A/N - set late season 6/early season 7. After Humbug, before Comeback, although closer to the latter than the former. A few spoilers for early season 6. Densi. Follow for updates, review to let me know you're out there. Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Fierce - Kalli
Kensi wakes up just a split second before the hands touch her. Her legs are tangled in her sheets and the room is pitch black and she feels like she's fighting blindfolded and underwater. Her motions are slow and clumsy at first, but as the adrenaline kicks in and her survival instincts surface she remembers that this is her bedroom, her turf. She has the home field advantage.
When the large hands drag her out of the bed she hits the floor with an unceremonious thud, but she's exactly where she needs to be. She reaches under the frame of her queen size bed and grabs her spare SIG from its hiding place, turning and firing three shots into the large assailant. Even in the dark she senses where he is.
But then someone comes at her from the side, knocking her into the bed and sending the gun tumbling. The flash of the discharge in the dark room destroyed her night vision, and although she feels around for a moment she can't find the SIG and has no more time to look. An arm comes around her neck from behind. They are trying to subdue her. These are professionals. They got the drop on her, and if they wanted her dead she would be already.
If they need her alive, that works to her advantage. There are tools and tricks in their arsenal that they won't use if they aren't willing to use deadly force. Kensi has no qualms about being deadly right now. She's pulled back up on the bed, and the arm around her neck is cutting off her air. She is starting to feel it as she desperately tries to get leverage on him and open her airway, even just a millimeter.
She throws her head back into the face of her attacker, and gets a second of advantage that she takes for all its worth. She scrambles, now with better spatial awareness in the darkness and grabs for her nightstand. She finds her father's knife, and in an instant it is unsheathed and embedded in the neck of assailant number two. She hears the nauseating gurgle of arteries and airways open at the same time in close proximity to each other, and knows she's hit her mark.
She takes a deep breath and realizes her clock is dark and the little green light on her power outlet is not glowing. There's no power in the house. She hears voices in the other room and knows that whatever this is, it's not over. Ignoring the sound of the man dying next to her, she retrieves her father's knife. Then she pats her hand across the nightstand and the floor looking for her phone. When she finds it she hauls ass to the bathroom and shuts the door.
She wants to call Deeks, but there isn't time. She does what she's trained to do.
Kensi activates her agent-needs-assistance call. She gets the four digit code entered the second time just before the bathroom door crashes into her with force. This man also meets her father's knife and he screams in pain when it's driven into his knee. When he reaches down to grab her hair, the knife comes up and slices his wrist, making it impossible for him to use the hand, and likely impossible for him to survive. He goes to his knees and she topples him into the tub, the shower curtain pulled down in the melee. Her father's knife gets caught underneath him, and she can't get it before she has to make a move.
She makes a run for the living room knowing that here she is trapped and at least there she has options. There are three men in her living room and in her effort to avoid them, she stumbles.
"Agent Blye. We're here to extract you. Stand down." An official voice calls to her.
"What?" It stops her for a moment. It wasn't the greeting she was expecting.
"You're burned, Agent Blye. We tried to intercept these operatives, but they got here before us. We need to get you to safety." The men had the plan down. If they didn't capture her clean they were supposed to pretend they were rescuing her. "We need to go. Codeword SPARTA."
Kensi's brain freezes at the word, but her body obeys its meaning. She stands, gathering her SIG and her badge. Her phone is on the bathroom floor and the knife is in the guy in her tub, so there's no time.
"My team…"
"We'll have someone stay and explain. Our SAC will call Hetty. Grab your crash bag and go. Getting you to the safehouse is the only priority."
She nods and they head for the door.
"Apologies in advance," she hears just as the crosses the threshold.
A bag goes over her head and she is restrained. She feels something slash her arm, then her other arm is run over the wound. The hand is pressed against the front door. Someone else runs their hand over the cut, and then it's wrapped and she's put in what feels like an SUV.
()()()()()()()()
Deeks hears the agent-needs-assistance alarm on his phone and is on his feet before his brain registers the time or the sender. He'd barely fallen asleep before the jarring sound has him grabbing things from his nightstand and dresser. He puts his earwig in while sliding on his second shoe and barely avoids face-planting when in the middle of both of those things he reaches for his gun. With enough clothes to be decent he grabs his keys and really looks at the alarm.
Kensi.
He tries to call her while running to the car, but she doesn't pick up.
Eric brings the comm network up and everyone sounds off as Deeks, Callen and Sam haul ass to Kensi's apartment while the rest of the team heads for the Op Center.
"Her security cameras are down, her phone is still pinging from the apartment, and there's no GPS signal from her car. LAPD received two 911 calls of shots fired at that location and are on the way. They are aware that you'll be onsite."
Nell's business-like tone keeps comms clear and calm while three cars break every traffic law on the empty overnight streets to get to Kensi.
Deeks can do this drive in his sleep, but that's unnecessary now that his adrenaline is pulsing. They are together pretty much every night. His place, her place - as long as they are together. They would have been again last night if he hadn't insisted she go home and get some sleep. She protested, said she would stay, but he sent her away and now even though the alarm has stopped ringing he still hears the sound in his mind.
He and Callen arrive simultaneously. When Sam says he's less than a minute out Callen and Deeks do a first sweep of the perimeter, but they see no movement in the small garden apartment.
As Sam pulls up Deeks and Callen are back around front. He shines his light on the front door, noticing immediately the handprints front and center in what they all immediately presume to be blood. Sam checks the door for trips and triggers. He tries to not notice the fidgeting and shifting that Deeks is doing – that kind of movement doesn't help where explosives are concerned.
It's the longest thirty seconds of Deeks' life.
When Sam gives the all clear they go tactical, drawing weapons and lights and opening the unlocked front door. The apartment is silent and it makes them all uneasy. They determine that the power is off, and Sam makes his way to the closet with the breaker box while Deeks and Callen make their way to Kensi's bedroom. They are clearing the room the best they can in bad lighting when the breaker is flipped back on. Callen hits the light switch on the wall, and they take in the sight in front of them.
"Oh my god," Deeks whispers as his eyes roll over the state of the room. Torn up, up ended, and blood everywhere. Her bed is literally red with blood and he puts his hands on his knees and tries to breathe through his urge to vomit.
"Kens!" Callen yells, desperately hoping she is hiding somewhere waiting for them.
"Holy hell," Sam adds, even though it might have been the exact wrong thing to say.
"Kensi?" Deeks starts yelling, digging through the corners and closets.
"Her phone is in here," Callen tells them, and they check out the bathroom with the door kicked in and her father's knife on the floor, the tub coated in blood that is still draining. Standing between the bathroom and the bedroom and letting his eyes scour for details between one and the other he starts to put a story together in his head.
"So they killed her cameras, breached silently, killed the power, and surprised her in bed," he suggests.
"Her SIG is on the floor. She wakes up, she fights, and she retreats to the bathroom," Sam adds.
"She sends the distress call from here. They kick in the door and struggle," Sam continues, trying to make sense of the scene before them.
"She doesn't leave that knife behind by choice," Deeks says.
"That's a lot of blood," Callen observes looking between the rooms. He doesn't even realize he's speaking out loud.
Sam tries to get them back on track. "So there's a good chance this," he says, gesturing at the bloodstains in the bedroom, "is mostly someone else's."
"No one lives through that," Deeks observes, glad to have a scenario that doesn't involve that being Kensi's blood. He has no idea how that phrase hits his teammates as they can't help but remember the night almost six years ago when those were Kensi's words about Dom's car.
The men make their way back to the living room as they try to figure out what happened next. Deeks is happy to get away from the bedroom that will give him nightmares, not that he imagines sleep coming anytime soon. He's instantly drawn to one piece of furniture noticeably out of place. An arm chair is haphazardly pushed to the side, and it reveals a compartment in the wall he never knew was there. The door to the compartment is wide open, and there is nothing inside. His inspection only yields more questions.
"What would she have in here? Was it something she needed or something the attackers wanted?" Deeks asks the room.
"Her crash bag," Callen says to Sam, who investigates the compartment as well and nods in agreement.
"Yeah, it's the right size and a good location to get to in a hurry," Sam concurs.
"Is that like a go bag?" Deeks asks realizing that in all the years they'd all been a team he's never heard someone mention one.
Callen tries to explain. "It's a crash bag. It's the line of last defense. An untraceable weapon, a new identity, cash to get out of town, a burner phone, some protein bars, maybe a bottle of water and a change of clothes." He looks at Deeks with concern as he cuts to the chase. "It's what an NCIS agent takes when they're burned and they need to disappear forever."
Deeks feels like he can't breathe. "How do you know when you're burned so bad you have to grab a crash bag and go?"
"When a group of trained operatives breach your house in the middle of the night and try to kill you?" Callen isn't being flippant. In the stories and legends where it actually happens you don't get a letter like your credit card information was lost in a hack. It happens fast, and there isn't a moment for hesitation.
Sam tries to get their focus back on the puzzle in front of them. The blood says that someone died in the apartment, but there are no bodies. The agent-needs-assistance signal tells them Kensi needed help. The crash bag is gone. Nothing personal looks like it is missing. There is no sign of her badge. He looks out the window at the street and sees the LAPD arrive, but also the absence of Kensi's car.
"So the question is did she get away, or did they take her?"
As they step outside to catch the police up on what they know, they look at the handprints on the door.
"If she got away we would have heard from her already," Deeks tells them, but Callen's face tells a different story.
"Not necessarily. If she's burned, she's gone. She clearly knows she's in danger. If she thinks she needs to disappear I don't know when we'll hear from her." He lets that sink in and then moves on. "Nell, get a full forensics team to Kensi's place. We need more information to figure out what happened here. And Eric, find Kensi's car," Callen barks instructions to get people moving.