Chapter 7: Watching from the Shadows
@Crossover Premise @Teresa Lisbon @NCIS Team @Lisbon’s Restricted File @Active Suspects
The marina was a cold, grey envelope of damp air and muted sounds. Yellow crime scene tape snapped in the breeze, cordoning off a section of the main pier where two of Teresa’s uniforms moved slowly, eyes on the planks. A heavy blue tarp, weighted at the corners with evidence markers, covered a shape that needed no explanation.
Teresa Lisbon stood just inside the tape line, her posture compact, her hands buried in the pockets of her jacket. A small notebook was tucked into her breast pocket. Her expression was a study in neutral focus, giving nothing away as Gibbs and Ziva ducked under the tape and approached.
“What have you got, Chief?” Gibbs asked, his breath fogging slightly.
Her eyes met his, green and wary. “Male, mid-fifties. Tom Weller. Works the docks.” Her voice was professional, clipped. “Preliminary indicates blunt force trauma to the back of the head. ME’s on his way from county.”
Ziva’s gaze swept from the tarp to the surrounding water. “This is the man who found Mercer?”
“Yes.” Teresa’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
Gibbs felt the connection click into place, heavy and deliberate. This was a message. “Who found him?” he asked, his eyes not leaving her face.
“Another dockworker. Early shift.” She nodded toward a patrol car where a man in stained coveralls sat in the back seat, looking shell-shocked. “He’s rattled. Said he came to check on a fuel line and saw Tom’s legs sticking out from behind those crates.”
Gibbs took in the scene. The perimeter was secure, the handful of responders quiet and methodical. The orderly precision mirrored what he’d seen at the first scene. It told him this wasn't a performance for a federal audience; this was simply how she operated. A thread of respect, unwelcome but undeniable, pulled taut in his mind.
Teresa turned away from them, her boots making soft, hollow sounds on the weathered wood. She moved along the edge of the taped area, her eyes scanning the splintered pilings, the frayed ropes, the grime-smeared tarps covering old equipment. She stopped, knelt, and leaned close to a pile of folded canvas.
“Agent Gibbs,” she called, her voice cutting through the low murmur of the scene.
He was beside her in three strides, Ziva a shadow behind him. Teresa didn’t touch anything. She used the tip of her pen to point to a smudge on the coarse brown edge of a tarp. It was a faint, rusty red streak, almost indistinguishable from the general decay.
“Trace transfer,” she said, more to herself than to him. “It matches what was on Mercer.” The words were out, clean and professional, before she could stop them.
She froze. The air around them seemed to crystallize.
Ziva and Gibbs both looked at her, the silence between them suddenly charged. The preliminary report from McGee had mentioned trace, but not its composition. Not specifically paint.
Gibbs tilted his head, his blue eyes boring into her. “You read the preliminary report from my scene?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm.
Lisbon stood smoothly, her face a mask of cool recovery. “No. I noticed something red on him yesterday.”
It was a good save. It was almost perfect. But Gibbs had spent a lifetime listening to what was not being said. He’d seen the microscopic delay, the faint widening of her eyes a split-second before her response. He held her gaze, letting the moment stretch, letting the unspoken accusation hang in the salt-tinged air.
Teresa kept her face calm, a statue of professional composure, but inside her mind was a siren. He’s parsing every word. He’s fitting pieces together. She could feel the weight of his perception, a tangible pressure against the careful wall she’d built. The faster she could get him and his piercing blue eyes out of her town, the better.
Gibbs broke the stare first, turning away as if the silent exchange was just another note in his file. He began walking slowly along the edge of the pier, his eyes tracing the waterline. He stopped, pointing to a neglected slip where a battered, grease-stained utility boat bobbed listlessly on the murky water. “Who uses this?”
She hesitated, her mind racing through the consequences of each syllable. “That slip is used by maintenance contractors,” she said, her tone even. “Repair tugs, fishing service boats. It’s communal.”
“Which contractor?” Gibbs asked, not looking at her.
They’ll find out, she thought, the resignation a cold stone in her gut. Saying nothing would only sharpen his focus. “Harlan Marine,” she answered, the words crisp. She knew he noticed how quickly the name came to her, another data point filed away.
“Walk with me, Chief,” Gibbs said, finally turning his head toward her. It was phrased like an invitation, but the command in it was absolute, a door closing on any alternative.
She fell into step beside him, her boots keeping pace with his on the damp, splintered wood. The fog was beginning to burn off, leaving the world a dull, washed-out grey.
“We spoke to Rachael Keene this morning,” Gibbs said, his voice conversational.
A jolt, sharp and electric, shot down Teresa’s spine. Here it comes. She stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the planks ahead, hoping with a futile, childish desperation that he would simply let the topic die.
He did not. “She said Mercer was scared. Thought someone was watching him.”
Teresa said nothing. The lapping of the water against the pilings was the only sound. If he was determined to drag information out of her, she wasn’t about to make the excavation easy.
“Said he wanted someone local he could trust,” Gibbs continued, watching a gull dive into the grey water.
“Is that so?” Teresa said, the words emerging in a perfectly controlled, neutral tone. She kept her eyes on the ground, noting a cracked cleat, a loop of discarded nylon rope.
“Did you know him?” Gibbs asked, the question landing between them with the weight of an anvil.
She couldn’t outright lie. He would know, and her own rule—the one Deputy Williams had proudly quoted—would shatter. “I met him,” she admitted, the concession tasting like ash. “Once. He came to the station.”
Gibbs slowed his pace, his full attention now on her profile as she studiously pretended to examine the crime scene tape fluttering in the distance. He studied the tight line of her jaw, the careful emptiness in her green eyes that weren’t quite meeting his. She was a closed book, but he was starting to see the outline of the lock.
Gibbs stopped walking. The sound of his boots ceasing on the wood was a full stop in the fog.
Teresa turned to face him, the movement tight. The weight of the unspoken thing between them had become a third person on the pier. The guilt, which had been a low, constant hum since she’d heard about Mercer’s body, now vibrated in her throat. He had asked for help. She had calculated the risk, seen the specter of naval jurisdiction and federal scrutiny, and chosen the path that kept her world small and safe. It had been a coward’s calculus, and a man was dead.
“When?” Gibbs asked. The single word was a probe inserted into a wound.
She met his eyes, her own guarded but clear. There was no point in evasion now. “Three days ago. He walked into the station, no appointment.” She chose her next words with the care of a bomb technician, each one examined for unintended triggers. “He was vague. Agitated. He asked questions about jurisdiction over contractors working the docks. Wanted to know if it fell to the town, the state, or the feds if something was... off.”
Gibbs said nothing. He just watched her, a silent pressure forcing her to fill the space.
“I told him it depended,” she continued, her voice flat. “Armed forces personnel are one thing. A civilian contractor is another. I advised him that if he had specific concerns about naval contracts or personnel, the proper channel was to report it through the Navy’s own system.” She paused, the memory of Mercer’s disappointed, frightened face sharp in her mind. “Then I sent him away.”
Ziva approached them from near the tarp, her observation of the scene complete. She had heard the last part. Her dark eyes fixed on Teresa, analytical and unflinching. “You did not think to disclose this interaction when we arrived to investigate his murder?”
Teresa held Ziva’s gaze, the wall inside her firmly in place. “It wasn’t relevant. He didn’t give me any specifics. No names, no allegations. It was a hypothetical question from a nervous man.” She almost believed herself.
Gibbs’s eyes narrowed, the cool blue of them sharpening to a point. “A murder victim asking a police chief for help is always relevant, Chief.” He let the statement hang, its truth a cold, clarifying slap. “He didn’t go to the Navy. He came to you. Rachael Keene told him you were the one person who doesn’t bend. And you pointed him back at the institution he was afraid of.”
The accuracy of it stole her breath. It laid bare the failure exactly as she had rehearsed it in her own mind a hundred times since finding the body in the alley. Her carefully maintained neutrality felt like a stain.
Gibbs saw the flicker in her eyes, the minute fracture in her armor. It wasn’t admission, but it was a leak. He turned his head, looking past her toward the grimy utility boat in the Harlan Marine slip. The connection was a live wire now. Mercer asked about contractors. A dockworker who found Mercer’s body is now dead. The red paint trace links both scenes to these docks.
“Harlan Marine,” Gibbs stated, the name now a destination. He began walking back toward the sedan, his pace leaving no room for debate. “You’re coming with us.”
Ziva fell in step. Teresa stood for a second alone on the damp pier, the weight of her withheld truth a new companion. Then, because he was right and because the lock he was picking was now her own, she followed. Her boots crunched on the gravel lot beside the dock, the sound separate from the rhythm of theirs. She watched Gibbs and Ziva approach their dark sedan, its government plates stark against the dirt.
She didn't break stride. She angled toward her own unmarked car, parked under a skeletal maple tree three rows over. Her keys were already in her hand, the metal warm from her grip.
“Lisbon.” Gibbs’s voice cut across the lot, not loud, but absolute.
She turned, one hand on her car’s door handle. He stood by the open passenger door of his sedan, his expression granite. “You’re riding with us.”
The order hung in the cold air. Teresa looked from him to Ziva, who watched silently from the other side of the vehicle, then back to Gibbs. “I’ll drive on my own,” she said, her voice flat, final.
His glare was a physical pressure, an attempt to physically shift her through force of will alone. She knew the tactic. She had used it herself in interrogation rooms, that silent, unyielding stare meant to make a person fidget, to make them fill the silence with concessions. Teresa didn’t fidget. She held her ground, the chill of the morning seeping through her jacket.
She would only be pushed so far. “We can either stand here and stare at each other all day, Agent Gibbs,” she said, not raising her voice, “or we can get in our vehicles and drive to the Harlan Marine offices. Your choice.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. The wind picked up, whistling through the rusted chain-link fence at the lot’s edge. She saw the calculation in his eyes, the assessment of whether her defiance was a bluff or a genuine line in the sand.
He gave a single, sharp nod. “Get in your car.” He ducked into the driver’s seat, the door closing with a solid thud.
He leaned across the passenger seat before Ziva got in, his eyes locking on Teresa through the open window. His voice carried clearly across the empty space. “You disappear, I find you. I will arrest you for obstruction.”
It wasn’t a bluff. She believed him completely. She nodded once, a curt acknowledgment, and slipped into her own car. The engine coughed to life.
She followed their sedan out of the lot, maintaining two car lengths behind. Her hands were steady on the wheel, but her mind raced. The warning was a live wire. He had her cornered, not by evidence, but by her own actions—the evasion, the omission about Mercer. He was using her guilt as a leash.
In the NCIS sedan, the silence was heavy. Ziva glanced at the rearview, watching the chief’s car maintain its exact distance. “She is not running.”
“Not yet,” Gibbs said, his eyes on the road. “She’s calculating. She knew about the paint trace. She sent Mercer away.” He flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “She’s in this deeper than she’s showing.”
“Or she is terrified of what we are uncovering,” Ziva offered, her tone thoughtful. “Her record is sealed. That does not happen for a simple small-town chief.”
Gibbs grunted, acknowledging the point. The sealed file was a black hole in the middle of the case, sucking in all the easy answers. People with clean histories don’t get files sealed by the Justice Department.
Twenty minutes later, they turned into an industrial park on the outskirts of town. It was a bleak collection of prefabricated metal buildings and weedy lots. The sign for Harlan Marine was freshly painted, but the single-story office it fronted had rust bleeding from its roof seams.
Gibbs parked nose-out in the small lot. Teresa pulled in beside him, killing her engine a beat after his. They got out in unison, the sound of their doors closing the only noise in the thin, cold air.
Gibbs and Ziva approached the front doors of the building, Teresa a few steps behind. She was scanning the perimeter, her eyes cataloguing the white company van, the litter of industrial parts by a side door, the drawn blinds on every window.
They entered the lobby. The space was cheaply furnished, smelling of stale coffee and lemon-scented cleaner. A harried-looking woman in her forties glanced up from behind a reception desk cluttered with invoices.
Gibbs and Ziva approached the woman at the reception desk while Teresa slowly circled the lobby looking out the windows. Her boots were quiet on the thin commercial carpet.
“We need to speak with Victor Harlan,” Ziva said, her badge already held up.
The receptionist blinked, her eyes flicking from Ziva to Gibbs. “Do you have an appointment? He’s very busy.”
“NCIS doesn’t make appointments,” Gibbs said, his tone leaving no room for negotiation. “Is he in?”
Teresa was only half listening to Ziva demand to speak with the owner. Her attention was on the view through the slatted blinds of the large front window. She tracked a delivery truck passing on the access road, then a man walking a dog far across the lot.
She was just on her second gradual pass of the front door when she saw Victor Harlan. He was walking along the sidewalk that ran next to the building and past the parking lot toward the street. He wore a navy jacket, his hands shoved in his pockets, his head down against the wind. He wasn’t running. He was leaving.
In a moment she was out the door, down the steps and yelling for him to stop. “Harlan! Police!”
Harlan glanced over his shoulder. His eyes met hers, widened. He took off running.
Teresa took off after him. The sound of her own breathing filled her ears, syncing with the pounding of her feet on the asphalt. “Stop!” she yelled again, but he veered between two buildings, kicking up gravel.
Behind her, the lobby door slammed open. She didn’t look back.
Harlan was fast, fueled by panic. He cut across a loading dock, weaving between pallets. Teresa gained, her legs burning, her focus narrowing to the space between his shoulder blades.
He shot a wild look back, his face a mask of sheer terror. It wasn’t the guilt of a murderer caught. This was the raw, animal fear of a man who knew he was next.
“I just want to talk!” she shouted, the words ripped away by the wind.
Inside the lobby, the slam of the exterior door was a gunshot against the quiet. Gibbs was already moving before the receptionist could finish her stammered reply about Victor Harlan being in the back.
Ziva was a step ahead, shoving through the door and into the cold blur of the parking lot.
Gibbs followed closely behind, his knee giving a familiar, protesting twinge as he hit the asphalt. He saw Teresa ahead, a streak of focused motion, and beyond her, the fleeing figure of a man in a navy jacket.
“I just want to talk!” Teresa’s shout echoed off the metal siding of the buildings.
The man, Harlan, didn’t break stride. He pumped his arms, his form that of a man running for his life.
“SHE’S AFTER HARLAN. GO!” Gibbs yelled to Ziva, his breath already burning in his chest.
Ziva poured on the speed, her feet a rapid percussion on the ground. The sidewalk forked ahead where the industrial park met a scrubby line of trees separating it from the older town. Harlan skidded, spraying gravel, and jagged right down the slope toward the distant gleam of the municipal docks.
Teresa didn’t follow the turn. She kept on straight, disappearing between two long warehouses.
Ziva, a half-second behind Harlan at the fork, hesitated. Her instinct was to pursue the primary target directly.
“GO RIGHT!” Gibbs barked, already dropping behind, the distance between him and Ziva growing. He hated running. It was an inefficient, pounding agony that reminded him he wasn’t twenty anymore.
Ziva took the right fork, following Harlan’s path down toward the water. She was gaining, her strides eating up the paved slope.
Gibbs pushed himself, his eyes tracking Ziva’s back. He saw her start to close the final gap, ten yards, then five.
Suddenly, from a side street that fed back onto the main path, Teresa Lisbon erupted into view.
She didn’t run at Harlan from behind. She came in perpendicular, a silent bolt in tactical pants and a jacket. She used her momentum to come in low at his knees, driving her shoulder into his legs.
The tackle was brutally efficient. She twisted in midair so she landed on top of him, her weight driving the air from his lungs in a pained oof.
They hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and scattered gravel. Harlan writhed, gasping. Teresa already had her knee in his back, one of his arms wrenched up and secured. Her other hand pulled cuffs from her belt in a fluid motion that spoke of a thousand repetitions.
The metallic click-click of the cuffs locking home echoed in the sudden quiet.
Ziva slid to a halt beside them, her own hand coming away from her hip. She wasn’t even breathing heavily. She looked down at Teresa, who was now standing, pulling a wheezing Victor Harlan to his feet.
“You are full of surprises, Chief,” Ziva said, her voice admirably level.
Gibbs jogged up, his chest heaving. He glared at the struggle out of his lungs, then fixed his stare on Harlan. The man was pale, sweating despite the chill, his eyes darting like trapped birds.
“Victor Harlan,” Gibbs stated, catching his breath. “You run from federal agents, it never ends with a conversation.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Harlan squeaked, his voice cracking. He looked at Teresa with genuine terror. “You have to protect me.”
Teresa ignored him, brushing gravel from her palms. She looked at Gibbs, her expression unreadable. “He was already leaving when we pulled up. Saw us through the window.”
“Convenient,” Gibbs said, his gaze shifting from Harlan’s cuffed wrists to Teresa’s steady hands. “You cut the angle. Knew the streets.”
She gave a slight, one-shouldered shrug. “I know the town. He was heading for the docks. There’s only two ways down from that fork.” She said it simply, a factual report. No pride, no gloating.
Harlan strained against the cuffs. “They’re going to kill me! Like they killed Danny and Tom! You have to put me in a cell. A real one!”
The names hung in the air. Danny Mercer. Tom Weller. Gibbs stepped closer, invading the man’s space. “Who are ‘they,’ Victor?”
Harlan’s mouth opened, then shut. He shook his head, his eyes squeezing closed. “I can’t. You don’t understand. They see everything.”
“We can protect you,” Ziva said, her tone cooler, more analytical than reassuring.
“You can’t!” Harlan’s laugh was a shrill, broken sound. “Your system is how they operate! Contracts, invoices, delivery manifests. It’s all just paperwork to them. And people who ask questions about the paperwork end up floating in the water!”
Gibbs looked past Harlan’s panic, to Teresa. She was watching the man, her green eyes sharp, assessing the truth of his fear against the backdrop of everything she’d seen. She didn’t contradict his claim about the system. She didn’t offer empty platitudes.
“Then talk to someone outside the system,” Teresa said, her voice low. She wasn’t looking at Harlan. She was looking directly at Gibbs.