Man I Used to Be # 6
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.
A/N: Sorry about the eon between updates... :/
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Don't open your eyes. Safer not to. Deal with yourself first, then the rest of it.
For a room full of so much nothing, Eliot felt it all too much upon waking. The temperature of the room and the gritty floor beneath him was probably no different than before, but he was colder, now, he could feel it in his legs.
It took him a few minutes to realize it was because he'd been stripped.
It was the most obvious next step his captors could have made, taking away one more scrap of preservation and safety.
Knowing this, however, did not help.
If you want to come in all cavalry style, he addressed his thoughts to the team, imagining somehow it would reach them, I really wouldn't mind.
It was as far as he went, though. Eliot Spencer did not ask for help.
He raised his left hand gingerly to catalogue the bruises, feeling a split lip here, dried blood there. He pressed careful fingers into the tender areas before letting his face drop to the floor again, as if the chill of it would reduce the swelling.
He wasn't so far gone- yet, he refused to think- that he didn't realize he was just asking for an infection.
His beard- he was long past stubble now, and probably looked a mess- was itching, probably matted with dried blood and spit. He'd give his right arm, which felt alarmingly heavy and useless anyway, for a toothbrush.
He'd give his right arm on the best of days for a lot of things right now.
Not wanting a repeat of before, he carefully opened his eyes, wary of brightness that wasn't there. The darkness was the smallest of mercies, though it didn't feel like it.
This was his punishment, then. Naked, cold, and hurting the total darkness.
This time around, Eliot didn't bother getting up.
---
"Give me five minutes," Alec said, well aware that he was striding through Nate's door like he owned the place. He managed to get the laptop plugged in before the last of the plugging his laptop in. "I'll have something for y'all. Just. Five."
He went back to the profile he'd started building on Mikel Dayan finessing it for a minute or two while reacquainting himself with the hitter's habits.
She had family in Canada, a younger brother and his wife. The only reason they were on Alec's radar at all was because the moment she got paid from any stateside job, she was on the next flight to Toronto. Usually flying coach.
It was an awfully mundane detail to know about her. Hell, even though he'd known Eliot for over a year, he still thought the man should've been living in a bat cave somewhere, even if he was more the Fortress of Solitude type. A house with a shed in the backyard was so damned domestic.
It should have been easy to track when she would have left Boston, or would be, if he was tracking anyone else. She had the propensity for picking up new aliases like Parker stole keys, and never flew direct. Tracking her tickets was going to be a bitch, so he opted for plan B, Pearson Airport's security system. Once he'd proven she was there, he could figure out the when easily enough.
It just felt right. He hadn't had a hunch like this since he'd figured he could roll the Bering Aerospace stock through the London market.
He stood up, brought his laptop to the kitchen table, and sat down across from Sophie. Parker was leaning against the island, and Nate was pouring himself another cup of coffee, but all eyes were on Alec, as evidenced by Nate's scalded hiss.
He recovered quickly, though. "Okay, Hardison. Tell us what you got."
"Mikel Dayan." He wasn't sure what sort of reception he'd been expecting, saying the words, but he would have thought someone would have said something. Instead, the stares coming back to him were nearly blank, with just enough processing for him to know they hadn’t simultaneously fallen into a coma. A muffled "huh," from Nate was all he heard, but it could have been a cough, for all Alec knew.
"I don't get it," Parker eventually said, staring across the apartment at the large screens, which were dark, like she couldn't track the information without visual assistance. "I know we messed up their con, but we kept them from getting caught. Mostly."
Sophie agreed, apparently warming to the idea. "And I can't imagine any of them losing too much sleep about, what was his name, Chaos? Getting nabbed, or where painting wound up. That was Marcus's concern, not theirs."
Nate finally nodded, his eyes suddenly clear. Buffering at 100%. "Yes. But. What was the fallout?" Nate looked from one face to the next, waiting for someone to pick up the train of thought. No one answered, and Alec knew he wasn't the only one half-waiting for Eliot to take his turn in the conversation.
Nate had to answer his own question. "We screwed them. They didn't get paid. Yeah." He smirked, then. "Hardison, can you find any link between Eliot and Mikel? Figure out where their paths might have crossed? They seemed pretty cozy at McRory's after the job."
"Shouldn't I be trying to find out where she and Eliot are linked now?"
"I want you to do both. She doesn't look the type to let an opportunity she wants pass her by."
"My point exactly."
"Yet if it was her, it took her weeks to get around to making a play."
Sophie disagreed. "She seems like she'd take advantage of element of surprise, does she not?"
"No. No." Nate paused. "I don't think so. If it was personal, she wouldn't have waited. It had to have been money."
Parker narrowed her eyes and stared at Nate, possibly trying to read his mind. "How do you know?"
"She didn't get paid." Nate blinked at the blank faces staring back at him. "When we screwed up their job? Ring a bell? We were just talking about it thirty seconds ago."
Alec rolled his eyes. "If we know it's just money, then why do I have to waste time tracking down ancient history?"
"Because for whoever's paying her, it's probably. You know. Personal." Nate nodded once to confirm the idea, and once at Alec.
"I see, right." Alec was already on it. "Between tracking her movements and her money…" he trailed off, already planning his strategy, scrolling down deeper into Dayan's profile, weighing eight different strategies for his approach.
Alec pulled his headphones on, chose a track off the Bloc Party's recently leaked album, took a breath, and dove in.
Start with what you know. Grab what you need on the way.
---
His limbs ached from curling so close to his body, trying to conserve heat that just didn't exist anymore, but his head was clear for the first time in days, the throbbing dulled into the background.
His thirst and hunger took the newly vacated space in his awareness to announce themselves with a vengeance, though. Still too shaky to pull himself up to stand, he half-crawled, half-dragged himself to where he knew food and water would be.
There was nothing, and he cast his left hand out, carefully, searching for anything, growing certain that there was more to his punishment than previously realized, when his ring finger brushed against something solid.
Water. In a plastic bottle. The lid was still on, and from the feel of it, the seal had not been broken.
Another careful sweep of his hand, and he heard the crinkling noise before feeling the wrapper. Rectangular, tightly wrapped. Grasping it with a careful turn of his wrist, finding the weight of it to be familiar, he supposed it to be food.
It was too dark to be certain, and even then, all anyone needed was a needle, but as far as Eliot could tell, it hadn't been tampered with.
Didn't mean he could eat it, though, at least not easily. He managed to twist the cap off the bottle with one hand, but couldn't manage the wrapper, not without making his right wrist scream in agony as he tried to hold it.
He still had his teeth, though. Even if they felt a little more loose in his gums than they should have been, they still managed to bite down hard enough to tear the wrapping apart.
Taking a bite, the texture was tough, and it tasted like nothing in particular.
"Hey man,' Eliot said, ducking his head into Hardison's office. "You gotta come eat something."
"In a bit," Hardison muttered, not so much blowing him off as barely paying attention in the first place.
"You don't eat, your brain slows down, you miss something, Parker and I get shot. So eat, already." Eliot glared at the back of his head, silhouetted by the screen's light. "'Sides. Can't make it three days without eating,"
"None of us will make it much further than that if I don't get the workarounds set on these security parameters, neither."
Eliot gave in. It wasn't the sort of advice Hardison was liable to take, but it was worth a shot. He could report back to Nate, tell him that he'd done as instructed. "Here," Eliot warned him, before throwing a power bar at his chest, too fast for him to catch.
Fifteen minutes later, he stood in the hallway, Old Nate staring down at him from the wall, and peeked his head around the door to see the empty wrapper abandoned on the side of the desk. Heading back to the conference room, he pretended not to understand Sophie's question when she asked him why he was smiling.
---
The seventh time he widened up the time range, Alec caught up with Mikel going through customs in Toronto a few days ago, arriving about 36 hours after Eliot's flight left Kansas, on a ticket originating at Pittsburgh International.
He traced her path and Sarah Fayruz, her alias, back through the airport to the rental agency, where she'd returned a utility van that she'd picked up at the Hertz, not a mile from Eliot's house.
And she'd supplied a phone number when signing for the van. Alec set a trace on it, and within minutes, every single number the phone had connected to was logged on his computer.
He forced himself to set it aside for the time being. Digging a bit deeper, he found that the van, like most rentals these days, was equipped with GPS. It should have been the easiest hack ever. Accessing the GPS and mileage data from the system would be simple enough.
It was an older model system, with very little memory. If the agency wanted to keep the data from the tracker, they'd have to dump it onto a computer, effectively deleting it from the original device.
And that's where it stopped. Suddenly, the information led nowhere. From what he could guess, the computer was non-networked. He'd have to pull what he needed directly from the source.
---
Alec pulled his headphones off and winced at the sound of angry voices falling abruptly into awkward silence as a door slammed behind him.
Alec coughed as he turned, trying a smile without really expecting it to work. "Hey guys-" Only one set of eyes met his. The second set of eyes was already halfway out the window, and the third had presumably taken the door.
"Sophie. What the hell's going on?"
"Maggie," was all she replied, as if waiting for him to read her mind. Eventually relenting, she sat down on the end of the couch with an angry sigh. "She's coming to visit." Her tone was arch, but her expression hesitant. She and Alec never talked. Not really. It was probably a bit of the geek versus the prom queen thing- mutual misunderstanding.
"What's going on?" he repeated, resolutely ignoring the accusations of jealousy and competition that his mind was supplying. He sat down at the other end of the couch.
"It's just." Her eyes widened in exasperation as she glared through the wall across from her. "Don't get me wrong. I expected it to be bad, what with the anniversary coming up, Sam's birthday, but…"
"Aw, hell," Alec interjected, realizing the calendar date. "Totally forgot about that."
Sophie shrugged. "And I know that she's the only one who could understand what's going on with him, but. I could help. I could be there, if he'd let me." It felt just awkward enough that if Sophie was putting on an act, she didn't realize it.
Alec sighed, wondering if this was about as honest as things would ever be. "I wouldn't force it. You'll be there when she leaves."
"Which one of us is sloppy seconds, then? Me or him?" Sophie smiled sadly. "And it's horrible of me. I mean. We've got bigger problems right now and I know it. Nate does too. But."
"There's not much you can do right now."
"That just makes it so much worse." Drumming her nails on the armrest, she sighed. "I keep waiting for him to saunter in here, reeking of alcohol and bragging about some swimsuit model down in Miami."
Alec's eyes flashed towards the door, half expecting it himself, now, but the door remained closed.
Life's never as cool as it is on TV.
"But in the meantime," Sophie continued, guiltily following Alec's eyes to the door, "I think we managed to scare Parker off, too. I don't know where she went."
"I'll find her," Alec said, standing. "Any idea where Nate went?"
"Out for coffee, I hope. And he's probably going to call Maggie back. He did growl out something about being back in twenty minutes, as he was leaving."
"That's good. Because I think I got something."
---
"Parker?" Alec called, scanning the roof for any movement, and finding none. "Yo! Parker!" His breath fogged in the air, and the sight of it only made him realize how cold he was.
"What?" Her voice was clipped and half lost to the wind, coming from behind a chimney on the west side of the building. Moving towards it and around, Alec found her, sitting on the ledge, her feet dangling over the edge.
"You alright?"
"I'm fine," Parker said, angrily enough that she probably wasn't, not entirely. "They were arguing, and then Nate started shouting. I left. Didn't know what else to do, I got-" Parker sniffed, still not looking at him. "So I came up here."
"Right on. Nate's gone too, but he'll be back soon. Sophie filled me in. Maggie's wants to visit because it's their son's birthday."
Parker turned her head to look at him quizzically. "I thought he was dead."
"Exactly."
"Oh." Parker tested the strength of the gutter, her fingers flexing around pipes and into niches. Nervous, or habit, or nervous habit, Alec couldn't tell. "I forgot about that."
"It's okay."
"I don't know. It's just. I can't sit around here anymore. I need to be doing something." The frustration was clear on her face as she squinted out over the neighborhood. "I'm not good at. It's too much around here, with Eliot gone, and yeah, I mean, he's a jerk, but things never got this bad when he was around, you know? He knew how to talk to Sophie, rein Nate in. But instead of trying to find him, they're fighting." Parker laughed. "And I'm up on the roof again, so it's not like I'm any better."
"Yeah. But you didn't go any farther, right? So if you want to come back down, I think I've got something."
---
Nate came in through the doorway with a cardboard carrier full of coffees and orange soda, the usual peace offering. He still held his cell phone in his other hand. "Ah. Guys?" He looked guilty, as if whatever he was going to say would be surprising. "Maggie's coming to visit. She'll be here tomorrow."
Sophie sighed, opened her mouth to speak, but Parker got there first.
"Does anyone here remember the part where we're in the middle of a job?"
To his credit, Nate looked apologetic, but not quite shamefaced. "I know, I know. But. Ah. She needs this." The unspoken and so do I was heavily implied enough that technically, it wasn't a lie. He wouldn't even look in Sophie's direction, though.
Parker and Sophie both looked like they wanted to argue, so Alec cut in first, raising a hand, waving for their attention. "All right, all right. Seriously. People? Table this right the hell now. I have something."
"You find Eliot?" Nate's face contorted, and it looked a lot like hope crawling through.
Alec found the urge to hit Nate dwindling down to nothing, and wished he had more information that he did. "Not yet. But I tracked Mikel Dayan down to Pittsburgh, and I got her phone. Between phone records and the GPS, we should be able to find Eliot pretty easily." Alec took a quick breath, not wanting to lose the floor just yet. "The GPS data's stored on a non-networked computer at the rental office. Have to go there to find it."
"What about the phone records?"
"She made several calls on the same phone, mostly to set up the rental and her tickets, judging by the numbers. There is one other number, but it goes to a ghost phone. No identity, so it's either hacked, or prepaid. No one tied to it, but the number originates in London, and there's no recent activity on Dayan's phone, so I think she dumped it before she left."
"You think Eliot's in London?"
"Either service was set up there, and the owner's roaming, or it was set up to look like it originated there. Not much use either way, but I'm watching both that line, and Dayan's, in case any other calls go through. Hopefully, somewhere between here and Pittsburgh, we'll be able to find out more."
Parker nearly jumped out of her seat. "I'm coming with you."
Nate coughed, again looking tense, his eyes sliding over towards Sophie, who was pretending to ignore him. "I. Ah."
In light of the evening so far, the idea of sitting in a car with Nate and Sophie was a nightmarish prospect, so Alec thought fast. "For all I know, the trail could lead right back here. This entire thing could be a red herring."
Parker's eyes darted away from the back of Sophie's head to meet Alec's. "What if someone's waiting to know that we're back in town to come forward with a ransom demand? At least one of us should stay here."
"Or, you know. Two." Alec wanted to disappear through the floor for how awkward he'd managed to make it sound. Even Parker picked up on it.
Sophie smiled into her coffee, though, and Nate blinked once and snorted. It was as close to approval as he was likely to get.
---
Alec was packing up his computer, as usual, the last one to leave. He could tell when Nate's attention was on him, and began to dread the inevitable conversation to come.
Don't even. No. This entire agony aunt thing's gettin' old, man.
Thankfully, though, Nate was all business. "How long will it take you and Parker?"
Alec hated this, more than anything. Deadlines. Like he had any clue where the information would take him as he followed it down. It would end up at Eliot, but between here and there? Who the hell knows? It was half the reason he'd been fired from the two legit jobs he'd held, back in the day.
"Depends on what I find and when I find it. Can't say, 'cause I don't know."
"Best case, worst case," Nate said.
"Best case. Get out there. Spend a day or so searching. Luck out with triangulation. Worst case. I'm wrong and this is a dead end. Look." Alec leaned his back against the counter and scratched at his ear. "There are a lot of ways this could wash out. I only barely have Mikel's MO down in the first place. Even then, I don't know if she was actually involved. If she is, I still don't know who she's working for, or with, or where they are, or what they're doing. So." Alec shrugged, dimly aware that he was the one unloading, that he'd had it wrong, before.
"You've got what you've got. Okay." Nate nodded his understanding. "Just. Be careful. Let us know the moment you find anything. Keep your earpieces in, and keep an eye on Parker. Those trackers still in her shoes?"
"Yeah."
"Want them in yours, too. I want your car littered with them. I want them in your phones, and I want a way to see them on my computer before you leave. Got it?"
Alec pretended that he wasn't even tempted to grin. "Program's already on your phone, man, and your desktop. Here." He held out his hand for the phone, showed Nate as he navigated through a few screens until a blinking red light became visible, two intersections away from Parker's apartment.
Nate nodded, took the phone back. "Thanks. Ah. For everything, you know. Let me know if you need anything."
"Oh I will," Alec grinned as he made his way to the door, hopefully forestalling any attempts Nate might make to hand him a bagged lunch and change for the bus. "Don't you doubt it."
---
There was a ticking noise, coming from somewhere up in the ceiling.
Digital readouts didn't need to tick. There was nothing in them to create the noise. No gears, no cogs.
The sound was being piped in just to fuck with him.
It was working. Too fucking well.
Forcing himself to calm down, to fucking think, he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling.
Large digital numbers. Bright green digits on a small black box counting down, the only thing that would be visible in the growing dark.
They'd left him with food and water, enough to last him a week, in a cardboard box over in the corner. And they'd planted a bomb on his ceiling.
---
Eliot tried to figure it out, find the point where it all went wrong. Thing is, really, it was only a few days ago. Things hadn't been that bad.
But obviously the guy in the picture was supposed to mean something, and it really sucked not knowing.
The man didn't look like anyone he'd killed- those faces, he remembered the most, except for one brutal night in a half-completed suburban house. The collateral damage had worn a ski mask, and the sirens were too close for Eliot to stop and identify the body.
That was sometimes a mistake they made. Wearing a mask only meant they were prepared to leave survivors. In his line of work, it was the sloppiest tell anyone could have.
But that was neither here nor there.
The worst thing about all this, though, was that he'd just recently started thinking that maybe, when the time came- and of course it would - he'd be going down for a good reason. A little bit of atonement, maybe. Something that his folks, rest their souls, wouldn't be ashamed of. If the world worked the way it was supposed to, he'd be putting his life down for the crew.
But Parker was dead, he was useless, and his attackers hadn't been wearing masks.
---
He'd been in town for the Oklahoma City bombing, but his father had been in the damned building.
Eliot volunteered in the rescue effort, but wasn't the one to find him. Some girl- Shawna or Shayla or something like that, the records weren't clear- was the one to catch sight of him in the wreckage, to report back that there wasn't a pulse.
Eliot never found out who Shawna or Shyla was, doubted that she'd ever known his father's name. Glancing around at the funeral a week later, knowing it was foolish as he did so, he found no strangers in the church.
Enough families were double booked on that front as it was. Had their own to attend to, that week.
He'd arranged everything, the funeral, the death certificate, the insurance. Groceries and visiting family. Mom had turned into a ghost, sometime in the middle of all of it all.
He never told her what the coroner's report had said. That dad had survived for several hours with internal bleeding and a broken spine. The filing cabinet had been all that was holding him together, and when it had moved? That was it. No more.
Eliot had been less than two hundred feet away at the time, searching through the wreckage, still hoping. He'd had no idea, wouldn't find out for another day.
---
He wanted a bed. Sheets and a blanket, something more than this flattened cardboard box he'd laid out in an admittedly pathetic attempt to insulate himself from the chill of the floor. He wanted clothing. Socks. That shitty radiator in his first apartment. Someone else's body, solid and close. Fire.
He wanted hot tea. Soup. Something that he didn't have to chew, anything that would fill his stomach. Red beans and rice, collard greens. Something with vitamins in it.
He wanted to go home. Wanted to be working in the garden, grass under his knees, dirt under his fingernails instead of blood. Guitars on the radio and Loretta Lynn's voice.
He wanted to stop hurting. Tape for his ribs, enough morphine to take his body away.
He wanted to be clean. Water and soap and steam.
He wanted to hear other people, even if it was just Hardison cracking jokes. He wanted to have something worth laughing about. He wanted Sophie's calm voice, Nate's certainty. Even Parker's insanity would be nice right now, but fuck, Parker. She was. Fuck.
He wanted to stop thinking like this. Wanted to be who he used to be a week ago.
He wanted that timer to just fucking stop, already. Sudden malfunction, numbers freezing.
He wanted it to count down to fucking zero, already. Just get this over with.
He was so goddamned tired, too tired to think straight, to remember things. Names and faces in pictures from somewhere he'd been. He wanted to rest.
---
They were in Pittsburgh by two in the afternoon the next day, and had rented a car they didn't need to give Parker the opportunity to case the rental office.
"How to you want to play this?" Parker asked, slipping back into Alec's car. "Getting you into the garage should be easy. You think that's where they'll have the computer?"
Parker was waiting in front of the rental agency, pretending to talk on her phone and preparing to make a distraction if she needed to, but there was a line out the door of the rental agency, and the staff inside was already insanely busy.
Once the mechanic on duty snuck out for a smoke break, it was so easy to slip in through the garage entrance that Alec didn't bother asking Parker for help. It would have been an insult.
He found the most likely computer, an old desktop built into the wall, and was preparing to dive in, when he saw it.
Someone had taped a memo listing the new password to the front of the computer. Even better, it was the correct password, only set a day or two ago.
The heading of the memo read Computer Security: Do Not Post.
Alec allowed himself to laugh, quietly, but didn’t bother explaining it to Sophie, who was on the other end of the comms. "I'm in," was all he needed to say, anyhow.
He found what he needed, pulled the data from Dayan's returned van, and copied it over into his own computer. "Got it. Heading out, Parker?"
"Meet you at the car."
He was out of there in less than two minutes. Easy as lyin'.
---
Parker had said she'd be asleep in the room next door, but he could hear the sound of cartoons bleeding through the wall as he worked.
Ordinarily, it was the sort of distraction that sent him running for his headphones. Today, though, he didn't mind so much.
Didn't want to miss anything out in the world, not like he had yesterday.
He traced the van's route down from Boston, tying the GPS points from the file to his tracking program, watching as the map built itself up out of nothing. Deleting every stop that lasted less than 45 seconds, he wiped out most of the stoplights on the route, leaving him with less than ten locations to examine.
It probably wasn't the hardware store parking lot, and they'd already checked Eliot's house.
It probably wasn't the gas station outside Allentown, but he pulled up the local scanner records to be sure there were no strange reports.
It probably wasn't the drive through coffee shop, either.
The last point, the longest stop aside from the lengthy stakeout across from Eliot's house, was in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.
Middle of nowhere, or about as close to it as you can get. Mostly warehouses, and mostly abandoned.
She hadn't stayed there for more than ten minutes. Enough time to trade a hostage for cash and exchange a few pleasantries about the weather.
There was no way he was on the wrong trail. Alec was starting to breathe again, found enough air in his lungs to laugh.
He hadn't realized the earpiece was still in, and he felt bad, waking Sophie up like he did, because it was kind of late, but Parker hadn't really been sleeping anyway.
There was absolutely no reason to take that tone. It was just rude.
---
There was no way to be sure how exact the GPS was, not really. They had to check it out in person, driving around the parking lots, making a show of stopping and pulling out a map, shaking it open on the hood of the car. On the dashboard, one of his phones searched for networks.
"Found three," Parker said from inside the car, and Alec was surprised to hear Nate's voice on the wire a minute later.
"Excellent, Hardison?"
Parker was confused as well. "Nate? You're-" she broke off as she watched Alec shoving the phone into an empty paper cup, and gathering the other detritus of their fast-food lunch before stepping out of the car, shoving it into a dumpster standing near one of the buildings. "Thought you went to California."
"It was lunch and a walk in the park, Parker," Nate replied dryly. "Was never actually going away."
"Oh." Parker grinned. "Good."
"Ah, right. So, where are we at? Need us down there?"
Alec got back into the car, glancing at the surrounding buildings one last time before replying. "Don't know yet. I'll give you a call in a few hours. I gotta work on some stuff, depends on what I find."
"Okay, that's good. Keep me posted, and I'll call if I don't hear from you. Got my phone on. And, ah. The computer."
"Right."
---
This was insane. He couldn't figure out what his captors wanted. Couldn't make heads or tails of the photographs. Couldn't figure out a goddamned thing, because he couldn't concentrate on anything other than the green numbers counting down and down and.
In three days and change, he would be dead.
If they'd left him food, there probably wasn't anyone on the other side of the door waiting for his admission, his apology, for whatever he could give them.
He tried to call out, but it came out in more pieces than he meant to- words weren't lining up the way they were supposed to, and he didn't know if it was the drugs, something wrong with his jaw, or if it was brain damage.
He meant to say, "I don't understand what this is about. I don't know who this is! What do you want from me?" He really did.
But he tried three times, shouting up into the camera, and each turn was more twisted than the last. Either he couldn't speak the words in the correct order, or he couldn't hear them right. He was pretty sure understand wasn't pronounced anderstond, but it didn't help him figure out if it was his ears or his speech or his memory that was broken.
It didn't seem to matter to anyone but him. There was no answer.
Eliot was too frustrated and annoyed to try again. He turned his head to hide from the camera, stupidly ashamed to have tried in the first place.
Even if there was nobody there to see it. Even if he was totally fucking alone.
---
The first network had provided nothing interesting. Inventory listings, security and utilities monitoring. The warehouse itself wasn't actually abandoned, then, merely shuttered. Scanning through a few emails, he found that it would be reopened once the fire chief had verified that the violations had been taken care of, probably early next week.
The second network was more what he'd expect to find somewhere like this. Massive piracy, badly hidden. If he'd been bored, he would have hit the boards and found out who was running it, maybe bolstered their security for them if they weren't jerks. But he didn't have the time for it now.
The third one, though. It was different.
It was all being run off one new computer. It was the most generic out-of-the-box desktop on the market. Cheap enough to buy with cash without raising questions, especially if they were storing everything in external hard drives. Which it seemed they were.
Alec forced himself to back out, to double check his approach, make sure he was leaving no trail. Checked a third time, and again. Hadn't been this cautious since he'd hit Lockheed-Martin, just to prove a minor point to Eliot, back when things were sane.
Almost all of them looked to be video feeds. No email, no documents, no pictures. Not a single trace of pirated music or pornography.
It had solitaire, though, and someone had played a few hundred games.
Choosing one at random, he brought it up. Found a delivery truck driving past yesterday, time stamped and dull. Fourteen seconds, and it ended. Motion detectors, then, running the system outside. Good to know.
There was no way they hadn't been captured by this. Any other day, that would have mattered.
He began to pull them all down into his computer, before realizing that one feed was being recorded, and couldn't be moved, yet.
But it could be watched.
Eliot was naked, and from the looks of it, hurt. His right arm, at least, wasn't moving right, but to be honest, Alec couldn't tell blood from bruise from shadow. There were too much of all three.
The scruff on Eliot's face was mostly stubble, though, left too long.
There was sick feeling forming in his stomach as he tapped into the audio feed.
Like it's not enough to watch, gotta be listening, too.
Hardison didn't want to do either, but he knew, already, that he wouldn't be turning off. Not once he recognized the ticking for what it was.
It was the only sound, though. Eliot wasn't saying anything, and he wasn't moving much. Just lying in the middle of the room, fingers clutching at some pieces of paper over and over again. He was lying there like he'd forgotten how to hide himself, and Alec wished, more than anything, that he'd turn his head just a fraction more, so he could see his eyes.
---
Get your head together, man.
Alec began to pull apart the scene, isolating images, cleaning up the audio tracks every time he heard Eliot breathe funny, or when his head convinces him that the ever-present ticking sound has changed in pitch or timbre.
He knew he should've called the others in by now. He should have done so an hour ago.
But Eliot was beginning to stir, moving too slowly. The image of him struggling just to sit up, and the flash of pain that the camera managed to catch, was burned too deeply into Alec's brain for him to think around it.
No one should have to see this, let alone… He was halfway to standing before the other thought dropped. Fuck, Parker is going to see this. They all are.
But they don't have to.
Ain't lying. It's for their own good. For Eliot's. Won't have to live it down if there's nothing to see.
It ain't lying.
He pulled up the security feeds from outside, turning the sound off and minimizing the live feed, before standing to stretch. He willed his body to move faster, slipping out into the hallway and to Parker's door, forcing himself to tap quietly, not to pound, to scream, to wake up the whole damned floor.
"Found him. It's bad," was all he said when it opened. He couldn't lie that well.
---
"I gotta work on this some more," he finally summed up, adjusting his earpiece to sit more comfortably, "but from what we're seeing there were four people going in and out up until yesterday, except for when they brought Eliot in, and he's never come out. Now there's just one other person going in and out. Camera feed's too crappy to pull the plates without spending days cleaning the images, but I'm on it already."
"Okay. One person somewhere in the building, plus Eliot, who's locked up. Have you gotten a look at the door?"
"There's a camera in the hallway. Couple of crappy looking padlocks, nothing that some heavy bolt cutters won't handle if we're pressed for time. That's not the issue."
"It's the fact that there's probably a bloody bomb in there with him, and you don't know when it's going to go off." Alec could see the disapproval on Sophie's face, so clear she might as well have been in the room.
"Hardison. Parker." Nate was probably shaking his head. "Yeah. I don't know if it's a good idea-"
Alec shook his head right back, not caring that Parker was the only one who could see it. "If the other person is in there, we have to assume that they know about the bomb, and are going to clear out before it blows. As long as that person's in there, we've got a shot."
"Anyone with sense would clear out with plenty of time. Or maybe it's a fake bomb," Parker pointed out.
"Are they in there now?"
"Yes."
"When do they normally leave?"
"Every twelve hours, at nine, there's a shift change."
"That's in…"
"Seven hours," Parker nodded. "That's our window."
"I don't like it," Sophie said.
"I don't either. I don't like anything about this. But. We should do this."
"Parker, what do you think?"
"I want to go now, but that would be stupid."
"Fine. We're coming down there."
"We can't wait, man."
"We'll catch up. Keep in touch."
"Right," Alec nodded. Fine.
Sophie asked, "Be careful. Is there anything you need?"
"No," Parker said, before looking over to see if Alec disagreed.
"Thanks," Alec said, signing off, waiting until Parker pulled her earpiece out.
"Everything we need except a plan," she said, crossly. "What if he's hurt?"
Alec sighed, nodding, pretending not to know the answer to that. "First, we need sleep. Four hours. We wake up, and we figure it out. We have bolt cutters. I'll ghost the security feeds. You distract the guard, I'll pull him out. That work for now?" Alec waited, breathless, for her assessment. It wasn't exactly the level of planning they were used to.
But sometimes, a little more fluidity was useful, apparently. Parker was still beaming when she went back to her room.
The moment she was gone, Alec was back on his laptop, pulling up the feed again, but there was nothing to see. And he had work to do, anyway.
He selected a loop of the security feed, checking the weather to check for rain, sun, and cloud cover before selecting three from the files that would fit seamlessly into tomorrow morning.
---
He knew he'd fallen asleep only after jerking back to wakefulness, casting about for the signal that woke him. Trying to remember what he wasn't sure he'd heard.
Nervously, he looped the past minute for playback.
Eliot's voice, silent for days now, was little more than stuttering breath. "Fuck." Barely audible, but after so much silence, it had been enough to wake Alec. It was hollow enough, hopeless enough, that Alec figured he'd never sleep again.
Alec had no idea why his vision was blurring. Rubbed at his eyes, and his fingers came away damp. It was embarrassing. Eliot wouldn't let him hear the end of it. Ever.
The sooner Eliot was back, the sooner they could get on that. Alec wouldn't even mind. Not much.
He was reaching for the keyboard again when he was overcome with the sick sense that he wasn't the only one watching. Somewhere in a warehouse a little more than a mile from here, someone was sitting just like he was, eyes on the same screen. Maybe taking notes.
Maybe they were riveted, and this was entertainment, a movie to them, and he'd come in too late to catch the plot.
Eliot groaned once, maybe in his sleep, and Alec was pulling up the screen so fast he didn't even realize he was doing it. He watched for a while, trying to make sure Eliot was still breathing, trying to make sure his own heart hadn't stopped yet. Trying to ignore the ticking.
He was wasting time. Had to get back to work. He kept the audio on, though, and listened, but Eliot said nothing more.
Alec only let himself enlarge the feed screen once every five minutes, to make sure Eliot was still breathing. Each time, he grew more certain that there were only so many turns he had left. He'd promise himself to hold out for ten minutes, next time, and every time, he failed.
He wanted to lie down, to get some rest. He had to be clear in the morning. Knowing it didn't help. But he couldn't bring himself to turn off the video feed. Didn't seem right to be listening to Eliot trying to breathe in the dark, but it was worse to shut it off, to leave him alone.
He drifted towards sleep to the sound of a bomb ticking down, and jerked awake every time it went off.
Chapter 7
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.
A/N: Sorry about the eon between updates... :/
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Don't open your eyes. Safer not to. Deal with yourself first, then the rest of it.
For a room full of so much nothing, Eliot felt it all too much upon waking. The temperature of the room and the gritty floor beneath him was probably no different than before, but he was colder, now, he could feel it in his legs.
It took him a few minutes to realize it was because he'd been stripped.
It was the most obvious next step his captors could have made, taking away one more scrap of preservation and safety.
Knowing this, however, did not help.
If you want to come in all cavalry style, he addressed his thoughts to the team, imagining somehow it would reach them, I really wouldn't mind.
It was as far as he went, though. Eliot Spencer did not ask for help.
He raised his left hand gingerly to catalogue the bruises, feeling a split lip here, dried blood there. He pressed careful fingers into the tender areas before letting his face drop to the floor again, as if the chill of it would reduce the swelling.
He wasn't so far gone- yet, he refused to think- that he didn't realize he was just asking for an infection.
His beard- he was long past stubble now, and probably looked a mess- was itching, probably matted with dried blood and spit. He'd give his right arm, which felt alarmingly heavy and useless anyway, for a toothbrush.
He'd give his right arm on the best of days for a lot of things right now.
Not wanting a repeat of before, he carefully opened his eyes, wary of brightness that wasn't there. The darkness was the smallest of mercies, though it didn't feel like it.
This was his punishment, then. Naked, cold, and hurting the total darkness.
This time around, Eliot didn't bother getting up.
---
"Give me five minutes," Alec said, well aware that he was striding through Nate's door like he owned the place. He managed to get the laptop plugged in before the last of the plugging his laptop in. "I'll have something for y'all. Just. Five."
He went back to the profile he'd started building on Mikel Dayan finessing it for a minute or two while reacquainting himself with the hitter's habits.
She had family in Canada, a younger brother and his wife. The only reason they were on Alec's radar at all was because the moment she got paid from any stateside job, she was on the next flight to Toronto. Usually flying coach.
It was an awfully mundane detail to know about her. Hell, even though he'd known Eliot for over a year, he still thought the man should've been living in a bat cave somewhere, even if he was more the Fortress of Solitude type. A house with a shed in the backyard was so damned domestic.
It should have been easy to track when she would have left Boston, or would be, if he was tracking anyone else. She had the propensity for picking up new aliases like Parker stole keys, and never flew direct. Tracking her tickets was going to be a bitch, so he opted for plan B, Pearson Airport's security system. Once he'd proven she was there, he could figure out the when easily enough.
It just felt right. He hadn't had a hunch like this since he'd figured he could roll the Bering Aerospace stock through the London market.
He stood up, brought his laptop to the kitchen table, and sat down across from Sophie. Parker was leaning against the island, and Nate was pouring himself another cup of coffee, but all eyes were on Alec, as evidenced by Nate's scalded hiss.
He recovered quickly, though. "Okay, Hardison. Tell us what you got."
"Mikel Dayan." He wasn't sure what sort of reception he'd been expecting, saying the words, but he would have thought someone would have said something. Instead, the stares coming back to him were nearly blank, with just enough processing for him to know they hadn’t simultaneously fallen into a coma. A muffled "huh," from Nate was all he heard, but it could have been a cough, for all Alec knew.
"I don't get it," Parker eventually said, staring across the apartment at the large screens, which were dark, like she couldn't track the information without visual assistance. "I know we messed up their con, but we kept them from getting caught. Mostly."
Sophie agreed, apparently warming to the idea. "And I can't imagine any of them losing too much sleep about, what was his name, Chaos? Getting nabbed, or where painting wound up. That was Marcus's concern, not theirs."
Nate finally nodded, his eyes suddenly clear. Buffering at 100%. "Yes. But. What was the fallout?" Nate looked from one face to the next, waiting for someone to pick up the train of thought. No one answered, and Alec knew he wasn't the only one half-waiting for Eliot to take his turn in the conversation.
Nate had to answer his own question. "We screwed them. They didn't get paid. Yeah." He smirked, then. "Hardison, can you find any link between Eliot and Mikel? Figure out where their paths might have crossed? They seemed pretty cozy at McRory's after the job."
"Shouldn't I be trying to find out where she and Eliot are linked now?"
"I want you to do both. She doesn't look the type to let an opportunity she wants pass her by."
"My point exactly."
"Yet if it was her, it took her weeks to get around to making a play."
Sophie disagreed. "She seems like she'd take advantage of element of surprise, does she not?"
"No. No." Nate paused. "I don't think so. If it was personal, she wouldn't have waited. It had to have been money."
Parker narrowed her eyes and stared at Nate, possibly trying to read his mind. "How do you know?"
"She didn't get paid." Nate blinked at the blank faces staring back at him. "When we screwed up their job? Ring a bell? We were just talking about it thirty seconds ago."
Alec rolled his eyes. "If we know it's just money, then why do I have to waste time tracking down ancient history?"
"Because for whoever's paying her, it's probably. You know. Personal." Nate nodded once to confirm the idea, and once at Alec.
"I see, right." Alec was already on it. "Between tracking her movements and her money…" he trailed off, already planning his strategy, scrolling down deeper into Dayan's profile, weighing eight different strategies for his approach.
Alec pulled his headphones on, chose a track off the Bloc Party's recently leaked album, took a breath, and dove in.
Start with what you know. Grab what you need on the way.
---
His limbs ached from curling so close to his body, trying to conserve heat that just didn't exist anymore, but his head was clear for the first time in days, the throbbing dulled into the background.
His thirst and hunger took the newly vacated space in his awareness to announce themselves with a vengeance, though. Still too shaky to pull himself up to stand, he half-crawled, half-dragged himself to where he knew food and water would be.
There was nothing, and he cast his left hand out, carefully, searching for anything, growing certain that there was more to his punishment than previously realized, when his ring finger brushed against something solid.
Water. In a plastic bottle. The lid was still on, and from the feel of it, the seal had not been broken.
Another careful sweep of his hand, and he heard the crinkling noise before feeling the wrapper. Rectangular, tightly wrapped. Grasping it with a careful turn of his wrist, finding the weight of it to be familiar, he supposed it to be food.
It was too dark to be certain, and even then, all anyone needed was a needle, but as far as Eliot could tell, it hadn't been tampered with.
Didn't mean he could eat it, though, at least not easily. He managed to twist the cap off the bottle with one hand, but couldn't manage the wrapper, not without making his right wrist scream in agony as he tried to hold it.
He still had his teeth, though. Even if they felt a little more loose in his gums than they should have been, they still managed to bite down hard enough to tear the wrapping apart.
Taking a bite, the texture was tough, and it tasted like nothing in particular.
"Hey man,' Eliot said, ducking his head into Hardison's office. "You gotta come eat something."
"In a bit," Hardison muttered, not so much blowing him off as barely paying attention in the first place.
"You don't eat, your brain slows down, you miss something, Parker and I get shot. So eat, already." Eliot glared at the back of his head, silhouetted by the screen's light. "'Sides. Can't make it three days without eating,"
"None of us will make it much further than that if I don't get the workarounds set on these security parameters, neither."
Eliot gave in. It wasn't the sort of advice Hardison was liable to take, but it was worth a shot. He could report back to Nate, tell him that he'd done as instructed. "Here," Eliot warned him, before throwing a power bar at his chest, too fast for him to catch.
Fifteen minutes later, he stood in the hallway, Old Nate staring down at him from the wall, and peeked his head around the door to see the empty wrapper abandoned on the side of the desk. Heading back to the conference room, he pretended not to understand Sophie's question when she asked him why he was smiling.
---
The seventh time he widened up the time range, Alec caught up with Mikel going through customs in Toronto a few days ago, arriving about 36 hours after Eliot's flight left Kansas, on a ticket originating at Pittsburgh International.
He traced her path and Sarah Fayruz, her alias, back through the airport to the rental agency, where she'd returned a utility van that she'd picked up at the Hertz, not a mile from Eliot's house.
And she'd supplied a phone number when signing for the van. Alec set a trace on it, and within minutes, every single number the phone had connected to was logged on his computer.
He forced himself to set it aside for the time being. Digging a bit deeper, he found that the van, like most rentals these days, was equipped with GPS. It should have been the easiest hack ever. Accessing the GPS and mileage data from the system would be simple enough.
It was an older model system, with very little memory. If the agency wanted to keep the data from the tracker, they'd have to dump it onto a computer, effectively deleting it from the original device.
And that's where it stopped. Suddenly, the information led nowhere. From what he could guess, the computer was non-networked. He'd have to pull what he needed directly from the source.
---
Alec pulled his headphones off and winced at the sound of angry voices falling abruptly into awkward silence as a door slammed behind him.
Alec coughed as he turned, trying a smile without really expecting it to work. "Hey guys-" Only one set of eyes met his. The second set of eyes was already halfway out the window, and the third had presumably taken the door.
"Sophie. What the hell's going on?"
"Maggie," was all she replied, as if waiting for him to read her mind. Eventually relenting, she sat down on the end of the couch with an angry sigh. "She's coming to visit." Her tone was arch, but her expression hesitant. She and Alec never talked. Not really. It was probably a bit of the geek versus the prom queen thing- mutual misunderstanding.
"What's going on?" he repeated, resolutely ignoring the accusations of jealousy and competition that his mind was supplying. He sat down at the other end of the couch.
"It's just." Her eyes widened in exasperation as she glared through the wall across from her. "Don't get me wrong. I expected it to be bad, what with the anniversary coming up, Sam's birthday, but…"
"Aw, hell," Alec interjected, realizing the calendar date. "Totally forgot about that."
Sophie shrugged. "And I know that she's the only one who could understand what's going on with him, but. I could help. I could be there, if he'd let me." It felt just awkward enough that if Sophie was putting on an act, she didn't realize it.
Alec sighed, wondering if this was about as honest as things would ever be. "I wouldn't force it. You'll be there when she leaves."
"Which one of us is sloppy seconds, then? Me or him?" Sophie smiled sadly. "And it's horrible of me. I mean. We've got bigger problems right now and I know it. Nate does too. But."
"There's not much you can do right now."
"That just makes it so much worse." Drumming her nails on the armrest, she sighed. "I keep waiting for him to saunter in here, reeking of alcohol and bragging about some swimsuit model down in Miami."
Alec's eyes flashed towards the door, half expecting it himself, now, but the door remained closed.
Life's never as cool as it is on TV.
"But in the meantime," Sophie continued, guiltily following Alec's eyes to the door, "I think we managed to scare Parker off, too. I don't know where she went."
"I'll find her," Alec said, standing. "Any idea where Nate went?"
"Out for coffee, I hope. And he's probably going to call Maggie back. He did growl out something about being back in twenty minutes, as he was leaving."
"That's good. Because I think I got something."
---
"Parker?" Alec called, scanning the roof for any movement, and finding none. "Yo! Parker!" His breath fogged in the air, and the sight of it only made him realize how cold he was.
"What?" Her voice was clipped and half lost to the wind, coming from behind a chimney on the west side of the building. Moving towards it and around, Alec found her, sitting on the ledge, her feet dangling over the edge.
"You alright?"
"I'm fine," Parker said, angrily enough that she probably wasn't, not entirely. "They were arguing, and then Nate started shouting. I left. Didn't know what else to do, I got-" Parker sniffed, still not looking at him. "So I came up here."
"Right on. Nate's gone too, but he'll be back soon. Sophie filled me in. Maggie's wants to visit because it's their son's birthday."
Parker turned her head to look at him quizzically. "I thought he was dead."
"Exactly."
"Oh." Parker tested the strength of the gutter, her fingers flexing around pipes and into niches. Nervous, or habit, or nervous habit, Alec couldn't tell. "I forgot about that."
"It's okay."
"I don't know. It's just. I can't sit around here anymore. I need to be doing something." The frustration was clear on her face as she squinted out over the neighborhood. "I'm not good at. It's too much around here, with Eliot gone, and yeah, I mean, he's a jerk, but things never got this bad when he was around, you know? He knew how to talk to Sophie, rein Nate in. But instead of trying to find him, they're fighting." Parker laughed. "And I'm up on the roof again, so it's not like I'm any better."
"Yeah. But you didn't go any farther, right? So if you want to come back down, I think I've got something."
---
Nate came in through the doorway with a cardboard carrier full of coffees and orange soda, the usual peace offering. He still held his cell phone in his other hand. "Ah. Guys?" He looked guilty, as if whatever he was going to say would be surprising. "Maggie's coming to visit. She'll be here tomorrow."
Sophie sighed, opened her mouth to speak, but Parker got there first.
"Does anyone here remember the part where we're in the middle of a job?"
To his credit, Nate looked apologetic, but not quite shamefaced. "I know, I know. But. Ah. She needs this." The unspoken and so do I was heavily implied enough that technically, it wasn't a lie. He wouldn't even look in Sophie's direction, though.
Parker and Sophie both looked like they wanted to argue, so Alec cut in first, raising a hand, waving for their attention. "All right, all right. Seriously. People? Table this right the hell now. I have something."
"You find Eliot?" Nate's face contorted, and it looked a lot like hope crawling through.
Alec found the urge to hit Nate dwindling down to nothing, and wished he had more information that he did. "Not yet. But I tracked Mikel Dayan down to Pittsburgh, and I got her phone. Between phone records and the GPS, we should be able to find Eliot pretty easily." Alec took a quick breath, not wanting to lose the floor just yet. "The GPS data's stored on a non-networked computer at the rental office. Have to go there to find it."
"What about the phone records?"
"She made several calls on the same phone, mostly to set up the rental and her tickets, judging by the numbers. There is one other number, but it goes to a ghost phone. No identity, so it's either hacked, or prepaid. No one tied to it, but the number originates in London, and there's no recent activity on Dayan's phone, so I think she dumped it before she left."
"You think Eliot's in London?"
"Either service was set up there, and the owner's roaming, or it was set up to look like it originated there. Not much use either way, but I'm watching both that line, and Dayan's, in case any other calls go through. Hopefully, somewhere between here and Pittsburgh, we'll be able to find out more."
Parker nearly jumped out of her seat. "I'm coming with you."
Nate coughed, again looking tense, his eyes sliding over towards Sophie, who was pretending to ignore him. "I. Ah."
In light of the evening so far, the idea of sitting in a car with Nate and Sophie was a nightmarish prospect, so Alec thought fast. "For all I know, the trail could lead right back here. This entire thing could be a red herring."
Parker's eyes darted away from the back of Sophie's head to meet Alec's. "What if someone's waiting to know that we're back in town to come forward with a ransom demand? At least one of us should stay here."
"Or, you know. Two." Alec wanted to disappear through the floor for how awkward he'd managed to make it sound. Even Parker picked up on it.
Sophie smiled into her coffee, though, and Nate blinked once and snorted. It was as close to approval as he was likely to get.
---
Alec was packing up his computer, as usual, the last one to leave. He could tell when Nate's attention was on him, and began to dread the inevitable conversation to come.
Don't even. No. This entire agony aunt thing's gettin' old, man.
Thankfully, though, Nate was all business. "How long will it take you and Parker?"
Alec hated this, more than anything. Deadlines. Like he had any clue where the information would take him as he followed it down. It would end up at Eliot, but between here and there? Who the hell knows? It was half the reason he'd been fired from the two legit jobs he'd held, back in the day.
"Depends on what I find and when I find it. Can't say, 'cause I don't know."
"Best case, worst case," Nate said.
"Best case. Get out there. Spend a day or so searching. Luck out with triangulation. Worst case. I'm wrong and this is a dead end. Look." Alec leaned his back against the counter and scratched at his ear. "There are a lot of ways this could wash out. I only barely have Mikel's MO down in the first place. Even then, I don't know if she was actually involved. If she is, I still don't know who she's working for, or with, or where they are, or what they're doing. So." Alec shrugged, dimly aware that he was the one unloading, that he'd had it wrong, before.
"You've got what you've got. Okay." Nate nodded his understanding. "Just. Be careful. Let us know the moment you find anything. Keep your earpieces in, and keep an eye on Parker. Those trackers still in her shoes?"
"Yeah."
"Want them in yours, too. I want your car littered with them. I want them in your phones, and I want a way to see them on my computer before you leave. Got it?"
Alec pretended that he wasn't even tempted to grin. "Program's already on your phone, man, and your desktop. Here." He held out his hand for the phone, showed Nate as he navigated through a few screens until a blinking red light became visible, two intersections away from Parker's apartment.
Nate nodded, took the phone back. "Thanks. Ah. For everything, you know. Let me know if you need anything."
"Oh I will," Alec grinned as he made his way to the door, hopefully forestalling any attempts Nate might make to hand him a bagged lunch and change for the bus. "Don't you doubt it."
---
There was a ticking noise, coming from somewhere up in the ceiling.
Digital readouts didn't need to tick. There was nothing in them to create the noise. No gears, no cogs.
The sound was being piped in just to fuck with him.
It was working. Too fucking well.
Forcing himself to calm down, to fucking think, he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling.
Large digital numbers. Bright green digits on a small black box counting down, the only thing that would be visible in the growing dark.
They'd left him with food and water, enough to last him a week, in a cardboard box over in the corner. And they'd planted a bomb on his ceiling.
---
Eliot tried to figure it out, find the point where it all went wrong. Thing is, really, it was only a few days ago. Things hadn't been that bad.
But obviously the guy in the picture was supposed to mean something, and it really sucked not knowing.
The man didn't look like anyone he'd killed- those faces, he remembered the most, except for one brutal night in a half-completed suburban house. The collateral damage had worn a ski mask, and the sirens were too close for Eliot to stop and identify the body.
That was sometimes a mistake they made. Wearing a mask only meant they were prepared to leave survivors. In his line of work, it was the sloppiest tell anyone could have.
But that was neither here nor there.
The worst thing about all this, though, was that he'd just recently started thinking that maybe, when the time came- and of course it would - he'd be going down for a good reason. A little bit of atonement, maybe. Something that his folks, rest their souls, wouldn't be ashamed of. If the world worked the way it was supposed to, he'd be putting his life down for the crew.
But Parker was dead, he was useless, and his attackers hadn't been wearing masks.
---
He'd been in town for the Oklahoma City bombing, but his father had been in the damned building.
Eliot volunteered in the rescue effort, but wasn't the one to find him. Some girl- Shawna or Shayla or something like that, the records weren't clear- was the one to catch sight of him in the wreckage, to report back that there wasn't a pulse.
Eliot never found out who Shawna or Shyla was, doubted that she'd ever known his father's name. Glancing around at the funeral a week later, knowing it was foolish as he did so, he found no strangers in the church.
Enough families were double booked on that front as it was. Had their own to attend to, that week.
He'd arranged everything, the funeral, the death certificate, the insurance. Groceries and visiting family. Mom had turned into a ghost, sometime in the middle of all of it all.
He never told her what the coroner's report had said. That dad had survived for several hours with internal bleeding and a broken spine. The filing cabinet had been all that was holding him together, and when it had moved? That was it. No more.
Eliot had been less than two hundred feet away at the time, searching through the wreckage, still hoping. He'd had no idea, wouldn't find out for another day.
---
He wanted a bed. Sheets and a blanket, something more than this flattened cardboard box he'd laid out in an admittedly pathetic attempt to insulate himself from the chill of the floor. He wanted clothing. Socks. That shitty radiator in his first apartment. Someone else's body, solid and close. Fire.
He wanted hot tea. Soup. Something that he didn't have to chew, anything that would fill his stomach. Red beans and rice, collard greens. Something with vitamins in it.
He wanted to go home. Wanted to be working in the garden, grass under his knees, dirt under his fingernails instead of blood. Guitars on the radio and Loretta Lynn's voice.
He wanted to stop hurting. Tape for his ribs, enough morphine to take his body away.
He wanted to be clean. Water and soap and steam.
He wanted to hear other people, even if it was just Hardison cracking jokes. He wanted to have something worth laughing about. He wanted Sophie's calm voice, Nate's certainty. Even Parker's insanity would be nice right now, but fuck, Parker. She was. Fuck.
He wanted to stop thinking like this. Wanted to be who he used to be a week ago.
He wanted that timer to just fucking stop, already. Sudden malfunction, numbers freezing.
He wanted it to count down to fucking zero, already. Just get this over with.
He was so goddamned tired, too tired to think straight, to remember things. Names and faces in pictures from somewhere he'd been. He wanted to rest.
---
They were in Pittsburgh by two in the afternoon the next day, and had rented a car they didn't need to give Parker the opportunity to case the rental office.
"How to you want to play this?" Parker asked, slipping back into Alec's car. "Getting you into the garage should be easy. You think that's where they'll have the computer?"
Parker was waiting in front of the rental agency, pretending to talk on her phone and preparing to make a distraction if she needed to, but there was a line out the door of the rental agency, and the staff inside was already insanely busy.
Once the mechanic on duty snuck out for a smoke break, it was so easy to slip in through the garage entrance that Alec didn't bother asking Parker for help. It would have been an insult.
He found the most likely computer, an old desktop built into the wall, and was preparing to dive in, when he saw it.
Someone had taped a memo listing the new password to the front of the computer. Even better, it was the correct password, only set a day or two ago.
The heading of the memo read Computer Security: Do Not Post.
Alec allowed himself to laugh, quietly, but didn’t bother explaining it to Sophie, who was on the other end of the comms. "I'm in," was all he needed to say, anyhow.
He found what he needed, pulled the data from Dayan's returned van, and copied it over into his own computer. "Got it. Heading out, Parker?"
"Meet you at the car."
He was out of there in less than two minutes. Easy as lyin'.
---
Parker had said she'd be asleep in the room next door, but he could hear the sound of cartoons bleeding through the wall as he worked.
Ordinarily, it was the sort of distraction that sent him running for his headphones. Today, though, he didn't mind so much.
Didn't want to miss anything out in the world, not like he had yesterday.
He traced the van's route down from Boston, tying the GPS points from the file to his tracking program, watching as the map built itself up out of nothing. Deleting every stop that lasted less than 45 seconds, he wiped out most of the stoplights on the route, leaving him with less than ten locations to examine.
It probably wasn't the hardware store parking lot, and they'd already checked Eliot's house.
It probably wasn't the gas station outside Allentown, but he pulled up the local scanner records to be sure there were no strange reports.
It probably wasn't the drive through coffee shop, either.
The last point, the longest stop aside from the lengthy stakeout across from Eliot's house, was in Kittanning, Pennsylvania.
Middle of nowhere, or about as close to it as you can get. Mostly warehouses, and mostly abandoned.
She hadn't stayed there for more than ten minutes. Enough time to trade a hostage for cash and exchange a few pleasantries about the weather.
There was no way he was on the wrong trail. Alec was starting to breathe again, found enough air in his lungs to laugh.
He hadn't realized the earpiece was still in, and he felt bad, waking Sophie up like he did, because it was kind of late, but Parker hadn't really been sleeping anyway.
There was absolutely no reason to take that tone. It was just rude.
---
There was no way to be sure how exact the GPS was, not really. They had to check it out in person, driving around the parking lots, making a show of stopping and pulling out a map, shaking it open on the hood of the car. On the dashboard, one of his phones searched for networks.
"Found three," Parker said from inside the car, and Alec was surprised to hear Nate's voice on the wire a minute later.
"Excellent, Hardison?"
Parker was confused as well. "Nate? You're-" she broke off as she watched Alec shoving the phone into an empty paper cup, and gathering the other detritus of their fast-food lunch before stepping out of the car, shoving it into a dumpster standing near one of the buildings. "Thought you went to California."
"It was lunch and a walk in the park, Parker," Nate replied dryly. "Was never actually going away."
"Oh." Parker grinned. "Good."
"Ah, right. So, where are we at? Need us down there?"
Alec got back into the car, glancing at the surrounding buildings one last time before replying. "Don't know yet. I'll give you a call in a few hours. I gotta work on some stuff, depends on what I find."
"Okay, that's good. Keep me posted, and I'll call if I don't hear from you. Got my phone on. And, ah. The computer."
"Right."
---
This was insane. He couldn't figure out what his captors wanted. Couldn't make heads or tails of the photographs. Couldn't figure out a goddamned thing, because he couldn't concentrate on anything other than the green numbers counting down and down and.
In three days and change, he would be dead.
If they'd left him food, there probably wasn't anyone on the other side of the door waiting for his admission, his apology, for whatever he could give them.
He tried to call out, but it came out in more pieces than he meant to- words weren't lining up the way they were supposed to, and he didn't know if it was the drugs, something wrong with his jaw, or if it was brain damage.
He meant to say, "I don't understand what this is about. I don't know who this is! What do you want from me?" He really did.
But he tried three times, shouting up into the camera, and each turn was more twisted than the last. Either he couldn't speak the words in the correct order, or he couldn't hear them right. He was pretty sure understand wasn't pronounced anderstond, but it didn't help him figure out if it was his ears or his speech or his memory that was broken.
It didn't seem to matter to anyone but him. There was no answer.
Eliot was too frustrated and annoyed to try again. He turned his head to hide from the camera, stupidly ashamed to have tried in the first place.
Even if there was nobody there to see it. Even if he was totally fucking alone.
---
The first network had provided nothing interesting. Inventory listings, security and utilities monitoring. The warehouse itself wasn't actually abandoned, then, merely shuttered. Scanning through a few emails, he found that it would be reopened once the fire chief had verified that the violations had been taken care of, probably early next week.
The second network was more what he'd expect to find somewhere like this. Massive piracy, badly hidden. If he'd been bored, he would have hit the boards and found out who was running it, maybe bolstered their security for them if they weren't jerks. But he didn't have the time for it now.
The third one, though. It was different.
It was all being run off one new computer. It was the most generic out-of-the-box desktop on the market. Cheap enough to buy with cash without raising questions, especially if they were storing everything in external hard drives. Which it seemed they were.
Alec forced himself to back out, to double check his approach, make sure he was leaving no trail. Checked a third time, and again. Hadn't been this cautious since he'd hit Lockheed-Martin, just to prove a minor point to Eliot, back when things were sane.
Almost all of them looked to be video feeds. No email, no documents, no pictures. Not a single trace of pirated music or pornography.
It had solitaire, though, and someone had played a few hundred games.
Choosing one at random, he brought it up. Found a delivery truck driving past yesterday, time stamped and dull. Fourteen seconds, and it ended. Motion detectors, then, running the system outside. Good to know.
There was no way they hadn't been captured by this. Any other day, that would have mattered.
He began to pull them all down into his computer, before realizing that one feed was being recorded, and couldn't be moved, yet.
But it could be watched.
Eliot was naked, and from the looks of it, hurt. His right arm, at least, wasn't moving right, but to be honest, Alec couldn't tell blood from bruise from shadow. There were too much of all three.
The scruff on Eliot's face was mostly stubble, though, left too long.
There was sick feeling forming in his stomach as he tapped into the audio feed.
Like it's not enough to watch, gotta be listening, too.
Hardison didn't want to do either, but he knew, already, that he wouldn't be turning off. Not once he recognized the ticking for what it was.
It was the only sound, though. Eliot wasn't saying anything, and he wasn't moving much. Just lying in the middle of the room, fingers clutching at some pieces of paper over and over again. He was lying there like he'd forgotten how to hide himself, and Alec wished, more than anything, that he'd turn his head just a fraction more, so he could see his eyes.
---
Get your head together, man.
Alec began to pull apart the scene, isolating images, cleaning up the audio tracks every time he heard Eliot breathe funny, or when his head convinces him that the ever-present ticking sound has changed in pitch or timbre.
He knew he should've called the others in by now. He should have done so an hour ago.
But Eliot was beginning to stir, moving too slowly. The image of him struggling just to sit up, and the flash of pain that the camera managed to catch, was burned too deeply into Alec's brain for him to think around it.
No one should have to see this, let alone… He was halfway to standing before the other thought dropped. Fuck, Parker is going to see this. They all are.
But they don't have to.
Ain't lying. It's for their own good. For Eliot's. Won't have to live it down if there's nothing to see.
It ain't lying.
He pulled up the security feeds from outside, turning the sound off and minimizing the live feed, before standing to stretch. He willed his body to move faster, slipping out into the hallway and to Parker's door, forcing himself to tap quietly, not to pound, to scream, to wake up the whole damned floor.
"Found him. It's bad," was all he said when it opened. He couldn't lie that well.
---
"I gotta work on this some more," he finally summed up, adjusting his earpiece to sit more comfortably, "but from what we're seeing there were four people going in and out up until yesterday, except for when they brought Eliot in, and he's never come out. Now there's just one other person going in and out. Camera feed's too crappy to pull the plates without spending days cleaning the images, but I'm on it already."
"Okay. One person somewhere in the building, plus Eliot, who's locked up. Have you gotten a look at the door?"
"There's a camera in the hallway. Couple of crappy looking padlocks, nothing that some heavy bolt cutters won't handle if we're pressed for time. That's not the issue."
"It's the fact that there's probably a bloody bomb in there with him, and you don't know when it's going to go off." Alec could see the disapproval on Sophie's face, so clear she might as well have been in the room.
"Hardison. Parker." Nate was probably shaking his head. "Yeah. I don't know if it's a good idea-"
Alec shook his head right back, not caring that Parker was the only one who could see it. "If the other person is in there, we have to assume that they know about the bomb, and are going to clear out before it blows. As long as that person's in there, we've got a shot."
"Anyone with sense would clear out with plenty of time. Or maybe it's a fake bomb," Parker pointed out.
"Are they in there now?"
"Yes."
"When do they normally leave?"
"Every twelve hours, at nine, there's a shift change."
"That's in…"
"Seven hours," Parker nodded. "That's our window."
"I don't like it," Sophie said.
"I don't either. I don't like anything about this. But. We should do this."
"Parker, what do you think?"
"I want to go now, but that would be stupid."
"Fine. We're coming down there."
"We can't wait, man."
"We'll catch up. Keep in touch."
"Right," Alec nodded. Fine.
Sophie asked, "Be careful. Is there anything you need?"
"No," Parker said, before looking over to see if Alec disagreed.
"Thanks," Alec said, signing off, waiting until Parker pulled her earpiece out.
"Everything we need except a plan," she said, crossly. "What if he's hurt?"
Alec sighed, nodding, pretending not to know the answer to that. "First, we need sleep. Four hours. We wake up, and we figure it out. We have bolt cutters. I'll ghost the security feeds. You distract the guard, I'll pull him out. That work for now?" Alec waited, breathless, for her assessment. It wasn't exactly the level of planning they were used to.
But sometimes, a little more fluidity was useful, apparently. Parker was still beaming when she went back to her room.
The moment she was gone, Alec was back on his laptop, pulling up the feed again, but there was nothing to see. And he had work to do, anyway.
He selected a loop of the security feed, checking the weather to check for rain, sun, and cloud cover before selecting three from the files that would fit seamlessly into tomorrow morning.
---
He knew he'd fallen asleep only after jerking back to wakefulness, casting about for the signal that woke him. Trying to remember what he wasn't sure he'd heard.
Nervously, he looped the past minute for playback.
Eliot's voice, silent for days now, was little more than stuttering breath. "Fuck." Barely audible, but after so much silence, it had been enough to wake Alec. It was hollow enough, hopeless enough, that Alec figured he'd never sleep again.
Alec had no idea why his vision was blurring. Rubbed at his eyes, and his fingers came away damp. It was embarrassing. Eliot wouldn't let him hear the end of it. Ever.
The sooner Eliot was back, the sooner they could get on that. Alec wouldn't even mind. Not much.
He was reaching for the keyboard again when he was overcome with the sick sense that he wasn't the only one watching. Somewhere in a warehouse a little more than a mile from here, someone was sitting just like he was, eyes on the same screen. Maybe taking notes.
Maybe they were riveted, and this was entertainment, a movie to them, and he'd come in too late to catch the plot.
Eliot groaned once, maybe in his sleep, and Alec was pulling up the screen so fast he didn't even realize he was doing it. He watched for a while, trying to make sure Eliot was still breathing, trying to make sure his own heart hadn't stopped yet. Trying to ignore the ticking.
He was wasting time. Had to get back to work. He kept the audio on, though, and listened, but Eliot said nothing more.
Alec only let himself enlarge the feed screen once every five minutes, to make sure Eliot was still breathing. Each time, he grew more certain that there were only so many turns he had left. He'd promise himself to hold out for ten minutes, next time, and every time, he failed.
He wanted to lie down, to get some rest. He had to be clear in the morning. Knowing it didn't help. But he couldn't bring himself to turn off the video feed. Didn't seem right to be listening to Eliot trying to breathe in the dark, but it was worse to shut it off, to leave him alone.
He drifted towards sleep to the sound of a bomb ticking down, and jerked awake every time it went off.
Chapter 7