Disclaimer: Sigh I don't own OTH, I wish I did, but I don't. What can I do? No seriously, if anyone has any plans to hijack the show, please tell me. There's so much I want to change right now. Like the stupid Tape storyline, and the way that EVERYTHING is always about Peyton, and Leyton (no offence, but I just don't get them, and I definitely can't feel the chemistry. Sorry if you like them, but we're all entitled to our opinions. I really wanted to give them a chance, but they're either disgustingly OTT with each other or they're just not interacting as boyfriend and girlfriend at all. I think that the writers are trying to overcompensate the fact that they have no chemistry by filling the awkward silences with puke-inducing cutesy dialogue). Not that I'd put Brooke with Lucas… actually, I might. After last episode with them together, I got the goose bump things that I haven't had for ages on OTH (except for with my darling Naley, of course). It's nice to see them interacting again… Crap! I'm rambling. I'll stop that right now. So yeah, don't own OTH or any of it's characters (nobody would let me, I'd probably let Derek kill Peyton or something… No, that's not fair. I don't dislike Peyton, in fact, I think that I might relate to her the most out of the female characters - she has wicked taste in music and she's kind of a wannabe loner without actually being a loner. I just hate Schwann's infatuation with her… CRAP! I'm rambling again.)

Possibly the longest informal disclaimer in history.

Oh, and I've decided that if the chapter title is named after a song, I'm going to put it here. This week: Rip Her to Shreds - Blondie. Oh, and the ring tone song is Who's That Girl - Eurythmic's.

The Con

Chapter Eighteen: Rip Her to Shreds

The Language of love

Slips from my lovers tongue.

Cooler than ice cream,

And warmer than the sun.

Dumb hearts get broken…

"Hello," Peyton greeted, cutting off the Annie Lennox's strong voice. She swatted Jake's hand away as it snaked up her stomach, giggling as she did so.

"Hey, Peyton? It's Lisa."

Peyton grinned a little wider, knowing that she didn't have to pretend with her new friend. "Hey! How are you?"

Jake lowered his head down and blew a raspberry on Peyton's bare stomach. She giggled again and pushed him away playfully, mouthing for him to stop.

"Oh, I'm good," Lisa's voice sounded cheerful, but Peyton detected a hint of sadness to it.

"Are you sure?" She asked, losing her happy expression and frowning with concern. She barely knew Lisa, but the fact that Lisa knew this huge secret about her made her a friend.

"Yeah," Lisa said forcefully, making Peyton question whether she'd even heard the hint of sadness. Maybe it had just been a figment of her imagination.

"Oh, so what's up?" she asked, twisting round onto her stomach and winking at Jake who was looking put out at the current interruption.

"Nothing, I was just wondering if you wanted to come out with me tonight. Get to know each other a little better, you know?"

Peyton pulled a face. She wanted to get to know Lisa better - it felt like she couldn't really talk to anyone anymore. Brooke was excited about her wedding and Nathan's, Lucas didn't seem to understand anyone who couldn't stand up to Dan, and Nathan was too hung up on Haley. Plus, she couldn't trust that he wouldn't use it against Dan to get him off the idea of her and him together.

However, it was rare that she got to spend a full day with Jake like she was now, and she wasn't ready to throw the privilege away.

"I'd love to," she said softly, "but I've got plans with Jake tonight."

"Oh, that's no problem," Lisa said.

"We could do it another time… how about after the ball next week?"

"The Scott ball?" Lisa asked. "Ok, sure."

The women swapped their goodbyes and then Peyton put the phone down again. "Now, where were we?" she asked teasingly as Jake lowered his head to hers.

--x--x--x--

Taylor closed her cell and threw it into the glove compartment, not taking her eyes off the apartment block in front of her. The apartment block that she had followed Peyton to earlier in the day. She gave a small smirk and set the car into gear, turning it towards the Scott Corp. building.

--x--x--x--

Dan Scott picked up his ringing phone.

"Yes," he said gruffly and unpleasantly.

"Miss Powell is here," his secretary told him. Dan nodded as if she could actually see him, and then barked, "Well send her up then Clarisse."

He slammed the phone down in his usual inpatient manner and rubbed his eyes. He had received a call the night before from a woman claiming to be his employee. She had told him that she had news on Haley Gregory, and Dan was no fool. He knew that if an opportunity like this fell into his lap he had to grasp it.

The office door opened and Clarisse - the small mousy secretary his wife had chosen as a way to deter him from sleeping around - led a tall red head into the room. He smirked at her as he did every pretty woman who walked into his room, his eyes filled with just a little too much interest.

"Miss Powell," Clarisse declared, pushing her glasses further up her nose and looking anywhere but at Dan.

"Please, call me Lisa," the red head said, smiling at Dan and sitting down in one of the seats opposite his desk without invitation. She smirked at Dan just as he had done at her.

"You can go now," he aid to Clarisse, nodding briskly before returning his gaze to Lisa.

"Big office," she said, one eyebrow raised suggestively.

"Let's cut to the chase Miss Powell. You said you have some information on Haley Gregory?"

Lisa nodded, leaning back on her chair and crossing her legs so that the soft fabric of her skirt rode up her thighs. "I have. But I may as well tell you, there's no point trying to look her up in any databases. She doesn't exist."

Dan's eyes lit up as a million possibilities ran through his head. There had to be something good - or bad, depending which way you looked at this - behind that little wealth of knowledge. He was about to question this when Taylor pulled something out of her bag and threw it across the table. Dan looked down to see a passport. He picked it up and opened it to reveal a picture of Haley with blonde hair, and the name beside the picture told him that she was in fact 'JAMES, HALEY'. He smiled again.

"Very good," he said simply.

"And if you look up Haley James," Lisa said, staring him down. "You'll find a perfectly respectable young woman without even a parking ticket to her name, who has simply moved around quite a bit in the past few years."

Dan's smirk vanished. "Am I missing something?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "Why would she give my son a false name if she had nothing to hide?"

Lisa simply took a deep breath and leaned forward so that her cleavage was on full show. Dan tried and failed not to look. "I didn't say she had nothing to hide, I just said that she's done nothing to be ashamed of. It's the people around her who've done that.

"See, Haley's parents died when she was young, and it was up to her older sister to look after her. Let's just say she didn't do a very good job of it, and as a result Haley got caught up in a lot of crap that her sister brought on her. She ran away and hasn't gone by the same name since. She hasn't changed it officially in case her sister or her 'friend's track her down."

Dan leaned back on his chair and eyed Lisa with incredulity. "You expect me to take your word on this?" Dan asked.

Lisa shrugged. "You can check up on it if you want. You'll find that Haley hasn't had a permanent address listed since she was about nineteen, and you won't find anything on Haley Gregory, unless there's another one in the world somewhere."

"Who are you?"

Lisa looked Dan straight in the eye and smirked. "I'm someone who knows a lot. I also know that your employee Jake Jagielski is doing something he shouldn't be with someone he shouldn't be doing it to."

Dan frowned. "What?"

Lisa looked bored and sighed deeply. She got out of her chair and walked to the door, turning to face Dan just before she left. "I'd check up on Jake if I was you. After all, don't you just hate it when your employees take what's rightfully yours?"

--x--x--x--

Haley pushed her pasta around her plate and looked dolefully.

"Has the pasta done something to upset you?" Nathan asked, tilting his head and trying to catch Haley's eyes. She looked up at him as if she was surprised he was even there, which couldn't be true because they'd walked into Karen's Cafe together about ten minutes ago. "If you don't like it, I'll get you something else. Just don't tell Karen. I can't imagine she'd be too pleased if we complained about her cooking."

Nathan was smiling at her, and Haley gave a weak smile in return, one that definitely didn't reach her eyes. "It's fine," she said simply, shovelling a forkful into her mouth as if to prove it. She immediately regretted this as her mouth was so dry that chewing the pasta around was like chewing sticky paper. "Really nice," she added, seeing that Nathan didn't look convinced.

"Are you sure?" He asked, putting his hand over the one she laid on the table. "You're not going to change your mind about us again, are you?" The way Nathan said this was with a hint of jokiness, but Haley could see the lost look in his eyes. The part that was serious.

She shook her head stubbornly and forced herself to properly smile. Why can't you fall out of love with me? she asked silently, wishing more than anything that Nathan didn't have to put up with this. "Definitely not," she told him. "It's just…" she trailed off, not wanting to tell Nathan about her encounter with his father yesterday.

"What?" Nathan asked, stroking the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb. "Wedding jitters?"

Haley smiled at him and nodded, grateful that he'd provided her with an excuse. "Yeah, that's it," she said. "Nothing important."

"Of course it's important if it's meaning that you're starving yourself," Nathan said, taking a drink of coffee with the hand that wasn't on his fiancée's. "Is there anything I can do?"

Fall out with love with me, Haley silently pleaded. If he called the wedding off, then she could go to Robert and tell him that she'd tried, but they'd have to get their money another way. She'd be heartbroken, but Nathan wouldn't and that was what was important.

But of course she didn't say that. Instead she looked up into his eyes and leaned over the table, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. "Just carry on being yourself."

--x--x--x--

Dan pulled his Mercedes up outside Jagielski's apartment building. He had been all ready to completely dismiss everything that Lisa Powell had said to him this morning, but after checking up on Haley James, he had found that what she had been saying was entirely accurate. It had made him curious as to whether she had been accurate about Jake too. He knew that what she'd said had been cryptic, but Dan's curiosity was getting the better of him.

He got out of his car and locked it, throwing the keys into his pocket and heading for the super's office.

He found the door ajar, and a portly man reading a porno magazine behind the desk. Dan coughed loudly and opened the door, making the super - or who Dan assumed to be the Super - to drop the magazine and flush up quickly.

"Uh, can I help," the super asked, his moustache twitching in what Dan assumed to be embarrassment.

"I need the keys for apartment 4B," Dan said simply, walking across the tiny office in two steps and leaning on the desk so that his impressive height would intimidate the tiny round super.

"Uh… that's not your apartment," the super said, stumbling on his words. Clearly Dan's intimidation was working.

"Well done," Dan said, a sarcastic edge to his voice. "I'm glad to see that such a competent super is in charge of the block. I think that maybe you should be rewarded." He pulled out four $50 bills from his pocket and put them down on the table. "How does $200 sound?"

The Super's moustache twitched again as he looked down at the money. He looked up at Dan and smiled nervously, pulling a pair of keys from under the desk. He handed them over to Dan and then grabbed the money greedily, scared that Dan would change his mind.

"I appreciate it," Dan said in his hard-edged charm and walked out of the office.

He got the elevator up to the fourth floor, throwing the keys from one hand to the other until the ping of the elevator told him that he'd reached his destination. He found 4B easily and turned the key in the lock.

The living room was empty, but he heard the sound of laughing from what he assumed was the bedroom. A girl's laughing that sounded familiar. He felt his whole body turn cold as he realised who's laugh it was and gritted his teeth together, following the sounds and throwing the bedroom door open.

He saw Jake Jagielski and Peyton Sawyer jump apart quickly, the laughing replaced by gasps. Peyton pulled the sheet up over her naked body and Jake did the same.

"Mr Scott!" Peyton gasped, and Dan saw that her eyes had widened almost comically. At least, it would be comical if he wasn't seething with anger.

Dan smirked at the couple and leaned against the door frame leisurely… cruelly. "Well, this is a surprise, isn't it?" he asked in a mocking tone. "Oh please, don't let me interrupt. get back to whatever it was you were doing." He turned to leave before briefly turning back.

"Oh, and Jake? Don't bother coming into work in the morning. You're fired. Wow, Larry Sawyer will be just thrilled to hear about this."