Amanda Collins, still in her makeup and button down shirt and slacks - though she had decided at some point to let her hair back down - sat at her computer.
She was both surprisingly clear-headed - having made a point of limiting her alcohol consumption - and surprisingly relaxed. It had felt good to jump back into the game, even in a limited capacity, and the buzz had lingered, leaving her in an unusually cheerful mood.
Tapping on her keyboard, she made her next move in the online chess game she was playing - white bishop to G5 - then sat back with a pleased expression as she waited for her opponent's countermove. She couldn't help bragging a little, even to an empty room. "I'm kicking your ass..."
Alex, who had just walked in with her purse in one hand and keys in the other, just grinned as arched an eyebrow at Amanda. "You're in a good mood. I take it you're winning?"
Amanda grinned back, a sparkle in her eyes that hadn't been there in far too long. "Damn right I am."
Alex, though relieved to see Amanda in such high spirits, decided not to comment further on it and just leaned in to kiss Amanda on the cheek. "I should be back by midnight. Go easy on the poor guy."
Amanda just scoffed and waved a hand at Alex's back as she watched her opponent move his bishop to E7 - exactly the way she'd expected he would. She made the next move called for by her strategy, leaving her just a few short moves from victory, and turned to her second monitor as she left her opponent to figure out how to save himself.
The second monitor was currently displaying an article from the Forensic Medicine Institute - a prospective new analysis that Amanda had wanted to review after helping the Inspectors with their case files. She had a feeling that any further involvement on her part wouldn't exactly be sanctioned by their department, but part of her still hoped they'd be back, and she wanted to be prepared.
A ding from her speakers notified her that she had an incoming email, and she hurried to pull up her email client in case it was something from one of the Inspectors - which would have been an amusing bit of coincidental timing. It wasn't her work account, though - it was the general purpose account that had been created for the website her publishers had insisted be set up for her books.
It was an email from a random, generic, and obviously throw-away email account, and was simply titled 'Tomorrow'. All it contained was a link to a YouTube video - Amanda almost deleted the message as spam, feeling momentarily perturbed that her software's usually excellent filters hadn't already caught it.
She froze mid-click as she caught sight of the thumbnail image of the video that had been created for her by the email client. Even in miniature, the image of Jennifer Lyle in a bathtub was unmistakable, and placed an entirely different spin on the email and video.
Pushing away and jumping to her feet, Amanda shouted for Alex, but Alex was already long gone. Grabbing her nearby cell phone along with Nikita Mears' business card, she starting dialing frantically.
The three rings it took Nikita Mears to pick up felt like an eternity.
Twenty minutes later, Nikita, Owen, Amanda Collins, and a young CSI computer tech named Sonya all stood staring at Amanda's computer monitor in horrified silence.
After running a few checks to make sure the link wasn't to a virus or some other trick website, Sonya had pulled up the YouTube video for them. Any hopes they all might have entertained that it was just a prank of some sort evaporated as they watched camcorder footage of Jennifer Lyle's dead body start playing. The tension in the room thickened as a dissolve effect shifted everything over to footage of a girl in a vintage white dress, her loose strawberry blonde hair and vintage sandals making her seem painfully young as she danced and mugged for the camera.
They all jumped as a horrible screeching laugh suddenly poured out the speakers, even as the girl's face in the video was replaced by a grinning skull. The video ended on a black screen with red text that read "She's next."
Collins - Amanda, Nikita reminded herself - didn't look so good, so Nikita got her to step away from her computer on the pretext of letting Sonya try and trace whatever she could about the email and the YouTube account. It seemed to help a little - or maybe Amanda was just normally steadier than she'd been on the day they'd first met - and Nikita figured it was safe enough to at least try to ask a couple questions. "Amanda, do you have any idea how someone could have gotten your email address?"
Amanda started plucking at the red rubber band that the cuff of her sleeve had hidden, taking a few slow breaths before responding. They'd offered to call Alex Udinov back to the loft, but Amanda had been adamant about not doing so. "I have an email box on my website - maybe they got it from there somehow."
"That's entirely possible," Sonya chimed in, her soft East African accent seeming strangely at odds with the heavy tension filling the study.
Nikita asked her next question very carefully, knowing it would only make Amanda's anxiety worse. She crouched down at Amanda's feet, putting a hand on Amanda's arm. "Is there any reason that someone would send that link to you specifically?"
Amanda's scathing look actually gave Nikita hope that Amanda might in fact be steadier than she appeared just then. "I don't know, Inspector. You tell me."
"I don't know," Nikita replied, blinking. "No one has said a word about your involvement in-"
"There is no involvement!" Amanda leapt to her feet, propelled by a mixture of fear and anger, and only Nikita's quick reflexes and good balance kept her from getting knocked onto her ass.
Amanda jabbed a finger in Nikita's direction. "This is all your fault - yours and your idiot partner's! It's a game he's playing, hanging around watching the cops to see how they fumble around - and you both led him right to me!"
Owen, who'd been called far worse things than 'idiot' in his time, finally stepped into the conversation. "Maybe so, Doctor, but he didn't send this to us. He sent it to you."
"I'm their damned pin-up girl," Amanda shot back, but she'd regained a measure of control and took her seat again. She looked up at Nikita, as if imploring her to understand something she couldn't quite verbalize. "They all know me - I'm their muse, their worthy opponent."
The sense of vulnerability and violation underlying that thought sent a chill down Nikita's spine - in that moment, it was all too easy to understand why and how Amanda would be afraid to leave her own home. Before she could say anything, though, Sonya started cursing under her breath.
The accent couldn't mask the anger in Sonya's voice as Nikita and Owen moved to join her. "He's a clever bastard, I'll give him that. He was expecting us to try and trace him, and managed to set a trap of some sort."
She gestured at the web page, which now showed a video frame containing a black field with the word "Goodbye' on it in the same red text as before. "I may still be able to trace everything with the data I've gathered, but it's going to take time."
That was about the time that they all realized that none of them had thought to grab screen captures to help them find the girl. Calling for a sketch artist was risky - there was every likelihood that their memories of the girl in the short video clip would be woefully inaccurate - but a quick call to Tasarov netted them approval to try anyway.
Even under the kind of stress she must have been feeling just then, Amanda Collins proved amazing. She hadn't been joking at all when she'd mentioned having a photographic memory - her initial description got them a nearly perfect sketch, and Nikita and Owen only added or tweaked a few minor details.
It made Nikita strangely glad that she no longer needed an excuse to officially bring Amanda into the investigation - the killer had provided all the ammunition she needed for that argument when he'd sent Amanda the email. It wasn't the way Nikita would have wanted it done - Amanda had been through enough already - but she was perfectly willing to accept the gift horse they'd all just been handed.
Provided, of course, that Amanda Collins was still willing to cooperate...
Amanda had apparently been hoping that Sonya would need to confiscate her computer, because she glared at the machine in much the same way a child might glare at an object that had tripped or injured them. It would almost have been comical, in fact, if Nikita hadn't been so worried about Amanda's mental state - and if Amanda hadn't immediately marched over and shut the thing off.
The techs needed the machine up and online in case the killer tried to contact Amanda some other way - and because they had programs they needed to run to gather the computer's logs about the video - and so Nikita moved to intervene. "What are you doing? The techs said we need to leave it on."
Something in Amanda's eyes said that she was finally starting to unravel a little bit, and her words only confirmed it. "I'm not leaving it on. Not when it's a fucking open window into my office!"
Nikita sent Owen out of the room with a nod of her head, and tried to figure out how to calm Amanda down enough to let them all do their jobs. "This is the only lead we have - he can't hurt you through a computer."
"This is the only safe space I have!" There was desperation in Amanda's eyes to match the desperation in her voice, and it cut through Nikita like a knife. "I can't- I can't-"
She broke off then, her breathing so rapid and shallow that Nikita was afraid the other woman would pass out. "I can get an officer assigned to keep watch, if that-"
Somehow, Amanda still found enough air to argue - loudly. "I don't want any more strangers in my home!"
It was a perfectly understandable way for Amanda to feel, and Nikita offered the only compromise she felt might help. "What if I stay? You know me, right? I'm not a stranger."
There was something in Amanda's eyes as she weighed Nikita's words - something back beyond even the anger and the fear - that unsettled Nikita in a way she couldn't explain. Then it was all suddenly replaced by a quiet gratitude that was unsettling in a very different way. "You'd stay if I asked?"
"Of course," Nikita assured her. "And Sonya said she'd stay and help with the computer if we needed her to. You wouldn't even have to look at if you didn't want to."
"And I'm only a phone call away," Owen chimed in from the doorway, having been drawn by Amanda's raised voice. "Nikita can call me if you guys need me."
Amanda and Nikita exchanged a look after that - a look that Owen was definitely not a part of and couldn't entirely decipher. It felt almost like back in high school, when the girl he liked had been really into someone else instead.
That last thought made everything click into place, and Owen fought back a smile as he reassessed everything about their interactions. Nikita was attracted to Amanda Collins, and he'd bet money - not serious money, not yet, but money - that Collins was attracted right back.
He'd known from the start of their partnership that Nikita was bisexual, so her liking another woman wasn't surprising - hell, he was pretty sure the whole deal with Nikita and Morelli was a one-night stand gone wrong. What was surprising to him was Nikita being interested in anyone at all - she'd had a few casual dates here and there, but no one had ever seemed to interest her enough to finally push her past quietly pining for Michael Bishop.
If he was reading things right, though, that may have finally changed. He didn't think it would be a bad match, either - lots of irresistible force meeting immovable object, which he knew Nikita would actually enjoy. She needed someone who could keep up with her, and Collins had that in spades.
Making his excuses - and fighting off a grin - he headed out once Collins accepted Nikita's offer. He was still trying to decide whether Collins' agoraphobia would be too much for Nikita to deal with when he reached his car, and got startled back to reality by the sudden awareness that he was not alone.
Lucky for Jill Morelli, he managed to pull back his punch just in time. He glared at her, genuinely annoyed, as she just stared at him with wide blue eyes - as far as he was concerned, it would have served her right if she had gotten herself hit, skulking around and sneaking up on cops like that.
He almost cursed out loud as a few other pieces fell into place and he realized that Jill Morelli now knew the police were consulting with Collins, and would waste no time at all spreading the word. "What do you want, Morelli?"
Morelli swallowed hard under the weight of his glare, but quickly composed herself. "I'm sorry I startled you, Inspector. Is it true that the police department is working with Doctor Amanda Collins? Does that mean this is a serial case after all?"
"Man, you're like some kind of ankle-biter or something, aren't you, Morelli?" Shaking his head in disbelief, Owen unlocked his car door and climbed in.
The last thing he saw before leaving the parking lot was Morelli glaring into his tail lights.
While Owen was down in the parking lot dodging Jill Morelli, Nikita had taken a seat in front of Amanda's computer to keep an eye on things while Sonya was busy doing... well, whatever it was with computers that she did so well.
Sonya claimed she was consulting with one of the other CSIs - a Seymour Birkhoff, who Nikita knew more by reputation than anything else - but the snatches of conversation Nikita had overheard so far sounded as much like flirting as they did work, so Nikita had pretty much tuned out.
They'd asked Amanda to open every avenue of contact she normally had open, and Nikita was trying very hard to ignore a very personal response to being slapped in the face by the evidence of a life lived entirely through other people. Amanda didn't want or need her pity, and she could imagine her own response if she'd been offered pity by a stranger while in Amanda's place - and offering even the hint of pity seemed like a slap in the face to the strength Amanda was showing simply by continuing to fight after everything she'd been through.
Amanda, and all the others like her, actually - Nikita had watched the various chat rooms for a few minutes, but that had been all she'd been able to take. It had felt like prying, for one, no matter how many times she repeated to herself that it was both necessary and part of the job - alerting the people on the various boards that they were being watched would scare away the killer if he was lurking in hopes of catching Amanda.
The real problem, though, had been her reaction to some of the stories being shared on those boards. She'd seen a lot in her years as a cop - she was a homicide detective, for God's sake - but the things that some of the other people on those boards had shared had just made her so angry on their behalf. That anger had somehow fused with her anger over what Amanda had been through at Daryl Lee Cullum's hands, and the whole mess had settled into an ugly, painful knot in her stomach.
Amanda, for her part, was largely ignoring Nikita as she paced around the study, Cognac in hand. (No one had blamed her for needing it, and Nikita had even poured it for her when she found her hands were shaking too much to pour it herself.) Despite her still-shaking hands and anxiety-driven movement, however, she was entirely focused on building a profile of their killer.
Right now, every scrap of instinct and intuition she had - and it was a gratifyingly formidable amount even having been out of the game for a year - was homing in on the fact that he had taken pictures of Jennifer Lyle body as it lay in her bathtub. The addition of the video to that fact only caused that indefinable gut response to ping even louder.
Pausing only to take a sip of her Cognac while she forced her mind to slow down and step back, she started pacing again as she continued working to piece together something based as much in fact as on intuition.
Jennifer Lyle's picture had been framed like a crime scene photo, and would not have stood out from among the other official crime scene photos in the case file. The footage of the girl in the video had clearly been taken by some sort of camcorder at the Festival Of Love. All of it showed an unmistakable level of training and talent.
Fact One, then - their killer was comfortable with photography equipment, including at least enough familiarity with digital editing software to make that damned video. He was also definitely familiar with the internet and its conventions - at least enough so to understand the best way to send that video to taunt Amanda and the police - and the fact that he'd also somehow been able to rig things to remove the video once it was watched only underscored this.
Okay, then, their killer liked to keep photographs and video footage of his victims as trophies. She'd be very surprised if he didn't also keep a scrapbook of sorts of the various news reports and newspaper articles about his handiwork.
She didn't quite have enough information yet to pin down the exact reason the killer had chosen to copycat the Boston Strangler - though his obsession with visual media made her wonder if had something to do with wanting the same level of celebrity for himself. The fact that his attempts at copycatting were both frighteningly well-informed and so incredibly precise spoke of intelligence and dedication.
The next question was this: how had he discovered her own personal involvement, limited as it had been until he'd sent her the email? Sending her that email could only have been intended as a challenge - he wanted her to know that he knew who she was, and where she was, and wanted to show off for her as he let her know those things.
A sharp flare of pain in her head made her stop pacing. It was all too much, too fast, for her - the meds and the alcohol had helped settle her at first, but they had started combining with her mental and physical fatigue to make everything seem dull and a little hazy. Stopping behind Nikita, she peered at the screen over the Inspector's shoulder. "You don't really think he'll try and contact me twice in one night, do you?"
"Not really," Nikita said, expression rueful. "But we can't ignore the possibility that he might."
Amanda nodded, then looked down to see that her snifter was empty. One more small glass before calling a it a night sounded like exactly what she needed just then. Walking over to grab the brandy, she looked back to Nikita. "Would you like a drink, Inspector?"
Nikita smiled at her - the first genuine smile Amanda had ever seen from her - and it was a little dazzling. "I'm on duty. But I saw the label on that bottle - rain check?"
Amanda smiled back, hoping the expression didn't look as drunken and sloppy as it felt. There was something about Nikita's offhand comment that made her feel strange, but she already felt so strange that she couldn't separate the emotion out from everything else. "Of course."
At least not consciously, anyway - her subconscious nailed it right on the head, if the next words out of her mouth were anything to judge by. "So - about you and Inspector Elliot -?"
Nikita had apparently already turned her attention to something on one of the monitors, because her answer sounded a little distracted. "What about us?"
Amanda meant to use that opening to back out gracefully before she asked any other ridiculously prying and impertinent questions. Her subconscious apparently still had control of her mouth, though, and part of her recoiled in embarrassment at the next words out of her mouth. "Are you two... close?"
That definitely got Nikita's attention. Nothing in her face or voice revealed her inner response to the question, and the little chuckle she gave was equally uninformative. "Never going to happen. We're friends and partners, that's all."
Amanda couldn't seem to help teasing a bit. "You sound awfully certain of that, considering the way he looks at you."
Nikita laughed again, and this time it was clear that she apparently considered an affair with Owen Elliot such a non-possibility that the question didn't bother her. "I'm not saying there's no attraction. I'm just saying you haven't seen how he looks at his girlfriend. Kinda adorable, really, in a 'give you sugar-shock' kind of way."
Amanda was saved from further embarrassing herself by two things: the sudden chiming of the alarm on her phone, and Sonya's return to the study. Walking over to retrieve her phone - and secretly glad she'd ditched her heels before the cognac kicked in - Amanda cursed under her breath as she looked that the reminder currently displayed on the device's screen.
By the time she looked back over to the desk, Nikita was already done conferring with Sonya and was watching her expectantly. Noting Nikita's apparently excellent hearing, Amanda gave the Inspector her own version of a rueful expression. "I hate to impose, Inspector, but I need to borrow you for a few minutes."
Nikita arched an eyebrow at her, though the teasing glint in her eyes from their earlier conversation faded a bit as she looked at the phone Amanda held out to her. It was a note for Amanda to complete her prescribed exposure therapy - a dozen steps down her hallway, and then another dozen back to her door.
Amanda, clearly feeling understandably awkward about the request, misread Nikita's change of expression. "I wouldn't ask, but Alex is out and I don't know what time she'll be back. It's getting late, and I need to do this."
"Oh, of course," Nikita said, hastening to reassure Amanda and break the tension. "Stretching my legs a little sounds great."
She wasn't sure if she was taking the request too cavalierly - this obviously wasn't a pleasure jaunt for Amanda - but it seemed to work well enough. Amanda's answering smile was relieved but certainly genuine enough. "Thank you."
Amanda filled in the brief and oddly uncomfortable trip to the front door with a cursory rundown of exactly what she was doing, and what she needed Nikita to do. Nikita relaxed a little once it became clear that she was really just expected to be moral support, and a safety net if Amanda's agoraphobia got the better of her - though she did silently kick herself for not yet having found time to look up info on how to help someone having a panic attack.
She considered asking Alex about that as she and Amanda stepped through the main apartment door and out into the hallway. It was an idle thought, really, but it took an odd turn - a small portion of Nikita's brain found itself back to wondering exactly what Alexandra Udinov was to Amanda, and what Amanda's vague but not-so-subtle attempts at flirting might mean.
It wasn't that she didn't reciprocate the attraction, Nikita admitted - she was honestly enjoying the attention, and in no way objected to the feel of Amanda's hand on her arm as they walked down the hallway. And even simply counting the steps they were taking aloud, Amanda's voice was definitely pure ear candy.
It wasn't even that Nikita was closeted - she made no secret of being attracted to more than one gender, her own among them, and her colleagues had eventually just stopped considering it to be of any note to them. Amanda Collins was certainly everything she found herself attracted to - smart, aggressive, independent, and a hell of a lot sexier than Nikita was really comfortable with her being, given that she was currently assisting with a case.
She'd been burned - and badly - by mixing work and pleasure before. But part of her couldn't avoid the temptation to wonder about what might be possible after the case was closed...
"Inspector?" Amanda's voice, amused at Nikita's apparent distraction, broke into Nikita's thoughts. "That's twelve."
Nikita, feeling a little guilty at having been so distracted - what if there had been a problem and she'd been too lost in her own head to see it? - gave Amanda a discreet once-over and was surprised to see that Amanda looked happy and excited rather than stressed. Smiling, she made a bit of a joke out of Amanda's unnecessary formality by echoing it herself. "Good work, Doctor."
Amanda - slightly out of breath, color high, eyes bright and flashing - just beamed, and Nikita tried to ignore the way it made her own breath come just a little bit faster. Then Amanda pointed ahead a few steps, to where the hallway ended. "Twelve is my record. Care to help me break it?"
Nikita wasn't sure if there was a particular reason for the number of steps Amanda's doctor had assigned, but decided that a few more couldn't hurt if Amanda felt up to it, and there was someone there with her. She also figured that someone, at some point, had to trust Amanda to know her own limits - nodding, she grinned back at Amanda and gave her the signal to go ahead.
They were both tired and a little overwrought - it had been a long day for both of them - and they were both laughing a little hysterically by the time they reached the wall they'd been aiming for. A little too hysterically on Amanda's part, Nikita suddenly realized - a heartbeat or two after reaching the wall and putting her back up against it, Amanda started shaking and her breathing changed.
Trying to figure out what had gone wrong, Nikita followed Amanda's wide-eyed gaze and suddenly understood the problem. The small and familiar trip to one side of the hallway had been tolerable, even enjoyable, for Amanda - until she'd accidentally caught sight of the hallway's far end.
Trying to stay calm - even she could guess that getting anxious herself wasn't going to help Amanda - Nikita took her best stab at helping, and hoped she didn't screw it up. Her immediate instinct was to disrupt Amanda's view of the hallway, and she want with it, albeit slowly - Amanda didn't startle as Nikita's hand came into her field of vision, but she did finally blink.
That seemed to help a little, so Nikita pushed on. "That's it. Just keep your eyes closed for a minute."
Amanda didn't say anything right away, but her breathing was evening back out. She started quietly snapping at the rubber band Nikita had noticed she always wore around one wrist, then started murmuring quietly under her breath. "George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson..."
It took Nikita a moment to make out what Amanda was saying, and another moment to realize that Amanda was reciting United States presidents as some sort of calming exercise. It was somehow so thoroughly Amanda Collins that it made her smile - a smile that only widened as Amanda opened her eyes again and smiled back. Nikita reached out to brush a wayward strand of hair away from Amanda's face without even realizing she'd done it. "You okay?"
Amanda - eyes locked on Nikita's face so she didn't get another glimpse of the hallway until she was ready - just nodded. "Yes. Still a little shaky, but-"
Amanda closed her eyes, let out a breath, then just beamed. "This is the furthest I've been from my front door in thirteen months, Inspector. I know it may not seem like much, but it's everything to me."
Every response Nikita could think of just sounded ridiculous to her, so she just nodded her understanding. Inspiration struck, though, as she remembered something she'd read once. "There's this book Owen gave me - Dune by Frank Herbert - that has something called the Litany Against Fear. Maybe it'll make a good addition to your list of presidents?"
Amanda actually laughed a little at that. "I'd forgotten about that one. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.'"
"Okay," Nikita admitted, making a face she'd never know just how adorable Amanda found. "It's kind of melodramatic - but I still like it. I've been using it ever since I read the book - it really helps me."
She was about to hurriedly add that her own fears on the job in no way compared to Amanda's agoraphobia, but Amanda seemed to understand what she'd meant and took no offense. She actually seemed to approve of Nikita's coping mechanism. "I'm glad it helps - being a cop can't be easy. If everything is going right, I'm not in any real danger - you're the one who's actually out there bringing these sick bastards in."
"I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie," Nikita admitted in a teasing, mock-confessional tone. "But please don't tell anyone. No one has figured it out yet, and Owen might worry or something."
They both laughed at that - it was a strangely comfortable, relaxed laugh considering the situation - but Amanda decided it was time to acknowledge the largest of the elephants currently in the room. "We need to get back into the apartment."
The unspoken addendum to that statement was that she wasn't quite sure how to pull that off when she couldn't risk getting even a glimpse of the other end of the hallway again. Nikita pondered that one a moment, and only came up with two ideas - and neither of them was very dignified. "If you need to keep your eyes closed, I can help guide you back to the door. Or you could just keep one hand on the wall and I'll stay right beside you."
After a couple more minutes of debating - or, really, just clarifying what Amanda needed and wanted in order to get back to her door without another attack - Amanda had decided that she was going to make the trek back with her eyes open. She'd keep one hand on the wall to help ground her, but focusing on something else - like Nikita - would keep her from focusing on the other end of the hallway again.
Walking backward while keeping an eye on Amanda should have been incredibly awkward for Nikita, even knowing there was nothing behind her to trip over, but it actually created a weird sort of camaraderie between her and Amanda - Amanda was being forced to trust Nikita's ability to get her back to the door, and Nikita was, ostensibly anyway, trusting Amanda to make sure she didn't bust her ass on something she couldn't even see.
That wasn't to say that it didn't feel odd. Amanda without her heels, Nikita quickly realized, was only a couple inches taller than she was, and the need for direct and extended eye contact as they slowly walked down the hall made the trip far more intimate than either of them was probably completely comfortable with.
They were only a handful of steps from the door when Nikita stumbled a bit. There was no danger of her actually tripping and falling, but Amanda still made a bit of a fuss over it - being bossy and maternal was apparently hardwired into Amanda's actual DNA - and they stopped for a minute to share a laugh about it.
They were standing awkwardly close, Amanda with one hand on Nikita's shoulder as she and Nikita stared into each other's eyes, when a voice broke in, shattering the moment. "Amanda? Is everything okay?"
Neither of them had heard the elevator, but Alexandra Udinov had apparently just stepped off of it and was more than a little surprised to see Amanda out in the hallway. She hurried over to where they stood, giving Nikita an odd, unreadable look as she stopped beside her - Nikita noted, though, that Alex immediately focused on Amanda rather than wasting time on whatever she thought might have been happening. She also shared in Amanda's excitement at having made an extended trek out of the apartment.
Alex Udinov clearly understood even better than Nikita what a feat that was, and the thought cut through Nikita in a way she hadn't expected. It wasn't rational at all - of course Alex understood better, she'd been living with Amanda this whole time, and had a grasp of Amanda's illness that Nikita couldn't possibly have yet - but it still hurt, somehow.
Nikita recognized jealousy when she felt it, and it was only made worse by the fact that Nikita didn't even know whether she should actually be jealous in the first place - and that it didn't really matter anyway, because she didn't have any right to be jealous no matter what Alex and Amanda's relationship ended up being.
She'd managed to put her game face back on by the time they were all back inside the apartment, but the looks she got from both Amanda and Alex made Nikita suspect that her game face wasn't up to her usual standards. It didn't really matter, though, because she was quickly distracted by Sonya, who needed to catch Nikita up on a few things.
The awkwardness returned as they all settled into the living area to continue waiting. Amanda was too wired to sleep after her success out in the hallway, and Alex decided to sit up with them all do a little studying - she was about to start her senior year as a psychology major at Berkeley, no surprise there - and Nikita was apparently set on obsessing over the nature of their relationship instead of just finding some socially acceptable way to ask them so she could put herself out of her current misery.
Eventually, she lost herself in a Dashiell Hammett novel that Amanda had laying around and looked up to find that it had gotten strangely quiet. Alex had fallen asleep first, apparently, using Amanda's leg as a pillow, and Amanda had fallen asleep at some point after that - even in her sleep, she was keeping a hand on Alex, which gave Nikita a bittersweet pang she decided to ignore.
Nikita herself finally dozed off around two or three in the morning, stretching out on the other couch. She had a sequence of strange dreams after that - all of them some variation on those moments out in the hallway, all of them ending in a kiss or something even more inappropriate - and it was hard to say whether she was actually sleeping or not given the number of times she woke up.
It was actually a relief when her phone went off at 6:30 in the morning - at least, until she answered it and heard what Owen had to tell her.
Amanda's sleep-roughened voice broke the silence that fell after Nikita ended the call. "They found her, didn't they? We were too late..."
Amanda's voice woke Alex up, and Nikita wasn't sure how to answer since she couldn't tell if Amanda wanted Alex kept out of everything or not. Alex, even half-asleep, picked up on this and just rolled her eyes as she got to her feet. "I'll go start the coffee and see what we have for breakfast. Maybe I can get you something to take with you, Inspector."
Nikita liked the girl - even if she was offering coffee instead of tea - and smiled at her, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. Then she realized exactly how dry and gritty her eyes felt and realized she probably need the coffee this morning, and that Alex Udinov might actually be an angel in disguise. "Coffee would be wonderful."
She had just enough time to relay what info she had to Amanda - nothing, really, as she hadn't checked in yet - and to reassure Amanda that it wasn't her fault, before Alex came back in with a travel mug of coffee and some breakfast pastries she'd rustled up somehow.
Alex also insisted on seeing Nikita to the front door, which everyone seemed to find a bit odd. Her nefarious plot was revealed, though, as she followed Nikita into the hallway. "She's my mom, Inspector."
Nikita blinked, not quite awake enough to process that non-sequitur, and Alex just grinned. "Amanda is my mother - well, my foster mother - and there's nothing like that going on between us."
She turned and went back into the apartment without another word, but Nikita still managed to hold back her grin until she was in the elevator.