Trauma Queen: A NCIS Fanfiction

Chapter Twenty Seven

We all silently worked, sifting through prison records and recent release documents. Gibbs instructed Tim to work with Abby on cracking through the cell phone she hadn't had any luck with. Tim flashed me a small smile as he ran past my desk to the elector and I felt a blush creep up in my cheeks. I couldn't let him cloud my thoughts while I was on a roll with these clues.

I found over thirty prisons between D.C., Virginia, and Maryland who had their prison release records not publicly available. Luckily, their security system was fairly easy to hack; besides, no one was going to arrest a federal agent for breaking a couple laws.

Not every prison record I found included hand dominance, but of the ones that did, left handed ex-cons were few and far between. In Virginia, there were seven. In Maryland, four. D.C. had twelve. I didn't want to assume that our perpetrator was male, but there was a voice in the back of my head telling me to disregard the females in the group, narrowing my total to fifteen.

Finding the addresses for these people was a lot harder than I initially thought it was going to be. Some of them were not on parole so they didn't have any permanent residence reported. Others had homes halfway across the country, which I hoped was with family. Those who were on parole did have local addresses, but I had a feeling they were the ones least likely to be committing crimes. If I were recently released from prison, I sure as hell would not want to go back there any time soon.

Looking at Tony, I saw his dark eyes focused on his screen, unblinking. His eyes darted back and forth across the screen as he sorted through the records. I hadn't realized until then, but he looked absolutely exhausted, as if he hadn't slept in days. I was sure that we all looked exhausted; we had been working at least six days a week since this case started.

I still wasn't sleeping properly, no matter how warm and snuggly Tim was at night. Every night I would lie awake in bed, thinking about Liam rummaging through my apartment, searching for who knows what. The thing that made me the most uncomfortable about the whole scenario, was the fact that he knew where I lived. I was not on any social media, nor did I update my address on anything, other than my legal documents, since he had been in prison.

When I did fall asleep at night, I dreamt of him. Some nights I had dreams where we were together back at MIT. I remembered all the good times we had together and all the dates we went on. I dreamt of our vacations and weekends away. I recalled our anniversaries and even sometimes our intimate exploits. But other times, I dreamt of him taking advantage of those girls and me standing there in the dream watching motionless. I had dreams where he would do unspeakable things to me. Once, I even thought he was going to kill me. Those were the nights that I would wake with tears soaking my pillow and Tim sitting bolt upright, shaking me awake. He told me I had been screaming in my sleep.

I was sure Gibbs knew that I was having trouble sleeping because every morning he would have a cup of coffee already on the table for me and breakfast sitting out. He wasn't everything I had thought he was when I first met him. He was icy and iron willed, seemingly uncaring and unkind. But now, it was as if he were treating me like a daughter. Like someone he cared for and wanted to protect. It was a good feeling to have someone care for me like that again.

Eight hours of sifting through files, creating detailed files on each of the ex-cons, editing case files, and being shooed downstairs to help crack the phone, my brain had ceased its functioning. Abby, Tim, and I sat on the floor of the lab with coffee in our hands, staring blankly at the screen as it loaded a new program. We had tried everything to break into the phone, but to no avail. It was a burner phone with no charger. Secondly, it had some wild programs on it to keep it from being hacked. Clearly our killer was skilled with technology, something not many people had. I sent Gibbs an email, letting him know that piece of information to help narrow the search.