Thriving

The Count

"Ooh, you're in trouble." Amber teased.

"Amber." Moira scolded at the same time that Oliver gave his daughter a parental look that read 'that's enough'. "Is this true?" Moira looked up at her son.

Oliver hesitated, quickly putting together a lie. "I was looking into The Count. He's the guy who sold drugs to Thea and I figured if I could find out what he looked like then I could give your sketch artist something to go on. So I paid a lowlife with a Russian accent an obscene amount of money to arrange a meeting."

"And did you get eyes on him?" The female cop asked.

"No."

"All right, are-are you pressing charges against my son?" Moira questioned impatiently.

Quentin exhaled heavily. "You get involved in this again, you will see the inside of a cell and unlike last time, you will not see the way out." He started storming away but Oliver quickly followed.

While they had a quiet conversation, Mckenna said goodbye to Moira and Amber.

"Thank you for your time." Mckenna shook Moira's hand.

"Thank you for coming forward." Moira returned the gesture.

Then Mckenna walked over to Amber, a sweet smile on her face. "It was nice to meet you." She held out her hand.

Amber looked up, confusion clear on her face. "Um, you too." She shook Mckenna's hand.

Mckenna was on her way out when she stopped by Oliver. 

"Hope you don't think I sold you out." She said.

"No." Oliver shook his head. "Just doing your job."

With that, Mckenna left and Moira's scolding began.

"What on Earth were you thinking?"

"I was trying to help." Oliver defended.

"By running around with the Russian mob and a murderous drug dealer? Are you out of your mind?"

"This seems like a conversation for just you two," Amber said, as she stood up from the couch and awkwardly bolted out of the room. She slowed down in the foyer, sighing in relief when she saw Jessica. "Finally."

"Sorry, I'm late." Jessica apologized. "I was distracted by Lance and Hall leaving. What happened?"

"Dad did something stupid," Amber said.

Jessica pursed her lips. "That sounds about right. What did he do?"

"I'm sure you'll hear about it at work," Amber replied. "Can we go? I'm gonna be late."

Jessica nodded. "Yeah. Sure." She led the way out front to her car, noting the oddness in her stepdaughter's behavior.

* * *

The drive to school was quiet. What Oliver said had sparked an idea in Amber's brain. He'd mentioned that he wanted to get a look at the Count's face so that he could give a description to a sketch artist. Unfortunately, that plan didn't work out. But what if something good could come out of that botched drug deal?

Amber spent the majority of the school day paying absolutely no attention to her teacher. She was too busy devising a plan to help Thea. She ultimately decided that she would try to find the Count's drug den. How exactly did she plan on doing that? Good question.

Instead of going to lunch, Amber went to the computer lab. She chose a computer towards the back where she was less likely to get caught.

The first illegal act Amber committed was hacking into the SCPD database. She read through the most recent reports and found the address of the parking garage where Oliver attempted a meet with the Count. Her second illegal act was hacking into any and all security, traffic, and atm cameras she could find around the parking garage. Amber managed to catch the Count's speedy exit and tracked the car all the way to an abandoned warehouse.

At this point, lunch was almost over and Amber had a choice to make. She could either email Jessica what she found now and risk getting caught, or she could wait until she got home and was able to cover up her tracks to send it.

The bell rang and Amber made a split-second decision to send the email with her fingers crossed.

* * *

Jessica didn't see the email for several hours, long after she had picked up Amber and dropped her off at the mansion.

After Oliver had tried to meet with the Count (Jessica got quite the earful from Lance about that), the precinct was kicked into high gear trying to catch him. So Jessica had been busy chasing down leads and questioning CIs for intel.

When she finally found a lull in her day, Jessica sat at her desk and looked through her email.

It was weird enough that there was an email with video attachments. But Jessica felt thoroughly freaked out when she realized that it was footage from cameras across the city tracking a single black SUV to an old, abandoned warehouse. And the cherry on top of it all: Beth Mitchell's old hacker alias was attached to the email.

"Kelton!" Jessica shouted for the IT guy.

The skinny and balding computer nerd came jogging over. "What?"

Jessica pointed at her computer screen. "I need to know where this email came from."

"Okay." Kelton nodded. He pulled the chair sitting beside Jessica's desk around so that it was beside her and in front of the computer. "Shouldn't be too hard."

"The faster the better."

"Got it." Kelton clicked around and typed for a few minutes before sitting back. "That can't be right."

"What?" Jessica's head snapped toward Kelton.

"It says that this email was sent from an elementary school." Kelton pointed to the address he had managed to pull up.

Jessica leaned forward, her eyes widening as realization dawned on her. "Son of a bitch."

"What?"

"Nothing." Jessica shook her head. "This stays between us."

"Someone hacked into city property," Kelton argued.

"Kelton, you keep your mouth shut about this or I will make you regret it for the rest of your life however short it may be." Jessica glared coldly at him, her voice low and threatening.

Kelton gulped, petrified. "Got it."

"Good."

A/N: Shit's going down.