A/N: Chapter one takes place 3 weeks after the prologue and don't worry you'll eventually find out what Claire's been up to for those 3 weeks.
Happy reading!
angellwings
PART THREE: Brave and Wild
by angellwings
Chapter One: Small Town Case
"I gotta be honest, Eliot, I'm not sure this one's for us," Nate said as soon as the potential client was out the door. "I know you have a weakness for food—"
"Who else are they gonna turn to?" Eliot asked him. "Technically, Henderson hasn't done anything illegal so they can't go to the police. Besides in a tiny town like that they don't have the resources to really investigate. And in the South, barbecue is more than food, Nate. It's a tradition and a freakin' artform. Particularly for the Carolinas. They got their own style of barbecue. It's named after them, dammit. And that family just had their legacy stolen from them. Each restaurant has a different recipe and a different philosophy on cooking the meat. This Henderson guy swiped it out from under them and then intimidated them all the way outta town. Away from their home. You're telling me that of all the jobs we've done, this one is not for us? No, no way. If we don't help them, no one will."
Nate let out a long suffering sigh and then grinned at Eliot in amusement. "I never really had a say in this, did I?"
"Well, that all depended on whether or not you gave me the right answer," Eliot told him.
"And the right answer is to take the job, obviously," Nate said with a smrik.
"Obviously," Eliot agreed.
"Alright, I guess we're going to North Carolina. Since you agreed to this, you get to tell Hardison," Nate said as he stood from the table and headed upstairs.
Eliot smirked after him. "It would be my genuine pleasure."
Hardison was going to hate this.
"Hell no. No. I'm not going, Eliot. We just got back from that case in Hell's Rump, Nevada and yeah it was hot but at least that was a dry heat! Now you want me to suffer in humidity? No. No."
"It was Pahrump, not—you know what, it's too late, man. Nate already said we're going," Eliot said with a smirk.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Hardison asked him knowingly. "Look man, I know you haven't heard from your girl in three weeks but that's no reason to take this stuff out on me."
Eliot rolled his eyes and shook his head as he mumbled under his breath, "I've heard from her. Once."
Parker giggled at them. "Please, he'd do this whether or not he'd heard from Claire and you know it. Besides, what do you have to complain about?" Parker asked him. "You spend most of every job in air conditioning or a running van. If anyone's going to be in the heat it's gonna be Eliot or myself and I'm fine with this job. Where there's barbecue there's usually French fries. Right, Eliot?"
Eliot gave her a lopsided grin and nodded.
"I'll go anywhere there's decent French fries," Parker said gleefully.
"Good, that's settled then," Eliot told them. "I'll call the Speedmans and let them know we're on our way."
"How'd these people get our number anyway?" Hardison asked. "Last I heard we don't exactly advertise."
"He said somebody passing through gave them our card. He didn't catch a name," Eliot told Hardison with a wary expression.
"Want me to prepare for an ambush?" Hardison asked. "I can pack some extra toys that might come in handy."
"Probably a good idea, yeah," Eliot agreed.
"Good as done," Hardison said as he started to gather his things.
"Oh good! This means I can bring my new rig!" Parker exclaimed with a mischievous grin. "This'll be the perfect job to test it!"
"Test it?" Hardison asked in alarm. "You haven't tested it yet? And you're gonna use it?"
"How else would I test a rig?" She asked him with a furrowed brow.
Two days later, they rode into town and Eliot was more than ready to get out of that damn van. Road trips with Parker and Hardison left him needing a moment alone. Luckily, Nate took Eliot with him to meet the client instead of Sophie. That gave him a break and he could trust Sophie to calm the other two down. One was hopped up on gummy frogs and the other on chocolate. On the trip back he'd have to remember to never let them go on a snack run without him.
The town had a quaint main street and Eliot found himself feeling at home, surprisingly. It reminded him of where he grew up. He and Nate walked to the storefront that had once been "Speedy's Barbecue" and knocked on the glass front door. The man Eliot and Nate had met with briefly at McRory's immediately came to the door and let them in.
"Come on in," the older man said with a bright smile and sweeping gesture of his arm. The inside was just as hot as the outside and Eliot pulled back his hair instinctually.
The older balding man shook Nate's hand then Eliot's hand before he pulled his baseball cap off his head to reveal a stack of napkins inside the cap. He took one napkin out and wiped it across his sweating bald head and then replaced the stack of napkins in the hat. "Sorry about the air," he told them. "Just got the power turned back on today. I called the company when I heard you boys were comin' but it took 'em a bit longer than I expected. It'll cool down in an hour or two. We've got window units in the back that should speed it up a bit. Come on back here to the office and we'll sit a spell." He put the cap back on his head as he talked.
He led them back to the office where the window units were running on high and a folding table was set up with a computer and messy stacks of papers. There was a rocking chair and a couple of hand made wooden dining table chairs with thin cushions on the seats. Mr. Speedman motioned for Eliot and Nate to take the dining chairs and then pointed to the cheap red cooler on the floor. "Can I offer you boys a beer?"
Eliot accepted the bottle with a thankful nod and Nate politely passed. The old man took one out for himself, knocked the bottle cap against the counter to open it and then settled in his rocking chair.
"Thank you for coming back here so fast, Mr. Speedman, we know this must of have been hard for you," Nate told him once they were all seated.
"Well, I do still own the building. I'm mostly worried about Henderson sending the sheriff after me for opening back up," he said with a worried sigh.
"We won't let that happen," Eliot promised him before he took a sip of his beer. "We're gonna run this place ourselves and we ain't gonna run it as Speedy's. It's well within the law."
"You don't know Henderson," Mr. Speedman said with a chuckle.
"No, but we've known plenty of people like him," Nate said with a sympathetic smile. "We're prepared, Mr. Speedman. You can trust us."
"It's a fool idea to begin with but my son is convinced it's the only option we've got," Mr. Speedman said with a shake of his head. "Y'can't make things any worse, I s'pose. Might be good timing too. No one's going to want to cause a scene during the Festival. It's our biggest tourist event of the year. You got a lot of work ahead of you though to get this place ready to go by then."
"We've got a good team. We'll have it ready," Eliot assured him.
"My son'll help y'out if you need it, too," Mr. Speedman offered. "He knows the business as well as me. Maybe better. I'll leave you his number. He lives one town over now. He'll be here in a blink if you ask."
"Good, we may need him," Nate said with a nod.
Mr. Speedman turned toward Eliot. "You told me you know good food, son. You ever slow cooked pork in a pit before?"
"A few times. Yes, sir," Eliot said with a nod.
"Just a few, huh?" Speedman asked with a teasing grin. "Yeah, you'd better call m'boy. You'll need him. This ain't something you can pick up overnight."
Eliot saw it for the good natured jab it was and chuckled. "Yes, sir. Trust me, I do not want to be the one to disgrace good ol' Carolina Barbecue."
"Especially since you're from a little further west, huh?" Speedman asked knowingly. He was guessing based on Eliot's accent. "We do things a little differently out this way."
"So I've been told."
"We'll make it convincing, Mr. Speedman," Nate said with a smirk.
The old man took one last sip of his beer and then stood slowly. He stretched a bit before he threw away the bottle. "Alright, well, I'll leave you boys to it and get out of your way." He turned with a wave and headed out the back screened door. "See you at the Festival. So will everyone else in the tri-state area."
Eliot chuckled and waved as he watched him go. "I like this place already."
"You would," Nate said with a laugh. "Call the son. I need you focused on your job this time and not the food."
"I could do it," Eliot said with a huff.
"I have no doubt, but call the son. Just in case."
Eliot called the son and he and Nate were set to meet him at the general store down the street. They passed the town courthouse on the way there. It wasn't functioning but it had been turned into a museum on the town's history. The construction of a stage across from the courthouse caught his attention. The Barbecue Festival, that the town was famous for, wasn't for another week. Why were they already setting up? In fact there were stages every two blocks down Main Street and they were all under construction.
"It's a little early for that, isn't it?" Nate asked him.
Eliot nodded his agreement. The last stage they passed was completely set. The sounds system was out as well.
"Testing, testing."
There was a man standing on stage with peppered gray hair and a guitar hanging around him by the strap.
There was a laugh off to right of the stage that struck Eliot as particularly familiar. His chest tightened slightly and he ignored Nate as he tried to urge him on to the General Store. Nate gave up when a woman stepped on stage. A very particular red head, in fact.
"You know better than to mike check like that," she said in to the microphone with a laugh.
"Alright then Clarabelle, show this old man how it's done, why don't you?" the man asked as he backed away from his mike stand.
"You've got to be kidding me," Nate said with a shake of his head. "Of all the town's you could have picked," he chuckled before he continued. "You picked Claire's."
The voice he knew so well filled the streets with an a cappella performance of an old hymn, "Let the Circle Be Unbroken", and he couldn't move. He couldn't breathe really. He was so surprised to see her. You'd think Hardison would've mentioned it if he recognized the town.
Nate motioned toward the stage. "You go. I'll meet Mr. Speedman's son."
Eliot must have nodded because Nate walked away with a knowing smirk. Eliot crossed the street and tried to stay just out of her view while she sang. He hadn't seen her in a while and she hadn't invited him here. He didn't know how she would react. She opened her eyes as the song ended, the man on the stage with her started to clap, and that's when her eyes found his. They widened and she blinked for several moments before she finally beamed at him and shook her head in amazement. He smiled brightly in return which she must have taken as a sign that she could acknowledge him. This job didn't require him to be so far undercover that he couldn't recognize Claire. In fact, it might help.
She hopped off the front of the stage and ran right to him.
"I knew you'd come," she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him. He gave her a questioning look as she pulled back from the embrace. Her eyes widened as if she was remembering something and then said, "Oh god, you should know my Uncle kind of thinks that we're—"
"Well, if it isn't Roy Chapel," the man on the stage said as he set his guitar on the stand and hopped off the stage himself. "Clarabelle made it sound like I wouldn't get a chance to meet you. Now I finally get to play that intimidating uncle card I missed out on while she was dating those European boys."
"Married," she finished with a sigh. "Shauffner called them." The man joined them and Claire cleared her throat with an apologetic glance. "Uncle Everette, this is Roy—"
"The husband," Everette said with a chuckle as he shook Eliot's hand. "Yes, I know. Paul told me all about it."
"Paul?" Eliot asked.
"Shauffner," Claire told him with a small smile. "He sent Everette a copy of the photo we took, remember?"
Eliot resisted the urge to sigh and shake his head and smiled pleasantly instead. "Did he? Well, that was nice of him."
Claire nodded wordlessly and then turned to her uncle. "Uncle Ev, do you mind if I…" her sentence trailed off but she motioned to Eliot and Everette shook his head.
"By all means, take your time," Everette said. "I'm gonna go speak with sound guys, make sure they got all the levels they needed."
Once he was out of earshot she gave Eliot another apologetic look. "I am so sorry. I didn't expect you to just show up. I thought—"
"But you did expect me?" He asked with a furrowed brow.
"I gave the Speedmans your card," she told him. "When I got here there were two of the old barbecue restaurants left open and then when Henderson forced Speedy's to close I knew somebody had to do something. I can't operate in my own home town, so…"
"Why didn't you call me?" He asked.
"I can't be any where near this," she told him with a shake of her head. "I couldn't be the one to contact you. Besides, you need a community pillar like Speedman to bring you in on this. No one here would trust you if I'd been the one to invite you."
"This is your town too, isn't it?" He asked.
"It was my town when I was twelve," she answered honestly. "These people haven't seen me in years. I've spent that last three weeks trying to gain back some footing. I wasn't gaining it fast enough. That's when I gave Kip your card."
"Kip? Who's Kip?"
"Mr. Speedman's son," she told him. She breezed past the fact very fast but he could tell there was more to Kip than being Mr. Speedman's son.
"So, if you can't be anywhere near this then how is this going to work with your family thinking we're married?"
"And the town."
"What?" Eliot asked.
"Yeah, apparently I've gained an aunt since I left town. She's nosy as hell. She put a marriage announcement in the town paper," Claire said with a sigh.
Eliot gave her a flat look and sighed.
"I know," Claire told him. She understood that look perfectly. "I'm sorry. I had no idea Shauffner would send that photo to them. I swear."
"Claire, how the hell is this going to work?" Eliot asked her. He was only partly frustrated by the situation. He was mostly amused that a cover story they used for a vacation ended up reaching her hometown several states away.
She sighed and shook her head. "We'll figure it out." She paused then and gave him a flirtatious smile. "But first…"
She placed a hand on either side of his face and pulled him in for a kiss. He smirked against her lips and then wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed her deeply and held her as close as he could. He hadn't kissed her in ages and in the midst of her apologies and explanations he'd nearly forgotten that fact. Trust Claire to bring it front and center, though. One kiss became two and then three and before he knew it they were essentially making out in the middle of Main Street. He forced himself to pull away from her and pressed his forehead against hers.
"You should have done that before you told me any news," he said with a grin.
She laughed and then nodded in agreement. "Probably."