A Thief's Priority

Parker watched Dawn run a brush through her wet hair. Dawn Summers was sweet and smart and normal. She was the kind of girl Hardison and Eliot should be with. Parker wanted to punch her in the face. She didn’t know why, but she did.

“So, why’s your dad trying to kidnap you?” Parker finally asked.

Maybe if she didn’t dwell on the punching of the face thing, she wouldn’t actually end up doing it.

“He wants to ransom me back to the corporation I work for,” Dawn said, never opening her eyes or stopping the slow pull of the brush through her hair.

“Why doesn’t he just ask for it?” Parker demanded, frowning.

“Because he knows we won’t give it to him,” Dawn said, still entirely too calm.

“Why not?”

“Because he sent a postcard to my mother’s funeral when I was fourteen and left me to be raised by my nineteen year old sister,” she said with that same remarkable calm. “There are a lot of things we can forgive but being abandoned by him when we needed him most isn’t one of them.”

“Oh,” Parker said, then shrugged. “Well, he’s wrong, anyway. You steal money, not people.”

Dawn peeked at her through one cracked eyelid, a little grin playing around her mouth. “That’s what a friend of mine said, too.”

Parker nodded because really. Who kidnapped people when they could just hire a thief?