I feel like my temperature started rising when we arrived at the crime scene earlier today. Watching Olivia stare at the body from behind the tape, enduring our interview with that damn nut vendor, hearing the tone of her voice as she talked to Stabler on the phone – it was all enough to make me feel as if I were about to spontaneously combust. It's no better here in the Technical Response Unit at One Police Plaza.

I breathe deeply, but the atmosphere in the video lab is no less repressively stifling than any other I've been in over the past few hours. I guess it doesn't matter anyway. I was too hot standing in a snowdrift at Lincoln Center, too hot in the car on the ride here with Fin demanding the heat be on full blast.

God, that stupid fucking nut vendor! I carefully focus my anger on him as if I don't know the real reason I'm all hot and bothered – I want Olivia so bad that I'm starting to have trouble thinking about anything else.

I try to think about how I was able to work with her three months ago. It probably had to do with the fact that she wasn't giving me any indication that we'd be stepping beyond the line marked 'professional courtesy.' Now everything has been flipped upside-down. I'm using every excuse possible to talk to her, stand close to her, touch her. In order of difficulty, I'd rate these as easy, harder, and dangerous but nerve-rackingly satisfying, respectively.

And she isn't exactly discouraging me. She looks at me like she's daring me to go further, then she pulls away like I've gone too far. I feel like she's teasing me, too. She let the nut vendor go on and on about her ass and all I could do was stand there, feeling the heat build. Anger, jealousy, desire – now I know why 'burning' and 'fiery' are such cliché emotional adjectives. Hell, by the time we got away from that damn vendor I was almost ready to skip the crime scene once-over and drag Olivia to the back seat of my truck.

I suddenly snap back to reality and find that the tech who's trying to clean up the ATM video has finally found something. I've forgotten his name, so I decide to call him Geek. He looks just like a pasty, bespectacled AV nerd should. He presses a few buttons and the black and white video appears on a larger monitor.

We can see the entire parking garage driveway, even if it is at an odd diagonal angle. The SUV pulls in, a big someone gets out and drags something out of the back seat, leaves it in the snow, then gets back in the truck, pulls out and drives away. We watch it again. And again.

The third time through, Olivia pokes me in the ribs, whispering, "It's a Grand Wagoneer. Just like you used to have, if it's really blue." I think she stepped a little closer to me as she said this. I'd noticed the make of the SUV the first time through the tape. The fact that our perp is driving a Jeep like I had back in the day is probably giving her the same feeling of disquiet it's giving me.

Geek apparently decides we've watched the tape enough times and pauses it halfway through the drop. Olivia cocks her head, squinting at the screen. "Can you tell if that's a man or a woman?"

"I think it's a man," Fin volunteers. "Kinda big to be a woman. It's hard to tell with that long coat, and the angle doesn't exactly help."

"You know these things are angled specifically to monitor security on the ATM, right?" Geeks asks in an oh-so-rhetorical tone.

"Naw, really? I thought they were there to catch people pickin' their noses while they took cash out."

Geek is clearly insulted by Fin's lack of deference toward the video. "I'm just saying that you shouldn't expect too much from it, because the camera wasn't designed to film your crime scene on the opposite side of the street."

"Right." Olivia waves her hand through the air, as if trying to clear the momentary tension. "It's just that one of our eyewitnesses was sure it was a woman."

I can't contain myself. "The nut/ass man? He just wanted a reason to check you out." She glances at me critically for a moment before leaning toward the monitor to further contemplate the gender of the dropper.

Geek smirks as he notices her proximity, looking at Olivia in a way I don't think I like. "Why would anyone need a reason?" Then he gooses her. With his eyes. If he'd actually goosed her he'd be splattered all over his keyboard, though I'm not sure if the splattering would have been done by me or her.

I realize that I may be reading into things a little too deeply as Olivia, seeming only a little taken aback, smiles politely before returning to a standing position. I still think Geek might need a clearer signal that he can neither look nor touch, so I jab my finger at the screen and lean threateningly into his personal space. "Why don't you focus on getting the plate on that car for us, Geek." He doesn't seem to enjoy my proximity the way he did Olivia's, and hunches over, tapping his keyboard as he enhances the area of the SUV's license plate. Fin doesn't even try to hide his snort of laughter, and I think that turns Olivia's glare into a half-smile.

Her face suddenly clouds as she turns her gaze back to the monitor. "Look at the timestamp. 12:47 PM. The note arrived at the house at 11:30 this morning." Standing next to her, I can feel her anger seething. "He's got the balls to tell us where he's gonna drop the body before he does it. The son of a bitch!" She slams her fist against the table.

Geek had no way to see her outburst coming and panics. He tries to grab every piece of computer and AV equipment he can, as if he thinks she'll start taking her anger out on his precious digital friends. She's already across the room, pacing angrily to the window and back. Geek takes the opportunity to write the plate number down and hand it to me. "Check down the hall. They can look up the registration for you." He stops just short of begging us to leave.

I don't think any of us have a problem with that. In the hallway, I ask, "Are you okay?"

She sighs. "Yeah. It's just…it's like every time we get a lead on this case, it just sets us back further. Paige sends us a note telling us where to find Marina Vasquez, then gives us the opportunity to catch him dumping the body. And we miss it. We can't catch a break on this thing."

"We will, Olivia," Fin says, with a confidence that sounds false. I like him for trying.

Our luck doesn't improve when we run the plates. A less geeky tech is looking things up for us. "There's a problem with your license plates. They were reported stolen about a month ago."

"So we're looking for a stolen car too now?" This is getting ridiculous and I don't care who knows I think so.

"I didn't say the car was stolen. Just the plates."

"Well, that's helpful."

Olivia interjects, "At least we know we're looking for a blue Jeep Grand Wagoneer. It's not like there are a lot around here. Can you put that into the computer and see what comes up?"

"Uh-huh." He skims the registrations as we try not to fidget behind him. He stops suddenly. "Whoa, wait a sec. We've got a blue 1990 Grand Wagoneer registered to an Eli Page.

A-G-E. Your guy spells it with an 'i' though, right?"

"Do you know when it was purchased?"

"Originally? Let's see…" He scrolls through the car's history, and my eye locks on a name near the top.

Olivia corrects the tech. "No, by Page." She obviously didn't see the same thing I did.

"Right. Registration occurred in…December 2002. Your guy was already in jail by then. Must just be a coincidence."

"We're gonna need the address on the owner anyway. And the rest of them, too."

"How many of 'em are there?" Fin asks.

"Thirty-one."

"That's not so bad. We can have some precinct cops run 'em down for us if they're really spread out."

I only care about the one we've just been looking at. "Can you go back up to the original purchase on Page's Jeep?" I already know what I'm going to see.

"Yeah, it was bought from a dealer in 1990 by Andrew Eckerson. Hey, didn't you say…?"

I share a look with Olivia. "The bastard has my old Jeep." If I've felt uncomfortably warm up to this point I should've been glad of it, because my blood just turned to ice.

"That's a hell of a coincidence." She turns and walks out of the room. I can only stare after her, wondering how I can make her see it's, well, really just a hell of a coincidence.

Fin taps me on the shoulder. "You gonna go take care of this, Eckerson?"

I nod and walk out of the room. I find her in the stairwell. She's on the landing below me. As I descend the stairs, she says, "Go ahead. Tell me again how I'm not really a big factor in what Paige is doing. Tell me it isn't my fault. Because dropping off bodies in my ex-boyfriend's Jeep sure feels like a sick message aimed at me."

"It can't be a message, though. They can't know we've even seen the Jeep." I know I have to find a way to make this not about her. "And, anyway, I was working in Virginia in 2002. Even if Paige and his accomplice had this thing planned back then, they wouldn't have known I'd be working on the case. They couldn't know."

"But they knew I'd be on it."

She saw straight through my attempt at distraction, but I still ask, "What d'you mean?"

"I mean it wouldn't take a whole lot of background searching to find out about us."

"Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it really is just a freak coincidence."

"Or maybe we're just dealing with a freak."

"Liv…" I can't think of anything to say, so I put my arm around her shoulders, gently pulling her against me. Her reluctance pulses through me, a subtle vibration, but she doesn't move away. My cheek rests against her forehead; she feels warm. I feel my blood start to heat up again.

She speaks into my neck. "This needs to stop."

"We're gonna catch him."

"That's not what I'm talking about." I know she doesn't really mean it. She's caressing my stomach as her arm slides around my waist.

"Right." I draw a shaky breath. "But it's not like I'm holding you so tightly that you couldn't pull away any time you wanted to."

She looks up at me. "Why does it have to be like this?"

The door creaks as it opens and she jerks back so fast she almost smacks her head against the wall. Fin doesn't seem to sense the awkwardness as he leans over the railing, saying. "We got an address for Page in Flatbush. I talked to the precinct cops and they gave it a ride-by to make sure it was legit. It was just a vacant lot."

"Big surprise. At least we didn't have to drag our asses out to Brooklyn." She starts down the stairs.

My cell phone rings before I can say anything to her. My mind is still focused on her last question as I answer, "Eckerson."

"Why didn't any of you bother to mention that you'd come to the scene in one car? Det. Munch and I are stuck here, the coroner's come and gone so we can't do anything with the scene and there are no more witness statements to be taken."

I'm trying to concentrate on following Olivia down the stairs, so I'm unable to reply with anything harsher than, "I take it you didn't find anyone else who saw the drop, did you, Healey."

"These snotty precinct cops are refusing to give us a ride back to the SVU, so you'd better come back here and pick us up, because I'm not taking another cab today." She hangs up before I have a chance to tell her I'm not running a chauffer service.

As we step into the lobby, Olivia and Fin look at me questioningly. I explain, "Healey and Munch need a ride back to the squad. We should probably get going."

"Okay. I'm just gonna stop in the Ladies' Room."

I don't really want her to be alone at the moment, but I nod. I can't follow her everywhere, even if I feel like I should. Fin is watching the door she's just disappeared behind too and he looks as if he's about to say something to me when his phone rings. "Scuse me." He steps aside and I sit on a bench, wondering what exactly has to 'be like this.' Our relationship? The case? I wish we'd had more time to talk.

Fin interrupts my train of thought. "That was Munch. He said don't bother to come pick him up, the guys from the 2-0 are giving him a ride. Apparently it was just Healey they didn't wanna do any favors for." He grins conspiratorially. "Apparently she got all bitchy after she got off the phone with you and said she was just gonna go home, since it was her day off and all. Jumped in a cab a few seconds ago. I don't think I've ever heard Munch sound so happy."

Healey's been a little weird since we started on this case, but she never plays well with others. I guess this is just what she's usually like.

I check my watch. Just as I think Olivia's been in the bathroom long enough, she comes out the door, adjusting her scarf. Her face is flushed and she avoids making eye contact. I want to wrap my arms around her and hold her until everything else just fades away. There's little possibility of that when she won't even look me in the eye, though. The two of us head back to the car, back to the squad, back to pretending nothing's going on between us. Fin only participates in the first two.