Disclaimer: Rights to Leverage do not belong to me, if they did I'd have found a way to get more seasons. But they don't. And FYI there's no use to sue me, especially for money I don't have.

AN: I'm gonna go back to writing my Elejah fic and my Skimmons/Nysara fic don't worry. But when I sat down to work on one of them, this came out instead (I blame that random Leverage rewatch I found myself in recently).

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She looks at the gun pointed at her face and the burning eyes staring at her in wild hatred and is… afraid. Parker doesn't fear death, never has, that's why she can jump from skyscrapers with just a parachute on her back or a harness around her chest, and scream in exhilarated joy as she falls. She's never feared death, not her own at least.

The con was supposed to be over. They'd won like they always do, their mark had been carted off to jail, the money had been electronically transferred back to the school it was stolen from, and one more wrong had been righted by Parker and the two boys.

Eliot had gone off to a date with the teacher he had spent the last week flirting with. And Hardison went grocery shopping, because they were out of everything except Fruit Loops.

But Parker is alone in her and Alec's apartment, staring into the face of their mark's sister, as she holds a gun in one hand and is using the other one to clench the shoulder of the terrified ten year old they met a few days ago.

Missy Adams isn't the innocent relative with the wool over her eyes after all.

"He's all I had, you know. He's been protecting me since our parents died, taking care of me... raising me. And you've put him in prison."

"He stole money from children."

"He-"

Parker's phone rings, interrupting what she's sure would have been the same bullshit she's heard a thousand times by now. The thief slash mastermind looks to her left at the table and sees Hardison's face flashing on the screen. Her eyes trail back to Missy.

Before she can come up with an excuse for why just letting it ring would be a bad idea, Missy makes the thought moot.

"Pick it up. I think there's one other person missing from this party." Parker's mind focuses, the woman doesn't know about Eliot, that's never a good place to be for a criminal. "And Parker? Don't warn him, I want this to be a surprise."

Here the kidnapper moves her gun away from Parker and instead points it at the crying boy in her arms. She feels her hands clenching into fists as the horrible woman puts her arm over they boys mouth and whispers something she can't hear into his ear. The boy's sobs quiet, but the scared brown eyes that catch hers tell her it's not because of something soothing.

Parker promises to herself that she will make the harpy pay for every single tear.

"It's gonna be okay."

She gently promises to the child and moves to pick up the phone, when the gun suddenly changes direction again.

"Speaker phone."

Parker complies with little more than a glare.

"You okay, Lil Mama? I was starting to get worried."

"Sorry, I was in the shower, almost didn't hear it ringing."

Parker's careful to keep her throat muscles relaxed, just like Sophie taught her. She needs to be careful about what she says and how she says it, Missy seems just unhinged enough to actually shoot Daniel.

"Right, anyway you want anything specific for dinner Parker? I was thinking pasta, we still have Eliot's special sauce, right?"

Parker sees the opening Hardison's left her with right away. A few years ago she would have smiled in victory and given away her game right then, but she's grown since being that cat burglar who had to jump out of a window because she stabbed a fork into a bad guy.

Neither her voice nor her face changes when she answers.

"Pasta sounds great, you know me, as long as it's not pretzels I'll eat anything."

The quiet on the other end of the call to her ears sounds absolute, but though it seems to stretch for eternity she knows it's exactly a second later that he replies.

"Okay, I'll be home in fifteen. Take the sauce out of the fridge?"

"Sure." She thinks about adding 'hurry up' or 'love you', but she's not sure if Missy would catch on so she just ends it with "Be safe."

She clicks 'end call' and lets herself look back to the woman that has ruined a perfectly pleasant evening and probably traumatized the trapped kid for life. But she's no longer afraid that anyone will die.

She knows Alec is already pulling up the hidden cameras they have in the living room, to figure out the situation. In twenty seconds he's going to interrupt Eliot's date with another phone call, and in fifteen minutes both her boys will come storming in, bringing with them all the fury a protective brother and a genius fiancee can conjure up.

…and the schoolteacher. Daniel will want to see a familiar face after the ordeal is over, Parker hopes they have the foresight to bring the teacher with them.