It took some time, but once they had digested the news, Eliot had a question. He looked straight at O'Neill and bluntly asked, "Why are you telling us all of this? We haven't signed a non-disclosure statement or anything."
"Hardison and Parker have," O'Neill replied. "And if you don't sign one when we're through with this, knowing all you know, then we have ways of making you forget."
"Why does Parker know?" Nate asked, irritation clear in his voice as he tried to make this information fit with his Catholic upbringing.
Daniel let out a laugh as he replied with a wry smile, "We had a very ... sensitive piece of technology get stolen a few years back. Parker was brought on to steal it back for us without being too blunt about it."
It was Eliot who brought things into blunt perspective, "You've been banking on us liking our memories more than we dislike the government, haven't you?" he shot at Cassie, none too harshly.
She looked at him questioningly, "Was I wrong? You should be thankful the CIA doesn't have the technology we do, with all the galavanting you've done throughout the years."
Eliot had a pained look on his face as he replied, "I would hardly call what I did galavanting."
"But they would. You saw some things you really weren't supposed to, Mr. Spencer," Sam replied, her eyes hard and sad at the same time. "We're offering you the opportunity to find out the answers to at least a few of your questions."
Nate and Sophie seemed situated on the edge of a deep precipice, and ready to fall either direction depending on what Eliot chose to do next. He didn't like feeling that they were choosing based solely on him. At long last, the hitter nodded once. "Where's the contract?"
"First we need to get things settled here," Jack replied, moving to the still-set dining room table and tapping on the pan half full of lasagna. "Cassie can't stay here."
"Jack, I'm not going to run," Cassie protested as she took a few steps toward him.
He rounded on her in an instant, "I promised Janet to keep you safe. We all did. The last time you didn't run they had you for three weeks before we were able to get you back. Three weeks, Cassie. That's not going to happen again. Especially not just because you're being pigheaded."
She glared at him, "I learned from the best," she shot back before moving into her bedroom. A few seconds later the sounds of crashing books was heard.
"Shouldn't someone check on her?" Sophie asked softly as her eyes flickered to the doorway still bearing a hole from it's encounter with a heavy body.
Daniel shook his head, "She'll be fine in a while. When her mom died it was worse."
"What happened?" Nate asked curiously. At the looks from Daniel, Sam, and Jack that he received in answer he clarified, "Well, something had to have happened to shake her up like that. So? What was it? If you don't mind me asking."
Vala, sweet, detached from the situation, Vala answered, "Janet died in a rescue mission gone bad. She was saving a man's life when she got hit in the back by a stray blast and her vest failed."
"Oh God," Sophie said, getting up and moving to look out the window. Once there she turned to survey the others, "How horrible. Did the man survive?"
"Yes," Vala continued, "His first child was born a week later. A girl they named Janet."
As Vala answered the other questions that seemed to pop up from this story, Eliot quietly made his way to the destroyed bedroom were Cassie could still be heard throwing everything she could against the walls. He briefly wondered how much stuff she had before briefly glancing at Teal'c (who was staring back with stoic acceptance and approval) and stepping over the threshold.
Cassie had stopped throwing her possessions for the moment. Instead she was looked out the shaded window, a snow globe in her left hand as her back heaved with silent sobs. He briefly surveyed the destruction of her room and raised his eyebrows in respect at the amount of havoc she'd been able to wreak.
"Go away Eliot," she whispered before turning to the wall that separated her room from the living room. She shifted the snow globe from her left hand to her right, pausing a moment to trace the worn glass. It was clearly well-loved and had a significant story behind it.
Her right arm came back in a baseball pitcher's swing, but Eliot stopper her by saying, "Now what'd that snow globe ever do to you?"
Her arm dropped like lead and her puffy, red eyes met his, "Mom gave it to me the week she adopted me." She held it out for him to see. It was of Toronto. He hesitated a moment before stepping forward and picking it out of her hand gently.
He held it upright as the snow inside the globe fell around the Gardiner Museum. "I don't get it," he finally admitted to the distraught woman before him.
Cassie's watery eyes met Eliot's as she answered, "We couldn't tell people where I was really from, so we told them I was Canadian. From Toronto." She shrugged as she looked back to where Eliot held the snow globe, "Mom got it for me on a visit to Toronto a few months after I got here. ... To remind me."
Eliot nodded, as he began to understand why she had been about to throw it against the wall. Looking at it closely, he thought he could see the signs of where it had broken and needed to be repaired in the past. She must really not want to remember.
"Cassie," Daniel's voice broke through the moment as he called them back to the present. Cassie turned fully to face her adopted uncle as he added, "It's time."
Time for what, exactly, Eliot didn't know, but he soon found out as Cassie quickly retrieved a bag from under her bed and proceeded to stuff a few items into it. It was a select few, but Eliot was sure they all held the most value to the woman when she briskly grabbed the snow globe from him and put it on top of the other things in the bag before zipping it shut.
She nodded once to Daniel as she stepped past him and went into the living room. "Let's get this over with."
Eliot and Daniel sized each other up for the next few seconds. Both were clearly hardened fighters, well capable of holding their own, and there was a mutual respect that passed before they too joined the others in the living room.
"What's going on?" they heard Sophie ask Jack as Sam and Tesa said their goodbyes to Cassie and quickly left the apartment for God knows where.
"We're leaving," Jack answered with a clipped tone as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed number 3 on speed dial. A few seconds later he was telling the person on the other end, "Everything's set down here Walter. No, no, all lifesigns. ... Yes, civilians, too. ... Get SG-3 down here to do a sweep after we get there. ... That shouldn't be a problem. ... And tell Mathews that his team won the bet."
As he hung up the phone Cassie gave him a hard look that made Eliot cringe a little even though it wasn't directed at him. "Bet?" she questioned with a facade of calmness.
He gave her an equally hard look as he replied, "They had a bet going about what sex the baby was going to be. It's a boy."
Before Cassie, or anyone else, could respond a flash of white light filled the room and in its wake there wasn't a soul left standing in the small apartment. A fact that would confound the Chicago Police Department for some months as they puzzled over the mysterious burglary and kidnapping reporter to them by a middle-aged pregnant woman and her young friend who looked no older than 21.
The truth would never be found out. That very same pregnant woman made sure of that.
When the group re-materialized the room was dark and that fact alone set everyone on edge. It wasn't quite pitch black as there was some light flickering in from the windows, but given the fact that they had just come from a fully lit apartment, the difference was drastic.
"Ow! Jack!" Daniel gripped at his friend. "That's my foot!"
"Just let me find the light," the older man replied. "It's gotta be around here somewhere. ... Cass? Do you mind?"
"Not at all, Uncle Jack," the young woman replied as she flicked the switch on the wall next to her head. The warm glow of low wattage light bulbs filled the room as she added, "All you had to do was ask."
The Leverage team looked around their new, unfamiliar surroundings with different thoughts in their heads. Alec was wondering if there was a cell tower close by; Parker was counting the ways she could get in and out of the log cabin undetected; Sophie was trying to figure out if the antlers mounted on the wall would be worth much; Nathan was busy feeling like an intruder into the private life of someone he wasn't trying to con; while Eliot was just taking in the rustic simplicity of the building. ... Well ... and making a quick tally in his mind about things that could be used as weapons should the need arise.
"Where are we, exactly?" Nate asked for the group as Daniel took a seat with Vala on the sofa, and Jack made his way to the kitchen to check on things.
"Minnesota," Cassie replied. "Exactly twenty miles from the nearest town -- general store, post office and gas station that it is."
"Perfect place to hide out," Parker commented as she let her feet lead her wandering around the new dwelling. She'd have it memorized in ten minutes, no doubt.
"And to go fishing," Jack added as he returned to the main room.
"That pond only has one fish, Jack," Daniel gripped at his friend, "Why would you fish in a pond without a good supply of fish?"
Jack raised his eyebrows at his younger friend, "Danny-boy, if I wanted to catch fish, I'd be a fisherman. Fishing is about the experience, not about the fish."
"So, what happens now?" Sophie inquired as she moved closer to the fireplace to study a statue Jack had on the mantle. "We lay low for a while? Scatter? What?"
The tension in the room skyrocketed as Jack paused a moment before replying to the group as a whole. "Cassie is the only one who's really in any danger. You all can go back to your lives in Boston. Robbing the rich to avenge the poor and all that."
"When?" Nate asked, thinking about the job they had been asked to take a few days ago. God, it felt like so much longer than that. Had it really only been four days?
"Tomorrow, if you like," Daniel replied as he leaned forward on the sofa in that old habit of his.
"And Cassie stays here?" Eliot wanted to be sure of this before he brought up the thought that had been nagging at him for over an hour.
Jack nodded once, "It's as safe as she can get right now without being stuck under the mountain. At least here she can escape easily enough."
"Don't be daft, Jack," Cassie snapped as she rolled her eyes. She pointed a long, white finger at him and shook it as she said, "You know as well as I do that as soon as they've checked Nevada and Colorado and D.C. that they'll be coming here next."
"We'll keep you safe, Cassie," he replied with a hard look. "I'm not going to let Janet down a second time."
"I can take care of myself, Jack," Cassie firmly stated as she had an impromptu staring contest with the older man. Glaring was more like it, but regardless, it was quite interesting for the others to watch.
Surprisingly, it was Cassie who looked away first.
"I have an idea," Eliot said, shifting attention away from the wounded pride of the woman he was finding himself more drawn to each hour. "It probably would be better if Cassie was somewhere completely unexpected, right?" At Jack's nod, he continued. Without daring to look at anyone but the Major General he offered, "So why doesn't she come with us to New England?"
"And stay where?" Cassie ignored the shocked looks coming from multiple directions in the room. "Do what? I'm not exactly the type to sit idly by."
Eliot's eyes never left Jack's as he nodded slightly, "I have a place. Plenty to do and no one to rat you out or tell them where to find you."
"Safe, you say?" Jack finally spoke. "How safe?"
The hitter smirked, "Hardison couldn't even find it if he wanted to."
"Hey!" the hacker cried in indignation. "I resent that."
Jack turned to Cassie, "Your choice," he said calmly, although he definitely had given Eliot his vote of confidence.
Cassie's eyes flickered to where Teal'c stood silently by, watching things the others missed (like when Parker subconsciously tried to swipe a yo-yo from the table she was next to, and Sophie smacked her hand away). He inclined his head to let her know of his own support of the idea. She would be safe with them. And if she wasn't, then he'd personally tear each and every one of them limb from limb.
Cassie sided inwardly and tried to go for jovial as she said, "Guess I'm going to Boston."
A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you (whether or not you celebrate it). I'm sorry this is up so late, but I decided to finish the chapter and post today as a Christmas gift to all my friends out there in cyber-world. I hope to have another piece of the puzzle up before the year changes, but that might happen or it might not. We'll see.