A Smattering of Stories

Disclaimer: Don't own the characters or the show.
A/N: Thanks to blue dogs rock, Susan L. Grabon, ncisnewbie, ToOldToShip, Guest M, and I Feel Possessed for dropping comments on the last chapter.

Eric
Prompt: 'Eric and why/how he got banned from Vegas'

He waggled his wrist and found himself reminded, again, that he may have gone too far this time. He frowned and slouched in his chair.

"It appears you have gotten yourself into a bit of a situation."

His head snapped up in surprise, he hadn't heard anyone come in. The diminutive lady looked nothing like the parade of visitors he had thus far. She obviously took his silence as a signal to continue.

"I'm told your name is Tom Cochrane."

He nodded, not sure what words to form.

"As in Tom Cochrane, of the band Red Rider and also a solo artist, with several hits to his name including 'Life is a Highway'." She said it as a statement, but her raised brows demanded a response.

"Uh huh" was all he could manage.

"The LVPD have yet to find out that you have created a rather elaborate alias to hide your true identity. Isn't that right?"

He felt as though she had just ratcheted the heat up. He shrank back to nodding as an answer.

"My name is Henrietta Lange, and it's my real one. What is yours?"

"Eric Beale" He swallowed as his eyes darted around to the cameras.

She smiled, as if he'd passed her test. "I work for NCIS, which is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and I have a proposal for you."

Earlier

Eric looked around at the suite. He had it to himself since his buddies had gone off to count cards at a casino down the strip. They were smart enough to not do it in the place they were staying, but Eric could guarantee that they weren't smart enough to not get caught. He had worked both sides of the blackjack table, once designing security systems for casino games and then playing professionally, but then it had become too mundane.

So he'd turned his attention to a more interesting pursuit: hacking.

He let his friends drag him to Vegas, but they had made the mistake of not forcing him to leave his computer at home. The laptop came out of his bag and he flexed his fingers.

"Let's see what we can do about that room bill."

He spent a few hours poking around the firewall of the hotel and casino complex's system, looking for a sweet little entry point. He found one and snuck right in. Once he was hooked into their system, he went for a little sight-seeing tour through their programs. He watched some security footage of people down on the casino floor, rooted through the alerts for suspected cheaters (he was happy to not see his face on that list), and took care of his bill.

The security measures around the more interesting sections were tighter and it took some time to wiggle his way through them. Stealing money held no interest for him, even though it would have been easy to siphon some of it off of the many transactions occurring every minute. Two cents here, a half a penny there; it would only take him an hour to become a millionaire. But then he risked someone noticing the theft and he would have to worry about an investigation. That was something he didn't want to deal with, he'd worked hard to stay under the radar.

He easily amused himself scrolling through the background checks of the employees, making mental notes of how detailed the searches were. If he understood what the investigators were looking for he could make his own aliases tighter and more impervious to being exposed. No one had even noticed he'd made his way into the system yet and that made him feel comfortable enough to go a bit deeper.

As he wormed his way back over to the section that controlled the money, something else was happening. A few lines of code caught his eye and he honed in to take a better look.

"You have got to be kidding me." Eric was astonished. Someone was hacking their way into accounts. It was nothing like his hack which was elegant and stealthy. This one was noisy and clumsy; it was akin to an elephant stomping through underbrush. Eric could almost feel the tremors through his keyboard. He slipped in behind the hack and watched as it began to take money out of all the open accounts, but not small amounts that would go unnoticed, instead large amounts were leaving all in one shot.

Eric was insulted by the heist. He couldn't decide if he was more offended by the heavy-handedness of the hack, the fact that the thief didn't seem to care that there was no way nobody would notice the missing money, or that the hotel he was currently staying in was in the midst of being robbed. There was a protective feeling that bloomed inside his chest and he could not sit back any longer. It would take some time for the in-house security to notice what was happening and the thief could be mopping up and out by that time, but Eric was already there and he was going to take action.

It was like a predator rising from the mist. He started to hammer away at his keyboard, stealing the money while it was being transited away from the accounts and putting it back. He threw up blocks in front of the accounts one at a time and then went on the offensive. A sniffer was sent out to find the IP address of the hacker and he started to take back ground from the other guy and tried to press him into a corner.

His sniffer came back faster than he expected. "What?" his fingers paused as he processed the information. "It's an inside job?" He shook his head and charged back in. The hacker had gained ground but Eric was relentless in grabbing it back. Once he was satisfied that his work would hold up for a few minutes, he split his screen to let him scroll through those background checks. He was narrowing in on who was at the other end when his door was thrown open and men with guns swarmed in.

They yelled at him to back away from his computer but they ignored him when he shouted that he had almost caught the thief. They didn't listen when he pleaded for them to let him finish and to be careful with his computer. He was hauled down to the closest police station where they dropped him in an interrogation room.

Every person who walked in proved to be the same. He would plead his innocence and try to explain what he was doing, but they wouldn't acknowledge him. They just kept talking about how he wasn't very smart, trying to steal from the very same hotel he was staying in and how it was good that the casino's security caught him. His attempts to explain that it was the other way around, that it was an inside job was met with scoffs. So when this Henrietta Lange walked in and said she had a proposal, he was cautiously interested.

"What kind of proposal?" He asked, finally getting his tongue to function again.

"I know it was you who stalled the robbery, not the other way around. One of my people is explaining that to the LVPD as we speak. I propose that you put your skills to good use."

"What skills?" Eric wasn't quite ready to spill all his secrets.

"The skills that allowed you to sneak into the computer system and run amok through it for approximately 12 hours." She raised her brows at Eric as he blinked and his mouth dropped open slightly. "Yes, you were in there for half a day and nobody noticed," She paused, "until you decided to stop a thief in his tracks."

He swallowed, it appeared she already knew his secrets. "How…how do you know that?"

She gave a small smile that seemed to be heavy in meaning. "I like to keep an eye out for promising talent." She gave a slight nod of her head towards him. "I'm looking for a technical operator and intelligence analyst."

Eric gave her a blank look; he felt like he was missing something and honestly he was confused by the whole situation. Was he really getting a job offer while handcuffed in a police station?

"I need someone to coordinate the technical aspects of my special operations field team of agents. You would be helping to stop terrorism and crime at a digital level."

"You want to give me a license to hack?" Eric felt like he was finally getting a handle on what was going on.

She looked at him over her glasses. "Within reason." She shifted in her chair. "I have seen others who can 'hack'" she pulled her fingers around the word "like you, but unlike them you show a moral side which is probably why this is the first time you've landed in a room like this. That is who I am looking for, someone who wants to save the world, not watch it burn from the safety of a desk chair."

He felt a grin starting, this was the challenge he didn't realize he had been waiting for. "Yes, I would like that."

She gave him another smile. "Good, I need to go talk to some people." She left the room on quiet feet.

Eric slouched back in his seat and waited. However now, it didn't feel as hopeless or lonely. He caught himself tapping his foot and almost started humming. An unknown amount of time passed but the door opened once again.

She walked in first followed by someone who was clearly high in the ranks. Eric sat up straight and tried to ignore the bead of sweat that appeared on his forehead.

"Captain Iverson agrees that you are, in fact, innocent." She stated and then turned towards the man shuffling his feet.

"It appears that we've arrested the wrong man." He coughed. "As such, you are free to go." He slid his eyes to the small woman beside him. "However, there is still the matter of you invading the security system in the first place. In exchange for not pressing charges, we ask that you not return to Las Vegas."

"I'm being banned from Vegas?" Eric's eyes flicked back and forth between the two people standing in front of him.

"It's either that or jail time." Iverson ground out.

"I'm good with that." Eric quickly nodded. The captain stepped forward and unlocked his handcuffs. The woman waved for him to follow her. They travelled to the desk where he picked up his laptop and the rest of his possessions that his 'friends' had dropped off at the precinct. Turns out they weren't that interested in associating with him after he'd been arrested. They walked out into the sunshine, where Eric immediately halted.

"I know you just hired me, but I don't know anything – what do I call you? Where will I be working? When do I start?"

She turned and faced him. "You can call me Hetty. The office is in LA and you can start now. After you change into proper attire, of course."

"All I own is shorts and flip flops." He shrugged.

Hetty frowned. "We'll work on that."