Disclaimer: I own nothing.
If you read, review! I love hearing your thoughts on this story, whatever they may be.
Go on, make a girl smile :) Sleep got sacrificed but I had to write it...so hope it's worthwhile. Split into two chaps to conclude. :)
The Penultimate Chapter. Dum Dum Duuuum...:D
Parker didn't return to bed. She went to her laptop, a gift from Hardison, and hooked it up to the printer in Eliot's office. Her hand was steady as a rock as she located the file on the screen and clicked print all.
It wasn't enough, but she was out of time.
/
The morning saw her sat outside Nate's apartment from 5 am, nursing a large coffee and wearing her all black clothes again. None of the bright tops she had started buying because they appealed to her happy mood were appropriate for what was about to happen.
In the end she couldn't wait any longer and got Nate out of bed. A sleepy looking Sophie too, but that hardly mattered to Parker.
She held up the print out picture of Scarlet to Nate's creased face and barged past him into the apartment.
"Why good morning Parker, no, no come on in you aren't interrupting anything and this isn't awkward at all." Nate ran a hand through his short hair and Parker wondered if she was doing the right thing. Then she saw Sophie standing in the kitchen and her heart began pounding as the anxiety of the last hour roared up to greet the world.
"Parker love what the hell is it?" Sophie abandoned any embarrassment in favour of capturing the thief in her arms. "What's happened?"
Breathing got hard as putting it into words made it real. Oh god she didn't want it to be real. But it was.
"It's Eliot. He's gone."
They both regarded her cautiously, Nate squinting as he processed that.
"Gone?"
"Nate I have a job for us." She thrust the close up picture of Scarlet at him.
"Is this the client?" He went to take the picture, but she held it aloft.
"No. This is the bitch who's going down. I'm the client."
An hour later, Hardison had all the data she had acquired over the past seven weeks and combined it with the information Eliot had that she had lifted from his apartment and was organising his presentation.
"This why you asked about my facial recognition programme Parker?"
"Yeah. No way she is just Scarlet Woodeaves, I figured I could see if she had any hits on Interpol."
"International huh? What makes you so-"
"Scarlet Woodeaves has left the States twice. Bitch recruits and assigns off the books jobs from what I found in Eliot's notes. No way she doesn't jet set-she just wants Scarlet to be squeaky clean."
"You've been paying attention to my skills baby."
"Yes I have." Parker drawled it slow and fist bumped the hacker. Cross legged on the sofa, she stared at the screen. "Are you sure you can't track his cell Hardison?"
"Tried it and tried it mama. GPS has been disabled and I can't even ping it. I'm sorry."
"S'okay." But it wasn't and she felt sick.
Half an hour later, the team rose. Nate looked them all in the eye, and Parker wondered where Eliot was and if he was all right.
"Right then. Let's go steal Parker."
/
Four days later, the team watched as Scarlet Woodeaves was taken away by McSweeten and Taggert, her estate surrounded by Feds. Her world had crumbled. Hardison had located her off shore accounts, ties to organised crime across Europe were exploited, and after an Andover Triple, it wasn't just Parker who had been erased from the bitches information network of blackmail and intimidation, but dozens of ordinary people whose loved ones had been coerced into doing her dirty work un-sanctioned by any agency. Her status as a recruiter for the agency had been a cause for embarrassment and Nate had ensured the agency knew that any attempt to try and eradicate Scarlet from the charges of smuggling illegal firearms, money laundering on behalf of her off the books clients and tax evasion would end badly for them. They deleted Eliot's sealed files. Hardison confirmed it.
It wasn't enough for Parker. Four days had felt like four weeks. Never had a cell been an instrument of torture, but every second Eliot didn't call chipped away at something deep within her. Nate didn't stop her when she approached the agents at the car, ice in her veins.
"Gimme a minute with her would you?" McSweeten nodded, and Parker got into the drivers seat of the car with Scarlet cuffed in the back.
"Parker honey, how nice of you to give me a personal send off." The red head was cool, Parker gave her that. Excitement coupled with the chill in her blood. Not long now.
"Where is he?"
"Who's that now sweetheart?"
"How's that scar healing up there Scarlet? Still tender?"
"What, you think I believe you'd stab me again in front of Fed boys a and b? Come on now blondie. Even you aren't that crazy."
"I would seriously rethink that assumption if I were you." Parker stared into the rear view mirror and caught the red heads eye. And held it. Scarlet looked away first.
"Touch me and you'll be riding along behind in the next car honey."
"Oh I don't have to do it now." Parker pulled a blade from her pocket and spun it on a finger tip, eyes faraway as she considered what she could do to the bitch in the back seat with it. "You know what makes me such a very good thief Scarlet?"
"Your psychotic nature?"
"I can get in anywhere. No walls can stop me. No alarms. No guards. No lasers. No locks." She paused as she let that sink in, and was gratified by Scarlet's grimace however fleeting. "I can get to you any time I want."
"But-I, honey you can't-"
"I can. And I will. Every night they lock your door, you should know, they aren't making it harder for me. You know the hardest thing to do for a thief? Locating the goods. And I know where you'll be every day and night for the next 25 years to life. You should think about that."
"I don't know where he is." Scarlet cracked under Parker's dead eyed stare.
"You sent him there of-course you know." Parker's heart stopped pumping for a flicker.
"I put him on a plane to Russia. After that I have no clue."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I didn't have a job for Eliot. I auctioned him to the highest bidder." The blade began to spin again.
"You did what?" Parker whispered the words. Her heart was a stone plummeting south.
"I knew he would be working on getting you out of this so figured I'd milk my one shot for all I could. Put the word out that I had Eliot Spencer by the balls. The calls came flooding in. He's a popular boy our Eliot."
"Careful Scarlet. Give me a name." If she called him our again she was dying of blood loss in the back seat regardless.
"Don't have one. It was a closed auction. Just numbers." Like the Fabergé Egg job. Huh.
"How much?" Scarlet blinked into the mirror. "How fucking much did you sell him for?"
"$1.5 million."
"That's ridiculous." Jesus Parker wanted to vomit. Eliot had a knack for pissing people off, but that was just beyond her comprehension. That was...revenge and hate and a whole lot of shit raining down on Eliot. Four days. Oh God.
"Why d'you think I took it?" Scarlet's snark wasn't helping. Parker narrowed her eyes on the red head and tried to clear her head.
"When were you paid?" Scarlet was eyeing the blade with the appropriate respect now.
"The minute he got on the plane." A weary shrug accompanied the admission. "Flight details are in my online diary."
Parker nodded woodenly. She began to climb from the car, then glanced at Scarlet who sagged with relief in the back.
"Hey Scarlet? I am coming for you. Never forget it." She palmed the blade and pinned Scarlet's shoulder with it, reopening the previous wound. The bitch cried out and the sound barely touched Parker's ears. Getting out, she called McSweeten over who stared at Scarlet in horror.
"Can you believe this one? Had a knife. You gotta be more thorough with your pat downs McSweeten, imagine what could have happened?" She patted his arm in a shoulda done better manner and returned to the team. Nate looked at her expectantly.
"It's not good." Tears threatened, but Parker refused to cry. She was tracking down Eliot and kicking his ass first. If he was-she refused to finish that thought, despite the silent cell being a dead weight in her pocket.
/
Days stretched and blurred into one, and it was impossible to distinguish between hours let alone days, it was all just time passing without Eliot. Parker wondered if this was normal. To be so messed up. She couldn't eat. Sleep was impossible. He consumed her every waking thought, and panic thundered up to claim her whenever those thoughts strayed into darkness. She wouldn't allow despair to take hold. She bugged Hardison every hour, on his case and falling out with him with every other word when he couldn't give her the answers she needed. The plane was tracked, the money transfer traced but none of it told them where he was. She raged at the hacker, and he took it. His own eyes were bruised from lack of sleep. Sophie looked like a ghost, and spent hours on calls to her European contacts. Tara called offering assistance. Everyone they knew and a whole lot of others besides were aware that the hitter was MIA. Nate looked gaunt by the tenth day. Sophie eyed him nervously, and he stared at the glasses of fellow patrons in the bar a little too long for comfort. His hands twitched and his eyes got bloodshot.
They were falling apart.
She went jumping every night. Watered his damn plants and stared at the picture she loved the most on his fridge. The one at the zoo, half dark half glow, in front of the Ocelot's enclosure. It just made her ache and want to scream all at once and she destroyed the new bed with a sledge hammer on the eleventh day. The smashed up frame littered the room and she dropped the hammer and nothing felt better. The emptiness just clawed away, hollowing her out, a minute at a time.
She refused to listen to his CD's any more, they reminded her of him training on his mat, going through his exercises; torso bare, hair tied back as she ate cereal at his breakfast bar and watched.
Instead she stole Hardison's ipod and worked out to it, the driving rhythms of his tracks suiting her mood as she rode on the bike Eliot hardly ever used. She cycled miles and miles and lost herself inside to the music, Eliot's face imprinted on her eyelids whenever she blinked. The pain she suffered in her heart whenever the traitorous voice in her head whispered doubts was all engulfing and Parker had never known that the heart muscle could physically hurt so much before. The steel box of Eliot rattled in her head and leaked continually, seeping into her bones and blood and skin. He was everything and he was gone.
How very fucking tragic.
She listened to Midnight Caller by Chase & Status on repeat, the words haunting her as she walked zombie like through each day, and she had regrets. Big regrets, and wished she could do what she had told him once in New York she couldn't. She wanted to steal time so badly it burned through her and snatched the air from her lungs. The song was dark and swallowed her in it, stripping her raw.
When the feelings suffocate me and nobodies there
All alone I turn to you, to you, to you...
I am the midnight caller, are you ready for me now?
You know there could be no other, but your time is running out
I'll be yours forevermore
Make me yours forevermore
I'll be at the back door waiting, for your love anticipating,
Every step we'll make together, oh our love will be forever...
The violence inside her had no release, and she replayed their last talk in her head endlessly, relived the moment of waking to find him gone. She was trapped in a cycle of whys and how's, why hadn't he said goodbye? Why hadn't he let her help him? How could he just leave her so easily?
What if he was gone for good?
/
They worked no other jobs.
Finally, they got a break from a lead in Prague through a contact of Sophie's. Renewed focus sharpened each of them, and Parker wondered if Eliot had any idea what he had done. They had all changed since he vanished. They had all mourned him, hated him, loved him, missed him.
On the eighteenth day since he left, they had cracked the murky chain of deals that had led to his capture. It was terrifying. A conglomerate had formed to ensure his purchase. Colombians, Triads and Iranians. Each wanted far more than his death. They wanted to exact punishment for a list of jobs he had operated that had fucked each of their gangs over. Hardison whistled as he examined the sealed files supposedly eradicated.
Eliot was not kidding about those bounties on his head. He was a wanted man in all corners of the world. The team didn't pause. They got to work. They boarded a plane on the nineteenth day.
/
Beijing was busy, sweltering and wet. There was no grift, no con, no game to be played. It was a straight up extraction. They did as Eliot would have. Nate held Sophie's hand and kissed her in a tea shop down-town as they all waited for dark, surveying the warehouse he was being held in according to their painstaking hard work. Hardison called his girlfriend, Holly the Horder as Parker called her. She was a spunky smart chick. They said little as they waited.
Parker felt nothing as she stared at the nondescript building standing alone down the street. She had closed down during the flight. Now she could barely summon a conscious string of words. There was just a building. A building with Eliot in it. The chatter of the locals and the traffic and the world itself existed beyond the bubble she and that building existed in. It pulsated in the rain, along with her steady heart beat.
Finally, Nate stood, and they left the shop.
Time to steal an Eliot.
/
Eliot was awake. Eyes half closed, listening intently, though he was pretty sure an ear drum had burst and sounds came at him slow and warped. He concentrated hard, snatching furious exchanges beyond the door of his cell in between beats of silence, of nothing and tensed, ready for the next round. He would not break. It was a chant in his bones that would not fade.
He was getting out. Every day he learnt more about the layout of his prison, the fuckers who had him. The moments of lucidity between sedations were those he utilised to mentally harvest useful details from distractions. The chair he sat on was soaked, with blood and fuck knew what else, but he had been retied to it several times now and each time he woke, he knew something new, by the binds they used, the knots, the positioning. He was getting out of here.
He would not break. Parker's voice rang in his head. His promise not to get hospitalised seemed pretty dumb now. But he wasn't going to die here. He was not going out like this. Not to these bastards. He knew who they were. And he was not letting them make him break a promise to his thief. Acid bubbled in his gut at the very thought of her. Of the sight he had walked away from, her curled up in his bed, their bed. What a fucking schmuck. Every memory of her was sunshine. Warmed his soul. Her teasing, her laughter, her kiss. He wanted to see her again so badly that no matter what punishment they inflicted, it didn't touch the aching chasm in his chest where he kept her face. Her touch. He hallucinated that she was here so often, he started talking to her, and she made him laugh through the blood and fists and rage pummelled upon him daily.
The door opened and he flinched, ashamed of the light on his face. Showing his weakness, the damage done. Then he raised his face, eyes closed and grinned. Fuck them. He would heal and they would die.
"Eliot? Jesus Eliot is that you?" Hardison? He was confused. It was normally Parker who spoke to him when he flamed out.
"Hardison? What are you doing here?" His voice was a raw break in the room, and he coughed, ribs sharp.
"Well it ain't for the Kung Pow Chicken my man." Stupid tears stung his eyes as he barked a rough laugh. Even in his fucked up imagination, H was a smartass. God damn hacker. The hands fumbling at his bonds freaked him out and he started, then felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"'S okay Eliot. We got you." A thread of hope span silver through his brain and he opened his eyes, still convinced it was the drugs.
"Hardison?" It came out as a plea but he didn't give a fuck. The hacker crouched down in front of him so he could see his face. Eliot's bonds fell away but it took an age to move his arms round to his front and rub his wrists. Everything hurt. H untied his feet.
"One and only baby." The hacker paused, and his face looked different than Eliot remembered. Older. "If it wasn't such an unfair situation, I would knock you the fuck out Eliot. All Imma say. All Imma say on the topic. Ended. Line drawn. Now get the hell up so we can blow Beijing. This place don't even have Facebook. That shit is messed up. I had to jump through hoops like a freakin' twelve year old to get on-"
"Hardison?" Parker. "Shut up." Parker's voice. Eliot struggled to stand and wavered. A familiar small body slipped to his left and raised his arm over her shoulder. Hardison's grabbed the other. Eliot was too bust up to care as he let them take his weight. He could smell her hair, feel it against his cut face and gripped her arm, checking she was solid. This had coma dream potential after all.
"Parker are you all right?" A croak but he couldn't clear his throat because it was raw and bloody from screams he could not contain. He tried to turn to look at her, but she used her hand to straighten his head to face forward.
"Am I all right?" Disbelieving. Aloof. Oh man even half dead Eliot knew that was bad. "If I look at your face Eliot I'm gonna lose it so do us both a favour and shut up and keep walking."
"Parker I'm sorry."
"I have no qualms about beating your beaten ass like Hardison Eliot. So Shut. Up." Oh man he heard the break in her steely tone.
"Nate? Sophie?"
"Outside in the truck. Jesus Eliot we gotta get you to hospital man. Bro' you're bleeding all over my freakin' pants." H sounded worried and grossed out. It made Eliot want to laugh but there was nothing left. He noted the unconscious bodies they passed through the warehouse and felt proud of his team mates and then horrified at what he had turned them into.
"When did you two get all..." Man it hurt to talk. "Batman crazy?"
"Toxic tea baby. We only had to deal with a few after that." He suddenly noticed both Parker and H were wearing Chinese straw hats around their necks, pushed back from their heads. Parker did love her disguises. H carried on talking. "You shoulda seen it man, we were all "heeeyaaah.""He did his Bruce Lee impression that insulted the legendary actors memory but Eliot let it go. It was too hard to think straight. To believe this was real. Parker remained silent but bristling to his side. A thousand words filtered through his brain and every damn one fell short of what he wanted to say to her.
What a sorry son of a bitch he was.
They made it to the truck, Nate driving, and Sophie gasped when she saw him, and her pained "Eliot" ripped him open anew. Fuck it was hard with these guys seeing him like this.
"Give him the morphine." Finally Parker spoke and his chest bloomed in reaction. Sophie tapped a needle above him as he lay on the stretcher in the back of the truck but it was getting foggy as he tried to see just one of her. He clung to consciousness with a death grip.
"Thought I told you not to talk to that guy again?" Every word stung his throat but he tried to smile, wanting to lighten the fearful atmosphere of the truck. To lighten the doom on Parker's face.
"It's his Chinese cousin so deal with it. Just shush Eliot. Just freakin' shush would you?" She was keeping it together by a thread. He fought the oncoming tide of darkness, desperate to make amends but having no clue how. He needed to know if it was repairable. Needed to know before he let the curtain fall in his mind that she was going to forgive him.
"Hospital is four minutes away," Hardison navigated for Nate in the passenger seat and the truck lurched through rain streaked streets in down town Beijing and Eliot latched on to the statement. He lifted a hand to Parker, but couldn't tell if she took it, or even noticed it.
"So am I still Mr Smith Parker?" So hoarse, man he wondered if he would ever sound like himself again. Finally small hands held his between them, cool and firm. He closed his eyes, anchored her her presence, terrified of what she would say in response.
"You think this is funny Eliot?" A stark pained demand from his thief. Jesus this truck ride was more brutal than the beatings. He felt the teams censure, their fear and anger and relief battering him worse than any fists or feet. Fuck.
"I was jus' tryin' ta-"
"Lighten the bloody mood?" Sophie interjected with an incredulous snort. "Great timing there hotshot. I could bloody well kill you you know that? Only funerals I do well at are my own Eliot. Everyone knows that." Oh darlin' Sophie. He tried to respond but Parker squeezed his hand and the morphine kicked in. He heard her whisper as he faded out.
"Mr Smith's out for the count. Where's the freakin' hospital Nate?"