Chapter 2
They had lost their hitter.
Sophie had lost her confidant.
Hardison had lost his best friend.
Parker had lost her big brother.
And Nate…. he had lost his oldest son.
Eliot had disappeared; he had just vanished into thin air several months after the whole San Lorenzo deal. It looked like Damien Moreau had long reaching arms even while in captivity and he did not enjoy an old friend running a game on him. The team had gone to San Lorenzo a week after Eliot had disappeared, when they had put the clues together. They had found to their extreme bad luck that they were 24 hours too late.
Damien Moore had enemies as well and one of them had taken him out while he was still trying to get out of prison. They had searched high and low for their missing family member but it was like the ground had opened up and swallowed Eliot. He was nowhere to be found.
None of them wanted to think that he might have been killed. Moreau would have wanted him to pay, that was his style so he would have wanted Eliot to suffer. They only had to find him.
It was two months before a job they could not possibly say no to came their way whilst their search was going on. One job led to another and then to four and on the fifth one they realized that they needed a hitter. Parker had sulked for a week while Nate had looked over possible candidates.
After three weeks and countless interviews they finally settled on John. He wasn't a criminal with a past like the rest of them, in fact he was 'sickly a good guy' as Hardison had put it.
He was an ex-seal and had been honorably discharged from the service and on his welcome back party a fight had broken out and John had ended up killing one of the fighters out of pure reflex that had been drilled into him. The judge had sent him away for involuntary man slaughter for 10 years and now he was out and with no job prospects.
He was the opposite of Eliot in many ways. First he was a big guy, and supported on an almost shaven head. One look at him and you said 'hired muscle'. He did however have the same sort of deep voice that Eliot had when speaking, Hardison thought it must come with the territory.
He couldn't grift even if his life depended on it and the team realized that they had relied on Eliot for more than just his fighting skills. He always ran the short con within the con and Sophie hadn't had to coach him through anything.
It took a while but they formed a working relationship with John. He had been hired as protection for the team and Parker had told him under no circumstances was he member of this family. He was the hired gun. John had taken that fact to heart and he was quiet and out of the way and did his job to perfection which seem to rub Hardison the wrong way.
They all dealt with the loss their own way and were in fact still dealing. They were in no way ready to except that they might not get Eliot back.
Sophie had been dealing with the situation with brushing up in all the languages she had known and had been learning a new one as soon as she had mastered the previous one. She had told Nate when they did find Eliot they might have to run a con and she had to be ready.
Parker had taken over Eliot's green house which they had found on the roof of his apartment building. Sophie had been pleasantly surprised to find the comment about 'I grow my own food' to be true. Parker had at first killed every single plant that Eliot had and then she had taken a gardening class and to Nate surprise some private lessons and help in getting the greenhouse up and running once again. She spent several hours each day in the greenhouse and they had more fresh vegetables to eat then before.
She also spent a lot of time drawing. None of them were surprised to find sketches of priceless artifacts, plants, horses or rarely of Eliot in various moods sketched to perfection lying around Nate's apartment.
Hardison had given up his online gaming and Nate knew that night time was spent on the internet searching and looking for his friend. Nate was confident that if anybody was going to find Eliot it would be him.
Nate on the other hand was dealing with the loss in a way that none of the team members had anticipated. They had expected him to get drunk and lose it in some way however Nate knew that he was the only thing that was keeping them up right, he didn't have the luxury of falling apart. Besides he didn't think he could deal with the idea of losing a son once again so he was OK living in denial of what could have happened and letting the others believe in it as well.
He was building the best safe slash retirement house anyone could think of for a bunch of thieves. He had always wanted to build a house for Maggie and Sam but never got around to it when Sam got sick. This time the house and its plans were different however basic the idea was the same.
When they found Eliot they would need a place to retreat to so Eliot would have recovery time. He was a realist, he knew as days had turned into weeks and the weeks into months that the Eliot they would find would need a long time to recover from the ordeal.
He had picked Maine as the area and bought an incredible amount of land, he knew that Eliot would have liked somewhere like Texas but he had always been partial to Maine. It had the most beautiful scenery in the world, was out of the way and secluded.
He had brought the property using Leverage funds and no one had batted an eye when the amount of money he was drawing out of the fund became seven figures. Nate even realized that the money he took out would be replaced within a few days.
The property was private and out of the way, the front part overlooking the sea and the back resting against a thick forest. In fact the only way of getting to the property was by boat or by sea plane as there were no roads to it from land. There was a large old four storey house on the property as well. The house was resting against the slope so it rather looked like it was going up step by step with the land rather than going straight up. Nate had fallen in love with it the moment he saw it.
The first thing Nate did was go through his old insurance contacts and get the best private security that money could buy for the whole of the area and then he got gotten both Hardison and Parker to tinkle with it, both had get to see the property, he hadn't mentioned a lot of it to them because he wanted it to be a surprise. He had the company connect the surveillance to the house, not even a bird could fly by without them knowing within a five mile radius.
Then he went on with re-building the house. The bottom floor became a game room, with an indoor pool and gym and a corner for a bar and electronics games corner which exited almost right onto the beach. The floor up there was a huge living room with a fire place, a nice dining room and a huge state of the art kitchen including two guest bedrooms. There was also a huge veranda that surrounded this floor so you can sit outside on nice weathers. Also from this floor you could exit to the rest of the estate after a short walk up the hill.
The floor above had his and Sophie's joint room with Parker sharing the floor.
He asked the architect who was redesigning and helping to build the house to make sure that there was a lot of personal space. So everyone got their own bedrooms with on suite bathrooms as well as an extra room to do whatever they want with it.
His own and Sophie's joint common room he had turned into a comfortable living room once again with a fire place. Parker's he had modeled into an art studio with a huge table where she could lay out her locks and etc.
The floor above was for the boys. They both had huge bedrooms with a skylight and a personal common room. Hardison's he arranged to have the strongest electric wiring and satellite connection. Eliot bedroom was done in earth tones and was left spacious as Nate knew he liked his bedrooms that way. His common room was the one with the best view overlooking the sea with book cases all around the room with a comfortable couch positioned for the best light with a lazy boy strategically placed. Half of the book cases Nate filled with the classics as he knew that Eliot always had those in his office or at home, the rest he left to be filled. Eliot had once commented on his own empty book cases when asked.
"If you are gonna fill them from the get go why bother?"
Each floor, each bedroom in fact had its own state of the art panic room, the panic rooms were built in such a way that they were independent from the rest of the house and a person could last up to six weeks in them. Nate was not going to leave anything to chance.
Also on the property a green house was being built, the small barn that was there was being looked over making sure that it could handle some livestock as well as house a few horses.
The whole estate would run on its own solar and wind power as well as getting electricity from the main land however Nate wanted the estate to be as independent as possible. He also had the latest models of generators placed on the property just in case.
Should they live in the house year around Nate knew that there would be a month or two in winter where they would have no contact with anyone.
He had envisioned the house as a place he and Sophie could retire to and the children could pop in from now and then, live year around if they wanted to.
He had been building for a while and he had no idea what he would do when he finished the house and it was ready to be used and they had no Eliot.
Fortunately or unfortunately he did not need to find the answer to that question. It was an ordinary Wednesday night when his phone rang at 3:52 am in the morning.
He was downstairs with Sophie waiting for Hardison to come within 3 minutes.
First to walk through the door after eight minutes was Parker, she must have been rattled to walk through the front door.
Two minutes later Hardison came in carrying his lap top. He set it down on the kitchen counter they had gathered around and looked at them all.
After seven months and fourteen days they heard the words they had been longing to hear.
"I've found him."