"That's what the situation looks like right now," Nell said, pulling up security cameras around the hotel in which they rented the room. Collectively they covered three hundred and sixty degrees of the outside, and most of the images were dominated by emergency vehicles.

"That could mean anything," Sam pointed out. "We don't know how it got that way or what is has to do with Kensi and Deeks."

Nell ran a hand over her face. "Try getting in touch with the others. See if anybody knows anything and if they could regroup with us."

"Callen did to no avail. Nobody has called back."

"And where is Callen now?"

"Sleeping, for once," Sam muttered while shaking his head. "He won't admit he's as fatigued as he is."

Nell began typing away on her keyboard again. "That's Callen for you. Okay, so I'm rewinding the tapes back to when we left the hotel. I can't promise anything because the cartel more than likely disabled any feed before the raid."

"Don't bother then. We don't have time for it. Try looking at the surrounding ones?"

Sam watched as Nell pulled up about twenty other feeds from store fronts that encircled the hotel. She fast forwarded to the appropriate time frame, but not after some of them had blacked out. The cartel members had thought ahead. After two sets of scrutinizing, trained eyes observed all of the cameras at least twice, there was no indication to what happened to Kensi and Deeks.

"What would cause emergency response vehicles to show up? Think," Sam prompted.

"A call, obviously. But we didn't hear any gun shots."

"It doesn't mean that somebody else didn't, or even see the cartel members."

"I'll see if I can hack into the call logs for 9-1-1. Usually Eric-" Nell broke off with a choke. "Never mind."

Sam put a comforting hand on her shoulder, knowing what it was like to have a partner in critical condition at the hospital and not being able to be there. "We'll see him soon."

Nell nodded. "Why don't you go check on Callen? I'll let you know when I find something."

Knowing that the intelligence analyst wanted to be alone, Sam left the safe room inside Hetty's house. He couldn't believe the computer system set up in there…he was sure it was more than illegal and national security wouldn't cover it if anybody above Hetty found out about it. Sam came upon Callen, who was stretching uncomfortably on the colonial-style couch in the living room.

"I knew you wouldn't stay asleep for long."

Callen ignored his comment. "What did we find?"

"Nell's still looking."

"Meaning nothing." Callen snorted.

Sam raised his eyebrows at his partner, who was being more pessimistic than usual. The silent question was answered with more silence until he finally cried out:

"Where is Hetty in all of this? Ops is completely blown, and she's nowhere to be found! No Granger, no Hetty, no resources? No anything?"

"G, you know as well as I do that Hetty's got a reason for everything. We just gotta do what we can right now. First we get Kensi and Deeks back, then we make sure that this…" Sam paused, looking for a better word than 'cartel', "…clan of miscreants never harm anyone again."

"If they have Kensi and Deeks-"

"We don't know that yet. But if they do, you better believe that they're gonna get hit harder than they hit OSP."

Callen sat up fully on the couch, wincing as he did so. Sam didn't say anything, but immediately reached to inspect his wounds.

"Whoa, getting a little handsy there," Callen slapped his hands away with a forced smile.

Sam shot him a disapproving glare. "You're really going to joke around like that now? Stop being childish and let me have a look."

Callen put his hands up again- preparing to deflect Sam again if necessary. "You said at the safe house that I wouldn't need a hospital yet. Well, I don't."

"Guys! In here!" Nell called.

Sam offered Callen a hand and hoisted his partner to his feet. He was slow moving, but if the blue eyed agent wanted to do something on his own—there was no helping him. When they met Nell in the secluded room, she was hovering over keyboards, eyes glued to computer screens.

"I found them," she said urgently. "The cartel has Kensi and Deeks."

It was what they suspected. Callen asked, "And you're excited by this how?"

"I'm not. I was able to use the system to track the cars that took them back to an industrial building in the Valley. We have a full layout of the vicinity include access roads, nearest cell towers- everything."

"Is that it?" Sam inquired, pointing a finger at the main monitor. It featured a huge land area- it might have even been a small airfield once. There were tons of people going in and out, trucks and other cars- everything. The labels on the trucks advertised for a company selling sound equipment. The cover explained the activity going in and out and the need for a large space.

But that same building was going to be the tough part about getting Kensi and Deeks back, Sam observed. He looked at the three of them. Callen could maybe hold a sniper position- if they could even use one with the surrounding geography. Nell was capable, but too untrained to go in with just himself to back her up.

Maybe they would have one or two more people, depending if the remaining agents could regroup or not. This was going to be a stretch.

"Well we're all thinking the same thing," Callen said. "We're really gonna have to pull this together."

"I can go on the raid with Sam. But that leaves nobody to back us up from another location," Nell pointed out.

"On the contrary, Ms. Jones, I have a few ideas."

All three NCIS employees whirled around, shocked, but somehow still not surprised, to see their operations manager standing in the doorway. She wasn't alone. Behind her stood Nate.

Callen raised his eyebrows. "Where have you been?"

"Pulling resources, Mr. Callen. Let's get these bastards."

Author's Note:

I really can't say how sorry I am this is late. I've been going through a real rough patch lately...having to go back to therapy, dealing with shitty grades, friend drama, etc...I really lost a lot of interest in most of what I was doing. I finally seem to be coming out of this self-hate dip and I've been writing a lot more which has helped. Next chapter should be up by the end of the weekend. Thanks for supporting me despite the fact that my writing's gone way downhill and so on. I'm resetting before I start my next story. Trying to restart. Sending love to you all :)

-C