Nuclear Family

1

"Be a good girl, okay?" Tony asked.

Tali nodded enthusiastically.

"I'll be back at the end of the day, just like always." He knelt down to her level, and she promptly hug-attacked him. "I love you, Tali."

"Love you, Aba."

She gave one last squeeze and then turned and ran back into the preschool classroom, curly pigtails bouncing wildly.

Tony sighed as he returned to his feet.

She was growing up so fast.

***

Gibbs surveyed him over the top of his computer screen.

Tony dropped his backpack in the corner before sinking into his desk chair. It was new, leather, reclining, a major piece of the bribe that brought Tony back to the team after his travels abroad.

"We have a case yet?" Tony asked when Gibbs continued to glare at him.

"No." Gibbs took a long sip of his coffee. "How's Tali?"

"Good. Really good. She loves going to school. So far, anyway. They just color and play right now."

"Have to start somewhere, DiNozzo. You'll have to bring her over some time."

"Sure thing, Boss." He made a mental note to have Tali draw another picture for Gibbs to hang on his fridge.

"Why don't we all have dinner tomorrow night?" McGee suggested. "Abby and I were just talking last night about how it's been a while since we all had dinner together."

"Let Ducky and Palmer know."

McGee had barely reached for his keyboard when Gibbs' desk phone rang.

Tony had his backpack on before Gibbs was even done with the call.

"Body down by the bay," Gibbs said finally. He sighed. "Messy one."

They said nothing more.

***

Messy was an understatement, Tony thought as he took in the wide radius of arterial spray.

The victim's neck was slashed, several times by the looks of it, and deeply.

"That's not all." Ducky beckoned them closer and pulled aside the victim's unbuttoned shirt to reveal a string of characters cut into the abdomen.

"Any idea what language?" Gibbs asked.

"Hebrew," Tony said almost immediately.

They all looked at him in surprise.

He shrugged. "Tali only knew words in Hebrew. I had to learn some in order to talk to her, didn't I?" He crouched down beside Ducky, determined to recognize and translate the killer's message. "."

"And that means...?" McGee prompted.

"Hold on. It's been a while."

Suddenly it clicked.

"'It is finished.'"

McGee frowned. "Isn't that..."

"From the Bible? Yes."

"Curious place to inscribe such a famous phrase," Ducky mused aloud.

"Might've been a revenge killing, Duck. Or a sacrifice." Gibbs tucked his stub of a pencil behind his ear and gazed around the deserted coast. "Doubt we'll have any witnesses out here."

Tony stood up again and found himself staring hard out over the water. "Whatever it is, I have a feeling it's far from being finished."

***

On a hunch, McGee typed the day's murder details into the case system.

Another case popped up, and a recent one. An unsolved string of murders, all inflicted upon seemingly random victims, all culminating in the words 'tam ve'nishlam' being cut into the bodies.

"Hey, Boss, I think you should look at this." McGee set the TV screen to mirror his computer screen.

Tony and Gibbs walked over from their respective desks, frowning at the TV.

"Any suspects?" Gibbs asked at last.

McGee scrolled through the notes to the bottom.

There was only one name, and not one that he recognized.

He had a feeling though, from the furious way Tony's eyebrows had pinched together, that this name meant something bad was coming their way.

"Israeli," Tony muttered.

Gibbs gave him a sidelong glance.

"I came across his name when..." Tony sighed heavily. "When we were looking for the person who ordered that mortar attack. He was with Mossad, went rogue about a year before that." He turned around, slammed a fist on his desk, making McGee jump, and turned back to face them. "Ziva was on his tail before crap hit the fan."

McGee's stomach plummeted. The last thing any of them needed right now was a ruthless manhunt for someone else possibly linked to Ziva's murder. Things were finally settling down, getting back to normal, and now he was sure Tony was about to go bat-crazy again until the man was dead.

"Are you sure it's-"

"Yes, I'm sure. I think you'd be pretty sure too, if someone murdered Abby." Tony had a scary glint in his eyes, the same one he got when he shot Kort, the same one Ziva got when going after Bodner. "I memorized every single word ever tied to that fire. This is our guy."

"So let's get him." Gibbs strode back to his desk and grabbed his desk phone, punching in a number with great intensity.

McGee felt a little bad for the poor phone.

Tony was still glaring at the screen, as if by channeling his murderous thoughts at the man's name he could somehow make the guy drop dead.

"Want me to finish uploading the details to the system?" McGee asked.

Gibbs gave him a distracted nod before turning away, phone still cupped between his shoulder and his ear.

Tony finally stalked back to his desk, muttering something about catching the guy if it was the last thing he ever did.

*** ***