The Nigerian Job
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The little airport bar is empty when Nate sits down at the bar. He’s got a blinding headache, but can’t tell if it’s because he needs a drink or if it’s because a vision is trying valiantly to push through the watery haze of his mind.
The bartender glances at him then looks at the early time displayed on the clock by the register before moving over to him.
“Morning,” the bartender says, stepping in front of Nate’s seat. “What can I get you?”
Unbidden, Nate Sees the bartender sitting down a drink, Sees himself reaching for it. Nate squints his eyes, feels the nausea rising in his throat and places his order distractedly. He wants to reach for the mini bottle in his pocket, but grinds his teeth at the urge.
“Do you, uh,” Nate starts, rubbing at his forehead, “do you know when the shuttle’s coming?”
The bartender already has his back to Nate, making the drink, but he looks up in the mirror and meets Nate’s eyes. “I’ll check.”
Nate nods his thanks as his drink’s finished. The bartender places a little black straw in the finished glass before walking away and Nate clenches his jaw at being able to see the drink, but unable to get it. It doesn’t take long for the man to return and he grabs the drink and a napkin, placing both down in front of Nate.
“Airport shuttle’s in fifteen minutes.”
He blessedly leaves Nate alone, walking to the other end of the bar to disappear from view and Nate takes the bottle out of his pocket and pours the contents into his glass.
Before Nate can even get the glass to his lips, a man rushes towards the bar, crowding into the seat next to him.
“I’m sorry,” the man apologizes and for a second, Nate assumes the man’s on the phone, until, “Mr. Ford, sorry. I’m Victor Dubenich. I know who you are.”
Nate glances at the coffee cup placed on the counter and then squints at the man. He moves quick, nervous and jittery. He starts gushing about what Nate used to do and Nate rolls his eyes and stares straight ahead, hoping he’ll get the hint and leave.
Nate used to be a gifted Watcher and while he wasn’t famous, he was known in certain circles as the man to go to if something needed found. Rumors would pop up that he was actually a Sniff, that he lied on his government forms in order to keep it a secret, that his abilities far outweighed the normal Watcher. None of it was true; Nate was a Watcher, he was talented, but a lot of his skills came from his understanding of humans and how people ticked.
He listens half-heartedly as Dubenich continues to praise him and his ability to save IYS millions of dollars when he goes too far.
“What happened to your family is the kind of thing—”
Nate turns, fingers tightening around the glass, and for the first time all morning, it feels like the pounding in his head abates.
“You know this part of the conversation where I punch you in the neck nine or ten times? We’re coming up on that pretty quick.”
Dubenich leans back in his seat but isn’t cowed. “I just want to offer you a job.”
“What do you got?”
Nate’s torn between annoyance and interest. He’s not sure if Dubenich is stupid or cruel, and despite himself, he wants to see where this is going.
“Do you know anything about airplane design?”
“I could give it a shot. You know, give me a pencil and one of those little rulers.”
“Somebody stole my airplane designs.”
“Oh, I see.” Nate says, cocking his head. Stupid then, he decides with a smirk. “And you’d like me to Find them, right? If you know so much about me, you know I don’t Find things anymore.”
“No,” Dubenich says quickly as Nate takes another drink. “I know where they are. I want you to steal them back.”
Nate looks over at him and furrows his brows in question.
“I have a team,” the man says, voice low, and Nate looks around at the empty bar but still gestures over his shoulder.
“Let’s talk.”
They move to a table near the windows and Dubenich pulls out files from the briefcase he’s holding. He talks in choppy sentences and Nate watches as Dubenich’s hands refuse to stay still. Nate listens, tries to focus, and sighs when he refuses to go to the police.
“Look at the people I’ve already hired,” Dubenich says, pushing a file across the table towards Nate. “Do you recognize any of these names?”
Nate leans back in his seat and opens the file, then leans forward with a frown. “Yeah. I’ve chased all of them one time or another…” he says distractedly as he looks over the papers.
These are government level documents; names, birthdates, aliases, associates. Nate flips through them and is settled when he realizes that they’ve just been compiled by a good PI and aren’t official.
His eyes skim over the pages. Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer, Parker.
“Parker? You got Parker?”
“Is there someone better?”
“No, but Parker is insane.” There is nothing on this profile indicating Parker’s a Shift and that, more than anything, is what cements Nate into the job. There is a startling lack of information on these master criminals. Nothing on Parker’s Shifts, no mention of the Moves Eliot can make in a crisis, the bare minimum of Hardison’s hacking style. This civilian obviously has no idea who he’s dealing with and while Nate has never heard of any of these three betraying a client, he’s also never heard of them working for a civilian.
“Which is why I need you. I just need one honest man to watch them.”
Nate looks up from the file and there’s sweat along Dubenich’s hairline.
“Are you in?”
Nate doesn’t answer, but tries, again, to push Dubenich towards the police. “It’s not going to work,” he says, “the people you hired, they all have the same rep. They work alone, they always work alone. There’s no exceptions, and there’s no way they’re going to work for you.”
“No, they will,” Dubenich replies, voice taking on a desperate tone. “They will. For $300,000 each, they will. And for you, for running it, it’s double that. And it’s off the books, completely off the books. Look at me, I’m desperate here.”
Nate hesitates and Dubenich continues, “And that’s just a salary! There is a bonus. Pierson is insured by IYS. It’s a $50 million intellectual property rights policy. Mr. Ford, how badly do you want to screw the insurance company that let your son die?”
“Alright,” Nate bites out. “Where are they meeting.”
Dubenich passes him a sheet of paper with an address and time written down and Nate slips it into his pocket.
“Thank you, thank you Mr. Ford.” Dubenich says, hands in a flurry. “You have no idea what you’re doing for me.”
Nate nods, taking another sip of his drink. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”
-----
They meet in the lobby of the empty building across the street. Nate walks in to see the three thieves already introducing themselves and smirks when Parker catches sight of him.
“What are you doing here?” she asks and draws the attention of the two men.
“Congratulations,” Nate says, “I'm babysitting tonight.”
“No, absolutely not. Hell no,” Hardison says, throwing up his hands. “He takes a step towards Nate and then turns towards his gear, shaking his head. “I will not be victim to a setup. I said no.”
“It’s not a setup,” Eliot growls and Nate nods a greeting that Eliot returns.
“Sure, I’m gonna take your word on it. Who even are you?”
“Alright, alright, that’s enough Hardison,” Nate says, but Hardison makes a show of ignoring him, muttering his refusal as he packs his bag.
“Where’s my…” Hardison trails off and looks up to see Parker across the lobby tossing hardware between her hands. “Hey! That ain’t yours!”
Nate joins Eliot in the center of the room and the two watch as Hardison darts to Parker.
“You’re our mastermind?” Eliot says, looking away from the commotion on the other side of the room.
“Just this once,” Nate agrees. Eliot turns a sharp eye on him.
“So how’s this gonna work, huh?” Eliot asks under his breath. “Can you even See anymore?”
Nate stares at him blandly. “I don’t need to See to do my job.” He steps away from Eliot and pretends he can’t feel Eliot’s eyes drilling into his back.
“Parker, give it back. Let’s gather up, the quicker we do this, the quicker we walk away.”
-----
Nate sets up shop amongst the construction of an empty floor. He listens as the thieves get ready across the street, bickering softly in his ear and only after he gets his computer’s booted and small projector illuminating the far wall does he gets their attention.
“Guys, listen up. We’re going to go on my count, not a second sooner. Parker, no freelancing.”
“Nate, relax. We know what we’re doing.”
“On the count of five, four—”
“Aw, he doesn’t want to be our pal.”
“We’re on the count. Five,” he says again firmly, ignoring Hardison.
“She’s gone, Nate.”
Nate curses, dropping the binoculars. He should have Seen that coming. He paces in frustration and tries to ignore the discomfort turning his stomach. He hasn’t done much of anything since he blinded himself, drowning his ability in too much alcohol for it to handle, and doing a heist blind is something new. He shakes his shoulders and looks back through his binoculars, following Parker’s steady descent down the side of the building.
“Vibration detectors are on.”
“No cutting, Parker. Use the binary.”
He watches as she cuts a small circle in the glass and if he wasn’t watching, he would have missed the way her shoulders Shifted smaller to fit within the opening. He glances at his monitors while she moves through the building, double checking the layout as Hardison and Eliot get into the elevator shaft.
Parker shorts the elevator override and listens as the boys pry open the doors and climb out on their floor.
“Alright guys, show time.”
Nate glances back at the monitors and does a double take at the screen tapped into the guards office. The men are shifting around and their silhouettes are hard to track but something feels off. He leans in, squinting at the screen before straightening.
“You got any chatter on their frequencies?” he asks, looking at the schedule Hardison procured for them. “There’s eight listed on the duty roster; there’s only four at the guard posts.”
“Problem?” Eliot asks and Nate hesitates.
“Maybe,” he admits, “Run the cameras.”
“Got ‘em!” Parker says. “They’re doing their walk through an hour early. Why the fuck are they early?”
Nate answers without even thinking about it. “Because it’s the playoffs.” He looks back at the security feed. “Game five of the playoffs. They’re doing their rounds an hour early so they can watch the playoffs. Where are they?”
“They’re at the stairwell!”
-----
Eliot shakes his head in frustration and lowers the finger he’d been holding to his ear.
“How long’s this gonna take?” he asks, nudging Hardison and peering over his shoulder.
“I don’t know, man, it’s a ten-digit passcode—”
“Eliot,” Nate’s voice comes over the line before Eliot can say anything more. “I want you to clear the zone. Use Hardison as bait.”
Before Nate’s even finished talking, Eliot’s shrugging off his jacket and moving away around the corner, ignoring Hardison’s mumbling protests.
Hardison bounces on his heels as the scanner slowly works on the lock. Adrenaline floods through him and he cranes his neck to try and peer around the corner without moving. There’s a moment of panic that freezes him as the heavy thud of boots on tile rushes down the hall and he raises his hands as the guards round the corner with their guns drawn. His pupils flicker as the story he’s about to weave filters through his mind.
I’m just a janitor, he thinks. You’ve seen me for years. You congratulated me on my daughter’s wedding. His heart rate slows and his pupil stretches to consume his iris.
“Hey,” he says, Pushing the words onto the guards, “I’m just—”
Eliot slips out silently behind the guards and Hardison smirks despite himself. His pupil shrinks to normal size and the guards yell at him to drop the bag in his hand; he obliges with a wide smile, letting the straps roll out of his palm.
Eliot moves quickly, catching the first two off-guard and the next two before they even fully realize they’re under attack. Hardison isn’t sure if he imagined the near invisible pulses of a Mover, knocking a guard just off balance enough for Eliot to turn and punch the man in the chest, knocking him into the opposing wall where he collapses onto the ground unconscious. He tries to think if he read anything about Eliot being a Mover, or any kind of clairvoyant, but comes up empty. It doesn’t matter, not when Eliot’s standing in a hallway he’d just cleared of any threats.
“That’s what I do,” he says with a self-satisfied smirk and Hardison returns it with a nod. That’s more like it.
-----
They get the files and Hardison leaves a barren wasteland where their servers used to be. They’re on their way out when Parker’s voice comes across the line.
“Problem. Those guards you ganked, they reset all the alarms. We can’t go up.”
Hardison’s fingers tighten around the hard drive in his hand.
“Every man for himself then,” Eliot says with an amused tone. It’s the amusement that makes Hardison snap; the amusement that colored the tone of every older sibling he’s ever had, and in one childish moment, Hardison wants to shove him.
“Go ahead. I’m the one with the merchandise,” he argues and Parker, never one to be outdone, chimes in over the comms,
“Yeah, well I’m the one with the exit.”
“Enough!” Nate’s voice cuts through their chatter. “Now I know you children don’t play well with others but I just need you to work together for exactly seven more minutes. Now, get to the elevator and head down.”
They follow Nate’s Plan B and Hardison gets chills, forcing someone to believe a fictional narrative without even the hint of Pushing them.
Nate’s waiting for them in a car parked on the curb and as they move towards him, the three thieves move together in unison for the first time all night. Hardison slips into the front seat and waits until the car’s been moved into traffic before he looks around the car at his partners. He’s beaming and Eliot meets his eyes with his own muted smile. He looks over at Parker, who smiles widely at him as she peels the fake face off her cheek.
Nate’s deliberately focused on the road, but Hardison can see the tightness around his eyes has loosened. He leans back in the seat and resists the urge to exclaim into the night.
-----
Nate walks into the warehouse with double vision, like there’s a film over his eyes making everything a little fuzzy. There are people already there and he frowns at the confrontation as he moves towards the noise.
“You wanna tell me what happened with the designs?”
“What makes you think I know what happened? Stupid.”
“No, no, forget you man. You did it. Okay? When we were coming down from the elevator.”
“Yeah, that makes sense, doesn’t it? You had the file every second.”
“Now hold on, Cujo, I did my part. I transferred the files—”
“You better get that gun outta my face, or I tell you, I’m gonna feed it to you.”
Nate walks into view and sees Hardison holding Eliot at gunpoint, wrist twisted sideways like that might make him look serious. Eliot’s relaxed, with his hands in his pockets, and for a moment Nate wonders if Eliot’s been training; if he’s advanced enough in the few years Nate hadn’t seen him and is able to cast a shield over himself, but one second longer of evaluating the scene makes it clear that’s not the case. Eliot just isn’t afraid of the gun being pointed with trembling hands at his chest.
There was a run-in, with Eliot, nearly a decade ago. A low-level white collar criminal panicked at being face-to-face with the Eliot Spencer, aimed a gun at Eliot’s unprotected chest. Nate was quick to make himself known because, despite being on opposite sides, Eliot’s always been an ally, and the gun flickered between the two of them for a moment while Nate tried to talk the man down.
It was slow going, but it was Eliot’s words that caused pause: “The safety’s on.” The man’s eyes went to the gun and that was all Nate needed to grab the gun and step aside so Eliot could deliver one quick knockout punch.
Eliot has something like an eidetic memory and Nate has no doubts the man remembers that encounter, he just hopes it’ll play out like they need it to.
“Hey!” Nate yells and draws Hardison’s attention. Eliot doesn’t move.
“Did you do it?” he asks as Nate approaches them. “You’re the only one that’s ever played both sides.”
“Yeah, and you seem pretty relaxed for a guy with a gun pointed at him.”
“The safety’s on.”
“Like I’m gonna fall for that,” Hardison says and Nate follows the script.
“No, he’s right.” Hardison tilts the gun and the second diversion is all Nate needs to disarm Hardison.
“Are you armed?” “You know I don’t like guns,” Eliot replies and Nate doesn’t even consider that Eliot could be lying.
Parker’s voice echoes when she steps into view with her own gun, pointed briefly at them and then up at the ceiling. She moves with a calculated, careful air, but Nate’s not fooled. Parker’s reputation is vast, but she’s not a killer. She doesn’t put up a fight when Nate slowly reaches for the gun and disarms her.
The three of them fall into an argument and Nate can’t stop the laughter building in his chest. They’ve been conned. These master criminals, conned by a civilian. His laughter echoes in his ears and then everything’s pieced together. The moment it clicks in his mind, a vision flashes weakly across his eyes. Fire, burning, the warehouse door not opening in time.
Nate’s eyes flash open and he sees the door from his vision.
“Get out!” he shouts and darts to the door. “Now!”
He presses on the opener and when he looks back, Eliot’s pushing Parker and grabbing Hardison, jerking him by his jacket.
“Go,” Eliot growls, shoving Hardison and looks behind them, taking a risky glance around the room, unsure of what Nate Saw but willing to fight the threat regardless.
Parker reaches the door, Shifting to roll under the space slowly revealing itself as the mechanics pull the door up. Nate’s heart races and he Sees Hardison trip a moment before he does in life, but Eliot’s there to grab him roughly by the arms and hold onto him as they both duck under the door.
Nate shoves a hand at Eliot’s back and Sees them all lying unconscious on the concrete moments before the explosion rocks him out the door.
-----
Nate comes to with a full body spasm. His eyes dart to the steady beeping of a hospital machine before roaming the room and spotting Eliot handcuffed to a chair by the window.
His skin looks sunburnt, but he’s uninjured. Nate looks down at himself and sees much of the same. If he were a gambling man, he’d have placed money down on Parker and Hardison looking similar.
Nate knows how close they were to the explosion, knows there’s no way they should have escaped that without injuries worse than skin irritation.
He knows what Eliot did, he wonders if Eliot does.
Parker’s voice comes from the vents, but Nate doesn’t assume she’s free.
Nate takes a second to orient himself to the situation at hand before dolling out orders.
She forces herself to vomit and Hardison winces in disgust; the doctor with a nurse rushes in, followed closely by the police guard. Hardison has half a mind to Push them, but he waits. He hates Pushing and he wants to see what Nate and this little team will do together.
They switch phones and Parker stands, free of her handcuffs yet again, and passes the flip-phone through the vent.
“They’re expecting a phone call, so let’s give them a phone call.”
-----
After switching cars two more times, they end up at Hardison’s apartment. He already has the various documents prepped for himself in case of emergencies, all he has to do is swipe out the pictures, change some names and pronouns, and within the hour he’s printing out new identities for everyone.
“You’re running.” Nate says simply and Eliot tucks the new papers in his jacket pocket.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re running,” Nate says again, but slowly, contemplating the picture of Dubenich pulled up on Hardison’s desktop.
“You got a better idea?” Eliot asks, moving like he’s ready to dart out the door.
“Yeah,” Nate says slowly, finally looking away from Dubenich to the rest of the room. “We can’t give this guy any time to cool down.”
“You want to run a play? You?”
“Yeah, well this guys the best kind of mark.” Nate’s defensive and turns to Parker and Hardison, like if they’ll side with him, Eliot has to.
Eliot isn’t going to go along with Nate’s plan blindly but Nate’s able to subdue every issue Eliot raises.
“Alright,” he says, moving out of the room. “Let’s go get Sophie.”
Parker and Hardison follow him.
“What the hell’s a Sophie?” Eliot asks their retreating forms.
-----
Sophie, it turns out, is a terrible actress. Eliot’s floored by the performance and is relieved he isn’t the only one who thinks so.
“She’s very awful,” Hardison mumbles.
“Is she injured? In the head?” Parker asks in a whisper. When Eliot looks over, Nate’s staring down at the stage with barely concealed happiness.
“Seriously, man, this is the worst actress I’ve ever seen.”
“This is not her stage,” Nate whispers back at them. “She’s the greatest Shifter, greatest grifter, the world’s ever seen.”
Parker shifts and Eliot raises a single eyebrow. This will be a train wreck.
Eliot waits by the car as Nate moves towards Sophie, clapping his hands and praising her. Sophie looks at him, then at the three of them by the car, and then back to Nate. They talk too softly for Eliot to hear, but he watches as the two smile and shift and finally, Sophie turns to the three of them and offers a small smile to the group.
Watching the way Nate fumbles around Sophie, the feeling from early returns strongly. This will be a train wreck.
-----
The team meets up the next morning back at Hardison’s apartment. Nate sets up the computer and slowly they move towards the couch to settle. Hardison sets out snacks and puts popcorn in the microwave, much to Nate’s annoyance. Eliot grumbles and shoves Hardison away from the kitchen and Hardison lets him take over, deciding to sprawl out on the loveseat.
Parker watches Sophie from across the room and pushes off from the wall once Sophie’s seated on the couch.
“So, you’re a Shifter, huh,” Parker says. Sophie looks up, but before she can say anything, Parker jumps over the back of the couch and sits on the edge of her seat. “Me too.”
Sophie beams at being trusted with that information.
“Wait, you’re a Shifter?” Hardison asks, leaning towards Parker. “I’m—”
“Move your feet,” Eliot growls, moving around the small coffee table to sit between Parker and Sophie.
Hardison doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence as Nate starts the briefing.
-----
Letting Sophie set the hook has Eliot tense, but he trusts Nate; and he’s confident enough in his own abilities that if Sophie doesn’t work out, if Nate really is just loveblind, then he can get out alive.
It turns out, though, that all his planning was unnecessary. Sophie introduces herself in a South African accent and has Dubenich hooked before she even leaves his office.
Eliot’s waiting for his cue in an empty office, but he catches a glimpse of Sophie as she leads Dubenich out of the building. Her face is long, angular, with eyes light as honey.
He doesn’t have time to think on it before he hears Parker over the comms say, “We’ve got someone from IT on your floor.”
He walks to the assistants desk and is able to watch Parker slip down a vent far too narrow for a human.
He’s never known Shifters that could move like this. He wonders if Nate knows what he’s collected here.
-----
Hardison’s the one who started the pool game, but then the files he was downloading became ready and Parker got bored once she realized Eliot noticed when the balls were swiped off the felt, and it fell down to a half-hearted game between him and Nate.
He’d been waiting all evening for a moment alone with Nate. He wants to know what Hardison is, wants to know if Nate knows what Sophie can really do, what Parker can do. He’s almost certain Nate knows he has some faint ability to Push, but not even Eliot is sure how to use it, so it doesn’t really count. He’s not an asset like that. Any of his previous employers would be all over this knowledge, would get drunk on the perceived power of having this many clairvoyants working under them – but Nate’s an honest man and Eliot doesn’t know how to bring it up.
“You look better,” Eliot starts, “than when we started.”
The conversation only goes down from there. He makes the mistake of mentioning Nate’s son, of offering his condolences too late.
“Eliot,” Nate says shortly, cutting Eliot off of the poor joke he’s making to try and dig himself out of the hole he’s in. “You and I are not friends.”
“Right,” Eliot says and can’t pretend that doesn’t sting. He’s known Nate for almost a decade, shared safe houses in a pinch and saved each other’s lives any chance they could. Eliot didn’t assume they were buddies, but he’d thought they were friends. “Right, ‘cause you have so many of ‘em.”
Sophie had been listening to the mess of a conversation and moves to defuse the situation too late. Eliot disappears as she approaches and she steps into Nate’s space, angling her head towards him.
She’s Unshifted, face bare; she feels safe with Nate and hasn’t been intentionally Shifted around him in years. Not that it ever really mattered; he used to be able to identify her anywhere.
She smiles at him, trying to put him at ease and ignoring the brushoff he’s attempting to give.
“C’mon, Nate, please.”
The blush that burns across her cheeks is real when he brushes away her hair and tucks it behind her ear.
She’s missed him, and more importantly, she agrees with Eliot. He is looking better.
-----
Dubenich arrives early to their stolen offices and Nate orders Parker to get Sophie to the lobby before the whole plan comes crashing down around them. Parker looks down the stairwell, sees Eliot jogging up the last flight, and peeks into the hallway.
“Sophie,” she stage whispers and beckons as Sophie moves to her. She tosses a harness to her and runs a quick eye over the rig to double check it’s still hooked up right. Parker looks back over Sophie and grabs the straps, pulling them tighter and then brushes her hand over Sophie’s shoulders.
“Can you take these in a little?” Parker asks, hooking the harness up to her own.
“What?” “Your shoulders. It’s easier if you’re smaller.”
“I can’t just,” Sophie sighs, exasperated and frightened due to the proximity she is to the open space between the stairs. “These are my bones, Parker.”
“I know they’re bones,” she says as if that was obvious. Sophie just continues to stare at her and they don’t have time for this. She just sighs and pulls them closer together.
“Hold your breath,” Parker says softly and smiles.
“Wait, you can—”
Parker jumps.
-----
The rest of the heist goes off according to plan and when the FBI arrives, Sophie shifts them some jackets and they move in and out of the building with ease. They gather files and slip off with the evidence unnoticed.
Nate reaches for his phone and experiences another rare vision. Pierson, standing in the empty office building across the street from his own, overlooking the city.
Satisfied he’s choosing right, Nate makes the call.
-----
Walking into the building gives off the vaguest sense of Deja Vu and it settles him, deep in his belly. As awful as his ability is, there is something satisfying about seeing a good vision come to life.
-----
Nate leaves the building and Hardison flanks his right, Parker his left. Eliot joins them and before he realizes, he’s stumbled upon Sophie waiting for them on a bench.
They make a compelling argument. The least he can do is hear them out.
