Before the Beginning (Part IV – Meanwhile, in Chicago)
[There is a deleted scene from the first episode on youtube that explains why Nate was in Chicago.]
Between the blaring of the fire alarm and the seizure-inducing flashing lights, Nate Ford's hangover got the best of him (he wasn't drunk – he wouldn't show up to a job interview drunk). He vomited unceremoniously in (near) the hiring manager's trashcan, just as the man was about to tell him he was in.
After that, even foiling a robbery in progress hadn't helped him make his case. The hiring manager's boss had showed up to see what all the commotion was, and instantly took a dislike to the clearly hungover Nate, the mess he had created, and his warning about the heist. It didn't help that the manager (what the hell was his name again?) had immediately called the cops, whose presence scared off the would-be thieves before they had a chance to make their move, eliminating any proof that the alarm was anything other than a system error.
Nate was out on his ass, still broke, divorced, and unemployed, now with the label of 'paranoid' attached to 'drunk' with at least one company.
Well fuck you, too! he thought, making his way back to the hotel room his prospective employers had reserved for him for the next two nights. That, he had originally felt, was a good sign – they were expecting him to need to stay a few extra days to fill out the paperwork, take a tour of the offices, maybe look at apartments. Now it just seemed like a mockery. He bitterly (and with not a little petty vindictiveness) snagged every bottle from the mini-bar (the least he could do was stick those assholes with a hell of a room service charge) and resigned himself to continuing the hunt for a new job to replace that company.
…
"Half a mil," the thief – Parker (was that her first name or her last, Victor wondered) demanded.
There was no way he could swing that. Not if she couldn't give him a guarantee. Not if they had to hire two thieves to do what (in Victor's opinion) shouldn't have taken more than one. This was getting out of control. He simply didn't have that kind of liquidity available. "Give me a minute to talk to my… associates," he said, and hung up.
"It's some woman called Parker. She wants half a mil," he repeated to Samuels.
The taller man snorted. "That's negotiable. Normal corporate espionage – a hundred grand, tops."
Victor looked at him askance, but held his tongue on asking why his head of security knew that. "She said she can't offer a guarantee."
"That's because knows what she's talking about." At Victor's confused look, Samuels explained: "I told you, the Panther's retired, but he's got contacts. She knows her shit. Getting someone else in and out, that's much harder than doin' it alone. She can't guarantee he won't fuck up."
"So we need backup, like as an insurance policy?" Brown asked.
Samuels nodded. "Spencer could do it."
"Can we just get Spencer to get the hacker in and out?"
"Probably not," the security man responded. "If I were doing security on a job like this, I'd want someone else coordinating the actual break-in. Especially on short notice."
"You did say you were on a time table," Brown added unhelpfully.
"Fine, then!" Victor was more than a little irritated now. This plan had seemed so simple at first, damn it! Just hire a thief to steal the designs, scoop Pierson, make money hand over fist. Spencer was supposed to be the most reliable, so they framed it as a retrieval to pique his interest. Easy enough. "I guess we're fucked, because I don't have the funds to hire three thieves to do this damn job."
"Too bad you can't find a way to just screw them over once we got the files," the engineer said, though he didn't sound all that disappointed.
"Yeah, right," Samuels snorted again. "Like you could get away with not paying these people."
Actually, Victor thought, that sounded like a pretty good idea. They'd just need a foolproof way to tie up any loose ends, and they could promise the thieves anything they needed to get the job done. A sly smile crossed his face as he said, "I think between the three of us, we could come up with something."
After a tense, calculating moment, Samuels nodded, and Brown, though more hesitant, said, "Um… okay," clearly uncertain of what that 'something' might be.
Neither of the other men objected as Victor called the infiltration expert back and negotiated her price down. After all, it wouldn't do to make it seem like they had money to burn. The woman might get suspicious if they agreed too easily.
