In her dream, Sophie is walking down the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois in the Marais District in Paris. She's been shopping and checking out galleries for new acquisitions. She can hear foot steps behind her. They get louder. Someone is shouting her name. The footsteps become louder, banging on her door, more yelling. A big bang. Loud voices.
Sophie sits straight up, confused. She's startled looking at Eliot, Parker and Hardison. She grabs the sheet and pulls it to cover herself. Parker is staring. Hardison's inspecting the ceiling. Eliot backs away slowly, trying his best not to see what's already been seen.
Nate pushes his way through the group. "Sophie! What the hell? We've been calling you half the night. Don't you check your phone?"
Sophie is still trying to process the sudden invasion of her privacy. She feels something, someone, moving in the bed with her. Alex! She drops her hand heavily onto her, hoping she is covered, wanting her to stay still.
Nate, of course, sees everything.
"Fuck Sophie. Really? Get up. Get rid of whoever that is. I don't want to know. We're having a briefing in 10 minutes in the room next door. Be there!" He looks around the room. "Where is this Alex person anyway?!"
Sophie doesn't answer and Nate realizes his mistake.
"Fuck Sophie" he swears again as he turns and stomps out of the room. Eliot is already out, not wanting to know anything more about what is going on. Hardison mumbles some sort of apology and grabs Parker's arm to leave. Parker resists.
"But I want to know…"
"No you do not!" Hardison tells her as he pulls her out of the room.
As soon as the door closes, Sophie pulls the blankets back from where they lie over Alex. "I'm sorry about that" she says. "They don't have a lot of boundaries sometimes."
Alex smiles at her as she sits up. "It's OK. I just hope I didn't cause trouble for you."
"Nothing I can't handle" Sophie says with a smile.
"So that was your team?" Alex asks.
Sophie sighs. "Yeah that's them."
Alex shakes her head. "Don't worry" Sophie tells her, "they may not have given the best impression but they, we, are the best in the world."
Alex still looks dubious. "At what?"
Sophie smiles again. "Everything!"
Her words don't inspire much confidence but Alex doesn't seem to have a lot of choices.
"We'll fix this Alex. I promise. It's what we do." "What do you do?" Alex asks. Sophie smiles. "We help people."
With that she slides out of bed and heads to the bathroom for a shower. Before she does though, she turns back toward Alex.
"Don't leave!"
Alex nods though she's not entirely sure she'll do as Sophie ordered. She doesn't have a lot of faith in a bunch of do-gooder thieves and she's itching to get out and take some sort of control back. For now, she decides, she'll wait and see what they have to say. But she won't wait for long.
Sophie leaves Alex to clean up while she goes to talk to her friends. She fills them in on what she knows and Hardison gets busy with his computers while Nate goes off to come up with some sort of plan. Sophie grabs a cup of coffee and some fruit from the breakfast Nate ordered and takes it back to Alex. She is pleased to see Alex up and dressed but a bit worried about how she's stalking the room. She knows she's not going to be able to keep Alex hidden for too much longer. She decides it's time for a more formal introduction.
Alex doesn't believe anything right now but she decides to trust that Sophie is right about her friends. She tells them everything she knows, from the moment she woke up at the bomb site, her time at the FBI office where they told her it was someone in her class who set the bomb, her arrest and her supervisor Miranda Shaw helping her escape. Everything but how she found herself in Sophie's room, and bed.
"So why do you think they're targeting you?" Nate asks. Alex shrugs. "I don't know. I guess it's easy to blame the brown person." Hardison raises his fist in solidarity. "Amen Sister!" He declares. Not to be outdone, Parker raises her fist too. "Yeah. Amen Sister!" Both Alex and Hardison glare at her and she lets her fist drop, not entirely sure what she did wrong.
When Alex is done with the few answers she has to give, Nate stands up. "Ok. Here's the plan. Sophie, you need to get in to talk to this Shaw woman. She's the only one on Alex' side. We need to know what she knows. Hardison, keep digging on the terrorist angle, backgrounds on everyone in the class. Eliot, go sniff around the bomb site, see what you can find."
Alex interrupts, "I want to go by my apartment. They said they found bomb making supplies there. I want to see for myself." Sophie opens her mouth to say something about Alex staying in hiding but she and Nate both know that it would be pointless. "Parker, go with her. Keep her out of trouble." Parker nods, happy about getting to go do thief stuff but not so much about babysitting.
They all stand and head off to make preparations for their individual tasks.
"Let's go steal a… umm…"
"Bomb?" Parker offers. "The FBI? A terrorist? Oooo, a fiddle!"
Eliot shakes his head at her. "Just go Parker!" he snaps. "And don't get her caught!"
"Right!" Nate tells them. "Meet back here at 3:00. We'll figure out where to go from there."
Everyone is back in the room by 2:30. They each share the information they have gathered. From Eliot, there were actually 7 individual bombs, all placed in the subway tunnels under Grand Central Station. All were detonated from within a 2 block radius. "Well coordinated" he tells them. "Definitely a pro job."
Sophie adds what she learned about the threat being called into the FBI, just minutes before the bombs were detonated. The caller specifically stated that one of the trainees in Alex class at Quantico was responsible.
Hardison adds that every single one of the trainees is dirty in some way, Alex included. "Hinky stuff man. Hinky stuff." He shakes his head. "Not a single one of these people should have been admitted to the training program."
Alex reluctantly agrees.
Parker and Alex have probably the best information. They brought back a block of C4 explosive. Military grade. Hardison lifts a fingerprint and runs it through the FBI database. Alex is impressed and a bit disturbed by the access he has to things that she thought were classified.
"Oh you'd be surprised what I can do" Hardison tells her.
It doesn't make her feel any better but she begins to realize that Sophie wasn't exaggerating about the talents of her team. Right now this small group of thieves is putting more than a couple of large law enforcement agencies to shame.
No one is surprised to learn that the finger print belongs to Alex. There would be no point in leaving the C4 brick behind unless it was to further implicate Alex. She is shocked to realize though that the cut on her finger she sustained during training was not visible in the fingerprint.
"They've been planning this for months" she tells them. "And planning to frame me all along."
Hardison agrees. "Whoever the mole is, they've been there since the beginning."
He shakes his head. He didn't have a lot of respect for the FBI to start and the fact that they fucked up this bad has him scared.
The best clue they have is a piece of wire that Alex and Parker found in the apartment next to hers. She shows it to the group.
"Let me see that" Eliot says as he snatches it out of her hand. His face pales.
"What? What is it?" Alex asks.
"It's military. Military contractor. Made only in the US. This thing is deep. Really really deep."
"How? How do you know?" Alex asks. "It's a very distinctive wire" Eliot tells her as Hardison rolls his eyes.
"Ok OK" Nate intervenes. "We've done all we can do today. Let's go get something to eat, and I could use a drink, and we can reconvene in the morning."
Everyone nods, a drink or two is sounding good to Sophie too.
"Hey Eliot" Hardison starts to tease, "I think you still owe me a steak dinner. Everyone up for some steak on El?" He asks.
Parker puts herself in while Eliot tells him to shut up.
Nate looks to Alex. "I think it would be a good idea if you stay here."
"In the hotel?" she asks, disappointed to be left out of the group. They were going to be talking about her after all.
Nate shakes his head. "In the room" he corrects her. "We don't need you going out and doing something stupid. Or worse, getting arrested."
Alex sits heavily back down on the sofa. "Order something from room service" Nate advises her, "or Sophie can bring something back for you."
Alex looks to Sophie for help. Sophie hesitates. Nate made himself pretty clear about what he wants her to do. It's really not a bad idea to avoid being alone with Alex considering the previous night, she thinks. On the other hand, she would feel guilty leaving Alex all on her own. That and she doesn't much trust the girl to stay put. And if she really admitted it to herself, she is kind of curious about what Alex might have planned. She sighs.
"I'm sorry Nate" she tells him. "I think I should probably stay here with Alex. Keep her company. Make sure she stays put."
Nate glares at her. "Whatever Sophie. Just don't forget who you are. And who she is."
He turns and leaves without giving her a chance to respond. Eliot and Hardison start to follow but Parker just stands staring, trying to figure out exactly what is going on between Nate, Sophie and Alex. Hardison has to come back and pull her out again. As the door closes, Sophie can hear Parker protesting and Hardison telling her that it is something she doesn't want to know about. Sophie smiles. Poor Parker. She'll have some explaining to do later.
Sophie looks back to Alex. "You don't trust me?" Alex asks.
Sophie laughs. "Should I?"
Alex shrugs. "And why did he say to remember who you are?"
Sophie sits next to her with a sigh. "It's just, well, I'm a thief. We all are. And you're not. You're a federal agent. You will be again soon anyway. We're on opposite sides. It could never work. Could we really be friends? With you knowing what I do for a living? Could I trust you? Could you trust me? I don't think so. Its better this way. Tomorrow you'll go back to your life and I'll go back to mine. We pretend we never met. And we hope never to run into each other professionally."
Alex shakes her head but Sophie doesn't let her talk.
"Do you know what I did today Alex? Do you really know?"
Alex shakes her head again.
"I went into the FBI today impersonating a Federal prosecutor. I conned my way in with counterfeit credentials and I talked to Miranda Shaw, a prisoner, someone no one is supposed to be talking to. I did that. Do you really think you could sit and watch that? That you could not say anything? What if I stole something? What if I became involved in an active case? You wouldn't allow that even if we were friends, which we're not. It's not who you are. And you can't change who you are any more than I can, no matter how much we might want to."
"And besides," Sophie continues, "we don't really have anything here anyway. Not a relationship for sure, not even a friendship. You were scared. I was, well I'm not exactly sure what I was doing…"
Alex smiles at that.
"It shouldn't have happened. It can't happen again. You understand that right?" Sophie continues.
Alex doesn't answer right away. She studies Sophie's face, trying to get a read on her, whether she means what she's saying or if she's just saying what she thinks she should. She cocks her head. "I'll tell you what, I'll tell you five things about yourself. If I'm right, I get to kiss you. If I'm wrong, we go our separate ways."
Sophie is intrigued, not only by Alex' boldness but by the fact that she thinks she can read her. Sophie is a professional. Her life depends on no one being able to figure out who she is. In reality she isn't even Sophie Devereaux. It's just another character she plays. No one knows who she really is, not even Nate. She likes it that way. She's amused to find out what Alex thinks she knows. The girl is good, she'll give her that. But nobody is as good as she thinks she is. She nods.
Alex squints hard at her.
"First, you're beautiful." She reaches out a finger and brushes it against Sophie's cheek. "But you know that. That's your game. Your dress is a little bit too short, you stand just a little bit too close. It disarms people. It makes them trust you."
"Second, you're a loner. You don't trust anyone. Not even your friends. Not really. You'll move on one day, when it suits you, when you don't need them anymore. I bet they don't even know your name? Which leads me to three... you're a liar. You lie about everything, to everyone. You probably don't even know what the truth is anymore. Which makes you, four, a very dangerous woman. You don't care, not really. Not about anything or anyone."
Sophie blinks. Alex got to her. She can't deny that. But Alex isn't done yet. She leans close to Sophie. Very quietly she says, "Five. You want to care. You very much want to. But you don't know how. That's why you're going to let me do this now. So you can feel something."
She gently touches her lips to Sophie's. Sophie sits perfectly still. "How?" she whispers. Alex looks deep into her eyes. "Because you and I, we're the same. I know you. I know you the way I know myself." Sophie nods slightly and closes her eyes. This time, when Alex kisses her, she kisses her back.