Disclaimer: I don't own Angel. I'm just borrowing the characters that other people own/created in the interests of telling a story that I hope is enjoyable to others.

Thanks to Starway Man, my Beta

Exit Strategy

By Alkeni

Chapter 10: Down an Angel

Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles

May 16th, 2001

In Lilah Morgan's view, the last ten days since they'd all returned from Pylea had been...interesting.

That Buffy Summers, Slayer Extraordinaire was dead was a bit of a shock, but hardly a surprise. Slayers died young, and they died violently. It was pretty much part of the job description, and it didn't bother Lilah at all to learn that that little girl was dead.

That Angel had reacted badly to that news was also not a surprise.

What had been a surprise was how Angel had reacted – rather than simply going to his room to brood and/or sulk, or blame himself for what had happened, or going all suicidal and trying to go down in a blaze of glory in some pointless fight, or any number of other things that had crossed her mind...

Angel had instead decide to go to a monastery in Tibet. A spiritual retreat to work through his grief, according to Wesley.

As far as Lilah had been concerned, though, Angel was just taking his brood international, and leaving his friends to fend for themselves. The rest of the White Hats hadn't found that very funny.

Which I, personally, just don't get. Does being a 'hero' warp your sense of humor or something?

Lilah shook her head at that thought, as she made her way down the stairs into the Hyperion's lobby.

Ever since their return from Pylea, Lilah had pretty much been given free reign throughout the hotel. Something which, while something of a let down from all the open space in Pylea, was nonetheless a massive improvement over being locked up in her own room.

She was even allowed to leave the hotel, though she rarely took that option up – too much risk that she'd be spotted by someone from the firm. By now, Wolfram and Hart had to know where she was; but the way Lilah saw it, Lindsey wasn't going to do a thing to her as long as the other half of the files she'd stolen remained well hidden and out of the White Hats' hands. Lindsey had two ways to get at her, but if he actually used either one, both his career and his life were over.

The problem remained everyone else in Special Projects. Taking Lilah out would be a nice feather in their cap, and removing Lindsey as collateral damage would just be icing on the cake – everyone needs a bigger office, right?

Not that the Senior Partners, or even the local managing partners, will be all that thrilled about the backlash from my deadman switch release... Lilah was fairly confident that anyone who killed her – and by doing so, caused all those files to go public – would be severely punished by upper management. But that would be cold comfort to her. After all, she'd be dead.

So Lilah had made the decision that she simply wouldn't leave the hotel much, while she was working on a solution to her problems. Indeed, she'd only left once in the last ten days, and that was as part of a case for Angel Investigations.

She'd been rather surprised when the others had been leaving, and Wesley turned to her and asked if she was coming. In response to her surprise at the question, the British man had pointed out that she'd said she wanted to join them. That did mean actually joining them, including when they went out to fight the demon in Cordelia's latest vision.

Lilah drew to a stop midway down the stairs, making sure no one else was in the lobby as she continued her thoughts.

Her hotel suite here was smaller – much smaller – than her old apartment had been, and not for the first time, she missed all the little creature comforts she'd had just a month ago.

Far from the first time at that.

Although, when they'd gotten back from Pylea, Lilah had found even the shower in the bathroom of her room was a truly magnificent thing, after all that she'd had to go through in that hell dimension.

Now that she was sure no one else was in the lobby, Lilah resumed her way down the stairs, reaching the bottom in short order. Apart from Fred – that twiggy Texan they'd brought back from Pylea with them – no one actually lived in the hotel, given Angel's absence. That, plus the fact that Fred hadn't yet left the room she'd been holed up in since Angel had departed, meant that Lilah effectively had the hotel to herself part of the time.

It gave the brunette woman a certain degree of freedom in the early morning, before even Wesley showed up. Of course, it meant that she had to be up by five in the morning to have even an hour free of the increasingly workaholic former Watcher, but as a lawyer she was quite used to waking up early – and going to sleep late. She was quite skilled at managing by on far less sleep than the normal person.

Although, to be fair, so is everyone else here. Fighting creatures of the night alongside an ensouled vampire may well be noble and good and all that heroic crap, but it played as much merry hell with a person's sleep schedule as being a lawyer with Wolfram and Hart did.

The coffee machine here was a simple, cheap thing – nothing like what she'd had at home. Hell, even the mail room at Wolfram and Hart had had a better machine. But in her college days she'd been stuck with a machine this crappy, and it wasn't like it was difficult to use. She started a pot and grabbed a clean mug more or less at random. While she waited for the caffeine to be done, Lilah sat down in a chair and opened her book. She'd had to pay Wesley slightly more in the way of rent than previously agreed, but he'd agreed to buy her a few books – which she also fronted the money for – to give her something to do in the unfortunately increased amount of spare time that she had these days.

Unfortunately, she hadn't given him much in the way of direction on what to buy beyond 'fiction' and 'not the kind of dry boring crap they make you read in lit classes'. The results had been somewhat mixed. She suspected Wesley had merely grabbed books off the shelf at random from a number of sections.

Though there had been one book she'd enjoyed well enough. Storm Front, by a Jim Butcher. The lead character was your typical do-gooder hero (he was even a PI with supernatural powers, and didn't that sound familiar?) but the book as a whole was entertaining enough. More so than she'd expected. Even if she couldn't help snarking at Harry Dresden's...everything. From his attitude to his choice of sidekick, a talking skull of all things.

Lilah doubted it had occurred to the author that his novel had the same name as a certain white supremacist website.

Of course, odds are he doesn't know it exists. Lilah only knew because Wolfram and Hart had represented the website's managers in a few cases. A surprisingly high number of vampires were members of the website. All of them old vamps, from the days when minority rights didn't even exist as a concept. And some of them had been more than wealthy enough to pay the firm's fees.

At the thought of those people, Lilah gave a little shudder. There was evil, and then there was a level of base, cruel, petty ignorance that made even minor evils utterly disgusting. If nothing else because of the sloppy wastefulness of their world-view.

And besides, Lilah just didn't get racism. If you were human, you were almost certain to be a mindless sheep or worthless scum, regardless of your skin color.

Might come from all the demons I used to work with. Though she'd never really gotten it, even before starting at Wolfram and Hart.

The coffee machine dinged lightly to indicate that pot was done, and Lilah put down the work of historical fiction she'd been reading and went to collect it, pouring herself a cup. She took a sip and once again screwed up her face at the taste. It wasn't bad, just terribly...bland, compared to what she was used to. Nowhere near as good. Still, it was better than the batch they'd been finishing the last of off upon the return from Pylea.

That had been battery acid masquerading as coffee. Or maybe paint thinner. She wasn't sure. Either way, there was no way that that stuff had been coffee in any sense of the word. This at least counted.

Lilah returned to drinking her coffee and pondered just what she should do next.

She'd had her plans, for her exit strategy out of Wolfram and Hart. Had them laid – albeit constantly updated – for years, always digging for files and dirt on her superiors, laying plans to have a weapon against the firm once she left, if she had to. That was where Cowan had come in. It had taken some doing to convince him to what she needed, but Lilah had always been good at convincing people to do what she wanted. Tricking him into believing that the information she'd be gathering would be used against others in the firm, and that she'd take Cowan with her when she won whatever interoffice fight she had planned had been easy.

Unfortunately, Lindsey figured out I was behind it. In retrospect, expecting him to not make the connection was perhaps a bit too much. If she'd given it a little bit more time between her escape and pulling the files, Lindsey might not have leaped immediately to the 'it was Lilah' conclusion.

Lilah hated admitting that she'd made a mistake, even to herself. But she had. She'd been so pissed off at being passed over for Lindsey – freaking Lindsey McDonald! - and with her composure shot from panic, she'd gone full bore on the plan without even a moment's delay.

And now that son of a bitch has my mother.

She hadn't 'joined' Angel Investigations out of the goodness of her heart. And she couldn't give two shits about all the helpless and hopeless little people they saved. But, as sad as it sounded, this little collection of rag-tag White Hats was the greatest threat to Wolfram and Hart, here in Los Angeles.

Oh, sure, there were about a half-dozen various groups in the city that made an active effort against the forces of darkness that preyed on people. Gunn's old gang was one of them, and Angel Investigations was another. Another gang of street toughs like Gunn's group, a small coven, a small alliance of half-demons that used the enhanced abilities of their heritages to do good and the latest, a little clique of college students with too much knowledge and not enough power (and thus were getting in way over their heads) rounded things out.

Of those six, only Angel Investigations, the coven and the half-demons even knew about Wolfram and Hart's role in the supernatural world. And neither the coven nor the half-demons were interested in fighting Wolfram and Hart head-on. They avoided the supernatural superpower with a strong sense of self-preservation.

And a sense of self-preservation really is something that Angel's groupies definitely lack, no doubt about it.

This made them the perfect resource with which she could wage her one-woman war against Lindsey – fighting Wolfram and Hart was incidental to the main target; finding and rescuing her mother.

She'd thought about it, and concluded her mother was still in L.A. It made the most sense. Putting her in another dimension was too stupid for her longtime rival – sure she'd be out of reach, but then he'd also have no way to personally keep an eye on her, make sure she stayed alive. And Lindsey would run into the same sort of problem if she was stashed too far from L.A. as well.

The odds were, given how unfortunately smart Lindsey was, that she'd be somewhere in L.A. and probably within a few hours' drive as well. But that still left a lot of territory to cover. Lindsey would be sure to either use a safe-house or location that she knew nothing about – a risky bet for him, but one that she knew was very possible.

Lilah couldn't be sure exactly which of her various assets Lindsey now knew about – she knew he knew about some, and could guess he'd know about others. But there were some that she knew he didn't know about, and there was at least one more safe-house that he still didn't know about, even being the Vice President of Special Projects as he now was.

Like any smart employee at Wolfram and Hart, Lindsey would keep as much as possible of this operation – and any others he chose to run – in his own network within the firm's Byzantine structure. And she knew enough about that network to start rolling it up. And, with any luck, figure out more about where her mother was, and what he had guarding her.

But, then again, if I work too hard against him... Lilah shook her head at that thought, finishing off the rest of the coffee in her mug. No. Even if she could manage to destroy Lindsey's entire network, there was little chance he'd do anything to her mother in retaliation. She still had more than enough to end his career and life.

Good old Cold War style Mutually Assured Destruction. Because even if she released everything and got Lindsey killed and his body set to work in a Third World hell dimension, he'd almost certainly have the time for a retaliatory strike, and even if not, the rest of the firm would still have plenty of incentive to kill her, and she wouldn't have her insurance policy.

She couldn't be sure she was reading Lindsey's likely actions perfectly – he'd not survived as long as he had in the firm by being easy to read or predict. But he, like her, was a rational player who knew how to balance risk and reward against his own self-interest.

But where to start?"

As she pondered that, Lilah got up and poured herself a second mug of coffee from the pot and took herself, her mug, and the – rather mediocre, in this case – book to the round couch in the center of the lobby. A look at her watch virtually guaranteed that she had a good thirty more minutes before Wesley arrived.

So, Lilah. Where exactly do we go first? Who's accessible that would know what I want to know? Or even a bit more about what he's got going for him.

Well, she had thirty minutes in which to figure it out.

Lobby, Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles

May 16th, 2001

Lilah had just finished her second cup of coffee when Wesley walked into the hotel lobby, a legal pad and two thick books in hand.

"Morning, Lilah." Wesley offered politely as he headed into his office, setting the books down long enough to unlock the door. She didn't know why he did it – Cordelia and Gunn certainly didn't waste their time with pleasantries when it came to her, and she highly doubted it was because Wesley liked or trusted her any more than they did.

It's got to be some English thing. That was the only conclusion she could think of, anyway.

"Morning." Lilah offered back, getting up from the couch to stretch a moment. She thought she saw Wesley's eyes linger for the slightest of moments, but she wasn't sure. She still smirked regardless as Wesley walked into his office.

Lilah's gaze went back to the book, then back to the open door of Wesley's office. Why bother with that when there's better entertainment available right now? Picking the book up, she folded down the corner of a page – knowing full well how much it would annoy Wesley if he saw her doing it, or that she'd done it – and set that down next to her empty coffee mug.

"So," she asked him, standing in the doorway of the office, "why do you show up here so early, anyway? I mean, your Girl Friday isn't going to show up until at least eight, unless she's had a vision or something comes up, and Gunn won't be here until nine, unless there's a reason for him to be here earlier. So why the hell are you always here at six o'clock in the freaking morning?"

"I could ask you why it is that you're always up and wide awake by the time I'm here." Wesley pointed out, not looking up from the papers and books layering the desk in front of him.

"That's a simple answer." Lilah shrugged, "I get up as early as I do so I can have a bit of time to myself before everyone else gets here. It's not like Fred's going to come out of hibernation and inflict her company on me."

She saw how Wesley frowned just a touch at the minor slight against the Texan nut-case. God, he barely knows the woman and he's acting all smitten. Of course Wesley would pick a crazy girl to have a crush on...

But he didn't make an issue of her words either. "I see."

"So, again," Lilah began, repeating her earlier question, "Why are you here so god-awful early? I mean, I don't like waking up at five in the morning, so I'd be all for you arriving later."

Wesley looked up from the books and papers he'd been examining. "The City of Angels is, as it were, down an Angel. He is a better combatant than all the rest of us combined. His absence significantly reduces our ability to fight demons and vampires, and his superhuman senses were useful on non-combative cases as well." He shrugged, "Therefore, greater effort needs to be made in order for Angel Investigations to remain on top of things here in Los Angeles. Thus, I arrive early."

Sheesh... "Such a martyr for the cause, Wes."

"Getting by on minimal sleep was practically a class of its own at the Academy. It is hardly martyring myself." Wesley looked back to the papers and started going through them, looking for a specific sheet. "Now, was there anything else, or did you interrupt me just to ask that question?"

"Well, hey, it's always fun to interrupt you," Lilah started, but kept going before Wesley could say anything. "But as a matter of fact, yes there is something else. The data I've given you is incomplete, granted. Nothing you could take any sort of authorities – local, state or federal. But there's enough there that you can use to target some of their operations. Cut into Wolfram & Hart's network of contacts and safe-houses, take out allies and key clients. That sort of thing."

"Aren't you worried that Lindsey and the Senior Partners will take such actions as good reason to use the gun they have to your head, as you put it?" Wesley raised an eyebrow, looking back at her. He gestured at the chair across the desk from him, clearing meaning for her to sit.

Lilah didn't oblige him as she answered his question. "Not hardly. Lindsey knows that I've given you guys at least some of the files I stole. And, since he's not dead yet, that all the really good stuff is hidden away with the half I haven't given you. The kind of things you'll be able to use will hurt the firm, but not enough that they'd be willing to risk all the shit that will rain down on them if everything else I have goes public."

"And yet, simply killing you to ensure it all goes public sounds even more appealing an option." Wesley muttered. Lilah resisted the urge to frown. She was almost certain that Wesley wouldn't do that – at least not as long as she proved otherwise useful and paid her rent, but...

She honestly couldn't be sure, not any longer. She'd seen that other, harder side to Wesley in Pylea. A much better side, in her view, than the one he usually showed, but also one eminently willing to kill her. Which just makes tweaking him even more fun. She admitted to herself.

Shaking his head, Wesley continued, "That aside, I assume you have a particular idea in mind, on where to start?"

"Uncanny." Lilah offered with a smirk. "Yes. I do. I don't remember all the details off the top of my head, but I know which floppy disk they are on." She crossed her arms in front of her and leaned her back against the door frame. "You took out the soul-drop factory, sure, but there's still a lot of that crap on the streets. The firm uses an intermediary to get the drug to the street dealers, and by now, the price would have gone through the roof. So I imagine our intermediary has a hell of a lot of the stuff just waiting to be sold to people who can put together the cash." Not to mention he'd have a lot of money. And that he's a second in command who works for Lindsey. The latter she had no intention of ever sharing with Wesley or anyone else at AI. The former...well, she'd let them in on that if she had to. But a woman had to make sure she had the money to cover rent, right?

She'd taken as much money with her she could, but it would only last so long. And depending on how long she was stuck here, she'd want to rebuild her clothing and shoe stocks...well, in that case she'd need more in the way of money than she currently had. Even it came out of a drug dealer's wallet.

Well, to quote Emperor Vespasian, 'Money does not stink'. Lilah couldn't help but smile at that. More than one prosecuting attorney had asked how she could sleep at nights, getting paid to defend such scum. How she could accept their money.

She'd always trotted that line out in response. It had usually left them sitting there speechless, as if they couldn't accept she'd be that blasé about it.

White Hats can never accept that sometimes people just don't care about their little black and white world-view.

"And you think we can take him out? Wouldn't he have minions of some sort? Guards?" Wesley asked, forcing Lilah to focus.

"Of course. Mostly demons, given that he is a demon, but maybe a human or two as well. I mean, I could be wrong, but you'll be able to find out one way or the other from the data about the guy and his base of operations on the floppy." Lilah shrugged – then she saw the way Wesley raised an eyebrow, and she knew what he was going to ask next. And I need an answer for it.

Just as she predicted, Wesley asked it. "And...why exactly do you suggest we start with this one? I've been meaning to make an effort to start working on the discs you did provide anyway, but you obviously have a motive in suggesting this particular target as the first one to go for." Wesley shifted in his chair a little, giving him a better angle to look directly at her face. "So. Why?"

Lilah shrugged, no obvious tells showing as she lied as easily as she always did, "I like things to be completely finished. Taking out the factory but leaving the distributor intact is an incomplete job. It is neither neat nor tidy. I prefer things to be neat and tidy."

Wesley looked at her carefully a moment, considering her words, then shrugged. "I'd imagine that part of that is actually true. Not sure which part." He returned his attention to his books and papers. "Very well. Give me the information, and I'll look into the possibility. In the meantime, I do have other work to do." He gestured irritably for her to leave his office. "Close the door on your way out, Lilah."