Unbetaed and probably unwanted, but I'm going to try and finish this fic, dammit!
I have the weirdest new years resolutions, I swear

Fifteen hours into the flight, Hardison laughed mockingly at his laptop screen. "You? Are not all that." He looked over to Nate. "I found him."

Winston's jaw worked as, with visible effort, he adopted an enquiring expression and mild, non-judgemental tone. "Did you just hack the State Security Department of North Korea during a plane flight?"

Hardison rolled his eyes with a trace of a smirk. "I hacked the SSD before you had your first pack of peanuts. I mean," he spun his laptop, "I found him."

He was a tiny figure on the screen, but there was Eliot, being marched across an internal courtyard towards a motor pool. There were chains around his ankles and tethered at his waist, keeping him at a shuffle. A man firmly gripping each arm and four more guards surrounded them.

"They've been playing a shell game, moving him from installation to installation," Hardison explained. "They know people are looking. Your guy isn't subtle."

"Guerrero?" Chance shook his head. "No way. Maybe Spencer said something."

Nate didn't reply; Parker's explosive round of laughter really said it all.

Hardison nodded and pointed. "What she said. Either way, whoever took him, they know we got his back: they're going to be ready for us.

"I checked for any worms in the system, we're clean. My guess? They've been watching him for a while. Long enough to know he's got a crew. They just weren't counting on tall, blonde and line-backer."

Sophie smiled slightly. "I don't know about that – I think they were very much counting on him, they just weren't up on current events. Why were you there, Chance?" She looked speculative. "On the street, I mean. You're based out of San Francisco, yes?"

Winston smirked and looked around the private jet. "We like to think of ourselves as global service."

"Have Kevlar, will travel. I'd just finished with a client." Chance's eyes narrowed speculatively. "You think they set it up?"

"One of the few people who can go toe-to-toe with Eliot just happened to be there?" She arched an eyebrow. "Quite the coincidence. Who was the client?"

Chance shook his head firmly. "Not a North Korean spy, that's all you need to know."

"Doesn't mean someone didn't play you. Or at least take advantage of on opportunity." Sophie turned her attention to Nate. "We've been in Boston for two years - that's a long time."

"Hey, I've been doing my damn job." Hardison looked aggrieved. "We are ghosts. I strip video, I strip audio, I hack logs and delete reports, and when I have to I steal tiny children's cameras and I can tell you, that's not a fun time. They bite."

"Even you can't erase someone's memory, or track down every photo that ends up online. We understand the risks." She patted his hand.

Hardison nodded unhappily and admitted, "Enough time and a heuristic search, the risks go up."

"So they've been watching for a while, they see a familiar face is in town and suddenly they have a plan." Ames nodded. "I can buy that."

Winston snorted. "You don't buy anything."

"Figuratively or whatever."

"Okay, so that means they probably want Spencer for something specific." Winston's expression sharpened shrewdly in the face of Nate's blank expression. "And you know what it is."

Chance tilted his head. "Something to do with the monkey, right? What did he mean, when he said he hated monkeys?"

"It's just a code," Nate said. "So we know you're a friendly."

"Tell us now or tell us later," Winston said, folding his arms. "But wait too long to trust us and maybe it'll be too late."

Nate glanced at Sophie and then nodded, giving in gracefully. Which he'd been planning to do all along, admittedly – let Winston feel like they were starting to trust, he wouldn't push so hard for the things they wanted to keep private.

"Eliot was commissioned to retrieve an item," he said. "It didn't pan out. Given where we're headed and what he said to you, it probably involves that item."

"And the item is … a monkey?"

Nate hummed under his breath, a non-committal sound.

"I'm going to guess you don't mean a real monkey," Ames said, brightly curious.

"The Sapphire Monkey," Parker said almost dreamily. "The monkey's gold, but the collar is inlayed with diamonds and rubies and in its hands it's carrying a sapphire."

"And Spencer was meant to steal it?"

"Retrieve it," Sophie corrected.

"And the difference is what, exactly?" Winston looked between them, nonplussed. "From where I'm sitting, you're all thieves."

"Stealing is taking something from its rightful owner. Retrieving, you're bringing it back to them." Nate raised a hand to forestall a round of protests and addendums from Sophie, Parker and, he wasn't particularly surprised to see, Ames. "He would have made a try for it in the last few years."

"Before he joined your crew, but after Moreau," Chance translated, tone so carefully free of inflection even Sophie looked impressed.

Winston's frown deepened. "And Moreau would be?"

"Kind of like the Old Man," Chance said lightly, the hard glint in his eye not matching the tone. "Better suits."

Winston didn't look particularly fooled. "Uh huh."

"Eliot hasn't worked for Damien Moreau for a long time." Sophie said after a delicate pause. "This was after that. We're … fairly sure."

Hardison shrugged and rocked his hand from side to side. "Like, fifty-fifty."

"Sixty-forty," Parker said. "Outside."

"You think this Moreau is involved with North Korea, somehow?"

Nate really wished he could say no.