Title: "The Ties That Bind Job" (Part Two)
'Verse: Leverage/Angel
Characters: Entire Leverage team plus Faith and Angel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2112
Summary: Nate makes a judgment call. Parker finds herself on the trail of a secret far beyond even her wildest dreams. Sophie and Hardison just want their team to last the night.
I meant to upload this yesterday - I honestly did. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the site did some sort of overhaul that stopped me from uploading anything. Here's the next chapter...hope it's worth the wait!
Nate was not having a good night. Bite marks, for God's sake! He glanced at the thick white dressing on Eliot's neck again, and barely suppressed a shudder of revulsion.
He hated hospitals – hated them. They all did in varying degrees, but the rest of them had never stood trapped behind a pressboard door with a flimsy circular window, watching someone they loved die while doctors and nurses raced around. Tonight was not going to be the night they felt what he'd felt, he was not going to have that happen again…
He'd gotten by with less sleep before, but never while trying to deal with the remains of his nervous, panicky team. Parker was almost literally climbing the walls. And Mr. Angel wouldn't stop staring at him…
Some room to breathe would be a good start, he decided finally. The hospital room wasn't nearly big enough for the five of them and the stranger all in black.
"All right, everyone," he said, raising his voice to cut through the low, nervous babble. They stopped talking immediately, looking up at him. The fearin their eyes, the panic and the uncertainty cut Nate to the quick.
Yes. He needed them out of here.
"All right," he repeated. "I think we can safely say that collectively, we're not doing any good here." He held up a hand as Parker opened her mouth to protest. "This is not a big room, and there's nothing we can do that isn't already being done. We also have a client whose needs are not being met."
They knew what he was getting at, and he anticipated their next reaction.
Their next reaction was to slide suspicious sidelong glances towards Mr. Angel.
"Of course, we all want to know what's happening with our friend," Nate continued smoothly, "so I propose that we stay here in shifts. That way, at least a couple of us can catch up on our sleep and…and…and do something constructive, all right?" Something better than standing around here worrying the doctors. "Sophie, Parker?"
The women nodded. Nate returned the gesture – one professional to two others. "Keep in touch," he added, absently touching his ear – a silent assurance that he and Hardison would keep the lines open. Sophie and Parker understood. Nate knew that he didn't need to remind Sophie to keep working on getting whatever she could out of Mr. Angel. His arrival had frustrated her previous attempts to get anything concrete, and Sophie had always been persistent that way.
She still looked reluctant, and Parker and Hardison were almost openly hostile to the idea. Nate understood. They'd become a remarkably tightly knit little band over the last couple of years; he'd noticed it, even if they hadn't. Their first instinct now when crisis loomed was to draw closer together, when two years ago they would have raced off in separate directions.
They trusted him to do what was best for the team, however, and he knew that they couldn't think of a better plan.
Parker unwrapped herself, slid off her chair and sidled closer to Hardison, close enough for the hacker to throw an arm around her shoulders and give her a one-armed squeeze. There was more emotion in the simple gesture than Nate would have thought possible. Sophie stayed back, but Nate could read her like an open book by now and he knew that tucked away inside Sophie Devereaux, some poor woman whose name he'd never known was falling apart.
"Hey, man, look," Hardison said, the second they were clear of the room and heading down the hall. "Y'know you make sense an' all, Nate, but I…I can't just go sit on my hands, man, I just can't…"
"I know," said Nate softly. "I just…"
Hardison nodded, and Nate knew he didn't have to finish. His hacker understood, and allowed Nate a minute to pull himself together.
"Lucky for you," Nate continued once he had, "part of the reason I pulled you out first is that I need you to do something for me."
Hardison perked up immediately. "Yeah? What are we talkin' here? Surveillance on the warehouse? Background checks on Batman and Batgirl?"
Nate waved a hand absently. "Little of this, a little of that. We'll go back to my place. The coms will still work at that range, won't they?"
He'd asked the question deliberately. Despite the panic and fear weighing so heavily on all of them, Hardison managed to pull together his patented "you've-gotta-be-kidding-me-I'm-downright-offended-that-you-have-so-little-faith-in-me" look.
It cheered Nate up ever so slightly to see that his team was still in the game.
The woman called Sophie was good at what she did, but Angel knew there was no better defense against a talented grifter than a lifespan of two hundred and fifty plus years.
He took pity on her soon after Ford's departure, deciding to leave the two women to their grief and worry. Aside from Lindsey, the two people Angel was most concerned with – Faith and Nathan – were gone. And as far as Lindsey himself was concerned, there was no way the man was getting out of the hospital without somebodynoticing him.
His final consideration was that it was getting on to dawn, and he didn't really feel like being stuck in the hospital all day. Back to the hotel, then. Hopefully to find Faith alive, well, and unbitten.
Sophie watched him go. She waited until the mysterious Mr. Angel had closed the door behind him before glancing at her teammate.
Parker nodded.
Sophie nodded in return.
The thief got to her feet, arms still folded tightly across her chest, and followed Angel – leaving Sophie alone to guard the injured Eliot.
He was down the hall, waiting for an elevator when she left the room, so Parker made a beeline for the nearest stairwell. It was blessedly empty – some times of the night were just that late, even for hospitals.
Without preparation or preamble, Parker clambered up onto the stair rail, took a moment to find her center, then leapt off into the open air – letting herself plummet towards the ground floor.
No harness protected her this time – no exuberant cry of delight filled the space around her – but Parker still relished the feeling of uncontrolled, breathless abandon that overcame her when falling from such a height. It was almost as if all the troubles and anxieties and bad feelings that had piled on her in the last few hours suddenly couldn't keep up.
For the span of a half-dozen heartbeats, Parker was free.
She landed lightly on all fours on the very bottom floor. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she got to her feet just in time for every bit of trouble and anxiety she'd tried to outrun to land on her head and nestle back into her brain.
Hardison – twitchy and sad and not knowing what to do.
Sophie – pretty face twisted up with worry.
Eliot – bandaged and bloody in his hospital bed.
Nate – trying to be the leader like he always was, and trying not to show how scared he was, and trying his best like he always did.
Parker shook her head to dislodge the bad pictures. She had a job to do now, something more than sitting on her hands and trying not to look at Eliot. It was a quick job, but it was a job – and that made all the difference.
She opened the door to the lobby and ducked out, trying to act like the team kept telling her "natural" was. She'd only just started for the door to the outside, when a 'ding' sounded behind her, and she heard the elevator doors opening.
Parker held position, facing away from the elevators. Looking over her shoulder would raise too much suspicion – Mr. Angel already knew what she looked like. The doors in front of her were translucent, however, and the darkness outside turned them into a perfect mirror. Parker made full use of the effect, trying to see if the man was following her out.
To her amazement, the brightly lit lobby behind her was completely empty.
Startled, Parker quickened her pace – heading towards the doors as she reviewed events in her mind.
He didn't get on the elevator until after she'd gone for the stairwell. The hospital didn't have that many floors, and it couldn't have taken more than thirty seconds for her to hit the ground, whereas an elevator should have taken at least a minute, assuming it had even started at the same time as her. Doubtful, when you considered the performance capabilities of the average hospital elevator.
She couldn't have missed him.
She just couldn't have missed him.
The doors in front of Parker slid open as she approached, then she was out in the parking lot. The sun was just starting to rise, barely visible over the tops of the Boston skyscrapers, but bright enough to find the car she'd seen Angel getting out of when she and Sophie had first arrived at the hospital.
Angel had no idea why the blonde girl was following him, but the blonde girl was definitely following him.
He'd been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt when she'd come out of the hospital room so soon after him, especially when she hadn't immediately joined him at the elevators.
Besides, he wasn't sure if it could really be counted as "following" if she reached his destination before he did. Maybe she just needed some air, he told himself. He'd practically smelled how emotionally fragile she was earlier, after all. Maybe the stress and the worry had finally gotten to be too much for her.
No. She was following him, and she was very good at it. That was definitely his car she was heading towards.
Angel watched, arms folded, as she picked the lock, scooted into the passenger's seat, and opened the glove compartment. Judging by the way she kept checking the side and rear view mirrors, she was expecting him to show up at any second.
He almost smiled, before laying a heavy hand on the girl's thin shoulder.
Startled, she shrieked loud enough to wake the whole hospital, before rounding on him and beating ineffectually at his chest and kicking at his shins. Angel easily caught her wrists and shoved her lightly away.
"That's my car," he said, folding his arms again.
To her credit, the girl immediately adopted a convincing look of surprise. "O-Oh," she stammered. "Um…is it?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
She folded her arms awkwardly across her chest, and averted her gaze. "I…I was just so upset…about Eliot that I…I was acting out. Yes. I was acting out because I was upset about Eliot and I…have control issues. I feel that I don't have enough control over my life, and so I steal things. Um…"
Another man might have mistaken her stammering and her awkwardness for just what she claimed was its source – anxiety and worry for her friend. Angel, however, knew people. It was part of the reason he'd lived the way he had for as long as he had. He knew people, and he knew that this girl, however worried she was about Lindsey, was still lying through her teeth.
He also knew that she had just lifted something from his pocket.
Almost as if on cue, she looked down at the stake in her hand as if she honestly didn't remember stealing it. "Oh. Um…" Again with the stammering, then she stepped a little closer to him and held it out. "So…either you hunt vampires, or you're building a really tiny fence."
Angel moved to take the stake back, and then he took another look at her.
She was thin as a reed – easily half the size of Lindsey or Nate. Her thin, pale face with its wispy blond hair only made her look more like a little girl – lost, alone, and entirely out of her depth.
He let his hand fall to his side.
"Tiny little fence," he said, completely deadpan. "They're all the rage in LA right now. Why don't you try it yourself?"
She looked down at the stake in surprise, and then back up at him. Angel managed to smile at her, then he got in his car, revved up the engine, and drove away as the clock ticked down to full sunrise.
Parker watched him go. Then she pulled her GPS reader out of her pocket and checked for a signal.
Yep. Mr. Angel's black '67 Plymouth had just passed the four way intersection around the corner.
"Thanks for the stake," she murmured, testing its weight in her hand.
