The last chapter will be published tomorrow, Monday morning (CET)
The Dark Rashomon Job – Chapter 2
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The same moment Sophie set foot in the barracks, she knew something was wrong. Three frozen, immobile people reflected the chill she felt inside, as if the temperature had dropped by twenty degrees. Even Hardison felt it; he stopped at the door.
She lowered the club Hardison had armed her with for protection – they felt Wayne's presence all the way up to this place – and tried to catch Nate's eyes. No luck there, he was facing away from her.
"We brought our samples," Hardison said. "I guess you didn't have any luck with yours?"
"No." Nate's reply fell heavy, and froze in the air before hitting the floor.
Still nobody moved; Hardison still stood by the door. "Okay, what's going on?" he asked. "Parker? Is everything alright?"
No, it wasn't. Sophie knew that even before the thief turned to look at them. Parker's eyes swiveled from Hardison to Eliot, with an expression of a child prepared to evade a hit. And Eliot… he was a restrained whirl of energy so compressed and turned inward that he looked like he would implode. She had never seen him so closed off, so… far away. His and Parker's eyes met for a second, and they both diverted their eyes from each other.
Sophie could almost hear the shattering sound of something breaking.
Nate cleared his throat. "It seems," he started quietly, "that Parker and Eliot both worked at the same place, at the same time, eight years ago. It ended badly. He cut her rope – she fell and broke her legs. She triggered the alarm – his friend got killed by security."
Sophie held her breath. Hardison made two quick steps and his arms were around Parker, holding, giving, and his muttered words melted into one long, comforting sound.
The walls around Eliot grew up, thicker.
"Are you sure?" Sophie asked like she would ask about the weather; lightly. "When did it happen? I'm sure there's a lot of possible-"
"Eight years ago."
"I was in London eight years ago. Good, for the moment I thought we would have another Dagger of Aqu'Abi mess, all of us on the same job…" Her words trailed off when Nate twitched. "What?"
"It did happen in London, Sophie. The Museum of Natural History. They were after Edward Heron-Allen's Purple Sapphire and the Devonshire Emerald."
Sophie's heart skipped a beat. "Which day?" Her voice betrayed her; it came out as a ghost of a whisper. "I was there too. Not planning a heist, no, just making groundwork with my mark. He was a curator at that time, and I swapped all his bank accounts, changed his numbers, and disabled them to make transactions that would result in the exchange of a few sculptures that I was interested in."
"Wait, what?" It was Hardison who turned to her now – much to Sophie's surprise, Parker seemed to be forgotten in his arms for a moment. "It was you who messed up his accounts?!"
"No way, Hardison, you couldn't, simply couldn't have been there too – you were barely in high school at that time!"
"I wasn't there, physically, you're right – but I was in there. And I was also in high school when I put Iceland on the brink of bankruptcy, Soph, so that means nothing. Are you talking about Sam Morgan, the curator? Because if you are, you blew away my first attempt to pay for Nana's medical bills. It took me two more months before I was able to start all over again, aiming at Iceland that time. She almost died because of that!"
The pain bleeding through his voice hit her hard. "I wasn't… I didn't know- " She stopped. What she could tell him? She had her own reasons, and she had also paid a huge price for that con. "I couldn't pull it off. I had to leave him alone, because someone's attempted robbery stirred all the security protocols…" Once again, her words died when she looked at Parker and Eliot.
"Eliot," Hardison whispered, anger seeping into his words. "The hell, man? You cut Parker's rope? What-"
Eliot stood up in one move, and strolled past them to the door.
They all stood in shocked silence.
What was the chance, really, that their lives had been so closely interwoven, just like they'd been around that dagger? But this time, there wasn't any banter or cheerful competition. The darkness of their lives reached out and grabbed them in a deadly clutch, bringing forward all the dirty aspects of their jobs.
"Nate?" Parker said, a small voice, a plea for reason, for sense, for making this go away.
Nate moved, slowly. He got up and put his hands on the metal case, not opening it for a few seconds. "Hardison, where are your samples?" His voice was a briefing one, but it lacked its usual sharpness.
Sophie didn't wait to see how Nate's attempt would work out; she followed Eliot outside.
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He didn't get far – she almost bumped into his back when she went around the corner of the barracks. He stood there, watching the dark forest that surrounded them.
"You lost someone important that day, Eliot?" she asked. He didn't turn around, but even in almost complete darkness, she felt his shoulders tensing. She didn't have to see it.
His voice sounded thick with an unidentified emotion. "I've lost too many people, Sophie, too many good people. That boy, Jean, he was an… a good man. At his core, he was a good man." Which Eliot wasn't at that time, she finished his thought. And because of that, his death was even worse, undeserved. "So much time passed, and I was starting to hope I would never again feel that, that-" He gritted his teeth with effort, and he had to take a deeper breath to continue. "That feeling of, of…"
"Failure?" She offered when he stopped.
"Loss," he said. And the sadness in that simple word squeezed her heart. "I've lost too many people. I thought I was done with losing them. I was wrong, I… well, I was wrong."
Oh, she knew which recent loss might've been one of the triggers for this retreat, but she knew she had to keep silent, not to mention her name. She waited through his hesitation, staying one step behind him.
Even that step was too close, it seemed. He put his hands in his pockets, and the barriers rose a little more. "It's been a long time since I thought of him," he said to the woods around them. "And this was an unexpected blow – and now knowing Parker's role in it, I can't even... no, I simply can't think about it now."
"It's not her fault, you know that? You were simply caught in a mess of circumstances," she said, pouring the softness into her voice. "Just as it's not your fault for her fall." A new thought cut her breath. "It isn't, is it? You didn't know somebody was hanging on that rope?"
"I knew. I eliminated the competition and potential danger. Maybe, if I had known it was a woman – a girl almost as young as Hardison at that time – maybe I would've stopped. Maybe I wouldn't. And that's one more thing I can't think of now, too."
He flinched at her touch, and she withdrew her hand.
"Get him in, Sophie!" Nate's call almost provoked a snappish reply, but the damage was done. He wouldn't say anything more.
"Come," she nudged him, gently – he expected that move now, and let her turn him around.
They returned to the barracks, and for one long, long moment, four gazes danced all around, unable to rest on familiar faces.
Nate was packing his case. "All the samples I tested were negative for the enzyme," he said. "That's the only important thing now. Concentrate on your job, not on this shit. We'll deal with it later, when we finish tomorrow's search. Understood?"
She wanted to tell him that matters of hurt and heart couldn't be switched on and off on command, but then she realized she was wrong. They could do it; all of them had been doing that for their entire lives. Masks, roles, acting - they knew how to put themselves aside and do the job.
Nate spared one long look at all of them, one by one; the treacherous flashlight gave too much away. They couldn't hide.
"I can't split you up now," he continued just a little softer. "Eliot can't return from his evening walk with another woman, nor can Hardison get a new girl. You have to work as if nothing happened. Can you do it?"
Sophie almost nodded, but she looked at Hardison, at the hurt confusion in his eyes. His arms, always moving, always doing something, simply hung by his sides, reflecting his turmoil.
She didn't tell them what price she had paid because of that disaster – what she'd had to leave behind and flee. Maybe she would never do it. They were quick; they would connect Charlotte Prentiss, count the years, and come to a conclusion. She didn't want that. But surprisingly, just when she thought she would be able to concentrate only on their pain and hurt, she felt her own pain growing into anger. Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away.
"Of course we can do it, darling," she said. "We are professionals."
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Of course they were professionals. It was a half-hour walk back and deeper into the mountain, with a few tiresome uphill climbs, slippery and slick, and they both hadn't said a word. Parker walked a few steps behind him, and Eliot felt her eyes on his back.
Hardison had told them about Wayne before they separated, so he had an excuse to go full protecting mode. Listening, ready to fight, concentrated only on sounds and shadows around him – not on the lithe girl that walked silently after him.
The night was young, and warm lights in the first camp welcomed them, accompanied by music and laughter from the cantina.
He should've joined the party, but he was tired, and tomorrow promised to be even more demanding. "Trailer?" he asked the darkness behind his back.
"Okay," Parker said. They turned left when they entered the circle of trailers, going to the one Baldy had given them.
They met a group just a few meters after that spot. Baldy, Salmon with his watery eyes, Derek, a black guy, the only one taller than Baldy; he had worked and joked with all of them that afternoon.
Parker was under his arm in a second, her arm around his waist, and her giggle responded to their greetings.
"No chance," Eliot said when they called for them to join them in the cantina. "Maybe tomorrow. Now I have more interesting things to do." He pulled her closer; she chuckled and snuggled, and the guys went away with only a few sleazy smiles.
Yes, they were professionals. He had never doubted that.
Yet, silence fell when they closed the trailer door after them. She got the bed; he made a makeshift berth in the corner.
It wasn't music that kept them awake, separated by darkness, their eyes staring at the roof. It was silence.
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"Try to understand, I have to process this," Hardison finally said at the end of his long tirade. He couldn't see her nodding in the darkness, so Sophie occasionally put encouraging: yes, I know, yes, of course, I understand… to show him she was listening.
She wasn't, really, listening to him. She didn't have to process this. She had to think about how to solve it, but that was more demanding than she thought. She couldn't solve herself, for starters – she wasn't thinking clearly, wrapped in her own memories. Hardison should never know how his actions messed up her life.
The main question now was troubling - would that London night mess up their lives now? Would ghosts of it chase them, poisoning the thing they had here? She could deal with Hardison's role in that. She knew, also, that he would process everything that needed to be processed, and get over it. He was young. His soul was clean and in bright colors. He was good.
But Parker and Eliot… their darkness lay heavy on them both, burdened them with things Hardison couldn't ever understand.
She clearly saw betrayal in their eyes, in that quick glance. Accusations and anger, hurt and pain, whirling with the same strength.
Maybe Nate had made a mistake. They could come up with a convincing story about swapped women. It would be wise to give Parker and Eliot a little time on their own, to calm down, to think and feel without the other near, reminding them of London all the time.
And she knew how upset Hardison was because of Parker; he was the one who should've been with her now. But it was too late now. They all had to survive this night; tomorrow might show something new to try.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered when the last sentence of Hardison's speech ended in a heavy sigh, before he started another one. "Something's moving in that thicket over there. We better hurry."
He raised his club and shooed her in front of him, silent and scared. They made the rest of their way in silence.
Thank you, Wayne.
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Nate spent the night in Jim's guest house, after they had met and walked together to the bar in the village, the only bar in the valley. People greeted the new veterinarian, and the word spread. He promised he would spend the next day driving all around, getting to know the villagers, mostly scattered around on small farms, and he had the perfect excuse to investigate every corner of the mountain.
The first thing in the morning, his phone rang, and Jim directed him to the third lumberjack camp, the biggest and permanent one. It was also built on an opening in the forest, but this one had an asphalt road, and real buildings. Ryce-Forbes set his headquarters and offices in that camp, and he was slowly, but steadily, making it his base for the entire county. All the other camps moved around, spreading further into the mountain, but the expansion was directed from the third one.
One of the guard dogs was late for its medicine; Jim was supposed to drive by and deliver the drugs, and it made perfect sense to send the new veterinarian.
That could shorten their stay here, if Nate found enough samples to prove the poisoning, because Parker and Eliot could skip this one, and after the second camp go directly to the fourth one.
It was only a few minutes' drive from the village, on the good road, but Nate had more than enough time to think about the cut that sliced his team – not in half, but into quarters.
They had this day, and maybe a part of the night, before returning to Portland and packing for Japan, and whatever problems they had, they had to deal with them before Japan. That job was deadly, and his team was shaken; never a good combination.
Yet, when he stopped his truck in the middle of the third camp, all his thoughts about that London night evaporated; this was the place they were looking for.
They called it a camp, and that fooled him, but it was a complex, the center of Lee Ryce- Forbes's empire. A modern, three-story tall building with warehouses and sawmills in the back and thousands and thousands of logs, spreading in perfect lines. There was a beautiful forest here not so long ago, he realized, watching the destroyed soil, ploughed with skidders and harvesters. The complex was in the middle of a huge bowl – the mountain slopes rose on its sides, the forest still fighting the intruders, hovering at the very edge of the wire fence. A person standing on that slope would have a perfect view down of the entire complex.
The main building was guarded by a tall wire fence. He saw five Dobermans inside, one of them his patient.
"Welcome!" Somebody called him and he got out of the truck; a gorgeous black woman in a sharp business suit came closer. "I was expecting you. I'm the personal assistant of Mr. Ryce-Forbes. Call me Heidi. I will take you to the dogs."
"Any chance to speak with Mr. Ryce-Forbes? I'd like to establish a connection, you'll see me more often than Jim. Is he around?"
She pointed at the group of people around one giant wood chipper. One of them, grey haired, was in a suit. "He is busy, unfortunately, and he is leaving in a couple of minutes. Maybe tomorrow, he'll be here all day."
But Ryce-Forbes noticed him and the truck, and he left the group, accompanied by a man in a similar suit, only a few thousand dollars less expensive. The other guy wore yellow rubber boots.
"Welcome, welcome! The new veterinarian, isn't it?" Ryce-Forbes was all white teeth, white hair, and dazzling smile: a successful politician in business waters. The most dangerous combination.
"Claw and Fang aren't feeling well today." Ryce-Forbes grabbed Nate's hand and shook it violently. "Heidi will administer the drug, you can give it to her."
Letting the veterinarian see the dogs himself would be a normal thing – unless somebody didn't want a veterinarian on the other side of that fence. "Are you letting them run in the forest often?" he asked.
"No, never – everything is full of bears. They are dangerous as hell. We've lost a few men. Never found them after they got lost in the woods. Will you excuse me now? I'm in a bit of rush here…" And he was already on his way back to the group. Yellow Boots followed him, but he nodded to Heidi before he went after his boss.
"Perfect," Nate said and took a small package out of the car. "Here you go. Everything you need for our little friends. Give it to them, and call me in the morning."
He was wrong. Parker and Eliot wouldn't skip this place – it would be their main target. He only needed to find a place with a signal to call them.
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Sophie didn't mind that her morning coffee was ground before her eyes, and clearly not coffee at all, but Hardison was shaken by the dark brown brewed drink that Ann-Catrin put on their table.
Sophie had collected a water sample from the small pool near the farm house while Hardison was still sleeping, but she didn't have a chance to go to the upper part of the farm that bordered the woods. This farm was in a strategically important spot, in the second third of the valley, mirroring the second lumber camp in the mountain. The samples they gave Nate the previous night were clean, but they had one more to collect before moving onto another farm.
"We are trying to learn more about the chickens." Hardison started their prepared speech. This farm didn't have any, at least nowhere inside the hedge. "I can't wait to see yours."
"Mine? I don't have any." Ann-Catrin sipped the brew; it must've been chickory root. "But Cynthia over there has three hen houses. She supplies the entire valley with her eggs and meat." That 'over there', according to the direction she waved, was exactly their next step, towards the third camp.
Sophie poured more coffee into Hardison's cup, and he smiled in delight.
"I grow corn for her chicks," Ann-Catrin continued, not waiting for their reply. "and she returns it with their manure. Organic fertilizer at its best. Do you want me to call her and ask if we could swap our volunteers?"
"It would be great – but only after we finish our morning tasks here," Sophie said. "I saw you have a small bean field under the edge of the forest – we'll go there and work until lunch. We can spend a few days with Cynthia, and then return here again after Hardison has learned all about chickens. I'm interested in manure preparations."
And that sentence was something she never imagined Sophie Deveraux would say.
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They didn't have to pretend to be a happy couple, just a couple, right? Eliot didn't try to act when Parker brought him his jacket while he prepared to go to work with the boys; she simply threw the jacket on the table in front of him. He managed to catch the coffee cup before it fell over.
"Oooh, trouble in paradise?" Derek snorted when she turned around without a word and marched away.
"It's your fault," he said. "Too much beer the last night. I was dead."
"And you'll be even more dead tonight when we finish," Salmon said. "You'll work with us until lunch, and then Baldy willl show you where our outer team is. They are working on the path to the next camp location. We plan to open one more in two months. They ain't coming back here to sleep. They have tents, and we bring them everything they need daily."
"Can't wait," he grumbled, because that was expected – and keeping a grim grimace on his face wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. They all sat on the cantina's porch, waiting for the sun to break through the mist that lingered in the branches. The forest was still asleep.
No samples to collect; they had done that here the previous night. Today they had to talk, ask questions, and wait for the next step, the delivery. He'd thought they would go to the third, maybe even the fourth camp, but this was new. That outer team wasn't accounted for, and maybe they spread the chemicals, not the regular workers.
He had to check his phone signal again. He had caught a signal at the edge of the camp before this coffee, and his phone pinged five missed calls from Nate – when he tried to return the call, Nate was out of reach at that time. So were Hardison and Sophie. They all needed to be within reach at the same time to communicate, and that was dangerous. He would try again - but not now. He had more important things to do now.
He had woken up at dawn and left the trailer, quietly. The night was long and disturbing, but as hours passed, his memories of Jean dying under the bullets, falling into the elevator shaft and out of his reach, transformed into something much worse. Eight years ago he cut that rope. Now, unfortunately, the unknown person on the end of it had a face. And not just any face – if he could have chosen, Parker would have been the last choice for it. Her impossible mixture of strength and fragility was always driving him nuts. She was able to survive everything, and at the same time, one wrong thought, word, look, could break her inside.
He could've killed her that day. When he finally accepted that thought, it set a slow burning dread in his stomach.
He put his jacket on, and collected his gear. Or whatever it was called here; every one of them had an identical pole-climbing kit. Lineman belt, cinch-lock, adjustable rope-positioning strap and shoe-claws, metal strips with spikes for better grasp. They were playing damn ninjas here – but he had to admit, yesterday it didn't feel stupid when he climbed forty feet up the tree with this stuff.
He hung all those clanging things on the backpack-style storage bag and went after Parker.
This was going to be one hell of a talk; he had no idea what to tell her.
She wasn't in their trailer. She wasn't nearby. She wasn't anywhere in sight, and his nerves danced, fueled with annoyance, worry and anger. Damn, not even a pissed off and hurt Parker would bail on the job. But he always knew he could expect anything from her – and that anything often meant something dangerous.
Like, let's say, going off into the misty woods, to stumble upon lurking Wayne.
He made three circles, wider each time, and his worry headed for fear. Unfortunately, his annoyance followed the trend and grew into real anger.
When he returned to his initial position, she came out of the trailer, as if she had been there all the time.
He couldn't not notice that she flinched when she saw him approaching, and he suppressed a growl, and slowed down his steps.
"We need to talk," he said even before he stopped in front of her, painfully aware that was the only sentence he had ready. What the hell he was supposed to tell her? Hi Parker, I broke your legs, but you killed my friend, so we're even, let's go work as if nothing happened? That was supposed to be the result of this talk, but he couldn't feel that. And that was the worst of all. So he simply stood before her, barely able to hide the storm inside.
And she raised her eyebrows, in a slow, maddeningly indifferent way, and looked at him as if looking at the mud before her feet.
The surge of anger surprised him; his vision went red, and he tried, really tried, to slow down, to stay calm.
"I have nothing to tell you," she finally said. Cold and precise words.
Well, how about: I'm sorry I caused your friend's death? How about: I appreciate you've come to settle things? How about… No, this wasn't going to work. He was miles away from the right state of mind for this shit, and his control was slipping.
He gritted his teeth, moved all the damn muscles in the right order and in the right positions, and produced a wolfish smile. "Good for me," he said. No coldness here; only burning rage.
He turned on his heel and strolled away.
Killing some trees would be nice after this.
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Cynthia also had a shotgun, but Hardison simply waved to the barrel. "Yes, we know, Wayne. We heard him last night. If we see him again, we'll call you so you can shoot him."
"Shoot Wayne?" The woman's eyes widened in horror. "Are you insane?!"
Ah yes – nature, green things, sanctity of life, he has every right to rummage our pumpkin field, it's his land shit… he should've thought they would react like that.
He waved again – noticing dirt under his fingernails and almost bursting into tears – and he hid all his thoughts, putting a smile on his face. "Ann-Catrin sent us to work with your chickens on your, your… place." He wasn't sure if he should call this a farm or a community. Many people worked and lived here. He also couldn't decipher whether they were organic, vegan, off-grid, or something else. This place wasn't vegan, for sure; a few goats watched them suspiciously while they walked with Cynthia to meet the other workers, and he saw geese, too. Meat, eggs, milk – this place wasn't even vegetarian, much less vegan.
Off-grid they were; solar panels covered the roofs of all the small one-room garden houses. They collected rain, so they weren't in an immediate danger from enzyme pollution, but a small pool with fish and ducks was clearly used for watering their gardens. And one mountain creek supplied water to it.
He nodded to Sophie to pay attention to that, while he listened to Cynthia's impossibly complicated speech about the chickens. Sophie already had a sample from Ann-Catrin's bean field, and she could collect one from the pool. They needed to get water from this pool, check if there was another creek, and take soil from a few spots. Preferably finishing all of that before he actually met or – what a terrifying thought – touched anything with feathers.
He had had enough shocks from Ann-Catrin's farm – that bean field had dirty soil, and his hands were ruined. One young girl noticed his trouble, and she gave him cream. He knew it would be home-made, organic blah blah whatever, but when he smelled it, she explained that it was from dandelions. And he couldn't Google that. The cream was great – until Sophie mentioned that the base for it was probably lard. He ended up rubbing that horror off his hands with dirty soil, drying them again, and he. Wasn't. Happy.
Yet, troubles with nature kept him occupied and diverted his mind from their other trouble – it worked every time, except when he would look at Sophie, which happened every minute, her being constantly in front of his eyes, so he was on a see-saw. Annoyed with this green shit, and troubled with a memory of his own despair. Alec Hardison wasn't often helpless – and he could recall that feeling of defeat with disturbing clarity. Numerous times he had cursed the unknown bastard who messed up his transactions; Nana was rapidly going down, her time was measured, and someone stopped him, after all the preparations, from pressing that key and getting the money for her.
And that someone now had a face. A face that avoided meeting his eyes.
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The only place that had a strong and constant signal was the bar in the middle of the village, a central position in the valley. Nate stationed himself there after he drove all around, trying to catch a good spot for calling. Now he was sure he was available, and the only thing he needed was to call all of them and try to catch them while they were available too.
Hardison and Sophie answered almost immediately.
"Thank you, thank you!" Hardison sounded as if he just saved him from drowning. "Don't hang up! Talk to me – say anything you want, talk about politics if you want – everything except nature and green things – but just talk. I want to hear a normal human voice, distorted through the speakers, not distorted with damn quacking and a soft breeze through leaves! This godforsaken place is full of pollen, Nate, pollen! And it's dirty, there's soil everywhere, wet soil with squishy sounds, and geese chased me. No, Sophie, leave-" A rustling sound came through the phone, something clanged, but before Nate could say anything, Sophie's voice replaced Hardison's. She put him on speakerphone, and the background sounds melded with Hardison's quiet protests.
"We have the last sample from Ann-Catrin's farms, and we collected three more at Cynthia's place."
He tried to hear how she felt, but it was impossible just through her voice. It had a slight con-voice feeling in it, though - the best sign she played a role in front of Hardison.
"Okay, we'll test them when you bring them to the meeting point. Anything new? How are you two doing, and have you heard from Parker and Eliot?"
Only the quacking in the background came as an answer. Hardison stopped murmuring.
"We are fine," she finally said. "Hardison is busy hiding that he is allergic to feathers, and I'm studying compost and manure. And no, we haven't heard from them. Hardison tried to call Parker a few times, but they are clearly deeper in the mountain. We can't reach them. You try."
Those last two words were said more like an order, than a suggestion, reflecting all her worries about Eliot and Parker.
"I will. In case I can't reach them, and you hear them first, tell them they have to go to the third camp." He quickly explained what he saw and what he needed them to check. He didn't say anything more about that London night, and both of them were carefully avoiding that subject. That was enough; he didn't need more.
When he finished the call, he ordered a Jack, and started calling Parker and Eliot in turns.
Parker answered when he was on the third glass.
"Eliot is with his people, going to a remote location where they plan to put up another camp, and after that he will go with Baldy, Derek…or was it Salmon? …to take care of some delivery." She recited that as if she read that from the paper, reminding him of the very first days, and her first disastrous tries at grifting.
"Okay… I've sent you both messages with an explanation about the third camp. You will get them when they go through, maybe later. Ryce-Forbes's main building very likely has our enzyme. It's surrounded by a wire fence, and he has five dogs. It's surrounded by sawmills, machinery and piled timber and has many good entrance points. After Eliot finishes with that delivery, and checking that outer location, you both go there and try to find something. It will be late, the second shift will end, and there won't be many people." He paused, waiting for her to say something, but she was silent. "How are you doing?" he asked.
"I got a job. I was bored in the camp, so I talked with people there, and challenged a few loud guys to pole-climbing. They were pathetic. They gave me a wood chipper with a hydraulic crane, a huge one, for large logs, the one you drive."
He squinted, imagining Parker armed with a wood-destroyer-whatever. "That's great, but I wasn't asking about that."
"And I think I saw Wayne at one point – a shadow in the trees, very fast."
He sighed, and changed tactics. "What does Eliot say about that delivery and the outer team?"
"I heard that from the guys."
Great, they weren't talking even about the job. "Did you talk with Hardison or Sophie?"
"Seventeen missed calls from Hardison. No."
"Is Eliot okay?"
"He is always okay."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm always okay."
"Look, Parker, there are dogs, and maybe guards around that building. You'll have to work together on that, and I have to know-"
"I have to go. I have wood to chip."
She hung up before he even opened his mouth to stop her.
This was getting better and better. He finished his drink in one sip, waved to a waitress to keep them coming, and hit Eliot's number. And hit, and hit.
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Destroying the wood brought the calm back. There was something comforting in monotonous moves, repeated actions, and roaring noise while the mighty machine gnawed the large chunks of wood, and Parker could almost clear her head of all the disturbing thoughts.
Images and feelings were harder to chase away. She still had nightmares about being trapped in that ventilation shaft. Broken legs – that was the worst of all. Speed was her life, mobility and ability to clear out. She had been certain she would die there. She had been dehydrated, delusional, she'd felt every scrape of sharp bones tearing her flesh, scraping on her nerves… for days.
And when Eliot had come to talk to her, she didn't hear him – she heard the dull sound of his knife slicing through the rope. That scared the shit out of her – the fact she didn't see him, Eliot, anymore, she saw only the unseen face that she had learned to hate blindly.
She also knew, without any doubt, that he wasn't seeing her then, but was seeing someone who had caused his friend's death.
The overwrought machine moaned at that memory, and she eased her hand, slowed down the speed of the rotating blades.
She had tested him, like she had always done with poking his bruises or drilling his nerves when he was annoyed. Oh yes, she'd known she was right when after only three seconds of her silence, his face closed, and one of his nastiest scowls broke through the mask he was trying to maintain. He didn't want, really, to talk to her, he only thought he had to. He did that step because he ought to do it, not because he wanted it – and that lie hurt more than she thought it could.
He would never look at her the same again; she destroyed the team. No – both of them did that.
She would still have Hardison, she tried to tell herself – but that wasn't enough. Not anymore. She needed this family, all four of them.
Refusing Eliot's offer to talk was a mistake. She knew that now. It wasn't important that it was a lie – it would be the first step, something to build on. Maybe, with time, they would be able to fix it, somehow.
She turned the engine off.
Afternoon was slowly crawling towards the evening, and she worked for hours without even noticing it. The camp was filling with people returning from their posts, and the noise grew louder. It was only a matter of time before Eliot would return with his team, either from delivery or from usual work.
She went to their trailer to change, choosing her darker clothes. What had Nate said? Three-story building, wire fence, dogs. Something like that would be an exciting challenge on a normal day, but today, only the thought that she would go there with Eliot, work with him, while silence continued to spread between them, set a knot in her stomach. It settled in a permanent position while she packed her gear, when she heard his laugh in front of the trailer.
This time, she had to do the first step; she opened the door and hurried out before she lost all her courage.
He was standing with Baldy; they listened to Salmon telling a joke, and that was a real smile on his face, not a fake one – but it froze and slowly died when he raised his eyes to her. His face closed. This wasn't angry-Eliot. This was cold-Eliot, very rarely seen, and frightening.
She stopped short.
Salmon shut up.
This was good. A couple fighting was a perfect cover, it cemented their roles, and nobody would suspect they were on the job. It made this real. But she never knew what ordinary people did when fighting, or how they made it… go away.
No words came, and she just shrugged, and changed her direction, passing by them, avoiding looking at him.
This was useless. She waited until the three of them went away, going to the cantina, then returned to the trailer to pick up her gear. It was easier to go to the third camp alone, than to endure doing it with him – in silence, not trusting each other, a perfidious mockery of their previous understanding.
And maybe it was even the time to remember how it felt to work alone.
.
.
.
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"Are you trying to tell me you don't know where she is?"
And there it was… careful, reserved distance in Hardison's voice. The last time Eliot had heard that awful sound, they also talked on the phone. Massachusetts General Hospital. They talked about stepping over the lines that time – he could still recall that dreadful talk word for word – while Hardison tried to ask him what he would do to save them from the Chileans. But what Hardison really wanted to know then, was what kind of monster would be unleashed on Boston that night, when he finally started. The hacker got his answer very shortly after that – but then, he learned to live with it, if not accepting it. This was a painful reminder of Hardison's fear; the man who he wasn't anymore was brought to life, in the present, before their eyes. Yeah, Hardison, I used to kill people. Surprise.
"No, Hardison, I know where she is," he said with the same reservation in his voice; he couldn't hide it. "Nate's message was just now delivered to my phone, he sent it earlier. I can't reach him, so I'm calling you. I'm trying to ask you if you heard from her."
"I tried to call her, no use. You were supposed to work together."
The accusation hit the target, because Hardison was right, but he swallowed all sarcastic replies, and took one deep breath. "She just left," he said as normally as he could. "I only went to the cantina and back, five minutes tops, when I saw she'd taken her things. I'm going after her, and we'll check that place. Tell that to Nate if you reach him. The meeting point stays the same place, the same time. If we're late, wait – we have today's samples, and maybe, if our luck holds, we'll find something in the third camp."
"That would be nice."
Hardison cut the call after that, and Eliot stared at the phone in his hand, not sure if he was more pissed off because of Parker, or this idiot. Or himself. Or every damn thing in the last two days.
.
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Someone naïve would think that five guard dogs behind the tall wire fence was perfect protection. Parker didn't even spare a glance at the animals that followed her with their eyes. She tucked her rope, hook, and harness into a pile of sawdust at the edge of forest, and went around the wire fence.
She watched the human activity in the camp. The main building was the first in a row, surrounded by a patch of green lawn. Behind it, after one more lawn, was a warehouse of similar height, but much larger. The last buildings in that complex were two sawmills. No lawn divided them from the warehouse; the space between them was full of lumber in all shapes and states. Huge tree trunks, some of them even with branches and leaves, lay near the fence, after them followed logs in more precise stages of production.
The wire fence kept the dogs only around the main building, they weren't allowed to go among the workers.
Nobody was in sight, and she could check the entire perimeter from the edge of the forest, hidden. The mountain slopes ascended around the fence. She stood by the trees, and she had a perfect view of the complex, directly below her. The main building was closed and empty, and the warehouse still had a few people finishing their jobs and preparing to go, but the sawmills clearly had longer working hours. Judging by the giant reflectors all around it, they might've even had night shifts.
But evening was closing in, eerie mist was returning into the forest, and people generally very rarely looked up, above their heads, when doing something.
That was her way in, far away from the dogs on the ground. She had to hurry, to use this short period of time while everything was grey and murky, but not dark enough for reflectors.
She checked everything once more and returned to her starting point to dig up her gear.
It would take three zip-lines. The first, from the trees and over the fence, onto the roof of the sawmill. That would be the trickiest part, and she had to calculate the exact moment when no one was in sight to notice her. After that, two more zip-lines, one from the sawmill to the warehouse, and the last, from the warehouse to the main building, would be easy. She had many good spots to shoot her hook at, and secure the rope, and everything would take only a few minutes.
She went up the slope until she was a little higher than the sawmill roof, and found a good tree with low branches to secure her rope to.
The rope hissed through the mist when she shot it to the sawmill roof, the hook clanging until it firmly attached to some metal construction. She checked the rope and tied it to the tree. The well-known routine calmed her down, and her concentration was in full swing.
It wasn't a drop-off, but her trajectory had a nice, comfortable descent. It would take her over the fence, over the empty space, then piled timber, and finally, over all machinery, band saws and cutters before she reached the roof of the sawmill. Thirteen seconds, if her calculation was correct – and it always was.
One last thing, and she was set to go. She attached her harness to the rope and adjusted all the cinch-locks. The roaring of the band saws covered all other sounds, but it was only important to see people walking below her; after a half a minute the perimeter was clear.
A sudden movement in the trees behind her drew her attention, and for one long moment Wayne flashed through her mind, but the shadow was familiar. She would recognize Eliot's steps anywhere.
The worst thing was, in that first moment, while her mind was still occupied with calculating trajectories and angles, she smiled, glad he was there, that he guessed where she went. Then she remembered, and the almost forgotten knot in her stomach tightened again.
She didn't need him here now, not on this sort of job. And it would be much easier if she wouldn't have to tell him that – she simply didn't know how to talk to him anymore.
"Parker, wait." His whisper was barely audible; it sounded hesitating.
But no. Thinking about their troubles would only distract her. She didn't need that now, not while preparing for a jump.
She clicked the last lock, and let herself go, leaving behind a barely audible angry grumble.
Free-falling would be better, but even this, while wind whipped her face, brought a smile back to her face. She turned her head to look back; Eliot was now standing by her tree, and she wondered if he could see her smile. He probably could, because she could clearly see his face, dark, still cold and closed-off.
And then his hand moved. The smile froze on her face when she saw a blade. One long, long moment she was simply confused, but then the blade flashed up, and she swore she could hear – though she was too far away to really hear it – the same dreadful sound of a knife slicing her rope.
It snapped. He cut her rope.
The wind changed direction while she was falling, unable to scream, to think, frozen in disbelief. The air, caught in her paralyzed lungs, burst out when she hit the ground, hard, and the searing pain flashed through her knee, back and head.
The last thing she saw, before darkness washed over her, were reflectors shooting the blinding light, making his face, up there in the woods, more clear.
Still dark. And so cold.
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