"Hey, uh, you wanna get a few rounds tonight? Maybe go out for a bite to eat?" Elliot asked Olivia. He pulled on his heavy winter coat and horribly clashing-colored scarf tight around his neck, getting ready for the cold night.
"Sorry, El, maybe next time. I have a date tonight," Olivia said. She gave Elliot a sad smile. "Really. How about tomorrow night? We'll hit the bar."
"Oh...okay." Elliot looked down, dejected. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Olivia checked her wristwatch as she hurried to the elevator. She pressed the down button. Switching her weight from one high heeled foot to another, she debated whether or not running down the stairs would be faster than waiting for the elevator, which could be a very long time.
Tony was waiting in his car when Olivia finally appeared in the exit of the building. He unlocked the doors and greeted her warmly as she stepped into the heated car. His blue eyes looked her up and down, lighting up.
"Where're we going tonight?" Olivia asked, centering her necklace.
"You look beautiful," Tony said in his British accented voice. His pale lips split into a bright smile, revealing bone-white teeth.
"Thanks." Olivia flushed lightly as he lifted an alabaster hand to her cheek, and lightly traced the outline of her soft features with a gentle finger.
"Well we could try the same place as last time...the food was good," Tony said, pulling out of the parking lot. "But I'm a little over dressed for that." He looked fine, in Olivia's opinion. He was wearing his usual business suit; navy blue with a crisp white shirt and matching navy tie, his hair slicked back.
"And I'm afraid I'm a little under dressed," Olivia sighed, the full, tiring impact of the day finally hitting her. She looked down at her turquoise, v-neck shirt with coffee stains on the hem and the ruffled-looking dress pants hiding the peeling leather sneakers she had used every day for the past three years.
"You look beautiful," Tony repeated softly, glancing over at her.
"We could go to my place. It's a mess, but I actually have food," Olivia said, remembering how bare Tony's cabinets had been the last time she had been to his apartment, despite the large amounts of cash in his bank account.
"I don't like buying food," Tony said in a whiny voice. "It goes bad."
"You're supposed to eat it," Olivia said sarcastically as she watched the city lights pass by her, listening to the honking horns and smelling the smoke.
*
Olivia woke up the next day very hungry. She hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day. Tony was already up and cooking breakfast in the kitchen. As she faintly remembered, she and Tony had skipped dinner and enjoyed an early dessert, then shared a bottle of wine over a movie, which they didn't really watch much. Her memories were fuzzy, still affected by the alcohol.
"Smells good," Olivia said, stumbling into the next room, half drunk. Two scrambled eggs and four slices of bacon were waiting, sizzling, on a plate in front of her seat. She sat down and hungrily shoveled food into her mouth.
An alarm beeped from somewhere in the room. She looked at the clock and noted it was already seven-thirty, which meant she was late for work.
"Oh shit," Olivia said, scrambling up from the table. She ran to her room, throwing dirty laundry aside for a set of clean clothes. She was in the car and driving away before Tony had finished eating and had gotten his kiss.
Olivia managed to comb the knots out of her hair on her way to work. Makeup was a bit harder, but squeezed it in while waiting for traffic lights to turn green. All in all, she looked partially decent when she greeted Elliot.
"You look awful," Elliot observed, setting a cup of coffee on her desk.
"Thanks; rough night," she mumbled, rubbing her temples wearily.
"I have some bad news, Liv."
"El, I really don't want to hear it right now."
"I think you'll want to...it's about Anthony Marshall."
Olivia gasped and looked up, horrified. Two years ago, she thought she had put Anthony Marshall away for life, even on death row if they were lucky. That case had gone far past a professional relationship. It had haunted Olivia all day and crept into her dreams at night. After a three-year wild goose chase and many sleepless nights, she had finally trapped him in an empty alleyway. Once caught, he had been put in maximum-security prison, despite the one thousand dollar an hour lawyer he had hired with all his stolen money. Charged with twenty counts of murder and five counts of rape, he had been found guilty in a record amount of time. Before being locked away, Marshall had enough nerve to go after Olivia herself, but she had escaped; the only one who came out of his torture chamber alive.
"Anthony Marshall...I hadn't thought about him in...." Her voice trailed off as the drifted into thought. Memories flooded her brain; bad memories.
"Liv?"
"What about him?"
"He's escaped."
"Escaped? What? IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A MAXIMUM-SECURITY PRISON," Olivia exploded. After a moment, she managed to calm herself and continued more civilly. "How? How did those...how did it happen?"
"Oh, the usual. And of course Marshall is a con artist. He used drugs to alter his weekly tests. They rushed him to the hospital where he mad a break for it. He's been in the wind for six hours now, so he's probably half way around the world by now," Elliot said in a controlled voice.
"You know that's not possible," Olivia said irritably. "It would take hours to get half way around the world. Crap, El, who's he going to go after now? Me, probably...his only unfinished-." Olivia couldn't bring herself to say the word 'victim'. It meant giving up her superiority over Marshall.
"Don't worry," Elliot said. "We'll find him. You'll be fine; safe."
"You don't know that," she said bitterly, turning away from him.
"Excuse me, miss," an officer Olivia had seen before said, handing her an envelope bearing only two carefully printed words: Detective Benson.
"Who's it from?" she asked the officer.
"I don't know. I just pick up the letters from the mailboxes," the officer said, looking impatient to finish handing out the rest of the letters.
Olivia took the letter and looked at it suspiciously. From years of experience and stories, white envelopes with no return address or name were not recommended to being opened. Still, curiosity killed the cat.
"What's it say?" Elliot asked, flipping through the morning newspaper, searching for the daily sports section.
"I miss you Olivia," she read in a quavering voice. "From, A.M," she paused and then unnecessarily clarified, "Anthony Marshall." She lifted her head to meet Elliot's gaze. Her eyes burned hotly with threatening tears.
"Tonight you'll stay with Tony," Elliot informed her firmly. "I'll have Cragen set up patrol cars around the neighborhood."
"El, you don't have to," Olivia protested.
"No. We're not taking any chances," he said.
"Where is Cragen, anyway? I haven't seen him all day," she murmured.
"Ah, I think our captain might be pulling his life together."
"Meaning?"
"He was wearing a tuxedo the other night when he left the office. I caught a glimpse of the woman he left with...very pretty."
"Tony doesn't get home until eleven tonight," Olivia remembered.
"I believe we're supposed to hit the bar anyways, right? I don't think Marshall's stupid enough to attack two detectives, even two drunk ones," Elliot said, and then chuckled softly, hoping to lighten the mood.
"Alright," Olivia said and continued to mentally fret.
*
Music thumped from the speakers, pounding in Olivia's ears. It hurt, but was a great distraction from her mid-life-crisis. Paired with a few shots of straight vodka, Olivia barely recognized Elliot, who was sitting beside her.
Olivia didn't drink much. The vodka screwed with her brain quickly. After the fifth shot, she was completely wasted, and Elliot was barely affected. That worried her a little bit, and she thought that maybe Elliot drank too much, but she figured she had enough to worry about, and passed the thought by.
Now sipping on a glass of bourbon over ice, Olivia's words slurred as she went on about Anthony Marshall. She was still blubbering as Elliot paid the bartender and led her through the crowd, out the door and into his car, where he began to drive her home.
It was nearly ten when Elliot pulled into Tony's driveway. The house was still and dark. Elliot hurried into the house, pulling the key from beneath the doormat; Olivia's full weight slumped on him.
Once inside, Elliot set the alarms (the passwords were stupidly placed right next to the systems). He settled onto the couch to wait for Tony's arrival home, and explain why Olivia was completely drunk and what his appearance was for and why the patrol cars would show up at midnight.
*
The door creaked as it opened. Tony threw it wide and stepped in, surprised to find the lights on, and even more so to see Elliot sprawled on his couch, fast asleep and snoring.
"Elliot...what the hell are you doing here?"
"What?" Elliot jumped awake. "Oh," he said, clearing his throat and eyes, "I'm just here to drop Liv off and make sure she's safe."
"Why wouldn't she be safe? I would never hurt her!"
"I know...a couple years ago we put away this guy but he's escaped and she's a potential victim. That's why I'm here and there'll be patrol cars parked all around the neighborhood starting at midnight. She'll camp here for a while. We also went to a bar; she needed to get her mind off Marshall," Elliot explained briefly between yawns. He stood up, stretched, and headed towards the door with a final few words to Tony, "Goodnight, then."
It was frigid outside. The cold air hit Elliot's lungs like a ton of bricks. He wished he had thought to bring his coat with him. He got to his car but it was locked. Elliot patted his pants pockets. They were empty.
"Shit," he sighed, peering through the window. His keys were lying on the driver's seat. They had fallen out of his back pocket. He sighed and up righted himself. As his face passed by the darkly tinted window, something in the reflection flickered. Elliot turned around, curious. He blacked out from a blow to the head, but not before he saw the face of Anthony Marshall smiling down on him meanly.