by Matt Forbeck
Nate had been unable to pay for the treatment himself or to scrape up the money for it in time. The irony that in the course of his career he’d saved the company several times over the amount they would have had to pay to save Sam’s life was not lost on him. He’d threatened to quit. That hadn’t moved them an inch, but he’d followed through on it anyhow. He just couldn’t bear to work for such people anymore.
After Sam’s death, Nate picked up a bottle and crawled into it for a couple years. By the time he came back out, his marriage had ended, and he’d ruined just about everything that was left of his life. He made just enough money working private investigations to keep himself drunk, and that had been enough—right up until he’d met the rest of the crew.
A man named Victor Dubenich had hired him as “the one honest man” to keep a group of thieves that he’d brought together in line. At Dubenich’s request, they’d stolen the plans for a rival company’s commuter airplane, which Dubenich claimed had been stolen from him. Reluctant as he’d been to work outside of the law, Nate hadn’t felt so alive and engaged in what he was doing since Sam’s death.
He’d enjoyed it despite himself, mostly because he was able to convince himself—at Dubenich’s prodding—that the system was broken and that bad people were using it to hurt good people, much in the way that IYS had used their policy—a policy of finding any excuse to deny payment—at the cost of Sam’s life. And when it turned out that Dubenich had been lying, that he’d double-crossed them—tricking them into stealing from innocent people and trying to murder them to cover his tracks—Nate had decided that Dubenich had been right after all. He could do some good with his talent for managing such a crew and being the one man they could all trust.
Dubenich had been the first bastard they’d taken down. Nate had been reluctant to continue after that, but the others had convinced him to give it a shot. After all, they’d made so much money by ruining Dubenich that none of them ever had to work again, but every one of them still itched to keep at their individual careers, to keep their skills sharp. With Nate’s direction, at least they’d be doing the world some good.
That had been years ago, and Nate and the crew had done a lot of good for a lot of people since. He’d long lost track of how many lives, reputations, businesses, and dollars they’d saved, although he knew that Hardison kept careful track. To Nate, though, the numbers didn’t matter so much as the fact that they were doing some good.
They’d even taken on IYS at one point, destroying Nate’s old boss, Ian Blackpoole. That had given Nate some closure in the matter of Sam’s death, but there still wasn’t a single day that went by that he didn’t miss his son and wonder who he might have grown up to be—or if he’d still be proud of his dad and what he’d done.
“Sam and I used to read comics together,” Nate said to Sophie. “He hadn’t cared much for reading as a kid. He was sharp enough, sure, but nothing about it really ever seemed to grab him. It wasn’t until I brought home some issues of Spider-Man that it caught fire with him. After that, I couldn’t stop him.”
“And you think going into the convention might be too painful for you.”
Nate nodded. “Sam used to talk about wanting to come here, to this show. He was too young, I thought at first. When he got sick, I promised him that I’d bring him out here the summer after he got better.”
“And that never happened.”
Nate blinked back the tears welling up in his eyes as their pedicab rolled up in front of the hotel. He got out first, then gave Sophie a hand down. He paid the pedaler and gave him a healthy tip.
Nate looked behind them, back down Island Avenue toward the Gaslamp Quarter, whose legendary nightlife was just starting to heat up. He spotted a man in a Darth Vader costume strolling across the intersection, holding hands with a ten-year-old Luke Skywalker. Vader had his helmet off, and he and the boy chatted and smiled as they walked.
“Sam would have loved this place,” Nate said. “Absolutely loved it.”
“Don’t you think he’d have wanted you to come here without him?”
Nate shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just feel so guilty being here without him.”
Sophie reached out, took Nate’s hand, and walked into the Horton Grand’s brightly lit lobby with him. Instead of steering him toward the elevators, she made a sharp left, which brought them into the Palace Bar. It was paneled in rich, hand-polished woods, and it featured a gorgeous, hundred-year-old “Grand Staircase” that had been restored to its original glory.
Nate didn’t know if it was the mingled smells of wood polish and beer, or just the warm colors of the wood that seemed to cocoon them inside the place, but for some reason it reminded him of John McRory’s Place, his father’s favorite bar back in Boston. Nate had practically grown up in the place, and he now owned it and even lived above it. Either way, the sensation brought him some comfort, even here, all the way on the other side of the country from the city he’d long called home.
Nate wished that he’d been able to take Sam into McRory’s. There were so many things that the two of them would never be able to do together, so many dreams that had been shattered with Sam’s death. The only thing Nate could do now was soldier on alone and hope that he would have made his boy proud.
During Nate’s darkest moments after losing Sam, he had known that his son would have been ashamed of how he’d acted, of how he’d wound up treating his wife, Maggie, Sam’s mother. That knowledge had always crushed him, made him more bitter. He’d barely been able to live with it.
Stepping back now, looking at Sophie, thinking about the rest of the crew and the good work they were doing, Nate couldn’t be sure what Sam would have thought. He knew how proud he was of the crew and their work, though, and he suspected that his son would have felt the same.
“All right,” Nate said to Sophie as they settled in at the bar for a nightcap. “Tomorrow I’m going in.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Hey!” Hardison said to Parker and Eliot over the earpieces. “I just got three tickets to the biggest party of the whole damn show!”
“I thought you already won The Biggest Loser, Comic-Con edition,” Eliot said.
“Aw, man, that’s not fair. Maybe I was a fat kid, and now you just brought all that rushing back to crush me.”
“Were you?”
“What?”
“A fat kid. Were you a fat kid?”
“He wasn’t,” said Parker.
“That is not the point,” said Hardison. “You don’t know me from back then. I might have been a terrified little kid who swallowed all sorts of fatty foods to make up for the fact I didn’t have any friends.”
“Did you?” said Eliot.
“What?”
“Not have any friends.”
“He didn’t,” said Parker.
“That’s sad,” Eliot said. “I still stand by my statement.”
Hardison made a slow-motion fist in front of his face to calm himself down. He wasn’t sure why it worked—or, actually, if it worked at all—but he liked doing it anyhow.
“Do you want to know about this party or not?”
“It’s going to have to be a good one to top what I have planned for tonight,” said Eliot.
Hardison, who was standing in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, just shook his head and laughed. “What do you have planned for tonight?”
“Hitting a bar, finding a girl.”
“This is much better than that.”
“You don’t find many girls, do you?”
“I’m a girl,” said Parker. “What’s the party?”
Hardison smiled at that. He could always count on Parker to have his back. “It’s a VIP party to meet the bridge team from, get this: Star Trek: The Next Generation. They’re here at Comic-Con to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the show!”
Neither Parker nor Eliot said a thing.
“What?” Hardison said. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you? We’ll b
e rubbing shoulders, munching shrimp, and drinking stale Heinekens with Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden. Do none of these names mean anything to you?”
“How old is this show again?” asked Parker.
“It’s a classic.”
“It’s as old as you are,” said Eliot.
Hardison laughed. “That’s why it’s a classic. Come on. Even Wil Wheaton’s going to be there.”
“Wil who?” said Eliot.
“Oh, I know him!” Parker said. “He’s on that Big Bang Theory show you watch.” She deepened her voice for an impression of Sheldon on the show and said, “Wheatooooon!”
“Right! And Eureka and The Guild and TableTop. The man’s the geek’s geek.”
Eliot snorted. “So you want us to go with you to this party so you can get your man-crush on?”
“No, no, no,” Hardison said. “It’s going to be a blast. I grew up watching Next Gen in reruns. It was about the only thing on worth watching most days. Hell, LeVar Burton inspired me to become a hacker. You ever seen the things he pulled down in Engineering?”
“I’m in!” Parker said. “Sounds like fun.”
Hardison grinned. That was exactly what he wanted to hear. He loved hanging out with Parker, and getting the chance to do this with her would make the experience only that much better.
“What about you, Eliot?” Parker asked.
Hardison held his breath. Eliot knew that he had a crush on Parker—not a man-crush, of course, or a friend-crush, but a real old-school kind of crush. Hell, everyone knew, it seemed, but Parker. For the longest time, Hardison hadn’t even been willing to admit it to himself. He’d just thought he was attracted to her the way he was to lots of women.
As they’d gotten to know each other, though, Hardison realized that Parker was one of his favorite people. While he was still attracted to her, his affection for her had grown into something far more than that. Unfortunately, Parker just didn’t seem interested in any kind of relationship above having him as a friend, and Hardison had been able to wrap his head around that.
Parker didn’t have many friends of any kind, and never any boyfriends—or girlfriends—that Hardison knew about. By allowing him to be one of her closest friends, she’d let him further into her life than anyone else outside of the crew. Hardison treasured that honor and was determined to never do anything that might screw it up. It just meant way too much to him.
Still, he hoped that he might have a chance to spend some time alone with her at the party. While Eliot would be fun to have along, he’d spend the entire time ribbing Hardison about being a geek. True as that might be—and as acceptable as that might be at Comic-Con—Hardison wasn’t sure he was up for dealing with it all night.
“Nah,” Eliot said after a moment’s hesitation. “You two kids go have your fun with a bunch of famous people I don’t know anything about. I’ll go out and have my own kind of entertainment instead.”
“You just don’t want to have to sleep on the floor of the hotel room again,” Parker said in a matter-of-fact way.
“Bingo.” Eliot cackled. “There’s got to be some lovely lady out there who’s bound to be impressed with the way I triumphed at the pedicab chariot races tonight.”
“You mean how you cheated,” Hardison said.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who threw out the challenge.”
“I was challenging Nate and Sophie.”
Eliot snorted. “Then you were the one who was cheating. You can’t challenge someone when you already know you’re going to win.”
“Nate might have taken me up on it.”
“While he’s riding around with Sophie? Ha! Forget it.”
Hardison decided to drop this line of attack and try something else. “I’ll give someone else your ticket.”
“Please do,” said Eliot. “I’m sure there are a lot of people here who would appreciate it far more than me. I mean far more.”
“Right. You’re not a geek. We get it. You like women and breaking things instead of video games and comics.”
“I don’t mind Angry Birds.”
“Really? Man, that’s barely a game. My nana plays Angry Birds.”
“Your nana’s got good taste.”
“Don’t you start talking about my nana.”
“Good night, Eliot!” Parker said as she walked up to the front of the hotel. Hardison spotted her as she strode up the driveway that ran through the low, palm-tree-covered slope from the street to the roofed-over area where he was standing. He greeted her with a smile, put his arm around her, and guided her into the building through the dark-tinted glass doors.
Eliot gave them a satisfied grunt. “Have fun, you two.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
They took the elevators up to the bar called Top of the Hyatt. Hardison wanted to crack a joke about that, but he kind of appreciated the simplicity of it. “Where you want to meet? Top of the Hyatt? Where’s that?”
Too many things in this world weren’t what they seemed like they should be. It felt refreshing to find something that was exactly what its name said it was. It even gave you its location.
When they reached the fortieth floor, the doors opened, and a wide smile cracked Hardison’s face as the strains of the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation reached his ears. A man in a Starfleet security officer’s uniform—a black-and-mustard-yellow jumpsuit—greeted Parker and him as they exited the elevator and took their tickets. He then directed them around the corner to the left, and they followed a short hallway until they emerged into a long room lined on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows.
The view of San Diego’s harbor and the wide-open Pacific Ocean beyond beckoned to them, and Parker wandered straight over to one of the windows and pressed her nose against it. “You don’t think there’s any way these actually open,” she said, “do you?”
Hardison smirked. “If there was, I’m sure you’d find it long before I had any chance at it.”
She nodded, still leaving her forehead on the glass. “That’s too bad. I can just imagine stepping out of here and climbing up one of those angled towers along the top of the building to get to the roof. If the view’s this good from here, just imagine what it’s like up there.”
Hardison sucked at his teeth. He didn’t like to talk about it much, but he didn’t appreciate heights the way that Parker did. He preferred to have his feet on solid ground.
Up here, in the lounge, the walls and windows offered enough insulation from the elements that he could ignore the fact that they were forty stories up. In his mind, he could pretend that the fantastic vistas outside the windows were little more than images on gigantic screens. They didn’t affect him at all.
Standing exposed on a rooftop, with no railing and the wind whipping about him, threatening to pull him flailing and screaming to the ground? That held no interest for him. It bothered him that his work with the crew sometimes pushed him into situations where he had to face up to such fears, and tonight he was happy to focus on what was going on inside the building.
From where he stood, Hardison could see Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn sharing a drink in a corner with a pair of guests, while Patrick Stewart and Marina Sirtis gabbed with a couple of conventioneers in full Star Trek officers’ dress uniforms. The woman’s outfit had one interesting addition to it: a bridal veil.
Hardison heard Stewart telling the couple something as gently as he could. “While I’m flattered that you’d ask me to officiate at your wedding, I’m afraid that it wouldn’t be legally binding. I only played a captain on television.”
“In any case,” Marina added with a sly grin, “I believe the tradition is that a captain can only marry people on his ship, and we’d have a hard time finding the Enterprise.”
Hardison stifled a grin as he strolled into the room to find a drink for himself and Parker. Since it backed against where he judged the elevator shaft to be, the bar filled the only wa
ll of the room that wasn’t lined with windows. One of the bartenders came over after a minute and asked for his order.
“You got any orange soda?” Hardison asked. He knew that most places didn’t stock the stuff, but he always had to ask, just in case. To his surprise, the bartender smiled at him and reached for the soda dispenser.
“That sounds like a hell of a good idea,” a familiar voice behind him said. “Can you make that two?”
Hardison turned around and saw Cha0s standing next to him, grinning like a hyperactive shark. “Hey, Hardison. Guess they’ll let anyone into one of these things, huh?”
Hardison put his palm over his eyes. “Aw, hell no. It’s a convention of a hundred and fifty thousand people. Don’t you have somewhere else you should be?”
“But this is where all the cool people are! Present company excepted, of course.”
Hardison looked around for Parker. The evening had just turned sour for him, and he wanted to make sure he collected her before he left. He spotted her moving along the windows on the north wall, her face still pressed against the glass. He knew what she was doing: studying the rooftops and imagining how she’d climb up to them and get around them. With Parker, scaling buildings wasn’t just part of her job as a burglar, it was a passion.
“Aw, hey,” Cha0s said. “You’re not thinking about leaving already, are you? This party’s just getting started.”
Hardison gave him a thin, fake smile. “I just remembered. I got to do that thing, you know, with those people, and it’s really, honestly, stick with me now, somewhere else.”
Cha0s shook his head. “Why do you have to be that way? So defensive. Do I look like I’m here to cause you trouble? I bought my tickets to this event months ago. How about you?”
Hardison fidgeted. He’d picked them up from a scalper earlier that day. If Cha0s was following him, he was playing a long game.
“That’s not the point,” Hardison said, which elicited another grin from Cha0s, who knew he’d been right. “The point is that you’re stripping the glossy finish off this party for me. That’s all.”
