Sorry for missing last week – I actually had it in my plan because I was at a convention, but I forgot to warn you ahead! Anyway, here are the next two episodes in this sequence of Hetty in LA while bad guys (ahem) break into her houses and threaten her team. This arc is one of my favorites just because of all the holes it let me fill in!

Enjoy!

Season 6, Episode 2: Inelegant Heart

Callen wasn't sleeping. He paced his floors in the dark, moving soundlessly, never holding still and never passing over the same floorboards more than once.

Someone had bought Hetty's personal information.

Hetty was in Washington, alone, unprotected.

And he was still in LA, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Of course, if Hetty had been in LA, Callen would have been guarding her himself, and no orders, no government, no power on earth would have prevented him. It was only because she was in Washington that he was holding position for now.

The information that had been bought was personal — at least one of Hetty's residences. But it was bought some time before she flew out to Washington to be interrogated or whatever those political idiots thought they were doing to her. If someone was after Hetty now, right this instant, they wouldn't be in LA at all if they knew her whereabouts.

So whoever had bought the information didn't know Hetty's whereabouts.

They might be waiting in ambush, or preparing a strike for later. But right now, the safest place for Hetty was all the way across the country in the mire that was Washington.

That made it a waiting game.

Callen could have gone to her houses, checked them for surveillance or worse, but that would mean revealing his own hand. Right now, whoever was hunting Hetty probably didn't know he was onto them. If he lost that tiny tactical advantage, it might cost him more than he could pay.

But with Hetty gone dark in Washington, having left behind anything that could make her easy to trace or that could give away information to the politicians and bureaucrats, he couldn't even reach out to her.

Spending a couple of weeks in prison didn't feel nearly as cut off as he did right now knowing he couldn't reach her when it actually mattered.

G's thoughts wound around and around, imagining every possible angle, every possible threat, every possible danger, until it was well past midnight.

Then his phone rang.

He picked it up, squinting at the screen in the darkness. The caller was blocked.

He drew in a breath. 'Blocked' could mean a lot of things.

Affecting the voice of a man woken from a sound sleep, he answered, deliberately huffing into the phone before letting out a sleepy, "Yeah?"

"Nice act, Callen."

He blinked. He recognized that woman's voice, but he couldn't place it.

"Who is this?"

"There will be people who come into your life. And you'll know you're safe when you're with them."

He stopped, frozen on the edge of fury at familiar words from the first night at home in his life. "How do you know that?"

"Is that really a question for your cousin?" returned the voice, clearly amused.

Cousin.

He had no family, but he had Hetty. He'd talked about her other children like himself before, called them 'cousins.' And there was only one currently alive whom he had ever met and known about it.

Grace Stevens.

"It's late," he complained. That was an opening, pitched to be friendly and familiar, without giving away any names or secret information. After all, there was no way to know who might be listening to either one of them.

"Tough." And he could hear the approval in her tone. "I'm calling in a favor."

"Not sure I owe you one."

"Well, you owe somebody."

Yeah, that got his attention.

"What do you need?"

"An old-school ball player."

There were a lot of ways that line could be interpreted, but G understood it regardless. Hetty was a basketball fan, and especially in the early days of training him — and apparently Grace Stevens — had used basketball as an analogy for tradecraft many times.

Specifically when it came to passing information, or moving players around the court.

He lowered his voice. "I know a couple of good power forwards."

"Do they play for a team worth their colors?"

He mentally translated that: Are they trustworthy? "They can go a few sets of round robin if that's what you need."

"Good." He could hear the touch of relief in her voice. "Watch for an email. I'll need their stats."

"Understood."

He hung up, knowing there was nothing else to say.

Grace Stevens had called him. Grace Stevens was looking for contacts, trustworthy contacts. And she had come to him to get them.

Which meant she couldn't use her own. And Hetty couldn't use hers, either.

Which probably meant Hetty needed backup, backup no one could know about, no one could trace easily. And neither of them were able to ask for that backup directly. And if they were looking for backup in the form of tradecraft, then this wasn't a politics game anymore.

His gut went tight.

He stared at the phone in his hand.

"Hetty, what is going on?"