A/N: This is a fic centered around two original characters, one of whom, Avery, was introduced in my fic "Outsmarted." I don't think it's absolutely necessary to read that one to understand this one, but I might recommend it. Either way, enjoy the fic! This is the first of what will be five chapters.

Disclaimer: I do not own Leverage, I'm just borrowing the characters.

Olivia sipped the cup of coffee Avery had made her. Sitting in Avery's kitchen, the cousins looked the absolute opposite of each other. Olivia was taller than Avery, and blonde, with glasses and a square face that still hadn't completely lost its baby fat. She currently was calm and collected, sitting peacefully at the kitchen table while her cousin paced back and forth. Petite and brunette, Avery's thin face was contorted with fury. "Nobody gets to screw you over like that!" she finally snapped. She pulled out her cell phone, punching a number in.

Olivia covered her face. "Avery, please. I'm perfectly capable of finding myself a different internship. Retaliation isn't necessary."

"It is necessary!" Avery said. "They took your parents' money! They took your money! I should've seen this coming and I'm sorry and I'm going to fix it!"

Olivia looked up at her incredulously. "How could you possibly have seen this coming?"

"Olivia, I con people and steal things for a living! It's a matter of pride." She rolled her eyes and put the phone to her ear.

Olivia slouched in her chair. "Who are you calling?"

"Shh!" Avery put a finger to her lips, listening to the phone ring.

Finally someone picked up. "Hello?" said a smooth, accented voice.

"Hi, may I speak to Sophie Devereaux?" Avery asked.

There was a pause. "This is Sophie," the woman said. "To whom am I speaking?"

"Sophie, this is Avery Carpenter. We worked a job together a few years ago."

"Avery!" Sophie sounded surprised. "Of course. Yes, I remember you. Why are you calling? Word is you're doing pretty well for yourself."

"Yeah, well, word is you're still in the game but playing by some different rules nowadays. You take down companies that screw people over, right?"

"Yes," Sophie said. "Pretty brief summary, but essentially that's what we do."

"Good!" Fury was still coursing through Avery's body. She couldn't let anyone get away with doing this to her family. "I've got a job for you."

xxx

Avery and Olivia met with Sophie in McRory's Tavern, where she introduced them to Nate Ford. They sat down across Sophie and Nate, and Nate spread his hands. "What kind of help are you looking for?"

Olivia looked down at her hands and picked nervously at her cuticles. Avery nudged her leg with her foot. "Tell."

"I applied for this internship," Olivia blurted out. "At this home security company. They design and then install home security systems and, um, I applied for the internship and it was going very well. They were going to hire me. They said I was one of the most exceptional applicants they'd had, and I would potentially have a very good future at their company if I performed as well as my resume showed I would. They were going to set me up with an office of my own, but I needed to make a payment to help pay for the computer and other equipment, but it was a paid internship. I would have earned all my money back. So I paid the money. My parents and I paid them. It was three hundred dollars for me and my parents paid the rest. I don't know how much it was, but it was quite an extensive sum. Um. And then – then they told me they couldn't hire me. They said some of the things on my resume didn't check out right, that my background check wasn't good enough. All kinds of insane things. So I didn't get the internship, but they didn't give my money back." Olivia bit her lip and looked over at Avery.

Avery drummed her fingernails on the table. "What I wanna know is what they needed the money for. Olivia did some little thing on the internet, asked around on a forum or something to see if she was the only intern who got screwed over like that, and she's not."

"You didn't think it odd that the company that wanted to employ you wanted to take your money?" Nate asked, raising his eyebrows.

"It was a really good opportunity," Olivia murmured, looking down. "And it's expensive equipment."

"No one's blaming you, Olivia," Sophie said gently. "What we're trying to figure out is what we can do about it."

"I want Olivia and her parents to get their money back," Avery said.

"And I don't want that company to con any more prospective interns out of their money and their opportunities," Olivia added. She pushed her glasses carefully up the bridge of her nose.

Nate started to speak, then Avery heard the front door of the tavern open and close. She glanced over her shoulder – and was shocked to see Eliot walking in, arguing heatedly with another, younger man. Eliot, from that time at the Mueller Museum. The guy she stole the tiara from. Her lips curled into a slight smile.

"Eliot. Hardison." Nate waved to get their attention. "Cut it out. We've got clients."

Eliot stopped short when he saw Avery's face. She smirked and gave him a little wave. Eliot furrowed his eyebrows. "What the hell are you doing here?"

The other man, Hardison, rolled his eyes. "Look, Eliot, I know you're in a bad mood – "

"I'm not in a bad mood, man."

"Yes, you are – Eliot, I know when you are – but that is no reason to take it out on the clients!" Hardison smacked Eliot on the back. "That's cold, man. Real cold."

Sophie looked back and forth between Eliot and Avery. "Wait – you two have met?"

"You know him?" Olivia asked, looking at Avery with wide eyes.

Comprehension dawned on Hardison's face. "Ohh – you guys know each other!"

"Yeah, we've met," Eliot said shortly.

Sophie beamed. "Well, that's nice! I guess we aren't all strangers here after all!"

"Yup!" Avery beamed back. "I stole a tiara from him."

There was a brief silence, then Hardison burst into a fit of giggles. Eliot glared at him. "I'm sorry, man," Hardison choked. "But a tiara? You had a tiara?"

Eliot looked furious. "It was for a client!" he snapped. He shifted his glare to Avery. "And thanks to you, that client tried to kill me. Lucky for me he decided I wasn't important enough after I took down the first two guys!" Still scowling, he grabbed a chair and sat down next to Sophie. "What're you doing here?"

Avery smiled. "You're alive. That's all that's important, right? Here's a secret: people have tried to kill me, too." She tapped her fingernails on the table and ignored Olivia's shocked expression. "Anyway, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted, Olivia and I need your help to take down Hemsworth Security."

"Hemsworth?" Hardison pulled up a chair, too. "That's one of the biggest names in the security business. You really wanna go after him?"

"You know about Hemsworth?" Olivia asked with interest.

"Girl, give me a break," Hardison said. "Those security systems are some of the hardest I've ever had to hack."

"Ooh, I know!" Olivia nodded emphatically. "But I appreciate the challenge. There's nothing quite like it once you're finally in. It's exhilarating!"

"You hack stuff for fun?" Eliot asked, looking at her incredulously.

Olivia tightened her lips. "Yep."

Eliot shook his head. "You and Hardison will get along."

"Wait a minute," Nate said, holding up his hands. "We need to figure out if we're doing this job – "

"What's to figure out, Nate?" Sophie asked. "She got her money stolen, we can get it back for her!"

"But if these are the most advanced security systems there are – " Nate started.

"You need someone who knows the company and all its weaknesses," Avery cut in. "Who also happens to be a computer genius." She tilted her head towards Olivia. "That's her."

Olivia lowered her head modestly. "I did graduate at the top of my class at Princeton. Next fall I'll be starting my master's degree at M.I.T."

"If Olivia and I help you, we can take them down, easily," Avery said. "We just need your help to figure out how to do it."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on." Nate rubbed his forehead. "We've already got a team of five. We've got a grifter and a hacker and they're both really good at what they do."

"Thank you, Nate," Hardison said.

"With all due respect," Olivia said, nodding her head to Hardison, "I'm sure you're perfectly adept at what you do, but the advantage of having me on your team is that I know the company. I know some of the employees because of the interview process for the alleged internship, and I know how the building is set up and how their security works."

Nate and Sophie exchanged a look. "It couldn't hurt to have her," Sophie said.

Hardison let out a squeak of dismay. "What? Sophie! Don't you trust me? I can hack the security system! I can hack that all day! I'll show you! I'll do it!"

"Hey," Olivia said. "If we work together I'm sure there's a lot we can learn from each other. I don't pretend to know everything."

Hardison crossed his arms and slumped back in his seat. "All right. All right, I see how it is. Fine. Fine. Y'all do what you want."

"I want in, too," Avery said.

Sophie looked at her. "There's not a lot of room for two grifters on one job, Avery. You know that."

"Yeah, I know. But we'll have to make it work." Avery leaned across the table. "This case is personal for me because it's my cousin, aunt, and uncle who lost money over this. I can't do it myself because I've never tried to take down a company before. I need someone to help Olivia and me do it, but I need to be in."

"Why?" Eliot asked.

Avery turned her head his way and smiled. "Because I'm a thief and I know how thieves are. Put simply, I just don't trust you." She glanced back at Sophie. "I'm sorry, I know we've worked together before – "

"Don't be sorry. It's understandable," Sophie said. "If you're more comfortable being part of the job, we can make that work. Of course."

Avery smiled at her. "Thank you."

Nate exchanged a look with Sophie, then heaved a sigh. "Looks like we've got work to do." He got to his feet. "Olivia, do you have any information on the company already? Things you might have left over from your interviews there?"

"Yes," said Olivia. "I still have the papers they gave me, but it's not very much. Oh, I also saved all my emails! I corresponded quite a bit with the internship director. Well…the alleged internship director."

"Good," Nate said. "Listen, we'll meet back here with the entire team – let's say tomorrow. And someone needs to call Parker and tell her to stop doing – uh, whatever Parker does in her free time, and make sure she knows we've got a job."

"Thank you!" Avery said, smiling. She got to her feet and shook Nate's hand. "Thank you so much. We appreciate it."

Nate waved it off. "Just be ready to do the job."

"Oh, I was born ready," Avery said. She thanked Sophie, then grabbed Olivia by the wrist. She grinned at Eliot as she passed him. "See you in a couple of hours!" she called over her shoulder as she and Olivia left the bar.

xxx

"Couldn't hurt to have her," Hardison muttered as he typed away furiously. "No little girl's gonna come in here and take my job, uh-uh."

"Hardison, stop complaining," Sophie said as she walked past him.

"Wait, who's taking Hardison's job and why?" Parker threw herself onto Nate's couch next to Eliot, who rolled his eyes and inched away from her.

"We've been over this, Parker, my friend Avery and her cousin Olivia are working this next job with us. It's personal for them."

"Eliot's friends with them too!" Hardison said without looking up from his computer.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Yes, we'll all have to hear that story later. Look, they'll be here any minute so I'm going to wait downstairs with Nate. Hardison, make sure you're ready." Sophie turned and disappeared down the stairs.

Parker looked at Eliot. "How do you know them?"

Eliot sighed. "I only know Avery, and not very well."

"Uh-huh. Right. Man, I saw the way she was looking at you." Hardison looked up and nodded. "They got history, Parker, trust me."

Parker switched her gaze to Hardison. "History? Is that bad?"

Hardison shrugged. "I dunno. Eliot? Anything you want to share with the class?" He rested his chin in his hand and blinked at Eliot innocently.

Before Eliot got the chance to answer, Sophie reappeared with Nate, Avery, and Olivia in tow. Avery made a beeline for the table and then rummaged in her bag for a thin manila folder, which she slammed onto the table in front of Hardison.

"Okay," she said briskly. "Olivia and I got together all the information we could from what she had left over from her Hemsworth interviews. It's not very much, but I'm sure Olivia can pull some more info once she gets a chance to hack into the system." Hardison grunted in indignation and Avery bestowed a thin smile upon him. "Sorry, but I don't know you or what you can do, and I know Olivia can do it."

"Yeah, well, I can do it too," Hardison said sullenly. "Probably better."

"I don't know about better," Avery shot back.

"Avery, leave it," Olivia said with a groan. She sat down at the table as Eliot and the others gathered around it as well.

Nate put his hand on Avery's arm. "Why don't you let me get started? Have a seat. Hardison and I will walk you through what we're going to do." He walked to the front of the room. "Everybody, sit down. Hardison?"

"Shouldn't Olivia and I tell you what we know before – "

"We'll get to you," Nate said. "Right now, I just want to go over the basics of the company for people who don't know."

"But if we're the ones who've actually dealt with the company, shouldn't we – "

"Look, if you want in on the con, you're gonna have to let me do things my way," Nate said testily. "Sit down, please, and let Hardison start."

With a huff, Avery sat down in the chair next to Eliot. Eliot leaned over to her. "Just let him do his thing," he muttered. "Be patient. It'll pay off."

Avery looked over at him as Hardison started explaining what Hemsworth Security was. "This is a really personal job for me, and I just want to be sure it's going to go the way it needs to, which means we need to have as much information as possible – "

"We've got it," Eliot said. "Trust me." He gave her a small smile.

"I don't have much of a choice," Avery said, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, you called us, sweetheart," Eliot said. "No one's making you – "

"Eliot, really?" Sophie cut in sharply. She looked exasperated.

"What?" Eliot snapped.

"I'm trying to listen to Hardison, and you're talking," Sophie said, a slightly wounded note in her voice.

"Thank you, Sophie," Hardison said before glaring at Eliot. "It's disrespectful, man!"

"I didn't – " Eliot started to protest, then decided it wasn't worth it. "Fine. Continue."

Hardison snorted indignantly then pressed a button on the remote control. A picture of an older, heavyset man filled the screen. "So, Richard Hemsworth. CEO of the company. He's in charge of everything. If there's anything going on at the company, it has to get approved by him first."

"So if they're trying to con the interns out of their money, it all comes back to him," Sophie said, glancing at Olivia, who sat to Sophie's left. "Does that add up with what you went through?"

Olivia bit her lip and thought for a moment before answering. "Yes, I suppose," she finally said. "I worked mostly with their head of internships, but clearly it all comes back to him."

"Great." Nate stood up. "So here's what we need to do."