(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 7
It was almost ten the next morning, and Nate was preparing for the team to arrive to go over what was known and what was going to be done about his niece's wayward fiancé. Marissa herself had enjoyed the warm and fuzzy feeling of too much scotch before falling asleep on the couch, emotionally exhausted and somewhat drunk. Nate hated that this was so hard on her. He could deal with the usual victims of crime and deceit, because he didn't know them personally. His crusade for justice was impersonal these days, and therefore much easier to handle.
Marissa was his blood relation and a young woman he had loved from the day she was born. To have her back in his life so suddenly might have been a wonderful surprise if it had not been due to her suffering the way she was. Bryan was up to something, that much was clear, and whether it was purely business fraud, a sordid affair, or a little of both, he was going to help her overcome this.
Right now, all Marissa wanted to overcome was the hangover she had woken up with. She really wasn't used to drinking at all, but apparently she was making some pretty crappy decisions lately, like throwing herself on Eliot Spencer and drinking scotch until she more or less passed out. Uncle Nate had woken her up when the team were due to arrive and she had opted to head outside for some fresh air in the hopes of both waking herself up and staving off the feeling of nausea in her stomach, while Nate made coffee and organised himself.
The first of the team to arrive was Eliot who found Marissa sat on the step to the back door of the building. She didn't look so great, which he might have expected. Women tended to get upset when the men in their lives turned out to be lying scum bags, and that much was understandable. Still, Marissa looking like she wanted to throw up right now was maybe taking things a little far.
"Hey," he greeted her. "You okay?"
"A world of no," she told him, smiling anyway because she knew a lot of this was probably her own fault. "Let's just say I'm my uncle's niece right now," she said with a sigh, "only scotch doesn't agree with me. Lack of practice, I guess."
Eliot took her moving over on the step as an invitation to join her and parked himself beside her then.
"You think he's worth the headache?" he asked her, resting his elbows on his knees.
"Honestly?" Marissa sighed. "I don't know anymore. The truth is, I was kind of hoping I'd come here, you guys would do your thing, and it'd turn out I'm just a paranoid bitch for ever suspecting Bryan of anything."
"Hey," Eliot looked mad at her for something then. "Maybe I don't know you that well, but I'm pretty good at reading people. You might be paranoid, but you're not a bitch," he assured her. "Trust me, I've met my fair share, I should know."
Marissa chuckled at the way he said it, smiling genuinely at the compliment he paid her at least. He didn't seem to think any the less of her for the way she behaved so far in Boston, in spite of the fact she wasn't too impressed with herself. Deflecting the attention of the conversation felt like a good plan then and she was pretty sure Eliot wouldn't mind.
"I'll bet you've had more than your fair share of girls throwing themselves at you, huh?" she said with a look.
Eliot opened his mouth to deny it but quickly closed it again when he realised there was little to no point.
"I've never gone short of company," he settled on in the end, the most honest answer he was prepared to give. "You're not exactly lacking in looks and style yourself," he said then, looking at her in such a way as to make it very clear he was thinking of the first time they met.
"I told you that really wasn't me," she shook her head then, blushing a pretty pink, Eliot noticed. "Not that I don't… I mean, seriously, look at you," she said with a giggle akin to a teenage girl because she felt so dumb saying it, "but y'know I really wouldn't have tried anything if I'd know how things were with you and Parker…"
"Me and Parker?" Eliot both looked and sounded completely shocked as he echoed the words she had said. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, come on!" Marissa gasped with as much genuine surprise as was showing on his face. "Seriously? She obviously likes you."
"No way," the hitter shook his head. "Parker is crazy, and yeah, okay, I like her, I'd go hell and high water to protect her because she's on my team, but there is no way we're... close like that," he assured her.
Marissa could've argued with him, since she was pretty sure she was right. Parker was clearly jealous when she heard that the two of them had made out and that alone screamed 'jealous girlfriend' to Marissa. Maybe she was wrong, but she doubted it. Perhaps Eliot was just being a blind guy like so many before him. Right now, he was one of the few friends Marissa had, she wasn't about to make him angry or upset, it just wasn't worth it.
As if on cue, Parker showed up at that very moment, with Hardison trailing behind her. The second she saw Eliot and Marissa sat on the step together she looked pissed. The hitter considered he was just being paranoid when he thought he saw such a reaction, but the way Marissa was smiling now suggested she considered her point had been made for her.
"We all cool here?" Hardison checked, feeling as if he was missing something amongst all the pointed looks between the other three.
"Let's just get to this meeting already," said Eliot, looking less than impressed, as he got up and turned to go inside.
The others followed without another word, and the smile soon dropped off Marissa's face as she was forced to recall what this particular meeting was all about. Her lying, cheating ass of a fiancé was definitely up to no good and she was about to get the full details on the whys and the wherefores. She almost didn't want to know, almost wished she could run back home and forget all about this, carry on as if nothing happened, but her Uncle Nate was right, she wasn't that person. She couldn't just let this be swept under the rug, couldn't let Bryan get away with it if he was either a bent businessman, a cheater, or both.
Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself against whatever came next and took a seat with the team who were facing the vid-screen whilst Nate walked in front of it. Sophie had seemingly come in the other door and the crew were now assembled, ready for the briefing.
"Okay, let's start with the facts," the mastermind began. "What do we know for sure about Bryan Winters?"
"Well, I'm guessing you didn't hear all that happened between me and him?" said Sophie, looking between Nate and Marissa who shook their heads.
Hardison took the pause in conversation as a cue to take over, hitting his clicker and bringing up a bunch of written details on the screen.
"Seems your girl Annette Fuller is some hot-shot business woman doing some shady dealings," he explained. "See, she arranges for other like-minded business-type individuals to go to these conferences..."
"Like the one at the Hyperion Hotel?" Marissa guessed.
"Kind of, 'cept she has nothing to do with this one in particular," Hardison told her.
"According to Bryan, Annette's conferences are non-existent, usually events that were going to take place but have since cancelled," Sophie cut in. "She sells these unsuspecting assorted executives everything they need; flights, accommodation, tickets to the conference itself, duping them into paying for a whole bunch of stuff for a meeting they can't attend because it's not happening."
"But when these businessmen find out there's no meeting, they're gonna want their money back, right?" asked Parker, feeling a little confused.
"Sure, but they got no leg to stand on with Annette Fuller," Hardison told her. "These folks sign up for her deal and right there in the fine print is a clause that states if the conference gets cancelled she don't owe you jack," he explained, zooming in on a document he had presumably found on the Internet.
It showed quite clearly then just exactly what the hacker had said, though the print had been incredibly small before the enlargement.
"What does this woman and her scam have to do with Bryan?" asked Marissa, almost afraid to ask the question, but knowing she had to.
"He's feeding her clients," said Eliot, having heard all this when Sophie was being told first hand. "Probably getting a cut from the profit she makes."
"Which would explain the money moving around your accounts," noted Nate as he looked to his niece.
Now all attention seemed to be on the young woman at the centre of this whole mess. It was her fiancé that was involved in this, and ultimately her decision how they were to proceed. Marissa wasn't sure she wanted the responsibility of deciding what came next, she wasn't even sure if what Bryan was doing was so very bad. She still had her doubts as to what else might be happening between him and this Annette person but having five people staring at her, waiting for her to tell them what she wanted to do next was just way too much pressure.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say," she admitted, putting her face in her hands a moment, then pushing her fingers back through her hair. "I can't take all of this in, I mean, what would you guys normally do?"
All eyes shifted from Marissa then and over to Nate. He was the one who ought to explain this, after all, it was his niece asking, and he was the one to know best how to deliver the news that usually they'd bury people like Bryan and Annette for their crimes.
"Well, these people are duping others out of cash, so we would usually stop that," he shrugged, "by any means necessary."
"Okay," Marissa nodded, though she said nothing else, apparently still thinking hard about what to do.
"Look, if you want time to think about this..." Eliot suggested. "I mean, we don't know if he's definitely having an affair or anything."
Parker snorted at that comment, barely holding in the laughter that rose in her throat.
"Oh come on!" she rolled her eyes as the hitter glared at her. "A hotel room with a double bed?" she reminded them. "The honeymoon suite? Even I know that means sex."
The gang had to admit that it seemed pretty obvious, and as Parker quite rightly said if she was seeing it then any 'normal' person who understood human behaviour certainly would.
In her heart of hearts, of course Marissa knew the odds were she was being cheated on, but having it laid out before her like this, the realisation suddenly seemed to hit her far too hard. Her life was wrecked. The man she loved was a crook and a thief, not like Uncle Nate and his crew that helped people, but out for his own gain. What hurt more was knowing he was probably both working and sleeping with some other woman, some woman he might just love, given the way he'd spoken to Sophie last night.
Five pairs of eyes boring into her and her head spinning with too many thoughts, Marissa did all she could think to do; she got up and ran. It was a childish thing to do, harking back to her days as a teenager when bolting to her room and locking herself in seemed like the best of plans when she was angry or upset. It was a little silly now, especially here in Boston where she had nowhere much to run to, but she couldn't help herself. She was out of the front door before her brain ever caught up with her legs, and stood on the stairway, crying hard and breathing heavily.
"Missy!" she had vaguely heard her uncle call to her as she left, but any other words spoken were easily lost as she slammed the door behind her.
"Shouldn't somebody maybe go after her?" asked Hardison after a long pause in which he had half expected Nate to give chase.
He seemed reluctant, probably because he wouldn't know what to say for the best right now, maybe even because his head was so much in the game he didn't want to lose focus. Shockingly, it was Eliot who got up, making a big deal, as if it was travesty for him to have to move.
"Sure, he'll go after her," said Parker the moment the hitter was on his feet. "After all they did have sex."
"We did not have sex, Parker!" he turned and snapped at her from a couple of paces away.
"But you wanted to," she challenged him the very next moment.
Eliot ignored her on the grounds that if he answered he was going to end up in hot water with one or all members of the team. Admitting he'd like to bed Nate's niece was going to lead to bad things between himself and the mastermind, plus it had the potential to start an argument with Parker and consequently everybody else. If he denied it, well, that'd be a bare faced lie that no doubt Sophie and possibly the others would see through. It wasn't worth the hassle, and so Eliot said nothing at all as he jogged to the door and headed out to find Marissa.
"He's not going to be any help to her," sighed Sophie, getting up herself and glaring at Nate. "Men can't handle anything properly," she huffed as she strode out of the apartment too.
The grifter soon realised that neither Marissa nor Eliot had gone far. They were in the stairwell, him trying to talk sense into her, reminding her they'd agreed to be friends, but getting mad when she wouldn't listen. She wanted to run straight to the hotel, have this whole thing out with Bryan apparently, which Sophie totally understood. Of course, that didn't mean it was the best idea.
"Eliot," she interrupted with her usual grace. "Maybe you could pop back upstairs so I can talk to Marissa a minute," she suggested with a look that said it wasn't a request so much as an order she hoped he would follow.
He didn't have to do as she said, and if he really didn't want to then he wouldn't, but Eliot knew that out of all of them Sophie probably stood most chance of getting through to the very upset and confused young woman sat between them now. She was built for talking people around to her way of thinking, but she could also help them come to answers they needed and help them out of confusion if she set her mind to it.
Without a fight, the hitter walked away, and Sophie carefully lowered herself down onto the step beside Marissa, mindful of her skirt that rode up as she did so.
"I'm sorry," Nate's niece apologised, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm such a kid, just running out like that."
"Hey, we're all allowed to lose it occasionally," Sophie sympathised, offering a handkerchief to the younger woman which she gratefully accepted. "This is a big deal for you, we all understand that. Bryan is the man in your life, someone you thought you could trust, and in at least one way if not two, he's proved unreliable."
Marissa choked on a laugh that lacked humour then.
"Unreliable?" she echoed with an undignified snort. "That's like the understatement of the century."
"Perhaps," agreed Sophie with a wry smile, "but at the end of the day he is just a bloke, one man, and we can deal with him," she promised, putting a hand to Marissa's arm and getting her attention. "We can play this any way you want. We can all back off and you can storm over to the Hyperion, knee this guy in the bollocks and tell him to go to hell, and that's fine," she explained. "But, that pain doesn't last. Your Uncle Nate and the team, we can hit him where it really hurts, we can make this man that hurt you really suffer," she said with relish.
Marissa couldn't deny that screwing over Bryan would feel good, given how he was apparently messing up the financials of many a businessman, as well as probably cheating on her. One way or the other, he had definitely proven not to be the man she thought he was, far removed from the person she had fallen in love with. She wasn't going to marry him now if he was the last guy on Earth, and honestly, she really wanted to see him go down for all this.
"Okay," she nodded, sniffing into the hanky a moment later. "I do, I want him to suffer, for everything," she said with a little more confidence then. "If you can make it work?"
"Oh, sweetheart," said Sophie as she got to her feet and held out a hand for Marissa to take. "This is what we do," she told her easily, helping her up.
The two women headed back up to Nate's apartment, both finding a smile by now, albeit Marissa's was decidedly watery. There was a bit more confidence in her step as she headed in through the door with Sophie on her heels, only for a mad scramble to take place in front of the vid-screen.
"What's going on?" she asked curiously, as Hardison hammered away on his keyboard, whilst Eliot and Nate seemed to be trying in vain to hide the vid-screen that was far too large to fully obscure.
"Nothing, nothing," all three were saying, whilst Parker stayed quiet throughout.
"Come on, whatever it is I want to know," said Marissa, looking pointedly at the blonde as she sat down. "Please, Parker," she urged her, sure that at least she would tell her the truth, completey unfiltered.
"They don't want you to see the camera feed to the Hyperion," she shrugged. "They think if you see Bryan kissing Annette, you'll run off again."
Though Eliot and Nate both glared at Parker for her trouble, Marissa barely noticed and was certainly glad to be told the truth. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath as she looked at the pair trying to block her view.
"Please move," she urged them, and though neither men looked eager, they did do as she asked then. "Hardison, please?" she said to the hacker, and with a sigh he hit the button that put the pictures back on the screen.
Everyone waited for Marissa's reaction, assuming there would be a scream, some tears, an angry shout. Instead, it was Sophie that reacted first and loudest.
"No way!" she gasped as she watched the couple on the screen part from their kiss. "Nate, that is not Annette Fuller," she said definitely.
"Then who is she?" he asked, as Marissa continued to stare at her cheating fiancé a moment, and then back over her shoulder at Sophie for her answer.
"She's a grifter."
To Be Continued...
