Man I Used to Be #4
Title: Man I Used to Be
By: Jendavis
Rating: PG-13 for now
Spoilers: Up through 2x07
Pairing: Alec Hardison/ Eliot Spencer
Genre: Drama?
Warnings: WIP
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: The present's a mess, and the past isn't helping.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
"Sir, he's awake."
"Good. Has he said anything yet?"
"No sir. Not a word."
"It's as I expected, then. Very well. Leave me."
---
Eliot stayed awake long after the cell went completely dark, fighting the drugs still coursing through his system, making him sleepy and weak. He knew he needed to conserve his strength, that he should get rest when he could.
It seemed, however, that his body remembered to panic for him, waking him sharply whenever it felt he'd left himself open too long.
He caught himself patting at his pockets, looking for his phone, his watch, anything that would tell him how long he'd been there, and chided himself. They'd taken his shirt, his shoes, and emptied his jeans pockets. Of course they did. It was the most basic of tactics.
It kept the prisoner from knowing how long he'd been there. Took away one more semblance of control.
He told himself it didn't matter. He figured he'd been here for most of a night, based on his own awareness, but he had no idea how long he'd been out when he'd arrived. How long he'd been kept under.
For all he knew, the team might already be missing him, but he slammed the door shut on that thought the moment he became aware of it. No sense getting his hopes up this early in the game.
Eliot sat against the wall of his cell and did not panic. Tried not to think. He just waited.
He was getting hungry, and he really had to piss.
---
Alec adjusted the strap that secured the device to the tree's trunk. It was the kind people used for tracking game when they were hunting, so hopefully, the camo-painted camera would be overlooked, even if it was noticed.
It wasn't absolutely necessary, but it was an extra means of gaining information. There if they needed it, and it got him out of the hotel for a few hours. After checking the workaround he'd set up that would feed the images directly to his laptop, he was satisfied that his work, for the time being, was done.
Sophie and Nate were tying things up at the Historical Society, and Parker was, presumably, back at the hotel. If she was on comms like she was supposed to be, she didn't have much to say.
For the time being, Alec was alone out here, and he had to admit, it was kind of nice.
The project area stretched out for what had to be miles before ending at the tree line, a dark green silhouette near the horizon, in front of the setting sun. There were horses grazing out on the pasture to the south, but he didn't know what kind they were, even after the job, with Eliot's ex-fiancée, or whatever. He'd learned a lot about breeding horses, except for anything that was actually about horses. From here, he could tell, two were brown and three were gray.
It was the kind of thing that Eliot would know, that he'd explain patiently to Parker or Sophie, and spit out angrily if stuck explaining it to Nate or himself.
Such a mama's boy, that man. Seriously.
Alec drew himself up short.
No no no. DOn't need to be thinkin' so much on him. You're just guessing, and it's based on a negligible amount of intel. It's a trap, exactly the kind of idiocy that's going to get you caught. Thinking that because you know one little thing, you know more than you actually do.
Alec sighed, checked his gear, and began making his way back towards the truck.
Especially 'cause of the stuff that you actually do know.
He really wanted to stop thinking about Eliot's thinking. It was like picking apart Nate's motivations about Sophie, Sophie's interest in Nate, or the way Parker's terrifying brain worked. Wasn't fair, either. He had the advantage.
--
He'd been fourteen, when he had realized that he might be gay, and the epiphany had brought enough angst and self-hatred that even now, he was still surprised that he hadn't taken out half of Chicago with him in the process. It hadn't helped that it was the same year was Kevin, his brother, the last of his real blood family, got stupid and gotten killed over some territory dispute down on the south side. Hadn't helped at all.
Finding himself, in the middle of all that, hadn't been easy. Nana had been there, and the others, but it wasn't the same. He'd spent half that year in church, it seemed, and the other half sitting in his room thinking about insane things like hell, and freakishness, and if it all meant he was actually a woman, or trying to act white, or if it meant he was destined for a life of being a prison bitch. Thinking about where he'd go, and how fast he'd have to clear out of town once the Disciples found out.
Nana was proud that he was so reluctant to fall in with the same crew that Kevin had died for, but she hadn't known his reasons, that he strong suspicions that they'd probably kill him on sight.
It took another year to figure out that apparently, all that thinking he'd done was normal, at least according to the internet.
The first thing he'd learned, back before he knew anything, had been how to set up an email account.
The second was how to clear out the search history.
The third was how to become someone else online, and the fourth was how to become no one or anyone at all.
Anonymity was safety. Online, he could find out what he wanted, become who he wanted. Alec was smart, though. Even before he was released from foster care, he was well on his way to discovering that it wasn't something that could only be done on the internet.
By that point, telling Nana was just a matter of being himself. But it had taken him nearly four years to figure out how to be who he was, and it had taken a lot of sitting up nights, sure that he was doomed.
--
He wondered how far along Eliot was with all of it.
You ain't even gonna ask him about horses, man. How you gonna ask him about scheduling this shit? Just set it aside and move on. Move. On.
Move. His footsteps brushed through the undergrowth, setting to some rhythm in his head. On. Move. On. Move. His thoughts provided the counterpoint to the beat as he walked back to the car. His shoes were soaked through, the moisture seeping through to soak his socks by the time he arrived, but neither the mud nor the music was much of a distraction. Not really.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and set it on the dashboard, wondering who, among the billions of people walking the world, Eliot would call once he figured it all out. His sister, maybe. Probably. The man still had family, after all, people that were probably there to look out for him, and it wasn't Alec's business.
But he'd seen Eliot's phone records. Aside from a few local calls, he hadn't called anyone who wasn't on the team since he'd bought the house out on Hough's Neck a few months back. It would have been sad, but it was more likely he kept another cell, one that Alec hadn't cracked yet.
---
When Eliot woke again for the fourth or fifth time, the sun had apparently risen. Light fought through from above, but it wasn't enough to reach all the way into the corners, and didn't reveal much of anything that he hadn't noticed earlier.
Except for four things.
A single bulb hung close to the ceiling, far too high to reach, but it was turned off, and there was no switch in the room that he could see. No way to know if it even worked.
He had to squint to see it, but up in the corner of the ceiling, eased in the familiar black hemisphere, was the inevitable camera. For all he knew, it could have been filming every move he made, or nothing at all. He decided to ignore it.
Sitting just inside the door was a plastic bucket, the kind kids hauled off to the beach for making sandcastles. Eliot knew it's alternate purpose without thinking.
Next to it, a paper cup dripped condensation onto the floor.
These last hadn't been in there before he'd fallen asleep. He hadn't been forgotten, then. He was supposed to survive this, for a while at least.
It wasn't as heartening a realization as it probably should have been.
---
Nate was dogging him, asking about Eliot's ETA before they'd even eaten lunch. Parker hadn't even made it past breakfast. It was going to be a long day.
"His flight's due to come in a little after five. He should be here by seven. He'll probably call and check in once he lands."
"All right. Let me know when he does," Nate poured himself some coffee from the carafe at the center of the table, frowning at it in distaste.
They were going to have to go over most of it again when Eliot got in, but Hardison passed out the field manuals he'd put together, complete with maps and charts and things that were there for show, should anyone want to look at them. Their discoveries were already logged and mapped. All they needed to do was go out there and look busy.
Sophie had decided that Parker needed new shoes, that the heels on her boots would not be suitable for working in the field.
"Sophie, what?" Nate was annoyed. It had been brewing all weekend. "Seriously. Shoes?"
"She's right, man," Alec cut in, seeing the chastened expression stealing across Sophie's face. "Been reading all weekend, and all the books say that you want to be wearing flat-footed shoes when you're digging in the field."
"Why's that?" Looking up from her fries, which she was stacking into piles that could have been teepees or whatever those things were that people used to burn witches, Parker looked confused, though Nate had clearly already lost interest, his eyes glazing over as he tried to flag the waiter down for the check.
"They mess up the floor of the hole that you're digging. Could wind up pushing artifacts down further into the ground unevenly or something like that. Make it look wrong."
"Nobody's going to be looking that close," Nate interjected.
"Not at the pits, but if anyone comes out and sees us, we should look the part, don't you think?" Sophie was smiling again, her grin widening a little as she caught Alec's eye when Nate cleared his throat irritably.
"Okay. Fine. You two go handle that. Hardison, do we know if DeWitt's been out to the site yet?"
"The cameras were triggered a couple of times last night. I was just starting to go through the images when you called me down here. I'll let you know what I find."
"We already know he's going to be out there," Parker said. "What are the cameras for?"
"To know exactly where he was, what he found," Nate explained, pulling out bills for the tip. "Possible evidence for later, if it's needed. If this doesn't work the way we want it to, at least the Bradshaw family will have some evidence."
"You don't seem as optimistic as you did last week," Parker said, but it was unclear if it was her words or the horrible coffee that sent Nate up out of his seat.
"He's just nervous," Sophie leaned towards Parker, smiling sympathetically as they watched him leave. She'd be a good mom someday, Alec caught himself thinking as she continued. "He'll feel better when everyone's present and accounted for."
"Him and me both," Parker said. "It's weird without him here. Even if he is. You know. Mean and grumpy all the time."
"Aww, you miss him."
Parker looked at him sharply. "You should talk. You're his friend."
"Nah, see. Hardly."
"I saw him leaving the other day. He was smiling when he left."
"He was leaving, I think that tells you everything you want to know."
"Or, it could be that you made him feel better."
Parker's grin looked a lot like the one she used when she heard you, but wasn't planning on listening. A little smug, a little patronizing, but adorable enough that you didn’t mind.
Kind of like a kitten, climbing up your pant leg with razor sharp claws.
So Alec let her get away with it, and followed them back to the hotel.
---
Whoever it was keeping him there, they weren't stupid, and they weren't amateurs. They'd grabbed him and shoved him here. They had a holding cell at their disposal. And they hadn't shown their faces. They didn't talk. They gave nothing away.
Eliot stood next to the door for hours, sometimes straining to see out into the space beyond, always listening, and finding nothing.
It was probably business. If so, they most likely knew him, or his rep, well enough that they weren't dealing with him directly. They could be weak, or smart, or both, but they were keeping their advantage.
He regarded the water again, considering the innocuous paper cup. It smelled okay. That didn't mean anything at all. They'd already drugged him to get in here in the first place. There could be a lot of things in that water.
But he was beginning to get thirsty.
---
Alec waited outside Nate's door, biting at the inside of his mouth as he listened to him move to answer.
Nate had read his expression even before the door was open.
"Hardison? What is it?"
"It's Eliot. His flight got in, but he wasn't on it. He's not answering his phone. Just spent ten minutes reconfiguring the monitoring for the comms, and he's not on there, either."
They stopped to retrieve Parker and Sophie en route to Alec's room, where they all stared at his screensaver like they thought it would tell them something useful. "Ah. Guys? He's not on there, and how I know it? It's because he's not on there. He's off the grid and in the wind."
"He left?" Parker's disappointment was palpable. Then again, hers wasn't the only one drifting through the room.
Nate cut a searching glance in Alec's direction. "That remains to be seen." Running a hand over his face, he said. "Do you have any idea why he would bail?"
"No."
"That argument-"
"Got handled. We were cool when he left."
"It's true," Parker interjected adamantly, but Nate ignored her.
"Are you finding anything on him at all? Has he been arrested?"
"His name and description aren't coming up on any police or hospital records. I looked before you got here. If he was, it would have had to be in the past hour or two, given the average time it takes for the records to be processed and uploading. Anything earlier, and I'd have seen it."
"So it's not the authorities, and it might just be him."
"He wouldn't just bail."
"True." Nate nodded, his face grim. "But you really don't want me running down the other possibilities right now."
"We have to get back there," Alec pointed out.
Nate's response was frustrated. "And what about the Bradshaws?"
"We come back in a day or two and salvage what we can," Sophie offered.
"No." Nate's voice was firm. "We finish the job." Glancing at the others apologetically, he continued. "Look, I know you don't like it, but here it is. Eliot is better at taking care of himself than the rest of us combined. The Bradshaws need us more right now."
"You don't know that," Parker accused.
"I know Eliot well enough that if he's gone AWOL, then he's safe. If someone's managed to get a hit out on him, we're too late already. If he's being held somewhere, well. If they can hold him, then we need to know what we're getting ourselves into before we go charging in."
Sensing the reluctant agreement of the others, he went on. "So. Tomorrow, we get out there, and we close this job down as quickly as possible. Hardison, I want you ready to alert the media. Parker, you've got the goods ready to go?"
"Yes. But-"
Nate cut her off. "We finish tomorrow. It's going to be a rush job, but we can make it work. Hardison?"
"I'm already setting up crawlers to look for him," Alec looked up from the screen. "I'll let you all know the second I know anything. And I've got a few hours to make calls."
"Who are you calling?"
"I'm still working that out," Alec admitted. "Any of you guys know his contacts?"
"There's. Us," Sophie offered lamely. "And Aimee."
"That Scottish Indian guy, ah," Nate waved his hand through the air. "Helped us out with the Mumbai videoconference last year? Donnie something or other."
"Right." Hardison added him to the list, made a note to check the call archive for his number once they all cleared out of his room.
"He doesn't know a lot of people," Parker said. "It's weird."
"You should talk," Sophie muttered, before turning to Nate. "You chased him before, right? You've got to have some insight into who might be after him."
"Only chased after him once," Nate grinned slightly, apparently fond of the memory. "There were these. Ah. Smugglers. Moving an experimental chip from one of IYS's contracts. It was a bitch to find, see. I mean. I was following them for weeks. Almost caught up with them in Israel. Missed them by minutes. Anyway." Nate shook his head, stopping an apparent tangent before it started. "It turns out that they'd fed it to a monkey just before crossing the border."
"Seriously. A monkey?"
"Ah. Yes. See, the monkey was a favorite pet of the daughter of one of the smugglers. Even went on the plane with her in a cat carrier. It wasn't until we were halfway over the ocean that I came close to figuring it out, but by the time we landed, well. I wasn't the first one there."
"Eliot stole the monkey first," Sophie guessed, grinning.
"What? No. They gave it to him. I was still stepping down from the plane when he hightailed it off the tarmac. I lost him."
Alec shrugged. "Did you ever get the chip?"
"Two months later, it turned up in Germany, and we did a sting. Me and. Ah. Sterling."
Parker made a face. "That guy is seriously creepy."
Nate cocked his head, considering. "Only because he's not on our side."
"Like I said. Creepy."
"Okay, look. We're getting off topic, here. Hardison, do your thing. Sophie and Parker? I want you thinking of anyone we've come across who might be out for payback, and getting ready for tomorrow. It's going to be an early day."
"What are you going to do?"
Nate sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "I'm going to think."
---
The silence was getting ridiculous. Made doubly so that he knew it was on purpose. To get him to freak out, show his cards first.
It was getting harder to hold his tongue, though.
He couldn't go down, faking injury when there was no one throwing punches. He couldn't work his captors to gain sympathy if there was no one around. He couldn't recite his name, rank, or serial number for the same reason.
He was beginning to lose interest in remembering his training, but he meditated on it anyway.
It beat thinking about his empty stomach.
---
Alec could put up with a lot of things, but the realization that the information he needed just didn't exist wasn't one of them. He checked his programs one last time, made sure his phone was synched to inform him if anything came through, and forced himself to step away. Get out of the room, away from the few pieces of gear and clothing Eliot had left behind, and away from the slow-crawling panic that had been crawling over his skin for the past five hours.
Around back, behind the hotel and next to the dumpster, was a picnic table, probably meant for staff only. But at the moment, Nate was occupying it, toying with the bottle he held in his hand. Under the streetlight, the amber liquid swirled against the clear glass.
Alec knew he should leave, that no good would come of staying. But Nate wasn't so far gone that he didn't see him. "What's going on? You have anything yet?"
"Nothing." Alec sat down on the bench, running his hand over the tabletop, feeling the wood threatening to splinter. "What you were saying earlier. You straight up on that? That was the only time you ran into him?"
"He was never the target, but he was the means, more than once." Nate set the bottle down, and Alec pretended not to notice that the seal hadn't been broken, mostly because it was surprising. "Wasn't too eager to get too close, truth be told. His, ah. Rep."
"Right."
"What about you?"
"Me? Nah, man. Never met him before that first job you ran."
"But you talk to him. You've got to have some ideas."
"None that are going anywhere. I'm out, man. Straight up."
Nate pushed the bottle across the picnic table, withdrawing his hand carefully, before looking up guiltily. "I'm starting to wonder if he really just didn't decide to leave."
Alec wanted to argue that Eliot wouldn't have left one pair of hiking boots and his rattiest jeans behind, but really. They weren't the sort of thing anyone would come back for. So he nodded, instead, and looked out into the parking lot, watching the moths fluttering under the lights.
---
He wasn't sure what woke him, but it was night, apparently.
His eyes cast about the room, looking for any source of sound, and finding none but the door. There was a dim light coming in from the other side of the door, barely visible through the gate.
Another moment of staring, and the shadows rearranged themselves, revealing the silhouette of someone's head. Absolutely featureless, absolutely still. Staring at him through the grate, he was sure.
Eliot was more awake in that moment than he had since he'd arrived, but he was frozen. Unready. He took a breath, closed his eyes to listen.
When he opened them again, seconds later, the person was gone, or maybe just the light.
Eliot wasn't afraid of the dark. But he didn't like it, either.
---
Chapter 5
By: Jendavis
Rating: PG-13 for now
Spoilers: Up through 2x07
Pairing: Alec Hardison/ Eliot Spencer
Genre: Drama?
Warnings: WIP
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: The present's a mess, and the past isn't helping.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
"Sir, he's awake."
"Good. Has he said anything yet?"
"No sir. Not a word."
"It's as I expected, then. Very well. Leave me."
---
Eliot stayed awake long after the cell went completely dark, fighting the drugs still coursing through his system, making him sleepy and weak. He knew he needed to conserve his strength, that he should get rest when he could.
It seemed, however, that his body remembered to panic for him, waking him sharply whenever it felt he'd left himself open too long.
He caught himself patting at his pockets, looking for his phone, his watch, anything that would tell him how long he'd been there, and chided himself. They'd taken his shirt, his shoes, and emptied his jeans pockets. Of course they did. It was the most basic of tactics.
It kept the prisoner from knowing how long he'd been there. Took away one more semblance of control.
He told himself it didn't matter. He figured he'd been here for most of a night, based on his own awareness, but he had no idea how long he'd been out when he'd arrived. How long he'd been kept under.
For all he knew, the team might already be missing him, but he slammed the door shut on that thought the moment he became aware of it. No sense getting his hopes up this early in the game.
Eliot sat against the wall of his cell and did not panic. Tried not to think. He just waited.
He was getting hungry, and he really had to piss.
---
Alec adjusted the strap that secured the device to the tree's trunk. It was the kind people used for tracking game when they were hunting, so hopefully, the camo-painted camera would be overlooked, even if it was noticed.
It wasn't absolutely necessary, but it was an extra means of gaining information. There if they needed it, and it got him out of the hotel for a few hours. After checking the workaround he'd set up that would feed the images directly to his laptop, he was satisfied that his work, for the time being, was done.
Sophie and Nate were tying things up at the Historical Society, and Parker was, presumably, back at the hotel. If she was on comms like she was supposed to be, she didn't have much to say.
For the time being, Alec was alone out here, and he had to admit, it was kind of nice.
The project area stretched out for what had to be miles before ending at the tree line, a dark green silhouette near the horizon, in front of the setting sun. There were horses grazing out on the pasture to the south, but he didn't know what kind they were, even after the job, with Eliot's ex-fiancée, or whatever. He'd learned a lot about breeding horses, except for anything that was actually about horses. From here, he could tell, two were brown and three were gray.
It was the kind of thing that Eliot would know, that he'd explain patiently to Parker or Sophie, and spit out angrily if stuck explaining it to Nate or himself.
Such a mama's boy, that man. Seriously.
Alec drew himself up short.
No no no. DOn't need to be thinkin' so much on him. You're just guessing, and it's based on a negligible amount of intel. It's a trap, exactly the kind of idiocy that's going to get you caught. Thinking that because you know one little thing, you know more than you actually do.
Alec sighed, checked his gear, and began making his way back towards the truck.
Especially 'cause of the stuff that you actually do know.
He really wanted to stop thinking about Eliot's thinking. It was like picking apart Nate's motivations about Sophie, Sophie's interest in Nate, or the way Parker's terrifying brain worked. Wasn't fair, either. He had the advantage.
--
He'd been fourteen, when he had realized that he might be gay, and the epiphany had brought enough angst and self-hatred that even now, he was still surprised that he hadn't taken out half of Chicago with him in the process. It hadn't helped that it was the same year was Kevin, his brother, the last of his real blood family, got stupid and gotten killed over some territory dispute down on the south side. Hadn't helped at all.
Finding himself, in the middle of all that, hadn't been easy. Nana had been there, and the others, but it wasn't the same. He'd spent half that year in church, it seemed, and the other half sitting in his room thinking about insane things like hell, and freakishness, and if it all meant he was actually a woman, or trying to act white, or if it meant he was destined for a life of being a prison bitch. Thinking about where he'd go, and how fast he'd have to clear out of town once the Disciples found out.
Nana was proud that he was so reluctant to fall in with the same crew that Kevin had died for, but she hadn't known his reasons, that he strong suspicions that they'd probably kill him on sight.
It took another year to figure out that apparently, all that thinking he'd done was normal, at least according to the internet.
The first thing he'd learned, back before he knew anything, had been how to set up an email account.
The second was how to clear out the search history.
The third was how to become someone else online, and the fourth was how to become no one or anyone at all.
Anonymity was safety. Online, he could find out what he wanted, become who he wanted. Alec was smart, though. Even before he was released from foster care, he was well on his way to discovering that it wasn't something that could only be done on the internet.
By that point, telling Nana was just a matter of being himself. But it had taken him nearly four years to figure out how to be who he was, and it had taken a lot of sitting up nights, sure that he was doomed.
--
He wondered how far along Eliot was with all of it.
You ain't even gonna ask him about horses, man. How you gonna ask him about scheduling this shit? Just set it aside and move on. Move. On.
Move. His footsteps brushed through the undergrowth, setting to some rhythm in his head. On. Move. On. Move. His thoughts provided the counterpoint to the beat as he walked back to the car. His shoes were soaked through, the moisture seeping through to soak his socks by the time he arrived, but neither the mud nor the music was much of a distraction. Not really.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and set it on the dashboard, wondering who, among the billions of people walking the world, Eliot would call once he figured it all out. His sister, maybe. Probably. The man still had family, after all, people that were probably there to look out for him, and it wasn't Alec's business.
But he'd seen Eliot's phone records. Aside from a few local calls, he hadn't called anyone who wasn't on the team since he'd bought the house out on Hough's Neck a few months back. It would have been sad, but it was more likely he kept another cell, one that Alec hadn't cracked yet.
---
When Eliot woke again for the fourth or fifth time, the sun had apparently risen. Light fought through from above, but it wasn't enough to reach all the way into the corners, and didn't reveal much of anything that he hadn't noticed earlier.
Except for four things.
A single bulb hung close to the ceiling, far too high to reach, but it was turned off, and there was no switch in the room that he could see. No way to know if it even worked.
He had to squint to see it, but up in the corner of the ceiling, eased in the familiar black hemisphere, was the inevitable camera. For all he knew, it could have been filming every move he made, or nothing at all. He decided to ignore it.
Sitting just inside the door was a plastic bucket, the kind kids hauled off to the beach for making sandcastles. Eliot knew it's alternate purpose without thinking.
Next to it, a paper cup dripped condensation onto the floor.
These last hadn't been in there before he'd fallen asleep. He hadn't been forgotten, then. He was supposed to survive this, for a while at least.
It wasn't as heartening a realization as it probably should have been.
---
Nate was dogging him, asking about Eliot's ETA before they'd even eaten lunch. Parker hadn't even made it past breakfast. It was going to be a long day.
"His flight's due to come in a little after five. He should be here by seven. He'll probably call and check in once he lands."
"All right. Let me know when he does," Nate poured himself some coffee from the carafe at the center of the table, frowning at it in distaste.
They were going to have to go over most of it again when Eliot got in, but Hardison passed out the field manuals he'd put together, complete with maps and charts and things that were there for show, should anyone want to look at them. Their discoveries were already logged and mapped. All they needed to do was go out there and look busy.
Sophie had decided that Parker needed new shoes, that the heels on her boots would not be suitable for working in the field.
"Sophie, what?" Nate was annoyed. It had been brewing all weekend. "Seriously. Shoes?"
"She's right, man," Alec cut in, seeing the chastened expression stealing across Sophie's face. "Been reading all weekend, and all the books say that you want to be wearing flat-footed shoes when you're digging in the field."
"Why's that?" Looking up from her fries, which she was stacking into piles that could have been teepees or whatever those things were that people used to burn witches, Parker looked confused, though Nate had clearly already lost interest, his eyes glazing over as he tried to flag the waiter down for the check.
"They mess up the floor of the hole that you're digging. Could wind up pushing artifacts down further into the ground unevenly or something like that. Make it look wrong."
"Nobody's going to be looking that close," Nate interjected.
"Not at the pits, but if anyone comes out and sees us, we should look the part, don't you think?" Sophie was smiling again, her grin widening a little as she caught Alec's eye when Nate cleared his throat irritably.
"Okay. Fine. You two go handle that. Hardison, do we know if DeWitt's been out to the site yet?"
"The cameras were triggered a couple of times last night. I was just starting to go through the images when you called me down here. I'll let you know what I find."
"We already know he's going to be out there," Parker said. "What are the cameras for?"
"To know exactly where he was, what he found," Nate explained, pulling out bills for the tip. "Possible evidence for later, if it's needed. If this doesn't work the way we want it to, at least the Bradshaw family will have some evidence."
"You don't seem as optimistic as you did last week," Parker said, but it was unclear if it was her words or the horrible coffee that sent Nate up out of his seat.
"He's just nervous," Sophie leaned towards Parker, smiling sympathetically as they watched him leave. She'd be a good mom someday, Alec caught himself thinking as she continued. "He'll feel better when everyone's present and accounted for."
"Him and me both," Parker said. "It's weird without him here. Even if he is. You know. Mean and grumpy all the time."
"Aww, you miss him."
Parker looked at him sharply. "You should talk. You're his friend."
"Nah, see. Hardly."
"I saw him leaving the other day. He was smiling when he left."
"He was leaving, I think that tells you everything you want to know."
"Or, it could be that you made him feel better."
Parker's grin looked a lot like the one she used when she heard you, but wasn't planning on listening. A little smug, a little patronizing, but adorable enough that you didn’t mind.
Kind of like a kitten, climbing up your pant leg with razor sharp claws.
So Alec let her get away with it, and followed them back to the hotel.
---
Whoever it was keeping him there, they weren't stupid, and they weren't amateurs. They'd grabbed him and shoved him here. They had a holding cell at their disposal. And they hadn't shown their faces. They didn't talk. They gave nothing away.
Eliot stood next to the door for hours, sometimes straining to see out into the space beyond, always listening, and finding nothing.
It was probably business. If so, they most likely knew him, or his rep, well enough that they weren't dealing with him directly. They could be weak, or smart, or both, but they were keeping their advantage.
He regarded the water again, considering the innocuous paper cup. It smelled okay. That didn't mean anything at all. They'd already drugged him to get in here in the first place. There could be a lot of things in that water.
But he was beginning to get thirsty.
---
Alec waited outside Nate's door, biting at the inside of his mouth as he listened to him move to answer.
Nate had read his expression even before the door was open.
"Hardison? What is it?"
"It's Eliot. His flight got in, but he wasn't on it. He's not answering his phone. Just spent ten minutes reconfiguring the monitoring for the comms, and he's not on there, either."
They stopped to retrieve Parker and Sophie en route to Alec's room, where they all stared at his screensaver like they thought it would tell them something useful. "Ah. Guys? He's not on there, and how I know it? It's because he's not on there. He's off the grid and in the wind."
"He left?" Parker's disappointment was palpable. Then again, hers wasn't the only one drifting through the room.
Nate cut a searching glance in Alec's direction. "That remains to be seen." Running a hand over his face, he said. "Do you have any idea why he would bail?"
"No."
"That argument-"
"Got handled. We were cool when he left."
"It's true," Parker interjected adamantly, but Nate ignored her.
"Are you finding anything on him at all? Has he been arrested?"
"His name and description aren't coming up on any police or hospital records. I looked before you got here. If he was, it would have had to be in the past hour or two, given the average time it takes for the records to be processed and uploading. Anything earlier, and I'd have seen it."
"So it's not the authorities, and it might just be him."
"He wouldn't just bail."
"True." Nate nodded, his face grim. "But you really don't want me running down the other possibilities right now."
"We have to get back there," Alec pointed out.
Nate's response was frustrated. "And what about the Bradshaws?"
"We come back in a day or two and salvage what we can," Sophie offered.
"No." Nate's voice was firm. "We finish the job." Glancing at the others apologetically, he continued. "Look, I know you don't like it, but here it is. Eliot is better at taking care of himself than the rest of us combined. The Bradshaws need us more right now."
"You don't know that," Parker accused.
"I know Eliot well enough that if he's gone AWOL, then he's safe. If someone's managed to get a hit out on him, we're too late already. If he's being held somewhere, well. If they can hold him, then we need to know what we're getting ourselves into before we go charging in."
Sensing the reluctant agreement of the others, he went on. "So. Tomorrow, we get out there, and we close this job down as quickly as possible. Hardison, I want you ready to alert the media. Parker, you've got the goods ready to go?"
"Yes. But-"
Nate cut her off. "We finish tomorrow. It's going to be a rush job, but we can make it work. Hardison?"
"I'm already setting up crawlers to look for him," Alec looked up from the screen. "I'll let you all know the second I know anything. And I've got a few hours to make calls."
"Who are you calling?"
"I'm still working that out," Alec admitted. "Any of you guys know his contacts?"
"There's. Us," Sophie offered lamely. "And Aimee."
"That Scottish Indian guy, ah," Nate waved his hand through the air. "Helped us out with the Mumbai videoconference last year? Donnie something or other."
"Right." Hardison added him to the list, made a note to check the call archive for his number once they all cleared out of his room.
"He doesn't know a lot of people," Parker said. "It's weird."
"You should talk," Sophie muttered, before turning to Nate. "You chased him before, right? You've got to have some insight into who might be after him."
"Only chased after him once," Nate grinned slightly, apparently fond of the memory. "There were these. Ah. Smugglers. Moving an experimental chip from one of IYS's contracts. It was a bitch to find, see. I mean. I was following them for weeks. Almost caught up with them in Israel. Missed them by minutes. Anyway." Nate shook his head, stopping an apparent tangent before it started. "It turns out that they'd fed it to a monkey just before crossing the border."
"Seriously. A monkey?"
"Ah. Yes. See, the monkey was a favorite pet of the daughter of one of the smugglers. Even went on the plane with her in a cat carrier. It wasn't until we were halfway over the ocean that I came close to figuring it out, but by the time we landed, well. I wasn't the first one there."
"Eliot stole the monkey first," Sophie guessed, grinning.
"What? No. They gave it to him. I was still stepping down from the plane when he hightailed it off the tarmac. I lost him."
Alec shrugged. "Did you ever get the chip?"
"Two months later, it turned up in Germany, and we did a sting. Me and. Ah. Sterling."
Parker made a face. "That guy is seriously creepy."
Nate cocked his head, considering. "Only because he's not on our side."
"Like I said. Creepy."
"Okay, look. We're getting off topic, here. Hardison, do your thing. Sophie and Parker? I want you thinking of anyone we've come across who might be out for payback, and getting ready for tomorrow. It's going to be an early day."
"What are you going to do?"
Nate sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "I'm going to think."
---
The silence was getting ridiculous. Made doubly so that he knew it was on purpose. To get him to freak out, show his cards first.
It was getting harder to hold his tongue, though.
He couldn't go down, faking injury when there was no one throwing punches. He couldn't work his captors to gain sympathy if there was no one around. He couldn't recite his name, rank, or serial number for the same reason.
He was beginning to lose interest in remembering his training, but he meditated on it anyway.
It beat thinking about his empty stomach.
---
Alec could put up with a lot of things, but the realization that the information he needed just didn't exist wasn't one of them. He checked his programs one last time, made sure his phone was synched to inform him if anything came through, and forced himself to step away. Get out of the room, away from the few pieces of gear and clothing Eliot had left behind, and away from the slow-crawling panic that had been crawling over his skin for the past five hours.
Around back, behind the hotel and next to the dumpster, was a picnic table, probably meant for staff only. But at the moment, Nate was occupying it, toying with the bottle he held in his hand. Under the streetlight, the amber liquid swirled against the clear glass.
Alec knew he should leave, that no good would come of staying. But Nate wasn't so far gone that he didn't see him. "What's going on? You have anything yet?"
"Nothing." Alec sat down on the bench, running his hand over the tabletop, feeling the wood threatening to splinter. "What you were saying earlier. You straight up on that? That was the only time you ran into him?"
"He was never the target, but he was the means, more than once." Nate set the bottle down, and Alec pretended not to notice that the seal hadn't been broken, mostly because it was surprising. "Wasn't too eager to get too close, truth be told. His, ah. Rep."
"Right."
"What about you?"
"Me? Nah, man. Never met him before that first job you ran."
"But you talk to him. You've got to have some ideas."
"None that are going anywhere. I'm out, man. Straight up."
Nate pushed the bottle across the picnic table, withdrawing his hand carefully, before looking up guiltily. "I'm starting to wonder if he really just didn't decide to leave."
Alec wanted to argue that Eliot wouldn't have left one pair of hiking boots and his rattiest jeans behind, but really. They weren't the sort of thing anyone would come back for. So he nodded, instead, and looked out into the parking lot, watching the moths fluttering under the lights.
---
He wasn't sure what woke him, but it was night, apparently.
His eyes cast about the room, looking for any source of sound, and finding none but the door. There was a dim light coming in from the other side of the door, barely visible through the gate.
Another moment of staring, and the shadows rearranged themselves, revealing the silhouette of someone's head. Absolutely featureless, absolutely still. Staring at him through the grate, he was sure.
Eliot was more awake in that moment than he had since he'd arrived, but he was frozen. Unready. He took a breath, closed his eyes to listen.
When he opened them again, seconds later, the person was gone, or maybe just the light.
Eliot wasn't afraid of the dark. But he didn't like it, either.
---
Chapter 5