PART 2

The panic in his eyes was still etched in the insides of her eyelids, blue warmth enveloping the redness of the pain as it radiated throughout her every cell and dripped from the hole that had just been shot through her.

It was the last thing she remembered.

Olivia opened her eyes, struggling against the glaring white lights. The deafening sound of the close-range gunshot was still caught in her ears, closely connected to the searing pain now concentrated in her shoulder.

"What happened?" she murmured, not yet sure who her audience was, but guessing from the aseptic whiteness and the impersonal monitor sounds that the venue was a hospital room.

She had been expecting a very specific shade of angry blue when she glanced around the room, but instead she saw warm browns watching her with a relieved smile.

"You scared us, Captain," said Ayanna Bell, standing from her chair before asking softly, "Do you remember getting shot?"

Olivia looked away, searching through the flashes of that moment in her mind, trying to put them together like a puzzle: the perp running with a gun pointed at her, Elliot's wild eyes following closely — too closely.

I knew you would've taken the shot, he had told her in another life.

No, I wouldn't've. Not in a million lifetimes.

"Yeah, vaguely," she replied, wincing at the memory and the burn across her skin from trying to sit up.

"Did you get a good look at him?" Bell asked in a visible effort not to push her too hard, while it was quite obvious she desperately needed the information: that meant that the shooter had gotten away.

"No, he was wearing a ski mask," Olivia sighed. "Is everyone else okay? I remember hearing a ten-thirteen before..." she trailed off, looking at Bell expectantly.

"Detective Rollins was hit, but she's fine," Ayanna answered reassuringly. "Bullet just grazed her arm."

"Damn it…" Olivia murmured under her breath. "Did we get anything from the search?"

"Plenty," the sergeant nodded slowly with a hint of a triumphant smile. "We're still analyzing all the evidence, but it should get us closer to catching Wheatley."

Olivia swallowed, nodding once as she laid back down. "At least."

The sling that kept her shoulder and arm immobile was nothing compared to the paralyzing glower that Elliot shot her as soon as she walked back into the Organized Crime task force's office. She felt it slowly burning a hole through her skin like another bullet, this one tearing through her in slow motion as she moved, her discomfort overshadowed only by the sharp pain that took her by surprise for just one second: Kathy Stabler's smile caught her eye from where it lay, imprisoned in a picture frame on his desk as she approached it.

Olivia gathered the courage to lift her eyes to his, braving the stare she'd fled to for refuge so many times before the ten-year-wide abyss. Now, they covered her in such icy cold blue that she shuddered.

"Bell call you?" he offered dismissively, looking away, making it clear she was there against his will.

"You forget it's my case now, too," she said, putting on her best sarcastic smile, but he never faced it.

He stood up, his glance so clearly avoiding hers, and started to walk away as she knew he would, certain as the rain that sputtered against the windows in a steady rhythm.

"I'm doing fine, thanks for asking," she mocked, and he stilled where he stood, to her relief: she could still get to him.

He turned around and squinted at her, coming back toward her with a couple of rushed, contained steps as he hissed his words. "Why didn't you stop him? Why didn't you shoot him?"

Olivia scoffed to conceal the flashback threatening to choke her as she spoke against the lump in her throat. "You were too close behind him. I couldn't risk it. Which I assume is the reason you didn't shoot him either."

His eyelids faltered, the only evidence, the undeniable evidence she'd hit him with her accusation. Square in the chest. She almost regretted it until he covered it up with misplaced rage, just like she remembered he'd done in the past.

"Someone ended up shot all the same and he got away," he shook his head. "It was sloppy work!"

"You're out of line, Detective," she ground her teeth to keep her eyes from watering. There was plenty of anger to go around, so she used it. "Sloppy of you all to let him escape the building!"

"I could've had him!" he raised his voice, and Olivia felt more than saw a few heads, more and less familiar, turn in their direction.

She cocked her head to the side challengingly, her voice still very much under her control. "Why didn't you?"

"You were…" escaped him before he shook his head, looking down with eyes shut tight, a hand to his forehead as though attacked by a sudden headache. "I assumed Bell would…"

"I was fine," Olivia accused, unable to escape the bitterness of the memories that blurred her vision — and certainly his: she could see it. He was still haunted by that mistake so long ago; he would continue to be haunted by this one. By the way he hadn't been able to help it once again, the way he'd been incapable of letting her lie on the floor bleeding, unattended. "You should've gone after him."

"You don't think I know that?" he finally lifted his wounded gaze to hers, all kinds of emotions glinting from the blue surface like an ocean of glass shards. "He got away, and now Wheatley knows!"

Olivia's lips opened before the words were conjured. "Knows what?"

It seemed like a capital offense that she didn't know the answer, and Elliot didn't grace her with it, leaving only a frustrated huff and a narrowed-eyed glance behind before making his way to the mezzanine.

"Okay, everybody, listen up," Bell called as she came from the entrance in hurried strides, urging everyone to follow her to where Elliot already stood.

In the next minute, the room filled with members of both units. Olivia kept her stare on the sergeant, picking up on the weird anxiety she seemed to emit.

"We have decrypted the last piece of evidence we gathered from the house: the flash drive." Bell's eyes found Elliot and landed on him for a silent second that puzzled Olivia. "Stabler, I want you to hear me out," she warned before taking a deep breath while Olivia held hers. "The flash drive contained a dossier about Kathy Stabler, including your Rome/New York flight information. It also contained Sacha Lenski's contact information."

Olivia could feel the tension in Elliot's body from the opposite end of the room, and his eyes found hers even through the fog of uncertainty that set them apart as they reached the same conclusion, minds insisting to remain in sync.

He turned to Bell once more. "Are you saying…"

"She was the target of the car bombing," Bell confirmed. "Not you."