Tin Man 1/4, Leverage, Rated R
Nov. 8th, 2010 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gilascaveMaster Post with headers
Eliot walked up to the theatre, still telling himself this was a bad fucking idea. He'd been telling himself that since he'd checked the voicemail on his 'public' phone number, the one he used for job contacts and the few people he pretended to call friends. When Sophie had left her message, time and day and ticket for him at the Will Call window -- he'd told himself it was stupid.
He'd flown to Boston anyhow, checked into a hotel and located the theatre, scouting the neighborhood by reflex and trying to decide if he wanted to pick up a date for the show or if dragging some poor unfortunate to see Sophie Devereaux trying to act would be considered cruel and inhuman.
As he left his hotel and walked to the theatre, he'd argued with himself about why he wasn't just turning tail and running, telling Sophie a sob story about getting stuck in Bogotá, under fire from drug lords and rescuing orphans from an asylum.
Probably she'd see right through it; Sophie had the most uncanny ability to sniff out a lie that Eliot had ever seen. Most lies, he told himself, grateful that the lies that never got spoken could still slip past even the best grifter he'd ever met. He was grateful for that much, that he'd had a few months last year, working with people as a team who didn't know who or what he was -- pretending that he was something else, something the band of thieves had considered normal.
Perhaps it was that he'd been missing, and had come here hoping for one more night of it. Seeing Sophie's play, spending some time with her afterwards, no doubt, telling more lies about how good her performance was and Eliot Spencer could be just another hitter and thief in a world where sometimes thieves really were the good guys.
Glancing at the theatre bills in the display cases, he realized suddenly what he'd actually come to see: the play was a musical. Sophie would be singing.
Eliot suppressed a shudder at the realization. Maybe she'd have a small part, a speaking role only, or even a bit part with no lines at all. He found himself hoping briefly before logic smashed its way through, reminding him that Sophie would never invite him to watch her stand in the background being part of the scenery.
He paused outside the theatre. There was still time. He could walk right past and head to the restaurant he could see halfway down the block. Grab dinner and be gone before Sophie realized he was there.
As he debated, Eliot saw a pair of couples walk into the theatre, talking and laughing. He felt his stomach tighten; young people, nineteen or twenty, carefree and enjoying their evening. Possibly drama students from Boston University, judging by the way they were dressed and the way their discussion was punctuated with such words as 'quintessential Neo Post-Modern' and 'contrived nuances.'
One of the girls caught him watching and she shot him a flirtatious grin. The boy on her arm followed her look, and his gaze traveled up and down before he gave a disdainful sniff and said something to the girl. She laughed and gave Eliot a wink, but slipped through the door as the boy held it open for her.
Eliot just watched them go, standing on the sidewalk and thinking -- he really ought to be smarter than this. There was no excuse for coming back; no reason to be in the States at all, and certainly no reason to head into the theatre and ask for his ticket and set himself up for three hours of dubious entertainment for the sake of...what? Nostalgia for a con he'd run on himself last year?
Only the thought that Sophie would look for him, made him go inside. Why on Earth she'd invited him, he didn't know, but she had and Eliot knew she would ask after him to learn if he'd picked up his ticket. She'd look for him after the show, possibly even during if she could see into the crowd. Lying about her performance would be easy -- she'd see right through it but Eliot would make the attempt to be polite and supportive and she would gracefully let him. But not showing at all would be more disappointing for her than admitting her performance stank.
Well, Eliot reconsidered, it might be worse to tell her that. But an admission of a mediocre performance he could get away with, far better than claiming he was too busy getting shot at by terrorists to attend her show. Even if it was the stupidest thing he'd done since going back and telling Nate Ford that working together as a team had been fun and maybe they could do it again.
Eliot scoffed to himself, keeping his face neutral as the gentleman behind the window searched for a ticket under the name Eliot Spencer. Fun. He still didn't understand that one either, except that it had been fun, and a nice change of pace to work with a team on jobs that had been decidedly less dangerous than his norm. Leaving when they had, had been well-timed. His first job back in the field had shown him how sloppy he'd gotten, fighting street punks and common security guards and letting Nate do most of the thinking for him. Six months had got him back on track, and this...could be simply a vacation. Visit Boston, try out some of the famed seafood restaurants before heading back out to Thailand or Denmark for his next job.
Eliot forewent the concession stand, but stopped and spoke with a young woman for a moment; she was attending with a friend, but no boyfriend, and if she was already here then she wouldn't blame him for dragging her to the show. The night might not be a total loss, Eliot thought, as she agreed to meet him for drinks after the show. Eliot gave her a smile and turned to go -- and stopped as he recognized three faces in the lobby.
Of course she'd invite them as well, he thought, forcing himself to walk over with a casual air. And no doubt they'd shown up for the same reasons he had -- though Nate, at least, had always shown a genuine...tolerance for watching Sophie perform on stage.
His stomach tightened again as he came to a halt, standing in the loose circle with his former partners. Whatever they had been. He had no stories prepared -- most of the work he'd been doing was nothing he could talk about to anyone, much less the sort of thing he would want to share with these people. Three days before he'd been in Pakistan wiping a man's blood from his hands, now he was in Boston telling himself he was on vacation to see a musical.
Eliot swallowed nervously, stammered his way through not telling them anything at all, and asked himself again for the forty-second time why the hell he'd done something as stupid as come back to these people.
One night, he told himself. One night to tell tales and pretend it was all good, then leave and fucking stay gone.
During the show, when Sophie was off-stage and Eliot's ears had a chance to recover, he glanced over to Hardison, who was sitting on his right. He looked as stunned as Eliot felt, and Eliot wanted to lean over and commiserate with him. Right before he could lift his hand to nudge for Hardison's attention, he saw Parker, on Hardison's other side, lean over and whisper to him.
Eliot remained still and returned his attention to the stage.
~~~
Two weeks later he still wasn't gone. Last week he'd sat in the bar with Hardison and Sophie and gone over possible second jobs, looking for angles to hook Nate in. He'd ignored two messages offering him good jobs overseas -- good money and a better chance of violence. Instead he'd let himself extend his 'vacation' and lie to himself that enjoying himself was worth it.
He was enjoying it, there was no denying that. The teamwork wasn't anything like what he'd experienced before; his old team had all been men just like himself, built for violence and sent on missions to seek out, destroy, and retrieve. Making some poor schmuck's life a little better after getting screwed by someone with money and power had never been on his agenda, but here he was, doing it all over again.
He'd missed it, he'd admit to that much. Missed the people as well, though he told himself over again that it was just one more job, then he had to leave.
Eliot stared at the ceiling of the hotel room, glad he'd at least had the sense to refuse Hardison's offer of a condo in the same building as Nate; Hardison grinning as he promised low rent and a year free of increases from a trusting landlord. But he wasn't so far gone that he was settling down, no matter how he'd helped them knock down walls and outfit the condo next to Nate's with office space, a cool-room for the servers, and a workout room. He'd already seen Parker using it, so it wasn't like he'd made a place for himself even if Hardison had left it to him to make all the decisions about type of flooring and what kind of equipment to install. He simply knew best how to outfit a workout room, and no amount of justification and lying would erase that knowledge that he'd made it exactly the way he liked it.
Eliot closed his eyes, trying to shut down the line of reasoning that insisted he was staying. He'd come back, he'd turned down job offers and helped the others con Nate into leading the team. If he had to be honest, he was making every move to stay longer. The suggested course of action was buy a house and he smacked down that entire sub-process, scattering the propositions and breaking their logical connections to each other.
It would be better to go. Safer, easier, smarter. Without any effort at all he could generate fifteen reasons why he should leave and the list of countries was long, places where he could find a job within a couple days. Everything inside him said run.
His phone rang and Eliot's hand shot out to answer it, not really surprised when Hardison's voice was on the line. "Hey, Eliot, you wanna come over and help me wrestle some furniture into place?"
Eliot let himself groan, annoyed at himself for answering and for knowing that he would say yes without even listening to all the reasons why he should say no. I have to go to North Korea, Eliot wanted to say. It was what he should have said, but instead he just growled into the phone. "Why does that sound like 'Eliot, you move all the heavy shit while Hardison stands there and changes his mind where everything should go'?"
"No way, man, for real. I already have everything figured out, I know where it goes. I just need some help--"
"I'm gonna charge you."
There was a pause, then a hopeful, "I can order pizza?"
He could practically see the other man giving him that beseeching expression, trying to charm him over the phone. "Why did I give you my phone number?" Eliot demanded, but he was sitting up and locating his boots.
"You didn't," Hardison retorted. "I gave you that phone, remember? And I also have the phone number for your hotel room as well as the concierge desk and the business center in case I need to send you a fax -- might as well use a carrier pigeon, seriously -- and I have the phone number for Brown Cow Coffee across the street, where you apparently buy a regular black coffee, no sugar or creamer or anything. Not even a bagel -- how do you expect them to stay in business if you don't support them properly?"
Eliot wasn't surprised by any of Hardison's information, either. He was tempted to ask if Hardison knew the last time he'd washed his underwear, but didn't -- for fear Hardison might actually somehow know. Instead he tugged his boots on, cramming the phone awkwardly between his shoulder and his ear and telling himself that if he staying he might as well admit he was staying and route the phone connection directly into his brain so he wouldn't have to do this sort of thing.
"Fine," he said. "But you're buying pizza from Fat Mat Maroney's, and you're getting a double supreme special and no fucking breadsticks."
There was a wounded noise and Eliot rolled his eyes. But Hardison said, "Fine. But I'm getting breadsticks because if I don't Parker will do that face. Do you want to see her do that face? Because I don't. I nearly bought her a pony made out of diamonds the last time she made that face and she was making it at Sophie."
"She doesn't like horses," Eliot pointed out, not wanting to admit out loud that Hardison was right.
"She'd like one made out of diamonds. Or I could fold thousand dollar bills into a kind of giant origami horse. And--"
"Fine!" Eliot interrupted. "Order breadsticks and let her dip them in jam or orange sauce or whatever it is she does with them. I want a salad, too." Then he hung up, jammed his phone into his pocket, and leaned over to tie his boots.
North Korea looked pretty damned inviting, right now. Nothing but people trying to shoot him or blow him up, and he could freely hit just about anybody he came across. He grabbed his jacket and his keys and headed out of the hotel. If Hardison told him to 'try moving it back over there' more than twice, he was dropping the furniture on Hardison's foot and leaving.
~~~
One week later Eliot stood outside an office door while Parker broke into the CFO's safe hidden within. There were seven guards in the building; three in the control room and two pair patrolling throughout. One pair was restricted to the ground floor while the other roamed the building in what was supposed to be a random pattern. Hardison was keeping an eye on them and feeding a fake loop to the security cameras outside the office they were breaking into. Nate's voice was in their ears, reminding them of things like 'don't get caught' and 'you only have ten minutes, tops, before the cleaning staff shows up.'
Eliot could hear Parker working, knew from the lack of chatter from her that everything was going well, but not so easy she was bored already. He glanced towards the stairwell, then tapped into Hardison's hack on the building's security system. Hardison was tracking the guards by their radios; Eliot watched the red lights moving, tracked their routes back for the last two hours and spotted the pattern to their movements. The travelling set of guards was two floors away, which meant they had at least six minutes before they showed, if they held to their decidedly non-random "random" pattern.
More than enough time for Parker to grab the files and them to be on their way. The far stairwell would be clear to the roof, then a quick jump over to the building next door and they'd be away, undetected.
The chatter on the guards' radios was standard check-in and report, no idle chatter over the airwaves that Eliot could overhear. So far, everything was going smoothly. He registered Parker coming up behind him; he glanced back and she nodded, letting him know she'd got all the files they'd come for. He nodded towards the stairwell and followed her down the hallway, glancing behind them again for any signs of the guards.
He heard the guard at nearly the same instant that Hardison's voice came over the comms. "Look sharp, the guards decided to skip the fifth floor and they're heading your way. You got two minutes. Less."
Parker broke into an easy run; Eliot double checked that it was only two guards they had to worry about -- though Nate's original plan hinged on their getting in and out with the files without being detected at all. Eliot calculated the distance to the stairwell, compared it to the time alloted before the guards arrived and had the chance to spot them. They were coming up the north staircase, which meant they'd have to patrol twenty feet then turn a corner before they had line-of-sight. Plenty of time.
Until Parker came to a halt beside the stairwell door and hissed, "You didn't tell me it would be locked!"
"Who locks a damn stairway?" Hardison demanded. "That's a violation of at least fourteen safety codes!"
Over the comms, Eliot could hear Nate telling Parker to get the door open fast and Parker talking back that she knew how to do her job even as she grabbed at her lock picks. Eliot turned to stand with his back to her, watching the corner where the guards would appear. The countdown ticked, Nate and Hardison both clamoring over the earbuds and Eliot had to tune them out, ignoring their useless instructions to hurry the hell up and throwing out potential contingency plans on the fly.
Eliot knew the contingency plan: take out the guards, take out any other guards alerted to the intrusion, and get Parker and the files out of the building. Forty-five seconds before the guards would see them; he had enough time to run down the hall and take them out before they could alert the others over their radios. That meant committing himself to that course of action; there was still a chance Parker would get the door open and they could get away without being seen at all.
He had five point two seconds to decide. Eliot cascaded the scenarios, weighted towards Parker and the door simply because he knew she was that good. Three point nine seconds to make his decision, and the guards were definitely on their floor now and walking down the hallway towards the corner. Parker cursed under her breath and Eliot resisted the urge to glance over to see what the trouble was.
All he could do to help was kick the door open, but the noise would alert the guards. If he wanted to do that he was better off doing so with his fists in their faces at the other end of the hall.
Two seconds and he tensed to run, abandoning all options except fight. The snick of the door spun him around and he was on Parker's heels into the stairwell, shoving the door closed behind them as hard as he could, catching it to close it silently only at the last second.
"They're around the corner," Hardison said over the earbuds.
"We're on the stairs," Eliot said quietly, keeping his voice down to avoid an echo. Parker was already heading up the stairs; Eliot made sure the door had locked behind them before he ran up after her.
Distantly, he acknowledged the disappointment that he hadn't gotten to engage the guards. He'd seen their records, knew how skilled they were and knew it wouldn't have been much of a fight. The only one who even trained regularly was the one who manned the control room most often; the chance of getting to fight him had been slim, over all.
Eliot snapped his head up as Parker's footsteps stopped; a second later there was a man's voice shouting, "Who the hell are you?"
Hardison said, "I think you may have a problem."
Even as Hardison spoke, Eliot was already up the stairs, rounding the landing to see the guard who should have been in the control room standing at the eighth floor access door, glaring at Parker. Parker was up against the far wall, doing her best to look helpless and harmless and stay out of Eliot's way.
Eliot grinned. "You think?" he said to Hardison, but he was already drawing back his fist, taking great delight in seeing the guard adjust his stance to block.
The fight was quick, though the guard nearly landed one blow to Eliot's shoulder and blocked two of Eliot's own punches before Eliot swept him off his feet with a side-kick. Pulling him up by his arm, Eliot turned the guard onto his side, jammed his fist into his back, and watched with satisfaction as the man fell limp.
Not a difficult fight, and not nearly as long as it could have been if they'd had room for the guard to maneuver as his training said he would have preferred, but Eliot felt his heart beating faster as he looked over at Parker. She gave him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
"Hey, hey, you two all right?" Nate asked after several moments of silence. "What's going on?"
"Eliot won," Parker said.
Eliot patted the guard down, and said, "He was off the grid, not carrying a radio. That's why we didn't know he was coming. But it also means he won't have been able to alert the others."
"Then head up to the roof before the others find you," Nate instructed.
Eliot rolled his eyes. "And here I was thinking we'd go to the commissary for ice cream."
Parker paused on the stairs above him and looked back. "There's ice cream?"
"Roof," Nate said, sounding irritated.
"Maybe we should get ice cream after we're out of the building?" Eliot suggested, because he really didn't know if Parker would abandon their escape in order to get dessert. Cafeteria food wasn't his idea of something worth risking an escape for, anyhow. "What's your favorite flavor?" he asked, ready to offer a compromise.
"Pistachio," Parker said, and Eliot was relieved to see her continuing up the stairs. "With sprinkles. And mint."
Mint and pistachio, Eliot mused. That would be easy enough. He'd have to get an ice cream maker; he could set it up in Nate's kitchen. "I've got a recipe for ginger peach ice cream," he said, remembering the recipe he'd found and wanted to try, but hadn't had the chance yet.
"Oh, that sounds delicious," came Sophie's voice over the earbuds.
"It sounds disgusting," Hardison interjected. "Whatever happened to vanilla?"
"Is anyone paying any attention to the fact they haven't actually escaped yet?" Nate asked, but Eliot didn't get the impression anyone was listening to him.
Parker leaned over the railing and frowned down at him. "I want sprinkles. The chocolate kind."
"Got it," Eliot told her, and he hurried up the stairs.
"Don't mind me," Nate said. "I'm just masterminding a daring break-in, the theft of millions of dollars' worth of files, and a brilliant escape."
"It's not a brilliant escape," Eliot told him. "We're running up seven flights of stairs then using ropes to jump over to the roof of the building next door."
"Vanilla ice cream with caramel syrup," Hardison said. "If you have to get fancy."
"Ew, no," Sophie replied. "Far too sweet. It's all corn syrup anyway; not real caramel."
"If I promise to buy everyone an ice cream cone when this is over, will you please focus on the job?" Nate asked.
"Jeez, Nate, we're on the roof," Eliot told him. "Unless they have air support I think we're good."
"How many accounting firms have air support?" Parker asked.
Eliot looked into the distance, then asked, "Do helicopters count?" He grabbed Parker's arm, and they ran for the edge of the building.
continue to part two
Eliot walked up to the theatre, still telling himself this was a bad fucking idea. He'd been telling himself that since he'd checked the voicemail on his 'public' phone number, the one he used for job contacts and the few people he pretended to call friends. When Sophie had left her message, time and day and ticket for him at the Will Call window -- he'd told himself it was stupid.
He'd flown to Boston anyhow, checked into a hotel and located the theatre, scouting the neighborhood by reflex and trying to decide if he wanted to pick up a date for the show or if dragging some poor unfortunate to see Sophie Devereaux trying to act would be considered cruel and inhuman.
As he left his hotel and walked to the theatre, he'd argued with himself about why he wasn't just turning tail and running, telling Sophie a sob story about getting stuck in Bogotá, under fire from drug lords and rescuing orphans from an asylum.
Probably she'd see right through it; Sophie had the most uncanny ability to sniff out a lie that Eliot had ever seen. Most lies, he told himself, grateful that the lies that never got spoken could still slip past even the best grifter he'd ever met. He was grateful for that much, that he'd had a few months last year, working with people as a team who didn't know who or what he was -- pretending that he was something else, something the band of thieves had considered normal.
Perhaps it was that he'd been missing, and had come here hoping for one more night of it. Seeing Sophie's play, spending some time with her afterwards, no doubt, telling more lies about how good her performance was and Eliot Spencer could be just another hitter and thief in a world where sometimes thieves really were the good guys.
Glancing at the theatre bills in the display cases, he realized suddenly what he'd actually come to see: the play was a musical. Sophie would be singing.
Eliot suppressed a shudder at the realization. Maybe she'd have a small part, a speaking role only, or even a bit part with no lines at all. He found himself hoping briefly before logic smashed its way through, reminding him that Sophie would never invite him to watch her stand in the background being part of the scenery.
He paused outside the theatre. There was still time. He could walk right past and head to the restaurant he could see halfway down the block. Grab dinner and be gone before Sophie realized he was there.
As he debated, Eliot saw a pair of couples walk into the theatre, talking and laughing. He felt his stomach tighten; young people, nineteen or twenty, carefree and enjoying their evening. Possibly drama students from Boston University, judging by the way they were dressed and the way their discussion was punctuated with such words as 'quintessential Neo Post-Modern' and 'contrived nuances.'
One of the girls caught him watching and she shot him a flirtatious grin. The boy on her arm followed her look, and his gaze traveled up and down before he gave a disdainful sniff and said something to the girl. She laughed and gave Eliot a wink, but slipped through the door as the boy held it open for her.
Eliot just watched them go, standing on the sidewalk and thinking -- he really ought to be smarter than this. There was no excuse for coming back; no reason to be in the States at all, and certainly no reason to head into the theatre and ask for his ticket and set himself up for three hours of dubious entertainment for the sake of...what? Nostalgia for a con he'd run on himself last year?
Only the thought that Sophie would look for him, made him go inside. Why on Earth she'd invited him, he didn't know, but she had and Eliot knew she would ask after him to learn if he'd picked up his ticket. She'd look for him after the show, possibly even during if she could see into the crowd. Lying about her performance would be easy -- she'd see right through it but Eliot would make the attempt to be polite and supportive and she would gracefully let him. But not showing at all would be more disappointing for her than admitting her performance stank.
Well, Eliot reconsidered, it might be worse to tell her that. But an admission of a mediocre performance he could get away with, far better than claiming he was too busy getting shot at by terrorists to attend her show. Even if it was the stupidest thing he'd done since going back and telling Nate Ford that working together as a team had been fun and maybe they could do it again.
Eliot scoffed to himself, keeping his face neutral as the gentleman behind the window searched for a ticket under the name Eliot Spencer. Fun. He still didn't understand that one either, except that it had been fun, and a nice change of pace to work with a team on jobs that had been decidedly less dangerous than his norm. Leaving when they had, had been well-timed. His first job back in the field had shown him how sloppy he'd gotten, fighting street punks and common security guards and letting Nate do most of the thinking for him. Six months had got him back on track, and this...could be simply a vacation. Visit Boston, try out some of the famed seafood restaurants before heading back out to Thailand or Denmark for his next job.
Eliot forewent the concession stand, but stopped and spoke with a young woman for a moment; she was attending with a friend, but no boyfriend, and if she was already here then she wouldn't blame him for dragging her to the show. The night might not be a total loss, Eliot thought, as she agreed to meet him for drinks after the show. Eliot gave her a smile and turned to go -- and stopped as he recognized three faces in the lobby.
Of course she'd invite them as well, he thought, forcing himself to walk over with a casual air. And no doubt they'd shown up for the same reasons he had -- though Nate, at least, had always shown a genuine...tolerance for watching Sophie perform on stage.
His stomach tightened again as he came to a halt, standing in the loose circle with his former partners. Whatever they had been. He had no stories prepared -- most of the work he'd been doing was nothing he could talk about to anyone, much less the sort of thing he would want to share with these people. Three days before he'd been in Pakistan wiping a man's blood from his hands, now he was in Boston telling himself he was on vacation to see a musical.
Eliot swallowed nervously, stammered his way through not telling them anything at all, and asked himself again for the forty-second time why the hell he'd done something as stupid as come back to these people.
One night, he told himself. One night to tell tales and pretend it was all good, then leave and fucking stay gone.
During the show, when Sophie was off-stage and Eliot's ears had a chance to recover, he glanced over to Hardison, who was sitting on his right. He looked as stunned as Eliot felt, and Eliot wanted to lean over and commiserate with him. Right before he could lift his hand to nudge for Hardison's attention, he saw Parker, on Hardison's other side, lean over and whisper to him.
Eliot remained still and returned his attention to the stage.
~~~
Two weeks later he still wasn't gone. Last week he'd sat in the bar with Hardison and Sophie and gone over possible second jobs, looking for angles to hook Nate in. He'd ignored two messages offering him good jobs overseas -- good money and a better chance of violence. Instead he'd let himself extend his 'vacation' and lie to himself that enjoying himself was worth it.
He was enjoying it, there was no denying that. The teamwork wasn't anything like what he'd experienced before; his old team had all been men just like himself, built for violence and sent on missions to seek out, destroy, and retrieve. Making some poor schmuck's life a little better after getting screwed by someone with money and power had never been on his agenda, but here he was, doing it all over again.
He'd missed it, he'd admit to that much. Missed the people as well, though he told himself over again that it was just one more job, then he had to leave.
Eliot stared at the ceiling of the hotel room, glad he'd at least had the sense to refuse Hardison's offer of a condo in the same building as Nate; Hardison grinning as he promised low rent and a year free of increases from a trusting landlord. But he wasn't so far gone that he was settling down, no matter how he'd helped them knock down walls and outfit the condo next to Nate's with office space, a cool-room for the servers, and a workout room. He'd already seen Parker using it, so it wasn't like he'd made a place for himself even if Hardison had left it to him to make all the decisions about type of flooring and what kind of equipment to install. He simply knew best how to outfit a workout room, and no amount of justification and lying would erase that knowledge that he'd made it exactly the way he liked it.
Eliot closed his eyes, trying to shut down the line of reasoning that insisted he was staying. He'd come back, he'd turned down job offers and helped the others con Nate into leading the team. If he had to be honest, he was making every move to stay longer. The suggested course of action was buy a house and he smacked down that entire sub-process, scattering the propositions and breaking their logical connections to each other.
It would be better to go. Safer, easier, smarter. Without any effort at all he could generate fifteen reasons why he should leave and the list of countries was long, places where he could find a job within a couple days. Everything inside him said run.
His phone rang and Eliot's hand shot out to answer it, not really surprised when Hardison's voice was on the line. "Hey, Eliot, you wanna come over and help me wrestle some furniture into place?"
Eliot let himself groan, annoyed at himself for answering and for knowing that he would say yes without even listening to all the reasons why he should say no. I have to go to North Korea, Eliot wanted to say. It was what he should have said, but instead he just growled into the phone. "Why does that sound like 'Eliot, you move all the heavy shit while Hardison stands there and changes his mind where everything should go'?"
"No way, man, for real. I already have everything figured out, I know where it goes. I just need some help--"
"I'm gonna charge you."
There was a pause, then a hopeful, "I can order pizza?"
He could practically see the other man giving him that beseeching expression, trying to charm him over the phone. "Why did I give you my phone number?" Eliot demanded, but he was sitting up and locating his boots.
"You didn't," Hardison retorted. "I gave you that phone, remember? And I also have the phone number for your hotel room as well as the concierge desk and the business center in case I need to send you a fax -- might as well use a carrier pigeon, seriously -- and I have the phone number for Brown Cow Coffee across the street, where you apparently buy a regular black coffee, no sugar or creamer or anything. Not even a bagel -- how do you expect them to stay in business if you don't support them properly?"
Eliot wasn't surprised by any of Hardison's information, either. He was tempted to ask if Hardison knew the last time he'd washed his underwear, but didn't -- for fear Hardison might actually somehow know. Instead he tugged his boots on, cramming the phone awkwardly between his shoulder and his ear and telling himself that if he staying he might as well admit he was staying and route the phone connection directly into his brain so he wouldn't have to do this sort of thing.
"Fine," he said. "But you're buying pizza from Fat Mat Maroney's, and you're getting a double supreme special and no fucking breadsticks."
There was a wounded noise and Eliot rolled his eyes. But Hardison said, "Fine. But I'm getting breadsticks because if I don't Parker will do that face. Do you want to see her do that face? Because I don't. I nearly bought her a pony made out of diamonds the last time she made that face and she was making it at Sophie."
"She doesn't like horses," Eliot pointed out, not wanting to admit out loud that Hardison was right.
"She'd like one made out of diamonds. Or I could fold thousand dollar bills into a kind of giant origami horse. And--"
"Fine!" Eliot interrupted. "Order breadsticks and let her dip them in jam or orange sauce or whatever it is she does with them. I want a salad, too." Then he hung up, jammed his phone into his pocket, and leaned over to tie his boots.
North Korea looked pretty damned inviting, right now. Nothing but people trying to shoot him or blow him up, and he could freely hit just about anybody he came across. He grabbed his jacket and his keys and headed out of the hotel. If Hardison told him to 'try moving it back over there' more than twice, he was dropping the furniture on Hardison's foot and leaving.
~~~
One week later Eliot stood outside an office door while Parker broke into the CFO's safe hidden within. There were seven guards in the building; three in the control room and two pair patrolling throughout. One pair was restricted to the ground floor while the other roamed the building in what was supposed to be a random pattern. Hardison was keeping an eye on them and feeding a fake loop to the security cameras outside the office they were breaking into. Nate's voice was in their ears, reminding them of things like 'don't get caught' and 'you only have ten minutes, tops, before the cleaning staff shows up.'
Eliot could hear Parker working, knew from the lack of chatter from her that everything was going well, but not so easy she was bored already. He glanced towards the stairwell, then tapped into Hardison's hack on the building's security system. Hardison was tracking the guards by their radios; Eliot watched the red lights moving, tracked their routes back for the last two hours and spotted the pattern to their movements. The travelling set of guards was two floors away, which meant they had at least six minutes before they showed, if they held to their decidedly non-random "random" pattern.
More than enough time for Parker to grab the files and them to be on their way. The far stairwell would be clear to the roof, then a quick jump over to the building next door and they'd be away, undetected.
The chatter on the guards' radios was standard check-in and report, no idle chatter over the airwaves that Eliot could overhear. So far, everything was going smoothly. He registered Parker coming up behind him; he glanced back and she nodded, letting him know she'd got all the files they'd come for. He nodded towards the stairwell and followed her down the hallway, glancing behind them again for any signs of the guards.
He heard the guard at nearly the same instant that Hardison's voice came over the comms. "Look sharp, the guards decided to skip the fifth floor and they're heading your way. You got two minutes. Less."
Parker broke into an easy run; Eliot double checked that it was only two guards they had to worry about -- though Nate's original plan hinged on their getting in and out with the files without being detected at all. Eliot calculated the distance to the stairwell, compared it to the time alloted before the guards arrived and had the chance to spot them. They were coming up the north staircase, which meant they'd have to patrol twenty feet then turn a corner before they had line-of-sight. Plenty of time.
Until Parker came to a halt beside the stairwell door and hissed, "You didn't tell me it would be locked!"
"Who locks a damn stairway?" Hardison demanded. "That's a violation of at least fourteen safety codes!"
Over the comms, Eliot could hear Nate telling Parker to get the door open fast and Parker talking back that she knew how to do her job even as she grabbed at her lock picks. Eliot turned to stand with his back to her, watching the corner where the guards would appear. The countdown ticked, Nate and Hardison both clamoring over the earbuds and Eliot had to tune them out, ignoring their useless instructions to hurry the hell up and throwing out potential contingency plans on the fly.
Eliot knew the contingency plan: take out the guards, take out any other guards alerted to the intrusion, and get Parker and the files out of the building. Forty-five seconds before the guards would see them; he had enough time to run down the hall and take them out before they could alert the others over their radios. That meant committing himself to that course of action; there was still a chance Parker would get the door open and they could get away without being seen at all.
He had five point two seconds to decide. Eliot cascaded the scenarios, weighted towards Parker and the door simply because he knew she was that good. Three point nine seconds to make his decision, and the guards were definitely on their floor now and walking down the hallway towards the corner. Parker cursed under her breath and Eliot resisted the urge to glance over to see what the trouble was.
All he could do to help was kick the door open, but the noise would alert the guards. If he wanted to do that he was better off doing so with his fists in their faces at the other end of the hall.
Two seconds and he tensed to run, abandoning all options except fight. The snick of the door spun him around and he was on Parker's heels into the stairwell, shoving the door closed behind them as hard as he could, catching it to close it silently only at the last second.
"They're around the corner," Hardison said over the earbuds.
"We're on the stairs," Eliot said quietly, keeping his voice down to avoid an echo. Parker was already heading up the stairs; Eliot made sure the door had locked behind them before he ran up after her.
Distantly, he acknowledged the disappointment that he hadn't gotten to engage the guards. He'd seen their records, knew how skilled they were and knew it wouldn't have been much of a fight. The only one who even trained regularly was the one who manned the control room most often; the chance of getting to fight him had been slim, over all.
Eliot snapped his head up as Parker's footsteps stopped; a second later there was a man's voice shouting, "Who the hell are you?"
Hardison said, "I think you may have a problem."
Even as Hardison spoke, Eliot was already up the stairs, rounding the landing to see the guard who should have been in the control room standing at the eighth floor access door, glaring at Parker. Parker was up against the far wall, doing her best to look helpless and harmless and stay out of Eliot's way.
Eliot grinned. "You think?" he said to Hardison, but he was already drawing back his fist, taking great delight in seeing the guard adjust his stance to block.
The fight was quick, though the guard nearly landed one blow to Eliot's shoulder and blocked two of Eliot's own punches before Eliot swept him off his feet with a side-kick. Pulling him up by his arm, Eliot turned the guard onto his side, jammed his fist into his back, and watched with satisfaction as the man fell limp.
Not a difficult fight, and not nearly as long as it could have been if they'd had room for the guard to maneuver as his training said he would have preferred, but Eliot felt his heart beating faster as he looked over at Parker. She gave him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
"Hey, hey, you two all right?" Nate asked after several moments of silence. "What's going on?"
"Eliot won," Parker said.
Eliot patted the guard down, and said, "He was off the grid, not carrying a radio. That's why we didn't know he was coming. But it also means he won't have been able to alert the others."
"Then head up to the roof before the others find you," Nate instructed.
Eliot rolled his eyes. "And here I was thinking we'd go to the commissary for ice cream."
Parker paused on the stairs above him and looked back. "There's ice cream?"
"Roof," Nate said, sounding irritated.
"Maybe we should get ice cream after we're out of the building?" Eliot suggested, because he really didn't know if Parker would abandon their escape in order to get dessert. Cafeteria food wasn't his idea of something worth risking an escape for, anyhow. "What's your favorite flavor?" he asked, ready to offer a compromise.
"Pistachio," Parker said, and Eliot was relieved to see her continuing up the stairs. "With sprinkles. And mint."
Mint and pistachio, Eliot mused. That would be easy enough. He'd have to get an ice cream maker; he could set it up in Nate's kitchen. "I've got a recipe for ginger peach ice cream," he said, remembering the recipe he'd found and wanted to try, but hadn't had the chance yet.
"Oh, that sounds delicious," came Sophie's voice over the earbuds.
"It sounds disgusting," Hardison interjected. "Whatever happened to vanilla?"
"Is anyone paying any attention to the fact they haven't actually escaped yet?" Nate asked, but Eliot didn't get the impression anyone was listening to him.
Parker leaned over the railing and frowned down at him. "I want sprinkles. The chocolate kind."
"Got it," Eliot told her, and he hurried up the stairs.
"Don't mind me," Nate said. "I'm just masterminding a daring break-in, the theft of millions of dollars' worth of files, and a brilliant escape."
"It's not a brilliant escape," Eliot told him. "We're running up seven flights of stairs then using ropes to jump over to the roof of the building next door."
"Vanilla ice cream with caramel syrup," Hardison said. "If you have to get fancy."
"Ew, no," Sophie replied. "Far too sweet. It's all corn syrup anyway; not real caramel."
"If I promise to buy everyone an ice cream cone when this is over, will you please focus on the job?" Nate asked.
"Jeez, Nate, we're on the roof," Eliot told him. "Unless they have air support I think we're good."
"How many accounting firms have air support?" Parker asked.
Eliot looked into the distance, then asked, "Do helicopters count?" He grabbed Parker's arm, and they ran for the edge of the building.
continue to part two