Comminication Skills

Put on a Little Show (Continued)

[Kensi's POV] I don't remember anything after I was knocked out at my house. When I came to I was tied to a chair in a small, empty room. There was a video camera on a tripod in front of me. My head felt cloudy, almost like I'd been drugged, but I tried to shake it off and look around the room. The walls were gray and there were no windows. I think I was in a basement.

I don't know how long it was that I sat there before a man came in. It was the same man from the alley and that had attacked me in my apartment. He was smiling sweetly, but the knife in his hand contradicted his smile. "Hi there, Kensalina. How's it goin'?" he asked.

The familiar nickname elicited a reaction from me. I narrowed my eyes and hissed, "Deeks can call me Kensalina. You call me anything at all, I will kill you."

He laughed. "You're tied up, Fern. I have the power."

Before I could reply, reeling from the idea that he knew Deeks called me Fern to annoy me, I felt a knife slice up the inside of my arm, from my wrist to my inner elbow. I tried not to scream in pain. I thought of anything but the knife as he methodically cut into my body. I thought first of my parents, but soon that wasn't enough. As he cut into my right inner thigh, just below my underwear, the pain was too much. I screamed. There was nothing I could do to stop him. I felt so... powerless.

And then I thought of Deeks. Of his eyes, his hair, his smile, his laugh. Just him in general. I was lost in memories of the two of us, drowning in the remembrance of his eyes. I hardly noticed when the man finished and turned on the camera. A few minutes of just me, and then he came into the picture.

He leaned in close to me. "Ready to put on a little show for your friends?" he asked with faux-sweetness.

"Pretending to be scared of you? Or pretending that you're any better than a piece of barnacle that lives off the bacteria on ships in the ocean? Because those are acting jobs I just don't think I can pull off," I hissed.

He slapped me hard across the face. My cheek burned, but I leaned closer to him and spat a wad of bloody spit into his face. He wiped it away and plunged his knife into my thigh, dragging it slowly. I held my breath. I was not going to scream. Tears pooled in my eyes and streamed down my cheeks, but I held my ground. Deeks was probably watching. I didn't want him to see me scream. He was probably blaming himself already. I wasn't going to put him through that.

The man shut off the camera, punched me hard in the face once for good measure, and left. As soon as he left, I let the tears fall.

✨✨

It's been two days since I'd been taken. Everyday was a new torture. I'd been pistol slapped twelve times in a row yesterday. My arms had been sliced with razors. This guy had gotten pretty creative. But the camera had stayed off. Until today.

I heard the door open and looked over to see two men. One was the man from the alley (I'd just started calling him Alley) and the other one I'd never seen before. They turned on the camera and then did this whole skit of reopening the door and pretending to come inside.

Alley untied me and pulled off my shirt. The new guy punched me hard in the stomach. Alley retied me, and then they left. "What the hell?!" I screamed after them.

I attempted to awkwardly cover myself, as I was wearing only a pink bra and lacy black panties, but I couldn't move my arms or legs more than a few centimeters in any direction. Finally I have up with a resigned, humiliated sigh and looked down at my thin, cut up thighs, thinking of Deeks's face.

[Deeks POV] It'd been a week since Kensi was kidnapped. Almost everyday came a new video. She was beaten and abused and cut up, but alive. Finally my shirt was put back on her. I was glad. It was awful to see her like that, so exposed and vulnerable. We weren't any closer to finding her.

I came into work with absolutely no enthusiasm. I was no longer working our old case. I'd abandoned that, putting everything I had into finding Kensi. Hetty was allowing it, miraculously. Sam and Callen were still working the case, though, so they were gone when I came into the bullpen. I sat down at my desk and was surprised to see a small package waiting for me. I opened it and froze, backing away. Inside was a price of dark hair, Kensi's hair, a sleeve of my ripped shirt, tattered and bloody, and a few other terrorizing items. I grabbed the care package of death, holding it away from me, and ran up to Ops.

"Eric, trace this return address!" I ordered him, dropping the box beside him. He peeked in, paled, and then looked away.

"You got it," he said tightly. I waited impatiently until he told me, "It looks like it came from a house here in Los Angeles. I ran it through the addresses I got from the video's scrambled IP addresses, and it lines up. Whoever posted the videos used a downloadable software that bounces the IP addresses off of different towers. It warps the IP address, but they are all within a general range. This house perfectly lines up."

"Send the address to Callen's, Sam's, and my phones. I'll call them and let them know I'm headed over there."

"Will do. But, this almost seems too easy."

I nodded grimly. "I know, but it's all we've got."

I called Sam and Callen in the car. I briefed them on what was going on, and then sped off towards the address loaded on my phone. Kensi, here I come.