What Else Would You Have Me Be?
Chapter 6
"You know that guy?" Donovan asked, and shit, Eliot had been careful not to stare, not to give anything away.
Hardison
in here meant one of two things. Either this was phase one of Nate's
plan, setting the stage for something about to hit, or things on the
outside had gotten much worse than Eliot had suspected.
"Huh. No idea." Eliot shrugged, casually glancing back towards the basketball hoop. "You?"
"He's staring," Donovan said, shaking his head. "Weird."
Alec's
body language- surprised and confused- could've meant anything as he
approached his side of the fence, and Eliot shifted his weight to his
other foot, about to take a step forward, when Donovan noted," he's
coming this way, you think…"
The last thing he needed was Donovan's curiosity. He aborted the movement.
---
This was the most carefully stupid thing Alec had ever done, but it was too late to back out now.
Nate
was going to kill him, if Sophie didn't get him first. But there
hadn't been time for a better plan. Tara wasn't going to be able to get
back in until tomorrow, and there was no way to get Sophie in before
Saturday. And for all he'd known, Donovan had already been closing in
for the kill.
He'd prepared. Comms were easy. Two earpieces and his phone were all he needed
The
phone would hold a charge for three days, and set to piggyback off the
wireless and relay via satellite back to JARVIS. More than enough time
to get a warning through to Eliot, and the moment Sophie found the note
he'd left, the rest of the team would be on comms as it all played out.
---
Going
through his case of backups, he found what he was looking for- an
earpiece he'd built last year. The earbud itself was of his own design,
but he'd built it into a hearing aid he'd bought online, Large enough
to be noticed immediately, but not noted. He'd been halfway
through making a second one when reality had set in and sent him back to
the drawing board. One person with a hearing aid was one thing. Four,
though, was a bit much.
Still, it was exactly what he needed
to get through a search, and yeah, the Maricopa County Jail wasn't the
Hilton, but it wasn't going to do any of them any favors to have an
inmate who couldn't hear them.
Even better? All he needed to
do was hollow out the hearing aid's casing, and it was just large enough
to hold a second earbud inside.
All he'd have to do was get it to Eliot.
---
The
last thing he'd done, before going out and getting himself arrested,
was to check the jail's systems for any changes in Eliot's status. He'd
estimated the time it would take to get through booking and intake, and
guessed that his arrival would coincide with the felony block's yard
time, but once he'd gotten started, Alec had been in an information
blackout. Eliot could've been moved down to isolation, or worse, the
infirmary. Anything could've happened in the meantime, even the morgue,
which Alec refused to think about.
He'd made it through intake, gotten printed and searched, charged and changed, given an armload of mostly-clean sheets, and finally led out with to Tent City by a guard named Miller, who'd muttered something about a labor roster before disappearing.
He
was contemplating the cot and the heat and the idiocy of this entire
enterprise, trying to figure out how he was going to get a message
through into maximum security, when he glanced out in the yard.
Eliot was standing right there, less than thirty feet away, alive, uninjured, and looking very… bored, actually.
Alec's
relief was short-lived, though. That boredom? That wasn't a good
thing. It meant Eliot's guard was down. And with Donovan standing
right next to him, with a shiv up his sleeve or stuck in his waistband,
there was a very good chance that anything Alec did could be the
distraction that he'd been waiting for.
Hand reaching up to his ear, Alec froze as a stray thought shot through, unbidden.
For
all he knew, Donovan and Eliot had history. It made sense. Donovan
was connected, somehow, to Moreau. And Eliot was letting the guy get
within five feet of him.
And you got yourself locked up, burned your best alias just to warn him about a friendly visit.
It
didn't track. Eliot's glances were bouncing off of him like he was an
uninteresting part of the scenery. He wasn't shooting him any furious,
angry glances, wasn't warning him off.
But if Eliot really was
in with Donovan, Eliot wouldn't have any reason to pretend not to see
him, wouldn't be feigning confusion as Donovan scowled and pointed in
Alec's direction. He'd fill him in, or at least come forward to find
out what Alec wanted before going back to tell Donovan what he'd
learned.
Alec needed to think. He turned the hearing aid over
in his hand, popping the case open in his fist and catching the second
earbud as it fell out before reseating the hearing aid.
If Eliot wasn't
close with Donovan, he'd keep him at arm's length. Eliot wouldn't show
his hand, and right now? That included cluing Donovan in on any allies
he had.
And fuck, Alec was in here to warn Eliot about a guy who was probably there to kill him. Screw everything else.
---
Sanchez,
the guard who'd brought him in, was over checking with the warden to
see if there was any room on the chain gang for a new intake. He'd be
back in a minute.
He approached the fence, casually, as if he were merely checking out the yard.
He
was evidently a bit too casual, a bit too focused on appearing
non-threatening while he prepared to toss the earbud through the
fences-and man he hoped that worked- he needed a string to pull it back in case it didn't.
But suddenly, Sanchez was banging on the fence right in front of him.
"Okay,
Mr. Washington," Sanchez said, coming close and speaking loudly, same
way everybody did when they noticed the hearing aid. "Tomorrow morning,
first thing, you're joining the work crew. In the meantime, you're
staying in here. And by here, I mean not within two feet of the fence, okay?"
"Uh, right," Alec stammered, stepping back from the fence. Shit. "Sorry."
Sanchez stepped back, heading for the Eliot and Donovan were moving off, back towards the building.
Alec
had missed his chance, but didn't linger on it. He began formulating
plan B as he watched everyone filter from the yard, heading inside.
Eliot was lagging behind, letting Donovan go ahead of him as they approached the building.
When
Eliot reached the door, just before he went out of sight, he turned to
shoot Alec a frustrated glare as he shrugged, and it's meaning was
clear. What the fuck are you doing, man?
The worst part, though, was that he looked worried, and didn't yet know what he was actually supposed to be worrying about.
---
Fuck.
Eliot
didn't know how they'd done it, he was too far out of the loop, hadn't
heard anything about a plan involving Hardison actually getting his ass
locked in here.
Maybe one of the deputies had noticed something. Maybe Arlington was smarter than they'd thought.
Maybe
this had nothing to do with him. They were still working Santiago's
case, after all, and yeah, Eliot was in jail, but it wasn't like he was
going to be here very long. But the note hadn't said anything; there'd
been no indication that they were worried.
But maybe the
timeline had changed. Something, somewhere, some stupid little detail
had poked its head up and thrown them all out of whack.
Maybe Parker was crawling through the air ducts right now.
Shit.
There
were no vents in the cell, no reason for them when one wall was made of
bars. If she was coming, there was no way she'd manage a direct route.
And whatever was going on, whatever had broken down in the planning
meant that they were no longer just breaking one person out of jail, but
two.
Morons.
Eliot pretended to sleep,
listening to Donovan flipping through his book on the bunk below,
thankfully silent. Small fucking blessing.
He wasn't sure what
worried him most. That they'd come up with a stupid plan, which
involved planting Hardison out in Tent City, or that they hadn't planned
it at all.
And he was locked in, with no way to make sure Hardison didn't do anything even more idiotic. It was bad enough, having Donovan trailing him around like he was scared of his own shadow, but Hardison?
Hardison should've known better. But apparently he didn't. And that was a concern.
---
Alec's
options weren't great. He could tell Sanchez that someone named
Donovan was planning a hit on his cellmate, but there was no guarantee
that anyone he passed it on to, inside, would do anything about it. If
Donovan was thrown into isolation, he'd just have to bribe the right
guard to finish his job for him, and there was no way Alec would be able
to figure out who, exactly, he'd bribed from out here.
He wasn't going to be able to do anything from Tent City, he needed to get inside.
Which
meant doing something even more stupid than faking a bench warrant for
unpaid tickets, reporting a car stolen that matched the make and model
of the one he'd been using, tracking the patrol car down and getting
ahead of it.
Luckily, he'd gotten very good at pissing off people who were tougher than him.
---
"My
exit's blocked." Parker, still in the records office, sounded like she
had company, and Eliot was still stuck in traffic, a few minutes out.
"Nate?"
But Nate and Tara were in the middle of closing the deal
with Varner upstairs, and Alec was already pushing himself back from his
computer.
"I got this," he assured everyone, and jumped out of the van.
"Two guys," Parker warned him.
"Then
I got this two more times," he crossed the street, ducking into the
employee parking garage and swiping his card to get into the stairwell.
Up one level, down a hallway, and he was nearly there. He started
singing to himself, just loudly enough that his voice bounced off the
cement walls and concrete floor. Coughed a few times, then began to
hum, staggering drunkenly. He could hear the guards from here, and
could tell when they'd heard him.
He was leaning against the wall, one hand on his zipper when they rounded the corner.
"What're you doing?" One of them called, but both were already rushing forward.
"Nothing,
man. Just gotta, you know. Thought this was the bathroom." He looked
at the guards straight on, and couldn't help it, he broke into a grin.
On the one hand, his cover was broken. On the other, he had their attention.
"How y'all doin'?" He said, waving, and began to run.
---
Eliot
was just fine worrying about the mess that Hardison had gotten the team
into until the guards came through on the cellblock address system,
ordering everyone back into their cells. Moments later, McTeague came
by, along with Salvo- the one Hardison'd said was down for the take-
working down the other side. The doors slamming shut, cell after cell,
made too much noise to overhear the words they were speaking into their
radios.
"Lockdown again?" Donovan asked, standing up from his bunk. "What's going on now?"
"Dunno,"
Eliot said, but from here, he could just make out the guards heading
towards the infirmary, maybe the cafeteria. Maybe back into the yard.
"Probably another fight," he said, deliberately unconcerned. It made
sense, with all the guards off the block, they'd had to secure the
inmates.
It made even more sense a few minutes later, as five
guards shoved three inmates Eliot didn't recognize past, moving them
along the corridor. They were heading towards the stairs. Isolation,
then.
"There's that guy again," Donovan commented, craning his neck to see through the bars. "Heading into the infirmary.
Eliot couldn't react, couldn't appear to care.
---
He'd pulled it off. It didn't matter what Eliot was saying.
It
could've been worse. The bruises were starting to come up, but his
right eye was the worst, swollen shut and damp from the ice pack that
Tara had given him.
"You deserve each and every one of those,"
Eliot said, holding out a beer and sitting in the chair next to Nate's
couch, chuckling. Half of that grin was because he'd enjoyed watching
Alec get his ass kicked, no doubt, and the other half was because yes,
once again, Eliot had saved the day, and he knew it.
The
adrenaline had worn off in the car, and Alec wasn't feeling up for the
trash talking, not really. "Whatever man, it worked." Maybe this- the
running, the punching, the kicking- was why Eliot was usually so cranky.
Alec realized he was bracing himself as Eliot got ready to let
loose another round of 'I told you so.' Eliot wasn't laughing any
more, he was grabbing a magazine off the table and voice was quiet, like
he didn't want everyone in the kitchen to hear.
"Seriously.
When you've got the bad guys chasing after you? Don't lead them into a
dead end. You've got to know where your exits are. Got that?"
"Yeah," Alec nodded, and pressed the ice pack back up to his face.
---
Eliot
wasn't around, this time, to joke about the bruises or the bloody nose.
Instead, Alec was manhandled into the infirmary while the three guys
who he'd managed to goad into jumping him were taken down into
isolation.
"Can you hear me?" The nurse, who looked overworked
and tired- there was no doctor in sight- was asking, holding out the
hearing aid that one of the guards had grabbed off the dirt, and was
looking at it skeptically. It only took Alec a moment to figure out
why. It had cracked open along the seal, and the earbud he'd hidden was
rattling in the casing.
Alec held his breath as he reached out
for it with the hand that wasn't holding the towel to his face. Any
second now, he was going to be found out and no, he didn't need Eliot there to tell him how stupid his plan had been.
"I'm
sorry, I don't know much about these," the nurse enunciated carefully,
giving up on his scrutiny and handing it over. "Is it broken?"
Alec
shrugged and pressed the casing back together, pressing it into his
ear, fidgeting with it to cover his relief. He shook his head slowly
and asked for a piece of tape.
"In a minute," the nurse said. "Let me take a look at your hand, okay?"
Reluctantly, Alec let him, but even raising his arm made his hand throb painfully. A few minutes, and too many questions and far
too much stinging later, the nurse set the supplies aside and regarded
the damage. "Your nose stop bleeding yet?" Alec rocked his head
forward experimentally, pleased when it didn't resume. "Okay, well.
Looks like you've got a torn ligament here. We're going to need to ice
it. Once the swelling's gone down, I'm going to fit you with a brace,
mostly to keep you from using it."
The nurse nodded to the guard as he unlocked the key to the office, emerging a moment later with an envelope of Tylenol.
"This should take the edge off a bit, but it's not the good stuff, in case you were hoping."
Alec grinned, shaking his head, and held out his left hand for the pills.
"Okay,
well. Looks like it's about mealtime for this wing," the nurse looked
up at the clock as the announcement was made, "So I'm going to cut you
loose for now. Report in with a guard when you're done. Your new
cell's going to be just around the corner."
"But it's just a thumb," Alec pretended to protest.
"One,
I can't go chasing you all over the place to drop off ice packs all
afternoon, and two, those guys that jumped you outside? They've been
here for a few months already. And it's not like we've got a ton of
gang activity in here- there's too much turnover for that- but I know
they've got friends. On the plus side, you're off the hook for breaking
rocks."
---
A quarter of an hour later, the information
had started to filter through, cell to cell to cell, and finally made it
to Eliot's ears. There'd been a fight out in Tent City. Some low-level
gang bangers awaiting trial had stomped one of the new inmates. Nobody
on the block recognized the guy.
"But it ain't like anyone's
probably recognizing him now," Trent smirked as he passed the word along
to King, in the next cell over.
There was a chance that this
game of inmate telephone had gotten the details wrong, getting gorier
and gorier with each pass. The estimate he was hearing, the amount of
blood that had spurted out of the stab wound was so insane- three
gallons was about twice what an average body could even hold, but the
fact that it was being discussed at all was bad enough.
He thrust his hands in his pockets when he realized they were shaking.
Eliot's
guts churned, and maybe it was instinct kicking in, maybe it was the
sudden realization of how fucking powerless he was, shut in here, but
his hands grasped the bars, tugging uselessly in frustration. He could
fool himself all he wanted, but that wasn't going to get those bars
open. He refused to believe that it was really Nate's voice he was
hearing in his head, asking him why he hadn't had Hardison's back.
Ten
minutes later, the guards were back on the block, and the cells were
opened again, and they all filtered out like nothing had ever happened.
The checkers game that had been going on down the way resumed, and half
a dozen guys retook their seats in front of the television.
By the time the announcement came that it was time to eat, they'd all forgotten about it entirely.
---
Eliot
was the first one in line, heading towards the mess, though he walked
slowly as they passed the infirmary, hoping that his luck hadn't gotten
so bad that he couldn't get a glimpse inside.
The door remained secure as he passed, and on the other side?
Fuck,
Hardison could've bled out on the table already. One room, just fifty
feet away, he could've been lying there, eyes open and seeing nothing.
Going cold.
Instinct's a funny thing, he realized, too aware of his movements- and the real reasons for
them- as he grabbed a tray from the stack and followed Donovan down the
line. He'd eat, because he had to, he needed something to do while he
staked out the infirmary door, just visible across the hall.
Everything else was just background- the noise, the food, Donovan's rambling.
Salvo
was posted at the mess hall door while McTeague and a guard named
Miller circulating between the tables. The infirmary wasn't guarded on
the outside, and if Eliot timed it right, while the two patrolling
guards were over on the other side of the mess, he could take out Salvo.
He'd be destroying any chances of future deals with him, but he could
do it.
Grabbing Salvo's key card, then, and ten feet across the
hall. Another three or four seconds to get through the door. After
that, he'd wing it.
Donovan hesitated, obviously waiting for
him before heading off to a table, so Eliot led him towards the back of
the room- it meant there was more ground to cover, but it also meant
that he'd keep the infirmary in his sights.
The last of the inmates filtered into the mess hall, and over their heads, he could see the infirmary door swinging open.
Trent was in the way, not fucking moving, blocking out anything else until the line began to move again.
From behind him, Hardison stepped into the room, and Eliot caught himself sighing in relief before focusing for inventory.
His
right hand looked injured, it was clear in the odd angle of his thumb
as he pressed an ice pack to the side of his face. There was no blood
seeping through the bandage on his arm, though, and he was walking in
here under his own steam. The limp was barely noticeable, probably not
even on his radar.
And there was something stuck to his ear
that didn't make sense, and it took Eliot a moment to realize what it
was. A hearing aid? Seriously?
---
"Hey, man. I
been working my ass off up in here, getting all this gear together so
ya'll don't wind up getting your asses killed," Hardison complained,
snatching the earpiece out of Eliot's grasp.
"It'll never work,
the thing's fucking huge, man." Nate walked past, glancing dubiously at
the mess Hardison had made on his coffee table. "Anyone'll see it from
a mile off."
"They're supposed to, and no, I'm not saying it's
for everyday use, the thing is damned uncomfortable. It's just another
version of the cords and the fake Bluetooth setups y'all already got."
"Which are working just fine," Eliot pointed out. Hardison needed to get a life.
"You're damned right they do-"
"But if we've all got the same one, it's going to stand out just as much."
Hardison blinked at him, his jaw clicking shut.
"Shut up, man."
---
Upon
his release from the infirmary, Alec noted that the cafeteria was
directly across the hall, already filling up. He waited for the line of
inmates to pass, an army of black and white stripes and bored faces,
before stepping inside, the ice pack held loosely in his fist.
It
took less than a moment to spot Eliot, all he'd had to do was look for
the best vantage point with the clearest escape route, and he'd found
him at the edge of a long table towards the back. Donovan was sitting
next to him. After going through the chow line, he sat down, facing
Eliot, one table away.
It wasn't too hard. Alec spent more
time than was actually needed looking out the window, turning so Eliot
could see the hearing aid sticking out of his ear. When he glanced
over, though, Eliot was staring at the ice pack.
Sitting on the
far right of the rightmost table, with his back to most of the rest of
the room, meant that the only eyes he really had to worry about were
Donovan's.
And he'd listened to Sophie, regardless of what she'd thought.
---
Sophie
sipped her tea, waiting in the van to keep warm before making her
entrance. as they watched Parker move through the crowded night club,
circling through the lieutenants as she made her way towards their mark.
"Got the third one, where's Connor?" Parker said.
"He's just leaving the office," Nate said, from halfway across town. "Just, ah. Mingle. Until he gets there."
"If
you're trying to mask a movement," Sophie said, when she noticed Alec's
frown- Parker had just barely brushed against a guy, hadn't even slowed
down, and yeah, Alec didn't know how she'd done it. "The best way is
to hide it with another, more obvious one, that's why it's called the
'bump and lift.' But most of the time, there's actually very little that
needs to be hidden from view. As long as you're not obviously
concentrating on the move you're making, they're not going to, either."
"So, like, if I was sitting in the middle of Central Park, setting the timer on a bomb, nobody would-"
"I
imagine if you were planting a bomb in such a public place, you'd take
measures to assure it wasn't detected. House it in a radio, or
something of the sort, am I correct?"
"Well-" Alec grinned, catching on.
"So
yes. People might think you were changing the batteries, or trying to
work out some minor technical difficulty, but yes. You could pull it
off."
"I'm sorry. You said Hardison could pull it off?" Eliot
snorted, and Alec glanced to the main entrance feed to see him stepping
back from the line to let two more into the club as a couple stepped
outside behind him. Whether he'd broken character to make a point, Alec
couldn't tell, but he was already flirting with the redhead that was
waiting her turn.
"Don't see what the big deal is," Parker pointed out. "I took out a garage with an Easy Bake oven when I was seven."
---
He
ate- man, it was horrible, but he ate, and, when the conversation at
two tables over began to get boisterous, he figured anyone else's
attention would be drawn there.
Taking the hearing aid out,
peeling back the tape and prying open the casing with his thumb. He
pretended to fiddle with the casing, checking for damage as the earbud
fell out into his palm. A moment's examination proved that both earbuds
were fine, and he was closing the hearing aid up again when there was
movement over at Eliot's table. They were getting up, along with
everyone else.
The fact that the announcement startled him made
it easier to pull off, so too did his injured hand. It was the closest
thing to a signal he could manage, but it would have to do.
Piling
everything back onto the tray as he stood, he managed to upend it just
enough to send the cutlery and the cup clattering to the ground.
Setting
the tray aside on the table as he stooped to pick everything up, he
nearly dropped the cup again as a striped arm came into his field of
vision, just because it was Eliot. He was there, he'd gotten the message, and he'd come through.
Just like Alec had known he would.
Apparently, he trusted Eliot more than he'd thought.
Now ain't the time.
"Earbud, tray," he muttered, looking up in time to see Eliot's concerned glance bouncing off of him as fought a smirk.
"Idiiot."
Eliot
was moving off by the time Alec managed to get to his feet again, but
it was fine. When he picked up the tray, there was a fork sitting where
the earbud had been.
---
"Auto-initiate Delta," Alec
muttered, once he'd been shown to his cell- right next to the infirmary,
the last cell on the block- and after too many seconds, he heard the
faint crackle that told him that out in the main office, his phone had
turned itself on, and comms were on line and signal boosted.
It was only a few seconds more before he heard Nate's voice, loud and irate and hoarse all at once.
"Hardison? You mind telling us all what the hell you are doing?"
"Okay,"
Alec glanced out to make sure no one was listening, and realized again
how badly he'd prepared. "Chill. We're fine. Eliot?"
There was
a noise on the line- Eliot humming, slightly distorted. If he was back
in his cell, he probably wouldn't be able to talk.
"Okay, look. Eliot? Watch out."
That got a confused grunt from Eliot and an exasperated sigh from Sophie.
"Hardison."
"Okay,
look." He could calm them down later. "Donovan, Eliot's cellmate, is a
hitter for Moreau. Had himself arrested deliberately to get in with
close. I didn't have a better way to get word through after I found
out, and didn't know if it would keep until Tara got here…" Hardison
trailed off for a moment. "Eliot, cough if you got that."
---
Eliot's relief at seeing Hardison alive and well- and that he'd had some sort of plan-
had faded by the time he'd picked up the earbud. Right now, it was
everything he could do to keep quiet as he climbed up into his bunk.
He coughed, once, and thought about punching Hardison in the face.
"Okay, man. Once for yes, twice for no. Has he shown his hand yet? You okay in there?"
Eliot coughed again.
There was a pause before Nate spoke. "How did you know all this?"
"He
turned himself in on a wonky case, and when I checked him out, only
thing I could find was that he'd been born-and died, at Bethesda General
in DC. Check my laptop, it's all there."
Eliot wanted to point out that he could take Donovan, that this wasn't his first rodeo, and he really
wanted to tear Hardison a new one, but there were a few things stopping
him. First, he couldn't afford to be overheard. Donovan was getting
settled in the bunk below, and the block was winding down for the
evening.
Second?
He was just starting to realize how
well he'd been played. Yeah, he could take Donovan in a fight, easily
enough, but…he hadn't been expecting one.
And Eliot knew about
timing. About waiting, about letting the target get comfortable enough
to get in close. He knew how to pick his moment. Donovan hadn't struck
yet, but it didn't mean he wasn't going to.
He wanted to tell
himself that it didn't make any sense, but every argument he formed was
too easily fought down as he thought back.
So far, Donovan had
done everything Eliot would've, were he in Donovan's shoes. Hadn't
pressed about Hardison in the yard, and he'd even hung back when Eliot
helped clear up the tray, watching for anything there'd been to learn.
Donovan had gotten into a fight, finessed the situation so that he'd be put in Eliot's cell. Smart.
Donovan
had gotten arrested on faked charges, yes, but Hardison had done the
same. It obviously wasn't impossible. And Hardison wasn't the type to
get his ass locked up on a mere hunch.
Worse? That Hardison had needed to. Because Eliot let his guard down.
But
possibly even worse? How little Eliot cared about all that, just
because he could hear that Nate was already spinning out another backup
plan, and that Parker sounded jealous that they hadn't waited for her.
Just because he could hear Hardison's fucking voice.
He wasn't sure he could've spoken if he'd had the option.
---
The shadows of the bars played against the far wall as Eliot lay awake, listening to Donovan sleep. He was quiet.
The
rest of the crew had gone off comms when the lights had gone out, but
he could still hear Hardison's breathing on the line- he'd faded into
sleep a few hours ago.
It wasn't a good thing. It was just
familiar enough that Eliot had to fight to keep his eyes open, just
distracting enough, listening to him being quiet, that he kept
having to remind himself that there were other things, much closer
things, sleeping in the bunk below, that needed his full attention.
But he kept his earpiece in.
