Archive of Our Own

"Jensen, you ready?"

"Yes sir."

Clay nodded. "Do it."

"Jamming security now." Jensen hit it, and inside the house, the security cameras flickered and went to static. The only active feed was the one they were watching on Jensen's laptop.

Clay was opening his mouth to give the go-ahead when Cougar jerked his chin towards the house. "Boss, we got civvies on site."

He grabbed the binoculars and looked where Cougar was pointing, and sure enough, a man and a woman were in the shadows by one of the outbuildings, the tiny little slip of a girl on her knees and...picking the lock? Clay looked closer; she was working on the alarm pad by the door. The guy with her turned, checking the landscape, and when Clay saw his face he had to stop and look again, his heart lurching sickly in his chest. "Spencer," he murmured, and his pulse started to pound. "That's impossible."

But possible or not, there was no mistaking him. Up by the gate a second couple was busy distracting the guards.

"Sir?" Jensen said. "Do we have a go?"

"Shit. No!" Clay shoved the binoculars back into Cougar's hand and rubbed his jaw. "No, we do not. Cut that shit off, radio Pooch and Aisha to rendezvous back here."

Jensen was already on it, shutting down the jamming signal and giving the house back its security system. "The guards aren't making any moves," he said. "Not yet at least."

Clay looked over Jensen's shoulder, and shook his head when the guy in the mansion's security room tapped one of the monitors suspiciously.

Cougar tipped his hat back, watching the pair at the outbuilding through the scope of his rifle. "What is it, boss? You know them?"

"The man," Clay said, nodding. "Yeah, I do. I don't know what the hell he's doing here, but I damn sure aim to find out."

"Can you hurry it up, Parker?" Eliot hissed. "We're sitting ducks out here."

The door to the outbuilding was in shadow, but just barely, security lights cutting a diagonal behind them. Beyond it, up by the gate, Nate and Sophie were doing their 'arguing married couple lost in the woods' act for the guards — Martin and Trudy Duroc, their Lincoln Town Car almost out of gas on their way home from the opera. Assholes were eating it up, too, especially Sophie's blond wig and low-cut dress. Eliot just hoped Wilson wasn't checking the cameras himself, or if he was, that he wouldn't make "Trudy" as the sleek, dark-haired Annie Kroy who wanted to expand the family business into heroin and meth.

The lock clicked and the light blinked to green. "There you go, mister grumpy."

Eliot pushed the door open and Parker followed him in. A tarp was slung carelessly over a set of steel shelves; Eliot lifted the corner and found the box right where Sophie had said it was. He unslung the pack he was carrying and set about prying off the lid of the box, and sure enough, inside was nestled almost a million dollars worth of China White in tidy plastic packages.

Parker started pulling identical packages out of Eliot's pack, and Eliot got busy clearing out the box and re-filling it.

"I thought you told me this place had next-gen security," Hardison said in his ear.

"It does, Wilson's brand new baby. That asshole Hume got it for him from one of his defense contractor buddies."

"Well, about a minute and a half ago baby burped all over the sitter."

Eliot cursed. "Damn it, Hardison, I told you not to mess with that!"

"I didn't! It wasn't me, man. His next-gen ain't got all the bugs out yet, is what I'm saying. It'd be a hell of a lot better than the cameras we planted last week, though, and I'll bet I could get in if—"

"No! Hardison, I swear, if you poke that hornet's nest—"

"No, no, that's all right," came Nate's voice, talking to the guards but aimed at Hardison and Eliot. "We don't want to cause you nice people any trouble."

"I'm not doing a thing, honestly, it's like you all don't trust me or something!"

"We trust you, Hardison," Parker said. "We trust you to be you."

Hardison sighed, and Eliot could practically hear him rolling his eyes. "I just don't even — just make the switch and get to the house, before these guys start paying attention."

"It explains why we didn't pick up their communications," Jensen said. "They're using some kind of — I don't even know, man, I mean, 'home made' doesn't do it justice, but it's not military and it's not off the shelf. It's a combination of some very high-tech shit, and I'll tell you, I would love to get my hands on it."

"Can you hack it?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Jensen said with a grin. "Might take a few minutes."

"Any activity in the house?"

"No sir. Guards still don't seem bothered by the glitch in the security."

"Well, keep an eye on them."

"They're moving, boss," Cougar said.

Clay grabbed the binoculars and looked. Eliot and the woman were heading across the lawn, keeping to the shadows. By the gate, the dark-haired man and the blond were still chatting up the guards, who didn't see a thing. Clay snorted. "Fucking amateurs."

"Looks like they're heading for the roof."

"They'll be going in via the skylights over the music room," Clay said.

Cougar watched them through his scope. "Should I take them out?"

"Negative, negative," Clay said, shaking his head.

"What if they're after them same thing we are?"

"Then we'll take it from them when they leave. I don't think they are, though. Something else is going on here, these people aren't arms dealers."

"I think you're right, sir," Jensen said. "I've cracked their comms — listen to this."

"But what if they sell it?" Parker whispered. "What if someone takes it and they die? They'd die because of something we did."

Eliot shook his head. "No one's going to mistake that for heroin, Parker, not once they open it. That's the whole point."

"I still don't like it."

"Well, I don't like breaking into a house where goddamned Roy Hume is head of security, but that's what we're doing."

The lock gave and she flicked the latch open on the skylight. "Hardison, we're ready."

"Security's still eating donuts and watching American Idol, you're good to go."

"You sure about the motion detectors?" Eliot asked.

"Yes, I'm sure," Parker answered. "They never turn them on before midnight, and with skylights this size," she went on, sliding the skylight slowly open, "vibration detection won't work. Alarms would be going off every time there was a thunderstorm." She dropped the rope, and Eliot followed her down.

"Seven minutes," he said. "Come on."

Vaughn Wilson's office was down the open spiral staircase, through the empty parlor, and across the entry hall; Hardison's voice in their ears assured them no one was in this wing. Eliot went first and Parker followed, closing the door silently and then heading over to the false panel beside the fireplace.

Eliot loved this part. Watching Parker work was watching perfection, it was just a joy to see. All of them, really, but especially her, the way her focus went laser-tight, her hands moving over whatever she was working her way past. It was like watching someone disarm a bomb, only without the messy explosion if it took her longer than she thought it would.

He counted seconds in his head while he watched her, keeping his ears open for footsteps — the advantage of houses with marble floors, usually you'd hear someone coming unless they were dressed for keeping quiet. They still had four and a half minutes when the safe clicked open.

Parker started pulling the money out while Eliot got the counterfeit currency from the bag, but then she stopped, looking into the safe quizzically.

"Eliot," she said, in that tone that always got his attention. It was the one that said things were about to go very wrong. "There's something in here that isn't money."

He looked in over her shoulder. Behind the remaining cash was a clear plastic box about the size of a shoebox and padded with blue foam, and tucked neatly into a precisely shaped indentation in the foam was a gleaming metal ball with a blue LED display. The display read 24:00:00. Eliot looked closer — a logo was etched below.

Adrenaline spiked his heartbeat and he narrowed his eyes. "NanoSine, goddamn it. Nate, Sophie, situation's changed. You get out of here, now, head to the backup site."

"Eliot? Is that 'nano sign' supposed to mean something to anyone who isn't standing next to you and Parker? Because I'm—"

"NanoSine Technologies," Eliot said, handing counterfeit bills to Parker to put in the safe and stuffing the real currency into the bag. "Defense contractors working on nanotech, biotech, micro nukes, 'clean' bombs, that kind of thing. Now I don't know if these guys stole it or bought it, but we don't want to fuck with them on this. Goddamn it, Nate," he hissed, "I told y'all this was a bad idea, I told you it was a bad fucking plan."

Eliot heard the slamming of the car doors and his heart started to beat again when the engine started. "They'll be checking the grounds any minute," Nate said. "Let's leave the post-game analysis for when we're all out of here, okay? You two get done and get out."

Then Hardison's voice again, with a restrained note of panic. "In fact, how about you be done now. Security's woken up, they're heading out in pairs, and three of the pairs are headed your way."

Parker snorted. "Eliot can take out six guys, no problem."

"Yeah," Eliot growled, "but even I can't take out six before one of them hits the alarm. They'll lock the place tight as a drum, and I ain't risking Hume getting his hands on you." He zipped the bag shut and shouldered it. "Come on."

"Just a second."

Eliot turned in time to see her reaching for the box. "No!" He grabbed her wrist and she froze. "No, leave it. We don't — we don't know what triggers it, don't even know for sure what it is."

For a second he thought she might argue — and hell, maybe she'd be right to. Whatever this was, it didn't belong in the hands of someone like Wilson. But she just nodded and closed the safe, and then the panel. He cracked the door open and checked down the hall; they were clear. "Okay, come on."

"Guys," Hardison said, "there's security coming towards you from the north and the east, and another team heading for the music room. They're gonna cut off your exit, you gotta move."

"How close are they?" Eliot asked.

"They're entering the library now."

"Shit." Eliot shoved the pack into Parker's hands, and then his comm. "Go. Leave the rope hanging, that's how I got in. Don't get caught, Parker."

"But—"

"I mean it! They'll be up there before we can get out, I'm just gonna give 'em someone to find so they stop looking long enough for you to get to the van. "

Parker stared at him. "Nate says you have to come with me."

"Parker," Eliot growled. "This one's my call. Go." He turned and headed for the library, and Parker went.

The kitchen door of the borrowed house opened and Aisha and Pooch came in. "What the hell happened?" Aisha asked irritably, and hopped up onto the counter. "I thought we were set."

"We were," Clay said. "Cougar spotted two unknown persons breaking into the house. We're pulling back until we can find out what's going on."

"You afraid they'll interfere with the precision timing of your 'crash the gate in a hail of bullets' plan?"

Clay shot her a look. "I promise I'll let you use the rocket launcher next time," he said, and she rolled her eyes. "No, one of those unknown persons isn't actually unknown. His name is Eliot Spencer. Now, I don't know what they're doing there, but when our plan involves a micro nuke that'll flatten everything within two kilometers and break glass forty-eight kliks from here, I'd rather not be dealing in unexpecteds."

"What's this guy's story?" Jensen asked.

Clay hesitated, then said, "He used to be on the team. Long time ago, before you guys. Eliot was our delivery and retrievals specialist."

"It's just a quick drop, in and out. We'll pick you up in Ulaanbaatar in three days."

He cleared his throat. Didn't do any good thinking about how long those three days had become, or how thoroughly fucked the end of that story was.

Parker was out on the roof now, a shadow slipping through shadows, and then Clay lost sight of her. She reappeared on the ground, heading for a service gate in the west wall as the guards by the front gate finally started to fan out. They were way too late, though; she was over the wall like a cat, and just as gone.

"Hey Colonel," Pooch said. He was leaning over Jensen's shoulder. "You uh, you may want to add retrieving your retrieval specialist to that 'crash the gate in a hail of bullets' thing. They've got him."

Clay looked at the hijacked security feed. Eliot had let them cuff him — standard-issue handcuffs, nothing Eliot hadn't escaped from before — and now four of the guards were manhandling him down the corridor while the other two went to retrieve the rope and close the skylight. He shook his head. "He can get out of that. As long as they don't shoot him or break his legs, he should be fine."

Jensen snorted. "Tell that to his friends." He offered Clay the headphones and Clay held one to his ear.

"—my fault! I tried!"

"Parker, sweetie, no one's saying it's your fault." A woman's voice, lightly accented, maybe the blond from the gate.

"He's so stubborn, and now he's stuck in there with those people, and even Eliot might have a problem taking out six guys if they kill him first!"

"They're not going to kill him, not until they know more," Nate said. "They'll want to find out who he's working for, what he was after."

"No, no, no, check this out." Hardison's voice again. There was a pause and a shuffling, and then Hardison went on, "That thing in the safe? I'm betting it's this. NanoSine's trying to keep a lid on the story, but it was stolen right out of their Battle Mountain R&D lab two days ago. They'll probably just assume he's there for that."

"All the more reason not to kill him," Nate said. "They'll want to find out how he knew about it, who else knows, or if he works for NanoSine—"

"Oh, great. They'll just torture him first, that's sooo much better." Parker again. Something clattered and someone cursed, Clay wasn't sure who. "What we need is Eliot to go in there and rescue himself, except, oh, that's right, we don't have Eliot anymore! Can we stop talking now and do something about that?"

Clay swallowed a laugh. He was starting to like this girl, whoever she was. "Jensen, you got a location on these people?"

Jensen turned the laptop and showed him the terrain. "Looks like the base station is one and a half kliks southwest by that abandoned gas station."

"This thing go two ways?"

Jensen handed him the headset mic and flicked a switch.

In his ear, Parker was arguing with Nate about whether to go now or just keep fiddling with their stupid electronics and their stupid plans and their stupid selves until Eliot was dead, and Clay said into the mic, "I like your attitude, Parker. And I think my team and I can help you out of this little jam you're in."

There was dead silence on the comm for three heartbeats. Then they all spoke at once: "Who is this?" and "Who are you?" and "How in the hell did you get on this frequency?"

And then Parker said, "You can get Eliot back?"

Clay looked down at the house. It had been nine years since Darkhan, and after Eliot left, Clay hadn't figured he'd ever see him again. "Yes," he said. "We can get him back."

This was far from the worst situation Eliot had ever been in.

There'd been the arms dealer in Tucson who'd staked him out in the desert for the vultures. Or the cage in Rijeka with the rats, which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been hallucinating, too. Or if it'd been big enough to stand up in.

There was the week in Lutsk when Mackey's pet doctor had used him as a guinea pig for his new opiate derivative, and that flooded cell in Tutuila, and the three days he spent chained in the cargo hold of a ship in Puerto De Cartagena with a fractured scapula and the bodies of two drug runners and a dog. He'd liked that dog, too.

There was Darkhan, the one he always thought of when someone said, What's the worst situation you've ever been in? Shit-hole cell in a Quonset hut near the Russian border, a pistol with one bullet and money on the table, about to die for nothing at all while that bastard kept pulling the trigger and laughing.

And then what happened when the team finally found him.

So yeah, this was not the worst situation he'd ever been in, but it was far from the best. He could taste blood from where Hume's ring had cut him on a back-hand, and his head throbbed. Might be a concussion. He hurt like fuck every time he took a breath, couple of cracked ribs and a pair of long, angry gashes from Hume's butterfly knife. It wasn't the injuries that were the problem, though, it was Hume. The guy was a fuckin' nut job, and now that his hired guns were aware of that, they were acting more like Eliot would have expected Hume's hired guns to act.

He pulled against the cuffs and tried to look the kind of scared that a guy would look if he wasn't someone like Eliot. "Listen, I don't, I don't, I don't know anything about anything, all I know is this looked like a place'd have money, right? I mean look around!"

Hume snorted, flipping the knife between his fingers, open and closed, open and closed, open again. "Right, you just happened to pick this house, on this night, for a little recreational breaking and entering, you expect me to believe that?" He leaned down to look in Eliot's eyes and tucked that knife up under his chin. "What I did to the assholes who were watching fucking television while you came in through the roof?" He glanced meaningfully towards the door through which the bodies had been removed. "That's nothing. For you, I'll take my time, and you'll die screaming, in bloody little pieces, one by motherfucking one unless you answer my questions. Now who do you work for?"

The door opened and Eliot smelled Wilson's too-sweet cologne, and the lingering scent of cigar smoke. "No one," he insisted, "it's just me, I was just going to—"

Hume's fist slammed into his right cheek, almost knocking him out of the chair.

"For fuck's sake, Roy!" Wilson's voice cut through the ringing in Eliot's ears and he watched the bright drip of his blood onto the carpet. "I told you to get him out of here before you start that shit, I just had this whole room redone! Take him out to the paddock or something. But not the stables, I don't want you upsetting the horses."

"Fine," Hume growled.

And that was something, then. Out of the house meant out in the open, closer to getting outside the wall and losing himself in the thick woods between the house and the road.

Hume got a black case out of the top desk drawer. "This is still in the experimental stages," he said, opening it, and he took out a syringe and an amber colored vial. "If it works, it could revolutionize interrogation techniques. It's just a bonus that it makes you stumble around like you're on the fifth day of a seven-day drunk, so if you've been thinking you might have a chance of running off, this should clear that up for you." He drew a small amount of clear fluid into the syringe and jerked his chin at the two guards. "Hold him still."

"No. No!" The guards grabbed his arm and Eliot jerked against them, the handcuffs cutting into his wrists and his ribs screaming as he struggled. It was useless, though — they had him pinned good and tight, and he felt the needle slide in and a sudden burn when Hume depressed the plunger. The burn traveled fast, lighting him up like someone had set off an explosion in his chest, and Eliot gasped for breath, his vision going bright and sparking at the edges.

"Now, I could spend the time to tell you how this works," Hume said, leaning against the desk and watching Eliot closely. "I could explain all about biochemistry, electrochemical impulses in the brain, nanotechnology, how your body reacts when you're going to tell a lie, but you wouldn't understand it. Hell, I barely understand it, and I've watched the webinar. But all you really need to know is that in about five minutes, if you lie to me, it'll feel like someone's shoving a hot poker into your brain stem."

"I'm not— I'm not lying," Eliot started, but his voice sounded muffled, and he couldn't tell for sure if he was actually speaking at all.

The door opened again, echoing strangely, and the guard's voice when he spoke echoed as well. Eliot knew it was the drug, but that didn't make it sound any less strange.

"The grounds are clear, sir, there's no sign of any other intruders. The couple's story checks out, too. The plates are registered to Martin Duroc, and his American Express card was used to buy two tickets to the 7:30 performance of The Magic Flute downtown as well as seventeen point six gallons of gas and a Snicker's bar at the gas station at 51st and Hayworth, about six minutes after they left here."

That was good. Parker made it out, Nate and Sophie made it out, Hardison was on his game. No one got caught but him, and that was his job, to get caught, to take the fall. His breath was coming short now, and his head was starting to spin, things were slipping away, the world was slipping away, like falling into a dream.

He couldn't afford that; that would get him killed, or worse. He sucked in a breath and the sudden sharp pain in his ribs made him choke back a gasp, but it helped. "Y'see? I'm not lying," he said again, and frowned, and worked his jaw for a moment.

"Bullshit," Hume snapped. "You may have broken in here alone — although that," he added, jabbing his finger at the nervous-looking guard, "doesn't mean a goddamned thing — but you're sure as hell lying about why." He headed for the door. "Take him out to the show barn by the paddock and cuff him to one of the gates, I'll be out in a little while."

One guard held a gun on Eliot while the other two hauled him up out of the chair. The room spun sickeningly and he couldn't control his feet; they stumbled under him like somebody else's, like things he was tangled up in.

He wondered where the team was, if they were hanging around trying to think up some crazy damned plan to get him out.

He hoped like hell they'd gone on home — there wasn't shit they could do in a situation like this. Even Sophie couldn't con her way in the front gate with the whole estate on alert, and they wouldn't be able to sneak him out past however the fuck many guards when he could hardly even walk. Hell, the sheer amount of ground they'd have to cover put that idea firmly into 'you've got to be fucking kidding me' territory.

Call Sterling, maybe. Interpol probably already had their eye on this bastard, but Eliot needed a way out tonight. Hume wasn't the type to hang on to a person just waiting to see if something interesting would happen. It was tonight, or he wasn't getting out. And there was nothing his team could do. If they tried...well, hell, he couldn't think about that now.

That was one of the problems with working on a team. Sometimes they'd do some crazy damned shit, worry the hell out of you with that kind of behavior and wind up getting their sorry asses killed for you over no good goddamned thing at all.

There were some ways it was just easier knowing you were on your own.

Hardison was staring at the weapons like they were snakes — snakes made out of some kind of super high-tech security he wanted to crack. He looked equal parts fascinated and disgusted. "With all this firepower, you're saying we can't just go in there and get him?"

"The problem with the 'crash the gate in a hail of bullets' plan," Clay said, "which had been the distraction part of the original one," and he shot Aisha an irritated glance which she returned with a smile, "is that originally there was only one guy on the grounds we minded getting shot, and we could've worked around it even if he had."

"Whereas now there's someone we definitely don't want to get shot," Nate said, "and no reason for them not to kill him outright if they think they're blown."

"Or to use him as leverage if they figure out someone gives a damn," Pooch added.

The getting-to-know-you part of the meeting had gone better than Clay thought he had any reason to expect, though maybe that was because Eliot's new team wanted him back as quickly as possible. And he had to admit, the plan that had brought them here had been a pretty good one. If you couldn't get the law to take care of your local drug dealing gun-runner, and you weren't the kind of people to kill him yourselves, get his associates to turn on him. Switch out badly cut smack for the good shit going to the drug deals that financed his weapons, and replace counterfeit currency for the money that would go to the arms dealers for the weapons he was selling to terrorists — or freedom fighters, or who the fuck ever — and you'd put him in an apocalyptic amount of shit. Someone would take care of him for you.

"So what was the other part of your plan?" Parker asked. She was sitting on the counter beside Sophie, watching him and swinging her feet. They knocked against the cabinet in a steady rhythm. "I mean, what are you here for?"

"I think you already know, Parker," Clay said, meeting her eyes. "The item you found in the safe."

"Wilson is into something a lot worse than heroin and cheap knock-offs of Israeli assault rifles," Aisha said. "That little ball of metal is the equivalent of a W88 warhead, but it's got a delayed detonation of up to twenty-four hours that can be coded to the user's thumb print, and it fits in your pocket."

"And you're going to steal it," Sophie said slowly. She had turned out to be a brunette, not a blond, but Clay hadn't asked what that was about. "What are you going to do with it?"

Clay briefly considered lying. It wasn't S.O.P. to share that kind of info, but they all wanted Eliot back alive, and given their particular skills — Hardison's and Parker's, specifically — they had a better chance of that if they combined their resources. Lying wasn't conducive to that, and Sophie struck him as someone who could spot a lie.

"We're not going to steal it," he said. "Wilson has a meeting tomorrow with a man who works for Max, a C.I.A. spook who tried to have us killed. Our plan was to go after the drugs and guns in that shack Parker and Spencer broke into, and while the guards were busy with us, Aisha was going to crack the safe and tag the package. It makes its way to Max, and we follow."

"So, this is just about revenge?" Nate asked.

"No." Aisha fixed him with her sharp gaze. "The man we're after has an agenda that involves dramatic destabilization of the global political structure in order to ensure the continued success of certain governmental—"

"No, no, no." Nate shook his head. "You're talking about interfering with a legitimate—"

"He's going to sell the bomb to terrorists," she said. "That kind of 'destabilization.'"

That shut Nate up, but Sophie still looked horrified. "But what if you lose the bomb before it gets to the target? Shouldn't we take it now, while we can?"

"Colonel?" Jensen interrupted. "They're moving Spencer."

"We won't lose it," Clay said as he moved to Jensen's side, but Sophie wasn't listening anymore, she was heading over to peer at Jensen's screen as well. So were Parker, Nate, and Hardison. Thankfully his own team were content where they were; Jensen was looking a little crowded.

"They've shot him up with something, Colonel. They're moving him, but the audio was garbled, I couldn't make out where to."

Clay watched the screen as two guards half dragged, half carried Eliot out of the house. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and he was stumbling like he was about to pass out, and he barely put up a fight when they bundled him into the back of a golf cart. Within a few moments they were out of sight of the security cameras.

"Cougar," Clay said, "they're heading around the east side of the house."

Cougar was already on his feet, and he nodded and slipped out the kitchen door, rifle in hand.

Parker headed for the door after him. "He's not going to shoot at them, is he? Because he could hit Eliot, and that would be very, very bad."

Clay had to smile. "No, he's not going to shoot at them yet, sugar, but if he did, he'd hit what he was aiming at."

Hardison stared at him. "You — did you just call her," pointing to Parker, and then back to Clay.

Parker screwed her mouth up and looked at Hardison. "He's going to get Eliot back, he can call me 'sugar' if he wants to. Anyway, Sophie calls me sweetie, that's almost the same thing."

"Yeah, but, but that's Sophie, that's—"

"Oh, god, Clay," Pooch said, tipping back in his chair. "Now she's gonna have to blow up your house or something, isn't she."

Jensen snickered, and Clay smacked him on the back of the head. "Can we focus, please?"

"Blow up your house?" Hardison said.

Parker snorted. "I would never do that." But the little smile on her face said that maybe, maybe, she might.

Clay was really starting to like this girl.

The radio crackled and Cougar's voice said, "Boss, they're taking him to the show barn at the paddock. I have a clear shot."

Clay grabbed the radio. "Negative, not yet."

"Why not?" Parker asked, staring at him. "Take out the guards, go get Eliot, simple, why wouldn't we do that?"

"There's a half mile of open ground between that barn and anything else," Pooch said, showing her on Jensen's screen. "Spencer's barely keeping upright, and we got to get him to the truck before I can drive us out of here. Unless you want to go back to plan A." He looked at Clay and raised an eyebrow, but before Clay could answer, Sophie broke in.

"We need a diversion," she said. "Something to keep them away from both the paddock and the safe while we get Eliot."

Nate was nodding, one finger to his mouth. "Hardison, if you can get into their security system, can you give them something to do besides watch Eliot and that safe?"

"If I can get in," Hardison answered, "yeah. I could give 'em ghosts wherever you want, all over the place, move them around, whatever. But Eliot was right, they've got some kind of next-gen military security, it could take me hours just to get in."

Jensen tipped back and crossed his hands behind his head. "One of the advantages of being in the military, bro," he said with a smug grin. "Or, you know," he added, glancing at Clay, "ex-military. I used to practically build that shit. We're already in."

Eliot sat slumped against the door of the empty stall while the world spun around him. The show barn smelled only faintly of horses, but the smell was still comfortable and warm.

That was the only thing that was. His arms were pinned behind him and every breath hurt. His head was pounding worse than ever, one eye swelling shut, blood in his mouth, and he was seeing two of everything. He was trying to pick the lock on the handcuffs with fingers that felt like they belonged to somebody else and a slim nail that he'd managed to get hold of after he tried to head-butt the tall one but missed. He'd lost his balance and they'd tried to grab him, and he'd tried to duck, and all three of them had gone down in a messy pile.

Fucking embarrassing for everybody, that was.

The guards had chained him up here and fucked off somewhere, maybe fucked off altogether after seeing what Hume did to those other two. He couldn't blame them if they had — they were in way over their heads. He wondered if Hume's reputation was better than the man himself, or if there was some other reason he'd hired these jokers. Or maybe he just didn't know how to put a team together.

He licked blood off his bottom lip and kept working on the lock.

He and Parker might have both been able to make it out, back then when he'd first realized what they were dealing with. He'd known it when he'd shoved his comm into her hands and told her to go, and he was even more sure of it now that he'd seen Hume's weak damn security team up close and personal. But he knew things about Parker, things that made her more than just a voice on a comm or a piece in play. Things that made him not want to see her getting taken apart by someone like Roy Hume. Hume would've been able to tell, too, and that would've been it, he'd have done whatever it took to get whatever he thought they had to give him, and he would've been doing it to Parker. And Eliot wouldn't have been able to stop him.

So maybe they could've both gotten out without the alarm getting raised, without the estate getting locked down and lit up 'til there wasn't no place for either of them to hide, but weighing the odds of that against the imagined sight of Parker after Hume had been at her a while, there hadn't been any choice.

That was the other thing about working with a team. They might do some crazy-ass shit for you, but you might do some pretty crazy shit for them.

He didn't know how long he'd been working on the lock when he heard footsteps in the doorway and turned to look, squinting against his own blurred vision. The world was spinning worse than ever now and he was seeing tracers every time he moved his head, but he could make out a tall figure, his crew-cut back-lit and bristling in the security lights from outside. He had a chain in one hand, and something in the other, flipping it in his fingers, closed and open, closed and open, the light shining through it. That damned butterfly knife.

"Hey," Eliot said, "the fuck are you doing?"

The words came out more slurred than he'd thought they would.

"I wanted to continue our conversation," Hume said, coming closer. "Now, where did we leave off? Oh, that's right. You were going to tell me who you're working for."

"I told you, I—"

Eliot gasped in a breath, and Hume laughed. "I warned you."

Searing pain spiked at the base of his skull and burned away any thought of what he'd been about to say. It left him panting, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Why don't you try that again?" Hume said. "Tell me who you work for."

Eliot looked at him blankly for a moment, trying to get past the haze of the drug in his system, past Parker, Sophie, Hardison, Nate, the plan, get behind that to something safe, something true he could say.

What he found was a cell in Darkhan, four days overdue for extraction and a pistol with one round, money on the table.

They're not coming for you, asshole. We called your boss, he just laughed, said why would he come for a piece of shit like you? The barrel of the pistol so close he could feel it, and the bastards making bets on whether the next shot blows his head off, and laughing about it.

Four empty shots, and then they'd heard the explosions.

Somebody'd come for him after all.

But that was nine years ago, and there weren't going to be any explosions tonight.

"I was working for Clay," he said finally, "it was just supposed to be a quick drop, just in and out."

"A drop?" Hume said. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Eliot shook his head. "Didn't even know what the package was. Whole thing was a fucking set-up, start to finish."

"You really want to do it this way?" Hume asked, but apparently it was a rhetorical question, because the next thing that happened was his fist slamming into Eliot's ribs, and there wasn't much talking for a while.

"All right," Jensen said, "we've got ghosts ready to activate in sectors two, four, seven, eight, ten, and thirteen."

Hardison looked at the ceiling and shook his head. "For the rest of the class," he said, "that's the pool, the sub basement, the second floor rotunda, the ballroom, the roof deck, and the observatory. Jensen's going to manage the first three and I'll manage the last three, moving them through the estate towards the storage building where the guns and heroin are, leading security away from both the safe and Eliot."

"Yes, but nothing's going to be stolen except for Eliot," Sophie said. "Won't Wilson realize something's wrong and cancel the meeting? What happens to your bomb?"

"Something is going to be stolen, though," Hardison said.

"Check this out." Jensen turned the laptop so they could see. "This right here? All the information necessary to access Wilson's bank accounts in the Caymans."

"While security's busy chasing ghosts," Hardison explained, "we'll be cleaning out his accounts and leaving behind a trace signature from a black hat outfit known for hiring local thugs to create a distraction while they take over your system to pull their heists. Wilson'll assume Eliot and the ghosts were their local guys."

"Anyway," Aisha said, looking up from the intel on the house and the safe that she and Parker were examining, "you don't cancel a meeting with a guy like Max. Wilson'd take that meeting even if he knew he'd been compromised."

"You can do that and manage these ghosts all at once?" Nate asked Hardison, his gaze flicking from Hardison to Jensen and back again.

Jensen smirked and Hardison just looked at Nate.

Nate held up his hands.

"Once we're in," Clay said, "Parker'll crack the safe again, Aisha will tag the package, and Cougs and I will get Eliot."

"I can tag it," Parker said, sounding sulky. "I don't need a babysitter."

Aisha looked at her. "Fine, you want to take a two millimeter chip and secure it in a bomb that could destroy this entire area if you look at it wrong, while security's roaming around loose, be my guest."

Parker opened her mouth but Clay interrupted before she could seriously irritate Aisha.

"Parker, Aisha will tag the package, and also incapacitate anyone who tries to interfere with you. This will ensure that we don't have to pull your ass out of the fire after we get Eliot. Pooch?"

"Insertion points," Pooch said, pointing to a pair of dots on Jensen's screen. "Aisha and Parker go in here and wait for Jensen's signal. Clay, Cougs and I will swing around here to the northeast and Cougs and Clay will get Spencer, then we'll come back to the west wall where Parker went out the first time. No crashing anything, no hail of bullets, not unless the op goes pear-shaped."

"And if it does?" Nate asked, raising an eyebrow.

Pooch grinned. "That's why God made little green M136 AT4s."

Clay grinned back. "That's what I like to hear."

"Just be sure you're not in with the heroin when I fire it."

Nate looked at him, then looked at the others. "So noted. No going back for the drugs."

"No fucking up the op," Pooch countered.

"I was — I was kidding, we're not... you know what," Nate said, shaking his head, "never mind."

"Now we're going to clear out of the house," Pooch went on. "Everyone's going to be mobile in case Wilson decides to check up on his only neighbors. Jensen, you and Hardison'll run your part of the op from Hardison's vehicle. Sophie, Nate, there's an old farmhouse two kliks further down the road from the gas station you were at earlier. That's our rendezvous point."

"Are we clear?" Clay asked, and there was a murmur of agreement. "All right, let's mount up."

"Hold up, hold up, not so fast," Hardison said. He was getting several tiny items out of his pack, and he started handing them out to Clay's team. They were earbuds. "These are very sensitive pieces of equipment, so don't, you know, don't be yellin' on the comms. Liable to put somebody's ear out. You don't have to do anything to activate them, and we'll all be on them, so try to keep the chatter to a minimum."

Parker snorted a laugh and Hardison rolled his eyes at her, but nobody explained.

It took less time than Clay would have expected for them to gear up and clear out. Eliot's new team seemed to know their shit, and had their own rhythms that slotted neatly in beside his team's, and in a few minutes they were filing out the kitchen door leaving the place as pristine as when they'd arrived. Parker even stopped and re-locked the deadbolt. He watched, smiling a little, and when she looked up and caught him looking, she hesitated, then gave him a shrug and pushed past. "Wouldn't want anyone breaking in," she said, and he laughed, and followed her down to the truck.

"Everybody in?" Pooch asked when he'd shut the door. "Here we go."

Pooch left the lights off on the truck, the moonlight making the road look like something out of an old black and white movie, and took them around to where Aisha and Parker would go in over the wall. Clay bit his tongue on the be careful that wanted to come out, and few moments after they left the truck, Aisha's voice in his ear told him they were in position.

Pooch started moving again. It was a full four minutes going slow and quiet through the darkness to get to the low hill overlooking the paddock, and when they reached it, Pooch killed the engine and the three of them climbed out. There was no wall here, just a fence guarded by video feeds that Jensen and Hardison already had control of, and they had a perfect view of the target.

"What do you see, Cougar?" Clay asked. He had his night-vision binoculars, but Cougar's eyes were better no matter what they were using, and he was already looking through his scope.

"Two entrances," Cougar, said, "like a shotgun shack. Both open, target on the floor near the far end. Looks conscious." After a moment he added, "Someone is with him."

"Jensen," Clay said, "you and Hardison ready?"

"Yes sir."

"Light 'em up."

"Y'know the shitty thing about Darkhan?" Eliot said. He was slurring worse than ever, and he rolled his head to the side to squint at Hume through the eye that wasn't swollen shut. "They didn't even want anything, not from me. I was just...just bait. Fuckin' worm on a hook, man, and they got bored." He laughed, and it sounded raw and wrong. "Bored motherfuckers, got the barrel of that thing right fuckin' there and just...click, click, click. Man, I hate guns."

Hume snorted a curse. He was leaning against the opposite stall, bandaging his split knuckles. "Fucking experimental shit. Believe you me, those fucks are getting a very angry visit from me on Monday."

"Wasn't like dying for something," Eliot went on, just to keep talking, to keep telling the true story. Every time he stopped talking he thought about Parker and the team, like when someone says "don't think of elephants" and then you can't think of anything else. And every time he thought about them, he thought of lying to protect them, and that red-hot poker would push against his brain, but keep telling the true story and you won't think about that. "Once they got — got word to the Colonel I wasn't dead, it didn't matter, they could kill me and those assholes still would've come, everything would've gone down just the same whether I was alive or dead." He laughed again. "Should'a left me there, fucking assholes."

"Shut the fuck up!" Hume shouted, and the sound of it exploded in front of Eliot like fire, and then the chain crashed into his ribs and he curled in on himself, didn't have breath to scream. "Now let's try this again," Hume said, crouching in front of Eliot. "You're not in fucking Darkhan, and if you don't tell me what I want to know, there won't be enough of you left to bury." He grabbed Eliot's jaw and forced his head up. "Who are you working for?"

Eliot was gasping in short, whining breaths through a throat gone tight with pain. "It— it was Boomer," he managed at last, "he— he—"

Hume looked pleased. "Boomer? Who the fuck is Boomer?"

"De— demolitions. Best in the—the business," Eliot gasped.

"A name," Hume snarled, gripping Eliot's jaw hard. "Give me his fucking name."

Then Hume blinked, and his eyes went wide. His grip slackened, and he slumped backwards.

"His name," came a voice from years ago, like a hand pulling Eliot out of the fire, "was James Winstead, and he died in Darkhan on a rescue op for one of my men."

But the information didn't help Hume at all; Hume was already dead.

Eliot turned to look at Clay and huffed out a breath. It might have been a laugh, Clay wasn't sure. "Colonel. Now I know I'm fucking hallucinating, you're supposed to be dead."

Clay dropped into a crouch beside him, nine years falling away like they were nothing. "I'm not dead," he said, and started going through Hume's pockets as Cougar came jog-trotting in from the other end of the barn. "He's cuffed to the gate," he said, and tossed Cougar the keys.

Eliot shifted so Cougar could get to the lock, and a few seconds later, the cuffs clattered free.

Eliot's face was a mess, his torso cut and bloodied. "They sure did a number on you, Spencer," Clay said.

"Yes, sir, they sure did."

"Well, we're going to get you out of here."

"Not really walking so good, Colonel."

"That's all right, we'll manage."

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Eliot asked.

"Well, we were in the neighborhood, got into a conversation with some nice folks who said they knew you. Seemed like they wanted you back pretty badly, so I said we'd help out. This is Cougar," he added. "Cougs, meet Eliot."

He got under Eliot's arm on one side, Cougar on the other, and together they got him to his feet. Clay could tell Eliot was hurting, but he didn't complain, hardly made a sound. Still the same tough bastard Clay remembered.

Everything went smoothly after that. Clay and Cougar got Eliot into the truck and Pooch circled around to the side, looking for Aisha and Parker. They came over the wall, barely visible slipping through the shadows.

"Anyone on their tail, Jensen?" Pooch asked as they climbed in.

The answer came back over the comms a moment later. "Nope, you're clear."

"Keep 'em busy another few minutes and then follow," Clay said.

"Yes sir."

"Any trouble?"

Aisha shook her head. "Package is tagged."

Pooch pulled out at an easy pace, heading for the main road while Clay and Cougar got Eliot stretched out in the back, and Clay's knife took care of what was left of his bloodied shirt. He whistled low at what they saw. Eliot's torso was a mass of cuts and bruising, with two long, angry gashes crossing them, and Parker made a hurt sound behind him, peering over the back of the seat. He hadn't realized she was watching.

"Don't worry, Parker," Eliot slurred, reaching out to try to pat her hand and missing. "Colonel Clay'll take good care of me, you ain't getting rid of me that easy."

"He'll be all right, sugar," Clay murmured. "He's had worse than this without half so many people around to look after him, and Cougar's the best damned field medic I've ever had. He's stitched me up more times than I care to count. Eliot, do you know what they gave you?"

Eliot shook his head. "Some kinda experimental drug. Something about nano...nanotech...nology. Makes it so you can't lie. I think there's some kind of narcotic in it, too." He was still slurring, and starting to sound sleepy. "Hey, Colonel?" He looked at Clay, and his pupils were pinpricks, his gaze glassy. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Finally, he just said, "It's good to see you."

Clay smiled, and gripped his hand. "It's good to see you, too, Spencer."

By the time they reached the farmhouse, Eliot was only about half conscious. He kept talking about Darkhan, and Clay couldn't tell if he thought that's where he was, if he thought this was that rescue op. When they pulled around back Clay was relieved to see that the Town Car was parked out of sight; Hardison's van pulled in behind them as Pooch parked the truck.

"All right, let's see what we can do here."

"Come on, there's a table in the kitchen. Pooch, grab that blanket?"

Sophie and Nate met them in the doorway. "What are you doing?" Sophie asked. "Look at him, he needs a hospital!"

"No," Parker hissed, "no hospitals, there are always police at hospitals."

"Sophe, it's okay, I'mma be fine," Eliot said, though the way he was stumbling as they helped him through the house wasn't reassuring.

"Don't worry," Jensen said. "Cougs can patch him up as good as new, he's done this a million times."

"Look at this." Pooch pulled his shirt up to show the fine line of a bullet wound from two years ago. "Barely even a scar! Jolene still sends him cookies every year for that."

Cougar cursed softly, something in Spanish about an echo, then plucked out his earbud and tossed it to Hardison. Pooch followed suit, but Clay had his hands full with Eliot.

"Come on, come on, there's not room enough in here for this to be a damned spectator sport," Aisha said, herding Eliot's new team out of the kitchen, and he made a note to thank her for it later. He could hear them on the comm even after she closed the door, the five of them arguing over the best thing to do -- or four of them, really. Aisha wasn't saying much, and Clay wasn't sure that what she did say constituted arguing, exactly. They quieted down after that, though, and Clay counted it a blessing. Honestly, he didn't know how Eliot stood it if they were always as talkative as they had been on tonight's op.

He and Cougar waited while Pooch threw the blanket over the sturdy wooden farmhouse table, then they got Eliot stretched out on it. Jensen was right there with the med kit, and Clay set about getting Eliot's shirt the rest of the way off.

Eliot, thankfully, seemed to have either gone to sleep or passed out, or a little of each. Clay ran practiced hands over his ribs, looking for damage and finding less than he'd feared, and Cougar cleaned the cuts while Clay checked Eliot's pulse. It was fine, though, and his breathing was good. Cougar started readying the needle for the deepest cuts, while Jensen fished out the Steristrips for the rest.

In his ear, Clay heard Hardison saying, "No, no, no, hold up, y'all. Local PD is not going to know how to deal with that guy." They'd been talking for a while but Clay hadn't been listening. He started listening now.

"Yeah," Parker agreed, "and Hume? Call me crazy, but I don't think he'd have a problem just blowing away a couple of policemen if they came knocking."

So, they didn't realize Hume was dead. Clay started to tell them, but Nate went on, "I'm not talking about local PD. Look, Hardison, you said these men are wanted by, what, pretty much every law enforcement agency in the country, including the CIA and the NSA, right?"

Clay closed his mouth again.

"Well yeah," Hardison said, "but, you know, look around the room, man. Any of us not wanted by law enforcement?"

"Not for the kinds of things they're accused of," Nate said. "Twenty-five children, Hardison. The estate of a man not convicted of any crime, his entire staff, and twenty-five innocent children. And now they want to deliver a bomb into the hands of terrorists."

There was silence, and Clay turned to Pooch. We've got a problem, he mouthed.

Pooch shook his head, gestured to his ear.

What is it? Jensen asked silently.

Clay raised a finger and shook his head.

"I don't know," Hardison said. "Just because the U.S. government says they did something, that doesn't mean they did it. And they risked a lot to help us get Eliot back."

Clay rubbed his jaw, then took out his earbud and handed it to Pooch, gestured to them to stay put.

Pooch nodded and inserted the earbud, and Clay got to his feet and slipped out of the kitchen.

He let them hear him coming down the hallway, and they were quiet when he walked into the front room, looking at him expectantly.

He leaned against the wall. "He'll be fine," he said. "His pulse is good, his breathing's good. Couple of cracked ribs, but nothing's broken. Cougar's taking care of the lacerations now."

There was a murmur of relief, though Sophie still looked doubtful.

"Where's Aisha?" he asked.

"Outside," said Parker. "She's watching to be sure no one's following from Wilson's place."

Clay nodded. "Hardison, my team gave you their comms back, didn't they?"

"Yeah, yeah, when we came in," Hardison answered, "but you know, if y'all wanted to keep one for reverse-engineering purposes...."

He trailed off, and then winced.

Nate looked at him. "Hardison, did you remember to get Clay's comm back with the others?"

Hardison took his earbud out and pitched it into his bag, scowling. "He was trying to keep Eliot's insides on his inside, excuse me for not wanting to distract him from that!"

Nate rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And you kept yours in why, exactly?"

"Same reason, Nate, I was a little distracted," Hardison answered irritably. "These things are made for long-term wear, you know, you're supposed to be able to forget you've got 'em in. And they weren't saying anything anyway," he added, shooting Clay an accusing glare. "You people are too damned quiet, man, it's creepy. Talk a little, let a guy know you're there!"

"So you've been listening to our entire conversation?" Nate asked Clay.

"Not all of it. Cougar and I were trying keep Eliot alive, so I missed the first part, but I did hear the bit about calling the police." He paused, then added, "I'd advise against it."

"Yes, well, I expect you would," Nate muttered.

"That thing in Bolivia with those kids," Hardison said, "it was all over the news, man, what the hell happened? Y'all are supposed to be dead."

Clay nodded. "Max blew up that chopper because he thought we were on it."

"Why weren't you?" Nate asked, watching him like Hardison had watched the guns earlier that night, like he was something interesting and awful.

"Well," Clay said, turning a slow gaze on him, "there wasn't room for twenty-five kids plus our team, and we didn't think it'd be real responsible to leave a group of children stranded in the Bolivian jungle."

"So instead you let them get blown up?"

"Nate," Sophie murmured.

Clay took a step towards him. "You tell me how five men on the ground with no surface-to-air firepower are going to stop a fighter jet from blowing a chopper out of the sky. You got a con you can run for that?"

Nate started to say something but Clay cut him off.

"No. You went into a situation that Spencer told you was a bad idea, and if we hadn't been here, you'd still be arguing over how to get him back. We risked our lives for him just like we did for those kids, and if you get the police here before we can get Spencer out, you'll be killing him as sure as Max killed them. I won't let that happen."

Pooch came up beside him and tossed the last comm to Hardison. "What are we doing, Colonel?" he murmured.

Clay glanced back towards the kitchen. "How's Spencer?"

"He's okay. Coug's finishing up now. He's still out, though."

"Listen to me," Clay said, fixing Nate with a narrow gaze. "If you call the police, we're taking Eliot when we go. He was one of mine, doing the U.S. government's dirty work on ops so secret they never even made it to paper. Just spoken orders from people who didn't exist, people like Max. Now you think about that. You think he isn't wanted by a dozen agencies? You really want them to know where he is, know he's alive, and well, and working with you?"

"Nate, he's right," Sophie said quietly. "You know we can't risk it, none of us."

Hardison nodded. "I've pulled off some pretty miraculous saves, but I even can't hack Eliot's fingerprints. All it'd take is them getting a little bit suspicious about why he's so beat up, why we even know who these guys are, and that could be it."

Nate nodded, and Parker met Clay's gaze. "No police," she said. "Don't worry."

Clay let out a silent breath. He hadn't been looking forward to explaining to Eliot where he was and why if things had gone that way. "Thank you."

"Hey," Hardison said. "Thank you. But uh, could you try to not call her 'sugar,' like, ever again? It's creeping me out."

One corner of Clay's mouth curved up. "You think we're going to be seeing enough of each other it'll be a problem, Hardison?"

"Hey, you never know."

"Yeah, anything can happen," Parker said. "I mean, what are the odds of you being here tonight in the first place?"

"Well," Clay answered, thoughtfully, "turned out they were a hundred percent in favor."

By the time Eliot woke up enough to know where he was, it was a day and a half later, he was back at home, and Clay's team was long gone.

"He left this for you," Parker said, and handed him an envelope. It was still sealed; Eliot raised an eyebrow at her.

"What does, 'last year it snowed twice in the valley' mean?" she asked.

"You steamed it open and re-sealed it, didn't you."

She shrugged, a silent 'duh'. "What's it mean?"

He opened the note and glanced at it, but that was all it said and he crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. "Doesn't mean anything," he said, and discovered that the drug was out of his system, too. Parker looked at him and frowned, but she didn't call him on it, and he was grateful.

Six weeks later, though, he was nursing a beer in a dimly-lit dive bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when a familiar voice behind him said, "Wasn't sure you'd show up."

Eliot sat up straighter and nodded to the other side of the too-small booth. "Been a long time since we used that code. What made you think I'd remember?"

"Figured it was worth a try," Clay said, and slid in across from him. "Glad you came."

Eliot nodded. "How you doing?"

"Still not dead. How 'bout you?"

"Just about healed up. Cougar's good with a needle, doc said he couldn't have done better. They all okay, your new team?"

Clay laughed. "I been thinking of your team as the new one," he said. "Yeah, they're okay. Thanks."

"Sorry I didn't get to really meet 'em before you all took off."

"Well, we were on kind of a schedule."

"Yeah, Parker told me." Eliot flagged down the waitress and nodded to Clay, who ordered a beer and a couple of shots. "How'd it go?"

Clay shrugged. "Followed the package as far as Max's second in command. He never took it to Max, though. We had to grab it before he passed it off to a group of domestic terrorists in Montana."

"What'd you do with the package?"

"Aw, hell, what do you do with a thing like that?" Clay asked, rubbing his face. "We don't know how it works, don't know anyone who knows how it works. We broke into NanoSine and put it back. Left 'em a note, though," he added. "Said if we ever heard of anyone using it, we'd come back for the board of directors. Probably won't do any good, but it made us feel better."

Eliot nodded. "Yeah, shit, you know, they've got the specs, it's not like they couldn't build another one anyway."

"Yeah."

The waitress came with the drinks and Clay nudged a shot over to Eliot, then raised his glass. "Absent friends."

"Absent friends," Eliot said, and downed the shot. "Speaking of," he said, "I know Hawke's retired, living up in Colorado. You ever see him?"

Clay shook his head. "Not in five or six years. Last time I went 'round, he didn't have much to say. I think he's trying to forget some things."

"What about Roque?"

The look Clay got then told Eliot maybe he shouldn't have asked. After a moment, though, Clay just said, "Roque went his own way a few months back. I don't think we'll be seeing him again."

"You two ever work your shit out?" Eliot asked.

Clay almost smiled. "In a manner of speaking."

That was the kind of answer that said everything he needed to know. He left it where it lay; whatever happened between Roque and the team, Eliot wanted to keep his own memories of the man. They'd tried to kill each other almost as often as they'd wound up saving each other's asses, and it was that last part he wanted to remember. "So, should I still be calling you Colonel, or did they finally get around to giving you a promotion?"

Clay shot him a look and then a slanted grin. "Not in the military anymore," he said. "You should be calling me Clay. But even when I was, well, hell, Spencer, you know what kind of men the General picked. Any of us the sort to get promoted every couple of years? Made it to full Colonel and then this happened."

Eliot huffed a laugh and nodded. "Probably wouldn't have liked it much if they had, anyway. Can't see you being a general."

"So, what's with the team?" Clay asked. "Thought you'd sworn off them after Darkhan."

Eliot nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I had. But I don't know, I guess they got under my skin. The whole lone wolf act gets pretty old after a few years anyway."

Clay huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I guess it would."

"Ain't without its drawbacks, of course. Working with a team, I mean." He took a swallow of his beer.

"Advantages outweigh them," Clay said. He looked at Eliot, that same steady, sure look Eliot knew from so long ago. "They would've done anything to get you out of there, Eliot. They weren't going to bug out on you, even when we told them what they were up against."

Eliot nodded. "Yeah, I know. That's the problem. But thank you, you know. For saving my ass. Again. And my team's."

"Hey, I owed you one."

"No you didn't." Eliot shook his head. His chest was tight, and the new scars pulled with every breath. "No you didn't."

"I know," Clay answered after a moment. "That's just what people say. But that isn't how it works, you know that. Nobody keeps score, Eliot, that's not what it's about."

Eliot jerked his chin, half disagreement, half fuck you. "What is it about, huh? What was Boomer's death about? Saving my ass?"

"It's about having each other's backs, Eliot," Clay said, and he leaned forward, his voice dropping so it was just them, just between the two of them. "Boomer knew what he was doing. If it hadn't been you in that shit-hole it would've been someone else, maybe me, maybe Roque, or Hawke, or hell, Boomer himself. And he'd do it again, just like you would've done it for him."

"It wasn't for anything, Clay," Eliot hissed. "I was nothing but bait, I was a fucking trap and you guys walked right into it! Boomer died for—"

"Don't." Clay fixed him with a hard gaze. "Don't you fucking dare. They took you because we were beating them, we had those bastards running shit-scared and desperate, and can you tell me, honestly," he said, pointing at Eliot like he was pinning him there, "that if someone grabbed Parker to get to you, that she wouldn't be worth going after? That she wouldn't be worth everything it takes? Or Hardison, or Nate, or Sophie? You telling me they'd be 'nothing but bait'? That dying for them would be dying for nothing?"

Eliot's pulse was pounding in his veins and he clenched his fists beneath the table. "I ain't saying that. Don't you — I ain't saying that."

"You're worth just as much as they are," Clay said quietly. "You were worth it to Boomer, you're worth it to me. You're sure as hell worth it to them."

Clay's face was reddish in the dim light from the cheap electric candles, and Eliot remembered nine years ago seeing him coming like the Lord's vengeance through the fire, deafening gunshots and the smell of smoke and cordite and blood. And Clay's hand when he pulled Eliot to his feet, and the fire burning everything behind them.

"It was for something," Clay said. "It was for everything. And your new team, that's for everything, too. They're going to keep doing this kind of thing whether you're there to help them or not, you know they are, just like you're going to keep doing it."

"At least if I ain't there, they won't be dying for me."

"You'd rather they die for a shipment of smack and somebody else's bomb? Bullshit." Clay shook his head. "When it's for your team, it's never for nothing. If you'd stuck with us after Darkhan, you would've figured that out."

And there it was on the table between them, caught and quivering like a bowstring with nine years of draw on it.

Finally, Eliot said, "I shouldn't have walked out on you, Clay, on you and the team. I shouldn't have asked for that reassignment. I'm sorry I did that."

"Past is past, Eliot, don't be sorry. I understood why you had to go, I never held it against you. Neither did the men. Just," and he hesitated, and Eliot looked up. Clay was smiling a little, watching him. "Just don't leave this one," he finished.

"I ain't going to," Eliot said. "I ain't going to."

They stayed at the bar until closing time, then stumbled together out onto the sidewalk with their arms around each other, laughing about something, Eliot didn't even know what. The streetlights made pools of light in the darkness.

"Took you two long enough," Parker said, dropping down beside them from somewhere overhead. Clay jerked like he'd been snakebit and stumbled into Eliot, and Eliot stumbled, and then cracked up laughing again, and then Clay cracked up, and Parker just stared at them both.

"Why didn't you come inside, honey?" Clay asked when he could talk again, draping his arm over Parker's shoulder.

Eliot blinked. "Did you — did you just call her—?"

"Sophie told me that you two probably needed guy time," Parker said, falling into step with them. "Whatever that means. Anyway, I promised her I wouldn't interrupt." She leaned forward to look at Eliot. "Did you have guy time?"

Eliot grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, I think we did. Colonel? Did we have guy time?"

Clay nodded. "Yes, I believe you could call it that."

"Good," Parker said. "Nate says you should come back with us."

"Oh, he does, does he?" Clay looked at her, and Parker nodded.

"Your whole team. He promised not to call the police."

"That's quite a change."

"Hardison's been researching it," Parker said. "His research says you're okay, and Nate believes in research."

Eliot snorted. "He should've just listened to me, man. I told him, but nooo, he's gotta have our pet hacker poke around on the internet for a week to tell him what I just told him."

"Anyway, he said to tell you to come back with us," Parker said. "He said to tell you he thinks we can help you out of this little jam you're in."

They were almost to the corner before Clay smiled. "Well, Parker," he said, "I guess maybe we'll take him up on that."

Eliot tried to picture Nate and Clay working together on much of anything, and laughed.

Clay looked at him. "Something strike you as amusing, Spencer?" he asked.

"No sir," Eliot said, and grinned. Whatever happened, this was going to be an interesting ride.