Chapter Nineteen
Tender Loving Care

Upstairs, an hour later, Alpha shift is nearly ended and Michelle Palmer steps part-way off the elevator. She's just told Jimmy they have an appointment to see Mother McGee before they leave; he'd been surprised but willing, she dreads the unavoidable encounter. But she halts at the elevator threshold between car and floor, surprised to see Maya Akana on the other side.

"You're leaving?" The case is half over at best. She steps off but Akana can't get around her before the doors close. Somehow, though she doesn't know the woman well, this feels like the right thing to do.

"I can't do anything more here. I've been okayed to go back to the Hoover Building. Your boss won't listen to me. He'll probably break your suspect and then your boss will play cards with my boss and that girl'll eventually be caught without anyone using a Profiler."

"But you were assigned to work with Tim."

"Gibbs ignores me, but McGee hates me so much he won't even hear me."

"Tim doesn't hate you. Not really."

"He fools me."

x

He fools her sometimes too, if she didn't have insight that perhaps it's time to share with the Hawaiian woman. If she can't help her own relationship... "That's not hate, that's fear."

"Fear?" It's so obvious she doesn't believe her. "He outweighs me by–"

"He's a husband who nearly lost his wife - his new fiancé rather - to a horrific death and he felt utterly helpless. He went from one nightmare to the next, counting every second as wasted time filled with terror. Every setback and false clue and turn drove him mad. He'd just asked Reverend O'Mallory - Siobhan - to marry him and just a few minutes later she was kidnapped."

"I know all this. And believe me I'm sorry my screw-up caused it, but I've been punished every day for almost six months, and he won't even listen long enough for me to apologize."

"Believe me, I know what it's like to go through this, but where my husband faces his fear and talks about it, Tim won't." She feels a sting of hypocrisy; she had to dig for months to uncover his nightmares, and still conversations with Jimmy require a shovel.

"Instead Tim buried it, but neither he nor Siobhan deal well with danger to the other." She'd been utterly shocked to witness the fiery dénouement at the Hotel Meritz.

x

"He accepts the danger of being an NCIS agent. You know what that is." Akana just nods; NCIS and FBI are cut from the same cloth, measured on the same pattern. "I'm not sure Mother McGee deals well with the risks of this job, because it's never been well for her when he has to face danger. But she's far better at facing his danger than he's ever been about hers, because a priest isn't supposed to be in danger of death and she's been nearly killed five times in the past year."

"Our Chaplains are older men who never go out in the field."

"Believe me, he's never expressed it but I think he'd prefer she'd stay in her Church, even though he's the one who proposed her to this job. But knowing Siobhan as I've come to, if that's what he wants then he married the wrong woman."

"Didn't he know the kind of life she led before he proposed?"

"No. She'd only become our Chaplain last Summer when they got back together."

"Back?"

"Long story."

"But if he's so against her being Chaplain, how'd it ever happen?"

"He arranged it." In fact, it'd been a done deal before he'd ever mentioned the prospect to her.

x

Michelle reflects for a moment on how Jimmy had expressed the same hopes about keeping her safe and his fears about the life she was resuming, but he'd never expressed these concerns to her. He'd expressed it instead to so many friends who'd brought the concern back to her.

She hadn't reacted well to that.

"What's he going to do about it now?" Maya asks.

For a moment she's confused, but then remembers they're discussing Tim and Siobhan, not…. "Everything he can do: nothing. He's taught her how to fight because he can't deny that she'll be at risk, but I can see it rip his heart out every time the insanity of NCIS spills over into his home."

Being surrounded by NCIS agents, being married to one, often turns someone into a danger magnet, a risk one must face if they would have the pleasures that go with the relationship. Mother McGee seems to have accepted that, at least on the outside, in the face she'll show.

She's not sure Jimmy ever will.

x

She's glad that Maya's thoughtfulness allows her time to think, even if it does leave the conversation pretty one-sided or confusing. Sometimes she's not sure if she's addressing the other woman's concerns or her own, or are they're twins, residing in two women's heads?

Three?

x

She pushes these thoughts aside. Danger to Tim at the Hotel Meritz a few days ago had sparked the first cross words she's ever seen the couple exchange - and they were shockingly dramatic. "But you represent to Tim the worst danger to her, and I don't exaggerate that she came within a few minutes of dying. I think he still can't deal with that."

"But okay, I screwed up and everyone from Agent Fornell to Assistant Director Skinner skinned me alive. There's got to be a point where we can just say 'enough'."

"I don't foresee that happening any time soon."

For the end of an intended 'pep talk', Akana looks more morose than when they'd started. "Neither do I."

xxx

An hour later, 1700, Jimmy Palmer, having changed into his normal clothes, though scrubs have long ago become his normal attire, knocks on the fourth floor office door, glances to his wife beside him and still doesn't understand the apprehension that gleams in her brown eyes. He stops himself from asking 'what's wrong?' She hasn't told him the last three times since they met for a small dinner in the Café and now that they're here at the Chaplain's door he decides getting answers from Agent McGee's wife will be less than like pulling teeth without Novocain.

"Come in" filters through the wood and he turns the knob before he'll let himself ask Michelle again. He has to push the door open wide.

"You wanted to see us?" he asks even before 'Chelle, half in front of him, has crossed the threshold.

"Yes. Come in please."

It takes a touch upon her back to urge 'Chelle into the room.

x

The room they enter has always reminded him of a long closet, barely twice wider than the large desk and flanking floor lamps at the far end. There's a couch on the right wall, filing cabinets on the left one, a few framed paintings of seas and tropical beaches and not much more. Even the desktop beyond the woman who rises to greet them has only the most basic things upon it. On the wall beyond hangs the distinctive crucifix, Christ's arms reaching out forward to the observer rather than spread on the wood.

Reverend Siobhan McGee is as they've gotten used to seeing her, in her own 'uniform' of summertime black calf length skirt and light blue, back button short sleeved blouse, an inch and a half high collar of stiff white about her throat. Her fiery red locks frame her face. "Come in," she invites, her distinctive Irish brogue warm. "Relax."

This last is appropriate for he must touch the middle of 'Chelle's back again to get her to walk all the way to the couch. He imagines that prisoners led to the hanging platform have approached it more happily.

x

'Chelle sits down at the edge of the couch closest to the door, obliging him to step around to sit on the remaining four fifths. Mother McGee - he forces himself to think 'Siobhan' as this feels too formal - wheels her high backed leather chair forward, turns it to face them so she has her back to the filing cabinets and her position nearly triangular to them.

To Jimmy this is extremely familiar and much too strange. This is how they met for the five times they could in 'Couples Counseling' with the Priest, but by the rules she must follow they've had their last session last month. Further, though their times occasionally got very tense, 'Chelle never entered the sessions fearfully. Indeed, he was often the reluctant one, she the one who pushed.

"I wanted to take a few minutes before you get ready to leave for West Virginia to go over some things."

x

A moment later Siobhan sits back in the Executive chair. "When one of you looks like he doesn't know what I'm talking about and the other looks like I'm about to push her off the edge of the roof I get–"
"I didn't tell him!"

This silences her, and she doesn't look happy at all. "Michelle..." She pauses deliberately; Jimmy suspects it's to pray. "Michelle, it's been–"

"I didn't know how to bring it up I'm sorry I was looking for the right–!" She halts hard enough to sprain her tongue as Siobhan raises her hand to stem the deluge of apologies.

"I really wish you'd said something," the priest says. "You've made this very awkward."

"I'm sorry! I was scared."

"Made what awkward?" Jimmy asks, but this is superseded a moment later by "Scared of what?"

"James," the priest says, leaning forward in her chair, "your wife loves you very much, and she's very concerned about you."

"I know she does." He turns back to Michelle. "Scared of what?"

"I've arranged for, to us go, to go to a, that is–"

"James," Siobhan's calmer voice pulls him back. "Michele and I have arranged for you both to get away for some private time, away for a while from the stresses of life here at Enkiss. It'll be a time to clear your heads, to get to spend some quality time with each other, to talk about a lot of things without Enkiss getting in the way."

"Okay." That's the cause of 'Chelle's conniption? "That's good, I guess. Where?" The look he gives his timid wife says 'and why are you so scared that Mother McGee has to speak for you?'

He'd thought he'd seen the last of his timid wife months ago. Why is she back?

x

"It's at Saint Francis' Retreat House, several miles outside North Hills, West Virginia," McGee tells him.

"Sounds nice." He turns to Michelle. "Why scared of that? A few days away would be ni–"

"A month," she admits in a tiny voice, unable to meet his eyes.

"Ab - a - a month?"

Her "yes" is the tiniest he's heard in months.

"When is this going to be?"

She doesn't answer. Her mouth works but nothing can squeak out.

"As soon as the current investigation her team is conducting wraps up," Siobhan says when she won't.

"But Doctor Mallard won't be back for another week."

"Sammy can help Doctor Isles!" She almost sprained her tongue on the blast of words.

"Sammy and Doctor Isles together in Autopsy?" He actually shudders, but then looks between the priest and his wife and shrugs, a gesture of helplessness. "Well, I guess I'm going to West Virginia. Better start packing, I guess."

"You're all packed already," Michelle says.

"How do you know what I want to bring?" he asks with a touch of annoyance. He doesn't want to feel annoyed, not with 'Chelle seeming like she's fighting up to 'timid fawn' level, but….

"I know your favorites. I simply packed all of them."

He looks from his wife to the priest and back again. "I'm not going to get any say at all in this?"

"No." She takes a lung-bursting breath, holds it until it hurts, and lets it out in "No, darling, you're not."

xxx

Gina Lollobrigida nurses her second whiskey sour at one of Gorman's Pub's small floor tables with three of her newspaper colleagues. She won't ever try to match the hulking Alex Cocheral seated opposite her; he's the serious drinker, the archetypical hard boiled newspaper man, at least so he likes his reputation to read.

She's a social one who really has to be in society before she'll indulge with Judi Atwater, while Pete Wishom to her left has declared himself, as usual, to be the designated driver. This is because it usually takes all three of them to guide Mount Cocheral to and into Wishom's four by four. By long-standing agreement the men and women travel on Pete's ride, for they're well used to the cooperative effort needed in getting Cocheral home, preferably before he falls over and cracks the floorboards.

Judi leans over on her right and breaks her reverie with a stage whisper. "Isn't that one of your men?" she asks, her gaze pointing to the bar.

"Men," she scoffs. "Now I have 'men'." But she looks anyway. There are four men at various spots at the long bar and she's about to say she's never had that many – her husband would have a fit – when she recognizes one of the men bent slightly over the wood. She turns back to her troublemaker. "That's Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS."

"Meat inspector?"

She chokes on a laugh. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service, not New Cattle Inspection System."

"National Crop Insurance Services?" Pete puts in.

"Now see what you started?"

Judi grins salaciously. "So he won't want to inspect your meat?"

She'll only shake her head, not wanting to go into this.

"How about your crops?" Pete asks.

She wants to explore this even less.

"Why don't you go over, see what he has for you?" Judi suggests.

"Absolutely not." She knows, but would never speak here, of his reputation; but at least the man would not have anything for her, not in the sense Judi's tone implies. Tony's an inveterate womanizer, true, but he stops on a dime at the sight of a wedding band.

Perhaps that's why she trusts him; he's a player who keeps to the rules and he knows she's not in the game. "No, I deal with his boss, not him."

"What do you deal with his boss in?" Judi asks.

"Business," she says firmly enough to end the banter. "And I'm not dealing with anyone tonight. If NCIS has a story, L.J. Gibbs knows where to find me."

"That doesn't sound like dedicated 'Go-Getter Gina'," Judi quips.

Okay, maybe she didn't stop it. "'Go Getter Gina' has clocked out for the night."

"Whatever," Pete Wishom says, "she's about to lose her chance."

This time when Gina looks, she notices the two twenty-somethings who stand a few feet from Tony's left, the tall blonde pointing him out to the shorter brunette who greets the whispered suggestion with a smile. They slowly approach him and Gina returns to her drink. "Good luck, DiNozzo."

xx

In one moment Tony is contemplating the gross unfairness of a universe that would allow such people as Scalici and his unknown cohort to thrive, and in the next the most beautiful Nordic blonde he's seen in weeks is at his left elbow. "Hi," she sighs hotly enough to melt not only his ice but the glass holding it.

"Hi." Eyes straining to keep on hers when he's had enough drinks that they want to stroll on their own, he's aware then of someone on his right and glances at the brunette who's even closer to him than her friend. "Ladies."

Nordic leans close, her whisper warm as she runs her finger under his tie. "That shirt looks very becoming on you, but if I were on you, I'd be coming too."

It almost makes him laugh. "Good one."

"It breaks the ice," the brunette assures him, slipping onto the stool on his right.

"That it did," he says as the blonde takes her place on his left. "Can I get you ladies anything?"

The brunette entwines her arms about his. She wears a scarlet, button-less half-blouse loosely tied under her breasts, and the scarf draped down from her neck can't cover her generous décolletage. "I've got everything I want."

x

The spirit of the moment vanishes for him. He normally has quite good success in meeting new companions but this is too much good fortune. "Wait a minute, you ladies aren't..." The blonde woman wears a half-blouse like her dark friend, but with the blue material pushed off her shoulders, and her blue jeans are tight enough to slow her circulation while designed to speed his.

No. While working girls may travel together, none of them ever to his taste, they would work together only on the rarest of occasions. Still, he's as relieved as pleased when the blonde shakes her head.

"No, we're just a couple of girls out for a good time. We don't want to split up and you look like you could handle both of us."

"Well, of course," he assures them with a confident smile born of years of success. He hadn't been in the mood for company of any kind, but now his spirits are lifted enough that he's sure he can give both of these beauties a memorable time.

xx

Gina Lollobrigida helps Pete and Judi haul Alex Cocheral to his feet. The man's not fat, not by any means, but he's a foot taller than any of them and wider than any two together.

While he's still almost sober enough to lumber, the three have decided to get a break this time and cut him off and be out early. Carefully, like three tugs aiming the Queen Mary into port, they guide him toward the door.

Actually, with Judi on her side and Pete alone on the right, Gina just repeats her usual prayer, for if they do the balancing lumber wrong she'll never counter the toppling tree before she's squished.

She'd throw everything to the wind and appeal to Anthony DiNozzo for aid, except that she sees him across the room, being escorted out the door by two guides, one on each arm.

'Show off!' she thinks grouchily as the door shuts behind the trio and she pushes to propel Mount Cocheral.

xx

The parking lot is quiet, deep in shadows beyond the single wide angle light over the door, but that doesn't prevent Tony from seeing either woman. They're close enough he could read them in Braille.

"So, what do I call you?"

"I'm Thelma," the Nord says and glances at the girl at his right, "and that's Louise."

He grins; one doesn't have to be a trained NCIS Agent or a World Traveler to know how many Nordic 'Thelmas' there are or to recognize the broad - no pun intended - desire for anonymity. But if they want no names, he's content to oblige them.

"Bet you've heard of us?"

"Oh, yeah." If they want to break the fantasy, he's okay with that too. "1991, directed by Ridley Scott, written by Callie Khouri; Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Mike Madsen, Timothy Carhart and a very young Brad Pitt."

"You sure know your movies," Thelma says, her arm around him. Fortunately she stays far from his wallet; he'd hate for the night to end like that.

"That's our favorite one," Louise says, leaning closer so he's well sandwiched between them as they walk. "You know the parking lot scene outside the bar?"

"Only yeah."

"Where Harlan Puckett gets it on with Thelma?" Louise asks, her arms wrapped about his right arm.

"Wouldn't you like to recreate that?" Thelma asks.

x

Tony hesitates. Two hot women is one thing, a very pleasant evening awaits, but Timothy Carhart's 'Harlan Puckett' had tried to rape Geena Davis' 'Thelma' and that has no appeal at all. But before he can open his mouth Thelma puts her lips on it, her body presses him backward, with Louise's guidance, until he's up against the side of a van.

Louise is in the clinch too, both women's bodies pressed to him. Louise grabs his hand, pulls it down and under her blouse, presses close to make him raise his hand under the garment. It doesn't take much convincing.

These two women are so hot he can barely think of more than to appreciate his good fortune. They press close enough to get into his clothes with him and they devour him with kisses. One of them, he's not sure which, has her hand low upon him, stroking the front of his pants, her hand pressing up and down, squeezing firmly to the rhythm of his pounding heart.

Thelma gets her mouth completely to his, forces Louise's head out of the way and her tongue works as though to lick his completely out of his mouth.

Tony senses Louise down below move away and then Thelma shifts her body to his left. An instant later agony blasts all else from him.

Louise has slammed her knee into his crotch!

x

Every organ in his body feels like it's been ruptured from within as Thelma steps back and, before he can bring his hand near the weapon on his belt, agony doubles with her brutal kick.

He can't breathe. The vicious attack has blasted control from his body.

He crashes to his knees, unable to do more than clutch his crotch and an instant later Louise's scarf wraps about his neck. Each woman grabs an end and pulls!

The garrote digs into his throat, squeezes his windpipe. He tries to grab each end to pull to ease the crushing constriction but he can't fight their strength. The cloth tightens further. He reaches for his gun, all thoughts of mercy expelled – it's them or him.

He manages to get the Sig out of its holster, aims left but a foot crashes into the back of his hand and the gun's slammed away. He can barely hear it clatter to the pavement. He grabs the cloth again, yanks with all his strength. They lean back; their full weights pull the ends, crush his throat.

The world grows darker. He can't pull as hard. His blood thunders in his ears, drowns everything. He swings with both fists, can barely reach straining bodies. He can get no force, knows he's doing nothing as they pull harder, lean further away.

He can't even wheeze, his breath completely cut but a moment later the garrote tightens further. His head is stuffed full. He can't hear, can't breathe, can't see… can't….

Continues in Next Episode: Who Knows What Evil Lurks: The fate of Tony DiNozzo unleashes a terror that will consume one of the Agents, and death and destruction are the price of Hate.