Home Sweet Home
Disclaimer: I own nothing here and am just doing this for fun and to ease my new-found Leverage addiction.
A/N: Written for prompt 29 (home sweet home) @ story_lottery. Sorry that it's so long - it just wouldn't stop growing. I was powerless to stop it.
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Eliot never really cared where he lived, as long as it had clear lines of sight and multiple exits. It was Hardison’s idea for the team to live in the same building. Even though it made good practical sense, Eliot suspected the hacker’s intentions had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with creating his own personal Hall of Justice.
If pressed, Eliot had to admit that it was nice, knowing and trusting all of his neighbors. He never had to worry about attracting suspicious attention with the odd hours that he kept. In this building, odd was the gold standard for normal.
Which was why he was more curious than surprised to find Hardison standing outside the door of Parker’s apartment at 5 am one morning.
“Parker, can you let me in, please? I’ve got reports of leaking and I need to check it out,” said Hardison as he softly tapped on the door.
“Seriously? And you have to check that out at this hour? Are we having a flood or something,” asked Eliot as he came out of the stairwell.
Hardison jumped, his arms swinging comically as his head swiveled around. Eliot suppressed a smirk because it was just too easy to startle Hardison.
“The neighbors have complained, you know, about a leak and what-not, so as the landlord, I have the check it out.”
“The neighbors, huh? Isn’t Sophie in the apartment directly under Parker’s? And I know it’s like the world’s worst kept secret, but even you must know that Sophie’s practically living with Nate these days?”
Hardison groaned as he twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door open. “Okay, man, you caught me. I’m just checking out a suspicion.”
“A suspicion? Is Parker okay?” Eliot asked, immediately on alert. He set his newspaper on the floor and walked into the apartment.
Hardison let out a low whistle. “This is kind of disturbing.”
Eliot turned a slow circle as he took in the empty apartment. Allegedly, Parker had been living there for the last six months. But the place was as bare as the day the builders had finished with it. Eliot checked out the bedroom and bathroom, but it was the same story. Not even a toothbrush or roll of toilet paper.
“But I don’t understand,” said Hardison as he pressed his fingertips into his temple, like he could will the answer into place. “Every night, she comes up here, doesn’t she? And don’t you see her coming out of here in the mornings?”
Eliot shrugged. “It’s not like I keep track of her.”
“Eliot, you got all our backs, it’s exactly like you keep track of us.”
“On the job, yeah, but... look, if you’d asked me before you opened the door what I expected to find in here, this wouldn’t be it. I thought she actually lived here too.”
“I was kind of expecting to find a room full of gold coins, like Scrooge McDuck. I sure didn’t expect to find the place empty,” said Hardison, aiming a frustrated kick at nothing.
“Well, this is what you get for falling in love with a crazy girl.”
“What? Oh no, who said anything about love,” replied Hardison, his eyes wide as he held up his hands to ward off the accusation.
“Your googley eyes whenever you’re within 30 feet of her.”
“I do not have googley eyes.”
“You do,” said Eliot as he examined the windows in the living room, running his hands over the sills and testing the locks.
“So you know? Who else knows?” asked Hardison, his shoulders slumping as the fight drained out of him.
“Everyone. I guess. You haven’t exactly kept it a secret.” Eliot pushed up the window and leaned out, looking down three stories.
“So....Parker knows.”
“No, Parker doesn’t know,” replied Eliot as he shut the window and walked into the bathroom, which was barely large enough for both men to stand in at the same time. A small window was on the same wall as the shower and an air vent was directly above the sink.
“If it’s so obvious, how could she not know?”
“You kidding me? it’s Parker. I don’t think she got the memo about feelings being part of life.” Eliot gave the air vent a cursory look, then turned his attention to the window.
“Why the hell are you standing in the shower?”
Frustration bubbled up inside of Eliot, and he bit back the explanation for his actions, opting to go on the attack instead. “Why don’t you just ask her out already?”
“What?”
“You like this girl, God only knows why, so... you know, the normal thing to do is to ask her out.” Eliot walked out of the bathroom and back to the living room, where he leaned against the window sill and folded his arms.
“No, not yet. I need to follow her, find out where she lives,” replied Hardison, his long legs making short work of pacing in the empty space.
“I think they have a word for that, Hardison.”
“Yeah, curiosity.”
“No I was thinking more like stalking. And in Massachusetts, that can get you five years.”
“And you know this because?”
“I dated a lawyer.”
“C’mon Eliot, I need you to help me. Are you going to make me beg?”
While the smirk on Eliot’s face suggested that’s exactly what he was going to do, he was more willing to help than he wanted to let on. Parker was crazy and the idea of her, out there in Boston somewhere, where anyone could get her. Well, even if she could take care of herself, that just didn’t sit right with him. The pack should stay together.
“You’re the only one who can help me. Please? C’mon man, what do you want?” asked Hardison, his voice edging up to a register that Eliot normally associated with annoying women.
“Okay fine. Looking for Parker, the price....No talking about anything science fiction or computer game-related for six months. If we find where she’s staying, then there’s another six month bonus.”
“No way,” replied Hardison, shaking his head with such vigor, Eliot thought the damn thing might actually pop off and bounce across the hardwood floor.
“Fine, then I’m not doing it.” Eliot pushed away from the window sill and headed for the door.
“Look, can we not make it less broad? Not talking about science fiction or computer games? Shoot, I’d barely talk at all.”
“That’s kind of the point, Hardison.”
“I’m sure we can come to an arrangement that we both can live with. How about this, no talking about Star Trek or World of Warcraft for three months, six if we find her.”
Eliot made a show of folding his arms and rocking back on his heels as he considered the counter-offer. “Okay....but, you also have to make me another one of those Japanese commercials.”
“Eliot, that was 13 hours of my life that I’ll never get back, and I had to look at your face for all of them.”
“Fine, good luck finding her then.”
“All right, all right. I agree to your exorbitant demands,” said Hardison, holding out a hand to seal the deal. Eliot shook it, squeezing a little harder than was strictly necessary, impressed that Hardison didn’t comment about it and nearly managed to control his bugging out eyes.
“So, the first thing, how’s she getting out?” said Eliot.
Hardison looked around the apartment. “I don’t know. One of the air vents, I guess. I’ll put in cameras and we can monitor the feed and find out.”
Eliot laughed. “You could do that. But we’d lose a few days and she might spot them. Besides, I already know.”
“You already know? How?”
“Because, Hardison, I opened my eyes and looked,” said Eliot as he glanced at his watch. He debated how much time he wanted to waste messing with the hacker, and decided not much, because right now, it wasn’t even a challenge.
Hardison muttered to himself and looked up at the air vent.
“Freezing,” said Eliot.
Hardison walked over to the windows, opening them the way he’d seen Eliot do earlier.
“Right idea, but cold.”
The hacker edged toward the bedroom.
“Colder,” said Eliot, already bored and wishing Hardison would hurry up.
He headed for the kitchen.
“Freezing. Man, you really suck at this game.”
Hardison threw up his hands in frustration. “What? Where do you want me to look? You clearly hinted that it’s a window, I’ve made to check all the windows and you’ve ‘colded’ me at every turn.”
“Not every turn, Hardison. You still got one left.”
“What? The bathroom. That’s way too small.”
“It’s Parker”.
Eliot followed Hardison into the bathroom, leaning against the door frame. “Look at the lock.”
“Yeah, I’m looking at it. It’s locked.”
“Seriously? That’s all you can come up with? And everyone thinks you’re the smart one.”
Hardison shot Eliot a dirty look then looked back at the window. He ran his fingers over the lock, then undid it and opened the window. “It’s different from the other locks.”
“Finally,” said Eliot. “Yeah, she must have replaced the plastic lock with a metal one. And see the way it’s an eye and hook lock, instead of a swinglock, which is what the rest of the windows have. Now see, the hook is a bit loose, so you can see how it would be easy for her to use a strong magnet through the glass to move it and lock the window on her way out. After that, it’s a small shimmy to the drain pipe and she’s gone.”
“She’s good,” said Hardison with a low whistle of appreciation.
“Yeah, she is. So we’re going to have to be ten times as good to have a chance at following her,” said Eliot, slapping Hardison on the back as he left.
“Wait a minute, where are you going?”
“I need some time to think. First thing we’re going to need to do is confirm how she’s getting in and out.”
“But you’re in, right? You’re definitely in?”
“Yeah, I’m in. Now quit asking me before I change my mind,” said Eliot as he left with a dismissive wave. His mind was already running the angles, trying to figure out how to track the best thief he knew.
---//---
Later that evening, Eliot sent Hardison a text telling him to place remote cameras in the alley and another one behind the building. Hardison waited until the middle of the night, then did as instructed.
When Eliot came into Nate’s for the morning briefing, he looked over with a raised eyebrow, and Hardison gave him a knowing nod. Oh yeah, baby, jackpot. At precisely 8:37 am, Parker had shimmied up the drain pipe, found handholds in the brick that Hardison still couldn’t believe existed, and opened the window exactly the way Eliot had suspected.
That evening, Hardison slipped Eliot an earbud that used a frequency the team never used. He didn’t want anyone else inadvertently listening in on them. Eliot left first on the pretense of having to meet up with an old friend. The plan was for him to station himself at a bar up the street, in the direction that they’d guessed Parker was most likely to go.
Hardison waited until Parker left, then headed out to McRory’s and hid in the stairwell outside, his face nearly pressed into the wrought iron so he could spot Parker walking out of the alley. Assuming, of course, that Parker left the same way she came out. Fifteen minutes went by, with Eliot grumbling in his ear, before Hardison was forced to admit that perhaps their assumption was flawed.
He went back to his apartment to check the camera feeds. Eliot joined him a few minutes later.
“What the hell happened?” asked Eliot, dropping his earbud on Hardison’s desk.
“You know how we put the camera just underneath the outer window sill?” asked Hardison, rewinding the film and then pointing at the screen. Parker wriggled out of the window on her stomach, feet first, and it looked like her thumb just brushed the camera, knocking it loose.
“So that one’s lost. What about the other one?”
Hardison shrugged. “I’m not really sure, just that the feed looks good, but there’s no sign of Parker on it.”
Eliot pressed his lips into a thin line and Hardison could practically see smoke coming out of his ears. “That don’t make sense.”
“Yeah, well, it’s Parker. Lots of things don’t make sense.”
“No Hardison, this really doesn’t make sense. The alley goes out to the street, where we would have seen her, or to the back of the building, which would involve scaling a wooden fence topped with wire.”
“Which is well inside Parker’s abilities.”
“Yes, it is. But then we still should’ve picked her up on the camera back there... Let’s go,” said Eliot, leading the way to Parker’s apartment. Hardison unlocked the door and they went into the bathroom, where the window was locked.
“Now what?” asked Hardison.
“We have to retrace her steps,” said Eliot, slapping Hardison on the back and gesturing toward the window.
“What’s this ‘we’ business?”
“Only one of is lanky enough to fit through the damn window.”
“No way. You like the idea of climbing out windows so much, then you do it. Go out one of the other windows .”
“Has to be this one, Hardison. We have to see what she sees if we’re going to figure this out.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. No. Way.”
“Fine. I got better things to do with my time. See you tomorrow.”
Hardison took a few deep breaths to steady himself. “Fine, what do I have to do?”
“Wait here a minute,” replied Eliot. He returned a few minutes later with a bulky black harness.
“Damn I hate those things.”
Eliot threw the harness at him. “Yeah, well, you’ll hate falling three stories even more. Chances are, the fall wouldn’t even kill you. Just break a lot of bones, maybe paralyze you, depending on how you landed.”
“Enough! I so don’t need to hear any of that.” Hardison bumbled his way into the harness and then fidgeted while Eliot checked the straps, pulling a few of them way too tight, just to be sadistic. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Hardison, who was growing more uncomfortable by the second.
Eliot opened the window. After several false starts and a lot of hopping around, Hardison found a way to climb out feet first. He let Eliot slowly lower him down, the rough brick brushing his finger tips.
His feet hit it first, the thin band of brick between the first and second stories. It was the kind of thing you’d miss when you looked at the building, since they were the same color as the rest of the bricks and only stuck out a few inches. But the ledge would be wide enough for Parker to use to take herself anywhere. She could’ve crept all the way around the building and got down at any point.
Hardison gave three sharp tugs on the rope, and Eliot pulled him back up. After learning about the ledge, Eliot thought for a few minutes, then they spent the next few hours deploying more cameras. Hardison thought that they were edging into overkill territory, but he didn’t dare say a word to Eliot.
Five new cameras, one replaced camera, and one original camera made for seven, which seemed like a lucky number. Hardison was confident that their plan was back on track and he’d soon know where Parker was living.
The next morning, he watched the camera feed as Parker came in the alley from the street and scurried up the drain pipe, same as the day before. Later that night, Eliot joined him in his apartment to watch the video feed, which was spread out over three monitors. She went out the window, knocking the camera again.
“Hardison, I thought I told you to put that in a different place under the ledge,” said Eliot.
“I did. Guess it’s just bad luck.”
“Bad luck... or she’s fucking with us,” replied Eliot, an ominous look in his eye.
“That camera was perfect, tiny, blended right in. There’s no way she knew it was there. Look, we’ll pick her up on one of the other feeds in a second.”
The men watched the video monitors, but the other six feeds remained the same, not a hint of her. Five minutes turned into ten and then fifteen.
Eliot tapped him on the back. “C’mon, man. Let’s go.”
They went to Parker’s apartment which, predictably, was empty. Eliot double-checked the window and then headed straight out, Hardison trailing behind him. They went up to the roof.
“Okay, she’s gotta be going up, so that leaves a lot of options for how she gets back down,” said Eliot, eyes scanning the rooftop.
“Air vent?” suggested Hardison, and they checked it out.
“No, look how the screws are rusted. That thing hasn’t been touched in months. Maybe even years,” said Eliot as he walked over to the roofline and began to pace the perimeter.
“She’s probably not going down the front and we got cameras in the back and the east side of the building,” said Hardison.
“Well, it’s Parker, we can’t really rule anything out, but...” said Eliot, gesturing to the west side. “It’s only a tiny hop to this other roof here.”
“A tiny hop,” said Hardison, trying to suppress a nervous giggle as he eyed the six foot gap between the buildings. “So how do we track her if the possibilities are endless?”
“I’m thinking. Give me a minute.”
Hardison gave Eliot several minutes, but then could’t resist adding his own suggestion. “How about a laser.”
“A laser? Seriously? I’m not even going to ask why you have one of those just laying around, because it’s a stupid idea.”
“It’s a good solid plan.”
“You really think she’s not going to see a laser?”
“Oh right. How about a tracker in her shoe? It worked in Serbia.”
“Yeah, and you must be forgetting how pissed she was when she found it. Naw, we’ll use a tracker as a last resort. Enough cameras and we’ll have her, then it’s just a simple two-person follow. We can do this.”
Which is how Hardison ended up spending most of the night setting up cameras, doubling the number from seven to fourteen. Which had to be twice as lucky, right? Hardison had to add three more monitors to his home set up, which was starting to make him feel like a creepy stalker.
The next morning, Parker came in the same way as she had the two previous mornings. He thought he saw the ghost of a mischievous smile cross her lips as she passed in front of the camera under the window sill, but he decided that he must be imagining things.
That night, he and Eliot were back in front of the video monitors, watching intently. Parker came out of the bathroom window, and this time she didn’t dislodge the camera.
“See, it was just bad luck the other two times,” said Hardison.
“Yeah, maybe,” replied Eliot, distracted.
Parker shimmied down the drainpipe to the ledge, which she used to scoot around the building to the corner, which she climbed like a ladder right up to the roof. As Eliot suspected, she headed straight for the west side and gracefully leaped to the neighboring building. She ran across that roof, jumped to the next building, and climbed over the side.
“We got her, let’s go,” said Eliot. They belted down the stairs, taking them two at a time and then jogged west, catching sight of a blonde coming out of the alley between the buildings. It took ten minutes of following for them to realize that they were following the wrong blonde.
“What are the chances?” asked Hardison, leaning against a bus shelter.
“I don’t know. You’re the geek, you tell me.”
Hardison ignored the insult. “So, plan B?”
Eliot nodded. “Yeah. Plan B.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, Hardison,” said Eliot, sounding tired and annoyed. A bad combination. “Shoes worked well the last time. Let’s go with shoes.”
Hardison kept his sass to a minimum as they walked back to the apartments. At least he wouldn’t be spending his evening deploying more cameras.
The next morning, Hardison sat in front of the monitors in his apartment. This time, Parker didn’t shimmy up the drainpipe. She just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, on the roof. she smiled directly at a camera as she opened the access door, and Hardison had to admit that maybe Eliot was right. It sure looked right there like she was fucking with them.
They were working a job that day, so Parker’s shoes remained firmly on her feet the whole day. At one point, Nate dispatched Eliot and Parker to work together. Hardison slipped him a tracker in case he saw an opportunity to plant it.
That opportunity arrived when Eliot had to give her a boost up to a second-story window. Hardison had been watching the security video, and he would’ve missed the plant if he hadn’t been looking for it. Eliot took out a pinch of his chewing gum, rolled the tracker into it, and then pressed the sticky glob onto the side of her sneaker, just where the heel met the arch. Hardison thought that it was, perhaps, an odd place to end up with gum, but he didn’t think she’d notice.
After the job was done, the team celebrated with a quick drink in McRory’s and then headed off in their separate directions. Hardison met up with Eliot a few blocks away, both of them following a pulsing red dot on their cell phones.
“Where’s the fire?” asked Eliot when Hardison tried to pick up the pace.
“Shouldn’t we make sure we can actually see her? She’s like three blocks away.”
“Yeah, and she’s jumping around like a drunk bedbug. We know where she is and we can see where she’s going. Better to hang back and not risk having her double-back right into us.”
Hardison and Eliot tracked Parker for 20 blocks as she criss-crossed and back-tracked her way across the city. Finally, the pulsing red dot on his cell phone screen came to rest, and Hardison felt a surge of excitement.
The excitement was short-lived, as he watched Eliot gingerly pick the tracker out of a garbage can.
“You think she knows?” asked Hardison.
“Maybe. She could just be fucking with us. Or she might have suddenly realized she had gum on her shoe.”
“We should be following closer.”
“No, we use the advantage of the tracker. If she sees us, it’s going to be awkward. You want to explain why you’re stalking her?”
Hardison shook his head. “All right, man. Tomorrow’s another day.”
The next morning, Hardison decided it was fruitless and kind of creepy to just sit in front of the video monitors. He headed down to Nate’s early and was sitting on the couch when Parker arrived. Her slightly wide-eyed look of surprise made him smile.
Eliot and Parker were sent out to do surveillance that morning. Eliot accidentally caused Parker to step in a deep puddle, so she was forced to take off her shoes when they returned to Nate’s, giving Hardison the opportunity to hide the tracker. He noticed that they were shoes he’d never seen her wear before: sensible black oxfords that bordered on the orthopedic, something more suited to a school teacher or an old lady.
That evening, they followed the red dot, which seemed to be doing a lot less hopscotching around. In fact, she led them directly to a Buddhist temple.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” growled Eliot, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
“What? Girl can’t be spiritual?”
“She can be as spiritual as she wants, but something ain’t right. She practically made a beeline for this place.”
Hardison thought about that for a minute. “Well, it makes a certain kind of sense. She knew she wasn’t going home right away, so she had no reason to cover her tracks.”
The two men retreated to a nearby bar to wait. Two hours later, the red dot was on the move.
“Whoa? Where’s the fire?” asked Hardison as Eliot practically jogged to catch up to Parker.
“We need to see her.”
Hardison stopped. “Why is it that when I say we should see her when we’re following, you say it’s a bad idea? But then when you say it, it’s suddenly a good idea?”
“Because the circumstances are different, Hardison. I’m not going to waste my time following what might not be Parker,” said Eliot, jogging off as soon as the words were out.
“Oh right,” mumbled Hardison as he ran to catch up. Two blocks later, their path crossed with the red dot, which most assuredly was not Parker. It was an elderly Chinese woman, who had on a fine pair of sensible black oxfords. Hardison groaned as Eliot looked around with his “I’m gonna punch somebody” face.
“You get the feeling she’s fucking with us? Because I’m totally getting the feeling she’s fucking with us,” said Eliot.
“Well, those shoes are kinda nondescript, it’d be an easy mistake to make.”
“Hardison!”
“Okay, man, yeah, I gotta admit. It sure feels like she’s fucking with us.”
“One more try. Three trackers this time.”
“Third time lucky. That’s what my nana used to say,” said Hardison as they turned to walk back to the building.
The next day, Hardison and Eliot planted trackers in Parker’s shoes, backpack, and the Red Sox baseball cap that she was inexplicably wearing. (Hardison had learned that a shrug and the words “It’s Parker we’re talking about” covered a multitude of quirky, unexplainable occurrences.)
When they tracked her later that afternoon, Hardison was comforted by the fact that Parker was again taking a circuitous route with plenty of doubling back. About ten minutes into the hunt, one red dot stopped while the other two continued on, a larger pulsing and moving target. Eliot motioned for Hardison to continue while he checked out the discarded tracker.
“She ditched her shoes in the trash,” said Eliot when he caught up.
“Both shoes? So she’s walking around barefoot now?”
“I don’t know,” said Eliot with a shrug. “It’s Parker. She could’ve had an extra pair in her backpack.”
“Hey, you know, since this is our last shot, why are we bothering to hang back here like a couple of super spies?”
Eliot opened his mouth like he wanted to complain, but then he rolled his eyes and relented. “Okay, fine.”
They quickened their pace and were soon about twenty feet behind Parker, who was ambling slowly up a crowded street filled with tourists. She seemed unaware of her surroundings, gawking at the sights.
Eliot spotted the guy first, elbowing Hardison a bit more sharply than the hacker felt was warranted. “Over there, three o’clock. I don’t like the look of that-”
Before he could finish the sentence, the guy shouldered Parker roughly to the ground and then took her backpack, running diagonally across the street.
Hardison made to follow, but Eliot pulled him back. Kind passersby were helping Parker off the ground, and the men turned away so she wouldn’t catch sight of them.
“Leave it,” said Eliot.
“Leave it? Guy just stole from Parker and you say ‘leave it’? What’s wrong with you,” asked Hardison, working up a good bit of righteous indignation.
“Yeah, listen to what you said. Guy just stole from Parker. The best thief we know,” said Eliot as he tapped Hardison’s chest and gave him a ‘c’mon, you should know better’ look.
“Oh...you’re saying she wanted him to steal the backpack.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Eliot noticed that Parker was on the move again, so they resumed following her. She led them directly to Fenway, where an afternoon game was just getting out. They fought their way through the crowds, struggling to get closer to Parker, losing her for seconds at a time before catching sight of her again.
They followed her to the Kenmore station and then boarded the same T car, headed for Boston College. The train car was jam-packed and it seemed that most of the riders were students, all headed to the same stop. When the train stopped, Hardison shot a questioning look at Eliot and he nodded. The game was up.
They caught up to Parker a few hundred yards outside the station. Hardison grabbed her arm gently, half expecting her to flip him over onto his ass. He definitely was not expecting her to swivel around and start shrieking, since he had never for a second thought that they were following the wrong girl.
But she was definitely the wrong girl, her blue t-shirt adorned with Greek letters while Parker had been wearing a plain tee the exact shade of blue.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, we thought you were somebody else,” said Eliot, turning on the Southern charm to smooth things over. Or maybe he was just hitting on the girl. Hardison sometimes had difficulties telling the difference.
“Oh,” she said, surprised at first and then clearly won over by Eliot’s smile. “That’s okay.”
“Thanks for your understanding, darlin’. We surely do appreciate it.”
Hardison clamped a hand on Eliot’s elbow, said a hasty goodbye to the girl, and dragged him away. “We’re looking for Parker. Not a date for you.”
“Well, we didn’t find Parker. We found her hat.”
“Yeah, thanks for stating the obvious,” said Hardison.
“Sorry...” said Eliot. “Hey, I know you’re pissed and disappointed. I also know what’ll help.”
“Picking up college girls isn’t going to help.”
“No,” replied Eliot, pulling out his cell phone and tapping the screen. “But finding that jackass who took Parker’s bag will.”
---//---
Hardison breaking into her apartment didn’t surprise Parker. But she was surprised that he’d waited so long to do it. And of course she knew he’d been in there. Well, that someone had, but who else would it be? Hardison was nosy by nature, and he had the keys to every apartment in the building.
A single hair super-glued across the doorframe was as old-school, low-tech as it got, but it worked. And after she knew, it was a simple matter of keeping her eyes open. Spotting the camera and then dislodging it the first night was simple. The multiplying horde of camera had been amusing. That must have taken hours to set up.
Then they’d moved onto the trackers. And Parker was quite sure this was a two-man job, that Eliot was involved too. The way he’d roughly shouldered her at just the right moment for her to land in that puddle, yeah, Eliot just wasn’t that clumsy.
The truth was, Parker thought this was great fun. A challenge. A silly game of hide-and-seek. And she always won at hide-and-seek. (At one group home in southern Illinois, she was missing for three days before they finally found her, wedged beneath a loose floorboard under a bed in one of the rooms. The way the search and rescue dog had licked her face made her giggle, and Parker still didn’t understand why everyone had been so angry with her.)
The day after Parker outsmarted Hardison’s three tracking bugs, she could barely contain her excitement, sure that whatever he’d planned next was bigger and better. She’d have to be on the top of her game to be ready for it.
After spending the afternoon planning their next job, they headed up to Eliot’s apartment for team dinner night. Hardison was quieter than usual, and Parker didn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk about Star Trek with her. Or why his refusal made Eliot chuckle under his breath.
Sophie and Nate left after dinner, separately of course, like they were fooling anyone. Parker made a show of standing up and stretching, announcing that she was exhausted and would be calling it an early night. Eliot barely looked up from clearing the table to acknowledge her statement. Hardison gave her a sad little wave. Not quite the reaction that Parker was expecting.
“I said I’m leaving now,” she repeated.
“We heard you the first time, Parker. Bye,” said Eliot.
Parker couldn’t decide if this was just Eliot being Eliot, or if if this was all part of their devious plan to lull her into a false sense of security. Well, she wasn’t falling for it.
Back at her apartment, Parker shut the door loudly, then opened it and scampered across the hall to press her ear against the door to Eliot’s place. She could hear the scrape of plates as Eliot cleaned up and a muffled conversation about what they were going to watch on television, Hardison pushing for Tron and Eliot insisting that it was his place and Hardison could go home if he wanted to watch that crap.
Parker grinned to herself. They were good, suspecting her of lurking and having a fake conversation to throw her off their intentions. She went back to the apartment, climbed out the bathroom window, shimmied down the drain pipe and walked right over to the street. She thought she was being sporting, giving them time to get out of the apartment, especially since she knew they hadn’t planted any trackers on her.
Parker walked slowly, using the windows to catch glimpses behind her, but no one was following her. She crossed the street, using the action of checking for traffic to carefully examine her surroundings, but nothing. No Hardison. No Eliot. Worse than that, she didn’t feel like she was being followed, and she’d developed an excellent sense about these things.
Turning with a sigh, she walked back to the apartment building and shimmied up the drainpipe. Using the ledge, she walked around to the back of the building, then climbed up to Eliot’s balcony. She eased herself over the iron railing, then crept up to the sliding glass doors.
Hardison was on the couch, talking to Eliot, who was sprawled on an over-stuffed leather chair. His eyes were on a baseball game, but Parker could tell that he was actually listening.
Parker pulled a paperclip out of her pocket and picked the lock, then eased the sliding glass door open. She took small, certain steps, creeping across the room until she was standing a few feet away from them.
“I don’t know, man,” said Hardison. “Maybe it’s dumb, but it felt like progress for a while. Now, though, I don’t know what to think.”
“When I was a kid, we had this scrawny stray cat that started living under our porch. My daddy tried for years to catch it, but she was wily and smart.”
“This isn’t going to turn out to be story of why you hate guns, is it? Because I’m not sure I can handle hearing that one tonight.”
“No, it’s not, Hardison. Now just shut up,” said Eliot, annoyed.
“Okay, keep talking, I’m sure you have a point.”
“Yes, I have a point. No, you know what? Forget it.”
“Eliot, I’m sorry, please. Continue,” said Hardison.
Eliot took a long pull from his beer and looked at the television. After a few minutes had passed, he continued. “What my daddy didn’t know was that when he wasn’t home, me and my sister would sit on the steps and just wait. When that cat would finally come out from under the porch, if we didn’t look at her, if we pretended she didn’t exist, she’d walk right up to us. Even take food out of our hands, or let us pet her, if she was in a really good mood. But everything had to be on her terms.”
“Awww, that’s a sweet story,” said Parker, climbing over the back of the couch to sit down next to Hardison. “I always figured your family would’ve had dogs though.”
Eliot hid his surprised flinch well, covering it with a good dose of annoyance. “We did have dogs. They couldn’t catch the damn cat either.”
Hardison hid his surprise less well, startling enough that some popcorn sloshed out of the bowl and landed on the floor. Parker hid her grin behind her hand as she watched him surreptitiously kick the kernels under the coffee table without Eliot noticing.
“Parker, how long’ve you been standing there?” asked Hardison, sitting up straighter and covering his mouth with his fist.
“Just got here. I got bored.”
“Bored?” asked Eliot.
“Yeah. I thought we were going to play again tonight. This week has been so fun.” Parker beamed as she looked from Hardison to Eliot. The hacker looked confused and the hitter looked like he wanted to punch someone. Well, at least one of them was acting normal.
Eliot shot Hardison a sour look. “I told you she was fucking with us, man.”
“Yes you did,” said Hardison,
“So, why aren’t we playing any more? You guys aren’t giving up, are you? Because I haven’t had this much fun since I stole the first David.”
“Yeah, that was fun,” mumbled Hardison. He looked over at Eliot, eyes slightly wide. He cocked his head and jerked it once, toward the kitchen.
“Are you kidding me? This is my apartment. You leave if you want privacy.”
Parker’s eyebrows knit together as she tried to puzzle out their cryptic communications. Then she shrugged and looked at Hardison expectantly.
“Please?” he asked, looking at Eliot.
“All right, fine, but you’re going to owe me.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll probably live to regret this, but okay, I owe you,” said Hardison, waiting until Eliot had gotten another beer and stepped out on the balcony, pulling the sliding glass door shut behind him. “So, you thought we were just playing a game with you?”
Parker shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, of course. What else would be doing?”
“Trying to find out where you actually live,” said Hardison, leaving a slight space between the last few words.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, if you want to rent out my apartment, I understand.”
“Nah, Parker, that’s not it.”
“Okay,” she said, like she understood what was ‘it’ then, but she didn’t have a clue.
Hardison rubbed his hands over his face and then looked up at her. “Do you not like the apartment?”
“Well,” said Parker. “I don’t like that you can’t see the front door from the bedroom. And it could probably use more windows and air vents. A balcony would be nice.”
Hardison looked around Eliot’s apartment. “Sounds like this place. I could evict Eliot and give you this place.”
Parker laughed. “You wouldn’t.”
“I’m the landlord. I can do what I want.”
“But you wouldn’t. Eliot would kill you and that would kind of suck, because, you know, where would we find another hacker? The only other hacker I know is that Chaos guy and he’s a jerk.”
“And he’s doing 15-20 in Walpole for grand theft,” said Hardison with a smile. “Hey, my place is right below here, same layout. Why don’t we switch?”
Parker shook her head. “No, it’s okay. Really.”
“So what are you saying, Parker, that you don’t want to live here? Because if you don’t, that’s cool. You don’t even have to explain why.”
“Is it important to you that I live here?” asked Parker, forming the question slowly as she tried to puzzle out the motivations behind Hardison’s actions.
“Well, I wouldn’t say important, like breathing is important. But I’d say it’s more like it’s nice. Like having purpz gear, you know?”
“That was a World of Warcraft reference wasn’t it? You haven’t been talking about it much anymore. I thought you stopped playing.”
“Oh no, I still play.”
Parker nodded as she processed the information. “So, you’d just like to have me around?”
“Well, yeah, although,” he paused and looked down. “It’s more than that. I wanted you to have a home. I know what the system can be like, bouncing around every few months, hauling around your stuff in crappy plastic garbage bags. I just wanted to give you a place to settle down and call your own.”
“Like a home? Like in the the cartoons? With a ‘home sweet home’ sign?” asked Parker.
“Yeah, Parker. Like a home,” said Hardison, folding his arms.
Parker opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn’t know what to say, if she was supposed to apologize or explain or tell him where she was living. She didn’t understand how these things were supposed to go, and sometimes, it seemed like whatever she chose was the wrong option. Whatever she said resulted in blank stares or a chorus of “there’s something wrong with you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Parker. The apartment’s yours and if you want a different one, we can see if we can work something out,” said Hardison.
“What about the room where you keep all your Star Wars stuff?” asked Parker.
“What about it?” asked Hardison, the puzzled look on his face causing Parker’s stomach to drop. It felt like she was edging out onto a limb that was just barely wide enough to support her weight.
“Well, it has a clear view of the front door. And four windows. And two air vents. Would it be okay with you if I stayed there? Maybe not always, but sometimes?”
Hardison smiled, his lips slowly pulling back to reveal blindingly white teeth. “Yeah, I think we can manage that. I’ll clear it out for you, put some of that stuff in storage.”
“Oh no,” said Parker. “I like most of it. Just, the life-sized cardboard cutout of Darth Maul, maybe you could put him in storage. Like somewhere outside your apartment, if possible.”
“Done. Darth Maul is looking for a new home in a galaxy far, far away,” said Hardison, holding out his hand. Parker shook it, careful not to squeeze too hard.
A safe place to sleep, with a good friend close by, and no creepy Darth Maul staring down at her. That was the best deal she’d made in ages. And maybe Hardison would even agree to play hide-and-seek again sometime.