A/N: Apologies for the delay on this chapter. I completely underestimated how busy the end of the work week was going to be. So here's to the weekend and chapter 4 :)

Edited to add: Reading this chapter over I found an error which has now been fixed :)

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Chapter Four: The Kickstarter

"Coffee black, two sugars." Thomas said sliding the takeaway cup over to Lieutenant Provenza.

Provenza looked up from his papers to the all too young attorney sitting opposite him. "I didn't ask for coffee," he replied.

"No, but I think that down turned expression did." Thomas said quietly laughing to himself then thinking better of it as the older gentleman stared him down. "How long are you going to keep our witness Ben McKay in Interview room 2? I heard Buzz complaining that he kept tapping on the table quite a lot."

Provenza put his coffee down and leaned back in his chair. "He'll stay there until we can figure out what Dany Rollins wanted that money for."

Thomas leaned across the table and kept his voice low, "So you believe me then? About the phone call?"

"This coffee is too cold." Provenza replied, pushing the cup back to Thomas. "It's not up to you to form the conclusion Mr O'Reilly. You need to learn as an attorney you're here to take what we tell you and use it to your advantage. You don't get to decide who's guilty or not."

Emma had said he'd be difficult. She had told him that of all the problems she would encounter in this division getting Provenza on side would be the most challenging. Thomas lifted his head, he opened his mouth as if to say something back to the lieutenant when the door to the break room opened.

"We got the warrant on Dany Rollins' email account," Andy said as he joined the two men.

"Oh? Find anything interesting in the inbox other than requests for loans from mysterious Nigerian royalty." Provenza asked.

"Well kind of, have you ever heard of something called Kickstarter?"

Provenza looked blankly at his partner, while Thomas suddenly brimmed with interest. Turning towards the younger man, he grunted under his breath, and rubbed his palm against his face.

"If this is another thing I have to ask Tao about then you better do something about this coffee O'Reilly."

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"Isn't that your second cup?" Billy asked as he went to pay the waitress.

"Third this morning, if you're keeping count." Andrea replied, taking another sip.

Billy raised his hands in a defensive gesture, before placing them back on the table.

"About this Stroh situation…" Billy began while Andrea looked at him from over her cup. "You could have taken the case you know, and—"

"And Emma could have been still languishing away in Robbery Homicide for the next three years." She interrupted. "There is no easing into the law when it comes to these big cases, and she wasn't going to be given the chance because she didn't fit some outdated criteria no one around here will admit to."

"Are we still talking about Emma here, or?" he asked.

"This isn't about me, " Andrea interrupted.

"Do you always think everything I say is about you?"

Andrea took a breath and tried to look past her old mentor. She pursed her lips and looked down at her cup but still felt his eyes watching her.

"I just think we need to all be a little better at adapting to change." she replied taking another sip of her coffee. She allowed her eyes to close briefly as the warm liquid made it's way down her throat.

"Change does require someone to loosen the reins a little," he replied.

"Have you seen the young defenders coming out of Wilson & Meyers? I think they've been trained by a DA recruiter. They seem to know most of our tactics before we're even aware we've used them. We need a few misfits roaming the halls. We can't afford to keep producing clones of ourselves to fill courtrooms."

"Oh I don't know. The world could well do with a few more Andrea Hobbs."

Andrea tilted her head to the side, rolling her eyes at her old friend, while he just laughed her reaction off.

"That's a lot of lunches you'd find yourself paying for." She replied.

He shrugged her comment off and they both found themselves blankly gazing around the place. The clock had ticked passed twelve some time ago, and the grill was no longer the sedated place for conversation. It was a popular eatery for young lawyers, marketers, and financial professionals, all wanting a cheap bite to eat before returning to the office for another grueling work day.

A couple of gentlemen bumped their way past Andrea and Billy, and they both decided to take their conversation to the outdoor area. Billy wasn't as enthusiastic about the move outside, and squinted against the harsh light of the sun as he put on his sunglasses.

"You've lived in LA for more than 40 years and you still hate the weather," Andrea commented, finding a place for them to sit in the shade.

"Give me the real seasons of New England over this perpetual sunshine." he replied.

Andrea shook her head as she sat down opposite her friend.

"So, Emma's protege - Thomas O'Reilly, you sure she's cut out for mentoring at this stage in her career?"

Andrea let out a sigh and let her eyes wander around the courtyard.

"There's something you're not telling me," he added.

She tapped her fingers against the table, before finally resting her hands on top of each other. "The thing is, he's not really her protege in the traditional sense. He's an observer."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she might become a mentor eventually, but she still has a lot to learn. Thomas O'Reilly looks young, but he's been a DDA working out of Nevada for the last ten years. He owes me a favour, and I think he's curious about moving out here. So I figure he can get a good insight for what we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis by following Emma around for a while."

"I don't know, this seems less about Thomas and more about you monitoring Emma - don't you trust her?"

"It's not like that. Thomas wants to see if working here is something he wants and I thought by working with Emma for a little while, maybe it will give him an idea of what being a DDA here is really like."

Billy took off his sunglasses, and rubbed his eyes as they readjusted to the light. He was trying to look her in the eyes but the sun behind her made his expression look confused, and agitated.

"I want to help her, but she can be difficult to help. It's not that I don't I trust her Billy, I do. But she's lost a lot of confidence and trust in herself, and lawyers without a strong ego get annihilated in the courtroom. Sometimes the only way to learn is by teaching others what you already know. I do want her to mentor someone eventually, but I needed her back now, and Thomas needed to learn the ropes so..."

Billy noticed the waitress approaching their table and passed her his credit card before Andrea got a chance to sneak a peak at the bill. While the waitress scanned his credit card Billy watched his friend from across the table. There wasn't much she hadn't told him over the years, and he knew that the woman in front of him had always been driven. In recent years he'd begun to see something change in her- her drive now included others. For Andrea it wasn't enough for her to be accomplished, she also needed to see that success in others. He just wasn't sure her approach would bring about the results she was after.

"Stroh knew about Bradac," he said.

Andrea scrunched her eyes as she sat forward, "what do you mean he knew about Bradac?"

"He had contacts, ways of doing research on everyone. He knew that Bradac would push Emma to go hard on a death penalty conviction and that ultimately it would end up with some kind of deal. He used it against her for his own purposes. It's not hard to use stubbornness against a person. Stroh knew Emma wouldn't believe him about the murders, and he knew making her look foolish would make her easy for manipulation. He could have easily seen any statement made by Bradac and put it together for himself."

"So you're implying…"

"I'm implying, that no one with a background in Internal affairs is going to go easy on what they see as the licentious corruption of those appointed to the law. If they had just started with a deal in the first place Stroh wouldn't have had as much room to manoeuvre."

"So Emma gets railroaded, so Bradac can teach the rest of the law profession a lesson - turn against the law like Stroh and face the harshest punishment available."

"Hey it looks good in the polls."

Andrea stood up, and Billy followed suit. He hadn't told her anything she hadn't already considered. She knew the law was as much about politics as it was about justice. While she didn't like to admit it, everyone was the player or the pawn at some point in this game.

"Bradac's need to punish the fallen attorney didn't seem to matter when he saw an opportunity to get more information from him. I guess I'm asking the question we've all asked at one point…"

Billy stopped and turned towards Andrea.

"Bad men always know how to find each other. When do we stop rewarding them for their poor choice in friends?"

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"I don't get it. Are you saying Rollins started a…what did you call this thing again?" Provenza asks.

"A Kickstarter," Tao replies.

"Right, a Kickstarter to teach our victim a lesson. What happened to raising money to help a third world country, or curing cancer? We now have people donating their change to kill each other? And here sits my retirement fund with barely fifteen bucks to its name."

Thomas looked over at the jar the older detective was shaking. He hoped Lieutenant Provenza wasn't depending too heavily on the jar because at present it was less than half filled. He wondered how often the old guy counted it, and if he would notice if he slipped in a twenty while no one was looking.

"Well not quite. Kickstarter is primarily used by creatives to fund music, video games new technology, and entertainment—"

"So is this some sort of reality TV crap gone wrong then?" Provenza asked, shuffling his jar to the other side of his desk, away from the prying eyes of O'Reilly.

"More like a movie actually" Flynn piped in. "According to the project page Rollins wanted to fund a movie called 'The Storm That Cometh', about a group of different people who were all seeking revenge on the same irritating man. The page goes into great detail to explain just what makes this man so irritating—"

"Oh wow he's one of those people who chew their food loudly at the cinema." Buzz chimed in, reading the description on the iPad over Andy's shoulder.

Provenza cleared his throat and shook his head, glancing sideways at the young tech.

"Anyway, so people - losers I imagine, put forward money to fund the movie, and how much money you donate determines what kind of reward you can get. Like a $5 pledge will get you a poster, but anything over $100 gets you a part in the movie. But here's the interesting thing…" Andy says as he moves to the front of the murder room. "If you pledge $1000 or more you are up for the role of the killer. So maybe someone did pledge that amount and got a little more than they bargained for."

"Well if you look at the trajectory of the bullet that hit our victim it looks like the weapon was fired by someone not expecting a real bullet to be fired." Tao added.

"So you're saying someone won the part of a killer in a movie, only for the movie to be playing out in real life?" Sykes, asked.

Provenza tapped on the picture of the victim hanging on the whiteboard. "Intended or not, dead all the same." he added.

"Do we know why Rollins would go to all this effort to get our victim killed?" Emma asked.

"Maybe your victim wasn't the intended target," Thomas added.

Everyone, including Emma turned around to the young observer who along with Rusty, had both entered the room with a sandwich and drink in each hand. Rusty had gone with the young DDA to find some lunch and stood in the background unsure of if he should say goodbye to Thomas or simply leave the room quietly.

"What if Rollins was trying to get McKay killed, and that's why he was on the phone earlier - he was trying to finish the job." Thomas continued.

"Oh really, O'Reilly. We don't know the victim wasn't set up to stop there. His car broke down and by sheer coincidence so did his cell phone - standard horror movie plot. As for the motive? It's in the Kickstarter list - it just looks like Rollins has a flair for drama." Provenza added.

Sharon shook her head and moved between the two men briefly before making her way to the whiteboard. "Has anyone contacted Kickstarter to find out who our bidders were?"

"Yes Captain, the information is just coming through now. It looks like none of the bids were over $20, and Rollins shut down the Kickstarter page before it hit its 30 day deadline." Tao replied.

"So how do you even know this Kickstarter was the set up for the murder?" Emma asked.

"Parts of the script were leaked online" Tao answered as he turned his computer screen towards Emma. "The death scene included the warehouse, and the same type of gun used by the killer. The weird thing is that apart from a few set up emails from Kickstarter and the odd bit of spam, there isn't much in Rollins email account to indicate he was communicating with anyone else- at least nothing I've recovered just yet."

"So what are you saying?" Emma asked.

"Rollins created a Kickstarter to fund a movie about a murder, but instead of it being a work of fiction our actor actually killed someone. The problem is, without a communication trail we can't connect Rollins to the victim or the shooter." Tao replied.

"Rollins is using someone here. But without the trail there's no proof." Andy added.

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"Hello," Andrea said as she picked up her cell phone.

"Hi, it's me Emma."

"I have caller ID Rios." Andrea replied.

"Right."

"How's your first day back at work?" Andrea could hear Emma trying to contain a frustrated sigh on the other side of the line. "That bad huh?"

"I've had worse. I guess there's something I needed to ask you about - about Thomas." Emma replied.

It was unusually quite through the phone line, and she could hear Emma take a deep breath.

"You encouraged me to be diplomatic, but you neglected to tell me something else."

Andrea took a deep breath of her own. She knew Emma was smart, but she'd hoped Thomas would be smarter and play a little dumb. She hoped he hadn't revealed himself, at least not yet, but she wasn't sure. "What do you mean?"

"Just how infuriating I must have been, or probably still am." Emma replied.

"Wait, what?" Andrea asked.

"He interrupts, he makes assumptions, and he forgets to pass on vital information. You're the closest thing I've had to a mentor in the last few months and if Thomas is this annoying to me and everyone else, I can't imagine how bad I must be."

Andrea bit her lip down to prevent herself from laughing in any way.

"Ah Andrea, are you there?" Emma asked wondering why the line had gone quiet.

Andrea took a breath and pushed her hair back behind her ear. "Oh I'm here, I'm just thinking."

"Oh?"

Andrea looked at the wall opposite her. There wasn't much space that wasn't occupied by a certificate or qualification, and they all hung along with a thin layer of dust. She looked at her desk and noticed only one or two photo frames. One of her with her parents at graduation, and another with Billy on her first day at the DDA's office. "I was thinking about the different relationships we have with people. Sometimes the ones we value the most are also the ones that we often grunt and complain about."

Emma scoffed at the comment as she looked blankly through the windows of the break room. There wasn't anything to see but an empty hallway filled with light bouncing from window to window. She remembered the first time she walked down that hallway, how big it felt, how determined she was to hold her head high and to answer every question she hadn't been asked. She remembered how silly she felt when Provenza and the others would point out her moments of arrogance. Then she remembered her times here with Andrea, how she would glance at her sideways, tipping her head in a manner that was supportive but warning her just the same. She smiled at the thought, and felt grateful for the patience she had been offered. "Good to know I've given you something to complain about."

Andrea smiled to herself. As she parted her lips to say something else she was interrupted by another noise coming down the phone line.

"You son of a bitch! What are you doing here?! Where is my damn money?!"

"Ah Emma, what's going on?" Andrea asked getting out of her seat trying to listen closer down the phone line.

"Oh crap." Emma replied moving out of the break room to look down the hallway. "It looks like Thomas and our witness have just run into the suspect. This is not the sort of annoying I signed up for."

"Yes, I agree" Andrea replied rubbing her hand against her brow. "There's annoying, then there's just plain—"

"O'Reilly what the hell have you done now!" Provenza yelled down the hallway.

Andrea put her keys in her bag, and closed the lid on her laptop, "I'm on my way."

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A/N: One of my main reasons for starting this story was to actually explain a couple of questions I kept seeing people ask about Emma.

The first was why Emma was chosen to prosecute the Stroh trial (considering her age and relative inexperience), and the second was to give a bit more context to Emma's decision making during the season three final.

When I rewatched her episodes I also found frequent references to Emma's 'boss' (they never named him/her) playing a bigger role in her decision making, so I decided to make him into the character I've discussed above - Louis Bradac. If you have also had these questions about Emma, then hopefully what I have explored in this chapter has helped give you some context to this character.