Jack lifted the unconscious Luke Dolan to his feet. Clay quickly pulled a cloth from his pocket and blindfolded him. He then realized his arms were drooping limply. He had dislocated his shoulder joint during the earlier fight.
Pulling out the handcuffs and resetting the joint, Jack reset the joint. Luke Dolan groaned in pain, awakening.
"Don't move, Luke." Jack pressed his knee firmly into his lower back, but it was unable to stop his desperate struggle, especially after hearing the cries of his wife and daughter.
"Daddy, Daddy, are you okay?"
"Luke, honey, stop!"
Helped down from the military truck, Luke Dolan's wife and daughter tried to approach, but were stopped by Hannah and Jiejie at the edge of the crowd, sobbing helplessly.
Jubal half-knelt before Luke Dolan, trying to soothe his voice. "Listen, Luke, you were in a car accident a while ago. The impact affected your brain and your visual perception.
No one's trying to cover up some conspiracy; it's all just a figment of your imagination. We're the FBI, and we have Agent Gibbs from NCIS here too. We can prove it all."
"Nonsense! You took my family. I saw it with my own eyes!" Luke Dolan continued to struggle violently, even at the risk of injuring himself. His wrists were soon bleeding from the handcuffs.
"Stop! Stop! Dolan!" His wife, Jenna, stamped her feet in panic. Only after Hannah, at Jack's beckoning, released her. Then, Jenna threw herself at her husband, tears streaming down her face.
"We're here. We're fine. We're here. They're just trying to protect us. Honey, it's not your fault. You're just sick. Please stop."
This was just a small trap that Jack and the others had arranged after a quick discussion. They had secretly moved the men, using the military truck and the Subaru's hull to block their view.
Aubrey, wearing a similar coat to Jack's, managed to pass himself off as the real one.
Red's description of the Capgras delusion was correct. Even with his vision blocked, Luke Dolan was clearly able to recognize his wife and daughter by their voices, and his struggles finally subsided.
"Daddy, Mommy said you're sick. Maybe you should lie down. It'll be more comfortable. I'm so scared. Daddy, please stop. I just want to go home now. Please."
The little girl's innocent words brought tears to the eyes of the onlookers, and tears welled up in Luke Dolan's own, wetting the blindfold.
"Where are my mom and dad? You replaced them with doubles. You took my real parents away."
Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment, unsure how to respond. Finally, Gibbs sighed. Only then did he truly and completely trust the FBI's judgment.
"They're dead, killed by your hands, along with your best friend, your former captain, Adam Weiner. The person you thought was your replacement was just that.
They said you still had some sanity left in you, so use that. If the government wants to silence someone, is such a method necessary?"
"No, you're lying to me. This isn't true. You're deceiving me. This is all a lie!" Luke Dolan struggled again.
Seeing the situation dire, Hannah and Jiejie rushed forward to forcibly separate Luke Dolan's wife and daughter. Jack took the syringe from Aubrey and injected the sedative into the now completely deranged former SEAL.
"
What a sad ending!" Hannah, with a sorrowful expression, rested her head on Jiejie's shoulder as she watched the ambulance take away Luke Dolan, his wife, and daughter. Jiejie, in turn, gave her a loving hug for comfort.
Because Clay was nearby, everyone's expressions varied, but none of them spoke. Clearly, their thoughts echoed Hannah's.
"What we did wasn't in vain. At least for his wife and daughter, we saved their husband and father."
Clay, guessing what everyone was thinking, forced a smile.
"Anyway, thank you for your help, FBI. Your work is truly eye-opening." Gibbs shook hands with everyone.
"Thank you also to NCIS. Without your full cooperation, Agent Gibbs, we wouldn't have been able to close this case in such a short time."
Jack, similarly offering sweet nothings, was only concerned with getting his team out of here as quickly as possible. He'd already seen that Gibbs was up to no good.
Jubal, watching from the sidelines, chuckled to himself. Although they belonged to different federal agencies, even within the FBI, he'd heard of the legendary exploits of a certain white-haired veteran.
He'd saved the president on Sky One, single-handedly stormed into Mexico to take out a major drug lord after his wife and daughter were murdered, and carried out a covert operation in France to eliminate a major arms dealer and his lover from the Mao family.
"Don't you think that Gibbs is a carbon copy of someone? Oh, and I heard he has four ex-wives and many more secret lovers."
On the way back, Jubal told everyone some of the stories about Gibbs.
While the ending wasn't perfect, the case was finally solved. Perhaps because he'd experienced so much and had become accustomed to the joys and sorrows of life, the veteran FBI agent, who had been the first to recover, even indulged in a rare dose of gossip.
"But I heard he only has a thing for red-haired women and was once rumored to have an affair with his female boss."
Seeing everyone in the car looking at her in surprise, Alice shrugged. "Office gossip isn't limited to a single federal law enforcement agency; everyone shares information.
Gibbs from NCIS and Rossi from the FBI were once the two most widely known gossip hubs. Of course, now..."
Jack, driving an Audi R8 ahead of the command vehicle, listened in on the entire conversation via the communicator, his eyes twitching slightly, and he dared not speak a word.
Because the Christmas and New Year holidays had been less than peaceful, and he had been involved in multiple cases, Jack had a lot of extra time off after submitting multiple reports.
He hadn't hung out with a certain writer in a while, so he decided to invite Rick Cassel to Las Vegas.
Jack had previously agreed to help Ma Xidao and Jiang Zhentai clean out their $2.5 million. It wasn't a huge sum, and since they were both foreigners, they wouldn't attract too much attention. He just needed to rationalize their income stream.
Chris could simply use his old connections and buy a few thousand dollars in chips at a Las Vegas casino, and that very night someone would lose a fortune to the two Asians at the blackjack table.
(End of this chapter)