"So, what do you want me to do?"
Montoya stared into Dent's eyes, not wanting to see the glimmer of hope that shone there fade away. Slowly, she removed her hand from his, giving him one last reassuring smile before getting to work. She scooted her chair closer to the desk and motioned for him to pull one up as well. As he did, she powered up the laptop.
"Well, for now I just want you to see if anything off catches your eye, ok. I'm going to be accessing Morley's work computer. When I was on it earlier today, I noticed that he had deleted some things with in the past few days. I want to know what he's hiding…besides the whole fraud thing."
"Do you think he's our man?"
"I don't know. All I have working for me is speculation and intuition. I will say, something's not right with him." Montoya stretched and brought her left hand up to her neck, massaging the tense muscles there. With her right, she began typing, trying to gain access to Morley's computer via the Internet. Pausing, she turned her torso from one side to the other, causing her back to crack and she winced.
"You alright there, Renee?"
"I'm fine, just a little sore. Those beds at the Arms aren't very nice!"
"No, I don't belive that they would be."
Montoya frowned, her brows kitting together. She was having problems and hacking was not her forte.
"Can you do me a favor? In my smaller suitcase, there is a blue notebook. Could you bring it here please?"
Quietly, he nodded and left the room. Renee took this time to dial her unlisted phone number. While it was ringing, she put her hair up in a loose bun, held in place by a hotel pen, and then grabbed the complimentarily notepad and another pen to take notes. Once the machine picked up, she punched in a code and waited while the tape rewound. Dent re-entered the room and set the aforementioned notebook on the desk as the first message sounded.
*BEEP* Renee? It's Benny…Just wanted to warn you. Pops is on the proverbial warpath…again. Later! *BEEP*
~Great~ she thought, doodling idly on the pad, but did look up and smile her thanks to Harvey.
*BEEP* Hello, Gotham area single…we are Gotham's premier Internet Dating…
Montoya jabbed the number three button to fast forward. She didn't know how these people still got her number!
*Beep* Renee? It's Momma. I just called to warn you, your father is on one of his rants. He started in on Benny and Alahna earlier. Hope your case goes well. Love you, sweetie. *BEEP*
"I wonder what's got Poppa so upset," She whispered to herself. She usually was only warned when her father was about to start in on her for being "an old maid" and of course the whole "being a cop" thing. She wrote down on the pad;
-Find out what's eating Poppa
*Beep* This in Northwest Credit Union. Your application for a first time homebuyer has been approved. Your credit limit is $120,000 for your home. Happy hunting! *Beep*
Montoya smiled faintly, and jotted down the dollar amount. The cost of her rent was going up again and merely out of curiosity she had applied. She looked up, aware that Harvey was not right there. She spied him by the small coffee pot working on two cups of coffee.
*Beep* Renee Isabella Montoya… It's your Poppa. You call me, you hear? As soon as you get home! *BEEP*
*BEEP* Montoya? It's Bullock. Why the HELL aren't you answering your cell phone? Where the heck are you? Call me! *BEEP*
Renee looked around for her purse, but could not spot it from where she was. The battery must have drained out on her. She would have to check later. Montoya jumped slightly as a mug of steaming coffee appeared in front of her. She looked up and took the cup, gratefully.
*BEEP* Montoya, it's Gordon. Can you lease check in. Bullock's driving me crazy. You know the rules. Fill us in. *BEEP*
~Oops!~ She blew on the coffee and winced. The last time she had gone undercover with out any way for them to trace her, she had been kidnapped and nearly killed. No wonder they were worried. She made a note on the pad.
- Call Bullock
She paused for a moment, the wrote down
-Call Dad; find out what's eating him!
* BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*
Montoya hung up the phone and sipped her coffee. She was surprised that it was just the way she liked it, no cream and just a hint of sweetener. She did not even want to know how he knew that bit of information and wondered for a moment how she could feel so comfortable around a man who could be considered a stalker to her. She put it off to one of life's great mysteries and took another sip of her coffee before returning her attention to the computer screen.
She opened the notebook, which she had jokingly labeled " the Dummies Guide to Hacking…For Police Officers". Montoya had taken a class a few years ago on data retrieval, amongst other things, and had kept the notes for reference. She skimmed the first few pages until she found what she had been looking for. Dent, for his part, remained standing behind her, watching and waiting. Soon, with the help of her notes, she was in the club's computer.
"Thank God for DSL," She mumbled. Then she spoke up, to her companion. "Where's my purse?"
"I'll get it. Hold on."
For a moment Montoya found it strangely amusing. The infamous TwoFace and former DA Harvey Dent playing errand boy for her. At the same time it was very depressing. Sighing, she took her purse from him, and pulled out her cell phone, and the schedules Morley had printed off for her earlier in the day, and sat them on the desk. There was an awkward silence, which she tried to fill.
"Um…thank you for letting me sleep."
"You looked so tired that I wasn't about to wake you."
She sat there looking at him. Something unseen past between them, her eyes locked to his. Gently, he brushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen from her bun, and into her face. Then he spoke, breaking the spell upon them.
"Let's get back to work, shall we?"
Montoya tore her eyes from his and blushed. She had no idea what had just happened there and was alarmed even more by her reaction to her confusion. She was not some simpering schoolgirl who blushed over a few stolen glances. She was a grown woman who was well aware of how the world worked. Clearing her throat, she looked back to her laptop, where it belonged. She had lots to do tonight and it was fading fast.
She started to type, trying to ignore the man, who had moved behind her, to watch what she was doing. She tensed when he lightly placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Do you mind," she asked, flipping through her notebook, trying to remember how to recover deleted data. He was making her nervous and was distracting her.
"Jeez, Renee, you're too tense!"
I wonder why? She muttered in Spanish, momentarily forgetting that he spoke the language. He must have understood, for he started to remove his hands, then stopped. Montoya decided to go forward with her previous plan, which was to ignore him and get to work. After all he was not hurting her…
"OW!" Renee jerked with pain, when Harvey started to gently massage her shoulders. Turning, she glared at him, but he would not relent.
"You don't take care of yourself, Renee. When's the last time you treated yourself to a good massage somewhere?"
~Never~ she thought to herself. She did not answer him and tried to shrug his hand off of her, but he had all the leverage. Swearing under her breath, she swung out with her right elbow. She missed.
"Stop!" Dent knelt down beside her and gently took her chin in hand and turned her to look at him. Their eyes met momentarily, before Montoya looked away. ~What the Hell is he up to?~ she thought to herself.
"Look at you, Renee. You are so tense and uptight. You NEED to relax. You're not doing yourself any favors. All work and no play…"
His voice trailed off as he continued to star into her eyes. While Montoya knew his words to be wise, she simply was not the type to cut loose. In small gatherings of close friends or family, she did loosen up a bit. However, around people she did not know well and at work, she was all business, and quite happy with the image she portrayed. Still, she admitted to herself, it was nice to see that someone cared about her well being.
Renee was startled out of her thoughts by the brush of his lips against hers. She started to pull away, yet he held her in place. One hand held her at the back of her neck, gently keeping her next to him. The kiss was one sided at first. Then some small part of her, the part of her that was lonely and tired of being that way, overruled her common sense.
Timidly, she kissed Harvey back. He must have been prepared for any reaction from her but that one, for he quickly back peddled and stared at her in confusion. A confusion that was mirrored in her eyes. Montoya prided herself as a woman who was in control. A control she seemed to be seriously lacking, at the moment.
A flood of thoughts entered her mind and she had to turn away from him, desperately fighting for the control she had worked so hard to obtain.
"I…we need to get back to work."
She would not look at him. It was not just the fact that he was TwoFace, although she was sure that that did have something to do with it. The main reason she was so upset was that she had been weak and so what did she do? She threw herself at the first man who had taken an interest.
"Renee, look at me, please?"
She shook her head and started typing again. Work was her solace. Her retreat from her lonely life. She had spent so much energy convincing herself that she did not need anyone in her life, that it was full without the bothersome nuisance of a relationship. Now, with one small kiss, all of her hard work was crumbling apart. Montoya knew it was cruel, but she ignored Dent and focused her mind back on her laptop. After a minute or two, he seemed to realize that she simply was going to ignore him and the kiss that they had shared.
He got up then and left the room, not into the bedroom, but out the door. Renee's eyes stayed glued to the monitor the whole time, yet she found herself following his reflection on the screen. Only once she was alone did she allow herself to react, putting her head in her hands and covering her face.
"What am I going to do?" She pondered, into the silence of the empty room. Montoya did not allow herself to brood for more than a few minutes, however. She had too much to do to allow herself the luxury of moping. Pushing her chair out from the desk, she took the time to change out of her club apparel. She slipped on a pair of faded jeans, which she slipped TwoFace's coin into the pocket, and a ribbed black turtleneck. Then she removed the makeshift bun from her hair and put it up into a proper ponytail. Feeling more like her old self, she returned to the front room.
She grabbed her cup of coffee and refilled it before sitting back down at her laptop. Montoya then started typing away, tying to recover the deleted data. She was irritated at herself, fumbling around the way she was. As she was typing, something caught her eye. Curious, she clicked on the icon, one she has not noticed earlier.
It appeared to be a journal. Her mouth went dry as she skimmed its contents. There was a bookmark for commercial property, currently unused, and in an unsavory part of town. Unusual to be certain but not criminal. Only when she continued to read did she get nervous. Morley talked in great length about the pleasure he had taken with each of the girls, and how his only regret would be that he had to set someone up to take the fall, that someone else would get the credit for his fun.
That someone, as she continued to read, appeared to be TwoFace, and she was to be his final victim. Who would even question it, he had written. The authorities would simply round up TwoFace and put him back in Arkham, again, and Morley would be free to move on. ~That's where the money must come in, so he could relocate~ she thought to herself.
"Well if he thinks that I'm going to be that easy to take down…." She let the thought trail away, as the list of deleted files finally appeared on screen. She had no idea why he would have forgotten to delete the journal, but it was a nice break for her. She set that aside and clicked on this week's schedule, which she noticed, he had also deleted. As it loaded up, she pulled her physical copy from the stack that Morley had printed off for her.
"That's not right," She whispered, looking from the computer to the paper. The copy said that Summer was supposed to work the next three days straight, and the laptop said that she was off. Montoya felt a growing sense of dread building with in her. She went back to the list of deleted files, just as she heard the door unlock and open. She barley spared a glance; just long enough to acknowledge that it was Dent. On a hunch, she picked up the phone and dialed Morley's home phone. She let it ring until it disconnected. Her bad feeling was getting worse.
"Well, I see that Detective Montoya is back," Dent spat our, obviously in a foul mood. She assumed it was from her earlier actions, or lack there of, as the case may be.
"Yeah," came her absentminded reply, as her attention was focused on the screen. She picked up the phone again, this time to call Bullock. As she waited for him to pick up, she opened one of several JPGS that she had come across.
"Oh, shit!"
The image on the screen was disturbing, to say the least. Hesitantly, she clicked open several of the other JPGS only to reveal the same kind of image. All of the pictures revealed one of the dead young women, in various stages of being tied up, beaten, and ultimately killed. The phone receiver slid from her hand, as she stared at the pictures, but then she closed her eyes against the brutality and the spell was broken. She picked up the dropped phone just in time to hear
"You know the drill…" *BEEP*
"Bullock? It's Montoya. Pick up." She paused a moment waiting for him, before continuing. "Damn it. Meet me at," She glanced at the address of the vacant property. "379 East lawn, ASAP. It's about the case!"
Renee hung up the phone and brushed past Dent, who was now staring at the screen. Making her way into the bedroom, she quickly clipped her badge to the waistband of her jeans and put on her holster and retrieved her Berretta from the nightstand, holstering it. Moving to her suitcases, she pulled out an extra clip of ammo. Then she noticed Harvey leaning on the door jam, and as an afterthought she also pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
"What are we going to do?" Dent asked, still lingering in the doorway. He was obviously trying to stay out of the detective's way. She brushed past him again, heading back towards the phone.
"WE? We," she took a deep breath, surprised at his level of commitment to this. Normally he would be calling for a new flip by now. She put her one hand into her pocket and touched his coin. Still there. "We aren't going to do anything. I am going to get the bastard and YOU are staying here!"
"NO!"
Harvey grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.
"You can't go alone, and you couldn't raise your partner on the phone." He let that sink in a moment. "I'm going with you."
Montoya jerked her arm away from his light grasp and glared at him. There was no way that she was going to let him, TwoFace and all around psycho, tell her how to run her investigation. When she spoke, it was deadly calm and single pointed.
"No…You…Are…Not."
She picked up the phone again and called dispatch. She asked for backup and gave all the appropriate information that they would need. Then she picked up Dent's keys and pocketed them.
"Hey, those are ours!"
"Yeah, I know. I'm borrowing them. Now, please, just stay here, ok?"
Montoya had just finished putting on her heavy leather jacket when Harvey grabbed her by the arm and forced her to look at him.
"Don't go. We have a bad feeling about this, Renee! He SAW you working at his computer. What if it's a trap?"
Montoya knew full well that it could be a trap, after what she had learned on the computer earlier. There was only one way she could think of to make sure that Dent could not be framed for anything, should tonight not work out well. She felt a guilty pain in her chest, knowing what she was about to do.
"I'm sorry, Harvey," She whispered, and he looked at her with confusion in his eyes. Moments later she had snapped her handcuffs around his free arm and then to the drawer handle of the small desk, which had been built into the wall of the room. Quickly she backed away from him as he stared at her in shock.
"I can't have you there, Harvey. It would compromise the case, you know that."
"Renee!"
Whoa, didn't think you had it in you. Looks like you could be fun, yet, eh Harv? Who wouldda thought she was the kinky type!
It always crept Montoya out when he held conversations between both personalities. She looked into his eyes and saw his anger and frustration. Slowly, she backed away from him towards the door. She stopped when she spotted her purse and cell phone on the desk. She would just have to come back for them Dent was struggling to free himself, but to no avail. The hotel desks had been manufactured to take a beating and stay in one piece. He looked back at Montoya, realizing that he was stuck.
"We said we'd help, Renee," he said in a defeated tone. " We trusted you." His shoulders slumped as he looked at her with more hurt than anger.
"I…I," She could not think of anything so say that would take the hurt from his eyes. She went with best she could come up with, which was bad enough.
"I warned you, I told you I'd take you in when this was over, but you just had to keep coming around…" Renee had made it to the door now. "I'll be back for you, I promise."
With that said, she turned her back on Dent who tonight was the lesser of the two evils. Opening the door, she left to go catch a killer.
Montoya stared into Dent's eyes, not wanting to see the glimmer of hope that shone there fade away. Slowly, she removed her hand from his, giving him one last reassuring smile before getting to work. She scooted her chair closer to the desk and motioned for him to pull one up as well. As he did, she powered up the laptop.
"Well, for now I just want you to see if anything off catches your eye, ok. I'm going to be accessing Morley's work computer. When I was on it earlier today, I noticed that he had deleted some things with in the past few days. I want to know what he's hiding…besides the whole fraud thing."
"Do you think he's our man?"
"I don't know. All I have working for me is speculation and intuition. I will say, something's not right with him." Montoya stretched and brought her left hand up to her neck, massaging the tense muscles there. With her right, she began typing, trying to gain access to Morley's computer via the Internet. Pausing, she turned her torso from one side to the other, causing her back to crack and she winced.
"You alright there, Renee?"
"I'm fine, just a little sore. Those beds at the Arms aren't very nice!"
"No, I don't belive that they would be."
Montoya frowned, her brows kitting together. She was having problems and hacking was not her forte.
"Can you do me a favor? In my smaller suitcase, there is a blue notebook. Could you bring it here please?"
Quietly, he nodded and left the room. Renee took this time to dial her unlisted phone number. While it was ringing, she put her hair up in a loose bun, held in place by a hotel pen, and then grabbed the complimentarily notepad and another pen to take notes. Once the machine picked up, she punched in a code and waited while the tape rewound. Dent re-entered the room and set the aforementioned notebook on the desk as the first message sounded.
*BEEP* Renee? It's Benny…Just wanted to warn you. Pops is on the proverbial warpath…again. Later! *BEEP*
~Great~ she thought, doodling idly on the pad, but did look up and smile her thanks to Harvey.
*BEEP* Hello, Gotham area single…we are Gotham's premier Internet Dating…
Montoya jabbed the number three button to fast forward. She didn't know how these people still got her number!
*Beep* Renee? It's Momma. I just called to warn you, your father is on one of his rants. He started in on Benny and Alahna earlier. Hope your case goes well. Love you, sweetie. *BEEP*
"I wonder what's got Poppa so upset," She whispered to herself. She usually was only warned when her father was about to start in on her for being "an old maid" and of course the whole "being a cop" thing. She wrote down on the pad;
-Find out what's eating Poppa
*Beep* This in Northwest Credit Union. Your application for a first time homebuyer has been approved. Your credit limit is $120,000 for your home. Happy hunting! *Beep*
Montoya smiled faintly, and jotted down the dollar amount. The cost of her rent was going up again and merely out of curiosity she had applied. She looked up, aware that Harvey was not right there. She spied him by the small coffee pot working on two cups of coffee.
*Beep* Renee Isabella Montoya… It's your Poppa. You call me, you hear? As soon as you get home! *BEEP*
*BEEP* Montoya? It's Bullock. Why the HELL aren't you answering your cell phone? Where the heck are you? Call me! *BEEP*
Renee looked around for her purse, but could not spot it from where she was. The battery must have drained out on her. She would have to check later. Montoya jumped slightly as a mug of steaming coffee appeared in front of her. She looked up and took the cup, gratefully.
*BEEP* Montoya, it's Gordon. Can you lease check in. Bullock's driving me crazy. You know the rules. Fill us in. *BEEP*
~Oops!~ She blew on the coffee and winced. The last time she had gone undercover with out any way for them to trace her, she had been kidnapped and nearly killed. No wonder they were worried. She made a note on the pad.
- Call Bullock
She paused for a moment, the wrote down
-Call Dad; find out what's eating him!
* BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*
Montoya hung up the phone and sipped her coffee. She was surprised that it was just the way she liked it, no cream and just a hint of sweetener. She did not even want to know how he knew that bit of information and wondered for a moment how she could feel so comfortable around a man who could be considered a stalker to her. She put it off to one of life's great mysteries and took another sip of her coffee before returning her attention to the computer screen.
She opened the notebook, which she had jokingly labeled " the Dummies Guide to Hacking…For Police Officers". Montoya had taken a class a few years ago on data retrieval, amongst other things, and had kept the notes for reference. She skimmed the first few pages until she found what she had been looking for. Dent, for his part, remained standing behind her, watching and waiting. Soon, with the help of her notes, she was in the club's computer.
"Thank God for DSL," She mumbled. Then she spoke up, to her companion. "Where's my purse?"
"I'll get it. Hold on."
For a moment Montoya found it strangely amusing. The infamous TwoFace and former DA Harvey Dent playing errand boy for her. At the same time it was very depressing. Sighing, she took her purse from him, and pulled out her cell phone, and the schedules Morley had printed off for her earlier in the day, and sat them on the desk. There was an awkward silence, which she tried to fill.
"Um…thank you for letting me sleep."
"You looked so tired that I wasn't about to wake you."
She sat there looking at him. Something unseen past between them, her eyes locked to his. Gently, he brushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen from her bun, and into her face. Then he spoke, breaking the spell upon them.
"Let's get back to work, shall we?"
Montoya tore her eyes from his and blushed. She had no idea what had just happened there and was alarmed even more by her reaction to her confusion. She was not some simpering schoolgirl who blushed over a few stolen glances. She was a grown woman who was well aware of how the world worked. Clearing her throat, she looked back to her laptop, where it belonged. She had lots to do tonight and it was fading fast.
She started to type, trying to ignore the man, who had moved behind her, to watch what she was doing. She tensed when he lightly placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Do you mind," she asked, flipping through her notebook, trying to remember how to recover deleted data. He was making her nervous and was distracting her.
"Jeez, Renee, you're too tense!"
I wonder why? She muttered in Spanish, momentarily forgetting that he spoke the language. He must have understood, for he started to remove his hands, then stopped. Montoya decided to go forward with her previous plan, which was to ignore him and get to work. After all he was not hurting her…
"OW!" Renee jerked with pain, when Harvey started to gently massage her shoulders. Turning, she glared at him, but he would not relent.
"You don't take care of yourself, Renee. When's the last time you treated yourself to a good massage somewhere?"
~Never~ she thought to herself. She did not answer him and tried to shrug his hand off of her, but he had all the leverage. Swearing under her breath, she swung out with her right elbow. She missed.
"Stop!" Dent knelt down beside her and gently took her chin in hand and turned her to look at him. Their eyes met momentarily, before Montoya looked away. ~What the Hell is he up to?~ she thought to herself.
"Look at you, Renee. You are so tense and uptight. You NEED to relax. You're not doing yourself any favors. All work and no play…"
His voice trailed off as he continued to star into her eyes. While Montoya knew his words to be wise, she simply was not the type to cut loose. In small gatherings of close friends or family, she did loosen up a bit. However, around people she did not know well and at work, she was all business, and quite happy with the image she portrayed. Still, she admitted to herself, it was nice to see that someone cared about her well being.
Renee was startled out of her thoughts by the brush of his lips against hers. She started to pull away, yet he held her in place. One hand held her at the back of her neck, gently keeping her next to him. The kiss was one sided at first. Then some small part of her, the part of her that was lonely and tired of being that way, overruled her common sense.
Timidly, she kissed Harvey back. He must have been prepared for any reaction from her but that one, for he quickly back peddled and stared at her in confusion. A confusion that was mirrored in her eyes. Montoya prided herself as a woman who was in control. A control she seemed to be seriously lacking, at the moment.
A flood of thoughts entered her mind and she had to turn away from him, desperately fighting for the control she had worked so hard to obtain.
"I…we need to get back to work."
She would not look at him. It was not just the fact that he was TwoFace, although she was sure that that did have something to do with it. The main reason she was so upset was that she had been weak and so what did she do? She threw herself at the first man who had taken an interest.
"Renee, look at me, please?"
She shook her head and started typing again. Work was her solace. Her retreat from her lonely life. She had spent so much energy convincing herself that she did not need anyone in her life, that it was full without the bothersome nuisance of a relationship. Now, with one small kiss, all of her hard work was crumbling apart. Montoya knew it was cruel, but she ignored Dent and focused her mind back on her laptop. After a minute or two, he seemed to realize that she simply was going to ignore him and the kiss that they had shared.
He got up then and left the room, not into the bedroom, but out the door. Renee's eyes stayed glued to the monitor the whole time, yet she found herself following his reflection on the screen. Only once she was alone did she allow herself to react, putting her head in her hands and covering her face.
"What am I going to do?" She pondered, into the silence of the empty room. Montoya did not allow herself to brood for more than a few minutes, however. She had too much to do to allow herself the luxury of moping. Pushing her chair out from the desk, she took the time to change out of her club apparel. She slipped on a pair of faded jeans, which she slipped TwoFace's coin into the pocket, and a ribbed black turtleneck. Then she removed the makeshift bun from her hair and put it up into a proper ponytail. Feeling more like her old self, she returned to the front room.
She grabbed her cup of coffee and refilled it before sitting back down at her laptop. Montoya then started typing away, tying to recover the deleted data. She was irritated at herself, fumbling around the way she was. As she was typing, something caught her eye. Curious, she clicked on the icon, one she has not noticed earlier.
It appeared to be a journal. Her mouth went dry as she skimmed its contents. There was a bookmark for commercial property, currently unused, and in an unsavory part of town. Unusual to be certain but not criminal. Only when she continued to read did she get nervous. Morley talked in great length about the pleasure he had taken with each of the girls, and how his only regret would be that he had to set someone up to take the fall, that someone else would get the credit for his fun.
That someone, as she continued to read, appeared to be TwoFace, and she was to be his final victim. Who would even question it, he had written. The authorities would simply round up TwoFace and put him back in Arkham, again, and Morley would be free to move on. ~That's where the money must come in, so he could relocate~ she thought to herself.
"Well if he thinks that I'm going to be that easy to take down…." She let the thought trail away, as the list of deleted files finally appeared on screen. She had no idea why he would have forgotten to delete the journal, but it was a nice break for her. She set that aside and clicked on this week's schedule, which she noticed, he had also deleted. As it loaded up, she pulled her physical copy from the stack that Morley had printed off for her.
"That's not right," She whispered, looking from the computer to the paper. The copy said that Summer was supposed to work the next three days straight, and the laptop said that she was off. Montoya felt a growing sense of dread building with in her. She went back to the list of deleted files, just as she heard the door unlock and open. She barley spared a glance; just long enough to acknowledge that it was Dent. On a hunch, she picked up the phone and dialed Morley's home phone. She let it ring until it disconnected. Her bad feeling was getting worse.
"Well, I see that Detective Montoya is back," Dent spat our, obviously in a foul mood. She assumed it was from her earlier actions, or lack there of, as the case may be.
"Yeah," came her absentminded reply, as her attention was focused on the screen. She picked up the phone again, this time to call Bullock. As she waited for him to pick up, she opened one of several JPGS that she had come across.
"Oh, shit!"
The image on the screen was disturbing, to say the least. Hesitantly, she clicked open several of the other JPGS only to reveal the same kind of image. All of the pictures revealed one of the dead young women, in various stages of being tied up, beaten, and ultimately killed. The phone receiver slid from her hand, as she stared at the pictures, but then she closed her eyes against the brutality and the spell was broken. She picked up the dropped phone just in time to hear
"You know the drill…" *BEEP*
"Bullock? It's Montoya. Pick up." She paused a moment waiting for him, before continuing. "Damn it. Meet me at," She glanced at the address of the vacant property. "379 East lawn, ASAP. It's about the case!"
Renee hung up the phone and brushed past Dent, who was now staring at the screen. Making her way into the bedroom, she quickly clipped her badge to the waistband of her jeans and put on her holster and retrieved her Berretta from the nightstand, holstering it. Moving to her suitcases, she pulled out an extra clip of ammo. Then she noticed Harvey leaning on the door jam, and as an afterthought she also pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
"What are we going to do?" Dent asked, still lingering in the doorway. He was obviously trying to stay out of the detective's way. She brushed past him again, heading back towards the phone.
"WE? We," she took a deep breath, surprised at his level of commitment to this. Normally he would be calling for a new flip by now. She put her one hand into her pocket and touched his coin. Still there. "We aren't going to do anything. I am going to get the bastard and YOU are staying here!"
"NO!"
Harvey grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him.
"You can't go alone, and you couldn't raise your partner on the phone." He let that sink in a moment. "I'm going with you."
Montoya jerked her arm away from his light grasp and glared at him. There was no way that she was going to let him, TwoFace and all around psycho, tell her how to run her investigation. When she spoke, it was deadly calm and single pointed.
"No…You…Are…Not."
She picked up the phone again and called dispatch. She asked for backup and gave all the appropriate information that they would need. Then she picked up Dent's keys and pocketed them.
"Hey, those are ours!"
"Yeah, I know. I'm borrowing them. Now, please, just stay here, ok?"
Montoya had just finished putting on her heavy leather jacket when Harvey grabbed her by the arm and forced her to look at him.
"Don't go. We have a bad feeling about this, Renee! He SAW you working at his computer. What if it's a trap?"
Montoya knew full well that it could be a trap, after what she had learned on the computer earlier. There was only one way she could think of to make sure that Dent could not be framed for anything, should tonight not work out well. She felt a guilty pain in her chest, knowing what she was about to do.
"I'm sorry, Harvey," She whispered, and he looked at her with confusion in his eyes. Moments later she had snapped her handcuffs around his free arm and then to the drawer handle of the small desk, which had been built into the wall of the room. Quickly she backed away from him as he stared at her in shock.
"I can't have you there, Harvey. It would compromise the case, you know that."
"Renee!"
Whoa, didn't think you had it in you. Looks like you could be fun, yet, eh Harv? Who wouldda thought she was the kinky type!
It always crept Montoya out when he held conversations between both personalities. She looked into his eyes and saw his anger and frustration. Slowly, she backed away from him towards the door. She stopped when she spotted her purse and cell phone on the desk. She would just have to come back for them Dent was struggling to free himself, but to no avail. The hotel desks had been manufactured to take a beating and stay in one piece. He looked back at Montoya, realizing that he was stuck.
"We said we'd help, Renee," he said in a defeated tone. " We trusted you." His shoulders slumped as he looked at her with more hurt than anger.
"I…I," She could not think of anything so say that would take the hurt from his eyes. She went with best she could come up with, which was bad enough.
"I warned you, I told you I'd take you in when this was over, but you just had to keep coming around…" Renee had made it to the door now. "I'll be back for you, I promise."
With that said, she turned her back on Dent who tonight was the lesser of the two evils. Opening the door, she left to go catch a killer.