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(During this coronavirus pandemic everyone please remember to keep calm and stay safe)

Not as it seems

(This story refers to the Seaon 17 episode 14, "On Fire", broadcast on 1/28/20 in which Torres is hit by a speeding car and subsequently is comatose in the hospital while the NCIS team investigates.  Did anyone else think it troubling that at the conclusion of the case McGee so quickly assumed that one of his teammates affected justice against Xavier Zolotov, the son of an influential Russian family, who was responsible for he hit and run? In effect, believing that one of his teammates murdered Zolotov because they couldn't touch him because he had immunity from prosecution.  Is that what McGee thinks of Gibbs and Bishop that they go rogue and kill people at their discretion?)

They saw the turmoil that was consuming the team as they worked the Zolotov case.  Tracking the evidence that led to the culprit but unable to do anything about it because of his immunity.  The anger grew in all of them.  To have Zolotov ‘dead to rights' and stopped in their tracks by an administration that said, "leave it and let him go".

They knew that team Gibbs would not do as they were ordered.  Torres is in a coma because of what Zolotov did and he may not survive.  The team continues to work the case and gather all the evidence possible and eventually arrest the one who convinced Zolotov to run down Torres like he was a deer on the highway.

Finding Zolotov murdered in his bathroom with only a strand of blond hair left as evidence was not much of a surprise since his neighbor was a blond and perhaps Zolotov had wronged her and she exacted her revenge. Palmer's quip about the blond hair caused McGee to question whether Bishop actually killed Zolotov.  There McGee goes again thinking the worst.  When Bishop denied her guilt then McGee thought that Gibbs did it.  

But in the end the neighbor/girlfriend was arrested for killing Zolotov and attempting to kill Torres.  She was caught in the act at the hospital.  

But they knew better.  They saw the hurt in the eyes of Gibbs and the team and they knew that allowing Zolotov to go free would wound the NCIS team for a long time.  They had the means to affect a change in that dynamic and they used their influence to reach a desirable conclusion.

Neither Gibbs nor Bishop killed Zolotov.  A simple text to a number in a faraway country put things into motion that made all of the difference.  Zolotov was known to many and his indiscretions were affecting a lot of people who wanted to end his reign of terror.

So a person or persons unknown entered that apartment and made certain that Zolotov did not leave it.  McGee was quite wrong with his assumptions.  No one from NCIS had any hand in Zolotov's demise.

They view the NCIS team as part of the family.  There is nothing they will not do for family.  Alexis Marjorie McGregor Gibbs will protect her husband with her last breath.  She would not have Zolotov's blood on his hands.  All it took was a text.  

So McGee, things are not as they seem.