The Riddle
- Chapter 2: Coincidences -
He was back. As predicted Leroy Jethro Gibbs had returned when his team needed him most and Jenny knew she owed him. He'd saved her friends life. He'd left again but returned for a case he needed to finish. Everyone was glad he was back but she suspected that this was temporary. When Abby entered her office after the end of a very long day, she knew it wasn't good.
"I think he's booking himself a flight, going back," She sobbed.
"Now?"
"I don't know. Mom, I don't want him to go again." God how many times had they had this conversation, this time however Jenny was going to break tradition.
"I'll see what I can do, but it may not work." True to form Jenny drove to his house on a different pretense and found him looking at a tape deck.
"It won't work Jen, I've made up mind."
"Fine," she said trying to fuse as much indifference as she could before bringing her second tactic. She explained to him why she thought he should stay, even if she didn't want him back. "When you're that good, you just don't quit Jethro." He didn't answer her and she didn't expect one. She left that night not entirely surprised when two days later he was at his desk working.
---
It was barley two weeks later and already they were having disagreements. It had to be a record, she was sure of it. They'd been needling each other for days and there was no intervention until Abby. The two were in her lab sniping at each other when Abby decided to imitate them and feeling she had made her point concluded.
"The kids don't like it when mom and dad fight." Jenny for her part fell silent and found the table entirely fascinating to look at, but making sure Abby got the message her displeasure. Gibbs was quiet for about thirty seconds before asking if she'd got something. After that however Gibbs had surprisingly let the topic drop and Jenny by default won the argument.
For his part Gibbs had looked at Jen in a completely different light after that comment, and than days later when shown a hypothetic child of his and hers. Obviously when he'd been away she'd really earned their respect and devotion. He was proud of her, but the idea of having a child with her wouldn't leave him alone. He had to stop himself on multiple occasions from calling her
And while he realized that perhaps Jenny and Shannon were similar in appearance the thing that really got to him was Abby. Abby was being nice to Jenny, it was odd that she was nice, just in the manner in which she was. She was affectionate; she let Jenny bring her a calf-pow and drank it! He wasn't quite sure what to make of it.
---
He knew he had trained her well, too well. The second he'd found out about Tony's undercover mission and La Grenouille he knew, and now she was quoting him.
"Best way to keep a secret, keep it to yourself, second best tell one other person if you must, there is no third best!" She began down the stairs. "That's rule number four isn't it?"
"Rule one supercedes all others," he lectured to her back.
"What don't screw your partner?" She tossed back.
"No, don't screw over you partner." In retrospect he should have seen it coming but she had him up against the window before he knew what had happened and one look in her eyes told him she was livid.
"I'm not your partner Jethro, I'm your boss!" She let him go the second another approached but she did not let go of her anger and Gibbs knew that for at least the next few hours it would be directed at him.
This was a side of Jenny he hadn't seen in a long time and he knew it reminded him of something else. He just couldn't figure out what. He thought perhaps he might get back in her good graces but the next case did not help.
He'd felt it the second she'd seen them together, Jennifer Shepard was jealous. Gibbs introduced her to Colonel Hollis Mann and Jenny knew what apparently Ziva had to. The younger woman waited with her till the others had left.
"So what do you think of future ex number four?" Ziva inquired.
"I offered her a job," Jenny answered.
"Ah...rule number 12. Well if you don't want him to catch on, stop fishing."
"Beg your pardon?"
"You heard me Jenny, as you're friend listen to me. Sabotage will work through a more subtle approach."
"You don't like her either," Jenny realized.
"Oh I figured I would make the vote unanimous, Abby can't stand her." Jenny laughed and watched her friend leave before turning to go downstairs to the lab.
"Abby?" Jenny called over the music.
"Oh I'm here!" The music went off.
"Good work today."
"You're fishing Mother," Abby informed. Jenny tried to look innocent. "So you meet my future step-mother?"
"Abby, be nice," Jenny scolded.
"Be nice? You're the one offering her a job!"
"Well..."
"Maybe you should tell him," Abby threw out and Jenny knew this was her limit and she would have to set down the law.
"Abby this is the last time we will have this discussion. I am not going to tell him. I will of course make sure he gets the appropriate hints if you want him to know about you, but not me. His wife is dead; I'm an old flame. Let me love your father in peace, he doesn't need to know. I want him to be happy and if the Colonel does that, fine." Jenny left after that and retreated to her office. She hadn't realized how hard it would be to watch him love someone else.
---
"You don't drink Scotch!" Jenny shouted, Gibbs put down the class on to her desk.
"Neither do you," he pointed out watching her pace her study. "You lost your security detail for twenty one hours, where were you?"
"You should like a jealous husband."
"How would you know?" He tossed back and watched as she took another sip of her drink and tried again. "What were you doing?"
"What we used to do, ever so well," she bit back angrily and he realized there was no sense in rationalizing with her, she was pissed and being mean.
"When you like your right eye twitches, always has."
"Finish your drink and get out." She wasn't exactly sure when he'd left, but she brought the Scotch bottle and glass to Abby's lab the next day.
"Gibbs isn't here Director," Abby said looking at the computer screen.
"I want you to run these Abby, off the books."
"Mom?"
"Please Abby," Jen said.
"Which Servers?"
"All, including those who died in the last thirty years."
"It'll take awhile," Abby pointed out.
"I've got time, just don't tell Gibbs." Abby nodded a little uncertain and Jenny left. She returned to her office only to find Gibbs waiting. "What do you want?"
"Fornell stopped by, rumor has it you pissed off quite a few people. We're being polygraphed."
"Let them come, we're going after an arms dealer, its what we do."
"Why this one? Why now?"
"I'm not going to let him get away this time."
"What did he do to you Jen?" He'd asked her that once before, she knew that.
"He came after those I care about, same thing Ari did to you."
"Ari killed my agent, and he almost killed you and Abby!"
"La Grenouille destroyed my father and my family!" Gibbs studied her, as far as he knew she'd only had her father, what other family could have been taken from her?
"Your father?"
"Colonel Jasper Shepard, they said he took bribes, killed himself. Those he worked for kept their mouths shut and Operation Loadstone never existed and my father was a traitor."
"Colonel Jasper Shepard, I remember...uh hearing about it." Jenny nodded accepting his answer not noticing his sudden unease.
The next morning when Gibbs was downstairs in the lab he noticed the bottle of Scotch and glass from Jenny's study.
"Abby where did you get these?" He demanded.
"Uh...the Director. She told me not to tell," Abby defended.
"Where there any hits?" Abby checked and to both their surprise found a deleted hit, but the Goth managed to recover it.
"Colonel Jasper Shepard, dead and..." Abby faded off looking at the picture.
"Abby?"
"I know him, well I've met him. When I was a child, I think," Abby explained before laughing. "But that's impossible of course, probably just a clone." Gibbs nodded, the man from his dreams was clearly real, but how had he known his wife?
In the aftermath of losing La Grenouille's trail Gibbs was the one clearly in charge. He made sure everyone was all right and appointed himself the Director's official security, much to her displeasure. He brought her home much like he had after she'd been kidnapped, but she was silent for the entire ride. She knew Gibbs had done the right thing by unloading her weapon but she did not want to accept it or the protection.
"You said he wasn't at his yacht," Jenny reminded when they got to her house.
"Doesn't mean he won't try and take you out, you went after his kid!"
"Lucky for me than, I have no one to be taken anymore," She snapped back. He almost wished he knew more about her past, perhaps she like he had lost a family of her own.
"I'll go pick some stuff up, don't leave the house."
"Fine," she responded picking up a glass and pouring a large glass of bourbon.
"And I wouldn't drink all that bourbon," he warned never having seen her that far gone.
"I won't," came the childish answer. He left and picked up cell, dialing while driving.
"Hello?" A woman answered.
"Johanna."
"Jethro, it's almost midnight is everything alright?"
"I need a favor."
"What?"
"I need you to look into a Colonel Jasper Shepard and a Jennifer Shepard," He said hearing Johanna's shaky exhale.
"Why?"
"I remember...I remembered meeting the Colonel, he said he knew
"And so you want to know if you former lover knows about
"She does, uh know what happened that is."
"Jethro let it go," Johanna advised.
"I can't. There's something I'm missing from it all." Johanna knew she would get him off the phone unless she gave him something so she simply rattled off what was basically common knowledge.
"Look all I can tell you about your boss is this: Everything in her file is true. She does drop off in terms of major activity between 1982 and 1992 but it's possible she was just working a low profile job or living with her father," Johanna explained.
"Did you know Colonel Shepard?" Well there's no use denying it.
"I met him once, as a younger girl, long before you knew
"They're the same age, Shannon and Jenny."
"Let it go, Jethro," Johanna repeated.
"Goodnight Johanna."
"Night." The phone went dead. Gibbs knew Johanna wasn't saying everything she knew and so he opened the laptop he'd borrowed from Abby's lab and did his own research, thanking God for having paid attention to McGee. The first thing that surprised him was rather ironic in a way; it was Jenny's full name. Jennifer Shannon Shepard and Shannon Jennifer Hunter, well that's interesting. The second best thing he found was an idle report that Col. Jasper Shepard had put his only child into a Federal Witness Protection program, but that was only an idle report and there was no file about it anyway so it was likely false. Still Gibbs continued searching learning what happened between the times she'd left till she'd reappeared in his life.
After exhausting his search on Jen he keyed in Abby's name out of curiosity. He found his next coincidence. Abigail Kelley Scuito, Kelley Abigail Gibbs, no one but Johanna, Shannon, and I knew her middle name. Leroy Jethro Gibbs did not believe in coincidences but he did not want to consider what this suggested.