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NCIS - Coincidences :Ch. 7 - Spring Thaw:

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Chapter Seven: Spring Thaw

Days passed with little forward momentum. Rebekah lay in bed, sedated half the time, with two NCIS agents standing guard out in the hall each day and night. Without anyone to talk to, she began to think about what had happened since the fire. Gibbs had not been back, but in all honesty, she had not expected him to be back. It seemed like, every time a man promised something, he never came through on that promise.

Only one nurse per shift was allowed into her room, each of them – according to the NCIS agents – had gone through rigorous background checks. Still, she found herself jumpy around them.  No one had come to tell her who the nurse that had attacked her was, nor why she had done so. She was starting to feel helpless and useless, two feelings that did not sit well with her.

Special Agent Ziva David, a woman with an accent that denoted the Middle East and who held herself with a great amount of dignity, entered the room. Agent David's gaze swept the entirety of the room as she walked through it. When she approached the bed, she gave Rebekah a small smile and took a seat in a hard plastic chair near to the right side. They sat that way for a moment in silence. This was only the third time Rebekah had seen the woman. She was the only consistency in her life at the moment, beyond the doctor. Agent David was the first to break the silence.

"How are you doing?" Agent David asked the simple question that Rebekah should have been accustomed to hearing on a daily basis. All of the nurses asked her that question, so did the doctor who had been assigned to her case. Even the NCIS agents who came to replace their fellows had asked her this question. But something about this time made Rebekah feel as though her world was collapsing around her ears.

She did the only thing she could do – she laughed.

"Rebekah?" Agent David sounded confused as she sat there, watching Rebekah's spiral into insanity. At least, that was what it felt like.

"I'm wonderful Agent David, how could I not be?" Rebekah managed through a few short laughs, wiping her face with her right hand as she looked over at the dark-haired woman, "I've lost my family, been chased to another state, had my apartment turned to ashes, and now have someone else, whom you refuse to tell me about, after me!"

"I never refused to tell you anything. We have been unable to discover who paid that woman to kill you," Agent David stated, shaking her head as she leaned back in the plastic chair and regarded Rebekah silently, "You have not been very… forthcoming with us either, Miss Evans."

The name stopped Rebekah's sharp comeback as she swung her head around to stare hard at the other woman. No one had called her by her proper last name in over six months. It was frightening to think that she had gotten so accustomed to hearing Conrad instead that she was shocked by the use of her given name.

"What of it?" Rebekah snapped, glowering at the agent.

"What does that mean? 'What of it?' I have never quite understood the point of asking such an inane and pointless question," Agent David stated before returning to her original line of thought, "What it is, Miss Evans, is an attempt to obstruct our investigation."

"What investigation? You're Navy cops, aren't you? Nurse White explained that one to me. Why do you care about me? I've got nothing to do with the Navy. Why haven't you punted my case over to the local authorities?" Rebekah demanded, growing angrier the more she talked to the agent. If she had allowed the nurses to give her the full dose of morphine they wanted to, she wouldn't be lucid enough to hear this woman accuse her of obstructing their case.

"The reason the investigation has to do with you is simple," Gibbs' voice startled Rebekah badly enough that it registered on the heart monitor. Turning her head too quickly, she winced and clenched her teeth at the pain that ran up her neck, but did not turn away from the man.

"And that is?" Rebekah snapped, barely recognizing her own voice.

"We found a dead Naval officer in a park a few days ago. His name was Roy Evans," Gibbs stated matter-of-factly as he took a seat in the orange, plastic chair on the left hand side of the bed, his gaze never leaving her.

"Uncle Roy? But… how?" Rebekah was caught off guard. The last she had heard of her uncle, he'd been deployed on board the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan.

"He was shot multiple times by a small caliber handgun," Agent David supplied, earning herself a glare from Gibbs.

"But… who would want to kill him? He never hurt anyone," Rebekah asked as she leaned back against her pillow, staring at the place where the wall met the ceiling on the opposite side of the room.

"That's what we're trying to find out," Agent David stated. Rebekah watched her stand and put on her coat as she walked toward the door.

"Ziva, I want you to go to the Fire Marshall, retrieve his report on the fire," Gibbs ordered, his gaze still focused on Rebekah.

"And you, Gibbs? What are you going to do?" Agent David asked as she pulled her long hair out of the back of her coat.

"I'm going to find the connection," Gibbs informed her as he stood and walked to the right side of the bed, taking the seat Agent David had just vacated.

Once Agent David had left the room proper, Gibbs leaned forward and set a hand on Rebekah's hand, smiling slightly as he waited in silence for something. Rebekah had no intentions of crying over her uncle's death any more than she had cried over the deaths of her parents. There wasn't time for tears.

"I'm being stalked… do you think he could have killed Uncle Roy too?" Rebekah asked. With a realization that she was clenching the rough hospital blanket with her right hand, she forced her fingers to release it.

"I don't know yet. Who's stalking you?" Gibbs asked.

Looking to the side, away from Gibbs's face, Rebekah swallowed. She didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to invite the bad spirits back in (as her grandmother used to say). But, she had opened the door to the question with full knowledge that he would pursue it.

"Matthew Keys," Rebekah stated, taking a deep breath before continuing, "I met him when I was thirteen years old… he was fifteen at the time. My parents hated him, especially my dad. But, as with most teenaged girls, I didn't want to listen to him. I thought I was in love. I mean, a fifteen year old who wanted to date me?! I was a kid compared to him. And that was the problem; I just couldn't see it back then."

"What happened?" Gibbs asked.

"My dad threw him out one night. There was a big fight after that and I stomped off to my room. Later that night, Matt came back and threw a few rocks at my window. Dad caught him before I could get to the window. That was the beginning of it," Rebekah took a deep breath again and swallowed, "I started getting 'gifts' on the front porch every other day. There was no note or return address. They were in shoe boxes, wrapped in brown paper. Dad always got home before me, so he took them inside and opened them. There were little trinkets in them; a stuffed cat, a teddy bear, a necklace with a dove on it. Never anything big or expensive, stuff like a kid would send to another kid. At first we thought I had a secret admirer from the neighborhood. It never passed any of our minds that it might have been Matt.

Back then, I had a pet bird. A canary I had named Miner. Bad name, I know, but I'd heard the stories of how miners used to take canaries into mines with them to test the air and I was enthralled with it. The very idea that a tiny little bird could save your life, even though they had to give up theirs… Now, I can see how morbid that was.

Anyway, Miner was my only pet. I wasn't allowed to have a dog or a cat, not even fish. Mom was afraid of fish, refused to swim in anything but a pool…" Rebekah laughed slightly at the memory, stopping for a moment to think about the things she had not thought about since it had all started to fall apart.

"It was Matt then, leaving the gifts?" Gibbs prompted her when the silence has dragged on longer than it should have.

"Uh, yeah, a neighbor caught him and told Dad. Dad went off the deep end then and took all the stuff that I had gotten away, burning it in the backyard. That was probably the worst decision he could make. The next day, when I got home from school, I found another box on the porch. It must have been placed there after Dad got home because he never would have left it there. I picked it up and snuck it up to my room to open it. I was still infatuated, a foolish little kid thinking that her parents were trying to keep her from the best thing in her life.

I didn't even look at Miner's cage when I got to my room; I was so focused on the gift. I opened the box carefully and set the wrapping aside. Pulling the lid off, I looked inside and stopped. I've never been much of a screamer, so no sound came out of my mouth. Inside the box, lying on a small scrap of material, his yellow feathers all mussed and his head lying at a strange angle was Minor. My poor little canary had given me the warning and now I got it. Where my parents failed, my bird succeeded," Rebekah finished for the moment, wiping at her eyes.

"How did he get into the house?" Gibbs asked, pushing her forward.

"Not sure. All my Dad said was that he had managed to find a way in, steal the bird, and disappear. After finding Miner the way I did, I started getting other threatening gifts and notes. It was about this time that Dad started talking about moving here, to D.C. I think he wanted to get us away from Indy to a place where he had family," Rebekah explained.

"Could Matt have killed your family?"

"I don't know. By that time, he was seventeen and I was fifteen. My parents had gone out for dinner and were driving home along a stretch of country road that was covered in snow. I had stayed home alone, telling them that I had to face the night by myself. I hadn't heard from Matt for about six months and was starting to think he'd stopped, that he'd given up. Then the accident happened and the cops said it was a hit and run. Three days later, I snuck out of my neighbor's house and ran. I took my father's savings, got a fake ID, and here I am," Rebekah stated, "How did you know my age?"

It was something that she had been curious about since the day he had stated her age to her. There were no reports on her, as far as she knew, beyond those of the police stating that she had died in the car with her family – she had hidden away in the neighbor's shed until things calmed down and she was able to slip away. No one from her old life knew that she was still alive, as far as she knew.

With a chuckle, Gibbs released her hand after giving it a small squeeze, and leaned back in his chair, "I spoke with a co-worker of yours, a Lydia Smith."

"Lydia," Rebekah groaned, running a hand across her forehead, "That twit. I told her that I was twenty-one and she never did believe me."

"How much do you know about your parents' accident?" Gibbs spoke after a few moments.

"Only what I saw on TV. It was a hit and run on an icy back road. Their car swerved off of the road into a stand of trees, going about fifty and flipped," Rebekah stated, looking at him curiously.

"There were bloody prints exiting the vehicle. The local police believed they belonged to you, but were unable to recover a body. Is there a possibility that they belonged to Matt?" Gibbs's suggestion sent spikes of fear through her body as she considered the possibility.

"Oh god, Gibbs… could he have known this entire time?" Rebekah moaned as she fought the fear was starting to get harder and the pain was starting to increase in her arm and leg.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find him and find out. Don't worry Rebekah, he can't hurt you anymore," Gibbs said softly as he leaned forward and hit the button that released the morphine into the tube connected to her arm. He stood over her as she drifted from consciousness. Once she was asleep, he walked around the bed and exited the room, stopping only long enough to tell the guards to keep a look out for a young man named Matthew Keys. He would send a photo of the young man over to them as soon as he retrieved it.




As soon as Gibbs stepped from the elevator, he was accosted by his team. Even Abby was standing there, waiting on him. Only Ziva was missing, most likely still visiting with the Fire Marshall. Moving through the throng of bodies, Gibbs walked to his desk and removed his coat, throwing it over the back of his chair before standing and waiting for someone to start speaking.

"The blood you found on the Lieutenant Commander's lapel was from an unknown male, but he's not as unknown as you might think," Abby started off, handing him a computer printout of a DNA profile, "He and the Lieutenant Commander are father and son."

"Were there any reports of the Lieutenant Commander having a son?" Gibbs looked to one of the others, but was answered by Abby.

"No, according to the Lieutenant Commander's file, he was married with no children," Abby answered, smiling at him as she spun on her heel, "What's more, the DNA did not come back as a match to Susan Evans."

"Meaning he has an illegitimate son out there who hates him, is it possible that he went up to Indiana and killed his uncle and aunt too?" McGee asked as he handed over the file from the Indiana State Police, "According to the report, the couple was shoved from the road by another, larger vehicle. Ducky's going over the autopsy reports now, he's got his hands full now that he's got Susan Evans's remains down there too."

This information surprised Gibbs, "I thought I told you two to go speak with her over three days ago."

"You did boss and we did, but we went back last night to speak with her again and found her body. She had been shot multiple times with a small caliber handgun, just like the Lieutenant Commander. Her fingers were gone as well," McGee explained.

"It was the same gun Gibbs," Abby added.

"So, we have an enraged killer out there who is taking the lives of the family he feels betrayed him?" Gibbs asked, looking at each in turn, "Well?"

"It's possible, boss, I just got off the phone with the Indiana State Police, as well as the local LEOs here and they're both saying the same thing, they don't know. According to the report though, Gregory and Stella Evans were both shot multiple times by a small caliber handgun. They're sending the evidence reports now so that Abby can compare the bullets. It's taking a while, you know, with all the snow and bad weather and… you really don't care," DiNozzo moved on to another subject, "According to Rebecca Evans's neighbors, there was a young man hanging out outside the building for five days leading up to the fire. He was skinny with scraggly blond hair, pale skin, and a day old beard on his face."

Taking a seat at his computer, Gibbs began typing without saying anything to anyone else.

"Gibbs, you want to share with the rest of the class?" Abby asked, coming around to stand behind him.

"We've got two possible killers out there and both are gunning for our only surviving witness," Gibbs stated, hitting a button to send the image he had just brought up to the plasma in the center of the bullpen. The image was from a driver's license. The young man in the photo was an exact match to DiNozzo's description of the man loitering outside of the apartments.

"That is the man I chased from the hospital, the day they admitted Miss Evans," Ziva stated, "Did you find him, Gibbs?"

"No, he's the man who's been stalking our key witness for the past three years," Gibbs responded, looking at the assembled members of his team, "Meet Matthew Keys, our prime suspect."
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Tree-Of-Time's avatar
Yeah I was right, he is creepy. *runs and hides*