Alexis was correct in her suspicions that she'd spend the bulk of the night tossing and turning, although that was less a result of Julian's proximity than it was the information he relayed. Without understanding the price this 'John Richter' would demand for Sam's freedom, there was little she could do to defend against it. She also had her plan for Sam's release from the PCPD well in hand. So Alexis spent the bulk of whatever remained of the night focusing on an offensive that would rid their lives of Julian's boss for good.
The thought that the man she had known as Luke Spencer for the preceding months was actually a cold-blooded killer rattled her. It was about 4 am when she sat up in bed, realizing that she barely escaped death after the Nurse's Ball. That served as the first domino: then all the odd conversations with Luke began to make sense. Richter—or whatever his real name was—had picked perfect foils. As Luke's lifetime of odd behavior made him easy to impersonate imperfectly without suspicion, so Ric Lansing's life of fraternal animosity and mob ties made him the perfect patsy. Julian's boss was vicious and violent. And he was cunning.
Alexis hadn't been able to save Ric, but she would be damned if she was going to leave Luke hanging alone out there. She already had the first tendrils of a plan working through her brain. But it would have to wait until she could free Sam.
Her strategy was to tiptoe down the stairs, steal a mug of coffee and then return to her room to get ready for the day ahead…all without waking him. Their morning routine in the kitchen was as emotionally intimate as their morning routine in the bedroom, and she wanted to avoid it. But the odors of coffee and bacon told her that Julian hadn't passed up the advantage of proximity to try and earn some good will. The pattern of their breakup was a few weeks of Julian trying to distract her flank with thoughtful gestures and flattery before advancing with a frontal assault that would temporarily throw her. After succumbing to his advances, she'd redraw the line and he'd work his way up to crossing it again. Charm. Conquer. Repeat. This morning he was executing step one.
But his moves were thwarted by both the strangeness of the kitchen and the physical distance she put between them. Julian was too guilty after his revelations last night to push anything, and Alexis hoped that would include the discussion of their relationship—a concession she made to prevent his interference in Sam's legal strategy. Breakfast was fairly quiet and ended on a brief exchange:
-"While you're getting ready, I'm going to run by the penthouse and pick up some clothes and my laptop. Maybe a book."
-"Got it. I'm out of here in an hour—is that enough time?"
-"Plenty."
He briefly kissed her on her cheek, careful not to let his lips linger. She escorted him as far as the landing before she registered his gesture, and then fled upstairs to prepare herself for the day.
She was at the PCPD by 8 am and it was another hour before they brought Sam upstairs. Alexis put her daughter's favorite breakfast and coffee on the table and watched as her daughter wolfed it down, periodically throwing a question her way. Detectives Nagy and Falconieri eventually entered the room. They proceeded with another hour's worth of questions, before Alexis posed a few of her own.
-"This is fairly repetitive. We covered all of this yesterday. Has there been any progress in the case as yet? Any new questions for my client? Any new suspects?"
Det. Nagy responded. "We're still working a few angles and when we have more information, we'll ask questions as appropriate."
-"Well, how about this: do you have any evidence implicating my client yet?"
Det. Nagy looked at Alexis dumbfounded. "You mean other than the fact she was his ex-mistress, they had a fight, her missing gun is the same make as the murder weapon, and she has no alibi?" Her tone took on an edge of sarcasm. "No. That's all we have."
-"So…nothing?" Alexis shook off the new detective's speech.
-"How is that nothing counselor?" Nagy's tone drew a glare from her partner.
-"Well, she's one of at least two exes Silas has in town—and we haven't even begun to look at who his wife may have been fooling around with. You can't place Sam at the scene and you don't have a murder weapon. All you do have right now is the fact that they broke up, and I believe you have a witness who overheard Sam ending the relationship-so motive is dubious. From where I'm sitting, that doesn't look like anything."
Det. Nagy sat silently, giving Sam and her attorney a dead-eyed stare. But the color slowly rising up her neck let Alexis know that she had stung the detective's pride.
Alexis tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow, "So…since it doesn't look like you're formally charging my client and it doesn't like you have any new questions, how about we put an end to this and let Sam get home to her baby?"
-"We can hold her for 48 hours," Det. Nagy parried, unwilling to concede the point.
Alexis looked thoughtful. "Hmmm. Well, let me put it to you this way. You've arrested a young widow with a baby at home without any evidence that ties her to the scene or the crime itself. If you anticipate that set of circumstances changing in the next 24 hours, then certainly hold her. But if you're not waiting on a big break that you're fairly sure is going to happen, let me tell you what you're risking: me calling the PCPD out for harassment and a potential lawsuit. I'm going to be on the news screaming about this case so often they may let me take over the weather update just for the hell of it." Alexis's inflection shifted from instructional to curious. "Have you met Mayor Lomax, Det. Nagy."
-"No."
-"Oh, you'll love her," Alexis crowed. "I think my favorite thing about her is that she's really focused on the press, especially now with an election coming up. She's a big fan of 'optics', Detective." Alexis took a moment to let her foil absorb her full meaning. "So it's up to you. Ask your partner, Det. Nagy. Det. Falconieri knows how this works."
The room was uncomfortably quiet before the detectives excused themselves to speak with the Commissioner.
Sam heard the click before she spoke, and turned to her mother. "I forgot."
-"Forgot what, sweetheart?"
-"Just how much you completely kick ass." Sam's face radiated awe and pride.
-"I feel like that compliment speaks well of my legal skills, but the fact that you've seen me in action enough to make that statement is a condemnation of my success as a parent."
-"Mom—"
-"I know sweetheart. Just a little gallows humor—" Sam raised an eyebrow. "Not that anyone is going to the gallows mind you…I'm sorry sweetie." Alexis sighed, "I'm just really tired."
Julian spent the morning on the phone with his security contacts to see if they had any luck with the video. Unmentioned in his conversations with Alexis was the slew of security cameras he had installed around the Lake House after Lucas was shot. They were monitored fairly regularly, but apparently not with enough diligence to notice the hooded figure planting a bomb in the mailbox. The guard thought it was a high school kid dropping something off for Molly. Upon review of the tape, the company saw the culprit briefly in the treeline, but his path up along the lake wasn't covered by the camera angles. It was a mistake that would have been rectified if there had been anything left to keep secure.
Although the physical monitoring had stopped, the cameras' default state included recording for 30 straight minutes once the motion sensors were tripped. So the cameras were still recording-all except the one mounted in the tree next to the house facing the driveway. That camera had been damaged in the explosion and the security company had been trying to see if they could pull anything that would place Sam there. Julian additionally was paying for a forensic team to see if anything was salvageable, but so far no luck. The other recording devices along the property didn't have the right angle to see Sam's position by the lake, but they would be reviewed eventually, just in case they could yield anything usable.
Julian had opted not to share this little tidbit with Alexis. Revealing the existence of the cameras to his daughter's defense attorney meant she may need to reveal it to the DA. And if she did that and there was nothing on the tapes it could strengthen the case against Sam. It seemed far more prudent to be silent until he knew if there was something useful. He also didn't relish having to explain that he had been—for all intents and purposes—spying on Alexis. He was already skating on fairly thin ice.
After his sole meeting of the day concluded, Julian called around to the insurance company, Alexis's former neighbors and the lake's gas station to try and track down some of the local retirees that fished during the week—anyone who may have seen the figure of a woman sitting next to the ruins of a home. But he was unsuccessful in finding someone who saw his daughter. Julian was now waiting for information from others so he could proceed. He was bored, and the temptation to open Alexis's door and be close to her things—smell her shampoo, her perfume, her hand lotion—was so great he opted for chores to occupy his time.
When Alexis and Sam showed up in the early evening, they found Danny's laundry done, the living room spotless and the beginnings of dinner in the kitchen. Julian was surprised when he found a crock-pot and paid a teenager down the hall to pick up ingredients for chili and deliver them to the penthouse.
The smell of cooking emanating from her stovetop would have bowled Sam over if her father literally hadn't done so first. His embrace was immediate and unrelenting, and accentuated by a big, enthusiastic kiss on her forehead. Sam threw her mother a questioning glance as she tried to navigate how her arrest had served as an accelerant in her relationship with her father. Julian seemed like he was three steps ahead, and Sam tried her best to respond in kind. He sensed her awkwardness, and hoping to ameliorate the discomfort he caused, he pulled away.
-"I'm so glad you're home."
-"Me too...Dad. It's good to be home." She quickly looked for a new topic. "So, what are you cooking?"
-"Chili."
-"Wow. Ambitious. Vegetarian?"
-"No…actually there aren't any beans in it. I don't really like them. I'm sorry, I should have thought—"
-"No, Julian-Dad. It's great. Thank you. I love it." Sam was struggling. She felt both close and distant and wasn't sure how to deal with Julian. "And it's supposed to get a little colder this week, so the leftovers will be great."
Alexis looked between father and daughter. "I'm going to run up and take a shower. I can take that basket up." She smiled at Julian, "Wow. Laundry too. You may need to keep him, Sam."
-"Just Danny's. I know better than to put your clothes in the washing machine without explicit instructions, Alexis."
His eyes bored into her, and she flashed back to an argument months ago where he shrunk one of her favorite sweaters. It had started with her dressing him down and ended with her undressed and moaning as she braced herself against the dryer. Now she was silent as she picked up the laundry basket and headed to her room.
Sam watched her mother climb the stairs and turned to see her father was also watching with a far greater degree of intensity. Feeling like a voyeur in her own living room, she turned to Julian, "So, Mom said you were looking into an alibi for me today. Any luck?"
-"Nothing yet. But I'm hopeful. I have a couple of leads and I still have to try and track down those two guys in the blue boat."
-"Oh! I didn't even think of them. They were out there every day." She made a face as she sorted through a mental inventory of the day. "I don't know if I saw them, though. I remember a water skier, but they were going so fast."
-"Anything will help, Sam—anything you remember about the boat?"
-"I remember they were loud. They were cranking music. Something hip-hop. Ugh I know this song and it's going to kill me until I remember it."
-"The song probably isn't important. Do you remember the general time, or color of the boat—anything?"
-"No. I'll sleep on it…Julian."
Julian looked up to see his daughter appraising him. He heard her murmur an apology.
-"Why are you sorry, Sam?"
She sighed. "I don't know what to do around you."
-"Sam, there's nothing you have to do—"
-"No. It's that sometimes it feels like the right thing to say 'Dad.' But I don't really know you yet. And so other times it feels awkward." She looked away in thought. "I feel like you *want *me to call you, Dad. And I think that needs to be something that just rolls off the tongue. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. I just…"
-"You just what?"
-"I just don't want you to be offended or hurt when I switch back to Julian. I appreciate everything you've done for me." She stammered. "It's really intense right now. All of this. I know you're my father. I *feel* you're my father. I'm just not always ready to say 'Dad.'" She looked up at him hopefully, "Are you OK with that? I just don't want to screw around with your head."
Julian looked at his daughter. She was so small to him. There were looks she gave—like at just that moment—where he could delude himself that she was a teenager coming to him for advice. He wanted so badly to recover what was stolen that his regrets of the past sometimes overwhelmed the gifts of the present.
-"This is what's in my head, Sam. You're my daughter. It doesn't matter what you call me. You can call me 'Dad' or 'Julian'-" He smirked as he added, "-or 'son of a bitch' for that matter. It doesn't change the connection I feel to you or for you."
Sam smiled. "OK. Then I have a confession to make."
-"What is it?"
-"As much as I appreciate the cooking and the help today—I'm not going to stay for dinner." She bit her bottom lip. "I just came home to pick up some clothes. I want to go to Wyndamere to see my boy. By the time I get out there, it will be bath and story time, so I'm going to stay out there and bring him back in the morning. Can we do lunch tomorrow? You, me and Mom?"
-"Yes." The response was instinctive and Julian immediately understood in that moment the meaning of 'Daddy's Little Girl.' He walked over and grabbed her shoulders, turned her around and marched her towards the stairs. "You better move it if you want to make it for bath time."
Sam spun around. "She knows."
Julian winced. Had Alexis learned about the cameras? "Who knows?"
-"Sorry. The song. The song they were playing in the boat was 'She Knows.' By J. Cole, I think."
-"OK. Water skiers playing J. Cole. On it." He smiled. "Now go pack."