Disclaimer: I still don't own Angel, still make no money off this, and remain unworthy of sue-age.
Thanks to Starway Man, my beta-reader.
Due to the fact that I want to avoid spending ten or fifteen chapters on the summer months (which I could easily do), I'm going to have to compress stuff – recap a lot of stuff into a character's reflections or thoughts, some in conversations, have character interactions be different without explored development (though usually explained), et cetera. What you'd kind of have to expect.
Exit Strategy
By Alkeni
Chapter 12: Conversations With Live People
Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles
June 7th, 2001
Things had...settled down in L.A., in the weeks since the White Hats had taken out Drosh's distribution center.
Well, not so much in Los Angeles per se as in Angel Investigations, and the Hyperion Hotel.
Fred was still holed up in her room, poking her head out every once in a while, and perhaps unsurprisingly – the insane little Texan didn't seem to like Lilah all that much. Both times the former attorney had run into Fred when she was out skulking, the girl – 'woman' hardly seemed to apply, despite the fact that Lilah suspected the former slave was at least in her late twenties – had tensed up and then sprinted off in the other direction.
Of course, it could just be that I'm another person. Lilah rolled her eyes.
Wesley and his people around here sent the girl food – tacos were ideal, apparently – and drinks, every so often. But otherwise, they seemed content, for the moment, to let Fred lurk up in her room all by herself. And, the Morgan woman thought to herself in annoyance, not charge her any rent.
Lilah rolled her eyes and returned to her thoughts on the last few weeks.
Wesley had spent – surprise, surprise – most of the money he'd taken out of Drosh's distribution center, on books. It was amazing just how many rare volumes on the occult there were that Wesley didn't already have, and just how much some of them could set a former Watcher back.
Lilah wasn't sure what Gunn and Cordelia had spent theirs on, though she was fairly confident that for the seer...it involved, at least to a large degree, clothes and shoes. Not that Lilah was criticizing the Vision Girl for that. Hell, she'd done exactly the same with some of her money.
But only some.
Most of the rest had gone into either covering things like paying her rent, or investing in her 'project'.
Lilah hadn't sent Angel Investigations out on any new hits on Lindsey's network, because she hadn't wanted to risk pushing her former co-worker too hard or too far that he'd feel the need to retaliate. She had explored other leads, getting some info on a few safe-houses and contacts Lindsey used, which had set her back a few more thousand dollars than she'd really wanted to spend – but that was life, unfortunately. That kind of work wasn't cheap.
And then there was the several thousand dollars she'd invested into getting every scrap of information she could get on Linda Reisan. That paralegal was her best angle into the rest of Lindsey's major network. Lilah doubted that Linda was personally involved in Lindsey's holding her mother hostage, but she would know things that could be useful – people Lilah could talk to, places she could follow up for more clues. Maybe even dirt on her boss, if the woman was worth her salt. Lilah had some dirt of her own, but it was more or less useless now, given the man's promotion.
But if Linda had something new, or different – and she'd be in a position to at least know different things, though perhaps not useful ones – then she had another resource against Lindsey.
But holding Linda at gunpoint to make her cough up wasn't likely to be enough – unless she was prepared to kill the woman, and that would just set off too many alarms with Lindsey. Alarms she didn't want set off, just yet.
Unfortunately, Linda seemed to be the perfect little paralegal. Her record was spotless – there was nothing she could use to bend the other woman to her will.
There was still one other option, but at this point in time, Lilah preferred not to take it. It was...risky.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but there's mail for you, Lilah." Cordelia said, walking back into the hotel from meeting with the postman outside.
"Surprised that anyone would want to send me mail?" Lilah asked, standing up and walking over to Cordelia, taking the envelope from the seer.
"Something like that. Of course, has to be a bill or something. I mean, who would want to have anything to do with you otherwise?" Cordelia took the rest of the mail and set it on the front desk.
"Very droll, princess. Still, I don't see you having much in the way of a social life." Lilah pointed out, opening the letter. Unsurprisingly, it was in fact a bill from one of the people she'd hired to look into Linda Reisan.
"It's not because I'm a complete bitch." Cordelia replied, with perhaps less venom in her tone than might have been present a month ago. "I actually can get along with other people."
"You also don't have your former co-workers trying to kill you." Lilah pointed out.
"And doesn't that just say everything there is to know about how 'good' you are at making friends and influencing people?" Cordelia pointed out right back. Less venom, yes, but a hell of a lot more sarcasm.
"Are the two of you quite finished?" Wesley asked, stepping out of his office.
"For the moment." Cordelia answered, with a brilliant toothpaste commercial smile. "We've got checks from Mr. Palster and Miss Hethburn." She handed the accompanying letters to Wesley. "And then there's this; it's from a Richard Gardener, for you." She handed that letter to him as well.
"Ah. Excellent." Wesley replied, opening the missive from Richard. "Yes. This will definitely help with that translation I was working on."
"Which one is that? One that's important, or just one you're doing for fun?" Lilah didn't quite get Wesley's willingness to translate obscure languages simply for the hell of it.
"None for a case." Wesley confirmed, heading back into his office. "When did Gunn say he'd be back?"
"Should be pretty soon." Cordelia said, picking a magazine out of the mail and sitting down to read it. But she didn't even get to the chair before she dropped the magazine, one hand flying to her head, a cry of pain ripping loose from her lips. Wesley was rushing out of his office as soon as he heard the sound, but he was too slow - Cordelia fell, but she managed to catch her arm on the chair, arresting her fall somewhat.
Wesley did get to her in time to help Cordelia up. "Vision?"
"Vision." Cordelia nodded. Once she was standing up, she pressed her hands to her temples. "Wes. In the drawer-" She gestured as best she could. The former Watcher was already opening the indicated drawer and taking out the bottle of aspirin before she was done gesturing. Popping off the lid, he handed her two of the pills.
Once Cordelia had the aspirin in hand, Wesley gave her a bottle of water from out of the mini fridge. Wesley waited for the Vision Girl to take the pills and get into the chair, before asking her the obvious next question:
"What did you see?"
"Woman – and a kid. Maybe three, four years old?" Wesley was already jotting this down as Cordelia spoke, the seer still pressing a hand to the side of her head. "Her name's – Sarah. Sarah Trent. She's going to be jumped by two muggers with knives in a parking garage soon...maybe an hour?" She gave them an address. Lilah didn't recognize the address, and Wesley didn't seem to, either.
Something about the name 'Sarah Trent' seemed vaguely familiar to Lilah, but she couldn't place it for the life of her. Then again, it wasn't exactly a very exotic name, first or last.
Wesley made a quick check on a map of L.A. "It looks like we can get there in thirty minutes or so. Which means we have time to wait for Gunn." He looked back to Cordelia, "What about these muggers? Vampires, demons? What kind?"
"Humans. Ordinary humans, as far as I could tell." Cordelia replied.
"Hmm. That's odd." Wesley commented, "The visions don't usually involve purely human crimes."
"There were those two guys who went after Bethany." Cordelia pointed out. "They were humans going after a human. Even if she could move stuff around with her mind."
"But I hired those two idiots to go after her." Lilah pointed out, then she frowned, "Huh." she added. "So that's how Angel got involved in all that?"
Cordelia lowered her hand and glared in Lilah's direction. "Oh, right, remind us of all the evil things you've done. Because we really needed the reminder about your glory days at Evil Incorporated!"
Lilah laughed, "You clearly forgot about that part, so yes, you did need me to remind you. As for why I brought it up, my point was that even when it was human on human crime, not only did the victim have powers, but they were sent by someone who is somewhat beyond the realm of purely human on human crime."
"So you suspect that someone hired these would-be muggers to target this woman?" Wesley speculated, looking at Lilah oddly. "Someone with a connection to the supernatural?"
"Maybe." Lilah shrugged, "Or maybe the woman has some other connection, or her kid has a destiny, or maybe even one of the muggers does. The vision didn't tell you – so once the people going after her are dealt with, you're probably going to want to do some digging."
Cordelia looked at the bottle of aspirin, then frowned and put it back in the drawer, taking another drink from the bottle of water. "I'll see if I can find anything on her. Not that it'll be easy, with a name like that."
"Good." Wesley nodded. "If we're just going up against normal humans, we should probably avoid being too heavily armed. Would-be muggers or not, we can't simply kill them, especially not with swords."
"So, what, you want to just beat them up? Seems more like Gunn's territory than yours." the ex-lawyer said dismissively.
"What's my territory?" Gunn asked as he walked in.
"Beating would-be muggers up." Lilah told him.
"Not than I'm against it, but why're we talkin' about that?" Gunn asked, approaching the rest of them.
"Cordelia just had a vision." Wesley explained, then filled Gunn in on what she'd seen.
"Just humans? Huh. That's a little weird." Gunn commented, mimicking Wesley and Cordelia's earlier confusion.
"Lilah theorizes that perhaps the victim or perhaps one or both of her attackers have some sort of connection to the supernatural. But, either way, we can't simply kill them out of hand, the way we might a hostile demon or vampire." Wesley explained.
"Of course, if you do kill them, I can always make sure you don't go to prison for it." Lilah quipped with a smirk. "I am still an attorney, and a damn good one, if I say so myself."
"We're not killing them." Wesley told her, not interested in letting Lilah get away with her little joke. If joke it was. "Threaten them with a gun, yes. Or simply deal with them the old fashioned way."
"L.A. muggers? I don't think they'll play by Marquis of Queensberry Rules, Wesley." Lilah pointed out.
"It's a good thing I'm not actually familiar with them in the specifics, then." Wesley replied. "Even the Watchers consider those rules rather idiotic for anything except what they were intended for – organized boxing matches."
Parking Garage, Los Angeles
June 7th, 2001
"Please – just, don't...here." The woman said, the panic evident in her voice, extending her purse to the two men, "please, take it. Just don't hurt him. Don't hurt us."
One of the men grabbed the purse, but neither of them seemed interested in leaving her alone. "I don't hear any keys in this thing."
"You can't- you can't take the car. I need it to get to work. Please!" She begged.
"Lady, you can't tell us what-" One of them started, but that was when Wesley decided to interrupt.
"She offered you her purse." He told them tersely, "You should have taken her up on that offer."
"Who the hell are you?" One of the thugs started to say, turning around to see the three of them there.
Lilah was a little farther back than either Wesley or Gunn, since she didn't want to get involved in whatever fight happened. It was half out of boredom that she was actually here at all. Of course, the fact that the would-be-mugger's eyes widened a little at seeing the pistol in Wesley's hand could mean there wouldn't be a fight.
Or maybe there would, because neither of them seemed that inclined to leave.
"I'm the person with the gun telling you to leave this woman and her child alone." Wesley told them.
"You're not gonna shoot us with that." One of them said confidently.
"Would you like to test that theory?" Wesley twitched his hand on the trigger a little. With both of the would-be-muggers facing them, Sarah Trent grabbed her son's hand and started to move away – the kid looked like he was scared and confused. He was too young to really get what was going on, but-
He was old enough to understand that something scary was going on, and that these two were bad men.
"I'm not going to call the police on you, in case you were wondering, as I prefer not to get the L.A.P.D. involved in my affairs." Wesley told them. "Just leave, and I won't blow both your kneecaps into little pieces. You'll find it rather hard to mug anyone else in the future, if that scenario comes to pass." He appeared to tighten his grip on the trigger. Lilah, from where she was standing, saw that he actually hadn't done so, but from their angle...they would think that he had.
The muggers looked at Wesley, then at each other, then one of them held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Alright, man. We're going." They started to move away, backing away from them, keeping their eyes on Wesley as they reached the nearby stairs. Only once they were gone did Wesley lower the gun.
"Tha-thank you..." The woman said softly, "If you hadn't-" Then her eyes narrowed, "Why- why did you-" The way the woman went from fear to gratitude to fear and suspicion again...
Lilah could read that easily enough. The woman was running from something, and had been for...a long while, if she was any judge of human behavior.
"We came here looking for you." Wesley said, putting the gun away. "You and your son, Miss Trent."
The woman scrabbled into her purse, pulling out...a crucifix? "Stay back! I'm not going back to him, I don't care how much-"
"We're not vampires." Lilah interrupted, walking up to the woman, suddenly realizing where she remembered the name from. She grabbed the top of the cross, letting the woman see that her hand wasn't burning. "Though I'm surprised you've managed to hide from your ex-husband this long. What name are you using now, anyway?" Lilah let go of the crucifix and stepped back.
"Who- how do you- Mark sent you-" She babbled out, the little boy flinching at the name.
"Lilah, what the hell are you-" Gunn started to say.
Lilah looked back at Gunn, interrupting him this time. "Sarah Trent was, until three years ago, married to Mark Sandrow. A somewhat nasty piece of work – he has enough clout to use vampires as hired muscle, but he deals in hookers and weapons, mostly. And a side ring in trafficking little girls. Lee Mercer represented him at his divorce proceedings. I remember how Sandrow was pretty pissed when he lost custody of his kid – it was a real nasty hit for Lee's position in the firm." She smirked.
"What's – who are you...why are you here? Who are you people, and what do you want!?" Sarah managed to get out, still confused and terrified.
"Madam, please calm down; we don't mean you any harm. My name is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, this is Charles Gunn, and she is Lilah Morgan." Wes held up his hands carefully, to show that he wasn't trying to be a threat. "Now, you know about vampires. Do you know about magic, demons, and all the rest of it?"
Sarah Trent nodded once, slowly, licking dry lips.
"Good, well, that makes things easier. Now, there's a young woman in my employ – she gets visions. Of people in trouble – people like yourself. People who need help. She had one of you, and of those muggers who accosted you just now. But given what Lilah just said, I'm guessing that the true reason she had the vision because your ex-husband has found you, or will soon..."
Apparently, Wesley is going with the 'explain everything' approach. Big surprise there. Lilah rolled her eyes, wondering how she constantly got herself into these things.