Chapter Eight:
The first thing that Alex Cabot did when she stepped into her room was kick off her shoes and curse herself for being impractical. "Olivia would be chewing me out for wearing these," she said, staring down at her Dolce and Gabbana heels. The Pradas from the day before weren't any better. Thinking about Olivia made her sigh, but her heart lifted slightly when she realized that she had a free moment to call Olivia. The clock on her nightstand read 4:02 AM, but back in New York, Olivia would just be going to bed.
Not even bothering to take off her clothes and change, she flopped down onto the single bed, grateful that it at least had clean sheets, and touched the screen of her cell phone. 7 missed calls stared back at her. There were also several voicemails.
All from Olivia.
One by one, Alex Cabot went through the messages, partially because she wanted to hear Olivia's voice, and partially because the sheer amount of missed calls had her worried. "It's probably nothing," she said to herself as the robotic voice of her phone announced how many messages she had.
"Hi, Alex. It's me. Awful case today. Found an environmentalist tied up and dumped in the hospital laundry. Still looking for leads, but, hey, it made me worry, and – well, call me back. I guess the cases are different now that I, you know, have someone... bye."
The corners of Alex's lips twitched upwards in a smile. It was nice to know Olivia cared, even though she didn't want the detective to worry about her. At least not too much.
"Hey, it's Liv again. You'll never guess who showed up at my apartment today! Talk about a blast from the past... I'll explain when I talk to you later. Unfortunately, I had to leave her with Abbie because El and I got a lead on our case. Gotta go, we just pulled up to our suspect's house – love you."
Alex adjusted her pillows and let the phone run her next message.
"Uh, sorry to bother you again – I guess you're out of range or whatever but... I thought you should hear it from me. Um, Elliot and I were shot at..."
All of the blood drained from Alex's face. She immediately hung up on her voicemail and hit Olivia's number on speed dial. The phone clicked as Olivia picked up, sounding surprisingly chipper. "Hey, Alex."
"Olivia! You are in so much trouble; I can't... are you all right? You're not hurt? Do I need to fly back home? Hold on, let me get my PDA so I can book a flight, I'll find Internet somewhere in this Godforsaken–"
"Woah, woah, woah... Alex, calm down! I'm fine, I promise. Not a scratch on me. Elliot busted the perp's head open, though."
"I knew I liked that man," Alex blurted out, unsure what else to say. So many thoughts and feelings were swirling around inside her that she could not begin to sort through them all. "Liv... God, I really want to hold you in my arms right now. You're sure you're okay? I'm going to call Abbie and Serena and Elliot to come stay with you and make sure you're okay..."
Olivia groaned. "No, Alex, I swear I'm fine, and Abbie's already staying with me. Er, you – us – whatever. At the apartment. Serena was over the other night for dinner, by the way. Abbie cooked –"
"Olivia," Alex growled, trying to keep her voice under control. Her heart was still thudding against her ribcage and her breathing was fast. "Olivia. Tell. Me. What. Happened."
Realizing that her attempts to distract Alex were not going to work, Olivia caved. "Well, this morning we caught a case: woman dumped in the hospital laundry and taken to the industrial plant. It was bad, Lex. Raped, tortured, throat slit..."
Alex suppressed a shudder. Olivia was a hardened sex crimes detective, and even she seemed particularly affected by the brutality of this case. She could hear it in the tone of her voice. "How did that lead to you getting shot?"
"Give me a minute," she sighed. "We got surveillance video of a Volvo dumping the body and tracked it to a dead guy named Gambel Sr. Turns out his son, Gambel Jr., is still alive and kicking, and he owns the car. When we went to question him, the bastard lied and said his brother had it, offered to go inside and get his address, and locked the door behind him."
If she had not been so upset and concerned, Alex would have let out a snort of laughter. In any other circumstances, seeing a perp trick Olivia in such a simple way might have been funny. Not this time.
"Then the little prick shot at us through the door. We were nowhere near the bullet spray, but I thought you'd want to know." Alex read between the lines and translated what her girlfriend was really saying: I didn't want you to kill me if you heard about it some other way.
Still brooding, she didn't realize that Olivia had not stopped talking until she heard the phrase, "-serial rapist. We found a whole box of trophies at his place – a ring, handkerchief, stuff from a bunch of different vics. No confession yet. He lawyered up, one of your old buddies. British accent. Annoying smirk. Sound familiar?"
"Pond." Alex groaned. "I am so incredibly glad that I don't have to deal with her anymore."
"Because she's a bitch?"
"No, because she's a good lawyer. Better than Trevor, anyway. Why she continues to defend the scum of the earth, I'll never know... – dammit, stop distracting me! So, you're sure that you're all right? No injuries at all?"
"None," Olivia said, trying to reassure the concern she heard so clearly in the attorney's voice. "I'm perfectly fine–"
"Were you wearing a vest?"
"Alex, we had no reason to believe that Gambel Jr. would be armed. We didn't even know that he existed. We just went to check Gambel Sr.'s last known address. For all we knew, we were going to end up staring at a 'For Sale' sign and talking to a landlord about the deceased."
Even though she knew it was irrational, Alex was still upset. "Maybe I should –"
"No, don't come home. You have a job to do, Alex. Everything is back to normal now, but Huang still needs to see me for my psych eval." Alex could picture Olivia wrinkling her nose and making a face reminiscent of a child staring down at unwanted vegetables. "Ugh."
"You like Huang. Olivia, I..." She closed her eyes, bringing her free hand up to her forehead to massage her throbbing temple. "You know I love you, right, baby?"
There was a pause on the other end. "I know, Alex. I love you, too." Despite her initial reluctance to say the words, Olivia said them as often as possible now. Alex knew that they were especially precious tonight. The news of Olivia's flirtation with danger had scraped both of their hearts raw.
"You sound exhausted." Now that she had stopped trying to sound happy and upbeat, she could hear the tiredness that laced her lover's voice. "You should go to sleep..."
"Can't. You're not here. Although Abbie and I had a distraction this morning."
"Not too good a distraction, I hope," Alex said, but the joke felt hollow and forced.
"Never, sweetie," said Olivia, and Alex was touched by her sincerity even though the sentiments were nothing new. "Something even weirder than getting shot at and catching a new case happened today. I had an interesting visitor."
"Oh?" Alex raised her eyebrows.
"Casey Novak. You remember her?"
"Of course. It's hard to forget such awful taste in footwear. I will admit that she did a good job questioning me, though."
"Hey, be nice to Casey," Olivia said, sounding slightly grumpy. "Apparently, someone's been making unwanted advances." She held herself back from saying 'stalker' because she did not want to worry Alex. In fact, Casey had seemed reluctant to bother her even while asking for help, eagerly letting Olivia leave in the middle of lunch and promising to tell the rest of her story later after she finished up at the scene of her latest case. So far, that later had not come.
"Unwanted advances?" Alex asked, knowing that Olivia was not telling her the entire story. "What kind of trouble have you been getting in to while I'm gone? An old friend shows up out of the blue, you find a corpse in a laundry cart, and you get shot at... What are you, a castmember in some soap opera?"
Olivia let out a long sigh. "Heh, I wish. No, my life is pretty much always this crazy." She paused. "I know you're probably tired, but could you..."
Alex read her mind. "Leave the phone on while both of us try to get some sleep?"
"Waste of money, minutes, and battery life, I know..." Olivia's voice trailed off sadly, but there was also a melancholy, pleading sort of hopefulness behind her words.
There was only one answer Alex could possibly give. "You know I will." She paused, then added, "just because I'm feeling generous, I won't ask you for phone sex after the day you had." Her second joke was much more successful, and Olivia chuckled lightly.
"Hmm. So you're not going to tell me what you're wearing?"
"Work clothes," Alex sighed. "The skirt and jacket with the two-tone gray pattern... Robin's egg blue blouse, though, not white."
"I'm wearing... flannel," Olivia admitted. "Sleeping naked in winter isn't nearly as much fun without you to help keep me warm."
Alex put the phone on speaker and stood up, stripping off her jacket before working on the buttons of her blouse and shimmying out of her skirt. "You'll be pleased to know that I'm taking off my clothes. I'm not even going to fold them."
"I don't believe it. Take a picture with your cell phone as proof. I bet you wake up at two in the morning to fix it because you're anal retentive."
"I am not." Alex scowled, but left the suit in a crumpled heap and stripped off her hose. "Okay, maybe a little. Right now, I'm too tired to care." Wearing only her underwear, she glanced over at her still unpacked suitcase and debated standing up again to find some pajamas. Eventually, she decided against it. The temperature was warm enough to go without. The snow and bitter wind of New York's winter were two things that she would not miss.
Curling up underneath the covers, she put the phone next to her ear, listening to the sound of Olivia's breathing. "Ready for bed?"
There was a half-yawn on the other end of the line. "Mmm. Yep. Alex, thanks... for not freaking out and everything."
"Oh, I freaked out. You just had the phone as a buffer." Secretly, Alex felt guilty that she was stuck half way around the world while Olivia had faced down danger in New York. What if something had happened? If Olivia ever did get injured while out on the job...
"Hey, don't think like that," Olivia said, reading into the silence. "I'm fine. I promise. And – and if something did happen... I know you would be here. Look, it's bad luck to talk about it, but I put your name on the sheet with Elliot's. Of people to contact, you know? So someone would call you..."
Alex's eyes, which had started tearing up while she thought about something happening to Olivia, suddenly burned with dryness. She was shocked, touched, happy, and incredibly depressed all at once. Suddenly, she thought of Kathy Stabler, whom she had only met twice. She and Olivia weren't quite there yet, but Alex knew that she needed to get used to the idea of waking up every morning and getting through the day with the knowledge that, in the blink of an eye, her entire world could be taken away from her.
"Thank you," was all she could manage to say.
