Chapter 1- Echoes in My Head

The helicopter continued to rise, even if most of its passengers felt a weight so heavy, it was crushing them. Nate may have been trapped by Sterling, but each one was trapped in their own thoughts. He had been the Nathan Ford they had come back for and he'd sacrificed himself to protect them. They had all been a little shaken by his speech when he sent them away, but his actions left them reeling. Gone was the chess master, guiding his pieces around the board, always protecting the king, the weakest piece, but the most important. In his place was the father, standing in the doorway, barring the evils of the world from the threshold with his bare hands if necessary. What did this mean ? Who were they now? What were they going to do?

Hardison stared at his hands, the hands that had helped Nate do this without hesitation. Nate said to and he had without a second thought. He should known something wrong when he was asked to destroy evidence against a mark. He almost didn't hear his phone over the roar of his own guilt. He pulled it out on instinct and eagerly placed it to his ear when he saw it was notifying him Agent Nivens was making a call.

"Yes, dispatch, I need an ambulance for a suspect. It needs to be escorted and have a team at the hospital for security. He's been shot. His name in Nathan Ford."

Hardison nearly dropped the phone. Eliot had caught the hacker's reaction to the call. The girls had both been too shaken to notice.

"What happened?"

"That...that was Agent Niven's phone...She was calling an ambulance. Nate's been shot."

"Dammit," Eliot swore, punching the side of the chopper, "I didn't seen a hole or blood. I thought he had cracked a rib either getting worked over by Kadjic's goons or he'd hit the side of the frame when we locked the bridge."

Sophie had tuned in to the conversation just in time to get sucker punched by the news. She forced the panic aside, preparing to take control like Nate would have wanted, no, want, when all three were drawn in one direction by a whimpered "No, no, no" and a frantic grabbing at the door. Parker was freaking out worse than any of them had even known she was capable of and they had all been present at the Belgrade Fork Incident to some degree.

Hardison leaned forward in his seat to get Parker back in hers, as Eliot reached sideways for her, the two guiding her back in the seat and buckling her in and keeping contact with her just in case. Sophie gently reached for the fidgeting hands with her own. "He'll be fine, Sweetie. You just saw him so it can't be very bad, can it? Sterling needs him. He'll be okay."

Parker continued to try to pull her hands away from Sophie, shrugging away from the arm Eliot had across her shoulders and the dark hand resting on her knee all at once. "No. No, no, no. He jinxed it. He said we were a family. I can't have a family. I can't take care of one. They leave me, one by one, 'til whoever's left hates me for making everyone else leave and abandons me too. It's starting." The broken whisper gave in to gasps and they all started attempting to head off hyperventilating. The cabin was filled with Sophie's gentle words, Eliot's "breathe in, breathe out", and Hardison's fingers rubbing the cotton covered knees. They would never admit it, but they were almost grateful for the distraction as the helicopter continued to the landing zone Sophie had arranged.

Nate smiled as he settled back on the stretcher. "Ahh, morphine." Sterling and Nivens climbed into the ambulance, the Interpol man with his witness in the back and the FBI agent in front to co-ordinate. He had watched his family until they were out of sight. He was sure he would see them again and he trusted them to take care of each other. Eliot had their backs...and fronts, sides...He'd protect them. Sophie would keep them going. She'd have the plan. Hardison would keep them aware of what was happening on this end. He'd keep them connected. And Parker, he sighed, right now she'd give them a welcome distraction, because he knew this had to hurting her. Later, she'd be the driving force in getting him back. He felt a small smile curl his lips as he pictured her stiffening up and ranting about Sterling having "their Nate". She didn't like when she was the one being stole from. He'd see them again and he was almost eager to see Sterling try to stop them.

"You've been shot, arrested, and your team scattered. You must be thinking of Ms. Devereaux, if you are smiling like that."

"Actually, I'm not. Not entirely anyway." No, not scattered, he thought. He made himself as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes.

The helicopter landed and the four stepped out, Sophie pausing a moment to pay the pilot. When the pilot lifted off again and they were alone, Sophie looked at each one a moment, before she continued with her plan. She held out three slips of paper.

"This is the address where we are meeting back in one hour. Do what you need to leave town for few weeks at least. Gather clothes, emergency funds, but be quick and keep it discrete. Eliot, there is a first aid kit over there."

Eliot started toward the red bag, paused a moment before taking Parker by the wrist, and leading he with him.

"Do you need help?" The blond asked a little confused.

"No, darlin', but you need those cuts on your hands taken care of."

She looked down at the palms of her hands at the cuts from the edges of the panels inside the helicopter. "Oh, okay."

Eliot had already laid out the supplies he needed and started on her hands as soon as she held them out. He was efficient and within minutes the cuts and scrapes were bandaged. Then he went to work on himself with Parker doing a few tasks, mostly for her sake, not his. They re-grouped after about ten minutes and Sophie addressed them again. "There are three rented cars downstairs." (Actually, four but she had no business to attend to and Parker wasn't being left alone in this state.) "I'll take Parker and you boys go your own ways. One hour." The men each took a set of keys and a slip with the address before leaving. Sophie turned back to Parker and found her watching with narrowed eyes. "You don't trust me."

Sophie slipped her arm through the blond's and headed for the exit. "I do trust you, sweetie. I just don't want to leave you. I missed you. I'd hear a bird on my window ledge and hoped you had come to visit. You tell me where to go and I'll drive. We can talk." Some of the anger was gone from the intense look Parker was giving her, but she still wasn't convinced yet.

"I wasn't going to go steal Nate. You'd miss me in an hour anyway. I'd need a lot longer than that. I'd have to wait until they fixed him and he'd have to help because I couldn't carry him."

"That's true." Sophie nodded as they reached the car and she released Parker to head for the driver's side. "Where to? I have no idea where your apartment is."

Parker focused on buckling her seat belt. "I don't have one."

"House, then." Parker shook her head. "Motel?" Another shake. Sophie turned more in her seat to look at Parker. "Parker, where do you sleep?"

"Lots of places. Nate's, Elliot's, Hardison's, Tara's once or twice, the empty apartment in Nate's building, a couple storage units in nice weather, the stacks of libraries...what?" Sophie stared a moment at the vagabond in the other seat. "Nothing," Sophie sighed. "Just tell me where to go to get what you need."

"Give me a second to decide." Sophie raised an eyebrow, but started the engine. Parker rattled off directions and Sophie simply followed them.

Eliot shouldered his duffel bag, as he spared a last glance at his apartment. One more stop and he could head to the rendezvous. He exited the stairs one floor below him and knocked on the door. No answer. Not that that surprised him. Two of the people who lived here were out this time of day. The one home was wary and frequently pretended no one was home. "Doña Martin, it's me." He waited for the older woman to answer the door. He smiled when she did. He liked the family. The husband had came to this country, worked hard, bought his wife, small son, and widowed mother to the country, and achieved his dream of citizenship. He fell over dead within the month, the heart that had worked so hard, giving in, leaving his family to struggle on their own.

Carmen, his widow, worked two jobs. She cleaned for various families during the day and an ad agency at night. Hector was a growing boy of fifteen who did whatever jobs he could find for the building super, the tenants, and anyone else who offered. The grandmother took in mending and alterations for a few dollars and something to do. Many neighbor kids had worn play and pageant costumes she'd sewn.

Eliot stepped in when invited and quietly explained what he wanted in Spanish. He wanted Hector to tend to his garden on the roof while he was gone, which wasn't new, but he would be gone for an extended period this time and didn't know when he'd return. He had brought the perishables from his place down in a bag. He explained he didn't want anything wasted and the old woman nodded. The boy could have whatever came ripe in the garden while he was gone and he wanted to leave his mailbox key, so his mail wouldn't pile up, simply sack it up for him until he came back. He thanked her and gave her two hundred dollars bills and her eyes widened. "Es importante a mi, Doña Martin, y el chico es un trabajador bueno." He smiled and promised to check in later by phone. She walked him to the door with a kiss on the cheek and a napkin wrapped pastry in hand. He headed to the address Sophie had given him and wondered where they were headed from the small airstrip.

Hardison was on his way to the airstrip. He had made arrangements for the properties he owned and he'd transferred all computer data to secure servers off-site and wiped the hard drives. Well none of that beginner "delete everything and hope it works" stuff, he initiated a program that wrote over the disk repeatedly, obliterating the previous data underneath. The cops could try all they wanted, but all they were getting was the duplicated contents of all of Youtube.

He'd packed his clothes and a couple laptops for his stay and a few pieces of hardware he didn't want found, his skimmer, the spare ear buds, the usual really. He'd done this before and knew how it worked. They'd get through this, together this time. They weren't going to go their separate ways and hope to get back together or wonder where the others were (or in his case tracking them on-line). Sophie had been pretty easy. Nate had been almost an insult to his skill. He'd gotten a pretty good idea on some of Eliot's activities. He sighed thinking about tracking Parker. He'd gotten a few good ideas where she'd been, but he knew she was probably already gone before whatever she'd come for was missed. The girl was a ghost. You never saw her and she haunted him. He had a lot more fun reading about her on-line since meeting her. She was a criminal legend, bordering on mythic, and the things he heard left him laughing. Most thought she was a he with CIA/MI-5 style training and his own version of Q coming up with high-tech super gadgets. Of course, he'd been laughed off the server when he told them about the First David. That no one believed. Then again, he knew the girl and she still had him in shock half the time.

His lips curved in that way that they always did when Parker drifted into his mind. He loved watching her. She was all power and grace. It had fueled more than one vampire slayer fantasy after a late night Buffy-thon.

Chosen One or not, he was her watcher. He carefully kept a file of what he new about her, what he'd figured out, the rumors he found, and was certain she'd throw him off a roof, without a harness, if she knew he'd done it. In the beginning, he thought she'd hid her past to keep it private. Now he knew, she wanted to forget, even to the point she used a different name. Whatever had happened, and part of him dreaded ever finding out, she'd survived and remade herself. The girl was tougher than the steel in the buildings she jumped off of. She was bent, really bent, but not broken. His smile only widened when he pulled up to the airstrip and his eyes fell on the blond sitting on the fence, straddling it, a duffel on the ground below her and Sophie obviously talking to her in gentle tones, her right hand around Parker's ankle, gently stroking the skin under the cuff of her jeans. Yep, definitely bent.

Eliot pulled up a few minutes after Hardison did and he was the one that finally got Parker off the fence. Literally at least, no one was sure where her head was. Sophie shouldn't have been surprised by the hitter's solution. He'd simply set his bag down, braced himself, and opened his arms, a hint of a smile creeping past his poker face. Parker had let out a whoop and propelled herself off of the ten foot fence and into the hitter's embrace. He placed her on the ground, but held her a moment to check that she reopened the cut on her hands climbing the chain link.

The three youngest members of the team looked at their newly returned second in command expectantly. Sophie gazed at them a few moments, seeing how they were, what they were thinking.

"I've had to modify my original plan. Well, extend it really." She felt a pang at Nate's absence. She'd originally planned to simply get them out of the city, and, by then, Nate would have something of his own in play. She glanced at her arm, then gestured at a small private plane. "In twenty minutes, that airplane will take off for Teterboro Airport. We will be on board it. Shortly after we arrive in New Jersey, a charter plane bound for Minnesota will take off with a tour group. Our names are on that list. The aliases Sterling will most likely be looking for anyway. We will not be on it. Instead I have van waiting. It is a long drive from there, but I doubt it's a place Sterling will be looking."

"Where are we going?" Eliot asked the question, but the others faces seconded it.

"The middle of nowhere." Sophie smiled and tipped her head towards the gate. "Come on."