Rule 39: There Is No Such Thing As Coincidence (Tony DiNozzo Love Story)

Who's Pulling The Strings?

Thirty minutes later there's a knock on the door, getting up I grab my the twenty-eight dollars I put on the table. Opening the door, a teenage boy with red hair is standing on the porch holding the pizza.

    "Hi, um, meat lovers with extra cheese?"

    "Yes, that's me," I reply.

    "It'll be twenty-two even," the guy replies.

    "Here's twenty-eight, the rest is for you," I say and he smiles.

    "Thanks, have a great night!"

    "You too, drive safe," I say and he nods and smiles as he heads back to his car parked on the street.

    "Gibbs pizza is here!" I call out and I moment later solid footsteps come echoing up the stairs.

    "About time," he replies as he takes a seat at the table.

    "It was on time, what's up that's got you all in a mood?"

    He looks up at me and sighs, "This ghost group. There's something about it that's just off."

    "I know what you mean," I say as I grab the beer from the fridge.

    "What do you mean?"

    "The Ghost program was dropped six months after I joined. SecDef and the VP have no clue who we were technically working for. Claxton went AWOL and made sure the rest of us did too, keeping us busy with contracts. After Claxton got shot in 2002, he changed. He was on us all the time making sure we were on top of our contracts, making sure that we were completing them and leaving no one alive. After I got shot in Saratov, I knew something was up. Something that he was pushing for, something with me. The other Ghosts were AWOL, I couldn't get a hold of any of them. Majority were out and it was just me doing Joe's dirty work. When he shot me, I knew there was something up, something going on that connected me to him. He said it himself, I got in the way just like Captain Nichols had. She overheard Joe murder someone when she was leading an intelligence operation that Joe was in charge of for forecon in Kuwait. She heard the transmission, because she dug in and got in through a backdoor. Hackery was there when Claxton got shot in Kuwait, because SecDef and the VP told me, he was apart of Claxton's mission in Kuwait. He was the communications officer, he's the one that closed off communications that Captain Nichols intercepted."

    "What could you have seen or done that made Claxton try and have you killed?"

    "I don't know, I'm trying to figure that out. But something happened that made Claxton force us to disappear and do his bidding, someone was sending him contracts or giving him a list of names. Who that was, that's what I need to find out. If it was Joe himself, I need to figure out why the people we killed needed to be killed and how they're connected."

    He sits in silence as I finally take a bite of pizza and I can practically see the wheels moving in his head.

    "We need to locate the other Ghosts if we can, see who is still around and see what they know. Check to see when they got out, if they ever did, and what they know about these contracts."

    I nod and we contemptibly eat coming up with a game plan for researching the Ghosts with what little I have about knowing who they really are.

    Promptly at eight o'clock Tony shows up at the door.

    "Well hello," I say as I step out to greet him.

    "Hello to you, you ready to go?"

    "Yeah, Gibbs is down working on the boat. Said he didn't want to be interrupted but said to have fun," I smile and Tony laughs.

    "Shall we?" I nod and follow him to his car.

    As we drive towards the shop I relax into my seat and close my eyes. The feeling of the breeze coming in through the lowered windows feels nice on my skin and puts me at ease. For a split second it feels like everything is normal and everything between the time I left the first time to now never happened.

    "What are you thinking about?" Tony asks as we stop, I hum and open my eyes turning to look at him.

    "How peaceful it is, this moment right now with you in the car," I say and he smiles.

    "I'm glad," he replies and reaches for my hand and kisses my knuckles.

    "Oh by the way, I have something that belongs to you," he says as he reaches into his pocket and continues to drive.

    "What's that?" I ask. He pulls out a box, a box that I have seen before that I was sure I'd left in my room back at Gibbs' house.

    "The Director gave the okay for me to be able to return this back to you from evidence," he says as he hands me the box. I open it to see the ring nesting in the velvet.

    "Why was it in evidence?" I ask confused.

    "When Ivann kidnapped you, as you know they had sent various body parts to make us think they were from you. One of which was a finger that was wearing that ring," he says.

    I stare back at the ring. "How did he get the ring, it was at Gibbs' house," I ask.

    "I don't know but they somehow got in and got the ring and then sent me the finger with the ring, I understand if you don't want the ring anymore because of what its been through—"

    I reach for his arm and interrupt, "No. No, it's fine. I just, I know what this ring means and what they did may have done to you or the team."

    "I knew you hadn't been wearing it when they took you, but it still crossed my mind that just maybe it was your finger."

    "Thankfully it wasn't, see," I show my hands, wiggling all my fingers to show him and he smiles.

    "Thank you for getting it back," I say as I look back down to the ring then back to him.

    He nods and kisses my knuckles once more.