Sam, Callen and Deeks are in the waiting room at Pacific Medical Center waiting for news. A nurse comes to tell them a doctor will be out soon just to keep them from coming to the desk one more time to ask.
"We're prepping her for a quick procedure. It will be a couple hours before you can see her but she's going to be fine."
"Fine?" Deeks asks, confirming he really heard it.
"Well, we'll reevaluate after her procedure, but yes. I believe she'll make a full recovery."
"Did her blood work come back?" Callen asks.
The doctor gave a quizzical look. "Her bloodwork looks good. Normal. Should we be looking for something?"
"She looked sick, feverish before she got hit by the car."
The doctor nodded and gestured to a corner with chairs and invited them to sit with her.
"That's the infection, it's severe, severe enough that it would have caused fever, chills, dizziness, general weakness. After the procedure we'll start her on a full slate of IV antibiotics. When we combine that with an extended oral antibiotic cocktail, I'm hopeful that will do the trick."
"What infection? And what procedure? I'm sorry. I think we need you to rewind," Deeks tells her, his mind finally accepting that Kensi will be alright and starting to actually hear the other things she's saying.
The doctor smiles a compassionate smile. She tells them there are a series of wounds on Kensi's back, each made with a jagged blade of some kind. They are deep enough to be painful and to bleed a lot, and were stitched with rudimentary technique. X-rays revealed that two of the wounds had small metal devices inserted. They are high on her back, where she could never have reached them.
The wounds were never dressed. The remnants of her clothes and the condition of her back imply that she put her. Some of them will scar. It looks like she put her shirt on over the cuts and that they bled and stuck to her clothing, opened when she moved, and bled again. They are all infected. They will likely scar.
"We're going to open the ones where something was inserted and remove the objects. There isn't any plausible medical reason for them. Then we'll clean the wounds, and start treatment for the infection. I've never seem a skin infection advance this quickly. It was almost as if it was accelerated with something."
"And the impact from the car?" Sam asks.
"A bump on the head. She took the impact mostly on her left side. Her shoulder looks bruised, her hip is black and blue, some scrapes from the pavement, but we don't see anything dangerous from the car. She'll be sore, for sure, but she'll be fine."
"We need those devices when you remove them," Callen tells her.
"Why?" the doctor asks.
"Because someone did this to her, and I'm hoping they help us find them."
Deeks exhales a long breath to organize his thoughts. He is overtaken by an idea that he can't shake. Maybe there was no toxin all along.
"One more thing," he gets the doctor's attention as he pulls out the syringe. "Can you have someone run a test and determine what's in this syringe? With caution. We think it might be dangerous." He holds up his LAPD badge. "It's for an ongoing investigation into Agent Blye's abduction."
"Right away. We'll treat it as evidence."
Callen's phone rings and he talks to Nell. Eric identified the IP address for the signal that was broadcasting into Kensi's earwig. They have a location. Callen tells Deeks to stay with Kensi and he and Sam head for the car.
It takes twenty minutes to get there, and after a brief look at the blueprints and confirmation that there are people inside, they decide they can't wait anymore. The pick the lock on the door, and breach with speed. There is a firefight that ensues, with well-trained shooters on both sides, but in the end Sam and Callen take out the two men there.
They compare them to the pictures they have and identify the pair as two more former agents. There's no sign of Angelo. They comb the scene for tech and connect Eric to it right away so he can begin to process of reviewing laptop content while the actual device is on its way to him. Time is of the essence, and getting Angelo is the best way to make sure Kensi stays safe.
At the hospital, Deeks is escorted to Kensi's room. She's asleep, but it's just sedatives and topical anesthetics and they expect she'll be awake soon. He pulls up a chair so he's right by her face, determined to be the first thing she sees when she comes around.
The doctor stops by. She has two plastic vials, one device removed from Kensi's back safely stored in each. She also has some paperwork, some of it chain of custody documentation for the case and some of a report on the syringe. She has a larger case with the syringe inside, now empty, and a solemn look on her face.
"It was a neuro-toxin. At that dosage it would be certain death. And certain agony. If someone had given that to Ms. Blye she would have died in a matter of hours, and it would have been terrible."
Deeks is sick to his stomach, and needs to sit back down. There are a hundred scenarios that would have put that syringe in his hand, injecting Kensi to save her only to watch her in unspeakable agony and fear for hours until she drew her last breath. Today she almost died by neurotoxin, by RDX explosives, and by getting hit by a car. Even by Kensi Blye standards that's a pretty bad day.
He calls Nell and she sends Castor to the hospital. He picks up the items delivered by the doctor so that the tech team can figure out what it all means and how it comes together. Deeks wants to stay on the investigation, but he knows he can't. He knows that the only thing he can think about is Kensi, and being in proximity to Paul Angelo when they find him will only cost him his badge.
He gets to the point waiting for her to wake up where he thinks that his badge for Angelo's life is a good trade.
And then a sound from her throat and the twitch from her hand bring him back to better place. The best place. The only place he wants to be – looking into Kensi's eyes.
He starts speaking the moment she twitches, to calm her as she comes around.
"You're safe. The whole team is safe. The explosives are gone. The necklace is gone. You're going to be alight, promise. I promise, you're safe."
By the time her eyes open all he sees is love and relief. And then a beat passes and her eyes fill with tears.
"Hey, baby, it's ok. Everything is ok."
She doesn't sob, but the tears are a steady stream. Even as she nods in agreement and understanding that the danger is behind them, she can't stop the tears from falling quietly. She's on her side, and he comes right next to her. He puts his forehead to hers, and despite the difference in the angles it's comforting. His tears fall, too.