CHAPTER 3

Invitations

(Building complex)

Eliot had heard the job going off the rails, but he hadn't really been scared until he heard the gunshots. He wasn't surprised to feel the jolt of pain in the bonds and was relieved when the feeling continued. Dead bodies didn't feel pain. As long as all of his pack was still alive things would be okay. He pulled the van up onto the sidewalk and parked in front of a large round fountain. This was definitely a 'no parking' zone, but a black van in the dark would attract less attention than if he'd parked in the street where traffic was still moving.

He'd barely stepped out of the van when he saw something burst from the side of the building. For a second he panicked but it only took a second for it to be made clear that whoever was dangling outside the building it wasn't one of his pack. He could tell from the bonds that it had to have been Quinn that stopped the other person from falling.

Eliot's hands clenched to fists as he helplessly watched the scene play out. He could hear Quinn's yell for help, and he could feel Parker respond. The only one he hadn't heard yet was Hardison. It worried him that Hardison wasn't talking. The man always talked. And things that scared him or stressed him out only made him talk more. The silence was unnerving.

Eliot could hear Parker talking. "Hardison, Alec? Alec, are you okay?"

"I think I got shot." Hardison sounded stunned.

A siren was blaring, and Eliot could see an emergency light flashing like a strobe through the hole in the building.

"Hardison, we need to stop the bleeding."

Eliot could hear heavy breathing and Hardison's grunt of pain.

"Quinn, can you hold pressure here?"

"Quinn, can you hear me?"

Eliot could feel Quinn's confusion and Hardison's pain and he sent a wave of power through the bonds.

"Quinn? Can you hear me now?"

Eliot continued to listen to what his team was doing, and he turned up the police scanner in the van so that he could monitor what police and emergency services was doing. After hearing the police chatter, he gave his team the ETA and moved closer to the base of the building.

One of the bags that Quinn had thrown out of the building landed in the fountain and the other had landed just outside of it. Eliot collected both bags and got them into the van. Hurrying back, he watched as Parker and Hardison worked their way down the rope. Parker had suspended Hardison the way that she usually did their bags of gear. It worried Eliot that Parker didn't think Hardison was capable of rappelling down on his own.

Parker's line stopped ten feet above the ground and Eliot positioned himself underneath Parker and Hardison. He'd asked Parker years ago why she left her lines too short to reach the ground and she'd told him about a security guard that had climbed up one of her ropes trying to trap her. She'd shuddered and refused to tell him what had happened, and he'd never questioned her decision on rope length again.

"Parker, you got two feet of rope left below your brake." Eliot called up to her.

"Thanks Sparky." Parker paused and looked around for a second.

"Just drop him like you would the bags." Eliot knew that catching a man Hardison's size from a ten-foot drop was probably going to hurt but it was the only option if they didn't want to risk giving Hardison a head injury. "I'm ready to catch him."

"What?! No!" Hardison started to swing wildly as he tried to look up and down.

"Stop moving!" Eliot's growl was overlaid by Parker's sharp reprimand.

Whether it was his mate's demand or his Alpha's order it didn't matter because Hardison went still. Parker reached below herself and pressed a button on the side of the clasp that held Hardison's rigging to hers.

Hardison dropped with a near silent gasp and Eliot broke his fall. Eliot had the air knocked out of him and Hardison moved off of Eliot with a whimper as it stressed his bullet wound.

Parker dropped with a flip and landed knees bent. She hurried out of the way and a second later the third bag dropped and a split second after that Quinn landed next to it.

~~o0o~~

Eliot got them onto the One-ten headed north and after a minute he took the turns necessary to get them headed southeast on the Santa Anna Freeway. After a couple of minutes on the freeway he turned south into a residential neighborhood. He parked in a relatively dark alley and climbed into the back where he could better assess his pack.

By the time he got them parked Hardison had stopped bleeding, but Eliot looked him over carefully anyway. There was a bright pink puckered mark on the front of Hardison's shoulder and a very raw wound on the back of his shoulder.

"How are you doing?" Eliot ran his hand across the top of Hardison's shoulder, careful not to press.

Hardison nodded. "I'm okay."

Eliot let his eyes go yellow and watched as Hardison's eyes shifted to wolf yellow. "You will be. I'll get you something to eat soon okay."

He pushed healing through the bonds at Hardison and felt his pain lessen. He ran his hands over Hardison one more time checking for other damage and other than some bruising he seemed okay.

"Quinn." Eliot hadn't turned to look but now that he'd checked Hardison out, he knew all the pain in the bonds wasn't coming just from Hardison. "Where are you hurt?"

"No Alpha. I'm okay."

Quinn had positioned himself in the back corner of the van near the door and Eliot wondered if it was the defensibility of the spot, or the door, that appealed to Quinn. He hoped that Quinn didn't really believe the pack would attack him while he was hurt.

Eliot felt a twitch in the bonds and smelled a lie. "Where are you hurt?"

Eliot turned to look directly at Quinn. Quinn scooted to sit up straighter, and Eliot noticed the way he favored his left ankle. "Is the ankle broken or sprained?"

"Sprained. It'll be fine. I'm not really hurt." Quinn looked at Parker. "She needs an ice pack for her throat."

"I'll check her out next, but first show me where you're hurt." Eliot looked at the stains covering Quinn's clothes. He imagined that in the light they'd be the bright red of fresh blood, but in the back of the van with no lights on, the stains looked black.

Quinn looked down at himself and seemed surprised to see the blood.

Eliot shifted one fingernail to a claw and cut the fabric of Quinn's shirt. Pulling gently, he peeled the cloth away revealing dozens of small cuts and punctures along with several very deep slashes.

"Looks like you are going to need stitches." Eliot moved purposefully but gently as he continued to inspect Quinn. "I'm gonna put gauze over a few of the deeper cuts to help stop the bleeding but I don't want to pick glass out of you in the dark." Eliot gave Quinn's shoulder a reassuring pat. "You'll last until we get back to the hotel." He gave the back of Quinn's neck a squeeze and felt Quinn relax a little.

After a few minutes of applying gauze and winding Quinn up in a web of vet wrap Eliot turned his attention to Parker.

"Where are you hurt sweetheart?"

"I'm…" She coughed. "I'm fine."

"You can't lie to a werewolf darlin'." He cracked the cold pack Quinn tossed him and tilted Parker's head back so that he could better see her throat. "Swallow for me." He listened carefully and watched the way her throat moved. "I'm going to press just a little and I want you to swallow again, if you can, okay." He looked up at Parker's face and she nodded just a little.

He very lightly pressed both thumbs side-by-side at the top of her neck in the center just under her jaw. She didn't flinch but he could feel her urge to cough as a shudder ran through her. "Swallow."

She did and he let his hands drop to her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. "I don't think anything is broken. Probably just bruised a bit." He gave her a flicker of a half-smile and handed her the cold pack for her throat.

Now that he'd had the chance to look them all over, he sighed and turned to Quinn. "So, what happened up there?"

"The guard was high as a kite on somethin'." Quinn ran a hand over his face. "It's my fault. I left my post at the door to move furniture for Parker. If I had done my job that guy never would have gotten that close."

"He had Parker." Hardison growled. "He didn't smell right. He was going to hurt her." He growled again. Fur had sprung up on his arms and the tops of his shoulders.

Quinn scooted a little closer to Hardison and put a hand on Hardison's knee. Eliot could feel Quinn urging Hardison's wolf to settle down through the pack bonds.

Eliot sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Hardison hadn't had trouble keeping control over the wolf like this since very early on. "So the guard grabbed Parker and… You rushed him and got shot?" Eliot looked at Hardison for a second before turning to Quinn with a raised eyebrow.

Quinn hunched his shoulders and pressed his back against the doorframe of the van, wrapping his arms around his knees. "I pulled him away from Parker and tossed him, just to get him away. But when he hit the window, it broke. I didn't think I threw him that hard but…"

"You didn't. If the window hadn't already been broken from the gunshots it wouldn't have broken when he rolled into it." Parker's voice sounded a little rough. "It was my fault Eliot. I was supposed to have the plan. If I'd done my job none of it would have happened."

"Was he alive when you left?" Eliot looked at Quinn and Parker. Both nodded.

"It could have gone worse." Scenarios that left one or more of his pack dead flashed through his mind and he shuddered. "This definitely changes how we can approach this job." With a sigh, Eliot moved back to the driver's seat. He tuned back into the police scanner and started making his way back to the hotel.

. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .

(Biltmore hotel)

Quinn flinched as Eliot drew a long splinter of glass out from under his right shoulder blade. His wolf wanted to whimper but Quinn just held tighter to the edges of the bathtub.

"Almost done." Eliot reassured Quinn as he dropped the shard in the trashcan.

"You said that ten minutes ago." Quinn growled.

"And I finished pulling glass out of the front of you seven minutes ago. Now I'm working on the back of you." Eliot smirked.

Parker came in without knocking on the door that connected their rooms and without knocking on the bathroom door either. "I was able to bribe the guy that brought our food order." She held out a plate that had four raw steaks on it. "The regular food is next to your beds."

"Thanks Parker." Quinn held his hands out for the plate.

"Is Hardison planning on shifting after he eats?" Eliot asked without looking away from the glass shard he was removing.

Parker shook her head. "No. I don't think so."

"I'll leave the door unlocked on our side in case you guys need anything." Eliot looked up to give her a half a smile before she left. "Close the door on your way through, okay."

Parker stood for a moment and then hurried to Eliot who let her lean into his side.

"Whoa darlin' everything okay?" Eliot pulled her into his side a little awkwardly since he didn't want to touch her with his blood smeared hand.

"It's just been an empty safe kind of night." She leaned there for another moment.

"Everybody got to go home at the end of the night. Even the guard." Eliot had to suppress a growl at the thought of the guard, and how close he came to killing Hardison, Parker, and even Quinn. He knew that most of Quinn's injuries came from trying to rescue the guard, but he was happy to lay that damage at the guard's feet as well. He kissed the top of her head.

She nodded and stepped away from him. She ran her fingers across Quinn's shoulder as she passed him. "Thank you." She didn't look at him or glance back as she left the room.

Still holding the plate in front of him he looked over his shoulder at Eliot with a raised eyebrow. "Empty safe? We didn't find a safe before everything went sideways."

"That's Parker speak for a really bad night." Eliot patted Quinn's shoulder. "Expressing feelings is still something that's really hard for Parker, so I can tell ya that, thank you, was truly meant." Eliot pulled a couple more glass pieces from the wound he was debriding. "I owe you a thanks as well. You saved Hardison and Parker and even the damn guard."

Quinn felt a swell of something tangled in the pack bonds. He frowned as he tried to figure it out. Before long, his stomach growled loudly at the smell of the meat on the plate in front of his face.

"Eat your meat." Eliot commented without looking up.

Quinn balanced the plate on his knees, and using his hand, since Parker hadn't provided any silverware, he picked up the steak and took a bite. "You're mad that we saved the guard and you're relieved that we saved the guard?" Quinn thought aloud.

"I'm pissed off at the guard and it… I don't want to be the man I used to be, but I still want to kill him for all of this." Eliot growled and threw a glass shard at the trashcan hard enough to make the can wobble. "I'm relieved that the guard is alive because it means we don't have blood on our hands over this." He couldn't help noticing the irony of his statement; his hands were covered in Quinn's blood at the moment.

Quinn took another bite of his steak and chewed thoughtfully.

"Why did you save the guy?" Eliot dropped another piece of glass into the trash. "No one would have blamed you if you'd let him fall." Eliot did his best not to kill people anymore but, much to his own shame, he wasn't sure if he'd have tried to save the guard tonight.

"I told you I'd do my best." Quinn swallowed his mouthful of steak. "I don't want to be that man anymore either."

Eliot continued to pick and toss glass in silence for a stretch and Quinn finished the second steak.

"I thought it really didn't bother me… the killing. I was good at it."

Eliot couldn't see Quinn's face, but he could feel the little spike of pride at the end of Quinn's words.

"Maybe it's you… maybe it's them." Quinn tilted his chin toward Parker and Hardison. "Maybe it was just time." He shrugged a shoulder. "I want to be something better I guess."

. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .

(The next morning in Scorpion's Garage)

"Cabe did you see this?" Toby waved Cabe over to the computer on his desk.

"The possible robbery in the same building we were in yesterday?" Cabe tucked his sunglasses inside his jacket. "Yah, I saw it. It's been all over the news and the radio."

"I ran the numbers." Sly crossed his arms and leaned in a little to look at the computer screen. "There are one hundred and fifty-seven businesses in that complex and thirty-eight of them are some kind of law firm. Between all thirty-eight there's over two-hundred and fifty lawyers twice as many aids…" Sly went back to his dry erase board where he already had most of this information written out.

"What does the number of lawyers have to do with the price of tea in China?" Cabe grouched.

"There's only one bank in the whole building." Paige blew on her coffee as she sat at her desk.

"Exactly." Sly pointed at her with his marker.

"But whoever they are they didn't rob the bank." Cabe frowned at Paige.

"Precisely." Sly finished writing out an equation. "If they'd hit the bank then there is a twenty seven percent chance that they could somehow be involved with the hacker that you're looking for. But…." He circled his final number. "They hit one of the law firms and that gives this a point zero zero three percent chance that they are involved with the hack."

"So, you're saying it's a coincidence?" Cabe asked just to be sure.

Walter hurried down the stairs and gave Paige's cheek a quick chaste kiss on the way past. "I don't believe in coincidence. I believe in probabilities and Sly's right, the numbers just don't make sense for one to be involved with the other."

"I believe in probabilities too." Toby closed his computer and leaned back with his feet on his desk and his head cradled in his hands, elbows out. "And if I was a gambling man…"

"Which you're not anymore!" Happy yelled from the back of the shop.

"Which I am not anymore." Toby agreed. "But IF I was… I would still bet that there is a connection."

"I'll make a call to the local PD and see if there's anything that isn't being reported on the news." Cabe saw the looks on Walter and Sly's faces. "Just to be sure that there's no information that Sly wasn't able to account for. I want to make sure his numbers are as accurate as possible."

Walter rolled his eyes as Cabe walked away to make his call. "While Cabe is engaged in his fruitless endeavor I can tell you all that I've made some progress."

"You found at least one of the hackers?" Happy wiped her hands on a shop rag as she came closer.

"I'm really sure that A H is in Los Angeles. He's still bouncing his IP address but the way he's set up his code says that he's planning to directly approach a server. There's no other reason for this line of code. See?" Walter pointed out a long string of code on the screen. He frowned at the blank faces he was seeing.

"I see the set up for a server farm protocol but what makes you think he's here?" Sylvester ran a finger under the code reviewing it again.

"It's obvious." Walt looked face to face. "None of you see it?"

"We're not saying you're wrong." Paige reached out and patted Walter's arm.

"So what now?" Toby asked.

. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .

(Biltmore hotel)

Hardison had ordered breakfast for everyone and once it was delivered, he'd knocked on the connecting door between the rooms. "El, you guys ready to get started? I got breakfast over here."

Eliot opened the door and smiled a little when Hardison startled. "How's the shoulder?"

"Fine." Hardison shrugged his shoulder and swung his arm a little. "Is it weird that it's fine? Seems like it shouldn't be. Not that I'm not glad! It's just weird."

Eliot patted Hardison's shoulder on the way in. Quinn followed in the shape of his wolf, and everyone gathered around the little table where Parker had set out plates. She already had a large pancake on her plate and was not waiting on the rest of them.

Eliot fixed a plate for Quinn, set it on the floor and fixed himself a plate. Hardison helped himself and they all settled in.

"Anything we need to be aware of before we try again?" Eliot asked.

"You mean like this?" Hardison used the remote to turn on the TV. Blaring coverage of the attempted burglary at the law offices was being shown on several news channels. Hardison clicked the TV off.

Eliot rubbed a hand over his brow and muttered "shit" under his breath.

"Tell them what else you found." Parker prompted.

Eliot quirked an eyebrow.

"Well, the guy that stole my code didn't really alter it much and he left my signature on it so I've made sure that all of my sniffer bots are carrying my signature as well, so that if anyone ever looks into it they'll see that the old code was old and I'm trying to stop it. I've also been tagging my trail when I've been looking for the guy that stole my stuff so that there is a trail pointing to him."

Eliot nodded and rolled his hand in a move it along gesture.

"Looks like someone is onto us or me at least. I started noticing another set of tags and I recognize the coding style. Even if I didn't though he left me a message and it was signed."

"So someone followed your work to you and your sure it's not the hacker you're looking for?" Eliot simplified it to be sure he understood.

Hardison nodded.

"What did the message say?"

"It was an algorithm. He'd put together data on me and the guy I'm looking for but he left information gaps that needed to be filled in before the algorithm could run."

"That sounds like a math problem and not a message." Eliot grumbled feeling like he was back in seventh grade algebra.

"Right. But the answer would depend on what I plugged in."

"Hardison if this is a 'behold my genius' geek speech I just might shoot your other shoulder." Eliot put a hand over his eyes and sighed heavily.

Hardison growled a little. "I used his algorithm to tell him I'm not responsible for the hack. He sent back his signature and his IP."

. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .

(Scorpion's Garage)

"You did WHAT?" Happy stood abruptly leaning toward Walter.

"What's wrong with you Walter?" Toby laid a hand on Happy's shoulder hoping she would restrain herself.

"What did I miss?" Cabe asked as he came back in the room.

Paige didn't look up as she answered. "Walter invited a possibly dangerous, definitely criminal hacker, to come to the garage." Paige rubbed her temples where she could feel the start of a headache.

"It's not like that." Walter protested. "This is the guy that's trying to stop the hack on the banks. We're all on the same side here, really."