Prodigal Son

Chapter 12

"Hello?" Oliver called out as he pushed open the back door to Verdant. No one had answered when he knocked and the door was open. There was a tan Honda Civic sitting outside so someone was here. He wasn't one hundred percent positive they were supposed to be here, it was the Glades after all, but Thea had said Tommy hired a new day manager.

Tommy continued to be elusive. For the last two weeks he was never at home at the fancy condo he owned, never answered his calls and only responded to texts with a generic "Can't talk now, catch you later."

Well, Tommy had his baby sister working for him. He could damn well talk now. But first, the same problem persisted; he needed to find him.

He texted Thea and asked if she knew where Tommy was without telling her why he wanted to talk to him. She hadn't been sure but thought he was back in LA. He wasn't going to hop a plane on an "I think so," so after dropping Felicity at home, Oliver spent the rest of Thursday calling hotels and later restaurants and clubs in the LA area with no luck. He'd still been on the phone when Curtis showed up after work at Felicity's place and he'd still been making calls to clubs when, with great satisfaction, he'd watched Curtis leave shortly before midnight.

It occurred to him somewhere in between that Felicity could have tracked Tommy down easily. Hell, she might not have even had to resort to the hacking and tracking skills that had run him to ground. He'd seen proof Felicity and Tommy had the kind of relationship where Merlyn just sauntered in and out of her home. Did that kind of relationship include always knowing where the other was?

He didn't have Felicity's special abilities, but he had other skills. After checking Tommy's condo again and seeing no sign of his black Jaguar, Oliver headed to Verdant. Running crews for 8 years taught him a thing of two about making sure employees accommodated his wishes—even if they weren't his employees. Whoever Tommy hired as his day watchman must have a way of contacting him.

He wasn't sure it was a good sign that the alarm appeared to be off once more. The metal door closed with a solid thud behind him as he cautiously entered. The lights were on. Would a burglar like the one Thea and Felicity ran into bother turning on the lights? The lights being on were about the only thing encouraging. The place was quiet. No one came to check on who had just walked in.

The continued silence had him on edge and only worsened his already foul mood. He didn't like how he'd left it with Felicity. She'd been learning to trust him again but something had happened to make her pull away. And when she'd made it clear she wasn't looking to change the rules of their deal yet, if ever, he'd reacted like a jealous ass and then compounded everything by overlooking the apology he owed her. By the time he'd surfaced from his Tommy fixation, it was too late and at that point, all he'd be doing was disrespecting her not so subtle request for space which meant tonight at the gala was the soonest he could get this weight off his chest. It wasn't hard to channel his frustrations onto Tommy's irritating habit of popping up, causing trouble, and vanishing. Ha! You'd think he was related to Thea.

Oliver glanced at his watch. Even if the day watchman put him in contact right away, he was running out of time. A flight from Starling to LA was at least a couple hours each way and that wasn't even counting checking in and getting through security. He could not miss the Foundation's gala so even if he got Tommy's info, he'd probably be twiddling his thumbs the rest of his day. That pissed him off even more. Already spoiling for a fight, he doubted he'd have any trouble convincing the day guy it was in his personal best interests to tell him exactly where his boss was.

He glanced down the hall that dead ended in access to the sub-basement. He saw a lot of stacked boxes but nothing else. He headed into the main club area and finally saw some signs of life. A clipboard and a rag had been left behind on the bar like someone had momentarily stepped away. And up on the second floor, light glowed behind the blurred glass door marked "Employees Only."