I Hate My Kitchen. Yes, That Sort of Relates to Fic...

[brokenroots]

Never a Small Favor
Word Count: 4,583
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Nico/Dani (eventually); Dani/Matt (doesn't last); Mike/Fi
Spoilers: up to 1x12 of Necessary Roughness and up to... uh, 4x01 of Burn Notice, I think.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I just break things.
Summary: Even with old friends, favors are never small and always have a price.
Author's Note: I will just say that having to reorganize a kitchen does not make posting fic possible. Yeah. I hate my kitchen.



Old Loyalties



"So, you're the number two man, huh?"

Xeno glared up at Sam. "Let me out of here."

Sam shook his head. "Can't. We haven't finished our chat yet. We have a few things to discuss. So I'll repeat the first question. What are you doing in Miami?"

"Where's Nico?"

Sam would give the man this: he certainly seemed loyal. He wouldn't answer any questions. The only thing he did-besides demand to be let go-was ask where Nico was. That was after Nico had knocked him cold, too. Either it was one hell of an act, or this guy was on Nico's side. Too bad Nico hadn't stuck around to hear it. "You don't get to know that. You need to answer my questions."

"If you did something to the boss, then we don't have anything to talk about," Xeno said. "All you need to know is that you'll pay for it."

Sam looked him over. "Nice. Play the loyalty card. It would almost work, but no one's that loyal. Especially not in this situation. Too much money, too much temptation, and the boss is a bastard, so why bother?"

Xeno gave him another glare. "Ain't about the personality. It's about the man. If you knew him, there's no way you'd think any amount of money or temptation would be worth it."

"So you're scared of him?"

Xeno shook his head. "Didn't say that. Just tell me what you did with him."

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Sam asked, laughing, but the truth was that he'd really like to know where Nico was right now because the man was definitely not on his game, not in good shape. Maybe seeing Dani would get some sense into him. She seemed good for that. "Too bad you can't. Tell me what I want to know."

"Or better yet, tell us who would have gone after the team when they got to the playoffs again," Mike said, and Xeno looked over at him. Sam frowned. Mike walked closer. "You're the number two guy. You know what your boss knows-or the closest anyone would get to it. Is there anyone who would fit that description and make your boss drop off the face of the earth?"

Xeno looked at him. From the way his jaw twitched, the answer was yes, but he wasn't about to share that information with them. "Why would I tell you that?"

"Because it seems to me your boss is fixing to get himself killed and if you're as loyal to him as you've been pretending, you'd tell us what we need to know to be able to stop this guy," Mike went on. Sam didn't like this. Mike had taken a call and now seemed spooked-as much as Mike got spooked. "Who would have a grudge against the team making the playoffs? Enough to kill?"

"Do you know where Nico is?"

"At the moment, no."

"Damn it," Xeno said. He shook his head. "I don't trust you. I have no reason to trust you. I don't know what you're after, but I won't tell you that. I won't tell you nothing."

Mike sighed. "Why does everyone have to be this paranoid?"

"It's the job, Mike," Sam said. He looked at Xeno for a long moment. "You ever seen the medal of honor?"

"The video game?"

"No, the one Nico has. That or any of his purple hearts."

"The man doesn't even talk about being in the service. Any service. You can tell he has training, but he won't even say what branch. I don't know if he has any medals. Wouldn't surprise me, but why the hell does that matter?"

"He got one of those purple hearts saving my life," Sam said. Xeno looked at him, waiting for the punchline. "Yeah, I might not have the same shape I once did, but I still have every bit of my SEAL training, and I haven't forgotten it or the men I served with. Nico's a friend. He's been working with us. You need to tell us what we need to know to save him from himself."

Xeno just looked at him. Mike studied him. "Would it help if you spoke to Doctor Santino?"

The man barely stopped himself from reacting to the name. Sam nodded. "Or maybe it would help if you spoke to Matt Donnally."

Xeno gave him a look of disgust. "You almost had me for a moment. But you blew it."

"Nico cares about Dani. He saved Donnally's annoying ass for her sake."

Xeno shrugged. "What do you really expect me to tell you? Everything? If you really know Nico, you know I'd never do that."

Sam sighed. He looked over at Mike. "We're not going to get anything from him like this."

"You got any old pictures of you serving with Careles, Sam?" Mike asked. Sam pulled him to the side, and Mike looked at Xeno before looking back at Sam. "The guy is holding out, and we need something. We don't know if we can trust him with Santino, though I'd gladly hand Donnally over to him. Fi said that Careles went to the warehouse to say goodbye to Santino. Whatever he's up to, wherever he's planning on going, he doesn't expect to come back from it. Fi was going to try and stop him, but-"

"But Nico probably lost her tail a minute after he got outside. Fiona's good. She's damn good. Nico was-I didn't want to say this, but he was trained as an assassin. Infiltration, we all did that, but he was a close quarters killer. He didn't like guns, and he didn't usually use them. He could take out his target and be back at the extraction point before anyone knew he'd left us. This is not a man who can be pinned down."

"You're friends with an assassin?"

"Jeez, Mike, it's not like he does it now, and it's not like it wasn't sanctioned then. It's also why he got out of the service. It was only an occasional thing at first, but it became every single mission for him," Sam explained. "All that's in the past, or it would have been if I hadn't asked him to do this. I don't know how far shooting Santino pushed him over the edge, but we have to find him. He knows who's behind the attacks on the team, at the very least, but going rogue when Hayes is watching him, that is just asking for it."

Mike was clearly not happy with Sam for keeping back that detail. Sam knew that he would be, but Nico didn't need the extra guilt and accusations in this situation. The man already carried enough guilt. "Well, Xeno might know who Careles is after, but he's not exactly talking, is he?"

Sam looked over at their prisoner. "How much do you know about Gabby-Gabriella Pittman?"

Xeno's look told them that he felt the same contempt for that woman that Sam did. "So you know what that bitch put him through, right? That she let him think Juliette was his to control him? Did he ever tell you how Marshall Pittman came to save his life? Because if you heard it from Marshall, it was embellished, to say the least. Guy's so full of himself he should sell his own hot air. Bastard. Look, I know I can't tell you anything that would convince you, but... Did Nico ever mention the name Sam Axe? Once in any of the time you knew him? Maybe?"

"Axe is the executor of his will."

"I am?"

"If you're not lying about being Axe, then, yeah."

"How do you know about Careles' will?" Mike asked, folding his arms over his chest. "He's not the type to share those kinds of details."

"Few years back, it almost got used."

"You mean when this guy, whoever he is, went after the Hawks the first time? Why didn't anyone mention that before? Why go through all this hassle to pin down a man when you both knew who it was?"

"Because that particular asshole's been in a coma for years. Nico put him there."

"Okay, so let's get this clear here, and we mean really clear because you know, Fiona, she's Irish, doesn't necessarily get all of this-Ow, Fi, come on," Sam said, and she glared at him. Now was really not the time for jokes. She'd slipped a little something into Dani's water to help keep her resting, but that left Madeleine and Lindsay with taking care of all the girls. Even if they could trust Jesse-and Fiona wanted to because he didn't deserve what Vaughn had tricked Micheal into doing to him-they were leaving things back at the warehouse in really bad shape. None of the people there were really safe. She hated this.

"This goes back to when I first got hired by the Hawks," Xeno said, shaking his head. "Most people have forgotten it. It's been all about the curse since that mascot tripped Alvarez, and that's all anyone thinks of when they think of the Hawks. Besides, back then it was all about burying things..."

"Burying what?" Fiona demanded. "Did this person... hurt some woman and your boss covered it up?"

Xeno gave her a dark look. "Nico wouldn't do that. He might make a scandal with a hooker or stripper go away with money, he might send a girlfriend who's causing problems somewhere else, but he wouldn't stand for a player doing that. He doesn't tolerate any disrespect to the ladies in the organization. You don't believe me, ask one of the cheerleaders. They have to put up with a lot of crap being who they are and doing what they do, but they don't even need to go to him because he made it clear to everyone that there's a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment."

"So why is this the guy, and why wasn't he considered for this before?"

"He's still in the coma. It's got to be someone working for him," Xeno insisted. "The guy hasn't moved. We monitor that. For all the hype about that stupid 'curse,' that guy's the biggest threat the Hawks have ever dealt with. The guy going after TK makes sense-he was TK, years ago."

Fiona sighed. "As nice as it is to have all the answers, you are going to have to speed this along because we don't have time for this. Careles has gone after whoever this bastard is that's helping your coma patient-on his own-in the middle of doing undercover work to help us while we're protecting his people. We all have way too much to do to sit around chit-chatting."

"Sounds like the boss. He'll be fine," Xeno said, shrugging. They all looked at him, but he ignored it. "Story goes that Nico had it out for this guy from the moment they signed him. He was the number one pick for everyone, and the Hawks managed to land him. Everyone was happy except the boss. He said that Sitek was trouble. They thought he didn't like the guy's attitude."

"No, if Nico says there's something wrong with a guy, there's something wrong."

"Exactly," Xeno agreed, nodding to Sam. "Sitek's the reason for a lot of the security measures that we have. They say it's spying. They say it's an invasion of privacy. Nico's a paranoid man, and it shows, but Sitek... The whole thing started over drug tests. Nico was sure that Sitek was paying off the people who did them to make sure that he didn't get caught. It looked like the boss was nuts because even the independent ones came back clean."

"But this Sitek was using?"

"Anything and everything. He'd paid off the labs in three surrounding states to hide it. He had money, and he had connections."

"I don't like the sound of this. What kind of connections?"

"Mob. Lot of money in controlling the games."

Sam shook his head. "Please tell me that Nico didn't take on the mob by himself."

Xeno didn't answer. Micheal looked at him. "Does Careles have... connections of his own there?"

"You know, Mike, you're lucky you're asking Xeno here that question and not someone else. Nico wouldn't be the first to object to the assumption that an Italian name immediately makes you a part of the mob," Sam told him. He looked at Fiona. "That's like assuming all of you are IRA, right?"

Fiona made a face. Micheal shook his head. "I'm not really concerned with protecting the man's feelings right now. We're trying to save his life."

"Fine," Xeno and Sam muttered at the same time. Sam looked at Xeno. "The rumors said that Nico had an uncle who was pretty high up in one of the families."

"Rumor was Nico used to be an enforcer for the mob."

Xeno and Sam looked at each other again. Sam sighed. "It doesn't really matter what the story is, does it? Nico never confirmed or denied anything, in that way that he does. Sometimes it's useful to let people think that you're connected even if you aren't."

"So the mob thing... came back on Careles?"

"It was another thing he couldn't prove," Xeno agreed. "Sitek was getting more and more out there the longer he was on the team. Things got ugly right around when the playoffs were coming up in his third season. Big argument. In public. In front of everyone. Nico told Sitek he wouldn't be playing in them if he had anything to do about it. Pittman came down, was actually around in person for the first and only time since I been working there. Sitek was told to take some time off and think and the same went for Nico."

"Nico doesn't do time off."

"No. He and the guy who had my job before me went up to the place Sitek was staying. Caught him in the act. Four of the security guys turned on Nico and the other guy. No one knows exactly what happened up there that day other than Nico, but the whole security team died. Sitek and Nico were the only ones that made it out alive. If you can call it that. Sitek's been on life support ever since, and Nico... Like I said, they dug out his will."

"Why kill over the playoffs?" Micheal demanded. "It's a damn game."

Xeno gave him a look. Sam did, too. Spies just didn't understand the value of a match, not in the greater scheme of things. There was no threat to national security, therefore it didn't matter. Fiona shook her head.

"It wasn't just about the playoffs," Xeno said. "Not playing in them cost Sitek a lot of money and the championship ring. Cost the mob a lot. Fans lost a star and a hero. Most people have no idea the stuff Sitek was into, but what happened with his security detail... That wasn't his first kill. The guy was into some nasty, twisted stuff. No one knows because the guy couldn't be arrested, and Pittman paid the right people or called in the right favors to keep it quiet. The scandal would have destroyed the team."

"Over Sitek? He was one player."

"He didn't do it alone. His security team. His trainers. The whole staff got shaken up, and most of them got fired. Everyone thought Pittman went nuts."

"Okay, but who would be helping this Sitek guy? Who would wait this long for revenge against the team for him? And why not... go after Nico directly? It seems like he's the only one who really knows what happened."

Xeno shrugged. "Fans still love the guy. He's got a foundation that people donate to that helps manage his care now that his own money is gone."

"And no one thought that maybe people deserved the truth about this?"

"Most of the time they don't even want it, Fi."

"Are you going to pull the plug?"

Nico looked behind him. He hadn't really considered it. Even if Sitek was dead, the person who was behind the attacks on the team wouldn't stop. They would be even angrier, and they were not going to quit. No, if it had been as simple as pulling the plug on the life support, Nico would already have done it. "Why are you here?"

"Curiosity. One of my truly bad habits. There are others, of course, but I find I have to know everything, as much trouble as that is."

"Since we both know you're going to kill me, why don't you just get it over with and stop playing games?" Nico asked. Hayes looked at him. "You don't have to pretend. It doesn't fool me."

"Of course not. It never did, never would, but as I said, I'm curious. I want to see how this plays out before then," Hayes told him with a smile. Nico shook his head. He didn't feel like playing along, and he didn't want to spend any more time in the company of a man who was planning to stab him in the back at any second. "You were supposed to deal with the man in Miami, and yet I find you states away visiting a vegetable."

"Nothing is ever without purpose, even if we don't see it at first," Nico said, looking at the doorway. "Well?"

"I don't know why I gotta tell you what you already know, Nick. The family's only interest in Donnie boy there is to make sure all of that stays quiet. Nothing comes out, we got no issues. Told you that years ago, but you don't seem to listen."

"It's not that I don't listen. It's that you lie. You have a very bad habit of doing that, Michele."

"Lay off that 'Michele' crap. You make it sound like a girl's name, and only my mother ever called me that. She's gone, god rest her."

"You call me Nick. We're even."

"Yeah, I guess we are," Michele agreed with a nod, smiling as he left the doorway.

Hayes turned to Nico. "Was that who I think it was?"

Nico shrugged. "I don't know who you thought he was, but it is possible. Then again, it's as equally not possible as it is possible. Are you sure you don't want to get this over with already? I don't expect any more visitors-not for several hours-and Sitek isn't very good company. Then again, he never was."

"I heard he used to throw quite a party."

"If you wanted to risk ending up dead in one of his games, sure."

Hayes studied the man on the bed, going close to the machines keeping him alive. "Funny how the story is that his cabin exploded, killing five people and severely injuring both of you and yet neither of you have any scars from the burns."

"Mine could have been taken care of."

Hayes laughed. "Yes, I suppose. But not his. No one would bother. All of his money went to keeping him alive this long. He's lucky he still has fans who are willing to pay even if he's never going to wake up. What really happened up there?"

Nico didn't answer. It was not a subject he discussed and certainly not with Hayes. The man was no friend, could not be trusted, and furthermore, Nico didn't feel like giving him any ideas. He looked at Sitek. Few people understood the monster that had hidden behind that face, exploiting that talent, but Nico had known something was off with him before he even met the man. He'd advised against getting the trade, but Marshall and the others had been so proud of getting what everyone else wanted that no one wanted to listen. Good people had suffered and died because of a few men's egos.

First it was the drugs, then the mob, then the incidental people who seemed to disappear after meeting Sitek. None of it was something Nico could prove, and he'd done his best to get the man refocused, give him a single enemy, but it wasn't about that. Sitek was indiscriminate. He didn't care who he hurt as long as he was hurting someone.

"You may as well tell me. We are in for a long wait."

"There is no 'we' here, Hayes. This is my business and has nothing to do with you."

"Your concerns are mine if we're partners."

"You're planning on killing me. There is no partnership here," Nico reminded him, and Hayes smiled, reaching for the tube feeding Sitek his oxygen. "Killing him doesn't actually solve anything."

Hayes studied Nico for a moment, turning the tube around in his fingers. "I wonder how you can say that when he almost killed you."

"Sitek was not the issue. His basement 'funhouse' maze full of traps and everything he could think of to kill a person was. I'd already neutralized Sitek, but since he'd shoved one of my men down there, I had to go in after him."

"It wasn't worth it, though. You didn't save him. And almost died yourself."

Nico glared at the other man. "You don't know what happened. Stop thinking that you do."

"You could tell me."

Nico shook his head. The subject was not one he was going to discuss with Hayes, ever. He looked over at doorway, watching the nurse approach. She smiled as she took a breath from the flowers, not having any idea what they were really for. She carried them into the room and set them on the table, giving both him and Hayes a warm wave before leaving. Security here was clearly not what it should have been, though Nico was on the approved list of visitors.

He went over to the table and took the card from the flowers. A location and time, as he'd expected. First, though, he'd have to get rid of his unwanted "partner."

"Sitek's dead," Sam reported, ending his phone call. Micheal nodded, taking in the news. It wasn't like they could expect Sitek to tell them anything of use, but his death, coming so soon after Careles disappeared, didn't look good.

"What?" Fi asked, frowning. "You don't think Nico...?"

"I don't know-"

"The boss wouldn't do that," Xeno said, standing up. He dropped the ropes he'd been tied with on the floor and folded his arms over his chest. Not bad. Then again, the man had worked with Careles for years, so he had better be. It would seem that someone had made the wrong call there. If they'd asked him to train their next generation instead of demanding that he kill, imagine what the SEALs would be like now.

"It would be a bad strategy, for one thing, and Careles has a very strategic mind. He may not have been at his best, but he had some kind of plan in mind when he left or he would never have gone," Micheal said. He knew that Careles had something-even if it was a stupid idea that was probably going to get him killed. "Sam, did your source say anything about the video?"

"Yeah, he did," Sam answered slowly, shaking his head. "He got a bite, but you're not going to like it."

"What do you mean?"

"Hayes."

"What?"

"The guy has connections, Mike. We all knew that," Sam reminded him, shaking his head. "He's gotta be watching everything connected to Nico and that means the Hawks. If someone's targeting them, then he probably knew about it. A part of me wouldn't be surprised if he was behind it, but that's giving him too much credit. He might have caught that I served with Nico years ago, but arranging all of this around the off-chance I'd call on him? I haven't done it since you got burned, so why now?"

"About that, Sam, why didn't you ever call him before? He had money, connections of his own, and he clearly could have been of help to us before," Fiona asked, her hand on her hip. "Any particular reason?"

Sam winced. "Uh, yeah, about that, Fiona-You know, I'll explain later. It's kind of a long story. For now, we need to focus on the getting to Nico before he gets himself killed. If Hayes knows about this thing, then he might know-well, Nico has to have left Miami, right? So he knows Nico's gone instead of dealing with me or with our new friend Xeno here. We need to find him before Hayes does."

Xeno took out his phone and pushed a few buttons on it. Micheal looked at Sam. The other man shrugged. No one had taken away the big man's phone? Were they really that sloppy? "I carry two. Like Nico. It pays to be paranoid."

"Oh."

Micheal had to ask. "You carry a signal jammer, too?"

Xeno just smiled as he made a call. "It's Xeno. Anyone been by to visit Sitek lately? He got flowers just before he-Yeah, yeah, I know he's on the list. No, I don't know that one. He said he was with Nico? No, don't worry about it."

Micheal waited until the man hung up, but judging from the expression on his face, it wasn't good. "Well?"

"Nico was there. Someone else was with him."

"And we're still going with the idea that Careles didn't kill Sitek?"

"This guy Hayes... He wouldn't happen to look like this, would he?" Xeno asked, showing them a grainy still photo taken from a crappy security camera. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Whoever this Hayes is that you're so worried about, he's with Nico now."

Sam looked at Micheal. "Hayes wouldn't think twice about cutting off Sitek's life support."

Micheal nodded. "You said that Sitek got flowers. Just before he died? Any record of the company who sent them or who purchased them? If someone was going to get a message to Careles, that would be how they'd do it."

"I can find out," Xeno said, making the call.

Fiona shook her head. "Okay, what I don't get is why Hayes followed him all the way to Sitek's room. What could possibly be this interesting? Does Hayes have some stake in this that we don't know about or is this just about Careles? Why go to all this trouble? Why not wait for Nico to walk back into his office?"

"Unless he thought Nico knew better," Sam said, shaking his head. "Damn it, I really don't like playing catch up here. Mike, you got any ideas about how to get ahead of this thing?"

"Where did Sitek and Careles have their last face-off? Even if he's dead, the man acting for him would want to take Nico back there. Maybe he thinks it would force him off his game, being where he almost died-or there's something there. Or it's just sentimentality. Any way you look at it, that's the most likely place where he'd send Careles."

"Then why not go there instead of the rest home this guy was in?"

"Officially, the gas main blew at the cabin and killed the security team," Xeno told them. "They torched the place afterward to cover up what Sitek had done."

"And the land would have changed hands to pay for the medical bills."

"So where else?"

"Somewhere else with significance, maybe, but I still lean toward the place where Sitek almost killed him. This guy would want to finish what he thinks Sitek started."

Chapter Twelve