"Any questions?" Sophie asked.
The team shrugged. She took the silence as clarity and strolled away from the briefing island to the bar for her glass of wine. Parker hopped up the stairs, Breanna and Hardison began dividing their research load, while Harry wandered over to join Sophie for a moment.
"How do you think it's going?"
"With Eliot? Fine. He's probably six hours into fishing by now."
"I meant..."
"I know. Likely unchanged as he won't have acknowledged it yet, but he will."
"I hope so. Anyway, since you don't need me here, I'm going to try and catch lunch with my daughter."
"Tell her hello."
"I will." Harry gave a nod as he left.
Sophie's phone began to ring. She glanced at the number, smiled and answered.
"Tara, long time..." she paused as Tara quickly interrupted her.
"Is Eliot with you?"
"No, he's on a sabbatical, I guess you could say. We could arrange help if you need it." Sophie stood up and began drifting toward the hackers as she spoke. They both noticed her change in tone and listened closer.
"Crap, I really hoped it was a prank." Tara sighed.
"What are you talking about? What should be a prank?"
Tara paused to text a photo to Sophie. The latter's face fell as she read it.
"Sophie?" Hardison hazarded.
She shook her head a moment before pointing at her phone and flicking her fingers toward the monitors on the stage wall.
Hardison immediately followed the instruction, projecting the text up on the wall.
"What the hell?" Breanna's jaw hung agape.
Tara's text showed an auction invite, the details not present. The only information listed stated New Orleans, with tomorrow's date. Eliot was listed as the prize alongside a photo.
"So somebody is planning to sell Eliot?" Breanna frowned.
"Appears so." Sophie breathed. She hit the speaker button on her phone to allow the hacker siblings full access to the conversation.
"Where did you get this, Tara?"
"It's all over the black market. Three different contacts sent it to me. That's why I called you."
"Any idea who the seller is?"
"No. It seems to have come out of thin air. Whoever it is definitely knows how to navigate the market, but there aren't even rumors of who it might be. They're hiding well."
"We're on this. Thank you, Tara."
"I'll let you know if I find out anything more, and if you need me, call."
"Thank you." Sophie hung up.
"Should I call Harry back?" Breanna asked.
"No," Sophie held two fingers up. "Let him enjoy his lunch. We need to focus on finding out what we can about this, starting with making sure it's real."
"Already on it," Hardison tapped a key to trace Eliot's phone and com. He tagged a local ally to physically check the cabin location.
"If someone does have Eliot, we need to know who they are, and how to get an invite to this auction," Sophie continued.
Breanna nodded and began tracing Tara's text.
"Parker!" Sophie shouted towards the upper floor.
Eliot glanced around. He was strapped to a chair, the straps clearly meant to keep him upright as opposed to holding him down. The shots his captors gave him worked. He could barely feel his limbs existed, let alone attempt to move them. A tingling sensation vibrated in his mouth and jaw, causing a small numbing.
He had blacked out for a portion of the drive from the cabin, a delayed reaction to his untold number run-in with a taser, so he couldn't pin point his location. The air smelled of the gulf, leaving him assuming he was back near NOLA. They had heaved him in through a dock area in a warehouse. No business signs were visible, and no unusual sounds came to his ear. Nothing to help him narrow things down.
They had taken his picture for proof of capture, strapped him in the chair, and largely ignored him for hours other than giving him numbing shots every two hours. The lack of interaction left him unable to get a read on his captors, a fact he was more discouraged about than his current state.
"How are you feeling?" the woman smirked as she approached from behind him.
"Who are you?" he asked as she paused a few feet ahead of him, devouring an apple.
"Who I am doesn't really matter, does it?"
"You said it yourself, the people you plan to sell me to are going to kill me. It's only fair I know who took me down." Eliot's words slurred slightly from the tingling muscles in his mouth.
"Oh, I'm not selling you. I'm just the retriever, like you. Nothing personal, just the job. But you have a point. You should know the name. Adeline Kylie, at your service."
"Imagine it's a pretty big purse you're collecting."
"Very nice, very large purse… and the reputation? Well, can't beat that." She tossed her apple core at the rear door can, sinking it.
"So who do you work for?"
"Sorry, buddy. He wants the pleasure of introductions himself. He sure doesn't like you though." Adeline checked her watch and smirked again as she walked out.
"What did you find?" Sophie sat at the island. Breanna, Hardison, and Parker already filled the other seats.
"Well, can confirm he's missing. Laundow found his stuff on the front step, no sign he ever even entered the cabin," Hardison answered.
"So we know the auction is real. Who did it? How are they doing it?" Parker interrupted.
"I don't know. We tried to track it down and came up empty. There's no sign of who did this or where they're holding Eliot."
Sophie gently tapped her finger in the air as she thought. "If Eliot never even entered the cabin, that means whoever did this had to be waiting there for him. How did they know he would be there?"
"Did we get bugged again?" Parker frowned.
"No, it wasn't bugs. I swept the whole place, the coms, the phones, everything. We're clean." Hardison rubbed his chin.
"It was my fault." Breanna sighed.
"Excuse me?" Sophie stared at her. Parker and Hardison joined.
"The only ones who knew Eliot was going to go there were us and the booking site. I went back and found a passive keyword tag alert buried in the booking site's code. The tag was set for keywords like rural, outdoors, remote, and limited to places within a few hours of NOLA. The code triggered when the keywords were used and sent an alert to a dummy server for retrieval. It looks like the actual hack came afterward, so I never noticed it when I gave Eliot the link. I missed it. I gave them Eliot's location. I'm sorry."
"No, Breanna. It's not your fault. There was no way to know that. You followed your instincts and caught it afterward. That's what matters. Were you able to get anything from tracing that?"
"Came up with nada. The server is a dummy set up just for this. Whoever did this went to a lot of trouble."
"They're professional, and they did their homework."
"Which means this is going to be hard." Parker locked eyes with Sophie.
"We need to get the auction information."
"We need to figure out who did this."