The Saving Eliot Job

Chapter One

No One Knows What It's Like

To Be The Bad Man

To Be The Sad Man

-Behind Blue Eyes by The Who-

Roughly 3:00 AM on September 7th, 2011 – An early stormy Wednesday morning in Boston

It was three in the morning and Eliot Spencer had just finished working out in his current safehouse's spare room, which he'd recently converted into a makeshift gym. He needed a shower, so he stripped off his sweaty white wifebeater, but left on his jeans, for now. He ran his fingers through his hair and stretched his arms over his head to help ease the ache of his overworked muscles. He was hungry. Food first, then he'd shower; then maybe he could catch an hour or so of some much-needed rest.

As Eliot walked into the large kitchen to forage some breakfast, he glanced out the large picture window over the sink area that looked out over the backyard. The storm outside seemed to be getting worse, he thought as he took in the rain spattered glass. He watched as the lightning flashed briefly and it seemed the wind was picking up as well. It was probably going to be a hell of a storm before it was finished.

Eliot had grown up in the Midwest and was no stranger to bad weather, especially thunderstorms. He'd been through a tornado or two living in rural Oklahoma, which was right up Tornado Alley. This weather was nothing to him, but he knew most Bostonians may not feel the same way about it as he did. Eliot smiled broadly as he remembered a time when he'd been around thirteen and his mamma, Mary had found him standing on the back porch of their home watching the huge funnel cloud that was heading their way. He had just been standing there watching; the cloud had been so damned mesmerizing.

His mamma had been mad as a wet hen, his father had recounted later. When re-telling the story, Eliot's dad told of how she'd herded her eldest boy down the basement stairs and to safety. She'd given him hell for a month after that about scarin' the crap outta her and she'd threatened every day to tan his hide if he ever did anything fool crazy like that ever again. He chuckled out loud at the memories of that month. It'd been hell; his mamma had been on him every minute of every hour.

Eliot could laugh now at the memory of just how upset she'd been at seeing him just standing there watching the huge monster twister heading right for them. He knew his mamma was strength personified, but whenever a tornado came into the picture, the woman became a nervous wreck. Until that day, Eliot had not known that her father, his grandfather, had been killed while standing outside the cellar watching a similar storm cloud threatening his family.

The man had been swept away and he'd never been found. Eliot sobered at the thought of just how sad his mother must have felt at losing her father. She had been an only child and her father had been her hero; her white knight. That's what Eliot remembered his mother always telling him when she would talk about her father.

Eliot once saw the movie, Twister, and couldn't help thinking the scene where Helen Hunt lost her father as a child was exactly how it must have happened for his mamma. He'd never watched that movie again.

He'd felt bad after that incident with his mamma and hadn't wanted to cause her to worry, so he'd sworn to her that he'd never be that reckless with his life ever again. At least Eliot had kept that promise to her for four years; right up until he'd lost her after a drunk driver hit her car head on. That crash took not only his mother, but his younger brother Eli, and his baby sister Lizzie, as well. Eliot had lost a lot that day and he'd sworn he would never let that kind of hurt happen to him ever again.

He'd worked in his father's hardware store every day after that to try and keep his father from hittin' the bottle himself to squash the demons he saw every night when he closed his eyes. His father Jack had taken his mother's death hard and it basically became Eliot's job to watch over himself and his remaining sister, his twin, Emma. She was older than him by all of two minutes, but she loved to remind him of that fact.

Eliot had taken care of both his dad and Emma until he just couldn't do it anymore. Once he'd graduated from high school, he joined the military and had gotten out of there. It wasn't home for him anymore. It had stopped being home the day his mamma took her last breath on this earth. He'd left everyone; his father, his sister, even Aimee.

He'd found out later that Aimee and her family had moved to Kentucky when her father had become a well sought-after horse trainer. Eliot had seen her for the first time in eight years about three years ago when his team had helped her and her father with Baltimore and Kentucky Thunder. He'd done his best to let her know he was sorry he'd left her before, and he'd said his formal goodbye to her then. He'd done the best he could do to make sure she understood it wasn't her fault, and he was moving on from that part of his life.

He'd also tried to make up for leaving his sister as well. Eliot tried to keep in touch with her more now; if you could call dropping an email or text every few months keeping in touch. Again, he was doing the best he could to mend things with his family; but there was still one person he had yet to deal with.

Eliot hadn't spoken to his father since the night he'd left his home to report for basic. He'd fought bitterly with the man that night and a lot of things were said between the two of them that Eliot knew could never be unsaid. He wished sometimes things could have been different with his father, but he had made peace with the fact he had tried hard to reach out to the man during the time after losing his mother. He had tried, he thought. He really had; it just felt like sometimes maybe he hadn't tried hard enough. Maybe someday he'd have a chance to try again.

He sighed as he turned from the window to reach into his fridge for the eggs and milk. Eliot wanted French Toast. He loved French Toast; his one indulgence of something sweet he allowed himself to enjoy. But this wasn't any gourmet French Toast; no this was the good old-fashioned bread-soaked powder sugar ooey-gooey sticky messy French Toast his mamma had made every Sunday when he was growing up. No, it was nowhere near anything gourmet, it was just down-home family cooking and he loved it because it reminded him of his mom and of home before things had all gone bad.

Eliot would never let anyone know, especially Parker whom he was always riding about eating her sugar-coated cereals and downing fortune cookies; just how much he loved it. He felt under the circumstances of his current memories invading his thoughts that he needed a good feeling, and so he needed French Toast.

Moving over to set the milk and eggs on the counter near the stove, he reached up into the cabinet for the bowl he liked to use most often for mixing things; when he suddenly felt something wasn't quite right in his world. Call it a hunch or his spidey sense as Hardison had started calling it, but Eliot had been bred to know when something wasn't right. The way the hairs were standing on end on the back of his neck, he knew deep down it was bad; really bad. He slowly turned back to the window in time to just make out the soft glow coming from one of the trees in his backyard.

Just seconds before the window exploded from the bullets penetrating it, Eliot had one coherent thought. Oh shit; they'd found him. Then he felt the pull of the first bullet as it entered his body and he felt the slam of the second one as he was propelled backwards from the counter dragging the milk and mixing bowl with him as his body fell to the floor.

Eliot distinctly felt the pull of the bullets as they tore through his body pulling apart muscle and bone to lodge deep in his upper chest. He felt the wetness of the milk under his side as the milk bottle exploded when it hit the floor. At least he thought it was the milk. It couldn't be blood; not yet. As he felt his body still from his impact with the floor, he was aware of another sensation; the bullets. Eliot could actually feel the bullets inside him.

He knew he was in trouble, big trouble. He turned his head slowly to look up at the countertop where he'd set his cell phone down in his preparations of breakfast and knew in that instant there was no way he was going to be able to reach it. Eliot's last sight before the darkness claimed him were of the two men coming through his kitchen's back door armed with heavy assault weapons and wearing military gear. Yep, he thought; they'd found him. They'd finally found Eliot Spencer.

Damn it, he should have completed the work on the house by installing the damned security system and the bullet proof glass on the kitchen's one window. Eliot had been too busy with the team's last few jobs going back to back, that he'd put the jobs off till he'd have more time; but now it was too late, he'd been discovered. He knew better than to let something like this happen. It was sloppy; he'd been sloppy.

Eliot watched as one of the men moved over to him as if in slow motion and kneel down by Eliot's head. The man seemed to be saying something, but Eliot was finding it hard to understand him at first.

"Hello Mr. White Hat..." The voice echoed in Eliot's head as he slowly gave in to the blackness that now claimed him body and soul.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Roughly 6:00 AM same day in Boston

Nate Ford sat on the stool in McCrory's bar staring down at the glass of scotch cradled in his hands. It was taunting him, he thought. He had known that for him, today would be one of the hardest he'd have to deal with, but he'd always been able to lose himself in the bottle each past year.

Every year, he mused. Yeah, every year when this day rolled around, he spent it knee deep in the nearest bottle he could find. Today it was the scotch. He frowned at the amber liquid, and heaved a deep sigh; desperation...

Today was the anniversary of the day Nate's life had been changed forever. It was five years ago today, September 7th. Five years since Nathan Ford had lost his son; five long years since Sam had died.

Nate knew his team wanted him to stop drinking, especially Sophie and Eliot, but they didn't understand just how much this sweet slow burning goodness kept him functioning from one day to the next. They didn't understand that he needed the drink just to keep going. They didn't understand how hard it was to face his demons every single day. They didn't understand how drinking really did help no matter how dependent he had become on this crutch in a bottle. They just did not understand; at least he didn't think they did.

It had been almost a year since the group had put Damien Moreau away on that job they'd done for the Italian, and they were just coming off the job of helping Sterling of all people; that ass of a human being. Nate chuckled lightly to himself as the thought of James Sterling. The man had used them, but Nate could understand after finding out the man had done it for his daughter. She was young; but she was older than Sam would have been if he were alive. Thirteen; Sam would have been thirteen this year.

A teenager with nothing to worry about other than school and girls. But Nate had been robbed of seeing his son grow into a man by Ian Blackpoole and all those other asses at IYS. Nate had to shake himself to force the images of that man from his brain. The last thing he wanted to think about today was the man responsible for taking his son away from him. That man did not deserve even one second of Nate's time or thoughts.

He turned to see the sun was just beginning to come up outside the bar's front windows. He looked down at his wristwatch. A little after six in the morning; a brand-new day. A nice day considering the storm that had passed through a few hours earlier. This day promised blue skies and falling leaves and the last throes of a late summer. Yet it was still the anniversary day of his son's death and that alone took away all the beauty he should have felt for a new day.

God, he wished Sophie was here right now; or Eliot. Sophie would guilt him through this day and Eliot would goad him through it. Sophie was forever pushing the bottle out of his reach any way she could and Eliot would just sit there next to him and give Nate that look and that growl that told him he needed to face this day instead of hiding in a stupid bottle of overpriced alcohol when a beer was better than that stuff any day.

But Sophie had been tired from a long day of scouting out the mark on their new job, and Eliot... well, Eliot had said he needed a few hours of downtime to recoup from the back to back jobs they'd taken on lately. Neither were here to push Nate away from this glass in front of him.

It was no secret to the team that during the weeks leading up to and sometimes after Sam's death anniversary that Nate tended to either lose himself in the bottle or get deeply involved in a job. The team didn't seem to mind the work, it kept them all on their toes, but Sophie had been a bit more subdued lately. More so than usual it seemed. Especially since they'd come out with their relationship to the rest of the team. They'd both enjoyed their secret time, but they knew the team needed to know what was going on in case it ever became a problem during a job.

So far it really hadn't, but that didn't stop them from focusing in on the fact that Nate was a little more protective of Sophie than before. Nate smiled though, as he thought about that. Sophie had become very important to him and that only meant she'd become more important to the team. Knowing now that Nate's attention could be easily diverted if something happened with Sophie put the others all on a higher alert to make sure the jobs didn't turn bad. And they'd all done their very best to protect both Nate and Sophie without really showing that's what they were doing; especially Eliot.

Eliot, Nate thought with a smile. The man was so deep it was scary. To most people, they didn't look much past his gruff exterior, but his team - no, wait - his family, knew him to be the most fiercely loyal member of their team. Eliot was their protector and he took that role very seriously. Sure, he'd lied to them, by omission about his connection to Damien Moreau, but he'd done so to protect them. He'd known exactly what Moreau could do to them, so he'd done his job. He'd protected them for as long as he could.

No matter what the odds, Eliot would throw himself on the gauntlet every time if it meant his team walked away safe and sound; and they were always safe if Eliot was there to watch their backs. Nate looked down again into his drink as he mused over the way Eliot, as well as Parker and Hardison, had now sort of become his kids, so to speak. Nate was responsible for their being a part of the team now even if he hadn't been the one to select them in the beginning. He was just as protective of them and he really took his role as a father figure to them to heart. They had needed him just as much as he had needed them, in the beginning, but now... well, now Nate Ford knew he couldn't go on without them in his life. To lose any one of them would be as heart wrenching as losing Sam was.

He smiled again, somewhat sardonically as he slowly realized that he may have lost Sam, but he would always have the memories of his son and in some ways, he now had two more sons... and a daughter. A crazy bunch, but family none the less. He slowly pushed the drink aside as he reached for a coffee cup instead. He thought maybe he just needed to start his day with coffee instead as he looked again outside the window to see that the sun was slowly beginning to stream into the bar. A really nice day indeed, he thought with a smile.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Still Roughly 6:00 AM in Boston

Detective Captain Patrick Bonanno looked around the mess of a crime scene as he slowly followed one of his CSI guys through the house. It was a shambles. The car bomb on the Chevy pickup truck that was now mostly in pieces in the attached garage had also wreaked havoc on the house itself.

The living room of the home which was on the garage side had probably sustained the most damage he'd ever seen at a bomb site. The wall that shared the living room space with the garage was gone. Literally gone. The front bay window was blown out and the wood framework hung in pieces letting the rain outside slowly seep into the room's carpeting. The storm was mostly easing up now as dawn approached and two of his men were busy putting up a tarp to try and preserve as much evidence as possible from the rain.

But it was the kitchen that showed the most evidence that something really bad had happened in this home. The huge picture window over the sink area showed the evidence of two bullet holes and there was a huge blood pool on the floor below the area. He guessed there had to be at least two or three pints on the floor. That was a lot of blood for someone to lose and still be alive, he thought. He didn't know his math that well, but he knew 40 percent of your body's blood was too much to lose and expect to survive.

There were smear marks as if the person who had been injured had either tried to crawl to safety or perhaps had been dragged towards the living room to get to the adjoining door to the garage. The smear continued across the carpeting from the kitchen's stone flooring, but it ended just at the door.

The steps down into the garage held some droplets of blood, but no more smears were found. Whoever made it this far had either been lifted or had somehow been able to regain his footing and the detective felt very strongly that this injured person could not have possibly been able to do that on his own.

He figured the person may have tried to make it to the truck in an effort to escape whatever danger was after him, but the detective knew the person hadn't made it past these steps on his own and therefore he could not have triggered the pressure device found on the bomb on his own. There was evidence that someone had died in the bombing though, and if it had been the injured man, then he was certainly dead now, because the garage was painted with the remains of someone. Blood, bone and tissue clung to all surfaces out there as well as some bits that had blown into the living room when the wall had basically disappeared during the blast.

Det. Bonanno knew someone had helped the victim to the truck and they had somehow triggered the bomb remotely. While there was a lot of carnage, his CSI guy David, was adamant that there was only one victim based on what evidence he'd collected so far.

He sighed as he took in everything his guy was telling him and pointing out about what he felt occurred in this house. The victim had been shot in the kitchen as detailed by the bullet shattered glass window and based on the blood loss, he most likely expired there. From there the body had been moved to the garage and placed in the truck; Eliot Spencer's truck.

Bonanno sighed again as he took in the carnage and the reality that most likely the remains were those of his friend, Eliot. He reached into his pocket as he carefully made his way outside into the early morning just as the sun was working on breaking through the dense clouds.

"Ford here." Came the somewhat laid-back reply.

"Nate? It's Det. Capt. Bonanno."

"Det. Capt.? This must be all business if you're announcing yourself as a cop before you even say good morning, Pat."

The detective heaved another heavy sigh that could clearly be heard through the phone. "Yeah, so it would seem this is all business."

"What can I do for you then, Det. Capt. Bonanno?" Nate asked as he wondered why the man would be calling him this early.

"Actually... I think I'm gonna need you to come to me. I'm at a crime scene and I need you to answer some questions for me." He paused as he looked towards Eliot's garage. "Some hard questions."

Nate took that in. He knew something was wrong; something bad had happened. He felt it in his bones, and what's more he knew one of his family was involved. "Which one is it?" He asked afraid of hearing the answer.

The detective wasn't surprised that Nate would know instinctively this involved his team. "It's... it's Eliot." He drew in a deep breath before he continued. "I'm at his house on Wallace Lane... and it's... it's bad, Nate."

Nate swallowed at the lump suddenly developing in his throat. Not Eliot. Of all his team, his family, Eliot was the last one he could handle losing right now. The man was supposed to be invincible and if he went down then Eliot had gone down hard; and it was highly possible once he went down that hard, he wasn't going to get back up again. Not today, God, he prayed. Of all the days, not today. "Is... is... how... how bad?" He managed to ask. Although he feared the worst, he continued to pray.

Patrick Bonanno looked up at the new late summer morning dawning as the birds were chirping away in the nearby trees. Eliot had a lot of trees on his property, he thought as he ran this through his mind. "It's... it's as bad as it gets." He replied. "It seems Eliot was attacked and shot early this morning and somehow his truck was blown up in the process. It looks like it was rigged with explosives beforehand. It seems he's... well, he's dead, Nate."

"I'll be there in five." Nate Ford replied softly as he felt that familiar pain in his heart again. Five years ago, Nate had lost his son to cancer and today he'd lost another to his past. Someone had taken Eliot from him and he didn't know if he could handle another hit, not today. "I'll be there in five minutes." He repeated as he hung up his phone and slipped it back in his pocket.

AN: I hope I've got you hooked!