September 14, 2014
"Hey, Elliot?" Jet called out sharply from her vantage point behind the bank of monitors.
Elliot fought the urge to groan; it had been a long and miserable day, a success for him professionally and a nightmare for him personally, and he was exhausted, weary down to his bones, and he wanted nothing so much as to go and sleep in his own bed for the first time in months. It wasn't Jet's fault, though, wasn't her fault he'd had such a shitty day, wasn't her fault that something had gone wrong, and so he heaved himself to his feet, and climbed the stairs to join her.
"What've we got?" he asked as he went.
"I was checking the feeds from Oak House, just wanted to make sure all our cameras were still up and running, and…I think we've got a problem."
Elliot's heart stuttered in his chest, his feet landing slightly out of rhythm as he walked and nearly sending him stumbling into the monitors. Why would there be a problem at Oak House? Olivia was on board, she knew the plan, she'd agreed to help, and it hadn't been two whole hours since Reggie had cracked and the squad had picked up Kosta; what kind of problem could possibly have formed in such a short span of time?
Jet leaned back, gave him a clear view of the camera feeds, and he recognized the problem at once. There, in grainy black and white, was Olivia, barefoot with her hair hanging loose all around her face, half-dressed in some slinky piece of silk, and there in front of her was Richard fucking Wheatley.
"Son of a bitch," Elliot swore, already racing away, heading for his desk and his keys. Wheatley wasn't meant to turn up at Oak House until Friday; whatever had brought him there early, it couldn't possibly be good.
"You can't go there now," Jet tried to stop him, sounding strangely authoritative. "You show up now Wheatley will know -"
"I won't break down the door," Elliot promised. "But if something's wrong I want to be close by. Call Bell, and see if you can pick up the audio. I wanna know every word he says and every move he makes. I'll call you from the car."
"Elliot -"
He'd found his keys, and he wasn't listening, anymore. Somewhere in Manhattan, in the dead of night, Olivia was alone with Richard Wheatley, and Elliot's stomach was twisting itself in knots as he ran for his truck, his mind awash with questions, and with dread. Something must have gone terribly wrong, he thought. Either Liv had sold him out and invited Wheatley herself - which didn't seem too likely; not only was she not that sort of person (he hoped), but she knew her house was full of police bugs, and she wasn't fucking stupid - or Wheatley had grown suspicious, and a suspicious man was a dangerous man.
Please, Elliot prayed. Please, let me get there in time.
"This is a surprise," Olivia said when she drew level with Wheatley, who was loitering just inside the door with Matt towering over him. "We're closed for business for the evening, Mr. Wheatley."
"I think you'll want to hear what I have to say," he told her smoothly. "It concerns our friend Mr. Kosta."
He knows, she thought grimly, and then, shit. She could not turn him away - had already decided not to - but she wished, for a moment, that she could. Wished, not for the first time, for a life where she could control her fate, where she was not beholden to the whims of men and the power of money.
"In that case," she said, "why don't you come upstairs? You'll need to leave your things in the locker room."
"I thought we were past all that," he said with a mocking pout.
And Olivia liked that not at all. Each time Wheatley passed through the doors he had been made to leave his things in a locker just like everyone else, and had never put up a fight, and she didn't like him disagreeing now. What was in his pockets that was so important he didn't want to leave it behind? A gun, maybe? Now that the question had been raised she might look rude if she insisted, but she wasn't stupid. She wasn't going to budge.
"Rules are rules I'm afraid," she said. "It'll only take a moment, Matt here will go with you."
Wheatley looked like he wanted to argue, but Matt was a strapping lad - and visibly armed - and so he relented, allowed himself to be led away, allowed Olivia a few moments to gather herself. Luke had his instructions; he was waiting somewhere in the shadows behind her, she knew, watching, holding off until the moment her bedroom door closed behind Wheatley before getting the girls out of the house. Everyone had their instructions, and Brian and Noah were long gone, and please, she thought, please let them be safe.
Wheatley reappeared and offered her his arm, and though it made her skin crawl she took it, held on to him in silence as they passed through the house, up the stairs, and into her private suite. The sound of the door closing behind them was heavy, and grim, but she plastered a smile on her face as she turned to look at him.
"Tea?" she asked. She kept an electric kettle and all the accoutrements on a side table in her parlor for moments just like this one. Well, perhaps not just like this one.
Wheatley cast an appraising eye over her, his gaze lingering, pointedly, on the swath of her bare chest visible above her slip, the vulnerable curve of her breast, and she'd done that on purpose, gone to him uncovered, intending to use his desire and her own sex appeal to distract the man, but she wished, still, that she had dressed, that she did not feel so bare, so exposed, alone with him. The rooms were soundproofed, even here, and so she could not tell what was happening beyond her door, did not know how long she'd have to keep Wheatley occupied in order to insure her girls all made their escape, but every second felt like an eternity. The plan, originally, had been to woo him, to seduce him, to fuck him, to sate his body and then pour honey in his ear until he trusted her enough to reveal his secrets, and she would go through with it, for the sake of her own safety and that of her family, but Jesus, the prospect was unsettling.
"No," he said shortly. "Tell me, did you know Eddie Ashes is a cop?"
There it was. She allowed her face to fall into a genuine expression of surprise - she was surprised, a little, that he knew the truth about Elliot already - while her heart battered itself bloody against her ribs.
"What?" she demanded.
"You mean to tell me you didn't know?"
Christ, what a slimy bastard he was.
"I had Brian pull his record, the man did jail time for arson and insurance fraud -"
"Yes, the real Eddie Wagner spent some time upstate. The man you know as Eddie Ashes is a cop named Elliot Stabler. You let a fox into the henhouse, Olivia."
As he spoke Wheatley began to pace, circling slowly around her, while she stood frozen near her sofa, trying to keep him in her line of sight, trying to maintain some shred of control over the nightmare this evening had devolved into.
"Shit," she grumbled. "We've got to contain this. Who else knows? How do you know? Who is he working for?"
"So many questions," Wheatley murmured. "One might almost believe you really didn't know." He grinned at her sharply. "Almost."
"Do you really think so little of me?" Olivia demanded, trying to imbue her voice with just the right amount of outrage. "This is my home, Richard. I don't let cops in."
"But you fuck them, don't you?"
This is bad, she thought. This is really bad. Brian did most of her fighting for her, and Wheatley was taller, heavier, stronger. She had Luke's gun, but it was tucked under her pillow on the other side of the room, and Wheatley stood between her and the bed. One swift kick to his balls might buy her enough time to reach the weapon, but then what would she do? Shoot Wheatley in full view of the NYPD cameras? No, if she was gonna do that, she'd have to do it somewhere else.
He doesn't know yet, she told herself. Just calm down. He only thinks he knows. Don't prove him right.
"Never," she said sharply.
"Oh, come on, Olivia. Your head of security is ex-NYPD, and everybody knows you fuck him for free."
Not anymore, she thought, but that would sound too much like a concession, and she kept her mouth closed.
"And anyone with eyes could see you and Eddie had something going on. It was embarrassing, honestly, watching the pair of you preen for each other. He's beneath you, Olivia. I have to pay a hundred grand, and he just gets to have you for free? Tell me, what was so special about him? What about him made you forget who you are?"
Everything. Elliot was smart, and funny, and kind, and just a little broken, just like her. Elliot knew about grief, and duty, and being trapped in a life he didn't want. Elliot treated her like a person, not a conquest or a trophy, and his arms were strong, and his heart was good. Elliot made her hope. But Wheatley was right; Elliot had made her forget who she was, made her forget that the only thing she was good for, the only thing she could ever hope to be, was this. Elliot had offered her freedom, and he'd been too naive to see that freedom wasn't meant for girls like her.
There's only one way this ends, she thought.
"You're a hypocrite," she said, and Wheatley paused in his circling, caught off guard by the sharpness of her tone. "You have desires, and you sate them. You can't fault me for doing the same."
"You wanted him," Wheatley said slowly.
And you want me, she thought.
Slowly she approached him, reached out to rest her palm on his forearm for a moment before running it slowly up the length of his arm, across his shoulder, up and up until she could curl her hand around the back of his neck.
"There is something appealing," she said, adding a breathless quality to her voice, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes coquettishly, "about a big, strong man. A dangerous man."
The ploy was simple; make Wheatley think she found something desirable in him, flatter his ego, tell him she wanted him more than Elliot, let him have her for free, if that's what it took. The plan could still be salvaged. There was still a way out of this. If Wheatley was only arrogant enough, only lustful enough, to fall for her reckless gambit.
"I'm a dangerous man," he said, and she relaxed infinitesimally. It sounded like he was buying it.
"You are," she agreed warmly. "And a girl like me needs a dangerous man to keep me safe from the big bad wolf." It was laughably melodramatic and she felt stupid saying it, but in her experience men like Wheatley ate shit like that up with a spoon. "I made a mistake," she continued. "Maybe you can fix it."
"How?" he asked warily.
"Help me," she said. Men liked him, they liked that, too, liked to see a woman as weak, liked to see a woman who needed them, because it made them feel powerful, made them feel strong. It was a dance she knew well.
"This man, Eddie, whoever, he's a threat to me," she said. "Help me get rid of him. And take what you deserve."
Wheatley moved then, suddenly, snaked his arm around her waist and hauled her hard against him, and she let out a breathless gasp for his benefit, let her open mouth swing perilously close to his, an invitation in the proximity. She could feel his breath warm against her cheek, could feel his body hard and unyielding crushed against hers, and please, she thought, please believe me.
"You're dangerous, too," Wheatley murmured, and then he dropped his head to press his mouth against her neck, and she tilted her chin, gave him more access to kiss her while she held her breath, waiting to see what he might do next.
"You and me," he said between heated kisses, peppered across her bare throat, "we could make a formidable team."
"I'd like that," she said, and then, before she could stop him, he tangled his hand in her hair and drew her to him and kissed her, hard, and she let him.