Deeks takes a chance. They all know Kensi was on the streets for a while when she was a teenager. It's so hard to imagine that knowing her now. She opened up one tiny crack's worth when they were working that case in Grant Park and she told him that was where she used to sleep when she was on the street. Maybe it would be a familiar setting for her.
It's just after 11:00 and the darkness covers the park like a blanket. It's a clear night with a few stars visible in the light pollution that is LA. He walks the park in silence, hands in his pockets, trying not to be noticed. He thought about breaking out Artie but decided to go as himself. They have no leads right now, no doors to kick in, no new bad guys they can cuff and question. And he can't just sit at home and think about where she is.
He hopes she's there and also that she isn't. He needs her to be safe, needs to see her with his own eyes. He would love to come around the corner and find her there so he could hold her, protect her. But if she's here at the park and not looking for a way back to him and the team than something much more nefarious is going on, and with Angelo's diabolical brain involved, he knows that could be really, really bad.
He sits on some steps where the park landscapes into terraces and stays still. His knees bent in front of him he rests his elbows on them and waits. He knows it's a long shot. Also, he's had two hours sleep in the last forty hours, and if he's afraid that if he stays still too long he may fall asleep, but he knows if he keeps moving he'll draw attention to himself and lose the element of surprise.
He watches the park come to life with its nighttime inhabitants enforcing the unwritten rules about who can stay where, whose territory is whose. He imagines Kensi here at 15 and his heart hurts. He remembers Kensi telling him he could fool everyone else but he couldn't fool her, in this very spot and smiles at how well she knows him.
He's snapped out of his reverie by a noise across the park. A small commotion has ensued - someone got comfortable is someone else's spot, not uncommon in homeless populations where people struggle with mental illness and addiction. The angry man leans down and pulls the offender up off the ground to move them along, and Deeks hears the unmistakable voice of his partner yelp in pain.
He's on his feet in a heartbeat, taking the short staircase two at a time. When he hits the bottom he's in the circle of lamppost light and his sudden appearance has caught Kensi's eye.
Relief washed over him and he calls to her.
"Kensi!"
She looks at him, but there is no relief in her eyes, just distress - almost despair. She takes in the sight of him, giving herself a second or two to memorize his face. Angelo is in her ear.
Don't forget the consequences of failure. For you and the team you love.
And she runs. She calculates the distance around the water feature at the lowest terrace of the park, and she uses it to create obstacles for him and maximize the distance between them. She's hungry, hasn't slept and is feeling off, not herself. Clear minded, but like her body is sluggish. She knows he can catch her, so she has to be clever. But she knew how to outrun police here when she was a teenager, and maybe she knows some turns and hiding places he doesn't.
She has to keep him safe.
She hears him call her name again, a mix of desperation and elation and disbelief and frustration in his voice. The sound tells her he's closer, she doesn't need to turn around. She ducks into an alley, over a railing near a delivery dock and out the other side back onto the main street while he's still behind the building.
Well at least you're trying. It won't save them if you get caught though.
"Kensi!"
Or so she thought. No time to make a plan, she just turns her feet over to her memory and lets them take her where they remember being safe. She crosses the street and runs into a parking garage, instantly going down into a stairway. This is her best bet. He'll have to choose a floor and guess. She runs down two levels and out into the parking structure itself. She crosses to the west corner and runs into the exit stairs on the far side. She's gasping for air but she's still running.
When she gets back up to street level she runs to the first place that will obscure her movement and settles in. She hides behind a dumpster behind a restaurant almost fainting at the scents still coming from the kitchen. Deliriously hungry, she would call it if she had someone to tell. She waits five minutes, and when she hears nothing she finally moves again in any direction that takes her further from the park.
She felt strangely safe t Grant Park, but should have guessed that Deeks would remember, would find her. Now she doesn't know where to go. She reaches into her pocket to take out the map, not wanting to stray out of bounds for the game, but her pocket is empty. Somewhere along the way it must have fallen. She has a general idea of the boundaries, it was clearly constructed to keep her in rougher parts of town with ample city camera coverage. Now she'll have to be careful about the park and careful about the edges. Her movement zone is starting to close in on her, and she isn't sure how she'll stay hidden.
In the parking garage Kensi has long since fled, Deeks is holding the map he saw her drop in his hand and running at speed. He's called the team, and Sam and Callen are on their way even at this hour in the hopes of finding anything that would help them bring her home. He's checking under cars and behind pillars, anyplace she may have tucked herself to evade him. When the team arrives, he's despondent.
"I can't believe she gave me the slip," Deeks says, so mad he could hit something. Mad that he lost her. Mad that she lost him.
"She knows these streets better than any of us," Callen reminds us. "She had the advantage. How did she look?"
"Not good," Deeks tells them honestly. "She's slower than she should be. If she hadn't been bobbing ad weaving I would have had her." He looks off in the distance finally saying the thing that's eating him from the inside out. "I just can't believe she's running from me."
"Well, that tells us something," Sam tells him. "The only reason she would do that is to protect you, us. She knows something about the game that we don't."
()()()()()()()()
By morning the map is digitized and blown up on the big screen in Ops. The whole team stands in front of the familiar rendering of their city looking for insight into what's happening with Kensi.
"And you're sure she dropped it?" Sam asks.
"I saw it fall out of her pocket." Deeks confirms.
"Then what is it?" Callen wonders out loud.
"She has nothing. No weapon, no money, no transportation, but a map?" Sam points out the absurdity.
They postulate ideas. That she picked it up but it wasn't really hers. That she was using it to look for places to hide.
"Angelo gave it to her." Deeks guesses. "This is the area she's allowed to hide in. He has her playing a game, too. These are her rules. She has to stay in this area."
Nell and Eric begin tapping and typing and the area on the screen inside the boundary marked on the map turns green. Then little objects begin to appear and Nell explains the process.
"Ok, so if that's true and this is the area she's allowed to be in then we have a smaller search area to deal with and that's good. Then we superimpose on that all of the areas that are under city surveillance, commercial security cameras, ATM camera feeds, etc., because she'll want to stay out of sight."
Sections of the map begin to turn red.
"Also, she won't go back to Grant Park. Go ahead and red that, too," Deeks says with frustration. He had a shot at her and lost her and knows she won't give him another chance. His eyes stay fixed on the screen and watches more of the in-bounds area turn red.
"So the south side of the search zone has a lot of camera coverage. Her best chance to stay on the north side of the zone."
"How is he keeping her in the area? What would make her run from us?" Deeks asks, worried and defeated.
"There's only one thing that would keep her away – if she thought we were in danger," Callen says.
"Well she doesn't get to decide for me," Deeks barks, taking out some frustration on the wrong target, but everyone in the room knows he's struggling, and that he loves her. They know that watching her run away from him almost broke him tonight. They give him a free pass.
"Guys," Eric says with expectation. "The algorithm we have looking for Kensi on camera footage just got some hits from last night." He puts some footage up on the screen and they watch Kensi enter the stairway at the parking garage. They see her exiting. They lose her again. Eric strings images together. There are gaps, but the timestamps give Deeks an idea of where he lost her.
Then about seven minutes later there is another clip. Kensi walks in front of a traffic camera. She's lost Deeks and isn't running anymore. She stands in view of the camera and puts her arms in front of her in an 'X'. She speaks and they zoom in a few levels of magnification until they can see her face.
"Stay away," she says or yells or mouths. They can't tell since there's no sound. Then she does it again.
"She's warning us. Angelo set a trap. She's the bait and she knows it," Callen tells the room.
"I don't care," Deeks tells them. "I have to find her."
"No one's stopping, Deeks," Granger tells him. "She's doing what she thinks is best for us. We're going to do what's best for her. We just need to be careful if we're all going to get out of this alive."