A/N: I'm beginning to feel that most of my chapters start like this lately but once again I'm sooooo sorry for the delay. Unfortunately life keeps getting in the way and then finding out Leverage was cancelled was the death stroke for my muse until I finally started reading some of the other E/P ff out there. Thanks to all the authors who inspired me to come back and give this story the ending it deserved. I finally finished my outline and though we have a ways to go I have a pretty good idea of where were going. Just so you all know I have not watched the season finally yet so in my mind Leverage has not been killed by TNT but it is on a reallyyyyyy long hiatus! No spoilers please!
Their ride home was silent. He knew Parker well enough to know that while she had fun and enjoyed their day, the information he had given her was still on her mind. The silence was almost suffocating and he hated himself for ruining what was supposed to be a beautiful afternoon. They pulled into the driveway and Eliot put the car in park but before she could get out he grabbed her hand. "I'm sorry I told you."
"Why?" she asked still not looking at him, but he considered speaking a step in the right direction.
"Because this is your family, you should have been able to enjoy the entire day with them and I took that away. I shouldn't have." He answered honestly.
"I'm not sorry, family means you help right? Like when I was in the building and you came in to get me. So now I have to help them." She answered. "But I don't know how… I think we need to get Nate."
"We do need to get the team involved at some point but I want to get a little more information first." Eliot replied slipping out of the car.
"What kind of information?" Parker asked following him into the House. They took a moment to greet the hysterical puppy that was running back and forth between them thrilled they were home.
"I want to talk to David. He's go the inside track on what's going on and who our major players are going to be." Eliot flopped down on the couch and Harris promptly hopped up and placed his head on Eliot's leg asking to be petted. "If we can get that sooner rather than later we can get right into planning the actual con and not waste time with background information."
Parker sat down beside him on the sofa her longer nails enticing Harris to her lap to get his ears scratched. "Who is our client then? I know we can't let David get in trouble; but we can't let Carter either. Should we have told Archie what's going on?"
"I don't think so. I know you want to keep Carter safe but Archie's way of doing that might not be the right way. Nate is better about actually managing to help people, no offense." Eliot answered honestly. Though he and Archie had come to a mutual understanding in the process of the family get together, he was still not a fan of the older thief's methods. Archie was a plain thief, much like Parker before the team got to her. They didn't really care who they robbed, if desperate they would be just as likely to take a wallet from a rich or poor man. Thieves like Archie didn't have standards when they were backed into a corner and nothing backed a man into a corner more than his family being threatened.
"I guess." Harris jumped down off the couch and Eliot took the opportunity to wrap an arm around Parker's shoulders bringing her to rest against his chest. He felt her stiffen for a moment but he held his ground and eventually she relaxed against him. Though he was not a fan of public displays of affection when in private he was a very tactile man; he liked the idea that he had permission to touch Parker when he wanted and he planned to take advantage of it.
"Huggy Eliot again!" she tried to sound exasperated with him but he felt her snuggle in tighter to his body.
"I like hugging you." He answered back giving her a small squeeze. "So aside from the job stuff what did you think of them?"
"I liked the kids." She answered absently fiddling with a button on his shirt.
"I think they liked you too. I was thinking maybe before we go back to the team full time we would have our own barbeque. Invite all the kids from the neighborhood and Archie's family." He suggested the idea he had been mulling over in the car.
"How would we do that?" Parker asked, "I have too much stuff that they would know I was bad and then I would have to move!" she sat up panicked her head spinning as she catalogued all the priceless artifacts she had scattered throughout the House.
"Relax crazy, I didn't mean right now. We can clean the place before we have the party it was just a suggestion." He smiled as she glared at him, whatever he was about to say was cut off by a knocking at the door.
"I'll get it!" she called over her shoulder as she skipped to the door. He heard the sound of muffled voices he couldn't quite make out over the sound of Harris barking to greet the newcomers.
"Eliot." He stood to shake the hand of both David and Jimmy who seemed more excited by Harris then Eliot.
"He's really fuzzy Parker!" the boy exclaimed rubbing the dogs' ears which perked up proudly at the comment.
"I'm sorry to interrupt but as I told Parker we seem to have lost a Frisbee in your back yard." David told him smiling at his son's obvious enthusiasm.
"Well why don't we let Jimmy find it, I'm sure we can rustle up a beer for you if you'd like to hang out for a minute." He looked at Parker who nodded clearly understanding that he planned to take the opportunity to talk to David.
"Let's go get the Frisbee, and then I'll show you how high he can jump it's totally cool!" Parker lead Jimmy out of the House with Harris trailing along behind them tail wagging.
"Didn't know you guys had a dog." David commented as Eliot led him into the kitchen.
"He's a new addition. As you heard at your dinner party Parker didn't have the most normal childhood, white picket fence and dog is the least I can do." he chuckled. Though it had been intended as a joke he did take a moment to appreciate the truth of that statement. Parker had missed out on so much, he remembered the job they pulled at the high school reunion and how she had shared a dance with Hardison, her first if he wasn't mistaken. He added dancing to his ongoing mental list of things to experience with the blonde thief.
"I still can't apologize enough for that." David replied hanging his head slightly.
"Parker's ok so I'm ok." Eliot answered. "I did put a little thought into what you told me that night though." He watched David stiffen and crane his neck to see Jimmy outside playing with Parker and clearly unable to hear their conversation. "I've still got some books to take off shelves in the library, we're doing some re-modeling Jimmy Will be fine out there with Parker." He offered, understanding the man's need to keep the situation away from his young son.
"Thanks Eliot." He replied standing with a relieved smile on his face, "Keeping my hands busy while we talk about this will be nice. Eliot led the older man into the library and almost laughed at the look on his face. "That is a ridiculous amount of books."
"I know that's what I thought." Eliot agreed gesturing to the shelves he had yet to start tearing down.
"I can see why you want to re-build these though." David told him as a shelf came apart in his hands.
"The decorator was a friend of ours and didn't take Parkers request for shelves too seriously I guess." Eliot told him gesturing to the picture Parker had drawn. "That's what we're aiming for."
"That's a lot of work; I've got a background in carpentry if you're interested in some help on the weekends." David offered as they worked for a moment.
"I might take you up on that offer but for the moment I'm more interested in who you think is behind the embezzling." Eliot segued into the topic he wanted to discuss.
"It has to be the CEO Anthony Haskell although I'm sure most of the family is reaping the benefits." David answered. "The company hasn't gone public yet so their financial records aren't a matter of public record but all the executives pour over them with a fine toothed comb. If I noticed something was wrong you can bet they did too and since they didn't say anything." He trailed off leaving Eliot to fill in the blanks.
"You said the family, are they all related?" he asked no longer interested in being subtle about what he wanted to know.
David seemed to understand what was being asked of him and he began talking without asking for clarification. "The company was founded by Anthony Haskell and his brother Arthur. According to most stories Anthony was a banker who started the company working with his bank and buying up properties using family money. Arthur got involved because he was in the real estate game. He found properties they could increase the value of for next to nothing and sell at a huge profit. The company was nationwide in a matter of five years."
"And the rest of the family?" Eliot prompted.
"Well Arthur is the Chief Technical Officer, he handles most of the record keeping along with Anthony's oldest son Anthony Jr. they call him Ant he's the Chief Financial officer. He's also 28 and barely gradated from a community college with a business degree."
"I guess these guys take family pretty seriously." Eliot commented a bit surprised. Most people running schemes at this level liked to have people more qualified to handle the situation if it exploded.
"You're not kidding. Anthony has one other kid, his daughter who in true conservative southern republican fashion is a housewife with three maids. Her husband however is the Chief Information Officer. Nobody is quite sure what he does but I'm sure he's useless at it." Both men laughed at the joke though it was a little forced. Both of them understood that by discussing what they were discussing they had opened a door that could destroy David's life if Eliot misused it.
"Then the last guy is Carter Leach. I don't know too much about him. I guess Arthur ran out of family because the Chief Security Officer has never been a member of the inner circle." David shrugged.
"It's a fall guy." Eliot muttered.
"Fall guy?" David questioned. Eliot was surprised that he could hear that well but shrugged.
"I've seen it before, not in embezzling but in other theft rings. A tem will recruit someone they don't know and set up a paper trail leading the police to believe they committed the crime alone. If they don't get caught it's never used but if they do it's a get out of jail free card." Eliot explained knowing that that scenario made things much harder if they wanted to get Carter out unscathed. Though they liked to pretend it wasn't true they all knew that once the whispers started; especially in the security business; the people they had helped who were falsely accused still dealt with people who were biased against them from the start.
"Anything useful you can tell me about them personally?" Eliot asked as the pair of them moved on to the last bookshelf.
"Well I don't know too much about Anthony and Arthur but I work pretty closely with Ant. He's not married and he uses his money to find various bedfellows. He seems to like older women from what I've seen storming out of his office every few weeks. It's a whirlwind with him, picks them up, screws them for a week, and then dumps them flat on their fake boobs." David's distaste for the younger man was obvious as he scowled at the wall.
"He sounds like an asshole." Eliot told him honestly.
"You aren't kidding!" David replied lifting the last few books off the shelves.
"We're tired!" Parker said from the doorway. Eliot couldn't help but laugh at the startled yelp Dave let out at the voice behind him.
"You're like a little blonde ninja." He told her clearly amused at his own fright.
"Daddy you were super scared." Jimmy told his father Frisbee in hand. "I think it was funny."
"Well Eliot it was nice talking to you." David held out a hand for both Parker and Eliot to shake. "Parker thanks for entertaining the boy." They walked together to the front door and after one last hug for both Parker and Eliot from Jimmy they closed the door behind their guests.
"It's not good is it?" Parker asked sliding down the wall in the entry way. Eliot sat down beside her and took her hand in his.
"It looks like they had a loaded gun pointed at Terrance Grey the guy Carter is replacing." He told her absently tracing patterns on her palm.
"Which means they most likely have one pointing at Carter by now." She sighed and slammed her head back against the wall.
"All that means is that we're going to have to find that paper trail and destroy it before we take them down. We can still protect Carter and Archie." He pulled her to him and pressed a light kiss to her forehead. He knew she would need time to think it through; she wasn't used to feeling the need to protect people like Carter who couldn't fend for themselves in her world.
"Can I kiss you?" she asked so quietly that he almost didn't hear her.
"What?" he asked though his blood thrummed through his veins at the idea of holding her again he had to make absolutely sure he heard her correctly.
She pulled away from him and stood up pacing into the living room with her arms wrapped around her biceps in a defensive position. "There's so much up there and I need to not be in there and it's hard and when you… when you get all Huggy Eliot and Kissy Eliot sometimes it's not too much and it's just quiet." She rambled only as long as it took him to cross the room. He placed his hands on hers and pulled her arms apart wrapping them around his torso. He took her chin in his hand and tilted her head up until she met his eyes.
"I don't care if it's because you're bored, you're feeling frisky, or you need to tone down the voices in your head you never have to ask my permission to kiss me." He said smiling slightly. A smile that she swallowed when she lifted her lips to his in a soft kiss. She pulled away blushing slightly a tiny smile on her face. He leaned forward intentionally brushing his lips against her earlobe as he said, "That the best you got sweetheart?" He delighted in her little shiver as he dropped his head to press a gentle kiss on her collarbone. He moved up slowly leaving open-mouthed kisses on her neck until he reached her lips.