August 17, 2021
"What's the significance of the location?" Elliot asked tersely. His fingers were still laced tightly with Liv's while he craned through the gap between the front two seats, trying to get a view of the city ahead of them. Bell was making good time, moving as fast as lights and sirens would let her, but the warehouse wasn't exactly around the corner; it would take time to get there, and Elliot knew they needed to use that time to formulate a plan. To consider all the information they had available to them, to think their way through possible scenarios and safeguard against calamity as best they could. If part of him was also morbidly curious and looking to satisfy that curiosity, well, he consoled himself with the knowledge that it wasn't his only motivation for asking.
"None," Liv said. That was bullshit, though. Elliot knew it was bullshit; what he didn't know was why she'd lie about it.
"Don't give me that shit," he said. "Cassidy told you the warehouse was by the canal and you looked like you'd seen a ghost. It means something to you. I wanna help here, Liv, but I need to know what the fuck is going on."
Needed to know from an operational standpoint, but from a personal one, too. It used to be Elliot who communicated with Liv using just a look, Elliot who knew her secrets and the shape of her fears, and now Elliot was in the dark? Elliot was in the dark, when fucking Cassidy knew what this was about it? Maybe it made him selfish, but that didn't sit right with him. He was her partner, and he was supposed to know, and the only way he was gonna learn was if she told him.
"Something happened," Liv said vaguely, her voice tight, deliberate, controlled. "In a warehouse by the canal. It was a long time ago."
Elliot was looking straight ahead, and he saw Bell's gaze flick up to meet his in the rearview mirror, saw the warning in her eyes. It was a warning he did not understand at all, and so he did not heed it. Besides, Liv had - however unintentionally - gotten his ire up. A long time ago, she'd said, when whatever it was had happened after he left. In many ways his departure still felt like a recent wound, and he'd been gone ten years, sure, but they'd been partners for thirteen, and that meant they still had more time together than apart, and he didn't like the idea of it, that whatever this was had been a long time ago. He didn't like to think too much about just how long he'd been gone, and what his absence had cost them both.
"How would Wheatley know about it?" he asked. That hurt, too, the thought that Wheatley knew something about Liv that he didn't. The man had bribed people in every government office he could find, might even have had a few cops on the take; maybe someone had spilled some scuttlebutt or pulled a file for him. However it had happened, Wheatley had found the means to learn something Elliot didn't know, something Elliot was certain he should have heard from Liv herself, and that made guilt settle heavily in his gut.
"It wouldn't be that hard," she said. "A fucking Google search would tell him anything he wanted to know about it."
There was an accusation there. Oh, she didn't say it outright, might not have even realized the displeasure her tone conveyed, too focused on the terror of the day to still be angry at him for something he'd done a lifetime before, but it was there, just the same. This thing Elliot didn't know, all he'd have to do learn about it was search her name on his fucking phone. A simple enough feat, and yet not one he'd ever undertaken. While he was in Rome it had hurt too much, the thought of where Liv was, what she was doing, who she was doing it with; he toyed with the idea of looking her up but it felt like an act of infidelity, somehow. Like it would make him unfaithful to Kathy if he admitted how badly he missed his old life, how desperately he missed his partner, how unsure he was that he'd made the right choice. Like it would make him unfaithful to Liv, if he learned about her life secondhand and not from her lips. Like it would make him unfaithful to Liv if he admitted that he'd left her so far behind he couldn't even call her on the phone to check up on her. It was the same reason he hadn't looked her up since he'd been back, either; he didn't want to betray her, didn't want to go snooping through her life without his blessing. But maybe his attempt to be considerate read like disregard. He hadn't asked her, either, hadn't asked her to tell him what had happened while he was away, mostly because he was afraid of the answer. Afraid of something like this. Afraid that something happened, an event so dark and unpleasant to Liv that she wouldn't even name it. A wound that was his fault, because he left her. It looked like he'd been right to be afraid.
"Do you think it's deliberate?"
"Yes," Bell said softly from the front seat, and Elliot and Olivia both jumped, startled by the reminder that they weren't alone. Her response galled him; apparently even Bell knew what had happened to Olivia, and only he remained in the dark. It made him feel like a son of a bitch, but it was too late to fix it now.
"There was a little girl," Olivia said. "The perp, he'd…he'd taken a little girl. Used her as bait to lure me out. It fucking worked."
Elliot's heart went cold, like it was suddenly clenched in a fist of ice. Whatever this something was it sounded personal, like Liv had been targeted deliberately, and her reticence to talk about it made him wonder just how deep this hurt went. Just how badly she'd been wounded, when he wasn't there to watch her back like he was supposed to.
"Just like it's working now," Bell said. "We have to acknowledge that this may be a trap. The whole time we've been looking into Wheatley no one ever found this place, and Jet just happens to stumble across it today? Maybe he wanted us to find it."
"What's his endgame?" Elliot asked, of himself as much as of the other occupants of the car. "If he wanted us dead there's easier ways to do it."
"He's theatrical," Bell mused. "And he likes to play with his food. He doesn't just want to eliminate a threat, he wants to watch people suffer. It's the same reason he…"
She caught herself, didn't finish her sentence, but she didn't have to. Elliot knew what she meant. It was the same reason Wheatley had killed Kathy and not Elliot. He could have targeted Elliot just as easily as Kathy, and doing so would have more neatly eliminated the threat against him, but Wheatley didn't just want to stop Elliot's investigation into his enterprise; Wheatley had been angry with Elliot, and he'd lashed out, wanted to make him suffer, and make Angela indebted to him in the process. And now he'd taken Mia; Olivia had two children, and he'd chosen Mia. Because she was the girl? Because she was sick? Because she was Olivia's blood? Wheatley had never felt particularly fatherly towards the son he'd adopted; maybe he assumed - wrongly - that Olivia would choose the child born of her body over her adopted son. Maybe he'd picked Mia for all of those reasons. Maybe it didn't matter, really.
"If she's in that warehouse," Olivia started to say, then swallowed hard, like she couldn't find it in her to speak the words aloud.
If Mia was in the warehouse, maybe Wheatley wanted them to find her. Maybe he wanted to blow the place up when they were just steps away from the door so both Elliot and Olivia would have to live knowing how close they'd come to saving her, and how they'd failed. If Mia was in that warehouse maybe he wanted them to get inside, wanted them to get so, so close to her, and then watch as his men killed her. If Mia was inside, maybe she was dead already.
"There's still a chance he doesn't know we're coming," Elliot said, but the words sounded hollow to his own ears. Sure, there was a chance, a chance that it was just a coincidence, Jet managing to find the place now, a chance that Wheatley had left Mia there for safekeeping and intended for Elliot to follow him somewhere else, a chance there was nothing in the warehouse at all. It wasn't a strong chance, though. Elliot wouldn't have put money on it.
Just then Bell's phone rang, and she answered it, let the sound of Jet's voice fill the car through the speakers.
"Sarge-"
"We can all hear you, Jet," Bell said, and it was half a warning. Whatever Jet had to say, Bell had Mia's mother in the backseat of her car, and they all needed Jet to choose her words carefully.
"There's a security system at the warehouse," Jet said. "It's lame, he probably bought the cameras at Best Buy. It wasn't hard to get into his account."
"So you know where all the cameras are?"
"Yes," Jet said confidently. "Warehouse is two stories, but the ceilings are high. He's got cameras mounted over every door and covering every corner. There's an approach out of the camera's range but you're going to have to go on foot. Park your car two blocks back and call me and I can walk you through it."
Oh, Elliot didn't like that at all. Abandoning the car, walking up to the building, just the three of them with no backup?
"I called a friend who's into surveillance, he's got a drone en route to the place now. The drone can check for heat signatures and electrical interference."
"Can it tell us if there's a bomb?"
"Maybe," Jet said, and this time she didn't sound confident at all. "If it's just a wad of C-4 with a handheld trigger we're not gonna pick it up. It might find something more complex, but I don't like the odds. It can tell us if there's people in the building though, and where they are."
"That's something," Elliot said quietly. Liv squeezed his hand to let him know she'd heard him, but that was it. She'd been quiet, so far, quieter than usual, but it was her kid they were searching for, and Elliot could only imagine the noise that was filling her head just now.
"All right," Bell said. "We're ten minutes out. I'll call you when we park."
The call ended, and the car was plunged once more into a tense and thoughtful silence. Bell was still speeding as fast she could, the lights on the dash still flashing, Olivia's hand still clutched in Elliot's. They still didn't know what lay ahead for them, and there was still no turning back. There couldn't be, not now. It was as if the hand of God himself had put them on this path, and there would be no turning aside from it, not until they knew for certain where Mia was. They had to find her; Elliot would not entertain any alternative.
