(A/N: This update has been a long time coming. Thank you for being patient with me as I dealt with all the things that took priority over this story. I promise the next update will be quicker. This chapter covers the events from the first part of 1x6, "Legacies.")
Chapter 14—A Full House With the Royal Flush
Detective Lance took a week's vacation, to pull himself together after his brief relapse, Felicity supposed. She spent that time partnered with Hilton, finishing the paperwork involved in Lance's shooting of the would-be assassin. Toward the end of the week, they were out to lunch when a call came in over the radio.
"Ten-sixty-five, Starling Trust Bank. All units respond."
An armed robbery in progress. A bank robbery. Hilton tossed some cash on the table and stood up. Felicity glanced down at her half-eaten BLT.
"Come on, Smoak," Hilton urged. "No time for a to-go box."
She grabbed her purse and followed him out the door. He drove like a crazy person, weaving in and out of traffic, while she fastened her seat belt one-handed and radioed in their location and ETA. Someone called in a report of shots fired, which started a burst of chatter over the radio.
Three marked units had beaten them to the scene. Hilton skidded to a stop behind the nearest one. Crouched behind the cover of his open door, he spoke to the closest officer. Then he ducked his head back inside the car.
"Three of them, all armed and wearing masks," Hilton said. "They're still inside."
"Crap." Felicity pulled her gun out of her purse and checked the safety. They were too far back for an effective shot, but it was wise to be prepared in case the perimeter was breached. She opened her door and stood behind it. She was short enough that she didn't have to bend down at all, and had to reach up a little to rest her hands with her gun on the top edge of the door.
The front doors of the bank were closed, and the entire street was eerily silent during what should have been a busy lunch rush. Felicity suppressed a shudder and narrowed her focus to the front of the bank. Detective Hilton grabbed a bullhorn from somewhere and shouted into it.
"Starling City Police Department! Lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up! Repeat: lay down your weapons and come out with your hands up!"
Silence. No movement.
Then the bank's doors opened. Felicity tensed, her grip tightening on her gun. A blonde woman in a green blouse hurtled down the steps of the bank. She was wearing a white mask with a playing card queen on it.
"Hold your fire," said Hilton as the rest of the hostages burst out of the bank, all wearing similar masks. "Hold your fire!"
It was impossible to know if any of the robbers were among the hostages, not when they all wore masks.
"They're all hostages. Mills, contain the hostages!" Hilton shouted to one of the other officers. "All units, move in, move in!"
Felicity stepped out from behind the protection of her door, shaking off a hostage who tried to grab her arm as she moved past, following Detective Hilton.
Uniformed officers streamed into the bank and spread out to clear the building. Felicity stuck close to Hilton, but her gaze roved across the bank lobby, stopping at the body on the floor. The body on the floor.
This is what she'd wanted, to be out of Cybercrimes, out of Internal Affairs, working cases that did not make her feel the need to shower afterwards. Of course she knew that a move to Major Crimes would come with its share of homicides, but she wondered if she'd ever get used to it. She wondered if she should.
"Smoak." Hilton snapped his fingers at her and pointed to the body. She gaped at him for a moment before she realized what he wanted.
Felicity stepped around him and approached the body. The glint of gold caught her eye—a bloody police shield on the floor, inches from the man's head. There was a messy exit wound on the right side of his chest. He'd been shot in the back. She tried not to look too closely as she reached down to check for a pulse that surely wouldn't be there.
Felicity was examining his features, trying to determine if she'd ever seen him around the department, when she felt a flutter beneath her fingertips.
"He's alive," she whispered. The man's eyelids twitched. "He's still alive!" she shouted. "We need an ambulance!"
Once the call was made, Felicity wasn't sure what to do. She clicked the safety on her gun and shoved it in the pocket of her jacket. Then she used her bare hands to put pressure on the exit wound to stop the bleeding. She recognized the man now. Stan Washington. He worked in Vice, and he was married, with kids. She pressed down harder.
Everything happening around Felicity was a blur. Her world had narrowed down to her and Stan. A hand on her shoulder startled her, but she shrugged it off, focusing on maintaining pressure on the gunshot wound.
"Detective."
Stan twitched again, and Felicity breathed a sigh of relief. With her hands occupied, she hadn't been able to check his pulse again.
"Detective." The hand on her shoulder again. Someone's shadow stretched across her field of vision.
Felicity glanced up. Two EMTs were setting up a portable EKG on the floor next to Stan. A third knelt in front of her, a freckle-faced boy with muddy green eyes who didn't look old enough to drive.
"You did good, Detective," he said. "I'll take over from here."
She nodded, but her hands wouldn't move. So he did it for her, enclosing her bloody fingers in his gloved hands.
"You did good," he said again.
Felicity got to her feet and picked up Stan's police shield. Her hands shook as she dropped it into her pocket with her gun. She looked around. The bank lobby was swarming with cops, uniforms, detectives, and crime scene techs, but she didn't see Hilton among them. She snagged a beat cop she recognized from a Cybercrimes case and asked him where Hilton was. He directed her to the bank's vault.
The vault was much quieter than the lobby. Two techs conversed quietly off to one side, pointing at the big hole in the floor. Hilton paced back and forth dangerously close to the hole, barking orders into his radio. When Felicity stepped into the vault, he came over to her.
"How is he?" the detective asked.
"Still alive," Felicity said. "I think they missed his heart."
"Good. And you?"
"Fine."
"Bullshit," said Hilton. "You look like hell. Go home—"
"I'm fine," Felicity said. "Don't take me off the case just because—"
"You didn't let me finish, Smoak. Go home and get cleaned up," he said. "You can't deal with witnesses while you're covered in blood."
Her stomach rolled. She knew she shouldn't look down too closely, but her eyes were drawn to herself anyway. There was a lot of blood. She had knelt in a small pool of it, and it stained the knees of her pants. Her blue shirt was spattered and smeared, and her hands were red up past her wrists.
"Get cleaned up and then go back to the station," said Hilton. "I want you compiling everything as it comes in. Start digging so we can find out who these guys are."
"I already know," Felicity replied. Her voice sounded dull to her own ears, flat and tired. "I mean, I don't know-know. Like I don't know their names. But I'm sure it's the Royal Flush Gang."
"Haven't they been in the news?"
Felicity nodded. "They've been working their way toward the west coast. They'll hit two or three banks in a city and then move on."
"Find out who they are," Hilton said. "Then maybe we can figure out their next target."
Felicity caught a ride back to the station in a patrol car. If she went home, she wouldn't want to leave, so she decided to skip it entirely. In the ladies room, she scrubbed her hands clean of Stan's blood. She changed into black sweats and a gray t-shirt that were normally issued to trainees—they had "SCPD" emblazoned on them in large white letters—and turned her bloody clothes over to the crime lab, along with Stan's shield. Her new ensemble looked ridiculous with her black Mary Janes, so she kicked off her shoes and stayed behind her desk.
She monitored the various databases, pulling each report off the servers as it came in. Once she'd complied everything that would be coming in for the night, she called the county hospital to check on Stan Washington's condition. But he'd been transferred, she was told, to Starling General. That was good—all the superstar doctors were at Starling General—but Felicity knew the limits of the city health insurance plan, and she doubted it covered the move.
"Transferred on whose authority?" she asked the receptionist.
"Oliver Queen's," the woman replied. "Apparently he's footing the bill too."
A quick call to Starling General confirmed that Stan had arrived and was in the Critical Care Unit. His condition was serious but stable, and Mrs. Washington was telling anyone and everyone about the generosity of young Mr. Queen, and how he'd shown up in person, bodyguard in tow, to oversee the transfer.
Felicity hesitated a moment before making the next call. She wasn't above pulling the cop card when she needed it, but was using her law enforcement status to satisfy her curiosity justified? Then she remembered Oliver Queen's bullet-ridden laptop. She'd crossed an ethical line for him—he owed her one.
The next call connected her with Stan Washington's hospital room. His wife answered the phone.
"I'm sorry to call so late, Mrs. Washington," Felicity said. "I'm Officer Smoak, and I'm just wrapping up some paperwork regarding the shooting." She crossed her fingers, insurance against karmic reprisals.
Mrs. Washington was effusive. It wasn't hard to get her started talking about everything that had transpired, and Felicity easily steered the conversation toward Oliver Queen's involvement.
"I was so surprised," said Mrs. Washington. "After all the trouble he had with the law before he disappeared, and his wrongful arrest last week, I would have thought he hated cops. But then Mr. Diggle showed up at County and explained everything to the doctors there, and when the ambulance pulled in at Starling General, the man himself came roaring up on his motorcycle."
Mr. Diggle. The enigmatic bodyguard.
"So this Mr. Diggle was there before Oliver Queen arrived?" she asked.
"That's right," Mrs. Washington said. "He was so nice, telling me Mr. Queen would be taking care of all the medical expenses, and Mr. Queen was just . . . gracious. Not at all what I expected."
If Felicity knew one thing, it was that Oliver definitely defied expectations.
"It's funny," the other woman continued, "but when they walked away, it looked like they had a little argument. I can't imagine what it was about."
After saying goodbye, Felicity hung up the phone and stared at it for a few moments. If the bodyguard showed up first and made all the arrangements, and then he and Oliver had argued . . . maybe the magnanimous gesture had not been all Oliver's idea.
"Go home, Smoak."
She glanced up. Hilton loomed over her desk.
"I'm not finished going through the evidence," she said.
"Your hands are shaking."
She'd noticed. She felt cold too, and nauseous.
"And don't tell me it's caffeine, because your coffee mug is dry," said Hilton. "Go home and get some sleep. You'll come at it with fresh eyes tomorrow."
She noticed he didn't say "we." Presumably he wouldn't be leaving any time soon. She wanted to argue, but he was right. She wasn't at her best, and it would be easy for her, in her shaken-up state, to overlook something. Reluctantly, she agreed to go home.
Hilton escorted Felicity to the door, where she remembered that she'd left her purse locked in her desk. She retraced her steps to the squad room while Detective Hilton buttonholed a patrol officer and berated him for some report that was late.
The squad room was dark, she and Hilton having been the last to leave, except for the blue glow from a single monitor nearest to the window that had definitely been shut minutes before. A puff of a cool breeze lifted the strands of hair around her face that had come loose from her ponytail. The monitor gave off just enough light for Felicity to see a tall hooded figure looming over the desk.
She hadn't been quiet in her approach, and he immediately looked up. He moved incredibly fast, snapping a flash drive from the computer before vaulting over the desk and leaping out the window. She'd only caught a glimpse under the hood, a sharply defined jaw line and a pair of cool eyes—blue, maybe—that held her gaze for a microsecond before he was gone.
Felicity hurried over to the computer. A few clicks of the mouse brought up a list of the last few commands executed.
"Oh, crap," she said, staring at the screen. Starling City's very own hooded vigilante had just broken into the police department, downloaded everything they had on the bank robbery and shooting, then locked eyes with her before disappearing into the night. She ran over to the window, but he was long gone.