Chapter 3

Alex wandered in at 8:05- her usual lateness- but it certainly didn't matter as she almost always left late. She found Bobby sitting at his desk, deep in conversation with a gruff looking younger man with an accent that she couldn't quite place. He had shortish blonde hair that laid perfectly on his head and he was a little short too, now that she took a closer look at him sitting next to Bobby.

Bobby looked up. "Ah, here she is."

Alex walked up to Bobby's desk. He stood up with the blonde man, who was only a little taller than Alex- only half a head shorter than Bobby compared to her full-headed shortness. "Alex, this is Peter," he said.

Peter held out his hand, which Alex shook. He looked straight into her eyes. "Nice to meet you," she said.

"Pleasure's all mine," he assured her, never looking away.

Bobby coughed. "P.K.s gonna help us try to bait this guy."

"You're going to have to be our bait when the time comes, so we're gonna have to use your description," he said.

"Oh great, does this mean I have to wear a mini skirt at some point?" she asked, remembering her days in Vice.

"Only if you want to," Peter said smiling at exactly the same time Bobby tried to say, "We'll see."

There was an awkward pause. Peter smiled, stood up straight and said, "We're going to need to plan this. Where you want to go with this, how long you want it to last, and how we're going to make it believable. I read the previous e-mails with the other girls and it looks like he's going to dictating a lot of the moves- we have to act naïve, or he's not going to fall for it."

Bobby was rather taken aback by P.K.'s assertiveness and personality analyzation of the suspect. But then again, he had to admit, scam baiting was something he knew nothing about and rather than risk blowing it, he had decided to call this guy in. He should have known this guy'd be almost as idiosyncratic as he was…

Alex smiled. "Let's get started, shall we?" and led him into one of the conference rooms. Bobby followed behind her.

They all sat down at the table, Peter sat on one side, Bobby and Alex on the other.

"Obviously, everything is going to have to be fake. We're going to have to rely on the fact that this guy will become so greedy to pick up his bait that he will ignore small details. Whatever he asks for, we're going to have to create, or create a good excuse why he can't have it." He gave Alex a sanctimonious nod. "Fax number, cell phone, address, and a place to meet… these things we can plan, but a lot of it we're going to have to play by ear."

"Where do we start?" asked Alex.

"We could either set ourselves up to be contacted by him, or contact him under the pretense that we heard about him through a charity organization website."

Alex turned to Bobby. He looked at her for a moment. How could he offer her up as bait? "The second one," he said finally.

"All right, I bring you a draft tomorrow morning."

Until Peter came back with the e-mail drafts to get the bait started, Bobby and Alex were really at a stand still. They had contacted the parents of the past victims to update them on the case, they had called SVU so they could be there when they started the bait, and they had been out for coffee twice. It was back to reading books and twiddling thumbs. Bobby was mid-sentence when he looked up and asked. "Did we ever read the whole e-mail correspondence between Sarah and Sam?"

"I think so. Here's the laptop if you want to read it again," she made for her bottom drawer.

"It's ok, I'll read it later." There was a pause. "PK asked if you were seeing anyone," he said finally. Alex looked up at him surprised.

"What did you say?"

"I told him not that I knew of."

Alex paused. "Okay," she said.

"What? Are you seeing someone?" he asked, afraid he was giving the wrong guy the go.

"He's not quite my type. Anyone who's that good at lying and deceiving people- even to catch them in criminal activity- doesn't seem like the most trustworthy person to be dating," she said.

"He's trustworthy," said Bobby a little devensively.

"And still you acted jealous today when he was hitting on me," she said casually.

"I'm just watching out for you- you should know that by now," he said.

"My big brother?" she said sweetly.

"Not quite," he said evasively. "I'm gonna take off. See you in the morning," he said gathering his coat and notebook.