A/N: That's enough exposition! It's time to get to the plot!

Craig, Damien and Ashley all stared at their bosses in complete shock. Alec and Parker were currently compiling their careful stock of equipment as if the shocked faces were nothing unusual. They were both kindly strapping themselves into harnesses attached to a zip line in the center of the roof. It was highly unusual and the two leaders were acting as if this was something they did all the time. What grifter puts on a harness on a roof in Belbridge, Massachusetts?

"What are we doing here?" Craig finally asked when he couldn't take it any longer.

"We're reconning," Parker shrugged in response. "What does it look like we're doing?"

"It looks like we're on a roof forty stories in the air," Damien shrieked as he tried to keep as close to the center of the roof as possible.

"Don't be ridiculous," Parker sneered at the very idea, "It's only twenty."

"Twenty?" Damien stared at the grifter in disbelief that that was a difference.

"What's the job?" Ashley questioned to get back on task.

"Capitol Industries," Alec handed out the well-prepared folders to each member of his team before he went to strapping himself in a harness. "They're a subsidiary of Dubertech."

"A company our old crew took down a long time ago," Parker explained to the blank faces with a sad smirk.

"We have a reason to believe that they may have had prior knowledge of our grifter's medical records," Alec informed the group with a quick tug to tighten his harness.

"It's your job find those files and steal them," Parker informed the group at large.

"We're stealing files from a company that may be associated with Sophie Devereaux?" Craig asked just to be sure.

"Yep," Parker nodded vigorously.

"Pretty much," Alec announced with a shrug.

"You going to be okay?" Parker demanded of the mastermind as she carefully strapped herself in.

"It's only a twenty story drop," Alec shrugged in response.

"Seriously?" Parker stared at the mastermind in disbelief.

"Seriously," Alec smiled at the old banter. "I've been taking lessons."

"Sweet!" Parker smiled sadistically at the knowledge.

"Hold up!" Craig ordered before anybody could say or do something else. "This is a daytime job."

"Yeah," Alec nodded in agreement with the assessment, "So?"

"So," Ashley stared at her boss in disbelief, "Why are we here at four o'clock in the morning?"

"Parker wanted to jump off the building," Alec responded with shrug as if it were obvious.

"Parker wanted to jump off the building?" Damien stared at his boss in confusion.

"Uh-huh," Parker nodded gleefully before catapulting herself off of the roof. "Yippee!"

"She just jumped off the roof!" Damien stared at the blank space the grifter once occupied in disbelief that it just happened.

"Yeah, you want to try?" Alec grinned at the very idea. He was met with three matching faces of stunned surprise. "Suit yourselves!" Then he too was off the roof with a suitable slide down the zip line.

"They're crazy," Craig commented as he stared at the waving forms from down below.

%

"It's a clear sunny day today as we look into Belbridge, Massachusetts office building of…" Parker removed her walkie talkie long enough to stare at the mastermind for any hint of what the business was called.

"Capitol Industries," Alec remarked without even a hesitation to help her out. He stayed glued to his process of directing his team via the map on his phone.

"Capitol Industries," Parker proclaimed into her walkie talkie excitedly, "a subsidiary of Dubertech which is a former mark of our former team."

"Is she really going to talk in that voice the entire time?" Ashley demanded of the mastermind in obvious agitation of the grifter's childlike mimicry.

"Ooh, baby hitter's just like Eliot," Parker stated towards the mastermind with excitement, "Only she's polite."

"Parker, this is serious," Alec commented without turning away from his phone.

"I'm sorry but it's just so boring," Parker replied in a huff, "Usually I'm the one in the air vent or distracting the guard while somebody is getting the info."

"Hold up," Alec ripped his head away from his phone to stare at the thief in disbelief, "You've been with other teams since it happened?"

"You've been with other teams since Nate happened," Parker remarked in alarm of the offended look on the mastermind's face.

"I've been with this team!" Alec retorted jealously, "I've been with our team! There is only one team I've been with besides our first one! This is it!"

"Oh, don't be such a baby," Parker rolled her eyes at the mastermind before she quickly turned back to watching the perimeter for anything out of the ordinary. "I was cashing in on a favor."

"As long as it doesn't involve Marcus Starke or Chaos," Alec remarked bitterly into his phone in a pout. Parker just looked a little too guilty at the mention of Chaos' name and the mastermind caught it. "You worked with Chaos?"

"It was one time and only because I had to in order to steal back a painting for this really nice old couple…" Parker began to excuse herself with an embarrassed smile.

"Oh I don't believe this," Alec grumbled into his phone in misery. "Now, I know how Nate felt when Sophie told him she used to date Marcus Starke."

"She didn't exactly admit it," Parker sighed in explanation. "I also didn't date Chaos. He kissed me but then I slapped him so…"

"He kissed you?" Alec stared at the grifter with wide dangerous eyes.

"But then I slapped him," Parker nodded as if it were no big deal.

"I'm gonna kill him," Alec hollered towards the woman with jealousy in his every move. "After we finish this, I'm gonna kill him."

"Guys!" Ashley interrupted pointedly, "Do you mind telling us what files we will be stealing before you get too distracted?"

"Devereaux," Alec glared at the grifter in the car with him as he answered. "D-E-V-E-R-E-A-U-X! You are looking for any file with Devereaux or Ford! F…"

"I think I know how to spell it, Alec," Craig quieted the man down with a roll of his eyes before he gingerly tucked his way into the executive office. "I'm looking now."

"It may be under one of her aliases," Parker suggested after a moment.

"You mean one of her other aliases," Alec fired back in thought. "Sophie Devereaux was an alias too, remember?"

"Yeah but it kind of wasn't," Parker shrugged in response. "They might have it filed under one of her aliases. Unless they knew her real name."

"How would they know her real name?" Alec questioned of the thief in confusion, "Nate didn't even know her name and he was sleeping with her."

"Touché," Parker nodded in response.

"Ewe," Damien scrunched his nose in disgust, "Okay, we've got video and audio now. In case you guys wanted to actually think about something other than your past."

"Hey, it's our past that we're doing this for!" Alec and Parker both shouted into the comms at the exact same time.

"Okay, but not so loud," Ashley winced at the ringing in her ear. "We still need to hear ourselves in order to get out of this mess."

"Oops," Parker grimaced towards the mastermind with a blush appearing on her features.

"Any luck?" Alec question pointedly ignoring the pink glow emanating from the grifter for the sake of his own mind.

"Working on it," Craig breathed heavily into the comms to show his frustration, "It would be easier if you would actually give me time to look before you asked."

"Please," Parker scoffed at the thief's reply unimpressed, "I always had the stuff when Nate asked."

"You also complained whenever he asked you all the time," Alec replied kindly. "Craig's not bad at this whole thief thing."

"I could still school him," Parker shrugged in response, "If I still did that."

"Can you do a long con?" Alec asked in a gentle whisper.

"I'm better than I used to be," Parker offered quietly, "but I'm not Sophie."

"Before you get sentimental," Craig interrupted pointedly, "I think I found it."

"What is it?" Parker and Alec questioned desperately into the comms.

"Was Kristy Connelly one of her aliases?" Craig cringed at the loud noises coming into his ear.

"Yes!" Parker and Alec replied in tandem again with glares firing off at each other for allowing their desperation to show.

"Then just let me… uh-oh!" Craig glared at the sound of people coming towards him. "I thought the office was supposed to be closed today, Damien!"

"It's not my fault if somebody decided to come in to work some extra hours," Damien explained in anger of the implication. "I hack computers, I can't hack people."

"Sophie could hack people," Parker remarked with a crazed expression towards the mastermind at the memory.

"Craig, you'd better…" Alec began to order.

"I'm out but without the file," Craig reported in answer, "I'm going to use the camera scope though. See what I can get from the video footage."

"Alright," Alec started fiddling around with his phone immediately, "I've got the scene where I'm at. Ashley?"

"I'm watching," Ashley replied from a nearby office close to the executive room. "Sorry, Craig, I had to get out of Dodge before I could give you a warning. She came out of nowhere."

"No problem," Craig whispered in response. He couldn't really say anything else considering his current situation.

"Ooh, she's blonde," Damien observed pleasantly. "Her hair's a bit darker than Parker's."

"It looks like we've got our mystery buyer," Alec grinned when he recognized the guy with the woman on screen. "The guy she's with is the C.E.O."

"He's wearing a toupee," Damien giggled at the news.

"Facial recognition?" Parker questioned of the mastermind in confusion.

"Oh right," Damien grimaced as he quickly worked his magic to get the software up and running. "I forgot. Sorry, Alec."

"Don't let it happen again," Alec ordered with a grin directed at the grifter's little reminder. "You're supposed to…"

"I know, I know," Damien nodded in reply, "I'm supposed to always run face recognition when doing recon. I'll do better."

"Wow," Parker remarked with wide eyes, "He's exactly like…"

"Finish that sentence and I swear you will pay," Alec ordered of the grifter in a friendly growl.

"Nate," Parker winked at the dangerous glint shining in the mastermind's eyes. "I was going to say Nate."

"Looks like we got a match," Damien replied happily as he started sending the information along. "She's one hot blonde. Hey, I think I know that name."

An image of a blonde with blue-green eyes appeared on the hitter and mastermind's screens. The woman had hard facial features and wore large rimmed sunglasses in most of the photos. The list of names appearing on the screen were nothing compared to the look the mastermind and grifter were sharing at the moment. Parker and Alec were both staring evil daggers into the image on the screen.

"Is that…?" Ashley questioned with wide eyes at the name and picture right before her eyes.

"It!" Parker growled as she recognized the grifter immediately.

"Tara Cole," Hardison hissed out the word with obvious loathing, "The only thing in the world I hate more than Chaos and Damien Moreau combined!"

"I should have pitched her off that roof when I had the chance," Parker thought aloud with a dark wistful smile suddenly appearing on her face.

"She was on our side back then," Hardison sighed at the grifter's thinking, "We know better now!"

"They're gone," Craig explained as he politely slithered into the air duct system before he looked at his phone. "Let's take her down. We've got the man power."

"We don't know why she's here yet," Parker stated in disappointment, "but she's on my list!"

"I knew I should have looked into that car explosion more when I had the chance," Hardison stated at the news. "Come on, we've got to regroup before she realizes how many of us there are."

"How did she survive that car explosion?" Parker demanded angrily as the mastermind immediately put the car in drive and started towards their hideout.

"I don't know," Hardison admitted sadly, "but we're going to make sure she stays dead this time around, Mama!"

"Woa," Damien gasped at the mastermind's statement, "We're killing people now?"

"We're not killing anyone!" Ashley replied to her brother's statement immediately, "Right Alec?"

"You're not," Parker stated as she shared a conspiratorial look with the mastermind, "We are!"

%

"We don't kill people!" Craig shouted at the pair in shock, "If you guys kill then everybody is going to think we all kill!"

"And we don't need that kind of attention!" Ashley finished for her boyfriend immediately.

"We're not going to draw any attention," Parker rolled her eyes at the dramatic hitter as she politely poured herself a bowl of cereal. "Alec and I know how to do subtle."

"Um," Craig stared at the grifter in disbelief, "You guys used to work for Nathan Ford. Subtle isn't exactly in your vocabulary."

"Can you trace any of our jobs back to us?" Alec demanded of the thief with disbelieving eyes.

"Nobody can," Damien explained without hesitation, "Most people believe you guys are ghost. Your reps are purely rumor based. There's no way anybody could prove anything."

"Even your supposed clients are a dead end on that train," Ashley sighed in disappointment.

The grifter and mastermind stared at the pair in confusion. There was no way on Earth they could have possibly known that at the drop of a hat.

"Oh," Ashley smiled guiltily when she noticed the confused faces, "We went on the hunt to find out information about your team back when we thought you guys were all dead."

"To be fair," Damien finished for his sister with a smirk, "We didn't think you were dead. We thought you guys were still running underground. That's how we heard the rest of the story actually."

"That and Craig told us on the plane ride over here," Ashley gestured towards the surrounding apartment to explain the here in the statement.

"Damien," Alec pointed towards the hacker in determination, "Find her. Ashley, Craig, do talk to your sources and see if you can get an inside man. I don't want a moment where Tara Cole is out of sight, do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir," The three saluted their boss as they hurriedly got to work.

%

"None of my sources are going to be any help to us," Craig plopped into his designated chair in disappointment. "They all repeat that It is dead and I should stop asking. Basically, they know she's alive and her backer has kept them all scared to the point of no return."

"No luck at my end either," Ashley reported barely even a second behind her beau, "I got asked to never return when I mentioned It's name. Somebody went through a lot of trouble to keep her affairs away from the underground."

"Any more good news?" Parker grumbled at the cold hard facts before them.

"Yeah," Craig sighed in frustration, "I went to get the file again while I was out. It was gone and it can't be coincidence because there was note informing me to tell Hardison to keep coming."

"Great," Alec snarled in disgust. "She's playing with us."

"Dudes, look at this," Damien smiled as he pulled up the footage from their newest target, "She's at a park!"

"Why is she at a park?" Ashley demanded with a crinkled nose in confusion.

"Maybe she's scouting for something," Craig shrugged in response.

"Like what?" Ashley barked at her boyfriend in shock, "She's at a park, Craig!"

"She has a kid with her," Alec noticed as he looked at the scene, "Zoom in closer, Damien! Let's figure out why It is at a park."

"Oh good," Parker hummed at the mastermind's statement, "So we're all calling her It now! That's good! I thought I was going crazy for a minute there!"

The three youngest members of the team just stared at the grifter in complete shock of what she said. There was absolutely nothing else for them to do in a situation such as that.

"D-man!" Alec yelled at the hacker angrily, "Zoom in! We need to figure out her angle!"

"If she's resorted to kidnapping I can't be held accountable for my actions, Alec!" Parker announced to the ex-hacker with nothing but pure honesty on her tongue.

"Okay, clearing up the image now," Damien reported as he began typing on his keypad again, "It's hard to get a handle on which kid is hers."

"Go back to when the car first gets there and enhance the images from that," Alec ordered sternly as his and his grifter's eyes became glued to the screen.

"Alright," Damien sighed as he began typing quickly all around the room, "Just a few more seconds forward… Oops, two seconds back! Enhance! And here is what the kid looks like!"

"Oh," Ashley sighed as she stared at the tiny image of the child coming from the back of their mark's car, "She's a brunette! The father's a brunette, we can use that!"

"Can we get a closer image than that?" Craig demanded as he tried to get more information from the tiny image of the tiny person.

"Parker!" Alec gasped as he reached out and took the grifter's hand in his own.

"It can't be," Parker concluded as she squeezed the mastermind's hand tightly, "Enhance the image more, Damien!"

The hacker did as instructed and everybody stared at the image in dismay. The tiny person coming out of the back of the traitor's car was a marvel to behold. She had dark brown hair that went down to her shoulders in wispy curls of perfection. She had cheekbones and other facial features that were hauntingly familiar to the two leaders of the crew. The young girl had bright blue eyes that every member of the team recognized as belonging to the man who lived in the upstairs portion of the apartment they were in.

"Is that…?" Damien questioned with wide eyes as he zoomed in closer to observe the scene of the pair.

"Sophie?" Alec and Parker gasped in surprised unison of the small figure they were staring at on the screen.

"Sophie?" Ashley demanded at the mastermind and grifter's comment.

"Alec," Parker cried out at the news they were witnessing, "that's…"

"Nate and Sophie's daughter," Alec finished for the blonde with wide eyes.

"Wait a minute," Craig gasped at the two's statement, "Are you saying that Nathan Ford and Sophie Devereaux had a daughter?"

"No way," Ashley snorted as she scrutinized the picture of the young child with more enthusiasm than before.

"Sophie told Nate she was pregnant," Alec remembered with shock covering his face.

"What does that mean?" Damien demanded of the pair in complete confusion by the way they were acting.

"We always thought she lost it because of all the drugs," Parker groaned at the news.

"You mean you didn't know she was pregnant even though she told you she was?" Damien grumbled at the pair.

"She could have just dreamed it up because of the drugs," Alec explained to the blonde beside him in complete disbelief.

"We were wrong, Alec," Parker smiled at what this meant, "Sophie really was pregnant and she was trying to tell us!"

"Tara stole her baby," Alec whimpered at the knowledge, "It stole our grifter's baby!"

"But why?" Ashley demanded as she continued to follow the information with renewed interest, "Why would she betray you guys for a baby?"

"We can save Nate!" Parker realized at the news, "We can get our revenge and achieve the one thing Sophie always wanted! We can save Nate, Hardison!"

"We can avenge Sophie and Eliot," Alec nodded at the thief's thoughts, "We can finally kill the woman responsible for tearing our first family apart!"

"There's only one problem," Craig pointed out in interruption of the pair's fabulous plans, "They know we're coming! They know how you think, Alec, and they're going to recognize Parker a mile away! We can't defeat them in those kinds of conditions!"

"Craig's right," Ashley nodded at the thief's assessment, "Even if I get close enough to break Tara Cole's neck I still can't steal that kid in broad daylight! I'm sorry, Alec! We can't do it!"

"I can change the DNA test results and forge the documents to make it look like you guys are the girl's rightful parents but by the time the court system gets involved they'll be long gone," Damien stammered in sadness of the news that they were finally failing their mastermind.

"There's one mind they won't expect coming," Parker arched a brow at the very idea.

"No, Parker," Alec shook his head at the grifter's thinking process, "You know we can't!"

"Come on," Parker begged the mastermind with vigor, "Who better to command our revenge?"

"Parker, we can't," Alec explained with painful gasps of air, "You said it yourself. He's practically living just to breathe air."

"Are they suggesting who I think they're suggesting?" Craig demanded of the other members of their team in confusion.

"No way, man," Damien laughed at the news, "They wouldn't dare bring in the legend for this! He's too broken! They can't!"

"Oh my god, they are!" Ashley hissed as she realized exactly where their leaders' conversation was going.

"Hardison," Parker hissed with a twinkle finally shining in her eyes that had been missing for far too long, "You know this is right! Nate's the only one who can get us our revenge!"

"Yeah," Alec reluctantly agreed with his grifter's statement, "But it's going to be impossible to bring him in on this!"

"It's Nate," Parker quipped back with a winning smile, "He only does the impossible!"