Chapter 2

"Why go after Parker tonight? I don't understand what this all about." Sophie said as she panicked staring at the pictures on the screens in front of her. She was upset with the way Parker looked. It was clear she was badly injured.

"Because she was the only one who was vulnerable enough for them to get to her." Nate said softly. "Think about it, you were with me in a public place, Eliot can take them and he was in a public place and Hardison well who knows what he was up to. But Parker was alone on top of a building attempting to go down in her harness, completely vulnerable."

"Poor Parker this is horrible." Sophie said.

Hardison kept looking at the screens in front of him, trying to keep his mind on what he was doing in tracking down the men responsible for hurting Parker. He was struggling with the fact that he could have offered to go with her. He could have been there to help her and maybe she wouldn't have been hurt like this. He looked up when Eliot entered the room and he already knew these men were dead. Eliot didn't like killing, he tried his hardest to make sure they were only hurt but everyone knew that he cared about Parker which made these guys dead men.

"How is she?" Hardison asked stopping his work and staring at Eliot.

"Let's just say she is terrified to be alone so I only have a few minutes and then I promised her I would be back. I am hoping she stays asleep and doesn't notice but it's possible she'll wake up and we are going to have a problem." Eliot growled as he clenched his fists. "Who is this guy Nate and what does he have against you that he would attack Parker?"

"I'll tell you about him if you tell us about Mitchell." Nate said arching an eyebrow.

"No problem." Eliot said nodding his head since he had already planned to talk about his issues with Mitchell.

"It was back in high school when we were kids. His name is Antonio Depandi and he and I were best friends. We did everything together in school, we were like brothers. But it all changed just before graduation all of a sudden he was acting weird. I caught him stealing from the church's charity drive boxes. I never said anything but I wouldn't hang out with him again and I told him if I saw him steal again I was turning him in." Nate said with a sigh. He took a deep breath and then continued. "A few weeks later I caught him stealing again and this time it was worse. He was stealing from the funds that were being sent to a hospital to help kids with cancer. I couldn't keep quiet, I had warned him and so I turned him in and he was arrested. They searched his room and found tons of stolen property from different burglaries and he went to jail. He blamed me for getting prison time and missing graduation. To top it off his family disowned him and he was told to never come home again."

"Aw that's so sad. It's weird considering we do con jobs ourselves." Sophie said with a shrug.

"What about Mitchell?" Hardison asked turning his attention to Eliot.

"Mitchell and I were best friends for a while. We grew up together as well. We both trained in the skill of fighting and then one time we worked together on a major job. They wanted more than one retrieval specialist because they were using more than one thief. Mitchell was cocky and arrogant and I told him to tone it down, I told him that he wasn't going to be able to do his job correctly if he didn't knock it off." Eliot said with a sigh. He looked down as if he was remembering everything that had happened. "The night we were pulling the job Mitchell was drunk, and I mean he was falling down about to pass out drunk. It pissed me off because I knew I was going to be doing three times the work. I knew I needed to cover him, and take care of both of the thieves. When the job went down Mitchell blew it, he went in when he wasn't needed and blew everything apart. We lost a thief, she was extremely young and I lost it. The next day we all went off on him and he blamed me, he said it was my fault that I didn't go out with him the night before, and it was my fault that I didn't keep him from entering the building. He swore that one day he was going to get even with the person responsible for that thief's death. I guess it's me that he blames, I just never knew it." Eliot said softly.

"What happened to Parker tonight is not anyone's fault." Sophie said evenly. "I want you all to understand that. Parker is an adult and she chose to go there alone and try and practice. It was not your fault that they decided to take her our first. You should be proud that you got there when you did and took out the men you did take out Eliot. We should all be grateful that we still have her here with us. Now we need to figure out what we are going to do to get even with these men." Sophie said with a grin on her face.

Nate was watching his team with wary eyes. He knew what Antonio Depandi was capable of and that was what worried him. He also knew that Eliot could probably take him, but what he was worried about were the other guys that he would probably have. Eliot was going to want to deal with Mitchell and Depandi, but he would be outnumbered by the backup that Depandi always had. Nate had been keeping tabs on him since he got out of prison, just to be safe, now he wished he had done something about the guy sooner, because Parker was hurt. It was time to get revenge and it was time to teach Depandi a lesson, the question was, would they be able to do it alone?