Author's Notes:
For all those who miss Peter as much as I do, this story takes place during the glorious period between "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" and "6:02 AM EST."
Standard disclaimer: I do not own the copyright, etc.
Special thanks to Frinja and My Beautiful Ending for the beta read.
Chapter 1 – Enemies close
"I'm really not interested," Peter told his father as he looked at the brick-like brownies on the paper plate.
"Are you sure, Peter?" Walter asked, in a way that, Peter assumed, was meant to be enticing. "The box claims that they have a half a day's serving of fiber, which, I think, explains why there are not properly gooey."
"Oh, does that explain it?" Peter asked sarcastically.
"Well," Walter admitted with a chuckle, "At my age, you cannot have too much fiber, so I added a little of my own."
"Why do I get the feeling that you're not talking about a teaspoon of Metamucil," Peter said.
"No, actually, I . . ."
"Wait," Peter said, as his cell chirped, informing him that he had a text message from a very well-known number. "It's Olivia."
"Wonderful!" Walter said excitedly. "Perhaps she can come over and join us!"
"I don't think that's going to happen, Walter," Peter said slowly as he read the message. "She wants me to meet her."
"Oh, should I come too?"
"No," Peter replied, putting his phone back in his pocket. "You stay here and enjoy your brownies."
"Thank you, Peter," Walter said with a soft, gleeful chuckle, " I shall!"
~break~
It was unusual for Olivia to text Peter out of the blue and ask him to meet her somewhere – but it wasn't quite unexpected. Peter did such things all the time, when he found a great cover band playing at a local bar or a hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant that served the hottest kimchi on the continent. He always texted her, asking her to meet him – the implicit promises that she would like what she found was always fulfilled. So, it was not inconceivable that Olivia would reciprocate in kind. It was not beyond belief that she had found the cafe with the perfect cup of Turkish Coffee. But it didn't feel right.
As Peter approached the address on his phone, a small nail salon in one of East Boston's less attractive strip malls, he was nigh certain that Olivia was not going to surprise him with a mani-pedi.
He'd texted her, asking for clarification and she'd responded "Come Now." She didn't answer her cell, and her work number just dumped him into voice mail – which wasn't surprising considering it was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon.
Had anyone else texted him imploring him to come to this location, he would have turned around and gone home. But this was Olivia: she wouldn't try to be cute or play games, she wouldn't be vague unless she could not be clear, she wouldn't call desperately for help unless she needed it – and if she needed it, she would find a way to call.
Peter parked at the far end of the strip mall and walked slowly down the shaded pavement towards the salon. He passed a dollar store doing brisk business, a dry cleaners that seemed deserted, a child care center with non-licensed, not-quite-Disney Mickey and Minnie Mouse painted across the windows, and a mobile phone store that seemed to have a long line of frustrated customers.
He opened the salon door and was assaulted with the eye-watering smell of nail polish and polish remover. He noticed that all the pretty, young, Southeast Asian women working there were wearing surgical masks to keep them from inhaling too many of the toxic fumes. None of the clients were wearing the masks, however, and Peter could not help but wonder if that was a subtle form of class warfare.
But, this was not the time to guess at sociological games. He walked up to the counter, where a young woman in a mask was rapidly sorting through a pile of nearly-identical peach-colored nail polish bottles, dividing them into two groups and, occasionally, throwing one away.
"Excuse me," he said, loud enough that he was sure everyone in the small shop could hear him. "I'm looking for Olivia Dunham."
"She come here?" the woman asked, barely sparing him a glance before she returned to her sorting.
"She sent me a message," Peter said, lowering his voice. "She said she'd be here."
"She here?" The woman asked, this time actually turning from Peter to examine the women in the room.
"No," Peter said.
"Maybe she come soon," the woman told him, offering him a curt smile behind her mask.
Peter did not know what to do next. He could wait and see if she showed or he could assume it was a fluke and ask her about it on Monday morning. The later choice was certainly preferable, but if she was in real trouble, as his gut insisted she was, he didn't dare take the chance.
"Thanks," Peter said, scanning the room once more, looking for anything suspicious, anything that could give him any kind of clue, and finding nothing. "I think I'll wait outside."
The woman sorting nail polish returned to her task without offering him a response and no one said a word as he opened the door and walked back into the, comparatively, refreshing air of the parking lot.
His relief, such as it was, was short lived. As soon as he was out the door he saw someone he has been dreading for the past six years. A tall man in his early 50s, solidly built, with thick black hair slicked back to cover a growing bald spot. He was smoking a cigar and leaning on the hood of a large, red, luxury Ford F-150. Everything about him was conspicuous – Peter knew that was a bad, bad sign.
"I'll be damned," Big Eddie said with a laugh. "If it isn't Peter Bishop."
"Yeah, I bet you will be damned," Peter said coolly as he walked across the parking lot towards the petty gangster. "Where's Olivia?"
"At my sister's house," Eddie said, smiling in a way that made Peter's skin crawl. "Probably enjoying the best Cuccidati of her life. Why don't you come and join her?"
"Because I have no reason to trust you," Peter said, forcing all his fear and anger down and displaying nothing more than cool detachment. "I remember seeing that you were out on bail," Peter said. "But I thought you were under house arrest."
"I am," Eddie said. "I can't go more than a mile away from the house. If I tried to walk over to the dollar store to buy my old friend a Coke, there would be cops all over me like ants at a picnic. However, you come to my sister's and I'll offer you all the ice cold Coke you want."
"I want to know where Olivia is," Peter insisted.
"Come on," Big Eddie insisted, boxing Peter fraternally on the arm and smiling warmly through his threats. "Think of the worst thing that could possibly happen and ask yourself, wouldn't you rather be there to try and stop it?"
Peter swallowed, "When you put it like that . . ."
"That'a'boy," Eddie said, opening the passenger door to the truck.
With a deep breath, Peter pulled himself inside and did not flinch when Eddie slammed the door shut behind him. In another moment, Eddie was in the driver's seat and they were rolling out of the parking lot.
"So, Peter," the gangster said conversationally, "How you been?"
"I'm pretty sure you don't care," Peter said. "So you can drop the act."
"Oh, no, oh, no," Eddie said with a chuckle. "I'm not gonna do that just yet. We haven't seen each other for five years so, tell me, how you been?"
"Good, I guess," Peter said.
"Moved back home with your dad, I see," Eddie observed.
"It's more like he moved in with me," Peter said. "He needs someone to keep an eye on him."
"Weren't they doin' that at the loony bin?" Eddie asked. "I thought for sure your dad was locked up."
"Yeah, well," Peter said uncomfortably. "Turns out he wasn't so crazy after all."
"Reconnecting with family, that's good, that's good," Eddie said. "And a new job too, contracting with the feds."
"Yeah," Peter said curtly.
"Job that comes with a pretty girlfriend."
"It's not like that," Peter said, feeling angry at the aspersion on Olivia's character.
"Still, it's nice to have a girl on the side."
"I told you," Peter insisted. "It's not like that between me and her."
"Of course it's like that," Eddie replied. "You're a con, Peter. Always have been. Best con I've ever seen because you got the brains and you got the heart. But a con is a con and no one but no one gets close to a con."
"I'm not a con," Peter said. "Not anymore."
"You can't help it, Peter Bishop," Eddie scoffed. "Who you are is a lie, so it don't matter how honest you are about the particulars."
"What are you talking about?" Peter demanded. It almost sounded like this local gangster knew, somehow, that Peter was from the other universe and his life in this one was based on lies. But Peter could not figure how Big Eddie would learn the truth about that and, even if he had, how the thug could possibly understand it.
"Eh, I'm just makin' conversation," Eddie said nonchalantly. "And here we are."
Big Eddie had driven Peter away from the poorer part of the neighborhood, past Piers Park, to a block that could be the poster child for urban renewal. He stopped at a beautiful Gingerbread Victorian house that had recently been painted white with sky blue and candy-apple red accents.
"Nice place, eh?" Eddie said as he got out of the truck. "Used to be my uncles but when he had to sell . . ."
" . . . because he was indicted by a grand jury for money laundering and is currently spending 25 to life in federal prison." Peter supplied, glad that he could finally demonstrate that he was just as aware of Big Eddie's activities over the past five years as Eddie was of his.
"Ha," Eddie scoffed, good naturedly, "You do keep up with the news, don't ya? But, when he had to sell she bought it for a song and turned the place around. It was a real eye sore then. Now," he gestured at the house, indicating that its appearance spoke for itself, and his sister's abilities.
"Why are we here?" Peter asked, refusing to be impressed.
"You wanted to see your girlfriend," Eddie answered.
"Why is she here?"
"I'll let her tell you the story," Eddie said. "Come on in."
Tentatively, Peter walked up the large porch cluttered with bikes, young children's ridding toys, and wicker furniture. He followed Eddie through the door and into a dimly lit foyer, which was equally cluttered with coats, bags, shoes, and toys.
"Gennie!" Eddie yelled. "I'm back."
"We're in the dining room!" A woman's voice called back.
"This way," Eddie said nodding a pair of French doors at the end of the hall. Peter followed the gangster through the entirely normal hallway, lined with family pictures, wondering what could possibly be in the dining room.
The minuet he'd gotten the text, he'd felt something was wrong, and when he'd seen Eddie in the parking lot, he was sure things were very wrong indeed. He'd expected to find Olivia, bruised and beaten, in the trunk of a car, or surrounded by threatening tuffs in an abandoned warehouse by the Warf. He'd braced himself for that, for the courage and bravado that such a situation would call for – but now he found himself in a charming family home and did not know how to act.
"Look who I found," Eddie said as he opened the French doors, revealing a formal dining room, made somewhat less formal by the three ten-year-old boys each playing with their own Nintendo DS at one end of the table. At the other end sat two women with a plate of cookies between them and a coffee mug each. The first woman had long, thick black hair, large brown eyes, and a warm smile. Sitting next to her was a little girl coloring in a coloring book with big toddler-sized crayons. Across from them was Olivia.
"Oh my God, Peter!" she said, clearly delighted and flabbergasted at the site of him. "How did . . .?"
"Are you all right?" Peter demanded, pushing past Eddie, ignoring the boys, the girl and the friendly-looking women, and kneeling in front of her so he could look her in the eye. Very blood-shot eyes, Peter noticed. And the usually-cream-white skin of her face looked red and irritated. "Did they hurt you?"
The question didn't faze her, "No, I'm fine," she assured him with a smile. "It was just pepper spray. They got my jogging wallet and my phone, but nothing I can't replace."
"Well, Ed, now that you're here I'm gonna put Nora down for her nap," the older woman said.
"No!" the little girl protested as her mother took a purple crayon out of her little hands. "I wanna color more!"
"You already got to color twenty minutes past your nap time," the mother said, picking up the little girl, who was now screaming "Wanna color! Wanna color!", and quickly exiting the room. Peter was too preoccupied with finding Olivia to care that a suspect was escaping.
"But how on earth did you know I was here?" Olivia asked. "Did Broyles tell you?"
"Broyles knows you're here?" Peter asked. His relief at seeing her well was quickly being overshadowed by his confusion at the entire situation.
"Well, I had to call in to let the agency know my phone was compromised," Olivia said. "I don't know if it would have gotten to him yet or not . . . but Peter, how did you know?"
"Do you know who's house you're in?" Peter asked softly.
Olivia's delighted smile faded as she realized that Peter had not come through serendipitous, but rather through nefarious, means. "Gennie said it was her house," Olivia replied.
"It probably is," Peter admitted. "And her brother is Big Eddie."
Olivia glanced at the man who had brought Peter into the room. He was standing over one of the boys, watching the small game progress. It was probably a racing game, because Eddie was urging "Look, there! You can pass him on the left!"
"What happened?" Peter asked seriously.
"I was out running and got mugged," Olivia said, pulling her eyes away from Eddie and back to Peter's worried face. "A guy jumped out of the bushes with a can of pepper spray. He got me in the eyes before I could react, grabbed my jogging wallet with my phone in it, and ran off. Gennie and her kids came by a few seconds later. They helped me wash the spray of my face, called the cops and stayed by when he took my statement, and she invited me here to make whatever calls I needed. She's going to give me a ride home in a couple minutes."
"Why didn't you call me?" Peter said.
"It didn't seem necessary at the moment," Olivia admitted. "I thought I'd call you once I was home and we could actually talk. But, Peter, how did you know I was here?"
"Because whoever stole your phone texted me and told me to go to a nail salon a mile away. Then, when I got there, I found Big Eddie."
Olivia looked at him, and Peter could see that she'd realized what he'd known from the beginning. Big Eddie had kidnapped her and used her to lure Peter. Why he'd done so was unclear, but the fact was unavoidable.
"Ed," Gennie said as she came down the stairs. "Nora's down for the count. You good to watch her while I drop off the boys at soccer?"
"Of course," Eddie said.
"Boys, stop your playin'. Get your bags."
"We're almost done with this race, mom," one of the boys said.
"Well, when you are done with the race you're done. If we don't leave in five minutes we'll be late." Gennie turned to Olivia and Peter, who was still kneeling on the floor.
"Olivia, I'd be happy to drop you at your place, like I said. Or, are you . . ."
"Um, I think I'll be going home with Peter," Olivia said, forcing a smile. "Thank you so much for everything. The cookies were delicious."
"Oh, help yourself, and, ah, Peter was it?"
"Yes," Peter said, standing up.
"Would you like some coffee? I brewed a whole pot. Or we have Diet Coke and Sprite, or apple juice or milk if you'd like."
"Thank you," Peter said, trying not to be rude, but still unable to feel at all gracious towards the woman who had participated in Olivia's kidnapping. "But I'm fine."
"I'll take care of all that," Eddie said, rejoining the conversation now that the boys had finished their race and put away their DSs. "You don't want to be late for soccer."
"Thanks Ed," Gennie said dismissively as she dug through the large bag over her shoulder, eventually pulling out her keys. "Mind if I stop by the store on my way back?"
"'Course I don't mind. You take as long as you need."
"And, if Nora wakes up you can give her some apple juice and put on a DVD."
"And maybe some of these cookies."
"Oh God," Gennie said, rolling her eyes, "You spoil that girl."
"Moooooom," one of the boys said from the door.
"Ok, gotta go," Gennie said, turning quickly to Olivia and Peter. "So nice to meet you both. Hope I can see you again sometime in more pleasant circumstances."
Peter couldn't reciprocate that feeling, but Olivia managed to say, "Thank you for all your kindness."
A minute later, the mother and soccer-paying boys were gone, leaving Peter and Olivia alone in the house with a dangerous gangster and a sleeping toddler.