Hardison left the van in time to see their mastermind charging toward the corner where Quinn was talking to Sterling. Hardison rushed after him in an attempt, futile though it might be, to stop the train wreck he envisioned. In the end, he needn't have worried.
Hardison walked right up next to Nate, who seemed to be frozen where he stood like an ice sculpture, watching the scene unfold before him. It all happened so fast, he wasn't even sure of what he had seen. One minute, Sterling and Quinn seemed to be talking to one another, and the next minute, Sterling tipped forward until he was sprawled on the ground, unconscious. Half a second later, Quinn stiffened and fell backwards.
Nate stood staring for just another moment, then said, "Get them inside."
(0o0)
He became conscious of sound before he was awake enough to even see anything except shadows. It was a metallic whooshing sound, like metal scraping metal. Gradually the shadows grew lighter, with dark, blurry shapes in between the light patches. The blurriness was disorienting. Slowly, ever so slowly, the shapes coalesced into familiar objects, and he saw that he was in a room he had never seen before. He looked around, half expecting to see Nate sitting there waiting for him to wake up. The room appeared, at first glance, to be empty, but still the scraping sound continued.
As he woke more fully, he found himself so tightly bound that it was impossible for him to move more than an inch in any direction. When that realization hit, he fought to squelch the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He heard a muted thump somewhere next to him, and turned his head to see. He couldn't turn it far enough to see anything, as it turned out, but the movement made him dizzy, so he tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
He opened them a moment later to see Eliot Spencer, with a knife in one hand and a sharpening stone in the other, standing inches from his face, staring at him. He swallowed hard, stifling the surprised yelp that threatened to escape from the back of his throat.
"Sterling," Eliot growled.
"Spencer," Sterling said, and fairly spat the word. "Where's your boss?" Eliot detected the smallest of tremors in Sterling's voice, and decided it was best to keep the man off balance for now.
"I'm the boss on this job, Sterling. Might be best to concern yourself with me for the moment.
"What do you want, Spencer?"
"You and I are going to talk. If you answer my questions truthfully and satisfactorily, I might let you go. If not, I'll show you how I earned part of my reputation."
"I'm not afraid of you."
Eliot didn't respond, and that worried Sterling more than if he had. Men who talked tough were rarely a threat. Men who didn't have to talk tough, on the other hand…For all of Sterling's effort to act completely disinterested in what Eliot was doing, he was smart enough to know that Eliot didn't make idle threats and that the man next to him could go from mostly benign to deadly in a matter of seconds. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he saw the lethal looking knife that Eliot was sharpening. No one else would have noticed, but then no one else had Eliot Spencer's reputation.
Eliot let out a mirthless bark of a laugh and growled, "If I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead. No. I think you might prove useful for another purpose, if you can behave yourself while all of this is going down. If you betray me or my team, I won't be nearly as forgiving as Nate. I will kill you. Slowly."
He glared at Sterling, and Sterling glared back. Finally, Eliot spoke again. "First, I'd like to know what business you have with Quinn."
Sterling cast wildly around for what to say. "I wanted to hire Mr. Quinn for another job, and received word he was on a job here. I had no idea he was working for you."
"So you weren't keeping tabs on us?"
Sterling shook his head, but he wasn't quite meeting Eliot's eyes. Eliot growled his scariest growl and said, "You'd better not be lying to me, Sterling."
Forcing a bravado into his voice that he didn't actually feel, Sterling said, "Can I go now?"
"Oh, I don't think so. I think we'll keep you right here where we can keep an eye on you—at least until I speak to Quinn to verify your story—and maybe until my mission is complete."
"Kidnapping of an Interpol agent? Is that really the way you want to play this? A little amateur for Nate Ford's team, don't you think?"
"Hey," Eliot said, with a trace of indignance. "There's no kidnapping here. The mission I'm on is a dangerous one, and it involves people you haven't heard of and wouldn't care to meet. I'm just trying to keep you safe until it's over. If you decide to call it kidnapping after that, we'll deal with that when the time comes."
(0o0)
Nate sat perfectly still, staring at the unconscious man until he started to stir. His instincts certainly weren't as good as Eliot's. Moments later, Quinn sat up and looked around, trying to figure out where he was and what had happened. Nate looked at someone off to the side and said, "Chair."
Hands seized him under his arms on either side, and guided him into a chair. He tried to stop them, and that's when he realized his hands were tied, far past the point of getting them free. Even tied, they had to assume he was dangerous, just as Eliot was, so Nate was careful in his approach.
A string of invectives flew out of Quinn's mouth, and Nate simply said, "Come on. You can do better than that, Mister Quinn."
"Free me, and I'll show you exactly what I can do."
"We mean you no harm—we just have a few questions. Answer them for me, and we'll let you get back to work."
"And if I don't."
"Answer them for him, or you'll answer them for me." Quinn's head shot around to the source of the noise, and saw Eliot standing in the doorway. Nate looked a bit alarmed, and spoke quietly, as soon as Eliot was in earshot.
"You shouldn't leave Sterling alone. Not if you plan to keep him here."
Eliot looked at Nate sideways and said, "I didn't. Parker's with him, and she's got both a fork and her taser ready to go." Nate wasn't sure how he should respond to that, so he didn't respond.
Looking back at Quinn, he said, "I want to know what Sterling's business is with you, and I want to know now."
Oh, he had business with Sterling, all right. The damned fool. He'd told the man not to contact him before this job was finished. He was a good mind to tell the team what was going on, and ask for their help, but he couldn't take the risk. Trying to look as normal as possible, he said, "We don't have business together. He approached me about a job he wants me to do when I am done here. I told him he wasn't very smart to approach me while I was on another job, especially the kind of job we are on here. That's why I'll probably say no to the job he has for me when we finish."
Eliot looked hard at Quinn, and Quinn's mouth suddenly went dry. He felt as though Eliot could see through to all of his secrets. He tried to speak and started to cough.
"Why is it that you were so hard to find when I tried to hire you for that job with the team, but Sterling found out fairly easily that you were here? You're a hard man to find, normally, and we aren't that easy to find either."
"Want to try again?" Nate asked.
"That's easy to answer," Quinn said, glaring at Nate, who glared back. "Sterling is a past client. He had my number, and gave me a call. I told him I was on a job here, and that I would contact him when I finished. Apparently, he didn't want to wait."
Nate made eye contact with Eliot, indicating he wanted to talk to him in private. Eliot growled at Quinn and said, "I'm stepping out for a minute to talk to Nate. We'll continue this discussion when I get back. If you're not here…well, you know my reputation, but you don't know how long my reach is."
Quinn didn't move, nor did he look at either of the men. Eliot knew the man had heard him, though. With a final look back, he stepped out into the hallway. Closing the door behind him, he looked his mastermind in the eye.
"What do you think?" Nate asked.
"I think he is on shaky ground. I can't say anything he has told us is false,"
"But?"
"But I feel like he knows more than he is telling."
"So what do we do?"
"We need proof," Eliot said, considering. "We give him enough rope to hang himself."
