August 17, 2021
"What have you got?" Myers asked tersely, peering over Jet's shoulder to get a better look at the monitor in front of her. Quarters were tight inside the van, and she wished he wouldn't stand so close.
"Should he be here for this?" she asked, shooting a meaningful glance off to the right, to the place where Brian Cassidy was sitting with his little boy on his lap. The kid was cute, Jet would give him that, but he was only like eight years old, and his sister was missing, and his mom was in danger, and Jet wasn't used to having cute little kids watching her with blue eyes wide and bright and scared.
"I'm not letting my kid out of my sight," Cassidy said, "and I'm not letting you shut me out of this investigation."
By you he meant Myers, Jet knew; Jet herself had no vested in interest in keeping information away from Cassidy, even though the guy was kind of an asshole. It was hard to imagine, Captain Benson having kids with Cassidy. It wasn't like Jet knew Benson well, or anything, but she was pretty and put together, had been gentle on that case she'd worked with Stabler, the little girl; Benson was warm and reassuring, a real honest-to-God grown up, and Cassidy's boots were dirty and he had the petulant scowl of a moody teenager and he seemed to rub everybody who came into contact with him the wrong way.
"Just go ahead," Myers told her. The Lieutenant was in command, was the highest ranking officer on scene - now that Captain Benson had rushed headlong into disaster - and so Jet did what he told her to.
"I'm waiting for the results of the scan from my drone guy," she began, "so in the meantime I've been trying to nail down Wheatley's whereabouts. He's been in federal custody while they finalize the terms of his deal."
And the deal was nearly done; the feds were gonna let him walk on everything in exchange for him turning rat on his buddies, but the NYPD still wanted him for Kathy Stabler's murder; time would tell if he'd ever face a single consequence for what he'd done. It was exactly what Jet had been worried policework would be when Stabler brought her on board; wasn't that how it always went? Money and influence could buy a man like Wheatley out of any sort of trouble, it seemed.
"Yeah, he's been in fucking Club Med this whole time," Cassidy grumbled.
Jet ignored him.
"We've been trying since we got here to get somebody at the FBI to confirm his whereabouts or let us talk to him, something."
And the Feds had been coy, dodging calls, giving vague answers.
"So I hacked into their prisoner tracking system-"
"You did what?" Myers demanded, flabbergasted, but she ignored him.
"And they've lost him," she said grimly. "That's what you're looking at here, these are prisoner transfer records. They'd been keeping Wheatley at a secure facility, but he was released on house arrest yesterday. The Feds seized all his properties but they let him move back into his primary residence, put a security detail and an ankle monitor on him, and he disappeared within hours. That's why they won't tell us where he is; they don't know."
And they were looking for him, of course they were, but the feds could be cagey about their cases, didn't like other people coming onto their patch, and they'd kept this little secret all to themselves.
"Shit," Myers said, very softly, and then he cast a guilty look at Noah Benson like he felt bad for swearing in front of a kid.
"So this guy's just in the wind?" Cassidy demanded. "Feds can't do anything right."
It was, technically, bad news; not knowing where a guy like Wheatley was, that was bad, but Jet also figured it was good news, too. When she found that warehouse Stabler and Benson had both latched onto the idea that Wheatley was behind it - Bell had, too, and Jet didn't know why they were all deadset on Wheatley, didn't know what possible reason they'd have to suspect him, but she knew that Stabler and Benson had a history, and Bell trusted them, and she trusted Bell, and she figured that was the only thing that mattered. But Wheatley disappearing the day before Mia was taken, that seemed to support their theory. Maybe he'd been trying to distract OCCB while he made good on his escape.
She had her mouth open to tell Myers that when her phone rang. Billy calling. It looked like her drone guy had come through.
With the intel from the drones and Jet's careful voice guiding them they approached the warehouse on foot from the south, hidden from the eyeline of its watchful cameras by the bulk of the other buildings surrounding it. Her voice reached all three of them, over the earpieces they wore, and their boots made no sound upon the ground, and their guns were held steady in their hands, their eyes trained on the target.
Maybe it was wrong to even think it, but it felt good, somehow. It felt good to Elliot, moving in lockstep with Liv again. The warmth of her beside him, the sunlight glinting off her soft, shiny hair; that was familiar. He knew how to do this, how to move with her; if they ran into trouble he knew already which way she'd feint, knew how they'd cover one another, knew without a shred of doubt that she had his back, just as he had hers. It came natural to them, hunting like this. Maybe that was crazy, to think that anything about this was natural, but it was. Being with her, that felt right. Facing danger with her by his side, that made him feel safe, somehow. He always felt safe, with her. Ten feet tall and bulletproof, that's how he felt when he was with her, because they were Benson and Stabler, and they were as brave and strong and reckless as each other, and they'd fucked up plenty of shit in their lives, but this they knew how to do. They would always have this.
There was a camera covering the front door of the building, but it was locked in place, didn't have the ability to pan and swivel, and that meant its view was limited. They could slip between buildings and walk right underneath it, and no one would ever know, and so they did, with Jet's help. She'd hacked into the Wheatley's account and could watch the video feeds for herself - they didn't dare risk turning them off, didn't want to make Wheatley suspicious, didn't want one of his guys coming outside with a ladder to look at the damn things - and she used her bird's eye view to keep them safe until they reached the door.
"There's a sensor on it," her voice echoed quietly through the earpieces. "They had it setup for keyless entry. I turned that off, so it's unlocked and it shouldn't send an alert when the door opens. The app doesn't send notifications for settings changes like that, so most likely no one will have noticed yet. You should be able to walk right in."
Most likely. Should be. Those words didn't exactly fill Elliot with confidence, but it was the best they could do. The three of them had formed a line, Elliot in front, Liv behind him, Bell behind her, and they kept moving, slowly, steadily, creeping along the front of the building.
We only get one shot at this, he thought. When the drone flew over there had only been two people downstairs; there might be more now, might be less, and they had no way to know. The door might creak on hinges gone rusty from misuse and alert everyone inside to the coming invasion. He might open it too slow, give the guys watching it a chance to pull their guns; he might rush in too fast and miss a crucial detail and get himself shot. There were a dozen ways it could all go wrong, a hundred ways. He was gonna do it anyway.
Liv reached out and settled her left hand on the back of his shoulder. Holding on to him, kinda, the way they used to do if they were clearing a building in the dark, so he'd know where she was. So he'd remember she was there. He wasn't scared, as long as she was there, and she was with him now.
He drew in a deep breath, turned the door handle slowly to avoid making too much noise when the latch moved, which it did. Jet was right, the door was unlocked.
Here goes nothing.
He opened the door slowly, using it for cover, and then darted through it.
The plan was to take down the two guys downstairs without firing a shot, if possible; they didn't want to alert the larger crowd upstairs to their presence. They were gonna have to clear the first floor before they went up, to make sure they didn't end up trapping themselves between two sets of unfriendlies on the stairs. The place was a warehouse but it had been abandoned for ages, and Elliot had sort of been imagining a vast, empty space, maybe a few overturned boxes, maybe some bathrooms or an office or two, but open, easy to scan. What he found instead was a warren of shelving and massive boxes and pallet upon pallet of god-only-knew-what. The shelves formed a labyrinth, aisles crossing and crisscrossing each other between them. He couldn't see more than about ten feet in any direction, and he'd have less visibility once they entered that maze, and the ceiling disappeared into darkness overhead and the whole place stank like mothballs.
Shit, he thought.
They were never gonna be able to clear that space with just three of them, would never be able to say for certain that there was no one slipping and sliding around corners behind them, certainly not without turning the lights on, spreading out, communicating with one another. They were fucked.
His head swiveled on his shoulders, scanning left and right, moving forward in a half-crouch with his gun extended in front of him, Liv's hand still on his shoulder, and she had to feel it, too, he thought. Had to feel the fear. An attack could come from any corner, and they were gonna have to go upstairs without knowing for certain if they had a safe exit. People were going to die in that place.
But not her, he thought. Not Liv, and not Mia. Not if he could help it.
He took another slow step forward, and as he did a shadow seemed to dance around the corner of one of the makeshift corridors stretching out to the left, carved out by the endless rows of shelves and pallets, and Elliot moved on instinct. Liv's hand slipped away from his back and he felt rather than saw her shift to cover his right, and he ran, as hard and as fast as he could, to the left, and collided with the approaching body in an inelegant tackle that would've made his high school football coach lecture him about his mechanics but which nonetheless did the job. Elliot didn't even really see the guy before they crashed into one another; he was just a blur of black, and Elliot's shoulder took him hard in the chest, and they went tumbling to the ground, and the guy didn't have a chance to do anything more than grunt once in surprise before he cracked his head on the concrete floor and went completely limp with Elliot sprawled out on top of him, panting.
There was already a pool of blood forming under his head; the guy had gone down hard, and he wasn't moving now.
"Jesus," he heard Bell whisper. Not that he blamed her; the scuffle had been brief, lightning quick, and fucking brutal.
"El." Liv breathed his name so quietly he wasn't sure he heard it with his ears; it felt like she'd spoken directly into his mind.
"One down," he whispered grimly.
He was pretty sure that fucker on the ground wasn't gonna move any time soon but just to make sure he took out his cuffs and secured one of the goon's wrists to the nearest shelf, and then he straightened up and looked around, breathing hard, wondering.
What were they gonna do now? Take the time to keep moving through the first floor, searching for a second - or third, or fourth - assailant who might not even be there? If they did, they risked someone finding them and sending up an alarm before they even made it to the stairs. Of course if they tried to go up they risked being discovered en route, or leaving some bastard to shoot them in the back while they went.
He could hear the ticking of the second hand of his watch in the silence as the three of them got their bearings, but as he gazed around he saw Liv's eyes flicker off to the far right wall, to the place where they knew the stairs were hidden behind rows of boxes. Her baby might be up those stairs, alone in the company of men who meant to do her harm, and Liv's focus was trained there, and Elliot's mind was made up in a moment.
"Let's go," he said, moving in front of Liv and Bell, leading them once more. Leading them, not deeper into the warehouse, not beginning to fan out in a search formation, but in a neat line towards the stairs, towards their one chance to rescue Mia.
It was fucking stupid, and they knew it, Bell and Liv. None of this was by the book; they were flying in the face of every piece of their training. They could have stopped him, Bell and Liv; either one of them could've stopped him, and he would've relented for their sake.
But they didn't.
They knew what they were risking, and they had chosen, too.
