A/N: Okay, back to regular lengths, thankfully. Wowzah, guys, thanks again for the great feedback! Many thanks to Alice of Scots, floralisette, LeeMarieJack, KyleRay, and Murakami no Kitsune. Now, without further babbling on my part, here's chapter four.
"Sophie," Hardison stage-whispered from behind a hydrangea bush, "I have done a lot of bad things in my life, but this is the lowest, dirtiest trick I've ever pulled."
The grifter shrugged and felt under a welcome mat until her hand closed around a key. "Look, we're not doing anything wrong. It's like you said: dear old Marge doesn't actually need the place any more. And all her relatives live in Alaska so no one's coming to collect Grandma's fine china anytime soon."
"We're three thieves living in a dead woman's house!" Hardison hissed. "What will the neighbors think?"
"If anyone asks," Sophie jiggled the key in its lock before the door swung inward. "I'm Caroline Weaver, Marge's granddaughter, and you two are distant cousins come to collect your part of the inheritance." She ushered Eliot and Hardison into the empty house. "This is the only way we can stick close to Parker while trying to find Nate. Now I don't know what she's doing, but she asked us to trust her so we will. Understand?"
"I just don't like the idea of Parker trapped in a car with two men- uh, I mean strangers," he corrected himself, seeing the look in Sophie's eyes. "Strangers we found hanging around an abandoned building in the middle of the night."
"Parker can hold her own," Eliot said. "If she needs us she'll tell us. I vote we do what she wants and find Nate before the other guys."
The hitter shined a flashlight over the floral-printed living room set. It was just the atrocious interior design that Sophie hoped she never succumbed to as she grew older. The whole house smelled like rose water too. As the beam of light swept through the room, two sets of eyes under the sofa momentarily reflected back. A feral growl welcomed them to the late Marge Weaver's home.
"Hi," Parker said.
Two heads whipped around. Zoinks! Parker could almost hear the cartoon sound effects. For a moment, both men were paralyzed by the unexpected sight of a pretty blonde woman in their back seat. Dean reacted first.
"Who the Hell are you?" he reached for his gun. Sam quickly grabbed his arm before he could shoot Parker point-blank.
"Dean," he warned. "Ask questions first, shoot later. Remember?"
"I asked her. Fair's fair," Dean kept the handgun trained on Parker.
"So this looks bad," Parker leaned away from the gun, eying her exits. She hugged the journal to her chest.
"Yeah, you could say that," Dean replied, falling back on sarcasm as he always did when he was taken by surprise. Sam stared at the book in her arms.
"Where did you get that?" he asked, reaching for the journal.
"No where," Parker shimmied away from his hands. "I found it." She opened her mouth to say "It's mine" but figured claiming the property of two armed men wasn't the smartest move. She snapped her teeth at Sam's fingers when they got to close.
Maybe this hadn't been the best of plans.
"Hey," Dean realized he was losing control of the situation to a girl imitating Jaws, "you never answered my question." Parker stared at the business end of his gun. What would Sophie do?
Parker bolted. Not that, probably. She sprinted across the parking lot, vaguely aware of the two men loudly arguing as they slammed the Impala doors shut. She neared the white picket fence that divided the lot from a neighboring yard, tucked the journal under her arm like a football, and dove over the top... only to be caught around the waist and dragged backwards. And definitely not that.
She kicked at the hands grabbing her, but they were stronger than even an adrenaline-fueled thief. Sam pinned her arms to her sides and waited for Dean to catch up. The shorter man (in comparison to the giant) grinned and dangled something silver in front of her face.
"You stole from the wrong car, sweetheart," Dean clasped the handcuffs around Parker's wrists. She tried her hardest not to smile. "FBI, you little - Ow!" Parker bit his hand, already out of the cuffs and Sam's grip. Sam started after her, but his wrist jerked back to Dean.
"She cuffed us," his eyes widened at the chain linking him to Dean. "How did she do that?"
"Does it matter? She bit me!" Dean pushed him forward, propelling him towards Parker's retreating figure.
Parker smirked. Sloppy, she thought triumphantly. She was ready to vault over the fence and make her exit stage left, when she felt something missing. Namely, the journal. That damned thing had gotten her into this mess and Parker wasn't leaving without it. She sharply pivoted. It lay directly between her and the handcuffed men.
She hesitated, catching Sam's eye. He dove; she leaped.
Sam easily snatched up the journal, only to realize too late it wasn't her target. She barreled into Dean, knocking Sam off his feet using Dean's weight. Parker swiped the journal from the younger man as he tried to get up.
"Dean, where the Hell are the keys to these?" Sam dragged his brother behind him. He didn't look ready to give up the journal either.
"Impala!" Dean yelled and matched Sam's pace as they set off after Parker.
Parker was fast, she knew she was fast, and normally two men essentially attached at the hip wouldn't stand a chance against her in a foot race. But this was not Parker's day. She didn't know whose day it was, but it sure as Hell wasn't hers.
Parker tripped over something small and furry and fast.
It took her a second to realize she was no longer running, but falling at a rather terrifying speed. The air painfully whooshed out of her lungs as she hit the pavement. Parker moaned and heard something like a toothpick being snapped in half. It wasn't a good sound. A ball of fur yapped excitedly in her ear. Adrenaline had her up, but her momentum was gone and all she could do was limp away only a little faster than a crawling toddler.
Sam scooped her up without so much as a kick in retaliation.
"Good boy, Mr. Muffin," Dean cooed, scratching the long-haired chihuahua behind its ears. "Aren't you a good rat? Yes, you are."
"Dean, stop playing with the dog and get us out of these cuffs," Sam slung Parker over one shoulder and carried her over to the Impala. She stubbornly clung to the journal, even as her (probably) broken rib knocked painfully against Sam's back. A light went on in the B'n'B.
Dean picked up the yapping dog and dug the handcuffs' keys out of the glove box. Sam gently set down Parker, warning her that if she ran he wouldn't stop Dean from using firepower. She didn't believe him, but didn't have the energy or motivation to risk it. The gingerbread house's front door opened and a thin rail of an old woman stepped onto the porch just as Dean shoved the handcuffs into the car.
"Mr. Muffin?" she called. The dog squirmed in Dean's arms. With a huff, it jumped free and pitter-pattered up to its mistress. "Oh, Muffy-wuffy, there you are! I was so worried I'd never find you." Dean had the decency to look guilty when Sam glanced accusingly at him.
Parker wrinkled her nose. Did people actually talk like that?
"What are we going to do about her?" Sam whispered, gesturing to Parker.
"Well, we can't let her go," Dean said, looking at the thief closely for the first time. "Chirsto." He was disappointed when nothing happened.
Sam snorted. "I don't think Mrs. Franklin would let two men bring a strange girl to their rooms in the middle of the night."
Dean smiled, looking between Parker's pissed expression to Sam's exhausted one. "You're right, little brother. But you know what she'd be all for?"
"Oh no."
"Oh yes."
Drat, thought Parker.
Dean got something out of the glove box, which to Parker seemed like the Impala's version of Mary Poppins' carpet bag. He shoved a key ring onto Parker's finger and an identical one onto Sam's.
"I now pronounce you man and wife," he smirked. Sam glared at him. "Mazel tov."
Oh man, Parker realized, she was in deep, deep-
"Cats!" Sophie pushed one off her lap only to have another jump on. "Who leaves this many cats alone in a house? The hair alone, and all over the furniture... Not to mention the ethics of it. It's terrible."
Hardison stroked a white long-haired cat in his arms. He grinned devilishly. "I think I'm gonna call this little guy Machiavelli." Eliot rounded a corner, two tabbys following closely behind. They mewed at him and arched their backs against his legs.
"She had ten cats locked in here," he shuffled back into the living room turned Leverage home base. Hardison's laptop and tablet were set up, though a few curious kitties tapped experimentally at both.
"It's animal cruelty, is what it is," Sophie lifted a Siamese to eye level. "You can see the neglect in their eyes." The cat meowed, wiggling uncomfortably in the grifter's hands.
"We can call PETA later," Hardison brushed a small gray cat off his laptop and sat down next to the grifter. Machiavelli growled and spat when the hacker tried to move him. "Right now we got a Nate to find." He reached around the fluffy cat on his lap to get to the keyboard.
"The guys in the warehouse said that Nate wasn't the only one missing," Eliot said, pulling an orange tabby off a chair and sitting down.
"Already on it," Hardsion didn't look away from his screen. "Alright, police records show six missing persons in the past three years, two of which were reported in the last month."
"Anything connecting them?" Eliot leaned forward. He wasn't happy about stumbling into a kidnapping case, but now that Nate was involved he added two more to the list of people he was going to get back to their families. He already knew four of the missing locals would only be returned in caskets.
Hardison's fingers flew across the keyboard. "Ah, the last two, Vincent Belke and David Wi- uh, hold on- Wiezt-tuh-zkew-ch- um, something Polish, were high school students. Actually disappeared at the same time. Vinnie's Toyota was found parked just outside of town with certain evidence that led police to think they were together before their disappearances. You want to know what the kids called the place?" Hardison waggled his eyebrows at his silent audience. "Wow, tough crowd," he muttered to Machiavelli, who flipped his tail disdainfully.
"Hardison, if you don't cut the crap, I will beat it out of you," Eliot said seriously.
"Shaggin' Peak, ya know, like Wiggins Peak, but for sexy times."
"Yikes, small town like this? That's got to be quite the scandal," Sophie shook her head sympathetically.
"You don't know the half of it," Hardison said, warming up to the story. His expression animated like he was discussing his favorite soap opera. "Seems young David's family took personal offense to two hot-blooded American boys doin' the do and told Vinnie's father, AKA Sheriff Belke, AKA brother of Lieutenant Belke of the state police - who is also the lead investigator on the case - that they didn't even want to find David or Vinnie."
"Oh, those poor boys," Sophie stroked the Siamese (which she had named Grisha after the infamous con man, Grigory Ilyich Pavlenko, inventor of the Moscow Middleman scam). "We have to find them. And Nate, of course."
"How far outside of town was the car found?" Eliot asked, batting a delicate black cat away from his lap. The cat curled up next to his thigh and began to purr.
"About five minutes out," Hardison shrugged. "But the state police already swept the whole area. Nothing's there."
"That's where we'll start," Eliot said and retreated to his thoughts.
Sophie gave him a worried glance. Eliot had been... distant since the warehouse. She didn't know what spooked him, but whatever it was had brought out a side of him Sophie had hoped was long buried. The hitter kept a cool exterior, but that didn't fool a grifter. No, something was eating at Eliot.
With its mastermind gone, the team was fracturing and Sophie didn't know how much longer she could band-aid it together. Not with Parker off gallivanting on her own and Eliot shutting them out. She saw only one way to fix whatever had broken.
They had to find Nate.