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Neal slowly came into awareness. He was on something hard, and rough. His hands and feet were cuffed. He opened his eyes. He was on a plywood floor, clearly in some sort of attic. There was one small round window sending a beam of daylight into the dusty space.
Suddenly he remembered that he had been with Elizabeth. He turned over. She was there. She was also cuffed, but her feet were free. They were also oddly bruised on the soles and one of her pinky toes was a little purple. There was blood on one of her heels.
Neal had to chuckle to himself. She had been kicking too much to tie up. Sometimes she was braver than was good for her, honestly. He scooted over to her, and gently nudged her with his elbow. She moaned, and turned her head.
“Hey, Elizabeth. It’s Neal, can you wake up for me?”
Elizabeth opened her eyes. She sat up suddenly, ready to go right back to fighting.
“El, calm down. We’re okay, ish…”
Elizabeth looked around, and then looked back at Neal, “they got us, after all.”
Neal nodded, “yeah. I’m sorry, I don’t know who they are. We will figure that out, though, and get out of here. I promise.”
Elizabeth bit her lip, and looked away. Then she looked back at him,”take off my bra.”
He raised an eyebrow, “I mean this doesn’t seem like the most comfortable place to–”
“For the underwire, Neal.”
Neal scooted around until he could lift her shirt and reach the hooks on her back, and undid them. She shrugged the shirt and bra forward onto her arms and used her teeth to open the threads on the fabric channel until she could get the flat, coated wire to slip out. She handed it to Neal, he used it on her cuffs, then she took it and used it on his, taking a little bit of coaching.
He untied his feet, and then stood. She put her bra and shirt back on, and looked around. She walked up to the window, looked around, took a broken piece of board, and smashed it. Neal scrambled back from the cascade of broken glass. Elizabeth used the board to sweep an area near her relatively free of shards, and then used the board to start prying the molding off.
Neal started getting up, but stopped, biting his lip and gasping. His back and hip were locking up in pain. Elizabeth heard him and came over, cleared the floor and then knelt beside him.
"You were jumped pretty good and dragged into the van. I'm not surprised you're hurt."
Neal chuckled, "did Peter give you self defense lessons? It looks like you kicked up a storm."
Elizabeth shrugged, "well only two of them had me, five of them had you…"
-
Eventually Elizabeth got the molding off, and then started slamming the board into the plaster and lath. Neal sat on the floor, watching her basically hulk out on a building. She was getting more and more worked up.
Neal tried again to get up, and pushed through the pain to shuffle carefully over to her. He put his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, panting. He gently swept the sweaty strands of hair that were escaping her hair tie back from her face.
"You're going to hurt yourself."
Elizabeth sighed, and looked him in the eye, "Neal, no offense, but I'm going to get out of here as soon as possible."
She went back to working on busting through the wall. Neal looked around. There was a trap door down, but it had been screwed to something from below, keeping it from being opened.
There was insulation, and plywood, and a few more very short bits of board. Neal picked up a board and hobbled back over to Elizabeth, working their way through by brute force..
It was not Neal's usual method of escape, but Elizabeth was not someone to be stopped. The world was lucky all she wanted was a quiet life.
Elizabeth had managed to get through in a semi circular ring, and pulled the asphalt shingles that were in the way off the roof.
"Elizabeth," said Neal suddenly, noticing that there was blood on her stick. She stopped and looked. She pulled a piece of wood out of her palm, and kept going.
Neal gripped her arm, "El, please, stop. At least let me take a turn until it stops bleeding."
She looked at him, panting. She sat down fairly suddenly, exhausted. Neal sat beside her. She shook her head to get her hair out of her face, “I… actually do know who they are. The people who captured us. Well, kind of.”
“Who?”
“Well, when Peter and I met, it was because I was a witness to a robbery at a gallery.”
“Oh, you think they were the same people who robbed the gallery?”
She shook her head, with an expression Neal could only describe as shifty.
“El?”
She finally met his eyes again, “Peter may have been, well…wrong to clear me. I may have…slightly orchestrated the entire thing.”
Neal’s eyebrows came together, his mouth dropped open, “you what?”
“Look, it was this rich guy, and he bought out the gallery for a solid month to show this collection of art, and I realized pretty quickly that everything there was from stuff looted in the 40’s. The people coming to see it were jerks, and then the guy was completely racist to the caterers.”
Neal nodded, slowly, “so your response was…?”
“Well I had a friend in a book club who was kind of a…well I guess anarchist? So I might have vented to her. And then hinted to her…exactly what the door code was and several times and dates when nobody would be in the building…I mean, as a joke…but also not at all as a joke."
Neal sat there with his legs folded to the side, staring at her. Finally he just shook his head, “so you orchestrated a robbery and then asked out the FBI agent investigating you?”
She shrugged at him, "I mean are you one to talk?"
He laughed, "no, fair."
She chuckled, then continued, "anyway, one of the guys who took us was working for the guy who booked the gallery. Maybe he found out somehow?”
“Or…you’re not the only one who was messing around with stolen Nazi art? Maybe he was involved in the sub somehow? Just a coincidence, and he took you because you were with me, or to use against Peter?”
Elizabeth nodded, “maybe. We won’t know until we get more information. Or get out of here. So I'm going to get out of here."
She got back up and resumed beating the roof and wall into submission. Neal helped, still fairly stunned.
Something dawned on him. He looked at her, pausing his architectural assault, "El, does Peter know?"
She shook her head, her hair getting in her face. Neal put down his stick and stood behind her, braiding her hair back.
"He doesn't know about that. Or the book club. Or the newsletter."
Neal started to get an idea what she meant, "the people at the book club, and the newsletter…They had a habit of doing things like that?"
She nodded, "they were into direct action. Don't get me wrong, I learned to run events by helping organize soup kitchens, everyone was working to help people, but…"
"But some of it might put Peter in an awkward spot."
"Yeah," she said, "it would.”
She turned to look at him, fear and worry in her eyes. Not because they had been captured, but because she feared her past actions would hurt Peter. Neal could say with certainty that he understood those feelings.
“El, listen to me. I know it's scary to risk a relationship with someone as amazing as Peter. But I have significant evidence on the side of thinking he would understand, and that we will figure it out."
Elizabeth's blue eyes bored into his, and he couldn't help but remark on the similarity between himself and her.
He quirked a smile, "he may be a lawman, but he cares about justice, not law. And he loves you."
Elizabeth sighed. She leaned against his front, bunching up his shirt in her hands, her blood soaking into it. He wrapped his arms around her, and held her, rubbing her back up and down.
Suddenly the trap door burst open from below. Neal turned to shield Elizabeth, though she was trying to do the same thing he was just bigger.
Peter's panicked face poked up through the hole.
"El, Neal…I'm so sorry. That banker we took down last week, he had ties to…"
He climbed up, looking around at the damage they had done to the inside of the building trying to break out. He saw how sweaty Elizabeth was, the blood on her hands, and Neal holding her with blood on his front.
He walked to pull them both into a tight hug, holding on like they might just disappear.
"I love you so much," said Peter, voice tight.