A/N- Here I am again. I'm hoping to keep up this pace, but we'll see. Also, in case you're wondering, Piper will absolutely be showing up eventually. I am 100% Vauseman trash so that's a given... just have to be patient and enjoy the slow burn. :) Hope you enjoy...

Chapter 4- Crossfire

I leaned over the sink in my office bathroom, carefully pressing a wet hand towel to the cut above my eye, wincing at the sharp pain that radiated from it every time I applied pressure, cursing myself for taking this fucking job in the first place. I was never the sort of person who was a sucker for a pretty face. Pretty faces were a dime a dozen. I could walk into Red's on any given night and have any one of them back here in a heartbeat. I could make a socialite forget her social decency and everything her mother and her teachers and her nanny and her pastor taught her about what was right and what was moral with a single well timed smile or smoldering glance or the barest touch. I wasn't an idiot. I wasn't a sucker.

That damned picture of the strikingly lovely and hauntingly sad blonde hadn't been the only reason I'd taken this job (the large open wallet of her significantly less intriguing best friend with the extremely wealthy Hollywood parents had played a much bigger role), but it had been a factor. If I had any sense in my head I'd drop this shit like a hot rock, but for some reason I wasn't even thinking about doing that and I had no idea what the hell that meant. I loved solving mysteries, I loved using my brain, and figuring shit out... but I fucking hated it when I had to try to figure out my own God damned motivations.

Especially when the job now involved getting punched in the face by a guy like George Mendez… I spent half my life trying to stay out of the way of guys like Mendez and his boss. A single day on this case and suddenly it felt like they were now going to be permanently attached to my fucking hip. This was supposed to be easy. This was supposed to be nothing. Just poke around a little and make a cursory effort then charge Polly Harper for a week's worth of work... As I pressed the cloth to my eye again and sucked in a sharp breath, I began to wish I had told her to find some other shill and had gone back to following dissatisfied housewives around LA.

The pain had finally started to fade a little, thanks to the aspirin I'd taken and the three long pulls of whiskey I had downed the pills with. It wasn't anywhere near gone, but it was settled enough that I could take care of it. I applied some hydrogen peroxide to it, winced at the sting, and then carefully covered it with some gauze. I grimaced when I looked at it. Between the cut and the rapidly forming black eye, I looked like a God damned pugilist. As if I needed anything else to make me more conspicuous.

I sighed deeply and glanced at my watch. Jesus… it was only 6pm but I felt like I'd awake for days. All of a sudden, exhaustion hit me like a freight train, as though my body had suddenly been made aware of just how tired and stressed I was and decided to inform my mind by shutting it down completely. All I wanted was to lie down on my couch and sleep for a day. Maybe rest would clear my mind, purge my thoughts of Piper Chapman and help me decide what the fuck I should do. It should've been an easy choice. It really truly should've been.

Because I hated hassle. I hated being punched. I hated being followed. I hated being someone that Kubra Balik was even thinking about, let alone sending guys after… But even more than that all those things I fucking hated being told what to do, especially by a draft dodging cowardly piece of shit like Mendez…

I woke up to someone banging on my door and instinctively brought my wrist up to look at my watch. The watch face was a blur and I realized I didn't have my glasses on. I groped around for them on the table next to the couch and slid them on. I grimaced when I felt the pain radiating from the cut in my eye, which had wormed its way into the center of my brain, giving me a splitting headache. My watch read 7am. I'd slept for over 12 hours, and I still felt like a wet piece of shit… I'd slept fitfully, my dreams haunted by visions of thugs and beautiful women…

The banging started up again, this time accompanied by yelling, "Vause! Open up! It's the police…" I recognized the voice and frowned.

"Fuck," I muttered, standing up and running a hand through my hair, knowing it wouldn't do much good to try to improve my appearance. It would've taken more effort than I had any sort of energy for, and it wasn't as though I had any interest in trying to impress him on either a professional or a personal level. The man at the door had known me since I was a 14 year old JD, smashing in windows and smoking cigarettes in abandoned lots. I wasn't even sure I could impress him even if I tried. Besides, even if I'd wanted to all my clean-ish clothes were at my apartment...

I smoothed out my shirt and tucked it sloppily into my skirt before I opened the door, vaguely wishing I hadn't been dressed for business when Mendez had cornered me. My jeans and leather jacket were so much more comfortable than this fucking thing. I shuffled out into the outer office, stretching like a cat, listening to my spine crack back into alignment. I flipped the lock, opened the door wide, and, as expected, found Det. Sgt. Joe Caputo standing outside the door, looking as put upon as he always seemed to when he saw me. Behind him was another detective who looked like he was about thirteen years old, with a smooth baby face and carefully combed brown hair. His wide brown eyes reminded me of a basset hound puppy's.

"Detective…" I growled, my voice sounding like cigarettes and whiskey, "to what do I owe this very early pleasure?"

He pushed past me without any preamble, "We need to talk, Vause…"

"Come right in," I muttered darkly, shutting and locking the door behind he and the child. He waited for me to walk ahead of him into my office. I sat down in my chair heavily and reached down to the bottom drawer, pulling out a bottle of whiskey and glancing up at him, "You want a drink?"

He raised his eyebrow, "It's seven in the morning…"

"It's seven in the evening somewhere, Detective," I said as I poured three fingers of the amber liquid into a marginally clean rocks glass that had also been in the drawer. "What do you want?"

Caputo sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk. The Gerber baby sat down in the other. Caputo gestured, "This is Det. John Bennett. He's training with me."

I snorted, "Detective? Recruiting them out of elementary school these days, sergeant?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, "You never did know how to show respect, Alex…"

I raised an eyebrow, "Oh it's Alex now, is it?"

A long suffering sigh emerged from underneath his mustache. His hangdog eyes meeting mine, the look in them softening just a hair, "I told your ma I'd look out for you," he said gravely, his voice going as sentimental as his eyes.

I winced slightly at the mention of my mother. Shook my head sharply. I didn't want to do this right now, not when my head was pounding and I knew that wasn't what he was here for. My voice was hard when I spoke, "You're not here for a walk down memory lane… Uncle Joe, so let's cut to the chase… I have work to get to…"

"Yeah, about that…"

A sigh tore itself from my lips against my will. How the fuck... I might as well have put an announcement in the fucking paper for all the good trying to keep it a secret had done.

"… I hear through the grapevine you're poking around the Piper Chapman business…"

The grapevine. I didn't want to be anywhere near the God damn grapevine... Jesus

"The Piper Chapman business?" I put on my best neutral face as I spoke, which even in my state was pretty good. Half truths and manipulations were my business.

"She's Bill Chapman's daughter…"

"Ahhh, Bill Chapman, councilman and all around big hearted philanthropist," I said in a grandly overwrought voice, "I didn't even know that smarmy fuck had a daughter."

Caputo narrowed his eyes at me, trying to suss out whether I was lying to him, "Yeah. He does. She's twenty two. Came back from college last year to help during his campaign..."

"And she has 'business'?"

"She's missing."

"You'd think that'd be in all the papers," I said, pouring out another jot of whiskey before dropping the bottle back in the drawer, the picture of moderation. "Daughter of a guy with that big an ego and a wallet…"

"He's handling it privately."

"Of course he is," I took a sip of the whiskey, savoring this glass, really feeling the burn. I leaned forward, pinned Caputo with my gaze, "If that's the case, what is a fine and upstanding representative of the LAPD like you doing talking to me about it at 7 in the God damned morning on a Friday morning?"

He flinched slightly, uncomfortable, "We're… assisting where we can…"

"Ahhh," I leaned back again, grinning at him, "Always nice to know public resources are being used to really help those in true need."

"I was told you were involved. With the case."

"I thought you just said there isn't a 'case'."

He narrowed his eyes at me. I couldn't tell if he was more annoyed with me or angry with himself. "It's not officially a crime."

I shrugged, "All right."

He huffed in frustration, "Are you involved?"

"Since when was tracking down missing socialites my thing, Detective? You know me. I'm all about the low hanging fruit. Angry cheating spouses are my specialty. Finding a missing rich girl sounds like it might actually force me to make an effort."

"That wasn't an answer."

"Sure it was," I said, my eyes steady on his.

We stayed that way for a long moment, staring one another down. His eyes were boring into mine as though he could dig through my skull and find the truth there. Sadly for him, I invented this game. My expression was no more than lightly curious about the missing girl he'd just "informed" me about and heavily annoyed at having been woken up. The fact that I was actually exhausted and had no fucking leads helped. Finally, he sighed again, "If you were involved, Vause, I would tell you to back off. The Chapmans are very private people. They would rather this all get handled quietly."

"As far as I can tell it's getting handled fucking invisibly. Not like the papers have hold of it, and I hadn't even heard of this dame before you walked in here."

Another long, scrutinizing look, and then he gestured to my face. "What happened there?"

I hadn't had a chance to look in the mirror, but judging by the still vivid ache, the still persistent throb, and fact that I couldn't open my left eye all the way, I assumed the bruising and swelling had really kicked in and that it was a beaut. I gave another careless shrug and gestured with my glass, "Got drunk. Said the wrong thing to the wrong woman. Got punched by her boyfriend. You know how it is."

Caputo shook his head, suddenly looking very tired, and a lot like the guy who was probably the closest thing I had to a father figure in my life, "Alex," he sighed, with long suffering concern, "you could make your life a lot easier if you…"

"...pretended to be something I'm not," I finished quietly, raising my eyebrow at him.

He frowned, said nothing. We'd had this conversation a few too many times in the past. We both knew where we stood. And at least his concern was actually for me and my health, and not that he thought I was doing something sinful and wrong (I mean, he might've thought that, but at least he didn't say it out loud to me… no one else had that kind of restraint). I had, however, successfully made him uncomfortable enough that he didn't question my answer too hard.

Caputo glanced at his watch and stood, putting on his hat, "All right, we have to go."

"Nice visit, Detective."

"If anyone comes to you with anything having to do with the Chapman girl…"

"Stay away from it. Right. Got it."

I walked them to the door, shook Caputo's hand, and then the kid's (even his hands were as smooth as a baby's ass), and locked the door behind them. Then I went and sat down on my couch, thinking hard about why everyone was so fucking interested in making sure no one got curious about Piper Chapman's disappearance. And why I had to be the one caught in the fucking crossfire...