Chapter 2
Later that day, Callen arrived back from the crime scene and brought Eric a torn piece of paper: "We found this piece of paper at the crime scene in the bin of Palmer's apartment. You need to find out what's on there."
"Ok, I'll get right on it." Eric replied and then got right away on the task. Callen then handed a laptop to Nell and said: "Nell find out what's on that laptop, maybe there are any clues on that, to why he was kidnapped in the first place." Then Callen finally left the room through the sliding doors and the two techies were alone once again. Putting that torn piece of paper back together proved to be more difficult than expected but he didn't want Nell to know, that he might struggle a little with his current task. Meanwhile Nell encrypted the Laptop in no time, with a special little algorithm she had written in college. She secretly peeked over shortly to Eric's desk and almost wanted to solve that puzzle herself but she decided against it, because in the spirit of fair competition she let him continue working on it. Nell then spotted on interesting File on the laptop, but it was encrypted in complicated way, so she couldn't get open with her encryption algorithm. It took a while a longer, but she finally got through the second layer of encryption and then read through the file.
Suddenly an alarm went off on Eric's Computer, he quickly put together the last pieces of the puzzle, let his hands then fly over the keyboard and said: "Somebody is trying to hack into the Pentagon with Braden Palmer's password. I'm trying my best to keep the hacker away from the sensitive data." Nell then quickly put away the laptop, her hands also quickly moved over the keyboard and she tried to trace back the IP Address of the Attacker. "I can't trace the attacker properly; he is redirecting his IP from one country to another." From another unknown source another attack was suddenly started, more aggressive then the first one and so the two NCIS techies had their hands full with fending off the attacks. Hetty came into the room and wanted a short status report, Eric did his best to update his boss on the current situation and fend off the now massive attack on one of sensitive servers of the pentagon. Nell finally found a way to break through the masked IP of the hacker and said to Eric: "I got him Eric, he is in LA and I'm pinpointing his exact location now." As quickly as she could, she ran the trace program and hopped that she would get the exact location of the hacker. The first attack had finally stopped, when the trace program finally revealed the location of the hacker attack: "The hacker is an abandoned warehouse at Rodeo Drive Number 23." Eric quickly grabbed his phone, called Callen downstairs to give him the information and then turned to Nell: "Impressive Move Rockstar, but how did you that?" Nell grinned brightly, already knowing in advance that that question would come from her partner and then she said: "Sorry partner, but if I would tell you that I would have to kill you." Nell finally continued working on the laptop, too see if there was anything else interesting to find on there and while working was thinking about her date with Jack tonight, she really loved his company and deep down in her heart she knew, that that "thing" as Eric would probably say, would last for very long time.
She then quickly collected herself again, as she had realized at the right time that she had been totally away from reality with her thoughts and had just stared at Laptop Screen for a few minutes. Finally she focused again on work because Callen surely wanted her status report on her findings on Palmer's laptop. The rest of the work day went by fast; Nell reported to Callen her findings on the laptop of the missing Navy Lieutant and one document sent the team, proved to be a very hot new lead in the case and while Sam and Callen followed that new lead, he sent Kensi and Deeks to the Commanding Officer of Palmer to find out to which data he had exactly access. While being busy looking into the phone records of Peter Mills, an ex-navy civil employee, Eric's computer began to beep. Eric immediately called Callen, to notify him, that Kaleidoscope had found the van.
By the evening they finally wrapped up the case: Eric had finally found out, where the Lt. was being held captive, Kensi, Deeks, Sam & Callen promptly made their way to the little private airfield and freed the navy lt. The boss of the gangsters tried to get away, almost ran Kensi but she quickly brought the car to screeching halt by firing two precise shots at the driver. All of them finally came back to the headquarters, Sam came upstairs later and asked: "I and the others want to drink something bar, you two want to come with us?" Nell was the first one to answer: "Sorry Guys, I have other plans for tonight but maybe next time."
"I have nothing else to do tonight, so why not? I'll be downstairs right away." Surely he was a little sad that Nell wouldn't come along but he did his best to not show that kind of emotion to her. Eric loved having her around her, she was definitely the best partner he could ever have or maybe even more than that? In the best nonchalant voice he then said before Nell left the room: "Have a nice evening Rockstar and I'll see you tomorrow."
"Thanks you too." Nell answered and Eric looked after her, till she disappeared through the sliding doors.
He finally then left the room, after he switched out his Computer and the light in room and then joined the others downstairs.
AN: Thanks to- Crazy Women loves for adding this story to her/his favorite stories list and reviewing the story, thanks to- Number Sixteen for adding this story to her favorite stories list and reviewing this story. I hope you like this chapter, please read & review and suggestions to improve the quality of the story are more then welcome.