A/N: Thanks for your patience as this is a little later than usual. I had to re-watch an episode, which took a few tries thanks to a sketchy internet connection. And I had to get some more work done on my novel in order to justify the time I've spent on this fic over the last two months. :P Other things: any business talk in this chapter and subsequent chapters is b.s. I don't know anything about business. Cop stuff I know, not business. I also made up a name for that Chinese restaurant Lance always meets Sara in, because I wanted to use it in this chapter and the next. And thank you for all the reviews and favorites, follows and recommendations! I'm so grateful for all of it.

Chapter 6-Lucky Fortune

"Detective Smoak."

Felicity sat up straighter. "Yes, sir."

"Join me, please." Detective Lance indicated the empty space next to where he stood in front of the bulletin board.

She went over to the board. The case of the guy in the hood had exploded in the last few days. He'd gone after James Holder, a rich, slightly shady corporate type.

It had been Felicity's first murder scene, and her stomach began doing somersaults on the ride over. Fortunately for her, the dead man was floating facedown in his own pool, so she didn't really have to look at him. But something must have shown on her face. Detective Lance took one look at her, then sent her back into the penthouse to get witness statements from Holder's bodyguards.

Both men were being treated for arrow wounds by paramedics. They'd been attacked and then relieved of their guns. One man had lost consciousness briefly and never saw his assailant. The other described a tall man in leather, with a green hood pulled down low to cover most of his face. And a green arrow had been recovered from the scene, so obviously the hood guy was involved. But the autopsy told them that Holder had died from gunshot wounds, not arrow wounds. The bullets were sniper rounds, and they were poisoned. It was weird.

Just a couple of days later, Carl Rasmussen was shot, same M.O., but no arrows at the scene. Detective Lance was sure that the sniper and the hooded guy were two different people, but all the victims had gone up on the board anyway—the dead Queen kidnappers, Adam Hunt, James Holder, and Carl Rasmussen.

"I'm looking for connections," Lance said as Felicity gazed at the photos. "What do you see?"

She took a deep breath and let it out, attempting to let go of every conclusion she'd reached so far. But like every other time she'd looked at the board, her eyes had immediately been drawn to the picture of James Holder. It was a cheesy corporate headshot, nothing special, but for the first time, Felicity realized it was his name that was familiar to her, not his face.

"Hmmm."

"See something?" her partner asked.

She frowned. "Maybe."

Felicity returned to her desk and grabbed her tablet. She vaguely remembered reading the article there, as opposed to her work computer or her laptop. She pulled up her browser history and quickly scrolled past all the music videos she'd watched on YouTube the night before. There, she found the article. She skimmed it briefly and then returned to the bulletin board.

"Here," she said, handing the tablet to Detective Lance. She kept talking while he read the article. "The name James Holder sounded familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I remembered this article I read a couple of days before his murder. He's kind of shady, which is something he has in common with Rasmussen, but we already knew that."

Lance held the tablet out to her. She took it and continued without stopping for breath.

"What we didn't know is that he has something else in common with Rasmussen," she said. "They're both prospective buyers for UNIDAC Industries, and they were both murdered in the same way, presumably by the same person, before the auction."

"Slow down," said Lance. "How do you know all this? What the hell is UNIDAC Industries? And what's this auction all about?" he asked, pointing at the tablet in her hands.

Felicity shrugged. "I keep up on tech news. UNIDAC Industries was a tech giant, but bad management drove it into receivership, and now the company is up for auction."

"And both these guys were going to bid on it?" Lance tapped his fingers on Holder's and Rasmussen's photos.

"A few others too," she said. "But only one of them is in Starling City right now."

"I noticed," said Lance. "Walter Steele, head of Queen Consolidated."

"He could be a target," said Felicity.

"He could be the next target," Lance said. He sighed heavily. "Much as I hate dealing with that family, I don't want anyone's death on my conscience. I'll have to go that damn mansion again and warn them."

"Do you want me to go with you?" Felicity asked. The idea both appealed to and repelled her at the same time. She was curious about the Queens and Mr. Steele, but she was worried about being sabotaged by her inexperience and nervous babble.

Lance shook his head. "I'll take Hilton with me. I need you here, digging deeper into this auction thing. This shooter isn't the one pulling the strings. Someone's funding him and feeding him targets."

While Detective Lance went on his unpleasant errand, Felicity did what little digging she could. She was hampered by police resources and legality. She had the skills to do much more, maybe even to identify the shooter, but she couldn't accomplish it without leaving a trace. There would be a whisper, a footprint, something that could be traced back to her. She wouldn't risk her career and the prosecution of multiple murders just to impress her new partner and speed along their case.

Lance and Hilton returned from the Queen mansion in much the same attitude as before, with Hilton rolling his eyes and Detective Lance stomping into the break room to noisily pour himself a cup of coffee.

"What happened?" Felicity asked Hilton. "Did he go toe to toe with Oliver Queen again?"

Hilton shook his head. "Moira Queen this time."

"Yikes," she muttered.

"You know why he didn't want you to go, right?"

Felicity shrugged. "He needed me here," she said, "not that I was able to do any good."

The detective pulled up a chair and sat, leaning one elbow on her desk. "You shouldn't take it personally," he said. "It is personal, but it's about him, not you."

"I'm listening."

"I don't think there's anyone in this world Quentin hates more than Oliver Queen," said Hilton. "Queen is the worst thing that ever happened to the Lances, and Quentin wants you as far away from him as possible. He's trying to protect you."

Felicity frowned. "Why? I was under the impression that he didn't like me very much."

"He doesn't like anyone very much, but he likes you enough," Hilton said. "And even if he didn't he wouldn't have thrown you to the wolves. You're his partner."

"Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out this whole partner thing," Felicity confessed.

"Give it time and you will." Hilton stood up. "The one thing you've got to remember is loyalty. Your partner above everyone else. Even yourself."

Felicity swallowed hard as he walked away. That was a big responsibility, especially when your partner was a handful. The corners of her mouth quirked upward in a wry smile. Lance would probably say the same thing about her.

With Walter Steele now aware of the potential threat on his life, there was little more the police could do in the few days leading up to the auction. Felicity had submitted a request to access Interpol, but it was based on nothing but a hunch, and the bureaucratic wheel ground slowly.

When she was in Internal Affairs, she'd worked more independently and cut through the red tape with the blessing of her superiors. If she'd still been IA, she could have expedited her own request, but it would have been at the expense of her own well-being and peace of mind. Not worth it.

At home, her fingers itched to hack Interpol. So much so that she'd turned to all kinds of distractions, most recently by rewriting code so that she could beat the ridiculously hard level in Candy Crush that she'd been stuck on for weeks. She was in the middle of that coding the night before the auction when her phone began to buzz. Almost finished typing in a long string of commands, she ignored the phone until it demanded her attention by vibrating its way off the coffee table. She picked up the call and put it on speaker so she could continue to type.

"Yo, homey. What up?" she said.

" 'Scuse me?" inquired a gravelly voice on the other end.

"Detective Lance!" Felicity shoved her laptop aside and snatched up the phone. "I'm so sorry! That was not professional of me at all. I didn't check the caller ID since I just assumed it was my friend Amy because she's the only one who calls me this late, and that's just how we talk to each other, but—"

"Take a breath, Smoak."

She did. Several breaths, in fact, which gave him the chance to speak before she could tear off on another ramble.

"We need to meet," he said. "There's an all-night Chinese place on Second Avenue. Good tea. You know it?"

"Yeah," she said. "But it's kind of late. You don't want to talk about it at work tomorrow?"

"No, and I don't want to go into it over the phone either," said Lance. "When I left the station tonight, I had a run-in with a suspect."

"We have a suspect?"

"Yeah, our false lead in the sniper case. Shoots arrows, wears a green hood."

"Oh my God," Felicity breathed. "What happened?"

"Second Avenue. Throw on a jacket and get over here," her partner said. "The place is called Tang's Lucky Fortune Diner. Look for the red awning."

"Got it, sir. I'll be there in ten."