The Bad Job (10/?) [Leverage]
Previous
From the van, they watched as more and more dark-clad figures surrounded the cabin, one of them the familiar shape of “Agent Hagen”. Hardison smiled at the screen as he spotted her, not even frowning over Todd McSweeten who was following right behind.
Inside the cabin, Winham hadn't yet realized his predicament, couch moved and on his way to open the trapdoor. “Parker, now. You need to get in there right now!” Nate growled, glad she'd been able to put her ear-bud back in sometime during the car-ride. He could see her conferring with McSweeten who spoke into his walkie-talkie right away, rising up to walk over and knock on the door.
Nate stood as well, turning towards Sophie. “I'll be outside, tell me if I need to know anything.” He grabbed his FBI-windbreaker and his fake ID and jumped out, already moving through the foliage to take the shortcut to the cabin.
“Nate!” she called after him, but he didn't care. He had to go, had to see for himself that the boy was alright. He might even find legitimate reason to do it, a good explanation why he had to go out there and break with the plan - again - but he didn't bother. There were perks of being the leader, and doing stupid, irrational things was one of them.
**
It took some time, even in haste, to reach Winham's cabin again. Huffing, Nate decided he'd give the Eliot's suggestion to star jogging in the morning another thought, then stopped when he had to dodge a man who was rolling out a long set of cables from his broadcast-van to the place where his colleagues were already setting up a scene. He spotted Kitty Mallory, from Channel 15 News, practicing her outraged-concerned-touched expression in front of her camera-man.
The clutter helped him to get past the FBI-agents, who only glanced at his badge and jacket and waved him through, towards the house.
Even though he'd hurried, he arrived just the moment Winham - still known under the name of Malcolm Winston - was brought outside by Agents Taggert and McSweeten, cuffed and swearing bloody murder, telling the FBI that they'd get 'their asses kicked once the Marshall's office gets wind of this outrage'. Nate could only just jump aside before a barrage of reporters - TV, newspaper, online-news and every other source that Sophie had been able to dig up - stormed forward, bombarding the agents and Winham. With the flashes and yelled questions, the “look here”, and “Agent can you tell us...” shouting all around him, Nathan felt like he'd accidentally stumbled onto the red-carpet during Oscar-night.
He tried to wedge himself through the people but gave up after a minute, instead walking around the cabin to reach the back-door. Once again, he was let through and he wondered distantly about the state of America's police-forces that they just let strangers walk into their crime-scenes. It made his job easier, sure, and in this particular scenario, with a whole task-force out on a job, he couldn't blame them to just accept a guy in the right jacket with a badge as one of them. Still...
Inside, the cabin was filled with people, all wearing blue jackets or kevlar-vests with the three conspicuous letters on the back. In the back of the room, two men and two women where already dusting surfaces and shining blue lights over every piece of furniture that was in reach.
No sign of Parker, but he could hear her talking in his ear, so she wasn't in the basement.
“You ready for the show?” she asked and didn't get an answer, but just as Nate wanted to ask her what she meant, a door to his left opened and the boy stepped out, Parker in tow.
The kid looked up, startled by Nate's proximity, huge eyes in a sharp-angled face which still held enough baby-features to soften the half-starved look he was sporting. Gray eyes, not green as he'd thought, with a thick black ring around the iris. Not blue. Not Sam's at all.
Yet alike in a way that hurt Nathan deep in his heart.
He looked so scared, flinching when Nate shifted, melting himself to Parker's side. Good Lord, what had they done to this kid?
“Oh, hey Nate,” Parker spoke up, unconcerned, like it was an every-day occurrence to free a boy sold into modern-day slavery. Like it was common for them to sell him to that in the first place. “Meet Ryan.”
The boy, just seconds ago chewing agitatedly on his lip and avoiding eye-contact now looked up and right at Nathan, who suddenly felt like he'd stepped through the rabbit-hole and into the Mad Hatter's tea-party.
The kid, Ryan, had shed his fear like an overcoat, leaving instead a boy with a curious tilt to the head, an open, slightly cocky expression and a smirk that was so familiarly 'Spencer' that it felt like a kick in the guts. “Hey,” he said, holding out his hand, “so, you're the dude with the plan?”
**
Down in the basement, everything was quiet. Two crime-scene guys were doing their thing and they didn't seem to mind Nathan's presence in the room.
From the trapdoor, a ladder had led into a small corridor, on its end a steel-door with a dial-lock that had clearly not been broken open, so he suspected Parker had done her magic.
Inside, it didn't look anything like he'd imagined. Nate had tried to avoid thinking about how a room installed for a little boy to use … to... to keep down there would look like, he had, but he hadn't been able shut up his brain, no matter how hard he'd tried
Yoga might have helped.
His mind had drawn pictures of horrible things, dark colors, a gloomy, dank place - completely disregarding Eliot's description of 'just a normal room'. What would Eliot consider 'normal' anyway.
Turned out the both of them were pretty much on the same page with it.
The walls were painted in a light-yellow, soft, bright color and the ceiling in an even lighter shade which made the room seem higher than it was. A couch, blue-and white checkered covering, sat on a bright carpet with a cheery but not too intricate design. One side of the chamber was completely covered with bookshelves, filled to the brim with all kinds of books on all kinds of subjects and on the adjoining wall was a TV and PlayStation-system with another shelf, this one stacked with a heap of games and DVDs. Nate spotted a few Disney-movies.
Sam had loved Disney.
The room as such really did look nice and cozy, if you ignored the lack of windows and natural light. No creepy clowns or other stuff that might set off a childhood-fear, though he guessed that being left alone for at least five days a week would be enough to set off anything.
And if not that, then the other two days would.
In one corner was a refrigerator and a shelf with plastic-cups and plates, and on the last side there was a big, comfortable looking bed with a teddy-bear and racecar-spreads. An open door to the left showed a small bathroom, lights on and the appliances were already covered in fingerprint-dust.
It felt eery, with the policemen inside, creepy in a normal, everyday-evil way.
It wasn't true that Nate forgot about the bad that normal people did. Eliot had it wrong on that. He didn't forget, and it grated on him as well, but he'd found that his anger burned hotter for those who had everything and still wanted more, going over everyone and anything that lay in their paths.
Sure, a man who beat his kids and wife, a person who exploited women, children or animals and who had a low, or average income was just as bad as a rich, influential one. He knew that.
The problem wasn't in not knowing, or in ignoring. The problem was that he couldn't do anything about it. Well, apart from one tiny step whenever he got the chance. He couldn't help everyone, and Nathan wasn't the kind of man who took that kind of thing lightly. Maybe Eliot Spencer, who had done so much bad, who had seen so much evil, who had learned to live with what he'd done and what he'd seen, maybe he was able to compartmentalize, to know and acknowledge and still keep going, still keep setting one foot in front of the other.
Nathan Ford, though, couldn't. He'd go insane. He knew he wasn't quite sane to begin with, that something had shattered inside him when he'd been powerless to help his boy, had watched his final breaths in that cold, cold hospital-room. Had disintegrated even more when he'd seen his wife grief, accept and deal with the death of Sam, and he... hadn't been that strong. Couldn't deal, didn't want to accept. Told himself it was because Meggie hadn't known about IYS, about Blackpool's cruel decisions, but the truth was simpler: his wife was stronger than him.
Sophie would say that it was good to take things to heart, that he was a good man, and he might even believe her when the lights were out. But... He sometimes wondered how he'd turned out if Sam hadn't been taken from them, or if he'd died even with the help of IYS. Would Nate be at the same place now? Would he be the same man?
Maybe not if Sam had died despite the new treatment. Certainly not if Sam were still alive.
Right now, though, he was one man who held some fragile power over a bunch of thieves, criminals, and even though his team was amazing, had done so much to help, he'd either wreck them - and himself along with them - trying to right every single wrong in the world, or he'd chase them away, drink himself stupid and sick and lose the last thread that tethered him to the world of the living.
He realized, didn't need Sophie pointing it out to him, that he often acted like a general commanding his troops. Aloof and distant, harsh and sometimes cold-hearted, he might appear to them like a boss more than a friend.
That was plain to see, and yet they followed his leads, stepped up their game, worked over their own fears and limits if he asked them to. Went where they didn't want to go, just for him, just because... of his plans. To outsiders, it would look like there was an imbalance of power that worked in his favor, but Nate knew that it wasn't all there was.
He needed them. He liked them, a lot, that was a bonus, but he needed them to keep him in this world, to keep him from drifting off into insanity and every time they surprised him - and that was fairly often - he got hooked back into liking this world. Liking people, acknowledging the good that mankind possessed, even underneath a layer of darkness and dirt. He needed them more than they needed him. So the power-imbalance? Wasn't on his side.
Standing in this dungeon, taking in the quiet and loneliness that kept drifting from the walls, he admitted to himself that he wasn't equipped for dealing with people like Winham, not constantly, not forever. He felt his mind trying to back out already, trying to find a place of quiet, to stop working and maybe drown in a bottle and he hadn't even seen anything really bad.
Doing this forever, doing this kind of thing more than once would kill him, and he'd probably take a lot of people with him. He didn't want that. He didn't want to die just yet, Nate realized with startling clarity. Living wasn't yet done, and as long as there were things he could do, people he could trick and play and rob blind, as long as he felt the deep, warm fuzz of satisfaction after a successful con and a group of wronged people who got what they deserved, that long he'd not just roll over and stop breathing. The world might be corrupt and harsh, might be cruel and unkind, but there was enough good in it to trust it a little.
People like Agent Todd McSweeten were worth trusting the world.
Because while McSweeten maybe wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, was too naïve for his own good sometimes, too gullible, he was still a good man who did his job with passion. He cared deeply about fighting the good fight and believed in what he did. They didn't know much about him, treated him as a joke a lot of the time, used him like a tool to work towards their gains, and they would continue to do so. Nate had stopped feeling bad about that a while ago. That didn't mean he overlooked the cold fury when McSweeten had led Winham out the cabin, the detached disgust he was showing with every line of his stiff posture.
He knew, he cared and Nate hoped he wouldn't burn out too soon, lose that spark.
McSweeten'd surprised Nathan when he'd suddenly appeared in front of them, knelt down to look Ryan in the eyes which had switched back to scared and timid in not even a blink. Todd had raised his eyebrows, looked at the kid and had introduced himself, quietly, earnestly and with only a hint of a smile. He hadn't spoken like an adult to a boy, or like a cop to a victim, but like a man would talk to another man.
“My name's Todd McSweeten. Would you like to get out of here and back to your mom?”
“Don't have a mom,” Ryan had shot back, slipping in his role of victim into the cocky, confident, slightly hostile boy he was underneath. Or maybe that was another act, Nate wasn't sure who that kid really was. Ryan'd realized his mistake and squeezed out a tear right away, and McSweeten hadn't seemed to suspect anything wrong. Silently, Nate had praised the kid's talent for bullshitting, even though it had creeped him out to see a child so young as such a remarkable con-man.
McSweeten had just nodded gravely. “My bad. You still wanna get out of here?” He'd held out his hand and seemingly against his own will, Ryan had taken it, following the FBI-agent towards the door.
The two of them had sat on the wooden steps just outside the back, talking in low voices but apparently content to wait until the worst of the reporter-crowd was gone and they could slip to one of the cars unseen. Nathan had wanted to talk to the boy, get to know him, get to understand him better and well... honestly, find a sign that they hadn't irrevocably destroyed his innocence.
But McSweeten hadn't let Ryan out of his sight, offering him a chewing-gum like it was a cigarette, sitting silently and not asking him anything at all.
When they had finally walked off, Nate hadn't been able to keep his desire to actually see the basement at bay and he'd slid down the ladder and into this bizarre sub-sphere he was standing in now.
Jesus Christ, they were so in over their heads!
Next
From the van, they watched as more and more dark-clad figures surrounded the cabin, one of them the familiar shape of “Agent Hagen”. Hardison smiled at the screen as he spotted her, not even frowning over Todd McSweeten who was following right behind.
Inside the cabin, Winham hadn't yet realized his predicament, couch moved and on his way to open the trapdoor. “Parker, now. You need to get in there right now!” Nate growled, glad she'd been able to put her ear-bud back in sometime during the car-ride. He could see her conferring with McSweeten who spoke into his walkie-talkie right away, rising up to walk over and knock on the door.
Nate stood as well, turning towards Sophie. “I'll be outside, tell me if I need to know anything.” He grabbed his FBI-windbreaker and his fake ID and jumped out, already moving through the foliage to take the shortcut to the cabin.
“Nate!” she called after him, but he didn't care. He had to go, had to see for himself that the boy was alright. He might even find legitimate reason to do it, a good explanation why he had to go out there and break with the plan - again - but he didn't bother. There were perks of being the leader, and doing stupid, irrational things was one of them.
**
It took some time, even in haste, to reach Winham's cabin again. Huffing, Nate decided he'd give the Eliot's suggestion to star jogging in the morning another thought, then stopped when he had to dodge a man who was rolling out a long set of cables from his broadcast-van to the place where his colleagues were already setting up a scene. He spotted Kitty Mallory, from Channel 15 News, practicing her outraged-concerned-touched expression in front of her camera-man.
The clutter helped him to get past the FBI-agents, who only glanced at his badge and jacket and waved him through, towards the house.
Even though he'd hurried, he arrived just the moment Winham - still known under the name of Malcolm Winston - was brought outside by Agents Taggert and McSweeten, cuffed and swearing bloody murder, telling the FBI that they'd get 'their asses kicked once the Marshall's office gets wind of this outrage'. Nate could only just jump aside before a barrage of reporters - TV, newspaper, online-news and every other source that Sophie had been able to dig up - stormed forward, bombarding the agents and Winham. With the flashes and yelled questions, the “look here”, and “Agent can you tell us...” shouting all around him, Nathan felt like he'd accidentally stumbled onto the red-carpet during Oscar-night.
He tried to wedge himself through the people but gave up after a minute, instead walking around the cabin to reach the back-door. Once again, he was let through and he wondered distantly about the state of America's police-forces that they just let strangers walk into their crime-scenes. It made his job easier, sure, and in this particular scenario, with a whole task-force out on a job, he couldn't blame them to just accept a guy in the right jacket with a badge as one of them. Still...
Inside, the cabin was filled with people, all wearing blue jackets or kevlar-vests with the three conspicuous letters on the back. In the back of the room, two men and two women where already dusting surfaces and shining blue lights over every piece of furniture that was in reach.
No sign of Parker, but he could hear her talking in his ear, so she wasn't in the basement.
“You ready for the show?” she asked and didn't get an answer, but just as Nate wanted to ask her what she meant, a door to his left opened and the boy stepped out, Parker in tow.
The kid looked up, startled by Nate's proximity, huge eyes in a sharp-angled face which still held enough baby-features to soften the half-starved look he was sporting. Gray eyes, not green as he'd thought, with a thick black ring around the iris. Not blue. Not Sam's at all.
Yet alike in a way that hurt Nathan deep in his heart.
He looked so scared, flinching when Nate shifted, melting himself to Parker's side. Good Lord, what had they done to this kid?
“Oh, hey Nate,” Parker spoke up, unconcerned, like it was an every-day occurrence to free a boy sold into modern-day slavery. Like it was common for them to sell him to that in the first place. “Meet Ryan.”
The boy, just seconds ago chewing agitatedly on his lip and avoiding eye-contact now looked up and right at Nathan, who suddenly felt like he'd stepped through the rabbit-hole and into the Mad Hatter's tea-party.
The kid, Ryan, had shed his fear like an overcoat, leaving instead a boy with a curious tilt to the head, an open, slightly cocky expression and a smirk that was so familiarly 'Spencer' that it felt like a kick in the guts. “Hey,” he said, holding out his hand, “so, you're the dude with the plan?”
**
Down in the basement, everything was quiet. Two crime-scene guys were doing their thing and they didn't seem to mind Nathan's presence in the room.
From the trapdoor, a ladder had led into a small corridor, on its end a steel-door with a dial-lock that had clearly not been broken open, so he suspected Parker had done her magic.
Inside, it didn't look anything like he'd imagined. Nate had tried to avoid thinking about how a room installed for a little boy to use … to... to keep down there would look like, he had, but he hadn't been able shut up his brain, no matter how hard he'd tried
Yoga might have helped.
His mind had drawn pictures of horrible things, dark colors, a gloomy, dank place - completely disregarding Eliot's description of 'just a normal room'. What would Eliot consider 'normal' anyway.
Turned out the both of them were pretty much on the same page with it.
The walls were painted in a light-yellow, soft, bright color and the ceiling in an even lighter shade which made the room seem higher than it was. A couch, blue-and white checkered covering, sat on a bright carpet with a cheery but not too intricate design. One side of the chamber was completely covered with bookshelves, filled to the brim with all kinds of books on all kinds of subjects and on the adjoining wall was a TV and PlayStation-system with another shelf, this one stacked with a heap of games and DVDs. Nate spotted a few Disney-movies.
Sam had loved Disney.
The room as such really did look nice and cozy, if you ignored the lack of windows and natural light. No creepy clowns or other stuff that might set off a childhood-fear, though he guessed that being left alone for at least five days a week would be enough to set off anything.
And if not that, then the other two days would.
In one corner was a refrigerator and a shelf with plastic-cups and plates, and on the last side there was a big, comfortable looking bed with a teddy-bear and racecar-spreads. An open door to the left showed a small bathroom, lights on and the appliances were already covered in fingerprint-dust.
It felt eery, with the policemen inside, creepy in a normal, everyday-evil way.
It wasn't true that Nate forgot about the bad that normal people did. Eliot had it wrong on that. He didn't forget, and it grated on him as well, but he'd found that his anger burned hotter for those who had everything and still wanted more, going over everyone and anything that lay in their paths.
Sure, a man who beat his kids and wife, a person who exploited women, children or animals and who had a low, or average income was just as bad as a rich, influential one. He knew that.
The problem wasn't in not knowing, or in ignoring. The problem was that he couldn't do anything about it. Well, apart from one tiny step whenever he got the chance. He couldn't help everyone, and Nathan wasn't the kind of man who took that kind of thing lightly. Maybe Eliot Spencer, who had done so much bad, who had seen so much evil, who had learned to live with what he'd done and what he'd seen, maybe he was able to compartmentalize, to know and acknowledge and still keep going, still keep setting one foot in front of the other.
Nathan Ford, though, couldn't. He'd go insane. He knew he wasn't quite sane to begin with, that something had shattered inside him when he'd been powerless to help his boy, had watched his final breaths in that cold, cold hospital-room. Had disintegrated even more when he'd seen his wife grief, accept and deal with the death of Sam, and he... hadn't been that strong. Couldn't deal, didn't want to accept. Told himself it was because Meggie hadn't known about IYS, about Blackpool's cruel decisions, but the truth was simpler: his wife was stronger than him.
Sophie would say that it was good to take things to heart, that he was a good man, and he might even believe her when the lights were out. But... He sometimes wondered how he'd turned out if Sam hadn't been taken from them, or if he'd died even with the help of IYS. Would Nate be at the same place now? Would he be the same man?
Maybe not if Sam had died despite the new treatment. Certainly not if Sam were still alive.
Right now, though, he was one man who held some fragile power over a bunch of thieves, criminals, and even though his team was amazing, had done so much to help, he'd either wreck them - and himself along with them - trying to right every single wrong in the world, or he'd chase them away, drink himself stupid and sick and lose the last thread that tethered him to the world of the living.
He realized, didn't need Sophie pointing it out to him, that he often acted like a general commanding his troops. Aloof and distant, harsh and sometimes cold-hearted, he might appear to them like a boss more than a friend.
That was plain to see, and yet they followed his leads, stepped up their game, worked over their own fears and limits if he asked them to. Went where they didn't want to go, just for him, just because... of his plans. To outsiders, it would look like there was an imbalance of power that worked in his favor, but Nate knew that it wasn't all there was.
He needed them. He liked them, a lot, that was a bonus, but he needed them to keep him in this world, to keep him from drifting off into insanity and every time they surprised him - and that was fairly often - he got hooked back into liking this world. Liking people, acknowledging the good that mankind possessed, even underneath a layer of darkness and dirt. He needed them more than they needed him. So the power-imbalance? Wasn't on his side.
Standing in this dungeon, taking in the quiet and loneliness that kept drifting from the walls, he admitted to himself that he wasn't equipped for dealing with people like Winham, not constantly, not forever. He felt his mind trying to back out already, trying to find a place of quiet, to stop working and maybe drown in a bottle and he hadn't even seen anything really bad.
Doing this forever, doing this kind of thing more than once would kill him, and he'd probably take a lot of people with him. He didn't want that. He didn't want to die just yet, Nate realized with startling clarity. Living wasn't yet done, and as long as there were things he could do, people he could trick and play and rob blind, as long as he felt the deep, warm fuzz of satisfaction after a successful con and a group of wronged people who got what they deserved, that long he'd not just roll over and stop breathing. The world might be corrupt and harsh, might be cruel and unkind, but there was enough good in it to trust it a little.
People like Agent Todd McSweeten were worth trusting the world.
Because while McSweeten maybe wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, was too naïve for his own good sometimes, too gullible, he was still a good man who did his job with passion. He cared deeply about fighting the good fight and believed in what he did. They didn't know much about him, treated him as a joke a lot of the time, used him like a tool to work towards their gains, and they would continue to do so. Nate had stopped feeling bad about that a while ago. That didn't mean he overlooked the cold fury when McSweeten had led Winham out the cabin, the detached disgust he was showing with every line of his stiff posture.
He knew, he cared and Nate hoped he wouldn't burn out too soon, lose that spark.
McSweeten'd surprised Nathan when he'd suddenly appeared in front of them, knelt down to look Ryan in the eyes which had switched back to scared and timid in not even a blink. Todd had raised his eyebrows, looked at the kid and had introduced himself, quietly, earnestly and with only a hint of a smile. He hadn't spoken like an adult to a boy, or like a cop to a victim, but like a man would talk to another man.
“My name's Todd McSweeten. Would you like to get out of here and back to your mom?”
“Don't have a mom,” Ryan had shot back, slipping in his role of victim into the cocky, confident, slightly hostile boy he was underneath. Or maybe that was another act, Nate wasn't sure who that kid really was. Ryan'd realized his mistake and squeezed out a tear right away, and McSweeten hadn't seemed to suspect anything wrong. Silently, Nate had praised the kid's talent for bullshitting, even though it had creeped him out to see a child so young as such a remarkable con-man.
McSweeten had just nodded gravely. “My bad. You still wanna get out of here?” He'd held out his hand and seemingly against his own will, Ryan had taken it, following the FBI-agent towards the door.
The two of them had sat on the wooden steps just outside the back, talking in low voices but apparently content to wait until the worst of the reporter-crowd was gone and they could slip to one of the cars unseen. Nathan had wanted to talk to the boy, get to know him, get to understand him better and well... honestly, find a sign that they hadn't irrevocably destroyed his innocence.
But McSweeten hadn't let Ryan out of his sight, offering him a chewing-gum like it was a cigarette, sitting silently and not asking him anything at all.
When they had finally walked off, Nate hadn't been able to keep his desire to actually see the basement at bay and he'd slid down the ladder and into this bizarre sub-sphere he was standing in now.
Jesus Christ, they were so in over their heads!
Next