AN: I am so sorry this took so long to post. Right after chapter three went up, I had a minor family emergency (well, more than minor, but not quite 'emergency' status, but that's the most suitable term I can come up with). I've been dealing with that for the past several weeks and just haven't had time to write, or been in the head space to be capable of writing. I'm so glad I managed to post chapter 3 before this all happened, so at least there were no ongoing doubts about Deeks's loyalties... I really want to say thank you to everyone who has been reading and leaving such wonderful comments so far...I will catch up on replying to reviews as soon as I can, but I thought everyone would prefer I focus on the chapter first. I've really enjoyed writing this story so far and think I'm in a place to get on track with regular updates - next chapter is more than half finished and I'm hopeful to update again in the next week.
The moment Kensi catches sight of her partner over Callen and Sam's shoulders, she feels like she can breathe again. She'd played her part at the boatshed, and she knew he was playing his part as well. And she knew they'd both done a damn good job doing their jobs. But she hated not being there to back him up after. She hated even more that none of the team was there backing him up; that none of the team even knew what was really going on. To make this work, he needed to be isolated. Needed to look vulnerable and rejected by his team. She'd ensured that. The last part of her job had been making a scene, leaving the boatshed and making sure Sam and Callen left with her, leaving Deeks alone.
He walks in the Mission at Vance's side now, looking only a little worse for wear. They knew it could happen at any time, so she's relieved it was only hours and not days, but she's instantly worried he's hurt. His face is bruised, he's bleeding, his shirt is torn, and she's pretty sure he's limping.
Quickly, she stands, steps around Callen and Sam, who are still crouched on the floor in front of her, and hurries over to meet him.
"Are you okay?" She asks.
He offers her a lopsided grin. "I had everything under control."
Considering his appearance, she doesn't quite believe him, but she'll let him have this one. "Is it over?"
Deeks nods.
"It's over," Vance answers for him with a proud and grateful smile. He pats Deeks on the shoulder. "He did a fantastic job. We gained far more information than we could ever have hoped for."
Deeks looks proud of his praise, but also a little embarrassed by the attention. Kensi smiles at both the praise and his reaction to it. She reaches her hand out to check out the ripped areas of his shirt, or more importantly to determine how bad the damage is underneath. The rip over his chest seems mostly superficial, but she's pretty sure the rip over his arm is responsible for the dried blood further down his arm.
"You're sure you're okay?" She asks worriedly.
"I'm good, Kens," he soothes, and wraps his arms around her. Despite the fact that they are standing in the middle of the Mission, and despite the fact that she knows her director and assistant director are watching and Hetty, Callen and Sam, Kensi snakes her arms around his middle and hugs him back.
"I'm so glad you're okay," she whispers.
He releases a hot breath along the side of her neck. "Trust me, Kens, I'm not going anywhere. I've got too much to live for."
She smiles into his chest. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
She presses herself a little closer, smiling when he hugs her that much closer. Despite the fact that she knew what was going on all day and never once actually doubted him, she still had to pull up all the right emotions to make her side of the show believable. Just as she knew he had to do the same. And right now they just need a moment to heal from that.
"I hated saying those things to you," Deeks finally whispers.
She nods. "I know. Me too. The man I love definitely exists."
"He does," Deeks says with more integrity than she can ever remember hearing. "And I would never take advantage of you or us or your love and trust," he promises in a moment of uncharacteristic seriousness.
"I know, Deeks. I know," she assures.
"And one more thing." He pulls back far enough to meet her eyes. "I most definitely plan on marrying you."
She smiles at that. "Good. Cause I'm not letting you off the hook that easily."
He smirks and ducks his head to peck her lips.
"If you two are done, the rest of us would appreciate an explanation," Granger cuts in, dryly.
Vance nods towards the stairs. "Why don't we meet upstairs in OPs in five minutes, and we'll go over everything? Eric should be ready for us by then." He, Granger and Hetty head for the stairs.
Kensi smiles as she recognizes the gesture for what it is; time for the team to regain their bearings.
Deeks kisses her one more time and then releases her. He takes a breath as he turns to face Callen and Sam. "Look guys, I'm sorry things had to go down that way. We couldn't risk bringing you in."
Kensi takes her place beside him. "When you got here, they were just demanding that I tell them what was really going on," she tells him, wanting to make it clear that the other half of their team didn't believe in his treason for very long.
Callen holds out his hand, accepting his apology. "That was a very impressive performance," he tells Deeks.
Deeks accepts with a nod. He shakes Callen's hand. "It had to be. We knew we'd only get once chance to pull this off."
Sam's next, also holding out his hand. "Don't ever do that again."
Deeks shook his head as he shook Sam's hand. "Nope. Playing dirty cop once was bad enough."
Sam sighs. "I know it was designed so we would believe it, but I still feel-"
Deeks shakes his head and holds up a hand. "We counted on the emotional response of you sympathizing with Kensi. We knew if I admitted it to her and she reacted...the way she did...that you would be forced to believe it. We banked on your emotional responses to Kensi not distrust in me."
"And that that was the only way you'd believe it," Kensi adds. They'd had many a discussion about the possibilities. And it was one of the two arguments that had allowed him to bring her in on the assignment in the first place. That, and threatening to quit.
"You're right," Callen says. "We were running every piece of information. We were determined you were wrongly accused right up until the moment Kensi apparently didn't believe it."
"We're good undercover interrogation choreographers," Deeks chirps.
Kensi laughs and bumps his hip with hers. "That we are, partner."
"Come on, I know you guys want some answers. Let's go upstairs and give you some."
They follow Callen and Sam up the stairs to OPs.
Nell practically throws herself at Deeks the moment they walk through the doors.
"I'm so sorry, Deeks," She says, throwing her arms around him tightly. "I'm so sorry that I even believed it for a second."
Deeks cautiously pats her on the back. "It's okay, Velma, you were supposed to believe it."
Nell sniffs and pulls away from him.
Deeks walks over to Eric, who looks exhausted, but relieved. Deeks shakes his hand. "Hey man, I hear you were running point today. Thanks for getting me out safe."
Eric nods. "Hetty told me what was going on right before. Thanks for not being a spy."
Deeks laughs. "No problem."
They gather around the table in the centre of the room.
"Okay," Vance starts. "I'm sorry for the deception today, but it was for a worthy cause, I assure you. As Detective Deeks has explained, your reactions and belief in his guilt was key. We needed to made it appear to each party present that you all believed in his guilt. To do so, we designed a scenario where the hope was you would have an emotional reaction to Agent Blye's reaction. And we were successful."
"Successful in doing what, exactly?" Callen asks.
"Forcing a mole to identify himself."
"Was it Winters?" Kensi asks.
Vance shakes his head.
"I'm almost disappointed. He deserves to have his ass handed to him after what he said about me."
"Don't worry, Kens, I think that kick you gave him was punishment enough," Sam points out.
Callen laughs. "He couldn't even walk to the couch. He practically had to be carried."
Deeks laughs. "Is that what happened to him? I was wondering why he was walking strange, but I couldn't ask because I was stuck pretending to be trying to save my own ass."
"He deserved it," Kensi declares. "Plus, he tried to stop me from getting into the room with you, so technically it was part of my cover."
"And that's the story we will go with, Agent Blye," Vance says, though he's smiling as he says it. "But let's start at the beginning. About five years ago, it came to my attention that we may have a problem. There were three separate and relatively minor security breaches reported that year. All seemed isolated and insignificant, but a conversation with the director of homeland security and the FBI confirmed they had similar breaches. I began to investigate the possibility of not only an individual mole, but an intelligence hacking network operating not only within NCIS, but within multiple federal agencies." He pauses for a moment to allow that to sink in.
"I spent several months brainstorming with other directors. I also spoke with Hetty during a visit here. Hetty suggested a mole will always find another mole."
"So you gave him Deeks."
"I chose a handful of agents and intelligence assets, as well as Detective Deeks, to take part in this assignment. We knew it would be quite a long term operation and may never result in anything. But we chose people we could trust and started dropping breadcrumbs. At first, the idea was to identify trusted individuals and augment their backgrounds in the hope they would be approached and recruited." Vance pauses for a moment to allow that to sink in.
"But we didn't know how intricate the web," Hetty steps in. "For all we knew, the recruitment process could have started long before the moles are already working in positions of power or access to information."
Vance nods. "Which is why Hetty and I began discussing other options."
"A mole will always find another mole," Callen repeated Vance's earlier statement.
Vance nods again.
"Exactly, Mr. Callen," Hetty says.
"Deeks was one of four individuals chosen to be part of this part of the assignment," Vance explains. "Of course, his position and background made him the most probable to be identified by the responsible network. We tweaked a few things about his background in the electronic records and planted a few things. The hope was a mole would identify him-or-herself to Deeks or one of our targets. We made sure to provide enough extra details to make them each look suspicious if investigated."
Sam chuckles. "The bag of documents."
Vance nods. "Deeks's idea. I was all for it. We set him up with fake IDs and a small amount of cash."
"I made sure to press my fingers really carefully in hopes if they were ever dug up there would be prints. Then I buried them one night around three in the morning."
"What do the codes mean?" Eric asks, looking almost desperate. "I've used every encryption program I have access to, even some I don't technically have access to and-"
Deeks winces. "Yeah, about that... Sorry, man, the codes don't mean anything. I spent a really long time designing codes that looked like they mean something, but they really are just random strings to throw people off."
Eric looks like he's feeling physical pain.
"Sorry," Deeks says again.
"The account numbers are just random offshore accounts," Vance cuts in. "All in all, a great idea."
"It was really hard not to cheer when they walked in with those evidence bags," Deeks says. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for that to pay off?"
Kensi laughs. "Now I can stop listening to you complain about that stupid bush."
He bumps her hip with his own. "Reminded me of the bag every time I got home."
Vance smiles, but moves on. "At first, we singled out one agent and two intelligence analysts we knew we could trust, but after several months I realized they didn't have the backgrounds needed to catch the suspicion of someone looking into them. Around that time, I was spending a lot of time visiting this office. I saw the trust being built with your liaison officer. After Deeks risked his reputation and position with us and the LAPD on our behalf by pretending to shoot an unarmed man during the Clarence Fisk case, I saw an opportunity. Because, as came up today, Detective Deeks's background can be...manipulated...to fit the kind of story we were wanting to tell." He glances at Deeks, who nods. "But it meant some sacrifice was in order..."
XX
November 2011.
'You've got a home with NCIS. I see that now.'
'I gotta to be honest; I think it's where I belong.'
'You're still one of mine...'
Deeks ran his hand through his hair as his mind worried over the words he'd exchanged with Bates the week before. In the days since his successful assignment to 'shoot' an unarmed man and get himself re-assigned back to LAPD, Deeks had easily been re-reassigned back to NCIS without any hesitation from LAPD.
'I thought they'd fight a lot harder to keep you,' Bates had said to him before he'd known the whole thing had been a setup engineered by NCIS. 'Apparently, you don't belong there either.'
The words hadn't caused Deeks to stress at the time because he had known if the situation had been real, NCIS would have fought to keep him. Just like he knew once everything was out in the open and LAPD learned he actually hadn't shot an unarmed man, if LAPD had fought against him returning to NCIS that NCIS would have fought to get him back.
But once LAPD knew the whole story they hadn't batted an eyelash in sending him back to NCIS. Deeks was grateful Bates recognized he had finally found a home for himself. But still. After all his years of service, LAPD didn't fight to keep him at all.
LAPD wasn't home.
Which was why Deeks had been up since four in the morning. And was why he'd spent the last several hours sitting on his couch, holding the NCIS paperwork Hetty had given him six months earlier.
"What do you think I should do?" He asked.
Monty, who had spent the last hour laying on the floor, head on his paws, staring at Deeks, lifted his head and wagged his tail at Deeks's voice.
Deeks sighed and couldn't resist the urge to smile at his dog. "You're cute, but you're not helpful."
Monty kept wagging his tail.
"I found a home with NCIS, even Bates sees that," he said out loud, telling himself he was telling Monty and not talking to himself. "But Bates said I was still one of his..." Deeks sighed and ran his hand through his hair again. "And you have no idea what I'm saying, do you?"
Monty got up and walked over to the couch. He sat in front of Deeks and cocked his head ever so slightly.
Deeks smiled. "I know you want to understand." He showed the dog the papers in his hands. "Hetty gave me these before she left for Romania. I wasn't ready to sign them, but she said to keep them for when I was ready." He paused. "Am I ready now?"
Monty cocked his head further.
Deeks reached forward to rub Monty's ears. "I think I'm ready now," he whispered, as if telling Monty a deeply held secret.
"LAPD didn't blink when I wanted to go back to NCIS. But NCIS would have fought to get me back. That's home, you know?" In the last week he had easily fallen back into the rhythm of working with his team at NCIS. His partner was still a little mad at him for deceiving her, but he had caught her smiling when he'd unpacked his box of things and returned them to his desk and locker. Sam and Callen, if anything, respected him just a little bit more now that he had proven his loyalty in taking the side of NCIS.
"And I didn't hesitate to trick everyone at LAPD last week. I would only do that for NCIS."
Monty whined and leaned forward to rest his chin on Deeks's knee.
"I guess that's my answer, huh?"
Monty chuffed, causing Deeks to laugh. "I swear, you are the smartest dog in the world."
Monty whined again and lifted his head.
"I know. You want to go for a walk, huh?"
Monty jumped up, tail wagging excitedly.
Deeks smiled. "Okay. One thing first, and then we'll go for a walk." He placed the NCIS application down on the coffee table and grabbed a pen. And then, with Monty as his witness, he signed his name.
With a satisfied nod, he left the paperwork on the table and took Monty for a quick walk. When he returned home, he showered and dressed, and then he retrieved the paperwork from the coffee table and headed for the door.
It was still early when he arrived at work. His team was not in yet, but that was what he had been hoping for. Hetty, also what's he'd been hoping for, was already at her desk.
She looked up when he arrived, and though he didn't look directly at her as he summoned his nerves, he knew she was tracking his movements. When he was ready, he took a breath and walked over to her desk.
"Good morning, Mr. Deeks," she greeted.
"Morning, Hetty," he responded, motioning to the chair before her desk. "You have a minute?"
"For you, I have several minutes."
He allowed himself a smile as he settled himself into the chair.
"What can I do for you this morning?"
He hesitated for a moment, but in the end realized Hetty both respected openness and probably somehow already knew what he wanted. Mind made up, he took a breath. "I want to become an NCIS agent."
As expected, Hetty didn't look surprised at all. But she did smile, and that gave him confidence.
"I know I wasn't ready when we talked about this last time," he said, "But that you thought so highly of me meant more than I can say, Hetty. I held onto the application, like you said. And I've given it a lot of thought. And after last week... I know where my home is now." He laid the signed paperwork onto her desk. "So, if the offer is still open, I'd like to take it."
Hetty was still smiling. "Mr. Deeks, nothing would give me more pleasure right now than to accept your application."
Deeks smiled back at her for a moment, but something in her tone and expression niggled at him. His smile fell away. "I'm sensing a but..."
Hetty nodded. "Very perceptive, Mr. Deeks." She took a moment and then leaned forward, elbows on her desk. "You also have remarkable timing, I must say."
"Timing?"
"Mmm-hmm." She nods again. "I will explain that in a moment." Again, she paused for a moment. "Mr. Deeks, I will happily accept your application this morning and ensure you are accepted as a fully fledged NCIS agent as quickly as possible if that is what you want. But I would ask that you first listen to a request we have of you before you make your decision."
"We?"
Hetty nodded. "Yes, we. Myself and Director Vance."
Surprised, Deeks sat up a little straighter. "I'm listening."
"The director was quite impressed with both your skills and your loyalty to NCIS after last week. As a result, he and I have discussed the possibility of asking you to take part in another assignment, only this one will be much longer term."
"How long?"
"We're not sure. Likely a year, possibly longer."
Deeks exhaled slowly. He'd grown to count on the stability of making it home most nights. "That's a long time to be away, but if-"
Hetty shook her head, cutting him off. "You wouldn't be away. You would remain here, being yourself, just as you are now."
Deeks felt his brow furrow. "I don't understand."
"Let me start from the beginning. We suspect there is a network of individuals working within various federal agencies who are providing secure information to outside sources. So far, the security breaches have been few and relatively minor, but we both know that's not likely to continue forever."
"I'm happy to help with that, Hetty, but I don't understand how I fit in?"
"What's that saying Mr. Callen and Mr. Hanna have been going on about all week? Like recognizes like."
Deeks nodded.
"From my experience, a mole will identify another mole; a traitor another traitor."
"So, you want me to be...a mole?"
Hetty smiled and nodded. "In a matter of speaking. The director and I have identified a handful of individuals within NCIS who can be trusted and who work in roles that allow them access to a variety of information. These individuals have already been approached for this assignment. But they aren't in the unique position you are in, Mr. Deeks. Your background and your current position as our liaison officer has aspects we just cannot duplicate in another planted NCIS employee. Which is why I suggested you to the director."
"I look suspicious," he said flatly.
"You can look suspicious," she corrected gently. "With just a little effort, we can make that work to our advantage. We may even make you look desirable enough for a mole to approach and either try to recruit or blackmail."
"What kind of effort?"
"Unfortunately, it would involve asking you to remain an LAPD detective and our liaison officer for an indefinite period of time. And when you are questioned about your reasons not to join NCIS, be vague. Your liaison position gives you unique access to local and federal information." She paused and offered him a wry smile. "As you know, it also tends to make you...underestimated by many, especially other federal agencies. Not a redeeming quality for you, I'm sure, but for a mole looking to recruit another, this is a very desirable quality. Also, if investigating you as a potential mole, it looks like a desirable position to be in." She paused for a moment and smiled sadly at his signed NCIS application. "I'd like nothing more than to process this application this morning, Mr. Deeks. This is not a request I make lightly."
Deeks took a deep breath before nodding. "I can do this."
Hetty nodded gratefully at him. "Are you certain, Mr. Deeks? This could take years. And it may never result in anything. There will be more active investigations ongoing as well. I want you to be clear that I cannot provide you with any timeframe."
"I'm clear on that, Hetty," he responded. "This is too important to let go." He swallowed down his disappointment and shrugged. "It's not like it makes a big difference, right? I'll still be working here."
"That you will, Mr. Deeks." Hetty lifted his NCIS application off her desk and placed it carefully in her drawer. "And as soon as this assignment is over, I will make sure these are filed."
Deeks exhaled slowly as he watched Hetty close her desk drawer, his NCIS Agent future closing with it. "Can I tell Kensi this time?"
Hetty shook her head. "Not at this time. Right now this is just between you, the director and myself."
XX
For a moment, there is silence as the implication of the story set in.
And then Sam claps Deeks on the back. "We had no idea."
Deeks nods. "That was the point."
Callen gave him an approving nod, but then turned his attention to Vance and Hetty. "You delayed him becoming an agent for that long? Almost four and a half years?"
"We didn't think it would take this long, Agent Callen," Vance answers first.
"The length of time didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now," Deeks says softly but firmly. "Even if I'd known then how long it would take, it wouldn't have changed my decision."
"The longer it took, the more we realized how intricate the web," Hetty adds. "And with that realization, Mr. Deeks's assignment was more important than ever."
Vance nods his agreement. "About a year after we started, it became clear the situation was more significant than previously believed. Though we weren't able to identify a mole to a specific person, we were able to identify several sets of security breaches to relatively specific position levels and locations. We theorized this network had been operating for years, probably a decade or more, setting themselves up in strategic positions. We had no idea how large of a scale the network was. Or how much information they had filed away over the year. And then Agent McGee, out of the Navy Yard, noticed something interesting," he says. "He noticed each official investigation into each security breach was being monitored. It was then we realized we needed to be more active in our setup." He nods to Deeks.
"We'd discussed how my past could look suspicious, but we needed a way to make it a little more obvious that I had purposefully imbedded myself in NCIS if someone came looking. I came up with the idea to approach Victor Janklow. After a year and a half in prison, and no longer on the drugs, Janklow had evened out a lot. He agreed to make an 'official'," Deeks makes quotations with his fingers, "statement about 'Jason Wyler' if anyone ever came asking."
"We also set up an account in Mr. Janklow's name and make regular deposits from an offshore account," Hetty added.
Callen nods. "To make it look like Deeks was paying him off."
"Exactly, Mr. Callen. Once we realized how deep this went, we knew once we could start a more active investigation that someone involved in the network would inevitably involve themselves with the investigation. We needed to make it lead to Mr. Deeks when that happened."
"So, I'm assuming you didn't murder NCIS Intelligence Analyst Christopher Boyd?" Nell speaks up.
Deeks laughs. "Not exactly."
"But how did you fake the forensics? And the camera shots?" Eric asks. "Because Nell and I looked into the video footage they have and-"
"It's real," Deeks cuts him off. "I was there. Had to be careful not to let any of the cameras catch my face, but the footage is all real and untampered. It had to be."
"But..." Nell shakes her head. "If you were there... I don't understand."
Deeks and Kensi exchange smiles. Even Vance smiles.
Callen furrows his brow. "What are we missing?"
"What you're missing, Agent Callen, is that Christopher Boyd is alive and well." Vance gives everyone a moment to let his words sink in. "He agreed to be part of this operation is currently on an extended vacation in an undisclosed location. We waited until the tactical class was a couple days away, then we had Boyd contact the taskforce saying he had information. Then we had Blye and Deeks register for the course and fly into Washington for the weekend. Blye went out with Abby Friday night, leaving Deeks several hours to stage a murder. We had Gibbs's team 'investigate,' so it's officially an open case."
"And I really did get rid of my sweatshirt to get rid of evidence," Deeks adds. "I stuffed it into a sewer drain...I'm actually disappointed they didn't find it. It was only two blocks away. I made it easy."
Kensi rolls her eyes. "Get over it."
"Hey, I'm out a perfectly good sweatshirt for nothing."
"You purposefully chose your least favourite before we left," Kensi counters.
"No, my least favourite sweatshirt is the green one."
"It's totally the black one."
Deeks shakes his head. "Nope, the green one. Hate it. And it's scratchy. At least the black one was more comfortable."
"If you two can come back to topic..." Sam prompts, though he's smiling.
"Technically, we're not completely off topic," Deeks counters. "This is tangentially related."
"Let's try to stay a little more directly related," Callen says.
"Okay, Kens and went to Washington. I pretended to kill NCIS Intelligence Analyst Christopher Boyd, who is in on the whole thing. I made sure to get caught on camera, but not enough so my face was visible. Director Vance had a trusted team investigate," he make air quotes, "who are also in on it, so they could control the level of information released; video, pacific sand on the body, etcetera."
"So," Sam says, "To summarize you started this thing four years ago. Didn't become an NCIS Agent. Augmented your background. Buried some suspicious documents. Made a deal with Victor Janklow. Pretended to murder an Intelligence Analyst. Scared the hell out of us this morning. Am I missing anything?" He glances at his partner.
"What about you friend?" Callen asks. "Detective..."
"Detective Phillip Monroe," Nell jumps in, her memory of the day's events as sharp as ever.
Kensi leans into her partner for support as Deeks releases a sigh. "It's like they said. He was undercover. Joint LAPD-FBI operation. His cover was blown and he was killed. LAPD blames the FBI. FBI blames LAPD. No one really knows where the leak came from."
"We suspect the leak came from the information hacking organization that we have been targeting," Hetty says, "But that has yet to be confirmed."
Deeks runs a hand through his hair. "It was months after he died that we realized the connection. Like I said, Eric was looking into the investigation regularly for me. And one day he mentioned that he noticed he wasn't the only one monitoring the investigation."
"And that's when we knew this was finally coming close to an end," Vance says. "After Hetty's information was compromised, we had confirmation they were operating on the west coast. There was a lull and then two minor security breaches, which we believed were related, but weren't certain. After Detective Deeks reported what Eric had told him, we believed we had enough information to move forward. The NCIS-FBI taskforce had already been assembled after Hetty's information was compromised a year and a half ago. They hadn't made much progress, of course, so we threw them some bread crumbs, knowing their investigation was being closely monitored."
"If they found Deeks, so would this organization," Sam summarized.
"Exactly, Mr. Hanna," Hetty confirmed.
"We made sure there were a few minor inconsistencies that would be caught in initial screening so that he would be investigated further. It was a long process, of course. And when they seemed to have stalled, we finally moved forward and staged the murder of Intelligence Analyst Christopher Boyd. The investigation into Deeks was monitored the entire time," Vance explains. "And this morning, we called for available teams to be at the boatshed."
"You knew the mole would be in the boatshed," Granger concludes.
"Exactly, Owen," Hetty says. "Of course, that meant Mr. Deeks needed to look guilty. And isolated. Ms. Blye was to get herself into the interrogation room alone with him so they could have the conversation they did, with the intention that the team would sympathize with her reaction long enough to believe Mr. Deeks was, in fact, guilty. Then she was to leave the boatshed and take Mr. Callen and Mr. Hanna with her."
"Henrietta had already left," Vance adds. "Deeks was to offer a deal, which would result in transport to the LA Field Office."
"And leaving me alone with the mole," Deeks adds. "Because he wouldn't be able to resist."
"That was the plan... But did it work?"
"After four and a half years, of course it worked!" He says with a laugh.
Beside him, Kensi laughs as well. "Who was it?"
Deeks bumps her hip with his. "We have to tell the story in order. No skipping to the last page."
She bumps his hip back, harder than he had hers. "I've been with you on this for over a year. It's not exactly skipping to the last page for me."
"When did you get brought in?" Sam and Callen ask at the same time.
"Ah, partners in sync," Deeks teases.
"Why not from the beginning?" Sam asks.
Kensi glances between Hetty and Deeks as Deeks sighs.
"That," Deeks begins, "Is a very long story..."