The team wasn't panicking. They never scrambled for answers, frantically searched his past haunts, or told anyone that he was missing.
The first day that Eliot failed to show up for the con's brief, Nate had a hunch.
It turned out he was right.
The briefing turned into a summary of what they knew and didn't know yet. Eliot was gone. His phone went unanswered, his place was empty, his safehouses were untouched, and his car, truck, wallet, phone, and earbud were all safely tucked away where they belonged.
The trail was so clean that he couldn't have made it and erased it himself.
He was taken.
There was no trace online. Hardison scoured the internet while the others discretely reached out to their top contacts. No one could come up with anything. There wasn't even a chance that one of the bounties on his head had been collected because a country seeking a fugitive couldn't do so without leaving a mark, no matter who the leader could think to hire.
This was a professional.
They eventually resigned to continuing to work, but they had to cherry-pick jobs that didn't require a hitter. They didn't want another hitter; they wanted emtheir/em hitter.
One day, nearly a year later, Hardison's laptop dinged. He looked up from playing a game on the TV. Going to the device, he opened the new email that had made it past all of his filters. It had marked itself as important, with a little red exclamation mark by the title.
"Rude," Hardison intoned. He hated when other hackers contacted him so passively aggressively. They changed his email settings to mark their email as important. That was just impolite.
His stomach plummeted when he opened it.
"Spencer has been a lovely guest. He's learned well to obey his masters. Care to see?"
Below the message was a link. Hardison clicked on it, too mesmerized by the wild turn of events to think to alert the team.
The instant he clicked it, his laptop began to download a series of mp4 files. Videos. It looked like there were dozens, and they only stopped when his computer had no more space left.
He opened the first one and blanched. On his screen, in fullscreen hi-def, he saw Eliot. His friend, teammate that had been missing for so long.
Naked, bound tightly to a table shaped like a T: his torso was strapped down along the tall part and his legs were forced into a split along the edge perpendicular. His body looked strained and had a sheen of sweat. He was trembling slightly. A man came onscreen, naked as well, and he moved to stand behind Eliot. Without warning, holding his erection, he moved forward and forced himself into the bound hitter, grabbing two leather straps to pull on for leverage. He pushed all the way in on the first thrust.
A raw, agonized, terror-filled scream was ripped from Eliot's throat. Hardison held a hand over his mouth, watching in paralyzing horror. He saw that man continue, only to be replaced with another as he moved around to stand in front of Eliot. He grabbed the hitter's jaw and forced him to look up before telling his to open wide or be whipped again. Eliot hesitated a second before complying. The man grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and proceeded to fuck his throat. The other man fucked him from behind, and now Eliot was sweating and crying out, however garbled. He sounded more disgusted and in pain than angry. The man in front shoved his head down onto his dick, holding it there as the bound man was still fucked harshly. Eliot could hold his breath and refrain from gagging on the cock held in place down his throat, but after a half of a minute, he was grunting more than before and trying to pull his head up. The man's grip held him down. Now he grew frantic and tried to struggle, but he was held securely. Now the man behind him was replaced by another, who shoved his fist inside him, and Eliot couldn't hold in his smothered scream. The man in front thrusted in his throat a few more times, feeling the man he was violating practically vibrate in agony and fatigue, before he pulled out. Eliot spluttered, choked, and gasped desperately, sucking in air desperately. The man behind him growled, "Push back, slut! Push your ass back on me, there you go - fuck yourself like the whore y-"
Hardison hit the spacebar to pause the video. He frantically typed a sequence to wipe his hard drive and all files, to erase the videos, but they wouldn't budge. He finally resorted to holding the power button to shut the whole thing down. He was breathless and wiped away a few tears.
That was Eliot. Eliot Spencer. Growly, threatening, terrifying. He was a fighter, an expert in retrieval and escape.
How could he be there? He'd been captured and held prisoner all this time. Tortured and... and...
Raped.
That video had been old, too. It must have been soon after his capture, because he looked the same as he had before he'd been taken.
Except for the whip marks.
Shit, this was not real.
He had to call Nate.