Nate and Allison watched on the laptop with the soldier, Corporal Robert Perry.
Nate rewound the video.
"Yeah, but you know what they gotta do? They gotta-"
Nate paused it when Dwight got shot.
"Is Jenny your fiancee?" Allison asked.
"Well, she was. But..." Perry trailed off.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Allison said, gently touching his shoulder.
He looked up at her with a cocky grin. "You single?" He asked.
She chuckled and patted his arm. "Happily."
He grinned, then looked at Nate. "Look, I'm not mad. It happens. I don't want charity though." Perry said.
"We are not a charity." Nate said.
"I just want my rehab, you know, if I'm gonna work, and I want to work, Dr. Leroque says I need another year and a half of hardcore rehab, maybe two more surgeries. Castleman shot me up, I just want them to pay my bills, no more, no less."
Nate hummed thoughtfully.
Allison looked around at the room full of wounded soldiers, all doing rehab.
"The army investigation determined... What? That you were hit by insurgents?" Nate asked.
"Yeah. That's because Castleman refused to cooperate in that investigation." Perry said.
"And they can do that?" Allison asked.
"Nobody's stopping them, they're cowboys. They go off all the time. Boom, boom, boom. I just want them to do right by me." Perry said, he reached over and pulled out the flash drive.
A woman with chocolate skin, dark hair, and dark eyes walked up. "Pardon me, Mr. uh?" She said, vying for a name.
"Oh, uh, Nathan Ford and this is my niece, Allison Ford. You're Dr. Leroque?"
"Can I talk to you outside?" Dr. Leroque asked.
"Doc, he's cool. I found him on the internet." Perry said.
"Yea, that never goes badly." The doctor looked at Nate. "With me." She said.
He nodded and walked out with the doctor.
Allison moved to follow her uncle.
Perry grabbed her arm.
"Ms. Ford." He said.
"Please, just Allison." Allison said kindly.
"Is there a number I can use to get a hold of you?" He asked is eyes glittered with mirth. "You know, just in case something important comes up. Like, for instance, dinner on Friday night?" He said.
She smirked and handed him a card.
He grinned, then handed her the flash drive.
She smiled and walked out and to her uncle. "What did she want?" She asked.
"Basically told us to get, thinks we're running a scam." Nate said.
Allison nodded.
He looked at his niece. "Allison, call them." Nate said.
Allison smiled.
"Why, why!" Sophie cried. "I can't live like this anymore! With the lies, and the filth! No! Help me! I want to be clean! I want to be clean!" She scrubbed her hands against her arms and fell to her knees, wailing.
The two directors watching were amazed at how horrible her acting was.
"You... You do understand this is a commercial for soap... Right?" The man asked.
"Uh huh." Sophie said enthusiastically, she got up. "When I thought about Peggy, I came up with this idea that the dirt was really this giant metaphor for sin." She said, bobbing her head.
The directors glanced at each other, silently asking if she was for real.
Sophie's phone rang.
"You should take that." The man said urgently. "No, no, you should take that."
Sophie seemed surprised. "Oh." She answered the phone. "Hello? Oh, hello Allison" She said with a smile. "When?" She asked seriously. Sophie hung up. "Peggy killed her first husband." Sophie said, before walking off the audition set.
"Yes, thank you." The man said, before looking at the other director.
The two laughed and shook their heads.
On the hood of a navy blue car, a man laid unconscious.
Soon, another fell on top of him.
Eliot turned away from the car and the last man pulled a gun on him.
They stared at each other for a minute, then a phone rang.
"That you or me?" Eliot asked.
The man didn't seem sure, but he didn't take his eyes off Eliot. Probably the only reason he was still standing.
The phone kept ringing.
"Could be important." Eliot continued with a laid back drawl. He narrowed his eyes. "Does your mama have your number?" He asked.
The man looked down.
Eliot quickly grabbed the gun and punched the man in the neck.
The man went down, choking.
Eliot unloaded the gun and tossed it away before pulling out his phone and answering it. "Yeah Allison?" He asked. "Nothing, why?" He asked with a tiny smirk.
A guard walked along the halls of a museum gallery, shining a light on a painting, then, turning around slowly. When he turned back to the painting it was gone, and a rope dangled down in it's place.
A cell phone rang.
"Parker." The female thief whispered.
The rope retracted with a zip.
"Shh!" She hissed. "Oh no, Allison. I wasn't shushing you."
Eliot, Sophie, and Parker came around the corner and headed down the hall.
"From the first job?" Parker asked.
"Yeah." Eliot said.
"I put all the money in a Swiss bank account." She said.
"Millions of dollars and you didn't buy anything?" Eliot asked wrinkling his nose.
"I don't like stuff, I like money." Parker said with a crazy glint in her eye.
"I bought a little retirement home, an island." Sophie said.
"Nice." Eliot said.
"In Dubai... and Tokyo." She added.
"What about you?" Parker asked, as they walked in front of a door.
A small yellow envelope with Sophie's name on it was attached to the door.
Sophie pulled it off.
"Yeah... I'm not about to tell two known thieves what I did with a million dollar payout." Eliot said, as Sophie unlocked the door.
"Don't you trust us?" Sophie asked, opening the door.
Eliot didn't answer.
They walked in and stopped in surprise.
The room they had stepped in, was a lobby type room with a sign on the wall that read "Leverage Consulting & Associates".
"Okay." Sophie said slowly, trying to come to grips with the room. "Okay." She said again when she figured out that she couldn't come to grips with it.
"I don't get it." Eliot said.
"What is this?" Parker asked.
"This." Hardison said walking over with three phones and three file folders. "Is our new cover story. Welcome to Leverage Consulting & Associates, founded in 1913 by the great Harland Leverage The Third." Hardison said with a grin as he pointed to a painting that looked like an older Nate with grey hair, and an old fashion suit.
Sophie burst out laughing. "I'm sorry. Nate is going to kill you." She said.
"Did you paint that?" Eliot asked.
"Hell no, Allison did." Hardison said, with a grin. "Now, Leverage Consulting Inc. is squeaky clean, all corporate taxes on record as being paid for the last ninety years." Hardison handed them each a cell and a folder. "All your identities as partners, your payroll taxes are paid, you guys have pension plans and dental. Those are employment records case files and company newsletters." Hardison said, walking down a hall.
The others followed.
Parker flipped through her file and laughed. "In 1998 me and some girl named Josie Collins won the three legged race at the Fourth of July picinic! Cool!" She said with a grin.
"Josie Collins is Allison's alias, well one of them. Josie Collins, Allison, and Alice White, you, have been best friends for years." Hardison said.
"Sweet, I never had a best friend." Parker said.
Sophie gave her a surprised look.
"Now, these." Hardison said stopping motioning to several doors. "These are your offices. Now, you can bring something like a photo- You know what? A plant. I'm a big supporter of dandelions." Hardison said.
"Hardison, I can't believe you spent your share of the cash on all of this." Sophie said.
"Me? No, hell no. Allison paid for all this, Nate would have, but he didn't have anything left. You know, after giving it all away." Hardison said.
"Whoa. What do you mean? He gave it away?" Eliot asked.
"Yeah, all of it, every last penny. It was like to some children's hospital, Allison did too with what she had left."
The team was silent.
"But this, this is my master piece." Hardison said with a grin. He opened two doors that lead to a conference room.
The room had one long table with several chairs around it and one wall was dedicated completely to big screen tvs.
"Nice." Sophie said.
"My man." Eliot said.
"Long version or the short version?" Hardison asked.
"Short." Sophie said.
"Short version." Eliot said.
"Shortest." Parker said.
Hardison clicked a button on a remote and the TV screens began to illustrate his explanation. "Photo and video forensics program, back doors into every electronic banking system in the world, running heuristics data crawls all over the news sites to find out clients- Oh! Also."
"This is the short version?" Parker asked.
"Facial recognition database tied into CIA, NSA, and the FBI. But the real piéce de résistantce." He clicked another button and different sports games showed up on each TV. "Direct TV HD Total Sports Package. NFL, NBA, and I threw in a little bit of hockey, cause I know you people like that." He said.
"Hockey." Eliot said with a big grin.
The doors behind them opened and Allison and Nate walked in.
"Alright, stop kicking the tires." Nate said.
Allison held up the flash drive Perry gave her. "Want to take her for a spin?" She asked, tossing it to Hardison.
"See those guys? Private contractors. They make seven hundred bucks a day, I make seven." Perry said.
"Yeah, but you know what they gotta do? They gotta-"
The shooting began.
Hardison paused the video on Perry's body.
"Our client is cameraman, Corporal Robert Perry. He says that the Castleman contractors spooked and started firing." Nate said.
"5.56 NATO rounds." Eliot said. "Mixed in with some 9 mils from the sub machine guns. Insurgents would have used AK-47s with 7.62 ammo has more of a..." He hit the back of his hand with his palm. "Crack. Contractors shot 'em up all right."
"You ID'd the weapon from the gunshot sound?" Allison asked.
He looked at her. "It's a very distinctive sound." He said.
She rolled her eyes.
Hardison changed the screen. "Castleman security is hardcore, folks. Billion dollar company. They got fat government contracts everywhere we got troops. That's Charles Dufort." He said motioning to a picture. "CEO, very paranoid, and very professional."
"I want to get this clear right now, this is a private army you're talking about taking on? They got their own Intel assets, they got a lot of trigger pullers." Eliot said.
"Yea and lobbyists in every office in Washington, DC." Allison said.
"The problem with a cover-up is all the paperwork it takes to keep the lies straight." Nate said.
"Internal emails, memos." Hardison offered.
"Exactly." Nate said.
"So..." Sophie said slowly.
"So, let's go to work." Nate said getting up and walking out.
The rest of the team followed.
"So, we steal the evidence and threaten to expose them." Sophie said.
"Blackmail." Parker said.
"Ah, yes." Nate said.
"But just enough blackmail to pay for Perry's rehab, maybe a couple of million more in damages." Allison said.
"It'll never hold up in court." Eliot said skeptically.
Nate turned and smirked. "Ah, but that's why Corporal Perry is lucky. He doesn't have lawyers, he has thieves." Nate said.
The team smiled and exited.
Nate glanced over at the painting of Harland Leverage The Third. "Allison!"
A/N: How do you like it? Sorry for any mistakes. In the past thirty-eight hours I've only slept two. Overnighter at my sister's church that I helped out at.