Sorry about missing yesterday, folks. In my defense, I spent a good portion of the day asleep after hosting 15 people at my house.

The song for this chapter is one that is just so, so inimical to Nate Ford, "Permanent" by David Cook. It was written about his brother's ultimately losing battle against brain cancer. So, yeah.

Also, I took a moment in this chapter to go into what I think is one of the more subtle, impactful episodes of the series. Because you can't tell me that Eliot being tortured by a CIA interrogator is just a shrug of a B plot.

Enjoy!

Chapter 5: Touch and Go

Nate really, really wanted a drink.

He threw back the last dregs of his mug of coffee and padded across the hotel suite to the coffee pot to start it up again. The pot wasn't quite empty, so he splashed the remaining cold coffee into his mug to gulp down while the new pot got going.

It lacked a great deal of the elegance and sophistication of whiskey – to say nothing of the soothing alcohol – but this, at least, would keep him awake.

After finishing at John Connell's house, they'd cleared out so as not to get in the way of any contact from the Russians. Hardison gave John a cheap, not-easily-traced cell phone so he could reach them whenever he got his assignment. Connell had asked Nate to stay, had asked the team to stay and help.

"The best help we can be right now is to leave so we don't give away our involvement in this before we're ready," Nate told him on the way out the door. He didn't tell the man that he would rather shove Connell's whole head into a toaster slot and plug it in than help him after he had fed Eliot to the Russians. Nate didn't even berate him for his cowardice and poor-decision-making and everything else. He simply said goodbye.

It was whatever Sophie had said that left the man broken and bawling all over again.

"I had to," she said in the car later. "They expect him to be a hopeless wreck. I just made it easier for him to give a good performance."

Nate had pretended not to see the secret fist-bump Parker gave her.

Now settled in a hotel suite in the city that was so recently their own, the team was hard at work. Hardison had shut himself into one of the bedrooms, wanting complete focus and isolation. He had to track the Russians, the FBI, and now every government or non-governmental group that might want Eliot dead. Sophie and Parker were out acquiring changes of clothes and other grift-necessary accessories – and also beginning the legwork to gather information on the Russians who had been at Connell's house with the initial information Hardison had pulled from his facial-recognition databases. Hardison might be able to tell them about criminal records and associates; Sophie needed to know about likes, dislikes, friends, and hooks.

And Nate was waiting.

It took all his self-restraint not to march himself down to the restaurant where he knew Boston's Russian mafia had a base and threaten, trick, and otherwise force them to reveal the locations of Molly and Eliot. That had been Plan A. Toss a few tables, throw his weight around as a son of Jimmy Ford and as the very notorious Nate Ford whose reputation was still enough to make even mob bosses pause, and get his Hitter and the girl back.

Of course, the problem with that scenario was the lack of said Hitter. Nate Ford knew walking into a crowd of Russian mobsters with nothing but anger and reputation to hurl at them would end with being carried out in a bag. If Eliot were here, he could do it. He would make the deal, or levy the threat, or offer the bribe, or whatever method was most likely to work, and Eliot would keep the thugs at bay and back up his play with appropriate intimidation tactics. And Sophie could do many things as a Grifter, but she couldn't play Eliot's stone-cold killer act.

To say nothing of the fact that it hadn't always been an act.

Sometimes, when Eliot stole Hardison's orange soda or traded pokes with Parker or cooked in the kitchen with Sophie, Nate could forget what he knew about the history of Eliot Spencer. He could see the man who was all heart, the man who would lay down his life for his team, the man who aimed to disable, not maim, even when it cost him in his own blood. He could see the chef, the musician, the loyal friend.

But Nate knew, probably better than anyone but Eliot himself, that that was only half of the true Eliot Spencer.

He'd known it since long before Damien Moreau.

Nate had chased each member of the team at one point or another. He'd investigated them all, given evidence on them all to local authorities, tracked them all so he knew where to put the blame for stolen items to save IYS the payouts. Sophie more than the rest, and he was starting to be certain that had not been an accident.

But he'd known something of who Eliot Spencer really was long before Dubenich added him to the team. He'd known of the soldier turned mercenary, the unstoppable retrieval specialist whose services could buy an infiltration of the most dangerous places in the world. He'd known that Eliot Spencer was rumored to have come from covert ops, to have been a professional assassin, to have worked as a hitman for more governments than most people had pairs of pants. Just rumors, but rumors that were whispered in low, fearful voices by men who feared nothing and no one.

Nate was pretty sure that at least some of those rumors had been true.

The coffee-maker bubbled and spit as the new pot started to fill.

Nate had learned in the last few years that there were times he needed Eliot Spencer at his side and times it was better to keep him invisible – and most of what determined one from the other had to do with whether or not the players in the game already knew those rumors and stories. The mobs, they knew. Maybe not the grunts, the new recruits, the errand boys, but every boss of every major mafia family knew Eliot's name and sometimes his face. There was power in that, in Nate being able to walk into a situation with Eliot at his side. Like walking with the Devil, or the Boogeyman, or Death itself waiting for his command to strike.

Eliot had given Nate that power to use, and had trusted him to use it well. Eliot played at being Nate's demon on a leash, proof that Nate should be feared, for he was the master of the monster.

And now, when that power could have helped save two lives, Nate had to find it in himself instead. Now the monster was in danger, Nate's leash was empty, and Nate had to become the demon.

"Hey."

Nate looked up, surprised that Hardison had come out of his self-imposed exile so soon.

"Got something?" he asked.

Hardison let out a breath. "Lots of things."

Nate frowned. He hadn't expected Hardison to be doing his 'behold my genius' dance, which would be out of place given the level of peril, but he also didn't expect the Hacker to look so haunted. Hardison's eyes were dull and wide. Sickened.

"You okay?"

"No, man." Hardison shook his head. "I'm really not."

Nate abandoned the coffee and crossed the room. "What did you find?"

Hardison looked at a piece of vague hotel art while he answered.

"I had to go into the deep web to find the auction for Eliot. The part of the internet that's reserved for psychopaths and kiddie porn. Did you know you can buy drugs and people and weapons like they were on Amazon there?" He swallowed. "And now...you can buy Eliot."

"Hardison." Nate tried to get his attention, but Hardison was staring resolutely at the bad hotel painting of maybe a bridge.

"Eliot's ad was right between a thing about machine guns for cheap and one for...you don't want to know."

Nate was pretty sure he could guess anyway and just nodded.

Finally Hardison turned to catch Nate's eyes, his own like a drowning man grabbing onto a line to keep his head above water.

"Normally we go after corporate jerks, or politicians, or political jerks. Not...actual people who make Darth Vader look like a model father. And these are the guys who have Eliot?"

"Hardison, calm down." Nate knew as he said it that it was thoroughly incongruous, that Hardison was, in fact, overly calm right now. But he needed the panic, the usual I'm-in-over-my-head flail that was Hardison being afraid and overwhelmed while also preparing to deal, and not this frozen shock. He needed Hardison to feel in order to move forward. And as with most things, telling Hardison to react one way incited the opposite.

"Dude!" Hardison blinked, his eyes narrowing and his body coiling with tension. "Don't you get it? There's a fun little line at the bottom of Eliot's ad. 'If no one meets our initial bid price, we would consider lowering it and selling the merchandise piece by piece.' They...they're…!"

Hardison rocked on his feet, looking like he was going to storm away.

Nate grabbed his shoulder, anchoring him in more ways than one.

"Hardison." He waited until the Hacker met his gaze again. "I know all that."

"And we're just sitting here!"

Nate gave Hardison a small shake. "Do you know where he is?"

"Somewhere in Venezuela. There's enough bids already that they're talking about having some kind of live auction, like the Marketplace from Kiev."

"Okay." Nate tightened his grip on Hardison's shoulder. "Good. That means we've got some time."

Hardison yanked himself backwards. "Time to be doing God knows what to him! And Molly! She's...they got these ads about girls..."

He closed his eyes and Nate was only surprised Hardison wasn't screaming.

Nate let Hardison have that moment to break down, the moment that had probably been building since he'd told them Eliot was missing. Hardison could play up his 'gansta' ways, but it was as much a grift as any he ran on a con. With Hardison and Parker, it was easy to forget that they were so very young, and Parker had been aged by the cold edges of the world more than Hardison. It was no mystery why Hardison gravitated to Eliot, irritating him while sheltering in his shadow like hiding behind a protective older brother. Hardison always tried to face the world through some kind of buffer or barrier, be it a grift, a piece of code, a video game, or someone else.

But there was nothing Nate could do to protect Hardison from the world they were walking into now.

Nate waited until Hardison's face was torn between fury and tears, until the shaking went from his hands up to his shoulders, and then pulled him into a one-armed hug.

"They're going to be all right, Hardison. We're going to find them."

"Yeah, but what if…"

"And the only thing you should worry about right now is making sure we get there before anything happens that we can't fix. Which is why I need you to find them for me. So we can get to them. Because we will."

Hardison sniffed and pulled back, visibly forcing his expression back into the cocky Hacker who was too cool for being scared.

"Yeah. Right." He rubbed at his nose, trying to regain his street cred and mostly failing. "I did get some hits on facial recognition on some traffic cameras that I tracked to Logan where they got in a private jet. I think Molly and Eliot were put on the same private flight down to Venezuela. I can't hack the Caracas airport from here 'cause it's all under construction and most of its security stuff is internal. But it should be pretty easy to see who got off that plane if they really landed at Simon Bolivar Airport."

"Good." Nate could see that Hardison was working past the panic now, getting his head back into the right space for the work.

"And I already got us some flights down there. Picked a bunch of aliases – figured you would want us to have options."

"Okay. Call Sophie and set it up with her. Tell her we probably need to prepare a couple different variations on a Kansas City Shuffle, and maybe a Gas Leak Special." Nate smirked at Hardison's expression. "It all depends on who shows up to this little shindig."

"Okay, but I ain't signing up to get my legs broken. We clear on that?"

"Crystal clear." Nate nodded. "Oh, and tell Sophie to work on her Greek. We might need it."

That won him an incredulous look. "Seriously?"

"Get to it." Nate turned away and headed for his coffee, leaving Hardison blinking after him.

"Hey."

Nate looked over his shoulder. Hardison was still shifting his weight, uncertain, but his wariness was normal now.

"You really think they're gonna be okay?"

"Yeah." Nate didn't look Hardison in the eye as he said it, focusing on his coffee. "They will be. But they're counting on us to get them out."

"I thought Eliot told you to keep us away from this."

"Well." Nate stirred his coffee for a moment. "Okay, he did that, too. But that was before he knew Molly was going to be taken. If he were here, don't you think he'd want us to get her back?"

"No, I don't."

Nate looked up in surprise.

Hardison huffed. "I think he'd ditch us in the middle of the night and go get her himself."

Nate chuckled. "You're probably right. So let's make sure we get down there and get them out before he does just that."

Hardison muttered something to himself and headed back into the room. Nate settled himself on a couch with the coffee, absently listening to Hardison calling Sophie.

He hadn't quite lied. He did think Eliot would be okay. And if Eliot weren't one-hundred-percent incapacitated, he would keep Molly as safe as possible, too. He knew Eliot could handle everything the Russians could imagine for him and probably several things they couldn't.

But the difference was that Nate knew exactly what that would look like, and Hardison didn't.

There was a reason Nate had insisted Hardison build their earbud comm network with the ability to adjust the connections between them, muting lines for some but not others. It had served them well a few times, but none so much as the job where they had sent Hardison to infiltrate the Dustmen secret society. They had all started the job on the same comms as usual, everybody connected to everybody.

But the first night Eliot spent in the 'research facility,' he had told Nate to cut his line off from everybody else.

Nate was alone at the office, which was to say, his home, and had done so, muting the pair of them on a private connection while he let the other three snark at one another about Hardison's homework assignments and such.

"Nate, it's gonna be ugly," Eliot had said.

"Do we need to abort?"

"I guess that depends. How bad do we want this guy?"

Nate had considered that. "Not bad enough for you to be in a situation you can't handle."

Eliot had chuckled then. "Oh, I can handle it. These guys think torture is noise and cold and inane questions. That's not even foreplay where I come from."

Nate had been very grateful Eliot couldn't see him flinch. "Okay. And Parker's got a key now, so she'll be able to get you out if you're in trouble. But if I think it's going too far, I'll pull the plug. And then I want you out of there."

"Fair enough." Eliot was quiet for a moment. "Nate, don't put me back on with the others. Unless they ask, and then only for a little while at a time."

"Why not?" Nate remembered his days in prison and how much easier it had been when he had a comm and the ability to talk to the others. Even if it wasn't for the plan, even if it was nothing more than idle banter and chatter. It had kept him grounded, focused. It had reminded him why he had reason to get out in the first place.

"Hardison ain't gonna be able to look that kid in the face if he's hearing me with their interrogator," Eliot said. "He's gotta be above all this crap. He's bad enough at acting already. If he pukes while I'm getting a beat-down, everything'll go to hell."

Nate couldn't argue that point. "One condition, though, or I'm pulling the plug right now."

"What's that?"

"You're staying online with me. Night and day. I'll sleep with the feed playing if I have to. But I have to know somebody is listening in case you need an out."

"Prepare for trying to sleep through a lot of loud metal music," Eliot had told him.

And that had been the least of it. The nightly beatings happened, too, and Nate tore a towel in half listening to Eliot take punches without fighting back. Then there was the cold, enough for Eliot's teeth to chatter like odd static on the line. And the interrogations at all hours, sometimes four over the course of the night, and Eliot's far colder answers.

But Eliot hadn't broken. Hadn't even spent a moment out of control. Nothing the interrogator could do or say, as Eliot told him, was worse than what Eliot carried inside his head already. And the pain and discomfort was bearable in the world of Eliot who had known so much worse.

Nate limited the exposure of Eliot's comm to the others, especially as Rush Week heated up. The one time Hardison could hear Eliot shivering with cold, it took him almost an hour to be able to focus on the con again.

Between the rest of it, when Eliot hadn't been asleep, he and Nate had played chess; Eliot had played chess with Nate over comms when he was in prison, too. And though Nate could outplay Eliot seven times out of ten, they had fun dissecting weaknesses and debating tactics in a way that didn't interest Hardison or Sophie or Parker.

But this time Eliot was facing all that and worse with no comm in his ear. With no Nate ready to call an abort, ready to arrange an extraction. With no Parker bringing real food and warm coats and water. With no friendly police officer a phone call away.

Yes, Nate knew Eliot would be okay. But he also knew what Eliot might have to survive on the way to being okay. He didn't have to imagine.

"Hardison!"

Hardison leaned so he could yell into the room. "Hang on – what, Nate?"

"Tell Sophie to get a bottle of whiskey for me, will you?"

"Nate says he's thirsty," Hardison said with a scowl.

"That's not what I said!"

"Sophie says Parker already stole you some."

"Thanks, Parker!" Nate called, hopefully loud enough to be heard. "And Hardison!"

"What?"

"Tell them to come get comms before they go anywhere else."

"Really?"

"Yes. Really."

Nate tuned out the rest of Hardison griping over the phone with Sophie, in spite of various pointed comments lobbed his way.

He couldn't hear Eliot, and he knew the silence on the line where his Hitter should have been would be hard for them all. But he needed to hear the others now. Needed to be able to reach them in a second. Even here in Boston. Even if they were all in the same building. Even before the con began.

He needed that permanent link to bind them, to fill in the gap where Eliot should have been.

"Nate."

He looked up to see Hardison holding out an earbud. He set his coffee on the table and slipped the tiny thing into place.

"Thanks."

Hardison stared at him for a long moment and Nate wondered what the Hacker was reading in his own face and body. Hardison wasn't the expert of human behavior and tells that Sophie was, and he didn't have her slightly frightening attention to details about Nate specifically, either. But Nate was running without sleep, and currently without whiskey, and the more that earbud sat with silence over the comms, the more it tore at him.

"Listen. I've got a good start going, and most of my searches can run without me watching them for a while. We could head down there now and figure out the plan on the way. It's a seven hour plane ride from whenever we leave either way."

Nate just looked at him.

"I mean...now that we know where we're going, why are we still just sitting here thinking and sending the girls to get supplies? We're going to be seven hours behind whatever I find out anyway. Can't we go now and figure it out when we're close enough to do something?"

"Yeah!"

Nate almost jumped at Parker's unexpected voice in his ear. "Parker?"

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. "The only person who didn't have a comm on them already is you, silly."

"She's right," came Sophie's voice. "We were just waiting for you to decide to start using them."

Nate made a noncommittal noise.

"So why aren't we going right now?" Parker asked. "We could've chartered a plane from the house and sat on the runway until Hardison knew where we were going."

"Yes, we could have." Sophie's voice had that tone to it that told Nate she was feeling smug – and that she was about to say something he probably would be a lot happier if she kept quiet.

"Sophie…" he warned.

"If Hardison's got the location," Sophie said, ignoring him, "then there's only two reasons we're not on a plane right now. First, Nate's not sure he's bringing all of us with him."

"Aw, hell no." Hardison crossed his arms and glared at Nate and it ached in Nate's chest how much that posture looked like Eliot. "You ain't doing that lone wolf cowboy thing on us this time. No way."

"Are cowboys wolves?" Parker asked. "Also, no. He's not. What's the other reason?"

"Oh. Hey, I get it!"

Nate blinked at the look of comprehension on Hardison's face. "What?"

"You're totally having a Heroic BSOD."

"Uh, I really didn't need to know that, Hardison."

"Parker!"

Nate blinked. Confirmed for himself that whatever acronym that was, it wasn't related to kinky sex. At least, he didn't think it was connected to kinky sex. But it was Hardison, so...

"It means," Hardison said, frowning, "Heroic Blue Screen of Death."

"It's an acute stress reaction," Sophie said. "Basically, he's frozen."

"I am not," Nate snapped.

"Then why the hell ain't we already running for the airport?" Hardison bent down, glaring. "We know about where Eliot probably is. We know where Molly probably is, or was. I ain't gonna get much more from here."

"Hardison." Sophie's voice was gentle, but there was steel in its tone. "Do me a favor. Make sure Nate is doing exactly as I say."

"Okay."

"Nate?"

Nate frowned at being addressed in that soothing, almost-con voice. Then he sighed. "Right, fine. Go ahead."

"Close your eyes."

He did.

"Think about Eliot for a minute. Not fighting, just...where he is right now. What he needs."

And Nate's mind rebelled. It slipped instead to an image of a pale, thin chest, of unforgiving hospital lights, of the whine of a heart monitor going flat.

"Uh...Sophie?"

"That's what I thought. Nate? Open your eyes."

Nate was surprised that Hardison was about six inches away from his nose, staring.

"There's no glass this time, Nate," Sophie said, warm and real. "There's no door between you and the person who needs you. And this isn't something you're powerless to fix."

"And you're not alone," Parker said. "So if you go all BDSM again, we can help you."

"BSOD, Parker!" Hardison yelled. "Heroic Blue Screen of Death!"

"Whatever."

"Nate."

Nate shut his eyes one more time. He heard the question in Sophie's voice. He knew she wanted to know if he could handle this. If he could face a child under threat and one of his own in danger like this and not lose it. If he could save Eliot and Molly when he could not save his son.

A few years ago, maybe the whole of the two situations wouldn't have been conflated in his mind.

But a lot had changed in those years. Maybe himself most of all.

"Okay." Nate opened his eyes and pushed to his feet, almost knocking Hardison backwards. "Guys? Enough stalling. Get to the airport. We'll meet you there. Hardison, do whatever you have to."

He could feel the smiles on the other end of the comms, relieved and ready as Hardison's own.

"Come on. Let's go steal an Eliot."