See Chapter 1 for disclaimers.
Author's Note: Eliot to the rescue!
It was a tense group of thieves or former thieves waiting out the night in New York. The ransom call finally came at nine o'clock that night...sort of. Nate received a call from someone who refused to identify themselves, saying they had his daughter. As Eliot had instructed him, he demanded proof of life before continuing the conversation. A link with a live videofeed followed shortly, but the only accompanying message was to await further instructions. At least, that was the only intentional message. Hardison was able to trace the videofeed back to confirm the location Eliot was heading for... if these people had done their homework sufficiently to know about the ties between the current Leverage team and Nate and Sophie, they still seemed either woefully uninformed about how information technology worked, or to be underestimating Hardison's skills. He mentioned this to Eliot when the older man checked in after landing, but Eliot didn't know how to interpret it either. And he certainly wasn't going to rule out the possibility of a trap.
"I'm going to drive out there and see what I can see." Eliot said. "Did Parker have any suggestions based on the blueprints you found?"
"Does Parker ever not have suggestions when it comes to breaking into a building?" Hardison asked. "She said that you should call her once you've looked around its outside."
"Okay," Eliot replied. "Hey, Hardison, I'm going to need a birth certificate or something for the kid to get her on a plane once I've got her."
"I bet Nate has a copy," Hardison said. "I'll have it ready to send to you when you've figured out which airport you're flying back from."
"No, I need one that matches my ID," Eliot said. "They're not going to let some random stranger take a kid on a plane just because he's got a copy of the birth certificate."
"Right," Hardison said. "I'll get to work on that. Eliot, you're about to become a daddy."
Eliot growled and hung up.
He hid his rental car about half a mile from the location Hardison had got from the videofeed, keeping in mind that he was probably going to have to get out fast with a tired and cranky five-year-old. There weren't many hours of the night left and he wanted to be well clear by daylight, so his reconnaissance was fast, looking for entry points and trying to get a sense of how many men were in the building. He texted Hardison to get himself and Parker on comms; he needed Parker's insights on the building and Hardison's technology, but didn't want Nate and Sophie in his ear for this one.
The building appeared to be largely storage space, with a few offices located in one corner. From what little was visible in the background of the video, it looked like Stephanie was in a deserted office rather than out in the main warehouse. Smartphone screens were not the greatest devices for looking at blueprints, but Eliot could make out enough detail to pick out the two most likely locations to hold a child.
"Can you get me there, Parker?" he asked, knowing she had both a better view of the blueprints and would have spent the time he was on the plane studying them.
"Uh-huh," she said. "You just need to get into the ventilation shafts."
"Okay," Eliot said. "You do remember that I'm bigger than you, though, right?"
"Of course I remember!" Parker exclaimed. "But why is that important now?"
The sound of teeth being ground was particularly unpleasant over bone conduction comms.
"Am I going to fit, Parker?" Eliot ground out.
"Oh!" Parker said. She looked at the blueprints again, taking in the scale and doing some quick calculations against her estimate of Eliot's shoulder breadth. "You should...You did say you're not claustrophobic anymore, right?"
Some muttering might have followed. But if the ventilation shafts were the way in, they were the way in.
"Okay," he said. "I saw an access point on the south side of the building. I'll go in there and you walk me through it."
The south side was, unfortunately, well lit – and covered by security cameras. On the upside, there didn't seem to be any security patrols, and Hardison could take care of the cameras. So Eliot just needed to channel Parker's ability to seemingly climb anything. It was, at least, an old building, offering finger and toe holds for his three-storey climb. Leaving Parker in New York in case the Kansas location proved a wild goose chase might have been the right approach, but he was regretting it now. Especially as he inched himself into the narrow confines of the ventilation shaft. It was definitely a tight fit.
He followed Parker's directions to the first office he had marked as a likely location. Empty. But outside the second office, there were four men – all armed – engaged in a poker game, and the boots of a fifth man taking his turn napping just visible within the limited field of view Eliot had from the ventilation shaft. He knew there were at least two more men outside. It seemed like overkill for a stall and babysit job. A laptop was set up next to the makeshift poker table, presumably keeping an eye on the kid. Eliot crawled on. He needed to know whether there was anyone inside the room with the girl.
There wasn't. There was, however, still the matter of the camera on her.
"Hardison," he muttered, sotto voce, "can you use that link they sent you to access the webcam they have on her? Maybe loop it and buy me little time?"
"One step ahead of you," Hardison replied. "Set and ready when you are."
Eliot craned his head, trying to see a little more of the room. It didn't look like there was anyone there except the child huddled in the corner.
"Let's go," he said.
"Done."
Eliot slowly pushed the grate out from the opening of the ventilation shaft, trying to avoid it either scraping or falling, then lowered himself to the floor, dropping the last couple of feet to land lightly in a crouch. He paused, eyes sweeping the room and ears pricked for sounds of movement outside the door. Nothing. Even the kid in the corner hadn't moved. Eliot could see her breathing, so he figured she was asleep...he needed to wake her up without sparking any ear splitting shrieks when she found a strange man in the room with her.
Up close, he could see dust sticking to the tear tracks on her cheeks, but it didn't look as though she had been hurt or restrained in any way. He reached out, gently shaking her shoulder with one hand while the other covered her mouth, pre-empting any screaming.
Her body jerked beneath his hands and her eyes flew open as she came wide awake in an instant.
"Shhhh," he soothed. "I'm here to help you, but I need you to stay really quiet. Your mom and dad told me you have a question you need to ask me. If I take my hand away from your mouth can you whisper it to me?"
Slowly, she nodded. Eliot withdrew his hands, giving her an encouraging smile. She sat up, but stayed huddled in the corner.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
"Well, ma'am," Eliot gave her a wink and his best drawl. "We'd be the cavalry."
She giggled, then clapped her hands over her mouth as Eliot raised a finger to his lips in reminder.
"Mommy and Daddy sent you?" she whispered.
Eliot nodded.
"My name's Eliot," he told her. "You're Stephanie, right?"
She nodded. Then – definitely Sophie's daughter – held out a hand to him.
"It's nice to meet you, Eliot," she said, as Eliot solemnly took the proffered hand in his own.
"It's real nice to meet you, too, Stephanie," he told her. "I'm going to take you home, okay? But I need you to stay really quiet and do exactly what I tell you. Think you can do that?"
Stephanie nodded, and Eliot gave her another smile.
"Good. Now, do you hurt anywhere?"
She shook her head.
"That's good. I'm just going to talk to your Uncle Alec and Aunt Parker on the radio for a moment to figure out the best way for us to get out. Can you wait quietly for a minute?"
This time Stephanie's face clouded.
"What's wrong?" Eliot asked.
"I lost Parker," she whispered.
Eliot thought about that for a moment. An image of Sophie fondling a toy rabbit's ears earlier that day popped into his head.
"Is Parker your bunny?" he asked.
Stephanie nodded, eyes filling and tears spilling over to mark fresh tracks thought the dust on her face.
"Well, then I've got good news," Eliot reassured her. "Parker's with your mom, safe and sound at your house, and waiting for you."
Big, teary eyes searched his face, and apparently decided this was the truth. She gave him a smile and a nod, and wiped the tears away with her sleeve.
Eliot stood and moved away a step or two.
"Guys, you get all that?" he asked Hardison and Parker. And probably Nate and Sophie. He was pretty sure they would have talked Hardison into giving them comms by now, and Hardison just had them muted.
"Yeah."
"Yes."
"Okay, so we can probably sneak out the way I came in, but something about all this doesn't feel right."
"What do you mean?" Parker asked.
"Well, it makes sense insofar as there's the VP who has history with Latimer and VerdAgra who could have figured out that we were behind the stuff with the biotech company and that using Nate and Sophie's daughter was a good way to prevent or delay our releasing the proof we got ... but when they contacted Nate, the kidnappers didn't ask for that. On top of that, they sent a videofeed link that they must have known Hardison could trace, and they have way more guys here packing more heat than you'd need for an army of kindergartners," Eliot explained.
"You thinking it's a trap?" Hardison asked.
"Maybe," Eliot said. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," Hardison said slowly, the sound of rapid typing behind his words suggesting they were just to fill time while he looked for more information. "All I see on the cameras are a bunch of guys playing poker."
Well, that matched what Eliot had seen through the air vents.
"What about the outside cameras?" he asked.
"Nah, man. Nothing," Hardison told him.
Eliot chewed on that. He heard what Hardison was telling him, but his instincts were screaming that they were missing something.
"And you're sure you're looking at the right cameras?" he asked.
"There's not that many to choose from," Hardison told him. "And, anyway, I'm looking at all of them."
"No," Eliot stopped him, wishing that there was less of a language barrier between himself and Hardison sometimes. "I mean, are you sure you're looking at the cameras now?... That they haven't used any loops or whatever like you just did with the laptop they're using to watch Stephanie?"
Silence for a moment, then, once again, the rapid tapping of computer keys.
"Ummm...that's...yeah, hang on, I'm checking," Hardison said. "Okay, nothing weird going on with the laptop camera I'm looking at the guys playing poker through, but a couple of the outside security cameras are looped. I'll have them back to real-time in a second."
"No, wait," Eliot said urgently. "If you do that, will anyone watching at this end see the change?"
"Yeah, they will. You want me to hold off?"
"Yeah," Eliot agreed, running through options in his head. He was going to need to know what was waiting outside to form a real plan, but there a few things he could do first to minimise the amount of warning they had of his arrival. "Can you send the camera feeds for the outside cameras through to my phone?"
"Done," Hardison told him.
Eliot pulled his phone out and opened the link Hardison had sent. The images were grainy, but good enough for what he needed.
"Eliot? You got a plan?" Hardison asked.
"Kind of," Eliot grunted.
He went back over to Stephanie.
"Sweetheart, you ever play hide-and-go-seek?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Good," Eliot said. "I bet you're really good at it, too."
"Not as good as Aunt Parker," she told him.
Eliot chuckled.
"I don't think anyone's as good at it as Aunt Parker," he told her, smiling again as Parker agreed over the comms. "And right now, I need you to pretend you are Aunt Parker and we're going to hide you just like her."
"Eliot, what are you doing?" Hardison asked.
"Just buying a little insurance," Eliot told him.
Eliot pulled a cloth out of his bag and tied it over Stephanie's mouth and nose.
"This is just to keep the dust out so that you don't have to cough or sneeze, okay?"
She nodded.
"Okay, now you see that vent up there in the ceiling? I'm going to boost you up there and you're going to stay really still and quiet for a little while until I come back for you," he explained.
The little girl's eyes widened in fear as she looked from him to the hole in the ceiling and back again. Her hand tightened convulsively on his sleeve.
"You won't be alone," he reassured her. "I'm going to give you a radio that goes in your ear and Aunt Parker and Uncle Alec will keep you company."
Her grip relaxed a little.
"You ready?" he asked her.
Stephanie nodded.
Eliot lifted her up and helped her crawl into the air vent.
"Hardison?"Eliot called.
"I'm here," the hacker answered.
"I'm giving Stephanie my comm. so you and Parker can talk to her for a few minutes," Eliot explained. "I need you to keep her calm and quiet, okay?"
"Calm and quiet, sure," Hardison repeated.
"Good," Eliot said. "Give me five minutes and then do the thing with the cameras...and if I'm not back on comms in ten, send the police and everyone else you can think of out here."
"Got it," Hardison said.
Eliot pulled his earbud out and passed it up to Stephanie, showing her how to put it in her ear.
"Can you hear Uncle Alec and Aunt Parker?" he asked her.
She nodded.
"Okay, then what I need you to do is shuffle back a little from this hole and then just lie still and listen to them. You can talk, but do it very quietly, okay?"
She nodded again and started to do as he had told her.
"Good girl," he smiled. "I should be back in a few minutes. If I'm not, then you stay where you are until Aunt Parker tells you it's okay to make some noise or move. Do you understand?"
In the shadows of the vent Eliot could just make out another head bob.
"Okay. I'll be right back."
Silently, he slid the grille back over the vent opening and clipped it in to place, then went to the door leading through to the outer warehouse and listened carefully. It sounded like the card game was still under way. A chair scraped on the concrete floor as someone got up to get a drink. Eliot waited for the follow-up sound of them settling into the chair again, then slid through the door. Five men, all armed and apparently expecting him, if not right then, at some point. Granted, the fifth man had to shake off the remnants of his nap to join the fray, but some of them had enough training for Eliot to have his hands very full for the next few minutes, taking both the men and the weapons out of play, and two of them got a decent number of their own hits in. By the time he had them all down and immobilised, Hardison's link was showing new pictures of the world outside.
Someone had obviously been monitoring the cameras for signs of Hardison's incursion because the previously empty surroundings now featured an armed guard on each wall. So much for sneaking out the way he had come in: he and Stephanie would be sitting ducks against that brightly lit wall. Eliot had some more work to do.
He sent Hardison a quick text to add five minutes to his "call the police" deadline, then set off on a circuit of the building. Not knowing how the men were communicating or what their check in schedule might be, he had to take them down fast and silently. Zip-ties, as he knew form experience, could be escaped with a little bit of force if you knew the trick, but they were quick to apply and reasonably effective if used to secure the arms behind rather than in front of the body. Four unconscious men, wrists and ankles thus bound were soon occupying the nearest convenient shadowy corners, strips of duct tape covering their mouths as an extra precaution against shouted warnings. With no sign of anyone else around, Eliot slipped back inside the warehouse to retrieve Stephanie – but did stop to snag a dark jacket from the back of a chair to cover her lighter coloured clothing for the short trek back to the rental car.
"Stephanie?" he called quietly, as he reached up to remove the air vent cover. "It's Eliot. Are you ready to come out of there?"
A dark-haired head popped into view, a little more dust streaked, but otherwise okay.
"Hi," she said, a little muffled by the cloth still covering her mouth and nose.
"Hi," Eliot replied, lifting her down and removing the cloth. "Do you think I could have my radio back before someone sends the police out here to rescue us?"
Stephanie nodded
"Bye, Uncle Alec. Bye, Aunt Parker," she said, then pulled the earbud out and handed it to Eliot.
"Thanks," he said, putting it back in his own ear. "I'm back, guys. You see anything I should know about before we clear out of here?"
"Nope," "Nothing," the two voices in his ear responded.
Eliot helped Stephanie pull on the too-large jacket, zipping it up to cover her own clothes and then rolling the sleeves up so that her fingers poked out.
"Let's get you back to your Mom and Dad," he told her.