Notes: Sorry RekkaKouyuu.
Beta'ed by she who should be praised: ALS_wonderland
The Legacy Job
Chapter 3
Selina was dead.
Eliot knew that for certain. A sniper shot had hit her directly between the eyes, splattering him and Nate with blood and brain matter and throwing her corpse back onto the ground before Eliot's mind finished registering the sound of a M110 Semi-Automatic sniper rifle.
Eliot turned, moving too slow to be able to prevent the next shot from hitting Nate in the side. 22 caliber handgun. His mind almost taunted him with the knowledge as he dove toward Nate. Sniper above, gunmen on the ground. What do you say about not using guns now?
Eliot felt a line of fire skim his arm as he pushed Nate down, his mind forming a picture, tracing the trajectories of the shots fired to locate the shooters without taking the deadly half second to look.
Selina was dead. But he and Nate were still very much alive and the important thing right then was to keep it that way.
The sniper was in the building on the other side of the parking lot, either in a top floor or on the roof. The men on the ground were from the side of the parking lot farthest from the main road.
At least down on the ground they had a couple cars for cover. Very little cover.
A window exploded over their heads and Eliot half grumbled about the lack of bullet proof cars. "Nate this remind you of Cairo?" He asked, only noticing when he glanced back that Nate was out cold.
And the side of his head was bleeding.
Eliot dropped back to Nate's side, guessing the fact the guys shooting at them didn't know he didn't carry a gun was the reason they were waiting a moment before coming out to finish them off. Carefully Eliot touched the side of Nate's head, nearly thanking god when he saw it was just a graze. It was a bone deep graze that showed an alarming strip of Nate's skull but considering the possibilities, it could have been much, much worse.
Still, it wouldn't matter much if Eliot couldn't get them out of this mess alive.
There was a goon squad of at least three armed gunmen, and a sniper way up in a building who Eliot couldn't honestly do much about from here.
At the moment they had a couple cars for cover from the sniper but if Eliot had to fight…
The four men started to make their way across the parking lot, picking up speed and Eliot braced himself, ready to move to take them out or die trying…
They didn't come near him, they stayed in the range of efficacy, their stance said ex-military who knew what they were doing and oh crap he was so very dead.
If he dived forward, to the left, and down, tucked and rolled and came up to the right he might be able to avoid the rounds they fired, the secondary rounds, and reach the first guy. He could use him as a shield to get to the second one and then…
But even though they trained their guns on him they didn't make a move to fire. It was like a western standoff.
Then the fourth one lowered his gun, walked forward through the no mans land and knelt beside Selina's body.
Eliot changed plans, tensing to go after guy #4 when guy #1 spoke up. "Make a move and I kill your friend. Stay nice and still and let us get what we want and we all leave here alive." A thin smirk crossed his face. "Well, the rest of us do."
Guy #4 had, of all things, picked up Adrian's messenger bag that Selina had been clutching when they'd "rescued" her. He opened it and pulled out the laptop, letting the bag drop. He backed away slowly and the four beat a hasty retreat. A jeep rolled up and they all climbed in, disappearing out onto the main road the next minute.
Eliot picked up the cell phone Nate had dropped, hearing Hardison's panicked voice on the other end. "We were ambushed. Get out now!" He more growled than said.
"Ambush… what?" Hardison said, fumbling. Eliot heard him say to someone on his side of the phone. "We have to go now. Get Sophie."
Eliot put pressure on the wound on Nate's side. "Selina's dead, Nate's down. I need an ambulance here two minutes ago."
"There'll be one there soon. Meet at the hospital."
Eliot kept pressure on the wound, waiting for sirens, his mind turning furiously. Nate was the big plan guy. He was the one who could make sense of all this.
How did they find them? How did this get set up? What were they after? Was it to kill Selina and if so why take the laptop? Was it just the laptop? What would a 15 year old have on her laptop?
Matthew. A voice that sounded too much like Hardison's in his head reminded him.
"Kids these days… I swear Adrian wouldn't care if I brought her nothing to wear so long as I didn't forget Matthew." Eliot was about to ask when Selina shook her head. "The laptop. According to Adrian, electronics work better if you name them." She slid it into the messenger bag with the power supply and flash drive.
Flash drive… there'd been a flash drive.
Eliot flew across the short stretch between Nate and the fallen messenger bag, digging into and producing the flash drive that had been left behind, shoving it into his pocket and returning to Nate.
Sirens blared in the distance, and Eliot tried to piece together some kind of cover story while he kept Nate from bleeding out. Somewhere between deciding a mugging gone bad would work long enough for them to get their stories straight and work their usual magic, and watching the ambulance round the corner, a sound somewhere between a disturbed laugh and a angry roar bubbled out from his chest.
Too much, too quick, too dead.
He let himself turn into a panicked civilian as the EMTs arrived to take over, feeling like he didn't have to act as much as he might have usually.
He was going soft. He was getting used to people he cared about not dying. As much abuse as he took, he'd almost started to believe the fallacy that he could protect those around him.
He'd let himself Care.
The EMTs tried to dress the graze on his arm but Eliot shook them off, climbing into the ambulance after they'd gotten Nate in.
He watched as they worked furiously to save Nate even as the engine roared to life and they drove off toward the local hospital.
He'd let himself start caring and looked what happened.
oOo
Eliot had been waiting outside the emergency room for just under a half hour when the others burst in.
He wished he could tell them more than just that Nate was on the table and at this point no news was good news. He knew from experience that a bullet to the side meant it could be hours before they'd gotten Nate completely out of danger and that for the first hour you didn't want anyone talking to you.
The first hour in surgery was the one where it was most likely something would go wrong with the smallest possibility the doctor'd come out and be able to say "Hey, no problem man, he's gonna be just fine. He'll be annoying you all again as soon as the morphine wears off."
Sometime later, while they were waiting, Eliot would address the fact that his mental version of a doctor was starting to talk like Hardison.
They pulled off to one corner, getting as much privacy as they could as they sorted out the details. He knew from the expression on all their faces they had moved well and firmly into the state of denial of anything Eliot told them that had happened. They'd process it later but right then and right there they needed to take the next few steps to keep things moving and not going farther south than they already had.
They got their story straight. They were only in the outskirts of Boston, not even that far from where Nate had lived once, so they all agreed with the snap decision Eliot had made to use Nate's real name. They could con, hack, and steal any hint of this they didn't want on his record. It would be much easier to work the system than back track and recover if they ran into someone who knew Nate. They were Nate's landlord/friend (Hardison), girlfriend (Sophie or "Katherine"), girlfriend's best friend (Parker), and best friend (Eliot). They'd been helping a friend (Selina) who had been trying to track down an old friend when they'd been attacked.
It wasn't the most ingenious cover story by far but considering what they had to work with it would have to do.
As they finished getting their story straight little spider web cracks started to appear in their togetherness. Reality was starting to sink in and they were all stumbling.
"What happened at the hospital?" Eliot prompted. He'd already told them what happened on his end.
After a moment Sophie picked up the story. "We got in. The identity I had from the job with Hurly worked it's usual charms. We got to the room, Parker was all ready to play the new foster sister eager to get her little sister home, opened the door and it wasn't Adrian."
"It was a girl the same age." Hardison said. "She looked completely different though. She was drugged up high as a kite and her records said she had sever schizophrenia. None of the orderlies had thought anything of her claims to "Not being Adrian""
The conversation faded for a moment and they waited, thinking, trying to figure out what to do next.
"I know we all want ta be here until we get news 'bout Nate." Eliot started slowly. "But if Adrian's not already dead she probably will be by then."
Sophie suddenly spoke up. "Selina said Adrian got her a message. See if you can trace that back to her. It was at least a week ago."
Hardison was already opening his computer and starting to type.
"She said her name was Mellissa Calhone." Parker said. At the curious looks Parker explained further. "The not Adrian girl. She said her name was Mellissa Calhone."
"Look to see if there's a Mellissa Calhone in the system." Eliot said. "They might have pulled a switch or somethin'." He opened his mouth to continue but the room ground to a halt.
The door opened and a middle aged doctor stepped in.
Eliot felt his stomach clench when he heard. "Are you here for Nathan Ford?"
Sophie got up, bolting over to the doctor quickly. "Yes. Any news?"
"He's still in surgery." The doctor said. "I just came to ask if anyone's contacted Nate's mother."
There was a brief moment of silence before the doctor explained. "I went to high school with Nate. Our parents were in the same parish until a few years ago. Unless she's moved in the past three years his mother only lives a half hour from here." He pulled out a card and wrote something on it. "I have other patients I need to see but this is her number." He handed it off to Sophie before excusing himself.
Eliot let out a long breath before nodding mentally. "Sophie, call her. Hardison-"
"Nothing yet. Even I can't do anything in thirty seconds." Parker's atonal laughter seemed to echo sharply in the silence.
"Is the van still outside?" Eliot asked.
Sophie nodded. "I'm going to have to go outside to call." She said, silently adding get me the second anything changes. Eliot nodded as she slipped out.
"Parker I want you doing physical surveillance. Keep out of sight and moving, anything within a hundred feet of Nate's room. You see anything that doesn't sit right, you let me know."
Parker nodded and took off.
Suddenly Eliot found himself without anything to do. The physical threat was over. The wheels that could were spinning themselves.
And he was sitting, waiting.
Eliot really hated hospitals.
It was a half hour before Hardison had anything, but when he did it came in a rush. He found the girl who was supposedly Adrian. He followed a trace of a phone call through a reroute and lost it only to find another one forwarded the rest of the way.
"I've got her." Hardison said. "Ward c, room 13, at Touchstone Psychiatric hospital in Someville."
Eliot nodded, standing. "Take over here. I'll be back once I've gotten her to a safe place."
"But our last…"
"That was one of our safe houses." Eliot said. "Not a hitter's safe place. Trust me. Even if they found this place she's safer inside than most places in the city. Until then figure out how they found Selina."
He was gone before Hardison replied.
oOo
Elizabeth Ford was not at all pleased.
It had been close to three years since she'd seen her son. He'd broken contact with her along with everyone else after his marriage fell apart. It was only in the past year that he'd started with the very awkward holiday calls.
To be honest, she could do with a couple more years of those if it meant the reunion mother and son were due could happen somewhere else than in the hospital after Nate had been shot.
However, god worked in mysterious ways and she'd just thank him later for giving her a reason to be able to politely verbally tan her son's backside for the years and hours of worry after he was out of the ICU. He was living in Boston now and she would be sure to impart on him (and his rather polite girlfriend) the need for him to come and visit her a few times a month.
Just as soon as he was alright.
She took a deep breath as she parked her car in the visitors lot and climbed out. She was not an ancient woman, though the black of her hair had long ago surrendered itself over to gray. She had married young to a man who became a different person after she'd lost their first child. Even the birth of Nate, a blessing she'd barely dared hope for, hadn't fixed all that was wrong in their family.
In honesty things had never been truly fixed after Jimmy started drinking.
But that was a long time ago. Her son needed her now.
She signed in at the front desk and started walking up to the surgery ward, paying attention to people and things as she went. She had always hated hospitals, though for most of her life it had been mostly because how confusing they were and how easily lost you could get in one.
She was just wincing at the memory of why those left of her family hated hospitals when she caught sight of someone.
If she'd been a more superstitious woman she'd have called it a bad omen.
Her mind tracked back twenty one years, to a long ago time when her husband was newly dead, and she was looking desperately for some kind of explanation.
She'd gotten it in the form of a boy beaten to death by his stepfather.
Elizabeth turned sharply, her eyes following the bad omen as he passed her in the hallway.
The same stormy blue eyes, guarded against pain. The same determined face. The same blonde hair and scared skin and…
"Mrs. Ford!" Someone called from behind her. Elizabeth turned and the woman she assumed was Katharine came running over to meet her. "Wish we could of met under better circumstances. I'm Katherine. Please, come with me. I'll show you where we're waiting."
oOo
Parker was sick of waiting. She was a sick of not being able to do anything but sit around and hope things turned out alright.
Eliot was gone. He'd left twenty minutes ago, right before Mrs. Nate's Mom got here, to go retrieve Adrian and get her to safety. He'd called her back from surveillance then and now she had nothing to do but wait.
Mrs. Nate's Mom was looking between all of them. They'd told her the party line, that they were Nate's business associates when he'd been working in consulting in L.A. and that when things went under because of the economy Nate had relocated to Boston and they'd eventually followed suit.
There had been some difficult things to explain but all in all she seemed to have bought it.
Mrs. Nate's Mom broke the silence. "You all do realize that I know what you've all been doing, right?"
Huh?
"What?" Sophie asked.
"Paul told me, Nate confirmed it and explained."
"Oh."
Oh… Parker echoed mentally. Well that made things easier.
"So does someone want to tell me what actually happened to my son?"
There were a couple beats before Parker nodded. "Job went south. Very, very far south."
Mrs. Nate's Mom nodded, turning her eyes back to the purse she'd been digging through since she'd sat down.
Parker believed that certain places had their own realities. That in them, time and space worked differently and things just all around sucked. Somehow, everything came together to make things not feel real.
When Mrs. Nate's Mom pulled out a bunch of pictures it didn't seem that odd to go over and look at them like she had when she was in that jury case. She found that she was looking at pictures more than thirty years old, of Nate as a kid.
"I had pictures of Sam here too." Mrs. Nate's Mom told her. "Maggie would send me some almost every month and they'd come to visit. After he died…" She trailed off with a sigh. "I still have them but after a time you have to let a child rest in peace. I started carrying these old things to remind myself."
"Remind yourself of what?" Parker asked, looking through the pictures.
"Happier times."
"But Nate's like fourteen in these pictures and he doesn't even look that happy in most of them." Parker remarked, ever tactful. "It's really been that long since you were happy?"
"I guess simpler times might be better." Mrs. Nate's Mom answered. "Though he never liked having his picture taken, that's why he looks so annoyed."
Parker looked at the old photos. A couple looked like a very young version of Nate's patented "Why do I put up with you all again?" expression.
She glanced sideways toward Mrs. Nate's Mom, who was looking misty eyed at the pictures of her young son.
"He looks very happy in this one." Sophie remarked, pulling out a picture of Nate, probably no older than thirteen or fourteen, petting a golden retriever while sitting on the front stoop of a row house. Parker paused, trying to remember how she knew the breed.
"Oh that's Kate. It was my husband's dog, though I swear Nate loved her almost as much as he did."
"Kate?" Parker asked, then suddenly remembering. "AHAH! I knew it!" She turned, ready to point an accusatory finger at…
Eliot wasn't there.
Darn it.
"Parker?" Hardison asked slowly, clearly unsure what brought on this new brand of crazy.
"Eliot keeps insisting I'm crazy but now I've got proof he's weird than me. I don't steal from the rest of you."
Sophie blinked. Hardison moved his mouth and tried to put some words together. Mrs. Nate's Mom looked suitably confused.
"Eliot has a picture of that dog. He stole it from Nate!"
"Parker I… huh?" Hardison's replied cleverly.
"Okay hold on." Sophie said after a moment. "Are you sure it's this picture?"
Parker nodded. "Yes. I see it every time I get hungry and sneak into his place to make him cook me something. It's the exact same dog, maybe a little less ancient but I'm sure it is." They all stared at her and she rolled her eyes. She could explain to them exactly how good she was at playing spot the differences but that was besides the point. "He even said her name was Kate and that she was his father's dog."
"Parker…" Sophie started but wasn't really sure where she was going with this.
The silence that followed was broken by a wallet full of pictures hitting the floor.
Three sets of eyes turned back to the woman now holding a single small photo of a teenaged Nate and a little blonde boy with an overgrown golden retriever puppy sitting between them.
Both the boys were laughing, looking at the camera with eyes the same color of blue.
oOo
It was not the cleanest job they'd ever done, but time was of the essence and Eliot knew how to work fast when necessary. There were plenty of people in his line who considered themselves artist,s above a rush job. Hell at some points in his life he could have waxed a little poetic about martial *arts*, but at the end of the day this was the way of his world.
He got in, got what he was getting, got out.
He retrieved.
Even if normally he wouldn't retrieve people this was something he could justify doing.
He had the credentials to get in without questions asked. The new shirt he'd changed into after cleaning up nicely covered the graze and lent to his professional appearance.
The key to a lot of cons was confidence. If you looked like you were doing something important that you should be doing not many people would stop you to ask.
It also helped if you had intimidating glares down to an art form.
Eliot reached ward C right as a fire alarm started going off. In seconds orderlies and doctors and patients were pouring into the halls. Chaos was abounding and it was a perfect chance to get Adrian and get away. He could hardly have planed better.
Except this wasn't their plan.
Eliot sprinted down the hall, turning the corner in time to see two guys in scrubs and army boots (and seriously, when were hit men going to learn not to do that?) heading toward room thirteen.
The first one was down before they'd registered any change in this end of the hallway. There were few rooms around this corner. Room 13 was the last in the ward and isolated enough.
Enough for a planned hit right from the get go.
The second guy recovered quickly, slashing out at Eliot with a knife even as he turned to face him.
Eliot dodge to the left, grabbing the hand wielding the knife and twisting until he heard a satisfactory crack.
A blow to the head and #2 was out like a light next to his partner.
Eliot grabbed the ID card number one had dropped and slid it through the scanner, unlocking the door and letting himself inside.
The room was small, sterile, and dark. Off white walls seemed vaster with only the reflection of a small bedside lamp illuminating them.
Somehow the figure on the bed seemed dwarfed by the little room.
He took a few steps into the room. "Adrian Merrins?" He asked, loud enough to be heard over the fire alarm.
Hands tightened around a word find book she'd braced against her knees and seemed to press herself further into the corner her bed sat in. She took a slow breath and looked up through a screen of tangled blonde hair. Across the room she met his eyes, biting her lip but terror only showing enough for someone with practice to see. "Are you here to kill me?"
"No." Eliot walked across the room. They needed to get out of here soon but he needed her to trust him enough to follow him. He held out a hand to help her up. "I'm here ta rescue you."