Chapter Text
Coma… The word kept echoing through Nate’s mind as he jogged up the steps of the Boston Medical Center. Eliot Spencer in a coma – it wasn’t something his brain was prepared to accept. The man was the damn energizer bunny when it came to taking a licking. The worst beating Nate had ever seen him take hadn’t kept Eliot down for more than a few hours.
“Hardison!” The hacker was waiting for him as he stiff-armed his way through one of the lobby’s few manual doors. “What do we know?”
Hardison fell into step with Nate as they headed for the elevators. “Ambulance found him in one of those warehouses he was checking out. Bruises, scrapes, probable concussion, three broken ribs, a broken hand…”
Nate pulled up short, turning to gape at the younger man. Acknowledging Nate’s shock, Hardison continued, “Multiple puncture wounds that might be bite marks, and massive blood loss.” For the first time, Nate registered just how uncharacteristically concerned the hacker was. “It’s not good, man. They’ve got him listed in critical condition.”
Nate pushed the call button almost reflexively, mind already wrestling with the problems and possibilities that would be waiting for them upstairs. “He’s not in ICU, is he?”
“Naw, man,” Hardison said – his drawl more pronounced than usual from the stress. “They’re holding him in a private room under the name ‘Lindsey McDonald’.”
The chime of the elevator arriving was the only thing that kept Nate moving forward. “Lindsey who?” he asked as Hardison pushed him into the cab. Hardison pushed for the fourth floor, and waited for the doors to slide shut before answering Nate’s question.
“Lindsey McDonald. It’s the name he was signed in with.”
Nate shook his head, trying to shuffle through what Hardison was telling him. “That’s not one of his usual aliases.” Then the rest of what the hacker had said finally registered. “Wait. Who signed him in? You said he was in a coma.”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Hardison said, showing Nate the screen of his smart phone. “Meet our Good Samaritan.” The picture of a dark haired young woman in her late twenties appeared on the screen. “Called 911, stayed with Eliot all the way in through admitting.”
“She signed him in?” Nate asked, studying the picture. There was something disturbingly familiar about the image. “Who is she?”
Hardison shook his head. “No idea. Sophie’s working her, but no joy when I came downstairs to wait for you.”
The elevator doors slid open, cutting off any further speculation. Nate let Hardison take the lead, following him down a crowded hallway to a room at the end of a side corridor. He knocked twice on the door before pushing it open. “Just us!” he called out.
It was a private room, but small. Hardison moved in far enough to make room for Nate, who took in the scene at a single glance. Sophie was off to his right, looking very upset. Parker was curled up in a chair in the corner, hugging herself so tightly it looked as though she was trying to squeeze herself out of existence.
Eliot was in the bed, hooked up to enough tubes and monitors to cause Nate to break out in a cold sweat.
On the far side of the bed stood a tall, dark-haired man in an expensively tailored suit, over a round-collared shirt. In his shadow was the woman in Hardison’s picture. Nate glanced at the hacker, but he shrugged – clearly as in the dark as his boss as to the identity of the man.
“Nate,” Sophie said, stepping smoothly into the conversational breech, “this is Mr. Angel. He runs a legal firm in Los Angeles. And this,” she gestured at the young woman, “is Faith.”
Lawyer… Nate gave the man a second look – his brain immediately rejecting the designation. If he’s a lawyer… His attention shifted to Faith, and he barely smothered a gasp of surprise. That face… He’d definitely seen it before, and the memory twisted his heart in his chest.
“Just Angel,” the man said, bringing Nate’s attention back to the larger picture in front of him. “Not mister.”
“What does a law firm from California want with something like this?” Nate asked. Focus, dammit! His responses were off – he was still too rattled to project the sort of belligerent defensiveness people would expect in this situation. Faith’s presence wasn’t helping things; Nate found his attention constantly drifting away from Angel to zero in on her.
Angel studied him for a moment before responding. “Answer me something first. What is your connection with this man?” He gestured at Eliot.
Before Nate could shuffle through his options and come up with a safe, yet appropriate response, Faith touched Angel on the arm. “Call me.” She pushed to her feet and walked towards Nate – heading for the door.
He started to step out of her path, and then stuck his hand out in obvious invitation for her to stop. “Nathan Ford.”
This close, it was almost impossible to keep his reactions in check. He did know her – but the eyes that met his were from at least two complete lifetimes ago. Possibly three, he thought as she gripped his hand and pumped it twice. “Faith.” The smile she flashed showed hints of humor, liberally laced with suspicion.
Nate waited a moment, then gave her his most charmingly persuasive smile. “You have a last name?”
She let go his hand, but her smile never faltered. “Sure do.” Stepping around him, she continued out the door. Nate didn’t turn to watch her go; he had the information he was looking for, and the implications were more than he was prepared to handle right this second.
“Mr. Ford.” Angel’s voice brought him back to the problem at hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Nate’s grin widened. Manic energy flooded through his body – the kind of rush that typically preceded his most reckless, and ultimately most effective behavior. “Don’t see where I have to, Mr. Angel. You’re not the police. We’ve only got your word that you’re an attorney, and even then the last time I looked Boston was a long way from California.” He stepped forward, deliberately putting himself in front of his teammates. You and me, big guy, he thought. Just you and me.
Angel was silent for a long moment. “It’s not Mr. Angel, Mr. Ford. Just Angel.” His gaze ticked down to Eliot, then back to rest on Nate again. “And I never said I was an attorney.”
*******************************************
That was interesting, Faith thought, shrugging up the collar of her leather jacket as she strode away from the hospital. She’d known the job wouldn’t end up as simple as Angel had tried to sell it to her – they never did. Finding Lindsey McDonald the victim of a vamp attack however, and then running into Father Nate was a little higher on the wacky scale than she’d expected.
Old homestead, moron, she thought, shoving her hands in her jacket pocket against the cold. Makes sense you’d run into at least one familiar face along the way.
She would have never bet it was going to be his. Father Nate (no last names, please) had been a part time counselor at the Belmont Center, where Faith had spent time in the mid nineties. She hadn’t been lucky enough to get him herself, but among the girls on her floor even the hardest cases liked Father Nate. He talked straight with his charges – never making them feel stupid or worthless. The grapevine swore he’d run the streets of South Boston in his youth, which gave him a credibility most of the other counselors lacked.
Didn’t hurt how easy he was on the eyes. Faith smirked. Still is.
She walked another block, and her mind drifted inevitably back to the job and the reason why Angel had convinced her to come. Orpheus – a brutal, enchanted narcotic developed by the supernatural underworld of Los Angeles – had made its way east. Angel was certain a major distribution hub was getting ready to mobilize in South Boston, and wanted to do whatever he could to stop that from happening.
He’d turned to Faith primarily for her availability and knowledge of the area. The fact that she’d experienced the effects of the drug first hand was a bonus that definitely outweighed the somewhat dated nature of her intel.
Need to go back and finish checking out those warehouses, she thought, turning down a side street. Then meet Angel back at the hotel. Thoughts of the suite of rooms Angel had booked for them made her smile. She was getting paid for her work these days, which was nice, but Faith still would have had problems shelling out the kind of money it took to acquire the five star digs Angel was accustomed to now.
***********************************
Angel’s attention kept sliding back to the unconscious Lindsey. He couldn’t work out how it had happened. Maybe Lorne had lost his nerve at the last second. More likely that he had one last, ridiculously obscure spell in reserve to save his life. Maybe none of his wilder theories were true – maybe Lorne had shot him, and maybe he’d just survived.
Lindsey had always been persistent that way.
It was him. Even Faith had agreed that it was, and she’d only ever met the man once. The hair was a bit longer, the face a bit more weathered. Definitely Lindsey McDonald, though.
He forced himself to look away from the bed, and back at Nathan Ford – clearly the de facto leader of Lindsey’s band of friends and supporters. The man didn’t like him – that much was obvious beneath his worry for Lindsey.
Angel glanced at the bed again. Personally, he couldn’t muster the energy to be too worried about the man. Lindsey had definitely survived death more times than any human should really have been able to, and surviving vampire attacks was almost a talent. That said, Angel had seen plenty of men weaker than Lindsey come back from worse.
Nate had mistaken him for a lawyer.
If only he knew how tragically ironic that was.
It hadn’t taken much in the way of strings – or cash – to secure Lindsey in a private room. Angel checked around the space to distract himself from the hostile looks Nathan Ford was periodically sending his way. It wasn’t a large room, though, and here and now it was crowded with Nate and people he assumed were the man’s…employees? Partners? Friends?
Friends, he decided, noting the way the brunette hovered over Lindsey. The young black man who had gone to the lobby to retrieve Nate had retreated to the corner near where the small blond girl had hidden herself. He alternated between fidgeting and touching the blonde’s shoulder…for reassurance?
He’s the leader, Angel decided – his attention refocusing on Nate. No question. The others deferred to him automatically – Ford fielded questions from the medical staff that drifted in and out of the room at semi-regular intervals, and demanded answers with equal confidence. Angel could sense the man’s worry for his friends, but he never let it distract him from the job at hand.
So why’d Faith bolt like that? She’d never been shy around authority figures, but her reaction to Ford had been…perplexing, to say the least. Not quite hostile, but she’d certainly been eager to get out of the room.
Angel’s memory finally obliged him by flipping a card. Faith had lived here, hadn’t she? Born and raised, before she was Called. She’d filled him in on her history in bits and pieces, during some of their talks sitting on opposite sides of bulletproof plastic. That was part of the reason he’d asked for her help in the first place, after all.
An Orpheus ring was something to be dealt with quickly. Faith was as tough as him, if not tougher, and she knew the area. Get in, get out, quick and clean, nice and neat. That was how he’d hoped it would go, at least. Bar Lindsey getting there first and flushing the vamps out of hiding, that was how it would have gone.
His plan had been for Faith to come in the front, shock and awe, giving him a chance to attack from the rear. It had all quickly gone to dust in favor of saving Lindsey from the dozen or so vampires already in the process of kicking his ass. Between them, they’d staked a few vamps, killed a few demons, and come out with some of the Orpheus. Unfortunately, the added chaos of protecting a badly wounded civilian had meant that Faith allowed a few of the vampires to slip past her and get out with what they had left of the drug.
Even if she had been helping someone like Lindsey, Angel couldn’t stop himself from being proud of her. That mercy, that care, was a mark of how far Faith had come.
Lindsey McDonald would live.
At least long enough to answer some questions.
*********************************
Nate was not having a good night. Bite marks, for God’s sake! He glanced at the thick white dressing on Eliot’s neck again, and barely suppressed a shudder of revulsion.
He hated hospitals – hated them. They all did in varying degrees, but the rest of them had never stood trapped behind a pressboard door with a flimsy circular window, watching someone they loved die while doctors and nurses raced around. Tonight was not going to be the night they felt what he’d felt, he was not going to have that happen again…
He’d gotten by with less sleep before, but never while trying to deal with the remains of his nervous, panicky team. Parker was almost literally climbing the walls. And Mr. Angel wouldn’t stop staring at him…
Some room to breathe would be a good start, he decided finally. The hospital room wasn’t nearly big enough for the five of them and the stranger all in black.
“All right, everyone,” he said, raising his voice to cut through the low, nervous babble. They stopped talking immediately, looking up at him. The fear in their eyes, the panic and the uncertainty cut Nate to the quick.
Yes. He needed them out of here.
“All right,” he repeated. “I think we can safely say that collectively, we’re not doing any good here.” He held up a hand as Parker opened her mouth to protest. “This is not a big room, and there’s nothing we can do that isn’t already being done. We also have a client whose needs are not being met.”
They knew what he was getting at, and he anticipated their next reaction.
Their next reaction was to slide suspicious sidelong glances towards Mr. Angel.
“Of course, we all want to know what’s happening with our friend,” Nate continued smoothly, “so I propose that we stay here in shifts. That way, at least a couple of us can catch up on our sleep and…and…and do something constructive, all right?” Something better than standing around here worrying the doctors. “Sophie, Parker?”
The women nodded. Nate returned the gesture – one professional to two others. “Keep in touch,” he added, absently touching his ear – a silent assurance that he and Hardison would keep the lines open. Sophie and Parker understood. Nate knew that he didn’t need to remind Sophie to keep working on getting whatever she could out of Mr. Angel. His arrival had frustrated her previous attempts to get anything concrete, and Sophie had always been persistent that way.
She still looked reluctant, and Parker and Hardison were almost openly hostile to the idea. Nate understood. They’d become a remarkably tightly knit little band over the last couple of years; he’d noticed it, even if they hadn’t. Their first instinct now when crisis loomed was to draw closer together, when two years ago they would have raced off in separate directions.
They trusted him to do what was best for the team, however, and he knew that they couldn’t think of a better plan.
Parker unwrapped herself, slid off her chair and sidled closer to Hardison, close enough for the hacker to throw an arm around her shoulders and give her a one-armed squeeze. There was more emotion in the simple gesture than Nate would have thought possible. Sophie stayed back, but Nate could read her like an open book by now and he knew that tucked away inside Sophie Devereaux, some poor woman whose name he’d never known was falling apart.
“Hey, man, look,” Hardison said, the second they were clear of the room and heading down the hall. “Y’know you make sense an’ all, Nate, but I…I can’t just go sit on my hands, man, I just can’t…”
“I know,” said Nate softly. “I just…”
Hardison nodded, and Nate knew he didn’t have to finish. His hacker understood, and allowed Nate a minute to pull himself together.
“Lucky for you,” Nate continued once he had, “part of the reason I pulled you out first is that I need you to do something for me.”
Hardison perked up immediately. “Yeah? What are we talkin’ here? Surveillance on the warehouse? Background checks on Batman and Batgirl?”
Nate waved a hand absently. “Little of this, a little of that. We’ll go back to my place. The coms will still work at that range, won’t they?”
He’d asked the question deliberately. Despite the panic and fear weighing so heavily on all of them, Hardison managed to pull together his patented “you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me-I’m-downright-offended-that-you-have-so-little-faith-in-me” look.
It cheered Nate up ever so slightly to see that his team was still in the game.
*****************
The woman called Sophie was good at what she did, but Angel knew there was no better defense against a talented grifter than a lifespan of two hundred and fifty plus years.
He took pity on her soon after Ford’s departure, deciding to leave the two women to their grief and worry. Aside from Lindsey, the two people Angel was most concerned with – Faith and Nathan – were gone. And as far as Lindsey himself was concerned, there was no way the man was getting out of the hospital without somebody noticing him.
His final consideration was that it was getting on to dawn, and he didn’t really feel like being stuck in the hospital all day. Back to the hotel, then. Hopefully to find Faith alive, well, and unbitten.
**************************
Sophie watched him go. She waited until the mysterious Mr. Angel had closed the door behind him before glancing at her teammate.
Parker nodded.
Sophie nodded in return.
The thief got to her feet, arms still folded tightly across her chest, and followed Angel – leaving Sophie alone to guard the injured Eliot.
He was down the hall, waiting for an elevator when she left the room, so Parker made a beeline for the nearest stairwell. It was blessedly empty – some times of the night were just that late, even for hospitals.
Without preparation or preamble, Parker clambered up onto the stair rail, took a moment to find her center, then leapt off into the open air – letting herself plummet towards the ground floor.
No harness protected her this time – no exuberant cry of delight filled the space around her – but Parker still relished the feeling of uncontrolled, breathless abandon that overcame her when falling from such a height. It was almost as if all the troubles and anxieties and bad feelings that had piled on her in the last few hours suddenly couldn’t keep up.
For the span of a half-dozen heartbeats, Parker was free.
She landed lightly on all fours on the very bottom floor. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she got to her feet just in time for every bit of trouble and anxiety she’d tried to outrun to land on her head and nestle back into her brain.
Hardison – twitchy and sad and not knowing what to do.
Sophie – pretty face twisted up with worry.
Eliot – bandaged and bloody in his hospital bed.
Nate – trying to be the leader like he always was, and trying not to show how scared he was, and trying his best like he always did.
Parker shook her head to dislodge the bad pictures. She had a job to do now, something more than sitting on her hands and trying not to look at Eliot. It was a quick job, but it was a job – and that made all the difference.
She opened the door to the lobby and ducked out, trying to act like the team kept telling her “natural” was. She’d only just started for the door to the outside, when a ‘ding’ sounded behind her, and she heard the elevator doors opening.
Parker held position, facing away from the elevators. Looking over her shoulder would raise too much suspicion – Mr. Angel already knew what she looked like. The doors in front of her were translucent, however, and the darkness outside turned them into a perfect mirror. Parker made full use of the effect, trying to see if the man was following her out.
To her amazement, the brightly lit lobby behind her was completely empty.
Startled, Parker quickened her pace – heading towards the doors as she reviewed events in her mind.
He didn’t get on the elevator until after she’d gone for the stairwell. The hospital didn’t have that many floors, and it couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for her to hit the ground, whereas an elevator should have taken at least a minute, assuming it had even started at the same time as her. Doubtful, when you considered the performance capabilities of the average hospital elevator.
She couldn’t have missed him.
She just couldn’t have missed him.
The doors in front of Parker slid open as she approached, then she was out in the parking lot. The sun was just starting to rise, barely visible over the tops of the Boston skyscrapers, but bright enough to find the car she’d seen Angel getting out of when she and Sophie had first arrived at the hospital.
*******************************
Angel had no idea why the blonde girl was following him, but the blonde girl was definitely following him.
He’d been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt when she’d come out of the hospital room so soon after him, especially when she hadn’t immediately joined him at the elevators.
Besides, he wasn’t sure if it could really be counted as “following” if she reached his destination before he did. Maybe she just needed some air, he told himself. He’d practically smelled how emotionally fragile she was earlier, after all. Maybe the stress and the worry had finally gotten to be too much for her.
No. She was following him, and she was very good at it. That was definitely his car she was heading towards.
Angel watched, arms folded, as she picked the lock, scooted into the passenger’s seat, and opened the glove compartment. Judging by the way she kept checking the side and rear view mirrors, she was expecting him to show up at any second.
He almost smiled, before laying a heavy hand on the girl’s thin shoulder.
Startled, she shrieked loud enough to wake the whole hospital, before rounding on him and beating ineffectually at his chest and kicking at his shins. Angel easily caught her wrists and shoved her lightly away.
“That’s my car,” he said, folding his arms again.
To her credit, the girl immediately adopted a convincing look of surprise. “O-Oh,” she stammered. “Um…is it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
She folded her arms awkwardly across her chest, and averted her gaze. “I…I was just so upset…about Eliot that I…I was acting out. Yes. I was acting out because I was upset about Eliot and I…have control issues. I feel that I don’t have enough control over my life, and so I steal things. Um…”
Another man might have mistaken her stammering and her awkwardness for just what she claimed was its source – anxiety and worry for her friend. Angel, however, knew people. It was part of the reason he’d lived the way he had for as long as he had. He knew people, and he knew that this girl, however worried she was about Lindsey, was still lying through her teeth.
He also knew that she had just lifted something from his pocket.
Almost as if on cue, she looked down at the stake in her hand as if she honestly didn’t remember stealing it. “Oh. Um…” Again with the stammering, then she stepped a little closer to him and held it out. “So…either you hunt vampires, or you’re building a really tiny fence.”
Angel moved to take the stake back, and then he took another look at her.
She was thin as a reed – easily half the size of Lindsey or Nate. Her thin, pale face with its wispy blond hair only made her look more like a little girl – lost, alone, and entirely out of her depth.
He let his hand fall to his side.
“Tiny little fence,” he said, completely deadpan. “They’re all the rage in LA right now. Why don’t you try it yourself?”
She looked down at the stake in surprise, and then back up at him. Angel managed to smile at her, then he got in his car, revved up the engine, and drove away as the clock ticked down to full sunrise.
Parker watched him go. Then she pulled her GPS reader out of her pocket and checked for a signal.
Yep. Mr. Angel’s black ’67 Plymouth had just passed the four way intersection around the corner.
“Thanks for the stake,” she murmured, testing its weight in her hand.