Hello, dear friends! This is my first fic after being away for quite a while. I hope you enjoy it! :)
Kensi Blye jerked awake at four-thirty a.m. to the sound of rain on the roof and someone pounding on the door. She was barely awake, but she fumbled for her Glock anyway, stumbling through the cramped apartment. She slipped on a pair of discarded pants on the way to the door, and cursed loudly as her big toe collided painfully with the edge of the coffee table. Her mood only soured further when a glance through the peephole revealed none other than Marty Deeks standing in the doorway, grinning ear-to-ear and holding a cup of coffee. She pulled the door open and scowled.
"This better be important, Deeks."
"Wow." Deeks pushed past her into the apartment, where he stood in the messy living area and dripped water all over the carpet. "Thanks for the warm welcome, partner." He cringed dramatically. "You know, I find your sunny disposition extremely heartening, especially this early in the morning."
Kensi snatched yesterday's flannel shirt off the back of the sofa and hurried into her bedroom to change.
"Have you ever cleaned this place up?" Deeks asked. Kensi could hear him rummaging around, probably hunting for embarrassing photos or other incriminating evidence that suggested a lifestyle of deviance. She emerged in time to slap his hand away from the framed photograph on the kitchen counter: a snapshot of herself and her father. In the picture, they stood in the cool pre-dawn desert, Kensi in his too-large Marines sweatshirt, her father in his old Carhartt. She was fourteen years old, a grinning teenager with long hair and wide eyes, unmarred by the cruelty of the world.
"No touching," she snapped. Deeks snatched his hand away, feigning offense. "Why the hell are you even here? This better be important."
Deeks took a long swig of coffee.
"Yeah, they pulled a Naval captain out of Santa Monica Bay at about one a.m this morning. Hetty called me about half an hour later."
Kensi pulled her NCIS windbreaker on over her flannel shirt and grabbed her cell phone.
"And we're being called out because...?"
Deeks shrugged and headed for the door.
"She said that something didn't add up. Wouldn't say anything else on the phone."
Kensi flattened her mouth into a grim smile as the two agents headed into the chilly morning.
"Good enough for me."
The body was stretched out at the end of the Santa Monica pier, surrounded by a group of cops and lifeguards. The coroner hadn't arrived, and the bleary-looking party huddled in the halo of light cast by one of the tall lamps lining the pier.
The woman must have been good-looking, and death had not erased her beauty. Long brown hair, alabaster skin, wide eyes. She wore dress blues and high heels, an unlikely combination.
"We were out on patrol when I saw something floating under the pier," a young lifeguard reported. "Thought it was a seal, but it wasn't."
He looked understandably shaken. Kensi gave him a reassuring smile.
"Thanks for calling us out. Did you find any ID on the body?"
The young guard shook his head.
"No. Nothing."
Deeks was poking around inside the woman's dress jacket. Eventually he fished out a crumpled receipt.
"It's for a restaurant a few blocks from here: the SeaHouse. She paid cash, didn't leave a tip." He gently smoothed the paper. "We'll check it out, see if anyone there remembers her."
The ME's van arrived a few minutes later, headlights cutting white through the misty morning. It was still dark, the sea churning dark beneath the pier.
"How in the hell did we get there before they did?" Kensi grumbled as the ME-a balding man in his late forties-climbed down from the van and strolled at an almost leisurely pace towards the corpse. While he went to work on the body, Kensi pulled out her cell phone and checked her texts. No new messages. Five-thirty, Sam and Callen were probably just getting up.
"It looks like someone hit her pretty good on the head," the ME reported. Arvon was stitched onto the front of his jacket. "I'll be able to tell later if she was dead when she hit the water."
Kensi crouched next to him.
"Can we get an ID on her? We're NCIS, we need to know if she's one of ours."
Dr. Arvon rummaged around for a moment in his box of supplies and took out a fingerprint reader. Kensi and Deeks waited silently while the machine scanned her prints.
"She's in the system," he reported. "But certainly not Navy."
Deeks sighed.
"What, then?"
"Arrest records," Arvon informed them. "For prostitution, drug possession."
Suddenly Deeks knelt and began working his fingers underneath the corpse's stiff white shirt.
"What the-" Kensi started, momentarily horrified, before he plucked out a Naval ID card featuring a heavy-set man with grey hair. Commander Wilkes.
"So I'm guessing this isn't hers, then?"
Please review, if you feel inclined! :)