Spotlighted by the car's white, incandescent headlights, Leonard's body resembled a macabre version of a twitching puppet, surrounded by a spray of red mist. He was dead even before his body hit the ground.

Marty let out two shots in the dark before taking cover behind the trash container. There were at least two perps in the vehicle, one behind the wheel and the other behind the bright flash of gunpowder from the gun. While he could see neither of them, the LAPD detective was pretty good at educated guesses, sending a shot in each direction.

A second volley spread across the small alley, the loud sound competing with the continuous shout of a car horn. It would seem that he had completely missed the shooter, but, if Marty were a gambling man, he would say that he had nailed the driver, who's head was now, most probably, responsible for ear-splitting noise of the blasting horn.

"DEEKS!" Kensi's voice sounded too loud inside his head, which meant this wasn't the first time she had tried to reach him. In fact, given the concern in her voice, she'd probably been trying for some time and he had failed to hear her until now. "Deeks, do you copy? I'm nearly there!"

Marty opened his mouth to reply and give his partner some peace of mind, but his mouth seemed unable to form the words. He felt out of breath, like he'd just finished a serious workout session with Sam... under water... while wearing weights. "Copy... that," he finally managed to push out, annoyed that his body would betray him like that. There was an annoying twitch in his side that shouldn't be there as well, given that he had only raced a couple of feet chasing Leonard. Maybe he needed to up his cardio exercises.

It was bad enough that the others already saw him as the team's weakest link, less proficient in warfare and somewhat lacking in combat training. However, while Marty was the first to admit that he was no badass soldier like Sam and Kensi, or some super-secret agent like Callen, the detective still had his LAPD training and years of experience on the force.

Hell! This was far from being his first time under fire and, save for the very first time he had someone shooting real bullets at his ass, Marty had never panicked or had his breath stolen from him by fear. Never.

Without risking a bullet between his eyes, Deeks raised his hand and fired blindly at the shooter, hoping to draw his attention long enough for Kensi's arrival to go unnoticed.

Kensi's arrival, however, was impossible to go unnoticed. If anything, his partner sure knew how to enter with a bang! Behind the cover of the trash container, Marty could only smile and picture in his head the scene as he heard the booming crash of metal on metal, as Kensi decided to waste no more time and simply drove their car straight into the perps' vehicle.

It was deadly effective. The machine gun stopped spitting fire and Deeks risked looking up from his cover. A big smile spread across his cheeks as he saw the result of kickass Kensi in action. The door on the driver' side was bent in half, barely hanging from the car frame. The headlight on that side was hanging loose, the other had dimmed its light down to half and the hood was bent in an odd 'W' shape. There was a body on the ground, on the passenger side of the car.

"Stay down!" Kensi blared, already out of the car with her weapon drawn on the man on the ground as she made her way over. "You okay?" she asked, sending Deeks a quick look.

The detective nodded, keeping his gun aimed at the fallen man until the NCIS agent kicked the perp's weapon away and kneeled down to cuff him. "You?" he asked, making his way towards Leonard, ignoring the lingering twitch on his side. A planned car crash was still a car crash and Marty knew how bruising those things could get.

"I'm good," Kensi let out, grunting in effort as she pulled the perp up. The man was mostly upright, the left side of his face already bruising from having a car smashed into him. "Leonard?"

"I don't think he's gonna tell us where his roommate is," Deeks said, his voice sad as he look down at the dead man. His chest was a mess of bloody holes.

"I don't think we need him to," Kensi voiced, taking a better look at the dead man behind the steering wheel. "It looks like Arthur Hinds was the one driving the car," she pointed out turning her attention to her partner. "Nice shot, by the wa-"

The rest of her words faded away at the same rate as color leached from her face. "Eric!" Kensi let out, switching out to coms, "We need an ambulance here, right now!"

Deeks looked at her in confusion, wondering why the urgency in getting medical aid there. Both the driver and Leonard were beyond help and the shooter didn't seemed all that bad. But she was too busy hastily cuffing the shooter to the door frame to give him more details.

Marty's gaze turned down, even as his brain tried to inform him that Kensi's concerned look had been directed straight at him. In the dark, the wet stain spreading from the right side of his ribcage towards his pants seemed almost black.

It took the detective a second or two to realize that it was blood. His blood.

TBC