Eight months ago
"Tick-tick-tick."
"Tick-tick-tick."
"Seriously, Deeks! Stop making ticking noises!"
Deeks smiles as he looks over the top of the bed to see Kensi glaring murderously at him. She's sitting cross legged on the bed while Deeks had been digging in the plastic bag deep under his bed. Their sitting in the oldest motel room in Los Angeles, listening for a possible meet between two murderous Marines. As usual, Deeks is getting antsy three hours into the surveillance op and he's up to his usual antics.
Deeks lays his head on the edge of the bed and watches Kensi turn her attention back to the newspaper in hand. "Tick!"
"Seriously, Deeks!" Kensi exclaims. She throws her magazine at his head and misses as the detective ducks below the edge of the bed. He emerges quickly by jumping onto the side of the bed, laying back, and putting his hands behind his head. Kensi groans in annoyance and sighs, " Two hours left."
"Aww and you not spend any more time with me? Who'd want to end that," Deeks says. "You know what we should do? Go on a trip."
"How did you go from annoying me to us going a trip, which I will not do by the way?"
Deeks is already two far ahead in his thinking to answer her question. " I say that we go to China….no wait, New Zealand or Italy."
"Deeks, why would we go to any of those places, especially since I'd rather jump off of a cliff than go on any vacation with you."
Deeks sits up and narrows his eyes at Kensi. " I love when you tell lies like that. We could run away together and never be seen again. Humor me, Kens- just imagine if we had to go somewhere together to run away or for vacation, where would you want to go?"
Present Day
Jordon- I would have us go to Jordon. I should have told him, Kensi thinks as she stands in front of the doors leading to the emergency room. Deeks is being tended to by two of the remaining doctors staying behind for patients who couldn't be moved to other hospitals. From her position a few feet away, she can see the two doctors working quickly over her partner , one placing a bloody gauge bandage on the bedside table every few minutes. Her partner had torn all of his stitches out from punching Willcock and was bleeding unusually heavily because of it.
"Kens, how's he doing?" she suddenly hears from Callen as he appears next to her. The lead agent had been back on the top floor with Sam for the last hour, using every non- ethical method they could to get Willcock and Leo to talk.
"All I see is blood," Kensi answers softly, "I can't bring myself over there to look."
"He'll be ok," Callen assures her with a rub on the shoulder. "He's made it this far alright- he'll pull through."
Kensi crosses her arms and continues to stare at both doctors attending to Deeks. "I trust you and Sam with my life. Do you trust me?"
"What?" Callen steps around her to where he's standing in her view of Deeks. " Of course, I do. Where is this coming from?"
"I've been standing here for an hour just thinking about how you aren't supposed to sleep with your partner because it changes things….makes you unable to think straight."
Anxiously, Callen replies, "You aren't going to break his heart, are you?"
"No, no…" Kensi inhales deeply before continuing on, "I need to handle this like someone who's more than a partner should- I need to do the things that Michelle would do for Sam in a heartbeat if they were in this situation."
"So what are you saying?"
"The team has 48 hours to figure this whole case out. That's 2 days to catch these assholes. After those two days, Deeks and I are leaving Los Angeles."
Upstairs, Sam paces back and forth in front of the chair and table in one of the hospital rooms. Leo is handcuffed to the table just as before; the only difference is the bruising on his hands and the black eye. The black eye is from Deeks, but the bruising on the hands comes from the very angry SEAL front of him.
"How about you say words instead of throwing punches?" Leo sneers at Sam. Sam makes a second round towards the doorway without saying a word.
"Let's see you've tried breaking my hands, very unsuccessfully by the way," Leo continues on. He knows that he's not as intimidating as the much bigger Willcock is, but he hopes his tone gets the same arrogance across.
"Who's your boss?" Sam says quietly before stopping directly in front of Leo.
"Still not going to answer that," Leo starts to say. Suddenly, Sam reaches over and slams his fist over the man's hand. It causes his pointer fingers to break into two. Leo bites down a scream and growls, " This doesn't….seem like you."
"You've hurt my family and that has a tendency to make me throw my rules out the window," Sam replies. He places both hands on the table and stares with a mock curiosity at Leo's broken finger. " One rule is to help my fellow man and injuries like that. Who is your boss? We did some research and found out that you have no relation to any of the Marines killed. You have no reason to be here."
"$5 million dollars is a reason to be here," Leo mutters accidently. His eyes widen as he watches a smirk appear on Sam's face.
"5 million dollars to torture people. You're telling me that it takes only 5 million to get you to go on assault spree for a bunch of men with daddy issues? You're a cheap bastard."
Leo shakes his head before looking back up to Sam. " I'm not a sellout."
"That's interesting. You have a honorable discharge for ratting out two old teammates back in the Naval Academy . Before you joined the Marines at 37, you never had so much as a traffic ticket," Sam walks over to the hospital bed and lifts up his tablet. He swipes through a few photos before placing the tablet in front of Leo. " The only possible way I'd do something as terrible and destructive as this is if I were really desperate or in your case, dying."
Leo swallows hard at the sight of a photographed lab test results. "How the hell did you get a copy of this?"
"We took it off your computer and before you whine about your rights, you're considered to be a domestic terrorist."
Leo inhales deeply and looks down to his hands like an apologetic child. His mind flashes back to his wife, Sara, sitting in Chicago alone as he had left her a year before. Sara was his first and only love that he still loved until this day. "I found out I had cancer two years ago," he states shakily, "And Sara's on disability from a work accident. I want Sara to have money and security when I die."
"Ok. How'd you find out about this job?" Sam says as he picks up the tablet from the table.
" I served with Willcock for a tour in Iraq. He and I kept in touch over the years- when I found out that I was dying, he told me about the job," Leo pushes out his lip and sucks it back in out of frustration.
"Hmm." Sam nods and moves around the small table until he's behind Leo. In one swift move, he yanks at Leo's collar and whispers, "If you want to hear or see Sara again, you're going to give me everything you know about your boss. Now."
