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.Returns on Investments	By : keithcompany Category: G through L > Leverage Views: 3447 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This story is inspired by, but not loyal to, the show Leverage. I do not own Leverage.. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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More Disclaimer: This work is my own. Do not repost this story beyond the limits of the Fair Use standards of Copyright Law (quotes, examples, ‘you gotta read this’ excerpts, the usual).
I tend to work with size-themed fiction, which includes overwhelming control issues and outrageous differences in scale. Such disparate sizes between partners is not for everyone, so be warned.
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Author's Note: This is almost Leverage Fanfic, but not quite. For one thing, my gang of thieves lacks the Robin Hood motivation. And one gender. We're left with a group of women that commit crimes. If three of them remind the reader of Leverage characters, that's very understandable.
The other member of the crew looks a lot like one of the aliens from a very early Tracker episode. I'm not sure if I could get a more obscure character template without going back to black/white television. The role doesn't even show up on the actress' wiki page.
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Bradley cuddled the stacks of cash to her bosom and giggled. This was her favorite part of the con.
The others liked the planning, or got a special excitement when the hook was set, or really enjoyed improvisation during the con.
And she understood. She did get thrills here and there, or a sense of pride in thinking up a solution on the spot. But it was all about the cash, in the end.
Kira's share just lay in a pile on the table before her. She sipped her wine and smiled at the smaller blonde. "What are you going to do with your money?" she asked.
Bradley looked Kira up and down, then started shoving the stacks of hundreds into her shirt.
Kira stared. Meryl came back into the room and sat by her own stack. She noticed Bradley's actions. "What is she doing?"
"I have no idea," Kira replied.
"I'm wondering if I have enough money to fill out my boobs," Bradley explained. "Enough to compete with her rack."
"What, these?" Kira asked, hefting her breasts in her hands. "Heck, for far less than one of those stacks you could buy a pair of real ones."
"Realistic," Meryl corrected. "Not real. But Bradley, you wouldn't want those. You couldn't get into half the places you go on a break in. They'd get in the way."
"They are the reasons I'm a grifter, not a burglar," Kira said.
"Eh, you're probably right," Bradley admitted. She pulled the money back out and put it on the coffee table. "It's just, sometimes I want to have men stare at me like they do you."
"Ah," Kira nodded. She stood and took one of Bradley's stacks of hundreds. She pulled on the other woman's bra and lodged the cash inside. One corner peeked out of her cleavage, just enough to show the denomination. "That should do it."
"Probably," Meryl laughed. "And it won't matter if they're gay or straight."
"But they'll only be interested in me for my assets!" Bradley half-heartedly protested.
Kira laughed and hefted her own breasts again. "Well, you DID say you wanted to be more like me."
Footsteps sounded on the stairs outside the loft. "That'll be Ellie," Meryl said.
"Wait," Bradley said. "That doesn't sound right."
The door burst inwards, bits of the frame flying across the room. The women didn't scream but did duck to the floor.
When the dust settled, the door was gone and a very angry man stood in the doorway. He held a strange looking pistol and a familiar looking duffel bag.
Meryl came up slowly from her crouch. "Mister Corey," she said with forced cheer. "What a surprise!" She glanced from the stacks on the table to the intruder. "You're probably wondering why there was no money in-"
"Shut up," he growled. He tossed three pairs of handcuffs over to the table. "Put those on. Over there." He gestured towards the nearest window to where the women were gathered. "Put your hands around through the bars and handcuff both your wrists."
Bradley hesitated. She knew at least two places where Meryl kept guns in this apartment. If the other two could distract him, she was fast enough to-
"NOW!" he shouted. His hand twitched. A beam shot out of the gun and hit the sofa behind Meryl. It disappeared. It didn't quite explode, but a wind or other force came off of it. Meryl's skirt flapped around her legs as if it was in a breeze.
Bradley felt the warm air blast her face and hands. There was a slight discoloration on the floor where the sofa had been, but no other marks. No sight of what had or could have happened.
She bent to pick up a pair of handcuffs.
The others cooperated as well. At least for now, they were probably thinking to gather information before reacting. With a handcuff key in her watch band, Bradley just waited to be unobserved. She locked herself in place.
Kira didn't press one of her cuffs fully into place. Corey just growled and pointed the weapon. She blanched and tightened it. With the women secure, Corey seemed to relax a little bit.
He went over to the kitchen area and started to slide the table over to the doorway. "You know, in retrospect, it was a pretty good con. It played to my ego, my greed, and my need to find a safe place to put my embezzled cash."
The table was tipped over to block the door. The women's eyes met in puzzlement. The table only blocked the lower half of the doorway. Anyone over three feet tall could see over, anyone over five would hardly pause to step over it. What the hell was he thinking?
Signs that they were in the hands of an idiot increased all their confidence. They'd get out of this. If Ellie was in a hurry, she might not even notice the table on her way in.
Corey made sure the back door was locked and all the windows latched. Then he found their bottle of wine and sat down. He sipped and stared at them. They stared back.
"Okay," he finally said. "I guess this is my money?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I need a few more things. I need to know how you picked me as a target. How you knew I was an embezzler. Who else knows about me. What other money you may have squirreled away." He drank again.
"And, uh, while we're at it? There's three women here and four stacks of money. Who's the other share for?"
"Expenses," Meryl answered. "We had to rent the building. And the office furniture. And hire the people that populated the office. And the limo-"
"But you would have paid all that up front," he said. Bradley cursed The Sting and other movies that educated the marks. "Who gets this?"
"It goes back to our investor, his layout plus interest. You're right, we had to pay money to make money. We know a few people with ready reserves of money they can't put in banks. Doctors that treat mafia guys, contractors that build secret vaults, that sort of thing."
"Would you like to be an investor?" Kira asked. Bradley didn't have to look to know that the woman had somehow managed to reveal more cleavage, even with her hands restrained. "Loan us some cash, get a share of the next score?"
"Tempting," he said. He slugged more wine. Meryl hissed. That meant it was probably a really good vintage he was disrespecting. "Ask me after my next lobotomy."
He started tossing the money into the duffel. "Now. Why me?"
"Bank records," Kira explained. "We accessed the accounts, looked for a pattern that we recognized. Your steady deposits of cash were a clarion call."
Bradley remained quiet, though she really wanted to know what a clarion sounded like. Kira was always using the big words, hinting at her educated past. But this probably wasn't the best moment to ask.
"Then we figured out where you were making the deposits," Meryl added. "And put that under surveillance."
"Two to three thirty five every third Thursday," Bradley moaned. "There I was, in the bank, watching to see who I recognized. Eventually, we had you."
"Found out more about you," Kira said. "Then started crafting the con."
"What do you know about me?" Corey asked.
"You're the Chief Financial Officer of Harrison Hardware Solutions, Incorporated," Kira recited from their summary. "No family, no significant others, a taste for imported whiskey, imported cigars and local women."
He barked a short laugh. "I'm not a financial officer. At Harhard, CFO stands for the Chuck Finley Officer." He laughed again at their blank faces. "Never mind. Different circles of illegal activity. So, go on. Who all knows about me?"
"Just us," Bradley told him. "The crew itself. All the bit players were just told enough to perform, not enough to blackmail us later."
"Blackmail?" he asked, surprised.
"Sure. They get $400 for standing behind a counter for two hours. It's worth it. But if they could get half of our take by threatening to tell you how to find the women who robbed you…" He nodded, accepting her explanation.
"How did you find us?" Meryl asked.
Corey shook his gun. "Harhard is a front for off-the-books government research. I've been embezzling technology along with the money."
He found that the wine bottle was empty and stood. He kept talking as he drifted through the kitchen. "Some projects have prototypes that fail testing and get abandoned. They work fine when I'm not spoiling the tests." Bradley fished her key out and started working on the cuffs. Beside her, Kira started to move, trying to get her own picks out of her hair. Meryl waited patiently.
There was the pop of a wine cork. The embezzler walked back into view. Bradley stopped playing with the cuffs. "And sometimes, the researcher disappears himself in the course of research. We call it a failure, have a memorial service and someone tries to read his notes."
He drew close to, but just outside of the reach of the women's kicks. "Of course, I'm the first one to go through their notes. So they don't always make sense to the next guy."
Six eyes watched closely as he moved the gun back and forth. "Eeny, meeny, miney… Who's place is this?"
"Mine," Meryl answered.
"You have any ready cash hanging around?"
She rolled her eyes. "That's not how it works. We do a job, get the money, spend it. When money starts getting tight again, we look for a mark. If I had cash, I wouldn't need to risk arrest. Or revenge," she said, nodding to the gun.
"How about a get-out-of-town stash? A few bills, maybe some negotiable bonds, a tote bag with diamonds in the lining?"
"Maverick?" Bradley asked. Everyone stared. "I'm just trying to figure out what TV show or movie he watched to get these ideas."
Her partners rolled their eyes but Corey's glowed in anger. So she was right.
"All I need to carry these days are my ATM cards," Kira said. "It costs a bit to launder the money, but once it's clean, I can put it in a bank and not worry. No finding fences in new cities or worrying that the pawn shop is a police sting operation."
Corey didn't believe them and went through the apartment. Meryl groaned at every broken picture frame, every upturned drawer. When she asked if he really needed to make the mess, he just turned that gun on the piled clothes and poofed them away. She shut up.
When his back was turned, the other two quietly tried to open their cuffs. But the key wouldn't fit and the picks weren't doing anything.
"Figure it out, yet?" he called from the bathroom.
"Figure what?" Meryl called back. "That you put some of my panties in your pocket?"
"No," he said. He came back into the main room. "That the handcuffs have been altered. It's impossible to unlock them." He swept past them to begin rooting around in the freezer.
"That's where serial killers keep their trophies!" Kira shouted. "You've confused genres!"
"Actually," he said as he came back, "I haven't." He showed them a handful of blood-red gems.
"You said Nate stole those!" Bradley shouted.
"Now, now, I thought he had. When I found that he'd stashed them in my freezer-"
"You didn't tell anyone!"
"Well, well. Um. Well, you guys were so very mad at Nate. And it kept you from asking him about that deal with the South Africans. So I just let it slide."
Bradley kicked Meryl in the knee. She gasped but didn't protest. Bradley didn't do more. Ellie would do enough damage to get revenge for all of them. Where was that girl? Tipping over a building for fun? Or arm wrestling the Patriot's offensive line?
"Why can't the cuffs be opened?" Kira asked. "You're just leaving us here to die?"
"Or just killing us?" Meryl asked.
"Nah," he replied. "There's still a way to get them off. But not something you're prepared to use without my permission." He put the gems carefully back in their box, then bagged it.
"Okay," he finally said. "Time for the last chance to buy your freedom."
"My ATM card-" Meryl started to say.
Corey interrupted her. "The account may be under some sort of surveillance. Cops or fellow criminals. No matter how much is in there, there's a limit to how much cash I can withdraw on a given day.
"If there is someone watching, that's going to increase the odds that they can identify me." He made a 'come again' gesture. No one spoke.
"We know too much," Kira said to the other two. "He can't afford for the government to learn what he's stolen. So he'll have to kill us."
"Dammit," Bradley muttered. "This was the year I was going to start a savings account."
"You're not going to die," Corey said. "In fact, let's get one of you out of those cuffs."
The women tensed up. As soon as he got close, they could overpower him. Then just wait for Ellie.
He pulled something out of his jacket. It looked to Bradley like a cross between a tricorder and a light saber. He adjusted the base, pointed the long, thin tube at Kira and pressed a button.
Nothing happened.
"What the hell was that?" Meryl asked. "A magic wand?"
"It failed," Kira said. She shook her cuffs against the bars. "I'm still locked up."
"Oh, sure," he laughed. "Like I said, they won't unlock." He sat down once more. "It'll just take a minute."
Kira glared at their captor. Bradley tried to see out the window, looking for Ellie. Meryl kept trying to say something, anything, to get him closer. He ignored her.
"Can you pull your hands out?" He asked after a while.
"No," Kira spat. "You made me tighten them. She rattled her cuffs again.
"Try relaxing your fist," he suggested.
"It's nothing to do with the fist," Meryl explained. "The wrist bones swell out right after the spot where the cuffs go. The hand just can't be made-"
Just then, Kira's elbow smacked into Bradley's head.
"OW!"
"Sorry, I just yanked on the hand and it…" She stared for a second at her hand in front of her face. It was loose. It took her a second more to slip the other one out from between the bars. The cuff dangled loosely on her wrist.
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.Returns on Investments