Chapter Text
The con was going well right up until it wasn’t.
They had the CEO of a large, evil healthcare corporation on the hook. Sophie had progressed to flirting with the CEO, Parker had grabbed the incriminating evidence and started making her way out, Hardison was getting what he needed from their internal server system, Eliot hadn’t even had to fight anyone, and Nate, who's running the con from headquarters, was beginning to hope that everything would wrap up according to plan.
And then, out of nowhere, everything seems to go wrong at once.
“What are you doing here?” “Hey-” “Wait a second-” “Sterling?” “What’s going on?” “I thought-” “What’s Sterling doing down-” A gunshot. “Hang tight-” “Who was shot?” “Who-” “Are you-” “Fuck-” “Dammit-”
Abruptly, comms cut out. Nate reels as the sound in his ear suddenly goes from a cacophony of voices to static. The screens he was watching flicker once, twice, and then go out. He swears loudly. Nate is the only one on the outside—he has to do something—but he first has to figure out what happened.
The team had thought that the CEO was the one responsible for the murders and cover-ups their clients had come to them about. But it seems, now, like more people are in play too. The vice president, maybe; she’d seemed suspicious. It sounded like Sterling is there, too, and that’s always a clusterfuck. And was that the head custodian he’d caught a glimpse of on one of the security cameras just before they went out?
One team member was shot. One sounded like they were unharmed but stuck. Someone had yelped in a way characteristic of someone being kidnapped. And the fourth, he hopes, is safe.
He knows Parker was on the roof, about to make her exit in typical Parker fashion. Besides that, Nate knows they’d scoped out the offices on the 10th, 15th, and 20th floors, but can’t remember who was where. It was Hardison’s job to keep track of the security system, not his.
Dammit. Hardison. If comms are down and haven’t come back up, that must mean Hardison isn’t safe.
Sterling wouldn’t have hurt any of them, not unless he really had to, not at this stage in their relationship. Whoever’s with Sterling is just trapped, then. But who?
That was Sophie’s voice asking about what Sterling was doing down there; Nate would recognize her voice even drunk, blind, and bleeding. So Sophie’s above Sterling somewhere.
The CEO and the VP… he still isn’t sure which of them is involved in the wrongdoings at this point (it could even be both), but he knows that one of them should have been in the executive offices on the 20th floor, and the other one would have had access to a gun.
He can’t quite remember what was going on in all of the security feeds Hardison was sending him, but he’s pretty sure one was Parker, one was someone getting trapped, one was the VP, and the last was someone who was safe.
He knows Sophie was with the CEO, flirting and getting him on the hook.
He still doesn’t know who was injured, but the mark responsible would have had to be either the VP (in charge of security) or the one on the 10th floor (in the security blindspot).
Eliot must have been below Hardison, because he remembers hearing something about Eliot offering (probably jokingly) to go up and bang Hardison’s head against a wall if he kept making nerdy jokes.
That should be enough information for Nate to figure out what’s going on, so that he can figure out what to do next.
For an online fillable version of this puzzle, or a better printable version, you can make a copy of this spreadsheet!