Hack 07

Jason wouldn't stand for this.

Spinelli hadn't said a word as they retreated back to their penthouse after Elizabeth's little presentation, and when he let them both in, the boy immediately scurried up the stairs to the safe haven of his bedroom where he promptly began to play…the Cure.

Now, Jason could have handled it if he was playing Underoath – that would have meant that Spinelli was angry. He could have handled it if he started playing Eliot Smith – that would have meant that Spinelli was getting himself to rise above the trouncing and was already plotting his next move. He could even have handled it if he was playing the Joy Division, a band that annoyed Jason to no end – that would have meant that Spinelli was just trying to tune everything else out for a little while, and there was nothing wrong with that.

But he was playing the Cure.

And really, that was the only thing sadder than the fact that Jason knew the individual names of the bands that his young friend listened to.

Shit.

Damien Spinelli was crushed, and Jason just wouldn't stand for it.

"Milo." Jason pinched the bridge of his nose and waited a beat for the noise on the guard's end to die down. "Call Stan and tell him to get someone up here to sweep my penthouse. Yeah. Okay."

He hung up the phone, satisfied that this would be the end of it. Elizabeth would soon know that messing with Spinelli this way just wasn't an option.


"What do you mean, you didn't find anything?" Jason snapped, glaring darkly at Stan and Trevor. "There's a fucking bug in this penthouse! Look again!"

Elizabeth, who had Sonny's door cracked open just enough to hear what was going on at Jason's, giggled. From where she was standing, she could glimpse part of Jason's face and the right side of his body, and the enforcer's expressions and rigid stance made it clear that he was pissed. Naturally, this gave her no small measure of satisfaction.

"Jason, I scanned the whole penthouse," Stan tried to explain. "You saw me – I've been here for a little more than an hour doing a very careful, very thorough job. You're at the top of this organization, and naturally, I take any suspicion of a tap on your part very seriously. But I'm telling you, we didn't find anything."

"Then look again," Jason ground out, pronouncing each word carefully and slowly for the young man's benefit. "Because there is a bug here."

"Can I ask again what makes you so sure?" Stan inquired politely. This was his boss, after all, and it would do him absolutely no good to get snippy, no matter how insulted he felt by Jason's ranting.

"Dude, Stone Cold, what's going on?"

Elizabeth rose on her toes and craned her neck and made out Spinelli's beanie. The nerd had apparently just come down the stairs to see what all the commotion was about.

"NightNinja, I thought you had already left," he continued, bowing at Stan. Ever since he had learned of his online alias, Spinelli was very admiring of Stan which irked Elizabeth to no end because her cyber record was much more impressive than Stanford's, but it was only because she was a girl that Spinelli barely batted a lash.

"Not quite, Spinelli." Stan shook his head, trying not to sound anything but perfectly pleasant. "We did a sweep of the place and didn't find anything, but Jason says there's definitely a tap here somewhere. I was just asking what made him so certain."

"Oh, I can tell you that easy, O Technocratic One," Spinelli offered as Jason glowered in the background. "We were just over at Mister Corinthos Sir's not-so-humble abode where I planned to show him the Jackal's newest revolution in employer-employee interfacing."

"Right, right." Stan nodded as if this were perfectly intelligible. "Go on."

"As it turned out, the fire-breathing Dragon also had a gift of her own making for Mister Corinthos Sir – and it was the same exact thing that I had made."

"You mean it was better," Elizabeth muttered from her safe position across the hall.

"That doesn't sound so strange," Stan frowned. "Was this an assignment that you guys worked together on?"

Spinelli was shaking his head. "No, no, you misunderstand, O Technocratic One. It was a secret project on my part to impress Mister Corinthos Sir. And the Dragon had the same exact thing already finished when I went over there to show him!"

"I don't really get why you're so surprised," Stan admitted slowly, making Elizabeth smile. She knew there was a reason that he was her best friend. "Elizabeth's really good at this stuff – I mean, really good. Like, scary good. Just because she had the same kind of program made as you did doesn't necessarily mean that she was somehow spying on you-"

"Just look again," Jason interrupted tersely.

"Jason, I know you're concerned about this, but-"

"Tell you what," the enforcer interrupted again, crossing his arms over his chest and leaving absolutely no room for any sort of challenge. "Better send someone else up to do a sweep. We'll be waiting."

Stan pursed his lips into a smile and nodded. "Sure thing, Jason. I'll send someone right up. Have a good day."

Jason waited until the two men were out in the hall before shutting the door behind them, and it was only then that Stan rolled his eyes as he and Trevor hauled the equipment over to the elevator.

"Ass."

Elizabeth hopped up and down happily, watching as Trevor cast an apprehensive glance at Jason's door. "Better not say it so close to his place, Stan. He could hear."

"Let him," the young man sighed, jabbing at the button. "Can you believe that? I've been working with this organization since he left for Cuba or wherever-the-fuck he went – I'm the authority on taps and bugs and cameras. And did you hear him? Telling me that I wasn't good enough to do what I've been doing all this time? You know, I'm almost sorry now that I told Elizabeth she was probably reading too much into whatever Jason said to her. She told me that he was an ass and I told her to give him a chance because there was no way he could be such a bad guy. Damn."

"Yeah, Default Corinthos got it right this time," Trevor agreed as the elevator doors opened slowly. "So what are you gonna do?"

"What can I do?" Stan grunted as he and the guard hauled the equipment into the elevator. "He's my boss's partner – for that alone, he requires my respect. I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to treat him with the same respect and courtesy that I have since he came home, but if he's looking for a friend or ally, he can just forget about it."

The elevator doors dinged and slid closed, and it was only then that Elizabeth closed her own door and leaned against it, a broad smile on her face.

Most excellent.


Sonny looked up when he thought he heard yelling from the hall. "What was that?"

"I dunno," Elizabeth shrugged, not even bothering to look up from her book. She was currently sprawled on her back on one of the olive green armchairs, her head on one armrest and her legs thrown over the other with a copy of Liquidation balanced on her tummy. "Didn't catch it."

"It sounded like Jason was saying, 'what do you mean you didn't find anything?'" Sonny insisted. "What do you think he meant?"

"I make it a point never to ask myself what Jason thinks," she replied, still completely unconcerned. She remained that way until the door to the penthouse was practically kicked down to reveal a fuming Jason whose piercing eyes immediately zoomed in on the brunette.

"Jason," Sonny frowned, putting down his paper. "What's wrong?"

"You," he growled, stalking over to where Elizabeth was wiggling her toes over the armrest. "What did you do?"

The brunette frowned and straightened, swinging her legs down to the floor and straightening her shirt. "What are you talking about?"

"I know you bugged the penthouse," Jason told her, bracing his hands on the armrests and leering menacingly down at her. "Tell me where."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Elizabeth replied firmly, though she was unable to back up the confidence of that statement with any physical gesture. As it was, Jason was towering over her, giving her no choice but to burrow back into the cushion. "What bug?"

"You know what bug!"

Sonny wasn't entirely sure where this was going, but he didn't like it. "Jason, I don't think-"

"I know you put it somewhere in the main room," he informed her, ignoring Sonny altogether. "I just had Stan sweep the whole place-"

"And did you find anything?" Elizabeth asked, her eyebrows rising in a perfectly orchestrated practiced gesture of curiosity and innocence.

Jason's lips tightened into a thin red line. "No, but-"

"Then obviously there's no bug there," the brunette drawled, moving her fingers as if she were drawing a diagram for him in the air. "And if there's no bug there, then obviously I couldn't have planted said non-existent bug."

The enforcer looked as if he wanted to throttle her, and would have, too, if Sonny hadn't been there. "You did it. I know it, you know it."

"What on earth makes you think I would have bugged your penthouse?" Elizabeth demanded, though really, it was more like a squeak as Jason's intimidating presence forced her to dig her toes into the cushion and seek to burrow back even further. "When would I have done it? Where would I have done it so that even Stan couldn't find it? And why would I have done it?"

"So you could use it to keep an eye on the competition." Jason's cerulean eyes sparkled with ferocity, all of it directed at a young woman that probably weighed as much as one of his legs. "You used it to find out what Spinelli was working on to impress Sonny and you made sure you made the same thing."

"Only better," Elizabeth informed him. "And no, I didn't."

"Then how do you explain that you had the same thing as he did?"

"I had a better thing than he did because I'm smarter and better suited for this job," she snipped. "I know our needs and I can anticipate changes that need to be made. I've been working with this organization for five years before you and your little lapdog came sniffing around, and would you look at that, our records are in order, two sets of books are carefully electronically maintained, and Sonny's not in jail. Pretty amazing for a girl, huh?"

"Don't change the subject," Jason barked, staring her dead in the eyes. "You know what you did."

"Obviously not," she fired back. "But you have a pretty good idea, don't you? Go ahead, Jason, tell us what else Spinelli came crying to you about. Is it my fault that the other kids don't play nice with him? Did I put them up to it? Am I to blame for the fact that he didn't get that Tonka Truck he wanted for Christmas?"

"Wherever you put it, I'll find it," Jason promised, his voice low and tight. "I don't care if Stan has to live in the penthouse; that bug will be taken out. And you won't ever do something like that again."

Elizabeth smacked her palms on the armrest, taking Jason by surprise with her outrage. "Hey, I don't care if you do get off on threatening girls, you putz, but don't get all pissy with me just because I know how to my job damn well. Maybe instead of coming barging in here, whipping it around and making accusations, your time would be better spent schooling your darling little protégé in how to play with the big girls. Because if the little twerp goes running straight for your skirts over something like this? He can use all the help he can get."

"At least he's playing fair."

"You're a mobster!" she burst out, her sapphire eyes narrowing lethally, just like she'd learned from her own mentor. "You don't get to rest on the security afforded by actually having morals!"

Dear God, he was actually regressing to her level of crazy. "Just tell me where you put it!"

"Just go straight to Hell!"

And there they were, her still sitting with her toes dug into the couch cushion, him glowering over her with his hands on the rest. A total stalemate – battle of wills – whatever you wanted to call it, it was clear to Sonny that neither one of them was going to budge and that they wouldn't get anywhere like this. And then he saw Jason's gaze betray him and drop to Elizabeth's mouth, and Sonny knew he had to break this up.

"Jason, I think you should leave," he instructed, moving over to the armchair to gently tug his friend back.

"Sonny, she-"

"I don't want to hear it," he interrupted, steering the enforcer to the door. "You come in here wildly accusing her, and she was good enough to tell you point-blank that she didn't do it. And that's that. Go home, tell Spinelli that I'll be expecting better behavior when it's time for the next challenge, and I'll see you guys for breakfast. Goodnight."

Elizabeth peered over the back of the armchair as Sonny shut the door in his very disagreeable best friend's face. Sonny stared at the door and shook his head, running a hand wearily through his curls. He'd catch Hell for that later – for the blatant favoritism he was showing Elizabeth – but honestly, he just didn't care. Jason coddled his kid; why didn't he get to coddle his sometimes?

"Wow," the brunette breathed, coming up behind him. "Thanks. You actually got him to leave. That's gotta be a record of some sort."

Sonny didn't dignify her comment and instead turned and stared the brunette hard in the face. Elizabeth stared back at him, her expression perfectly serious, but as the seconds ticked by, Sonny's tried-and-true method of figuring out whether his girl was lying to him won out. While his expression remained unchanging, Elizabeth slowly broke out into a giant grin, unable to hide her cheekiness.

The sight of the triumphant smile was enough to crack even Sonny, and the mobster laughed as he waved her off and headed toward the stairs. "I don't even want to know – that way, when Jason asks, I won't have to lie."

Elizabeth's giggles followed him all the way up the stairs and even though the whole thing amused him terribly, Sonny couldn't help but wonder if the rivalry was slowly spreading from the kids to him and Jason.


A day or two later…

"She definitely has a bug here," Spinelli murmured around the rim of his bottle of orange soda. "How else would she have immediately known that I made off with her monkey butt lamp and made me give it back? Tricksy Dragon."

"Stop saying that."

"Lord of the Rings, Stone Cold," he tried to explain. "Tricksy hobbitses – that's what Gollum, formerly known as Smeagol, says of Frodo and Samwise Gemji when he is leading them to Mount Mordor to dispose of the One Ring gifted to Frodo by his uncle Bilbo Baggins, who recorded the tales of his own adventures in yet another masterpiece of literary fiction known as-"

"How many times have I told you? I don't care about your cartoons."

This statement mortally wounded the boy. "They're not cartoons, Stone Cold. Lord of the Rings, a grand trilogy adventure penned by the ever-wise J. Double R. Tolkien, was converted to the big screen by the equally-wise Peter Jackson, who used-"

"Spinelli."

The boy burrowed down into the couch. "Fine."

Jason let out a sigh of relief and lined up his next shot.

"Notacartoon."

"Spinelli!"

"Fine."

A long pause ensued in which Jason sunk two stripes.

"Stone Cold?"

He slammed the butt of his cue on the floor. "What?"

Spinelli's green eyes peered apprehensively at him from over the back of the couch. "I don't feel safe here anymore."

Oh, for God's sake.

Jason dumped the cue on the table and walked over to the closet. "I'm going for a ride."

Spinelli nearly fell off the couch. "What? You're just going to leave me here with the Dragon's surveillance?"

"Yeah."

"But you can't! She pervades this penthouse! She has minions everywhere – how much do you really trust the NightNinja? Her eyes see all, just like the evil Eye of Sauron, and-"

Jason pulled open the front door and stepped out into the hall. "Bye, Spinelli. Have fun with your cartoons."

"NOT A CARTOON!"

Jason let the door slam shut behind him and headed toward the elevators when he saw Elizabeth poke her head out of Sonny's open penthouse.

"Hey," she called, waving at him with one hand while she nibbled on a frozen banana. "Tell Spinelli that they're actually in talks to turn L-O-T-R into an animated thing."

The door to Penthouse II flew open to reveal a stunned Spinelli, who was more flabbergasted by the news than the blatant evidence that Elizabeth had just been watching them. "What? Did I hear that right? No way!"

Elizabeth nodded, not noticing that a couple nuts fell off her banana and onto the floor. "Oh, yeah, it's totally in the works. Steve Jobs wants to turn it into a Pixar venture."

Spinelli pulled a face. "Hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, Orks, Uruk-hai, Ents, and men as clay-mation figures? Shoot me when that happens."

"I know!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "And he's not the only one vying for it, either. How much would it suck if Disney got the rights? We'd have, like, the Ent Song, just a poorly rehashed version of the Elephant March from the Jungle Book set to the same music."

"And you'd have to immediately kiss any original Biblical or philosophical content goodbye," Spinelli pointed out.

Elizabeth nodded emphatically. "God, I'd just want to kill myself."

If the elevator doors hadn't opened just then, and if the desire to leave hadn't been so incredibly tempting and necessary, Jason would have throttled both Elizabeth and his own young charge on the spot.

A/N: There is no talk of turning LOTR into an animated venture. So please, slowly, come down off the ledge.