"Hey, Willster. Finally over that cold?"
"Thank god," Willow replied, spinning around in her chair as Xander stood in the doorway of the 'robot room', "Me and the flu do not mesh well together. And me and Tara having it at the same time, that was... it was...unpleasant."
Willow gave a small shudder and Xander laughed.
"Well we're glad you're back. Listen, I just came up to tell ya, we got to go on a little trip tomorrow. How do you feel about undercover work?"
"Under...undercover?" Willow asked in disbelief, "I'm just the computer whiz. I'm not good with detective-y, stealth-y stuff. I'm just really good at cracking servers."
"Which is why we need you," Xander replied, spinning the other chair that was in the room around and sitting on it backwards, "You know that work you've been compiling for us for that furniture company in Syracuse?"
"Yea," Willow nodded, "They all seem legit on paper, but some of their figures just don't add up."
"Exactly," Xander sighed, rubbing his temple, "But the company's drawing up their quarterly reports as we speak, reporting them on Thursday."
Willow though for a moment and nodded.
"February 1st. Right, start of a new quarter."
Xander nodded as well.
"Yea. So anyway, we got linked in with the IRS, they have their suspicions as well so they've agreed to work with us. Me and Jesse are gonna go in, fronting as IRS operatives. We're gonna make up a problem with getting the accounts on their computer and call you in as an IT guy. Or gal. Once you have access to their system, you can download all their files for us and hopefully their internal notes will tell us where they're hiding their cash."
Willow nervously chewed the skin of her thumb.
"This is like...this is like a real-deal, like, operation. If I spaz up I could ruin everything."
Xander reached out and put a hand on the redhead's shoulder.
"You won't. I believe in you. We all believe in you. You know you're the only one with the skills to pull this off, Will."
Willow inhaled slowly before smiling.
"Okay. I'm in."
"Excellent," Xander stood and clapped his hands together, "We're leaving tomorrow, just one night. All you need is clothes; the team'll bring everything else. Great to have you in on this one, Will."
He gave a thumbs up as he left the room and Willow laughed after him before spinning back around in her seat, excited about her very first 'mission'.
Willow put her key in the front door and opened it, smiling when she smelled something delicious wafting from the kitchen. Tara had been working a half-day, so she'd had the drive home alone and was looking forward to whatever culinary delights her wife had whipped up. She walked further towards the kitchen and leant against the doorway, watching the blonde chop and stir things around her, oblivious to her presence and smiled at when she heard her wife start to hum along to the radio playing in the background.
"Smells amazing," she said eventually and Tara's head shot up with a smile.
"Hi, honey. How was work?"
Willow's face faltered slightly and she straightened up.
"I'm leaving you."
Tara dropped the dish she was holding, causing it to smash into a thousand pieces on the floor and stood rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging open in shock.
"You're what?"
Willow suddenly realised what she'd said and rushed over to where the blonde was standing, carefully stepping over the broken plate and pulling her wife into a hug.
"Business trip," she said quickly, "I have to go on a business trip."
Tara almost choked on air and wrapped her arms as tightly around the redhead as possible.
"Why the hell did you word it like that?" she shouted angrily, though didn't loosen her hold.
"Baby..." Willow choked out, "Can't...breathe..."
"Deal with it," Tara replied, refusing to let go as her voice lowered to a whisper, "I think my heart just literally stopped."
Willow wanted to respond but couldn't, she was being squeezed so tightly so just held on until Tara let go a few minutes later. Willow could see her hands were shaking.
"I'm really sorry, Tare-bear," she said, taking her wife's hands and squeezing them to try and stop the shake, "You know I spaz up my words...and my actions...and just in general sometimes. And I mean, if I was really leaving you, I'd at least have brought you some flowers or something."
Tara glared at the smaller girl and Willow winced.
"There I go again," she said with what she hoped was an adorable smile, "I would never, ever leave you."
Tara continued to glare for a moment before pulling Willow to her again, though not as tight this time and exhaled slowly.
"Don't do that to me again, okay?" she said, blinking away the tears of shock that had formed in her eyes before pulling away and leaning down to start to gather up the broken pieces of the plate, "So a business trip?"
Willow heard the still-upset-though-she-was-trying-to-hide-it tone of her wife. She lowered herself and took the broken slivers from the blonde's hand, putting them back on the floor before cupping her cheek.
"How could I ever leave that beautiful face?" she asked softly and stroked the skin under her thumb before lowering her hand again and starting to gather the plate pieces, "I'll do this. You get back to that delicious dinner."
Tara smiled that Willow knew exactly how to reassure her and straightened up, returning to the salad she had been preparing.
"So, a business trip?" she asked, her voice much more confident this time, "I didn't think your job involved business trips."
"Me either," Willow replied, throwing the shards in her hands into the trash and grabbing the sweeping brush to gather up the smaller pieces, "Don't worry, I don't think it's gonna be a regular thing, just for this one case we're working on. I'll only be gone the one night."
Tara turned and bent down, checking the lasagne and garlic bread in the over as she spoke.
"When are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow," Willow replied, somewhat sadly, "Sorry about the late notice. Like I said, not a regular thing. And I'll only be in Syracuse so if there's some big emergency I can be back in a couple of hours."
"I'll miss you," Tara responded but gave her wife a reassuring smile, "How're you feeling about it?"
Willow bit her lip.
"Kinda nervous. It's like a proper covert operation. What if I mess up?"
Tara wrapped her arm around the redhead's shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
"Don't worry, sweetheart. You're gonna be great."
"Rosenberg-Maclay?"
"Here," Willow squeaked, "I mean, me. I mean I'm here. Me here."
The man who'd called her name looked at the rest of his colleagues as if he was asking 'this is the one who's gonna crack the case?' and Willow looked down, shamefaced until Xander put a hand on her shoulder.
"That's everyone," he said, addressing the hotel conference room of FBI agents and analysts, "Okay, this is where we're keeping base, so most of you will be working from me. Myself, Agent McNally and Mrs. Rosenberg-Maclay here are going to be working mostly in the offices of Elmwood Furniture downtown. We all know the plan; me and Jesse have an appointment this afternoon and their computer system is gonna crash for as long as it takes for Willow to retrieve their internal files. Everyone know what they're doing?"
There was a round of nods and murmurs of agreement and Xander clapped his hands together.
"Great. We get enough dirt for an arrest on this one... well, guys, the steaks are on me. Now let's get started."
Everyone in the room went about to their own sections and Xander turned to Willow.
"Don't be intimidated. They're all just jealous 'cause they know you have the skills they can only dream of. Now, here's your ID badge. Nothing too difficult, we kept your name the same so you won't forget it and as far as the company's concerned, you're an IT tech with the IRS so they shouldn't ask any questions."
"Okay," Willow replied, though she was taking shallow breaths.
"Breathe easy kiddo," Jesse's voice was heard as he walked up to them, "Cool as a cucumber, that's how you work undercover. You know your plan of action?"
Willow nodded.
"Wait for your call. Tell the front desk who I am, log onto their system and look like I'm trying to fix it while I download all their files."
"Nice and simple," Xander smiled, "And you should get most of the stuff done today so hopefully we'll only have to go in for the morning tomorrow to finish off and we can be back in Buffalo in time for our women to bring us dinner. Or the Chinese takeout dude in Jesse's case."
Jesse patted Xander on the back playfully, though quite hard and checked his watch.
"We should head out."
The trio made sure they had everything in order and made their way out to the SUV that Xander and Jesse had driven up to Syracuse in that morning, though Willow had had to take her own car since the backseat of the SUV had been filled with some of the equipment the team were going to need.
Xander and Jesse talked about football as Xander drove down the streets to their destination, both obviously comfortable about what they were about to do but Willow sat in the back, looking about the window and trying to remain calm.
She knew she had nothing to be really worried about – it wasn't like she was on an undercover drug sting or there was any real threat of things taking a violent turn, but her concerns were more that she'd mess up and disappoint the whole team.
She was known as a bit of a superstar in her department because of her excellent computer skills and she really didn't want to lose that. It wasn't an ego thing, although she did enjoy the boost it gave her, it was more about finally getting job satisfaction after she'd spent so long unemployed.
"Right, that's their HQ over there, that big red building," Xander said, pulling the redhead from her thoughts, "We'll call you with the fake call, wait about twenty minutes to make it seem like you're not right outside waiting and then come in. Got it?"
"Got it," Willow nodded, portraying a lot more confidence than she had, "Good luck."
"You too," Jesse smiled from the rear-view mirror, "You won't need it though, this is all easy as pie. Okay, do we look like stuffy IRS men?"
Willow laughed and moved forwards, tightening Jesse's tie slightly.
"Very stuffy. I'll see you in there."
Xander and Jesse exited the car and Willow pulled her Ipod from her pocket, listening to some music to distract herself until she felt her cell vibrate in her pocket and whipped it out, placing it against her ear. She said nothing as she listened to Xander tell her she was needed urgently at the address they were at, knowing it was all a pretence until her friend hung up again.
She wrapped her earphones around her Ipod and stuck it back in her pocket, then got out of the car. She walked around the block a couple of times before deciding enough time had passed and went into the building she'd seen her colleagues walk into going up to the front desk.
"I was called in. IT problem."
The woman at the reception frowned for a moment.
"Oh you're with the IRS men," she said, adopting a very pleasant smile and Willow figured she'd been told to be extra nice, "Of course. If you just go through those doors right there..."
She nodded at a set of double doors behind her and Willow walked through them into an open office space, seeing Xander and Jesse standing around, pretending to read through a file.
"Are you the IT technician?" Xander asked in a pretend-but-realistic affected voice when he spotted Willow coming towards him and the redhead nodded, "We've tried logging into the computerised accounts but there seems to be a problem. Never happened to me before, so I can't say I know what's
wrong."
"I need to apologise profusely for this," an older, balding man that Willow recognised as the owner of the company from the intel she'd already done on the case spoke up, obviously flustered, "I made sure all our records were available for you today, I don't know what this glitch is."
"Probably something simple," Willow said, trying to keep casual, before amending herself, "Although if it's a system problem, it might take me all day to fix it. I should really get started. Where does your main server operate from?"
The owner looked blank.
"Do your computers all operate on a linked network?" Willow asked.
"I believe so," the owner replied, wiping his brow.
"Okay..." Willow responded, trying not to laugh at the man's sketchiness, "Then I just need access to any computer in here. Could get noisy though, so maybe somewhere away from people working?"
Jesse shot Willow a discreet wink and the company owner gestured with his hand.
"You can use my office at the back here," he said, walking towards the back of the building, having no reason to believe Willow was anything other than an IT tech and so wasn't concerned about the sensitive material she would have access to, "Will that work?"
Willow nodded and walked into the office, the door closing behind her. She could see the hustle and bustle of the offices through the large window in the office as she settled behind the desk of the computer and took the flashdrive she'd been hiding in her pocket, attaching it to the usb port and opening a command box.
She typed in what she needed to, 'telling' the computer to access the complete network server and to copy all the hidden and unhidden files. It only took her about half an hour to do what she needed, the computer doing the rest by itself in the background.
"Now to look busy," she muttered to herself, biting her lip as she thought of how do just that.
She hadn't thought that far ahead, thinking it would've taken her longer to gain access to everything she needed to, but a high-class security system was not something Elmwood Furniture Ltd possessed which was quite surprising since Willow knew how much effort had been put into the company hiding their paper trail.
She shrugged and opened up the 'paint' application on the computer, amusing herself by drawing hers and Tara's initials in hearts for a little while before feeling silly for acting so adolescent and closing down the application, deciding she'd have to settle in for an afternoon of solitaire.
Countless games later, a small beeping sound was heard and Willow looked down in surprise to see that the command box was telling her the process had been completed, much sooner than anticipated. She went through the flashdrive and nodded as everything seemed to be in order and decided to use the time she had left to scan the server again, trying to find anything the prompt may have missed.
She grinned to herself as she found a few more carefully hidden files and transferred them to the flashdrive just as the company owner returned into the office. She quickly shut everything down and slipped the usb device into her pocket.
"We're closing up here," he said, nervously wringing his hands, "You're IRS colleagues are coming back tomorrow morning? Did you find out what the glitch was?"
"All fixed now," Willow replied with an easy smile, "It was just a jam in your network, takes a while to repair, like untwining a ball of yarn, but everything's working fine now."
"Excellent," the man replied, and Willow could tell he was happy that that meant the 'IRS' should be out of his hair by the next day.
Yea, how little you know dude.
"So, yea, all fixed now. I'll, uh, just be going."
Willow scooted out of the office and scurried out of the building quickly, happy she'd done what she'd had to and gotten whatever information she could. She walked back to the car, spotting Jesse and Xander sitting in the front seat and hopped into the back.
"How'd it go, kiddo?" Jesse asked with a smile, turning his head around.
Willow fished the flashdrive from her pocket and held it between the seats.
"I got everything. And I went through their entire system with a fine tooth comb, there is not one file or trace of a file on that server that isn't on this little beauty now."
"You got everything?" Xander asked, turning his head around and smiling, "Really? In just the one day?"
"Everything," Willow nodded.
Xander and Jesse high-fived each other.
"Great," Jesse said, as Xander turned the engine on, "Me and Xand will just go in tomorrow morning and pretend to do our audit so we don't raise any suspicion and we're golden."
"Hey, if we get the team working on the information, we could have an arrest warrant by tomorrow morning," Xander pointed out as he drove, "Otherwise, yea, keep up appearances."
"Hey guys?" Willow piped up from the backseat, "You don't need me anymore, right? I mean, you two are doing the field stuff tomorrow and the intelligence guys are gonna be working on the info I got today..."
Jesse chuckled.
"You wanna go home early?"
"Not if you need me," Willow replied quickly, "Obviously I'm here to do my job."
"And you've done it," Xander responded, "Pretty damn well I think. We all need to write up reports for the day, but once I get those, you're free as bird, Willster."
Willow beamed at the fact that she wouldn't have to spend the night away from Tara.
"Thanks, Xand. I'll start my report as soon as we get back to the hotel."