Chapter Ten

Meet me at The Vice. We need to talk.

Olivia tucked the note back into the pocket of her borrowed jacket and hurried down the street. She'd no more than stepped into the kitchen when she had found the note Mitch had left for her written in her brother's hurried scrawl. The red ink was a touch over-dramatic, she thought.

Nerves skittered along her spine and despite her resolve to react to his anger calmly, and maturely, Olivia chewed fearfully at the inside of her cheek. For a moment she stood on the porch, debating whether or not to ignore his summons. After all, he'd been rude enough to leave it in a note instead of talking to her directly.

It would serve him right if she didn't show up.

Thinking about the repercussions of that action was enough to help her decide against blowing Mitch off. Instead, she took off down the sidewalk at a jog.

In the bright light of mid-morning, The Vice looked more like the run-down, two-bit club it was, rather than the hot spot of Alphabet City night-life. She stepped into the smoky air and chewed at her bottom lip.

"Olivia!"

Her thought of: Oh thank God evaporated into a hearty damn it, the minute she realized the person calling her name was not her brother, but Sheridan.

The hulking club manager stalked toward her with all the menace of a charging grizzly. Any hope of darting out the door to safety was dashed when he stepped between her and her escape route.

Wincing, she tilted her head back and smiled weakly up into his furious face. "Hey."

"Hey?" he repeated. "That's all you can say to me, after last night? 'Hey'?"

"Look, Sheridan..."

He held up a large hand. "I don't care, Liv. I'm going to be pressing charges. Tell your little rocker friend to expect to be paying punitive damages for the next fifty years."

"Don't!" Olivia's outburst echoed through the empty club. Sheridan raised a sleek, dark eyebrow and crossed his arms.

"And why shouldn't I?"

"It wasn't Roger's fault."

He scoffed. "Of course not. I'm sure Nick, who is recovering nicely, by the way, started it all."

"Sort of." She winced at the wheedle in her voice. The youth in her words made her straighten her shoulders and jut out her chin. "I mean, Nick was getting fresh with me and Roger stepped in to mediate. Things just got a little out of hand, that's all."

"A little?" He grabbed her arm roughly and jerked her toward the stage. "Look at this mess! Does that look little to you, Olivia? I'll be lucky if I can get my sound system back up and running in a month for all this equipment is going to cost me. Roger had better have some deep pockets because I'm planning on squeezing them. Hard."

Thinking about the two-thousand she had saved in her porcelain piggy-bank, she sighed. So much for searching for properties. "I can give you two thousand now, the rest later when I find a job."

The fury on the tall man's face disappeared. It was replaced by something infinitely more terrifying. Calculation. "You're willing to pay for him?"

She thought about Roger and his skinny, sallow face, the barely healed needle tracks.

In that instant, she made up her mind.

Her community center would just have to wait. After all, its purpose was to serve the community, help those in need. What better way to start than pulling Roger's scrawny butt from the fire? "I am."

Sheridan stroked the small patch of hair under his lip and regarded her carefully. "Two thou ain't going to cover it, Livvy, love."

She winced and looked away, resisting the urge to fidget under his gaze that was more like a physical touch. "I know."

"How do you propose you get me the rest of the money?"

"However I can, Sheridan."

His eyes twinkled menacingly. "I can think of a few ways."

Shoulders slumping, she looked at him expectantly. "Well?"

"Work double shifts, here and at the Catscratch." Her eyes widened.

"You've got to be joking..."

"If you'd rather I call the local precinct, I'd be more than happy to..."

"No. No, don't do that. I'm in. I'll do it." She pointed a finger at him. "But the slate's clean once I pay this shit off, okay? I can quit and you don't harass Roger or blackmail me."

His eyebrows winged up and she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Oh yeah, Sher, I've grown up. I can smell blackmail just as easily as I can your cheap ass cologne."

His frown melted into a toothy grin, practically oozing triumph. He stepped out of her way, catching her arm before she could make a break for the door. "Bitch all you want, Liv. You want Roger to stay out of trouble? You start Monday. Eight sharp."

Mitch didn't show.

It was just like him to be immature enough to employ the role-reversal teaching tool that their father had favored in their, often misspent, youth. She should have known.

Angry that she stayed in that oppressive, smoke-hazed atmosphere one moment longer than she had to, Olivia got up and walked out, well aware that Sheridan followed her every move with his eyes, all but cackling with glee.

And why shouldn't he? He managed to snare the one bird that had been, up to that point, successful in evading him. It looked like escaping to the West Coast hadn't done her one damn bit of good. She was right back where she started five years ago.

Fucked.

Staring at the pavement with single-minded intensity, she didn't hear Cullen calling until she practically ran face first into him. She staggered back and he beamed at her. "We really have to stop meeting like this."

She rolled her eyes and jerked herself free. "Yeah, but that would require that you stop stalking me."

He chuckled and waved a hand at his outfit. "I'm official today. Perfectly legal for me to be walking down the street." She eyed him. "Okay, I just got off my shift, and I'm heading home." He cocked his head. "You look like you had a rough night."

"You could say that."

"Get caught up in the excitement at the Vice last night?"

"Who's asking," she demanded bitterly, shifting away. "Cullen or Officer Murphy?"

"Cullen. I'm off-duty," he reminded her gently, taking her elbow in a light grip. "Are you sure you're okay?"

She blew out a breath, the exhalation dislodging a sob that had been trapped in her throat. "No." she admitted, tears falling in earnest. "Not at all."

Cullen pulled her closer to him, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "Let's go get some coffee."

Laughing through her tears she pulled back to stare up into his face. "Will you stop asking me out, already? The answer's no."

He chuckled and turned her, his steady arm guiding her down the street. "Let's go."

Roger walked back to the loft slowly, hands in his pockets, whistling a mournful tune under his breath.

Last night played over and over in his mind, bringing a pleasant hum to his blood and a giddy feeling in his belly. It had been just like every other time he'd stepped under the lights: frightening to the point his knees had almost buckled, with the music in his heart echoing in his head.

The heady feeling of the guitar in his hands, the mike pressed against his lips, the audience surging forward, waiting for the first note had made him dizzy, his ears ringing and his eyes sightless. He was blind and deaf to everything but the music.

The song had come then. Something that had been playing in his heart in the months since April's death, and before he received his letter.

When he'd wrote it, he'd thought he had been doomed. No great song for anyone to remember him by, he would fade into the nothingness like many - hell, like most people did.

But last night, only the music had mattered. At least, until he'd seen Olivia's face. He shook his head and turned down 11th Street, heading for Tent City.

He wasn't ready to go back to the loft, facing Collins and Mark.

The tears in her eyes and on her cheeks were different from those he remembered when she'd been a child. Extremely emotional, it was rare for the younger Olivia to get through a set without bursting into tears at least once. But these tears, they weren't the stormy weeping of a hyperactive pre-teen, or the hormonal blubberings of a teenager.

They were the heartbroken tears of an idealist suddenly coming face to face with reality.

She knew.

Sighing and rolling his eyes heaven-ward, he stared up at the puffy white clouds floating aimlessly through the smog-hazed sky.

It shouldn't have surprised him. Olivia had always been as clever as she had been curious. And she, whether she knew it or not, could read him better than most.

But then, he'd done his best to hide that from her, desperate for the distance. Whenever those dark eyes looked at him, it was as if she could see into his soul and read his thoughts. When she'd been a child, it had unnerved him. As she'd grown up, grown more beautiful and desireable, the idea that she could read him like some trashy magazine terrified him beyond measure.

And now, with so many secrets, so much of his past a mystery to her; he feared just what those eyes could do to him. What would she do if she knew?

What would anyone say if they knew that Roger had been meant to die that day as well?

He found his eyes wandering to the darkest corners, the ones that Vince liked to frequent, searching for the man who could quiet the crawling, gnawing, sensation that was beginning to clamber out of his belly and scrape along his nerves. Shuddering he stepped away from the shadow, forcing his gaze to the sidewalk ahead of him.

Turning abruptly, he headed back to the loft, climbing the stairs swiftly. The sun was bright in the windows when he rolled the door back, showing just how shabby the place really was. Sighing heavily, he kicked off his shoes and padding toward the table. His stomach grumbled in agreement when he moved to the kitchen, intent on digging something out of the fridge.

He paused on his way by, his eye caught by the ripped envelope and pen sitting on the metal table. He froze, all rational thought fleeing his mind. The envelope. He lunged and snagged it in his hand reading the hastily scrawled note on the front.

Olivia.

She'd seen the envelope. Crumpling it in his hand, he tossed it to the floor. "'Heard something', my ass," he growled. "More like check on the HIV patient." He glowered at the balled-up paper. "Damn you, Livvy, couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

All thoughts about breakfast forgotton, Roger retrieved his shoes and stormed out of the loft, cursing steadily under his breath.

Cullen procured the comfortable couch at the Life Cafe and they sat together in silence, Olivia staring at her hands and Cullen staring at Olivia, the concern in his eyes nearly burning a hole through the side of her face. Twitching, she shifted farther away from him, dropping her face into her palms - if only to block her view of the worry in his expression.

"I'm going to need an apartment," Olivia mumbled into her hands, trying to organize the chaotic, fluttering thoughts in her brain into something that resembled a plan. "But, I don't have money for an apartment..." She groaned into her palms again, scrubbing them over her face. "I'm fucked with a capital F."

"You in some kind of trouble, Olivia?"

"You might say that," she agreed, slumping back against the couch cushion. "You also might say that if anyone in my life finds out just what kind of trouble I'm in...I'll be trouble free." He frowned in confusion. Olivia opened one eye a slit, mouth turning up in a sardonic smile. "I'll be dead, Cullen. Deader than a fuckin' doornail."

"You really need a place to stay, then?"

She nodded.

"I'm guessing it's got to be cheap, too?"

Rolling her eyes, she scraped a hand through her hair. "Free would be better."

He hummed at the back of his throat and tapped his fingers on his thigh. "I might have a solution for you."

She gaped at him. "Really?"

He shrugged. "Don't quote me, I said 'might'. Let me check out a few things, get back to you. When do you need the place by?"

"Sooner than Monday."

"Not a whole lot of time to work with..." he muttered, scratching the back of his neck. She stared at him, curiously. His eyes met hers and he smiled. "Not to worry, we'll get it figured out."

She stared into his face, wondering how she came to trust her life in the hands of this stranger. To think it had only been a few days earlier when she'd met the man. And now, he was offering her the only light at the end of her suddenly, impossibly long tunnel.

She laughed suddenly and threw her arms around him. "I am glad I met you, Officer Murphy."

Cullen chuckled and gave her back a good, hefty thump. "Well, that's an improvement at least." He pulled back to wink at her. "I'll have you willing to date me in no time."

She sat back and snorted. "Keep dreaming, copper."

"All right, all right." He held out his hands. "Let me go make some calls - if the waitress comes by, order me a club sandwich and whatever you're hungry for, okay?"

"But..."

"My treat." He left the couch so suddenly, she didn't even get to squeak in protest. Annoyed that he'd managed to finagle a date from her after all, Olivia leveled a scowl at his back, resolving to order the most expensive thing on the menu.