Chapter 3

The safe house is indeed the home of the Team Flash Emby Server. There's also a ridiculous number of Hallmark style romance movies on there. Cisco swears Caitlin's the one addicted to them, but he gets a very shifty look on his face when he casually tosses his missing friend under the bus.

Hartley suspects that even if the movies are all Caitlin's, Cisco watches them a lot too.

Eventually Joe heads back home, leaving Hartley behind with three super heroes. He's fairly certain that Jesse choosing Love Comes Softly for their next movie to watch is behind the older man's decision to abandon them.

Hartley can't really blame him, though his own reservations against the movie have to do with how stereotypical and straight the plot is.

About halfway through the movie, Cisco takes pity on Hartley and takes him to the hallway that leads to the bedrooms and points him at a specific door - thankfully not the master bedroom's door, Hartley'd not like to revisit that room any time soon - and points out the other rooms in the hallway.

"Wally and Jesse have the master bedroom for the night since they're dating and neither have hang-ups about taking what used to be Dr. Wells' room. I had way too many vibes of past events in that room when we were doing the re-modal." Cisco grimaced and shook his head.

Hartley couldn't help it, he blushed. "Um... did you see... that is... uhm... did you see me... in there?" oh, god, he can't even say it outright.

Cisco also blushed brightly. "Nothing... revealing?" he squeaked. "Anyway, we did change the house foot print a little. Updated the bathrooms, added a third bedroom and turned the entire basement into a panic room, though the whole house is kind a panic room now since all the windows have that retractable metal reinforcement," Cisco said, changing the subject and most definitely not looking anywhere near Hartley's face. "Wally was showing that off to Jesse when you got here, so we left it on partial lock down. Full lock down and the front door wouldn't have opened. So instead of being a two-bedroom, two bath house, it's now a four bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath house. Three bedrooms upstairs, one downstairs. These two doors are to the old guest room, which was Wells' office and I hope you don't mind that I put you in there? We can swap, but I'd rather not since I don't really want to risk wake up vibing Dr. Wells cackling maniacally over his camera feeds of Barry's old apartment or whatever he did when he was bored before the accelerator exploded."

"That's fine with me," Hartley agreed. "I suppose this door is to the new third bedroom?" He pointed at the door in question.

"Yup. The bathroom that used to be accessible through the hallway is now a jack-and-jill style shared between your room and mine. Hope you don't mind sharing."

"Not at all." Hartley headed into what had been designated his room and dropped his backpack and briefcase on the bed. It was a good sized room with a full sized bed and a desk in one corner by a metal covered window. "So I take it all the walls are reinforced?"

"Yeah. We had the whole place taken back to studs for the outer walls and majorly reinforced, which was really cool to see in progress. Well, I say we but really it was all Barry. His guilt-complex fueled reconstruction work after the singularity came in handy since he now knows all the building codes and structural engineering. I don't know that he got permits from the city for any of that work, but the results are impressive and we can now electrify the walls during lock down to prevent speedsters from phasing through. I think. I mean... I was trying to get that finished before the big showdown with Savitar, but... it didn't pan out. Obviously." Cisco shrugged, "so it hasn't really been tested yet. Wally volunteered, but Joe shut that down. And no one is going to suggest Jesse try and risk incurring Harry's fatherly wrath."

Hartley snorted softly in amusement. "I'll bet."

"Do you want to check out the basement? That's where all the tech toys are hiding," Cisco added with a grin.

"Sure." Hartley followed him back out into the hallway, towards what Hartley had thought was a hall closet. It wasn't a closet, after all, though; it opened to a staircase leading down into the dark.

Cisco flipped a light switch, illuminating the stairwell. "Much as I enjoy the comfy living room upstairs for movie nights, down here is my favorite part of the house. The computers here pretty much mirror my setup in STAR Labs cortex."

"Whose idea was the Flash themed kitchen?" Hartley asked.

"Mine," Cisco grinned impishly. If they hadn't been descending a staircase, he'd have probably bounced with glee. "You remember what this place looked like before. Very sleek and modern with white on white on white with stainless steel. No personality at all, which I suppose is a plus when you're trying to hide your personality from everyone else. But there was no way we were going to have something like that as our safe house. Caitlin picked the gray paint, which goes with just about anything which is why it's everywhere upstairs. She was going to go with plain white, but I vetoed that. But once I knew what the wall paint was, well... the glossy red cabinets look gorgeous, right? And the yellow and gray back-splash tiles ended up looking even better than I thought they would. And if you looks closely at the counter tops? The black quartz has flecks of yellow in it too. I was, perhaps, being a little petty but..."

"It looks awesome," Hartley agreed with a grin. "You can add 'interior decorator' to your myriad list of skills."

"Yup." Cisco popped the sound of the 'p', looking inordinately pleased with the compliment. "So, what do you think of the basement?"

While the upstairs looked largely like a normal house, if you ignored the metal 'panic' shutters - or whatever those were called - blocking out the windows (and making for an excellent movie watching atmosphere), the downstairs was more spartan looking. The gray wall color persisted, though it was a lighter shade. There was a kitchenette, a wall of computers, servers, and screens, some comfortable looking computer chairs that Hartley itched to test out for how comfy and ergonomic they probably were. Another couch, a darker blue than the one upstairs and a little smaller, was set next to a kitchenette, presumably in case the one upstairs was blocked off due to double lock down or if maybe whoever was down here was too lazy to go upstairs for snacks and something to drink. The kitchenette had the same color scheme as the upstairs kitchen and Hartley took the time now to check the counter top for those promised flecks of yellow.

It made him grin to skim his fingers over the dark surface and see golden glitter flicker as the shadows passed over them.

Then he poked his head through the doors. A bedroom with two bunk beds - twin beds on top and full sized beds on bottom, so they could pack a number of people down here if necessary. Hartley was willing to bet the couch pulled out into a sleeper too. The next door was a bathroom, the double sink being the biggest part of the room. The toilet was crammed into a small, claustrophobic little water closet and the shower was big enough for one person - barely - with an opaque glass door that would, presumably, give anyone in there a semblance of privacy. The last door off the main room was a functional laundry room with a second toilet hidden away in another small, claustrophobic water closet. Presumably so that if multiple people were hiding down here there wouldn't be too bad of a line to the bathroom.

"So I guess the laundry room counts as the half bath?" Hartley asked.

"Yeah." Cisco looked pretty proud of his decorating skills, a grin on his face.

Hartley wandered over to the computers and grinned, "so, show me all the tech toys."

"If you'll show me yours?" Cisco teased, tapping his own wrists to indicate he meant Hartley's cuffs. "Those looked really impressive yesterday."

Obediently, Hartley held out his hands for Cisco. "I was inspired by Iron Man's evolving tech in the movies, to be honest. I wanted a less conspicuous version of my gloves."

Cisco skimmed his fingers over the metal cuffs, turning Hartley's hands this way and that in order to get a better look at the casing. "How do you activate them?"

"Pressure switch. Usually I just..." Hartley brushed his wrists together, putting pressure on the center of each cuff. The silvery tech unthreaded from the casing, snaking its way up his fingers and forming a circle against each palm. "Just like my gloves, I have gesture based activation and can cycle through the frequencies programmed into it. Though it can only handle two right now." Hartley felt prickles running up his arms like chills as Cisco continued to run his fingers over the tech, over Hartley's hands and fingers, the touch so soft and gentle... "It's, uh... it's also active right now. I can either use the gesture that deactivates my gloves or re-trigger the pressure switch to put them back in sleep mode."

"Which is when they turn back into cuffs," Cisco murmured bending his head closer to Hartley's hands to look at some piece or other. Hartley couldn't really focus on exactly what Cisco was actually inspecting.

He was too busy imagining what it'd feel like if the cuffs weren't in the way and Cisco's mouth were to brush a kiss against his wrist.

"That is so cool," Cisco said, finally pulling back and letting Hartley re-trigger the pressure switches. "I don't suppose I can convince you to let me check out the specs?"

"Sure. Uh... sure. It's um. They're in my safe in my apartment. With the actual gloves." Hartley really, really hoped Cisco didn't notice him stumbling over his words like that...

"Well, my turn to show off," Cisco turned away to start turning on monitors. He had to stretch to reach up some for a few of them and if Hartley's eyes strayed to the sight of how Cisco's pants accented his butt?

Well... Cisco had a very nice looking butt.

Jesse woke up alone, again. Second night in a row.

Sighing, she rolled over and starfished on the bed. She wasn't sure what was up with Wally. But had been building ever since Barry disappeared into the Speed Force.

Or maybe a little while before then. Jesse had been pretty tied up trying to take care of both Earth-2 and Earth-3 with Jay's absence during the lead up to Savitar's defeat. So there was a blank area there where maybe something had changed for Wally.

She was pretty sure, at least, that what was going on with Wally wasn't really anything to do with her. He was still happy dating her - Jesse could see it in his eyes every time she arrived on Earth-1 or he showed up on Earth-2. But something was weighing on him and she wished he'd open up to her about it. After all, she wasn't exactly shy about discussing her problems about her dad's... team management style when it came to her work as Quick on her Earth. Wally did know he could come to her for support too, right?

Well, last night Jesse had rolled over and gone back to bed. But not tonight.

Tonight she was going to make it clear this relationship was reciprocal and that if he wanted to talk to her about what was bugging him, she'd listen and support him a hundred percent.

So Jesse got out of bed, pulled on a robe, and padded out in bare feet to the open plan living area, expecting to wait up there for Wally alone.

She's not alone in there, however. Hartley is already there, curled up in the recliner with a cup of... probably tea, Jesse didn't smell coffee. The window wall was uncovered and Hartley was staring out into the darkness outside, the room lit by the dimmest lighting setting.

"I left the tea kettle on the stove if you're looking to make some tea of your own," he said, glancing over at her.

"Sounds good. Where are the cups and the tea bags?" Jesse grinned as Hartley told her where to look, zipping across the room in a heartbeat to get everything set up for her drink. While the water took it's sweet time boiling, Jesse folded herself up into a blanket on the couch. "So what's your story with Team Flash, anyway?"

"I worked at STAR Labs before the accelerator exploded," Hartley replied. "But I found the very flaws that led to the explosion and was fired as part of a cover up. And then I tried my hand at revenge against Harrison, but it didn't go so well. Somehow I wound up helping out Cisco and the others here and there and was even back at STAR Labs full time for a few months after Harrison died in the singularity. But then your dad showed up and I decided I really just didn't have the distance from what happened with Harrison to deal with him and noped right on out of there over to Mercury Labs."

"So you knew the fake Wells pretty well then?" There was a sort of morbid fascination Jesse held for the man. He wasn't really an alternate version of her father, but the man who'd murdered and stolen the identity and appearance of her father's doppelganger. But at the same time, he'd been Harrison Wells for fifteen years. How much had he become the mask?

Hartley shrugged and drank his tea, not answering the question.

Probably for the best. Morbid fascination or not, there were probably a lot of things about the Reverse Flash that Jesse was better off not knowing.

"So did Wally wake you up when he went for a run or were you already awake?" she asked, changing the subject and flopping onto the couch to wait for the water to finish boiling.

"Already awake. But his departure did finally convince me to raid the house's tea stash. It's not too bad, actually." Hartley hesitated. "Is this a common occurrence for him lately?"

"Yeah." Jesse sighed.

"If you want some privacy to talk to him, I can go listen to music in my room," he offered. "I mean, I'll still hear you two, but I'll be focusing on the music and probably a book to read on my phone, so... I won't really be paying attention to what's happening in here."

Cisco had mentioned Hartley had enhanced hearing, hadn't he? When he'd mentioned that if they were having sex that they shouldn't be having it here 'cause Hartley'd hear them.

Not that she and Wally were having sex. Wally wasn't interested and, while Jesse was interested in sex, she was more interested in Wally than in sex. So.

(Her dad, of course, also thought she and Wally were having sex and the various shades of red and purple his face turned the one time he asked her if they were using birth control was hilarious. She'd said yes since abstinence was the safest form of birth control according to the woefully inadequate sex ed class she had back in high school. Also it wasn't really her dad's business if she was sexually active or not, so Jesse preferred to leave him to his assumptions. At least Cisco had acknowledged that they might not be sexually active, just that if they were then Hartley'd be able to hear them if something happened in this house just down the hall from him, so maybe don't?)

"Thanks, but if you don't mind staying up to talk with me until he gets back?" Jesse grinned. "I'm in a physics class this semester at uni and I hate going to dad for help cramming notes before a test."

"What do you need help with?" Hartley asked, looking interested.

Jesse zipped off to grab her notes and pour the water to let her tea bag steep. She handed the notes over to Hartley at regular speeds. "Ask me questions based off the info on those cards and see if I can answer them correctly. Dad always expects info above and beyond what the course teaches which can lead to me being overly verbose on tests and I had at least one teacher in a bio course tell me to stop showing off. Which, admittedly, made the professor a shitty teacher, but..." She shrugged. "It is what it is."

Hartley wrinkled his nose. "I've definitely had teachers like that in the past," he said. "When they say 'stop showing off' what they really mean is 'I don't like having students who are more knowledgeable than I am so shut up'."

"Ugh, yeah. It's awful." Jesse sighed. "Only one more semester, though, and it'll be graduation time. I'm soooo ready for that."

"Alright, ready for your first question?" Hartley asked, peering over the notes.

"Fire away."

Wally runs back into the house and into a study session.

"Ah, I didn't wake you two, did I?" He asked, standing in front of the house entry and feeling very sheepish.

"Nope," Hartley said at the same time Jesse said, "yes."

Standing and stretching, Hartley handed Jesse back her notes. "You're going to ace that test," he assured her. "Goodnight Jesse. Night Wally."

Wally waited for Hartley to disappear into the back of the house before joining Jesse on the couch. "I'm sorry. I've been kind of restless lately."

"I noticed." Jesse's tone sounds a little wry, but her expression is reassuring. She held out a hand to him in askance. "Join me?"

Wally instantly went to cuddle with her on the couch, loving the way they slotted together so comfortably.

"You can talk to me, you know that right? About anything. Including what's been bothering you."

"It's going to sound stupid," Wally muttered, ducking his head.

Jesse rubbed his shoulder with one hand and reached out to capture one of Wally's hands with her other one. She brought that hand up to her mouth to drop a kiss against his knuckles, making Wally feel all warm and soft. Safe.

"If it's making you upset, then it's not stupid," she told him.

"I feel like I'm letting Barry down, because I'm not the same kind of hero he was. He could protect the city on his own, but I'm more like Cisco's backup. And Cisco's great at the hero thing, but if I were handling more of it, then he'd have more time to work on bringing back Barry and... I feel like Barry would be back already if I were just better at this," Wally admitted all in a rush, his insecurities flowing out in a speedy mess. He's pretty sure even Hartley's enhanced hearing wouldn't be able to make sense of what he just said.

But Jesse runs at the same speeds Wally does and she hears him just fine. This time she kisses his cheek. "It must be a little frustrating seeing me do what Barry used to. Protecting my Earth with a team, but no one there to back me up yet. Unless you're visiting. We made a good team against that alien starfish thing the other weekend."

Wally chuckled. "I neglected to mention that to dad. He'd have freaked." Then he sighed. "A little? Yeah. I mean... I just... I had this dream as a kid. That I'd take a cross country road trip after graduating high school. Just me and the open road and a very fast car. Now I don't even need the car, but... I'm so happy to have dad and Iris and Barry in my life and I want all the time with them I missed out on because mom was afraid to go back to dad and admit she was wrong... I want to make up for all that lost time. And I want to be here when Barry gets back."

He loved his mother. And he would never regret the life he had or the way she raised him. But after she died, he finally realized that he felt a lot like Iris did. Like their mother had stolen an important part of their lives from them by keeping them separate. Wally never did like being angry with his mother and now he'll never be able to talk it out with her. Instead he's left with pent up energy in his chest and a desire to just run. Any direction as long as it let him see the world.

There had to be more to the world than Central City and Keystone.

"But at the same time there's this... wanderlust I guess. I feel like I'm never going to find out who I'm really meant to be - what kind of person I am - if I stay here."

"I think..." Jesse hesitated for a moment. "I think that if what you really want, and need, is to leave Central then you should do that. It's not like that'd stop us from having our weekends together and video calls are a thing so you'll be able to stay in touch with your family from anywhere in the world. Especially if Cisco hooks you up with the best equipment." She hesitated again and then added, "Barry wouldn't want you to live his life, Wally. He'd want you to live yours."

Jesse was right. Barry would want Wally to be his own person, his own kind of hero. "You really are a genius, you know," he muttered, nuzzling into her embrace.

"So they tell me." Jesse kissed his forehead again. "I love you, Wally."

Hartley spends Sunday starting the process of catching up on Cisco's research into the Speed Force and the prison that had been constructed inside it where Barry now resided. When Cisco had contacted Hartley earlier that month, he hadn't been nearly so far along. Hartley'd consulted on some of the physics involved, but he didn't have much experience in the field of Speed Force studies. Admittedly, not really a thing but if there was then Cisco would be the expert.

And the evidence of Cisco's brilliance is breathtaking. Hartley might have lost some time fantasizing about worshiping Cisco's body while praising his genius that evening. (There's nothing more embarrassing than having a very enjoyable shower and then nearly running into the object of his fantasy while making a kitchen run to get one more of the cookies Jesse left behind before leaving. And then Cisco had wanted to talk while Hartley had wanted to spontaneously manifest new powers of invisibility. He'd known it was a bad idea the moment he'd gone under the spray, but he was so pent up with anxiety and frustration and Cisco was just so brilliant and made him feel so safe...)

But by Monday morning Hartley's going a little stir crazy and he's quite happy to get out of the house for a few hours. Doctor's appointment first. His stitches get checked along with his lungs. It's a familiar routine, sitting on the exam table with a very cold metal disk moving over his chest and back while he breathed in, held it for a moment, and then breathed out.

"Your lungs are healing well. You should have finished the anti-biotics yesterday, right?"

Hartley nodded. His last dose had been the previous morning. "No side effects, that I noticed anyway."

"Good. Like I said, your lungs are improving, despite that asthma attack I hear you had on Friday, was it?" When Hartley affirmed that information, the doctor continued, "try to keep the strenuous activity to a minimum for the next few weeks. I don't think you'll need another checkup, but if you feel unusually short of breath do not hesitate to use your inhaler and make an appointment."

Hartley nodded and headed back to the lobby where Cisco was waiting for him. He had to pause at the intake/outtake window to deal with the co-pay and the office attendant made an offhand comment about Cisco, calling him Hartley's boyfriend.

He probably should've corrected her, but... Hartley liked the sound of that. Cisco as his boyfriend...

Probably too much to wish for. Hartley needed a break. Just for a little while. Maybe he could have that at Mercury.

Cisco couldn't find Hartley.

They'd gone to Mercury together after dropping by the doctor's office. They went to Dr. McGee's office first to finalize the joint project between Mercury and STAR. Officially they were conducting a joint research project into extra-dimensional energy, specifically as related to theoretical wormholes and utilizing data collected from both STAR Labs failed accelerator experiment and the smaller scale, successful run of the accelerator they did over a year ago.

It was weird to talk about that particular accelerator run right now. It had ended with Barry trapped in the speed force and they'd thought he was dead. It had taken Cisco's powers to bridge the gap and give Iris the chance she'd needed to bring Barry back. And now they were back at that point, just without Zoom or a zombie knocking at their door. But it was going to take more than Cisco's powers and Iris' love to bring Barry back this time.

The whole time, Hartley's new laptop sat in the corner being re-imaged. They had lunch and then moved to Hartley's office. It had an excellent view of the city.

Cisco went to the bathroom. He wasn't even gone for long. But he gets back to Hartley's office and... it's empty. Laptop on the desk, loading circle still spinning. But no Hartley Rathaway.

He panics for half a second before switching to irritation. Hartley must've walked out. And Cisco wasn't familiar enough with the building to know where he'd go. Also he only had a visitor's badge, so if Hartley went anywhere requiring a badge swipe then Cisco was stuck.

Letting out a deep breath, Cisco touched the back of Hartley's chair. His eyes flickered closed and he watched a blue tinted Hartley walk out into the hallway and go into another office around the corner.

What was so damn important he couldn't wait for Cisco to come back from the bathroom?

Making a frustrated noise, Cisco retraced Hartley's path. The infuriating physicist was still in the other office, having an argument with the office's owner. The office door was open a crack, so it was easy for Cisco to hear the raised voices within.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. The data that's there now is the same data that was there when the project completed."

"Oh really?" Hartley's smug tone was quite familiar. "Then explain this discrepancy."

Cisco pulled the door shut and waited, impatiently, for whatever was going on in there to finish up. Crossed his arms, leaned back against the wall, and told himself he was most definitely not pouting.

Hartley came out of the office a few minutes later, smug expression turning into a wince at the look of irritation on Cisco's face.

"You couldn't have waited?" Cisco asked dryly.

Hartley rolled his eyes. "I barely went anywhere."

One of Cisco's eyebrows went up.

"What are the odds I'm going to be attacked here?" Hartley complained turning and stalking down the hallway.

"One of Zoom's lackey's blew up Mercury Lab's previous headquarters," Cisco reminded Hartley patiently.

"That wasn't about me, though," Hartley muttered. Now he was definitely pouting. "And I remember quite well since I was there that night. Siren's powers fucking hurt."

Cisco grimaced. Yeah, he wouldn't want to have enhanced hearing and find himself at the wrong end of a Canary Cry... or, well, Siren Scream in that case. Even at a distance it must've sucked to be Hartley that night. But Barry had gotten him, and everyone else at Mercury Labs, out safely.

"You've been attacked in your home and your parents home, Hartley," Cisco finally said. "And I don't want you to be attacked while you're alone again." Because he'd almost been too late the first time and only known about the second attack because Hartley had enough time to set off the alert on his phone. Cisco couldn't bear the thought of third time being the charm... for the bad guys.

Hartley heaved a sigh. "Yeah, okay. Fair point. I'm just going a little stir crazy from being cooped up for the last few days. And also way more non-work related social interaction than I'm used to."

The last part made Cisco smile in amusement. "So that guy you went to chew out?"

"He has a bad habit of delegating more of his work than he should onto his subordinates," Hartley told him. "One of the projects that Dr. McGee identified was one where he was in charge of maintaining the test equipment. So he should have been aware of any sudden changes to the equipment's efficiency ratings. Going over reports every day. The old results showed that equipment that should've been on the brink of replacement were rating higher than new equipment. Which was weird and one of the things I'd flagged for Dr. McGee to have audited. But once the audit began..."

"The numbers on those reports changed to reflect reality," Cisco surmised.

"Yeah. And with the equipment now showing signs that it all should have been repaired or replaced in the last six months... any processing or test data collected with that equipment is now suspect. And if we're being sabotaged this badly... it makes me wonder if other labs are being effected too." Hartley's gaze went distant, clearly lost in thought. "But that still doesn't explain why they're going after me personally. So what that I blew the whistle? What could they possibly think I've seen that's worth murdering over?"

"Something that points to the reason why the sabotage is happening in the first place," Cisco mused. "What was it that tipped you off to something wrong in the first place?"

"We have a quarterly fun event fund," Hartley said. "I was planning on taking my team to an escape room. But then the money for the event was missing. When I started looking into that, it was suddenly there again. Clerical error, or so I was told. Except then there was less money in the allotted budget for the project itself..."

"Did you at least get to do the escape room?" Cisco asked.

"Oh, yeah. And it was pretty fun too. There were enough of us that we had to split into two groups though, so I was in the group that did the Orient Express themed escape room; everyone else was in the Cursed Pyramid room." Hartley grinned at the memory and Cisco's glad he had at least some kind of break from the stress at the start of the whole snafu. "I chased the missing money from the budget afterwards, only that reappeared too. Which made me suspicious that someone was moving money around to cover their embezzlement. It's kind of a classic move. Person takes money from account A, then moves money from accounts B and C to account A to make up for the stolen money, but then they have to cover B and C... and of course for every money shift, they take a little more off the top for themselves. But it's also one of the easiest to catch. If I hadn't noticed the money moving around, I probably wouldn't have found the other embezzlement going on though. That one was more along the lines of taking a few cents here and there from multiple accounts so it all gets rounded out on the assumption it was caused by clerical errors somewhere. Approved purchases that were a few cents more expensive than expected... that sort of thing. Except you start having a lot of those all over the place and... it's a slower theft, but it all adds up eventually and is less likely to be caught.

"But I really don't think this has to do with the money. Every half-baked cop show and it's dog will say the most common motivations for murder are love and money..."

"But they're not generally dealing with metahuman assassins," Cisco filled in.

"Exactly." He frowned and then added, "and they're coming after me, but not Dr. McGee. So that leads me all the way back around to thinking it has to be something I've seen, but she hasn't. I looked over a bunch of projects before I saw clued into the intellectual theft happening. One of the managers was taking credit for his subordinates patents. Two in particular - an Asian woman and a black guy, so not only was he stealing other people's work but he was being racist about it too."

"Yikes," Cisco hissed, scrunching up his nose. "That's... how did they not notice it was happening?"

Hartley shrugged. "Once the patent documents are submitted to legal, it can take years for them to be processed and approved and officially all the patents belong to Mercury. All new patent applications require managerial approval before sending it on to legal, which is where I assume the guy re-wrote the documents to include his name instead of theirs. The process is supposed to prevent frivolous patents from being submitted so that our patent lawyers aren't tied up unnecessarily but also to keep people from artificially inflating the number of patents they submit in a year. There are bonuses involved... but if someone submits, say, upwards of twenty patents in a year then are they going to notice if one or two fall through the cracks?"

"I would," Cisco muttered.

"So would I, but we're both meticulous about keeping track of our work. There were a few complaints that I found that tied into patents he stole credit for but he tried to bury those too. It also spanned a lot of projects, so I..." Hartley trailed off. Cisco could practically see a lightbulb flashing over the guy's head.

"What is it?"

"I need to see Dr. McGee again," he said, hurrying for the door. "Come on."

"My computer is still rebooting for the umpteenth time. I need to borrow yours. And also show you something," Hartley announced when Dr. McGee opened her office door, Cisco trailing along behind him.

"Be my guest," Tina said, smiling in bemusement as she stood aside.

"Thanks," Hartley said, settling at her desk. "When I was first looking into the embezzling, I looked into Project Dreamer. There was evidence of someone moving funds around similar to what they'd done to my fun event funds and project budget. I came back to it when I was looking into the patent thefts, but I didn't see any evidence of it happening on that project. So while I included the financial documents in what I presented to you, I didn't include any of the project's reports or data documents."

"Because none of it pointed to patent theft, so you didn't think it was relevant," Tina filled in. "Project Dreamer... that was the one where we were reverse engineering some of the Dominator tech found in the wreckage of one of their ships that crashed during the fight, wasn't it?"

"Yup, I think it came inside the atmosphere and Mardon brought it down," Hartley said absently, looking for the files.

"It was going after the Waverider while we were trying to stop the bomb headed for Central. One of the Mardon's rare good deeds, though admittedly self-serving since he lives here. Didn't earn him a full pardon but, from what I heard from Barry, it knocked a good 70% off his sentence and he'll be out on probation next year," Cisco shrugged and added, "I know he'd just, like, turn around and rob a bank or something but I did think it was a little unfair that Heatwave got a full pardon and Mardon didn't."

"He's got a standing offer to let us study his powers and the promise of a hefty paycheck attached to it," Tina said absently. "I'm hoping he'll take me up on it for science reasons, but keeping him out of crime would be nice too."

Hartley snorted in amusement. "Here we go. Dreamer's resources were repurposed into other projects and those should probably be checked for data discrepancies, but... I think those are a red herring. Dr. McGee, take a look at this."

"Four crates of Dominator technology... marked as being stored until Project Dreamer can be restarted next year in conjunction with Palmer Tech's R&D. What about it?" Tina asked, frowning in confusion.

"Four crates... but when I last checked, there were six. Two crates are missing." Hartley leaned back in Tina's chair, looking between his boss and Cisco. "Missing Dominator tech... now that is worth sending assassins over."

"They wanted the audit so distracted by the other projects that were hacked that we wouldn't notice the altered manifest." Tina grimaced. "And now I'm going to have to discuss this with ARGUS. Lovely. Hopefully once it's known ARGUS is looking into this, you'll be in the clear Hartley."

"I hope so." Hartley stared balefully at the screen for a long moment. "I really, really hope so. And I hope someone rubs it in that the only reason I noticed this is because they tried to kill me." He got out of Tina's chair, conceding the seat back to her.

"I'll make sure Lyla gets your request," Tina responded dryly.

That evening, back at the safehouse, Cisco felt himself relax a little. He'd contacted Dig and asked him to pass along a request to Lyla regarding the status of the inquiry into the missing Dominator tech, since they'd need to know when Hartley would be safe from assassins on his own again. But they'd hit upon the most likely reason for the assassins in the first place, so it was likely Hartley's ordeal was finally headed towards a good conclusion.

Cisco had promised to keep him safe, though, and he was going to keep hovering over Hartley protectively until this whole thing was wrapped up with a neat bow.

Hartley seemed to be in better spirits too, arguing with Wally over what kind of pasta to make for dinner. He'd decided that they weren't doing yet another night of take out and was planning on being the first to actually cook in the Flash themed kitchen. Wally was all for this plan, but the two were spaghetti versus penne pasta and determining what additional ingredients Wally would need to make a grocery store run for.

Since anything those two ended up cooking together would no doubt be delicious, Cisco was stretched out on the couch with Fringe running on the Emby. In fact, Cisco might've been nodding off a little when Hartley said, loudly, "there's a car pulling into the driveway. It doesn't sound like Joe's."

"You should go downstairs." Cisco paused his show and stood up.

When Hartley made to argue, Cisco cocked his head at Wally, who rushed Hartley out of sight in a flash. Cisco would probably pay for that later, but better safe than sorry. He'd promised to keep Hartley safe. Promised both Hartley and himself and, in a somewhat unspoken and roundabout way, promised Rachel too.

So Cisco approached the door and, when the knocking started, he was right there to look out through the peep hole to see who was there.

He had to rest his forehead against the door for a moment before checking again. And then, slowly, Cisco opened the door.

"Hi Caitlin."

"Hi Cisco."