AN: Zoe is a past client of Leverage that I introduced in Malediction du Loupgarou.

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CHAPTER 3

Ready for Your Close-up?

Hardison had been up most of the night trying to find images with a clear enough face to run facial recognition on. The video clip of the birds being left at the pub had provided the best images in the end, but Hardison had had to do a lot of clean up on the images to make them usable and he had his doubts that any match he found would be reliable. Finally, in the wee hours Hardison had left the facial recognition program running and staggered off to join Parker in bed.

It wasn't quite dawn when Eliot decided to go for a run to clear his head. He stood at the front gate and stretched for a moment or two, enjoying the feel of his muscles loosening and the pop of joints that had been held in the same position for too long. The air was crisp and the morning still dark. Behind him the quiet click of the front door opening, and closing drew his attention.

"Everything okay?" He could see Parker clearly even in the dark.

"Yep." Parker joined him near the gate and did a few quick stretches of her own.

"Hardison sleeping?"

Parker nodded and opened the gate.

"Give it another couple of minutes and it should be light enough for you to see." Eliot's night vision was excellent as a wolf but he knew that no matter how well Parker moved in the dark she couldn't see in it.

"There's enough light from the streetlights. I'll be fine." Parker started jogging down the street.

Eliot caught up with her in no time and let her set the pace. After a couple of blocks Parker increased their speed to a run. Eliot knew Parker could keep this pace for miles and from the look on her face he knew this was going to be a good run. Parker knew this neighborhood about as well as he did, so he continued to follow her lead.

After about five miles Parker glanced at him and gave him a grin. She turned onto a park trail that led to the playground. Parker jumped onto a bench and took a couple of running steps across the back of it before launching herself at the top bar of the swing set. She spun around the bar like a gymnast before balancing at the top on her hands. She let go with one hand and let herself fall into a cartwheel across the top of the bar. One more cartwheel took her across the rest of the swing set, and she flipped off the end. She stopped and stared at the swing set for a moment.

Eliot had jogged in place and watched her acrobatics with fondness. When she didn't continue on to the next parkour acrobatic combo, he jogged up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. He waited a moment for her to get her jogging rhythm back and led her away from the playground. "You okay?"

"I guess. I think I will be." Parker shrugged and increased their pace a little.

Eliot tightened down on the pack bonds to see if he could at least slow the flow of emotions that Parker so often seemed to pick up on. He'd been spending a lot more of his meditation time working on his control of the pack bonds now that they had gotten stronger. Nati had coached him on several techniques and he'd figured some things out on his own but mostly he knew that he still had a long way to go before he could claim to have control over this situation.

Parker made a little gasping sound and put a hand to her chest. She slowed to a stop and stared at Eliot. "Why?"

Eliot saw the look of hurt on her face. Her scent had changed but nothing that indicated pain or distress of a physical nature. "What?"

Parker gave him a shove that knocked her back farther than it did him. "Don't be a big dumb wolfy. Did I ask you to make you and Hardison go away? Did I tell you I didn't want to feel my link to you and Hardison?" She shoved him again.

"I'm sorry I was just trying to help." He reached toward her and she batted at his hand.

"Well don't. Just give it back." She crossed her arms and glared at him.

Eliot released his hold on the bonds and Parker's glare lessened though it didn't completely go away. "Better? Are we good?"

"Don't do it again." She turned to the path that would take them back to the safe house and sped back up to a run. Eliot followed her and concentrated on feeling more positively about their current situation for Parker's sake. His grandmother would have told him to count his blessings and he figured it was a good place to start.

Parker of all of his human pack mates seemed most strongly affected by the pack bonds. Hardison said that on very rare occasions he'd felt something but more an impression or intuition. Nate and Sophie said the only time they'd ever felt anything was when he had drawn on them in order to heal quickly that time that he was in Wisconsin. But Parker, she seemed to actively feel what he and Hardison were feeling. He was beginning to think that Parker had tuned in on the emotional part of the pack bonds because emotions had always been something she had struggled with.

"Parker, why do you want to feel what we're feeling? I don't like putting up with myself all the time. Why would you want to feel that all the time?" Eliot could still talk at the pace Parker was keeping them at but he was glad when she slowed down a little to make talking easier.

"Remember when you taught me to cut celery?"

He nodded.

"It's like that." She started to speed up but he put a hand on her arm to slow her down.

"Sorry darlin', I'm not Hardison, you're gonna have to give me more than that. What do you mean?" Over the years he'd noticed that Parker and Hardison had developed their own kind of communication and Hardison had an almost supernatural ability to understand Parker's vague or seemingly off topic comments.

"You put your hands on top of mine and showed me how to hold the knife and the celery and we went really slow but even when I was ready to go faster you still held my hands." Parker glanced at him but could see that he still didn't get it. "Feelings are weird sometimes. There's not good words for them." They jogged a little farther. "Remember when you and Sophie helped me be Alice?"

"You are Alice." Eliot rolled his eyes.

"You and Sophie helped me learn how to do normal people things and the link is like that."

Eliot shook his head. "You don't need lessons on how to feel, Parker. You are fine the way you are. Besides I don't think an elf lord and a trained killer are great people to learn well-adjusted feelings from."

"You guys are my family. I like not being alone."

They slowed to a walk for the last quarter mile and things seemed more settled between them. As they rounded the corner at the end of the block Eliot smelled blood. He put an arm out in front of Parker and she slowed to let him take the lead. Eliot was glad it was Parker and not one of the others with him. Parker was good with body language and didn't require a lot of explanations. They ghosted down the sidewalk and at the fence line Eliot paused. He smelled the same wolf who's scent he'd picked up on the rabbit last night. He took a careful look at the front yard but there were very few places for anyone to hide. Taking a closer look at the house itself he noticed something crawling on the front porch. After another look around Eliot motioned Parker to follow and they headed for the front door.

Parker caught a glimpse of something moving on the front porch and was sure that was the cause of Eliot going into 'Hitter mode'. A few more steps and she could see a baby bunny crawling down the sidewalk toward them. "Bunny? Is it hurt?" The bright red smear of blood down the side of its white fur was hard to miss and Parker dug her fingers into the back of Eliot's arm.

"No, that's not it's blood."

At his words Parker streaked past him, leapt over the rabbits on the porch, and bolted into the house. Eliot sighed, she had to know that nothing had happed to Hardison or they would have felt it through the bonds, but he understood her need to check on him. He also knew that Hardison would rather be woken by Parker, so he left her to it. He scooped up the bunny on his way up the sidewalk. There were four more bunnies leaving little bloody tracks all over the front porch. Lying in front of the door was the dead rabbit that the smell of blood had been coming from. Someone had slit her throat and left her there with her kits.

Eliot stepped over the dead rabbit and went to the closet to fetch a box. He knew there was a box on the shelf that Hardison had been storing some kind of magazine or comic book collection in. Dumping the box out in the bottom of the closet he went to the kitchen and pulled a towel off the oven door. He settled the bunny in the bottom of the box on the towel and went out to collect the rest of the bunnies before they got lost in the yard.

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Eliot decided to drive them to a shopping center that was halfway between Gresham and Clackamas. In a public setting they were less likely to be attacked and it would give them a chance to regroup without exposing another safe house. Parker kept the box of baby bunnies on her lap and talked nonsense to them. Hardison, red eyed and groggy from too little sleep sat in the back of the van with his favorite tablet and tried to figure out how the bad guys had found them.

"Dammit Eliot! Don't take the corners so fast." Hardison braced an arm to keep from falling over.

"I'm not. Just do your computer thing and leave the driving to me." Eliot checked his speed, and it was certainly nothing that would garner unwanted attention. He would have to see if there was a restaurant nearby that he could get everyone breakfast at.

"What will we do with the bunnies?" Parker hugged the box.

"We ain't keepin' 'em" Eliot growled.

"No. But we can't let them go. They're too little and they're not the wild kind of bunny." Parker reached into the box and petted one.

"Call Zoe. If her shelter can't take them she might know someone who can." Eliot pulled into a parking lot in front of a home and garden store. "Hardison, you figured out how they found us yet?"

"Maybe they tailed us last night." He yawned and kept typing.

"You already said that, and I know they didn't. What else?" Eliot slid around in his seat to face Hardison.

"What would you do to tail somebody without tailing them?" Hardison was just too tired for the sideways thinking it would take to puzzle this out on his own. Hack the pentagon on no sleep sure, he'd done that plenty of times, but real-life war games not so much.

"Would it be okay if Zoe met us here?" Parker interrupted their bickering.

"Parker, she lives nearly an hour from here. I'm not sure we can stay here that long." Eliot growled.

"She's only ten minutes away. I'll text her and let her know we have bunnies for her." Parker was already tapping her way through a text.

"Babe did she tell you she was only ten minutes away? She might think you're at the pub." Hardison continued to work on his tablet.

"No, she's sharing her location with me. It's that find my phone thingy. I only use it on Alice's phone."

"You're Alice." Eliot and Hardison said at the same time. When Hardison had burned the aliases that the team had used before Portland he had kept Alice White. Parker's identity as Alice White had never been used the same way as most of their aliases had. And hadn't been flagged on any of the law enforcement watch lists or anywhere on the dark net.

"Wait a second that's perfect!" Hardison's face lit up and he dove back into his tablet with renewed energy. "Oh yah that's it!"

"What's it?" Eliot slid into the back of the van.

"El, crawl under the van and see if you find anything that doesn't belong." Hardison continued racing through screens on his tablet.

Eliot slid the side door open and hopped out. "Like what?"

"I don't know. Tape, or a box, or whatever shouldn't be there. Do I look like a mechanic?" Hardison called from the back of the van.

"Do I?" Eliot growled.

"If we trimmed your hair up a bit and got you some dark coveralls with the cut off sleeves, you could probably pull it off." Hardison grumbled.

"What was that?" Eliot's voice sounded muffled coming from under the van.

"Just look for something that don't belong." Hardison called loudly.

Scooting from the back to the front of the van it didn't take long before Eliot found something taped to the frame near the driver's side. Flicking open his pocketknife, he cut through the tape and peeled it away from the metal. Someone had put a cell phone in a plastic bag and taped it to the underside of Lucille. Sliding out from under the van, Eliot climbed back into the driver side. "Found a phone." He held the phone out to Hardison.

"Woo! I knew it! I knew it!" Somehow Hardison managed a victory dance while remaining seated.

"Congratulate your amazing-genius-superpowers later." Eliot waggled the phone in Hardison's direction.

"Fine." Hardison snatched the phone and started working his way through its system. After several minutes Hardison glanced at Eliot. "Oh, that ain't good." Hardison mumbled as he connected the phone to his laptop.

"What ain't good?" Eliot took a sharper look at the phone.

"We were definitely supposed to find this phone." Hardison half answered but his fingers were now flying over his laptop and all of his concentration was centered on the screen.

"Explain, please." Parker slid around in the passenger seat so that she could see Hardison better.

"Here:" Hardison slid his laptop around so that they could see the screen. He played the first video clip:

Eliot and Hardison are standing behind the bar in the pub.

"I ain't servin' that! Whatever that is. You can't serve that kind of thing in a restaurant. Hell I'm not even sure it's really edible!" Eliot crosses his arms and glares at Hardison.

"Sure it's edible! Taste it." Hardison offering something on a fork to Eliot.

"No!"

"Oh come on." Hardison wheedles.

"No!" Eliot has a little growl in his tone.

"Pleeeease." Hardison waves the fork.

Eliot grunts, snatches the fork, and takes the bite of food.

"See? Not bad, right?"

Eliot shrugs and after Hardison walks away, he spits the bite out in the trash.

Added to the end of the clip is a still image of their menu featuring the new item Hardison had proposed.

Eliot doesn't say anything just looks between the screen and Hardison's face.

"They're threatening us over bad food?" Parker looks confused.

"I fixed it. It was fine when we added it to the menu." Eliot now shared Parker's confused look.

"Didn't need fixing. But that's not the point. Watch the next couple clips and you'll see what they're telling us." Hardison pressed play again.

Second clip:

Eliot and Parker are walking across the loading dock and headed for Lucille.

"I want to drive." Parker tries to grab the keys from Eliot's hand.

"No. We're going to the store not robbing a bank." Eliot grumps at her.

"Oh come on you said I could drive next time." Parker turns her most pleading puppy dog look him.

Eliot rolls his eyes and tosses her the keys.

Third clip (no sound):

Eliot, Hardison, and Parker are on the couch in Eliot's houseboat. Parker has fallen asleep and Hardison is obviously drifting that way. Eliot checks his watch and scoops up Parker. He and Parker disappear for a moment before showing up in another window of the houseboat. Eliot lays Parker on a bed and walks back to the living room. There is a short conversation between Hardison and Eliot before Hardison joins Parker. A minute later Eliot takes the extra blanket from the couch into the bedroom and spreads it overtop of Parker and Hardison. Eliot goes back and settles in to sleep on the couch.

The fourth clip is really a series of clips from a job they'd recently done in Seattle:

"Eliot go to the west exit." Hardison is sitting at a public picnic table not far from Lucille.

Eliot's voice coming from Hardison's computer speaker. "A little busy right now." The sound of him grunting as he hits somebody.

"I don't care. Parker is coming out hot." Hardison frowns at the computer.

"Fine! On my way." One more grunt and thud.

"Eliot cook dinner. I'm tired of fast food." Parker whines as they walk to the apartment they'd rented in Seattle for the job.

"Okay darlin' whatever you want." Eliot follows her into the apartment.

"Dude! You got blood on my shirt!" Hardison howls as they head back to Lucille.

"So? You can wash it out." Eliot grumbles.

"Me? I didn't put this blood here. If anybody is washing anything it's gonna be you." Hardison holds his shirt away from his skin.

"Fine I'll wash it, if it will shut you up." Eliot smirks as he walks ahead of Hardison.

The fifth clip is a montage of video snippets and audio clips all of them feature Parker and Hardison bossing Eliot around and Eliot agreeing to do what they want. The screen goes black for a moment before red lettering scrolls to the center. 'Too Weak to be Alpha'

AN: Kudos if you spotted the 'Love Song' (2000) MTV movie reference lol