Strangled and slashed."

McGee's eyes turned sad, and he stepped right up to her. "You sure you're okay?"

"I am fine," she replied automatically.

Her partner gave her a look that told her he didn't buy that for a second. She sighed pointedly at him.

"I will be fine," she revised. "I was just not expecting to see her."

"No," McGee agreed. "You should call Tony."

Ziva felt a pang in her chest when she thought about how Tony would react to the news. Another sharp pang came when she realized that she really, really wanted to see him right now. But she was on the clock, so her private, mini meltdown with him would have to wait.

She shook her head at McGee as if it was no big deal. "I will tell him tonight. If I see him," she added with a rueful smile. There was never a guarantee that would happen. For two federal agents, living together and even sharing a bed didn't necessarily mean that they saw each other every day.

McGee nodded and reached out to gently squeeze her elbow in support before turning and walking back to the house. Ziva watched him go, and then let her eyes wander over the property as she wondered how Bonnie's killer had gotten inside. Had he simply walked up to the front door, knocked and then taken advantage of her surprise? Ziva shivered at the thought and lifted a hand to rub at her throat, but she froze again when she caught sight of Gibbs watching her from the front porch. Had he been there when she was talking to McGee? Had he caught that all this had rattled her? It was likely, she knew, and that put her off even more. She didn't want to get into her history with Bonnie with him—well, not all of it. But once Gibbs knew something was up, he was like a dog with a bone. Ziva wasn't in the mood to be chewed on, though, so she turned her back on him and got back to work. She had to focus on finding Bonnie's killer.

She owed her that much.

A final note: I'm not watching season 11, I haven't watched Ziva's farewell episodes and I don't intend to. If you want to know my thoughts on the new season, my answer is that I have none and I'm not interested in getting any. Just wanted to make that clear and easy for you because I know I will be asked.
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter, and fingers crossed that will continue with what's to come. This is perhaps only the first or second story of mine that I really personally like, so I hope you do too.