"Hey, what the hell...?" Hardison shouted as pieces of paper collided with his head.
"Wake up, Hardison," Eliot snapped, "We're all waiting on you!"
"Well, maybe I'd be more awake if someone hadn't awoken me up last night," he commented, "twice!"
"It's important!" Eliot replied, "what did you find?"
Hardison turned to Nate who'd been sitting quietly, watching the exchange, trying to decide just how much to reveal to the hitter.
"The four names in the file have current social services files, all started in the last five months, none of them are missing yet," Nate started.
"There are details in the files about the family that wouldn't be in a medical or social services file," Hardison picked up the thread, taking his cue from Nate, "where they work, what hours they do, what bars they drink in, when the house is normally empty and details on the houses as well, entry and exit points, where the kids' bedrooms are etc."
"Why can't we give that to the police?" Sophie asked, "surely that would be enough to get them asking questions?"
"Not really," Nate answered, "she can explain it away as keeping tabs on patients she was worried about. She's a trusted and respected doctor, who didn't actually treat all of the missing kids, so they'll probably believe her."
"So what do we do? How do we run a con on her to find the kid?" Parker questioned.
"Do we know what she's doing with the kids?" Sophie added.
"The ledger," Eliot interjected quietly, "names, dates and amounts right?" he looked at Hardison who nodded confirmation, "they sell the kids."
"I did a search on some of the names, took most of the night because there are no locations, but of the five most recent ones I searched, all lost kids to illness or accident between one and two years before the dates in the ledger."
"So they're not only selling the kids, they're selling them to families who've lost kids?" Sophie asked.
"They probably see themselves as the good guys," Nate added, "taking kids out of bad situations and placing them with families who will love and protect them."
"Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, kinda like us," Parker piped in.
"Nothing like us!" Eliot said, practically shouting at them, "the homes these kids are from may not be perfect but it's their home. Maybe some of the family don't care about them, but what about the rest of them," his voice was rising steadily now, "Cindy's father may be a bastard who beats on her, but what about her mom or her brother, they just have to live with never knowing what happened to her?"
"Well," Sophie started cautiously, "they had their chance to help and didn't."
"So that justifies kidnapping?" he replied,
"Well no," she said quietly, "but I don't see what we can do to help."
"If we confront her, she'll deny it," Hardison commented, "and the ledger doesn't say which kids went to which families." He ran his fingers over the keys on his laptop, pulling up the original research. "The five cases I looked at last night match up roughly to five of the kidnappings in the last eight years, but we don't know for sure."
"They must have a list of which kids went to which families," Eliot said, calming slightly as he leaned against the wall.
"Plus the dates in the ledger go back to the eighties," Hardison added, flipping through it once more.
"How far back?" Eliot asked.
"Erm... 1982." Hardison replied.
Eliot closed his eyes and took a moment to gather his thoughts, a moment which was not missed by the team, more specifically Nate who could only guess at what Eliot was thinking.
"Anyway," Nate began, "I think our only play is the doc, if she thinks she's doing this for the right reasons, we need to show her they aren't always right."
"How do we do that?" Parker asked.
"Well, she thinks she's taking these kids out of bad situation and putting them into better ones, what if some of these kids end up worse off?"
"She probably doesn't think about the family she leaves behind either." Eliot added quietly.
"True, we could use that, she's also probably scared at getting caught, I think blackmail is our best option here."
"But you said the info here isn't enough for the police, if we try to blackmail her with it, she'll just explain it away." Hardison said.
"Well," Nate turned to look at Parker, "how about a visit from one of their 'kids' who's not better off. That ought to shake her up a bit, she'll start looking up the other kids they relocated to see if any of them have had hard times. The father will probably have the full list of kids somewhere. If we can get that and match it to this ledger we should have enough to go to the police." Nate finished.
"But we'll need a name to use; someone we know is on their list of missing kids." Sophie said with a puzzled expression, "how are we going to find them?"
"Hardison," Nate said, "can you do some more research on the first few names in the ledger, see if you can find us some possible kids who could have been matched with these families."
"On it, but it'll take a while."
"Okay, Parker, you'll be grifter on this one," Nate started, dishing out the roles, "Sophie, be ready to go in as her lawyer in case she needs help with the role, Eliot, you watch the doctor, keep track of her movements."
"What about you?" Eliot asked.
"I'm going to be a grieving father looking for a second chance, I'll bug her office, make sure we don't miss anything," Nate said, "okay, let's get to it guys!" he finished with a sigh, this case was getting too personal and he really, really wanted a drink.