CHAPTER TITLE: "Eye of the Beast (Hours 2-5)"

PAIRINGS: None specified

SEASON: Late Season Four. Alex Cabot is still around and the Stabler marriage is still, well, stable-ish.
RATING: M
WARNINGS: Lots of language, more implied violence. Big ol' angst fest.

SUMMARY: See parent chapter (Zero Hour)

DISCLAIMERS: See Chapter 1

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The 'hour' at the top of each segment is counted from the top of that hour, regardless of the actual time stated in parentheses. Hour 2 is first because the official first hour of the standoff ended around 10 pm at the end of the last chapter.

"Eye of the Beast (Hours 2-5)"

Hour 2
(12:11 am)
Tuesday Jan 21st
Autopsy suite, County Coroner's building

The only noise in the sterile and blue-tile walled room was the ticking of the clock on the far wall and the sounds of instruments clinking and drawers opening and closing. Fin's eyes discreetly tracked the two men. Ryan Wallace was bored, going through cupboards and going over tray tables, picking things up, looking at them, laying them back down. Jay was sitting on a swivel stool at one of the counters nearest the three unlucky hostages, his elbows on the countertop, his head in his hands. At the moment, neither men had their weapons pointed at the three, nor even had them in hand. Fin took note of this fact, and risked a glance to his right.

Warner had her head back against the cupboard doors, her eyes were closed. She shifted, groaning softly as she tried to get comfortable. Benson was still holding one of her hands, rubbing that arm soothingly. Olivia's eyes, though, were just as carefully as Fin's, following the movements of their captors around the emergency lit suite. She caught Tutuola's glance and he flicked his eyes in Ryan's direction; the other man was on the far side of the room going through an overhead cabinet. With a slight nod of understanding passing between the two officers, Olivia looked up to where Jay was sitting and Fin locked his eyes on Wallace.

"Jay?" Her alto voice was low and quiet and cautious...she neither wanted to upset Wheylan nor risk Ryan getting out of control again. But it had been over thirty minutes and the silence was more unsettling than the chaos an hour ago had been.

Sniff. "What."

"Captain Cragen is going to be calling back in a little while," she ventured softly.

He wiped his eyes. "I dunno what to say."

Jackpot. Fin and Olivia shared a glance...she had her foot in the door and they knew it. And Jay had just given her a reason to squeeze the rest of the way in.

"When I have trouble saying something to someone, I find thinking out loud first helps," she said slyly. "Y'know, before I talk to them."

He sniffed again and turned to look at her. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She smiled back. "Why don't you sound off me first, before he calls," she suggested. "Get what you want to say organized, make it as easy as possible for him to understand things."

Fin watched Ryan continuously and carefully - he was playing with the microscopes and oblivious to the fledgling negotiation going on behind him.

Jay took a shaky breath. "I... No one was supposed to be around."

"Around.." Olivia repeated slowly. "Around...here?"

Wheylan nodded. "I was just gonna come over, take some pictures." He pulled a digital camera from his coat pocket and set it on the counter next to his gun. He shook his head. "We came in, I thought the guard was the only one on. And then I see people still in the offices. I didn't want 'em to get hurt, so I made 'em all leave. Ryan got pushy with some, I couldn't keep him quiet." He sniffed back a bit of emotion and curiously looked again at the double doors that led to the hallway. "No one was supposed to be down here," he muttered, his eyes red. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

"Jay," Olivia began gently. "We understand that this was an accident," she said of Warner. "No one blames you."

Jay glanced at Melinda fearfully, then looked back at Olivia. "She's gonna be okay though, right?"

Benson looked at her friend for a moment. "She's okay right now, Jay." She looked back up. "But she really needs to have professionals take a look. They need to treat it properly."

Wheylan nodded but didn't say anything. Olivia forged onward, fully aware that under normal hostage situations, the hostage was not under any circumstances to try negotiating with their captor. This was not a normal hostage situation, she was realizing.

"Okay. How about, when Captain Cragen calls back, we tell him exactly what happened," she suggested, her use of 'we' instead of 'you' putting her on an even keel with him. If nothing else, it let him know she was just as determined as he was to end this peacefully."We'll tell him what you really wanted, what was supposed to happen. If he agrees to help, what d'you say we let someone come get Melinda, take her to a hospital."

Scratching the back of his neck with one hand, Jay studied her for a moment. "I don't want anyone else coming down here," he said. "I don't want him goin off again and hurting someone else." He jerked his head at his cousin.

Olivia nodded. "Okay. That's okay. We'll work something out." He looked a bit calmer. "Why don't you tell me exactly what you want to tell Captain Cragen, just like you want him to hear it. Work out the nerves before you get on the phone."

"Yeah." He took a deeper, steadier breath. "Yeah okay."

"Stooge number two's about to get interested," Fin muttered at her under his breath. Ryan's boredom with the situation was winning out over his curiosity of the morgue equipment and any second he knew the man would be back over near them harassing Jay to do something. A second later, just as predicted, Ryan was wandering back their direction as Jay started speaking.

"What're you telling them?" He asked suspiciously.

"Look man, drop the attitude all right?" Jay sent back. "I'm just thinking out loud, before the Cap calls back so I know exactly what to tell him."

"Fucking retard," Wallace mumbled under his breath and shook his head with a roll of his eyes. He didn't comment further though, and Jay turned back to Olivia.

(12:30 am)
Precinct

"Captain Cragen."

Don shook hands with one of the city maintenance consultants working with the negotiation team. "Thank you for coming. I know it's late." He looked at the rolled papers in the man's hands. "What've you got for us?"

"Good news I hope," he replied. Space on a couple of desks was cleared and the building plans laid out. John set a stapler on one corner, a coffee mug on another to keep them from rolling back in on themselves. Six men crowded around and bent low.

"We've got three possible access points. Sewage lines here and here," the man pointed to cylindrical lines on the paper on either side of what Cragen assumed was Melinda's building. "An underground electrical line runs in-between the east wall and that side sewage line."

"I wouldn't think there'd be much space in that for someone to get in and run optics through," Elliot remarked.

"Ordinarily there wouldn't be," the technician affirmed. "But this is New York. We have to compensate for the moisture here on the East Coast. As a rule there's about a foot and a half of space between the electrical lines and the walls of the tunnels they're run through. The lines run right through the center. Keeps them dry, less chance for shortages and disruptions in the city's power grid systems."

"Foot and a half on either side," John mused, "That's only about three feet all the way around."

"It's tight," the man agreed. "But of the three, this electrical line is the only place that runs exactly flush with the outside wall of the morgue. With the sewage lines, there's about five feet of solid concrete in the way. This is your best bet."

Phil Aston, the crisis team's team leader rubbed at his face. "Cutting through to that's gonna make a hell of a lotta noise," he said, concerned.

"You won't need to." The technician smiled and rolled a page over. "There's an access shaft in the street right out in front of the building's main entrance." He showed them. "NYPA guys are in it all the time," he said of New York Power Authority, the state's largest power company. "The tunnel leads right to the circuit breakers for the electrical lines adjacent to the basement. You unscrew one panel in the ceiling of that tunnel, squeeze one of your guys' shoulders up about two feet, and you're in. Only drilling you need to do is through the outer wall and then the inside wall of the autopsy suite. Two feet max. You get it right, your optics will come out somewhere along the bottom of the southeast wall."

Eyes turned to Cragen, who nodded. "Let's do it. I want a relay set up between those optic lines and this station. Everything that camera sees, I want to see right here."

"My techs can have it set up in two hours," Aston promised and without needing prompting he spoke into his radio. Network IP addresses were swapped, computer speak swirled around like a second language, and Phil moved out of the squad room.

"Don."

Cragen looked right. Huang was looking at him with a small, almost apologetic smile. "It's time," he said quietly. Cragen, Elliot, and John each looked at the clock simultaneously, the looks on their faces the same. 12:40. Had it already been an hour?

The captain's heart raced a bit as he sat back down and slid his headset on. He found himself running through possibilities is his head. What if something had happened between when he'd last spoken to Olivia and when he called now? He was almost scared to know - they'd all have been completely ignorant to anything. He took a deep breath and dialed Olivia's mobile number as Elliot and John either sat or stood right next to him.

They waited.

Four rings.

Seven.

"Benson."

Cragen clenched shaking hands as she picked up on the eighth. "It's good to hear you, detective."

"Likewise Captain."

Huang just sat listening. It was not time for his intervention yet. At the moment he could allow the captain these words with his officer. He wasn't going to get many more once Jay started talking to them.

"How're you doing in there?" Don asked.

"We're all right," she responded affirmatively. Elliot thought he detected a note of ... was it optimism? Her tone was a little more open, a little less tense. Like she wasn't having to be quite as careful when she spoke nor with what she said.

"Warner?"

"It's under control at the moment. She's uncomfortable, but shock doesn't seem to be a threat anymore." She surprised them all by adding, almost conversationally, "Jay'd like to talk you, Cap."

Cragen looked at Huang, who nodded. "Okay," he said after a breath. "Put him on."

Silence.

They heard her through the phone saying quietly, "It's all right, Jay. Just tell him what you told me. Exactly like you told me."

Once again, Elliot marveled with a swell of pride, his partner had managed to connect with the seemingly unreachable in even the most harrowing of circumstances.

A few more seconds passed with nothing, and then a man cleared his throat. "Captain...?"

Don sat up a little straighter. "Jay," he said in a neutral tone, as Huang had instructed him to do when they made contact again. "Olivia said you wanted to talk to me." Huang had earlier advised him to keep on a first name basis with the man, putting everyone on an equal level and thus making Jay feel he was speaking with just regular people instead of superiors or subordinates.

"Yeah, yeah. I uh...I did." He was nervous.

"Jay, just talk to him like we talked," they heard Olivia say in the background.

Cragen went to open his mouth but Huang put a hand on his arm. "Don't push the conversation yet," the profiler said in a quiet voice. "He's nervous and uncertain how much to trust. Let him come to you."

The frustrating patience paid off. "I uh...I'm really sorry about all of this Captain," Wheylan muttered.

"Keep his focus away from blaming himself," Huang said.

"We know, Jay," Cragen followed. "Olivia told us it was an accident. We know you didn't want to hurt anyone."

"That's good," George nodded encouragingly. "Boost this affirmation. Acknowledge his good will thus far."

Cragen heard but his eyes were focused ahead of him as he concentrated. "That's why you cleared the offices first, isn't it Jay...because you were concerned about everyone there."

"Yeah," Jay sniffed. "Yeah that's just it, I didn't think anyone would be here this late."

"Let him know he's coming across clearly. Lead him with statements, not questions..."

"You wanted to go there alone," Cragen, as per the profiler's continual guidance, stated matter-of-factly.

"Yeah." They heard the shriek of what sounded like a stool's legs sliding against the morgue's hard floors. A deep breath. "I just...I got so sick of the perps going after the cops. I just wanted to take some pictures. Y'know, of the place, of the morgue. Ryan was going to help. Just with the camera. Take some of the pictures while I pointed stuff out, that kinda thing. I was just going to put 'em up on this website. Thought maybe if I did some informational type shit, they'd get the ideas that the cops just get their stuff from somewhere else. Y'know, cause our cases, all of 'em, they're solved in places like this first anyway. But there were still people here, and he thought it'd be cool to carry a gun and..."

"Oh what the hell! You gonna tell 'em people still being in the fucking building was my fault too?" They heard Ryan snap.

There was a pause as Jay and his cousin bickered off speaker and the negotiation team considered how best to handle things now with this information. There had been no hostile intent. In fact, Cragen thought, if he'd left his cousin out of it, this probably wouldn't even be happening.

"Acknowledge the reasons for his anger," Huang instructed after a moment's contemplation. "Sympathize with the emotion."

Cragen nodded. "Jay," he began gently. "I know about your uncle. I understand why that would've made you so angry. I have to admit I'd be pretty upset too. It's uh...it's not easy to lose someone you care about," he added, with real emotion this time as an image of his late wife ambushed him. He paused, unsure where to go next.

"You're doing fine," Huang assured him from the sidelines. "We've established his intent, you've made a personal connection. Test his trust, we need to know how deep the connection goes and determine whether or not it needs to be strengthened."

"Jay," Don said after a second. Despite the weather outside, he was sweating...beads of perspiration shone like glass on his forehead and a dark smudge was showing at the neck of his shirt. "I know you didn't want things to go down this way. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I wanna get this over with as fast as I imagine you do."

A little laugh from him sounded through the speaker phone. John stole a glance at Elliot. The detective was a statue, standing with his legs spread wide, his arms over his chest, his forehead creased. Munch could see through it, however, and could see a tiny tear forming in the middle of his heart. Like a run in a woman's nylons - it was small, undetectable to the untrained eye but little by little though, it would spread. Stress would eat it away until the tear ran the entire length of his composure, ripping through material until it reached a seam and shredded his soul.

It was the same tear John could feel opening in his own chest.

"You didn't want anyone hurt," Cragen was saying when Munch refocused. "I don't want anyone to get hurt. We're in the same ballgame here. Tell me what I can do to help this end as peacefully as possible for all of us..."

"You've been talkin forever," Wallace complained. "What're you saying to them?"

They heard Jay sigh. "Ryan, do you wanna talk to him?"

Silence.

"Then shut the hell up." He paused and spoke again to Cragen, sounding weary. "I uh...I don't really know what to do here, Cap."

There was a prolonged pause. Then, rather surprisingly, they heard Fin speak in the background. "It ain't up to us, Jay," he said, as if during the pause Jay had been looking to the two detectives for help. "Ends when you say it ends. How 'bout you let us get Doc Warner outta here, though. We can work on what to do after that, huh? What d'ya say."

The crisis team held a collective breath, and then released it when Jay came back on the phone with, "I want to let doc Warner out."

Cragen blew out a breath. "Okay Jay. I think that's best."

"Appreciate it," Huang prompted from his side. "It's a gesture of good faith, and carries weight."

"Thank you for seeing that she needs medical attention, Jay," Cragen said sincerely. "I know I speak for her husband as well when I say that it means a lot to a lot of people."

"I uh..." he cleared his throat nervously. "I don't want anyone coming down here though," he said. "Can I uh...can I figure something out first?"

Don looked at Huang. The profiler nodded. "Yeah okay Jay," he said into his headset. "We'll play it the way you need it to go. You tell us what you'd like to do, and we'll go with that."

"Yeah. Thanks. I ...can I call you back in a little bit?"

Huang again nodded but said, "We need to keep some control. Give him a time limit."

"You bet," Cragen affirmed to the man. "Should we say we'll talk again in another hour?"

A long pause. Huang shook his head and held up two fingers.

"How about two," Cragen amended. "Give you plenty of time to work through what you need to before we talk again."

Another pause, then, "Yeah okay. That'd be okay. I'll call in a couple hours."

"I'll be here, Jay." And the line went dead.

"Cap," Elliot started but Don held up a weary hand as he removed his headset.

"We take what we get, Elliot. I need air." Without speaking to anyone, or letting anyone else speak to him, Cragen pushed through the crowded squad room and headed towards the front doors.

Elliot watched him go and then turned to John to elicit his help. Munch, however, was not interested. The older man, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, flung some papers off the desk with a sweep of his palm and pushed his chair back. He left the room in much the same fashion as his captain.

Elliot rubbed a hand down his face and sighed heavily.

"It takes time, Elliot," Alex said quietly. She'd been staying in the shadows, watching and listening to the proceedings silently.

He didn't reply. Not because he didn't know what to say.

But because it was the last thing he wanted to hear said.

Hour 4
(2:30 am)
Precinct

Tempers had not cooled much as the negotiation team sat back down in the squad room. In the break given them by Jay's two hour time limit, a stealth team had gotten inside the main office and managed, without being detected, to pull the security tapes. The squad room had since gotten a front row view of everything that had happened from fiver after nine last night to about thirty minutes ago. Jay and his cousin entering the building, clearing the offices, storming the morgue. All of it. Elliot had audibly murmured a tense "No!" as, while they watched Olivia reach for some paper towels, Jay's cousin had pressed the barrel of his pistol to her head. Events had calmed somewhat after she and Fin had controlled Warner's bleeding, and the remainder of what tape they had managed to secure showed the three of them simply sitting on the floor against the counters, saying nothing as Jay paced and yelled at Wallace and Wallace tossed obscenities right back.

The two hours passed, and Cragen now again had the headset on with Huang right next to him ready to guide him through the conversations. There was an unspoken fear drifting through the room that Jay would not call back as agreed.

Cragen, fully not expecting him to, jumped when the squad room phone began ringing. He forced himself back under a cool control as he picked up and spoke into his mouthpiece. "Jay?"

"Yeah, Cap."

"I appreciate you calling back," Don said, this time without needing prompting from Huang. He'd done these before, but it was nice to have the backup when his mind froze and words failed him. "Have you decided how we're going to get to doc Warner?"

"Yeah, yeah I did. I uh, I know there's probably people crawling all over the place," he began. "But I don't want anyone upstairs. They're gonna help her up, y'know, to the doors, and the bus can be waiting there. I just, I don't want anyone inside," he repeated.

Cragen frowned slightly. "You say 'they' are going to help her, Jay. Do you mean Olivia and Fin?"

"Yeah."

A surge of something rushed Elliot Stabler and he felt hot and cold flash through him at the same time.

"Okay," Cragen nodded to himself. "We'll have a bus and some EMT's waiting outside the doors." He did not ask about the body they'd seen in the hall outside the autopsy suite on the security tapes. He had to concentrate on the live hostages first. And reminding Jay of something he'd never intended to happen was, without being told so, very unwise. "When would you like to do this?"

"Um..." There was a stagnant pause as he obviously thought about the question. "Fifteen minutes? Yeah. Yeah, I'll send 'em up in fifteen."

"Fifteen minutes then," Cragen confirmed, and then Jay hung up.

Elliot wasted no time. "Captain, request permission to be there with that EMT crew." The words had hardly come out intelligibly they'd been spoken so fast.

"Denied," Cragen said flatly.

"Captain.."

"Elliot we can't have this handoff compromised," Don said firmly. He took a second to look the other man over. And the look on Elliot's face made him relent as empathy flooded him. A glimpse, even a brief one, was better than nothing until the optics were in place in another thirty minutes. "All right, but you go JUST to help Warner," he said sternly, both to Elliot and John, because Munch had the same look on his face as Elliot. "I want you out of the way."

John grabbed his coat from the wall and with a clap on his arm from Elliot, the two half-walked, half-jogged from the squad room.

Autopsy Suite

Jay closed the flip phone and set it on the countertop. "Okay. Out she goes." He walked over to where Olivia, Fin, and Warner sat and reached a hand down to Fin.

Fin looked at it briefly, then reached up. The two men clasped wrists and Jay pulled the detective to his feet. "Thanks man," he said quietly, and meant it.

Wheylan helped Olivia up, and then he and Fin carefully pulled Warner to her feet. They put Fin's jacket on her, and then Olivia's coat over that and then helped balance her between Olivia and Tutuola. She had an arm draped over each of their shoulders and they had her waist wrapped tightly from behind.

"You okay?" Olivia asked as Melinda gasped and caught her breath.

"Yeah," Warner lied, her face ashen. "Too vertical too fast." She offered a small smile and when they were certain she wasn't about to pass out on them, they started to move towards the double doors.

"Whoa, whoa...wait a minute." Wallace was looking between the trio and his older cousin. "You're just gonna let them all go together?"

Jay shrugged. "How else are they going to get the doc out the door to the bus? Can't walk out on her own, now can she," he added with accusatory snip to his tone.

"How do you know they won't just run when they get out there, huh?" Ryan said challengingly.

"God, you're paranoid. You're worried about them skating, fine." Jay waved his hand at his cousin. "You go with them."

"Are you crazy! I'm not going up there...you know how it works, and it's the same on them dumb cop shows. They'll have snipers and shit all over the place."

Olivia and Fin, a shaky Warner supported between them, shared a nervous glance. Neither were surprised when Ryan spoke up again.

"I got it. One goes up with the doc, the other stays here with us." He looked at them, then pointed his gun at Fin. "You. She don't come back down," he said to Jay. "We shoot him."

"What?" Jay laughed incredulously.

"No," Ryan pointed his gun at Jay. "We're gonna do this one my way 'cause I'm not gonna have no SWAT team come storming down here and get a bullet between the eyes because you were too stupid to think this through." He swung the gun back towards Fin. "Help 'em to the stairs. Then sit back down." He looked at Olivia. "You got ten minutes to get your ass back in this room."

"I'll come back, Jay," Benson said with feeling. "You know I will. He doesn't have to toss around threats."

"Yeah?" Ryan replied before Wheylan could. "Well this'll just make me a little more certain you'll keep your word." Wallace looked at his watch. "Nine minutes."

They left the autopsy suite without another word. The moment they stepped outside it and turned the corner, however, Warner let out a cry and Olivia felt her sag between her and Fin.

"Christ," Fin muttered, at the same pulling Warner to his chest and holding the back of her head firmly with one hand. "Don't look, baby," he murmured and with a nod at Olivia, kept walking. "Don't look."

Dante, the lab tech Warner had sent up to Evidence, was lying on the floor in the hall, a hole in his chest and a pool of red spread out around the floor beneath him. Olivia looked at him in horror and anguish as she helped Fin hold Warner's trembling frame between them. Now she knew why Jay kept looking at the doors with guilt, knew what it was she and Fin had heard hitting the floor in the hall just before Jay and his cousin had burst into the suite.

It had been Dante. He was dead.

They moved away from the grisly discovery as fast as they could. When the three of them got to the door of the stairwell, Fin stopped them and looked straight at Benson. "Listen up. You get topside, you get your ass outta this building with Warner," he said firmly with a nod at Melinda. Warner's face was pale and tear-streaked, she didn't focus on either detective.

"No." Olivia shook her head and opened the door.

"Liv.."

"Bullshit!" She turned around and stared right back. Neither said anything, but there were tears threatening in Olivia's eyes. "Don't you play martyr with me, Fin. It's bullshit. I'm not going to let you eat a bullet on my account." Elliot was already taking a professional slug in the gut because of her. She wasn't about to lose Fin as well. "I'm coming back," she whispered firmly.

Fin stared hard at her, looking like he wanted to say something else, then conceded and moved around her to hold the stairwell door open. "Ten minutes I better see your pretty ass back in that morgue," he muttered. "Or you're speakin at my funeral."

Olivia obliged his dark humour with a tense laugh - as phenomenal as she was one-on-one with the human race, they both knew how much she hated public speaking. "Ten minutes," she repeated with a nod as Fin clapped her once on the back. She adjusted her arm more securely around Warner's waist, and then Fin closed the door behind them.

(2:45 am)

Elliot couldn't stand still. He felt like he did when his kids were little and he was waiting for them to step from the school bus. He kept glancing at his watch, and then at the double glass paned doors of the main entrance to the building. He and John stood amongst the swath of EMT's and uniformed officers that formed a half circle on the other side of the sidewalk just outside those doors. The tapes and her voice over the phone had confirmed it - she was alive and she was okay - but he had to see it for himself.

"Detectives."

Stabler looked up from the ground and at the doors where the EMT's gaze was directed ... and his heart all but stopped in relief.

The paramedics pulled open the doors and there in the darkened entryway hall stood his partner, supporting a silently crying and shaking Melinda Warner. He watched, transfixed, as the pair made their way to the threshold and then he, along with the EMT's and John, was suddenly surging forwards until they were, as instructed by Cragen, stopped by other officers.

Olivia pulled Warner's arm off from around her shoulders and handed her off to the medics. Warner held on to one of her hands as they got her onto a bed and Olivia just gave it a squeeze. She said something, but it was lost in the freezing snow-filled air. When she looked up and her hair fell back away from her face, Elliot saw against the strobing red and blue around him that the M.E. was not the only one crying. He and John made a quick stop at Warner's bed as it was wheeled past them to the waiting bus, and when he looked up back towards the doors, his heart stopped again.

"Liv!"

Olivia had not moved across the threshold of the open doorway, nor did she make any move to advance to the arms of the SWAT officers reaching for her. In fact, to Stabler's horror, she actually stepped back and out of their range.

"Detective Benson..." One of the team members prompted her. "It's all right, detective," he said soothingly, thinking that some sort of delayed shock was the reason she was just standing there and disregarding aid from the building.

"Will she be okay?" John heard her ask numbly. His eyes searched for Fin, but his own partner was not there.

"Detective.."

"WILL she be okay," Benson demanded again.

"She'll be fine," one of the medics on scene to help her and Fin when they came out assured her.

Olivia nodded, oddly looked at her watch, and then Elliot's breath caught as she stared at the street and just stood there.

"Detective Benson," the SWAT officer reaching for her moved into the doorway and spoke firmly. "Step out of the premises," he prompted her again more urgently. They had to get her out, and they had to get her out now.

'C'mon Liv...' Elliot urged her, trying to catch her eye. 'You don't owe this prick anything...'

She waited until she couldn't see the ambulance bearing Melinda away anymore, and then backed away. This time, however, the SWAT officer was ready for it and he grabbed her elbow.

"Don't touch me!" Munch watched Elliot's face unravel as Olivia forcibly pulled her arm out of the man's grasp and shook her head.

"I can't leave," she said and took a deep breath. Her eyes fell on John and a tear escaped down her cheek.

He felt like he was suffocating as she said almost guiltily, "If I'm not back downstairs in five minutes, Ryan Wallace is threatening to kill Detective Tutuola."

She took another breath that shook and went on, delivering what news she could in the time she had. "Uh..." She rubbed her eyebrow with one hand and Elliot could see it shaking hard. "You should know that Dante Sandoval is dead." She didn't know they'd seen the tapes. "Detective Tutuola and I heard the shot. We believe Wallace is responsible for that as well as for Warner." She was starting to shiver from the draft of the open doorway and for the first time Elliot realized, as she wrapped her arms over themselves, that Warner had been wearing her coat. "His body is in the hallway outside the autopsy suite."

"Olivia." Huang, who had joined the EMT's and the rest of the crisis team crowd for the handoff, spoke softly, concerned as he watched her. It had been almost five hours already. "Are you all right?"

She nodded unconvincingly as another tear fell and she looked at her watch. "I have to go," she whispered. "I made a promise."

She finally found Elliot's face in the crowd and for one electrically charged second, locked eyes with him. She shook her head, almost, it appeared, at herself and then turned and walked back down the dark hall with her head bent.

"Olivia!" Elliot lunged forward, but was stopped when John grabbed him around the chest and held fast.

"Elliot, don't." Munch said firmly, his insides churning.

Stabler watched her back until she opened the stairwell door.

And then the world fell out from under him as the heavy metal door squealed closed and she disappeared with the click of its latch.

End Part 7

A/N - Thank you so much for all the reviews thus far! And yes, I did learn from "Sibling Rivalry"...mainly because I didn't know how to upload in chapters back then, lol. Live 'n' learn, lol. Please review ((puppy dog eyes)) :)