Full Circle (4/23)
Title: Mysterious Unnamed Psych/Leverage Crossover Fic (4/23)
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~10,000 total so far
Pairing: Eliot/Shawn pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, violence, un-beta’d (please, please, someone volunteer to beta?)
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage do not belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no monetary profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of sqeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: Please forgive my GoogleTranslate!Portuguese. It was not my intention to butcher the language, though I most likely did.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
***
Something had been tapping at the back of Eliot’s brain for the past few hours. Amazingly, it wasn’t the urge to kill the man currently deeply engaged with, from the sounds, a flash version of Asteroids on his computer. Earlier in the hotel, Shawn had said Please don’t shoot me. I know for a fact that it hurts way worse than people say it does, and I’m not awesome with pain. Someone had shot him. Eliot took that to mean that someone had probably been aiming for him. God knew he’d wanted to a couple of times already, and he’d only known the guy for less than a day.
So not only was Eliot stuck babysitting the guy for some unexplained reason of Nate’s, but he had to be on the lookout for people with grudges and guns, too? He didn’t even like the guy, and wasn’t getting paid for this shit.
***
“Who shot you?” It was completely out of the blue, and Shawn’s hands jerked on the keyboard. His triangle died in a firey 8bit explosion with accompanying midi orchestration.
“The porn star,” he replied without thinking. It was what he called him in his head--which probably said something really messed up about his relationship with porn. He shoved that thought to the back of his head and cursed the fact that his mom was a psychologist. Constantly psychoanalyzing yourself wasn’t good jujubees, but it was really hard not to if you’d flipped through all of your psychologist mom’s textbooks one day after school because you were bored and you couldn’t forget a single sentence of what you’d read, even 16 years later. At least he was no longer convinced he was a sociopath anymore. That--had eventually led to the Mexican border with Gus. Twice.
Dude-man didn’t have a reply for that. Shawn went back to his triangle with a purely internal sigh of relief. If he didn’t talk about it, he could ignore the memory for the rest of his life and pretend to have forgotten it so well that occasionally he almost did forget it. Luckily, he was only a consultant, and not required to go through the trauma of mandatory psychological evaluations like Lassi and Jules had to. He could talk circles around any psychologist not his mother anyway, sometimes even making them question themselves if they were persistent and pushed past his deflections. But doing that always made him feel slightly dirty, so it was best for all involved to just avoid the head-shrinkers in the first place.
The office phone rang, and Shawn grabbed for it gratefully. He needed a distraction. But he’d replaced the phone upside down in its cradle last time--again--and it died as soon as he answered. But at least he’d seen the caller ID in the second before it blanked, so he started patting himself down in an effort to find his iPhone to call Gus back with. Though why Gus hadn’t called him on it in the first place… He had a moment of complete blankness, then remembered stashing it in Gus’s center console on Sunday when they were on their way to get jerked chicken because he’d already broken the first incarnation by sitting on it. Which meant it was still in Gus’s car. With Gus. In Arizona. Shit.
***
He watched the guy do the familiar ‘where’s my phone’ dance before looking briefly irritated and turning to face Eliot. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“No,” Eliot replied shortly, and Shawn huffed out an exasperated breath.
“If I don’t call him back he’ll call Henry and then Henry will track me down and want to know who you are and ask you questions…” Eliot stopped listening to Shawn ramble as Hardison spoke in his ear.
“We found her. Oh, God, we found the client’s sister.” Hardison’s voice was grim. Eliot couldn’t understand why.
“Great. She can testify or provide evidence or whatever the cops need to go after this asshole, and I can ditch this guy since we don’t need him anymore. Should I meet y’all back at the hotel? Where’s the sister, anyway?” Eliot wasn’t often thrilled, but he was feeling pretty close at the prospect of not having to be around Shawn any longer.
“She’s in the SBPD morgue.”
***
Shawn was a little offended by Eliot’s mention of ditching him, but didn’t comment, because he was trying to figure out the other side of the conversation from Eliot’s half and didn’t want to miss anything. They’d found the sister of their client, that much was easy to deduce. But the look on Eliot’s face after he stopped talking indicated that all was not well in Sherwood forest--or the Hotel de la Cruz home base--whichever. “Where’s the sister?” he asked, trying not to sound hesitant. He really didn’t want to be ditched right when things were getting interesting, and Shawn figured maybe being a teensy bit reticent might help until Eliot remembered how indispensable he was. Or found it out in the first place.
Eliot groaned and scrunched up his face for a moment, almost like he’d forgotten Shawn was standing next to him. But that would just be silly. Shawn knew he was unforgettable. “In the morgue. Coroner hasn’t written up his report or emailed it to anyone yet though so we don’t know how or why.”
Finally, a proper distraction. “Awesome!” Eliot glared at him, and Shawn decided elaborating might be a good thing, because Eliot was getting the hitting look. “I mean, I can get you in there, no problem. Woody and I are like this,” he demonstrated a fist bump. With himself, because Eliot left him hanging.
“What the hell is a Woody?” Eliot asked, sounding pretty exasperated with Shawn. Then he grimaced, seemingly realizing what he’d said and like he wasn’t expecting Shawn’s answer to be helpful or anything.
Shawn refrained. When it was too easy like that it just wasn‘t fun anymore. “Woody’s the SBPD’s coroner, man. He’s awesome. He always tells me stuff, even when he’s not supposed to.” Shawn tossed the dead handset in the general direction of the charger and made for the door. He paused for a moment to catch Eliot’s eye right before he exited the door. “Just… Don’t eat anything he offers you.”
***
Eliot still wasn’t sure how he’d lost the transportation argument. Well, he’d won part of it--there was no way in hell he was ever gonna be in the bitch seat on a bike. But Shawn had managed to talk him out of Eliot’s driving Shawn’s Norton, and out of a cab as well. He still hadn’t figured out how. As soon as Shawn mentioned hitting up Henry for the truck, Eliot ended the discussion by shoving the bike helmet on Shawn’s head. None too gently, either.
He straddled the Norton and waited for Shawn to get on behind him, ignoring the protests and complaining about how they‘d already crossed this option off the list. He blinked down at the helmet Shawn handed him before getting on the bike. “Oh, hell no. Not happening,” Eliot told him with a smirk, handing the helmet back over his shoulder to Shawn for him to dispose of. He didn’t even want to know why the extra helmet was neon green with PSYCH in giant silver glitter letters across the front. He ignored Shawn’s bitching and moaning about the dangers of motorcycles without helmets, and kick started the bike. The growl of the engine drowned out Shawn’s voice and Eliot grinned into the wind as he pulled out into the street.
The SBPD morgue didn’t look much like any other morgue Eliot had ever been in, and believe it or not, he’d been in a few. For one, the Dawn of the Dead movie poster (Romero, not remake) poster on the office door was… unique. As was the fact that the coroner was holding an burger oozing ketchup with one gloved hand while his other red stained glove was occupied weighing internal organs on a digital scale. At least, Eliot hoped to God the red oozing out of the burger and covering that glove was ketchup. As it was, he took a moment to swallow and concentrate on settling his stomach. He’d thought Shawn was being facetious and gutter-minded when he’d told Eliot not to eat anything Woody gave him. Not so much. He glanced over at the guy and saw the same disturbed look on Shawn’s face that he felt on his own.
***
Woody put down his burger to offer Shawn a ‘hello’ fist bump, but Shawn politely declined. And tried not to throw up in his mouth. At least Gus wasn’t here for this, because if Gus was here he’d be throwing up, and Shawn was a sympathetic puker. “Hey, Woodster, I like the poster. Nice touch. New, isn’t it?” Woody grinned at the compliment, and Shawn was in. “I followed a spirit to this place, a very distressed spirit. She’s really upset. But unfortunately she’s speaking Spanish, so that’s pretty much the only thing I’m getting is that she’s upset. I brought my translator, John Smith,” he waved in Eliot’s direction, “to see if we can’t get to the bottom of what she’s telling us. But all I know so far is that she’s here,” he indicated the morgue with a flail of his arm that had Eliot jumping out of the way, “so you think you can help me out, buddy? Met any Spanish-speaking dead people wandering around without their bodies lately?”
Woody paused to think. Like, actually thought about the question. Which was a little weird, but Shawn had seen way weirder from the coroner. In the past five minutes, even. “Not lately, no,” Woody finally replied.
Shawn made a face and cracked, “Playing hide and seek with invisible people isn’t for the easily bored. John’s been keeping me on track though. How about meeting any dead Spanish-speaking people whose spirits might be playing hide and seek with easily bored psychics? I bet I could talk to her--or listen at her while John here translates for me--if I found her home base and she’s olly-olly-oxen-free,” Shawn grinned at Woody.
***
Eliot still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to be translating for a ‘psychic,’ but he kept his mouth shut and his head down (figuratively) while Shawn flapped his trap. The police coroner (Woody couldn’t really be his name, could it? That was taking bad puns to a whole new level.) didn’t even seem to wonder how a translator could work with spirits. Santa Barbara got weirder and more fucked up every hour Eliot spent in it.
Somehow Shawn talked Woody into showing them Maria Chavez’s body, and while Eliot stared intently at it, mentally cataloguing injuries and paying close attention to what the coroner was saying about what he’d discovered so far--no cause of death as of yet, because she was still waiting for autopsy--Shawn was grabbing at Eliot’s shoulder with one hand and holding the other over Maria’s waxy face, and appeared to be seizing. Eliot didn’t pay much attention to what Shawn was doing until he started babbling in broken Spanish. Really broken, nonsensical Spanish. Eliot rolled his eyes, not even caring if the coroner saw. Suddenly, though, Shawn’s Spanish started making sense and forming proper sentences. Eliot gave half his attention to remembering what Shawn said in case he had to ‘translate’ it later, and let the other half be filled with amazement. A relentlessly annoying little lazy fuckup idiot like Shawn had actually learned a second language. That didn’t fit the impression of the guy Eliot had formed. The question filling half of Eliot’s brain was this: Was Shawn a relentlessly annoying little lazy fuckup idiot with a gift for languages, or was there actually more to Shawn than met the ey… senses?
The other half of Eliot’s attention, the part listening to Shawn prattle on in Portuguese-accented Spanish, if Eliot wasn’t mistaken, and he knew his foreign accents, so he wasn’t, recalled the other half of his mind from its wandering. Eliot stiffened and tried not to look as if he was concentrating every iota of his attention on Shawn. He’d said Damian Moreau.
***
“O homem do hotel, o dono do hotel grande, o Sr. Cruz, ele disse que eu estava destinado para o homem grande chefe que vinha visitar. Eu não quero ser usado por Damian Moreau. Lutei contra eles e tentou fugir. Eu morri,” Shawn babbled, not paying much attention to what he was saying. He figured that an SBPD employee like Woody, like himself for that matter, or most anyone who lived in SoCal, would know at least some Spanish, so he switched it up and threw in some Portuguese he’d learned while in Brazil visiting Jack--before he’d realized what an asshole his uncle was--so he wouldn’t have to pay attention to exactly what he was saying. If Eliot didn’t know Portuguese, and Shawn was pretty much planning on him not knowing it, he’d make up something about how the essence of her meaning had come through because he was connected to a translation conduit circuit, or something like that. All he really needed was enough to point the cops at Esteban Cruz somehow, for something, but he was drawing a blank with the body. There were no conveniently located shoe clues, most likely because she was naked under the sheet, and nothing monogrammed with the hotel’s logo had been pressed against her skin--at least the skin that was visible and there was no way he was lifting that sheet--while she died, in order to leave fancily lettered bruises. Pretty much, Shawn was at zilch. Hopefully Eliot was getting more out of the body than he was.
***
“Did you get that?” Eliot subvocalized for his earbud under the cover of Shawn’s continuing prattle, knowing that Hardison would be able to pick it out.
“Damian Moreau? Hell yeah. Nate’s jumping around like he got stung by a bee and is deathly allergic and Parker used his last EpiPen for a lock pick. He says to bring him here as soon as you can. He wants to talk to him.”
“I’m on it.“ Yeah. Eliot wanted to talk to Shawn too. Nate’s method probably wouldn’t involve systematic beating till the guy spilled everything he knew about everything, though. Worse luck. He would have liked to know what made the guy tick. And it didn’t escape Eliot’s attention that the fact that someone he’d never met was hanging his life on a thread over this Moreau thing was possibly making him slightly prone to violent solutions. More prone, anyway.
Parker was right. Being on the wrong side of blackmail sucked. Hard.
***
Chapter 5
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~10,000 total so far
Pairing: Eliot/Shawn pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, violence, un-beta’d (please, please, someone volunteer to beta?)
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage do not belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no monetary profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of sqeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: Please forgive my GoogleTranslate!Portuguese. It was not my intention to butcher the language, though I most likely did.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
***
Something had been tapping at the back of Eliot’s brain for the past few hours. Amazingly, it wasn’t the urge to kill the man currently deeply engaged with, from the sounds, a flash version of Asteroids on his computer. Earlier in the hotel, Shawn had said Please don’t shoot me. I know for a fact that it hurts way worse than people say it does, and I’m not awesome with pain. Someone had shot him. Eliot took that to mean that someone had probably been aiming for him. God knew he’d wanted to a couple of times already, and he’d only known the guy for less than a day.
So not only was Eliot stuck babysitting the guy for some unexplained reason of Nate’s, but he had to be on the lookout for people with grudges and guns, too? He didn’t even like the guy, and wasn’t getting paid for this shit.
***
“Who shot you?” It was completely out of the blue, and Shawn’s hands jerked on the keyboard. His triangle died in a firey 8bit explosion with accompanying midi orchestration.
“The porn star,” he replied without thinking. It was what he called him in his head--which probably said something really messed up about his relationship with porn. He shoved that thought to the back of his head and cursed the fact that his mom was a psychologist. Constantly psychoanalyzing yourself wasn’t good jujubees, but it was really hard not to if you’d flipped through all of your psychologist mom’s textbooks one day after school because you were bored and you couldn’t forget a single sentence of what you’d read, even 16 years later. At least he was no longer convinced he was a sociopath anymore. That--had eventually led to the Mexican border with Gus. Twice.
Dude-man didn’t have a reply for that. Shawn went back to his triangle with a purely internal sigh of relief. If he didn’t talk about it, he could ignore the memory for the rest of his life and pretend to have forgotten it so well that occasionally he almost did forget it. Luckily, he was only a consultant, and not required to go through the trauma of mandatory psychological evaluations like Lassi and Jules had to. He could talk circles around any psychologist not his mother anyway, sometimes even making them question themselves if they were persistent and pushed past his deflections. But doing that always made him feel slightly dirty, so it was best for all involved to just avoid the head-shrinkers in the first place.
The office phone rang, and Shawn grabbed for it gratefully. He needed a distraction. But he’d replaced the phone upside down in its cradle last time--again--and it died as soon as he answered. But at least he’d seen the caller ID in the second before it blanked, so he started patting himself down in an effort to find his iPhone to call Gus back with. Though why Gus hadn’t called him on it in the first place… He had a moment of complete blankness, then remembered stashing it in Gus’s center console on Sunday when they were on their way to get jerked chicken because he’d already broken the first incarnation by sitting on it. Which meant it was still in Gus’s car. With Gus. In Arizona. Shit.
***
He watched the guy do the familiar ‘where’s my phone’ dance before looking briefly irritated and turning to face Eliot. “Can I borrow your phone?”
“No,” Eliot replied shortly, and Shawn huffed out an exasperated breath.
“If I don’t call him back he’ll call Henry and then Henry will track me down and want to know who you are and ask you questions…” Eliot stopped listening to Shawn ramble as Hardison spoke in his ear.
“We found her. Oh, God, we found the client’s sister.” Hardison’s voice was grim. Eliot couldn’t understand why.
“Great. She can testify or provide evidence or whatever the cops need to go after this asshole, and I can ditch this guy since we don’t need him anymore. Should I meet y’all back at the hotel? Where’s the sister, anyway?” Eliot wasn’t often thrilled, but he was feeling pretty close at the prospect of not having to be around Shawn any longer.
“She’s in the SBPD morgue.”
***
Shawn was a little offended by Eliot’s mention of ditching him, but didn’t comment, because he was trying to figure out the other side of the conversation from Eliot’s half and didn’t want to miss anything. They’d found the sister of their client, that much was easy to deduce. But the look on Eliot’s face after he stopped talking indicated that all was not well in Sherwood forest--or the Hotel de la Cruz home base--whichever. “Where’s the sister?” he asked, trying not to sound hesitant. He really didn’t want to be ditched right when things were getting interesting, and Shawn figured maybe being a teensy bit reticent might help until Eliot remembered how indispensable he was. Or found it out in the first place.
Eliot groaned and scrunched up his face for a moment, almost like he’d forgotten Shawn was standing next to him. But that would just be silly. Shawn knew he was unforgettable. “In the morgue. Coroner hasn’t written up his report or emailed it to anyone yet though so we don’t know how or why.”
Finally, a proper distraction. “Awesome!” Eliot glared at him, and Shawn decided elaborating might be a good thing, because Eliot was getting the hitting look. “I mean, I can get you in there, no problem. Woody and I are like this,” he demonstrated a fist bump. With himself, because Eliot left him hanging.
“What the hell is a Woody?” Eliot asked, sounding pretty exasperated with Shawn. Then he grimaced, seemingly realizing what he’d said and like he wasn’t expecting Shawn’s answer to be helpful or anything.
Shawn refrained. When it was too easy like that it just wasn‘t fun anymore. “Woody’s the SBPD’s coroner, man. He’s awesome. He always tells me stuff, even when he’s not supposed to.” Shawn tossed the dead handset in the general direction of the charger and made for the door. He paused for a moment to catch Eliot’s eye right before he exited the door. “Just… Don’t eat anything he offers you.”
***
Eliot still wasn’t sure how he’d lost the transportation argument. Well, he’d won part of it--there was no way in hell he was ever gonna be in the bitch seat on a bike. But Shawn had managed to talk him out of Eliot’s driving Shawn’s Norton, and out of a cab as well. He still hadn’t figured out how. As soon as Shawn mentioned hitting up Henry for the truck, Eliot ended the discussion by shoving the bike helmet on Shawn’s head. None too gently, either.
He straddled the Norton and waited for Shawn to get on behind him, ignoring the protests and complaining about how they‘d already crossed this option off the list. He blinked down at the helmet Shawn handed him before getting on the bike. “Oh, hell no. Not happening,” Eliot told him with a smirk, handing the helmet back over his shoulder to Shawn for him to dispose of. He didn’t even want to know why the extra helmet was neon green with PSYCH in giant silver glitter letters across the front. He ignored Shawn’s bitching and moaning about the dangers of motorcycles without helmets, and kick started the bike. The growl of the engine drowned out Shawn’s voice and Eliot grinned into the wind as he pulled out into the street.
The SBPD morgue didn’t look much like any other morgue Eliot had ever been in, and believe it or not, he’d been in a few. For one, the Dawn of the Dead movie poster (Romero, not remake) poster on the office door was… unique. As was the fact that the coroner was holding an burger oozing ketchup with one gloved hand while his other red stained glove was occupied weighing internal organs on a digital scale. At least, Eliot hoped to God the red oozing out of the burger and covering that glove was ketchup. As it was, he took a moment to swallow and concentrate on settling his stomach. He’d thought Shawn was being facetious and gutter-minded when he’d told Eliot not to eat anything Woody gave him. Not so much. He glanced over at the guy and saw the same disturbed look on Shawn’s face that he felt on his own.
***
Woody put down his burger to offer Shawn a ‘hello’ fist bump, but Shawn politely declined. And tried not to throw up in his mouth. At least Gus wasn’t here for this, because if Gus was here he’d be throwing up, and Shawn was a sympathetic puker. “Hey, Woodster, I like the poster. Nice touch. New, isn’t it?” Woody grinned at the compliment, and Shawn was in. “I followed a spirit to this place, a very distressed spirit. She’s really upset. But unfortunately she’s speaking Spanish, so that’s pretty much the only thing I’m getting is that she’s upset. I brought my translator, John Smith,” he waved in Eliot’s direction, “to see if we can’t get to the bottom of what she’s telling us. But all I know so far is that she’s here,” he indicated the morgue with a flail of his arm that had Eliot jumping out of the way, “so you think you can help me out, buddy? Met any Spanish-speaking dead people wandering around without their bodies lately?”
Woody paused to think. Like, actually thought about the question. Which was a little weird, but Shawn had seen way weirder from the coroner. In the past five minutes, even. “Not lately, no,” Woody finally replied.
Shawn made a face and cracked, “Playing hide and seek with invisible people isn’t for the easily bored. John’s been keeping me on track though. How about meeting any dead Spanish-speaking people whose spirits might be playing hide and seek with easily bored psychics? I bet I could talk to her--or listen at her while John here translates for me--if I found her home base and she’s olly-olly-oxen-free,” Shawn grinned at Woody.
***
Eliot still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to be translating for a ‘psychic,’ but he kept his mouth shut and his head down (figuratively) while Shawn flapped his trap. The police coroner (Woody couldn’t really be his name, could it? That was taking bad puns to a whole new level.) didn’t even seem to wonder how a translator could work with spirits. Santa Barbara got weirder and more fucked up every hour Eliot spent in it.
Somehow Shawn talked Woody into showing them Maria Chavez’s body, and while Eliot stared intently at it, mentally cataloguing injuries and paying close attention to what the coroner was saying about what he’d discovered so far--no cause of death as of yet, because she was still waiting for autopsy--Shawn was grabbing at Eliot’s shoulder with one hand and holding the other over Maria’s waxy face, and appeared to be seizing. Eliot didn’t pay much attention to what Shawn was doing until he started babbling in broken Spanish. Really broken, nonsensical Spanish. Eliot rolled his eyes, not even caring if the coroner saw. Suddenly, though, Shawn’s Spanish started making sense and forming proper sentences. Eliot gave half his attention to remembering what Shawn said in case he had to ‘translate’ it later, and let the other half be filled with amazement. A relentlessly annoying little lazy fuckup idiot like Shawn had actually learned a second language. That didn’t fit the impression of the guy Eliot had formed. The question filling half of Eliot’s brain was this: Was Shawn a relentlessly annoying little lazy fuckup idiot with a gift for languages, or was there actually more to Shawn than met the ey… senses?
The other half of Eliot’s attention, the part listening to Shawn prattle on in Portuguese-accented Spanish, if Eliot wasn’t mistaken, and he knew his foreign accents, so he wasn’t, recalled the other half of his mind from its wandering. Eliot stiffened and tried not to look as if he was concentrating every iota of his attention on Shawn. He’d said Damian Moreau.
***
“O homem do hotel, o dono do hotel grande, o Sr. Cruz, ele disse que eu estava destinado para o homem grande chefe que vinha visitar. Eu não quero ser usado por Damian Moreau. Lutei contra eles e tentou fugir. Eu morri,” Shawn babbled, not paying much attention to what he was saying. He figured that an SBPD employee like Woody, like himself for that matter, or most anyone who lived in SoCal, would know at least some Spanish, so he switched it up and threw in some Portuguese he’d learned while in Brazil visiting Jack--before he’d realized what an asshole his uncle was--so he wouldn’t have to pay attention to exactly what he was saying. If Eliot didn’t know Portuguese, and Shawn was pretty much planning on him not knowing it, he’d make up something about how the essence of her meaning had come through because he was connected to a translation conduit circuit, or something like that. All he really needed was enough to point the cops at Esteban Cruz somehow, for something, but he was drawing a blank with the body. There were no conveniently located shoe clues, most likely because she was naked under the sheet, and nothing monogrammed with the hotel’s logo had been pressed against her skin--at least the skin that was visible and there was no way he was lifting that sheet--while she died, in order to leave fancily lettered bruises. Pretty much, Shawn was at zilch. Hopefully Eliot was getting more out of the body than he was.
***
“Did you get that?” Eliot subvocalized for his earbud under the cover of Shawn’s continuing prattle, knowing that Hardison would be able to pick it out.
“Damian Moreau? Hell yeah. Nate’s jumping around like he got stung by a bee and is deathly allergic and Parker used his last EpiPen for a lock pick. He says to bring him here as soon as you can. He wants to talk to him.”
“I’m on it.“ Yeah. Eliot wanted to talk to Shawn too. Nate’s method probably wouldn’t involve systematic beating till the guy spilled everything he knew about everything, though. Worse luck. He would have liked to know what made the guy tick. And it didn’t escape Eliot’s attention that the fact that someone he’d never met was hanging his life on a thread over this Moreau thing was possibly making him slightly prone to violent solutions. More prone, anyway.
Parker was right. Being on the wrong side of blackmail sucked. Hard.
***
Chapter 5