Archive of Our Own

Podfic Length: 39:38

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The last job had wrapped up, without any unexpected complications other than bringing them back to the bar an hour after closing. Which wasn’t a problem; ever since they’d helped Cora straighten things out at her father’s wake, they had keys and were trusted to be in and out of the bar without causing any trouble.

Still, it was late enough that even Parker decided to just crash here for the night rather than making her way back to wherever the hell her current apartment was. She had passed out in one of the booths; Nate and Sophie had gone upstairs; Hardison was wrapping up a few things in Lucille while Eliot cleaned up after they’d had a victory drink.

Which had been earned. Lack of unexpected complications or not, this had been a weird one. If Eliot never had to work another job involving a crooked vet, he’d be thrilled. Didn’t people have standards?

But it had been dealt with, the crooked vet had gotten what was coming to him (and all the animals in his kennel were safe), along with the banker and the lawyer, and--

That noise at the back door was definitely not Hardison.

Eliot’s eyes narrowed, and he grabbed a muddler and a knife from behind the bar before hopping over it, making his way towards the back.

Parker uncurled and blinked at him in the darkness, he shook his head. I’ve got this, he told her, without saying anything out loud.

She nodded and flopped back, probably already asleep again. She was good at that.

He made his way down the hall, past the poker room and the walk-in; heard a distinctive click from the lock and stepped into the shadows where he’d have the advantage of surprise.

The door slowly creaked open; the intruder was good, sticking to shadows and only giving him a vague silhouette to work from. Lean, average height, favoring their left leg but still moving with a predatory grace that felt familiar. Not enough for him to put a specific name or organization to that shadow, not quite. But this person knew damn well what they were doing; they were an operative from one of three different agencies Eliot had come up against before; trained and efficient and experienced--

And bleeding.

The narrow rectangle of light from the streetlamp, filtering in through the open door, showed a few drops in the intruder’s wake that couldn’t be anything else.

Eliot shifted his grip on the muddler and moved.

The intruder moved just as fast, ducking under the first overhand strike with the muddler with a faint hiss; she--he could see that much now--followed that up with a jab at his throat; he sidestepped, let her momentum carry her forward and dropped the muddler in favor of catching her wrist for a level of control. She twisted in his grip, dropping low to keep him from getting a lock on her and that was the last clue he needed.

Division.

Fuck.

He shifted direction, kicking at her injured leg to buy himself a split second of reaction time and then used the advantage his greater mass gave him to shove her against the wall, his elbow at her throat, knife in that hand, ready to finish this unless--

Her face caught just enough of the light from the door for him to recognize her.

“Nikita,” he said, not letting up the pressure.

“Spencer,” she said, more out of breath than she had been the last time they’d met like this. “I need your help.”

He could feel it in her pulse, read it in her eyes; he let up on her throat just in time to catch her when she passed out.

When Nikita came to, she was lying on a table in one of the bar’s backrooms; it was covered in a thin sheet of some kind of plastic. There was a specific, familiar burning sensation on her thigh that meant high-proof liquor for a disinfectant.

And she wasn’t alone.

She didn’t move yet; given the disinfectant and the fact that she wasn’t restrained--and she did remember fighting Spencer before she passed out--she probably wasn’t in danger.

Not much danger, anyway.

“Spencer?”

“Welcome back,” he said. “I don’t have anything to numb you.”

“Fine,” she said.

“The hell happened?”

Good. Talking would distract her while he got the bullet out. She could probably do it herself, but it was easier with an extra pair of hands.

“We were running down a lead. One of Division’s external suppliers. Virtanen Pharmaceuticals.”

“Yeah, I know who they are. Who’s we?”

She hesitated for a split second, but-- you came here for a reason. “Me and an analyst I work with sometimes. Ryan Fletcher.”

“Company man?”

“Yeah. But he’s good people.”

“Fine.” She smelled vodka, and braced herself for the extraction.

“I was supposed to back him up. Didn’t go well. Security was better than I thought, we got-- fuck.”

“Almost got it. Hold still.”

“Yeah.” She took a breath, held it for three counts, then let it out slowly. “We got separated. They grabbed him. I need to get him back.”

He snorted. “You got shot.”

“I’m aware.”

“Got it,” he said, and with a final starburst of pain, he pulled the bullet out of her thigh.

“Fuck,” she breathed, and then hissed again as he splashed more vodka on it.

“You should see an actual doctor,” he said. “Not sure if that thing was in deep enough to hit the bone.”

She sat up instead of answering. “I have to get Ryan back, Spencer,” she said. “I could use an extra pair of hands.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How long did it take me to pin you when you broke in?”

“...fuck.” She sank back. He had a point. Damn it. If she got herself captured, too, that wouldn’t help Ryan.

It would, in all likelihood, do the exact opposite.

“I’m not saying I won’t help,” he said. “I’ll talk to my crew.”

She shook her head. “Bringing other people into this--Spencer, you know what Division’s like.”

“Doesn’t work like that anymore,” he said. “I’m part of a team now. It’s frustrating as hell sometimes, keeping them safe and backing them up, but it’s…” He sighed. “Point is, I’m not gonna go breaking in somewhere without at least running it by them. Probably they’ll stay in the van with you to manage the cameras and shit while I extract your friend.”

“...I guess,” she said. She still didn’t like it. Spencer was a thief, not an agent. Their worlds overlapped some--more before he’d gone freelance--but they weren’t totally the same. And his friends were even further out.

On the other hand, she’d come to him for a reason. And not just because he was the only viable semi-friendly contact of hers in the greater Boston area.

“You trust them?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“All right.”

He set the vodka and a roll of gauze on the table so she could finish cleaning herself up. “I meant it, about a real doctor, Nikita.”

“Noted,” she said, then turned her attention to her wound while Spencer left to find his people.

By the time Eliot rejoined the rest of the team upstairs, Hardison was already at work, pulling up everything a quick and dirty search into Virtanen could provide. Parker was in her usual seat, one leg hooked around one of the rings of the chair; Sophie slid into hers, setting a cup of coffee in front of Nate and wrapping her hands around her own mug of tea just as Eliot shut the door.

Virtanen was a standard pharmaceutical corporation, at least at first glance. And even a second. Their legitimate business was primarily manufacturing surgical drugs and sedatives. So was most of their black market business, though they dabbled in a few other things there. They’d been on Nate’s radar, but there hadn’t been the right time or the right client to actively target them.

Until now. Maybe.

“Division?” he asked.

“Black ops,” Eliot said. He remained standing, arms folded across his chest, his eyes on the screen. “Theoretically official, at least semi-rogue. Nikita’s working to bring them down.”

Nate nodded. That was enough, for now.

“All right. What do we know?”

“Okay,” Hardison said. “I haven’t had the time to do my usual deep dive, but Virtanen’s a pretty straightforward company. As far as pharma corporations go, anyway. Company financials all look legit, which means whoever’s burying the off-the-books stuff is good. CEO is Roger Lyall, premed at Stanford, then went and got an MBA from UCLA. He’s hopped around a few different healthcare companies, but he’s been at Virtanen for ten years, in a couple different executive positions. Got the top job two years ago. His personal financials…well, shit.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, setting her cup down and leaning forward just a little, her shoulder brushing against Nate’s. “That’s a man being blackmailed for something.”

“Not by Division,” Eliot said. “They’re not this obvious.”

“But maybe they’re leaning on him the same way,” Nate said. “Or just offering him cash to cover up his other indiscretions. Any idea what those might be, Hardison? Mistress, drugs?”

“I’ve had like five minutes, give me a sec,” Hardison said.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Eliot said. “Not with a hostage in play.”

“I can handle him,” Sophie said. “A man being blackmailed, whose office was broken into by a CIA agent--yeah, I can rattle him, keep him distracted.”

“MI6?” Nate guessed. Following up on the CIA break-in angle was probably the smart play, given the timeframe and resources they were looking at.

“I can go in on my own,” Eliot interrupted, quietly. “This kind of wetwork--it’s dangerous. Even on the fringes of it. Not the kind of thing we usually do.”

“We know,” Parker said.

“Still not letting you go in blind,” Hardison said.

“Or alone.”

“It’s your play, Eliot,” Nate said. “We’re just backing it.”

He looked around the room for a minute, then nodded. “...FSB would be better,” he said. “Division has a Russian rival.”

“FSB it is, then,” Sophie said, agreeably.

“So,” Nate said. “Sophie, you’ll keep Lyall and his people distracted. I’ll be there to back you up. Parker, go with Eliot, find Ryan. Hardison--”

“I can keep digging into Lyall on the fly,” Hardison said. “Feed you anything specific I find. And I’ll have the cameras, figure out where this guy’s being held.”

“Nikita’s going to want to be on-site,” Eliot said. “Pretty sure I talked her into staying in the van.”

“Long as she knows not to touch anything,” Hardison said.

“All right, then,” Nate said. “Let’s go steal a secret agent.”

Spencer had come down to tell her the mission was a go, and then he and his crew had scattered to get their gear together, which gave Nikita a couple minutes to touch base with the others. She and Ryan had been planning to call in around now, anyway.

Or maybe earlier than now, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been out.

Judging by how fast Michael picked up, maybe longer than she thought.

“It’s me,” she said. “I’m fine. Ryan’s not, there’s a situation. I’m handling it.”

“What happened?” The quality of Michael’s voice was a little distant; probably on speaker.

“Alex and Birkhoff with you?”

“I’m right here, Nikki.” So, that was Birkhoff, at least. “Alex is around, not in the room. What happened to Ryan?”

She filled them in on the details as quickly as possible. “I got in touch with an old friend who’s based out of Boston. We’ll get him back.”

She could almost hear Michael raising his eyebrow at her. “A friend? What kind of friend?”

“You’re not gonna like it,” she warned him.

“Who?”

“Eliot Spencer.”

There was a brief pause.

“I wouldn’t have gone to him if I didn’t trust him to do this,” she said, quietly. “And he cut ties with Moreau years ago, you know that.”

“I know,” Michael said, shortly. “That’s not the--you’re sure about him, Nikki? If the rumors about what he’s been up to the past couple of years are at all true…”

“Then maybe he can help,” Birkhoff cut in. “What? I track that kind of activity, too, you’re not special. Plus, the hacker on that crew is actually worth my time.”

“I’ll tell him you said that,” Nikita said, dryly.

“And we can’t exactly throw stones in terms of ethics here,” Birkhoff went on, ignoring her. “Besides, Spencer and his crew might be vicious, but they’re picky about who they target.”

“Exactly,” Nikita said, shifting position a little to put a little less strain on the damned wound in her thigh. “And we don’t have much time before these people figure out who Ryan is.” And hand him over to Division went unsaid.

“...I don’t like this,” Michael said, but he was giving in.

“I don’t, either,” Nikita admitted. “I don’t like bringing outsiders into this. But I didn’t have a whole lot of other options.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Alex is probably going to want to come back you up.”

“I don’t think she’ll get here in time, but it can’t hurt to have an ace up our sleeves,” Nikita said. “And I might need a hand getting out of Boston and back to you.”

“How bad is it?” Michael asked, his tone softening just a little.

“I’ve had worse,” she said. “Bullet’s out, and I’m mostly on my feet. Spencer says I should track down a real doctor, but I think he’s overreacting.”

“I’ve got a favor I can call in,” Michael said, and he didn’t even sound that annoyed that he had to agree with Spencer on something.

Despite everything, Nikita bit back a smile. “I’ll be fine,” she said, and then, hearing footsteps on the stairs, “I’ve got to go. I’ll check in when it’s done.”

“Do that,” Michael said. “We’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon,” she said, and hung up just as Ford joined her. Parker was half a step behind him, silent, head tilted, curious.

Nikita narrowed her focus to her mission and her temporary allies, and her very valuable friend trapped in that building. “Ready when you are,” she said, getting to her feet with only a little bit of difficulty.

He nodded. “Follow me.”

So. This was fine.

Or, at least, Ryan had been in worse situations than this before. Maybe. Probably.

He hoped.

He’d been left in a conference room, tied to a chair. He could taste the blood from a maybe-broken nose dripping into his mouth but that was fine. That would heal.

Ugh. Damn it. Should’ve done more digging before bringing this to Nikita.

Finding this place had taken him weeks of analysis, piecing together scraps of information and following one of the most convoluted money trails he’d ever traced in his career. But that was Division for you, the leadership of that place never did anything simply.

And he’d found the source of most of their black-market pharmaceuticals. Actual medicine for their recruits and agents, sure. Most of what they bought was probably things like morphine and antibiotics, ketamine and other anesthetics.

But some of it was also experimental, and while Nikita didn’t tell him everything, and he wasn’t exactly an expert in this area, he knew that some of the drugs he’d found records of had very few legitimate uses. And most of those would probably disqualify anyone from serving in Division.

He’d brought it to Nikita once he was sure of the connection; if they could get some of the company’s on-site records, or maybe blackmail the right people in charge…disrupting one of Division’s most important supply chains would, if nothing else, lure them into making a mistake. Maybe expose some other weakness they could exploit.

That was the plan, anyway.

Should’ve done more digging. Maybe then it wouldn’t have gone this badly.

He’d seen Nikita go down when the guns had started firing; he’d tried to cover her as best he could, but there had been a lot of blood. He didn’t know how badly she was hurt; he knew she’d gotten away (there was no way these people were holding her, too; he had that to hold on to, at least) but he hadn’t been so lucky.

She’ll be fine, he told himself, and tried to believe it. She’s…she’ll get herself cleaned up, get backup, and…

The knob on the conference room door rattled, and Ryan dragged his mind away from worrying about his friend. Focus. Keep yourself alive, learn what you can. You won’t do the others or our mission any good if you get yourself killed. Stall. You’ve done this before.

The door opened and a tall, balding man with a carefully-sculpted beard stepped in, followed by a man in a suit who moved with just a little too much precision to be nondescript. The first man was instantly recognizable--it took a hell of a lot less research than Ryan had done to get a picture of Virtanen’s CEO--and the second, while not identifiable as an individual, was just as obviously a bodyguard.

Of course, why this escalated all the way to Mr. Lyall already…

There might be something more going on here than some off-the-books trading and a little bit of blackmail. Lyall’s facial expression was neutral-shading-pleasant, at odds with the tension in his shoulders, and the bald part of his head was just a little bit shiny under the fluorescent lights. Bodyguard was relaxed, keeping one eye on Ryan and one eye on the door.

Ryan considered the best way to play this for a few seconds, and immediately rejected the idea of going on the offensive, trying to force Lyall into a corner where he’d reveal additional information. Let him do the talking. He’s already nervous. If I push him too hard, too fast, the situation will get out of control.

They sat in silence for a solid minute, staring at one another across the table.

Lyall broke first.

“I suppose we could dance around the issue,” he said. “I could pretend not to know who you are, you could pretend to have a completely legitimate reason to enter my company’s offices in the middle of the night…but that would just waste time. Wouldn’t it, Agent Fletcher?”

Ryan raised an eyebrow, and said nothing. Okay. He knows who I am. The real question is how he found out. The Chile incident was long enough ago that while he might remember it, it would be one hell of a coincidence.

Lyall sighed. “Why are you here? What do you want? What does the CIA want with me?”

Okay. Options--continue stonewalling, try to stare him down…no, that wouldn’t work, I’m not that intimidating. Time to throw him a bone.

“The CIA has limited jurisdiction on US soil,” Ryan said.

“Yes. Yes, it does.” Lyall drummed his fingers on the table, maybe a hint of anxious fidgeting. “This office is in Boston. Virtanen’s operations are mostly domestic. And yet here you are.”

“And yet here I am,” he agreed. “Virtanen’s direct operations are mostly domestic.”

“If you were investigating our international partners, why didn’t you come in openly? Why did you and your partner come armed in the middle of the night?”

“Why did your security fire at us on sight?” he countered. He considered for a second, then decided to risk a delicate push. “It’s almost as if you expected an armed break-in, in the middle of the night. Like you were prepared for us. Or someone like us, anyway.”

Lyall seemed to notice what his fingers were doing, and folded his hands together. “My security is prepared for anything,” he said. “We have valuable patents. Wouldn’t be the first company that got robbed.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Ryan said, settling back in his chair as much as the ropes would let him. Easing up the pressure, just a little bit.

“What were you looking for?” Lyall asked. “I know how the game is played, Agent Fletcher. And I doubt your superiors know what you’re doing.”

They didn’t, but Ryan had gotten a lot better at covering his trail on this sort of thing.

Of course, getting caught and tied up in a conference room made that a little harder, but not impossible.

…if I let him think he’s rattled me…

Ryan wasn’t a specialist in interrogation. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But Lyall wasn’t the only one who knew how the game was played.

He glanced at Bodyguard, swallowed once.

Lyall took the bait, leaned forward. “We don’t need to bring them into this, Agent Fletcher,” he said, pitching his voice low and soft and gentle. Wheedling. “Just tell me what you were doing here. For both of us. No one will ever know you leaked anything to me, I promise.”

“I’m not going to leak anything,” Ryan said, automatically.

“Of course, of course,” Lyall said. “A poor choice of words on my part. But if you give me the chance to get ahead of this, I can clean up this mess. For both of us.”

He said nothing, looking at Bodyguard again.

“Don’t worry about him,” Lyall said. “Anything you could possibly say, he already knows.”

Bodyguard’s eyes flickered just a little, but his posture didn’t change at all. He didn’t say a word.

…huh.

Time for another test.

“We suspect that one of your clients may be a front for an…organization…we’re tracking,” he said. Which had the advantage of being at least a partial truth.

“And you wanted our records to set up a sting?” Lyall suggested. “Maybe stage a shipment, lure these terrorists out into the open?” He shook his head. “We would have been happy to help if you’d just asked.”

That was fast, Ryan thought. I wonder if he’s done that before. Not for us, that would’ve come up in my research, but for Division…

“Something like that,” he said, and, when Lyall relaxed just a hair at the confirmation, decided to roll the dice one more time. “But we’re not tracking a terrorist cell.”

Lyall tensed again, and opened his mouth to ask another question when Bodyguard raised an almost-casual hand to his ear.

“...what is it?” Lyall asked.

Bodyguard leaned forward and murmured something into his ear.

“What?” he hissed. “You’re sure she’s FS--” He cut himself off, with a glance at Ryan.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, frowning just a little. As if he hadn’t been able to make out any words. “Look, if my partner came back for me--”

“No,” Lyall said. “We haven’t seen her since she left you here.”

“Sir,” Bodyguard said, the first audible word Ryan had gotten out of him.

“…I have to deal with this,” Lyall said, and stood up. “But we’re not finished here. I’ll be back, we’ll straighten everything out. Make a deal. I know where my loyalties lie. Anything else is just…business. Understand, Agent Fletcher?”

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

“Good. Yes. Andrei?”

Bodyguard opened the door and held it for him, and spared one more glance at Ryan before following his employer out.

So that was…interesting.

The good news was, Lyall’s people probably hadn’t identified Nikita. Which meant there was a possibility that Division hadn’t been read in yet.

The bad news was, Ryan very much doubted that Lyall really did intend to just shove this mess under the rug and trust him to keep his mouth shut about it in exchange for details about what the CIA might or might not know about his business deals with other intelligence agencies. Foreign or domestic.

Which led to…

Ryan leaned back as much as he could, staring up at the line between two of the roof tiles, thinking.

I might have misheard him. He was whispering--even if it wasn’t very quietly--and F and S are sibilants, easy to mistake for one another. I might be reading more into this than is actually there.

But if Lyall really was getting a visit from someone claiming to be Russian intelligence, mere hours after US intelligence infiltrated his office, and that was his response…

I would kill for a laptop and access to Virtanen’s network, Ryan thought. If I’m right…Division might not be Lyall’s only off-book client.

Which was one hell of an opening to exploit.

Unfortunately, at least for the moment, until he figured out how to get himself out of this damned conference room, there wasn’t anything Ryan could do about it.

Keeping one eye on the night watch at the front desk, Sophie turned a page in her book. Chekov, untranslated--Russian wasn’t her best language, but it wouldn’t do for her to be reading the plays in English, not with the role she was playing. She was projecting a very specific image here--in a simple black suit, sharply tailored, wicked heels; her hair tied back in a severe knot. Sit with her legs crossed at the knee, shoulders relaxed, calm and in control.

Easy.

Nate was sitting in the chair next to her, phone out. The two of them had walked into the lobby five minutes ago; she’d introduced herself to the guard at the desk, letting him run the name and find the FSB identity Hardison had built for her.

Then they’d taken their seats and settled in to wait.

“Cameras are mine now,” Hardison said in her ear. “Still working on internal communications, but Lyall and a beefy looking guy are in the elevator, heading down to you.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning another page.

“Keep us posted,” Nate said. “Eliot, Parker, once they hit the lobby, you’re up.”

“Copy that,” Eliot said.

A soft chime, as the elevator across the lobby reached their floor.

“Ms. Morozova?”

Now Sophie looked up, closing her book without bothering to overtly mark the place. “Mr. Lyall. I apologize for late hour.” She rose and offered him her hand, which he shook.

Cool, dry, but a little too firm. He’s overcompensating. Responding to an overtly dominant woman, or just the situation as a whole?

“It’s fine,” he lied. “But perhaps we can take this somewhere a little more private?”

She smiled briefly, not letting it reach her eyes. “Of course. My colleague, Mikhail Kozlov.”

“A pleasure,” Lyall said, offering Nate a hand as well.

“Da.”

“Mr. Kozlov speaks little English, I’m afraid,” she said. “Though he understands much. And your…aide?” She sized up the bodyguard, keeping her expression neutral.

“Andrei’s been with me for a long time,” Lyall assured her. “I trust him absolutely.”

“Always good, to find someone you can trust,” she said. “After you?”

“Ah. Yes, of course. Uh, please, follow me.”

Oh, yes. He’s definitely flustered by my taking charge. But not resentful.

Lyall led them to the elevator. “We’ll go up to my office. It’s on the tenth floor.”

“We found Ryan,” Nikita said. “Spencer, Parker, he’s in a conference room on the fourteenth floor. Tied up, doesn’t seem like he’s been hurt. Hopefully mobile, once he’s cut free. One guard on the outside, no one in with him. Rest of the floor looks clear.”

“And I’ve got the alarms,” Hardison said. “Plus Lyall’s finances. Give me another five minutes, maybe, and I’ll know who he’s been paying.”

“Perfect,” she said, answering both Hardison and Lyall at once.

She stood straight and silent for the rest of the ride up, keeping her hands folded behind her back, and one eye on Lyall.

Still nervous, trying to watch her without being obvious about it and failing.

Andrei didn’t have as many tells, but he was wary of her and Nate.

Andrei could be a Russian name, or any of several other nationalities. Something to think about.

“Here we are,” Lyall said, breaking the increasingly-tense silence when the elevator reached the tenth floor. “My office is this way.”

“Not on top floor?” she said.

“I like to keep a close eye on my people,” he said. “Not cut myself off from them. They’re more productive when they know they’re being watched.”

“Rude,” Parker muttered.

“You are not wrong, Mr. Lyall,” Sophie said.

He seemed pleased by this.

The office had an electronic lock, which opened with his fingerprint.

“But still sensible about security,” she noted. “You have many locks like this one?”

“On high-level offices like mine,” he said. “And R&D, and of course HR. The places where our most sensitive data is held. Our other offices use keycards.”

“Fourteenth floor is mostly accounting,” Nikita said. “Could go either way.”

“Looking into it now,” Hardison said. “Keycard’s easy. Parker, check the upper left pocket on your bag, the usual spoof should be charged and ready. Sophie, Nate, can one of you get a better look at the pad?”

Nate leaned forward, examining it in silence.

“Full biometrics. Shit. Gonna be hard if the conference room has one like it,” Hardison said.

“Damn it,” Eliot said.

“I said hard, not impossible,” he said. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Ms. Morozova?” Lyall said, holding the door open for her.

“Of course,” she said. “Mr. Kozlov simply admires your security.”

“We do take it seriously,” he said, letting the door fall shut behind them.

Andrei remained outside. Interesting. And--not ideal. It made him a variable they couldn’t control as easily.

“We may not be guarding state secrets, but the work we do here is important. As I’m sure you know.”

“Yes,” she said. “Virtanen has been on our radar for a little while now.” She sat down at one of the chairs across from his desk.

“Right. Of course.” He took his own seat behind his desk; took a breath, let it out, relaxed a little.

He feels powerful and in control in here. And he left Andrei outside.

Time to make him feel vulnerable. She caught Nate’s eye, he nodded once and took up a position standing behind her, rather than the other chair.

Lyall’s eyes flicked up at him, and there was just the barest hint of uncertainty before he turned his attention back to her. He leaned forward slightly, hands on the desk. This was his space. He had to remind himself of that.

“So. What brings you here now?”

“As I said, Mr. Lyall. We have been watching you for some time.” She maintained her position, cool and collected and neutral. Did not react to his attempt to assert himself. As if he was beneath her notice.

This may be his space, but she was the one who had graciously allowed them to meet here. Little tricks of body language, when he was already responding to her casual control over herself, made that an easy impression to give.

He was sweating again. Good.

“I hope you haven’t seen anything to concern the--the Federation.”

“Wait, back up a little bit,” Nikita said. “I recognize that account number.”

“Should we have?” Sophie asked, delicately raising one eyebrow.

“Of course not,” he assured her. “My business is--well, it’s nothing that should raise any alarms. Unless…unless one of my other clients…?”

Oh, FSB had been an excellent choice.

“Business is business,” she said. “This is not why I came so far to speak to you.”

“Shell company, shell company, shell company--oh, damn,” Hardison said.

“Mail-order bride service,” Nikita said. “Also bratva.”

“With a payoff roughly every year, and his wife sure as hell ain’t Russian,” Hardison added.

“How much money are we talking?” Eliot said. “Enough to cover up disappearances?”

“I don’t think so,” Nikita said. “Not unless he’s getting a special discount. Just trading in for a newer model when he gets bored, most likely.”

“Nice guy,” Hardison said. “Real classy.”

“Oh?” Lyall asked. “Then…well, what can I do for you?”

Sophie ran through her options, and picked the one that would give them the most ammunition against him for later. Just in case.

“I will be blunt, Mr. Lyall,” she said. “We need to borrow some of your more…extracurricular connections.”

“My--I don’t know what you’ve heard,” he said. “But nothing I’ve done is illegal, either here or in Russia. And my…my friends, they get--”

“I am not interested in whatever retirements you arrange for your mistresses,” Sophie said, allowing an edge of contempt to line her voice.

To his credit, he didn’t flinch. He did fidget, just a little, with a pen lying on his desk.

“You…you want me to lean on my agents?” he asked. “I…those accounts are separate, but if you need evidence…”

“We can handle bratva,” she said, dismissively. “When we are ready to handle bratva. But for now, they--and you--are useful.”

“...oh?”

“I simply want to introduce you to a lovely young lady,” she said. “Through our mutual friends.”

“...oh, I like where this is going,” Nikita breathed, and Sophie bit back the urge to laugh or respond to the compliment.

Eliot’s friend really was a lovely young lady, once one got past the desperate, homicidal rage simmering just under the surface.

Lyall’s face went white. “You want me…you want me to help you…?”

Sophie smiled, and now she leaned forward just a little bit. “Tell me, Mr. Lyall. How much does CIA know about where you find your mistresses?”

Ryan spent maybe the first five minutes after Lyall and Andrei left him there trying to work his way free of the ropes.

No luck. Not only were Lyall’s people inconveniently good shots, they were even more inconveniently good at tying people to chairs.

And searching them. Even if he had been able to get enough wiggle room to reach it, he doubted he still had the file he’d started carrying after one too many times being tied up in an undisclosed location.

The next few minutes, he allowed himself to indulge in a little bit of self-pity. Rescue was unlikely, talking his way out of this situation when the CIA found out would be a pain in the ass if he lived long enough to do it, and he and Nikita hadn’t even managed to get anything useful out of this mission. Other than the fact that, maybe, Lyall was double-dipping.

At the ten minute mark, he pulled himself together. If I can just get out of here, I have a new angle to pursue. Or even if I don’t get out of here, I just have to figure out how to get a message out, and Nikita and the others can take it from there.

That thought distracted him, brainstorming and rejecting ways he might be able to get a message out, depending on how much time he had and whether or not he got a chance to speak to anyone other than Lyall and Andrei.

Ryan had been alone in that conference room for maybe twenty minutes when his increasingly-wild brainstorming session was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of violence outside.

Fuck, he thought. He had no idea who the hell was out there--it couldn’t be Nikita, or could it? But anyone else was probably bad news for him. Whoever came out on top, so to speak.

He knew who he was dealing with, more or less, with Lyall and his people. Unidentified parties meant unknown complications, and he was still unarmed and restrained.

And if Virtanen’s security won, he’d lose what little ground he’d managed to gain to increased suspicion.

A thud from outside that sounded remarkably like a body hitting the floor with a great deal of force, and then the handle rattled.

Ryan made one last desperate, futile attempt to get free, and then braced himself for the inevitable.

The door burst open, showing one unconscious man in a suit on the ground, a blonde girl crouching next to him, with a device that looked like a credit card skimmer in one hand, and a second man, this one on his feet, who stepped almost casually over the unconscious guard and entered the room.

“I’m Eliot Spencer,” the stranger said, curtly, taking a position at the door not unlike the one Andrei had been in earlier. His friend got to her feet with an easy grace and made her way around the table to start working on the ropes. “Nikita sent me. She said to tell you anemone.”

“Anemone, got it,” Ryan said, relaxing a little. He and Nikita switched up their code phrase every couple of weeks, just in case. That was the latest one. She really had sent him. “Eliot Spencer?” He’d heard that name a few times. Not every CIA agent would know it, but the specific areas Ryan worked in…it was hard not to.

“Yeah,” he said.

“...huh,” he said. “You’re shorter than I expected.”

Spencer just glared at him for a minute, while the blonde girl snorted behind him.

“Sorry. It’s been a long night.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Parker?”

“These are really good knots,” she said. “And really good ropes. Wish I didn’t have to cut them.”

“You have good ropes, and we need to move,” Spencer said, but he didn’t sound all that annoyed. He and his partner had probably been working together for a while. Long enough to become real friends.

Which--

“Is she okay?” Ryan asked, waiting patiently while the ropes loosened--if he got up before he was totally free, that wouldn’t solve anything and would probably make his rescuers’ job harder. “I know she gave you the code word, but--” He’d seen her get shot, which didn’t happen very often. Not for lack of trying, but…

There was the unmistakable sensation of an earbud being shoved into his ear. “Uh--”

“Ryan?” And that was definitely Nikita’s voice.

Ryan let out a relieved breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve got something for you.”

“Me, too,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “I mean, some stuff for us, too, but your friends here are up to some shady shit.”

“That would be why we came here,” Nikita said.

“Parker, Eliot, you clear yet?” another voice, also male, cut in. “Sophie’s pulling out now.”

“Parker?”

“Got it!” she said, and the ropes fell away.

Ryan stood up, shaking his hands to check the circulation. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now I keep security busy while the rest of you get clear,” Eliot said.

“You’ve got your exit mapped out?” the second unfamiliar voice said.

“Always do,” he said, already on his way out of the conference room.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” the blonde girl--Parker, that’s what Spencer had said her name was--asked.

“Not…really, why do you ask?”

She just grinned, took his hand, and hauled him out the door, heading for the stairs to the roof.

…I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Somehow, miraculously, they had all made it back to the van in one piece.

Devereaux and Ford had come out first, with her gliding along and him half a step behind her, glowering at everyone.

Ryan and Parker had joined them a few seconds later, with Parker looking very smug and Ryan looking windswept and slightly terrified.

But unhurt. Unhurt was good. Unhurt was important.

Spencer had turned up last, unhurt and barely disheveled at all.

And then Hardison had nearly run over Alex as they drove away; she had somehow made it here just too late to help, and was casing the building from the parking lot.

Eight people made the van just a little bit crowded on the drive back to the bar, and curling up in an out-of-the-way corner, answering Alex’s annoyed questions, put a little more strain on Nikita’s wound than she would have liked, but…

Well, they all made it out. No one had died. And from what Ryan and the others had said so far, Division hadn’t been alerted to the break-in in time to cause problems.

For a night that had started out as terribly as this one, it had at least ended on a high note.

They were all still in one piece--or as many pieces as they’d started the rescue mission in, at least--when they made it back to the bar. Nikita was taking up one side of a booth, sitting sideways so she could keep her bad leg stretched across the cushion. Ford and Devereaux were sitting across from her, giving her a chance to…well, there were some things she should probably say. Even if they didn’t know the full story--and never would; she’d make sure of that with Spencer before she, Ryan, and Alex left.

“...I should thank you,” she said, after a moment. “For everything you did.” For everything you risked.

“You’re welcome,” Devereaux said, with a smile that was way more genuine and warm than Nikita would’ve expected from one of the most notorious grifters of the last decade or two.

“We’ve got a few more surprises heading Lyall’s way, too,” Ford said, sounding unbearably pleased with himself. Which, from Devereaux’s reaction, was not at all unexpected. Or unfamiliar.

“Oh?”

“Hardison already sent everything we have on his mistresses to his wife,” Devereaux explained.

“He’s going to spend some time reinforcing the paper trail over the next couple of days, too,” Ford added. “So by the time she hires a divorce lawyer and starts subpoenaing more records, it’ll expose his Russian underworld ties. Which might be enough to trigger an official government investigation.”

“And if it’s not,” Devereaux continued, “we have a recording of him agreeing to help smuggle at least one Russian spy into the country.”

With that much official heat, Division would either cut him loose or silence him another way, to make sure he didn’t cause them a very public problem.

Nikita looked away for a minute, turning towards the bar and tilting her head at just the right angle to let her hair hide her face from her unlikely allies.

“It wasn’t too bad, for pulling it off in like an hour or two,” Parker was saying, perched on the bar next to Hardison. “Even if I didn’t get to climb through any vents.”

“Vents in the Virtanen building have tripwires,” Alex said. “At least based on Nikita’s schematics.”

“Who does that?” Parker complained. “...although I guess it would make it an interesting challenge…”

“Hey, can we not knock over my soda?” Hardison complained, moving his glass to the other side, before turning back to Ryan. The two of them had had their heads together from pretty much the moment they’d gotten back, going over everything Hardison had pulled from Virtanen’s servers with the combined analytical skill of one of the best intelligence agents and hackers alive.

Sorry, Birkhoff, she thought, biting back a smile.

“Basically, we’ve made sure Lyall won’t be a problem,” Ford said, softly. “Not for you, not for any of the other people he and his company have hurt. That’s what we do.”

Nikita nodded. “I can’t promise I’ll ever be able to return the favor,” she said. “But…I’ll give you a dead drop. Use the anemone codeword again. If I can, I’ll come.”

Ford nodded; Devereaux reached across the table and put a hand on hers, squeezing it just a little.

Nikita met her eyes across the table, and there was--a strange sort of understanding there. It wasn’t the same--Sophie Devereaux was not the kind of hard that would make her the same--but something in her understood.

“All right,” Spencer said, coming out of the kitchen again. “I’ve got chili, who wants some?”

“Ooh!” Parker said, hopping off the table. “Is it the kind with--”

“Stop grabbing, Parker, you’re gonna make me spill!”

Devereaux pulled her hand back. “Stay here, I’ll get you a bowl,” she said.

Nikita watched her go, and couldn’t help but smile a little at the weirdly comforting domesticity of the whole scene. Alex and Ryan included.

If only, she thought, if only all my missions could end this well.

And maybe a part of her still regretted it--and would regret it even more tomorrow, especially if it turned out she had exposed these people to danger--but for now, for this moment, Nikita couldn’t help but feel glad, relieved, even, that she’d come to Eliot Spencer for help.