I haven't given up on the Leverage/Human Target fic (I swear!), but this one bit me too, so...

S4/5-ish Leverage with mid S4-ish PoI ..ish (Honestly, it would probably be best if you don't look too hard at either. Fun train! Fun train!)

"Question for you, Harold." Sam ran an eye over the huge collection of photos stuck to the board; apparently Finch had made an early start. There were a lot of different names, but always the same handful of faces. "How do fifty numbers make five people?"

"When someone remarkably adept at building cover identities is involved. There are a great many more," Finch added, as he crossed to stand beside her. "The Machine found four-hundred and eighty numbers, these are just the ones that have been active in New York - minus a few with significantly easier to remember names. If you're an aficionado of British science fiction programming."

"And do we have the real names?"

"We do." Finch pointed to the largest cluster of photos. "Nathan Ford."

The largest group of photos, ranging from company mugshots to prison mugshots to CCTV captures, with roughly a ten year spread. Something pretty bad had happened around year four, Sam guessed, because Ford had gone from buttoned up corporate suit to skid row bum practically overnight. A year or so beyond that, he'd settled around 'that uncle nobody talks about' and stayed there. The latest photos showed a middle-aged man, with lightly curling, salt-and-pepper hair and a faint frown that seemed to be a permanent feature.

"Ford was an extremely capable investigator with IYS Insurance. He resigned after his son died from a highly aggressive cancer, treatment for which the company refused to pay for. Two years later, he resurfaced as the head of this … team, I suppose, of assorted criminals. One of the first things they did was ruin Ian Blackpoole, the CEO."

"They aren't a team," Sam said firmly, after reevaluating Ford's expression. Now she understood the context, it was clear that he wasn't frowning. He was thinking. Planning. "They're a crew," she clarified. "Old school. How many little old ladies have they cheated out of their life savings?"

"As far as I've been able to find, none whatsoever. In fact, quite the opposite. While we endeavor to help people before a crime is committed, they aid those the usual channels of justice have subsequently failed.

"Lara Bennett," he went on, nodding to the pictures of a dark haired woman in her forties.

Or possibly mid-thirties. Late twenties. Fifties? Sam rolled her eyes. "Grifter? With a hell of a collection of hats."

"Ms Bennett is a South African expat, though she spent a great deal of time in the United Kingdom. She has the largest collection of identities, many pre-dating her association with the rest of these individuals."

"Crew," Sam corrected, and pointed at the widely grinning face of the next in line. "Who's this guy?"

"Alec Hardison, who graduated community college at fourteen with an unweighted 4.1 GPA. While he's more than intelligent enough to have earned it, the program the college uses simply doesn't work that way, so…"

"He's the hacker." There hadn't been much point in studying the photos of Bennett, they didn't contain anything she didn't want a mark to see, but Hardison's unguarded expression was an open book with a big font and double-wide spacing. Under someone a little too naive, and a little too kind, was someone a lot confident. "He Caleb Phipps good, Root good, or you good?"

"From the evidence, certainly on par with Caleb. Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure how one would judge Mr Hardison gaining complete control over an entire country's communications against Ms Groves' ability to infiltrate and corrupt networks I spent years building."

"Maybe they can have a hack-off."

"Yes, a wonderful idea I'm sure would end well." Harold moved briskly on. "The second woman is Patricia Arker, more commonly known as Parker. I have doubts that this identity isn't yet another cover, albeit the earliest one I've found and probably the closest to the real history.

"She was in and out of foster care until she was ten, at which point she was in and out of juvenile detention, until finally being taken until the wing of one Archibald Leach."

Sam blinked and turned from her study of the least expressive of the five. "That Archie Leach?"

"The same. She enjoyed an extremely successful career specialising in thefts to order, though there are some jobs attributed to her that I haven't been able to backtrace to a client."

Not expressive, but not expressionless, Sam decided. There was a glint in Parker's eyes that appeared in photo after photo; it was … familiar. "Probably did some for the hell of it," she said.

"Robbing the Louvre … because it was there?" Finch tested, staring owlishly at her from behind the lenses of his glasses.

"She's that good, why not have a little fun now and then?"

"And last but not least, Eliot Spencer," Finch said, after a delicately horrified pause.

"He joined the military after high school and apparently showed enough propensity that he entered the special forces in remarkably short order. The circumstances of his departure are heavily redacted - much like yours and Mr Reese's."

"I'm still a Marine. Reese is still a Ranger. Spencer's probably still … whatever he was." Ranger, she'd put down money and not consider it gambling. "We're all still marching on paper, it's the easiest way to get lost in the shuffle."

"He was seconded to a number of agencies, but eventually transitioned to working in the private sector. After a period of employment as an enforcer, he became an at least semi-legitimate retrieval specialist. It appears he was attempting to go straight, but then, of course, he joined Ford's crew ."

"He looks familiar," Sam muttered, but he didn't. Not exactly. At least, no more than Parker did: she recognised these eyes too. They were closer to Reese's than her own: trained, deadly, and always so damn sorry about it.

She turned back again, more than ready to get this moving. "So now the bonus question: why am I the only one here?"

"The Machine has cross-matched several dates where Mr Reese and Mr Spencer were in the same location and possibly involved in the same operation. Until we can determine why Ford is here, I'd rather not risk our surveillance descending into mass violence in the streets. Again."

"Hey," Sam raised a finger. "That was not our fault. And they didn't need to close the tunnel for more than, what? An hour?"

"Nonetheless - "

"Yeah, yeah. I got it."

"Take Detective Fusco," Finch suggested.

"Please, I can do better than that." Sam whistled once and Bear padded after her.

-o-

"The woman with the Belgian Malinois on my two," Eliot said. "She's watching us."

"Malinois is Belgian?" Across the table, Parker frowned. "Wait, who's Malinois?" She mumbled around a half-chewed bite of burger. "I thought we were here for-"

"Not 'the Belgian, Malinois .' The Belgian ... it's a dog, okay?" Eliot shook his head. "The woman with the dog is watching us."

"Or maybe she's just watching me. Maybe she wants my pretzels," Hardison suggested pointedly, adjusting his sexy new shades and rolling his sexy new shoulders. Fine, same shoulders, newly sexy. No, always sexy. Hella sexy. "Never think of that, huh?"

"Oh for - not again." Eliot straightened in exasperation, their watcher momentarily discounted. "Look, man. I wasn't saying you're not-"

Nate pinched the bridge of his nose and wished he'd ordered a double. He couldn't see the woman, but as Eliot, Parker and Hardison had been sniping at each other non-stop for a week while their client's case sat dead in the water, he welcomed anything new she was bringing to the table. Up to and including a damn Belgian Malinois. "Eliot, you sure?"

"Yeah," Eliot nodded, settling back. "CIA maybe." Right-handed, but holding her coffee cup with her left. Chair turned to put her back to the wall, with the best view of not only the cluster of tables they were seated in the middle of, but also of the side street. And not once had she checked her cell phone or touched her hair. "She sits very distinctively," he said.

"Okay, when Sophie gets back we'll do the Dusseldorf Exit. Parker, you're the bait. Eliot, go fish."

"She's trying to clone our cells," Hardison said, and tapped a few buttons on his phone. "And whatever she's using, it is smooth. I can return the favor, but not without her getting in."

"Wipe the most sensitive data, then do it," Nate said after a moment of deliberation. Know thy stalker. "Let's see who's come out to play."