Liette had dated all of four people in her twenty eight years of life and those relationships had amounted to nothing. Her last boyfriend had been the clerk at the bookstore she went to once a week. That had lasted all of three months. Liette still had a hard time trusting people so she often fell flat in relationships. This was why she liked to work a lot. Her social ties never amounted to much.

"I can't do this. It won't work. He'll never believe it." she was panicking already. Joe would see the lie the moment it left her mouth. He would start to look at her differently and he wouldn't want to talk to her anymore. For some reason that bothered Liette. Joe would shut her out if he saw her as purely an agent trying to take him down. She wanted to stop him but a lie this big was just too much.

"You need to make him believe it." Parker said firmly. She needed strong agent Liette Arnaut but this girl was bending. Her instability was infuriating at times. Parker just wanted her to do as she was told. She needed Liette to be the chess piece the could lead to Carroll's unravelling.

"I can't."

"She can't." Hardy said harshly. He understood why Parker wanted to use Arnaut in this way but he also saw the flaw in the plan now. He looked at Liette and knew she wasn't ready. She was a puppet in all of this but she was only capable of so much. Joe was a psychopath but he was also a brilliant man. "Look at her, she can't do this. She was practically shaking to death the last time she confronted Joe. That big of a lie will never work." he was saving her from being thrown in unprepared but at the same time he wasn't being all that kind about her abilities either.

"Besides, he's already saw me wearing this...he knows what it means." Liette said, holding up the hand with her claddagh ring on it. It seemed like such an insignificant think but to them it wasn't.

"That ring you wear is beautiful." Joe said as he sat with Liette on another one of their Sunday meetings. Professors were not supposed to have favorite students but this had become inevitable. They met now at least once a week to talk about anything and everything. They talked about class, about his book, about anything really. Joe always seemed to push more personal topics but Liette often brought them back to literature.

"Thank you, my mother bought it for me for graduation last year." she said, spinning the silver claddagh ring once around her finger. She rarely took it off. It was one of those sentimental pieces the she actually liked.

"Do you know the significance of the claddagh ring?" Joe asked, the smile on his face suggesting that he knew the significance behind it. Of course he did. The claddagh was a romantic piece of jewelry with so much symbolism and heart. It was just the type of thing Joe loved.

"Not exactly. I know you're supposed to wear it a specific way but I haven't looked it up yet." Liette shrugged. It was just a ring how much could it matter?

Joe shifted slightly in his seat across from Liette. He leaned forward with the intent of getting closer. The space between them lessened and he waited for a moment before reaching over to take her hand."May I?" he asked politely, simply waiting for her nod to pull her arm closer. His fingers touched the silver of the ring and his eyes gleamed in the metal reflection. Liette watched his stare for a moment and then looked down to their hands. There was a warmth there that felt so new. It was comfortable in an odd way."The way you have it now signifies an open heart looking for love." he spoke softly. His eyes then drifted up from the ring and caught Liette's. She blushed slightly and broke their contact."You're not in a relationship are you?" he asked.

"I'm not." she answered almost too quickly.

"Then I suppose you're wearing it correctly. Your heart is open." He almost always sounded like a poet. He talked in a way that was unusual for most men. It was what really drew Liette in. She had really come to like these Sunday afternoons with Joe. It gave her a break from her hectic school schedule and it gave her someone to talk to. Still, Liette always wondered why he did this. He probably had friends his own age so spending his Sunday afternoons with her seemed to odd.

"I still think this plan could work if you really try." Parker frowned. She had thought her idea was wonderful. Carroll would be extremely jealous to find out that the women in his life didn't seem to need him. First Claire and now his little friend.

"He knows me too well." Liette shook her head.

"How well does he know you Arnaut? You haven't really specified." Parker snapped.

Debrah Parker only got like this when she was frustrated. Liette had always liked her boss but moments like these made Liette shy away from her. Debrah was a tough woman and she was a strong authority figure. You didn't get that far in the FBI without being hard. It was a rough place for a woman. The bureau was still overflowing with men and many of them still believed that girls didn't have a place in their boy's club.

Defining her relationship with Joe was tricky. She didn't like this invasion of her privacy and she definitely didn't like accessing memories that she had tried to forget about. She had even gone to therapy for a little while in hopes that it would help her to let go. It had helped but all this was truly setting her back. She could hardly sensor her thoughts about Joe anymore. He was always there and what he did was always present. She remembered the Joe she knew and then the Joe she had found out about at once. The profiles were conflicting and hurtful.

She spoke slowly, careful of what she gave them. She wasn't trying to hide anything but she also didn't want them profiling her again. "He was my friend...at the time I suppose he was my best friend...I had trouble finding anyone else." she bit her lip. That last bit of information had been too much. She made herself sound desperate. Perhaps at the time she was but she had never been desperate enough to believe in killing people as art.

"You really don't help your own case at all." Parker shook her head.

Liette immediately felt the need to defend herself. "I'm not one of them. I was just as surprised as anyone to find out Joe did what he did. Why do you think I've avoided it for the past ten years?" Her eyes shifted from Parker to Hardy. She needed him to understand. She needed him so see that this was way beyond her. Joe had been a good man at one point or he had at least pretended to be. Just because Liette had seen his good side did not mean she would follow him to the dark side. "I could never face the fact that my friend...the man I spent time with every week was spending his other hours killing girls my age. Sarah Fuller was in my class. You sat there Hardy, don't think I don't remember that. Did you think he was the type of man who would do such a thing?"

In that moment she had challenged Ryan. He couldn't deny what she was saying. He had already told Parker that Carroll had tricked him. Joe was good at that. He had come off as the type of man you wanted to be around. He was filled with charisma. Even now Ryan saw how easy it must have been for Joe to find people to worship him. Perhaps Liette truly wasn't one of them. Maybe she had just been as blind as he had been.

"She's right. Carroll played everyone. I was in his home and I had no idea." Ryan swallowed hard. He would need a drink after all this. "We need a different lie." They needed something Liette could work with; something that Joe would actually believe.

"What if you just let me go back in there and talk to him candidly," Liette suggested.

"You think that'd be a good idea?"

"Wouldn't you be surprised if I went in there without an angle? It could throw him off." it was a small idea but it would be worth a try. She didn't know exactly what she could pull from Joe but maybe he'd tell her something important. They needed more information to understand him and all that he had planned. So much of this was for Ryan but they needed to figure out the how not the why. "It's really all we've got right now."

The silence showed everyone's thoughts. They weighed the pros and cons and then finally Parker spoke. "I think you need to tone down your FBI presence. Go buy some new clothes...something you would have worn in school."

"You want me to dress like my nineteen year old self?" Liette' eyebrows raised. It sounded kind of perverse to her and she didn't like the idea. She had grown up a lot since then. Her wardrobe consisted of a lot of black now. Blazers, dress pants, white shirts. Liette thought it all made her look more professional. In school she had wore a lot of sundresses and skirts even. It would be weird to go back to that.

"Aged but similar. Play into his fantasy." Parker shrugged.

"I'm sounding more and more like bait by the minute."

"Liette." Parker sighed. Her puppet wasn't very cooperative.

"I'll do it. I don't like it...but I'll do it."