"How did you con him?" Parker asked with enthusiasm.
Nate, lifting up a plank of wood, began to run through the details.
Nate straightened up his jacket before he entered Case's office. He was eager for this.
Nate looked the man up and down; the similarities between his and Abigail's features were remarkable. They had the same features, same nose, same hair but different smile; Abby's was much more like Eliot's (and her mother's he supposed) and much more sincere.
"Mr Case, thankyou for seeing me on such short notice," he smiled then reached his hand across the desk for the man to shake. Case did so, by quickly, gripping Nate's hand only slightly before pulling it back close to his body. "David Bridie."
"What can I do for you Mr Bridie?" Case asked, spinning slightly from side to side in his chair, already eager to leave.
"I'll be quick," Nate ensured. "I have a friend at the SEC," Case's eye's widened in fear; he stopped swinging in his chair and directed all of his attention towards Nate. "Yes, we know about your not so little indiscretions."
"How?" he asked, sounding already resigned.
"Mr Case, we're the SEC," he stated smugly. "We always know."
Case lent forward, resting his hands on his temples and elbows on his desk in disbelief. "Dear god," he cursed under his breath. "Chris."
"I'm sorry?"
"My son, Chris, I'm… I've screwed everything up haven't I?" He sounded exasperated.
"Yes, quite the predicament you've found yourself in isn't it?" Nate asked slyly and, hearing the shrewdness in the man's voice, Case looked up.
"You know a way out." It wasn't a question, merely an observation and a plea for assistance.
"I may," Nate smiled. "One that will benefit both of us."
"When the cops come to arrest you, I give it a day or two," he added as a side note. "Trade them this information." Nate held out a USB drive and passed it to the man, who fiddled with it nervously between his fingers. "For your freedom," he continued.
"Why would you help me?" Case asked suspiciously, looking down at the drive and back up at Nate.
"That information there," he nodded to the USB, "needs to go to the police but I can't deliver it to them without putting myself in the firing range."
Case nodded slowly then sat in silence. "I'll do almost anything."
"What type of con is that!?" Parker exclaimed in disbelief as she angrily threw a piece of timber into the junk pile. You gave him the information to get away?"
"Parker," Sophie scalded in a low tone. "People have feelings remember."
"Sorry," the thief muttered.
"You didn't let him get away did you?" Abby asked cautiously.
"No," Hardison replied, now grinning as he stood up from tearing out the flooring and brushed off his hands. "But we didn't exactly get him arrested either."
"Mr Case could you stand up for me please," Hardison demanded barging straight into Case's office around an hour after Nate had left.
"I'm sorry, Mr Case, they just barged in," the receptionist, panicky and flustered stated to her boss.
"It's fine Ellie," he assured her as he stood up.
"Very good," Hardison praised. "My name is Agent Ben Marling with the SEC and you're under arrest for embezzlement-"
"I'd like to make a deal," he said quickly, upon hearing the word 'arrest'.
"Sir, I doubt there's anything you can offer us," Hardison replied, turning Steven to face the wall and pulling out a set of hand cuffs.
"So you did arrest him?" Abby asked.
"I'm getting to it!" Hardison exclaimed. "So, after that, we took him down to the station."
"The actual police station?" Eliot questioned in disbelief; it was unheard of for con men and criminals to willingly walk into a police station, even if it was part of the con.
"We may or may not have stolen-"
"Borrowed," Nate corrected.
"Borrowed Bonnano's precinct," Hardison continued.
"Was he aware of this?" the teenager enquired as she sat down to listen. Eliot gave her a brief glare and, after rolling her eyes she stood back up and continued working.
"He offered," Sophie explained. "After we convinced him it was necessary."
"Right," Abby stated. "Carry on."
"Mr Case you understand these are very serious allegation's facing you," Hardison exclaimed. Steven was sitting in the cold metal chair of one of the back interrogation rooms while Hardison stood up, dominating the space in front of him.
"Yes, I understand, and I want to make a deal," the incarcerated man replied, adamantly and concisely.
"That's not possible," the hacker replied. "You stole over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
"I have information on Charles Henson," he stated coolly, a task which Hardison was surprised he could do under the pressure.
Hardison raised his brow and there was a knock on the one way mirror behind him. "Excuse me," he declared then walked out of the room to go talk to Sophie.
"Who's Charles Henson?" Abby asked, sticking her hand up into the sky like an enthusiastic school child.
"Small business owner," Nate offered, finally wrenching a piece of wood from the skirting which he had been wrestling with for the past several minutes
"Why would the SEC care about him?" she asked again inquisitively.
"He's running a Ponzi scheme," Sophie explained.
"But you said he was small time?" It was Parker who had asked the question this time. Nate shook his head.
"The SEC, when it comes to Ponzi schemes, doesn't matter how small they are, will always take drastic action," the mastermind explained.
"Why?" The teenager had once again taken over the questioning.
"Ponzi schemes always start off small," Sophie, once again, took over the explanation. "The FBI, SEC and a myriad of other government agencies always try to take them down before they get big enough to do too much damage."
"Okay," she stated, satisfied. "So then what?"
"Then," Sophie said proudly, "came my part of the con."
"This is so wrong," Hardison exclaimed, walking into the observation room. Looking through the window he could see Case fidgeting nervously.
"What is?" Sophie asked in response. Her arms were crossed and she was staring at their mark intensely; studying him intensely.
"Being in a police building," he explained. "I swear, any second now, I'm going to get arrested."
Sophie ignored the man's somewhat precented fear. "Have you noticed they both do that when they're nervous?" She lifted one of her hands out of the cross and pointed at Case.
"What?"
"Fiddle, with their fingers and feet," she clarified. "They're fidgeters."
"Good thing that's the only characteristic she gets from him," Hardison noted; he had zero positive feelings for the man. "Anyway," he turned away from facing the window to face Sophie. "Shall we?"
Sophie smiled in anticipation. "You're telling me you don't want to look into this?" the grifter yelled, loud enough so she could surely be heard in the adjacent room.
Sure enough, Case reacted to the noise, perking his head up and steadying his twitching fingers.
"We don't need this!" Hardison yelled back. "We can bring down Henson another way. A way that doesn't involve letting this man go."
A small smile slipped onto Steven's face at the mention of being let go.
"He'll slip up again, they always do!" Sophie yelled back and looked out the window to see their mark's reaction; he didn't show much, so she upped the ante and tried to make her contention a little more obvious. "Give him six months and he'll be running another scam and stealing the same amount of money, you'll be able to charge him then! As long as you keep a close eye on him, he'll be back here in six months!"
That got the reaction out of Steven that Sophie was looking for; one of frustration, fear and anguish.
"You think that was enough?" Hardison asked, this time in a soft tone meant only for Sophie's ears.
"I think so," she smiled then wandered out of the room and into speak with Case.
"So then what happened?" Abby asked, completely captivated with the tale.
"Case handed over the information on Henson," Hardison exclaimed. "Who Bonnano swiftly arrested. He says thanks, by the way," he stated to Nate. "Big bust for him and he reckon's he's gonna get promoted because of it.
"We let Case go with a warning," Nate continued, with a nod to Hardison. "And a year's probation."
"That's not actually real though, is it?"
"No," Nate agreed. "But if he tries anything again, the cops will be sent all the evidence they need to prosecute."
"And he won't try it again," Sophie added. "He thinks we're watching him closely and he thinks we know he's going to try it again. Unless your father is a complete imbecile, no offence Abby, he won't try scamming money from anyone again."
"None taken," the teenager replied.
"I can't believe I missed out on all the fun," Parker moped.
"That's alright Parker, you can… go steal his mail or something," Abby suggested.
"Don't encourage her," Eliot scalded from the corner of the room as he set down his crow bar.
The sun was setting now, and they were quickly losing light. Soon they'd be able to get little done for the evening.
"How 'bout we call it a night?" Eliot suggested, pulling of his gloves, tossing them into the toolbox and wiping his hands off on his jeans.
Hardison was quick to jump on board. "Sound's good to me!"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"So, uh, how did things go?" Nate asked the hitter, pulling a small metal flask out of his pocket. Both men were sitting comfortably on a seat at the edge of the barn, observing the others as they entertained themselves. Nate passed the flask to Eliot.
Parker and Sophie sat in front of the fire, both enthusiastically discussing the recent heist of a Degas whilst Parker fiddled with a lock and Sophie brushed the sawdust and woodchips out of her hair.
Abby and Hardison sat opposite them and were animatedly engaged in a game of Go Fish.
"I think it went good," Eliot replied, he took a small sip of whiskey then passed it back to Nate. "I think she's gonna be good."
"Anything specific?"
"She actually seemed to sort most of the stuff out herself; she stood up to Kyle, put her father behind her; She handled it like her mother," he explained then paused and reached for the flask. "She's gonna be fine," he declared, taking a sip.
Nate grabbed the flask and raised it up, cheering the notion.
"I don't doubt it," Nate agreed, stuffing the flask back in his pocket patting Eliot on the shoulder and walking over to the fire to join the others.
Eliot nodded in agreement, taking the moment to soak in the sigh of his dysfunctional, makeshift family, stood up to join them.
XXXXXXXX
They left the following evening, having stripped the house back to its bare bones, ready to be built up again. A task which Eliot had promised, mostly to Abby and Parker, would be undertaken the next free weekend they had. Hardison and Sophie were less enthusiastic, but not entirely against the idea.
More or less, they had enjoyed being unbothered by the outside world and, unbeknownst to Abby, Eliot's obscure technique and the time and space it had given her, had really allowed her to think and clear her head.
Perhaps there was something therapeutic in working with her hands and building something. Perhaps it was the fact that she was away from the world that troubled her and safe with the ones she loved. Either way, upon leaving, she felt more (though not entirely) at peace than she'd been upon arriving.
She felt ready to build something.
She felt ready to build her.
sorry for the tardiness... I got distracted by a cat video on YouTube and we all know how that goes.