Chapter 30: Battle Plans

Rae was quick in the shower and got dressed just as quickly. She put on jeans, a red sweater, and flat soled black boots. She and Olivia left her apartment and made it to the café by ten minutes after eight. They got coffee and muffins and went back out to Olivia's car. Rae wanted to sit and talk with her but she had to be to work in less then twenty minutes.

"Can you meet for lunch?" she asked as Olivia opened her door to get in the car.

"I don't know. We've kind of been having lunch on the go, you know, because of this case we're working on." Rae nodded her head. She couldn't bring herself to meet Olivia's eyes. She felt herself getting emotional and was trying to keep it in check. She hadn't cried since her father's death and she wasn't gonna start up again now. "I'll call you ok?"

"Ok" she said with a small smile. She gave Liv a quick kiss before stepping back and letting her get in the car and close the door. Olivia drove away and Rae went to her car to go to school. She figured since she didn't have anything better to do she'd just go into school early. She texted Ashley to see where she was and when she'd be coming to school. She needed to talk to one of her best friends and since Maureen was out of the question Ashley was her go to girl. Ashley walked into the library at eight forty five and sat next to Rae.

"I'm freaking out" Rae said before could even take her jacket off.

"Okay. What happened?" Ashley didn't even know what'd happened yet but she was freaking out just watching her friend freak out.

"Fucking Charles" she sneered. Ashley rolled her eyes at the mention of Rae's stepfather. She knew from when she and Rae were together sophomore year what an asshole he was. "He showed up at my apartment this morning and just barged right in. I didn't even know he had a key. He walked in on Olivia and me and he wanted to know who she was and how old she is but I wouldn't tell him. He got so mad. He started yelling at me and Olivia came out of the bedroom. She...she refused to leave me alone with him. He saw her badge and..." Ashley could see where this was gonna go. "He threatened to out her at work." she said finishing Rae's sentence for her. Rae shook her head up and down. "He asked for her badge number and her captain's name. I wouldn't let her tell him so he said he would find out from a "buddy" of his. I don't know what to do Ash" Ashley took a deep breath and thought about everything she'd just heard. Ashley didn't want to feel happy at the idea of Rae's relationship with Olivia falling apart but she couldn't help it. On the other hand, it pained her to see her friend so upset. She wasn't sure what she could say to make Rae feel better so she figured she'd just throw out some ideas. "What if you just tell everyone yourselves?" Rae looked at Ashley like she had three heads and she knew that idea was a no-go. "No? Ok. Ummm...try to convince Charles that talking to Olivia's boss would be bad for him?" Rae's face didn't change. "No. Ok. Ummmm...Rae I don't know babe. I got nothin'" she said feeling bad that she couldn't think of anything helpful. "What does Olivia say?"

"I don't know. We didn't really have time to talk about it. She had to get to work. We're gonna try to meet for lunch." Ashley could tell that Rae was thinking hard about how she was gonna fix this whole situation. "If you keep thinking about it you're just gonna drive yourself crazy" she said pulling Rae out of her thoughts. Rae worriedly ran her hands through her hair. She knew Ashley was right; stressing about it would only make things worse. She took a breath and tried to clear her head. Ashley put her hands over Rae's, "Everything is gonna be fine. You and Olivia will figure this out together. And I'm always here if you need to talk" she said giving her reassuring smile. "Come on, walk me to my locker" They got up and walked arm in arm to Ashley's locker so she could put away the stuff she didn't need for class. "Speaking of being there to talk, what about Maureen?" Ashley asked hanging up her jacket. The bell to dismiss first period rang and people started to fill the hallway. "What do you mean?" Rae asked over the chatter of other students and the clammer of lockers. "I mean she doesn't know about you and Olivia right now, but if Charles talks to her boss then her dad's gonna find out. I'm sure he'll want to know if she knew about it" Ashley closed her locker and they started to walk towards study hall. "Then she'll know that you kept it from her and she'll be pissed."

"Great, just one more thing I have to worry about. I don't know. I just really want to talk to Olivia" she said opening the door to their class. They took their usual seats in the back of the class. "You really think she'll be that mad?" Rae asked looking at Ashley. "That you told me and not her? Uh, yeah." Rae sighed and took out her book for AP Lit. The bell rang for the start of class and they worked quietly next to each for the duration of the hour.

It was nearing lunch and Olivia still hadn't called to say whether or not she could meet Rae for lunch. She was getting restless when she finally got a message from Olivia about ten minutes from the bell for third lunch. She said they were making progress in their case and would be working through lunch so she wouldn't be able to meet her. Rae was frustrated. The longer they put off this talk the harder it would be to deal with whatever Charles decided to do. She just hoped that whatever progress they were making now meant that she'd be home in time for dinner. "She'll be home?" she thought to herself "Slow it down Rae. You've only been officially dating for three weeks...and you weren't talking for a week of that". She rolled her eyes at herself. The bell rang to release them for lunch and she went to find Ashley and Maureen. They went to lunch and Rae tried to act as normal as possible but Maureen could tell that something was wrong. She just kept telling her that everything was fine until Maureen finally let it go. The rest of the day went quickly and Rae decided she wanted to go straight home. She couldn't focus on any of the homework she'd been assigned. All she was thinking about was the talk she needed to have with Olivia. It was nearing six o'clock, the time Olivia would be leaving work on a normal day. She hadn't called or texted to say she was on her way so Rae assumed she was still working. She decided to cook dinner for them in case Olivia was able to make it to her place at a decent time. She decided to make the eggplant lasagna that she'd learned to cook from helping her mother over the years. At seven thirty she got a text from Olivia saying that she'd be over soon. She set the table for two, putting the lasagna in the middle, and took out a bottle of wine. She sat on the couch and waited for Olivia to get there.

Olivia arrived around eight fifteen and was surprised to see that Rae had cooked for her. They sat down at the table and Rae poured them both a glass of wine. She cut the lasagna and put some on each of their plates. They ate for the first few minutes in silence. Rae kept looking over at Olivia to see if she would say something but she would just look away. Rae couldn't bare the silence any longer, so she decided to break the ice.

"Is the lasagna ok?" she asked timidly. She cooked on occasion but never for anyone but herself. Her cooking was nothing comapared to her mother's.

"It's great. I didn't know you could cook." Olivia said finally holding eye contact with Rae.

"I learned from my mother. I helped with her dinner sometimes so I picked up on some things. I'm not nearly as good as her though. She's an amazing cook." Rae said feeling more comfortable now that they were talking.

"You mean for your Saturday family dinners?" Olivia was trying to ease into the conversation she knew they had to have about what happened this morning with Charles.

"Yeah. Well, that, Ramadan and Thanksgiving. We'd never celebrated Thanksgiving every year before she married Charles. Now we do." Rae finally brought up the person they needed to talk about. Now they just had to stay on that topic.

"Charles, he's...he's..." Olivia couldn't quite think of the right words to describe the man she'd meet this morning.

"An asshole" Rae finished for her. "Yes. I guess that's a good word to use." she said laughing. "Has he always been like that with you?" Olivia couldn't stand the idea of Rae having to put up with that man all these years. "No, actually. I mean he's always been an asshole but he's gotten worse with success. He uses his money to get what he wants. He doesn't care about how he hurts or uses other people. "Money is power" he always says. And he has a lot of money." Rae really didn't want to talk about Charles but she knew they had to. They finished eating and cleared the table, putting the leftover lasagna in the frig. Rae brought their glasses and the bottle of wine over to the living room so they could sit and continue talking.

"Charles doesn't bluff Liv. It's not a matter of if he'll out us, it's when." she said taking a sip from her glass. "I don't want to hurt you with work. I know how much you love what you do. I love what you do. It's really important and I don't want to get in the way of that." Rae didn't know what the best thing to do was so she decided she didn't want to be the one to make the decisions. "Whatever you want to do, that's what we'll do."

"There has to be something that we can do to stop him" Olivia said. She didn't want to hide her relationship with Rae but it was too soon for them to go public. They'd agreed to keep a lid on things at least until Rae was done with school. If they accounted for Thanksgiving break, that was less than a month away. "He has to have some weak spot, something that we can use against him; something he wouldn't want other people to know about." Rae's mind immediately went to Jimmy. When he had gotten in trouble last year for drugs Charles was furious saying he'd jeopardized his reputation. He whisked Jimmy of to a private treatment facility in Florida so no one he did business with would find out. Olivia noticed that Rae had thought of something. "What? What is it?"

"It's nothing" she said picking up her glass and finishing her wine. "I just know that he doesn't like to be embarrassed, espeically in front of people he does business with. Once at one of his dinner parties, one of the guests tried to...put his hand...up my dress. I slapped him; threw my drink in his face. Charles tried to "reign me in" in front of them. I told him to fuck off. He was pissed. He said that I'd embarassed him." Olivia couldn't stop the anger that came over her as Rae told her the story. "He blamed you?" Rae nodded. "He said that his associates would think he was incompetent. If he couldn't handle his teenage daughter, how could they trust him to handle their business" Rae could tell Olivia a hundred stories about Charles and how he treated her but the look of anger on her face told her that she probably shouldn't.

"Okay well if he's as big an asshole as he was this morning all the time then he can't have many friends. There has to be someone who'd be willing to dish dirt on him?" Olivia said posing the question to Rae. Technically she could do it but that would mean using Jimmy and she didn't want to do that. Yeah, he was an idiot and he was screwing up big time but she didn't want to use him to hurt Charles. It wouldn't be right. Olivia could tell Rae was debating something in her head. "What is it? You know something don't you?" Rae sighed and nodded. "Well, tell me." Olivia said leaning forward ready to listen. "I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Why not? If this will help us then we should use it" Olivia said prompting Rae to give her the information.

"No" she snapped. Olivia was taken back by Rae's anger. Then she remembered the night that Rae went out for her "family emergency". It was about time they talked about what happened. "Does this have anything to do with the "family emergency" you had to deal with last week?" It was times like these that Rae hated that Olivia was a detective. She didn't say anything and she refused to look at Olivia. "Araeyah, we have to talk about this sometime. It won't go away if you ignore it."

"Yes it will." she said finally looking up. "It has before." Rae had managed to keep the memories of what happened under control until the night Jimmy called her to pick him up. Then everything came rushing back. "Yeah, until something else happens to remind you" Olivia moved closer to Rae on the couch and took her hands. "Rae, please, tell me what happened" Rae still didn't say anything. "Did Charles...do something to you?"

"No" Rae said quickly. "Then what is it?" Olivia was practically begging Rae to tell her. "I can't tell you Olivia. I want to. I know it'll help us but this isn't just about us or Charles. If we use what I know someone else will get hurt and I just can't do that."

"Ok" Olivia sighed heavily trying to thing of what else they could possibly do. "What if you just talked to Charles? You don't have to tell anyone else. Just tell him what you know and if he knows that it could hurt him, maybe it'll stop him from going forward about us. Whoever it is that you're trying to protect will be safe" Rae thought about Olivia's proposal for a moment and then nodded her head. Maybe this would be good for Jimmy. If Charles knows he's back on drugs he'll cut him off and he won't have money to keep using. Olivia pulled Rae into her lap and she laid her head on her shoulder and held her tight. "This will help him" she thought to herself, "This will definitely help him".