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Mourning Song – Chapter 2

Eliot pulled his truck into the shade of the campsite he'd rented for the next three days. He didn't know he long he was going to be here and it wasn't that expensive. If he ended up leaving before that, fine, he was out a bit of money. If tracking down Parker took longer than that, on the other hand, he would be looking at trying to retrieve a towed vehicle. And no one was going to impound his truck. No one drove his truck except for him. Ok, him and maybe Parker. And even then, it was just the one time he'd verbally doubted her carjacking skills and she'd stolen his truck just to prove the point. He'd made sure not to make that mistake twice.

He killed the engine and hopped out the truck, his boots scuffing against the gravel underfoot. He surveyed his spot. It wasn't much. Just a place to park his car and a picnic table with a bit of an opening between the pine trees to nestle a tent in there if he chose not to sleep in his truck. He was a ways back in the woods. He'd asked for that specifically, since there was something that eased his nerves a bit to be off on his own away from the tourists who might be lurking about. It wasn't that he was expecting trouble here, but some fine-tuned habits and neuroses weren't easily shed as a coat. No, those constructs had been woven into the very fiber of his being. He still jumped when people surprised him, and if it happened too fast and in the wrong way, he could very well end up accidently injuring someone who didn't deserve it.

He walked around to the bed of the truck and dropped the hatch as he began sorting the supplies he'd brought along. First thing he took out was the mountain bike he'd taken out of storage back in Boston before he'd made the five hour drive. Some of the older roads out here weren't passable by car and walking would take too long. Horses would've worked just as well, if not better, but finding Parker wasn't going to be made any easier if he ended up accidently causing her to flee at the sight of one of the animals that she seemed to possess an irrational fear of.

He brushed a bit of the dust off the seat as he leaned it up against the truck and began hanging the saddle bags off of the loading bracket he'd installed himself over the back tire. This bike hadn't been ridden in years. He packed just the essentials: a few knives, navigation material, plenty of dry food, his fire starting kit, his small tent and a sleeping bag, the small net book that Hardison had rigged up for long range communication capabilities by satellite so he could track Parker better. Cell phone reception died at the park entrance, Acadia National Park was one of the last vestiges of wilderness you could entrench yourself within in this country anymore. A few more odds and ends went into his saddle bags. He checked the supplies in his backpack and filled up his water bottles. He locked his truck and then he was off. There was the nod he gave to the campground owner as he rolled past the supply store and then he was biking along the mountainous spine that wrapped along east coast of Maine as if a great beast had chosen this land as its final resting place and gradually sunk into the land and become part of it.

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He found Parker that evening. She wasn't trying to be evasive, which was the first clue that she wasn't here working an outside job that she'd taken without consulting the rest of them. Up until he'd gotten here, on the ride up, that had been the explanation he was banking on; after all, what else would've brought Parker out here into a national park? It was just about as far as you could get from the luxurious living that often marked the individuals that Parker went after to steal from. He had been betting that some juicy target had pulled Parker out into the wilds like this. But this obviously wasn't the case; Parker wasn't acting like she normally would if she were on a job. So what had her out here?

He still hadn't figured that out. Did Parker take vacations? Was this really such a simple trip that he was reading far too into it?

It was late summer, and the sun was starting to kiss the mountain tops and let the world sink into a hazy evening. He clutched the brake on his bike, drawing to a halt at the top of the ridge. He couldn't help but smile as he watched the small figure of their thief below. He couldn't make out much more than her faint figure, silhouetted by the sun. But he could still see the way her ponytail whipped straight out back behind her in the wind. It was the perfect description of Parker. Like a horse running at a full gallop across an open field, tail raised high as an exclamation that, in that moment, no one would own them. It was freedom at its purest. And Parker lived that philosophy every moment of every day.

She clung to the bike, tightly. He could read that in the strain of her tightened shoulder muscles that didn't move quite right with the bike as she guided it around the lazy curves of the road as it wrapped down into the valley below. If she would just relax more, she would let her body flow with the movements of the bike and it wouldn't be so forced. She could do it, he watched her perform those motions when she was over the edge of a building hanging hundreds of feet above the street below. But here, with the road firmly under her feet, it was almost ironic that ease abandoned her in favor of a certain novice clumsiness that just ran counter to the normal grace he associated with her.

He waited until she glided around the tree line at the bottom of the valley before releasing the brake on his own bike and beginning the long coast down in pursuit of Parker and whatever had drawn her away from the terrain she favored above all else.

A few minutes later found the land leveling out and he had to begin actively pedaling to keep his speed up. The hitter's gaze was focused staunchly on the road ahead, scanning the distance ahead looking for Parker. There was no sign of her, or of anyone else, for the matter, on the open road ahead. Could she have gotten that far ahead of him? He hadn't given her that much of a head start and he had definitely been travelling downhill faster than she was willing to risk. No, if he had to bet, Parker would've likely been riding the break all the way down the mountainside.

His attention was drawn back as he heard the shifting of a bike's gears to the side of him. Eliot whipped his gaze sideways, it wasn't often someone managed to sneak up on him.

Parker nodded at him as if she had expected him to be there. She pedaled a bit faster, speeding up to draw her bike in alongside Eliot's. "You're following me."

The road ahead was starting to curb and Eliot was caught between keeping his gaze on her or on the road in front of him to follow the grade of the road. "You left without giving us much notice, in case you didn't notice."

He started trying to puzzle out when he had slipped up and let her see him. And after that, how had she gotten behind him? If she had pulled off the road it would've meant that he had ridden right past her without so much as noticing. Maybe Hardison was right…maybe he was getting a bit rusty.

"I told Hardison I'd be back in five days. That's no more time off than any of the rest of you have taken."

"So call me curious as to where you'd gotten off to. You did the same thing to me, trailing me back to Kentucky last year." He cursed once under his breath as he sharply jerked his handlebars to lean his bike into a curve to avoid a collision course with a tree straight ahead. He was having trouble multitasking like this.

"Damn it, can we stop for a minute and talk this out? If one of us gets killed it's not going to be much of a conversation."

She laughed. "You weren't invited. This wasn't meant to be a conversation." With more strength that he would've assumed Parker could possess in such a small frame, she pushed herself harder as the road started sloping uphill again and began pulling ahead of him.

He shook his head and felt his muscles strain as he pedaled harder to keep tight on the thief's tail.

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There were no more downhill bits along their journey to grant his aching muscles reprieve from the constant uphill battle. When they'd finally stopped for the night, he'd hardly been able to walk. His body was used to certain types of abuse, and this certainly wasn't his usual training venue.

Parker, on the other hand, hadn't showed the day's exertion in the least bit. She slunk around her camp as deftly as ever. She hadn't been much for conversation last night, which was odd for Parker. Usually she was badgering him with questions that seemed to come out of nowhere. What she got of his answers to these odd questions, he'd never know. But Parker wasn't like that now.

She had accepted his presence easily enough and the fact that he was shadowing her. But she hadn't been willing to give him any details about what they were doing here or where they were going. Hell, the most conversation they had that day was when he started pitching the tent she'd rolled out on the ground before going to retrieve some water from a nearby stream. She'd slipped the hammer from his hand as he'd been about to lay in on the first tent stake and made it clear that she would be taking care of herself, thank you very much, and he could keep to worrying about himself.

And Eliot had taken the cue. He was here as an observer, and Parker granting him that much was a gift in the form of a window into what she considered a private experience, whatever it was she was doing here. He'd seen her climbing gear in her bag, so there was still a very real possibility that this was a personal job of some sort that she'd taken under the table. All of these thoughts and possibilities had roiled through his thoughts as he rolled out his sleeping bag and drifted off into an uneasy slumber to the sound of buzzing insects and a gentle wind through the trees.

It was back on the road now. More damnable uphill travel. It was more pain stacked upon his already aching joints and seat bones. Who would've thought a bike seat could cause that much discomfort? Even a full day spent on horseback didn't make him sore like this. Parker showed no signs of slowing her pace, so he sucked it up and kept going. If she could do this, he could too. And there wasn't really an alternative. If he fell back, she'd be gone. Whatever almost inhuman force that was driving her higher into the mountains wasn't going to grant him reprieve.

He snagged his water bottle from its holder and swallowed a few swigs of the tepid liquid before sliding it back into its holder. He directed his gaze forward again just barely in time to see the rear wheel of Parker's bike disappear behind a tree line as she turned off the paved road and onto a dirt trail that forked off in another direction. He dipped his bike into a sharp turn to follow her. Had she finally decided it was time to ditch him?

He wasn't about to give her that. He worked to catch up to her, expecting her to be much further ahead already. Instead, the hitter found himself pulling on the brake hard to grind to a halt just a foot or so from where Parker had stopped her own bike and wheeled it around so she could watch the road. Her eyes were wide and every muscle was tensed.

"Parker, what's wrong?"

"Shhh!"

He rolled up his bike next to hers and fixed his stare in the same direction she was watching. They sat there like that for a minute or two until he heard the jingling of metal chain. That was shortly followed by voices drifting between the trees and then the sound of heavy footsteps clomping along the road.

Parker cocked her head and her eyes narrowed as something finally passed the opening from where the trail met the road. A team of heavy-boned draft horses strained against their harnesses as they pulled a carriage of gawking tourists toward the mountain peak. The older man driving the team flicked his wrist, setting the reins into a rolling motion that lightly slapped them against the horses' rumps.

"Get up, boys," he encouraged.

The horses snorted. One shook its head and swished its abbreviated tail back and forth anxiously but the team complied, throwing themselves harder into their exertions.

He turned to look at Parker. The thief had an angry glare on her face as if she expected the horses to break free of their harnesses and come to trample them. She growled as they passed low under her breath and then they disappeared behind the tree line again.

"You okay, Parker?"

"Fine," she snapped.

He waited for her to take the lead and start them moving again. And then he waited some more. The pair remained there for a solid fifteen minutes after the sounds of the group and their horses had faded off into the distance.

Eventually she sighed and scrubbed a hand across her weary face and slowed her quickened breathing. "Stupid horses. It's some heritage thing; they've always had carriage rides in the park." With that statement she kicked off against the ground to start a forward rolling motion and he was chasing after her once again.

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