Canada (dS/Leverage)
“Remind me again why I agreed to this?” Eliot muttered, twitching in that way that probably meant he was scouting out the area for gangbangers to beat up or something.
“Because,” Hardison said, poking at the GPS on his iPhone, “even you are not capable of personally replicating the God-given glory that is true Chicago-style deep dish spinach and triple-cheese pizza, and you know it.” God, the wireless coverage in this neighborhood was terrible. But he’d gotten the recommendation for this pizza place from his most reliable contacts, and there was no way he was going to pass it up. They hadn’t been in Chicago for over a year, and there was no telling when they’d be back.
“So why are you here,” Eliot asked, and Parker said, “I like pizza. Do you think Nate would care if we went through the Art Institute real quick?”
“Pizza first,” Hardison said. Finally! “Next right.” They rounded the corner onto a street with an actual parking lane, dominated by an imposing official-type builidng with Canadian flags flying out front. “Or maybe not.”
Hardison looked over at Eliot to see how pissed he was, and saw Parker instead. They looked at each other, then back over their shoulders. There was a significant lack of Eliot behind them. An alleyway went, “Pssst!”
Hardison rolled his eyes and followed Parker into the alley. “Seriously?” he said, at the same time Parker said, “Did you just say, Psst?”
Eliot glared at both of them. “Would you keep it down? Look, I don’t know about you, but there are some places where I am not welcome except in certain law enforcment facilities, if you know what I mean.”
“What, did one of your exes just cross the street?” Hardison said in a normal voice, earning him another growl from Eliot, which he ignored. He leaned over to peer around the corner of the building, then leaned back. “Dude, it’s the Canadian Consulate. In Chicago. They ain’t gonna arrest you here.”
“That guy will. He’s a freak.”
Hardison leaned back, and this time Parker leaned with him. Eliot stayed plastered to the alley wall, looking like he wanted to punch someting. Well, more than he usually did. There was a guy standing guard outside the consulate building, in that blinding red Mountie suit you could see coming a mile away.
Parker said, thoughfully, “I hate Mounties.”
“Of course you do,” Hardison said.
The bell on the clock tower chimed five o'clock, and a dog started barking from the direction of the consulate. Eliot’s eyes widened. “Run,” he said, and bolted toward the end of the alleyway. The *other* end, where there was a wall that Eliot could probably scramble over with no problem and Parker would be able to make in two seconds flat and Hardison would be stranded at the bottom of, with what sounded like a very large, very angry dog right behind him.
“Oh hell no,” he said, and started running.
Behind him someone, probably the Mountie, shouted, “Diefenbaker!”
“You know,” Hardison said, breathless and mostly to himself, since Eliot was already launching Parker up over the top of the wall at the end of the alley, “I am gonna have *words* with the guys at Google Maps. Either that, or I’m gonna fry the computers in every one of their fancypants street view vans.”
They rounded the corner to come face-to-face with a balding man in an expensive wool coat, pointing a gun at them. “You’re under arrest,” he told them.
“We didn’t do anything!” Hardison protested. “It was him,” he added, pointing at Eliot, who just glared.
The balding man nodded at the mountie, who had caught up to them and was currently cutting off their exit from behind. Parker was eyeing a fire escape some three feet above her head, and Hardison squeezed her hand hard to keep her from doing anything stupid, like climbing the building like a monkey and leaving them there.
“You were running away from Fraser, that makes you bad guys, you’re under arrest,” the cop said as if this were the most logical thing in the world.
“Actually, Ray -” the mountie started to say.
“Shut up, Benny,” said the cop, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “Keep an eye on them, would you?”