"Ooh." Walter moaned softly. His hand came up and felt his jaw and then his head. His eyes opened, feeling the bandage and hearing the soft beeping of a heart monitor. His eyelids felt heavy to him and his vision was blurry for a few moments but slowly it focused. It was dark in the room except for a light by the exit. The light reflected off the clock by the TV and Walter saw it was just after 2 am. He vaguely remembered the argument with Happy and then her slugging him, hard.

He remembered he had just been about to tell them that the software he developed that was used to mask that those European leaders came to the US had been used to render his bedroom and different areas around the Garage. All of the images were from around the time of his recovery after landing in the ocean.

Walter started to hit the call button but then he noticed a slim hand lying on his bed. There was no doubt who that hand belonged to. He looked on over and smiled at Paige, sound asleep in the chair beside him. As his mind woke up more and he was able to make out more in the room's subdued lighting. He saw his laptop lying on the bed tray stand. He yawned and stretched a bit as his mouth moved about trying to generate a bit of saliva.

Walter reached out and pulled his laptop over. After powering it up he found it had eighty one percent power left. He entered his password and logged into the OS. After noticing he'd been unconscious thirty two hours, Walter found everything was still set as he had left it in trying to investigate the website. He minimized that and opened another portal and hacked into the hospital. Finding his record he read the diagnosis and prognosis. He nodded gratefully that it hadn't been any worse.

Walter closed it and brought up the other portal and reviewed all he had found out. He ran a trace on his sniffer and was able to find where the money had gone. The bank was a fairly routine target of hackers and he found lots of information on the darkweb for them. It didn't take him long to get in and bring up the account history. He noted the accounts it paid money to that weren't businesses.

He tracked one to a woman named Paige Murphy in Long Beach. Another went to Clyde Stevens in Pasadena and to Tim Armstrong, with an address in Paradise Cove Bluffs. Walter was puzzled as the Bluffs were a very wealthy area. Walter did a quick search and found the address for Tim was actually for a woman named Ginger LeBeau. Walter remembered the name from one of Richard's galas he had thrown. Richard had introduced her to him. She was a nice looking woman and she seemed kind of interested in him. But Walter knew with his track record with people, he'd alienate her and that wouldn't be good for Richard or Scorpion. He remembered she was worth somewhere north of two hundred and fifty million dollars. Finally a fourth account that went to an offshore bank. That one he would have to wait until he was thinking clearer. While Paige Murphy was receiving forty percent of the income from the website in payments, the amount of money that went to the offshore bank was more than double of Tim's and just slightly more than Clyde's.

Walter's eyes closed as he tried to rest a moment. He scratched his head. 'If he was in a relationship with this woman, why would Timothy risk his relationship with her, just for some cheap revenge? It doesn't make sense.' Walter thought. Walter shook his head. That was a question for later. He still needed more information.

Walter switched back to the portal that was still open to the website and he dug into it deeper. He found the web address to the computer that uploaded all the files. As Walter hacked into the computer that sent the files, he saw it was clearly a powerful system but when it came to security it failed miserably and Walter was into it with little effort. He found all the files that had been uploaded and then he found a backup section where the original data files were stored. He pulled up one of the images and shrugged. The girl was pleasant enough to look at but clearly wasn't Paige or in her league.

He turned to the man's email datafiles and got through it easily. He began reading the emails back and forth from him to Tim and the girl. A few had all three listed in them. Nothing seemed to be incriminating on what was going on. Mostly discussing different shoots and what the members of Paige's website were looking for. It was clear that Paige had very little to do with the website and Clyde was running everything. Walter saw the man had the Discord app on his system and so he began examining the files there. And he hit gold.

Tim and Clyde had communicated extensively in their private Discord server. About six months ago Tim had shared his bitterness over what happened with Paige and the guy offered to help get revenge. Clyde had told him what he had planned and Tim liked the idea a lot. Tim had a number of pics in high quality of Paige and her face. Clyde told him they were perfect for his AI program to use. The concept had originally been a way to embarrass both Walter and Paige and hopefully break them up while causing Paige a lot of personal problems. Tim told Clyde he had photos from around the Garage they could use to make it seem like she was actually cheating on Walter. But Clyde wasn't sure it would work. Tim then told him about Walter's software and Clyde liked the idea more.

The only problem was they didn't have a copy of it. But Tim said he had an idea, someone who could get it for them. A few days after Christmas Tim sent a smiley face to Clyde. "I got a Christmas present for you. It is going to cost a good bit more than I thought though. The person has a huge medical bill to take care of. But I gave her my word we'd take care of it." Walter saw it had a file attached to it and it was a copy of his 3d layering software.

Walter flipped to another portal and hooked up to the Garage and did a quick check of the system and he noticed that a computer had accessed the Garage's server a few days after Christmas. It had happened while he was recovering in the hospital. And it had downloaded a copy of his software. Then he noticed that it belonged to Florence.

Walter stared at the screen, he remembered Florence had come into the Garage after everyone had left him there. She had seemed surprised he was there but that didn't register at the time. She said she'd hoped to catch Sly before he left. She told him she'd see him later and he thought she left. He remembered coming down the stairs of the Loft after he had to grab something and then he tripped. Why would he trip? He'd questioned that so many times in the past but nothing ever came of his thoughts. He'd chalked it up to being distracted by everyone bailing on him. But his recalling of this memory with Florence triggered something in his memory.

He saw as he fell down the stairs, a shadow on the floor coming through the stairs as he fell.

"Son of a bitch." Walter said as his thoughts clicked and his memory solidified. "Florence tripped me. She must have been afraid I wouldn't leave and she needed to get the software. She nearly killed me to get the software."

Walter was stunned as he sat there thinking and then he saw the light changed as the door opened and a nurse walked in. Walter quickly held a finger to his lips and pointed at Paige.

The nurse smiled and nodded as she moved around to the other side of his bed before they spoke in soft hushes.

"It's good seeing you awake. How are you feeling?" The nurse asked quietly as she hit the button to get his blood pressure.

"My thoughts are growing clearer." Walter whispered to her.

"Good, all of your friends will be so happy you woke up. Speaking of which, why are you awake? With what you are on you should be completely out of it." The nurse frowned and double checked the IV and found it working.

"Well if it is low dose propofol then that is because I'm mostly immune to its effects except for higher dosages." Walter told her.

"Weird, I wonder why your chart doesn't show that? I'll have to make a note for the doctors. Is there anything I can get for you?" The nurse asked.

"I could use some bottled water." Walter told her. "I would have called but I didn't want to wake Paige."

The nurse smiled down at Paige sleeping there.

"She's been pretty worried about you." The nurse said as she turned the blood pressure machine off and then updated his chart with his vitals. "I'll bring your water shortly." The nurse said as she left.

Paige's phone rang and she jerked up and looked around and slowly realized where she was and grabbed her phone.

"Hello?" Paige said tiredly.

"Hey, we're on our way to the hospital. Do you want us to bring you a breakfast sandwich or anything? We'll be stopping at McDonald's." Happy asked.

"Oh, yes, that and coffee sounds good. Wait, what the hell?" Paige said as she saw Walter still asleep but his laptop on his lap.

"What's wrong?" Happy asked anxiously.

"Walter's still asleep but his laptop is on his lap." Paige told her.

"That must mean he woke up at some point." Toby said over the speaker. "That's a good thing."

"I hope you are right." Paige smiled at the thought. "Weird, the power supply is plugged into it too and there is a half empty water bottle too."

"Yep, sounds like he must have awakened and did some work while you slept. We'll see you in about forty minutes." Toby said.

"See you soon." Happy said before hanging up.

Paige sat her phone down and reached across to Walter.

"Walter." Paige said as she gently stroked his cheek.

Walter jerked and his eyes fluttered as he looked around. Slowly he saw her looking at him and he smiled.

"Hey, good morning beautiful." Walter told her.

Paige blushed as she grinned.

"Yeah, I'm not so sure. I haven't touched up my makeup since before we arrived at the Gettlemen bid." Paige told him. "I'm so glad to see you awake. I take it you did some late night work?"

Walter nodded.

"The nurse was nice when she came in at about 4 am and plugged my laptop in for me. I had drained nearly seventy five percent of the battery before she came in to check on me." Walter told her as they held hands. "And you could never look short of beautiful."

Paige blushed again.

"How are you feeling?" Paige asked as she ran her hand down his cheek still.

"A bit of pain, pretty equal between my jaw and head." Walter grinned.

"Well Happy has a really nice bright neon green cast on her broken hand. She broke three knuckles." Paige told him before she pulled his hand up and kissed it.

"I'm pretty pissed about that." Walter told her as he pulled her hand up and kissed it in response.

"Well I'm not defending her, but you did say something pretty offensive to her." Paige told him.

"Well if it was offensive it was only because it was true. She abandoned me just like her Dad did her. So you'd think she'd have thought twice about doing that." Walter told her.

"I know. I'm not going to argue it for her. But I am curious, Walter. May I come back to you and to Scorpion?" Paige asked.

"All I have ever wanted was you Paige. You mean the world to me. But will you truly be happy with me? I don't know if I can take it, losing you again that is. And I don't know if I will ever mature anymore." Walter tried to explain.

"Oh Walter, I was so unfair to you. You were wrong in what you did but you didn't do it for nefarious reasons. And I was wrong in how I responded. Not to mention helping to set up and run CP. So please forgive me too. We might need to discuss things more than we did before. Get some counseling. I also don't want us spending so much time at the Garage going forward. Except for cases, lectures or an occasional date it was like we were always there if we were together. We seldom spent time at the condo." Paige interlocked her fingers around his.

"I'd be agreeable to what you are proposing." Walter smiled as his fingers tightened briefly around hers.

"Proposing huh?" Paige smiled at the word he used.

Walter grinned at her.

"Well I didn't mean it that way, but, what do you think? Do you really think you are ready to live full time, until death do we part? Not to mention having a second genius with us for another eight years or so." Walter asked.

"Walter, I've always wanted to be married. And while I've been in relationships I didn't see going to marriage, I always wanted you and I to go the distance. To get married and make us a real family." Paige told him.

"Well I guess once we get this mess with the webgirl straightened out, I better get a good job so I can afford a proper ring to ask you." Walter grinned.

"So what have you found out about that?" Paige asked.

"Well I am reasonably sure that Paige doesn't know what Tim and his partner Clyde are doing." Walter told her.

"Wait, the model's name is Paige too?" Paige said, shocked.

"Yes, Paige Murphy. Apparently Clyde met her a couple of months ago. She was having some problems securing loans for college. Him and Tim had been having a hard time finding someone to run this with. She didn't have an issue modeling this way. And with Clyde handling all the details of the website she agreed. I couldn't find anything that showed she knew what they were actually doing." Walter told her.

Paige frowned.

"Walter, what aren't you telling me?" Paige asked.

"If you don't mind, let's wait until Cabe is here before I tell you the really disturbing part." Walter said reluctantly.

Paige stared at Walter for a moment.

"You promise you'll tell me the whole truth?" Paige asked.

"As long as Ralph isn't here, yes." Walter told her.

"Okay, well I need to use the restroom." Paige said before she stood. She smiled down at Walter and then leaned in and they shared a tender kiss.

Walter watched with a smile as she walked towards the bathroom. His eyes resting on her slacks covering her arse. He loved her miniskirts so much. He couldn't wait to see her out of her CP outfit. He shook his head, the thought of the other three forming a company with that name. He was nearly positive the company was Toby's idea but the name had to have come from Sylvester.

Walter grinned as Ralph came running into the room.

"Dad!" Ralph said excitedly as he saw him looking at him.

"Hey Buddy." Walter said as Ralph flew across the room. Cabe smiled as he walked into the room and saw them hugging.

Greetings! I hope this finds you all well! Thank you guys! Sorry, I forgot I have to be at the VA today and I am out of time and can't reply to you all today. Have a great weekend!

To the Adventure! -Tim