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They’ve lost the mark.
The three of them have come to a London suburb to pursue a UK property developer. They usually wouldn’t have come after this guy, their backlog of scumbags being what it was, but they were already in town for another thing, so it felt like a bit of a might-as-well. Parker’s done that before, stealing a second painting cause it’s hanging right next to the one the buyer wanted.
This guy almost didn’t make their list because it was such a boilerplate job. It’s kind of amazing how many of these property swindles really just boil down to a game of find the lady, where the lady is millions of dollars that some rich person doesn’t want to pay taxes on.
Dodgy people need dodgy accountants, which is one of those weird spaces where the criminal world and the legal world meet.
“It’s like a donut,” Parker says.
“Hm?” Eliot hums. He’s reading one of the trashy novels he likes, where some special forces guy rescues a hundred hostages and is friends with the President. He says he finds them soothing, but Parker thinks he just likes heckling them, judging by the rants he’s gone on.
“On the one end you have fancy people, and on the other you have thieves and when you go far enough it sort of loops back around to stealing stuff.” Parker is proud of this metaphor. “Like a donut.”
“Sure babe, like a donut.” Alec is also distracted, he says he’s doing some sort of money trace, but Parker knows that’s running in the background while he plays Black Desert Online.
No one is appreciating her right now. Parker sighs.
She drapes herself around Eliot’s neck. He absentmindedly grabs her hand to kiss it before flipping the page.
“How’s the book?”
Eliot snorts. “Terrible. The president just had to repel his own assassination attempt, like the motorcade would be that far away. Everyone knows they keep those cars idling in case they need to make a quick getaway.” He turns the page and reads for a couple of seconds. Then he folds a corner and puts the book down on the table. He turns a bit in the chair so he can look her in the face. “Ok, tell me more about the donut.”
She fluffs up a little, pleased. He was listening! She opens her mouth but a ping comes from Alec’s computer.
“Got it!” Alec says, “Wait, dammit, someone’s coming for my base.”
***
The computer spit out an address of a fixer nearby. Not really an accountant, not really someone who did any work, but one of those people who finds a niche by knowing everybody’s business and knowing how to make a phone call.
Eliot vaguely knows this guy secondhand, Parker thinks she’s heard the name before, and they don’t have time to get more background, so they figure they’ll try Plan A: showing up at the front door and brazening it out. They can probably bribe this guy. He works for money anyway, this would just be some more money.
As soon as they’re a block away, Alec’s tablet lights up with a ton of blinky buttons.
“Woah,” Alec says. “This guy has some serious signal stuff going on. I’m seeing two separate uplinks, a satellite connection, and scramblers.” Alec looks up. “I’m beginning to believe this guy is legit, he might know what we need.”
Eliot’s hands tighten on the wheel. It’s what they hoped, but it also means he might be a tough nut.
They walk up to the buzzer, Alec hanging back, and Parker is surprised when the door immediately opens for them.
A middle-aged South Asian man in spectacles waves them inside.
Once the door is closed, he starts talking. “Mr. Spencer,” he says, which is always a bad sign, getting recognised. “To what do I owe the honour?”
But they decided to roll with it, so they’re rolling with it.
Smoothly, Eliot asks, “I’m looking for a client of yours, Donald Haskins.”
The man is already nodding. “You understand, I can’t confirm that any such man is my client.”
Eliot’s eyes narrow and the man swallows.
The rest is just negotiations, so Parker turns out the noise and focuses on cataloguing the space. If this goes sideways, they’ll need a second exit. She evaluates two windows, and a door to what is probably stairs to the next floor. She tunes back in though, when she hears some key words.
“Of course, after what you did to Moreau’s men when he was fleeing to San Lorenzo, I’d be suicidal to try to stop you. They say no one made it out of the warehouse alive, but the security cameras were backed up offsite. I’ve seen the footage.” He said leaning in a little, confidentially.
Eliot is standing stock still.
Alec is too concerned about the data signals he’s tracking to really be paying attention but it takes every bit of training Sophie ever gave Parker to keep her from swinging her neck around so fast that her hair would crack like a whip. She needs to know what Eliot’s face is doing because despite the fact he has a pretty good poker face -- keeping all those government secrets -- she can still read him. And that’s because when it’s something he’s ashamed of she can see something struggling inside of his eyes, like a little animal trying to get out.
She wants to look because she wants to see the other face, the one with the glint in the eye that says ‘you’re a liar and you’re trying to mess with me’. If she can see that, then everything will be ok.
But they have a job to do right now. “So give us the information.”
“Right you are,” Clarence says, “just let me grab --” Clarence has been moving back towards his desk.
“Hands where I can see them,” Eliot says, not quite a growl, but with some harmonics around the edges that take it just outside of normal. She decides she can risk a quick glance over and pass it off as natural and -- fuck.
It’s real. She knows it is.
She wants to know when, she wants to know how many. Above all, she wants to know how. How did this happen?
Clarence is frozen. He licks his lips. “Right you are.” Parker can hear the strain in his voice. “I’ll just move slowly then.”
Eliot nods at Parker. “Tell my associate what to look for.”
Parker heads over, pulling out a notebook from a desk drawer and handing it over to Clarence to page through. She plants a bug, mostly out of habit, Clarence seems like the type to do a sweep regularly.
After giving him instructions, she goes back to her original position. Feeling unsettled, she stands closer to Alec than she would normally. She remembers all of Eliot’s lessons about presenting separate targets so they’ll have more time to react if someone moves against them. She feels Alec startle slightly when she gets close, but he doesn’t move away and she can feel the warmth of him from here, the way it radiates out. It’s comforting. The bonus is that she startled him enough that he’s clicked back in with them, which makes Parker feel like she can relax just a bit, that Alec will pick up some of that slack.
Eliot is pacing just on the edges of Clarence’s peripheral vision, which probably explains why Clarence’s hands are shaking as he flips for the right page. “Right! Um, here it is.” He hands out the notebook and Eliot rips the page out and passes it off to Alec.
Alec nods and Eliot says, “If anyone asks --”
Clarence is already nodding furiously and blinking quickly. “Yes, absolutely, mum’s the word.”
Eliot grunts and Parker takes that as her cue to lead them out.
***
They’re in the car, Eliot carefully shoulder checking when Alec asks, “What was up with the fear of God routine back there, Eliot? Man looked like he was about to fall through the floor.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Eliot says.
Parker says nothing. She’s not sure what to think right now. Every part of her wants to run, just to get some space but she’s trapped in this tiny car with her emotions and there’s just not enough space for them. Parker doesn’t understand how everyone is supposed to keep all of their feelings inside of their tiny skeletons, when she feels things it’s like she’s got a skyscraper inside of her exploding out of her skull.
So she sits there, and thinks about being inside of vents and vaults and focuses on her breathing.
***
Parker slams her way back into their temporary safe house and turns on Eliot.
“Is it true?”
Eliot’s face blanked out in the way that means he’s packed up shop and moved into some tiny corner of his mind that’s nicer, probably full of tasty mushrooms and punching bags. Parker does the same thing, except hers is an endless rock wall with perfectly spaced hand-holds.
It’s the answer to her question but she needs to hear him say it.
Alec has his hands up. “Woah, Parker, what’s--”
“You killed people, didn’t you?”
“Parker, you knew that -- we both know what Eliot used to do --” Parker still isn’t looking at Alec, she’s watching Eliot, looking for any crack in the facade, somewhere she can get a fingernail grip on.
“No, not used to. This was after. This was recently.”
“No way,” Alec says, “He’d have told us.”
Eliot flinches, just a little.
Alec sees it. Parker can feel a mean smirk of satisfaction come onto her face. If she’s going to be thinking about this, so is Alec. So is everyone. Eliot wants to keep this from her? Too bad, they’re all in it now.
“Eliot?” Alec asks, and his voice is so small that Parker immediately feels bad for having wanted it. It wasn’t a good thing, to want him to be upset. Wanting other people to feel bad is a bad people thing. She keeps trying to be good, but she doesn’t know how.
Eliot stands to face them, hands clasped behind his back. “We were trying to take down Damien, we were pinned down in a warehouse. Nate told me he could get him if he could get to him. I had to clear him a path.” The retelling is bloodless, flat. “I used a combination of the terrain and the materiel left behind to pacify the area. In the end, it didn’t work.”
Something sticks out to Parker. “Nate knew?”
“Yes,” Eliot says.
“He didn’t tell us.”
“No.” Another one word answer.
Alec reaches out a hand to touch Eliot on the arm, lightly, and Eliot flinches. Alec pulls his hand back. “Why didn’t you tell us Eliot?” Alec asks. “This is a big secret to be carrying on your own, you don’t have to do that, anymore.” Eliot is looking at Alec, clearly confused. Alec should be mad. He’s the good one, the one who cares about people’s feelings, and doing the right thing. If Alec heard about a stranger shooting up a warehouse he would say they were a bad guy and deserve to be taken out. He can’t be ok with this.
“You’re not mad?” Eliot asks.
“Well, I’m a little hurt, cause I thought you trusted me and you were keeping some big information to yourself.”
Eliot looks so relieved.
It’s all wrong.
“You shouldn’t have told us,” Parker says, too loud. “I didn’t want to know.”
Alec frowns, looking at her.
Ever since the bad broker told them, Parker’s wanted to get out, to get away. But now that she’s here and they’re safe, she doesn’t want to go. She feels like if she leaves, something really bad is going to happen -- she’ll look away for a second and everything will be all shifted and sideways.
But she’s not used to sticking around when she’s upset. She goes out, she finds a perch, she figures out what’s wrong, then they talk about it. It works for them. She’s not always calm when she comes back, but at least she can say something useful. Unlike right now. Her brain feels like it’s boiling in her skull, bubbling around with nowhere to let out the steam.
“We keep all sorts of secrets, why couldn’t you have kept this one?”
Alec is frowning even harder. “What secrets, Parker?”
Parker waves her hands. “I don’t know, secrets!” She paces a little. “We had to leave that guy in the cave. The dead guy.” Parker remembers trying and trying again to get him out and how much she wanted to be good like Alec is. And she couldn’t do it.
“I know,” Alec says gently, “You told me. You did your best.”
She does remember telling Alec. He’d held out his arms and she hadn’t known what he wanted but he mimed hugging and she’d thought, yes, that, and crawled right in for a hug. He’d thought she was upset about failing to get the guy, she hadn’t known how to tell him that it wasn’t that at all, it was that she was actually ok with leaving him and she didn’t like what it said about her.
Eliot is just standing there, like a lump. How long between that cave and when he’d gone on his warehouse rampage? How come she didn’t notice something was up with him? His explanations and rationalisations of how they were different, of how there was something in them that let them survive, had he been thinking about how when it came down to it, he had killed and probably would again?
“How did you do it?” She asks, harshly.
Promptly, Eliot responds, “Guns.”
Parker hears a low sound and realises it’s herself. “You hate guns,” she says, voice breaking a little.
“I couldn’t let Damien get away.”
Parker and Alec don’t know the details of what Eliot had done for Moreau, but they had seen how driven Eliot had been, how torn up he was about whatever it was he’d done. Parker could believe that Eliot’s need to stop him beat out everything else, even his hatred for guns and his decision not to kill anymore.
Parker nods, blinking back tears. She’s back in the cave. She’ll always be in that cave, knowing there is a right way to do things and not being the one who does it.
She blinks again and Alec is in front of her, holding her hands. “Hey, no, Parker, it’s ok, I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
Parker shakes her head. She squeezes his fingers back though. She’s learned that that’s a nice thing to do, it feels good for both of them.
“Should I go?” Eliot asks, and it brings her back to the situation.
“No.” Parker says, sure of this thing, at least. “It wouldn’t make it better.”
“Wouldn’t make what better, Parker?” Alec asks.
Parker sits down, heavily. She ends up dragging Alec with her. Oops.
She waves at Eliot and he comes over obediently. “What if I want to be the person who dies in the cave?”
Alec takes in a sharp inhale but Eliot looks at her steadily.
“You can be, Parker. You can be whoever you want,” Eliot says.
She shakes her head though. “But I can’t, can I? Look at you, you hate guns, you hate killing people.”
Eliot’s mouth twists. She knows he understands her. They’re the same.
If she could really be who she wanted, then she wouldn’t be the person who could leave someone behind. She wouldn’t be the person who was seriously going to kill Tara when she thought Tara had betrayed them. There is always a part of her that was looking at things from the distance, that knew there was always another option. No matter what she does, she can’t make that part of her brain go away.
She stamps her foot and wheels on Alec. “Why aren’t you mad?”
He puts his hands up, alarmed. “Why is this getting flipped around on me?”
She didn’t know how to explain that Alec being calm is just making this worse. It makes her feel like she is the crazy one, and she isn’t crazy.
“I don’t get why you don’t think this is a big deal! Eliot killed people!” Eliot flinches when she says the word ‘killed’ which she sort of feels like it’s making her point.
“Fine!” Alec says, throwing up his hands, “I am mad! I’m mad that Eliot kept a major secret from me. And I’m mad because I shouldn’t be mad about that, I know y’all have your own things and I don’t have a right to everything that goes on in your head. You’ve told me that often enough.” Does that bother him? He never seems to be upset when either of them need to go off and be alone for a while. “More than anything I’m mad at Nate for putting Eliot in that position. He was there and he never should have asked that from Eliot.
But none of that matters because I could never be as mad as much as I worry about you. And when you’re both this upset, I want to do what I can to make it better.”
Parker feels a stab of guilt. She’s messing it up. She isn’t thinking about how Eliot is feeling at all and she knows it has to be pretty bad because of all of the flinching and shoulder hunching.
“You don’t need to make excuses for me. No one forced me. Nate didn’t ask me to do it,” Eliot says quietly. “I knew I could do it, that it was our best chance, so I did.”
“But this is what I’m saying!” Parker burst out. Once something works, there’s no way to go back to when it wasn’t even an option. And that’s what she wants. She feels her breath coming a little faster and struggles to make it even. “I want to be the type of person who wouldn’t even think about it. How do I, like, take it off the menu?”
“Why does Eliot doing something mean you can’t be who you want to be, Parker?” Alec sounds so bewildered.
“You don’t get it,” Parker says, feeling tears prick at the back of her eyes. Eliot takes an abortive step towards her.
“Then help me out, Parker,” Alec says, gently.
She opens her mouth, then closes it. She doesn’t know what to say.
Eliot had wanted to change, she knows that. He likes being able to help people and not having to kill anyone. He goes out of his way to not kill people, and he never ever used a gun, not even to threaten people. And then one day, he just picked up a gun and went back to his habits. So if he couldn’t change, not really, there was no hope for her.
“Should I go?” Eliot asks. He’s looking at her and his eyes are soft. She knows he’d go if she wanted but it wouldn’t help. In fact, it would kind of suck, to not have him around, so she reaches out a hand and he reaches back. The hand squeezing feels nice. She deflates a little.
Out of nowhere, Alec says, “I could kill Nate.”
Eliot sort of chokes on a cough and Alec says, “Too soon?”
“A little, yeah,” Eliot says, but he’s smiling.
The joke, as bad as it is, breaks her out of her thoughts a bit. The room feels a little bit less like it’s going to flip upside down, which gives Parker a bit more space to think. “Why are you mad at Nate, Alec?” It seems a little random and this is the second time he brought it up.
“For putting Eliot in that position. It’s his job to give options.” Stopping Eliot from objecting, he continues, “You can say what you want, he still didn’t do his job.”
Parker can feel the tumblers in her head rotating and she thinks through that. It feels like there’s something there.
Parker squeezes Eliot’s hand again, still thinking.
“It doesn’t have to be Nate, right?” she asks.
“Hmm?” Alec asks.
“To give options. It could be anyone, right? Like when we were on the train, you gave me options.”
Eliot squints at her a little, shrewdly but Alec just says slowly, “Yeah, that sounds right.”
“I want to change some things about me, and so does Eliot.” Anything that makes Eliot all sad and flinchy definitely needs to go. Maybe on her own, she can’t get there, but if they all decide the type of people they want to be in the world, and they all help each other, maybe there’s a chance?
Parker likes the shape of this, it feels like a key that’s got some ridges and teeth that are pushing things into place, tumblers sliding into the right position.
So she’s just got to ask, “Does that mean we can change, if we change together?”
“Assuming I agree that there’s anything wrong with you,” Alec says and Parker rolls her eyes. “I’m down to help. And I don’t want either of you ever feeling so alone again.”
Eliot’s voice is rough, like he’s been running, “It could be a plan.”
She can hear that he’s not convinced, but didn’t he just tell her that she could be whoever she wanted? He’s always helped her do that. And if she can do that, and if they all help each other, this is their best shot.
She just knows it.