Thriving

The Count

After eavesdropping on the parlor conversation, Amber ran straight to her room and made a bee-line for her closet. Against the back wall was a pile of shoes, under which was an old shoebox of flash drives, sticky notes, and mini notepads.

Amber dug the box out from under her shoe pile and brought it over to her desk. She sifted through its contents till she found what she was looking for, a red flash drive with a hand-drawn picture of a pill taped to it.

Amber plugged the flash drive into her computer, only to find that the drive was locked through a passcode. Now, Beth Mitchell taught her daughter many things, but her passwords weren't one of those things.

"Damn it, Mom." Amber groaned. She glanced at the shoebox still sitting on her desk. She grabbed it and pulled out a random sticky note.

The small piece of hope that Amber was still holding onto started to fade when she read the sticky note. It was a few lines of nonsense that she recognized but didn't understand.

Amber sighed, turning toward a framed picture she had of her, Jess, and Beth. "You were insanely paranoid." She spoke to the photo.

For hours, Amber kept herself holed up in her room working relentlessly on deciphering her mother's coded passwords trying to find the right one for the flash drive. When she finally found it, she unlocked the drive and ran a search through its files for the word vertigo only to find zero results.

"Damn it."

* * *

The next morning, Amber went into the parlor to wait for Jessica to pick her up and take her to school. To her surprise, Moira was there, sitting across from Detective Lance and another female cop that Amber recognized from SCPD but couldn't name.

"Good morning, Amber." Moira greeted.

"Morning," Amber replied tentatively. "What's going on?"

"We're waiting for Oliver." Detective Lance answered before Moira could.

"Oh." Amber felt herself relax. "Wait, why?"

"It's none of your concern," Moira said. "Do you have a ride to school?"

Amber nodded. "Jess is on her way."

Right as an awkward and tense silence started to settle over the room, Oliver finally made an appearance.

"What's wrong? Everything okay with Thea?" Oliver's mind immediately went to the worst-case scenarios. He glanced over at Amber. "Is Amber in trouble?"

"What makes you think I did anything?

"You kicked a cop, got into a fight at school, and tried to hit a reporter." Oliver listed his daughter's transgressions.

"Okay, that's fair." Amber relented.

"This isn't about your sister or your daughter, this is about you." Quentin stood up. "Last night we got a call from a CI. Busted up a drug sale between a big-time dealer and the Russian mob."

"We?" Oliver looked over at the female cop. "I thought you worked the vice."

"Joint task force. Vertigo's got everybody holding hands."

That gained Amber's attention.

"Like I said-- last night, drug deal gone south." Quentin stepped closer to Oliver. "An eyewitness put you at the scene."

"Whoever he is, he's mistaken," Oliver said.

"Yeah?"

"I saw you, Oliver," The female cop admitted.