Chapter Text
If there was one thing Elliot Spencer hated more than poorly cured pancetta, it was amateur hour. They shoulda left it alone. Nate's place was burned. Any smart operator knew that burned meant dead. Finito. Return to sender, no forwarding address.
But once in a while, you broke your own rules. He'd been doing that more and more the last couple of years and he still wasn't sure how he felt about it. On the one hand, he had a family. On the other hand, he had a gooddamn family.
“I could have done this alone,” Parker’s voice hissed in his ear.
Elliot snorted and crossed his arms over his chest, eyeballing the alphabet soup of agents camped out up and down Nate’s old street. “Uh huh.” He uncrossed his arms and saluted the Staties in the SUV with his cup of coffee. Portland’s hipster coffee was slightly better. Not that he’d cop to that, even under torture.
The Interpol guy with the pretzel cart tipped his yellow baseball cap to Elliot. Elliot snorted. Stirling needed to have a word with his materials department. There was a difference between blending in and being so painfully generic you stood out like a sore thumb.
Parker grunted. This was Grunt #137 in the Elliot Spencer Guide to Parker, which meant she was working her way through an emotional thing by fixating on a thief-type problem instead.
Elliot raised an eyebrow.
“I heard that,” Parker growled.
“I didn’t say a word.” He took another sip of coffee.
Parker grunted again, #22, which meant that she’d done something acrobatic but successful. One of the Staties was on the radio, glaring at him, while his partner was shaking his head and getting out the car. One of the Feds was leaning on the steering wheel, giving him a very distinctive glare that meant she’d been a Marine and may be the friend of one of his former flames from Camp Lejeune. He gave her a shrug. It used to be called Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for a reason 1.
Her partner, a dyspeptic looking guy who probably had a new baby at home, judging from the stains on his jacket and the bags under his eyes, was staring from Elliot to a thick folder and back again.
“You close?”
“I’ve got three drawings, two pictures, and a clay handprint.”
Parker huffed, a classic #14, and he headed her off at the pass. “It’s a parent/kid thing, Parker. Don’t analyze it, just pack it up and get out.”
“I wasn’t sloppy enough to leave fingerprint records lying around, even when I was five.”
The image of a scowling miniature Parker socked him in the gut. She would have been a tiny menace to society, stealing juice boxes and teaching other kids the wrong way to play on the monkey bars. And if Parker and Hardison ever had kids, he was going to take early retirement and go stock up his Doomsday bunker.
He shuddered and took a huge gulp of coffee to banish the horror. The other Statie jumped out of his SUV and ran towards McRory’s, tie flapping. The former Marine popped open her car door and stood, one foot still in the car, staring toward the entrance. Her partner slammed the file closed, slapped it onto the dash, and leaned back, covering his face with both hands.
“What was that?” Parker’s concern crackled across their comms. “You made that weird noise you make when I fix myself breakfast.”
“I do not make weird noises, Parker. You done yet? The undercovers realized something was off.” The Interpol guy looked from the sprinting Feds to Elliot and gave him a slow clap.
“Sure you do. All the time.”
“Are you done, Parker?”
“Sure, fine, yep. Go do the thing.”
He growled. She laughed.
Family. Jesus.
He kept a firm grip on his coffee as he strode toward the pretzel cart. The Interpol agent squared his shoulders subtly, adjusting his stance in case he needed to shove the cart over and pin a potentially dangerous suspect.
Like Elliot Spencer could be defeated by pretzels. He nodded to the man. “Fitzgerald.”
“Spencer.”
“Nice hat.”
“Nice distraction.”
Elliot spread his hands. “Hey man. Don’t look at me. I am the distraction.”
Across the street and a few feet down, the FBI agent who hadn’t given in to existential despair and sleep deprivation had pulled out her smartphone and was filming the two of them. Perfect.
Fitzgerald looked at the building and whistled. “Well damn.” He shrugged. “You want a pretzel?”
“I hear they’re delicious.” Not that they’d pair well with coffee, but a well-crafted pretzel made up for many sins. Maybe he’d put them on the menu at Hardison’s godawful doomed albatross of a gastropub.
Fitzgerald froze. “You’re… you’re not serious.”
Elliot stared at him. “Good lord, you are serious.” Fitzgerald gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly. Then, with shaking hands he grabbed his tongs and plucked a pretzel out of the mountain of golden bread stacked atop his cart. It thudded to the ground, leaving a small crater in the concrete.
Both men studied it. Then they looked at each other.
Fitzgerald waved his tongs. “You still…”
“Yes.”
The man, a trained agent of the world’s premier police force and, as indicated by his distinctive watch, a former special forces operator, gulped. Grabbed another pretzel. Delicately placed it on a snow-white napkin. And paled, looking up at him again.
“You’re… you’re entirely sure.”
“Give me the damn pretzel, Fitzgerald.”
“Give me the damn pretzel, Fitzgerald,” Parker groused in his ear.
Elliot sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with one finger. In typical Boston fashion, a guy whizzing down the sidewalk on a gearless bike flipped him off. He was starting to miss Portland. Portland didn’t have Massholes.
He grabbed the pretzel. Eliot hefted it, trying to figure out what the hell they’d done to it. Fitzgerald’s pretzel would make a damn fine improvised weapon. He could bash Fitzgerald in the temple with it and then chuck it at the Staties. Eliot Spencer appreciated versatility.
“I’m clear,” Parker hissed in his ear. “Why are you not clear?”
Staring into Fitzgerald’s horrified brown eyes, Eliot bit into the pretzel. His teeth ground against the chunks of salt, and one FBI agent would later swear sparks shot out of his mouth 2. His altered mental state due to the strain of being a new parent was noted alongside the observation, but no one struck it from the record. Just in case.
Amateur hour. Amateur hour all the way down. He should have known better than to take the culinary recommendation of a man who thought orange soda and Fruity Pebbles were gourmet living. It was like fighting a land war in Asia. Pure hubris.
Dammit, Hardison.
Eliot lowered his hand and knocked the pretzel against the galvanized steel of the cart. It left a dent the size of a nickel in the shining metal. Never one to leave a weapon in the hands of an opponent, he stuffed the pretzel in his pocket and leveled a warning finger at the Interpol agent.
“You’re better than this, Fitzgerald.” The man’s head drooped.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Eliot snuck a glance at his watch. “Tell Stirling I expect him to up his game next time.” Every government employee on the block reached for their gun at the same moment.
Which was when the Tesla at the end of the street exploded. When the smoke cleared, Eliot Spencer was in the wind.
Half way across Nebraska, Parker snuck the pretzel out of his coat pocket.
“Don’t eat that,” he said, eyes tracking two semis clearly racing for pink papers half a click up the highway. There were many reasons Parker was riding shotgun on their trip back to Portland, and her deranged need to lap anyone who challenged her dominion of the open road was only halfway up the list.
Parker, being Parker, chomped down and promptly chipped a tooth.
“Ow!”
Eliot yanked the pretzel back and stuffed it in the pocket of the door down near his feet. Parker lunged across him, grabbing for it, and he shoved her back with one well-placed open palm to the sternum. “Back off, Parker, I’m driving!”
“It bit me,” she growled.
“You bit it first,” Eliot snapped, leveling a finger at her while still keeping his eyes on the road. The JB Hunt truck was still neck-in-neck with the Hy-Vee truck, and they were both swooping down like death on 18 wheels on a little camper limping along at 50 in a 75.
This wasn’t going to end well.
“Anyway, I told you to leave it alone.”
Parker huffed, crossing her arms over her chest and propping both feet up on the dashboard in a way that made his jaw twitch. “I’m hungry.”
Eliot rolled his eyes. “There is an entire cooler in the back seat, Parker. Full of sandwiches, homemade fruit jerky, and orange slices.” Out of the corner of his eye her saw Parker mimicking everything he said. “Well?”
“Stolen,” she said, huffing a classic #03, “is better.”
One day, she was going to die of scurvy. Or rickets. Or some kind of weird folic acid deficiency that only happened to tiny blondes that hung out in air ducts.
Up ahead, the Hy-Vee truck blew a tire and Eliot swerved to avoid the debris, zooming ahead of the other poor sucker also hanging back from the semi truck death match. Assholes. He tapped the steering wheel. “Okay. Then you are officially not allowed to have any of the food in the back seat. Especially not the oranges.”
She dropped her feet from the dash and leaned forward. “If you move to the left shoulder and kick it up to 92 you’ll be able to pass both of these guys and get ahead of the old guy in the green and white thing in 167 seconds.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
His jaw twitched a little more. He had signed up for this road trip. This was penance for some of the terrible things he’d done during his life. “No, the whole point of driving back is to stick to the speed limit, pretend that I’ve never driven through Syria during a fire fight, and not attract the attention of any cops, Parker!” He shot her a dirty look. She was sitting cross-legged on the seat, munching on an orange.
Parker shrugged. “Okay,” she said around a mouthful of pulp, spraying a little bit of orange juice on the windshield.
Whooping like he’d just roped a prize bull and pounding on the steering wheel in delight would have given the game away. Instead he just grunted and maintained orderly defensive driving protocols.
Parker mangled the orange in silence for a few moments. “What’s wrong with your pretzel?”
He shrugged. “Stirling cut corners. He cared more about the appearance of his surveillance than the effectiveness.”
“So it’s an evil pretzel.” Parker nodded. “An evil Stirling pretzel.”
He rolled his shoulders, trying to shed some of the tension in his neck. Parker, for all that it was like driving with a ferret hopped up on speed, was a solid road tripper. They could be back in Portland in just under a day, provided they didn’t hit any truly bad weather in Idaho. And the other drivers started behaving themselves.
“Just leave the pretzel alone, Parker. I’m going to throw it at Hardison’s head when we get back home.”
Parker cocked her head. “Pretzels are important.”
“Look. When we get back, I’m making y’all some real pretzels, okay? With stone ground mustard. From scratch.” Hardison better have been feeding Eliot’s sourdough starter the way he’d promised. In fact, Eliot made a mental note to text Hardison threats at the next three gas stops just to make sure.
Parker hummed, and Eliot was careful not to glance at the small, satisfied smile that always accompanied that little noise. She preferred to be sneaky about her moments of joy. Much like the way he had learned to be sneaky about getting some actual food into her once in a while.
“I think Hardison and I would like that,” she said. And continued to hum contentedly as she snuck another orange from the cooler.
1) And that reason was nothing more than a frothing mixture of yellow-bellied cowardice, vitriolic ignorance, and frothing hate, if you asked him. Not that anyone did, the second they caught the look in his eye.return to text
2) Eliot Spencer is a living legend, and like all legends, the tales always grow larger with the retelling. It was only one spark.return to text