Chapter 6: The Back Alley Escape
The grey light of a Virginia morning did nothing to soften the edges of the Cobalt Creek station. Teresa Lisbon was at her desk, the dregs of her first coffee already cold in the mug. Her fingers stilled on the keyboard as headlights swept across the front window, slow and deliberate.
Not a local truck. Not a resident’s sedan.
A dark blue sedan, government-issued and achingly familiar in its anonymous severity, slid into a slot beside the rusty mailbox. The driver’s door opened, and Leroy Jethro Gibbs emerged, his posture a study in focused intent. The passenger side yielded Ziva David, her curly hair pulled back, her gaze already sweeping the storefronts and alleyways with an analytical precision that made Teresa’s neck tighten.
Instinct, older than her badge here, took over. She didn’t stand. She didn’t gasp. She simply closed the lid of her laptop in one smooth motion, her other hand already scooping her keys and jacket from the back of her chair.
“Williams,” she said, her voice low but carrying across the quiet squad room to her young deputy, who was frowning at a traffic accident report. He looked up.
“Tell them I haven’t been in yet,” she instructed, already moving toward the reinforced door that led to the back lot. “You haven’t seen me this morning.”
Deputy Williams’s eyes widened, flitting to the window where the two federal agents were now approaching the front steps. “Chief, what—?”
“Just do it.” The words were flat, leaving no room for debate. She was through the door before he could form another question, closing it silently behind her.
The chill of the concrete lot hit her immediately. Her personal car, an unremarkable sedan, was parked ten feet away, shielded from the street by a dumpster. She slid into the driver’s seat, the engine turning over with a muted growl. As she reversed, she glimpsed, through the station’s rear window, the front door opening and the shapes of Gibbs and Ziva stepping inside. She didn’t wait to see more. She turned onto the service road, her eyes on the rearview mirror, watching the station shrink until it was just another block in the quilt of a waking town.
Inside, the station smelled of stale coffee and lemon-scented cleaner. Deputy Williams, looking young and very alone behind the reception counter, offered a hesitant smile. “Mornin’. Can I help you folks?”
Gibbs held up his credentials. “NCIS. Looking for Chief Lisbon.”
“Ah.” Williams ran a hand through his hair. “She’s… not in yet. Wasn’t here when I got in. Can I take a message?”
Ziva didn’t speak. She was scanning the small room: the orderly desk, the faded "Wanted" posters, the filing cabinets. Her eyes landed on Lisbon’s desk chair, pushed back at an angle. On the desk, beside the closed laptop, sat a stoneware mug. A thin, faint tendril of steam was still curling from its surface into the cool air.
Williams followed her gaze. His amiable expression faltered for a fraction of a second.
“You’re a terrible liar, Deputy,” Gibbs stated, his voice not unkind, just factual. He nodded toward the mug.
To their surprise, Williams didn’t look chastised or nervous.
To their surprise, Williams didn’t look chastised or nervous. He actually smiled, a faint trace of pride lifting his shoulders. “That’s a good thing, Agent. Chief Lisbon says good, honest people are terrible liars. She says it’s a tell you can trust.”
Gibbs absorbed that, his blue eyes sharpening. “What’s that make your boss, then?”
Williams met his gaze without flinching. “The Chief knows she’s a terrible liar, too. I’ve seen it.” He gave a small, knowing shrug. “Except when she’s playing poker with the veterans down at the Legion. Then she’s a shark. Cleans ‘em out every time.”
“She is lying to us right now,” Ziva stated coolly, her head tilting toward the still-warm mug. “Her evasion is a lie of omission. The coffee does not steam for long.”
“She doesn’t lie,” Williams insisted, his conviction sudden and solid. He said it like a fundamental truth, like stating the sky was blue.
“Everyone lies, Deputy,” Gibbs said, his voice a low rumble.
“Not her.” Williams leaned forward on the counter, his knuckles white. “You tell me one thing she’s outright lied to you about. Go on. Since you rolled into town.”
Gibbs was silent. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. He replayed their brief interactions at the dock, the polite but empty words in her office. She had been evasive. She had avoided them. She had remained sealed shut like a vault. But a direct, provable falsehood? He couldn’t pinpoint one.
The realization was a quiet click in his mind, adjusting the profile he was building of her. She was careful. She was operating within strict, self-imposed rules.
“Let the Chief know we’re going to interview a person of interest in town,” Gibbs said, his decision made. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket, scribbled a name, and tore the sheet off. He slid it across the counter. “Rachael Keene. She’s welcome to join us when she comes back.”
He held Williams’s eyes for a beat longer, ensuring the message was received. Then he turned, Ziva falling into step beside him without a word. The station door sighed shut behind them, leaving Deputy Williams alone with the note and the cooling coffee.
Outside, the morning air was sharp. Gibbs paused by their car, glancing down the empty service road. “She was watching. She saw us pull in.”
“Yes,” Ziva agreed, following his gaze. “Her departure was precise. This Rachael Keene—the florist records from Petals & Thorn?”
“The delivery address.” Gibbs yanked the car door open. “McGee texted it while we were driving. The roses went to a Rachael Keene at 214 Pine Lane. Cobalt Creek.”
He slid into the driver’s seat, the engine growling to life. Ziva fastened her seatbelt, her expression contemplative. “If Lisbon does not lie, but she hides, then what is she hiding from?”
Gibbs didn’t answer. He pulled out of the lot, the direction clear. 214 Pine Lane. They were about to meet the woman who received a doomed man’s last romantic gesture.
214 Pine Lane was a small, neat craftsman bungalow painted a faded butter yellow, nestled between two nearly identical houses. The porch light was still on against the grey morning. Gibbs knocked, the sound solid against the quiet street.
The door opened after a few seconds. Rachael Keene was an attractive young woman, her blonde hair pulled into a messy bun. She wore yoga pants and an oversized cream sweater that seemed to swallow her frame. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, the skin around them tender. She looked at them, then past them to their car, her expression already resigning.
“Rachael Keene?” Gibbs asked, holding up his badge. “NCIS. Special Agent Gibbs, Agent David. Can we come in?”
She didn’t speak. She just opened the door wider, the movement sluggish, and motioned them inside with a faint tilt of her head. The air in the house was still and cold, carrying a faint scent of lavender and yesterday’s coffee. As Ziva stepped past the threshold, her sharp eyes caught the vivid burst of red on a small side table by the door. A dozen roses, some petals already beginning to curl at the edges, stood in a simple glass vase.
Ziva’s hand moved subtly, a finger pointing toward the flowers. Gibbs glanced at them, then back to Ziva, a silent confirmation passing between them before they followed Rachael further in.
She led them to a small living room dominated by a large, worn sofa and a bookshelf overflowing with paperback novels and accounting textbooks. “Please, have a seat,” she said, her voice hoarse. She gestured vaguely at the sofa and a floral armchair. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you,” Gibbs said, his tone softer than it had been at the station. He remained standing for a moment, taking in the room—the neatness, the quiet, the profound sadness soaking into the walls.
Ziva settled onto the edge of the armchair, her posture attentive but not aggressive. “We understand you work as a civilian accountant connected to Marine Corps logistics. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” Rachael sank onto the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her. She pulled a cushion onto her lap, holding it like a shield. “I’m a contractor for the base. I audit supply chain invoices.”
“How did you know Lieutenant Commander Daniel Mercer?” Ziva asked.
Rachael’s fingers dug into the cushion. She looked at the blank television screen, her throat working. “We were having an affair,” she said finally, the words dropping like stones into the quiet room. “For about eight months. He was separated. It wasn’t… it wasn’t just some sordid thing.” She said this defensively, as if she’d rehearsed it.
“When did you last see him?” Gibbs asked, moving to lean against the bookshelf, his presence a steady, unignorable pressure in the corner of her vision.
“Tuesday night. He came here after work.” A tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek. She wiped it away with an angry swipe of her hand. “He sent the roses, and came by later. He was… he was scared.”
The word hung in the cold air. Ziva leaned forward slightly. “Scared of what?”
“He thought someone was watching him. Following him. He kept checking the windows.” Rachael’s gaze was distant, seeing the memory. “He said he’d gotten in over his head, that he wanted to fix things. He was talking in circles. I asked him what things, what he needed to fix, and he just shook his head. Said it was a mess.”
“A mess involving what?” Gibbs pressed, his voice low.
“I don’t know.” She looked at him, her eyes pleading for belief. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was safer if I didn’t know. But he asked me… he asked if I knew anyone in civilian law enforcement he could talk to. Someone he could trust.”
Gibbs straightened. “He didn’t trust anyone in the military?”
“No.” The answer was immediate and absolute. “He said he couldn’t. He said the problem was inside the house, that’s how he put it. ‘Inside the house.’ So I…” She trailed off, chewing her lip.
“You told him he could trust Chief Lisbon,” Ziva finished for her.
Rachael nodded, a flicker of defiant pride breaking through her grief. “Yes. I told him if he needed a cop who wouldn’t bend, he should talk to Chief Lisbon.”
Gibbs and Ziva exchanged a glance, the same question passing between them. “Why her?” Gibbs asked. “She’s a small-town police chief. This sounds like a federal matter.”
A faint, almost sorrowful smile touched Rachael’s lips. “You don’t know what it was like here before she came. This town was rotten. The Satan’s Dawgs motorcycle gang had meth houses operating in three different neighborhoods. The old police chief and every deputy except the old Sergeant were on the take, taking bribes to look the other way.”
She hugged the cushion tighter, her voice gaining a little strength from the story. “When the town council hired her from out of state, the Dawgs sent a representative to her office. They offered her two million dollars in cash, upfront, just to keep the status quo. A signing bonus, they called it.”
Ziva’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Gibbs didn’t move.
“What did she do?” Ziva asked.
“She fired every single deputy that same afternoon,” Rachael said. “Walked them out of the building herself. She kept XXX because he was just the desk guy, he wasn’t involved. Then, with just him and a couple of temp officers from the county, she started shutting the labs down. One at a time. She didn’t make a big show of it. She’d just show up with a warrant, clear the house, make the arrests. The Dawgs threatened her. They shot out the windows of the station. They set a car on fire in her driveway.”
“And?” Gibbs prompted.
“And she kept going.” Rachael shrugged, as if the conclusion was obvious. “Within four months, the labs were gone. The gang packed up and left. They couldn’t operate here anymore. She didn’t take their money. She didn’t back down. She just did her job.” Rachael looked from Gibbs to Ziva, her eyes clear now with conviction. “So when Danny asked for someone he could trust, that’s who I told him about. Someone who doesn’t bend.”
The silence that followed was thick. Gibbs pushed off the bookshelf. “Did he contact her?”
“I don’t know,” Rachael whispered, the strength leaving her again. “He said he would. He left here around ten, said he was going back to his apartment. That was the last time I saw him.” Her composure crumpled, and she buried her face in the cushion, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Ziva stood, giving a slight nod to Gibbs. They had what they came for. More, in fact.
They let themselves out, the faint scent of roses following them to the door. On the porch, the cold morning felt charged. Gibbs stared back at the quiet house, then toward the direction of the police station.
“She doesn’t bend,” Ziva echoed quietly, pulling her coat tighter.
“No,” Gibbs said, his jaw tight. “But she hides. And a scared man with navy secrets thought she was his only safe option.” He dug his keys from his pocket, the metal cold in his hand. “Mercer’s last move was toward her. Now he’s dead. And she’s avoiding us.”
He looked at Ziva, his decision etched in the grim lines of his face. “We’re not waiting for an invitation anymore. We find her. Now.”
The cold bit through Gibbs’ jacket as he pulled his keys from his pocket. He turned toward their sedan, the morning stillness broken only by the distant cry of a crow.
Ziva fell into step beside him, her hands buried deep in her coat pockets. “She is either part of the problem,” Ziva said, her breath misting in the air, “or she is a target herself.”
“Either way, she knows more than she’s saying.” Gibbs hit the key fob, the locks clunking open. A sudden, sharp chirp sliced through the quiet, stopping him mid-reach for the door handle.
He yanked the buzzing phone from his hip. The screen flashed “Cobalt Creek Station.” He exchanged a look with Ziva and answered. “Gibbs.”
“Agent Gibbs? It’s Deputy Miller.” The young deputy’s voice was tight, stretched thin over a thread of adrenaline. “Chief Lisbon asked me to call. She needs you at the south docks, the old cannery pier. Now.”
Gibbs’s eyes locked with Ziva’s. “Why?”
A pause, filled with the crackle of a radio in the background. “We’ve got another one, sir. Another body. Male. Chief says… she says you’ll want to see this for yourselves.”
The line went dead. Gibbs lowered the phone, the winter air feeling suddenly heavier, charged with grim potential. He looked from the silent house behind them to the road leading toward the waterfront.
“It seems,” Gibbs said, sliding into the driver’s seat, “we will not have to find her after all.” The engine snarled to life.
Ziva fastened her seatbelt, her expression analytical. “Convenient timing. She avoids us, then summons us.”
“Or someone else just painted a bigger target on her town.” Gibbs threw the car into reverse, the tires spitting gravel. He focused on the empty road ahead, his mind already at the damp, splintered planks of the cannery pier.