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Chapter 2: Big Problems for the Small Analyst
A/N: This story is based on the two teaser photos for the episode "Third Choir" and the one of Callen where it looks like he is trying to match Deeks' hair styling. Some of the dialogue from previous canon episodes are used here. Parts of this story are condensed from other stories that I have already posted. I hope you enjoy it.
A/N 2: I know that this chapter is longer than usual, but Nell has got a whole lot to tell Nate about what was going on the past couple of months at the OSP.
Dr. Nate Getz looked at Nell, wondering what could be troubling the woman so much that she would choose a location to meet with him where she was actually hiding from the rest of her team. Maybe the situation at the Office of Special Projects was worse than what he was led to believe.
"You said you felt that watching the water had a calming effect on you. Why don't we walk down closer to where the waves are running up on the sand, and you might be able to allow them to drag some of your problems out to sea."
Nell agreed. "Let me go to my car and get the blanket. Then we can sit down on the beach and neither of us will get our clothes too dirty or full of sand."
Nell pulled out an old, green, army-type blanket from the back of her car, shook it out a couple of times and then folded it over her arm, as she joined Nate in slowly walking across the sand in the direction of the water.
They walked together for a few moments in silence. Nate's first question to her completely surprised her, as she stumbled and almost dropped the blanket.
"Nell, are you worried about them knowing you are meeting with me because of what is going on with the rest of the team, or is it something going on with you that you just don't want them to know about?"
"A little bit of both, I guess. But I really don't know which one concerns me more right now. The whole team seemed to be off just a little bit, and that includes me."
"When did you first start feeling this way?"
"You've had a look at our action reports, haven't you?"
"Is there any specific one to which you are referring?"
Nell hesitated a moment, her eyes focused on the sand just in front of her. "For me it started right after Granger took Kensi with him to Afghanistan. You have no idea how often Deeks tried to find out from Eric and me where Kensi had gone. At first we didn't know, and could tell him that honestly. But after a while, when the two of them had filed some of their early reports, we had to lie to him. All he wanted to know was where she was and if she was safe. Any good partner would want to know that. But he got nothing. I felt terrible for lying to him or watching his face as I told him that I couldn't tell him. Hetty wouldn't let me."
"I can see the conflict it would cause in you, your concern for one of your teammates and your loyalty to your boss."
"I don't know, Nate. It seemed like Hetty enjoyed playing with Deeks' feelings. She gave the two of them satellite phones for Christmas. It seemed like a great idea, but the two of them could never get on at the same time to talk. They would text a lot, and after that Deeks appeared a whole lot happier for just a short time, but then the deeper depression would set in because she wasn't here for him to hold, and he couldn't even talk to her."
"Was it that obvious up in ops for the two of you."
"Well, since we were one agent down with Kensi gone, sometimes Deeks was partnered up with both Sam and Callen. He told me he felt like he never fit in when they did that. I don't know if anyone said anything to Hetty, but all of a sudden I was promoted again to agent status and partnered up with Deeks, at least for the most part, but I also worked with Sam and Callen for a few cases. Now I know I told you that I would like to be a full time agent, sometime in the future, but not now, not like this. After Kensi came back and was on desk duty and I was sent out with "her" partner, I came back and told her the same thing. I want it on my own, not because someone else is gone. Living like that is like tiptoeing through a mine field, always second guessing everything you do, for fear it is gonna blow up in your face and set you back."
"Didn't Hetty see that, or couldn't you go and talk to her?"
"Who can really talk to her, when she wants to stonewall people? Callen tried to find out about Afghanistan, and he was shut out. Every time Deeks asked about it, Hetty turned his requests aside. The Duchess of Deception was working way too hard to protect Jack Simon from being assassinated by the CIA, ...or Kensi, as she sought out the 'White Ghost' to complete her mission, ...or the rest of the team here in LA, to keep us from falling completely apart, ...but most of all, herself, as she was butting heads with the top officials in at least two federal agencies, perhaps even more. And she was always doing it by going back to her old ways, not by telling the truth, but by spinning whatever story would be most believable at the time being."
"You're sure of this?"
"I caught her twice where her stories didn't match up. I didn't say anything, so I don't know if she found me out on this. On one I went back and did a quick edit to make the facts match her story. It wasn't much, but it could trip her up. With the other one there was no way to edit out the discrepancy. If someone catches it, I have no idea how she will explain her way out of it."
"God, Nell, you are changing official documents. I seem to recall something like that, in itself, is a crime for which you can be dismissed, even sent to prison."
"Been there, done that, won't be the last time, either. The longer you stay in this game, the deeper you sink into the mire of illegality. You tell me that you haven't done something similar in writing up psychological evaluations, where you added something that wasn't there or took out something that was. I'm not accusing you, I'm just saying..."
"Okay, I see what you are getting at."
"Did you fully understand what was going on with Kensi's rescue in Afghanistan?"
"I read a little bit about it."
"You need to read the full action reports. Even those don't tell the whole story. I'll get you access to them tomorrow morning. You really need to understand all that was going on over there if you want to help the team, especially Sam, Kensi, and Deeks."
"What do you mean?"
"I can't begin to tell you, because they are not my stories to tell. After you read everything, I will talk to you about my role in it. I'm ashamed at some of the things I did and the repercussions that resulted from them."
"Nell..."
"Just read them, Nate, and talk with us afterward. We all need to have these feelings become less painful somehow."
"Anything else you want to tell me now?"
"Just the whole narco-sub fiasco. Hetty had been recalled to Washington to answer charges about what she and the team did in Afghanistan. There was some talk about there being a leak somewhere in the office here, but that has never been confirmed. I would put my money on Granger, but he told Hetty he didn't do it."
"Do you believe him?"
"I don't know what to believe where he is concerned. Hetty told me that I would make the decisions on the day to day operations of the team, and she would talk to me every day to monitor what I was doing. Then Granger marched in here, telling everyone that he had been appointed as Hetty's replacement. Hetty must have known that this might happen, because she gave me access to most of her files, and showed me how to work around Granger in a short letter she left me."
"From what I heard you did a fantastic job at that."
"Well, somebody had to do it. When Callen and Sam went missing on the narco-sub, Granger appointed a DEA agent, Talia Del Compo, as the lead agent on the case. I mean, she worked with Deeks on one previous case; that was the sum of her experience working with us, and Granger makes her the lead agent. He wouldn't listen to any of the intel that Eric and I had developed. He was gonna prove that he knew better. I don't know if you read the sanitized versions of the action reports."
"Sanitized version?"
"The ones we all wrote for him to include in the records. Callen asked us each to write up a second action report on what they thought really happened on that case and gave them to me. I gave him a thumb drive with those reports on it, but I kept a copy of it. I'll let you read it, but it is an unofficial version, and has no official standing."
"Did anyone else see it then."
"I think Callen showed it to Vance before he brought Hetty home. Granger started telling people how he planned the rescue and brought it off. He must have mentioned it to the wrong person, because Vance called us up to ops on a conference call and came down on Granger like a ton of bricks. He told him how the operation really went down and then removed him from control of the primary team and gave it to me, at least until Hetty came back or someone else could be appointed."
"Congratulations, from the little I have found out, you deserved it."
"Well, it lasted about two days until Callen brought Hetty back. You think I can list it on my resume if I get fired from NCIS?" she asked, with a big smile on her face.
"I think that's highly unlikely. They need for you to take some leadership courses at FLETC."
"Vance has said he would fly instructors here for personal training. We just got things set up to start next month."
"I have never heard of him doing anything like that before. He must really want you to stay in NCIS. So I don't see any problems with that at all, or is there something that I'm not seeing? "
"I guess the latest problem was when Director Vance told me that there would be one more person in my FLETC classes. If I was just going to be the only one in the in the classes, I felt that I could move at my own pace. I know the Director had said that he felt that I would complete the courses in half the time it would normally take, and yes, Hetty once mentioned that I had the highest IQ in all of NCIS, but I can't say that I am as confident in myself as my superiors are in me. If it were just me in the class, it would not matter. If I didn't understand a concept, if I forgot to apply a rule or regulation, if some way of working on a problem would appear to be completely foreign to me, it wouldn't matter. My instructors would patiently go back and show me what I did wrong and let me try to work it out for herself."
"Okay, I guess that's true. You are a very intelligent girl, Nell."
Her embarrassment at what Nate just said about her broke out in a deep pink blush all over her cheeks that she tried to hide it by bowing her head. After a moment, she continued, but her voice had gotten a whole lot quieter. "But that's one of the biggest parts of the problem. With someone else in the class there would probably not be any time for that. It would be more like hold on for dear life and try to keep even with this guy who must be as good as I am and probably a whole lot better. I met him on a Skype call and he really seemed to have it all together, where I couldn't even seem to put together four words to make a coherent sentence. The responsibilities they want to place on me sometimes just seem so overwhelming."
Nate reminded her how she just acted and didn't think out what the consequences would be in the narco-sub case. "Nell, sometimes you overthink things. Maybe you just need to get out into the world and mingle with people that are more like you. How old is this guy that had you so tongue tied, and does he have a name?"
"He is just a little over a year older than I am. His name is Joel Fong, a third generation Japanese-American. He's an analyst in the Seattle office."
"Hmmm, okay..."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm just wondering if there could be another reason why you might be tongue tied around someone like him, besides your fear of him showing you up intellectually."
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
They finally got to a spot about thirty feet from the water. "Is this close enough to the water for you to have the ocean do it's magic?"
"Mmm hunh," Nell replied as she shook out the blanket and let it settle on the sand.
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As they sat down, Nate asked her another question that she wasn't expecting. "So, how's the office romance going?"
"You mean Deeks and Kensi?"
"Well, unless you have got a hot little affair going on with someone?"
"Right," she said, pushing the arm he was using to support himself, so he fell flat on the blanket. "I wanna tell you that at the OSP, romantic possibilities are extremely limited. Deeks and Kensi are sort of paired up, in an on again, off again relationship. Lately it seems to be more off than on. Having Talia here didn't help matters any. When Granger first appointed her to the team, because he thought the narco-sub case was still about drugs and she was our DEA liaison, she and Kensi did not have a good first meeting. I thought Kensi was gonna scratch her eyes out for some of the comments she made." Then Nell said with slight laugh in her voice, "or each one of them strip off everything they were wearing above their waist and then demand that Deeks choose who had the better boobs."
"I bet Deeks would have loved that."
"That's a bet you would have lost."
Nate arched his brow as he looked at her, giving her the impression he was asking, "Come on, you don't really mean that, do you?"
"Deeks was so terrified that it might come down to that. No matter which one he would have chosen, the other one would have torn him apart. As it was, Deeks had some pretty serious bruises from where each of them pounded him."
Nate began singing "The fists of love, have hit your arm?" to the tune, "The Look of Love."
Nell started laughing so hard she could hardly get her next words out. "Yup,..." Then she got all serious again, "But Deeks and Kensi seemed to have hit rock bottom the night everything wrapped up. She called me later that night and wondered if I could trace his phone to find out where he was. I told her that I wouldn't do that. She started bitching about how he was two-timing her with Talia. But they must have patched things up. They were all lovey-dovey when they came into the office on Monday morning. And it just keeps going on like that, one day they're up, the next day they're down. We just play it by ear where those two are concerned."
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"And what about you and Eric? I remember you telling me that he was not your type, but that he had a huge crush on you, and you worried about him being hurt if you told him how you really felt about him."
"Eric seemed to have lost his crush on me. He has found someone by the name of Svetlana Kolcheck across town at the Russian Cultural Ministry. She is the daughter of Arkady Kolcheck, and helped us out when we were trying to rescue Callen and Sam from the narco-sub."
"And Hetty allows that? I can't believe that she would let Eric go over there, not with all the secrets that he knows. That's a walking security disaster."
"But you forget that Svetlana has just as many security secrets locked in the back of her brain as Eric does. The two of them have agreed not to talk shop, unless one of them is helping the other one out. Apart from that first time, when he was working with her on the narco-sub case, he has not been over in their bunker to use their computer setup, and she has never set foot in ops at the OSP."
"Then how can they work together on anything?"
"The two of them have set up a secure network between two computers. These are set up like burn phones. Everything can come in from the other computer, and then it is sanitized. The two of them have written some extremely wicked antiviral software and mounted it in both of the machines. This breaks down every message coming in to its basic components, and only then is it transferred to the main system in each place."
"There still could be problems or abuse, even with as careful a system as that."
"You don't seem to understand, Nate. He cares a lot for her and she has that same care toward him in return. I'm not saying it's love, yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if within the next year you got an invitation to their wedding."
"It's gone that far?"
"Yup, and to think, when I asked him to go over there that first time, he was so freaked out. No way he wanted to leave the friendly confines of ops. What he found was a beautiful young woman, whose computer skills probably match his own, with each one's strongest areas in the area the other one is weak. He's taken her out a couple of times to teach her how to surf. She even gets his jokes, and hers are similar to his."
"WOW."
A huge smile came across Nell's face. "That's exactly what we all thought. It is so good for Eric to have someone with him, who understands who he is and what he does. Sveta is not gonna try to change him, and he is not gonna try to change her. The two of them mesh so perfectly, and each of them are so happy."
"Then I can see how Hetty would allow it. If something happened to either of them, they would have all the agencies of two separate governments working together to straighten it out."
"Exactly. Not to mention all of the shared information that we are giving them and getting from them. We have new leads on several cases that we thought were dead ends."
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"Okay, what about Sam? How do you feel that he is doing?"
"Sam has been married to Michelle longer than he has been partnered with Callen, and it used to be hard to say which bond was stronger for the big guy. But I'm beginning to feel that his ties to Michelle are winning out over those to Callen."
"What makes you say that?"
"I think he's been in way too many close calls, just like this last one.'
"His claustrophobia?"
"That was part of it. When the Russian Naval Spetsnaz units disabled the narco-sub's propulsion and then forced it to the surface, the terrorists tried to flood the forward compartment to take it back under. Unfortunately both Sam and Callen were in that compartment, and it was almost filled by the time they were gotten out of there. Sam had swallowed a lot of water and wasn't in the greatest condition when they got him on deck. They almost had to carry him over to the trawler, and you know how well his pride accepted that. "
"I wonder if he saw Jocko?" Nate said to himself.
"What was that?"
"Nothing, Nell, please forget that I ever said that. It's something that he confided to me, and I was wrong to mention it out loud."
"Oh...kay. Noted and filed. Anyway, this was another example of Callen sort of going off the reservation, and Sam being dragged along, to his detriment. Sam wanted to wait until Deeks and Kensi arrived before they went on board the sub. But you know Callen. I guess he even asked Sam, 'What's the worst that can happen?' Well, Callen doesn't have anyone waiting at home for him, wondering when or if he is coming back from a mission. Michelle has had to put up with that for years. She knows how often Callen has gone rogue, and how much extra it endangers her husband when he does this. I am surprised that she has not laid down the law to Sam, to help keep him safer, not only from the missions, but also from his partner."
"Is it really that bad?"
"You can see it in his facial features. Nate, if he would have hair, it would not be gray, it would be snow white. It's wearing him down, fast. The only one who doesn't see it is his partner."
Nell looked around, as if she expected someone else to be listening in to them. "There's more to it than just that, but I am not the one who said anything about it to you. Please promise me that, Nate."
"Okay, we will consider this a counseling session. Everything that you tell me is covered by the physician / patient privilege understanding. Of course, you also understand that it works both ways, you can't tell anyone what we have talked about either."
"I wouldn't dream of it. Things are way too tense for me to add any more to any of our lives."
"Sam has another source of tension that he has to deal with?"
"Ahhh...yeah. I guess things are not going so good for him at home." Seeing the look on Nate's face she quickly shook her head and said, "No, it's not anything like that. Neither one of them are having an affair, unless you count Sam's bromance with Callen. You know that Michelle worked for the CIA at one time, then sorta retired to have their daughter, Nina. Well, now that Nina is almost a teenager, Michelle wants to go back to work. You know what happened the last time she was activated as Quinn. Both Sam and Deeks still have nightmares about that. From what I hear Sam absolutely refuses to talk about it with her. The one he does talk about it with is Deeks, and that is part of Marty's problem of making a more permanent commitment to Kensi, because he sees the same thing happening with them. Right now he doesn't want to do anything to destroy their partnership like that would do."
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"So that just leaves Callen. What is going on with him? Any romance in sight for your fearless leader? Nate asked, not really expecting her to answer.
"Well, if you are meaning with me, I don't see that happening at all. I know that I told you that from the very first day that I met the Senior Agent in Charge, I had about as big a crush on him as Eric had on me. I hated it so much when he was out in the field, being shot at, blown up, knifed, involved in a car crash, and I had to watch it on the monitors, or even worse, just listen to the open mics and imagine what pains his body was suffering. I knew that I could not show any overt amount of affection toward him, because I never received any hint of those type of feelings from him in return. Yes, he was the first one that I saw leaning over me, talking tenderly to me, after I fought for my life with Robert Brown in the boat shed and ended up on the floor with a concussion. And yes, most recently he said he would kiss me if I would have been there, when I found out all the dirt on the committee members investigating Hetty. But that was safe for him to say, since I was on the other side of the country. He sees me as a tool, to be used whenever he needs information or some other service I can perform for him in ops. The only way he sees me as a person is just like all of the other guys on the team, like their little sister, someone to watch over and protect, but so wrong to even think about in any sexual way. I guess that just like Eric, I am gonna have to get over this crush I have on Callen and look elsewhere. "
"Well, maybe this new guy in your FLETC class might be the one you are looking for."
"Joel Fong? You think that maybe he might be the one I need to check out? I don't think so."
"You were the one who said it, Nell, 'I am gonna have to get over this crush I have on Callen...'"
"I don't know. I really have no idea what is going on with Callen. You're not gonna recognize him at all. From all appearances, he is just letting himself go, or he and Deeks were having some sort of contest of who could appear the shaggiest before Hetty demanded them to clean themselves up. It had nothing to do with attempts to placate Sam and Michelle setting him up with Joelle. As he was driving me home from our so-called 'victory celebration' with the narco-sub case, Callen admitted to me that there was nothing developing between the two of them. Neither wanted to enter into any type of long term relationship, but that there were times when each of them felt the need for someone to be there for them, and the sex between the two of them was very satisfying."
Her fingers were teasing one of the threads from the edge of the blanket as she said this latest little bit about Callen to Nate. She hesitated for a few seconds, and then Nell looked down at what she was doing and tried to rip the thread from the blanket. Her voice dropped to a whisper, and Nate could have sworn that he heard the silent tears fall from her eyes as she painfully breathed, "What guy ever tells another girl something like that?"
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Nate thought to himself, **Without question, time to change the subject – for now – but something that clearly had to be worked on when he met with her during the week. This was an open wound that had to be healed over, one way or another.** "So, any heads up you want to give me about either Hetty or Granger?"
"I don't know what to tell you about Hetty. She is preoccupied with something that she has not shared with me, and I don't think she has shared with anyone. She has gone into a lot of her old records, the ones she kept when she was working with the CIA. Whenever I get close and she has one of those open, she immediately closes it so I can't see what she is reading about.
"Knowing Hetty as I do, I don't think that she would just be reminiscing. You don't have any new cases that maybe tie into what she did back then, or maybe something that went unfinished?"
"I don't know. She has never told me about any that are still ongoing. Those files are ones that I have never seen. She has asked me not to look into them, and so far, I have obliged her. I really dread the time that someone is going to have to go back through all those old files and find out who among all the lifetime enemies she made is still out there, or even worse, still active."
"I don't think you are going to have to worry about that. It will probably have such a high clearance level required just to read the names of those files that maybe even a presidential clearance might not be high enough."
Nell looked at him and giggled, "You think? Anyway, Hetty has left enough potential problems among the team by acting like the stoic ninja we both know she can become.""
"Sometimes I think that a deaf mute might be persuaded to answer questions before Hetty would, if she thought that an answer is not something that you deserve."
"And she's been doing that to almost everyone. She made Deeks think that Kensi was assigned to the Afghanistan mission because she was punishing him for getting so involved in a relationship with one of her agents. Hetty knew who the 'White Ghost' was, but didn't tell any of that to Kensi, before she was sent out on a wild goose chase that lasted almost six months. When Sam found the picture of Kensi, laying there dead with her throat cut, and Deeks wanted to see it, she ordered us to send it to him."
Nell was openly weeping as she went back to that memory. "Nate, I could hardly look at it; it was so gruesome. I can't even imagine what Deeks was feeling when he saw it. We heard the rage start to build up in him, before Hetty ordered the transmission cut. Something happened with him, and nobody knows what. It changed him, Nate, and not for the better. He came back a different man. I don't know if Hetty truly realized what she had done."
Nell had to go into her purse to get a Kleenex so she could dry the tears streaming down her face and blow her nose. It took her a few more seconds as she tried to compose herself again.
"I'm sorry, Nate. I have to take some blame for how much Afghanistan changed all of us. I should have demanded that the Director stand all of us down, until you could come in and clean up the mess each of us was carrying in our minds. The team was stood down for one week, plus any time needed for injuries to heal. They got Dr. Pharnum to come in here and meet with each of us for a half hour, and then he said we were all good to go. I keep kicking myself for not asking for you. How much damage have I done to the team, to the people I love, by just going along with what those in authority wanted."
Nate pulled her into his arms as best he could, allowing her body to run through all her emotions. With one hand he was rubbing circles on her back, trying to calm her down, as he whispered in her ear, "It's okay, Nell. It's not your fault. It's okay, I am here now and I will help everyone deal with whatever still is bothering them about that mission. Please, please trust me, Nell. You were brave enough to bring it up so that I knew about it. You have helped every one of them by what you have just done. It's okay. We will work through this. I won't leave until I have talked it over with everyone. It will be okay. Do you believe me, Nell?"
Nell looked at him with her big hazel eyes still glistening from the tears she shed. She sniffed three or four times before she answered him in a voice that he only heard once before, from a five year old girl who had badly hurt her leg. "...yeeees, you got to help all of them. They all hurt, ...like I do."
"I will, Nell. I will work on this with everyone on the team. I give you my word."
"Thank you, Nate."
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When Nate felt that she had calmed down, he inquired about the last member on whom he would have to do a psychological evaluation, Assistant Director Owen Granger. "You said earlier that Granger and you don't exactly see eye to eye. Was that something that started with Afghanistan?"
"No, It started even before that. I don't think that Granger has any idea how big a part both Eric and I play in the team dynamics. I don't think he feels that we have any original thoughts, but are just androids, brought in to translate the digital data into words that human beings can understand."
"Come on, Nell. It really can't be as bad as all that?"
"I heard from Hetty that he once told her that he thought her meerkats needed a new exercise wheel, when he saw Eric and me coming down the steps from ops."
Nate bit his lip as he tried unsuccessfully to keep from chuckling at the image that formed in his mind.
"So, is that the only reason why you and he do not play nice and get along"
"No. Granger was really pissed when Director Vance offered me the position of office manager for the primary team. I can understand why he feels that way about me. I did sorta go around his authority to help Callen and Sam. But if we would have left it for him, we still would be looking for that submarine somewhere off the coast of Columbia, and someone would have to explain why several hundred Navy servicemen lost their lives when a aircraft carrier was sunk. He knew his way was right, and nobody could talk him out of it. When I tried, all I did was rub him the wrong way. It seems like everyone is doing that these days."
"Who else do you think is 'rubbing him the wrong way'?"
"You mean besides Hetty, and me, well, let's see – ahhhh, ...Deeks, ...Kensi, and maybe ...Callen. I'm not sure about Sam and Eric."
"All of them? I can't believe that."
"Okay, all of this is from the Afghanistan mission. Hetty told me that Granger asked for Callen to be assigned as the sniper to take out the 'White Ghost'. The last person who tried to take him out ended up beheaded. This was looked upon as a suicide mission, and Granger picked Callen because he thought he had the least to lose, at least that was what he said."
"If that were the case, why did Hetty send Kensi on the mission?"
"Hetty said she told Granger, 'My team, my call'. She later told me that she knew that the 'White Ghost' really was Jack Simon, who had worked for the CIA and now wanted out. Hetty had some connection with Jack and knew that Kensi couldn't kill her former fiance. She didn't intend on Kensi being captured and tortured. She didn't expect that the team would be that close to being killed because of it."
"So Kensi was upset with Granger taking her to Afghanistan?"
"It wasn't that so much. She knew that it was an assignment and it was given to her. It was more how she felt he treated her while she was there."
"And what did she mean by that?"
"She told me that Granger was always watching her, as if there was some connection between the two of them. No matter where she went, no matter what she did, Granger was always there. No one else paid any attention to her, almost treating her like she wasn't really there, because she was already dead and her body just didn't realize it yet. But not Granger. It started to creep her out so much, that after she took a warning shot at Jack, she lied to Granger about missing the shot, and then snuck out of camp just to get away from Granger and try to talk with Jack. From that point on the mission went all to hell."
"Was Afghanistan the reason why Granger had problems with Deeks too?
"I don't think so. This was going on before Kensi went to Afghanistan. When Deeks first joined the team, we didn't exactly welcome him with open arms. Each of us, to some extent, didn't think that he would fit in, because he wasn't an agent, but just a cop. He has proved himself over and over that he is the equal of anyone on the team, and in some cases, even better. Granger has never gotten out of that way of thinking. He especially has problems with Deeks being Kensi's partner, but I just don't know why."
"Here I thought you were learning all of Hetty's secrets. She hasn't taught you how to read minds and know everything that is going on yet?"
Nell blushed again and then looked at him quite seriously. "Have I given you enough information now that you can take me to dinner? It's starting to cool off here and I'm really getting hungry. I am a real cheap date. You gonna feed me or do I have to take my old, cold sandwiches and go home and eat them all by myself?"
"No, you don't have to do that," Nate told her as he helped her to her feet and then picked up the blanket. "I will feed you. Where do you want to go?"
She laughed at him and said, "You're the one who first mentioned it, and you are the one who will pay for it..."
"But you know where all the good places to eat around here are. I really would like some good seafood. Where do we go."
"I know just the place. Follow me and get ready to have your taste buds tantalized."
As Nate folded up her blanket and they started walking back toward the parking lot, he asked her, "This place is really that good?"
"Good enough to get recommended to me by both Deeks and Callen."
"Then let's go. I'm getting hungry, too."