To you lovely readers who are still here through everything, thank you! XOXO
Chapter 20
Central City, Undisclosed Secondary Location, 12:48 am
"So, if you had her, where would you stash her?" Felicity asked Oliver. He was the one who loved lairs.
"Depends on what they took her for," Oliver answered. If it's just for leverage, then it could be anywhere and they were shit out of luck. But his gut was telling him that they wouldn't have gone through the effort of taking Caitlin if killing Barry would have already gotten them off scot-free.
"If not to tie up loose ends, then what?" Felicity asked.
Oliver shook his head. "If they wanted to do that, they wouldn't have taken Caitlin. They would've killed her point blank. I think they need Caitlin for something else - maybe something more in line with her work."
"Why not the houseboat then?"
"It's Woodrue's, not theirs. And that makes me think they're after him, not working with him. Those women have been ten steps ahead of us all this time, killing in the dark. I don't think a boat with an easily traceable provenance fits their M.O."
"So, if they can't kill him, they'll screw with him?"
"Something to be said for contingencies," Oliver shrugged.
"Where does that leave us with finding Caitlin?"
"They've been running around Central City all day," Oliver said. That wasn't going to be easy with how big the city really was. "They needed easy access to the docks, to CCPD, to Barry and S.T.A.R. Labs, so they're gonna need to be somewhere that's isolated but not too off the grid."
"I need something more," Felicity said as she pulled up the City's plans and overlaid all that traffic cam locations and geodata they had from scratch. She thought that starting with a clean slate can help streamline everything that they had going on.
"Probably an old building or warehouse that's not too close to the docks," he mused. And for the scale of their operation, especially if they were manufacturing product, they'd probably need power. "They'll be needing electricity, so there's that. But they'll need it from the grid. Generators are just too noisy to not attract attention. That or, they'll be in a place where generator noise wouldn't matter much."
"A thermal fly-by would've helped us cover a lot more ground in a shorter amount of time, but with Cisco's drone being down and no deployable assets in the area, I'll need to hack the grid," she decided. They had to start somewhere.
"Can you do it from here?"
"The main grid and substations are linked but I can't tap into it from here," she answered after taking a closer look at the schematics.
So, Felicity clicked on her comms. "Barry, we're going to need you."
It didn't take a beat before Barry whispered, "I thought you'd never ask."
Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs, 12:48 am
"Get tactical down there," Singh commanded as Detective Perez revealed the stolen houseboat as a potential target location.
"Team's five minutes out," Eddie said, just as he got off his phone.
Barry took that as his opportunity to sneak out, but before he could leave the room, Singh called out, "Allen, where the hell do you think you're going?"
"If it's all the same with you, I'm just gonna bunk down. Call if you need anything," he said, waving his phone to the rest of the people in the room. It might've left the captain flummoxed, but he had to get of there. Felicity needed him to do some legwork.
He quickly made his way to the cortex, where his go-bag was stowed.
"Where do I go?" he asked over the comms.
"Coordinates sent to your phone," Felicity chirped. "But before that, I'm gonna need you to get a few things for me."
"Roger that," he answered.
He was just about to leave when a uniformed rookie cop made his way to the cortex. "Sir, the Captain asked me to escort you home."
It took all he had not to roll his eyes, but he nodded to the cop, "I'll be right out."
Once the cop was out of earshot, he spoke once again to Felicity, "Looks like I'm gonna have to take a detour. I'll be there once I lose my babysitter."
"Noted," Felicity said, "but you better be quick about it. There's so much ground to cover."
Starling City, Arrow Cave, 12:55 am
Laurel couldn't help but sigh. Seeing Tommy coo Sara to sleep in his arms while going over the data on his screen was doing something to her insides.
"What?" he asked when he noticed her staring.
"Nothing," she answered, faking a yawn and rubbing her eyes to hide the blush that tinted her cheeks. "I'm just getting tired of all the twists and turns in this case."
The first thing she did was bring up Jason Woodrue's dossier. Aside from the murky details of his accident in South America, the police and federal government had nothing on him - not even a single parking ticket. Newspaper clippings of him, lecture circuit announcements and university postings show no distinct changes in his travel patterns before or after the years he was on leave.
"It looks like he's a model citizen, but knowing what we know and seeing what we've seen, this could also well be an elaborate cover," she continued.
Tommy blinked at her. "Don't you think it's too perfect, then?" he asked as the thought occurred to him. "Maybe the lack of changes after a particularly bad experience is suspect."
"You think the accident is anomalous?"
He nodded. "I mean, if you wanted to downplay something, wouldn't you continue on as if nothing happened?"
"You might be on to something," she said as she rifled through the papers on the table in front of her until she found what she wanted. "Here's the list of his known associates. A number of them died on the first expedition. Maybe we should also start taking a closer look at them."
Starling City, Abandoned Airfield, 1:05 am
Lyla was careful not to trip any alarms.
This hangar was one of the many older A.R.G.U.S. installations scattered in the city. Due to some budget cuts, sites like these were often devoid of the airtight security deployed in the other more critical infrastructure.
The security door buzzed open, halting her mid-step.
"Ferreira," Lyla said as she straightened to greet the tall, dark-haired man on the other side.
"Micheals," the man acknowledged as he stepped aside to let Lyla in.
Somewhere in Central City, 01:15 am
The DNA isn't stable, Caitlin thought as she looked over the sheaf of paper that her captor had slammed on the table in front of her.
The mutations are accelerating with time. Side-by-side comparisons of the genetic profiles taken every few months show unstable permutations of repeat expansion mutations, meaning that Barry's assailant had not only a progressive, but also a rapidly deteriorating condition, much like Huntington's Disease - only on a more accelerated timeline.
It was beginning to look like she was kidnapped to stabilize those.
She huffed, frustrated with herself for getting more engrossed with the data in front of her than with finding a way to get out of this old dingy laboratory or whatever this room was in its former glory.
She squinted against the dim light, taking stock of her surroundings, as she tried to build a map in her brain. She knew she didn't have much time. After all, there was only so much she could put on that demand list without arousing suspicion.
Central City, Quay Alley , 1:15 a m
"Police are cordoning off the area," Digg reported over the comms just as he slipped back into the van. There was only so much he could do from a distance. "Anything on your end?"
"Nothing so far," Oliver answered. "But we're trying to cast a wide net."
"You really think this isn't a waste of time and resources?" Digg asked as he looked at the few officers left milling about. The raid, if it can even be called that, took all of ten seconds. He was just pulling in when he saw the SWAT officers boarding the boat. He didn't see muzzle fire or hear flash bangs. Right then and there he knew that it was a bust.
"Hang in there. I want you to get a look yourself. See if the CCPD missed anything."
"Roger that."
And with that, Digg clicked off to wait.
Starling City, Arrow Cave, 1:15 am
The telling clack of Laurel's pen hitting the desk made Tommy look up from the papers he was sorting through.
"I think I found something," Laurel said as she scrambled from her screen to his.
With fingers quickly flying on the keyboard, Lauren called up Felicity's live feed from S.T.A.R. Labs and put them side-by-side with an old photo she just found while sorting through what they had of Jason Woodrue's past.
"Tell me I'm not imagining things," she said, looking at Tommy expectantly.
Tommy took his eyes from the screen to look straight back at her, "I think we found our perp."
Let it rip! :-)