Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: LA.

Prompt #20: Code - When the lines of letters and numbers skittered across his screen, he knew she was trying to tell him something.

Words: 974

"Mister Beale, tell me you're making progress," Hetty said with her absolute last ounce of patience.

"I'm trying, Hetty, but this isn't exactly like shooting a target from a hundred yards," Eric grumbled, just as close to breaking. "Rathford is spoofing his IP address through a series of proxy sites, and I can't track it that easily while trying to keep him from hacking the OSP mainframe." His fingers quickly typed a string of codes as fast as he could, eyes blurring from the speed of reading what his computer was showing him. "All I can tell you is that he's in LA, someplace east of Santa Monica but not past Beverly Hills."

Driving in the Challenger with Sam, Callen swore. "Not good enough Eric. We can't go knocking down doors from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica Pier."

"Not even with SWAT and LAPD helping out," Deeks agreed. "Watch it, Kensi! Red means stop, not power on through!"

"There has to be a faster way to track this guy," Kensi said, not heeding her partner's cry. "Eric, there has to be something else you can try."

"I can't do this by myself!" Eric snapped, finally losing patience with everybody. "I need Nell's help!"

As soon as he said those words, he knew it wasn't possible. Attacked in her own home earlier that day, Nell was at Pacific Beach Medical Hospital, severely beaten and unconscious. They'd already found the man responsible, and when he'd copped to being paid by Rathford to assault Nell, the team was after him with a vengeance.

But Eric knew he couldn't do this alone. Rathford was an insanely gifted hacker, and he had already proved a dangerous cyber-adversary by coming closer than anyone before him to hacking NCIS Office of Special Projects. Thankfully he'd been deflected without a loss of intel and no comprimised aliases, but it was only because Eric and Nell had been working in tandem.

Without Nell, Eric was only at half strength.

And Rathford knew it. Attacking NCIS OSP yet again, he was trying to worm his way past Eric while managing to ghost through all of Eric's attempts to reverse-track him.

But he still perservered. Using every microcircuit of his whole system, Eric was combing the entire City of Angels for Rathford. He checked and double-checked every possible place he could be, cross-checking with everything they already knew about the guy. He sent feelers in every direction, setting a cyber-web over Los Angeles like a spider and hoping the intelligent fly would screw up and get caught.

Suddenly an alarm went off on one of the terminals. Swiveling in his chair to look, Eric did a double-take and his jaw dropped in shock.

It was Nell's computer that was going off.

"What the - ?" said Hetty, leaning in to look at the lines of letters and numbers that started scrolling down the screen. "What is this, Eric?"

His eyes scanned the code that was filling up the screen. A smile tilted the corners of his mouth up. "Nell set up some kind of program," he said, going back to type with new ferocity. "It must've been tripped when Rathford attacked again, and now it's starting up."

"What does it do, exactly?" asked Hetty, not accustomed to being left out of the loop.

"It's tracking him." He cracked his knuckles and input a few commands on Nell's keyboard. "That'll hone in on Rathford, and I can focus on keeping him out of OSP."

"How long?" Hetty wanted answers, not explainations.

"Two minutes, tops."

One hundred and fifteen seconds later, they had the address.

When Nell woke up, the sun had already set outside her window. Blinking to clear the haze from her vision, she turned her head to see Eric sitting by her bedside. "Hey."

"Hey," he replied, scooting closer. "How you feeling, rockstar?"

"Stiff. Like someone whaled on me with a baseball bat."

He nodded with a grimace. "Yeah, sounds about right." He reached over and took her hand. "We got the guy who did this to you, Nell. And we got Rathford."

A tired smile spread over her face. "My program worked?"

"Start-up was a little slow, but it found him."

She gave a weak laugh. "Good. At least I could help nail the bastard." Green eyes looked at him. "No comprimised covers? No intel lost?"

Eric shook his head. "Nope. I managed to keep him out long enough." His grip on her hand tightened. "We make a good team, even when you're lying in a bed."

They shared a laugh at that, then spent a few minutes in comfortable silence. Nell broke it in a quiet, almost bashful voice.

"Honestly, I got a little worried about actually leaving the program that way," she confessed. "I didn't think - I thought you wouldn't know what it was."

"At first, I didn't," Eric admitted. "But then I remembered who my partner was. And I figured it out, no sweat."

Nell smiled. Squirming in her bed to get comfortable, she let out a light sigh. "I'm gonna go back to sleep. You staying?"

"If you want me to," said Eric. At her nod, he pulled over another chair and rested his feet on the seat like a footrest. "Then I'm here, Nell."

She fell asleep holding his hand, and he didn't let go all night.

The fluff...the fluff! It's giving me cavaties! ^_^ but you like it, don't you?

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