April 10, 2019
The next morning, Kirby woke earlier than she ever really wanted to. But she had to make sure Fallon didn't leave for work without telling Kirby what her plan was. But she was halfway through her breakfast when Fallon's door opened and Liam walked out, wearing what he'd had on the day before.
"Hi," she greeted, a little too upbeat and curious.
Liam frowned slightly, turning to give Fallon room to step past him and into the kitchen with Kirby.
"Don't get all weird today," Fallon warned the redhead. "We need you to come up to the office. Jeff is going to meet us there after we talk to Michael."
"Jeff?"
Fallon nodded. "You'll need to pack whatever you want to have access to. You can't stay here anymore."
Kirby stood up, clearly upset by the declaration. "You can't just kick me out."
"Well, actually I can. I'm paying for this suite, for starters." Fallon lifted an eyebrow, as if daring Kirby to argue with her, but Liam cleared his throat and she sighed, finally getting to the real heart of the matter. "More importantly, the odds of someone hurting you go way down if you're staying with Jeff. He has no association with Ada anymore, and she wouldn't expect him to go after her after how hurt he was."
Kirby didn't respond, which Fallon interpreted as acceptance due to the lack of argument, so Liam stepped up to Fallon's side. "I need to go back and change, but I'll let you know when I get there. We're not telling him that you're not-?"
"No. It's better if he still thinks I am. He'll want to keep up that protective side," she told them. "And he really can't know about us."
At that, Kirby did speak up. "Hopefully you're good at faking jealousy."
Liam's jaw tightened. "I wouldn't call it fake."
Fallon turned to him, kissing his cheek. "Go get changed. We'll see you later."
He nodded, giving her arm a light squeeze and passing a nod in Kirby's direction, before heading out. Several minutes afterwards, Fallon and Kirby climbed into a cab with Fallon's work bag and the suitcase Kirby had packed.
At the office, Kirby went downstairs to wait with Liam, leaving her laptop behind so Fallon could bring it with her to knock on Culhane's office door. When the door opened, however, he saw her and started to close it back. But Fallon stuck a hand out, quickly speaking up. "Michael." She glanced up and down the hallway, putting on an expression that wasn't strictly fake, as her fear made itself known. "I'm in trouble. I need your help."
He frowned, and though he didn't push the door again, he didn't open it either. "Trouble? What did you do this time?"
"Michael, please. Just... hear me out. I think- I think someone's out to get me. And not figuratively."
He was taken aback, to be sure, but Michael stepped aside to let her in, then closed the door behind her. Fallon waited, knowing that she needed him to run this conversation if she wanted to make him believe her. So until he pointed at one of the chairs, she didn't sit down.
"Explain," he told her.
Fallon sighed, setting the laptop on his desk but not pressing play just yet. "I don't remember if I told you about Adam," she began slowly, having thought through the way she wanted to go about this. "But there's something really... unnerving about him. I get this terrible feeling when he gets close to me. And now Sam's saying that Adam is trying to get Steven to move away, which is a terrible idea when he isn't really back to being himself, yet-"
"Fallon, what does this have to do with you being in trouble?"
"... The room Adam's staying in? It's bugged," she said simply, her tone and expression grave. "And it turns out, he's working with someone to hurt our family. It really is Adam this time, and it sounds like all he wants is to make sure he gets the Carrington inheritance. Blake wrote Steven and I out a while back, and as soon as Adam figures out how to get his name on that will, he won't need anybody around anymore."
Michael lifted his eyebrow, either acting or genuinely unconvinced. "You think your brother wants to off your dad?"
"Well, not yet."
"But you just said-"
"Yeah, but, somehow he's teamed up with..." She glanced down, acting reluctant to bring up his past. "He called that woman who blackmailed us. I don't know what she has against my family, considering I never actually did anything to her," Fallon went on, her voice becoming angry and vehement with her fake confusion. "But apparently they think I'd stand in the way of him getting what he wants. And rightly so."
She turned the laptop towards him, pressing play.
"It's not Blake he's after right now," she said, before falling silent so he could listen to what she'd heard the night before. By the end of it, she was just staring at the laptop, almost having forgotten just how cold and tense his words had made her feel. She forgot to press pause on the audio, but Michael had evidently had enough because he reached out and stopped it himself.
"...Fallon..."
She shook her head a little, snatching the laptop back and shutting it in her lap, her hands anxiously running along the edges of it. "It's not the first time someone tried something like this, I guess. But now I can't go home, I can't tell any of them... She's going to get away with it, isn't she? They both will."
Culhane sat forward, frowning at her. "I've never known you to give up. Why now?"
"Well... if I don't go home, I can't keep an eye on Blake, or talk him out of doing something foolish like giving Adam what he wants. But if I go home, then..." She shrugged. "I mean, I have the opportunity to travel to New York for a week, but Lord knows what would happen before I got back. Maybe I should put my own safety first, and just go, but... Our entire family, entire staff – they're all in danger, now, and I can't even fix it."
She was trying to get him to admit his participation in Ada's ventures, but she couldn't tell what was happening behind his eyes. She started shifting in her chair, wondering if a minor freakout would push him over the edge. But maybe he was never going to help her. Maybe she'd offered her hand and now Ada would know, and she would be done for twice as fast.
"Is Jeff's cousin still Chief of Police?" He asked out of nowhere.
Fallon blinked. "Bobbi Johnson...? Of course. Why?"
He hesitated slightly, but turned a deeply serious gaze her way. "If I leave an anonymous tip about where to find Ada and her warehouses... maybe Adam won't have the help he seems to need."
Shocked as she was, Fallon tried to hide her amazement. "Would he not just make a move if he feels threatened?"
"I think you should go to her with this recording."
Fallon wasn't entirely convinced, as evidenced by her blank stare. "What, today?"
"Yeah. Now, in fact."
She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Regardless of what we've done to each other, I'm choosing to trust that you'll call her," she said, trying to sound vaguely threatening despite not feeling confident that he would hold up his end of the deal.
"Show of good faith," he offered, picking up the office phone and placing a call to Bobbi's office. Holding a finger up to his lips to tell Fallon to keep quiet, Michael put the call on speaker to anonymously deliver Ada Stone's name, addresses for her, and what they should expect to find in the various locations. He even gave them times of day that they ought to go by in order to catch her or avoid her, depending on how they wanted to go about it.
When he hung up, she was still staring at him. "Thank you," she said genuinely, standing up on the instinct to approach and hug him. If this worked, the odds were that his decision would be the one that led to Fallon being able to protect her family, and protect herself from Adam.
Downstairs, Kirby and Liam were listening in over the phone Fallon had slipped into her pocket, and both sank back in their chairs with relief at what they heard. That is, until it became incredibly quiet, before they heard Fallon gasp.
"Michael," she warned slowly. "I was serious before..."
Kirby's eyes drifted towards Liam, wondering if he'd picked up like she had on what had happened. The jealousy on his face suggested he had.
"After what happened the other day," Fallon continued, "you have to know we could never go back."
"I didn't mean what I said," Culhane claimed. But his voice was getting farther away from Fallon's phone, which had Liam slightly less irked as he assumed she'd pulled or walked away.
"Maybe," she replied. "But you still said it." They heard her packing things away – the laptop, certainly – before she spoke again. "I'm going to head over to turn Adam in right now. Should I text you afterwards?"
"Yeah." There was a brief pause before, "It's him, isn't it? For you."
Maybe Liam imagined it, but he thought he heard a hint of a smile in Fallon's voice when she answered with, "Yeah. It's been him for a while. And I think deep down we both knew that. I'm still sorry, though. I tried to be what you wanted, but it just wasn't easy the way it should've been."
"It's easy with him?"
Liam sat forward in his office, brow furrowed.
"... It is. I can't give you an exact reason why, because I don't know. Some part of me will always love you, Michael, because you were there for me when nobody else was. When nobody else even tried. But I don't think it was ever meant to last. I messed us up far too thoroughly for that..."
"It wasn't all you, Fallon," Michael replied.
"Still. We handled it badly. So I'm going to go take care of this, and if Ada brings your name up... I'll vouch for you. I'm sure they'll find it in her documents, but I'll tell investigators what happened, I'll- I mean, I didn't really do anything, right? It was an accident. And if the entire truth is presented, then... we should both be fine."
When Fallon showed up in Liam's office, Kirby was sitting off to the side as they waited in silence. Liam stood when the door opened, only for Fallon to walk straight up to him and kiss him. Kirby stared, and when Liam pulled back, he did the same.
"I'm sorry you had to hear that," Fallon told him immediately, not wanting to leave room for him to brood about anything.
"I'm not," he replied, shaking his head. "I needed to." Liam stepped back, but took her hand in his. Fallon squeezed his hand in return, looking anxious. "We need to get going. If they find Ada first, she could say any number of things. We need this audio proof on the record first. And Kirby, you need to go with Jeff."
"I still would rather help," Kirby pointed out sort of petulantly, her frustration best shown through the crossed arms and narrowed eyes.
"And I would rather you not die," Fallon snapped, unable to understand why her new friend was so determined to risk herself like that. It hadn't occurred to her that people like Kirby wanted to be there for their friends, much like Liam did for Fallon, or Fallon herself had for Sam in the past.
Kirby rolled her eyes as if to say she thought Fallon was being overdramatic, but she picked up her bag anyway. "At least give me my laptop back after they get the audio off of it? Then I'd have something to do."
"Of course," Liam agreed, eager to stop the argument and get out of there. "Come on."
He gestured towards the door and they walked out to the elevators, then through the lobby, making sure Kirby was safe with Jeff before Liam and Fallon made their way to the precinct's headquarters.