Winces. Sorry for the long wait. College thoroughly kicked my butt and kept me busy. Hopefully this long chapter makes up for the wait.
Just so you guys know, this story wont feature every single of the targets that Oliver visits in season 1. I stayed with Hunt and Sumers because they set up the foundation for the entire crusade, but this story won't be a play by play of season one with only a few alterations. That'd just be lazy.
Martin Sumers looked up from the paper on his desk at the sound of metal hitting metal. The man leaned forward, a hand held up to signal complete silence. His bodyguard shifted, a hand slowly dropping to the firearm at his side. The two kept quiet, ears strained and breath held. When there was no follow up, Sumers relaxed into his chair. It was probably someone dropping a shipment, and trying to cover up their incompetency. "Make sure they're not dropping stuff again," he murmured to the bodyguard.
"Yeah, that shit's expensive." The muscular man mumbled, the hand that had rested on the firearm now used to rub his face in exasperation. "You got to stop hiring clumsy hands, boss."
"Just go check it, Donovan." Sumers growled. The bodyguard snorted, but complied and slowly headed towards the exit, ducking around a shipping container.
Sumers turned back to his report, concentrating on the numbers.
He heard feet pounding and scraping against rough pavement, a grunt and then nothing more. It was so quick, Sumers initially thought that he was imagining things. But then he heard the unmistakable thud of something heavy hitting the ground.
Heart racing, Sumers leapt from his chair, knocking it to the ground. "Donovan, that you?" He called out, voice trembling only slightly. When no one replied, Sumers sucked in a sharp inhale as his mind raced. He quickly opened a desk drawer and pulled out his personal firearm. Taking slow, hesitant steps he walked around.
"D-Donovan?"
"Donovan isn't here." A distorted voice, warbled and tinny like it was thrown through a synthesizer.
Sumers nearly jumped out of his skin in fright, dropping his pistol. With a curse, he crouched down and picked it up again, holding it with both hands now. "Who's there?" He yelled out, inching away from the looming shelving units.
"Martin Sumers." The voice emerged from behind. Immediately the businessman swerved around and shot two rounds blindly in the general direction. The bullets hit nothing but the metal sides of a shipping container.
"Where are you?!" Summers screamed, spinning in all directions with the gun pointed forward. It trembled in his sweaty hands, the trigger finger twitching in his growing paranoia.
The assailant ignored his question. "Now I just have to ask, if you'll pardon my curiosity, is just why a clean, honest businessman like yourself is skulking about at the docks so late at night? I highly doubt it is for the view." The voice sounded far off to his right, but when he turned there was nobody.
The man looked around for the source of the noise. "You've got nothing on me." He yelled out, his confident bravado ruined by the slight tremble in his voice.
The voice was cool and collected. "The score of bodyguards that I had to deal with says otherwise. You're hiding something, something that someone doesn't want to be found."
Desperately, the man tried to pull a bluff. "I've called the police. They're on their way right now." He yelled out, voice echoing against the metal shipping containers that surrounded him. "They'll be here any moment, and you'll be thrown behind bars before you can even touch me."
For a moment, there was only silence. Martin felt himself puff his chest out in vicious pride as he realized that, surely, he must have scared off his attacker. But then… "It's a bad thing to lie, Mr. Sumers." The voice came back, this time right behind him.
Something smacked into the back of his legs. Knees buckling, Sumers fell face-first into the rough pavement. There was a sickening, wet crunch as his nose broke. Blood, warm and thick, spewed out of his nose and began to pool on the concrete. Gasping in pain, he coughed violently when the blood dripping out his nose receded into the back of his throat. Spitting out a fat glob of saliva and blood, Sumers braced himself on his elbows and pushed his upper body upwards. Before he could properly stand up, a foot pressed down on the small of his back, hard enough that he flopped on his belly and smacked his face, and his already broken nose, back into the concrete.
"Now now," the voice murmured from above. "No need to move."
The tip of a boot dug deeply into his side, right in the soft spot between the ribcage and hips, forcing him to roll over onto his back. Martin chocked and coughed roughly as blood clogged his nostrils. His entire face felt warm and stiff, and his mouth felt like his tongue had turned into cotton. He tried to move his face to look up at his attacker but could only cry out as light erupted in his vision from the movement. It took far too long for his vision to return, and that was when he finally saw her.
A pale-skinned woman stood over him, peering down at him with inquisitive blue eyes that contrasted against the black domino mask. Curly blonde hair framed her face.
"I've got a question."
Sumers blinked, still a bit starry-eyed and too confused to say anything more coherent than a slurred mumble.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the woman held up a metallic rod and tilted it for him to see. "How long do you think this will knock you out?"
He tried to scream, truly he did, but all that managed to come out was a strangled sob that caught in his throat.
"Yeah, I reckon about an hour too."
Before he could try to scream again, or even put up some minimal form of protest, there was a glint of metal moving, and the impact of something hard against his temple. For a brief moment all he could see was white, but then he knew no more.
Up close, Martin Somers didn't seem like the terrifying man she had heard about. His face was soft, almost boyish despite the short beard, and his body felt rather pudgy beneath her boot. Definitely not the sort of man who had come into command through his own fists. Still, she kept her guard up as she removed a few zipties from a pocket and began to place them around his wrists and ankles.
When the unconscious man was bound like a prize-winning hog, Sara began to snoop around. The desk was the first place she went to. Against the dull concrete and rusted metal of the shelving units, the wood desk stood out like a sore thumb.
She pulled out several manila envelopes, stacks of paper work, and log books. Sara grinned triumphantly as she looked closer at one of the leather-bound books. It was an accounting book that was without a doubt off the books. Another ten minutes of digging, and she found a shipping log and, while it wasn't brazenly labelled as 'drug smuggling' the profits and units of measurements were incriminating enough to warrant a look further. Why the man such incriminating kept it in his desk instead of under lock and key, Sara couldn't fathom a guess. Perhaps it was simple arrogance.
The final drawer on the bottom right side was locked. It only took around a minute or two to lock pick, considering it was just a standard pin tumbler lock that had come with the desk. When she opened the drawer, Sara found a black duffel bag stuffed to the brim with several dozen rolls of unmarked hundred dollar bills. "Saving for a rainy day, Sumers?" She asked aloud. "Or is this plan B in case there was ever a need to run?"
Whatever the case, Sumers' emergency plan had just horribly backfired and instead become key evidence to throw him in jail.
Grabbing her phone, she began to take pictures of the various pages from the shipping log and accounting book. Come tomorrow morning, district attorney Laurel Lance would open her apartment door to head off to work, and find a manila envelope on her doormat that held enough evidence to bring Sumers down. Perhaps not enough to prove the man guilty of the murder of one of his employees, which was what Laurel was gunning for, but enough to slam him in jail on drug trafficking charges.
It took her an hour or so read through it all, and taking the occasional picture for any particular page, but Sara didn't mind the time. She was waiting for Sumers to wake up from his kali stick-induced nap.
By the time she was finishing up with the photos, Sumers was already beginning to slowly wake up. Sara put the phone away in a secure pocket, and casually strode over to the stirring man who was beginning to notice his current situation. Sara quickly activated her voice alteration.
Sumer's breathing elevated into ragged gasps of terror as he began to struggle against his binds. With his hands and feet bound, all his effort resulted spastic wiggles that reminded Sara of an insect.
Before he could begin to inch away towards an exit, Sara kicked the man in the side and made sure he stayed on his back. To keep him still, she dug her heel into the man's chest, pressing down just hard enough to make the man struggle to breathe.
"Hello, Martin Somers," Sara greeted the man with the nonchalant nature of someone meeting a friendly stranger. "I've heard a lot about you."
Bleary brown eyes blinking slowly, the man looked up at her, thick brows slowly furrowing in confusion as he struggled to focus around the pain. Then the man's face paled considerably and he immediately flinched away from her. "China?" He gasped out in a savage sort of terror that reminded Sara of a cornered animal.
Something cold almost seemed to crawl through her skin that word, creeping under her skin like invasive worms. China. The world seemed to tilt to the side all of a sudden; leaving her with intense whiplash as her vision warped into tunnel-vision."What was that?" Sara distantly heard herself demand, too focused on keeping her tone steady. "Say that word again." The boot on his chest moved to his throat. Sumers could only gurgle out a protest as he struggled to breathe.
Biting back the frustration, Sara lifted her foot up from the man's throat, but moved it downwards so that it pressed against the man's chest to keep him down. "What do you mean 'China'?" She demanded angrily. "Answer me!"
"Hair…" Somers slurred out, his gaze a bit unfocused. "… white."
Sara froze as she heard the last word. Her very blood seemed to curdle with dread as she came to a realization. There was only one thing, or, to be more exact, one person that fit those description and could inspire such fear in a man. China White.
Fuck. Fuck. Not good. This was not good. This was supposed to be simple. Martin Sumers was a man who seemed keen on keeping matters close at hand, with his power and influence only reaching certain sections of the criminal underground. He wasn't even important enough to know China White's name! Was there some connection to the Triads that she and Oliver had missed? How could something like that have been overlooked?
Leaning down she gripped the front of the man's dress shirt, Sumer's upper body jerking upwards as she all but snarled in his face. "Where is she? How do you know China White? How is she involved with you?" Her hands were trembling. Sumers, for all he seemed a fool, noticed it.
Smirking up at her, Martin Sumers looked far too smug for a man whose face was covered in his own blood. "She's going to find you." He told her, bloody teeth shining in the artificial light. "She's going to kill you."
Despite the emotions running in her veins like a live wire, Sara smirked back. China was a terrifying enemy, but Sara had heard the threat before. "She's tried, trust me." The man blinked up at her, taken aback. She loosened her grip on the dress shirt, and Sumer's head smacked against the pavement.
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Sara reassessed the situation.
Do I kill him? She internally debated. Or do I stick to the plan and let Laurel sort him out in court?
The plan had just to spook him up and gather enough evidence to get him arrested. But Sumers seemed to have worked with the Triads. Sumers knew about China White. Sara needed to know what he knew. If they could find her… if China White was in Starling City and not holed away in Hong Kong… it changed everything.
"You're going to tell me everything you know about China White and the Triads, Mr. Sumers." Sara pressed her foot in harder, digging the heel of her combat boot into the man's sternum. Sumers squealed in pain, the sound reminiscent of a mouse being stepped on.
"Fuck off," he snarled out, but the bravado was already cracking with every second passing. "She'll kill me." The snarl became a whine.
"And I won't?" Sara countered.
He glared at her mutinously. Sara purposefully spun the kali stick in her hand, watching with no small amount of contentment as Sumer's eyes followed the movement. Martin swallowed nervously.
The kali stick gently touched the man's chin. Sumers flinched at the contact, jerking his head away from it as though it burned. "Why don't you start by telling me where Zhishan is?" Sara began.
Tears of frustration flowed freely down blood-stained cheeks. "I… I can't." Sumer's sobbed.
"Yes, you can…" Sara whispered, the tip of the kali stick tracing invisible lines down the man's cheek, to the dip of the Adam's apple, till it began to make flowy spirals around the collarbone. "I don't think you have the willpower to endure what I have planned for you…"
A chill crept up the man's spine, a tendril of pure, undiluted fear wrapped around him, suffocating him, paralyzing him. At that moment, Sumers was sure, beyond all doubt, that he was about to die. The woman looming above him was the Reaper, come to collect.
I…. I don't want to die!
"O-Okay, okay. I'll tell you! Just don't kill me, please!" Thick, wet sobs erupted from his heaving form. "China White is in Starling City. I don't know where, but she's here, I promise!"
The kali stick paused its journey. "Where's Zhishan? Is he here?"
"I don't know. I never asked any questions so long as they paid what was due." Sumers cried, struggling against his bonds, wrists already rubbed raw. "I never met the leader, just his subordinates. China White was the only one I ever met, I promise!"
"What is the Triad doing in Starling City?"
"I don't know, I swear. I just let the Triad use my port for their drug trade!"
Sara struck him in the stomach.
Sumers curled into the blow, gasping. "They're trying to spread their drug trade through the United States; Starling City's ports make it the ideal staging point. I don't know much, but I know that something big is coming. The Bertinellis' have been trying to impede them every step of the way, and the Bratva have been taking advantages of the chaos to spread their own influence."
The businessman rambled on and on. A few names of low-level street thugs and even a corrupt cop or two on the Triad's payroll. A street name here and there, where Triad members operated. Everything he knew, everything he gleamed from what little interactions he had had with China White he told his assailant until his throat hurt and his tongue ran dry.
When his rambling ceased, the begging began. "Please... please don't kill me. I told you what you wanted, you can just let me go, just let me go, please."
Sara shot him a look, her eyes so cold that the man's begging stopped mid-sentence, the pleading dying on frozen lips. She leaned down, towering over him. When she spoke, it was almost a whisper.
"I understand that you're currently under investigation for murder. Despite so many accusers and lawyers suddenly disappearing, the district attorney seems rather dead set on convicting you."
What? What was this crazy lady going on about? What did this have to do with the Lance bitch? "You think I'll confess?" He wheezed out, his face so cherry-red that it looked ready to pop.
Sara actually blinked at that. "A confession?" She questioned, head titling to the side in confusion. She hadn't mentioned anything about a confession. Was there a misunderstanding between them? "I don't need a confession from you, Mr. Summers."
Sumer's eyes bulged as he began to writhe in blind panic. Annoyed, Sara kept the weight of her body focused in the heel of her boot and tried to keep him still as he tried to wiggle out of her reach like a worm. "Jeez, just stop trying to escape, it's getting a bit annoying now…" she mumbled under her breath. Sumers ignored her and kept trying to struggle.
"Relax, that doesn't mean I'm going to kill you." Or, at least, she wasn't planning on it, but if he kept these pathetic attempts of escape she might honestly lose her patience. He was only alive because Laurel needed him alive to throw into jail.
She reached downwards towards his shirt pocket, ignoring the fearful flinch from Sumers, and took the man's phone. A few taps on the screen later and the phone was dialing emergency services. Sara put it on mute, and tossed the phone on the floor. The police will eventually come knocking by tracking the phone's location.
"I reckon that desk full of rolls of hundred dollar bills will make the police suspicious enough to look a bit deeper. Maybe they'll even find the accounting bills of your extracurricular activities from smuggling foreign drugs into Starling City that I placed, open, on the top." That might explain the Triad's involvement. "I'm sure that should be suitable evidence for the law to arrest you on charges of smuggling. Paper trails are nasty things, Mr. Sumers."
Pale-faced and thin lipped, Martin Sumers looked up at her in horror.
"So, you see, Mr. Sumers," Sara's voice turned mocking. "I don't need you to confess anything. I have what I needed, and I'll be sure to give it to the right people. People who can put you away for good. I should, however, thank you. You've been surprisingly useful."
Sumers choked and spluttered an incoherent protest.
"Goodbye, Mr. Sumers. It was a pleasure."
The kali stick slammed down.
Detectives McKenna Hall and Quentin Lance stood side by side as they surveyed a whiteboard of data and references. The whiteboard contained two weeks' worth of data collected from first hand observers, the few survivors and what little live footage was scrapped from shoddy street cameras. The board was the brain child of McKenna and some fellow detectives that had been given the task of identifying the female vigilante that had popped up in the Glades and putting her in handcuffs. McKenna had dragged the whiteboard from another room that she had hunkered down in when she had joined the force to the other side of the precinct to toss ideas with Lance, who was investigating the other vigilante.
"So, what do you think?" McKenna asked him. "You think this blonde woman has any connection to your hood guy?"
She could practically see the gears turning in the older man's head as he compared data references. Lance gave a non-committal grunt as he looked closer at a specific portion of the whiteboard. McKenna recognized it as the recorded chart of decreased crime in assault and harassment from the last week.
McKenna groaned. "A grunt doesn't count as a conversation, Quentin. We've been over this. Use your big boy words."
Detective Lance shot her a withering glare that could have sucked life from the Earth itself. Quentin's partner, Lucas Hill, barely masked his laugh as an awkward cough from where he sat at a desk, the daily crossword half-finished in his lap.
"I don't know." Quentin offered his input, looking at the data with eyes narrowed in concentration. "Even if they both started around the same time doesn't necessarily mean they're buddies."
Still, McKenna Hall was convinced that there was some connection between the two criminals that had suddenly sprung up around the same time, give or take a week or two."Bodies have begun to pile up drastically and these… vigilantes…." The word tasted foul on her tongue. The term seemed too positive for these merciless killers. "-are responsible. That not even mentioning that both of their modus operandi are odd enough to warrant comparison."
Detective Lance still didn't look convinced. "One shoots people with a bow and arrow at long to medium range and finishes whoever is left with brute force. The other uses some kind of metal rod to cause blunt force trauma that differs from bruised skin to broken bone and has a preference for strangulation. Those are two very different MO's, Detective Hall."
"True, but this is also the day and age where anyone with a grudge can buy a firearm within a few miles of their home." She argued. "Surely the fact that there haven't been any reports of firearms being shot off except from the victims, if you could even call them that, should be mentioned as something noteworthy?"
"She's got a point." Hilton looked over towards Quentin and nodded his in direction of the board, where McKenna had been collecting photos from crime scenes. "The hood and the lady in black- whoever they are and whether they work together or not- they've got some serious aggression." In the upper left corner were several photos of the deceased killed by the female vigilante. One man had his throat crushed in, another had been stabbed in the jugular. Another had been stabbed right below the clavicle. None of those deaths had been painless.
"There is a shared…" McKenna struggled to find the correct word. "… passion to these killings. That is the connection between the hood and the woman in black. Passion. Their brutal method to dispatch anything or anyone that stood in the way of their objective, whatever that objective was, is terrifying. That is some serious dedication."
"Not to mention anger," Hilton added in. "It takes a certain deep-seated anger to have the mentality needed to murder another human being." The older man was looking closer at the board, his crossword forgotten in his newfound interest. "I think you might be onto something, Detective Hall."
Before she could preen internally, two officers, one male and the other female, entered the room grumbling in low tones to one another. The man glanced over at the board and paused mid-step. "Whoa, is that what I think it is?" He exclaimed as he skittered up to the board with enthusiasm. "T, come take a look at this; I think this is one of the vigilante boards!" The woman ignored her colleague and just collapsed in a nearby chair and pulled out her phone.
As the man got close enough to touch, McKenna's nose instantly wrinkled in distaste at the sharp, acrid scent, more like a heavy fume than anything, lingered around her. It smelled burnt. Not cigarettes, but-
"-Why do you smell like you ran headfirst into a fire?" Quentin, bless his ever-curious heart, barked out at the officer. Billy. McKenna was sure that was his name.
It was the woman, Theresa her mind supplied helpfully, who replied. "Someone messed up the coffee machine and now the breakroom smells like burnt coffee grinds and melted plastic." She explained without taking her eyes off of her phone. Sound effects of punching and explosions quietly blasted away from the small speakers. With the chair tipped back and balancing precariously on its hind legs, Theresa looked more like a bored teenager in detention than an officer of the law on break.
"Honestly I think the new smell is an improvement. The fumes might make your head feel a little fuzzy, but it at least masks the body odor and stale leftovers." Billy hummed as he inspected the board. "You're investigating the Glades vigilante?"
Theresa looked up from her mobile game in interest. "You're investigating the lady in black?"
The lady in black. Despite the cliché name, it had become the official moniker for the mysterious female vigilante by the investigating SCPD. Just like how the Hood had become the name for the vigilante archer that was leading Quentin's team on a wild goose chase across Starling's metropolitan area. Not for the first time, McKenna Hall groaned at the creative minds of Starling City's finest. Surely there were better names that didn't take after the obvious?
"T likes her," Billy supplied helpfully, not noticing the woman's baleful glare and heated "I don't like her, Billy!"
Quentin pounced on this new information like a cat on a mouse. He loomed over the seated woman with a cross look. "It almost sounds like you admire this woman." Quentin noted a bit accusingly, looking at her with just the smallest amount of distrust.
Theresa met the man's infamous glare without so much as a flinch. McKenna could respect that; very few could look Quentin Lance in the eye when he went into detective mode. "I don't." She shot Billy a look so dirty it could have curdled milk. "I believe that she should be put behind bars for taking justice into her own hands. Laws and a system of court is what separate us from animals, Detective."
"I'm hearing an unspoken 'but' coming on…"
McKenna groaned in fond exasperation. She couldn't help but feel for Theresa, Lance was a hard ass at the best of times.
"However," Theresa shot the grizzled detective a half-hearted glare."I'm just noting that almost everyone killed has had a record of sexual assault or domestic abuse. Not all of them, but enough that people will notice."
Huh. McKenna hadn't thought about that. She'd been more interested in the number of bodies dropping, and if it related to the string of killings and the odd death threats occurring in Starling City proper. "What do you think about that anonymous phone call at the docking district last night and the whole debacle with Martin Sumers?"
"Which part?" This time it was Billy who asked, oddly enough. But then McKenna remembered that he had been one of the officers put on call to investigate and later arrest Sumers. Out of all of them in the room, McKenna knew that Billy was probably the best source of information about the arrest. "The part where the call was used on Sumers' own phone, the unconscious people spread out on the pavement with guns, the shit ton of incriminating evidence of drug trafficking found on site, or that we had to read Martin Sumers his Miranda while loading him into an ambulance instead of a normal cruiser?"
"Well when you put it like that, it's hard to choose." McKenna mused.
Sumers got hit last night by the woman in black, but there's no evidence of a history of abuse or sexual assault. Was he just an anomaly?
Billy chewed his lower lip in thought. "I saw Sumers last night. He looked like someone had put the fear of God in him as they loaded him into the ambulance."
"Sounds more like the fear of the Devil," Lance joined in, tone dark. "People who take the law into their own hands need to be stopped quickly before the lines get too blurry. One day she might not care about innocents any more than the guilty."
"I didn't mean that what these lunatics are doing is good; they're killers, plain and simple." Theresa defended herself. "But you can't deny that since these two popped out of the woodworks one day that crime has slowly begun to decrease ever so slightly. Enough would-be thugs in the Glades are scared to be beaten or killed by the woman in black that they choose to stay safe at home, and this hood guy has got all the corporate fat cats shaking in their fancy Italian-leather boots. There's change in the air."
"People never react well to change… they'd rather dig their heels in the dirt and tear down anything that threatens their normal reality. Who knows how the gangs are going to react."
"Well, perhaps-"
"Hi, daddy!" A bright, cheery voice interrupted their conversation. Immediately, Quentin perked up as he swirled around, lips already curled into a bright smile. McKenna was floored at the sight; Lance never smiled. She hadn't even known the man was capable of any emotional capabilities aside from bitter dourness and uncompromising stubbornness. Curious about whoever could elicit such a pleasant response from a man like Quentin Lance, McKenna tilted her head and peered over the man's shoulder.
McKenna froze in place as she stared.
It was Sara Lance all grown up. The young woman was smiling as she walked over to them, a cardboard container holding cups of coffee in one hand and what looked like a pastry box tucked under her arm.
Before Sara had been so… girlish. Now the woman before her sharply contrasted against what had once been; a phantom memory clashing against a new reality. The softness of her face and body had melted away. Suddenly she was all harsh angles and hard muscles. Still somewhat feminine, with her wavy hair and rosy smile, but rougher around the edges with a broader set of shoulders and long, thick fingers curled into half-formed fists, ready for anything.
Sara Lance had changed completely.
Has Oliver changed too? The thought made her insides twist uncomfortably.
Sara's body was more muscular than it had ever been, not stocky but still solid enough for any wandering eyes to do a double take. McKenna saw the way the toned muscles of her forearms flexed with each subtle movement of her hands. McKenna had a brother who rock climbed practically every day, and had the toned definition to prove it, and Sara Lance's forearms were just as defined. How'd she get those muscles? Were they from whatever experiences she had had on that island?
When Sara raised her free hand to hug her father in greeting, McKenna noticed the slightly lighter spots of skin that littered her fingers just below where the joints bended. Calluses. Sara hadn't had those before. When did she get those?
"Hey baby girl," Quentin greeted his youngest with a peck on her forehead, a dopey smile on his face that was so sweet it could give someone a cavity. "What are you doing here?"
The younger Lance held up the cardboard carton like it was a peace offering. "I brought coffee. Thought it might do you all some good from the stuff they serve you here."
Backing away from the board, Billy practically groaned at the news. The dark-haired man officer looked at Sara Lance as though she were an angel descending from the heavens to offer salvation. "T, no more black tar from the rec room." He murmured to his partner excitedly, not noticing the woman rolling her eyes in fond exasperation.
"SCPD's coffee isn't that bad, Billy." But to McKenna it sounded half-hearted at best as the brunette accepted two cups of coffee from Sara, handing one to Billy and keeping the other for herself. Next to her, Quentin cradled his own hot drink in both hands.
Sara then handed over the blueberry muffin to Hilton, who gladly accepted it with a kind smile. Not looking the least bit apologetic, she turned to her father. "I'd have gotten you a pastry too, but I thought better on it. I've seen your fridge, daddy. Red meat, dairy and beer isn't a sustainable intake of sustenance." She lightly scolded her father, who just simply scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.
"That's what I've been telling him for years." Hilton declared around a mouth full of blueberry muffin.
"Hey!" Quentin glared at his partner, though it lacked any heat. "This is the first I'm hearing of it from you."
Sara laughed at her father's expense. It was a surprisingly soft sound considering the roughness of her. Light and airy; like tinkling bells.
Billy practically inhaled the entire cup with a strong whiff, Styrofoam and all. Smiling dreamily at Sara he told her, "Do whatever you want, Miss Lance. Run a red light, kill a man, whatever floats your boat. Just keep the coffee coming and I'll give it a pass."
The young blonde laughed again. Less airy this time, and a bit more strained. Maybe she hadn't found it in good taste? "I'll be sure to keep that in mind." Sara's tone then warmed considerably. "It's good to see you again too, Billy."
McKenna kept staring, fingers clasped tight over the cup. Her thoughts wandered from the young Lance girl –Urgh, am I really that old to call her young? She's barely two years younger than me!- to the one who had been lost as sea with her. Oliver Queen.
All of McKenna's memories of Oliver were borderline wistful nostalgia. Perhaps it was a good thing she had never gone past the whole little crush phase with him. God that would have been a recipe for disaster, she thought to herself with a shudder. Makes me glad we just got drunk and did stupid reckless shit. The past five years had been boring without him. For all that he had been a shitty person and a shitier boyfriend, Oliver had been a good friend in their platonic relationship.
I wonder how Ollie is. It's been, what, eight or so years since I last saw him? Heh, how time goes marching on. Jeez, I feel old, and I'm not even out of my twenties yet.
And then Sara turned her attention away from her father and Billy and looked right at McKenna. She froze at the sight of those bright blue eyes staring at her, the cup of coffee halfway to her lips and already forgotten as she meets her gaze uneasily.
"Hi." Sara greeted, shifting on the balls of her feet with an uncomfortable awkwardness.
"Hey." McKenna echoed, just as awkward.
An uncomfortable silence followed. The others awkwardly looked away from the two women, suddenly very much immersed in their hot beverages. McKenna cursed them in her mind.
It was like watching a socially awkward kid try and interact with another socially awkward kid. Two socially awkward halves didn't make a socially competent whole.
It was a bit odd to see Sara again. McKenna had never really done much with her, but she did remember the bubbly blonde that stuck to her older sister like glue with the sort of adorable awe that comes from a younger sibling. When the news broke out and people speculated on just why Sara Lance had been on her sister's boyfriend's yacht, McKenna had been genuinely thrown off. She hadn't thought that the little girl, barely out of her teenage years, was capable of going behind her sister's back like that.
"It's… good to see you?" McKenna offered, suddenly aware of all eyes on her. Quentin was looking at her with narrowed eyes, looking all the more ready to jump in at the slightest hint of animosity. Jeez, he might as well think I'm going to bite her head off. McKenna coughed and cleared her throat and reached for some semblance of civility. "I'm glad you're alive. Same with Oliver, too."
Some of the awkwardness seemed to melt away from Sara's frosty exterior, and the tension in the blonde's body slowly slackened like an unwound spring. Even Sara's father relaxed, figurative hackles lowered and everything.
"Oliver missed you," Sara admitted with a fond smile. "You need to get back into touch with him. It'll do him so good to get out of the gloomy manor and hang out with someone." Behind her, Quentin's expression soured like curdled milk.
Shit, that's fucking hilarious.
"What was that, Hall?" Quentin snapped out.
Shit did I say that out loud? Shit, shit act natural. "Nothing, Lance." She replied quickly. It was only the slight curl of her lips that betrayed her mirth.
Nailed it.
Sara's small grin was barely noticeable before it was hidden behind the woman's cup of coffee, but McKenna caught it. Then her eyes wandered over to the girl's father. Oh God. Quentin looks pissed. Oh God, she needs to change the subject right now.
"So, uh, how do you know Billy?" Came the quick, flustered response. If she didn't dare to make eye contact with the glowering detective, nothing bad would happen to her. Detectives couldn't kill other detectives, right? "This is the first time I've seen you at the station."
"Oh really?" Sara looked genuinely surprised at that. "I guess I've just stuck to this room, since this is where my dad works. I'm not comfortable around crowds, and the hallways always seem to suffocate me. Whenever I come here, I just stay in this room the entire time." Sara fiddled with her coffee, fingers picking at the plastic top, looking sensibly guilty. "I didn't know you became a detective, McKenna. If I had known I would have stopped by!"
Whatever tension had remained with McKenna had left her by the time Sara was done talking. Damn, how could she hold a grudge against the girl after all these years? "Don't blame yourself," she said with a small, teasing smile. "Blame your father."
Quentin's head perked up from where it had been nearly submerged in his drink. "Wait, what did I do wrong?" He demanded to know before stealing another sip from his latte. Quentin Lance was a latte man? Huh, who knew.
I guess you really do learn something new every day.
"So what are you doing here, McKenna?" Sara asked her curiously; the questions suddenly resembling McKenna's from earlier. "I've never seen you around here."
Lance's daughter or not, McKenna wasn't about to give up confidential information. "Ah, just normal work." McKenna lied smoothly. "Just wanted to bounce ideas off of Lance, see if anything stuck, ya know?"
"Does it have anything about Martin Sumers getting attacked at the docks last night?" Sara asked innocently, sipping her drink with a meticulous pace.
Quentin's head jerked up at the casual statement. "How'd you hear about that?" He asked his daughter, unable to hide the suspicious tone.
"Dad," Sara rolled her eyes dramatically. "Just because I was on an uncharted island for five years doesn't mean I forgot how to use the internet." She held up her mobile phone, and flashed it at her father. On the screen was a tabloid news site that was already spewing theories on how and why Martin Sumers had called the police in the middle of the night. "The SCPD needs to work on keeping their mouths zipped." She looked pointedly at the wall behind them.
Quentin was frowning. "When did you get a cellphone…?" he murmured.
Billy not so subtly side-waddled several steps so that he was properly in front of the whiteboard, somewhat hiding it from Sara's view and-oh god, a civilian just saw highly confidential evidence.
"So, the Glades vigilante attacked Sumers, huh." Sara looked halfway torn between genuine surprise and dry amusement. "I thought the Hood guy dad is always ranting about would have been the one. Right, daddy?" Her tone turned teasing.
"This is confidential information that you just stuck your nose in. Keep your mouth zipped, missy," Quentin warned his daughter with a waggling finger that reminded McKenna so much of her parents admonishing her reckless behavior during her teenage years that she couldn't help but snort into her coffee.
"Depends," Sara replied good-naturally. "Am I a suspect?"
Lance's derisive snort of amusement was so loud it nearly cancelled out Billy's bark-like laughter.
Sara sipped her coffee pleasantly. "Then I guess you have nothing to fear from me."
With so much evidence found at the docks, Laurel's case against Martin Sumers was over and done with relatively quickly. Although the lawyer never managed to weasel a conviction for the murder of one of Sumer's employees, something Sara was sure infuriated her sister to no end, Laurel still managed to throw him in jail on charges of smuggling both illegal wares and drugs. The fact that many of his 'personal entourage' found at the docks, their physical welfare was suspiciously omitted from the police reports, carried several machine guns that were illegal was just the final nail on the coffin to any hope of Sumer's sentence being lessened or having the right to appeal for parole.
The media had a field day, praising the SCPD for discovering the evidence and for district attorney Laurel Lance's grit for spearheading the case even before the evidence was found and swiftly putting the man away behind bars. Martin Sumers, it seemed, was to live out the rest of his life in prison.
It didn't matter in the end.
A few days after the being moved to Iron Heights, Sumers was found dead in his cell.
Self-strangulation was what both the police and media declared. Suicide, it seemed, was a better alternative to Mr. Sumers than spending the rest of life in the prison system.
But Sara knew better.
Sumer had talked. How the Triad figured that out, Sara couldn't hazard a guess, but they found out. Sumer's death was just a way of keeping his tongue quiet, and retribution for waggling it in the first place. Very few betrayed the Triads and lived to see another sunrise.
Eyes still glued to the news report on the television, Sara fished out her civilian cellphone from her jean pocket. She quickly tapped in a phone number she had long since memorized, and held it up to her ear and patiently waited for the call to connect.
There was a little tinny, mechanical beep as the line connected. Sara could hear the soft sounds of breathing as the other caller brought the phone close. "Sara?" A voice rumbled through the speaker. Deep, guttural and so familiar it made her heart ache.
"Slade, there's been a change of plans."
