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

Smoking Gun

Erin's POV

I'm sitting in Abby's lab when Gibbs walks in and motions for me to follow him. I put my bag of chips down and follow from one side of the lab towards the back where Abby does her ballistic testing, passing my makeshift cot along the way. Since I'm supposed to be dead, everyone thought it best to keep me hidden in the building and away from everyone.

"What's going on? You have a certain look on your face," I say as Gibbs closes the door behind me.

"Claxton ordered Shannon and Kelly's death," he says and turns around to look at me. The statement doesn't make any sense to me, that can't be true.

"No, Hernandez killed them," I say and Gibbs nods.

"Yeah, he killed them. Claxton ordered it. McGee and Tony found the connection, he was in Camp Pendleton on his way to retirement and McGee found wire transfers between Hernandez and Claxton. One for Tanner, then a second one just before Shannon and Kelly were killed. Hernandez worked for Claxton," he says. The room tilts and sets straight again as I process the information.

"And you've killed both of them," I say in an incredulous whisper and he nods.

"So what do we do now?" I ask. Gibbs looks up at me and then reaches for his phone.

"We figure out how to get SecDef and the VP to admit to being accomplices to Claxton and murder," he says and exits out of the room. I turn and stare after him as he leaves the lab and turns for the elevator.

I run my hands over my face and scream. My voice echoing around me off the walls but contained to a near silent muffle on the other side of the door. I look out of the glass to see McGee rushing in and sigh. Still trying to process and compartmentalize the information, I step out and return to the lab.

"What are you two doing?" I ask as McGee and Abby are quickly typing away at the keyboards.

"Drehten asked to talk to Tony again and he told us about a hidden software that he has saved as backup on his system. It's a tracking software that he created in order to keep track and to protect the Ghost program. So I had been right about him being able to know if we were looking into the Ghosts. What Drehten said is that this program not only alerts him when the Ghosts are being searched, it also has a backup that holds information about each Ghost, their specialty and the list of contracts they've had," he says and breaks eye contact quickly to glance towards me before returning back to the computer screen. "He said he has it because Claxton provided him the information over the years and did it as a bargaining chip. In case SecDef or the VP or some other government agency tried to bring him down. So, we're trying to access the software offsite from the Pentagon to get the evidence we need."

"You're hacking into the Pentagon, I'm pretty sure that's illegal," I say.

McGee shakes his head. "Drehten created a backdoor when he noticed some of the Ghosts being pinged. He figured something was going on and instead of deleting the files, he created a way for the information to be downloaded through a private server and copied to a flash drive."

"So what is it you're doing because it looks like you're both about to break the keyboards?" I ask.

"Well we still have to distract the security systems the Pentagon has set up to allow access to the backdoor, so we're I guess we're still hacking the Pentagon," he says.

"I've got it," Abby says quickly and I look on as they continue to type.

"Crap, we have a minute before the system refreshes and locks us out."

"It's downloading, we're at 22%," she says.

"I don't know if we have enough time," Tim says hastily as he continues to type. "Forty-seven seconds."

"We're at 48%," she says.

"Thirty seconds."

"64%."

"Twenty-one seconds."

"78%. 82, 87, 93.

"Ten seconds."

"99. 100, got it," she says as they continue typing and then suddenly stop.

"That file has to be huge for it to have taken that long to download," McGee says.

"Do you think the Pentagon will find out about the hack?" I ask. They both glance towards me and then to each other.

"Don't think so, but we'll have to see," Abby says and pulls up the file.

"Holy smokes," she says as countless folders pop up. She selects one, Egypt, a full portfolio file pops up then numerous dossiers begin to stack themselves across the screen. Abby returns to the main file and scrolls and hovers over my name before scrolling past and there's a file near the bottom that has initials. She opens it up and its portfolios on SecDef and the VP, there are surveillance photos that have been scanned in. Photos that are clearly dated to be at least five to ten years old. Meeting photos, photos of recruitment, exchanges between themselves or through a Ghost.

"It's all there," I say and they turn to me and nod.

"Claxton loved to be thorough," I say.

"We gotta call Gibbs," Tim says as he reaches for the phone.

I glance once more to the screen and see the file with my name and I begin to wonder just what kind of information is in there.