A\N: I am toying with some NCIS: Los Angeles ideas. Don't know how they will roll out in the end, but this is the beginning of one. Don't know how long this will be, or where I am going, so we shall see.

Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS: Los Angeles.


Hiding in Plain Sight


Chapter 1


"3 months and the neighbors still don't know we're here." There is a bit of amusement in Sam's voice.

"Huh, hiding in plain sight." Callen replies, scanning the large sandstone building to memory."What was it before we got it?"

"Old water plan administration building. Condemned after the Northridge quake."

Callen pauses. "Condemned?"

"Only on the outside, G."


Kensi is in the bullpen when it happens.

Nate's trying to get in her head, but she's sidestepping him with smiles and one word answers.

The psychologist studies her with arms crossed, brow furrowed. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," she answers, sighing.

He lulls into a momentary silence before breaking it. "Well, your body language and one word answer suggest that you're not lying. You don't want to talk about it."

Resisting the urge to tell him she just said that, she leans back against the wood of her desk and regards him coolly. "I'm glad to see your putting that master's degree of yours to good use."

He smiles and squints at her, studying again. "Sarcasm," he muses, "Interesting."

Her back straightens at his tone and she frowns. "Nate," she stands, suddenly not amused, "Stay out of my head."

She catches movement out of the corner of her eye as the front door to the building is opened ever so slightly. She looks over, confused. Callen and Sam had just left to get Chinese for the team; they couldn't have been back with the food already. An explanation is given in the next three seconds. Three seconds of warning before all hell breaks loose.

In the first beat of her heart, she catches the barrel of a Colt AR-15s appear from behind the open door. Her mind races: Assault Weapons—US Military—Preferred gun of drug cartels.

In the next second, the masked face of a man with dark, black eyes. Emotionless—Focused—Killer.

And in the third and final second, the same man's body, twice her size clad in full tactical gear, hands attached to the raised assault weapon. Five others flank him, guns also raised. Military movement—Team based—She's outnumbered.

Her instincts kick in.

"GET DOWN!" she lunges towards Nate, tackling him to the ground as gunfire splits the air.

Everything happens at once.

The lower floor of the headquarters is in an uproar with shouts and screams erupt as the gunfire continues. Kensi falls under her desk, covers her head with her hands and pulls her knees to her chest. She can feel splintering wood raining down on her.

Nate is cursing on the ground beside her, clutching his shoulder. Red blood in slipping through his fingers. She watches with wide eyes as the masked team enters, guns still firing. They move swiftly. The last man in the line breaks off and stays on the first floor while the remaining five make their way towards the stairs.

Kensi's hand goes to her side, but there's nothing but air. She doesn't have her gun. It's in her locker.

"Stay on the ground!" The man shouts, his voice heavily accented. English is not his first language. Kensi guesses maybe Portuguese, or some variant of the dialect by the way he rolls his R's. "Stay on the ground and no one else needs to die!"

How reassuring.

She quickly goes over the statistics in her head. Hetty had been, most likely, at her desk when the shooting started. She was blocked by a concrete support beam and her wooden divider. Safe, Kensi concluded. Others were not as lucky. There had to have been at least ten people on the lower floor. Tech support was unprotected, as well as wardrobe. Hopefully her warning had been enough, but from the light smell of copper teasing her nose, she knew at least one person was hit. That left her with the upstairs—

"What the hell?—Whoa, Whoa. Okay, Okay—just point that thing somewhere else, would ya?" She freezes. She knows the voice all too well. Eric was never one who liked guns pointed at him.

"Get your hands off me!—Whoa. Easy there, dude. Easy."

Something inside her snaps. They were taking Eric. But why? She figures in that moment that the "whys" don't matter. It was not going to happen.

"What do we do?" Nate pants beside her. She assesses his injuries quickly. A simple graze, he'd be fine, if not a little sore once he was patched up.

"You aren't going to do anything," she hisses, moving her hands to the bottom of her shirt. Slowly, she lifts up the fabric and withdraws a knife from the holster on her back. This was not going to be another Dom. Not if she had anything to do with it.

She feels Nate stiffen beside her, sees the cogs and wheels in his head turning. "Kensi," he whispers frantically, "You can't be serious. Look, I know what you're thinking, but there are five of them and only one of you. Six, Kensi. Six."

"Stay here."

"Just because of what happened to Dom—"

She turns sharply towards him. "Don't," she says. And then softer, "Stay down, Nate. I can't do this if I'm worried about you. Get people out once I clear the area."

The masked man near them squeezes off a couple of rounds towards the back of the room, yelling at people to stay down. She can feel her heartbeat in her head and through the adrenalin; she can hear conversations in Portuguese from the upstairs computer room. But she cannot make out the words over her own heartbeat.

Crawling on the ground, she glances out towards the intruder. His head is constantly on the swivel and she realizes that he'll shoot her before she gets even remotely close to him.

Then Kensi catches Hetty at the far end of the room, the woman's small hands clenched securely around a miniature handgun. Their eyes meet and Hetty nods ever so slightly. Then the older woman is on her feet, firing at the man. He is hit in the shoulder and chest but acts like they are bee stings. He raises his weapon with a snarl and Kensi is already moving forward. Through her tunnel vision, she catches Hetty go down in a heap, and her heart beats painfully for her Operations Manager.

For the briefest of moments, Kensi realizes that she has never killed someone with her bare hands before. And one could argue that killing with a knife is not killing with your bare hands. But she would disagree because when she places her left hand over his mouth so he cannot scream and thrusts the blade in her right through his back, it's the closest she's ever been. It is not killing with bare hands, but it is enough to shake her. She feels him jerk, but knows that she's penetrated his liver. He'll bleed out internally in less than three minutes.

In her eyes, she was protecting everyone. She was strong enough, tough enough to make sure they stayed safe during this mess. She was not going to let anyone else get hurt. And if that means that she has to watch the light dime from a human beings eyes as she kills him, then so be it.

These men were trying to hurt her family, and that was something worth killing for.


A\N: I like Kensi. She's my favorite character. But I also like the angsty drama between the team when something hectic goes down. So this is the hectic situation. Because let's be serious, their base of operations was going to be found out sooner or later, in my opinion. Just my thought though. Anyways, read and review if you'd like. No pressure though. Until next chapter, stay cool.