Calling The Bluff
based off a prompt on tumblr: LockStat sends Beckett an ultimatum. She calls his bluff.
He's sitting in the shadows, eyes glued on the plethora of screens before him, watching the little people go about their lives, oblivious to those that watch and pull the strings, dictating the course of human events unseen. There's a knock at the door. He checks the security camera, recognizes the face of the enforcer he had sent to deliver a message to a particular thorn in his side, more like an annoying itch really. Nothing substantial in the larger scheme of things.
He waits a beat, and then buzzes the man in.
"How did it go?" he asks, curious as to the woman's response to his ultimatum.
"She said you were bluffing, that killing her husband would only bring down the full force of her vengeance on you and that's something you'd regret" his messenger rehashes his conversation with the obsessive NYPD captain.
He can't help but laugh at the audacity of the woman. All because she managed to bring down a corrupt senator, who foolishly got his own hands dirty instead of staying in the shadows, she thinks she can take him down. The woman is a fool. She should know better.
Did she seriously doubt his resolve to silence all connections?
He had a well-known disgraced senator brutally killed while locked up in solitary confinement with little care as to the questions such a death would cause. He had an entire team of federal agents killed simply for knowing the name LockStat. Did she seriously think that he'd just let a quasi-famous author walk around with more knowledge than that in his head.
He shook his head, amused by the woman's arrogance. Her feeble threats of vengeance meant nothing to a man like him. She'd doomed not just herself, but also her loved ones, the moment she refused to accept his offered scapegoat.
"Foolish woman, I gave her an out, and she didn't take it," he mumbles to himself, amazed at how self-sabotaging some people could be.
"What should we do?" his man asks.
"We gave her a second chance to back down, and she's refused," he answers coldly. "Kill her. But first, kill the husband and his family. I want her to suffer before the end, see the consequences for her decisions."
"Should I make it look like an accident?"
"No. Make it dirty and ugly. No need to play coy now. If she thinks we're timid, time to show her just how wrong she is."