A/N to all my loyal readers of Father and Son. I am having a mental block on that story because this one just wouldn't leave me alone. Hopefully you all will forgive me but this has been playing on my mind for two weeks and I hope that it will help me finish Father and Son. Please let me know what you guys think of this one too if you want me to continue with it or not :)

Thanks in advance

DISCLAIMER: I want, I want, I want, but alas sadly - I don't got :P

Inside Job

Senior Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs had just sat down to enjoy the third coffee of his morning. Seeing as it was only 0800 hours on Monday, Gibbs thought to himself he was obviously in for one hell of a week. The week had started with the main elevator being out of order, a fact displayed by the scrawl of red ink stuck to the elevator doors in the main foyer. Normally, something as simple as this little inconvenience would not bother him it was just that the second elevator at the back of NCIS headquarters was more crowded than usual. The amount of people that were squished in the claustrophobic space had started his day off on the wrong foot. Gibbs was an old-fashioned agent, one who relied more on his instincts than what the facts told him. He was a damn good investigator, well, the continuous string of unaccepted awards told the world that he was. He was a simple man with complications, more of a man with a complicated life rather than complications in his life. Although, the fact that his Senior Field Agent, Anthony DiNozzo, still hadn't shown up for work was starting to change that ideal.

Gibbs picked up his cell again and pressed the single digit that held the agent's all-too-familiar phone number. It dialed through and started ringing only to be answered by Tony's recorded voice. Waiting for the beep, Gibbs yelled down the speaker.

"DiNozzo! You had better have a damn good excuse for being over an hour late. I do not care if you claim to have Monday-itis, you will not have a job if you do not get here soon!"

Gibbs flipped his phone shut loudly, bringing his fellow agents up for air from all the back-log of paper work that needed to be done. Both Ziva David and Timothy McGee stared across the partitioned section at their boss with questioning glances but were quick to resume their previous positions under the piles of files waiting to be attended to. Gibbs was never in a good mood but Tony always seemed to irritate the older man that little more than anyone else.

Gibbs sat at his desk, staring at the one that was diagonally opposite his, where the Senior Field Agent on his team was usually situated. It seemed a little too quiet, even eerily quiet, without Tony's antics being played in the bullpen. Even though Tony thought he got away with a lot of his pranks without Gibbs knowledge, Gibbs smiled as he thought of some of the more inventive ways that Tony had made the time of a work day pass. Super-gluing things to other things seemed to be one of his favourites, although, generally for poor Tim, that meant some part of his body being super-glued to some form of office furniture. Gibbs would never admit it but some of the hazing could be quite humorous.

Half an hour had disappeared while Gibbs was in his reverie. He had let his third cup of thick brew go cold and had decided to throw it away. Gibbs stood up and headed towards the main elevator, asking the remainder of his crew if they would like anything while he was gone. He walked over to the elevator and pushed the down button, lighting it up on impact.

"Ah Boss?" Tim yelled from his desk in the bullpen.

"What McGee?"

Tim ran across towards where the older man was standing, pointing in the direction of the elevator doors.

"Ah…the…ah…"

"Spit it out McGee." Gibbs chided to stop the involuntary stutter his junior agent had suddenly acquired.

"The elevator, Boss, it's out of order."

Gibbs looked at the sign that Tim had been pointing at displaying the dripping, red handwriting. Gibbs rolled his eyes at Tim, sending him a no-nonsense glare instructing him to head back towards his own desk to continue with the task at hand. As they both turned to leave, however, the elevator pinged at the third floor and the doors rolled open. Gibbs smiled with satisfaction as he turned towards the lift. The smile quickly dropped as he noticed that the cleaning crew obviously hadn't got to this elevator over the weekend.

"McGee! David! Grab your gear!" Gibbs voice echoed across the entire floor filled with the curious eyes of Federal Agents. A soft whisper could be heard starting to filter through the office as the people nearest to the elevator began explaining the scene oozing from the metallic box.

Gibbs ogled the interior design of the obvious crime scene before him, swallowing hard, trying to figure out how an attack could happen so close to home. Red covered every wall of the interior stainless steel, even covering parts of the porous ceiling and carpeted floor. Everywhere you looked there seemed to be a cascade of red running down a wall of silver. If this was in fact, blood, someone sure took one hell of a beating.

Tim had started instinctively taking photos of the scene, marking each pool of blood for future reference taking in all the gore that the elevator had hidden. He was facing the back wall of the lift, taking the photos with the skill of five years under his belt in the same job. He was careful not to stand in the lift, for fear of contaminating the scene with his shoe prints as he hadn't geared up properly. Instead he just stood at the open threshold, flashing at all the points of interest that he could muster. He noted that there were four main sections in the area that displayed copious amounts of blood spatter. The fifth section seemed to be a blood trail from the railing at the back of the section all the way down to the floor. Tim thought to himself it seemed as though the victim must have fallen against the back wall exhausted or unconscious. He watched the evidence through the lens of the camera as the flash reverberated off the shiny metal, illuminating the scene with more intensity than was deemed necessary.

The four blood spatters covered the two side walls of the interior. The first one was up high on the left wall towards the ceiling, suggesting an upward motion from a weapon, more than likely a knife of some sort, the density of the pattern suggesting that it was further away than the other three patterns that were of a similar size and closer together. The first of the three that Tim noticed was in the middle of the right-hand side wall, the stainless steel wall displaying it like a Jackson Pollack painting. He did note, however, that the blood loss was minimal because the blood had dried leaving a minimal blood trail down the wall, meaning that the attack was misplaced or the attacker definitely knew what they were doing.

The second spatter was in the bottom left-hand corner, the side of the elevator the controls did not appear on. The blood had soaked into the carpet. In the arrangement of blood, there seemed to be a straight line which was inconsistent with a random blood spill. McGee flashed the inconsistency, identifying it with a yellow, numbered marker. Tim looked over the area, ensuring that he hadn't missed anything, nearly head-slapping himself as he nearly missed the dint displayed above the blood.

The fourth spatter was on the floor and fairly spread apart but seemed to come to an abrupt halt at the edge of the elevator floor. Tim seemed puzzled by this, maybe thinking that something or someone had gotten in the way.

"Boss?"

"Yeah McGee?"

"It looks as though there could be a blood trail leading out of the elevator."

Gibbs searched the well-worn carpet of the third floor.

"The body wasn't dragged out here, McGee. Maybe it started here. Get DiNozzo…" Gibbs voice trailed off in thought as he realized his first in command was still not in the building.

"Ziva!"

"Yes, Gibbs."

"Run down to Abby's lab. Tell her I need her to pull all the security footage from all the cameras that surround the main lift. Tell her to start from Friday 2300 hours when I left until this morning at 0800 hours. Stay down there and give her a hand."

"What is it exactly that we are looking for Gibbs?"

"Any sign of what may have occurred in this elevator."

"On it!" Ziva ran across the bullpen to the second lift on the other side of the third floor, disappearing with it as the doors swallowed her inside. Gibbs' gut was churning and not in a good way.

McGee stood staring at the blood down the back wall of the enclosed space. Trying not to contaminate the scene, Tim leaned in the space, centering on what seemed to be a large dint.

After having taken the photo several times, making sure that the flash mirroring off the stainless steel didn't interfere with the shot, Tim flicked the button that would allow him to make sure all the photos he had taken would actually turn out.

After flicking backwards through the memory card, Tim gasped as he stood frozen to the spot where he stood, the colour of his face disappearing with the seconds that passed. Gibbs, having been only standing a couple of metres away from his junior agent, heard the sharp intake of breath and turned in his direction.

"McGee you alright?" not looking into the eyes of his agent, rather finishing the notes he was taking regarding the crime that had taken place. After receiving no reply, Gibbs looked up, actually noticing the hollow stare that the younger man had on his face.

"Tim?" Gibbs asked again, more understanding in his voice as he tried to figure out what had his agent disobeying a direct order, having failed to answer him for the second time.

Gibbs looked over Tim's shoulder at the camera that lay in his hands. Gibbs' jaw dropped as the image came into view, his heart racing as the picture stuck firm in his mind. Gibbs opened his phone and dialed another familiar number.

"Autopsy." The voice filled with the Scottish brogue filtered through the receiver.

"Duck, I need you up on the third floor. I've got something I need you to see."

A click was heard on the other end as the conversation came to an abrupt halt.

Flipping his phone shut, Gibbs eyes had never averted from the photo on the camera. The LCD screen displayed the now familiar scene that Tim and he had spent the last half hour processing. The blood was all the same, the colour of the carpet, the stainless steel walls and railing. The only thing different was the body. Blood was dripping through the cuts that covered the upper torso and the bicep of the right arm. The suit was black, the shirt, although covered in blood, displayed splotches of a faint blue colour. The face could not be seen but the mop of hair was indistinguishable with all the blood covering it.

Ducky sidled up beside the two agents wondering what all the fuss was about when he took a look at the elevator.

"Ooh, what have we got here?"

"That's not what I need you to have a look at Duck," Gibbs said as he tore his sight away from the image that he had been staring at.

"Over here Duck," Gibbs said pointing towards the image displayed on the camera, prying it away from Tim's fingers.

"Oh my, well yes Jethro, it definitely seems like the same scene, same blood spatter and … oh dear."

"What is it Duck?"

"You're not going to like this, Jethro."

Gibbs looked towards the ME and asked the question with his eyebrow raised. Ducky turned the camera around displaying a different image than the one he had been given. Gibbs emotions caught in his throat as he took in every detail of the close up image of the victim's face. The image showed a nose that was bloody suggesting that it had been belted in some way. Swelling covered all of the face from cuts of obvious torture, not deep enough to be life threatening, but in areas that were definitely sensitive to any sort of pain. The cut below both eyes, down the sides of both cheeks across the top lip, all were meant to inflict pain. The person who suffered all this torture was brave, suggesting that they didn't break under the strain. Gibbs eyes squinted at the face, although slightly disfigured, he was sure.

Gibbs was staring into the open eyes of Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.