Author's note: all the usual disclaimers about not owning the Leverage characters/concept and not making any money from this apply.
Thank you for the lovely reviews - and for being excited when an extra chapter appears! Barring intervening Acts of God, there should be another chapter up tonight. In the meantime, Parker and Hardison are going to play Harriet the Spy - although without any tomato sandwiches :).
Hardison and Parker left the suite but not the hotel.
"I want to see who he called," Parker whispered to Hardison once they were in the hall.
He nodded.
"Hell, I don't just want to see her," he told her. "I want to know who she is and what kind of favour she owes Eliot."
"He'll kill us if he catches us snooping," Parker said.
"Nah," Hardison said. "But he probably won't cook for us for a while."
"So, quiet and sneaky?" Parker suggested.
"Quiet and sneaky," Hardison agreed. "And we never let it slip we spied on him."
"We also have to go and eat steak," Parker reminded him. "I bet Eliot is friends with someone at that steakhouse, and they'll call him if we don't show up."
"You're right," Hardison acknowledged. "But we might get lost and be late."
"So what's the plan?"
"We wait for her to show up, get her photo or her ID, and we'll research her over dinner."
Parker nodded, eyes already scanning the hallway for the best places to catch a photo or lift a wallet from the mystery woman.
The problem, of course, was that they didn't know who they were looking for, and apparently it was rush hour in their hallway. Hardison had photos of five women – and two men, because it was entirely possible Eliot was deliberately misleading them with his pronouns – and Parker had lifted three wallets before one of the women knocked on the door to their suite. Hardison had already photographed her as she exited the elevator so they both ducked out of sight before Eliot answered the door. If they had been hoping he would greet her by name and speed up their identification, they would have been disappointed. But after four years, they knew Eliot didn't slip like that. Neither he nor the woman said anything. Parker and Hardison waited another moment after they heard the door close, just to be sure the coast was clear, then went back to the elevators – and this time rode down to the lobby. By the time they reached it, Hardison had the photo running through his facial recognition program. There wasn't much else they could do until they had a name, but they still hesitated in the lobby.
"This feels wrong," Parker said.
"Spying on Eliot?" Hardison asked.
"Leaving him alone," Parker corrected him.
Hardison sighed.
"I know," he said. "But he's okay, and he doesn't want us there."
Parker nodded. She hadn't meant they should do anything differently...she was just saying it felt wrong.
"So we go eat steak," Parker said.
Hardison wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they stepped out onto the street.
"We eat steak," he agreed.
They weren't even late enough for their reservation to have to pull out the lost-tourists excuse. Hardison's phone pinged when they were halfway through their appetiser: facial recognition had found a match. Millicent Hernandez. Hardison passed the phone over to Parker. It wasn't much: just a Virginia driver's license.
Parker shrugged and handed the phone back. Hardison started digging into Millicent's life, in between bites of food. He didn't find much, even though they ate their way through the rest of the appetiser, steaks with sweet potato fries, and a hot fudge brownie sundae. By the time they were ordering Eliot's steak to go, he knew she was fifty-two, and had a son and a late husband, and that she had trained as a surgeon but had her license revoked almost a decade ago. There wasn't much detail available in electronic form from that time, but it seemed to coincide with her husband racking up a sizeable gambling debt and owing money to people it was better not to owe anything to. These days, she worked an office job with an insurance company. There was nothing obvious to show where her path had crossed Eliot's significantly enough for her to owe him a favour. Which told Hardison she was probably damn good at keeping secrets.
He shook his head, putting the phone aside to help Parker polish off the last few bites of the brownie sundae.
"Looks like she's mostly just a regular person," he told Parker.
"Weird," she said.
Hardison shrugged.
"I guess we all know some regular people," he said. "I mean there's my Nana, and your friend Peggy. Nate knows lots of regular people, and Eliot's horse trainer friend seemed like just a normal guy, and Sophie..."
Hardison stopped. He couldn't actually think of any regular people Sophie had introduced them to...her friend Theresa with the Italian restaurant had been married to a man tied up in mob business, Tara was definitely not regular, Stark and Vlad were both conmen, and as for the "aunt" in London, well, she certainly counted as at least eccentric.
"...Sophie has her acting class," he finished.
Parker scraped up the last of the hot fudge sauce.
"Eliot called her," she pointed out, an apparent non sequitur.
"Meaning...?" Hardison asked.
Parker shrugged.
"He must trust her to take care of what he needs done," she said. "Maybe that should be enough."
"But then why did he want us gone before she got there?"
"I don't know," Parker shrugged again. "I guess what I'm saying is that, since we didn't find anything bad about her, maybe it doesn't matter."
"You don't want to know?" Hardison was baffled by that. Missing pieces of information were like an itch he couldn't quite reach.
"I don't need to know," Parker said. "So if Eliot doesn't want to tell us how he knows her or why he didn't want us to meet her, that's okay."
Hardison chewed on that as their waitress delivered the take-away bag and their bill. He looked at his watch as he pulled out his wallet to pay.
"It's been almost two hours," he said. "Think we should head back?"
Parker frowned. On the one hand, Eliot had said he would call when the coast was clear. On the other, he wouldn't appreciate a good steak being allowed to go cold. Or the sweet potato fries getting soggy.
She nodded.
Hardison slipped cash into the billfold, then pocketed his wallet and phone as he slid out of the booth. Parker checked the billfold to make sure he had included a tip that reflected both the excellence of the food and service and the fact it was always wise to stay on the good side of Eliot's friends. Satisfied, she also stood, picking up the take-away bag, and led the way out.
Parker set a fast pace on the way back to the hotel.
"Slow down, girl," Hardison protested. "What's the rush?"
"I don't want Eliot's fries to get soggy," she explained, but she did reduce her speed a little.
Hardison gave a slightly breathless laugh.
"Yeah, that's Eliot all right," he said. "Get shot? Walk it off. Soggy fries? Pitch a fit."
"He cares about food," Parker said, remembering her recent stint as a food critic while Eliot was masquerading as executive chef. "About the effort someone put into making it."
"I know," Hardison said, even though he hadn't found Eliot particularly sympathetic to his own culinary forays...especially those involving lasers. He wrapped his free arm around her shoulders as he caught up with her, tugging her into his side in a one-armed embrace that had the added benefit of keeping her pace to one at which he could breathe.