by Matt Forbeck
“But not for sale anywhere?” Eliot said. He didn’t sound disappointed at all.
“You don’t find too many costumes for sale here,” Leia said. “Most of the cosplayers make them from scratch, and they take a lot of pride in them. They break out their best stuff on Saturday, of course.”
“Because they want to show off to the big crowds?” asked Parker.
“That and because of the Masquerade tonight too,” the stormtrooper said. “I hear Nathan Fillion and Danny Pudi are part of the judges panel this year.”
“Oh, and Phil and Kaja Foglio do such a great job as the MCs,” Leia said with an easy smile. “They’re just so much fun!”
“So it’s a competition,” Eliot said, trying to understand. “That’s why no one sells the costumes? They don’t want to help their opponents?”
The stormtrooper shook his head. “It’s illegal,” he said. “Copyright violation. Most companies don’t care if you make your own costumes, as long as you don’t try to sell any of them.”
“Right,” Leia said. “Then it goes from being just for fun to being a business, and they come down hard. Lucasfilm would have anyone selling unlicensed costumes like ours removed in a heartbeat.” She frowned. “Well, like his. I see knockoff bikinis that look like mine around in booths out there sometimes, but they’re easier to make.”
“I see people in costumes like that at Halloween all the time,” Eliot said.
“Oh, sure, there’s the store-bought kind,” the stormtrooper said. “But those are just cheap crap. No serious cosplayer would ever been caught dead in one of those. You’d be laughed out of the Masquerade.”
“If you’re that interested, you might be able to find things like that on the far north side of the hall,” Leia said. “Honestly, though, I wouldn’t wear them outside of a house party.”
“We may have someone on the move here soon,” Nate said over the earpiece. “I think we spotted where Patronus hid the goods. We just need someone to pick them up and start moving with them.”
“I suspect they’ll do it just before the auction starts,” Sophie said. “All eyes will be on the stage here. They should be able to get away with it without too many questions then.”
“But that doesn’t leave you enough time to get across the hall, buy those costumes, and change,” Nate said.
“Plus you’d look awful in them,” Sophie added. “That woman you’re talking to is right. You’d stick out in a place like this for being so horrible, and that’s the opposite of what you want. Better to go without them at all.”
Eliot nodded along as Nate and Sophie pitched in with their advice. Parker’s frown deepened with every word. It was a great idea, sure, but it didn’t seem like it was going to work. That meant that they would have to risk being spotted, and when she thought about what that might mean for Hardison, she felt horrible.
Eliot patted her on the shoulder to reassure her and then cut right to the chase, which Parker appreciated. Sometimes she got too caught up thinking things over instead of doing them. It worked in her favor when examining and evaluating security systems, but it could slip her up when she needed to move fast.
“We need your costumes,” Eliot said to Leia and the stormtrooper. “How much?”
Leia made an odd face at him, something between disgust and intrigue. “We can’t do that. We just told you. Besides, we need them. We’re going to the Masquerade tonight.”
Eliot turned toward Parker and shrugged. “Ah well,” he said. “I guess we’re out of luck. At least we tried.”
Parker wasn’t ready to give up yet. She pulled a wad of cash out of her pocket and held it in front of Leia and the stormtrooper. “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for your costumes. Right here, right now.”
Leia and the stormtrooper looked at each other. The stormtrooper looked back at Parker. “Make it two.”
FORTY-ONE
By the time the auction got under way, Nate was ready for a drink. His feet hurt from standing on the concrete floor for so long and for walking the long distances around San Diego. It wasn’t that he didn’t walk anywhere back in Boston, but he didn’t walk everywhere, and he usually got to sit down from time to time.
Here it seemed like everything was blocks away from everything else, including one end of the convention center from the other. While he’d have been happy to take cabs around town, the crowds at the convention often made it impossible to find one that was empty. Because of that, he and the others walked everywhere, and his feet were damn sore from it.
He was also losing his voice. The air-conditioning in the hall did a great job of removing the humidity from the air, along with the heat, and the dryness affected his throat. Combine that with having to raise his voice constantly to be heard over the roar of the murmuring crowd, and his vocal cords were just about ready to give out.
A good Irish whiskey would have soothed that perfectly, but the convention didn’t sell drinks in the hall. He’d substituted bottles of water, but he objected to having to pay four dollars for each one, especially at the rate he was guzzling them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but it appalled him on principle.
Given the circumstances, he was content just to stand silent in the middle of the crowd of bidders that had formed up in a rough semicircle around one end of Patronus’s booth, eager and ready to compete for the chance to buy the artwork and other collectibles the man had been displaying all weekend. He wasn’t here for the bidding, of course. He just wanted to keep an eye on Patronus for as long as possible.
“Are you all right?” Sophie said to him.
He cleared his throat and frowned. “Just a little too dry in here.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “I mean, are you worried?”
Nate blew out a deep sigh and nodded. He pointed at his ear so that Sophie would know that he wasn’t free to talk candidly. He didn’t want Parker or Eliot to hear him say what was really on his mind, although he could see that Sophie could read it on his face.
During the four years he’d worked with Hardison, he’d come to think of the young man as — well, not as a son. For one, there was no way anyone would ever replace Sam in Nate’s heart, and for two, Hardison was just too old.
Sure, technically Nate could have been Hardison’s father, but never mind the math. It just didn’t feel that way. When they’d started out, Hardison had been a cocky kid, a bit of a loose cannon, a little too smart for his own good. He’d relied too much on his technical knowledge and his gadgetry and not enough on his wits.
Over the years, things had changed. He’d started to take his work more seriously, perhaps because he was working as part of a team and had other people—people he’d come to care about—depending on him. He’d become more responsible, and he’d shown a particular willingness to take on new challenges and expand his horizons, becoming in the process a better man.
In many ways, Hardison had become Nate’s protégé, the student he’d never known he wanted. The others just didn’t fit the role. Sophie and Eliot were closer to Nate’s age, and he considered them peers. Parker was young enough for him to mentor, sure, but Parker was Parker.
Besides, Parker already had a mentor, the legendary thief Archie Leach. He’d taken her under his wing at a tender age and molded her to be the perfect thief. Because of that, she didn’t need Nate, at least not as a teacher or role model.
Recently, Hardison had even been lobbying to run jobs himself, to take the lead away from Nate, at least for a job here and there. Nate had resisted at first, but Sophie had pointed out that he wasn’t being fair to Hardison. He realized that if he didn’t give the young man the chance to grow, he’d either become stunted and bitter or strike out on his own.
Nate hadn’t liked either of those options, so he’d finally acceded to Hardison’s request. It didn’t hurt that his decision had stopped the hacker from bugging him. Of course, the first time out, things hadn’t gone so well, and the crew had needed to fall
back on Nate to get the job done.
While that hadn’t hurt Nate’s ego at all, he’d not rubbed Hardison’s face in it. In fact, he’d stepped up his mentoring of the young man instead. In the process of handing things over to Hardison, even temporarily, he’d realized that the crew needed someone who could step in and take over for him if he was incapacitated.
Over the years, they’d all started to share their skills and expertise with one another. Hardison had taught them all a bit of hacking—at least enough that Nate could find his way around a smartphone with ease. Eliot had given them all tips on how to handle themselves in a fight. Parker had taught them about security systems, mostly as a result of her sheer enthusiasm for them. Sophie had educated them in the art of the grift.
Nate had shown them how to plan, how to think on their feet, how to evaluate an ever-changing set of options and opportunities and come up with new ideas for how to handle them on the fly. But he hadn’t relinquished these duties to them often. If they managed to rescue Hardison, he promised himself that he’d loosen his grip on that part of the job. With enough time and patience, he guessed that Hardison might one day surpass him at their trade. It surprised him how much this thought made him want to smile.
Just then Sophie elbowed him in the ribs. “If you’re done with your little reverie,” she said, “I think things here are about to get started.”
Nate glanced up to see Patronus standing near the podium, chatting with one of the models. He seemed to be instructing her on how she should present the auction items while he spoke to the audience. From the bored look on the woman’s face, it seemed it wasn’t the first time he’d gone over this with her.
“Not him.” Sophie nodded toward a burly man making his way into the back of the booth, which was now roped off from the public. “Him.”
The man knelt down next to one of the tables and drew its skirt aside, exposing the piled cache underneath it. Then he started to pull the boxes and tubes out from behind the skirt and stack them on the table’s white surface. Three of the other men who’d been working security in the booth stepped forward and took the items from the table, loading up their arms with as many as they could manage.
As they worked, Patronus stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone twice. “Is this thing on?” he said. It was.
“All right,” Patronus said. “Welcome to the first annual Patronus Collectibles Auction. First, I want to thank each and every one of you for taking the time out of your busy Comic-Con schedule to be here. I know there’s a panel with the stars of The Big Bang Theory going on in Hall H right now, and if I didn’t have to be here, I’d probably be over there myself.”
Nate knew that this was meant to be a joke, but no one laughed.
“We only have until the hall closes tonight, and we have a lot of merchandise to get through, so let’s get started. Before that, though, just let me remind you that ten percent of all purchases tonight go straight into the coffers of the Hero Initiative, the charity set up as a safety net for our industry’s elders, for the people who have brought us all so much joy over the years. So don’t be afraid to bid high.”
That got a laugh from the crowd, though it may have been one that Patronus wasn’t looking for. Nate couldn’t help but chuckle along with the rest of the bidders. He noticed Sophie do the same.
“Eliot? Parker?” Nate said in a low voice. He turned toward Sophie so that anyone nearby would think he was talking to her. “They’re on the move, heading toward the rear of the hall. Four of them in Patronus shirts, all loaded down with boxes and tubes.”
“Got it,” Parker said.
“On our way,” said Eliot. His voice seemed both muffled and as if it had an electronic echo.
Nate stifled a smile. “How does he look in his outfit?” he asked Parker.
She hesitated for a moment. “Evil.” She made a curious noise. “Wait. The stormtroopers are the bad guys, right?”
“Yeah. Well, in all the good Star Wars movies. They’re the good guys in all the bad Star Wars movies.”
“Hmm,” Parker said. “Funny how that works.”
FORTY-TWO
Eliot did not like wearing stormtrooper armor. He couldn’t say if he didn’t like it in general or just didn’t care for this set, which had been custom made for a man more than a little heftier than him, but he suspected he wouldn’t much care for it either way. Maybe if it was real stormtrooper armor rather than this white vacuum-formed plastic, he’d enjoy it, but this stuff was so flimsy it didn’t offer him a lick of protection. It just got in his way.
“A real stormtrooper?” he muttered to himself. “I can’t believe I’m even thinking this stuff.”
“You okay in there?” Parker asked. She leaned over and peered up at him through the eyeholes in his helmet.
He couldn’t stand how hard it was to see out of the helmet, or the crazy way it made his voice sound. He nodded at Parker anyhow. “Considering I’m wrapped in a plastic case in San Diego in the middle of the summer, yeah,” he said with barely controlled anger. “I’m doing fine.”
“You don’t have to get all snarly about it.”
She backed away, and Eliot had to admit two things to himself. The first was that he shouldn’t take his anger out on Parker. He was getting ready for a fight, and that always put him a bit on edge.
He didn’t mind that, though. He was used to it. He knew how to take the anger and channel it into adrenaline, which he could use to move faster and ignore pain. He’d learned the technique years ago, and while it wasn’t for everyone, for him, it worked.
Second, Parker looked damn good in that slave Leia outfit. It was pretty much a bikini with a long skirt slit all the way up the sides of both legs, along with some metallic decorations around her arms, hair, and bra, but she made it work. Or maybe it was the wig that did it.
He didn’t generally think of Parker in that way, of course. She was just a kid. But in that outfit, she didn’t look like Parker; she looked like a young Carrie Fisher. He’d had a wonderful crush on that woman when he was a kid.
When Parker opened her mouth, of course, she shattered that illusion. That put Eliot right back to remembering who she was to him: the crazy thief with the wild ways and the private heart. The little sister he’d never had.
“Keep your eyes open for those guys,” he said. “They should be coming up this aisle, but you never know. They might juke left or right, especially if they hit traffic. They look like they were in a hurry, Nate?”
“They moved like professionals,” Nate said through the earpiece. “They have a job to do, and they set about doing it.”
“Right,” Sophie said. “Fast without rushing.”
Eliot smiled under his helmet. He liked working against professionals. They were rarely as good as he was, but they did things the way he expected them to: rationally.
Amateurs were usually easier to handle, toe-to-toe, but they had a habit of doing things that no one would ever expect. They literally didn’t know what they were doing, and that made them dangerous, as much to themselves as to anyone else, much of the time. Professionals were far more predictable.
Eliot had checked out Patronus’s muscle—or more like Kanabe’s—on the show’s opening night. They were big guys, the kind who tended to rely on sheer intimidation to keep people away from them. Eliot wasn’t the kind to scare easily, though, and in his experience guys who depended too much on their size often neglected to develop any serious skills.
He hoped that was the case here. If so, they might not prove to be too much trouble, even though they outnumbered him by at least four to one. He’d seen more like eight guys going in and out of Patronus’s booth on preview night, but he didn’t know how many of these were Kanabe’s guards. Probably all of them, but he couldn’t discount the chance that some of them were Patronus’s.
“You’re going to have to guide me here, Parker,” Eliot said after a minute. “I don’t have any peripheral vision in this damn thing.”
>
“I just spotted one of them coming this way,” she said.
“Did he get separated from the rest?” Eliot frowned. “Nate said there were four of them.”
“They didn’t all walk off together,” Nate said. “They left whenever there was enough stuff out for them to carry. They shouldn’t be more than a few seconds apart from one another.”
“Good to know,” Eliot said. “It’s harder to follow just one guy, though, especially in this getup.”
“I got him,” Parker said. “There’s no way I’m letting him get away.”
She grabbed Eliot by the hand and dragged him south. That brought them straight to the dining area near the main concession stand area, a sea of white tables, curtained off by yellow fabric hanging from waist-high poles and filled with people who had waited too long to pay too much for substandard food. Eliot supposed it beat having to walk a half mile to the nearest real restaurant, but only in emergency cases.
As they skirted around the dining area, a couple of teenagers with cameras stepped in front of them. “Oh, wow,” they said to Parker. “You look amazing! Can we get your photograph?”
“No time now,” Eliot said. “We’re in a hurry.”
Maybe he was too brusque, but they really didn’t have the time to stop and pose for an impromptu photo shoot, no matter how good the costumes might be.
“Hey, stormtrooper,” the bigger of the two teens said, stepping into Eliot’s path and stopping both him and Parker cold. “I don’t think we were talking to you.”
Eliot considered knocking the kid cold. One swift punch to the solar plexus, and he’d be down on the ground and gasping for air for the next five minutes. That might cause a hell of disturbance, though, and he and Parker couldn’t risk having security chase after them while they tried to tail this guy carrying two boxes and three tubes he seemed in constant danger of dropping.
Maybe he should just break the kid’s finger. Or grab his camera and toss it into the crowd. Both of these solutions would be satisfying in a deep way, but they’d also put a real crimp in what he and Parker needed to be doing.