Man I Used to Be #13
Title: Man I Used to Be
Rating: R
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: This one fought me tooth and nail, so I'm kicking it out, just so I don't have to look at it any more. :)
Banner by the wonderful and amazing and brilliant cybel
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Chapter 13
They clambered over rebar and concrete and broken computers, towards the slash of blue sky cutting through the cracked foundation, brushing dust from their sleeves.
Watching them go, Eliot was still, solid and frozen. A stone in the rubble, with nothing but shadows and creaking aftershocks for company. Not even suffocating anymore, not even breathing.
Stone wasn't supposed to hurt. Wasn't supposed to feel anything at all.
Blinking awake, Eliot inhaled deeply, his lungs scraping the air in until they were overfull. Hurt like a bitch, and it felt like a dull knife was carving a new swatch into the muscle below his shoulder, but he was awake now.
He waited it out, counting the seconds in his head, and tried not to move. If he'd been thrashing in his sleep, Hardison was probably awake already, even if he wasn't saying anything.
Once the worst of it had receded enough to will his limbs into action, he reached for the painkillers on the nightstand, casting his eyes towards the other bed in the process.
It had been years since he'd woken up in a room while someone else was still sleeping.
It had been a deliberate decision, once, after he'd hit the woman sharing his hotel bed in the face. It had bruised something awful, and three days back from Bosnia, he'd realized, with a dim sort of resignation, that this was how half the bad stories in the papers probably started out. She never called, and neither did he.
A few months later, sleeping alone had become habit, something he only thought about when walking that night's woman to the door, but a few years later, he'd even stopped thinking about it.
By that point, it just made sense that a guy in his line of work shouldn't let his guard down.
It was three in the morning and the painkillers were starting to set his head swimming. Hardison was in the other bed, and more importantly, still asleep. And maybe it wasn't the big deal that it should've been after all, but Eliot was too tired to think.
So he shut his eyes, and went back to sleep.
---
Alec was positive that every move he made, every footstep towards the bathroom and back, every keystroke was going to wake Eliot. But so far, even the sharp hiss of the soda bottle had failed to disturb him.
He kept his fingers tight on the cap, holding it still, and watched the pile of blankets for signs of movement.
Then he was just watching Eliot. Reveling in the fact that some things really looked a whole lot better when they weren't on a screen.
He'd dreamt before he'd woken, and the details were gone, but Eliot had been in there, somewhere, decontextualized now. He didn't know if it had been a good dream or a nightmare, but it left him feeling a little uneasy to find that his brain had taken the liberty.
To be that voyeuristic, to assume that much.
So he took a deep breath, unscrewed the bottle cap carefully, and tried to focus.
He had to set up access into the convention center security feeds. Check in with the others, find out what they'd need to have straight. Test the comms unit. Talk to Nate about whatever other details were still pending. Get over and set up the computers, get the
It could all wait, a little longer. There was something he needed to check, first.
He swiveled in his chair. Started a file transfer from his home server and waited a few minutes as it loaded. With a final glance in Eliot's direction, he opened the alert that had popped up in his system.
Mikel Dayan had gotten pinged going through Heathrow airport.
---
There was a groan, and Eliot was clambering out of bed, nodding at Alec as he headed towards the bathroom. A few minutes later, the shower was running.
Backtracking, it turned out that Dayan had been in Canada the entire time.
All this shit had been going down, and she'd been visiting family. Probably even helped out with her niece's ninth birthday party. Who the hell knew, maybe she'd helped bake the cake and everything.
Calculating the date in his head, Mikel's niece turned nine on the same day that Eliot was beat so fucking badly he hadn't gotten up again.
Feeling a little sick, and wanting to launch his laptop right through the window, he grabbed the first distraction he could find, listening to the squeak of the dial and the throbbing of water stopped dead in the tracks, nowhere to go, as the shower was shut off. Eliot was moving around in there, but he wasn't coming out yet.
By the time Eliot was brushing his teeth, he'd found her again. At this exact moment in time, she was waiting in a terminal for her flight to Johannesburg to begin boarding.
He was probably going to lose her three minutes after she arrived, but maybe he'd luck into something. Head her off at the pass, before she gained too much ground to ghost out.
Checking every hotel he could find, every news story and rumor, he tried to draw up a predictive model of where she'd most likely go. But he kept getting derailed, thinking about her family in Toronto and some strange kid's birthday party.
"What's going on?" Eliot came out of the bathroom, cap pulled low, but only wearing two sweatshirts this time. Now that Alec thought about it, the water had probably been off for thirty minutes or more.
"Not much. They're serving breakfast downstairs for, like, another hour if you don't want room service."
"Yeah," He squinted over Alec's shoulder, saw the profile up on the screen for the first time. "Shit. Tell me that isn't what I think it is."
"Dayan's getting on a plane for Johannesburg, and the trail's probably going to go cold, but. You know. I've been thinking. We could talk to her brother-"
"No, Hardison. We're not going near her family."
Eliot's sharp tone was startling enough that Alec stopped, mid keystroke. "What, that some sort of hitter's code?"
"No," Eliot snorted with derision. "Say she finds out. How's that gonna play out?"
He hadn't thought about that, to be honest. "Not good." Hardison sighed. Of course Eliot was going to be a hard sell. "But she's a direct line to whoever's behind all this, and you know it."
"We've already got the guards, right? Trust me, dealing with ten moonlighters is better than one pissed off Mikel Dayan, I promise."
"Right. Right," he exited the profile, and folded the laptop closed, trying not to let on how frustrated he was getting.
"Hardison. Seriously." Eliot took another step into his space, and for the first time since he'd come back, it felt deliberate. He was forcing Alec to look at him, and for a moment, there, his eyes were steady and serious. "I get that it sucks, but don't even... She finds out we're fucking with her family, she'll be on us like a bloodhound. Ain't worth it."
---
"Have you found him?"
"I've been monitoring his apartment, and his usual haunts. He's not home, but he's got the lights on a timer. They come on every evening at around quarter past seven, though I assume he's got more of a security system than that."
"He'll return. Wait for him."
---
Stupid fucking idiot.
By the time Eliot made it downstairs, breakfast wasn't sounding at all appealing. The suspicion that Alec was up in the room, ignoring everything he'd just said, was sapping his appetite.
He made himself sit down at a table in the back of the room, and picked at his eggs, trying to pay attention to the weather report droning on the screen in the corner.
It wasn't too hard to figure out how he'd gotten to thinking about it, but he wished it could have waited a few moments more before making itself known, because choking on dry toast and coughing hurt like a bitch these days.
Didn't matter. His appetite had barely been there to begin with.
---
Hardison jumped when he opened the door, probably not expecting him back so soon, and definitely not expecting him to look so pissed off.
"What the-"
"Did you call my sister?"
"What?" Hardison cocked his head, scowling as he tried to catch up. "No," he stated forcefully.
"You sure?"
"Hell yeah I'm sure. I was going to, if you gotta know, but Nate warned me off." Hardison looked irritated enough that he was probably telling the truth.
"Good." It was all he needed to hear, so he let the matter drop, going for his bag, considering his options. If he wanted to pull on another shirt, he'd have to take the sling off.
"Hold up." Hardison's voice was quiet, like he was talking to himself, but Eliot looked anyway. Wishing he hadn't, a moment later. "You mean to tell me that you haven't talked to your sister since you got back?"
"She never knew I was gone, unless you told her."
"I didn't, and. That ain't the point. You should let her know you're okay."
"She doesn't need to know about any of it. Not the job in Kansas, not the fucked up shit in the warehouse, not the hospital. Got that?" Hardison was winding up to complain again, otherwise Eliot wouldn't have continued. "Listen. It's cool. I stay out of her way and she stays out of mine, as much as possible. We ain't exactly tight, don't need her knowing my business."
"Why not?" Of course he'd fucking ask.
There wasn't any sense in going into the cracks that had started showing mere days after the Oklahoma City bombing. Dad's funeral hadn't been the breaking point, anyway. And really, there wasn't much sense in telling him, either.
But if he didn't hear it from him, he'd probably just search it out as soon as he got the chance.
"Was when I was first starting out, you know? Came home for Christmas one year, brought a tail with me. Wound up having to move her and my nephew before New Year's. Get them new identities. She didn't take too kindly to that."
"Yeah, sure. But, they're your family."
"Damn right. You think I'm going to set them up for all of that again, you're fucking crazy."
"She know what you do?"
There was no way Eliot was going there. "Your family know what you do?"
Hardison snorted and shook his head, scratching at his arm. "Nah. Mama wouldn't get it, and Nana wouldn't get over it." Hardison's forehead creased as he examined a hangnail on his thumb. "If my brother was alive, though? I'da told him. He would've gotten a kick out of it like you wouldn't believe."
Eliot nodded in response, to stop himself from asking more than anything else. He hadn't known Hardison had a brother. Just never came up, they didn't talk like that. And right now, the way he was staring at nothing, it didn't look like Hardison was up for talking at all. He grinned, but it went away too soon, and his attention never left his thumb.
Hardison wasn't supposed to get like this. He was supposed to be the one that let the bad shit roll off. It wasn't supposed to stick.
Eliot tried to think. Looked back at the computer and tried to find something to get him talking again.
"So what's the plan?"
True to form, Hardison dove right in, like a switch had been flipped. "We're gonna meet up at five. Office building across the street from the convention center. Don't know what Nate's got in mind for the playbook, but here's the deal…"
---
Alec spent the afternoon hacking into the convention center security systems and setting up the workspace on his laptops. He checked to make sure their names were on the conventions registration list. Parker stopped by with some keys to the space, but didn't stay, grumbling something about going shopping with Nate and Sophie as she disappeared again.
Eliot mostly lay in bed, reading, but every hour or so, he'd get bored enough to get up, stretch, and come over to look over Alec's shoulder and complain that he had nothing to do. There wasn’t much Alec could do in that department, and he tried, he really did. Every time, though, he came up blank, and Eliot returned to his book.
Eliot left five minutes after Sophie called, pinning Alec to the phone with questions about what the other convention goers were wearing. There wasn't much he could figure out from the parking lot below, so he was looking up salaries online, trying to give her some sort of baseline for selecting their eveningwear. She was still talking when Eliot returned, smirking.
"She talk you into going for manicures yet?" Eliot shook his head. "Hang on, she's asking you for fashion advice?"
"Sophie, I got to go. I think I heard Eliot fall in the shower. Yeah, I'm sure he'd like it if you stopped by when y'all get in to check on him." He hung up the phone to see Eliot sneering at him as he held out a paper bag.
"I'm gonna kick your ass for that, you know."
Alec pulled out a sandwich and some chips, but it was the brownie that really undermined the threat. "Thanks, man."
---
"If this doesn't work. You know. We've still got two guards we can talk to," Nate was saying to Parker, adjusting his tie in the window's reflection.
She was unimpressed, or maybe Sophie was pulling her hair too tightly as she swept it up to style. "So why are we going after this one?"
"He got paid more than the others, which probably means he knows more. And he's the best bet. According to his wife, Martinez is out hunting with his brother all weekend. Tomlinson's got a day job working nights at the children's hospital, so if we want to track either of them, we're going to have to wait."
Parker tried to nod her understanding, but Sophie tsked her, working the last of the hairpins in.
Hardison was over at the desk, doing whatever it was he needed to be doing with the computers.
Eliot watched all this from his post next to the door, trying to remember what it was to get caught up in the anticipation, but he couldn't feel it from there. The day had been too long already. All their movement and commotion, all their chatter over takeout was making him twitchy instead of energized, distracted instead of focused.
Other than the glaringly obvious, he hadn't been able to find a hole in Nate's strategy, earlier, though he kept it turning in his head, considering the angles, because there wasn't much else he could do. The others were handling everything.
They were taking care of this for him, and he knew he should have felt grateful, thankful, something, but really, they were going off to fight his battle, and try as he might, nothing about this entire damned life was sitting right anymore.
He checked his watch again, and waited for them to leave.
Eventually, eight thirty rolled around, and with purses and suitcases in hand, they did.
---
"What's with that, anyway?" Hardison asked, as soon as the others had gone.
"What?"
"Do we smell or something?"
A confused scowl was answer enough, because he'd elaborate if needed, but Hardison was distracted, anyway, sliding his earpiece in. Apparently, though, something was still bothering him.
"Seriously, man. You gonna stand there all night or come over here and help out?"
"Help with what?" Eliot grumbled, crossing the floor for the first time, not really sure why he had the dim suspicion that he'd just been caught at something.
"Seriously? Were you not paying any attention at all? Here." Hardison picked something off the table and waved him over. It wasn't until he was reaching out for it that he realized it was a comm. unit.
It was weightless in his hand, but something about it felt heavy, as he backed away, heading towards the door, as if his body had decided that now that he was equipped, he was supposed to move.
The moment he realized it, he stopped, and decided that the window closest to the door was an acceptable destination anyway. Keeping his eyes on the glass, he watched Hardison, listened as he tapped a few keys, and noted the bright red MUTE flashing on one of the monitors, reflected backwards on the glass. He didn't turn when Hardison began to speak.
"Look. Once they get to the reception, they're splitting up. Nate and Sophie are goin' after Warren. Parker's gonna cause a distraction and tail him if it goes all to hell. The only protection they've got is that Warren won't do anything stupid in front of eleven hundred witnesses, but that many people means Parker might not be able to maintain line of sight the entire time."
"Yeah. But. Ain't like I can actually do anything."
"You can be another set of eyes. Something hinky goes down, you can advise." Eliot worked the earpiece into place, but stood his ground. "And now you know how I feel, every time y'all go out troublemakin'."
Before he could respond, Hardison tapped at the keyboard again, and he could hear everything, the almost-there sounds of cars driving by, Nate humming to himself as he walked down the block to the entrance, Parker complaining that they were overdressed.
He could hear them breathing, and if he wanted to go and look over Hardison's shoulder, he'd see everything too.
Hardison didn't say anything when he pulled a chair around next to him and sat down in front of the screens. "Okay. I got Parker. You got Nate and Sophie. How do I switch cameras?"
By the time Nate's voice came over the comms, saying that they were heading inside, they were already in the room, seeing everything. They watched them step inside, waited with them as they signed in at the registration table for their name badges.
Even from here, they could catch Nate's slight nod before they split. He and Sophie went left, and Parker tilted her head to glance sidelong to wink at the camera as she went right.
---
Next to him, Eliot was intent on his screens, tracking Parker as she wove her way through the crowd.
"Power box is down the stairs past the bathrooms, right?" Over the comms, her voice was muffled, the way it usually was when she was trying to speak without moving her mouth.
"Yeah. I've disabled the security, but you'll still need to pick the lock," Hardison confirmed. Glancing over quickly, he could see that Eliot was managing to bring all the cameras up with no problem.
"There are some caterers three halls away, but it looks like security's upstairs," Eliot added.
Nate and Sophie weren't making the same progress. There were probably six or seven hundred people milling around the catering tables and the cash bar already, and the number was rising quickly.
Nate came on next, as Sophie began making small talk with some strangers by the buffet. "Hardison, you got him?"
"Nothing yet, I can't really tell from here. The resolution on the cameras inside the hall itself isn't the best, think they were more concerned with monitoring the entrance and exits, but if he pops up, I'll let you know."
By the time they were meandering clockwise near the outer edges of the room, Parker was apparently finished. "I've got the patch in place."
"You go, girl," Hardison pulled out his phone, tapped a few screens and waited for the signal. "All right. I'm sending the switch code to your phone now. You see anything you don't like, or you hear us yelling, just press send and it's the night the lights went out in Georgia all over again."
"But we're in Pennsylvania," Parker hissed, and Eliot snorted. Alec didn't have to look to know that he was rolling his eyes.
"You know we really don't want it going down like it did in the song, right?"
Been snippy all day. Must be feeling better. "I was just talking about the lights-"
"Whatever, man."
"Hey, I've seen Reservoir Dogs a million times, ain't like I don't know-"
"I see him. Back of the room, across from the stage." Nate's voice said, and everyone else went silent.
---
It was taking everything Eliot had not to take his eyes off Parker, because he knew that on the monitor next to his, inches away, Hardison was watching Sophie and Nate approaching John Warren.
One of the guards. He didn't know which injuries the man had claimed, if it was the shoulder, the ribs, the kicks to the kidney, the elbow to the temple, or one of the others, but there were enough to go around, and he'd gotten his shots in.
And, if this went down the way he was starting to really fear that it would, the others might be moments away from the same treatment.
Apparently, they'd had reached him. Nate went first. "You know who we are, I presume?
Something was said, but in the din of the room, it was hard to make out. Hardison was switching to another keyboard and typing furiously, and Eliot glanced over to his monitor. There were too many people in the shot to find the ones he was looking for. Frustrated, he turned back to see Parker at the edge of the crowd, holding her phone up to her ear to cover for the fact that she was standing still and tense.
"You could try that, yeah. Not without incriminating yourself, but yeah. Go ahead."
"And just imagine the stories we'll have to tell, should they arrive," Sophie interjected, and even over the comms, her voice was chilling. "And the evidence we have to back it up."
"You're bluffing," a man's voice accused. Apparently, Hardison had managed to tweak the comms.
"Ah yeah," Nate snorted. "There was enough for us to find you, wasn't there?" Clearing his throat, he continued. "Hang on, hang on. We're not actually here looking for you. We know you were paid. It was your job, but you weren't pulling the strings on this one. You're in over your head, and we're not interested in the errand boy. We want your boss."
"Tough shit."
There was no way this was going to work. Warren just sounded too meatheaded and stubborn to play along. They should have put this off a little longer. If Eliot were in better shape, he'd have no trouble getting Warren talking. Idle threats weren't going to get them anywhere.
And there was something not right about hearing so much venom in Sophie's tone. "We know where you live. And where your wife works. And where Jenny goes to school. And I don't at all care what you know about us. The only thing you need to know is that we are not happy."
"Whatever, look. I've got work to do. Go waste someone else's time."
"You helped torture a man," Nate said, voice smooth. "And you were paid heavily to do so. Very heavily. More than the others. This tells us not only that you are willing to be bought, but that you are willing to, ah, negotiate."
"Yeah. Right," Warren scoffed.
"He's opening the briefcase," Hardison said, and Eliot could just make out the displeasure flashing across Parker's face. She'd been the only one siding with him when he'd argued against Sophie putting up her own money to buy Warren off. They'd both been voted down, since there wasn't enough time to set up an alternate revenue stream.
Sophie was talking. "I think it would be best for you if you quickly came to understand just how serious we are. You can have the money. Or you can say no, and see if you can make it back home before your family finds themselves in a situation not dissimilar to our man's."
It was disgusting to hear them talking like this. It wasn't that they'd never screwed with people before, but this?
It felt like they were sinking down to levels Eliot himself hadn't sunk to in years.
He was dimly aware that Hardison announced that they were moving to the side entrance opposite Parker.
Eliot wrenched his eyes shut for a second, before remembering that he was supposed to be watching Parker, and he really just wished that someone would say something, already.
A few too many heartbeats, and Warren did. Parker was starting to move across the floor, and Eliot followed, tapping over to a different camera to see them all in the same shot. For the first time, Eliot was looking at John Warren's face.
It meant nothing to him, and he knew that he should have been expecting it, but he wasn't ready for the shocked disappointment washing over him.
"Can't tell you what I don't know. But. Called the number in the ad and this guy says he's got some work. Said he was on retainer with the UN. That's the, uh. United Nations," Warren explained. "Sounded off at first, the way he was explaining why it couldn't be handled through the usual methods. I made him show me the warrants and extradition papers, and they were solid enough. Wasn't until later that it became apparent that something else was going on, but by that point, we'd be going down with him."
Nate placed the suitcase down on the floor, kicking it underneath the tablecloth. "Tell us about Nicola."
"Um. Older guy, probably in his fifties or sixties, short gray hair, clean cut. Had a little bit of an accent, like he'd spent a lot of time in China or something."
"Have you spoken to him recently?" Sophie sounded unimpressed, but Eliot couldn't think about that right now, he was trying to concentrate.
Nicola.
Lacking the flash of recognition, hearing the name was more anticlimactic than he'd been expecting. Shit. For all he knew, it was an alias.
"Did he tell you anything else? About why he needed Spencer locked up?"
"Only that it was a matter of national security."
"Did he ever flash a badge?"
"If he did, I'd have his full name, wouldn't I?" It was almost comedic, to see John Warren's large frame backed into a corner by Sophie. Eliot would have laughed at the sight of it, wanted to crow at the panicked expression he could make out on Warren's face, but there was still ample time for things to get worse. He needed to be ready, even if there wasn't anything he could do.
"That's all I know, I'm serious. I would have gotten out of there but by the time I found out everything, I was stuck. That's all. You. Look, my daughter-"
"We're square. Long as we don't find out that you've been lying to us, you and your family will never hear from us again. If, ah. If we find out otherwise, it's another story entirely, so if there's anything else?"
Warren nodded dumbly.
"Then we should take our leave," Sophie said, inclining her head forward before turning on her heel to head out through the front. Parker was already sliding through the crowd ahead of her, and Nate followed, turning once to look back in Warren's direction before carrying on.
Eliot hadn't seen his face, and because he'd had to switch cameras, hadn't seen Warren's, either. He didn't even know if it he was still standing where they'd left him.
---
"Hardison? You've got trace running on all his phones?"
Ducking to confirm, Alec then shook his head. "He hasn't made any calls, but when he does, we'll know. Also got a line into the GPS on his car."
"Okay. Eliot? You catch everything that was said?" Nate already knew the answer, because otherwise Eliot probably would have said something, but someone had to ask.
"Nicola's gotta be an alias."
"So, the ringleader's as much of a mystery as our friend in the photos, then." Nate nodded to himself, regarding the door.
It was Parker who confirmed what they were all thinking. "So we wasted money and have nothing to show for it, then?"
Nate shrugged. "Not until he picks up the phone."
"If he picks up the phone. Think you scared him silent, man. Shook him up too much for him to think. Probably would have come up with something if y'all hadn't gone so over the top."
Alec thought he must have missed something, because all of a sudden, everyone in the room seemed like they were about to go off. Eliot was pissed about the way they'd played it, Sophie was insulted by his anger, Parker was mad about money changing hands, even though it wasn't hers, and Nate looked like he wanted to throttle all of them.
They'd tracked him. Got a tracker in his phone. If he called, and yeah, it was fifty-fifty on that one, they'd have a direct line to Nicola.
"Hey, guys? Guys." He waved his arm, tried not to shrink away from the glares they unleashed. "Even if it is an alias, it might have seen some field time. And did you hear the man talking about the warrants?"
"Yes," Nate said, "but if they weren't entirely fake, they were shown under false pretenses."
"What do you mean?"
There was a beat before he answered. "If Nicola was looking to collect on the rewards, he would have handled it already. If he was really concerned with throwing Eliot in prison, he either would have had a case for extradition, or been trying to get him out of the country as soon as possible, not screwing up his case by." He broke off, deliberately not looking in Eliot's direction. "He would have put a lot of work into nothing, so we have to assume that this has nothing to do with anything official."
"So all this was just a huge waste of time," Parker said, packing up the last of the takeout containers and dumping them into the garbage bag Sophie held open.
"Enough of this," Alec almost shouted, snorting sharply. "Y'all ain't seein' it. Look. Even if the papers were shown under false pretenses, they would've had to pass at least a cursory inspection. Because of dovetailing roles with law enforcement, companies like Crandall train their guards in this sort of thing. Warren might not be too bright, but he knows what he was talking about."
"Doesn't mean they weren't fake," Sophie pointed out
"Doesn't mean they were, neither, and if fake papers and fake names are all we've got, if we throw them out, we got nothing. I'm gonna look into it," he confirmed, daring the others to argue. Nate said nothing, and that was agreement enough, so he was careful to keep his hackles down when he continued. "All right. Here. Monitoring's already up and running on the other two guards. How we gonna handle them?"
Nate examined their tired faces, each in turn, before deciding. "We pick it up in the morning. For now, let's just clear out, get back to the hotel."
---
"Hey," Eliot leaned on the side of the bathroom doorway, ice pack freezing through his fingers as it melted in his hand, but he didn't go so far as to enter the room. Hardison was calmer now, but that was because he'd had his eyes glued to his screen for the past half hour, no doubt digging up every single thing Eliot had wanted to keep hidden.
"Hey," Hardison looked up for a fraction of a second, and looked away even faster.
Avoiding him. Non-confrontational. Wary and distrustful.
It was the same tell that had once clued him in, sent him on his way, seconds before Nate Ford, of IYS, called in his backup. Eliot hadn't stopped running until he'd made it out of Spain.
It was the same look he'd gotten from Aimee the last time he'd gone home, as she was putting the breakfast dishes away. By dinnertime, he'd left again.
It was the same look his sister'd given him Christmas evening, once her son was up in bed and the police were finally gone. Once she'd already heard his end of several hushed telephone conversations about hiding and identification and how soon. Before she'd really understood that her life, as she knew it, was over, but after she'd arrived at the conclusion that she didn't know him anymore. Didn't even want to.
Hardison didn't wear the expression all that differently.
This is gonna hurt like hell.
"I know that look. Means you found something you didn't want to find," His shoulders slumped just a fraction, sending fresh shoots of pain down into his chest and arm, but he was too tired to hide it. "About me." This time, he had the feeling that Alec would be the one to leave. This is it.
"Found some stuff, yeah." Hardison still wouldn't make eye contact, too intent on the screen, and too angry. He spoke mechanically, deliberately, like he was rehearsing the lines in his head before letting them out. "And I'm sure you had your reasons, so it's cool. Don't worry about it."
Yeah, it's so cool that you won't even look at me.
"Fine," he said, wishing he didn't know why the dread was coiling so tightly in his gut. He could feel something tearing in his chest, but forced himself not to check for blood. "But tell me what it is."
---
Which one? he almost asked, because there'd been so much, but this was not the time for sarcasm.
Swiveling his head back to the computer, though he had the information memorized, he took a moment to reconsider his hunch, then went with it.
"Right. So. Myanmar." He didn't want to see the expression Eliot would be wearing. Didn't even want to be having this conversation in the first place, but the file was on the screen, bright and glaring, like it had been trapped inside for thousands of years, waiting to be released. Taking one final breath to clear his head, he asked the question. "What happened?"
"I was sent in to retrieve two political prisoners," Eliot began, clearly not wanting to. "North of Dawei, there was this town, village, whatever. Found the one that was still alive. Things got messy. Someone alerted the guards, and we wound up running through a market. People everywhere. The guards shot first, and I could barely return fire with all the running and screaming. The prisoner got tagged and went down. I fired three times, one went wide 'cause I got jostled by some kids that were trying to get out of there." There was a pause, and Alec had already seen the reports. He knew how this was going to end. "The other two shots went where they were supposed to."
Eliot fell silent, frozen in the doorway, and it was fucked, everything was so out of control that there wasn't supposed to be any stillness left in the world, not with everything flying too fast through his head right then. It felt a little too much like the universe was spinning out from under him and he couldn't catch up.
"Then what happened?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eliot sit down on the bed, his good hand coming up to rub at his neck, but his voice was steady when he answered.
"Contacted my handler at the embassy. I hadn't been in contact for over a month, and didn't know." Eliot laughed without humor. "A policy thing in Washington had shaken everything up and the orders had changed. I cleared the hell out, got to Thailand before it could all come down." Eliot sounded like he was filing a report, not gloating. His voice was too dead for that. "Next thing you know, there's a price on your head and the government claims no knowledge. My line of work, you know. It happens."
Eliot was their hitter, but he'd been other things to other people before. He'd known so, in a general sense, but now he got it. He really did.
Alec had seen the rumors, found hints to assignments that weren't supposed to exist, but they'd all been oblique references. Code names on a scanned piece of paper somewhere. Nothing about them had been real.
He needed a minute to think. Figure this thing out. He needed to not get distracted by the other files he'd found, because right now, if he was honest, he couldn't deal with seeing the evidence that this was as bad as it got.
---
Any minute now, Hardison was going to flip the hell out. He'd call Nate, talk to the others. He could already see the look on Nate's face, tried not to picture Parker and Sophie wearing that same disappointment.
His time was nearly up, here. Soon, he'd have to go his own way. He'd known that someday, this would happen, that this would all end, but he hadn't expected it to be his fault. That it would come from the others knowing exactly what he was capable of, what he'd done and who he'd been, and the fear that knowledge would bring.
He'd known, since way back when, in the then-new office, when he'd admitted "I actually hurt people, so…" that they'd put their blinders on, never asked, never wanted to know, and he couldn't blame them.
Nate was an honest man, in his way, if ruthless. Sophie wanted to steal herself a better life, and Parker stole to live, like breathing. And Hardison? He wanted to know everything in the whole damn world, but even he'd never wanted to know that.
They'd never asked, and he'd never told.
He'd been happy to let them believe that it had all been chokeholds and kicks and the odd concussion, here and there, but he'd known it was a lie, and years of becoming someone other than the man he'd had to be, way back when, didn't change that.
You don't con your own crew.
But it would change everything, now. He'd killed, more than once, and there was no denying it. It wasn't something he was proud of, but he'd made his peace with it, more or less. The others, none of the others had ever gone there, and they could do a lot of things, but they wouldn't get it.
They'd want to trust him, and they'd try to. Even Nate, who'd chased him, who'd known his reputation, had never had all the facts. Parker would be skittish, and Sophie would pretend to bury it, and Hardison would get curious. He'd only start digging up more, until there was nothing left worth hiding.
And if the cracks started showing while they were on the job? If Sophie didn't move on his signal, if Parker spooked and went solo, if Hardison decided that he was tired of being an accessory after the fact and forgot to warn Eliot about the guns waiting in the next hallway, it would destroy all of them.
Even if Nate had to see this all coming, closed it down and broke up the crew, the results wouldn't be much different.
He had to leave before he brought them down with him.
It was fine. He'd done it before, and he'd survived, even if only because he was too far away from the fallout to get burned.
And it was funny without being funny at all, because the others talked about it sometimes, how they were family. Eliot wondered where he'd gone so fucking wrong that he couldn't even recognize it until he was on his way out.
If he played it right this time, though, maybe he could do it without fucking them over. If Hardison would just give him some indication of what he was thinking, somewhere to start from, he could figure out how to leave them intact when he left.
He really fucking wished Hardison would say something. It was a little fucked, waiting to follow someone else's lead just so he could walk out the door.
---
What the hell do you say to that?
Taking what he hoped was a silent breath, Alec slid the laptop away and stood. Eliot was staring at the curtained window, but there was no way to tell if he was actually seeing it, the cell, or the trajectory Alec's body would take as he fell.
Stop it. That ain't fair. Nothing's changed.
He sat down on the bed, next to him, and pulled his thoughts together, waiting for Eliot to show some sign of life, to stop this entire catatonic act.
But this had to fucking stop. They were both being ridiculous.
"That's messed up. Dunno what to say, man. You hungry?" As wise words went, it fell a little flat, even to his own ears.
Eliot hung his head, but he was smiling, already, even if he didn't want it seen.
"Nah. I'm good," he said, after a minute.
"Okay. Cool." Hardison stared at the floor too. Hadn't realized how ugly the carpeting was, until now. "Seriously, though. Don't freak out over this." Eliot wasn't convinced, but Alec wasn't convinced he didn't want to be. "Now that I know where to look for leads, we'll get it sorted."
"And what then? Do I just go in, get a little revenge? Kill someone new?"
It was too soon to even think about going there. "I don't know," was his measured response, and it was true. He hadn't really thought about it, didn't even have the energy to start. "Ain't gotta figure it out right now, though."
Finally, Eliot nodded. Raised his head up, and stared at the curtains for a while, like he was thinking. Seemed like something worth doing, so Alec joined him.
After some interminable minutes, the only thing he'd learned was that the curtains were damned ugly. Apparently, Eliot had reached the same conclusion, scratching at his throat before going back to hefting the melted icepack in his hand.
Alec didn't know what the fuck it was that he was doing, and there were too many Damn Fine Reasons why it shouldn't even occur to him, but he heard himself saying, "Hey. C'mere."
Maybe he'd only said it because he hadn't expected a response, but he got one. Eliot swiveled his head up, brushing the hair off his face, and met his eyes for the first time since they'd sat down. His expression wasn't what it had been, for a while now. Might've been a new one entirely.
He seemed frozen, then, they both did, but there must have been some momentum left hiding somewhere, because when Alec leaned into Eliot's mouth, he was pretty sure Eliot met him halfway.
---
Chapter 14
Rating: R
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: This one fought me tooth and nail, so I'm kicking it out, just so I don't have to look at it any more. :)
Banner by the wonderful and amazing and brilliant cybel
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12
Chapter 13
They clambered over rebar and concrete and broken computers, towards the slash of blue sky cutting through the cracked foundation, brushing dust from their sleeves.
Watching them go, Eliot was still, solid and frozen. A stone in the rubble, with nothing but shadows and creaking aftershocks for company. Not even suffocating anymore, not even breathing.
Stone wasn't supposed to hurt. Wasn't supposed to feel anything at all.
Blinking awake, Eliot inhaled deeply, his lungs scraping the air in until they were overfull. Hurt like a bitch, and it felt like a dull knife was carving a new swatch into the muscle below his shoulder, but he was awake now.
He waited it out, counting the seconds in his head, and tried not to move. If he'd been thrashing in his sleep, Hardison was probably awake already, even if he wasn't saying anything.
Once the worst of it had receded enough to will his limbs into action, he reached for the painkillers on the nightstand, casting his eyes towards the other bed in the process.
It had been years since he'd woken up in a room while someone else was still sleeping.
It had been a deliberate decision, once, after he'd hit the woman sharing his hotel bed in the face. It had bruised something awful, and three days back from Bosnia, he'd realized, with a dim sort of resignation, that this was how half the bad stories in the papers probably started out. She never called, and neither did he.
A few months later, sleeping alone had become habit, something he only thought about when walking that night's woman to the door, but a few years later, he'd even stopped thinking about it.
By that point, it just made sense that a guy in his line of work shouldn't let his guard down.
It was three in the morning and the painkillers were starting to set his head swimming. Hardison was in the other bed, and more importantly, still asleep. And maybe it wasn't the big deal that it should've been after all, but Eliot was too tired to think.
So he shut his eyes, and went back to sleep.
---
Alec was positive that every move he made, every footstep towards the bathroom and back, every keystroke was going to wake Eliot. But so far, even the sharp hiss of the soda bottle had failed to disturb him.
He kept his fingers tight on the cap, holding it still, and watched the pile of blankets for signs of movement.
Then he was just watching Eliot. Reveling in the fact that some things really looked a whole lot better when they weren't on a screen.
He'd dreamt before he'd woken, and the details were gone, but Eliot had been in there, somewhere, decontextualized now. He didn't know if it had been a good dream or a nightmare, but it left him feeling a little uneasy to find that his brain had taken the liberty.
To be that voyeuristic, to assume that much.
So he took a deep breath, unscrewed the bottle cap carefully, and tried to focus.
He had to set up access into the convention center security feeds. Check in with the others, find out what they'd need to have straight. Test the comms unit. Talk to Nate about whatever other details were still pending. Get over and set up the computers, get the
It could all wait, a little longer. There was something he needed to check, first.
He swiveled in his chair. Started a file transfer from his home server and waited a few minutes as it loaded. With a final glance in Eliot's direction, he opened the alert that had popped up in his system.
Mikel Dayan had gotten pinged going through Heathrow airport.
---
There was a groan, and Eliot was clambering out of bed, nodding at Alec as he headed towards the bathroom. A few minutes later, the shower was running.
Backtracking, it turned out that Dayan had been in Canada the entire time.
All this shit had been going down, and she'd been visiting family. Probably even helped out with her niece's ninth birthday party. Who the hell knew, maybe she'd helped bake the cake and everything.
Calculating the date in his head, Mikel's niece turned nine on the same day that Eliot was beat so fucking badly he hadn't gotten up again.
Feeling a little sick, and wanting to launch his laptop right through the window, he grabbed the first distraction he could find, listening to the squeak of the dial and the throbbing of water stopped dead in the tracks, nowhere to go, as the shower was shut off. Eliot was moving around in there, but he wasn't coming out yet.
By the time Eliot was brushing his teeth, he'd found her again. At this exact moment in time, she was waiting in a terminal for her flight to Johannesburg to begin boarding.
He was probably going to lose her three minutes after she arrived, but maybe he'd luck into something. Head her off at the pass, before she gained too much ground to ghost out.
Checking every hotel he could find, every news story and rumor, he tried to draw up a predictive model of where she'd most likely go. But he kept getting derailed, thinking about her family in Toronto and some strange kid's birthday party.
"What's going on?" Eliot came out of the bathroom, cap pulled low, but only wearing two sweatshirts this time. Now that Alec thought about it, the water had probably been off for thirty minutes or more.
"Not much. They're serving breakfast downstairs for, like, another hour if you don't want room service."
"Yeah," He squinted over Alec's shoulder, saw the profile up on the screen for the first time. "Shit. Tell me that isn't what I think it is."
"Dayan's getting on a plane for Johannesburg, and the trail's probably going to go cold, but. You know. I've been thinking. We could talk to her brother-"
"No, Hardison. We're not going near her family."
Eliot's sharp tone was startling enough that Alec stopped, mid keystroke. "What, that some sort of hitter's code?"
"No," Eliot snorted with derision. "Say she finds out. How's that gonna play out?"
He hadn't thought about that, to be honest. "Not good." Hardison sighed. Of course Eliot was going to be a hard sell. "But she's a direct line to whoever's behind all this, and you know it."
"We've already got the guards, right? Trust me, dealing with ten moonlighters is better than one pissed off Mikel Dayan, I promise."
"Right. Right," he exited the profile, and folded the laptop closed, trying not to let on how frustrated he was getting.
"Hardison. Seriously." Eliot took another step into his space, and for the first time since he'd come back, it felt deliberate. He was forcing Alec to look at him, and for a moment, there, his eyes were steady and serious. "I get that it sucks, but don't even... She finds out we're fucking with her family, she'll be on us like a bloodhound. Ain't worth it."
---
"Have you found him?"
"I've been monitoring his apartment, and his usual haunts. He's not home, but he's got the lights on a timer. They come on every evening at around quarter past seven, though I assume he's got more of a security system than that."
"He'll return. Wait for him."
---
Stupid fucking idiot.
By the time Eliot made it downstairs, breakfast wasn't sounding at all appealing. The suspicion that Alec was up in the room, ignoring everything he'd just said, was sapping his appetite.
He made himself sit down at a table in the back of the room, and picked at his eggs, trying to pay attention to the weather report droning on the screen in the corner.
It wasn't too hard to figure out how he'd gotten to thinking about it, but he wished it could have waited a few moments more before making itself known, because choking on dry toast and coughing hurt like a bitch these days.
Didn't matter. His appetite had barely been there to begin with.
---
Hardison jumped when he opened the door, probably not expecting him back so soon, and definitely not expecting him to look so pissed off.
"What the-"
"Did you call my sister?"
"What?" Hardison cocked his head, scowling as he tried to catch up. "No," he stated forcefully.
"You sure?"
"Hell yeah I'm sure. I was going to, if you gotta know, but Nate warned me off." Hardison looked irritated enough that he was probably telling the truth.
"Good." It was all he needed to hear, so he let the matter drop, going for his bag, considering his options. If he wanted to pull on another shirt, he'd have to take the sling off.
"Hold up." Hardison's voice was quiet, like he was talking to himself, but Eliot looked anyway. Wishing he hadn't, a moment later. "You mean to tell me that you haven't talked to your sister since you got back?"
"She never knew I was gone, unless you told her."
"I didn't, and. That ain't the point. You should let her know you're okay."
"She doesn't need to know about any of it. Not the job in Kansas, not the fucked up shit in the warehouse, not the hospital. Got that?" Hardison was winding up to complain again, otherwise Eliot wouldn't have continued. "Listen. It's cool. I stay out of her way and she stays out of mine, as much as possible. We ain't exactly tight, don't need her knowing my business."
"Why not?" Of course he'd fucking ask.
There wasn't any sense in going into the cracks that had started showing mere days after the Oklahoma City bombing. Dad's funeral hadn't been the breaking point, anyway. And really, there wasn't much sense in telling him, either.
But if he didn't hear it from him, he'd probably just search it out as soon as he got the chance.
"Was when I was first starting out, you know? Came home for Christmas one year, brought a tail with me. Wound up having to move her and my nephew before New Year's. Get them new identities. She didn't take too kindly to that."
"Yeah, sure. But, they're your family."
"Damn right. You think I'm going to set them up for all of that again, you're fucking crazy."
"She know what you do?"
There was no way Eliot was going there. "Your family know what you do?"
Hardison snorted and shook his head, scratching at his arm. "Nah. Mama wouldn't get it, and Nana wouldn't get over it." Hardison's forehead creased as he examined a hangnail on his thumb. "If my brother was alive, though? I'da told him. He would've gotten a kick out of it like you wouldn't believe."
Eliot nodded in response, to stop himself from asking more than anything else. He hadn't known Hardison had a brother. Just never came up, they didn't talk like that. And right now, the way he was staring at nothing, it didn't look like Hardison was up for talking at all. He grinned, but it went away too soon, and his attention never left his thumb.
Hardison wasn't supposed to get like this. He was supposed to be the one that let the bad shit roll off. It wasn't supposed to stick.
Eliot tried to think. Looked back at the computer and tried to find something to get him talking again.
"So what's the plan?"
True to form, Hardison dove right in, like a switch had been flipped. "We're gonna meet up at five. Office building across the street from the convention center. Don't know what Nate's got in mind for the playbook, but here's the deal…"
---
Alec spent the afternoon hacking into the convention center security systems and setting up the workspace on his laptops. He checked to make sure their names were on the conventions registration list. Parker stopped by with some keys to the space, but didn't stay, grumbling something about going shopping with Nate and Sophie as she disappeared again.
Eliot mostly lay in bed, reading, but every hour or so, he'd get bored enough to get up, stretch, and come over to look over Alec's shoulder and complain that he had nothing to do. There wasn’t much Alec could do in that department, and he tried, he really did. Every time, though, he came up blank, and Eliot returned to his book.
Eliot left five minutes after Sophie called, pinning Alec to the phone with questions about what the other convention goers were wearing. There wasn't much he could figure out from the parking lot below, so he was looking up salaries online, trying to give her some sort of baseline for selecting their eveningwear. She was still talking when Eliot returned, smirking.
"She talk you into going for manicures yet?" Eliot shook his head. "Hang on, she's asking you for fashion advice?"
"Sophie, I got to go. I think I heard Eliot fall in the shower. Yeah, I'm sure he'd like it if you stopped by when y'all get in to check on him." He hung up the phone to see Eliot sneering at him as he held out a paper bag.
"I'm gonna kick your ass for that, you know."
Alec pulled out a sandwich and some chips, but it was the brownie that really undermined the threat. "Thanks, man."
---
"If this doesn't work. You know. We've still got two guards we can talk to," Nate was saying to Parker, adjusting his tie in the window's reflection.
She was unimpressed, or maybe Sophie was pulling her hair too tightly as she swept it up to style. "So why are we going after this one?"
"He got paid more than the others, which probably means he knows more. And he's the best bet. According to his wife, Martinez is out hunting with his brother all weekend. Tomlinson's got a day job working nights at the children's hospital, so if we want to track either of them, we're going to have to wait."
Parker tried to nod her understanding, but Sophie tsked her, working the last of the hairpins in.
Hardison was over at the desk, doing whatever it was he needed to be doing with the computers.
Eliot watched all this from his post next to the door, trying to remember what it was to get caught up in the anticipation, but he couldn't feel it from there. The day had been too long already. All their movement and commotion, all their chatter over takeout was making him twitchy instead of energized, distracted instead of focused.
Other than the glaringly obvious, he hadn't been able to find a hole in Nate's strategy, earlier, though he kept it turning in his head, considering the angles, because there wasn't much else he could do. The others were handling everything.
They were taking care of this for him, and he knew he should have felt grateful, thankful, something, but really, they were going off to fight his battle, and try as he might, nothing about this entire damned life was sitting right anymore.
He checked his watch again, and waited for them to leave.
Eventually, eight thirty rolled around, and with purses and suitcases in hand, they did.
---
"What's with that, anyway?" Hardison asked, as soon as the others had gone.
"What?"
"Do we smell or something?"
A confused scowl was answer enough, because he'd elaborate if needed, but Hardison was distracted, anyway, sliding his earpiece in. Apparently, though, something was still bothering him.
"Seriously, man. You gonna stand there all night or come over here and help out?"
"Help with what?" Eliot grumbled, crossing the floor for the first time, not really sure why he had the dim suspicion that he'd just been caught at something.
"Seriously? Were you not paying any attention at all? Here." Hardison picked something off the table and waved him over. It wasn't until he was reaching out for it that he realized it was a comm. unit.
It was weightless in his hand, but something about it felt heavy, as he backed away, heading towards the door, as if his body had decided that now that he was equipped, he was supposed to move.
The moment he realized it, he stopped, and decided that the window closest to the door was an acceptable destination anyway. Keeping his eyes on the glass, he watched Hardison, listened as he tapped a few keys, and noted the bright red MUTE flashing on one of the monitors, reflected backwards on the glass. He didn't turn when Hardison began to speak.
"Look. Once they get to the reception, they're splitting up. Nate and Sophie are goin' after Warren. Parker's gonna cause a distraction and tail him if it goes all to hell. The only protection they've got is that Warren won't do anything stupid in front of eleven hundred witnesses, but that many people means Parker might not be able to maintain line of sight the entire time."
"Yeah. But. Ain't like I can actually do anything."
"You can be another set of eyes. Something hinky goes down, you can advise." Eliot worked the earpiece into place, but stood his ground. "And now you know how I feel, every time y'all go out troublemakin'."
Before he could respond, Hardison tapped at the keyboard again, and he could hear everything, the almost-there sounds of cars driving by, Nate humming to himself as he walked down the block to the entrance, Parker complaining that they were overdressed.
He could hear them breathing, and if he wanted to go and look over Hardison's shoulder, he'd see everything too.
Hardison didn't say anything when he pulled a chair around next to him and sat down in front of the screens. "Okay. I got Parker. You got Nate and Sophie. How do I switch cameras?"
By the time Nate's voice came over the comms, saying that they were heading inside, they were already in the room, seeing everything. They watched them step inside, waited with them as they signed in at the registration table for their name badges.
Even from here, they could catch Nate's slight nod before they split. He and Sophie went left, and Parker tilted her head to glance sidelong to wink at the camera as she went right.
---
Next to him, Eliot was intent on his screens, tracking Parker as she wove her way through the crowd.
"Power box is down the stairs past the bathrooms, right?" Over the comms, her voice was muffled, the way it usually was when she was trying to speak without moving her mouth.
"Yeah. I've disabled the security, but you'll still need to pick the lock," Hardison confirmed. Glancing over quickly, he could see that Eliot was managing to bring all the cameras up with no problem.
"There are some caterers three halls away, but it looks like security's upstairs," Eliot added.
Nate and Sophie weren't making the same progress. There were probably six or seven hundred people milling around the catering tables and the cash bar already, and the number was rising quickly.
Nate came on next, as Sophie began making small talk with some strangers by the buffet. "Hardison, you got him?"
"Nothing yet, I can't really tell from here. The resolution on the cameras inside the hall itself isn't the best, think they were more concerned with monitoring the entrance and exits, but if he pops up, I'll let you know."
By the time they were meandering clockwise near the outer edges of the room, Parker was apparently finished. "I've got the patch in place."
"You go, girl," Hardison pulled out his phone, tapped a few screens and waited for the signal. "All right. I'm sending the switch code to your phone now. You see anything you don't like, or you hear us yelling, just press send and it's the night the lights went out in Georgia all over again."
"But we're in Pennsylvania," Parker hissed, and Eliot snorted. Alec didn't have to look to know that he was rolling his eyes.
"You know we really don't want it going down like it did in the song, right?"
Been snippy all day. Must be feeling better. "I was just talking about the lights-"
"Whatever, man."
"Hey, I've seen Reservoir Dogs a million times, ain't like I don't know-"
"I see him. Back of the room, across from the stage." Nate's voice said, and everyone else went silent.
---
It was taking everything Eliot had not to take his eyes off Parker, because he knew that on the monitor next to his, inches away, Hardison was watching Sophie and Nate approaching John Warren.
One of the guards. He didn't know which injuries the man had claimed, if it was the shoulder, the ribs, the kicks to the kidney, the elbow to the temple, or one of the others, but there were enough to go around, and he'd gotten his shots in.
And, if this went down the way he was starting to really fear that it would, the others might be moments away from the same treatment.
Apparently, they'd had reached him. Nate went first. "You know who we are, I presume?
Something was said, but in the din of the room, it was hard to make out. Hardison was switching to another keyboard and typing furiously, and Eliot glanced over to his monitor. There were too many people in the shot to find the ones he was looking for. Frustrated, he turned back to see Parker at the edge of the crowd, holding her phone up to her ear to cover for the fact that she was standing still and tense.
"You could try that, yeah. Not without incriminating yourself, but yeah. Go ahead."
"And just imagine the stories we'll have to tell, should they arrive," Sophie interjected, and even over the comms, her voice was chilling. "And the evidence we have to back it up."
"You're bluffing," a man's voice accused. Apparently, Hardison had managed to tweak the comms.
"Ah yeah," Nate snorted. "There was enough for us to find you, wasn't there?" Clearing his throat, he continued. "Hang on, hang on. We're not actually here looking for you. We know you were paid. It was your job, but you weren't pulling the strings on this one. You're in over your head, and we're not interested in the errand boy. We want your boss."
"Tough shit."
There was no way this was going to work. Warren just sounded too meatheaded and stubborn to play along. They should have put this off a little longer. If Eliot were in better shape, he'd have no trouble getting Warren talking. Idle threats weren't going to get them anywhere.
And there was something not right about hearing so much venom in Sophie's tone. "We know where you live. And where your wife works. And where Jenny goes to school. And I don't at all care what you know about us. The only thing you need to know is that we are not happy."
"Whatever, look. I've got work to do. Go waste someone else's time."
"You helped torture a man," Nate said, voice smooth. "And you were paid heavily to do so. Very heavily. More than the others. This tells us not only that you are willing to be bought, but that you are willing to, ah, negotiate."
"Yeah. Right," Warren scoffed.
"He's opening the briefcase," Hardison said, and Eliot could just make out the displeasure flashing across Parker's face. She'd been the only one siding with him when he'd argued against Sophie putting up her own money to buy Warren off. They'd both been voted down, since there wasn't enough time to set up an alternate revenue stream.
Sophie was talking. "I think it would be best for you if you quickly came to understand just how serious we are. You can have the money. Or you can say no, and see if you can make it back home before your family finds themselves in a situation not dissimilar to our man's."
It was disgusting to hear them talking like this. It wasn't that they'd never screwed with people before, but this?
It felt like they were sinking down to levels Eliot himself hadn't sunk to in years.
He was dimly aware that Hardison announced that they were moving to the side entrance opposite Parker.
Eliot wrenched his eyes shut for a second, before remembering that he was supposed to be watching Parker, and he really just wished that someone would say something, already.
A few too many heartbeats, and Warren did. Parker was starting to move across the floor, and Eliot followed, tapping over to a different camera to see them all in the same shot. For the first time, Eliot was looking at John Warren's face.
It meant nothing to him, and he knew that he should have been expecting it, but he wasn't ready for the shocked disappointment washing over him.
"Can't tell you what I don't know. But. Called the number in the ad and this guy says he's got some work. Said he was on retainer with the UN. That's the, uh. United Nations," Warren explained. "Sounded off at first, the way he was explaining why it couldn't be handled through the usual methods. I made him show me the warrants and extradition papers, and they were solid enough. Wasn't until later that it became apparent that something else was going on, but by that point, we'd be going down with him."
Nate placed the suitcase down on the floor, kicking it underneath the tablecloth. "Tell us about Nicola."
"Um. Older guy, probably in his fifties or sixties, short gray hair, clean cut. Had a little bit of an accent, like he'd spent a lot of time in China or something."
"Have you spoken to him recently?" Sophie sounded unimpressed, but Eliot couldn't think about that right now, he was trying to concentrate.
Nicola.
Lacking the flash of recognition, hearing the name was more anticlimactic than he'd been expecting. Shit. For all he knew, it was an alias.
"Did he tell you anything else? About why he needed Spencer locked up?"
"Only that it was a matter of national security."
"Did he ever flash a badge?"
"If he did, I'd have his full name, wouldn't I?" It was almost comedic, to see John Warren's large frame backed into a corner by Sophie. Eliot would have laughed at the sight of it, wanted to crow at the panicked expression he could make out on Warren's face, but there was still ample time for things to get worse. He needed to be ready, even if there wasn't anything he could do.
"That's all I know, I'm serious. I would have gotten out of there but by the time I found out everything, I was stuck. That's all. You. Look, my daughter-"
"We're square. Long as we don't find out that you've been lying to us, you and your family will never hear from us again. If, ah. If we find out otherwise, it's another story entirely, so if there's anything else?"
Warren nodded dumbly.
"Then we should take our leave," Sophie said, inclining her head forward before turning on her heel to head out through the front. Parker was already sliding through the crowd ahead of her, and Nate followed, turning once to look back in Warren's direction before carrying on.
Eliot hadn't seen his face, and because he'd had to switch cameras, hadn't seen Warren's, either. He didn't even know if it he was still standing where they'd left him.
---
"Hardison? You've got trace running on all his phones?"
Ducking to confirm, Alec then shook his head. "He hasn't made any calls, but when he does, we'll know. Also got a line into the GPS on his car."
"Okay. Eliot? You catch everything that was said?" Nate already knew the answer, because otherwise Eliot probably would have said something, but someone had to ask.
"Nicola's gotta be an alias."
"So, the ringleader's as much of a mystery as our friend in the photos, then." Nate nodded to himself, regarding the door.
It was Parker who confirmed what they were all thinking. "So we wasted money and have nothing to show for it, then?"
Nate shrugged. "Not until he picks up the phone."
"If he picks up the phone. Think you scared him silent, man. Shook him up too much for him to think. Probably would have come up with something if y'all hadn't gone so over the top."
Alec thought he must have missed something, because all of a sudden, everyone in the room seemed like they were about to go off. Eliot was pissed about the way they'd played it, Sophie was insulted by his anger, Parker was mad about money changing hands, even though it wasn't hers, and Nate looked like he wanted to throttle all of them.
They'd tracked him. Got a tracker in his phone. If he called, and yeah, it was fifty-fifty on that one, they'd have a direct line to Nicola.
"Hey, guys? Guys." He waved his arm, tried not to shrink away from the glares they unleashed. "Even if it is an alias, it might have seen some field time. And did you hear the man talking about the warrants?"
"Yes," Nate said, "but if they weren't entirely fake, they were shown under false pretenses."
"What do you mean?"
There was a beat before he answered. "If Nicola was looking to collect on the rewards, he would have handled it already. If he was really concerned with throwing Eliot in prison, he either would have had a case for extradition, or been trying to get him out of the country as soon as possible, not screwing up his case by." He broke off, deliberately not looking in Eliot's direction. "He would have put a lot of work into nothing, so we have to assume that this has nothing to do with anything official."
"So all this was just a huge waste of time," Parker said, packing up the last of the takeout containers and dumping them into the garbage bag Sophie held open.
"Enough of this," Alec almost shouted, snorting sharply. "Y'all ain't seein' it. Look. Even if the papers were shown under false pretenses, they would've had to pass at least a cursory inspection. Because of dovetailing roles with law enforcement, companies like Crandall train their guards in this sort of thing. Warren might not be too bright, but he knows what he was talking about."
"Doesn't mean they weren't fake," Sophie pointed out
"Doesn't mean they were, neither, and if fake papers and fake names are all we've got, if we throw them out, we got nothing. I'm gonna look into it," he confirmed, daring the others to argue. Nate said nothing, and that was agreement enough, so he was careful to keep his hackles down when he continued. "All right. Here. Monitoring's already up and running on the other two guards. How we gonna handle them?"
Nate examined their tired faces, each in turn, before deciding. "We pick it up in the morning. For now, let's just clear out, get back to the hotel."
---
"Hey," Eliot leaned on the side of the bathroom doorway, ice pack freezing through his fingers as it melted in his hand, but he didn't go so far as to enter the room. Hardison was calmer now, but that was because he'd had his eyes glued to his screen for the past half hour, no doubt digging up every single thing Eliot had wanted to keep hidden.
"Hey," Hardison looked up for a fraction of a second, and looked away even faster.
Avoiding him. Non-confrontational. Wary and distrustful.
It was the same tell that had once clued him in, sent him on his way, seconds before Nate Ford, of IYS, called in his backup. Eliot hadn't stopped running until he'd made it out of Spain.
It was the same look he'd gotten from Aimee the last time he'd gone home, as she was putting the breakfast dishes away. By dinnertime, he'd left again.
It was the same look his sister'd given him Christmas evening, once her son was up in bed and the police were finally gone. Once she'd already heard his end of several hushed telephone conversations about hiding and identification and how soon. Before she'd really understood that her life, as she knew it, was over, but after she'd arrived at the conclusion that she didn't know him anymore. Didn't even want to.
Hardison didn't wear the expression all that differently.
This is gonna hurt like hell.
"I know that look. Means you found something you didn't want to find," His shoulders slumped just a fraction, sending fresh shoots of pain down into his chest and arm, but he was too tired to hide it. "About me." This time, he had the feeling that Alec would be the one to leave. This is it.
"Found some stuff, yeah." Hardison still wouldn't make eye contact, too intent on the screen, and too angry. He spoke mechanically, deliberately, like he was rehearsing the lines in his head before letting them out. "And I'm sure you had your reasons, so it's cool. Don't worry about it."
Yeah, it's so cool that you won't even look at me.
"Fine," he said, wishing he didn't know why the dread was coiling so tightly in his gut. He could feel something tearing in his chest, but forced himself not to check for blood. "But tell me what it is."
---
Which one? he almost asked, because there'd been so much, but this was not the time for sarcasm.
Swiveling his head back to the computer, though he had the information memorized, he took a moment to reconsider his hunch, then went with it.
"Right. So. Myanmar." He didn't want to see the expression Eliot would be wearing. Didn't even want to be having this conversation in the first place, but the file was on the screen, bright and glaring, like it had been trapped inside for thousands of years, waiting to be released. Taking one final breath to clear his head, he asked the question. "What happened?"
"I was sent in to retrieve two political prisoners," Eliot began, clearly not wanting to. "North of Dawei, there was this town, village, whatever. Found the one that was still alive. Things got messy. Someone alerted the guards, and we wound up running through a market. People everywhere. The guards shot first, and I could barely return fire with all the running and screaming. The prisoner got tagged and went down. I fired three times, one went wide 'cause I got jostled by some kids that were trying to get out of there." There was a pause, and Alec had already seen the reports. He knew how this was going to end. "The other two shots went where they were supposed to."
Eliot fell silent, frozen in the doorway, and it was fucked, everything was so out of control that there wasn't supposed to be any stillness left in the world, not with everything flying too fast through his head right then. It felt a little too much like the universe was spinning out from under him and he couldn't catch up.
"Then what happened?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eliot sit down on the bed, his good hand coming up to rub at his neck, but his voice was steady when he answered.
"Contacted my handler at the embassy. I hadn't been in contact for over a month, and didn't know." Eliot laughed without humor. "A policy thing in Washington had shaken everything up and the orders had changed. I cleared the hell out, got to Thailand before it could all come down." Eliot sounded like he was filing a report, not gloating. His voice was too dead for that. "Next thing you know, there's a price on your head and the government claims no knowledge. My line of work, you know. It happens."
Eliot was their hitter, but he'd been other things to other people before. He'd known so, in a general sense, but now he got it. He really did.
Alec had seen the rumors, found hints to assignments that weren't supposed to exist, but they'd all been oblique references. Code names on a scanned piece of paper somewhere. Nothing about them had been real.
He needed a minute to think. Figure this thing out. He needed to not get distracted by the other files he'd found, because right now, if he was honest, he couldn't deal with seeing the evidence that this was as bad as it got.
---
Any minute now, Hardison was going to flip the hell out. He'd call Nate, talk to the others. He could already see the look on Nate's face, tried not to picture Parker and Sophie wearing that same disappointment.
His time was nearly up, here. Soon, he'd have to go his own way. He'd known that someday, this would happen, that this would all end, but he hadn't expected it to be his fault. That it would come from the others knowing exactly what he was capable of, what he'd done and who he'd been, and the fear that knowledge would bring.
He'd known, since way back when, in the then-new office, when he'd admitted "I actually hurt people, so…" that they'd put their blinders on, never asked, never wanted to know, and he couldn't blame them.
Nate was an honest man, in his way, if ruthless. Sophie wanted to steal herself a better life, and Parker stole to live, like breathing. And Hardison? He wanted to know everything in the whole damn world, but even he'd never wanted to know that.
They'd never asked, and he'd never told.
He'd been happy to let them believe that it had all been chokeholds and kicks and the odd concussion, here and there, but he'd known it was a lie, and years of becoming someone other than the man he'd had to be, way back when, didn't change that.
You don't con your own crew.
But it would change everything, now. He'd killed, more than once, and there was no denying it. It wasn't something he was proud of, but he'd made his peace with it, more or less. The others, none of the others had ever gone there, and they could do a lot of things, but they wouldn't get it.
They'd want to trust him, and they'd try to. Even Nate, who'd chased him, who'd known his reputation, had never had all the facts. Parker would be skittish, and Sophie would pretend to bury it, and Hardison would get curious. He'd only start digging up more, until there was nothing left worth hiding.
And if the cracks started showing while they were on the job? If Sophie didn't move on his signal, if Parker spooked and went solo, if Hardison decided that he was tired of being an accessory after the fact and forgot to warn Eliot about the guns waiting in the next hallway, it would destroy all of them.
Even if Nate had to see this all coming, closed it down and broke up the crew, the results wouldn't be much different.
He had to leave before he brought them down with him.
It was fine. He'd done it before, and he'd survived, even if only because he was too far away from the fallout to get burned.
And it was funny without being funny at all, because the others talked about it sometimes, how they were family. Eliot wondered where he'd gone so fucking wrong that he couldn't even recognize it until he was on his way out.
If he played it right this time, though, maybe he could do it without fucking them over. If Hardison would just give him some indication of what he was thinking, somewhere to start from, he could figure out how to leave them intact when he left.
He really fucking wished Hardison would say something. It was a little fucked, waiting to follow someone else's lead just so he could walk out the door.
---
What the hell do you say to that?
Taking what he hoped was a silent breath, Alec slid the laptop away and stood. Eliot was staring at the curtained window, but there was no way to tell if he was actually seeing it, the cell, or the trajectory Alec's body would take as he fell.
Stop it. That ain't fair. Nothing's changed.
He sat down on the bed, next to him, and pulled his thoughts together, waiting for Eliot to show some sign of life, to stop this entire catatonic act.
But this had to fucking stop. They were both being ridiculous.
"That's messed up. Dunno what to say, man. You hungry?" As wise words went, it fell a little flat, even to his own ears.
Eliot hung his head, but he was smiling, already, even if he didn't want it seen.
"Nah. I'm good," he said, after a minute.
"Okay. Cool." Hardison stared at the floor too. Hadn't realized how ugly the carpeting was, until now. "Seriously, though. Don't freak out over this." Eliot wasn't convinced, but Alec wasn't convinced he didn't want to be. "Now that I know where to look for leads, we'll get it sorted."
"And what then? Do I just go in, get a little revenge? Kill someone new?"
It was too soon to even think about going there. "I don't know," was his measured response, and it was true. He hadn't really thought about it, didn't even have the energy to start. "Ain't gotta figure it out right now, though."
Finally, Eliot nodded. Raised his head up, and stared at the curtains for a while, like he was thinking. Seemed like something worth doing, so Alec joined him.
After some interminable minutes, the only thing he'd learned was that the curtains were damned ugly. Apparently, Eliot had reached the same conclusion, scratching at his throat before going back to hefting the melted icepack in his hand.
Alec didn't know what the fuck it was that he was doing, and there were too many Damn Fine Reasons why it shouldn't even occur to him, but he heard himself saying, "Hey. C'mere."
Maybe he'd only said it because he hadn't expected a response, but he got one. Eliot swiveled his head up, brushing the hair off his face, and met his eyes for the first time since they'd sat down. His expression wasn't what it had been, for a while now. Might've been a new one entirely.
He seemed frozen, then, they both did, but there must have been some momentum left hiding somewhere, because when Alec leaned into Eliot's mouth, he was pretty sure Eliot met him halfway.
---
Chapter 14