This is short, three-chapter story, written for The Secret Santa Exchange on LiveJournal. (for Radiolaires)
This is the prompt I had to work with:
a con happening outside of the USA. Possibly in a remote location (at sea, in a wireless village, in the forest, in a lighthouse), but it's not an obligation. Could be Berlin, could be Sydney, or you can go wild and lose them in Mougins or Ban Houzai. Sleeping and living arrangements are a constant source of worry to everyone. Hardison hates the food and Parker cannot shut up about the local specialties. Eliot and Sophie are suspiciously cozy with the local thugs. Of course everyone has to work with make-shift material and the language barrier.
a dark alternative to The Rashomon Job: in which everyone realises one of their past cons dangerously interfered with each other's life of the time. Backstories are unveiled, others kept secret. They exchange lies that fool nobody, mistep and endanger each other in the middle of a con. Being under each other's scrutiny takes its toll. Whether or not it all works out in the end is left to the promptee.
I wrote this as a part of Texas Mountain Laurel series, and it goes between The Chargoggblahblah Job, and The Arch-nemesis Job.
In short, this is right before their trip to Japan, and Arch-nemesis is after they've returned.
(I'll edit the list in my profile later)
After this one, I'm starting with Florence-Sterling-Eliot mess.
The Dark Rashomon Job – chapter 1
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All four of them were leaning with their elbows on the high working desk that faced the big screen on the wall. Only Parker's hand was moving – she had a golden chain in her fingers, and she swung a medal at the end of it, left and right, left and right.
They stared at the computerized projection of the Sixth Fleet maneuver, many orange dots clustered in the Pacific Ocean. Sophie couldn't help but think how ominous that silent advance was. Unstoppable.
"They're slow," Hardison said.
"They're ships," Eliot said. They didn't look at each other, their eyes riveted to the progress.
Sophie glanced at Parker, at her hypnotizing, slowly swinging medal, a replica of the medal that Emperor Akihito had to give to a military attaché in only one week.
Their preparation for the Japan job entered the second week, and with the each passing day, they faced more and more trouble. And now, the Sixth Fleet slowly moved to Japan, and Hardison couldn't yet find out why.
"We'll be there before they arrive," Sophie said lightly. "But I better call Nate and tell him to get in here."
"He is here." Hardison pointed a remote at the screen, and the blue ocean disappeared, replaced by the set of brewery cameras. "He said he would just…" Hardison stopped when one camera showed a table near the window, and Nate sitting with an unknown guy. "Okay, this is new."
"Show me the close pan." Eliot was already standing.
Hardison put that camera on the entire screen.
"This is a client," Sophie said. They all looked at her. Even Parker put the medal down on the desk.
"How could you know?" Hardison eyed the man.
"This is Nate's 'talking with a client' posture; reserved but showing interest, non-committal smile and tensed listening. No danger, at least none that I can see."
Eliot came closer to the screen, checking all details in the feed. "We're travelling to Japan in three days." He didn't turn around while saying that. "This can't be a new job; maybe he's just investigating for some future case."
"We'll see." Hardison clicked the remote again, putting Nate in the upper left corner of the blue background. The orange dots seemed to advance to his small recording, north-west bound. "Now get back in the chair, you have to sign all the papers for the diplomatic luggage. Why couldn't the Japanese use shorter swords? How am I supposed to pack your katana, as diplomatic what?"
"The Japanese do have shorter swords, Hardison! The fact you don't know it, doesn't mean they-"
"Yeah, yeah, I read ya. Sign that. And find a box for that thing yourself. I'm too busy with preparing my uniform."
"You mean, your embroidery?" Eliot's voice softened as he carefully pronounced the word; he sent a derisive smile at the hacker. "Your golden plaits and stripes you so carefully weaved, along with those little dangling… whatever they are. How many curtains have you robbed for those tassels?"
"Hey, I'll be a general, and I have to show all my medals, all my ranks, all the gold I can put on that thing – it's a part of protocol."
"And you're enjoying it."
"Are you jealous?"
"No, I'm worried. If they ask you something about the Navy, please don't answer with Army slang, or you'll kill us all."
"Yeah, sure, the Japanese are well-versed in our military terminology, they can tell difference between…"
Sophie sighed and tuned out their voices, returning her gaze at the ocean. Their job was about monkeys: one alive, a snow monkey, and one golden, a sapphire monkey – the latter a permanent cause for Eliot's unexplainable grins since they'd started planning. One of the generals on that diplomatic conference was their mark, he had both the monkeys…and one wandering fleet was something that didn't, exactly, fit in that picture.
They weren't ready yet. She opened a printout, one of the many that lay all over the table; this one was from Imperial Household Agency. It contained, as Hardison said, a few tips for protocol for Imperial dinners – all 436 pages full of instructions.
Parker was enjoying the blueprints Hardison also provided. The Imperial Palace was a place full of wonders for her, though Sophie suspected that the thief's attention was mostly directed at Sannomaru Shozokan, the Museum of Imperial Collections.
If she, even once more, read something with the word Imperial in it, she would start cursing.
Their bags were piled up in the corner of the big room. Eliot was the only one who was already packed. His bag had only a few black shirts and black trousers, nothing more. Hardison's two big cases, full of uniforms and accessories, stood by Eliot's bag. Sophie hadn't added her luggage yet; Japan was warm and sunny this time of year. A weather report promised warm breezes and humidity, just perfect for her hair, and she had trouble choosing light dresses for the occasion. Too many to choose, to be exact. If she put aside the fleet that slowly advanced on Japan, it could be a nice trip. Rain in Portland was driving her nuts, and the warm breeze sounded marvelous. If only-
"That looks like two safes," Parker said out of nowhere. The thief pointed at the brewery recording and Nate's table, now with two metal cases on it. One was open, giving them a glimpse of something glassy in it. The man was standing now, pointing at the things inside, and explaining in a hurried manner.
"Maybe I should go and check what's going on," Eliot said.
Hardison waved that suggestion off. "Maybe you should go and check the antennae boxes; I just remembered we have some in the back rooms. Not sure about the length, though. Can you unscrew your sword's handle?"
Sophie needed only one glance at Hardison to see that he knew very well that katanas weren't McDonald's toys, but Eliot was too shocked to think better. That outrageous insult left him speechless, though, long enough for her to snatch the remote from Hardison and beam Nate's recording on the big screen in full size. "This glass inside the crates looks like small bottles. Maybe he's just testing the stuff from our new liquor supplier? Or maybe not," she added when the man opened the other one, and they saw something dark and furry in it. Nate visibly flinched when he leaned closer to examine it.
"Maybe he got us a kitten," Hardison said with one sideways glance at Eliot. Eliot entwined his fingers, and his hands lay very still on the desk. Hardison caught the message and backed away.
Sophie rolled her eyes and returned to the recording. Nate was standing now, shaking hands with the man; only now when they both stood up, did she see his guest had a walking stick in his hand. His limp when he walked to the door was unmistakable. Nate wasn't far from limping, too; he carried two cases, one bag, and something more in his hands, and he left the camera range.
"Well, it's about time." Hardison put the ocean back on the screen. "While he was doing who knows what, the Sixth Fleet made another ten miles, and I still can't find out why. I do know I don't like it. General Jackson will be at that dinner too, but I doubt they are being sent just to provide a fireworks and confetti party in his honor."
A door bang stopped him, and Nate entered the room, pushing the door with the cases in front him. He held a long piece of wood under one arm, Sophie noticed when they all turned to him.
"So, what's that all about?" Hardison asked. "Who's that man?"
"You have to pack, we're leaving in two hours."
"We ain't leaving for three days-"
"What's in the cases, Nate?" Sophie quickly said.
Nate put one case on the floor. "This is laboratory equipment." He pushed it aside with his foot, and lowered the other one. "This, however, is a dead animal. I presume some sort of beaver."
"Ah," she said lightly, watching a grin on his face. "Fascinating."
"And this." Nate finally pulled out the piece of wood and showed it to them in all its details. "This is an axe."
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"No, no, no." Hardison's stern tone would've been taken much more seriously if he wasn't waving with his golden tassel. "Only three days before Japan, and we ain't ready. We can't take another job!"
Nate looked at the rest of the team: Sophie with her unreadable smile, Parker frowning, and Eliot occupied with the axe he'd put on the desk. Parker was actually frowning at Eliot, darting significant glances between the axe and George in the background. Nate checked; George didn't look upset with a fact that Eliot held the axe in his hands. The tree looked content and satisfied.
Trying to forget that he just felt emotional temperature of the tree, Nate threw a USB stick into the hacker's hands. "Plug it in." He turned to face the screen while grumbling Hardison plugged it into his laptop.
"This isn't a job," he said when images of woods and mountains flooded the screen. "This is a two-day long investigation. We have to find proof for my client, Professor Sam Dobson. There is a chemical that's endangering wildlife in the mountains near the Canadian border. He can't travel himself, and he doesn't trust anyone with that information. Our job is only to collect samples and test them for that particular chemical, then we're off to Japan. When we get back, we'll make a real plan and take down whoever we have to."
Eliot twirled the axe between his fingers. Nate winced, deciding not to glance at George. "Why now?" Eliot said. "Why can't it wait until we- hey!" The wood cracked, splitting near the head, and metal blade slammed at the desk, missing his other hand by an inch.
"That's why," Nate said. "There are five lumberjack camps in that area, and one of them is using that chemical to ease the cutting process. Professor Dobson said that shortens the time in the sawmill by seventeen seconds per one beam. For seventeen seconds – during the year it saves millions of dollars. Yet it's not exactly the chemical – it's some sort of enzyme that corrodes the organic matter on a molecular level. That axe simply sat in the treated sawdust for a few hours. Think of termites – that's how it works. The beams are treated with it before while they lay in huge basins – they still use water channels to transport them to lower ground where trucks take over. It spreads. And it has a very long life span, enough to reach thousands and thousands of miles, poisoning everything. Do you want to drink water with an enzyme that can do this to an axe?"
They all stared at the wood; Eliot felt the cut end, and it crumbled under his fingers, leaving the red rash on his fingers.
"Professor Dobson contacted the FBI, and they sent one investigator, off the record, not taking it seriously. Besides… it's in Canada. Every joint USA – Canada operation would take months. Professor Dobson was the one who made that enzyme and gave it to this man." Nate pointed at the picture of an old, squinting grey man on the screen. "Meet Lee Ryce-Forbes, the Supervisor of those camps, the main guy in control. He works for a big Canadian conglomerate and his division is at the top of the chain. The most successful, brings in the most money. He wants to keep that position, and Dobson's enzyme is the best way to spike the productivity."
"But still… seventeen seconds for one beam?" Hardison said.
"Think hundreds of thousands of seconds, Hardison. And he won't stop – once they're done with that range, they will move their camps onto another location. The spreading will continue. Professor Dobson used Ryce-Forbes's sawmills to test his enzyme, and he was promised the results wouldn't be published. They weren't. They were stolen and used. He never intended to release it to industry; he's a typical lab rat, purely academic."
Nate clicked the remote and the pictures changed: the wilderness remained the same, yet they showed sawmills, basins with thousands of beams floating, along with trailers and small houses for workers. "Parker and Eliot – you'll go as a couple. Ryce-Forbes is always short on workers. Get the trailer, work, hang out with the workers in the cantina, saloon, whatever they have, and bring me water and sawdust samples. Dobson said he thinks it's used in only one camp for now, so you'll maybe have to move through all five."
"And you'll just sit in the bushes around the camps, ready with your bottles?" Parker asked.
"No, I'll have a cover. Professor Dobson found out his enzyme was used when his friend Jim brought him a full box of dead beavers. He's a veterinarian and author of The Last Beaver Dam, a fascinating book about wildlife. Their dams are nearly ruined – the water that flows through them is corroding them, and it's a matter of time before the entire valley will get flooded. He'll give me his truck, and I'll pose as his partner, a veterinarian, visiting local farms in the valley. The laboratory equipment will be stored as his medical supplies, creating no suspicion."
"So, are we saving the beavers, their dams, the valley, woods, animals, people… what?" Sophie said.
"We are taking samples in small bottles. That's all for now. The saving part will come after Japan."
Nate changed the set of pictures one last time. The screen now showed a small trailer village, with gardens and chicken coops. "Sophie and Hardison – this is your target. There are three off-grid vegan communities on the slopes of that mountain; they go to the valley only to sell their products and avoid mingling with local farmers. In fact, they are on the brink of fighting most of the time. All three of them lay on the creeks coming down from the mountain, from the lumber camps. Test their water, soil, and ask questions. Maybe they know something more, something that Parker and Eliot can't find from our workers."
"Off -grid." Hardison almost choked. "You're sending me to… do you even know what that means? No power, no telephone, no internet, no microwave, no… you gotta be kidding me! Why can't I do Eliot's part in lumberjack-"
"Do you feel skilled enough to work with a chainsaw, Hardison?"
"Wrong question," Eliot said. "Can you even lift it?"
"But Parker is going with-"
"As my wife, or girlfriend, or something like that."
"No problem. I'll adapt. Parker can go with Sophie, eat raw potatoes, I'm more than willing to pose as your husband, wife, daughter, whatever."
Nate rubbed his forehead. "Look, we have two days. Bring sandwiches, for god's sake, if you think you'll starve to death."
"I'll stupid to death."
"I always knew your brain lives in your tech thingies and not in your head. You're just remotely accessing it from time to-"
"Okay, enough!" Nate stopped Eliot. "Go pack your things. We're leaving in two hours."
"What the hell am I supposed to wear?" Hardison still looked as if his entire life was flashing in front of his eyes. "Are they some sort of hippies? Do they bathe? And how? In a river? Or they are survivalists, those strange guys with underground bunkers full of cans and dried food, preparing for the zombie apocalypse?"
"I knew you'd find a chance to involve zombies in this," Eliot said.
"Hey, you have a chance to wear your plaid shirts, so shut up! I'll have to weave my own clothes, as it seems. Or bear skin. Or-wait! It's Canada! Mountain with camps, vegan farms and valley with beavers. There'll be wild animals roaming freely through the woods!"
Nate clicked the remote for the last time, and the screen went dead. "What part of 'go and pack your things' you did not understand?"
"The 'things' part," Hardison muttered, but he stood up. Parker followed him upstairs to their apartment, and Eliot wandered off to the kitchen.
Nate smiled at Sophie. "Only two days. Nothing can go wrong."
Her smile, in return, was pretty ironic.
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Their internet connection died when the mountain range started to rise before their eyes. Hardison packed his laptop and his tablet with a dignified sorrow reserved for the funerals of old friends.
Sophie was driving. Parker was occupied with information about the mountain, woodcutting process and everything useful Hardison managed to collect before. Nate went, for the second time, through all the steps written on a few papers. Dobson's explanation about the testing wasn't too academic. On the contrary, there were many red arrows pointing at the things and big letters stating: then you press this, and add this.
Eliot drove behind Lucille in his Challenger. All their earbuds could catch was loud music. Nate wasn't sure if the was hitter trying to mute their eventual nagging, or just trying to drive them out of their skins; both tactics seemed to work on Hardison.
The earbuds died when the mountain range hovered over them, when they stopped on the last ridge before entering the valley.
Mountain slopes clutched the valley like giant fingers around a bowl. The dark green completely surrounded lighter green, old forests competing with cultivated land.
"This is better than Google Maps, Hardison," Sophie said to the upset hacker when they all got out, and when Eliot joined them to look at the land under their feet. "Everything is in our palm, look. The lumber camps are hidden in the mountains, but you can see where they are by following the canals they use to transport beams down to the valley. And there, those three patches of color in the fields – that's our target, our communities. Everything within our reach."
Hardison slapped a mosquito on his other hand and said nothing.
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"Lumber camp number one," Parker said when Eliot stopped his Challenger in front of the long wooden barracks. Trailers, tents, more barracks, everything was huddled together in the small opening, surrounded by tall trees. The mountain above them blocked the sun, and trees added long shadows, making noon feel like twilight. Clear blue sky shined only directly above them.
She stepped out, waiting for Eliot to bring their bags, and almost lost her boot when her foot went through the five inches of mud mixed with sawdust. "Can we just put some of this dirt into our bottle and leave?" she quickly said.
"Nope." Eliot gave her a backpack. "We need water from the basins, and from the place where they gather logs, and a soil sample. Not to mention it would be useful if we find out if they have that chemical here. We can wait for the cover of darkness and sweep this place before we go to meet the others."
"Are you sure you'll find the meeting point?" she asked while trotting after him to the barracks. "Do you want me to check our phones again?" Their signal was gone when the slopes closed around them. They were cut off from the rest of the team.
"Yes, and no." Eliot lowered his bag onto the porch; loud music from the barracks gave a little life to this murky place. "What's troubling you, Parker?"
She struggled with the last yard of mud and grumbled. "This slows me down. I can't even walk, much less run. Or anything."
"Try to slide," he said and opened the door. Violins and banjos, chirping and screaming, burst out.
She pulled her foot from the trap closing around her ankle, put a grin on her face, and followed him in.
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Sophie straightened Hardison's jacket and the cheerful, flowery scarf he wrapped around his shoulders. They still didn't know what mixture of community they were heading to. His scarf was for hippies – though he was too young to ever see real hippies – his jacket was linen, hand-made, without artificial colors, and his trousers were camo, just in case they faced survivalists gathering pyramids of canned food.
"Before we were cut off from civilization, I found out that two of the three communities are part of WWOOF," Hardison said. "It stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and that means they are accepting volunteers. You can go to any part of the world, stay and work with them, and get food and a free place to stay. I managed to get us in, legally, so we don't have to think of aliases or a cover story."
Sophie watched Lucille as the van disappeared from her sight. Nate drove off, leaving the two of them on the road, by the tall hedge. Parker and Eliot were already on their way deeper into the mountain.
"Organic farms means they are simply hard working people, providing healthy food for their families," she said. "Nothing to be worried about, right?"
"I guess you're right." He sent her a smile. "We'll spend our time picking beans with small children. I can live with that. Go now, they are expecting us."
The wooden doors in the hedge were open; they stepped onto a small path, covered with white pebbles. Small flowers shone red and yellow alongside their path.
They took only five steps inside when they heard the unmistakable click of a shotgun loading.
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"Aren't you too short for a lumberjack?" asked a bald, bearded man.
Parker kept silent; Eliot was maybe the wrong person to be asked that, but Baldy who hovered over him with his six feet five was the right person to ask it. And so were all the others; a bunch of loud, laughing, very tall men, who whistled when she entered the cantina.
This one looked like he was in charge, so Eliot went directly to where he was leaning his elbows on the bar, flirting with the waitress with three more men.
Eliot did his confused blinking. Parker kept grinning, mirroring the waitress's smile.
"We do need someone who will make coffee, and bring it to the guys at break, along with lunch. Do you want to be our delivery boy?"
"I ain't in a position to choose," Eliot said. "I need a job. Ya think I can't work with a chainsaw?"
"Nah, darling, that's for the big guys." Baldy frowned looking down at him, and Parker wondered why Eliot wasn't lining them up in a pile already. He just stood there and smiled. Baldy sighed and left his beer on the desk. "Come with me. I'll give you a job, but I wasn't joking – we have coffee machines in the back rooms, and we do need organized delivery."
"Stay here, darlin'. No forks, please." Eliot said over his shoulder, when he went after Baldy.
Yeah, stay here. Parker put her hands in her pockets. And no forks. Those three men now openly measured her, grinning and winking, though neither one made any move towards her. If they just stayed where they were, this stupid situation could end peacefully for everybody.
And maybe this twist was even better – if Eliot really got a delivery job, they could circulate through all five camps without any suspicion. Only two days, she reminded herself.
"Don't just stay there, sweetheart, come and join us." A call came from one of the tables behind her, not from the three men by the bar. She turned around to check that group. Five of them, with two girls. Fake, curly blondes, with plaid shirts and cowboy boots. This looked like a commercial, and a cheap one. Music added to the atmosphere, and this set up was screaming bar fight so much that Parker seriously thought about leaving. Not that she was afraid of bar fights – but attracting so much attention to themselves on their first day, first minute of investigation, wasn't so clever.
"Anyone want a coffee?" Eliot asked behind her, and she sighed in relief.
Yet, when she saw him, she widened her eyes just as all the men by the bar did. Eliot held a tray in his hands, with five cups of coffee. Baldy was hanging around his shoulders, the same way one of those men would carry a dead deer.
"What?" he asked coming to the bar, with light, swift steps, as if carrying only the tray. "I thought all guys here skin the wildlife to make clothes for themselves. Is he too big for a scarf?"
A grunt came from somewhere, Parker couldn't tell its source. The music died out in the moment Eliot put the tray on the bar. The grunt repeated, louder this time – just then she saw it was Baldy.
Eliot lowered one shoulder and let him slide to the floor, and now all of them heard the grunt again. Baldy sat on the floor, shook his head – and burst into laughter. Parker squinted at that thundering sound, but all the men in the room relaxed.
"Maybe we should give the man a chainsaw, after all!" he said when he scrambled to his feet, and his hand, the size of a watermelon, slapped Eliot on the shoulder. "This calls for beer! Call me Baldy!" Cool. Her assigned nickname was his real one.
Eliot slapped him back, grabbed a bottle and winked at her. "Come 'ere, darlin', meet my new friends."
"Yay," Parker said through her gritted teeth. Two days of this shit suddenly sounded much longer.
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"Have you seen him?!"
Hardison slowly turned around. He was between Sophie and a woman with a shotgun, so he didn't need to take a step. "Seen whom?" he asked with his most pleasant voice.
"Wayne." The woman stepped out of her cover; her eyes under the bushy dark hair darted all around them in frantic jumps. "Close the gate. Don't be afraid, I'll cover you."
Okay, that scared the shit out of him; Hardison quickly closed the door, glancing all around, but nobody was in sight.
The woman smiled then, and put the shotgun over her shoulder. "Good. That'll keep him away. He rummaged our pumpkins last night. I'm Ann-Catrin. And you are…?"
"You're expecting us – we're volunteers," Hardison waved to Sophie to come closer. "This is-"
"Yes, I remember now. Follow me, I'll show you your place and introduce you to the others." She passed by them then, waving off Sophie's offered hand. They just glanced at each other. Sophie nudged Hardison to start walking. He didn't need that – that Wayne could simply open the door and enter – nobody locked it.
"Who's that Wayne you wanted to shoot?" He asked the woman's back. "Your enemy? Competitor? Lumberjack from the camps?"
"A black bear."
"What?" Hardison stopped mid-step. Sophie pulled him to continue.
"I suggest you don't leave the hedge – there's barbed wire inside – especially not at night."
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Nate had decided that the meeting point would be an abandoned lumber camp. Ryce-Forbes's men moved the machinery from there only a month ago, so nature didn't have enough time to claim it again or to destroy the roads. It was also at the perfect position, halfway between the valley and the mountain camps, but not likely to be visited by anybody.
Hardison and Sophie had only to climb up a little – a half an hour walk from their community, and Eliot and Parker had the same distance, only going downwards, from the woods.
Nate checked his watch; he had only twenty minutes to get there. He had spent the last three hours squelching in the knee deep water with his colleague and new partner, a veterinarian and wildlife enthusiast – "Call me Jim, pal" – examining one of four large basins for collecting timber. They entered it on the opposite side of where the loggers were parked, where it looked like a real, natural lake.
"Look, here's another one!" A yell from his left stopped him during the tenth time checking his phone. No service.
Jim trotted through the muddy water in his fisherman boots, raising yet another soaked, dead ball of fur. They already had a full bag, and evening was closing in.
Nate raised his eyes to the dark slopes above them. "Do you know which creek runs into this basin?" he asked Jim. "If we follow it, it can lead us directly to the camp that's using Dobson's enzyme."
The sturdy young man put the animal in the bag, and threw it aside. "No luck there. There are two. But there's also a huge net of small streams, forest springs, that connect them. In case you didn't notice, everything is soaked in water here. One of those small streams could bring poisoned water from the third camp, not those two creeks. By the time it gets here, everything is contaminated, so the only way is to find the source."
"Okay, I have to call it a day. I'll meet with my people – we'll spend the night up in the mountains, and continue tomorrow if they haven't already found something."
Jim opened the second bag. "I'll collect a few more while I can still see, then head home. Be careful."
"You too." With that, Nate went to the truck that Jim had given him – a big logo glaringly showed who was he and why he was driving around. It spared him a lot of explaining to locals; they were automatically open and willing to talk.
He followed the muddy forest path, made by numerous loggers, to the meeting point.
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The muddy road ended in a similar dump of soil; it simply dissolved in the middle of a large opening in the wood, a land ploughed and devastated with heavy machinery. Nate parked the truck by the first line of trees, and opened the hood. If someone stumbled upon the car, he would think the new veterinarian went to get some help for the broken engine. He picked up his metal case with the portable lab, and hoped it wouldn't start to rain, on top of all this moisture all around.
He found Parker and Eliot in the remnants of the barracks, deserted and left to rot in this dampness.
"No luck with your phones?" he asked the gloomy darkness that awaited him. "Still no signal?"
"I caught a few minutes while we walked down here," Parker said. She pulled a small flashlight from somewhere, and placed it onto one large log that lay in the middle of the room. It gave Nate enough light to see them. Eliot was sitting on a bunch of smaller logs, and he looked like he was half sleeping, with his arms crossed, and beanie pulled low.
Nate unpacked his case, arranging bottles and everything needed on the log.
Parker came closer; she handed him three small bottles. "These are from the creek near the first camp, soil around the cantina, and from one small stream that flowed at the other side of the camp." She watched him taking samples, and adding a few drops of three different fluids in every one of them. "What will happen if they are contaminated?"
Nate put the samples into a small machine, and pressed the button that was marked with a red arrow in his instructions. "We'll see in… ten seconds. Hardison would probably know what this thing is, and what it does to analyze the samples, but for now we can only… and here we go…" He brought the flashlight closer when the readings on the display blinked green numbers. "Nope, nothing. These are clean."
"Damn." A muttered curse came from Eliot's log, nothing more.
"I hoped we could end this tonight," Parker said. Nate glanced at them both; Eliot was grim, and Parker sighed.
"What's wrong with you two?"
"I'm bored, and he is drunk."
"I'm not drunk, Parker. I'm just… soaked in beer. Those guys drink it instead of water, and they were testing to see how long could I follow."
Nate risked a serious growl in his direction, and pointed the flashlight directly at Eliot. The hitter darted him one nasty glare, but he didn't look or sound drunk. More tired and pissed off. Nate had seen him drunk and with a bad hangover only once, when he'd had to get rid of a professor in a college case, with that frat kid, Travis Zilgram. Tequila shots mixed with cheap whiskey had turned Eliot into a greenish, swaying bundle of headache and nausea; they were lucky Sophie took over and dealt with that hangover with her Middle East tricks. And that reminded him…. "Hardison and Sophie are late?"
"Hardison called when I had a signal, but he just whispered something about not being able to speak because of some Wayne, and the line went dead. But they were on their way."
"Maybe I should go to meet 'em," Eliot said, but didn't move from his comfortable position. "Night, woods, Hardison, walking – only two of those are enough to get 'em in trouble."
"They only have to follow the road," Nate said. "We'll wait. Have you tried to find a storage place for the chemicals?"
"It's not in this camp." Parker shook her head. "Tomorrow morning we'll go with Baldy to camp number two – he's Eliot's new friend – and Eliot will deliver food and more things. That way he won't have to hang from the trees again."
Oh, it looked like there was more to the story – maybe Eliot's bad mood wasn't only from the headache. "Something I should know?"
"They cut the high branches with machinery," Eliot said. "Except when they have new workers who need to be tested. So I had to climb the trees and do it manually."
"And we all know how expertly he avoided coming near my harnesses all these years." Parker chuckled. "Somebody doesn't like ropes."
"Ropes can snap."
"No, ropes can be cut, they don't snap. There's a difference. Ever tried to cut a rope?"
"As a matter of fact, I did."
"Yeah, sure," Parker said. "Of course you did. How?"
"London, eight years ago, Museum of Natural History, first floor, The Vault, elevator shaft. I cut the rope hanging among the cables. With a knife."
Parker said nothing.
Nate closed the bottles and prepared a few new ones for Hardison's and Sophie's arrival. "I think I remember something happened in London, connected with The Vault… somebody died in an attempted robbery? You were involved in that?"
"Yeah, I was," Eliot's voice grew darker and more quiet. "I went with an inexperienced retrieval specialist; our employer wanted him to learn. He almost killed us both. But in the end, only he ended up dead."
"You were after the Devonshire Emerald?" Parker's voice was only a whisper, and Nate quickly looked at her. The thief's face was turned away from the light, he could see only the line of her jaw.
"Yes. Last week before they sent it on the tour across Europe to USA."
"That other guy was shot, and crushed in the elevator shaft, if I recall correctly," Nate said, and then added carefully, "He was young."
The darkness from Eliot's corner grew stronger. "I don't want to talk about it, Nate."
Of course he wouldn't; knowing Eliot's over-protectiveness, losing someone on the job was very likely a still-burning pain. Especially knowing that his sense of responsibility for various fuck-ups was not healthy. That sort of shit burned people out.
Nate took two steps on the wooden, slightly saggy floor; it gave out a sucking sound. The only place to sit, besides Eliot's pile of logs, was a bunch of broken chairs and tables in the corner. He found one chair with three legs, and brought it closer to the log in the middle. Sitting on that thing would be a practice in balance, but he didn't want to stand the whole time.
The silence after his steps was as deep as only silence in nature could be – no background sounds. Only one, lonely cricket chirped occasionally from somewhere in the barracks.
Parker was still standing by the log. Her voice, when she broke the silence, was quiet and restrained, almost whisper. "They said there was a curse on the Purple Sapphire." Something unidentified in her voice raised the hairs on Nate's arms. "Now I know they were right."
Nate glanced at Eliot; the hitter raised his head, watching her, clearly feeling the same unease Nate had felt. Both of them waited.
"I lay there, in that ventilation shaft for days, with both legs broken, listening only to the wind whistling through the metal coffin." Her whisper was soft, and her every word sat a leaden weight in Nate's stomach. "I could move only my arms, so I dug, and pressed, and pulled, for hours, loosening the screws, trying to make a hole. It took me three days to crawl my way out to the backyard. I was half-dead. The people who found me thought I had been mugged. They saved my life." She stopped talking; Nate could hear her breath. One muscle in her jaw danced as she breathed through her nose, still hiding her face in shadows. He didn't want to see her eyes now.
"The Devonshire Emerald and The Purple Sapphire were scheduled on the same tour; they lay side by side in The Vault," she said finally, and only then slowly turned her face to Eliot. It was empty, frozen in a blank mask. "Before I fell, I activated the alarm, to get those sons of bitches who messed up my heist. And I listened to the gunshots, and screams, and the elevator going down. Because… it was my rope you cut that day, Eliot."
.