Sara Lance peeled out of the crowd and moved in next to her, matching her pace, walking with her toward City Hall. Like her, the blond crime fighter wore civilian clothes.
“Nice blouse,” Dinah said.
“It’s something I picked up while working.” She looked Dinah over. “Well, someone surely has a serious face today.”
“Just thinking random thoughts.”
“Serious thoughts?”
“Somewhat. Nothing to worry over.” Dinah waved her hand in dismissal. “I’m glad you could join me,” she said. “I thought you had left us.”
“Think nothing of it. I’ll be with you till the end of this case.”
“How does that even work?”
Sara chuckled. “It’s better not to think about it too much.”
The two of them reached the doors to City Hall. They were impressive, stretching twelve feet tall and made of oak and glass and polished steel. Dinah pulled one of them open and waved Sara through. They crossed the lobby together, walking past the security desk as Dinah flashed her badge.
“That’s pretty handy,” Sara said. “I might have to get one of those myself.”
“Somehow, I didn’t think you’d want to go through a weapons detector.”
Sara grinned. “You flatter me.”
They rounded a corner, walked down the hall, and saw two familiar faces.
“There’s my daughter,” Quentin Lance said.
He spread his arms and he and Sara hugged as Rene and Dinah looked on. Dinah caught Rene’s eye.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“As well as could be expected,” he said.
“Don’t be a pain in the neck,” Lance chimed in. “He’s doing great.”
Rene shrugged. “I have to go finish this business, Hoss.” Before anyone could respond he turned and walked away quickly.
“Is he okay?” Sara asked.
“Yeah, he’s fine. It’s just been a long day,” Lance replied. He turned to Dinah and pointed to the door at the end of the hall. “Oliver is waiting for you.”
“I’ll go see him now.” Dinah nodded, and lightly touched Sara’s arm. “I’ll see you soon.” Sara nodded back and smiled. Then Dinah turned to Quentin and firmly gripped his arm.
“How’re you doing?” There was concern in Dinah’s voice. She didn’t know if Sara had been told what happened on Lian Yu, what her father had been through there, so she didn’t ask outright, but she felt the need to ask about his state of mind.
“I’ve been okay,” he said.
“If you need to, call me.”
“I will.”
Once she was gone Sara turned to her father. “How about you take a girl out to get some coffee?”
* * *
There was a knock at the door, and Oliver looked up.
“Come in.”
The door opened and Dinah stepped in. He set aside the file he was working on, folded his hands on the desk, and gave her his undivided attention.
“Is this a good time?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Did you find out anything that will lead us to Faust?”
“I don’t know that the beating had anything to do with Faust.” She sat in the chair across from the desk, crossed her legs. “There was nothing that indicated his involvement.”
“As… manipulative as Chase has proven to be, I have a hard time believing it could be a coincidence, happening so close to our recent encounter.”
Dinah didn’t speak for a moment. “It’s a great big city full of crime, Oliver,” she said finally. “You know we have a lot on our plate.”
Oliver considered her words. Dinah would know more than he would about the everyday crime in Star City. She dealt with the common criminals in the streets, as well as the threats that the team faced from persons that were beyond the norm. This was why he valued her perspective. He sat back, moving his hands to his lap. He wasn’t completely convinced, but he was willing to listen with an open mind.
“Please,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”
* * *
“Well, first of all, everyone thinks that you did this,” she said, being brutally honest with him. Holding back would do him no good.
“I didn’t.”
“I know that. The victim and a lot of people on the force think that you did.”
“The police think that this was me?”
She nodded. “Most of them actually don’t have a problem with it. This guy was an armed robber, after all.” Dinah felt a twinge of guilt over the assumptions she had made about Chavis, just because of his criminal past. After seeing him in that hospital bed, however, she couldn’t think of him as anything but a victim of a vicious crime.
She came back to the conversation. “Support for Team Arrow is high among the rank and file.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Don’t be too comfortable with that though,” she said. “They all still look at us as vigilantes, as a necessary evil, and their trust could be broken with next to no effort.”
“Do you think that’s what this new vigilante, this copycat, is trying to do?” he asked. “Undermine our standing with the authorities?”
She considered the possibility, shook her head, and dismissed it.
“According to the victim, this guy was looking for a drug dealer.”
“A drug dealer?” Oliver said. “Might he be trying to start up the drug trade again?”
“The drug trade never went away,” Dinah said. “Not really. You disrupted it in a major way with that bust of the Skulls. Oh, god, is that really what we’re calling them?”
Oliver just shrugged.
“Anyway, he seemed to be looking for the source of the drugs in town.”
“Are drugs that hard to find in Star City?”
“Not on the street. The users can always find them, but the players, well, players are pretty well hidden.” She shifted in her chair. “That’s why I think this guy is going after a source, and he may have just found it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, our victim gave up a big fish in the drug pond. He gave up Manny Cross.”
“I don’t know who that is.” He looked angry with himself at the very idea.
“Cross is someone that we’ve had on the radar for a long time. He’s got a high public profile, and covers his drug import business with his legitimate dealings. We’ve tried, but we haven’t been able to touch him. It’s a big operation and we drop a lot of his street-level operatives, but nobody gives up anything about Cross.
“What we do know,” she continued, “is that he used to move drugs through the city using the harbor and the trucking industry. His focus seems to have changed, though, and now he’s keeping the drugs in the city, and they’re hitting the streets in a big way.”
“Sounds like we need to put him on the list.”
“I thought you already had. He’s tied in with the Skulls.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe that’s what we’re calling them.”
“Think of a better name, and we’ll use that,” he said. “But why did you think I’d already put them on the list?”
“Because of that incident with the car carrier.”
“I knew the Skulls were active,” he replied, “but I didn’t know anything about Cross until you mentioned him. I wound up tangling with his crew by following a tip.”
“Is that why you took White Canary for backup?”
Oliver chuckled. “You don’t know Sara very well— she just showed up that night.”
“I don’t know her that well, but I do like her.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, not like that. I like that she’s direct. Doesn’t have any artifice.”
“No, she has none of that,” Oliver agreed. “Back to the beating of this guy, Chavis—if this copycat is going after Cross, we need to stop him quickly.”
“Why?” Dinah asked.
“I don’t understand the question,” O
liver said.
Dinah leaned forward in her chair. “Look, I saw his handiwork up close. I don’t know how good he is at investigating, but he took down three armed robbers and obviously has no problem doing what it takes. I say, let’s concentrate on Faust and clear that book up, because the team could use the closure with Chase.”
She leaned back again. “If this guy does any damage to Cross, it only helps Star City.”
“I don’t like the idea of a loose cannon running around.”
“Who do you hate the idea of more?” she asked. “A loose cannon aimed at a major drug dealer, or a psychotic explosives expert commissioned to create chaos and mayhem, all by a dead psychotic criminal mastermind who hated you?”
Oliver had no answer.
6
“Well, I must say they’re very impressive specimens.”
The tall man in the dark blue uniform didn’t respond other than to tilt his head in a slight nod. He watched Alex Faust move between the rows of his men, all standing at attention. Faust was an odd-angled man and he moved with odd-angle motions, elbows out and hands extended, almost as if he were constantly moving things out of his way. He was the polar opposite of the men around whom he walked.
Thirty of them, a mixed bag of physical attributes, but all of them wearing the same sharp battledress uniforms in the same midnight-blue color. They formed five columns of six men each, all of their shoulders and spines ruler straight, their feet together in polished boots, and their arms down their sides. None of them would give a man like Faust any respect, had they met him in a bar or on the street. He was too odd, too strange, the complete opposite of discipline. If they weren’t mercenaries then they would never allow him to inspect them like this.
But they were guns for hire.
And he was the man with the money.
“You say they’re trained to the highest specifications?”
“My men are tip-top, sir.”
“They work well under pressure?”
“They’re all combat proven. Battle-tested to the core.”
“Are they all veterans?” Faust kind of hopped around and moved back over by him.
“There’s all kinds of battle, sir. Some of them have seen combat, others are ex-military from various places.”
“And a lot of them are ex-convicts?”
“Some have gone up against the police, A.R.G.U.S., or the masks in town.” Tall Man shrugged. “You don’t have a problem with criminals, do you?”
“Of course not,” Faust said, “but the kind of crime that I’m involved with requires a certain amount of… steadfastness. Since criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, I need to know that your men will do as they are ordered when things begin to explode.”
“We are neither cowardly nor are we superstitious.”
“It’s just a saying.”
“What assurances would satisfy you?”
Faust tapped his chin as he thought about it. “Which one is your best man?”
Without hesitation Tall Man’s voice rang out, “El Tigre!”
Immediately from the ranks stepped a man slabbed with muscle. Even under the uniform it was obvious. Average height, he looked almost short, his proportions were so skewed, as if the amount of muscle he carried had compressed him with its weight. Even so, the tall man noted, he moved with the grace and ease of his namesake. Unreadable ink spilled down his python arms where they weren’t covered by sleeves. Tattoos of matching quality spilled from his collar and up onto his throat.
“I asked for your best,” Faust said. “Not your most intimidating.”
“El Tigre did two tours in Afghanistan, where he accomplished forty-three confirmed kills and an additional thirty-six unconfirmed. He returned and served eight years in Iron Heights. Inside, he became the reigning shiv champion until—”
“Excuse me,” Faust interrupted. “What is a ‘shiv champion’?”
“Shivs are illegal knife-fighting matches held in the sub-basement levels at many supermax prisons. They take their name from the crude weapons made by prisoners.”
“How exciting,” Faust murmured. “How do you become the champion?”
“You kill people, and you don’t die.”
Faust studied the man. “Why are you El Tigre?”
El Tigre looked at Tall Man, who shrugged his permission to speak.
“I earned my name by giving other men stripes.”
Faust nodded and turned. “I’m convinced.”
“Then we have the contract,” Tall Man said.
Faust reached into the pocket of his coat, pulling out a square object. “Not exactly,” he said. “I’m convinced this is your best man.” He tossed the square to El Tigre, who snatched it from the air with one quick move of a thick hand. A red light began flashing on the corner of the object. El Tigre looked at it impassively.
“What is that?” Tall Man asked.
“That?” Faust asked airily. “That is a bit of my homebrew explosive, a new formula I’m trying out. It should have a concussive radius of about three feet.”
“Why is it flashing?”
“You said your men were steadfast when things went boom. I’m testing that resolve. Let’s see how steadfast your best man is.” Tall Man looked at Faust, gauging exactly how far he would take this. Faust watched El Tigre, his fingers steepled in front of him.
“Hold your position, soldier,” Tall Man said to El Tigre. The mercenary nodded and resumed attention, the flashing object held by his side.
Seconds passed like minutes.
Faust leaned over, speaking to Tall Man from the side of his mouth.
“None of the others have moved.”
“My men are disciplined.” Tall Man couldn’t keep the tension from his voice. “I don’t want to lose my best one for no good purpose.”
“The amount of money I am going to pay you is a fine purpose.”
“Is your intention simply to buy cannon fodder?”
“You mean do I intend for all of your men to die?”
“That is my meaning.”
Faust considered his answer. “I don’t intend it, but soldiers die,” he replied. “I am about dangerous business.” He turned sharply to Tall Man. “I need to know that your men are also about dangerous business.”
Tall Man extended his hand. “My soldier hasn’t moved a muscle.”
“Why, you are right.” Faust walked over to El Tigre and studied him. The mercenary kept his eyes straight ahead. “Look at him, spine rigid, not even a tremble or a trickle of sweat to betray any nervousness he might have inside, from holding an armed explosive device.” Faust plucked the object from El Tigre’s hands. It continued flashing as Faust began casually tossing it into the air and catching it as if it were a simple tennis ball.
“So,” Faust continued. “If El Tigre is your best, then who is your worst?”
“All my men are the best you can hire.”
“Oh, come on!” Faust cried out. “We’re so close now! Leadership is about cold calculation and harsh assessment, so just tell me, who here is the weak link in your chain?”
“Rickson!”
From the back of the ranks stepped a blocky man with bulging biceps and a blond crew cut. He moved up with precise steps to stand beside El Tigre.
“Rickson is a decorated combat veteran. He is a fine soldier, and I have no complaints with his performance. I would not have him here if he wasn’t among the best of the best.”
“He does have a chiseled jaw, doesn’t he?” Faust stepped close to Rickson, looking up into the man’s ice-blue eyes. “A real poster boy we have here.” He slapped the bomb against Rickson’s chest. It stuck to his shirt. Faust stepped back. The moment his hand left the object the red light began flashing in a staccato rhythm. Rickson’s hands slapped at it, trying to dislodge it from his chest as Faust moved quickly away.
“Hold your position, soldier!” Tall Man shouted.
The light stopped blinking, burning steady and bright. Rickso
n’s fingers were under the edge of the bomb, prying a corner off his shirt.
A flash of light and a blast of noise, and suddenly the upper half of Rickson became a red mist. Viscera and gore painted the right side of El Tigre and the row of soldiers behind him.
“I cannot, and will not, abide weak links,” Faust said. Tall Man simply watched Rickson’s legs collapse into a pile.
“The good news is, you and your men are hired.” Faust clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll be working tomorrow night.”
El Tigre stood motionless with his former brother-in-arms dripping off his expressionless face.
* * *
She watched her father blow on the steaming cup of coffee he held in his hands, as she sipped her Killer Frost, a white chocolate cold brew coffee over ice. It was Jitters’ newest drink on their secret menu. A hyperactive teenager in line ahead of her had ordered one, and she figured anything that had a kid so hyped he was nearly vibrating had to be good. So she’d ordered one, then realized that a lot of the people inside the busy coffee shop had the distinctive drinks. There was a lot of vibrating going on.
It was sugary, but the flavor was nice and it was cool.
“I don’t see how you can drink regular coffee on a summer afternoon.”
“Hey,” Quentin said. “There’s air conditioning in here.”
She smirked at his attempt at humor.
His face turned serious. “I drink a lot of coffee these days.”
“That’s good.”
“Better than the other stuff I was drinking.”
“I’m proud of you, Dad.” She took another sip. “But I really want to talk about something else.”
“Oh yeah? You don’t want to just keep congratulating me for doing the bare minimum everyone else does, every day?”
She frowned at the bitterness in his voice. “Don’t put down your achievement, or I’ll kick your ass.”
“I wasn’t.” He recovered, and chuckled. “It was just a bad attempt at humor.”
“I’ll say.” She watched him, considering whether she wanted to dig at his “humor.” She knew a lot about avoiding feelings with bad humor and jokes that weren’t really jokes. In fact, she’d learned it from him.
She decided to let it slide for the time being. He was sober and holding it together, as far as she could see, but she made a decision to keep checking in with Oliver from time to time, to make sure her dad was doing okay.
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