Here it is, as promised! A within-a-week update! Enjoy.
On Monday morning, Frank drops her home early to shower, change and get ready to meet him at Annalise's office in an hour. He kisses her in the car, long and soft and sweet, but the innocent kiss progresses quickly and closed mouths open and it's not long before Laurel is flushed and panting and needy again.
"Go," she whimpers against his lips, kissing him once more before pulling away. She gathers up her bag from the footwell, shoots him one last gaze which somehow manages to be longing and hateful at the same time. "Just… go."
He laughs, smirks at her as she slams the door shut behind her and marches into her building without so much as a backwards glance. Frank shakes his head, adjusts himself and drives on to the Keating house, spending the journey casting her from his mind; he can't afford to be distracted today. To come up with a solution that doesn't involve throwing Laurel to her own personal, bloodthirsty sharks, he needs to be on his A game.
When he arrives, Annalise is in her office and Bonnie is sitting in an armchair browsing casually through a file. She glances up. "Hey. Coffee's on in the kitchen."
"Thanks. You want one?"
"Why else would I put it on?"
He returns moments later, two steaming mugs in hand, one of which he hands off to Bonnie. She puts her file aside and looks up at him. She takes a sip and narrows her eyes over the rim of her mug. "Bitch, please."
"What?" Frank asks, already on the defensive because he knows exactly what.
"You screwed her, didn't you?"
He rolls his eyes. "None o' your business."
"Tell me you at least have a plan to get her off?"
Frank smirks. "You sayin' you think I struggle to get a girl off?"
Bonnie doesn't approve. "Oh har har. You know what I mean." She drops the humorous edge to her tone, glances at Annalise's office door and then lowers her voice. "Getting the stripper on the stand is Annalise's only solid plan."
"I talked to her last week; she said we're not goin' down that avenue anymore."
"Well, what else are we going to do?" Bonnie hisses. "Even if the strategy isn't ideal, she'll still go with it if there's no alternative."
Frank frowns, tries to shrug off the sense of impending doom. "Relax, Bon. We got a back-up. I'm going to sort it today."
Her blue eyes swim under a creased, concerned brow and her disapproval is clear in her gaze.
"Jus'… forget all about it, okay?" Frank urges. "Laurel don't know that you know about her, an' it should stay that way."
Bonnie opens her mouth to respond but, at that moment, the door to the office opens and the two of them spring apart when Annalise emerges.
Her eyes narrow suspiciously. "What you two gossiping about?"
Frank waves her off. "Nothin'. What's up?"
Annalise takes a moment, clearly decides not to push the matter and then moves on to the agenda. "Richard Dryden's trial starts on Wednesday. We've got to get a plan together in the next two days as to how to get his case dismissed. And if either one of you suggests begging the DA for a plea deal, you'll both be fired." She raises a sharp eyebrow between her associates.
"When are the students getting here?" Bonnie asks.
"About ten," Annalise replies. "So we've got a good hour to actually get some work done before their needy asses need mothering." She leans on a desk and sighs. "So aside for an unconfirmed alibi, what have we got?"
"I'm goin' to talk to the bartender at the club tonight, get her to testify that Dryden was at the club that night," Frank supplies, and Bonnie adds: "The wife is prepped and ready to take the stand as a character witness."
"We'll have to meet her at the courthouse in the morning and go through the questions with her again, just in case," Annalise notes.
The blond nods. "Of course."
"Frank? Any other suspects or evidence?"
He reluctantly shakes his head. "Not really. Reed's ex-wife was outta the country and no one else would have the means to access the murder weapon, what with the receipt bein' found in Dryden's car."
Annalise stares straight ahead, eyes bright with thought. "So someone must have either planted the receipt in his car or, coincidentally, purchased the exact same knife in the same week. Can we check sales of the murder weapon? If there was a significant number or a sale on, we could persuade the jury it's a coincidence."
Frank nods. "On it."
"And who would have access to Dryden's car to plant evidence there?"
"Anyone who works or lives with 'im. Or anyone who could jimmy open the door which, judgin' by the model, wouldn't be that hard."
"The wife?" Annalise looks to Bonnie.
The blond frowns. "That's a bit of a reach. Why would she kill Reed?"
Annalise simply raises her eyebrows. "Men are annoying," she remarks in a casual tone. "Nothing would surprise me in this business anymore." She stands and rubs her hands down her skirt. "Please find something I can actually use," she says before disappearing back into her office.
Bonnie raises an eyebrow at Frank. "Told you we needed a plan."
When the first of the new Keating Five start to arrive, Frank's still gathering data on kitchen knife purchases in the state of Pennsylvania in the week before Reed's murder. He pauses his work long enough to find the file from the prosecution on Dryden's case and dump it on the desk. "The murder book," he tells the prom queen and the gay guy with neatly gelled hair, predictably the most eager of the students. "Given to us by the prosecution with all the evidence they've gathered for Dryden's case. Go through it and see if you can find any holes to help get our guy a 'not guilty'." The girl grabs up the book enthusiastically and the boy picks up some other files.
Suddenly, Frank's almost glad for the help. This case has been feeling so hopeless that he wonders if it might actually be more useful than not to get an outsider's fresh perspective on the messy web of lies that is Dryden's case.
Laurel steps up to the desk, doesn't quite meet his eye. He wordlessly hands her some papers on Dryden, though he's sure she won't read anything she doesn't already know, and she follows her peers to the living room. Frank has to force himself not to watch her ass as she goes.
He resumes his investigative work, half an ear on the kids' discussions.
"…receipt for the murder weapon was in his car. What kind of an idiot leaves that shit lying around?"
"Exactly. He must have been framed…"
"Are we sure he's not guilty? I mean, he's got means, motive and opportunity…"
"It doesn't matter-"
"He's not guilty. He has an alibi."
"He does?"
"Here." Paper rustles as a file is passed around.
"A strip club?"
"Wahey, the dude knows how to have a good time, am I right?"
"Gross."
"Asher."
"What? I'm just sayin-"
"But the alibi's not confirmed?"
"Why not? That's like, criminal law basics?"
Frank grinds his teeth. "Workin' on it," he calls across the room, allowing most of his frustration to leak into his tone and he frightens them into silence for a few moments before the yammering continues. He tunes it out, finding their whiny voices too annoying, until-
"Yo, Frank?"
He sighs and turns away from the computer, gets up and joins them in the living room. "What?"
"About the alibi." It's the rich, white kid. Judge Millstone's son.
"What about it?"
"Can't we confirm it with CCTV?" he suggests, swagger in his tone, clearly feeling like he's cracked the case in two minutes flat. "Just check the camera footage and show the judge when he arrived and when he left and then that'll prove that he wasn't stabbing anybody." He stands abruptly, slaps his hand to his chest. "Boom! Not guilty, Judge, I move to free this man immediately!"
Frank glares slightly. "Gee, thanks, we didn't think of that." He lowers his voice to mutter, "Doucheface," and then goes back to the desk, allowing one of the kids to waste their breath explaining why his idea is impossible.
Prom Queen jumps to it; any opportunity to show off. "Most CCTV is only kept for thirty days because of data protection laws, Asher."
"So?"
The kid off the wait list picks it up, providing a more comprehensive answer than his peer. "So Mr Dryden didn't reveal his alibi until more than that amount of time had passed so footage from that night would have been deleted automatically anyway."
"Oh." A pause. "Well, have they checked for sure? Maybe they have special cameras at the strip club…"
"I'm sure they've looked into it, Asher…"
Though he's pleased to hear Laurel defend them, Frank groans, exasperated, and gets up again to go to the kitchen, pretending to be in search of a second coffee.
Bonnie's leaning against a countertop, sipping on a glass of water. "You get sick of them already, too?"
Frank just comes to stand beside her. "Days like this I wish Pennsylvania would just make idiocy a criminal offence already."
"I wish I could drink on the job."
"I'd drink to that."
They stand and enjoy the silence for a few minutes and then Bonnie sighs and reluctantly straightens back up. "Come on," she says. "We've got a job to do."
At his desk a short while later, Frank pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and fires off a covert text: You comin' over again tonight? I was thinking of getting a takeaway but I'm more in the mood for eating out ;)
Then, he watches across the room as she opens up the message and blushes furiously, mashing her lips into a line and shuffling to press her thighs together.
Moments later, his cell buzzes: That pun is so overused. Try harder.
He doesn't hesitate, thumbs flying across the keys. Judging by the way your legs are squeezed together, I'd bet that your panties are already wet at the thought of me. Kissing you slow, deep, my tongue running down your neck, chest, stomach, all the way til I'm under that skirt, my fingers sliding inside your panties…
He fires off the message and then watches. Frustratingly, though her cell lights up beside her, Laurel studiously ignores it for a while. He tries to resume his work, but all he's succeeded in is winding himself up and now he's at half-mast and uncomfortable.
He stares blankly at the screen before him and jumps when his cell buzzes in his pocket. He stares for a moment longer, pretending to be engrossed (so that he doesn't look too eager), and then fishes it out.
Meet me in the bathroom and you can find out how wet my panties are.
For a moment, his breath stops. Then, he watches as Laurel excuses herself from the group. He waits an appropriate amount of time before ducking out, too. She opens the door as soon as he knocks, grabbing his tie and tugging him gently inside. Then, she shoves him roughly backwards, her hands come to his face, his beard, his hair as she kisses him hungrily.
Frank's hand drops straight to her skirt, wanting to find the aforementioned panties, but when his hand slides up the inside of her thigh, he's surprised to find no barrier to her wet folds. He groans into her mouth and feels Laurel smirk against his lips.
"No panties?" he murmurs.
"Surprise," she mumbles back, moaning as he enters her with two fingers, pushing in straight up to the knuckle until he's buried inside of her. He can tell it's not going to take long for either of them, so he fingers her just enough to set her building but then quickly withdraws to wrestle with his belt. He pushes her roughly to the sink, forces her up so that her ass is resting on the cool porcelain, skirt mussed around her hips, legs splayed.
His pants are down and he's lining himself up within seconds, feeling her leak over his tip in a way that's delicious; warm and inviting.
"Quick," she mutters. "Before they notice."
He slams into her and her head falls backwards. "Ohhh," she moans quietly, long and deep.
A grunt falls from Frank's lips as he pulls almost all the way out and then pushes back in, feels her quiver and suction around him. He starts to set a pace, pistoning in and out of her in a punishing rhythm, the thrusts fast and hard and insistent. Laurels nails scrape at the nape of his neck, clawing and ravenous. It's rough, this time, basic instinct taking over as he uses her body, every thrust claiming it as his. Every pulse tells him that she's his, every whimper shows him he's in control, every delicate throb of her cunt draws him in deeper and lures him further into her world.
Eventually she starts to tremble, a leaf in a hurricane, and her hips twist back up to him, meet him. "Harder," she whispers. "Harder. Fuck me. Please."
He pushes himself, picks up the pace until the sound of flesh slipping and slapping against flesh becomes a rapid, staccato drumbeat.
Her reedy whines become louder. "Oh… oh… oh… god. F-Frank, fuck, yes, right there…"
"Laurel…" His thighs are tightening, straining as he tries to hold back but her slick warmth and the steady, swift rhythm are a torturous level of hot and he's struggling. "You gotta come."
"Oh…" Another breathy sigh. "I will," she mutters blissfully. "Tell me how close you are."
"So close, Laurel," he mutters. "So goddamn close, I'm gonna come so hard…"
She falls, cunt fluttering around him as her eyes squeeze tightly shut. She moans like a siren, pitchy and rising, falling, and Frank is almost done in but, just in the nick of time, Laurel gets her wits back and she pushes him gently, forces him to slide out so that she can take him firmly in her hand and pump his cock, her own juices slick and warm in her palm.
"Ugh," he groans. "Laurel-" But that's all he gets out before his own shuddering moan cuts him off as he comes, streams shooting from his cock and onto her thigh. She strokes him through it, jerky movements in all the right places, his thick cock twitching under her careful fingers.
They pant together for a moment as they come down, sticky becoming dry on Laurel's bare legs. Eventually she holds her hand out and Frank reaches over, grabs some toilet paper. Instead of handing it to her, he gently cleans her up, wipes the evidence of their short tryst off of her thigh. He pauses, looks her in the eye and recognizes how tender the gesture seems in this close proximity. So he hands off the tissue to her and steps away, sorts his clothes out. He clears his throat. "I'll see you later, then?"
She smirks, shrugs. "Maybe."
"Just maybe?"
"Just maybe," she confirms cryptically and then she slides the lock across and slips out of the room, leaving Frank to consider what she means by that.
Back downstairs, the Keating Five haven't come up with much that Frank, Bonnie and Annalise haven't already explored, and, luckily, they haven't noticed Frank and Laurel's mysterious co-disappearance. Also fortunate is the fact that Bonnie is nowhere to be found so she can't give him that knowing expression, shame him with one quirk of an eyebrow.
Frank, now fully sated, turns his attention back to his research and finds that relatively low numbers of the murder weapon were purchased in the weeks leading up to the murder, which is the opposite of helpful. The fewer knives were purchased, the weaker the argument that the receipt is a coincidence.
Basically, Frank thinks, the bartender at the strip club really has to pay off for this case to get off the ground.
As night draws in and boredom glazes the students' eyes where they sit, knee-deep in discovery and Chinese cartons, Frank stands and collects his things into a briefcase. He sticks his head in Annalise's office. "I'm heading to the club; bartender starts her shift in half an hour."
Annalise looks up from the paper she's reading. "Okay. Let me know what you get."
"Will do." He leaves her to it, mumbles a 'goodnight' to Bonnie and catches Laurel's eye on his way out, but otherwise doesn't acknowledge the students. He makes the now-familiar drive along Castor Avenue and parks in an adjacent street and then heads across to the non-descript building.
As soon as he pushes the door open, a grating female voice greets him shrilly from the other side of the door. "Honey, we're not open yet!" The woman comes to the door to get him to leave, and then eyes him up and down, slowly. Her voice softens to a purr. "But come back in an hour and I'll be sure to show you some sugar."
"I'm not 'ere for that," Frank tells her. "I've come to see Holly. She's expectin' me."
The girl's eyes narrow slightly. "She is?"
"Yep."
She hesitates, looks him up and down again, but now she's suspicious. "Wait here." She disappears behind the bar and into the back.
Frank takes a moment to look around the club, look for the boss. After what Laurel said last night about her father trying to buy the place, he's curious about the man he's been calling an ally for a few years now. Parks has always helped him when he needed information about people that came calling to these places, has always known the darker side of Philly when Frank needed something, and that knowledge somehow feels more sinister now. Has Parks always been connected to the kind of crime Laurel hinted at? Frank's not a naïve guy; most of the people he knows have their fingers in several illegal pies, but this kind of corruption seems different. He supposes that he's never known rich crime in the same way he's known desperate crime, the kind that the back-streets of Fishtown thrive upon. He knows it exists, has seen it in so many of Annalise's clients, but he's never been under the thumb of that kind of wealth and power, has always been his own operative. But maybe Parks has been doing someone else's dirty deeds all along.
"She's in the back." The girl is back again, and her now-disgruntled voice snaps Frank out of his musings, pulls his attention back to the present task.
"Thanks." He steps behind the bar and heads through to the kitchen.
The bartender – Holly, Laurel had told him – is alone in there, unstacking clean glasses from the dishwasher. She looks up when he comes in, vibrant red hair parting across her face like curtains. "So you're Kevin?"
Frank blinks for a moment, before remembering his own alias and then nods. "Yeah."
"Mr Parks told us not to talk to you."
This is news to Frank. "He did?"
"Yeah. But he's not here tonight so I'll tell you what I can. Lola said you can be trusted."
"She's right."
"Well… what do you want to know? You're here about the dead guy… it's Reed, right?" She's got a slight southern twang to her accent, certainly not local, and Frank wonders at her story, whether it's as twisted as Laurel's.
Frank leans against a countertop and crosses his arms. "Yeah. Well. I'm here about the guy accused of killin' him: Mr Richard Dryden – he's a regular customer here?"
"He came in from time-to-time. Not as often as his friend, but yeah. Regular enough to have a tab."
"Right. And you were working on the night of the 2nd of July?"
The girl stares at him for a moment. "Look, mister. Honest truth is I have no idea if I was working that night. I work most nights but they all blend into one. Cut to the chase and tell me exactly what it is you want, and I'll tell you if I'll help."
"Fine. On the night that Edward Reed was murdered, Richard Dryden was here with Lola. For… her own reasons, she can't testify to that fact in court, so his alibi is unconfirmed, and, without it, he looks like he's gonna get convicted for a murder he didn't commit."
"So talk to Lola."
"I have – trust me, that ain't gonna happen. We need you to confirm that you saw him at the club. Ideally, we need the time he got here and the time he left."
She smirks. "So, like, you want me to be his alibi instead of Lola?"
"Yes."
"Won't the judge, like, want Lola instead? She spent the evening with him after all."
"Sure, but we can't get hold of her." Frank shoots her a level stare, dares her to argue.
"Seems pretty suspicious to me."
Frank sighs, makes his face bored, hides his desperation behind an eye roll and a glance at his watch. "Well, are you in or out? Will you do it or not?"
She thinks for a moment. "Will you pay me?"
"That's illegal. But I'll buy a drink and I tip very well. Unrelated, o' course."
"Of course. I want eight hundred bucks."
Frank scoffs. "Two, tops."
"Six."
"Three."
"C'mon, you can do better than that. Lola said you're a good guy."
"Look, my hands are tied. I don't have a budget because this shit ain't legal. Three hundred an' that's it."
Holly snorts but doesn't fight. She stares at the countertop for a moment. "Fine. I'll do it for three hundred." She bends down, picks up another glass and stacks it on her tray. "It's a shame, really, that they killed Reed."
"Why, you don't wanna testify?"
She laughs. "No. Three hundred wasn't even a tenth of Reed's tab. He owed us big time and now I won't see a dime of that cash."
Frank frowns at her. "I thought he was a regular customer here?"
"Yeah, he was. Regular enough in the start to earn a tab. And then he'd come in, like, six days a week, get wasted and screw whoever would take him. He was a mess."
"An' he never paid for your… services?"
"Nah. Parks was getting, like, super mad at him, too. They got in a shouting fit when Reed showed up in a new car and he owed us thousands of dollars."
Frank's brain starts to whir, latches onto the first glaring inconsistency he's come across in the case. "Huh," is all he says out loud. "Well, thanks, Holly. I'll speak to my boss and get back to you, okay?"
"Sure. If you can raise it to six, I'll cry on the stand and say what a nice man your guy was." She smiles sweetly, garish pink lip gloss shining under the harsh kitchen lights.
"Don't push it," Frank tells her, and then he leaves. He heads out of the kitchen, breezes past the girl at the door who flirts with him on his way out but all he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears. He reaches his car and flings open his briefcase, searching through until he finds the scrap of paper Laurel had brought him.
Edward Reed
Gold standard – regular client since August 2013.
Amount outstanding: $0.
215-528-7352
His eyes zero in on the line: Amount outstanding: $0.
His pulse roars as he remembers the time he and Annalise visited the strip club. Parks, shifty under Annalise's intense gaze, had told them what a valued customer Reed was, "a damn good tipper", he'd said.
Frank's mind races as things slot into place in his mind. Reed owed thousands of dollars and there was someone out there who wanted to plow thousands of dollars covertly into the business. Perhaps Jorge Castillo had bought the club and had been using Reed as cover to launder his dirty money. But… then how had Reed ended up dead? Had he gotten too close to the cover up, threatened to out Jorge? But surely if he was an employee, he'd have been benefitting from the deal?
Suddenly, ice runs through Frank's veins.
Reed had slept with Lola less than a week before he died.
If he'd have recognized her as Laurel Castillo, surely he'd have told Jorge that his daughter was posing as a stripper in his club? Unless… Unless someone had killed him before he'd have the chance to pass on that particular piece of information. Someone who didn't want Jorge to know that his daughter was working against him.
Someone like Laurel.
Frank's cell phone rings and it takes a few moments for him to remember how to move – hell, how to breathe – before he can answer it. "What?" he snaps into the cell.
"Frank-" Bonnie's voice comes back and she sounds almost as hollow as he does. "Frank, she knows. Annalise knows about Lola… Laurel. She's going to use it to force her testimony."
So sorry for the terrible cliffhanger! My aim is to get this finished before the new season starts but that's going to be a tight deadline because of how crazy my life is right now. Next chapter probably will be posted in around 10 days so keep an eye out. And if you have any comments or theories you have about where this is going, you know I'd love to hear it in the comments or my ask box is always open on tumblr.
Until next time!