Chapter Text
“You need to attend.”
“Is Liv going to be there?”
“Yes.”
“Then, no, absolutely not. The last thing I need is to spend an evening with her shooting daggers at me with her eyes.”
“Liv is why you need to go, Barba. She told me that she wants to make peace with you, but she doesn’t know how to start.”
“She knows how to find me, but hasn’t reached out, even after all this time. Why should I be the one to put myself on the line?”
“Because of the sad look in your eyes when you ask after her. Which you do every time I see you.”
“Which may give you a clue about how I would feel if she still hates me.”
“She doesn’t still hate you. She’s the one who brought up your name. You think she would have said anything to me if she hadn’t fully intended for me to pass it on to you? This is your chance, man.”
“I’ll think about it.”
------
Of course he went. And of course she was there. The Summer Solstice Gala was the fundraiser of the year for an organization that did great work with abused and abandoned children. The cause was close to Olivia Benson’s heart, and the presence of the Captain of the nation’s premier Special Victims Unit was an asset valued by the organization.
Barba was as far to the back of the room as he could get as he watched the guests enter. He saw her arrive in the company of Renee Curry, whom he’d never met but knew had been the Captain of IAB before joining SVU. He found the presence of two captains at SVU to be rather unconventional, but then so was the head of that unit.
Benson looked stunning, of course. He recognized from previous formal events the black dress that hung just right on all her curves. He knew she was not one to go out and buy a new dress when she had a perfectly acceptable one already in her closet. The dress was to him a statement that, despite the passage of time, Olivia’s basic nature had not changed.
Rather than approaching her, he waited and watched her work the crowd. She immediately fell into conversation with a couple he knew to be major donors to the cause, and whom he recalled she genuinely liked. She then moved on to greet the new Chief of Detectives. He could almost read her lips as she thanked Chief Tynan for coming to show the NYPD colors. He smiled slightly as he watched her continue to move about the room, shaking hands and giving hugs.
“Why don’t you go up and say hello?” asked Dominick Carisi as he came to stand next to Barba.
“She’s working. I’m waiting until that moment when she feels like she’s talked to everyone she needs to talk to.”
“How will you know?”
“I’ll know.” Barba then watched as the bartender handed a waiter a tray of drinks, pointing to the glass of red wine on the tray and then to Benson. Of course the organization would make sure that their asset was attended to.
As Olivia thanked the waiter for the wine, Rafael could see her look around the room. He dodged behind a group of people so she wouldn’t yet see him, but continued to observe her. Her eyes fell on Curry and she smiled. Ah! This was the moment. She was finished for now with circulating and was seeking out a friend for a bit of relief. He gave them a moment, and then walked toward them.
As he neared, he could see a concerned look on Curry’s face while Olivia spoke to her. Curry nodded in his direction to indicate to Benson that someone was coming, and Olivia turned to meet his eyes.
“Rafa!,” she called out. “Rafa, Rafa, Rafael. Renee, do you know Rafael? Smart, sexy Rafael Barba.”
“Liv,” Curry responded. “Are you okay?”
“I am, now that Barba is here,” Olivia said loudly, then continued in a stage whisper, “Did you know he has big brass balls? Oops, I mean ego. Nooooo. I do mean balls.”
With that, Olivia began to swoon, then grasped a nearby table, knocking over several glasses.
“I didn’t think she’d had that much to drink,” Curry said to Barba.
“I’ve been watching her since she walked in. That glass of wine is the only thing she drank, and it looks like she didn’t have much of it. This isn’t like her. At all,” he finished.
“She’s been drugged,” said Chief Tynan, who had come over to check on the disturbance. “Captain Curry, make sure that wine glass and its contents are preserved and checked.”
“I’ll take her to the hospital,” said Barba.
“Who are you?” Tynan asked.
At this point, Carisi had approached. “He’s Rafael Barba, former ADA who worked a lot with SVU. And long-time friend of many of us, including Benson. Rafael, I’ll go with you.”
“Didn’t you say you had a hard stop to pick up your kids at the sitter?” asked Barba.
“That’s right. Call me with updates,” Carisi told his friend. “Mercy is closest.”
“That’s where I’ll take her,” Barba said, wrapping Olivia’s arm around his shoulder and propping her up as he walked her to the taxi stand.
Curry handed the wine glass off to a uniformed officer to take for analysis, then went to question the waiter. He explained that the bartender had given him some random drinks to offer guests, but had asked him to first deliver the red wine to the lady. “He told me that she was a VIP guest, and this was her favorite. I guess he knew her.”
When Curry looked toward the bar, the waiter said, “Oh, that’s Jerry. It wasn’t him. He was on a break. It was a guy I didn’t know. I figured he was with the event sponsor, since he knew who the VIP was.”
As it happened, Tynan was questioning two women who were from the sponsoring organization, so Curry joined them to ask about the substitute bartender. They explained that the only people there that evening from the organization were women, and none of them would know what Olivia Benson’s preferred drink would be.
Curry then sought the manager of the venue facility to ask about security videos, while Tynan interviewed the catering manager as to who was tending bar. He knew of no substitute bartender. They then approached Jerry, who explained that he’d been trying to wave down a waiter to fill in while he made a quick bathroom trip when a guy saying he was with the organization came up and said he’d fill in for a few minutes. Jerry did not get a name, but his description of the man matched that given by the waiter: white, slender, on the tall side, dark hair with a hint of gray, probably in his mid-50s.
The video from the bar area was grainy, but they could see the man in question talking to Jerry, then stepping behind the bar as he left. They watched him pour some champagne and some white wine, then a single glass of red wine. He reached into his pocket, waved that hand over the red wine glass, then return something to his pocket. The security officer showing them the video pulled a still of the man and forwarded it to Curry and Tynan.
By now, Fin and Bruno from the SVU squad had arrived, so they were given the picture to show around.
Moments later, the door slammed open and another figure stormed into the security office. “Where the hell is Liv?” demanded Elliot Stabler.
------
Stabler had been at the precinct looking for Olivia. When she wasn’t there, he’d sought Fin’s counsel as to what the reasons might be that Olivia had been increasingly distant to him in the past couple of months. He explained that he’d asked her if he’d done something to upset her, but she acted like she didn’t know what he was talking about. He just knew that something was changing.
Fin was saying to keep him out of the middle of whatever it was when he received the call about the incident at the gala. When Fin refused to allow him to come with him, Elliot followed him to the venue.
Curry was trying to calm Stabler, as Tynan continued to review videos of the exits from the time just after the man was behind the bar. She called Curry over when she spotted him leaving through a side door. As they made a note of the time stamp on the video, Stabler looked over their shoulders and remarked, “I think I know that guy.”
The two women looked at him as he continued. “It’s been a while—maybe fifteen or twenty years or so—but it looks a lot like Dean Porter, or how Porter might look this much older. Porter was an FBI agent who was involved in a few of our cases years back. He was Liv’s handler when she did an undercover stint for the FBI, and I think he had kind of a thing for her. I always thought he was dirty, but Liv thought he only leaned that way but hadn’t crossed the line. Is he who drugged her?”
“It looks that way,” Curry said. “But if he did, why didn’t he stick around afterward? What was in it for him?”
“You said Liv was taken to the hospital,” Stabler said. “By whom?”
The two women looked at each other, then Curry pulled out her phone and called Carisi. “Have you heard anything?” she asked.
“No,” said Carisi, “and Barba’s phone is going straight to voicemail. And no one at Mercy Hospital has seen them. I’ve asked a neighbor to look after the kids while I go over to Mercy. Damn, I wish Amanda wasn’t in Atlanta.”
“I’ll send Bruno over too.” Curry turned to the security chief. “Is there a security video covering the taxi stand?”
The video for the time that Benson and Barba departed showed a town car pulling up in front of the taxi stand and Barba helping Olivia into the back of the car. They noted as the car pulled away that it had no license tag. Tynan asked the security chief to see if he could get a focus on the driver’s face.
“That’s Rafael Barba with her,” Stabler demanded. “Who the hell let her leave in that condition with that son of a bitch?”
“Carisi said he was an old friend, and Olivia acted like he was,” Curry replied.
“While she was drugged? Her brain was scrambled. He may be a friend of Carisi’s, but Olivia hasn’t spoken to him in years,” Stabler spat out.
“Damn!” declared Tynan. “Look at the driver.”
Elliot pointed at the screen. “Porter!”
------
“What the hell, Barba?” said Olivia, rubbing her head.
Olivia had awakened in a strange bed with a throbbing headache. She looked down to see that her dress had gone, replaced by an oversized t-shirt and a pair of boxers. Rafael Barba was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, watching her. When she spoke, he moved to stand next to her shoulder by the bed.
“I’m sorry, Liv. You must have been given a bigger dose than planned.”
“Planned? There was a plan to drug me?” she asked, her voice filled with outrage.
Rafael leaned over and stroked her face. “I’m sorry.”
As his hand continued down her neck to her shoulder, she shoved him backward and, with great effort, stood.
“Don’t you dare touch me!”