Chapter 45: First Saturday
It was Saturday.
He'd gotten up this morning with no intention of doing anything in particular. The last few days had gone by in a fog; he was absolutely miserable, couldn't focus on anything, couldn't concentrate on anything. He'd bought a bottle of hard liquor at a cheap dive in the ghetto, but then couldn't drink it. It reminded him of the night on the subway—which in turn reminded him of her.
The apartment was…adequate. Actually closer to what he'd thought he wanted when Harold had first offered him a place to live; an efficiency, a shoebox in a larger concrete box. Two windows on one wall, and that was it. Nothing like the airy spaciousness of the Baxter street apartment. And now he found he missed the airy spaciousness; this apartment made him feel…claustrophobic.
He turned his mind away. No. He didn't want to think about the Baxter apartment. Because the last time he'd been in the apartment had been to collect some of his clothes, to take over to Joss's apartment, and he'd paused for a moment wondering if he should take those red satin sheets off his bed and take them with him. About a third of the clothes he owed now lay in the bottom drawer of Joss's dresser, and two or three of his ubiquitous suits hung in one side of her closet.
Harold had stopped at the Baxter apartment and collected the rest of his clothes; John hadn't wanted to go anywhere near there, for fear Joss would be around, would see him. He still didn't feel like he could face her, with the knowledge of what he'd done still hanging between them. He couldn't even look at himself in the mirror, the last couple of days; he hadn't shaved because he didn't want to see the face in the mirror, the man who'd promised Joss he would never hurt her and had turned that into a lie, had hurt her in the worst way possible for a man to hurt a woman.
But he couldn't stop thinking of her. His dreams had all been about her. The way she looked that night at Ettienne's; the way she'd put her hands on her hips and accused him of having Harold help him cheat at Monopoly. The soft, gentle, comfortable kisses they shared when she was on her way out the door in the morning, or in the door in the evening; and of course, the time they spent in each others' arms.
Even the few fragmentary memories he had of that fateful night hadn't helped; the sweet heat of her body, a mental image of her screaming his name in tones of lust and desire, even though he knew it couldn't be possible, he'd hurt her, she couldn't possibly have wanted that. He'd looked at his body in the shower the morning of the day after; the raw scratches on his torso, feeling hot water from the shower sting the scratches on his back, and when he looked in the mirror, the red semicircle where he quite clearly remembered her biting his shoulder. But every time he saw that bite, his overwhelming physical reaction was arousal; he'd liked it. Wanted more.
And that was what he hated himself for.
He'd scrubbed himself in the shower, willing his skin to stop feeling her hands on him, but no amount of showering or scrubbing could wash away that memory, and as he paced back and forth now in this tiny shoebox, a cage for his rage and self-loathing, he suddenly remembered. It was Saturday. First Saturday. Aleksa was going to be having her monthly social gathering today.
Not the 'new' merchandise that usually came in on First Friday; no, that was called off. Harold had called him at about two this morning, waking him out of a sound sleep and sweet dreams of Joss.
He'd panicked for a moment when he saw the time on the bedside clock, then saw Harold's number on his phone. "Is she okay?" He couldn't imagine any other reason why Harold would have called him at this hour; something had to be wrong with Joss. She'd said she was taking Laskey to the docks to witness the dismantling of the HR/Russians human trafficking enterprise; for one wild moment he'd wondered if something went wrong, had Joss been shot? Was she wounded? Dying?…
But Harold had put those fears to rest immediately. "She's fine, John. She and Laskey showed up at the docks. Two HR folks died; a few Russians. No police were injured and none of the children. She and her partner protected the children until the firefight was over. She drove him back to the station to clean up. And it appears that she was right about the young man; he's gotten several phone calls today from various members of HR and he's thus far refused to answer those calls." Harold cleared his throat. "Joss called. I didn't answer. She left a message on my voicemail informing me that she saw Simmons at the dockyard, but he escaped, slipped away before the firefight started."
"So she's okay." It was the only part of the conversation that John was able to process.
"Yes, she's fine. John—" but John had hung up without another word.
Now he was pacing angrily. It was almost five PM; in another two hours Aleksa's guests were going to be arriving for another party. Aleksa herself was almost certainly preparing for that party this very minute.
Predatory senses sharpened, focused. Aleksa Nikolaevna was the one who'd started this. She'd set all of this in motion, had taken from John the one good thing he had in his life.
He was going to have his revenge for that. If she wanted to dance with Reese, had drugged him so she could have him, by God he was going to give her what she wanted.
He headed for his closet, reached blindly for one of his suits.
Aleksa's guests were going to start arriving in an hour.
Joss checked her watch for what seemed like the hundredth time that hour. She had to time this carefully. She was furious with what the bitch had done to John, wanted revenge. But she'd learned the art of crafting traps from Reese; he was a past master at elegant but simple solutions that would close on its victim without the trapper also getting caught.
She checked the pouch with the few things that she'd need for this venture. Two pairs of handcuffs. A syringe, with a clear liquid; water, but Aleksa wouldn't know that. Several packets of Ten Scope that she'd nicked from the evidence locker at the precinct, each packet she'd brought with her being a mix from several different packets of the seized drug; one full bag of Ten Scope would be missed, but tiny amounts taken from many different packets wouldn't be noticed. And copies of the forged shipping manifest paperwork from the Pier Eleven raid. This last had been a little difficult; the originals were in evidence at SVU, and SVU's cops were clean. But she'd nonchalantly asked Fin Tutuola for copies, and although she'd been prepared for a rejection, after one single narrow-eyed look he'd said he could get that for her, and when she'd stopped at Manhattan North just before she got off work that morning, in the envelope with her name and copies of her reports of the Pier Eleven raid had been a folded copy of the shipping documents. She'd spent a few hours that morning carefully preparing those papers, taking fingerprints off them, wrinkling them just so, even adding a few random cigarette burns, and then she'd dusted them with Ten Scope before tucking them carefully into a plastic ziplock baggie for transport.
The last item she'd gotten had been a little harder, but she'd managed it, thanks to Sam; a copy of a blackmail video Aleksa had made and sent to a city councilman a year ago. He'd been one of the rare few that recognized the drugged wine for what it was, and hadn't drunk the second glass that had been Aleksa's insurance that her victims got the full dose. When she'd sent him the videotape, full of confidence that he'd pay up just like every other male, he'd dared her to do her worst.
A tape had been released to the media of the councilman. In the tape, however, Aleksa's face was never shown, thanks to some careful editing. She couldn't risk exposure, after all. The councilman had been running for council president, so the tape cased a small scandal, but unfortunately for Aleksa it didn't have the effect she wanted since the councilman had just gotten a divorce from his wife. However, speculation had run wild as to who had been behind the tape; even more so when two women had come forward and claimed that their husbands had been blackmailed by the same person who had made that tape.
Now Joss was going to put that speculation to bed. After tonight, no one would ever come to a party hosted at the Nikolai mansion; no one would ever again fall victim to Aleksa's blackmail scheme. And if she was very, very smart, she wouldn't go after the men who were still paying her off.
She'd driven a patrol past the mansion earlier that day; had immediately seen how John had gotten away from Aleksa. The library had a set of glass French doors in the back that led out to the patio, then a brick walkway tracked from the back patio to the front drive. The gates of the mansion were open, in expectation of the exclusive assemblage of visitors in a couple of minutes.
She checked her watch again. Perfect. Right on the dot. She'd have exactly an hour.
She'd dressed in black; now she pulled a ski mask over her face. Sensible black boots with rubber soles made no noise on the concrete front drive. Up the brick walkway, then; and around the side of the house; the lock on the French doors was an easy one to pick, thanks to her having watched Reese pick locks. She shook her head; yes, she really was spending too much time with him.
The library was luxuriously appointed, though at the moment mostly in shadow. Joss slipped in, did a quick prowl around the room, hid the packets of Ten Scope in the large desk, then laid the altered shipping list on the desk, half-hidden under other papers; not visible to a casual observer, but it would certainly be found by cops when they tossed the library. She poured a shot glass of the brandy sitting on a sideboard, to which Carter carefully added the contents of a small packet of Ten Scope. She also took a quick look around for the camera; as she suspected, the camera was hidden inside a tall bookend on a narrow shelf between two tall windows; she'd seen the angle of the footage in the Councilman's tape, knew where the camera had been hidden. Fortunately for her, the camera caught picture, not audio; Aleksa didn't want audio of her victims sounding reluctant or drugged.
And, as she'd expected, Aleksa came into the library at quarter after to turn on the lights and prepare the room for her latest victim.
The dark figure rising out of the chair in the shadows by the curtains startled the beautiful Russian woman. Before she could scream, however, that figure had covered her mouth with a black-gloved hand and bore her backwards into the chair behind the desk, usually reserved for Aleksa's blackmail victims. She swept the shot glass of brandy off the desk, presented it to Aleksa even as she pressed the syringe against the hollow of Aleksa's throat. "Drink."
The Russian beauty's struggles were no match for Joss's own strength, developed by her military service training and kept honed by her work as a cop; Aleksa wasn't even a challenge. Aleksa drank the brandy down in one shot; then Joss pressed her hand back over the woman's mouth and waited for the drug to start working.
It didn't take long before the Ten Scope started to work its magic on its victim. In fact, rather faster than Joss expected; she guessed that Aleksa didn't use her own product, and so wasn't prepared for it. Good. Carter didn't care.
"Who are you? What…what are you doing here?" Aleksa slurred when Joss finally took her hand off the Russian woman's mouth, once she was sure that the drug was fully in effect.
Carter didn't reply immediately, shifting instead to the back of the chair, where she locked one pair of the handcuffs around Aleksa's wrists, using the connecting link between the cuffs to ensure Aleksa's wrists stayed back there. "You tried your extortion scheme on one person too many," she said, and even through the drugs Aleksa's eyes widened as she realized her assailant was female.
"Who…did I get…your husband? Your boyfriend?" Aleksa giggled.
"Doesn't matter. What matters is that you're not going to do it again." Carter straddled the Russian woman's chair, doing her best to move like a man. How does John move? Slow. Graceful. Like a panther. She did that now as she climbed onto Aleksa's lap.
The drug was definitely working; Aleksa was whimpering, her hips pumping air. Her eyes, when Joss looked down into them, were wide, dilated by the drugs; her perfect red lips parted. She had the kind of beauty Joss had, all her life, envied; the money that Joss could never even dream of; and she'd done this. What a waste.
Now to complete the illusion. Joss carefully leaned in and pressed her lips onto Aleksa's. To anyone watching the bookcase camera footage later, it would appear as though the assailant had given Aleksa a slow, passionate kiss. She tasted the alcoholic tang of the brandy, and something else; a bitter aftertaste, presumably the Ten Scope. She had to fight not to make a face; the stuff tasted horrible. No wonder it was drunk in shots—and no wonder John had tasted it in his wine. When she straightened up, she licked it off her own lower lip, wincing.
When John had first seen the dark-clad figure covering Aleksa's mouth through the twin French doors, his first thought was that the Russian woman's schemes had finally caught up with her. He watched as the back-clad figure forced Aleksa to drink down a shot of brandy from a small glass at the edge of the desk; waited until the drug had started working on the Russian woman. John saw when Aleksa succumbed; he remembered the heavy leaden heat that had settled in his arms and legs after he'd drunk the stuff. Aleksa was smaller; this would hit her a lot harder and a lot faster—depending on how much of the stuff Aleksa's mysterious assailant had put in the shot glass.
But something seemed off to John; the way the assailant moved. The figure under the bulky clothing also seemed a little off; he was almost sure that this assailant was female. And when the assailant climbed onto Aleksa's lap, straddling it, John was certain. The gloved, masked figure was a woman. No man could roll hips like that.
But the way the figure straddled the Russian woman's lap in the chair was undeniably sensual, and John felt his own breath catch in his throat as the black-clad figure dropped a long kiss on the Russian woman's full red lips. Not for the Russian woman; she inspired nothing but disgust in John. He knew she was beautiful, but her beauty held no attraction for him. But there was something about the way this other woman moved, walked; the way she finally slid off the Russian woman's lap, then went to the large desk. She fumbled around for it, and then suddenly the silence of the night was split by the shrill piercing wail of a house alarm. And when the black-clad figure sprinted away from the desk straight at the twin French doors through which John watched, his eyes met hers. "Carter!?" he exclaimed in shock as his mouth fell open.
She saw him. Her eyes registered disbelief that he was there for one second just before she shoved the French doors open and ran past him."Come on. You don't want to be here when her security gets here."
He swallowed all of his questions and ran along behind her.
