Chapter 3-
I.
Hetty knocked lightly on Nate's office door, careful not to disturb him. There were times when that was the right tactic, and other times when subtlety was absolutely necessary.
"Mr. Getz? May I come in?", she asked softly, treading as though this were a room rigged with bombs.
"Look, Hetty, I have like, ten psych clearances to sign off on and I'm waiting on the airline to send back confirmation on my flight to Orlando. Can this wait?", he replied, gesturing toward the folders strewn over his desk.
"Oh, of course it can wait. Just like Agent Kelly's mother's heart surgery can wait.", their ops manager countered dryly.
"Hetty..."
"To quote that charming newsman, I am going to ask the hard questions, Nate."
Nate looked up from the papers to his boss with a semi-irritated glare.
"What is going on between you and Miss Blye?"
II.
"Aaron? Though your name was Lucas.", G said, tapping his fingers on the trigger.
"You were pretty convincing, too.", Sam added, trying to mentally piece together the murder.
Great. Played Again, Kensi thought, internally sighing as she shook the hair out of her eyes.
"I said who the hell are these people?", the woman raged, gripping the knife even tighter.
Lucas stayed silent, his gun trained on her.
"Mrs. Cornell," he began evenly, drawing a sharp breath.
"I need you to listen to me. I need you to put the knife down and go with these people. They're gonna get you all cleaned up, then...then we're gonna get everything sorted out, okay?"
Mrs. Cornell turned to the young officer with a look of pure, vengeful, evil.
"No. It's all on you, boy, the damn seamen and the cops. And my Husband!"
She slashed at air, carving out a thin slice on the sleeve of Kensi's jacket.
"Ma'am, please.", Lucas said, in the same coldly disaffected tone he had used earlier. "Don't do that."
"I'll Do it like ya did it to Johnny, huh?", she laughed, bringing her knife closer to Kensi's chest.
III.
"Look, Hetty, there's fine line between being nosy and being an ass, dammit." Nate felt whatever reservations he might have had fade at the thought of Kensi's fit over something he'd considered so small and insignificant. Sheesh, it was just a kiss with the coroner. Not like Kensi's little games with sleazy Renko were any different.
Was it fair at all that Kensi expected his total commitment when she practically ran around HQ acting like she could have her pick of whose pants she'd be in that night? He got the whole "liberated woman" thing (you would too if you'd been raised by Delores Getz) but he'd done nothing she wouldn't have. And he was dealing with it.
He returned Hetty's surprised gaze, a newfound venom leaking into his voice.
"So just let me live my life and do my job. You didn't hire me just so you could have your own personal gossip mill."
IV.
Lucas fired with deadly accuracy, barely giving an inch to the recoil as they watched Mrs. Cornell topple to the ground like a tower of blocks.
Her blood spattered over the front of G's shirt, making even his eyes widen.
Lucas stepped forward to kick away the knife, nodding curtly as Sam's weapon dropped to his side. Suddenly, the cold-hearted assassin he'd been seconds later melted away, replaced by the same newbie Kensi remembered from the last night.
"Holy shit. I-oh man. You guys could've gotten in, right? Oh, man.", he sputtered, looking down at the bloody mess at his feet.
"I'll call the van.", Sam muttered, glancing over a G, who was studying Lucas with interest.
"And I'll take our old buddy Lucas in.", his partner agreed
V.
Hetty greeted her team with a small tip of her teacup, too engrossed in paperwork to noticed Kensi's ripped jacket and the blood over the front of G's shirt, not to mention their guest.
"Whoa. You guys' office kicks LAPD's ass all over the yard...", he said, drinking in the bustling mid-morning scene.
'Yeah. We have connections.", G told him casually. "Hey, Dom! Take our friend here downstairs and have Nate talk to him for a bit."
"Um, wait. Am I under arrest? Should I call my boss?", Lucas protested.
"Nah. Arresting you would cost us too much. We just need some info, then you go and it's totally off the record." G spoke like he was telling Lucas where the vending machine was.
Dom jumped from his seat. "Um, this way, sir."
VI.
The locker room was unnaturally quiet at this hour, the rhythmic early-morning melody of slamming locker doors gone as agents were either in the field of goofing around with Eric's toys.
G threw his locker open and dug through, coming up with a wrinkled, yet mostly clean light brown t-shirt. He had no hesitations tossing the bloody one in the pile, treating Kensi to a full on view of his toned abs and chest. Yummy.
She'd always considered what it might have been like to be with G, but she just kept coming back to a Mr and Mrs Smith movie poster with her as Angelina. All that sneaking around, gunfights in the living room, and glitzy trips to romantic Paris.
Really, once you got over the Angelina part, it wasn't half bad.
Kensi folded the ripped jacket into the bottom shelf of the locker (yes, she used shelves) and looked over to G, who was checking himself in the so-clean-it-sparkles mirror over the room's Italian-import sink.
"Sooooo, Kensi.", he began, brushing a hand through his hair.
"Huh?"
"There something going on? Like, something with our government sanctioned psychobabbler?"
Kensi shrugged. G had known about her and Nate since they'd started...whatever they did. He'd been perfectly okay with it, but had given Nate all the standard big brother-ish warnings, most of which he'd probably copied off Chuck Norris jokes.
"What, you lost a bet? Sorry, G, there will be no signing Nate up for a commercial about safe sex.", she said bitterly, not quite caring if he got the hint or not.
"He got you pregnant? I'm gonna-"
VII.
"Um, can I have a drink?" Lucas tapped on the two-way glass of the interrogation room, snapping Dom out of his semi-conscious coffee-sipping stage.
"I don't know...I'll go see.", Dom told the glass, not quite sure of the rules when it came to maybe murderers and maybe crooked cops. He sprang up to ask. Maybe and agent would be right outside the door.
Instead, Dom found Nate, casually drinking from a Dixie cup of bourbon, an overflowing folder in his arms.
"Uh, Nate? Can I um, are we allowed to give the guys drinks?", he asked quietly, not bothering to question why Nate was drinking alcohol on the clock. Maybe it was normal around here.
"He can get a drink when I'm done.", the psychologist replied curtly, entering the room without a second look at Dom.
"Oh man, you cannot believe how long I've been waiting. Sheesh. Okay, so how's this work,do you question me or do I fill out a bunch of forms?"
Nate rolled his eyes.
"I ask you questions. Like this one, what the hell is going on?"
Lucas shrugged nonchalantly.
"Look, you guys took me in. Do I get a lawyer?"
VIII.
Eric's fingers tapped over the keyboard, his head bobbing along happily to the mixtape Jack, the OSP's latest addition to the techie family had popped into their intercom system. Jack was a good kid.
Sam had asked him to run a search on some guy named Lucas Hamel an LAPD cop, if the records in front of him were the right ones. There'd been seven hundred Lucas Hamels in California, two hundred in the LA area, fifty in the right age range, and three working in law enforcement. But he was pretty sure he had the right one.
Eric took mental notes, picking which information was important enough to text to Sam.
Lucas was born in Michigan, moved to LA with his brother and dad at thirteen. Graduated from the Academy with mediocre grades. Nothing remarkable. No kids, no wife, no naughty high school senior prom afterparty pictures. A boring facebook profile listing mostly current co-workers as friends. As far as harmless went, this guy was the height of it.
He scrolled past another page of records, tapping his foot impatiently. There couldn't be anything usable about the guy...
"Bingo!"
IX.
"Shawty got Low, Low, Low, Low." Sam's phone sung the familiar club anthem, making the ex-SEAL glare at it in disgust. He had no idea what his kids found so funny about racking up download charges on his phone and switching the ringtones to the most embarrassing, inappropriate teenage top-40 crap on the air.
"Never pegged you for a rap guy.", the coroner, beside Mrs. Cornell with a clipboard holding the standard forms, chuckled.
"This ain't rap. LL Cool J, that's rap. I don't know what the hell this is.", he replied, opening the text from Eric.
"Yeah. My dad likes that guy." the coroner checked her pupils, shaking her hair out of the way for a closer look.
Sam scrolled past the To/From/CC/BCC headers and down to the point.
Their Lucas guy had a brother, Johnathan Hamel, who'd been killed working undercover on the drug unit, date of death February 29th, 2002. His father had been locked up in rehab for alcoholism for the past six years after, and he'd followed in Johnny's footsteps. Lucas had put it for seven separate transfers to the undercover Squad, with just as many denials.
Sam studied the date. 2002 hadn't been a leap year.
His head whipped back toward the house and he speed dialed Eric.
"Hey, man? I want all Johnathan Hamel's know Aliases. Including the last one he used for an op."
X.
"No, I am not pregnant!", Kensi shouted, immediately regretting it when one of the cameras swerved her way.
"No, God, just, yuck, no!", she added.
G sighed. "Are you sure? Like did you take a test and everything?", he breathed, edging closer to Kensi on the room's polished wooden benches.
"Hell, yes. And-and I wouldn't get pregnant with Nate. Jesus, I actually want my future children to be pretty, G!", she giggled, suddenly overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the situation.
"I thought you had a thing for Nate?", he asked, catching on her last comment.
"Yeah.", Kensi grumbled, toying with the frayed cuffs on her shirt.
G squeezed her shoulders and smiled.
"Okay, Whatever you need to work out, Kenz. But you were joking about the safe sex thing, right? Because if he gave you something I will-"
"Oh for God's sake, G. It's nothing. Just...I'm just gonna sort everything out.", she told him with a pointed glare.
He squeezed harder, ruffling her hair a bit. Damn that caring guy charm, Kensi thought. Gets me every fucking time.
"You're sure that Nate didn't do anything bad to you. He didn't hit you or freeze your bank account or steal your car, right?", Callen ticked off the arrest worthy actions of other ex-boyfriends, grinning with the memory of each one.
"No." Kensi shook him off and studied herself in the mirror, watching G's grin fade in the reflection.
"Then what happened?", he asked again, his voice taking a sharper tone, the one he used in interrogations.
"Remember the coroner thing Nate had?", Kensi began, debating whether to follow through with the rest of it.
"Yeah, her name's, uh, Rose, right?"
Kensi nodded, facing the door.
"You get the invite to her damn baby shower yet?", she finished, her voice wavering as she slammed the door, making a hollow thud echo through the room.
Uh-Oh! Bad Nate! And what's Johnathan Hamels connection to all this?
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