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Thick in the air and growing denser with every passing moment, tension reigned in the empty, cavernous heart of an abandoned warehouse.
Well, Shawn certainly hoped it was abandoned. What would it say about him if he'd let a couple of goons without the presence of mind to take him to a secure location get the drop on him? Nothing good. If Shawn Spencer was going to be so thoroughly and successfully kidnapped—and as things currently stood, it was definitely Goons 1, Shawn 0—it had better come at the hands of seasoned professionals.
Judging by the two standing in front of him (to say nothing of their last accomplice, who thus far was only a flash of navy in the gaps between the blinds in one of the office's windows off to the left and a low, echoey murmur), these goons were more than seasoned. They were positively Flavor Blasted™.
No, not in the big-and-beefy-and-could-knock-his-block-off-with-one-hand sort of sense, but in the lean-and-steely-and-clearly-capable-of-much-much-worse sense.
So, for once in his life, Shawn Spencer was not tempted into shattering the mounting unease with a slightly hysterical stream of quips and jokes, equally likely to defuse and detonate what was clearly a non-ideal situation.
Perhaps, if his feet were as free to run as his mouth, he would have broken already. But though he had been de-gagged and un-blindfolded, his wrists and ankles were still squarely secured—Goons 2, Shawn 1. They might have kept him from escaping, but Shawn was the one without chafe marks, so who was really winning here?—zip-tied to the chair that he had woken up in about ten minutes ago.
Ordinarily, ten minutes would be more than enough time to scan his surroundings, come up with a wacky but brilliant plan, pitch it to Gus, get it rolling solo after he refused to participate, and make their unlikely escape.
As it was, Shawn was clearly coming off some kind of heavy duty knock-out drug, and his mind hadn't quite rebooted. The last thing he remembered was the delightful melding of a mountain of chocolate fro yo and intrepid gummy bear mountaineers dancing on his tongue as he ignored Gus ragging on him for his "childish" and "clearly inferior" choices in frozen delicacies. Like putting fruit on ice cream made him a grown-up.
Then, a flash of blonde. Gus turning to watch her go. Gus's choked off girly scream. The tell-tale kick of a stun gun to the ribs. Which led him to... here. Tied up in a warehouse.
It was all he had: Warehouse. If pressed, he could also add: Cavernous. Thoroughly nondescript.
So, not all, but dangerously close.
For all his observational prowess, Shawn was hard pressed to glean more than a vague proximity to a mid-sized industrial park on the west side of whatever city this was. He doubted it was Santa Barbara, having toured just about every sketchy warehouse in city limits. Both for Psych and for fun. There was no telling what kind of sweet merch he could sniff out in some of the officially unofficial shipments stored in those places.
Literally. He would never tell Jules about the stuff he picked up there. Because she’d be disappointed in him and lead a raid on all his favorite shady suppliers. In roughly that order, too.
Then again, this experience might put a serious damper on Warehouse Wednesday, so it could just be a moot point.
"I don't like it," the blonde was saying, eyeing Shawn warily, like the zip ties holding him to the chair weren’t just to keep him from running off.
He'd been snatched on the way back to Psych, but he was the dangerous one, here. He could work with that. He squinted at her, trying to enhance his naturally intimidating aura of danger and aggression. He was triumphant for about half a second as the woman rocked back on her heels, but that moment of alarm was swiftly replaced by an intimidating squint of her own.
"You just don't like the job," returned her partner, eyes still fixed on the tablet in his hand. Even if he was unnecessarily tall, this guy at least seemed calm, with none of the twitchiness of the woman standing beside him. He simply kept tapping away at his screen. He hadn't looked up from it once since Shawn had been awake, which wasn't the worst thing. A slight distraction was better than none, after all.
The blonde's attention shifted away, and Shawn very pointedly did not slump in his seat, even if a tiny part of his mind was grateful to no longer be the sole object of her focus. Her lips pursed, but she didn't argue. And there, finally, was something Shawn could use. A little dissent in the ranks never hurt when it came to driving a wedge between two kidnappers.
Before he could pounce, however, she relented, the barest softening of her stance, and turned to the guy. He looked up from his screen to give her a concerned, distressingly gentle look. Distressing because it didn't exactly help Shawn if he thought of these goons as actual people, with rich inner lives and complex allegiances. "I like the job fine," she murmured, almost too low for Shawn to hear even as she cast another suspicious gaze his way. "It's this part I don't like. Can’t we just get Tara to do it again?"
"She's neck-deep in a job in Kazakhstan," the guy said, patient in a way that said he'd reminded her of this fact many times and would have to repeat it a few more by the time the day was out.
Her nose wrinkled and eyebrows lifted. "So?" she demanded. "Let's go steal her back! It's what we do!"
"You say that like you're the one who'd go get her," a new voice grumbled from behind him.
Even as he startled—no creaking door hinges from the warehouse offices or footsteps across the concrete floor: what was this guy, part cat?—a spark of recognition went thrumming through Shawn. A whole deluge of memories started shuffling through his brain, none of them from before he turned fourteen. Someday, he'd have to figure out why so many key moments from his life came from the years he was between twelve and thirteen, but even he could respect that now was really not the time.
Because now, he was a little busy heaving himself and his chair up and around in jerky, scooting little hops until his back was to the kidnappers, ignoring their protests—"What is he doing? Man, make him stop!" and, downright gleeful, "Okay, time for the taser!"
Even before the four legs of his chair were back on solid ground and the screeching of metal against concrete had faded, a wild, ridiculous smile was spreading across Shawn's face. Was it totally inappropriate for someone who'd just been abducted by three unknown assailants? Sure.
But for two unknown assailants and one long-lost cousin...?
Well, there probably wasn't a standard protocol for that—and if there was, Shawn certainly would've done anything else—but it hardly mattered.
Because staring straight at him, maybe a shadow of a grin tucked into the corner of his mouth, was Eliot Spencer.
About 95% of Shawn's more gruesome fears evaporated. Never mind that he hadn't seen Eliot since before he'd signed up and shipped out—hadn't heard about him in nearly as long, his aunt's face always going too serious and worried while his uncle just grunted whenever Eliot was mentioned—this was the kid who'd brought Shawn and Gus to their first R-rated movie, who'd showed them how to get a stick shift into gear, who'd proved it was possible to be a Spencer and successfully pick up women.
Except he wasn't a kid anymore. Clearly.
Well. If Shawn up and disappeared for twenty-something years, he could come back with biceps the size of bowling balls, too.
"Long time no see," he said, relaxing into his chair, zip ties be damned. "You know, if you were really dying to see me, there are easier ways to arrange a reunion. We could have gone splitsies on a toaster for Doreen's latest wedding."
Eliot rolled his eyes, ignoring the news of their great aunt's fourth marriage. Which was for the best; her fifth was already scheduled for next fall. With an ease that spoke of complete physical control, he tipped Shawn's chair onto one leg and spun it (and him) back around to face his partners in what might be literal crime. Not braced for the impromptu Tilt-A-Whirl, Shawn had to shake off the dizziness and lost his chance to get in the first word.
"Parker," Eliot was saying, growling really, prompting a frown from the blonde, "you agreed to this. It's the only way the—job will work. Hardison's already running too much of the backend, and I've got to track down the goods."
Shawn watched avidly, catching Eliot's hesitation and the minute shifts in his partners' body language, which at least let him identify them better than the chill Black guy and the unsettling blonde.
Said unsettling blonde, Parker, kept frowning, suspicious of Shawn for reasons surpassing his understanding. Nonetheless, she caved.
“Fine. I'll listen to what he's got to say. But..." she trailed off, "Why'd we have to bring him?”
As one, four sets of eyes turned to the “him” in question.
Ordinarily, Burton Guster would already be on the defensive, desire to prove himself more useful than Shawn overriding his primary goal of religiously avoiding anything that even rhymed with “trouble.”
But ordinarily, Burton Guster would have already been freaking out. While there wasn't anyone Shawn would rather have thrown into the trunk of an unknown vehicle with him—aside from maybe a fully-armed Lassie—that was purely for Best Friend Hijinks Survival Points. Gus, unfortunately, wasn't typically at his finest when confronted with danger. Waking up tied hand and foot to a chair in some unknown location was practically tailor-made to incite a classic Gus meltdown.
But he'd been unnaturally quiet since he'd woken up, blindfold already removed.
Which meant he'd woken up face to face with a smoking hot blonde who, despite the wary way she'd kept eyeing them, more than deserved his Player’s Nod. He couldn't thumb his lip with his hands tied to the arms of his chair, but he still grinned, clearly ignoring the way Shawn was shaking his head.
“Why hello,” Gus said, his voice dipping low on the last syllable.
Later, if he asked, Shawn would reassure him that it was just the recent kidnapping that must have thrown off his game, but for now, he was too delighted by the way Parker's vague distrust shifted to open confusion.
For a moment, the warehouse was utterly silent.
Rather than let it get too awkward—as he and Gus were still trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, there wasn't a lot of leeway there—Shawn swept in.
“Please don’t mind my colleague, Theodore J. Ruxpin. And no,” he said with a chuckle for a flourish. “Before you get too excited, not that Theodore Ruxpin.”
The delivery fell even flatter than usual. Possibly because of the five people in that warehouse, only he and Gus had ever known the joy of a Teddy Ruxpin.
“This is Gus,” Eliot said, yet again ignoring Shawn entirely. “And Shawn. My cousin.”
While Shawn contemplated the novelty of being introduced second to Gus by a family member, no less (and Gus continued to give Parker the Look™ right up to the moment the realization dawned that she, unlike every other woman he'd fallen for in the past seven years, wasn't just potentially a criminal—she had actually kidnapped him—and he fell into pre-panic), a wholly different look passed between the three criminals. Eliot studiously avoided looking at the other two, pulling out a pocket knife to slice Shawn and Gus free, while Hardison and Parker conducted an entire conversation with just their eyebrows. Though he wasn't looking at them, going by the progressively tenser set of his shoulders, Shawn guessed Eliot heard them loud and clear, anyway.
"Can't see the family resemblance?" Shawn asked, catching the tail end of their exchange and stretching his legs out to lounge in his chair. He wasn't about to stand up and find that whatever they'd used to knock him out had left him with jello for legs. "I understand. Not all Spencers can live up to this. Now, tell me how I can be of service?"
As Eliot took up a position off of Parker's shoulder, flanking her other side, she leveled Shawn with a reluctant, unimpressed look.
"We're taking you on as a consultant."
It wasn't a request or an offer. This had been decided. Probably well before he and Gus had been abducted off the Santa Barbara boardwalk.
Gus finally perked up a bit from his disgruntlement, but only to say, "We're charging you double our going rate."
"What happened to our friends and family discount?" Shawn demanded.
"I got rid of that when you let your girlfriend offer it to every one of her colleagues at the station."
There was another long pause, this one less awkward than alert.
"Station. As in... fire?"
While the thought of Juliet in a search and rescue rig was one he'd have to further consider at a later date, that was a negatory, and Shawn shook his head accordingly.
“Don't tell me... He's dating a cop?” demanded Hardison, shooting a look at Eliot, who refused to look back, arms crossed forbiddingly over his chest.
“We work for the cops,” muttered Gus.
“Hey, hey!" Shawn interjected, already picking up on the way the tension in the warehouse had rocketed back up to the stratosphere. Well, Parker didn't look much nervier, but that wasn't saying much. Hardison was shaking his head, muttering something about needing to hit up Santa Barbara ASAP if their PD actually hired psychic detectives. Eliot was inscrutable, but that wasn't exactly a good thing. If they weren't careful, he and Gus were going to find themselves on the business end of another pharmaceutical-aided blackout and impromptu road trip. Now that Shawn knew it was his cousin who'd kidnapped them, he wasn't about to let that happen. "Just because we sometimes offer the SBPD our services, doesn't mean we're total squares. I mean, c'mon. We are known to blur the lines of legality. We break and enter! We steal back Darth Vaders from awful, little children! We-we-we aided and abetted Pierre Desperaux!”
“Desperaux?” Parker went even sharper-eyed but finally was looking at him less like he was a bug she was contemplating squashing. Before Shawn could leap on that dangling shred of street cred, though, her lip curled. “That hack!”
“—to ensure he was rightfully imprisoned.”
“Before you helped him escape. Twice.”
“Not helping, Ruxpin,” he hissed from the corner of his mouth
Gus just crossed his arms, sticking his nose up in the air.
Parker squinted at him with the kind of intensity that might make a lesser man start to sweat. Shawn, of course, was cool as a cucumber. So long as no one got a whiff of his undershirt.
"If Eliot's sure about you," she finally allowed, sounding less uncertain than she looked, "that's all I need to know. So, tell me everything there is to being a fake psychic."
"A fake..." Shawn's surprise petered off into uncomfortable laughter. Instinctively, he checked his peripherals for Lassie or the Chief or, worse, Jules. Was this somehow some overly convoluted plot to catch him? Had his dad decided he'd had enough and roped in the nephew he hadn't seen in decades? "No, no, I think you've gotten the wrong end of the stick, here."
"What stick?" she asked, utterly serious.
"No, babe," Hardison said, his tablet stashed away and now radiating a mood that was distinctly not-chill. "He's just trying to convince you he's for real."
"But psychics aren't real."
"Then, then, then," Shawn sputtered, silently cursing that his mind still wasn't back up to snuff as he floundered for something. Pieces slotted together, not quite perfect fits, but close enough that he could justify the guess. "Then how would I know that I'm in the presence of criminals." All three stared him down, supremely unimpressed. "No, not just criminals. Master thieves!"
Parker began to show some doubt, but Eliot just looked furious.
"Don't mess with her head, Shawn," he threatened. And it was very clearly a threat for all he hardly even moved a muscle.
"Oh, what's this?" Shawn cried, shooting to his feet. He always did his best work standing up, even if the way his cousin was glaring vividly brought to mind the single game of tackle football he'd convinced him to play as kids. Shawn danced behind Gus's chair, not above using his best friend as a human shield should the former quarterback decide he wanted to try out tackling again. "A message from beyond? No! A vision,” he corrected, ignoring the way Gus buried his face in his hands in favor of pinning Eliot with his patented mystical stare followed by a sympathetic wince. “You know, I’ve heard Rogaine can work wonders.”
Eliot wasn’t so transparent as to reach protectively for his hair, but for anyone who knew him, it was easy to see the barb land and stick. Hardison hid his smirk behind a fist, but Parker practically flinched.
"You said he wasn't actually psychic!" she cried, whirling accusingly on Eliot.
"You what?" Shawn gasped, and Eliot rolled his eyes, pure exasperation. "You called my gift into question?"
"Was it such a gift when Uncle Henry wouldn't let you go see Die Hard 'cause you miscounted hats?"
"That was just my dad being my dad: a killjoy." Shawn lifted his hand to his temple, squinting into the distance. "This is a boon from the—"
“I know y’ain’t psychic.”
“No, you don’t,” Shawn shot back.
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don—“
“Damn it, Shawn!”
Hardison looked up from soothing Parker to aim a wounded look at Eliot, but Shawn was too thrown by the sudden apparition of Henry Spencer in the room, apparently determined enough to throw his own frustration all the way out of his nephew’s mouth, to notice.
He flopped back into his seat as Eliot turned to Parker, who was looking far too spooked for Shawn to really enjoy. He liked impressing people, making them believe in something fantastic. The haunted look on her face wasn't something to revel in.
"Ignore him," Eliot was muttering, hardly a hint of a rumble in his tone. "Shawn's always been good at riling people up."
When she finally nodded, it wasn't shaky, just determined. She turned back to Shawn. "I know you're not psychic. I don't believe in that," Parker informed him. If it was as much to tell herself as him, that was just the way of things. "But our clients. They lost a lot—everything—to someone who does. And to get back what they lost, I need him to believe in me. So, will you help us?"
From the corner of his eyes, Shawn glanced at Gus, who was already looking back. They went back and forth, because they were fully capable of silent conversations too, but it was mostly for appearance's sake.
As one, they turned back to the team of criminals.
"All right. After all, who are we to stand in the way of justice? We're in."
Shawn, master observer of the human condition that he was, had no trouble reading the relief and satisfaction playing out on his cousin and company's faces. And, though he might not be truly clairvoyant, it was no surprise when Gus had to get a last word in.
"But we really are charging you double. Who can I send the bill to?"
"Us?" Parker asked, a smile finally curling across her mouth. "We're Leverage."