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There was a young woman – really more of a girl, she couldn’t have been any older than twenty at most – standing in front of the Leverage headquarters and looking absolutely terrified. Harry spotted her while getting the mail and identified her as a potential new client immediately. He didn’t even ask the others before inviting her in as carefully as he could.
The rest of the team was already inside, all except for Hardison, who was off somewhere saving people and probably wouldn’t be back for at least two more months. Parker was hanging from the ceiling upside-down and trying to convince Breanna to join her up there and Sophie was checking up on one of their old marks who was apparently attempting a return to crime. Eliot just sat at the bar and listened to Parker’s increasingly silly arguments.
Of course, Parker spotted their guest first, even in her distracted state. She slipped out of her harness and landed directly in front of the stranger, looking her up and down once before nodding and inviting her to the counter with a wave of her hand. It took another moment for everyone else to notice and fall silent.
Then, everyone just looked at each other for an uncomfortably long moment. The girl clearly wanted to talk, but she also looked absolutely terrified, so Sophie eventually decided to give her a hand and help her out a little. She was still really good at that kind of interaction, so she placed a hand near the girl – without touching her so she wouldn’t scare her off – and put just the right amount of gentle coaxing into her voice.
“Hello, I’m Sophie, and these are my colleagues. I assume you already know that we help out people who need it, and who don’t really know where else to go, and I promise that we can be very discreet if that is what you need. So, what brings you here today? How can we help you?”
It wasn’t how Parker would have done it, but it clearly worked because the girl relaxed visibly and even managed to smile just a little. Then, she took a shuddering breath and wiped at her tear-filled eyes with the heels of both hands. Her voice was small and unsteady, but she managed to talk, which was probably already a huge step for her.
“My name is Bella, and I need your help to save my little sister. Her name is Hailey and she’s five years old. My parents have been putting her in pageants since she was a baby and it’s getting really bad, and now they also want to put her on social media. They barely let her eat anything, and last week I even caught my mom bleaching Hailey’s hair. I know that it’s all legal – trust me, I checked – but it’s just not right! I know what it’s like to grow up like that, and I can’t stand seeing my sister go through it too…”
She was openly crying by the end, sobbing and gasping for air in a way Parker had never quite understood. Harry and Sophie were both awkwardly reaching out to comfort her while Breanna mumbled something about getting tissues and disappeared under the counter. Parker was just looking around, not quite sure what to do or how to respond until her eyes met Eliot’s across the counter.
They held each other’s glance for a long moment, having an entire conversation without saying a single word in a way Parker only ever could with Eliot or Hardison. This specific conversation was a particularly intense one, as well as being the only reason Parker didn’t leave right then to beat some sense into those horrible people Bella called her parents. They would have deserved it, but that wouldn’t actually have fixed anything, and Leverage fixed things, so Parker needed to think of something better.
So Parker pulled herself together and pushed away the rage that always bubbled up somewhere deep inside her when someone was mistreating children, and got to work. She let Sophie and Breanna take on the main conversation with Bella, getting as many details out of her as possible, while Harry explained all of the legal issues they would face to Parker and Eliot.
Of course, Parker already knew that parents were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted with their children without anyone doing anything about it, but it was still crazy to have it listed out so plainly. It was kind of insane, all things considered, and suddenly Parker once again understood why Hardison wanted to tackle the bigger issues now instead of just trying to patch over symptoms as they came up. Eliot looked like he had just come to the exact same conclusion.
But all of that would have to wait, because in that moment, there was one specific child they had to help out of her own very specific situation, and that was a more pressing issue than systematic but probably slow changes. They could try all of that as well, but not until later, once that one specific child was properly taken care of.
It wasn’t even a question that they would take the case, even if it wasn’t the kind of thing they usually did, and Bella could clearly tell that they had already accepted and started planning as well. She looked incredibly relieved, even if she was still sobbing in Sophie’s arms like the child she clearly still was. Parker didn’t really know how to make her feel better – emotions were still hard for her, sometimes – so she was glad the rest of the team was there to take care of that for her while she started scheming.
She already had a bunch of ideas, but she couldn’t really put any of them in motion yet before the client conversation was over. So Parker made her mind tune back into the still-going conversation just in time to catch Breanna asking some of the most important questions, the ones Parker always forgot to ask.
“What do you want us to do, exactly? Do you just want to get your sister out of there or should we also make your parents to suffer a little bit for everything they’ve done?”
That was actually something they all sometimes forgot to ask about, even if they should really have known better after doing this for over a decade. The main problem with that was that, at least for Parker, it always seemed obvious that they should just do both. She just sometimes forgot that other people didn’t think the way she did.
Luckily, she wasn’t working alone anymore, so now there were always other people around that could remember that kind of stuff for her. It also wasn’t really surprising that the people who usually remembered were Harry and Breanna, who were still much closer to being civilians than the members of the original team could ever be. This time, Breanna’s comment actually reminded Parker of another important question that hadn’t been asked yet.
“Also, are you ready to take Hailey in or is this going to land her in foster care? Because that’s not a fun place to grow up, trust me…”
She said it as soon as the thought occurred to her, before Bella could do anything more than nod at Breanna’s questions, just to get it all out before the conversation moved on and she forgot all about it again. It was probably fine, Parker’s question was more important anyway. It was also the question Bella answered first.
“We have an aunt that can take her in. I’m already living with her and she knows what’s going on, even if our parents won’t let her come around anymore.”
That was already better than Parker had feared, but it still wasn’t a guarantee that both children would be fine. They would just have to make sure of that once everything else was done – it certainly wouldn’t be the first time they infiltrated CPS. Their internal networks were ridiculously easy to crack, and the people there were far too overworked to notice if someone was messing with some of the paperwork just a little bit.
But, of course, Parker didn’t say that out loud, at least not in front of a client. For some reason, normal people never seemed to respond well to that kind of comment, even if they should probably know that something like that was going on in the background. It was usually better when they didn’t know most of the details anyway, if for no other reason than so they couldn’t snitch.
Luckily, Bella seemed to agree, because she was already getting ready to leave, claiming that her aunt would start asking too many questions if she got home late. Parker waved at her to see her off and went right back to thinking before the door could even close all the way. This was exactly the kind of job she always wanted to finish as quickly as possible, just so that child wouldn’t have to suffer any longer than absolutely necessary.
They had another team discussion once that was all done, and quickly came to the conclusion that Breanna would mess with the family’s surprisingly successful social media presence while Sophie went to infiltrate one of the pageants and Parker and Eliot set up the family’s house, just to make sure it would look bad enough to justify Hailey being taken away as soon as they set the rest of their plan into motion.
It wasn’t as convoluted or artistic as some of their other jobs, but that was fine, not everything needed to be the biggest possible production. As much as it hurt Parker to admit it, sometimes easier was better, and this was one of those cases. They didn’t even need to do that much, Sophie just got herself a spot as a guest judge so she could not only keep the parents distracted but also break them down mentally as much as possible.
At the same time, Parker slipped through an open window in their surprisingly big house – they could have just gotten Bella’s keys, but this was more fun – and opened the door for Eliot, who was carrying a bag full of pretty much everything that would make someone look like a bad parent without posing any actual danger to Hailey.
They knew each other so well at this point that they barely even needed to talk to each other. Parker simply took the upstairs area with Hailey’s room while Eliot started his work in the kitchen. He didn’t even need to change that much there – there wasn’t nearly as much food as you would expect from a household with children, and he spotted more than one bottle of wine in the fridge, low enough for a toddler to reach – so he pretty much just moved the knifes onto the counter, where a child could easily get to them.
They both kept going this way, moving from one room to the next and always changing just a few small details that added up to a bigger picture of danger and neglect. By the time they were done, Eliot had exposed several wires all over the house and Parker had turned the bathroom into a masterpiece of danger and discomfort.
Parker had even brought a few self-made drawings that looked like they were made by a deeply disturbed toddler that she stuffed into the trash and hid in Hailey’s bedroom to make it look like her parents were trying to hide them without actually making them disappear. It really wasn’t that hard to hit just the right balance between the drawings being hidden yet still visible.
Their last step was to make every part of the house look just slightly too dirty, like whoever lived there either didn’t care or simply wasn’t capable of keeping the house in a liveable state. Eliot seemed to know exactly what he was doing, so Parker just went along with it until things looked surprisingly similar to some of the foster homes she had to stay in as a child. Those places had always been the worst, which meant that they were doing a good job.
Lastly, just as another small touch, Parker snuck into what looked to be a home office and added some papers to the stuff already piling up on top of a ridiculously huge desk. It wasn’t anything too obvious, because no one would leave that just lying around, but it was definitely enough to build a case. There was a list of beauty treatments that would be a lot even for an adult that had Hailey’s name on top of it, a few bills for expensive filming equipment mixed in with final notices, and just some other stuff that would look bad. Hardison had even forged a diary for this job.
Then, they could finally leave, nodding to the actors Sophie had arranged to play concerned neighbours on their way to the food truck, where Breanna and Harry were already waiting. When they picked Sophie up from the pageant, there was an afterparty going on even though it was already past 10pm. All of the kids were clearly exhausted but their parents didn’t care. They drove back to the house in silence.
They had to wait for another hour before the family finally came home, Hailey asleep on her feet and both parents yelling at her for only getting the fourth place. Because they were great at planning, and because Breanna knew how to track phones, that was exactly when not only CPS but also the police showed up.
Parker knew that they had done everything right – it wasn’t even the first time they took on a job like this – but there was still a moment of breathless terror when her mind was suddenly convinced that it would all go horribly wrong, even with the way Hailey threw herself at those people who were strangers to her just so she could get away from her parents.
There was more shouting and it even looked like Hailey and Bella’s father would start a physical fight, but he clearly wasn’t a particularly good fighter since he ended up in handcuffs in the back of a cop car in less than ten seconds. The mother followed him a few minutes later, once the CPS workers started going through the house and pointing out things that drove her increasingly mad.
Of course, that left Hailey alone and without anyone to look over her for the night, standing in front of her home in her almost painful-looking pageant outfit and crying quietly into her hands. There were streaks on her face from the spray-tan and makeup she definitely shouldn’t have been wearing, and both Parker and Eliot had to be held back so they wouldn’t step in and ruin everything because they just really hated it when someone made a child cry, especially in situations like this.
At least they both knew that Hailey wouldn’t be alone much longer. Breanna had made sure that Hailey’s aunt’s number was listed at the very top of her file as an emergency contact, and also that said aunt was still awake and ready to answer her phone. So they all just waited, and watched one of the CPS workers make the call before driving off with Hailey in the back of their car.
A few minutes later, Breanna got a text from Bella letting the entire team know that Hailey had arrived safely and was now sleeping soundly in the guest room that could easily be transformed into a normal bedroom for a child. That was already a great first step, but unfortunately, they weren’t even remotely done yet, and the rest would be much less interesting or fun.
It would probably take at least a few more days before anything else would happen, and then they would mostly need Harry’s skills as a lawyer to get permanent custody to Bella and Hailey’s aunt. They would still use all the tricks they had to make sure everything worked out, but all of that was just necessary, not fun.