A/N: You may have noticed a distinct lack of Carter so far. That will change soon. :) Carter and John have a very active role in the 2nd half of the story.
A scene with Carter and John got pushed to next chapter; I wanted to get something posted and this one was getting awkwardly long.
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Root had two modes: silent but creepy, or talkative and annoying. Nothing in between.
Today, the switch was firmly in the annoying position.
Elizabeth Ruben had long ago learned that the best way to deal with Root's incessant chattering sprees was to be all zen-like and just let it happen. Responding with even the slightest hint of perturbation just encouraged her. It was best to let her ramble, keeping the responses as neutral as possible.
Ideally, the best way to deal with Root was to not be anywhere near her, but she made that solution frustratingly difficult at times. It was hard to get rid of her; like a cat, she went where she wanted, when she felt like it. For instance, today, Root had kind of just…shown up. One moment Elizabeth had been walking alone down the street (or at least, as alone as one could get in New York). And then, like a magic trick, Root was by her side, as though she'd been there all along.
And she was talking.
"…but that's okay, I don't judge much. Compared to the guy I was investigating last week, your browser history is perfectly tame."
Sometimes, ignoring her just didn't work. The bullshit filtered through, some odd phrase catching the ear like a sour note, and then Root had your attention.
"Wait, what?" Elizabeth said.
"Just seeing if you're listening."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Not really. Just thinking about the case."
"You're not nervous about a little B&E, are you?"
"No, I'm not," Elizabeth said firmly.
Well, maybe she was, a little. Whenever she got the text message from John or Shaw, she always got flutters in her stomach—part excitement, part nerves, especially when the task required her to fly solo. The pre-case jitters, she called them, and even a good cup of tea couldn't calm them down. It was only natural. Working with John and the team wasn't exactly above-board. Anybody in their right mind would've been nervous about breaking into a stranger's apartment to snoop around and hack their computer.
In a way, it was nice to have Root along for backup.
Not that she'd ever tell Root that.
"Are you sure you're not nervous?" Root purred, demonstrating, as usual, her ability to be obnoxiously and eerily perceptive.
"What I'm nervous about is someone seeing us together and jumping to the conclusion that we know each other."
"Owch, nice zinger."
Elizabeth sighed, running her fingers through her wild, frizzy hair. A few strands came loose. Annoyed, she brushed them aside, wondering if dealing with Root's bullshit could cause hair loss.
The walk from the subway station to Leslie Johnson's apartment wasn't much more than a block, but Root's presence made it feel far longer. Elizabeth did her best to tune out the other woman as she began nattering on again, this time about Shaw and how unfair it was that she wouldn't let Root drive anymore, just because of that one incident.
Elizabeth pulled her cell phone out of her skirt pocket and checked the address of Leslie's apartment again, wishing that she could just teleport there instead of walking another minute with Root, who was still talking.
"Don't you have something better to do today?" Elizabeth asked, frustrated.
"Not really," Root said.
"Really? No corporate secrets to steal?"
"Nope."
"Nobody to kidnap and torture with your talking?"
"Uh-uh. Although, if you really want to be kidnapped again—"
"Eat a dick. What about Shaw? Can't you bug her?"
"I'm giving her space. She's still mad about me wrecking the Bugatti."
"What about the other guy John mentioned? Can't you go break into his place and snoop around—you know, without me?"
"Maybe this afternoon."
"There's no one in the city who needs a crazy hacker? Preferably someone at least five blocks away?"
"You should be flattered, Lizzy. I could be doing lots of things, but I'm hanging out with you instead."
"Stuff it."
"Stuff it where?" Root said suggestively.
"Up your ass," Elizabeth said firmly. "Along with whatever else you're about to say."
Root just laughed. Elizabeth tuned her out again. To her relief, they had arrived at the stately brick apartment building. They took the stairs to the third floor (because there was no way in Hell Elizabeth was going to let herself get stuck in a rickety-ass elevator with Root) and strode down the carpeted hall.
Root had finally shut up, probably because even she realized that there was a need for stealth when breaking into somebody's apartment. She leaned casually against the wall and checked her phone as Elizabeth put her ear to the door, listening intently for the sound of any occupants within.
"Cracked her network password," Root said softly, tapping rapidly on her phone screen.
"Already?"
"Her password was one through eight."
Elizabeth snorted. "Secure."
After listening for a few more seconds, Elizabeth reached into her pocket again, this time pulling out a tiny, folding leather case. Opening it with care, she selected two of the lockpicks.
"Keep an eye out," she said. Root nodded and stood a little further out into the hall, partially blocking Elizabeth from view of the elevators as she got to work.
The first time she had picked a lock, it had taken her nearly twenty minutes to get the damn thing to open. Now, a few years later, Leslie Johnson's front door lock yielded in barely twenty seconds. Elizabeth slipped the lockpicks back into their case. She had eased the door open about an inch when Root said, "Stop. She has a cloud security camera pointed at the front door."
Elizabeth cursed and froze. Had they blown the entry already? Usually Harold Finch—John's mysterious employer, and apparently a hacker of the highest caliber—remotely disabled any Internet-connected security systems long before Elizabeth was even invited to the party. But it seemed he had missed this one. Most of the higher-end cameras were capable of sending alerts to their owners when they detected motion. If that was the case...
"Sorry," Root said. "I mean, she had a cloud security camera pointed at the front door. I disabled it like two minutes ago."
"Asshole," Elizabeth hissed. She opened the door the rest of the way, eyeing the little dome mounted to the ceiling. "You sure it's off?"
"Yep. It's looping footage now until we leave."
"Great. Thanks."
Credit where credit was due: when she got down to business, Root knew how to make herself useful. Last time Elizabeth had encountered one of those cameras, there hadn't been much to do but flee. (Fortunately, Carter had taken the police report for that one, and the report had gone nowhere. The footage had mysteriously vanished from the cloud security provider's servers.) Identifying and cracking into the owner's wireless network to compromise their security systems, like Root had just done, was a great idea in theory, and a pain in the ass in practice: a slow, error-prone process with no guarantee of success. There were so many variables—differences in vendor implementations, firmware versions, network password complexity, signal strengths, firewall rules—and even under ideal circumstances, it often took an unreasonable amount of time. Elizabeth had no idea how Root had managed to do it so quickly (on a phone, no less), but she was grudgingly thankful that she had come along.
Again, not that she'd ever tell Root that.
They split up and cleared the apartment, carefully checking each room to ensure that Leslie Johnson didn't have any unexpected guests (aside from themselves, of course). Root peeked in the bedroom while Elizabeth checked the living room and front closet. Fortunately, there were no other surprises, human or otherwise.
"We have the place to ourselves," Root said, and of course, she said it in the most suggestive way possible.
"How romantic," Elizabeth said as she looked over a pile of opened mail on the dinner table. There were no late payment notices or other signs of trouble—just junk. "I love fucking in other peoples' apartments, especially ones with cameras."
"Okay," Root said thoughtfully, "I wasn't going to go there, but if you want to—"
"You're hacking her computer," Elizabeth said, pointing to a laptop computer charging on the coffee table.
"You sure you don't want to do it?"
"You're way faster than I am, and you talk less when you're hacking, thank God."
"But you could use the hacking practice. And think of all the fun files you could be sifting through. The browser history. The porn."
"Enjoy," Elizabeth said. "I'm going to look around."
Root shrugged and flopped on the couch, cracking her knuckles and grabbing the laptop. While she did her thing, Elizabeth prowled through the apartment, on the hunt for clues.
The first thing she noticed was the picture frame on the kitchen counter. It had been turned to face the wall. Elizabeth took note of its position and then rotated it just far enough to see the photo within.
It had been a happier time when someone had photographed Leslie and Ronald together; they were both grinning widely with their arms on each others' shoulders. With a sad smile, Elizabeth returned the photograph to its original orientation and continued on.
Remember when you used to think this kind of thing was creepy? she thought to herself as she parted the turquoise bead curtain and stepped into Leslie Johnson's bedroom. Pepperidge Farm remembers.
It was funny how fast you got used to looking through other peoples' stuff.
This wasn't really Elizabeth's area of expertise—after all, she was a cryptographer and fledgling hacker, not a sleuth—but she'd picked up enough bad habits from John and Shaw to recognize signs of suspicious activities in the people they were investigating. Sometimes the signs were obvious—guns and drugs and huge stacks of cash, for example. (Elizabeth usually nope'd the hell out of there whenever she found those, leaving it to more well-armed people like John to handle those kinds of cases.) But most of the time the clues were subtler, more innocent things—journals, receipts, voicemail messages. And those usually required some digging.
She spent the next few minutes exploring the bedroom, starting at the desk by the door. Large sheets of paper were spread across it: paintings in various stages of completion, next to a tray of watercolor paints and an array of brushes. The first painting was a bust of a young woman, but it was hardly a sketch at this point. The painting next to it was likely of the same woman, but her head and hair had been filled in with rich colors; browns and tans and reds against a deep yellow background. The woman's dark eyes were disturbingly lifelike and accusatory, staring at Elizabeth as if to say, Why are you snooping around here?
Elizabeth made a perfunctory check of the desk drawers and, finding nothing suspicious, moved on to the walk-in closet. She slid the door aside and, seeing that it was dark, fumbled on the wall for the light switch.
When the lights came on, it took her a few seconds to realize exactly what she was looking at.
She gasped. She had found the tails. Tails, plural. There were at least a half-dozen, in all sorts of colors and materials. Each one was stored on one of the walls, hanging upside-down from padded hooks that cradled the underside of the wide fin.
These look amazing! she thought as she took a closer look at the nearest one. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch it, brushing her fingers gently against the textured surface and tracing along the edges of iridescent blue and green scales. The material was smooth, with a tiny bit of give to it—silicon, perhaps, or some other kind of rubber. Short, fluted fins ran along either side of the tail from the hips to the huge tailfin, which was several feet across and lovingly detailed. She had to stand on her toes to get a good look.
"You want one, don't you?" Root said.
"What, me?" Elizabeth drew back her hand so fast, it was like she'd been burned. How the fuck did Root sneak around like that? She crossed her arms and turned to face Root. "No way. Just admiring."
She wanted to slap the cheeky grin right off Root's face.
"It's okay, having a little kid's fantasy doesn't affect your hacker reputation. Mermaids can be hackers too, you know. You should totally get a tail like that."
"Right, whatever."
"No, seriously. I think you'd look great in one."
"Did you get anything off Leslie's computer yet?" Elizabeth said crossly.
"Oh, right," Root said. She rolled her eyes. "Got through the password prompt pretty fast. Checked out her browsing history. Downloaded her email archive from her ISP. You know, the easy stuff. I'm cloning her drive to analyze later."
"Great," Elizabeth said, motioning for Root to get out of the way. When she didn't, Elizabeth said, "Can you move so we can get out of the closet?" When she saw the grin on Root's face, she growled, "Oh no, don't you fucking dare."
"Dare what?" Root simpered, but at least she stepped aside. Elizabeth pushed past her.
"I hate you." She could feel Root smirking behind her. "Anything good in the emails?"
"More 'baby please come back' from the ex," Root said. "Take a look."
They sat on the couch and spent a few minutes skimming through the emails from Ronald. They were all variations on a theme: just give me one more chance, babe.
None of them had a response from Leslie.
"He keeps saying something about the car," Elizabeth said thoughtfully. "'I'll sell it.' Shaw made it sound like it was his pride and joy. Hard up for money?"
"He makes good dough at the detailer," Root said. "Wonder what he's spending it on?"
"My magic eight ball says drugs."
"It could be the car too," Root pointed out. "He really likes the car."
"Nu-uh. It's literally always drugs. Except for that one case. That guy blew all his savings on guitars. He barely even knew how to play."
"Well. I'm sure Harry is looking into Ronnie's finances as we speak."
"'Ronnie?' Harry?'"
"You know. Ronald and Harold."
Elizabeth's looked bemused. "Do you have obnoxious nicknames for everyone?"
"'Lizzy' isn't obnoxious. It's endearing."
"Okay, first off, fuck you. Second off, the fact that you chose that nickname to defend means you know perfectly well that I hate it."
"I'll just have to come up with a better one."
"Whatever." Elizabeth grabbed the laptop out of Root's lap. "Did you check her social media?"
"Of course I did," Root said, and she even had the nerve to sound offended. She crossed her arms. "Not much interesting there; she keeps it mostly professional. Lots of great pictures of the mermaid getup though."
"Uh-huh. What about chat logs? I see AIM on the desktop."
Root hesitated just long enough for Elizabeth to notice. "I was saving that for you," she said.
"You were not. You forgot."
"I can't do everything for you."
"Uh-huh. Jesus. AIM. Who still uses AIM? The nineties are calling." Elizabeth navigated to the folder where AIM kept all of its logs, and she began to browse recent messages.
"You still do, apparently. Most people don't have the log path memorized."
"Shush."
They skimmed through the log files, which were organized by contact and then by date.
"Try Maria McLane," Root suggested, pointing at one of the folders. "They're Facebook friends."
Elizabeth double-clicked the file and skimmed its contents.
"Finally, something interesting," she said. "Look at that." She traced the text with her finger as she read:
"He said he needed the money to pay a friend. And then he goes right back to the fucking slots. He promised me, Maria. He fucking promised it was the last time."
"So...not drugs then," Root said, her voice deadpan.
"Gambling problem," Elizabeth agreed. "Maybe he borrowed money from someone dangerous and they want it back?"
"Or maybe he's angry at Leslie and wants revenge for cutting him off."
"Mmm." Elizabeth scrolled quickly through the rest of the folder. "There's a lot of chat logs…can you send me these please? I'll look through the rest at home." She handed Root back the laptop.
"What's the hurry?" Root asked as Elizabeth stood. "Too tempted to go look at the tails again?"
"Shush. I just don't want to hang around here too long, that's all. It's somebody else's apartment and I don't want to have to pull out Donnelly's badge if the police come knocking."
"Relax, nobody's around and Leslie won't be home for hours. Come on, embrace your temptations. Go fondle the tails again."
"...I'm leaving now."
"I'm going to find a tail on Amazon for you," Root said as Elizabeth left.
"Don't you dare!"
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A/N: I dedicate this chapter to SWWoman, who absolutely loves Root as a character and enjoys it when I use her as comic relief.
