KRYPTONITE
CHAPTER 2
Toby was in rare form. He only waited a scant two seconds after Ralph's carpool picked the boy up for school before turning toward Paige with a mischievous grin. His eyes were darting back and forth between her and Walter.
"So..., Ms. Dineen," the shrink drawled, "I didn't want to scar your son for life, so you should thank me for not asking until now. But how exactly was your romantic weekend with Tim? Feel free to give us all the gory details."
"Why can't you shut it today, Doc?" Happy asked, sounding annoyed. But she was looking curiously over at her boss.
Walter was trying his best to appear busy and like he was concentrating on anything else, but his entire being was poised on the proverbial edge of his seat raptly awaiting Paige's reply.
Paige propped her chin on her hand and looked at Toby with an exaggerated, beatific smile and answered in a breathy voice, "It was completely and totally and utterly…"
Walter clenched his fists in his lap and fought rising nausea while staring holes in his desk top. He sincerely wished he could render himself temporarily deaf.
"…none of your business," she finished. Paige let the fake smile slide from her face and went back to work.
Sylvester snorted. "I guess she told you," he remarked under his breath.
"I'm sensing some hostility from you. Care to talk about that?" Toby inquired, undaunted and all innocence.
Paige was saved from commenting by the arrival of Cabe and Deputy Director Cooper.
"Gather around. We've got a case," Cabe said to the room at large and held up a jump drive.
Everyone got up and approached the bank of monitors.
"We've had an influx of armor piercing bullets cropping up around the city lately," Cabe explained, "They dug some out of a couple of members of the SWAT team after a thwarted bank robbery two weeks ago. Through one of the perps they arrested in that case, the cops were able to ascertain the source of the ammo, but that source turned out to be a small-time middle man. The feds were leaning on him to talk until he was permanently silenced in a holding cell last night. The FBI was only able to get one useful bit of intel out of him before his untimely death."
Cabe motioned for Walter to plug in the thumb drive. A company logo filled the screens.
"Helping Hands Temporary Services," Katherine took over as slides of smiling people doing various jobs began to scroll, "This outfit has been under investigation for years for money laundering, weapons brokering and many other not-so-savory enterprises. But they are really smart about covering their tracks and, so far, nothing prosecutable can be linked to them. We believe they are the big fish distributing these bullets around for the smaller fish to sell. Needless to say, we want to find a way to shut down the supply line. I can't stress enough how dangerous this ammo can be in the wrong hands, especially for our law enforcement officers and military personnel."
"What exactly is Scorpion's role in all this?" Asked Walter, who was extremely grateful for the distraction of a case.
Cabe replied, "The feds have tried a few times to infiltrate this company to no avail. It's as if they can sniff out cops, or more likely they have an inside man that tips them off. The team will go in undercover applying for jobs as temps. Walter will apply for an IT position, Sylvester for accounting, Happy for service or maintenance, and Paige as an office assistant."
"What about me?" Toby asked.
"They don't have an open position for a wiseass," Happy shot back.
Cabe chuckled and said, "We will need you to profile the personnel looking for any criminal element or connections with a cop or fed. You can do that from the garage."
Cooper chimed in, "You guys will have to hack their employee files first before Toby can get started. That must be done from inside the office because of the security on their system. All company records are on intranet only and can't be accessed from the outside. That includes not only the employee information, but shipping manifests, invoices, bookkeeping and other things that might be pertinent to this case. The company does have a legit website, but it's only used for submitting resumes and applications and for customers to request temporary workers. We need you guys to go to 'work' for them and keep your eyes and ears open for anything suspicious. Make copies of anything you find. Any detail may be significant. We can't get warrants issued until something concrete can be found.
I'll leave you to work out the details, and I'll check on your progress in the morning. Good luck, everyone." With that, Katherine left the case in their hands and headed out of the garage.
"We should…," Walter began, but was interrupted by Toby.
"Before we can start the brainstorming process, we need to address the Tim-sized elephant in the room, or more accurately, not in the room. It's very distracting. Where is your conspicuously absent protégé, Cabe?"
The older man cleared his throat. "I thought Paige would have told you," he answered.
Everyone looked at Paige, but she just shrugged and shook her head, so Cabe continued, "Tim got cleared for duty and was called back to his unit. He had to report at 06:00 this morning. He really enjoyed working with you guys and getting to know you, but this was his goal all along."
"Hmmm…Wonder why Paige didn't mention that?" Toby pondered aloud.
"Could we please focus on the case?" Paige said with a thread of impatience in her tone.
"I concur," Walter agreed. All of the sudden he was feeling fifty pounds lighter and more relaxed than he had been since Friday. He was happy to push the rest of the unwanted emotional detritus to the side and concentrate on more important matters.
After a plan was mapped out, Sylvester and Toby spent a diverting hour making up names and resumes for the four 'applicants'. Happy would be called 'Patricia Curtis'. Sylvester picked the name Patricia for her alter ego Patty Prankenstein from the Super Fun Guy case in Kazakhstan. And Toby picked 'Curtis' for obvious reasons. Paige was dubbed 'Zoe Walters'. Again, Sly picked her first name based on her Zany Zoe costume. And Toby picked Walters because he said she should be Walter's, then he laughed hysterically at his own cleverness. Sylvester was going in as 'Bruce Parker', from Batman's and Spiderman's true identities. And they made Walter's alias 'Clark Lane', a combination of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Both of the geniuses giggled over the assumed names and made everyone look spectacular on paper as they turned in applications and resumes on the Helping Hands website. All the numbers listed for references would ring at the garage where Cabe or Toby would answer.
Happy tried to ignore their silliness and made fake IDs to go with their new names.
Walter spent the rest of his day creating online profiles for everyone in the event Helping Hands ran background checks…and dodging being alone in a room with Paige.
By the end of business that day, each applicant had an interview scheduled for the following day at different times. Paige convinced the others she would coach them over comms while they were interviewing, because in spite of their progress, the geniuses still weren't great with authority.
As Walter made his way up to the loft after everyone left, his eyes felt gritty due to lack of sleep and staring at a computer all day. But in spite of his exhaustion, he felt confident the equilibrium within Scorpion had been reestablished. He was sure he'd made the right decision regarding his foolishness with Paige.
But, you know what they say…
"There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know." – Jonathan Swift.
AN: Here's a quick update for those who are following the story. Bear with me, there's more Waige on the way. But Walter is just Walter and he won't be rushed. Also there is a good reason Paige is a little quieter than normal for now. Please read and review!