It is truly amazing, Felicity thinks, how calm she is right now. If this had happened to her a year ago she would be in pieces on the floor, as it is she was able to press the panic button she built into the side of her smartphone case and hide said phone in her boot before her captors had even closed the door of the car.
It's not that she's not worried, she is. But she feels the same way she did in the back office of that illegal casino, knowing that Oliver was about to break down the door and nothing was going to be able to stop him.
It's very reassuring having a superhero on speed dial. Takes a lot of the stress out of the whole being kidnapped thing.
There are three men in the car with her. Two of them are wearing ski masks. The third is driving and all she can make out about him from her position held down against the backseat of the car is that he has dark hair.
Actually she realises, that's not all she can tell - he's white, male, wide shouldered (at least in comparison to an average man, her recent exposure to Oliver and John's shoulders make this guy look almost weedy). So far he's stayed completely silent unlike the guy whose hand on her neck holds her low against the car seat. He keeps snarling things like "Stay down bitch" and "keep still bitch". If she has the chance she hopes she can get Oliver to break his jaw for her.
The driver seems to know where he's going so he might be local, unlike Mr Pottymouth McHandsy who has a definite New Jersey twang. The two masked men have guns. Plain old hand guns that don't look much different to John's preferred weapon. Even as they threatened her as she walked out of Queen Consolidated on a quest to find just the right kind of salad to make up for the lunch she skipped, part of her brain commented how little flair for drama these guys have.
Not like the other masked men (man) in her life.
She can't turn her head far enough to see much but she thinks they're heading north, out of the city.
The masked gunman in the front seat is pawing through her hand bag, scattering tissues, make up, and half a pack of chewing gun as he goes. He picks up her tablet and tosses it aside.
"Hey," she snaps at him, "that's expensive!"
"Shut up bitch," says McHandsy.
"I can't find her cell," Tosses BagSnatcher says, sounding panicked.
Felicity congratulates herself mentally for palming the phone successfully then realises that they'll realise soon enough there aren't that many places she could have stashed it. Surreptitiously she tries to move her hand towards her ankle boot, planning on hiding the phone under one of the car seats, but McHandsy spots the movement immediately.
"What are you doing?" And if she hadn't just spent the past few months being growled at by Oliver she might be impressed at the amount of menace there is in his voice. She's had more than enough aversion therapy that she can't help but roll her eyes.
McHandsy's hand moves from holding her down to wrenching her up by the scruff of her neck. Her eyes immediately start to water at his painful grip and she hates the fact he'll probably think she's crying.
She realises that the hand he's holding her up with is also the hand that's holding his gun, and that means it's currently pointed away from her and so she lunges, going for his eyes with her fingernails.
The car breaks suddenly and she's thrown forward into the back of the front seats. She loses her breath for a second, then takes a hard hit when McHandsy backhands her with his pistol.
Her head spins and she clutches at her face with her hands, pressing down, trying hard not to whimper. She's not the hero, Oliver is. And how is it fair that's it's only since he walked into her life that she's learned just how painful it is being hit in the face.
McHandsy rears back, obviously about to lash out again and she pulls her arms up around her face, trying to head off the blow.
But it doesn't land. Instead there's a yell above her and she blinks, thinking that this is it, Oliver's here to rescue her, but it only takes her a second to see that salvation has a different source.
The driver, who's face she can now see but would still have difficulty describing because he is oh so average in every single way, has just punched McHandsy, knocking him backwards and away from Felicity. McHandsy is holding his nose through the mask and Felicity feels a perverse stab of hope that it's broken.
Felicity stares, then realises no one's looking at or holding onto her, and she grabs for the door.
There's a click that years of action movies and no small amount of recent experience tells her is the sound of the hammer being drawn back on a gun and she freezes.
"Don't," says a new voice - the Driver. "I'd hate to have to explain to my employers why we had to shoot the most valuable hostage in Starling City."
Felicity risks a glance back, sure enough there's a gun pointed at her head. The Driver's eyes as he looks at her are ice cold (and blue, part of her mind notes, an extra bit of information for the mental list of descriptions she's been compiling). She has no doubt he'll pull the trigger and from this distance there's no way that wouldn't kill her.
"Sit down," he says, and she nods, turning her body sideways into the seat so she is as far away from McHandsy as she can be. She moves slowly, not wanting to risk any sudden movements. The gun looms large in her vision and she wonders how she could have thought that this was any less scary than a bow and arrow. Having any sort of weapon pointed at your head is terrifying.
"Seat belt," he says and she obeys, pulling the buckle over her shoulder slowly. She clicks it into place and places both her hands in her lap.
"Glasses," he says, gesturing at her face.
Her heart sinks, without her glasses she's very short sighted. It'll be almost as bad as being blindfolded. Almost, but not quite.
With a sigh, she takes off her glasses, hands them to him. The world immediately blurs into soft edges and fuzzy colours.
"If you do what you're told," the Driver says, "we won't hurt you."
She nods, not trusting her voice to speak.
"Good girl," he says approvingly and she feels her lip curl in response. "Now, stay still, stay quiet and don't try to escape again."
Felicity nods, and the dark blurry shape that is the Driver says to McHandsy, "Search her. Nicely. If the phone isn't in her bag, it's someone on her person. We need that phone. Find it."
The fuzzy blob that is McHandsy is suddenly there, grabbing at her clothing and groping at her chest. She sits still and lets him, only flinching when he pinches the top of her breast really hard.
"Norris," the driver says, "that's not very nice."
"There's no phone," McHandsy - Norris - says.
"Check her boots," the Driver says and Felicity forces herself to stay still as Norris leans over, close enough that she could kick him in the fuzzy shaped blob he has for a head, and starts running his hands over her chunky ankle boots.
"Got it," Norris says as Felicity feels her cell phone being lifted out of her shoe. She bites her lip, hating the fact the Driver saw through her admittedly flimsy deception. If there had been three men like Norris in the car she'd probably still have the phone. Though, if there were three men like Norris in the car she might have been able to get away already. Or she might have been shot already.
There's a sound like a dull crunch and Felicity knows that her new smartphone, with her hacked OS and the custom apps she built so she could help Oliver save the city, is now in pieces. She hopes they won't bother with the case, won't find the GPS transmitter wedged between the thin layers of decorative plastic but she can't see far enough to check.
She has to hope that on this at least she's smarter than her kidnappers.
There's a sound like a door opening and closing and Felicity guesses that the wreckage that used to be her phone is now nothing more that street trash. She has no idea what the status of the case is.
But she refuses to be frightened. She managed to keep the phone from them long enough that the computer system in the club's basement will have registered her capture. John and Oliver have tracked people down with less than this. They will come for her.
All she has to do is stay alive until then.