Jack Carter's smile, as he stepped onto the Global Dynamics parking lot, was a bit less wide than it had been. Willow had actually seemed to be in pain there, and he hadn't meant to do that. He'd wanted her (and Vi) to be thinking about what might happen, but not actually worried that the devil would be a flight up.
She seemed a little better now. That was good.
There were more people in the parking lot than normal, even at the end of what would be a normal workday at a lot of companies. Parrish was standing nearby, so Jack asked, "Do I want to know?"
"What do you think?" Parrish said. "You caught Beverly Barlowe and we want to see the bitch get what's coming to her." Parrish seemed genuinely angry –
Of course. For all of his faults, and he had a lot of them, he'd genuinely liked Holly Marten.
"Okay," Jack said. "I get how angry you are. But you realize we're not just going to string her up here in the parking lot, right?"
"Hanging? Please! That's so 19th century. I'm thinking of an air-proof force bubble." And that's what he wanted to do to Beverly. Senator Wen, he probably wanted to feed her own organs.
Parrish was serious. Wanting to avoid an argument, though, Jack just said, "Wait till the trial's over. Then you can compete to see who can cause her the messiest death."
Snapping his fingers, Parrish said, "That's a terrific idea, Sheriff. Thanks! You know, you're not as dumb as I thought you were."
Jack muttered a sarcastic "Thanks," but Parrish was already rushing off.
Andy walked up. "Welcome back, Boss! Nice job."
"Thanks, Andy. All quiet?"
"Two kids arguing over what level of credit Meucci deserves in the invention of the telephone, but otherwise, it was calm until about a half hour ago."
"Good news travels fast."
"Yes, it does," Andy said. I've checked everyone who's entered the parking lot and no one who shouldn't has any weapons on them. I've never seen the people around here quite so angry."
"They have a lot to be angry about. And thanks for thinking to check."
Andy smiled. "Just doing my job, Boss," and walked off to keep doing it.
Jo was supervising Beverly's exit from her vehicle. Two GD troopers were pointing weapons at her, and another dozen were hanging back. "Wow," she said. "All this for me?"
"You're being allowed to walk in under your own power," Jo said. "If I had my way, I'd knock you out so hard you wouldn't wake up until the trial was over."
Turning her head suddenly, he said, "Jack. You will tell them how I helped those girls, right?"
"Sure," Jack said. Beverly smiled. "I'll them exactly how long it took to get you to help, too." Her smile faded.
Then she looked around and saw everyone gathered around them, most of whom, to say the least, did not look happy to see her. They were yelling and swearing and making death threats. "Can we get inside?" she asked nervously.
"Oh, come on," Jack said. "Don't you want to hang out with your adoring fans?"
Jo yelled, "Incoming!"
Everyone ducked, and Beverly got hit square on the forehead by a tomato. "Look," Jack said, standing up. "Some of them even brought you dinner."
At that point, Jo and the troopers cracked up. Beverly yelled, "That wasn't funny!"
"Oh, come on, it's a little funny." It wouldn't have been a grenade or anything else lethal; Andy'd already seen to that. And the people around here were careless, not casually homicidal, and in any event if Jo had seen something that Andy might not have pegged as a weapon but could still hurt – like a rock – Jo would have been more specific.
"Okay, people!" Jo shouted. "Let's get her inside! And if you see any incoming produce, duck! Don't be a hero!"
As the troops hustled Beverly into the building, Jo slowed down to talk with Jack. "Are we enjoying this too much?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as enjoying this too much." Willow and Vi were still standing next to his SUV. "I'll be in in a minute," he said, and walked over to talk to the young women. "Come one, come all."
"And stand around in the lobby?" Vi asked.
"Yeah, Fargo knows you're coming. He might not know why, but he knows you're coming."
"Why wasn't he out here?" Willow said.
"He didn't trust himself," Vi said. "I get that. Believe me."
"You hid it well," Jack said.
Vi said, "When 'don't kill humans' is drilled into you over and over again, it sticks. Even for people like Beverly Barlowe."
There was enough venom in the way she said "Beverly Barlowe" to bring down a bull elephant. "Okay, cross you of the list of people hunting for Senator Wen," he said.
"Good idea," Vi said.
XxXxX
No, the last fifteen minutes hadn't been awkward, not at all. Neither Willow nor Vi had done much talking since they came into his office, though Fargo and Vi had had a quick moment of solidarity about them catching Beverly. When he'd asked what was going on, Vi'd pulled away and said, "Ask the Sheriff, since he seems to have all the answers anyway."
And that was the end of that. This on top of an afternoon where he'd alternated between apologizing to Dukes and Anderson, and telling them to get lost so he could make or receive important phone calls – like the one he'd had to make to Dr. Blake to confirm something the Sheriff had told her about time travel and magic, even though he didn't have all the details himself. Fargo'd done so – the last experience they'd had with a time loop had killed Nathan Stark – but he still didn't know why.
"You're the Scarlet Witch?" he asked Willow after a few minutes.
"Depends," Vi said before Willow could answer, not that she seemed much inclined to talking anyway. "Is the answer likely to put her in the cell next to Beverly Barlowe?"
"No. No, it isn't."
Finally, Willow answered in more than monosyllables. "Isn't breaking into GD treason?"
"Well, sure, if you want to get technical," Fargo said. "But you clearly weren't trying to swipe our technology or hurt anyone here, and you helped us track down one of the worst criminals in Eureka's history. Oh, sure, you might be guilty of a HIPAA violation, but that's about it."
"HIPAA?" Vi asked.
"The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – protects people's health care information. Technically, as soon as you became a GD employee, any medical data you looked at without good reason or authorization was a violation." After a second, though: "That doesn't mean I'm not upset you broke in, though. I'm not a computer genius like you or Zane but I know more about the security of those systems than anyone. Attacking them successfully was a cut directly at the fiber of my being." Maybe a bit dramatic, but he was serious.
"Then why aren't you angrier?" Willow asked.
"I met you, I like you, and I'm fairly sure you had to have done it using magic, so still no one's managed to successfully break into GD's servers from outside without, well, cheating." He was proud of that.
"Using magic isn't cheating!"
"Well, it's not like there's a set of rules or anything, but at least no one has been able to hack in from the outside without either using non-technological assistance or having someone on the inside. That means it's not inherently a problem with our security system."
Willow said, "You're right. I tried the first time without magic and couldn't make it through. Doesn't make magic cheating, though, it just means it's not something you anticipated. Although, you know, to be fair, you couldn't reasonably have anticipated it. But, if it'll help, I'll fix it so that magic-wielding hackers will also have a tougher time getting in."
Fargo nodded. That would be useful, although, unlike with the earlier exploit Willow had found, it wasn't like he could double-check it; he didn't know any other magic-using computer experts, and the people here thought he was crazy enough already without him openly advertising for a cyberwizard.
Eccentric was one thing; eccentric was expected in Eureka. But there was a higher concentration of skeptics here than there was anywhere else in the United States. Oh, sure, you had the occasional geologist who was also an anti-vaccination fanatic; there was even a creationist among the engineering crew. But magic? He wouldn't have time to be laughed out of town, he'd be run out in a rail. And this being Eureka, they'd build the rail just to do it.
And he, basically, trusted Willow not to screw them.
That's when Sheriff Carter and Jo walked in. "Okay, Carter," Jo said. "Beverly's locked up. You've called Allison again. Fargo called Allison. I called Allison. Now. What the hell happened when you were in Maryland?"
XxXxX
Sheriff Carter began with the "time-freeze," and, over the course of about an hour, explained everything that happened from the time he disappeared until the time he reappeared and told Willow not to go anywhere. It all had the ring of authenticity to it, but Willow was sure the Sheriff hadn't known exactly how close he was to Giles cleaning his clock. Although, to be fair, she didn't think he would have cowered if he had known.
Finally, he wrapped things up with his threat to Willow.
"Would you have?" Willow asked when he was done.
"Would I have what?" he asked.
"Tracked me down and thrown me into a deep hole?"
"Yeah. I would have. And I think Jo and Fargo would have agreed with that one."
Jo said, "Yeah. Me too. We would've let you out soon enough, but we would have had to track you down."
"And we would have been able to do it," Fargo said.
"But you came back with us, you didn't try to run, and your motives were good," the sheriff said. "So, in case it wasn't clear, no deep holes. Not even any shallow ones."
"Good. That would have probably caused the war you wanted to avoid," Vi said.
"I know it," the sheriff said. "So next time, just ask, okay?"
Vi said, "Next time we will. But this time? How could we have known we could completely trust you in advance?"
"You're connected with the Defense Department and you've seen what happened with the Initiative," Willow said.
"I can see why a horrible experience like that would put you off, but it's a long way from 'these military scientists wanted to experiment on people' to 'any scientist connected to the military has to be evil until we can prove otherwise," the sheriff said.
"You could have done some research," Fargo said.
"We did," was Willow's response. "That's how we found Beverly Barlowe. And what was that you said about not hiring evil mad scientists?"
"Fargo wasn't in charge then," Jo said.
With a surprised smile for Jo, Fargo added, "And also, even with a good system like ours someone's going to get through who doesn't match our high standards. That's a near-certainty, statistically speaking."
"One rotten apple – or even a couple – shouldn't spoil the whole barrel," the sheriff said. "We've got enough careless scientists here to fill Safeco Field, but even the meanest of them wouldn't do the kinds of things you're worried about."
"We get that now," Willow said. "But we couldn't take the risk. We have to assume –"
"That everyone's out to get you?" the sheriff said. "Even in your case where you're fighting off bad guys left, right, and sideways that's a bit on the extreme end of things. Is everyone against you? Are we the first people who've been nice to you?"
"You call threatening to throw me in a dungeon 'nice'?"
"I never said dungeon. I said hole. And you know what I mean. Trust me, given what happened with Beverly and Senator Wen it's not like I'm a cockeyed optimist. But going around assuming you can't trust anyone seems like an overreaction."
"Yeah," Jo said. "I mean, we're all pretty cynical here. But even now, knowing you had another agenda, we're not falling all over ourselves to have you punished. We're ticked, annoyed, and disappointed, but not really angry."
"The problem is, we can't afford to be wrong," Vi said. "One mistake, and we maybe have the government after us again, maybe to draft, maybe to experiment on. It's not ridiculous to think that someone might think that Slayers might make excellent assassins."
"You probably would," Fargo said. "So? I think about things like that all the time. Thinking's not the same as doing – well, most of the time. There was that problem we had with our dreams."
"Did yours come true? Because with us, one kid had spiders come out of his books, and Cordelia became a nerd and had to join the chess club," Willow said.
"No, we just all shared ours," Jo said. "Carter turned up naked in a dream a lot of us were sharing."
"Well, thanks for bringing that up," the sheriff said.
"It's what I live for," Jo said.
"Back to the topic at hand?" Vi said. "Do you see why we couldn't ask?"
"Do you see why we all would have been a lot better off if you had?" the sheriff responded.
No one said anything for about a minute. Willow got what the sheriff was saying; in retrospect, if they'd known, things would have been different. But hindsight was usually 20/20; foresight's a lot trickier. "I think we're going to have to agree to disagree," she finally said.
"Okay," Fargo said. "Still, in the future?"
"In the future we'll knock politely and say please," Willow said.
"Now, as for what's going to happen to you two -" the sheriff said.
"You said no deep holes!" Willow said.
"No holes at all!"
"Well -" Fargo said. "Not quite. The only hole you'll have to deal with is the magical one you wormed out in GD's security systems. Other than that? Here's the thing. Vi, we don't have any proof you did anything. And Willow? You did enough to help us that I'm fairly sure we're all willing to say don't do that again, and let things go there."
"Really?"
"Yeah. We'd kind of be assholes to do much of anything else," the sheriff said.
"But I have a couple of conditions."
"Oh?" Vi said suspiciously.
"Yeah. One, we'd like to actually establish some kind of formal relations with the Unbroken Academy. That we we actually avoid anything like this happening in the future. Don't worry, it'll be off the books and we won't tell anyone who doesn't know without your express permission. We'd appreciate the same in reverse. Our existence is supposed to be something of a secret, too – at least, our existence as a town full of geniuses."
"Okay . . ." That sounded not only reasonable, but like an actual good idea.
"And two, Willow, while you can go, if you want to, once you finish the upgrade to the security system, Vi, we'd actually like you to stay."
Wait, what?
