Chapter 3

Boston

Logan Airport

TWA Flight 401

"Relax, love," Maura Rizzoli-Isles said to her wife Jane, as their plane taxied onto the runway. "We will have almost two weeks to ourselves. Frost and Korsak will handle things just fine while we're away."

"I know, Maura," Jane Rizzoli-Isles replied. "I hated leaving Frost with that extra case work. I know he said it wasn't any problem, I know Cavanaugh 'ordered' me to forget it. I hope I didn't leave them in the lurch."

"Jane. Did you know where the term 'leave him in the lurch' comes from?" Maura asked.

"No, I don't, Maurapedia. And how do I know you're not making this stuff up because you know I can't check it?" Jane joked.

"I'm not making this up. And you can certainly check it through a reputable website," Maura protested, lightly. "It comes from a 16th century French dice game called lourche. In the game, to incur a lurch meant to be far behind the other players. Winners often won by lopsided results, so to lose meant to be 'left in the lurch'...It began to be used in its present figurative sense around 1600 C.E."

"C.E.?" Jane said.

"Yes. Common Era, which is interchangeable with Anno Domini, and also is referred to as the Christian Era."

Jane rolled her eyes. "I'm Catholic, Maura. In school we used B.C. and A.D., so Why not just say A.D?"

"A.C.E. is the accepted academic and scientific term. Many academics and scientists avoid A.D. because of its religious connotations."

"Well, Maura, this detective uses A.D. because she's Catholic and it's what she grew up with," Jane retorted, as the plane picked up speed; shortly afterwards, it left the runway, heading west towards Los Angeles.

Maura smiled, looking into Jane's eyes. "Everything will be fine, honey. We will have a lovely vacation after I make my speech."

Eight rows back, a young Latina woman reclined in her aisle seat, keeping an eye on the couple at all times.

She'd watched them from the time they left their home, and would until her associates picked up the detail outside LAX.

East Los Angeles

NCIS Special Agent Julie Todd twisted so her bicep and shoulder would hit at the right angle so she wouldn't break her arm.

The goon who tossed her against the arm didn't use excessive force and didn't seem intent on harming her; in fact, Julie noted he looked apologetic when they briefly locked eyes. All she could see was his brown eyes, since he - like the other four goons in the room - wore a jet black ski mask.

As soon as she thought she may have a sympathetic ally, she remembered what Leroy Jethro Gibbs had once told her about a criminal's gaze.

"The eyes can lie," Gibbs had told Julie, after the rescue operation that ended in the death of Ari Haswari. "Your sister learned that when he tricked her in the morgue."

If Kate had only killed Ari after he infiltrated the NCIS medical examiner's room and took her, Dr. Mallard and Gerald Jackson hostage - instead of being misled by his 'kind eyes' - so much might have been avoided.

Kate had told Julie about the incident, and Julie made her sister promise never to make the same mistake again.

So when she glanced at the brown-eyed goon again, and saw his kind eyes, she reminded herself he threw her against the wall and was as much of a threat as the guy with the bad breath shouting in her face.

"¡Mujer! ¡Se sentará y se callará!" (Woman! You will sit down and shut up!)

She grinned. "Only as long as it suits me, Jack-"

Her response was halted by a hard slap to the cheek. "Silencio!"

In the short exchange, and from what she heard him say to his compatriots, she gathered the man spoke Spanish with a Caribbean accent - not quite what she expected from a gang thought to have roots in East L.A..

She then took note of her surroundings.

It looked like the back of a warehouse, in a room of some kind - as wide as the main room of the boathouse her Special Ops team used to interrogate suspects, with a much higher ceiling. There was a fan along the back wall, and the door that one of the goons was standing guard at had a window looking out onto another warehouse.

I think I know where I am, Julie thought, as her captors talked amongst themselves. I hope Renko, Callen and the others know where I am, too.

She didn't have very long to ponder whether they did or not, because she saw the goons reacting to some commotion on the other side of the building.

The goon with the 'kind' brown eyes was ordered to stand guard over her, and the one at the door stayed at his position, while the others left the room to attend to whatever was going on.

A moment later, she heard gunfire - and several moments afterwards, she saw the door kicked in.

"FEDERAL AGENTS!"

She was never so glad to see Kensi Blye and Marty Deeks.