Hey everyone!
Thank you so much for the response to the last chapter. In all honesty, I was pretty worried about that one because Callen seemed out of character a little. I'll just blame it on the alcohol (whiskey has that chatty effect on me too!).
Sorry about the delay on this one. I just got done with 7 straight days of work plus school, so it's been hard finding time to get on here! I promise, the long-awaited black tie scene is coming up shortly! I hope you guys enjoy and please review (they really make my day). Happy Thanksgiving!
Kensi groaned as she rolled over and wondered what had woken her up. It wasn't her alarm; it hadn't even gone off yet. Her phone wasn't ringing off the hook, so that couldn't be it either. Taking a deep breath, her brain recognized what the mysterious culprit was. Coffee.
Mind still groggy, Kensi trudged to her door and opened it. The scent of the black liquid was almost overpowering as she let her feet carry her toward it. Halfway down the hall, her mind caught up with why the smell was there in the first place and she stopped dead.
Callen.
She had stubbornly convinced Callen that it was best for him to stay the night at her place. He'd been reluctant, but finally agreed and camped out on her couch. Kensi had laid awake for hours, going over everything that had been said by the man out in her living room. She once considered going out to check on him, but thought better of it. She didn't need him catching her watching him.
Vanity took the lead and Kensi resisted the urge to run back into her room like an embarrassed teenager caught in her pajamas. Instead, she hurriedly straitened her rumpled tank top and tried to tame her wild hair before calmly walking into the living room.
The blankets were piled on one of the cushions, folded neatly as they had been before. Kensi smiled at the sign of his military training showing through and headed for the kitchen. She didn't know if she was expecting to see him or not, but the slip of paper near the coffee and a white paper bag told her he had left.
Kensi first lifted the steaming foam cup to her lips to let some caffeine awaken her brain cells before tentatively peering into the bag. Donuts. It was like he read her mind. Kensi smiled before picking up the note covered in small, scratchy writing.
Thanks for the bed. 7 on Saturday – be ready. C.
"Well, well, if it isn't my old team!"
Kensi groaned and tried to bury her face further into the file she was reading. She knew that the team was really getting desperate for something more on Callen when Mike Renko showed up.
"Renko, you son of a bitch," Sam greeted, standing to shake his ex-team member's hand. The former had been off on deep cover assignments since leaving Los Angeles. "What are you doing here?"
Kensi really didn't mind Renko when he wasn't shamelessly hitting on her, which wasn't often. Sure enough, it took him all of two seconds to remind her why she hadn't really missed him. "I heard something interesting about our old boss man," he stated, eyes scanning the bullpen and landing on Kensi. "Hey," he started in a voice he must have thought was irresistible, "looking good, Kensi. You know I'm still waiting on that date you owe me."
"Funny," she bit back, "I didn't hear that hell had frozen over."
Sam laughed at Renko's soured expression and turned to the others on the team. "Deeks, Dom, this is Mike Renko." The three agents exchanged nods and handshakes.
"So what have you heard?" Dom asked, bringing them (thankfully) back to why Renko was there in the first place.
"I hear you guys got a lead on Callen. Back to dropping bodies in LA, huh?" Kensi resisted the urge to glare at him and the matter-of-fact way he stated his question.
"Looks that way," Deeks replied, glancing at his partner as though he sensed her objection. She kept her face impassive to satisfy his questioning look as they moved on.
"Huh. He comes out of years of hiding just to pop some Marine. I don't get it."
"And how did you hear about it?" Kensi asked, suspicion creeping into her voice. Luckily, it was covered with just the right amount of contempt to remain unnoticed by Renko. "I thought you were on long term assignment."
"Good news travels fast," he stated evasively. When Sam fixed him with a questioning look, he gave in further. "I've been back in town for a few days. Word came up when I checked in with the big bosses and I figured you guys could use the help. I was there too, you know."
The answer seemed to satisfy Sam, but Kensi couldn't help watching Renko closely as he pulled over a chair and made himself at home. The agency was keeping Callen's case as tight-lipped as possible, so how is it that someone just threw it into a conversation when Renko checked in? Sure, he was a member of the team when Callen had been lead, but it didn't seem right. And how did he just happen to come out of a long-term cover right as his former boss resurfaced?
After the bases had been covered and Renko was as close to updated as they would allow, Kensi waited for the inevitable 'I-know-it-all' rant from their newest member.
"Well we know Callen's been working for any country that can afford him, right?"
"Yeah, but it's a lot of rumor. There's no actual evidence of it," Kensi argued. Renko paid it no mind and kept talking. The man sure loved the sound of his own voice.
"Well, you wouldn't get a lot of evidence with Callen, would you? He was trained, so there wouldn't bemuch physical evidence, and I doubt he started working with anyone. He always liked to go solo, with that whole 'lone wolf' complex of his."
Kensi couldn't help but snort at his tone as she aimlessly pushed around papers. Deeks looked up at her but didn't say anything. He knew that his partner had a thin line between tolerance and annoyance, and Renko seemed to dance on the latter side.
"I still think we need to look at the Staff Sergeant. We still don't know where the cash came from or what he was doing in that alley. Callen's fingerprints on the envelope could be complete coincidence," Kensi stated, trying to sound convincing in her lie. She did know the where and the why, but had made the promise to keep quiet. All she had left to do was find out who the real mole in NCIS was and turn her team's attention to it without getting the attention of the mole in question. But both objectives were proving to be harder than she'd hoped – the team was stuck on Callen as the killer, and Renko's pushing wasn't helping. Added to the fact that she had no idea where to start looking for the mole, and her prospects looked especially bleak.
"Really?" he asked incredulously. "You're going with coincidence? What are the odds?"
Kensi glared back at him. "It's not impossible. Besides, fingerprints alone don't mean he killed Campbell."
"We've run over Campbell's life with a fine tooth comb, Kensi," Deeks piped up beside her. "You know that Callen is the best lead we have." He shrugged back in response to her look.
"Well obviously. Look," Renko continued, "Callen probably hired him to get something off the base. Information, weapons, people – it doesn't matter. And then Campbell got cold feet, decided against it, and Callen popped him. Easy as that."
Kensi couldn't stop the wave of frustration as she blurted "You've got it all figured out then, don't you?"
The words rung through the bullpen just long enough to be noticeable. From the corner of her eye she could see Nell, who had been close to coming into the area. She now turned on her heel quietly and went back the other way. Kensi knew she was getting looks from Sam and Deeks, who would be able to notice something different about her voice. In an effort to reverse the damage, she adopted a look she hoped was indifferent.
"Thanks for the evaluation, Renko," Sam stated, sarcasm covering the concern in his voice as he watched his agent closely. "But unless you know who he's working for now, you're at the same dead end as we are." He paused for a moment, turning to the other two agents who had remained mostly quiet. "Why don't you guys go check in with Eric. See if he's got any hits on the airport canvases."
Dom and Deeks stood, the latter throwing a final look at his partner before following the junior agent. Renko tagged along but not before voicing his thoughts, as usual. "Good idea. No point in looking for someone who's probably in Siberia by now."
Kensi rolled her eyes at his retreating form before focusing on her boss. She didn't like the look he was giving her but knew there was no getting around this one. So she settled on a questioning expression before asking him "What?"
He didn't speak, only tried to read through her cover. She refused to be the one to break and after a moment he began with the questions. "What's going on, Kensi?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you just bit off Renko's head for putting out a plausible idea."
Kensi scoffed. "Plausible? Not if Renko said it."
Sam wasn't buying it. "You've been going against everything we bring up on this case, even though you know it's all we've got. And as much as I hate to admit it, Renko's probably right about the money and why Campbell got killed."
Kensi hated the words coming out of his mouth. Callen had been his partner; they had trusted their lives in each other's hands. But here he was, standing in front of her, so ready to believe that the man he had once known was a traitor and a murderer. If Deeks had been accused, she liked to think he'd get the benefit of the doubt, at least from her.
"You can just believe it all so easily? Believe that your partner, a man you knew, was betraying his country?"
Sam stiffened at her words. "That has nothing to do with this."
"How doesn't it?" she asked, frustration getting the better of her once more. "You knew him enough to trust him with your life, didn't you? And he did the same. And then you turned your back on him."
"You have no idea what it was like," he stated, his voice dropping to a dangerously low level. Kensi sighed.
"I'm sorry, Sam. This case just isn't right. It feels like we're getting pressured into only looking in one direction," she stated, not entirely lying. She needed a reason to explain away her reactions, and settled on one that was just close enough to the truth to be convincing.
"When my father was murdered, it was like no one cared about the investigation. It was a robbery, they said, and that was it. It was like they didn't even want to look at any other explanation. If someone would have dug deeper, they…" her voice broke for a moment, "they might have gotten me a real answer." So many things were beginning to take hold in her mind now that she knew why her father had been killed and that Barden had been a part of it. With his connections, he could have easily killed the investigation. She had no way of knowing that her suspicions were correct, but the thought was like a parasite nonetheless.
Kensi took a deep breath and brought it back to her original point – their current case. "I refuse to just accept the party line and let the possible real killer go free. Maybe it is Callen, maybe it's not. I don't think we should jump to conclusions, that's all."
Sam's face had softened to concern, but she could see the trace of doubt and anger in his eyes. After a minute, however, he nodded his head. He knew that her father's case was a touchy subject and she didn't bring it up often. "If we had anything else, we would go with it. But we don't. I don't want to believe Callen killed him, I really don't," he said quietly, looking as though he were surprised by his own words. "But even if he didn't kill Campbell, he knows something. And it's our job to find him, no matter what he has or hasn't done. He broke the law, our trust, and our team, and he needs to answer for that."
Sam stood and went to join the team, but stopped short of the steps. He turned, opened his mouth and closed it again. The leader considered his agent for another moment before speaking quietly. "If you need help, you know you can come to us. We're a team," he added, nodding at her once more before climbing the stairs upwards.
Kensi sighed as she brought her hands up to her head. She knew Deeks was getting suspicious and Sam was worried, and that thought alone made her insides twist. If running around with Callen wasn't going to kill her, lying to her team just might.