A Shot in the Dark 🏹 Oliver Queen

TEN.

Zoey's whiskey colored eyes stayed fixed on the hooded vigilante and he avoided making any sudden movements, as if she was a deer he didn't want to spook.

Zoey glanced down at the bow laying on the ground by the vigilante's feet. He noticed her wary gaze and he took several steps away from the weapon.

The vigilante didn't realize that Zoey was bating him– luring him away from his bow. 

When the bow was out of his immediate reach, she sprang forward and swung her fist at his head. He stumbled backwards, dodging the blow. While he was caught off guard by her unexpected attack, she kicked the bow and it slid across the floor, spinning as it went. The weapon disappeared somewhere under the couch and Zoey made a beeline for the door. 

The vigilante moved quickly, circling around the room and blocking the door so Zoey couldn't escape. She swung her leg, a swift roundhouse kick, and hit him roughly in his ribs. He buckled to the side and Zoey kicked at him again, but this time, he caught her by the ankle. He knocked her off balance and Zoey plunged backwards and landed hard on the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of her and she was momentarily paralyzed as she gasped for air.

"Fine," she huffed, "I'll help you. Just... I like being alive, so please don't– like–unalive me?" she pled. The vigilante leaned forward and grabbed her arm. He yanked her up to her feet and she wavered unsteadily, rubbing the sore spot on the back of her head. She considered pushing her luck and asking if the vigilante would allow her to go find some ice or a frozen bag of peas or something before she helped him. 

He led her to a desk that was pushed against the wall of the room. It was glass with gold metal edging and when she'd left earlier that day, the only thing on it had been her laptop. Now, there were two: hers and a rugged laptop, a heavy duty computer meant endure even the harshest usage environments. Hopefully the vigilante had sprung for the extended warranty because it looked like whatever harsh usage environment he'd brought it into involved a bunch of guns. 

A handful of bullet holes were scattered across the lid of the computer. Cracks in the cover spiderwebbed towards the corners. 

"I need to know what you can get off of it." The vigilante's explanation sounded more like a demand. 

She slid into the black velvet chair and opened the vigilante's laptop. The screen was just as damaged as the exterior. She was pretty sure there was even a piece of bullet shrapnel lodged between one of the cracks.

Zoey tried to comfort herself by instead imagining the leather-clad vigilante in a coffee shop, sipping on a frothy latte from a tiny mug and accidentally spilling it on the keyboard when his gloves wouldn't fit through the itty bitty handle. That could account for the shattered screen and cracked letter keys, right?

The screen was too damaged to display anything so she connected the laptop to her own, which took her much longer than it usually would have since she was still shaking. 

She still wasn't one-hundred percent convinced that the vigilante wasn't going to put an arrow through her chest the second he got the information he wanted, but if there was a chance that she could save her son from becoming an orphan with a simple computer hack, then that's exactly what she was going to do.

Clearly, this laptop didn't belong to the vigilante and there was no telling what she would find on its hard drive, but clearly it was important.

Using keystrokes stored in the computer's coding, she found the password and logged into the system. As the computer's displays transmitted onto her own laptop, she saw detailed schematics. 

"Looks like blueprints." Zoey announced. The vigilante was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at the screen. 

"Do you know what of?" he asked.