A/N - Hey everyone!

I have RETURNED!

Though it wasn't as fast as I wanted it to be, I am glad to be back!

My health literally got in a fight with a Tasmanian Devil... I am still fighting and getting stronger!

A/N - This is a stripped down version because I had to post from my phone.

Thanks to my AM Coffee Crew and the Kaniacs for getting me to this point!

The plane landed in Burbank in the early morning, but not quite sunrise yet. Nate took himself back to the Head Priest's residence so that he could continue to be Father Quinn. The mastermind walked her to the black Hyundai Elantra waiting for Parker. The thief slipped her cell phone into the pocket on Nate's jacket over his costume while his arm was around her shoulders and hers was around his waist. She wondered when he would notice the weight addition to his clothing. Once in the car, the cell phone was one less item she had to abandon to keep Hardison from tracking her. True, it went against what she had told the hacker she was going to do, but the blond thief needed time to focus. She couldn't do that if the Leverage team wanted her to check in all the time, especially since Parker left Eliot behind in Portland the way she had. Checking in was a distraction… However, that was only if Nate spilled the beans to Hardison and Sophie about what happened with Eliot. And if the genius hacker had half a brain, she knew he might contact Col. Vance since he knew the expensive tools he had available to him on that truck.

Parker knew no one wanted to share anything with Eliot because he'd get mad, threaten everyone, and then brood when they didn't give in to his way. Or worse, he'd escape, and try to stop her while injured, and get hurt again. The thief stopped in an alley and ditched all her shoes she knew Hardison could track her with. She put on a black hoodie and drove to a random liquor store to pick up a burner cell phone. The extra clothing was to block her face from the cameras Hardison could hack. Then Parker headed into Los Angeles and ended up stopping at her favorite burger place in the world, Original Tommy's Burgers. She loved the way the chili there was strong enough that a fork stayed upright, and was just as greasy as you please. A double cheeseburger, extra-large root beer, and chili cheese fries later, and she felt right like an arrow hitting the center of a bull's eye; all was right with the world. She continuously made a stop there whenever she had a job in LA. It constantly gave her energy to burn and she burned it off in her line of work; she always did. She knew it wasn't healthy for her, and Eliot would disapprove, but how many times did she get to come to Los Angeles? Not many.

Just before she was about to hit the road again, she dialed Vance by memory…

"Welcome to Los Angeles," a male voice said.

"Thanks Vance," she didn't need to wonder how he knew she was in the city; she knew he had the means to find her; she hoped he hadn't shared any of it with Hardison or Eliot… "I need to see you after I find out what I need to know here in LA."

"I'll send you the location when you're ready for us. FYI, Diego Rodriguez is dead, suffocated in his sleep. Someone must have gotten to him while we were in another room."

"Enrique's men probably knocked him off. Can't say it's a huge surprise. You might want to have someone look out for Lorena Spencer in Oklahoma; they might come after her too."

"I'll look into it."

"Gotta get going. Bye."

Parker hung up and then headed toward finding a place to sleep. There wasn't time to go the Port of Los Angeles; going in under the cover of darkness while wearing black was a much better plan. The jetlag and all the stress of leaving Eliot the way she had got to her. When she arrived to the area around the Port of LA, she parked in an alley where there were other cars and put a car cover she found in the trunk over the car. Then she lifted part of the cover and let herself into the trunk; the trunk door shut and the cover fell to its original spot. With a little work she gained entry to the interior of the car by putting the back seats down. She covered up with an emergency blanket she had stuffed in her gear to keep warm. Parker could have rented a motel room with cash, but then cameras might have picked up on her face… And Hardison could have found her. She needed to use the cover of darkness to find out what she needed; who was going to disturb a car with a cover parked next to a warehouse?

Vance sent the other Michael to go pick up the Fake Jake because Vance needed to have eyes on Parker. He didn't know that she'd fallen off the Leverage Consulting & Associates grid, so it was a good thing if someone still had eyes on her. His hands were itching to get into the action, but he knew he needed to be patient, and wait. At least this time they weren't trying to stop a bomb… The only issue was that the Fake Jake didn't have any idea where she was, and at the very least, the Colonel did know she was headed to the Port of LA.

Nate got into his vehicle he brought from the church and noticed that when he went to buckle his seat belt in, there was something heavy in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw it was Parker had ditched her cell phone.

"Parker, you in contact?" He said into his ear bud.

There was no immediate answer from the blond thief.

"Yo, you need something Nate?" The hacker piped in when he heard the worry in the mastermind's voice.

"Parker ditched her cell phone in my pocket before she took off in her car."

"Dang it, that's really bad. It probably means she didn't get the last text I sent her 'bout the change in who's watching the shipment."

"See if you can get her back. Eliot will have both our hides if we let anything happen to her."

"Amen! I agree, we shouldn't tell him."

"Get word to Sophie."

"It's still too early man, and she'll have my hide if I interrupt her beauty sleep, so would Eliot."

A few hours later, they were still talking as Sophie let Eliot make breakfast. She asked if she could help, but he thought it was safer to stay away from anything sharp or cooking. While Eliot was considering his answer to Sophie, the grifter's phone rang. So Eliot couldn't help but listen in to hear if it was Parker; the hacker was on the phone…

"Uh Sophie, we have a little teensy weensy problem, Parker's missing. She's not using any of her known identities and she's not wearing a bud or tracker," sounded like there was an emergency and it wasn't good news; Nate thought it was important that Hardison contact Sophie so they could decide how to deal with the new crisis and him?

Apparently, they all knew that he was going to lose it if he found out they lost Parker and couldn't find her… He felt blood rushing into his head as he stood behind Sophie.

"Oh no," he overheard her say before Eliot just grabbed Sophie's cell from her hand.

"What did you just say, Hardison?"

"This wasn't part of the plan," the hacker told them.

"What the FUCK was the plan, or so help me Hardison…"

"She was supposed to come here to the hotel with me and get ready for the fake containers to be dropped off at the docks. She done fell off the radar man. She didn't tell me she'd ditch her phone in Nate's pocket."

"I swear if something happens to her, I'm holding you personally responsible, Mister Computer Genius."

Manuel Villareagos called the Captain of the ship and the ship was about a week; more or less, from Los Angles. He was getting right on what Raoul asked him to do since he put him in charge. One never knew when the old man would get a wild hair that something wasn't right, but they all expected a call at any time of day or night… And he didn't take no for an answer if he asked you to check on a shipment or do something for him. He called the old man back and told him what he heard; the boat was on target to arrive on the middle of the month. They had received good weather so the sailing had been calm. The Captain said that if it continued, they might even arrive a day or two early. It wasn't a very long ship but there were at least two dozen containers in the below deck compartment and in them were the two stolen from the Delgadillos. Poor Manuel didn't know that a water spout was headed his way and Michael Vance's name was on it…

Parker woke up in the car and it was daylight. She changed into her black cat suit and hid it under one of Eliot's country plaid flannel shirts she'd stolen a while back, and a pair of jeans. As for shoes, she had a pair of specially made boots of black-stained leather. They had no heels so no one could hear her coming. She'd have to dare Eliot to try and hear her the next time she used them. She never used them around the Leverage gang because she didn't want any of them to know she had them; Hardison would have tried to hide some kind of tracker in it to find her. The laces wrapped up her shin and she tied them just below her knee caps so she'd stay limber while moving. Then she carefully snuck out the trunk as before, not a soul saw her and there were no visible cameras in the alley, but she still had the black hoodie covering her face. It didn't take her long to stuff the cover in the trunk and take off in search of the docks.

She found them and checked out what she could without attracting attention. Lots of 18 wheelers were coming to drop off containers and exiting with picked up containers. There were mainly cameras every fifty feet. Parker assumed that more security was added after the 9/11 attacks. Didn't matter, one call to Hardison and she didn't exist. She already had a plan for getting around them; she timed the cameras as they swayed left and right. She only saw one guard checking paperwork at the gate she was at, but she didn't discount that there were more on the property. She got the rest of what she needed from the burner smart phone she bought. It had some preloaded applications on it, one of which was Google Maps. She used it for the satellite view… The good thing was that she got the numbers on the crates coming in to LA from some of the information that Sophie and Tara got out of Lorena and Diego, so it wasn't going to be too hard to find what she needed once she got to San Francisco. Boy, it was going to be quite a show for the Villareagos family. Later on, Parker, Westen, and Quinn were going to break the bad news to the Delgadillo family...

Fi took the lead because she had the extra special plan that the Leverage team didn't have. Her job that day was to take Axe, Westen, and Vance to the Port of Los Angeles with the two fake crates. As instructed, Michael Vance and Sam drove the trucks in while Michael Westen had faked an ID and disguise to look like a dock worker. He was supposed to get to the crane worker and get the two crates off the backs of the trucks. Fi sat watch for her Mike, while the team went to work; the others had trucks they had to drive back out of the gate. She sat a few blocks away. Once they got the fake containers placed as the top and the next one down on the stack closest to the water, they met up back at the new location Vance moved them to. From then on, they waited for Parker to call later to set up a meeting with Vance to share with him what she needed them to do next.

Hardison's cell phone rang…

"I am okay. Don't speak, listen. When I call again, be ready to transmit the coordinates to Col. Vance's cell. Bye," she didn't let him get a word in edgewise.

He felt like he was the white ball in a fast table tennis match.

'Be here, go there, send this, send that,' he whined in his thoughts, but at least now he could spread the word that he'd heard from the missing thief.

Bad news, she hung up the phone before he could trace what was possibly a payphone since he knew she didn't have her cell phone. He had already hacked the cameras at the docks so he saw when the fake containers arrive. So he knew something was happening with Parker's plan when he spotted Vance in the driver's seat of the big rig. Good news that she called; bad news again, that she still didn't have her cell.