(A/N; Holy cow, this chapter turned out to be a beast. I'm totally exhausted and not feeling well, so I apologize for any typos I may have missed by not reading it over. Much thanks to thatmasquedgirl, who looked up some dialogue for me. Ugh. I need a nap now.)
Where Your Loyalty Lies . . . and Lies and Lies
Detective Lance drove his personal car to Iron Heights, at speeds that would make a NASCAR driver nervous. He wasn't talking, and they had no police radio to tell them what was happening at the prison. Honestly, Felicity wasn't really sure why she was accompanying him on this trip. If it was about his daughter, then it was personal and not her place. If it was about a potential Major Crimes case, they should have taken a car from the motor pool and gotten radios and maybe even backup. She had her gun in her purse, but she didn't want to go into the prison unless she absolutely had to.
The guards at the outer gate were preoccupied, one on the phone, the other on the radio. The guy on the radio leaned out of the booth, glanced at the gold shield Lance held up, and waved them on. Inside the gate, it appeared to Felicity as if chaos reigned, guards running everywhere, SCPD officers mixing with SWAT teams, and civilian prison employees here and there. But they had to have trained for this, with contingency plans in place.
Lance drove as close to the main building as he could get, nearly rear-ending an ambulance. An ambulance. Her stomach flipped.
"How do you know Laurel's in there?" she asked.
"She told me she was going to meet with Declan." He flung open his door and got out, not bothering to shut it behind him.
Felicity got out of the car and shut her door. She walked around the front of the vehicle and ducked her head into the driver's side. She took the keys from the ignition, pocketed them, and closed the door. Then she hustled to follow her partner.
"Dad!" Laurel ran to her father. She looked . . . surprisingly okay for having escaped a prison riot. Her tear-stained face and the shock blanket draped over her shoulders were the only indicators that she'd just survived a traumatic experience.
"Laurel, sweetie. What are you—" Lance crushed his daughter in a frantic embrace.
"I'm all right," said Laurel, pulling back a bit.
"You sure?"
Laurel hugged Detective Lance again. Felicity felt increasingly uncomfortable. Other people's emotional family stuff was awkward and weird. Family stuff and a new partnership were doubly weird.
"I'm sorry about what I said to you." Laurel brushed away a tear.
"Yeah, well, you were right," said Lance. "Ankov just copped to Camille Declan's murder. We got the wrong guy."
Felicity's mouth dropped open. Who was Ankov? And Peter Declan really was innocent?
"Now listen to me, Laurel," Detective Lance continued. "I'm right too. I'm right about him. He's dangerous. He's outside the law."
Now who was he talking about?
"I know. He's a killer," Laurel replied. "There's something inside of him that's . . . it's not human. The things that I've seen, I—it was awful."
As she turned away from the moment of vulnerability, a flash of movement on the rooftop caught Felicity's eye. A hooded figure turned away and then disappeared into the shadows. The vigilante. She'd been staring at the police sketch of the defined jaw line below that hood for days now. What was he doing at the prison?
Lance put his arm around Laurel and began walking her toward the car. "Let's get you home, sweetie. How'd he get into that prison anyway, huh? A grown man in an outfit and a hood. That kind of stands out a little, doesn't it?"
Felicity couldn't keep quiet any longer. "The vigilante? He was here?"
Laurel eyed Felicity, then turned back to her father. "He actually wasn't wearing the outfit this time. He was in a prison guard uniform and a ski mask."
Lance stared.
"What?" Laurel asked.
"Nothing. I just had an idea. Get in the car, both of you."
"Bossy," Felicity mumbled as she drew the keys from her pocket and handed them to the detective. She got in the back seat as Lance fussed over his daughter, going so far as to buckle her in himself.
Felicity waited to speak until she could see the prison in the rear-view mirror. Then all the questions she'd be hanging onto began tumbling out.
"So when were you going to tell me any of this?" she asked, glaring at the back of his head. Muppet hair again. "The Declan case, the new confession, the fact that your daughter is working with the vigilante that's been killing people—"
"Was," Lance said. "She's not anymore. That's done." He glanced over at Laurel. "Right, sweetie?"
"He's a killer," Laurel reiterated. "I wasn't sure about him when he first approached me, but seeing him inside that prison left no doubt in my mind. He would have killed that inmate if I hadn't stopped him, and the look in his eyes when I did—" She shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself.
"I'm just saying," Felicity continued. "It would have been nice to know this stuff before now. Well, not nice because murder, but you know what I mean. Helpful. It would have been helpful. Beneficial to our partnership. Because we're partners, remember?" She locked eyes with him in the rear-view mirror. "I realize I have two strikes against me because I'm young and I'm a woman, but you're not doing this partnership any favors by starting out lying to me."
As soon as the words left her mouth, a lump formed in her throat. She'd started out lying to him. She'd done it first.
"She has a point, Dad," said Laurel.
"Hey, now, whose side are you on?" he joked. "Isn't half this mess your fault?"
"A third," Laurel said. "One-third me, one-third you, and one-third the vigilante."
"I'm pretty sure his third is slightly bigger than mine."
"Well, your third is definitely bigger than my third."
"Excuse me?" said Lance. "Who was working with the vigilante again?"
He was half-smiling, as if it was funny. What a weird family. His eyes caught hers again in the rear-view mirror.
"Smoak, I want to drop Laurel off at her apartment, and then you and I are going back to the station."
"Well, good, because my car is still there," said Felicity. "I have a cat at home that needs to be fed."
"Your last name is Smoak?" Laurel turned in her seat to look at Felicity. "Has he started with the bad puns yet?"
Felicity shook her head. "No, but it won't be anything I haven't heard before."
"I'm sure. When I said bad, I meant bad."
"Change of subject," said Lance. "You're not going home just yet, Detective."
"I'm not?" Felicity said.
"You're not. What Laurel said earlier about this hooded guy's getup gave me an idea. We have some surveillance footage to look over."
Detective Lance made Felicity go with him to walk Laurel right to her door. There was a brief argument, as Felicity thought it was ridiculous that she couldn't wait in the car—"I have a gun!"—but Lance was forceful and Felicity was overwhelmed with guilt for holding back the information she'd recovered for Oliver Queen. She stood just inside the doorway, feeling awkward and intrusive, as Lance fussed over his daughter some more, making her a cup of tea and tucking a blanket around her as she sat on her couch.
Finally, they were in the car again, headed back to the station. Detective Lance sighed heavily.
"You're right," he said. "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark about what I was doing."
She made an unintelligible noise, not trusting herself enough to speak.
"I should have told you as soon as I realized Laurel was lying to me." He parked in a fire lane outside the station. "This whole trust thing—I kind of stink at it, for reasons I'm sure you've heard about. But that's no way to start a partnership."
"It's okay," said Felicity. "I mean, it's not okay okay, but I'm over it. So you can stop agonizing about it or punishing yourself or whatever. I'm actually stuck on the part where you said we're going over surveillance footage."
Lance smiled. "I had a thought. It's kind of a shot in the dark, but it could give us a lead."
She followed him into the station. He threaded his way through the desks in the squad room, stopping at his own. He unlocked a drawer, rifled through it, and came up with a disk. He nodded for her to follow him again.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"To the DVD player in the conference room."
"What's showing?"
"Security camera feeds from the Exchange Building," he replied.
Lance loaded the disk and used the remote to skip ahead. The time stamp jumped forward in half-hour increments, and then he slowed it down to around the time of the shooting.
"What exactly are we looking for?" she asked.
"Anything out of the ordinary."
She could see that the camera was aimed at a stairwell. The door was clearly visible, as was the metal trash can next to it.
"What's that?" Felicity asked.
"What?"
"Right there," she said, pointing to the screen. She took the remote from him and backed up the video a few seconds.
The door opened and a tall figure stepped into the frame. He took the cover off the trash can and pulled out a bundle and a long . . .
"Is that a bow?" Lance asked.
Felicity slowed the video down even more, until it was playing frame by frame. With jerky movements, the tall figure slung the bundle over his shoulder and made for the stairs. He didn't glance at the camera, but he was looking straight ahead. She hit the pause button, and Oliver Queen's face froze on the screen.
"We got him!"
Felicity jumped when Lance shouted. She dragged her gaze away from the image. Lance was waving the remote around like she would have if she'd been really fired up about something.
"I knew it!" he said. "I knew that smug smartass was up to no good."
Detective Lance was off and running, and for the next couple of hours, it was all she could do just to keep up. It seemed so tenuous, the assumption that Oliver Queen was the vigilante based almost entirely on a grainy video from one crime scene. Felicity had somehow briefly nodded off while sitting upright in the middle of a conversation, and it was then that Lance finally told her to go home.
Home. Sleep. It sounded tempting on the surface, but Felicity knew she would be wide awake as soon as her head hit the pillow. When she entered her apartment, Jpeg walked over to her, turned his back, and sat down. He only did that when he was really mad at her for being gone so long. She fed him, and he went right back to ignoring her.
Felicity changed into pajamas and sat on the couch. She didn't think she could sleep now if she tried. Caffeine and guilt was a potent combination. The TV was on, tuned to an episode of Project Runway from her DVR, but her mind was focused elsewhere.
She'd lied to her partner, and she'd done it just days into their partnership. And then she busted him for doing the exact same thing.
"Oh, I am bad," she moaned, putting her head in her hands. "I am a bad, bad person."
Felicity sat up. It was time to consider her options.
"I can't come clean with him now," she said. "I'll look like a hypocrite—which I am—and he'll probably request a new partner and I'll get sent back to I.A." She suppressed a shudder at that thought. "So I just keep it to myself, right?" she asked Jpeg. He was unmoved, sitting next to her with his back turned.
"Okay, so I keep it to myself, then." Felicity picked at a loose thread on the arm of the couch. "But Oliver . . . I have to actually face him tomorrow. I have to help arrest him, Jpeg." The cat's black ears twitched. "He could tell Detective Lance that I helped him. Oh my God, did I help the vigilante kill someone?"
There would definitely be no sleeping now. She felt betrayed, though she knew that wasn't logical. Betrayed by Oliver Queen's charming demeanor and handsome face. How was she to reconcile the sincerity she'd seen in his eyes with what Laurel had said about looking at the vigilante and seeing something inhuman within?
They met in the squad room at nine the next morning, Felicity, Detective Lance, Detective Hilton, and two uniformed officers. It seemed like overkill until Felicity thought back on all the crimes the vigilante was tied to—violent crimes. Any objections she might have had died on her lips. Until they were actually in the SUV, on their way to the Queen mansion with an arrest warrant in hand.
"Are we really sure about this?" she asked. "I mean, we're about to charge into the home of one of the richest families in the country to arrest the heir for murder."
"And vigilantism," Lance added. "It's in the warrant."
"And obviously having a warrant means there's at least some evidence, but really, all we have is a few seconds of video footage plus Oliver Queen's habit of ditching his bodyguards and disappearing for hours." She pushed her glasses up on her nose.
"Are you flaking out on me, Smoak?" he asked. "Because we're partners, remember? We're in this together."
"I'm—I'm in," Felicity said hesitantly. "I just . . ." She sighed. "I'm in."
"Good."
Felicity had been wildly curious about the Queen mansion and the Queens themselves for days now. She'd seen the house in photos, but it was massive in person. As she hopped down from the SUV, she craned her neck to take in the whole building. It had an air of decay to it, like a crumbling castle.
Detective Lance led the way, beginning to swagger as he approached the front doors. A maid in a uniform opened the door before Lance could knock.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"I doubt it very much," said Lance, "unless you can point us in the direction of Mr. Queen."
The maid's eyebrows rose to her hairline. She raised her hand and indicated a hallway off to the left. Lance charged in that direction, Felicity, Hilton, and the other cops following in his wake. The hallway opened into a spacious, ornately decorated room. Maybe a living room, but it was the first one Felicity had ever seen (outside of magazines) that didn't have a TV. Everything was cream and shades of gold, and standing in the middle of it were Oliver Queen and his bodyguard. The two men dropped their handshake.
Oliver rolled his eyes. "What now, Detective?" He seemed to be making a point of not looking at Felicity. She hoped that meant he wouldn't say anything about their previous contact, but there was no way to let him know that she wouldn't say anything either.
"Oliver Jonas Queen, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice, aggravated assault, trespassing, acting as a vigilante, and murder."
A teenage girl with sleep-rumpled hair burst into the room as Lance rattled off the charges. "Ollie, what's going on?" she asked.
"Let's go." Detective Lance snapped his fingers, and the two uniformed officers stepped forward to slap a pair of handcuffs on the young billionaire.
"Ollie!" The girl launched herself at the cop with his hand on Oliver's elbow, but Hilton grabbed her and held her back as Oliver was led from the room.
There was a fire in the girl's eyes that Felicity recognized. Anger and fear all wrapped together in a crackling, sparking mess. Felicity caught Hilton's gaze and nodded toward the girl she knew to be Oliver's sister. Hilton inclined his head and let go of her, then headed off in the direction Lance and the other cops had taken Oliver Queen.
Felicity put her hand on Thea Queen's shoulder, but the girl shook her off. She glared at Felicity, and then looked her up and down, assessing her.
"Who are you?" Thea demanded. "You're too young to be a cop. What are you doing with those stupid jerks who just took my brother away?"
"It's not important," said Felicity. "Look, I know you're upset, but if you go after them, they'll just arrest you too."
Thea's shoulders slumped.
"Call your mom, okay? And have her call a lawyer." Felicity smiled a little. It was easier to lie with a smile on her face. "It's going to be okay."