Chapter 1: The Unwanted Shadow
The air in Tobias Fornell’s office smelled of stale coffee and warm electronics. Teresa Lisbon stood at attention beside his desk, her posture straight but not rigid, her hands clasped loosely behind her back. Her eyes tracked the details of the room: the active case files stacked in precarious towers, the faded family photo half-buried by a procurement report, the way a single vein pulsed near Fornell’s temple as he gripped the phone receiver.
“No, I understand that,” Fornell snapped into the phone, his free hand massaging his forehead. “What I don’t understand is why we’re reinventing the wheel when the blueprint for failure is sitting in your inbox from the Baltimore fiasco. Yes.That one.” He listened, his jaw tightening.“Fine.Do it your way. And call me when you need the forensics report I already ordered.” He slammed the phone down with a crack that made a stack of papers shiver.A long, slow exhale escaped him. He swiveled his chair, his tired eyes finally landing on Lisbon. For a moment, he just looked at her, as if reassessing a piece of evidence.
“Agent Lisbon.”
“Sir.”
“Your supervisor, Agent Abbott, called in a favour. A big one. Says he needs a place to stash you while some political storm blows over. I’ve agreed to offer you a temporary attachment to my team.” He leaned back, the chair groaning in protest. “Problem is, I don’t have an active case for you. Not one that needs another body.”
Lisbon remained silent, her expression neutral.She knew the value of letting people talk themselves into the point.
“What I did have,” Fornell continued, “was a brand-new agent, fresh from Quantico, slated for a liaison detail over at NCIS. A procurement fraud case, inter-agency cooperation, all that happy bureaucratic nonsense. Good learning opportunity for a rookie.” He picked up a pen, tapped it twice on the desk. “I’ve decided to send you instead.”
A flicker of surprise, quickly suppressed, passed through her. “Sir, if it’s a learning opportunity for a rookie, I’m not sure I’m the right—”
“You’re not,” Fornell interrupted, his voice flat. “But Abbott made a compelling case that your particular situation is currently… politically flammable.My office is a contained environment. This assignment gets you out of the building and off the radar.” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “I know it’s not ideal.But it’s better than desk duty.”
Lisbon processed this. The “political storm” Abbott had mentioned was the fallout from her last case with Jane, which had ended with a very public, very unorthodox confrontation with a state senator. Paperwork had been her life for weeks. The thought of more made her skin itch.
“What exactly is my role as the liaison?” she asked.
“Simple. All I need you to do is monitor the investigation from their side.Be a friendly face. Keep me apprised of anything substantive the FBI needs to know.” He shrugged, a slow, deliberate motion. Then he added, his tone dropping into something sly and knowing, “And if you happen to find something else to do while you’re there… well, that’s up to you.”
The suggestion hung in the air. He wasn’t just giving her busywork; he was giving her a leash long enough to run with, if she had the initiative.It was a test, cloaked in bureaucratic procedure.
“Understood, sir.”
“Good. You’ll report to the NCIS Major Case Response Team at the Navy Yard. Agent in Charge is Leroy Jethro Gibbs.” Fornell slid a thin case file across the desk.“Basics on the procurement fraud. Gibbs runs his own show. He never checks his email, so I won’t bother sending a heads-up. You can update him when you get there.”
Lisbon took the file. It was light. “Anything else I should know about Agent Gibbs?”
Fornell almost smiled. “You’ll know everything you need to within five minutes of meeting him. Or you won’t. It’s kind of his thing. Dismissed.”
Lisbon gave a curt nod, tucked the slim file under her arm, and left the office. The door clicked shut behind her, sealing her into the hum of the bullpen.
The case file was a collection of dry facts that didn’t add up to a crime, not yet. A discrepancy in hydraulic fluid procurement for the USS George H.W.Bush. The numbers were off by a few thousand gallons over eighteen months. A rounding error in the Navy’s vast budget, or a slow bleed of resources into someone else’s pockets. Gibbs stared at the spreadsheet printout, the numbers blurring into gray lines.The answer wasn’t in the paperwork. It was in the people who touched it.
The anticipation in the air wasn’t for the case.It was for the arrival of the unknown element.Fornell’s promised FBI liaison. A rookie, according to the perfunctory email from Deputy Director something-or-other that he’d deleted after ten seconds.A rookie meant hand-holding.It meant wasted time explaining the basics. It meant another body taking up oxygen in the bullpen while his team did the actual work.
He could hear them now, the background noise to his simmering impatience.
“My point is,” DiNozzo said, spinning in his chair, “if you plan your weekend around a potential date, you’re setting yourself up for failure. You gotta keep the schedule fluid. Like a… a weekend ninja.”
McGee didn’t look up from his screen. “A weekend ninja. Right. That’s why you’re currently planning to spend Saturday night watching a Road House and Point Break double feature.By yourself. Again.”
“Research, Probie!Aesthetic research. The fashion, the dialogue, it’s a timeless—”
“It is a stain on the cinematic landscape,” Ziva stated flatly, meticulously cleaning under a fingernail with a letter opener. “And my weekend plans are superior to yours simply because they involve silence and the absence of you.”
“Ouch, David. Right in the camaraderie.”
“Your ‘camaraderie’ is what my father would call ‘unwanted auditory clutter.’”
Gibbs let their words wash over him, a familiar tide of irritation and affection. Their focus was supposed to be on the supply chain for Tomahawk missile components, a tedious but necessary cross-reference McGee had insisted on. Instead, it had frayed into this. He took a slow sip of coffee, the bitter, burnt taste a grounding punishment for his own distraction.He was waiting.He hated waiting.
His eyes flicked to the elevator bank, then back to the photograph of the Chief Petty Officer whose signature was on half the questionable purchase orders.The man had a good face, tired but honest. A family man, from the look of the slightly blurred school photo on his desk. People with families stole for two reasons: desperate need, or greed disguised as need. Gibbs was leaning towards the former, which only made the itch to solve it sharper, and the rookie’s impending intrusion more grating.
“You know what lacks unwanted auditory clutter?” DiNozzo mused.“The aquarium. Quiet, peaceful, full of beautiful, drifting creatures who don’t talk back.”
“Fish are boring, Tony,” McGee sighed.
“Not the shark tunnel, McMoody. In the shark tunnel, it’s all tense, predatory silence.You ever tried flirting in a shark tunnel? The stakes are immediately elevated.”
Ziva paused her cleaning. “Have you?”
“The point is theoretical!”
The elevator dinged, a soft chime that cut through the bullpen’s ambient noise.Gibbs didn’t look up. He watched DiNozzo’s posture change, saw McGee’s glance shift, observed Ziva’s hand subtly lower the letter opener out of sight. The footsteps that approached were measured, not tentative. The click of heels, but sensible, low ones.She stopped just inside the perimeter of the workspace. Gibbs finally lifted his gaze, a slow, assessing scan.
The woman standing there was slim, dressed in a dark pantsuit that was professional without being severe.Her hair was pulled back, no-nonsense. She held a single file folder loosely at her side.Her stance was easy, alert, but not posed. She was taking them in, too—the dynamic, the layout, him. Her eyes met his for a half-second before flickering to his team, a quick catalogue.
“Can I help you?” DiNozzo asked, his voice shifting into a cordial, professional gear, his previous clowning tucked away.
“I’m looking for Agent Gibbs,” she said. Her voice was calm, devoid of the nervous pitch he’d expected.“I’m Agent Lisbon. FBI Liaison.”
Gibbs set his coffee down. He gave her a long, silent look, from her steady hands to her direct eyes. She wasn’t fidgeting.She wasn’t offering a scripted pleasantry. She was just stating her business and waiting.He stood up.
“You’re late.”
“I came as soon as I was briefed,” Teresa said, her voice level.She didn’t apologize.
Gibbs held her gaze for a second longer, then gave a slight nod toward a vacant desk tucked beside his own. “Grab a chair.” He turned his back, his attention already returned to the photograph in his hand.
Teresa crossed the bullpen, the rhythm of keyboards and muttered conversations settling around her.The chair squeaked as she pulled it out. She sat, placing her own thin folder on the clean, empty desk surface. It felt like an island.From the desk diagonal to hers, a young man with a gentle face glanced up. “You the new FBI agent?” McGee asked, his fingers still poised over his keyboard.
Teresa opened her mouth. “Actually, I—”
A sharp, urgent beep erupted from McGee’s computer.His eyes snapped back to the monitor, his posture tightening. “Hang on,” he muttered, not to her, but to the data stream suddenly demanding his focus. He was gone, absorbed into the glow of the screen.
Across the aisle, the handsome agent—DiNozzo—leaned back with a grin.“Don’t worry,” he said, his tone conspiratorial. “We won’t make you carry the body.First day rule. Mostly.”
“Okay…” Teresa said.
From the desk facing DiNozzo’s, the woman with dark, intense eyes—Ziva—spoke without looking up from her own work. “You should stay close to McGee. He is the least likely to get you shot.”
Teresa started to form a response, a polite deflection, but McGee cut her off, his eyes still glued to his scrolling code. “Thanks,” he said dryly.
Before she could attempt another sentence, a thick folder landed with a soft whump on the desk in front of her. She looked up to see Gibbs retracting his hand, already moving back toward his own space.
“Catch up,” he said, the words leaving no room for questions.
“Boss,” McGee called out, finally tearing his gaze from his screen.“You should take a look at this. The financials from the secondary vendor just aligned with the shipment logs from Norfolk. It’s not a rounding error.”
Gibbs was at his shoulder in three strides, leaning down to study the monitor.
A second later, the sharp ring of a desk phone split the air.DiNozzo snatched up the receiver. “DiNozzo.” He listened, his playful expression solidifying into professional focus.“Right. We’re on it.”
Teresa watched, her hands resting on the closed folder. The rhythm of the room, momentarily disrupted by her arrival, had restarted.The brief flutter of attention had passed. She had been assessed, categorized as the new observer, and neatly tucked into a corner so the actual work could continue around her. A flare of stubborn pride wanted to correct them, to state her years of experience, to explain that she had collaborated on cases that would make their procurement fraud look like a parking ticket.
But the atmosphere was clear. Making a scene, insisting on credentials, would only reinforce their assumption that she was needy, insecure.It would waste time.Gibbs valued competence over talking about it. Fornell had given her a leash.She decided to see how far it would let her run before yanking her back.
She opened the file in front of her. The top sheet was a fresh autopsy report for a Naval Petty Officer First Class, a man she recognized from the photo Gibbs had been studying. Cause of death: single gunshot wound to the chest.Location: a rest stop off I-95. Estimated time of death placed him miles from his last known duty station. Personal effects: missing his military ID and wallet.The case had just stopped being about missing hydraulic fluid.
Around her, the machine of the team hummed.McGee was talking rapidly about shell companies.DiNozzo was grabbing his jacket. Ziva was checking the magazine in her sidearm. Gibbs listened, his eyes flickering once, briefly, to Teresa as she read. She didn’t look up, but she felt the glance—a recalibration. She turned the page, absorbing the details of a life ended mid-transaction, her mind already weaving the dry procurement data from Fornell’s file with the violent finality of this new report.They thought she was catching up. She was already ahead.
The petty officer’s death changed the texture of everything. A paper trail was one thing. A body made it real. She watched Gibbs absorb the information from McGee, his stillness more intense than any outburst. His eyes, cold and blue, scanned the data, connecting points she could only guess at.
The phone on Tony’s desk rang, a jarring bleat in the new silence.
“DiNozzo.” He listened, his gaze locking with Gibbs. “Yeah. Got it.” He hung up. “That was local PD. They located Petty Officer Riggs’s apartment. Building supervisor’s on-site with a key. Says he hasn’t seen Riggs in two days.”
Gibbs nodded once. “Take Ziva. Go.”
Tony was already up, grabbing his coat from the back of his chair. Ziva stood smoothly, holstering her weapon. They moved in practiced sync toward the elevator.
Gibbs’s voice cut across the bullpen, stopping them. “Take Agent Lisbon with you.”
The command hung in the air for a fraction of a second. Teresa closed the autopsy file, stood, and scooped up her own jacket from the back of her chair. As she moved to follow, Gibbs spoke again, his attention still seemingly on McGee’s screen.
“You have a gun, Agent Lisbon?”
She didn’t break stride. “I do. I’m still armed. You didn’t give me the key to the desk drawer to lock it up.”
She was almost to the elevator bank, passing Ziva, who watched her with detached interest, and Tony, who raised an eyebrow.
Behind her, Gibbs’s voice was dry. “You could have asked.”
Teresa hit the elevator call button. The doors slid open immediately. She stepped inside, turned, and looked back at Gibbs, who finally met her eyes. Her reply was quick, clean, and just loud enough to carry.
“I thought about it. Then everybody looked busy and I decided being accidentally armed was probably less disruptive.”
She held his gaze until the doors began to close, then looked expectantly at Tony and Ziva, who quickly stepped in beside her. The elevator descended with a soft hum.
The silence inside was thick. Tony leaned against the wall, studying her. “So. ‘Lisbon.’ That’s a city. In Portugal.”
“It is,” Teresa said, watching the floor numbers tick down.
“You’re not from Portugal.” Tony tilted his head.
“No.”
“See, this is the part where you offer a helpful, conversational fact about yourself,” Tony said, grinning. “Eases the tension. Builds team rapport.”
Beside him, Ziva stared straight ahead with her arms at her sides. “Your talking builds tension, Tony. It does not ease it.”
Tony ignored her. “Fine. I’ll start. Anthony DiNozzo. Former Baltimore cop. Movie enthusiast. Handsome. Widely admired by coworkers.”
“By coworkers?” Ziva asked, amused disbelief crossing her face.
“Okay, by coworker. Singular.”
Teresa nodded thoughtfully. “That’s nice.”
Tony frowned. “That’s it? That’s all I get?”
“You wanted a conversational fact.”
“I wanted reciprocity.”
The elevator continued downward. Teresa considered her answer for a moment, and then sighed, “I had a dog when I was a kid.”
Tony blinked. “A dog.”
Teresa kept her expression calm and unaffected. “A very good dog.”
“That’s your contribution?”
Teresa signed. She had met and worked with agents like Tony before. The jokes weren’t a distraction from his investigation. They were part of it. While people rolled their eyes, Tony was learning things people never intended to tell him.
Unfortunately for him, Teresa had spent years working with Patrick Jane. Compared to him, Tony DiNozzo was a rank amateur.
“You said conversational. You didn’t say interesting.” She replied.
Ziva’s expression softened just enough to suggest amusement.
Tony scowled, looking accusingly between them. “This is how it starts.”
“What is?” Teresa asked, only half interested.
The elevator doors opened to the NCIS parking garage. It sat beneath the Navy Yard complex, a sprawling concrete structure lit by rows of fluorescent fixtures that cast a pale glow across the painted lanes.
“The judging.” Tony called as he took the lead toward one of the black NCIS SUVs parked in the fleet section. The vehicle looked exactly like half a dozen others nearby—practical, unremarkable, and built for work rather than comfort.
Teresa and Ziva followed. “You introduced yourself as widely admired.” Teresa replied.
“I stand by that.” Tony declared as he opened the driver’s side door. As Teresa and Ziva approached the passenger side doors, Ziva rolled her eyes.
Teresa dropped back, ensuring Ziva took the front seat. It would be easier to observe and avoid being the subject of unwanted observation from the back seat.
She buckled her seatbelt as Tony shifted the vehicle into drive and their SUV started moving past government-issued sedans and SUVs lined up in neat rows. A few personal vehicles were scattered among them, but the government fleet dominated the space.
Tony obviously was still was not done. “So what did you do before this?”
This was the question Teresa had been expecting. The easy answer wasn’t technically a lie, and would avoid a barrage of more unwanted questions.
“Paperwork.”
Tony frowned. “Paperwork.”
“Lots of paperwork.” Teresa watched out the window as the vehicle pulled out of the garage and onto the sunlit road of the Navy Yard.
“Wow.” Came the sarcastic reply.
Teresa watched a particularly harried looking sailor carrying a briefcase and a coffee hurrying down the sidewalk. “It wasn’t as exciting as it sounds.”
“That sounds exactly as exciting as it sounds.” Tony replied as he eased the vehicle through the security checkpoint on onto the street.
Teresa shrugged. “Fair.”
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Ziva watching her in the mirror on the back of the sun visor. She did not look suspicious, just curious. It was the kind of look investigators gave people who didn’t quite fit the picture they’d been handed.
Tony was still trying. “Okay. Rookie rule number one.”
Teresa sighed. “There are rules?”
She had a strong suspicion that these were not going to be the NCIS rulebook rules.
“Oh, absolutely.” Tony smiled, looking much too pleased with himself as he watched her in the rearview mirror.
“Tony invents them as he goes,” Ziva said, shooting him a glare that said go easy on her, she’s new.
Tony ignored the interruption. “Rule number one: don’t touch Gibbs’ coffee.”
“Noted.”
“Rule number two: if McGee starts talking computers, just nod.” Teresa could hear affection disguised as annoyance in his tone.
“I actually understood some of what he was saying.” She responded meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. Tony stared back.
“That is not helping your rookie image.”
Teresa arranged her features into an appropriately concerned expression. “I’ll try harder.”
Ziva’s lips twitched.
Tony shifted his attention back to the road before looking over at Ziva. “See? That. That’s sarcasm.”
Ziva ignored him and flipped on the radio, a clear sign she was done with the chatter.
They road in silence for half an hour with only the sound of soft rock breaking the stillness. Eventually they pulled up in front of a walk up apartment and Tony put the SUV in park. “Welcome to fieldwork.” He declared, turning off the ignition and climbing out of the vehicle. Teresa followed, stepping out onto the street next to Ziva.
Tony fell into step beside them as they crossed the street toward the building.
“You know, for a rookie, you’re surprisingly difficult to get a read on.” He observed, opening the door to the lobby for Teresa and Ziva to enter.
Teresa shrugged, “Maybe you need more practice.”
For a second Tony looked genuinely suspicious, before pressing the buzzer marked Superintendent. Ziva noticed his look and glanced at Teresa, her eyes narrowed. Neither woman said a word.