Part nine and the finale of Those Who Wander. Sorry for the wait. I remade the last three thousand words at least a hundred times before they felt right. Hope that this is good enough to make up for my long absence. As always, review! ~ SamayouTamashi

Alex watched from his seat by Gibbs' chair as the team scurried around, coordinating the counterstrikes in three other states and their own city, vaguely wondering if this was the wrap-up for his mission in the States.

Abby Sciuto had decrypted the two binders full of notes by hand alongside Eagle, who turned out to be an incredibly fast code breaker. The duo was finished within five hours, bursting from the elevator with vigor and triumph in their eyes. Since then, it had been all hustle and bustle with few breaks to even sit down.

A couple minutes ago, he'd been corresponding with the Secretary of Defense, making sure all strikes were passed through his office. With his go, there would be fewer problems with debate on the plans.

The NCIS team in Los Angeles* had negated the dilemma in the city. With the correct coordinates and warnings to bring in heavy firepower while still staying under the radar, they had reported success half an hour ago. The bomb in Chicago had just been dismantled, but in Houston, the FBI was encountering problems with SCORPIA. Apparently the notice to bring lots of guns hadn't helped; the enemy evidently had come prepared for such a siege.

In D.C., the siege was just getting underway. Gibbs had retreated to MTAC to help lead the effort, leaving the rest of his team with orders to assist the other cities with their own problems. Wolf had volunteered to be a part of the team going to retrieve the dirty bomb, and while they had turned down his request at first, Gibbs caved in when he mentioned that he had worked briefly as an EOD** before going into SAS. Fox, bored of sitting around***, had accompanied him.

All of which left Alex with nothing to do. Gibbs had assured him that the rest was all easy enough and not to worry about it. The spy was, of course, doing exactly that. Worrying.

He knew perfectly well that these people knew just what they were doing, and they were some of the best, but he couldn't help worry that he could be doing something to help. Ziva had hesitantly offered to spar with him again, but he had turned her down. Fighting would only increase his stress, not release it.

Standing up to get the blood flowing in his legs again, he walked over to the restrooms, turning once he was relatively sure no one was watching, and quietly taking the stairs up to MTAC. Assuming, based on the general lack of messages being sent into the room, that most of the information was being passed around where only certain ears would be privy to it, he pulled an iPod from his pocket.

NCIS had taken most of his possessions down to Abby when he'd been 'arrested', and she had kindly given all of it back, including the plethora of weapons found on his person.

Like any good spy, however, his trust had been placed mostly in the 'everyday' objects, such as the pencil used in interrogation. Among his gadgets was his personal favorite: the iPod. Made on short notice, Smithers hadn't been able to give it a nickname.

The iPod was made in two parts. The first worked like a regular music player, able to download all sorts of music, movies and games on to 8 gigabytes of space. Typical iPod. The mainframe, however, had been altered to pick up sounds from behind steel doors and up to three hundred feet away. It could intercept radio signals without knowing which frequencies to look on, be used as an x-ray, and detect the smallest amounts of radiation within a fifteen foot radius. Most importantly, there was a GPS system he could activate that would send an alarm and his current location straight to Blunt and Ben's phones.

Flicking a couple buttons on the top to open up the mainframe, Alex switched it over to the listening device. He disconnected a nearly invisible piece clipped into the back of the silver frame, taking out a tiny metal ring and fitting it around a screw holding the doorknob in place. Putting his earbuds in, he strolled back down the stairs, diving around the dividers to make it appear as if he had just come from the bathroom. Tony and Ziva weren't even suspicious.

He turned the sound up and returned to idly fiddling with a paperclip. For the most part, it sounded evident that SCORPIA's dirty bombs were going to be rounded up quickly. The problems in Houston seemed to have been fixed with some gas bombs and a dozen well-placed snipers. Their bomb squad had earned its pay once more.

What caught his attention, however, was the situation in D.C... or the lack thereof.

The team sent in by Gibbs had uncovered the bomb exactly where Walker's notes had placed it, down to the millimeter. Luckily for the team, the bomb hadn't even been programmed yet. In fact, the SCORPIA agents hadn't even gotten the chance to finish assembling it. Director Vance was keeping the team on their toes, suspicious of their turn in luck and waiting for the rest of the trap to clamp down on them.

The most surprising part was that Chicago and Houston had all seen minimal injuries while exchanging fire, with only two casualties in Houston, before being able to disengage the bombs. Even Los Angeles, who had gotten it easy, had still had to deal with SCORPIA.

According to the data he was getting from MTAC, the only SCORPIA agents discovered in the warehouse in D.C. were the technicians constructing the explosive. Their only weapons had been a handful of basic handguns.

So where was the firepower that should have been there?

Alex removed one of his earbuds, standing up and stretching before telling the two NCIS agents that he was going to take Abby up on her offer to borrow her floor for a little well-needed rest. Tony nodded sympathetically, knowing the cost of overtime, but Ziva looked unconvinced. Adding a yawn, that wasn't completely fake, he waved at them before pressing the elevator buttons to take him to the basement.

Except it wasn't Abby's subterranean lab he was going to. He strode right past it to the carefully guarded holding cells just beyond Ducky's autopsy room.

Ziva stared suspiciously after the teenager's retreating back. "There is something down with him," she informed Tony.

"Up," he patiently corrected. Despite all her brilliance, the former Mussad agent just didn't understand figures of speech. "There's something up with him."

"Then we agree." As usual, she didn't even note the difference. "Alex is a spy. For all we know, he might not even be on our side."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "He's also, like, fifteen. While he might be a spy, who works for MI6 and had some amnesia, it's not like he's Bourne.****"

This was lost on Ziva, who had never seen the 'classics'. "How do we know he hasn't bugged all of our computers? We don't really know him at all, and he may have defected from MI6 at some point. He had training from SCORPIA, after all. He could have gone back to working for them."

"He's fifteen." Tony stressed. "Besides, he doesn't look like the cold-blooded murdering type."

Before Ziva could retort, McGee spoke up from where he had been hard at work. "Guys, I was watching all the surveillance cameras on Walker's cell, like Gibbs told me to, and I think I've found an anomaly in the feeds."

"Speak in English for the rest of us, probie."

"Someone's put the cameras on a loop, so what we're seeing isn't actually what's going on."

Ziva grabbed her gun from the top drawer of her desk, loading it as she walked in the direction of the elevator. "I will fix the problem."

"You mean torture and kill the problem," Tony protested, getting up to join her. "I'm going with you."

"Sit down, Dinozzo." The Gibbs slap sent a dozen more brain cells to their premature deaths. "Finish the preliminary work for the transportation order of the SCORPIA assassin we have in our basement or you will never get to it." Before he could respond with a 'Yes, sir', the elevator doors had closed between them. He sat back in his chair.

"The intruder doesn't stand a chance in hell against the two of them," McGee noted.

Tony nodded his agreement. "I only hope he survives."

Alex had put the cameras on a loop to buy himself some time, though he knew that someone watching the feeds carefully enough would notice quickly. He'd asked the guard to wait at the door outside, saying that Director Vance had asked him to further interrogate the prisoner. When the guard, who was surprisingly diligent and less apt to snap judgments unlike many he had met on previous engagements, asked for his identification, he showed him the badge hanging around his neck that labeled him as a visitor. However it wasn't his badge that he had provided, but the one he had 'borrowed' from Ben before the spy had snuck out to join the action. They looked similar enough in the fuzzy pictures either way. The guard had quickly stepped aside.

Inside his cell, Walker had been silently contemplating the ceiling with a look of utter disinterest. As the spy waltzed through the door, his look didn't change in the slightest.

"What is SCORPIA really doing in the States."

A gleam of interest alit in the assassin's eyes. "Why would you ask that? I already informed you about the dirty bombs. All four of them in fact, which was quite nice of me, I have to say."

"I know that the dirty bombs are a cover op for something else. There haven't been nearly enough deaths for the bombs to have been their main mission, and you gave all that information up much too easily for someone as skilled as yourself."

"You would have been a great teammate," Walker mused. "I was wondering when you would catch on that something was up, but tell me first: What set you off? Just curious."

"In D.C., the bomb hadn't even been put together fully and the only ones there were the basic technicians. In any standard op, there would have been at least some form of skilled team to cover the ones doing the work to both reinforce their cover and keep an extra eye out for advance warnings."

"Well, with my curiosity satiated, I guess I could leak a couple unimportant tidbits come to your attention."

Alex sighed and crouched down to look him in the eye. The former CIA agent was always one for making things difficult, even when he was being straight with you. "Yes?"

"One of these tidbits might mention the problems in the Middle East, or specifically Egypt."

"Mmhmm."

"The Egyptians' issues with their current president might come into play."

He gave an impatient wave of the hand, but Walker couldn't be bothered by it.

"What you might not realize is something that has been kept out of the media as much as possible."

"And that would be…?"

"That the Egyptian president is coming to D.C. to go over some, shall we say, treaties with the president of the U.S.*"

Alex's right eyebrow shot up. "Is that a problem for SCORPIA? Last I'd heard, he still wasn't getting into the politics over there."

"But his Secretary of Defense hasn't been sharing his views, last I heard."

Turmoil in the Middle East would serve to stir up more business for the terrorist group. The American desire to cease the violence wouldn't help their recent financial problems in any way. So by keeping the States out of the equation in Egypt…

Alex stood up, not bothering to thank the assassin. Such things weren't necessary between enemies. "You know, if I mess up their plans, I won't be their only target. A couple guards in front of your cell won't help your cause nearly enough to save your life."

Walker smirked, still not turning his head to meet Alex's eyes. "There aren't any cameras in here for you to fool, at least none that you've left on. You know where I'm going as soon as they transport me to prison."

"Figured I needed to give you fair warning either way," he shrugged before peering up at the sole camera in the room. "Speaking of which, I bet McGee's caught on to my little trick by now. They ask you if I was here and you deny it fully. It might give me a couple minutes lead." Any actions going through NCIS would take time to get accepted, and they would need solid evidence and confessions to prove their case. The one thing he didn't have on hand right now was time, and as such, Alex was going to bypass the authorities.

Glancing over at the assassin, he crossed the room to stand beneath the camera. With a flick of his little finger, the copper piece of metal was unplugged and the feed went completely dead. In another half-second, the blue plastic-coated wire was back in its correct place. Once more, the camera was transmitting live data.

The spy nodded to Walker as he pulled a pair of leather gloves from the same pocket his iPod was in. They were thin, but really warm on the inside. Their real value was in the finger pads. As he swiftly pulled them over his fingers, he touched each digit to his thumb in quick sequence. A low brief buzz announced that the pads were now ready to activate.

Before making his escape, Alex pressed his ear to the door. Footsteps, and two sets of them, resounded in the corridor. Time to go.

He laid his hands flat on the cement walls, and instantly he felt them stick. Tiny hooks had been sewn into the material, and when he turned them on, they held him to most surfaces. Tile and metal didn't seem to react well with the gloves, but he remembered Smithers telling him that everything else worked alright.

Thirteen feet up the wall, he stopped to hover above the camera. The door had opened to let Gibbs and Ziva into the room. "There's no one in here," Ziva reported to the guard, who frowned in disbelief.

"I'm telling you, he showed me his visitor's badge and I let him right in just a couple minutes ago."

"Alex hasn't returned yet," Ziva added as she looked Gibbs in the eye.

The spy hooked his fingers into the vent over their heads, carefully working a paperclip from Tony's desk into the second screw and slowly loosened it enough to slip it out. Glancing down at the two agents he grabbed for a handhold in the shaft and lifted himself in, not bothering to close the grate again. He listened to the voices as he ascended into the ventilation shaft.

The guard was speaking again. "There aren't any other exits."

"For most people," Ziva retorted. "Alex is a spy. He could find many ways to get out."

"Care to point some out?" Gibbs spoke up.

"That vent right above us."

Everyone, including the spy just above them, took a moment to pause.

"That open vent right above us?"

"Yeah…"

Alex rolled his eyes as he turned to find where the vent opened into another room: the bathroom. Perfect, he thought, retrieving the paperclip to quickly unfasten two more screws. These had to be done more quickly, but he didn't mind them tumbling to the floor. From his vantage point, no one was using the men's room at the moment.

Deactivating the gloves as he jumped down to land neatly on the tiled floor, both screws were replaced and the vent tightened to make it appear as if it hadn't just been used. Wasting a couple precious seconds, he took the gloves off, stuffing them back into his pocket, and turned on the faucet. As he let the water splash over his hands and face, he replayed the plan in his mind. The only thing he needed was some cash for the taxi he would need to take.

Gibbs shook his head as he took the elevator back up to the main floor. Ziva was inspecting the ventilation shaft with the distraught guard, trying to determine how someone could get up there in the first place without a ladder or another person to boost them up. Walker had been less then helpful, saying no one had even entered the room.

Grabbing a coffee from the machine outside conference room three, he returned to his desk, shaking his head sadly as he noticed Alex's absence. McGee perked up. "Boss, Alex left a message for you."

"He did?"

"Yeah. Said he got a call about some problems downtown from his partner and had to run down there. I gave him some money for a taxi. He looked sort of worried."

Tony looked up from his computer. "Trouble with the bomb?"

"Not that I've heard. Call down to the team, just to make sure, and ask about Alex's partner, Daniels."

The agent whipped out his phone, quickly dialing the number for one of the people on site, as Gibbs nodded at McGee. "Search the local news channels and tell me if something important comes up?"

"Such as?"

"I'm not sure yet, but probably something big."

"Boss," Tony spoke up, holding his cell phone next to his ear, "Daniels is on the line. He says Rider called him in to standby, but that was all he ever heard. Everything's OK on his side, and the team should be returning in the next half hour."

"Which brings us back to the question: Where is Alex?"

Ziva stepped out of the elevator. "I couldn't fit in the vents," she told Gibbs. "Alex might've been able to get in, but there was no way anyone else could have. They're just too thin."

"Did Walker tell you anything worth knowing?"

"Nothing that I heard."

"Dinozzo, can Daniels tell us where his partner is?"

Tony spoke quickly into his phone before shaking his head. "Says Rider just told him to be on standby in case anything…happened."

Gibbs shook his head. "Can we track him through the cameras in the building, McGee?"

The agent turned from the news to bring up the most recent camera footage in the building. Going back five minutes, he put up the footage from when Alex left McGee's desk with a five-dollar bill in his hand. Through three separate cameras, they watched Alex leave the building through the main entrance, hailing a cab as he reached the curb. A taxi pulled up, but instead of getting in, the spy tapped on the passenger side window. The driver seemed to be giving him directions with all his gesturing. Alex nodded and walked away from the cab, which pulled back out into traffic.

When he went out of the camera's range, McGee switched to another view. Surprisingly, Alex didn't show up on any of them. "Where'd he go?"

"Right there, probie." Tony pointed to a man in a tan trenchcoat who was carrying a nondescript briefcase. The man raised a hand out, trying to hail a taxi. "See, he's still got the five dollar bill in the same hand as that briefcase, and what businessman goes around in sneakers?"

"Good job, Dinozzo. Now where did that taxi take him?"

"On it-wait. That breaking news you were asking about? Would it involve an accident downtown?"

"What kind of accident?"

"A driver suddenly swerved and hit a sign post, creating problems with the traffic by the Federal Triangle**. By the time a police officer on the scene had gotten to him, he had already died of blood loss. Apparently, he hit his head badly against the window, almost shattering the glass, and then fractured his nose when he hit the steering wheel."

"By the Federal Triangle?" Ziva asked. "That's not even a mile from the White House, Gibbs."

"Who can tell me if anything is happening at the White House today?"

McGee scrolled back over to the news, searching for information on the White House and Tony asked Daniels the same question. Both of them raised their hands at the same time. "Egyptian president is visiting today," they said simultaneously. McGee cleared his throat, interrupting Tony, who glared at him. "Boss, the negotiations over a cease-fire in the country was scheduled to begin in a couple hours. The Egyptian president's private plane just flew into Reagan seven minutes ago."

"Could we get jurisdiction at the car accident?" Ziva asked. "Just in case it wasn't an accident," she added.

"It might be possible, but difficult unless we could tie it, without a doubt, to the SCORPIA investigation." Running a hand through his graying hair, Gibbs sighed. I'm too old for this cloak and dagger stuff***, he thought. "In the meantime, can you get a lock on the number of the taxi that Alex took and tell me where it was when this took place?"

Ziva turned from the screen to frown. "You think he might have something to do with this?"

"I know he does." Despite how much he hated to admit that, it was true.

"Boss, Alex's taxi was sitting idle just outside the Museum of Natural History, two blocks from the accident when it took place."

"All right, and where is it now?"

A map of the area appeared on the screen with a red dot moving steadily down 14th Street, slowing as it reached its destination. "If he's using the same taxi, then he's stopping outside the Crowne Plaza." Minimizing the map, McGee brought up footage from a traffic camera just across the street from the hotel. Despite the blurred image, the sneakers once again gave away his appearance.

"Should we alert someone in the area?" Tony hesitantly asked, unsure whether or not the kid was a security risk.

Gibbs turned from the screen, taking a steadying breath. "No. Keep surveillance on him and see what he's up to. We have no evidence to suggest he's doing anything illegal or that makes him a security risk. Ziva, Dinozzo. Go downtown to the traffic accident and see if you can get a positive identification on him." Tony grabbed the keys, to Ziva's disapproval, and the two took the elevator down.

"McGee, any news in the area?"

"Nothing in the area, but there is something…"

"What?"

"I don't know if it's relevant, but in Franklin Park, a block away, a man collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. A lady walking her dog noticed and called for an ambulance, which just now got there. From the radio calls being sent back to the hospital, it looks like he isn't expected to make it."

Gibbs sat down in his chair. "Where's the taxi now?"

"Just leaving. You think he's connected?"

Before Gibbs could formulate an answer, his phone rang. "What do you have?"

"The local PD hasn't been able to get a clear ID, but we did find a familiar tattoo on his right index finger."

"A silver scorpion?"

"In one, boss. Not only that, but we also determined that the cause of death came before his car hit the post." There was a pause as Tony moved, probably closer to the body. "One of the officers over here discovered a hole in the vic's passenger window not caused by the crash, and a corresponding bullet hole right beneath his right ear."

"A sniper got to him then." He didn't say outloud that the sniper had likely been Alex, but anyone listening to the conversation got the gist of it. "Does anything tell you where he was headed?"

Ziva took the phone from Tony, saying, "His car was headed northwest on Pennsylvania Avenue, based on the trajectory, and he had plenty of guns and ammo to back him up. We're trying to keep that out of the media, but you know how they are."

"Good work. Head over to Franklin Park and see if there's anything there. An ambulance should be leaving for George Washington University Hospital right about now, and I want you to check his fingers if you get the chance."

Tony reclaimed his phone. "We're on it, boss. There is one thing that seems a little…off here."

"And what's that?"

"Uh, I'm just wondering how," he coughed, "the shooter would know exactly where our vic would be."

"Don't worry about that for now. Look in on Franklin Park before any evidence disappears." Gibbs clicked his phone shut as McGee waved a hand to catch his attention.

"There's been a double homicide in front of the Blair House****. There were five witnesses in the area, but none can give any definite details as to what he, or she, looked like."

"And why would that be?"

"Apparently it happened so fast that none of them had even registered it until he, or she, had already fled the scene."

"I don't know if I want to know, but where is Alex's cab right now?"

"It's…going down 17th Street, heading northwest. Boss, I think-" He was interrupted as the elevator released Ben Daniels and Wolf back into NCIS headquarters.

"Did you miss us?" Ben grinned, at which Gibbs cut him off.

"What I'd like to know is what your partner is doing running all over D.C. and killing people, whether they're SCORPIA agents or not," he fumed.

Ben blinked. "Uh, well he does do that sometimes. So is he openly killing these people in public or disguising the murders as natural deaths?"

McGee offered up his own reply. "Actually, he's covered just about everything in the book, if all the murders really are his. Which we've pretty much confirmed," he added.

Wolf shook his head. "I have absolutely no idea what you all are talking about, but if Cub's decided to go out on a shooting rampage, I feel sorry for the poor bastards who get in his way."

The phone, of course, decided to ring at just that moment. Gibbs snatched it from the hook. "Yes?"

"Gibbs! You won't believe what me and Joey found when we went back over the encrypted stuff from Walker!" Abby was exuberant as usual, and just as loud over the phone.

"Joey?"

"Eagle, the SAS guy that helped me with the decoding stuff. But that's not important. Three guesses!"

"Abby," he said in his most patient voice.

"Well okay. We found an extra line of coding in invisible ink, the cheap kind done with lemon juice, that took some time to figure out, you know since it was done in a sorta different code, but we got through it, well most of it anyway, and found that the bomb thing was just a cover for a deeper mission."

Gibbs took a second to register the massive amount of sheer thought crammed into one sentence. "So, what did you find?"

"We found," the sound of a chair rolling as Abby crossed the room echoed in the phone, "some interesting information about an assassination attempt on Secretary of Defense, Robert Janey*. It would seem that his attempts at appeasing the Egyptians is not going over well with those in the terrorist business."

"Great job, Abbs."

"And Joey, er, Eagle. He was the one who figured out the altered code."

"Tell him I said good work."

"Aye, aye sir."

He hung up to turn to Ben. "So Alex might have good reason for his trip, but it doesn't mean I approve of him running off without backup or authorization."

The MI6 agent held up his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm on your side in this battle. Except he's my superior and he hasn't died yet, so I have no evidence supporting my claims. As for the authorization thing, well, I blame that on MI6. They let him get away with everything under the sun while he was young and it evidently rubbed off on him that he could do that all the time."

"Kids these days," Wolf snorted.

"If you can still call him that," murmured Ben under his breath. "Hey, when did you get in?"

Everyone swiveled to look around themselves, finally seeing the yawning teenager with a too-big grey sweatshirt walking over to stand beside McGee's desk. "Just now. Came in through the fire escape."

"And why did you use the fire escape instead of the elevator, like any sane person would do," Ben calmly asked, in a voice that said this had happened quite a few times before.

"I dunno. Didn't want to run into a bunch of strangers until I had a decent amount of coffee. Speaking of which, where is the vending machine? I haven't eaten since…umm…"

"Oh no you don't." Ben stalked over to drag Alex into the nearest chair. He took a small flashlight from his pocket, shining it in each of the teenager's eyes. "When did you hit your head?"

"How did you know I-?"

"You have a lovely bruise and matching cut right above your ear. Care to answer the question?"

He tried to rub at the laceration before his partner swatted his hand away. "Umm, an hour ago, I think."

"You think?"

"I hit the top of a window when I jumped out and it didn't really pass my mind at the time that-"

"So you've been walking around, with a concussion, for an hour?"

"No, I—what?"

"I'd have to get Snake for a better diagnosis, but based on how dilated your pupils are, the fact you can't stand steady, and the slight slurring of your words, I can bet that you didn't just bump your head a little."

Alex crossed his arms, the act making him look almost juvenile. "So I might've let my guard slip a little and gotten hit over the head with a lead pipe by one of the SCORPIA agents. It wasn't any worse than normal."

"That's not the problem!" Ben threw his hands over his head and resisted the urge to bash his head repeatedly into the nearest wall. "The issue here is that you have no sense of self-preservation!"

Wolf and Gibbs exchanged a glance that said, 'I'm not getting involved.'

"Ben, we've had this talk before."

"And I don't recall having ever finished it."

Alex sighed. Tuning out his partner, he told Gibbs, "SCORPIA shouldn't be a problem here for awhile. With their recently foiled plans, it will be awhile before they can muster up either the funds or the will to do anything on this scale again."

"We appreciate that," he responded wryly, "and I'm sure the director agrees wholeheartedly."

The spy nodded in understanding. Whenever SCORPIA came into the equation, sparks tended to fly. "I should go grab the rest of K-Unit for the flight back over. SAS shouldn't mind getting them back a day early."

"But I might," Wolf grumbled, but turned to look for Eagle and Snake.

"I need to run over to see the FBI director to finalize some of the contract papers, so I won't get to leave until tomorrow morning." Alex yawned again, rubbing his stomach as he heard it complain at his negligence. "Might need to eat something, too."

"So the FBI hires you to essentially shoot terrorists for them?" McGee asked.

"It's…well I guess so. The CIA used to use me as cover for their other agents, but the FBI thought it would be more useful to have me shoot things." He shrugged. "It all depends on who the director is. The nice part is that MI6 makes sure I have some form of insurance, since I am the deputy director, so if I get captured or mortally wounded, they're under obligations to do anything they can to fix the situation and get me out alive."

Ben snorted. "Like that's helped."

"True, but it's the thought that counts." Alex looked at the clock on the wall. "Well we need to get moving. I was supposed to have this wrapped up three days ago and my employers won't exactly latch on to the idea of amnesia too easily. What's a good excuse, Ben?"

"You'd think you were trying to fool a teacher into accepting late work."

"It isn't that different."

Ben rolled his eyes. "You would do that. It wouldn't hurt to tell the truth, you know."

"Not when they'd believe something else more easily. Oh well. I'll have to work a story out on the ride over. Thanks for the fun time, Gibbs. Your team is much easier to work with than most I've dealt with."

"We pride ourselves on having brains," Abby cheerfully said as Wolf gathered up the remaining members of his team from the elevator. "Unlike those FBI suits, you have to have more than a suitable glare and dark glasses to get accepted."

Alex managed to get out, "Glad to hear," before the forensic specialist encased him in a bone-crushing hug. "We're going to miss you so much, so make sure to call or something so we don't have to worry a whole bunch, even though we'll probably worry either way, but you'll call us right?"

"Uh, yes?"

"Abbs, don't crush him." The teenager sent a grateful look his way as Abby managed to not hug him to death.

Ziva and Tony, called back by Gibbs got out of the elevator just as Wolf moved to press the 'down' button. "Boss, we weren't able to catch up with the ambulance, but-" Tony stopped as he saw the crew from England stepping into the elevator. "I take it that the case has been wrapped up?"

"As wrapped up as it can be," his boss said, not completely answering the implied question.

"Hey," Ziva grabbed Alex's arm as he moved towards the rest of his team. He flinched, but met her eyes. "You never told me how you knew my name when we first met."

He thought back, but nodded as he remembered the incident. "You two have similar eyes, your father and you."

She frowned, but released her grip. "How do you know my father?"

"Eli David and I have met quite a few times, and not always on the same side. I recall seeing you once with him which was why I remembered your name."

"That doesn't explain much," Ziva complained, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"I can't tell you any more than I already have." He got into the elevator, and raised a hand in farewell as the doors closed between them.

A/N: I'm so so so so so so sorry about taking so long between updates. I could give you these long complicated reasons as to why I've been gone, but basically, I didn't really have the spirit in me to write for awhile. Then, over break, I opened up this file and finished the entire six-thousand words within two days. Yay.

So with the explanations over, I have to say that I wasn't sure how this was going to end when I started this story. Actually, I didn't even understand the story until I started writing. Everything came to me as I typed. Anyone who finds the ending sort of disappointing is expressing the same feelings as me. Somehow, I felt there wasn't anything left and I am terrible at endings. So…yeah. Hope you liked it, because I had fun writing this. Thanks for following! And sorry for the gigantanormous amount of asterisks...

* Yes, this is a brief reference to NCIS: Los Angeles. While they aren't a quarter of what the original series has become, I believe in the very very deepest part of my soul that they have the potential to do well. So, this is me, supporting them. Sort of.

** EOD stands for "Explosive Ordnance Disposal" and obviously refers to people who dismantle bombs. Some of the bravest guys out there are in this small, but incredibly important and constantly working, unit of the military.

*** If one whole day counts as sitting around. *rolls eyes*

**** From the Jason Bourne movies/books written by Robert Ludlum. If you haven't watched the movies, shame on you.

* Everything that's current day, like the stuff with Egypt-US negotiations, is completely made up. It's sorta real, because there really is a crisis in Egypt with the president versus his people, but all this treaty and negotiations stuff is all in my imagination…I hope…

** The Federal Triangle is basically ten government buildings in a small triangular area, all of which are part of a national historic site. The original seven were built as a huge project undertaken in the early and mid 1930s. Of the ten, the most well-known are the National Archives, the two EPA buildings, the Department of Justice, and the Old Post Office Pavilion. Despite housing government offices, it is a beautiful space for biking.

*** Refers to an old spy movie named Cloak and Dagger and the term is sometimes used to refer to the things going on behind the curtains that might not be completely legal, per say.

**** The Blair House has been used as a guest house for guests of the President, primarily foreign heads of state, since it was bought by the government in 1942. It is also larger than the White House with over 70,000 square feet and 119 rooms.

* Once again, not a real person.