(A/N: Bless you, readers, for sticking with me. I know it's been a long time, but I promise you I am committed to this story. I am also committed to my life outside of this story, and sometimes stuff just comes up. Thanks for waiting patiently and not bugging me. I really appreciate it. So here's a nice long chapter with a juicy flashback that covers something I've been DYING to write about. :P)
Chapter 18—Shady Characters
A knock on the driver's side window made Felicity jump. Detective Lance. She lowered the window.
"How long you been parked here, Smoak?"
"I don't know," Felicity admitted.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
The reply was automatic, years of conditioned, hollow responses to people who were only asking to be polite, not because they wanted an honest answer.
But Lance, it seemed, wasn't asking to be polite. He walked around the front of the car (which he did in about two strides) and got in on the passenger side. He folded his legs so that his chin could almost rest on his knees.
"Something's got you rattled," he said. "What did Queen say to you?"
"Nothing," she said too quickly.
Detective Lance's eyebrows grazed his hairline.
"Nothing to do with the case." Felicity looked down at her hands, still clenched on the steering wheel.
"Smoak, the Queens chew people up and spit out the bones," said Lance. "It's what they do. I wish I could arrest 'em all just for that, but being soul-sucking, two-faced . . . Well, it's not against the law. All I can do is warn people off."
"You already did," Felicity pointed out.
"That was a nudge. This is a warning. Next time . . . There shouldn't be a next time."
Felicity let go of the steering wheel and let her hands fall in her lap. "I can take care of myself."
"I'm sure you can. You wouldn't have made detective otherwise."
"I'm not your daughter. I'm your partner." She stole a sideways glance at him. He was staring straight ahead. "You warned me, I listened, and it's done."
Detective Lance opened the door and unfolded his legs.
"I'm an adult," Felicity continued. "I have been for a while. And I'm not afraid of Oliver Queen."
Lance grunted something that might have been assent or just an acknowledgment that the conversation was over, then got out of the car. He started to close the door but leaned his head back in.
"Maybe you should be," he said.
Felicity watched him walk off and disappear into the building. She didn't know what to do next—her thoughts were in such a tangle. She might be the only person who knew the identity of Starling City's vigilante, besides the vigilante himself.
Oliver Queen. She had a hard time reconciling what she'd learned of him with what she knew about the vigilante. The Oliver Queen from her research was spoiled, entitled, a brat if ever there was one. The vigilante was a trained killer. And what about the Oliver Queen she'd been doing favors for? He was totally different.
Felicity rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She'd been doing favors for the vigilante. Had she contributed to people getting killed? The vigilante's victims were all guilty of some really awful things, but he had no right to carry out a death sentence. And she certainly wasn't about to help him commit murder.
She wasn't stupid, either. She'd made the connections between the names Oliver had dropped, the cases she'd worked on, and what she saw on the news. But Felicity wasn't able to wrap her fairly enormous brain around it until the incontrovertible truth stared her in the face. Or his face. Or his face staring back at hers . . . Whatever. There was a lot of staring.
And what about the rest of those recent revelations? The vigilante following the mysterious motorcyclist out of Russo's. That accidental text she'd received, Oliver wanting to talk to his bodyguard about Helena Bertinelli. Frank Bertinelli's dead associates. How self-destructive could one person be, getting involved with a mobster's daughter and suiting up every night to take on the city's criminal elite?
"I need a drink," she said out loud.
Felicity couldn't bear to return to the squad room. She texted Lance something bullshitty about cramps that she hoped would discourage him from asking any questions, and then she headed home. She needed her cat, and a glass or two of wine, and maybe the smoked mozzarella in her fridge that she'd been saving for just such an occasion.
No sooner had she settled on the couch with her wine and cheese, then there was a knock at the door. Highly annoyed at the interruption, she jumped up and flung it open, assuming Detective Lance was dropping by with another gloomy, pointed warning about all things Queen. The lean, craggy older man on her front stoop arched an eyebrow.
"You're not Detective Lance," she blurted out.
"I am not," the man said. "Josiah Hudson. And you, I assume, are Felicity Smoak."
"I am. Is there something I can help you with?"
Hudson looked her up and down. "You might want to have this conversation inside."
"Because I'm wearing pajamas? I don't care."
But she did care a little bit. Her shirt was printed with a graphed parabola and the words "I want you to be tangent to my curves," and it was a little cold to be outside wearing sleep shorts.
"I don't let random strangers in my home," Felicity said, "even ones who know my name."
"Fair enough."
He reached into his inside jacket pocket, and she wished she hadn't already unloaded and locked up her gun for the night. But he pulled out, not a weapon, but a book. A little leather-bound book that looked more like a journal.
"Your research skills come highly recommended," said Hudson. "My employer would like you to find out everything you can about this book."
He'd moved forward, crowding her in the doorway. Reflexively, she took a step back. Now they were in her house.
Felicity really didn't want to touch him, but she also really didn't want him in her own space. So she pushed him back. Not a shove—just hard enough to send a message.
"If you know my name and address, then you know I'm a cop," she said.
"I do," Hudson admitted. "I also know about your college boyfriend, your ability to count cards, and the real reason you left SCPD's Internal Affairs office."
Felicity tried to maintain a poker face, but her fingernails were digging into her palms. Those were things only she and her mother knew, and she hadn't even told her mom the truth about her move to Major Crimes.
"My employer expects me to be thorough, Miss Smoak."
"Then why come to me?" Felicity asked. "I'm nobody."
Josiah Hudson smiled. It was creepy.
"You and I both know that's not true," he said. "My employer will be in touch." He turned to go. "Miss Smoak? Cop to cop, you should know better. That door has a peephole. Use it."
Felicity stared after him, open-mouthed. He faded into the darkness of almost-midnight, and then she heard a car somewhere in the distance start up and drive away.
She blew out a breath. "Okay, that was incredibly weird."
Felicity closed the door. Maybe it was time to buy that security camera setup she'd been eyeing at Tech Village. As she reached out to engage the locks, she saw the tiny book clasped in her hand. Josiah Hudson had somehow slipped it to her without her noticing.
"Creep," she muttered, locking the door and returning to the living room.
Jpeg didn't even twitch as she flopped down on the couch next to him. She picked up her wineglass and took a big gulp, tossing the book onto the coffee table.
"I am done doing people's dirty work," she said to the cat.
Her willpower lasted about twenty seconds. She might have been able to hold out longer, but her stomach growled. She reached for the cheese and the little book at the same time.
"Who am I kidding? I love getting my hands dirty . . . with research," she added, in case Jpeg was listening. "Just dirty, dirty research."
Jpeg opened one eye. Felicity could feel him judging her.
"I didn't mean dirty research," she said to him, breaking off a chunk of cheese. "I mean I can't resist it. Research, not dirty stuff. Oh my God, I can't even talk to you like a normal person. You shouldn't be letting me out of the house to interact with people."
Felicity flipped through the book quickly, and then once more, slower. Then she went through it again, page by page. All blank.
It almost looked handmade, but the paper was cut uniformly and no threads were visible. The cover was leather but plain, no tool marks or stitching. There was nothing distinctive about the book.
So why would this spooky Josiah Hudson guy be so cloak-and-dagger about an empty book?
Josiah Hudson. That was a place to start.
It was disappointing how easy he was to find. She'd have though the head of security for Queen Consolidated would try a little harder to stay under the radar. But his name and photo were listed on the company website for all to see. The executives all had professional photos reminiscent of actors' headshots. Hudson's looked like someone scanned in his company ID after failing to convince him to pose.
Now who had he meant when he talked about his employer? No one by the name of Queen was actually involved with the company anymore. Walter Steele, Chief Financial Officer, stepped in when Robert Queen's yacht disappeared. When it became apparent that there was no hope for his safe return, the board made Steele CEO. He had the decency to wait until Robert Queen was declared dead before marrying Moira Queen, though. Was Steele the nameless employer?
More cyber-digging and a few phone calls later, she learned that Josiah Hudson was not responsible to the board. He reported directly to Walter Steele and no one else. Steele was the one who'd told his security director to be thorough. Steele wanted to know everything that could be found out about the little book on her coffee table.
Felicity decided to confront Walter Steele at his office on Monday. She did not expect to be summoned by phone on Sunday afternoon. She knew the police chief and the DA were frequent dinner guests of Walter Steele and his wife. Turning down the summons was not an option if she wanted to keep her job.
She dressed in work clothes, a blue button-down and a striped skirt she hadn't been able to wear since making detective, since it was a little short for chasing down perps and crouching over bodies at crime scenes. She traded her fuzzy socks for black heels and smoothed her unruly curls into a ponytail. After slipping the book into her purse, she headed out the door and made the drive to the skyscraper in the heart of downtown Starling City.
Parking was a pain in the ass. The business district ought to have been deserted on Sunday, but all the spaces were filled with Mercedes and high-end SUVs. She ended up parking illegally, knowing she could wipe a ticket from the system.
Felicity was early. After checking in and clipping a visitor badge to her coat, she did a little exploring because she had an idea. The building was quiet, but she managed to get on the elevator with a woman who directed her to the Applied Sciences division. Dropping Walter Steele's name and flashing her other badge got her what she needed.
She walked into Walter Steele's office with her arms full. Without ceremony, she dumped everything on his desk and retraced her steps to flip the light switch. The room plunged into near darkness.
"What are you doing?" His voice was deep, his British accent rich.
"It needs to be dark in here if we're going to do this," Felicity said. A blush flared up her neck. "If I'd had more time to think of that sentence, it wouldn't have sounded so dirty. Look." She pushed the book toward him.
He flipped through the blank pages. "I don't see anything."
"I got these from Applied Sciences." She handed him a pair of safety glasses and put on a pair of her own. "They're able to pick up the sub-visible variations in the UV spectrum."
Steele put on the glasses. Felicity turned on a handheld UV light and shone it on the journal. "Now look at the book again."
The soft blue-purple light revealed handwriting on the page. It was a list of names. They both took off the safety glasses, and Felicity turned the overhead light back on.
Steele sat back. "I haven't even told you why I wanted to see you, Miss Smoak. Though I do appreciate you humoring me on your day off."
She shrugged. "Josiah Hudson showed up on my doorstep with that book. All roads led back to you, Mr. Steele. Well, one road, really. Neither of you is very good at being covert."
Steele leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. "Miss Smoak—"
"Felicity."
"Felicity. I realize you work for the Starling City Police and are outside my employ, and that I come to you for a favor. Your skills as a researcher, however, come highly recommended from sources both within and without the police department. So I asked Josiah to deliver the book to you and engage your services. He died this morning under questionable circumstances."
Felicity blinked. "Questionable?"
"I believe he was murdered."
"By who?" she asked.
"Whoever wants to keep these names invisible." He closed the book. "I want to hire you as a consultant. I'd like you to find out all you can about this, but you must understand what I may be asking of you. This mystery . . . Are you sure you want to do this?"
Felicity wrapped her arms around her middle. A man was dead. A creepy man, but still. He had been in her home, he had asked for her help, and now he was dead. There was only one answer to Mr. Steele's question.
"I hate mysteries," she said. "They bug me. They need to be solved."
"Very well," said Mr. Steele. "Then that will be all, Miss Smoak."
She wasn't his employee—she didn't like being dismissed. But she held her tongue for once, gathering up the borrowed equipment. She wasn't about to cop an attitude with someone so close to her boss. And he had given her a tantalizing puzzle to work out.
Felicity returned everything to Applied Sciences, lingering a few moments to catch a glimpse of what they might be working on, but there wasn't much to see.
On Monday, the squad room was abuzz with the excitement of what had gone down over the weekend. As the newbie, Felicity had been left out of the loop, and she'd been too busy with the vigilante and the book to turn on the news. Detective Lance took her out to Big Belly Burgers for lunch to make up for not calling her.
"So first, this fairly small-time fish, Anthony Venza, gets taken down," said Lance while they waited for their food. "He sold prescription pills, and turns out he's on Frank Bertinelli's payroll."
"Interesting," Felicity commented.
She sneaked a peek over her partner's shoulder. Oliver Queen was in the next booth facing her, looking glum and tired. She didn't think Lance had seen him—he would have said something cutting by now.
"No body count this time," Lance continued. "Venza lawyered up right away, but his flunkies all had the same story. Guy in a green hood, and some scary woman with a crossbow."
"What?" Her sharp tone caused Oliver to glance up. She lowered her voice. "The vigilante has a partner?"
Lance sat back as their waitress set their plates down on the table. "Looks that way," he said. "Then the top leadership of the Triad gets taken out. Only one guy's left alive, with a bullet in his leg. And he describes a scary woman wearing a mask who told him Frank Bertinelli sends his regards."
"She's trying to turn them on each other, isn't she?"
"Oh, it's already happened," said Lance, slopping a French fry into the puddle of ketchup on his plate. "Where have you been?"
When he looked up, Felicity gave him her fiercest glare. But the sting was taken out of it by the sight of Oliver over Lance's shoulder. His face wasn't smiling, but his eyes had a definite twinkle when they met hers. She shook her head a little—for a moment she'd forgotten who she was talking to and why she was mad.
"I've been left hanging by my so-called partner, is where I've been," she retorted, dragging her eyes away from Oliver and focusing back on Detective Lance.
A flicker of hurt flashed in the gruff man's eyes. The "so-called partner" comment was a dig, sure, but he kind of deserved it for not even telling her any of this until now.
"So what else did I miss?" Felicity asked. She used a fork to dig into her cheese fries. "I know there's more, because I heard the man himself is in custody."
Lance shook his head. "All that work, and some rookie in a uniform gets the collar."
Felicity sensed movement and spared a glance at Oliver. He'd leaned forward. The better to eavesdrop, probably.
"They won't make a rookie detective over this, will they?" She was a little worried. As far as she was concerned, there was only room for one upstart young detective in Major Crimes.
Lance smiled. "No one's gonna pin a gold shield on him just because he happened across Frank Bertinelli laying unconscious in his front yard."
He began to tell her the story behind the arrest, but she'd already heard some of it in the squad room, and she was distracted by Oliver. His bodyguard slid into the booth across from him, blocking her view. Damn.
"Chili cheese fries with jalapeños," Mr. Diggle said. "That's a cry for help if I've ever seen one."
Felicity covered her snort with a massive bite of cheese fries, which led to a coughing fit, which led to her gulping down half her soda.
The rest of Oliver and Mr. Diggle's conversation was lost to her until she was sliding out of the booth to leave. Her heart gave a painful little twist at the bodyguard's words.
"You know, Oliver, I'm no expert at this, but I don't think love is about changing or saving a person. I think it's about finding the person who's already the right fit."
As she buttoned her coat, biting her lip, she could feel Oliver's gaze on her. She refused to look up. Somehow she made it out of the diner without the hot tears she was fighting back spilling over.
If Detective Lance noticed Felicity was visibly upset when she got into the car, he didn't say anything. She stared out the window as they drove back to SCPD, thinking about Cooper Seldon, her first love, the last person she'd tried (and failed) to save.
7 YEARS EARLIER
A sharp pain lanced through her finger. Felicity looked down. She had been biting her nails, and she'd just drawn blood. She wiped it on her jeans. Her black polish was mostly chipped off. The courthouse opened at eight, and she was first inside after sitting in the IHOP across the street for four hours. In the restaurant, she'd picked at her fingernails, trying to ignore the smells of syrup and fresh coffee that were making her already nervous stomach swoop and roll.
She had paced inside the courthouse until her legs were tired, and now she was sitting on a bench. The only people she'd seen so far were clerks and judges. Not a single cop, and definitely no prisoners. Where the hell was he?
Sneaking around the bustling hallways wouldn't work. With her purple-streaked hair, black clothes and heavy eye make-up, she looked more like a criminal than an employee.
"I'm seriously starting to see the disadvantages of the Goth look," she muttered.
She approached four different people before she could get anyone to look her in the eye, and two more simply shrugged when she asked when federal prisoners would be arraigned. Since asking nicely was getting her nowhere, she decided the city of Boston deserved whatever it got. She was going to hack the system.
Felicity zipped up her hoodie and gathered her long dark hair into a ponytail. In a bathroom on the third floor, she scrubbed at her face with hand soap and wet paper towels until all the eyeliner was gone and her skin was pink and tender. It would have to be enough. There was nothing she could do about her clothes, or the fact that she hadn't showered in a few days.
She spotted a pair of reading glasses on the counter by the sinks. Someone must have taken them off and forgotten about them. She put them on. Combined with her contacts, they made her vision all swimmy, but she didn't need them to see. She needed them to look vulnerable, like a non-threat.
The first networked computer she found that wasn't in a high-traffic area was down in Archives, off a dim, spooky corridor in the basement. Everything looked kind of dusty. Maybe the archivist was on vacation.
"It'd be nice to catch a break right about now," she said to herself as she decrypted the computer's password.
From there it was easy to look up the court docket. Federal arraignments weren't scheduled until the afternoon. Two names were listed, neither of them Cooper's.
"Damn."
Why the delay? Cooper's public defender ought to be raising a stink about it, but Felicity had met him briefly when she'd gone to the jail two days ago. She wasn't overly impressed.
Piggybacking off the network, Felicity used an old hack to get into the police department's secure database. The first thing she'd done when she got to MIT was to hack the police department and campus security, writing her own back doors into the code, just in case. Now she used that back door to run a search for any mention of Cooper Seldon.
All the files were time- and data-stamped, most recent first. So she found it right away, read it twice without the borrowed glasses, and then vomited in a trashcan she hastily pulled out from under the desk. Somehow she erased her tracks and logged out of the system. Somehow she made it out of the building without attracting any attention. Then she sank to the curb and cried.
She cried until her eyes burned and her head pounded, until her sleeves were soaked with tears and snot. Red-eyed and hollowed out, she took a bus back toward campus, staring out the window. Felicity could still see the words behind her eyes.
Seldon, Cooper. Deceased. Suicide.
It had happened in the middle of the night. Sometime when she was pacing in the dorms before heading downtown, Cooper had chosen death over federal prison. Of course no one told her. Cooper had done everything he could to keep her out of it. All the waiting, all the skulking around, and that whole time he was laying on a metal table in the morgue. She swallowed hard against the burn of bile rising in her throat.
Felicity got off the bus on a street near the campus and walked a couple of blocks to a drugstore. After making her purchases, she walked a few more blocks to Cooper's dorm. No one stopped to talk to her, but no one usually did. She had few friends to begin with, and her world had pretty much shrunk down to Copper and his roommate, Myron. And Myron didn't like her very much.
She'd practically been living in Cooper's dorm room for the last few weeks, and a lot of her stuff was there, but she stopped at her own dorm first. She'd hacked the system ages ago and made herself a keycard for Cooper's dorm. When she entered his and Myron's room, it was empty. Myron had class, and Cooper was . . . She couldn't finish that thought.
The room was a mess. The feds had been all over it, searching through Cooper's belongings and seizing his computer. Felicity went into the bathroom and took out her contacts. That way she wouldn't be able to see anything of Cooper's. Then she tackled her hair. It was the longest it had ever been, and she used up an hour and two boxes of dye. The peroxide made her eyes water. While the dye set, she cleaned up and then went through her make-up, getting rid of the liquid eyeliner and the black and purple lipsticks.
Felicity left her dark clothes in a pile on the floor and stepped into the shower to rinse her hair. A lump formed in her throat, but she bit her lip and refused to cry. No more crying. Tears didn't change anything.
Wet hair dripping down her bare back, she shoved her discarded clothes in the same trash bag as the boxes and gloves and hair dye bottles. She used Myron's blow dryer and then dressed in clothes she hadn't worn since her freshman year, a twirly, knee-length skirt and a gray sweater over a white button-down patterned with tiny flamingos.
Foundation covered her blotchy skin and puffy eyes. She painted her lips with the only color she had left, a tube of bright pink lipstick that was old enough to be a little cakey. Her hand shook as she applied it, being careful not to meet her own eyes in the mirror.
She stepped into a pair of heels and then, as the final touch, she put on her own pair of glasses, daring to gaze at her reflection. Her hair, in a ponytail again, was now a wheaty shade of gold, and the square-framed glasses, a pair she only kept around for the times her contacts acted up after long nights of coding, somehow made her look both younger and more serious.
When she exited the bathroom, trash bag in hand, Myron was perched on the edge of Cooper's bed. His eyes were a little teary, but they widened when he saw Felicity.
"What the hell?"
She tossed the trash bag on the stripped twin mattress. Her duplicate keycard was inside it, as well as the silver ankh necklace Cooper had given her. He'd commented more than once that she looked like Death from the Sandman graphic novels—"only hotter"—and the ankh was all she needed to complete the look.
"I don't need that anymore." She indicated the trash bag with a tilt of her head. "This is me now."