"This guy on the phone behind us," Olivia whispered into Elliot's ear, "he sounds exactly like the scumbag who shot at me in the schoolyard yesterday."

Elliot glanced over her shoulder at the tall, bulky man, who shook his head as he spoke into the phone. "You sure?" Elliot asked her.

"Positive," she said firmly. "I'd stake my life on this, El."

"Oh, yeah?" the man abruptly said into the phone. "Yeah, well, fuck you. Fuck you very much!"

When the man turned away from the pay phone, Elliot got a good look at his face, and what he saw chilled his blood. He recognized that face from the photo ID sent to them from Riker's Island. It was Samuel Childs.

Unfortunately Childs saw them right away. And judging from the wide-eyed look he gave Olivia, he recognized her, as well. Elliot glanced down and saw a gun sticking out of Childs' waistband.

'Shit, he's armed,' Elliot thought. He glanced around at the long line of people who were waiting to be seated in the IHOP restaurant. Elliot realized with a growing dread that this was a situation that could very rapidly deteriorate at any second.

Both Olivia and Childs stood there, glaring at each other, each frozen for a spilt second. And in that scary moment, Elliot made a decision.

'Make the first move,' Elliot told himself, as he reached for his Glock. 'And if he tries to shoot anybody, then gun him down like the dog that he is.'

"Police!" Elliot yelled, aiming his Glock at Childs. Olivia also pulled her piece out of its holster at the same time. "Don't make a--"

Before Elliot could finish his command, Childs broke into a run, shoving people out of his way as he ran out the restaurant.

"He's running!" Olivia shouted, as she gave chase.

'At least we're no longer standing in the middle of a group of innocent people,' Elliot thought as he ran after Childs with her.

When they reached the doorway, both he and Olivia paused to warily glance around the parking lot, making sure that Childs wasn't waiting out there for them with his gun drawn. 'This bastard had no qualms about shooting at cops before,' Elliot thought, 'so better safe than sorry.'

After a quick scan of the parking lot, Elliot and Olivia determined that Childs wasn't here. Elliot glanced off to their right, and saw Childs running into the parking lot of the strip mall. "There he is, Liv!"

Elliot took off after Childs, who appeared to be looking for a car to steal. Elliot felt a chill run up his spine when Childs approached a young mother pushing a baby carriage. But the woman, sensing Childs was trouble, grabbed her baby from the carriage and ran frantically in the opposite direction from him.

Childs started to run after her until Elliot shouted, "CHILDS!"

Childs whirled around to face him just as Elliot ran up with his gun pointed at him. "Give it up, Childs," Elliot told him. "You're not going anywhere! Even if you manage get out of this parking lot, you still won't get far. Every cop in New York State is now looking for you. Put your hands behind your head and kneel on the ground. Do it!"

As he glared back at Elliot, Childs' hand hovered dangerously over the gun in his waistband.

"Don't even think about it, Childs!" Elliot warned him. "Don't go for that gun!"

Olivia came up alongside Elliot and took aim with her Glock at Childs. "Oh, by all means, go for the gun," she told Childs in an eerily calm voice. "Give me the excuse I need to blow you the fuck away right here and now."

Childs' eyes went wide at what Olivia said, as well as the deadly tone of her voice, and he promptly raised his hands in surrender. "Whoa! All right, you've got me. I give up."

"Hands behind your head and kneel on the ground, now!" Elliot ordered.

Childs did exactly what he was told. As Olivia covered him with her Glock, Elliot went over, pulled the gun from Childs' waist, and then cuffed his hands behind his back.

He was reading Childs his Miranda Rights when a local police car pulled up to them with its roof light bar flashing. After Elliot and Olivia identified themselves as NYPD, the police officer gladly placed the captured Childs in the back seat of his squad car.

Olivia's stomach let out another growl as she holstered her gun, which reminded Elliot that they had been going to get something to eat before running into Childs. "Sorry Liv," he said, "but it looks like breakfast will have to be postponed for a bit."

"I don't mind," Olivia said. She gestured at the captured Childs in the squad car, and added, "This was well worth missing breakfast for."

Elliot nodded. "Great job on that bluff, by the way. You had me convinced." When she gave him a puzzled look, Elliot explained: "When you told Childs to go for the gun, so you'd have an excuse to blow him away? You were bluffing when you said that, right?"

Olivia's mouth merely curled up into a Cheshire cat-like grin as she slowly turned and walked away from him.

Elliot couldn't help but smile in admiration at her.

-------------------------------------------------------

When Casey arrived at the D.A.'s office, she made a beeline straight for her own office, hoping that Rachel Gibbons was still there. She'd left Rachel and her mother in the care of Munch and Fin, and Rachel had been pretty determined to face Beauchamp in court--yet Casey had witnesses back out on her in the past. And while she was busy building up evidence against Beauchamp and his bizarre suitor Claire Stephenson on her own, Casey still needed all the help she could get.

On her way down the hallway, Casey ran into Alex Cabot, who was on her way out. Casey wondered if Alex had heard any news about their abducted colleague Alex Borgia. But before she could ask, Cabot asked the very same question: "Have you heard anything new about Alex?"

"No," Casey said sadly. "In fact, I was just about to ask you the same thing."

Alex shook her head. "It's horrible, isn't it? I heard she was abducted right from her home!"

"Oh, God," Casey said.

"This sort of thing just makes you want to pull all of your friends close together," Alex said. "You don't want to let anybody you care about out of your sight for even a second. I recall feeling this way during 9/11."

Casey nodded--as what Alex just said reminded her of something that Elliot told her last night. He said that Olivia was hurt by the fact that Alex had never contacted her yet. "Um, speaking of which, Alex, have you spoken to anybody at the one-six since you got back, yet?"

"No, I haven't had the time," Alex replied with a frown. "But I'm headed in their general direction this afternoon. I was thinking of just popping in and saying hello."

Casey nodded with a smile. "That'll be great. Listen, as usual, I've got a hundred things to do right now. Speak to you later?"

"You bet," Alex replied, as she continued walking down the hallway.

'Well, at least she's finally going to see Olivia,' Casey thought. She wondered if things would ever be the same between them again, especially since Olivia was now seeing Eric.

Her idle musings about Olivia Benson's love life ended once Casey arrived at her office. She was pleased to see Rachel and her mother were still there, along with Munch and Fin. When she handed the SVU detectives the signed warrants, Fin smiled and said, "Oh-ho! This is gonna be fun."

"Yeah, well try not to be too overjoyed with your work while you're tearing Stephenson's house and business apart," Casey told them. "That sort of thing looks tacky."

"We'll keep the snickering down to a minimum," Munch promised as he and Fin exited her office with the warrants in hand.

When Casey turned to Rachel and her mother, she was pleased to see that Rachel still had that same level of determination in her eyes as before.

"So tell me what I need to do," Rachel said.

"With pleasure," Casey sincerely said, as she sat down across from her.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Olivia let out a heavy sigh as she and Elliot finally arrived back at the One-Six. As soon as she got out of the car, she opened the back seat door and helped the handcuffed Samuel Childs out.

As she escorted him up the main steps of the One-Six, Olivia glanced up to see a news photographer step right in their way. His flashbulb lit up several times as he snapped off a few pictures of Olivia and Childs.

Then a mob of reporters came rushing up to them, all shouting, "Detective Benson! Detective Benson, over here!"

Elliot went ahead of her, making a hole in the clamoring crowd for Olivia as she continued to grimly escort Childs into the precinct house.

A female reporter shoved her microphone into Olivia's face and asked, "Is the Lilly Beauchamp kidnapping case now closed, Olivia?"

"No comment," Olivia muttered, as she gratefully entered the main doorway of the precinct house. The reporters didn't dare enter the building.

And yet, just as Olivia walked inside, she heard another female reporter shout out to her: "Detective Benson, what's your beauty secret!"
Olivia didn't even bother to acknowledge the twit, but she burst into laughter when Elliot glanced over his shoulder and shot the reporter a strange look. "She must be from the Fashion Channel," he jokingly said.

They brought Childs upstairs to the SVU squad room, where they placed him in an interrogation room and removed his handcuffs. Then they left him alone in there. As much as Olivia wanted to dig into Childs, there was a science to this sort of thing. They decided that it was best to let Childs sweat it out for a spell before they began grilling him.

When Olivia and Elliot entered Cragen's office, they found the Captain standing by the two-way mirror, gazing intently at Childs in the interrogation room. "Did he ask for a lawyer?" Cragen asked.

Elliot shook his head. "Not yet."

Cragen nodded, looking thoughtful. "Leave him alone with his thoughts for a while before you start questioning him."

"That was the plan," Olivia said. "We've also sent his gun out for a ballistics test."

"Good," Cragen said, as he went back behind his desk. "Munch and Fin are presently making Claire Stephenson's life miserable. Casey got the warrants to search her home and business."

Before Olivia could reply, there was a light knock at the door. Her eyes grew wide in shock when she saw the same two IAB detectives who interrogated her yesterday standing in the doorway of Cragen's office.

"You ready, Captain?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," Cragen said. "Go ahead."

When the IAB men left, Olivia glanced nervously back and forth from Elliot's concerned face to Cragen. She suddenly had a crazy impulse to run for her life out the door.

Cragen quickly came over and gave her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. "Relax, Olivia, they're not here for you."

"Then why are they here?" Elliot asked.

"Remember I told you that the fire in the evidence room was arson?" Cragen asked Elliot. He gestured out the door. "The IAB, working with the FDNY, found the arsonist. Here he comes, now."

The IAB detectives escorted a uniformed officer into Cragen's office. Olivia was shocked to see that it was Aaron Nuffield, a rookie who was in charge of the evidence room during the night shift.

They brought Nuffield up to the two-way mirror that offered a view of Samuel Childs in the interrogation room. One of the IAB men said, "Officer Nuffield, do you recognize the gentleman seated in that room?"

"Yeah," Nuffield said, his voice tinged with sadness. "That's the guy who paid me to torch the evidence room."

"Ok," the other IAB man said, as he produced a pair of handcuffs and put them on Nuffield. "Let's go."

Olivia watched in stunned shock as the IAB detectives grimly led the disgraced police officer out the door. She was torn between the horror of seeing a fellow NYPD officer brought down so humbly, and the raging anger that came from the realization that he was the one who destroyed a roomful of evidence--effectively throwing all of their cases into turmoil--just for a quick, illicit profit.

"So now we've got Childs for conspiracy to commit arson," Cragen said. "You think you can use it to make him roll on Claire Stephenson?"

"I'd rather wait until we hear back on the gun," Elliot said. "If Childs' gun turns out to be the one used to kill Marcus Sewell, that'll be all the more ammo that Liv and I can use against him in the Box."

"That's something else I wanted to talk to you about," Cragen said. He turned to Olivia and added., "You're not talking to Childs. It's going to be Elliot and someone else, either Munch or Fin."

Olivia glared at Cragen. "Captain--"

"I know how you feel about this, Olivia, and I'm sorry," Cragen said. "You were a huge help in finding Lilly and keeping her calm. And you and Elliot just did a great job in capturing Childs. I'm now glad that Elliot brought you along with us this morning, I really am. But the situation is still the same. You're too close to this case. Now that Lilly's safe, I want you to back off."

Olivia glanced at Elliot and saw that he stared uneasily at the floor. And in that instant, she realized that Cragen was right. 'If I remain as one of the prime detectives on this case, my very presence might make it harder for Casey to prosecute it down the line,' she realized. 'The defendants' lawyers could very well use me in their defense, claiming that I was after Beauchamp for personal reasons--which isn't too far from the truth.'

"I understand," she said. "The last thing I want to do is to become a hindrance to this case."

Olivia went to get something to eat at the vending machines while Elliot sat down at his desk to begin writing the arrest report. As Olivia looked over her choices--slim though as they were--it occurred to her that she actually never had any choice in the matter. Cragen was her commanding officer, after all, and whatever he said was law, whether Olivia liked it or not. Yet the Captain's command style was such that he made it appear that they were all a team, a part of a larger family who each had a say in the goings-on.

'And every now and then, dad just has to put his foot down and say no,' Olivia thought, with a slight smile. It often seemed silly to Olivia to think of Cragen as being the father whom she never had, but that was the honest truth. He was a man whom she respected and cared enough for to listen to when he told her to do something.

Speaking of men whom she respected and cared for, Olivia abruptly realized that she had not spoken to poor Eric in almost a full day now. She had meant to call him last night, but forgot all about it.

'Damn it,' Olivia thought, as she pulled out her cell. 'I should give him--'

"Hello Olivia," a very familiar female voice said from behind her.

Olivia was startled out of her reverie. She spun around and saw Alex Cabot staring back at her with a broad smile on her face.

"Alex," Olivia said in a surprised whisper.

"Oh God, you look great," Alex said, as she came over and warmly embraced Olivia.

'My Alex,' Olivia thought, as she returned the embrace. 'My Alex is back….'

"It's great seeing you again," Olivia said, when they ended their hug. "Especially knowing that you're back home to stay, now. God, that's so amazing."

"Yeah, but with the way thing are going lately, I'm starting to miss being in Witness Protection," Alex said with a nervous laugh.

Olivia knew her well enough to know there was something wrong. "What is it?" she asked.

"It's nothing I can't handle," Alex told her with false bravado. "Besides, you've got so much on your plate now, what with the Beauchamp kidnapping and everything else. Congratulations, by the way! I just heard about Lilly being rescued."

"Thanks," Olivia said. She couldn't help but notice the anxious pitch in Alex's voice. 'Something's really got her rattled,' she realized. "Are you sure you're all right, Alex? You seem…I don't know, a little wound up."

Alex appeared as if she were about to burst into tears. "I-I think I'm a little overwhelmed right now. Um, Alex Borgia has been kidnapped."

"Sweet Jesus!" Olivia said in a horrified whisper. "When did this happen?"

"Just this morning," Alex replied, shaking her head. "She never showed up for work, and when a patrol car was sent to her home…well, it looked like it had been broken into. Green and Fontana from the Two-Seven are working the case."

"I know them, I've worked with them before," Olivia said. "They're very good, Alex. Green used to partner with Lennie Briscoe."

Alex nodded anxiously as she stared timidly at Olivia.

'There's still something wrong,' Olivia realized, 'and it's more than just having the jitters from coming back to work.' She placed a hand on Alex's arm and said, "You're not upset because of seeing me, are you?"

Alex smiled slightly. "You always were able to read me like a book, Olivia. But to answer your question: no. I'm not upset at seeing you again. I'm upset at what I have to tell you. I'm engaged, Olivia."

"Alex, that's wonderful," Olivia said, forcing herself to smile. Deep within, she felt her heart break into a million pieces. Although she realized that this day would come, Olivia never really thought about actually having to face it until this moment.

When Alex had come out of the Witness Protection Program last year to testify against her would-be assassin, they had managed to spend a stolen night together. After they made love--which would now turn out to be for the last time--they spoke of the fact that Alex would have to go back into protection soon, and that they would once more be parted. Alex had told Olivia at the time that if she ever met someone, that Olivia should just take advantage of it. "I'll understand, Olivia," she said. "I can't expect you to wait for me your entire life."

Olivia had understood the implications of their agreement, as well. Yet even when Olivia had met Eric, she realized now that she really had kept him at arm's length all this time. Eric was a nice, decent man, yet Olivia had just thought of him as being a casual boyfriend at best. Because, deep down, she was still waiting for Alex.

Until now.

'It's over. It's really over,' Olivia realized with sadness. 'She's no longer my Alex. She belongs to somebody else, now.'

"Are you sure it's all right?" Alex asked, watching her carefully.

"Of course it is, sweetie," Olivia said, as they embraced once again. "I've moved on, as well. And as long as you're happy, I'm happy."

She felt Alex's entire body abruptly go stiff, and when she glanced at Alex, Olivia saw she was staring fearfully at something over her shoulder. "This guy's staring at us really hard, Liv."

When Olivia glared at the man, she was shocked to see that it was none other than Eric. He stood there, staring stunned at the both of them. "Eric, hi!" she said, waving him over. "Come meet Alex."

But Eric remained where he was, and the look he gave Olivia was so malice-filled that, if looks could kill, she would have been decapitated right then and there.

"You fucking bitch," he said under his breath.

Then he turned around and left them, walking briskly down the hallway.

Olivia was so stunned at his reaction that it took her a few moments to react. When she finally snapped out of her shock, she glanced at Alex and said, "I'll talk to you later."

"Of course," Alex replied, now looking even more uneasy than she had been before.

Olivia ran after Eric, but did not find him at the elevator. When she saw the stairwell door swing shut, she realized that he took the stairs.

When she entered the stairwell, Olivia could hear Eric's stomping feet descending a few levels below her. She stuck her head over the railing and shouted his name, but when he would not stop, she ran down the stairs after him.

She caught up with Eric just outside the precinct house. Thankfully, the army of reporters had vanished. Olivia finally made him stop when she grabbed his sleeve and pulled on it.

"Let go of me!" he shouted at her.

"Eric, what is it?" Olivia asked, puzzled. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong--at least for you, Olivia," Eric said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Don't let me disturb the reunion between you and your little blond bitch."

With that, he spun on his heel and left her standing there on the sidewalk, with her mouth gaping at what he'd just said. After several moments of stunned silence, Olivia shook her head in disbelief.

"What the hell just happened?" she said, to nobody in particular.

To Be Continued...