Hell Hath No Fury - chief_johnson (2024)

Chapter 1: Countless Hatreds

Chapter Text

Chapter 1.

Countless Hatreds

. . .

Two pictures were what kept her going. They were allowed more, up to fifteen as long as each arrived individually and was not p*rnographic in nature, and most women in this sh*thole used every inch of the twelve-by-twenty wall space allotted them for personal decoration.

Some of the lifers had weaseled more square footage from the guards, constructing wall to wall collages on the scuzzy white brick alongside their bunks, as if they were goddamn Martha Stewart. As if any of the people in those photographs, or any of the children who sent those ill-proportioned drawings and scribbled coloring book pages, actually still cared.

Her old celly hadn't received a single letter or school photo the entire time she was incarcerated, and when she made the mistake of commenting on the blonde in the newspaper clipping ("So, which one's your ho? The snow bunny or the MILF?"), it was her final query. Sondra Vaughn got an extra three years tacked onto her twelve-year sentence for that assault, but it had been worth it, to see the fat, pasty bitch's eyes bug out when the shiv entered her spare-tire abdomen, smooth as butter.

What she didn't enjoy was the mess. It might sound cliché, but she didn't like getting blood on her hands—until this place, until Sealview Women's Correctional Facility, she had almost exclusively gotten others to do her dirty work for her. Anton had called her his curly-haired jackal, a sly comparison to the scavengers that waited for larger, stronger predators to make a kill before claiming the prey for themselves. He'd meant it as a compliment, murmuring the nickname the way most men called their lovers "sweetheart" or "dearest," lips stretched into one of his rare, simpering smiles that looked too tight for his gaunt face. No doubt he had a few more choice names for her after she turned state's evidence against him eight years ago, in exchange for a reduced sentence.

It wasn't personal. Sondra had needed to ensure she'd be out of prison in time to raise their little girl, their Nessa. The baby who had been taken from her arms minutes after she was born, never getting to nurse at her mother's breast, nor be rocked to sleep with the lullabies Sondra knew by heart and sang quite well. Her first weeks in Sealview were spent cradling her pillow like an infant as she wetted it with tears and hummed "Hush, Little Baby."

Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird . . .

She'd been luckier than most. When they got out, half the women in here would be battling the courts, and siphoning thousands of dollars straight into their lawyers' pockets, to regain custody of their children. Baby Vanessa had gone to Sondra's brother out in Long Island, instead of getting lost and abused in the foster system. There were regular updates on her progress, during visiting days and over the phone; Sondra had missed her daughter's first words, first steps, first day of school, but she'd spoken to the child often, written to her with even more frequency.

On Nessa's sixth birthday, Sondra snuck her contraband cell phone into a bathroom stall and feigned the stomach flu, giggling between retches as she scrolled the photos her big brother texted from the princess-themed party. Pink everything. Nessa dressed as her very favorite princess, Moana. Uncle Royce the perfect Maui with his lion's mane of dark curls that rivaled even Sondra's itself. Other than Sondra's absence, it had been the best party a mother could wish for her child.

Two weeks later, Nessa and Royce were dead. A drunk driver, Sondra's sister-in-law relayed over the direct connect phone, her sobs and tearful voice disjointed from the crying woman on the other side of the glass partition. Sondra never much liked Denise, and she hated the sniveling cow even more after listening to her whine about her dead husband and sweet baby girl.

"It should have been you," Sondra told her quietly, before hanging up the handset and walking away.

She had stabbed her cell mate later that evening and gotten transferred to D Block ("Wonder how many of 'em actually like the 'D,'" an A-blocker had once commented, apropos of nothing, when the segregated group filed by on the opposite side of the barbed wire fence), with the other inmates too dangerous for gen pop. That was where the two photos resided by her bunk. And that was where she decided that Detective Amanda Rollins needed to suffer.

The little trailer trash slu*t was going to burn.

Declan Murphy, the man Sondra had hired and known as O'Rourke, was just as much to blame as the Rollins bitch, but no matter how far Sondra's feelers stretched beyond the prison walls, she could not locate the Mick bastard. One day he would return from dicking around with other people's lives undercover, and when he did, she would be waiting for him.

Until then, she was content to focus all her energy and her resources—which were considerable, despite (and, in some ways, because of) her location—on the blond whor* who once pointed a gun at her pregnant belly. Sondra had been good to the detective, acting as a mentor of sorts and going along with that female camaraderie bullsh*t, partly because Amanda had shown real promise. And how did the stringy-haired, skinny-ass bitch repay her? By threatening what Sondra held most dear. By ripping it away from her. And now Vanessa was dead; little Nessa, whose first laugh Sondra never got to hear, whose wedding she would never get to attend. Amanda might as well have pulled the trigger that day, eight years ago. She had killed Nessa all the same.

As Sondra finished giving Parker his complimentary handjob, she gazed over his hunched shoulder at the pictures on the wall: one of Nessa shortly before her death, wearing a felt cowgirl hat, red rain boots, and a tutu, and showing off her missing bottom tooth; the other a wedding announcement clipped from the newspaper, two women embracing in the grainy image above the legend Rollins-Benson.

She had the article memorized, from the names of the brides' parents (Captain Olivia Benson must have sprung immaculately from the womb like Jesus Christ himself, because no father was mentioned) to the church, Convent Avenue Baptist, where Reverend Lynn Bishop officiated.

That had struck Sondra as funny—a Baptist church named Convent, with a reverend named Bishop—but only the first few times she read it. Throw in a yarmulke, make sure you were facing Mecca, and you had yourself one helluva holy mulligan stew at the Rollins-Benson wedding.

Sondra recited the lines of the announcement silently to herself as CO Parker ejacul*ted in her hands. His come reminded her of bird sh*t, always warm and runny and distributed with total impunity. Didn't smell much better, either. She kept a towel handy for these very encounters, and she swiped her palms against it now, in full view of her jailhouse lothario. There wasn't a sensitive bone in his big, Neanderthal body, unless you counted his brain—and that was just weak, not in tune with his or anyone else's emotional state.

That was fine with Sondra. She didn't have a heart left to involve, let alone damage. They had buried her heart in the ground two years ago. "So much for being discreet," she said, corkscrewing the gunk from between her fingers with the towel, as if she were polishing the inside of a wine glass. Strange the things you missed in prison. She would have gotten on her knees for Matthew Parker just for the chance to unload a dishwasher, to sip a Chardonnay. "Warden catches you in here, you'll be out on your ass. Then we'll both be f*cked."

"Nah. Warden Young loves me." Parker flashed his sleazy grin that always looked like he was chewing gum with his mouth open—something banal and flavorless, Doublemint or Dentyne—even when he wasn't. Jesus, even the way he zipped his sh*t-brown pants and rebuckled his belt was disgusting. "He'll turn a blind eye. It was Barron I had to watch out for. She had a great big woody for me, Old Battleaxe Barron did. I could barely get any product past that tight-ass bitch, let alone a good beat off from one of my girls. She cracked down real hard after that business with my buddy Harris. Glad she retired before you came along, sweet thing."

Sondra was glad about that too, actually. Young was the laziest, most inept warden Sondra could imagine, and all of the guards had him in their back pockets. He was almost as corrupt as they were, though not smart enough to carry out any large operations on his own. Parker didn't have the brains for that, either, but he was a good errand boy and occasional lay, when they found an empty, unlocked closet where she could pull down her DayGlo orange pants and bend over.

It had been rape the first time. Back when Sondra still cared enough to fight him. Before she realized he could be of use to her. Now she controlled him, not the other way around. He'd been dumbfounded the first time she came onto him, eager as a little boy the next. She had loved Anton Nadari in her own way, but that relationship started out much like this one—as a means to an end. Once you had a man by the dick, you could lead him anywhere, just like a dog on a leash; Matthew Parker was a very good boy.

"All the same. I'd hate to risk losing our time together. Even Young would have to put us on bad report if one of the Pollyannas caught us." Sondra made a small, fearful gesture to the wide world outside her cell door, or at least here in D block.

She wasn't too concerned about getting caught. In her time among the more dangerous sector of women housed at Sealview, she had established herself as the alpha female. Not because of her size or physical strength—she was modest on both counts—but because of the power she'd wielded on the outside. The money.

Even in prison, wealth got you preferential treatment and lots of friends. Most of them just wanted to secure a handout once her stretch was over, but that was okay: people were more loyal when they thought something was in it for them. The rest recognized that the connections which had made it possible for her to snap her fingers and visit pain, suffering, rape, and sometimes even death on those who crossed her hadn't simply vanished while she was locked up. Those women avoided her altogether.

The guards—the Dirty Johns, not the Pollyannas—liked her because those same connections fueled their drug trade inside Sealview. A few dealt on the outside too, but nothing opened a junkie inmate's legs faster than the promise of a bump of cocaine or some oxy. Man supplied woman, woman serviced man, and they all had Sondra Ann Vaughn to thank for their little barter system.

But she still played up to Parker once in a while, just to ensure he didn't lose interest. "I can't go to the hole again. I'll go crazy, especially if I don't get to see you every day, Park," she concluded, all wide brown eyes and batting eyelashes. He ate that sh*t up, and she had the face for it.

He studied her closely, as if debating whether or not she was being sincere. Luckily he never spent too much time thinking about anything other than sex. "Aww, you know I can't resist that face." He pouted his bottom lip, feigning sympathy, then descended for a sloppy kiss, which consisted mainly of tongue. "Okay, I'll be a regular Boy Scout from now on. A Boy Scout who only f*cks you in the broom closet. And that's not a euphemism for the ass, although I'm down for that too."

As I well remember, she thought, but didn't let it show in her expression. She couldn't suppress an impatient sigh, though. He was stalling, and if he kept it up, she would get called to the mess hall without hearing the latest news he'd been dying to give her when he arrived at her open cell door with a giant smile and a giant hard-on. Quid pro quo, Parksy.

"Okay, okay." Parker put his hands up, as if warding off an attack. He thought he was so cute. "Don't shoot the messenger. I just came to tell you they had it. Week ago. I didn't find out till this morning. Turns out lesbo babies ain't the hottest buzz on the law enforcement wire."

Well, if you f*cking watched them like you were supposed to, those things wouldn't slip by you. Sondra bit her lip to keep from saying it out loud. So far he'd proven himself to be a wealth of information on the Rollins-Benson duo—particularly the Benson half—and continued to keep close tabs on them, at her behest. Plus, she was too excited to bitch at him. "What did they have? Boy or girl?"

"Girl. They named her Samantha, but they're calling her Sammie." Parker rolled his eyes. It was an unflattering look on him, too much white. More seizure victim than sarcasm. "Figures they'd give their kid a guy name. Probably grow up to be a feminist lesbian bitch just like them. Waste of good puss*, if you ask me."

Sondra barely heard anything pastSammie. She was trying to picture what the infant must look like. Probably still as scrunch-faced and splotchy as a newborn, and impossibly light in her mothers' arms. Amanda was very pretty, Sondra would give her that. If the child resembled her at all, it would be a beauty. Vanessa had been one of the prettiest babies Sondra had ever seen. "Can you get me a picture?" she blurted, unable to stop herself.

"All's I did was grab her ass a little—" Yet again, Parker was in the middle of soliloquizing about Amanda's cop wife (of course all those assholes stuck together), but he cut it short to blink at her, dazedly. "You want a picture of her ass? 'Cause I could probably arrange—"

"Of the baby," she said sharply, in no mood to deal with his lame jokes or his insufferable stupidity at the moment. In her life before, she used to joke with her girlfriends that she wanted a dumb pretty-boy for meaningless, no-strings sex. Well, she'd gotten her wish. (Except Parker came with plenty of strings). "Samantha."

She liked the name. But none of that Sammie nonsense. When Royce took to calling Vanessa "Van," it had annoyed Sondra wholeheartedly. Now, she would give anything to hear it again, and to hear her brother's big, booming laugh at her sharp-tongued response: "If I wanted my child to be called after some old white guy, I would've named her Charlton Heston."

That had been the only old white guy whose name she could remember at the time. So boisterous was Royce's amusem*nt, one of the guards had sauntered over and asked him to tone it down, as if everyone didn't already overhear everyone else's business in the cramped visiting area. "Since when do you even listen to The Doors?" she'd asked, partly to ignore the snot-nosed little Barney Fife who issued the order, partly because she wanted to keep Royce's humor going. She had loved making him laugh.

"Huh?" He stared at her in utter confusion for a moment, then burst into another raucous fit of mirth. He pretended to lock his lips with an invisible key when the guard started their way again, but he leaned forward and spoke to Sondra in a confidential voice tinged with affection and hints of a smile. "That'sJimMorrison, sis. Van Morrison is a different old white dude musician."

"Whatever, they all look the same." And more seismic, eardrum-rattling laughter.

God, she missed him.

"I dunno, Vaughn." Parker scrubbed a palm over the bristly, graying hair he would no doubt cling to far longer than was advisable. It was already the color and texture of a used Brillo pad. "Those two bitches keep a pretty tight leash on their brats. Not a good idea to go nosing around and chance them catching on. I thought you said the kids were part of phase two, anyway. What do you care what one of them looks like?"

She had said that, it was true. But perhaps she'd spoken in haste. (In all likelihood she had; their conversations were always rushed, communicated partially in code—hence, "phase two"—in case someone else was listening. Supposedly the cells weren't bugged, but Sondra had her doubts.) She didn't care about the older children. They would go to the highest bidders, and whatever happened to them after that, Sondra would likely never know. That kind of life chewed kids up and spat them out fast, though. Most didn't survive it.

But the youngest girl, Matilda . . . Sondra had an eye on her. She'd only seen a handful of blurry pictures of the little redhead, swiped through hurriedly on Parker's cell phone when she should have been working in the wood shop, but there was one clear shot of the three-year-old, fiery curls springing from her head in every direction as she frolicked on the playground. Though the coloring was the exact opposite of Vanessa, the toddler reminded Sondra so much of her daughter—especially those wild, bouncing curls—her eyes had teared.

Irrational though it might be, she wanted the child. Decided to keep her options open. The men in charge of the operation were just as likely to sell the little girl along with her siblings (pretty as she was, she would make them a mint), but if Sondra promised them a high enough price, they might follow through with the arrangements she had in mind. Matilda would have a few rough and lonely years, but Sondra would be there to make it all better once her time was served.

And now there was a baby. A baby who would only be seven years old by the time Sondra got out. Almost the same age that her Nessa would be now, had she survived the crash. At that age, kids could still adapt to their circ*mstances. If Baby Samantha became part of the plan, instead of being delivered over to certain death, or a life that closely resembled it, she would know no other mother besides Sondra. That was almost too tempting to pass up. But she needed to see the infant first. And they had time. Phase one didn't begin until May.

"Indulge me, Parks. You know how we girls love to fuss over babies." Sondra gave her most radiant smile. Prison life had hardened some of her finer features—sharpening her from delicate silver spoon into slender, whispering blade—but she was still beautiful. Even after one of the fish managed to pocket a pair of scissors and hack off several inches of curl during yard time a couple weeks ago. It had left her unruly ringlets flat on one side, making her look off balance somehow. She'd gotten a couple of her fellow D-blockers, Big Wanda and Derby, to teach the fish a lesson about manners and Sealview's pecking order.

Anything for you, S. The two women, who were as muscular as men, their hair slicked back in Elvis-style pompadours (God only knew what they'd used in place of hair gel), had practically bowed to her as they hustled from the cell to do her bidding. She'd had that effect on people since childhood, her friends always deferring to her to prevent awakening her immense and vindictive anger. Royce had been the only one who wasn't afraid of her, the only one who kept her in check.

Sorry, big brother, she thought into the ether. Those days are long over.

"Besides, it'll give you a chance to get up close and personal with that captain you're still hung up on. Olivia." Sondra rolled the name off her tongue like good caviar, smooth and salty-rich, a delicacy only a select few could partake in. She used to eat the stuff by the tinful, delighting Anton with her sheer, unapologetic decadence.

Parker sniffed at the suggestion, lips curling into an unpleasant sneer. "Hung up, my ass. That c*nt was nothing but trouble from the minute she got here. Flaunting it all over the place, then crying rape as soon as one of us looked at her funny. My buddy Harris didn't even put it in 'er, just gave 'er a little taste, and she got him locked up with a buncha lowlife criminals. Killed him, too. He'd still be here busting heads, if not for that raving bitch."

Sondra could almost recite the spiel about "my buddy Harris" right along with Parker, she'd heard it so many times. Personally, she thought the exiled corrections officer sounded like a disgusting prick who got off on torturing women, and more power to the Benson broad for having him sent up the river. But it was better to keep those feelings to herself in front of Parker. Besides, in her line of work she couldn't afford to pass judgment on someone else's crimes—those who raped for pleasure and those who facilitated it for revenge held no great distinction. And sympathizing with the victim was the worst thing you could do.

She had no sympathy for Olivia Rollins-Benson. The captain was simply phase one. The inciting incident to Sondra's one-woman tragedy starring Detective Amanda Rollins.

"Okay, yeah." Parker nodded decisively. A malicious little twinkle brightened his ashy gray eyes to their natural reptilian green, as if his lizard brain had activated and with it the scrim of color—and Sondra knew then that she had him. Hook, line, sinker. "I'll get you that picture, Vaughny. I'll do anything you want, if it means making that bitch pay."

Three months later, when it was time to roll out phase one, Sondra had added a third image to her wall: alongside Nessa in her cowgirl hat and tutu and the lesbian wedding announcement, a picture captured by telephoto lens from several yards behind the unsuspecting nanny depicted a beautiful infant with an ink blot of hair covering her fragile head, which peeked over the nanny's shoulder. Even Nessa's hair hadn't been that dark or that plentiful at such a young age.

The golden-brown eyes were wide and alert, also unusual in one so young. She was going to be extremely intelligent, this child, who already couldn't wait to take in every sight and sound around her. She was going to take after Sondra, always the most advanced student in class, always the most observant (the slyest, some would say). Sondra fancied that there was even a resemblance between herself and the baby—her baby. The birth mothers must have opted for the ethnically diverse sperm.

"Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird," she whisper-sang to the photograph, trailing her fingertip along the infant's pudgy cheek and smiling to herself. Seven years wasn't that long of a wait. It would go by in a blink, with her daughter out there waiting. Needing her.

But now? Now it was time to teach Rollins a lesson. Sondra pointed a finger gun at the blond woman's smiling face and pulled the trigger. Instantly reloading, she aimed for the dark-haired wife and blew her brains out too. "Nothing personal," she told the taller woman, giving a regretful shrug. The police captain should have chosen a different spouse, that was all. Tragic, really.

"Personal to me." Parker stood in the open doorway of Sondra's cell, arms crossed over his chest in a laughably masculine pose. Probably thought he was sneaky, just showing up like that, but she had heard the ring of keys on his duty belt jingling all the way down the corridor outside D block. (sh*t for Brains better not screw up her carefully laid plan with his ham-handed presence.) "I'd give anything to be one of the guys who finally knocks that carpet-munching slu*t off her high horse."

"Well, you're not going to, so shut the hell up about it," Sondra snapped, rounding on him with a fierceness that made him draw back in surprise. She seldom lost her cool—even in court, when they handed down her sentence, she hadn't flinched—but she was sick of hearing how much he would have enjoyed getting a piece of the blond bitch's wife.

She should probably be grateful he couldn't let bygones be bygones. His grudge against Benson was the exact in that Sondra had needed; if he hadn't spent the day waving that wedding announcement in the face of anyone willing to listen—and many who weren't, Sondra included—while bragging that he'd almost banged the brunette chick "before she turned lesbo," Sondra might never have made the connection between the captain and Rollins. She might not have spent the last year cultivating the perfect retribution for the detective, making sure everything was airtight, everyone understood their role, and no one would back out at the last minute.

Sometime in the past, she couldn't remember when exactly or by whom (probably some arrogant man whose word she'd taken with a grain of salt), but she'd heard it said that you could rule the world from inside a prison cell. There was some truth to that. But Sondra didn't want to rule the world. Just a very small blond-haired, blue-eyed part of it.

"Sorry, Parks. Just on edge, I guess." It wouldn't do to get on Parker's bad side right now. An integral piece of this operation was riding on his shoulders, and if his feelings got hurt, Sondra risked losing her key to the outside world. Her obedient little doggy. "I can't believe it's finally go time. Aren't you excited? I barely even slept last night."

A slow smile began to spread across Matthew Parker's brutish features, the excitement contagious, as Sondra hoped it would be. He had that reptilian gleam in his eye again when he pushed off the barred door with his shoulder, prepared to move on with rounds. "Yeah, babe, I been waiting on this day since I found out Her Highness there was UC. Little narc bitch."

For a moment, Sondra observed the happy women in the smudged print that hung between her daughters' photographs. "Hey," she called to Parker before he sauntered off to the neighboring cell. He stopped short to look at her through the stationary bars the door rolled back on, and she stepped closer, peering at him from the other side. "Her Highness. She as pretty as she looks in that picture?"

Parker glanced over her shoulder at Benson—the woman he had dubbed "Her Highness," though he was just as likely to call her one of various female body parts, or sometimes Kat, the name she'd gone by undercover in Sealview.Here, kitty kitty, he murmured more than a few times, as he and Sondra plotted in feverish whispers, the paper brides overseeing all.

"Nice firm little ass, yeah. But those tit*, boy oh boy . . . " He gave a low, appreciative whistle, hands cupped wide in front of his chest, indicating a large pair of breasts. "Everything's probably sagging now, though. She's way over forty. All dried up."

It was all Sondra could do not to reach through the bars and throttle him. She was months away from forty-seven. Smiling tightly, she spoke in her most honeyed and measured tone. "I meant her face. She looks awfully pretty for a cop. Is it just the picture, or . . . ?"

"Oh. Hmm." Parker frowned as if he were deep in thought, concentrating hard on conjuring mental images of anything above the captain's shoulders. Eventually he nodded like he was conceding a point. "I wouldn't put a bag over her head. A lot of the chicks in here are real messed up in the face. Jacked up teeth and sh*t from the drugs and getting smacked around. But she wastoopretty, you know? Should've been my first clue something was off. Hey, wait a minute, you sureyouain't UC?"

He smiled at his suaveness, and Sondra couldn't help herself—she joined him. He'd given her just what she hoped for. "Tell them the buyer said not to touch her face. Anything from the neck down is fair game." Sondra Vaughn didn't excite easily, but now she clamped her hands down on his, pressed her own face between the bars as far as it would go, and hissed, "I don't care what they do to her body, but I want her face perfect for that blond bitch. I want Amanda Rollins to look into the face of the woman she loves and see every ounce of pain and suffering she's caused."

. . .

. . .

Chapter 2: Mother's Milk

Chapter Text

And I'll sleep in the sea, and I'll wait there beneath
The mud and forgotten dreams and disease
And what is the secret I'll drain from your soul
And sweet is the sugar I'll drink from your skull

- Swans

Chapter 2.

Mother's Milk

. . .

"Ouch!" Olivia cringed and instinctively shrank from the sharp pain in her nipple, but the mouth latched onto it did not readily let go. Hissing through her teeth, she skimmed a finger between her daughter's gums to break suction and held the baby away from her breast, to gaze down as sternly as one could at a three-and-a-half-month-old. Which wasn't very. "Samantha Grace. No biting Mommy."

Samantha cast a placid look up at Olivia, gurgling as if she hadn't just tried to gnaw through a rather important and extremely tender body part with her strong little gums. The breast milk frothed at the corners of her mouth as she offered a fleeting smile that made it almost impossible to be too put out.

Noah had been a serious baby who grew into a serious child, the official worrier of Olivia's brood (a trait that, in turn, worried Olivia—had she passed it on to him? Would he grow up to be fretful and anxious?); Matilda had been the happiest, most easygoing infant on the planet, and now at almost four years old, continued to be her mommies' little ray of sunshine; and though Olivia had missed out on much of Jesse's babyhood, she knew from Amanda's vivid accounts—both then and now—that their middle child had been a pistol from the start.

But Samantha Grace Rollins-Benson was their wild card. A deep thinker, who already looked at her mothers as if she were slightly exasperated by their insistence on helping her. She often entertained herself in the crib or the swing, appearing perturbed whenever she was interrupted. And though she gave affection freely, it had to be on her own terms. Smiles were bestowed with even more discretion.

"She's as stubborn as you are," had become Olivia and Amanda's tagline for their baby girl, usually recited in unison and accompanied by a skirmish of jinxes, pinches, and pokes.

Stubborn and a biter, apparently. Like everything else she did early—from rolling over to reaching for toys—it seemed she was already teething, a development Olivia had refused to believe until the Night of a Thousand Tears, when she spent hours rocking a squalling Samantha, who would accept no less than Mommy and a wet washcloth for chewing. Now, Olivia knew how the washcloth must have felt.

"Maybe we should have named her Vampira," said Amanda, sauntering into the bedroom from the door jamb on which she'd been leaning. "Or Buffy."

Olivia hadn't realized she had an audience for her induction as a chew toy, though it wasn't out of the ordinary for one of them to watch the other breastfeeding their daughter. The supplemental nursing system, which consisted of a bottle-like container to hold Amanda's expressed milk and a plastic tube as thin and pliable as a spaghetti noodle, had been the perfect Christmas present from Amanda. (On the tag that dangled from the box, the detective had scrawled Olivia's name, of which the O and the V formed a pair of crudely drawn and highly asymmetrical breasts.)

With the tube taped to her breast, the pinpoint hole aligned at her nipple, and the bottle resting on her chest, delivering the milk like fluid through an IV, Olivia was able to simulate nursing her child. "Aww darlin', don't cry," Amanda had said, after explaining what the SNS was for, and that she wanted Olivia to share in breastfeeding duty, an important part of bonding between mother and baby. "You know I can't handle it with these pregnant lady hormones."

But she had cried—they both did—cried and marveled that she would get to experience breastfeeding after all, a ship she'd thought had long since sailed for her; that she could have such a connection with one of her children, providing nourishment for them (from her own body, for all intents and purposes) in a way she hadn't been able to with the others; that she belonged to someone who cared enough to give her such a thoughtful, heartfelt, extraordinary gift.

Then, when Samantha arrived, Olivia had found she got almost as much enjoyment out of watching Amanda nurse the baby as doing it herself. It was a bit of a family affair at times, with either mother camped out at the other's side, an arm around the waist to help cradle their daughter, a head gently resting on a shoulder as they wondered at what they had made, a finger lazily twirling a lock of hair as they listened to the sweet little sucks and grunts from their Sammie.

The love Olivia felt in those moments, absolute and bigger than anything she'd ever dreamed could exist, left her breathless.

"I thought Buffy slayed the vampires. Slew?" Olivia looked up from guiding her nipple cautiously back to Samantha's striving, baby-bird mouth, and caught Amanda snapping a picture with her cell phone. "And I better not see that on Facebook, or vampires won't be the only ones getting their ass kicked."

"Relax, it's for my private collection." Amanda winked slyly, sidling up to the old-fashioned wooden rocker where Olivia sat, and bending down to peck her on top of the head. "You kiss our kids with that mouth,cher?"

Ever since their trip to Amanda's hometown last June, when she'd only been a few weeks pregnant and not even showing, a bit of the Cajun influence from her maternal grandmother's side of the family had steadily crept back into the detective's vocabulary. Olivia couldn't say she minded. Each inflection came with a certain amount of co*ckiness or sass, and always a flirtatious gesture of some sort—like the wink, the kiss. It was ridiculously cute and undeniably sexy.

"Yup. Their mama, too," said Olivia, tipping her head backwards against the carved crest rail, lips upturned and lightly puckered. She didn't have to wait long, and she sighed into the tender kiss she received, her skin atingle as Amanda's fingers coasted the length of her neck, her breast atingle with the sensation of her daughter nursing.

Some of the literature claimed she might naturally begin producing milk on her own, body responding to the suckling infant. While that hadn't happened, Olivia did sense an occasional stirring—a vague prickle and a heaviness in her breasts that she knew wasn't imagined. She loved that feeling. Somehow it made her more present in her body than she had been for years, or possibly ever.

After a childhood spent withdrawing from negative emotion, learning to separate from herself when reality was too painful (dissociating, Lindstrom would correct her), and after an adulthood spent learning to compartmentalize so well she sometimes couldn't access her emotions at all, she'd worried a vital part of herself had been lost along the way. Whatever made her human; whatever made her body her own.

But then there was Samantha. Amanda. Noah, Jesse, Tilly. Her family and her mantra. Those were the names she repeated to herself these days, not the names of her would-be rapists. They grounded Olivia, brought her back to herself no matter how lost she might be. They were the air in her lungs, the heart beating in her chest. The reminder that she had a soul.

Amanda.Noah.Jesse.Tilly.Sam.

"I'll delete it if you want me to," Amanda murmured, perching on the armrest of the rocking chair, though it couldn't have been a very comfortable seat, and displaying the screen of her iPhone. The photo she'd just taken was illuminated there, showing Olivia with breast at the ready, the flesh around the areola held back by her fingertips, nipple shadowed in the half-light. "Y'all are just so pretty I couldn't resist."

Itwasa lovely photo, captured at exactly the right moment. Olivia wasn't fond of having her picture taken anymore; she had tolerated it as a younger woman, aware that she was what most people deemed "attractive," and she participated in current group photos and family photos, for posterity's sake—mostly her children's. (She had only a handful of pictures of herself with her own mother.) But she preferred to be behind the camera these days, especially since finding out Calvin Arliss had been secretly photographing her for years. Just like her rapist father Hollister, collecting newspaper articles about his bastard daughter, to what end she didn't know; would never know. And didn't want to.

She had texted Amanda a revealing selfie or two a while back, just to get the blonde's attention. And boy, did it ever work. Posed during Amanda's morning shower, the shots were little more than some off-the-shoulder and deep cleavage action, with a smoldering look over the rim of her glasses, but when Olivia sent them off from behind her captain's desk, the detective had nearly spewed a mouthful of lunchtime coffee across Kat's desk and her own.Happy Friday, Det. Dimples, read the accompanying text. And a happy Friday it had been indeed, when they were finally back home and in bed.

Then there was Amanda's suggestion that they record a—ahem—home video of themselves, for the heck of it. She'd tried to play it off as a joke, but the hopefulness in her voice had been unmistakable. Olivia was considering it. She'd never filmed a sex tape before: not when she was young and foolish enough to participate in such a production (granted the cameras back then were huge and obtrusive, but still); not when she was a detective third-grade in SVU and slogging through the vile things people recorded themselves doing to others, especially children; not when the digital age hit, bringing with it a whole new means of violating someone's privacy and destroying their reputation.

She didn't have to worry about any of that with Amanda. And it might be kind of sexy and exciting to film themselves—Amanda, at least. Soon, maybe. While her breasts were still delectably full and ripe from the milk they produced, turning her into a hefty C-cup, the blue veins flowing beneath her lovely pale skin like hillside rivers in the snow. While she still had that soft little pouch of skin on her belly, left over from giving their baby girl a safe place to grow. The detective despised that "flab," as she called it, but Olivia found her hands inexplicably drawn there whenever they made love.

Yes, very soon.

"Keep it," Olivia said, guiding Amanda's thumb away from the trash can icon below the picture. She might not like looking at herself, but she loved the way Amanda saw her, and the picture reflected that: she was gazing down at their daughter, face framed by her side-swept hair, eyes filled with love, heart on her sleeve. Beautiful because of the beauty surrounding her. "For your eyes only. And someday maybe this little piranha's, if she stops biting Mommy's boobies. Isn't that right, Sammie?"

"Yeah, kid, leave that to me." Amanda leaned in to confide the naughty statement to the baby, jutting a thumb at herself like a boxing coach in an old black and white movie, claiming her fighter was undefeated. Only thing missing was the stogy. She stole a sideways glance at Olivia, the corner of her mouth twitching with a suppressed grin, waiting.

"Amanda Jo." Olivia clucked her tongue, pretending to be scandalized. To Samantha, whose eyes were rolling drowsily in their sockets now, one pudgy hand lightly kneading the breast to which she was attached, Olivia said in a soft, storytime voice, "Your mama is an incorrigible pervert, little love. Yes, she is. Yes, she is."

Snickering, Amanda joined in the baby talk ("Well, your mommy shouldn't have such a great rack then, should she, peanut? No, she shouldn't, no ma'am"), their nonsense banter lulling Samantha further, her chin working with gradually slowing gulps. But the moment Olivia started to ease her breast away, Samantha's eyes went doe-wide and her mouth resumed its greedy suction.

"Good Lord, she's really going to town," Amanda commented. Before she could follow up with anything more suggestive, their attention went to the doorway, where their second youngest padded in on Olaf slippers that matched herFrozenjammies. Matilda was toting her plush Elsa doll under one arm, her lookalike Anna under the other, and yawning so grandly, she could have been belting the big note from "Let It Go." Disney+ had become a staple in the Rollins-Benson household.

"I'm sleepy, Mommy," Matilda announced, wandering into the bedroom and over to the rocking chair, the Arendelle sisters' exceptionally long legs trailing the carpet on either side of her. She'd outgrown the toe-walking that had concerned Olivia last year, a habit the pediatrician assured her had most likely been the little girl's attempt to imitate Noah's constant dancing. Now, Miss Tilly was enrolled in dance classes of her own, and already leaps and bounds ahead of her peers, thanks to her big brother and private coach.

But, at a month shy of just four years old, Matilda was still very much a baby. And still very much a Mommy's girl. She extended her arms, Elsa and Anna peeping out from under her tiny armpits like she had them in the world's cutest headlock. "Hold me." And remembering her manners a moment later: "Please."

Except she forgot the L.Pease. Olivia's heart melted a little bit and she cupped her palm to the child's fair, freckled cheek. As far as she was concerned, the only downside to four children was not having enough arms to hold them all. And despite efforts to foster some independence in her gentlest, most sweet-spirited child, Olivia relished every minute that Matilda clung to her.

She would walk through fire for any of her children; lay down her life for them, if need be. But they each had their distinct personalities, their special virtues, and there was something healing in the way Tilly chose her. Olivia had felt it the moment she held her daughter for the first time, and every time since.

Nothing could completely undo the feelings of rejection Serena Benson had instilled in Olivia from birth—from conception, most likely ("Women never used to talk to their bellies the way these silly young mothers do today," Serena had confided once, rolling her eyes at a pregnant woman stroking and singing to her baby bump while seated on a park bench)—but Matilda's love and affection, her sweet kisses and endless cuddles, came close. So close.

"Can you be Mommy's big girl and wait just a few more minutes for me to hold you, lovebug?" Olivia tucked Matilda's curls uselessly behind her small ears, smiling as the coppery ringlets sprang right back up again. Such a bold and unruly head of hair for such a compliant little person.

"'Cause Amantha's hungry?" Matilda inquired, rising on tiptoe for a better look at her baby sister, Olaf's pointy carrot noses smooshing into the carpet. She hadn't quite gotten the knack ofthe infant's full name yet, often combining it with Amanda's name to form the near-missesAmanthaandSamanda.

Olivia thought the mispronunciations were adorable, but to save on confusion she nodded and said, "Yes, bug, Sammie's eating. I think her belly's almost full, but . . . " She lowered her voice to a whisper and peeked up at Amanda, who was fluffing the little girl's curls seconds after Olivia smoothed them. "I bet Mama will hold you, if you ask her."

"Hold me?" Matilda turned a pair of imploring blue eyes up at Amanda. Ha! Mama was finally getting a taste of her own medicine; she used that sad puppy look to get her way all the time.

But the detective had a stronger constitution than Olivia, at least when there were dolls involved. Suspiciously, she eyed the monarchs tucked under Matilda's arms, as if they were suspects in a despicable crime. She must have decided their cloth bodies, constructed more like stuffed animals than the baby dolls that struck fear in her pediophobe heart, were relatively harmless, because a moment later she patted her knees and said, "Sure, sugar booger, come on up."

In the process of being lifted, Matilda lost her grip on the dolls and they slumped to the floor, blessedly facedown, their permanent smiles and sightless embroidered eyes hidden from view. Amanda made no attempt to pick them up, instead settling back on the arm of the rocking chair with Tilly snuggled against her. The little girl gazed curiously from her sister to Olivia's breast for a long time, then patted Amanda's chest through her faded MetallicaRide the Lightningt-shirt.

Olivia didn't care for the macabre image of the man being electrocuted on the back, but she couldn't complain when Amanda slipped off her pajama bottoms after the kids were in bed and strutted around the apartment in just the t-shirt—her long hair concealed the guy's skeletal face, anyway—and panties that seldom covered both cheeks. Ride the lightning, indeed.

"Why do sissy get food there?" Matilda asked, with the earnestness of her older brother and the inquisitiveness of her big sister. But whereas the older children regarded feedings with wary glances and, at one point, outright disgust ("What is she doing to your boobies!" Jesse had shrieked, the first time Amanda nursed in front of her), Tilly was still fascinated.

The decision to let the older children observe—or not observe, if they preferred—their new sister's mealtimes had been a topic of serious discussion for weeks, before and after Samantha's arrival. Amanda had no reservations, maintaining that it was a healthy, natural part of motherhood, and one they would want to perform promptly once Samantha got the hang of it.

While Olivia mostly agreed, and hadn't shied from using the SNS around her daughters, it had taken longer to feel comfortable baring a breast in front of her son. She was discreet, and Noah had grown bored of the whole process after the third or fourth time, bless his heart, but she'd been on the lookout for any changes in his behavior. Thankfully he was the same introspective, quiet, dance-obsessed little guy as before. Olivia hated that she still worried about his background sometimes—it was so easy to forget, until he asked questions like, "Did I do that when I was a baby?" and it all came flooding back to her. She hadn't known how to respond; whether Ellie had ever breastfed or not was anybody's guess, and Alexa Pearson couldn't even afford a crib, let alone an SNS or the supplements needed to induce natural lactation. Not to mention the handful of failed foster homes.

"No, sweetheart," she'd finally answered, heart heavy. "You drank from bottles. Like Tilly did when she first came home, remember? I made her formula and warmed it under the faucet. That's what you drank, too."

"Okay. Good," had been the decisive response. "I don't think I would like it the way Sammie drinks it. No offense, Mom."

She'd had to laugh at that.

Meanwhile, Jesse refused to believe she had ever suckled, period. "Hush up, Mama," was her automatic response whenever Amanda teased her about it, poking lightly at her squirmy six-year-old body. The child was so boneless she was practically reptilian.

"You want me to take this one?" Amanda asked of Matilda's question, eyebrow raised amusedly at Olivia. They had both fielded the preschooler's many pop quizzes about nursing, usually with whichever mother wasn't performing the task acting as spokeswoman, but apparently the answers weren't satisfactory to a three-year-old.

"I got it." Olivia cast a fond smile up at Amanda and patted Samantha's bottom rhythmically. The baby was a blink or two away from full sleep, but her hand remained cupped possessively at Olivia's breast. Just like Mama. "Sammie eats this way because mommies' bodies make milk for their babies, bug. And this is where the milk comes from."

"Like cows?" Jesse had asked, when given the same explanation.

Matilda was slightly more decorous than her elder sister. She nodded carefully, as if processing some dubious information. One day, she would make an excellent journalist. Or, even better, a judge. "Like crying," she said, repeating the less bovine comparison Amanda had made to Jesse—when the detective finished laughing, that is—after the cow comment.

"Yes, sweet girl, like crying." Olivia grazed the pad of her thumb down Matilda's cheek, and then the other side, tracing imaginary tear tracks and pushing out her bottom lip in a silly pout. "The way your eyes can make tears when you're sad. Mama's breasts can make milk when Sammie's hungry."

Head tipped back on Amanda's shoulder, Matilda looked up at her mama wonderingly and patted the band t-shirt again, matching the soft beat of Olivia's hand on Samantha's diapered bottom. "Is it owie?"

"Nope. Not owie." Amanda folded both lips over her teeth and chomped them lightly against Matilda's shoulder, making the little girl giggle and scrunch the shoulder to her ear. "Feels just like that, Tilly-billy."

Well. Maybe once your nipples were no longer so sore and cracked they actually bled, Olivia thought. That had been an experience, and had put quite a damper on foreplay for a week or so, there near the beginning. "If this is the beauty of motherhood, I am deeply unimpressed," she'd groaned, as Amanda snickered and applied droplets of breast milk to her raw skin, and when that remedy didn't work—lanolin ointment. God's gift to nursing mothers. (Having the surrounding flesh kissed and caressed by Amanda's warm, sympathetic lips helped, too.)

"Can I have some?" Matilda asked next, taking both mothers by surprise. She'd made a similar query early on, but seemed to have forgotten it in the weeks since. Ever helpful, she reached out to pat Olivia's covered breast this time, clarifying her meaning, in case confusion was the reason behind the long silence. "From there."

"Umm . . . " Olivia glanced down at the nearly empty bottle on her chest, fretting her lower lip for a moment. The books all said it was normal for a child Matilda's age to make such a request; that it was equally fine to assent. But Olivia wasn't entirely convinced. She didn't want to be the reason her daughter regressed or ended up in therapy before she reached high school.

"Tell you what, Tilly Vanilli," Amanda piped in, resting a hand on Olivia's shoulder for a reassuring squeeze.I got this. "Next time Mama's feeding Sam, I'll let you give it a try too, okay? You might not like the taste, though. It's awful sweet, huh Mommy?"

That, Olivia could absolutely attest to—the sweetness. It had been an accident, at least the first time. Amanda's hormones were up and down in the weeks immediately following Samantha's birth, the increased prolactin and oxytocin her body produced making her, by turns, disinterested in sex ("How 'bout tonight I just watch, babe?") and insatiably horny ("Woman, get your ass in this bed right quick"). But it was that first postpartum org*sm that really got their attention. Amanda had looked just as startled as Olivia when her nipples started to leak, the cream-colored fluid dribbling down the sides of her breasts, towards her armpits. "Aw, sh*t," she'd muttered, grabbing a throw blanket to dab herself dry. "Sorry."

Then, in a totally inspired and uncharacteristically spontaneous moment, Olivia had requested, "Let me," and—permission granted—leaned in to lap up the milk with her tongue. She didn't make a habit of consuming Amanda's milk (that was for their baby girl), and the detective had taken to pumping before sex to reduce spillage, but the eroticism in that first taste, the unexpected mellow sweetness, like innocence with a drop of vanilla, had awakened in Olivia a passion like she'd never known. She craved Amanda now, more than ever before. And once in a while, if that lovely, soothing nectar happened to find its way past her lips, then so be it.

"Mm-hmm." Cheeks aflame, Olivia ushered herself back into the present, where Matilda was agreeing amiably to the arrangement, as the little sweetheart agreed to almost everything, and Amanda was grinning knowingly at Olivia's red face.Shush, Olivia mouthed, and stuck her tongue out at the blonde, whose response was to grin even harder.

After a year of marriage and close to two years living together, they had developed their own private language of sorts—mostly hand signals and facial expressions—for discussing sensitive topics in front of the children. A few revolved around work (the Shaka sign near one ear either meant an important phone call, usually with the chief, or being summoned back to the precinct; murders were described by the weapon of choice: finger guns, air-stabbing, invisible nooses around crooked necks, and so on), but the majority were sexual in nature. Scissors cutting through imaginary paper. A quick, lizardlike swipe of the tongue. Index and middle fingers beckoning suggestively, sometimes incorporating a third digit, if the messenger was feeling frisky.

Tonight, Amanda introduced a new one: an upraised eyebrow and a fist brought down on its side, like a gavel, against her leg. She repeated the motion a few times, while Olivia stared, nose and brow crinkled in confusion, and finally guessed, "Hammer?"

"I was going for pounding or banging, but that works," Amanda said, conceding with an easy shrug. She flashed another devilish wink and a smile. Postpartum couldn't keep Amanda Jo Rollins-Benson or her libido down for long, no sir.

"At least you didn't say f-i-s-t-i-n-g."

"Ooh, Captain." Amanda puckered her lips, elongating the word.Ooohh. "Dirty."

Before Olivia could think up a decent comeback, Jesse marched into the room, took one look at the breast Olivia had removed from Samantha's slack mouth to dab with a burp cloth, and threw her hands up in exasperation. "Oh Lord," she said loudly, shielding her eyes and peering through a crack in her small fingers. "Is it gone yet?"

Olivia clucked her tongue, but peeled off the medical tape and unwound the SNS from her neck and shoulders, setting it aside on the nightstand. She tucked her breast back into the loose camisole she was wearing, and announced wryly, "You can look, Jesse Eileen. My hideous deformity will no longer offend thine eye."

"Huh?" Jesse lowered her hand guardedly, face scrunched up in an expression that, according to Amanda, the little girl had inherited from Olivia.

"Think about it. All that eye-f*cking we used to do?" the detective had said, when Olivia pointed out that it was unlikely any of their children would inherit her physical traits. "And you were there for her birth. I'm just sayin', youcouldbe the father, we don't know . . . "

It had been impossible not to giggle at the notion, especially when Amanda went on to add that she'd been present for Olivia's introduction to Noah—the first to lay eyes on him in fact, while Olivia was the first to free him from the womblike dresser drawer, to hold him and mother him—therefore, she, Amanda, was clearly the baby daddy.

Clearly.

That left Matilda, their little fairy child, who was just as likely to have sprung from the flowers and sunshine she exuded as from any human birth parents, and baby Samantha, whom Olivia truly had impregnated Amanda with—she was the one to insert the syringe and release the donor sperm that fertilized Amanda's egg.

Maybe she really would pass some things on to her kids, after all. Considering the hodgepodge of DNA in their family, Olivia's chances seemed as good as anyone else's.

"Never mind," she told Jesse, waving her eldest daughter over to the rocker, where she could marvel at her baby sister up close. Luckily, Samantha had received a warm welcome from all her siblings, with only some minor glimpses of jealousy since her debut three and a half months ago.

Noah had expressed disappointment that he hadn't gotten a brother this time, but he brightened when Olivia listed all the fun things he could teach Samantha that he'd been too young to teach his other sisters—namely dance. Miss Jess, sassy little britches that she was, had also been the hardest to sell on adding a new member to the household ("I think we have enough already," she'd said, dead serious, when her mothers announced the pregnancy), but now she was Samantha's biggest champion and the only person capable of making the baby laugh. They went into hysterics together for no other reason than a silly noise or a surprise sneeze. And Matilda thought baby Sam was hers, plain and simple. If allowed, she would have carted the little one around like herFrozendolls.

But the wonder of a quiet, sleeping infant wasn't lost on the older children, no matter how well Samantha had acclimated. When baby didn't sleep, no one in the Rollins-Benson family slept.

"Whatcha need, pumpkin?" Olivia asked softly, gathering the little girl into the crook of her left arm, alongside the rocking chair. It was her weaker side, the one that throbbed from shoulder to wrist on rainy days, and the one she habitually rotated to dispel stiffness (didn't work), but it never felt defective when she held her children.

Jesse swiped at the cobweb of blond hair that always seemed to knit itself across her forehead, and gazed up with an expression so serious Olivia knew she was about to get bushwhacked. In what way she couldn't say, but the forty-five pounds of first-grader next to her, clad in Noah's outgrown Spider-Man pajamas, was gearing up for something big. "I have an important question, Mommy," Jesse said, her somber tone making it difficult for Olivia to keep a straight face. "Hear me out, okay?"

"Okay . . . " Olivia tucked in her bottom lip, suppressing a giggle. She didn't know many six-year-olds who used phrases like "hear me out," but then, she didn't know many six-year-olds being raised by an Olivia Benson and an Amanda Rollins, either.

"I think you should let me 'n Tilly 'n Noah sleep with you and Mama tonight. In your bed." Jesse exhaled heavily, as if a huge weight had just lifted from her small, polyester-adorned frame. Sometimes she resembled Amanda so identically, whether in personality, facial features, build, or pattern of speech, it was uncanny. Look out, world. "We can help y'all take care of Sammie if she wakes up."

"Is that so?" Olivia snuck an amused glance at Amanda, whose face was nestled in Matilda's curls under the pretense of giving kisses, but whose shoulders were noticeably quaking with stifled laughter. Turning her attention back to Jesse, Olivia cleared her throat and leaned in for a secretive exchange. "You know what's funny?" she stage-whispered, her forehead almost pressed against the little girl's. "I don't think I heard a question anywhere in there."

Without missing a beat, Jesse ducked down to look Olivia square in the eye, placing a hand on both of her shoulders and whispering, "Please, Mommy?"

It all became very clear what was happening then, especially when Olivia spotted her son peeking around the doorframe from the lit hallway, straining to overhear. She and her wife were being played like a couple of well-rosined violins, their two older children guiding the bows. The little stinkers had sent Matilda in first, to soften them up before working the real angle: securing a family sleepover in Mommy and Mama's bed.

The worst part wasn't discovering that her kids were evil geniuses, or that they thought she and Amanda were gullible saps; it was realizing that their plan was working. Despite her better judgment and all the parenting tips that discouraged co-sleeping, Olivia felt a strong urge to say yes. She suddenly and desperately wanted her babies close, even if it meant not getting a good night's sleep herself, even if it set back the little bit of progress they'd made at keeping all the kids in their own beds for full nights at a time.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with that weird cartoon I told y'all not to watch earlier, would it?" Amanda asked, in a wry voice that suggested she knew that was exactly what this was about.

"Ma-a-a-ybe," Jesse drawled, assuming such an innocent pose, a halo practically dinged into existence above her, as golden as her hair.

"Jesse Eileen . . . "

While the little girl attempted to verbally tap dance her way out of trouble with Mama, Olivia tried to make sense of the sudden, overwhelming need to have her children and Amanda near. She always cherished their time together, sometimes barely unable to contain her eagerness to leave work and be home with them again.

Returning to the job after Samantha's birth had been particularly poignant and painful; Olivia wanted to be there for every moment of her daughter's rapidly changing development. Each day brought with it something new and awe-inspiring, everything from the infant trying to vocalize (so far "agoo" and raspberry noises were her entire lexicon) to discovering her hands and feet. She hadn't gotten those early months with Noah or Jesse, and duty had frequently called her away from baby Tilly. So much lost time she would never get back.

But this was different, even beyond that. She had expected some anxiety, with the anniversary coming up—it was unavoidable, really, although the past two years had been easier, with the distraction of a new relationship with Amanda, then a new marriage. Nothing would compare to that first year, when she almost couldn't leave the apartment, and the ten year anniversary would inevitably seem significant. Tomorrow was only nine years. Nine years since Lewis had stepped quietly from the shadows and changed her whole world. Why did it feel like she should be looking over her shoulder, holding onto her family just a little tighter? Why did it feel like she was running out of time?

Realizing she had let her thoughts run away with her—falling into that catastrophic thinking Lindstrom warned her about—she dismissed the knot in her stomach and motioned Noah into the bedroom, smiling encouragingly when he hung back at first. It was probably a boy thing, that hesitation to join in with a gaggle of girls, but Olivia worried about his tendency to watch from the sidelines. She knew what it was to be an outsider in her own home, with her own mother. Her son was never going to feel that way, as long as she had breath in her lungs.

"Come here, little man," she said, making room for him to sit on her knee. He obliged happily, almost skipping forward the last few steps, and assuaging most of her concern with a wide grin, all dimples and disheveled curls. Then, just as quickly as her fear had reared its ugly head, it disappeared altogether when Noah looked down at his baby sister with complete adoration.

"What do you think, Mama?" Olivia asked, sliding her gaze in Amanda's direction with added emphasis, indicating which parent the children should be focusing their coercive tactics on. "Do we have room for three more?"

Crestfallen, Amanda gave a defeated little huff at the sight of three sets of blue eyes—and Olivia's—turned hopefully up at her. She bopped her fist against her thigh again, the signal growing weaker with each repetition. The poor thing really wanted to get laid tonight. "But . . . "

"Yeah, Mama, can we?"

"Can we, Ma?"

"Pease."

As long as she was already fighting dirty, Olivia decided she might as well contribute a pouty lip to the kids' efforts. That did it. Amanda groaned, relenting almost at once with a grouchy, drawn out, "Fine." But she was smiling when their children celebrated with a hushed cheer—Noah and Jesse exchanged a silent high-five—and scampered over to the bed, the older two hoisting Matilda by upraised arms onto the tall queen mattress.

"I'm gonna have blue balls now, I hope you know," Amanda murmured, easing their sleeping daughter out of Olivia's arms to be deposited in the bedside bassinet. Plans were to move Jesse into Noah's room soon (promises of a bunk bed required) and set up the full crib for Samantha in Matilda's room, but neither of them had the heart to make the transition just yet.

Subsequently, sex had become a catch-as-catch-can occurrence, often taking place in random corners of the apartment, and at the oddest hours of the day. The breast milk incident, for example, had been a nooner, while the kids were at the park with Lucy, and Samantha napped in her swing. Gigi, the long-suffering bystander to her owners' sexual antics, had kept watch over the baby while her mothers wrestled on the couch.

Blue balls seemed like a very real possibility, if they didn't get some privacy—some unrushed, unrestrained org*sms—soon. Maybe a weekend away, just the two of them . . . . It didn't even need to be someplace fancy or expensive. Just somewhere they could ravish each other for two or three days straight, without keeping one eye on the door, an ear tuned to the slightest sound. Amanda's birthday had already come and gone a month ago, their one-year anniversary a month before that, but they didn't need an occasion for weekend getaway sex. Olivia liked surprising her wife for no particular reason, anyway. The delight in Amanda's eyes was reason enough.

"Sorry, love," Olivia whispered in the detective's ear, as they strolled to the bed, an arm around each other's waists and Sammie secure in the crook of her mama's elbow. "I just . . . want everybody close tonight. I'll give your sad little balls my undivided attention another time."

"You better." Amanda followed the good-natured warning with a playful pinch to Olivia's rear, her lightweight pajama bottoms not offering much in the way of resistance. But instead of teasing Olivia with more pinches when she squirmed from the touch, Amanda pulled her in and quietly asked, "You feeling okay, darlin'?"

"Mm-hmm."

And as Olivia piled onto the bed, swallowed up by an octopodlike collection of arms and legs—including Amanda's, once the baby was safely in her bassinet—she said with absolute sincerity and contentment, "I'm feeling just fine."

. . .

Chapter 3: Creep

Chapter Text

Chapter 3.

Creep

. . .

According to Melville, hell was an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling, but on that Saturday afternoon in late May, on a day just like any other, Amanda Rollins-Benson learned that hell was an uneaten bag of warm bagels.

Everyone had requested a different flavor and a corresponding schmear to go with it: Noah wanted blueberry with whipped cream cheese only, claiming regular cream cheese made him barf; Jesse thought it over extensively, and still decided on chocolate chip—the only flavor she seemed to believe existed, no matter the form it was eaten in—and Nutella; Matilda would nibble on a plain, like a prisoner subsisting on bread and water, perhaps with a thin layer of butter, perhaps not; and Carisi, bless his little New York City heart, sure could go for an everything with lox, cream cheese, capers, tomato and cucumber (but hold the onion), if it wasn't too much trouble.

Amanda had stared at their late Saturday morning guest for so long, Olivia intervened before any blood could be shed. Carisi was doing them a favor, after all, stopping by on his day off to review a case involving several elderly victims in a nursing home. And he did volunteer to watch the kids so Olivia could accompany Amanda to the bagel shop and help keep the order straight. Rather than take offense at the implication that she wouldn't be able to remember a simple list—which, honestly, she'd already forgotten halfway out the door—she jumped at the chance to be alone with her wife.

Alone in a city of eight million people, that is. But other than a few stolen moments at work, and a couple of late-night rendezvous in the living room, she and Olivia hadn't spent time together without a child in tow since Samantha was born. No, scratch that—Amanda had carried their baby around inside her for nine months prior to that, even. It had been a whole damn year since she'd gotten Olivia all to herself.

No wonder she was horny as hell. And no wonder she somehow still missed the woman she woke up next to every morning.

Two months of marriage wasn't enough time before beginning a pregnancy. Amanda had known that when she expressed interest in the idea last year on her birthday, while she sat across from Olivia in what was to become their favorite sweets shop; had known, the instant she saw the quietly hopeful spark in her new bride's warm brown eyes, that she would agree to anything if it put that look of wonder and boundless love on Olivia's face.

She didn't regret the decision to have Samantha—not for one second—and she understood the urgency. Neither she or her wife were getting any younger, and the longer they waited to have another child, the more difficult it would have been, the greater the likelihood of complications. Amanda didn't mind that the big decisions moved at warp speed for them; that was how she'd made decisions all her life. No sense slowing down now, especially when you were past forty and just starting a family.

But occasionally the old Amanda, the one whose jealousy and impulsive behavior she'd spent the last year in therapy trying to suppress, still made an appearance. That Amanda wanted the undivided attention Olivia had promised the night before. And they had fooled around a little that morning, after the kids drifted out to watch cartoons in the living room, and Olivia turned the bassinet away from the bed.

"Even if she did wake up, you really think she's gonna know what we're doing?" Amanda had asked, hands clasped behind her head on the pillow, a smirk on her lips. She'd stretched out her foot, plucking at the hem of Olivia's rumpled camisole with dexterous toes, attempting to drag the captain back down beside her.

"I'llknow," Olivia replied, then turned to shuck off Amanda's pajama bottoms in one fell swoop. Her face was buried firmly between Amanda's thighs when Carisi texted to say he was on his way up from downstairs. They might have gotten to finish if he'd waited just a few more seconds to drop by unexpectedly. Once a co*ckblock, always a co*ckblock, Amanda supposed.

She had been tempted to reach out and stick a sock on the doorknob, after a glimpse through the front door peephole, but Olivia was already wandering from the bedroom, yawning, hair in slight disarray, a groggy Samantha nodding against her shoulder. Sonny was oblivious to what he had interrupted, despite Amanda's braless, cheerless state and Olivia's compulsive wiping at her mouth with the inside of her collar.

Amanda came dangerously close to strangling the ADA with her bare hands. She would have had the strength, too—all that pent up sexual frustration. It was the first time she hadn't climaxed while Olivia went down on her, and now she understood the captain's frustration at being on the cusp but denied release. Olivia must have the self-control of a Buddhist monk not to have murdered someone every time she felt like this.

That was how they ended up making out in the stairwell of their building for ten minutes, when they should have been walking the five blocks to the bagel shop. Not for homicidal reasons, but because Amanda had led her unsuspecting wife by the hand away from the elevator (they didn't have a very good track record with those) and cornered her on the landing between floors three and four.

Olivia smelled vaguely of breast milk—they both seemed to be swimming in it these days—and the coffee she'd sipped as Sonny shuffled paperwork around on the dining room table, using his pen as a pointer on the more graphic portions of each written statement, lest the children overhear. She had looked so sleepy, so obliviously sexy squinting at the pages from behind the reading glasses she fished out of her purse, Amanda could hardly concentrate on Carisi's yammering.

Unfortunately, Olivia had taken the glasses off and changed out of her fluttery camisole and capri bottoms before leaving the apartment. But thank the Lord for thin white t-shirts that clung to every contour, the ghost of a bra and bronze skin visible just beneath, and stretchy black yoga pants that contained more curves than the Himalayas. Comfy weekend attire was Amanda's favorite part of her wife's wardrobe, especially the weightless slip-on tennis shoes that put them at the same height, thanks to Amanda's chunky sneakers.

"Sweetheart, I love you, but those things on your feet are godawful," Olivia observed, the first time Amanda had worn the fat-heeled Skechers.

"What, they make me feel like a Spice Girl. I'm Peach Spice."

They also gave Amanda the perfect height boost to walk Olivia backwards, until her well-accentuated rear bumped against the handrail that bordered the landing wall, and clamp a hand to the rail at either side of her waist, ensnaring her for a deep, lingering kiss. Around the time they got married, Olivia had loosened her rules about public displays of affection; they were still largely off limits in the precinct, and she swatted away anything that approached her inner thigh while she was driving, but empty stairwells, stalled elevators, and cars parked on abandoned piers were all fair game. And Amanda loved to play.

"Our children are going to wonder where their brunch is," Olivia murmured, wrist raised for a glance behind Amanda's head at her watch, as Amanda peppered more kisses along her jawline. "And Carisi."

Pausing with both hands up Olivia's shirt, breasts squeezed gently together, enhancing the cleavage at the low V-neck mere inches from her lips, Amanda frowned. "Please don't say that name while I'm this close to your tit*." She gazed longingly at the sumptuous mounds cupped in her palms, mouth watering at the thought of what she'd like to do with them. But the moment had passed, the mental image of Dominick Carisi making love to his bagel and lox a definite mood killer. Olivia probably wouldn't let her past second base in the stairwell, anyway.

"Sorry. I meant the ADA in our apartment," Olivia amended, easing back to look Amanda in the eye. Her lips quirked into a wry smile when Amanda heaved a wistful sigh, gradually releasing her breasts like she was stacking wine glasses and didn't want the precarious tower to come crashing down. "Better?"

"Not really, no." Amanda screwed on a moody pout, but it didn't last very long. After a quick glance above and below to ensure they were indeed alone, Olivia caught her t-shirt by the hem and flipped it up, exposing her bra and chest fully, with a taunting little shimmy of the shoulders. She grinned widely at Amanda's surprised expression and whipped the shirt back into place just in time, a latch clicking open on one of the other landings. Company coming.

"That oughta tide you over," Olivia said, plucking up Amanda's hand and leading her toward the stairs, "at least until we get Sammie down for a nap and crank up the cartoons."

"My Lord, woman, you are a shameless hussy," Amanda teased, keeping her voice low, in case they met up with the other tenet on the last few flights down. But Olivia's giggles drowned out the sound of footsteps, and whichever neighbor had happened into the seldom used stairwell never crossed their path. Must have been an upstairs occupant.

Moments later, they emerged from their apartment building and into an ideal New York City spring day, so mild and refreshing you could almost smell the flowers over the engine exhaust, almost hear the birds chirping over the swearing cabbies and honking horns. It was sunny enough for Olivia to slip off her unzipped hoodie and tie it around her waist.

Ever since Amanda's prowess at braiding hair revealed itself, Olivia had requested a different style braid at least once a week. Truthfully, it was just an excuse for Amanda to play with her hair, a fact they were both aware of, and one they both used to its full advantage. Today, she had only wanted a loose side plait, which bobbed on her shoulder as they walked, the fringe at the end curled against one breast like a sleeping cat. Her hair was longer than ever, and Amanda could have spent the better part of the weekend running her fingers through it. Had done so on past occasions, as a matter of fact.

But Carisi needed his damn nasty fish bagel.

Sighing, she fitted her hand into Olivia's, falling into step with her wife's long, easy stride. Her own legs had to work a little faster than their regular clipped pace to keep up, but she didn't mind. She was glad Olivia didn't tailor her steps for anyone, including Amanda herself. The captain had tried to make herself smaller for Amanda in the past—tried to just grit her teeth and "take it"—and it always ended badly. Olivia Benson wasn't meant to follow any path but her own.

Together they exuded confidence as they strolled hand in hand to the first crosswalk. Nothing could have prepared Amanda for her move to the City all those years ago, not even her time in Atlanta; part of her present day surefootedness on the overcrowded streets and sidewalks of Manhattan, she owed to Olivia. The older woman's poise and agility in the urban setting were something to behold. She might not be a dancer, but her movement throughout the city was as well-choreographed as any ballet. Amanda had learned from watching her, emulating what she saw, the way she and Kim used to teach themselves the dance moves from music videos. "Rhythm Nation," "Vogue," "Cold Hearted," "Smooth Criminal"—none compared to her city girl.

Pride at walking alongside such a woman, the wedding band on her finger proof that they belonged to each other (and proof that Amanda always settled her debts; she'd worked her ass off to pay Olivia back for that ring, despite the captain's reluctance to accept the money), might have had a little something to do with Amanda's co*cky strut as well.

They turned a lot of heads when they were in public, even among native New Yorkers, who tended toward the jaded seen-it-all side of the spectrum. Olivia attributed it to Amanda's fair and delicate beauty, but Amanda disagreed—this city devoured fair and delicate. Gobbled it up and spat it out like a barn owl with a mouse. It was the fierce beauty, the inner strength and indomitable spirit, that survived in a place like this. That's why people looked at them so often. And it originated from Olivia.

"Whoa! Watch out!"

Amanda's reverie was cut abruptly and breathlessly short when an arm shot out, blocking her path and colliding with her breastbone. Before she could comprehend why Olivia had just clotheslined her, a flash of yellow zipped past, hot and hulking, leaving behind a gust of warm, sulfuric air that snatched at her breath and blew her hair back in long streamers. The last time she had felt three-thousand pounds of steel breeze by her like that was when Tad Orion tried to run her and Olivia down in a stolen Mercedes in the Catskills.

"Geez," she said, staring dazedly after the speeding cab that had almost been her demise. It had plowed through the red light without even slowing down, inches from taking Amanda with it as she started across the street. "Crazy sumbitch nearly wiped me out. D'you see that?"

"Kinda hard to miss." Olivia glanced pointedly at her extended arm, still braced against Amanda's collarbone. She lowered it a moment later and resumed holding Amanda's hand, leading the way into the crosswalk with the hesitation of someone encountering a mud puddle, rather than someone who had just saved her spouse from certain death. She'd become an expert at last-minute rescues, due in large part to their children—specifically Jesse, who didn't just stroll blindly towards danger, but ran full speed ahead.

A few of the saves were truly magnificent to behold: the one-armed catch as Jesse plummeted headfirst from a tree branch taller than Olivia herself; the hawklike swoop to grab the back of Jesse's overall straps and haul her away from the edge of a subway platform; the gasp and lunge that prevented countless heavy objects, including a stuffed bookcase, a set of expensive china, and the flatscreen at home, from toppling onto the adventurous little girl's head. Olivia had honed her reflexes on the worst scum in the city, and they were still no match for the six-year-old kamikaze known as Jesse Eileen Rollins-Benson.

Neither, apparently, was Amanda. Her wife already seemed to have forgotten the homicidal taxi by the time they cleared the opposite curb. But then:

"You okay, love?" Olivia cast a sidelong glance in Amanda's direction, gave her hand a faint squeeze. Per their therapists' requests, they had been working on affording each other space and not doting quite so intently on their spouse. (Well, Olivia was working on it. Amanda made a halfhearted attempt once or twice, then went right back to fretting over the least sign of discomfort or unhappiness from the captain.)

Olivia's startle response had calmed considerably in the months after insemination. In fact, it was around the time of Samantha's first kick that Amanda noticed a change in her wife's anxiety level, as if that tiny fluttering beneath the palm Amanda grabbed and pressed to her belly had soothed Olivia's deepest, most ingrained fears. An affirmation of life, and proof that Olivia could bring something of absolute purity and good into the world. This child would never question whether she was wanted, loved, cherished. This child would never wonder if she was a monster.

"Yeah, I'm okay," said Amanda, massaging circles on the back of Olivia's hand with her thumb. She wouldn't wish PTSD on anyone, least of all her captain, but she did miss taking care of Olivia and feeling needed. And though loathe to admit it, she missed being fussed over by the other woman as well. She'd gotten used to being pampered and pacified for nine months; now all the Pampers and pacifiers belonged to Sammie Grace.

As they should. And Amanda was immensely proud of the strides Olivia had made in her recovery; wouldn't begrudge her that for one moment. Still, it was probably a good idea for Amanda to jot down in her journal a few of the less noble feelings she'd wrestled with recently—jealousy, fear of being replaced, desire for attention—and discuss them with Dr. Hanover next session.

"You sure?" Olivia lifted her sunglasses and propped them on top of her head, studying Amanda a bit more closely. She hadn't worn any makeup for this outing, and her freckles ran amok on her cheeks and nose, cinnamon brown in the late spring sun. The lone freckle on her upper lip reminded Amanda of a wayward speck of chocolate syrup, and she had the sudden urge to lick it off. "You're awfully quiet over there. Something you need to talk about?"

Without any forewarning from her brain, Amanda heard her lips inquire, "How'd you get that scar?" She had no idea what brought the question on, only that, with both sides of Olivia's hair gathered into the braid and the sun shining down on her forehead, the jagged blemish gleamed noticeably.

Amanda knew the story behind every one of her wife's scars, except for that intricate silvery zigzag. There was the caterpillar shape on Olivia's right palm, courtesy of Amanda's pocket knife, and the pinched skin at the web of her left thumb—courtesy of a kitchen knife and Amanda's mother; the little divot in her forearm, just under the left elbow, from being stabbed by an intruder, years before Amanda's transfer to SVU; a crease down the middle of her shoulder, as if it had been poorly ironed post-op; the thin white stripe across her neck from Calvin Arliss' razor; and a deep furrow low on her abdomen, from an emergency appendectomy at the age of ten. And those were just the impressions left by a blade.

Most of the visible scars for which William Lewis was responsible, a mosaic confined almost entirely to the upper body (the lower region, his pièce de résistance, had been branded in other ways), were from cigarettes. Four altogether, focused on Olivia's breasts. Amanda hardly saw the puckered white flesh anymore—one looked like a perfect bullseye, an outer ring still visible around the inner dot where the tip had pressed the longest—and she had done her best not to stare or avert her eyes too often in the beginning, when she and Olivia were new and tentative in their lovemaking.

The two that really infuriated Amanda and made her wish she could resurrect Lewis, just to have the pleasure of killing him again, were the spiky teeth of a house key, concealed between Olivia's cleavage, and the serpentine length of wire hanger that slithered along one hip. That snakelike mark bothered Amanda the most. It hadn't been administered through clothing (too distinct), which meant Lewis had Olivia's pants down at some other point, besides in the bathroom. That part of the story had been left out, and Amanda hadn't pushed, though Lord knew she wanted to.

Last but not least were the slit on Olivia's left eyelid, incurred during a sorority volleyball match gone awry, and the mystery scar on her forehead. Amanda had hoped the story of the latter would be offered up someday without prompting. But a year in, she still didn't know where the fault-line in her wife's otherwise smooth brow had come from. She probably should have gone on waiting for Olivia to bring it up in her own time. They just didn't have much of that anymore—their own time.

"This one?" Olivia touched the scar as if there were several to choose from in that particular area. She frowned at first, stroking the seamed skin with her fingertip, hesitating like she needed to think the answer over, the memory buried deep. "Childhood accident," she said eventually, her voice almost too soft to be heard above the street noise. It appeared she might leave it at that, but when they stopped at another crosswalk, she spoke again. "I was three. Fell into the bathroom mirror and got a big piece of glass embedded in my forehead. My mother said it looked like someone threw a tomahawk at me."

She chopped the side of her hand towards her forehead and made the noise.Pffwt.

Just as Amanda was thinking that it didn't sound too awful or unusual—she had scars from similar childhood mishaps; Jesse got it honestly—another thought occurred to her, and this onewasterrible. "Tell me she didn't do that to you, Liv. Please. Otherwise . . . "

Otherwise what, Amanda couldn't finish. She would like to have slapped Serena Benson across her damn alky face for the pain she'd put Olivia through, whether the woman had rape trauma syndrome or not. Being traumatized was no excuse for neglecting an innocent child, and it sure as hell wasn't an excuse for abusing that child. Olivia still downplayed the mistreatment, refusing to call them beatings ("She usually only slapped me or, you know . . . grabbed me, or something"—this, while demonstrating with a hand clamped roughly around a bicep), attempted murder ("She didn't know what she was doing, I don't think she would have really hurt me"), or sexual abuse ("Not all of them came after me, and she tried to stop most of the ones who did").

Most, but not all. Amanda would never forget the matter-of-fact way Olivia described being forced, at fifteen, to give her mother's latest one night stand a handjob in the middle of their kitchen, only for Serena to walk in, see the assault,thankher weeping child, and lead the scumbag molester back to her bed to finish f*cking him.

Would that Serena Benson have slammed her three-year-old daughter face-first into a mirror, resulting in a tomahawk-sized chunk of glass slicing the baby's head open and scarring her for life? You bet your f*cking ass she would.

"No," Olivia said at once, though the lengthy pause that immediately followed piqued Amanda's curiosity—and her suspicion. "She didn't do it. But . . . she left me alone in the bathtub. I got out and climbed onto the sink to play in the medicine cabinet. That's how I slipped and fell into the glass."

"Why the hell'd she leave you by yourself in the tub?" Amanda asked in a peevish tone. She was determined to be pissed off at Serena, even if the woman hadn't harmed her daughter on purpose.That time, Amanda thought to herself, darkly. What kind of mother left a toddler alone in the bath, anyway? That was how most accidental drownings occurred in the home.

Then again, maybe that was the idea. If the kid happened to die—well, Serena would no longer be stuck raising her rapist's baby, now would she?

Amanda forced away the ugly thoughts, hoping Olivia couldn't read them all over her face. If the captain had never made the connection—that the same woman who had sat on her chest, strangling her until she started to lose consciousness; chased her with a deadly weapon, threatening to never let anyone else have her; almost burnt the apartment down with Olivia inside, asleep—if Olivia had never realized that same woman might have wanted her to just die, Amanda would do whatever it took to keep her from figuring it out.

"I don't know." Olivia turned her face aside, gazing across the street at something unseen. In some ways, she had more difficulty talking about her mother than sharing the details of her multiple assaults. The wounds were just too deep. Amanda understood because she had the same problem. "I've always assumed she was drunk. She did that a lot. Started drinking and forgot where I was. That I needed her."

This time it was Amanda's hand that went up, stopping Olivia from entering the crosswalk too soon. Though not a close call like the cab a moment ago, Amanda held tight to her wife as several cars and a van whizzed by. She nuzzled gently at the bonnet of dark brown hair created by Olivia's side braid. "Sorry, baby. I shouldn't have brought it up," she murmured, pressing a kiss to the ear buried under all that hair. "Just been curious."

"It's okay." Olivia turned to peck Amanda on the tip of the nose, so lightly it almost made her sneeze. When the sensation and the subsequent blinking had passed, she found Olivia smiling warmly over at her. "I've got everything I need now. And it's not going anywhere."

"Damn straight I ain't." Amanda grinned and guided Olivia into the crosswalk and past the line of cars waiting for the light to change. Releasing Olivia's hand, she spun around on her heel and began jogging backwards in front of her wife, encouraging a brisker pace, but really just showing off. "Well, just to get some bagels. But you're coming with me. Get those long legs moving, city girl. Hup two three four."

Three blocks later, the marching count had faded—though their steps were still fairly uniform and military—and Amanda trotted ahead to sweep open the door to the aptly named shop Bagels Bagels Bagels. She ushered Olivia inside with another sweeping gesture that earned an eye roll and a whispered accusation ("Dork") as the captain glided by on those gloriously long legs, her subtle bittersweet scent wafting behind her. Amanda followed after it like that randy cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew tailing an especially fragrant feline.

"Are you humming 'What's New puss*cat?'" Olivia asked with a wry little smile as they stood near the cash register, watching their order being plucked from a buffet of carbs and yeast. The baby-faced boy wielding the tongs chattered them playfully at Olivia through the glass windshield before selecting her whole wheat bagel, which would promptly be toasted and smeared with peanut butter and grape jelly at home. Amanda's Asiago bagel came next, topping off the bulging paper sack, its warm aroma already making her mouth water.

"Yup." Amanda scrounged in the pocket of her Adidas three-stripes, withdrawing her debit card and putting up a hand to stay Olivia, who was patting down the hoodie around her waist, trying to locate her own pocketed plastic. "Keep your money, brunch is on me. puss*cat."

"Okay, Tom Jones." Olivia gave a small snort and started to say something else, but fell silent instead, her smile slipping as she glanced at something behind Amanda. She looked as if she'd just been made by a perp, and she let her gaze drift to one side before turning slowly to the counter, facing the same direction as Amanda.

"What's wrong?"

"Don't look," Olivia said sharply, when Amanda tried to steal a peek over her shoulder. "There's a guy in the corner who keeps watching us. Your eight o'clock. Really tall,Leave It to Beaverhaircut, serial killer eyes. He's creeping me out."

Hands thrust into her pockets, Amanda pretended to study the bagel shop's interior with great interest, as if there were an art installment on the walls, rather than the knotty pine paneling that covered every surface. She did everything except whistle nonchalantly as she angled herselftick-tick-ticktoward six . . . seven . . . eight o'clock and dropped her gaze onto the man stationed there. Not her stealthiest work, but it was her day off.

He was very tall, that was a fact. Six-four or -five, from the looks of him. He was also very young, Amanda thought, probably not much more than twenty. The Beaver Cleaver hair didn't help. His eyes, which lingered on Olivia's back for a moment, then cut straight to Amanda so suddenly she almost gasped and looked away, were deep-set and penetrating, the irises not quite symmetrical, one lagging behind the other. They reminded her of a doll whose open and shut eyelids got stuck in different positions. When a slow smile unfurled on his prominent, rubbery lips, she felt the hair at the back of her neck stand up. Serial killer indeed.

But he was just a kid, and his smile was friendly enough, if somewhat unsettling in its execution. A lazy eye and weird facial expressions didn't mean someone was a bad person. As a matter of fact, many of the most heinous criminals looked like perfectly normal people. This kid might be a bit strange, but he was probably harmless. Yet another gawker who recognized the strength and power Olivia exuded, even while dressed down and looking forty at most. You could take the girl out of the precinct, but you couldn't take the precinct out of the girl.

"Aww, he's kinda cute, in a Hannibal Lecter sort of way." Amanda hooked a protective arm behind Olivia's back nonetheless, keeping her close. She didn't stiffen or shake anymore, the way she had after Orion; after the bank robbery. After Henry Mesner. Still, it would have been better if Amanda hadn't followed up with, "He probably just wants to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

Later, she would recall quoting that line and despise herself for it, for making light of Olivia's discomfort. Now though, she nudged her wife's hip, trying to draw out a smile, or at least chase away the dark cloud that had passed over the other woman's features. The darkest thing on Olivia's face since their daughter's birth had been the smudges under her eyes from not getting enough sleep. Samantha was finally on a schedule now, and her mommy's eyes had never been more vibrant. Almost no zoning out in the past year. No night terrors, either.

"I'm serious. He's—" At the sound of the bells tinkling above the shop door, Olivia glanced back and breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Leaving. Good." She forced a short, scornful laugh and shook her head as if disgusted with herself for overreacting. "Sorry. Guess I'm being paranoid. He really was staring at us, though."

If anyone had the right to be paranoid about watchful young men, it was Olivia. She'd been stalked by two of them, one of whom sexually assaulted her and tried to slit her throat, the other forcing her vehicle into oncoming traffic. Calvin Arliss was almost four years in his grave, and last year they had gotten word that Henry Mesner was arrested at the Canadian border, where he fled after another failed murder attempt—this one on his mother and younger sister.

Truthfully, Amanda had been relieved by that news as well. She didn't expect Henry to return and try to finish off Olivia, not if he had any kind of brain in his demented head, but it was better knowing he was behind bars. It freed Olivia from constantly having to look over her shoulder, and it freed Amanda from having to track down the little bastard herself. That was the least she could have done, since she was off visiting petty acts of revenge on Olivia's rapist ex-fiancé Daniel while the captain was being hunted.

That experience—along with the nightmare in Calvin and Amelia's kill room—and getting shot in the stomach by twenty-something Makiah Washington had made Amanda somewhat wary of college-aged kids for a while, too. If she'd let herself, she could have become anxious to the point of being frightened by young men in bagel shops. So she hadn't let herself.

"You don't need to be sorry," Amanda said to Olivia, accepting her debit card back from the kid behind the counter. He was a high schooler and too wet behind the ears to be a threat. He still had his baby fat, and he called Amanda "ma'am" when he thanked her and handed over the bagels. "Guy gave me the creeps, too. But that's the beauty of living in this big overpopulated city of yours. We'll never have to see his ugly mug ever again."

Olivia cast a skeptical glance out the glass storefront they were headed towards, and though her feet didn't falter, there was a momentary hesitation to continue on. It was the same reluctant behavior Noah sometimes displayed when he felt uncertain about approaching family cuddle sessions comprised entirely of girls. It tore at Amanda's heart then, and it tore at her heart now, to see Olivia conflicted about the simple act of walking outside into the sunshine. The captain had made great strides in her recovery, it was true. But every once in a while, she needed a bit of coaxing, a bit of reassurance. Maybe even a little of the brash (and occasionally unfounded) confidence Amanda had in generous supply.

She switched the bag of bagels to her opposite arm, cradling it like a fat, delicious baby against her hip, and linked arms with Olivia on the other side, escorting her to the door. A small, grateful smile turned up the corners of Olivia's mouth, and she followed willingly, hugging Amanda's arm to her chest. "You're right," she said, leaning into Amanda's side as they exited the shop and began the lazy trek back to the apartment, neither in the mood to rush it. "How'd you get so smart, little pretty?"

"Welp, way I figure, learned 'most everything I know from my city girl." Amanda affected her best cowboy strut, which wasn't easy in sneakers and track pants, but she made it work. Just needed the right amount of bounce in the knees, the faintest turnout of the toes. All that was missing were the chaps and spurs. "And she's one smart cookie."

"Chocolate chip or Oreo?"

The sly question put a grin on Amanda's face and an extra spring in her step. Oreos had become a favorite post-coital snack and subject of major debate for the two of them. Olivia started it, often requesting the sandwich cookies whenever Amanda padded out to the kitchen, ravenous after an energetic roll in the sack. Now Amanda craved them as well, and found she couldn't eat them without feeling slightly amorous.

But the real issue—the one that saw them bickering like a couple of old ladies, each certain hers was the superior recipe—washowto eat them: Olivia insisted they should be dunked in milk, which she then nursed from the cookie, wafers and cream dissolving to a chocolaty mash on her tongue; Amanda swore by twisting off the top, licking up every ounce of filling, and consuming the leftover wafers last, one at a time. "Hey, save some of that for me," Olivia had remarked once, while Amanda laved a cookie clean with the determination of Frannie and a spoonful of peanut butter. The captain hadn't been referring to the Oreo.

"Oh, definitely Oreo," Amanda said now, dropping her voice to a seductive purr. She winked at her wife, who gave an appreciative hum of laughter and again hugged tight to her arm. "She's chock full of all kindsa good stuff."

"Charmer." Olivia stated it like an accusation, but craned her neck to stamp a kiss on Amanda's cheek when they stopped at yet another crosswalk. She eased back and gazed softly at Amanda, immeasurable fondness gleaming in her warm brown eyes. "You know how much I love you, right?"

"'Course I do. What's not to love?"

If Amanda had known those were the last words she would speak to Olivia—her captain, her perfect, fierce, loving, compassionate city girl—before their entire world was ripped apart; if she'd suspected in the least that the van parked half-assed on the curb as they approached the second crosswalk held horrors untold, curated specifically for herself and for her wife; if she had ever dreamed that, sitting in a cell in Sealview Correctional, Sondra Vaughn was smiling at an engagement photo of her and Olivia, to whom the prisoner whispered, "Happy anniversary, Captain," Amanda might have chosen a better goodbye.

If she had known.

It started with the sunglasses. Olivia bent to pick them up when they fell from their perch atop her head and cracked against the sidewalk. Though not prescription, they were an expensive pair—dark aviators that made her look twice as badass and effortlessly sexy. "Shoot," she muttered, losing a few cool points, but none of her cuteness, with the mild oath. (Her New Year's resolution was to stop swearing in front of the children. Jesse had gotten several time outs at school earlier in the year for exclaimingdammitduring spelling tests.) "Darn it, shoot."

"If you insist," said a male voice, barely rising above the volume of normal conversation, but clearly audible over the Saturday traffic. It sounded a bit like Calvin Arliss; that creepy little f*cker had always seemed to be speaking from the bottom of a well, his voice at once hollow and resounding. But the Mangler was dead.

This was the guy from the bagel shop, and his off-center eyes once again struck Amanda as odd, even a little deranged, as he stepped from the shadows of some scaffolding on the corner, aimed a gun at her, and fired.

These assholes never give me a chance to react, she thought, watching the bullet arc toward her like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Except it wasn't a bullet, she realized at the last second, noting that there were two glints of silver advancing, something that resembled fishing line trailing behind them, and instead of a deafening bang, she'd heard a crisp snap, like a twig breaking underfoot. And then her legs were the twigs, buckling beneath her as the prongs from the gun pierced her side and hip, stinging her through the useless layers of t-shirt and track pants that were her only protection.

It's a Taser, not a gun, her brain relayed an instant before the real pain began. That knowledge was cold comfort as her central nervous system turned against her, muscles contracting so violently she pitched forward, clenched as tightly as a noose with a body kicking and twitching at the end. She would have smacked face-first against the pavement
(See? Jesse gets it honest)
and probably knocked out a few teeth, if not for Olivia and her lightning reflexes.

Dropping her sunglasses for a second time, the captain's hands shot forward to catch Amanda, a hairsbreadth away from colliding with the ground. "Oh my God," she said, her voice jittery in Amanda's ears, but whether it was the convulsions or the electric crackle from the Taser was hard to say. A definite schism of terror ran through the reflexive statement, like a crack opening up the earth—normally so solid and steady—during an earthquake.

Olivia was scared, and Amanda was in too much agony to care.

She had been tasered before, upon joining the police force. It was a requirement, a rite of passage of sorts, for the newest officers welcomed into the Atlanta Police Department to be tasered, and later in the same endurance test, pepper sprayed in the face. The goal was to give rookies a better understanding of the effect disarming agents had on the human body and to prepare them for the event, should a suspect ever use those agents against them. Amanda had actually laughed back then, giving a rowdy war whoop and slaps on the back to her fellow recruits, as they wiped tears and snot from their tomato-red faces and flung it from hands that still tremored like an old drunk's. It was a good lesson, one she never forgot.

But nothing prepared you for the mind-numbing, bone-rattling pain when a stranger came out of nowhere and shot an electrical current through your body for five excruciating seconds.

And in that five seconds, an eternity. Amanda saw it unfold around her as if it happened underwater, a dreamy, stop-motion ballet. Olivia lowered her heavily to the ground ("Amanda! What the hell are you doing? Stop it!"), half falling and half dropping to her knees on the sidewalk, from the sudden dead weight in her arms. She gazed down from above, features twisted in concern and confusion, a golden aura behind her, turning the tips of her hair amber.

Out of the scrambled thoughts that went through Amanda's glitching hard-drive of a brain, there emerged one clear, coherent line of code—She looks like an angel—and then it was lost. Another upheaval of pain, her insides trying to migrate to her outsides. (How long could five seconds last?) Forever, said the kid with the Taser and the serial killer eyes, but it came out, "Sorry, Cap, boss's orders."

A shrill whistle followed, and that's when the second man rolled back the slider door and alit from the van. He reminded Amanda of a panther descending a tree branch—the sinewy, crouching movements, the plodding boots that belied his speed. She could see him slinking ever closer, his flinty eyes focused solely on Olivia, whose back was to him.

The captain never saw him coming. She was too busy shielding Amanda's head from the concrete below and yelling at the first assailant. But Amanda saw it all: his platinum fauxhawk and face full of metal (industrial piercings in both ears, barbells in his eyebrow, a labret, a septum ring), the teardrop tattoo on his cheek and the riot of ink that spilled from his neck and on down both muscular arms, his silver tooth that glinted dully when he grinned at her and wielded the syringe. He was directly behind Olivia now, so close he could reach out and stroke the braid on her shoulder. Instead, he aligned the needle with the exposed side of her neck—

Oh my God, Liv, turn around, Amanda screamed with everything she had in her, but the only sound her lips produced was a faint gurgle, drowned out by the sizzling Taser.

—and jammed it in, depressing the plunger to the hilt, whatever substance it contained disappearing into Olivia's bloodstream. At first the captain merely grimaced and put a hand to her neck, as if she'd just been stung by a bee. She tried to turn then, to look up at the man holding the syringe, but something was very wrong. Her hand flopped uselessly into her lap, fingertips glancing across Amanda's brow, and she slumped sideways, her upper body boneless and drooping, head lolling against one shoulder as though her neck was made of rubber.

Stroke, Amanda thought, paralyzed by fear and the stun gun. Someone had taken a hit out on them, and this was the last thing she would see before they died: her wife's wide, terrified eyes looking to her for help she couldn't give.

But that didn't make sense. Why tase one cop in broad daylight and drug the other into a stroke? Hitmen didn't work that way. They shot you with real bullets from real guns until you were real f*cking dead.

No, it wasn't a hit, Amanda discovered, when the electrical pulses finally—blessedly—reached their predetermined limit, relinquishing her hijacked muscles. Not a hit, but an abduction, and her body was too weak to do anything besides lie there as the men took Olivia by the arms and yanked her backwards, ejecting Amanda's head from her lap to thump against the pavement.

"Liv. No," Amanda cried feebly, trying to lift a hand, stretch it out towards the retreating figures who flanked Olivia, dragging her by the underarms like soldiers removing a wounded brother from the battlefield.

The captain's eyes were open and staring when she was lifted into the van, but her body remained flaccid, her lips slightly parted and wordless. Fully awake, unblinking, breathing, yet offering no resistance. Amanda mentally ticked off a list of drugs she knew could induce such a state: ketamine, maybe—although an injection of that probably would have rendered Olivia unconscious; succinylcholine, but oh Jesus if they gave her that, she wouldn't be able to breathe. It froze everything, including respiration, which was why anesthesiologists administered it in unison with a sedative and careful monitoring of the airway, so the patient (or the victims, which were what had familiarized Amanda with the drug) didn't panic, didn't lie there suffocating and unable to move, to scream.

Did these men know enough to help Olivia breathe? Did they care? Surely they wouldn't go through the trouble of abducting her, just to watch her turn blue and expire on the floor of some sh*tty old van, would they?

Actually, the van was in good shape, better than most of the undercover vans Amanda had worked in; sleek black with tinted windows, same as the Feebs used. No major distinguishing marks, and the nose was pointed away from Amanda, the license plate out of view. All she could see was Olivia being dumped onto the cargo mat in back of the van, much like the deer carcasses she'd watched her father and his hunting buddies sling into the beds of their pickup trucks, amid the empty beer cans and fishing tackle, during smoky crisp autumns in Loganville.We're having venison tonight, boys.

"Liv." Amanda managed to reach out this time, her arm abnormally heavy and her hand trembling like one of those autumn leaves that the neighbors raked up and burned, filling the woods with a scorched smell she could taste in the meat when she ate her daddy's latest kill. (Some people claimed the animal's fear yielded a distinct flavor. A desirable flavor.)

Flat on her back in the van, Olivia didn't move a muscle, her eyes fixed so raptly on the ceiling she appeared to be having a vision of God. In her head, Amanda heard her Grandmama Brooks plunking away at the church organ and singing in a sweet birdlike trill:Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. And then Olivia was gone, swallowed up by the dark van when the guy with all the metal in his face and ink on his body flashed her another grin and slammed the door.

"Help," Amanda said hoarsely. It felt like she was on her dozenth rep of an intense push-up routine—military, not the modified kind for girls—but she managed to rise onto her elbows and hold up her head about as well as her three-month-old daughter could have done.

There were a handful of bystanders on the opposite curb, a couple with their cell phones out, aimed at the vehicle that lunged forward and made a sharp U-turn in the middle of the street. A disgruntled cry arose from the crowd when the van bumped onto the curb, nearly sideswiping the looky-loos in front. Amanda caught a glimpse of the burly driver (shaved head, small goatee, big muscles) and the last few digits of the license plate (86J) as the man cranked the steering wheel like he was changing course on a ship, and sped away in a screech of tires and hot rubber. Another haphazard turn at the end of the street, and the van roared out of sight.

Thirty-one years of searching for Olivia; nine more years of Amanda with her head up her ass, not realizing how in love she was with her sometimes-partner turned boss; a year of living together that felt as if it had always been, like Amanda was finally home; another year and a marriage that felt like the truest, mostrightdecision she had ever or would ever make—all of this, and she had just lost Olivia in an instant.

People were milling around Amanda now, asking if she was hurt, if she needed an ambulance or the police.Where were you f*ckers ten seconds ago?she wanted to shout at them, but heard herself inquiring about the license plate instead. "Did anybody see the rest? Please, anybody?"

Someone thought it was a "U," not a "J." Someone else swore the "8" was really a "B." The woman who helped Amanda to her feet and steadied her while she swayed said that, yes, she would be willing to come down to the precinct so TARU could take a look at the footage captured on her phone.

"What's that?" Amanda asked, staring at the hoodie the same woman handed over, as if she'd never seen such an article of clothing in her entire life. Maybe this lady thought Amanda was shivering because she was cold, rather than from the fifty-thousand volts that had been delivered by the barbs she pinched from her flesh, or from watching her wife be snatched up right in front of her and not doing a damn thing to stop it.

"It fell off the lady when they threw her in the van," said the woman, whose voice was deceptively young and tinged with a slight British accent. Her face, when Amanda finally glanced at it, belonged to a much older woman, and it was creased with deep sympathy. Amanda hadn't realized the woman was still keeping her upright, a hand at her back. "Is she a friend of yours?"

Something about that hand made Amanda feel like she might scream or cry—or both. But she couldn't fall apart, not while time was so important. Not while Liv needed her. (The first few hours were the most crucial in any abduction, not just the ones involving children; beyond that, she couldn't let herself think about time length or likely scenarios.) She accepted the sweatshirt, clutching it to her and vaguely noting the heft in one of the pockets. Olivia's cell phone. They wouldn't be able to track her with it. Amanda hugged the hoodie tighter, praying that, wherever the men were taking Olivia, it would be someplace warm.

"She's my wife," Amanda said in a thin, broken whisper, and sank to the ground, sitting down hard on the sidewalk. She was aware it should hurt, but her body felt numb and displaced, like a lip or gums given a shot of Novocain at the dentist. Even the inside of her skull felt as if it had been clanged like a bell. "M-my wife . . . "

From her pocket, she dug out her cell phone, located Fin's number among her contacts, and thumbed the telephone icon beneath his name. She missed the first time, and tried again, repeating the words "My wife" under her breath, over and over, while the call rang through.

"What happened to the man who was with you?" she asked suddenly, of the Good Samaritan who had helped her and who was now gathering up Olivia's cracked sunglasses and the bag of bagels, placing them beside Amanda on the sidewalk. There had been a man standing next to the woman in the crowd, filming the van's getaway, Amanda was sure of it. He might have captured something that this lady's camera missed.

"What man?" asked the woman, a bit dubious, as if she suspected Amanda of hitting her head during the fall. It was thumping at the back, where it had kissed the pavement when Olivia was ripped away from her, but Amanda knew what she'd seen. The guy had been sporting a red MAGA cap, that's why she noticed him. No one wore that sh*t anymore. "I'm not with anyone else, miss."

"Hey, Rollins. What up?" Fin's voice, oddly chipper for the sergeant on a working weekend, interrupted Amanda before she could reply to the older woman. He sounded like he had just finished chuckling at a joke. It was jarring, finding that humor still existed in the world. "Call to gloat about having a day off?"

"They took her, Fin," Amanda blurted, barely getting the words out around the sob that immediately followed. "They took Liv."

The bagels were warm against Amanda's leg as she did her best to explain what had happened. Like laughter, the smell of fresh baked bread, normally a comforting, homey fragrance, seemed profane at a time such as this. Vaguely, she wondered if Olivia would ever get to eat bagels again. If they would ever get to walk down the street again, holding hands in the sunshine. Laughing and loving.

Fifteen minutes later, when Fin whipped his Crown Vic up to the curb, lights and sirens awhirl, Amanda was still hugging Olivia's hoodie to her chest, trying to hold onto every last ounce of her wife's warmth and scent contained in its folds.

. . .

Chapter 4: Exit Light, Enter Night

Chapter Text

Chapter 4.

Exit Light, Enter Night

. . .

The coffee, a generous term for the dark and watery brew swirling around in the mug Fin had blown into prior to filling ("Sorry, habit. Got open cabinets at home, sometimes the dust . . . " If he explained further, Amanda hadn't heard it), was hot as blue blazes. That term she had learned from her grandmama. "It's hot as blue blazes out there, Mandy. Come on in for some lemonade."

Grandmama Brooks always knew how to make everything better, whether it was a skinned knee, the unbearable Georgia heat, or another knockdown drag-out between Mama and Daddy. Absurdly, Amanda caught herself wishing her mother's mother was there now, to tickle her back with nimble pianist's fingers and sing a few stanzas of "You Are My Sunshine," until Amanda was smiling again. Her sweet grandmama, who couldn't even bear to kill the pests that invaded her garden, and who had remarked on Olivia's gentle spirit, likening it to that of a doe or a white dove, just last summer. Grandmama loved Olivia.

"This tastes like sh*t," Amanda said, and took another swig of the coffee, scalding her tongue and probably her esophagus with the bitter liquid.

If it hurt, she didn't notice. The sensation had not returned to her body since being tased. Fin kept trying to persuade her to get checked out by a doctor, and he was most certainly correct in his assessment that she was in shock from that street corner ambush, but once they had arrived at the precinct, she refused to leave it.

She couldn't feel her body without Olivia there. After Charles Patton held her down and raped her in a cheap motel room, she'd stumbled into the hall ("No need to rush off, pumpkin," he had called out to her), hunkered in the back seat of a cab, and fled to her apartment door, locking it behind her, as if she were being chased, all the while unable to feel anything below the shoulders. Something was taken from her back then—something vital and sustaining, a tether between mind and body—and today it had been torn away from her again. Only this time she couldn't just burn her clothes, skip town and pretend it never happened.

"Christ," she said, coughing into her fist after the next slug of hot java definitely did burn her throat. "Who made this?"

"Uh, sorry." Kat raised her hand sheepishly, then ducked behind her open laptop like she wanted to disappear underneath it and the file-strewn table. She was the one who had set up a command center in the interview room, complete with laptops, tablets (electronic and paper), a landline, and the coffeemaker, where the SVU officers could escape the growing circus in their squad room. It was a nice gesture, but it also meant she expected to be there for a while. Officer Tamin did not foresee her captain being returned any time soon.

That upset Amanda, and the bad coffee only added to her already frazzled nerves. The younger woman might be a certified health nut who preferred coconut water to caffeine, but if she wanted to make it in this unit—and two years in, she was still the newbie—she should learn how to operate a damn Keurig. Sometimes coffee was all that kept her squadmates going. "Oh. Well, pro tip for next time: more grounds, lower heat setting. Maybe something not quite so comparable to the surface of the sun, y'know?"

Amanda.

As clearly as if Olivia were seated in one of the other chairs hemmed around the table, Amanda heard the gentle reprimand. The captain was always getting on her to be nicer and more patient with Kat, the youngest and most inexperienced member in the unit. Amanda preferred the tough love approach, at least with a fellow cop, but she couldn't go against Olivia's wishes. Not right now.

"Sorry," she said to Kat, without much conviction. She sighed and put the mug aside, raking back the bangs from her forehead with several compulsive sweeps of her fingers. She longed for a ponytail ring, then remembered the one she'd twisted onto the end of Olivia's braid less than two hours ago, and abruptly let her hair fall in a heap around her face and shoulders. "I'm . . . going crazy just sitting here."

"Don't sweat it." Kat re-emerged from her hiding place, lips folded into a sympathetic smile. Her head tipped to one side, dark eyes soft and almost misty. (People had to stop looking at Amanda like that, or she would lose her mind.) "I get it. Totally."

Amanda dug her nails into the thighs of her track pants and tried counting to herself like Dr. Hanover had suggested. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. By the time she reached ten, her anger was supposed to have dissipated enough for her to give a calm and rational response to whomever she was addressing—at least in theory. But there were no theories that suited this situation. And there was no way in hell Katriona Tamin understood anything Amanda was going through.

Oh really?she wanted to demand of the younger woman. The twenty-seven-year-old had never even been married.Did you get tased and have to watch your wife be drugged, thrown into a van, and driven off by three strange men, for God only knew what purpose? I must've been out sick that day, Officer.

Those men hadn't been careful, either. Amanda wasn't concerned about what they had done to her; she hadn't hit her head that hard on the sidewalk—even if it was still throbbing and tender to the touch—and the quaking in her muscles was mostly gone. But the way that kid and the second abductor had manhandled Olivia made it clear she was not precious cargo to them. The second guy worried Amanda the most. Teardrop tattoos were prison ink, and they usually signified a murder conviction. An outline of a tear stood for attempted murder; this guy's was filled in, black as a seed. He had killed someone in the past. Planned it, followed through with it, and now he walked free. And now he had Olivia.

Ten Mississippi.

"Not that I've ever experienced anything like what you're going through," Kat was saying, her voice distant and meaningless to Amanda's ears. She might as well have been speaking Mandarin, or one of the other fifty-seven languages she apparently had at her disposal. Too many, if you asked Amanda. Sometimes plain old English worked best. "I just mean it's gotta be tough, with Garland ordering you off the case. I get that it's a conflict of interest, since she's your wife and all, but come on, if anyone's gonna bring her home, it's you."

Being taken off the case (officially) had been a slap in the face, that was true. Amanda might have punched the deputy chief when he made the pronouncement, if not for her sergeant holding her back. She had taken a menacing step towards the smartly dressed commander, who was to "fill in" for Olivia during her absence, though his time would be divided between SVU and his regular chiefly duties. Technically, Fin and Kat shouldn't have been allowed to work Olivia's case either, given their close relationships with her, but Christian Garland had ordered all hands on deck to find the missing captain—all, except Amanda's.

"Easy," Fin had cautioned softly, holding her by the shoulder. Somewhere in the back of Amanda's overstimulated brain, she'd been reminded of Jiminy Cricket playing conscience to the little wooden boy Pinocchio when her friend whispered in her ear. "He ain't gonna hang around and dirty up his nice clean suit. Wait till he leaves, then you can help look for her."

That was over an hour ago, and Amanda still hadn't turned up any leads. The squad room was filled to capacity with officers from different units, including Missing Persons and Major Crimes, most of them eager to find Captain Benson, whom they inevitably referred to as "the real deal" or "good police." Even the cops who had butted heads with Olivia in the past—usually the men with reputations as good ol' boys, or those with excessive force complaints in their jackets—were fired up about someone coming after one of their own. Their sister in blue, they were calling her.

Seeing them all gathered near the white board, watched over by the 8X10 photo of Olivia in her captain's uniform, made Amanda heartsick. She vividly remembered putting together a similar murder board and presenting it before her colleagues when Lewis had abducted Olivia the first time. God help her, she'd felt energized and alive back then, adrenaline pumping at the thought of her coworker in the hands of a monster like William Lewis. She had been concerned for Olivia, of course, but there was also that heady rush—almost a thrill of excitement—at the thought of taking Lewis down and saving the day.

This time she didn't feel excited, just shell-shocked, hollowed out, and desperately afraid. Beyond a couple of blurry shots captured from the bystander's cell phone footage, they didn't even have any profiles of the perps to display on the board. Just vague physical descriptions cobbled together from Amanda's admittedly compromised viewpoint: Perp One was early 20s, slim build, brown (Leave It to Beaver) hair, green or blue (serial killer) eyes; Perp Two was mid- to late-30s (plenty of time to become a hardened criminal), muscular build, dyed platinum hair, eye color unknown (something mean). She couldn't even wager a guess at the driver, other than a resemblance to a brawny Anton LaVey.Satanist on 'roidswas not a useful descriptor for an APB.

Amanda thought the younger guy was around six-four, a detail she'd repeated incessantly, until someone finally wrote it under the photo in which his bulging eyes were focused on an unpictured Olivia. The other guy was harder to tell, because Amanda had been lying down and only saw him sneaking forward with squatted knees, but he seemed close to Olivia's height when he hauled her upright. Height had little bearing on strength, though. Quite often the most violent criminals were of modest stature. Amanda herself could lift Olivia off her feet if she put enough muscle behind it. Why had that always filled her with such pride, like it was proof of her physical superiority?

Now it just made her nauseous. As did Olivia's personal information being splashed all over the murder board for everyone to see. Female brunette, brown eyes, 5'9" (5'8½" at her last doctor's appointment, a decrease for which Amanda had teased her mercilessly, crowing, "Who's the short one now, baby?" and poking her while she squirmed), 154 lbs. Most of the cops in attendance knew Captain Benson on sight—she had made a strong impression throughout the New York Police Department over the years, not just at the one-six—but if the FBI was called in to assist, they would need a physical description to aid their search. At first, Amanda hadn't understood why, the impulse to protect Olivia's privacy overruling her logic and all her police training. Then it clicked: bodies were often too disfigured to ID by facial features alone.

Jesus God.

"Don't worry, Rollins, we're gonna find her." Kat didn't reach over to pat Amanda's hand, but her voice sounded as though she had. "Hell, knowing the Cap, she'll probably rescue herself before we even—"

"What've you got?" Amanda asked, indicating the back of Kat's laptop with an abrupt nod. She appreciated the attempts at reassurance, but if the officer backpedaled any harder, she was going to break an axle. Amanda had neither the time nor the patience. "Anything?"

Kat's shoulders sagged, giving her a slightly chastised appearance. She gazed at the screen in front of her with a dubious expression, then askance at the squad room, where Fin was conferring with CSU about the Taser that had been left at the scene. The kid must have dropped it when he helped drag Olivia to the van.

"I'm not really supposed to . . . "

"When has that ever stopped you before?" Amanda asked, fixing the younger woman with a hard look. It wasn't right to lord that over Kat, especially when her own motto had always been that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, but Amanda didn't care about right or wrong just then. She only cared about getting Liv back safe and sound. "You said yourself I'll be the one to find her. Garland ain't even here, and Fin's letting me help. So, tell me what you've got, Tamin."

After a brief hesitation and some chewing of the lip, Kat relented. She swiveled the laptop in Amanda's direction and wheeled her chair around the table, leaning in to operate the media player that engulfed the screen. "I still can't make out the full plate number," she said, and cautiously pressed play, as if slow movements might lessen the pain of viewing the video for the fortieth or fiftieth time. As if Amanda hadn't experienced it in living, breathing, brutal color. "And the van blocks most of the shot. But there is this guy. Over here in the red hat."

Somewhere between the ride to the precinct in Fin's department issued car and taking down the contact information of their eyewitness—a tourist from London who was visiting her granddaughter at university and accidentally caught Olivia's abduction on camera while recording a Facebook story—Amanda had forgotten about the man in the MAGA hat. She followed the accusatory line of Kat's finger as it pointed him out in the throng waiting to cross the street. Other than the outdated cap, he seemed fairly innocuous. An Average Joe clinging to an extinct administration, as men so often do. "What about him? Bastard didn't even stick around to help."

"Right. Didn't think much of him at first. What kind of asshole records something like that and doesn't offer it over to the cops, you know?" Kat tapped the screen emphatically, right on the man's side-turned face, then did the same to the rewind button. "But watch this. If I take it back to where Mrs. Lockhart leaves the café and starts filming . . . "

For several moments, Amanda didn't catch on. She stared intently at the jerky slo-mo images in the video—a blinding flare as Mrs. Lockhart conveyed her cell phone from dim café to bright sunshine, the old woman's sandaled feet moving along the sidewalk, the seasick whirling while she figured out where the camera lens was located, and a sharp pan to the left when the action broke out—growing more frustrated with every second that passed. "Just tell me what—"

She cut herself off, all at once spying the small detail that her brain had tuned out after studying the footage too many times. Kat replayed the moment, pitched forward and eyeing Amanda coaxingly, like a speech therapist struggling physically to encourage a stuttering pupil. There it was, a split-second before the van screeched up, before the kid had emerged from under the scaffolding and pulled the trigger.If you insist, he had said.Sorry, lady. . . A blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse (and all the other cops had, up till now) when Mrs. Lockhart turned the camera towards the crosswalk, at the very same moment Olivia and Amanda approached on the other side. At the very same moment MAGA Hat zoomed in on their progress.

"Sonuvabitch," Amanda muttered, bringing her fist down so hard against the table a tidal wave of coffee crested over the brim of her mug and splatted next to the laptop. "He was already filming us when those pricks showed up. He was pro'ly in on it too, the f*cker."

"Yeah." Nodding eagerly, Kat clicked through the scene again and again, each time taking it back to that single frame where Olivia was smiling, before all hell broke loose. A candle-flame flicker in the fires of eternity. That was how quickly life could change. Finally, Kat paused it there—The After—and Olivia smiled no longer. "That's what I'm thinking. He was there to get it on video for . . . whatever reason. Proof of life? I dunno. Then he bolted during the commotion. Like a bitch."

Tentatively, Amanda pushed play on the video window and watched herself fall into her wife's arms, watched Olivia drop to her knees and yell at the kid pointing the Taser. The video was muted, only traffic and the umbrage of the onlookers surrounding Mrs. Lockhart discernible in its audio, but Amanda heard the words perfectly when the kid moved his mouth. "Sorry, Cap, boss's orders," she narrated for him, glaring at the lanky, bug-eyed figure on the screen. A moment later, the van blotted him out like an instantaneous solar eclipse. The last clear shot in Mrs. Lockhart's video was of Olivia, expressionless and limp as a dishrag, being hauled into the back of the vehicle.

"What?" Kat asked, breaking into Amanda's dark reverie, a quizzical expression on her bold features.

"That's what the younger guy said to Liv after he tased me, and before the other guy tranqed her." Amanda poked at the rewind double arrows, backtracking to the scene she spoke of. She was only now remembering his exact words to her wife, who had demanded to know why he'd hurt Amanda. That distraction had ultimately gotten Olivia drugged and kidnapped. "'Sorry, Cap, boss's orders.' I forgot till just now. He definitely called her 'Cap,' though. He knew who she was. And there's someone else calling the shots. 'Boss's orders.'"

"sh*t, yeah." Kat chewed at her bottom lip some more, casting an uncertain look at the laptop and another at Amanda. "What are you thinking? Drug cartel or something? Those guys are always making threats when she puts them away. Or maybe that douchebag lawyer she locked up a few years ago. Didn't he have it out for her, too?"

Amanda shook her head, but try as she might, she couldn't pry her eyes from the screen and that final glimpse of Olivia's face. Blank though it was, due to whatever paralytic she'd been shot up with, she had to be absolutely terrified. She had to be, because Amanda was, too. "Miller's a blowhard. Ain't heard hide nor hair of him since he went to Rikers. You know how chickensh*t rapists do in prison," she said, tugging her shoulder up in a dismissive shrug. "Probably got his hands full with gangb*nger co*ck right now."

Ex-attorney Rob Miller wasn't the only one who was all bluster, Amanda thought. Despite her confident and callous tone, she felt a large weight settle onto her chest at the mention of his name. The truth was, she didn't know if this was him or not. He likely still had ties on the outside, men willing to do his bidding for the right price. It would be foolish to think a rat bastard like that didn't have some of his riches hidden away in offshore accounts never uncovered by the NYPD. Rat bastards always did. And there was the man with the teardrop tattoo, unquestionably an ex-con . . .

She made a mental note to check up on Miller, even as she shot down the drug cartel theory. This one, she was sure about. The cartel—from Sinaloa to Juárez—did not waste time on tasing a cop and abducting another off the street. Vengeance was swift and cruel with drug lords; they would have entered the apartment late at night and slit the throats of each family member as they slept, right on down to baby Samantha and both dogs.

Amanda said as much, all the while fighting the urge to vomit. She left out the part about her baby. "It's about more than just retaliation," she concluded, reaching to trace her finger along the outline of Olivia's face. She drew back at the last second and returned the video to its dark and featureless beginnings. "That would be too impersonal. This felt more like—"

"Uhh, Rollins?"

Annoyed by the interruption, Amanda hiked an expectant eyebrow at Kat and waited for the younger woman to spit it out already, instead of gaping at the front of Amanda's t-shirt as if the Just Peachy slogan was morally offensive. "What?" she snapped, and immediately regretted the harsh tone when she glanced down and saw for herself the wet spots darkening her ringer tee. Two of them, right in the vicinity of her nipples. No wonder her chest felt warm and heavy a moment ago—her milk was letting down.

"Aw, Christ." Reflexively, Amanda peeled the shirt away from her breasts, but the damage was already done. Both cups of her cotton bra, the one reserved for lazy weekends and midnight bodega runs, were soaked through.

They had laughed wildly one evening when Olivia commented that she "probably couldn't fit one whole boob into that dinky thing," and Amanda spent the next few minutes trying to arrange the cups over her wife's ample and uncooperative bosom. She never did manage to secure it properly and with adequate coverage.

"I forgot to pump," she said, gazing at the damp spots in bewilderment. She flapped her shirt uselessly and looked around the interview room, for what, she didn't know. Only when her eyes fell upon the toy box in the corner did she realize she was searching for her infant daughter. "I was going to feed Sammie when we got back home . . . "

"Do you, um, need to go? I can call you if—"

"I'm not leaving." Amanda stood, the abrupt shift sending the chair rolling out behind her. The undrunk coffee shimmied in the mug, close to overflowing again. Olivia had been after her not to consume too much caffeine while they were breastfeeding, convinced it made Samantha fussy. (How could she have forgotten that? How could she have forgotten their baby needed to eat?) "I've got a breast pump in my locker. And there's extra bottles in the fridge at home. Lucy knows the routine."

She said it as much for her own peace of mind as for Kat, who appeared rather dubious though she nodded understanding. If she was doubting Amanda's mothering skills right then—well, sister, get in line. Amanda had felt like a louse calling up the nanny to relieve Carisi of childcare duties, but even if it made her a bad mama, she couldn't go home to her kids yet. She couldn't bear to look them in the eyes and lie when they asked where Mommy was.

"I gotta go take care of this," Amanda said, gesturing to her soiled t-shirt and edging towards the door. She peered out the glass partition wall at the busy squad room beyond, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. She wasn't particularly self-conscious about her body, but no female cop wanted to parade past her male colleagues with leaky tit*.

Just f*cking Peachy.

"Here. Take this." Kat shrugged out of her blazer and walked it over to Amanda before she could object. "I'm getting overheated from the laptop anyway." The officer kept a safe distance and averted her eyes from the milk stains; for someone who enjoyed a bloody contact sport like boxing, she was awfully squeamish.

"You sure?" Amanda held the jacket away from herself for a moment, as if it might be rigged to explode. She'd never been the type to share clothes with her female friends when she was younger, for fear they would find out she wore her cousins' hand-me-downs throughout most of grade school and junior high. By high school, she had a job and bought her own clothes, only to have them constantly stolen by Kim.

Now, though, Amanda was the thief, pilfering from Olivia's wardrobe whenever she got the chance. It was the smell. She loved donning one of Olivia's old shirts and finding her wife's scent trapped in the fabric, like whiskey that got absorbed by the wooden barrels in which it was stored. The devil's cut, they called it. Amanda never felt safer or more at peace than when she wrapped up in that scent, the devil's cut of her Liv.

She'd held onto Olivia's discarded hoodie until CSU bagged and tagged it as evidence. Logically she knew that was the best place for it—a stray hair or a wayward print on one of the grommets could be enough to identify the kidnappers, to bring Olivia home. Sometimes cases broke wide open with far less. But Amanda couldn't help wishing she was slipping on that jacket now, rather than the blazer Kat insisted she borrow.

"Thanks," she said distractedly, pausing to glance back at Kat from the doorway. She pointed at the
(black void)
blank media player on the laptop screen. "Get someone from TARU to run that guy through facial recognition. And find out what Rob Miller's been up to lately. Doubt it's him, but it's a place to start."

"On it."

The sounds of Kat's furiously clacking keyboard followed Amanda into the squad room, as did several pairs of curious eyes, a few belonging to cops she didn't even recognize. Someone had tipped them off that she wasThe Wife. So much for keeping a low profile. It might be a good thing, though. People were sometimes more willing to do their job well if they knew who would be benefiting from their hard work.

Amanda's forced smile fell short at a grimace as she skirted past the uniforms, arms folded tightly over Kat's blazer (it smelled like granola, a snack Olivia detested), and made her way over to Fin at the conference table. He stood at one end, fists pressed against the tabletop, his face a study in concentration and something Amanda seldom saw there—worry. It sent a stab of fear to her heart, and her voice came out a breathless quaver when she asked, "Anything?"

She must have looked as anxious and pitiful as she sounded, because Fin's features softened considerably the moment he turned to her. More troublesome than yet another sympathetic expression was the reluctance with which he answered her. If the sergeant couldn't shoot straight with her, something was terribly wrong.

Of course something is terribly wrong, you idiot.Your wife is missing. She's in the hands of total strangers, their intent unknown.(Who are we kidding? Intent is always known in situations like this.)

"Oh, God. Is she dead? Just tell me, Fin." Amanda hunched forward, leaning on the table for support, the other hand forked at her side, a habit she'd acquired after being shot in the abdomen and frequently getting winded with the least exertion. "Is Liv—"

"It ain't that," Fin said in a hushed, hasty tone, taking Amanda by the shoulders and steering her into the break room area, away from the whispers and surreptitious glances. She was already proving why a spouse shouldn't be allowed to work her partner's case.

"I'm good. I got it." Amanda shrugged off his hands, straightened out her blazer with a jerk at the sleeves, and sidestepped the chair he tried to guide her towards. No more sitting. She'd sat on her ass on the sidewalk, bawling because Olivia had been taken from her. She would be damned if she behaved that helplessly again. "Just tell me what you know. puss*footin' only makes it worse."

Fin set his lips in a firm line that brought out his dimples and made it seem like he might deliver a lecture on conduct unbecoming, instead of the information she sought. But after an excruciating pause, he spoke with the matter-of-fact drawl he was famous for around the precinct. (If my sergeant gets anymore laidback, I'll have to install a napping couch next to his desk, Olivia had once joked, gazing out of her office at Fin nodding off in front of his computer.) "We can't trace the Taser. They tampered with the cartridge, so there's no serial number to go on."

That much Amanda had figured. Police tasers like the one she'd been shot with contained anti-felon ID tags that resembled confetti with the serial number printed on each fleck, to help identify which weapon was fired by which cop. Or criminal. Poor man's ballistics, some called it. Looks like a rave, said others. Personally, the colorful, scattered dots had always reminded Amanda of the exit toss at a wedding.

She and Olivia had opted for bubbles on their big day. And Amanda didn't recall seeing any confetti today when the stun gun was fired, or in the aftermath. In shock or not, she would have remembered something like that.

"We did get a hit on the plates, but the owner reported the van stolen four months ago. He seems clean, just a couple parking tickets. We'll keep an eye on him, though . . . "

The false optimism in that last statement and the way it drifted off, as if Fin were mentally preparing for what came next, alerted Amanda there was more. That was a cop's segue—deliver the good news first, then drop the bomb and run—if she'd ever heard one. And she had; it was usually she who held the detonator. "And?" she asked impatiently. Her arms were crossed again, shielding her heart (it felt horribly vulnerable and exposed) as well as her breasts.

"And we got a print off the Taser." Fin swatted his bobbing knee a few times with the folder in his hand, and that simple, unconscious gesture, which Amanda recognized from her own store of nervous twitches, filled her with more foreboding than anything he'd said. Sergeant Tutuola did not fidget. "Ran it through AFIS and got a match. So far just some misdemeanors, mostly for dumb kid stuff. But one of the guys from vice recognized the name. Liam Sandberg."

A couple more swipes of the file, and then, with the deep remorse of a long-awaited apology, Fin added, "Rollins, his dad is Gus Sandberg."

From the import of his words, Amanda knew she should be familiar with the name, but it held no significance for her, whoever it belonged to. Any other time, she would have blamed her cluelessness on postpartum brain. Right now she didn't have the energy or the patience for motherhood jokes. "That supposed to mean something to me? Who is he, Fin?"

The sergeant sighed and proffered the manila folder begrudgingly. "They call him the Sandman. Sprinkles dust in your eyes to make you sleep, but all he brings is bad dreams. And no one can catch his nasty ass."

That description did ring a bell, though it was faint and sounded more like a death knell. Amanda grabbed the folder, taking a shaky, preparatory breath before opening it and surveying the contents. One page wasn't a very impressive rap sheet, she reasoned; the list of infractions in her NYPD jacket was much longer than that. But the blood drained from her cheeks and she slumped a hip against the table, feeling momentarily faint as she read over the suspected crimes of Gustav Sandberg (Known aliases include Sandman, Gus Sanburg, Gustaf Bergmann, August Sanderson, and Stavo Bergström), age 51:

Drug smuggling and distribution, money laundering, arson, kidnapping, homicide, child p*rnography, procuring, and human trafficking.

"Sweet Jesus," Amanda whispered, reading and rereading the list until the words bled together, no longer legible except for the last four offenses. And of those, it was human trafficking that flashed at her like a neon sign and made the blood run cold in her veins.

Homicide was bad, but if murder had been the objective, why stage an abduction? A drive-by would have been cleaner and more effective. Child p*rnographers were the scum of the earth, but they didn't kidnap grown women, either. On its own, procuring didn't frighten her much—Olivia was no whor*—although it put him in the sex trade, and combined with the trafficking, it painted a scary picture. Men who sold human beings were some of the most vile criminals SVU encountered. Those mendidabduct women and what happened to those women, the ones who survived to tell their story, was often the stuff of nightmares.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, Amanda thought, gazing at the distorted surveillance photo that must have been the only available image of good ol' Gus. Crappy as the quality was, she could still see the resemblance to his son, Liam. Tall, lanky. And those cold, penetrating eyes looking directly into the camera.Boss's orders, Liam had said.

"You the big boss, motherf*cker?" Amanda murmured to Gustav's picture.

"Huh?" Fin ducked his head for a glimpse at Amanda's downturned face, his own features knotted with concern. "What'd you say?"

"Nothing. Why the hell haven't we collared this guy?" Amanda stood, pushing off from the table, which gave a shriek of protest when its feet scraped across the floor. The cops in the other room probably thought she was having a breakdown, but she was too distracted by the head rush she got upon standing to care about the noise or its reception.

"Because he's good. Been operating for years. And he gets other people to do the grunt work for him while he sits back on his pretty little ass and rakes in the dough. Some people think he's got dirty cops working for him." Fin examined her carefully as he spoke, stepping closer to peer into her eyes like a doctor with a pin light. "You all right? You don't look so hot. Let me see your pupils."

Falling back a step, Amanda shooed the sergeant away with the Sandman file and tossed it onto the table. The single sheet inside glided from between the manila folds, coasting across the table on a breeze. It reminded Amanda of the puck in a game of air hockey.And the first point goes to Gustav Sandberg, she thought darkly, turning aside from his poor excuse of a mugshot. "Man, piss off. I'm fine. I'm just drained because my body is literally a milk factory." She gestured at her breasts, uncomfortably damp and sticky within her bra. "And, oh yeah, my wife is probably being sold to some Saudi prince right now. How much you think she'll go for? I hear American women bring in top dollar. 'Specially the pretty, white ones. And a cop? sh*t, that's gotta be a few hundred thousand right there."

Fin's patience as he waited for her rant to finish was infuriating. He gathered Sandberg's page into its folder and tucked it under his arm, hands dipping loosely into his pockets. God, just once could he not be so damned easygoing? "You know that's not how it works," he said, and in spite of his relaxed posture, there was a grim note in his voice. "They turn 'em out right here on home turf. And it ain't to no princes."

"That supposed to make me feel better?" Amanda asked, trying for incredulous and just sounding tired instead. In a strange way, his acknowledgement that the situation was dire had defused her mounting temper. She shouldn't be taking her anger out on Fin anyway. He was on her—and Olivia's—side, always.

"No. Just saying." Fin gave a light shrug. "This ain't some Liam Neeson flick, there's no seventy-two hour window, or whatever. If they did grab her for that—and how many women in their fifties you know get trafficked for the first time? But if they did, it means she probably won't leave the city. And that means we'll find her."

It was a good speech and it almost did succeed at making Amanda feel better. Women didn't have to travel outside the United States to be trafficked, and it wasn't like in the movies, where a gang of Albanian marauders dragged some cute teenager kicking and screaming from her hotel room. Girls were in far more danger of being forced into prostitution by a relative, a friend, a boyfriend—and most of them were young, anywhere from adolescence to late twenties. Olivia did not fit the typical trafficking victim criteria. And yet.

She had still been snatched off the street in broad daylight by at least one man with ties to a known trafficker. Nothing about that was typical, and frantic wife or not, Amanda knew her fears weren't unfounded. Somebody wanted Olivia badly enough to stage a risky ambush, and with the kind of enemies the captain made—the kind of men Amanda had seen in the van and read about in the file under Fin's arm—there were no good scenarios to choose from. Even if Olivia never stepped foot out of Manhattan, finding one woman in a city of over eight million, with barely any leads to follow and a sandman sprinkling his magic dust, was damn near impossible.

"Yeah," said Amanda. She caught herself pinching the bridge of her nose, and immediately jerked her hand away, dropping it against her thigh. Olivia did that when she had one of her migraines—squeezed the bridge of her nose to alleviate the pressure in her skull. Massaged her temples. Took off her glasses and scrubbed both hands over her face.

Headaches had never been a problem for Amanda, at least not excessively so, but she had one now. And if she had one, Olivia probably did too. That reasoning gave her more comfort than anything else had so far, as if it proved some sort of psychic connection between her wife and herself, a connection rooted in pain. As long as Amanda felt it, that meant Olivia was still alive.

It wasn't much to go on, but it was all she had.

"Yeah, we'll find her," she said thinly, unable to muster the confidence the words implied. She gave Fin a distracted nod, only half aware he was still there, and headed for the door.

"Hey," he called after her, "If I get an EMT up here, will you let them check you out? You know I'll get my ass chewed if I let you run around without medical clearance."

"Fine. Do what you gotta do." Amanda couldn't help noticing he hadn't mentioned who would chew him out, a job that usually fell to Olivia. Maybe he wasn't so convinced of her swift return, after all. At all. "I gotta go pump. Tell people to stay outta the crib, and call me the second something turns up. I mean it, Fin. No matter what it is, I wanna know."

Without waiting for a response, Amanda stormed out of the break area and past the multitude of eyes that followed her through the squad room. She wanted to yell at them all to mind their own business and find her wife, goddammit, but she kept her head low and quickened her pace, feeling oddly exposed. Being the center of attention didn't bother her one way or the other—she'd never been shy, although she hadn't hungered for the spotlight like her mother or sister, either—but she knew what some of these assholes thought of her and Olivia. That they were drama queens who invited dangerous situations on themselves. That they were soft from working sex crimes too long.

Most of those same macho pricks wouldn't last eleven days in SVU, let alone the eleven years Amanda had spent there. Never mind the twenty-four that Olivia boasted. But maybe it was too long, if things like this kept happening. Maybe it wasn't worth it.

She shoved through the door to the crib, slammed it shut behind her, and delivered a vicious kick to wood that would have broken some toes if not for the sturdy construction of her chunky sneakers. "Motherf*cker," she snarled under her breath, though whom she was addressing, she couldn't say.

It felt good to swear, though, and she continued to do it as she flicked the lock on the doorknob and went to her locker along the wall. Fin had thought it was hilarious to scrawlHerson two pieces of tape and stick them to her and Olivia's neighboring cubbies. "I's gonna get ya towels, but I went with Hers and Hers lockers instead," he'd announced, smirking. A year later, the tape still hadn't been removed.

"Motherf*cker son of a bitch."

Amanda started to open her own locker, then reached for Olivia's at the last moment. She knew the padlock combination ("40-21-35, just like your measurements, hot stuff," she liked to tease the captain), but no one kept the doors secured when they were off duty. Not even her extra cautious, by-the-book Liv.

She felt a little guilty nonetheless, as if she were violating Olivia's privacy even more than it already had been today, and she almost closed the door back up. But a small bundle—neatly folded—deep inside the storage compartment caught her eye, and she withdrew it with something like reverence. Ever practical, Olivia kept a change of clothes at the office at all times. Amanda laughed it off whenever it was suggested she do the same, but now, unraveling the navy blue sweatshirt with the NYPD crest on the left breast, she thanked her lucky stars that her wife was such a square.

After double-checking that the crib door was still shut, the lock on the knob still horizontal, she leaned her back against the lockers, bunched the sweatshirt to her nose, and inhaled. It took some searching, but she located Olivia along the back collar, faintly, fleetingly, and stood there breathing her in for several moments. Too soon Amanda lost her again, and with tears in her eyes, the sweatshirt clutched to her chest, she retrieved the breast pump from her locker and slogged over to sit on a bottom bunk.

Two minutes went by with no milk flowing into the bottles, even after she adjusted the breast shields and the suction speed. The longer she waited, the more agitated she became, fretting that the electric jolts she'd received from the Taser had somehow affected her supply. And if she did manage to squeeze something out, would it even be safe for Samantha to drink? Had enough breastfeeding womenbeentasered for there to be a study on that particular motherhood quandary?

Olivia would know. She had read all the baby books from cover-to-cover in preparation for their youngest's birth, despite already having brought up two babies herself, and what she didn't have an answer for, she researched on the Internet until she found one. "Once an overachiever, always an overachiever," she said sheepishly, when Amanda had commented on her study habits.

Sniffing, Amanda scrounged the phone from her pants pocket and typedDoes Taser affect breast milkinto the Google search box. As she scrolled the results, which were mostly about the dangers of tasing pregnant women—"No sh*t, Sherlock," she muttered as they drifted to the top of the screen and out of sight, like so much smoke—an email alert pinged in the background. At the same moment, Amanda felt a familiar tingling in her breasts and breathed a sigh of relief when two streamers of milk spiraled through the tubing and trickled into the attached bottles. That part always reminded her of drinking through a Krazy Straw.

Putting her phone aside, she focused on the steady pull of the pump and trying to determine if the milk looked discolored or abnormal in any way. She didn't think so, but maybe it was a good thing Fin wanted to bring in an EMT. Amanda could ask the medic about the milk.

Fifteen minutes later she was bone dry, except for her bra, which she stuffed into her locker, along with theJust Peachyt-shirt and the breast pump. She hadn't gone braless at work since those late nights out at illegal gambling clubs saw her rolling in for early shifts, with only a few winks in the backseat of her car, no clean underwear, and not a toothbrush in sight. Back then, she hadn't really needed the support, but her tit* were huge right now—to her, anyway—and she would have been uncomfortable without the undergarment, if not for Olivia's baggy sweatshirt. She kept shrugging her shoulder to smell the fabric, a compulsion she either wouldn't or couldn't cease.

A text message trilled through on her cell phone while she was screwing the cap onto the second bottle of milk. The plan was to store both bottles in the break room (her colleagues were well aware to steer clear of the mysterious containers of white stuff that regularly appeared in the fridge) until she could get them to the nanny, but she never made it that far. Sent from an unknown number, the message read:

You've got mail.

It had been at least two decades since Amanda last heard that AOL greeting; so long ago, in fact, she first wondered why someone was texting her the title of an old Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romcom. Then she remembered that the movie was named after America Online's ancient email herald. Then she remembered the email alert she'd gotten just as her milk let down.

"No," she whispered to her phone, head shaking as she brought up the mail app and thumbed her Gmail inbox. "No no no."

A wave of nausea, as strong as any she had felt during her first trimester with Samantha, came crashing down on Amanda when she saw the subject line of her newest message.

Bagels Bagels Bagels

She reached for the top bunk to steady herself, but her legs were rubber, wobbling beneath her until she sat down heavily on the bottom bunk, the bottles of milk tipped over, forgotten. Her finger trembled above the subject line, which claimed to have No Sender. She'd encountered that plenty of times before on the job—it usually meant the message came from an anonymous account, lots of encryption, an untraceable IP address. The sort of safety measures taken by someone who wanted to remain a ghost. Or a sandman skulking around in the dark.

And there were only a handful of reasons people like that made contact in abduction cases. Ransom demands were the most common, but sometimes the sickos got off on sending photographic evidence of death. The worst was when they sent actual body parts to the family members. Ears and fingers were the favored "gifts" among your run-of-the-mill kidnappers, although Amanda had once interviewed a man less than an hour after he opened a box containing his wife's tongue. He'd filled the wastebasket with the partially digested remains of their anniversary dinner seconds after the interview concluded.

With a silent prayer of thanks that she wasn't opening a small—or large—box, Amanda held her breath and tapped the subject line. She didn't want to look. She didn't want to look, but she had to. For Olivia, she must face whatever lie ahead.

The body of the email was a single line, reading,Did you lose this, corner of 58th and Grand?and for one blessed moment, she thought she'd been wrong. That it was just a kind New Yorker (believe it or not, they did exist) attempting to return something she'd dropped during her ordeal. Hers and Olivia's. But there was nothing absent that she could recall—other than her wife—and it didn't explain how this imaginary New Yorker had gotten her email address and phone number.

All of that was forgotten when the attached picture loaded. The entire crib melted away, taking with it the bustling squad room beyond, every cop therein, and the precinct itself, until it was just Amanda, suspended in some hazy, gray NoPlace where time and space didn't exist. Nothing did, except for Amanda and that picture.

Olivia's frightened face filled the screen. Whatever drug they injected her with had since worn off, her features mobile once more and capable of expressing
(pure and utter terror)
fear. From the red-rimmed, watery eyes, Amanda could clearly see she had been crying. And no wonder—the bastards had duct taped her mouth.

That was a huge trigger for Olivia since spending four days with Lewis, her mouth taped shut for hours, maybe even days, at a stretch. Amanda had stopped by Cassidy's apartment in the aftermath of that abduction, to drop off some flowers for her recovering colleague, and she'd found it difficult not to stare at the rectangular rash that spread from one side of Olivia's face to the other, like the perfect impression left behind by a latex Band-Aid. That splotchy red stripe had filled Amanda with guilt—along with the injuries she couldn't see but had no trouble imagining, after getting an up close and personal look at Lewis' handiwork on Mrs. Mayer—and she'd left quickly.

No looking away this time, Amanda Jo.

There were no bruises on her wife's face yet, she noted with some relief. They hadn't beaten her. (At least not where it's visible, Amanda's brain chimed in.And it's not a full-body—) She appeared clothed, the shoulders of her white t-shirt still in place at the bottom edge of the shot. Behind her was a grungy, colorless wall of nondescript makeup. Hard to identify. Impossible, really.

"Oh God, Liv, where are you?" Amanda whispered, tracing the outline of Olivia's face. The picture was soft and shimmery through a glaze of tears she blinked back furiously. She had to keep her sh*t together right now. Find Olivia, then fall apart, not the other way around.

She took a deep breath, heart in her throat, and pressed the link below the picture, which invited her to "Click for more" and pointed the way with a string of motivational arrows→→→

What waited on the other side left her choking back sobs and fighting to hold onto not just her composure but her sanity.

. . .

Chapter 5: A Wartime Novelty

Chapter Text

I can't remember anything
Can't tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel the scream
This terrible silence stops me

- Metallica, "One"

Chapter 5.

A Wartime Novelty

. . .

The van door slammed shut, cutting Olivia off from Amanda for good. She hadn't even been able to turn her head for one last look at her wife, whom the men had left lying on the ground like the litter for which New York City was notorious. At first her concern for Amanda outweighed the fear for herself, but alone with the three men (she thought there were three of them; two had grabbed her, and someone had to be driving the van, although she couldn't see him or the passenger seat), still conscious and yet unable to so much as lift a finger or blink an eyelid, her panic skyrocketed. She thought her heart might actually explode.

They had hurt her when they chucked her into the back of the vehicle. Luckily the floor had some padding, or it would have been worse thumping her head and smashing her back on the corrugated metal underneath. She didn't think anything was broken, but it was hard to tell with her adrenaline pumping as if she'd just swum the entire Hudson River. While paralyzed from head to foot.

It didn't dull pain, the drug they had injected her with; ketamine would have been her first guess, if not for that characteristic. Neither did it seem to impair cognitive function, for she was completely aware of her surroundings, almost to the point of hyperawareness.

Were there muscle relaxants that were also stimulants? She racked her frantic brain, trying to remember. Her only firsthand experiences with drugs were the kind that knocked you out, not ones that made you more alert. And she was familiar with most substances on the party scene, because so many of them were used to facilitate rape. Maybe it was a new designer drug, then. Lucky her, she got to be the first test subject. And that meant she had no clue how long the effects would last. Minutes, hours, days . . .

If she made it that long. Every muscle in her body was screaming at her to move, to do anything besides lie there and stare at the ceiling, while strange men hovered at the outskirts of her vision, leering. She thought of the Metallica song about the soldier, so grievously injured in a war that he can't see, speak, or move, praying for God and the doctors to end his life.Kill me, he begged them, jolting his limbless body in Morse code the physicians puzzled over, until they realized the awful truth.Kill me, over and over.

"One"—that was the name of it. How Olivia had hated that song and the music video, even at twenty years old. (What would she beg of God and these men, she wondered now. What desperate, dying plea would she make with her bones and flesh?)

Her heart really was going to explode. She was running standing still, and her lungs weren't pumping fast enough to keep up. At the very least she would go into cardiac—

"You wearing your weapon?" asked the guy with the teardrop on his cheek. He appeared above Olivia's limited vision, looking as though he were peering down into a well. First good look at him she'd gotten, and she already knew he had done hard time. Even without the tattoo, it was written all over his face.

She tried to shake her head, couldn't; she tried to say no, but wasn't able to lift her tongue, part her lips, form sounds. He didn't want an answer, anyway. With a cold little smile that so resembled Lewis it was momentarily him above her, taunting and terrorizing, he groped his way up and down her body, inspecting places she couldn't possibly hide a gun. She was wearing a light t-shirt and yoga pants, for Christ's sake. Any weapon would have made a noticeable bulge beneath her clothes, like the one he probably had in his pants as he ruthlessly squeezed her tit*.

He reached into the V-neck of her shirt, rubbing his calloused hand roughly between her breasts like he was sanding the sides of a homemade boat. As he rummaged inside her bra cups, he fiddled his tongue piercing, flicking the little silver ball back and forth with his front teeth. Eyes locked on hers, he pinched her nipple so hard it tweaked a nerve at the bottom of her foot. He co*cked his head, as though he were testing her reaction. Olivia gave him none.

Men had been ogling, commenting on, and grabbing her breasts without permission since they first developed. Her own mother had often glanced at them from the corner of an eye, first with apprehension, then as Olivia matured and surpassed her in shapeliness, with resentment and accusation. As if Olivia had any control over the matter. (She'd tried, hadn't she? Practically starving herself didn't make a bit of difference in the long run. She went down a full cup size her senior year, and Serena still hated her.)

All that attention, good and bad—mostly bad—had made Olivia despise her large bust for a time. Only when she had come into her own as a cop did she start to view it as a source of power, and not just in the bedroom. She had been young, strong, beautiful, and no one got to touch her breasts, her body, unless she said so. No one. That, she could control.

Then came Lowell Harris, William Lewis, Calvin Arliss . . . And a handful of others—no pun intended—in between and after. She didn't even know this guy's name, but he was already taking potshots at the armor she'd built up in the aftermath of those assaults, the armor her attackers had all but stripped away entirely. She longed to clench her eyes shut, willing it so fiercely tears swam into her vision and spilled onto her cheeks, though she still couldn't blink. Crying was not a good idea right then. She needed to remain calm so she didn't aspirate or block an airway. Doubtful anyone in this van would know how to revive her.

"They real?" asked the younger kid, whose smiling face wavered as if reflected in the surface of a pond as he gazed down on her and addressed his handsy partner. Nevertheless, she recognized him as the tall guy who had given her the creeps in the bagel shop. Her gut had told her something was off about him, but she never would have guessed this. And what this was, she hadn't figured out yet.

"Yeah. Nice for a bitch her age. Hate it when their titt*es hang down to their knees." The man with the teardrop on his cheek gave Olivia's breast one final wrench before withdrawing his hand from her bra. He winked at her, conveying none of the charm or good-nature usually implied by the gesture. It was the wink of a hunter sighting game with his rifle. "We're going to have some fun with those later."

Well, there it was. At least he hadn't kept her in suspense, wondering what their intentions were. It gave her some time to prepare, if she could just harness her racing thoughts and heartbeat, and maybe when they got to wherever it was they were going, the drug would have worn off. Maybe she could negotiate or escape. Unlikely she would be able to overpower the three men; the kid by himself, perhaps—he had the height advantage, but not a lot of muscle to go with it.

But the felon, though not exceptionally large, was strong. She'd felt it when he dragged her to the van, and now, as he opened her thighs, smoothing his palms up the insides, under her buttocks, over the hips, and (through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go) cupped her crotch roughly through the stretchy fabric of her pants. She said a silent prayer of thanks that she'd worn underwear, indifferent about panty lines while making a simple bagel run. It wasn't a steel barrier, but it was better than what she'd had when Lewis finger-f*cked her in a beach house bathroom.

Better than red velvet.

The Crier had no intentions of using his fingers, though. Knocking her legs farther apart with his knees, planting a fist near either of her shoulders, he lowered himself against her like he was doing a push-up. She'd been right about the erection; it jabbed into her crotch when he thrust his hips, as if he could f*ck her through the layers of material between them. Lewis had done that as well, crawling on top of her to simulate the various ways he would rape her (again). Sometimes molesting her with the muzzle of her own gun. And when he stood behind her in the granary, rubbing his co*ck against her ass and mashing her tit* together, it had been as familiar as screwing an ex lover. Once Lewis' bitch, forever Lewis' bitch.

"Bet you still got a nice juicy c*nt too, don't you, slu*t?" the Crier gruffed in Olivia's ear. He nipped painfully on the lobe, and for one second, Olivia forgot she couldn't cry out. She thought of the tagline to the movieAlien—In space no one can hear you scream. She'd been eleven the year that was released, and the concept had filled her with terror. Floating alone out there in space, forgotten, forever lost.

She still feared that was what death might be like. Like being mute and frozen on the floor of a dirty van while a man with a teardrop tattoo dry-humped you and murmured, "I been getting sick of kiddie puss*. 'Bout time I got to break in a real bitch."

"Boss said not to mess up her face," the kid warned, though he watched with fascination as the scene played out. Any closer and he would be nose to nose with his accomplice. "Buyer wants her pretty."

"Yeah well, her ear ain't her face, dickweed." The Crier shot a murderous glare at the younger man, but whatever the exchange meant, it had done the trick. He shoved away from Olivia and slammed her knees shut with a nudge that felt more like a kick. "And your boss daddy isn't here risking his neck to grab some bitch cop, is he?"

Okay, breathe, she told herself.Think about what you know, what you're hearing.Keep your sh*t together, he didn't rape you(yet).At most you've got a sore ear and probably need a tetanus booster, from the looks of him.

She took a deep breath and blinked. This is what she knew: None of these men were in charge; it was important to learn the power dynamic early on, so you knew to whom to appeal. Hadn't the kid mentioned something about boss's orders, too? She couldn't remember, but she tucked the information away in her brain, along with "boss daddy." Real daddy or just a dig at the kid was hard to tell.

Then there was the comment about a buyer. That frightened her more than anything else thus far, other than seeing her wife tased and dumped on the sidewalk. (Oh God, Amanda. Please let her be okay.) Buyer was trafficking lingo for someone who purchased a human being, usually for sex or forced labor. Or both. Occasionally the buyer simply wanted someone to torture, or in one case Olivia would never forget: as hunting practice.

Maybe it was the last name Byer, she reasoned. But she knew that wasn't what the kid had meant. The drugging, the van clearly equipped for transporting large cargo, the references to breaking her in and leaving her pretty for a buyer, the pawing and rutting she'd just endured, the group of assailants—this abduction had so many earmarks of human trafficking, it was almost laughably formulaic. Next thing, she would be tied to some filthy bed, being force-fed co*ke and co*ck, until there was nothing left of Olivia Benson but a hollow shell, frail and zombie-like. Wasn't that how these movies went?

Except it didn't make sense. Men like this went after young girls without families who would support or miss them. They promised young immigrant women jobs as nannies or maids, then turned them into all-American prostitutes in the land of the free and the home of the brave. She had never, in her thirty years on the force, and twenty-four of those in SVU, heard of a police captain in her fifties getting trafficked.

She supposed there was a first time for everything. A time to every purpose under heaven, like the song said.Turn, turn, turn.

Her eyes blinked again, and she realized she was able to move them around in their sockets, a natural impulse she immediately fought to suppress. The drug was beginning to wear off—she felt herself gradually regaining control of her faculties, one by one, as if a potent poison were being leached from her body through the feet; she felt like a draining bathtub—but the fear of what these men would do to her once she rallied was greater than her relief at being mobile. She might at least buy herself a few extra minutes to think, to plan, to breathe, if she could just hold still . . .

"Eyes are moving. Cryo's wearing off." That was the Kid, helpful little son of a bitch that he was. He leaned in so close Olivia smelled banana on his breath, momentarily reminding her of the Gerber banana-flavored cookies Matilda had loved when she was teething. Someday soon, Samantha would be ready for those as well. Jesse hated bananas; Noah loved them. Her sweet little monkeys.

It hurt to think about the children while she was in this predicament (would she ever see them again? Samantha was too young to remember her if she didn't make it out of this), but the Kid blew an experimental puff of air directly into her face, scattering her thoughts like leaves in the wind and grinning when she flinched. "Should we dose her again?"

"You wanna turn her brain to mush before we even make the docks?" The driver had finally spoken, calling into the back of the van in a faintly accented voice. New York with a bit of Latin flair. Spanish Harlem, maybe. Local. Olivia didn't know if that was significant or not, but she filed it away with the other intel: the drug was called Cryo (short for—?) and they were taking her to the docks. Lots of places to hide in New York Harbor. Lots of cargo coming in—and going out. "You give her another dose of that sh*t already, she'll have the same IQ as your retard brother. Nobody wants to f*ck some special needs c*nt, no matter how big her tit* are."

The Kid bristled at that comment about his brother, forgetting Olivia for the time being and pushing himself upright to sit with his back to the van wall, arms folded petulantly on his bent knees. He was still part child, and he looked it at the moment, sulking in the corner. It hadn't been a joke, then; the boss was his father. No one acted that way around men like the Crier and the Driver (Olivia caught a glimpse of his beefy frame in the front seat as her eyes pinballed back and forth, trying to spot a familiar landmark through the windows) and stayed alive, unless he had a sh*t-ton of money, or his father did.

"I was just asking," he said, stone-faced and glaring at the opposite wall. He cracked each knuckle of his long, spidery fingers compulsively, and when he noticed Olivia gazing askance at him, he thrust his foot forward without warning, the heel of his Converse sneaker buffeting her temple.

An explosion of light dazzled her already inflamed senses, as if she had caught the sun's reflection glancing off a storefront window in passing, and for a moment her terror disappeared as pain ricocheted inside her skull. It settled somewhere behind her eyes, and she gave a feeble moan, wishing she could hold her aching head but unable to lift either arm. Extremities must take longer to restore than other parts closer to the brain. She hated that the first sound she made in the men's presence was weak and vaguely sexual; she hated that she reacted at all to the spiteful kick.

"Now who's breaking boss daddy's rules about not f*cking up her face?" The Crier smirked encouragingly, in spite of the question. Olivia got the distinct impression that he would have enjoyed seeing the Kid give her a few more jabs with his foot, and it wouldn't have bothered him a bit if the younger man stood up and stomped her skull to bits, gray matter and bone shards kicking up like mud and stone from his black Chucks. In fact, the man with the teardrop tattoo would like that very much.

"Why don't you make yourself useful, junior, and help me tie this bitch up?" he said, clapping Olivia soundly on the thigh the way a farmer might show affection for a prized hog. "She's stronger than the skinny little skan*-hos we usually bring in. Spinners practically snap right in half on my dick. This one's got some fight in her. Look at them eyes. Still thinks she's gonna get away, don't you, Mommy?"

"Afraid she's too much woman for you? Won't be able to keep her satisfied?" The Kid snickered at his own commentary while he dug around inside a dark backpack that sat open in the corner. It reminded Olivia of the duffle bags used by the robbers when she and Amanda were held hostage in the bank a year and a half ago. They had taken her engagement ring, almost killed Amanda. At least it wasn't the detective's life in danger this time. That was Olivia's one comfort so far.

But the Crier had called her "Mommy." It could have beenmami, though she didn't think so. The driver was the one who spoke Spanish, that much was clear from his accent. Cry Baby looked like an average white guy—from what she could make out of his natural skin and hair color, under all the ink and bleach—and probably didn't knowel jefefromla bolsa. But he did know she had young children at home, the way he affected a baby voice when he said "Mommy," and delighted in informing her that she couldn't get away. Even that small amount was too much information for her liking.

Before she could fret about what else he had on her, what else could be used against her, the other guy pulled a roll of silver duct tape and some zip ties from the backpack. Olivia's pulse spiked at the sight of them, and she tried to shout a resoundingno, breathing from the diaphragm like she did when her words needed to project to the back of a squad room, an auditorium, (a prison basem*nt), a noisy and agitated crowd. She managed little more than a whimper and a shake of the head that felt like it rattled her brain, though she'd barely twitched.

"N-no," she croaked, forcing the sound up her throat and through her lips with an audible puff of air. She thought of the Tin Man fromThe Wizard of Oz, bleating for his oil can. Amanda always made her and the kids laugh by imitating the rusty axman, plank-stiff and uttering the squeaky request from the corner of her mouth, whenever they reached that scene in the movie. Olivia had taught their children that hugs and kisses worked just as well as oil at restoring Mama to her pliable, grinning self.

The men either hadn't heard, or chose to ignore the woman struggling and grasping for purchase—even the smallest of footholds to lift her from the mire of total paralysis—on the floor between them. "Never had any complaints before," said the Crier, grabbing his crotch with both hands and rubbing it lewdly. He kissed the air above Olivia, directing it at the younger man. "From bitches on the inside or the out. What about you, rich boy? You even had puss* yet, or you just jerk off to that kiddie p*rn your daddy sells?"

"I've had plenty of puss*." The Kid did a fancy trick with the wheel of duct tape, rolling it down his arm, launching it from the bend of his elbow, and batting it hand to hand with the skill of a trained juggler. Suddenly, he pitched the heavy skein at the Crier, who caught it against his chest at the last second and scowled darkly, looking as if he might take the Kid's head off in return. "My pops got me a hooker for my fourteenth birthday. While you were cornholing your buddies in Attica, I was getting real play. I'll f*ck her right here if you need a refresher course, bro."

Olivia's fear of the duct tape, roughly that of spotting a shark fin approaching in dark waters, was swallowed whole by mind-numbing terror—the great white breaking the surface, its soulless black eye focused on her—when the Kid got to his knees and unzipped his jeans. No f*cking way would she lie there and let that disgusting little bastard use her as a demonstration tool. No one other than Amanda was permitted to touch her. She didn't believe marriage offered a protective barrier against assault, nor did it make someone the property of their spouse, but she had come to think of herself as Amanda's, all the same. It made her feel safe, untouchable. Fighting for her own protection had so often failed; perhaps fighting for what belonged to Amanda would better serve her.

"No," Olivia said again, and this time the men heard. They turned to watch her flounder, with the dispassionate gazes of scientists standing outside the cage of a test subject—a monkey or a rat they had injected with an experimental drug not yet approved for human trial.

Other than mild surprise, they registered no emotion while observing Olivia's desperate struggle to prop herself up, walking backward on both elbows and shuffling her feet, just to gain a few inches of distance from them. "Don't touch," she whispered hoarsely, unable to dislodge themethat stuck like cotton in her throat, which had gone dry at the prospect of having her mouth taped shut. The burning aftertaste of vodka, a flavor similar to scorched tires, ignited on her tongue.

"I don't think she likes you, junior." The Crier grinned, turning even that typically pleasant expression into something sinister and trashy by licking his silver tooth, his eyes roving Olivia's retreating form. He reached down and grabbed her ankle, tugging her towards him and undoing what little progress she had made in her escape. When she tried to kick out at him with her other foot, he knocked it aside as easily as swatting a pesky insect. "Limp noodle probably doesn't do much for her. Bet a tough bitch like this makes that little blond wife of hers wear the nine-inch. The tough ones always like being put in their place with a good, hard f*ck. Wait'll she gets a load of my nine inches."

As he spoke, the man gripped Olivia's ankles tightly enough to leave bruises, preventing her from doing much more than uselessly pedaling her knees up and down. She thought of Jesse, who was just learning to ride a two-wheel bike. According to Amanda, their daughter would have been buzzing around the streets at four years old—the same age Amanda had been when she taught herself to ride a big kid bike—if they lived in a small town, rather than the city.

But it still took Olivia's breath away to see her fearless little girl wobbling haphazardly through the park when Amanda, jogging alongside, released the bicycle seat. Would she ever get to see Jesse discard the training wheels for good and ride confidently on her own? Would Jesse ever forgive her for not being there, if she didn't make it through this? Would any of the children?

"Limp noodle, my ass. Give her here, I'll f*ck her so hard she'll choke on my dick from the other end." The Kid clamped a hand on Olivia's arm, wrenching her sideways, and for a moment, the men engaged in a tug of war with her limbs, pulling her this way and that.

Had she been an old shirt, surely she would have been rent in two. Luckily she was made of sturdier stuff than that, and she let her body become dead weight, a much more difficult state to maneuver. She hoped. In the end, however, it was the Driver who rescued her from being yanked in opposite directions; from being raped on the floor of a van that smelled like a jockstrap and something industrial, metallic.

Later, he would prove to be as sick and heartless as the others, when she was suffering, bleeding, and crying out for mercy in a colder, filthier hell than this one. For now, he was her savior, calling over his shoulder, "Cut that sh*t out, fool. Both of you. Gus'll string us up by ourcojonesif we start sampling the merchandise ahead of time. You can't afford to make any mistakes, sonny boy. You screw up your first gig, you can kiss being a recruiter goodbye."

At first the Kid didn't appear to care whether or not he made recruiter, his hands still poised at either side of his open fly. He gazed down at Olivia with a mixture of longing and disdain, and for half a second, she expected him to spit on her, or whip out his penis and blow a wad on her face. He wanted to, of that she was certain. When he zipped up his jeans instead, she breathed a sigh of relief and felt as if some of her strength had been restored. Not a true escape, perhaps, but a reprieve nonetheless.

Then she heard the screech of duct tape separating from the roll and turned just in time to see the Crier tear a piece off, bringing it towards her lips. "Wait—" She tried to dodge his oncoming reach, craning her neck and twisting her head side to side, the way babies refused bites of strained peas or carrots (not Matilda, of course, she had loved—) "No, please!"

Grabbing the long braid that had slipped behind Olivia's shoulder, the Kid coiled it around his hand like an abusive husband preparing his belt in a tawdry Lifetime movie about domestic violence. He jerked it tight, snapping her head back in the other man's direction so abruptly her neck popped. One of her first vehicular homicide cases as a newly minted detective had been a woman whose thick French braid got shut in a car door during an argument, breaking her neck instantly when she sped away and collided with a tree. She could still picture the odd angle at which the woman's head lay upon her shoulder, severed from the spinal cord, like a bent match head, a top-heavy dandelion.

"I—" I, what? She had no follow up to the declaration (I'm a police officer,I have children at home,I can't be raped again,I don't want to die) and it wouldn't have mattered anyway, if she did. The tape sealed any and all conclusions inside her mouth, where they withered on her parched tongue. Operating on reflex, her hand shot up to pry the adhesive aside, only to be slapped away with such force, it flung her arm out wide, as if she were displaying a sprawling vista.

When she automatically reached up with the opposite hand, the Crier reared back a second time, preparing to drive his fist into her face. She cringed from the anticipated blow, sure it would break her nose, a cheekbone, an eye socket—or maybe all three—the way he was hitting. His strength was immense and terrifying. Earlier in the school year, Noah had done a report on honey badgers, the small but incredibly powerful and ferocious creatures that resembled skunks and were capable of taking down large mammals. So thick-skinned they could withstand arrows and machetes; resistant to snake venom and known to kill even the most deadly cobras.

That's what the Crier reminded Olivia of, those fiendish, foul-smelling weasels, right down to the stripe of white hair he styled like a mohawk. She gritted her teeth, waiting for him to shatter the bones in her face
(like you shattered William Lewis')
but the impact never came. Not from that angle, at least. "Turn her over," said one of the men—she hadn't distinguished their voices from each other yet, the blood and her heart pumping too loudly in her ears—and before she could force open her eyes, she was bodily lifted, flipped, and slammed onto her stomach by two sets of hands. Her abductors were finally working together, it seemed.

She tried to push up from the floor on flattened palms. For a woman in her fifties who had large breasts and a trick shoulder, she still had a great deal of upper body strength. "Damn, girl, were you a mountain goat in another life, or just a lumberjack," Monique Jeffries used to ask, when she and Olivia went indoor climbing together. It was the same strength that made it possible to subdue perps so efficiently, and the reason she was able to pull Amanda back from a cliffside in the Catskills. And it was absolutely useless to her, now.

Both men caught her by the wrists, one on each side, and wrenched them behind her back, crushing them together while the tape roll made several revolutions, thicker and tighter with every loop. There wasn't time to be afraid or triggered by the sound and sensation of the bindings; it happened too fast for her to process, and neither function nor feeling had fully returned to her extremities anyway.

She had felt cut off from the rest of her body before, but those moments of dissociation paled in comparison to the Cryo, which had the added effect of trapping her inside the body she was separating from. She wasn't outside, looking in; she was at the innermost part of herself, cocooned in duct tape like a chrysalis awaiting transformation. What would her body be when this was over? To whom—or what—would it belong?

"Think I like her better from this angle," said the Crier (Yes, Olivia thought it must be him, he had a harder edge to his voice than the Kid). He gripped her ass with rough hands, kneading and spreading until she gave a sickly little groan behind the tape and turned her face to the floor. A metal groove beneath the mat pressed painfully against her forehead, but it was better than what he was doing. It kept her grounded, yuk yuk. (I'm here all night, folks!Unless these fine gentlemen kill me first!)

The groping seemed to last forever, and Olivia was trying to summon the strength to buck him off—maybe if she whiplashed her lower half hard enough, she could use the momentum to swing over, hook her legs around his neck, and squeeze until he turned purple or she heard a telltale crunch, whichever came first—but the Driver saved her the trouble, slamming on the brakes and sending the other two men sprawling. Already flat on her stomach, Olivia hardly budged. She launched a few blind kicks, hoping to hit something, anything, and connected only with air.

"Red light," the Driver announced, by way of an apology, his partners cursing and grumbling about his sh*tty driving. "You want me to get pulled over by the cops? That'd really give you something to bitch about."

It occurred to Olivia then that she should have been paying more attention to her surroundings this whole time—counting stoplights, listening for familiar sounds or changes in road terrain, noting the direction of each turn. She'd seen those movies and didn't believe for one second that someone with a bag over his head could memorize the layout of a foreign city through auditory cues and an internal compass alone, CIA or not. But she had lived in Manhattan her entire life, and she knew the streets well, thanks to thirty years of traveling them in squad cars. Perhaps if she'd been more observant (Like when that guy was rubbing his dick in your crotch?), she would have figured out where they were taking her.

They were headed for the docks, she knew that much. It was too general to be very helpful—there were countless docks in a city surrounded by water—although she might be able to narrow it down a little, based on how long it took to get there. Had they been in the van for ten minutes or fifteen? God, she couldn't remember. Every second that passed with the tape over her mouth, hands behind her back, face to the floor, felt like an hour. They could be upstate by now. They could be in goddamned Jersey.

She had experienced that same time loss with Lewis too, her memory and consciousness glitching in and out while she was tied up in the trunk of a car, then the floor of yet another van. Day blurred into night, the living blurred into the dead, the assaults on her mind and body blurred into a waking nightmare, much like the current one. Maybe she had never really escaped at all. Maybe everything since had been the dream: Amanda, their children, the home and family she had always wanted. A beautiful, perfect, impossible dream . . .

No, Olivia scolded herself so sharply she grunted. She didn't get to check out like that. She had survived minutes with Harris, hours with Arliss, days with Lewis, years with her mother, and kept her sanity through it all. No matter how painful the reality, she had to face it head on, just as she'd done her entire life. Her wife and children were as real as the metal ridge pressing against her forehead, the tape cutting off the circulation in her wrists, and they needed her sane and whole.

She closed her eyes and pictured her family—all smiling faces and blue eyes, except for little Sammie Grace, brown-eyed and dark-haired, just like Mommy—so she didn't have to see the men gazing down at her. Their intentions were clear by the expressions they wore (the Kid kept grinning and winking at her, the Crier glared and licked his lips every few seconds) and the bits of conversation she struggled to tune out ("—she's ever been f*cked by a guy before?" "—take a while to break a bitch like her in, but that's what the buyer wants, so . . . ").

Some of the meditative state was to block out their faces and voices, some to conserve her strength. She couldn't fight two of them in close quarters while partially hog-tied, but she would be damned if she'd lie back and take whatever they had planned for her at the next location.

And she knew, didn't she? No matter how hard she pretended not to, she knew what it meant to "break a bitch." It was slightly outdated street slang for what pimps did beforehand to the girls they turned out. They were calling it seasoning these days, traffickers and law enforcement alike, a term that referred to raw meat being prepared for consumption. Whichever nickname it went by, it all boiled down to the same basic methods: psychological torture, threats, rape, beatings, food and sleep deprivation. Anything and everything it took to make the victim docile and compliant. That's how Olivia's buyer wanted her.

She had a buyer. She'd been branded like livestock by William Lewis, now she was to be sold like it. Unseasoned meat, awaiting slaughter. That was all she was to these men.

Oh God, she longed for Amanda.

. . .

Chapter 6: Run

Chapter Text

Chapter 6.

Run

. . .

Some time later—whether minutes or hours, Olivia couldn't say—the van slowed to an amble, the bumpy city streets giving way to the crackle and crunch of gravel beneath tires. The man at the wheel had coasted into a driveway or lot of some kind, from the sound of it.

Lengthy shadows flickered past Olivia's peripheral vision, as if the van were traveling through tunnels, into daylight. The buildings beyond the windshield must be tall, but Olivia couldn't catch even a glimpse; she was still flat on her stomach, forehead resting on the vinyl mat that would probably leave a maze-like indentation on her skin. She had turned onto her cheek a while ago, only to jerk face forward again when the Crier stared down at her, slowly cracking each of his knuckles. Although she wasn't squeamish, just listening to the bubbles burst inside the fluid in his joints made Olivia want to puke. She couldn't do that with the tape over her mouth, though, and the sole of the Kid's sneaker was inches from her face on the other side. So, she prostrated herself and she prayed. God, how she prayed.

"Honey, we're home," the Driver announced, doing his best Ricky Ricardo.Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do. The Kid didn't get it, but the Crier sniffed out what was probably the closest thing to a laugh he could manage.

If this were a realI Love Lucyepisode, the men would all be bumbling fools who botched the whole kidnapping, probably forgetting to secure Lucy's restraints, only to find she'd escaped out a window and down the fire escape—of course, not without several pratfalls and plenty of the other physical comedy for which the zany redhead was so famous. Unfortunately, Olivia was not Lucille Ball, and these men were far from foolish or inept.

"Okay, listen up, sugar tit*," said the Crier, taking Olivia by the braid and, like a lever, using it to turn her face toward him. "I'm only going to say this once, so you better pay attention. You're going inside with us, and you're not going to make it complicated. Our boss will be here shortly, and you're gonna be on your best behavior for him, right?"

When Olivia simply looked at him, breathing heavily through her nostrils above the chemical-scented duct tape, he cranked her braid up and down, forcing her to nod yes. Her scalp was tender from the previous mistreatment, her temples pulsing from the kick she'd taken, and the come-down of the drug. She gave a soft, involuntary cry, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain. Long ago she had learned to function normally, in spite of the headaches and various sites of extreme discomfort within her body—as a child, it was chronic bellyaches; as an adult, the migraines that had tripled in size and frequency since Lewis—so she would survive a little hair-pulling. But Jesus, it hurt.

"Good girl." The same praise Olivia and Amanda gave to their dogs. The same thing Harris said in the basem*nt of Sealview, his co*ck in her mouth. "Because if you do fight me, you know what'll happen, right?"

Yes. She knew.

Before she could nod, he did it for her, jerking her hair even harder than he had the first time. Tears pricked at her eyes, behind the closed lids. She exhaled wetly through her nose, hating the snotty, juddering sound it made; the way it puffed uselessly against the tape, like a bird fluttering at a windowpane, expanding her cheeks. It was difficult to gather herself, to feel in control and capable of forming a plan, let alone a clear thought, when she could hardly breathe properly. The smell itself was nauseating. That was how vodka smelled to her now.

"It's good that you do. But I've heard you're a real handful, and not just here." With the hand not clutching Olivia's braid, the Crier tugged back on her shoulder and slid his palm down to cup one of her breasts. "Seems like you didn't learn your lesson too well from those other boys who tried to tame you," he said, lips against the outer curve of her ear. "So let me be crystal clear—if you try any of your bullsh*t cop moves or whatever puss*-ass self-defense they teach you bitches in rape class, I will break both your kneecaps. Might cut off a couple fingers while I'm at it. Gus keeps a cattle prod around for the extra feisty girls. That's what I'll f*ck you with, you give me any trouble. Got it?"

This time he allowed Olivia to nod for herself, a cruel smile—no, more of a sneer—on his face when she finally opened her eyes and looked at him. She didn't believe him about breaking her kneecaps or cutting off her fingers. If she truly was being sold, they wouldn't cripple or mutilate her and risk losing business. Men usually didn't want their toys broken.

But the threat about the cattle prod sent a cold stab of fear through her. That, she believed. She had witnessed the Kid tasing Amanda without hesitation, and she'd seen enough genital scarring, inside and out, over the years to be aware of its popularity as a method of sexual torture and coercion. Men weren't often concerned with the internal or what a woman's genitalia looked like, as long as they were in working order when needed.

"Mm," Olivia agreed. She had few other options. Until she got a look at her surroundings, she didn't know what the chances of escape were, if any. She would have to play the obedient captor, the "good girl," long enough to orient herself, decide in which direction to run and whether or not her muffled screams could be heard. It worried her that she wasn't blindfolded. They had no intentions of her returning from this abduction.

"That's more like it. You keep that up, we might go easy on you." At that, the Crier chuckled to himself, a dry, hoarse sound like dead leaves scraping the pavement in autumn. It scraped Olivia's inner ear, making her shudder and shy away from his humid breath. Then he read her mind. "No place out here for you to go, anyway. Unless you're a damn good swimmer. And tit* like these? You'd sink straight to the bottom."

The Kid and the Driver joined in with his laughter, their voices spilling out the door of the van when the Crier shoved it open, hopped to the ground, and hauled Olivia onto her feet beside him. Once again, his brute strength shocked and terrified her. She'd been close to men like him before; men whose power seemed disproportionate to their size, and burst out of them with a force that snatched her breath away, sometimes literally. Men who were like a loaded gun that went off unexpectedly in your hand.

Elliot Stabler had been that kind of man. His explosive temper had frightened her at first, and she'd even considered requesting a new partner after seeing him in action in those early days. But what kind of cop would she be if she went whining and tattling to her boss because the big scary boy yelled and occasionally played too rough? What kind of partner? She had grown up with an angry, aggressive parent who yelled and played rough too. She knew how to handle it. Even when it turned on her.

He had hit her once—Stabler. It was accidental and partly her fault for grabbing his arm in a stupid rookie attempt to drag him off the perp he was pummeling. When he wheeled around, not realizing who she was, and decked her in the face, she'd instantly learned her mistake. That punch laid her out flat, after she slammed into the brick wall of the Central Park tunnel behind her. Hardest hit she'd ever taken, up to that point. Still one of the hardest.

This man, this Crier who probably hadn't shed any real tears since he was in a cradle, had that type of strength. The type that nearly knocked you out of your shoes with one blow, left you lying in the dirt and staring dazedly up at a swirling sea of stars on brick, made you forget your own name for a second. It was the strength of Harris, Lewis, Arliss, Orion . . . not of seven men, but of seventy times seven. Wasn't there a verse like that in the Bible?

(Would she ever get to look it up and find out?)

There was nowhere to run, just as he'd said. From what Olivia could tell, they were on some sort of loading dock that was practically an island unto itself. Huge shipping containers, the kind transported by boat and freight train, were stacked three and four deep on all sides, blocking most of her view beyond. She caught glimpses of water in the gaps between the stacks as the men marched her forward at a pace she had no choice but to keep up with, practically lifted off her feet by their iron grips on her arms.

A brackish scent tinged the air, and she could almost taste it in the back of her throat, like the warm saltwater her mother had made her gargle when she had sore throats as a child. Surely they weren't along the East River; she would be able to see the skyscrapers from there, hear the constant onslaught of traffic. Here, all she heard was the screech of seagulls—their vocalizations were eerily human to Olivia's ears, although maybe she was projecting—and the abrasive, discordant jamboree of drills and hammers from a nearby construction site.

Neither source was visible to her, bird or builder, and even if she did manage to break free from the two men on either side of her (the Crier outweighed her by twenty or thirty pounds, but the Driver was massive, easily in the two-twenty range and most of it muscle), no one would discern her muted screams for help over all that noise. Her captors would be on her before she made it past the first row of shipping containers, as uncoordinated as her legs still were from the injection, and she would find out what it was like to stick her privates in an electrical outlet.

Even that grim prospect couldn't keep her from balking when they reached a lone container, set off slightly from the rest, and which stood upon a jumble of railroad tracks so ancient they had receded into the ground like an old man's neglected gums withdrawing from his teeth. "Hm-mm," she said, and tried to fall back a step as the Kid loped ahead, unlatching the chain threaded through the panel doors at one end of the big metal box.

She had been inside of similar storage spaces enough times to guess where this was leading. Good for shipping large cargo, they were even better for housing all manner of clandestine individuals—illegals, trafficking victims, squatters, brothel workers who sometimes fit into each of those categories. During one raid, Olivia's team had discovered fifteen underage girls living in one of the units, the conditions so squalid each cop required several breathers in the fresh air to get through assessing the scene. The youngest girl had cerebral palsy and lost three toes, after they were gnawed by rats.

For her attempt at backtracking, Olivia received a rough shove that would have sent her face first onto the filthy floor if the Driver hadn't kept a tight hold on her bicep. As it was, she stumbled forward into the container, blinded by the shift from afternoon sunshine into stale, artificial darkness, depending solely on the Driver to keep her upright. The memories of being led around that way by Lewis and Amelia Cole, too out of it to object or aid in her own transport, were so vague she could barely access them; in her dreams of those attacks, she often floated. What dreams or memories would she have this time, she wondered.

Assuming she survived.

"Sorry about the accommodations." The Crier—AKA the Shover—resumed his clutch on her arm, jerking it unnecessarily towards him. Of course he had ended up controlling the side she'd required surgery on. Pretty soon they were going to start calling her Lefty, after all the injuries she seemed to accumulate on that half of her body. "Best we could do on short notice, puss*cat. Previous tenants weren't very good about upkeep. Don't worry, they got, uh, evicted."

That earned an appreciative chuckle from one of the guys, or maybe both, it was difficult to tell in the dark. No sooner had the thought entered Olivia's mind than a switch flicked on somewhere behind her, a mechanical hum like a large air conditioning unit whirred to life, and four tall tripod lights—the kind found on movie sets and in photography studios—suddenly blazed so brightly Olivia's vision eclipsed.

"Lights, camera, action," shouted the Kid in a booming director's voice. He was the one who had turned on the generator that powered the lamps, and he kicked out his long legs as he skipped into the island of light, like an energetic circus master or a vaudevillian taking center stage. His size thirteen Chucks were pigeon toed and flappy on his awkward feet. Still such a boy.

The other men ignored his antics and walked Olivia deeper into the room, which was smaller inside than it had appeared on the outside. About the length of her office and the adjoining interrogation room, and not much wider than the back of the van she was just in. With a small hop, the Kid could easily touch the ceiling.

Furnishings were sparse—beyond the square of light formed by the lamps, an old metal office desk like the one Olivia had written her DD5s on during her early days at SVU stood at a slant. Its surface reminded her of a slab in the morgue. A five gallon bucket of the sort used by house painters and car-wash attendants crouched in the corner. She doubted it was filled with sudsy water. The floor surrounding it was mucky dark, swamplike, and judging by the strong whiff of excrement she caught from that direction, the swamp had had multiple contributions.

The smell alone turned her stomach, but her belly flooded with hot acid when she saw what lay beneath the confusion of wadded blankets, crumpled fast food wrappers, unspooled toilet paper, and, inexplicably, a mangy, one-eyed teddy bear that littered the floor. A single, pitiful mattress with almost as many stains in its creases as on the floor was just visible, co*cked at an odd angle from the wall. It looked like an old hide-a-bed mattress, probably poached from some prehistoric RV, folded, slept on, and f*cked on countless times over the years, until it dragged itself into this hellhole to die.

Before Olivia could pause to consider the consequences, she stopped short and dug in the heels of her tennis shoes on the unfinished wood floor. There was enough traction to keep her from skidding, not enough to keep the men from strong-arming her forward—closer to the mattress with each step—so she locked her knees, summoned the strength she'd been saving up in the van, and threw her full body weight into the man closest to her size: the Crier. He grunted and lurched to the side, and for a second, as he and his accomplice recovered from their surprise, Olivia managed to break loose.

Acting on instinct and adrenaline, she spun around to flee, every muscle, every synapse, the very blood in her veins crying out for her to RUN. She'd been there before, that lizard-brain place where fight or flight were all that existed; where you were just legs pumping, a heart pounding, and that single red word flashing in front of your eyes like a neon sign.Run.

Too late she felt the braid slide from her shoulder. Too late she sensed the fist that closed around it. She barely made it two steps before he jerked her backwards by the hair, stumbling and cringing ("Mm!" she cried sharply), and reeled her in as if she were his big catch of the day. "They told me you were smart," he snarled in her ear, the stubble on his face scratching her cheek. "But that was one dumb bitch move you just made. I'm gonna hurt you bad now, c*nt."

Warning delivered, he clawed a hand around her throat, braid pulled taut in the other, and slung her gracelessly onto the mattress by both. She hit hard on her side, the thin, wilted padding providing almost no buffer against the unyielding floor below. The impact sent a cloud of dirt and dust wafting into the air, a good portion of that going up Olivia's nose and into her eyes.

Blinded and numb with pain on the side—the left, of course—on which she'd landed, she couldn't have said exactly how she made it onto her knees. But when the foot connected with her belly (she felt the unmistakable steel toe and ridged tread of a work boot), she wished she had stayed down. The dirt in her sinuses scraped like steel wool as she inhaled, trying to breathe past the pain in her stomach, except there was no breath to be found. Every bit of oxygen she sucked in through her nostrils was coughed right back out again, via the same route. And then she began to sneeze.

For several moments, she was lost in the throes of a hacking and sneezing fit so violent it blocked out everything else: the men who stood above her, like gods in a Greek tragedy, masks of varying emotion affixed to their faces (the Kid was Comedy, the Crier was Fury, the Driver was Apathy); the heat and cramping in her torso, the likes of which she hadn't felt since menopause ran its course, from that kick; the filthy, musty mattress she knelt on, doubled forward and fighting to remain conscious and breathing. Her sinuses burned like she'd snorted chlorinated water, her lungs burned like she was running a 10K at lightning speed.

If she didn't catch her breath soon, she would surely die. And maybe that was better than what the men had in store for her . . .

Before the thought had time to fully form, Olivia drew in enough air to keep herself from blacking out. She had worked up a sweat with all the coughing, and beads of perspiration ran down her temples to mingle with the tears and snot that flowed freely from her eyes and nose. Her face felt unbearably hot and she desperately needed to clear her throat, but couldn't find the adequate breath to do it without starting another coughing spell. She swallowed forcefully instead, willing away the twinge in her throat that threatened to set her off again. She wouldn't be done in by some dust and a strip of duct tape.

This was nothing compared to being stuffed in a trunk for hours with tape over your mouth and William Lewis behind the wheel, or feeling your life and breath dwindle away in your mother's monstrously strong hands as they tightened around your neck. Compared to those nightmares, this was child's play.

"Finished?" asked the Crier, a note of boredom in his tone. He extended his foot and prodded her in the ribs with his steel-toed, ridged-tread work boot when she didn't respond. From this angle, hunched and heaving, she had an up-close view of all their shoes—the Driver was wearing a pair of expensive high tops, brand new from the unblemished look of them; and the Kid had his classic Chucks. She'd known it was the Crier that kicked her. Who else?

He jabbed harder the second time, and Olivia shrank from the stitch in her side, nodding vigorously.Yes, you motherf*cking asshole, I'm finished almost asphyxiating while you stand there and watch. A hank of hair had come loose from her braid, after all the manhandling, and she flicked it out of her face as she straightened—as fully as her stiff abdomen would allow—and shot him a dirty look, conveying the message.

Unimpressed with the glare that served her so well in interrogation rooms and jailhouses (but not here, oh no not here . . . ), he casually raised his arm and blinded her again, this time with a flash that threw large spots into her vision. She blinked hard to dispel them, though it didn't do much good. The throbbing in her head seemed to synch up with the flickering afterimages, creating a strobe light effect that intensified the nausea in her aching stomach. A vicious cycle of sickness flowing through her, head to foot, like raw sewage churning in the pipes. She could even smell it, thanks to that mess in the corner.

"You can't send that one," said the Kid, whose voice she recognized now. It had more of a lilt than the Crier's flat, emotionless pronunciation. And none of the Spanish inflection unique to the Driver. Why she should be so intent on distinguishing them by voice alone, Olivia couldn't say. Refused to say. "She's supposed to look hot, remember?"

And just as Olivia's vision returned, it was blotted out once more by something scratchy and foul-smelling scrubbing across her face. Worse was the hand clasped behind her head, keeping her from pulling away, from seeking the oxygen that was in such short supply already, while the Kid dried her sweat, tears, and snot. He gave the rag a final jiggle, like a mother prompting her child to blow, then tossed it onto his shoulder as if he were about to do the dishes. It was a ratty old long-sleeved shirt with a pink cartoon cat on the front. Something a preteen girl would wear, if not for the blood and mystery stains. Dried seminal fluid, if Olivia were to hazard a guess.

"There she is," the Kid said, and smiled as he crouched down and tucked the stray locks of hair behind her ear. She pled with her eyes, hoping there might be a shred of humanity left in him to appeal to; he was so young, surely he still had a soul, a conscience? Calvin and Amelia didn't, nor did Henry Mesner, but maybe this Kid could be reached . . .

"Much more f*ckable." He tapped the end of her nose, the way she sometimes did to her children, and stood.

Maybe not.

"Say cheese," he added, his too-wide grin vanishing in another supernova burst of light from the Crier's cell phone camera.

The spots lasted longer this time, morphing into a trio of hideous monster shapes that loomed above Olivia, a dark and sinister trinity. In the outer reaches of her mind, someplace long ago and far away from here, she resurrected the lyrics to a song she hadn't heard since the days ofSchoolhouse Rock!on Saturday mornings. Five-year-old Livvy, seated inches from the TV screen—the cause of her adulthood hyperopia, perhaps?—because Mommy had another headache and the volume had better stay low, or that thing is going out the window, do you hear me, young lady? (Livvy was lucky Serena let her have a TV at all, didn't she know that?)

She seemed to remember a funny little magician pulling an assortment of items from his hat, including the letter three:

The past and the present and the future
Faith and hope and charity
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three
As a magic number

A magic number, indeed. Although, some of the shine wore off when it was the number of men who were about to gang rape you. They left that part out of the song. But as she brought the men back into focus from the blobs they had briefly become, she saw that they were too preoccupied with their own affairs to concern themselves with her.

The Crier had wandered towards the container doors, jabbing at his phone screen and brandishing the device like he was trying to locate a signal; meanwhile the Kid and the Driver were huddled around the ramshackle desk, engrossed by something their broad backs hid from view. Their secrecy worried Olivia, who had witnessed similar behavior from Noah and Jesse, when they were up to no good. Unlikely these boys would be nearly as innocent in their troublemaking as her son and daughter.

Sure enough, the Driver, whose Vin Diesel build did most of the blocking, turned to the side and retrieved a plastic baggie from his pocket. He was far enough away, and just outside the perimeter of the tripod lights, that Olivia couldn't determine the bag's exact contents, but she knew without a doubt that the colorful capsules were not candy. Nor was the spoon the Kid rapped against the desktop in a manic, mind-numbing drum solo intended for scooping cereal. No Cap'n Crunch for Livvy today.

Lewis had done drugs too. She'd seen the telltale white crust around the rims of his nostrils at some point—the precise hour could be divulged only by Daddy Bill, and he wasn't talking—while they were still in her apartment, and he had snorted a line of white powder off of Mrs. Mayer's vanity prior to raping and torturing the old woman for Olivia's viewing pleasure. "Breakfast of champions," he'd announced to no one, flaring and kneading his nostrils until they squelched.

The stuff inside the baggie wasn't co*ke, that much she could see. She had heard enough horror stories from victims, and she knew enough about the drug scene, especially as it pertained to sexual assault, to make an educated guess about what the multicolored tablets were. Anything that bright and bearing such a strong resemblance to Flintstones vitamins or SweeTARTS had to be ecstasy.

The "hug drug," a favorite among ravers and rapists alike, supposedly caused an amorous response in the user, with heightened physical sensations. Ironically, it also lowered the sex drive, but that was why God had invented the little blue pill. Combining ecstasy and Viagra increased sexual potency to almost superhuman proportions (think small Mario consuming the mushroom and growing into super Mario) and made it possible to rave—or rape—on for hours.

Olivia wasn't surprised in the least when the Driver took another baggie, this one filled with light blue capsules, from the opposite pocket. Even from here, she recognized the distinctive diamond-shape of them, although that might have been a trick of her imagination. She was a little on edge, after all. But no, the Driver palmed several of the blue pills, trailing them like a gardener sowing seeds among the E, gearing up to sow his seed in Olivia, and the men began divvying up their bounty. Her boys were cooking up something extra sweet indeed.

"Hey, come get summa this sh*t before I hammerhead it like motherf*ckin' Jaws on that naked chick," the Kid called over his shoulder to the Crier. He sounded like a kid on Christmas morning, in raptures as he surveyed all the presents under the tree.

"Man, Jaws was a great white, not a hammerhead, dumbass." The Driver butted the Kid's shoulder with his own, knocking him back a step, but laughing at the joke all the same. The Kid joined in as he began crushing pills with the heel of the spoon he'd finally stopped clattering against the desk. They stood there, giddy as schoolboys, pulverizing the trail mix into a fine powder. In that form, the E was known as Molly. At least in the United States.

In the UK, they called it Mandy.

(God, please let her find me somehow . . .)

And snorted, it took effect in about half the time of an ingested tablet. Olivia had approximately ten minutes until they started on her, fifteen at most. If she didn't act now, they would likely do her right here amidst the McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers and the foxed sheets of newspaper. She gazed down at the litter, frantically searching from side to side—for what, she didn't know. A cell phone she couldn't use with her hands taped behind her? A discarded blade, somehow overlooked by the men during their last gangb*ng? A revolver to end this before it started?

Click.

Her body began to rise of its own accord before she had mapped out a plan. There was no planning in a situation like this. She either got out, or she died trying. That would be better than the alternative, which was just a different kind of death, really. Like a cat with nine lives, she kept on escaping it, but soon those lives would run out and she'd be crushed beneath the tire for good, her guts fusing with the road until eventually all that remained was a garish smear.

It had almost gone that far with Lewis. In fact, her wife would argue that ithadgone that far, and not just the once. According to Amanda, many of the attacks Olivia had sustained over the years were full-fledged rapes: months of statutory rape by Daniel McNab, following that initial assault which claimed her virginity; ten seconds with Lowell Harris in her mouth, barely managing more than one or two thrusts; Lewis fingering her
(and whatever else he put in you while you were unconscious, don't forget that)
and moaning about red velvet.

Olivia had drawn the line at calling the titf*ck by Calvin anything other than an assault, and more often than not, she called it nothing at all. She had assented that the nameless—and all these years later, faceless—man who forced her to manually masturbat* him when she was fifteen had committed sexual assault on a minor, and the breast fondling at thirteen, by a pair of hands she couldn't confidently say were male or female, had been a form of sexual abuse.

While she and Amanda had come to a grudging agreement about the terminology for those incidents, it was her most recent revelation that caused the biggest controversy. After a first trimester checkup at the OBGYN led to a discussion about first-time experiences with Pap smears, Olivia had mentioned offhand that hers was enforced by her mother as punishment for the engagement to Daniel. To be sure she wasn't pregnant or infected with the clap, supposedly.

"Wait, back up. She made you have one against your will?" Amanda asked, in that tone she had. The one Olivia had come to think of as the detective's watchdog voice. There was practically a growl in it.

"Yeah, it was mortifying. She wouldn't even let me go in alone. I hated her for months after that," Olivia had replied, expecting a sympathetic groan from her spouse, who knew what it was like to be a teenager embarrassed by her own mother. The response she got instead caught Olivia completely off guard and almost resulted in her running them into a telephone pole blocks from their apartment.

"Babe, that's . . . do you not hear what you're saying?" Gentle, yet steady and unrelenting. The voice of an SVU detective breaking difficult news to a hospitalized victim who was unaware of her freshly acquired status. "She forced a gynecological exam on you without your consent. That's rape by medical proxy."

Olivia's exact reply was a blur, the heated debate that ensued in their parked vehicle inside the garage fragmented in her memory, but at some point, too shrilly, she had declared, "Of course I'm upset, you're trying to say my motherrapedme. My God, Amanda. You have got to stop making me out to be a victim every time I tell you someone touched me. It's too much."

That was one she couldn't accept. Would never accept. Just like she could never accept being raped by three men rolling on E and Viagra. She only had three or four of those nine lives left, by her wife's calculations.

Get outnow, she thought viciously, still attempting to stagger onto her feet. Without hands to boost herself—the lumpy padding distorting the floor below, her abdomen broiling from that kick, legs weakened by the Cryo—it was almost as impossible to stand as it had been to sit up on the bed Lewis threw her onto when they arrived at the beach hou—Get upnow, you stupid bitch.

Rocking her upper body to generate momentum, she dragged a leg forward, bent at the knee, and levered herself upright, to her full, albeit protectively hunched, height. The Crier had been thumbing at his phone again (composing a text or email, his rapidly pecking fingers suggested); he paused to observe Olivia's progress, with the cold gaze of a hunter preparing the kill shot for a wounded, dying animal. Not a mercy killing but a trophy hunt, to be stuffed and mounted. To be studied with dispassion or vague amusem*nt on a parlor wall.

For a long while they simply looked at each other, muscles tensed and breath held, as they waited to see which way their opponent would feint. Amanda played that game with Frannie, arm co*cked back, tennis ball in hand. When loosed, the fuzzy projectile—both ball and pit bull—would launch halfway across the park and be snatched up midair by a set of powerful jaws. Olivia's reflexes, while swift and efficient, weren't as keen as Frannie Mae's, nor was master as fleet of foot as canine.

If Olivia wanted to make it past her crying captor, she would have to rely on physical strength. He was strong, but so was she, and they were of similar size, at least in height. Given enough force, she might be able to plow through him and burst through the unbolted container doors. From there she would just have to improvise.

She'd been outmaneuvering larger, crueler individuals most of her life, from dodging her mother's drunken swings to fleeing through the woods to escape Orion. She had almost charged him on the edge of that cliff, seeing no other way to take him out. There was no other way now, either. The Crier smirked as if he knew it too. He twitched his shoulders like he was about to pounce forward himself, making a spitting cat noise against his front teeth.Fft fft. Mouth opening into a wide, vampiric maw, he let out an eerily realistic hiss.

Olivia flinched back, startled, and it was that split second of hesitation which cost her everything.

. . .

. . .

Chapter 7: Bespoke

Chapter Text

Chapter 7.

Bespoke

. . .

She tried to run then, feeling the metal prongs dig into her side a moment too late, and her knees buckled before she made it more than a full step. At the bottom edge of her vision, she saw an aura of neon blue light sizzling in the vicinity of her ribs. Her first thought was of those bug-zapper lanterns that fried mosquitoes upon contact with the UV core. Amanda's grandmother had one hanging from an eave on her front porch, and it had blinked a Morse code signal the entire time they sat sipping lemonade on the porch swing that late-June evening—Olivia, Amanda, Grandmama Brooks, and Great-Aunt Ouise. (Was that really almost a year ago? How badly Olivia longed to be back there.)

Pain exploded in Olivia's side, her ribs igniting with a wildfire that spread rapidly throughout the forest system beneath her skin, consuming everything—branching veins, the sap that flowed there, the organs whose striations chronicled age and significant events—down to the root. She was being electrocuted, of that much she was convinced. During undergrad, she'd written a research paper on the death penalty and learned more about lethal injection, hanging, and the electric chair than she ever cared to know. Sometimes the eyes popped out when people got the chair. Occasionally the body burst into flames.

She was burning and any second now her heart would stop. A smell of scorched hair made her wonder if she had indeed burst into flames, but looking up from the garbage-strewn floor she saw that none of the paper or flammable junk around her was on fire. She'd fallen when the weird blue light sunk its teeth into her flank, and she stared dazedly at the Converse sneakers less than an inch from her face, trying to make sense of her new surroundings.

Groaning with the effort, she turned her head to gaze at the grinning man above—her Converse Kid. So, it had been old Chucky Boy, and not a lightning strike or her finger in a light socket. Whatever he had shocked her with was more powerful than a normal stun gun or Taser; years ago, when tasers had become NYPD regulation, she'd gone through the entire training program, including the capstone project: lining up to be tased herself. Though barely out of rookie blues, she was one of the few officers who didn't drop to her knees or squawk when the electrical current passed through her. She certainly hadn't pissed her pants like that one guy.

The jolt she had received this time was at least twice (possibly thrice) the voltage of that mid-90's Taser, wielded by a snigg*ring sergeant. Her eyes wandered to the Kid's hand, where she wasn't at all surprised to spy a clublike weapon with electrodes the size of the prongs on a washing machine plug at one end, and a pump handle at the other, for controlling the surge.

It was somewhat modified, but Olivia was definitely looking at the cattle prod the Crier had threatened to f*ck her with. She'd come across similar devices in the handful of kill rooms she had helped process over the years; they were a favored method of torture among deviants, specifically designed for human victims, and thus banned in the United States. In theory, anyway. Its high voltage and low current meant it probably wouldn't kill her, just burn like a son of a bitch and hurt like a motherf*cker.

The one consolation was that they hadn't used it on Amanda. It was bad enough that the detective had been tased, but Olivia couldn't bear to think of her in this much pain. (Had she traced the Taser by now? She must have, she was damn good at her job. First-grade material, maybe even sergeant, if she continued the level of work she'd done in the past year. She would come for Olivia. She would.)

(God, please.)

"Next one goes in your tit*, you interrupt my happy-time snack again," the Kid warned, pointing toward the desk with the business end of his sad*stic toy. He swung it back down and jabbed it into Olivia's breast, grinding cruelly, the electrodes biting at her flesh like vampire fangs. The smile never left his face.

That perpetual grin reminded her of The Joker, both the character and the song. Lewis had sung the latter while he jammed his finger inside her ("I get my lovin' on the run . . . "), and Noah had pouted for days when she refused to let him watch the movieJoker, with that actor whose name was a fictional bird. Phoenix something. The birds that self-immolated and were reborn from the ashes.

Olivia held her breath, waiting for the next shock, wondering if she would have the strength to rise from the ashes these men left of her. But the flash-fire pain didn't come, and when she nodded in response to the Kid's demanding, "Got it, Captain?" and another thrust from the cattle prod, he relented and practically skipped back over to partake of his happy-time snack.

She couldn't watch as he and the Driver leaned over to snort the kaleidoscope of dust scattered on the desktop, tightly rolled bills from each of their pockets poised between their fingers. As a kid, she'd loved those little glass potion bottles you filled with layers of pigmented sand. Once, Serena had hurled one at the wall above Olivia's head, bent in study, her drunken aim off by a mile. The bottle exploded in a nebula of multicolored grit that resembled the crushed up drugs when it settled.

What a mess you have made, Serena said the next day, shaking her head at the rainbow smears she caught Olivia scrubbing off the wall and carpet, her own contribution to the disaster forgotten.Why can't you just behave yourself?

Forty-some years later, she hadn't learned her lesson, it seemed. She still didn't know how to behave herself, and the consequences were much more dire now than they had been when she was a bookish twelve-year-old who collected bottles of sand. She had the scorch mark on her side to prove it.

Lifting her head cautiously—somewhere in the span between shoulders, a muscle was strained, and her neck felt wobbly, weak—she peered down at the hot spot over her ribs, finding exactly what she'd expected. The holes in her shirt were bigger, the fabric singed in wider, darker circles, but the resemblance to cigarette burns was uncanny. Underneath, her flesh glowed a meaty, gristly shade of pink. Another brand, to go with all the rest. How had they known to use an instrument meant for livestock? What made her such choice meat for men like these?

Don't just lie here, you dumb cow.Move your ass.Right then, her internal voice, which normally sounded a lot like her mother, sounded more like Lewis instead. In a strange way it was comforting, and she didn't care to know why.Show them what you're really made of.

Struggling to sit up, she propped on one elbow and shoved off the floor, for a moment lingering in the space between like a sticky gauge. With a switch of the hips, she lurched fully upright, legs extended, and checked over her shoulder that the Kid and the Driver were otherwise engaged. They were bent over, snuffing powder off the desk in long, chalky lines, the woman on the floor all but forgotten.

Not so for her old pal Crier. When she turned back around, he was staring intently at her, his face betraying not a single emotion. He gave his phone a perfunctory glance before pocketing it and sidling towards Olivia with the body language of someone coming to taunt and intimidate. It was the way lifers approached fish in the prison yard, thugs approached rival gang members, bullies approached the smaller kids on the playground. (The way rapists approached their victims.) Same old song, and he knew all the words by heart.

As he drew near, about to squat down in front of her, Olivia counted to herself, trying to time the kick just right, align it perfectly with his groin. Her heart clenched up at the thought of what would happen if she missed—or didn't—and maybe that gave her away, some involuntary twitch on the outside alerting him to her next move.

He intercepted her foot when she thrust it forward with all her might, and gave it such a violent twist, she thought he meant to break her ankle. Maybe he did, but her shoe came off instead, her heel smacking heavily back to the wood floor. So he improvised, hurtling the tennis shoe at her with allhismight, which was immense. Though lightweight, the Nike trainer felt like a cannonball hitting her in the sternum at that speed.

While she was still coughing and wheezing into the duct tape, he snatched up her other foot, ripped off her remaining shoe, and pelted her in the back with it as she huddled up protectively. It hit her with a hollow thump that resounded in her ears and her lungs, and she began to panic at the thought of another episode like before—that inability to catch her breath, to hold onto the small amount of air the tape and her fear permitted. The Crier solved the problem for her, jerking her head back by a fistful of hair and opening her constricted airway.

Distracted by the pain in her tormented, fiery scalp, Olivia forgot the need to cough and inhaled sharply, hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "You keep making it worse and worse for yourself, you stupid slu*t," the Crier said in a confidential tone, as if imparting some deep wisdom for her ears only. "All that bad bitch bullsh*t you keep trying to pull? It's my job to f*ck that out of you. Now, you see those assholes over there?"

He took Olivia's head between his hands, one at her brow, the other gripping her chin, and snapped it towards his cohorts. They were grinning and rubbing compulsively at their noses, probably trying to absorb every last bit of powder they had snorted. Enough to rape Olivia for at least a couple hours, continuously if they took turns during each other's refractory period. Even on drugs, men still couldn't get it up immediately after ejacul*tion. But with a break in between . . .

"They don't take this work as seriously as I do. The big one, he'll hurt you plenty with his fat sausage fingers, but the 'roids shrunk his dick, so you won't feel much when that's inside you. He only makes the really little girls scream. Guess they're too tight— Hey. Hey." The Crier shook Olivia's lower jaw, her top teeth screeching against the bottom, when she tried to pull away. "And the dumbass-looking Nancy boy is only here because his daddy's in charge, so he'll inherit this dump and the business someday. He wouldn't know a gourmet c*nt like yours from a hole in the ground otherwise.

"Point is, kitty cat, they're just here to have fun and make bank. The more you fight them, the harder they'll get. But Gus chose me because he needed someone to really teach the girls. Someone who understands discipline and control. See, I don't get off on the squirming and flailing and sh*t. For me, it's about the pain. That's the only drug I need to get me going. And the longer it takes to break you, the more chances I'll have to get high.

"Oh, and I should warn you: I'm a biter," he concluded with a gnash of his teeth, jerking Olivia's face close enough that she felt the moisture from his breath on her cheek. He grazed it with his incisors, as if preparing to take a hefty chunk out of an apple, and when she whimpered a wordless plea, he licked the side of her face with an agonizingly slow stroke.

Olivia swallowed several times, forcing down the bile that coated the back of her throat like a hot, slippery algae. She wouldn't give him—any of them—the satisfaction of seeing her throw up and struggle not to aspirate behind the tape muzzle. If they thought she was that weak, they could think again. Four days of being hammered on vodka and pills, being pawed and licked and rutted against by that man-beast Lewis, and lying flat on her back when she wasn't getting tossed around like cheap luggage; all that, and not once had she vomited in his presence. She'd learned from the best. Serena passed out drunk on the regular and had never choked to death on her own vomit.

God knew Olivia sometimes wished she had.

Olivia wished the Crier dead, too. She hoped the Viagra backfired on the other men and gave them such painful erections they had to rush to the hospital and have the blood drained from their throbbing co*cks with needles the size of ice picks. If she had some handy, she would perform the aspiration herself. Then she would lobotomize the Crier by inserting one of those same needles under his top eyelid and directly into his brain. She'd read about the procedure years ago, after a case involving a woman whose rapist lobotomized her (badly) and kept her as a sex slave. She remembered the steps vividly, but she would add a few extra stabs of the needle for the man before her.

How long she went on torturing and killing the men in her mind, Olivia didn't know, but she became increasingly aware of the Kid and the Driver's antsy, erratic behavior. They were laughing too loudly at nothing funny (the Kid's floppy, untied shoelace; a paper plate that sailed across the room like a flying saucer, after a kick from the Driver) and pacing like a pack of wild dogs awaiting instruction from the alpha male.

Estrus had been scented and the she-bitch was running out of time.

But the Crier had returned to his phone, and he barely glanced up when the other two started dragging the desk across the floor, unleashing a hawkish shriek. It sent a jolt through Olivia, as if she'd been touched with the cattle prod again, and it must have woken her up, because she suddenly spotted a large nail sticking up from the poorly hewn flooring a few inches away.

While her captors were looking elsewhere—the Crier intent on his phone, the two dipsh*ts standing back to survey the screechy old desk, now bathed in light, as if they were propmen preparing a stage—she scooted closer to the nail, praying she didn't gather any splinters along the way. Honestly, a splinter in the ass would be the least of her worries right now, but she wanted nothing from this godforsaken place under her skin, not even the smallest piece of it inher. Somehow she managed to avoid being snared, and lowered her bound wrists over the sharp crook of metal behind her.

Cautiously, she began to whittle at the thick layers of tape, trying not to scrape her skin in the process, though it was almost inevitable.You can live with the scratches, she told herself.Worst case scenario, you'll need a tetanus shot.That's better than the shots you'll need for whatever STDs these scumbags give youif you don't get the hell out of here.

She was so focused on sawing through her restraints, stealing furtive glances between the trio of men, she barely noticed the shaft of light that joined the overbright lamp beams when the door opened to her right. At the opposite end of the container, two dark silhouettes entered in a sunburst of rays that first made Olivia squint, then made her cry out.

It couldn't be the cops already, not unless they had somehow tracked the van, but it might be help. Unsuspecting workers who stumbled upon an unlocked shipping container and would surely call 911 when they discovered what was inside? Or even just a couple of curious teens who would see the woman duct taped on the floor, her muffled screams scaring them off—but only far enough away to dial the police. Every teenager had a cell phone these days.

Her voice vibrated the roof of her mouth, blaring from her throat and colliding with the padded wall of her sealed lips. In the back of her mind, a murky memory surfaced: the soundproofed room with checkerboard walls, where Calvin Arliss had sexually assaulted her. It was inside her now. They all were—the dirty rooms she'd been assaulted in, the dirty men responsible. And not just assaulted.Raped. Maybe if she finally admitted it, this new nightmare would end. She couldn't have survived three rapists, just to become the victim of a gang rape. Not even fate was that cruel . . .

Was it?

She yelled herself hoarse behind the duct tape, or would have, if the Crier hadn't taken several swift strides forward, almost appearing to spring from one side of the room to the other, and backhanded her across the face with such force it knocked her sideways. She felt something drag across the nail and rip, but it was just her skin, not the tape. Tape didn't bleed. Wrists and the insides of cheeks did, especially when a hand came out of nowhere and slapped the living hell out of you. Olivia had learned that lesson at a young age, and still she hadn't been prepared for such a vicious blow. On her side like that, pain emanating from her cheek, scalp, chest, and abdomen, she couldn't even find the strength to sit up right away.

"Enough," boomed a voice, almost as loud as the blood pounding in Olivia's skull. She flinched involuntarily, knees curling in tight towards her chest. There was a time that yelling men didn't frighten her, when big noises hardly made her jump at all, but those days were over. Lewis saw to that, as he had so many of the alterations to her life, her soul, over the last nine years.

A life bespoke by monsters.

And here was the next in a long line of men-shaped beasts who would control Olivia's fate. She recognized his power without even seeing his face; the moment he had shouted, the Crier halted his attack—boot co*cked back, about to drive into Olivia's gut like he was the kicker and she the football—and retreated. Whoever the new man was (not help, that much she realized), he had authority over the Crier and his buddies, whose laughter had cut short abruptly at the sound of his voice. Didn't they say everything went silent right before the tornado hit?

"What's the meaning of this?" Despite the demand, his gait was casual, his shoes barely scuffing the floor upon entry. Someone followed along behind him, plodding heavily and awkwardly with each step. "Was I unclear when I told you no damage to the face? Do you want this deal to fall through, after all it took to make it happen?"

"Bitch was screaming," the Crier said in a vaguely military tone. Olivia didn't lift her head to look, but she imagined him standing at attention, fists behind his back, stance wide. A regular goddamned soldier. "Had to shut her up somehow. She can take a hit, and it worked didn't it? Look at her, curled up all nice and quiet, like the good little puss* she is."

Olivia unfurled from her defensive ball and slowly dragged herself upright, every movement a struggle for her strained muscles, which were still glitchy from the paralytic and the electric shock. She felt like an old VHS tape with bad tracking, her inner reels snarled beyond repair. But she would not lie on the floor and be compared to a f*cking animal (although she was certain there were other connotations to that particular choice of species) while four men stood around, licking their chops. Five, she saw, when she straightened her shoulders and raised her chin with defiance.

The fifth was a boy. Younger than the Kid, to whom he bore a strong resemblance, but his crooked baseball cap and LEGOStar Warst-shirt were oddly juvenile for a boy of his size. He lagged behind the taller, older man, openly gawking at his surroundings and playing with the zipper of his red windbreaker. "It stinks in here, Dad," he commented, wrinkling his nose when he caught a whiff of the bucket in the far corner.

His father ignored him, eyes on Olivia, though he hadn't finished with the Crier yet. The two older men were practically toe to toe, and though the Crier wasn't exactly using the soldier's posture that Olivia had envisioned, he gave a clipped nod when his boss said, "Touch her face again, you're out."

"Hey, bro!" the boy called, waving at the men by the desk.

"Hey, man," the Kid replied, sauntering over to the new arrivals, hands in his pockets. He whipped one out and slapped the brim of the boy's hat, knocking it down over his eyes. "What're you doing here?"

"Dad said I could come." The boy adjusted his hat, grinning as if he'd received a good-natured whack on the back rather than a bullying gesture. "I'm eighteen now. It's time I learn the business too. Right, Dad?"

The Kid looked to the man who was obviously his father as well—they were the same height and build, sharp-featured, with those creepy penetrating eyes—and co*cked his head, dubious. "Seriously? You didn't let me join in till a few months ago."

"That's because you're careless and impulsive," said the father. If Olivia remembered correctly, the Crier had said his name was Gus. He seemed familiar somehow, but her thoughts were too disjointed, her nervous system too fried, for her to place him. She probably wouldn't even recognize her own face in the mirror right then.

"You were already making trouble for yourself and all those young women by the time you were fifteen, anyway. Now it's time to shape up and teach your brother how to become a man."

The Kid swiped the flat of his sneaker along the floor, sending up a dust cloud worthy of a dirt driveway. He thrust his hands into his pockets again and frowned at his father, looking like a child pouting over a confiscated toy. Noah made that face when his video game privileges were revoked. "Come on, Pops, you really think this is the best one for him to learn on? You said it yourself, this job needs to go smooth. Can't he wait till we've got some little nobody?"

"You never did like to share," said Gus, a faint smile belying his disapproving tone. He reached up and cupped a hand firmly to the back of the Kid's neck. Not rough, but certainly not gentle, either. "You'll teach him. And you'll make sure there are no mistakes, like when you got out of hand with that pretty little immigrant girl. I lost a lot of money on that one, son. You know I don't like to lose money."

The last bit sounded like a warning—or a threat—but Olivia was too busy trying to process the part about the little immigrant girl to decide which. How little? What had these animals done with her? Was she in a shallow grave somewhere nearby (or maybe another shipping container like this one, filled with decomposing bodies, more money lost); had she survived the Kid's overzealous attentions and been too damaged to fulfill her duties as a pretty little girl anymore, thus discarded for Olivia and her squad to find, to try and piece back together?

Olivia suddenly felt more afraid for the girl than for herself. She had to get out of this place and look for her. Even if she only found a corpse, the ME could still identify the body and put it to rest. Someone somewhere had to be searching for their lost daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend . . . Women and girls didn't just go missing, without at least one person looking for them. There was always somebody who loved them, wasn't there?

It was like trying to get up with an anchor tied around her neck, weighing her down to the floor, but she made it onto her knees and summoned the strength to rise fully. Where she would go from there, she didn't know; she only knew that all it took was one stroke of good luck: a well-placed kick that knocked the jagged bottle away, a metal bar that came loose with a final desperate tug, a perfectly chambered bullet, a cliffside that beckoned in the deep dark wood.

(But there's five of them and only one of you.)

No matter. She had escaped Lewis, who seemed to have the power and wherewithal of five men, or even ten. By the time she was through with him, his face was a misshapen mask of blood, the dents in his skull sunken in like shallow graves, limbs twisted at odd angles. She had broken him on the inside, just like he'd done to her. The difference was, his wounds healed.

Parts of Olivia would always remain broken—her inability to be approached from behind, to walk into a dark apartment alone, to feed her children cake batter from the bowl, to trust herself not to go too far—she had accepted that years ago. But she couldn't let it happen again. She couldn't let these men shatter what she had so delicately and painstakingly reconstructed for her wife and children's sakes.

Maybe one of the men had a gun on him. Probably Gus, since he was the ringleader. It wouldn't do to put firearms in the hands of the Kid or the Crier. Little Brother, obviously intellectually disabled in some way, would probably end up shooting himself if given a weapon. The father was her best bet, though how she could break her bonds, wrest an unseen gun from him, and not be overtaken by the others was a terrible riddle she had no time to solve. She would just have to think on her feet, as she had always done since first learning they could carry her far away from her mother.

But in her haste to stand and run, she had forgotten about the Driver over by the desk. From the corner of her eye, she saw his muscular form coming at her, not with a gun in his hand, but with the cattle prod from before. He was too quick for her, his movements surprisingly spry for someone so large.Well, at least I know it's coming this time, she thought, as the metal teeth of the weapon bit into the soft, bare flesh at her inner elbow.

It didn't hurt any less than the first zap, even with that fleeting moment of preparation. She tried not to cry out, and failed, as the current ripped its way through her like a buzzsaw going up her spinal cord. Luckily the Driver didn't have quite the happy trigger finger that his younger partner had demonstrated, and he eased off within a second or two. The burn wouldn't be as bad as the one to her side, and she only fell to her knees now, instead of kissing the filthy floor. Perhaps she was already building up a tolerance.

Please, God.

"Wait," said Gus, his hand going up when the Driver repositioned the prod at Olivia's hip, probably intending to lay her out flat with a second shock. She wondered why her jaw hurt so badly, and realized she was clenching her teeth in anticipation of another jolt. She attempted to relax her body, especially the jaw, fearing it would lock up entirely like it sometimes did when she chewed, but she couldn't let down her guard with Gus approaching.

Olivia eyed him warily as he drew near, a placid smile on his lips. Whereas his son grinned too wide and too much, this man's expression barely touched the surface. A formality for his guest, and nothing more. He wasn't a bad-looking man—at one time, she might have smiled back to find him watching her in a bar or a restaurant; she might even have been flattered that someone so attractive and well-dressed had noticed her. Now, she shied away, unable to fully recoil with the Driver gripping her shoulder and aiming the cattle prod at the opposite side of her neck.

The meaning was clear: one false move, bitch.

"Whose idea was this?" Gus asked, pointing to the tape slashed across Olivia's mouth. He glanced at each of the kidnappers in turn, an expectant look on his flinty features. "You really think it's a wise idea to close off the airway of someone to whom you've administered a paralytic agent? You're lucky she's still breathing."

"I didn't put it on her until after the sh*t was wearing off," the Crier said gruffly. "She was being a mouthy little c*nt, so I shut her up. That's what we're supposed to do. These bitches don't learn if you play nice,boss."

The honorific was anything but, and Gus turned a cold glare on the other man, the room gone deathly quiet. In the distance, a muffled chiseling from the construction site was just detectable. "You've seen what duct tape does to the skin. You want to be the one who explains to the buyer why she's got a rash on her face?"

"I don't see what the big deal is. It's just a face. Unless this guy only wants blowj*bs, there's other more important parts of her. Speaking of which, can we speed this up? I'm losing my woody over here."

At the mention of blowj*bs, Olivia's pulse kept time with the jackhammer across the water. She tried to jerk free of the Driver, but he had her trick shoulder in his large, unrelenting grasp. He was standing close enough to headbutt in the genitals—Gus, too—if only she could twist in the right direction. As if he had read her mind, the Driver moved his hand to the back of her neck, squeezing at either side and giving a vicious shake. For a moment, she felt like a cat being lifted by the scruff. Bad puss*.

"See? She's ready and rarin' to go," the Crier said, grabbing his crotch as if his co*ck was already out and wagging at her. "Can't wait to feel this glide between her cheeks."

He didn't elaborate, but Olivia had a pretty good idea which cheeks he meant. Even so, she gagged at the thought of him putting it anywhere close to her mouth, and the spasm nearly brought up her breakfast coffee. (She wondered vaguely if her children had gotten their bagels, and if not, what had they been fed? The thought of them going hungry was too much to bear; worse, almost, than knowing what was about to happen to her.)

Feeling another coughing fit coming on, now with the added challenge of the Driver keeping her in place, his ball-peen fingertips digging into the slope of flesh on either side of her neck, Olivia started to panic. The room was suddenly too small, the air too thick. It was like the inside of a broom closet—or a tomb. There were ways out of those places (hadn't Jesus risen from the tomb after three days?), but not out of here.

Beads of sweat sprouted on her forehead as she fought back a giant whooping cough, and just as she was about to begin choking in earnest, a hand appeared and whisked aside the tape from her lips. She took in a gush of air that whistled in the back of her throat, a strong wind through the eaves, and spluttered it out again, hacking until she produced a deep bronchial rattle. Noah used to sound like that with his frequent respiratory infections and lung issues; sometimes he still did, if he caught a bad enough cold. It always put Olivia on edge, her own lungs growing tight, throat constricting, as she tried to breathe for him. Tried to breathe. Couldn't.

She couldn't breathe.

Someone thumped her on the back with an open palm, as if she had a piece of food lodged in her windpipe. She realized then that the Driver's hand was no longer at the nape of her neck—he was probably the one who hit her—but she was too busy guzzling all the rancid, sh*t-scented air she could get to do more than hobble a few paces on her knees. The room shimmered in her teary vision, a mirage in the vast and fiery desert, though one she wanted to run away from, not towards. And ahead, a dark figure emerged from the light and the wavering aura, like a terrible angel, bending down to Olivia's level.

"Shh, shh. Get hold of yourself," said Gus. His voice was unique from the others, calm and soft-spoken. Soothing, almost. Perfect for reading bedtime stories and last rites alike. He swam into Olivia's watery gaze, lifting her face in his hands and swiping away the tears with his abnormally long thumbs. All his fingers were extraterrestrial in length, and ice cold. "Is that any way for a seasoned NYPD officer to behave? I've seen you in action, Captain Benson, and you're quite impressive. Frankly, this is beneath you."

He smoothed her hair with his palms, tucking it behind her ears, then licked the pad of his thumb and wiped a sore spot on her cheek. The Crier must have broken skin with one of his ugly skull rings when he hit her. Again she imagined tearing loose of her bonds, this time seizing the cattle prod from the Driver, and—after she'd zapped him and Gus in the balls—using it to bash the Crier's skull in. Just like she did to Lewis. Next, she would tell Little Brother to run before taking care of the Kid. Just like she did with the housekeeper and her daughter. And Lewis.

Now, she reared back, hawking up a wad of phlegm and saliva and expelling it directly into Gus's face. Just like Lewis. That had been the first and only time she'd ever spat on anyone, until this very moment. It didn't do a damn bit of good, in fact it probably hurt her cause grievously, but right then she didn't care. She had few weapons in her arsenal, other than screaming and fighting, and you didn't roll over and expose your belly to the wolf, unless you were prepared for him to tear out your intestines.

If nothing else, it put her DNA on him, should he be questioned in her disappearance. He wasn't new to organized crime, that much was evident from his calm, self-possessed exterior and the way each man kept referring to "the business" he ran. Maybe NYPD already had eyes on him. The FBI might even be involved, if trafficking and child p*rnography were his bread and butter, as it had been suggested. Olivia wouldn't argue jurisdiction with the feebs on this one, as long as these men never saw the light of day again.

She expected another blow to the face, or at least another bone-rattling, skin-sizzling jolt from the cattle prod, especially when the Driver clapped a hand to her shoulder, squeezed until she thought her collarbone might snap, and nuzzled the fanged end of the prod into the side of her breast. Before she could cry out or beg him not to turn on the juice, Gus called the man off again. He gestured for the Driver to step back, and after a reluctant glance down, the man released Olivia and faded into her peripheral vision.

The others were gazing at her with anticipation and open hostility, waiting for Gus to deliver whatever punishment was befitting a faceful of sputum. Calmly, he brought forth a handkerchief from his pants pocket and used it to polish his forehead and cheeks. Of course he would have one of those. The only other person Olivia had ever known who kept a handkerchief was her mother. Serena's all had her initials—SGB—embroidered in the corner, though Olivia had never seen her pick up a needle and thread. Those were the implements of housewives and domestics, certainly not of Serena Grace Benson.

Tucking away the hanky, now crawling with Olivia's DNA, Gus hitched up the legs of his trousers and squatted in front of her. If her hands were free, if she weren't kneeling and nursing an inflamed, aching torso, she might have been able to take him down—claw out his intense, creepy eyes; uppercut him in the big brass balls he hefted around; or maybe just rely on her old standby, an elbow to the face.

But her self-defense options were limited and she could barely muster the strength to stay balanced on her knees, let alone pull off some feat of athleticism and coordination. She was fooling herself about being able to overpower five grown men, each individually stronger than she, perhaps with the exception of Little Brother. Feeble-minded didn't necessarily mean feeble-bodied, however, and he shared his father and brother's physicality.

She hadn't felt Gus pressed up against her yet, hadn't been hauled around by him like a sack of garbage headed for the incinerator, but she sensed that the frame before her was well-toned beneath the crisp trousers, chambray shirt, and leather jacket. His power emanated from him the way some guy's put off a heavy, oppressive cologne scent. As if they bathed in it.

Left with no other means of defending herself, Olivia turned to the method that seldom worked in these situations—in her experience, at least—and tried to use her voice, not for screaming but for appealing to Gus's humanity, assuming he had any. But when she opened her mouth to speak, the only word she could think of, the only one she could summon from her strained and raspy throat, was, "Why?"

"Why?" Gus co*cked his head, giving the impression of sympathy, as if he had happened upon an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Never mind that he was the one who laid the trap to begin with. "Why you, is that what you mean?"

Olivia nodded. She supposed it was what she meant. Not in the woe-is-me sense or even in a "why do bad things happen to good people?" way (she'd stopped asking that question long ago), she genuinely wanted to know why she had been chosen for this hell. It wasn't a random kidnapping, she was here for a specific reason—a buyer wanted her, face intact, but the rest of her broken. Those kinds of sad*stic requests usually sent a message to someone. It was the type of revenge torture she and her squad encountered in drug cartel cases, typically with dismembered body parts playing a significant role, or gang wars. Weaponized rape with a twist.

But if she was the target of the buyer's revenge, why leave her face untouched? What lesson did that teach her? That was a lesson for lovers, for the person who had to look on their beloved's face and know that their sins had been taken out on the flesh below it.

Why?

"Because, Olivia, you caught the attention of a really big fish. Someone with a lot of friends in this town. A lot of pull." Gus reached for a strand of hair that fluttered next to Olivia's cheek, gliding it over her shoulder between his fingers.

His gentleness was unnerving. Olivia almost preferred the manhandling to being touched as if they were about to share a romantic kiss. Calvin had touched her like that—intimately, lovingly; Lewis a few times, too. Those were the touches that didn't wash off, afterwards. The ones that stuck in your mind when the pain was long gone, the way women were said to forget the pain of childbirth with that first glimpse into their newborn's eyes.

It was true. Sweaty blond hair plastered to her head, cheeks as pink as rosacea, Amanda had wept and laughed while they held a minutes-old Samantha, her tiny fists and tiny wails piercing the air. The detective had never looked happier than in that moment. And in their daughter's deep brown eyes—which knew nothing of suffering or cruelty, hurt or sadness—Olivia had found an unimaginable peace that drove out even the darkest thoughts, the worst memories. Amanda had forgotten the labor pains, but with Sammie in her arms, Olivia forgot every trauma, every maltreatment, including the kind disguised as tenderness, of the past fifty-odd years.

Until today.

"Or I suppose your wife caught their attention, and you?" The man offered that regretful look again, the one you gave a likable insect— ladybug or butterfly—before swatting it dead. He grazed his knuckles across the gouge on her cheek from the Crier's ring. "You're just collateral damage. It's unfortunate. As I said, you're quite impressive, not only as a beautiful woman, but as a cop. And I don't say that lightly. The NYPD and I aren't exactly on the best of terms. But I've come to think of you as a worthy opponent. You've ruined quite a few of my operations over the years without even knowing it."

He tapped her under the chin with his fingertip. It was an oddly affectionate gesture that made her cringe. "We grew up together, you and I. I remember you in your little sleeveless tops when you were still a third-grade. So cute and so green. Half the time I couldn't decide whether to court you or kill you, you were such a pain in my ass. Pardon the language.

"In the end, I liked knowing you were out there, balancing the scales. Challenging me. But you can see why I was so intrigued by the call to bring you in. The only thing better than having such a formidable foe is finally besting her."

Most of the speech was lost on Olivia, who had heard little else after the mention of Amanda. It was the same old spiel crime bosses and narcissistic, presumptuous men had been giving her for years—how deeply connected to her they were, how alike; how the woman in her brought out the man in them, and on and on ad nauseam. But this was the first time one of the bloviating assholes had made a direct reference (or threat, came the unbidden thought) to Amanda.

"What about my wife?" she asked, failing to mask the fear and concern in her voice. It didn't help that she could barely speak above a hoarse whisper, her throat still scratchy from the intense coughing spell and the dust. She sounded weak, small. "Whose attention did she catch? Is she— is she in danger? Please, I have to—"

"Ah-ah," Gus said discouragingly, wagging his finger like a strict school-teacher admonishing an unruly student. "Nice try, but I'm not going to spoil the surprise. Besides that, my clientele expect anonymity with their transactions—I only know the pertinent details of this one myself. Your wife pissed off the wrong person. She's going to pay a steep price. Not out of her own pocket, at least not yet. You, Ms. Benson, are the first installment towards paying off her debt."

Though she had listened carefully this time, analyzing every nuance and inflection, Olivia couldn't make sense of the words. She and her squad received countless threats on a regular basis, most of them nothing more than big talk from desperate, angry people who were about to go down hard. Occasionally someone tried to make good, but only the extremely wealthy or extremely powerful ever got close. And William Lewis.

Olivia racked her brain for a name or a face who fit that description; someone Amanda had been instrumental in capturing and whose threats Olivia most certainly would have taken seriously. No one in the past year. It was a bit underhanded and perhaps a tad unethical, but she had played favorites with her detectives during Amanda's pregnancy. Any case that sounded potentially risky or strenuous had gone to Fin and Kat, or to Olivia herself, while Amanda was given the lighter duties of a sergeant, to be conducted from the squad room as much as possible. The detective had commented on not being in the field as much, but she'd been so consumed by her new leadership duties and her impending duties as mother to a newborn, she hadn't seemed aware of Olivia's ulterior motive: protecting her.

That was always Olivia's top priority.

There were past busts, some of them high profile, and Amanda did play a major role in that sting at the brothel a few years ago. Many of the girls had been underaged victims of trafficking. But the man in charge got himself blown to kingdom come by opening fire on the detective, and therefore the SWAT team and half of the one-six who served as backup. No one had mourned that guy, certainly not enough to orchestrate something like this as revenge.

The harder she grasped at an answer, skimming through eleven years worth of cases stored in her memory like microfiche, the farther it receded from her whirring, flickering brain. She truly felt as if she were getting motion sickness from her rapidly flashing thoughts, and as the bile crept up her throat again, so arose a realization that filled her with stark, white-hot terror. If she was just the first installment, what—or who—were the rest?

"Is everything in place?" Gus stood up and looked to his lackeys, acknowledging Olivia no more than if she were a dog he had greeted then forgotten once the fur was brushed from his trousers. "You've set up contact?"

"Sent the picture and the link. Should be opening it any second now," said the Crier, holding up his cell phone and slapping it against the opposite palm several times. He hadn't even partaken of the sextasy and he was still antsier than the Kid and the Driver. He kept adjusting his crotch, swiping under his nose like a boxer spoiling for the next round, licking his lips as he eyed Olivia top to bottom.

"What's the rest of the p-payment?" Olivia asked, gaining a little volume, if not steadiness, in her mounting trepidation. She dodged the Driver's bear claw of a hand as he attempted to clap it over her mouth. "The other installm—"

The Driver's second attempt was successful, his palm crushing her lips against her teeth, his chiseled abdomen pressed against the back of her head so she couldn't turn it and bite. Something hard nudged between her knees—his shoe, she thought—knocking them too widely apart, and for a moment, she was suspended there, with just him holding her upright by the head, his big hand cupped beneath her nose and partly under her chin. She envisioned him snapping her neck right then; he had the strength to do it, no question. One little twist and this could all be over . . .

(Please, please, oh please.)

Gus motioned the Driver's hand away with a two-fingered salute that was vaguely religious, like those sacred heart paintings of Jesus. But there was nothing Christlike about the smirk on his thin, colorless lips. "You always were a sharp one," he said, with something resembling fondness. He took a cell phone from his back pocket and thumbed at the screen a few times, then extended it towards Olivia.

Even without her glasses, she recognized the picture of her son. It wasn't just any old snapshot, either—this was his third-grade school photo, his hair a wilderness of brown curls that should have been smoothed before the shutter clicked, the bow tie he had picked out himself slightly askew. But that big, beautiful smile was perfect. And so was the next, revealed by a swipe from Gus, this one belonging to Jesse. Her first-grade portrait, for which she'd insisted on matching her best friend Jillian, right down to the bangs she hacked into herself with a pair of snub-nosed scissors from art class. Olivia and Amanda had both cried over that one, although pregnancy hormones might have played a role. The six-year-old's bangs had since grown out, though the picture would live on in infamy.

Another swipe, and Olivia was staring at a candid shot of Matilda on the playground of her daycare, red curls ablaze in the afternoon sun. She only wore her little spring jacket with the bunnies and birdies on it, the one she chose at GapKids just two months ago, so the picture had to be recent. As did the last.

Shot with a telephoto lens at a good distance, the picture was no more than two weeks old—Olivia could narrow it down to almost the exact hour, because it depicted her exiting her apartment building, baby Sammie asleep in the stroller she navigated, Gigi standing guard alongside. She'd been meeting up at the park with her wife, Frannie, and the older children, after a mid-morning nap and feeding with her sweet baby girl. Not a bad dream in sight.

How had she missed it again? She'd been so vigilant in the years since Calvin Arliss tried to make her his magnum opus, when she discovered he had been stalking and photographing her for God knew how long. Henry Mesner had slipped through her well-constructed defenses early last year, but that was a one-off; he hadn't tailed her for months—years, in Calvin's case—with a camera, stealing pieces of her private moments as surely as a pickpocket nicking her wallet. He was a hit and run. Calvin and Gus were a head-on collision with no survivors. Those school pictures hadn't been passed out to anyone but family.

A sourness spread over Olivia's tongue, flooding her cheeks and palate, pressure building in her throat, and she fully expected to empty her stomach on the floor in front of Gus's chestnut-brown boots, sleek and burnished as a horse's coat. But when she opened her mouth, what spewed out was far more vile than dark coffee-scented sludge.

"If you go anywhere near my children, I will f*cking kill you," she snarled, quaking now with rage instead of just terror—though there was plenty of that, too. She wasn't even sure what words her lips would form next, only that they came from some dangerous, blackened part of her soul. The part that had goaded her into beating a man nearly to death; to playing judge, jury, and executioner. "I swear to God. I will tear your heart out and feed it to the f*cking sewer rats, do you hear me? No one touches my kids, you piece of sh*t. You're f*cking dead, all of you.Dead."

Gus's eyes glinted a steely, malicious blue-gray that reminded Olivia of sun reflecting off the barrel of a gun. (Click.) He directed his response to the room at large, though his voice didn't raise above its rockabye cadence and he crouched slightly, like a wildlife enthusiast spotting a tiger in the bush: "There she is."

To Olivia, as he returned the phone to his pocket, he said, "I'm sure you passed some of that fire on to your children, even if they're not biologically yours. Hopefully not too much, though. It's always hardest on the feistier ones. You, for instance. And the little blonde—Jesse, right? I'm afraid she'll have a rough go of it, too. But your boy, the dancer . . . he'll learn fast. And the youngest two will never know any different.

"They'll grow up calling every man they meet 'daddy' and selling themselves for the price of a takeout dinner and some blow. The redhead might fare a little better, especially if she keeps that color upstairs and down . . . "

For a moment Olivia thought a rabid dog had wandered into the storage container, but the doors were closed and she was the only one practically on all fours. She realized then that the deep, beastly growl was coming from her own throat, and she released it with an infuriated cry, lunging at Gus with the intention of biting whatever she got hold of—aiming for the groin, but the femoral artery would do just as nicely—or ramming her head into something vital. Even if she only managed to bruise some ribs or a kidney, at least it would shut him up.

He didn't get to talk about her children that way. No one talked about her children like that—ever.

The Driver's hands snatched her back before she got anywhere near Gus or his dick. He barely flinched, the smirk never leaving his lips, somehow reptilian in their formlessness. If a forked tongue had flickered from behind them, testing the air, Olivia wouldn't have been a bit surprised. What did slither out of his mouth, though not a serpent's tongue, was just as sinister.

"Okay, gentlemen. I believe the pump is primed, so to speak. How's our viewership?"

"All eyes," said the Crier.

"Excellent. Then let's show Captain Benson what her new duties will be, now that she belongs to me."

. . .

Chapter 8: Make America Great Again

Chapter Text

Chapter 8.

Make America Great Again

. . .

Matthew Parker was not happy with the role he had been relegated to in this twisted little scheme of Vaughn's. He felt like a neutered mutt, his balls chopped off to keep him from running wild. From looking for some other bitch to mount. It wasn't fair, especially since he was the one who had set the whole plot in motion anyway. If he hadn't found that dyke wedding announcement in the newspaper last year, Little Miss Smarty Pants Vaughn never would have known that Rebecca De Mornay-looking cop was married to the Linda Evangelista-looking c*nt he'd almost banged right here in good old Squealview. ('Cause that's the sound they made when you stuck it to 'em.)

How many guys even read the paper anymore, let alone paid enough attention to all that wedding crap to notice such an important piece of the puzzle? Granted, he'd only glanced at that section on the off-chance there were some good tit* on display—and out of habit, to see if his ex ever roped in another poor sucker—but that didn't make it any less of a good catch. Even Vaughny couldn't deny that.

And yet she treated him like he didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. Bossing him to do this and do that, and "don't deviate from the plan, Parks," as if he hadn't practically set up Phase One singlehandedly. The Sandberg guy (Parker didn't play into that "Sandman" bullsh*t) might be the head honcho and the one Sondra Vaughn had connections with, thanks to her old lover Nadari, but Parker had been the go-between, relaying all the instructions and putting his ass on the line stalking those dyke cops.

Now, Sandberg and his merry little band of assholes were going to get a taste of that luscious, turbo-tit captain who should have been Parker's fourteen years ago. He'd seen her first, copped the first feel, and bent her over that table, when it was all he could do not to jerk down her snug orange bottoms—in his mind, they were always spandex-tight on her nice round ass—and take her right there, in full view of Harris and the other inmates. Harris had helped himself that time, later telling Parker he only got a few good thrusts before the partner ran in, but it had been like sliding his dick into warm apple pie, like they said in that movie.

It burned Parker to think of Sandberg and the other guys having their warm apple pie while he got nothing out of the deal. Okay, sure, Vaughn was a hot piece of ass, too, and she did give good head. He supposed he loved her, otherwise why would he have gone to so much trouble to make her happy? But he was sick of sneaking around to get sucked off in broom closets that smelled like bleach and the last guy's wad. Sometimes it was still dripping from whichever surface the dude had blown it on. Parker preferred creampie himself, though he seldom got the chance with Sondra. Wouldn't get many chances for at least seven more years; longer, if she got caught in the web she was spinning for the De Mornay lookalike.

In the meantime, Parker deserved his own serving of creampie, and he intended to fill up on that Benson bitch. She might be old now (only four years older than he was, to be honest; still, women were different, they aged in dog years), but he had gotten it up a few times in his parked car just watching her and the blonde from behind his camera viewfinder. He'd practically splooged the windshield fantasizing about the two of them together, and he wouldn't mind splooging all over the little blond detective, either. But he liked the look of the captain these days. Her breasts, hips, and thighs were fuller than ever—the ass, too—and he couldn't wait to get his hands on them again. To get what had been due him for nearly fifteen years.

Sondra would be pissed to find out he'd gone against her wishes, but she would have to forgive him once she saw the surprise he had for her. And he was going to risk everything to kidnap one of those brats she kept yammering on about, so she better show some gratitude. Why she wanted a kid that belonged to a woman she hated, and a white woman at that, he couldn't say. The two youngest were kind of cute, though.

The older boy was queer and the blonde was off limits—Sandberg had plans for her. But Parker wouldn't mind playing papa to the little redhead or the baby, whichever he nabbed first. So long as Big Daddy got to have a go at Mama Benson in the meantime.

He nearly popped a boner just thinking about it on his way to D Block.De co*ck, the male guards called it, with a Frenchie accent that always cracked him up. As if the coozes that ended up there were straight off the Paris runway or some sh*t. Most of them were pretty heinous. Except for Sondra and her cute curly snatch. What did Kitty Kat's look like? he wondered, then smiled to himself. He supposed he was about to find out.

Parker never had quite gotten the hang of calling the bitch by her real name, instead of the undercover one. He liked the sound of Kat better than Olivia, anyway. She'd be purring in his ear soon enough.

"Sst," he hissed, resting his chin on the crossbar of Vaughn's cell. "Wakey, wakey."

Recumbent on the top bunk, a cloud of dark hair was all he could see of her at first. She didn't get the time or the products to style it behind bars, and it was kind of a rat's nest, but he liked the wild curls all the same. They felt nice between his fingers when she went down on him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked in a harsh whisper, rolling over to gaze down at him with annoyance. No doubt irked that he wasn't keeping his distance today like they had agreed. Best not to raise any eyebrows on the commencement date of Phase One.

It was really f*cked up, how she had insisted the captain's abduction take place on the anniversary of her abduction by that Lewis nutcase. (Yet another bit of information Vaughn should be thanking Parker for; he had watched Captain Kitty lie her pretty little ass off on live television back then, while he bragged to his buddies that he'd stiffed her once, and he was the one who snuck his favorite moptop prisoner all the articles and court transcripts he could find on the case a few months ago.) Probably a chick's idea of poetic justice or whatever, but it was still pretty twisted.

His Vaughny could be a downright bitch.

"I brung you a present all the way up here, and that's how you greet me?" He flashed a grin, perhaps with too many teeth—she eyed him warily—and slipped his cell phone through the bars, swaying it back and forth, tantalizing.

"Brought." Sondra sighed heavily, but swung herself down from the bunk, fluid as a cat, and sauntered over like a tail was twitching behind her. A different kind of kitty altogether. "What is it?" she asked, huffing when he swiped the phone back at the last second, playing keep away. "Dammit, Parker . . . "

"Jesus, you are the moodiest bitch I ever met," he said, but let her pry the device from his fingers on the next try. He hadn't gone through all the trouble of smuggling in his private phone, equipped as a hotspot for this momentous occasion, just to turn around and schlep it right back to his locker. "Could at least say, 'Thank you, Parksy.'"

"What's it for?"

So much for his sweet brown sugar. He'd just have to get him some milky white cream when he visited the captain later.Here, kitty, kitty . . .

After a glance around to be sure the other celly wasn't returning from macramé classes (or whatever the hell these bitches did in their spare time), he skirted the open cell door and instructed Vaughn to check his photo album. When she glanced up with uncertainty, he tapped the thumbnail that was time-stamped at a little over two minutes, playing the video he had shot during his lunch break. He'd had to wolf down his ham and cheese on the way back to the prison, but man, it was worth it to see those two dyke cops get ambushed in person.

The blonde had looked like she was pissing on an electric fence—God, he wished he'd gotten a shot of her tit* then, still filled up from the baby, the nipples probably rock-hard—and the way Sandberg's boys moved on that apple-pie captain, you'd think the gangb*ng had already begun. Parker wasn't inclined to be jealous of a friend, but he had envied his pal Angel in that moment. He and Nicky Angelov went way back, to before the freak-show body modification and multiple incarcerations. Good guy, Angel. And a devil with the ladies. That little prude captain wouldn't know what hit her.

"What is thi—" Sondra squinted at the phone, holding it under her nose. She flat-out refused to buy any of the cheapo glasses from the commissary whenever Parker suggested it. "Wait, is that them? Cagney and Lacey?"

That was one of the code names Sondra liked to use for the cops in the video. Parker had never watched that dumb chicks' show himself; just a bunch of ugly man-haters running around trying to act tough. He favoredBaywatch, and his preferred names for the women he'd recorded were Pamela and Yasmine.

"In the flesh." Parker flashed his broadest grin, feeling pretty proud of himself, truth be told. The surprise only got better from here, and Vaughn was already gaping at the phone, mesmerized. She was going to sh*t a brick when he played the next video. "Double D's and all. Keep watching, it's about to get good."

He had started filming a bit early to capture a decent tit shot while the women were walking along, totally unsuspecting. He liked the way their t-shirts jiggled, especially the big-breasted captain's. It was just a filmy little white thing you could see right through in the sunlight. Bitch had flaunted it around Sealview, too. Today would be the last time she did it and got away with it.

"I told you to stay out of this part, Parker," Sondra said, but her eyes were still glued to the phone and her voice hadn't hit that razor-wire pitch that made his testicl*s jump back up in his stomach. "If Gus even suspected that someone was poking around— oh, sh*t."

The blond detective on the screen was gripped by a sudden seizure-like spasm, having just been tased by Sandberg's kid, whose name Parker could never remember. Parker just thought of him as Jack, because he looked like a beanstalk. Within seconds of Jack's attack, Angel hopped down from the van like he was doing a kickflip on the skateboard he'd ridden constantly as a teenager. Rolled right up on the goody-goody captain and sunk a needle in her neck, and she never even saw it coming. He always had been sneaky, that guy.

"f*ck." Sondra said it reverently, as if she were watching a religious ceremony, rather than a couple guys lugging about a hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight into a van. Parker hadn't envied them that part, even if their hands were all over several pounds of grade-A tit* and ass in the meantime.

"Yup," Parker said, hooking his thumbs into his utility belt, unable to resist a faint smirk. The inmate was practically vibrating with excitement as she watched the final seconds of the kidnapping, a sad*stic little gleam in her eyes.

They were as black as eight-balls in this lighting. "Like to act big and tough, but those muff divers went down fast, huh?"

Onscreen, the one whose muff was probably blond, too—Parker really would be interested to know—was flopping around on the sidewalk, reaching out a hand towards the van, calling for her wife as the vehicle sped away. It was all very dramatic. He would give it four out of five stars, though the camera work wasn't his best: he'd hightailed it in the opposite direction the moment the van disappeared.

"Very. Wonder what was in that syringe." Vaughn passed the phone back to him, a smear of red frozen in the video window. Parker had accidentally switched to selfie mode in his haste to flee the scene, and the last frame was a flash of his MAGA cap, his only disguise. Luckily, the shot was too blurry to make out his face. "Better not knock her out. The instructions were to keep her awake and lucid. I want her to feel every second of it. The more she suffers, the more Rollins suffers. That's the whole point, those idiots better not—"

"Hey, relax." Parker rested his hand awkwardly on her shoulder. She didn't like him to touch her unless they were fooling around, and sometimes not even then. But that edge had been creeping into her voice and she had slipped up on the detective's name, which wasn't like her. Sondra never slipped. "They know what they're doing. She's gonna feel all of it, every single dick-inch and whatever else them guys put in her—and I can prove it."

Sondra rolled those wide eight-ball eyes up at him, skeptical. "How?"

So glad you asked, he thought, but kept it to himself. If she knew she was playing right into his hand, giving him everything he'd hoped for, she would probably act like the next part was no big deal. Still, he could barely contain his excitement as he glanced outside the cell, listening briefly, then pulled up the link on his phone. Right where Angel said it would be. Parker didn't know dick about that dark web bullsh*t, but Angel had promised him simple point and click access to the livestream.

He held his breath and clicked.

"Who's your daddy?" he asked, grinning from ear to ear when he displayed the browser and the video feed therein. It was a bit pixelated, the sound a bit muffled, but the lighting was good and the old office desk in the forefront was clearly visible. Must be where they were going to do her. She had the kind of ass you wanted to bend over and ream from behind, he knew that from personal experience.

Right now, though, she was on her knees (also a good position) and the guys were standing over her. Parker didn't recognize the one in the ball hat, but he saw his buddy Angel, that Jack kid, the walking steroid who went by Lobo, and boss man Sandberg—speaking, of course. That dude loved to hear himself talk. He was currently informing Captain Kitty Kat Benson of all the f*cked up sh*t he planned to do to her kids.

Parker didn't go for all the kiddie p*rn and child trafficking stuff Sandberg was into—though he had heard you could make a killing—but it was none of his business. He would be doing his part by saving one of the littler kids from that fate. In the meantime, the bitch captain looked like she was about to hurl. Not so high and mighty anymore.

They had roughed her up pretty good already, but her clothes were still on, so nothing too exciting had happened yet. Nevertheless, Vaughn's eyes were bugging out of her head as she gaped at the scene unfolding in her hands. She was even shaking a little, like one of those puny, bobble-headed dogs that could barely contain itself.

"Is this now? How did you—" She broke off there, either too stunned to continue, or too fed up. Based on her inability to pry her gaze from the screen, where the dyke cop let out a bestial roar and tried to launch herself at Sandberg, it was the former.

"I got connections too, baby," Parker said, and took a chance, slipping in behind Vaughn, arms cinched around her narrow waist, to watch the captain fight and scream and lose. When he wasn't rebuffed, and when the screaming began in earnest, he relaxed into the embrace and rested his chin on the inmate's shoulder. This was better than pay-per-view p*rn.

Too bad he hadn't brought popcorn.Oh well, he thought with a shrug, and concentrated on enjoying the show. He always had been a fan of the coming attractions.

. . .

Chapter 9: Prayers to St. Jude

Chapter Text

Chapter 9.

Prayers to St. Jude

. . .

Time seemed so frangible during the other abductions. Like the broken shards of a mirror, some pieces missing, others savagely sharp and glinting, but all cracked beyond repair. No matter how often Olivia tried to put it back together, the glass always shattered again, never quite solidifying in her mind. There were days with Lewis, hours with Calvin, that she would never get back. Moments of her life stolen, along with everything else they took from her.

But now. The mirror was whole, so crystal clear it reflected everything in high definition, and so bright it practically blinded her. Time wasn't frangible. It was sheet metal, solid and inflexible, glaring hot in the sun; it was the blade of a guillotine, swift and brutal. Even at that speed, she saw it all unfolding around her in exquisite detail.

The Kid coercing his younger brother into snorting the powder that remained from the crushed up Viagra and ecstasy, then laughing hysterically as Little Brother clutched his nose and keened in pain.

The chest-slapping and shoulder-thumping that the Crier and the Driver engaged in, psyching each other up the way football players did before a big game; the way Elliot used to during summer softball league between precincts, and sometimes in the locker room before a big bust.

The flash of a tactical knife that Gus removed from a hidden pocket, though he made sure she got a good long look as he unsheathed it. The blade wasn't particularly large—maybe four inches in length—but it curved into a sinuous, wicked grin, mocking anyone who doubted its capabilities.

Knives were like scorpions—the smaller ones could be more deadly than the big ones, especially in the right hands. And Gus definitely knew how to handle the full nine inches of this one.Wait'll she gets a load of my nine inches, she thought, her guts gone loose and watery, her mouth the same. She had to swallow several times just to get out thepleaseshe instantly silenced as he grazed the tip of the blade along her jawline, traced the outline of her lips with it, and glanced the edge across the opposite cheek, closely enough to remove peach fuzz.

This was how it always started. They used
(a police baton or your own gun)
a weapon in place of their dicks to frighten you into submission, to give you a little sneaky-peek of what was to come. She'd been so terrified that Lewis would rape her with her service pistol—and why not, he had jammed it into her crotch enough times to create a vivid mental image and leave her sore for days—it was almost a relief when he had only used his hands.

You could survive penetration by a gun if it didn't go off, and on rare occasions even if it did, although the damage was usually catastrophic. But the cases Olivia had encountered of foreign object rape with a knife (and there were many) seldom had a live victim to follow up with. Too much blood loss, too many delicate parts severed beyond repair. When an attacker hated his target enough to f*ck her with a blade, she usually wasn't meant to walk away from the assault.

Four inches might be short enough
(like he'll stop at the haft, yeah right)
for Olivia to be one of the lucky ones, but she couldn't remember which vital organs to worry about; which she could live without and still be fairly functional, still desirable to her wife. How would Amanda ever look at her again, let alone touch her, knowing she was mutilated like that? It was so hard to think, with the knife poised at her throat, nicking the skin when she swallowed convulsively.

"Please," she whispered, afraid of what else Gus would nick if she moved suddenly or breathed too deep. "Don't do this. I'm not some street kid or an illegal they'll let fall through the cracks. They'll be looking for me nonstop. My wife won't give up until she finds me. You don't know her like I do. This will end badly for you—"

He pressed the blade flush with her windpipe, releasing a trickle of blood she sensed more than felt. She had experienced that same spreading heat, similar to a hot flash but more contained, the last two times her throat was slashed. "It's not a threat," she said quickly, her voice paper thin, crackling as if she were losing the station. "I'm trying to let you off the hook. I don't know where I am. Take me somewhere and drop me off. Blindfold me. I won't be able to lead them back here. I won't look for you. You can go on with your business, and I'll go on with mine. You know me. I keep my word."

"That is true. It's one of your best qualities." Gus angled the knife blade under Olivia's braid, gliding it from the top notch to the fringe at the bottom, the entire plait dropping back against her shoulder with a flick of his wrist. He placed the sharp edge at the crook of her neck this time, leaning in to murmur the rest. "It's one of mine, too. So believe me when I say, if you make this difficult for me or my boys, I will carve you out a new c*nt with this knife. cl*t to asshole. You're allowed to resist, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, and it gets these fellas going. But if you fight and don't let us do our job, by the end you'll wish that all we had done was f*ck you."

Olivia felt strangely bloodless as the words passed through her ear, into her brain. For a moment, she wondered if he really had cut her throat and she was slowly exsanguinating. She wanted to look down at her shirt, to see if it was stained in a waterfall of blood, but Gus was too close, the knife too eager to bite into flesh. Left with few other options, she nodded. After all, she did believe him.

"Good. I like that you're a quick study. It will serve you well here, as long as the lesson that you learn is who's in control. I know plenty of men have failed to break you before now, but let's face it, they were amateurs. This is what I do." Gus gave a conversational gesture with the knife, then reached behind her, tugging her arms up painfully, until she was forced to bend forward and relieve the strain on her muscles. "I'm cutting you loose because I prefer it, aesthetically. There's just something about a woman's wrists pinned above her head that does it for me. Don't make me regret it."

Her wrists snapped free of the split tape all at once, arms falling to her sides so heavily she almost dropped to the floor face-first. After an hour (had it really been that long, or was her mind playing tricks on her again?) of being tightly trussed behind her back, and crushed a couple of times too, the limbs were leaden and numb. They felt useless, and she feared trying to lash out like she'd planned to while he was sawing at the restraints. What if she missed? What if she didn't?

But she had to do something—he'd signaled to the other men, who advanced as a unit, save for Little Brother (he was already rolling on the E, grinning and hugging himself, an erection tenting the front of his pants). "How do you know about the other men?" she blurted, hoping to delay the inevitable. He liked to pontificate, maybe if she kept him talking a while longer, it would be enough time for Amanda to find her. To get her out of this awful place.

Maybe.

"Lewis I get. That was all over the news, everyone knows about it. But the others . . . "Harris, Calvin, Amelia. The most anyone—other than Amanda and Dr. Lindstrom—knew about Olivia's experience with the Manhattan Mangler was what she had told the press: an attempt was made on her life, but she was ultimately unharmed. With both perps dead, there hadn't been a trial to dredge up the gory details. And Amanda was the only living soul, besides Olivia herself, who knew the full extent of what Lowell Harris had done to her. Supposedly, dead men told no tales. So where were these monsters masquerading as men getting their information?

"Nice try, Olivia." Gus's smile held a tinge of sadness, as if he were saying goodbye to a child who would be grown when next they reunited. "We'll have plenty of time to chat in the coming days. Weeks, perhaps. Depends on how well you cooperate. Right now, my boys are getting restless."

His boys grabbed her by the arms just as she swiped for the knife in Gus's hand, not even coming close. He had already retreated a step, calmly standing back to watch the other men haul her upright. It was a weightless, jostling sensation, like the times she'd fallen from the wall during her days of indoor climbing, jerked up short by the harness. For a moment her feet really were off the ground, and she flung out a wild kick, but it only grazed the sleeve of Gus's leather jacket. Without her shoes on, she couldn't land a hard enough blow, anyway. She felt a flash of anger not at the men, but at herself for not wearing socks with her tennis shoes. It had seemed so unnecessary this morning. She was just going a few blocks for some bagels . . .

Her bare feet dragged across the unsanded flooring, scraping the skin off her heels when she tried to dig them in, splinters driving into the soles when she shuffled for purchase. How could she be so stupid, forgetting her socks like that? She hated to be barefoot outside of her home, where it was safe. Where she was safe.

"No," she grunted, her legs twisting and flailing over each other as she attempted to wriggle loose, tossing her weight from side to side. She'd expected to be thrown back onto the disgusting, flea-bitten mattress, but they were toting her to the rusty old desk that had served as their drug buffet minutes earlier. So that's why they had moved it away from the wall and into the light.

That was to be the site of her very first gangb*ng.

She'd never even participated in a threesome before (though a couple of past boyfriends had definitely made their case for why she should) and now she was going to take five at once. Maybe only four, if Gus stayed on the sidelines. Three, if Little Brother couldn't perform. Could she get it down to two—cram her foot into the Kid's crotch and put him out of commission? She could probably handle two, especially if the Driver's dick was as small as the Crier had claimed. Steroids were known for causing ED too, so maybe she would get lucky.

That just left the Crier himself, and that realization shattered the entire illusion she was constructing. She couldn't stop him. (Amanda wasn't coming.) She couldn't stop any of them. (This was really happening.)

As her hope began to crumble, so did her sense of propriety, of honor—captains didn't grovel, they didn't scream in terror and desperation—and her sense of shame—she hated losing control, showing weakness. She gave into the fear and the panic, and she screamed for help. She screamed so loud and so long, one of the men uttered a startled, "Jesus." Little Brother stopped hugging himself and covered his ears, face contorting in a pantomime of horror.

And while she screamed, she fought. She fought like they were dragging her down to hell, because they were; she fought like her life depended on it, because it did. f*ck Gus and his f*cking little shrimp-dick knife. He might carve her out a new c*nt with it, but these guys were about to do the same thing, just using a different type of weapon.

Rape was never pretty, and one man could do a lot of damage, but gang rapes were often the most violent crimes Olivia had to investigate. Men lost their inhibition in groups, lost themselves. They did things they wouldn't normally do, sometimes to impress, sometimes to assert dominance, sometimes to belong. Whatever the reason, it always escalated the violence. It was an important component in weaponized rape in places like the Congo—the brotherhood it created among soldiers, raping together. Destroying together.

Look at that, Alex, you didn't have to go all the way to Africa, after all, she thought, writhing in the men's relentless grasps. Her left shoulder, the one weakened by her rotator cuff injury and subsequent surgery, was already crying out for mercy as they yanked and twisted her by the arms.You could've found what you were looking for right outside your front door.

"Lemme go," she bawled at them, her voice already giving out at the end. She was unable to draw in the adequate breath for another lengthy shout. Her lungs weren't as strong as they used to be, nor were her core muscles (especially after taking a foot to the gut). Maybe if she were younger and thinner. If only this had happened when she was thirty-four, instead of fifty-four.

"Motherf*ckers! Don't touch me! You're dead, you hear me? You'll rot in jail, you sickf*cks!" And when that didn't work, when they only laughed at the profanity and idle threats, and lifted her so she peddled air the last few steps to the desk: "Please don't do this. I have a new baby at home. My oldest is only eight. Please, don't. I'm begging y—"

She managed to plant the arches of both feet on the ledge of the desk, bending her knees and shoving backwards with every ounce of strength she possessed. A solid surface to spring from might have slowed them down a bit, but the desk lurched sideways, emitting a banshee shriek. Or maybe that was just Olivia screaming again, because they didn't find the defensive move nearly as funny as her cursing, especially when the back of her head smashed into someone's chin.

It must have been the Crier, who nursed his bloody bottom lip and wrenched her arm up high enough behind her back she thought it might snap. "You f*cking bitch," he growled, so close his breath warmed her cheek. He smelled like engine grease, or some kind of motor oil. Olivia didn't know much about cars, but from this day forward she would think of him whenever she was in a repair shop (if she ever went to one—or anywhere—after this).

She would think of him grabbing her by the nape of the neck, his long, unkempt fingernails digging into her flesh as he slammed her facedown on the short end of the desk, the metal ledge driving into her pelvis like a battering ram, and said, "Boss won't need to cut you, 'cause I'm gonna tear this puss* up. You can forget the Vaseline now, I'm doing you dry."

I'll do you cold, Lewis had said, indicating his willingness to rape her corpse if he was forced to kill her for not cooperating. Dead or alive, cold or dry, it was all the same; they were ending her life. This was just the latest death. She was about to be raped by the pallbearers who had carried her casket.

On the cinematic screen in her mind, where the picture was always so much more vivid and visceral during a crisis—and never so much as when she was under attack—she saw Amanda and their children at her graveside. Amanda in mourning dress with a widow's veil, Tilly wearing a little blue coat and saluting her mommy's coffin like John-John in that iconic photo. To her older children, she would be the mother who had abandoned them; to her two youngest girls, she would be nothing more than a headstone:

Olivia Rollins-Benson
Beloved Wife and Mother
1968 - 2022

And to Amanda, she would just be gone. The ghost of what might have been.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." For a moment, they were the only words Olivia could say, and she repeated them until other words finally flew out of her mouth, whatever she could think of: "Please don't hurt me. Please don't do this. Get off me— I can't—please, don't!"

"Well, since you asked so nice," the Crier said, even as he started to undo his fly. One of the men (Driver, she thought) stood behind her, his own hard-on nudging at her ass, his large hand at the small of her back, pinning her to the desk like an insect mounted with a straight pin in some display case. She couldn't turn her face away with the Crier still gripping the back of her neck, either.

His erection, strangely dusky for his skin tone, suddenly jutted out of his unzipped pants, reminding her of a curious animal poking its head up from a hole. He had a Prince Albert piercing, one of those barbells that went in through the urethra and out beneath the glans. Olivia had seen one or two perps with that piercing over the years, but she'd never gotten such an up-close and personal look before. Most men were revolted by the idea of shoving something sharp through their penis. They couldn't stand the pain.

I'm doing you dry, he'd said.

More than anything, Olivia wanted to cry out again, but she was afraid to open her mouth with him that close to it. Hot, hopeless tears seeped from her eyes, and she screamed through gritted teeth—in frustration as much as terror—thrashing as best she could with someone grasping her arm on the opposite side and the other two men pressing her to the filthy metal surface of the desk. It felt like twenty pairs of hands holding her down, rather than three, and any movement she made was quickly subdued. They were so goddamned strong.

"I wanna go first," said the Kid, so petulant it was almost laughable. He was definitely the one who had Olivia by the left arm. She tried to yank it away from him, not caring if she reinjured her shoulder, if it meant getting his hands off of her—but the little son of a bitch held fast. "You got to shoot her up with the Cryo and rub off on her in the van. Should be my turn."

"I'm the one who did all the work getting the heifer here. You'd still be trying to haul her ass into the van and dropping sh*t and ji*zzing yourself if I wasn't there to keep you from screwing up the whole grab." The Crier scoffed loudly, a drop of his spittle landing on Olivia's cheek. She flinched and writhed some more, until he squeezed her neck so roughly, she yipped. Frannie made that sound when someone accidentally stepped on her tail. "No one wants your sloppy seconds, junior."

"None of you woulda got anywhere without me," said the Driver, whose prowess behind the wheel was undeniable. He had gotten them through the city streets in no time and didn't even need lights and sirens to do it. He punctuated his assertion with a brisk slap to Olivia's ass, which made her gasp and clench, and made him chuckle. "I'm taking her for a spin first,eses. If that's a problem, talk toel jefe."

Either the Driver had more authority than Olivia first suspected, or the other men didn't want to be tattletales in front of their boss, because no one argued with him. He clapped her on the hips like he was patting a horse's withers or a dog's rump—some loyal, well-trained beast that had followed the commands of its master. "On her back," he instructed, his hands sliding down to her thighs, helping to flip her over. "I like seeing their face when I put it in."

The lights were blinding as the three men turned Olivia onto her back, a disorienting shift that gave her vertigo and left her squinting at the figures looming above. For a second they were featureless shadow demons, and that was frightening, but then they came into focus: real sneering, leering men whose hands and eyes were all over her body—and that was most frightening of all.

"Please don't," she whimpered, defeat creeping in no matter how hard she fought to keep it—and the men—at bay. She still hoped for her squad, led by Amanda (who always came for her in the past,always), to burst through the door at the last second, like it happened in the movies. Sometimes it did happen that way in real life too.

Didn't it?

Not for Olivia. Not this time.

While the two men leaned heavily on her shoulders, both gripping her by the wrists with their free hands, the Driver shucked off her yoga pants like he was whipping a tablecloth from underneath a setting of fine crystal. The snug material and swift removal bunched her panties around her hips, but thankfully they stayed on. She longed to tug up the waistband and shield herself, or at least to cross her legs against the stubby fingers kneading her inner thighs, but every time she tried, the Driver forced them apart, until it felt as if he were trying to rip her straight up the middle.

"You got some nice long legs, girl," he said, stroking the limbs admiringly, even as Olivia kicked and peddled and bucked. Her heels hit the side panel of the desk, punching in the aged metal with a sound that reminded her of junior-high lockers. Two eighth graders had gotten into a fight in the hall during first period one semester, and that was the sound the boys' fists made when they swung wild, whanging the locker doors. "Mm-mmm. You wrap those pins around me nice and tight, okay? Let's see who can crack whose spine first."

She obliged right then, snapping her knees shut around his middle like a triggered bear trap and squeezing so hard it made her thighs shudder. She half expected a crunch of breaking ribs or at least an indignant shout, but the Driver hardly reacted beyond a smirk that extended to his skinny goatee, sharpening the already pointy corners.

In her precinct, Olivia might be formidable—a force to be reckoned with, some called her—and even out on the streets, with a squad behind her and a gun on her hip, a badge on the other, she had considerable strength, especially for a woman. But here, stripped of authority and now her dignity, strength was failing her too. The eighty or more pounds of muscle he had on her surely made a difference (she wouldn't have tangled with him outside of an interrogation room or gunpoint, under normal circ*mstances), but it still felt like failure. She should be able to stop him, stop all of this. If not, what was she good for?

"f*ck, bro, look how eager she is," the Driver commented to one or both of his buddies, or to no one, it was hard to say. He grabbed Olivia's knees and jerked them open with no more effort than undoing a stubborn clothespin. "Can't even wait till I put it in her. Littleputa. I already smell her from here."

To demonstrate he dipped low, spreading her resisting thighs wide beneath his palms, and buried his nose in the crotch of her underwear, for a deep whiff that traveled from perineum to cl*tor*s. A miserable groan escaped Olivia's throat when she tipped her head back on the desk, striving to be as far removed from the violation as possible, even if only by sight. Why couldn't she just dissociate and step out of her body like she had in the past?

She'd done it the first time her mother beat her, after discovering twelve-year-old Olivia had emptied all the hidden vodka bottles in the apartment down the drain; it was so successful that, upon returning to herself, Olivia couldn't remember how she had gotten the bloody welts that covered her body. To this day, she didn't remember what implement Serena had used to make those leechlike wales.

Once or twice with Daniel, her first fiancé, she had gone blank (that was the only way she knew how to describe it, at age sixteen) when he asked her to do something sexual she didn't enjoy. He did that a lot, actually.

It had come in particularly handy during her previous assaults, though she never managed to tap out quite so fully as she had in her childhood. Those times—Harris, Lewis, Arliss—she had stood outside herself, watching the men hurt that poor woman who screamed and wept and bled and begged. At least that was how she remembered it. With all the alcohol and drugs pumped into her system the last two times, it was hard telling which memories were hers, which were the sedatives, and which were the nightmares she'd had since. That was what she consoled herself with, at least: the idea that parts of those attacks must be illusion.

This was wide awake, brutal reality—the musclehead rooting in her privates, his bros slamming her shoulders, elbows, wrists against the desktop whenever she lifted one or the other—and she was maddeningly sober, maddeningly present. From her upside-down vantage, she caught a glimpse of Little Brother staring wide-eyed at the lurid scene, wringing his baseball cap in his hands.

"Help," she called to him weakly, praying he might appeal to the others on her behalf. Make them see her as human. But he just stood there wringing his stupid hat. "Please help me."

The Kid grabbed a handful of her breast and gave it a vicious twist that would have hurt worse without the padding of her bra cup, but still caused her to wince and gasp in pain. It redirected her attention to the men ahead, in particular the Driver, who had finally finished sniffing and stood up to declare, "Not half bad for cop puss*." He smiled at the little white stars on her black cotton bikinis before grasping the underwear at the hip and rending it from her body. He tossed the tangled material aside, presumably in the same direction he had pitched her pants.

It happened with no more import than if they had wandered across a skin flick on television and paused on that channel with mild interest ("Nice," the Driver said of her pubic hair, meanwhile the Kid observed, "Huh, I expected a bigger bush"). For Olivia, who had never been nude—partially or not—in front of a group of men before, it was earth-shattering. She squirmed frantically, trying to kick out at the Driver, but he was standing between her dangling legs and the most she could do when he pushed her hips flat to the desk was whiplash her body at the torso, in the hopes someone would lose their grip.

No one did. Not until Driver let go with one hand, reached into his low-slung joggers, and pulled out his penis. He was hard and not as small as Olivia had hoped. Longer than the four-inch blade introduced by Gus, but shorter than the nine inches promised by the Crier. Like the rest of him, the Driver's girth was the intimidating part. He looked from his genitals to Olivia's, weighing some unspoken option, then spat into his palm and smeared the saliva between her legs.That doesn't work, you dumbf*ck, she screamed at him in her mind.

Aloud she cried, "No! Please."

Then he was inside of her, and all screaming, all crying out for mercy, ceased. Other than the man's initial grunt upon entry, the room went momentarily still and silent. It was as if the entire world held its breath
(no, she could hear the jackhammer going in the distance; the outside world carried on, despite the woman being raped in a shipping container on the waterfront, ob-la-di, ob-la-da)
until the second thrust, much deeper than the first.

Sometimes Daniel had gotten too eager and pushed his way in before she was wet enough, but nothing could have prepared Olivia for being entered totally dry. It was that over-full, gagging sensation she'd felt when Harris shoved his dick in her mouth, except this pulled at her insides, dragging back and forth like sandpaper between her labia. Now she knew how the barrel of her gun felt when she plunged it with a stiff-bristled bore brush, by design larger than the opening for which it was intended.

"Oh yeah," the Driver said in a long, guttural exhalation, as if he'd just settled into a bathtub of steaming hot water after a hard day's work. He released Olivia's hips, pressing his hands to the desktop on either side of her and leaning into the thrusts. "f*ck. Bitch is tight. I can hardly fit."

"That's 'cause you got a dick like a damn Spam loaf." The Crier, whose own dick kept grazing Olivia's arm whenever she moved it, snickered at the wisecrack and winked conspiratorially down at Olivia. "Open wide, puss*cat. Hope you're in the mood for some canned imitation meat that smells like ass. Probably tastes like, too."

The Kid joined in with the older man's derisive laughter, egging the Driver on, not just by mocking but with slaps on the shoulders and a vigorous rub of his shiny bald pate. He lowered his gleaming head, already beaded in sweat from his efforts, and drove into Olivia harder than before. Hard enough that a hiccup of pain and trapped air from the lungs she'd forgotten how to use escaped her lips.

It reminded her to breathe, although she would just as soon not, when each breath hitched in her throat, mingling with the Driver's convulsive grunts in a vulgar sort of harmony. She had given up fighting once he penetrated her, once that first irrevocable thrust undid the fifty-four years of fighting that came before it—all those years of dodging her mother's boyfriends, with their wandering eyes and wandering hands; all those years of burying the truth about the assaults she had endured, until she believed the lies herself; all those years of pouring her heart and soul into protecting women and girls from scenarios like this one: being raped on top of a rusted-out desk by a man whose St. Jude medal swung back and forth, inches above her face, as he rocked against her.

Olivia was being raped. There was no way around it this time. She couldn't argue that it was consensual, or that her desires had been unclear and therefore absolved the rapist of any wrongdoing, as she had with Daniel since the moment he first assaulted her (then went on doing so, in various ways, for months after). She couldn't claim the "five-second rule"—that it wasn't full-fledged rape because he hadn't made it all the way in; hadn't been in her mouth longer than one or two thrusts, barely enough time to cut off her air supply; had only used a single finger, and her body was already so numb she didn't really feel it anyway. She couldn't let awareness slip away, protecting her from the harsh reality of what
(Daniel, Lewis, Calvin, the Crier)
the man on top of her was doing.

He put his penis in my vagin*. How many women had she encouraged to say those precise words? How many thousands of victims had she listened to recount the exact moment someone stripped them of their humanity, agency, safety, pride? And now she was one of them, for however long she survived after this attack.

Tonic immobility, that's why she couldn't move. Could barely think. God, she was one of those statistics now. The seventy percent of women who experienced involuntary paralysis during their rape. Likelihood doubled if you had experienced it before (she had, the first time with Daniel, and if she were being honest, it was part of the reason she'd kept so still during that last time with Lewis) and if the assault was violent or included multiple attackers. Check and check. She was like some small, helpless creature curled in on itself while the big bad wolf batted it around with his paw.

"Get her legs up," the Driver instructed, lifting Olivia's legs one at a time, behind the knee, and hooking them over the other men's arms. Her upper body was momentarily unrestrained as they followed his directions, but it didn't matter since she couldn't move on her own. The men did it all for her, anyway.

She had inched higher up the desk with Driver pounding away at her like he was, so he jerked her back down by the hips, positioning her ass right at the edge. With her knees co*cked apart and her ass about to slide off the cold slab below, she felt as if she were on a gynecological table, feet in the stirrups.I'm doing this for you, her mother had said while they were waiting on the doctor's arrival for that first, forced vagin*l exam. Olivia had simply stared at the wall, refusing to acknowledge her mother's existence.You don't know what he might have given you.Men are filthy.

Like you ever asked any of your f*ckbuddies from the bar if they had VD, Olivia thought, distantly. She hadn't said it back then; she would have gotten her mouth slapped. Besides, Serena was right—Olivia had known nothing of Daniel McNab's sexual history and what diseases he might pass on to her (none, as it turned out).

Lucky. She'd been so lucky over the years, except for the pregnancy scare that turned out not to be a false alarm. When she was still trying to do something important with her life. That was the story, at least. Never mind that she would have given birth at the same age her mother had delivered her, and she couldn't bear to see the look on Serena's face when she announced an unplanned pregnancy. Serena never would have forgiven her if she dropped out of college to raise a child. So she hadn't.

Maybe it was better to be raped at fifty-four, after all. Of the many unpleasant outcomes, it did take unwanted children off the table. Had her mother thought about that, Olivia wondered, while lying on that dirty concrete landing below street level, with Joseph Hollister on top of her? That she might have a child who was conceived down there in the lonely, godless dark, among the broken bottles and decaying newspaper? That, no matter how far the child ran from it, how long and hard she fought it, she would end up right back in that dark in which she was conceived?

Had this been written in Olivia's stars all along? Not family, not happiness, not peace and safety. What a fool she was to have believed any of those things were meant for her.

She watched the St. Jude medal pendulum above her, gaining momentum with each stroke, until it pitched wildly back and forth, like a playground swing the occupant had jumped out of midair. It was close enough for her to reach up and touch, to squeeze in her palm and say a prayer. Jude was the patron saint of lost causes, if she remembered correctly. Nothing could be more fitting than that.

"Look at me," the Driver panted, heaving his pelvis into her with a faint smack of flesh against flesh. Wet, sloppy sounds that curdled the blood inside Olivia's ears. She forgot them a moment later, when his hands went up her shirt, sliding the hem to her shoulders, and began harshly massaging her breasts. Even through the bra cups, it hurt. "Hey, bitch, up here. Look at me while I f*ck you. Yeah, that's it, show me them pretty brown eyes."

She tried not to. But the longer she avoided eye contact, the harder he squeezed and the more vicious his thrusts. Her breath caught with each one, and she could swear she felt him in the back of her throat. She felt him everywhere. "No. S-stop," she said, in a voice so thin and broken he probably wouldn't hear her over his p*rnographic sound effects. "Stop."

The Driver swatted her cheek smartly with his fingers, not hard enough to be called a slap, but enough that it startled her into obedience. She didn't want to be hit anymore. Perhaps if she cooperated, he wouldn't be so eager to make it hurt. Some men couldn't rape a woman who looked them directly in the eye. But Driver held no such reservations.

The moment he had her full attention, he bucked faster and twice as violently, until she was sure he would do internal damage. She wasn't delicate or of small build, and she'd engaged in plenty of vigorous sex over the years, particularly in her teens and early adulthood, but nothing like this. Nothing that made her whimper in pain and reach blindly for something to hold onto. She caught a handful of the Kid's shirt and knotted it around her fist. If she could have brought it to her mouth to bite, she would have.

It occurred to her then that she had developed that habit—needing something to bite down on when she didn't want to cry out during
(rape)
sex—while she was dating Daniel. At first it had been to muffle the sounds coming from the bedroom so his roommates wouldn't hear; then, as he'd gotten more adventurous with his sixteen-year-old plaything, Olivia had bitten whatever was handy (usually herself) for reasons she couldn't explain. Daniel thought it was sexy.My little carnivore, he called her.

"Sugar tit*," the Driver called her. He groped her breasts like he was trying to crush a pair of grapefruits with his bare hands. St. Jude flailed above, his useless, sad face staring down as if he were f*cking her, too. Patron saint of carnivores and women with big tit* the boys just loved to squeeze.

And finally, abruptly, the Driver came inside of her, spilling his seed where few men had and adding to the slimy sensation she was almost certain must be blood. It sure as hell wasn't arousal. Her body might be numb from the shoulders down, it might feel like it belonged to someone else entirely—the man straining inside her, perhaps—but there was no part of her that had wanted that. Daniel had convinced her otherwise; even Lewis made her question the reactions her body had given him. But no one, including herself, could tell her what just happened wasn't rape.

If she made it out of this godforsaken place, if she wasn't sold and used up till there was nothing left, she would have to describe for countless listeners what the Driver had done to her: how he wetted her down beforehand, his saliva as thick and sticky as his sem*n; how he yanked her into each thrust by tugging on her breasts, his fingernails leaving hot, red crescents in her flesh; how he smiled when he pulled his co*ck out of her with a faint pop, like a cork plucked from a wine bottle. How she could only lie there, naked from the waist down and half out of her t-shirt and bra, shivering uncontrollably, while he vowed, "Not finished with you yet,puta. Gimme a couple minutes, we'll go again."

She began to panic at the thought of relating those details to a jury, to other cops, doctors, or even just to her wife. At least the other assaults had been very much in the past tense when she finally disclosed them to Amanda, but this was their present, their here and now. Rape often tore relationships apart, or at the very least, changed them forever.

And what if Amanda blamed her for not fighting harder? The detective hadn't let it show much lately—not since the night that almost ended their marriage before it began, when they pushed each other to their limits, emotionally and sexually—but it still angered her when Olivia didn't defend herself well enough. During the last Super Bowl, Olivia had apologized for blocking the TV at a crucial moment, inciting Amanda to bellow, "Move, woman!" and toss a throw pillow across the room, and the blonde practically wouldn't speak to her the rest of the evening—not for the interruption, but because Olivia had excused the yelling and throwing. Amanda went into labor the following day, so it had all been a moot point anyway.

Nothing about this was moot. Amanda would never forgive her if she found out Olivia had just lain there and taken it. She would have her proof that Olivia was weak and deserved the blame for the past assaults as well, things she should have put a stop to, but didn't. And then Amanda would leave her, because no one wanted a wife who didn't fight with every last ounce of strength not to be gang raped. Wasn't that like complicity, when you really got down to it?

"Damn, Captain, you're tore up," said the Kid, gazing down at her with fascination and a hint of disgust. It was the way Noah and his ballet friends sounded when they showed off their calloused feet and split toenails, challenging each other to see who had the best war wounds.

At first, Olivia thought the Kid was talking about her genitals, which indeed felt raw and stretched beyond their limits—inside and out—but his eyes were on her breasts. More specifically, the pucker marks that marred her deeper cleavage and curved along the outsides. The scars from Lewis' cigarettes always reminded her of bullet holes in glass, that striated outer web with the puncture at its center, signifying where he most firmly ground in the tip. She had five of those bullet holes altogether, and considered herself lucky not to have five times that. Most days she hardly noticed them, and she no longer hid the scars from Amanda or felt self-conscious having them touched and kissed. She had very nearly forgotten how ugly they were; how "tore up" she was, truly.

And that wasn't even counting the serpentine mark on her hip from the coat hanger, or the various and sundry scars she had accumulated over the years, from her various and sundry attackers. God, how Amanda didn't find her completely repulsive was beyond Olivia.

"Guess you've got a little more mileage on you than most of the c*nts that come through here, though, huh?" The Kid traced a fingertip from one cigarette burn to the other, connecting the dots. His fingers were cold, but the touch seared Olivia's skin as surely as any smoldering Marlboro. "You're gonna be the oldest bitch I ever had. It's kinda hot, actually. Like that Mrs. Robinson chick. Roll over, Mrs. Robinson, I want you from behind."

As he spoke, the Kid unzipped his jeans and peeled them back from his slender hips. He was rummaging for the bulge inside his Calvin Klein boxers when Olivia threw her elbow sideways, aiming for the crotch of the plaid shorts, but swinging high in her frenzy to get away. She caught him in his soft, concave gut, drawing a faintoomphand a bow, as if he were inviting her into a Baroque dance. Near the wall behind him, visible only when he ducked, was his father Gus, looking on with a dispassionate eye. He didn't seem at all bothered by his son's difficulties, nor did he spare a glance for Olivia. It looked like he was watching a dogfight, the outcome of which he had no stake in either way.

The Crier, however, thought his friend's plight was hilarious. His laugh sounded rusty, like a gate forced open after years of disuse. It was a harsh, hateful sound, maybe the ugliest one that Olivia had ever heard, and she longed to shut him up. She longed for a metal bar to beat in his brains and shatter his kneecaps with; to bash against his crotch until he went flaccid, his balls turned to mush, Prince Albert embedded deep; to stand over him and wield, making him feel small and helpless and afraid.

Her elbow would have to do. He was at her left now, after that last-minute flip the Driver—her rapist—had requested. That was her weaker side, thanks to fractures and surgeries, but she mustered all her strength and hurled that elbow at the Crier. Once he was doubled up, clutching his stomach like the Kid was doing, she would only need to kick the Driver, and run. Little Brother couldn't stop her, and perhaps Gus was far enough away for her to get a good head-start . . .

She had barely finished the thought, or worked out how she would find her pants and get them on before she fled, when the Crier smoothly stepped aside to avoid the blow. Heaving herself sideways into nothing, into the fetid air, threw Olivia off balance and she rolled from the side of the desk, crashing heavily to the floor. Her arm crumpled beneath her, and she feared it might be broken, but then the Crier's boot came hard and fast. She felt a definite snap when it connected with her upper abdomen, and if that hadn't fractured some ribs, the next two kicks undoubtedly did.

He continued to laugh while he kicked her, hitting a maniacal crescendo before cutting it abruptly short and wrestling Olivia upright. "That the best you got, you dumb f*cking c*nt?" He exhaled hotly in her ear, holding tight around her middle as he hoisted, the pain in her freshly injured ribs bright and exquisite. "You think you're a real tough bitch 'cause you got a badge and a gun? You wouldn't last five minutes where I been, kitty cat."

"f*ck you," Olivia rasped, her shortness of breath no longer from panic or adrenaline, but from his foot colliding with her solar plexus. She'd had the wind knocked out of her a few times as a kid, and this felt a lot like that. Except she only need worry about defending herself from her staggering drunk of a mother back then. "You're gonna burn in hell a lot longer than five minutes."

The Crier's laugh was sharp and brief this time. Not a laugh at all, but a warning, like the growl that preceded a dog bite. He grabbed her t-shirt where it had slid back down her shoulders, and jerked up, momentarily shrouding her in white, until another yank freed it from below her chin. The shirt—just a markdown from Gap or somewhere, purchased for its soft, airy texture and mostly worn for lounging around at home—went the way of her yoga pants and underwear before it.

Nude, except for the bra she was only half in anyway, she felt divested of everything that made her Olivia Benson. He might as well have reached in and ripped out her soul. Perhaps that was what he intended, because he popped the hooks of her bra with a swift tug, unceremoniously spilling her from the cups, and groped her bare breasts from behind, burring, "This is hell, baby. And you better get used to it. You and me are gonna be here a long, long time."

. . .

Chapter 10: The Weight of the Soul

Chapter Text

Chapter 10.

The Weight of the Soul

. . .

"This is hell, baby. And you better get used to it. You and me are gonna be here a long, long time."

Thiswashell, on that much they agreed. Hell was being raped by one man and knowing you still had four more to go (not to mention what would happen when they got their second wind). Hell was having your tit* squeezed from behind by a sad*stic scumbag, and still reassuring yourself that at least it wasn'tHim—wasn't Lewis. And hell was being bent over a desk again, the long side this time, unable to see what your next rapist was about to do to you.

Don't worry, you'll feel it, she thought. And if she needed a visual, the Kid was directly in front of her. He had recovered from the jab to his belly, which seemed to have had little, if any, effect on his arousal. The sextasy was doing its job and ensuring Olivia would have to do hers, too. One of these days she should start charging for her services, at least then she would get something out of these encounters. It was astounding how many men still went ahead and paid the prostitute they had just raped.

She wanted to tell the kidnappers she forfeited, that they had succeeded in getting her to think like a hooker—which was usually the goal of seasoning in the first place—and there was no need to condition her any further. But all she got out was a breathless, anemic, "Stop . . . " before she clamped her mouth shut at the sight of the Kid freeing himself from his boxers. She could already taste him, the musty, briny flavor that had flooded her palate when Lowell Harris orally sodomized her instantly at her tongue, like a long-forgotten name. No other men had been in her mouth since then, but if you tasted one, you'd tasted them all.

(Not entirely true. Young and fit, Daniel had had a much more robust, tangy essence that Olivia associated with blowj*bs until well into her sophom*ore year of college. Made sense—he was the guy who had taught her how to give head, after all. He taught her a whole lot of things by the time they were through.)

"You know what, I'm feeling generous," said the Crier. He smacked Olivia on the ass hard enough to leave a handprint, evoking a small, girlish squeal that shamed her deeply. Any sound he drew from her was just another thing taken without her permission. She was already naked in front of him, he didn't get to expose any more of her. "You take this end first, junior. I wanna have a word with this mouthy c*nt, 'cause she still seems to think she's the boss."

Olivia shook her head furiously, or as furiously as she dared while her brain throbbed inside her skull like an ear-splintering bass. And that was tame compared with the pain radiating from her rib cage. Now, more than ever, it hurt to take a breath, a deep stitch in her side preventing her lungs from filling to capacity. "No. I-I don't think th-that," she said, between each gasp and subsequent wince.

She tried to track the men's movement as they switched places, trading heads for tails as if she were a bad coin toss, but the tripod lights were blinding (she didn't even remember seeing them while the Driver raped her) and blotted out their faces. The Kid's arms were longer and he kept a hand on her back, pressing her flat to the desk as he rounded on one side, Crier on the other. If not for the shortness of breath and the pain in her torso, like she'd just met with the business end of a taxicab, she might have been able to push up from the desktop, knock him aside. But right then, she doubted her ability to stand up straight, let alone rely on her shaking limbs.

Instead, she tried her shaking voice. "You're in con-control here. I'll— I'll cooperate, if you'll please just stop this, please. You s-said there's a b-buyer. Do you want money? I can g-get you money."

NYPD wasn't in the business of paying ransom demands, and Olivia doubted she had enough in her savings to tide these men over for very long, but she would say anything to get away at this point. Do anything, besides just lie there and take it. She could worry about the follow through of her promises later, when she wasn't moments away from being raped a second time by two assailants. (God, please.)

"Still thinks she can talk her way outta this," the Crier said to no one in particular, least of all Olivia, though he stood before her and looked down as dispassionately as if he were observing a slug inching along the sidewalk. And like most cruel, unfeeling boys, he was more interested in dousing the slug with salt than helping it. "Still thinks she can hand out ultimatums." He clucked his tongue and bent forward to be at her level, the angle between them too steep for her to maintain eye contact otherwise.

When he got closer he grabbed the back of Olivia's hair, fingers sifting in deep, and snapped her head back viciously. She gave an involuntary cry, tears springing to her eyes as the heat spread again through her tender scalp. He wrenched her head side to side—no rhyme or reason, just because he could—before addressing her in a low tone, as if he didn't want the others to overhear. "Since you've got this all figured out, tell me, bitch. You think you can afford one mill? That's how much your bitch-cop ass is worth to someone. I've sold girls for less than ten grand, so what makes you so f*cking special? You just look like some pig captain who eats puss* to me."

The whole time the Crier was speaking, the Kid was behind Olivia, rubbing the head of his penis against her labia, the shaft gliding between her buttocks. When he spread both cheeks with his hands, fingers dangerously close to her anus, she tried to buck him away, but succeeded only at making him titter and jerk her tucked-in ass back against his pelvis.

"No!" she said to him, and to the Crier, who shook her roughly by the hair for not answering his questions. "No, please. I'm— I'm not special. I'm nothing. I'm not worth tha— ouch! P-please don't, not there."

The last part was directed at the Kid as he went on prodding with his dick, grinding into her perineum and teasing at the opening beyond it. Every time he got close to pushing inside, he pulled away and started over; and every time, Olivia gasped and struggled fruitlessly beneath his hands and the Crier's.

She'd had anal sex before, with her first fiancé Daniel—who else? Just another thing he had taught her to do with her body. She hated it more than oral. It took weeks of cajoling pillow-talk for her to agree, Daniel snuggling her so tightly, so securely, as he murmured about how sexy it would be, how all the college girls did it that way, and didn't she want to make him happy? Didn't she love him? The first time, she hurt and bled for days after; and every time after that, Daniel held her while she cried, telling her how good she was at it, and he just couldn't help himself, he wanted her so much.

"I know it hurts, honey," he said once, dropping kisses onto the top of her head, something that still made her feel safe and content after sex. "But it's worth a little pain, to heighten the pleasure, right?"

Olivia had learned at an even younger age than sixteen how fine the line between pleasure and pain really was, thanks to her mother's tendency to slap (or choke) first, then offer the affection Olivia desperately craved. Sometimes you did have to push through the bad to get to the good. But she'd never learned to do that with Daniel and his frequent sexual requests, and she had never let another man touch her the way—and the places—that he had. Not willingly, anyway.

The Kid laughed outright at her plea not to be sodomized. "She must not be a fan of backdoor surprises," he said, as if she weren't there, listening to every word. Feeling every movement behind her. He reached into a drawer that rattled open near her knee, which he knocked aside with his own, and withdrew something that he stamped down on the desktop. It sounded plastic, but that was the only feature Olivia could discern. "Maybe this'll help grease the wheels."

"Stick to the front door, little man," said the Crier, his fingers slackening as he focused on something besides Olivia's eyes and, with unmistakable hunger, her mouth. (Bet yours is real pretty, just like your mouth. You wanna suck—) "I got dibs on the back."

"Dude, this isn't Skee-Ball. It's a free country and every hole is up for grabs." The Kid drummed on Olivia's buttocks until both sides were hot and numb, not just where the Crier had slapped her. Other than playful swats from Amanda, she'd never been spanked before—not even by her mother, who, ironically, hadn't believed in corporal punishment—and it was every bit as degrading as she had always suspected. "But fine, I'll keep it kosher for now. I know how much you must miss your prison wives. Don't wanna ruin your walk down memory lane."

"Eat me," growled the Crier.

"That's her job. Hey, bro, get over here and watch this. Come on, buddy, I'm gonna show you what to do when it's your turn." The Kid gave a piercing whistle that went through Olivia like a jolt from the long-forgotten cattle prod. She tried to cringe from it, but the men jerked her back into place every time she deviated even an inch one way or the other.

"Go on, son," said Gus, patting his younger son on the back and urging him to join his brother like he was being sent onto the field during a Little League game. Make your old man proud.

Hesitantly, the boy donned his hat, so twisted out of shape it barely fit his head, and stepped forward, his eyes locked on Olivia as he edged past her at a wide berth. She wanted to cry for help again, but he was useless to her. If his father and brother weren't present, she probably could have appealed to him. But with them in control, treating her less than human, he would never see her as anything other than what his brother had reduced her to—a series of holes waiting to be filled.

She detached then, listening at a distance while the Kid explained inserting dicks into puss*es, his thumbs spreading her labia for a better view, and how the Vaseline he'd taken from the drawer made for a smoother, more enjoyable f*ck. He slopped a large, slimy glob of the stuff onto her vulva, greasing her from front to back, like a skillet for frying, and kicked her feet apart when she tried to close her legs.

"If she pulls any sh*t, just shove it in harder and she'll settle down," he said sagely. "Then just keep doing that until you shoot your load, know what I mean? Here, I'll show you. Go ahead and touch her if you want."

A hand skimmed the dip of Olivia's spine, and a moment later, the Kid pushed into her, keeping his promise to enter her vagin*lly. Just some good old-fashioned penis-in-vagin* rape, like an All-American Boy. (Or dick-in-puss*, she supposed, in his case.) He had been right about the petroleum jelly, it did help smooth things out a little, along with her blood and the Driver's sem*n. Thank God for small favors.

"No, p-please. I— I—" She what? She had nothing to finish with, and couldn't stand the sound of her voice hitching as she was jostled from behind, so she fell silent, like she had the first time.

Olivia had ultimately been silent for all her rapes.

In front of her, the Crier released her hair and took her roughly by the chin, forcing it up until she was looking him in the eye again. The other hand went to his penis, the erection still going strong, and brought it towards her mouth.

That sight—so familiar it felt like déjà vu—triggered in her such a visceral response, she didn't realize she was screaming and thrashing until Crier ordered someone to, "Get your thumb outta your ass and hold her down," and a third pair of hands joined his and the Kid's, which encircled her waist. These hands, big and paw-like, pinned her arms behind her back, easily holding them in place by the wrists. "Ow, ow," she cried in a childish timbre, when he pushed up, stretching her awkwardly twisted limbs beyond their limits. Too much higher, something was bound to snap.

"Use this." The Crier grabbed Olivia's long, tattered side braid and passed it back to the Driver, the only man present whose hands were that beefy and strong. "Keep her head still. And facing that way."

One-handed, the other still clasping her wrists, the Driver looped the braid around his fist like a boxer wrapping his knuckles, pulling it taut near the top, so close to the scalp Olivia couldn't turn her head one way or the other. It would have brought tears to her eyes, if they weren't already streaming down her cheeks.

Then just like that, the Crier disappeared from her shimmering vision. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but he was beyond peripheral range—and oh God, the Kid was hurting her. He didn't have Driver's girth, but like the rest of him, his penis had considerable reach, especially when used as a battering ram.

She had, on occasion, enjoyed deep penetration with her sexual partners, men and Amanda alike. Some might even call it rough sex (Olivia preferred the term "vigorous"). vagin*l org*sms weren't quite as pleasurable to her as cl*toral ones, and yet, there was something primal and intensely erotic about a deep, relentless f*cking. Even when it hurt, she still got off. Sometimes she got offbecauseit hurt.

Once again, it was a predilection she could trace back to Daniel McNab. Oh, he was gentle at first—even that initial assault had seemed tender at the time—but his desire for rough sex gradually came to light the longer they were together. At sixteen, Olivia hadn't known any better. She was used to hearing (and sometimes seeing) her mother f*ck strange men, loudly and vigorously. It had seemed to her the thing to do, and so she'd told herself she liked it, until she eventually believed it. Until it became true.

Lewis had seen it in her, that dirty little secret she'd been hiding since eleventh grade. The hypocrisy of it was astounding—a sex crime detective, an advocate for survivors of the worst kinds of violence and assault, and she still liked it rough. Women wept as they disclosed to her the details of being savagely penetrated, meanwhile she got to go home and do it for fun.

It had finally caught up with her. She could feel the Kid pummeling her cervix and knew the damage it would cause: bruising, at the very least, a common injury among rape victims, especially the ones who were positioned—like Olivia was—for deeper penetration during the attack; maybe even some tearing, although small tears of the cervix were usually left to heal on their own. Like broken ribs. She would be expected to heal after this, too, but how?

She hurt so much.

"Switching to granny puss* after this," the Kid grunted, the slap of his hips against her ass punctuating every word. "More lived in. Like a nice, homey cottage."

One thought she was too tight, the other thought she was "lived in." She guessed they would know; her body belonged to them now. She had slowly started to untether from herself, as effortless as a kite string unraveling from its spool, the pain and humiliation too great to bear. (Little Brother stroked her thigh while his brother violated her. "Is she gonna cry when I do that?" he asked.)

What was the quote about slipping the surly bonds of earth? Olivia was about to slip the surly bonds of this hell on earth when one of the desk drawers clattered open, startling her back into the body that was no longer hers. Metal scraped metal, the Kid made a noise like a leaking steam valve, and a moment later, the Crier reappeared before her.

Without a word, he grabbed her chin again and jerked downward, jamming something long and hard into her open mouth, cracking her trick jaw wide. At first, wildly, she thought of the metal bar that she'd used to beat Lewis, but this was thicker and pronged at the end. She gagged as it met resistance, and only when she felt the fanglike tips pressing into the tender meat of her throat did she realize it was the cattle prod.

Please, Jesus.

"It's this or me, bitch," the Crier snarled, his hand on the pump-style trigger. "And you better choose me, otherwise I'll make Junior back there shove this up your ass next, and you'll still have to blow me. Take your pick."

Olivia wanted to tell him to go f*ck himself; that she would rather die than pick him. She wanted to grab his ugly, soot-colored co*ck and rip out the idiotic f*cking Prince Albert piercing with her teeth, maybe bite the head off while she was at it. Spit it at him. Watch him scream and bleed and die. Instead, she cast a pleading look at his penis, choosing it over the prod. At least it wouldn't break her teeth or destroy her ability to talk or swallow. It wouldn't scorch the back of her throat like lit cigarettes against flesh.

It would just make her wish she were dead, rather than actually kill her.

Without her hands free to gesture, her head free to nod, or her mouth free to speak, she could only convey an answer with her eyes, flicking them up to the Crier's hard, tattooed face and back down to his hard, barbelled penis. She repeated the signal until he eased up on the prod and slid it out of her mouth. Tentatively, she shifted her lower jaw side to side, afraid it had locked in place. It clicked a few times, but she was able to close it. For now.

"Good girl," said the Crier. (God, why did they always have to say that?) He let the torture device—the electric one, at least—slide onto the desktop, Olivia starting violently at the racket it made, and scooped up something else that gave a familiar screech of metal on metal. "Now, you see these?"

He waved the pliers in front of her face, too close for her to bring them into focus at first. She flinched instinctively, getting nowhere. The Kid thumped her from behind, rocking her forward in an energetic and unrelenting rhythm. Her stomach clenched convulsively with each thrust.

"If you bite me, I'll rip every last tooth out of your pretty little head with these and cram 'em down your f*cking throat. You'll be sh*tting teeth for a week." The Crier clacked the pliers loudly on the edge of the desk, jolting Olivia again. (The Kid reciprocated the jolt at the other end.) He chattered the tools at her like a pair of wind-up teeth, and she wondered if the dark rust spots in the creases were actually dried blood. "Got me?"

Olivia tried to nod, forgetting she couldn't. She had recently watched a documentary on snakes with the kids, who were particularly fascinated by the wranglers whose job it was to milk venom from the deadlier serpents. She supposed the Driver was her wrangler now—and she? She was the black mamba, about to have her mouth forced open, her power stolen in a way that, unlike the snakes, she could never get back.

"Y-yes," she said, her voice so hoarse she hardly recognized it. Her throat was sore from screaming and being jabbed by the prongs of the cattle prod. And her thirst was unimaginable.

Some of it was real, but some of it was in her head, she knew that; ever since Lewis had withheld water from her until her tongue felt as rubbery and shriveled as a piece of beef jerky, she'd been experiencing terrible dry mouth in dangerous or frightening situations. Or sometimes for no reason at all.

She shuddered to think how her thirst would be quenched this time. Clearing her throat, she attempted to speak up, hoping to disguise her parched voice. These men didn't get to know she needed anything from them. "I underst—"

The Crier rapped Olivia's forehead with the jawed end of the pliers ("Hey," Gus said sharply, as if scolding a bad dog), making her cry out more from surprise than pain. Not to say it didn't hurt. There would probably be a notch in her forehead to match the one his ring had left in her cheek. "Gotta teach her somehow," he called over his shoulder to the man who stood in the wings. And to Olivia, a hand under her chin, ruthlessly squeezing her cheeks against her closed teeth, he said, "Tell me you want it. Say, 'I can't wait to suck your big, yummy co*ck, Angel.'"

So he had a name, or at least a nickname. She would never call him by it. He was no angel.

Her lips wouldn't form the other words, either, no matter how hard
(he f*cked her from behind)
she tried to push them out. She told herself it was fear—that freeze response again—but truth be told, it was stupid, stubborn pride. What she had left of it, anyway. Never had she spoken that way to any man in her life, not even in jest, and she'd be damned if this prick would be the first.

Despite the nasty yank of her braid, despite the vicious thrusts from behind, Olivia held out for as long as she could. A matter of seconds, perhaps. Time was so hard to keep track of here, whilethiswas happening. Whatever the length of her silence, it was too long for the Crier. "Say it, slu*t." He brought the pliers down on the edge of the desk again, but refrained from hitting her in the face, she noted. He was itching to, though. It practically oozed off of him, how much he wanted to hurt her. "f*cking say it, or I'll use these to gouge out your goddamn eyeballs."

That was a lie. She believed him about sodomizing her with the prod and pulling out her teeth with the pliers—a few missing molars would likely go unnoticed by anyone looking to "purchase" her—but eyeless prostitutes were not in high demand. Olivia finally had something over on him, and it almost felt good for a split-second, until the Driver jerked up on her pinned wrists, pushing them to the middle of her back. The Kid bore into her like a drill motor in drywall. Inexplicably, it made her want to cough.

She whimpered instead, hating herself for it. Such a pathetic, weak sound, and one she associated with her previous assaults, because those were the only times she ever made that noise or anything like it. As an adult, she had never whined, until those four days with Lewis. Then, it was because of a desperate need to pee, a desperate need for water, a desperate need not to be raped. What would these men do that would finally make her whine in desperation?

"Okay, have it your way," said the Crier, with an indifferent shrug. He picked up the cattle prod and brandished it over her head at the Kid. "Give it to her good."

"W-wait. Wait!" Olivia shouted the second time, but it came out rusty and ineffectual, like an old sink knob that screeched in protest when turned. "Wait, I'll say it. I— I—"

The Crier gazed down dispassionately at her, and just when it seemed he would ignore the plea and proceed with the sodomy, front and back, he lowered the cattle prod onto the desk. "'I can't wait . . .'" he coached, as if he were feeding lines to a child with stage fright.

"I c-can't wait to—" Olivia cringed. At the words, at the soft porcine grunts from the Kid. She'd hoped his youth meant he would be an early arriver, but he was not that inexperienced. "—to suck your co*ck."

"Nope. Start over. 'I can't wait to suck your big, yummy co*ck, Angel.' Say it all, like a good kitty."

The kitty bullsh*t made her want to puke. The co*ck bullsh*t made her want to puke even more. It was just a f*cking power play, another way to prove he had control over her. And the bitch of it all? He was right. Penetration with a foreign object was common in gang rapes, almost expected, and whatever Olivia must do to avoid it, to only have penises shoved inside her, she would do.

God help her, she would.

"I can't— I can't wait to—" Olivia licked her lips, but couldn't moisten them. Couldn't stop her own small grunts and groans every time the Kid bucked forward. "I can't wait to suck your— your big, yummy . . . co*ck, A—"

He saved her from the blasphemy of using that name by catching her lower jaw, forcing it wide, and gliding in his big, yummy co*ck. An interesting fact Olivia had learned from the snake documentary was that snakes didn't unhinge their jaws to consume large prey, as many people believed; the reptiles' mandibles weren't fused like a humans, therefore they had nothing to dislocate and, because of stretchy ligaments, could open their mouths unbelievably wide—a mechanism known asgaping.

Olivia had no such luxury. Her misaligned jaw cracked dangerously the farther he yanked it down, and her first instincts were to clamp shut, but the old, improperly healed injury—whatever it stemmed from, she still didn't know—kept her mouth locked open.Gaping. Just right for raping. (Hey, I'm a poet and didn't—) Once again, her body was working against her, in favor of her attacker.

Reflexively she tried to jerk back, but the Driver hadn't loosened his grip on her braid, and the Crier rested a firm hand at the back of her head. He pushed her forward, using what little leeway she'd gained to meet his thrust and slide himself to the hilt. Deep-throating was the popular term among p*rn producers and high schoolers alike, and Olivia had been avoiding it since the age of ten, when she saw her mother do it to a perfect stranger. Even with Daniel and the two other boyfriends she'd—very badly—fella*ted, it hadn't gone this far. Even with Harris.

He tasted like he smelled, oily and alkaline. Car battery, she thought, right before all thinking abruptly ceased. Choking. She wasn't thinking, she was choking. If he'd lied about being nine inches, he hadn't embellished by much, and most of that was lodged against the back of her throat. Her esophagus contracted, trying to expel the foreign body and unraveling a ribbon of fire that went deep into her belly. It mingled with the upsurge of pain from her groin, from the Kid's punishing strokes, until it was impossible to tell where the hurt was coming from. It was everywhere, all over her, just like their hands.

Please, God, make it stop.

"Heard you were real good at giving head, puss*cat," the Crier said, sounding as though he had just released a long-held stream of urine. His zipper clacked against the desk every time he jerked his hips towards Olivia, but the rest of the world above was muffled, as if she were wearing headphones. "You definitely got a big enough mouth for it. Most of these bitches can't handle all of me. You'd be real popular with some of the donkey dicks we sell to."

As soon as he slid back enough for Olivia to cough and splutter, he plunged in fully again, blocking out everything—the ability to gag, swallow, breathe, think. It must be what drowning felt like, first breaking the surface, then sinking back under, over and over again, until finally your lungs filled with
(big, yummy co*ck)
water, and you died.

The Prince Albert piercing rippled across her palate, soft to hard and back again—over and over and over—like a xylophone mallet dragged along the slats. That's all she was now, an instrument to be played, to be plucked (you mean f*cked) and pounded and used for the entertainment of others.

Obviously not a woodwind or a brass, though, since she was the one doing the blowing. If you could call having your mouth reamed, while you struggled not to asphyxiate, a blowj*b. There weren't any cases of death by deep-throating that she recalled. Women did this all the time and survived, and she was no good to these men dead (I'll do you cold, Lewis had said, but she doubted even the Crier was into necrophilia). He would let her breathe soon. He would . . .

He would . . .

"Trade with me, man," the Kid panted, slowing his vicious tree-sawing to a halfhearted sandpaper-sweep against the grain. "This end's starting to chafe. Thought she'd be wetter by now."

The Driver's voice sounded overhead, the volume and randy inflection suited to a locker room after a big win. "She got plenty wet for me.Muy mojada. Maybe she doesn't like skinny white boy co*ck?"

"Shut the f*ck up. She's just old. They dry out faster or something. Anyway, I felt her come a second ago. That was all me, muchacho." The Kid slammed his hips into Olivia's backside, jolting her forward, her nose pressing into the Crier's scrub of black pubic hair. It cut off what little air she was siphoning in through her nostrils when the Crier's dick wasn't suctioned to the roof of her mouth, preventing her from inhaling at all.

Which one brought her back to reality—lack of oxygen or the
(motherf*cking liar, I didnot)
lie about her experiencing an org*sm—she couldn't say. Both made her struggle to worm away from one man or the other, but she was skewered like a goddamn pig on a spit whichever direction she went. Between a co*ck and a hard place, you might say.

"Uh-oh, we have movement," the Kid announced, imitating police radio chatter, complete with cut-off static.

Christ, this was all just a f*cking game. Would she live to see who won?

" . . . serious, dude. I wanna try this golden throat everyone keeps raving about. Don't get me wrong, these lips are good, but those . . ."

The Crier let out an enraged roar that was almost primal, and jerked himself out of Olivia's mouth so abruptly she gagged more than she had when he went in. For several moments, all she could do was cough and wheeze, tears flowing down her cheeks and blinding her to the men surrounding her on all sides. (Fine, take her mouth, the Crier was yelling.Just shut the f*ck up, for Christ's sake. You're whinier than she is.) She longed to cover her ears, to block out the loud voices and just exist inside the dimmed, muted world where everything hurt but at least she could breathe.

Her arms ached too badly to move. Hot, weighted bands encircled each joint, the muscles in her shoulders clenching painfully, and she winced back from lifting either limb. Only then did she realize the Driver had let go of her wrists and braid, though she could still feel the ghost of his hands wrapped around her.

She felt the ghost of the Kid too. He had pulled out, leaving behind a hollowness that immediately flooded with pain—sharp in her gut, a rashlike burning inside her vagin*, paper-cut stings at the entrance. He'd definitely torn something, somewhere. That was to be expected during a violent assault, even more so for a woman her age. Tissue became thinner and less elastic after menopause; it was why SVU saw more vagin*l trauma in older victims than in young women, excluding the very young, whose reproductive systems hadn't fully developed. Children and old ladies got the worst of it.

But in spite of the terrible cramping, the weakness in her trembling legs, the gashed-open feeling between them, the throbbing in her head, neck, chest, back, arms, hips, pelvis—in spite of it all, she felt a moment of sweet, blessed relief. No one had his hands on her body; no one had his penis inside her. There was air in her lungs. As far as she knew, the men weren't even looking at her right then.

It was the most freedom she had felt since those bleary, half-waking moments with Lewis, when he was out of the room and she convinced herself the whole thing had been some horrible dream—and it was just as much of a lie now as back then. It was just as short lived.

"Turn her that way some more," said one of the men. The Crier, she thought, or maybe Gus. She was too spent to seek out the source, and probably couldn't have raised her head, even if she wanted to. Too heavy. The most she could manage right then was turning it away from the voice and letting her cheek rest on the corroded desktop. At least the metal was cool.

"Aw, Christ, she moved her head. Fix it. And clean up her face, she looks like sh*t." Same voice as before, but this time Olivia was certain it belonged to the Crier. It had come from directly behind her, where he stood rubbing his dick between her buttocks. His intentions were clear, each stroke taking him in the opposite direction Olivia hoped for, prayed for.

Years from now, if she lived that long, and if someone asked her what moment had finally broken her, out of all the unspeakable and dehumanizing experiences she'd had—during this and every other assault—she would say this one. Asking God to let her only be raped, not sodomized.God, please, please, not there.

"Plea—" she tried out loud, but made it no further, before something smashed against her face, smothering her. She gasped (Oh God, I don't want to die here!), sucking in a mouthful of soft fabric that tasted like acrid underarm sweat. Her t-shirt, she realized, gagging and coughing on the material, despite its gauzy weave. Her sweat, pungent with terror.

Only, she wasn't being smothered. The hand that held her t-shirt scrubbed it vigorously across her eyes, the other hand holding up her head beneath the chin. When the shirt was drawn away, she squinted her stinging eyelids, bringing the Kid into focus. He grinned and wiped delicately at the corners of her eyes, like an attentive mother drying her child's tears.

"Anybody ever tell you you cry pretty?" he asked rhetorically, pinching snot from her nose with his makeshift tissue. He licked a thumb and used it to smooth her brows, then raked back the nest of bedraggled hair that had escaped from her braid with his fingers. "There. Good as new."

"Can we stop?" Olivia asked, not caring how pitiful and naïve it sounded. The Crier was moving against her more forcefully, waiting for some cue she couldn't determine before pushing his way in. He was like a bull snorting at the gate, eager to charge. He butted it once, making Olivia's voice spike sharply as she gazed sideways at Gus and said, "Please— oh God, ow, please I just need a minute."

The Kid quivered his bottom lip, pretending to well up at her plight. He whined like a puppy in search of its mother's teat. "Aww. She needs a break, guys. It's hard work spreading your legs, huh, Captain? Gives you a whole new respect for the working girls you lock up, doesn't it?"

You mean the working girls you, your scumbag father, and your punk-ass friends brutalize, then turn out for profit, you son of a bitch?The words were on her lips, but she couldn't produce them. That was Captain Benson talking, and Olivia didn't know if that woman existed anymore. She certainly didn't exist in this place, with these men. Whoever Olivia had woken as that morning, she'd shed that skin the minute she stepped into the storage container. God only knew what she would emerge as this time.

"Think we should let her have what she wants?" the Kid asked, looking around as if expecting a show of hands. He still held Olivia's chin propped in his hand, and he turned her face toward the tripod lights against the nearest length of wall. "Let's poll the audience and—"

Olivia gave a small, strangled cry when the Crier grabbed the back of her hair, jerking her head away from the Kid like he was uprooting some especially stubborn weeds—or pulling a deeply wedged clog from a drainpipe—and slammed the side of her face down on the desk. He pressed his palm against the opposite side, pinning her cheek flat to the tarnished metal.

"You don't get to say stop, you stupid c*nt," he sneered, his free hand snaking around her hip to clamp cruelly at her sex. He squeezed as if he were juicing a tough-skinned piece of fruit, his long, uneven fingernails digging into the soft and intimate pulp of her. He made a ruthless scrubbing gesture until she hissed and nearly used the forbidden plea:stop. "When you gonna get that through this thick skull?" He rapped his knuckles briskly against her temple, igniting sparks behind her eyes.

You don't get to say no anymore, Lewis had informed her at some point during their four days in hell. She couldn't place when exactly; much of that time was a blur to her, even more so after the nightmares and flashbacks distorted what had actually happened and what hadn't . . .

Not true. In Olivia's heart of hearts she knew he had done more than put a finger inside of her, that the soreness between her legs after the first day—all that unaccounted for time spent together in her bedroom—wasn't just from having her service weapon jammed into her crotch. Why was she still denying it, even now, stripped of her clothes, her right to say no—or stop, her humanity? Lewis had raped her. Maybe with an implement other than his penis, but it was rape all the same.

You don't get to say no anymore. What did it matter when he told her? In one way or another, someone had been taking that choice away from Olivia throughout her entire life. She'd fooled herself into believing she was past it. That her family—her beautiful wife and their sweet, perfect babies—had finally broken the curse, like a fairytale kiss. She got complacent, dropped her guard, and now this. The ultimate reminder:

Olivia Benson didn't get to say no.

"Guess I'll just have to keep f*cking it out of you until you catch on," said the Crier, releasing her cl*tor*s from a savage pinch of his thumb and forefinger. She barely felt it—though she heard herself gasp—and she thought perhaps the numbness had finally spread from her mind to her lower body.

It must have skipped her breasts, which were crushed against the dirty desktop, slivers of pain piercing the tissue like glass shards. She thought of Sammie, whose tough little gums created a similar sharp twinge when they latched onto her nipple improperly. Then she pushed the thought away hard, not wanting her baby girl anywhere near these animals or their horrific violence, even just in her head.

Then came another push, this one from behind Olivia, swift and merciless, and the pain was unlike anything she had ever felt before. No amount of numbness or dissociation could have separated her from it. No amount of the Crier rooting between her buttocks with his
(big, yummy)
co*ck could have prepared her to be penetrated there so suddenly, so roughly. He said he'd do her dry, and he was a man of his word. The unused tub of petroleum jelly was still somewhere to her left, where she couldn't see it because her head was pinned to the desk and she was being sodomized by a man whose co*ck piercing felt like marbles in her rectum. The rest of him was a goddamn redwood.

She managed a single, wounded scream that sounded more like an animal being tortured than a human. It cut short abruptly, as if the poor creature's head had been lopped off in one fell swoop, but the pain went on and on, too all-encompassing for screaming. The most Olivia could do was clench her teeth against it, and she did so with such force, something crumbled in the back of her mouth. The sensation was similar to crunching ice chips with her molars, but that usually wasn't accompanied by searing gums and the tang of blood. Shattered tooth, most likely. Maybe the Crier would extract it with the pliers if she asked nicely.

Gritting her teeth in spite of the pain it caused, as bright and pulsating as a star
(wish I may, wish I might)
she tried to remind herself to relax her muscles. The worst thing you could do during anal penetration was tense up; she had known that since she was sixteen. Back then, she'd used the breathing techniques she knew from competitive swimming to get through it.Try to push me out a little, Daniel had coached, stimulating her with his fingers in front, gradually inching deeper in back as she whimpered and puffed.It relaxes the right stuff.Mm, you feel so good.

But there was nothing gradual about what the Crier was doing to her. At least Daniel had taken his time and used plenty of lube, for his own sake as much as hers. The Crier didn't mind the discomfort. It only seemed to turn him on more, and he plunged ahead at a jerky, unrelenting pace. Olivia's body remained rigid, her breath snatched away by each jounce. Now she knew how raw meat felt when it was tenderized, she thought. Now she knew how the men she'd sent to prison, with warnings that they would be sodomized by their fellow inmates, must have felt the first time they were facedown in their bunks.

She desperately wanted something to bite down on, and started to lift her hand to her mouth, not caring if she broke skin—the rest of her was already ripped open. But the Crier grabbed her wrist and pinned it behind her, the same way she did to perps when she handcuffed them. He leaned forward until the weight of his upper body rested on her back, his hips still working behind hers, and blew the hair away from her ear to murmur into it.

"I'll be nice and use the jelly when I do your girls like this," he said, no noticeable difference in his voice as he thrusted. He could have been taking a leisurely stroll, for all the effort he evinced. "Not the boy, though. He might as well get used to it early. Most guys who f*ck below tenliketearing up the kid's asshole. How's it feel knowing your son's gonna be in this same position soon? You wanna see that, puss?"

Olivia opened her mouth to release a scream of sheer hatred, of a rage so profound it felt as though a demon had been unleashed in her soul, but all that came out was a low, mournful cry that dwindled into an infantile whine. That finally did it. Lewis had reduced her to a helpless, whining captive with booze, pills, bathroom control, and his boundless rage; this man did it with sodomy and threats against her children. She wanted to believe it was a lie—just a way of bringing her to heel—but until the Driver had shoved his dick inside her, she never would have believed she was going to be gang raped, either. And they had pictures of her babies. Oh, Jesus. Oh, sweet Jesus.

"No," someone sobbed brokenly, and Olivia longed to tell her to shut up.No, likestop, was a forbidden word here, and it would get them hurt even worse, if the stupid bitch kept on wailing it like that. "No, please— no, not my—" Only when the Crier clamped his hand over her mouth, muffling the devastated sounds, did Olivia realize she was the stupid bitch. She was the one pleading with him not to harm her children. And she was the one he reamed even harder, the more she cried.

"Remember when I told you I'm a biter?" he asked, and clacked his teeth together beside her ear, as if he meant to chomp down on the lobe. Instead, he drew back and sank his teeth deeply into her shoulder, the way vampires always seemed to bite—wide, voracious—in movies and television shows. He didn't tear out the hunk of flesh and spit it aside, like in the movies, but he might as well have, with the heat that blossomed in her shoulder, a furious, fiery orchid. "From now on, you say no to me anymore, you're getting one of those."

He snagged her earlobe in his teeth this time, and if he had bitten down with the same force he'd just applied to her shoulder, he surely would have snipped the lobe clean. "Understand?" he asked, and gave the morsel in his mouth a greedy suck.

Olivia failed to stifle a groan of revulsion and total despair, but she nodded faintly. She was lying, of course—if her kids came up again, if he or the others put anymore of those horrendous images in her mind (she would die before she'd let her son go through something like this, and her sweet, tiny girls who didn't even know such evil existed in the world . . .), she would no more be able to hold back a reaction than she could hold back the Crier himself.

As if reading her thoughts, he tested out her truthfulness, murmuring in an almost tender voice while he reached down to stroke her cl*tor*s, "Good puss*. You like that? Your little girls are gonna love it. I'll teach them to come just like their mommy. That redhead's gonna be great on camera, too. Maybe I'll send you a copy of her audition, if your new daddy lets you off your knees long enough to watch it . . . "

Olivia sensed a rending deep inside, not of body tissue or anything tangible—though she felt plenty of that, as well—but of reality and her place in it. Her mind wanted desperately to separate from her current circ*mstances. It was like being the character in a book who was about to be plucked from the pages by a giant authorial hand. And the only thing she could do was cling to the desk as if it were a life raft. She had to stay and fight for her kids. It might be over for her, but if there was even the smallest chance she could prevent this from happening to those babies, she would hold on to the bitter end.

"You're not touching my kids," she said, so shaky and breathless it barely qualified as a whisper. Part of it was muted and cracked, but she made her point clear. "They'll have a protective detail. My wife will kill you before you get near them."

The Crier gave a sharp laugh, an even sharper jerk of his hips. He rubbed at Olivia's raw, aching cl*tor*s until she hissed and tried to shift away from his touch. Suddenly, his other hand shot forward and gripped her chin, lifting it from underneath to display her face to the blinding studio lights. The few times Olivia had been on stage in college, the footlights were similarly overpowering, casting a dark pall over the audience.

"Not if I kill her first," he whispered in Olivia's ear, then raised his voice for the others to hear, making her shrink from the loud sound. "Your bitch wife didn't do sh*t to protect you. We walked right up and took you from her, and she did nothing. Where is she now, puss*cat? I don't see her coming to your rescue."

"You—" Olivia cried out. He went at her even harder, with his hands, with his co*ck, the pain so breathtaking she could barely speak. "Am-ambushed . . . us. She— she— God. Oh God, Manda . . . " She gave in and sobbed her wife's name then, unable to restrain the flood of tears that followed hearing it out loud. She wanted Amanda to wake her from this nightmare, as the detective had done so many times before, and hold her until the tears, the trembling, and the terror abated. To stroke her hair and murmur that it was just a bad dream, and she would still be there when Olivia woke in the morning.

Please, Amanda, she prayed.Please, love, I need you so.

Lewis had told her that, before he finished with her, she would cry the name of the person she wanted most. They all did, he said. And she'd known it was true—the little ones always cried for their mommies, sometimes the big ones too; wives, for their husbands, or in some cases, their children; cops, if they lived for the job, often cried a partner's name. But whichever name was called, be it parent, spouse, lover, or friend, the victim was always asking for the same thing: the person who made them feel safest. The person they were certain could take away all the pain, no matter how severe.

There had been no one like that for Olivia back then. For most of her life, there had been no one. Now, she had Amanda, but would there be anything left of Olivia for her wife to get back when this was over? Jesus God, why couldn't it just be over?

"Okay, you had your fifteen minutes," said the Kid, leaning over to peer at Olivia, the backlighting making him appear as if he were gazing down upon her in a well. If only. She could curl up and hide in a place like that; she could be far, far away from here. "Give her to me. Mouth, at least. Let him do something to her, he hasn't had a chance yet. Get in there, bro."

"She's all bloody," came the slow, childish voice of Little Brother, who was still somewhere out of Olivia's view. (His father leaned against the wall, directly in her sightline, watching everything with a calm, cool eye. He looked as if he were contemplating a chess board.) "And there's other stuff. I don't like how it looks."

"Yeah, and I ain't holding his dick for . . . for him while he figures out where to poke her at," the Crier growled, breathing a little heavier than before. He ought to be, as strenuously as he was thumping into her. He had released her chin and abandoned the cl*t-fondling, in favor of grasping her hips and yanking her back to meet him. Olivia couldn't imagine Gus's knife hurting any worse. "I'm not his— mm, buttf*ck coach."

"You don't have to touch his dick, man. Just show him how to finger her or something." The Kid scooped up Olivia's chin a moment after the Crier let it go, tilting her face back for a look. "Aw, f*ck, she split her lip. Got a whole Queen Amidala thing going on now. That one's not on us, for the record. Did it to herself."

He was right, she realized, her tongue grazing her bottom lip. She'd been tasting blood, but couldn't identify the source with her gums and the insides of her cheeks seeping as well. It felt like slime in the back of her throat and burned like acid going down. The cut opened wider when the Kid tugged on her chin, shoving his dick into her mouth. He used a bit more finesse than Crier, not as impervious to pain as his tattooed counterpart, but by no means gentle, either.

The next several moments were a blur of hands and co*cks and come. Olivia focused on breathing through the oral sodomy, a constant chant ofdon't bite, don't bite, don't biterunning through her mind. With the Kid's fingers digging into her jaws on both sides, she probably couldn't have closed them, even if she tried. Her fear that she would reflexively clamp down during one of the more violent thrusts from behind were eased when the Crier pulled out—her entire body deflated in relief—but he inserted himself into her vagin* just as abruptly and began pumping with renewed vigor. He spread her buttocks with his hands, and a tentative finger circled her anus, then pushed inside.

"See how many you can fit. Move 'em like this," the Crier instructed. "She'll love it. That's what it's there for."

Little Brother obeyed, testing out his new plaything like a curious kid inspecting the inner mechanisms of a new toy. He quickly got over his aversion to blood and the other stuff, and soon, he was hurting Olivia almost as much as the other men. She supposed her feeble moans could be mistaken for pleasure by someone inexperienced, who had probably heard girls in p*rn videos making similar sounds.

(Let's poll the audience.)

(That redhead's gonna be great on camera, too.)

Great on camera, too . . .

"f*ck. f*ck," said the Kid, and gripped the sides of Olivia's head tightly. He bucked two more times and then stiffened, the way corpses sometimes kept twitching when death was instantaneous but the body hadn't figured it out yet. Happened frequently in decapitations.

His ejacul*te was warm and salty, and it filled the back of her throat like a thick broth, triggering the swallow reflex as she struggled not to choke. Almost as if the men were operating on a timer, the Crier grunted and dispersed his seed at the other end, digging his jagged fingernails deep into her backside. That usually got her off when Amanda did it, while wearing the strap-on. (Please, Amanda . . .) Now she barely felt it, barely felt anything, as she gagged and tried to sick up the sem*n she'd consumed.

The Kid's penis blocked her efforts and the most Olivia could do was cough like a croupy baby, mouth wide open, interchangeably gasping and sobbing, moisture streaming from her eyes. The only thing worse than asphyxiating during oral would be choking to death on the fluids. But moments after the thought occurred to her, the Kid removed himself from her mouth and she sucked in a whooping breath.

"Jesus, bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose with lungs like that," he said over the sound of her rattling, retching hacks.

All at once, the unpleasant fullness she had felt with the three men inside of her was replaced by lightness—an empty, aired-out feeling, like the windows had been left open in a desolate room—and for a second, she wondered if her soul had slipped out. Supposedly the body lost twenty-one grams, upon death. Some people believed that was the weight of the soul departing.

But she wasn't dead, and she wasn't outside herself, looking down at a battered and broken woman bent over a rusted-out desk. They had simply finished with her, their hands and bodies no longer fused to hers, plugs in a socket. She felt the Crier dripping down the inside of her thigh—or perhaps that was blood—but she made no move to stop the flow.

It was the sem*n on the way to her stomach that concerned her more. There was no greater risk in ingesting the stuff than in having it ooze from between your legs; nevertheless, she wanted it out of her. The taste alone made her mouth dampen, her stomach roiling dangerously, but she couldn't bring it back up without some manual assistance.

One of her most shameful moments as a so-called courageous and honorable captain, mother, and fiancée was going on her knees in the bathroom to purge herself of the wine she'd overindulged in a couple of New Year's Eves ago. She had felt like a self-loathing, bulimic teenager—or a pathetic drunk, like her mother—kneeling in front of the toilet, with her fingers jammed down her throat. The thought of anyone ever seeing her that way, so weak and messy (so stupid), had haunted her long after, and she'd cut back on the drinking, vowing never to let herself get that low again. Never to put her body or her psyche through another purge. She didn't even want Amanda to know she'd done something that stupid.

Now, she didn't care that the men were watching and would see the humiliating act, her nudity only exacerbating the shame. She hung her head over the side of the desk, crammed two fingers into the back of her tender throat, and gave up a mouthful of stringy, coffee-scented fluid that burned like Tabasco. It was much easier this time than it had been all those months ago. She could probably get used to it, if it became a regular practice.

Dragging the back of her hand limply across her painful, wet lips, Olivia blocked out the sound of the men laughing that she had "horked up" the Kid's spunk ("Dude, that sh*t is rank, what the hell you been eating—besides puss*?" "It's her, not me. It's all that rugshe'sbeen munching. Throws off the pH balance in my boys"), and tried to cross her arms beneath her, shielding her bare breasts. She yearned to huddle up in a ball, hide her head, and block out everything else: the blinding light, the potpourri of multiple bodily fluids, the terrible weight of their eyes upon her. But her ribs hurt too badly for climbing onto the desk, and she wouldn't put herself on all fours in front of a pack of wild, rutting dogs, not even for a second.

They had other plans for her, anyway. As she struggled to stand up, unable to accomplish even that small task with her rickety limbs—she felt as though someone had unscrewed all her hinges—the Kid took her by the side of either arm and said, "Help me flip her. Lay her out this way." Crier complied, and with a hand from Driver, who joined the Kid at her other shoulder, they turned and lifted her, mummylike and lengthwise, onto the desk. She knew then what it was like to be a corpse, flat on a slab in the morgue.

At least the dead got the courtesy of a sheet.

"Okay, bro. Hop on up." The Kid cuffed Olivia on the thigh as if he had just saddled her for his younger brother to ride. He waved the boy closer, wearing an encouraging smile. "She's all yours. Don't worry, we'll hold her for you."

The meaning of the words didn't register with Olivia until Little Brother stepped forward, twisting his stupid f*cking cap in the hands he'd used to violate her, so impersonally and revoltingly, moments ago. She had thought it was over, at least for the time being. Couldn't they give her a minute—to breathe, to suffer and take inventory, to die a little bit more? Just one goddamn minute.

"No," she mewled, past the point of caring what sounds she made and how they might be perceived. Three of these men had already f*cked her; propriety and dignity were no longer a concern. And Badass Benson wasn't getting her out of this one. "No more. Please, no more. I wanna go home. T-tell me why you're d-doing this. I'll . . . I'll tell Amanda anything you want. I'll tell her ev-everything you did to me, and she'll— she'll fix whatever it is that started this."

"Oh, Captain," said the Kid, in the voice you used on an incorrigible child who just couldn't help herself. Olivia often used that tone on Jesse, her bright shining star, her little beastie. She hated scolding the kids, and it was especially difficult with her second eldest, who talked big but got easily upset if Olivia was truly cross with her. (My little love, Olivia thought, heart aching as palpably as the rest of her.Will I ever see you again?) "You still haven't caught on, huh? The only way you're going home is in whatever pieces we cut off of this luscious, stacked body of yours."

His fingers glided along her collarbone as he spoke, idly at first, then becoming more intent as he forced her hand aside and outlined the scars from Lewis' cigarettes. Finally, he reached his destination and wrenched heartlessly at her uncovered breast while delivering the threat. He didn't let up until she gasped sharply and started to writhe, and even then, it was only to make sure he had her full attention when he added, "But it's cute, the way you think that blond bitch of yours will still rescue you. News flash, honey: she can't fix this. And she already knows exactly what we're doing—"

"Get on with it," Gus barked in a tone so commanding, his son's jaw snapped shut as if it had been propped open by a stick that was suddenly snatched away.

The Kid stared down at Olivia coldly, like she had gotten him into trouble on purpose. But he was all smiles as he ushered Little Brother forward, giving him encouraging slaps on the back and showing him the footholds to climb onto the desk—and Olivia. The expression widened when he leaned in and confided, "Be nice to him, he's my kid brother and he's slow. Show him a good time, and I'll make sure your kids stay in the US. Believe me, you don't want 'em sent to other countries. Those people are sick."

The sad part was he probably wasn't too far from the truth. Not because other countries were more barbaric than the United States—in fact, just the opposite—but trafficking was such a lucrative business in the states, at least many of the victims went to wealthy investors. That meant food, clothes, shelter, doctor visits. White children fared best of all, usually going for higher rates and getting better care.

Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, Jesse and Tilly would fetch the most money and likely get preferential treatment; Noah's best chance was to be sold for private use, because the Crier was right—men who liked boys that age did terrible, terrible things to them; and that left baby Sammie. Mixed race, but passing, she might stand the same chance as her sisters, although infants were somewhat of a rare delicacy that only a select few had the taste for. And those few tended to be the sickest of all. Sammie should go to a couple that wasn't above buying a baby, hopefully because they wanted a child so badly, not for any nefarious purposes.

Leaving her to divvy up her children like they were kittens in a box by the side of the road, the Kid stood to his full height, grinning wider than ever, his wandering eye slightly misaligned with the other. It gave him a deranged appearance that made Olivia shudder. She still tasted him in her mouth, and it turned her stomach, but Little Brother was straddling her hips, the other men were taking up their posts—one at each of her arms, the Crier in charge of her feet, as if it were a crucifixion—and she knew then that the Kid was right.

She would never be going home. The most she could hope for was to make it out of here in pieces, because once they were done with her (God, would they ever be done with her?) she would never be whole again.

. . .

Chapter 11: Watcher

Chapter Text

[1] After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." [2] He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Mori'ah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

- Genesis 22: 1 - 2

Chapter 11.

Watcher

. . .

Amanda Rollins-Benson had seen a lot of f*cked up sh*t in her day. By age eleven, she had witnessed her mother being beaten unconscious, choked, pushed down the stairs, and lying in a puddle of blood after miscarrying Amanda's little brother or sister. By age seventeen, she had attended the memorial of a childhood friend who got drunk at a party, wound up being gang raped by three college guys, and committed suicide shortly thereafter—that was actually what had scared Amanda straight; she'd been at the same party, but knew how to hold her liquor by then. She hadn't heard a peep from the upstairs bedroom where the rape occurred, though she remembered the guys involved. One of them had served her a couple beers.

In college, majoring in forensic science, she had studied some of the most horrific crime scenes imaginable, just for the hell of it. Blood-drenched walls and sacrificial killings weren't nearly as disturbing in pictorial form as they were in real life, when the energy—and the smell—of the murder still permeated the room. And since joining the police force, and eventually the Special Victims Unit, she had encountered the worst dregs of humanity and seen things that even the hardest, most callous cops couldn't stomach: women chained up like dogs and used as sex slaves, children being molested on camera, dead babies buried in shallow graves.

There was a lot of f*cked up sh*t out there, and Amanda thought she knew how to handle it. But nothing—not one of those past experiences, no matter how graphic or harrowing; not the unflinching "been there, done that" attitude she liked to convey; not even her own assault in Atlanta—none of it could have prepared her to watch her wife being beaten, brutalized, and gang raped by more men than it took to subdue an NFL running back.

They had been savaging Olivia for almost forty minutes. Ever since Amanda clicked on the link in her email and a blurry livestream consumed the full screen, only a voice recognizable at first, breathless and terror-stricken, as the picture slowly came into focus. Olivia was on her knees in some hovel, a knife to her throat, the Sandman threatening to carve her out a new c*nt if she put up too much of a fight . . .

Then reality took on the same blurry, surreal quality as the first few seconds of the buffering video. Amanda vaguely remembered charging into the squad room with her phone extended like a dirty bomb, shouting for someone (anyone, goddammit!) to get TARU, and get them now. Most of the officers only stared at her, mouths agape, until Fin jogged over, asking, "Whadda you got? Is it Liv?" He took one look at the cell phone, saw Olivia being lifted bodily by three men, and began barking orders to the room at large.

Cops scattered in every direction, the momentary chaos adding to Amanda's disembodied feeling as she stayed in place, unable to take her eyes from the screen. It was like the effect in movies when the rest of the world went into hyper speed around the protagonist while she remained unchanged and isolated from the action. The protagonist usually wasn't viewing a live feed of five men threatening to rape her wife, though. That plotline was too f*cked up, even for the movies.

But this was happening in real life, where there were no rules, no continuity or dramatic structure, and no content rating system to ensure that, while the situation might look hopeless and dire, nothing truly awful would happen to Wife of Protagonist—at least nothing stronger than PG-13 violence and innuendos.

That soon changed, Olivia herself securing a solid R-rating by screaming for help and unleashing a profanity-laced rant on the men who were dragging her towards a shabby old desk that stood singularly in the room, like a sacrificial altar. Overhead lights shone down on its surface, heightening the effect and, Amanda realized with increasing dread, creating a crisper, more vivid image for the viewers. Rape in HD, what would they think of next?

Vaguely, Amanda heard herself answering Fin's questions—yes, the video had been sent directly to her; no, she didn't know where it was coming from; no, there weren't any ransom demands yet—but she was too focused on willing the clouds to part, for a celestial voice to boom down and stay the captors' hands as they slammed Olivia, her primal and blood-curdling screams for help turning to frantic pleas, facedown on the desk. It had happened for Abraham, when he was about to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and prove his faith in God. Surely, surely, it could happen for Detective Amanda Rollins, who loved her wife with more passion and devotion than any Biblical figure had ever loved his god. She would give up whatever she must to make this stop.

The God of Abraham and Isaac wasn't in the sacrificial business these days, it seemed. No divine intervention came, just threats too vile for Amanda to associate them with Olivia (something about not using Vaseline, which she didn't allow herself to comprehend), the captain's desperate cries ofpleaseanddon'trepeating like the saddest refrain Amanda had ever heard.

It was a familiar song, though—during the worst of Olivia's night terrors, she had cried those same words in a voice so shrill and frightened it was unrecognizable as her own; and during the bad dreams that occasionally slipped by Gigi, the captain could sometimes be heard whimpering different combinations of the phrase Amanda now knew for certain was what Olivia had begged of her other rapists.Please don't.Don't, please.

(Please, Amanda silently joined in.God, please.)

The entreaty hadn't worked for Olivia those other times, and it didn't work for her now, either. Two of the men—Amanda recognized them as Liam Sandberg, the son of a bitch who had tased her, and his tattooed freak of a partner, still unidentified, who had drugged Olivia and whose erection currently wagged from his undone fly—were arguing over who got to rape her first. The driver of the van, the Satanist on steroids, slapped Olivia hard on the ass (she didn't even like that when Amanda did it) and declared himself victor.

Then it was happening. Amanda glanced around helplessly at the crowd of one-sixers, seeing no one in particular, no one who could do something, only a blur of concerned faces, all of them looking at her with pity. They could hear Olivia's struggle, even if they couldn't see her being flipped over, her pants yanked off by the burly guy with the goatee. It didn't take a vivid imagination to guess what was on the screen while the man made his sick comments, most of them regarding Olivia's body. Her beautiful, perfect body . . .

Someone gasped when the man forced Olivia's legs apart and inhaled the crotch of her underwear like he was doing a fat line of co*ke off her labia. Fin's hand came down heavily on Amanda's shoulder, and only then did she realize the horrified sound had been her own. The phone jittered in her hand, but she jerked it away when Fin tried to rescue it. "No, I hafta . . . " She let the rest trail off, no idea how she'd planned to finish, nor did she care, because her heart was shattering into a million f*cking pieces.

"Help. Please help me," Olivia implored, her voice a charred husk of its usual rich, velvety tone. It was directed to the dopey kid standing on the outskirts of the scene, but she had tilted her head back the way she sometimes did during moments of extreme pleasure, her neck exposed and her lips bee-stung with Amanda's kisses, and appeared to be looking straight into the camera lens as she spoke.

"Oh Jesus, Liv." Amanda fisted her hair near the scalp, tugging it desperately. She had known a girl in college who pulled out strands of her own hair till she had bald spots, even going so far as to pluck her eyelashes, one by one. Amanda had never understood the compulsion, until now. She wanted to rend something valuable and irreplaceable with her bare hands. She wanted to tear down the city, brick by brick, until Olivia was back in her arms.

Just as the thought formed in Amanda's racing mind, the goateed man grasped Olivia's panties at the hip and tore them from her body, ripping along the side seam like he was opening a potato chip bag. They were a simple but cute pair of briefs that Amanda loved for their softness and the little white stars that were a charming contrast with the captain's tough persona. (Twinkle, twinkle, little star, Amanda teased in a singsong voice, whenever her wife slipped the underwear on.) They crumpled like so much tissue paper in the man's huge hands.

"Oh my God. Oh my God." For a moment, they were the only words Amanda could think of, and they mingled with the miserable cries coming from her phone, like the ululation of mourners at a funeral. She almost couldn't hear the men critiquing Olivia's pubic hair over the forlorn sound. "Jesus Christ, Fin, we have to help her, he's gonna—"

The air left the room as if it had been sucked out and vacuum sealed; left Amanda's lungs in the same manner, time itself seeming to freeze. All except the live feed in her hands, where Olivia's eyes, bulging with terror, suddenly went dead and sightless, the pained and frightened pleas expiring on her lips. Amanda could see the fight leave her wife's body entirely, like a soul departing its corporeal form, a light winking out in the darkness, the moment she was penetrated.

"Oh yeah," said the man raping Olivia. He exhaled deeply, a carnal, throaty rumbling more suited to a bad p*rno than a gangb*ng.

It didn't seem fair that men could still make sounds of pleasure while inflicting so much pain. Charles Patton had pawed and snorted like a racehorse at the gate when he was on top of Amanda, but he was just a wiry old booze-hound who barely kept it up long enough to finish. Not like this guy, who was clearly putting on a show and making the most of his time in the spotlight.

His muscles rippled while he drove at Olivia, forceful and punishing, though she offered no resistance. In fact, she was practically catatonic, jogged only byhismovements in a profane imitation of the kids on one of their bouncy toys. She didn't blink once.

Amanda's knees buckled underneath her, and she would have gone down hard, if not for the hands that caught her by the elbows on either side. They guided her to the nearest desk chair, where she sat down heavily, her gaze traveling up the arms attached to the hands and settling on a pair of familiar faces: Fin and Kat. But no, not familiar—their features were twisted into expressions Amanda had never seen before. For once, Fin didn't appear to know what to do, his brow furrowed in deep concern as he looked not at Amanda, but at the horrors playing out on her phone. Kat was openly weeping, a hand over her mouth, as if awaiting a gasp that never came.

"He's raping her," Amanda said dully, to no one in particular. No one was listening to her, anyway; not while the rapist complained about how tight Olivia was and got razzed by his buddies for having a fat dick. She almost threw up then, her stomach rebelling at the vulgar remarks—and because she had seen it, before he put it into her wife. His penis was as they described, and he was using it to hurt Olivia.

And Amanda couldn't do a damn thing about it but watch.

It was the story of her life. Child or not, she had sat back and watched her daddy beat, berate, and belittle her mama too many times to count, doing nothing to stop it. She hadn't witnessed any of the rapes, beyond what her childish imagination conjured to explain the sounds from the next room, but she'd lain in bed, hands over her ears, willing her mama to shut up and take it. To get it over with, so Amanda didn't have to hear any more of the begging, the crying, the moaning . . .

She'd done the same thing with Olivia and Lewis, then again with Olivia and Calvin—watched. Only, those times she had been old enough and strong enough to stop the bad guy, if she would have just tried. The warning bells about Lewis had gone off instantly that first moment she saw him with Frannie in the park, but when his interest in Amanda waned in favor of Olivia, she'd actually been annoyed that he had some big supposed connection with Detective Benson. He was Amanda's collar, not Olivia's. Why should Benson get the credit for taking down the psychopath thatAmandabrought in?

Then he had snatched Olivia from her own apartment, tortured her for four days straight, and left her so scarred and broken she couldn't even return to work for two full months—and what did Amanda do? She thanked her lucky stars that it hadn't been her. Oh, she played the supportive colleague who suggested welcome-back cupcakes (then forgot them), but she felt relieved every time she noticed Olivia absently fiddling with her healed wrist or her short hair, or pretended not to see the once-unflinching detective shrink from loud noises. Relieved that she hadn't let Lewis get the jump on her; that she wasn't the one they looked at with doubt anymore. And so goddamned convinced that if shehadbeen in Olivia's position, she would have gotten away sooner, been unaffected by the experience, and wouldn't have needed to beat Lewis to subdue him—or at least would have finished the job she started.

She'd had the audacity to believe every bit of that, while also plunging headfirst into a gambling relapse and her own personal rock bottom; the audacity to take it out on Olivia—if the woman had just looked out for herself better, Amanda wouldn't feel so damn guilty for not protecting her, just like Mama—who had needed Amanda's support, not her sh*tty attitude.

All because Amanda sat back and watched.

And when Calvin came along, dangling his girlfriend and baby in front of Olivia as bait, Amanda had encouraged the lieutenant to follow up on the young mother. Once again, she'd sent Olivia off to face a monster alone, and instead of learning from her mistakes—how long had she sat at her desk in the precinct, thumb up her ass, knowing damn wellsomethingwasn't right, just as she had when Olivia didn't ignore Cragen's order to take two days off after Lewis walked?—she had wandered around Calvin's lair, giving him plenty of time to sexually assault Olivia in the very next room.

Just like Mama, just like Daddy. Just like Amanda, eyes squeezed shut and ears plugged, pretending she didn't know what was happening behind the closed door.

Now the door was flung wide open, forcing Amanda to look inside, to see.

And watch.

She swallowed hard several times, refusing to give up the contents of her stomach (if there even were any; she didn't remember or care). Throwing up would take her attention away from the screen, and the only thing worse than looking at it was not. This was her punishment for years of turning a blind eye, she couldn't look away. If Olivia had to experience it, so did Amanda. Every hellacious, soul-eating moment.

Still. Amanda choked back a sob when the men pulled Olivia's legs up at the knee, her limp arms pinned needlessly at her sides, and positioned her for the goateed man to have deeper access. He slapped Olivia smartly on the cheek for looking at his swinging necklace instead of his face. "You f*ck," Amanda whispered, hot tears rimming her lower lids, but no higher. She wouldn't allow her vision to blur and separate her from Olivia while that piece of sh*t was hurting her. "You sick goddamn f*ck."

If Amanda had been in that room—God, there weren't even any windows, nothing to give any indication of where they were, other than a dreary, boxlike setting that made everything appear artificial, the way plays looked on film—she would have shot the bald bastard right then, no questions asked. She could shoot all five of the men in that room, even the kid who was obviously simple (but also void of compassion; he observed the rape as if he were watching a sporting event with low stakes), and not lose any sleep over it.

"Rollins, maybe you shouldn't be—"

Amanda blocked out Fin's voice saying she shouldn't be watching the stream. It was far too late for that, and if Fin thought for one second that there was any chance of keeping her off the case or dragging her away from the phone screen after this, he was an idiot. Thankfully he abandoned that tack almost at once, instead muttering, "Aw, sh*t," when the f*cker onscreen made org*sm noises.

The guy was dripping when he pulled out of Olivia. She exhaled loudly through her nose and winced, the way she did if Amanda removed the dild* too fast. Amanda always took extra care with such things—or tried to—knowing that sex, while increasingly free and open to experiment the more they'd had it, was still a potential minefield for Olivia, and probably always would be. No matter how much the captain enjoyed the act itself, her long history with sexual abuse and assault had made her vulnerable in ways of which she was sometimes unaware. There were a few sex acts she just couldn't handle, no matter how gentle Amanda's touch.

Seeing this man, thisanimal, disregard it all completely, and likely destroy for good all the progress Amanda had made with her victimized wife, filled her with a rage so immense it tunneled her vision, the overheads grayed out, the faces around her, too. Even the voices sounded foreign and muted, as though she were hearing them through a heavy dark hood.

Then Fin was shaking her shoulder, telling her the TARU officer had located the darknet site Olivia's rape was broadcasting from. Untraceable, of course—that was the whole point of the dark web, to commit the most devious, depraved offenses in the shadows, while never leaving the comfort of your own home. Or your run-down sh*thole of a rape pad.

It was even more of a cesspool than the rest of the Internet, and it featured everything from kiddie p*rn to snuff films to hitmen for hire. The anonymity it provided was a dream come true for criminals of all shapes and sizes, and a nightmare for law enforcement, even the officers with hacking skills and the most high-tech equipment. Oftentimes the video transmitted through darknet servers couldn't be traced at all; in those instances, it was almost always some random detail that broke the case and led the cops to where the victim was being held. Amanda had seen it a hundred times over.

Many of those times, help arrived too late.

Officer Boyd, who had announced that the IP address embedded in the live feed was bouncing from one location to another—Sri Lanka, Okinawa, Sydney, Texas—patched the video through onto his laptop, the tablet on Fin's desk, and the flat-screen monitor in the media section of the squad room. It afforded Amanda a supersized, crystal clear view of the scene just in time to watch Olivia topple sideways off the desk as she tried to elbow the man with all the tattoos. The ink made him look dirty, like a mechanic whose fingernails were caked in grime no matter how frequently he washed.

"No!" Amanda shouted at the laptop screen, springing to her feet when the cruddy, tattooed bastard started kicking Olivia repeatedly. The onscreen desk obscured Amanda's view, but not the thump of each brutal blow connecting with her wife's
(head, chest, abdomen . . . ?)
body, not the grunt from Olivia or the sound like air gushing from a punctured tire. Amanda slammed both palms down on the desk in front of her so hard the laptop screen juddered and a cup of ink pens overturned, scattering. "God damn you! Leave her be, you sick freak!"

"Amanda," Fin said measuredly, and rolled the chair she'd shoved backwards into place behind her. "You gotta sit down and quit yelling. Go on, sit."

"He's hurtin' her, Fin," Amanda cried, pointing indignantly at the screen. Kicking the living sh*t out of her, more like, but Amanda couldn't form the words. She had picked her mama up off the floor countless times, after her daddy had finished whaling on Beth Anne that way. She'd be damned if she would sit there and watch someone do that to Olivia.

But in the end, that was exactly what she did. There was no other option.

"He's hurting her so bad," she said, fisting the hair on either side of her head and sinking down onto the chair. Her elbows banged against the desktop, but she didn't feel it. She felt nothing: not the pins and needles from hitting her funny bones; not Fin's hand on her shoulder, squeezing ("I know," he said solemnly, "and I'll beat his ass when I get my hands on him, but right now she needs us to keep it together"); not the daggers in her heart as Olivia was yanked upright, wheezing and clearly in tremendous pain, by the man whose strength was frightening to behold, let alone be on the receiving end of. He was strong enough to jerk the captain around like a rag doll.

"You wouldn't last five minutes where I been, kitty cat," he told Olivia, the microphone of whatever recording device was being used just barely picking up his low, gravely voice. But it was enough to confirm what Amanda already knew from his teardrop tattoo and hardened features—he'd done serious time.

Fin had heard it, too. "Tamin, get this mofo into facial recognition. He's gotta have a record. I wanna put a name to his ugly ass so we know what we're dealing with."

"Copy that, Sarge." Kat hesitated, turned toward Amanda and the computer screen, then hurried off with the tablet in hand.

Wouldn't want to miss the show, would you, Officer, Amanda thought after the younger woman, when Olivia swore at the tattooed f*cker and paid for it by having her shirt and bra torn off, exposing her fully to the camera. A disgruntled murmur went up from the packed squad room, a couple of the women punctuating it with sharp gasps (imagining themselves in Olivia's place, probably—but they weren't, they didn'tknow. . .) Amanda had forgotten the crowd around her, too focused on the indignities her wife was suffering to think about anyone else watching them unfold.

"Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus," she choked out, head clamped between her hands like a block of wood in a vice. The man was bending Olivia over the desk again, in the Eiffel Tower position, between himself and Liam Sandberg. "Fin, you gotta get these people outta here. Now. She wouldn't want anyone to see this. Make 'em clear out. All of 'em."

"Amanda, we need some of them—" Fin stopped short, looking slightly taken aback by the agonized expression Amanda turned on him. Or maybe he was just shocked she'd actually taken her eyes off the screen, off Olivia, even for a split-second. How could she do such a thing? How could she, while her wife needed her so desperately?

She returned to the screen in time to hear the platinum-haired scumbag tell Olivia that she was being sold for one million dollars. A staggering amount, considering humans were relatively cheap in the modern slave trade, but it supported the theory that Olivia's abduction was connected to a trafficking ring. And that undoubtedly meant the man who stood outside the plateau of light, skulking in the shadows just beyond the camera lens, was The Sandman.

So, please turn on your magic beam . . .

The thought made Amanda shudder—if these guys were just the lackeys, what must the man so notorious he had his own alias be like?—but it was listening to Olivia tearfully deny being worth that much money, or any amount at all, that left her trembling from head to foot. First, with a sadness so disheartening she felt physically ill (Olivia still didn't believe herself worth anything, no matter what Amanda said to the contrary), then with a rage that consumed her like fire when Olivia cried out and pleaded with young Liam Sandberg, of the serial killer eyes and Leave It to Beaverhair, not to f*ck her in the ass.

Might as well call it what it was. Not much point in niceties when you were about to witness your wife being sodomized. Amanda rubbed unconsciously at her mouth, a habit that mostly manifested when she was drinking or trying very hard not to. "Oh, Jesus," she said, her voice a muffled whimper behind her fingers. Liam had retrieved a Vaseline container from inside the desk and slapped it down on top. "Oh, Fin. Get them out. Please get them out."

"The ones who aren't essential, okay? No looky-loos," the sergeant grimly agreed, his hand heavy on Amanda's shoulder a moment longer. Then he was gone, leaving her to nod dazedly while he rounded up bystanders and shouted to be heard over the sound of Liam and Fauxhawk bickering about who got to visit Olivia's backdoor.

Check it out, backdoor shuffle, nine o'clock, Amanda had overheard one of her Atlanta SVU coworkers snickering as a prostitute who had been beaten and sodomized by a john took small, wincing steps across their squad room. Amanda requested a transfer to Manhattan soon after. Running into Deputy Chief Patton at every turn had a little something to do with it as well.

That all seemed like child's play now. What was getting knocked around a little, having your shirt ripped open, and letting your boss have his way—as you'd already agreed to—compared with this? This felt a thousand times worse than anything Ol' Early Arrival Patton had done to her. This was the pure and utter terror Olivia had spoken of the first time she'd let down her walls and given Amanda a glimpse of her experience with William Lewis. Now Amanda knew.

The squad room was only partially cleared out by the time Liam Sandberg summoned over the dopey-looking kid he calledbro("Find out if Sandberg Senior's got a younger kid," Amanda barked out to whomever was listening, when The Sandman called the younger boyson, and sent him into the fray, "Check special ed schools") and began instructing him on how to rape Olivia. "But really, you can stick it anywhere that feels good to you. Give 'er a good smack if she does anything you don't like. Like when we hit Shadow with a rolled up newspaper, remember?"

And by the time Liam's oration was through and he commenced the physical demonstration, perhaps a third of the officers remained. It was still too many, though at least there were no gasps or murmurs as Olivia was penetrated—not even by the captain herself. Amanda couldn't tell for sure where he had put it, but judging by Olivia's reaction, she didn't think the young man was sodomizing her wife.

Yet.

Anal sex was something Amanda and Olivia hadn't even tried together. Amanda had occasionally indulged with old boyfriends, mostly out of curiosity, and while she didn't get much out of it, she wouldn't have been opposed to trying again, had Olivia expressed interest. But the captain expressed the exact opposite, tensing the few times Amanda hinted at the act with wandering fingers, and once guiding the strap-on away from the cleft of her backside, requesting over her shoulder, "Not there, okay?"

(Please don't, not there.)

It had bothered Amanda, the way Olivia asked the question, as if she might not have a choice in the matter. But Amanda had let it go, not wanting to seem like she was pressuring her wife into anal. Knowing Olivia, she would give in, if she thought it was something Amanda truly desired—or if it would get her out of talking about why she disliked being penetrated in that particular area.

Amanda wouldn't need to ask anymore, after watching this. Assuming she ever got the chance.

Liam made some comment about switching to granny puss*, which Amanda only half heard (Thank God, she thought, then wanted to scream in his divine, passive face; he got to sit up there on a throne while she was down here thanking him that her wife wasn't being sodomized). She was too distracted by what the bald man and his tattooed friend were doing.

Tattoos had ordered Goatee to hold Olivia's head still by pulling tight on her braid—the braid Amanda had fashioned just a few hours earlier, the soft, silky strands tangible between her fingers even now—while he rounded the desk and took something from one of the drawers. He knelt down, disappearing from view for only a second, but it was much too long for Amanda's liking. When he re-emerged, it was with a nondescript tube she couldn't identify, though it filled her with a cold, familiar dread. It almost looked like a bicycle pump, without the skinny hose to conduct air.

Whatever it was, he crammed it into Olivia's mouth so roughly and so far, Amanda feared it might pierce through to the other side like a skewer through a beef cube. She got to her feet again, unaware she was moving, just finding it impossible to stay seated. Her wife was being horrifically tortured right before her eyes, Fin could go to hell if he thought she shouldn't react. She pressed her fists into the desktop until her arms trembled, until it felt like she could bore through the wood, and she seethed as Tattoos threatened Olivia—first, with the tube, then with a pair of pliers.

"I'll f*cking kill you," she said under her breath, when he forced Olivia to choose oral sodomy over being penetrated anally with a foreign object or having her teeth pulled out. Amanda didn't care if the TARU guy picked up on what she was muttering. She didn't care about anything but the woman on the laptop screen who was suffering and struggling to breathe. And to the man holding the tube: "You goddamn animal. I will put you in the ground."

His response?

"'I can't wait to suck your big, yummy co*ck, Angel.'" He was making Olivia repeat it, calling her filthy names, threatening her with the pliers or the tube-thing again, each degradation slicing at Amanda's heart like a pair of shears. But he had slipped up, and that was how Amanda knew she would find him. If she had to hunt him down till her dying day, she would do it, and she'd stick more than just a tube in his mouth when their paths finally crossed . . .

(Lord Jesus, Sandberg Jr. was rough. He reamed Olivia viciously from behind, but even though it jarred her entire body, she hardly reacted. She was too frightened of what the man in front of her had planned.)

"Somebody run the name Angel," Amanda called out, aware she was giving orders as if she were in charge of the investigation. If anyone didn't like it, tough. They could try to send her home, but they would have one hell of a fight on their hands. Right then she felt the urge to hit something—or someone—almost as strongly as she felt the urge to smoke while she gambled. "Check for guys with records. Shouldn't be too hard to ID the sonuvabitch with all that ink and metal."

"Already on it," said a voice Amanda didn't even recognize. She didn't turn to look because her eyes were fixed on the screen, where Olivia's features were also flat and unrecognizable.

The closest expression Amanda could recall seeing on her wife's face was the one Olivia had worn under Lewis' blood after he forced her to play Russian Roulette and killed himself in front of her. It was a ghastly image then, haunting Amanda every time she closed her eyes, for days after; now, it was less ghoulish without the blood (although one of the bastards had hit the captain and left a fleck of red on her cheek), but it would haunt Amanda for the rest of her life. Olivia was playing Russian Roulette again, only this time it wouldn't be a gun that got shoved in her face.

"No," Amanda said, shaking her head adamantly as Angel tried handing the tube off to Sandberg Jr., to use on Olivia when she wouldn't—couldn't—recite his disgusting words back to him. "No, no, no, no, no."

Something of that length and width would unquestionably cause devastating internal injuries, especially in the overzealous hands of the man who was raping Olivia. (Even watching it unfold, moment by horrific moment, Amanda still couldn't comprehend that it was actually happening. They just went out for bagels, for Christ sakes, and now her wife was being gang raped.)

Amanda breathed a shaky sigh of relief when Olivia spoke up, agreeing to the prick's terms, though every twitch of muscle, every facial tic, screamed that she absolutely did not want to. She looked like she would rather die. "Just say it, baby. Tell him what he wants to hear." Amanda nodded encouragement, as if her captain could see it. She hated herself for willing Olivia to give in. It made her feel like an accomplice. All this time she'd been giving Olivia hell for not fighting for herself, and now Amanda wanted her docile and compliant, just like the men did.

Had she really suggested, only a few weeks earlier, that she and Olivia should record themselves having sex, because it would befunandhot? Had she really continued dropping hints that she'd like to try it—everything from playfully recording her wife before bedtime, ensuring the camera was handy, just in case, to leaving the lingerie drawer open, with her favorite selections on the top—right up until as recently as two days ago? God, she was an idiot. A damned insensitive, selfish idiot.

"Oh, come on," Amanda snarled at the creep who was making Olivia start again because she hadn't repeated him verbatim. The captain could barely raise her voice enough to be heard over Liam Sandberg's brutal and vocal assault, the words hiccuppingin her chest as if she were hitting every pothole in a deeply pitted road.

But she said it like the good kitty she was (Amanda would cut out Angel's tongue for using that revolting nickname on her wife, for putting that filth on Olivia's lips), and for her troubles, she received a mouthful of co*ck before the sentence was even finished.

"Jesus f*ck!" Amanda grabbed the edge of the desk, her fingernails digging into the wooden underside so hard they threatened to split down to the quick. She wanted to overturn the goddamned thing, hurtle it across the room, maybe—she had the strength right then to do it. But if she tossed the desk and the laptop resting on it, she risked losing her connection to Olivia. That was something she would not do, no matter how devastating the scenes playing out on the screen.

They couldn't be half as devastating to watch as they were for Olivia to feel. And by God, Amanda wouldn't leave her to feel them alone.

She tipped the desk forward, lifting the rear legs off the floor far enough to slam them back down and rattle the whole structure. Just because she didn't throw it, didn't mean she couldn't make some noise. Even the door to Olivia's office quaked from the impact, and that snapped Amanda out of her desire to rage more than anything else—more than Officer Boyd's exclamation of surprise when his MacBook hopped against the desktop; more than Fin's brusque, "Rollins!" from across the room—because she realized she expected the captain to throw open the door, storm out, and reprimand her for disorderly conduct.

The office remained silent and bare, and Olivia went on gagging and retching in the livestream, the sound amplified by the deathly quiet squad room. Amanda glanced around in misery and despair, barely able to catch anything but glimpses of Olivia's red, strained features, with Angel overshadowing most of her face.

There were at least fifteen people standing around watching Captain Benson of SVU take it from the front and the back. They had the decency to look sickened by what they saw, a couple of them gazing down at untouched coffee cups instead of the flat screen, but it took everything in Amanda's power not to scream at them to get out. They had no right to see Olivia like this. No one did, not even Amanda herself.

From what little Olivia had mentioned here and there about her feelings towards fellati*, Amanda had gleaned that her wife considered it a shameful, degrading act, which she'd only performed on a select few. Amanda had thought it a rather extreme view (blowj*bs were just a means to an end, in her opinion), probably influenced by Olivia's traumatic childhood experiences and the oral sodomy she'd suffered while undercover in prison. Now, Amanda understood the shame and the degradation; it was almost more difficult to watch than the vagin*l rapes. Almost.

"Jesus Christ, let her breathe," she bawled at the screen, where Olivia's face had taken on a purplish hue. She knew from experience how easily oxygen could be cut off during oral, particularly if the guy was big and didn't let up. It didn't matter how tempered your gag reflex—if your airway was blocked, you couldn't breathe through the mouth or the nostrils.

It was an alarming feeling at the best of times, and for Olivia, who had been deprived of oxygen before, it had to be downright terrifying. Indeed, she was trying to squirm away from Angel, only to meet up with Liam Sandberg in back. The burly guy with the goatee held her fast, her braid wrapped around one fist, his other palm splayed low on her back. Close enough to slide down and grab or slap her ass, both of which he did liberally.

Olivia was getting nowhere, and the longer she fought for air, the harder it became for Amanda to catch her own breath. Not until Fin guided her into the abandoned desk chair did she realize she was gasping out loud, chest heaving as if she'd run the entire thirty-five blocks from her apartment to the precinct. Fromtheirapartment.

"Hey," said the sergeant, bent forward to address Amanda. He sounded as if he were on an awkward phone call. There was no right way to talk to someone whose wife was being double-teamed in front of her, she supposed. "Amanda. Hey. The, uh, the EMT is here to check you out. Why don't you go on to the crib and let him make sure you're good? I'll . . . take over here." He gestured half-heartedly at the laptop, just a vague flicker in Amanda's peripheral vision.

"Huh? She turned her head slightly, giving the pretense of looking at Fin, though her eyes stayed glued to the livestream. "Check me for what?"

"You got tased and fell, remember? And I think you need your blood pressure checked. You're beet red. Look like you're about to have a stroke or something."

Amanda had completely forgotten that she'd agreed to see a medic, mostly to assuage her sergeant. She barely even recalled being tased, for that matter. It was something that had happened a million years ago, to some other Amanda. To the Amanda who had sworn to herself, her wife, her mother-in-law's grave, her best friend—and at some point, probably her sergeant too—that she would protect Olivia with everything she had; would make sure no one ever hurt her again the way she'd been hurt so many times before.

And now this Amanda (this failure, thisliar) who had let Olivia be stolen right out of her grasp, and brutalized worse than even Lewis or the Mangler had managed to do—she was supposed to be examined for injuries? She was supposed to care about her own health while her wife was suffering so profoundly?

"No." She sat forward, elbows on the desktop, and hunkered around the MacBook screen, shutting out as much of her surroundings as she could. The animals were bragging about making Olivia come. Amanda shuddered, crying tearlessly. She'd finally gotten Olivia to a place where she could let go and reach org*sm almost every time they made love. It had seemed like such an accomplishment. A goddamn badge of honor.

"Amanda—"

"Leave me the hell alone, Fin," she growled. "I don't need no damn EMT righ' now. Can't you see what they're doing to her? Or don't you give a f*ck?"

"You know I do. But I also see what it's doing to you. So you either let this guy look at you, or I'm sending you to the hospital, then home. That's an order, Detective."

It required every ounce of Amanda's self-control not to whirl around and demand to know who the f*ck Fin thought he was? Half the time, Olivia practically had to strong arm him into doing his job, let alone staying awake at his desk. He wouldn't even be sergeant if not for Olivia's goading, and Amanda was carrying most of his weight these days, anyway. She had all the responsibility, without the increase in pay or rank.

But when she glanced at her longtime friend and partner, her anger dwindled from flash fire to the guttering of a candle flame. His face was full of such sadness and deep concern, his eyes flicking to the computer—he visibly struggled not to cringe—and back to Amanda, it made her want to fold her arms on the desktop, rest her head there, and weep.

Mandy, what's wrong, honey? Does your tummy hurt? Do you need to visit the nurse?Third grade, Miss Hart; she'd caught Amanda crying at her school desk, head down, and whispered those words in her ear. Miss Hart was a good teacher, but how to tell a grownup that you saw Daddy hurting Mama last night and your sick was in your heart, not your belly? How to tell your sergeant you couldn't abandon your wife while she was being raped, because you were afraid it might be your fault? Because you had let this happen?

"Fine," she said dully, glancing past Fin, at the EMT who had hung back near the reception desk. He was feigning interest in his stethoscope and medical bag to avoid looking at the flat screen and the horrors it broadcast to the room. "But he can check me out right here. I'm not leaving her. You make me do that, I'll never forgive you."

Fin sighed, nodded. He knew when to pick his battles, and this was not one. Not while a trio of men were arguing about who got to shove his dick in which of Olivia's holes. Fin must have waved the medic in, because a moment later, Amanda felt a blood pressure cuff tightening around her bicep. The chest-piece of a stethoscope slid from one point to another on her front and back, deep breath in . . . and out . . . Her eyes followed a blue latex finger just long enough to get the f*cking thing out of her line of sight, reserved solely for Olivia.

Amanda answered the man's questions robotically and without truly hearing any of them. There was new activity on the screen: Liam Sandberg and the piece of sh*t who called himself Angel were performing a Chinese fire drill on Olivia, swapping orifices instead of car seats. For one fleeting second, none of the bastards were touching Olivia's body, and she almost looked like herself. Mussed, terrified, exhausted, traumatized beyond belief—but it was Liv.

Then she was gone. An empty shell of a woman, nude and misused, her eyes black slate and unseeing, stared back at Amanda from the digital feed. A million miles of gigabytes, code, and firewalls stood between them, invisible barriers Amanda couldn't break down with her fists or any amount of brute force. It made her feel pitifully small and helpless. Her sweet, fierce, beautiful wife looked pitifully small and helpless.

Meanwhile, the pigs who stood around Olivia, touching her now—batting her tousled braid, smacking her ass, jeering, pinching, pulling, grinding—seemed impossibly large, monstrous. God, how they must look to Olivia, looming over her like that. It was better that she had so clearly dissociated, escaping to the place Amanda suspected she'd been disappearing to since childhood. That place Amanda always tried to bring her back from, lest she be lost there forever.

Stay there, darlin',Amanda silently encouraged. Whatever protection Olivia's unconscious had created for her all those years ago was her safest bet now. No one could remain mentally cognizant through what Amanda was witnessing and keep their sanity. Not even her fearless Liv.Stay as long as you need, until I find you.

No sooner had the thought formed than two things occurred at once: the EMT offered Amanda something to calm her nerves ("Ma'am, your blood pressure is dangerously—") and Olivia cried out in pain, fully lucid as she pleaded for a reprieve. For just one minute of not being raped.

(God,please!)

Perhaps Amanda should have accepted the sedative ("Get the f*ck out of my face," she'd snapped, and heard nothing further from the paramedic), because a moment later, heat surged through her chest, neck, cheeks, and out the top of her skull as Angel jerked Olivia's head back, then slammed it onto the desktop. He flattened his hand on the side of Olivia's face, like he was palming a basketball for dribbling.

"You don't get to say stop, you stupid c*nt."

His other hand slithered around Olivia's thigh, disappearing below the edge of the desk, but obviously fondling between her legs. No, fondling was too gentle a description for what he was doing. He was scouring her, as if she were the washboard and he held the bar of lye soap. Olivia gasped and writhed under the abrasive touch, going nowhere.

"I'm gonna put a bullet in yours," Amanda whispered to Angel, when he knocked roughly on Olivia's temple and asked when she'd get it through her thick skull that she didn't get to tell him to stop.

"What'd you say?" Fin asked.

He never got an answer. Seconds after the question was posed, the sound of a red fox screaming sent a hush over the squad room and a chill through Amanda. She remembered that shriek from the few hunting trips she'd taken with her daddy; listening to the animals keen and whimper and die had quickly put her off the sport, but not before hearing a vixen's final enraged screams as she tried to protect her cubs from Dean Rollins' shotgun.

The sound of that mother fox haunted Amanda for weeks afterward, maybe months, especially at night when the nocturnal creatures called to each other in the woods outside her bedroom window. She wondered how long this sound would haunt her and what mournful, accusatory voices would cry out to her in the dark. Because it hadn't been a red fox screaming just now, she realized—it had been Olivia.

Even without a close-up view, it was obvious Angel had sodomized her. His grimace and Olivia's agonized expression, her teeth gritted in a macabre grin of pain, told the entire story. No need for graphic, gory shots when the actors could convey everything with their faces, wasn't that what they said about television and movies? Same went for livestreams of your wife being raped. It was all in the face.

"Why," Amanda asked in a watery, broken voice, finally unable to look on her wife's tortured countenance any longer. She held the sides of her head, fingers knotted into her hair, and gazed at the ceiling swimming above her. Tears spilled hotly into her ears, but didn't block out the terrible grunts and whimpers coming from the laptop speakers. More sounds she would never forget. "Why is this happening? How can you let this happen to her?"

Whether she was asking God or herself, she didn't know. Maybe no one. A small part of her had held onto the faith she'd been raised with, mostly out of love and respect for her grandmama, whose existence seemed proof enough that some benevolent force out there was watching over Amanda. She had thought so again, when she hit rock bottom and somehow came back from it; again, when her daughters were born; and the day she married Olivia, she had been absolutely certain of it as she walked down the aisle to join her bride.

But it wasn't true. There was no one out there listening, guiding, or caring. His eye wasn't on the sparrow any more than it was on the woman being sodomized in some dirty room while who knew how many people watched.

The last of Amanda's faith slipped away quietly, leaving an empty feeling in her chest. She would have thought the hollowness was in her soul, if she still believed in such a thing. People didn't have souls—not when they could do things like that man was doing to Olivia.

"Come on," Fin said gently, a hand under Amanda's elbow.

Following along, as if in a dream, Amanda let the sergeant stand her up and walk her from the squad room towards the interview room. She balked outside the door, trying to turn back for the laptop—for Olivia—but Fin kept a tight hold on her shoulders and steered her forward.

"I had Boyd set it up in here. I still don't think you should be watching it, but . . . she's your girl, and it ain't for me to say." Fin led her to the office chair where she'd sat earlier, poring over the tourist's cell phone footage with Kat, trying to find even the smallest clue that might result in Olivia's safe return. Before anything truly awful happened.

On the current laptop screen, Olivia was cringing and biting her lower lip hard enough to break the skin. Amanda had caught the captain biting herself like that a few times during sex, especially when it got intense—perhaps too intense, in hindsight—but she'd chalked it up to inhibition. Like a hand covering a laughing mouth, holding back the full blast. But maybe that wasn't it at all; maybe Amanda had just been hurting and triggering her wife all along.

The beast known as Angel was bent over Olivia, speaking too softly into her ear for the microphone to pick up on his naturally low, guttural voice. Whatever horrors he whispered to Olivia made her open her mouth in a silent scream, revealing a dark gash in her bottom lip, split down the middle. A high, thin whine, like a distant siren, escaped her lips and caused the hair at the back of Amanda's neck to stand on end. She had heard Olivia whimper and cry in her sleep, and on the worst nights, Amanda had even heard her wife scream. But she'd never heard the sound Olivia made now; there was no name for it, just endless despair. It was how the fire and brimstone preachers back home would say the damned sounded, suffering eternal torments in the pits of Hell.

"I gotta get back out—" Fin began, his hand on Amanda's shoulder making her flinch. He stopped short and swore under his breath when the man on camera went at Olivia twice as hard, clamping a hand over her mouth and biting down on the fleshy slope of her clavicle like a dog aggressively defending its meal. "Christ," Fin muttered, and drew back as Amanda recoiled from his touch and the laptop.

"Get out." Amanda stared stonily ahead, refusing to look away from the barbarism again, no matter how much distance she put between herself and the screen. She needed to see every violation, every cruelty, however it sickened her and broke her heart, to ensure that the monsters responsible for each atrocity got what was coming to them. And so that she might know how best to comfort her wife once this was all over.

But it would never be over, would it?

"Amanda, I—"

"Just go, Fin. Please." She gritted her teeth, fighting the urge to scream at him. Not for any particular reason, other than to scream. She usually went to the shooting range and unloaded a few rounds into a paper target when she felt like that. Every bullet was a release of the pent-up pressure she could feel consuming her by degrees. Used to be, gambling gave her that release. Gambling and meaningless sex. Now, sex always had meaning because it was with Olivia. Everything had more meaning when it was with Olivia.

Amanda didn't know how to function without her anymore. Angel and Liam Sandberg might as well have ripped Amanda's heart out and taken it with them when they tossed her wife into that van. They might as well have backed over her and left her for dead; it would have hurt less than what they were actually doing, and she probably would have recovered better. (How was Oliviaevergoing to recover from this?)

"I called Garland and let him know it's definitely a trafficking situation," said Fin, his voice retreating towards the door. "He's bringing the Feds onboard. It'll be better that way. More eyes, fancier tech, and we'll need 'em if those punk-asses took her across state lines . . . Amanda? You hearing me?"

She was straining too hard to make out what Angel and Olivia were whispering—she couldn't, even after stabbing at the volume button several times—to hear anything Fin said, but she nodded anyway. He added something about the EMT clearing her medically, but recommending the pills. She hadn't even noticed the blister pack of diazepam beside her on the table, until he mentioned it. There were four capsules total, and it would stay that way. Popping sedatives while her wife was stone sober and being tortured was not an option.

"Wait," she suddenly called, expecting Fin to already be gone.

"Yeah?"

"Put a security detail on my kids." Amanda tossed a quick glance over her shoulder, too brief for eye contact. She wasn't entirely sure where the request had come from, other than the fear of not knowing why Olivia had been taken and whether the rest of her family was a target or not.

Had she been thinking clearly, she would have asked for the protection sooner. Lucy knew the drill and wouldn't leave the apartment or let in anyone without a badge while her boss was under threat—that was a rule Olivia had established with the nanny long ago, after the drive-by at the park when Noah was just a baby. But men like the ones hurting Olivia wouldn't be deterred by petite, innocent-looking Lucy Huston, no matter how protective she was of her charges.

Besides that, Amanda had a bad feeling. It might just be a result of watching her wife being beaten, raped, and sodomized, but she didn't think so. Something told her she needed to prepare for other attempts on her family, and though it was probably instinct, she heard the warning in a voice that sounded a lot like Olivia's.

"The best we got, okay?" she requested, rubbing absently at her head, where it had hit pavement. That attack had come out of nowhere and ended in the blink of an eye. The Sandman and his accomplices were skilled and frighteningly bold.

"Already done. I sent 'em to your apartment right after— right after you called and told me what happened. Your kids are safe, Rollins. Focus on Liv now."

As if she could focus on anything else. But she nodded and said a vague thank you over her shoulder, unsure if Fin had heard it before stepping out or not. She didn't really care either way, because at that very moment, Angel grabbed Olivia's face and turned it directly to the camera lens. Blinded by the lights and the pain, Olivia blinked rapidly, then squinted ahead, almost as if she knew the camera was there, almost as if she were gazing straight at Amanda.

"Oh, Liv," Amanda whispered, tracing the outline of her wife's tear-stained face with her thumb. "I'm here, baby. I'm right—"

"Your bitch wife didn't do sh*t to protect you. We walked right up and took you from her, and she did nothing. Where is she now, puss*cat? I don't see her coming to your rescue."

Amanda snatched her hand back from the screen like she'd touched a hot burner on the stove. It was one thing to think it of herself, but to hear her failure confirmed out loud like that, by the man currently raping her wife, nearly put her over the edge. She couldn't even yell at him that he was wrong. He wasn't. She'd downplayed Olivia's unease about Liam Sandberg at the bagel shop, and she'd watched as this man, a devil who called himself Angel, snuck up behind the captain and stuck a needle in her neck. And Amanda hadn't done a damn thing to stop him.

She'd failed as a wife, a cop, a mother—her kids expected her to protect their mommy; "Mama, are you Mommy's bodyguard?" Jesse had asked once, out of the blue, "Do you shoot the bad men for her?"—and Olivia was the one paying for it. Why hadn't they just taken Amanda instead? That would have been less tortuous than watching this. She could live with being repeatedly and brutally assaulted, but not with listening to her wife defend her ("You ambushed us," Olivia stuttered, grasping at each breath, each word) while crying out in unimaginable pain.

"She— she— God. Oh God, Manda . . . "

Amanda felt as though she were being ripped in half, her skin tearing like paper, her insides snapping apart like a gristly cut of meat, guts unspooling on the floor. This was worse than dying. This was Hell, and Amanda's eternal torment was to hear Olivia sobbing for her, but having no way to help. The rest of the words were broken and incoherent, except for those heartrending cries: Manda. Please.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." For a while it was all Amanda could say, shaking her head in denial (of what, she had let this happen) and gripping the upper corners of the laptop until they felt embedded in her palms, fingers numb and stiff against the outer shell. If she didn't hold it, she would throw it. And right then, it was the closest thing she had to holding her wife.

I'm so sorry I'm so sorry so sorry so sorry . . .

Over and over again, becoming a single, stream-of-consciousness apology that could go on forever and still not be enough. She gave it up—all of it—and covered her mouth with both hands, sobbing into them as Liam Sandberg forced Olivia's jaw open and put himself in her mouth. Acid tears coursed down Amanda's cheeks, trickling between her fingers, and for a moment she was glad she couldn't see clearly: not while the two men raped Olivia together; not when Angel switched to vagin*l penetration, giving the younger Sandberg a tutorial on anal play; and not as the goateed guy took turns stroking Olivia's body and his erection.

By the time Liam Sandberg ejacul*ted in Olivia's mouth, Amanda's tears had turned to dust, refusing to fall any longer. She cried without them, great, racking sobs that had no sound but sent violent shudders rippling throughout her body. She hadn't cried so forcefully since childhood, when everything felt like the end of the world and she'd been powerless to stop it. Except, this really was the end of her world, and she had no more control of it now than she did at six years old.

Angel climaxed a moment later, clawing at Olivia's ass with enough pressure to leave visible scratches in her already florid skin, and hunching over to ram her a few last times before pulling out. Amanda tasted bile at the sight of his slimy, pierced dick slipping, eel-like, out of her wife. He shook it off as if he'd just taken a piss on some bushes.

Motherf*cker.

As soon as Liam Sandberg was out of her mouth, Olivia belly crawled to the edge of the desk and vomited over the side, fingers jammed down her own throat. Amanda tried not to think about what the viscous substance was that drizzled from the captain's lips as she hacked and sputtered, or why she was able to bring it up so easily. Almost as if she'd done it before.

If you asked Amanda, her wife had a sensitive stomach. Olivia would deny it, of course, always quick to dismiss anything that might be perceived as weakness, but she was the one who couldn't keep anything down when she was ill, who spent as much time as Amanda with her head in the toilet during Sammie's first trimester, and whose appetite depended entirely on her emotional state. God, how would Amanda ever get her to eat again, after this? How would Amanda ever eat again, for that matter?

"Liv," she breathed, pressing her palm to Olivia's naked, trembling body on the screen. She ached to wrap her wife in a warm and protective embrace, shielding her from the monstrous assholes who were laughing at her for throwing up.

If there was any part of Amanda's heart still left intact, it shattered completely when Olivia, too weak—or too injured—to push herself upright, tried to cover her breasts with her badly quaking hands. She had been so self-conscious about her chest these past few years, after Lewis and his cigarettes, after Calvin and his sick Oedipal fantasies. Amanda had noticed her unconsciously tugging her blazers closed at work many times, especially in front of the male suspects, and whenever she did wear a revealing top in public, often at Amanda's behest, she constantly checked that her scars weren't visible.

Only since she'd started breastfeeding Samantha had Olivia begun to recapture some of that body confidence Amanda remembered from their early years together at SVU.Man, she used to come in wearing some wild sh*t, Fin had said once, during a rare nostalgic moment with Amanda and Kat.Not to be trifling with your woman, Rollins, but she looked damn good.Amanda didn't know if she could ever completely restore that freedom and ease in her own skin that Olivia once had—age played a role too, unfortunately—but she had wanted to try. That was part of the reason she'd suggested filming themselves having sex. Maybe if Olivia saw herself through Amanda's eyes, she would realize how beautiful and sexy she truly was.

Now it would never happen. Even if the captain did survive this
(If? Shewillsurvive it, she has to, I can't do this without—)
showing off her body, reclaiming that pride she so rightfully deserved, would be the last thing on her or Amanda's mind.

"Oh, Liv. Hold on, baby. Hold on for me, okay?" Amanda kept her hand on the laptop screen, trying with all her might to convey the message. She knew the ability Olivia seemed to have to read her mind was just a confluence of empathy, intuition, experience, and years of working alongside each other, but if there was any chance—any chance at all—that her wife could sense her in the hellhole where she was being tortured . . . . Foolish or not, Amanda had to try.

She gasped and jerked her hand away when Liam Sandberg grabbed Olivia's arms, requesting assistance, and with the other men's help, flipped the captain onto her back. They expended no more effort than men turning a slab of ribeye over the fire. Then Liam called for his younger brother to hop on, promising to hold Olivia down for him.

"Stop," Amanda gritted, through clenched teeth. She got to her feet and leaned on the table, palms flattened at either side of the laptop. They couldn't honestly mean to let this kid rape Olivia, could they? They were heartless pigs, but even people like that didn't encourage mentally disabled boys who barely looked old enough to shave to commit rape. It was unconscionable. It would destroy Olivia, who had spent her life helping the innocents, the ones who couldn't stand up for themselves.

Amanda pointed at the screen, where the boy was creeping forward, an idiotic grin on his smooth baby face. His boner poked prominently at the zipper of his jeans. "Don't. Don't you f*cking dare, you little ratf*ck." She slapped both of her hands down hard against the table, palms stinging almost as badly as the rest of her body had when she got tased.

Before Amanda could unleash a torrent of obscenities on the boy, whose affliction she would not consider when assigning blame if he proceeded with the rape, Olivia uttered a feeble protest that sounded hauntingly childlike. As if she had regressed to some small, neglected part of herself that hadn't been let out of its cage in years. Weak and famished, it dragged its skeletal form into the open, a withered hand outstretched in supplication.

"No more. Please, no more. I wanna go home. T-tell me why you're d-doing this. I'll . . . I'll tell Amanda anything you want. I'll tell her ev-everything you did to me, and she'll— she'll fix whatever it is that started this."

The room began to shrink around Amanda as Olivia's meaning sank in. Her breath came in small, quick gasps, hardly enough to expand her lungs. At the last second, she felt her legs giving out and managed to drop heavily onto the chair behind her. It let out a huff, the lift mechanism giving by an inch or two. She gripped both sides of her mouth in one hand and coughed out a tearful, "Oh, dear Lord."

Her worst fear—which she had been shoving down and refusing to acknowledge since the door slammed shut on the van that took Olivia away from her—was coming true. Thiswasher fault, and not just because she failed to act. The men had told Olivia that Amanda was somehow responsible for her capture; why else would she be offering to relay a message to Amanda, in exchange for release?

It made a strange kind of sense now. Nothing about the abduction or the livestream had felt like the work of Rob Miller, who would rather do the raping himself, or any of the idle threats made by BX9 members, coyotes, drug cartel, Henry Mesner, or the countless other men Olivia helped put behind bars. Those men wanted to end Olivia for interrupting their fun, these men were using her as a pawn. And the game was Amanda's to lose. No wonder it felt so personal, like some sort of twisted payback.

That's exactly what it was.

But who? Who had Amanda so grievously wronged that they would go to such lengths to destroy her, by first destroying the woman she loved? She had paid off her debts—slowly and with a determination that bordered on obsessive—and even if not, this went beyond the scope of a bookie's attempt to collect payment. It was the type of revenge someone sought when you had taken everything from them. She couldn't think of anyone she'd done that to, not even the worst criminals she'd encountered.

"Oh God, Liv, I'm so sorry, baby," she whispered into her hand. She repeated the apology again and again as Liam Sandberg informed Olivia that only the parts he cut off of her would be leaving,signifying his intended starting point by twisting cruelly at her breast.

"It's cute, the way you think that blond bitch of yours will still rescue you," he said. "News flash, honey: she can't fix this. And she already knows exactly what we're doing—"

"No, no, no." Amanda shook her head, scrubbing absently at her mouth, cheeks, bangs. As much as she wanted Olivia to sense her presence—to not feel so desperately alone—Amanda did not want her wife to know she was viewing the rapes like free p*rn on the Internet. Not only would it add to the already catastrophic humiliation of a violent and sustained gang rape, but Olivia was smart enough to figure out that if Amanda was watching, so were a lot of other people.

Luckily, the Sandman cut his son off mid-sentence, and Olivia didn't appear to catch on to the younger man's meaning. She was too busy shrinking from the youngest of the Sandberg men as he crawled on top of her, with the jolly assistance of his older brother. Liam leaned down to murmur something inaudible to Olivia, and whatever it was brought to an abrupt halt what little resistance she offered.

After nearly forty solid minutes of struggling against her torturers, being called the most vile and despicable names imaginable, suffering the most dehumanizing torments, Olivia finally heard the words that broke her spirit.

"Oh Jesus, no," Amanda said. She recognized the expression that softened across her wife's terror-glazed face.

Olivia had just resigned herself to her fate.

. . .

Chapter 12: The Jackal

Chapter Text

Chapter 12.

The Jackal

. . .

Amanda had seen some f*cked up sh*t in her day, but watching a group of grown men egging on a special-ed kid as he tried to rape the woman they were holding down was just about the worst. Olivia wasn't fighting them, though they pinned her as if she were, hands at her wrists and shoulders, spreading her thighs. When they weren't thumping the boy on the back and tugging the jeans and boxers from his skinny hips, chanting for him to "put it in, put it in, put it in" Olivia, that is.

They sounded like frat boys gathered around a beer bong, cheering on a buddy whose thirst was flagging. Amanda used to participate in those same activities, often finding she was the loudest and rowdiest of the bunch. She had coaxed plenty of her friends into drinking past their limit and knew all too well the persuasive power of a noisy crowd. Olivia knew it too, her face turned away in anticipation of the boy's approach.

The goateed man took her by the temples, his span wide enough to pinch both sides between the fingers on one hand, and turned her head sharply back into place like he was popping the lid on a jar. "Eyes front,capitana," he said, and nodded to the boy, who was nudging his penis fruitlessly into Olivia's pubic hair. "Little Man needs some help. Tell him where to stick it."

He can stick it up your ass, you disgusting piece of sh*t, Amanda thought, but couldn't say it out loud. Not after what had just happened to Olivia. What was still happening.

"Louder," said the man, when Olivia mouthed something indiscernible. He slapped at the side of her head with his fingertips, making her flinch and give a small birdlike caw. "Come on,puta, speak up so everyone can hear."

Everyone. Amanda bit down on the side of the hand still covering her mouth. Christ, how many people were watching this? Recording it, even? How many times had Amanda explained to devastated young women that the worst moments of their lives would be forever commemorated online, because nothing ever really went away on the Internet? Now, Olivia would be one of those women. Olivia who had only disclosed most of her assaults, extending as far back as childhood, within the past couple of years. That was how great her shame had been; how little she had trusted anyone besides Amanda to hear the full details of her most painful and traumatic experiences.

Men might watch this for years to come, getting off on seeing Olivia—beautiful, loving, kind Olivia—degraded and so afraid. The thought was beyond Amanda's comprehension or what her broken heart could withstand. At first, Olivia's response, weak and tearful, sounded as if it were coming from inside Amanda herself:

"I— I can't." The captain gazed at each of the men above her in turn, searching for someone who would be merciful and excuse her from participating in her own rape. No one stepped forward. "I can't. Please—"

Angel yanked the wrist he'd been pinning down, jerking Olivia's left arm and shoulder off the desk with a sharpness that drew a yelp from Olivia and an indignant cry from Amanda. Sometimes that shoulder still gave out or locked when Olivia lifted her arm too suddenly. She had almost dropped Jesse once when the little girl launched off a jungle gym and into her arms, accompanied by Matilda, who took the right side. The girls knew unexpected leaps into Mommy's arms weren't allowed now, a rule Amanda had imposed.But I want them to know I'll always be there to catch them, Olivia had argued.They should have that security.

It had been Amanda's opinion that her wife needed the security more than their daughters did—needed to know she would be able to be there for them, arms open wide, no matter what the danger or the physical toll. That determination to keep her family safe had earned her the shoulder injury in the first place, when she rescued Amanda from plunging off a cliff. They hadn't even been dating yet, and Olivia had risked her life for Amanda.

So sorry so sorry so sorry, she repeated silently, as Angel wrapped Olivia's fingers around the shaft of the Sandberg boy's penis and forced her to guide it into herself. Olivia groaned as if she were about to be sick again, but she couldn't turn away to do it. "Stop," she said, gazing past the boy at the ceiling, almost too breathless to be heard. "You don't h-have to do—"

Cupping a hand beneath Olivia's left breast, Angel leaned in and bit the top of the fleshy mound, near the scar left by Lewis' cigarette. Olivia's eyes went wide, first with surprise and then intense pain, a distinction measurable by her intake of breath—the soft gasp ended in a sharp upsurge of air, like a reverse scream. She clamped her eyes and lips shut rather than exhale the scream, and for a moment she looked like a woman drowning, fighting her way to the surface before time ran out.

"Oh." Amanda found no other words to say, just that choked little cry she breathed into her hands again and again.Oh.

The sound of someone clearing their throat behind her startled Amanda so badly she flinched and ducked down as if she were being fired upon. "f*ck," she snapped, recovering almost at once and scrubbing at her damp cheeks and snotty nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Olivia's sweatshirt. She turned a nasty sidelong glare on Kat, who hesitated in the doorway, a stack of files in her hands. "What do you want, Tamin?"

"Sorry, I—" Kat glanced to the laptop screen, where the boy was heaving himself fitfully against Olivia, making a sound like squeaky bed springs, while Angel gnashed at one breast and the goateed man groped the other. When Amanda twitched the MacBook aside, the officer remembered herself and stepped forward with the files outstretched. "Got some hits in facial recognition. We ID'd the two big guys. The youngest one doesn't have a record that I can find—"

"He does now." Amanda snatched at the manila folders and slapped them onto the tabletop. She was aware of being an outright bitch, but couldn't bring herself to care. When the love of Kat's life was being gang raped for going on a full hour, no signs of the perps or their erections slowing down (sick f*cks had to be on something), then she could talk to Amanda.

"Yeah, um. This year's school records didn't turn up anything, either, but I did a quick search of the past few semesters. Found a Xander Bergström who graduated last year from a special needs school in the Bronx." Kat, a native of the Bronx herself, delivered the news with distaste. Her gaze kept darting toward the laptop and the godawful noises that issued from it. "Bergström is one of Sandberg's known aliases, so I think it's probably his kid. He'd be, uh . . . eighteen now."

Amanda could have read every bit of that in the file she had peeled open, or at least she would have been able to under normal circ*mstances. Now the words jumbled up and snarled in her vision as she glanced convulsively from page to screen and back again. God, those sounds. She couldn't even think straight with that playing in her head. "Least he's not underage," she said vaguely, watching from the corner of her eye as Xander Bergström jerked above Olivia like he was having a seizure. The other men howled with laughter at his efforts. "Little f*cker can be tried as an adult."

And Olivia wouldn't have to live with the added burden of knowing she'd been raped by a minor. Just someone with the brain of one.

"Yeah." Gingerly, Kat took the other two files from under the one Amanda stared blankly at, when she wasn't staring blankly at the screen. "The guy with the teardrop tattoo is Nicholas Angelov. Goes by the name Angel. Career criminal, mostly controlled substances. But . . . he's got a lot of sexual assault charges in his jacket."

"You think?" Amanda asked, without much bite behind it. She scanned the mugshot inside the open folder Kat placed in front of her. Sure enough, it was the same man whose teeth marks stood out in bright red dashes on Olivia's breasts—he'd moved on to the right side, tugging the nipple with his front teeth, then sucking it vigorously. Amanda felt a jolt in her own breasts, and glanced down, expecting to find them leaking again.

Her sweatshirt was dry, but oh God, Sammie. Olivia loved breastfeeding their baby girl, approaching the task with such reverence it bordered on the sacred; sometimes she just liked to snuggle up at Amanda's side and watch the ritual performed by another, always with the rapt expression of someone witnessing the miraculous.

Now, Amanda found herself thanking a god she no longer believed in that Olivia wasn't actually lactating. The f*cking animals didn't get to take that away from the captain, like they were taking everything else. Although, how Olivia would ever be able to find joy in using the SNS again, Amanda couldn't imagine. She still avoided letting anyone other than Amanda put things in her mouth, because of a past oral assault—even the kids. What if the same thing happened with breastfeeding?

"He did ten years for a murder too," Kat said quietly, underlining the charges on Angel's rap sheet with her fingertip. "Been out since 2018. Guess that explains the tat."

"Yeah."

It explained nothing. There was no sufficient explanation for how Olivia, who had woken Amanda that morning with sleepy smiles and tender kisses—who smiled most days lately, sometimes for no apparent reason—was now being violated by a murderer and repeat rapist that should be rotting in a jail cell. Whoever had let the sonuvabitch out was partly responsible for this whole thing, as far as Amanda was concerned.

But try as she might to decipher his rap sheet and find a connection in his priors to herself or Olivia, there was nothing. He had never even been charged in Manhattan, and most of his life outside prison walls appeared to have been spent on the streets of Brooklyn.

"The guy with the ugly-ass goatee is Carlos Riva," Kat said, shuffling his folder to the top of the pile. She tapped his mugshot, as if there were another five-foot-ten bald man, two hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle, to confuse him with. "Former driver to some big art gallery. Priors for assault, including rape. He just got out last year for laundering and—"

"Holy sh*t," Amanda whispered, putting her hand up to silence Kat. She skimmed over the criminal history on Riva's sheet, her eyes going too fast for her brain to keep up. But she got the gist: possession of an unregistered firearm (charges dropped), misdemeanor stalking fourth-degree (plead down from domestic assault), rape one and grand larceny (found guilty, sentenced to twenty years). "Oh, holy f*cking sh*t, Tamin. I know this guy."

"What? What do you mean you know him?" Kat bent over with her knuckles on the table, looking hard at Amanda like she suspected her of brain damage or delusion.

"I f*ckingknowhim." Amanda shot to her feet, launching the chair out behind her. It collided with the cabinet against the wall, clanging loudly, but she was too shaken to notice. She thwapped the backs of her fingers on the edge of the paper she held up. "Son of a bitch. It was, like, eight years ago . . . " She checked the most recent date of incarceration below Riva's mugshot: 03/26/2014. "Yeah, I was— I was undercover in a gambling club. He was the bouncer. He raped this guy's poor wife as payback for— oh my God."

Kat's eyes widened and she reached quickly for Amanda's elbow, as if expecting her to keel over backwards. Amanda had felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and the paper she was brandishing did quiver in her hands, but she wouldn't allow herself to pass out right now. Not while Olivia needed her. And not while the pieces were falling into place with such impact, she felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

"Oh my God," Amanda groaned, the sound weak and despairing to her own ears. "I think I know who's doing this. It has to be— oh God, Liv."

She peered tentatively at the laptop screen, hoping beyond hope that the men had finished in the half-second since she'd looked away; knowing that they hadn't. While Angel and the younger Sandberg boy continued working Olivia over, Carlos Riva had placed his dick in her hand, stroking it up and down the length of the fat, pulsing shaft. Olivia herself was gone. She was nowhere.

"—hear me, Rollins? Hey, Rollins." Kat was shaking Amanda's arm and gazing at her with a deeply troubled expression. She kept glancing back at the plate glass window, to the squad room beyond, as if debating whether or not to call for help. "Who's doing it? Riva? I don't think he's been out long enough to set up something this—"

"No." Amanda's voice returned to her slowly and she swallowed with effort, shaking her head in the meantime. "Riva's just a pissant, bootlicking flunky."Yeah, the pissant, bootlicking flunky who's sexually assaulting your wife. "He couldn't arrange something like this, even if he had ten years to plan it."Or eight . . .

She could barely think with the internal commentary echoing in her ears. But she had to, she had to get it all out—even if it meant admitting she was to blame—because if her suspicions were correct, they might be the key to finding Olivia. Bringing her home. That was all Amanda wanted.

"The club he worked in was run by this woman, Sondra Vaughn. Her lover . . . Anton-something was the real boss, but she was his baby mama and had a lot of sway." Amanda closed her eyes as, on the screen, the kid Xander pulled out too soon in his excitement and came in Olivia's pubic hair. His brother laughed wildly and gave him a noogie on top of his baseball cap.

"I befriended her to get to— Nadari, that was his name. She ended up turning state's evidence on him. Got herself a lighter sentence, but had to send her kid off to live with family."

Amanda left out the part where she had taken Sondra hostage by pointing a gun at the woman's pregnant belly, in order to get to Nadari.If you don't think I'll shoot, you don't know me at all, she'd warned Sondra and Declan Murphy. And in the moment, to their horror as well as her own, she meant every word. In the years since, she had told herself it had to be believable, that was the only reason she could so vividly imagine pulling the trigger. It was long before Jesse, so Amanda hadn't had the same motherly instincts back then. At the time she was just a desperate gambling junkie in danger of losing everything.

It was a good story.

"I, uh, haven't really kept tabs on her since then," Amanda said, guiltily. She had wanted to put the whole experience behind her, and threw herself into meetings, work, and earning back the trust she had pissed away with her sergeant, Olivia Benson. She didn't have time to check up on every criminal she helped put away, she'd reasoned—even the ones who gave birth in prison and had to pawn the kid off on relatives.

"But this is her MO. She's the one who ordered Riva to rape that guy's wife back then. Just to send a message." Oh Jesus, what had Amanda done? She longed to look away from the livestream, where Carlos Riva was still manually masturbating himself with her wife's hand and Liam Sandberg was teaching his brother how to finger a woman, using Olivia's privates as a guide. But this torture was meant for Amanda.Becauseof Amanda. She didn't f*cking get to look away.

"You think this is to send you a message?" Kat sounded doubtful. She eased the crumpled rap sheet from Amanda's fist, smoothed it inside the folder, and leaned over Riva's mugshot. "That seems kind of . . . extreme, even if you did arrest her. Most people who make threats when they go down never follow through, right? Would she even still be in contact with this guy? Is her sentence up or—"

"I don't know," Amanda said, at a volume her children—and wife—would describe as yelling. She checked it immediately, more for their sake than Tamin's. They hated when she raised her voice. "I betrayed her, Kat. I made her turn on her lover. Took her kid away from her. I know you don't get it 'cause you don't have kids, but a mother will do whatever it takes to defend her child. And female criminals are always more vindictive."

"Okay, but . . . eight years after the fact? Wouldn't she be out by now and back with her kid? Why wait so long?"

It was possible that Sondra had gotten out on parole before her twelve-year sentence was up; apparently Riva had managed it, and he didn't have half the brains or beauty of his one-time boss. The parole board probably got one look at Sondra Vaughn's big brown eyes and doe-like demeanor, not to mention her art history degree from Columbia, and decided a mother should be with her child. Even if she was a snake in the grass.

But Kat had a point. Why wait till now to seek revenge, especially if Sondra had reunited with her kid? A little girl, if Amanda remembered correctly. She'd been a surprise before she was torn away from her mother; Sondra had been convinced she was having a boy. Someone to carry on his father's legacy, no doubt.

"I don't know," Amanda repeated, flatly this time. She gazed at the screen with the same hollow affect, unaware there were tears rolling down her cheeks, until they dripped onto the back of her hand. She didn't care if Kat saw. Olivia was writhing on the desk, her scuffed and battered body flush and arching stiffly at the spine, her eyes squeezed shut so tight it looked painful.

Amanda recognized the struggle, only now it was to ward off something, instead of bring it on. Her wife was fighting desperately against climax, while Liam Sandberg and his idiot brother tried to force it out of her. "Come on, Captain, give it up like a good little slu*t," Liam said, his fingers doing most of the work. Xander couldn't keep a steady rhythm.

"Rollins?"

"If she's out of prison, she's had time to rebuild a network." Amanda swabbed her tears half-heartedly with the cuff of Olivia's sweatshirt, and sniffed. "And even if she's not out, you know as well as I do that these people always have friends on the outside. Especially the rich—"

It occurred to Amanda, then. During her hostage negotiation with Anton Nadari and his baby mama, one of the demands she had made was a million dollars in cash. The same amount for which Olivia's buyer would be purchasing her.

Jesus Christ.

"It's her, Kat, I know it is. Sondra f*cking Vaughn." Amanda cast a pleading look up at the officer, needing to be believed. It was the only thing she had right now, and she couldn't afford to be wrong about it. She couldn't let Olivia down yet again. "You gotta look into her for me. Check out Nadari too, just to be sure. Anton Nadari. Tell Fin, he'll remember the case. Please, Kat."

"Yeah, of course. Of course." Kat's gaze flicked to the turned aside MacBook, where Olivia sounded like she was hyperventilating, her chest heaving with the effort of trying to maintain control of her body. At the same time, Carlos Riva ejacul*ted without reservation or forewarning, his milky sem*n sliding down Olivia's arm with the consistency of snot.

"Go," Amanda said, too harshly. She shouldn't alienate herself from the people who were there to help, especially the ones she knew cared about Olivia too, but she needed Kat to get out. If the Sandberg bastard did force her wife to org*sm, Amanda didn't want anyone else in the room with her. It was bad enough they would be watching in the bullpen. That any number of viewers could be watching from anywhere in the world.

Amanda pushed the thought aside, as she had trained herself to do over the years (gambling and booze helped), afraid that if she considered it too long, she might start screaming and never stop. She felt it just beneath the surface of her skin, burning in her lungs, waiting to claw its way out. Ready to rip her to shreds, along with anyone else who got in the way.

"Tamin, get the hell . . . " Amanda looked up to an empty room, and part of her would have wondered if Kat had really been there at all—if she hadn't just cracked up and imagined the entire interaction—were it not for a glimpse of the officer talking solemnly to Fin in the outer office, pointing back in Amanda's direction.

Plus the criminal records fanned out on the table in front of her. She reached around, feeling behind herself blindly, until she caught hold of the chair and pulled it into the bends of her knees, dropping heavily onto the seat.

Riva's file was still open on top of the others, and Amanda tried to reconcile his mug shot, which she did recognize, to the man on the screen, whom she hadn't. Granted, he had put on another twenty or thirty pounds of muscle since she'd seen him last, probably pumping iron in Fishkill day after day; he'd aged considerably too, as did most who served hard time; and the few moments his face had been in frame on the livestream, she'd only had eyes for Olivia, whom he was raping.

But Amanda still should have recognized him. How much sooner could this have ended, if she had? How many more violations would Olivia suffer because Amanda hadn't done the basic duty of any decent cop and successfully identified the perp?

Her answer was a sharp gasp, followed by a muffled whine as Olivia gritted her teeth and fought her body's normal physiological response. That was how they always described it to victims who experienced involuntary org*sm during an assault—normal, physiological.

But there was nothing normal about seeing your wife struggle against herself with as much exertion as she had struggled against her attackers. And no amount of framing it as physiological would convince Olivia, who had only recently stopped apologizing for not reaching climax every time Amanda used her fingers, that she wasn't somehow to blame for how her body did or didn't react.

Luckily, it was over fast and there hadn't been anything too overt for the casual viewer. Just for the wife, who knew the captain's body and its responses like the back of her own hand. Amanda brought the hand to her mouth, making a fist and biting down hard on her knuckles. She didn't even feel it.

"That the best you got?" Liam Sandberg asked, gazing down on Olivia with disappointment. She barely seemed to register his voice, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as she panted shallowly, either too traumatized or in too much pain for anything deeper. She tried to cross her arms over her ravaged breasts, but that prick Angel pushed them away, leaving his handiwork exposed.

"I think you can do better," Liam continued, reaching toward Olivia again, with the hand he had just dried on his jeans. These men were covered in her DNA by now. And she in theirs. "Let's try again. What do they say in show biz? Once more, with feel—"

"Step back, son."

From out of his shadowy corner, the Sandman emerged. Amanda had almost forgotten he was there, just off camera, so still and quiet he might have been a statue presiding over the gang rape he had at least partly orchestrated. She wasn't sure what his connection might be to Sondra Vaughn, other than the bottom-feeder Riva, but even if they weren't in on this together, he was still a lowlife trafficker who raped for sport. He was still the one who had greenlit Olivia's abduction. Sondra had wielded a little power because of Anton Nadari, but by no means was she a big fish. Gus Sandberg was a great white.

He even approached Olivia in a sneaking, sharklike manner, as if he had scented blood in the water and was preparing to circle a kill. "You too, my boy," Sandberg said to his youngest, whom he patted on the cheek, fondly. The proud papa. "It's my turn to get acquainted with Ms. Benson. Go on. You'll all have plenty of time with her when I'm through."

"You don't want me to hold her for you?" asked Angel. With his face aimed down at Olivia, the teardrop tattoo made him look like one of those sad clown paintings. Then he sneered and shattered the illusion. "She's stronger than most of the others, I'll give her that."

"I don't think that will be necessary, will it, Olivia?" Gus gazed at the captain, who didn't acknowledge him and hadn't uttered a sound since the org*sm, with a mild expression that could have been mistaken for kindness. But the shark always smiled while it ate its prey. "We'll be fine," he told Angel, sending the man to wait with the others at the edge of the frame. "Alone at last."

And though he didn't speak directly to the camera—he kept his face mostly in profile, as a matter of fact—Amanda sensed that he was addressing her, more so than Olivia. "Kiss my ass, you piece of horsesh*t," she hissed, longing to reach through the screen and strangle him with her bare hands.

(Why had she thought that? Why couldn't she have thoughtanythingbesides that?)

"Are you having a good time so far?" Gus reached out to stroke Olivia's hair off her forehead, finally eliciting a reaction, albeit a small one—she shied from his touch, turning her face in the opposite direction. He took her by the chin and turned it back. "I know my boys are a little rough, but you're used to that, right?"

Amanda wasn't sure what Gus meant by that, and for a moment she was convinced he was talking about her. She had been rough with Olivia last year, while recovering from a gunshot wound and having a gambling relapse. She was still too afraid to examine their sexual encounter during that whole mess—it had been disrespectful and thoughtless at best. At worst, she feared it had been nonconsensual.

Olivia had sworn she'd been a willing participant in the angry, aggressive foreplay and sixty-nining, but that was almost as worrisome to Amanda. She knew all too well how easily women, especially the ones with histories of abuse and sexual violence, could convince themselves they had been complicit, had enjoyed it. What if Olivia was doing that every time they had sex?

Logically, Amanda knew that wasn't the case. Until about an hour ago, their sex life had been at the top of its game. But for the past couple of months, she'd considered mentioning her fears to her therapist, just to get a second opinion. Now she never would. She had blamed Serena Benson for allowing Olivia to be molested as a kid, but was Amanda any better, allowing this to happen?I'm never going to let anything else bad happen to her. Not ever.That's what she'd told Serena's headstone last January.

What a liar.

"That Lewis fellow and the Mangler weren't exactly known for their finesse, I imagine." A vague smile touched the Sandman's lips when Olivia shuddered at the names. He made no move to stop her from covering her breasts, arms crossed to cup one in each hand. "And that old partner of yours—what was his name? Stabler? Oh yes, I remember him too. An egotistical, hypocritical thug. He assaulted a few of my best paying customers over the years."

Any relief Amanda felt at not being the source of the violence Gus was referring to faded at the mention of the three men. Not only for the obvious distress it caused Olivia, but because the Sandberg f*cker seemed to have been keeping tabs on her for quite a long time. The Lewis case and the Mangler were both well-publicized at the time of their attacks on the captain, and their subsequent demises, but Elliot Stabler predated Amanda herself—in almost every way. (Olivia seldom spoke of him; Amanda knew just enough to make her hate the guy.)

Was it possible none of this tied back to Sondra Vaughn after all? It had to, though . . . it was Amanda's only lead.

"Did he ever get physical with you?" Gus patted Olivia's cheek, much more briskly than he had done to his son, when she didn't answer. "Hm? Pin you to the wall and force himself on you, maybe? I saw the way he looked at you. Your little backside twitching in those snug jeans you used to wear. Can't say I'd blame him if he—"

"No." Olivia's voice crackled like long-dead autumn leaves. "Never."

Gus made a noncommittal sound, vaguely disappointed. He reached out and glided his hand up the thigh Olivia was trying to close against the other. The flesh there was smudged, but Amanda couldn't tell what the dark splotches were—blood, feces, bruises? Any were possible, all were likely. The Sandman passed them by, coasting his palm over the crest of one hip, into the valley of Olivia's side, and up the plain of her arm. He looked to be mapping her out, like a land surveyor deciding where to begin.

"That is a shame," he said, trailing his fingers back and forth along Olivia's collarbone. He rested his hand on her shoulder when she attempted to turn onto her side. After a weak shrug failed to shake him off, she gave up and was still. "You could have given him some lovely babies. Of course, he probably would have walked away from you regardless. And now you've got those four precious angels waiting for you at home, not even suspecting that it was their last morning with Mommy."

Tutting softly when Olivia began to cry, Gus petted her ratty braid, which hung over her shoulder like the head of a mink stole. "Do you think they'll feel like you abandoned them?" he asked in an idle tone. He pieced at something among the loose strands of hair at her neck. "Do you think they'll hate you for the rest of their lives, Olivia?"

"Goddamn sonuvabitch." Amanda bit her knuckles hard enough to draw blood. She was distantly aware that she should feel it, but she did not. This sad*stic motherf*cker was going straight for Olivia's weakest spots: her abandonment issues, her fear that the kids would stop loving her for some reason. How he knew her vulnerabilities so well was the scariest part.

No, that Olivia might believe him—that was the scariest part. She could withstand some of the most heinous tortures imaginable, but there was no way she would survive losing her children's love, trust, and devotion. Without it, she would probably give up completely.

Finally, Gus freed whatever it was he'd been digging for at the nape of Olivia's neck. He brought it forth pinched lengthwise between his thumb and forefinger like a gem to be studied in the light. Not quite, but close; it was the little pillar with each of the kids' names on all four sides, which hung from the necklace Amanda had given Olivia last Christmas. The captain hadn't taken it off since. Amanda often glanced into her office and saw her absently stroking the rose-gold pendant with a fingertip or two. Their babies always brought her such comfort.

"Sweet." Gus closed the pillar into his fist and yanked, snapping the chain from around Olivia's neck. Her body jerked as if she'd been shocked with defibrillator paddles. He dangled the glinting charm above her for a moment, making certain she focused on it before he tucked it away in his jacket pocket. "I'll hold onto this for safekeeping. You won't need it where you're going."

"Wh-where?" Olivia whispered. Still trying to ascertain what was to be done with her, probably in hopes of getting away or calling for help. Still doing her job, after everything she had already been through. "Where are you t-taking me?"

Something vivid and frightening flashed in the visible eye of Gus's profile. Olivia saw it too, and she drew in a sharp breath, as if she knew what was coming next. And maybe she did; it had happened to her before. So damn much of this had happened to her before.

His calm, almost pleasant exterior gone, the Sandman revealed his true face then: a hard, cruel sneer, the muscles twitching with an underlying rage so big and relentless it was terrifying. And it was focused entirely on Olivia. She cringed from the hands that reached for her, but they went around her neck and began to squeeze with a casual indifference Amanda couldn't reconcile to what she was seeing.

Seconds went by before she realized her wife was being strangled, that Olivia wasn't crying out because shecouldn't.

. . .

Chapter 13: Tilt

Chapter Text

Chapter 12b.

Tilt

. . .

"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus." Amanda glanced around the room in a panic, looking for a weapon to hit the man with, anything to get his hands off of— "Oh, Liv." She clawed at her own neck, as if she might somehow pry him away from Olivia by sheer force of will. By the supposed psychic connection that was proving to be a load of bullsh*t, just like the false sense of security they had let themselves fall into.

Or Amanda had, at least. Olivia wanted her and the kids close last night. She'd been on guard this morning in the bagel shop, too. Had she known she was going to die today? That it would be the last time she'd hold Amanda's hand or play with her hair until she fell asleep? The last time nursing Samantha or hearing Matilda say her sleepy goodnight I-love-yous to everyone, including the dogs. The last time getting a big, noisy smooch on the lips from Jesse, and a less demonstrative but extra tight hug from Noah.

"LET HER GO, YOU f*ckING ANIMAL!" Amanda screamed at the screen, the words ripping out of her with such guttural force she thought he might actually hear her. Wherever he was.

The Sandman went on choking Olivia, paying no mind to the useless blonde shouting at a laptop, X amount of miles away. He dodged the captain's outstretched hands, which shot up to push at his cheeks and chin, unable to find purchase enough to gouge his eyes or deliver an uppercut. He didn't even blink when she began slapping frantically at his biceps, her face turning a garish shade of red, her mouth open in a silent gag.

With a bit more pressure he would likely break Olivia's hyoid bone, an injury found most commonly in victims of strangulation. (Yeah, the dead ones.) It was oxygen deprivation that ultimately killed them, not the broken bone. Olivia could still survive, even with the fracture, though she might experience inability to swallow or airway obstruction. But she would be alive. Amanda didn't care what condition she got her wife back in, just as long as she was alive.

Olivia was fading fast. She gripped at the Sandman's hands, trying to pry his fingers away from her throat, but her eyes were beginning to flutter, rolling aimlessly behind the lids. Her face was the color of a ripe plum, the vein in her forehead startlingly prominent. Her arms sagged a little more with each second that passed.

"Come on, baby, fight," Amanda said in a small, whimpering voice she didn't recognize as her own. She briefly wondered who had let a child into the room, but the thought disappeared before it fully formed. Her only lasting thoughts were of Olivia, whom she was watching slip away.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. They were supposed to grow old together, outliving everyone except their children, and then going together, on the same day, in the same bed, their old lady hands intertwined. Amanda didn't know how to exist in the world anymore without Olivia by her side.

"Breathe," said the strange, childish voice, even more tearful than before. Amanda didn't care where it was coming from, as long as Olivia obeyed its request. Expecting her to fight in such a weakened state, to breathe when the air was being choked from her lungs, seemed unfair, callous almost. But she had to.

Amanda repeated the commands—fightandbreathe—a second, third, fourth time, until she was practically yelling them at Olivia with the same fury she had directed at Gus. She picked up the laptop by its sides and shook it viciously, only catching herself at the last second before hurtling it across the room. "Goddammit, Liv, just— just—"

The captain closed her eyes and didn't open them again, her body going limp in Gus's hands. She drifted to sleep that way sometimes, nodding off in bed with her nose in a book, glasses on, dark hair bunched around her on the pillow like a sleeping princess. Or a body in a casket.

Oh my God, she's dead! He killed her, Fin! He killed Liv! He killed my—Amanda thought she must be screaming, but her ears were ringing like they had the last time she'd been shot. She couldn't make sense of what Fin was saying or how he had gotten there, either. He deposited the laptop on the table with one hand, the other arm looped behind Amanda, lowering her into the desk chair. His lips moved without sound, until he finally said the one thing she was willing to hear.

"She ain't dead."

"What?"

Fin nodded grimly to the screen, where Olivia was indeed stirring and the Sandman was undoing the front of his pants. "Wasn't long enough to kill her. He just wanted to put her out while he . . . " The sergeant swallowed hard and didn't go on. He shook his lowered head, drew back his fist, and drove it down against the tabletop with enough force to break his knuckles. "Goddamn. I hate this motherf*cker."

The momentary rush of euphoria Amanda felt at seeing her wife move turned into a flood of guilt and despair when she realized what Fin meant. Gus didn't intend to kill Olivia—not with a million dollars on the line—just render her unconscious for the rape, which he began now, as smoothly as if he were entering a lover. Of course it was easier when Olivia wasn't struggling and had already been lubed up for him. He was more vulture than sandman, waiting for others to make the kill so he could swoop in and pick the bones clean.

A deep frown furrowed the captain's brow, her eyelids twitching rapidly but having difficulty parting. She mumbled something unintelligible, head lolling side to side, then gave a mighty cough and took a ragged, wheezing breath, like an asthmatic without an inhaler. At last her eyes squinted open, although perhaps it would have been better if they had stayed shut. When she brought Gus into focus, leaning over her and pinning both wrists above her head, she gasped and tried to jerk to back, succeeding only in bucking against the desk.

"G-g-get off," she croaked, barely above a whisper. So much damage could be done to the throat and larynx via manual strangulation, and Amanda had heard that telltale rasp in the voice of countless DV victims over the years. Including her own mother's.

She'd never expected to hear her wife sounding like that; it was bad enough imagining what it had been like for Olivia in the aftermath of being choked by Serena Benson. The bitch hadn't even taken Olivia to the hospital afterward to check for underlying injuries, opting instead to tuck the traumatized fifteen-year-old into bed with her and hold her until she cried herself to sleep.

Sometimes Amanda wondered if that incident—attempted murder, to be precise—had contributed to Olivia's change of vocal pitch in recent years. What would this one result in, assuming the captain survived it? Strangulation also had high incidences of stroke, brain injury, blood clots, respiratory issues . . .

"Try again," Gus told Olivia, gathering both of her wrists into one hand and returning his free hand to her neck. He forked it against her windpipe, bearing down hard, though she had barely regained enough consciousness or strength to resist beyond a few spasmodic jerks of the arms and shoulders.

Inches from the captain's face, he studied her intently as she slipped back under, his rocking hips picking up speed. It wasn't just about conditioning her to respond appropriately; the sad*stic f*cker was getting off on depriving Olivia of air. On having the power to end her life or restore it with the touch of a hand.Oh, Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream . . .

"Jesus Christ." Amanda gripped the armrests of her chair as if she were on a roller coaster. She pictured herself standing up and heaving it through the plate glass wall to the interview room. She thought about punching the table, as the sergeant had done, but if she started that, she probably wouldn't stop. It was like being in a straitjacket, this sitting here dreaming about all the actions she couldn't take. Soon she really would go insane. "I'm gonna kill him, Fin. I'm gonna f*ckin' hunt him down and kill him."

Fin gave no indication whether or not he had heard. His jaw was clenched so tightly he probably couldn't have spoken, even if he wanted to. His fists were knuckle-down on the table, hard enough to leave indentations. In all the years Amanda had known him, she'd never seen him look so much like he might be willing to kill someone with his bare hands. And like he would succeed.

Ten seconds was all it took to render Olivia unconscious, ten more for Gus to revive her with a vicious thrust, a vicious squeeze at her breasts. (Fin looked away.) She whimpered this time and expelled a single feeble cough, but her terror at waking to find she was being raped had dissipated. Now she shook her head so faintly it was almost imperceptible. Air puffed from her lips until she managed to form one raspy word: "Please."

"Please what, Olivia? Please f*ck you harder? Faster? You'll have to be more specific." Gus twitched the corner of his mouth in what must have been his version of a smile. It went no further on his dead profile. Amanda could tell he was conventionally attractive, hawk-featured and well-dressed, but to her, he looked like the worst monster of them all.

He looked like the sandman, bringer of nightmares and infinite sleep.

With a great deal of effort, forcing tears from her eyes and a few more fruitless attempts at speech from her lips, Olivia finally choked out a shakynothat sounded more like a question than a refusal. "Please no?"

The Sandman shook his head as if he had been let down by someone for whom he'd had high hopes. Someone who just hadn't learned her lesson yet. "Wrong answer," he said flatly, and lowered his hand toward Olivia again. Her eyes widened as it clamped heavily over her mouth, the thumb pinching her nose shut against the side of the forefinger. Her face looked so small beneath the large, unforgiving grasp.

"f*ck." Amanda muttered the curse below her breath, then held it in—the swearing and the breathing—not wanting to do either while her wife was unable to even gasp for air.

It took longer to suffocate than it did to die from lack of blood to the brain, but Olivia's panicked state and the previous choking had already drained her oxygen supply. She faded quickly, the frantic jerks of her head slowing to a sleepy nod, before Amanda's lungs even started to burn. Her huge brown eyes, twice their normal size in her frightened, partially covered face, rolled to white. Horribly, sickeningly, Amanda thought of the blank spaces between rotating symbols in slot machine reels. Her gorge rose without warning, and she would have vomited right there on the keyboard if Olivia's eyelids hadn't closed over the sclera.

"Stop," she gritted through her teeth, when Gus didn't immediately release Olivia and let her breathe. So many times Amanda had woken in the middle of the night and squinted through the darkness to see the rise and fall of her sleeping wife's chest, not content until she was positive the comforter had moved, that there had been the tiniest of sighs. So many times she had dreamed that she'd failed to resuscitate Olivia that day in the Mangler's lair. "Goddamn you, let her go!" She slapped the table on both sides of the laptop, ready to use her fists next, if Gus didn't listen.

"He will," Fin said, though he didn't sound convinced. "She ain't no good to him dead, or . . . "

Brain damaged? In a vegetative state? Drooling into a paper cup? Before Fin could elaborate, the other man took his hand away from Olivia's face, and finding her unresponsive, pumped harder. When that didn't work, he shook her by the chin, cuffed her lightly on the cheek, blew in her face. He muttered what sounded like, "Come on, bitch, quit playing possum," and butted the heel of his palm twice against her temple.

On the third blow, Olivia's eyes cracked open barely enough to part her lashes. Amanda sank back against her chair, clutching her chest and gulping at the air as if she were the one who had gone without it for at least fifteen seconds. Not long in the grand scheme of things, but a significant interruption after repeated loss of consciousness and respiration. She didn't know how much more Olivia could take without eventually not waking up at all.

"She's strong," Fin said, as if he were reading Amanda's mind. Or just her trembling hands and the tears that now came as spontaneously as blinking. Breathing. She wasn't even wiping them away anymore. "Liv's been through a helluva lot—"

"Please do not say she's been through worse," Amanda snapped. Fin was the last person she wanted to take out her anger and fear on, but he was also the easiest target right then. He'd been working with Olivia when Amanda was still an undergraduate and the police academy was just a distant twinkle in her eye.

He had been there to stop Lowell Harris as the CO orally sodomized Olivia; he'd been first on the scene with Amaro when they found Olivia in that beach house, shellshocked and clutching a bloody iron bar; and he had burst into the warehouse with EMTs and half the force behind him after the Mangler nearly succeeded in slashing Olivia's throat.

Always a day late and a dollar short was Sergeant Tutuola. At least when it came to protecting Olivia. Yeah, he had her back, all right.

"You don't know half of what she's been through, so just shut your damn mouth." Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to look at Fin—refusing to look anywhere but at the livestream. It felt good to be mean, especially in defense of her wife, whom she had failed so tremendously. "She shouldn't have to keep surviving this sh*t."

"That's not what I was going to—"

"Shh." Amanda waved her hand to silence the sergeant when Olivia, still not fully lucid after the last bout of asphyxiation, began to mumble something to the man above her, raping her. At first it wasn't loud enough to make out, but the captain kept repeating the same broken phrase until a few of the words were detectable.

"Mah . . . me. Suh-sorry. Um sorr— sorry, Mom. Me, I'm . . . "

I'm sorry, Mommy.

Amanda's insides crumbled then, the fury that had just bolstered her gone in an instant, and she clapped both hands over her mouth to keep a sob from escaping. Olivia was apologizing to her mother. The mother who had shoved her headfirst into a brick wall and, while she was on the floor, bleeding and probably concussed, climbed on top of Olivia to strangle her.

It was probably better that the captain had regressed to that moment, instead of being present for this one, but it tore so viciously at Amanda's heart she felt as though a bullet had ripped through her chest this time, rather than the shoulder or the abdomen. She clamped a hand over her heart, like that would stop the blood from pouring out. But the wound was too grievous, and she would surely die. She'd already died a thousand times since Olivia had been thrown into that van.

Her one consolation was that Gus and his merry band of rapists likely wouldn't understand what Olivia was saying. Amanda had only pieced it together because she was accustomed to her wife mumbling in her sleep. The captain usually spoke to her rapists at nighttime, mostly pleading, often crying, and sometimes apologizing, as she did now. But this was the first time Amanda had heard Olivia talk to her mother. She looked so small and frightened, as she must have at fifteen, with Serena choking the life out of her.

"What's that?" Gus asked, an ear inclined in Olivia's direction. He slowed his thrusting to a rhythm more suited to conversation. "You'll have to speak up, my dear. And I better not hear another refusal from these lovely pink lips." He squeezed Olivia's cheeks with the same hand he'd used to strangle and smother her, forming her mouth into a fishlike pucker. Another time, another place, it would have been cute, but now it was disturbingly sad*stic and cruel. "Agreed?"

Olivia had regained enough awareness—specifically when the Sandman grabbed her face—to give a small, affirmative nod. "Y-yes," she said in a sandpaper-whisper, exaggerated by her bowed lips. They were indeed very pink, the skin around them puffy and inflamed from having two different dicks shoved into her mouth. (If you think that's bad, wait till you see the other pair, said a voice in Amanda's head; she cringed inwardly, desperate never to hear it again.)

"Smart girl. Now, what is so important you just had to interrupt our special moment to say?" Gus still had Olivia's wrists pinned above her head, her fingers loosely curled, like an insect that died on its back, legs furling inward. She didn't have any fight left in her. When he let go of her face, stroking the hair from her temples and forehead with the fondness of a lover—or a father—Amanda shuddered, her insides churning; Olivia didn't react at all.

"I don't . . . " The captain furrowed her brow as if she were studying a perplexing case file full of holes and inconsistencies. "Don't remember."

Amanda tugged anxiously on her bottom lip, praying that Sandberg would accept the reply. In all likelihood, Olivia truly could not remember what she'd been mumbling while half conscious and struggling just to stay alive. She was not a convincing liar at the best of times, and certainly not while suffering and terrorized, but if the Sandman couldn't detect her honest tone or, hell, just decided he didn't like her answer, he would use it as an excuse to hurt her even worse.

Luckily, it appeared he had already lost interest by the time Olivia looked to him with trepidation, obviously fearing a reprisal as well. She winced when he made eye contact, his hips hitching at a slow and deliberate pace, reminding her where he was and what he was doing. As if she'd forgotten. "Oh well," Gus said, with such phony good cheer it sent a shiver down Amanda's spine. Men like him only sounded like that when they were planning something. "I guess you just need a way to keep that mouth of yours busy."

The meaning was clear from his inflection and the way he grazed his fingers over Olivia's lips, slipping his thumb inside her cheek like she was a prize catch to be lifted, photographed, displayed over a mantle. But until he stepped back from Olivia and rolled her onto her side at the edge of the desk, she didn't seem to register his intentions. When she did, she began to cry weakly, a sound so frail it had less substance than Samantha's first cries as a newborn.

Chin quivering rapidly, Olivia followed the Sandman with her eyes, tracking his progress as he rounded in front of her. She kept her gaze trained on his face, never letting it fall to his waistline, where he was exposed and fully erect. "I . . . I just wanna go home," she rasped, when he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I want my family."

"Your family is dead. Your wife would never be able to look at you or touch you the same way again after seeing this. And your kids would never trust you to protect them anymore—not when you can't even protect yourself." Gus slid his hand behind Olivia's head, fisting her roughly by the hair. "My boys and I are your new family, at least until you go to your forever home. And any decent pet should be housebroken before she's sold."

The Sandman jerked on Olivia's hair, snapping her head back, her lips parting slightly in reflex. He rubbed the tip of his penis against them, trying to push his way in, yanking harder at her hair when he couldn't. "Open up like a good girl. This is your life now, Olivia, and you better get used to it."

She fended him off for only a moment more, her clenched jaw no match for his powerful grip as he wrenched it open and put his co*ck in her mouth. Simple as that. Hand in glove, sword in sheath, gun in holster. He took his time with it, more than the other men had, which meant he didn't pound away at Olivia's gag reflex and practically choke her to death. But it also meant he blocked her airway longer with each thrust, withholding the relief Olivia strained and wept and moaned for.

"Man, just let her breathe," Fin said, his voice distant in Amanda's ears. She had tuned out the sergeant and the rest of her surroundings, focusing so intently on the video feed that it overwhelmed her vision, narrowing the field around it like she was peering through a keyhole. Like Alice outside the door to Wonderland, first too large to get through, then too small. Perhaps if Amanda cried hard enough, her tears would become an ocean and carry her to wherever Olivia was being held. (And raped and tortured and strangled . . . )

It had worked for Alice.

"Breathe, baby, breathe," Amanda chanted under her breath as she watched Olivia fighting to stay conscious—and losing.

The captain's face had that same sickly purple hue as when Gus's hands were around her neck, squeezing, but this time she couldn't sputter or wheeze or mouth a silent plea. (Breathe, baby. Please breathe.) She simply faded out, like the end of a song, her hand dropping from where it had clutched at the back of Sandberg's jacket. It dangled lifelessly over the edge of the desk. (Breathe for me, Liv. Come on, baby . . .)

Amanda exhaled heavily, as if the blockage had been in her throat, when Gus eased off and shook Olivia by the hair to wake her. The dullness in her eyes as she gazed up at the man—he tilted back her head so that his face was the first thing she saw, upon waking—chilled Amanda to the bone. Olivia didn't seem to register what was happening anymore, and each subsequent fade out and fade in resulted in the same blank stare. Gus might as well have been giving her a routine dental exam rather than committing oral sodomy, for all the recognition in that look.

He put her out with his dick twice more, manly man that he was, and must have derived some sort of pleasure from it, because he was still hard when he withdrew from her mouth. "I think you're finally catching on," he said approvingly, when Olivia just lay there taking short, gasping breaths, and didn't attempt to speak. She hunched her shoulder to hide her breasts from view, but that was the only indication that Olivia Benson, as Amanda knew her, still existed.

It turned out that Olivia needn't have bothered with the modesty; Gus lifted her by the waist, drawing a hoarse cry as his arm tightened around something painful, and deposited her flat on her stomach, bent over the desk. She turned her face toward the camera, pressing her cheek to the desktop, and shut her eyes tight, as if she knew what was coming. And she probably did—Amanda knew, felt it in the pit of her stomach, like she was on a drop tower about to release. Her muscles clenched in preparation, but the bottom still dropped out, her stomach in free fall, when Gus stepped behind Olivia.

The proper term, used by hookers, p*rn stars, teenagers, and a couple of the guys Amanda had dated, was going "around the world": penetrating all three orifices during a single session of sex. Amanda had done it for fun once, but not with her wife. She doubted Olivia had ever done it at all, until now—Gus greased his fingers in the tub of Vaseline that was still open on the desk, swiped them between Olivia's buttocks, and entered her without ceremony.

He didn't grunt and groan like the other men. If not for the excruciating pain that twisted Olivia's features into a mask of suffering, it would have been difficult to tell if he was even inside. But as it always did, Olivia's face told the full story, and there was no questioning that she was being hurt again. Terribly hurt, though she didn't make a sound to express it, either. The silence was worse than the sobbing and the screams. Standing at the gates of hell and hearing nothing beyond was far more terrifying than any symphony of torture.

And yet there were no words to say when Amanda turned to Fin and saw her own helplessness reflected back at her. They watched in total silence as the Sandman completed the rape. He hardly broke a sweat, even when he burrowed his hands between Olivia and the desk, gripping her breasts and using them to pull her against him, her ass colliding with his pelvis; she bit into the side of her hand and never once opened her eyes as he jerked her back and forth, rattling the entire desk beneath them.

When he finally came, the only indications were a hunch in his shoulders and the ceasing of that maddening squeak from the rickety old desk. Beyond a faint groan, Olivia barely reacted to him pulling out, though it must have hurt tremendously. She tried to tuck in her bottom, winced, and sagged in defeat, looking as though she might collapse onto the floor.

Gus held her up with a hand on her back, the other producing a cloth from his pants pocket. He used it to wipe off his dick before zipping up, then folded the dirty side neatly onto itself and pocketed the rag again. Fastidious little f*cker that he was. Meanwhile, his sem*n and that of four other men oozed out of Olivia, stained pink with her blood, and crusted on her skin like the glaze on a doughnut.

The vivid, vile mental image finally sent Amanda scrambling for the wastebasket. She snatched it up and stuck her face inside the brim just in time, though most of what she expelled was clear liquid and sticky saliva that had to be spat out forcefully. Globs of spittle clung to her lips and chin nevertheless. She brushed it off with the sleeve of Olivia's sweatshirt, dropping back into her seat and stowing the wastebasket next to her feet. Just in case.

That was how she knew the video was deeply affecting Fin as well. He didn't ask if she was all right, or even acknowledge that he'd heard or seen her puking into the garbage. His eyes were locked on Olivia, who lay draped over the desk like it was a life raft, and crying silently, the tears trickling from her unblinking eyes as if she was unaware they fell. She trembled uncontrollably, and each attempt to swallow was tentative, laborious.

"She's so cold," Amanda said in a broken whisper, her hand going to the screen on instinct, covering her wife's nude and battered body. She looked anxiously at Fin. "Maybe they've got her in some kind of refrigerated unit? Or— or a cellar? Have you checked that out?"

"She's probably in shock, Amanda," Fin said gently, resting a hand on her shoulder. It felt like he was preparing to break some difficult news ("I'm sorry, Mrs. Rollins-Benson, your wife didn't make it . . . "), and she shrugged him off at once. "You'd see her breath if it was that cold. And theirs. Plus, those big studio lights are hot beating down on you."

"Fine, if you're so all-knowing then you tell me—where the hell is she, Sergeant? You got any other ideas, or you just lettin' Garland do all the work for you?" Amanda infused the questions with every ounce of hatred she had for the men on the screen. It felt awful speaking to Fin that way, but it was better than the awful of seeing her wife be violently raped over and over.

"I don't know where these bastards took her any more than you do. But I got our best guys on it. Kat's hunting down that broad from prison you told her about. And Ihadto inform the chief, Rollins, you know that. I'm lucky he's even letting me work this case myself, being Liv's friend for so long." He cast a sorrowful glance at the laptop, swallowed hard. "I hate dealing with the Feds, but it'll be good to have—"

"The Feds? You brought the FBI into this? What the hell, Fin, they'll take over everything. And get in the way. They don't care about finding some cop." Amanda gestured to Olivia, shivering inside a featureless box (a garage, maybe? Another damn warehouse?) that could be any number of places throughout the city. Or beyond. "They don't care about Liv like we do."

"It wasn't my choice. Garland called them in. Told you that already." Fin said the last part so softly Amanda almost didn't hear. She did vaguely recall him mentioning the feebs getting involved, but she had been too preoccupied by the livestream—by watching her wife beg, suffer, bleed—for the information to sink in. "She's being held by a known sex trafficker who's moved vics across state lines, it's a federal case. And it's more eyes and better equipment. Trust me, they wanna get these f*ckers, too. Anybody who sees this sh*t would."

Amanda gave a dull nod, pretending to agree so he would stop talking. He was probably right; the more people looking for Olivia, the better. And the FBI did have better tracking software and a farther reach than the NYPD. But something else Fin had said echoed in Amanda's ears and turned her stomach. "More eyes," she murmured to herself. She grazed the pad of her thumb along the onscreen image of Olivia's back, unable to move her hand away and expose her captain, her wife, again.

Too many people had seen Olivia being assaulted already. Each new pair of eyes was just one more person she would have to add to an already tragically long list of violators.

"Huh?" Fin asked.

"Nothing."

"You okay?"

Amanda tried to scoff, but it lacked conviction. "What do you think? My wife just got gang banged and strangled nearly to death. Would you be okay if it was Phoebe lying on that desk?"

"No. I'd probably be going outta my mind." Fin twisted absently at his engagement ring, then caught himself and made a fist with that hand. "That's why I'm asking. You didn't take the pills the EMT left—"

"I ain't taking some sh*t to calm me down when Liv can't even—" Amanda bit her bottom lip, unable to continue without succumbing to the lump in her throat. She shook her head instead, refusing the sedatives and the tears.

"Okay, I hear you. But you can't keep going on like this, either. It ain't healthy. What about . . . what about your therapist? I could call her for you. Someone should be here with you when I can't."

"Oh Christ, I do not need you to call my shrink like I'm some mental patient off her meds. Jesus, Fin." Amanda shot an incredulous look at her old partner, angry that he would suggest such a thing. He thought therapy was an even bigger sham than she did—or she had, at one time. "Besides that, she's out of the country till next month. Bali or somewhere. Must be nice."

If Amanda were in Bali right now, Olivia would be with her, instead of naked and draped over a desk, looking half dead and fully shattered. f*ck Hanover and her meditation retreat. No amount of spiritual guidance or special interview techniques was going to rescue Olivia from the hell she was in, and it sure as sh*t wouldn't make Amanda feel any better.

"You need to talk to someone, Amanda. What about—"

"Fine, I'll call Carisi," Amanda snapped, tossing out the first name that came to mind. She had no intentions of calling anyone, least of all the former detective who sometimes still looked at her with a bit too much longing. Talking would only distract her from Olivia, and the current conversation had already done too much of that. "Or Daphne. Just get off my back about it, I've got enough to worry about as it is."

Fin sighed and looked to the screen. He had more to say, that much was obvious just from the sound of his agitated breathing, but he kept it to himself. "Yeah, okay. I should get back out there. Are you gonna be all ri—"

"Go. I'm fine. Make sure you check out the Bronx. The Sandberg kid went to school there, so it's probably close to home." Amanda narrowed her eyes at the boy's father Gus, who had left off stroking Olivia's skin with admiration to huddle up with the other men, as if they were discussing football strategies. "Daddy might still be operating out of that area."

"Yeah, we're already on it." The sergeant was halfway to the door when he glanced back, prepared to add something he no doubt meant to be helpful, though nothing of the sort would hold much water at present. Whatever it had been, he never got to share, because two things happened at once: first, the men on the screen broke their huddle and converged on Olivia like a wolf pack on a wounded deer.

And second, a piercing voice Amanda hadn't heard in years and only recognized by the thick accent—nothing like the coarse ones in this city, but very much like the drawls of Atlanta—rang out in the squad room.

"Sweet baby Jesus. Who's in charge around here while that poor little girl is waiting on y'all to get up off your asses and bring her home?"

. . .

Chapter 14: F5

Chapter Text

The winds are getting stronger
And the sky is falling through
And you ain't got much longer
Til the rage rips off the roof
I'm a tornado... and I'm coming after you...

- "Tornado," Little Big Town

Chapter 14.

F5

. . .

After years spent infiltrating hate groups and terrorist cells, you developed a strong stomach. Dealing with the slime of the earth, befriending them and being welcomed into the fold, you had to. If there was a single doubt in your mind, they smelled it on you—and you could kiss your sorry ass goodbye.

Dana Lewis had built an entire career around that ability to put aside her morals and sometimes her conscience (the still, small voice Mama had always talked about), to shapeshift and become that which she was not. There were moments when she had almost lost her way, after witnessing the atrocities humans were capable of, and suffering a few of them herself.

But she had stayed the course through it all, everything from living and working among white supremacists who thought nothing of spitting on a child of color (she had developed stomach ulcers during that case), to her own rape by a man she still had nightmares about from time to time. Getting arrested for murder so she could be sent to Bedford Hills Correctional and take down a powerful criminal network, which consisted of COs, prisoners, and outside sources alike, had been no walk in the park, either.

She'd taken part in a prison riot, literally been shanked by an inmate who just didn't like her face, and witnessed three murders during the Bedford stretch.

Yet, in all that time, and in her years of undercover work since then, Dana had never seen anything as devastating or as gut-wrenching as the scene unfolding on the flat-screen a few yards away. After the rape, she had specifically avoided cases involving sex crimes, but you could never escape it altogether. Sooner or later, some scumbag raped some defenseless girl, and Dana couldn't just turn tail and run.

The horrors she encountered while busting human trafficking rings were many, but she didn't know those people. No matter how unlivable the conditions, how unspeakable the abuse, she could go home at night, feed her fish, and mostly forget the victims' faces by the time she dozed off in her nice warm bed. There were too many to remember them all.

But this face belonged to Olivia Benson. Though they hadn't spoken in years—not since Dana led the younger woman to believe she was guilty of the murder she had framed herself for—she considered Olivia a friend. Shelikedthe policewoman, respected her even, and there were precious few people left whom she could say that about.

In another life, Dana might even have liked Olivia as more than a friend.

She closed her eyes and gathered herself just as one of the men on the screen pushed Olivia's head towards his erect penis, while two of the others penetrated her from the front and the back. Dana expected screaming, muffled cries, sounds of a tussle—the Olivia Benson she had known was one helluva fighter, God love her—but she heard nothing beyond the men's lewd panting and jeering.

For a moment she felt the weight of a two hundred and twenty pound man on top of her, and then it was gone. She opened her eyes just to be sure, but all she saw was her old friend, who had dedicated her whole life to protecting women from similar degradation, being torn apart. It was enough to make you lose your faith in humanity, if you even had any left to begin with. She had seriously begun to doubt hers, and she was quickly losing confidence in the operation of this squad room as well.

Assistant Director Danvers hadn't had time to fill Dana in on what to expect upon arrival at Manhattan SVU, only that their captain had been abducted by Dreamland, the title some irreverent twerp of a field agent had slapped on the trafficking ring headed by Gustav Sandberg, AKA The Sandman. He wasn't her division's prime target—the head of the snake that needed to be lopped off, else it keep thriving—but he had risen to the top spot in Manhattan after John Drake got himself killed in a courtroom shootout with police.

That news was bad enough to make Dana break her pledge not to set foot in the one-six again. After the murder rap, she'd lost the few friends she had, and convinced herself it was better if Olivia never find out that Dana had lied to and manipulated her for the job. A couple of Christmases ago, while feeling nostalgic and lonesome for a family that didn't exist, she had almost broken down and called Olivia, but after a little preparatory digging, she discovered that the other woman was now Captain Benson and a mother of two. No way would Dana interfere—or try to compete—with that.

But the call from Chief Garland, fielded by Dana's boss and relayed to her section, sealed it. She had gathered her team and raced to the precinct, stopping just short of jumping on her motorcycle and yelling for them to meet her there as she sped away. Entering the squad room to find Olivia naked on a television screen, already in the throes of a nasty gang rape (not surprising; Dreamland didn't waste any time turning out new girls), was bad enough. It was the cops standing around like a bunch of mourners, though, watching their boss get f*cked seven ways to Sunday, and no one giving orders, that really pissed Dana off.

f*cking amateur hour at the NYPD, ladies and gents.

She was about to crank up the volume and the bitchiness on her previous inquiry—who was running this sh*t show?—when the door to what she vaguely recalled as an interview room swung open. "What the hell?" asked Detective Tutuola, gaping at her as if she were Jesus Christ arisen from the tomb.

Dana usually did enjoy making an entrance, but now was not the time. Without giving the detective a chance to do much more than step aside, she plowed into the room at full force. Though she lacked the height advantage, she was stout and bullheaded, a combo that had carried her through Quantico and prison. Men and inmates, it turned out, did not know how to handle a woman they couldn't intimidate.

"Long story. Detective Tutuola." Dana tipped him a brief nod. She had always liked the man, and she would have preferred giving him the courtesy of an explanation. But as her daddy used to say, want in one hand and sh*t in the other. "Who has seniority in this—"

"What the f*ck are you doing here?"

A female voice this time. Dana hadn't noticed anyone else in the room, a gross oversight that was totally unlike her. She chalked it up to being shaken by what she'd seen in the bullpen, and turned with a sharp retort on her lips. It died out when she saw the little blond detective she just barely recalled from her last summons to the precinct. Dana couldn't remember the girl's name (Roland, maybe?), but she did remember the hero worship in those blue eyes every time they were fixed on Olivia Benson.

It had amused Dana—Benson was woefully oblivious to the adoration—and annoyed her at the same time—if any cute, sassy Southern girl got to make eyes at Olivia, it should be Dana herself. She'd just never found the right moment. And now . . . Olivia looked like a boneless, lifeless rag doll the men were twisting and posing for their sick pleasure.

The blonde had been watching the rape on a laptop, which her eyes kept straying back to, and she looked as if she'd recently done some heavy-duty bawling. Her entire face was puffy and red as fire. She looked like a grief-stricken child sitting there in that oversized NYPD sweatshirt, and Dana softened her expression accordingly.

"I'm here to help you get your captain back alive, Detective," she said. Expecting that to be that, she glanced to Fin, who now regarded her with less apostolic amazement and more officerial suspicion. But before she could continue, the little blond girl had to put in her two cents again.

"Like hell ya are. She sent your ass to prison for killin' a pregnant woman. I don't know how you got out already, but you ain't FBI anymore, sister. So just turn your baby-killer ass around and get the hell outta here. Go on, git." The detective swiped at a stack of files in front of her, scattering them across the table. They coughed out several loose sheets of paper that flapped in Dana's direction like oncoming birds.

Well, the girl had sass, Dana would give her that. And the accent was pure Georgia sticks if she had ever heard one. They probably had some kinfolk in common; she had lots of family over that way. But Southern roots and the possibility of being related weren't enough to get on Dana's good side, especially with an attitude like that.

"Now, you listen here, babysister, I'm—"

"Hold up, hold up." Detective Tutuola raised his hands, one palm facing the blonde, the other pointed at Dana. There was an authoritative tone to his voice that she didn't recall hearing during their past encounters. "I think she's still FBI, Rollins. I dunno how. But check out the jacket, and she's got a squad out there." He jerked a nod at the plate glass window and the other agents setting up headquarters in the outer room. "And since I'm Liv's second, I gotta ask: how the hellareyou here, Lewis?"

Rollins. That was the blonde's name. And Tutuola had moved up the ranks since last time; good for him, he was a solid cop. "Look, Detective, Sergeant—" Fin answered Dana's questioning glance with an affirmative nod. "It's a long story. Suffice it to say, I'm obviously not a murderin' baby killer. I needed to get into prison undercover, and it had to be believable. Now that assignment is over, and I'm on to the next."

"She's not a goddamn assignment," Rollins snarled, shooting out of her chair like she was spring loaded. She stood quivering with fury from her white-blond head to her clunky tennis shoes—odd attire for an on-duty detective—and appeared for a moment as if she might launch across the table herself and throttle Dana.

Instead, she cast a forlorn look at the laptop, where the men were switching positions, laughing and jostling Olivia between them in a macabre, feverish orgy, and choked back a sob. "She's my wife," the blonde said in a thick, catching voice, then crouched beside the table, gripping the ledge, and rested her forehead on her hands. She shook her head and cried with such vehemence it sounded as if she were laughing hysterically. "She's not your g-goddamn assignment, she's m-my— she's my—"

The rest was swallowed up by tears, but Dana had heard the important part. Wide-eyed, she glanced to Sergeant Tutuola and received another nod of confirmation. "They just celebrated their one-year anniversary a couple months ago," he said in a hushed tone. "Got a new baby and three other little kids at home."

"Oh my Jesus." Dana's hands flew to her open mouth, covering the gap with her fingers. She was almost never left speechless, but that had done it. The horrors on the video feed were awful enough on their own; knowing they were happening to Olivia Benson was ten times worse; knowing they were happening to a mother who had four little ones depending on her was unfathomable.

And Olivia was married. To a woman. Any fantasies Dana had about riding in on a white horse to rescue the captain were swiftly and efficiently snuffed out. She prided herself on not being the jealous type—territorial, yes, but nothing so petty as jealousy—yet in that moment, she felt stung and somehow betrayed by her friend. She'd thought they would go on married to the job and dancing around their attraction to each other for at least the rest of their careers, if not their lives.

One look at the wretched creature on the laptop screen and the gutted wife below, and Dana was back on track. She wouldn't mourn the loss of that dream life any more than all the other lives she might have lived, real or imagined.

No, ma'am, she would not.

"My God. I had no idea. That is just—" Dana shook her head grimly. There truly were no words for it; anything she chose would have sounded like she was making light of the situation. And that was unacceptable. "I'm so sorry, Detective Rollins . . . "

"Amanda," the sergeant said softly, when Dana looked back for assistance.

"I'm so sorry, Amanda. This must be the worst kind of hell for you. I didn't mean to imply that Bens— that your wife is just another case. I assure you, she is not." Dana bent down and gathered the handful of papers the detective had knocked onto the floor. She stood and placed them on the table carefully, as if it were Amanda she was handling and not the rap sheets of those devils hurting Olivia. "I have the utmost respect for her, and I'll do everything in my power to get her back to you and your babies."

Amanda had turned her cheek against the back of her hands, peering over at the livestream and taking deep, juddering breaths. She tried to exhale steadily, doing some sort of breathing exercise, but she had already worked herself into a state, like a child who couldn't come down from a tantrum. "H-how'm I suh-supposed to trust y-you?" she asked, between the heaving and sniffling. "You're a liar."

After a glimpse at the screen, where a guy with more tattoos and piercings than unmarked skin was wiping his ejacul*te off of Olivia's face with a cloth, Dana gentled her voice another octave. "Honey, I don't think you have much choice. All I can do to prove I'm legit is bust my ass to find your girl. And that's what I'm here to do."

Dana considered adding that, even if she were a jilted ex who had murdered her lover's girlfriend and their unborn child, she was still the best damn G-woman to step foot out of Virginia. She nixed the idea as quick as it came. Neither cop was in the mood for her bravado just then, and despite what schoolmates and colleagues had always thought of her, she did know how to rein in her larger than life personality.

Sniffing hard, Amanda rose to her feet like the air intake had boosted her. She was a skinny little thing, the only baby weight that remained concentrated to her breasts. (Dana assumed that meant breastfeeding, though she honestly couldn't say; she'd never done such a thing—or had children, for that matter.) "Ok-kay. What do you need from m-me?" the detective asked, her eyes locked on Olivia.

The captain looked as though she had deserted her body entirely, and it wasn't any wonder, with what the men were doing to it. The kid in the cap had joined in now, too. The Sandman presided over all, sometimes instructing, sometimes participating, but always making sure Olivia's face was turned to the camera.

Dana kept her eyes on him. The others were just puppets getting their strings pulled, albeit willingly. Gus Sandberg, however, was the puppeteer in this theater of the damned. There might be financiers and artistic directors with far more power than he, but in that lonely, lowly room with Olivia Benson? He was god.

"Tell me everything you know about that f*cker in the leather jacket," Dana said, pointing to Gus. "And how he ended up with your captain."

Unfortunately, neither Amanda or Fin knew much about the man known throughout the criminal circuit as The Sandman—less than Dana, in fact. He had been on the FBI's radar for some time, though it was in the past seven years that his empire had grown to troubling proportions. He'd also become far more difficult to catch, in part because he was key to bringing down the bigger fish. If the Bureau brought him in, they risked scaring off a supplier whose reach was global, not just Manhattan based.

In the meantime, the smaller fish had gotten away.

The cops had far more information on Sandberg's goons, which included two of his sons. No big shocker there, these guys loved to pass on their legacies of sin and corruption. But it was the muscular Latino man that showed the most promise as being a lead. Firstly, because Amanda had a connection to him (Dana got the sense that the sergeant and detective were leaving out parts of the story, but trusted that they weren't withholding anything critical—not with Olivia's life on the line), and secondly, becausehehad connections.

Sondra Vaughn ran her own little criminal enterprise out of Sealview Correctional, and everybody knew it. Everybody except the NYPD, it seemed. To be fair, it was out of the one-six's jurisdiction, and until now, there hadn't been any reason for the incarcerated woman to come to the attention of Manhattan SVU a second time. As for Anton Nadari, Vaughn's ex-lover, he was living the high life from his luxury cell in Sing Sing. Money really could get you everything, including special treatment in prison. Couldn't stop you from being a lowlife, though; Nadari had as much pull now as he did on the outside, if not more.

"You're looking into this Riva guy, then?" Dana asked, studying his mugshot on paper instead of his likeness on screen. He was the one currently in Benson's mouth. "And his association with Vaughn?"

"Got one of our officers on her way to Sealview now," said Tutuola. He only glanced at the livestream sparingly and for the briefest of moments. He cleared his throat and balled his hands together at chest level each time. "Might already be there. She's good. If Vaughn's involved, Kat'll get it out of her."

"She's involved," Amanda said darkly. Her eyes hadn't left the video feed of her tortured wife the entire time she'd detailed where the investigation stood. "This is her MO. Rape as revenge. It's the kind of crime women think up."

Hell hath no fury, Dana thought, but kept that tidbit to herself. It was obvious from every word out of Amanda's mouth, every tearful shudder, every heartsick expression as she guarded the laptop like a junkyard dog, that she blamed herself for her wife's predicament. And she was right about Vaughn—women weren't typically the criminal masterminds, but when they were, God help the poor soul who wronged them. Or that poor soul's wife.

"No disrespect to your officer, but how 'bout we send one of my guys out to Sealview to help lean on Vaughn?" Dana wasn't really asking—she had the authority to do it, and she would send someone, with or without the cops' approval—but it was better to stay on good terms with the people you had to work alongside of. Especially when one of them was personally involved in your case. "Might sweat it out of her if she thinks she's facing criminal charges."

The sergeant and detective gave their consent, and after Dana whistled out the door for Agent Marquez and instructed him to assist Officer Tamin in her interrogation at Sealview, she turned back to them and took a deep breath.

"Okay, here's what I know," she said, mostly addressing Fin. The Rollins girl was lost in the video stream again. "Your captain was abducted by a group of traffickers my people call Dreamland. They're located in Manhattan, but harder to lure out than those fellas in Afghanistan. The leader, the one y'all know as Sandman, is extra slippery. Moves more product in and out of this city than you would believe. Y'all took down Johnny Drake, I followed that trial . . . "

Actually, she'd still been in Bedford at the time, but she had seen the newspaper articles and news coverage that mentioned Manhattan SVU as the squad that unseated Johnny D from his throne as king pimp of New York City. After the undercover gig had ended and Dana eventually got involved in the trafficking division, she had retroactively studied the case, just to get a feel for what she was going up against.

"Well, Sandberg is just as bad, if not worse. His girls—" Dana caught herself about to say something that would be deeply insensitive to bring up in front of the spouse. (If Amanda couldn't stand to hear her wife called an assignment, she sure as sh*t wouldn't be able handle the news that many of Sandberg's girls were so psychologically damaged they ended up committing suicide, even after rescue.) She rerouted as quickly as if she were cutting a sharp corner on her chopper.

"He gets 'em from all over, 'cause he has some serious connections. That's actually how I ended up on this case. Sandberg might have a lot of clout here in the city, but even he's kissing someone else's ring. Got a guy we're looking for—"

"What'd you just say?" Amanda asked out of nowhere. It was the first indication she'd given that she heard anything other than Olivia's occasional muffled cries, which sounded much the same as the noises torture victims made after a round of waterboarding—not that Dana had ever participated. Same concept, though: the men were drowning Olivia on dry land.

"That we're looking for a guy—"

Amanda shook her head and made an impatient gesture for Dana to move it along. "No, the part about kissing a ring?" She pried her eyes away from the laptop long enough to glance over her shoulder, an odd expression on her pale face. It did look as if she had seen a ghost, but given her viewing material, that was understandable. "I've heard that somewhere before."

"Oh." Dana glanced at Fin, like he might know where this would lead. The sergeant was staring at Olivia's body—it was hard to reconcile the lifeless prop on the screen to vital, vibrant Olivia herself—and massaging his knuckles compulsively. "It's a saying," she said to Amanda, trying not to sound as impatient as she felt, standing there discussing fashion accessories. "And the guy really does wear a signet ring on his pinky. Celtic symbol of some kind. Likes to burn it into the skin of his girls. Been the only identifiable mark on some of them when they end up in the morgue."

Not until Amanda blanched a few shades whiter did Dana realize what she'd said. It was too late now to backtrack, and she wasn't the type to stutter and stammer after a faux pas. The best thing to do was just keep going. "He's a hard sumbitch to catch because he knows law enforcement like my mama knew the Bible. Thanks to you guys."

"Huh?" Fin finally looked away from his captain, his eyes a tumultuous black when they found Dana. Fairly calm on the outside, he was a raging storm within.

"He's one of yours. NYPD, that is." Dana hitched a thumb at the squad room, as if it housed the entire New York City police force in its walls. "Spent too long undercover with trafficker scum and it turned his head. Guess he sampled the merchandise one too many times and got a taste for it. Now he's the biggest cheese in the East Coast flesh trade. You can bet he had a hand in this." She gestured to the haggard, tear-stained, empty-eyed face on the laptop, then snatched her hand and her gaze away.

Sergeant Tutuola's lips curled into a sneer. "This asshole got a name? I'd like to find his training officer and rip off that dude's ball sack. Cram it down this other guy's throat when I find him."

Yes, Dana had always liked Mr. Tutuola. "Indeed he does. Fella by the name of Declan Murphy. Figures he'd be Irish, they're a bunch of—"

Before Dana could finish the less than P.C. sentence (she didn't really have anything against the Irish, and she doubted the man with the last name Tutuola and a penchant for ripping off ball sacks, and Rollins, the second most Southern female in the room, would take offense), Amanda spun her chair around so forcefully it bashed against the table.

"What the hell? Is this all a f*cking joke to you?" The detective was visibly seething, her chest heaving as if it contained a much larger creature about to claw its way out. And from the looks of it, that creature wanted to grab the nearest sharp object and jam it into Dana's carotid. "Fin, get her outta here. She's nothing but a damn liar. Prob'ly idn't even real FBI anymore, just here to get her kicks."

Deeply confused, Dana glanced at the sergeant for clarification. She had known reintegrating with the SVU squad would be tough, especially since the only one present whom she had history with was Fin, but she didn't anticipate being cussed at and thrown out of the room—at least not after they realized she was there to help.

"Rollins . . . " Fin spoke in Amanda's direction, though his eyes never left Dana's. He sounded wary, dubious, but he nodded as if he saw something in Dana's face that answered his questions. "I think she means it. There's no reason for her to lie about that. And it makes sense."

"Fin," Amanda said, the betrayal she felt evident in her rising tone. She flung her arms wide on either side of the chair. "How the hell does that make sense? Murphy's good police. He ain't some lowlife trafficker."

Fin cast an apologetic look at the detective. His elbows were tight to his sides, his hands still polishing each other like he was washing them. "I'm sorry, Amanda. I know you two got history. But I seen it plenty before. Watched a lot of good cops go bad working narcotics. They think they got it all under control until it bites 'em in the ass."

"That's drugs, it's not . . . " Amanda gestured at the laptop, looking mournfully back at it. She released a shuddering breath at the sight of Olivia surrounded by all those sweaty, grunting men. "Not this."

"You know how deep Murphy goes when he's UC. Remember all those girls who told us he pimped them out last time we arrested him? It's a thin line, and he probably crossed it one too many times."

"He said those girls were lyin'! He said he never touched them! He said—" A green tint finally put some color in Amanda's wan cheeks, and she glanced at the trash basket near her feet. She tucked her hair behind her ears several times, bending slightly forward as if she had a runner's cramp. "He's Jesse's daddy, Fin. He can't be a sex trafficker. He can't be responsible for this."

Brow knitted in concern for his colleague—who went on mutteringhe can't, he can'twhile clutching her stomach and repeatedly rocking forward in the swivel chair—the sergeant looked to Dana urgently. "Are you sure he really turned? Could he be trying not to blow his cover? We had a guy a few years back get accused of raping a prostitute, but it was a setup. Turned out he just went into the room with her and talked."

Dana had no idea what she'd walked into here at the one-six, but she got the feeling she wasn't going to make any friends during this assignment. "Negative. Murphy does a helluva lot more than talk to his girls. Bureau's had an eye on him for about eight years now. At first it looked like he was just building up his reputation, getting in good with the right folks, trying not to blow his cover, as you said. But then he came back from Serbia with a whole mess of girls supposedly rescued from a brothel there. My ass. He brought 'em back to the states to pimp 'em out himself. His communication with NYPD went dark around that time. Been AWOL ever since."

Met by absolute silence, except for the nauseating sounds coming from the laptop, Dana glanced back and forth between the cops. She might as well ask, or God knew how long they would all just be standing around like they were getting milked. "Who's Jesse?"

"She's Amanda's kid. And Liv's," Fin said quietly, when the detective made no attempt to answer. It looked as if she were crumbling on the inside, her slender frame outwardly sagging beneath the baggy sweatshirt. "Murphy's the . . . biological father. He was commanding officer of SVU for about two seconds."

The response was so unexpected, so awful, it took Dana a few moments to register what she had heard. She knew Murphy had gotten around quite a bit in his career—both of them—but she didn't recall reading anything about his stint with SVU, and she certainly hadn't come across any information about him having a daughter. With Olivia Benson's wife. He really was a chameleon, as his mandatory psych evals consistently stated.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph." Immediately after the words left her mouth, Dana bit her tongue out of habit. Her mama had always gotten after her for taking God's name in vain. She had a feeling The Big Man would forgive her this one (whowouldn'tswear after a revelation like that?), so she said a silent prayer of repentance to Mama and pushed on. "I had no idea y'all had worked that closely with him. Or that he—"

A hard, warning look from Amanda made Dana choose her next words carefully. "Had any personal stock in this . . . travesty."

They were the wrong words nonetheless.

"He doesn't," Amanda said hotly, practically rising from the chair in her vehemence. There was murder in her devil-blue eyes. "He's never even met her. Jesse. He doesn't give a damn about her or me. We got drunk and stupid one night, and I was— I used him. For my own reasons. But he used me too. He knew my—"

The detective couldn't seem to finish a full thought, let alone a full sentence. She raked her fingers through her disheveled blond hair, catching on snarls and yanking through them the way Dorothy Lewis used to comb bubblegum out of six-year-old Dana's pigtails.

"He's never reached out to you about his child?" Dana asked, trying not to sound dubious. Her own daddy had been a Virginia coal miner who died of black lung before he got to see her graduate the academy; she remembered him as a quiet, somber figure, but one whose love and dedication to his family never wavered. Even when he was in a hospital bed, coughing up blood and black mucus.

Not all fathers were that devoted, she knew. Still, it took a possessive and controlling sort to do the work Declan Murphy had appointed himself for, and men like that usually held onto their offspring and personal relationships with an iron fist. Especially the women. "Not even once?"

"Jesse ismykid. Mine and Liv's." Amanda brought her fist hard against her chest, then even harder against the table. "He doesn't have any claim on her, we dissolved his parental rights when Liv adopted her." She gasped the second she heard herself, hand flying to her mouth, eyes flying to the laptop screen. "You don't think that's why this is happening? He wouldn't. He only reached out to me the once, before Jess was even born, and then he disappeared back to . . . Serbia. Oh, Jesus."

Dana clasped her hands behind her back, waiting grimly as the poor little blonde put the pieces together for herself. She did in fact think that was precisely whythiswas happening to Olivia. The captain had become so much collateral damage (and if the men didn't give her a break soon, this might become a recovery mission, rather than an abduction case). Best to let Detective Rollins come around to the idea on her own.

"Oh, Jesus," Amanda said again, and did not feel the need to bite her tongue. She kept tearing at her hair, though. Several strands were entangled around her fingers like golden cobwebs. "He went there to bring back girls to pimp out. The sonuvabitch gave me his phone number in case I needed anything, then went back tothat?"

The detective's head lolled backward, her eyes on the ceiling, and for a second it looked as if she were about to direct a prayer heavenward. "If he is doing this because he thinks I took Jesse away from him, then it's my fault. That . . . Liv." Her hand wavered in front of the screen at which she pointed. "I talked her into dissolving his rights. I told her it wouldn't matter. I told her it wasn't the same as her growing up without a daddy. I con-convinced her— I said it would all be okay."

Despite speaking out loud, Amanda clearly was not talking to anyone in the room. She began to sob again, tears streaming along her temples and into her hairline. She took huge, gasping breaths, coughing them out, until she had to tip her head back down or risk choking. Her hand was still outstretched at the laptop, and she touched Olivia's tortured body with her fingertips.

The men appeared to have finished with the captain, at least for the moment, and mingled in the corner of the shot like addicts chatting after an NA meeting. Olivia was left to languish belly-down on the desk where they had just been raping her. From the looks of it, she didn't even have the strength to lift her head.

Fin observed the scene—Amanda trying to reach out to her wife, Olivia in such profound shock she could hardly blink—with deep sorrow, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe the injustice of it all. "I'm sorry, Amanda," he said, and gestured for Dana to follow him out of the room. "I gotta go talk with Agent Lewis some more. See if we can figure this thing out. I'll update you as soon as—"

"Oh my God, what's he doing?" Amanda leaned forward and squinted at the screen like an old, myopic woman whose hearing was also failing—she didn't appear to have heard Fin at all. And it wasn't any wonder. Gus Sandberg was approaching Olivia with a knife similar to the ones the black ops guys used. Small, efficient, and deadly. "Oh my God. Don't you f*cking touch her, you son of a bitch!"

The wife went on railing at the Sandman, her sergeant trying to no avail to quiet her, but for Dana it all faded into background noise. She was certain she was about to see Olivia being raped with that knife, and the thought made her insides feel loose and watery. Try as she might to keep the voice at bay, she heard it whisper,You got a velvet throat, honey. She shook it from her head and found herself backing towards the door, preparing to run.

But the room and all its occupants suddenly froze as Sandberg descended with the knife, each stroke of the blade swift and brutal. Olivia didn't even cry out, although she probably couldn't with her head at that angle. Sandberg had not used the knife to penetrate her, but instead grabbed Olivia's long braid, jerked her head back with it, and began sawing through the hair like he was cutting rope. "Christ Almighty," Dana breathed, halfway between relief and horror. Amanda was moaning as if the blade had plunged into her gut.

Seven or eight inches of hair came free in the man's hand with only a few quick swipes—that knife was damn sharp—and Olivia's head whiplashed forward from the abrupt separation. Her body jerked once in response, like she was dreaming about falling, then settled bonelessly back against the desk. She whimpered only when Sandberg trailed the frayed ends of the braid along the back of her shoulders and commented, "I like your tattoo, Olivia. It suits you. I'm sorry about your hair, but I have my orders. It will make a lovely souvenir for your wife, don't you think?"

Olivia flinched back when he shook the severed plait in her face, prompting her to answer. She mouthed what looked like a yes, her nod even fainter, and let her eyes drift shut against anything else that might be shoved into her face. It reminded Dana of the way small children thought they couldn't be seen if their eyes were closed.

She wished she could close her eyes and block out this miserable damn mess too. But she had a job to do, and if she did it well enough, Olivia would be freed from the hell she was in. (Nice try, Lewis. You know she will never be free of this, even if you get her out alive. The hell is inside her now, same as it is in y—)

"Sergeant." Perhaps Dana spoke too abruptly, but she needed to get out of the small, confining room and into the bullpen where she could bark orders and lead the charge, whenever that might be. She felt for Amanda, she really did, but the detective was useless to the investigation right now—a distraught and sobbing spouse, more hindrance than help. Frankly, she didn't even belong at the precinct until this was over. "May I have a word?"

Manhattan SVU was already pushing the limits of protocol just by allowing Fin, a longtime colleague of Olivia's, to head the search for its captain. Dana would let that one slide because it was a small division and they needed all the help they could get, but the hysterical wife had to go.

She said as much to the sergeant after he told Amanda he would be back to check on her soon (no response) and reluctantly bowed out of the room. "Detective Rollins should not be here, Sergeant. She'd be better off at home with her kids than seeing this." Dana gestured to the flat-screen on the wall, but she could have pointed at any nearby electronic device. Olivia's haunted, hollow eyes stared out from all of them.

"I know. But you try making Rollins do something she don't wanna do." Fin quickly put up a hand to stop Dana when she reached for the interview room door, prepared to take on the task. "Hold up. She ain't gonna listen to you. She's already been through hell with Liv. You can't keep those two apart, I'm tellin' ya. If she's here, at least we can keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn't go off looking for Liv by herself."

Dana raised her eyebrows, as if the idea of a female officer taking matters into her own hands was unheard of, though she had done just that on numerous occasions. She'd gone after her own rapist and would have killed him if not for her badly trembling hands and that jackass Stabler taking the bullet instead. She still wished she hadn't missed.

What might she be willing to do in Amanda's place? To rescue—and avenge—the woman she loved?

"And these dumbf*cks contacted her first, so we need her here in case they try again. Or in case they decide to grab her next." Fin cast a troubled glance back at his detective, visible through the plate glass, still weeping and tearing at her hair like Jewish mourners rending their clothes at a funeral. "I know she ain't okay, but she'd be worse at home. And I'm gonna call someone for her. She ain't gonna like it, but . . . "

"Okay, Sergeant. You convinced me. I'll leave her be." Dana cuffed the man lightly on the arm, trying for her usual camaraderie and ease, but only able to muster a halfhearted smile. "Let's you and me find Benson."

Fin nodded and fell into step with her. "Hey, Lewis?"

"Yeah?"

"Just call me Fin."

. . .

Chapter 15: Funny Games

Chapter Text

Chapter 15.

Funny Games

. . .

Sondra Vaughn gazed mildly across the table at the female officer and the G-man. A casual observer might have mistaken the interaction as an agreeable one, just a trio of friends shooting the bull, or whatever they did on the outside these days. Sondra's orange jumpsuit and the metal loop she was handcuffed to in the table probably would have given her away, though.

Despite the interruption to her viewing party with Parker, she was in a good mood. So far, Phase One had played out even better than she'd hoped. At first it had been somewhat difficult to watch, especially when the Benson woman was still present enough to react strongly to the harsher stimuli. She was tougher than Sondra would have expected, based on the candids of her with her kids. And truth be told, Sondra had never viewed any of the rapes she'd ordered before. She almost felt sorry for the pretty captain.

But that wore off the longer the rape went on, Olivia's decompensation to a whimpering, rung-out rag making it easier to forget she was real. Eventually it was like watching p*rn, just a lot of dicks going into various holes, a lot of over the top moaning that kept Parker frantically thumbing at the volume control on his phone. Sondra had surprised him—no more than she surprised herself—by getting turned on while Gus choked and raped Amanda's wife at the same time; she'd let him finger her till she came, her eyes barely leaving the screen.

It must have been the thrill of victory, of dominating by proxy, and knowing that the bitch detective was suffering terribly, that made her so horny. Even now she was wet just thinking about it. She smiled at the dark-haired girl who studied her with narrowed eyes and kept sighing impatiently. Officer Tamin of SVU, she had introduced herself, not bothering to get up when Sondra entered the room usually reserved for inmates and their lawyers. A colleague of Amanda Rollins, then. That had piqued Sondra's interest.

She was a bit disappointed that they had connected the abduction to her so quickly, but her old pal Rollins hadn't been stupid. Reckless and immature, yes, but not stupid. That was all right, though. Sondra was smarter. She could stall and throw these kids so far off the scent they would never even come close to finding Benson.

They were both young, early thirties at best. It was almost too easy. If Rollins herself had shown up, that might have been a challenge—Sondra wouldn't have been able to contain her gloating. She was watching Olivia take it from three guys at once (and two alternates) when the walkie on Parker's utility belt crackled to life, the warden requesting that someone in D block escort Vaughn to interview room one. Parker had practically sh*t himself running away, although he did promise to keep watching the livestream and bring her updates as soon as it was safe.

It might not be for a while, but she was satisfied with what she had seen. Even if the whole plan unraveled from here, she'd already won. She had her justice, and anything else that worked in her favor after this was just icing.

Her old friend Gus and his boys were probably still spreading their icing all over the Benson woman that very moment. Sondra smiled at the thought—and the pun—and waited for one of her visitors to break. She could see it in their faces, and in the antsy movements of the girl officer. Probably hoped she'd be the one to crack the case and rescue her unfortunate boss.

Good luck, little girl.

"You're in an awfully cheerful mood for somebody who's in prison," Tamin finally said. She began that incessant tapping with her pen again, the end thwacking her open notepad.

Small, repetitive noises usually irritated Sondra—she had once incited Anton to shoot a macaw that perched outside their villa bedroom every morning in Brazil—but this one she would tolerate. It sounded like the steady ticking of a clock, which reminded her of the time that must be passing so terribly slowly for Amanda and her poor, dear wife.

"I didn't realize that was against the rules." Sondra shrugged lightly, though not indifferently. She had a reputation for being cool and calculating, but today she was Little Miss Sunshine. Innocent as can be.

This time it was the boy agent who spoke. "It's not. It's just unusual coming from an inmate who got herself transferred to a high-security wing for stabbing another prisoner." He looked up from Sondra's criminal file, open beneath his folded hands on the table. He smiled. "And earned herself a longer sentence. That doesn't sound like someone who has much to be cheerful about."

The little sh*t was trying to rile her up so she would make a mistake, but it wasn't going to work. Sondra didn't make mistakes when she was angry, she just got crueler. "I had a lot of issues with self-control back then. I've learned how to manage it, through vigilance, counseling, and prayer. I'm not the same person anymore."

Tamin snorted. "Seriously? You found Jesus in The Hole, so now you don't set women up to be raped anymore? That what you're going with?"

A silent but delightful exchange took place between Sondra's guests after that brief outburst; the boy, it seemed, did not want the girl to reveal the nature of their visit quite so soon, and he appeared to nudge her under the table. The girl didn't give a damn about establishing rapport with the prisoner, and she jerked away from his knee or foot, scowling. It was like sitting at the third-grade lunch table, and Sondra was enjoying every minute.

"I've regretted that every day since it happened," she said, playing up the repentant brown eyes and heavy heart. In reality, she no longer recalled the names of any of the women whose rapes she'd ordered, including the one that landed her in this dump. The only name that mattered now was Olivia Benson, but they would have to rip out Sondra's fingernails one by one with pliers before she would implicate herself.

"That poor woman. Not a day goes by when I don't wish I could apologize to her. I know it would never make up for what she went through, but if I could give her even the smallest bit of peace . . . " Sondra hung her head in shame, though she was really just hiding a smile. She deserved a f*cking Oscar for her performance. She would probably be the first Black woman to win the award while behind bars. Maybe they would send a camera crew and roll out a red carpet in the exercise yard.

"Cut the crap, lady. We know you're not some reformed sinner, or whatever you're trying to sell us. You probably got half this prison in your back pocket." Tamin jabbed her pen into the notepad, impressing her point. "And we don't have time to sit here while you pretend to be Mother Theresa. My boss is out there suffering somewhere, thanks to you. Tell us where she is so we can go get her. And call off your goons while you're at it."

"Officer," Marquez said sharply, glaring at Tamin like he wanted to throttle her. Just like poor, sweet Captain Benson when Gus put it in her. The girl returned the glare, looking as though she had some choice words for her male counterpart, but she held her tongue for the time being.

This good agent, bad cop routine was almost as entertaining as the livestream on Parker's phone. Sondra wouldn't have had the patience for such amateur league bullsh*t on the outside, but the venerable halls of Sealview had lowered her standards somewhat. She gave it a few more moments, letting them stew in their young, impetuous juices, then widened her eyes in shock.

"Your boss?" she asked, perhaps going a little overboard with the breathless dismay. For some reason, she couldn't stop picturing Vivien Leigh inGone with the Wind. She hadn't watched the movie since she was a kid, before its White-ass propaganda ever occurred to her, but she had always loved that spoiled, bitchy Scarlett O'Hara. "Something happened to her? That's terrible. I don't know anything about that, though. I don't even know who your boss is."

And frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

"Like hell you don't. She's the same commanding officer who was in charge of SVU when Detective Rollins took down your shady little gambling club and your lowlife boyfriend." Officer Tamin felt pretty confident that mentioning the club and Anton would get a big reaction, that much was obvious from the way her face fell when Sondra remained serene. "She's captain now, and a damn good one. So, unless you want every cop in Manhattan up your ass for the next however long, you better start talking."

Sondra had to hand it to the girl—that was a great line. Vivid imagery and just crude enough to be funny. It was something Sondra might have said herself during the days of running Anton's club and handling the deadbeat gambling addicts who thought they could cheat her out of what they owed. She wondered if the officer knew that Detective Rollins, whom she spoke of with such esteem, was one of those deadbeat cheaters. And a dirty snitch.

"I'm not sure what to tell you, Officer, I didn't meet your captain back then. I have no idea what she even looks like."

Not so pretty anymore, Sondra added silently, lips pressed into a prim, thin line. If she wasn't careful, she was going to get overconfident and make one of her clever remarks out loud, and then she'd really be screwed. Best to dial it down just a notch and let Tamin be the one who said too much.

"How is Amanda these days?" she queried, hoping for a reference to how the blond bitch was doing today specifically. "She and I worked well together before she stabbed me in the back. Not that I hold it against her. She had to play the good girl to keep her job, I get it. I do hope she's gotten help for her . . . habits. For her children's sake."

Luckily Tamin was busy trying to process the information—she didn't know about Rollins' darker side after all—and didn't notice Sondra's slip about the kids. Agent Marquez, however, eyed her with suspicion.

"How do you know she has children?" he asked, and again scanned the file in front of him. He had sharp little hawk eyes and they darted over the lines like he was hunting field mice. "You've been in prison for eight years. Detective Rollins' children are . . ."

"Younger than that," said Tamin smugly, when Marquez looked to her for an answer. As if that proved anything.

And anyway, it was a lie, or at least not the full truth. Sondra knew the Rollins-Benson boy would be nine in a few months. But from what information Parker had gathered for her on the kids, she also knew the boy was the adopted son of Benson. So, technically not Amanda's kid at all. The little blond girl was Amanda's eldest, and she wasn't even seven yet.

Disappointed she couldn't answer the trick question, Sondra gave a small sigh, passing it off as weariness of being misunderstood. "It was just an assumption. Eight years is a long time, and Detective Rollins is probably in her forties by now? She's an attractive woman who was rather . . . free with herself when I met her. I'd be more surprised if shedidn'thave a few kids."

"Is that because you had a child out of wedlock?" Marquez asked, his inflection never changing one way or the other. He was reading Sondra's information off a sheet inside the file as if it were no more riveting than a takeout menu. As if Nessa were just an anecdote. That baby Sondra once had in prison. "A child who died two years ago, along with her uncle, your older brother?"

For a moment, the room was awash in red and Sondra pictured herself lunging across the table to strangle the solemn young agent with the chain from her cuffs. The little prick wanted to hit her where it hurt to try and trip her up again, and he had almost succeeded. With effort, she swallowed the retort that sprang to her lips—the Rollins bitch would soon know what it was like to lose her entire family too—and forced her fists open, flattening her palms on the table.

"I don't see how that's relevant," she said evenly. Hardly the tone of a grieving mother, but she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing that pain. She said a silent prayer to Nessa, in hopes her little girl—her little girl who should be eight years old now—understood that not a day went by where Mommy didn't love and miss her. None of this would be happening otherwise. "Nessa and Royce were killed by a drunk driver. That's who I blame for their deaths, not Ms. Rollins. I would never wish something like that on another mother."

That had come to her like divine inspiration, and though it was gall to the throat to speak it aloud, in her heart she thanked sweet Nessa for sending the perfect words at the perfect moment. At least one part was true: if she ever found out who the drunk asshole was that had taken her daughter and brother away, she would end him too. For now, though, the Rollins-Benson family would suffice.

"No one said anything about you blaming her for their deaths," Tamin noted, practically pouncing on the detail like a fox diving into the snow for prey. "What makes you think that's what this is about?"

"It was implied when he brought up my child in connection with Amanda." Sondra lifted a gesture at Marquez, annoyed when the cuffs cut it short. She had taken a few acting classes to fulfill her arts requirements, but not one of them had taught her how to express herself while chained to a table. She folded her hands in front of her to discourage their use. "I don't see how they pertain to each other. Or your missing captain. She is why you're here, isn't she?"

"You know damn well that's why we're here. And I think you know exactly where she is, too."

Not exactly, no. Sondra had met Gus Sandberg a few times through Anton, but it was always on their turf. She'd heard them discussing shipping yards and knew Sandberg liked to store his "goods" in spaces along the waterfront—it made for easier smuggling and attracted little attention, because shipping containersbelongedin shipping yards—but in which spaces, Sondra was never made privy. She wasn't even sure Anton knew.

"Tell us, and you might be able to avoid federal charges," said the humorless agent, that rat bastard who had no qualms bringing up someone's dead child to get her talking. "That's a lot more time behind bars, Ms. Vaughn. Probably in a facility far more restrictive than this one."

And no qualms using scare tactics, the little sh*t.

"I have no idea where she is," Sondra said, once again relying on the truth to balance out her lies. The kids could have fun sorting out which was which when this was over. "How would I, when I'm locked up in here? And why would I go after some woman I've never met and know nothing about, instead of the one who put me in here?"

"Come now, Ms. Vaughn, you and I both know that prison doesn't hinder the savvier criminals. It just makes them more creative. And with connections like yours and Nadari's, I'm sure you've had no problem carrying out all sorts of misdeeds from inside these walls." Marquez waited expectantly, as if he thought she might start listing all the laws she'd broken since getting tossed into Sealview.

Good to see he hadn't lost his youthful idealism. Tamin, on the other hand, was getting more impatient by the minute, and she scoffed at Marquez's open-ended accusation and his belief that Sondra would spontaneously confess if he stared her down long enough. "You trying to tell me you don't know Liv— my captain and Rollins are married?" the officer demanded, sitting forward at the table. "Bullsh*t. It's your MO, lady. Set the wife up to be raped as payback for—"

"Officer." Marquez's tone was so clipped, he sounded like a drill sergeant giving orders at muster. "May I have a word with you?"

Tamin gazed at him in disbelief. "Uh, can it wait, I'm a little—"

"No, I'm afraid it can't. A word."

It was impossible not to smile as they wandered over to the farthest corner, Tamin slouching along reluctantly, preparing to get chewed out for being too impulsive or divulging too much information, or whatever was getting to Marquez. Sondra had lucked out, getting questioned by two people who obviously didn't know how to work together. Made her job—lying her ass off—that much easier. The agent's mention of her outside contacts had been a little too spot-on for Sondra's taste. And she didn't like that the girl cop had figured out why Benson was the target, rather than the Rollins bitch.

But they were still just grasping at straws, ultimately. They had no way of connecting her to Olivia Benson's abduction. She had taken down her shrine of Rollins-Benson photographs from the wall of her cell, storing them inside a pre-existing hole (she may have widened it a bit) she'd found along the side seam of her mattress, and only taking them out for a look when her cellmate was asleep or working in the wood shop. As for Gus Sandberg and his goons, Sondra had not made contact directly and Sandberg kept his transactions top secret, especially from his underlings. They might get caught and spill what little they knew, but Gus would not—no one could catch The Sandman.

That just left Parks. Sondra was confident that he would not be a problem. For one thing, he was crazy about her, but even more reassuring was his involvement in the crime. He had been her go-between with that fauxhawked friend of his and Sandberg from the beginning, and he couldn't give up Sondra without implicating himself. All the same, she didn't fully trust him not to get caught and try to take her down with him. If that happened, she had every intention of pinning the whole thing on him. Matthew Parker was the one with a long-standing vendetta against Benson, the one who had stalked her and her family, and the one who set up the abduction with his trafficker pals.

Sondra Vaughn was just an innocent woman Parker wanted to pin the crime on because of her history with the victim's wife.

It was almost too perfect.

She schooled her features and kept her hands placidly folded while the investigators returned from gesticulating in the corner. The Tamin girl was pissed and glowering, the boy agent red-faced and stiffer than before. He kept straightening the papers in Sondra's file by tapping them against the folder. "I apologize for the interruption," he said to no one in particular, though his and the cop's refusal to look at each other must mean it was for Sondra.

"It's fine. I don't have anywhere to be." Sondra shrugged. She did want to get back to her cell eventually, in case Parker returned with some more video footage, but with any luck, he was recording what she missed. It would be kind of like watching the Super Bowl after it aired, but she would take what she could get.

In the meantime, talking to Tamin and Marquez was her very own halftime show. "And it's just so senseless and terrible, what's happening to Detective Rollins' wife. I didn't know they were married. And she's been raped?"

Sondra shook her head at the tragedy of it all. "If there's anything I can do to help the poor woman, please let me know."

. . .

Chapter 16: Once Upon a Dream

Chapter Text

And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once, the way you did once . . .

- "Once Upon a Dream," Sleeping Beauty

Chapter 16.

Once Upon a Dream

. . .

Time came and went, just as the men had. She was only aware of its passage because the sounds of construction stopped and started again (second break, or a shift change?), then halted altogether. A day's work done. She could see the weary, lucky construction workers in their hard hats, eagerly tramping to their cars so they could get home for dinner with their families. But it was all inside her head, of course; there were no windows in this place, this box.

This tomb.

She must have lain there for hours, her cheek against the rusty metal desktop. For a time she had drifted off. It seemed like only seconds, but it had been long enough for her to dream she was lying on the dinner table at home, about to be carved like Easter ham and served to Amanda, their children, and the dogs, who licked their chops in anticipation. She'd flinched awake and almost rolled off the desk just as the electric knife buzzed to life—the hands that held it belonged to Lewis and every other man who had raped her—inches away from cutting groin to sternum.

When she tried to lift her head, it was too heavy and she let it thump back down on the desk. Even that little bit of effort was exhausting, and Olivia allowed herself to drift for a few moments or a few hours—there really was no difference here in The Box, where time meant nothing. Where she meant nothing.

She woke again, desperately wanting three things: to be clothed, a drink of water, and her wife. The latter, she couldn't think of without weeping, though it hurt her throat badly to cry. How she longed for Amanda to wrap her in a warm, safe embrace; to take away the pain not just in her flaming throat but in every square inch of her body. Amanda always knew how to stop the hurting, whether it was mental or physical. Amanda would come for her, would help her to heal, just as she always did . . .

"Manda," Olivia whispered, sliding back into unconsciousness before the full name had left her lips.

Manda, where are you?she asked in her dream. But there was no answer, only bright, endless space above which she floated, looking down on various scenes from throughout her life, like a scrolling timeline. Like the funhouse rides at Coney Island that conveyed you past odd and whimsical sights along a winding track.

Some of the scenes were incredible: finding Noah in the dresser drawer of that fleabag motel, and knowing he was hers from the very moment she picked him up; kissing Amanda for the first time, and finally understanding what it was to be home; her three precious little girls who brought her joy and laughter every single day, and more than made up for her own lost childhood.

But the worst moments were there as well. She saw Serena doing things that shocked and horrified her, mostly because she had forgotten they happened. Somehow, she saw her father and, though it was impossible, she recognized his scent, his smile, as if she'd actually known him all along. Lowell Harris and Calvin were there, forcing themselves into her mouth, between her breasts.

And Lewis . . . she saw everything he had done to her with stark clarity, as if it were acted out beneath a surgical light. Not just the things she had let herself remember, or the lies she'd told herself—and everyone else—because they were what she could live with, but the whole ugly truth. He had been inside much more than just her head. It should have been a life-shattering revelation, but after what she'd been through inside The Box, it felt like little more than a practice run. Lewis couldn't even keep it up long enough to leave a mark.

Then he put the revolver to his temple, said it would be the last thing she thought about before she died, and pulled the trigger.

That was when Olivia knew she must be dying. Of all the memories that had filtered by, the one of Lewis blowing his brains out was the most vivid. She felt his blood, warm on her cheek, copper in her mouth. Smelled his bowels let loose. Felt her legs start to go, then lock at the knee because
(her body still did what he wanted it to do, even when he was dead)
of the duct tape. His come dripped out of her, nauseatingly sticky.

Except that last part had never happened, at least not with Lewis. And though her legs were terribly numb and stiff beneath her, they weren't taped to table legs like she'd thought; they seemed to be dangling off the edge of something. The stink of excrement and the taste of blood were real, and as Olivia came to, she raised her head as high as she could, remembering.

A desk—no,thedesk she'd been repeatedly raped on—was the thing her legs dangled from. At some point she had crawled onto it after they left her there, bent over the metal frame like she was in a pillory. The stench was from the slop bucket she had seen (and smelled) upon arrival to The Box, and the blood she tasted was her own. As for the come, there were five possible donors, although by now the wetness she felt was probably just more of her own blood seeping out of her.

It was that thought which made her want to drift away again, but fearing she wouldn't return next time—This is the last thing you're gonna think about before you die—she forced her eyes wide. They had left one of the tripod lights on, and she winced back from the brightness as if it were a sharp, glancing blade. Everything hurt, including her eyes, which were raw and irritated from so much crying. Oh God, and her throat. She thought they might have taken a cheese grater to it. When they weren't using it on her privates.

"Ow," she whimpered and croaked, crashing to her elbow when the arm she propped up on gave out. The pain came not from her arm, although that felt as weak and breakable as a toothpick, but from the daggers in her side. She tried to estimate how many ribs were broken, and could only conclude that it surpassed the amount of fractures and pain from the first Lewis attack.

By the time she turned from her stomach onto her side, she was too winded to continue. Just the idea of sitting up was an impossible, insurmountable task that made her want to lie back on the desk and stay there until they—be it the men or Amanda and the rest of her squad—came for her. But she wouldn't offer herself up like that to those monsters, and she couldn't bear for Amanda or any of her fellow officers to find her that way.

Steeling herself and huffing each breath, Olivia threw her weight forward and used the same momentum to sit upright. Her guts wrenched and she half expected to hear metal grinding on metal, like scrap cars being crushed flat by a compactor. That's how her insides felt each time she moved. It tore the air from her lungs and a soft whining from her throat that she didn't bother to silence, though she despised the sound.

What did it matter, with no one else around to hear it?

"Fu- f*ck ow." She had made it to a seated position at the edge of the desk, but the final push to stand was as daunting as a skydiving leap from an airplane. If her legs didn't hold, she would end up on her hands and knees, a place she had already been far too many times today. Even with no one there to see, she refused to crawl naked and bleeding across the filthy floor like some pathetic, dying creature.

"Get up," she rasped, willing herself to lower both feet to the ground.Get up. Get up. Get up. Her hands were the problem though, refusing to release the steadying ledge behind her when she was almost ambulatory. She changed the order to, "Let go," and repeated it until she would have been screaming—if she'd had the voice to do it. Why cling to something she had been horribly violated on top of? Why wouldn't her bodylisten?

In her anger and frustration, she managed to pry her hands free and found herself wavering on her feet, arms out for balance, like a toddler taking its first steps. Astonishingly, her legs didn't buckle beneath her, though they were wobbly and weak. If not for the occasional jog through the park with Amanda, she wouldn't have had that much strength left in them.

"Jesus," she gasped, clutching her side with every hobbling step she took. It didn't occur to her that she was looking for something until she felt some kind of cloth underfoot. Her heart sank to find it was the youth-size cat shirt the Kid had shoved into her face earlier. Back when she still thought she'd make it out of here without being raped.

She flicked the shirt aside with her foot, as far as she dared, and cast around for her own. They had taken some of her clothes—the Kid was twirling her yoga pants in the air like a cowboy with a lasso on his way out the door, and Little Brother followed close behind, imitating him with Olivia's bra—but they hadn't bothered with the shirt. "Leave it, got as much ji*zz on it as she does," one of them had commented to the other.

It did have ji*zz on it, and quite a bit of blood, both of which had dried to a stiff crust. Olivia just barely made it upright with the shirt in hand, after bending her knees enough to stretch an arm down and grab it. She cringed putting it on, as much from the stains as from the pain that went into pulling the shirt onto her head and stuffing her arms through the holes. "Oh f*ck," she whispered, her left shoulder twanging at the motion. She felt its reverberation throughout her entire body.

But at least the bite marks and rashlike redness on her aching breasts were covered. The shirt hem exposed part of her ass and enough of her genitals that she had the urge to tug it down in the front like the sheepish girl on the poster of an Eighties' sex comedy. Her pubic hair was matted with blood and more sem*n. The pain between her legs was raw, consuming fire.

Putting on the shirt had exhausted her and she longed to sit, if for no other reason than to stop the continuous trickle of blood that ran down the insides of her thighs. Just when she thought she might give up and crumple to the floor like the rest of the trash, she spotted the black wad a few feet away. It might as well have been a few miles, but she limped in that direction, getting there in twice the time it normally would have taken.

The memory of Driver tearing off her underwear was so vivid and so visceral that, at first, Olivia couldn't make herself pick up the tattered bottoms. They might not even be wearable if she did manage to pluck them off the floor, instead of snatching her hand back like she'd almost touched a dead rodent. After several attempts, she finally gritted her teeth, seized the star-spangled fabric, yelped in pain, and staggered against the nearest wall for support.

Stepping into the ragged panties was harder than picking them up, and Olivia nearly pitched over several times, until she managed to thread a leg through one hole and stretch the waistband enough to hook the other leg. The Driver had ripped out most of one side seam, but the elastic around the leg opening was still intact and, except for a loose flap of material that exposed her hip, the underwear stayed in place.

She tried not to think about the injuries that made even the soft cotton gusset feel abrasive and constricting to her ravaged privates. Nevertheless, the diagnoses floated up from the back of her mind on their own: vagin*l and anal tears, bruised cl*tor*s, bruised cervix, a potentially nasty infection from switching orifices, any number of potentially nasty STDs, because the men hadn't worn condoms.

She desperately wanted to relieve her bladder, partly in hopes that the urine would kill off some of the bacteria she was undoubtedly crawling in, but she wasn't going near that goddamned bucket. Not yet. That was her excuse, anyway—willfulness, dignity, strength. To be honest, she feared the searing pain that was inevitable with genital injuries. Wiping seemed unimaginable. She thought of all the women she'd discouraged from urinating until after they had received a rape kit, and she despised herself for it.

Of course, she probably had enough DNA evidence on her skin and inside her mouth to make the same IDs that vagin*l and anal swabs would yield. The taste of bile mixed with her blood made Olivia fear she would vomit again, an ordeal her body—or at least her ribs—surely could not withstand. But the feeling passed quickly and without incident. She didn't have anything left to expel. Even her tears felt dried up for good. All she had was the blood that slithered out of her, soiling her panties as if she were menstruating again.

Perhaps if she were, she might have been able to take the vitamin supplements to help her breastfeed Samantha naturally. She might have even been able to carry her youngest daughter and spare Amanda the trauma of being ripped apart and stitched back together. The husband stitch was a real thing Olivia had read about while doing research for an undergrad essay, and years ago she had testified against a doctor who gave several unwitting new mothers the extra vagin*l suture after childbirth to "tighten them up" for their hubbies. How many stitches would it take to tighten her back up, Olivia wondered.

After a minute or two of standing there in a daze, contemplating everything from the memory of Sammie crowning to why Serena hadn't delivered Olivia on her own and smothered the newborn baby girl when she had the chance, Olivia realized she might have a head injury. She hadn't taken a hard enough blow to do serious damage, probably just a mild concussion. But she hated the way her brain skipped from one line of thought to the next, like she was mentally channel surfing. It made planning difficult.

"Come on, puss*cat," she murmured, only half aware that she was speaking out loud, and even less aware she had quoted one of her rapists. Something about that nickname struck her as odd, but it was probably just the immense terror she was in while hearing it. Her own name had sounded monstrous coming from the lips of those awful men. "Move your ass."

That got her going, though she didn't know where to, until she was pushing and pulling at the wall the men had exited through. Not finding a door of any kind, she began to wonder if she truly had lost her mind, but a seam down the center of the wall reminded her that both sides opened outward by an exterior latch. She dug her fingernails into the crack and pried with every bit of strength she could muster, her heart throwing out a wild kick when she felt something start to give.

It turned out to be her fingernails, three of them snapping off close to the quick. She hissed and instinctively stuck the fingers in her mouth, then gagged at the feeling of flesh on her tongue. "Oh, God," she moaned wetly, hunching forward to let the hot gush of saliva spill from her mouth. It dripped in ropey tendrils from her lips, like the wavering fronds of a willow tree. Nothing else accompanied it, and she spat forcefully to be rid of the strings that clung, cobweb-sticky.

Olivia wasn't getting out. The Box only had one exit, and it was sealed tight against her. If she had the strength to ram it with her shoulder, she might get it open, or if they hadn't taken her shoes (they had; she'd watched the Crier launch the Nikes into the lot outside with two expert kicks, like a soccer player scoring a double goal), she might be able to kick her way out. But barefoot and barely able to rotate either shoulder, let alone use them as battering rams, it was hopeless.

She slumped her back against the wall, bent her knees, and shoved as hard as she could, walking backwards like she was pushing a boulder. All it produced was a weak grunt and more splinters in the bottom of her feet from sliding across the wood floor. Infuriated, exhausted, and afraid of never leaving the hell pit where she had already died a thousand times, she rounded her back and slammed it against the wall, over and over, until she thought her bones might crack.

There were baboons that, trapped and petrified, would heave themselves against the inside of their cages, essentially bashing their own brains in attempting to escape. As Olivia threw herself into the wall, a silent enraged scream on her lips, she knew how those desperate primates must feel, preferring death to whatever Man had in store for them. "Let me out, you f*cking bastards," she tried to shout, her voice crackling and popping like a scratchy old record. She turned and pounded on the nonexistent door, her fists and her mind gone numb with the effort.

How long she stood there raging at an invisible enemy, she couldn't say. When she finally came back to herself, she had sagged to the floor in a broken, sobbing heap and she stayed like that for a good, long while, too emotionally and physically spent to resume her search for a way out. It was a waste of energy, anyway. She needed to conserve her strength for whatever came next. Whatever Man had in store.

"But I just wanna go home," she whispered, gazing at her surroundings as if she were the shell-shocked survivor of a bomb blast. Her eyes fell upon the wall opposite the desk and she felt a wave of revulsion so strong, she almost doubled up with it. That was where the Kid's imaginary studio audience resided, and he had spoken to them so convincingly throughout the rape, Olivia had begun to think someone actually was watching the whole thing.

Maybe there were more of the traffickers watching from a peephole she couldn't make out or, more likely, another location, which meant a hidden camera. Maybe her buyer wanted video beforehand to be certain of what he was purchasing, like a horse being sold across seas. The thought was too awful to entertain—she would rather be dead than know that some asshole watched her being raped, and probably got off on it—and she pushed it away.

Sitting up and taking a guarded breath that still made her wince, Olivia instinctively reached to smooth back her hair, a habit she had acquired young because her heavy locks got in the way of most serious undertakings. She gasped and jerked her hand back when she felt how much of the hair was gone. Since that offhand remark of Amanda's that made her decide to grow out her shoulder-length mane three years ago, she had only gotten the ends trimmed every few months to keep it looking sleek and healthy.

The now missing braid was the longest her hair had ever been, and it was one of the few physical aspects of herself that Olivia had felt true confidence in. She'd thought that was gone forever after Lewis, when the hair was just a reminder of him grabbing it, dousing it, rubbing himself off in it. But Amanda had loved it so much, touching it with an almost reverence in those early months of their relationship—and often still did, especially after treating it less than gently that awful New Year's Eve the year before last—that it became healing. Amanda had healed so many of Olivia's hurts, and not just the ones from Lewis.

Fighting back tears at the loss of something so meaningful, to her and to her wife, she raked her fingers through the strands that were now well above her shoulders and dragged herself to her knees. It took several long, arduous moments and several painful and unsuccessful attempts, but she eventually made it onto her feet. She hadn't a clue where she was going until her feet were taking her there.

The Sandman had cut her braid with his vorpal little knife going snicker-snack, that she recalled with absolute clarity. Perhaps the men had gotten sloppy, left behind one of the other implements they had used on her, or threatened to. (Other than the cattle prod that got shoved into her mouth, there had been no foreign object penetration, at least she could say that much.) She wouldn't hold out hope for the knife—Gus didn't forget things—but maybe the prod or the pliers . . . . She could do some damage with either of those, should the men return.

(They would most certainly return.)

There was nothing. Not even the damn spoon she'd watched the Kid use to crush up their drugs. The most lethal-looking item she saw among the plentiful garbage she nudged aside with her feet was a plastic fork with the middle tines broken, so that it resembled vampire fangs. She couldn't bring herself to search the desk drawers, or even get very close to the metallic carcass itself. She gave it a wide berth, as if she were skirting a sleeping lion.

Nice kitty, she thought, and wondered why such a thing should come to her right then. Just another example of her brain not working properly for the time being, she supposed. Ignoring the strange but familiar phrase, she shuffled over to her last resort—the stained and tattered mattress partially covered in fast-food wrappers and mildewed newspapers. It looked as though black mold had formed on some of the pages, and Olivia tried to guide them aside with her foot without touching the toxic fungus.

The process was slow, and she had to pause and catch her breath every few seconds, but eventually she cleared off the pitiful bed. When she gazed down at it, counting the brown spots (some overlapped, creating an ombré effect) that looked like coffee spills, although they were certainly not from coffee, she couldn't figure out for the life of her why it had seemed like such an important task just seconds before.

Perhaps she had meant to dissect the mattress for one of its springs, the closest thing to a deadly weapon at her disposal. But in spite of its shoddy exterior, the pad was fairly intact and she would have to tear the thing apart with her bare hands to get inside. Then find a way to pry a piece of steel from its frame, not to mention straighten it out so it could be wielded properly. Just thinking about each step left Olivia weary and overwhelmed. Her legs were on the verge of giving out, anyway.

That's when she realized she had cleaned off the bed with the intention of lying down on it. God help her, she was so exhausted that even the mystery crud that darkened the seams in the padding didn't deter her. Lice, bedbugs, fleas, she warned herself, and that didn't dissuade her, either. She was covered in human bite marks, what harm would a few bug bites do?

Before the question had fully formed in her brain, and as she was kneeling on the pad, tugging at one of the threadbare blankets from the bundle she'd kicked aside, half a dozen large co*ckroaches scurried from their disrupted home. Olivia shrank back from the outpouring, her cry of disgust little more than a whistle in her throat. She heaved the blanket edge away from her, retreated to the farthest corner of the bed, and huddled there, watching for the insects as if they might regroup, turn, and attack.

Bugs weren't a particular fear of hers—she didn't like them, but wasn't phobic—but the sight of those skittering brown bodies filled her with revulsion and paranoia that she felt them crawling all over her mostly exposed skin. Her first solo apartment outside of the Siena dorms had been one step above hovel and infested with co*ckroaches. She'd kept shoes by her bed specifically for hurling at the ugly little f*ckers, and after the third or fourth time of waking up to one trundling across her pillow, she had finally complained over the phone to her mother.

"Well, you're not moving back in here, so I suggest you deal with it," Serena had replied bluntly. She never did pull punches where her only daughter was concerned. "You're a grownup now, Olivia. You can't just depend on Mommy to take care of things for you anymore."

When have Ieverdepended on you for anything?Olivia wanted to shout. She had stared at the handset in disbelief, thought about slamming it down on the cradle and never speaking to the boozy, slurring old bitch again. Instead, she'd forced a tight smile and replied, "I know, Mom. Just thought I should tell you in case a few of the really big ones carry me away in the night."

Yeah, like five of them. And oh, the things they will do to me, Mommy. You can't even imagine. They make Joe Hollister look like the Good Humor man. Isn't that what you always wanted for me? The reason you hurt me, let all those men hurt me—so I would know how it felt? You took away my childhood, my innocence, because he took away your sense of safety, your freedom. Did it satisfy you, I wonder, to get one over on Hollister by abusing his little girl? Does this satisfy you now, Mom, seeing me like this? Is this what it takes to finally give you peace?

"Is it?" Olivia asked aloud, and started at the sound of her own voice.

The roaches were gone, scattered to the four corners of the earth (or maybe just The Box, it was hard for her to distinguish between the two right then), or escaped through some crevice too small to see in the shadows outside the lone tripod light. There must be several cracks, actually; all at once, she could feel the chilly night air seeping into the storage container, grasping at her scratches, burns, and bruises with icy fingers. It had been a mild May, that was true, but it was still springtime in New York. Nights were cold, especially with a breeze coming off the water.

No sooner had she noticed the change in temperature inside the container than she realized she was already shivering uncontrollably. Some of it was the shock of being assaulted and sustaining God only knew what kind of internal damage, but that didn't account for the goose flesh creeping along her bare thighs, snaking up her bare arms. A deep, bone-rattling, teeth-chattering quake went through her, and she knew she was in trouble. Even when she and Amanda had been running for their lives in the snow-limed woods of the Catskills, she hadn't felt the cold so profoundly.

They couldn't mean to leave her there to freeze all night, could they? Just as the thought crossed her mind, her eyes fell on the bucket and the insidious dark stains where the wood had rotted around it; she looked at the desk with its lame legs that put it slightly off kilter; she looked at her own legs, the thighs streaked with blood and forming dark, finger-shaped bruises, the crotch of her bedraggled panties wet-black with a smattering of crimson stars.

Of course they meant it. Some of the threats might have gone unfulfilled, but for the most part, they had kept their word about what they planned to do. What frightened her most about that was the threats to her wife and children. Amanda would take every precaution to keep their children safe, the men would not get to them (would they?). But Amanda herself . . .

Pained by all the awful possibilities that came to mind, Olivia couldn't finish the scenario. She would rather spend the rest of her life here, passing each day in the same manner as this one, than have Amanda go through any of the tortures she had experienced over the past few hours. But God, the thought of being trapped inside The Box for another hour, let alone days, was too much to bear.

She told herself to get up and move, to keep warm by searching for a way out—battering the goddamn doors down with one of the heavy-looking tripod lights, if nothing else—and when she found it, to run. To never stop running until she was back with her family, back in Amanda's arms.

Then she saw Amanda up ahead, laughing with the kids, capering with the dogs, and waving for Olivia to join them. She was wearing a dress Olivia had never seen before, long and flowing like her unfettered blond hair. The strands shone gold in the sunlight, and as Olivia drifted to sleep on a filthy mattress on the floor of a large metal box, her hand slid into Amanda's inside the dream, fitting like a glove.

Together, they strolled home in the endless spring sunshine.

. . .

Chapter 17: Hello From the Other Side

Chapter Text

Chapter 17.

Hello From the Other Side

. . .

It was a silly song and one Amanda didn't know all the lyrics to, but she warbled it at the top of her lungs anyway, just to get a rise out of her wife and kids: "We'll sing in the sunshine, we'll laugh every day . . . Oh, something-something the sunshine, then I'll be on my way . . ."

"I will literally pay you to stop," Olivia said, cringing as if she'd heard nails slashed across a chalkboard. She cupped a hand over Sammie's tiny ear, the other side pressed to her shoulder. "You're scaring the children."

"Hush up, you love my voice," Amanda countered in a lofty, self-important tone, though she knew for a fact it was true. Olivia often turned down the radio in favor of hearing Amanda's rendition of whichever track was playing. And the kids requested Mama songs all the time. As a matter of fact—

Amanda looked back at the path where, moments before, Noah and Jesse had traipsed along behind their meandering mothers, flanked by both dogs and chattering happily about some musical they couldn't wait to see. The little group was gone now, which seemed odd since they were walking through the park and the kids (and dogs) knew to stay within eye- and earshot. They must've gone home, she thought, satisfied with the conclusion.

"Looks like it's just you, me, and the babi—" She turned to Olivia, only to discover her arms empty, Sammie Grace no longer cuddled to her chest. Even the pink Carter's blankie that was draped around the baby had vanished into thin air. Something wasn't right here . . .

"Mama, I'm cold," said Tilly, the one child who remained. Indeed, her little hand felt like an ice cube in Amanda's, and when Amanda glanced down to check on her, she recoiled from whatever it was that walked beside her. Itlookedlike her Tilly-Billy, sounded like her too, but the skin was a lurid shade of blue—it resembled the floaters who occasionally bobbled up in the Hudson—and the features were much too congealed, as if they were molded from wax.

The Tilly-Thing gazed up at Amanda with sightless, socketless eyes. "I want to go home. Carry me?"

It took all of Amanda's strength not to fling her daughter's hand away, grab Olivia's, and get herself and her wife as far from the child-shaped abomination as possible. "S-sure, peanut," she stammered, then bent to scoop the little girl into her arms. It was Matilda, after all; the sweetest little angel God ever put on Earth. (If Amanda believed in such things anymore. She couldn't remember why she did not.)

But when she stood, her arms were empty. The monstrous imitation of Tilly had disappeared, leaving behind nothing but blue vapor that winked out like a candle flame. "Where'd she go?" Amanda asked, then noticed Olivia walking ahead. She trotted to catch up, the sack of bagels in her hand extraordinarily heavy. "Liv, wait up! You didn't eat anything yet. Here, have one of—"

Suddenly, Olivia rounded on her, dark eyes flashing, dark hair fanning around her shoulders. It continued twirling, even when she didn't, and the strands were so long they wrapped around her neck like a maypole. Or a noose. "You let them take her," she accused, the fluffy clouds transforming to black thunderheads behind her. Lightning split the sky. "You were supposed to protect her! Why didn't you protect her, Amanda? She's so alone. Do you even care?"

The storm had whipped itself into a frenzy, threatening to destroy everything in its path, but somehow Amanda withstood the powerful wind, the pelting rain. It tore at her clothes one minute, plastered them to her body the next. Olivia only wore a soiled white t-shirt and a pair of ragged black panties. She must be freezing.

"Of course I care," Amanda shouted above the freight-train roar of thunder. "I'm sorry, Liv. I do care!"

"Then do something, goddammit."

"I will," Amanda mumbled, jerking from sleep at the sound of herself talking in the empty room. The only other occupant was the digital image of Olivia, curled up in the fetal position on a disgusting mattress, that filled the laptop screen. Amanda gasped, her head shooting up from the table, where she had rested it moments ago—except, checking the clock on the wall, she saw that three hours had passed—planning to watch Olivia's fitful, shivering slumber.

The captain had lost her battle with consciousness late the night before, drifting off while she was still seated upright. She hadn't even gotten the chance to cover up with the sorry excuse for a blanket she'd scrounged from the junk around the bed, once the bugs fled its folds. Instead, her head lolled the way Jesse's and Matilda's had when they fell asleep in their highchairs, her arms snapping out to catch her each time she leaned too far sideways. Amanda had yearned so strongly to guide her wife into a restful repose, she physically ached inside.

After a while, Olivia found it for herself, wilting bonelessly onto the mattress like one of those clocks in the Salvador Dali painting. Only, you couldn't see a clock's breath as the night drew on, or see its teeth chattering while it huddled into a ball, trying to find warmth. Amanda had willed her over and over to reach for the blanket—it wasn't the time to be squeamish of bugs—and finally, sometime after two in the morning, Olivia had felt around blindly for the ratty old thing, pulled it over herself, and slept again. It looked like she was covered in a morgue sheet.

That was around the time Amanda realized she hadn't peed in over fifteen hours, and hurried to the bathroom, doing everything one-handed as she watched the live feed from her phone in the opposite hand. Fin hadn't said a word, just followed her with sad, tired eyes as she came and went. She thought about telling him to go home to Phoebe, but why should he get to crawl into bed and hold his sort-of wife while Amanda had to watch hers probably dying of hypothermia or internal bleeding? Maybe both.

Now it was 7:30 AM, and Amanda had broken her promise not to leave Olivia alone for even a second, even if she was asleep and there was nothing else to be done right then. Angry that Fin, whom Amanda had asked to wake her if she started to doze, hadn't kept up his end of the bargain, she grabbed for her phone and fired off a snippy text:

Thnx for letting me go to sleep, Sarge. V. restful. She wake up at all? Any word from Kat & the Fed?

She noticed that the cell battery was low (not in the red yet, but less than thirty percent) and would need to be charged soon. More than likely she had an extra charger in her desk or locker, but she went through those things the way Jesse went through bobby-pins. A few short steps away, she was guaranteed to find a spare power cord—probably several, color coded and folded up neatly with rubber bands cinched around their middles—in Olivia's desk drawer. Amanda loved to tease her that the desk was her equivalent of Mary Poppins' carpetbag.One of these days you're gonna pull a penguin in a bow tie out of there, aren't you?

Then yesterday, instead of rummaging through a magical desk, Olivia had been raped on top of one.

It still didn't seem real or possible. The revelation from Dana Lewis that Declan Murphy might somehow be involved only made the whole situation even more surreal. Her brain wouldn't accept the information at first, but it had begun to make a strange and terrifying sort of sense the longer she let it sink in. She had known something was off about Murphy that February seven years ago, when they had hauled him in as a sex trafficker after nearly blowing his cover at a Super Bowl party fueled by sex, drugs, and underage girls.

Not only were the girls full of stories about the man they called Lucky (as in Charms, because most of them were too young and uneducated to recognize an Irish accent, outside of the one belonging to a cartoon leprechaun), who they claimed had pimped them out and in some cases, raped them himself, but Murphy had been far more intense than Amanda remembered from his turn as SVU commanding officer. She'd briefly wondered if he was hooked on one of the hard drugs that got passed around like candy by the men he was emulating, but outside of demanding a urine sample for drug testing, she wouldn't have gotten an answer.

Honestly, she hadn't wanted to know. She had still been coming off the Patton trial and the emotions and self-loathing it dredged up, plus getting back into the swing of things at work after the Joyful Heart Foundation yoga retreat Olivia had encouraged her to take. She might have overstated her recovery a little upon returning, but she had so wanted to see that pride on Olivia's face to hear that she was trying. And when she had it—when the sergeant smiled at her over their diner coffees and congratulated her on a job well done—then Amanda had known for sure what she'd started to suspect while meditating on the summit of that Costa Rican volcano: she was in love with her boss.

Of course, she had denied it and buried the feelings deep, never expecting all the disastrous and dangerous ways they would resurface until she finally let them out. One of those ways had been falling into bed with Murphy, whom she didn't love, care about, or even particularly like. He was a warm body when she couldn't have the one she really wanted. Olivia had been a new mother, her attention divided between Noah and work (and God help Amanda, she had resented that little baby for a while for stealing Olivia's focus), and didn't have time for a relationship. But Lord, she looked damn good during that Super Bowl sting, and Amanda had needed to scratch that itch.

Nine months later she had Jesse and wouldn't change that for anything in the world, but she had chosen to overlook some major red flags from Murphy back then, she saw that now. Stupidly, she'd told herself it was just his bad boy UC persona that attracted her, and she wouldn'treally get excited by the prospect of sleeping with someone like that. Someone Olivia would disapprove of so heartily . . . Someone who would disappear back into the ether, never to be heard from again . . . .

Her need to rebel, to fill the emptiness inside herself with meaningless sex, and to get Olivia's attention, had caused this. She was the reason her wife was shivering on another bed, in another monster's lair, after the most brutal and sustained gang assault Amanda had ever seen. It was unfathomable. It made her wish she were dead.

And it wasn't over. A new day had dawned outside the interview room window, as bright and lovely as the day before, and that meant the men had gotten a full night to rest and recharge for their next visit with Olivia. Amanda found herself hoping they had more women to torture, just so they wouldn't have time to spend the day with her wife again. The thought was so shameful and so all-consuming, a vibration from her phone sent her pulse through the roof, as if it were a gunshot rather than a text message.

Looked like u needed it. I kept watch. She's been in n out, mostly out. K + fed still trying to crack Vaughn. IP a no-go. Lewis tracking Murphy.

And a second later:

U should eat.

Amanda squeezed her phone, fighting the urge to hurl it across the room at the one-way mirror. At first glance, she'd mistaken the Lewis in that sentence for William Lewis, not Dana. And what good were the feebs if they weren't capable of tracing an IP address, for Christ sakes? Amanda had done it many times, and when she couldn't, she damn well found another way in, even if it meant breaking down the door herself.

She didn't want any goddamn food, either. How was she supposed to stomach anything, knowing that Olivia hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours? If she had to fast until the captain was returned to her, then so be it. But oh God, oh Jesus—

Sammie. Amanda couldn't remember if her baby (our baby) had enough milk in the fridge for another full day. She thought so, but if this nightmare stretched on any longer than that, she might need Lucy to bring the baby to the precinct for feedings. She had the pump, and there were plenty of officers she could send out on milk delivery duty—the kids were not to set foot inside the precinct while Olivia was plastered on every monitor, not even baby Samantha—but Amanda didn't want to risk losing that connection with her youngest daughter. It was so important to Olivia.

Deleting the text she had already started (Not hungry), she thumbed inI need the spare to Liv's officeand sent it to Fin. He showed up a few moments later, dangling his copy of the key Olivia kept on a keychain with Matilda's old teether and the peach charm she had bought during a bathroom break in a Georgia gas station. Amanda's knees were bouncing anxiously as she glanced between her dwindling cell battery and the computer screen. "'Bout time," she muttered, standing and swiping the key from the table when Fin slid it across.

Fin ignored the remark, nodding at the door that joined the interview room to Olivia's office. "Whadda you need? Something I can get for you?" He was eyeing her hands, which tremored while she tried to fit the key into the doorknob, its teeth skidding from the slot with each jab. She nearly lost her grip on the phone, turned sideways to view the livestream in full screen.

Rattled by the close call and frustrated that she couldn't even open a damn door, she threw back her head and released a sound that was part scream, part growl through her clenched teeth. "I just need a f*cking charger for my phone, is that too much to ask?" she said, looking up at the ceiling as hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. She was addressing a god she didn't believe in again, but at the same time, there was nowhere for her anger at him to go if he didn't exist.

The quandary made her brain hurt and only added to her exhaustion. Bringing her head forward against the door with a soft thump, she slapped the palm holding the key against the wood and cried in earnest. "Is that too goddamn much to ask?"

"Nah, it's not. Here, give it to me. I'll get you a charger, Amanda." Gently, Fin removed the key from beneath her palm, turned her by the shoulders, and urged her back toward the table. (It reminded Amanda of a father sending his daughter off to bed, and that made her cry harder.) "Go on and sit down."

She wanted to protest, to say that she didn't need him to baby her, but he had the door open now, and even just the smell of Olivia's office—that cinnamon potpourri the captain liked, something floral,her—was too much. Amanda backed away, unable to look inside and not see her there. Instead, she returned to her seat at the table just in time to see what appeared to be sunlight streaming over Olivia from somewhere off camera. For a moment, she wondered if there was a window Olivia had overlooked during her search for a way out last night, but the sound of plodding footsteps on the floorboards stopped Amanda's heart.

"No," she exhaled. She swiped the moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand and leaned in, anticipating which one of the men would appear on the screen. (Please, not all of them again.) "No, no, no, no, no. Wake up, Liv." He had sidled right up to Olivia's bedside, and stood above her, gazing down with his head tilted to one side like he was studying an ant hill, teeming with activity, that he planned to stomp on with his heavy boots.

Nicholas Angelov, the one they called Angel. The one Amanda called evil incarnate. It was impossible to measure the cruelty of Olivia's five attackers and label one the worst, but if they were arranged on a pie chart, Amanda had no doubt Angel's slice would be the largest. He had been the one to enjoy hurting Olivia the most; oh, Riva and Sandberg Jr. had their fun, the special needs boy emulated what he saw, and Gus didn't even consider Olivia to be human. But Angel.

His objective was pain. Amanda got the distinct impression that the only thing he would prefer to do more than rape Olivia was kill her. That was the look he gave the sleeping captain now as he drew back a boot and drove it soundly into the mattress, just inches from where Olivia's dark head lay, hair fanned in uneven hanks around her. "Wake up, puss," he announced loudly, nudging her with the toe of his kicking boot. "Time for kitty to have her morning cream."

Cold, stark terror clutched Amanda's heart in its icy fist when her wife didn't immediately stir. Covering her mouth with both hands, prepared to scream into them if Angel rolled the body on the mattress over to reveal that Olivia was dead, Amanda instead choked out a sob. Groggy and disoriented, but very much alive, Olivia struggled to open her eyes and keep them open. She squinted at the man looming over her as if she had never seen him before. "Wha?" she rasped in a voice so thin Amanda could just barely hear it through the speaker. It sounded like the grooves that hissed at the end of a record.

As much as Amanda wanted Olivia awake, the fear of what Angel had planned made her wish the captain had stayed asleep. But it was too late now; the man crouched down beside the bed, his numerous piercings glinting in the sunlight that streamed in through whatever entrance he'd left open. (It wasn't underground, then, and the beams didn't waver, so they weren't on the water, either.) Sneering his silver-toothed sneer, he surveyed the scrap of blanket Olivia had huddled under all night.

"I don't remember anyone giving you permission to use that," he said, poking his finger into one of the holes probably chewed out of the material by mice. The damn thing resembled, in size and condition, the scraggly old baby's blanket Frannie had slept on while being crate trained, and still wouldn't allow to be thrown away. "Your little co*ckroach friends tell you it was all right?"

"I-I was cold," Olivia said, shying from the touch on the blanket. She forced herself fully awake, attempting to sit up, but making it no further than lifting her head and dropping it back again. The moan she exhaled was so weak it barely made it past her lips, and she winced as if even that small effort caused terrible pain. Her eyes remained squeezed shut while she breathed through it, mentally preparing to try again.

Before she got the chance, the platinum-haired monster squatting at her bedside grabbed the blanket and yanked it off of Olivia. He twirled it like a matador cape, making her flinch and cower from the flapping overhead, then flung it aside in a tangled heap. "You're cold?" he asked in a pouty, mocking tone. He reached for his zipper with the hand not holding the bottled water and another object Amanda couldn't identify. "I know just how to warm you up, little kitty. Why don't you turn over—"

That lit a fire under Olivia and she rolled onto her elbow, heaving herself forward with it, at the same time rocking upward and onto her backside. It all happened in slow-motion, her movements stiff and disjointed, and when she scuttled backward in a crab walk, she only found enough strength to reach the corner of the mattress. Dropping heavily onto her rear, panting as if she'd jogged up several flights of stairs, she gave her badly disheveled head an adamant shake.

"Not cold," she husked, speaking at the loudest volume she seemed able to produce. Still no more than a harsh whisper. It sounded like she was wearing a tracheostomy tube.

Despite the assertion, she was trembling violently and kept tugging on the hem of her t-shirt, trying to hook it over her knees to prevent Angelov from seeing anything tantalizing. The shirt wasn't stretchy or baggy enough to provide adequate coverage, and each time she pulled it down, the V-neck exposed more of her breasts. Even over the livestream, her dusky-rose nipples were visible beneath the veneer of the thin shirt. Angelov grinned luridly at her losing battle.

"That's not what them big titt*es are telling me," he said, with a pointed glance at Olivia's chest. He took a handful of his crotch and shook it at her, as if wielding his erect penis. "Unless you just didn't get enough of my wood yesterday, you filthy slu*t. That it? Finally got a taste of some real meat, and now it's what you crave, huh?"

Anxiously, Amanda twisted the wedding ring on her finger, turning the gemstones inward to dig into her palm as she made a fist and brought it down hard on the table. "Motherf*cker," she said in a vicious whisper, angry tears pricking her eyes. If she ever got her hands on Nicholas Angelov, she would show him exactly what they did down South with live meat. Mountain oysters were a goddamn delicacy, served at many a Rollins family reunion.

"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Fin, striding back into the room at a speed he reserved for emergencies only. A power adapter dangled from the neatly folded white cord in his hand, prevented from unraveling by a neatly looped rubber band. He tossed it onto the table and leaned over Amanda's shoulder to see for himself when she didn't answer.

"N-no, please." Olivia hugged the t-shirt to her chest the way Matilda hugged her lovies—any one of a thousand stuffed animals the little girl couldn't sleep without—at bedtime. It left her lower half unprotected, save for the ruins of her underwear, hanging from her hips in starry black shreds. She pinched her knees together awkwardly, resembling a calf whose legs collapsed inward during its first steps. "I don't— don't want that."

"Don't want . . . what?" Angelov turned his head, ear inclined, prompting Olivia for more. As if they already had a rapport, or an inside joke she'd left out.

And the worst part was that she knew exactly what he expected of her. "Y-your big . . . your big, yum-yummy co*ck," Olivia said, mouthing most of it, choking on the rest. She visibly steeled herself for him to lash out at the denial, and reeled back so forcefully she almost toppled over when he threw something at her instead.

The package rolled down her thigh and fell dead on the floor at her knees. She stared at it in horror—and then, growing confusion. Whatever she had expected to find, a snack pack of powdered donuts was not it. She drew her knees aside as if it were a stick of dynamite she didn't want to risk bumping. Amanda couldn't blame her; it felt like a trick, this act of generosity from the man who had also delighted in rubbing his pierced co*ck on every inch of Olivia's body.

If a mangled roll of mini Donettes could be called generous. Amanda ate the things like they were going out of style—especially while she was carrying Samantha—but Olivia seldom did more than kiss the powdered sugar from her lips, with that satisfied littleMmmshe gave even when their kisses weren't laced in confection. She claimed that actually eating the donuts made her teeth hurt. Amanda suspected that meant they were another of the foods Olivia had subsisted on as a kid, when she had to steal food or starve (before the starving was voluntary), and consequently couldn't stomach as an adult.

"I'm not hungry," Olivia said, and though it was a common phrase for her, there was probably some truth in it. Amanda's stomach was so twisted up in knots, her throat so constricted, the thought of food made her nauseated. "May I just have the water?" She gestured warily to the bottle in Angelov's hand, looking as if she was prepared to duck, should he launch it at her. "Please."

Something in the request struck Angel as funny, and he stood to his feet, laughing. "Boss sent me in here to feed you, bitch. Either you eat the donuts or my dick, it's up to you." He twisted the cap of the bottled water, breaking the seal. "Choose dick and I might give you a great big sip first . . . "

Olivia gazed longingly at the proffered drink, but she picked up the donuts instead and tried to peel apart the cellophane sleeve at one end. Neither her fingers nor the wrapper would cooperate, and after wrestling with it for several seconds, the package split partway down the side, expelling the first three donuts in opposite directions. Two landed on the floor, one on the mattress, and a misting of powder drifted into Olivia's lap like snow.

"Spoiled c*nt. Quit wasting food." Angelov wandered around the mattress to inspect the scattered treats. He squished one beneath the toe of his boot, grinding it like a large, resilient bug. He swiped the sole against the floorboards, as if he were scraping off dog sh*t. "I oughta make you eat it anyway."

Thankfully, he didn't, and Olivia knew better than to respond. She took a small, tentative bite of the donut she'd plucked from the package and kept her eyes on it as she chewed, rather than look at the man standing over her. Swallowing appeared difficult and painful, an audible click coming from her throat as she forced the bite down. She chased it with another smaller nibble, then peered sidelong at Angelov's feet.

"Where are we?" she asked, and had to repeat herself when the first try was too rusty. Gingerly, she cleared her throat, though it didn't help much. "Are we still in the City?"

Amanda's heart began to hammer double-time, the blood in her ears matching it, beat for beat. Not for one second did she expect the man to answer, but she doubted Olivia did, either. Asking something like that, on the off chance that pertinent details would be revealed, might mean the captain was aware of the camera. "Good girl," Amanda said, giving the table a punctuating thump of her fist. "Oh, good girl. Tell me where you are, baby."

"What's it to you?" Angelov asked. He motioned at the open entrance and the streaming sunlight. "Planning to run? You won't get very far."

Olivia chanced a look toward the outside, which she had avoided so far. She gulped on donut mush and coughed behind closed lips a few times. "I didn't recognize the dock—"

"Hey." Angelov snapped his tattooed fingers like he was scolding a naughty puppy. "Shut the f*ck up and eat your donuts. You talk about it anymore, I'll put your face through that wall. You'll have a great view, then."

"Of what, shipping containers? Construction?" A smirk was detectable in the remains of Olivia's voice, if not on her lips. The questions were definitely deliberate and, though they weren't much to go on (docks, shipping containers, and construction were prevalent throughout the City), Amanda felt a glimmer of hope at their asking. Triumph, even. Battered and traumatized as she was—bloody and bruised and shuddering convulsively—Olivia was still in there.

But the triumph was short-lived. Angelov moved quickly and savagely, springing forward to snatch the package from Olivia and empty the last two donuts into his hand; he smashed them into Olivia's face, smearing them back and forth like the old pie-in-the-kisser gag from outdated game shows. Ghostly white streaks painted her forehead and cheeks, the crumbly insides of the sweets clumping in her eyelashes and sprinkling down like large, ungainly snowflakes.

The captain took a deep whooping breath through her mouth when Angelov finally gave off scrubbing fried dough and powdered sugar against her lips. She spluttered on the paste it had formed, coughing and wheezing until tears and mucus traced ghoulish tracks down her new mask. She looked like the ashen victim of a volcanic eruption. The dead in Pompeii were forever frozen in similar defensive postures, their faces also twisted in agony and terror. The killer ash and gases of Mt. Vesuvius had nothing on Nicholas Angelov.

"I told you to shut your fat f*cking mouth," he growled in Olivia's ear, a hand clamped to the back of her head to keep her from turning it. He reached out with his free hand and snagged the donut that had fallen on the mattress, threatening to cram it between Olivia's parted, gasping lips. (Water, she mouthed.Water.) "Are you going to quit asking annoying questions and being a mouthy bitch, or do I have to shove this down your throat and get the duct tape?"

Olivia shook her head as best she could with him holding it, her breath coming in fits and starts. "No more," she managed to croak between ragged, racking coughs. A sliver of blood from her split lip stained the powder bright red, and somewhere in the back of Amanda's mind, she remembered a conversation they once had about Snow White and how she'd been conjured with a drop of blood and a mother's wish . . .

Only to fall prey to evil and be sentenced to eternal sleep. And where was her one true love while it all transpired? Watching on a laptop, safe and warm in a police precinct.

"Wat— water." Tears streamed from Olivia's plaintive brown eyes, even larger and darker beneath all the powder, but it was difficult to tell if the moisture was a result of the coughing, the donut crumbs, or the captain's need for: "Water. Please."

"You want this?" Angelov picked up the bottled water he had dropped during the impromptu attack, and trailed the capped end to and fro in front of Olivia. When she nodded eagerly and grabbed for the bottle, he jerked it back and put the cap to his chin for a contemplative pose. "What'll you give me for it? Will you give me a kiss? Haven't been able to stop thinking about those pretty lips of yours since what they did to me yesterday, puss*cat."

"Y-you forced—" The rest was drowned out by another round of hacking, so intense it set Olivia's cheeks aflame behind the powder and doubled her forward, clutching her side. When she peered up at her caretaker again, like a worshipper looking into the face of a terrible, vengeful god, her eyes strayed to the plastic bottle in his hand. She swallowed hard, but could not control the residual coughs that threatened to set her off once more.

"Kiss?" Angelov flipped the bottle impressively around his arm and caught it in his other hand, as if he were flair bartending. The bastard would be coordinated. "Or no kiss, no water? And I tell Gus about the mess you made with your breakfast. He doesn't like it when the girls—"

"Kiss." Olivia's voice was so small. The vowels were mostly silent, the consonants sticking in her throat and needing to be pushed out. Amanda's cousin Mindy had stuttered badly as a kid, and it had sounded a lot like that. Min eventually outgrew it, but how did you outgrow something like this? What if Olivia never did? Lewis had kissed her on the mouth, a detail Amanda gathered (like so many of the details from those dark days) by hearing Olivia talk about it in her sleep. Cry about it, and wake needing Amanda to hold her.

God, Amanda just wanted to hold her.

Nicholas Angelov, good old Nicky boy, sighed as though he had a big decision to make. He regarded the water and then Olivia, his lip curled in that non-smile he wore the majority of the time. "All right, I'll give you one small sip first. You gotta moisten those things up before I'll get near 'em." He uncapped the bottle, but pulled it away at the last second when Olivia leaned in, craning her neck to get at it. "Just one."

Nodding assent, Olivia groped at the bottle with her lips at its approach and gulped down the water as fervently as Sammie on the nipple first thing in the morning. It was the way a lamb suckled, its head tipped back, exposing a vulnerable throat, body poised to follow the food source wherever it went. Unfortunately for Olivia, hers departed much too soon, and she spurted out part of the mouthful she was left with.

"That's more than a sip, you damn camel," said Angelov, eyeing the barely depleted bottle. He shook his head in disappointment, first at the water level and then at the front of Olivia's shirt, stippled with moisture.

"You really want it that bad? More than the kiss?"

It was all too contrived for Amanda's liking. He wouldn't just give Olivia another drink and forget about his bribed kiss, and the captain knew it too. She gazed at him with uncertainty, not answering for several moments. In the end, though, her thirst was greater than her fear. "Yes," she mouthed, and licked her lips in anticipation. She was on her knees, face upturned, every muscle in her body tensed for that next sip. Poor little lamb.

With no more ceremony than a shrug of the shoulder, Angel upended the bottle over Olivia's head, dousing her hair, her face, and her t-shirt in a few expert flicks of the wrist. He snapped the leftover droplets at her like a priest dispersing holy water during an exorcism. Having grown up Southern Baptist, Amanda was more acquainted with the laying on of hands to get the demons out—and he did that, too.

Before Olivia had caught her breath, torn away by the cold deluge of water, Angelov was on her. He covered her open mouth with his, plunging his tongue so deep she gagged. Her fists went up reflexively, but after pounding and pushing at his shoulders to no avail, she tried to pry his arms from around her. His hands, splayed at her lower back and the back of her head, didn't budge, and she managed only to writhe in his ironclad embrace.

Amanda thought of the footage from wild animal documentaries, where the apex predator set upon smaller, weaker prey, sometimes consuming it in just a few large bites. She often wondered why the film crew didn't intervene on the smaller animal's behalf. What kind of heartless person just sat back and watched something like that? Now she knew that she was no different. When the lion attacked, she watched like it was a goddamned documentary.Sexual Predators in Action: Unrated Edition.

A moment later, Angel pinned Olivia to the floor and yanked down her panties. Then he was raping her again, with so little effort he might have been wrestling a stubborn fitted sheet into place. The sheet crumpled and curled in at the edges and eventually went still beneath him, yielding to his every move, his every thrust. Olivia either couldn't cry out or wouldn't, her silence lasting long after the kiss had ended. She didn't blink once, the muck on her cheeks from the wet powder giving the appearance of strange gray tears. She looked like one of those Mary statues that, according to the religious nuts, wept olive oil. Or blood.

"At least we know she's on a dock . . . somewhere," Amanda said thinly. She had forgotten Fin was still in the room until she noticed his hand on her shoulder, offering awkward pats as Angelov manipulated Olivia to maximize his pleasure. "With shipping containers and construction. That's gotta be helpful, right? You should send out some of those concerned citizens who are just standing around with their dicks in their hands out there to start searching. Make themselves useful instead of beating off to rape p*rn of my wife."

"Amanda. That ain't what they're doing, and you know it." Fin's voice was light, but his hand was heavy and so was the look he gave her. At least it looked that way from the corner of her eye. "Everybody's working hard to find her. And I get it, you're pissed that you can't help. I would be too. You just gotta . . . let us do our thing and trust that everybody out there's giving it their best. We can't search every dock in the city—"

"Why the hell not? And look. Look here at the sunlight." Amanda tapped her finger rapidly against the screen (in the upper right-hand corner, Nicholas Angelov went on f*cking her wife on the wet and filthy donut-strewn floor), leaving a ghost-trail of imprints on the display. They evaporated in front of her eyes. "Can't we . . . I dunno, figure out what direction it's coming from and use that to pinpoint a location? What is that, like a forty-five degree slant, so northeast, which is probably somewhere near Hell Gate—"

"Hey. Rollins. Slow down." Fin gestured as if he were trying to prevent Amanda from speeding headlong off of a cliff, but he didn't return the hand she shrugged from her shoulder. He was acting like she was being irrational, or perhaps a bit manic, and it only made her angrier and more impatient. "I think you need a break from this. Why don't you go get some rack time, come back after you've had a chance to process a little?"

Rather than dignify the suggestion with a response, Amanda remained fixated on the screen, pretending Fin had in fact left the room this time. Angel was finishing with Olivia, tucking his penis into his pants and zipping up as he backed off of her, smiling like a john after a cheap roll in the sack. The captain folded in on herself like the pillbugs Amanda had poked with a stick when she was a kid, flicking them across the yard when she grew bored of their retiring behavior.

"Okay then, will you at least eat something from the vending machine if I bring it to you?" asked the sergeant, refusing to be ignored. As a teenager, Amanda had always gotten pissed when her mother dismissed her attempts at giving the silent treatment and talked to her like they were best friends. She huffed just as deeply now as she had back then. "How about some peanut butter crackers or—"

"Yes, peanut butter crackers are fine, Fin," Amanda said in a loud, hasty tone. She hated losing her patience with him, but at the moment she had a pretty damn good excuse. Olivia's rapist had left her alone again, shutting out the sunlight and taking with him the one source of warmth Olivia had found the night before: the shabby blanket. The captain was curled on her side, underwear still around her ankles. "And a coffee, I need some caffeine."

The dubious expression on Fin's face made it clear he did not agree with that assessment. "You sure about that? You seem pretty wound up as it is. Maybe lay off the caffeine for a while, you think?"

A second before she was about to say no, she didn't think so in the least, Amanda glanced down to see her knees bouncing wildly just below the table, her fingernails clacking like a busy typist's on the arms of the chair. She quieted her hands and her jiggling legs, folding them tightly together in an unnaturally stiff pose. Her posture was never that good at any other time. "Suit yourself. Forget the coffee, forget the crackers. I'll just wait for the next guy to show up and rape my wife, that'll keep me awake as well as the caffeine would."

Unable to tolerate Fin's troubled expression, even though she wasn't looking at him—she felt it boring into the back of her head the longer she sat there—Amanda occupied herself with the charger he had delivered. She could barely make her fingers cooperate enough to untwist the rubber band and let the cord spring free, crimped and unwieldy. It took several tries before she got the connector into the port of her phone, and she had wheeled her chair over to the nearest outlet when Fin finally spoke up again.

"I get that you're going through some heavy sh*t right now, Amanda. And I know you're just trying to hold it together. But I gotta do my job, and part of that is making sure you don't crack up. I'll bring you the crackers and the coffee, but you gotta gimme a reason to let you stay here watching this sh*t, otherwise I'm sending you home. I called someone for you. Either you talk to him when he gets here, or you're out."

"Him who? Did you call Carisi? I said I would—" Amanda sat up from plugging in the adapter and rotated the desk chair to face the sergeant, only to discover he had already gone. Oh well, she was about to lie, anyway. She no more intended to call Carisi now than she had when she first mentioned him as someone who could offer support.

They had a decent friendship since his move to the ADA's office, but their lives had gone in radically different directions these past few years. He was no longer her confidant, and she didn't want him anywhere near this. In some ways, he would always just be the boy with the silly mustache in her mind. Besides, without a badge, there wasn't much help he could offer for a case like this.

There didn't seem to be much help anyone could offer.

"I'll find you, baby," she murmured to Olivia, who had unfurled from her protective ball to pull up her underwear and drag herself onto the mattress. It reminded Amanda of one of her father's old hunting dogs that had gotten hit by a car and dragged itself home, unable to use its hind legs. Daddy had called the poor thing lame and put it out of its misery with a bullet between the eyes. "If I have to search every goddamn dock in the state myself, I'll find you. Just hang in there for me, darlin'."

"Amanda? What did you say?" a confused voice asked, and for a split-second, Amanda thought Olivia had responded to her. Then she realized it was Lucy answering the call she had sent without being fully aware of what she was doing. Maybe Fin was right; maybe shedidneed to talk to someone before she ended up completely losing her sanity.

"Hey, Lucy. Never mind, how are the kids?"

It should have felt good hearing about Noah and Jesse destroying the kitchen to make Sunday pancakes, and Matilda insisting she could change Sammie's diaper herself, but Amanda had to cover her mouth to keep from sobbing as she listened. She couldn't look away from the laptop screen. The mother of her children was seated in squalor, with blood-encrusted thighs, her hair and t-shirt soaked through as she shivered uncontrollably—and in the background, the kids were giggling. ("Is that Mommy or Mama?" Jesse called. "Tell them to come home for pancakes!")

"How's Liv?" Lucy asked in a hushed voice, after shooing the kids into a different room. "Have the kidnappers made any demands or anything yet?"

Only for the heart and soul to be ripped out of me, Amanda thought, stroking the livestream image of Olivia with her thumb. Only for everything that I have, and all that I am, so much of it because of her. Because of who she's made me and everything she's given. That's all.

She didn't say it, of course. Lucy had been told no more than was absolutely necessary for her and the kids' safety: Olivia had been kidnapped by some dangerous people, and no one but NYPD was to be trusted. If Jesus Christ himself came to the door, inquiring about the Rollins-Benson children, Lucy was not to let him in.

Amanda hadn't wanted to frighten the nanny with words like "possible sex traffickers," nor would she ever mention the live broadcast of Olivia's repeated assaults, but the girl was bright and she knew all too well the dangers that came with her bosses' jobs. The fact that she even knew to inquire about the kidnappers' demands proved she had a leg up on the average babysitter.

"There hasn't been much change since yesterday. We're still . . . " Amanda made a useless gesture that the nanny couldn't see or hear. She thought about how in tune she and Olivia were; so much so that Amanda could picture the captain's facial expressions and hand gestures, even when they were speaking over the phone. She knew her wife by heart. "We're still trying to figure out where they're holding her. I'm sure— we'll get her back soon."

A long pause from the other end of the line made it clear the nanny wasn't falling for Amanda's lame, stilted pep talk. But, on top of being a good nanny and savvy employee, the younger woman was also tactful and didn't ask anymore questions. She assured Amanda that there was plenty enough breast milk to last Sammie until the following day, and further plans could be arranged then, if it came to that—and it definitely would not, they both agreed with too much certainty.

"Hey, thanks, Luce," Amanda said, as they prepared to sign off. The kids were giggling in the background again, presumably at Frannie, who sounded as though she had the zoomies. Poor girl hadn't gotten her daily jog yesterday or this morning. "I'll call Daph to help with the dogs. She and Carisi are the only ones—"

"—I'm allowed to let in without a badge," Lucy finished lightly. "Don't worry, Amanda, I know the drill. I promise. Just focus on finding Liv."

The frustration of being able to see Olivia, being able to hear the soft hitches of breath that surely meant she was crying—she had turned her face away from the camera, almost purposely, as if she didn't wish to be seen at such a private moment, as if she sensed how many eyes were on her—but not being able to go to her, tofindher, hit Amanda all at once. "Tell the kids . . . Give them a hug from me and mommy," she said in a strained voice, and ended the call abruptly.

Releasing a shaky breath, she tried all the tricks to stave off the tears: deep, calming respiration, looking skyward and fanning her bottom lashes, snapping her wrist with the rubber band from around the phone cord. She cried anyway, a brief torrential downpour amid the hurricane of emotions that had been raging over the past twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four hours without Olivia. Maybe only twenty-one or twenty-two at this point, but still too long. It probably felt like an eternity to Olivia herself, stuck in what was essentially a large cell, no windows to provide an estimate of the passage of time. People had psychotic breaks over less, sitting in The Hole and conversing with co*ckroaches just to have the connection to another living being that humans so desperately required.

"Of all the days for you to forget your watch," Amanda said softly, chiding the woman on the screen with fondness, the way she would have—in happier times—if Olivia could actually hear her. She forced a tearful laugh that came out as a nasal whine, and she cut it short immediately. What right did she have to sit around sniveling while Olivia was the one suffering? It wouldn't bring the captain home.

Neither would calling Daphne, but at least it gave Amanda a task and made it feel like she was participating in her wife's rescue. Even if it was only asking the clerk to help with the dogs, that still took some of the responsibility off Lucy's shoulders, in turn giving her more time with the kids and making their mothers' absences less pronounced. With the kids and the dogs taken care of, then Amanda could really concentrate.

She could find a way to get Olivia back alive.

The moment Daphne answered, her tone bright and chirpy, Amanda's throat closed up, eyes brimming with fresh, hot tears. For a moment, she cried soundlessly into the mic, her mouth open wide, the way a heartbroken child cried when their sadness was too big for words, sounds, breathing. She considered hanging up, letting her friend go about her day as if it were any other. As if the world wasn't crashing down around her.

It was too late for that, though. Daphne might be a jokester and a shameless flirt, but she was also perceptive as hell when it came to Amanda. The only person who knew Amanda better was Olivia, and sometimes they were so intertwined with each other it could be difficult to tell where one of them ended and the other began. Daphne had become a sounding board of sorts, able to offer a little perspective when blind love wasn't enough.

"Mandy Lou? What's going on? Are you— I can barely hear you. Hello?"

That stupid nickname succeeded only in making Amanda cry harder, and she held the phone away from her mouth, unable to respond. She must have made more noise than she thought, however, because Daphne's pitch suddenly rose by an octave and something clattered in the background as if it had been dropped or flung aside. "Amanda? Honey, are you crying? What's wrong? Oh my God, is it one of the kids? Is it the baby?"

The other woman's mounting panic had a reverse effect on Amanda, calming her enough to take a stuttering breath and find her voice under all the emotion that had choked it out. "Not the kids, Daph," she said, stuffy and waterlogged. She sounded as if her lungs were full of sea water. Come to think of it, watching Olivia be tortured, watching her weep—cold and alone, half-dressed and hurting—was like drowning on dry land. Being waterboarded couldn't be any worse. "It's Liv. She's . . . something real bad happened. I can't— oh, Daphne, it's so bad."

"Oh, God. No, no, no. Not Liv. What happened? Is she—" On the opposite end of the phone, Daphne's breath caught audibly. The connection she and Amanda shared went both ways, and Amanda knew that light gasp had prevented the clerk from asking if Olivia was dead, like Meredith. "Is she hurt? Are you at the hospital?"

"She's hurt." God, she was so horribly hurt. Amanda pressed her palm to the MacBook screen, covering Olivia's hunkered form, and bowed her head. The televangelists that seemed to be required viewing in the South, and who were as prominent as Fresh Prince or Zack Morris in Amanda's childhood television experience, had always encouraged the audience to stretch their hands towards the TV during prayer.

She'd tried it once, begging Jesus to make her daddy stop hurting her mama. Dean had sent Beth Anne to the emergency room the next day. Amanda didn't pray now, at least not to Jesus. To Olivia she silently promised,I'll find you.Please don't give up,I'll find you.

"She's hurt, but we're not at the hospital," Amanda said, wondering why her voice was so flat, then realizing her head was still bowed, eyes closed.

It would have been nice to stay like that forever, to drift off and wake in a few hours to find this was all just a dream—Olivia smiling at her from across the pillow, calling her sunshine, even though she was anything but in the morning. Instead, she opened her eyes in time to see her wife slowly limping toward what looked like the edge of a bucket in the corner of the screen. Partial view or not, it didn't take a genius to figure out what the receptacle was for, especially when Olivia clapped a hand over her nose and mouth, as if she were about to be sick.

"Why aren't you at the hospital? Where is she? Amanda, you're scaring me. Where's Liv?"

The captain turned away from the rancid bucket, squatted over it, and hissed loudly through her teeth as she released a brief stream of urine. Most of it took place off camera, just the sound effects and peripheral glimpses of movement telling the story. Apparently none of the men had a bathroom fetish, thank God.

"I don't know where she is," Amanda said, interrupting another barrage of frantic questions from Daphne. "Some guys jumped us on our way home. They took her. They just . . . took her right out of my arms."

Not entirely accurate, but that was how it felt. It was bereavement; Amanda was utterly, unimaginably bereft. ("Ow," Olivia cried under her breath, though she was alone. She couldn't even bear to hear herself reacting to the burning pain. Amanda knew it from giving birth to Samantha; it had hurt to relieve herself for weeks after.)

"What? Oh my God. What guys?" Static crackled on the line as if Daphne were on the move.

It crossed Amanda's mind to lie, to downplay the urgency of the situation and spare her friend the awful details, but she wouldn't minimize Olivia's experience that way. And Daphne was a grown woman who worked in the family courts and heard her share of stories about trafficked kids. She often asked Amanda how she dealt with similar cases day in and day out.

Someone's gotta help them, Daph, was Amanda's usual response.I just try to remember that I get to go home to my family after, and I thank the Lord they're all safe.

"There's a group of them." A heaviness settled over Amanda as she said the words. It was difficult to hold her head up, let alone speak. She felt like she could sink into the earth, become part of it—that field of ripening grain from the poem they recited at funerals. What a load of bull that was. Dead was dead, pretty lies didn't change it. "Five . . . so far. They're— they're traffickers. I think they took Liv as some kind of payback for me. For mistakes I've made."

A lengthy pause. Then: "Traffickers? You mean, like, the sex trade?"

"Yeah. That's what I mean. They're recording what they're doing to her. Sent— sent me the link so I could watch." Amanda's vision shimmered, her throat clenched. Olivia was shuffling from one wall to the next, holding her lower abdomen, wincing with each step, and searching again for some way out. Trapped in a box, probably bleeding internally (certainly externally), and brutalized beyond belief, the captain was doing more to aid in her own rescue than Amanda was, just sitting here wringing her hands. If she didn't get out of this room soon and do something to help, she really would lose her mind.

The thought instantly filled her with guilt. She could leave her cage, but Olivia couldn't leave hers; she could call a friend for help, but Olivia had no one. Even the co*ckroaches were long gone.

"—terrible. Are they . . . " Daphne didn't know how to ask the rest. As open and honest as their friendship was, Amanda still hadn't told the clerk about Olivia's multiple assaults. In fact, the only other person she had revealed them to was her therapist. She talked about them more and in greater detail than her own assault, or so Dr. Hanover had pointed out during a session.You seem to have a more vivid image of your wife's traumatic experiences than your own. Why do you think that is?

Gee, doc, I don't know, maybe because that's the nature of trauma—the not remembering. Amanda hadn't said it. Hadn't wanted to "explore" why she was so keen to unravel Olivia's issues, to replay the captain's worst moments over and over again, but barely acknowledged Atlanta, Patton, Daddy, or Mama. They had long ago forgiven each other for that awful night of Amanda's relapse, but sometimes Olivia's small, tearful words still haunted her:I think you like me a little broken.

Was that why she had let this happen? Did she need Olivia to be hurting and dependent on her in order to feel secure in their relationship? But God, no, not like this. Sheneverwould have wished for something like this to make Olivia need her.

"Amanda?"

"Yes, they're . . . assaulting her. They— they were with her for hours yesterday. And one of them came back a little while ago." Amanda longed to get up and pace the room, as Olivia was doing on screen, but the cord to the phone charger didn't stretch that far. It was as though everything she touched had conspired to keep her and her wife apart. "They're breaking her in for someone who wants to buy her, they said. They cut her hair, Daph."

Why that should be the part of the attack she focused on, out of all the sad*stic things the men had done, and why it should be that detail that made Daphne burst into tears, Amanda didn't know. But the image of Gus Sandberg sawing off Olivia's braid and saying it would be a good souvenir for her wife was seared permanently into Amanda's brain. It raised a question she didn't want answered: what would the Sandman decide to cut off next?

"Oh, 'Manda, I'm so sorry. Oh my God, you have to find her." There was more, but it was unintelligible as Daphne cried with a fervency she normally reserved for laughter. She could be difficult to understand then too, racked by giddy, breathless amusem*nt rather than the sobs that came through the phone now.

Somewhere amid the emotional outpouring, Amanda detected the name Mere, and then she understood why Olivia's hair being cut off bothered her friend so much. Meredith Ashton's gray, eyeless face and beautiful shorn locks had waited behind Amanda's closed lids for weeks after that night in the Catskills. It was still just below the surface for Daphne from the sound of it. "Why? Who would do that to you guys?" asked the clerk, swiping loudly under her nose. "Who'd want to hurt Liv like that?"

The father of my child, Amanda thought, unable to say the words out loud. And a woman whose baby I threatened to shoot. Either or, take your pick.

Maybe if she didn't put it out there, it wouldn't be true.

"I don't know for sure," she said, trying not to lie to her friend. Lies had gotten her here—gotten Liv into the hellhole she couldn't find a way out of, no matter which wall she pushed on, or rested her head on and cried—in the first place. Lies, gambling, and meaningless sex: a trifecta of vices that earned Amanda this grand f*cking prize. "I've put a lot of people behind bars. Pissed off a lot of folks. There's a couple possibilities we're looking into."

"God. I just . . . I can't believe it's happening to Liv. Are you at the precinct? Should I come be with you or—"

"No. Don't come to the precinct." It was too sharp, but Amanda did want to sugarcoat it and chance Daphne deciding to stop by. The little clerk adored Olivia to the point of worshipfulness, and when Olivia got home (if she gets home, corrected an internal voice Amanda instantly shot dead) she would need someone who still treated her like that; who didn't see her getting piledriven by five men every time they looked at her. "They wouldn't let you up here right now, anyway. Place is full of cops and FBI. You could do me a favor, though."

"Anything."

"Would you go over to my place and take the dogs for a walk or to the park, or something? Lucy's there with the kids, and I don't want her dragging them out if she doesn't have to." Amanda explained about the security detail and why it was safer if the kids were at home. And, when Daphne agreed to look in on the dogs, it was with the stipulation that she behave normally around the children and their nanny, and make no mention of their missing mother.

"I promise," said Daphne, solemnly. "Find Liv, okay?"

"I will. Thanks, Daph."

Staring at her phone for several moments after the call ended, Amanda tried to remember if there was anyone else she should contact. Everyone who worked closely with Olivia already knew more about her abduction than they had any right to, and that also took care of the majority of her friends, other than Daphne. Barba would want to hop the soonest flight to JFK, but he only got to know if Olivia decided to tell him herself. And there was no way in hell Amanda would call Alex f*cking Cabot. The former attorney couldn't possibly have over a million a dollars just lying around—could she?—and even if she did, trying to renegotiate with Gus and his men might get the captain killed.

Suddenly Amanda understood the dilemma her wife had faced after the bank shooting that hospitalized her a little over a year ago. Except, Olivia didn't have an annoying, infuriating mother to reach out to; she had no family to pray for her safe return, to offer assistance in the aftermath, to reminisce with about the good old days—before all the rapes, all the unspeakable sadness. Amanda had never felt Olivia's absence of family as keenly as she did in that moment, holding her phone with no one to call. No one who cared.

"No one who cares," she repeated out loud to herself and sat forward, overwhelmed by a feeling that something was on the tip of her tongue.

No, at the tips of her fingers, not her tongue. She scrolled through the contacts on her phone, heart thudding wildly, until she came upon the number she'd only dialed once in the seven years since it was given to her. Toward the bottom, under M for Murphy. Last time she had tried it, while attempting to contact Declan about signing over his parental rights on Jesse, she had gotten a recording that said the number was out of service. But maybe now . . .

"We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error—"

"f*ck," Amanda exhaled, forcing out the breath she'd been holding in. She jabbed at the screen, ending the call, and let her phone clatter onto the tabletop. It had been a stupid idea anyway. What did she plan to say if he had picked up? Hey, pretty sure you're the kingpin of sex traffickers now, but could you tell your goons to quit raping my wife?

"You okay?" Fin asked, shuffling into the room with a steaming mug in one hand and several bags of chips and crackers clustered in the other, like a food vendor at Yankee Stadium.

"Dandy." Amanda watched him unload the coffee and snacks onto the table, feeling distant and removed from the scene, as if it were just another livestream she was sitting in on. But it must be real, because she could smell the coffee, earthy and piquant, and she felt a pang of hunger as Fin spread out the vending machine fare for a better look.

"Wasn't sure which you'd want," he explained, gazing on intently, as though she were IDing a suspect in a photo array. He had brought every type of peanut butter cracker available—the regular kind, the gross cheesy Keebler ones, and a bag of Nutter Butter bites—and several flavors of potato chips, including sour cream and onion, barbecue, and garden salsa Sun Chips. A pack of Skittles, Amanda's go-to dessert on working lunch days, lay among the selections.

She didn't want any of it, but if it got Fin off her back, she could choke down a few bites. Thinking of Olivia being forced to eat those f*cking powdered donuts, which Amanda loved and ate on the regular, she plucked her least favorite snack from the pile—the peanut butter cheese crackers—and tore open the cellophane on one end. "Thanks," she muttered, nibbling the corner of a cracker she normally would have consumed in two bites. It tasted at least three years old. "Any news?"

"Tamin and Marquez are taking another run at Vaughn. Kat says . . . "

"What?" Amanda glanced up from absently turning the once-square treat between her fingers like a coin (or a poker chip) when the sergeant trailed off. "What did she say, Fin?"

Sighing, Fin swiped up the bag of barbecue chips, split the seal, and began munching. He had never been a stress eater to Amanda's knowledge, but he chewed nervously now, stealing glances at the laptop, and spoke with his mouth full. "She says Vaughn's having fun with it. Pretending she's all innocent and reformed. Acting concerned about you and Liv."

Amanda gave a dark, mirthless bark of laughter. "Please tell me they're not falling for that sh*t. That's what she does—bats those big brown eyes and acts like she's harmless, but she's really the one who's twisting the knife in your back. Even had me feeling sorry for her there for a while." On the screen, Olivia was taking inventory of her injuries, tenderly touching different parts of her body—lips, jaw, neck, ribs, thighs—and wincing away from each, her eyes closed for a long time. She did that when she couldn't bear to look or listen anymore. When it was all just too much.

"Sondra Vaughn is a f*cking sociopath," Amanda said, and tossed the peanut butter cracker onto the table. It cracked down the middle and sputtered out orange crumbs. She reached for the coffee and held the mug at the bottom, letting it burn. "She was back then, and she still is now. Those kinds don't reform."

"Yeah, I know. And so do they, that's why they're still down there grilling her." Fin mulled on one of the aromatic crisps he was shoveling into his mouth from the dwindling bag. Chip shards and barbecue seasoning flecked his goatee and stained his fingertips, but he refrained from licking the latter. "You, uh, you know her kid died?"

The hot sip Amanda was trying to siphon from the mug a little at a time went down all at once, scalding her tongue and her esophagus. Beyond a reflexive cough, she barely noticed or reacted to the pain. It was nothing compared to the pain her wife felt. Olivia couldn't even sit down on the mattress without gasping as if it were a bed of nails she was lowering onto. "What? No. When? I never heard anything about that."

"Couple years. She and her uncle got hit by a drunk driver when the kid was six. Vaughn got more time on her sentence for almost killing another inmate after that." Fin stroked his goatee, not in thought but to shed the crumbs that had accumulated there. He dusted his hands together, sprinkling seasoning on the tabletop, then swiping it absently onto the floor. It was the most nervous Amanda had ever seen him. "She's got a reputation in the prison. You get on her bad side, you're gonna know it. They put her in the high-risk wing, but until she's ruled out as having anything to do with this—" He motioned to the video feed without looking at it. "—they're keeping her in solitary."

"I didn't know," Amanda said hollowly, staring at the screen through the steam from her coffee. It tickled her to no end when Olivia's hot drinks fogged up her glasses, momentarily blinding the captain and making her heave an exasperated sigh. At least it used to. Thinking about it now, Amanda couldn't even crack a smile. "'Bout her kid or any of it. Jesus, six years old. That's Jesse's age. Just a baby."

Fin's hand came to rest on Amanda's shoulder, and she caught another whiff of the barbecue chips he'd inhaled. "Hey. That ain't your fault. There's nothing you could've done about it either way. And it sure ain't no excuse if she's involved in this."

Glancing sidelong at Fin's engagement ring and his gritty, scented fingers, Amanda dropped her shoulder and scooted her chair away from him. "Think I don't know that already? I ain't looking for excuses for that crazy bitch. I don't care what happened to her damn kid. I should've put it down myself when I had the chance."

For several long seconds, Fin remained silent with his hand poised like he was still holding onto her, fingers slightly curled. Finally he balled them in a fist and dropped it to his thigh. "That's just your anger talking. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you'd done that." He sounded as though he wasn't entirely sure if that were the case, and Amanda made no attempt to answer one way or the other.

He was probably right, but at the moment Amanda didn't care about being the bigger person or the mother of an infant who couldn't bear to think about harming another baby. She didn't care about her vow to protect and serve. She was hurting, and if she could have taken something away from Sondra Vaughn—destroyed something the woman loved the way Olivia was being destroyed—she would have done it in a heartbeat. One of the few sermons from Amanda's childhood that had actually stuck was An Eye for an Eye.

"Has Lew— Dana found anything yet?" Amanda asked, when she was sure she could speak again without her voice trembling in rage. Olivia had reached for the plastic bottle Angelov left behind, and she upended it to her lips, trying to drain out any leftover drops of moisture. If she got any, Amanda couldn't tell, and the way Olivia sighed and let the bottle drop to the floor made her think not. "Anything about Murphy or his whereabouts?"

"She's following up on some leads from CIs. Feds have a few in the brothels around town, but you know how it goes with those girls."

Yeah, Amanda did know. They lived fast and died faster, most of them never making it out of the life before drugs or their pimp or a dissatisfied john's temper got the best of them. Five seconds later, a new girl was ready to take the old one's place, and no one ever noticed the difference. They weren't known for their honesty, either, or so Amanda had told herself when five of Timmer's girls had implicated Declan Murphy as one of the men who helped break them in. Their stories had been so similar, it was easy to dismiss them as scripted.

But that didn't explain how or when they had collaborated—they were kept separate after the Super Bowl bust—or why they would single out Murphy, whom they knew as just another pimp and not an undercover officer. Amanda had reasoned that it was like Brian Cassidy being framed for rape by a prostitute whose boyfriend was out for money. If Olivia could believe in Cassidy and support him through all that,andcontinue sleeping with him, why couldn't Amanda do the same thing for Murphy?

She had let her idiotic f*cking hero-worship, not to mention her desire to get laid (and possibly make Benson jealous in the process), blind her to the truth once again. And just look at what it got her. Olivia was shivering harder than ever, her wet hair and t-shirt clinging to her face, her breasts. She flicked the heavy tendrils aside, wincing at the sharp movement, and peeled the shirt away from her chest compulsively. Every effort to huddle into a warm, safe ball was defeated by pain that made her flinch and whimper just tucking her legs in. Eventually she gave up, leaned stiffly against the wall behind her, and shut her eyes to the bleak surroundings—her only escape.

"Rumor is Murphy's in Belarus right now," Fin was saying, a dark quality to his voice and expression. He ducked his head for a moment, averting an intense gaze from the screen. From Olivia. "Dana knows someone in Minsk who might be able to locate him."

"Lemme guess, he's rounding up more girls to ship back to the states and do this to." Amanda nodded dully at her wife and set her mug aside, the coffee nearly untouched. She couldn't stomach it right now. None of it.

"Probably, yeah."

"Jesus Christ, Fin, how'd I miss it? It was staring me right in the face, and I just . . . " Amanda's gesture faded along with the sentence. She was so goddamned exhausted she didn't think she could keep going. Every inch of her body ached, most likely from tension and dropping onto the pavement while being tased the day before—but it was more than that, too. She was feeling Olivia's pain again; that had to be why she felt so bone-weary she could barely hold her head up. Something in her pelvic area burned as if she had a UTI. "Maybe if I'd paid closer attention, none of this would be happening."

"Nah. We all missed it with Murphy." Fin hesitated before softly adding the next part, "Even Liv."

"This ain't her fault," Amanda snapped, turning a ferocious look on her sergeant. Her anger was disproportionate to what he had said, she knew, but she had to let it out somehow. It scorched her insides the way the coffee had scorched her tongue. "Don't you put this on her."

"I'm not. I'm not." Fin's hands went up, palms open and empty, showing he wasn't a threat. It was the way you approached knife-wielding EDPs and snarling dogs. "It's not on her at all. But it ain't on you either, Amanda. You couldn'ta known he'd do something like this. And even if we had thrown his hairy ass in prison back then, there's still a strong chance this would have happened. If Vaughn's involved, she'd have found a way to get to you and Liv, with or without Murphy. Someone else would be running the show, that's all."

That very well could be true, but it didn't make Amanda feel any better—A) because Olivia hadn't dealt as closely with Murphy, and therefore had fewer warning signs to ignore than Amanda did; and B) she was responsible for putting Vaughn behind bars and, in some small way, for the death of the woman's little girl. Any way you sliced it, Amanda had a hand in what was happening to her wife. It was nice of Fin to deny it, but she knew the truth, ugly though it might be.

"Yeah." Amanda left it at that, not interested in hearing him defend her any further. Someone had to be to blame for this ongoing nightmare, and if you really thought about it, she was the common denominator it all came down to. She was the one who put Olivia in the worst danger of her life time and time again.

Just as Amanda was hoping the sergeant would get the hint from her silence and return to the squad room, leaving her to stew and self-castigate in peace, Olivia's eyes sprung open as if she'd just remembered she left the coffee pot running at home. She sat forward and appeared to listen to some distant sound the camera wasn't picking up on. Then she looked directly at the lens, an almost wistful expression on her tired, wan face, like she was preparing for a difficult goodbye.

"What is she doing? Baby, what're you doing?" Amanda asked, her throat tightening and producing a shrill pitch as she watched Olivia struggle to stand, to limp closer to the camera.

The captain still couldn't see a recording device, her eyes scanning whatever concealed it (a wall, Amanda presumed) and straying past the lens several times. Finally she settled on a general vicinity, and spoke. "If anyone's watching this, please send help. I'm in a shipping container. There's . . . so many."

Her voice was gravel and rust, a ring of dark bruises encircling her neck like a dirty noose. Her lips were so dry they were flaking, the split down the middle glistening with fresh blood. She kept both arms crossed in front of her chest in a protective X, hands curved over her shoulders. "Some kind of port near the water, I don't know which . . . " Tears of frustration filled Olivia's eyes and she gazed around helplessly, shaking her head.

"I couldn't see the skyline. There's a construction site nearby." The last part came out rushed, and the captain glanced over her shoulder, eyes gone wide and fearful, as if she expected to see a ghost. Or a sandman. "We went over some bridges. Jersey, maybe. sh*t, they're coming. Please help, I—"

The rest was lost to a screech of door hinges and a flood of sunshine that spilled over Olivia like a holy light from above, blinding her with its glory. The figure that stepped forth from the light, though somewhat reticulan in shadow, was anything but divine; it was that tall, lanky piece of sh*t named Liam Sandberg, and he was carrying the same length of pipe or whatever the thing was that Olivia had been threatened with yesterday.

"Bitch, what the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, his tone harsh but strangely playful. He sounded like he was imitating an abusive husband from some dumb movie, about to yell at his wife to make him a sandwich. He smacked the pipe-thing against his open palm. "You better sit your rank ass down and shut your fat mouth, unless you want another taste of old Sparky here."

Old Sparky wasn't a very helpful description, but the connotations and the pipe-thing's overall shape made Amanda pretty confident she was looking at some sort of jury-rigged taser. It made sense. Little Liam Sandberg liked to shock women, and Amanda had the prong-shaped burns to prove it.

"I know you're recording me," said Olivia, backing away from the younger man too quickly. She bumped into the desk where most of yesterday's assault had taken place, and upon seeing what it was, shrank back from it like she'd wandered too close to a rabid dog. "They'll know where the video is coming from if you put it online. Wouldn't it be better to just let me go, and you can get out of here before they show up?"

Amanda longed to wipe the smug, sh*tty smile off the little punk's face as he taunted Olivia with false starts toward her, stamping his foot and twitching his shoulders while she dodged side to side, ready to flee in the opposite direction from which he came. "They? You still think you got friends out there who will magically appear and save you? Hate to break it to you, honey, no one's coming. No one gives a f*ck about you. If they did, they would've been here yesterday to keep us from doing you raw and nasty. Over and over and over . . . "

"Don't listen to him," Fin said in a low, confidential tone, as if he were interrupting Amanda mid-interrogation. "He's just messing with her head. Wants her to feel hopeless so they can control her better."

"I know that," Amanda said sharply. Did Fin really think that, after all this time, she didn't understand how guys like this operated? Did he really think she wouldn't feel guilty no matter what he said to the contrary? Or that Olivia, alone and terrorized, after so many devastating experiences where no one did come for her, wouldn't believe every single word? "Don't you think I damn well know that?"

Before Fin could respond, Liam Sandberg took a running leap at Olivia, his open plaid shirt billowing out behind him like a cape. Or at least that was how it appeared from the angle of the camera. He had actually pounced on top of the desk in front of her, his checkered Vans squeaking on the metal. He struck a corny surfing pose, and when Olivia stumbled backward in an attempt to get away from him, landing heavily on her rump on the floor, he called out in an equally dumb surfer dude voice, "Whoa, bruh, wipeout. Where'd you learn to hang ten, man?"

If Amanda had her gun and could have shot him dead through the screen right then, she would have done it, no questions asked. Her next best option, besides heaving the laptop across the room, was to slam her fist down on the uneaten pack of cheese crackers, pulverizing its contents. She did it once, twice, three times, four—and on the fifth pounding, when she realized she couldn't stop, Fin cupped a hand over her fist, gently but firmly keeping it still.

"That ain't gonna help her," he said.

Will anything, Amanda wondered. Will anything help her when this is over? She thought she might have said it out loud, but Fin didn't answer, so maybe not. It didn't matter anyway, because this was far from over: the Sandman's son hopped down from the desk (it shuddered like the Tin Man inThe Wizard of Oz) with the heavy, graceless dismount of a clunky teenager, and strode toward Olivia. Seated on the floor, she scooted backward on her hands, dragging her legs as if they were paralyzed, and cringed in agony every inch of the way.

Not that there were many inches to go. A few more, and she was backed against a wall, nowhere else to hide. With a Herculean amount of effort, she forced herself onto her feet by bending both knees and pushing up, her back sliding along the corrugated metal wall. Liam Sandberg watched as if he were impressed by the feat of strength, his head bobbing in approval. He opened his mouth for some sarcastic comment or another, but shut it in favor of staring down Olivia, whose gaze bore through him.

Gradually, his eyes grew wider and wider, until they bulged with fake horror. Then he jerked forward, throwing out his arms and yelling, "RAHHH!" like a kid trying to scare the willies out of someone. A very large, terrifying kid. And it worked—Olivia recoiled the way she sometimes did at the sound of a car horn blaring. Her knuckles clanged on the container wall when she threw her hands back in surprise, but it was Liam who got the real shock of his life when she kicked out at him, connecting high on his inner thigh.

It wasn't his groin, but it was close and he leapt back with a little shriek, clutching at his privates. Olivia wasted no time, skirting past him and hurrying for the open door at the fastest hobble she could likely manage in her condition. Amanda willed her to go faster, to push through the pain and just f*cking run. It was the worst, most selfish feeling she could imagine, to be angry at her wife for not ignoring the probable broken bones, internal injuries, and extensive anogenital tearing that were slowing her down. And yet Amanda wanted to scream at her like Liam Sandberg had:RUN.

Olivia might have made it outside the container if not for Nicholas Angelov, materializing from inside a flare of sun. Ra, an angry god come to earth as man to smite the infidels. He had Olivia in his sights—she stopped short, her gasp an emphysemic wheeze—but it was the other man-monster who, recovered from his close-call, approached her from behind and cracked her skull open.

At least that was how it sounded when Sandman Jr. smashed the taser baton across the back of Olivia's head, sending her sprawling facedown onto the floor. Other than a muffledhmphshe made no sound, though it hurt like hell to watch (even Fin gave a pained hum) and had to be ten times worse to experience firsthand. "Lord Jesus," Amanda whispered, holding the back of her own head. Her brain was on fire. She couldn't survive this. They had just gone for bagels, and now her wife was going to die right in front of her.

"f*ck," Liam Sandberg hollered, landing a sound kick to the middle of Olivia's back when she moaned and attempted to sit up, clutching her head. Laid out flat again, she didn't try to move this time, but the crazy bastard Sandberg pinned her to the floor anyway, one of his Vans planted square on her back. Size twelve, easy. "I was gonna be nice and let you off with a warning, but you had to go and get physical. And trying to run? Seriously? My mentally impaired brother can run faster than you. Learns faster, too. And we never had to beat it into him like I'm gonna do to you."

He raised the baton high, ready to bring it down on Olivia's skull again, in what would surely be the coup de grâce, but Angelov grabbed his wrist in midair. "Easy, junior. You kill her, your daddy eats a mill and probably kills you too. And if he doesn't, I will. You can zap her, you can f*ck her, but you're not beating her f*cking brains in like that other girl. Got me?"

Junior looked like he wanted to be the one who killed Angelov right then, visibly seething as he yanked his wrist free. For a moment, gaze flicking anxiously back and forth between the two men, Amanda was on the demented angel's side. The side of the man who had just raped her wife not twenty minutes earlier.

"Yeah, man, I got you," said Liam Sandberg, laughing off the murderous anger that disappeared much too abruptly. "We're good. We're copacetic. No kitty killy, just zappy f*cky." He took his foot off Olivia's back—she exhaled heavily and coughed, but kept her face turned to the floor, a protective hand splayed behind her head—and he lowered his weapon, gesturing as if it had all been a big joke.

He was still smiling, his eyes empty (those buggy serial-killer eyes), when he jabbed the taser prongs into Olivia's exposed lower back like he was using a trash-picking stick and depressed the trigger. Olivia's entire body jerked and went rigid as the current passed through her, God only knew how many volts flowing out of that modified torture device. Amanda had gotten lucky, the shock she'd received was regulated for use by law enforcement.

Even so, her nerve endings tingled, an odd hot-cold sensation flooding her skin, as she watched the captain convulsing. The sound of the taser reminded her of those outdoor bug zappers that were the soundtrack of her childhood summers, along with cicada song and Dean Rollins' earth-shattering beer belches from the front porch. And Olivia was the pretty brown moth getting fried when she flew too close to the ultraviolet light.

"For f*ck's sake, give her a minute," Amanda said, on the verge of shouting. She wanted to grab the stick and shove it up Liam Sandberg's rapist ass; she watched. "That's too much! She can't handle it, you f*ck—"

Sandberg let up on the trigger and raised the charged end like it was the barrel of a shotgun, blowing across the pronged tip. If there were any kind of justice in the world, a stray current would travel through the mist of his saliva and orally electrocute him, but of course it didn't. There was no justice in this. Even if they got Olivia out of there alive and put all the animals responsible for her abduction and torture in prison, it wouldn't be enough. The men would go about their lives behind bars, probably bragging about the lady cop they did raw and nasty, and their misdeeds would live on forever through the Internet.

The only justice would be in Olivia rising from the floor, where she lay in a limp, motionless heap, wresting the taser from Liam Sandberg, and beating him and Angel to death with it; in her strolling from the shipping container, streaked in their blood instead of just her own, and hunting down the other men, picking them off one at a time; in her return home, resuming normal life, all the while arranging the deaths of Sondra Vaughn and Declan Murphy from behind the comfort of her desk, blameless. That's how it happened in the movies.

You kill 'em all, baby, Amanda urged her wife silently. But Olivia didn't move or make a sound, let alone get up and massacre seven people with her bare hands. The realization—Olivia had been still for way too long—sent a fresh wave of panic through Amanda, and she sat forward, palms flat on either side of the laptop, and strained to see if the captain was breathing. "Is she breathing, Fin?" she demanded, as if her sergeant had some inside information he was withholding. "Oh my God, I can't tell, is she breathing?"

"I don't—"

Olivia answered them with a dry cough when Angelov, holding up his hand to stop Sandberg from dosing her again, nudged her shoulder with the toe of his boot. In spite of the brief sign of life, he wedged the boot under her shoulder and used it to roll her over. "Better ease up for a while," he said, regarding her with a dispassionate eye as she lay there, half-conscious and panting. She moaned at the sound of his voice, but couldn't quite find his face with her wandering gaze. "You probably melted part of her brain with all that juice. Give her some time to recover before you do permanent damage."

"How the f*ck is that fair?" Liam demanded, standing above Olivia on the opposite side and looking down at her with the same cold indifference. They might as well have been examining a dead rat in the subway, arguing over who should pick it up by the tail and toss it in the trash. "You get to come in here and f*ck her skan* ass, but I have to back off? Nah, bro, she needs to learn that, from now on, the only reason she gets to open her big mouth is when there's a dick in it."

That brought Olivia into focus, and she gave another feeble groan, slowly shaking her head as the young man undid his zipper. Her eyes scrunched shut against the sight, reminding Amanda of sweet little Matilda, who thought she was invisible if she closed her eyes during games of hide and seek. Olivia always acted so surprised when the three-year-old, in full view of the seekers, popped open her blue lilac eyes and squealed in delight that she'd tricked her mommies.

Nicholas Angelov shrugged and turned for the exit. "If you're into half-dead bitches sucking you off, go for it. Just don't overdo it and suffocate her. I'm not gonna run back in here to save your ass every time you lose it. You kill her, you're on your own with the Sandy Man." On that note, he ambled out of the shipping container like Alex and his droogs strolling away from a little of the old ultraviolence in A Clockwork Orange.

Heaving a disgusted sigh, Liam cast an accusatory glance at Olivia, as if she were ruining all his fun with her inability to withstand a more sustained torture. "The way my dad talked about you, I thought you'd be something special," he said, lip curled. "But you're as weak and pathetic as the rest of them." He hawked loudly, snorting nasal mucus into his throat, and spat a large wad of phlegm and saliva onto Olivia's chest where it was exposed by her V-neck t-shirt.

Then, almost boredly, he touched the fanged end of the taser to the slimy deposit on Olivia's bare skin, and gave her a short, parting zap. "Don't try talking to the camera anymore, or else I'll come back in here and drill you so hard I'll put a hole in this floor." He booted Olivia's feet aside on his way out, even though they weren't in his path. His whistling trailed from the room, silenced altogether when he closed the doors, blotting out the brilliant May sunshine.

"Oh, Liv," Amanda whispered, touching her wife through the screen. She looked so small and defenseless curled up on the floor like that. Shewassmall and defenseless in that moment. It made Amanda ache, body and soul, to see her so alone, so defeated. The only sign that Olivia was still in there was a trembling hand reaching for a wadded scrap of cloth to wipe her chest. "Yeah, baby, that's a good idea. Go ahead and clean up."

"I'm gonna go back out there and make sure they're looking at ports in Jersey," Fin said quietly.

"By the water. With lots of shipping containers and a construction site nearby." Amanda kept her eyes on Olivia, who made no attempt to move onto the mattress once she had dried off the Sandberg kid's saliva. She merely lay on the floor beside the bed, like she was part of the surrounding trash. Amanda willed her to at least roll over onto the padding, but Olivia didn't budge. "Tell them to hurry, Fin. I don't think she can take much more."

The sergeant looked as though he wanted to say something, but kept it to himself, nodding instead. At least until he made it to the door. "Hey, um, Lindstrom will be here soon, so, uh, just a heads up."

"Lindstrom? Why the hell is he—" Amanda cut herself off, realizing her friend must have called Olivia's psychiatrist—thehimwho Fin had mentioned earlier—in lieu of the vacationing Dr. Hanover. She whirled around in her chair, prepared to tell Fin to call the man back and rescind the invitation immediately; to never presume they were close enough for him to make such decisions for her. But he was already out of the room, headed for the clutch of cops and agents gathered at one of the desks.

"f*cking hell," she muttered, because not only was Fin long gone, but she also spotted Peter Lindstrom wandering into the squad room at that precise moment.

Amanda could count on one hand the number of times she had spoken to the curious little man, though she didn't remember when was the last time she'd seen him in person. His appearance hadn't changed from what she could tell at that distance. He still reminded her of a tortoise without a shell. And now he was toting a leather medical bag like the ones doctors carried in the days when they did house calls.

Christ, Fin, what did you do?

. . .

. . .

Chapter 18: The Sixth Man

Chapter Text

Chapter 18.

The Sixth Man

. . .

To Lindstrom's credit, he was appropriately taken aback when he caught a glimpse of his patient on the screen that Fin and the others were watching. His expression, initially wide-eyed shock (he put a hand over his heart), darkened almost to a glower the longer he stood back and observed. He had a creepy quality that Amanda wasn't fond of, though she couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was, and the glare didn't help. But his reaction made him seem human and proved that he cared for Olivia's welfare.

Amanda still didn't want to talk to him. If she wasn't glued to her seat and determined not to leave Olivia alone, she would have ducked into the captain's office, then continued on to interrogation, hopefully managing to slip out of the squad room entirely. She stayed in her chair, glancing from her wife to the man who was approaching the interview room, after Fin pointed him in the right direction.

"f*ck," Amanda whispered, foolishly, selfishly wishing that Olivia was here with her, to field the psychiatrist's questions and act as a buffer if the interaction got too heated. Ashamed to be putting her raped and battered wife in that position, even if it was an imaginary one, Amanda cast an apologetic look at the laptop.I'm sorry, she mouthed, and stroked Olivia's huddled form with the pad of her finger. The captain was quaking from head to toe again. Amanda longed to pick her up, place her gently on the mattress, cover her with warm—

"Amanda?" The voice from the doorway was level and pleasant, if a bit didactic. It was a voice intended for educational cartoons on PBS; not a Mr. Rogers drowse, but mellow enough for the part of an animated tortoise who carried around a doctor's bag and made house calls.

Amanda missed Hanover already.

"Hey, Doc," she said flatly. Without turning around, she beckoned him in with a salute-like flick of the fingers. "Come to see the show? I didn't figure you for the type to be into torture p*rn. Guess you never can tell about some folks, huh?"

The man didn't respond—the comments were rhetorical anyway—and when Amanda cast a sidelong glance at him, he was watching her with a solemn expression she took for disapproval. It silenced any other smartass remarks that might have followed. Not because Lindstrom intimidated her in the least, but because she knew Olivia would be upset with her for disrespecting the esteemed therapist. He had helped Olivia through some very dark times and probably thought he could do the same for Amanda.

Indeed, he rounded the table and gestured to the chair opposite her, asking her permission to be seated. She liked that he chose a chair across from her, where he wouldn't be able to see the laptop screen, and she tipped her head in assent. He took a seat somewhat fastidiously, as if he might pull out a handkerchief and dust off the chair first, then he placed the medical bag on the table with a discreet hand. He laced his fingers together on the tabletop and fixed another somber look on Amanda. This time she saw the concern etched into his features, along with the wrinkles.

"How are you?" he asked pointedly. Not just a passing question with a bottled response (I'm fine, wife's being held captive and brutalized, but other than that. You?), but one which anticipated a real answer.

"You saw her. How do you think I am?"

Close enough.

Lindstrom studied Amanda with a gaze so steady it was disconcerting. Sometimes Dr. Hanover did that too, although it felt like less of a violation with her, since she was getting paid. "You don't look well, Amanda. Your sergeant is very concerned about you. He said you would be angry that I'm here. I'm sorry to see that's the case, but I wanted to come, anyway. Olivia wouldn't want you to be alone right now."

Hearing her wife's name cut like a knife, particularly while Olivia was crying and hugging herself for warmth, and Amanda shot a hard look at the man, unmoved by his speech. "I'm not alone, in case you missed the room full of badges out there. And I talked to a couple of my friends on the phone a little while ago. Hell, I'm livin' it up compared to—" Her voice caught, and she had to clear her throat in order to continue. "Compared to what Liv's going through. She's the one who's all alone."

"She is," he agreed, sadness passing over his already weathered face. He obviously cared a great deal for Olivia. Amanda caught herself wondering if he harbored feelings for her wife—everyone seemed to—but she quickly snuffed out the idea. Now was not the time to let her jealousy rear its ugly head; no one was having amorous thoughts about Olivia right then (except maybe a few hundred sickos on the Internet).

The doctor canted his head thoughtfully. "But I don't think she would want you to suffer along with her. Olivia speaks of you often, and her greatest hope for you is that you're happy, safe, and cared for."

Yeah, that sounded like Olivia. Her Liv.

"Well, I'm not, okay? How the hell could I be happy right now? Fin tell you what they been doing to her?" Amanda's voice gave out on the final note, but she pressed on, angry tears in her eyes. It felt even better to rage at him than at Fin, one of her oldest friends since transferring to New York. She tried not to think about what her wife would say. "Right before you got here, one of them cold co*cked her with a taser baton hard enough to crack her skull. Then he kicked her in the back and spat on her like she was . . ."

A lump formed in Amanda's throat, burning like hot stone. She swallowed laboriously, only able to choke it down after three attempts. "And the guy who stopped him from hurting her worse? He raped her on the filthy f*cking floor 'bout twenty minutes before that. You wanna hear what they did to her yesterday? All five of them taking turns on her for hours until she was half dead and just lay there, letting them do whatever they wanted to her?

"So, no, Doc, I'm not f*cking happy or safe or whatever bill of goods you came in here to sell me. I feel like my guts are being ripped out, fried up, and fed to me like motherf*cking fried okra. And if you ask me to elaborate on that or some other shrinky-dink bullsh*t, I swear to God . . . "

Unflinching, Lindstrom listened to the whole rant (towards the end, it sounded frighteningly similar to one of Dean Rollins' drunken ramblings), his expression so passive it infuriated Amanda even more. How could he sit there with that blank look on his stupid cartoon tortoise face after she'd just described the horrors Olivia was being subjected to? He should be at least a little upset that years of hard work with his star patient were going down the drain. Maybe he was happy she would never get better after this. He could go on treating her, ad infinitum.

"Amanda, when is the last time you slept? Or ate something?" He was looking at Amanda as if he were examining her retinas with an ophthalmology tool. "Or took your eyes off that computer screen? Your pupils are dilated—"

"If you're suggesting I'm on something—"

"I'm not," Lindstrom interrupted, calmly but with a fatherly firmness that made Amanda want to scream. He was no father to her. "It can be a sign of extreme distress. PTSD, panic attacks, and the like. It's perfectly understandable in your situation, but it's also dangerous for you to keep operating at this level of anxiety. If you continue this way, I fear for your mental and physical health. How will you be able to care for Olivia if— when she comes home, if you yourself are unwell?"

Amanda didn't have an answer for that, sarcastic or otherwise. She snatched up the bag of mini Nutter Butters from the haul Fin had left on the table and tore the corner off too forcefully. The crinkly plastic split deep down the side, nearly dispersing the contents in every direction. "f*ck," she muttered, scooping up the escaped cookies at the last second. She threw too many of them in her mouth, but refused to spit them out while Lindstrom's eyes were on her.

It was better this way. He couldn't expect her to talk with her mouth full of peanut butter and shortbread. Unfortunately, he still expected her to listen. "Not only that, but you've your children to think of as well. The younger two might not be able to make sense of what's happening, but the older two are going to have questions and concerns. They'll be looking to you for reassurance, and if you continue to push yourself like this, it will be nearly impossible for you to provide that for them. Have you thought about what to say when they ask after Olivia?"

Amanda chewed until her jaw grew tired, avoiding an answer for as long as possible. She hated him for bringing her children into this. Logically she knew she would have to give them some kind of explanation for Mommy's absence—and her own—when she next saw them. It wasn't fair to saddle Lucy and Auntie Daph with lying to the kids for her.

And he was right about Noah and Jesse; Tilly and Sammie would just be happy to have their mommies to cuddle, but their older siblings would want to knowwhy. Why had Mommy and Mama gone to work on the weekend and not come home for days? Why was Mama so sad and red? Why was Mommy in hospital again, and can we go see her, please oh please, Mama?

The peanut butter cookie mash went down Amanda's throat in a large painful lump. She coughed and took a sip of the coffee that had gone lukewarm since Fin delivered it in a mug she didn't recognize. If she got sick from drinking after someone else, so be it. She couldn't possibly feel any worse than she did right now, her eyes on Olivia, who hadn't gotten her morning coffee. Just her morning beating and sexual assault.

"I'm not telling them anything yet," Amanda said, and set the coffee down too hard, slopping some onto the table. She swiped at it briskly and swiped that on the leg of her pants. And that's that. "I don't even know if their mother is ever coming home, so—" She felt the admission like a gunshot, unable to actually hear it for the ringing in her ears. Of course she had known it before this (Oh God! Liv might never be coming home!), but to say it out loud gave it form, gave it life.

Had she just doomed her wife to die? She wanted to believe in God again so she could pray for a retraction. Grandmama Brooks would say the Good Lord wasn't a gumball machine you dropped a quarter into and got your prize, but Amanda was desperate enough to try it. Hell, she'd go into Olivia's office and pray to the little Buddha snow globe on the desk, if there was a chance he might hear and intervene on her behalf.

Please, she thought to anyone who might be listening.

Dr. Lindstrom was looking at her strangely, and she realized he was waiting for her to finish what she'd been saying. For the life of her, Amanda couldn't remember how she'd planned to conclude. "I'll figure something out when I see them," she said dully. "They're my kids, I know how to talk to them, okay?"

"I'm sure you do." Lindstrom nodded, sincerity in his wrinkled tortoise face. He offered a faint smile. "Olivia's mentioned how wonderful you are with them. It sounds as though you've really taken to the role of 'Mama,' and also become somewhat of the disciplinarian in the household."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Amanda demanded, his pronunciation of the wordsmamaanddisciplinarianputting her on alert. She had a pretty good idea of what he was driving at—she had indeed started correcting and punishing the kids, as needed, more frequently in the past several months—and she resented the implications that Olivia had discussed her parenting style with the man. "Liv tell you I'm too much of a hard-ass with them? 'Cause I ain't. She's just so—"

Breaking off there, Amanda bit her tongue before she could say the captain was too soft, too lenient. Too afraid to be cross with their children when they acted up, fearing it might cost her their love. And who could blame her? When you grew up trying your damnedest to win your mother's love, only to be rejected and made to feel intrinsically wrong at every turn, how could you not internalize the idea that you were unlovable? Or that scolding your children would make them feel as worthless and burdensome as you did at that age? It was the same reason Amanda couldn't stand it when the kids saw their mommy hurt or crying.

"It's just real hard for her to get after them for acting up," Amanda said, with less vehemence than before. She couldn't speak of Olivia in anger at the moment. Even if the anger was directed at someone else. (The captain appeared to have drifted into a light, fitful sleep, her body jerking violently each time her muscles began to relax.) "Because of how she was raised. So, it's my job and I do it the way I see fit. It's not like I'm mean to them. They're good kids, I barely even have to raise my voice for them to listen."

"Olivia didn't say you were mean, no. On the contrary, she's expressed great relief that she has someone to co-parent with, and she seems to admire your ease with the children." Lindstrom's gaze trailed toward the leather bag beside him, as if there were something inside it that might tell a different story from the big happy family tale Olivia had spun. "But we've also spoken of the difficulties you two have encountered in your relationship: PTSD, childhood abuse, anger issues, addiction . . . "

And there it was. He wanted to paint Amanda as the abusive, hotheaded spouse, just like everyone else did. Fine, okay, so she had a temper. She had crossed the line a few times with Olivia, but she would sooner cut off her hand than raise it to her wife.

Why couldn't people stay the hell out of their private life? It wasn't anybody else's business what went on behind the closed doors of her marriage, least of all this strange little man who probably had the hots for Olivia. Or did, before getting a look at her bruised, broken, barely dressed form crumpled on the floor like a used tissue.

The tattered underwear would haunt Amanda till her dying day.

"My concern is that this current trauma will reawaken some past behaviors which could prove . . . detrimental to you, to Olivia, and to your children."

Amanda wished he would just speak like a normal person, for Christ's sake. He had beady eyes, she noticed, as they gazed intently at her. Maybe he reminded her more of a rat than a mild-mannered tortoise. A tortoise kept to itself and didn't offer unsolicited marital advice. Rats poked their noses where they didn't belong, whiskers twitching.

"Why don't you say what you mean?" she asked sharply, narrowing her eyes to slits. She imagined they looked like snake eyes, the kind you spotted in the grass, seconds before a deadly strike—not the duds you rolled in a game of craps. Both were unlucky, but one was far more dangerous than the other. Especially for a curious, foraging rat. "You think my wife being abducted and ripped apart in front of me is going to push me over the edge, right? That I'm gonna go home and, what, beat the livin' snot out of my kids and dogs? Hit a few gambling clubs on my way to shoot up a mall or park or something?"

Lindstrom's mild expression never faltered, nor did his gaze stray from hers. Amanda was being sarcastic about the possibility of a violent outburst if she went off the deep end, but the longer he stared at her, the clearer it became that that was exactly what he insinuated.

"Christ A'mighty, I wasn't serious," she scoffed, slumping back heavily in her chair, arms crossed. It was the same posture that had gotten her through high school and all the lectures about abstinence, underage drinking and smoking, GPA, and inking obscene doodles into the margins of exam booklets. "I'm not a psychopath. I've only—"

She was about to say she'd only killed three people in the line of duty, and one—Esther Labott—had been an accidental shooting. Another was an intruder in her home, attacking her sister (or so she'd been led to believe when she pulled the trigger); and the last was Calvin Arliss, whose final act on earth was slashing a straight razor across Olivia's neck and almost taking her down with him. Not exactly "good shoots," least of all Esther, the biggest f*ck-up of Amanda's career and forever a scar on her soul, but by no means a random killing spree, either.

"I wouldn't do something like that," she said flatly.

"But you do own a gun." Lindstrom spoke slowly, as if he were giving her time to catch up with a difficult concept. A cop with a gun—inconceivable. "And you've had to use it before. On someone who had hurt Olivia, and before that, on a man who was hurting your sister, yes?"

Amanda hated how much he knew about her. It made sense; she had told her therapist details about Olivia that she would never share with anyone else. And both of those shootings had taken place before they were a couple, so of course Olivia had discussed them with her psychiatrist at the time. Nevertheless, Amanda was unsettled having personal information recited back to her by someone who was little more than a stranger. Thankfully he didn't seem to know about Esther. She might not have been able to restrain herself if he'd brought that up in his measured, PBS voice.

"Yeah, so? You sayin' I should've let that freak go on slashing at Liv with a razor? Let him rape h— let Jeff rape my little sister right there on my living room rug?"

"No, I'm not suggesting you reacted inappropriately. You had every right to defend your loved ones—"

"Damn straight I did," Amanda said, but couldn't look at the Olivia-shaped heap on the screen just then. God, she had let her wife down so utterly and completely this time. She was supposed to be the brave white knight who protected Olivia from all the evil in the world—that was the lame-ass fairytale she'd told herself and been stupid enough to believe—and instead she had led Olivia straight to the gates of hell.

"But in both of those instances, you took the life of someone who was a threat. I'm concerned how you'll handle this situation, with no one you can immediately defend Olivia against." Dr. Lindstrom donned another of the thoughtful expressions from his repertoire. It was his tell, designed to coax the patient into considering his words and their response.

All it did was make Amanda want to punch him.

"You mean who'm I gonna kill to rescue her this time?" she asked, plucking a Nutter Butter from the pack and tossing it into her mouth like popcorn. It tasted of nothing. Of emptiness so profound she almost spat it back out. With effort, she choked it down after a few hasty crunches. "Because I'm such a trigger-happy hothead who kills anyone that looks at my wife funny?"

"Are you having suicidal thoughts, Amanda?"

Caught off guard, Amanda laughed out loud. She regretted it at once. There was nowhere for the sound to go, with the room's flat acoustics, and it died off quickly. But she cast an apologetic glance at Olivia, as if the captain might have heard. Honestly she didn't know if Olivia was able to hear much of anything, after all the abuse she had sustained; Amanda herself had to concentrate on words extra hard just to make them make sense. What had the doctor asked? Was she having suicidal thoughts?

Jesus.

"No. Why the hell would I kill myself?" she demanded, annoyed that he would even ask that question. She had never been suicidal in her life—not as a kid, growing up in an abusive household, where screamed curses and shattering glass were her nighttime lullabies; not as a teenager, being gossiped about by the whole school, including the teachers ("Easy-Ass Amanda" had not been invented by her peers); not as an adult, struggling with addiction, anger management issues, and sexual assault.

Truth be told, she liked living way too much to give it up. Suicide was a coward's way out, as far as she was concerned. It was something flaky housewives attempted, traumatizing the two little girls who discovered them in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, as a lame last ditch effort to make their husbands notice them. Besides, Amanda had too much to lose these days, and she would never put that burden on her kids. Or her wife . . .

"I'm no good to Liv and the kids if I'm dead," she said, and thought better of the next cookie bite before it went into her mouth. She chucked it back into the bag, brushing her fingers together with finality. "I have no plans to eat my gun. I don't even have my gun on me right now. So, you can write that in your little psych eval and be on your way."

She had left out the part about her and Olivia's guns being locked up safe at home, where she could easily access them, but he was a smart guy who knew how cops operated. And she didn't want to bring up questions about when she would be returning home, mostly because she didn't have the answers. With Olivia gone, it was as though Amanda had lost her compass—her true north—and wandered alone beneath the stars. How had Olivia put it when she placed the lighthouse charm around Amanda's neck three birthdays ago?

I was unmoored. Drifting out there with nothing to hold onto. . .

Yeah, that pretty much summed it up. Except Amanda wasn't just unmoored, she was sinking beneath the dark, blank surface of the water, underneath all those directionless stars. It was filling her mouth and lungs, her eyes, nose, shoes. And there were no answers.

"Amanda?"

"What?" She'd heard Lindstrom ask her something, but it hadn't registered in her brain. Now she knew how Olivia felt during those times she zoned out and missed whole conversations, didn't see the light turn green, or had no clue what had happened in an episode of television they'd just watched. It seemed charmingly absentminded in those moments, but there was nothing charming about it, Amanda realized. It was like being dropped into a foreign country where you didn't speak the language.

"I said this isn't a psych eval, not in the official sense, anyway. I'm here as a favor to Fin, and to Olivia. I can't clear you for duty." Lindstrom's hand curved around the clasped doctor's bag, his index finger tapping at the soft leather. "And frankly, based on what I'm seeing so far, I wouldn't, even if I could. I think you're a danger to yourself and possibly to others, and I'd urge you strongly against carrying a firearm any time soon."

Amanda blinked at the man, mystified. And then, as his words sank in, in mounting rage. "What the f*ck are you talking about? I'm literally just sitting here, watching my wife being raped over and over again. How the hell am I a danger to anyone? I can't even leave this room because I don't want her to be alone in that hellhole. You saw the shape she's in. You think it's so easy to see her like that, why don't you come around here and watch for five or ten minutes. That's pro'ly how long it'll be till they're raping her again. Come on over here and watch her cry, watch her cower and beg while they laugh and ram it in her some more. Then we'll see how much of a danger you think I am, doctor."

Not until she had finished did Amanda realize she was standing, balled fists planted on the table as she leaned forward menacingly, glaring at the slim little man and his unreadable face. Her breathing was rapid and heavy, as if she'd just gotten back from a long run in the bitter cold. She hadn't been for a proper run since Sammie's birth, and the nine months before that; she probably wouldn't make it more than a block without getting winded now. Why hadn't she kept in shape, beyond the occasional low-intensity jog? If she had, maybe she could have protected Olivia better.

"Are you aware of how many threats you've made in the short time that I've been here?" Dr. Lindstrom asked. He showed no signs of intimidation, but his hand hadn't left the safety and familiarity of his leather bag, either. For a moment, Amanda wondered if he had smuggled in a gun of his own for protection, then she remembered that he couldn't have made it past security with something like that in his bag. "This is at least the fourth or fifth. I understand that you're distraught and enraged by what's happening to Olivia, but if there's a chance you'll follow through on the violence you're alluding to, I can't in good conscience say you belong on this or any other case."

"Well, it's a good thing you're just my wife's therapist and have no say-so then, idn't it?" Amanda sneered at him and at the bag he held onto like a security blanket. Must be nice to have something to cling to for comfort when you needed it most. Hers was in a shipping container somewhere in Jersey, shivering on the cold hard ground. And any comfort item for Olivia had long ago been stripped away by the hands of vicious men.

"Everything all right in here?" Fin asked, poking his head into the room and eyeing Amanda's aggressive stance warily. "'Cause it sounds like you could use a break. Rollins, why don't you go splash some cold water on your face or something?"

Amanda snorted, refusing to budge, despite the burning in her shoulders from holding the stiff, hunched posture. "Why, so y'all can talk about what a loose cannon I am behind my back? What a dangerous whack job I am to myself and others? Hell no. Why'd you have to drag him into this anyway, Fin? He's a civilian and shouldn't even be here while all this is going on."

After a brief look over his shoulder, Fin stepped into the room and eased the door shut behind. He moved slowly, which wasn't unusual itself, but the excessive care he took with each gesture wasn't like him. He looked like a monk drifting about a monastery, upholding his vow of silence. Until:

"You shouldn't even be here, either, Amanda. I called him 'cause I thought he might talk some sense into you. Get you to go home and be with your kids. You can't do anything here. You're kind of— you're kind of a distraction for everybody else. Look, I ain't tryna be a dick, that's just how it is."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Amanda put on a pantomime of deep dismay, splaying a hand to her chest and drawing back in slack-jawed shock. "I'm so sorry that watching my wife get gang raped and sodomized is inconvenient for you. For them. Maybe if y'all did your f*cking jobs 'stead of acting like a bunch of rookies on your first day out, Liv'd be safe in a hospital bed right now. And I'd be with her, instead of trapped in this goddamn glass box like a zoo animal."

As she ranted, Amanda paced, truly feeling as if she were caged against her will. She and Olivia had taken the kids to Central Park Zoo last summer, and the snow leopards had paced the perimeter of their enclosure in much the same manner. In fact, while the three munchkins were oohing and ahhing over the cubs, which were indeed adorable, Olivia had leaned in and murmured in Amanda's ear, "See that slinky one who looks like she wants to eat us? Keeps twitching her tail? Reminds me of you, my little snow leopard."

Then she had kissed the rim of Amanda's ear and, sneaking a glance around to make sure no other zoo-goers were about, patted her fondly on the rear.

The memory took Amanda's breath away, and she stopped short in front of Fin, momentarily teetering off balance as if she might faint. Her knees did start to give, her vision fading to gray
(the color of the city in daylight . . . the color of the box Olivia was trapped in . . . her city girl . . .)
but when Fin caught her and stood her upright, she shoved him by the shoulder, tearing herself from his grip.

"Keep off me! You f*cking traitor." She slapped at his shoulder again, butting it with the heel of her palm. "You call some shrink on me because you can't kick me out yourself? Some sergeant you are. I don't know why Liv ever wanted you for the job in the first place. You mighta been tough sh*t in your day, but now you're just a weak old man who should've retired years ago. If I was sergeant, she'd be home by now."

It infuriated Amanda that, no matter the insults she hurled, no matter how hard she shoved, Fin did not budge or attempt to defend himself. He simply gazed at her with sorrowful amber eyes, taking the abuse—and worse, pitying her for it. She balled her hands into fists at her side, a hot pressure building up inside her, pushing to get out at the temples, behind the eyes. She was either going to explode into a million pieces or she was about to punch one of the best friends and partners she'd ever had.

"Someone's coming," said Lindstrom, the wary note in his voice snapping Amanda back to reality.

The heat that simmered just beneath her skin evaporated so abruptly, it left her feeling cold and empty, as if she'd had a vital organ removed, and awoke sliced open on the gurney. She glanced past Fin to see who was approaching, and indeed, Dana Lewis was out there in the bullpen, conferring with her fellow agents like she owned the place. But no one appeared to be headed for the interview room, and Amanda whipped around fiercely, ready to confront the psychiatrist for lying.

Dr. Lindstrom had slanted the laptop toward himself, keeping an eye on Olivia while Amanda's back was turned. He indicated the video display, which had brightened considerably, natural light pouring in on Olivia's crumpled body, revealing the caked-on blood and bruises that decorated her arms and legs in ugly, lurid shades. She looked like a piece of rotten fruit. And stretched across the floor at her back, an alien shadow fell, some giant, misshapen underworld creature come to claim its human bride.

When it slunk deeper inside the shipping container, drawing shut the doors and blotting out the sun, the creature proved not to be a hideous demon—at least not outwardly—but a man like all the others. Frightening enough on its own, but even more so because this one was new.

Amanda had never seen him before, at least as far as she could tell with his back to the camera and the baseball cap pulled low on his brow. He wasn't brawny enough for Riva, and much too muscular to be the younger Sandberg kid. He had Liam Sandberg's height, but the physique of an older man, probably in his fifties. It wasn't the Sandberg father, either—that man, who had preened like a co*ckroach after each time he f*cked Olivia, wouldn't be caught dead in the dumpy jeans, denim jacket and dirty sneakers this guy was wearing. That only left Angelov, and there wasn't a fauxhawk, tattoo, or piercing in sight.

Another stranger, come to call on Olivia Benson. At this rate, the captain would be broken in in no time.

He sauntered up to Olivia and stood above her, surveying the length of her like he was lusting over a cherry red sports car. With the toe of his hangdog sneaker, he nudged lightly at her back. When that failed to get a reaction, he squatted next to her on his haunches and peered around her shoulder, dusting away strands of dark hair to reveal her face. He mumbled something that sounded like "still the same," then clasped Olivia's shoulder and shook it.

"Wake up, kitty cat," he said loudly, ducking his head closer to the woman prone at his feet. He trailed his fingers up and down her arm the way Amanda did while she held Olivia after they made love. Nearing Olivia's hip, he gave that a shake too, and glided his hand farther in to stroke something obscured by their positions. It didn't take a genius to figure it out, based on his bobbing elbow and the weak groan from Olivia. "Here kitty, kitty, kitty . . . "

Christ, what was the cat thing about? It made Amanda's skin crawl just listening to it, and with the added visual of his pumping arm, and the imagined one of what his hand was doing in front, her stomach lurched dangerously. The handful of crackers and sips of coffee were catching up with her. She was going to have to vomit again at some point, but this wasn't the time. Not with Olivia being violated by a sixth man who had yet to show his face. He must have been aware of the camera's placement, because he kept the back of his red cap to it the whole time.

"Dun . . . fram . . . " Olivia mumbled, several more unintelligible words following. She took a while to open her eyes and look up at the man crouched over her, and the reaction was just as delayed. At first she merely stared, trying to bring him into focus, her eyes rolling and widening, lids blinking, as if they weren't properly wired. Then, a moment of confusion as she got a better look at him. And finally, that pure and utter terror when it all came flooding back to her.

She tried to scramble away from him, but only managed to drag herself sideways on one elbow, her bare feet scuffing uselessly on the crude flooring. Panicking, she felt around in the rubbish beside the mattress, finding nothing more helpful than a remote control for some electronic device or another. She threw it at the man and missed, despite their close proximity. Olivia never missed.

"Don— don't touch," she husked, pushing at his arm where it encircled her hip. He let her shoo him away with little effort, and though his face still wasn't visible, something about his jaunty posture suggested he was grinning. Kitty cat was playing hard to get. "Leave me 'lone."

"Just as uppity as you ever were," said the man, too cheerful for the words he was speaking. He wiggled his fingers at Olivia, taunting her the way Amanda did with spidery movements, threatening tickle torture. He jerked his hand back, dodging the swipe she took at it, then playfully poked her side and upper thigh as she clawed the floor, squirming toward a freedom that didn't exist. "Filled out some since then, I see. Not that I'm complaining. Most of it's tit anyway, and that's A-okay by me."

"Who is this f*cker?" Amanda asked, more to herself than anyone in the room. The man obviously knew Olivia from a previous encounter, at least a few years prior by the sound of it, but Amanda couldn't place the voice or the stature. It wasn't Murphy, thank God, although it might have been better if it was; surely Murphy wouldn't abuse Olivia himself, even if he had orchestrated the living nightmare she was in. (Right?) "Show your face, you f*cking coward."

"Knows how to duck the camera," Fin observed. He started to say something else, but let it drift off without further explanation.

Amanda squinted at the bastard in the stupid red cap. A list of sports teams with red uniforms and logos ran through her brain like the crawl at the bottom of ESPN: Cincinnati Reds, Ohio State, Cardinals, Red Sox, Braves . . . . The more logos and titles she conjured, the more certain she became that she could identify this piece of sh*t if he would just: "Turn your goddamn head, you son of a bitch," she snarled.

When he suddenly obeyed, she started back in surprise, hand on her chest, and gasped. She knew who he was. Not a name, nor did she recognize the face that appeared in profile for no more than half a second, but the words above it—Make Americ—were impossible to forget. It was the man in the MAGA hat who had been filming her and Olivia yesterday.

"f*ck me, I've seen that guy before," she said, storming over to stab a finger to the screen, as if which guy she meant might be in question. "He was in the crowd after they grabbed Liv. Taking video. That's the hat I saw."

She looked eagerly to Fin, pointed adamantly. It wasn't like she had just cracked the case wide open, she knew that, but it had to be an important detail. For Olivia's sake, it had to be. When the sergeant gave her a dubious frown and said, "I don't know, Rollins. A lotta people have that hat. Means they're stupid, doesn't mean they're all in on this," she heaved a frustrated sigh. Why couldn't he see how significant this was? Why the hell didn't hedo something?

"But . . . he does look kinda familiar," said Fin, rubbing his goatee in thought. Lips compressed, he shook his head, he squinted. He stepped forward for a closer look and rubbed his beard some more. "Feel like I seen him somewhere, I just can't place him."

"Well, maybe you should try harder." Amanda picked up the laptop and shoved the edge of the keyboard into Fin's chest. She hadn't intended to be that rough about it, but she didn't care if it hurt or not. Someone needed to take this situation as seriously as she did, and if she had to get physical—get mean—to get the point across, then so be it. "Seeing as how Liv's entire f*cking life depends on it. Who the hell is he, Fin? Don't just stand there shrugging your shoulders. Look at him!"

"Amanda, perhaps you should—"

Fin put out his hand to Dr. Lindstrom, who had gotten to his feet as if he might be required to break up a fistfight at any moment. The doctor was still clutching his damn bag, resembling a scandalized old lady clutching her purse. He lowered it slowly, falling silent and fading into the background again, at Fin's behest. "I said he's familiar, not that I can ID him for sure," said Fin, carefully placing the MacBook back on the table. "But let me see if I can get a better look at him, okay?"

"Have you met him or do you just know him from a mugshot or a lineup?" Amanda asked, peering over his shoulder as he leaned in, studying the man in the cap. She didn't want to hear any excuses about not being able to make an ID; if Fin was at all worth his salt as a cop, he'd damn well figure it out.

But Red Hat wasn't cooperating this time, and he kept his face from view as he scooped up Olivia under the armpits and hefted her onto the mattress she was dragging herself toward, inch by agonizing inch. She cried out at being handled with little concern for her injuries, grunting as if she'd been gut punched when he dropped her unceremoniously onto the pad. It was too much to hope that his intentions weren't ignoble; head down, he circled Olivia and grabbed her wrists, pulling her fully onto the bedding, then returned to kick her ankles apart and stand between them.

"I don't know." Fin growled in frustration, swiping a dismissive gesture at Red Hat, like he was telling him to get lost. "This mofo won't show me his face. Can't tell nothing from the back of some dude's head. Come on, man, quit hiding behind your damn—"

"You," Olivia gasped, struggling to catch her breath. She sounded asthmatic, though Amanda had never known her to have such a problem. It would make sense, with all her focus on calming exercises and mindful breathing. Amanda had just never thought to ask. Maybe now she would never find out. "I-I know you. Who . . . wh-where?"

"What, when, why, how?" Red Hat laughed at the unamusing joke, and bunted Olivia's feet away each time one or the other tried to sneak around his legs to join its mate. It became a game for a moment, Olivia trying to close her legs, while he slung them open with the top of his sneakered foot. Eventually she gave up, panting and clutching her side as if she'd run a marathon, and tugged down on the hem of her t-shirt, trying to cover herself that way. The underwear was a loose flap between her legs.

"Not surprised you don't remember," said the man. He had grown tired of the game as well, and co*cked his head to watch as Olivia struggled to maintain some modesty. Even after everything the other men had done to her, she still didn't want this one to see her body. "You were a bitch back then, too. Strutting around like you owned the place. Twitching your little tail at me just to see what I'd do. Thought you were too good for me, didn't you, kitty cat?"

"Dammit, Fin. Who the f*ck is he?" Amanda brought her fist down on the table, commanding an answer. Her pulse was galloping faster than the race horses she used to bet on, and if she didn't find out this guy's name soon, her heart would probably explode in her chest. His ID might be just the break in the case they needed; Olivia's return hinged on Fin summoning up a single goddamn name, but by all means, take your time, Sergeant. No need for urgency whatsoever. "They know each other from somewhere. Is he someone she put away? A dirty cop? Why the hell's he calling her kitty cat?"

"I don't know, Amanda, can you just shut up and let me think?" Fin flicked an annoyed glance at her, the sudden appearance of his temper jarring. He seldom lost his cool with anyone, least of all Amanda. He knew it, too, his features softening quickly, his voice following suit. "If I have seen him, it's been a really long time ago. Liv doesn't even remember who he is, so—"

Blocking the rest out, Amanda zeroed in on Red Hat, aiming every ounce of hatred and fury she possessed—for him, for the other five rapist pigs, for the helplessness she felt, for everything she had watched her wife endure the past two days, for the weakness that prevented her from stopping it (probably inherited from her mama), for MAGA hats and motherf*cking Donald J. Trump—at the back of his head.

Her eyes felt laser-hot, she stared so hard, and she momentarily entertained the image of blowing his skull to bits with the laser beams. Melting his brain to something that resembled cream of mushroom soup. Or just simply vaporizing the bastard in a puff of smoke. But fantasizing about killing him wasn't helping Olivia. His intentions were obvious, even to the dazed captain, who kept a wary eye on the vicinity of his waistband.

If something didn't give soon, if they just kept sitting here watching and upping the viewership of this hellacious reality show, Olivia was going to be raped by a sixth perpetrator.

"Give us a name, darlin'," Amanda whispered, trying to send as much love to Olivia as she had sent hate to the sixth man. "Please. Just something to go on. Just say his name so we can ID him and find you."

"How did y-you know wh-where I am?" Olivia asked. Propped on her elbows, she glanced at her surroundings, and Amanda could hear her thoughts as clearly as if she'd spoken them aloud:Idon't even know where I am. "Are you the— the buyer?"

That was an excellent question, although unlikely—no way this guy had a million dollars to spare—and Amanda was silently commending her wife for trying to pump him for information when Dana Lewis' sharp twang filled the room, like the drone of cicadas in summertime. It was a pungent sound, overpowering, and it reminded Amanda of woodsmoke, permeating everything in its path.

"Y'all know who this horse's ass is? My guys can't get a good enough shot for facial recognition unless he turns that big nut on his shoulders and, hopefully, takes off the gimme cap. Think our girl can knock it off for him?" Just a head and a pair of shoulders poking through the doorway, Dana addressed the laptop screen as if Olivia herself were sitting right there at the table. "Whadda ya say, Cap'n? Help us out a little?"

Obviously the agent didn't really expect Olivia to aid in her own defense like that, but Dana's brassy entrance, not to mention calling Olivia "our girl" and speaking to her video image, irked Amanda deeply. There was noourabout it—Olivia was hers, period—and Dana had no business talking to the captain while she was absent; that type of prayerful discourse should be reserved for Amanda alone.

The irreverence of it all was too much, and she shot a venomous glare at Dana, warning her not to open her big mouth again. "Shut the hell up and maybe we can hear who it is," Amanda growled, pointing at the man as he laughed at Olivia's question and claimed he was not the buyer. It annoyed her that Dana stepped into the room to listen, but at least she heeded the warning and kept her trap shut.

"I know the buyer, though," Red Hat went on, boastful. He grazed the back of Olivia's calf idly with the toe of his sneaker. "I'm a liaison for— them. That's how I got in here. You're pretty exclusive property, believe it or not. Real top-shelf stuff. I wasn't sure they'd let me have a taste, but I go way back with one of the guys and I was instrumental in getting you here, so—"

"Quit yapping, and do her already," boomed a voice from the doorway, which had cracked open, emitting a cone of sunlight into the shipping container. "I said you could have her for an hour, not all damn day. You're not even supposed to be here, so snap it up."

"All right, Nicky, geez—"

"No names, you f*ck! And no more pillow talk. Screw the bitch or get the hell out." The slamming door resonated throughout the small space, rattling the walls and pixelating the onscreen image. For a moment, the entire room was a blur, with two human-shaped smears, one on the ground and one standing over her, in the top corner.

Of course that was when the smear in the red cap turned and yelled over his shoulder, "f*ck sakes, just cut the feed, man. It's not like they don't know what's happening to her by now. Goddamn."

The video resumed crystal-clear focus as Red Hat turned back to Olivia, shaking his head. "Nothing like rushing a guy and giving him performance anxiety, am I right? Just kidding. I can always get it up, especially with a ripe bitch like you. Been a long time coming." He bent down to tug at Olivia's ruined panties. "Let's get these off."

"The prison," Olivia said, her voice splintering like rotted wood, leaving only ragged edges. And barely any sound. She slapped at his hands, tried to scoot backward on the mattress, and mouthed something that might have been "roped" or "groped," but hadn't the clarity or volume to adequately decipher.

Just as she was about to say something else—Amanda felt certain it was a name, saw the flash of recognition in her wife's eyes—the man grabbed Olivia by the hips, yanking her toward him. The last thing Amanda saw before the livestream ended was Olivia's face, twisted in pain and fear, as the man climbed on top of her.

Two or three seconds of dead silence hung over the precinct before it burst into activity, officers and agents alike scrambling to get the lost captain back, even if it was only digitally. Shouting, cursing, calling out orders. But the silence stretched on for Amanda, the voices around her falling on deaf ears while she stared in disbelief at the browser window where Olivia had been, now plastered in banner ads for underage p*rn, hidden sex cams (Totally Live!), BDSM requests, and bestial*ty.

At first she couldn't comprehend what had happened, and then, when it sunk in that she'd lost Olivia again, their connection severed as swiftly as it had been yesterday morning, possibly forever this time, she became witness to her own damnation.

"No. No, no, no, no," she heard herself repeating, though she was unable to reconcile the voice inside her head with the one outside it. She might as well have been yelling into an echo chamber, no way to tell where one sound began and the other ended. No way to tell where she began or ended.

This felt like her ending.

"Oh Jesus, what did they do? Why did it cut off?" Amanda punched random keys on the laptop keyboard, no rhyme or reason to the combinations she chose. Amid her growing panic, she forgot everything she knew about ethical hacking. She tapped at the space bar like she was sending Morse code, and slammed her fist down on it when nothing happened. "We gotta get her back. I promised I wouldn't leave her alone. Fin, help me, we gotta get her back."

Fin's eyes were too wide for his face, giving him an almost gaunt appearance. For the first time Amanda could remember, she noticed they were golden in the light, and she thought of the Buddha in the snow globe on Olivia's desk. But her sergeant was no holy man or prophet. He only shook his head lamely, his gaze downcast, as useless as the little gold statue in its glass bubble. "I don't think we can, Amanda. We ain't even been able to trace the IP address on that thing. How can we bring it back on?"

Truthfully? Unless one of the Dreamland men restored the feed, there was no way to pull up the video, no matter how good the FBI white hats supposedly were. Amanda knew that, and it wasn't fair to blame Fin for something he had no control over, but her anger toward his resigned attitude, his acceptance that Olivia was just gone, flashed white-hot in her already feverish, sleep-deprived brain.

"That the best you can do? Shrug it off like she's nothing? Some guy you know but can't identify is raping her right now, and you just wanna go about your day until maybe they make contact again, maybe not. Jesus, you're f*cking useless. All of you." Amanda had resumed pacing the length of the table, clenching and unclenching her fists, absently cracking her knuckles. "This is all so f*cking useless."

She stopped beside the laptop, gave it a long hard look, then picked it up and heaved it at the wall beneath the one-way mirror. It arced past Lindstrom, who started back in surprise, and collided at one hinged corner, ricocheting onto the floor. It clapped shut like a clamshell. The result was rather anticlimactic—no shattering glass or plumes of smoke—but Fin yelled, "Hey!" and that was all the encouragement Amanda needed.

With a sweep of her arm, she sent the vending machine snacks hurtling off the table like lemmings over a cliff. She swiped the Dreamland rap sheets with a precision she could never duplicate, papers cascading in a perfect, airy spiral. The coffee mug cracked impressively against the one-way, displacing its handle and trailing a streamer of dark roast that hit the glass with an aromatic splat.

Not until she lifted her chair and threw it at the street-facing windows did a pair of strong arms wrap around her from behind, hemming her in like a straitjacket. "Let me go, goddammit! Liv needs me! We have to get her back," Amanda bellowed, grunting and writhing to get free. When that didn't work, she kicked out her feet, trying to throw her captor off balance. And when that didn't work either, she reverse headbutted them. Someone groaned, and then Amanda was loose and thrashing. She saw blood when she punched the person who ran at her.

More groaning.

"Child's done lost her mind," said a wet, nasally voice, muffled by a hand.

"Rollins, hey! You gotta chill. Come on, sit down before you hurt yourself," said another. A chair wheeled into view and Amanda grabbed the arms, preparing to send it the way of the first one, still hunched over by the file cabinets like a school kid during a tornado drill.

"I don't wanna f*cking sit. I gotta get to Liv. Lemme go, I gotta get out of here. She needs me. Get the f*ck off me, or I'll—" Amanda ended the sentence with a grunt, trying to wrench her arms out of the grasps that held her at both sides, forcing her down toward the chair.

Her mama loved to tell the story of four-year-old Mandy Rollins fighting like the dickens not to get a shot during a pediatric visit:It took three nurses and the doctor to hold her down. They said they'd never seen a child put up such a fuss over a little ol' needle before, especially such a tiny, angelic-looking thing like my Mandy. It was meant as a commentary on the trials and tribulations of raising a willful kid, but Amanda had always listened with pride. Even at four they hadn't been able to control her or keep her down.

They weren't going to at forty-two, either. She fought with every ounce of the irrational rage and recklessness that had seen her twisting and turning in impossible shapes, and at one point, kicking a nurse across the room, that day at the pediatrician. But in the end, she got the shot.

She looked down at her bicep, and up at Lindstrom as he retracted the syringe, its contents already disseminating into her bloodstream. Her muscles began to relax a second later, turning her limbs to limp spaghetti noodles. It was as if she'd been hit with the opposite effect of yesterday's taser blast. "What the hell did you do?" she asked, tongue thick and sluggish in her mouth. She sounded like a warped cassette tape played at a slow speed. "The f*ck'd you gi' me?"

"I'm sorry," said Lindstrom, gazing down with a sad, benign expression. A religious painting of some lowly saint whose duty it was to minister to mere mortals. "This will help you rest. Try not to fight it."

My ass, Amanda thought, but no words came out. She couldn't have fought whatever drug he'd administered, even if she wanted to (God, she wanted to), because it was already pulling her under, into darkness. She made one last attempt to sit up and tell the psychiatrist that she would have his ass and his license for sedating her against her will; that she had never liked him anyway, and she didn't trust him with her wife; that she wanted to kill him for dragging her away from Olivia like this. But she remained slumped in the chair, chin drifting closer and closer to her chest.

Her last thought was that she finally knew what Dr. Lindstrom had in his medical bag.

. . .

Chapter 19: Karma Is a Cat

Chapter Text

Chapter 19.

Karma Is a Cat

. . .

It was that word ripe. A description for fruit, for strong odors, like a baby's diaper ("Phew, girl, you are ripe," Amanda often announced while toting Samantha to the changing table). It could apply to cheese or beer, to animals ready for slaughter, and funnily enough, to being drunk. Sometimes it was used to describe c*nts and bitches too.

As in,I can go for hours with a ripe little c*nt like you. Fourteen years had passed since Lowell Harris grunted that line, now infamous in Olivia's brain, while he forced his dick down her throat. In the years since, she'd come to wish he had used less unique phrasing, particularly that piquant little adjectiveripe. She couldn't shake it. She thought about how Serena would laugh: her cop daughter picking apart a rapist's word choice like she was deconstructing Keats or something.

That just made it all the more vivid in Olivia's memory. She could smell him—taste him—every time that damn line went through her head. So when she heard it repeated by the guy in the MAGA hat, right before he shucked off the scrap of fabric that used to be her underwear, she instantly made the connection. The phrasing was different, but the sentiment the same.I can always get it up, especially with a ripe bitch like you. Olivia was a ripe, rapeable c*nt bitch all the boys couldn't wait to f*ck.

She did wonder if it was a comment on her age. Although, she had been younger than Harris at the time, physically fit, limber, and at an age some would consider her sexual prime, so probably not. (It occasionally crossed her mind that he was referring to her scent, but that was too awful to dwell on.)

This man whose name she couldn't recall, but whose erection she clearly remembered pressing against her ass while he restrained her over a prison lunch table, wasn't that much younger than she was. A couple years at most. And she only knew that from studying his jacket before and after Sealview; guard or not, prison had aged him. He still had that crooked nose—a break which hadn't healed properly, from the looks of it—and that gash in his face, meant to be a smile.

And he still wanted to follow in the footsteps of his long-dead buddy, enough so that he had adopted Harris' favorite adjective as his own.

Son of a bitch, what was his damn name?

"The prison," Olivia managed to rasp before her voice gave out. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a handful of razor blades, her neck so stiff and sore she could barely turn her head. She feared that some irreversible damage had been done to her larynx. No doubt it had been done to her soul. "Sealview. You— you groped me."

It had gone beyond that, his middle and ring finger sneaking into the seam of her backside, glancing across her labia as he commented on her workout. That was what had sent her into attack mode, after Huang specifically told her she couldn't react to the injustices she witnessed or experienced herself. Her ass got grabbed plenty on the job, especially during undercover gigs—hell, that one guy had gotten to second base with her, his hand on her breast like he was picking low-hanging fruit—but Parker's fingers in her nether regions was not what she'd signed on for.

Parker. That was this dirtbag's name. The women at Sealview had called him Parker the Poker, because his dick always managed to poke you in one place or another whenever he got close. Olivia had been so certain he was their perp, and obviously he'd taken up the torch for Harris since then, that she was blindsided when the real attack came.

Afterward, she'd been too shaken to pursue charges against the man who now teased her, stroking the insides of her thighs, drawing his hand back each time she batted at it, stroking higher when it returned. Her case against Harris hadn't gone through, so why subject herself to the humiliation of describing the base and petty assaults by Parker, who at least had never forced his dick into her mouth?

Why hadn't she stopped to consider that he might escalate? Of course he would, they always did when they were left unchecked. And without Harris there to call the shots and poach his game, Parker had flourished into a full-fledged rapist and sex trafficker in his own right. God, how could she have been so stupid? Surely this mistake would be her last. Surely it had cost her everything.

"Parker," she said, trying to whisper loudly enough for the camera to pick it up. The type of people who tuned in to these guerrilla p*rn videos probably wouldn't contact the police or listen to the victim's pleas for help, but maybe someone out there still had a shred of humanity. And if not, she might at least ID one of her attackers posthumously, should NYPD find the recordings. The only way she could bear to think of anyone she knew seeing the footage was if she was already dead and there was no other way to get justice. "Mark— Matt Parker."

"Well, looky there." Parker sounded delighted that she remembered him, as if he were an old student of hers, expecting to have been forgotten in a sea of academic faces. "Guess I made a lasting impression on you after all, huh, kitty cat?"

No, not kitty cat. Kitty Kat. That was where the disgusting nickname had come from—Katrina Rae Lewis, her undercover alias at Sealview Correctional. She was desensitized to the name now, because of Officer Tamin, and she'd forgotten the handful of times Parker had called her by the nickname during her stint in the prison, usually meowing after her like a damn cat in heat. That meant the Crier (or Angel or Nicky, or whatever the hell he went by) had picked up the name from Parker, and it wasn't just some quality they had both seen in her.

Her relief was tempered by Parker's hands trying to slide under her t-shirt and the realization that she still didn't know who was behind her abduction. Harris had died years ago, leaving behind only a couple of estranged siblings that didn't care enough to show up for his trial or his burial, let alone exact revenge in his name. No one had mourned William Lewis, either. And Calvin had killed everyone who might have loved him or Amelia enough to hold a grudge against Olivia. The Mesners wererelievedthat Henry was locked away again . . .

All of Olivia's monsters were accounted for. Or so she had thought, until she met six new ones.

"What stuck with you the most, would you say?" Parker asked, his tone so conversational anyone watching might think it was normal discourse between friends. If not for the half-dressed woman on the floor, brown blood crusted on her thighs, black blood crusted on her shirt. "Was it when I copped a feel at intake or when I restrained you for inciting a riot? Gotta hand it to you, you did keep things lively. You've mellowed out a little since then." He looked her up and down, and smoothed a hand along her body, not playing keep away anymore. "But I bet you're still a great f*ck."

f*ck you, she thought, but couldn't make her lips say it. Words were a precious commodity for her now, and not one to be wasted on repartee or comebacks. If they thought it meant they had broken her—and maybe they had—then so be it. She was too weak to fight back, her throat too ravaged to speak above a whisper, leaving her with few other options than the pathetic, degrading one she chose.

"Please don't do this," she begged, tears leaking onto her cheeks. She didn't have the energy to cry hard, but her eyes had kept up a slow and steady stream since yesterday. Almost as if it were her natural state. "Help me, Parker. I need— need you." Her touch-and-go voice was a blessing then, the last few words not reaching her ears as she mouthed them. His hands were partially cupped to her bare ass, and she was asking him for help. It was one of the more debasing moments she'd had since this whole thing began.

The gash appeared where Parker's smile should be. He shook his head as if he thought she was a real piece of work, but he also looked mildly charmed. Like she had strolled over to flirt with him at a bar. "Aww, don't be giving me those big doe eyes like Vaughny does. I'm a sucker for that sh*t, you know. Most guys are, although you probably found that out before you went full Ellen, huh?"

Olivia stared at him, confused by the names. He was massaging the tops of her thighs, delving in a little deeper each time, and talking to her about people she didn't know. She took his wrists and tried to pry them in opposite directions, but they didn't budge an inch. When she brought her thighs together, he forced them apart. They were too sore from being forced open for hours yesterday, she could hardly move them. She felt like a wishbone, cracked up the center.

"You bagged a hottie, though, I'll give you that. A little small up top, but you more than make up for it." Parker flashed an actual smile this time, and it was no more pleasant than the gash. He smoothed a hand over Olivia's breasts, one at a time, buffing with his palm until her nipples were erect. He tweaked them through her t-shirt, admiring his handiwork. "I'd offer to eat you out, since that's what you're into, but you're kind of a mess. Down here."

He swiped two fingers up the middle of Olivia's vulva and showed them to her, like he was doing the white glove test on a mantel. Judging from his disgust, she hadn't passed. He paid no attention to her squirming bottom half, pinning her with a hand at her pelvis, as he dried his fingers on her shirt. Trying to buck him off only succeeded in making him bear down harder, pressing against whatever internal injuries she'd already incurred.

"That's what you get," he said, giving an indifferent shrug when she yelped in pain, sounding like a kicked dog. He did slide his hand higher, applying the pressure to her abdomen instead of her reproductive organs. Not that she believed he had any knowledge of female anatomy, or cared at all about hers if he did.

"Anyway. You're not as bad as some of the broads we get at the prison. They come in at intake smelling like BO, their periods, pot, my high school jockstrap. Sometimes all at once. Weigh about five hundred pounds too. Makes you wonder where a guy's supposed to stick it, you know?" Parker lifted the bottom of Olivia's t-shirt like he was peering underneath, looking for a place to stick it. Unnecessary, since the hem barely covered her genitals in this position, but he didn't seem to mind the discrepancy.

"Most of them look like butch-ass lesbos," he went on, sliding his hand up Olivia's shirt to stroke her belly. The worst part was that it felt good compared to the violence she'd endured so far. No—the worst part was that she didn't try to get away. She had finally accepted that this was happening. "Like that bulldyke onOrange is the New Black. No offense to your people. Thank God you're a real woman, though. You and Vaughn. Wish I had gotten to you sooner, before menopause dried you out, but I'll get you nice and slick here in a second. They leave that Vaseline nearby?"

Olivia only heard bits and pieces of what he was saying (someone named Vaughn or Von, menopause, Vaseline) her brain doing what it had always done, preserving her sanity by tuning out the ugliest moments. The irony that this ability she'd acquired at a young age, to disappear inside herself during a trauma, made her an unreliable witness—an unreliable victim—was not lost on her.

Most of her account of the Lewis maelstrom had been cobbled together from half-memories, guesswork and likelihoods, and details gleaned from the case file, her doctor's report, and the rape kit. She couldn't even have said with absolute certainty that there was no rape, if not for the inconclusive results of that kit. Inconclusive meant that, while there were no obvious signs of forcible penetration and no evidence of sem*n or spermicide in the vagin*l canal, there was room for interpretation based on her other injuries. Her interpretation was an unequivocal no. Her body would have told her if that had happened.

Never mind that it had hidden so many other offenses from her over the years.

His hands on her bare breasts, kneading. It occurred to her that he was saying something about still working at the prison ("—usually handjobs or blowies, can't really do her right there in the cell, you know?"), but why that was important she couldn't exactly say. Pinching and twisting, jolts of pain shooting through her nipples, into breast tissue, more raw now than they had ever been from nursing Samantha. Oh my God, she would never get to hold her baby girl again, would she?

Don't cry, he said. Hate it when women cry, he said.

A belt unbuckled, pants unzipped. Olivia's version of Pavlov's bell. She didn't salivate, though; nor did she try to get away, the response she had trained herself for so diligently, since that very first warning her mother had given her about men who liked to do The Bad Thing to little girls. It turned out her learned response—after all those dry runs and close calls, after yesterday's crash course in torture and assault—was pure catatonia.

Her eyelashes barely fluttered, she scarcely took a breath, when he entered her. He must not have found the jelly, because she was anything but slick, his large, clammy penis tugging at her skin, opening the wounds that were stitched together with blood and dried sem*n. Even that failed to pull her back from the halfway world she'd slipped into, where his words ("Not as tight as my Vaughny," "At least lift your hips a little") were a foreign language she didn't understand, his tongue in her mouth didn't gag her, and she felt nothing below the waist.

"Oh, kitty cat," he murmured, leaning back to look her in the face while he thrust. Occasionally he rotated his hips like he was trying to make it pleasurable for her too. The joke was on him—she didn't feel a damn thing. "Pretty little kitty."

The halfway world was nice, it was safe and far removed from the shipping container, with all its horrors and indignities, but Olivia knew eventually she would have to return to reality. Her children and Amanda weren't in this place, and she couldn't stay anywhere they were not. A world of misery and pain, of being bought and sold and raped daily, was still better than one without her family in it.

So she tethered herself. She let in some of the pain, some of Parker's disgusting grunts and moans ("Gonna fill you up with so much come, it'll be up to those pretty eyeballs"), and some of the despair that grounded her in the body she kept trying to leave behind. Whereas her mind had been sluggish and uncooperative before, she now became hyperalert and made a connection she hadn't even known she was aware of.

He was talking about Sondra Vaughn. While he f*cked Olivia and groaned about her big, juicy titt*es, her just right c*nt—he'd decided that her supposed elasticity, though lacking the snug fit of his Vaughny, was perfectly co*ck-sized—her gold-dust skin, he was waxing poetic about the woman she remembered from Amanda's mandatory reports.

Olivia had been far too pissed, and far too busy learning how to command a squad, to attend the trial. Because of Amanda's recklessness and addiction, Olivia had been forced to lie, something she loathed doing, and she'd looked incompetent in front of her new bosses for not being able to control one of her detectives. Of course she remembered that case. Not only had she almost fired Amanda over it—had wanted to, badly—a move that would have proved fatal, at least for their relationship, she clearly recalled that Vaughn was sentenced to Sealview.

Her stomach had dropped, upon reading the name of the prison. Images flooded back in a rush: a bone-colored mattress mottled with the stains of various bodily fluids; Harris' baton rattling across chain link, a black phallus, a godlike finger, pointing directly at her; the mole, the size of a 9mm bullet hole, at the base of his shaft; her neon orange uniform, blinding in her peripheral vision as his penis breached her lips.

That hellhole, though far behind her, even back then, was never quite out of her thoughts. She'd felt a bit sorry for Vaughn, who not only had to live there, but also give birth in such a godforsaken place. Then Olivia had remembered that Sondra Vaughn had orchestrated the rape of an innocent woman, just to prove a point, and her sympathy vanished.

She tried to resurrect a mental image of the woman she was being compared to, but all she could picture was an abundance of dark, curly hair and a vulpine expression that looked cold and calculating, even in mugshot. Was it just a coincidence that two random people from her past were apparently now lovers and somehow both involved in her current hell on earth? Was her exhausted and shell-shocked brain forming patterns that weren't actually there?

For the sake of argument, she concocted a theory: Parker met Sondra Vaughn at Sealview and they bonded over their mutual hatred of Olivia—Parker never did get over being rebuffed by her, denied a piece of her, or losing his partner-in-rape, Lowell Harris, because of her—putting together an elaborate revenge plot. Vaughn had executed them before, weaponizing rape just to make a point. She could use Parker as a go-between, God knew she'd have the contacts for something like this. The snake's head was rarely cut off a crime ring by tossing a few of its higher-ups into prison, and even if it was, those criminals always knew ten more who were willing to do their bidding on the outside.

In a perverted bit of poetic justice, they had even timed their plan so that Olivia was abducted on the same day she'd been taken by William Lewis, nine years earlier.

It was f*cking brilliant.

And also too f*cking crazy to be true. Olivia had never even met Vaughn in person, let alone angered her enough to warrant payback this extreme. And how would she or Parker know anything about Lewis? They would have had to follow the trial, and Olivia refused to believe that she'd unknowingly been tracked for years by someone other than Calvin Arliss. None of that explained the buyer, either. Who was it? Whom had she wronged so horribly that they wanted her to suffer like this? Someone with a million dollars to spare?

"Squeeze my ass," Parker said, breathless and sweating so profusely it dripped onto Olivia's forehead, her lips, her neck. The salt of him permeated her mouth as, below, he drove in harder. When she didn't obey the order, he grabbed her nipple and twisted as if he meant to rend it from the breast. He caught the hand that shot out in reflex and clapped it to his buttock, then did the same to the other hand, the other cheek. "Squeeze."

What choice did she have? He was nearing the edge anyway, and maybe he would finish sooner if she complied. Olivia squeezed, digging her nails into coarse-haired flesh and proving at least one of her theories to be true: he came a second later. It didn't make it to her eyeballs, as promised, but she did feel it inside of her like a glob of phlegm, squirmy on her inner walls. Parker groaned and kept pumping as if he were in a p*rno.

And he probably was.

What did the girls do in those things, she couldn't remember. In the very minimal amount of legitimate p*rn Olivia had actually viewed, they always seemed to be screaming and wailing as if they were being hacked to pieces. Mouths open like baby birds waiting on worms, their bodies contorted into unnatural shapes. A series of holes from which men derived pleasure. That was what she'd been reduced to, so she might as well put it to good use.

As she squeezed him harder, sinking her nails into his ass cheeks as deeply as they would go, hands tightening with the steadiness of a blood pressure cuff, her mind was void of anything, even malice. She heard him bark at her tocut it out, bitch, but she held on the way she had clung to the iron bar after beating Lewis. They'd had to pry it from her hands, which retained its shape, her fists hollowed, fingers curved into talons like a hawk without a perch, until Amaro put her in the squad car.

She was that hawk again, its grip reflex triggered, and the more Parker struggled to pull her off, the harder she dug in her claws.

"Let go, stupid c*nt," Parker snarled, flopping out of her like a slimy, dead fish. He clamped onto both of her wrists and shoved them toward her, dragging her nails across his skin so roughly they drew blood. She couldn't see it, but she knew that it was there. His DNA inside her, under her fingernails. A good cop always collected evidence. "f*ck!"

He hit her in the face for it, the blow snapping her head sharply to one side. It stunned but didn't surprise her. The only surprise was that it had taken one of them so long to finally go for her face. He had a decent right hook; she thought her cheekbone might be broken. Her brain felt loose in her skull, as if it were bouncing off the sides like the white dot inPong. He loomed above her on all fours, an angry-looking blur she had to blink several times to bring into focus. The MAGA hat sharpened first. He hadn't taken it off for the rape.

"Ah, sh*t. Look what you went and made me do," Parker lamented, gazing down with something that resembled concern. He clicked his tongue, taking her by the chin and turning her face to inspect the damage. "I'm gonna get my ass chewed now. Buyer wanted your face spotless. Oh well, your eyes still show. I'll just tell— uh, him I had to get you under control somehow. In fact . . . "

Sitting back on his haunches, Parker tucked himself back into his slouched jeans, without bothering to zip or button them. Instead, he unthreaded his belt from the loops, the fake leather whispering
(warnings?)
secrets when he whisked it free.Run, it told her.Get up off of this goddamn mattress while you still can. You fought him off before, you can do it again. If you lie here much longer, you will die. Move, bitch!

Olivia's body wouldn't cooperate. She saw herself launching up from the dirty pallet, elbowing Parker in the face or perhaps planting her foot in his crotch, and making a run for the unlocked door. The others would be waiting on the outside, but maybe they would be preoccupied enough for her to sneak past. With any luck, the keys would still be in the van, and she could drive right out of this valley of death, find the main road, and go straight to the closest police station. She would walk it if she had to, though her gait was probably severely diminished from having her legs forced open for long periods of time, multiple penetrations in multiple locations, and the beatings.

But no matter how clearly she pictured each step of her escape, she couldn't make herself go through with it. She could barely even sit up on her own, let alone take down Parker and make a quick exit. Her best bet was to talk him out of whatever he had in mind for that belt—and it didn't take a genius to figure that part out, the way he halved the band, holding an end in both fists and snapping it taut.

"What are you doing?" she asked weakly, shrinking from his touch when he worked a hand under her back, the other under her ass, like spatulas about to flip a pancake. She made herself into deadweight as he struggled to turn her over. "What do you want?"

She had asked Lowell Harris that very same question, knowing perfectly well what the answer was. But you stalled in whatever way you could, asked whatever came to mind, when you were trying to prevent the inevitable. Part of the reason Lewis hadn't raped her at the beach house—at least not with his penis—was because she had kept him talking. He had loved a mindf*ck just as much as the real kind, that Lewis.

Parker wasn't nearly as cerebral. "You and the wife aren't into BDSM, eh? I'm surprised, she keeps a pretty tight leash on you. Barely ever lets you out of her sight, always got a hand on you, leading you around. I thought for sure you were the sub. You should be used to getting spanked, kitty cat." He lifted in earnest then, easily rolling Olivia onto her belly, despite all efforts to remain on her back.

Truthfully, the few times she and Amanda toyed around with a Dom/sub dynamic in the bedroom, she had been the submissive partner. But they seldom took it further than some playfully given orders that may or may not be followed (they almost always were), depending on Olivia's preference and comfort level. The only time she'd been the aggressor during sex was with Cassidy, a few months after Lewis, when she forced herself to initiate intercourse as proof that she wasfine. Would have happened sooner, if not for the sling.

"No, don't," she said, looking back at Parker pleadingly. He was standing now, slapping the looped belt into his other palm, observing her bare, aching backside, and grinning. She longed to pull her shirt down over her ass, but her arms wouldn't bend that way, especially the left. Just turning her head to see him was almost impossible. "Please. I'll . . . I'll be a good girl. Good kitty. You're— you're so strong, you'll hurt me."

The words tasted as vile as the come she had swallowed by the mouthful yesterday, a bitter, viscous whey that she'd been unable to prevent from sliding down her esophagus. She spat and vomited out as much of it as she could, but eventually her stomach and throat had refused to give up any more. The flavor of it was still on her tongue, mixed in with the donuts and whatever Parker had eaten for breakfast. Some kind of sausage. Olivia would never be able to stomach the meat links again.

Parker looked down at her with surprise, which gave way to curiosity and something that might have been sympathy. He lowered the belt to his side, where it hung against his leg, a headless noose. "You afraid of me, kitty?" he asked, as if the thought had never occurred to him. A woman frightened of the man who had just raped her, imagine that. "Afraid big, bad Parksy will forget his own strength and whip you to death like a stubborn horse?"

Oh, he was poking fun at her. That made more sense than his sudden contrition. Reading social cues was so difficult in these situations. Cruel men didn't play by the rules, and Olivia's mind, which knew how to navigate the breathtaking drops and corkscrew turns of cruelty if not emulate them, wasn't quite up to snuff at the moment. Helplessness and vulnerability were her safest options, the ones most readily available to her. No sense in not playing the victim when that's exactly what you were.

"Yes," she rasped, nodding against her scrunched up shoulder, the way her sweet Tilly did when she was feeling bashful. Olivia made herself small to match the smallness of her voice. It hadn't worked with Harris—with any of them, actually—but maybe Parker would be the exception. A rapist with a heart. "The others . . . so violent. You don't h-have to beat me, I'll do— I'll do whatever you want. Just please don't make it hurt."

Head tilted pityingly, Parker listened as if he were in fact considering the plight of a small, despondent child. The frightened voice on the phone, calling for help from some dirty basem*nt with flowers and a picket fence painted on the wall.He hurts me a lot. And then his friends hurt me so he can take his pictures.Oh God, she really had come full circle. How long until they buried her alive, just like little Maria?

"Anything I want, huh?" Intrigued, Parker cropped himself lightly on the thigh with his belt. He had that velvety tone men always got right before they suggested you degrade yourself in some way for their pleasure. Take it in your mouth, up the ass. Their smooth, liquid words slickening the path, for when they slipped it in. "That's quite an offer. I mean, you'll do what I want, irregardless. But it's better if you're a willing participant. I had to force Vaughn at first, but now she gets off as much as I do."

Sure she does, Olivia thought. And it's regardless, you f*cking idiot. Outwardly she nodded like it made perfect sense. But when he crouched down beside her to test her receptivity, tucking a scribble of dark hair behind her ear, she instinctively shrank from his touch. At the last second, she managed not to turn her face away, but the damage was already done. His expression went stony for one fleeting moment, then softened to saccharine the next. He stroked the back of her head with a heavy hand, gliding it down to her back in a repetitive petting motion.

"Purr for me," he said, leaning in to murmur the instruction near her exposed ear. He went on petting.

"What?" Olivia blinked at him stupidly. Of all the things she imagined him making her do, that hadn't even crossed her mind. It had to be a joke. She had heard of a case where the victim was forced to whinny like a horse for her attackers, and there were countless instances of men putting dog collars on the women they tortured, but purring was a new one. She hated George Huang for giving her that goddamn name; she hated Kat Tamin for carrying it on.

"You said you'd be a good kitty. Well, good kitties get their backs rubbed and scratched." Parker prodded around her shoulder blades, sawed his nails back and forth along her spine. He walked his fingers up and down, hitting every sore spot on the way. "And that makes them purr. I want to hear you do it. Purr for me like a good kitty, and I won't use the belt on you."

Olivia inwardly cringed each time he made contact with her skin, but she did her best not to let it show. Now, though, the bastard wanted her to purr for him as if she enjoyed his rough-skinned fingertips and calloused palms scraping her already tender flesh. She wouldn't. He'd asked the one thing of her that she couldn't do.

"I— I don't know how," she said lamely. Days ago, she had played dolls and stuffies with her middle daughters, entertaining them with animal noises for each species of plush toy they owned, including a fluffy white Persian cat. Jesse quickly caught on to blowing air over her tongue to vibrate it against the roof of her mouth, although much spittle was involved. But Matilda didn't yet have the dexterity and could only make the sound by flapping her little lips like a motorboat.I can do it, Mommy! I can do it!

She'd wanted to teach her children so many other things before she had to leave them. She thought she would at least see them all graduate, maybe watch the older two get married, start families of their own. She might even hold her grandchild one day. Strange how quickly your dreams changed. Now she could scarcely imagine a world outside of this one—The Box—or how she would fit back into it again. If she ever did return to her children, it would be as an Olivia they had never met.

"Oh, come on," Parker was saying, his dubious expression giving him a double chin. He wasn't overweight, but he had filled out since their last encounter, and the squatting stance was proving too much for his knees. They crackled like Styrofoam when he pushed to his feet, grunting. "Everybody knows how to purr. Especially kitty cats."

Olivia shrugged, her eyes following the belt that dangled at his side like a strop. She asked Amanda to take Noah to the barber for his haircuts these days, fearing what her own reaction might be if someone brought out a straight razor. But the tools of Calvin Arliss' trade found her no matter where she was, it seemed.

"Bet your pretty little wifey makes you do it all the time. You telling me, when she's down there eating you out like a blond piranha, it doesn't get you purring just a little bit?" Parker smiled to himself, enjoying the imagery he had conjured. When he noticed Olivia's distaste, he held the belt buckle to his crotch, waggling the strap suggestively. "Her tongue rough or soft? Must feel good dragging across your cl*t, over and over. She's kinda small, but those tiny girls pack a big punch, don't they? She ever make you squirt, or—"

"Stop." Olivia shuddered, her revulsion so strong it rippled beneath her skin, inside her stomach. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. If he said one more word about Amanda, about their lovemaking, which was as sacred to Olivia as any religion—itwasher religion—she would lose her mind. They had already taken almost everything else from her; he didn't get to take the sweet, intimate memories she had made with her wife. Her little pretty. "Just stop. I'll do it."

The gash in Parker's face appeared and he gave an eager wave of invitation. Let's hear it. "Thatsa good kitty. Show me what that pretty pink tongue can do. Like this . . . " He demonstrated, lips parted, tongue trilling his palate, creating a sound like distant helicopter blades. The oddly soothing patter of heavy artillery hitting water, the hum of drones and military tanks. Inside of Parker's mouth, a war raged.

Olivia's first attempts produced little more than a puff of air, as if she were blowing on dandelion fluff or a bubble wand. Her children were forever putting things near her lips for her to blow on. What she wouldn't give to be at the park with them right now, laughing at the white fuzzies in Amanda's pale hair, almost indistinguishable from the blond, the dogs biting the bubbles midair.Not so much, they'll get the sh*ts, Amanda would say.Language, love, Olivia reminded, pecking her lips, piecing floaties from fine golden strands.Love is the only language I speak, baby. And they were laughing again, the kids and the dogs joining in on Amanda's efforts to kiss Olivia silly.

But her mouth was too dry to make the noise. Her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth instead of vibrating with the air she pushed out. She tried saying the wordpurrand rolling the R's. She was good at that, had picked it up quickly in Spanish class. Now it caught in the back of her throat, a glottal stop that sounded more Arabic than Latin. "Can't," she whispered, failing even to clear her throat productively. "Need water."

Parker's shoulders sank, his animated expression settling to neutral, his crooked features like an off-center picture frame that threw off the whole wall. Only one nostril flared when he sniffed resignedly. He wiped the other with the back of his wrist, the belt a dead black adder in his hand. Oh, but it could still bite. Its fanged tooth glinted in the crook of his fist. "Well, that's too bad. I only give good, happy puss*es something to drink. Great big saucers of cream for them to lap up while they purr and purr."

Olivia shook her head adamantly. His cream was already seeping out of her, puslike. "Water."

"Okay, fine. You don't want to play that game, how's about a new one?" Parker took the belt by the notched end, winding it around his hand a few times, as if preparing for a street brawl. He let the buckle and a good eighteen inches of the strap swing free. The adder had sprung to life, ready to strike. "You make it past five lashes without whining like a little bitch, and I'll get you some water. Deal?"

He didn't wait for an answer, the hammered silver buckle, shaped like the letter P, whistling as it hurtled skyward in a wide arc, then plunged downward at a sheer drop. The cracking sound it made against Olivia's back was so spectacular, it was as disorienting as a gong going off in her ears. In her whole body. It reverberated up her spine, ping-ponged around in her neurons, and finally exploded in fireworks of multicolored pain behind her eyelids.

"Oh," she cried, a scream in her head, though barely a gasp when it left her lips.Oh, dear Jesus. She had yet to catch her breath from the first lash when the second came down at the back of her shoulder, just as brutal. A third and a fourth landed near the base of her spine, her buttock. The fifth was a searing stripe across the backs of her thighs. Oh, she breathed again, thanking Jesus it was over, that no more flesh would be gouged from her body like paint chips by that silver prong at the center of the buckle. Every inch of her backside felt torn open and raw.

But Parker was not a man of his word. Not surprising, really, if you considered the source. He surpassed five strokes, going on to six, seven, eight. By the time he stopped hacking at her with the belt, like it was a machete and she a dense patch of rainforest, Olivia had counted eleven lashes. An odd number to end on. Why not twelve? Better yet, twenty? As she took inventory of her stinging, singing flesh, she realized he had probably just run out of places to hit her. Of course, he could turn her over and start on the front . . .

"Phew, think I worked up some thirst myself, with that one," he announced, winded. He stooped forward, hands on his knees, panting like those guys in the park who wanted you to know they had just jogged three miles, weren't they manly and oh-so-fit? From what Olivia could see through her tears and from the corner of her eye, he was a bit flush in the cheeks. Maybe he would have a heart attack and drop down right there beside her on the floor. She willed it to be so, eager to look into his eyes and watch him take his last breath.

But he didn't clutch his chest or drop to his knees. He didn't fall, reaching out to her for help, for pity. Things she would deny him. Instead, he droned on about needing a drink until the Crier—she recognized him by voice alone now—called out from the open doorway: "You slipped it to her yet, or what? Don't tell me you been in here talking her ear off this whole time."

Not the whole time, no. Olivia shook her head, or the closest thing to it she could manage, a twitch, a flicker, willing him to take a better look at her and see what Parker had done. She hated relying on one monster to protect her from another, but right then she didn't have much of a choice. At least Crier didn't say one thing and do something entirely different. As much as he enjoyed hurting her, she was still property in his eyes, and you didn't damage the property you were trying to sell. Not with a million dollars at stake.

"Nah, just a little pillow talk. She gave me a real sweet welcome, didn't you, Miss Kitty?" Parker trailed the tapered end of the belt up the inside of Olivia's thighs, making her jump when it grazed skin. He brought it higher, bobbing it like a feathered cat toy, teasing between her legs where there was so much pain. Though not as much as between her buttocks, where the faux leather slithered its tail next, catching on sticky blood and whatever else had congealed there. "Had me purring like a kitten right along with her."

"Yeah, well, Gus'll be back soon, so—" The Crier's voice had drawn closer, and when he came into Olivia's limited field of vision, it grew louder still, until he was almost shouting. "What the f*ck did you do, Park?" he demanded, surveying her back, the side of her face not turned to the floor. "I leave you in here with her for half an hour, and now she looks like she went through a meat grinder. I told you not to f*ck with her face, man. The boss is already getting antsy that he hasn't heard from the buyer yet. You better hope and pray that bruise don't depreciate her value any, otherwise you'll end up at the bottom of the Bay wearing cement shoes, buddy boy."

On the outskirts of conscious thought, where meaning and logic faded into the fog between the worlds—reality and not—Olivia heard him mention the Bay. She peered sidelong, willing him to be more specific. There were multiple bays throughout New York and New Jersey, if that was indeed where they had taken her. Were she to wager a guess, she would go with Newark Bay, based on the drive to get here and what she had (or hadn't) seen in her glimpse of the surroundings. But that didn't give her much hope. If it was Newark Bay, she might well be smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest, busiest container shipping facilities in the US.

They could ship her anywhere, at any moment, and Amanda would never be able to find her. Even if they didn't, looking for a particular shipping container in such a huge shipyard would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Then again, the area had seemed too remote to be Port Newark-Elizabeth. She hadn't heard enough activity outside for it to be a hub of that extent. Just that relentless pounding, whirring, and drilling from the construction site.

She focused on a spot on the floor when the Crier's gaze fell on her, as though he sensed her listening in, calculating. If she played dead long enough, her chances of overhearing something of value were much greater than if she stared him down, acting tough. They had beaten and f*cked all the toughness out of her, anyway. For lack of a better simile, she felt as weak as a newborn kitten, lying there on her stomach, her back and insides seeping.

"Relax," Parker said to his friend, not nearly as blasé as he was attempting to sound. A nervous little giggle gave him away. "I'm here on behalf of the buyer, who is otherwise detained for the moment. There's nothing to worry about. Deal's still on, and it's not like I gave her a black eye or anything. I had to get her under control. And she— well, the buyer isn't going to see this part anyway. I doubt they'll even notice, when they do get back."

"Hope not, for your sake." The Crier didn't come across all that sincere, but he did crouch down to examine the wounds on Olivia's back, from the buckle. He gave an appreciative hum, reminding her of a medical examiner who enjoyed his job a little too much. "And it's your lucky day, 'cause I turned the camera off when you were first dicking around with her. I guess you can convince Gus that she hurt herself there. Ran into your elbow or something. But there's no explaining away these—what are they, P shapes? What the hell'd you hit her with, you sick f*ck?"

Olivia tuned out the men as Parker proudly displayed his belt buckle and they went on laughing, talking about what a great piece of ass she was, and trading verbal slaps on the back as congratulations for tearing up that puss* with a capital P. She floated in the hazy gray place that was Reality But Not, their voices a buzz somewhere beneath her, like the electric drills across the water. She thought of Amanda, how the poor thing was probably going out of her mind with worry. If their roles were reversed—well, Olivia couldn't even imagine. Her one consolation was that she'd been the target, not her wife.

Not until she heard Parker mention tag teaming did she reluctantly drift back down into the body that wasn't hers anymore. (Had it ever been? Over the years, she had often wondered.) They were looking at her with grim, hungry eyes, like coyotes watching a slab of meat before setting upon it. They couldn't possibly still want her, the shape she was in.

Could they?

"I did promise you an hour," said the Crier. He clicked his tongue piercing against his front teeth a few times, debating with himself. Maybe he would have given a different answer if Olivia hadn't glanced up at him then, pleading, hoping the ripening bruise on her cheek would discourage him from giving Parker another turn with her. From taking another for himself.

But the second she caught his eye, she saw him decide. It cinched like a padlock behind his flat, colorless irises, no key to open it up again. "All right, but let's do her someplace besides the mattress. It smells like the ass-end of a menstruating skunk. Tell you what, these bitches start to get nasty in a day or two. Worse than leftover shrimp. Probably have to turn the hose on this one after today's regimen."

They crutch-carried her to the desk that listed to one side in the beam from the tripod light, and started raping her there. Oral, vagin*l. Intermixed so she eventually lost track of who was inside her, where. She complied with each order—"Balls too, suck 'em, bitch," "Push your ass into me, keep them hips up, oh f*ck yeah, I bet you were one prime c*nt in your day"—hoping it would be over sooner that way. It went on for years, eons. An eternity of bitches and c*nts, of penises hurting her, gagging her, hammering, drilling.

At least she didn't have to take it up the ass this time. Or so she believed, until they started a game called puss* in the Middle, their version of Monkey in the Middle. As far as Olivia could tell, it simply involved her crawling on all fours, mewing like a cat, and being mounted from behind when one of the men "caught" her. She did not like the game. It made her want to die.

Parker must have won, because it was he who turned Olivia over, straddled her legs, and shinnied up her body like an arborist. She was merely the diseased oak he worked to fell, hacking off dead limbs, stripping away bark like leprous skin. Her t-shirt, no longer white but speckled in dirt and veined with blood, lay in a whipped-cream dollop on the floor, inches from her head. She reached for it, thinking of the ice cream sundaes the kids loved to make at home—Jesse's strange concoctions of Oreo crumbs and strawberry syrup, Noah's snowy peaks of Reddi-wip that practically touched the sky—and got her hand snatched away by Crier. He pinned it above her head with the other.

Holding her for Parker, though she didn't resist. A knee between her legs, knocking them apart. It rammed into her genitals, stars exploding there and in her vision. Among them was her mother's face, bright as the sun in its fury, a spittle of comets and asteroids spewing from her lips. Destructive, burning things that pelted Olivia like stones, tearing at flesh and bone.

The memory had been resurrected in therapy not that long ago, but she wondered if this reenactment—Parker battering her with his knee, to make way for his co*ck—would have reawakened it anyway. Every time she thought she'd recovered from a past trauma, another popped up to take its place, whether a forgotten incident from childhood or a new violation such as this. A vicious cycle, an infinite loop of violence. Begetting and begetting and begetting.

How had Serena put it, simulating her own rape on her eight-year-old daughter?This is what happens when you walk home late at night. This is what your precious daddy would do to you. This is what I went through to get you. This is what they do to women who think they're invincible.

Turned out, she hadn't been wrong or crazy after all. Olivia had been born of this, for this, and her mother had just been preparing her to fulfill her destiny. The way royals trained their offspring to ascend the throne. Spread your legs and accept the crown. And so she did, because there was nothing easier in the world than giving in to your fate when it came for you. You either fought like hell or accepted it, and all of Olivia's fight was gone. Too exhausted and dried out to cry or speak, she turned her face away and waited for the men to be done.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, Olivia realized the Crier was gone, her wrists no longer pinned above her head. At first, it frightened her that she couldn't remember when he'd left, when Parker had dragged her back to the mattress to hold her like a lover after an evening of passionate sex, or what had been done to her in the meantime. But then again, it was probably better that way—not knowing.

She used to think it would be torturous not being able to remember your own assault, but after Lewis and Calvin, she knew the real torture was obsessing over the memories you did retain. If she had her preference now, she'd rather be drugged to the gills and oblivious to every word, every touch, every sight and smell. All those women who were raped while they were unconscious didn't know how lucky they had it.

"Hey, I think it's only fair that I let you know," said Parker, tracing patterns on Olivia's upper arm, so gentle it was almost loving. He turned to look at her, their heads close together, hers cushioned in the crook of his arm. It was the most comfortable she'd been since yesterday morning, despite being tucked naked against the side of her most recent rapist. "'Cause you've been real sweet to me this afternoon. Me and Vaughn are gonna take real good care of the kid. She wants the baby now, but the redhead—what's her name, Madeline? She'd probably be easiest to grab. Either way, you don't have to worry. I'll treat whichever one we end up with like my own."

Olivia stared at him for several seconds, trying to make sense of the sounds coming from his mouth. She was mostly picking up on tones, sometimes every other word, but he gave her a moment to let it fall into place, to let it sink in and percolate, and she finally understood: he was talking about her children. Threatening to take them away, as Gus had done upon their introduction. Why couldn't these monsters leave her babies alone? She would submit to being raped a thousand times over, if it meant protecting them.

"Tilly," she said, her voice a husk, like the shed skin of a snake or an insect. Fragile and easy to crush if handled too roughly. "Tilly. She's— she's a baby too. Don't take her. Please. Stay away from my family."

Parker put on a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He stroked Olivia's forehead too roughly, pushing back her hair and kissing her there so soundly it made a loud smacking noise in the small, boxy room. "You don't have a family anymore," he murmured, too intimate, too warm. It felt like being suffocated, those words and his heavy hands holding her down, his eyes. God, she couldn't breathe, the way he looked at her. "Forget about them, it'll be easier if you do. You're no good to them now, anyway. I give it six months before you check out. Normal rape f*cks you up enough as it is, but this gang bang sh*t? Being trafficked? Seen it time and again at the prison. You broads never get over things like that.

"Even if you make it out alive, you'll have too much psychological damage to be a good mom to your kids. The baby'll be better off with me and Vaughn." He stroked Olivia's forehead idly with his thumb, a dreamy note in his voice. He wasn't speaking to her anymore. "She'll have two stable parents, and a daddy, instead of two lesbos. No offense. It's just . . . little girl needs a father, y'know?"

He had a point. Olivia had spent the better part of her childhood wishing for a daddy to come whisk her away from the abuse, the name-calling, the neglect, the fear. She would rather be dead than to pass that on to her children. Her little girls weren't going to grow up searching for men to fill that void, and falling for the first guy who made them feel special. Who proposed so he could have sex with them whenever he wanted. Who promised to be there, always, then left without so much as a goodbye. If Parker could prevent that from happening . . .

The thought was such a shock to Olivia's system, she almost sat bolt upright. Or would have, if she wasn't pinned by his hands. Those hands were never going to touch her daughters—or her son—as long as she was breathing. She would kill this man, in his stupid MAGA hat with his stupid sleazy smile, if she had to. His belt had gone by the wayside when he and the Crier hauled her over to the desk, and she gazed at it intently, willing it to slither the last few inches into her outstretched palm.

She pictured grabbing it up like a real adder, by the tail like on Animal Planet, and wrapping it around Parker's thick neck. It would only take a minute or two, less if she placed it properly and found the strength to pull it tight. But the image of herself, legs wrapped around his waist, belt noosed around his neck from behind, barely had time to solidify in her mind before Parker was getting to his feet and zipping his jeans. He did it the cavalier way guy's zipped up in front of urinals, after draining the snake.

"I gotta get back," he said with some reluctance. His gaze held a hint of longing when he looked down at her, as if she were the lover he must depart from because his wife called. It shamed Olivia just to think it, even though there was no wife as far as she knew, and she had not willingly participated in the affair. "Your people have been interrogating Vaughn since yesterday, and she's probably getting real anxious about what she's missing. Better go see if I can help her out. Maybe I'll come visit you again, kitty cat. You were definitely worth the wait."

She kept expecting him to remember the belt and put it back on, but she almost forgot it herself at the mention of her people. If her squad was questioning Vaughn at the prison, that meant they were on the right track. Cracking perps was difficult and the ones who were already in prison were sometimes the hardest to draw out—they already had nothing to lose. But she was also confident in her team's ability to find answers and bring the vic home. Parker was probably right, it was probably too late for her. The next woman might be more lucky, though.

She waited until he was gone to reach for the belt he'd left behind, inching it toward the mattress by the P-shaped buckle, tucking it underneath. He may not have held up his end of the deal about getting her some water, but he'd unknowingly left her with another way out besides dying of thirst. If the moment came when she was sure she would not be reunited with Amanda and their children, she would drag herself to the desk, loop the belt through the top drawer handle, latch the ends around her neck, and lean into the arms of sweet oblivion.

For now, it felt good to have a plan. She was a captain, a mother, and she knew how to prepare ahead.

Carefully she gathered her dirty, crumpled t-shirt to her, wincing with the effort of stretching out her arm. It took a good fifteen or twenty seconds to get the shirt over her head and down her chest. She didn't bother with the panties; they were somewhere amid the garbage and she didn't have the energy to look, let alone put them on. Perhaps later, when she woke up.

She slept hard on the thin mattress, the belt a serpentine lump underneath her, comforting, and she didn't dream.

. . .

Chapter 20: This Woman's Work

Chapter Text

Chapter 20.

This Woman's Work

. . .

The nose would heal, Dana didn't much care about that. She had grown up a tomboy in rural Virginia, two older brothers, scrappy as all get out; she was used to broken noses. And you didn't build a career as a ball-busting FBI agent or serve time in prison, posing as a murderer of innocent pregnant ladies, without getting socked in the face a few times.

Honestly, she could have popped her crooked schnoz back into place herself and kept right on working, but somebody needed to be with Rollins when she woke up. The detective was going to be madder than an old wet hen once the drugs wore off, and Dana couldn't exactly blame her. It had been a rotten trick by that beady little shrink to sedate her like that, against her will. He had claimed it was for her own safety, and that of everyone in the squad room, but in Dana's opinion it was no different than the age-old practice of deeming women "hysterical" and drugging them into submission.

She was here for selfish reasons, though. She had needed to get away from the precinct and especially from the live feed of Olivia Benson being beaten and raped. The video had ended abruptly, right before the altercation, leaving everyone to stare at the black void on their screens in stunned silence, but it would likely be restored. Those men were not amateurs, nothing they did was by accident, and everything was designed to inflict the most suffering—for Olivia and their audience—as possible.

In the meantime, Dana's colleagues were poring over the previous footage, analyzing background noise, enlarging screen captures, replaying conversation in search of missed clues, all in hopes of pinpointing a location. It was too much. The longer she watched it play out, the deeper she receded into memories of her own assault. Following leads on Declan Murphy's whereabouts had been a good distraction for a while, but there were only so many dead ends you could go down before admitting you were on a wild goose chase.

Maybe Amanda had the right idea after all. Dana watched her sleeping heavily on the gurney, chin slumped to her chest, and wished she could be that oblivious to the passage of time. Every minute Olivia was held captive, the likelihood of getting her back diminished by that much more. How long until they ran out of minutes? Until Olivia did? Despite years of not being in contact with the captain, Dana had taken great comfort in knowing that somewhere in New York City, justice and empathy thrived, and it had a fantastic head of hair to go with it.

She couldn't imagine looking out at the Manhattan skyline if Olivia was no longer under it. She couldn't imagine how devastating it must be, as a wife, to watch the woman you loved, the mother of your children, being violently tortured, her beautiful body used and defiled. Vandalized like a highway underpass, blood and sem*n the tagging medium of choice.

All of Dana's spouses and children were unique to her UC personas, and she enjoyed making up lives for them. She'd liked being married to Amos the best, he never gave her any guff. Stephanie had been fun, though. She challenged Dana, drove her crazy, but they always found something to laugh about together. Jordy and Cash were into every school sport imaginable, Nellie got good grades but was shy like her father. Sometimes Dana missed them, those fictional families she used to believe were as good as the real thing.

Then again, look what the real thing got you, she thought, sighing as Amanda slept on. The shrink said the sedation would wear off in about an hour, and that had come and gone twenty minutes ago. If Dana sat there much longer, watching the steady rise and fall of Amanda's chest, the dripping of her IV, the blips from the pulse oximeter, she would probably go crazy and need to be sedated too. She got up to stretch her legs, stiff from the uncomfortable hospital chair, and bent down to touch her toes. That always got her blood going.

When she stood upright again, Amanda had begun to stir, her hand feeling the catheter in her arm, though she hadn't opened her eyes yet. The detective frowned, gliding the length of slender tubing between her fingers, and slowly parting her lids to peer at what she was holding. "S'this?" she mumbled, speaking more to herself than to Dana, who had yet to catch her eye.

"The sedation can make you dehydrated," Dana said, moving slowly toward the bed. Last time she rushed at Amanda, she ended up with blood gushing from her nostrils. For someone so slight, the little blonde packed one helluva punch. Dana was shorter, but rock solid and thicker around the middle, thanks to menopause. Even so, she had reeled back on her Steve Madden loafers with that hit. "You were lookin' a mite peaked when we got here, so they hooked you up to an IV."

"They did?" Amanda traced her eyes along the tubing, no thicker than a cooked spaghetti noodle and twice as curvy, as if she had never seen such a contraption before. The sedative could cause confusion too, Lindstrom had warned. "Don't remember. Just one minute I's talking to y'all and watching the livestream— oh, God, Liv. How long have I been out? Did they find her? Is she okay?"

"Hey, slow your roll there, Detective." Dana snapped her fingers for Amanda to stop trying to rip off the surgical tape from the crook of her arm. When that didn't work, she stepped forward and cupped a hand over the catheter. "You need to take it easy, otherwise you'll be on your ass. And I ain't waiting around while you recover from that."

The joke fell flat as Amanda glanced around the room like she was looking for an escape route. Her strength hadn't returned just yet, but it was filtering back slowly, like the drip from the saline bag, and soon she would be putting up a much heartier struggle. "You've been out for 'bout an hour and a half," Dana said quickly, hoping to allay some of the girl's concerns. Although probably not many. "Olivia is . . . we still haven't found her, I'm sorry. Since the feed went dead, there's been no new attempts at contact. Sergeant Tutuola's been keeping me apprised via text. Last was five minutes ago."

Amanda fought valiantly for several more seconds, prying at Dana's fingers and huffing in frustration each time they closed around her arm again. "Lemme go, you f*ckin—" Flumping back against the pillow elevated behind her head by the upright bed, she let out a low, animalistic growl, like something feral and ferocious that had gotten its leg caught in a trap. "Bitch. I h-hafta go to her. Hafta— she . . . she needs me."

In that moment, Dana saw clearly what had so appealed to Olivia about the spunky little blonde that she'd gone and married her. Amanda was muscling her way through a haze of ketamine and fatigue just to watch over the captain in whatever capacity she could, her desperation so stark, so unabashed, it was almost embarrassing. That kind of loyalty was hard to come by; Dana certainly hadn't found it, although years of UC work would do that to you. Couldn't be loyal to someone whose persona changed every five minutes.

Detective Rollins loved Olivia in that fierce and consuming way that most people only dreamed about finding in a partner. Well, good for Olivia. She deserved it, and God knew she'd need it if she ever made it back home. "I know, darlin'," said Dana, easing off Amanda's arm with a few awkward pats. She wasn't great with the affection, probably another reason they weren't lining up for a chance at Dana Karen Lewis. "But until they initiate contact with us again—"

"Don't call me that." Amanda's head was tipped back to gaze at the ceiling, her irises a flat blue that matched her flat voice. She blinked and suddenly her eyes were awash with tears. "That's what I call her. I ain't your darlin'."

Cringing, Dana mentally kicked herself for the pet name. It was common in the South, versatile enough to use on men, women, and children, and no one took offense. Her big mouth always seemed to get her into trouble, though, even when she wasn't being rude or abrasive. She just had that knack. "Sorry, I didn't realize—"

"Did you say I was sedated? As in, drugged?" Amanda sat forward, looking directly at Dana. Her irises swam in the surrounding white pools of sclera, the pupils not quite back to normal yet. She looked a bit like David Bowie, with his strange asymmetric dilation. She had his intensity too, all of it focused on Dana. "Was it that bastard Lindstrom? Did he do this to me?"

The detective was getting riled up again, and Dana felt for her. Born in the mid sixties, she had narrowly missed the era of men making women's mental health decisions for them, but her mama and a few aunts had suffered through the psychiatric treatment for difficult, high strung women. Apparently Lindstrom hadn't gotten the memo that the fifties were over. Women could be as loud, and maybe even a little violent, as they saw fit.

"Yeah, he, uh, got kinda freewheeling with that syringe. Thought you were gonna hurt someone, supposedly. Your sergeant was not a happy camper." Might as well keep Fin in her good graces, Dana decided. And he had been visibly upset with the shrink as he hefted Amanda's limp body onto the desk chair. "He asked Lindstrom to leave, which I think was Fin-speak for 'get the hell out of my squad room.'"

Amanda gave a derisive sniff. "Shouldn't have called him in the first place, if that's how he felt about it. What happened to you?" She tapped the side of her nose when Dana tilted her head, questioning.

"Oh. This?" Dana touched the splint, a small piece of plastic shaped like a Bioré pore-cleansing strip and held in place by medical tape. She had tried to refuse the damn thing, insisting she'd broken her nose enough times to perform her own rhinoplasty, but the doctor insisted. She held no illusions about the appearance of her nose—it had been her least favorite feature long before the breaks, its snubbed tip and asymmetrical nostrils the bane of her existence—but at least the guy cared that it healed properly. "This is nothing. I've gotten worse fractures sneezing. You should see the other guy."

"Sorry," Amanda said with a deep, weary sigh. She flexed her knuckles, as if they still held the residual pain of smashing into Dana's approaching face. It had been one hell of a right hook. "Did I headbutt someone too?" She rubbed the back of her head, grimacing. Dana had used the defense move on a few sleazebag perps herself, including a nearly seven-foot-tall white supremacist who outweighed her by two hundred pounds, and she well remembered the brain-thudding throb that followed.

Wincing, she gave an apologetic nod. "Let's just say Sergeant Tutuola will be a little fuller around the lips for the next week or so. I think the goatee absorbed some of the blow." On the outside, at least. She had heard the unmistakable clack of teeth, a sound you didn't forget once you'd heard them gnashing together during enhanced interrogation techniques, seconds before the equally unmistakable sound of her nasal bone and cartilage crunching like Styrofoam.

"Good," said Amanda, her icy features hardening to frosted steel. All at once, she halted the careful probing of her injuries as if the pain had magically disappeared. More than likely, she had simply resolved herself to it, as Dana would have. As Olivia seemed to have done in that sad*stic horror movie she was trapped in. "Serves him right for siccing goddamn Lindstrom on me like I'm some kind of . . . "

Some kind of what, she didn't finish, but Dana got the gist. She doubted it would do much good to point out that Fin hadn't personally sicced the therapist on Amanda—the odd little man had taken that liberty all by himself—not when the detective was determined she knew where to place the blame. Besides, Dana had a feeling that reasoning with an angry Amanda Rollins was like reasoning with a hornet. A nest of them, freshly kicked.

"I'm gonna kill that sonuvabitch." Amanda's jaw tightened with resolve, and she glanced sidelong at Dana, daring her to say differently.

Normally, Dana wouldn't have; she made off-the-cuff remarks like that all the time, everyone did. But something about the way the wordkillsprang from Amanda's tongue, as singular as a launched grenade, was troubling. Dana might never have watched her wife going through the worst kind of hell imaginable, but she had survived her own sexual assault and, in a blind fury of grief and trauma, very nearly murdered the assailant. Amanda had the same vengeful look in her eye that Dana had glimpsed in the mirror after completing her own rape kit.

"It isn't Fin you should be—"

"I'm not talking about my damn sergeant," Amanda snapped. "I'm talking about the turtle-looking motherf*cker who stuck me. He had no right. I mighta found Liv by now if I wasn't lying in some goddamn hospital bed. Christ. Who the f*ck's he think he is? I never should've let Liv go to him. I'm making her switch therapists soon as I get home."

Dana could pinpoint the exact moment Amanda noticed the incongruity of her words—the detective froze in her fussing with the hospital blanket, went a little dead behind the eyes, and then her tired, pretty face crumpled in on itself. She began to weep with bitter, racking sobs that almost sounded like laughter, until you saw the anguish in her red face, in the clawed hands scratching at the blanket. A Bible verse Dana hadn't heard since she was a teenager, her mama's good little Pentecostal girl, came back to her unbidden:

They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew something or other, if memory served. Dana had always liked the verse, the idea of Jesus and his angels tossing folks out of Heaven, onto their keisters, appealing to her not-quite-so Christian affinity for seeing the bad guys get theirs.I don't know about you, Daney, her daddy used to say.You're either gonna be a fearsome protector or a fearsome troublemaker someday. Cain't rightly say which just yet.

Luckily it had been the former option, but that didn't make her job any easier. She hated seeing women cry, particularly the tough ones like Amanda Rollins. She knew the shame and embarrassment that went with it. The feeling of failure that you were proving all the men right, women were too emotional for the job. She cleared her throat and patted Amanda awkwardly on the back. Why hadn't she just returned to the precinct instead of staying behind to play nursemaid?

Lord Almighty, she hated this case.

"Hey, now. Let's, uh . . . let's keep it together here, dar— honey." Dana winced at her incompetence. There was a reason she didn't have children. Or a spouse. Or even a dog. She tried to imagine what Olivia would say in her place—Olivia who wore her heart on her sleeve and had shown compassion and tenderness to Dana, despite believing she was a cold-blooded killer of pregnant kindergarten teachers—but all she came up with was a sentiment too lame for a greeting card: "Don't give up hope yet. She's a fighter."

It's always darkest before the dawn. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. May the force be with you.

It was all so senseless and there were no good words, certainly not any Dana could summon up on short notice. She pressed her lips together, blocking any more meaningless platitudes from spilling out, but the damage was already done.

"Not like this, she ain't," Amanda cried, the words harsh and jagged in her convulsing throat. "You weren't h-here, you didn't see. All the other times, what it did to her. Harris and Lewis. Calvin. The stuff fr-from when she was a kid. It took her so long to recover. Even if I g-get her back, she ain't gonna be my Liv anymore. Don't you understand, I already lost her for good. She might as well be—"

She swallowed the rest with an audible gulp, though Dana heard it just as plainly as if it were spoken. The Olivia they both knew and loved might as well be dead. Not a wish, but a deduction based on years of experience. People often didn't recover from a trauma of this magnitude, and those who did were fundamentally and irrevocably changed—it's why gang rape was such an effective weapon in war zones. Racking up kills without the body count.

Detective Rollins was in mourning. A widow whose spouse wasn't yet in the ground.

"You listen to me, little girl," said Dana, leaning both hands on the hospital bed and fixing Amanda with a severe look. She might not know how to comfort a devastated wife, but she knew damn well how to talk to a soldier giving up in the heat of battle. "That woman is not dead, and don't you ever come to me with that fatalistic bullsh*t again. She's only lost to you if you let her go. I seen plenty of ladies survive something this bad or worse, and yes, it's an unthinkable tragedy and some don't recover, but the brave ones do. And there ain't nobody braver than your wife. So, you don't throw in the towel tillshedoes, ya hear?"

Gradually Amanda's expression changed from total despondence to mild surprise, probably at being spoken to like a kid getting scolded by a strict teacher, and finally settled on something resembling resolve. She nodded, pawing the tears from her face and pinching a drip of snot from her nostrils. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right," she said, sniffing loudly and rubbing the heel of her palm under her nose. "My head's just . . . " She spread her hands near either side of her head and shook them, suggesting a frenetic, static-filled brain.

"Yeah. Ketamine'll do that to you." Dana patted Amanda's arm, and this time it wasn't forced. She had suffered terrible sleep paralysis for months after her assault, waking up convinced she'd been drugged again and was incapable of moving. As an added bonus, he was always on top of her, murmuring about her velvet throat. For a long time, it was a raw, gravelly throat from all the sobbing and retching she did on those sleepless, feverish nights. "That feeling will wear off soon, but you'll probably have one sumbitch of a hangover."

"Great. I can hardly wait." Amanda closed her eyes and leaned back on the headrest. It lasted all of two seconds before she sat forward, tore the IV catheter from her arm with two brisk yanks that snapped the medical tape and sent up a little geyser of blood like red oil, and threw aside the thin bedclothes. "Screw it. I gotta get out of here. Going back to the precinct and see what I can do. I'm the one those bastards want to be in contact with, anyway."

"I'm not so sure that's a wise—" At the last moment, Dana sidestepped the oncoming blonde, narrowly escaping being plowed down by a hundred and twenty-five pounds moving at full speed ahead. Well, okay then. Amanda was right about the kidnappers; they were more interested in tormenting her than the NYPD, making her presence beneficial to the investigation. Just not to her mental health.

But when had Dana ever stopped to consider the negative impact of a case before jumping in headfirst? When had any law enforcement officer worth her salt? Sometimes you just bit the bullet and did it, regardless of your health or your sanity.

"Hey, hotfoot," she called, grabbing her blazer off the visitor's chair and hurrying after Amanda, who was making a beeline for the exit. "Wait up, I'm coming with."

The one-six was still in a tailspin when they returned. Grown men in uniforms looked shell-shocked, and the women wore subdued, faraway expressions, bruise-like smudges under their eyes as if they hadn't slept in days. Many of them stared at Amanda, parting like the Red Sea to let her through as she headed for SVU at a fast clip. The squad room wasn't much better, with officers and agents alike half-dead on their feet, guzzling coffee and searching for clues that weren't there.

Normally, Dana would have enjoyed ragging on NYPD for not being the well-oiled machine that was the Bureau. But not while a cop was missing. When a fellow agent was in jeopardy, the FBI banded together as well, doing whatever it took to help their brother or sister in need. She had pulled many an all-nighter, sometimes several in a row, to find agents who had disappeared from the grid. Most made it back in one piece, but some weren't as lucky—those were the ones that haunted Dana and put that hollow-eyed look on the other agents' faces.

She saw that same look in some of the cops' faces now, including Sergeant Tutuola's. The poor man seemed smaller than he had been just a few hours ago, his complexion taken on a sallow hue, and the threads of gray hair in his goatee much more pronounced. His tired eyes widened at Dana and Amanda's approach, and Dana held her breath, anticipating the worst as Amanda went straight for him. Her nose was already throbbing, she had no desire to break up any more altercations today.

But the detective didn't launch herself at Fin, nor did she acknowledge his swollen bottom lip, which resembled the ridiculously Botoxed kissers of the Kardashian wannabes who populated Noho and Tribeca. In fact, Amanda barely acknowledged the sergeant at all, beyond a gruff, "Where we at?"

Fin hesitated, as if contemplating telling Amanda she shouldn't be there (Don't do it, man, Dana thought at him), but thankfully, he checked the urge and gestured to the flat-screen on the wall. The same one where Dana got her first eyeful of the horrors that were befalling poor Captain Benson. Now the screen was ominously blank, a few randomly dispersed links in red its only signs of life. An afterimage of the letters floated in Dana's vision when she looked away.

"Ain't heard nothing back since they cut the feed two hours ago," said Fin. "TARU and the Feds have been searching the darknet for any info or a location, but you know how that goes. Like looking for a needle in a haystack of p*rn and puppy mutilation. One of the audio guys thinks he's got it narrowed down to a port on the Jersey side, based on a boat horn or something in the background, but it could be one of several."

"So? Did you send out search teams?" Amanda didn't sound like she was asking. She glared at Fin, ready to criticize whichever answer he gave. Her legs weren't entirely steady beneath her yet, and she still wavered a little in her thick-soled tennis shoes. But she stood her ground, demanding that the sergeant give her what she wanted.

"We don't have the manpower for that, Rollins," Fin said softly, wearily. He had the tone of someone with a monster headache, measured and wincing, as if he were speaking inside a hushed cathedral and didn't want his voice to carry. "You've seen the size of those container yards. There's thousands of them things. We'd be searching for days, maybe even weeks, and by then—" He broke it off there and sighed, too late to prevent his meaning from coming across.

"They ain't gonna kill her. She's worth nothing to them if she's dead, remember?" Amanda choked on the last part, a click in her throat as she swallowed with increasing effort. She had to be about as dry as drought season in the Texas panhandle. Dana made a mental note to offer her some water when this confrontation was through. "And what good's a force of forty thousand if you can't utilize them to find a missing high-ranking officer? Is it because she's a woman? Because she's queer? Because she's got her twenty in and they want her gone, anyway?"

Fin shook his head doggedly. "It's not anything like that, you know that. We can't assign every single officer in the NYPD to one case, no matter who it's for. Garland's got as many people on this as he could muster. We're doing everything we can."

The desk beside Amanda rattled when she kicked the leg, scoffing. A few heads turned, but the eyes averted quickly at a glare and a snap of the fingers from Dana. Sometimes, being a woman in charge wasn't all that different than being a grumpy schoolteacher. Fewer spitballs aimed at the back of your head, lots more fingers flipping you the bird. Olivia must know what that was like, having her own squad to wrangle. Then again, knowing Benson, she was probably a fair and benevolent boss, who commanded the respect and loyalty of her team, as she did with most everyone.

"Maybe I oughta just go out and look for her myself," said Amanda. She sounded a bit like a sulking teenager, but if anyone had earned that right, it was the woman whose wife was being sold as a sex slave. "Better than sticking around here and getting drugged against my will again."

"I had no idea he was going to do that," Fin said, just earnest enough to be convincing. "I swear, Amanda, I wouldn'ta called him if I thought—"

"Save it. All I care about is getting Liv back, that's what we should be focused on. I'm assuming you sent Dr. Kevorkian home?" Amanda didn't wait for an answer, instead backing toward the interview room that had become her personal headquarters. "Good. Next time, don't bother me unless you've got something on my wife." With that, she executed a wobbling about-face and disappeared into the room.

"I'll talk to her," Dana said when Fin glanced her way, looking as though he was at a loss how to handle his detective. As a woman who herself was often too much for people to handle, Dana sympathized—with Fin and with Amanda. She wouldn't pick sides, though. There was no winner in this inhuman game they were being forced to play. "Girl to girl."

. . .

Chapter 21: Talking to Ghosts

Chapter Text

Chapter 21.

Talking to Ghosts

. . .

The interview room was eerily quiet compared to the squad room. No one had removed the laptop that Amanda smashed, and it lay in the middle of the floor like a black cat that had curled in on itself to die. Dana went to it, picked it up, transferred it to the table. Thinking better of it, she pushed closed the cracked, equally dead screen a second after opening it. "Dr. Kevorkian?" she asked, hiking up an eyebrow. She hadn't heard that name in years, and Amanda didn't look old enough to remember the case.

"Huh? Oh. It's all I could think of." Amanda glanced up from her cell phone, on the table where she'd left it before getting ambushed. She shrugged and resumed scrolling through a cascade of messages that looked like email. "Goddammit," she muttered, reaching the bottom and starting over again. She held up her finger for silence, despite the quiet of the room. The messages ticked by like numbers onThe Price is Rightwheel. Landed on a big red zero. "Goddammit."

"They'll get back with you. These guys are all the same." Dana tried to sound more confident than she felt. The only thing men like the ones holding Olivia captive had in common was their unpredictability. And so far, nothing about this case had been common or predictable. Luckily, Dana was a better liar than she was a comforter. "Just give 'em a minute, they're probably chomping at the bit to be showing off again."

Amanda let her phone thump against the tabletop. She picked it back up a second later, scrolled some more. "Yeah, and in the meantime, they're doing God knows what to her. The livestream was bad enough, what are they doing to her now that even they won't show?" She opened an email and muffled a sob when the photo attachment displayed on the screen—Olivia, wide-eyed and frightened, thick duct tape slashed across the bottom half of her face.

"You can't think like that, Rol—"

"Can't I?" Amanda demanded, holding the cell phone image out for Dana to view up-close. She snatched it back quickly and held it to her breast, protective, as if she had revealed something precious and secret. Something that was hers alone. "You think these are the nice sex traffickers? Yesterday and this morning were just a fluke, huh, and now they're treatin' her like she's at some f*cking resort?"

This kid had a lot of sass. Dana got the feeling they could have been good friends, had they met under different circ*mstances. "No, that's not what I meant. But they're saving the worst parts for you. If they turned the cameras off, it's because they want some downtime. It's their intermission. I know it's hard to believe, but Olivia's probably safer with the cameras off than with them on."

Most of that was true; nevertheless, Dana held her breath as she waited for a response. She really did want to say something to put Amanda's mind at ease, or as at ease as it could be, but so far nothing seemed to come out right. It just reinforced Dana's belief that she wasn't meant to be close with other people. The only truly significant relationships she'd had were with people who didn't even know her real name or occupation. And Olivia Benson.

"Yeah." Amanda looked doubtful, but she did place her phone on the table and stack her hands on top. Though most of her color had returned and she didn't appear jittery anymore, her eyes had a hangdog heaviness that made it seem like the lids were weighted. If she rested her forehead against her folded hands, she would be out within seconds. She sat up straighter, cleared her throat, blinked. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Can't make torture p*rn if you don't film it, huh?"

The corner of Dana's mouth quirked with sympathy, rather than humor. She eyed one of the other office chairs congregating around the table, and decided to take a chance. Wheeling the chair around to Amanda's side of the table, she settled in next to her, hitching her trousers at the knee, and propped her elbows on the same spot. "Tell me something," she requested, tapping Amanda's knee with her knuckle. "Anything. Let me hear all 'bout them babies you and Liv got at home. What is it, ten of 'em? And a newborn? Y'all are crazier than a sh*thouse rat."

That actually earned a small chuckle from Amanda, but she cut it off, swift as the head of a chicken on the chopping block, her expression gone sullen and dark. But mostly just unbearably sad. "I don't want to talk about them right now. Can't. Not while their mama's . . . " She let the conclusion fade, along with her focus, staring off into the middle distance. "I haven't even seen or talked to them since yesterday morning. What kind of mother does that? Just ups and bails on her kids? I'm as bad as Serena."

"I don't know who that is, but I'm willing to bet she never went through half of what you're going through right now. Doesn't make you a bad mama." Dana was no authority on the subject—her mother had been a saint; no, really, she had her own church pew at the First Assembly dedicated in her name, Dotty Lee, everyone called it The Dot—but it didn't take an expert to see how devoted Amanda was to her wife and kids. "It wouldn't do them any good to see you this upset anyhow. You're protecting them by not exposing them to it."

Amanda gave a noncommittal shrug, a noncommittal grunt. It didn't even seem like she was listening, until she heaved a sigh and said, "Shoulda protected her better, is what I shoulda done. None of this would be happening if I'd done my job and not let them get at her. sh*t, I just keep failing her."

"Hon, they tased you. Doesn't matter who you are or what the job description, they still woulda grabbed her up—"

"You don't know! You don't get it, I . . . " Amanda slumped back in her seat as if she'd suddenly deflated. She swiveled the chair away from Dana and spoke in the direction of the opposite wall. "I vowed to keep her safe. I went to her damn dead alcoholic mother's grave and swore I'd never let anyone hurt her like that again. 'Course I just found out that bitch sexually assaulted her too, so maybe the vow doesn't count now?"

This time her laugh was bitter and not a laugh at all. She took a bite of the words, spat them out like rotten fruit. And then that laugh. "How stupid am I? Kept worrying about all the men I needed to protect her from, and it turns out to be another woman."

Dana found it difficult to follow along with Amanda's narrative, but she didn't want to interrupt while the detective was venting. Lord knew the poor child needed to let off steam somehow. The part about Olivia's mother sexually abusing her and being a damn dead alcoholic was shocking, though, and it must have come across loud and clear. Without turning for a glimpse of Dana's curious expression, Amanda went on as if she were talking to herself.

"'Bout a month ago, during an undercover gig with a therapist, Liv remembered her mother attacking her and simulating her own rape on Liv. She was only eight years old. And her father . . . the one time she met him, he sexually abused her, too. She was raped in that prison and by Lewis, even though she said she wasn't. Too ashamed. Melia and Calvin sexually assaulted her. Them an' Lewis, that was on my watch." Amanda jabbed her index finger on the table, bending the tip back painfully. "And now six other guys've done her. Probably more by the time this is over."

That was a hell of a lot of information to process all at once. It had taken Dana's breath away, especially the part about Olivia's parents. Years ago, Dana had picked up on Olivia not having any family—something about a brother she didn't meet until adulthood, maybe?—but Dana assumed she was a former foster kid or something. Hadn't wanted to pry. You were supposed to reciprocate when someone shared details about their family. Or, in Dana's case, lie your ass off.

"Jesus." She couldn't think of a worse swear than that. Taking the Lord's name in vain either got your mouth or behind smacked, where Dana came from. Sometimes both. "Her own mama did that to her? That's awful. I heard of plenty of daddies doing that to their kids, but not mamas. What a hellacious bitch."

Amanda nodded, head turned just enough for the twinge of irony to be visible at the corner of her mouth. She sighed or gave a huff of amusem*nt under her breath, hard to tell which. "Right? And despite it all, Liv still loves her. You believe that? I've tried to get her to be angry and stand up for—" Her throat caught and she cleared it abruptly, flicked the hair from her eyes, shot Dana an accusatory look, as if she'd been lured into revealing too much. "Anyway. She just doesn't have it in her. That hate."

That, Dana could absolutely believe. She might not know anything about the captain's tragic family, but you only had to spend a few moments with Olivia Benson to see she was all heart. Dana had expected it to be annoying at first. Instead, it had made her respect Olivia all the more. It was a dangerous way to exist, though, being that empathetic and accessible to everyone. You got used, cheated, abandoned. In the end, other people always let you down.

"Sometimes I think if her daddy had ever showed up again, she would've even forgiven him," Amanda said, the faraway tone returning to her voice. This time the sigh was unmistakable. "Wish she was more of a bitch, like me. And Vaughn. Maybe if she was a little meaner, these things wouldn't keep happening to . . . "

Amanda inhaled deeply through her nose and shook her head hard, as if dispelling the thoughts inside it. "Nah, that ain't true. I'm mean as a snake, and this is happening to herbecauseof me, so." She gestured for Dana to fill in the blank however she saw fit.

"I'm sure that's not true," Dana said. She tried to be as soft and sincere about it as Olivia would be, but it felt false. She opted not to reach over and squeeze Amanda's arm reassuringly. "You had no way of knowing that Murphy would do something like this, especially when he ran off to Serbia and left you high and dry, his baby in your belly."

"He didn't, though. Not really." Amanda turned to gaze out the windows that lined the back wall, her eye glazed over in profile. She appeared to be watching the scene she described. "He came back while I was pregnant. Stood right out there and offered to help in whatever way he could. However much I'd let him. I thought Jess would be better off without him. Thought we all would. Liv tried to tell me different, but I ignored her. What's she know about having a daddy, right? God, I'm such an idiot."

"I still say it's not your fault." Dana shrugged, as if it were just fact, though Amanda didn't glance around to see it. "He was half a world away, and y'all tried to hunt him down, didn't you say? He's the one who was off selling young girls into sex work. Nobody in their right mind would think that's good daddy material. Even him."

Amanda raked the hair back from her face with such vehemence it looked painful. "I wasn't talking about Declan f*cking Murphy, okay? I'm talking about Sondra Vaughn. She did this to get back at me. And don't try to explain it away. I appreciate that you wanna let me off the hook, I do, but that's not what I want or deserve. Vaughn wouldn't even know who Liv was if it weren't for me and my damn habit."

"Habit?" Dana ventured. The detective was still staring out the window, talking to ghosts. But Dana hated being in the dark, and she still couldn't make the connection between Olivia, Amanda, and a criminal like Vaughn.

"Gambling." Amanda tossed the word over her shoulder like she was spitting out tobacco juice. It hit with a similar splat, brown and ugly and pungent. "I'm an addict. Recovered. But back then . . . Vaughn was running an underground casino, and I got dimed as a cop. That's how I met Murphy. He was working undercover, and when Vaughn wanted to blackmail me into being her errand girl, he made me part of the operation. I got friendly with Vaughn, got her to trust me, then I sent her to prison while she was eight months pregnant. Now her kid's dead and she's taking it out on me and—"

The last part was a breathless, soundlessLiv. Amanda swallowed hard several times and shoved up from her seat to go pace in front of the windows. "Maybe they're working together again, or something? I don't know. But I do know this is Vaughn's MO—rape the wife to get back at the person who wronged her. And I sure as hell did."

It was one heck of a story, and Dana wished she had more time to process and refute it. She wasn't sure how sending Vaughn to prison made Amanda responsible for a kid's death, but criminals—especially the women—didn't need much incentive when it came to seeking revenge on the person they blamed for their troubles. Dana had seen it plenty in prison, sometimes had it directed at her (on one occasion, she'd been the instigator against a highly unpleasant and handsy CO), and knew that law enforcement officers were twice as likely as civilians to fall victim to it. It's why police and Feds needed special protection when they were incarcerated.

"Vaughn's not gonna crack, even if this is all her," Amanda murmured, sounding a bit like a mad scientist working on a complicated formula out loud. "No matter how hard Kat and your guy lean on her. She's got nothing to lose now. She was pregnant, with a Kahr K9 pointed at her belly, and she still tried to play me. They're never gonna break her. We need someone she's working with to give 'er up. A weak link. But who? Who's the patsy here, Lewis?"

An excellent question, and one Dana didn't have an answer for. There was no way in hell Murphy was the fall guy, if he turned out to be involved—and she didn't doubt for a second that he was—but there had to be a go-between, or several, who did the dirty work for him and for Vaughn. These guys didn't like to get their hands dirty; they were the gods who commanded the scurrying co*ckroaches known as Gus Sandberg and his Dreamlanders. But even those filth-loving, pestilence-spreading insects had underlings.

Amanda was right: they needed to find out who answered to the co*ckroaches.

Four hours later, they had made very little progress. Vaughn's visitors log and LUDs proved useless. She'd had only one or two visitors since the death of her brother and child, a handful of calls from her sister-in-law (most of them hang-ups on Vaughn's end), and no mail since turning down the grad student who wanted to interview her for a dissertation on women giving birth in prison. That meant the person who ranked below even the co*ckroaches was probably employed at the prison, or another inmate. With close to one thousand women housed in Sealview and upwards of two hundred and thirty correctional officers, not to mention regular staff without badges, it was a helluva dung heap to sift through.

They had narrowed it down to a pile of possibilities, which included several guards, an overly friendly member of the kitchen staff, a clergyman, and a slew of inmates who were known Vaughn lackeys, when Amanda got an email. An unceremonious ding, an intake of breath as the detective opened the new link, a frenzy while agents and cops synchronized all available electronics to the feed on Amanda's phone.

Finally they had Olivia back, but it was such a grim sight, Dana wondered which was worse—seeing her or not.

Although impossible, it looked like she had shed ten pounds in the past few hours. Her shirt, no longer white, hung in tatters like a castaway's or a corpse whose clothes rotted right off its body. The dirt and blood were caked so thickly to her skin, she resembled a burn victim, charred around the inner thighs, the buttocks, the hands, the neck. If any of it were fresh, Dana couldn't tell from where she sat, but it definitely did not appear as if the men had treated Olivia to a spa day while the cameras were off.

Honestly, the captain seemed to have given up. For a solid hour, she did little more than stare at the wall and tap her knuckle ceaselessly against the wood floor. An occasional raspy request for water was the only other sound she made, and those were met with a deep silence, a stillness that made her location feel even more remote. Trapped in the small, featureless room with no sunlight and no outside noise—no indication of life on the other side—she might as well have been floating in deep space or that uncharted part of the ocean known as the abyss. Out where only the strangest, most alien creatures could survive the pressure, the cold, the lack of oxygen. Places man wasn't meant to go.

"Just breathe," Dana whispered to the screen. She was unaware she had spoken out loud until Amanda glanced up with a questioning grunt.Hm?Dana shook her head, not wanting to explain that the longer she watched Olivia confined inside that box—the shipping container or the darknet browser, take your pick—the harder it was to take a full breath. She didn't usually experience claustrophobia, but she was pretty sure that's what this was. Her pits were soaked through.

She fanned herself with one of the files from the No pile, a woman Vaughn had sent to the infirmary with a filed-down toothbrush in her gut, and peered at the dossier Amanda was currently engrossed by. Some doofy-faced guard named Parker, probably couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. Dana had almost tossed him onto the No's, based on that mouthbreather expression alone, but Amanda intercepted the employee record at the last second and had been poring over it ever since.

"He good for something this involved?" Dana tilted her head, squinted. The photo ID still just looked like Gomer Pyle to her.

"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Maybe?" Amanda licked the pad of her thumb and shuffled absently through the pages. "He's got some priors, a DV charge and possession. Couldn't hold down a job till he got to Sealview. He'd've been there when Liv— when she was undercover at the prison, but it's a big place. Odds of him knowing her are pro'ly slim. But . . . "

"But?"

Amanda extended the black and white picture, only a step removed from a mugshot itself, her fingers angled low on his brow. She had been the one to request hard copies of the Sealview records, unwilling to use her replacement laptop for anything but watching over Olivia. "What do you think? Pretend it's a MAGA hat instead of my hand. He could be the other guy, right? Number six?"

"Hmm." Dana was reluctant to answer one way or the other. If she agreed, she might be giving Amanda false hope, telling her what she wanted to hear. And if she said a flat-out no, she'd be ripping that hope away. Trying to settle on something halfway in-between, she gave a light, noncommittal shrug. "Could be, I reckon. Although, every one of them sonsabitches looks alike, so I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket just yet."

"Not putting my eggs anywhere," Amanda mumbled, chucking the file onto the Yes pile. She heaved a sigh and studied the livestream intently, though nothing had changed. Olivia was still curled up on that sorry excuse of a mattress, tapping out a metronomic rhythm on the floor and periodically requesting a drink of water. Amanda kept time with the tapping, her fingernail ticking the tabletop like a dripping faucet. "Wish she was here," she said, after a while. "She'd have this all figured out by now."

That was unlikely, considering they had half the cops in the city and some of the best field agents Dana had ever worked with on this case—and Olivia's location was still unknown—but she held her tongue. Amanda's longing was for her wife's return, not some magical detecting skill only the captain possessed. "You really are crazy 'bout her, huh?"

The pronouncement took them both by surprise, Amanda for its seemingly random delivery, and Dana for her own interest in someone else's private life. Years of UC work had taught her how to keep things on the surface. You didn't ask personal questions and you didn't get close to the people around you, unless the investigation required it. The last was a lesson she'd learned from Olivia, actually. She had caught herself missing her detective friend after sending Olivia off to godforsaken Oregon, and again, while trying to return to normal life after the rape. She'd buried herself in her work until the feeling eventually subsided.

Amanda hesitated for no more than half a second, then said with complete conviction, "Yeah, I am." Her lips twitched up momentarily in a sad, nostalgic smile. "She's the best thing that ever happened to me, 'sides my kids. And I only have them 'cause of her. She— she saved my life in so many ways, showed me what a good mama looks like . . . " The smile faded, Amanda's eyes glistening with fresh tears. Grief turned her irises to brilliant sapphire.

"She deserves better than this," she concluded, her features set in stone. A tilt of her head toward the laptop was the only indication she hadn't hardened to marble, like that bust of the veiled Virgin Mary in some cathedral up north somewhere. "I owe her so much better than this. She trusted me to protect her, and all I do is keep letting her down again and again. Why didn't they just take me instead? I could've gotten away from them and—"

Whatever came next dissolved into tearful gibberish that Dana didn't need an interpreter to understand. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression. The detective was running the gamut of the five stages—minus acceptance—and returning to the starting line each time, to begin anew. She would be going in circles for all eternity at this rate.

Dana wanted to say that the Olivia Benson she knew would never depend on someone else as fully as Amanda made it sound; that it didn't matter how clever or strong or fearless you thought you were, sometimes you just couldn't get away. But it wouldn't have done much good, not with the frame of mind Amanda was in. And besides, at the exact moment Dana parted her lips to speak, the door to Olivia's cell screeched open.

The rape was short and perfunctory, as if they were carrying out an everyday task. Washing their hands before dinner, taking the dog out to piddle on the lawn. Three men this time, Riva holding Olivia for the older Sandberg kid, while the younger boy, the simple one named Xander, stood back watching and grinning inanely. Then vice versa, Junior giving Riva and his fat mushroom dick a turn. Xander applauded his efforts, which produced a fat wad of come the color of cheese curds. It seeped down Olivia's stomach, gathering in the creases where thigh met groin. She looked as if her limbs had broken off and been glued carelessly back on with too much Elmer's.

What worried Dana the most was the hose. It was just your regular garden variety, the glossy green kind her mama had used to water the clematis and her prize roses. If there had been a pressure wash attachment, or if it were a fire hose, that would be real cause for alarm—those goddamn things could strip off skin straight down to the bone. This one had a power nozzle, but nothing to suggest a robust water source. And yet. There was a lot of damage you could do with a hose like that, and it didn't necessarily involve high water pressure.

"What are they gonna do with that?" Amanda asked, voice muffled behind the fingers she had interlocked over her mouth as she watched her wife being assaulted yet again. (Dana had already lost count of how many times.) "What the f*ck are they gonna do with that, Dana?"

Waterboarding was a strong possibility. Rectal rehydration, lashing the soles of the feet, douching and forcing the detainee to hold their water, Dana had seen it all. One man had been hung upside down and sprayed with a hose until he nearly drowned in his own vomit. Another had simply been strung up by the neck with the hose and died, his feet swaying in a graceful dance long after he stopped kicking. Oh, the things they could do with that simple garden hose. Amanda had no idea.

"I dunno, honey," Dana replied, realizing her hand was on Amanda's shoulder. She left it there and wasn't shrugged off. They were both watching the screen too intently, the woman lying limp at the men's feet, her grimy t-shirt barely covering her breasts, everything below the waist fully exposed. Olivia turned onto her side, legs together, and pulled up her knees, hiding as much as she could. "It's hard telling with these sh*tbirds. Maybe you shouldn't be here for it. Go on, get you some fresh air. I'll stay with her."

It came as no surprise when Amanda ignored Dana completely, refusing to budge. She decided not to press, though. She might end up with something more vital than her nose broken if she pestered the detective any further. No doubt Dana could tough out whatever Amanda threw at her—possibly literally—but it was better not to stir the pot. Besides, the men were preparing the hose for whatever nefarious purpose they had in mind, and neither she nor Amanda could look away.

"Bad news, Cap," said Liam Sandberg, who wielded the nozzle, a urine-like flow of water trickling from the holes in its snout. Of course the little punk was controlling this. Had to show off for Daddy and prove himself a worthy successor. He tossed the nozzle playfully from hand to hand, posturing for Olivia, though her face was turned to the mattress, hidden from view. "Your buyer is playing hard to get. Hasn't contacted us all day, just sent that rat-faced flunky you cozied up to earlier. My pops is getting impatient, thinks maybe the guy's gonna renege."

Damn fool mispronouncedrenegeas re-nedge. Dana bit back a scornful laugh. Now was not the time.

"And if that happens?" Liam squatted down beside Olivia, gathering a clump of short, stringy hair like he was sifting through loose soil, and guiding it away from her face. It revealed her eyes, black as boreholes in the center, the sclera startlingly white around them. Her terror had gone beyond mere mortal fear to someplace primal. Someplace it had taken thousands of years of evolution to drain out of us. "After all the trouble we went through to get you?"

Liam clucked his tongue rapidly. "Oh, poor little Livvy. You see, my dad? He really likes you, but he likes his money a lot more. And if he has to eat one million dollars because of you? Man, there's no telling what'll happen. I mean, he'll still sell you, but it'll be to some third-rate dealer in whatever country there's a demand for old white ladies. Guess we could thin you out some, that'd probably help."

"Nah, don't want her to lose any of that tit," said Carlos Riva, his sole contribution so far, besides his parchment-colored stump of a penis. "That's the best part of her. Well, okay, second best." He licked his lips wolfishly, his tongue as ugly and blunt as his manhood, and winked at Olivia's wide, unblinking eyes.

"I like her face," Xander chimed in, the tone of the conversation completely lost on him. "She's pretty. Just not when she tries to kick me. Then I get real mad and want to call her bad names."

The older Sandberg listened indulgently, smiling at his little brother. "Oh yeah, bud? What kind of names? Pretend she just kicked you and called you 'retard,' what would you do to her?"

"Like the big kids used to. And Uncle Lars." Xander balled his hands into fists at his sides, his slack, boyish features clouding over with darkness. He looked even more like Liam in that moment. An identical rage brewed within them, practically turning them into twins. "He hit me and said, 'Retards don't belong in this family.' Remember that, Liam? Dad was so mad! Me too. And then Uncle Lars didn't come around anymore 'cause Dad took care of him."

Dana made a mental note to check on Lars Sandberg. She wouldn't be surprised to find him in death records, his manner of departure listed as several thousand gallons of water and a pair of concrete shoes. If the body was ever found at all. Violence within crime families was rare—they had some kind of strange code when it came to blood relation—though not unheard of. Brother killing brother was one of the oldest stories in the book.

"Yeah, bud, I remember. But what about her?" Liam nudged Olivia's protruding backside with the toe of his Converse sneaker, eliciting a small yelp. Olivia reached down to cover the spot with her hand, in turn eliciting a laugh from Liam. "She thinks you're a retard too—"

"I don't," Olivia rasped.

The strong, assertive voice Dana recalled her friend having was gone. It had always amused her how someone so resonant, so commanding could turn it right around, speaking more softly and soothingly than a lullaby. She'd never quite mastered that art herself (Dana had only two volumes: loud and louder). Olivia would probably never have that same vocal control again. "I don't think that," she half mouthed, half whispered.

Overriding the objection, Liam shoved his brother forward, disguising it as a brisk clap to the shoulder. "Tell this bitch what you think of her, Xandman. Come on, she's just like Uncle Lars. Don't let her get away with it, tell her." He repeated the incitingtell herseveral times, thumping Xander on the back of the shoulder after each repetition.

"She's— she's stupid!" the boy finally erupted, hurling the insult like an axe. But it was an unwieldy throw, sailing past the target to bury its head in the ground. Olivia didn't even flinch.

Amanda, on the other hand, held the sides of her head, elbows sharp as tent stakes on the table, and made a miserable sound that was part moan, part whimper. "She hates that word," she muttered, shaking her head, fretting her lower lip. "God, she hates it so much."

"Aw, come on, you can do better than that," Liam said, jabbing his index finger into Xander's ribs. The son of a bitch was literally prodding the kid into violence, and Dana longed to reach through the screen and throttle him by his skinny, reticulan neck. She didn't much sympathize with the younger one, either. Slow or not, he was a rapist like the rest of them. "Stupid isn't even a swear, unless you're a little preschool baby. Are you a little preschool baby, huh, Xan? Do you wear diapers, little baby?"

"No!" Xander began to pace in front of Olivia's crumpled form, fists battering his thighs and hips. "I don't need diapers no more, not even when I sleep! I'm not a retarded preschool baby, d-dammit. Dammit! Did this . . . thisbitchsay that about me? Stupid mean old bitch." He halted midway in his stride, glaring down at Olivia in sheer hatred, his chest heaving with it. "I oughta kill her."

His first kick was tentative, the way you tested a dead body, just to be sure. When there was little movement from Olivia—she turned her face against the arm curled beneath her head, spread the fingers of her other hand to shield her kicked belly—Xander took it as the go-ahead he needed. He began pummeling her with his Velcro sneakers, losing more control with every blow he landed, until he was raging like a toddler stomping on blocks that wouldn't stack.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he screamed, driving his foot in again and again with such force he lost his balance and fell onto his backside.

The other men crowed with laughter while he floundered like a turtle in an overturned shell, unable to rock himself upright. Eventually, still giggling, Liam helped him stand and splayed a hand on his chest to keep him from charging Olivia. It looked like a scene in a zombie movie, the lead guy holding back a snarling, snapping undead thing as it reached for the quaking damsel. "Whoa there," said Liam, pushing Xander back with a grunt. "Sorry, pal, but I can't let you stomp her to death. We still gotta make some money off her skan* ass."

He slapped the nozzle of the hose against Xander's chest, holding it there for him to grab onto. "Here, I'll let you do the honors of cleaning her up. She smells like a dumpster someone sh*t in and died. Dirty little whor*'s even got come in her hair. You hose her down nice and pretty, okay, bro? Make her shine."

In the end, all three of the men took a turn spraying Olivia with the hose, the older two experimenting with the pressure settings and their target's response. The misting option made Olivia blink profusely, dewy-lashed, and turn away; the single high-pressure jet left red splotches on her skin and made her beg for them to stop. They didn't, not until Liam looked her over, from her mop of wet dark hair to her bare, dripping feet, and declared, "Fresh as a daisy."

Dana realized that some of what she'd thought was dirt were actually bruises. The captain was covered in them, her arms and legs a weather map of purples, blues, and sooty black. Rivers of blood were threaded throughout the painful landscape, some flowing anew, others draining off in watery streamlets. The t-shirt was translucent now, molded to Olivia's breasts and abdomen, leaving nothing to the imagination. She peeled it away from her chest, only for it to suck back to her skin like shrink wrap.

"Bit nippy in here, wouldn't you say, boys?" Liam commented, tossing an impish wink at Riva. The older man laughed at the inference, cupping his hands in front of his chest to imply a pair of plump female breasts. He tweaked the nipples like they were radio dials, vocalizing the fluctuating, insectile whine between stations.

The joke was lost on Xander Bergström, who had become distracted by the hose. Like a man casually watering his lawn in his Sunday pajamas, he sprayed down various objects in the room, including the fossilized remains of the ancient desk, the bucket brimming with human waste and black mold, and the rat nests of trash built up in the corners.

Olivia's mattress was already as soaked through as she was, otherwise the inch of standing water might have worsened conditions. She didn't seem to notice or care, her main concern concealing the hazy dark areola and erect nipples that so mesmerized—and entertained—the other men. She held the ropy gauze of her stretched-out shirt over her breasts, like a woman in a Raphael painting. Dana was surprised the men had let Olivia keep that article of clothing, but now she understood it was the visual aspect. They got a kick out seeing her try to hide inside of it.

"Why," Amanda said thinly, her fingers pressed to the screen, to Olivia's huddled, shivering likeness. The captain could barely keep herself seated upright, her body convulsing with pain and chills, but she wavered side to side in Amanda's hand, refusing to collapse in front of the men. "Why is this happening to you?"

The question was rhetorical, and Dana opted to keep quiet, though she knew the answer. That was the other form of water torture she'd forgotten—dousing a prisoner in cold water and cranking up the A/C. Very effective at inducing confessions and hypothermia. She doubted there was a functioning air conditioner in the shipping container, but there certainly wasn't a sufficient heat source, either. May in New York could be as cold as winter, come nightfall. Particularly on the waterfront.

Bastards were trying to freeze Olivia out, and to what end? She had no information for them, nothing of use except her body. Perhaps there was no answer to Amanda's question after all.

Why?

"Let's get him outta here before he electrocutes us," said Liam, socking Carlos Riva on his brawny arm and waggling a thumb at Xander, who was indeed inching the spray closer and closer to the tripod lights. He held the nozzle against his crotch, pretending to piss a hefty stream, as Liam had shown him while they hosed down Olivia.

At least they used water instead of the real thing, that was the one consolation Dana could think of. It was a common practice among rapists to urinate on the vic, like dogs asserting their dominance. She supposed these men didn't want to wallow in their own piss, since they were keeping their vic around for a while. A don't sh*t where you eat type of situation.

Once the men were gone, taking the hose and sloshing much of the water out with them, Olivia let herself sink against the wall behind her, head drooping like a top-heavy dahlia. The sun was a pallid bar on the wet floor as the door opened and closed on screen, and outside the precinct windows, it hung low in a sky the color of white eggplant. There was no warmth in that sky, and soon it would be a cool, moonless night. Inside and outside the container.

"She's gonna freeze to death," Amanda said, making Dana question whether or not she had spoken her own concerns about the temperature out loud. But Olivia's teeth were chattering, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she was only going to get colder as the evening wore on.

"Nah, she's strong, healthy. It's not like they've got her locked up in a refrigeration unit, then I might worry." Dana sounded much more confident than she felt. The chances of the captain actually freezing to death were slim, but she could get a nasty case of hypothermia, and she was already suffering enough as it was. She looked like a bedraggled refugee, lost and bobbing on a makeshift raft in vast, open waters.

"Well, excuse me for not dancing a jig that she'll probably just freeze to death more slowly, then. And if you say it's a peaceful way to go, I swear to God, lady . . . " Amanda shot a death glare at Dana that left little doubt what the unspoken conclusion of that sentence entailed. A black eye to go with the broken nose was in Dana's near future if she didn't quit trying to look on the bright side. It was a relief, to be honest. She was getting on her own nerves with all the puss*footing and sugarcoating.

"Tell you what, Rollins," she said, rubbing her palms together and giving a brisk clap, like a gymnast chalking up before hitting the uneven bars. "I'm gonna get me something to eat. Whadda you want? My treat."

"Ain't hungry."

"Nah, I'm not buying that excuse. When's the last time you ate something? Yesterday? And what, just a few little old bites?" Dana made a tsking sound with her tongue, but didn't overdo it too much. She wanted to get a rise out of Amanda—the child had to eat, for gosh sakes, she was as skinny as a whippet—not get a fist in the face. Again. "I heard your belly gurgling earlier, you need to put something in it. So, what'll it be? Chinese? Pizza? Hamburgers?"

"I am not hungry," Amanda said, overpronouncing every word. "I can't eat while she's . . . I won't."

"Well, that's asinine. You're breastfeeding, right? And you got tased and sedated, all in the span of about twenty-four hours. Your body needs food, and not eating because she can't isn't gonna help either of you. You'll just be that much weaker when it's time to help her." Dana pointed at the fingers Amanda was still extending to the screen and Olivia. "Look at you, you're as shaky as she is. That poor girl is gonna need every bit of strength you got when she gets outta there, so you damn well better keep it up."

At first it didn't seem to have worked, and Dana sighed, preparing to go. The tough love approach had been successful earlier, but perhaps the detective was too far gone now to reach. Her hand was on the door handle when Amanda called after her, "Fine. Jesus. I'll eat your goddamned food. Just get me whatever you're having, I don't care."

The pizza was good, greasy and oozing cheese like a delicious infection. Dana scarfed down two large slices herself, although she did find it difficult to look at Olivia while she chewed. Amanda picked at a slice, rolling the soft dough into balls between her fingers, then placing them on her tongue to be swallowed like pills. She lost interest in the odd birdlike method about halfway through, finishing all but the crust in three enormous bites that bulged in her cheeks and her throat.

"Happy?" she asked around a final laborious mouthful. She tossed the crust back into the pizza box as if it were a chicken bone she'd sucked clean. A hearty belch which she didn't excuse herself for resounded in the smallish room.

Dana plucked up the discarded crust—the best part, in her opinion—and polished it off, nodding. She caught a glint of amusem*nt in Amanda's eyes, but it vanished just as nimbly as it had appeared. Olivia remained in their peripheral vision, her deep, shuddering breaths growing progressively louder. Night had fallen, and though her hair and t-shirt were mostly dry now, the shivering had not subsided. She talked to herself occasionally, mumbling things Dana didn't quite understand, but Amanda seemed to. They had their own secret language, the two policewomen.

"For now." Dana wiped garlicky grease from her fingers with a napkin the size of a playing card, swigged her co*ke. It was lukewarm and diluted, the ice slush long since melted by the heat from her palms. Yeah, well, people in Hell want ice water, she thought, her gaze wandering to Olivia. She decided not to complain about the drink. "Don't suppose I could talk you into getting some shuteye now, could I?"

Amanda didn't appear to be listening, but after a few moments of staring at the laptop, her eyes glazed over and unblinking, she spoke just above a whisper. As if she didn't want to disturb her wife, whose head kept lolling on the wall she was propped up against, eyelids drooping. "Doubt I'll ever sleep again."

Sleep deprivation, now there was a nasty interrogation technique. You could get someone to tell you anything—confess to anything—if they were tired enough. It only took a day or two for their cognitive function to break down, and by then you could convince them to walk into traffic if you were feeling particularly fractious. Not that Dana had ever done such a thing.

"Well, I don't know if I can make it that long, but how's about I keep you company for a few?" She purposely didn't specify for a few what—minutes, hours, days. No sense in reminding Amanda that they didn't know when or if Olivia would be returned to her; the detective definitely hadn't forgotten. "I can keep watch if you need a break or just want to rest your eyes. Any change, I'll sound the alarm first thing."

As expected, Amanda didn't relent on the matter of sleep, but she did nod her head for Dana to stay. "She'd hate it if she knew all those people out there were seeing her like this," she said, inclining her head at Olivia, at the officers and agents in the squad room. "Probably be upset if she knew I let you stay in here and watch with me. I just can't seem to give her the privacy she needs."

Dana didn't get the reference, and she didn't ask. It wasn't any of her business. "It's best to have every set of eyes on this right now. The more people involved, the better our chances of finding her. She understands that, same as I would. Same as you would." Never mind that testifying on the stand about her own rape was one of the hardest things Dana had ever done, almost as devastating as the violation itself. She couldn't imagine how it would feel finding out that her attack had been recorded, passed around, consumed like junk food.

"I guess," Amanda said, not sounding the least bit convinced. She pulled on a dripping scallop of mozzarella, stretching and snapping it apart like taffy. She mashed it between her fingers, contemplating the gummy wad as if she might take a bite, but smeared it on the inside of the pizza box instead. "Anyway. Thanks for staying. If somebody has to watch, pro'ly better it's you than a friend or someone who cares."

That one stung a little bit, Dana had to admit. But she let it go, reminding herself that Amanda wasn't thinking or speaking with much clarity at the moment. And she wasn't entirely off base, either—Dana hadn't been a friend to Olivia for quite a while now.

She hoped Olivia lived long enough for her to rectify that mistake.

. . .

Chapter 22: Autopsy of the Living

Chapter Text

Chapter 22.

Autopsy of the Living

. . .

"Woman, how are you so damn toasty?" Amanda asked in a slightly accusatory tone, as if she suspected Olivia of false representation, or perhaps, witchcraft. Even though she was the one crawling under the covers with hands and feet as cold as death. Witches were abnormally cold in all the fairytales. "I swear you got a space heater hidden up in here."

"Manda!" Olivia's voice hit the closest octave to a squeal that it could reach. She pushed down on the icy hands Amanda had slid under her pajama top, clasping lightly at her breasts with fingers like icicles. It was like being felt up by Elsa of Arendelle.

Warm-blooded or not, Olivia got the shivers from that touch, her nipples pricking to attention. They were a bit tender from feeding Sammie, and even the satin of her Chinese pajamas was enough to trigger a reaction. Amanda's fingers practically sent her through the ceiling of their three-bedroom apartment. Which put her somewhere in the vicinity of their upstairs neighbor's hall closet. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack or just carbon-freeze me like Han Solo?"

Amanda went still as a statue herself, pausing her playfully bratty attempts to get at Olivia's warm bare skin. "Did you just make aStar Warsreference?"

"Don't look so surprised," Olivia said, showing off a little. There was more to her than penal codes and police stats, after all. "I saw the original releases before you were even born, Flyboy. And thanks to our oldest children and Disney Plus, I've watched everyStar Warsmovie, animated series, and documentary there is. Multiple times. I'd beat the pants off you atStar Warstrivia. I'd beat the pants off George Lucas atStar Warstrivia."

"Better not be beating off some old Obi-Wan-looking dude's pants," Amanda grumbled, feigning disapproval. When she had sulked her way close enough to steal a kiss, she snuck her hands down Olivia's pants, warming them on her backside as if it were a cozy wood stove, each cheek a plump burner. She nudged her feet in with Olivia's, soaking up the heat there too. "Didn't realize my wife was such a nerd. Such a hot, sexy nerd . . . "

They spent the rest of the night tradingStar Wars-related banter and saucy quips, and making love until they both needed to kick off the covers, bodies slick with sex and sweat.

It was a sweet memory, a warm one, and Olivia held it close as she trembled like a Parkinson's patient on the wet mattress. Most of the water left behind by Little Brother's unsupervised turn at the hose had since seeped through cracks in the floorboards, leaving the wood soft and dank as a marshland. Not that she had tried it out; she hadn't moved from the spot where the men dumped her after they finished. Some of it was the near-catatonia she slipped into whenever they raped her now, but it also hurt terribly to move.

The best she could manage for the time being was sinking onto the padding below, letting it cradle her in the fetal position her body naturally assumed in this fearful, lonely place. The kids still had their Bible pop-up books from Grammy Beth, and Tilly loved the story of Moses in his floating basket—pull the tab, and he bobbed right along on the page. That's how Olivia felt, infantile and abandoned, like baby Moses in the bulrushes, waterlogged, helpless. Waiting for someone to find her . . .

But she was going to freeze to death before that happened. She had never experienced cold like this. She'd quaked uncontrollably after Lewis—both times—but that had been shock more than an actual chill. Even winters in New York weren't this pervasive. True, they could kill you, but it would be quick and dirty, like getting hit by a Mack truck. This cold was a snakebite, spreading insidious through the bloodstream, shutting down organs as it went, a slow and excruciating death.

It stiffened her limbs, exaggerating the pain from having them wrenched and pulled into unnatural positions that even Noah's flexible frame couldn't replicate. She really should move them, it would help relieve some of the stiffness and might get her blood flowing enough to stave off hypothermia till morning. The storage container was warm approaching stifling during the day. (Thank God they hadn't abducted her in July or August, she would already be dead of heatstroke.) But just the thought of dragging herself upright and trying to stand was exhausting.

She would never make it as far as the bucket, let alone squatting over top of it. How her body had even produced enough urine for a full bladder, she couldn't say. Perhaps she had swallowed more water than she realized when they were hosing her down. It certainly wasn't from their generosity where sustenance was concerned. No one had fed her since the Crier and his powdered donuts this morning. Not that she could have kept anything down, anyway. Her stomach was a mess, gurgling and churning as if she had food poisoning.

What the hell, she was naked from the waist down, lying on a bed of filth, from which her last several rapes had probably been broadcast to God only knew how many people. She had no pride left. And maybe it would help her get warm.

Relaxing her pelvic floor muscles was no easy feat—whatever her injuries, they prevented her from passing urine normally. Her anticipation of the intense burning she had felt last time didn't help. It took several tries before she was able to let go, heat searing her groin, making her hiss. She was glad her face was turned away from the wall where the camera must be hidden, otherwise they would see her pained expression and might be able to guess at the cause. Still, she bit the heel of her palm to stifle a cry and to distract from the fire between her legs. It wasn't worth the fleeting warmth that trickled down her thighs, absorbed by the mattress before she could really benefit from it.

Now she was just lying in a puddle of her own piss, teeth chattering and a feeling like alcohol poured on paper cuts emanating from her privates. She didn't even try to keep at bay the memories of her mother, who wet herself more than a few times while passed out drunk over the years. Whether Olivia was eight or eighteen, it had fallen to her to clean Serena up, get her fed, get her sober.

Hell, Olivia was still doing it at twenty-eight. She would probably go on doing it until she was sixty-eight if her mother lived that long. She didn't know her family medical history, just that her grandparents had died in an automobile accident in their late fifties. Longevity could be hit or miss for her and Serena.

The thought of taking care of her mother for the next thirty-odd years, cleaning up vomit and piss that smelled like burnt tires, tolerating the abuse, both verbal and physical (Serena still slapped the hell out of her during arguments, despite their similar sizes), and wondering how the woman who birthed her could possibly hate her so damn much, made Olivia want to tear her own hair out at the roots.

It was hard enough being a rookie and waiting for the day the drunk woman stumbling into your squad room turned out to be your mother. Her one comfort was that Serena hated police precincts and probably wouldn't pay her an unexpected visit, unless she had an alcoholic blackout and didn't know what she was doing.

Unfortunately, that happened sometimes. Olivia had been eleven years old and relieved beyond words when Serena's Gremlin, a lemon-yellow rust bucket that almost gave you tetanus just looking at it, finally went to that great big junkyard in the sky. She'd sat in the passenger seat—back in the days when little kids could ride shotgun, no seatbelt—many times as Serena swerved down the road, unaware of her destination or even that she was driving. Certainly not conscious that her little girl was in the car, and terrified.

Then again, maybe she did know and just didn't care. Olivia's safety had never been her priority, and in fact, there were times when Olivia was pretty sure Serena actively wanted her dead.

And why not? Nobody wanted a constant reminder of the worst day of their life hanging around. Needing them, always needing. A few times, Olivia had considered doing Serena a favor and killing herself—specifically at age thirteen, when puberty struck, and with it Serena's disdain increased sevenfold; and at fifteen, after the choking, the man in the kitchen, Serena's suicide attempt, but before Daniel. Most recently she had wanted to die when Becky Hendrix threw her out of bed after Wilson walked in on them, then more or less accused Olivia of forcing herself on her.

The betrayal had been so acute, so steeped in all the worst things Olivia feared about herself—too aggressive, too needy, a drunk like her mother, a predator like her father, unnatural, damaged—she didn't even look at her reflection in the mirror for two weeks. She easily could have ended it right then, and probably would have, if not for the promise of graduating the academy and joining the force. She spent a brief time as a rookie acting reckless, indifferent to her own safety, and taking chances that paid off (she'd risen to detective quickly) but working with a partner meant having the other person's back, and you couldn't do that if you were wearing a target on yours.

This new guy Stabler seemed promising. He had an ego the size of Yonkers, but he was good police and had something like fifteen children. Olivia was still learning all their names, which were all very long and very Catholic. She liked to rib him about it, and especially about how whipped he was by his wife, though secretly she envied his big family, his happy marriage. Too often she caught herself hanging on every word of his stories about the twins, about the oldest one's brand new braces, about the middle one's scathing sense of humor. He didn't talk about the wife much, but Olivia liked that he didn't air their dirty laundry.

A real honest-to-God family man. Olivia hadn't known such a thing actually existed, and it fascinated her. Of course, she would never have that perfect family—mistakes like her didn't get them. But she loved her new job working SVU, the unit she'd aspired to be a part of since Karen Smythe first recommended it to her.You've got a way with the vics, Benson, especially the women and children. Use that.

As long as she had this job, she would be okay. She wasn't going to be one of those cops who got burnt out on the horrific nature of the crimes and transferred out after two years. She had spent her whole life living with that kind of trauma, and someone had to stand up for the people still trapped in it. So the job would be her spouse, the victims her children, the trauma what she ate, slept and breathed. And it didn't matter if she went home to a lonely, empty apartment for the rest of her life; SVU would always be there, welcoming her back with open arms, like what she imagined church was supposed to be. A place to atone for your sins.

Olivia's hand closed around something then, and it dropped her back into reality so abruptly she felt the return like a crash-landing. Parker's belt. It was tucked away under the mattress where she'd hidden it after he raped and beat her. Other things came back to her a little at a time as she squeezed the buckle, imprinting the P into her palm: her mother was long dead, more than twenty years now; Elliot was long gone too, eleven years and counting; and she was far closer to fifty-eight than twenty-eight.

She mourned none of it. The worst part, the one thing she absolutely could not abide, was that she had momentarily forgotten her wife and children. Even just for a second was too long. She must be going mad, for it to have happened at all. SVU would always be important to her, and it was the reason she had a family to begin with. But the job was no longer her whole world and one true love. She had those things in human form now. Their sweet names adorned the necklace that the Sandman had torn off of her yesterday. The necklace that was a gift from her one true love.

Amanda, where are you, she wondered as hard as she could, trying to send the thought out through the metal walls of the container. Rising into the nighttime air, to skitter along the wires that adorned the city like garland, pinging off the skyscrapers like hail on a tin roof. She imagined it striking the one-six in a dazzle of lightning and sparks, throbbing in the walls, in Amanda's sharp, intuitive brain. If anyone could follow her SOS and find her here, Amanda could.Please come get me, love. Please, I can't hold on much longer. I need you.

She might have spoken the words aloud, but it was difficult to tell. Besides the trauma, the injuries, and the cold, being trapped in a box without so much as a window to the outside was disorienting. She couldn't sense her body anymore, though it ached and shuddered all the same. She felt like one of those brains in a jar from bad sci-fi, sending impulses through electrodes and believing what they generated in her subconscious was real, thatshewas real.

She'd become that limbless, sightless, voiceless soldier from the Metallica video. Blown to pieces by heartless men. Except she had a way out that the soldier didn't. Clasped in the hand she couldn't feel was Parker's belt buckle, the leather strap beneath it a promise. A way out. If Amanda didn't come for her soon, she would use it. How she would find the strength to get it around her neck, around something else that could bear her weight, she didn't know. But she'd figure it out, she was good at that.

For the fourth time in her life, Olivia made up her mind to die. More than anything, she wanted to see Amanda and the kids again, but the longer this went on, the less likely it was she would be any good to them when she did get out. She might be too far gone already, lying there in her drying piss, contemplating suicide with calm detachment, relief almost.

Oh, Amanda, please hurry.

Sleepiness was a bad sign when you were hypothermic, if she remembered her survival training correctly. But she didn't fight it as it crept over her like smoke. Invisible and odorless as carbon monoxide. She breathed it in deep and let it carry her into oblivion. If she never woke up, at least it would spare her family the devastation of knowing she'd killed herself. At least they wouldn't hate her for leaving them.

On the third day, God was busy creating land and sea, calling forth the plants and trees from thin air; fruit and seed dripped from his divine tongue, dotting the earth like jewels.

On the third day, Jesus cast off his shroud and rose from the tomb, first appearing to Mary Magdalene, who some mistakenly believe was a whor*. But former prostitute or not, he entrusted her and his disciples to spread the Good News.

Then there was Three Dog Night singing "Joy to the World" and helping Jeremiah drink his mighty fine wine.

A lot could happen in three days (or nights), but on the dawn of the third morning of Olivia's captivity, Amanda felt no closer to rescuing her wife than she had lying on the sidewalk, watching her being dragged away. The image waited for Amanda in her dreams, and once again she hadn't slept more than a few minutes at a time, despite Dana's continued offers to relieve her for some rack time.

How could she sleep after listening to Olivia ask for her, plead with her to be saved?I can't hold on much longer. I need you.Oh, Amanda, please hurry. The voice was ravaged and vaguely slurred, but Amanda had heard it straining through tears like that before. She'd heard it slurred by alcohol, and uninhibited in sleep. The words were as clear to her as if Olivia had enunciated every syllable. She was losing hope of being found, which also meant losing hope in Amanda.

It was like watching Olivia drive off a cliff, the car bursting into flame on impact. It was like being sliced open and having your guts scooped out in front of you. Final. Irreversible.

Amanda had gone to the restroom, expecting to toss back up the one slice of pizza she'd eaten to placate Dana. But her stomach didn't revolt strongly enough, and she refused to make herself vomit. That was for bulimics and accidental overdosers. People who wanted to kill themselves slowly. No, if Amanda were going to do it, it would be too fast for anyone to stop her. A leap off a building, or a barrel under her chin. Final, irreversible.

An autopsy of the living.

She'd washed her hands raw to rid them of the greasy garlic that reminded her of working pizza joints in high school, trying to save up the cash for a car. Something to get her out of Loganville the second she graduated. Back then she had thought her life was hell. Now she knew the truth: hell wasn't something you went through yourself, it was seeing someone you loved suffering for you.

Returning to the interview room had proven difficult, Amanda's feet balking like stubborn saddled animals at carrying her there. Once inside she hung back at the exit for several moments, catching her breath as if she were about to do a deep-sea dive, when all she was really doing was approaching the laptop screen again.

Olivia hadn't moved from the position she'd been in when Amanda stepped out, half curled on her side, her garishly bruised neck at an odd angle. Her body the swirl in a conch shell, the mysterious Fibonacci pattern that could be found in everything from tree branches to galaxies. It shivered like the fragile light of a star, reaching out from a thousand years ago, already dead before its luminescence winked out of our night's sky.

By six in the morning, she still hadn't moved from that same golden ratio of sleep, that perfect balance she struck even now. If not for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, Amanda would have been certain she was dead. It would be just like Olivia Benson to die in a pose of absolute symmetry, as if divine hands had placed her just so. That was the way she lived.

But the breathing. Amanda held onto that, watching until her eyes ached and she could practically see through her sleeping wife's back. She held onto it when the trembling stopped too, a bad sign. Yes, it might mean a rise in body temperature—the sun was the color of watery egg yolk in the sky—but shivering also ceased when hypothermia increased from mild to moderate. So did the ability to stay conscious, and Olivia hadn't opened her eyes since ten or eleven o'clock the night before.

Now it was seven AM, and Amanda was torn between desperately wanting someone to rouse her wife and not wanting the men to go anywhere near her. Any time one of them entered the shipping container another rape occurred. It filled Amanda with guilt just wishing for the door to clang open. She'd taken to holding her breath for long intervals, and waiting. Waiting for the sound of the door, waiting for Olivia to unfurl in a catlike stretch, the way she did on lazy mornings.

So intent had Amanda become on the breathing exercise, and on the screen in front of her, she didn't realize it was her phone ringing until Dana answered it and elbowed her, a hand covering the microphone at the bottom. "Someone named Daphne," Dana whispered. "Says it's important. Want me to blow her off?" She ticked the cell back and forth in an eeny-meeny gesture.

Amanda was about to agree, when she remembered Daphne was currently taking care of the kids. A revolving door of babysitters had come and gone since Saturday, with Lucy and Daphne being the most consistent. It hadn't even occurred to Amanda that her best friend was probably missing work today, or that she should have asked the actual nanny to relieve Daphne. She couldn't think clearly enough to take care of her own damn kids right now.

"What's wrong?" she asked, grabbing the phone from Dana and bringing it to her ear so hard it was painful. "Are my kids okay?"

"They're okay," Daphne said quickly. She sounded startled by the abrupt questions, but there was nothing frantic or frightened in her voice. In fact, she was downright calm compared to Amanda, a disorienting reversal of their usual dynamic. "Everybody's fine, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to let you know that we're running a little low on, uh, breast milk. There's enough for today, I think, but I don't know if you need, like . . . time to prepare so you can make more, or what."

Poor Daphne was so clueless about breastfeeding and baby-related topics in general, it was laughable. Under normal circ*mstances, Amanda would have busted a gut at the suggestion in those words, as if she had an internal switch to flick and a warm-up period like a coffee maker, before she could produce her infant daughter's favorite brew. She recognized the humor now, but couldn't find the emotions to go with it. Just more sadness and maybe a little anger mixed in. She didn't have time for jokes.

"I'm not a cow who's gotta be milked at sunup, Daph," she snapped, too tired to worry about hurting her friend's feelings. Daphne was a grown woman, she could suck it up. "But yeah, I'll pump, make sure there's plenty, in case . . . " In case this dragged on for another three days or more, she was about to say. The words wouldn't come.I can't hold on much longer, Olivia had said.Please hurry.

"How is she?" Daphne asked quietly, her pitch lower than normal.

Something about the bright, bubbly clerk speaking so sedately made Amanda tear up, unable to respond for several beats. She swallowed hard, sniffed, flicked the hair off her shoulders. "She's hanging in. 'Bout as good as you'd expect, considering." On the screen, Olivia didn't move a muscle. Amanda squinted until she was certain the graying t-shirt was expanding and contracting, albeit infinitesimally. "They've left her alone so far this morning."

It was only 7:05 AM.

"Oh. That's . . . that's good." Daphne's end of the line rustled as if she were nodding. It went on much longer than needed. "How are you?"

Amanda didn't have to think about the answer at all, just opened her mouth and let it fall out: "Fine. I'm fine. Are the kids okay? They're not giving you too much trouble? How's the baby?" She would have continued, but her voice gave out onbaby. She'd gone almost forty-eight hours without holding her three-month-old daughter, without kissing her perfect hands and feet, without breathing in her pure pink scent, like undiluted innocence. That baby smell only lasted so long, and then it was gone forever.

Forty-eight hours and counting of Olivia missing out on Sammie's smell, Tilly's angelic giggles, Jesse's ridiculous sense of humor, Noah's thoughtful and artistic nature. The kids were such good medicine for her, a balm to so many of the wounds Amanda could never hope to soothe on her own. They were Olivia's chance at a childhood she'd never had, at experiencing a mother's love, and giving so freely what was denied her at their age. But would they ever be able to help her heal from this? Would they ever even see her again?

"—all okay. They've been perfect. Well, Jesse did use my lipstick to draw all over the shower walls, but it was a picture of me covered in hearts, so I couldn't be mad. At least I hope those were hearts." Daphne started to laugh, then remembered herself and cut it short at a single huff of air. "Sammie is the best goddaughter an aged lesbian with no childbearing prospects of her own could ask for. She likes Lucy more than me, but I'm okay with it. Wait till she discovers who takes her shopping."

A sad smile pulled at the corners of Amanda's lips, but the cables snapped loose like a kite string, the frayed ends drifting back to earth. The kite sailed away. "She loves you. They all do. Sam's just a mommy's girl." If she hadn't clamped her lips shut at the last second, a sob would have escaped and those would be the last coherent words she spoke for who knew how long. She had to hold it together. She couldn't crack up like she had done yesterday, otherwise they would probably strap her to a bed in Bellevue this time.

But it took every ounce of strength she had not to break down when Jesse's piping voice filtered through the speaker, demanding that Aunt Daph let her talk to whichever mommy was on the phone. "Hello? Is this Mama or Mommy?" she asked, as Daphne protested in the background, too late. ("She grabbed my phone, Amanda, I'm sorry," Daphne said somewhere nearby.)

"Jess—" Amanda cleared her throat, the first attempt too weak to be heard. "Jesse, you're not supposed to grab things from people. Be a good girl and give the phone back to Aunt Daph."

"Hi, Mama. I got to tell you some things first." Jesse took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say were of the utmost importance. She prefaced everything that way, and Amanda could easily picture her expression, straightforward and dead serious. "Frannie pooped in the kitchen, and Aunt Daph said a bad word. It was the s-h-i-t one. The 'partment was stinky all night! When are you coming home? I don't think she knows how to clean poop right."

"Thanks a lot, narc," said Daphne.

Chances were slim that Daphne, who had a rambunctious goldendoodle that "sh*ts like a man," didn't know how to clean up after a dog. And more than likely, Frannie was having accidents because of the sudden change in routine, but that only made Amanda feel worse. Either she neglected her children and pets, or she left her wife alone in hell. There were no good options.

"I'll be home just as soon as I can, peanut," she said, her throat constricting around the not-quite lie. Even if they got Olivia out, there was no telling how long she would be in the hospital after the brutality she'd endured so far. When Amanda was finally by her side again, she didn't think she would ever be able to leave it. "The smell will go away, okay? Ask Daphne to spray some Febreze, and try to help her keep track of when Fran needs to go out. Can you be a big girl and do that for me?"

Jesse sighed. "Okay, Mama. But when's Mommy coming home? Me and Tilly want her to play tea party. You can play too, but you have to dress up. And Noah wants her to walk him to school 'cause Lucy doesn't scare the big kids. I said I'd protect him like Supergirl, but he said I'm just a little kid. That's not right, though, is it, Mama? 'Cause girls can do anything, even if boys are bigger and stronger, huh?"

If only that were true, Amanda thought, gazing at her motionless wife. She'd thought she was Supergirl too, able to swoop in and rescue Olivia from any danger that crossed her path. The bigger, stronger boys. How wrong she had been. How stupid and arrogant. "You stay away from those boys, y'hear? Tell Noah to go to a teacher if the big kids bother him. And don't give Aunt Daphne anymore trouble. Now, put her back on the phone, and you get ready for school. Hey, Jess."

"Uh-huh?"

"I love you, kid. Lemme talk to Daph." Amanda added the last part hastily, the hot lump in her throat flaring, hot tears welling in her eyes. Olivia was freezing to death, but hey, at least Amanda was burning on the inside. She felt as if the heat might be visible beneath her skin, like E.T. and his glowing finger, blazing heart. Ouch. But when she glanced down, she saw only pale white and blue veins. The colors of winter and corpses.

She had ignored the question about Olivia on purpose. She could no more answer it than she could put her hand through the laptop screen and pluck Olivia out, bringing her to safety. But it rang in her ears, repeating like a cave echo that didn't fade away.When's Mommy coming home? We want her to play tea party.

The woman on the screen wouldn't be having tea parties for a very long time, if ever again. Amanda loved to watch her playing like that with the girls. She'd often stood in the doorway to their bedroom, grinning and eavesdropping on the make-believe games that Olivia became so invested in. Dolls were spoken to as if they were real human beings, someone inevitably turned into a four-legged pet, even though two very real dogs were in attendance (they were unicorns, mermaids, trolls—anything but canine), and tiaras must be worn at all times.

Oh, how the captain laughed when she played. The years melted away, and she was no more than seven or eight herself. About the age she had been when her mother sexually assaulted her, holding her down and using a knee to simulate being raped by Joseph Hollister. Olivia's rapist father, who would go on to sexually abuse Olivia as well. God, the fact that she could even laugh at all, that she could love her daughters so wholeheartedly and so purely, was a miracle in itself.

Maybe you only got a certain number of miracles in your lifetime, and Olivia and Amanda had both met their quota.

"Amanda?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

The next few minutes were spent arranging the breast milk handoff, with Daphne making most of the suggestions and, encountered by silence from the other end, confirming them aloud. Amanda would pump, and not leave the bottle sitting out this time. Daphne would wait until Lucy took the two eldest children to school, where a security detail was in place, and then, the babies and their own detail in tow, Daphne would come to the precinct to retrieve Samantha's dinner.

"And under no circ*mstances do I bring the girls past the main lobby, where you will meet me with the milk," Daphne said, solemnly repeating Amanda's warning like she was swearing a sacred oath. She murmured it again, as if she were jotting down an important address. Her boldness around cops didn't extend past Olivia and Amanda, or at least not to the male officers, of which there would be many when she arrived at the precinct. But she was to stay put, taking no chances of exposing the little ones—or herself—to the livestream splashed all over the one-six.

Samantha might not be affected, but little Tilly was almost four, and so sensitive. She showed the most compassion of all the Rollins-Benson children, and seeing Olivia in her current state, even if she couldn't comprehend it, would scar the little girl for life. Amanda couldn't bear to think about that happening. It reminded her of what she said time and again in the squad room, when cases involved a leaked video: once something was on the Internet, it stayed there forever. If Tilly didn't see the footage now, she still might someday. Any of the kids could. They could be forty years old and click a link that shattered their memories of Olivia forever.

But who was Amanda kidding? Those memories had already shattered the minute Carlos Riva forced himself inside of Olivia. Then each of his friends, one after the other, over and over, until she had been raped by six different men, at least twice apiece. More for Angelov and Sandberg Jr. How many times would Amanda have to kill them for it to be even? It didn't seem fair for it to only be the once. They needed to suffer and die, over and over, at least a dozen times. A hundred. Ten thousand. It would never be enough.

"Just be careful, Daph," Amanda said, before they ended the call. She knew sending a uni to the apartment with the milk would be the better option, but she didn't want to lose a single unit of manpower in the search for Olivia, especially not over something so personal. She wasn't squeamish or embarrassed about breastfeeding, but now that her wife, who shared in the feedings—who cherished them—had been so horribly violated for all to see, she felt protective of the act. Like she was somehow exposing Liv further.

Plus, she really wanted to see her kids. Noah and Jesse would have far too many questions, but the babies would have only love. That was something Amanda was in desperate need of right then.

She said goodbye to Daphne after several more promises from the little clerk to guard the girls with her life and sic Hamilton on anyone who looked at them funny. Gigi or Frannie would be the better option. Female dogs were more loyal and aggressive about protecting their family, or so Amanda had heard. She'd seen it in action a few times with Frannie, and even gentle Gigi had fought ferociously out there in the woods, before she was even an official Rollins-Benson.

Amanda was considering calling Daphne back to tell her to bring the retriever instead when Dana suddenly sat forward, leaning past Amanda's shoulder and peering intently at the laptop screen. "I think . . . is she—?"

There was no need to finish, Amanda saw it too. Olivia had begun to stir, the mattress rustling beneath her as she attempted to undo her body from the tight knot it had slept in. Though her face wasn't visible, her struggle was obvious, a weak moan accompanying even the slightest progress she made at unbending her knees and straightening her spine. She opened like a strange, arid plant on the desert floor, like the shriveled brown boll of a cotton blossom. The sharp, brittle bolls shredded your hands if you weren't careful picking the cotton, and by the end of the day, you had a blood-red crop to show for it.

"Manda?" she said, her voice thick with sleep and confusion. Failing to sit up or even lift her head more than an inch from the bed, she let it loll back in defeat and turned it gradually side to side on the padding, taking in her surroundings. Several moments passed when she clearly didn't know where she was or what had happened to her.

As painful as it was to see her so disoriented, Amanda hoped she would stay that way. It was better if she couldn't remember, wasn't it? She'd been spared some of the trauma of Lewis and the Mangler by being drugged, and she didn't even know that Dr. Giacomo had groped her breasts while she was passed out on his couch during the undercover op. Amanda hadn't the heart to tell her. Why traumatize her even more?

But it wasn't better, not when reality began to sink in. Amanda watched it play out on Olivia's face, just like she had watched every one of the rapes (except whatever the MAGA hat man had done while the cameras were off), and this was almost as bad. Olivia lay there reliving all the horrors done to her in the past forty-eight hours, wading back into the dark, uncharted waters until they were at her elbows, shoulders, chin.

Then she slipped under completely, sobbing without tears for the next ten minutes straight. She only stopped when exhaustion won out and she dropped back into sleep, heavy as an anchor tossed overboard. One hand clutched at the collar of her shirt, keeping the stretched fabric from sagging too low on her breasts; the other was wedged under the mattress like she'd been interrupted mid-reach. It was strange to see her dodge in and out of sleep so effortlessly, when she sometimes took hours to nod off at home and seldom shut her eyes again after waking.

So acute was her exhaustion, Amanda felt it through the screen, felt it in her own bones. She longed to rest her head on the table and sleep alongside her wife, who was there but not. Maybe when she woke up, this would all be nothing more than a bad dream. The worst she'd ever had. But that couldn't be—the drugs had already put her out, and the nightmare still raged on, all these hours later.

God, she was tired. Several moments passed while she tried to remember what it was she had intended to do before Olivia proved she wasn't in a hypothermic coma. It took a tap on the shoulder from Dana to reorient her, and to remind her that the other woman was even there.

"Sorry." Dana flashed a hand in apology when Amanda jumped. "Why don't you go do the, uh, pumping thingamajig so you'll be ready when your friend shows up? I'll stay here and keep an eye on her."

Amanda nodded dully. She hated that Dana had overheard her entire conversation with her daughter and Daphne. It wasn't as if she was being spied on by the FBI woman, but watching her wife be repeatedly violated made everything else feel like a gross invasion of privacy. She hated it for Olivia, who was intensely private about her personal business, and for herself, because she wanted nothing more than to make Olivia proud, to follow her lead. She hated that she might never get the chance.

There wasn't a lot she didn't hate at the moment.

"Yeah, okay." Amanda stood abruptly, getting a head rush from the sudden drop in blood pressure, and swiped her phone off the table as if she suspected Dana of plans to pocket it while she was gone. She pulled up the live feed on the device, showing it to Dana, lest she get the impression Amanda was entrusting Olivia to her alone. "I can watch from the crib. Shouldn't take me very long. Maybe when I get back you could put a little more effort into finding her, 'steada just playing lookout."

Unfair, rude. Amanda didn't care. She had much more important things to worry about than Dana Lewis' bruised feelings. What was left of her bruised, unconscious wife in hand, she exited interview one and headed for the crib, where at least she would be able to do something useful for her baby.

. . .

Chapter 23: Come Little Children

Chapter Text

Chapter 23.

Come Little Children

. . .

"Well, Geeg, looks like you're hanging out with us girls." Daphne held her phone out to the dog, showing her the text as if she could actually read the short missive from Amanda:Bring Gigi, not Ham. Daphne didn't need an explanation for the request, and honestly, it was a bit of a relief. She loved Hamilton more than life itself, but the goldendoodle's energy level was off the charts and the thought of trying to keep track of him, plus a three-year-old and a three-month-old, gave her heart palpitations.

The sweet golden retriever was far more obedient, and Daphne knew firsthand just how loyal and protective she was. Gigi had faced off with that madman in the woods and ultimately helped rescue Olivia and Amanda. Daphne might not have witnessed that part, shattered and half dead as she was at the time, but she remembered well how terrifying and strong Thaddeus Orion had been. If the dog could take that on to defend her family, she would stop at nothing to defend the youngest members of her household.

Frannie and the Ham-ster would have to make do until everyone got back, because there was no way in hell Daphne could handle three dogs and two small children on the sidewalks of New York City. She'd be lying dead in the middle of traffic within the first five minutes. And she had already had more than enough close encounters with motor vehicles to last a lifetime.

"Okay, let's find your leash," she said to the golden, half expecting her to trot off and come back with the lead in her mouth. She was smart and well-trained enough to do it, but she was also unfamiliar with taking commands from Daphne, who didn't have quite the presence of an Olivia or Amanda Rollins-Benson. She was lucky to get Hammie to sit while she poured food in his dish, let alone train him to be as intuitive and gentle as Gigi. "Leash, leash, where's the leash?"

"Here, Aunt Daphy." Matilda, sweet little angel that she was, couldn't pronounce Daphne to save her life, but she located the extra-long walking lead for Gigi as if by magic. The little girl had the golden retriever's gift of insight and understanding as well, and she trotted the leather strap over to Daphne, saving her the added steps with her cane. Unlike big sister Jesse, who liked to hide the cane and snicker while Noah and Daphne searched high and low. "'Is is Gigi's."

"Tills, I am claiming you as my other godchild and taking you home with me, how's that sound? You wanna move in with Aunt Daphy and Hambone, and help keep us in line?" Daphne fluffed and bounced the coppery red ringlets that sprung from Matilda's head in every direction, like wild poppies. They were irresistible, those bright spirals, and Matilda was still young enough to revel in the attention. Daphne had learned the hard way that Noah was past the age of tousled curls.

Matilda deliberated for a moment, glancing back and forth between Daphne and Hamilton, who had appointed himself king of the sofa. He lay there now, sprawled on his back with all four legs co*cked at separate angles. Badly in need of grooming, he looked like a shearling blanket tossed to the winds.

"No, thank you," said Matilda, a finger in her mouth as she gave an uncertain shake of the head. The most conscientious soon-to-be four-year-old on the planet. "I stay with mommies and sissies and bubby. You can live with us. Us'll adopted you."

Well, if that wasn't the most charming response possible, Daphne didn't know what was. She had never really considered herself the motherly type, and once she hit thirty-five, kids seemed to be off the table altogether. But spending time with the Rollins-Benson children always made her wonder what could be. Especially sweet Tilly. And baby Sammie was proving just as lovable, even if she did sometimes stare at Daphne like she was contemplating homicide. "I think your mamas might have something to say about that, sweet girl. But I appreciate the thought."

Nodding as though she understood, Matilda gave Daphne's knee a consoling pat. Then she asked the question Daphne had been dreading since she first arrived at the apartment after that frantic phone call from Amanda the previous day: "Where's Mommy and Mama? They come home soon? I want them, please."

It had been difficult enough lying to the older kids and dodging their eerily accurate suspicions ("Is one of them sick?" Noah asked while being tucked in the previous night, "Is it my mom? Is she in the hospital again?"), but looking into Matilda's hopeful eyes, bluer than the horizon where the ocean met the sky, and just as honest, was like lying in church. Walking up to the altar and thumbing your nose at God himself.

Daphne wasn't particularly religious, unless you counted worshiping hot middle-aged alpha females who carried guns, but even she didn't feel comfortable flouting divine authority like that. She tapped Matilda lightly on the tip of her nose, drawing her attention to the approaching fingertip rather than the eyes above. "They're still at work, Tilly Vanilli," she said, affection softening her tone from its usual sardonic glint. Jesse was the only Rollins-Benson kid she traded barbs with; the six-year-old gave as good as she got. "They'll be home just as soon as they can, okay? But I know they miss you so much and want to be with you too. "

That was about as close as she could get to the truth. She held her breath, half expecting Matilda to let out an indignant squawk like Sammie did whenever she realized her mothers had not returned yet, forcing her to make do with Aunt Daphy or Nanny Lucy. The baby clearly had her favorites—namely the ones who put boobs in her mouth instead of plain old bottle nipples—but Matilda showed a bit more decorum, nodding in resignation.

"In the meantime, we'll stop in to say hi to your mama on our way to the park." Daphne ruffled the curly head resting against her leg once more. It sprang up, ringlets bouncing, and Matilda flashed an equally buoyant smile before toddling off to collect her lovies and the little purse she didn't leave home without.

The child loved her accessories. She and Daphne were of the same ilk in that respect. Daphne had so looked forward to turning her favorite little ginger into a fashionista like herself—Jesse was a hopeless case, and thus far, Samantha's interest in clothes extended only to what she could gnaw on or poop in—but the future was too uncertain for such plans now. If Olivia didn't make it out of the predicament she was in alive . . .

Daphne couldn't even finish the thought, let alone guess at what it might entail. She'd only known the captain for two years, and she already couldn't imagine life without her in it. Losing Olivia would destroy Amanda and the kids. The family Daphne had quite unexpectedly found herself a part of, just by sheer dumb luck and the need to let Hammie burn off some of his energy at the dog park, felt as if it were slipping through her fingers. She was determined not to let that happen, although what she had to contribute was hard to say. There were no magic files for her to pull this time, the key to rescuing Olivia contained within, and it was too late to play target, distracting the bad guy while her friends got away.

It seemed the best she had to offer was superb childcare and free housekeeping services, for whatever that was worth. "Not a whole damn lot," she muttered to herself as she latched the leash to Gigi's collar, readied the stroller for Samantha, and stuffed everything she could possibly fit into the diaper bag.

She affixed her brightest Aunt Daphy smile for Matilda when the little girl returned, dragging almost as many provisions with her—you never knew how many dolls and stuffed animals you might need on an eighteen-block trek through the city. The cops assigned to the Rollins-Benson children's security detail probably thought Daphne was a loon, refusing to be driven the short distance to the one-six, rather than stumping her way down the street with a double stroller and a large dog in tow. But those cops would never understand that the city felt safer to her than being boxed in a car; cars were unpredictable, even deadly in the wrong hands. And every face she saw behind a windshield belonged to Orion.

Besides that, the younger kids needed some fresh air. Noah and Jesse had school to get them out of the apartment, to get their minds off their absent parents, but Matilda and Samantha were reliant on fun Aunt Daphne for distraction. Time to live up to her reputation as the spunky free-spirit who didn't let a simple thing like permanent disability get her down.

By the twelfth block, Daphne no longer felt spunky or free, and if her cane got caught in the spokes of the stroller one more time, she was going to scream. Luckily, Gigi was a pro at sensing and alleviating stress, and she paused every other block, making sure Daphne took a moment to breathe and center herself. They were close enough to Bryant Park to see the skinny vertical windows of the library, the horizontal slivers of interior lighting like mismatched rungs on ridiculously tall ladders. Though a relatively low building by NYC standards, its architecture always reminded Daphne of the songStairway to Heaven.

She hummed a few bars of the Led Zeppelin tune until the calliope music from Le Carrousel drowned out the melody. "Horseys!" cried Tilly from her front-facing seat in the stroller, though the small carousel had yet to come into view. Girl loved her horses. Daphne had thought about taking the kid upstate to ride some real horses on her upcoming birthday, but she had the feeling there wouldn't be much celebrating by then. Matilda turned four in just over a month.

Would Olivia be healed enough for a party? Would she even be alive to see her sweetest child reach preschool age?

Yo, I know I'm a giant lesbian and all, and according to some, that's not your cup of tea, Daphne thought, unsure of how to start a prayer, it had been so long (yo was probably a bit informal, but it would have to suffice),but if you're really up there, I doubt you're the hom*ophobic stick in the mud people make you out to be. I know you cared enough to make sure Liv and Mandy Lou got together, so you must be pretty disgusted by what's happening right now. I mean, Liv's one of the best people I know, and I can't imagine you want her to suffer like this. Look, dude—or dudette—can you just help her? And Amanda? For their kids' sakes, if nothing else. Please.

Please just don't let her die.

Amen. Hastily she made the sign of the cross, though she wasn't Catholic. She would have faced Mecca if she knew which direction it was in. Anything to better her chances of being heard and, despite the irreverence of her pseudo-prayer, being taken seriously by whoever was listening. Maybe she could even stop in at one of the churches on her way back home and light a candle for her friends. With Matilda and Samantha along for the ride, she could light two more. Three candles had to be worth something.

"We'll see the horseys after we visit your mama for a few minutes, okay, frilly Tilly?" The precinct had finally come into sight, and Daphne pointed it out to the little girl, leaning over the stroller handle so her hand was visible beyond the canopy. "We're almost there, just a couple more streets to go. Can you hold your horseys that long?"

A giggle from under the canopy was the cryptic reply, which Daphne took as a yes. Samantha hadn't made a peep from her bassinet-style side of the stroller since they left the apartment, but she had no more appreciation for Daphne's sense of humor awake than she did sound asleep. Gigi at least looked up wearing her signature golden retriever grin, and even if it was a pity laugh, it was better than nothing.

"Thanks, Geeger. I'm glad you get me." Daphne rubbed the dog's head and marveled once again at her obedience. Hamilton would have been halfway across the patch of lush green grass by now, chasing a stranger's frisbee, oblivious to the three small humans he was dragging behind him, the big galumph.

With Gigi they made it past the west lawn without a single tug of the leash or a break in their stride. She did release an ominous growl when a man in a red baseball cap stood up from one of the bistro chairs that flocked the lawn like a gaggle of spindly green birds and stubbed out a cigarette under the toe of his sneaker. Daphne didn't scold; the guy left his nasty cigarette butt right there on the sidewalk, he deserved to be growled at.

"Right on, girl," she muttered, sidestepping the smear of ash and tobacco, the paper crumpled up like the body of a dead insect. An exotic white beetle with a corklike abdomen. Or maybe not so exotic, since the ground was littered with their carcasses as far as the eye could see.

Daphne sighed, and decided against plucking up the trash and calling to the man that he'd forgotten his smelly carcinogenic pollutant, as if he'd left behind a set of keys. She'd been a New Yorker for a while now—lobbing sarcasm at perfect strangers was par for the course—but there was no sense in starting something, even if she did have a police convoy tailing her every move. She would save it for a day she didn't have such precious cargo to look after.

The litterbug and Daphne's distaste for smokers were soon forgotten as the park faded behind them, the chatter of a hundred people, tourist and resident alike, and the reeling carousel music dwindling into the background. Another wall of noise went up before them, thick as a concrete slab with a thousand more voices, honking horns, angry drivers and the fumes of countless traffic jams, as they neared the precinct.

Daphne waded into the hot, acrid stew, wishing she had approached from the far less populated rear entrance. It was meant for NYPD use only, with a chain-linked parking lot for the muckety-mucks, of which Captain Olivia Benson was one, and street parking for the lowly officers and detectives (Daphne had it on good authority that Liv often gave up her spot to her lower-ranking wife), but Daphne could have been granted civilian access at a word from Amanda. Especially with a captain's children on hand.

"Aunt Daphy, it's stinky," Matilda cried in dismay, her hand just visible outside the canopy, flapping like a tiny white flag. Mayday, mayday. "I don't like it, please. Mommy holds me now. You hold me now?"

The poor little kid was a lot closer to the ground and the smell that wafted up from the pavement, the way cooked-in odors lingered on stovetop burners and inside microwaves. Not to mention the lungfuls of exhaust she was probably getting with every breath. So much for giving the babies fresh air. There were only a few more streets left to go, and Daphne considered asking her to wait another minute or two, but she couldn't ignore that little hand signaling SOS. Matilda so seldom complained, it felt cruel to ignore her innocent request.

"Okay, Tillybean, let's pull over here and get you resituated," Daphne said, easing the stroller and Gigi aside to make room for oncoming foot traffic. Gigi stood guard next to Samantha's bassinet, which, rear-facing, canopy-topped, and elevated to waist height, kept the sleeping baby from sucking in much of the city effluvium that ambulatory adults and sensitive three-year-olds got by the faceful. "And Sammie, you just do you, girl."

"Need any help?"

It was one of the cops assigned to the kids, Daphne thought his name might be Montero, though he looked vaguely Asian. He seemed to be under the impression that Daphne's cane put her at old lady status, because he offered a hand any time she took a step without it. She appreciated his willingness to help, she really did, but a nice female officer, statuesque, about thirty or forty, would have been preferable.

"Thanks, I've got it," she said in her best deputy clerk tone, perfected by years of working with the public. Amanda always laughed when she turned on that voice.I think you missed your calling as a flight attendant, Daph, the detective liked to tease, of the bright but robotic cadence. Buh-bye, take care, have a nice day, buh-bye now. "She's lighter than some of the court dockets I've carried."

"Oh yeah? Which court do you work in? I don't remember seeing you around."

Great, now he was interested. Next he would be suggesting they meet for coffee someday during their lunch hour. Daphne unbuckled Tilly and hauled the little girl onto her hip, using the stroller handle for balance. She hadn't been exaggerating about the dockets—paperwork in general was surprisingly heavy, particularly when stacked—but thirty-one pounds of toddler, even a light, birdlike thirty-one pounds like Tilly, required some strength. Luckily, Daphne did extra curls at the gym. Keeping up the gun show for the ladies.

"Probably because we were both busy hitting on other women," she said. The sooner they got this part out of the way the sooner they could resume their roles as bodyguard and the guarded, and no, it would not be anything like the Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner version, thank you very much. "I'm gay and sort of . . . involved with another cop. Who's a woman. So."

Involved might be an overstatement. She and Kat were currently off again in their yearlong relationship, which had so many highs and lows she could no longer recall who was mad at whom, and whose turn it was to break down and call the other. Then again, maybe she would run into Officer Tamin at the precinct, strike up a conversation, offer some comfort. The thought of what was happening to Olivia, the memories it awakened of Meredith Ashton, made Daphne miss having someone by her side, holding her hand when things got rough.

"Ah." Montero gave a thoughtful pause. A tinge of humor was detectable when he spoke again, his voice not quite as level as he likely intended. "Well, I'm straight and married. To a woman. You won't catch me hitting on anybody but my wife. So." He smiled and flashed his wedding band at Daphne, her eyes going to that finger and then to him, abashed.

"See, Tilly, this is why I don't interact with the male species." Daphne offered an apologetic smile to Montero before turning back to her unofficial goddaughter. "Your Aunt Daph has no game with the fellas. Now, the ladies I got covered. I've been told I'm irresistibly charming. What do you think?" She gave her shoulder-length hair a toss, striking a supermodel pose from the shoulders up.

Tilly listened intently, almost as if she understood. Then she broke into a wide grin, squeezing Daphne's cheeks between her tiny palms to form even bigger fish lips. "Aunt Daphy, you so silly."

"That does seem to be the popular consensus, at least with most of my exes." Daphne spoke in all seriousness, despite her squished together lips. She opened and closed them like a guppy in a fishbowl, getting a giggle and a kiss from Matilda. "Except they think silly is spelled with a 'B' and an 'itch,' for some reason. Gigi knows what I'm talking about, huh, girl?"

"You might not wanna—"

"Bee and an itch," Matilda repeated in singsong, interrupting the warning from Montero. To the little girl everything was a song, and she made up her own tune now, with the lyrics Daphne had unwittingly provided. "Bee itch, bee itch. Ouchy, it's a bee itch."

sh*t, Daphne thought, opting to keep that one to herself. Montero chuckled behind his hand, retreating a few steps to resume watching the group's six, as the cops called it. Daphne poked at the muzzle of Matilda's stuffed unicorn, which was bundled tightly in the girl's arms, along with her purse, a llama, and what looked like an avocado plushie. "That's a great song, Tills, but how about singing me a unicorn song instead? Something that's not so . . . itchy."

By the time they reached the precinct entrance, Matilda was on her fourth verse about a unicorn named Daphy, whose best friends were a llama and an avocado named Llama (pronouncedYyama) and Avocado (Cado). Montero swooped in again, prepared to haul the entire double stroller, baby Sammie and all, up the flight of stairs to the glass double doors. "Hey, Fisk, gimme a hand," he called to his young partner, whom he'd sent ahead as lookout for their little jaunt. He whistled shrilly, grabbing the kid's attention but also waking Samantha in the process. The baby blinked her eyes, got one look at the strange face above her, and began to howl.

At the exact same moment, Matilda gave a distressed cry of her own and peered past Daphne's shoulder, reaching out as if she wanted to be rescued from the arms that held her. "Aunt Daphy, I losted it. Go back, I losted my purse!" It was a comical exclamation to hear from the mouth of a small child, but Matilda was dead serious. One look at her tight, troubled face, and Daphne couldn't ignore the request. She knew well the panic of misplacing one's purse. Of course, hers was a Dooney & Bourke filled with credit cards, personal identification, makeup, keys, and the latest iPhone release, but a four-year-old's accessories were important to her too.

The men were staring at the squalling infant like a bomb they didn't know how to disarm—Fisk actually blanched a few shades lighter—and Matilda turned a pair of enormous blue puppy-dog eyes on Daphne, bottom lip quivering. Even Gigi was agitated, prancing and taking short, yipping hops on her front legs beside the bassinet. She had taken it upon herself to be the baby's guardian, and alerted the nearest responsible adult whenever the child cried. Apparently that responsible adult was Daphne, because the retriever pawed at her foot and whuffled a bark.

Okay then. Daphne took a deep, cleansing breath, blew it out, and zeroed in on Montero. She dealt with all sorts of loud, kooky people in family court, some of them bawling like babies themselves, she could handle two upset kids, an antsy golden retriever, and a couple of petrified cops. "You. Be a peach and run tell Detective Rollins we're out here, would you?" She hadn't wanted to go inside the precinct, anyway. Not with all those guns and testosterone milling around. And not with the chance of accidentally glimpsing the livestream of Olivia on a stray monitor somewhere.

Pointing out the baby to Fisk, she said, "Can you watch her for a second, great, thanks. Just rub the pacifier on her gums and see if you can get her to take it." The rookie nodded dumbly at the instructions, glancing too late at Montero, who had jumped at the chance to scurry upstairs and retrieve Amanda, rather than stand outside and play nursemaid for five seconds.

"Calm down, girl. We're taking care of your little one." Daphne stroked Gigi's head for a moment, settling her before stepping away to look for thelostedpurse. It couldn't have gone too far, Daphne remembered seeing it nestled in with the stuffed animals when she lifted them and Tilly from the stroller a few minutes ago.

"Okay," she said to Tilly, though actually addressing Fisk over the girl's head, "let's you and me go find that bag. I'm sure it's right around here somewhere, so it will only take a second. Meanwhile Officer Fisk will guard Sammie Grace with his life and rock her stroller very gently until we get back."

"Yes, ma'am," said Fisk. He gazed in terror from Samantha to the pacifier she was gumming angrily, to Daphne, and back again.

"Good man."

No sooner had Daphne lowered Matilda to the sidewalk, grabbed her cane from the stroller handle, and started off in the opposite direction with the girl than another man approached, dangling a tiny pink purse on a tiny gold chain. He hopped the curb with a long-legged stride, his Chucks smacking heavily against the pavement. Graceful he was not, and his sweaty hair formed a mushroom shape on top of his head, as if he'd just taken off a sweatband or a hat. He had rodentlike features—something about the ridge of his brows and that small clutch of teeth—but he wore a wide, friendly smile as he strolled closer.

Daphne hooked her cane over her elbow and scooped up Tilly anyway. She didn't care if it made her look like a nervous, overprotective white lady; right then shewasa nervous, overprotective white lady, and a strange man, smiling or not, was invading her space. His expression did falter for a moment, but he recovered quickly and fell back a step or two, tipping a nod—of acknowledgment or apology, Daphne couldn't tell which.

"Think the little lady dropped this back there," he said, gesturing to a vague spot somewhere over his shoulder. He shook the purse at Matilda, shimmying the fringed piping, much to her delight. Disaster had been averted, justice was restored, Miss Matilda and her handbag were together once more. She reached out eagerly, rocking on Daphne's hip in an attempt to urge them closer. "Figured she might be looking for it before long."

Reluctantly Daphne edged forward enough for him to hook the chain over Matilda's arm when he glanced at her for permission. Up close he resembled her eldest brother a bit, especially around the jawline. Same build, too. He was the brother Daphne clashed with the most, but also the one who made her laugh hysterically whenever they were together. A glimmer of his humor sparkled in this guy's eyes too, and it put her a little more at ease. "Thank you," she said, offering an appreciative smile. "Now we don't have to cancel all those credit cards she's got racked up. Total shopaholic, this girl."

The man chuckled at the joke, which went unnoticed by Matilda. She was rooting through the coin-purse-sized compartment of her toy as if she were indeed confirming that all platinum was present and accounted for. "I know how that goes," he said, catching the toe of Matilda's little huarache sandal as she swung her feet, happiness restored. He gave the shoe a playful shake. "Got one about this age myself. Three, right? How many times she sucker you into riding the carousel back there?"

Daphne started to answer truthfully ("Horsey!" cried Matilda, bouncing on Daphne's hip like she was actually in the saddle), then caught herself wondering how he knew they had walked by the carousel. It was too far away for him to have followed behind just to return a play pocketbook. "A few," she said, a bit terse, glancing back at the precinct steps. Fisk had removed Samantha from the bassinet and snuggled her to his chest, a dopey, smitten grin on his face as he bobbed her up and down. "Well, I should get back before the officer finds out why you don't bounce a recently fed baby. Thanks for the—"

"Wait, are these the Rollins-Benson kids?" The man ticked his finger back and forth between Matilda and Samantha. "Are you the nanny?"

Gaze snapping to attention, Daphne eyed him warily, angling the hip with Tilly on it toward the precinct. She probably couldn't run with a kid in her arms—hell, she probably couldn't run anymore, period—but she would damn well try it if she had to. "How do you know who we are?" she asked, edging away a little at a time. He was very tall. She felt like a mouse in the shadow of a swooping hawk.

"I'm part of your security detail. Here to relieve one of the officers. Name's Porter. Marshall Porter." He released Matilda's sandal and offered the same hand to Daphne, dusting it awkwardly against his pants when she didn't shake it. "The two older kids in school? I was supposed to be assigned there, but I had a family thing. Guess you're stuck with me."

"Where's your uniform?" she asked in a brusque tone. She sounded like her mother telling off a rude client, but that was just fine with Daphne. Her mom was awesome.

"I'm a detective, not a uni," said Porter. "You'll be trading up."

"What about your badge?" Daphne had learned from Amanda to always ask to see a badge.Won't that piss them off?she'd inquired, forever dubious about questioning authority. She still got intimidated by some of the judges at work, particularly those without a sense of humor.

We're required to do it, Amanda had replied.The only ones who get pissed are the ones with something to hide.

"Oh, yeah. Sure." Porter sniffed, and though his smile may have tightened a little, he reached around to his back pocket. He brought forth a rolled up baseball cap and a leather wallet, unfolding the latter and flashing the silver shield-shaped badge inside. Amanda's badge was gold and blue, shaped like a sunburst, but the lower ranking detectives probably had less fancy insignia. Just in case, Daphne memorized the number at the bottom: 26037. "Never had to show my ID to a nanny before," he said, and chuckled lightly. "Feels like I'm being busted by Mary Poppins."

"I'm not the nanny," Daphne said, the tension of preparing to run—or die trying—beginning to dwindle. He had the proper credentials, and he definitely looked like a cop, big and oafish. No offense to Amanda or Olivia, who were neither of those things; but female cops were a different breed altogether. "I'm a family friend and the kids' godmother. But I protect them like my own." It was awfully big talk for someone who was only 5'1", but she meant it. She would claw anyone's eyes out if they messed with her favorite kiddos.

Too late, Daphne heard the threat in her head (claw anyone's eyes out . . .), and the image of Meredith Ashton's eyeless corpse flashed before her, honey-blond hair shorn off in clumps, and she cringed. That seldom happened anymore, the ghastly visage of her murdered girlfriend coming back to haunt her, but when it did, it left her shaken to the core. Carefully she stood Tilly on the sidewalk, not trusting herself to head back toward Fisk on wobbly legs, her cane on her elbow, and the child in her arms.

"Ah, that explains the mix-up, then," Porter was saying, stuffing his badge and hat into his back pockets. His voice sounded far away. "They must have notified the nanny I'd be coming, instead of you. Sorry for the confusion. Hey, are you all right?"

"I'm okay." Daphne ignored the arm he offered as she turned. She started to protest when he took Matilda's hand, guiding the little girl along beside him as he followed, but Matilda accepted happily, even allowing him to carry Llama and Avocado to lighten her load. There was no sense in scaring the kid just because Daphne was being paranoid. She did a few of the deep breathing exercises that Olivia had recommended to her after the Catskills, and concentrated on getting her sh*t together as the three of them headed for the steps.

Then Gigi lost her goddamn mind. The golden gave an uncharacteristic growl, baring her teeth at their approach, and when Porter drew back in alarm, she lunged forward like the rabid dog in that Stephen King film. Her bark was so deep and sonorous, it reverberated down the corridor of buildings on either side, raising the heads of a few startled passersby. The grip of her leash was tied around the stroller handle, and the carriage rattled along behind her like an old stagecoach.

"Whoa, call off your dog," Porter said, scooping Matilda up to safety as Gigi snarled and spat, menacing him like an angry wolf. Actually, with her hackles up and all that white fur, she was more raging polar bear than wolf. Whichever beast she most resembled, Porter was sufficiently intimidated.

"Gigi! Calm down, girl!" Daphne's heart clenched at the sight of the stroller being tossed about so roughly, but Fisk followed close behind it, the baby still in his arms. She was squalling again, disturbed by Gigi's frenzied barking and the sudden jolt of movement. Officer Fisk kept her shielded to his chest, grabbing for the stroller with his other hand and trying to drag it and Gigi back toward the steps.

The dog had not calmed down as ordered, and was in fact, going even more spastic as Daphne and Fisk drove her back, doing their best to quiet her. She strained at her leash, stiff as a taxidermy creature, and craned her neck around Daphne's leg, roaring with all her might. Daphne caught the railing by the stairs just in time to stay upright, Fisk throwing an arm behind her back in reflex. Sammie screeched.

"Gigi!" Daphne yelled above the racket, but she was drowned out each time by more barking. Hamilton sometimes got a little out of control when he saw a squirrel at the park, but even his goldendoodle mania couldn't compare to mild-mannered Gigi's sudden outburst. At a loss how to handle her, Daphne stood back with Fisk, who looked partly dazed by the assault on his ears as well, and hoped the dog would wear herself out soon.

"What the hell's going on? Gigi, knock it off." Amanda barked the command with almost as much vehemence as the golden. She snapped her fingers and bounded down the stairs two at a time, barely appearing to light upon them at all, at that speed. She was faster than lightning, Amanda Rollins-Benson. A moment after appearing at the top of the steps, she was at the bottom and holding Daphne at arm's length by the shoulders. A distance to embrace a long-absent loved one, pulling them to your breast, or to shake someone whose sanity you were trying to restore.

Amanda did neither, but stood back from Daphne, pale and panting. To the casual observer it would have been difficult to tell who was propping up whom. At their feet, Gigi whimpered and pawed the ground like a horse at the starting gate, her obedience to Amanda at war with whatever was causing her distress. "Are you okay? Daph?" Amanda ducked down to peer in Daphne's eyes as if she suspected public intoxication of some sort. "What's wrong? Montero said you'd be in Reception, but I heard the ruckus out here . . . " She looked to Gigi, who pressed her face against Amanda's leg, gazing up with doleful brown eyes, and whining. Amanda rested a calming hand on the dog's head. "What got Gigi so stirred up?"

"I don't know," Daphne said, shrugging with her hands, instead of the shoulders Amanda was holding. She gestured weakly at the stairs, the building, Fisk and baby Sammie. "I was talking to the detective, we were all about to walk in, and then she just went off. Nearly pulled an E.T. with the stroller. I guess something spooked her. Maybe Fisk holding the baby, or Porter walking with Tilly? Has she ever acted like that before?"

"Not since we got her. She gets upset when Liv—" The rest of the sentence died on Amanda's lips as soon as the name was out. Clearing her throat, she straightened from the slight crouch she'd assumed to check on Gigi and glanced around at her infant daughter in Fisk's arms. Samantha's cries had quieted when Amanda shouted for the golden retriever to knock it off, and once the dog had mostly settled, so did baby. Officer Fisk had finally gotten the pacifier into her mouth. She looked like a bunny, curled up against him in her headband with the floppy little bow, the movement of her pacifier resembling a rabbit's twitching nose.

Amanda sniffed, swiped under her nose, took another glance around. A smile ghosted across her lips at the sight of Fisk walking Samantha to and fro in front of the bottom step, bouncing the baby like an old pro. "Is Tilly still in the stroller?" she asked, leaning forward for a glimpse under the canopy of the front-facing seat. A strange expression crossed her face and she jerked the stroller wheels sharply sideways, turning the whole thing for a better look at the empty seat. "Where is she? Did she already go inside?"

"No, Detective Porter's holding her."Herfaded off, half-spoken, as Daphne looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the tall man standing behind her, a ridiculously cute ginger in his arms. And don't forget the toy menagerie. But the man—and Tilly and her lovies—were nowhere to be found. She scanned the pedestrians who flowed by like a never-ending river, searching for Porter's rodent face, Tilly's bright head and fairy-child beauty. Her heart took off at a gallop when she realized they were gone. "He was right here, I— she dropped her purse . . . "

"You let someone take her?" Amanda's voice was tight as a violin string about to snap. Daphne had played since fifth grade and felt a visceral reaction to the tension, wanting to duck and dodge before she lost an eye to the ricochet of wire. Amanda's fingers were steel rods digging into her shoulders. "What the hell, Daphne? Who was it? I don't know any Porter. Montero and Fisk, that's your detail. You're not to let anyone else near them. Where the f*ck is my little girl?"

Facing down an angry Amanda was no less intimidating than facing down a charging bull, and Daphne had no available defenses. She couldn't crack a joke to defuse her best friend's rage this time. "She was right here, I put her down so I wouldn't stumble," she said, her tone reaching an even higher pitch than usual. "I-I don't know. I don't know, he said his name was . . . Marshall. Marshall Porter. He showed me his badge, it was silver, number 260—"

"Detective badges are gold, goddamit! I've told you that before!" Amanda shouted now, her pallid cheeks flushing blood red. Her scalp looked like a burn victim's underneath the pale blond hair, bleached white in the sun. Most frightening were her eyes, though. They were a cool glacier blue, warning of danger below the surface. Fire and ice could be a deadly combination. "What'd he look like? What's he wearing?"

"Tall," Daphne called after Amanda, who quickly mounted several of the steps, standing on tiptoe and craning her neck for a better view of the crowded sidewalks and streets. "Rat-looking face. Thinning salt and pepper hair. Jeans and a T-shirt, I think." She didn't notice men's clothes. "And a red baseball cap in his—"

"What?" The color drained completely from Amanda's face, and for a moment, she seemed near translucence. If not for the baggy NYPD sweatshirt and striped track pants, a pair of blocky white sneakers on her slender feet, she wouldn't have been visible at all. Daphne feared she might faint and pitch down the stairs, but she surveyed the area even more frantically than before, her eyes darting from one point to another at hyper speed. "Oh my God. Oh, Jesus Christ, Daphne. That guy's involved. He's one of the men who took Liv."

. . .

Chapter 24: All the Pretty Little Horses

Chapter Text

Chapter 24.

All the Pretty Little Horses

. . .

"Oh my God. Oh, Jesus Christ, Daphne. That guy's involved. He's one of the men who took Liv."

"What?"

Amanda ignored Daphne's shrill exclamation and didn't even hear any of the questions or crying that followed. The man in the MAGA hat, who had filmed Olivia's abduction and spent yesterday morning raping her, doing whatever it was that left her so traumatized she stared at the wall for an hour afterward, hardly blinking—that man had Amanda and Olivia's daughter. Amanda was sure of it. Drug cartels wiped out entire families as revenge; Sondra Vaughn planned to take Amanda's apart piece by piece.

And she'd enlisted Matthew Parker to do it. Amanda knew it in her bones that he was the sixth man involved in her wife's capture, that he was the patsy, sent to do the grunt work like recording out in the open or snatching a cop's kid right in front of an entire precinct filled with law enforcement. You either had to be really gutsy or really stupid to do that, and Amanda's best guess from reading the guy's jacket, he was a grade-A moron the other men didn't mind seeing take the fall. The kind of guy who got their sloppy seconds (or sixths). She just knew it, like she had known he was MAGA Hat the second she saw his picture.

"Where are you, f*cker," she muttered to herself, scanning the crowd for the fourth or fifth time. She tugged at her bottom lip so hard the web of tissue inside felt as though it would tear.

All she needed was a glimpse of Matilda's bouncy red curls, just one flash. They were molten copper in the sun, but the baby was so fair, Amanda and Olivia usually kept a bonnet on her during family outings. The precise moment the thought clicked in her head, she spotted a child in an ill-fitting red cap, seated in the arms of a tall man with salt and pepper hair. Her child, wearing the pink linen overalls Tilly adored because the buttons were shaped like butterflies and flowers. Olivia loved them too, said she wanted to pass them down to Sammie when the time came.

(Would it ever come?)

He was headed towards Bryant Park at a brisk pace, though he didn't run and chance drawing attention to himself. Even in New York, a man running with a small child in his arms would get a few stares—and some choice words—particularly among the heavier foot traffic. Still, he had earned himself a generous head start, his long legs carrying him two or three steps to the leisurely strolling tourists' one. He glanced back once, but his eyes were on the crowd, not Amanda or the precinct. He was expecting any would-be rescuers to come from behind him, and forgot to check the precinct stairs.

Amanda opened her mouth and almost made the biggest mistake of her life. Shouting at him would only alert him she was on her way, giving him ample time to flee. And taking out her weapon to shoot at him wasn't an option, not with Tilly in his arms. She wasn't armed anyway, and she needed Parker alive. He was going to tell her where to find Olivia.

Then she could kill him.

"I see him," she said, pointing the retreating figure out to Fisk, but not waiting to see if he got a glimpse.

Pointing to Daphne at the foot of the stairs, she barked at the kid like a drill sergeant training a recruit—"Give my baby to her and move your ass"—before leaping off the steps and hitting the pavement at full tilt. Her shoes were heavier than the lightweight tennis shoes she preferred to run in, but they scarcely slowed her down. Pedestrians were the bigger hindrance, though some heard her pounding the sidewalk behind them and dodged out of the way. If anyone swore at her or mouthed off, she didn't notice. The only sound in her ears was the wind rushing as she ran.

She was pitifully out of shape and unable to fill her lungs to full capacity, probably from all the extra tit she was carrying around. Her throat already burned, her knee, the one that twinged sometimes when she pushed herself too hard, felt as though it were crunching on gravel. She kept meaning to get it checked, more to appease Olivia than anything. "Sweetheart, you must take care of yourself," her captain had said, frowning at the swollen kneecap. It looked like a big blister about to pop. "As your boss, I order it. And as your wife, that thing is hideous, call the damn doctor, or I will."

Still she ran. He had her little girl, her Tilly-billy, the most trusting and tender-hearted of all her children. Even baby Samantha lost patience with her mamas from time to time, but never Matilda, their little ray of sunshine, who gave hugs and kisses just because. Only a few days earlier, she had crawled into Amanda's lap with one of her stuffed animals, bussed Amanda on the cheek with its snout, the other with her tiny pink lips that always looked like she was wearing lipstick, and said in all sincerity, "I love you, Mama." She was asleep against Amanda's chest minutes later.

That random display of affection would have spelled trouble if it had been from Jesse, but it was just Matilda's way. In the wrong hands, that purity of spirit and innate sweetness could be so corrupted, twisted into something vile, profane. It had happened to Matilda's birth mother, Amelia Cole. The father had been a psychopath, pure and simple, but Amelia was an innocent kid when William Lewis stole her childhood and turned her into a monster. Her backpack had smelled like a Cabbage Patch doll when Amanda found it on that tram to Roosevelt Island.

That was not going to happen to Amanda's little girl. She couldn't let it, not after what she'd let happen to Olivia. If she failed her wife again by allowing one of their children to be taken by a stranger—a rapist—there really would be no redemption left for her. She might as well run into traffic right now, and save herself the trouble.

Breathe, she told herself, gaining another burst of speed, though where it came from she couldn't say. Maybe the angels were on her side this time. Maybe it was that adrenaline that made it possible for mothers to lift a car off their children kicking in. Whatever it was, she was suddenly only a few feet away, with no other thought in her mind than saving her daughter. And that word that pounded in her head like her feet on the pavement:Breathe.Breathe.Breathe.

He must have heard it, her thundering feet and breath, before he sensed her coming, because he glanced back in surprise, as if it were completely natural to wonder off with someone else's kid. The brazenness of these men's attacks was terrifying. Even more terrifying was that they got away with them—or almost did. For a moment he gazed benignly at her, in no more of a rush than a cow chewing cud, and then he was running too, his hand at the back of the red baseball cap, keeping it pressed to his shoulder.

At least he was protecting Tilly's head, but the sight of him charging ahead with her little girl in his arms, putting Tilly in greater physical danger should he fall or drop her, made Amanda's heart lodge in her throat. "Stop," she bellowed, too winded to reach her usual volume, though still loud enough that people nearby turned to see who was shouting. "NYPD, stop! Put her down, now!"

The warning didn't slow him down a bit, and that frightened Amanda, but it was even worse when she saw what the man was running to. Idling in a no parking zone on the curb outside of a bodega yards ahead stood a white van. Olivia had been taken in a black one, of much different structure, but that didn't mean anything. These guys had endless access to any number of stolen, impossible to identify vehicles—it's what they did. Besides that, the back door of this van was wide open, another man crouched inside it, snapping pictures on a wide-angle lens.

Even this far off, Amanda recognized him as Angelov, the sad*stic bastard who had bounded out of the black van to snatch Olivia from her, and who reveled in hurting Olivia more than any of the others. It was hard to miss that fauxhawk, the tattoos, and the glints of silver from his many piercings. At least the visible ones, Amanda thought, remembering his Prince Albert piercing and how he had jammed it inside of Olivia again and again. Calling her kitty cat.

She tucked in her chin and ran faster, arms and legs pumping harder than they ever had in her days of running track. She was probably setting a new record for herself, which was saying a lot for someone who had been the fastest girl in five counties and whose picture still hung in a trophy case back in Loganville High. But it had always been freedom and determination that had pushed her on back then; now it was the pure and utter terror Olivia talked about. And not for Amanda herself, but for her little girl. Her little punkinhead Tilly.

Then a miracle happened right in front of Amanda's eyes, almost restoring her faith in God. Almost.

Against Parker's shouts for the van to wait, Angelov slung the rolling door shut and the vehicle sped away, leaving skid marks and the smell of hot rubber in its wake. They left him. The sonsabitches had actually driven off and left their man behind. So much for loyalty among thieves. Parker was yelling after them, still running, stumbling in his efforts to catch up. Adrenaline pierced Amanda's heart when his ankles wobbled. "Put her down!" she called, voice rising to a brutish shriek. She could hear Fisk behind her now, a short ways off, ordering the man tostop, police!The kid was pretty speedy too. Just not as speedy as Amanda.

And then, like magic, like that miracle a moment before, Parker stuttered his feet until he halted completely and stood Matilda on her feet so quickly she lost her balance and plopped down in the grass behind her. The red MAGA hat had fallen over her eyes, her tiny face covered by the brim. She couldn't even see Parker as he took off like a shot, abandoning her there, or Amanda as she sprinted by, shouting at Fisk to stay with her daughter. It wrenched at Amanda's soul not to stop and help the child herself, but she couldn't let Parker escape. He was going to take her to Olivia.

"NYPD," Amanda boomed, an announcement far more powerful than the word stop, and one she was so used to hollering she could probably manage it with her dying breath. This time he didn't listen, no more miracles left up his sleeves, but at least he knew Amanda was still coming for him. What he didn't know was that she had grown up playing tackle football with all the boys, and she needn't get close enough to grab him by the arm or the shoulder. All she needed was another inch or so, maybe another wobble in his step . . .

Like that right there.

She launched herself at his middle, plowing into him from behind like a one hundred and twenty-five pound wrecking ball, and tackling him to the sidewalk. He went down in the heavy, slow motion collapse of a demolished building, as if not all his parts were falling at once. When he did hit, he skidded across the sidewalk, breaking Amanda's fall with his back. It was still a rough landing, but more than worth it as he groaned beneath her. "f*cked you good, huh, pal?" she said breathlessly. "f*cked you real good. Little bitch."

Her cuffs weren't there when she reached for them, his wrists pinned behind his back, cinched together under her palm. She meant to haul him to his feet when she clambered up, but her hands, her entire person, seemed to move of their own violation as she turned him over, straddling his chest and pinning his arms with her knees. Then she started punching.

It was funny how she didn't even feel it as her fists collided with his face again and again. How she heard bones crunching with each blow of her knuckles, but couldn't understand the man's cries of surrender. How a macabre red mask appeared where his face had been, and she didn't register that the slippery substance on her fingers was blood. Not until Montero was hauling her off the man and telling her to stand down, Detective, did she realize she'd beaten her suspect nearly unconscious. He sputtered blood like red paint from his lips and nostrils, his mangled features pulpy and off center. One eyelid drooped closed like the wing of a dying moth.

Amanda spat on his chest and swiped a string of saliva from her chin with the heel of her hand. Her fingers, stunned into complete numbness by the brutality they had just delivered, she dried on the back of her pants. They probably wouldn't bend for a while, but she could live with that. She waited just long enough to be certain Montero had him under control, reading him his rights and cuffing his hands as he sat dazedly on the ground, peering out from his crimson mask. "Get this ugly f*cker outta my sight and into interrogation," she said, and with that, went to check on Matilda.

Thanks to the hat and some quick thinking by Officer Fisk, who had escorted Matilda over to peer through the black wrought iron fence rails at a small flower garden on the other side, the little girl had missed out on the action behind her. She was surprised to see Amanda, unaware that the frantic shouts from moments earlier had belonged to her mama, whom she'd never heard or witnessed in cop mode before. That was something Amanda never wanted her kids to see, least of all sensitive Tilly. She couldn't bear for her little sparrow to be afraid of her; not like she had feared her own daddy.

"Mama!" squealed Matilda, throwing both arms around Amanda's neck and squeezing until their cheeks pressed together, as she was hoisted into the air. "Mama, I missed you! Is this work? And she bringed me to see you at work! Look, I picked you flowers." She brandished a pair of wilted buttercups in her tiny fist, as proud as if they were a bouquet of yellow roses.

Amanda couldn't let go, couldn't even draw back to make a fuss over the pretty weeds, pretending they smelled heavenly. Her baby in her arms was the most real thing she had felt in the past three days. It was like sensation returning to a long-asleep limb, or what a starfish must feel regenerating a part of itself. If she hadn't pumped less than thirty minutes ago, her milk would have let down with her tears. She crushed Matilda to her, hugging and weeping, until even her most patient and affectionate child began to squirm.

"Why you cry, Mama?" Matilda asked with deep concern, her milky white brow furrowed. A faint dusting of eyebrow, fattened by the expressive facial muscles underneath, stood out on her face like two ginger caterpillars on a magnolia blossom. She began to tear up too, the moisture turning her blue eyes cornflower. In her entire forty-seven months on Earth, she had only seen Amanda shed happy tears. It had been Amanda's goal to keep it that way, but now they were both losing that one. "Don't cry."

"Mama's not crying, baby girl. I'm just so happy to see you, that's all." At least the last part was true. Amanda didn't mind telling white lies to the kids every once in a while, but it made her feel twice as lousy right then. Olivia avoided lying as much as possible—especially with their children—and anything less than that felt like a breach of her trust, and theirs.

Funny how it hadn't seemed that way a few weeks ago when Amanda was sneaking a peek at Olivia's journal, her most intimate and personal thoughts, and something no one had the right to take away from her
(Oh God,Itook them away from her)
and got caught by their eldest daughter. Amanda had lied her way out of that one, just like she lied her way out of everything else, and had broken Olivia's trust several times over. All in the name of "looking out for" her abused wife.

I swear I'll never lie or invade her privacy again if you just bring her back to me in one piece, she prayed, momentarily forgetting her abandoned faith.

Outside, the pavement dappled by the May sunlight through the trees, Matilda in her arms, and the city at its most vibrant, most vital, it seemed impossible that the hateful images she'd been watching on a computer screen for days were even real. Maybe the videos were manipulated and it wasn't Olivia at all—they had the technology for that now. They could just superimpose her face onto someone else, her body and movements, so familiar, her ravaged voice and godawful screams . . .

"Ow, Mama." Matilda leaned back from the hug, pushing at Amanda's shoulders to loosen the grip around her delicate herringbone ribs, her ivory-skinned back, no wider than the span of Amanda's open hand. The overalls straps draped off her narrow shoulders. "Too tight. No more bear hugs, please."

Please. Olivia had taught her to say that, as determined as any mama from the South that her children should have impeccable manners. Amanda would rather teach them how to say no, unequivocally, unapologetically. After listening to her wife plead not to be raped for the past three days, please had lost all meaning for Amanda. Please wasn't worth a good goddamn.

"I'm sorry, baby. No more squeezes." She eased up on her iron grip, sliding both arms down to cradle Matilda's bottom. She kissed the child's face repeatedly, each time reassuring herself that her little girl was safe and completely unscathed by what had just transpired. Still her sweet, innocent Tilly-billy. Gently, under the guise of more kisses, she slipped the red cap off Matilda's head and handed it to Fisk to be bagged as evidence. "Can you tell, Mama, though? Where were you going with that man? Did he talk to you?"

Matilda nodded empathetically, curls bouncing. "We're gonna ride the music horseys! He said. But I fell down. Where is he, Mama? I want to ride them." She sat up in Amanda's arms to peer past her shoulder, unaware that Amanda had turned slowly as Montero walked by with his handcuffed perp, keeping both men out of sight. "Can we?"

"Not right now, punkin. I know you love the carousel, but let's go on back to Mama's work and check on Daph and sissy, okay? We can see the horseys some other time, I promise."

With a heavy, resigned sigh, Matilda sank back down in Amanda's embrace. "Okay," she said reluctantly, then brightened a second later. "Is Mommy there too? I want to see Mommy."

The inquiry sliced through Amanda like a blade just forged, hot and unforgiving. Sharp enough to separate body from soul. Yes, Mommy was there in a manner of speaking, but seeing her was out of the question. Amanda would die before she let that happen. "No, punkin, we can't see Mommy," she managed, before her voice gave out. She cleared her throat and tossed her hair, as if the quick motion would recalibrate her spiraling thoughts. (With startling clarity, she'd envisioned herself walking back to the precinct, finding someone's unsecured weapon, and putting a bullet in her brain just to make it all stop.) "For now. We'll see her as soon as we can."

"He said we'd go to Mommy. After the horseys." Matilda wore the closest thing to a pout her delicate, naturally happy face seemed able to muster. A day without a smile from Tilly was like a day without sunshine, without love. Olivia hadn't seen that smile in three days, and maybe never would again. She might never hear Jesse's ridiculous machine gun giggles, or watch Noah dance his little heart out one last time. Might never know what kind of personality Sammie would develop as she grew . . .

Amanda took a gulping breath, almost choking on a sob. She managed to swallow it in time, but it stuck in her throat like a bitter pill. "Who did? The man?"

"Uh-huh. He said my mommy was 'scited for me to come, and he's my new daddy." Matilda lifted strands of Amanda's hair from either shoulder, lashing them like thin blond reins. She jounced in Amanda's arms like they were a saddle, prodding with her knees. Giddyup, horsey. "Is he, Mama? Do I got a daddy?"

The hair at the back of Amanda's neck stood on end, and it required every ounce of strength she possessed not to swear profusely, not to hand her daughter off to Fisk, sprint after Montero and the demented pervert in his custody, and finish beating Parker until he was unconscious or dead. Preferably dead. "No. That man is not your daddy," she said, too sharply, giving Matilda a scolding jounce of her own. "He is a liar, Tilly, and a bad, bad man. You don't ever go anywhere with a stranger like that again, do you hear me? No more riding the carousel if you do."

It was much too harsh of an admonishment for a toddler, and unwarranted, when Parker had been the one to walk off with Matilda, not vice versa. But if it frightened her, then so be it. Amanda would rather her children be afraid and safe than fearless and locked up in a shipping container somewhere, alternately being beaten and raped every couple of hours by a steady stream of men. A few tears for Mama were not the worst thing a child could experience in her lifetime, not by a long shot.

Matilda had an entirely different outlook, her sweet faylike features crumpling in on themselves as if they were made of tissue paper. "I sorry, Mama," she whimpered, before dissolving into the heavy, soundless tears that were so like Olivia's, falling as effortlessly as rain. If she had only wailed and burst into childish tears, blubbering about the carousel, about her "new daddy," her scattered toys that Fisk trotted over to retrieve, Amanda wouldn't have felt like such a monster. But Matilda wept.

Fifty-one years ago, Olivia's biological father had approached her in the same manner as Parker, telling her things no three-year-old should hear. She had gotten yelled at and threatened by her mother too, a memory traumatic enough to be stored away in the vault of her subconscious, unlocked only with the key provided by Dr. Anthony Giacomo—now rotting in a prison cell—in the form of hypnotherapy.

Would this be Tilly's childhood trauma, the one that followed her the rest of her days, keeping her from true happiness and fulfillment? What she would forever associate with Olivia's abduction (and potential permanent absence from her life)? She had Olivia's intuitiveness and deep capacity for empathy; of course this was going to affect her. All Amanda could do now was try and mitigate the damage she'd helped cause.

"No, baby girl, I'm sorry," she said, guiding Matilda's bright head to her chest, holding it there as she pressed her lips into the soft, baby shampoo scented curls, peppering them with fierce kisses, even fiercer tears. "Shh, Mama didn't mean it. He's just a bad man, and I got scared. You're not in trouble, and it's not your fault, Tillybug, shh. None of this is your fault."

By the time they reached the precinct steps, Amanda had calmed Matilda—and herself—down to an occasional sniffle, though she wouldn't lift her head, and simply peered out from under Amanda's chin at Daphne's outstretched hands. "Can Aunt Daphy hold you so Mama can say hi to Sammie?" Amanda murmured into the warm nest of ginger curls she couldn't stop kissing.

Matilda shook her head no, clinging to Amanda like she was Velcroed in place. It was the first time she had refused to let one of her mothers pay attention to the baby,herbaby, and it tugged at Amanda's already battle-weary heart. "I want you, Mama," said the tiny, muffled voice below, reminding Amanda so distinctly of Olivia crying out for her mother while being raped, it almost brought her to her knees.

She sat down heavily on the steps, oblivious to the rough landing on the concrete and the sound of Daphne's fretful voice asking if she was all right, and she held her daughter close as they cried.

. . .

Chapter 25: Mother of a Monster

Chapter Text

Mama who bore me
Mama who gave me
No way to handle things
Who made me so sad
Mama, the weeping
Mama, the angels
No sleep in Heaven or Bethlehem

-Spring Awakening, "Mama Who Bore Me"

Chapter 25.

Mother of a Monster

. . .

Mommy, wake up. I want my blankie, please. It's cold here, I'm hungry. It hurts all over. Can we go home now, Mommy? I don't like this place, it's a bad place. Are you drunk, Mommy? Please wake up.

Please!

"Plea—" Olivia jolted awake, reaching for whichever one of the children was calling out to her, Tilly, it sounded like Tilly, the timbre high and still a bit babyish, but her arms closed around thin air. Arms as stiff as iron rods, legs not much better. Somewhere in the middle a cauldron bubbled, black tar churning in her abdomen. She wished the heat would spread to her fingers and toes. She couldn't feel them anymore.

Tilly didn't know what drunk was. She wouldn't think to ask such a thing. Only Noah and Jesse had gotten the alcohol talk, because of the cartoons. What did all those X's on the bottles mean? Why did Bugs and Sylvester act funny and get the hiccups after they drank it? Jesse had piped up with the real million-dollar question: "Is that like your stinky red drink, Mommy?" The wine. She hadn't forgotten about Olivia's overindulgence with the merlot after Amanda was shot. That night she sleepwalked into the living room and caught Olivia staggering around, half-drunk and in shock from Alex's uninvited kiss.

Merlot would be so nice right now. She longed for warmth to come and wrap itself around her like a
(kitty)
cat, circling her ankles. Even better, like Gigi sleeping at her back, her solid canine body giving off so much heat, Olivia sometimes had to kick aside the covers. Amanda laughed and called them her two hot mamas.

Oh, why did it hurt so badly to think about Amanda? Not physically—but they said mental anguish registered as pain in the body. Same receptors, or something. Olivia didn't really remember. Her receptors weren't working properly.

Had she been the little girl in her dream? She'd experienced all those sensations at a very young age: neglect, hunger, fear, abandonment. Unlike Matilda, at three or four years old, Olivia did know what it meant to be drunk, or at least which bottles made Mommy angry, mean, sad, or very silly. (Don't be silly, Tilly, Jesse sometimes teased her little sister;You're so messy, Jesse, Amanda had taught Matilda to retort. If she didn't learn to stand up for herself now, she never would.) Well into her twenties, Olivia was still caring for her alcoholic mother, making sure she was bathed, dressed, and on time most mornings. Still hiding the scratches and finger-shaped bruises on her own arms, from fending off Serena's booze-fueled attacks the night before. "I'll never let anyone else have you" was not an isolated incident.

What kind of cop couldn't protect herself against a fifty-year-old woman who was so blotto she barely knew her own name?

Mom was dead, though. The Velvet Room, twenty-six steps to the bottom—thenkersplat!Twenty-seven if you counted the ground that caught her, and snapped her neck in three places. She would have hated that, death by odd numbers. The last drink she had ever ordered was a whiskey sour. Olivia hadn't even known she drank those. But it seemed fitting. She hardly knew her mother at all in life, why should it be any different in death?

They had fought shortly before that. Who could remember how those things got started exactly?

("You're wasting your time at that thankless, dead-end job, surrounded by all those fat, sweaty men, Olivia. How can you stand knowing you're just there as the T&A?" Serena rounded her hand in front of her chest, indicating a pair of gigantic tit*, the kind you'd see on a cartoon bimbo with a pencil-thin waistline. "Wouldn't you rather be doing something important with your life, like teaching or getting a medical degree? Something that requires brain cells? You were so gifted in school, everyone said so. All that promise, and you became acop?"

Spittle flew from her lips, landing in the primavera Olivia hadn't touched anyway. There wasn't much use in eating when you were just going to throw it back up later. She still got terrible stomach pains whenever they argued like this. Any time she began to feel dissatisfied with her weight, all she had to do was agree to dinner and drinks with Serena—on the plus side, not only did she slim down right after, she also saved a lot of money on groceries for all the food she wasn't eating.

"Jesus Christ, Mother," she said, pushing away the broad pasta bowl. It looked like an Amish man's upside down hat. "Why can't you ever just be proud of me? Is it really that difficult? Why even give me this watch if you didn't mean what you said in the inscription?To my daughter, of whom I'm so very proud.All my love, Mom." She bit her lip, wishing she hadn't quoted the inscription verbatim. How pathetic, that she knew it by heart. "Or was that all just bull, like everything else you've told me my entire godforsaken life?"

Serena rolled her faded eyes—if Olivia wasn't mistaken, they had once been the color of a Russian blue, but years of alcoholism had dulled them to cold flat gray—and her meaning was clear. There went her overdramatic daughter again, dredging up the past, blaming her for things she barely even remembered. "Oh, Olivia, don't be such a child. You're acting like I insulted your kindergarten finger-painting.Look at me, Mommy, look what I made!But kindergarten's over, sweetheart. I gave you that watch as something to aspire to. You honestly think you could ever afford anything that expensive on a cop's salary?"

For a moment, Olivia stared at the watch in stunned silence, as if were a poisonous adder that coiled around her wrist. She had actually fallen for her mother's bribery, like a child being groomed by a predator.You can have the lollipop if you lick this first.You can have my love if you let me control your life.

But she knew better than that. She'd never had Serena's love, and never would. "I don't need expensive things to be happy. Not like you do. I could have settled for believing you actually cared about me. Supported me. If it's childish for a daughter to want that from her mother, just once, then so be it. Stick a pacifier in my mouth and sign me up for daycare, Ma."

"Supported you?" Serena glanced at the diners the next table over, forcing a wan smile. It disappeared the second she turned back to Olivia, hunching over her own bowl of penne to hiss, "I have supported you your entire life, you ungrateful— girl. Who do you think made sure you got into all the best schools? Kept you in a nice apartment, instead of all those sh*tty shelters you poke around in now? Kept you clothed and fed? I did that, and now you want to throw away the education I paid for to be just another sweaty plebeian grunt, punching a time clock? My daughter was supposed to be exceptional. What happened to you, Olivia?"

Olivia almost vomited in her untouched primavera right then. These were not new revelations, and Serena had said much worse to her in the past, but sitting across from her mostly sober mother and hearing her spew such utter crap was too much. Olivia's academic scholarships had paid for a significant part of her tuition at those fancy schools; many times, she probably would have been safer in a shelter than she was at home in that nice apartment with Serena around every corner; and more often than not, Serena was too sauced to buy food or clothes for her pesky daughter, who always seemed to need clothed, need fed. Funny how that worked when you had a child who depended on you for everything.

"You happened to me, Mother. You and your impossible expectations and jealousy and resentment." Olivia poked the tabletop with her index finger after every flaw she listed, just as Serena had done while naming off her various forms of support. She lowered her voice to a harsh whisper, sensing herself being watched from one of the tables nearby. Two attractive women having a heated argument in the middle of a swanky Italian joint were bound to earn a few stares. "And let's not forget the Olympic-sized pool you could fill with all the alcohol you consumed while I was growing up. Probably just my high school years alone. And speaking of alone, so was I. All that support you were talking about was nowhere to be found when I really needed it. I'm not talking about financially, either. If you wanted me to be your daughter—"

"I didn't," Serena interrupted, so calm and flat, it seemed she might have misspoken. But no attempt was made at retraction, no bumbling apologies or faltering glances. She looked steadily over her raised wine glass, fingers domed around the brim, and pointed straight at Olivia with an accusatory forefinger. For a woman who dealt in subtlety and literary analysis, she left little room for interpretation when it came to her feelings about Olivia. "I had no choice in the matter, my dear. Believe me, if I had? If I'd known you'd become . . . this?"

She circled her finger in the air around Olivia, indicating her whole countenance. The dark, plebeian ponytail, the sweaty bare arms in the sleeveless top she'd worn from work, the too-full lips and too-wide eyes that were nothing like Serena's, slim and cunning. "I would've gone with the coat hanger," she said, and drained her glass of merlot.

Olivia had deposited her merlot and half a breadstick in the huge urnlike planter outside the restaurant, before stumbling home, blindly, to cry in the safety of her empty bedroom. The watch she left with her mother, having torn it from her wrist and slapped it down on the table, amid Serena's protests to "put that back on" and "don't you dare walk out and leave me here alone."

That was exactly what Olivia had done. It was the final time she'd spoken to her mother. She thought her last words might have been, "Goodbye, Mom. Better call a cab before you get too blitzed." Serena was dead a month later, and Olivia had found her Breitling watch in the purse that was part of the personal effects held back for her at the morgue. The watch, a few photo albums, and some extensively annotated copies of Brontë, Woolf, and Plath were all she had left of her mother—or whatever you called the woman who raised you and hated you.

The books were rotting away in a box somewhere, the photo albums stuffed at the back of the closet, full of faces Olivia didn't recognize, had no stories to tell her children about. As for the watch . . . )

She couldn't feel it on her wrist, thought she must have left it on the dresser at home. That was just as well. The men—the rapists—would have smashed it or taken it from her. Sent it to Amanda, along with her braid.A little pretty for my city girl. Love, Me. That bastard had taken her necklace, too, the one with her babies' names dangling like a chime, sweet music on the breeze. Which one of the children would find it among her personal effects? Wear it as a reminder of the mother who wasn't?

Oh, but she loved them so. It didn't matter that her blood didn't run through their veins, or that two of them had been conceived by monsters. She would never tell them she wished they had been aborted, no matter what they grew up to be. Noah, her little dancer; Jesse, who would probably take over the world, and Tilly, who would help heal it with a smile; and Sammie, the one who studied faces intently, like she was looking at a lineup.She's gonna be a cop, Amanda often commented.Look at that, she's even got your interrogation eyebrow.

"She can be whatever she wants," Olivia said then, and now. Her voice was startling in the empty room. Not so much because it disturbed the quiet—the construction site and an occasional boat horn precluded total silence—but because it sounded like a rusty hinge on a screen door. Something you'd hear in a horror movie, right before the dumb girl with the big tit* got sliced and diced. Her throat burned as if she had strep again. The kids were always bringing it home with them; she inevitably ended up catching whatever they had.

She touched the base of her throat, where her necklace should be, feeling its loss as acutely as if it had just been torn from her neck. Too exhausted to cry, she exhaled a dry sob that produced no tears, just a shallow hitching in her chest, a burn like hot oil. It was the only place she felt warm, and she tried to curl up inside it, tucking in her knees, holding them in a cannonball pose. But her limbs were too stiff from cold and strain to bend that way.

The thirst was terrible. She knew how to be hungry, how to breathe through the gnawing stomach pains, telling yourself to be strong, they'll be over soon. And what a triumph when you held out long enough that the worst of it passed, and you could convince yourself you weren't even hungry anymore. Of course you were, but it was as rewarding as food, if not better, when you dropped another dress size or your mom asked if you were all right, you look so thin. Daniel made a big fuss of getting her to eat, too, but he liked her underweight. He held her hand as if it were delicate crystal, commenting how slender it was, the fingers, the wrist. He put them to his lips like he wanted to eat them. He called her his spinner.

"What's a spinner?" she asked, the first time he said it. She was far more well-read than most sixteen-year-olds, but she'd never heard the term before. From his inflection, she gathered it was a sexual reference. Daniel was a very sexual guy who took one look at Olivia and knew he had to have her in his bed. He confessed that one night after they had made love, though he swore that was prior to finding out she was fifteen at the time.

"A girl who's small enough you can practically spin her around on your dick during sex," he said, brushing the hair back from her forehead. He had just made her come with those fingers, and she could smell herself on them, still girlish and vaguely peppery. Not like Serena, whose fragrance overtook the apartment, so that even the food tasted like her. Olivia usually skipped breakfast. "Like that arrow thing that points to the color circles in Twister."

"Twister?" Olivia laughed at that, though she kept it to herself that she'd never played the game before. It required more than one player, and her mother would have yelled at her for participating in a group activity that involved tangling your body up with someone else's. She threaded her legs around Daniel's under his rumpled bedding. "Well, I don't know about that. I'm not reallythatsmall. We're almost the same height, you and I."

"Yeah, but you're a skinny minnie. Look at this, there's not an ounce of fat on you." Daniel lifted the covers with one hand, peering underneath like he was holding back a tent flap. Encouraged by Olivia's giggling, he ducked in to chomp at her belly as if she were five years old, being tickled by her father.

Well, not exactly like a father when he moved on to her breasts, taking tiny, painful nips, soothing them with warm sucks. A few weeks ago he had accidentally given her a hickey on the side of the neck doing that. She'd panicked and worn all her collars popped until it faded. Serena said she looked like a hood, but that was nothing compared to what she would have said if she had seen the hickey.

"Just don't go putting on any weight," he added, as he settled back in beside her. He was hard again, she felt it on her thigh. Sometimes it was overwhelming to be wanted so much. To be loved. "You go any higher than one fifteen, I might rethink our engagement."

Even though it was a joke (right?), a hundred and fifteen pounds had become Olivia's ideal weight for the rest of high school and most of college. She cried senior year, when she hit one twenty. Only after deciding to join the force and discovering she was well below the minimum weight requirement for her height did she give up the unattainable, unrealistic goal. Every year that she creeped further and further away from it, she couldn't help but sigh and think back to that hungry, giggling girl she used to be, getting her first taste of love and craving it more than any meal.

But water, God, how she craved that. She muttered it aloud, prayed it in her head, envisioned a Native American rain dance, calling on the gods to be quenched. She didn't care if they brought the hose again, the gods disguised as men. Just as long as they brought her: "Wat— water."

At what point her longing for water became a longing for Amanda, she couldn't say. The two seemed interchangeable. Amanda, her peaceful, healing waters, her raging ocean tide. The caress of a gentle rain, the sheltering embrace of a steady downpour. She could only live three days without Amanda before dying of thirst, and that deadline was fast approaching. It had been early evening—of the second night, she was almost positive—when they doused her with the hose, she saw it while the container door was open. But several hours (weeks?) had passed since then. Her t-shirt and hair were dry, but the mattress was still bloated and squishy, like an old man's leg retaining water, with damp and her urine.

Surely it was morning by now. The shivering hadn't ceased, though it came in shorter bursts and her teeth weren't chattering as much. That was good; the pain in her shattered molar was unbearable, stabbing at her jaw whenever she forgot and clenched it shut. Despite years of nighttime gritting, she'd never had a bad tooth before. Given the choice, she would have preferred getting shot.

Like Amanda. The look of shock on her face, the near betrayal—both times—was imprinted on Olivia's brain.Don't cry, city girl. A hand reached out in comfort, even as she crumpled to the ground. The blood smell, sharp as a blade, and those horrible red poppy blooms on her white coat, her white shirt when Olivia unzipped, crimson oozing through metal teeth.So red, Amelia said when Lewis shot her. Wait, no . . . Calvin, not Lewis. It was difficult keeping so many rapists straight.

He didnotrape me,he didnotsodomize me.You look at that rape kit. After four days, he did not have the balls to rape me.

But Barba didn't believe her. A jury of her peers didn't believe her, Warner didn't believe her, children's services didn't believe her. No matter how often and how adamantly she denied being raped by Harris
(or was it Daniel, or was it her father, or maybe her mother?)
no one ever took her at her word that nothing had happened. That she wasfine. They all took her for a liar, a sad little victim. So she refused to be that. If they tried to pressure her into saying she'd been raped, she simply denied it. She was the one who got to decide if it was true or not, if she was going to be a victim the rest of her life or not. No one else got to tell her that, not even Amanda.

At least that's how it had been before. There would be no pretending if she made it out of this alive. No inconclusive rape kit for her to rely on as absolute proof that no one had forced a penis into her vagin*, though there were plenty of other ways to be f*cked. No chance for her to rinse and spit, scrub her hands, or urinate, literally pissing away evidence.

She hadn't done the latter with the sole purpose of flushing away incriminating DNA; she genuinely had to use the restroom when Lewis held her captive for four days. Her body might have naturally flushed away the remains of his fumblings and fondlings from that first day, but it was only after seeing the rape kit results, so ambiguous, so open to interpretation, Olivia had decided he didn't rape her. Whatever he did do—and that was plenty—he had never put himself inside her, at least not all the way. That meant she could deny being raped, and it wouldn't be a total lie. It had kept her sane through that entire trial and the ordeal which followed.

But now. Her injuries were too extensive and damning to be mistaken for anything other than what they were. And there was the recording as well. Whoever was watching would have irrefutable evidence that Olivia had not only been raped once, but several times by multiple assailants in various orifices.

She shuddered at the thought of that word,orifices, applied to herself. That's what she was now. An empty space, a void, something to be penetrated for the sad*stic pleasure of men who would just as soon kill her as f*ck her. As long as she was worth something ("So this is what million dollar puss* feels like," the Kid had said, his arms hooked under Olivia's knees while he plowed into her), she was pretty sure they would let her live. The question then became, did she want to?

On the first day, she would have said yes, without hesitation; yesterday, her resolve began to crumble with each new degradation; today, she couldn't imagine life outside this hellhole. It was as if the world beyond the container door had simply ceased to exist. And if this was all that was left, this place, the men, she had no desire to remain.

Just as her mind strayed to the belt Parker had left behind, its buckle a perfect match to the P-shaped welts in her skin, and which she'd hidden underneath the mattress, in what was a fortuitous oversight on the CO's part, the door to the container creaked open. Olivia snatched her thoughts back as quickly as a hand tucked under a mattress. She was starting to tell them apart by how they entered the room, and this one she recognized because she'd heard it the least.

Soft-soled and courteous, as if he were trying not to disturb her, Gus sidled over to the bed, after closing off her view of the outside. She'd been right, it was daytime, sun glinting off the metal containers stacked to the sky in the shipping yard. She'd been wrong, the world had continued on without her. Maybe Amanda and the kids had already forgotten her. Maybe that was better.

He stood over her for a while, contemplating her like a fish in a koi pond. Her t-shirt in ribbons, stiff from air drying, from blood and sem*n, her bareness beneath the hem. The bruises were stark against her skin, white as a fish belly. There must be hundreds, she thought dispassionately, studying the fingerprint-sized smudges on the underside of her arm. It looked like Swiss cheese. That thought made her want to vomit, and on reflex, she jerked over the side of the mattress to retch violently—and unproductively.

Gus stared down without expression while she dry heaved on his shoes. He could have been waiting curbside for a valet to retrieve his car, for all the interest he showed in her plight. When she had it a little more under control, the hacking at a minimum, he pinched the legs of his trousers and squatted beside her, arms on his knees.

"Empty stomach," he commented, as if that explained it all. Her current wretched state, her fragmented thoughts and feelings, the reason she couldn't roll sideways far enough to prop herself upright with her elbow, instead dropping back to the mattress in defeat. The pain below, above, inside, swirling, swirling, swirling around her like a dark, dreadful incantation. Something loosed from Hell. All of it could be explained by the simple fact that she hadn't eaten.

"Just get it over with," she rasped, too tired to care if her bluntness pissed him off. He would rape her either way, so it might as well be on her terms. And she'd learned from Lewis that there was no reasoning with men like this. As soon as you figured out their game, they switched it up on you. They handed you a revolver and told you to blow your own brains out. And you complied, because they were God now. They were Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.

And you? You were the good, nice girl who did whatever Daddy wanted. His little valentine baby, sweet Livvy, his strawberry girl.

"What's that?" Gus inclined his head, bending an ear in her direction with his forefinger. He didn't have the playful nature of Lewis or his lanky son, the one Olivia knew only as the Kid. Whether that made him more or less dangerous, she couldn't tell. More, probably. Cold and calculating power was always deadlier than the helter-skelter whims of madmen. Rather than handing over the gun, they put it to your head and pulled the trigger. "Something about strawberries?"

She must have been mumbling out loud without realizing it again. Unless he was in her head, reading her thoughts. (Some of them could do that.) It was so difficult to tell what was real and what wasn't anymore.

Buried beneath the waterlogged padding of her scant little pallet, the serpentine lump of Parker's belt jutted reassuringly into her spine. That was real. That would be the anchor tying her to life, until it ushered her into the inviting arms of death. The sirens' song was sweet and clear in her ears, far more beautiful than the clamor of the construction site, the industrial hum of a city on the river. She had pounded on the floor, signaling to anyone who might be watching that she heard hammers in the distance.

"Babe, not in front of the kids," Amanda teased whenever Olivia made a gesture that could be construed as even remotely sexual. And, God, how she laughed when Olivia glared over her glasses, knowing full well the response she would elicit with that reprimanding look. It was all for show, and they both knew it.

No one had seen, though. No one deciphered her meaning, somehow magically guessing which construction site out of thousands in the city she referred to, and rushing to save her. She still hoped Amanda would put it all together and come to her aid, but the longer she was here, the more her hope drained away. She was running on fumes, and Gus had brought the matches.

"It's funny you should mention strawberries," he said, tucking Olivia's hair behind her ears with an almost paternal touch. Or at least she assumed that's what a paternal touch would feel like. She tried to remember if her father had stroked her hair or trailed his thumb along her cheek like that, but all she recalled was the solid girth of his penis in her hand. (You wanna finish me off, baby? You wanna take care of daddy?)

Gus's movements were crisp and certain, as though he knew what each would be before he made it, and yet so spontaneous Olivia flinched every time. She crushed her eyes shut when he retrieved something from inside his jacket, expecting him to pull out the cattle prod or an equally horrific implement of torture. But after a lengthy silence, she cracked an eyelid to see him holding a cell phone in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. He offered her the latter and helped her sit up to drink it, his phone hand at the back of her head, the bottle tipped to her lips.

"Because I have yours." He took the bottle away from her then, carefully, and dabbed moisture off her lips and chin with the cuff of his jacket. He withheld the water for a moment, not taunting but giving her the chance to swallow the large mouthfuls she'd gulped and sputtered on. To her surprise he patiently waited for her to take several more pulls of the liquid, slaking her thirst just enough that she could answer.

"M-my what?" She couldn't follow his logic, her body, her brain crying out for another drink as they were. Mouth open, she panted like a dog left in a hot car for too long. Suddenly, all that mattered was the water and getting more of it. She hadn't felt so greedy for something since she was five years old, gobbling down a box of Pop-Tarts from the neighbor boy because she was quite literally starving. No other food had ever tasted as good as those untoasted pastries. The strawberry kind.

"Your little strawberry girl," said Gus.

Or was it Si, who was really Joseph Hollister in disguise? That didn't seem possible because Hollister was dead, and even if he weren't, he'd be an old man by now. This guy was in his fifties. So how did he know about the nickname Olivia's father had bestowed on her at fifteen, moments before sexually abusing her?Bet you wouldn't pass out drunk mid-f*ck and leave a guy with blue balls, would you now, strawberry girl.

No, she wouldn't leave a guy or a Gus with blue balls. She wasn't a tease like the other juniors who led the boys on and wouldn't put out. She was a good girl. A nice girl. Daddy's girl in more ways than one. Daniel was impressed that, despite her lack of sexual experience when it came to intercourse, oral, and anal, she gave a good handjob. It came so naturally to her, and she'd never been able to figure out why . . .

The Sandman slapped Olivia's cheek and raised his phone to hit her with it. But the second blow didn't come, and when she gazed up at him in confusion, he was scrolling the screen of his cell phone intently. "I can see you're having difficulty with this, so let me make it clearer for you," he said, looping an arm under Olivia's shoulders and sitting her up, partially cradled against him. It looked as if he were about to baptize her in the name of the
(Joseph Hollister)
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He held the phone in front of her face, too close for her to focus on the image it displayed. Instinctively she squinted, though that method had stopped working for her long ago. Her prescription was so strong now, Amanda teased that she could probably make out the surface of the moon. One night, not so long ago, she'd swatted Amanda's naked rear and replied, "Yours is the only moon I care to see, little pretty."

"I have your daughter. The little redhead, I believe she goes by Tilly." He forked his fingers across the screen, enlarging the picture for Olivia to get a better look. It very clearly depicted Matthew Parker with Tilly in his arms. She was wearing her pink dungarees made of the lightweight linen that some trendy baby shop charged an arm and a leg for. Olivia hadn't cared when she bought them. They were purposely oversized, and Tilly was small for her age. She would get a lot of good use from them before outgrowing them.

Or so Olivia had believed at the time. Would there be anything left of Matilda when the men finished with her? She could picture her daughter's tiny body bruised and torn, scraps of pink linen scattered on the floor of a filthy shipping container. She'd seen it a hundred times before, with girls even younger than her sweetest child, her lovebug. And nothing made the imaginary more vivid than firsthand experience.

The cry that rose to Olivia's lips sounded inhuman in her ears. The closest thing to it she had ever heard was the screams that accompanied each thwack of the bar when she used it on Lewis. It was all in her head, though—she didn't have a voice left to produce those awful, primal vocalizations, those echoes from the deep dark, that sometimes still woke her in the middle of the night. Dreams of howling wolves, of being eaten alive. She didn't even have any tears left to weep for her little girl.

"Wh-where?" she finally croaked, using all the strength she had to reach for the phone. He let her take it from him, and she wondered vaguely if it was a trap. There was no kindness in him, so why would he give her a single moment's grace, to stare at her daughter's angelic face beneath the stupid red ball cap? It bloomed around Tilly's small head like a mushroom top. Make America Gangrape Again.

"Not anywhere you need to be concerned about," Gus replied. He zoomed out on the photo and swiped through a few more, each one showing Parker toting his petite bundle, her curls springing cheerfully in the sunshine. (Would they let her keep them, or would the Sandman hack the dainty ringlets off and send them to Amanda?) They smelled sweeter than any flower after bath time, those curls. Even now, in the midst of this stinking rathole, Olivia could pick out the scent. "You'll never see her again, aside from these photos."

He plucked the phone from Olivia's hand then, extinguishing the screen and the picture on it. Tilly's smiling face became a blank void like the rest of the world inside Olivia's new home. She clawed for the cell, wanting one last look—craving it more than food or water—but she missed, swiping only at air. "Don't worry, though," Gus said, calmly tucking the phone away, as if he hadn't just destroyed the very last shred of hope she clung to. "She's not close enough for you to hear us breaking her in. We'll go a little easier on her at first than we did with you. Don't want to wear her out all at once."

"N-no. No." Olivia shook her head, repeating the word under her breath as he spoke, each iteration gaining momentum until she was whispering it, then saying it aloud, albeit more hushed and hoarse than her normal speaking voice.

It might have continued building into a scream if Gus hadn't grabbed her by the chin, jerking her bottom jaw to one side, teeth scraping against each other. She yelped in pain, the taste of blood and bile coating the back of her throat. So, that was her nutrition now: the tang of agony and stark blind terror. She nursed at its teat like Sammie gulping down the breast milk she needed to develop into a healthy, happy little girl.

What would Olivia grow into, with the alkaline mixture as her only food source? It burned when she swallowed, probably eroding her bruised esophagus, filling it with holes like
(baby swiss)
torn stockings. All her insides felt that way. Shredded, diaphanous. Incapable of mending. Perhaps she would finally get back to her old goal of one hundred and fifteen pounds?

Her throat was full of gravel again, what little use she'd regained of her voice lost beneath the rubble. She could barely whimper when Gus brought his face inches from hers, close enough for her to see his chicken pox scars like the surface of the moon, the ingrown hair near his neatly trimmed sideburns, the devil in his eyes. That devil had followed her wherever she went since the moment of her conception. It only took him fifty-four years, but he had finally caught up with her.

"You don't get to say no anymore, remember?" the devil whispered, his breath scorching her cheek, her ear. She had heard that somewhere before, though she couldn't quite place it. Hadn't people been saying it to her, one way or another, her whole life? Maybe it was true. Olivia Benson didn't have the strength, the authority, or the autonomy to say no, and she never would. "You belong to me now, and since it looks like I'm getting stiffed by your buyer, I'm going to take my money's worth out of the skins of your little whelps. Starting with Strawberry Shortcake."

After a ruminative pause, Gus relaxed his grip and patted Olivia's jaw, smiling like an affectionate papa. "Is it true that redheads taste differently? I'm more of a brunette man myself. Ah well, I'll find out soon enough."

"Please," Olivia whispered, clutching at his sleeve. She knew his game. If she couldn't say no, then the other option was to beg.

That's what she had done with Lewis in the end, begging him to let her live, to keep her around because she knew just how to pleasure him. It hadn't been an exaggeration, she had years of experience bending herself to an abuser's will. If that had meant spending the rest of her life fighting off his advances, only to be overpowered and violated time and again, in that moment she'd been willing to accept her fate.

Bound to that table in the granary, she had made the same choice, pleading with him to rape her instead of Amelia Cole. The language he forced her to use had been vile—"f*ck me, daddy, you don't want that little girl puss*"—and sometimes she feared it was that experience, hearing the p*rnographic script Lewis demanded of her, which so warped Amelia that she became accomplice to a serial rapist/killer. Olivia's efforts to protect the girl's innocence and save her life were what ultimately ruined her. Lewis would have loved that. Knowing he still had that much power over their lives, just as he'd predicted.

But he had prepared Olivia too. He had taught her to speak the language of monsters and men who would rape a child just to prove a point. She'd already known the basic vocabulary, but under Lewis' instruction she became fluent. And once those words came from your mouth, you never forgot them.

"Please," she said again, trying to speak from the diaphragm to make herself audible. It hurt too much to sustain, like a knife twisting in her gut. One in her heart too. She ignored the pain enough to produce a crackling whisper, similar to a radio voice when you'd gone too far and lost the station. "Please don't hurt m-my little girl. I'll do anything you want. Anything. I won't f-fight you or say no anymore. I promise." Lowering his arm by the sleeve she still held onto, she fitted his hand to the swell of her sore, pendulous breast, and squeezed. "f*ck me, not her. She's— she's a baby. I know what men like. I can make you feel good."

The Sandman gazed down at his hand with mild bemusem*nt, but he listened, intrigued. When she'd said her piece, he exhaled a long, deep sigh and began kneading her breast, weighing it heavily in his palm with the same up and down motion as a Slinky, toying idly with the nipple. He pinched, looking on dispassionately as she gasped and blinked through the pain, fighting the urge to twist free of him, fighting every natural instinct she possessed to be still. Just be still.

He reached into the ragged neckline, now more of a bustline, of her t-shirt and scooped up the other breast, squeezing until she was certain it would pop like a mishandled water balloon. What would ooze out, she wondered. Slushy red gore? Tissue that resembled minced meat being fed through a grinder? The coral-like milk ducts, withered and dry in her case? Oh, what she would have given to breastfeed Samantha one last time. Even though the milk wasn't coming from her own body, she had never believed in God more than when she nursed her baby girl.

That was over and done with now, the nursing and God. Any inkling of spiritual faith that had survived her childhood, being raised by a woman who wore her atheism like armor, and all the darkness since had been driven out of her during the last few rapes. It wasn't that she no longer believed in a higher power, but at last she had accepted that he didn't give a damn about her. He must have taken one look at her—what he had created, for God only knew what purpose—and deemed her unworthy. Not his daughter, but that of a monster, and to be treated accordingly.

"You are learning, I'll give you that," said Gus, studying her face for signs of defiance or dishonesty. He rummaged inside her shirt for a while longer, drawing out the torture with his merciless hands; when she complied with every cruel tug, twist, pinch, and poke, barely reacting beyond a gasp or a painful hum, he finally dumped her back inside the mangled top and wiped his palm on his pant leg. "But there's still the problem of your buyer not keeping up their end of communication. What do you have to say about that, Olivia?"

As if she had any control of the situation. She didn't even know who the buyer was, let alone why they weren't in contact with Gus. Did he really expect her to provide an explanation? An apology? From the impatient expression on his austerely handsome features, it appeared that, yes, he did.

Olivia struggled to find an answer in her lethargic, muddy thoughts. She got into the bad guys' heads for a living, and she had seen her share of cash drops go south. There had to be something in those past cases for her to draw on, to buy herself and her daughter some more time. In the end, she relied on her own strategy from those last few hours in the beach house with Lewis. Selling herself for all she was worth.

"Maybe they never planned to follow through," she said thinly, a sound like dead leaves skating along the sidewalk on a cold autumn wind. Her throat hurt too much to try clearing it. "The buyer. Maybe the objective was to piss you off so you'd kill me. But you don't have to do that. It would be such a waste. I've made a lot of enemies over the years. Powerful ones. Men like you who'd pay top dollar to— to f*ck me. Show me who's boss. You could make a lot of money off me if you kept me around."

His eyes strayed to her thighs, blood-stained and dusky with bruises in storm-cloud colors. She moistened her lips, trying to draw his attention back to her face. It had to look slightly less ruined than the rest of her body, slightly more human, thanks to the anonymous buyer's request that she stay pretty. She suffered no delusions that Gus would recognize her humanity with anything other than contempt, but at least he might see her as something besides a piece of meat too. "Little kids are a dozen— a dime a dozen. Why not let Tilly go home, and you focus on me? She'll only attract scumbag pedophiles who'd rather buy a kid overseas no one will miss. I'll bring in the real customers for you."

She was counting on the universal hatred of pedophiles, even among men who viewed their business ventures involving underage children as loftier than just having the hots for little kids, to drive her point home. And for a moment, Gus did seem to be taking her ploy into consideration. Then he smirked, tapping his finger to her temple with a sharpness that went through her like a jolt of electricity.

"That mind of yours is always working, isn't it? Even when you can barely string together a coherent sentence, that big beautiful brain just won't let you rest." Gus offered her another drink of water, propping her forward with his arm, the bottle tipped as patiently to her lips as a kiss. Olivia drank, God help her, accepting all that he would give. "I can't even be irked by it, since it's one of the things I admire most about you. It's what drew me in when you were still tromping around in those atrocious faux leather Oxfords and off the rack pantsuits, like some toddler playing dress-up cop. God, you were gorgeous, even back then. But yourtenacity, your intelligence and willpower . . . . You know, most women break within a day or two of arriving here. You're holding out even longer than I expected."

Bully for me, she thought, lips pressed together to keep it inside. He sounded almost proud, as if he had somehow contributed to the endurance he was praising her for. Little did he know, he had her mother to thank for it, her wife and children. Serena taught her to function under unbearable amounts of distress and pain; Amanda and the kids kept her fighting far longer than she could have on her own. But that strength was wearing down too. They had Matilda. Olivia could withstand almost anything being done to her—she knew that for certain now—but her children . . .

Never her children.

Before Gus could continue waxing poetic about her days as a rookie detective, she brought her hand toward his, intending to cup the back in her palm. She found she couldn't bear to be skin to skin with him, at least not voluntarily, and at the last second, diverted to holding his wrist where it was covered by his shirt cuff. "Please, G-Gus. Don't hurt my little girl. I'm begging you. Send as many men in here as you want. Just leave her alone. Please."

Expecting to be met with coldness, she almost recoiled when his face softened to something verging on pleasant. It was like watching video footage of Hitler smiling, laughing with children, and dancing his little Nazi jig. The devil liked to have his fun too, she supposed. "Your loyalty to your little band of bastards, strays, and half-breeds is admirable," said the Sandman, and devil that he was, he stroked back the hair that clung to her cheeks, the ends tacky where he'd sheared them off days earlier. He pinched the stiff strands away from her skin delicately. "But I'm afraid it will only hurt you in the end. I'm your family now. Your mother, father, brother. Your spouse and child."

It required every last ounce of self-control Olivia had left not to scream when he lowered his face to hers, and asked, "How does it feel to be the mother of a monster, Olivia?"

A trick of the light. That had to be why, for just a split-second, she saw her mother's face in his. (How can I love someone who was conceived by a monster?) She saw Calvin Arliss' face, telling her she was responsible for the beast he had become; Lewis calling himself Daddy Bill, his hands everywhere at once. She saw them all, hurting her, blaming her. No escape, just endless suffering, forever and ever, as long as you both shall live. And now she was passing it down to her children, that marriage to the darkness which had been preordained before she was ever born.

He left her alone to cry without tears, to sob without sound, pleading for him to rape her, not
(Amelia)
Tilly. Left her alone in the knowledge that she had brought this on herself and her family. How could she have been foolish enough to believe she would ever escape it? That they wouldn't be dragged down by it, right along with her? Amanda shouldn't come for her. She should take the kids—what was left of them—and run as far away as possible, never looking back.

In the overpronounced light of the cruddy room, so bright it seared afterimages to the insides of her eyelids (the desk where she was raped, the bucket of filth that she hadn't used in at least a day, her bare legs beneath the t-shirt), she rolled onto her side, keeping her back to the camera. She slipped a hand under the mattress beneath her, feeling for Parker's belt until her fingers closed around the initial-shaped buckle.

Finally she knew the way out.

. . .

Chapter 26: The Arc of the Moral Universe

Chapter Text

Chapter 26.

The Arc of the Moral Universe

. . .

"Will you at least accept fresh ice?" Dana extended the rubber ice pack with an impatient thrust, disapproval written all over her face. She might be FBI, but she had the no-nonsense schoolteacher thing down pat. When she didn't get a response, she snatched the old pack away and plopped the new one unceremoniously onto Amanda's swollen knuckles.

"Gahdamn." Amanda hissed through her teeth, wincing at the sudden shift of pressure, the clunky weight of the cubes as solid cold replaced lukewarm liquid. The knocking sound of the cubes reminded her of dice shaken inside a fist, tossed out into space like wishes and prayers, like the hope that everything would come out right in the end. God, she wished she was an alcoholic instead of a compulsive gambler. At least then she could have a drink to calm her nerves, rather than getting the jitters over clacking ice. "Watch it, will you? Ain't like I asked for your help. And I sure as sh*t didn't ask for your opinion."

"Honey, it ain't my 'opinion' that your hand is done swole up to the size of a Cornish hen at Thanksgivin' dinner, it's cold hard fact." Dana gave a succinct nod, leaving no room for interpretation. She had the annoying habit of acting as though every word out of her mouth was gospel, and the even more annoying habit of often being right.

About the hand, at least. It did look a bit like a plump, plucked bird, each finger fat as a sausage. The right side had fared a bit better, its dominance offering Amanda more control over her punches. The left had swung wildly, blindly, colliding with Matthew Parker's face—and teeth—half a dozen times, or more. The ME who examined his lumpy, blood-smeared face said it looked like he had gone through a windshield, face-first. "And I would know, I've seen more than my share of head-on collisions," the examiner had said, eyeing Amanda warily from the corner of his vision.

She didn't understand why everyone was looking at her like that, it wasn't as if she had killed the f*cker. So what if she'd broken his nose in two places, fractured his cheekbone, knocked out an incisor, and split his top and bottom lips like they were a single unit? He had raped her wife and attempted to kidnap her child, she was more than justified in beating him senseless. Anyone else would have done the same thing in her position, including self-righteous Dana goddamn Lewis.

"Just like it's cold hard fact that you near 'bout killed that boy in there," Dana said, jabbing a thick index finger at the one-way glass that separated them from the interrogation room and the men inside it.

Something about her appearance had rung familiar to Amanda the first time they met, and again, now, with the clipped movements and features that should have belonged to a stockier person—it clicked into place then, when Dana tapped the glass with the flat of her blunt fingernail. She resembled a snub-nose revolver. And she had the temperament of one too. "You know how much harder that makes our job, you going off on him like that? You better hope and pray he doesn't decide to press charges, little missy. We'll proly never get information out of him now. And you can forget talking to him yourself. You shot that all to hell."

Amanda opened her mouth to argue that Parker, who was glaring up at Fin from beneath an eyelid the size and color of a hyacinth bulb, didn't have a leg to stand on if he wanted to press charges. But the truth was, he might actually have a case after the beating she'd given him. William f*cking Lewis had raped, tortured, and murdered multiple women, then kidnapped and brutalized Olivia until he broke down her executive function, rendering her incapable of controlling her own actions. And the motherf*cker still convinced a jury that she was guilty of police brutality.

Goddammit.

"Yeah, well, I ain't sorry for what I did," Amanda said with more indifference than she felt. If her violent outburst made getting Parker to disclose Olivia's location more difficult—or, God forbid, impossible—she would never forgive herself. Once again, Amanda the screw-up had reared her ugly head and jeopardized Olivia's safety. Jesus, no wonder Dana was looking at her like that. "Bastard had it coming, and don't tell me you never roughed up a suspect before. Especially a rapist. Heard you got in a few shots of your own with thoseboysback in the day."

The color drained from Dana's face at the mention of other rapist boys, filling Amanda with a smugness she didn't much like. She didn't know all the details behind the potshot Dana had taken at her attacker, just enough generalizations to use it against her. It felt low, but Amandawaslow right then.

She'd been short with Daphne, practically blaming Matilda's attempted kidnapping on her, when all the blame belonged on the ugly sonuvabitch in interrogation one. She felt awful for the way she'd sent her friend and daughters off, with only brief hugs and kisses for the girls and multiple warnings to Daphne not to engage with anyone other than the two officers who had taken over for Montero and the rookie. "I don't care if Jesus Christ himself knocks on my door and asks after the kids, you do not let him anywhere near them, you got that?" Poor Daphne had been on the verge of tears, and Amanda still hadn't shown her any mercy.

What she hadn't managed to say to Daphne was that she blamed herself much more. Amanda could have prevented the whole damn mess with Parker if she'd just made Daphne stay at home with the babies. If she hadn't wanted to see them, hold them, so badly. But she could hardly look at them by the time they left; the bloody handprints she had left on Tilly's overalls and Sammie's little onesie, grabbing them up so soon after pummeling Parker, were too terrible. At first she had thought it was their blood, and she'd upset Tilly all over again by frantically checking her for injuries. "I not hurt, Mama," said the little girl, trying to push Amanda's hands away. Little Tilly hated getting her pretty clothes dirty.

And now Amanda was taunting Dana Lewis with rape. Because that was exactly the kind of piece of crap human being she was. The kind who let her wife get snatched right out of her grasp and ravaged so brutally she wanted to die. Amanda knew what the belt was for as soon as Olivia had taken it from beneath the mattress, she hadn't needed to see her fitting it into a noose to figure it out.

The men had come and confiscated it before Olivia could get the loop around her neck, of course. She was too valuable for them to let her kill herself. Instead, Liam Sandberg and Riva took turns choking her with the belt while they raped her. She'd been lying on the mattress, half dead, wrists bound above her head with the strap, ever since. Only an occasional blink or inaudible movement of her lips, whispering words no one would hear, gave outward physical proof she was alive. Nothing existed behind her eyes, though. They were as empty as the black dots stitched into the face of Matilda's Raggedy Ann doll.

Amanda looked up from the iPad even angrier than before. She understood Olivia wanting her suffering to end, wanting to escape by any means possible, but the captain—hercaptain and wife—didn't get to make that decision alone. She didn't get to give up before Amanda rescued her.Please don't give up before I rescue you, Amanda prayed, even as she spoke to Dana: "Anyway, I figure you've got some enhanced interrogation skills up your sleeves. Why don't you go in there and make him tell you where my wife is? You can bitch at me later."

"And leave you out here to do God knows what?" Dana gestured up and down the hallway outside the interrogation rooms as if she were ushering a crowd past the one-way.

They could have watched Fin questioning Parker through the mirror in Olivia's office—the sergeant had provided the key again—but Amanda hadn't been able to set foot in there since her failed attempt to retrieve a charger the other day. She wouldn't have been able to tolerate watching Dana strut around Olivia's personal space like it belonged to her, anyway. She might end up breaking more than the agent's nose this time.

"No, ma'am. I've been assigned as your handler, thanks to them little hissy fits you been throwin'. I'm telling you, Detective, you got to get that sh*t under control or you're gonna blow this entire case. And where'll that leave Captain Benson?" Dana started to tap the glass screen of the iPad, directly above Olivia's wilted form, then thought better of it. She clasped her hands behind her back instead, assuming an erect military stance.

Had Amanda compared her to a snubbie? More like a pit bull standing guard, ready to sic 'em, girl, the moment she stepped out of line. And that bit about being assigned as Amanda's handler was complete bullsh*t; Dana had the authority here, even more than the prodigal chief, so if anyone had put her in charge of Amanda, it was Dana herself. Amanda was about to call her on it, to tell her exactly where and how far she could shove her "handler" status, when something in the agent's voice changed, taking on a smooth, deadly calm that made Amanda's blood run cold. She wasn't speaking to anyone else but the woman reflected back at her in the observation window.

"These situations are delicate. You go in half-co*cked, fists a-blazin', you're going to upset the balance. You've got to bide your time until you strike, and when you do, it has to be the very second you get the signal. Then you get in, get what you came for, and you get back out like the devil's on your heels. And that sumbitch is fast." Dana leaned toward the glass, eyes narrowed, like she was confiding a secret. To herself, to the man on the other side, or to Amanda was anyone's guess. "This fool ain't him. But he is a tool to get there. Now, I'll do my best to wear him down, and maybe that'll be good enough. I hope it is. But if it's not, you've got to keep a clear head, clear eyes, and clear heart. And be ready."

Dana and her reflection glanced past her shoulder, not quite meeting Amanda's questioning gaze. Her eyes lingered on the iPad and the vestige of Olivia, trussed to a metal anchoring point designed for lashing cargo inside the container. For humans too. "You understand what I'm saying to you, Detective?" She looked up then, a meaningful glint in her shrewd brown irises. "Clear head, clear eyes, clear heart?"

Perhaps Amanda had broken entirely from reality, and perhaps this conversation was just a figment of her imagination, brought on by complete psychotic meltdown. It was possible. She might still be beating the hell out of Parker on the sidewalk to Bryant Park, or herself trussed up to a hospital bed with wrist restraints and horse tranquilizer humming in her veins. But she didn't think so. She thought she had a pretty good idea of what Dana was getting at, and it was more real, more tangible, than any of the hope she'd been offered in the past two days. "And be ready," she replied, matching Dana's sharp nod. "Clear head, clear eyes, clear heart."

Dana gave her an atta girl pat on the back, rounding behind her to be on the side nearest the interrogation room entrance. "Good. Now, stick to it. I'm gonna go talk to this ass-clown and relieve Sergeant Tutuola, and you're gonna stay out here and do as he says til you hear different from me. Ain't that right?" She paused with her hand on the door handle, an expectant look on her bold features. Her quirked eyebrow resembled Olivia's so much, it took Amanda's breath away.

"Copy that." Amanda inhaled deeply through her nose and released it slowly through her lips. For the most part, she had forgotten her breathing exercises during the last fifty-two hours, but she relied on them now, trying to restore some balance to her reeling senses. Some clarity. "I won't go off like that anymore." Her gaze flicked to the iPad, propped in her throbbing right hand. Olivia's respiration was much too shallow and rapid, her arms twisted at uncomfortable angles overhead. "But don't draw it out too long, huh? I don't know how much more of this she—or I—can take."

"Copy that," Dana echoed. She opened the door as though anticipating a rush of heat to come flooding out. Or that tidal wave of blood fromThe Shining. Redrum and all that jazz. "Hey, Sergeant, sorry to interrupt, but how's about you give Mr. Parker and me the chance to get acquainted? No sense in keeping such a fine, upstanding citizen all to yourself." Before she sallied into the room, she tossed a wink back at Amanda, as bright as the On Air sign outside of a recording studio.

"The hell's she doing?" Fin asked when he joined Amanda in front of the one-way. His expression was even more peevish than usual, and he looked like he needed some rack time. Honestly, he'd probably gotten less rest than Amanda had since this waking nightmare began. "I been working on this guy for three hours, and she just comes waltzing in like it's antebellum Georgia and they gonna converse White Anglo to White Anglo?"

"She's from Virginia," Amanda said absently. She was so busy watching for her signal, she no longer felt the unpleasant stiffness in the knuckles of her left hand, the dead sensation in her ring finger where the wedding band pinched the swollen digit, the stabbing pain. Clear head. Clear eyes. Clear heart. Nothing else existed, save for Olivia out there somewhere, tied up like a dog in a shipping container.

"You know what I mean," Fin groused. "What's with you, anyway? Figured you'd be just as pissed—"

"Shhh." Amanda leaned toward the glass, forcing her sergeant and the sound of his voice into the background. If he said anything else—if he was even still present—she didn't notice.

She went on clearing her head, her eyes, her heart.

She was ready.

Dana flicked the vented hem at the back of her blazer out behind her and settled into the chair opposite Matthew Parker. His CO jacket, including the rap sheet he'd incurred before landing at Sealview Correctional—probably what kept him from joining NYPD—had been left open on the table by Sergeant Tutuola. She pretended it wasn't there, folding her hands neatly on top and flashing her widest Miss Roanoke Valley grin. She'd made first runner-up for that dog and pony show.

Not too shabby.

"Hi, handsome," she said, spreading the accent on thick. It annoyed these true blue New York-types, and that made it extra fun. She might as well trot a decrepit horse down the middle of Broadway during rush hour, as speak Southern to a city person. "Quite a shiner you got there. Do they still call it a shiner when it covers your whole face like that, I wonder?"

"Eat me, Sarah Palin." Parker peered at her through the slit of his right eye, which felt very much like being watched by an overripe plum. She got the urge to poke him in his other slightly more open eye for that comment, but then he might start crying like a great big baby again. The big lummox had actually been blubbering when Officer Montero first carted him in. "That crazy bitch Rollins did this to me, and she's gonna regret it. You hear that, Detective Rollins-Benson? She's— You're gonna pay for this."

A bemused smirk worked its way onto Dana's lips. She disguised it behind her hand for a moment, tapping her pinky fingernail against her front teeth. The dumb ones never realized just how dumb they were. But damned if some of them weren't running on sheer dumb luck too. "Ms. Palin's from Alaska, got all them youngsters, sound like they're named after racehorses or boats or some such. I'm a bit farther south regionally, and a whole lot more to the left, politically speaking. You can call me Agent Lewis."

"Agent? You FBI?" Behind the bruises, Parker's color drained a few shades lighter. He looked like one of those transparent human anatomy dummies, the colorful organs visible beneath its clear plastic skin. No, strike that, he looked like an actual cadaver, postmortem contusions surfacing beneath a fluorescent overhead light. Dana had seen plenty, and the resemblance was uncanny. Matthew Parker was a dead man walking. "Why'd they call you in?"

"Haven't you heard, Mattie my boy? Mind if I call you Mattie?"

"Yes, I mi—"

"This here's a federal case now, Mattie. See, when someone gets trafficked across state lines, it becomes an FBI matter. And true, NYPD might not be our— what do they call it?—our ride-or-die. But I can promise you we take the kidnapping and assault of a decorated police captain very seriously." Dana made a show of scanning his dossier for the employment history, despite having it nearly memorized by now. Lots of bouncing around from job to job, until he landed at Sealview. Must have found his calling. "Especially when a lowlife CO with a criminal record as long as his dick is involved."

"Hey, I've only been arrested once, and that was a—"

"My point exactly." Sitting forward in a low and predatory posture, all traces of Southern charm gone in an instant, Dana got down to business. "That's all going to change, now that you've orchestrated the abduction and rape of Captain Benson. You'll be going away for the rest of your life for this one. If she dies, you might even get the death penalty."

Parker's smugness, restored at the mention of his questionably sized member, faltered again, but too briefly for Dana to latch onto it. She would have to be quicker next time. He might not be the devil incarnate, but he was still slick enough that he had almost succeeded in walking away with Detective Rollins' daughter while a hundred cops were milling about the precinct. "I don't know what you're talking about, ma'am. I don't even know a Captain Benson, let alone have anything to do with her being kidnapped and raped. I'll tell you the same thing I told that sergeant fella—you got the wrong guy."

Sergeant fella. Dana checked the urge to reach across the table and slap his ugly face for that snide remark disguised as a respectful form of address. It was one step shy of calling the sergeant "boy"; Dana knew from her own experience living as Star Morrison, the anti-Semitic racist Nazi bitch that first put her in contact with SVU. That assignment was not only deeply unpleasant, as law enforcement and as a decent human being, it had also given her the unfortunate ability to think like the assholes she was investigating.

Parker might have pretended not to remember Fin from their brief stint as coworkers while Fin was undercover at Sealview, but Dana had spotted the glimmer of recognition in his puffy lizard eyes when the sergeant first entered interrogation. Parker knew exactly who he was dealing with, and that wasn't confined to just inside the walls of this precinct.

"You know damn well who Captain Benson is, Mattie my boy. You sexually assaulted her back in '08. Way I heard it, you had your hands and your crotch halfway up her backside 'bout five minutes after you met her. That the only position you prison boys know? Hey, you think this is funny?" Dana slapped the table hard with an open palm, the sound impressively loud in the hollow room. Parker didn't startle as easily as she hoped, but his sleazy little smirk vanished at once.

"I've never sexually assaulted anyone," he said, and sucked his teeth as he looked her over like she was sitting there stark naked with her legs co*cked open. What a prince. "Don't need to. Women are always throwing themselves at me. So, you'll have to be more specific about this captain broad. She someone I dated? Keep in mind, I was getting a lot of play back then. You got a picture or something, might jog my memory? Measurements?"

There was a heavy thud against the one-way mirror, and if Dana had to wager a guess, she would say it was either the ice pack or Amanda's fist. She hoped for the detective's sake it was the former, and she hoped for Olivia's sake that her hotheaded wife took Dana's advice and didn't come storming in to throttle Parker. Pretending she hadn't heard the noise, she kept her eyes locked on his face. Her interrogation gaze had been called everything from penetrating to unnerving by her colleagues, and she'd gotten a handful of confessions over the years just by staring them out of people.

Guilty people, of whom Matthew Parker was not one. Okay then, new plan. He had tried to cover a cringe at the strident tone of her voice when she raised it at him a moment ago. If he didn't like loud, aggressive women, she would be the loudest, most aggressive bitch he had ever met. "You met and assaulted her while she was undercover in that rat-infested dump where you work. And even you can't be dumb enough not to remember when your captain got arrested after he assaulted her. Think, Mattie, tall girl, brown hair, way too pretty for the likes of you."

"Oh. Her." Parker sneered, as if the concession left a bad taste in his mouth. "Yeah, I remember. But whatever she said about me assaulting her is a lie. I was just restraining her, which is part of my job. Sounds like Captain Benson accuses every guy she meets of rape, huh? Maybe she's got herself a little rape fantasy going, you looked into that yet?"

Dana held her breath, fully expecting Amanda to burst into the room, leap onto the table, and kick Parker backwards out the window. But even more troublesome was the total silence outside the mirror. She hoped it just meant that Fin was holding his detective back, or that Amanda was exercising more self-control than she had thus far. Head, eyes, heart, Dana reminded herself, her patience with Matthew Parker just about shot.

"Oh, Mattie, you love to hear those gums of yours flapping, don't you?" she said, and pushed up from the table. Grabbing the chair she'd been sitting in, she dragged it with her around the table, fighting the urge to pick it up and bash him over the head with it a few dozen times. Calmly, she positioned it backwards beside him, swung a leg over the seat, and straddled the cushion, hands planted on her knees. She was close enough to smell the antiseptic the ME had applied to his split lips. "The inmates are gonna love that about you when you're in with them. Will it make a difference, do you think, that you were a CO in a women's prison? Or will the fellas have it out for you just as much?"

For once, Parker kept his mouth shut and set in a deep frown, nose wrinkled like he smelled something nasty. Apparently he didn't appreciate the idea of servicing his male counterparts nearly as much as he enjoyed forcing that job on the ladies. "See, Mattie, you're the one I been looking into, and it turns out you're no different from all the other pig COs who opt for female prisoners. Easy prey, right? Yeah, I ran into plenty of guys like you in Bedford. Undercover, mind you, but my ass still got grabbed like all the other girls."

She had caught his attention with the name dropping, as expected.That's right, I speak your language, you sick prick, she thought, trying not to breathe in his smell any more than necessary. Vaguely she wondered if he had showered since raping Olivia. "And one thing I learned about you CO boys is that most of you got some sweet thing on the inside, ready to do whatever you tell them. And vice versa. Guess y'all plan to get hitched after the girl's released, and what, live happily ever after with your little hoosegow babies?

"Anyway, my point is, I know who the lucky lady is that holds the key to your heart. And I bet you carry the key to hers on your belt with one of those little retractor clip thingies." Dana made the general shape of the device she was describing with her hands, then waved it away as unimportant. It was all part of her tactic. You threw as much at them as you could, anything to get them off balance so you could go in for the kill while they were confused, their defenses down. And she needed him off balance for the next part, because she was about to lie right out of her ass.

"Huh?" he asked, ears practically pricking up.

Perfect.

"That's right, Mattie my boy. I know all about you and Sondra Vaughn. She and I had a nice long chat about how you two've been carrying on. Tsk, tsk. Took a long time to get it out of her, but once we tossed her cell and found proof, she didn't really have much choice." Dana shrugged her shoulder. It is what it is.

"Pshh, you're lying," said Parker, and for a moment, Dana thought she'd blown it by over-embellishing. But there was doubt in what was visible of his bloodshot eyes when he turned them on her, looking for something to confirm his assessment. Dana closed herself off like a blank, featureless wall around a fortress. "Vaughn'd never give it up to you. If there was anything to give up. Bitch's got ice water in her veins. Just like you."

Dana smiled at that as if he'd told her she was pretty. "Maybe she felt like we were kindred spirits, 'cause honey, she turned on you like that." She snapped her fingers in his face, and this time he jumped. Now she was getting somewhere. She softened it a bit so her next strike would be a surprise, her fingers trickling the air in front of him. "Told us how all of this was your idea, to get back at Captain Benson for spurning your advances a million little years ago. How you forced 'er into helping you 'cause you knew she had history with Benson's wife. Detective Rollins-Benson."

"Hey, wait a min—"

"You tried to abduct their baby girl, not more'n a few hours ago, right out there on the street, Mattie." Dana resumed the big voice, the big gestures, pointing to the windows as she launched up from the seat and shoved her chair aside. It clattered across the floor, making Parker start and turn to look like he'd just witnessed a head-on collision on the freeway. She clamped a hand on the back of his chair, the other flat on the table, and crouched down to be face-to-face with him.

"What were you gonna do to that sweet little thing, Mattie? Tie her up and f*ck her like they're doing to her mama? Likeyoudid to her mama? I saw you, you sick f*cking sonuvabitch. You and your dumbass MAGA hat." She slapped the back of Parker's head hard enough for her palm to sting. He jerked forward with a convulsive grunt. "You know he lost, right? Takes a loser to know a loser, that it? You think you can go around grabbing puss* and getting away with it, too, don't you, you nasty-ass f*ckin' pig. You goddamn—"

"Agent Lewis!"

Fin's voice finally cut through the freight train of anger and noise that roared in Dana's ears, in her brain, under her skin. It had been a while since she'd had quite such a dramatic PTSD flare-up—she wasn't even aware of when she'd gotten to her feet—but it could be used in her favor. Parker was looking at her like she had lost her mind, which in fact she had, and the chickensh*t perps were the easiest to manipulate. Yeah, yeah, coerced confessions didn't stand up in court, blah blah. She wasn't so much concerned with getting a confession out of him as she was with finding Olivia.

The rest would work itself out later. Dana would see that it did, one way or the other.

She straightened, pulling the panels of her blazer taut at the hem, smiling. Kill them with kindness, Mama used to say. And if that doesn't work, there's always your gun. (Dana added that part herself.) "We're okay, Sergeant. Just gettin' a little fired up because Mattie-boy here thinks he's got the upper hand. Don't worry, I'm impressin' upon him exactly how deep the sh*t is that he's in. Takes a bit more effort with skulls this thick, though." She rapped her knuckles on the top of Parker's head, rolling her eyes when he ducked as if he were dodging gunfire.

"Hey, bro, get her out of here, will you?" Parker asked, phrasing it as more of a demand than a request. He looked expectantly at Fin and jerked a thumb at Dana. Tell this broad to take a hike, the gesture said. It was one she'd seen many times over the years, and she was old enough to remember when it still worked.

Thankfully, those days were over and she was no longer at the mercy of male agents or felons whom she was just too intense for. Dana Lewis was at the mercy of no one. "She's as crazy as that detective bitch of yours. Aren't there any sane people around here? Preferably ones with balls. You got big black cojones, why don't you take over?"

Dana made an inviting gesture, pretending to step back and give Fin the floor. There was no way she would let him take over, but it didn't hurt to appear willing to share. Besides, she was pretty sure the sergeant had no interest in giving Parker anything he wanted, so there would be no turf wars or pissing contests in the one-six today. On the off chance that he might chew her out or report her to a superior for excessive force, she was prepared to stand her ground. But judging by the curled lip and the deep disdain on his features when he spared a glance at Parker, that wasn't going to be a problem, either.

"I ain't your bro," he said. "And she's in charge, so you best get your tiny white-boy cojones in gear 'fore she rips them off and stuffs them down your throat. You good?" He directed the last part at Dana, and when she nodded, looking him square in the eye, he turned on his heel and exited the room. The door closed solidly behind him, the observation window shuddering in its frame.

Detective Rollins wasn't the only one awaiting a signal, and Dana took the closed door and the flat reflection in the one-way as hers. She flashed herself a smile, aimed a wink in Amanda's general direction on the other side, and bent over Parker once more. "f*ck," he groaned under his breath, sitting back in the chair to distance himself from her face, looming like a thunderhead. God, she loved the jumpy ones.

"Okay, listen," he said, slicing his hands in different angles on the tabletop, as if he were enthusiastically cutting a pie. "That was all a misunderstanding, with the kid. Brat wandered off, was I supposed to just let her walk into traffic? Then you'd be in here trying to pin me with negligent homicide. I saved that little carrot top's life."

"Why'd you misidentify yourself to the child's caretaker Ms. Tyler? And why does she claim you intentionally absconded with the girl when there was a distraction?"

Parker threw his hands up as if he, too, were at a loss. "I guess she misunderstood what I said. Does she even speak English? Most of these nannies don't. I showed her my badge, can't help it if she assumed I was something other than a correctional officer like it says right on the front. She's probably trying to cover her ass for not watching the kid better, and using me to—"

"Why were you running away from the precinct with someone else's child in your arms?" Dana boomed, not waiting for the lightning flash to cue the noise. She shook the back of his chair, simulating the quake after a sky-splitting clap of thunder. "Detective Rollins saw your buddies in the van drive away. Same way they abducted Captain Benson three days ago. You're lucky the people working for you are smarter than you are, Mattie." She knocked on his forehead, and he hissed and grabbed his head like he was auditioning for a migraine commercial.

"Look, she said her mom was at the park, I wasn't trying to, what'd you call it,abspondwith anyone. I don't know anything about a van, either. If there was one, I had nothing to do with it." He swiped his palms together, miming washing his hands of any responsibility. "Same with the Benson chick. Whatever Vaughny said is a lie. She's delusional, got this whole fantasy that I'm her boyfriend. If I don't play along, she tries to get me in trouble. That's why she's saying I'm involved. Bitch is crazy."

"Sounds like you think every woman you meet is a crazy bitch. That why you can't get laid? Have to go around raping vulnerable women like Liv and, what'd you call her, Vaughny?" Dana overpronounced the name, rolling her eyes at the corniness of it. She hadn't exactly foreseen the romance angle when she started fudging Sondra Vaughn's confession, but it fit. COs often exploited inmates for sex, or sometimes the other way around. Sometimes it was a two-way street.

Whatever the case with Vaughn and Parker, he had real feelings for her. It was written all over his dopey purple face. "I've never raped her! I wouldn't— did she tell you that? Why would she say I raped her?" He cast a distraught look to the observation window, as though he might cry out for help. He didn't go that far, but he did drop his palms heavily onto the table, like he meant to push to his feet and exit the room. "I need to make a phone call. Don't touch me. I've got the right to make a call, so gimme my cell or a landline or something. I said get off."

Dana put her hands up when he batted them away from his shoulders. She was tempted to keep returning them to the same spot, pulling them back, returning them, and so on, until he lost his cool completely. Childish, perhaps, but also highly satisfying. There wasn't time to play, though. He was already dragging this out longer than she had hoped. He should have caved and given up the other men as soon as he heard he was taking the fall for the rest of them. Maybe he was in deeper than Dana suspected.

She could let him beat around the bush some more, continue her solo rendition of good G-woman/bad G-woman, and hope he finally cracked. Meanwhile, Olivia was tied up in that disgusting sh*t hole, hanging on to her life and her sanity by a thread, possibly even being raped again, for all Dana knew, while she was in here dicking around with this jagoff. Or she could bend that arc of the moral universe a little more toward justice with her own two hands.

She always did have a mighty strong grip.

"I suppose we can accommodate you on that one, Mattie my boy," she said, unable to resist vigorously ruffling his thinning hair before she stepped back. It was a cheap shot, but sometimes you had to take them when you could get them. She hoped Amanda had enough life experience to have learned that lesson, in spite of her youthful appearance. The distant throbbing in the bridge of Dana's nose and the myriad of bruises splattered on Parker's face like paintball pellets were a pretty good indication that she had. "It's been a few hours. You probably need a potty break and some snacks too, huh?"

Parker peered at her, mystified and distrustful. He knew she had given in far too easily, but he was just stupid enough to take the bait. He hadn't even asked for a lawyer yet, probably thought he was still going to waltz out of the precinct a free man. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good. How about some pretzels and beer? Maybe a flat-screen to watch the game on?" His bloated lips quirked into a lopsided grin, his lame attempt at boyish charm.

Or maybe it was a sly reference to "the game" everyone in the squad room had been riveted by for the past three days. He was brought directly from holding into interrogation, his exposure to even a brief glimpse of the livestream as limited as possible, but he definitely knew they were watching. That was the whole point of streaming the rapes to begin with. Old Mattie boy might not realize it, but he had just sealed his fate, as far as Dana was concerned.

"Don't push your luck," she said, wearing a crocodile smile of her own. She hauled him up by the back of his shirt collar and cinched the bracelets on his wrists, giving him a motivating shove toward the exit. "Sprite and soda crackers will suit you just fine. Wouldn't want to send you to lockup with an upset tummy, now would we? Hey, Detective Rollins, you got any change for the vending machine?"

"No way I'm going out there if she's out there." Parker stopped short a few steps from the door, refusing to budge. He was a large man, about as solid as a tank, and Dana didn't have the strength to force him while he resisted. She couldn't tolerate his body against hers anyway. It was too similar to the physique of her rapist, Seth Coleman. She'd memorized him while he was inside of her, and once Dana Lewis had something committed to memory, she never forgot it. "Bitch tried to kill me."

"You're afraid of that itty-bitty little thing? Come on, Mattie, you probably got eighty pounds or more on her. She just had a baby not that long ago, you telling me you're that much weaker than a new mama who's unarmed and sleep-deprived from being up all hours with a baby caterwauling in her ear?" Dana stepped around him and went to the door, the handle in her grasp when she looked back. "Or you can hide in here, forget the phone call, piss yourself, and go hungry? Your decision."

Parker glanced at the one-way, his internal struggle written all over his face, despite the darkening bruises. In the end, his needs outweighed his fear. He really wanted that phone call. "Okay, fine. Just keep that blond hellcat away from me. She's worse than the meth heads they dump on us at Sealview. She ever been drug tested? 'Cause she has to be on some—"

His professional analysis of Amanda's so-called substance abuse—and she could very well be feeling the lasting effects of the shrink's ketamine ambush, he wasn't wrong there—broke off when they stepped out of the room and encountered the blond hellcat herself, iPad clutched protectively to her chest, and a deadly glare hardening her pretty features to cool, spiky quartz. She looked like she might open her mouth horror-movie wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, and consume Matthew Parker whole, right there in the observation area of the one-six.

It would be one hell of a show.

Unfortunately, Fin stood in the way, blocking Amanda's path to the suspect and the source of her unfinished business. He intercepted Parker before anyone else got the chance, tugging the man's arm from Dana's grasp, frowning with displeasure. Most people had dimples that showed up when they smiled or laughed, but Sergeant Tutuola's were clearest when he was judging you. "I'll take his whiny ass to the bathroom," he said, grudgingly. "You two worry about the snacks and the landline. Asking for his cell phone like he's the queen of Sheba or some sh*t. Dumbf*ck. Get going, Proud Boy, you got two minutes until I come in there and haul your ass out, finished or not." He jabbed the back of Parker's shoulder with his fingers, goading him down the hall to the men's room.

A lot can happen in two minutes, Sarge, thought Dana as she watched them go. With that in mind, she turned to Amanda and formed a plan on the spot. There were probably a million and one ways for it to go deeply, tragically wrong, but she was trained to make split-second decisions that ended in life or death all the time. You didn't second guess. You didn't turn back. "Go get that boy his snack, Detective. Grab a little something for yourself, too. You're lookin' a mite bit peaked."

"I don't want a goddamn snack, I want—"

"Amanda." Dana looked the detective hard in the eyes, infusing her words with as much meaning as she could, a hand propped on the grip of her sidearm, holstered at her hip. "I said get yourself something too, is that clear? I don't need you passing out and being wheeled out of here on a stretcher again. It's a distraction to the rest of us, and when people are distracted, mistakes get made. Details get overlooked, bad guys get away. Then I look like I can't do my job."

She paused just long enough to be certain Amanda was following, and caught a slight nod of the girl's blond head. At least she hoped it was a nod, for Olivia's sake, for Amanda's, and for Dana herself. "Right now, my job is to take Mr. Parker downstairs to make his phone call, and I can't very well march him through the squad room with what's on all those monitors out there, now can I?"

Amanda hugged the iPad tightly to her chest. The device returned only silence. "No, ma'am. You can't."

"Exactly. Which means I'm gonna have to walk his giant ass down all those stairs like I'm mama to a six-foot toddler, and I ain't in the mood. If he gives me trouble, I gotta know everyone's on their A-game. So you go get what you need, and make damn sure I can count on you to back me up if he pulls somethin'. Understood?"

"Yes." Amanda searched Dana's face with a hint of uncertainty, as if expecting it to burst into a big jokester grin or shout a belated "April Fool's!" at any second. But she was met with an unflinching gaze, a jaw as rigid as her own, and this time the nod left little doubt that she remembered the rules perfectly: clear head, clear eyes, clear heart. "I hear you, Agent Lewis," she said, giving vocal confirmation, "loud and clear."

Dana watched after the detective as she headed in the direction of the lounge area, instead of the break room and vending machines. "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," she said under her breath.

To herself or to Amanda, she didn't know.

She got to work.

. . .

Chapter 27: Ouroboros

Chapter Text

Chapter 27.

Ouroboros

. . .

It was so easy it was almost scary. No one wanted to believe you could simply walk a perp out the stairwell door of a police station, unnoticed and unquestioned, but that was exactly what Amanda did. It helped that she had a Glock jammed into his spine, his hands cuffed behind his back, and her long hair tucked under the dome of an NYPD baseball cap. The gun was hers, the cuffs were FBI issue (which made no difference, since handcuff keys were universal, and anyway, Dana had slipped hers to Amanda in the stairwell, along with Parker), and the hat was stolen from the crib. She didn't know or care who it belonged to.

Dana had tried to pawn off a different gun on her, but Amanda refused. She had her work firearm in hand and a drop in an ankle holster, and whatever needed to be done, she would do it with her own weapon and ammunition. Olivia's gun was tucked in the back of her waistband for safekeeping, until it was delivered, locked and loaded, into the captain's hands. The utility knife was just in case, its sheathed blade strangely comforting against her hip.

"Crazy f*cking bitch," Parker repeated, though he kept his voice down this time. He hadn't believed her at first, but now there was a bloody gash in the back of his head from the butt of her gun, proving she meant what she'd said: if he didn't shut his goddamn mouth and cooperate, she would make him regret it. Little did he know it had taken all of Amanda's willpower not to finish the job and bash his brains in right there in the stairwell of the one-six. Or maybe he did, and that was why he was hissing over his shoulder at her. "You're not gonna get away with this. You're gonna get caught and thrown in jail. Just wait till I'm your CO, you dumb blond c*nt."

The laugh that came out of Amanda's mouth sounded deranged, even to her. Like some creepy canned laughter in a carnival funhouse. She almost didn't care. It made her feel invincible. Here she was, walking to the parking lot in broad daylight with a criminal—one of her wife's rapists—whom she had just sprung from police custody, and no one was stopping her. She could have cackled in the face of God right then, she felt so powerful.

"Rollins. Hey, wait up."

Kat Tamin's brogues clapped the asphalt as she jogged across the street, approaching Amanda and Parker from behind. She slowed and fell back a step when Amanda turned sharply from the neck up to look at her, body blocking the pistol and Parker's attempt to turn. The officer looked like she expected Amanda's head to spin the rest of the way around. "What?" Amanda snapped, angry that her moment of triumphant euphoria had come to a screeching halt. "Spit it out, Tamin."

"Where the hell you going? I thought you wouldn't leave until . . . holy sh*t, did they find her?" Kat forgot her wariness, and stepped closer in her excitement at the prospect of Olivia's rescue. She'd been at Sealview Correctional for the better part of two days, trying to sweat answers out of Sondra Vaughn, and it showed in her appearance. She looked as though she'd been on a week-long bender, her normally sleek ponytail crooked and bushy, her clothes rumpled, mascara creating raccoon circles under her eyes.

"No. Not yet." Amanda tried to hustle Parker along, keeping the gun low at his back, out of view. One false move and she would probably quite literally put a cap in his ass. She dug the muzzle into his flank as a warning. Dana's black unmarked Lincoln was parked right where she said it would be, three spaces down from the fence. The only thing standing in the way of Amanda getting to her wife was Katriona f*cking Tamin. "Gotta go."

"Go where? Who's he?" Kat trotted ahead, then did a double take when she turned to walk backwards in front of them, easily keeping pace with her long-legged stride. "What the hell happened to his face? Rollins, what's—"

"Let it go, Tamin," Amanda gritted, through clenched teeth. The scariest part wasn't that she could imagine pulling the trigger of her Glock, it was that, in her head, she saw herself pointing it at Kat when she did it. For a moment it felt so real, she almost dropped the gun. But she needed it too badly. She needed it to save Liv. "Let it go, and walk away."

"Huh?" Kat halted in place, dumbstruck, her hands spread in a pantomime of confusion and misgiving. Recovering quickly, she crossed her arms as if to bar the way until she got an answer. She stood directly behind the town car Amanda held the keys to, placed in her hand by Dana, with the lone instructions:Don't make me regret it. "Amanda, what's going on? Are you even supposed to be out here with this person?"

She stressedpersonlike it might not be the correct definition for the man in Amanda's custody. It wasn't. He didn't have the humanity, the soul, to be called a person, and by the time Amanda was through with him, he would no longer be recognizable as a living, breathing human being at all. At least not on this mortal coil.

"Don't listen to her, she's got a gun on me," Parker interjected, trying to jerk his cuffed wrists from Amanda's grasp. He yelped when she held firm and twisted his arms up at an angle suitable for dislocation, maybe fracture if she was lucky. Just like his buddies had done to Olivia while they raped her on that filthy old desk. She tugged harder, waiting to hear that delicious snap. It was better than the sound of the ball falling into the right slot on a roulette wheel, better than dice on green felt.

But as loudly as Parker was carrying on, he'd have the entire precinct down on them at any minute. Amanda relaxed her grip, dropping his arms back to a level that drew whimpers instead of shouts, and she was about to lie her way out of the situation when Kat cautiously thumbed the hood guard from the service pistol on her hip. Preparing to pull her weapon, like Amanda was some scumbag street thug holding an innocent civilian hostage. Amanda beat her to the punch.

"Leave it," Amanda said, aiming at Kat's kneecap. It was the same command she used on Frannie when the pittie stole shoes to chew on behind the couch.Must be that savory down-home flavor, Olivia teased, each time Amanda bemoaned that the crazy dog liked her shoes best. And in a perfect Cajun accent, thick as roux, the captain would purr:Manda Jo étouffée.

How they laughed over that ridiculously corny joke. How sweet and sensual were the kisses that followed, and the lovemaking they inevitably gave way to. Tears pricked Amanda's eyes, blurring her vision and the target her gun was trained on. If she took the shot, hands trembling and breath hitching in her chest, she'd probably end up hitting Kat someplace far more vital than the knee. That wasn't what she wanted, but she had to get past the girl somehow. "Don't make me shoot you, Tamin. Just let us get in the car, and you go on upstairs like you didn't see any of this."

Kat extended her palms slowly and slanted toward the ground, as if she were balancing on a steep ledge or approaching a skittish animal. "You know I can't do that, Amanda. How about you put the gun down, and we'll both take him upstairs togeth—"

"There's no time! You ain't seen what they been doing to her while you were off at that prison." Amanda jabbed the Glock accusingly at Kat, making her blanch and back into the bumper of the Lincoln. Normally, her fear would have been enough for Amanda to tone down the aggression, but right then she didn't care. The officer should be afraid. Amanda was desperate and prepared to do whatever it took to get Olivia back, no matter who stood in her way. "He's one of them. He raped Liv, and he just tried to kidnap Tilly. Told her he's her new daddy." She sneered at Parker's downturned face, wanting more than anything to blow it off.

"Oh my God, is she okay?" Kat asked.

"She's fine. I caught him and beat the living daylights out of him. Ain't that right, Parker?" Amanda slapped him hard on the back. He coughed like he was hacking up a wad of gum stuck in his throat. "And now he's going to take me to my wife, or I'm gonna start shooting off his body parts one at a time until he does. So you need to step aside, otherwise I'll have to include some of your parts too."

"Amand—"

"They've been raping her for three days, Kat. Three. It's Liv. He went there to take his turn on her like she's the goddamn Wonder Wheel. After he left they hose— they hosed her down like she's in a f*cking concentration camp. Now she's tied up with a belt they used to choke her with, and I'm pretty sure it belongs to this piece of sh*t." Amanda paused for the third or fourth time in the stilted speech, swallowing the slimy bile in the back of her throat. She would not throw up in front of this man, God help her. It was bad enough she'd just let him in on the part about the belt.

"She's not gonna make it another day. Not in the shape she's in. They're probably raping her again while you're here, slowing me down. If she dies because you think a prick like him deserves to sit up there in a nice little room, eating pretzels, drinking Sprite, and laughing at us chasing our tails, then you shouldn't even be wearing a shield." Her voice thinned out, a thread about to snap from too much tension. She resorted to brandishing the gun again, her eyes pleading with Kat to let her pass. The tears fell freely, and finally she understood how Olivia cried without making a sound.

When your heart had been broken too badly, never to be put back to rights, the cracks eventually began leaking, and all that sadness needed somewhere to go. It came from your shattered heart, your splintered soul, and out through your eyes, into the air around you, the atmosphere, the universe. After a while you breathed it back in again, that oxygenated sadness, and it was what kept you alive. The snake eating its own tail. An ouroboros of grief, Olivia's tears.

And now Amanda's.

"I have to do this," she said, shrugging the dampness from her cheeks with the shoulder of her sweatshirt. She didn't care if Kat or Parker saw her crying, but she wasn't keeping the clear head and clear eyes Dana had insisted on. Her heart, though split wide open, was the one thing in the right place. Saving Olivia was all that mattered, and she would do it or die trying. "She's my wife, Kat. The mother of my children. You have to let me go to her."

The silence seemed to stretch on forever, while Kat gazed back over her shoulder and past the fence that surrounded the parking lot, to the rear of the precinct. Dana would only be able to stall the others inside for so long, if they weren't already on the way down to apprehend their missing suspect and rogue cop. Amanda's finger twitched on the trigger of her gun, and she held her breath, milliseconds from firing. She could have done it while Kat was turned away, but when the officer suddenly faced forward again, she lost her nerve.

"Is this the car you're taking?" Kat asked, pointing vaguely to the Lincoln she guarded. Her apprehension was evident, her dark brow knitted into sinuous creases, themselves resembling question marks. But something had changed. Her fretful glances were directed across the street to their house, instead of at Amanda and her gun. Officer Tamin was making a decision. "Whose is it?"

"Lewis's. Handed me the keys herself. And this motherf*cker too." Amanda elbowed Parker in the ribs before he could produce the measly two cents he opened his mouth to offer. He made a sound like a huffing bellows, flinching from the second bony jab she dug into his love handle. "Told me to do whatever I need to do to get Liv back. So what's it gonna be, Tamin? You gonna help me and Liv, or are you going to side with the traffickers who are keeping her locked up like an animal and plan to sell her for even more rape and torture?"

Kat sighed heavily, her shoulders sagging under the burden of choice. She was struggling with her conscience and her instincts as a cop, Amanda knew, from her own battle to suppress those same internal voices, those all-important guides. She couldn't do what was required of her with an angel on her shoulder, debating with the adjacent devil, so she had flicked aside the good and invited the devil in to make himself at home. She didn't even feel bad about forcing Kat to compromise her job and her integrity. None of that mattered while Olivia's life was on the line.

"Okay. Gimme the keys," said Kat, holding out her hand for the fob and the pair of keys that dangled from its ring. She gestured impatiently when Amanda hesitated, unsure if it was a trick or not. "You can't keep a gun on him and drive at the same time, you'll end up running somebody over or driving off a bridge. Hurry up before I change my mind and turn you in."

No time to weigh the risks of what she was about to do, Amanda tossed the keys at Kat. She would just have to trust another person for once, and see how it played out. It might come in handy to have some backup when she got to Olivia, anyway. The captain was in bad shape and would need her help getting around; Kat could stand guard while Amanda put Olivia in the car.

"Leave your phone so they can't track us," Amanda said, shoving Parker toward the back door of the town car. He fell against the wheel well, but managed to stay on his feet. It would have been more satisfying to see him go down on his knees. Maybe when they got to wherever Olivia was being held. Maybe she would make him go on his knees for Olivia and let her decide what to do with him. "You can tell them I forced you to give it up at gunpoint."

"Wouldn't be too far off," Kat muttered, digging the cell phone from her back pocket. She did a quick scan of the parking lot and trotted the device over to a concrete pole base under the nearest security lamp. She placed the cell on top, casting one last longing look back at it before returning to the car. Amanda could sympathize—she'd felt a physical ache leaving behind her phone, and by extension, the one tenuous connection she had to Olivia, but if the feds and the police descended on them too soon, she might never see Olivia again, period.

That was not an option.

"You know they're going to track the car too, right?" Kat hooked her arm behind the passenger headrest, turning to look out the rear windshield as she whipped backward smoothly from the parking space. There were few people whose driving skills fulfilled Amanda's requirements—and speed was really the only one—but Kat came pretty close. She had quick reflexes too, probably from the boxing. "This thing's got all the bells and whistles. There's definitely some kind of locator chip somewhere."

"Yeah, Tamin, I'm aware." Amanda gestured for the officer to keep both eyes on the road ahead, instead of compulsively glancing at her and Parker in the rearview. She didn't need a lecture in electronics from someone who hadn't even been born when NES first debuted. "Lewis said she would throw them off the scent for as long as she could, and she's got an app that tells her where the car is. She's not just gonna roll on us. In the meantime, pissant Parker here is going to tell us where to find my wife, and maybe he'll live to see Lewis's face again when this is over."

The man rolled his eyes, but they dropped warily to the Glock pointed at his face, and he opted not to respond. That was probably the wisest choice he'd made all day. Perhaps in his entire life. Amanda rewarded him by not bashing his teeth in with the butt of her gun, as she was tempted to do. She pressed the muzzle under his nose instead, crushing it into the squishy divide between his nostrils. If she remembered her semester of forensic anthropology correctly, it was called the columella. His was wide and off center, and pushing up on it gave him a pig snout.

"Will the real Matthew Parker please stand up," Amanda purred in his ear. Fleetingly she was convinced she could smell Olivia on him; on his breath that came out in short, spasmodic bursts; on his collar, the way a wife detected her cheating husband's mistress. She buried her face against his neck and inhaled deeply, searching for Olivia's scent somewhere below his coarse man-musk, skin tags, and five o'clock shadow. Had she the teeth for it, she would have torn his throat out.

She understood those chimpanzees in West Africa who fought for dominance and mating purposes now, one alpha male killing the alpha of another group and claiming the females. Olivia couldn't watch the video footage of the apes savaging a fallen leader ("Is it over yet?" she asked, hand shielding her eyes), but Amanda found it fascinating, the way the animals banded together, biting and tearing and using their fists like clubs, until the other chimp was dead.The things we do for love, she had teased, when Olivia peered through her fingers at the furry black mound, languishing in the underbrush.

"Hey. Hey, you." Parker jabbed the back of Kat's seat with his foot. "Get this bitch off me, she's out of her f*cking mind. She's smelling me, man."

"You say Matthew Parker? That his name?" Kat asked, ignoring him altogether, though the urgency in her tone suggested she was eager to distract Amanda from her current occupation as well. She rapped the steering wheel with her fingers, then reached into the backseat and snapped them. "Rollins, hey. Is his name Matthew Parker?"

"Yes," Amanda growled, grudgingly retreating from the fleshy folds she longed to devour like those frenzied, screeching chimps. She'd lost Olivia's scent, subtle and bittersweet, to the revolting tang of Parker's flop-sweat anyway. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and jammed the muzzle of her gun higher, practically ramming it up Parker's nostril. "He's a CO at that rape factory of a prison you went to. Missed his chance with Liv years ago, so he cooked up this whole elaborate scheme to, what, f*ck her and steal our kid?"

"It wasn't me!" Parker hit a shrill, girlish timbre, like a frantic criminal in a kids movie. Amanda's children laughed hysterically when Marv from theHome Alonemovies unleashed his feminine shrieks. If they could only see their mama now, reducing the bad guy to quivering, whimpering jelly. Even better if he piddled in his pants like the spineless little bitch he was. Oh, how they would laugh!

Sometimes men pissed themselves when you blew their brains out through the top of their skulls too. The bowels might let loose, and a body could even ejacul*te as the nervous system gave its final hoorah, sending out spasms to the oddest of places. Amanda wondered what would be the last part of Parker's body to stop twitching. Just a little more pressure on the trigger, and she could find out . . .

"That's not what your girlfriend told me," Kat said, speaking up to be heard over Parker's continued denials. She was weaving in and out of traffic with the ease of a ballerina flitting across the stage, and by the looks of it, she was heading toward Chelsea Piers, a perfect destination to enjoy the riverfront or to persuade an uncooperative suspect to start talking.

As a matter of fact, it was right next door to Pier 57, where Olivia had taken Amanda on her birthday last year, their desire for one another so strong that they hadn't been able to wait out the drive back to the apartment. They had made love in Olivia's Mustang, under a painted April sky, and it was the freest and most alive Amanda had ever felt. The rush of gambling, of a fistfight in a smoky bar, of rowdy sex with someone she barely knew—none of it could compare to that day on the pier with Liv, riding the waves of pleasure and the Hudson.

"Your girlfriend, Sondra Vaughn," Kat elaborated when Parker gazed sidelong at her in the rearview, not daring to turn his head. He squinted water from the corners of his eyes, which teared profusely each time Amanda inched the muzzle higher. "She's Vaughny, and you're Parks, yeah? See, 'cause she said you masterminded this whole thing. You saw Captain Benson and Detective Rollins' wedding announcement in the paper, and when you found out she had a score to settle with Rollins, just like you did with Benson, you forced her into arranging the captain's abduction.

"And how you obsessed over the two younger kids, thought you and she could raise them better than a couple dykes. That's not a very nice thing to say, Parksy. You a hom*ophobe, on top of being a rapist and a kidnapper?"

Each new revelation from Kat's mouth unleashed a ladle of hot molten steel in Amanda's gut, through her veins. She had expected Vaughn to be lead in the shady collaboration with Parker, and she very likely was—the corrections officer did not have the brains or the balls to strategize something of this scale on his own—but if Parker took the rap, justice would still be served. And if he was just the scapegoat, they were one step closer to getting him to talk. That was the only thing that stayed Amanda's hand as she heard the plan laid out, from wedding announcement to the dykes comment. Her palms itched with the heat inside her.

"No! I got a gay cousin. And plenty of ladies at the prison are gay. I respect that." Between the snout and the rapid stuttering, Parker appeared to be doing a Porky the Pig impression. His eyes went crossed every time he tried to see the gun in Amanda's hand, and he hadn't stopped whimpering. "I'm not—"

"What does that mean, you respect it?" Amanda got tired of looking at the forest of dark nose hair in his upturned nostrils and jabbed the muzzle of the gun into his philtrum, hard enough to damage the gums underneath. "You only rape straight girls and bi women who pass, like my wife?"

"Ow! Jesus, okay, yeah! I mean no. I didn't rape your damn wife, and I'm only into sex with chicks who like co*ck." Parker tried to ease back from the pistol, his snot misting the tip as he sniveled and snorted in desperation. His bottom lip quivered uncontrollably, but the top was trapped by the gun, giving him a speech impediment. "Ask Vaughn, she'll tell you I never raped anybody."

"Actually, she won't," said Kat. "She told me the first time you guys had sex, you forced her. And every time since then, she's only given you what you want to stay on your good side. She's afraid of you, brah. Says you showed her video of what they were doing to Captain Benson as a threat that she was next."

For a moment, Parker forgot about the Glock and gazed into the front seat, wounded, unblinking. He almost looked like he was about to cry. While Amanda would have loved to see that, she wasn't going to give him the chance to process what he'd heard or talk himself out of the confession she sensed building up inside him. The good thing about spineless jellyfish was that they didn't like to go down for someone else's crime. Whatever the relationship between Parker and Vaughn, he would roll on her with the right incentive.

Amanda knew just the thing. He didn't seem to value his face too much, at least nothing in or around his big ugly mouth, so she relocated the gun to his crotch, nuzzling it in good and snug. It touched something with a little give, inciting her to push harder, until she hit resistance.

As expected, it got his attention, and he squirmed as if she'd poured a bucket of spiders or scalding hot water into his lap. "Hey, sit your ass down," she barked when he clenched his buttocks and thrust his pelvis forward, rising from the seat and bucking the gun away. "I said sit down, or you're about to get a real impromptu sex change operation."

"Jesus Chri— ow, f*ck! Hey, call her off, she's gonna blow my dick off!" Parker screeched the order at Tamin, who studied his panicked reflection and opted to turn on the radio instead. Dana had left it on a classic rock station, and the Stones were singing about some Puerto Rican girls that's just dyin' to meet you. The tune was jarringly upbeat and jarringly loud when Kat cranked it up several notches, but somehow the chaotic tempo and chorus of vocal tics suited the situation completely. Jagger always found that hook.

"Thought that's what you liked," Amanda shouted over the music. She worked the muzzle in a little more, as if she were boring a hole to insert a screw. If she fired now, his scrotum would explode like a couple of eggs hurled against a windshield. She'd never seen it happen before, but the image was so vivid in her mind, she felt as if she had. Maybe in a past life. Perhaps she had been chasing Matthew Parker across centuries. "Girls blowing you off. And I know you like it rough, I saw how my wife looked when you were done with her."

"Hey, Rollins, you might wanna—"

"She looked that way when I got there," Parker howled, huddling sideways, his hip jutting out to shield against another jab of the Glock. His forehead smacked against the back window with a meatythunk, and he groaned in misery at his own pathetic plight. "I didn't do anything the other guys hadn't already done to her. They're the ones responsible for all of this, not me. I had nothing to do with kidnapping her and passing her around like that, I swear to God."

"But you had no problem taking your turn with her, did you, you sick sonuvabitch? Huh? Did you?" Amanda prodded him in various vulnerable spots with the gun—behind the ear, under the arm, into the spine—as he danced and writhed to get away. Curled up in the corner, he had nowhere else to go, unless he managed to open the door with no hands and rolled onto the street. While she wouldn't mind seeing his brains splattered on the road below the Lincoln's tires, she needed him to give up a location first. She seized him by the collar and yanked him back from the door.

"Okay! I f*cked her—"

He yelped when Amanda grabbed his pinky finger, which already poked out crookedly from his cuffed hand, and wrenched it backward until it snapped inside her fist. The closest she'd ever come to breaking someone's finger was rolling over her little sister's hand while strapped into a brand new pair of roller skates, and that had been accidental. Doing it on purpose was easier than she could have imagined, and deeply satisfying. Like popping bubble wrap. She wanted to do another, but he was talking again:

"I mean, I raped her! Jesus f*ck ow! I raped her, okay? I didn't think it would matter, after all the other guys. And you weren't supposed to find her ali—"

The ring finger was much harder to break than the pinky, but Amanda gave it her best effort. She didn't have the strength for one-handed, and so settled on bending the digit as far back as it would go. "You didn't think it wouldmatter? What the f*ck is wrong with you? She's a human being, for Christ sake! She's a wife and a mother, and she cares about people. She matters, you bastard. You goddamn animal!"

"Amanda," Kat cried sharply. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, her eyes enormous in the mirror. It must have been the screaming; Amanda hadn't even realized she'd raised her voice until Kat shouted over it. Jagger oohed and ahhed his way through the final bars of his song, not the least concerned by the goings on in the town car.

"Didn't mean she doesn't matter." Parker heaved a sigh of relief, his body going limp, when Amanda let up on his finger. He sputtered for a moment, as if he might cry. "I just thought— I don't know. I wanted Sandberg and his guys to see me as more than Vaughn's errand boy. Thought I was proving myself."

"So, it had nothing to do with you missing your chance to rape my wife the first time? You're just a sensitive guy who gave into peer pressure. That what you're sayin' to me?" Amanda gripped his finger tightly, prepared to jerk it backward again, if she didn't like his answer. She'd arm-wrestled her fair share of drunken Loganville cowboys—and a few in Atlanta—back in her honkytonk days. All she needed was a little purchase and the right momentum, and she could bring a grown man to his knees.

"No! I-I don't know. I wasn't . . . I didn't think it through, I just did it. Yeah, okay, I don't like getting shot down, but that was years ago, I'm over it. Plenty of other fish in the Sealview sea." Parker tittered nervously at his joke aboutfish, prison slang for new inmates. When no one else joined in, and Amanda gave his knuckle a warning crack, he resumed his crybaby shrinking and mewling. "It ain't me who's out for revenge, it's Vaughn. Whatever she told you, sweetheart, it's a lie. This whole thing was her from the get. She's pissed that you dimed her, and she thinks it's your fault her kid's dead. She wants you to suffer like her."

All of the breath left Amanda's body at once. It was as if the car had been vacuum sealed, or all of the oxygen had spontaneously been sucked out of the atmosphere by some great cosmic force. It was being kicked in the gut—or watching your wife be kicked in the gut repeatedly, endlessly. It was knowing that you were the reason it had happened to her, every rape and every beating, and that your worst fears were one-hundred percent true. You did this to her. It's on you.

"She's the one who wants your kid, too. I was supposed to try to get the baby, but I already had Tildy—"

"Tilly, you f*cktard," Kat shouted.

"Tilly! I already had Tilly by the hand, and she's a cute little thing. She won't be exactly the right age when Vaughn gets out, but close enough." Parker shrugged as if he had chosen a perfectly reasonable alternative.

"Right age?" Amanda heard herself ask vaguely.

He nodded, encouraged by the interest he was generating with his confession. "Yeah, the age her kid was when she died. Twisted, right? I was supposed to play daddy and tell the baby all about her mommy so that when Vaughn got out, the kid would never know the difference. Seemed kinda f*cked up to me, but I always wanted to be a dad. I woulda been a good one to the redhead, I swear. She woulda had a good life with us."

In a daze, Amanda listened to him justifying stealing her child, and reassuring her that Matilda would be unaffected by the change. It seemed so unreal, she could barely make sense of the words coming out of his mouth anymore, let alone the action she took next. Like she was watching it unfold in a dream, she saw herself reach for the utility knife at her hip and flick the blade open with an expert snap. The gun, she reasoned, couldn't be fired inside the car without damaging Kat's hearing and her own, while likely also causing a dangerous motor vehicle accident.

The knife, however, was a moderately safe alternative. She hadn't accounted for the screaming when she stuck the blade into his thigh—it was easier than she expected, at least compared to her last attempt: stabbing Thaddeus Orion with a screwdriver—but Kat managed to swerve back into the appropriate lane after the initial shock wore off. To Amanda it was all background noise, like the sound of horns blaring outside the Lincoln, Kat's frantic shouts from the front seat ("Jesus Christ, Rollins! What the f*ck are you doing?"), and Andy Gibb proving his Bee Gees heritage with a falsetto "I Just Want to Be Your Everything."

Blood oozed from the wound when she pulled the knife out. Ironically, that took more elbow grease than putting it in. It reminded Amanda of carving pumpkins with the kids last October; the chunks came out of the rind so much better if you followed the pattern and poked the holes in first (Olivia's advice always worked best).

But as much as she would have relished sticking Parker a few more times, and maybe carving out some chunks too, she wasn't ready for him to bleed out just yet. The wound in his leg was a gusher, red spurting onto his pants and hers, like rusty water from a clogged faucet. She wondered if she had nicked the femoral artery, but probably not—she'd gone for the outer thigh, not inner. At best, she had sliced through muscle and a superficial vein or two. If he died within the next couple of minutes, she would have her answer.

In the meantime, she needed some answers, and she angled the serrated edge of the knife under Parker's chin, instantly silencing his piteous wails and violent swearing. "You say another word about my kids, I'll cut your throat next," she warned, no longer surprised by how much she meant it. His blood was a thick, warm balm on her thigh. Arterial spray would be as inviting as a hot shower. "Got me? That bitch will never be their mother. She's gonna rot in prison for the rest of her life, just like you will if you don't start talking. Where is Olivia? Where'smy wife?"

"Jesus," Kat muttered, and went on shaking her head and repeating the name under her breath. She appeared to be praying with her eyes open, the steering wheel as fluid in her hands as the blood on Amanda's.

From some ancient corner of Amanda's mind, a song from her past floated up, ghostly and slowed to a dirge-like tempo:There is power, power, wonder-working power in the Blood of the Lamb . . .She caught a glimpse of her grandmama on the organ, feet working the pedals as if she were riding a bike, body swaying gently with the motion; Andy Gibb was at the microphone, leading praise and worship, his falsetto bringing the congregation that much closer to their Heavenly Father.

She hummed the next few bars of the hymn into Parker's ear, concluding with a singsong, "In the precious Blood of the Lamb," as she thought about sawing the blade back and forth against his carotid. Would it feel like slicing through a Thanksgiving ham, or something less resistant, like tenderloin? There were a lot of cords and tubes to cut through, so maybe it was more of a bow strings drawn across the neck of a violin type deal. Whatever the sensation, at least it would stop his incessant whimpering. That was almost reason enough to make like Nike and just do it.

"I-I can't tell you," Parker whispered, barely audible over Gibb refusing to be some puppet on a string. He gagged, putting on a show of not being able to swallow around the sharp teeth at his throat. They nipped at his skin, drawing tendrils of blood so brilliantly red it was mesmerizing.Power, power, wonder-working power. "If I rat them out, I'm dead. You saw what they're doing to her. That'll be nothing compared to what they do to me. They'll probably string me up by my gonads and—"

"You're not gonna have any gonads left, you don't start talking." Amanda jammed her Glock into his crotch again, despite the awkward angle. It was overkill, a knife to the neck and a gun to the genitals, but it got her message across, loud and clear. "And don't you ever f*cking compare yourself to her again, you sonuvabitch. What they'd do to you will look like a walk in Bryant f*cking Park by the time I'm through with your disgusting rapist ass. Tell me where she is."

"It'll be worse for her if you kill me. Hey, hey, hear me out." Parker clamped his knees together, as if he were trying to keep a dog from nosing his privates. He couldn't squirm above the waist without risking a severe throat laceration, and his stiff upper body and craning neck made him look like he was in the stocks. "I've been the—what's it called, the liaivonfor Vaughn this whole time. If I go missing and she can't communicate with them, they're gonna think the buyer punked out on them and that's gonna be real bad for your girl."

"It's liaison, you stupid f*ck. You're not selling perfume door to door." Amanda's wrist was cramping from holding the knife in the same pinched position, so she drew it back suddenly and hit him in the forehead with the butt of the handle. He was lucky, she'd wanted to use the pointy end. "And you're giving yourself too much credit. If I have to kill you because you won't talk, Vaughn won't have you to pin this on anymore, so I'll makehertalk. Either way, I'm getting an answer, and who knows, if you're the one who gives it to me, I might decide to let you live."

Lying had always been Amanda's strong suit.

And Parker did pause to contemplate the proposal, sweat and tears mingling on his skin for an oddly thick sheen that resembled KY Jelly. The thought turned Amanda's stomach, and she visualized shooting him point blank in the face to dispel the sickening imagery. She would rather look at his brains oozing from his forehead than his ugly bruised face covered in the lube-like mixture of fluids. When he shook his head, flicking beads of moisture at her, including one that landed on her lip, it was the last conscious experience her brain encoded.

That was what Olivia had tasted while he held her down and hurt her on top of that filthy mattress. Part of him was in Amanda now, the man who had raped her wife. If she transformed into a monster like him, he had no one to blame but himself.

"I can't, man. I don't really know how to get there any—" he was saying as the blade went into his shoulder. This time it scraped bone, and the sound from his mouth was enough to shatter glass. Andy Gibb had nothing on Matthew Parker. He sang out one long, high note that made Kat weave abruptly across the road and into oncoming traffic, if the chorus of horns was any indication.

No collision came, and Parker's screams intermingled with Kat yelling, "Oh my God, Rollins, you're gonna kill him," as Amanda continued stabbing. It felt like fifty times—the upstroke that almost touched the ceiling, the downstroke, so swift and penetrative it was org*smic—but when she stopped to examine her progress, there were only four other gashes in his shirt and jeans. Widely spaced, frenetic. It was amateurish, but she would get the hang of it with a little more practice.

"Wait," Parker coughed, as if he were spitting up blood. He wasn't. Faker. He was panting, though, and he had undoubtedly pissed himself. The dark spot spreading on the front and inner thighs of his pants wasn't from his wounds. "Wait. I'll— I'll tell you. Please just st-stop."

"Is that what she said to you?" Amanda asked. She brought up the knife, leveling the tip near his eyeball, close enough that an unexpected pothole or speed bump would probably result in permanent blindness on that side. "Did you stop when she begged you not to rape her? When you undid that big manly belt of yours and beat her with it? That Jack Daniel's buckle tearing chunks out of her skin . . . "

Parker squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head hard. Like a kid trying to get rid of a nightmare. "I don't have a Jack Daniel's buckle. It's a P for Parker."

Heat flashed in Amanda's cheeks when she registered her mistake. This bawling little bitch wasn't the one who owned the Jack Daniel's belt—that was her daddy. Her daddy who beat the holy hell out of her mama with Old No. 7. Who tore out chunks of her with each lashing. No more than eight or nine years old at the time, Amanda had tended to the wounds herself, counting every one of the marks on her mother's body and vowing that she would make her daddy sorry for what he'd done. She never did follow through on that promise.

"I don't think she even felt it," Parker was saying, frantic, feverish, and tossing out whatever idiotic excuse came to mind. "Sh-she barely moved. I thought she would scream or something, but she j-just kinda laid there and grunted. I quit after a minute, since I wasn't getting much out of her. She was already pretty m-messed up by then, and you couldn't really tell where any of the blood was coming from."

Any part of that might have set Amanda off, but it was the way he could have been describing the beating or the rape that bothered her the most. He hadn't even cared what he got to do to Olivia, as long as it involved inflicting the most degradation and pain. Well, as Amanda's whiskey-lovin' daddy used to say, what goes around comes around twice as hard and covered in sh*t. She raised the knife again, ready to plunge it into his neck and put an end to his mindless blathering.

"Amanda, don't!" Kat ordered, and tapped the brakes, throwing the occupants of the backseat forward enough to prevent another stabbing. "He said he'd tell us where she is. Let's just get to Liv first, then we'll worry about what to do with him, okay?"

Caught up in the heat of the moment, Amanda either hadn't heard Parker offer to give a location, or she'd already forgotten. It was the only reason she didn't kill him then and there. "You gonna tell me where my wife is?" she asked, pointing the tip of the knife at his eye again, but this time touching it to the swollen purple skin underneath. With a little pressure and a scooping motion she could pluck out his eyeball. A tear of blood bloomed from the puffy bottom lid and slid down the blade, so very tempting. "No bullsh*t? You dick around with me, I swear to God—"

"No bullsh*t! I can lead you there, it's not even that far." Parker tried to glance out the window, but his fear of enucleation kept him from turning his head or making any sudden movements. "Could I just tell you how to get there, and you can drop me off somewhere before—"

"WHERE IS SHE?" Amanda shook the knife at him, screaming the question directly into his face, her hatred so all-consuming it left her breathless. Chest heaving, she sat looking down on him and seething. He had cowered from her the second she moved the knife, and now he was twisted at the waist and half-huddled against the door, the back of his head and shoulders pressed to the leather panel.

She'd always wondered how her father could look down on her weeping, battered mother and not feel anything but contempt and the desire to inflict more pain. Now she knew.

"Take Lincoln Tunnel," said Matthew Parker, slumping back on the armrest, his chin almost touching his chest. He was pale from blood loss, his eyes large and wild in his face. He didn't look so co*cky anymore. "She's in a shipping yard in Jersey. We can be there in fifteen minutes."

. . .

Chapter 28: Blood Moon

Chapter Text

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.

- "Serenity Prayer," Gamblers Anonymous

Chapter 28.

Blood Moon

. . .

All that time, and Olivia had been less than four miles away, if you counted the tunnel. It was almost a straight shot from the precinct, and probably visible from Pier 57 on clear days. Today was one of those, the sun pouring down onto the asphalt and glinting off the once-colorful corrugated metal of hundreds of shipping containers. Most had a patina of age and disuse, although there were brighter, newer ones mixed in. They resembled giant Tetris blocks, stacked so high in some spots that Jersey seemed hellbent on keeping up with Manhattan's skyscrapers.

Farther down the riverside, glimpsed as they drove past, was a construction site for what appeared to be another warehouse like the one they were approaching. There were more containers inside, Parker had assured Amanda, when she expressed doubt that Olivia was caged in such a spacious building. The box in the livestream wasn't nearly as large, and Amanda had seen sunlight the few times the doors were open offscreen.

"The loading doors were open too," Parker said, indicating the row of garage-like doors ahead. "And there's lots of windows." He tipped his head at the massive squares of plate glass that lined the top of the building, above the docks.

"I can see that," Amanda snapped, giving him a shove forward, but not releasing the back of his shirt, in case he tried to run. Unlikely, considering he could barely stand erect, his body curved into a question mark, as if it couldn't quite comprehend why it was bleeding from so many places. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet with a rough yank backward. "You better hope to God she's really in there, otherwise you're looking at the last condemned warehouse you'll ever see."

"It's not condemned. It's a front company for Sandberg's . . . other operations." Parker gave a deep, bronchial cough that rattled his entire six-foot-plus frame. It sounded like a lung was coming up with the phlegm, and Amanda wondered vaguely if she had nicked something pulmonary during her tantrum with the knife. She didn't think she had gotten close to anything that vital, but she didn't exactly have full control, either. "Opens it a few months at a time as a legit biz, rakes in the dough, then he's free to use it for whatever business venture comes along next. Laundering, trafficking, illegal gamblin—"

"I know what a front company is, dipsh*t," Amanda growled, tempted to slap him in the back of the head just to shut him up. Not so long ago, this warehouse would have been the object of her single-minded obsession for a very different reason than today. In fact, it was in a place like this that she'd first encountered Sondra Vaughn and one of the men who would become Olivia's rapist. In a place like this, she had set Vaughn's demented, horrific plan in motion. And for what? A few cheap thrills.

I'm so sorry, Liv, she thought, fighting back a sob.I'm so goddamn sorry.

"Shouldn't we call for backup now?" Kat gazed up at the looming structure with uncertainty, surveying it like a kid outside a haunted funhouse. She looked like Dorothy on her way to meet the Wizard, each step tentative and creeping, except Dorothy hadn't wandered into Oz's throne room with her 9mm drawn and sweeping the vicinity for any approaching threats. She damn well should have, the dumb little Kansas hick.

"No," Amanda said flatly. The closer they had gotten to the port Parker mapped out for them, the more certain she'd become that she would not be calling for backup, no matter what the circ*mstances. No way was she waiting around for them to show up before she went looking for Olivia, and no way would she be able to handle the situation how she deemed fit if the entire NYPD and FBI descended on the warehouse. What was the point of Dana handing her full control, only to have Amanda hand it right back?

Kat didn't need to know all that, though. She just needed to stay alert, stay quiet, and watch Amanda's six.

"You are my backup, and besides, we don't have phones to call it in. Left 'em back at the precinct, remember?" Amanda kept Parker in the lead, walking him forward with a firm, insistent hand, the other pointing the gun at his spine. Snipers were unlikely in this setting, but armed traffickers could easily pop up out of nowhere and start firing. If that happened, her human shield could take the brunt of it, and there would be one less scumbag rapist for her to worry about. "Let's just get to Liv first, then we'll go from there."

"But we don't know how many of them are in there," Kat pointed out, as if it were Amanda's first time going in blind somewhere she might be fired upon or outnumbered. Of course the Labott standoff and the Mangler's lair both predated Kat's reassignment to SVU, and Amanda had been extra strict about letting the officer get away with similar behavior; yes, because of Mike Dodds' death, but even more so because Olivia would take all the blame onto herself if anything happened to another member of her squad.

Kat really didn't get just how far Amanda planned to go with this, how willing she was to do whatever it took to save her wife. But she was going to learn.

"We could be walking into an ambush. And if we get popped, then who's gonna help Liv?" Kat's voice faded as though she had glanced over her shoulder, but when Amanda looked back, she was retrieving something from her waistband. "I've got my radio, I'm calling it— hey!"

Before the walkie talkie made it to Kat's lips, Amanda swiped it from her hand and hurled it as far as she could across the shipping container lot, which was pretty far thanks to the Rollins' rocket-arm. Her aim came entirely from her mama, but the velocity and distance were all Mean Dean. The walkie collided with a grimy red container that looked like an old boxcar, and clattered onto the pavement. "I'm going in. You can either be my backup, or you can go fix your radio and give away our location to all the dirty cops the Sandman's got in his back pocket. Probably have half of Jersey PD here to pop us in five minutes."

"She's not wrong," Parker muttered. He peered up from his hunched posture like a dungeon captive with long, bedraggled hair and sensitive eyesight after years of confinement to the dark. Multiple stab wounds took a lot out of a person, it turned out. "Sandberg's got a lot of pull over here, that's why he does business on this side of the Hudson. Has friends in NYPD too, though. And believe me, they don't want him going down."

Amanda fixed anI told you solook on Kat, giving her no time to weigh options. "Can I count on you or not, Tamin?" She hated involving a rookie in her haphazard rescue mission, but she had already crossed so many lines in the last half hour, there was no turning back. She would undoubtedly lose her job, and Kat probably would too—hell, they might even both end up incarcerated themselves—but in the meantime they would find Olivia and get her to safety.

That was all that mattered now.

"Fine," Kat sighed. She gazed at the building warily. "Just don't go all stabby again. And don't shoot anybody unless you have to. Okay, Rollins?"

Amanda barely heard the request. She was already halfway inside the warehouse entrance.

Strange, the door being unlocked like that. Amanda chalked it up to powerful, arrogant men who thought they were impervious to arrest, and to the somewhat secluded nature of their headquarters. Parker's directions hadn't taken Kat and Amanda too far down the shoreline, but the stacked shipping containers created a soundproof—and visual—barrier around the warehouse, and the nearby construction added a wall of noise that prevented detection. It was the perfect cover for a major crime operation, hidden in plain sight, yet not so heavily guarded it drew suspicion.

"I don't see a container," Amanda said quietly, nestling the muzzle of her gun into the base of Parker's neck. Gunfire would likely attract the wrong kind of attention, but if this was some kind of wild goose chase, she would blow the bastard to kingdom come. She started to say as much, when he hissed over his shoulder at her.

"It's on the other side of those stairs, chill. There's nowhere to get in on that side, that's why we came in over here."

The stairs he tried to gesture to, forgetting his hands were still cuffed behind his back, and shrugging in that direction instead, were hard to miss. Straight ahead, they stacked upon each other in a scaffolding-esque labyrinth of steel bars and beams, and steps ascending and descending at every juncture. At the top, reaching to the lofty ceiling, was an enclosed room that resembled a stadium skybox. Amanda narrowed her eyes, not liking the looks of it. She didn't like the looks of any of this. But whatever she was getting herself into, it was bringing her closer to finding Olivia, of that she was certain.

"Okay, you first." Amanda poked the back of his shoulder with the Glock, guiding him toward the first flight of stairs. He balked at the foot of it, refusing to climb.

"I don't think I can make it," he wheezed, propping his elbow on the railing as if he might collapse at any minute. Most of his wounds had stopped bleeding, but one in his abdomen seeped a stringy tendril of blood so slender it looked like a red cobweb.

Amanda had firsthand experience getting stabbed—and shot—in the gut, and she knew how much it hurt. Not that she sympathized in the least with this prick. He'd gotten exactly what he deserved (actually, no; justice would have been f*cking him with the knife, the way he had thrust into Olivia over and over . . . ), and Amanda didn't feel an ounce of guilt or pity. If she could yank a screwdriver out of her obliques and still manage to pull herself up cliffside, with Olivia's assistance, then Parker could drag his whiny ass up a few stairs. "You can, and you will, unless you want this gun up your ass crack as incentive."

Apparently, he didn't want that, for he slowly began to climb, his big clumsy feet slogging up to the next step, one at a time, making a noise like someone dragging a peg leg. His tragic groans were laughable, and Amanda chuckled bitterly to herself, prodding him ever higher, until they reached the landing that overlooked an arena-sized expanse of warehouse, large enough to fit multiple shipping containers, lined up end-to-end, or stacked to the ceiling. But only one stood in the middle of the room, windowless and sealed up tight from whoever might try to get in—or out.

It looked about the right size for the box Amanda had been staring into for the past three days, watching horror after horror unfold. Maybe twenty-feet long, eight-feet high, probably about the same in width. Plenty enough space to store one small, defenseless woman who was bound, bleeding, and broken, at least till you were able to sell her to the highest bidder.

The sight of it made Amanda's heart leap into her throat, and she felt the rest of herself springing into action along with it. No other thought in her mind but getting to Olivia, she shoved past Parker to descend the stairs, nearly knocking him down the full flight. He skidded past a few steps and fell backward—forward would have been much less fortunate for him—landing heavily on his rump.

"Watch him," she called to Kat, almost slipping on the same blood trail that caused Parker's wipeout. Thankfully, her reflexes were faster and her hands weren't cuffed behind her back. She stuffed her gun into its holster, grabbed the railings on either side of the stairs, and swung her legs up and over, vaulting Parker like a low fence or a rock. She practically zip-lined past the remaining stairs, feet barely touching the treads, and hit the ground running. As soon as she reached the container and chunked aside the open padlock, she threw its doors wide and said the name that went with the face she was conjuring: "Liv!"

But the box was empty, like the huge packages Dean Rollins used to wrap up for Christmas morning, laughing hysterically when his two screaming daughters tore into them—convinced they held a pony, a drum set, a dirt bike—only to find nothing inside. Occasionally he mixed it up and threw in the socks and underwear Beth Anne bought them each year. The Sandman and his thugs hadn't bothered with consolation prizes, though.

There was no sign of Olivia at all, not even the filthy mattress or the lopsided desk that were undoubtedly covered in her blood and sweat and tears. The interior didn't smell, either, not like the men had claimed Olivia's cell reeked. No way had they gotten rid of her and cleaned out the dingy container already. Amanda had been played. That's what you got when you made the mistake of trusting a man.

"She in there?" Kat asked, midway down the steps, steadying Parker while he swayed to and fro, his head drooping low, as if he had tied on a few too many.

Without answering, Amanda took her gun from the holster, fully intending to shoot Parker dead right then and there. She would make sure not to hit her fellow officer during commission, but she couldn't guarantee that Kat wouldn't get splattered. Blood and brain matter were highly unpredictable; that was why she had steered clear of CSU. Puzzling over spatter patterns and flecks of biological goop eventually would have driven her crazy. She needed to go out into the world and get her hands dirty, not be stuck inside some lab somewhere.

And she was about to get her hands very dirty.

Then a voice overhead clucked its tongue and sang out, "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" from the platform beside the skybox. Amanda recognized the speaker by his co*cky, irreverent tone before she ever looked up into the face of Liam Sandberg, of the serial-killer eyes. The man she had laughed off Olivia's fear of at the bagel shop; the man she had watched raping Olivia multiple times over the past few days, including not more than an hour ago. The man who literally helped drag Olivia from her arms.

Carlos Riva was beside him, a Desert Eagle aimed at Parker and Kat. The silver chamber of the .50 glinted in the streaming sunlight from the plate-glass windows above. So did the sweat on Riva's bald head, giving him an otherworldly shine to go with his harsh Anton LaVey features. Lucifer was once the morning star too, the bright and shining one, before he was cast out of Heaven for trying to usurp God. Riva gazed down at Amanda, flashed her a sinister grin, and winked.Hey, ese, been a while.

Arms crossed on the railing where he leaned, Liam brandished his gun as well, a slightly more modest .45 that was sleeker than the Desert Eagle and probably wouldn't knock him on his ass with the kickback. He probably couldn't talk Daddy into buying him the big boy gun his sidekick was using, Amanda thought, sneering to herself. These fools always thought the size of their weapons was indicative of their power, but all it told her was that they were insecure about their ability to hit and subdue a target with normal ammunition.

She was not.

"If I'd known it was going to be a party, I would've brought snacks," said Liam, wearing his sleazy little smirk. Amanda couldn't wait to wipe that look off his creepy, bug-eyed face. Her plain old 9mm would be more than sufficient for the task. He cut his eyes sharply to Parker then, lip curled in disgust. "You gave us up to a couple of bitch cops, you enormous wang?Geez-us. I told Angel not to let a pantywaist like you in on a deal. And they call me the incompetent one."

"Christ, can't you see I'm bleeding here? That crazy bitch stabbed me, like, fifteen times," Parker wailed, kicking out his foot in Amanda's direction. He spat over the railing at her, but the loogie didn't even come close, just dropped to the floor below with a heavysplat.

"Please, it was five times, tops." Kat jerked him by the collar to shut him up, her Glock wedged between his shoulder blades. She threw wary looks up at Riva and his very large gun as she spoke, angling her body behind Parker as best she could with the limited space on the stairs. In all likelihood, a caliber that huge would tear through him and lodge itself fatally in her, a fact she undoubtedly knew, if her wan cheeks and saucer eyes were any indication. But she wasn't letting her fear outweigh her sass: "And she didn't hit anything important enough to shut you up, so quit whining, or I will make it fifteen. Bullets."

"Where is Angelov?" Amanda asked, interrupting Liam's wild laughter at Tamin's threat. The idiot kept waving his gun around like he was conducting an orchestra, and she fought the urge to duck each time it swung her way. Little by little, she edged toward the open door of the shipping container, prepared to fling herself behind it when the shooting started. "Get that tattooed freak out here, we're placing y'all under arrest."

Liam sobered at the mention of the tattooed freak, but only enough to shake his head. His off-center irises appeared to rattle in his eyeballs when he did that, a disconcerting visual that reminded Amanda of those plastic googly eyes they glued on sock puppets or greeting cards. "Sorry, Detective, no can do. He's, uh, playing with the kitty right now. She's kind of a bad little puss*, but if anyone can straighten her out, my man Angel can. He's got a real big—"

I can't wait to suck your big, yummy co*ck, Angel. Those were the words ringing in Amanda's ears when she took the first shot; those awful, vile words Nicholas Angelov forced Olivia to say before orally sodomizing her, one of many times that day alone. And then her ears really were ringing as the bullet pinged off the metal rail, inches from the spot where Liam Sandberg's arms were draped. Or had been, until he reflexively dropped into a crouch at the crack of Amanda's gun inside the hollow building.

"Dude, what the f*ck," Liam shouted, his fingers laced together above his head, the .45 slanted at the ceiling. He looked like he had gotten caught in an unexpected bomb drill. Behind him, Riva had barely reacted to the shot, save to turn his face aside as if he'd been blinded by the glint off his own pistol. Liam peered out from under the cover of his large reticulan hands, a kid playing peekaboo. "We're just having a nice conversation, and you take a shot at me? Maybe Parker was right, you are a crazy bitch."

"If I was trying to hit you, you'd be dead, junior. I shot the railing to give you a chance to answer me like an actual human being, instead of a smartass punk." Truthfully, Amanda had been aiming for the gun he was swishing around like a magic wand, goddamned fairy princess that he was, but he didn't need to know that. She'd only missed by an inch or so, anyway. "Now, I assume you're talking about my wife, with that kitty cat bullsh*t y'all are on about. You're going to be answering to something a lot sweeter than that from your cellmates soon, so I'll let it go this time. But if you don't tell me where the f*ck she is right now? I'll aim low."

Devilish grin returning, Liam grabbed the bar overhead and struck a simian pose, thrusting his head forward through the hoop of his spindly arms, his upper half dangling, bottom half squatting. Amanda thought of the chimpanzees again, and she knew then what she would do. She would kill the alpha to protect what was hers. "Hey, Parker," he said, chucking the name over the landing like he was unleashing a wad of saliva too, "tell her who started the kitty thing."

Head hung miserably, Parker made a lame attempt at glancing up to the landing, failed, then peered sidelong at Amanda instead. "Me. She went by Kat at Sealview. Short for Katrina or something. Just easier to think of her as that dirty little junkie whor* I first met than as a police captain, I guess. No offense."

No offense. Amanda almost pulled the trigger again, out of sheer rage alone. Why on earth would she be offended that he had reduced her wife to street trash—NHI, no humans involved, that's how they labeled the case files for the junkie whor*s in other units outside of SVU—so he could f*ck her, guilt-free? Who in their right mind would be offended by that?

God, she should have killed him back in the car. The expression on Kat's face, after hearing her own name used in such a degrading way, suggested she was thinking the same thing as Amanda. Her weapon wasn't visible from its position on the other side of Parker's fat head, but Amanda was willing to bet her finger had tightened on the trigger.Do it, Amanda silently encouraged her.Do it, or I will.

To the little Sandberg sh*t, she said out loud, "I don't give a f*ck who started what, you're gonna tell me where my wife is, or I'm going to take you and this place apart piece by piece, you understand me? Your daddy and idiot brother are gonna come home and find your walleyed ass hanging from these rafters, and the family business in police custody."

Liam's smile slipped at the mention of his idiot brother—Riva sniffed with amusem*nt at "walleyed"—and he stood to his full height, towering above like a dictator on a balcony, addressing the masses. "You talk a good game, Detective, but there's one itty bitty problem I see with your logic. There's only . . . one, two . . . " He put on a show of counting on his fingers with the muzzle of his gun. "Two of you ladies, and, what, like . . . four, five? Five of us big bad boogeymen. I don't see any backup."

He cupped a hand behind his ear. "Hark! I heareth not a siren in yonder dell. What about you, Reevs, you think she's got her cop buddies on the way, or is she full of sh*t? I vote sh*t."

"sh*t," Riva confirmed.

"They got anybody coming to rescue them, Parker? Or is Mrs. puss* Cat feeding us a bunch of kitty doody right out of the litter box?" Liam was grinning again, enjoying drawing the confrontation out longer and keeping Olivia's whereabouts under wraps. Amanda honestly didn't care if Parker revealed that no reinforcements were on the way or not, all she wanted was to hold Olivia in her arms, to take away all the pain and humiliation she had experienced in this terrible place, at the hands of these terrible men.

But Kat was not so eager to have their solo mission announced to the room. She snaked her arm around Parker's shoulders, clamping a hand over his mouth, and redirected her aim at Riva, though her eyes flicked back and forth between him and Liam. "There's three of them here," she said to Amanda, as if they were alone in the warehouse, not separated and outnumbered. "If the Angel guy's with Benson, who's the fifth? He said there's five. Who else is here?"

"Oopsie," said Liam, putting a finger to his rounded lips like he had let slip a guarded secret. It was infuriating how playful the psychopaths always were. Even Riva looked annoyed at his partner's antics. Under different circ*mstances, he would probably just shoot the kid in the back of the head and be done with it, but no such luck this time. Hardened criminal or not, killing your boss's eldest son—no matter how obnoxious he might be—was generally bad form all around. "Guess I let thatcatout of the bag. See what I did there?" He tossed a wink down at Kat like it was a penny dropped into a wishing well. "Good catch, Officer. You still single, or—"

His attempt to hit on Tamin was interrupted by the skybox door opening behind him. From inside, the younger Sandberg boy, Xander, stepped onto the landing and gazed over the railing, tentative and curious. Number five. "Can I come out now, Liam? I don't like it in there, she just keeps crying. I want to say hi to the new girls. Hi!" He waved at Kat and Amanda, oblivious to the tension in the air and the pistol co*cked in his direction. "Are you the other girl's wife? She tried to hit me. I don't like her anymore, she's mean. My brother says she's a lesbo and a cop, so she's a c*nt twice over."

Amanda knew then that she had crossed a line she could never get back over. She felt not a single ounce of remorse, apprehension, or guilt for the decision she was about to make. She didn't see a boy with an intellectual disability in front of her, she saw only another monster who had violated Olivia, who laughed at her suffering and shame. It wasn't the dog's fault when it got rabies and had to be put down, but it still had to be done; Xander Bergström was no different.

She would give him one last chance, though. One final opportunity to prove himself better than his older brother, who was trying to usher him back toward the skybox. "Hey, Xander," she called, waiting for the rabid dog to stop and turn, "Where is she? Where's the mean lady who tried to hit you?"

Xander listened intently as Liam pulled him close and whispered in his ear. His brow furrowed in concentration—and confusion—at whatever the other man had told him, but he drew back sporting a big, inane smile when Liam nodded encouragement and slapped him on the chest, building up his confidence. Treating him like a real man, a brother in arms. "Probably still in the ground I drilled her into with my Mega— what is it, Li? Oh, with my Megatron clock."

"co*ck," Liam clarified, beaming as brightly as his little brother. He ruffled the kid's hair like he'd just won his first peewee tournament, and they laughed together, trying to wrestle each other into headlocks, the better to deliver noogies in.

If they hadn't been horsing around, Xander might have survived, but at the exact moment Amanda took the shot, aiming for his shoulder, he jerked his head in that direction. The bullet tore through his lower jaw, which exploded on the skybox windows beside him like a rotten Halloween pumpkin hit with a baseball bat. At first he couldn't make sense of what had happened; no one could, including Amanda, who watched the boy's teeth scatter in ten different directions, and kept wondering where the white shrapnel had come from. Something dangled down the front of his shirt like a rubbery red fish on a line. His tongue, she realized, as he fumbled with the useless organ, attempting to stuff it back into a mouth that wasn't there.

"What the f*ck," Liam shrieked, once he was certain the blood that went off in his face as if he'd detonated a dye pack in a bag of stolen cash wasn't his. He gaped in horror at Xander, who clawed at his own face and made frantic gibberish noises, then pointed at his missing jaw like it might go unnoticed. "What the f*ck! You shot my little brother, you bitch! You f*cking psycho c*nt—"

Anything else that came next was drowned out by gunfire, as the shootout began in earnest, spurred by that first inciting and misplaced shot. Riva fired several rounds from his gleaming Desert Eagle, the pops as impressive as the gun itself, and disorienting in the enclosed building. Amanda imagined this was what a war zone felt like, as she leapt behind the open door of the shipping container just in time. Liam peppered the other side with a barrage of bullets, steel colliding with steel in a metallic drumbeat that sounded like the fist of God. His knuckles dented the door in with each punch, and Amanda pressed herself flat against the container, in case they broke through.

She felt the thump of each discharge vibrating in the wall behind her, transforming the box into a living, breathing thing. A huge and rumbling beast, with hot gunpowder breath, waiting to consume Amanda if she stepped an inch too far to the left or right. Luckily, Liam's shots were too wild and furious for him to hit anything below the door, where her feet were visible in the space between it and the ground. He roared as he fired, so apoplectic he could be heard above the deafening noise, the ringing in Amanda's ears.

Through the crack in the door, she saw him run across the landing, charging toward the flight of stairs where Kat had ducked behind Parker. It appeared most or all of the gunfire had been concentrated on Amanda's position, neither the officer or the CO taking any hits, despite the chaotic outpouring. No sooner had the thought presented itself to Amanda than another shot rang out, singular and deliberate, and Matthew Parker's head burst apart like a balloon with too much helium.

His body collapsed on the stairs, heavy but not yet limp, muscles still spasming as the last few synapses his brain had fired tried to complete their tasks. Those brains were now splattered all over Kat, his blood misting her skin and the railing like red spray paint.

Stunned and blinking away the blood, she squinted out of her garish mask in time to see Riva's Desert Eagle pointed directly at her head, ready for round two.

"No!" Amanda shouted, voice muffled in her own ears. She raised her Glock, prepared to step out from behind the cover that had just saved her life, in order to save Kat's. But the gun that went off in the half-second journey from one side of the door to the other was not the Desert Eagle—even partially deaf, the caliber was distinguishable from the blunt, less guttural pop of a smaller pistol—and she peered from her hiding spot at the same moment Riva stumbled backward, clutching his lower abdomen.

"Puta," he mouthed, sliding down the support beam he'd fallen against. He sat down hard on the metal plank below, the massive gun dropping to his side as he grimaced at his wound. Blood had already begun to trickle through the grater-like holes in the floor treads, creating a slow crimson rain. Gut shot was a particularly nasty way to go, Amanda knew from experience; she'd only survived it by sheer luck and by Olivia's fierce, unwavering love and determination to keep her alive.

I prayed, Olivia told her once, after that whole mess (a walk in the park, compared with this one).I don't even remember what I said, but I prayed and you lived.

Amanda didn't pray. She set her sights on Liam Sandberg as he ran wildly in Kat's direction, as if he planned to trample her with his size thirteen Converse. Kat had been quick on the draw with Riva, but she hesitated for a second too long with Liam—who could say why; perhaps his youth, or some fear response that froze her, like being charged by a lion—and the next moment he was bearing down on her.

Just as he pounced, Amanda pulled the trigger, clipping him in the shoulder. His opposite arm snapped up on reflex, pumping out two rounds in rapid succession, one that whizzed by Kat, and the other narrowly missing Amanda, the hiss of it audible in the ear it would have shorn off with another fraction of an inch. She dodged aside, firing blindly, and must have caught him in the thigh, because he grabbed it and staggered forward, still headed for the stairs.

The third bullet came not from Amanda's gun but Kat's, taking him full in the chest, and more than likely shredding his heart at that proximity. He stumbled back onto the platform railing, looking up at Kat like she'd betrayed him, then pitched over the side and plummeted at least twenty-five feet, landing face first on the concrete. Amanda imagined she heard his bones crunching on impact, but it was probably just her gritted teeth, the only sounds she could hear coming from inside her own head.

"Hey, Tamin, you good?" she called, not expecting an answer from the officer, whose eardrums were undoubtedly worse off than Amanda's, being in the midst of all that gunfire. She was surprised when Kat did turn around, a hand at her neck, mouth working, as if she were trying to speak and discovered herself mute. She looked on the verge of panic, and Amanda waved for her to calm down, to breathe. You'd think someone who wanted to be a detective would understand that hearing loss was normal when weapons were discharged and you weren't wearing protective gear.

Pointing to her ear, she mouthed, "Give it a minute," and stepped cautiously from behind the steel door, intending to check on Liam. It was doubtful he had survived that last shot to center mass, let alone the fall, but it was always a good idea to disarm the perps, just to be safe.

Then she saw the blood. Not the puddle that expanded beneath Liam on the hard, unforgiving floor, and not the gentle droplets that sprinkled the ground under Riva's seat on the landing overhead. Not even the gout that came from Xander's half-mouth like a fountain of blood, coating the Ghostbusters logo on his shirt and the crotch of his jeans as he stumped on his knees, still not comprehending that his life was over, that finding the lower half of his face was pointless.

No, this blood came from Kat, seeping between her fingers where they clutched at her neck. It was so dark and copious, Amanda mistook it for oil until her logical brain kicked in, and with it, the truth of what she was seeing: the bullet hadn't whizzed by Kat, as Amanda first thought—it had struck her in the throat. Someplace vital, judging by the amount of blood pouring from beneath her palm.

In the back of Amanda's mind, she recalled learning in one forensics class or another that arterial blood was much brighter than venous blood, so it probably wasn't the carotid. But you could bleed to death just as quickly from the jugular. Mere minutes, in fact. Less without applying pressure.

"Oh my God, Kat," Amanda said, and it might have been a whisper or a shout, it made no difference. She desperately wanted to remove the noise-canceling headphones that seemed to have muted any sound softer than a semi-automatic—it threw off her other senses and made her feel trapped inside her own body—but there was nothing to reach for, just lank blond hair that hadn't been washed in days. "No!"

She ran as if in a dream, her brain having an entirely separate experience from her body. The strange rustling sound effects and the metallic smell of so much blood and spent ammo was a bit like being on the Moon. The handful of people who had actually walked on the Earth's satellite all concurred: it smelled like gunpowder. What was the tagline from Alien? In space no one can hear you scream. Amanda was on a silent, bloody moon, running in slow motion while Kat fell down, down, down.

The officer landed at the foot of the stairs, gazing up at the ceiling almost serenely, though the rest of her body convulsed as if it were having a seizure. Amanda dropped to her knees at Kat's shoulder, frightened to find the floor already slick with blood. It soaked into the material of her pants, warm and viscous as syrup. And it was coming so fast. So terribly fast. "No, no, no, no, no," she cried, trying to pry Kat's hand from the wound, in hopes of providing more adequate pressure. "Let go, Tamin, I need to look—"

When the hand finally did come away, too slippery to sustain a tight hold, when Amanda did get a look at the damage to her fellow officer's neck, she wished she hadn't. If Kat did live, she would likely need extensive surgery just to be able to resume normal activities, such as breathing, swallowing, and talking. Knowing Kat Tamin, that would be a challenge she'd meet head-on and conquer with the same fierce determination she showed every day on the job.

Problem was, she would never get the chance to do it. She had lost too much blood already, anyone could see that, and even with Amanda's fingers adding careful pressure (too hard, and she risked cutting off air supply and who knew what else), at best she was just delaying the inevitable. By the time she fashioned some sort of tourniquet that slowed the blood loss but didn't block blood or oxygen to the brain, then found a phone and called for help, Kat would be gone. And if she stayed put, using her hands as a tourniquet, and praying that someone had overheard the gunshots and called 911 for her, Kat would still bleed out in the meantime.

Amanda knew because that was exactly what was happening now. Kat's skin had taken on a sickly white hue, cold and clammy to the touch. Her breathing was rapid and labored, coming in short bursts that didn't seem to be released, just that continual gasping like a record skipping. She couldn't focus enough to follow Amanda with her eyes, her gaze drifting aimlessly, the way Sammie's did the first few weeks of her life. "Oh no, Kat," Amanda said, and her pitch was so high and frantic, it pierced the stuffy feeling in her ears like a straight pin through a cotton ball. She must have been shrieking, though she was unaware of doing so. "Hold on, Tamin, please. Stay with me. Stay—"

Kat finally found Amanda's face above her, a moment of recognition flitting over her features, a bit of relief in all the confusion and dark red terror. She moved her blue-tinged lips, the only part of herself she still had control over, but Amanda couldn't pick out any actual words. The officer was close with her family, especially her sisters, and people generally wanted to say goodbye to loved ones at the end. Or maybe she was praying. People did that at the end too.

Try as she might, Amanda couldn't think of a single prayer to contribute, other than the one from GA.God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She cradled Kat's head in her lap, hands fumbling in the blood, trying and failing to find purchase, and she prayed that useless prayer. Serenity, courage, wisdom. Please let this be a thing I can change. Please don't let this kid die in my arms. Father, please take this cup from me.

And seconds later, another quote by Jesus: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Kat was dead, her eyes half-lidded, her lips still slightly parted—in prayer or goodbye, Amanda would never know. Without a heartbeat to control it, the blood no longer flowed from her neck in a rhythmic gush, but trickled out like leftover water from a faulty tap. The need for pressure had ceased, and so had the need for prayer. Amanda gave up on both, staring dazedly at her crimson-stained hands as if they belonged to someone else. She couldn't go searching for Olivia, covered in another cop's blood. It would scare the hell out of her, the way the mess at Kat's throat made her look dismembered to Amanda, like she was holding a severed head in her lap.

Shrinking back at the thought, she tried to slide her legs free and ease the dead officer's head onto the ground while using her hands as little as possible. "I'm sorry," she told Kat, unable to look directly into the vacant face that just minutes ago had been set with almost as much determination as her own to find Olivia. Now, Kat would never get to see that through, and if that was any indication what was in store for Amanda, she didn't want to know or acknowledge it.

But when she turned to go, she found herself incapable of walking away and leaving the young woman exposed on the floor, surrounded by several dead rapists. Kat deserved a better death than that. The body would have to be moved to get the lightweight blazer—now heavy with blood—off of it, so Amanda scanned the area nearby until she caught sight of a large blue tarp draped over a stack of boxes on some wood pallets, at least the length of a pontoon.

She covered Kat with the vinyl, fitting the stiff edges around her limp form, the same way she tucked in the kids at bedtime.Tighter, Mama, Jesse always insisted, wanting to be stiff as a mummy inside herPaw Patrolsheets. "I'm so sorry," Amanda repeated, cringing each time she touched a warm spot under the Kool-Aid blue shroud. It would be a good twelve hours before Kat grew cold to the touch, but feeling that deceptive heat, that one remaining sign of life, made Amanda want to tear the covering apart and check if the officer was somehow miraculously still alive.

Wouldn't it be something if Tamin sat up and looked around in a daze, marveling at all the blood she'd lost—damn, there went her favorite pair of pants!—and how she had managed to survive? She would razz Amanda for trying to get rid of the competition, and for years to come, the one-six would trot the story out at every police function: that time Officer Tamin was almost fitted for a toe tag because Detective Rollins couldn't tell the difference between dead and temporarily unconscious.

"Remind me never to fall asleep at my desk in front-a you, Rollins," Fin teased, drawing laughter from the entire SVU squad, including its captain, who snuck in a playful, punchline-worthy, "Again," and got another big laugh. Not a lot of people realized how truly funny Liv was, but Amanda knew. Her humor was quick and sharp, like a one-two punch you didn't see coming.

Amanda pictured it all so vividly in her head (Olivia was at her most beautiful when she let go and just laughed, a sight Amanda didn't think she would ever see again after the past three days), she chuckled along through her tears. In fact the whole situation suddenly seemed bizarrely funny, from the dead woman she had just rolled up in a tarp, like the worst genie of all time, to the man who had done a face-dive into concrete a few feet away, with a literalkersplat. There were headless bodies that had raped your wife the day before and dying boys who crawled through the muck of their mangled jaws, trailing streaks of gore while searching for their teeth.

It was worse than any horror movie imaginable, and Amanda could not stop laughing. She did it silently, head thrown back, no air in her lungs; she screamed with it, soundlessly bent over and clutching the stair railing, until her sides ached and she could barely stand, until the tears poured from her eyes as steady as rainfall. She laughed until she thought she might die. Maybe she already had died days ago—maybe when she hit her head on the sidewalk—and all this torment was her eternal damnation. An eternity of searching for Olivia, but failing to save her.

The thought was too awful to entertain, and it snapped Amanda back to reality at once. She didn't have the luxury of losing her mind right then. Not while Olivia needed her so. Later she could accept her newfound role as a cold-hearted killer, as someone who walked innocent people into bloodbaths and left them dead in a pool of blood (like Esther), covered by a tarp like wild game in the back of someone's pickup truck. Later she could agonize over the state of her brain, heart, soul.

Now she would find her wife, all morality and commitment to upholding the law be damned. She was going against everything Olivia stood for, and everything she tried to stand for herself, but she didn't care. If she had to tear New Jersey down with her bare hands and lay waste to every single man, woman, and child who got in her way, then that was what she must do. She'd shot an eighteen-year-old retarded boy in the face, and she would do it again if it meant getting Olivia back, alive. She was willing to sacrifice her own humanity for that.

. . .

Chapter 29: The Killer in Me

Chapter Text

Chapter 29.

The Killer in Me

. . .

Liam Sandberg hadn't moved a muscle since plunging over the banister. Amanda nudged his head to one side with her foot, leaving no question about his status. It looked as though every bone in his face had been crushed by the fall, his serial-killer eyes wide open, almost lidless, in the curdled remains of his skull. It reminded her of a bag of jacks rattling inside a leather pouch. One swift kick would probably leave an indentation of her shoe in the gelatinous flesh, but she refrained, kicking his .45 away instead. Better to be safe than sorry, no matter how unequivocally dead he appeared to be. Orion had nearly taken her over that cliff with him when he was all but dead from being stabbed, shot, and mauled.

Giving it a second thought, she did kick Liam swiftly in the side. And again, just for good measure. It was the least he deserved, after what he'd done to Olivia. After what Amanda had watched him do. She kicked him a third time, a fourth, and felt herself starting to lose control, a torrent of curses flowing from her mouth with each connection of her foot to his ribs. She might have stood there pummeling the corpse for hours if she hadn't heard groaning from the skybox platform.

Her ears were still ringing, certain sounds a bit muffled, as if they came to her underwater, but she could hear herself swearing ("—f*cking rapist prick!") and recognized Riva's grunts from their similarities to the noises he made while raping Olivia. Each of the men had their own particular sound in those videos, and it was something Amanda would never forget. Just like she would never forget that Carlos Riva was the first of the men to rape her wife, calling dibs on Olivia as if she were the passenger seat of someone's truck or the last piece of leftover pizza in the fridge.

And the motherf*cker was still alive.

Cautiously she mounted the stairs, tracking Riva's progress with frequent glances upward, her Glock at the ready. He was in too much pain to do anything besides reach for his huge gun, which had tumbled just beyond his grasp during the melee. Without the slug in his gut, he easily could have snapped up the weapon and unleashed a hail of bullets on Amanda, but as he was, his fingertips barely grazed the glinting silver barrel. Desert Eagles were ridiculously expensive and impractical, the kind of piece you bought to show off, rather than make a serious stand.

Riva did neither as she neared him, their eyes locked on one another through the gaps between stairs and the serrated treads. She felt like a jaguar in the brush, stalking its prey, each flicker of leaf or branch bringing her one step closer to the kill, the play of light and dark no match for her singular focus. Clearing the top step, she stared down at him for several moments, her aim as fluid and predatory as her ascent up the stairs. He didn't look so big and muscular from this angle. He looked weak, clutching his abdomen and wincing as if he were experiencing contractions.

"Didn't th-think you h-had it in you, blondie," he said, after a long silence. His breath shuddered as if he were cold, reminding Amanda that, somewhere nearby, Olivia was alone and shivering just like that, very possibly hypothermic from spending the night in nothing but a thin, wet t-shirt, when the overnight low had dropped into the mid-forties.

Even with the sun shining so brightly all afternoon, it was still a crisp day outside, and the warehouse interior held a mild chill. Imagine what it must be like in a metal box with no windows and no heat source, beyond a couple tripod lights.God. Hang on, Liv, I'm coming, Amanda thought as loudly as she could, trying to be heard over the cacophony in her brain.

For three days, she had felt the inexplicable connection she shared with her wife growing weaker by the hour, almost to the point of disappearing completely. But now that she was this close, she was convinced she could make out Olivia's heartbeat, wild and panicked as a hunted doe's, thrumming in the air around her. Pounding inside her head, keeping time with her own primal, beastly heart. It was crazy—most of her thoughts were, since walking out of the precinct that morning to discover Tilly missing—but she felt as though she could follow that sound, and it would lead her directly to Olivia.

"Sh-shooting a retard's pretty h-hardcore." Riva coughed out the final word, expelling a mist of blood and spittle from his coarse-looking lips. (The things he had done to Olivia with that mouth. The profane, sad*stic things.) He slurped the runny red saliva off his chin, back into his wolfish mouth, and bared his white, white teeth. He looked like he had just finished devouring a rabbit or some other small creature. "You musta g-grown some cojones since I saw you last, little canary."

"Where is she?" Amanda asked, no interest in reminiscing with him about their days together as Sondra Vaughn's lackeys. His idea of power andhaving cojoneswas to rape innocent, defenseless women just to send a message to the spouses. She would be damned if she'd let him compare her to himself. She pointed the gun at his leg and repeated in a commanding tone, "Where."

Riva smiled, the underlying taunt quickly turning to a pained grit of his teeth. Still, he wore a sickly smirk when he recovered enough to open his eyes and refocus on Amanda. "Who? Your puss*-loving wife? Last time I popped the b-bitch, she was sprawled out on that bed like a Playboy centerfold, waiting for me. You s-sure she's not into dick?"

He stopped smiling when she shot him in the kneecap, pulverizing the joints and bone within. She could almost sympathize with his shout of agony as he grabbed the singed hole in his pants, where black blood welled like crude; knee injuries were a bitch, she knew from personal experience. If he somehow made it out of here alive, he would never walk the same again. They put down racehorses with a lame or broken leg like that, and it was considered a mercy. Playing the ponies had taught her one or two useful things, after all.

"Where. Is. She." Amanda aimed at his other kneecap, a hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger again. She exhaled forcefully, exercising every bit of self-control she still had to not fire too soon and chance losing a confession. His face was so red and twisted, he appeared to be wearing a kabuki mask, as if he were portraying a vengeful demon, but he had to be on the verge of giving up Olivia's location. Everyone had their breaking point, and being shot twice would be it for most, vengeful demon or not. "I've got the balls, you know I do. Tell me, Riva, or I'll f*cking kill you."

Sweat poured down his bald head in buckets, darkening his eyebrows, beading in his lashes, dripping from the end of his nose. It turned his goatee an oily black that gave the hair a synthetic look, as if it were pasted on. He squeezed his eyes shut spasmodically to keep out the salty moisture, hissing like cooked bacon at the sting of it. That's what happened when you were a pig. "B-b-big talk. You think be-because you knocked boots with Lucky a f-few years back, you can g-g-g— get away with this? That f*cker's cold, man. D-doesn't care if you're his baby mama or j-just her dyke wife—"

Amanda shot him in the other kneecap, though it was at more of an angle than the first. The bullet went clean through, shredding cartilage, ligament, and flesh like so much tissue paper. He still howled and made a fuss, but he had to have known what was coming. His confidence that she would get her comeuppance from "Lucky" was unnerving. He acted as though they had never lost touch after she and Declan Murphy put him in prison, and perhaps the two men hadn't. It would explain how Riva had served so little of his sentence and how he conveniently ended up working for a second-tier trafficker who did Murphy's top-tier bidding.

Lucky, my ass, Amanda thought. Or she might have spoken it out loud, because Riva gave her a funny look, halting his weeping and moaning to gaze at her through a sheen of tears and perspiration. The whites of his eyes were yellow, like pit stains in a white t-shirt. He was going to make a very sweaty, reeking corpse.

"You really d-don't know who you fu-f*cked, do you, canary?" he asked, more in disbelief than with any sort of gloating or jeering. He seemed to be marveling at her naïveté, as if she had questioned the influence of Jesus Christ on Good Friday and Easter. "If you think Sandman is b-bad, just wait until Lucky f-f-finds out you blew up an op-operation." He made the expression of dragging a finger across his neck—the signal for cutting one's throat—without the gesture itself. His hands wouldn't go that high.

"Funny, looks to me like it's y'all who blew it," Amanda said, with an indifferent shrug. Just let Murphy try to get anywhere near her or her family again after this. She would be ready and waiting. "Let a couple of women take you down in about five seconds. Can't be that great an operation."

"That's that f-fool Parker's fault." Riva turned his head and spat in the dead man's direction. A hefty glob with plenty of momentum, it still left a string of bloody saliva slashed across his chin in its wake. He swiped at it defiantly with his bunched-up shoulder, and missed. "I told Angel to k-keep that rat bastard outta this, b-but he had some f*cked up idea about loy-loyalty. Gus ain't gonna care wh-who he was friends with as a k-k-kid—Angel's dead as the r-rest of us, man."

He was right about one thing: Nicholas Angelov would be as dead as the rest of them soon, but it wasn't an angry boss he needed to watch out for. It was Detective Rollins-Benson. "Where are they? Angel and Sandberg?" she asked, letting her aim drift for a moment, the muzzle at an oblique angle. This clown wasn't going anywhere. Whatever he juiced up on, it didn't help him walk through bullets like some of the 'roid ragers she had encountered on the job. "And Murph— and Lucky?"

Riva gave a rough shake of his head, losing patience with the game of Twenty Questions while he was racked with pain and drenched in sweat. "Nobody knows where he is. He c-comes to you. You w-won't find Gus, either. There's a r-reason they call him Sandman." He coughed wetly, holding his stomach and hunching forward, bloody drool dangling from his lips. He didn't try to suck it back in anymore. "Angel's with your girl, but I suggest you let h-him finish, or he'll be pissed. And that's bad n-news for wifey. Muy mal."

"Where?" Amanda waited only a few seconds for an answer before raising the Glock to his temple, close enough for him to feel the heat from the two most recent shots. Close enough to burn. "Don't make me ask again, ese."

"Okay. Okay." Riva put up his hands at elbow height, attempting surrender but barely succeeding at keeping his palms turned out. He let them drop heavily into his blood-soaked lap, and looked askance at Amanda, unable to sit fully upright from the humped over position he'd assumed. With his gaze, he indicated the skybox behind her, where the men had been congregating before the shootout began, and where Xander made the fateful decision to join his brother on the catwalk.

The boy lay there now, twitching, still feeling around weakly for the lower portion of his face. He really wasn't very bright if he hadn't figured out by now that his jaw was never coming back, that his tongue wouldn't stay inside his head without a chin, bottom lip, and teeth to hold it. His death would be a kindness, like those lame racehorses.

"She's in a c-container out back. You'll know it when you see it. Might w-wanna take a look in there first, see what y-you're in for," Riva said of the skybox. He made a sound similar to a militaryten-hut!when Amanda grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt and tugged, sitting him up straight. His Catholic medallion—some saint or another whose name she couldn't make out and didn't care to—swung loose from his cheek, and stuck to his sweaty collarbone with an audible splat. "She's not gonna be m-much use to you now, w-w-way we w-worked her over. Bosses might go easy on you, if y-you leave her."

Amanda emptied the last ten bullets in her magazine into Carols Riva's chest without flinching, her heart rate barely going above its usual seventy beats per minute. She worked up more of a sweat chasing pigeons off the sidewalk on the way to work, because they freaked Olivia out.

Killing a man was much easier than frightening a flock of street-hardened birds who were defending a pizza crust. She had noticed that before, too, when she shot Jeff Parker to death in her old apartment. How easy it was. How guiltless. Even when she broke down and sought counseling afterward, it was due to the pain her sister's betrayal had caused, the old hurtful memories of being used by her family, their complete disregard for her safety and happiness acutely devastating. Jeff never really factored into it.

The difference was, she'd actually killed Jeff. She had only fired on Riva in her head, she realized, disappointed by the revelation. But maybe it was a sign that she wasn't completely out of her mind—she still had enough wits about her to recognize that she couldn't justifiably shoot an unarmed, immobilized man. He looked down in confusion when she nudged the Desert Eagle with her foot, bumping it against his thigh and putting it well within reach.

"Pick it up," she ordered. And when he continued to stare dumbly, first at his weapon and then up at Amanda, she kicked the side of his knee like she was punting a football. "Do it, Riva."

"I can't," he panted, winded by the fresh wave of pain and his lame attempt to lower a hand from his leg to the gun. For such a big, macho guy, he had surprisingly little ability to muscle through an injury, and almost no dignity whatsoever. He was whimpering now, tears mingling with his sweat, as he prepared for what came next. To his credit, he didn't beg, at least not with words. His eyes stayed locked on her, silently pleading for mercy.

Amanda had none. He was the same man who had torn Olivia's yoga pants from her body and forced her to look him in the eye during that first awful rape; he held her for the other men, laughing and taunting as if they were a group of rowdy boys competing over a basketball on the playground; and hours ago, Amanda had watched him choke Olivia, a belt around her neck like a dog collar, while he raped her, doggie style, one brawny arm supporting her middle, the other jerking the belt. No. There were only two people who could show mercy to a man like that: Jesus himself and Olivia Benson.

Amanda was neither of those.

"Pick up the gun." Slowly, emphasizing each syllable. And when Riva failed to comply again, she brought her heel down hard on the knee she'd already kicked, grinding it in. "PICK UP THE f*ckING GUN!"

His reflexes were quicker than he was letting on, or else the adrenaline gave him an energy boost. He snatched up the gun so fast, Amanda reared back, her spine colliding with the handrail, the only thing that kept her from toppling off the catwalk to a swift death—either that, or a very slow and excruciating one.

But all those quick draw games she used to play in the backyard with Kimmie, their daddy's old lighters substituting for six-shooters, had paid off. That, and Riva's flashy Desert Eagle, which probably cost as much as a year's tuition for one of her kids, suddenly jammed. It was all the time she needed. "Shoulda stayed in prison, Reevs," she said, and pulled the trigger, one hand still supporting her on the railing.

If her aim was off, you wouldn't know it from the smoldering black dot that appeared in Riva's forehead. The hole was oddly tidy, no brain matter or blood present, not even a glimpse of skull fragments at the entry site. Bastard must not have had a brain for her to obliterate, she thought, as she reached down and snapped the chain from around his neck. She remembered Olivia staring at the medallion in abject horror—there, but not really there—as Riva sweated and grunted on top of her. Saint Jude, Amanda saw now, holding it up by the chain, the little silver pendant suspended like a teardrop frozen in midair. Patron saint of lost causes (you didn't have to be Catholic to know that much). Also the namesake of a great song.

She didn't know why she even wanted the damn thing, but she tucked it into the pocket of her track pants as if it were a lucky coin. Some talisman to rub when you were playing the tables and the chips were down. She preferred to smoke while she gambled, feeling like it upped her game—although that was probably just the nicotine—but if she ever did place a bet again, she would have good ol' Jude on her side. In a way, just the weight of it in her pocket was comforting.

Muck the color and texture of afterbirth finally leaked from Riva's forehead when Amanda released him, his chin dropping to his chest. "Whadda you know, something in there after all," she said absently, swiping a hand on her pant leg to brush off the moisture from the necklace. And just as easily, she turned from him and walked away. His death meant no more to her than scraping dog sh*t off the bottom of her shoe, and she doubted it would to anybody else, either.

Xander Bergström was another story. His brother had loved him, his father probably did too. Somewhere, he had a mother waiting for him to return home so she could fix his favorite meal, naturally pizza, just like Noah, and snuggle with him while they watchedGhostbustersor some other adolescent-boy movie for the umpteenth time. Her forever baby. It would break her heart to see him this way, crawling aimlessly along the landing, making strange porcine noises instead of coherent words, his tongue holding on by a sliver of meat no wider than Amanda's pinky finger. It would break his mother's heart almost as much as it had broken Amanda's to watch what he and the other men did to her wife.

Trying not to think about them—the mother or Olivia, who could never understand what Amanda was about to do—she stood looking down on Xander with a cold, detached glare. She sensed herself making a momentous decision, one that would change who she was forever, her place in the world and how she existed in it. But that had already changed three days ago when Xander's brother and the man they called Angel tore Olivia from her arms. They had ripped away something essential that made her Amanda Rollins-Benson, and even if she got it back, it would never be the same.

She would never be the same.

He looked up at her with wide, terror-filled eyes, the boy she had disfigured, and clutched at her pant leg like a vagrant in the gutter, begging for bread, water. (Water, Olivia had rasped, over and over, until they turned the hose on her.) He had no clue who she was, or that she'd been the one to inflict his monstrous injury, only that she might save him from his pitiable state. Once again she thought of Esther Labott: the big, needy eyes and the desperate grasping, wanting to be fed, wanting to be rescued.

Esther had been a victim of her father's fanaticism and psychological abuse, though. She had deserved Amanda's help. Perhaps this boy was no different, with his sad*stic father and brother who encouraged him to commit unspeakable acts in the name of family bonding, but Amanda couldn't frame it that way, no matter how hard she tried. All she could see was Olivia looking off-camera, alone and petrified, pleading for Xander Bergström to help her, moments before the initial gang rape began.

He had done nothing but watch as Riva took the first round. Laugh at his brother's antics. Participate when encouraged to do so. Nothing, not even a tear shed or a word spoken in kindness. That was what Amanda would give him now—the same nothing he'd given Olivia.

It was a quick, quiet death, the bullet entering at the base of his skull, execution style. The lividity on his cheek and chest would be an odd waffle pattern from the serrated floor, where he dropped, facedown, and did not get back up. Whatever blood he had left would pool in those parts of his body, giving CSU and the ME a relatively accurate idea of how long he'd been dead. Ballistics and gunshot residue would identify Amanda as executioner, but that was okay.Cross that bridge when you come to it, Mandy Jo, said a voice that sounded a lot like her daddy's. The ultimate pro at dodging responsibility for his own actions.

For now, she crossed the bridge in front of her, vaulting over Xander's lifeless body via handrail, and approaching the skybox at a long stride. She paused outside of it to steel herself, but only for a second. She'd already lost precious time rescuing Olivia, thanks to the dead men who littered the warehouse like drunken frat boys passed out after an all-night kegger. Time in which she might have spared her wife a few moments of torture. Seconds in the grand scheme of things; a lifetime to someone who was suffering.

And she was suffering. The video feed played on a monitor here too, surrounded by a lot of tech equipment Amanda was too amped up to recognize. Killing Riva and the boy had sent her adrenaline skyrocketing, and she felt as though she could take on an entire army by herself, but reading brand names or identifying an electronic device by its shape were impossible tasks right then. She couldn't make sense of anything other than what she saw on the screen: Nicholas Angelov with his hands all over Olivia, his mouth, his big yummy co*ck.

He had it in her, just warming up to the hard, punishing thrusts that were his signature move. He hadn't bothered to free her hands from Parker's belt, and the rough rocking jiggled her breasts and sawed her wrists back and forth on the metal ledge beneath them. She made no attempts to get away or shield her fully exposed chest, her t-shirt—the one article of clothing she had managed to hold onto this entire time, the one thing that hadn't been snatched violently away from her—torn up the middle and hanging loose at her sides. Olivia herself looked as split apart and ragged as the shirt, and it terrified Amanda that she wasn't reacting to the rape at all. Amanda had to squint to see if she was even still breathing.

The plan formed itself, as so many of Amanda's plans did, haphazardly and literally on the run. If she caught Angelov during commission of a rape, she could shoot him without consequence, and she'd have the element of surprise on her side as well. It was difficult to pull a weapon when you were busy sexually assaulting someone else. Nevertheless, she ran at full tilt from the skybox, leaping over the corpses whose blood may have quit pumping but hadn't finished flowing from multiple orifices. It pattered like rainwater, Amanda's feet the thunder that shook the heavens above.

She pelted down the stairs, nearly wiping out on the blood slick that painted the steps and rail where Parker's head exploded and Kat caught one in the throat. That all seemed like a dream now, though the evidence was right in front of her: the bodies splayed out like paper dolls, hands clipped from each other's, breaking the chain; the brain matter as sticky as boogers, already hardening in grayish clumps and flecks; the big blue tarp with dark stains that resembled spilled wine.

The images came at Amanda viscerally, leaving no imprint and following no logical pattern. She might as well have been running an obstacle course from that showDouble Dareshe watched as a kid. But it didn't slow her down, and it took her all of five seconds to find the exit door she hadn't noticed before on this side of the warehouse. Hard to get a good sense of your surroundings during a shootout. She knew she was on the right path, though, because of the electrical cord threaded under the door, thick and black as a snake.

Sure enough, when she punched out on the other side, the cable fed several feet across a lot filled with more storage containers, most stacked a mile high in every direction. She was only interested in one, which stood on its own amid all the rest, like the "cheese" in a game of Farmer in the Dell. A series of cables connected to this cheese, making it possible to light and record the horrors within. On the outside, it didn't look nearly as sophisticated as she had imagined. Not much different than getting a peek backstage at a theater, finding only ropes and pulleys and canted ladders. Center stage was where the real magic happened.

Amanda was about to make her debut.

Just not for the whole world to see. At least not the part of it connected to the dark web. Differentiating between the power cords and the Wi-Fi antenna was as simple as looking up (the extender was perched on top of the storage container, its antennas akimbo like devil horns), and she hurriedly snipped the slim wire that hung from the electronic box like a strange blue vine with her utility knife. The blade was encrusted with Parker's blood, but it seemed appropriate to end it this way. Breaking a curse usually required a blood sacrifice.

Her hand froze on the long rod that ran vertically up both double doors, part of whatever locking mechanism kept the unit sealed when it wasn't in use. It was unlocked now, one side not fully closed, and required no effort to open. But for one terror-fueled second, she couldn't bring herself to do it. Dread swallowed her up, a big fish consuming a guppy, and she felt certain that the world—or at least her world as she knew it—was about to end with whatever awaited her on the other side.

So be it. Her hesitation, whether outside the Mangler's lair or inside the office of Doctor goddamn Giacomo, had already cost Olivia too much. Far, far too much. No matter how hard her world came crashing down, she owed it to Olivia to take the final steps. They could rebuild a new world together. They could put all this behind them and start again. They could get back the fragile happiness they had finally pieced together from their broken lives and broken childhoods.

Theycould.

Even if she didn't believe it, it got her through the door. She entered the way a cop was supposed to enter an unfamiliar room with potential hostiles, slowly, quietly, checking corners and keeping her back to the wall. Fortunately, it wasn't a very large space and there were few spots for a perp to be hiding. None, in fact, with the tripod lights illuminating most of the box, and only a bucket and piles of garbage in the shadows. The dilapidated desk was in the middle of the room, smaller in real life than it had looked while Olivia was being brutalized on top of it. The place smelled like an outhouse that had been baking in the summer sun for weeks.

A few feet away, split open like a raw and weeping wound, was Olivia, her head cradled in the halo of her arms. It was a pose reminiscent of crucifixion, although most of the people in those paintings weren't being raped by a man so tattooed his skin looked reptilian. She was oblivious to Amanda's presence, even though they were facing each other, and the only sign of consciousness she gave was a slow, unseeing blink. No tears, no whimpering. No soul.

"Hell's all that banging out there?" Angelov grunted, tossing the question over his shoulder. He was aware that someone had entered the container, just not that it wasn't one of his rape buddies. He went on plowing into Olivia as if he were engaged in a strenuous but socially acceptable activity—working out at the gym, playing an intense sport, fixing a carburetor. "Sounded like gun . . . shots."

The strained pause was too much, considering what had inspired it, and Amanda exhaled slowly, preparing to fire at the back of his head. At the last second, she realized it would traumatize Olivia even further if the pig died on top of her, and she eased off the trigger with a great deal of effort. She didn't lower her weapon, though. No f*cking way.

"It was, dipsh*t," she said, her voice unnaturally calm. As a matter of fact, she felt calmer than she had since the minutes before this bodymod freak first appeared in her life. Maybe calmer than she had ever been. She was right where she was supposed to be, and she knew exactly what she needed to do. "Your scumbag friends are all dead, and if you don't get the f*ck off my wife, you're next."

Before she could finish with her planned threat to shove the gun up his ass and pull the trigger, Angelov uncoupled from Olivia in a whiplash of his body that spun him around to face Amanda. He tried to spring to his feet, but even his catlike reflexes were no match for hers, and he sat back on his heels when she stepped closer—"Uh-uh," she said, harsh as a rejection buzzer—bearing down on him with the gun. Daring him to move a muscle.

"The f*ck are you doing here?" he asked. He sounded annoyed, but not especially frightened. More like she'd woken him too early from a pleasant nap. "There's no way you got past that encryption. CIA itself couldn't get past me."

So he was the one behind all the dark web chicanery. Amanda would have guessed Liam Sandberg, or even Xander if he was some kind of savant, but not this punk-ass, fauxhawked sonuvabitch. You never could tell about a person, even if he did have a teardrop tat on his cheek and a dick piercing, she supposed. But she didn't want him getting any high-minded ideas about himself, either. Let him die believing he was a failure. "You're not as clever as you think, Nicky. I had a little help from your buddy Parker, too. He gave you up like that." She snapped her fingers loudly, and immediately regretted it when Olivia flinched.

She wanted to go to her wife then, to comfort and care for her in any way she could. First, though, she had to take care of Nicholas Angelov, and the prick was still too close to Olivia to fire on him safely. Amanda's hearing was still partially muted from the shooting in the warehouse; if she unloaded a couple of rounds inside this metal box, she risked permanent damage to her ears and Olivia's. It was possible that Olivia was so shut down mentally that she wouldn't register the shot, but even if her mind didn't absorb it, her body would.

"Dumb bastard," Angelov spat, shaking his head at his friend's stupidity. He hadn't put away his co*ck since jerking it out of Olivia, and the ugly organ pointed up at him, slimy and pop-veined, like a sightless underground creature striving to the surface. Sonuvabitch hadn't even fully lost his erection yet. Both silver balls of the Prince Albert piercing were visible, tempting Amanda to find out just how much of a deadeye she really was. "He never did know how to keep his damn mouth shut."

"That's not going to be a problem for him anymore. Your pal Riva blew the f*cker's head clean off his shoulders." She watched for any sign of shock or dismay at hearing about his so-called good friend's grisly demise, but Angelov didn't bat an eye. Cold motherf*cker looked almost like he was smiling as a matter of fact. It didn't seem to be a facial expression he wore enough to do it properly. "Then I popped that Satan-looking steroid between the eyes. Now the question is, where'm I gonna pop you?"

He snickered at the description of Riva, unfazed by the threat that followed it. There wasn't much that did faze this guy—certainly not Amanda and her Glock, no matter how accurate she claimed to be as a markswoman. The only way to convince him was to show him firsthand, and that was just fine by her. "Aren't you worried you'll lose your job when they find out you went allDeath Wishon us? How you gonna support your bitch here and all those little bitchlets at home if you're in jail for murder? You know how much more therapy her tore-up ass is gonna need now?"

If the barbaric questions and his complete lack of empathy hadn't done it, the smack he reached out and delivered to Olivia's hip, as close to her buttock as he could get, did. Amanda stooped down and grabbed the cushion she'd stepped on a moment ago among the trash that surrounded her feet. It looked like an old chair cushion, the sort you found around the kitchen table at your grandmother's house. This one was so flat and worn—and still damp from the previous night's assault with the hose—it wouldn't have offered much padding for sitting. But she had no intention of using it for that.

"I think they'll pin a goddamn medal on me for wasting your lowlife asses, is what I think, " she said, folding the cushion around the muzzle of her gun. It wouldn't work as a silencer, the way Hollywood led most people to believe, but it would muffle the sound enough to preserve her and Olivia's eardrums. She hoped.

As for his inquiries, she didn't have the answers and she didn't care anymore. Let them fire her and put her on trial. As far as she was concerned, everything she'd done to rescue her wife was completely justified. Anybody who argued differently should have to watch their spouse or someone they loved more than life itself being raped and tortured for three days straight. Then they could get back to her and see how concerned they were over a few dead creeps. They might not actually pin any medals on her, but she had a pretty solid case for justifiable homicide and possibly a temporary insanity plea. One look at Olivia, no jury would convict.

"And if I do go down, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I took you and your piece of sh*t friends down with me." Amanda returned his nasty little sneer, happy to see it fade from the inkblot he called a face as her sincerity sunk in.

They hadn't reckoned on her willingness to kill for Olivia, to die for her if necessary. They were used to trafficking in young girls and women without families, or, if they had anyone, it was usually those same loved ones turning the girls out to begin with. No one came for those girls, and they certainly didn't take out an entire crime ring almost single-handedly. Angelov was beginning to realize just who he'd f*cked with the moment he crossed Amanda Rollins-Benson.

"Take her," he said, casting a dismissive look and shrug at Olivia, who had retreated behind the barrier of her arm, face hidden against the side of her bicep. Anything to separate herself from her current hellacious reality; anything to escape. "She's no good to us anyway. Too old, too flabby. I told Gus she'd be more trouble than she was worth, especially if the deal went south—and it did. So, take her. I'll say I wasn't here when you showed up, and you can go on your merry f*cking way with your little wifey. What's left of her."

The offer was almost too good to pass up. Finally having Olivia back in her arms and getting her out of this hell pit was everything Amanda had hoped for since the moment Olivia was taken from her. Maybe it would be better to cut her losses now, and leave with the winnings while she still could. But how could she or her wife ever have peace knowing the Sandman was still out there? Wondering when and from where the retaliation would come for the death of his sons?

How could Amanda live with herself letting this demon Angelov get off scot-free?

She shook her head, silently answering her own question. It didn't matter how much of a head start Angelov gave her, or how much time it shaved off her sentence by not killing an unarmed man, she was going to finish what she started. Anyway, he wasn't entirely unarmed—he was tucking the weapon he'd used mercilessly on Olivia into his pants, as if he had just done his business at an airport urinal and planned to dash off to catch his flight.

Think again, sh*thead, Amanda said. In her head or out loud didn't matter, it was all the same right now. This whole thing still felt so surreal, she wasn't entirely sure it wasn't some strange, elaborate nightmare she couldn't awaken from. Out loud and silent were one in the same when you dreamed. But in case he was real, not a mind-reading figment of her imagination, she spoke aloud: "Get away from her. Over there, against the wall." She showed him where with a gesture of the cushion and gun.

"So you can shoot me in the back? Nah." Angelov scoffed, not budging from where he knelt on the floor. He was within arm's length of Olivia, and just the idea that he was close enough to touch her made Amanda's skin crawl.

If there was any justice in the world, he'd die among the rest of the filth by the bucket in the corner. He'd be chopped into little pieces and used to chum the waters surrounding the port. His numerous piercings would litter the bottom of New York Bay long after Amanda herself was gone. But she had seen justice fail time and again over the years, and if the best she got this time was watching the gleam go out of his serpentine black eyes, then she would take it. Eventually the worms would take care of the rest for her.

"I ain't shooting nobody in the back, angelface," she said, a taunting inflection at the end. He and his boys weren't the only ones who could make up cutesy nicknames for their victims. Amanda knew how to play the game with the best of them. Though loath to admit it, her stint as a runner for Sondra Vaughn had been an invaluable lesson in thinking and operating like a criminal. "I wanna look you in the eye while I give it to you. Isn't that what you said about her?"

"That was Riva, the Latin lover. He's the one who gets off looking into their eyes." Angelov pulled a face, as if the mere concept of such intimacy were off-putting. He held no illusions about what his job entailed, and it certainly wasn't romance or pleasure. Not even for himself. "I'd have done her with a bag over her head, makes no difference to me. They all start to blend together after a while, anyway."

"Funny, I could say the same about sh*thead rapists like you." Again, Amanda gestured for him to move toward the opposite wall. One last chance to do the right thing before he died. It was more than he deserved, but at least it would benefit her and Olivia as well. "Now move your ass. I'll give you to ten. One . . . "

The counting trick was highly effective on her kids, just as it had been on herself and Kim when they were little, and for a moment, it seemed as though it might work on criminals too. Angelov put both palms flat on the floor like he meant to push to his feet, but at the last second, Amanda saw what he was really doing: going for a weapon half-hidden under the mattress, probably stuffed there while he raped Olivia.

His hands flew to his genitals instead when the gun went off with a comicalwhoomphthat sounded like a tire popping under several layers of blankets. Before the pain registered, he gazed at Amanda in astonishment, a sentiment she returned wholeheartedly. She hadn't expected a direct hit—somewhere in the general pelvic region, perhaps, since he'd moved just as she squeezed the trigger. But blood blossomed at his crotch, darkening the cloth around his cupped hands.

"What the f*ck?" he asked, his tone barely elevated. He sounded more like she had committed some minor but annoying infraction—running a traffic light or cutting in line at the grocery store—rather than blown his dick off. It was the shock most likely, but his understated reaction was disconcerting. Most guys would be screaming their fool heads off by now; Nicholas Angelov was holding his crotch like Michael Jackson, and shooting her a murderous look. "What the f*ck?"

"Just wanted a taste of your big yummy co*ck before I sent you to hell with those other pricks." Amanda regarded him for a moment, head tilted as if she were studying a Gauguin. And not a particularly impressive one at that. She was considering letting him live on as a eunuch, pissing through a catheter and never feeling like a real man ever again. Even with extensive surgery, he would probably always suffer erectile dysfunction. So much for that big yummy co*ck then.

But the thought had barely crossed her mind when Angel sealed his own fate, full of hubris and a misplaced sense of power, much like that angel of long ago, that bright morning star. He tried for the weapon again, surprisingly quick for a man with a grievous injury. Another half-second and he would have had it in his grasp, but he fell backward, empty-handed, when Amanda pumped two rounds into his chest.

She would have gone for a creatively placed third if Olivia hadn't started to whimper, her entire body trembling violently. She muttered a few incoherent phrases, the only recognizable word among them a weak, ineffectual "no." Still using her arm as a blindfold, she didn't see Amanda check on Angelov, whose knees were bent underneath him, his upper body thrown back, arms flung wide. He had died, eyes open, in the same pose as Led Zeppelin's fallen angel.

His weapon turned out to be the stun gun the men had used on Olivia, and whose pronged electrodes had left multiple burn marks all over her body. They looked like especially nasty bug bites, as if she'd fallen asleep in the Amazon without a mosquito net. "Son of a bitch," Amanda muttered, rolling the device into the closest pile of trash, where it wouldn't accidentally go off. She was vaguely disappointed that it wasn't a firearm—her Glock against a taser, no matter how tricked out, did not equal a fair fight—but she wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

This time she didn't take a trophy. She would have had to pry any of his jewelry directly from his corpse, feeling it worm its way out from under the ink-scaled, still-warm flesh. Her aversion was less about being squeamish, and more about wanting to focus on Olivia and forget Nicholas Angelov had ever existed.

But the moment she turned back, it was to that same hesitation and fear she'd experienced at the container door. What if there was nothing left of her Liv inside the broken shell of a human being in front of her? What if that vacant look she had seen in Olivia's eyes before they were covered never went away? What if she and her wife were both so changed, they didn't recognize each other anymore?

There were too many what ifs, and Olivia needed her. That was all that mattered right now.

. . .

. . .

Chapter 30: Labyrinth

Chapter Text

Chapter 30.

Labyrinth

. . .

Amanda pushed through her fear and really let herself take Olivia in—the utter havoc and devastation that had been done to her in the past sixty hours—for the first time since she stepped into the unit. She had seen dead bodies that were more vital-looking than the one on the mattress. The golden skin, three days ago still gilded by last summer's sun, had soured to the color of an underripe banana. Some of it was bruises, of which there were many, in various shapes, sizes, and shades. The thighs were the worst, so darkened with fingerprints they looked like a crime scene dusted by CSU.

No. The actual worst was higher up, caked beneath layers of blood and sem*n, raw and gashed like a Glasgow smile. Try as she might to shield her privates, knees together and legs tented to the sides, Olivia couldn't hide the deeply inflamed, deeply traumatized flesh of her most intimate parts. She was as stained and used as the mattress beneath her.

Each injury cataloged itself in Amanda's brain, captured like a snapshot she could take out and observe later on: the red daisy-chain of bite marks around both breasts, the nipples puffy and chapped; the strata of bruises on the face, as colorful as a Sahara sunset, a gouge in the left cheek crusted black with blood; lips dry and shriveled like winter leaves; purple contusions the size of softballs to the iliac crests, a matching one at the rib cage; an alphabet soup—p, b, q, d, a—of indentations to the trunk, all lowercase, some more distinct than others, depending on the momentum of Parker's belt buckle.

She didn't know how else to process such a brutal scene, other than through the eyes of a cop. If she looked through the eyes of Amanda Rollins-Benson, wife and mother, the horror would swallow her whole. But even for a cop who had seen her share of torture, neglect, and abuse, the sight before her was unfathomable. It had been easier to reconcile the woman she'd watched on the computer screen to Olivia than this miserable creature.

"Jesus," Amanda whispered. In her head she pictured making the sign of the cross. Wasn't that what you did at a crucifixion? "Oh Jesus."

Then Olivia moaned softly, a sound she sometimes made while turning over in her sleep, while she was safe and warm, wrapped in Amanda's arms—and the spell was broken. The invisible glass barrier between them shattered, and Amanda forced herself into action, going to Olivia's side and kneeling next to her. She was afraid to touch her wife, the injuries were so extensive, but she found a mostly unblemished spot near Olivia's elbow, and she cupped it gently. Her other hand rested lightly on the side where the ribs weren't black and blue.

She intended to coax Olivia's arm down enough to see her eyes and gauge her level of consciousness. But the moment Amanda touched cold, bare skin, Olivia cried out and shrank from the contact, instinctively trying to curl up in a ball. The best she could do with her wrists bound above her was draw up both knees and twist her body sideways, left arm overextended so far past its limit, Amanda feared the rotator cuff might give out again. Olivia had hated that sling so.

"Liv baby, it's me. It's Amanda. Shh-shh. Hey, darlin', I'm not gonna hurt you." Amanda's palms hovered just above Olivia's skin, as close as they could get without touching. She felt as if her hands were tied too, preventing her from offering adequate solace and care. Even the slightest brush of skin made Olivia retreat more into herself, tugging at her restraints to get away, to physically retreat as well. Amanda winced in pain, feeling every jerk and jolt like they were in her own body. "Liv, can you look at me? Shh, I won't hurt you."

Olivia produced little more than incoherent mumbling that Amanda strained to hear. She caught bits of actual words (no,don't,plea—), but nothing to indicate her wife had any clue who she was. In fact, Olivia was terrified of her, and that wrenched at Amanda's heart more painfully than if it had been torn from her chest. "Come on, darlin', let me get this off of you. Please? You're safe now, it's over, shh. They can't hurt you anymore, I won't let them."

More promises Amanda couldn't keep, but she had to say something to soothe the captain, who kept pulling the belt tighter around her wrists with each attempt to dodge Amanda's hands. Her nail beds were faintly blue and her fingers moved restlessly, seeking a solid, true thing to hold onto, like she was gripping a rockface over a sheer drop. Her skin was chafed and bruised beneath the leather strap, ringed in red lines and more dark fingerprint smudges.

She whimpered when Amanda managed to unknot the belt from her crossed wrists, her arms sliding limply down to her chest, lax as a pair of discarded scarves. She didn't seem to notice they were free, and rather than try to sit up or cover herself, she put every ounce of strength she had into raising both arms again and protecting her head and face. Amanda knew all about the phenomenon—how it had been tested on dogs, who were given electric shocks inside cages and eventually became so traumatized they wouldn't try to escape, even when the cage doors were left open. The freeze response, developed by a body whose fight or flight instincts had been suppressed during an attack (or several), preventing it from reacting to any further assault when or if it came.

It was biology; it even showed up on CT scans, different portions of the brain lit up or greyed out, depending on a PTSD patient's response to danger. It could be observed in soldiers, survivors of genocide, CSA victims, and abused housewives alike. There was no question it was a legitimate and common behavior, that the person experiencing it had no control over a brain and nervous system rewired by trauma. But it still pissed Amanda off. Her response was fight, and it always would be.

She would be Olivia's goddamn fight response, if that's what it took.

"Hey, baby, I need you to sit up for me, okay? Can you do that? Come on, I got you. Good girl." The last part had been a slip of the tongue—being called a good girl was a trigger for Olivia, whose many abusers had taunted her with some variation of the pet name during their assaults—but Amanda didn't think her wife even noticed. She was too busy shying from Amanda's touch and refusing to look at her, no matter how gently Amanda coaxed her upright and tried to lower her arms from around her head. "Look at you, being a stubborn old thing. Now I know why Jesse's such a grump butt in the morning. Just like her mommy."

The mention of their daughter caught Olivia's attention, just as Amanda hoped it would, and her elbows parted slightly, a single brown eye peeking through. It stared for a long time, drifting in and out of focus, until finally a barely audible voice whisper-croaked, "Manda." Not a question, not a cry of delight or relief. Only a simple acknowledgment, as if Amanda had strolled into her office and sat down across from her at the captain's desk.

Days ago, that would have seemed like the most ordinary part of Amanda's daily routine, but now it brought tears to her eyes and a flood of emotion so overwhelming that she released it with a broken little laugh. "Yeah, baby, I'm here. I've got you." She eased Olivia's elbow aside, treating her as carefully as she had their newborn daughter just three and a half months earlier, and bit her lip to hold back a gasp. The facial injuries weren't as extensive as the bodily ones, but seeing Olivia's beautiful, expressive features, which exuded her warmth and kindness more than any other part of her—especially those big brown eyes—looking so hollow and haunted was a shock to the system.

"What time is it?" Olivia asked urgently, like she had just remembered she was late for an important meeting. She couldn't sit up by herself, her head leaden on Amanda's shoulder, and yet she was concerned about promptness. "F'rgot my watch."

"I dunno, probably around four-somethin'," Amanda said, distracted by her own concerns of how to safely get Olivia on her feet, out of the shipping container, and into a car on the other side of the lot. The captain already looked as though she would come apart at the seams if handled too roughly. Amanda had an E.T. doll that she'd carried around by its outstretched phone-homefinger through much of the eighties, its fuzzy brown body weighted and swinging like a pendulum behind her, and the homely little guy was still constructed better than the woman in her arms. "Don't worry about your watch, it's safe at home. Let's get you there too, huh?"

"Where are we?" Olivia winced with each blink, as if the light was a razor blade, slicing at her eyes. Brow furrowed in confusion, she searched for something familiar in their surroundings, but found nothing. "Is this— are we in Sealview? I don't wanna be here, Amanda. No, no! Oh God, we have to go."

The mention of Sealview was so eerie it made the hair on Amanda's arms stand up. Had Olivia made the connection between the prison and her abduction while she was trapped here in hell, suffering the tortures of the damned (meanwhile, it took Amanda, the NYPD, and the FBI days to figure it out), or had the visit from Matthew Parker simply triggered flashbacks of another hell she escaped long ago? Why wasn't important, though, when Olivia was so distressed by the memory.

"Shh-shh, it's not Sealview. It's not Sealview, sweetheart. That was a long time ago, and you don't ever have to go back there." Amanda stroked the hack-job Gus Sandberg had made of Olivia's full, beautiful mane. Dirty and matted, it hung lank around her head, all its luster gone. She would have to cut it at least a little above the shoulder to even it out, and though that wasn't anywhere near the worst tragedy to come out of this situation, it made Amanda's heart ache. Somehow, Olivia's hair was a major source of comfort to her, and now it had been ripped away, like so many others.

"But we do need to get you out of here," she added, swallowing the lump in her throat. As long as she had Olivia back, the hair wasn't important. She pressed her lips to Olivia's hairline, wanting to breathe her in, and finding no trace of the bittersweet scent she associated with her wife. Wine and blackberries and rich dark chocolate. A smell like decadence, but which now stank of the carnal: blood, sweat, tears, sex. Amanda held her breath. "I don't know where Gus is, and I want you someplace safe before he comes back."

Perking up at the name, Olivia became even more agitated and didn't seem to know if she should take Amanda's hands or push them away. She tried to do both, then drew them under her chin and let out a weak sob. Dehydration had dried up all her tears, but she cried as if they rained down in sheets. She cried as if her heart were shattering into a million pieces.

"What is it, darlin'?" Amanda tossed another worried glance at the doors, expecting to see the Sandman appear at any moment. She didn't want to have to contend with him with Olivia present. It was one thing to be the target herself, but she couldn't protect Olivia without making her one too. "What's wrong, can you tell me?"

Olivia only shook her head at first, unable to speak. When she did find the shredded remnants of her voice, paper-thin and dry as bone, it required several tries before she formed anything coherent through her harsh, rasping breaths. "Tilly," she heaved at last, the name catching in her throat. She exhaled another feeble sob, inhaled with a stutter. "They took Tilly. They took our baby girl." No sound accompanied the last few words, the notes too high for her ravaged throat to produce, but the meaning was clear. And so was the devastation.

She collapsed into Amanda's arms then, burrowing under her chin and into the warmth of her sweatshirt. Had she the strength she would have rattled them both with her heart-wrenching cries, but she barely had the lung capacity of their infant daughter at the moment. Dry and convulsive, the weeping was muffled against Amanda's chest and soon gave way to pitiful coughs and gasps for air. It was hard to tell if the tremors that ran down her back were from the crying or the cold. Most of what she mumbled was indecipherable, except for their middle daughter's name, repeated over and over, like something irrevocably lost.

Tilly.

"Aw, baby, no." Amanda buried kisses in Olivia's hair, at the top of her head. Even that was cold, and it stank badly, the normally clean and silky strands matted together with sweat and God only knew what else. She didn't care, as long as it was part of her wife. Her wife, who was still alive and whose bloody, blackened feet she would have crawled to and kissed if it meant having her back. "Tilly's at home with the girls and Noah. Daphne's watching them, and they've got police protection. All our babies are safe, y'hear?"

The words took a moment to sink in, and when they did, Olivia tipped her head back to peer up at Amanda with uncertainty. It wavered on her shoulders, as if she had no more control of her neck muscles than baby Samantha, either. Amanda cupped a hand at the back, as much out of habit as concern that her head would suddenly drop backward. "But he said— he had pictures. Tilly and . . . and Parker. The red hat. He s-said they were going to— to hurt her. They're going to hurt her like they hurt—" Olivia started to crumble again, her face scrunching up to make tears, though none fell. Nor could she add themeto the end of her sentence.

Gus and his men had taken her words, her tears, and her identity.

Amanda shook her head and cupped Olivia gently by the cheeks, holding her wandering gaze. "Baby, no. It's not true. Whatever they told you is a lie. I saw Tilly just a little bit ago, and she's fine. Nobody's gonna touch her, I promise. She's still our sweet, innocent little lovebug. And you know what she wants right now, more than anything in the world? To see her mommy. She's been asking for you. All the kids have."

There would be time later on to apprise Olivia of the kidnapping attempt and to suggest they keep an eye out for any signs that Matilda was traumatized by what, if anything, she retained from the experience. Or maybe Amanda would just keep all that to herself, she thought, studying Olivia's sallow features, twisted into a pained expression. Still so uncertain and confused. Olivia had a long recovery ahead, and Amanda wasn't going to add any more to her already unbearable load by admitting Tilly had been in danger. She probably already had the images burned into her brain anyway—of the horrors she'd believed their three-year-old was suffering. The men hurting her like they had hurt Olivia. Like they had hurt other little girls not much older than Tilly.

"She's okay? She's not here? I thought . . . " Olivia gazed around the shipping container—torture chamber, more like—her eyes straying from one corner to the other, not really seeing anything they landed on. Studies showed that people could adapt to even the most deplorable conditions within a matter of days, in an effort to stay alive and keep their captors happy. Olivia had been doing exactly that her entire life; it wasn't any wonder she didn't seem to notice the hellhole she was in. "I thought they were raping her. I wanted to die. I tried with the belt, but they stopped me and—"

The rest was unintelligible as she lowered her head, muttering and crying, unaware that she had just confessed to attempting suicide. Amanda, however, felt like the floor had suddenly been yanked out from under her, leaving her momentarily suspended in midair before the big drop. She didn't blame Olivia for wanting to die after three days of this living hell, with all those men repeatedly violating her, and no sign of hope on the horizon, just the belief that her little girl had succumbed to the same fate. That would make anyone want to die, including Amanda.

But it frightened her that Olivia had tried to break her promise never to kill herself. Once a first attempt was made, it was only a matter of time before another came. Amanda wanted to say something to undo it, to go back and free Olivia from ever shouldering that burden, or at least to acknowledge that she had heard. She made a mental note to talk it over with Olivia later, when they were out of danger and the captain was more lucid. For now she tried to hook the split sides of Olivia's t-shirt around her shoulders and sit her fully upright. "That didn't happen, baby. Tilly's not here, it's okay for us to leave. Can you help me stand you up? I don't wanna hurt you."

Olivia looked down at her lap as if she didn't remember how to shift onto her knees, let alone get to her feet. She gazed back to Amanda, stripped as bare emotionally as she was physically. She was almost unrecognizable then, though not from the cuts or bruises. It took Amanda a moment to put her finger on what was different, and when she did, it made her fight back tears. All of Olivia's defenses were down. Every piece of armor gone, including what she must have worn even with Amanda—for how would Amanda notice its absence if it hadn't always been there?

It was like seeing Olivia for the first time, in her truest, most artless form. She seemed strangely unsullied, vulnerable as a child. "I'm cold," she said in a voice so small she might actually have been a child. Everything within Amanda longed to reach down, scoop her up into strong arms, into warmth and safety, and carry her far, far away from here. Everything about that voice made it sound possible. "They took my clothes. I can't go out like this. I need . . . "

The illusion of Olivia as an innocent, untouched and ageless, was broken when she crossed both arms over her chest, attempting to conceal her mistreated breasts. "I'm so cold," she repeated, doubling up at the middle, rolling herself into a protective ball. If possible, it looked like she had gotten smaller in the past few days, and Amanda wondered if it was her imagination—the enormity of the situation dwarfing her larger-than-life captain—or if she'd actually been diminished somehow.So cold.

Amanda glanced down at her own clothes, the NYPD sweatshirt she took from Olivia's locker and the track pants she had been wearing since Saturday. Her sleeves and the heavy polyester of her pant legs were foxed by rust-colored bloodstains, courtesy of the late Matthew Parker, but they were the only acceptable clothing around. She would not dress her wife in the clothes of her dead rapist, now soaked in his blood, and she wouldn't search this sh*thole for rags, even if they were to be worn only briefly. She wasn't going to bring any more of this place than necessary with her and Olivia once they left it.

Without a second thought, she tugged the sweatshirt up and over her head and carefully inched it down over Olivia's. "Here y'go, baby," she whispered absently, threading Olivia's boneless arms through the holes. "That'sa girl. Almost gotcha. There, now. Like it's made for ya, huh?"

Instantly Olivia melted into the body heat trapped inside the soft fabric, her discomfort at having it grazed along her tender skin forgotten. She looked more like herself with it on, at least outwardly. The vacant expression and compliance to each nudge from Amanda were troubling. Fighting to dress her wouldn't have been ideal, but moving her around like a storefront mannequin was worse. She just wasn't there.

Getting the track pants off and then slipping them onto Olivia's mottled, rubbery legs proved much more difficult. She yipped in pain when Amanda worked the waistband around her buttocks and onto her hips, and her body reacted as if she were under attack again, crumpling in on itself like a pill bug. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," became Amanda's murmured refrain, her hands wincing back from the body she so adored and had vowed more than once never to harm.

Down to her bra and panties, she shut off her brain
(I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry)
and began the next task on autopilot. He was heavier than he looked, though the dead usually were. Luckily, Amanda had above average strength for her size and build, and she was already running on pure adrenaline. She got Angelov's legs out from underneath him, letting them drop from the wheelbarrow position, and assessed the damage to his clothes. She refused to look at his face.

The shirt was a hopeless cause, a cumulus cloud of blood adorning the chest, and within it two telltale holes left of center. However, just below, a flannel shirt was knotted around the waist by its sleeves. Amanda hastily untied them and yanked until the shirt, relatively clean at a quick glance, gave way. She buttoned it around her, trying not to think about where it had been or how it smelled like him. The hem fell past the tops of her thighs, the cuffs clearing her fingertips by at least two inches. She rolled up the latter and started on the pants, which meant first getting off the boots.

"Come on, motherf*cker," she muttered as she yanked at the heels of both shoes, then took turns jerking until they popped loose one at a time. "f*ck you, piece of sh*t." The legs flopped back to the ground like dead catfish on a boat deck, and she kicked them out straight with her socked feet. A dark smile crossed her lips at the dime-sized hole and the black stain in the crotch of the joggers. Neither would even be noticeable if she left the shirt untucked.

It was easier than she expected to shuck off the pants and slip them up her own legs. Then again, she didn't have severe trauma to her genital region like Olivia did. Like Angelov died with. Amanda sneered at his corpse, nude from the waist down, his dick shredded like an exploding cigar in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. His thighs were painted in deep crimson blood, she noted with satisfaction. "Enjoy your new Prince Albert," she said, tugging the drawstring of the pants tight around her waist. "Sick f*ck."

She tied the string into a haphazard bow and turned to find Olivia watching intently, eyes painfully large in her gaunt face. They followed Amanda's every move, seeming to really see her now. She stepped sideways, blocking Olivia's view of the body as well as she could, though the steady gaze remained locked on her, purposefully not straying lower. In spite of everything, the captain was at least partially aware of her surroundings and what had just transpired.

"Is he dead?" she asked evenly, no tinge of hope or trepidation to suggest how she felt about the answer either way. Just that straightforward question, as if Angelov was a coyote Amanda had clipped with a shotgun and followed into the woods. Olivia was waiting for confirmation in blood, a dripping pelt extended by a gore-soaked fist. If Amanda had held out Angelov's scalp as proof, she doubted it would get a reaction at all.

"Yeah, baby, he's dead. Can't hurt you anymore." Amanda knelt beside her wife, momentarily cupping a hand to her jaw, thumb stroking the purple cheekbone above. She nodded, holding Olivia's gaze until she nodded along, agreeing with the promise of safety, of comfort and rescue. Even if she didn't fully comprehend yet, it was something for her to hang onto. A life preserver tossed into the ocean. "How's 'bout we get some shoes on—"

Amanda's voice caught when she took a good look at Olivia's bare feet. The soles were cracked and seeping, with dark slender splinters embedded beneath the skin on the ball and heel of both feet. Inflamed and covered in nicks and cuts, it looked like she had walked through a briar patch—or scuffed her feet, repeatedly and vigorously, across the unfinished wood floor some jackass had installed inside the container. A half-assed attempt at sprucing the place up, she thought bitterly.

Expecting a hiss of pain or another heart-rending whimper, Amanda fitted her socks and shoes onto Olivia's feet with great care. But if the added pressure caused any discomfort, Olivia didn't let it show. She stared right through the chunky white sneakers she'd previously gotten so much enjoyment out of making fun of—"Seriously, how many stormtroopers did they have to kill to make those things?"—and she didn't say a word regarding what Amanda would wear on her own feet. Amanda had no idea, either, and after a brief appraisal of Angelov's much too large boots, she shrugged off the need for shoes altogether.

She'd spent the majority of her formative years traipsing around Loganville with no shoes, or flip-flops that were as good as, her feet caked in rust-colored clay. The soles got tough after a while, and half the time you didn't even notice what you were stepping on. One time she had sliced open the arch of her left foot on a broken co*ke bottle and didn't realize it until she got home, saw her bloody footprints on the porch, and became convinced a murderer had followed her inside.

Hoofing it barefoot across a concrete lot she could handle just fine. And if not, she would stop off in the warehouse and borrow Kat's shoes.

Or she wouldn't.

"A'right, darlin', I'm gonna need you to help me out a little here," she said, squatting down to loop Olivia's arm around her shoulder. Short of carrying Olivia bodily from the room, acting as a crutch was the best option for getting her off the floor. That is, if her legs could sustain her, and Amanda had serious doubts about that. She barely had control of her neck muscles, let alone the more violently strained ones in her battered and twisted limbs. But they would make it work. They had to. "Can you boost us up with me? I'll get us going, and you can lean on me."

"I think so." Olivia sounded so vacant and uncertain it didn't seem very promising. She tried to prepare herself, though, bless her heart, bracing a hand on the floor and shoving up at the count of three. For a second, it felt as if they might actually succeed at standing, their trajectory wobbly but unhindered. But when it was time to straighten their knees, Olivia's buckled beneath her, and they both dropped back down to the floor. "Ouch. I'm sorry. I can't—"

"No, no, it's okay. This is good." Amanda heard the phony optimism in her voice, but didn't try to correct it. For Olivia's sake she had to stay positive and not sink into the pit of despair that yawned open before them. There would be plenty of time for that later. "It'll be easier to stand up from here anyway. C'mon, Cap'n, one leg at a time and a big heave-ho, then we'll be outta this hellhole. You can do it."

She was so focused on willing Olivia's legs from a kneeling position into a standing one, she didn't notice the other presence in the room until it spoke:

"Looks to me like y'all could use some help. You're weaving around in here like a couple old drunks."

And then, as Amanda's hand snaked around for the Glock tucked into the back of her waistband, the presence stepped forward into the light, palms spread. "Easy, it's me. Shoot me, and you can forget about these puppies lending a hand. I know they're kinda stubby, but they get the job done."

"Jesus Christ! Dana, what the hell?" Amanda huffed, shoving the gun back into place. Flooded with the relief of not having to use it, she momentarily felt as loose and limp as Olivia. Maybe she wasn't a stone cold killer after all, if that was how much she didn't want to shoot someone else. Or maybe she was just glad to see a familiar face in the midst of all this chaos. Someone to help shoulder the burden, literally. "You scared the sh*t outta me. How the hell'd you know where to find us?"

"You think I let anybody drive off in my baby without a tracking app?" Dana brandished her cell phone with the same import as flashing a badge. In her other hand she held her service weapon, at the ready for whatever she would find inside the shipping container. Noticing the gun was still pointed at Amanda, she lowered it and the cell phone, though the phone was all she put away. "Once I got here, I just followed the blood trail."

Amanda shot the agent a silencing glare, warning her not to get into specifics in front of Olivia. The captain's awareness waxed and waned, and currently it was waning, but Amanda wasn't going to take any chances that her wife would find out what she had done inside the warehouse, especially to that boy Xander. The truth would come out eventually, but for right now, Olivia only need know she was rescued. "Where's your backup? Figured you'd have half the Bureau raining down on this place once you found it."

"I didn't tell anyone where I was going," Dana said, holstering her gun without securing it as she stepped up to get Olivia on her feet. "You'd be surprised how easy it is to slip out while everyone's scrambling to find a missing detective, officer, and perp. It's pure chaos, and with an abducted captain on top of that . . . " She lifted Olivia's free arm tentatively, fingers linked near the armpit, and whispered over her nodding head. "How's she doing?"

"See for yourself," Amanda said, grunting as they hefted Olivia to her feet, each holding an arm to keep her from teetering one way or the other. Olivia looked up in a daze to find herself standing, something she hadn't done on her own in at least thirty-plus hours. She blinked drowsily at Amanda, as if she couldn't quite make her out, then over at Dana, whom she stared at for several long beats.

Almost too softly to hear, Olivia declared, "You," and tipped her head back the way she did when she tried to read fine print without her glasses. "You killed someone." Whether or not she disapproved was hard to say, but she made no attempt to shake Dana off or distance herself from the woman she had felt so betrayed by after that murder confession.

Amanda remembered well how sullen and distracted Olivia had been in the weeks that followed her interrogation of Dana Lewis. One thing that struck Amanda most at the time was the ambiguity—she couldn't tell if Olivia was more upset that her friend had killed someone, or that Dana had lied to her about it. Amanda hoped it was the latter. She couldn't bear for the sole imprint she left on Olivia's brain, even in the midst of horrendous trauma, to be: Killer.

Even if it were true.

"Yeah, about that . . . " Dana cleared her throat, glancing at Amanda as if seeking her approval to speak further. Thankfully, she understood that Olivia wasn't entirely coherent, and took the hint to keep her response brief. "Wrongfully accused. I'll explain later. Right now y'all need to skedaddle on outta here and get you to a hospital, honeybun. Sound good?" She spoke at a volume suitable for the elderly or the hearing impaired, instinctively hunched forward like she was addressing an old woman with a walker.

Any other time, Olivia would have told the FBI agent to stand the hell up and stop shouting at her like she was deaf. Amanda held her breath, waiting for it, but Olivia only nodded her agreement and slumped in Amanda's embrace, unable to maintain what little balance she'd had from being propped up on both sides.

Guiding Olivia's head onto her shoulder, Amanda kept a hand over the opposite ear and stage whispered across it to Dana. "Are you seriously just letting me go? What about him? And there's more in the warehouse. Kat, she . . . " Unexpected tears pricked her eyes, and she stopped short at the emotion in her voice. She'd be damned if she would lose it now, after everything she had made it through so far.

"I saw. You've been a busy girl." Dana craned her neck to survey Nicholas Angelov's body past Amanda's shoulder. She pulled a face at the state of his half-dressed corpse with its exposed, mangled genitals, then sighed like a weary mother about to tackle a mess left behind by an overactive toddler. "You let me worry about this and the other. Ask me, looks like these boys went and had themselves a shootout before we even got here. And I'll take care of that." She put a finger to her lips, silencing Amanda as she started to mention Kat again.

"Why?" Amanda asked, trusting her freedom to leave no more than Olivia had moments earlier. Lewis already put her career on the line by letting Amanda abscond with Matthew Parker, now she was risking a prison sentence—and a real one, not just an undercover tour—by offering to stage a crime scene and allow a suspect to flee. She knew the thin blue line went deep, but that seldom held true between feds and cops, especially when they barely knew each other.

Dana cast a sad look at Olivia, showing genuine concern in spite of her brusque exterior. She touched the captain's shoulder for a moment, as if in passing, as if strength could be imparted with a single meaningful squeeze. "Because somebody owes it to her. And I'll be goddamned if I let those sonsabitches get away with this. Did you do what had to be done, Detective?"

Did she? Amanda thought of Xander Bergström, whose intellectual level was probably close to that of her two eldest children, as he crawled on all fours, searching for his missing jaw like a lost marble or a set of keys. She thought of him putting his fingers inside of Olivia while the other men pawed and tore at her, his lack of concern for the crying, bleeding woman on the desk undeniable. Learned behavior or not, he was ruined. His father and brother had seen to that.

"Yes, ma'am," she said solemnly, with a firm military nod. This was warfare, after all. Maybe not on as grand a scale as some wars were fought, but the minute Sondra Vaughn came after Amanda's wife the battle had been waged. Amanda would use every last weapon she had, down to her own eye teeth, to end it—and anyone who was involved. She gave her hair a toss, snapping it over her shoulder, posture erect. "Clear head, clear eyes, clear heart."

Except for Kat, she meant every word.

"Good. Then that's all I need to know." Dana hiked her thumb toward the doorway, signaling for Amanda to get a move on. She swiped the same thumb under her nose and sniffed loudly. "Now get that poor girl outta this festering sh*t factory and into a hospital bed. I can't hold my guys or yours off forever, and I've got my work cut out for me with the, um, creative approach you took." She indicated Angelov's body with a slant of her shrewd dark eyes.

Without looking back at her latest (and final?) casualty, Amanda started for the door, supporting most of Olivia's weight despite the captain's best efforts to follow along. The poor thing just didn't have the strength or coordination to take more than a step or two unaided. They hadn't made it much farther than that when Amanda stopped and glanced over her shoulder at the woman who was saving her ass. "Dana, I . . . "

Thank you didn't quite cover it, considering the magnitude of Amanda's appreciation and what Dana was about to do for her. For Olivia. The FBI agent probably wouldn't accept something that sappy anyway. "Watch out for Gus," Amanda concluded, adding the name in the same hushed tone they used at home so the dogs wouldn't go nuts at words likewalkorpark. She wasn't sure Olivia even knew the Sandman's real name, but she didn't want to frighten her with it or with the knowledge that he was still alive somewhere. "Haven't seen him, but he probably won't stay away very long. His kid is here."

Was. His kid was here.

"Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself." Dana took her 9mm from its holster and displayed it as if that was all the answer Amanda needed. It looked like she might kiss the barrel, the way she held it up close to her face, admiring. "He never gets caught because he runs, not because he stays and fights. 'Sides, he's got everyone else doing his dirty work for him. Guys like that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. And don't you dare say same difference."

The joke sailed over Amanda's head, but she was aware of Dana's irreverence, and she didn't like it. Gustav Sandberg shouldn't be taken lightly, no matter how confident Dana was feeling or how much firepower she had at her disposal. "Be careful," Amanda said gravely. After a second thought, she took her Glock from the front waistband of Angelov's joggers and extended it to the other woman. She gave it an extra thrust in Dana's direction after a hesitation to accept. "Take it. If you find him . . . I want it to be my gun you use. However you see fit."

"What about—"

"I got it covered." Amanda tossed her gun onto Dana's palm, upturned with uncertainty, then reached for Olivia's gun behind her back. Their weapons were identical, but she could swear the grip was somehow different on this one than on her own. She flexed her fingers around it a few times, adjusting to the feel. If she had to shoot someone with it, she could—that was really all that mattered. "Don't let him sandman you, hey, Lewis? It's time he f*cking gets what he deserves."

"Trust me, babygirl, he ain't pouring no sand in these eyes. I've never been much for dreams, anyhow." Dana holstered her pistol again, shooing with the muzzle of Amanda's gun. "Now, hospital. Go."

Amanda went, hobbling out of the shipping container and across the lot with Olivia hanging onto her shoulders and stumbling along beside her. It was impossible to move quickly while being mindful of Olivia's injuries and treating her as gently as Amanda wanted to. Several times she had to stop and heft her captain higher into her arms, making Olivia wince and hiss with pain.I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Amanda repeated in her head, too winded to say it out loud.

By the time they reached the corner of the warehouse, they were both panting heavily and on the verge of collapse. "I can't," Olivia gasped, falling against the concrete pillar like Jesus grappling with his cross.Father, please take this cup from me. "Yes, you can," Amanda said breathlessly, shouldering her weight again, urging her on despite the balking. As much as Amanda hated it, this was one time she couldn't let Olivia say no. "Look at me, darlin'. Yes, you can. You have to. Do it for me 'n our babies. They need their mommy. And I need you to do this for me."

She would have to add manipulation to her long list of sins for the day, but right then she didn't care. Whatever she had to say to get Olivia around the building and into the car, she would say it. And not only because the journey was so arduous—she was pretty sure she had just heard a car door somewhere in the distance. Sound carried strangely out here along the waterfront, especially while surrounded by a mountain range of metal containers, but if Gus or the cavalry had arrived, it was time to haul ass.

Without waiting for the go-ahead, Amanda took off again, launching herself like a horse from the starting gate, dragging Olivia along with her. She moved so quickly, neither of them had a chance to protest or stumble. They were too preoccupied hanging onto each other and trying to catch an occasional breath. If there was ground beneath Amanda's bare feet, she didn't feel it.

Before her brain could catch up with her rapid footsteps, she had Olivia in the passenger's seat of the Lincoln, buckling her into the seatbelt with the practiced hand of a mother with four small children.

The click still made Olivia's entire body jerk as if a blast of gunfire had gone off next to her ear. She hunkered down inside of herself, fearful of Amanda leaning over her, of the belt strapping her in, of the bright sunlight streaming through the windshield. The outside world had become almost as hostile and frightening to her as the one inside the box. Even Amanda was a threat. She longed to kneel beside Olivia, take her by the hands, kiss the backs, and reassure her she was safe.

But first Amanda had to get her to the hospital. She pressed her lips to Olivia's hairline for a moment, so fleeting they barely made contact, and whispered, "Hang on, baby. Hang on, okay? I'm shutting the door. Watch your fingers." There wasn't any need for the warning, with Olivia's hands lying limply in her lap, the fingers curled in like the legs of a dead insect. Amanda eased the door shut carefully anyway, bumping it fully closed with her hip to deaden the noise. She rounded to the driver's side after a cautious scan of the lot, keeping low in case she had to duck behind the car.

There were no other vehicles in sight, and she slid in behind the wheel of the town car with a giddy sense of escape, though they weren't quite home free just yet. She latched her door as soundlessly as possible, still cringing at the muffled thump and the purr of the engine. It wasn't a loud car, but right then she felt like she was revving a Mustang on a quiet neighborhood street. At least Olivia hadn't cowered away this time, if she could even manage it, as badly as she was shaking.

"Aw, baby. Hold on, hold on. I'll get you warmed up." Amanda found she couldn't remember the steps for warming someone with hypothermia—if it should be done gradually or all at once—but she turned the heater on full blast anyway. All that mattered was Olivia was cold and needed her body temperature raised, and Amanda had the solution. She adjusted the vents to blow on her wife, who was squinting at her surroundings with uncertainty and confusion.

"Manda," Olivia rasped, saying the name as though not quite convinced she had it right. But she did know who she was with, and that was encouraging. Back in the container, she barely seemed to recognize Amanda at all. Here she gazed out the window like it was the rest of the world she didn't recognize. Like those three days inside the box were familiar ground, life beyond it a foreign planet, when shouldn't it be the other way around?

"Yeah, baby?"

"Where are we?"

Amanda navigated the car through the parking lot at a slow crawl, not wanting to attract any attention to their departure. She would floor it once they were beyond the stacked units, where the flow of city traffic and the industrial clang of construction would drown out the Lincoln's gunning engine. Fortunately, Dana had a light bar on the dash, with a siren option. She did like to make an entrance. "It's a shipping yard in New Jersey, sweetheart," Amanda said. During normal conversation, she would have cracked a Jersey joke, but nothing about this was normal. "Hoboken."

"Oh. They brought me to Jersey?" Olivia sounded as perplexed as if she'd discovered Gus and his men had housed her in Japan.

"Yeah." Trying for a wan smile, Amanda fell short at a queasy twitch of the lips. She wondered if her wife was figuring out that she had been less than twenty minutes away from the precinct the whole time she was being tortured and assaulted; meanwhile, Amanda had sat around uselessly, letting it happen.

Less than twenty f*cking minutes. Jesus.

"I wanna go home," Olivia said suddenly, as if the thought had just occurred to her. She was slouched low in her seat, gazing up with innocent, earnest eyes that were so like their baby daughter's, it shredded whatever remained intact of Amanda's heart. She was asking to be taken home the way small children asked for the deepest desires of their heart. "I don't wanna go to the hospital. I— I think I'm okay. Can we just go home now, please?"

It gutted Amanda to hear the pleading, to look into her wife's beautiful, bruised, imploring face, and to still have to say no. There was no way in hell Olivia was "okay," even if she meant in the physical sense. Her body was probably so numb she didn't realize how badly she was injured. "No, darlin'. I'm sorry, but I gotta get you somewhere to be looked at. You're in real rough shape. Might have some internal injuries. I know you hate hospitals, baby. So do I. But I need to be sure you're okay."

She left out the part where Olivia would need another rape kit. At least the fourth one Amanda was aware of her undergoing in the past several years. Harris, Lewis, Arliss—and now Gus, aka The Sandman. Even if all of the men turned up dead this time, it was still important to collect evidence of what they had done, so the assaults could never be denied. And part of Amanda feared that she'd missed other assaults by other men while the cameras were off. DNA testing could help rule that out or confirm it. Then she would know if there was anyone else she had to hunt down and execute.

Olivia wilted further against the seat, barely managing to hold her head up. She sighed like she wanted to say more or offer up protest, but she didn't have the strength for it. Amanda would have preferred she argue, tell her she didn't get final say on medical decisions, and demand to be taken back to their apartment immediately. Not that Amanda would have listened. But any sign of Olivia's strong-willed nature would be better than the spiritless, defeated reaction she gave. "Okay. Which hospital?"

"There's the Medical Center here in Hoboken," Amanda said, momentarily distracted as she finally coasted out of the lot and onto a gravel path. No one was following in the rearview, and up ahead, like a lamp burning in a lighthouse on a nighttime coast, was the main road. A place where they could put this unspeakable hell behind them.

"Rather go to Mount Sinai." Olivia's gaze remained fixed on the window, a sidelong drift of her eyes as they passed the construction site the only indication that she saw anything beyond the glass. She shrank even more inside herself as the high metal labyrinth loomed alongside her, and turned away completely when the men working there came into view. "In the City."

"University is closer," Amanda countered lightly, trying not to flat-out dismiss Olivia's preference. Of course she wanted to be treated closer to home, away from the Jersey pit she'd been terrorized in. It might even be wiser to leave the town where Sandberg's headquarters resided, in case he had affiliates at the local hospitals. But right now, the most important step was to get medical care for Olivia as soon as possible.

Anyone who even looked at her funny would first have to go through Amanda. "Let's try that one, yeah?"

Olivia shook her bowed head, peering at Amanda through the coarse, raggedy strands of her hair when sitting up straight proved too difficult. "Sinai's fifteen minutes. Please, Amanda. Wanna be in the City."

Leave it to her city girl to know the distance, Amanda thought sadly. That place was in the captain's blood in a way no spot on earth had ever been in Amanda's. Other than by Olivia's side. It might be good to let her make the decision of where they went. Reestablish some of the agency that had been stripped away from her, repeatedly, for three excruciating days. Fifteen minutes would be worth that small kindness.

"Okay, baby. Mount Sinai it is," Amanda murmured, reaching over to stroke Olivia's cheek, dying a little inside when she flinched at being touched. Logically she understood that Olivia wasn't afraid of her—that it was a natural reaction after enduring so much trauma—but it still cut to the bone. They had worked so hard on getting past Olivia's many trust issues these last four years, but being touched by Amanda had never been one of them. Until now. "But I'm using lights and sirens. I'm sorry, Liv. It'll get us there faster."

She flipped on the light bar and siren without giving Olivia time to anticipate the loud abrasive noise, which would undoubtedly be an assault to her senses. Amanda felt cruel just for putting it on. All she could say as she angled the car toward 495 and the Lincoln Tunnel, the only comfort she could give, was an apologetic, "Hang on, baby. Hang on."

. . .

Chapter 31: The Body Electric

Chapter Text

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

- Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"

Chapter 31.

The Body Electric

. . .

God, would he ever stop driving?

And that incessant chatter was going to drive (no pun intended) Olivia insane if it went on much longer. They had been circling aimlessly around the city for hours, no rhyme or reason to any of the sudden stops and screeching turns made at the very last second. Twice her head had thumped against the back passenger window, much to his delight. He kept trying to time it to thepop!in "Pop Goes the Weasel," sung at the top of his lungs as he swerved down an empty stretch of road, jostling her side to side.

His unpredictability was what made him so difficult to catch—and to keep. She'd put him away once, practically in the ground, yet here he was again, terrorizing her in the backseat of another car, in another part of her city
(It washers, Amanda always said)
months after those four days of hell she first spent with him. Pop goes the weasel indeed.

This time she was his accomplice, though. What else did you call it when someone went on a rape-torture-killing spree in your name, then requested your presence, so you slipped your security detail and joined him with goddamn bells on? Sure sounds like complicit behavior to me, Captain. (Except she'd been Sergeant back then; barely six months in the uniform, and she had donned it to announce that she was a liar on national television. A liar, a brutal cop, an accomplice, a monster . . . )

Every half hour or so, he parked the car in some random spot—a closed gas station, an empty alley, beneath an overpass, anywhere dark and unpopulated—got into the backseat, and did things to her. Some of it was just groping, which was easy enough to steel herself against. She had plenty of practice. But when his fingers crept farther on, pumping between her legs, fast and hard, it became a battle of wills. "Come on," he slithered in her ear, coquettish at first, then vicious and cruel, determined to force it out of her. "Comeon."

She wouldn't give it to him, not again. There were no drugs dulling her fears and inhibitions like last time, and if he wanted to f*ck an org*sm out of her, the disgusting son of a bitch would have to climb on top of her again
(Please, God, don't let him—)
and get it up like a real man. It was almost hilarious how soft he got every time he tried to put it in her. She had laughed, verging on hysterics, when he whipped it out in her old apartment, only for it to wilt as it neared her. You'd think she had anti-erection powder sprinkled on her c*nt.

He hadn't shared her amusem*nt. And then the burning started. That finally got her nipples hard, and beyond that lay a drunken, drug-fueled haze of his hands, his voice ("Based on your extensive collection over here, I'm guessing Mr. Night Shift doesn't quite fulfill his end of the bargain, eh?"), his devil smile. She wouldn't even have remembered coming if he hadn't loomed over her on all-fours, shaking the bed like a magnitude 8 earthquake and crowing that he knew she'd give it up for big silicon dick.

Now she had to find her own distractions as he fumbled inside her panties, digitally f*cking her in the dark. She watched cars in the distance, letting her eyes go soft and unfocused, the headlights blurring together and flitting place to place like the fairy inPeter Pan. Her mother had taken her to see the Broadway revival in 1979, with Sandy Duncan in the titular role. Productions in those days were a lot simpler, without the acrobatics and dangerous rigging of the Cathy Rigby era. But eleven-year-old Olivia was plenty impressed by Sandy's onstage gymnastics, and she'd loved the mischievous little ball of light that represented Tinker Bell.

Little had she known that someday she would grow up—the ultimate betrayal to Neverland and all it stood for—and watch a million Tinker Bells floating around her city while a dark and sinister man raped her in the backseat of a parked car.

Only it wasn't rape, not truly. Not in the sense of the word as she could stand to have it applied to herself. That was how she reasoned it out the first time with Lewis; he'd technically never put his penis inside her vagin*. True, in some states penetration was defined as any part of the penis coming into contact with any part of the vulva, but that was not the case under New York law. And the most he would probably get for using the dild* on her was aggravated sexual abuse.

That wasn't even worth mentioning, considering all the humiliation and embarrassment which would accompany it. The toy was hers, with her bodily fluids on it (of course), and on the bed where she regularly had sex with Brian Cassidy—it had been so easy to explain that all away after her rescue. She held her breath waiting for the SANE nurse to ask if she'd recently had intercourse, based on the pelvic exam, but her urine and the four-day lapse must have taken care of that evidence for her. She was fully prepared to cop to getting herself off with the toy the morning of her abduction, but the subject never even came up.

As for the fingering, well, she had walked into this. She didn't want it, nor would she ever consent to such a thing with this man, but she had known exactly what would happen if she answered his summons. (God, she hadn't expected it so many times, though. His hand had to be getting tired.) That was sort of like consenting, when you knew something horrible would happen and you went anyway. Besides, it was just more aggravated sexual abuse, not full-fledged rape.

That's what she had told them last time, and she would say the same now, until she was blue in the face: he didnotrape me, he didnotsodomize me. He didn't have the balls
(or the hard-on)
to do it!

Her mother would be proud of her for taking the importance of word choice and definition so much to heart. Of shaping her story so painstakingly, bending the language to her will.I learned from the best, Mom.She had the court on her side too. They wouldn't call anything Lewis had done to her—this time or before—rape. And neither would she.

Ten minutes. He got bored and gave ("—up, okay? I'll come 'round and get you. Just wait right there for me, darlin'," Amanda said, throwing open her door and trying to get out of the car without unbuckling her seatbelt) after ten minutes. Ten minutes of pure hell, of sirens and speeding through the Lincoln Tunnel like they were moving at warp speed. He would climb into the back with her again soon, determined to break down the walls she'd rebuilt after the last time; maybe he would never take her to Amanda
(Amelia? But, no, she was dead)
but just drive around with her forever, penetrating her at his leisure.

"No," she whimpered when he opened the door to drag her out. She had at least twenty more minutes before he started in on her again, she'd timed it. They left the shipping yard at 4:47, arrived in the Mount Sinai ambulance bay at a minute till. If she was going to survive another not-rape, she had to prepare herself, and he hadn't given her enough time. "Not here. Somewhere else." Why he had chosen this place, bright and open and well-populated, she didn't know. It was like he wanted to get caught.

"Naw, baby, it's gotta be here." Amanda ejected the seatbelt, guiding Olivia from the vehicle—gently, but without allowing her to shrug off the assistance—and settling her into the wheelchair that waited beside the car. "We came all this way, and everything else is too far. You have to get checked out. For me and the kids, remember? You in okay?" She looked up from fitting Olivia's feet onto the footplates of the chair, her eyes burning sapphire bright in her pretty, careworn face. Her skin was pale ivory, blue veins visible in the delicate upslope of her neck.

For the first time since they had left Hoboken, Olivia noticed that the flecks on her wife's cheeks were blood spatter, not freckles. The rusty red color stood out starkly against her fair complexion. "Where's your shoes?" she asked, more dismayed by the sight of Amanda's slender bare feet on the pavement than by the blood. She understood the stippling meant someone was dead—there had been gunshots while the Crier was on top of her; "Hear that?" he'd grunted as he thrust, "Hope those f*cktards accidentally blow each other's brains out. Then you'll be all mine"—but she couldn't remember who. She did feel certain Amanda had killed whomever it was, and strange as it sounded, that filled her with a distant, ethereal peace.

A whispered reassurance, a hand at the small of your back: Safe now.

"Don't you recognize them ugly old things on your feet?" Amanda replied, pointing over Olivia's shoulder. Her voice was too tight, too forced, the way she sounded when one of the kids got hurt and she tried to make them laugh so they wouldn't cry. "What'd you call me first time I wore 'em? Hillbilly Spice?"

("Peach Spice." Olivia tugged Amanda in by the hips, bringing them face to face, nose tip to nose tip. The only good thing about the butt-ugly chunky sneakers was that they put Amanda on the same level with her. The perfect height for kissing. "Wannabe my lover?"

Amanda pretended to think it over while Olivia nuzzled kisses against her neck, hands roving her backside in its skinny little jeans. "Well, now, I don't know, Cap'n. First you gotta get with my friends. Make it last forever. Friendship never ends, you know. Then you've got to give, because takin' is—"

Taking was far too easy, and Olivia did it with gusto, her mouth closing over her wife's as she practically swept the rambling blonde right off her thick-soled shoes. She did her best to make the kiss last forever.)

The color-blocked hospital flooring disappeared beneath Olivia's feet in the sneakers, giving her vertigo. For a moment, she thought she was on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport, but when she looked up, the wheelchair was rolling into an overbright room with a gurney and a cubicle curtain. Terror as stark as the room itself filled her at the sight of the narrow bed, the blinding overheads, and the confined space. She would have bolted from the chair if she could have gotten her legs to work. Or her arms.

Everything was so sore and stiff, she could barely turn her head to locate Amanda. Olivia heard her slightly nasal voice as if the volume were lowered and muffled by a glass partition, but a sidelong glance showed Amanda standing just behind her, gesturing at someone. Slowly Olivia followed the motions with her eyes and saw another woman in blue scrubs gazing down at her. Now she knew how a child felt, looking up at adults who were making decisions for them and talking about things they didn't understand.

She strained her hearing beyond the insectile whine in her ears to catch snippets of the conversation. Tense. Frightened. Urgent. Even without the words, she recognized those sounds. All from Amanda, and all in her clipped detective tone. But underneath was a quaver like the slide of a steel guitar, plaintive and heartbreaking. The appoggiatura they called it, from the Italian 'to lean'—the musical note that made you cry. And that's exactly what Amanda's rundown to the nurse made Olivia want to do.

"—raped by multiple assailants." A thick, sodden pause, as if the words were being plucked from a bog. "Six that I know of . . . sex trafficking . . . no condoms."

(Had there really been six of them? Six separate men raping her over a period of x days, y times a day. Olivia was too exhausted for rape math right then, but she knew for certain that she had surpassed the number of partial rapes from her past—and then some. Making up for lost time, she supposed. The punishment she had always deserved, but somehow managed to escape on a technicality at the last possible second. Perhaps she'd learned more from William Lewis than she ever realized.)

"—checked for internal injuries. Probably some rib fractures as well. You need to look at her cheekbone right there. Oh, and she had arthroscopic surgery about two years ago. Torn rotator cuff in her left shoulder, so you'll need to—"

"Ma'am, we can handle it from here." The nurse put her hand up gently but firmly, silencing Amanda's rattling list of ailments and precautions. "You can wait for your friend in the visitor's area, and we'll call you—"

"She ain't my friend, she's my goddamn wife. Not to mention she's a captain in the NYPD, so you sure as sh*t better give her the best damn care you got." When Amanda reached that tone, sharp and snappy, there really was no stopping her. Olivia found it best not to try, unless you wanted to be on the receiving end of a scathing remark. She did raise her hand, hoping to dissuade her angry wife from telling the nurse off any further. Instantly Amanda gathered the hand in her own, chafing it between her palms. "Don't worry, darlin', I'm not leaving you. They'll have to drag me— they'll have to arrest me if they want me outta here."

The expression on the nurse's face suggested she might not be opposed to such a thing, even Olivia could tell that much. She looked like a uni preparing to reach for her walkie and request backup. Amanda saw it too, and she was not above pulling rank. "Look, lady, I'm a detective. Same unit as her. Special Victims. You've heard of us. Well, now she's the special victim, and that puts her at the top of your list."

"I'll need to see some identification before I can—"

"Does it look like either of us has ID on us right now?" Amanda burst out, and though Olivia didn't have a clear view of her face, it sounded very red. In fact, the whole room appeared to be awash in red, as if it were set to a post-apocalyptic filter or lit with a bulb dipped in blood. What was that old mariners rhyme? Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. They never said what a red sky meant midday. (Dismay, Olivia's mind echoed.Dismay . . .)

"—had to put my clothes on her because the pigs who raped her tore all hers off. That's right, I'm not just dressed like this, I got these nasty-ass rags off a dead guy. Can you read? Her shirt says NYPD. If that's not proof enough, call the 16th precinct. Captain Benson and Detective Rollins. Do you need my damn badge number too? I'd give you hers, but captains don't have them. Did you know that, Nurse Karen?"

"No, ma'am." Nurse Karen, if that was indeed her name and not just a clever dig by Amanda, flushed several shades of pink under the fluorescent lighting. Mixed with the blue of her scrubs, it gave her a slightly purple hue, as though she too were hypothermic. Olivia felt a little sorry for her; she was obviously new to the hospital and unfamiliar with handling such a sensitive case, not to mention such a volatile spouse. But if she was going to do this line of work—and do it well—she'd better learn.

"Is Rudy on shift?" Olivia asked, starting at the rasp coming from her own throat. She could have voiced the part of a vengeful spirit in any number of horror movies with a rusty hinge of a voice like that. The nurse looked taken aback too, as if she were being addressed by a CPR training dummy, or perhaps a corpse from the hospital morgue. Apparently she hadn't thought Olivia could speak, let alone remember the names of staff. "Or Rose? They can confirm we're NYPD."

She hated using her badge to get special treatment, but if it kept Amanda from coming to blows with a bitchy RN, and if it got her checked out of the hospital sooner, she could make an exception this once. Besides that, her head was starting to feel a bit clearer, and though loath to admit it, she could tell she required medical attention. One unexpected side effect of spending so much time on introspection and mental health was that Olivia had become far more in tune with her body—its strengths and weaknesses; its abilities and, with more and more frequency throughout the years, its limits.

Her body had reached its limit. Despite the numbness in almost every piece of her, despite the realization that her flesh was no longer her own, she knew that she could withstand nothing else. One breath breathed on her too hard, she would fly apart like ashes in the wind. She held tight to Amanda's hand, convinced of it. The image was vivid in her mind: a golem with her form, dark and sooty; but she wouldn't be constructed of holy ash, more like what you would find at the tip of a cigarette or on the floor of a crematorium. Among the cancerous lungs and charred bone, the emphysemic coughs and the teeth cast like dice.

Thenpoof!A faint gust, and the golem disintegrated.

She was gone.

If there had been an answer about Rudy or Rose, she missed it entirely. Amanda was stroking her hair (what was left of it, anyway; she kept forgetting part of it had gotten hacked off) as if she were one of the kids being soothed while the adults conversed. Olivia almost fell for it, her head drifting toward Amanda's hip, where she gladly would have dozed off—had done so many times after they made love, although her wife's chest was her preferred spot—until she heard those dreaded words. Words she'd said countless times about others, but couldn't bear to have applied to herself.

"—a SANE nurse. She needs a rape kit. By someone who knows what the hell they're doing." Amanda tossed out a gesture that said Karen should already be halfway down the hall, hailing the nearest SANE certified RN like a runaway taxi. Her other hand had come to rest over Olivia's ear, but it didn't block out nearly as much as she thought it did. What made it through Olivia's soupy consciousness she heard with an almost-canine clarity and keenness. "And bring her some of those heated blankets, she's freez—"

"No." Difficult as it was, physically and emotionally, to separate herself from Amanda, she pushed back slightly and sat up straight. She started to shake her head, but her brain felt loose enough to tumble out, so she stopped. She couldn't afford to lose anything else, not after so much of her had been lost already. Who knew how much of her had made it out of The Box. Maybe she was still there, just dreaming of being rescued by her wife. But even in her dream she said, "No, I don't want that."

Amanda blinked in confusion, her hand compulsively cupping the back of Olivia's head, stroking it. She bent over to be closer to Olivia's eye level, a trick Olivia herself had learned from Meg, her surrogate auntie from childhood, who had always brought herself down to the other person's height for comforting. (It was Serena who taught Olivia to use the same trick for arguing and threats.) "Don't want what, darlin'? Blankets? But we need to get you warmed up. You're still shivering somethin' fierce." She reached out to stroke Olivia's cheek with the backs of her fingers, but withdrew without touching. "You're white as a—"

"The rape kit," Olivia said, forcing the words from her lips as evenly as possible. They quivered and crackled anyway. Just another part of her body, her being, she no longer had control over. "I don't want one. Won't make a difference. One of them's dead, and I can IP— . . . ID the rest. We don't need to collect evidence. I can put them away 'thout it."

For a moment, Amanda just stared back, her face a study in tragedy. Olivia couldn't figure out why until she realized she'd been pleading not to undergo the rape kit, hot tears searing her cheeks, Amanda's sleeve clasped in her hands. It was the first time she had produced actual tears, instead of dry, useless sobs, in at least a full twenty-four hours, she thought. Maybe longer? She had no idea what day it was or how long she'd been gone. And she hated playing on Amanda's emotions with her own, but right then, she would have said or done just about anything to get out of being poked and prodded any further.

"Baby . . . " Amanda's voice was thick with sadness, and she had to pause and swallow hard before continuing. Her hands were warming Olivia's again, and she drew them under her chin, curled to her chest where it was safe and warm. "I know they're awful and they take forever. But you gotta be examined. We don't know how many men there were—"

"Yes, I do." Olivia sat forward eagerly, hungrily, like a child who knew the correct answer in class. "Six. There were six of them. Gus and his two sons, the Crier, the Driver, and Parker. I can give you height and weight on all of them, I can describe tattoos and every one of Angel's piercings. I can tell you exactly what each of them did to me, and if that's not good enough, I'm pretty sure they were recording it, so there's digital proof out there somewhere. Just, please, don't make me go through that again. Not right now. Please, Manda."

The color drained from Amanda's cheeks the longer Olivia went on, even when she was crying too hard to understand the words tumbling out of her own mouth.Pleasewas the only really coherent sound she had made, and it never worked for her. She didn't get to say please. Didn't get to say no. Those words were luxuries for other people who had agency and the freedom to make choices. Her entire existence began with a lack of consent, and she was doomed to repeat it until the day she died.

Why hadn't she just died?

"Shh, Liv. Shh," Amanda soothed. She coasted her hand up and down Olivia's back when Olivia hunched over, wrapping both arms around her waist and weeping against her soft, warm belly. Olivia had loved pressing her ear there to listen to Samantha, though Amanda's high-pitched impression of the fetus, who said things likeGet your own damn pillow, lady, andHey, Mommy, as long as you're down there, might as well give Mama a good time, had been entertaining too. The thought of her baby girl, of laughter and the easy intimacy she'd so recently shared with Amanda, made her cry all the more.

"Look here, darlin'." Ever so gently, Amanda took Olivia by the shoulders, easing her back enough to gaze into her itchy, watery eyes. She cupped Olivia lightly below the chin, as if helping her to hold her head up. "I think— I really think you should get the kit done. The video . . . if there's any chance it didn't catch everything, we need to know. I need to kn— It will just strengthen our case and might help bring in Gus. He's the only one we have to find now, okay? I'll be right by your side through the whole thing, I promise. Please, Liv? It's important, baby, and you're not, um, you're not exactly thinking clearly."

Wasn't she? She did have trouble staying focused, and her surroundings did feel vaguely dreamlike, but she knew who Amanda was, where they were, why she was here. And she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she did not want a rape kit. She would rather go back to the shipping container for another four hours than lie on the stiff hospital mattress with yet another stranger nosing around between her legs, touching her in places they had no right to touch. And hurting her. God, that pain, it seemed to go on for hours, for miles, into the deepest parts of her . . .

Then Amanda's face appeared before her, shining like the dawn, despite her pallid features and the exhaustion that made her look almost haggard. She was close enough to smell, but something was off about her scent. Musky. It reminded Olivia of the men in The Box, bringing with it the mandatory nausea, and yet she didn't pull away. She wanted Amanda to hold her and tell her that it was all just a bad dream. That the violation was over, and she could rest.

"Do I have to?" she asked, not caring how childish the question sounded. She felt more like a child right then than she ever had in her life.

Amanda struggled with a range of emotions too complex for Olivia to suss out, though her wife's expressive face was usually her favorite thing to study, and it usually told her everything she needed to know. A scrim had been drawn between them, not unlike the hospital curtain that Nurse Karen whipped shut when she went to find someone more qualified to do Amanda's bidding. Nevertheless, Olivia recognized two things: the deep turmoil Amanda was in and the resolve she tapped into for her answer.

"Yeah, sweetheart, you do. I'll make sure it goes as quickly as possible, okay? And if it gets to be too much . . . well, I won't let that happen. You just keep talking to me and telling me how you're doing, and it'll be over before you know it." Amanda forced a smile, more pained than genuine or reassuring. Her voice had a falsely cheerful lilt to it that sounded quite a bit like her mother Beth Anne's cloying tone, a comparison that would have made her cringe if spoken aloud. She seemed to notice it herself, and cleared her throat of the disingenuous note. "Come on, let's get you into a gown. That nurse better get her ass back here with those blankets in two shakes."

The last part was added below her breath as she leaned in to scoop Olivia up from the wheelchair, the rape kit debate apparently over. In a way, Olivia was glad. It was a relief to have someone making the hard decisions for her, instead of letting the burden rest on her weary shoulders. She trusted Amanda's judgment—much more than her own, at the moment—and if Amanda said she needed to have the examination done, then she would have it. Just the idea of arguing about it anymore made her deeply tired. Bone-tired, they called it, and nothing could have been more accurate.

Her bones cried out with every movement, the chill she'd caught from sleeping on a wet mattress in the cold, while practically nude, making her feel brittle and rigid. Like a pretzel that would snap in two if handled too roughly. Thankfully, Amanda was as gentle with her as with their baby, even though she was much larger and harder to manage than Sammie Grace. Olivia hadn't realized how big she really was until that moment. Other than a couple of inches in height, a slightly larger frame, and a much bigger bust, there hadn't seemed to be a marked difference between her size and Amanda's. But now she felt monstrous, her body bloated and ungainly and out of her control.

She tried not to look at it while Amanda helped her undress, but the sight of her arms outside the sleeves of the sweatshirt was startling. They were pale as fish bellies, covered in more fingerprints than an elevator control panel, and so raw at the wrists it looked like they had been garroted. Her hands opened and closed at the ends of them when she tested her fine motor skills, but they felt weirdly detached, as if she were wearing Mickey Mouse's big puffy white gloves and anything could be happening underneath.

Something about her hand-eye coordination was off, so she let her eyes drift farther on, to braless breasts (what had they done with her bra, she wondered, heart giving a little kick inside her chest, as if she'd misplaced her keys or a wallet) and an abdomen so mottled with bruises it looked like she was wearing purple and yellow camouflage. She gazed at them mildly, unable to make sense of the colors and the bite marks. There should be a pattern, a meaning to the madness, but all she identified was chaos, pain, and anger. More anger than she'd ever known existed.

She couldn't look lower. It was as though her bottom half resided under a dense fog. Her legs were there—obviously, since she was standing while Amanda hurried to shake out the gown folded on the end of the bed—and she saw that they were as battered as the rest of her. But they felt leaden and unreal, completely disconnected from her brain. The thing between them didn't exist at all.puss*cat, puss*cat, I love you, yes, I do, Parker had crooned at her during one of the rapes.You and your puss*cat nose.

f*ck Tom Jones. f*ck that stupid song. And f*ck the cold hospital floor, icy hot against her feverish bare feet. Her internal thermostat seemed to be on the fritz, registering different levels of heat and cold in every part of her body. Mostly cold, god, so cold. But the splinters and raw, cracked skin ignited the soles of her feet like she was walking across hot coals, and she took turns standing on one, the other resting on top of the opposite foot, then switched.

"I know, baby, it's cold. I'm sorry. Almost there." Amanda draped the gown around Olivia's shoulders like a cape and reached into the sleeves to slide her arms through. The garment ties were in the front, same as the gowns designed for Pap smears and mammograms, and Amanda made quick work of knotting them into messy bows. She arranged the fabric gently over Olivia's breasts, ensuring they didn't show. Their eyes met briefly above the action, but neither of them acknowledged the awkwardness of it. "Can you make it up onto the bed?" she asked, and immediately bit her lip. "Here, let me . . . "

Along with the disruption to Olivia's natural rhythms, the injuries had thrown completely out of sync her easy physicality with Amanda. It took them a few tries to get her arm hooked around Amanda, who provided the boost upward that got her high enough to sit back heavily on the mattress. If it hurt, she couldn't tell yet, still too numb from the waist down to feel anything but an odd fullness in her groin, similar to the pain of needing to urinate but holding it until you cried.

"Sorry. Sorry." Amanda winced, despite getting no reaction to the abrupt landing. She plumped up the pillow at Olivia's back, guiding her onto it with the utmost care and checking for even a hint of discomfort as Olivia settled. "How's that? Are you— do you need anything? Water or . . . or . . . " She glanced around for something else to offer, but came up empty-handed. Looking a bit lost, she turned her anxious gaze back on Olivia, awaiting an answer, ready to spring into action when it came.

"Can't have water," Olivia said, even as her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth, sealed there by what little moisture remained on one or the other. Her lips were so parched, she felt new fissures forming every time she opened them to speak, and the split down the middle tugged painfully, as if the entire lip were ripping apart at the seams. She tucked it under her top teeth, hoping to soothe the soreness, but lacked the saliva to do so. "Mouth swab."

"Oh. sh*t. Right." Amanda closed her eyes and gave an exasperated shake of her head like she was mentally kicking herself for the mistake. She sighed heavily through her nose, and when she finally opened her eyes again, they were contritely blue. The color of forget-me-nots sent as apology for some thoughtless offense. "I didn't even think. I'm sorry, darlin'. Is there anything else I can do?" She unfurled the blanket that had been folded on the end of the bed with the gown, frowning at its thin weblike weave. It was little more than a sheet with a low thread count, but she spread it over Olivia nonetheless, tucking it around her with fastidious hands.

Olivia reached for one of them, bringing it to her chest and holding it as if it were a small creature in need of protection. Truthfully, she just wanted Amanda to stay close. Even stepping away for five seconds to gather the clothing off the floor and prepare it for an evidence bag was too long. "Can you please just stay here beside me? Don't go anywhere. I need you right here." The more she asked for it, the more certain she became that it would be denied her. With mounting distress, she grasped at Amanda's arm, her hands climbing up the sleeve of a shirt she didn't recall ever seeing her wife wear before. It felt hot and abrasive in her palms. "I need you, Manda—"

"Hey, I'm right here. I'm right here, shh." Amanda made to gather Olivia against her chest, to kiss the top of her head as she often did, whether they were cuddling on the couch or tangled up together after a nightmare.

When the kiss didn't come, and Amanda held her slightly at bay, Olivia felt it as acutely as one of the slaps the men had applied to her cheeks. Not even blows of punishment, but brisk, playful swats meant to taunt and humiliate. It worked. Amanda probably just didn't want to disturb the crime scene Olivia's body had become, much of it dried into the filthy strands of her chopped up hair. At least she hoped that was the only reason her wife didn't want to touch her.

"I'm not going anywhere, Liv. They'll have to sedate me again to get me outta here. I mean—" Amanda shook off whatever was to follow-up the brash statement and fretted her bottom lip between her teeth. She had said something she regretted, but for the life of her, Olivia couldn't figure out what it was. Normally, she could almost read her detective's mind in these situations. Now it required more concentration and brainpower than she possessed. "Never mind that. I won't leave you. Just rest until the nurse gets back, baby. Just rest."

Attentive as Amanda was, fussing with the blanket, with the hospital gown, with Olivia's scratched and bloodied fingers, which she folded around her own and petted compulsively, she still appeared distracted. Each time her eyes met Olivia's, they darted away almost as quickly, to search for Nurse Karen or Rudy or some other medical personnel. Anyone but Olivia. She kept forcing vaguely seasick smiles, as if they were on a boat in choppy waters and she was trying to hold onto her lunch.

Anger, Olivia concluded. That must be the emotion Amanda was attempting to hide, afraid it would show through in too much direct eye contact. She didn't want Olivia to know how angry she was with her for letting this happen. For doing this to her and their children. Every time Olivia got hurt, Amanda and the kids had to suffer right along with her. If she had just fought a little harder or done a better job of negotiating with The Sandman, maybe she wouldn't be here, dragging her family through yet another traumatic ordeal.

("You know, Olivia Margaret, every time you pull a stunt like this, it complicates things for me too," Serena said, narrowly missing Olivia's cast when she swung the car door wide, ushering her toward the passenger seat with a hand that felt more forceful than helpful. And it should. It was the same hand that had pushed Olivia down the stairs and required a three night stay at the hospital; that put the cast on her leg and took away all athletic activities for the rest of freshman year. "I'm missing a lecture right now, thanks to you."

"Sorry," Olivia muttered. Her head was swimming from the pain medication, and she hadn't been fully awake when Serena bustled into the recovery room, announced that it was time to go home, and shook her by the shoulder until she opened her eyes. Now they were drooping again, and she was too tired to argue with her mother or even fasten her seatbelt.

She surrendered the latch to Serena, who sighed and leaned across her to buckle it. Normally, she did all that stuff by herself, to prove to Serena that she wasn't a baby or a burden. Today, she didn't care if she was either. Her leg hurt badly where they had set it, and she longed to be back in her hospital bed. At least there she could rest and the nurses took care of her without telling her she was a pain in the ass.

"—no special treatment," Serena was saying as she weaved through the parking lot. It occurred to Olivia that she was probably drunk and didn't belong behind the steering wheel, but hell, if she plowed them into a tree—or better yet, a brick wall—then they'd both be out of their misery. "I can't stay home to watch you, and Meg's got her own life to live. I'm not going to dump you on her like we're on some Deep South plantation. She's not your mammy. No, you're my responsibility. Lucky goddamned me."

She was doing it again. Making racist comments about Meg. That was how this whole thing had gotten started in the first place. Serena knew how much it upset Olivia when she put Meg down, as if she were the hired help and not the closest thing they had to family; not the one who had visited Olivia in the hospital, without complaint, and fed her so much candy she got a stomach ache; not the woman Olivia wished could be her real mother. Serena knew that part too, and she used it against Olivia every chance she got.

"Did you see that headscarf she was wearing yesterday? I know you've imprinted on her, little lost duckling that you are, but if I ever catch you following her around like some pickaninny in one of those, I'll disown you."

That's what Serena had said while they mounted the stairs to their apartment, both lugging schoolbooks, in a leather satchel and an L.L. Bean book pack, respectively. What happened next, Olivia could only describe as a brain glitch that was inspired by the elevator being out of order, the hot stairwell, and the rarity of the two of them getting home together from school at the same time. She simply forgot herself and said exactly what she was thinking:

"Well, it's not like you and I are anything alike. Maybe she is my real mom? It would explain my dark hair and eyes you hate so much. And why I tan so much better than you."

Serena swore it was her satchel that knocked Olivia off balance at the top of the stairs. That the weight of Olivia's pack, adding an extra ten pounds on her back, did the rest. But Olivia had seen Serena's hand striking like a snake when she turned. She had felt it ram into her shoulder, delivering the fateful shove that sent her toppling backward down the steps. At the bottom, the snap had been so loud and sickening, she thought a tree branch had broken beneath her.

Now the tree branch was throbbing, and Serena would not shut up about what a handful Olivia was, what a strain she put on her, how poorly having an unruly daughter reflected on her, how they were financially strapped with all the medical bills . . .

Olivia wanted to look her straight in the eye and tell her to go f*ck herself. Scream that Serena was the one to blame for everything, including the broken leg. Tell her what an awful mother and human being she really was. Couldn't hold a candle to Meg Hawthorne in either respect. Instead, Olivia started to cry. Through her tears, she did the one thing she could think of to keep Serena from despising her, from thinking her so unworthy of love—she apologized. "I'm s-sorry, Mom. I'm sorry you have to take care of me. I'm sorry I got h-hurt. Please don't be mad. I'm sorry."

Little did she know at the time she would spend the rest of her life apologizing to her mother for crimes she hadn't known she committed.)

"Liv baby, what's wrong? Why're you crying? Are you hurtin' somewhere?"

Amanda's voice was so taut it made Olivia feel as though she couldn't swallow. Already coming up short from the dryness in her throat, she found it impossible to push down the lump in the back of it, as hard and jagged as stone. She made a strangled sound, like Gus's hands were around her neck again, choked on air, and began to cough uncontrollably. Water poured from her eyes, mixing with her tears, until she couldn't tell one from the other.

"Sorry," she wheezed between harsh, labored breaths. It sounded like wind whistling through a corridor each time she inhaled, her lungs pleading for more air than she could take in. She was as hungry for it as food or water. As forgiveness. "I'm— s-sorry, I-I'm sorry, Man-Manda. I'm s-s—"

A moment later she was in Amanda's arms, being rocked side to side and gently shushed, concerns about evidence transfer forgotten. She balled the front of Amanda's shirt—the one that didn't smell right—into her fists and hung on as if she might be torn from the embrace at any minute. There was that family years ago who survived a tsunami, the mother and oldest son managing to hold onto each other, even as nature raged around them, devastating cities and killing hundreds of thousands. That's how Olivia clung to her wife now, like the earth itself, the very ocean, in all its unfathomable depth and power, were trying to pull them apart.

"Naw, baby, you don't have to be sorry," Amanda cooed, stroking Olivia's hair and back. (It occurred to Olivia that she had less hair for petting; that's why Amanda's palm kept circling the back of her gown, and why she felt its warmth through the thin fabric.) She made soft soothing noises that were almost musical and sounded like one of the lullabies she hummed to Samantha when the baby fussed. Olivia thought it might be an old church hymn, but it was strangely comforting. "Shh. What do you have to be sorry about, huh? You didn't do anything wrong."

Of course Amanda considered her blameless. She still believed Olivia was brave and strong. A fighter who did things like face off with William Lewis, outfox Tad Orion, and use her bare hands to keep Amanda from bleeding out on the floor of a bank. She didn't hear all the begging, pleading, and groveling Olivia had to do in order to survive. The disgusting words she had to say. The even more disgusting acts she had to perform. If Amanda had witnessed any of it, she wouldn't think Olivia blameless anymore. She would be repulsed.

"I didn't f-f-fight hard enough. I shouldn't h-have let th-them hurt me like that. Please don't hate me, Amanda." Olivia buried her face in the neckline of Amanda's shirt, finding there warmth and bare skin that she wanted to wrap up in and disappear. Maybe forever. She pressed her forehead to it like a genuflecting Catholic at the Cross. "I w-wanted to be better for you and the k-kids. I'm sorry I let this happen again. I just keep h-hurting you. All of you."

"Oh, darlin'. No, huh-uh. Liv, look here." Gently Amanda pried Olivia's arms from around her middle, using them to prop her back enough to look in the eye. Her steady gaze belied the quaking of her hands, her body. At first, Olivia mistook the trembling as her own, but when she felt it pass through Amanda's grasp and into her like an electric current, she wanted to weep.

The detective seldom shook. Even giving birth, she had been fixed and unwavering. Always ready to get the job done. "None of this is your fault. You fought like hell not to let them touch you, I saw— I know that. There's no way you could've taken on that many guys by yourself and escaped. Even if it had been just one guy. You are not to blame here, it's them. You hear me? It's them, baby, shh."

Olivia heard her just fine, and perhaps right then she believed it. But what of later when the shock wore off, the numbness in her brain and body, and she had to feel everything on her own? What then? She didn't envy Amanda the effort it would take to convince her of her innocence when she was more clear-headed. The least she could do was accept being excused now, while Amanda was so desperate to let her off the hook. There would be plenty of hooks to come, and they would be much sharper and deadlier than this.

She answered with a small nod that Amanda had to glance down to see. Olivia tilted her face up at the same moment, and they gazed at each other that way for a long time, as a mother regarded an ill infant she cradled in concern. Words seemed to fail them both, and they relied on communicating with their eyes, with every touch.You're going to be okay, they said.I love you, they said.Please don't cry.

Neither of them could heed the request. They were weeping silently, eyes closed and foreheads together, when Rudy Syndergaard knocked gently on the doorframe to the room and peered around the curtain.

The examination was about to begin. For the next several hours, Olivia would again be at the mercy of countless strange hands, of eyes that would stare and judge, of bright lights and cold hard tables. Things inside her; her body being recorded, possibly for a jury to see. Her story in the hands and minds of total strangers. They took a piece of you with them, and you never got it back. Sometimes they didn't even believe your version of events. Sometimes they thought it was your fault. Sometimes it was.

She wished that Parker's belt were back in her hands.

. . .

Chapter 32: Refrain

Chapter Text

Chapter 32.

Refrain

. . .

Before he even stepped foot beyond the curtain, Amanda knew that requesting Rudy had been a bad idea. An excellent nurse and a decent, likable guy all around, yes. But he was also massive, standing well over six-feet and leaning more toward the pudgy side than the svelte. Most people would call him a teddy bear, at least the ones who said that sort of thing. Amanda liked his gentle manner with patients, particularly the vics. Olivia spoke highly of him too, always preferring his sensitivity to SVU cases and his willingness to cooperate when they were dealing with hospital staff. Many rape victims were directed to SVU by "the big male nurse at Mount Sinai."

Olivia panicked the moment she saw him. Empath that he was, he didn't enter the room all at once, probably aware of his overwhelming presence in a small space. But the slow, cautious approach only prolonged the fear that radiated off of Olivia in waves. She became restless at a mere glimpse of him, her body gone rigid beneath the dull white drape they called a blanket. The shaking started again, at full force, until even the bed shuddered with it. Her breathing verged on hyperventilation as he neared, and she shook her head urgently, the words dying on her lips.

She kept her eyes closed, a hand over her heart, as Amanda took the nurse aside and requested a different aide, female this time. "Sorry, Rudy," she said in a low, confidential tone, her eyes fixed on Olivia. The captain was struggling through a deep breathing exercise, unable to inhale fully without a hitch in her chest or a spasmodic cough. "I hate to ask, but she's been through hell the last few days. You're one of her favorites, I think she just . . . needs to be around feminine energy right now."

Rudy's eyes were kind and deeply sympathetic. "No apologies necessary, Detective. I have nothing but respect for Captain Benson. What those animals did to her . . . " He cut himself off there, jaw clenched, his hand balling into a fist the size of a cantaloupe. Amanda considered that she might have underestimated his tough side, based on his tenderness with fragile patients. Right then he looked as if he could tear someone limb from limb with his bare hands. "May they burn in Hell. I'll send in another nurse. Este's here. She's who I'd want as my partner's nurse if I were in this situation."

By the time Amanda thought to ask how Rudy knew what had happened to Olivia, he had already slipped into the hall, his tread exceptionally quiet for such a large man. She didn't really have to ask, anyway. News travelled fast when a cop was missing or injured, and most of the civil servants in the city found out before it reached the general public. But how much did he know? Had he seen the video? It was unlikely, but not impossible. God, if the livestream had been leaked onto the Internet, anybody could watch it at any time, and they would never know—she or Olivia.

Tempted to run Rudy down and demand an explanation, it took all of her strength to stay put, to not let on how worried she was about anything besides what was going on in this room. Olivia had no idea her assaults had been recorded and that's how it was going to stay, at least until Amanda figured out how to tell her. Maybe it would be better to break it to her now, while she was still emotionally numb and detached, her gaze distant, eyes glazed. It might be easier to accept in that state than in full awareness, when it would feel like its own separate violation.

But Amanda couldn't find the courage to do it. Not while Olivia looked so shattered, so hollow. Amanda would not take advantage of that just to make her job easier. She pushed those concerns aside to focus on calming Olivia down, soothing her with promises of a new, female nurse, who had Rudy's stamp of approval.

As long as he didn't send back Deborah, AKA Nurse Karen, to demonstrate her incompetency once more. Amanda had been one snooty remark away from throttling the bitchy RN prior to Rudy's appearance. If not for her traumatized wife watching her, needing her so badly, she might have given it a try. She'd already killed three other people today—four counting Tamin, who would still be alive if not for her—why stop there? Maybe she would just start shooting anyone and everyone who even looked at her funny, including the new nurse, should she give Amanda lip.

Luckily, Este was as good at her job as Rudy professed, and within seconds of her entrance, she had Olivia swaddled in heated blankets, the lights dimmed, and the curtain pulled for extra privacy. But even with her prompt and efficient treatment, the hours still ticked by as the examination for internal injuries—which took precedence over evidence collection—led to a series of tests and x-rays that revealed what Amanda feared was just the tip of the iceberg: two fractured ribs, a mild concussion, a shattered molar, and a broken cheekbone.

The ribs were the worst of those particular miseries. They caused Olivia a tremendous amount of pain the more she moved, and according to the radiologist, it was rare for the lower, more flexible ribs to break. "That's one hell of a kick," he said absently, admiring the image after Olivia summed up the cause in a single word:kicked. (She was gradually devolving into monosyllabic responses with each new diagnosis.) Amanda wanted to punch the guy's lights out for his indifferent attitude toward his patient, but it was that very indifference that seemed to put Olivia at ease in his presence. He only had eyes for the photos of her bones, not her.

"You're lucky, Mrs. Rollins-Benson," he stated on his way out of the room. "These types of breaks sometimes cause the spleen to rupture. You would have needed emergency surgery if that had been the case. As I said, you will want to follow up with a dentist about that tooth." And with that, he straightened up his folder of scans and saluted with it as he exited.Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, Amanda thought after him, deliberately choosing not to say it aloud. Olivia didn't need any more negativity or sarcasm from her right now; positivity might not be her strong suit, but for her wife's sake, she would try.

"Lucky," Olivia muttered, slouching in her wheelchair. Occasionally she spoke to case files under her breath like that, usually while shaking her head and whispering some form of Christ's name at the atrocities she found on the page. Sometimes she sounded as if she were praying. It occurred to Amanda then that she didn't know if the captain really believed in God, or not. How strange that they had never discussed something that could make or break a relationship for most people. And now it didn't even matter. They had no place for any god in their lives after this.

In the elevator, on the ride back to the first floor, Olivia gave a small hum as preface, like her lips were sealed around the words she meant to speak, and tried to look over her shoulder. Only her eyes were able to turn in that direction, glancing sidelong and up at Amanda, her neck stiff. The radiologist had warned that zygomatic fractures could be particularly painful. "Tilly . . . you said she's okay, right?" Rather than doubting the answer, she sounded more like she genuinely couldn't remember it. "And the baby? Noah and Jesse?"

Amanda skirted the wheelchair and knelt down next to it, taking some of the strain off Olivia, whose hands were balled in her lap. Amanda rested her hand on top of them, lightly chafing the backs with her thumb. "Yes, darlin', they're okay. Tilly's safe. They all are. They've got a protective detail, police and feds, and Daphne's with them. You know how she is—small but mighty. She'll kick anyone's ass if they bother our babies. She loves those kids almost as much as we do."

It was only a slight exaggeration. Daphne did love the kids dearly, and given the chance to kick Matthew Parker's big, oafish ass, she would probably give it her all. And she was tougher than she looked. There just wasn't a Matthew Parker for her to contend with anymore. His brains were splattered all over a shipping warehouse in Jersey, and they would likely have to ID the body through fingerprints or DNA, because no one would be able to recognize the pulpy mess where his face had been. Not even his prison sweetheart, Sondra Vaughn, who Amanda hoped would at least be thrown by the news of his death, if not devastated. (Knowing that cold-hearted bitch, she wouldn't even bat an eyelash.)

The temptation to tell Olivia about Parker's grisly death, plus that of the other men, was strong, but Amanda didn't know whose conscience she would be assuaging more with the information—her own or Olivia's—so she kept that to herself for now as well. Perhaps later she could look into her wife's too-wide brown eyes, desperate for some truth to hold onto, some meaning in the face of senseless tragedy, and tell her there were five fewer rapists in the world today. Just not now, while Olivia gazed down at her with that forlorn expression, so unguarded and childlike it almost made her cry.

"I know those . . . those men told you a lot of awful things were gonna happen, and baby, I don't blame you one bit for being scared. I've been going outta my mind with worry and fear the past three days too. But they lied to you, Liv. They were just trying to wear you down and make you easier to control." Amanda cupped her hand to Olivia's cheek, careful not to touch the small gouge there, the myriad bruises. Her heart ached when Olivia rested in the cradle of her palm, too weary to hold up her own head anymore. "I've got you now, and I'm telling you they ain't gonna touch you again, or the kids. Ever. Trust me?"

Olivia gave a nod so light, Amanda felt it rather than saw it. They held each other's gaze for a moment, Amanda trying not to let her intense guilt for the captain's current state show—she would be damned if she'd make this all about her—Olivia searching, as if the key to undoing three days of horror lay somewhere behind Amanda's eyes.

"They were going to sell me," she said in a small, confiding tone that reminded Amanda of very young vics when they disclosed. Often, women who suffered especially violent attacks regressed to a childlike state of mind, unable to cope with the experience any other way. The brain's defense mechanism and the most heartbreaking thing Amanda had ever seen when it was Olivia doing the regressing. "For sex. There was a buyer . . . that's why they took me. We should find out who. We'll always be in danger if not."

Of course she was still thinking like a cop, in spite of the mind-altering trauma. Amanda would have laughed, but she was afraid she'd burst into tears instead. She opened her mouth to say she knew who had orchestrated the attack, then she realized Olivia would want to know the identity, and she clapped her jaw shut. How did you tell the woman you loved more than life itself that she had been brutalized because of your mistakes? Because you couldn't exercise some goddamn self-control and keep your wallet or your zipper closed?

For the first time since finding her wife alive, Amanda realized she might yet lose her. Eventually, Olivia would need to hear that Vaughn and Murphy were involved in trafficking her, and then it was only a matter of time until she connected the dots back to Amanda. After that, Olivia would hate her. Never trust her again. Divorce papers, custody battles. Their family, so lovingly and intricately woven together, suddenly torn asunder. Amanda the f*ckup strikes again.

The scenario would have taken her to her knees if she weren't already there. And lucky f*cking duck that she was, the elevator dinged its arrival on the first floor, doors parting like clouds letting in the sun. She didn't question it. If these were the last days she got to spend with Olivia, she was going to put everything she had into them and make sure Olivia had the care she deserved. The care Amanda owed her. Maybe if she saw how determined Amanda was to be there for her, Olivia would stay.

"Let me worry about that, 'kay, baby?" Amanda stroked Olivia's cheek in lieu of a kiss and slowly got to her feet, careful not to make any startling movements. "You got the whole NYPD and a bunch of feds working on your case too. We'll find the— the guy. All you need to do is take it easy and let me and Este and the doctors look after you. Just sit back and try to relax, there you go. No one else is gonna hurt you."

She saved the lie for last, after she stood behind the wheelchair. The rape kit was up next, and it would undoubtedly be painful. They always were, whether physically or emotionally, and with the extensive bruising and tearing Olivia was bound to have, following such violent penetration, the pelvic exam would hurt, perhaps tremendously.

Amanda had almost talked herself out of subjecting Olivia to the kit at all by the time she wheeled her back into the exam room. But, regardless of evidence collection, Olivia would still require the pelvic to assess her injuries. She would still have to go through the pain and embarrassment anyway, and maybe some of the discomfort could be alleviated by knowing she was contributing to the capture of a so-called uncatchable man. The camera had never really got a clear shot of Gus Sandberg, and having his DNA on file might make all the difference in finally nailing his ass to the wall.

It had cost Olivia her dignity, her body autonomy, and nearly her life, but she might help bring down one of the worst and most elusive criminals in the city.

Of course Amanda couldn't say any of that out loud without tipping Olivia off about the livestream, so she took a deep breath for both of them and rolled the wheelchair toward Este, the white-haired nurse who awaited their arrival, ready to draw the privacy curtain shut around Olivia immediately. She was pretty for an older woman, with a kind face that had mastered the art of smiling only when it was appropriate, and never too much.

How she managed to keep the sweet grandmotherly attitude as a SANE nurse, Amanda didn't know, but she was perfect for Olivia. Non-threatening, efficient, and discreet, not to mention Olivia's soft spot for old ladies. They were always fond of her too, and Este was no different. She apologized with absolute sincerity each time Olivia winced, she made sure to untuck as little of the blankets as possible so Olivia could stay warm, and she described everything she did beforehand to avoid any nasty surprises.

"Did we get some good news, I hope?" asked the nurse as she and Amanda assisted Olivia from wheelchair to bed. She was strong too, able to keep the captain just as steady on her side as Amanda did on the other. They got Olivia safely onto the bed, and when an answer still hadn't come, Este looked to Amanda with concern. "That bad?"

"I think she's just really exhausted," Amanda said, busying her hands by tucking the blankets in tightly around Olivia to keep from stroking her hair, arms, face, hands. She'd probably already lost them some touch DNA with her inability to remain hands-off between x-rays and on the elevator. f*ckup. "Two rib fractures, a cheekbone fracture. Concussion. And the tooth's going to need work." She cast an anemic smile of apology at Olivia, who may or may not have been listening. It was hard to tell while she was so unresponsive. "But at least the weaker shoulder is okay, right, Liv? And your wrist."

That had seemed like a minor miracle, the discovery that both sites of Olivia's previous injuries were relatively unscathed this time around. Strained, obviously, from being yanked, twisted, and bound, but nothing requiring surgery or a sling. She'd hated that goddamned thing. The memory of it, of how frustrated Olivia had been wearing the cumbersome sling to work for weeks, filled Amanda with sympathy. Without thinking, she reached for the formerly broken wrist in Olivia's lap, intent on stroking it.

The moment her fingers grazed Olivia's skin, just exposed in the cocoon of blankets, it was as if she'd delivered an electric shock with the taser stick. Olivia gave a sudden jolt, her arms jerking like they were attached to pulled strings. She cringed back, waiting for a blow that didn't come. Amanda gasped at the reaction before she could stop herself, but she quickly waved it away when reality sank in and Olivia looked as though she were about to burst into tears over her mistake. "No, hey, it's okay. That was my fault. I shouldn't be grabbin' on you right now, darlin'. I didn't think. I'm sorry, shh."

Actually, seeing her wife flinch away from her and cower in fear had been equivalent to taking a bullet in the gut. Amanda felt her star-shaped scar pulsing like it was hot and alive. But she couldn't let the pain show, not right now. She'd witnessed similar reactions in countless victims, maybe even experienced a little of it herself after the assault by dear old Chuck. She knew it wasn't personal, that Olivia didn't mean to reject her. The captain would probably have the same response to any type of unexpected touch just then, be it a feather, a drop of water, or Amanda's fingertips ghosting by.

And yet.

Este rescued them from the awkward moment by unboxing the rape kit onto a sterile tray. "Are we still wanting your wife to stay?" she asked in a delicate tone, accompanied by a delicate glance.

At first, Amanda couldn't figure out what the hell the nurse was talking about. Why would she bring her wife to the hospital, insist on a rape exam, stand by Olivia's side the entire time, and vet every member of the hospital staff who treated her along the way if she didn't want Olivia to stay? Just as she started to answer, she realized that Este hadn't been speaking to her. Up until a few seconds ago, Amanda would have felt confident answering the question for Olivia, but now she waited anxiously for the reply.

"Yes." A hand emerged from under the blankets and sought out Amanda's, held unnaturally at her sides, afraid to make another wrong move. Olivia tried to interlock their fingers, grimaced in pain, and drew their enfolded hands to her chest instead. "I need her to stay with me. She's a cop too, she can help with evidence collection."

Bolstered by the request, Amanda brought her other hand up slowly to warm the back of Olivia's. But the expression she turned on Este was one of concern. Olivia had already informed the nurse earlier that Amanda was police and could be present for the examination, both as a wife and an officer. It wasn't like the captain to forget and repeat herself. A mild shake of the head from Este, discouraging undue worry, put Amanda at ease, but only a little. Now that the kit was arranged and ready for sample gathering, she understood why her wife hadn't wanted it. When it was you or someone you loved in the stirrups, you couldn't just switch it off for the job.

You felt every single pluck, scrape, swipe, and flash. Every degradation. Amanda had never subjected herself to one personally, opting instead to wash away all the evidence from the Patton assault, praying it would just be forgotten. For a while it had been. Was she forcing Olivia to hang on to the horrible memories even longer, by putting her through this? And for what, a stray hair that might get them a serial rapist-killer's DNA? It wouldn't get them a location or a guarantee that Gus would be caught and sent to prison. If you really thought about it, Amanda was no different than the men in the shipping container, forcing Olivia to lie back and be violated all over again.

She should be the one on that hospital bed, bruised and shivering and traumatized beyond measure, beyond hope. She should be the one dead behind the eyes, because that's how she felt inside. Cold and dead, heartless and cruel.

"You don't—" Amanda's voice hitched, for she was already too late. Este had torn the wrapper from the oral swabs, explaining what they were used for (as if Olivia didn't know that), and held them poised in front of Olivia's hesitantly parting lips. Less than an inch away, and if Amanda stopped it right then, they would see what a monster she was, how she just wanted Olivia examined to assuage her own guilt. To make up for how thoroughly Amanda had already failed her.

"You, uh, don't have to open up all the way if it hurts you too much, baby," she finished softly. They were both looking at her, thrown off by the interruption, and she was quite sure Olivia would have seen right through her ruse at any other time. Now she merely nodded, thinking she understood, trusting that Amanda had only her best interest at heart. She scrunched her eyes shut as the swabs went in, but Amanda kept hers wide open. That would be her punishment for this—having to watch every single moment of Olivia's suffering, just like the livestream.

"Ow," Olivia whimpered when the cotton swabs came into contact with a tender spot inside her cheek. Her respiration began to speed up, more ragged with each breath, her eyelids crinkled so tightly it appeared there was nothing behind them. Amanda half-expected the eye sockets to be empty when it was over. She couldn't get Meredith Ashton's eyeless face out of her mind, even in the bright room, her wife's bruised, swollen, tear-stained face clearly before her.

"Do you need me to stop?" Este asked, brow furrowed in concern at the pain the oral swab—one of the less painful steps in the kit—was already causing.

Of course she needs you to stop, Amanda thought, her voice verging on shrill inside her own head.She had a guy's co*ck crammed down her throat in prison and just spent three days with dicks in every orifice. She hates letting people put things in her mouth. So, Este, what do you think? Wouldyouneed to stop?

"Jus' do it." Olivia managed to sound as if she were gritting her teeth, though they remained slightly parted, lips open just enough for the bare minimum of access. She squeezed Amanda's hand until it hurt, which wasn't very much, in her weakened state; nevertheless, Amanda's knuckles were still puffy and tender from beating Matthew Parker, and even a little pressure was plenty. Amanda welcomed the pain. A few throbbing fingers were only a fraction of the discomfort Olivia must be feeling.

Luckily, Este was a pro at oral swabs, and she skimmed the circumference of Olivia's mouth with a practiced motion that took all of five seconds. "You can close for a second, dear," she said, the moment she withdrew the cotton-tipped sticks. She turned to the instrument tray and rubbed the sample onto the evidence slide in a circular pattern. "I'll give this a minute to dry, then we can do the buccal. That should be all I have to do in the mouth."

"Thank f*ck," Olivia muttered. She traced her tongue around her gums, looking as if she'd tasted something sour. Carefully she probed at her broken back tooth, hissed, shied away from the sensation like she was about to be backhanded. When she noticed herself being watched, she straightened a little defiantly, but lost all her confidence just as quickly. "Sorry. I'm . . . uncomfortable having things in-inserted in my mouth."

"That's perfectly all right. I'm not usually someone people are too thrilled to have around for long." Este nodded to the evidence collection tools arranged next to her. "And I've had plenty of F-bombs dropped on me in this room. Believe me, I've said it a few times myself."

It was difficult to imagine angel-faced Este saying f*ck, but Amanda liked that she was willing to cop to it. Especially since Olivia was probably chastising herself internally. She tried so hard to always be professional, and police captains weren't supposed to swear in front of the public. It was an unwritten rule—and precious few followed it—but Olivia took it to heart, like she did with pretty much everything else. "You don't have to be sorry," Amanda said, gently buffing Olivia's hands with her own. They were still so cold. "Nobody minds if you cuss, baby. You go ahead and say whatever the hell you want. Anybody says sh*t about it, I'll kick their ass."

A wan half-smile drifted across Olivia's face, fading out before it came to fruition. "My tough girl," she said, either the thought or her voice drifting away, unfinished. She brought Amanda's hands up and rested her forehead on back of them, very much resembling a penitent begging forgiveness and prayer. When she spoke again, it was muffled by her downturned face and the blankets. "I just want this to be over. Wanna go home and see the kids. I'm so tired, Manda. It hurts. I just . . . want . . . "

Whatever else Olivia wanted she exhaled with a heavy sigh—or a soft sob—and leaned into the shoulder Amanda guided her toward. "I know, darlin'. I wish it was over too. But you'd still need to be patched up and feeling a little better before you went home. The kids'll be thrilled to see you no matter what, but you wanna make sure you're okay for them, dontcha? We'll get this exam over with, get you all cleaned up, and hopefully we can go home tonight, before they're in bed. You wanna help me tuck in our babies, sweetheart?"

God, it felt dirty using the kids like that, but she had to get Olivia through the examination somehow. The captain would absolutely take care of her health for their children's sake, if not her own. She would do anything for those kids, same as Amanda. "Yes," she breathed, a sound so soft it almost got lost in the folds of Amanda's shirt. It was not a word she'd had occasion to say much of in the past few days, and it had a strange inflection, as if she were asking instead of affirming.

Three days, and she'd forgotten how to consent.

"Yes, I want to tuck them in," she repeated with a bit more resolve. But even when she lifted her head and prepared for the buccal specimen, it took several attempts to open up long enough for Este to swab the insides of her cheeks with the little brush. That would give the kit examiner her DNA for comparison, ruling it out from the perp's—or perps', in this case.

It was only a small comfort, or perhaps none at all, for Olivia gagged harshly when the brush swirled around the other cheek. Had there been anything in her stomach, she would have emptied it into her lap. As it was, she retched for a moment, then began to cough and clutch at her side. Trying to muffle it just made it worse, and she hacked and wheezed until tears poured from her eyes, mucus leaked from her nose, and her face flushed blood-red.

"She needs water. Can't hardly swallow." Amanda heard the hillbilly in her voice on the wordswallow (as in, "Hey, Mandy, heard from Travis in first period that you like to swalluh" and, scrawled on the inside of a stall in one of the Loganville High boys bathrooms, the script suspiciously feminine:for a good time call 'er, easy ass amanda'll swaller). She'd learned to curb that pretty quickly after moving to New York, but it still crept in when she was excited or pissed off. Or scared sh*tless. "Breathe, baby. Gimme some goddamn water, will ya?"

The last part she snapped at Este, who was already hurrying for the plastic carafe on the overbed table that had yet to be rolled anywhere near the bed. It was the same pink pitcher that Amanda had seen in every other hospital she ever stepped foot in, and it made her inexplicably angry. Who the f*ck's brilliant idea was it to make the water pitcher the exact same color as the puke basins? Did they think sick people and rape victims were too dumb to notice those things? Her wife was anything but dumb, and she noticed everything.

Except for right now, when she could barely catch her breath, let alone care about the color scheme of some stupid plastic dishes. Amanda patted her on the back rapidly, struggling not to dissolve into a panic herself—outwardly, anyway. Inside, she felt as helpless and frightened as she had watching Jesse fight for every bit of oxygen her small lungs could grasp after the bee sting incident that put her in the hospital. As a mother, it had been her worst nightmare: the inability to help her child. As a wife, it was like the world was coming to an end.

She was ten years old, holding her unconscious mother's head in her lap, a puddle of blood beneath them growing ever larger. It seeped into the grout between the bathroom tiles like one of those Satanic symbols that some possessed character etched into the ground in a horror movie. Those symbols always required a blood sacrifice, and even back then, Amanda had known it was a curse she'd been born under. To watch the people she loved suffer and bleed; to hold them in her arms while they breathed their last.

The curse of being hers.

"She shouldnta had to wait this long," Amanda said in a clipped tone as she helped Olivia sip from the plastic cup Este brought over. She knew it wasn't the RN's fault—if Amanda hadn't talked Olivia into the rape kit, she could have hydrated much sooner—but it felt good to have someone besides herself to blame. Turns out the old Amanda, who had learned from Daddy at an early age to always have an accomplice to pin it on, wasn't as dead and buried as the new Amanda believed her to be. "It's ridiculous how long all this sh*t takes. Easy, baby, you'll make yourself sick."

But Olivia was pushing the cup away, not trying to tip it and take larger gulps. She dragged her hand across her wet lips, which smacked when she opened them, panting heavily. "Not her fault. Thought I could wait. Cou— cou—" She held her side and shook her head, unable to finish thecouldn'twithout mouthing it. Her coughs were weaker, muffled behind closed lips, but each one brought with it a stab of pain that Amanda recognized from months of guarding her own gunshot wound from every laugh, cough, sneeze, even a strong belch or two.

"That's all right," said Este, dismissing the barely audible reprimand with a wave. She'd wheeled the table and carafe over, parking them at Amanda's side, before returning to her tray of sealed swabs, stainless steel instruments, and paperwork. "I agree with your wife, SOECs are extremely invasive and time-consuming. I understand your frustrations." She directed that one at Amanda, head tilted in sympathy. "I'll do my best to get it over with as quickly as possible. We're past the oral part, so she's good to sip water as needed. Just try to take it slow, honey."

Throwing someone else under the bus wasn't much fun when they were rational and sided with you. Este must have dealt with her share of frantic, angry spouses in her line of work, just like Amanda. Normally, Amanda hated being handled, but she got the impression the nurse was sincere and really did care about Olivia's comfort and well-being. The honeys and dears helped too. Anyone who spoke to her wife that sweetly, without patronizing or flirting, was an okay person in Amanda's book.

"I'm . . . " Amanda couldn't form the rest, giving an apologetic nod of her head in the nurse's direction instead. It seemed ludicrous to say she was sorry while the only person whose feelings she cared about right then was in such pain, but she was also aware of Olivia watching her over the brim of the cup, hoping she would cut Este some slack. She circled Olivia's back with her palm, trying to soothe the residual coughing and tilt the water just enough for a sip, not a baptism.

Este saved Amanda from finishing as she looked up and took a deep breath, preparing to make sincere amends. "No apology necessary, Mrs. Rollins-Benson, really," said the nurse, shooing at the air. She'd begun unfolding the white sheet the vic was supposed to stand on while they undressed. Amanda had been so eager to get Olivia off her feet and into the hospital bed, she'd forgotten about collecting trace evidence. The clothes, which Olivia hadn't been wearing during the assaults anyway, were still in a pile on the floor where Amanda had left them. "You and your wife have both been through a significant trauma. Strong emotions are to be expected right now."

If you only knew, Amanda thought. She offered the closest thing to a smile she could muster, but it dissolved as soon as Olivia coughed through her nose, water dribbling from the cup onto her gown. Amanda eased the brim away from her lips and dried them with a corner of blanket. "Better?" she asked, trying not to let on that she was keeping the water at bay so Olivia wouldn't gulp it all down at once. She had to do the same thing for Frannie Mae sometimes on hot days or after a run. Didn't make her feel near as guilty then.

"So thirsty," Olivia sighed, but dropped back against the upraised bed, no longer straining forward to pull from the cup. Other than a couple light huffs, the coughing seemed to have subsided. Now she just looked drained, as if the hacking fit had sapped her of what little energy she'd regained at the hospital. She was shaking almost as much as when they first arrived. "Cold. Wanna sleep."

Amanda touched her fingers, front and back, to Olivia's forehead and the cheek that wasn't fractured. She expected the skin to be cold and clammy, like it had been a couple of hours ago, but it was surprisingly warm. Hot, even. It could be all the heated blankets, and Olivia's body heat, which naturally ran high. Still, that didn't explain the shivering. "Gotta stay awake for a while yet, sweet darlin'," Amanda murmured, stroking Olivia's brow with her thumb, hand resting atop her dark head. She signaled to Este with the other hand. "Should she still be shivering like this? Feels awful warm to me."

"Her core temp was very low when you brought her in. It can take a bit to get that back up." Este spread the sheet on the floor next to Olivia's discarded clothes. Carefully she picked up the NYPD sweatshirt and transferred it onto the thin paper. "She might just feel warmer to you now, compared to how cold she was earlier. Some patients develop a slight fever after being warmed up from hypothermia too. We call it rebound pyrexia. It's usually nothing to worry about."

Finding no comfort in the explanation—Amanda knew what her wife's body temperature should feel like, goddammit, and "usually nothing to worry about" was a far cry from not being worrisome—she started to protest. Then he appeared, and she momentarily lost her train of thought.

Just a small clink, silver against tile, but to Amanda it sounded like a gunshot. The St. Jude medal she had taken off of Carlos Riva. She'd forgotten all about it, buried deep inside the pocket of her track pants, and now glinting like a spotlight on the hospital floor, like all her sins laid bare.

Take a sad song and make it better . . .

Turning this way and that to see what had fallen from the pants she was holding, Este spotted the medal next to the sheet and reached down to pick it up with a gloved hand. "Hang on there," Amanda said too loudly, startling Olivia and the nurse as she scurried around the bed and swiped up the necklace before Este could claim it. Here she was, already breaking her promise not to leave Olivia's side. "Sorry. This is mine. I, uh, forgot I left it in there. Put my clothes on her, and . . . yeah, just plumb forgot."

At a quick glance she noticed that the clasp was magnetic and hadn't been destroyed when she yanked it from Riva's sweaty dead neck. She looped the chain around her own neck, the magnets cinching together by themselves with a phantomlike tug that felt somewhat final, somewhat fatal
(You have found her, now go and get her)
and returned to Olivia's bedside without giving the nurse time to protest. The nearly empty plastic cup stuttered in Olivia's grasp, and Amanda rescued it from tipping onto the blankets. She put the water aside and warmed her wife's hands, cupping them in hers and blowing into the cracks, chafing lightly, as if she were soothing Sammie's delicate skin.

Perhaps it was Amanda's imagination, but she felt more in control with the necklace on. Calm, almost. The weight of it against her chest seemed to anchor her to the ground, so she no longer felt like she might go flying off into space.The movement you need is on your shoulder.The lyric made sense now. She kissed Olivia's knuckles, disregarding the grime and God knew what else caked into the creases. What could it hurt? Olivia was as much a part of Amanda as her own flesh and bone. The song said it all: Remember to let her under your skin, then you'll begin to make it better.

"Oh. All right," was Este's only comment about the confiscated jewelry. She gave it a curious glance, hanging there on Amanda's stolen flannel shirt, but folded her thin lips without a word and finished shaking out Olivia's clothes over the sheet.

Next, she would fit the folded sheet into an envelope, place it in the kit, and put the clothes in a paper bag for the police to test. Had to be paper, not plastic, or else the DNA might get destroyed. Amanda hated those bags; they reminded her of the brown bag lunches from grade school. Except these you didn't open up anticipating the bologna sandwich or PB&J your mama had packed that morning. These contained mementos of the worst day of someone's life—ripped blouses, skirts smeared in cloudy white stains, track pants soiled between the legs with blood.

Underwear was collected separately, a whole step unto itself, the holy grail of the rape kit. But Este would have to skip that step this time, since Olivia's underwear was somewhere in Jersey, torn to ribbons inside a shipping container. Amanda was about to say as much, when she noticed Olivia staring at the medallion on her chest. No sign either way to whether or not she recognized it, but the intent expression was unnerving, and Amanda gently caught her hand when it reached out for St. Jude.

"Doing okay, baby girl?" Amanda asked, tucking the necklace inside her shirt with a casual sleight of hand while Olivia's eyes were drawn to hers. They were a murky, muddy brown that couldn't quite focus on their target, and Amanda got the feeling the medal had been forgotten the moment it was out of sight. "Aw, sweetheart. You're so exhausted, aren't you?" She didn't need an answer—it was written all over Olivia's weary face—but it concerned her that her wife barely seemed to register the question. "Liv? You with me?"

"I should be giving my statement," Olivia said in a colorless little voice that would have been a monotone, had it any volume behind it. She looked up at Amanda questioningly, as if she really wasn't sure of her own observation. "Shouldn't I? You n-need to record it in case there's a trial, don't you, officer?"

Amanda cringed, not at being referred to as officer, but at the mention of recording Olivia's account of the assaults. She meant writing it down, of course; she couldn't possibly know how accurate her word choice was. (Could she?) The officer part was strange, but Amanda chalked that up to shock and sleep deprivation. And Olivia wasn't wrong: Amanda was the assisting officer for the exam, responsible for the collected evidence and taking the victim's statement. Normally, she would be listening to an account of the rape that had brought the vic in right now. Only, this time she didn't need one.

"It's okay, darlin'." She buffed the backs of Olivia's hands with her thumbs, watching the subtle shift of skin that somehow reminded her of the ever-changing sands on a shoreline. Any excuse not to make eye contact. "You don't have to give a description. I'll write it out for you later. I know what happened well enough to— I mean, I was there when they grabbed you up, and I got a good look at the place they kept you in. I can piece it together from there if you don't—"

"You saw it, didn't you?" Olivia sounded more lucid than she had since Amanda found her in that hellhole. And sure enough, when Amanda glanced up in surprise, Olivia was staring back with sudden eerie clarity. She might have been a blind soothsayer who gained sight just long enough to deliver a dreaded prophecy. "There were cameras, I thought . . . I couldn't see them, but the kid kept talking to someone. They turned my face that way." With resignation she let her head drop back against the pillow behind her. "You saw, didn't you?"

"Liv, I—"

"How much?" Olivia didn't raise her voice to interrupt or demand an answer, but the inquiry was so matter-of-fact it cut Amanda off all the same. Olivia hated being lied to, no matter how awful she already felt, no matter how well-meaning the lie that was told. That's what happened when you grew up with a mother who lied to you just as often as she breathed, Amanda supposed. Sort of like hating when women made excuses for abusive men because you'd grown up listening to that same sh*t your entire life.

Goddamn Serena Benson. Goddamn Beth Anne Rollins. And goddamn Amanda, for perpetuating the lies and the violence, the addiction and its repercussions, in Olivia's life. Once again, she was unable to look her wife in the eye, and it was that very avoidance that gave away the truth she wanted to hide.

"Oh my God," Olivia husked, growing restless on the bed. She moved her feet as if she were marching inside the blankets, or trying to kick them off. When she tried to throw aside the corner wrapped around her shoulder, she hissed in pain, slumped back against the pillow, and gave a feeble whimper of frustration.

"You saw the whole thing," she said tearfully, turning a watery gaze to the ceiling like it was the sky. The place where people always looked for answers to impossible questions. "Didn't you?"

. . .

Chapter 33: Slow Dying Flower

Chapter Text

Chapter 33.

Slow Dying Flower

. . .

"Oh my God. You saw the whole thing. Didn't you?"

At first Amanda couldn't reply. Not wouldn't, but literally could not, her tongue refusing to cooperate beyond lolling silently in her mouth. She licked her lips and tried again, eventually producing a weak, "Some." She cleared her throat and reached for the blanket, to rearrange it on Olivia's shoulders, only for it to slide right off again. After another unsuccessful attempt, she gave up on the blanket and stood next to the bed with her head bowed like a child come to confess her most shameful sins. "I saw some of it. Couldn't help it, Liv, they sent me a link. I didn't know what it was—thought it might be the ransom demand, so I clicked . . . I'm so sorry, darlin'. What they did—"

"Who else?" Try as she might to hold in the tears and harden her features, her tone, moisture streamed from the corners of Olivia's upturned eyes. She had to swallow hard several times before she could continue, and even then it was a struggle to make herself heard. "—else? Wh-who else saw me like that?"

"Not that many," Amanda lied. This time it was necessary. Olivia looked as if she might shatter into a million pieces, depending on the number of viewers her deep humiliation had garnered. She couldn't handle the truth right then, no matter how much she might think she wanted it. "Just a couple people in the squad and some fibbies. I made sure it was eyes-only, and Dana—"

"Fin?" Olivia glanced sidelong, without lowering her head from its backward repose. She looked paralyzed in that position, an image reinforced by the deep bruising that encircled her neck, as thick as a belt strap, with a scrabble of harsh fingerprints coloring outside the lines. Layer upon layer of bruises, stitched together with the thread of white left behind by Calvin Arliss' straight razor. She would have so many new scars to go with it now, outside and in.

Amanda swallowed thickly, hoping to delay her reply for as long as possible. She remembered well the shame and fear she'd felt after the Patton assault even just thinking about her fellow officers finding out—that was partly why she never reported. But to know that someone you had worked alongside for over twenty years, someone who had your respect, and you his, watched as you were brutalized and degraded like that? She couldn't imagine.

One glimpse of Olivia's pleading brown eyes, so desperate to hear answers that Amanda could not give, at least not truthfully, and she pushed aside those old images and memories best forgotten. She had her St. Jude medal, the solace of knowing that most of Olivia's attackers were dead, and almost a decade worth of armor she'd constructed diligently, piece by inflexible piece. She would neither bend nor crack. Two gunshot wounds didn't lie: she was damn near bulletproof.

"He didn't see much," she said, treading carefully. Weaving in a bit of truth made it harder to detect the lies. She had learned that from Olivia actually, her advice not to oversell a fib and to lead with honesty a useful blueprint for duplicity when taken out of context. And the captain was a pro at claiming things were fine when they most certainly were not. "Couldn't . . . couldn't bear to watch. He didn't want to, you know, violate your privacy any more than it already was. He's been doing real good keeping things under control for you, baby. Real good."

When he wasn't siccing asshole psychiatrists on unsuspecting detectives to drug them against their will, she added to herself. That was a dirty rotten trick she would not soon forget. Or forgive. All the same, it ranked rather low on Amanda's scale of fury, hatred, and vengeance-inspiring events at the moment. Definitely not something Olivia needed to know about anytime soon, although Amanda would exercise extreme caution in sending her back to Lindstrom. But she would worry about that later.

Right now Olivia wanted to know: "Kat?" She practically choked on the short name, like she was aspirating on it the way a drunk died from lying flat and inhaling their own vomit. Nevertheless, she wouldn't sit up, wouldn't acknowledge the tears flowing from the corners of both eyes, wetting the pillow, her hair, her ears. Fixed on the ceiling tiles, her gaze was the only part of her that didn't waver. Her teeth weren't chattering together like before, but she couldn't have fired a gun with any sort of accuracy with that tremor in her hands, either. "Did she watch?"

For a split-second, upon hearing the officer's name in a setting so far removed from work or the shipping warehouse, Amanda forgot that Kat was dead. It was easy to believe she was still back at the precinct, trying to crack the case, or off at Sealview, grilling that bitch Sondra Vaughn. Her death felt like a dream Amanda had yet to wake up from. Jesus, that's how every minute of the past three days had felt. Why couldn't she just wake up?

Concentrating on the weight of St. Jude, strangely cool against her chest, Amanda let that be her totem, telling her where and when she was. Who or what she was now was up for some debate. "Only a little at the beginning," she said, hating the sound of it. As if the livestream had been a stage musical with a prelude, intermission, a trip to the concession stand, a grand finale. That's entertainment! "She left pretty early on to follow some leads. She was, uh, a big help in me finding you. Wouldn't give up until she knew you were safe. Good police."

"The chief?" Olivia sniffed, but refused to wipe underneath her damp nose. She seemed determined not to let on that she was crying, despite the evidence written all over her face, and even more determined to name off every cop she could think of who might have had a front row seat to her rapes. Cops she worked with day in and day out, who looked to her to lead. Men and women who had now seen her nude, spread-eagle, command taken from her by the types of criminals she was supposed to put away.

How would she ever look them in the face again, when she could barely even look at Amanda?

"He's been really busy. If he did see anything, it was just a passing glance." Amanda failed to keep the contempt out of her voice—while his best captain was missing and being subjected to unimaginable torture, the chief had been off doing God only knows what. He should have been at the precinct every minute she was gone, instead of calling Fin for updates like he was checking on his cat at the vet. But Olivia seemed relieved to find out about his lack of interest. She closed her eyes and nodded, as if giving silent thanks.

"Come on, now," Amanda added, with a note of conclusion. Like she was ending a phone conversation that had gotten off track and needed to be gently reined in. They were off topic, and poor Este was hanging back, head bowed, allowing them space to process and grieve. But the longer they delayed, the more it drew out the rape kit. And the greater the chances that Olivia would ask questions Amanda simply could not answer. "We'll talk some more about that later, huh? Right now, let's finish getting you checked out."

Expecting a protest and receiving none, Amanda held Olivia's hand and, though not in the way, stepped aside for Este to resume her examination. She cast anxious glances at her wife, who didn't acknowledge the nurse's return or the hand Amanda clutched to her chest. It rested there, warm and limp, the arm loose as a cooked noodle, until she almost couldn't bear to feel it against her. The way it waited to be manipulated into whatever form its controller saw fit. It no longer belonged to Olivia, but to whomever picked it up and used it for their own sick purposes.

Part of Amanda wanted to shake Olivia by the arm and tell her to snap out of it—that she couldn't give in to despair, Amanda and the kids needed her sane, whole—but that was the fear and the guilt talking. Tough love would not be helpful in this situation and would probably make it about ten times worse. What scared Amanda the most was not knowing what type of love, if any, might make a difference. She doubted it was possible to love Olivia's trauma away this time, and despite her years of experience, she had no idea how else to make any of this better.

Maybe there was no way. Maybe all those victims she had supposedly helped, all those pearls of wisdom and healing she handed out like religious tracts in the hands of a righteous old Baptist woman, meant nothing. She'd been fooling herself thinking she could ever help anyone escape their pain and suffering, or the endless cycle of abuse; she had never accomplished it with her mama or her little sister, and now she never would with Olivia, either. Just one more example, out of so very many, of how profoundly she had failed her wife.

"May I continue?" Este asked quietly. She bunched up her shoulders in a sheepish apology when they both jumped anyway. Her eyes immediately went to Olivia when Amanda gave verbal consent, anticipating that the captain would not answer on her own. Present physically, she was somewhere else altogether in spirit, so that her nod, when it did come, looked weirdly disembodied. Robotic, almost. She didn't blink while Este gathered loose debris, piecing it from her hair, swiping it from between her toes.

The location of the rapes was known, so there was little need for evidence from the scene, but Amanda held her tongue. It was a routine step, and you'd be surprised what one speck of dirt or imported gravel could turn up. Sometimes it led to overseas operations and resulted in the capture of the really big fish who ran the whole show—there and in the states. Declan Murphy wasn't the only lucky son of a bitch in this game. Amanda had lucky streaks of her own from time to time, and she had to have a few saved up with all the gambling she wasn't doing lately.

She fingered the St. Jude pendant inside her collar. Treating a saint like a good luck charm was probably sacrilege of some kind, but she didn't have a rabbit's foot keychain to rub or a pair of dice to blow on. All she had was the necklace of a man she'd killed for raping her wife, and that would have to do.Don't let me have put her through this for nothing, she implored the medal.Don't let me lose her to this.Help me find Sandberg and Murphy.May Sondra Vaughn die a slow, ugly death in prison very soon.I'm sorry, Jesus.I'm sorry, Grandmama.I'll kill them all.In her name, amen.

The UV light was too much for Amanda to bear. Olivia's flesh lit up like bioluminescent waters when Este scanned the glowing wand over the areas not covered by her strategically positioned gown. It looked as if every inch of her arms, legs, back, chest, abdomen, and neck were coated with saliva, sem*n, and bruises hidden beneath bruises. Her eyes were glazed over, much too shiny in the alien blue light that gave her a cadaver-like tint, and she never let them stray lower than chin level. Each time the swab grazed her skin, collecting samples from full sets of teeth impressions and whimsically patterned splotches like heavy-handed graffiti, she flinched.

Amanda finally had to turn her face away, unable to watch the long and tedious process. Even Este was shaking her head at the sheer amount of deposits there was to choose from, and she cleared her throat gently every few minutes, as if dispelling the apologies or anger it would be unprofessional to speak. Amanda just hid against Olivia's shoulder, praying for this portion of the kit to end, afraid the image of that body—once a beautiful and flawless landscape, now a toxic waste site—would be burned into her brain forever. It was one thing to see the destruction as it happened, but the aftermath was almost more tragic. You got the whole picture of what had been lost.

"You're doing great, baby," Amanda whispered, smoothing her palm side to side on Olivia's back. She had to say something to keep up morale, though neither of them were holding up particularly well. She was like a little kid who thought the monsters went away if you didn't look at them, and Olivia was quaking worse than the dogs when they had to go to the vet. Her skin was on fire, despite the blankets draped off her shoulders to pool at her waist, and the partially open gown.

A mother of four, Amanda knew a fever when she felt it, but she didn't want to second-guess Este, who was so attentive and considerate of Olivia's needs. And if she were being totally honest, she couldn't turn back to the nurse until the UV light was off. Another glimpse of that Rorschach nightmare in white painted on her wife's abused flesh, and she would go crazy. This time they would have to strap her to a gurney and never let her go. Olivia would be left to face this alone.

"Almost over," Amanda lied, stroking and murmuring the way she did when one of the kids woke from a bad dream. They called for her then; it was Olivia they wanted when they were sick. Mommy made everything better. Mama kept everyone safe. That had been the deal until a Saturday morning bagel run changed everything. Now Amanda didn't know what she was good for anymore. "Just hang in there a little longer. It'll all be over soon."

"That's what I told myself while they were on top of me . . . inside of me. Almost over, can't go on forever." Olivia sounded blank, as if recalling an unexceptional trip to the grocery store rather than three days of rape and torture. "But it did. They just kept coming. Kept hurting me. I didn't think it would ever end. It did end, though, didn't it?"

That got Amanda to pull back enough to look at Olivia from arm's length. She cupped the captain's face in her hands, ensuring the attention remained on her and not on Este's gradual progress. Bathed in the weird, otherworldly lighting, it was easy to see how Olivia might become confused about what was real and what was not. "Yes, Liv, it's over. We left the shipping yard, and now we're at the hospital, remember? They'll never come for you ever again. No one's gonna do those things to you— never again."

"Okay. That's good." Fear seemingly assuaged, Olivia rested her chin in Amanda's palms, the tension melting out of her posture until she was as pliant and submissive as a dozing child. Her twitchy movements, triggered by the nurse's methodical swirling of swab after swab, calmed to an occasional faint sigh that sounded like Samantha's impatient huffs when she nursed. The need for satiation. "They're nice at the hospital. They let me watch TV, and I can eat whatever I want, even though the food isn't too good."

"I'll second that," said Este, who was busy sliding the applicators into the designated paper containers and missed Amanda's fretful glance. The older woman didn't appear to notice Olivia's regressive comments, but then, she wasn't familiar with Olivia's past and the many hospital stays she had amassed since childhood. Perhaps Amanda was reading too much into the odd anecdote, though. People said all sorts of strange things when they were in shock; hell, Amanda herself had been off in la-la land after getting shot, according to Olivia, Daphne, and Fin.

Nevertheless, she was relieved when Este finished up with the dried secretions and bite marks portion of the kit. That put them at the halfway point of the exam, and between each step the nurse paused to gauge how receptive Olivia was to moving forward. If Olivia was losing touch with reality, it should be apparent during these brief check-ins, and Amanda wouldn't have to look like the pushy, worrywart wife who kept telling the medical personnel how to do their jobs.

"Okay, dear, I'll go ahead and scrape under your fingernails now, if that's all right with you." Este displayed a tapered stick that resembled the end of a manicurist's nail file. She pressed the pointed tip into the pad of her finger to illustrate its harmlessness. "It won't hurt, and it will get some of that gunk out of there. That has to feel unpleasant."

Olivia examined her fingernails, which were indeed darkened by crescent moons of dirt at the tips, at least where they weren't chipped and frayed nearly to the nub. She did look surprised to see them in such poor shape, but she extended them to the nurse without reservation. "I went for his DNA. I'm right-handed, so you'll probably find more on that side." As an afterthought, and more to herself than to anyone in the room, she sighed, "Not that you'll need it. It's everywhere else too."

There was a callous note to the remark, but that was easily attributed to Olivia's raw emotions and severe exhaustion. And the singular "his" could have been a slip of the tongue, or just her way of saying she only got a piece of one attacker. Nothing too alarming in either instance, and the captain didn't sound muddled or incoherent, but try as she might, Amanda couldn't hide her concern. She stroked the hair back from Olivia's forehead with her palm, testing again for fever.

"How you doin', darlin'?" she asked, leaning in to get a better look into her wife's dark eyes. She didn't exactly know what to search for besides dilated pupils or pinpoints, but if something was off, Amanda was confident she would see it. She gazed lovingly into Olivia's eyes all the time; she had every gold fleck inside those deep brown irises committed to memory.

Other than a dullness where there was usually warmth, wit, wisdom—that window to the soul thing people were always talking about—she saw no noticeable difference from their normal composition. "You hanging in there? Anything you need me to get you?"

"I'm okay. Just stay with me. You promised you wouldn't leave me." Olivia tore her gaze away from the stick Este expertly rounded beneath her fingernails like she was paring fruit. Her reaction time lagged behind the rest of her responses, so that her distress over being abandoned was misplaced, but no less upsetting. She snatched a hand back from Este as soon as the nurse finished with her pinky fingernail, and reached for Amanda as if they were about to be forcibly separated. Her grip was weak, but she held on for dear life when Amanda caught the escaped hand in hers.

"I'm here, I'm here. Shh." Amanda smoothed out the back of Olivia's hand and mentally kicked herself for poking around and upsetting her wife again with her own insecurities. She should just shut her mouth, let Este do her job, and be there in whatever capacity Olivia needed her most. And right now, she needed Amanda to just be there and hold her hand.

"Sick of people leaving me," Olivia muttered, or something like it. Chin tucked to her chest, voice scratchy and whisper-thin, it was difficult to make out. She retracted her other hand when the scraping was complete, tucking it to her chest like an animal with a wounded paw. Everything about her was so goddamnedwounded. Amanda had thought she'd already seen Olivia at her most fragile and withdrawn, particularly after the night terrors or flashbacks she occasionally suffered, but those were nothing compared to this. "Nobody ever loves me enough to stay . . . "

Amanda's heart clenched painfully. Whether or not Olivia was aware of what she was saying (and she more than likely was not, given the vulnerability and candor she expressed without reservation), it still hurt to know that she felt that way, so unloved. Even if it was only in the past. Amanda tried every single day to love Olivia enough to make up for all those years without it, but she was fooling herself to think she could undo the damage inflicted so long ago. She could never fully heal that lonely, abused little girl inside Olivia, just as she could never heal the angry, fearful child inside herself.

"I do," Amanda said, not bothering to temper the urgency in her voice, the desire to make Olivia feel how loved she truly was. So what if some nurse in her sixties saw Amanda getting emotional over her wife? It wasn't as though either of them had anything left to hide. She hugged Olivia to her chest, rocking her gently side to side, and murmuring anything she could think of to counteract what Serena had instilled in her daughter at birth. "And the kids do. I've seen the way them girls look at you. Noah too. You're their whole world, Liv. You'reourwhole world, and we're not leaving you. You believe me, don't you?"

It took a moment, but a small, sniffly nod finally came, rustling against Amanda's shoulder. Olivia's bowed head hid her face from view and muffled the frailyesshe sent up like a beacon of hope—a white dove released on the wind, or a faint glimmer of light on dark and tumultuous waters. She hadn't forgotten that her family loved her, and that had to mean there was a way to bring her back. No matter how far gone she was, she would never give up on her family. She had promised that to Amanda, and though it was an easy thing to say when you were in the safety of your bathtub with someone who loved you unconditionally, Amanda believed it was true.

She had to.

"I miss them," Olivia said, breathy and so childlike she might have passed for a kid herself over the phone. It was disconcerting to hear a voice, once powerful and resonant in volume and impact, now so diminished. A voice like that couldn't command a squad room; couldn't dare a man doing hard time to try and cross her, because she had the biggest gang in town; couldn't offer peace and courage to victims of unconscionable crimes. Victims just like her. "I didn't think I'd ever see them again. Tried not to picture them, though. I didn't wanna see their faces while those men . . . while they— "

"While they were hurting you," Amanda said softly. Olivia always did have trouble applying the word rape to her own experiences, and right now she didn't have to if it was too difficult. She had submitted to a rape kit, that was admission enough. Even so, she shuddered in Amanda's arms at just the implication of what "hurting" meant in this context. Olivia knew all the many ways a person could be hurt, and the great irony of it was that she deserved it the least. People like Sondra Vaughn and Matthew Parker deserved it. People like Sandberg, Riva, Angelov. People like Amanda.

Nurse Este saved the day once again by clearing her throat and discreetly displaying a small black comb, the kind boys used to carry in their back pockets when Amanda was in high school. Lord, they thought they were cool, raking those little ten-cent drugstore combs through their shaggy too-long hair. This one wasn't for the head, though. Besides that, Olivia's long hair had been hacked off as if it were nothing. "The next step is pubic-hair combings," Este said in a confidential tone. "Now, I can do it if you prefer, but I give everyone the option of doing it themselves. Or, if you'd like your wife to assist, she can—"

"I'll do it." Olivia sat up from Amanda's embrace, easing her off as if they had been walked in on during an intimate moment in her office. She put out her hand for the comb, and for a second, she was Captain Benson again, taking charge and refusing to let anyone else do her dirty work for her. But the shaking spoiled the illusion, casting doubt on her ability to even hold the comb, let alone use it to sweep any of the perps' stray hairs from her private area. Thank God they had done away with plucking a pubic hair and a strand from the victim's head in recent years. That would have been even worse.

"Hang on, darlin', why don't you let me get that for you?" Amanda intercepted the comb from Este, prepared to zip through the step as quickly as possible. She had never done a pubic combing before, though she had stood nearby during hundreds of them, and she knew them to be a difficult part of the process. Painless, but what woman wanted a stranger grooming them there? What woman wanted her wife grooming her there, for that matter?

Amanda didn't exactly relish the idea herself—seeing the damage up close would make her want to kill Olivia's rapists all over again—but she would do anything to take some of the burden from Olivia and get her through this faster. "Lie on back while I just—"

"I want to do it myself," Olivia said, sounding for all the world like Jesse when she was being stubborn and independent. Mama, I want to walk to school by myself. Mama, I want to do my own pigtails. The six-year-old thought she could handle any task, no matter how large or small, and Olivia was no different. She thrust her hand forward, demanding the comb from Amanda, eyes locked on her open palm. It twitched like a dying animal gone belly up. "Give it to me. Now."

Normally, being given an order like that would either have incited Amanda's anger, if in the midst of an argument, or an irreverent dash of humor, if she thought it might defuse the tension. To be honest, it was rare enough for Olivia to be that bossy with her, it surprised Amanda more than anything. But trauma victims often lashed out and acted irrationally, and more than likely that's all this was. If Olivia were clear-headed at the moment, she'd realize Amanda was the better choice to perform the collection.

"Hey there, boss lady, you forget I'm the one with the forensic science degree here? I know a little bit about gathering evidence." Amanda rested a hand on Olivia's knee, tapping the inside with her fingers, encouraging it to open. She forced a coaxing smile that was usually reserved for luring the kids to bed or the dogs to the vet. God, she hated this. Herself most of all. "Come on, it'll be over before you—"

"Give me the comb, goddammit." Olivia snatched at the comb like she was disarming a gun-wielding criminal, but her aim, always so true in times past, was off. She missed it by a mile, swiping at air and huffing in frustration. Her second attempt was more successful, and she connected with Amanda's palm, knocking the comb into her lap. Rather than grab for it again, she recoiled as if it were a large co*ckroach.

"What the hell, Liv," Amanda said, surprised but not angry. It had become her go-to response, even with the kids: What the hell, Jess, why would you put mayonnaise in your sister's hair? Oh, Sam, what the hell you been eatin', child—green eggs and ham? Of course, now Jesse and Tilly had picked up the habit, asking what-the-hell about even the slightest inconveniences. They didn't understand that it was Amanda's way of keeping her cool under challenging circ*mstances.

Calmly she retrieved the comb, holding it flat in her upturned palm to show that it was a lifeless, harmless thing, not a weapon. Though, she supposed, in the wrong hands it probably could have been used like one. She lowered the comb from sight and gave Olivia's knee a reassuring squeeze. "Never mind, that's all right, darlin'. Let's just do it real quick and get it over with. Then we can move on to the next step. 'Kay?"

Not much of an incentive, considering that the next step was the anal and perianal swabs. Amanda wondered if that might be the reason Olivia was stalling now, to avoid moving forward with the most invasive portions of the kit. If there had been no anal contact they at least could have skipped that swab, but Amanda knew for certain that there had been, and repeatedly. The images and sounds were seared into her brain like a brand. Like the burns on Olivia's skin from the taser. (She'd done her best not to count them while she helped Olivia off with her clothes and on with the hospital gown.)

"No. Please, just . . . " Olivia held out her hand expectantly—even a little defiantly—and with an urgency that bordered on need. Her unfocused gaze rose no higher than Amanda's shoulder level, as if she were unaware of the face above it. She resembled a blind woman whose eyes never quite reached the speaker. It had a strange disembodying effect on Amanda, who drew closer on instinct, rounding directly in front of Olivia to bring herself into view.

"Liv, why won't you let me—"

"Because I don't want you touching me there!" Olivia cried, so agonized and raw-throated she sounded like a soldier being actively ripped apart. An arm torn off by shrapnel, a leg blown in a thousand different directions by a land mine. Gouts of blood, bone fragments as sharp and dangerous as exploding glass, gelatinous gore splattering the ground like the contents of a water balloon dropped on pavement. Human beings were resilient, but some things could not be undone. "I don't want you to see! Don't— don't want you to see what they . . ."

The ending may have faded, but the meaning was clear, and so was the realization they both had at the same time: it didn't matter. Amanda had watched every cut and bruise as it mapped its way across her flesh; from video footage alone, she could probably visualize a fairly accurate depiction of Olivia's genital trauma, based on the injuries she saw day in and day out on the job. And she knew Olivia's body, the most intimate parts, the pleasures and pains they could reach. What was left to hide?

Every fiber of Amanda's being wanted to object. She was far better equipped to handle the gravity of the task right then, her hands markedly steady though her insides felt like water, her mind singularly focused on shielding her wife from any further trauma. The state Olivia was in, it would have been easy to override her refusal. But one glimpse of her pained expression, and Amanda couldn't do it. She'd be as guilty of taking away Olivia's consent as all the men in the livestream if she continued down this path.

"Here, baby," she said so gently she practically mouthed the words. Tucking the comb into Olivia's hand with the same care, she ensured a good grip, then unfolded the small collection sheet that resembled a piece of kitchen parchment paper. She spread the sheet lightly on Olivia's lap where it could be reached without effort, and drew back deliberately when she started to fuss at the corners. There was actual physical pain in not being able to freely touch or hold Olivia as she had done for the past two years. "If you need any help, I'm right here."

Sadness darkened the hollows of Olivia's face, giving it a gaunt, skull-like appearance, and for a moment, it seemed as if she might recant and ask Amanda to take over. But she waited for Amanda and Este to move aside, where they would no longer have a straight-shot view of her progress. Watching her struggle into position, groaning and wincing, a hand at her ribs and the other clutching the comb so tightly it left a white barcode on her palm, it was all Amanda could do not to intervene.

With frustrated whimpers, sighs, Olivia toiled beneath the tent of her gown, still trying to be discreet, even if those same intimate places were to be examined minutes later. An eternity passed in sniffles and the aggressive ticking of a wall clock before she presented the comb and sheet, neatly folded back into quarters, to the SANE nurse as if it were a religious offering. Amanda had never seen a victim do that—re-fold the pubic combings sheet so any shedding was preserved within its creases—and it hit her with the swiftness of a fist. She couldn't tell if Olivia knew those tricks of the trade because of her job or because she'd had this procedure done so many times.

Este noted the difference with a look of mild surprise too, but didn't comment, only received the collection like she was handling a newborn, and murmured a light thank you. She cast a meaningful glance at Amanda before fitting the sheet into the corresponding envelope, drawing that part out with a slow and deliberate hand. The next step would be even more torturous and everyone in the room knew it; the air was so thick with tension it was stifling. Amanda wanted to run, but then she would have to abandon Olivia.

Again.

She imagined her feet as cinder blocks, too heavy to lift from the floor (not much of a stretch, really), and stayed fast at Olivia's side. If only the rest of her were made of stone, maybe then this wouldn't feel as horrendous. Maybe then she could convince herself she was doing the right thing. "Okay, baby, got another rough one coming up," she narrated, all the while wishing she'd kept her mouth shut. Commentary was unnecessary in this particular situation and came off more than anything as nervous chatter. But she couldn't let it go at that. "Just hang in there, you're doing so good. And you're almost finished."

Two and a half hours into the kit, they honestly were making good time compared to the grueling four—and sometimes as long as six—hour kits that Amanda had stood sentinel for in the past. But there was no telling how long the next several swabs would take, and whether or not Olivia could tolerate the speculum exam. These steps could not be rushed and were often responsible for the whole process being dragged out, no matter how efficient the nurse. Whenever the patient said stop, you stopped and you didn't proceed without a green light, ever.

Olivia muttered something that sounded like "It'll never be over," but she complied with Amanda's attempts to get her situated at the end of the bed where Este had extended a pair of stirrups. The nurse waved them forward as if they were parking a car and trying not to ding the bumper. The visual was absurd, almost to the point of being funny, but no one laughed. Especially not while Olivia was having such difficulty, each leg requiring a great deal of effort to lift into the metal support brackets. She hissed loudly, her face a study in concentration, pain, and wrestling with her own body.

Amanda felt powerless to assist, knowing she would only be in the way if she tried to help Olivia scoot her bottom to the very edge of the bed. She waited anyway, hands poised to straighten snarled sheets or remove any other hindrance Olivia might encounter. The physical ones, at least. She couldn't control the mental blocks she saw going up, the walls her wife was building out of reinforced steel, in place of the concrete Amanda had chipped away at for the past ten years. Right then she couldn't even control her own racing thoughts, which were so loud they drowned out Este's explanation of the anal and perianal swabs.

Not until Olivia gave a stilted cry and turned her face away, eyes clamped shut, did Amanda finally snap out of the brain fog in which she drifted. She began to speak without any conscious planning or forethought of what she would say, just the awareness that she needed to distract Olivia from the torment below her waist: "Hey, darlin', I ever tell you about the time I went trainhopping? You know, where you sneak into a freight car like they do in Fried Green Tomatoes. I ever tell you that one?"

After several moments without response, Olivia finally shook her head in a brief spasmodic jerk. She still didn't open her eyes or face Amanda, but she had at least heard and acknowledged the inquiry. That was something.

"Aw, shoot, can't believe I never mentioned it. That's gotta be one of my best Dumbass Amanda stories yet." Actually, it wasn't nearly the dumbest or the most dangerous stunt Amanda had pulled in her youth—not even the most illegal—but it was a safe memory to revisit, minus any family drama or serious injury, and it didn't end too badly. Olivia was always after Amanda to share more of her past; there were just so few stories worth telling about her home life. Skipping town on a freight train would have to do.

"N-not a d-dumbass," Olivia mumbled. It sounded like she was talking to herself, searching for a set of lost keys or a pair of glasses that were on her head. Her eyes remained closed, but she turned her face in Amanda's direction, pressing it to the hand she held in hers. She was very warm. "You're n-not. Don't say . . . "

"I know, you don't like it when I call myself names. But you ain't heard the story yet. Might change your mind by the time I'm done." Amanda stroked Olivia's good cheek with the back of her index finger, putting on a sad smile the captain didn't see. It hurt almost as much not looking into Olivia's eyes as it did looking into them and finding nothing but pain. "Think I was about fourteen at the time, and I must've been pissed at Kim or my parents for some reason or another, 'cause I decided to run away from home.

"I didn't want to go alone, though, so I invited my cousin Mindy. 'Member her? You met her at the Loganville fair. She was my partner in crime back then. Anyway, she said yes, and we snuck out to the tracks one night with our backpacks full of teen magazines, belly shirts, and country music tapes. Never mind what we'd listen to them on. Mindy brought ham salad. I brought the beers."

Even the underage drinking reveal didn't get a reaction from Olivia, although Amanda might have included it in other tales of her childhood. It was a major feature in those days, and Amanda had probably dodged the bullet of alcoholism by a very slim margin. Too busy perfecting her poker game. She decided not to mention her daddy's .22, another stowaway on that midnight Georgia train.

"Think we went through most of our provisions in the first hour and a half. Neither of us remembered to bring a flashlight, so we couldn't see to play cards or read the magazines. We just sat there in the dark like a coupla nincompoops, telling ghost stories and gossiping about boys. Mindy was used to sleeping out in the barn with her horse, but I was freezing my tail off. Remember how long it took me to adjust to the weather up here?"

Actually, she had yet to fully adjust to the coldest New York temperatures and probably never would, but it usually earned her a smile from Olivia when she mentioned her cold intolerance. This time there was nothing, not even a nod to indicate that Olivia was paying attention. Her lips were folded in, eyelids folded tight, as if she had retreated somewhere within, closing up all the windows and doors. She was slipping further away rather than staying grounded by the tale, but Amanda didn't know any other way to bring her back besides finishing.

"Anyway, we felt around in the dark like we were in that Helen Keller movie, until we found what Mindy swore was a pile of hay. 'Cover up with it,' she says, 'You'll be as warm as if you were at home in your own bed.' Figured the farm girl knew what she was talking about, so we got all snuggled in, fell asleep within ten minutes, not even. Beer pro'ly had something to do with it . . .

"We woke up the next morning all excited to see where the train had taken us. Thought for sure we'd be in Arkansas or West Virginia or somewhere. You know, I's singing 'Little Rock,' she's singing 'Country Roads.' And well, the haywashay, sort of. Apparently someone had been using the car to store cut weeds. To burn later, I guess. Know what lives in the grass and weeds down south?" Amanda paused for dramatic effect, even though she was fairly certain Olivia was not listening. "Chiggers. Lots and lots of chiggers. They ate us alive. Seriously, I looked like I had chicken pox for a month. But the worst part? Our train out of Georgia?"

Amanda made a sideways slicing gesture, as if she were cutting off any grand ideas about her final destination. Olivia was gripping her other hand like a woman in the throes of childbirth. At full strength, she probably would have crushed some of Amanda's bones. At full strength, she wouldn't have let herself hold on so tightly to begin with. "Never left the station. Like, ever again. Defunct car. The damn thing wasn't even hitched to a locomotive. I'm not so sure the tracks were active, either."

She shook her head at the humorous twist, giving the appearance of light amusem*nt, though she felt nothing. Inside, only death. Este signaled the conclusion of the anal swabs with a quick glance up before rubbing the applicators, cotton heads tipped with blood, on their respective slides. At least that part was done, then, and though Olivia was visibly shaking and still wouldn't—or couldn't—open her eyes, she hadn't cried or screamed as Amanda feared she might. She'd barely made a sound.

"Longest redeye of my life," Amanda said, with a silent, quivering laugh. She hated the sound of her own voice; she hated the stupid, pointless story that was better left unspoken. Why hadn't she told it to Olivia when things were good, when they could have laughed at her teenage antics together, instead of choking back tears and bile? Now it was memory with a taste, bitter as rotten grapes, and it would forever be associated with this moment, another painful invasion of Olivia's body.

"So, yeah, Dumbass Amanda, see? Tried to run away and all's I ended up doing was having a midnight picnic and pro'ly getting Lyme disease or West Nile or some sh*t from five million chigger bites. Thank the Lord our kids got your brains, otherwise we'd be in for a real treat in a couple more years." Amanda fiddled anxiously with the frayed ends of Olivia's hair, no longer aware of what was coming from her mouth. Anything to grab Olivia's attention, even if it was just to scold Amanda for self-deprecation or agree that their children were extraordinary.

But when Olivia did open her eyes, it wasn't to comment on the anticlimactic tales of bored teens in Loganville. Slumped against the pillows, she merely stared at Amanda for a while, the angle turning her slight frown into a pouty expression. She seemed on the verge of speaking, her respiration rapid and shallow, as if timed to her frenetic, traumatized consciousness. Poised for flight, with nowhere to go. That was the very nature of PTSD, and she had lived it over and over for most of her life.

"Saint of lost causes," she lisped, tongue moving, lips not.

It was so subtle, Amanda thought she might have imagined it. Maybe her conscience was working overtime. "Huh?" She leaned closer to Olivia, inclining an ear, but she was caught off guard when Olivia's hand extended toward her, reaching for something at chest level. Tucking in her chin, she glanced down to see that the St. Jude medal had escaped from inside her collar and dangled, coin-like, in the overhead lighting.You're waiting for someone to perform with.

The pendant landed in Olivia's hand, gentle as a raindrop, and she cupped it in her palm as if it were that fragile, a tear discarded by the sky. God was crying, isn't that the stuff they used to sell to little kids who were scared of storms? What lies we told our children in the name of comfort. What horrors we disguised as fairy tales and religion. "Like to see their face when I put it in . . . " Olivia mumbled, as if it were the inscription on the back of the necklace, read under her breath, to ponder and inspire.

"Hey." Amanda eased the pendant from her wife's hand, still upturned in anticipation of more rain, and dropped it back inside her collar. She took Olivia by the wrist, folding her arm down so the elbow was at her side, hand draped over her belly. The action and the limpness of the limb reminded Amanda of the way dead bodies were posed for burial, and she almost pulled away, refusing to associate those things with Olivia. Ever. "That's all over with, Liv. Just try to focus on where you are now, okay, baby? Listen to the sound of my voice, and breathe. You need a break? Maybe another sip of water?"

Este nodded at Amanda's glance up for approval, but Olivia cut them both off, shaking her head adamantly on the pillow. She kicked at the blankets Este had drawn back in place across her knees, tossing the covers askew, baring her legs from the shins down. There were large bruises on both kneecaps, as if Olivia had played an extreme sport without proper padding. Her whole body looked like that, to be honest. "You think they gave me a break or a sip of water when I asked for it?" she snapped, and though she was weak, her anger still packed a mighty punch. "No, they just kept— they kept . . . . Just want this over, so I can go home. Please."

Exchanging another look with the nurse, Amanda found confirmation of what she already knew—it would be a while before Olivia was cleared for release, even beyond the rape kit. If nothing else, her burns needed to be treated and the splinters removed from her feet and hands. That cheekbone should be iced, and in all likelihood she would require sutures to the current exam site. They might be looking at an overnight stay, or at least a late-night to early-morning release time.

Neither woman wanted to break the news, and in the end, neither of them did. Better to let Olivia feel like she was calling the shots than to take away her choice and her hope yet again. Este readied the vulvar swab, the first of three final swabs in the genital area and the last of the evidence collection. Feeling helpless and hollow inside, much like she had while viewing the livestream, Amanda watched the preparation in silence alongside her wife. It was as if they were waiting for the nurse to turn off the life support of a beloved family member. A fifty-four-year-old woman who suffered a tragic accident and had no chance of recovery.

It became unbearable—the silence—as the nurse began tracing the applicator on the outside of Olivia's vulva, her arm moving with the grace of an orchestra conductor, leaving little to the imagination about what was happening beneath the blankets draped over Olivia's knees. The comparisons a mind came up with to rationalize the unimaginable (at times the men had looked like bronco busters to Amanda, taming a wild, bucking bronc for the saddle) were profane and shameful. Amanda averted her eyes from the exam before her overwrought brain played any more tricks.

"I tell you about the time Kimmie 'n me brought home the pregnant praying mantis?" Amanda chuckled once, swiped at her nose with the heel of her palm. Her nose leaked like a sieve whenever she held back emotion. Or when she let it out. One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. That seemed to be the overarching theme of Amanda's entire goddamn life, when you got right down to it. "Well, we didn't know she was pregnant or what the weird honeycomb-lookin' things were inside the shoebox we kept her in. Until they hatched. You knowhow manyeggs are inside those things?"

When neither of her listeners wagered a guess, or even showed any interest in hearing the answer, Amanda provided the punchline with all the enthusiasm she could muster—that was to say, very little. "Tons. Like three or four hundred. And the lid was off the box, so they got out. Mama was screechin' and carryin' on over itty-bitty stick babies for days. Took us about a week to get 'em all out of the house. So, if Jess or Tilly ever come home with a praying mantis in their pocket, look out."

Nothing. Not so much as a flicker of the eyelashes at the mention of their daughters' names. Amanda almost preferred it when Olivia was fretting over their three-year-old being snatched up; at least then she was engaged and responsive. For better or worse, she was Olivia when she was anxious and hypervigilant. Amanda didn't know who this blank, staring woman was or what to say to snap her out of it. She frightened Amanda with her empty brown eyes and mute tongue. In some ways it had been easier hearing her cry, hearing her beg.

The vagin*l swab passed in the same eerie silence, and Amanda gave up on the forced and pathetic storytime. It was all just white noise anyway, and if she had to listen to herself being unnaturally talkative and upbeat for another second, she would really go crazy. Shooting up a hospital full of civilians crazy. She was a killer now, it wouldn't be that big of a leap. Most repeat killers started small, their crimes escalating with experience. She could picture the bloodstains, like sprays of red flowers—hibiscus or some other bold bloomer—on the sterile white walls.

Closing her eyes didn't help. When she did that, she saw Olivia being raped again and again on an endless loop. So she kept them open, watchful, though they felt dry and sunken inside their sockets. She had no clue how much sleep she'd gotten in the past seventy-two hours, but she couldn't let it catch up with her now. Whatever the number, it was probably more sleep than Olivia had gotten. Until her captain was resting comfortably, Amanda would not give herself the luxury.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than Este finished the vagin*l smear and boxed the envelope alongside the rest. It might have been a welcome sight if not for the next step: the cervical swab. Having an applicator wiggled around in your most intimate places was intrusive enough, but the culminating swab of the kit required a speculum for deeper insertion. The instrument gleamed like a brand new pistol on the tray beside the nurse. Ready to be picked up and fired.

Amanda stole a nervous glance at Olivia, expecting to find her restless and fearful at the prospect of anything larger than a cotton tip being put inside her. At some point she had sunk down further into the blankets, as if her outer retreat reflected her inner one, for she was fully immersed inside herself now, a squatter in her own skin. The resemblance to cinematic scenes of possession, when the demon finally took control of the host body, was unnerving and made the hair on Amanda's arms stand on end. She half-expected to hear the words "Olivia's not here anymore" from the puffy, cracked lips that were virtually identical to her wife's, right down to the plump little Cupid's bow, so unique to Olivia that Amanda had never seen another like it. Sometimes she kissed it just because.

But Olivia didn't speak at all. The blanket shroud shuddered around her, the only real sign of life beyond an occasional faint puff of air from her lips. She'd stopped meeting Amanda's eye some time ago, staring dully into the middle distance, her irises a shade of puddle-brown they had never been before. Color had risen in her cheeks, though, turning them an almost healthy pink. Bright and a bit glossy, like she just went for a mid-January stroll through the city.

Why didn't she speak?

"Hang on," Amanda said, waving off the speculum that Este brought forth, Olivia in its crosshairs. She didn't care how much she delayed the rest of the exam. Hell, Olivia was caked in come and saliva, they had to have DNA samples for all the men by now anyway. Amanda scooped up her wife's hand, which she couldn't remember putting down in the first place—whywould she do that?—and gasped at how warm it was. Not just warm, but actually hot to the touch. "Liv baby, how you feeling, huh? Look up here, darlin', I wanna see that pretty face of yours."

With Amanda to guide her chin up, Olivia obeyed, or else the demon-thing inside of her did, but there was nothing behind the glassy brown eyes to indicate she saw anyone at all. Amanda longed for her to turn and kiss the inside of one wrist, like she did whenever Amanda's hand lingered by her face for very long. Every time she did that, it made Amanda fall in love a little more. Now just the thought of it made her heart ache.

"Why'd y'make me come here?" Olivia asked, slurring as if she'd been awakened from a heavy nap, or perhaps had gotten a bit overzealous pouring herself a glass of wine or four after dinner. She tried to home in on a visual target, but her pupils swam in and out of focus, creating a trippy illusion of depth and flatness that reminded Amanda of a cosmic vortex. She felt drawn in by it, the way she imagined things sucked you up in space, no telling what was on the other side. "I don't need t'be checked out, Mom. He didn't hurt me like that."

Mom. Amanda winced at the name, knowing what it meant to Olivia: neglect, cruelty, lies, addiction, fear, and irreparable harm. She had a pretty good idea which memory her wife was reliving right then, too. At sixteen, and against her will, Olivia had been forced by Serena to endure an unnecessary pelvic exam, supposedly for her own good. In reality it was just Serena's way of exerting control over her daughter and punishing her for having a boyfriend—someone whom she might love more than she loved Serena.

And now Olivia thought that's who Amanda was. No better than the wretched woman who had beaten, sexually abused, berated, and abandoned her more times than she could count. Logically Amanda knew Olivia was just confused, possibly even hallucinating from the fever, but that did little to soften the blow or alleviate her rapidly growing concern. This was a lot worse than a simple spike in temperature from being warmed up too quickly.

"Oh my Lord, she's burning up," Amanda said, her voice cracking with the shrill rise in timbre. She forgot herself and reached for Olivia's face, to better gauge the heat that seemed to emanate from her skin like a furnace, discernible even before contact was made. Olivia shrank from the touch, a hand over her badly bruised and swollen cheek, a whimper in her throat. But Amanda persisted, waving for the nurse to test Olivia's forehead and see for herself. "Feel. That's not no normal, low-grade fever. We gotta get her cooled down before her brain starts cookin' in her skull."

Frowning, Este put down the speculum and opted for pressing the back of her wrist to the inside of Olivia's ankle, nearby in the stirrup. Her frown deepening, she peeled hurriedly at the nitrile gloves she'd tried not to dirty and tossed them aside. "Olivia," she called, grasping the back of Olivia's calf, then pushing up from the wheeled stool with an urgency that caused Amanda's heart to leap as well. "I'm gonna go ahead and take your temperature, okay, hon? Your wife's right, you're pretty warm."

The nurse continued to speak loudly over her shoulder as she retrieved a thermometer from a cabinet beside the sharps container. Amanda put her energy into trying to coax Olivia to sit back up, instead of hunching over sideways on the bed, her head practically hanging off the edge. She was struggling to get away from Amanda's hands, which refused to let go and risk sending her pitching onto the floor. "Liv, no, hey. Come on, darlin', sit back up. It's just me. Liv. Liv!"

No matter how gently Amanda spoke, Olivia would not stop fighting her. She wasn't that difficult to subdue, as weak as she was, but fear of hurting her or losing patience and snapping at her, kept Amanda from using her own full strength. The result was a slow, feeble skirmish that put Olivia in Amanda's arms, being guided back against the bed and turning her face away so far it strained her neck.

"No, don't," she said, reaching out with both arms for something only she could see.

Kids reached out like that when they were being separated from their mothers. By children's services, by war, by death. All were the same in the eyes of a child, and all were the same in the eyes of Olivia Benson as she fought the loose arms that held her, leaning in the opposite direction. "Please. Lemme go. I want my wife. I want Amanda. Don't! Leave me alone, I want . . . want Manda . . ."

Unable to catch her breath, not from the physical exertion but the welling emotion that threatened to suck her under, Amanda gasped for air and hugged Olivia to her like a drowning woman. That's how it felt—they were drowning together, taking turns pulling each other down in an attempt to keep their heads above water. Who would emerge the winner, while the other floundered and eventually sank to the bottom, was anybody's guess. "I'm right here, Liv. I'm right here." She dispensed with the kid gloves and held on fiercely to Olivia, determined to keep them both afloat, no matter what else she had to let go of to do it: pride, composure, strength, control. Even her whole self, if that's what it took.

"I got you, baby. Shh, it's me, it's Manda."

"No, y-you're not— she's not h-here." Olivia shook her head restlessly, putting her weight into her arm and shoulder as if Amanda's chest was a door to be broken down. Barely succeeding to nudge her captor off balance, she whimpered in frustration and dropped her forehead against Amanda's collarbone, a defeated head-butt that hurt about as much as a thump from a sturdy pillow. "She d-didn't come. I cried f-for her . . . when they hurt me, I c-cried for h-her, but she dinnit c-come. Why didn't she come for me?"

All pretense of a brave face gone, Amanda wept into the hair at the top of Olivia's head. It was the one spot left relatively unscathed by the torment the rest of Olivia's body had endured for three days. The one spot that still felt safe, like home. Leaving that one small comfort was its own kind of torture, but Amanda forced herself to put Olivia at arm's length by the shoulders, ducking down to eye level, where she couldn't be missed. "It's me, Liv, I'm right here. I came for you soon as I could, baby, I swear it. I'm sorry it took me so long. I— I heard you cryin' for me, and I wanted to be there more than anything. More than any— any—"

The rest would come out only as a sob, and she swallowed it back forcefully when she felt Este's hand on her arm, a thermometer at the ready. If she had gotten through to Olivia at all, it was hard to say, but some of the tension seemed to have drained out of the muscles in the captain's shoulders. She held still for the forehead thermometer, though its tiny chirrup, no louder than a hatchling, sent her into a full body spasm that Amanda once again likened in her mind to an electric shock. "Shh," Amanda soothed, watching anxiously for Este's reaction to the reading.

"Hundred and three," said the nurse in a low voice that belied her alarm. She was finally getting it.

"Should it be that high?" Amanda felt around on Olivia's inflamed skin with cold, helpless hands, as if she might locate the source of the heat. All she found was more hot skin and a sudden puppetlike limpness of limb that startled her. She'd preferred it when Olivia had fought back.

"No. It shouldn't." Este bustled over to the laptop she had wheeled in on a cart before beginning the exam, presumably checking the administered medications and procedure lists in Olivia's chart.

Prepared to demand an explanation and that the nursedo something, Amanda opened her mouth to speak, but instead uttered a surprised cry as Olivia turned to jelly and collapsed into her arms, deeply unconscious. If Amanda hadn't been there to catch her, she would have fallen headfirst onto the floor. Luckily, she still sat mostly on the bed, and Amanda was able to guide her back against it with little effort, propping her head on the pillow.

"sh*t, she fainted or something," Amanda said. Rough, as if it were an accusation and the nurse was to blame. And wasn't she? Amanda had known there was something wrong, but Este kept downplaying it as shock or a response to the rape. If Amanda had listened to her gut, this wouldn't be happening. Whatever this was. "Get off the damn computer and help her. Liv baby, wake up. Can you hear me? I want you to stop this right now, and do as I tell you. Open your eyes, goddammit."

No amount of fingers snapped in her face, firm patting on the cheek, or being shaken by the shoulders could rouse Olivia. She was dead to the world, and whether or not it was permanent, Amanda couldn't say. When two hands took her by the arms and moved her aside, she almost whirled around, punching. She would have clocked Este right in the face if she'd followed her instincts. Now she stood by, feeling wooden and simpleminded, watching while Este listened to Olivia's chest with a stethoscope.

"What is it? What's wrong with her?" she asked anxiously, tracking the nurse's every movement, suddenly very clipped and hasty, as she rounded the bed and pressed a call button on the instrument panel by the laptop. Amanda couldn't see it, but she was willing to bet the button was labeledEmergency. She grabbed up one of the lifeless hands at Olivia's side as if it were a coveted item, the last of its kind. "Why'd she pass out like that? Why's she got such a high fever?"

Jesse often got tuned out because of her incessant questions, at least by Amanda, who had built up a strong tolerance being raised with Kim. But now Amanda remembered what it was like to be six years old and have your cares and concerns summarily dismissed by someone older and more knowledgeable. And like a six-year-old, she felt herself about to have an angry outburst if she didn't get some answers. "Will you please tell me what the hell is—"

"I'm not sure," Este said, hurriedly. She trotted back over to Olivia, checking her pupillary reaction with a pin light from the pocket of her scrubs. If there was any difference—good or bad—beneath the lids Este peeled apart with her thumb and forefinger, Amanda couldn't detect it. Unsheathed, the eye bulged in its socket, the iris pointing due south like a pole at the bottom of a globe. Like the eye of a frantic fish that knew its time was up. "Her heart sounds are erratic, pulse is . . . very low. It's possible she's hemorrhaging internally."

"Well, you have to find out if she is and fix it then." Amanda didn't care how obvious her advice was, they apparently didn't know their ass from their elbow in this hospital, otherwise they wouldn't have missed something so crucial in the first place. It wasn't entirely Este's fault; she hadn't been the one to check Olivia over for signs of internal damage. But how could she just let Olivia sit there getting worse and worse, and not have any clue she was bottoming out?

How could Amanda?

Even standing at Olivia's side, speaking to her and holding her hand, Amanda had failed to protect her. The universe seemed hellbent on taking Olivia from her, as if God himself had deemed Amanda unfit to care for such a remarkable soul. Either that or he just wanted to make her suffer and had taken some pointers from Sondra Vaughn on how best to go about it. She cursed them both silently, God and Vaughn, and steeled her mind against the dark thoughts.

No one was taking Olivia from her, no matter who they were or what power they believed they wielded. Amanda could move mountains in the name of her wife, her Captain Benson, whom she loved more than life itself—but, of all obstacles to stand in her way, she found that she could not move Este. The nurse wasn't much bigger than Daphne, just a little thicker around the middle due to age, but she put her hands up to halt Amanda's advances toward the bed, having stepped back to be out of the way.

"Mrs. Rollins-Benson—"

"Just call me Amanda," Amanda snapped, trying to sidestep the smaller woman's wide, blocking stance.

"Amanda, I assure you I will do everything I can to help your wife, but right now I need you to back off." Este put some authority behind the last part, making it clear she meant business. She wasn't intimidating in the least, but her stern schoolteacher expression was still plenty effective. Pissing off someone who held your wife's life in their hands was never a smart move.

Amanda couldn't afford to make any more dumbass mistakes. That's what got her and Olivia here in the first place. Meekly, reluctantly, she backed up to allow Este some space, all the while checking on Olivia's status with fretful glances. The captain hadn't stirred and remained slumped on her pillow, head drooping down against her shoulder, a top-heavy daisy turned away from the sun. Amanda wanted very badly to step forward and sit her upright where her head would at least be supported, but she was afraid of getting in the way and harming Olivia further.

"I've alerted emergency staff," Este said as she buzzed around the bed, recording Olivia's vitals, provided by indifferent, faceless machines that didn't care whose wife they were hooked up to; whose mother. A wave of despair, as vast as the ocean itself, hit Amanda while she hung back, unable to help—she knew what most of the monitors were for, what was a good reading and what meant the patient was in distress, but she couldn't make heads or tails of them right then. It all looked like gibberish, and she felt about ten years old.

How many times had she waited in the wings for her daddy to quit beating on her mama so she could get Beth Anne patched up? How many of those times had she ended up in a hospital room like this, a scared kid with nothing to do but wring her hands and pray
(no, she didn't do that anymore)
and hope to hear the doctors and nurses say everything was going to be okay? No wonder her heart was about to explode inside her chest.

It dawned on her that she couldn't read the monitors because her eyes were filled with tears, so she swiped them away, found it made no difference. Olivia was still dying right in front of her.

"—need you to leave the room," Este was saying, at the end of a distant tunnel. In Amanda's bleary vision she looked like Agent 007 viewed through a gun barrel, like in the old James Bond movie trailers. How odd.

But then, everything about this living nightmare was odd: the muted voices of the medical staff as they poured into the room; the unfamiliar faces and stony stares drifting past Amanda, swarming around Olivia; the sensation of floating as hands lead Amanda away, and she offered no resistance; her own flat affect reciting Olivia's known allergies—"Cats, sulfa drugs, latex, gluten"—when someone asked about the patient's allergic reactions.

"My God, what did they do to this woman?" someone else muttered just as Amanda went out the door. She never saw the face of her escort, who disappeared back into the room and shut the door soundly behind them. She stared at it for a long time, maybe minutes, maybe hours, willing it to open again. Just a false alarm, Olivia was awake and asking for her. Needing her. She would rush to her wife's side and get it right this time. Every word, every gesture. Amanda would fix everything she'd broken.

But the door remained closed to her, as if she'd been cast out of the Garden. She realized it was the first time in three days, with the exception of lost video feed and a few other interruptions, that she didn't have eyes on Olivia, couldn't see what was being done to her. At least the livestream had given Amanda the illusion of watching over the events inside the shipping container, no matter how awful they were or how impotent she'd felt. She had known what she was up against.

Now she was falling without a net and no clear view of the ground. No way of preparing for impact.

"I didn't get to say goodbye," she whispered, pressing her palm to the door. She expected it to be hot, as if the fires of hell blazed on the other side, but it wasn't warm or cold, just neutral. Just a door, and such things were made to be opened. Letting her fingers drift down to the lever, she was moments from depressing it, storming back into the room, demanding to be with her wife.

Behind her a familiar sound stayed her hand.

. . .

Chapter 34: Two Lies and a Truth

Chapter Text

Chapter 34.

Two Lies and a Truth

. . .

"Amanda."

His gentle tone and the worry—not just apprehension or concern, but genuine worry—on his normally untroubled features broke down the last of Amanda's defenses. She went the ten or so feet to where he stood and dropped into his waiting embrace, burying her face against his chest to release a long, mournful sob. "I didn't tell her goodbye, Fin," she cried, not caring if she could be understood or not. What did it matter now? "She's gonna die, and I didn't say goodbye. I love you. Anything."

"Liv knows you love her," said Fin, stroking the side of Amanda's head with an awkward motion, like he was trying to wipe off clinging spider silk. He clearly had no idea how to offer physical comfort, his embrace tentative and mannequin stiff. But it was better than what Amanda felt on her own, out there wheeling around in space with nothing and no one to hold onto. "Anybody with two eyes and a brain in they head can see that. I saw it that first day you walked into the squad room, jiggling around like you needed to score, all eager to shake her hand. I thought she was gonna run for the hills."

Amanda pressed her forehead to Fin's chest for a moment, listening to him describe the encounter she remembered like it was yesterday. And he was right—she had been in love with Olivia from the get. If she believed in such things, she'd think their love was written in the stars. But stars died eventually too. "Yeah, well," she said, swiping under her nose and pushing back from the safety of Fin's arms. She didn't deserve it, and besides, she was still pissed at him for the Lindstrom betrayal. "She still might get the chance."

Fin rubbed his hands together nervously, as if he wasn't sure what to do with them now that they had been rebuffed. He blew into his fist once, then stuck both hands into his pockets. "Is she really that bad off? What did the doctor say?"

Because Amanda couldn't possibly know what she was talking about, right? She scoffed and distanced from Fin by another step, hugging herself by the arms. Momentarily disoriented, she noticed that they were in the waiting area, several paces down and around the corner from the exam room where Olivia was slipping away from her. Fin must have brought her here, and she hadn't even registered that they were walking. Everyone wanted to take her away from Olivia, it seemed.

"All the doctor said was, 'Get her out of here.'" Amanda dropped heavily into one of the chairs meant for family and guests of patients. Unlucky people sent off to a designated space where they wouldn't be in the way or ask too many questions. Amanda wasn't used to being on this side of things. She was no good at it. Abruptly she stood up again and began to pace. "They threw me out when her stats started dropping. She was fi— she was awake and talking one minute, passed out and almost did a header off the bed the next. I caught her, but that bitch Este kicked me out anyway."

His effort to follow along visible, Fin frowned at the choppy narrative. He gestured for Amanda to sit back down, to no avail. Finally, he took the seat himself, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled before him. "But they didn't actually say she was dying, right? She might have just taken a bad turn, and it's something they can reverse."

"I'm not that lucky," Amanda muttered. When she heard herself, the nervous energy she was running on drained in an instant and she sat down numbly in the chair beside Fin. Her wife was on her deathbed and here she was talking about goddamn luck. Piece of sh*t. "I just mean . . . "

She didn't know what she meant. She didn't know anything anymore.

"I hear ya," said Fin, and he did sound as though he genuinely understood. He flicked a gesture at their surroundings. "I also sat in a waiting room just like this and heard her say the same thing about you when you got shot. That you's dying and she wouldn't get to say goodbye. I never seen her that distraught before, not even when Noah went missing. She was convinced, man. And yet, here you are. You pulled through, and so will she. That's what you guys do. That's what survivorsdo."

For one brief moment, Amanda considered that he might be right. Olivia had already lived through an inordinate number of assaults and suffered consistent abuse since birth or before (Amanda couldn't imagine someone like Serena talking to her baby in the womb, or having anything nice to say if she did), and she was more accomplished, more sane than anyone with her history had the right to be. But the small glimmer of hope was extinguished by ugly images of Olivia being gang raped, beaten, choked, sodomized. Spat on, laughed at.

"This isn't like those other times, Fin," Amanda said darkly. And what was darkness but the absence of light? Of hope? She had lost both in one fell swoop, right around the time Olivia was taken from her. Whether or not she'd ever get them back was anybody's guess. The only thing she knew for certain was that she couldn't do it without Olivia. "You saw what they— Even if she does recover physically . . . she ain't bouncing back from this one."

"She didn't exactly bounce back from Lewis, did she?"

Though he spoke gently and phrased it as a question, Fin obviously didn't need to ask. He had witnessed Olivia's struggles in the aftermath of William Lewis and had probably been there for her in ways Amanda couldn't be at the time. She'd let guilt, insecurity, and addiction keep her from reaching out to the woman who, back then, was just a colleague, a supervisor. Not her responsibility, she'd reasoned, whenever she caught herself wondering what would have happened if she hadn't set Frannie on Lewis, hadn't hauled him into the precinct, hadn't nixed the idea to call up Olivia and invite her out for a beer so she didn't sit at home stewing when Cragen insisted on time off.

The list of excuses had been long: Olivia was dating Cassidy (although, Amanda had heard rumors that they weren't even having sex anymore by that point), and they would want some time alone; Olivia wasn't really a beer girl, she preferred the fussier, more expensive stuff that Amanda could barely pronounce; besides that, she didn't seem to like Amanda much, so why bother her outside work; anyway, Amanda needed to take Frannie to the groomer, and there was that big game coming up.

Anything to avoid the awkwardness ofI'm sorry.This happened to you because of me.

Always because of me.

"And y'all can say what you want, but she wasn't 'just fine' after that Calvin kid and his psycho girlfriend got hold of her." Fin shook his head as if he still couldn't make sense of that one—two children for whom Olivia had given so much, her time, her love, and almost her life, only to be repaid with a vile assault, an attempted murder—and, really, who could make sense of such a thing? Of any of this? "Or all those years with her moms treating her like dirt . . . "

Amanda glanced up in surprise at the mention of Serena. Olivia was intensely private when it came to her personal life, even more so now than when Amanda had first met her. Becoming her wife and confidant had opened those doors up to Amanda, but she didn't know how much of her tumultuous childhood Olivia had shared with others before Stabler's abandonment and the Lewis attack shot that all to hell.

She felt her jealousy flare at the idea that someone—Elliot goddamn Stabler or even Fin—might know more of Olivia's history than she did, if they had gotten it out of the captain before she'd fortified those walls around her tender, easily wounded heart. Quickly, and ashamed that the thought had crossed her mind, Amanda pushed it aside for later. Or never. It didn't matter what Olivia had once confided to a man who walked out of her life like she was nothing, taking all that trust, all that hurt he must have known she harbored from years of neglect and beingtoldshe was nothing, and throwing it right back in her face. Dirty f*cking coward.

Likewise, it didn't matter what Fin had overheard or simply gleaned from twenty-plus years of working alongside Olivia. Most of it had probably come straight out of Munch's mouth, anyway. Amanda loved the old guy, but he hadn't known the meaning of just shutting the hell up.

None of it mattered now. All those little betrayals paled in comparison with the horrific violation of privacy Olivia had endured for the last three days. And she didn't even know the full extent of it yet. If she died, she never would.

Afraid to find out where her brain was going with that line of reasoning, Amanda interrupted it—and her sergeant—with an abrupt question: "So, what are you trying to say? By now she should be so desensitized that this won't even faze her? Because that's some fresh bullsh*t if I ever heard—"

"You know that ain't what I meant," Fin said, his calm, rational veneer absolutely infuriating. He'd seen the very same livestream as Amanda, looking sickened by the torture and degradation being visited on his longtime friend and boss. A man who had been deployed to Mogadishu and later watched the bodies of his brothers in arms getting dragged through the streets by Somalis; a former army ranger who must be aware that America's reluctance to intervene after that bloody battle saw it turn a blind eye on the Rwandan genocide—and he'd still looked away from the screen.Nowhe was the voice of goddamned reason?

"Well, what do you mean, Fin, because I don't have time to sit here and sort it all out while my wife's off somewhere, pro'ly dying alone." Amanda heaved a sigh, slouching down in the chair as if physically drained by great mental effort. She was being an awful brat, but she couldn't bring herself to care about anyone else or their feelings at the moment. All she cared about was Olivia and seeing her again.

"I'm saying she ain't dying, so quit acting like she's already dead. And I'm saying she's not gonna bounce back from this, no, but she'll find her way through it, same as always." Fin hesitated before bringing a hand down on Amanda's shoulder, squeezing. "She's got you this time. And the kids. I ain't never seen her as happy and at peace as she is with y'all. Long as she's got her family, she'll be okay."

Something in his tone made Amanda anxious. She studied him from the corner of her eye, trying to determine how much he knew, if anything, about her exploits at the Jersey port. He must have gotten some kind of update, otherwise he wouldn't be at the hospital, and he would probably be asking her a lot more questions. But why did he sound as though he was warning her not to start spilling her guts and ruin everything, at least when it came to protecting Olivia?

Maybe because that was exactly what he was doing. "Look, I know you're having a rough time right now, and I don't blame you for anything you said . . . or done. I'm just glad you got her here in one piece. In the meantime, though . . . there anything I should know about how this all went down? 'Cause I'm gonna have Garland and One PP breathing down my neck pretty soon, and I gotta make sure our stories— our account of events corroborate each other."

"All I can tell you is my end of things," Amanda said, and shrugged. The nonchalance that made her such a gifted liar—unless her nerves got the better of her first—kicked in all at once, and she felt the story falling into place, even as it was coming out of her mouth: "After you kicked me out of interrogation I was trying to blow off some steam by jogging the stairwell. Lewis was taking Parker somewhere . . . Bathroom, I reckon. He broke free, I caught him. Guess he was scared of me after I tuned him up that first time, 'cause he started blathering about how sorry he was for hurting Liv. So, I made him take me to her."

"Just like that, huh? No backup, no coercion. I grill him for how many hours without any progress, but he runs into you in a stairwell and suddenly just rolls over?" Fin arched his eyebrows, and for the first time in a while, or maybe ever, Amanda noticed the wiry gray hairs that had crept in with the dark. In his goatee and at his hairline too. Some of them may have cropped up within the last few days, come think of it. In fact, on closer inspection, he did look as though he'd aged considerably since the last time Amanda saw him. He looked almost old.

Then again, she probably did too. Shefeltold. "Well, I'd be lying if I said I didn't slap him around a little more. You, of all people, can't fault me for that." It was a low blow, using the sergeant's past misconducts to justify her own, but she had to be ruthless now. That's what killers did. And she seemed to recall an incident involving Fin and Nick Amaro threatening to gouge out a convict's eyes with a jagged spoon if he didn't sing—related to her after the fact by Amaro himself, while Amanda was still on heavy painkillers, her shoulder alive and crackling like a grease fire.

She had only been shot when the men used their authority and their brutality to get the answers they wanted, all in her name. How could Fin admonish her for doing the same for Olivia, whose life had been on the line, who was being tortured right in front of Amanda's eyes? And his. She gazed into them now, his sad amber eyes, daring him to challenge her story or preach at her about ethics and police procedure. Their friendship hinged on that moment and Fin's response, she felt, hoping he sensed it as well.

"I don't fault you any of it," he said after a lengthy silence. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but theany of itsounded heavier than the rest, more meaningful. The tone of someone who knew more than they were letting on. "But you know I have to ask, Amanda. I got Lewis' account of things, and as long as it lines up with yours, well . . . case closed, far as I'm concerned. You, uh, might want to change clothes before the brass show up, though." He eyed the rumpled, oversized shirt and jeans she'd stolen off a dead man whose blood lined the creases like dark red caulk.

"You talked to Dana? Before we— before I got to Liv, or after?" Noticing a rust-colored spot on the flap of the shirt, Amanda balled the fabric into her fist, as if Fin hadn't already seen. So far she was doing a piss-poor job of hiding the figurative blood on her hands—and the literal. She'd been stupid as hell, putting on Angelov's clothing, but what else could she have done in that moment? What could anyone have done? She was still standing there in bare feet, for cripes' sake.

St. Jude lay heavy on her chest, the back of the medallion sticking to her skin. She hadn't adjusted to its weight yet, but she didn't plan on taking it off, even after she switched clothes. It was hers now, and soon enough she would forget it was there, as if it were a part of her. Something that had always been and would always be. She got the feeling that, as long as she wore it, the deaths at the warehouse couldn't be pinned on her. Good old Jude protected his lost causes.

"After. She wanted to be the one to come check on you, but she's got a sh*t ton of paperwork and red tape to go through." Fin watched Amanda closely as he spoke, almost as though anticipating her questions before she asked them. He nodded when she co*cked her head in inquiry. "That's how it goes when you kill somebody on the job, even if you're FBI."

Amanda's heart was pounding so hard she expected the medal to start bouncing beneath her collar. A quick glance down assured her it remained in place, and she took a steadying breath, composing herself. Luckily, she'd had to do that several times already, making it less conspicuous this time, when she couldn't hide her nerves. "Kill somebody?" she echoed, trying to disguise her interest as shock at the news that someone had died. "Who'd she kill?"

She willed him to say The Sandman, that slimy piece of human garbage who skulked around in the shadows, literally selling women and young girls. But the magic of St. Jude only extended so far, and Fin gave a halfhearted shrug, suddenly despondent.

"They're still IDing some of the bodies and tryna piece together the crime scene. I hear it's a mess. Real Wild Bunch sh*t." Fin lowered his head, scrubbing a hand back and forth over his finely cropped hair. "At least one of the dead is that Angel guy with all the tattoos, he was easy 'nuff to identify. But, Amanda . . . one of the others . . . "

Oh, God. Kat. With everything else that was going on, Amanda had forgotten about the young officer killed in the line of duty. She'd forgotten that Fin had cared for Kat Tamin, taking on a sort of fatherly role with the girl. If nothing else he had been her rabbi at the one-six, and those relationships ran deep, sometimes even deeper than blood.

At one time, he and Amanda were that close too. There had been a shift in recent years, though, and Amanda couldn't quite put her finger on it. Still good friends, always that, but not as willing to lay it all on the line for each other anymore. She supposed it had something to do with marrying Olivia, getting a family of her own. You couldn't put it all on the line for someone else when you had so much to lose yourself; so many people depending on you.

Somewhere along the way, Amanda had grown up. Tamin would never get the chance, and that was on her. The guilt was all-consuming, and yet she didn't regret it for a second. As senseless and unnecessary as the officer's death was, it had gotten Amanda to Olivia and helped put an end to that nightmare. Given the chance, she'd do it again in a heartbeat. Save for their children, there wasn't a life she wouldn't risk to protect her wife.

"—was Kat. Damn kid went and got herself shot dead." Fin folded his lips together tightly and shook his head, unwilling or unable to continue right away. He fidgeted needlessly in his chair, wrestling his emotions as much on the outside as in. A younger man would have gotten up, paced, punched a wall. The sergeant remained seated, a glossy streak on either side of his nose the only indication that he was crying. He thumbed the moisture away and went on, though his voice had softened by a few octaves. "I don't know what she was even doing there. Lewis said she musta gotten the location from Sondra Vaughn, but Vaughn's denying any involvement."

Forgetting herself, Amanda snorted outright at the news that Vaughn was still a lying traitorous bitch. What a surprise. She'd sell out her own grandmother if it kept her from having to accept any of the blame for her misdeeds. Hell, if her kid wasn't dead, Vaughn would probably find a reason to sell her out sooner or later too. Amanda hoped she'd get the chance to look Vaughn in the eye and tell her that:Your daughter would have hated you eventually too. And you will never get your hands on mine.

In her daydream Amanda leveled the gun at Vaughn's pretty face and pulled the trigger. If only she had done it the first time, none of this would be happening.

"What? You know something?" Fin asked, snapping her back to the present.

"No, I— that just . . . tracks with her. Vaughn, I mean." Amanda cleared her throat too loudly, plucked at the buttons of her ill-fitting flannel shirt. If her knee started bouncing, she'd be displaying all her nervous tells simultaneously. She gripped both knees in her hands, stilling all four parts at once. Killing four birds with one stone. More bodies to add to her total count for the day. "Kind of her MO, isn't it? Deny everything, until she can't. Then flip on whichever poor sap she got to do her dirty work for her."

"You seem to know a lot about it."

For a split-second she thought he meant that she was doing the same thing—denying what she'd done, letting someone else take the fall for her crimes. Just as she was about to lash out at him (hehad a lot of room to talk, after his betrayal with Lindstrom), she realized he was referring to her knowledge of Vaughn's methods. She swallowed her anger as best she could, but there was too much for it to be digested properly. It would come back up eventually, like it always did.

"Yeah, well, she and I were business associates there for a while, remember? Guess I learned a couple things." Amanda let go of her knees, freeing them to do as they would. She wasn't playing poker with Fin, and trying to hide the truth usually just made it come out faster. If he noticed her anxious behavior and commented, she had a pretty damn good excuse to throw back at him. Surprisingly, though, her legs weren't bouncing, nor did her hands shake like a junkie's. She was actually sort of calm. "Back when I was worth teachin', huh?"

Fin narrowed his eyes. The corners were dry now, leaving behind no trace of the tears that had snuck quietly into the crevices of his careworn face. Men had it easy. They cried the way they org*smed—one and done. Women's suffering, like their pleasure, could go on indefinitely. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.

"I don't know." Amanda sighed, dropped her head back to stare at the ceiling. Every hospital ceiling was exactly the same as the next. It might have been comforting if it wasn't so f*cking depressing. "Nothing. Never mind. I'm sorry about Kat. I know y'all were . . . tight. She and I didn't really see eye to eye on much, but she's a good cop. She helped out a lot getting Liv back. Didn't deserve to go out like that."

Overtaken by a wave of vertigo, Amanda righted herself and blinked until the sensation passed. The waiting room came into focus in a wash of bright and gray, and Fin appeared through the haze, a ghost-image of himself. He watched her with the intent of a father waiting on his wayward teenage daughter to tell the truth, hoping she wouldn't let him down.

Not that Amanda had any such experience to draw on—Dean Rollins never gave a hoot what his pretty, young daughters were getting themselves into when they snuck out at night or stumbled back home in the wee hours. But if she'd had a father who cared and expected better from her, she imagined he would look at her the way Fin did now. And she resented him for it. He had no right to play the dad card, or the morally superior boss, or even the disappointed friend. She did not answer to him.

When she didn't look away, Fin breathed a weary sigh and rubbed his palms together, shifting his weight from elbow to elbow against his knees. He worked himself up to it a few moments longer before asking straight out, "Did you see her there? When you were looking for Liv? It would have been close to the time you were there 'cause she left the prison at—"

"I wasn't all that concerned with what new dumbass stunt Kat Tamin was pulling while those animals were ripping my wife apart, no." Amanda glared at him, the blood boiling in her veins. He should have just let the Kat stuff go. She was dead and there was nothing anyone could do about it, least of all Amanda. The only person he should be worried about right now—the only one who mattered in this whole damn sh*tshow—was Olivia. Why wasn't he asking after her?

"All I cared about was getting to Liv. I never even went into that warehouse, how'm I supposed to know what happened in there? Buncha lowlife traffickers are dead, well whoopee, I won't be losing any sleep over it. Wouldn't think you would, either. I am sorry Kat got mixed up in it, but sounds like that was her choice. She was a big girl, Fin, no one forced her hand. Unlike what those guys were doing to Olivia, your captain and one of your oldest friends. Remember her?"

"I didn't say anything about a warehouse, Rollins," Fin said quietly, when she paused to take a breath. He gazed straight ahead this time, not even glancing sidelong to see her reaction. Almost as if he didn't need to. "How'd you know that's where the shootout took place if you didn't go inside?"

f*ck.

They hadn't nicknamed her Annie Oakley for no reason, though. She was still quicker on the draw than most, despite trying to tame her impulsivity and her lying tongue in recent years. "What are you, the rat squad?" she snapped, perhaps too vehement, but too pissed for anything less. "I saw the building—big ole eyesore like that, you can't miss it. But Parker told me Liv was in one of the shipping containers, so that's where I went. No place else there could've been a shootout in that area without me seeing the bodies,exceptfor the warehouse. It's called deductive reasoning, we use it all the time on the job."

"Right." Fin managed to make even his agreement sound skeptical. He went silent for a few moments, scrubbing at his goatee with flattened fingers and a contemplative expression, as if he were considering shaving the facial hair off. When he spoke again, it was with tired resignation, but also an underlying hope. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth. "Okay, yeah. That kinda makes sense. Ain't like you were thinking clearly, or as a cop, either. They'll pro'ly buy that."

A protest rose to Amanda's lips—who said she hadn't been thinking clearly or like a cop?—but she bit it back at the last minute. The sergeant seemed to be giving her an out, she would be a fool not to take it. Suave liar or not, her story was all over the place and full of holes. If she kept her mouth shut and let Fin and Dana finesse things for her, she had a much better chance of throwing IAB off her scent. Maybe it wasn't the honorable thing to do, or the brave thing, but it was what she had to do. For Olivia. For the children. She couldn't be there for them if she was behind bars.

For a long time after that, neither Amanda nor Fin spoke to each other beyond deep sighs and impatient grumblings under their breath that conveyed what simple words couldn't. Half an hour must have passed, although it seemed much longer, before Amanda couldn't stand the waiting and wondering anymore. She shoved herself up from the chair and began to pace the room.

Her father had never been much of a hunter—too much discipline required—but he'd had a lot of coon traps in the backyard. Hated the little scavenger assholes, as he called them. Amanda remembered well how the poor critters paced inside their cages, lunging off the sides chittering and hissing, practically turning somersaults in their agitation to be free. They must have known what fate would befall them later that evening when Dean loaded the trap and his 12-gauge into the pickup and drove down to the river.

Amanda felt like one of those raccoons now, hysterical with fear and confinement, sensing the doom that awaited her. If she listened hard enough, she could almost hear thebaboomof the shotgun, a sound she'd dreaded and revered as a child. Daddy would be home soon, and he always drank too much on a coon shoot. His boots clomping up the porch steps made her stomach drop as if she were on a thrill ride. There was danger, yes, but also anticipation. Maybe even excitement. What was coming, what was on the other side of the door . . .

"Mrs. Rollins-Benson?"

The voice went off behind her like a shotgun crack, and she whirled around so quickly the speaker startled as well. It was Este, looking a bit more frayed around the edges than she had earlier, if Amanda wasn't mistaken. Then again, the same could likely be said of Amanda herself, who didn't realize she was holding fistfuls of the hair on either side of her head until the nurse glanced up apprehensively, as though Amanda might start yanking.

Shaking the strands loose hastily, she wrung her hands together in front of her, resisting the urge to grab Este by the shoulders and demand information. "How is she? Is she okay?" The hair tumbled into her eyes again, and she raked it back so hard her fingernails dug into her scalp. She wished for some scissors to hack off the annoying blond wisps, then felt sick for even entertaining the idea. At least she had long hair to fuss with. "She's not— Is she still alive?"

"She's alive," Este confirmed, cupping a hand under Amanda's elbow and attempting to lead her to a nearby chair. When Amanda didn't budge, Este resumed a professional distance, keeping an eye on Fin as if she suspected him of eavesdropping. "But she has a serious infection, we believe from . . . " Hesitating to go on, she glanced Fin's way again, not trying to hide it this time. "I'm sorry, sir, are you here for Captain Benson too?"

"He's her sergeant. You believe from what?" Amanda cycled her hands in the air, hurrying Este's explanation along. She didn't have time for dramatics or being let down easy, just cold hard truth. Anything less was for sissies.

Getting nowhere with subtlety around Amanda, the nurse cast another hesitant look at Fin, who took up quietly from his seat and went to stand in front of the picture window that overlooked the parking lot. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he pretended to be fascinated by the shade trees, asphalt, and endless stream of vehicles that passed below.

This time, when Este returned her attention to Amanda, placing a hand behind her arm to lead her aside, it was with more insistence. "The rapes were . . . violent, as I'm sure you're aware," Este said, once they were out of Fin's earshot. Amanda's expression must have warned her to dispense with the spoon-feeding, although she still kept her voice lowered. "There's quite a bit of internal trauma to go with the external. We've found some tearing that needs to be sutured, and it's likely the bacteria that's causing the infection was introduced there."

"So, what, like, in her cervix and stuff?" Amanda asked, unconcerned with sounding professional. She had seen her share of violent rapes and knew what types of injuries were associated with certain acts, and the complications that accompanied them. A bruised cervix was the minimum amount of damage she'd anticipated from what she witnessed onscreen—and that would have been bad enough. Sutures and infections meant even more invasive procedures and longer recovery time. "Can't you just give her some antibiotics? I thought most cervical tears healed on their own?"

Este's face registered mild surprise, as if she had forgotten the nature of Amanda's work, not to mention her personal experience with childbirth. Cervical and vagin*l tears were common during delivery, but didn't typically require stitching, unless severe; Amanda had hardly needed any sewing up at all after Samantha's birth, a far cry from the Frankenstein scar left behind by Jesse's Caesarean. "Some do, but considering the advanced stage of the infection and the severity of her other injuries, the doctor feels it's best to go in for a closer look. She's been started on IV antibiotics, which we're hoping will get the infection under control."

Hoping wasn't good enough. Nor was the apprehension in Este's voice and mannerisms. As far as Amanda was concerned, they were equal to being offered thoughts and prayers after a personal tragedy. Didn't mean diddly. "And if they don't?"

"Then she'll be looking at a more extensive procedure," Este said, at first failing to meet Amanda's eye. She got it on the second try, but it would have been better if she hadn't. It wasn't fear or intimidation that stopped her, just plain old-fashioned pity. She didn't think Amanda could handle the full story. "If she becomes septic, her organs will start to shut down. At the very least, there would be permanent damage."

And at the very worst, Olivia would go into complete organ failure and die. Amanda knew the dangers of sepsis, without a rundown from the RN. She also knew that Olivia didn't have a whole lot of fight left in her after enduring the past three days. How could the shell of a woman whom Amanda had met back in that shipping container survive something like her own body trying to destroy her? It terrified Amanda even to consider it, but she had the feeling Olivia would simply stop trying—to fight or to live.

There were glimpses of it before: the careless combination of wine and pills that Olivia had relied on during the rougher parts of Amanda's recovery from the shooting; the risks she took with Giacomo, the near-defiance when she looked at Amanda and accepted a drugged drink from him; denying herself food as some sort of twisted punishment for existing; denying herself love because it was all she knew.

And there was the advance directive, better known as a living will. Most cops had them, even Amanda, relatively young as she was. She and Olivia hadn't discussed theirs in-depth yet—at first it was too soon after the shooting, then it was too upsetting to think about when life was so good again, and now . . . —but she got the impression that Olivia's directive had been completed and regularly updated for some time. Probably since day one of the academy, if she knew her wife at all.

It troubled and relieved Amanda that she didn't have Olivia's end-of-life wishes memorized by heart. At least this way, if she overrode them, she had the excuse of not being aware of what they were. Or that's what she could claim, though deep down she really did know.

Of course she did. She knew Olivia by heart.

"So, um, what can you do?" Amanda cleared her throat of the bile that was creeping up, her eyes of the tears that were seeping in. She would have time to lose it later, when Olivia's life didn't hang in the balance. "The, uh, the more extensive procedure thing you said?"

"Yes, that's partly why I came out here," said Este, her confidence visibly bolstered when Amanda didn't break down or start yelling. "For your consent. Right now our main concern is stopping the infection from worsening. The area in which it originated is delicate. Depending on how far the infection has spread, it's possible an excision will be necessary to remove it all."

Amanda heard the words (consent,excision,remove) and understood their meanings, but couldn't string them together in linear thought. They floated out there in space with the rest of her. "Excision . . . you mean cut something out?"

The nurse nodded, folding her lips into that sympathetic non-smile the healthcare profession seemed to require of all its personnel. It probably had its own academic course. "I'm afraid so. Again, that might not be the case here, but based on what we're seeing, there's a strong chance she'll need a hysterectomy."

Again the word didn't sink in for several more beats, and when it did, it resounded in Amanda's head like an echo chamber, though the delivery had been rather anticlimactic. Just another medical term that got bandied around by Este and her colleagues. To Amanda it was as startling as finding out her wife needed a limb removed.

The worst part was the uncertainty what Olivia would say. It was one thing not wanting to live on a ventilator, no brain activity to speak of, but how would she feel waking up with pieces of herself gone like that? Her reproductive organs, no less. Liv was funny about those kinds of things. She'd been so timid and awestruck getting to breastfeed Sammie the first few times—hell, even now—and she talked about having periods with an almost nostalgic air. She fretted over small bodily changes and whether or not she was feminine enough.

And then there were those regrets she had alluded to on the rare occasions they discussed her decision not to have biological children. Rape aside, that would be impossible now, and they both knew it. But what if having her womb taken away killed that little glimmer of hope she had inside, like a quickening that never got to be? Like another life aborted, this time without her consent? She might never forgive Amanda. She might spend the rest of her days wonderingwhat if?

"I can request that the doctor leave as much intact as possible, if you think that's important to your wife," Este said, gently interrupting Amanda's reverie, her earlier warmth returning when she saw the impact her update had made. "A supracervical hysterectomy removes the top part of the uter—"

"I know what it is." Amanda sounded much calmer than she felt, pleasant even. She realized she expected herself to have an emotional blowout about as much as everyone else did. Instead, she just kept coasting on the flat, ignoring the sparks shooting off behind her. "If the infection is that far along and he doesn't get it all, she'll keep getting worse, right? She could end up dying?"

"That's the worst-case scenar—"

"Then do what you have to, to save her." No hesitation, no regrets. Clear head, clear eyes, clear heart. Amanda gave a decisive and final nod, leaving little room for debate. "If you have to take it all, you have my consent. Just . . . do whatever needs to be done so that she's okay again."

Este retreated through the automatic doors, disappearing as she had come, permission granted, like a jinni gone back into the lamp to work its sinister magic. Amanda watched after her for so long she began to feel woozy under the fluorescent ceiling panels. She vaguely remembered staring into one such light as she lay on a surgical cot, waiting for the sedatives to kick in and release her from the pain that bloomed in her shoulder, nuclear in its intensity.

Was that how Olivia felt right then? Was she even awake and aware of her surroundings—that Amanda wasn't there, as she'd promised to be? (I cried for you when they hurt me, but you didn't come.) Why hadn't Amanda asked if she could see her wife before the procedure that, despite survival, would be a kind of death for Olivia either way?

Realizing Fin was still there, standing silent by the window with a questioning look on his face, Amanda turned and walked to him with the same eerie composure that had stolen over her repeatedly since arriving at the hospital. She took a deep, steadying breath in anticipation of sharing the basics about Olivia's condition with him (he didn't need to know their private business, especially in regards to Olivia's reproductive health). But when her mouth opened, all that came out was, "She's never gonna be okay again, is she?"

And then she was in Fin's arms, crying harder than she had ever cried in her life.

Crying as if she would never stop.

. . .

Chapter 35: A Fine Line

Chapter Text

Chapter 35.

A Fine Line

. . .

"You have got to be kidding me." Olivia stared at the bottle in disbelief: A) That her mother had demonstrated on an almost full vodka, which seemed like a waste, and B) That anyone in their right mind would put something likethat. . . well,there. She was only eleven, but that was more than enough time to figure out you didn't go around sticking things in your privates, unless you wanted to end up in the emergency room, your mother wailing about a marker lid in her daughter's you-know-what.

And now her mother was insisting that women all over the world did this to themselves for about five to seven days each month. Hence Olivia's disbelief and the sneaking suspicion that Serena had already polished off part of a vodka before inserting the tampon into this one.Tampon.Menstruation.Menses. Even just the words associated with the phenomenon Serena had spent the past half-hour lecturing on—she loved talking to Olivia, as long as there was a lesson involved—were gross.Kotex.Ovulating.Uterus.

See?

Olivia peered skeptically at the white clump bobbing in her mother's favorite drink, like those creepy gel candles on Serena's desk with random objects suspended inside. Years ago, Olivia had tried to eat the fruit out of one, thinking it was like a Jell-O mold, and got into big, BIG trouble. But it was perfectly okay to go shoving cardboard tubes and gobs of cotton into your twat? (That's what the girls at school called it. Another ugly word for things she'd rather not think about. Hers already seemed to be a source of punishment—and now this.)

"Are you sure? Isn't there some way to make the period things stop?" Olivia stressed the last part, making it very clear that was her plan for this menstruation nonsense, to stop it in its tracks. She hadn't even gotten hers yet, so why not just nip it in the bud before it ever got to the tampon stage of development? Why were grown women subjecting themselves to these . . . shackles of the patriarchy? (Her mother's words this time.) "Like a sitz bath or something?"

To Olivia's astonishment, Serena burst into laughter at the inquiry, slapping her knee like it was the most hilarious thing she'd ever heard. The strange part was that she didn't appear to be laughing at Olivia, but finding humor in what she had said. Enjoying her input. That hardly ever happened.

She was definitely drunk.

"Well, baths can be helpful, particularly hot ones," Serena said, when her amusem*nt died down a bit. She kept on grinning, though. It was kind of scary to see her in such a good mood. Hyenas smiled at their kills, too. And yet, she was so pretty in that moment and willing to listen, Olivia allowed herself to be drawn in. "It helps with the cramps. Bidets are nice for hygiene as well. Unfortunately, I haven't heard of a sitz bath to cure menstruation. I'm afraid it's something you'll just have to get used to, my dear."

Being called "my" anything by Serena, who usually looked at Olivia like a dirty sock pinched out in front of her, was even more rare than her smiles. And when she reached out and held Olivia gently by the chin, stroking it with her warm thumb, it felt as though something truly magical was taking place. Maybe the spell had been broken, and the mean, awful Serena who yelled and swore at Olivia, who threw things that sometimes hit her, was being replaced with this lady, who thought she was funny and didn't mind showing affection. It didn't matter if the new lady was a drunk too. All that mattered was how nice it felt here in the palm of her hand.

"When will it happen?" Olivia asked, sounding to her own ears like a small child asking after the pictures in a storybook.What happens next, Mommy? Can I turn the page and see?She didn't much care how childish it was, though, so long as Serena kept looking at her like that and stroking her face. It was the best feeling Olivia had felt in all her eleven years on earth.

In fact, she was so entranced she didn't notice Serena's expression slip for a second, or at least pretended not to. Her mother hated to be watched too closely, and she scolded Olivia for being a nosy little busybody if Olivia asked what was wrong. Eventually, Olivia had learned not to see what was happening right in front of her face. Like the dark flicker that momentarily turned Serena's gray eyes to reptilian slits when she contemplated her prepubescent daughter becoming a woman.

"Oh, not for a while," she said, a cryptic note in her voice. Her hand went to Olivia's hair, which she usually drew back from as if it were filled with snakes. Lots of people made a fuss over Olivia's dramatic features ("My goodness, child, where did you get this coloring? Who's your mother: Cleopatra?" they'd ask, winking over her head at Serena), but instead of being proud like most mothers would be, it just seemed to make Serena mad that someone considered her little girl pretty or special in some way.

Now she was petting Olivia's hair as if it were the arching backbone of a sleek black cat, and hers was the hand of a potion-stirring witch. Olivia wanted to lay her head in Serena's lap and purr with contentment. "Well, if you're anything like me, that is. I didn't start menstruating until I was fifteen. Some girls do start at eleven, though. I guess we'll just have to wait and see where your . . . unique biology takes you, won't we?"

Too drowsy from the gentle touches to question the meaning of her "unique biology," Olivia nodded along. It was always best to agree with Serena, even if you had no idea what she was talking about or why she was angry. Defy her, and you wound up locked in your bedroom or on your way to the ER. "I hope I'm like you, Momm— Mom. I don't want to be a woman yet. Besides, if I'm having cramps and all that other stuff, I might not be able to focus on my schoolwork. And that's just unacceptable."

That drew a soft chuckle from Serena, and if Olivia wasn't mistaken, there was a bit of pride in it. Her mother might not care if she was pretty or not, but she insisted Olivia get an education. And today, this conversation over a bottle of booze and a crazy stick of cotton dynamite you put in your privates, had certainly been enlightening.

Actually, it had been a pretty great day, despite the drinking. Olivia didn't know what had inspired Serena to sit her down for this talk, but it was one of the best mother-daughter bonding moments—no,thebest—they had ever had. Maybe it was a sign that their relationship would get better as Olivia got older, instead of worse like she feared. Maybe Serena just didn't care for children (although she didn't seem to mind other people's kids).

Whatever it was, Olivia didn't intend to let it pass her by. She wrapped her arms around Serena's shoulders with such spontaneity and enthusiasm, it almost knocked Serena over. It was more attack than hug, but Olivia couldn't help herself; she didn't have a lot of experience doing this, and she better get it over with before the moment passed them by. Her heart was swelling with love for the woman she feared and sometimes thought she hated. The woman she called Mother.

"Thank you for telling me all that," she said, giddy with relief when Serena's arms closed about her too. She had been pushed away so many times, she'd learned to just keep her distance. They would both have to get used to the hugging thing if this was how it was going to be now.Please, God, let it always be like this. "Even if it is kinda gross and scary, I'm glad I know about it so I can prepare. I still don't get how it helps with having babies, but I think I'll want a little girl someday, and probably need it then. And . . . oh, Mommy—"

Lost in the sensation of warm arms around her, a warm and powerful hand stroking her long dark hair down her back, Olivia didn't notice when Serena reached back with the other hand. She didn't see the glint of the coffee table lamp on silver, nor did she hear the little experimental snick of metal.

"Mommy, I love you!"

Then she felt the scissors plunge into her gut, not with the crazy hacking arm like in the movies, but with a subtle fluctuation of muscle and bone. Like a Fosse shoulder roll, that's how it looked when her mother stabbed her.Hotcha, whoopee, jazz!

It didn't seem to hurt at first, before her body or mind could register shock. Then pain, a thousand times hotter than the face of the sun, opened up inside her belly, pouring out its wrath in red tears that rained into her lap and made it feel like she'd wet her pants. Was this what it was like to get your period, she wondered vaguely. Perhaps she had reached womanhood after all, hastened by Serena's hand.

"There. Now you know how it felt having you," Serena cooed into Olivia's ear, cupping a hand behind her head to hold her upright. She was faint and trembling from the shock of losing so much blood so quickly, and it was difficult to stay sitting up. It was difficult to make sense of her mother's words, though she had heard them many times before. "The little girl I never wanted."

The little girl she never loved.

As Olivia felt her life ebbing away, ended by the woman who had given it, she reached up to touch her mother's cheek. She wanted Serena to know she was forgiven; Olivia didn't blame her for anything that had transpired between them then or in the past. She still loved her mother—her murderer—as much as she had seconds ago, and with her final breath she whispered to Serena how long that love would last:

"Always."

She gathered Olivia's wavering hand in hers, bringing it to her lips and warming it with her breath. It was still so cold, though the hypothermia had dissipated hours ago and the heated blankets were plentiful, post-op. Amanda had insisted on it at the first sign of Olivia shivering under the single thin blanket they had wheeled her into Recovery wearing. That might have been a trick of the light, honestly, but Amanda wasn't taking any chances.

At least the fever had gone, so she didn't have to worry about Olivia's brain cooking itself inside her skull, or her organs shutting down one by one, consumed by the spreading wildfire beneath her skin. Little left to cling to, Amanda clung to that: the infection was under control and, though Olivia's road to recovery would be long and arduous, her life was no longer in imminent danger. For the first time in going on four days, Amanda could rest easy knowing that her wife was going to be okay.

That was the theory, anyway. You couldn't have proved it to her while she waited by Olivia's bedside for two hours after the surgery, jumping at every movement, real or imagined, beneath the covers, every shadow at the corner of her vision. She was paranoid and skittish from lack of rest, but there was no way in hell she could sleep in a hospital unless she was under sedation herself. Not while she'd awaited news of Olivia's condition, and not while she waited for Olivia to open her eyes.

It seemed like she was about to get her wish, the captain finally beginning to stir, reaching out a hand as weak and palsied as an old woman's. A moan that might have been a word, though too unintelligible to identify, accompanied the gesture, and Amanda held her breath, willing more to follow. If she still believed in Jesus, she would have asked him to raise Olivia up like that young girl he brought back from the dead.Talitha cumi. Little girl, arise.

Maybe Amanda didn't need his help, though. Maybe she had the power to bring Olivia back all on her own. By sheer force of will she had tracked her wife down when no one else could, escaped a deadly gunfight, and single-handedly killed three men. Who was to say she didn't hold dominion over life and death? She'd given it and taken it away multiple times since that very morning.

Talitha cumi, she repeated to herself, to Olivia's sleeping form.Talitha cumi. She clasped Olivia's hand tight, intentionally squeezing a bit too hard, in hopes of rousing her. A small amount of pain was sometimes necessary to bring about healing; she didn't need a Bible story to teach her that, just regular life experience. Recovering from two bullet wounds provided a lot of insight as well.Talitha cumi, talitha cumi . . .

She hadn't realized she was gritting her teeth with effort, straining to convey her thoughts to Olivia's unconscious mind, until another voice cut in. "Manda?"

Her teeth sliced in opposite directions with a noise like whetting a knife, and her eyes flicked open so quickly they were momentarily blinded by the stark overheads.

By God, she had done it. She told Olivia to rise, and that was exactly what happened. Even through the cacophony of trauma, surgery, sedatives, and exhaustion, she had heard Amanda and followed her out of the darkness that was so hellbent on swallowing her up.

It was a miracle—and it was also a load of absolute horsesh*t.

Olivia was no more awake than she had been since her return from the OR, eyes shut defiantly against the outside world. She did look like one of the kids faking sleep, all puckered up that way, but Amanda recognized it as the face she made while heavily drugged or when she'd had too much wine before bed. Once again she was too far away for Amanda to reach, their extraordinary connection lost, possibly never to return. (What if itneverreturned?)

Suddenly furious for the interruption, convinced it was the reason she hadn't gotten through to her wife, Amanda shot a stony glare over her shoulder at Dana Lewis. The agent hung back by the door, hands in her pockets, and for the first time in her short acquaintance with Amanda, she looked completely out of her element. The street clothes added to the impression. Jeans and an NYC hoodie were much less formidable than a business suit and Fed boots. She was shorter in tennis shoes.

"Don't call me that," Amanda snapped, without pausing to consider if she might have misheard. She didn't care right then, as long as she got to vent her helplessness and frustration somewhere. "Only she gets to call me Manda. And I don't go by Mandy either, so don't even try it."

"Right, uh, sorry. Amanda." Dana glanced back at the door like she wanted to bolt, but instead she shuffled a few steps closer to the bed. Craning her neck, she peered over the remaining distance at Olivia. "How's she doing? Got a healthier color, at least. She's blue last time I saw her."

Amanda wanted to snarl that if horrifically bruised was a healthy color, then sure, Olivia was healthy as a goddamn horse. But after that first flash, all the fun had gone out of being angry. It required too much energy, and Dana was too wide-eyed and uncertain to be a good target. There was no sport in killing something frozen in fear. Hospitals had a way of reducing people to their basic animal selves—Dana was a timid hare in this room, scenting for danger, prepared to dash away if it came.

She must have sensed that Amanda was the mountain lion: keen, moody, ever-prowling. The off-brand sweats, about two sizes too large and the same shade as oatmeal, contributed to the overall effect, as if she were wearing a catamount bodysuit. Her clothes, née Nicholas Angelov's clothes, were on their way to the incinerator, having been stuffed into a hazardous waste bin after she requested the sweats from Rudy.

The nurse had included a pair of tube socks and plain white tennis shoes in the bundle, and with her ratty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail—Rudy had even scrounged up one of those hair coils that looked like an old phone cord, bless his heart—Amanda felt almost human. It wouldn't have been her first choice of attire for speaking with the brass or IAB, but at least she was no longer wearing the blood of the man she'd killed.

Besides that, Angel had been wearing those same sh*tty joggers and that same worn out flannel when he raped Olivia. Burning them was the only viable option, just as scrubbing her skin with handfuls of soap from the bathroom dispenser and patting dry with paper towels had been Amanda's only option for ridding herself of any trace of that sick bastard. Even now, her flesh crawled at the thought of him, of his dead skin cells and God knew what else hijacking some small part of her body she'd overlooked.

Maybe she was in need of a baptism by fire too.

Shuddering, Amanda forced herself back to reality and Dana, who watched her expectantly with those big hare eyes, full of questions. "Well, she's not hypothermic anymore, if that's what you mean. We got her warmed up pretty quick once I brought her in. 'Nother night in that torture box, she might not've been so— "

Lucky. She'd almost said it out loud. Hot, slimy bile slickened the back of her throat, made her mouth humid and sour. Thankfully, Dana nodded as if she understood. No need to finish.

"That why she's still out?" Dana edged closer to the bed, gazing down at Olivia like she was looking over the side of a cliff. One she had narrowly missed plunging off of herself.

"No," Amanda said, wanting to leave it at that, but knowing she owed the other woman a better explanation. If not for Dana, she wouldn't be standing there with Olivia right then. She might never have seen Olivia alive again at all. "She had a real bad infection from the r— from a, uh, tear or something. They had to go in and stitch her up. Would've caught it sooner, but the symptoms mimicked hypothermia and shock. Damn near fell off the bed when she blacked out. She'd be even more busted up if I hadn't been there to grab her."

With a heavy sigh, Amanda plucked at some imaginary lint on the blankets that were piled on top of Olivia. The rest was none of Dana's business, no matter how beholden Amanda was to her. She hadn't even told Fin about the hysterectomy ultimatum Este had handed down in the waiting room. Olivia deserved some small semblance of privacy, after having so much of it stripped away by violent, sad*stic hands. Amanda longed more than anything for her wife to wake up, but part of her dreaded what was to come. Especially now that Olivia knew about the recording.

"Sounds like you're pretty good at that," said Dana. She followed the outline of Olivia's cheek with her eyes, as if she were tracing it with her finger, though she didn't dare reach out. Amanda narrowed her eyes anyway, prepared to intervene if there was such a movement. Dana's hands didn't leave her pockets, but neither did her gaze leave Olivia's battered face. "Grabbing her up when she needs you."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Amanda bristled inside her ugly jogging suit, which was probably too baggy to show the full effect. She clenched a fist inside one of the loose sleeves, consoling herself that at least she knew it was there. She didn't want to use it unless absolutely necessary, but if Dana was implying that she treated Olivia with anything less than her utmost love and respect, it would sure as hell be necessary.

They didn't need another Alex Cabot horning in on their relationship and making Amanda out to be some kind of abuser, not right now. Not ever again. "I don't go grabbing on my wife, if that's what you heard. Anybody lays a finger on her, or just looks at her sideways, I'll . . . " The rest faded away when she realized Dana had seen exactly what she would do to someone who hurt Olivia—the blood, the trail of bodies. Strange how she couldn't make the threat, now that she'd actually done it.

"I wadn't saying it in a bad way," Dana said, finally tearing her attention from the sleeping captain and eyeing Amanda for a moment. She didn't appear to know what Amanda was talking about, although her interest was clearly piqued, her lips rounded into a questioning O. For someone so great at getting into character in her undercover roles, she didn't have a whole lot of subtlety as Agent Lewis. "You're the one who brought up grabbing her when she fell. I was agreeing that it sounds like you take good care of her. No matter what needs to be done."

Try as she might, Amanda couldn't find an accusation in the latter comment. On the contrary, it sounded like a pat on the back instead of the reprimand she expected. So far it seemed as if Dana was glad the men were dead, no matter how many rules were broken to get them there. Hell, she seemed to like the rule-breaking part too. Amanda should have been relieved—it was hypocritical not to be—but Dana's disregard for what was just and good made her angry.

True, everything made her angry right now, from the occasional chatter at the nurses' station to the cheap fabric of her generic sweats. But here at Olivia's bedside, she couldn't be congratulated for taking the law into her own hands and going against everything Olivia had fought so hard to uphold throughout her entire career, her entire life: justice, fairness, peace. Amanda had slain the monsters, but at what cost?

Signaling with a nod for Dana to follow, Amanda wandered just far enough away from the bed to pretend they were out of earshot, while sticking close in case she had to spring into action if Olivia woke. It was the best she could do on short notice, and it eased her nerves a bit, so that she didn't feel quite as much like a furious mama bear, determined to tear apart anyone who approached her cub.

Once Dana joined her, however, she found she had no clue where to begin. How did you ask someone if they had killed a guy for you and successfully staged a crime scene to cover your ass? The girl who once sweet-talked bookies and bosses didn't know how to spin this one. She could never repay such a debt.

As she was racking her brain for the best place to start, Dana slipped something out of her pocket and held it up for Amanda to see in the light.

"I think you oughta hold onto this," Dana said, shimmying the chain lightly, dancing its pendant to and fro. The names of Amanda and Olivia's children graced each side of the dainty rose-gold pillar, which Amanda had hunted down so painstakingly last Christmas. "For her. Keep it safe till she's ready to wear it again. Maybe get the clasp fixed so it doesn't fall into the sand anymore."

Amanda stared at the dangling necklace for several moments, not quite comprehending, not even sure she recognized it. In the past five months, she hadn't seen it off of Olivia's neck more than once or twice, and that had been in the shower, nowhere near any sand. She'd thought it lost forever when Gus Sandberg yanked it away from Olivia and stuck it in his pocket right before he raped her. That was probably where it had been for the last three days. Until Dana somehow retrieved it . . .

Oh. The Sandman.

"Where did you— " Amanda cupped a hand behind the pendant, gently scooping it up as if she were catching a firefly in her palm. She rolled it back and forth with her fingertip, reading and rereading her children's names. One soul more than the amount of people she had killed today. Dead-even if she counted Kat. "Is he . . . "

She cast a look at Olivia, then around the room, as if it might be bugged. Anything was possible, she understood that now.

"Mr. Sandman won't be bringing dreams to her or anyone else from now on." Dana drizzled the necklace into Amanda's palm and folded her fingers closed around it. There was barely any weight to it; if not for the pillar pressing into her flesh, Amanda wouldn't have felt it inside her fist at all.

She, too, felt oddly weightless as she tried to make sense of what Dana was telling her. She thought she might have misheard or misunderstood, but that sly little smile on the agent's lips was not imagined. Neither was the wink she passed to Amanda before resuming a solemn expression, most befitting of a g-woman. "I found it in the shipping container," Dana added, her inflection telling a different story. She may have been in the container when the necklace appeared, but it had been found in a dead man's pocket. "Just lying there like it was waiting for me. I figured it was better off with you than in some evidence baggie."

"Just like that, huh?" Amanda opened her fist to gaze at the necklace a few moments more, wanting to see those four precious names again (had it really been almost as many days since she saw Noah and Jesse?), wanting to remember how the pretty rose-gold had looked against Olivia's golden skin, back before their lives were destroyed. The chain around Olivia's neck was made of fingerprints now.

Closing her hand around the pendant, Amanda squeezed until it hurt. She thought about putting it on Olivia, but that would be overstepping her bounds. Suppose Olivia woke up to find herself wearing it and got triggered all over again? She'd already been eyeing the St. Jude medal as if she knew exactly where it came from—and exactly how it was obtained. Fortunately, Amanda didn't have the full story behind this one, whether the captain asked after it or not.

She snapped the magnetic clasp around her own neck and tucked the pendant inside the collar of her sweatshirt. When the timing was right she would return it to Olivia, with as much love and gratitude as it had first been given, but that was not this moment. Not while she discussed revenge killing in code with a woman whose ethics were what you might call somewhat lax. "Sure there wasn't anyone around to see this miraculous discovery of yours?"

Dana was getting more brazen with each play on words, her fear of the hospital all but disappearing, and her voice resuming its normal strident quality that for some reason reminded Amanda of a skillet. Blunt iron, hot and crackling. You didn't talk like that unless you were pretty damn confident in yourself and your ability not to get caught. Of course there was that old Bible verse about pride going before a fall, but Amanda would rather be involved in a coverup with Dana than someone guilt-ridden and unsure of themselves. Prison was filled with heavy consciences.

"Not a living soul, can you believe it?" Dana bragged, pushing up the sleeves of her hoodie. It looked brand new, as did the jeans and shoes. She must have ditched the clothes she'd worn while taking care of Sandberg and tidying up the scene, though Amanda couldn't conjure up the image of what those had been. A blazer and slacks most likely.

What had the pattern of blood spatter looked like, Amanda wondered. Usually you could lay out the last few moments before death with a fair amount of accuracy just by where the flecks landed. They had computers to do it for you now, but she had gone into the academy right under the wire and learned to visualize murders without a machine doing the work for her. The sea spray arc of arterial blood, the symphonic rise and fall of multiple stab wounds, the minute stippling from a gunshot. It was almost artistic—painterly—in its flow and nuance.

Amanda knew; she had painted her masterpiece earlier that afternoon. She glanced at the wall clock then, realizing she had lost all track of time. Maybe it wasn't even the same day that she had foiled her daughter's kidnapper, rescued her wife from human trafficking, and dispensed of half the traffickers in the ring. It did feel as if a lifetime had passed. But she was stunned to see that it was only ten in the evening, presumably on the same night as her arrival at the hospital. Her kids might still be up, if they were putting Daphne through her auntie paces.

"Yeah, I reckon I can believe it," Amanda said, her affect as flat as one of the sociopath's who occasionally wandered into SVU. Victims sounded that way sometimes too. A fine line, Amanda Jo, she thought to herself. A very fine line. "Just hope everyone else can. You know, when they bring in the big guns and start going over every little thing."

"Honey, I am the big guns." Dana slung an arm around Amanda's shoulders and patted the outer one a tad too roughly. The contrast to how gently and lovingly Olivia offered comfort made Amanda want to weep. Dana Lewis couldn't hold a candle to the woman who still lay unconscious in that lonely hospital bed, but she did have a killer instinct that Olivia lacked.

Right then, it was an instinct that Amanda needed if she meant to stay out of prison. Walking around feeling guilty and corrupt was a surefire way to get caught. That soft heart and deep sense of morality she so loved in Olivia would not help her through this. It felt like a betrayal just admitting it to herself, but that was how it had to be: she would follow Dana's example on this one, not her captain's.

"They're gonna investigate where and what I tell 'em to, and they're gonna be so busy celebrating a major trafficking ring wiping itself out that they won't give two sh*ts how you or I were involved." Dana gave another brisk pat that was more like being thumped on the back, and released Amanda when she shrugged off the attention. Conspiring had cured the agent's fear of hospitals it seemed, for her co*cky manner had fully resumed, hands loose at her sides and ready for whatever came her way. "Just keep your story simple and be consistent. And don't be afraid to bat them baby blues at the fellas. Heck, the ladies too, if you think they're into that."

No way in hell was Amanda in the mood to flirt with anyone at the moment. But she couldn't help wondering how Dana had pegged her as the type to sweet talk her way out of trouble. Was it that obvious or just a good guess, one Southern girl recognizing the ingrained behavior of another? Either way, she didn't like Dana advising her to use her looks or her body to get away with breaking the law. Not while Olivia was in the hospital recovering from a horrendous assault. It would be almost as bad as cheating.

"I already told Fin that I was at the port, but I said Parker led me to the shipping container, and I lost track of him after that. Didn't see inside the warehouse at all. Just focused on getting Liv the hell outta there." Amanda tipped her to gaze longingly at Olivia, as if a different vantage point might reveal that the captain's eyes were open, she was awake and wanting water the way Sammie wanted milk, needing Amanda, even if it was only to provide a few precious sips. Olivia slept on, unaware of how much she was needed in return.

"Which is mostly the truth," Amanda added, taking a deep breath and, with it, putting some substance behind her words so they didn't sound weak and ineffectual. She would never convince anyone with a delivery like that. "I didn't have back up and Liv was bad hurt. I was there no more'n five or ten minutes, and I didn't stick around to see what those f*ckers were up to. All I cared about was my wife."

She looked Dana directly in the eye as she lied, careful not to go too intense—that could give you away too—but not overly calm either.

A very fine line.

"Good. That's good." Dana waved for Amanda to stop there, though she had already concluded. The agent began to pace, her expression thoughtful, as she let the alibi sink in next to whatever her version of events were to be. It must have been a decent fit, because she began to nod, chin in the V of her fingers, the other hand tucked under her arm. "Keep it simple. Don't embellish and don't offer details they didn't ask for. You can say Parker bested you, grabbed your gun before he ran off. Other than that, just use the wife angle. No one's gonna press too hard after seeing what she—and by association, you—went through."

"It's not a goddamn angle," Amanda growled, taking a reflexive step toward Dana. What she planned to do she wasn't sure, but she couldn't stand by and listen to her and Olivia's suffering being called an angle, as if it was calculated or insincere. "It's our f*cking lives. You think this was all just some bid for attention? Some big show she was putting on for your viewing pleasure? 'Cause, lady, if that's what you think— "

Whether responding to the anger in Amanda's tone or Dana's defensive reaction ("Hey, easy," she said, backing away, hands protecting her face), Olivia chose that moment to open her eyes, groaning at the effort it required. Some of the swelling from the facial fractures and bruising had gone down, but the whites of her eyes were so shot through with red, it looked like they were filled with blood. She squinted from behind blackened lids, trying to bring the room into focus.

. . .

Chapter 36: Lyin' Eyes

Chapter Text

My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things?
You're still the same old girl you used to be

- Eagles, "Lyin' Eyes"

Chapter 36.

Lyin' Eyes

. . .

"Amanda?" Olivia croaked, only one or two of the vowels actually audible. An attempt to raise her head from the pillow was quickly abandoned, another feeble groan taking its place. She felt around for the bed rail, patting along its length as if testing for heat, then gripped near the middle and made to pull herself into a seated position. She got no further than a single stomach crunch before wilting back against the bed, entirely spent. "Manda."

"I'm right here, darlin. Hey." Amanda hurried toward the bed, the impending argument with Dana forgotten. She rested her hands on Olivia's shoulders, discouraging anymore movement, but also wanting to touch, to at least give the impression that she could scoop Olivia up and hold her at any time it was requested. The drugs hadn't worn off completely yet; Olivia didn't even flinch at the sudden contact. Good, let her have the illusion of relaxation for as long as she could. There would be plenty of time for hypervigilance and pathological fear later. "Don't try to get up, okay? You just lie there and rest for now."

Olivia mouthed anokayand tried to moisten her chapped lips with her dry tongue. She winced at the splintered skin she encountered, tucking in her bottom lip protectively and closing her eyes against the pain. It seemed as though she might leave them closed and drift off again, but after a moment she peered up quizzically from the one eye. Under better circ*mstances it would have been endearing; battered and bruised as she was, it only served as a reminder of how bad off she had been just an hour or two before.

"How you feeling, baby? Still pretty groggy, huh?" Needlessly Amanda smoothed back the hair from Olivia's forehead. The questions were needless too, it was written all over Olivia's face—her whole body, actually—in vivid blacks, yellows, and blues how awful she felt. But Amanda had the irrational urge to keep her talking, as if she were still hypothermic and in danger of slipping into a coma. "They gave you some pretty strong meds. Said you'd probably sleep a lot."

"Why?" Olivia's blinking was slow and out of sync. It required several attempts before she was able to gaze up at Amanda without going cross-eyed. Poor thing didn't even have her glasses, Amanda lamented, flooded with guilt at the realization. There was probably no need for the readers, but it had become such a part of their routine—Olivia searching for one of her million pairs of glasses, Amanda handing over the nearest frames with a wry smile—its absence was upsetting.

A rush of heat went up from Amanda's neck, out from her heart. It wasn't unusual for someone to forget the moments prior to a blackout or medical emergency, especially when they were already traumatized beforehand, but it frightened her to see Olivia so confused. She couldn't handle it if Olivia started crying because she thought Amanda had left her to rot in that hellhole. Surely, Amanda would curl up and die if she had to listen to those horrible sobs again.

"Don't you remember, darlin? You started feeling real bad while the nurse was looking you over. You had a high fever and didn't recognize me. 'Bout gave me a heart attack when you passed out. I thought . . . well, it was just kinda scary." Noticing how far she loomed above her wife, who looked terribly small and vulnerable in her ill-fitting hospital gown, Amanda bent over to rest her elbows on the bed. Delicately she smoothed Olivia's knitted brows and forehead with the pad of her thumb, as if they were no larger than their infant daughter's same features.

"You had a bad infection," she said, gentle enough to be a lullaby. Anything louder or harder seemed like it might shatter Olivia the way a high-pitched note could break crystal. Maybe it would break Amanda too. "They had to do surgery to stop it, but you're gonna be fine. Just gotta take it real easy for a little while and let yourself heal up. Think you can do that for me, pretty darlin?"

There wasn't much of a choice, as evidenced by Olivia's inability to sit up on her own, but framing it as her decision to make would get quicker results than treating it like a rule to follow. At least that was the theory. Somehow, Olivia had a way of cutting straight through to the heart of the matter, even when she wasn't fully coherent.

"I had surgery?" she asked, staring in disbelief. She raised her hands, turning them front to back, as if they would reveal an incision among the scrapes and scuffs and scars. Finding none, she started to pat herself down, but got no farther than the first broken rib. "Where?"

The question was weak enough, more of a gasp than a spoken word, that it easily went ignored. Amanda would come back to it eventually, just not now, in front of Dana. The woman had stepped away from the bed, rather than approach and make her presence known. Olivia hadn't even caught sight of her yet. She could have drifted toward the doorway and ducked out, with Olivia being none the wiser—it probably would have been better that way. But given the choice between explaining the details of Olivia's emergency surgery or explaining Dana's astonishing return, Amanda had to go with the G-woman on this one.

"Hey, Liv, look here. Look who came to see ya," she said, waving Dana closer, vaguely at first, then more insistently as Dana hesitated. Amanda pointed to the other side of the bed, demanding she take her place there and speak to Olivia.

Too late she remembered what a shock it had been to see the FBI agent come waltzing into the interview room, not guilty of murder, not out on parole or even out of a job. And Amanda didn't have the history with her that Olivia did—the friendship, if that's what you wanted to call it. Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut, at least until Olivia wasn't so dazed and half-asleep, all defenses down? It wasn't a surprise reunion, it was an ambush, and Olivia would probably hate her for it.

"On second thought," she began, about to shoo Dana in the opposite direction. But Olivia had already spotted her guest, at whom she blinked for several moments, eyes growing progressively wider as recognition set in. Her lips formed the name before she spoke it aloud, and she visibly struggled to get it from her brain to her voice box. From wherever she had tucked away her memories of Dana to the surface, where pain was most vivid and monstrously alive. Once it went deep enough, you almost didn't feel it anymore.

"Dana? Dana Lewis?" Olivia swallowed the "I" at the last minute, pronouncing itLews. She still couldn't say his name all these years and all these traumas later. Perhaps she never would be able to put him fully into words. And what of these new men? What restrictions would she find on her tongue, mind, and body because of those evil f*ckers?

Among them, Amanda counted Sondra Vaughn and Declan Murphy. She hadn't gotten the chance to ask Dana what would happen to them now, either. But one thing she knew for certain: they didn't get to just go on living their lives like none of this had happened. If Amanda had to go to Serbia and track down Murphy herself, she would do it.

"In the flesh," said Dana, palms upturned in the manner of a praying televangelist. A soft, sincere smile and a tilt of her head belied the co*cky announcement, but she didn't know what to do with her hands when she lowered them, restless fingers fiddling with the bedsheets and tap-tap-tapping the rail. Her sneaker scuffed the linoleum flooring, producing a loud squeak that startled all three of them. "sh*t, sorry. How you feeling, honey? Got everything you need, or should I track down a nurse and give her what for?"

Olivia went on staring at Dana, her facial expression too vague to determine if the emotion that finally broke through would be wonderment, confusion or some other response altogether. She co*cked her head on the pillow, drawing out the silence for so long it seemed she had forgotten to answer. Amanda cleared her throat, preparing to intervene, but Olivia found her voice again with an incredulous, "Dana?"

"Yeah, guess I've got a lot of explaining to do, don't I?" Dana chuckled to herself a bit indulgently, as if she were being called out by a precocious child and couldn't help being amused. It was the same reaction most people had to Jesse and her blunt interrogation technique. "Last time you saw me, I's on my way to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit. Well, I just can't pull off that look, not with this complexion, so I lit on outta there first chance I got."

"But how? I thought . . . that girl you killed." Olivia looked to Amanda for confirmation that she wasn't crazy, they had indeed arrested Dana Lewis for murder, they had watched her being escorted from the squad room for what would no doubt be a very long bid. Not just one innocent life, but two. And like a coward, she had hidden her crime, staging the scene so someone else took the blame while she went on living her life as if she weren't a killer, a liar, and a cheat. Imagine. "She was pregnant. You— you brutalized her. You staged a rape."

The accusation hung heavy in the air, like a rain cloud about to give forth. And that word:rape. It was a shock to the system hearing her say it out loud, considering what she'd just gone through. But then, she did say it every day, multiple times a day, at work. That took some of the mystery out of it, some of the power. Whether or not she could admit that it had happened to her this time, though—that remained to be seen.

All traces of amusem*nt and bravado gone, Dana shook her head soberly. "I didn't. That's just how it was supposed to look. We had to make it believable to get me into the prison. Took my share of ass-whoopins while I was in there, those were real enough. But that poor girl's murder was just my cover story, sweet pea. You know your old pal Lewis could never do something like that, dontcha?"

Amanda cringed and Olivia recoiled at the name they both avoided using like it was a curse. There was no way for Dana to know that her own last name would cause such a strong reaction, but it irked Amanda all the same. She wanted to shield Olivia from any further exposure to her attackers, and if that meant obliterating certain names and phrases from her vocabulary—and policing everyone else's—then she would do it.

"How's she supposed to know something like that, when you been lyin' to her all this time?" Amanda asked, reaching across Olivia to grasp the opposite shoulder as if she meant to literally shield her wife from Dana's careless words. She turned a warning look on the agent, making it clear that was her first strike. Maybe the second, if they counted the squealing sneaker. "You had us all fooled, not just her. But she took the brunt of it because you's her friend, and she had to go around feeling like she'd missed it that whole time."

"Missed it?" Dana's gaze was wary, angled low, as if she were facing off with an angry pit bull. A dog that, moments ago, had been happily panting and wagging its tail.

"What you were. A liar. Murderer."Baby-killer.Rape-stager. Amanda continued listing crimes inside her head, growing angrier with each one, until she reacheddirty cop,jealous ex,Judas. She lost momentum with those last few, her shoulders sagging underneath the weight of it all. The weight of knowing she was no better, and that she had populated Olivia's world with others of the same ilk. Real ones, not the dress-up kind like Dana. "How's she supposed to believe anything you say now?"

Dana cast a contrite look over Olivia, her frame so diminished under the drab hospital blanket, her hair matted and mangled around her abused face. (They weren't supposed to touch her face, Parker had said. Amanda couldn't decide which was worse—the order itself, the reasoning behind it, or that the men hadn't followed it.) "She's not, I reckon. But I hope she can forgive me and understand that I was just doing my job, it wasn't personal. And it sure doesn't mean I didn't really care about her. 'Cause I did. Do."

The scene unfolded with Olivia watching as if she had happened across a riveting soap opera, possibly in a language she didn't understand. Only after several silent beats did she realize they were waiting on her response, the players inle feuilleton mélo. "Your kids," she said weakly, the furrows in her brow the only thing that stood out from her wan complexion and demeanor. "What about them? And your husband? You just left them to go undercover in prison?"

That last part came out funny, her voice suddenly thick and gummy instead of the thin, cracked shell it had been a second before. It did appear she had trouble swallowing, but it wasn't any wonder with that Victorian collar of bruises around her neck.

"Well, uh, not exactly." Dana glanced at her feet, scuffing the toe of her sneaker on the floor a few times, then catching herself before it squeaked too loudly again. She straightened her posture inside the NYC hoodie, assuming a vaguely military stance, hands behind her back. "I didn't leave them because they don't exist. Never did. I've never been married or had any babies of my own. I'm real glad you have those things, though. If anyone deserves them—"

"I saw their pictures. In your apartment . . . The kids looked like you." Olivia turned to Amanda for confirmation, though the visit to Dana's apartment must have taken place before Amanda's transfer to New York. Unless it was a social call, made before Olivia shared such details with a lower ranking officer. But even then, that didn't sound like her. When had Olivia ever gone on a social call, by herself, to the home of a female friend?

Never, to Amanda's knowledge. She didn't much like the implications, not that she thought Olivia would have let anything happen while believing Dana was a married mother of however many nonexistent kids. But that hadn't stopped Alex Cabot from having designs on Olivia, knowing damn well she had a fiancée and three very real children just down the hall. It didn't stop Amanda from obsessing over what Alex had done to make Olivia kick her out, either.

She hated that it still bothered her, even now, when Olivia needed a fully present, fully supportive partner, concerned with nothing other than her well-being. Pushing the paranoia aside, Amanda leaned over and stroked Olivia's forehead with the side of her thumb, so gentle she could have approached a frightened doe. "They were just another part of her undercover persona too, darlin. The kids, the husband. 'Member we thought it was strange no one showed up for her when we made the arrest?"

"Ouch. Thanks for that reminder," Dana said, her attempt at a light laugh dying out almost at once. She sobered quickly, nodding in agreement. "S'true, though. Any family I had to bail me out left this good earth 'bout twenty-five years ago with my mama and daddy. Rest of us aren't really on speaking terms. Y'all were probably the only ones shedding any tears over my trip up the river. Which wasn't fair to you, and I am sorry it had to be that way. Now you see why it's better if I just keep to myself."

"I didn't cry," Olivia said quietly, and the surprising part wasn't the denial itself but how well she executed it. Amanda would have believed Olivia was unaffected by Dana's fake downfall if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes—the hurt and betrayal written all over Olivia's face after her friend was taken away; the self-blame and self-doubt that plagued her work in the weeks that followed; the distrust she'd leveled at everyone, not just Amanda; and yes, a tear or two, always when she thought no one was around to see.

Those three days in hell had taught Olivia how to lie.

Dana nodded as if she understood and accepted it, though she was clearly uncomfortable, struggling to find the appropriate response. Her eyes even looked a bit dewy, if Amanda wasn't mistaken. "Can't say that I blame you," she said, subdued. "I wouldn't be too tore up over someone I thought had killed a pregnant kindergarten teacher, either. If it's any consolation, you helped bring down a major crime ring by putting me away, no matter how unintentionally."

"It's not." Olivia turned to stone, her vulnerability and confusion momentarily lifting, a solid wall of anger erected in its place. She didn't express rage very often, but when she did, it came on fast and hard and looked an awful lot like that. Impenetrable, intractable. Unnervingly sedate. "You lied to me. I held your hand, and you looked me right in the face, and you lied."

"I had to. I was doing my job. You know how it is, Cap—"

"What else did you lie to me about?" Though Olivia's voice lacked strength, she made up for it in point-blank directness. She understood that you couldn't shoot to kill while you were screaming to be heard.

Something in the low, rattlesnake tone told Amanda it was time to intervene. Everyone's emotions were on edge, she should have known better than to initiate this haphazard reunion when the last thing Olivia needed was more people ganging up on her, more reminders of the past. The present was bad enough. "Liv," she said softly, trying to guide Olivia's focus back to her with a gentle nudge from her fingers. Her wife was stubborn and ignored the small cue, refusing to turn her head.

Then all the air went out of the room.

"Were you even raped?" Olivia asked, and one thing she hadn't lost was her steady glare, used so often in extracting the truth from hard-hearted criminals. It was changed, though. She couldn't sustain it quite as long, and the arrogance it required to be really effective had vanished almost completely. She lacked the confidence and conviction. "Or did you make that up too?"

If Olivia had pulled out a knife, stuck it in Dana's gut, and twisted, the agent couldn't have appeared more taken aback than she did right then. She covered her heart, as if shielding it from a second strike of the blade. "I'd never make up a thing like that. That was the worst experience I ever— No, ma'am, I did not make that up. You heard my testimony. I wouldn't say those things, perjure myself on the stand with those . . . hateful words, if they weren't absolutely true."

Whatever the hateful words had been, they sent a visible wave of revulsion through Dana now, her entire body shuddering. She touched her neck absently, smoothing her fingers down its length, then snatching her hand away in disgust. Amanda didn't need to read any court transcripts to recognize that reaction. Dana might have lied about many things, but being raped wasn't one of them. Despite her tough exterior, she wore the memories as if they had just happened.

How long ago had it actually been? Was recovery really even possible? After what Amanda had witnessed on that livestream, she just didn't know anymore. But one thing was clear: she had left a deeply traumatized woman behind to clean up her mess at that Jersey port. She should feel guilty for that, but instead it felt like solidarity. Perhaps executing a man like Gus Sandberg and staging a shootout between some other lowlife rapists would give Dana closure. Perhaps the three murders would do the same for Amanda.

That just left Olivia, whose lot in life seemed to be never finding the closure she relentlessly sought. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, rejecting Dana's claims. Believing the victim was her creed, even when she had every reason to doubt. When everyone else, Amanda included, had lost faith in someone's story, Olivia held on, held up. It was one of the qualities Amanda loved most about her.

It was gone.

"I don't believe you. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie. I was so impressed that you'd done your own rape kit. Thought you must be s-so strong, some kind of Wonder Woman. To testify in front of him like that. Even I couldn't . . . " Olivia was no longer speaking to Dana, her eyes and inflection somewhere in the middle distance. For a moment, she didn't seem aware there was anyone else in the room at all. "But you're just as weak as the rest of us, aren't you? Worse, because you pretended to know what it was like. What this was like."

Dana opened her mouth, closed it, stared at the floor and shook her head. She was definitely holding back tears this time, her eyes shiny with moisture, the irises like pennies at the bottom of a fountain. Just the idea of standing there watching her cry made Amanda uncomfortable. Some people weren't meant to show a softer, more emotional side, and Dana Lewis was one of them. "I wasn't pretending. Not about that, any of it. You don't have to believe me, but I do know. What this is like." She sniffed hard, gaze lifting to reveal dry cheeks, dry lashes. No tears in sight. "I know what you went through, Captain, and I am so sorry."

The emotion Dana withheld came flooding out of Olivia all at once. Weakened by her injuries and post-op restrictions, she could only produce a small, breathless sob, but it racked her entire body like a bronchitis cough. It took all of her strength to rise from the pillow, and even then she only made it far enough to prop on her elbows with help from Amanda. Tears flowed freely down both her cheeks. "Get out."

"Liv, baby." Amanda caught herself about to soothe Olivia by gathering and stroking her hair down her back. Hair that didn't exist anymore, just the frazzled ends that lay at her shoulders, coarse and scrubby. Instead she smoothed the hair back from Olivia's forehead, where the long bangs fell stubbornly on either side, getting in the way. They would have to be cut, along with the rest of the ruined mane that, up until a few days ago, had been such a source of pleasure to Amanda and Olivia both—touching it and having it touched.

Amanda wanted to cry too.

"Don't say that. Dana's been a big help to us. I wouldn't have been able to get to you when I did, if not for her. She put her job— herself at risk so I could find you and take you outta that awful place." Amanda shushed her wife lightly as she spoke, hoping to calm her before she exerted herself too much. The doctor had said she was lucky to still have her spleen, and anymore abuse to her fractured ribs might have resulted in a very different outcome. She should be taking it easy now, not getting worked up and putting strain on her abdomen. "We owe her a thank you, not marching orders. Come on now, darlin, hush that crying."

"It's okay," Dana said, back in business mode. She gestured like she was in front of a room full of federal agents, rather than two women who were anything but cops at the moment. It was easier taking charge and giving orders than showing you had feelings, Amanda supposed. Who could hurt you when you were always at the top? "Nobody needs to thank me. I just wish I could've done something sooner, before all—" She caught herself sweeping a hand in Olivia's direction, and immediately cut the gesture off, midair.Before all this. "Well, before they made their move."

"You saw it too, didn't you?"

The agent did a fair job of feigning ignorance, but Amanda's stomach filled with acid when Olivia asked about the video feed. She would probably be asking—or at least wondering—the same thing five, ten years from now. Maybe for the rest of her life.Once something's on the Internet, it never goes away. And once something was in evidence, any number of your colleagues and other members of law enforcement could take a peek. All in the name of gaining a better understanding of what you went through, of course.

"I don't know what—"

"They recorded what they did to me," Olivia gritted, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. If she meant to fight back the tears, she succeeded only in producing twice as many, twice as fast, with the pressure building up inside. Her face was an alarming shade of red, the color of danger signs, stoplights, of sirens and bloodbaths. "They took turns raping me for— for days. It went on forever, and you saw."

"I saw . . . only what was necessary to make informed decisions about the case." Dana's head was at half-mast again, her gaze turned sidelong to Amanda. She had her tells just like everyone else, but it was a good lie. The best she could do under the circ*mstances, when Olivia wanted the truth more than ever, but desperately needed the comfort of a lie. "Feed wasn't clear enough to make out very much, anyway. Kinda blurry. What's that called—pixelated. And the video lagged. I wouldn't have known it was you if I hadn't been told ahead of time."

If she had left out the last part, maybe it would have gone over more smoothly. But she had oversold it toward the end, and Olivia always spotted the lies that went just a little too far, sounded just a little too good to be true. Even now, her senses dulled by painkillers and anesthesia, her perception skewed by despair and trauma, she was aware of being placated.

"Get out," she repeated, and though a whisper, it resonated throughout the room. When her emotions were too big, particularly her anger, Olivia made them—and herself—very small. For fear of what might burst out of her if she let it, Amanda believed. It was the survival tactic of a little girl whose anger and terror were too dangerous to express. Twins monsters that would wreak untold havoc if unleashed. She would never turn them loose after this.

No sooner had Amanda come to the terrible conclusion than Olivia sat up fully on her own, gathered all the breath her fractured ribs would allow, and released it in what would have been a bellow had she the strength or the voice for it: "I said GET OUT!"

Thin and scratchy, the shout was ineffectual at startling anyone into motion, as Olivia had no doubt hoped it would. When she raised her voice at work, everyone hopped-to. Here, they merely looked stunned and uncomfortable, Amanda's hands coming to her aid, as if she might fly apart with any further rages. Her body didn't have the energy, however, and she collapsed against the bed the next moment, like a rag doll tossed into the corner by a careless child.

"Please make her leave." Olivia curled into a ball on her side, facing Amanda, her back to the FBI agent. She took Amanda's hand and hugged it as desperately to her chest as a lifeline. Tears wetted the back when she buried her face against it, reminding Amanda of Frannie trying to nuzzle under her palm during a thunderstorm. Weeping inconsolably, Olivia begged, trembled, her teeth scraping Amanda's knuckles.

Into the furnace of fire, Amanda thought. It's where she had always assumed she'd go; she just hadn't expected Olivia to end up there with her.

"Please, Amanda. I don't want them— her to see me like this. Please make her go. Oh, please . . . "

"Shh, she's gone. She's gone." Amanda stroked Olivia's cheek, her side, her bunched up knees.

She had always thought the worst agony must be trying to explain their suffering to a child or an animal, who couldn't understand what had befallen them. But she was wrong. You could make up a pretty story for a child—an illness was a curse by an evil witch, a dead loved one just needed to be with God for some higher purpose—and they would believe you. A dog only cared that you were there to love it through the pain.

No explanation or comforting would suffice for a senseless tragedy of this magnitude, visited on a wife and mother who had already been victimized more than her share. More than most. And there was nothing Amanda could say to make it better.

"She's gone," Amanda said again, nodding to Dana as she backed out of the room without making a sound. Poor woman looked shell shocked by the encounter, her eyes wide and sorrowful, but she tipped her head in silent acknowledgement as she slipped out the door. Amanda's place was with Olivia, and Olivia was not up to visitors yet. Any hurt feelings on Dana's part would have to be dealt with on her own for now. "There's no one here, darlin, no one's gonna see. I won't let them."

All that was left were the lies.

. . .

Chapter 37: Wayward Heart

Chapter Text

Chapter 37.

Wayward Heart

. . .

Half an hour later, Olivia had finally calmed enough for Amanda to step away from the bed, with promises of a swift return, and drag a chair over to sit in. The wooden chair leg lowed mournfully on the epoxy flooring, making Amanda wince and stop short, afraid the noise would set Olivia off again. But the captain gave no indication she had heard anything at all, her gaze turned inward, unblinking. That seemed to be her permanent new mien, and it chilled Amanda to the bone.

She placed the chair directly in front of Olivia, so they would be eye to eye when she sat. Hoping to snap her out of it, yes, but also wanting to be in her sightline at all times. Olivia still hadn't unfurled from the fetal position she'd regressed into, trying to escape Dana's curiosity and concern. Amanda had quickly nixed the idea of climbing onto the bed
(please God don't let him climb on top of me again)
with her wife, who had already moved around too much on her own. If she pulled a stitch or punctured something with a displaced rib, Amanda wouldn't be able to live with herself.

Not that she could like this, either, ducked down in the chair to see around the hair that fell across Olivia's face, curling it behind her ear to no effect—it fell back into place each time—and exchanging long, silent glances with the large brown eyes that found hers and locked on, the lashes occasionally flickering but never quite closing fully. She used to be able to read what was going on behind the dark irises with their glints of gold, and she'd prided herself on knowing exactly what Olivia wanted or needed at any given moment.

Now all she saw was her own face reflected back at her, haggard and haunted, so anxious she could practically see the worry lines in the tiny mirror image. She felt like she was falling into those deep black pupils, Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, no bottom in sight. Only when Olivia sighed heavily and finally closed her eyes was the spell broken, Amanda colliding to cold hard earth. The second blow came a moment later, in the form of another question Amanda wasn't prepared to answer.

"When can we go home?" Olivia's eyes rolled behind their lids, giving the unnerving impression that they were directed at Amanda, somehow seeing her through the fleshy membrane and vasculature. Like the blind soothsayers in fairytales who could look into your soul. She knew what she asked was impossible right then, but she needed to examine Amanda from the inside out to be sure. "I hate being in the hospital. Reminds me of . . . "

There were any number of hospital visits to which she might refer—probably even some Amanda knew nothing about—aChoose Your Own Adventureof abuse and heartbreak, of terrible loss. But in the end she didn't have to finish. Each of the horrors was here with them, a menagerie of violence to which this latest beast would be added as the star attraction. By which all others would be measured.

"I know, babe. I know how much you hate it," Amanda said. Her throat felt tight and she gulped softly when she swallowed. She couldn't remember the last time she had anything to drink or to eat.

Did it really matter?

"But you gotta stay at least for tonight. That infection you had was pretty nasty . . . They, uh, they want to keep you for observation. Make sure they got it all before they send you home. You were real sick, darlin. If they hadn't operated as soon as they did—"

"I had an operation?" That restored Olivia's sight, her eyes suddenly open and, though hazier than usual, fixed on Amanda from her sideways position.

It reminded Amanda of those scenes in movies and television where the person buried under the rubble was gradually slipping away, holding hands with the first responder whose heart they had touched with their dying words. By the end, you were crying over a dead fictional character who hadn't even existed until an hour ago, and your favorite protagonist was changed forever. Amanda hated that trope, and she regretted setting up such a tableau now—with the chair and in her mind.

Besides, she was the one the rocks were tumbling down on. She felt the weight of them pressing at her back, her chest, pinning her legs, crushing them until they were useless flesh stockings filled with jellied bones and gore. She prayed that the inquiry would end there, but Olivia looked at her with confusion and distress, pleading for some kind of answer.

The captain was far from dumb; she'd been working sex crimes since Amanda was still strutting the halls of Loganville High as a know-it-all senior. If Amanda concocted a last minute lie about the surgery, Olivia would be able to call her on it, should even the smallest detail fail to line up. And she would find out from the doctor sooner or later, anyway.

"What for?" Olivia prompted, probably picking up on Amanda's reluctance to discuss it. She was still perceptive, that hadn't been taken from her. Perception could be skewed, though. It was inevitable that she would look at the world through a different lens from now on. So would Amanda.

"Well, like I said, the infection was bad. You spiked a fever, lost consciousness. They were worried you'd become septic." Amanda licked her lips, wishing to God she had poured herself some water to sip—and for stalling. She'd expected a bigger reaction to the threat of sepsis, a condition she knew Olivia feared after watching Amelia Cole die from it. But if it had made an impact, it didn't show. Olivia merely blinked and waited.

"I thought . . . I thought you were gonna— Este said the infection was from a tear in your cervix, that they were going to try stitching it up and they might have to, um, remove something if it— if the infection had spread too far. She kinda . . . asked my permission. In case they had to do more to save you."

"Permission?" Olivia crinkled her forehead as if she couldn't recall the definition of that word. She searched Amanda's face like it might be printed there, a dictionary page in black and white, making sense where there was none. "To remove what? I don't understand."

The moment the question left her mouth, recognition dawned on Olivia's features. Almost as quickly, the enlightenment clouded over, her expression settling into a neutral tone, calm and completely unreadable. Her voice was the same, devoid of any color: "How much did they remove?"

Amanda felt a simultaneous rush of relief and guilt that Olivia didn't have to hear the word hysterectomy to comprehend her meaning. She was the worst kind of hypocrite, pressing Olivia to use the proper language for her traumatic experiences (Say child abuse, not poor parenting skills; grooming, not bad judgement; rape, not anything but), while she herself wanted to avoid at all cost calling the medical procedure what it was. There was no pretty way to dress it up, not even a little.

"Este said they'd try to leave what they could," she said, disgusted with her own willingness to hide behind the nurse's skirts. It was just so much easier to let someone else shoulder the blame when Amanda had already failed Olivia in every other possible sense. What good would it do to say she had ignored her instincts regarding Olivia's wishes, essentially taking away her choice, when everything else had been stripped from her, too? Literal parts of her.

"How much."

"They, um, they took out the— your uterus." Amanda caught herself starting to form the shape with her hand and quickly stuffed it into her lap. The last thing her wife needed was visual aids. The other hand she tightened around Olivia's, pulling it to her chest. God, this should have been her. "Your cervix. Your ovaries and Fallopian tubes." She botched the damn word.Fluh-lopian. Christ.

They couldn't laugh that one off, and the silence afterward was unbearable. It stretched on forever, Olivia lost in her thoughts, Amanda wondering what they were. Probably not too dissimilar from her own, when she had Googled total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Basically, they left only what would have been taken if Olivia had cancer in her reproductive organs: the upper part of her vagin*, pelvic ligaments and lymph nodes. Everything else was ravaged by the infection just as surely as Olivia had been by the men who gave it to her.

Though she would never own up to it, Amanda had cried while reading about the difficulty some women experienced having an org*sm with no uterus to contract and add to the pleasurable sensations of penetration. When she gave the go-ahead on the hysterectomy, she hadn't stopped to consider what it would do to Olivia's sex drive. Not that such a thing existed anymore. And the crying was less about its loss, and more about the shame she felt for considering whether or not Olivia would ever desire sex again.

Battling back the same thoughts now, Amanda pressed her lips to Olivia's skinned knuckles without pulling away after she'd kissed them. "The surgery was laparoscopic, so the scars'll be minimal. But no heavy lifting for six to eight weeks, at least. And there's supplements you can take . . . for the, uh, other stuff. If it gives you fits." She was rambling nervously toward the end, wishing she hadn't started down that path, not sure how to stop it. Olivia had gone through menopause already, she didn't need supplements explained to her.

Thankfully, she also didn't appear to be listening to a word Amanda said. She had zoned out again, this time staring at a spot over Amanda's shoulder. It was eerie, and Amanda couldn't quite figure out why, until Olivia scanned the room as if she were searching for something. Then it clicked: a camera.

That was how she'd looked, lying on the scuzzy old mattress inside the rank-ass storage container, whenever her eyes swept past the recording device. The one she had known was there all along. Safe and sound in a hospital bed, she was still watching, waiting, for the next bastard to come in and take his turn in front of the at-home viewers. Amanda recognized hypervigilance when she saw it.

"It's really a good thing they caught it when they did," she said, trying to lean into view and break the trancelike stare forming between Olivia and the wall. Indeed, Olivia blinked rapidly and pulled Amanda into focus, a momentary flash of annoyance on her face at being distracted. It disappeared the very next second, as did the captain's fixation on what lay in the distance, hidden and malignant as a tumor. "If it had gone untreated much longer, you might've— it might've been a lot worse."

Brilliant.

"Hypothermia symptoms are so similar to the signs of infection, they thought— we all thought you were just . . . " Unable to tolerate the sound of her own voice making anymore excuses, Amanda let the rest taper off into silence. She worried her bottom lip, worried Olivia's knuckles with her thumbs, and when there was little left to worry physically, she did it out loud: "Say something, darlin. Can you tell me what you're feeling? What you need? Anything you want, just say the word and I'll make it happen."

I want this to never have happened. I want you to climb into this bed with me, Lewis and all the others be damned, and hold me till it doesn't hurt anymore. I want it to be as good as it was before, because God, it was so good. I want to play silly games with our kids, laugh until our sides ache from happiness—not this awful emptiness, this misery—and know that whatever life throws at us, we can get through it. Together.

Can't we, Amanda Jo?

But that's not what Olivia said, no matter how hard Amanda wished for it. When her lips finally parted, gathering a shuddering breath, slivers of blood threaded through the chapped skin, she chose the solitary over the attention and support Amanda was ready, desperately, to give: "I want to sleep. I'm so tired, Manda. E'rything hurts. I just need to close my eyes . . . " As if demonstrating, she allowed her eyelids to drift shut, though how much control she actually had over it was debatable. Painkillers tended to hit her pretty hard. Not to mention the three days of sleep deprivation.

Kind of hard to catch any Z's when you were awakened at all hours by men raping you. What else could Amanda do but agree and let her sleep? Being awake right then was its own kind of torture.

"Okay, sweetie, you go ahead and rest some more," Amanda murmured, kissing the back of Olivia's hand again. It appeared she was already out cold, but her grip suddenly tightened, startling Amanda as if the hand had popped out at her from a dark corner. She recovered quickly, and, thankfully, without an audible reaction.

"Don't leave me." Olivia made the request with her eyes fully open, no trace of sleep to be found. She looked like one of the kids when they stumbled from their room, features overpronounced in their little faces, to confide in a sympathetic and brave adult about their latest nightmare. Before this, Olivia had seemed almost entirely free of her own night terrors and bad dreams. "Stay here with me, okay? I— I can't wake up alone. Not here, not like this."

Probably not anywhere, ever again, Amanda thought sadly. It was a depressing realization, and it brought with it a whole slew of new worries that she had yet to consider. The baby slept in their bedroom; how was she going to keep Olivia and Samantha from disturbing each other at night if the night terrors started up again? Would Samantha be safe? Olivia would never intentionally hurt the baby—not ever—but she had lashed out in her sleep before, completely unaware of her own actions. There was only so much Gigi could do to rouse Olivia when she got like that. There was only so much Amanda could do, for that matter.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Taking giant leaps, when right now all they could handle were one or two wobbly baby steps at a time. Right now they just needed to worry about making it through tonight.

"I'm not going anywhere, darlin, I promise." Amanda shook her head, Olivia's hand pressed to the side of it, to feel the firmness, the warmth, of her vow, and to know that it was true. Be still, and know that I am God, that was how the scriptures put it. Olivia just needed to be still, and know that Amanda was there with her. "You sleep now. I'll be right here when you wake up."

Amanda kept her word, barely leaving Olivia's side for anything longer than a bathroom break or a quick round of stretches when her neck, back, and knees grew stiff from sitting. Este brought food and bids for Amanda to get some rest herself, maybe even go home for the night, come back in the morning. The suggestions fell on deaf ears, and eventually Este's shift ended. Then another began, and another.

Olivia slept for almost forty-eight hours, waking only occasionally—just long enough to see that Amanda was still there, then sinking back under the dark waters of unconsciousness. Extreme fatigue was the medical explanation, according to the doctors and nurses who filtered in and out of her room, never the same face gracing the doorway more than once or twice per shift.

But by Wednesday afternoon, even the hospital staff was getting anxious about the captain's disinterest in the waking world. Theirs was a much more economical concern than Amanda's: they wanted the room and bed back for the next practically comatose patient who had been brutalized beyond belief. There was always somebody who had it worse, it seemed, no matter how bad off you were. Amanda would worry about those people later; for the time being, she just wanted her wife to be among the living again.

She wasn't at all prepared for the task of getting Olivia back home, though, a conclusion she didn't draw until she was in the middle of it. After days that felt like they stretched on for years, with little more to do than stare at the clock or Olivia's bruised face, expressionless in sleep, her discharge from the hospital happened so fast, it made Amanda's head spin. The details were a blur, from the moment Olivia woke up and agreed to a few spoonfuls of applesauce to finding her Jeep in the Mount Sinai parking garage, no earthly idea how it had gotten there.

On the way to the vehicle, which she gunned like a drag racer to reach the pickup area before the nurse could wheel Olivia to the curb, she paused at the checkout desk to ask after her clothing, forgetting it was in evidence now. "Uh, never mind," she said hastily, when the attendant started to make a call. She had burned the clothes she wore into the hospital, she remembered all at once, because they were Angelov's and served no other purpose than to remind her of the man she'd taken them from. The man she had killed. Her very own telltale heart, stitched together of flannel and denim. She didn't hear it beating anymore once the clothes had gone into the incinerator.

The only mementos she wished to keep were around her neck—the St. Jude medal and Olivia's pendant of the kids' names. How could she feel any guilt for her actions, with each of those small reminders of why she had done what she did so close to her heart? And then there was Olivia herself, the one for whom Amanda would do it all again. She hardly said a word as Amanda maneuvered through traffic, making a conscious effort not to be too pushy or cut anyone off and risk a blaring horn, curse words shouted out the window, or getting flipped off.

Olivia needed to feel safe, not be subjected to more anger and aggression. But if she was aware of anything happening beyond the Jeep's noise-canceling interior, it didn't show. She watched out the passenger-side window in silence, so still in Amanda's peripheral vision, she could have been a statue. Although, statues were easier to get a read on than she was, since their departure from the Mount Sinai parking lot. Since she had opened her eyes and nodded in agreement when the nurse asked if she was ready to go home, actually.

The harder Amanda thought about it, the more she began to question whether or not she had heard Olivia's voice yet at all today. Hell, Olivia hadn't talked in her sleep either—miraculously—which meant she hadn't spoken out loud in almost two full days. Not since Amanda broke the news of the hysterectomy. She felt a sudden irrational fear that Olivia might never speak to her again. Perhaps she had done the math, and concluded that Amanda was the common denominator behind this and every other tragedy she'd experienced over the past ten years.

Engrossed and frightened by the thought, Amanda didn't notice she was drifting into the next lane until another driver honked. She gave the wheel a sharp turn, jerking the Jeep back on track and jolting Olivia sideways in her seat. "Sorry, sorry," she chorused, mentally kicking herself for doing exactly what she'd been trying to avoid. But when Olivia barely reacted to the near miss or to her apology, it was too much.

Amanda cast a fretful glance over at her wife, taking her eyes off the road only as long as she dared without chancing another abrupt stop. "Liv. You sure you're okay? If you don't feel up to going home yet, we can always go back—"

"I don't want to go back to the hospital," Olivia said, no inflection to indicate how she felt about it one way or the other. But at least she was talking—or doing her best to, anyway. Her voice hadn't improved in the past forty-eight hours, and in fact sounded like it might have gotten worse. The bruises around her neck had definitely ripened, highlighting just how harshly it had been treated. She should be able to swallow without choking, the doctor had said, as if it were a major achievement, being able to ingest or inhale properly. Then he turned right around and cautioned Olivia against eating big meals or anything too spicy, until the swelling in her throat had gone down.

Not that it would take much convincing. She had pushed away the little cup of applesauce after no more than three or four bites, leaving her toast and scrambled eggs untouched on the tray. She seemed poised to abandon conversation just as readily as the unwanted meal, but after several silent beats she spoke again in a whisper like crinkling paper, almost too low to be heard over the car engine. "What did you tell the kids?" With a vague gesture, she indicated herself as the topic in question. What had the kids been told abouther.

Amanda had dreaded that question in all its forms—from the kids, who were smart enough to know that a four-day slumber party with Aunt Daphne meant something was very wrong; from Olivia, who was so keenly aware of her battered appearance she wouldn't even glance in a mirror—and it made her wish for the quiet to return. But that just made her feel more guilty. Either she wanted Olivia to talk or she didn't. Couldn't have it both ways.

"Not too much," she said, and cleared her throat softly, though it didn't really need it. She did it again, stalling, but that trick only lasted so long. If she hadn't thrown away her half-empty bottle of tepid Dasani water, she might have drawn out the hesitation with a few sips. Unfortunately, purified water tasted like crap when it was no longer cold, and Olivia was waiting expectantly. It was the most expressive her wife had been in days, and Amanda couldn't ignore it.

"I told them you and I both got called into work unexpectedly over the weekend. That we were trying hard to catch some really bad guys . . . " At least that much was true. Amanda had tried to adhere as closely to Olivia's policy of being honest with their children as possible, without telling them everything. She couldn't bring herself to lie and say she and Olivia were on a second honeymoon or something fanciful like that, either. Not after seeing what she'd seen, hearing the awful moans and whimpers she'd heard. "And that we'd be home as soon as we could. We're sorry it's taking so long."

"No, I mean . . . " Olivia repeated the gesture from a moment ago, pressing her palm flat to her chest this time. It looked as if she were trying to push her heart back into place, or else keep it from flying away altogether. She touched a sore spot and winced, but she wouldn't uncover that wayward heart. "Did you tell them I'm— I'm like this? Injured? I can't just walk in limping and covered in bruises, they'll be traumatized. Did you tell them I was— attacked?"

Attacked. Even in the middle of her mounting panic, she paused to find the least unsavory word for what she'd been through. Amanda was amazed by the continued discretion, but more than that—so much more, it made her grip the steering wheel in cold terror—she was angry with Olivia for downplaying the experience. Did Olivia think it was any less traumatic for Amanda, at Noah's age, to see her mother in the same condition? To know it was her daddy who had put Mama's arm in a sling or gave her a concussion?

Was Olivia really going to put them all through that: the devastating effects of repressing their trauma along with hers, pretending everything was normal, that they weren't coming apart at the seams? She'd done it for fifty years and knew how toxic it was; she couldn't possibly expect that of their children, of Amanda, could she?

But no matter how hard the anger struggled to take over, Amanda refused to give in to her old defense mechanism. It wasn't even about Olivia, she knew that. Therapy with Hanover had revealed to Amanda just how much of her "angry armor" (Hanover's term, not Amanda's) was related to fear and her misguided childhood attempts at self-protection. As a child she had felt small and helpless to keep her mother safe, and turned inward those feelings of fear and failure bred anger, problems with impulse control, more anger. Bigger, meaner, until it exploded out of her in all kinds of nasty ways.

She would not take that out on Olivia. Being kidnapped and gang raped was not the same as staying in a broken, abusive marriage that royally f*cked up your kids' lives too, not even close. If anyone was to blame here, it was Amanda. All of the anger belonged on her, just as all the love and comfort now belonged with Olivia.

"They know you're hurt," she said gently, forcing her fingers to unclench from the wheel, and her breath to even out. Her heart hadn't stopped racing, but she didn't have the focus or the patience for mindfulness exercises right then. She had to drive; she had to make sure Olivia was okay. If they were on a plane and the oxygen masks dropped, she would secure Olivia's first before putting on her own, in-flight emergency announcements be damned.

"I didn't give them any details about the, uh, attack. Just that some bad men were mean to you, and they need to be careful like they are with Samantha when they give you hugs and stuff. They remember how it was when I came home after getting shot. Or Noah and Jesse do, at least. I didn't hear much out of Tilly." Amanda added the last part to herself, momentarily failing to mask her concern. Her normally sunny, chattery little Tilly girl had hung back in Daphne's lap during the FaceTime call, quiet and shy for the camera.

Amanda had told herself it was just the long separation from her mommies that troubled the child, but what if it was something more? Matilda might be happy-go-lucky and sweet as apple pie, but that didn't make her less observant or less intelligent than her older brother and sister. Maybe she'd been more affected by the close-call with Matthew Parker than Amanda had hoped. Christ. Every time she thought the nightmare was over, it just kept unfolding.

And now, to Amanda's deepest dismay, Olivia began to cry. The tears fell silently, of course, as they so often did when she could hold them back no longer. Amanda might not have noticed them at all, if not for the sniffling and the hand that came up to brush them away. So few were Olivia's gestures and movements over the last couple of days, anything as significant as a raised arm or a bent elbow immediately caught Amanda's attention. She hurried into line at the red light and looked to her wife in concern.

"What is it, darlin? Was it something I said?" Amanda fretted her bottom lip, her stomach in knots. She hadn't felt this anxious and jittery since she'd watched herself sinking several thousand dollars more into debt during each quarter of the 2013 Super Bowl. It was like slowly being dragged to Hell, no amount of kicking, screaming, or clawing halting your progress. Meanwhile, God and the Devil laughed like old drinking buddies. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I can call them again and tell them whatever you want me to say this time."

"No, don't." Olivia threw her hand out to stop Amanda from reaching for the cell phone mount on the dash. She drew back just as quickly, cradling the hand to her abdomen as if scalded—or, perhaps, kicked. Her eyes were wide and frightened, as if Amanda had suggested something far more sinister than dialing up their children on Daphne's phone: a round of Russian roulette, a game of chicken with an oncoming train. "What you said is fine. I just . . . hate putting them through this again. And now Sammie."

That was understandable. Amanda had found it difficult looking at their innocent little faces, so open and unsuspecting, believing what Mama told them was absolute truth, crowded together on her cell phone display. It didn't help that the last time she'd looked at a screen like that it had been to view her wife's repeated rapes and torture. "Aw, baby, she's not even four months old yet, she's not going to remember any of this. Ten to one, Tilly won't either. Noah and Jesse might have some patchy memories of it later on, but I bet they'll forget altogether if we don't bring it up and remind them all the time."

Stealing furtive glances between the stoplight and Olivia's drawn, damp features, Amanda prayed she'd said the right thing. Nothing too diminishing or dismissive, but also encouraging enough to assuage her wife's fears. It was so easy to get it wrong when someone was severely traumatized, and finesse had never come as second nature to Amanda. If she f*cked this up, she might as well drive to the one-six right then and hand over her gun and shield.

"You know it doesn't work like that," Olivia said, not particularly anxious or angry. Mostly just weary. So very weary. "They might not remember specifics, but they won't ever forget the feelings that go with it. Those will be with them for the rest of their lives. If this is too scary for them—if I'm . . . if they're frightened of me, they'll hold onto that, even when the memory of why is gone."

Spoken like someone who had feared her mother well into adulthood, for transgressions remembered, repressed, and lost forever to time and the brain's built-in defenses. And she wasn't wrong. Every day they dealt with children whose lives were profoundly and irrevocably changed by violence. Amanda had her very own firsthand experience with the subject, for Chrissakes. Who was she to claim that couldn't happen to their children?

She couldn't let it.

Shewouldn'tlet it.

"No, Liv. Those kids love you more than anything in the world. Listen here. You're . . . you'reeverything to them."To me, Amanda added silently. This wasn't about her or her feelings for Olivia, no matter how strong they might be. She wasn't going to put that on Olivia to make herself feel better. "I'm fun and all, but you're the one they go to when they're sick or upset. You're the one they trust. That's not gonna change because you've got some bruises. I bet they won't even notice them after a few days. All those babies want—or expect—is your love. And nothing can take that away."

For several moments that probably felt much longer than they actually were, Olivia didn't respond. That troubled Amanda more than the rest of it: the kids' reactions, what they would retain from this nightmare, and Olivia's fretfulness about returning home. She had been so certain reuniting the kids with their mommy would be a step toward healing for the entire family, but what if really was too soon? It could end up compounding everyone's trauma. It could fracture relationships and reinforce Olivia's belief that she was somehow intrinsically unlovable.

Seconds from turning the car around and driving back to the hospital, Amanda caught a glimpse of the most welcome sight she had seen in five days. Labored and lopsided though the effort was, Olivia was attempting a smile. It lasted no more than half a second and didn't make it past the inflamed, flaky creases of her mouth, but it had been there, inspired by the undeniable love she had for their children. That was something, and Amanda clung to it fiercely. Someday, they would be okay again. Someday . . .

"You're right," Olivia said, not quite able to muster the conviction to go with the declaration. But she was trying. She even nodded at the green light, redirecting Amanda's attention to the road and the flow of traffic ahead. For now, at least, she was aware and participating in the present. She wasn't hogtied on a scuzzy mattress, alone and petrified. "I've missed them so much. I didn't think I'd ever—" A small, pained sound, like a whining animal, escaped her throat, and she compressed her lips tightly.

"Yeah, I know." Amanda reached over and cupped a hand to Olivia's knee, a habit she had acquired while driving and carrying on conversation with her wife. Only when she noticed the tension thrumming below the surface did she realize she should have asked first. Even simple, affectionate touches, once comforting to both of them and reflexive as breathing, required consent now. Back to square one.

Olivia covered the hand with her own, just as Amanda was about to withdraw it. Delicately she linked the tips of her fingers with the webbing of Amanda's fingers, the barest of connections holding them together. "You're more than their playmate, you know. You're their hero. In their eyes there's nothing you can't do. No one you can't save. You keep them safe, and that's invaluable to a child."

They should have been the perfect words—Olivia always had those—but Amanda could only hear what wasn't being said: that she was Olivia's hero, nothing in her eyes she couldn't do, no one she couldn't save. That Amanda kept her safe. Why should it be said, though, when it wasn't true anymore? And how could Amanda go on listening and allowing Olivia, in her condition, to be the one who soothed and consoled?

"They'll find me out sooner or later," Amanda said, and gave a single shaky chuckle that died out at once. She pinched Olivia's fingers lightly between hers, bringing the back of the captain's hand up for a kiss before depositing it, as gently as a bird, on the center console and resuming her grip on the steering wheel. "But yeah, I'm sure they'll be glad to see both their mamas. Who wouldn't be, after eating Aunt Daph's cooking for almost an entire week?"

. . .

Chapter 38: Sad Love

Chapter Text

Chapter 38.

Sad Love

. . .

Daphne's hands trembled as she ended the call. Six pairs of eyes—three human and three canine—gazed back at her in anticipation. It would have been seven if Sammie weren't drowsing in her baby swing, and if an infant could understand the concept of her mothers returning home from the hospital. Explaining it to the older kids had been tricky enough. Daphne had to be careful not to contradict what Amanda told them, and to not talk over Tilly's head, while also not talking down to Noah and Jesse. All with a big fake smile plastered on her face, because the truth was too awful for children to understand.

The truth was too awful foranyoneto understand, as far as Daphne was concerned. She still couldn't quite imagine what Olivia had gone through, held captive by actual human traffickers for three days. She'd seen the movies and knew the situation must have been dire, especially with the way it affected Amanda, who had barely been hanging on by a thread the day Daphne took the two babies with her to the precinct. The day that sick freak tried to walk off with Matilda.

It would have been on Daphne's head if he'd succeeded. The thought had haunted her for the past two days, every time she looked into the little girl's sweet pixie face, so pure and delicate—and absolutely certain Aunt Daphy was taking the best care possible of her, her brother, and her sisters. If Amanda had stepped out of the precinct just a few moments later, that beautiful child might have been gone forever. She might have suffered the same tortures as Olivia, too monstrous even to name.

The movies didn't tell you that. They showed the explosions and thrills, the macho lead kicking ass and taking names, the damsel in distress being rescued seconds before her virtue was besmirched. But what happened to all the other girls who weren't so lucky? The ones whose fathers weren't former CIA and couldn't map out an entire city while blindfolded in the back of a van? If any real person were actually capable of such feats, Daphne would have bet on it being the untouchable and invincible Captain Benson.

That illusion was shattered now, along with so many others. Daphne had made sure she didn't accidentally glimpse the live feed while it was streaming at the precinct; she did not want to see her friend like that—it was bad enough just seeing what a wreck Amanda was from watching the footage herself. And somehow the NYPD and FBI had kept the news stations from catching wind of the video, although the story of a kidnapped police captain had generated a lot of buzz at first. But no matter how many times Daphne changed the channel or avoided the Internet, she still couldn't keep the images from creeping in through her imagination.

In a way, the imagined was worse than reality. At least that was what Daphne told herself to be able to stomach it and face Olivia's children without breaking down in tears. And now, she used the same naïve self-talk—the injuries probably weren't as bad as they sounded, Amanda was probably just reacting as a frightened wife and mother—to look them in the eye and deliver the update. "Okay,mesdamesandmonsieur, your mamas are officially in the parking garage. They'll be up in a few minutes."

"Yay!" cried Jesse, forgetting her promise to be quiet for the baby.

Fortunately, Samantha was a sound sleeper and didn't stir, but Daphne quickly shushed Jesse anyway. She'd been impressing upon the children the importance of treating their mothers with care when they returned home, Olivia especially. "Did she have a baby?" Jesse had asked, her most recent experience with the women returning after a stay at the hospital, followed by cautions to be quiet and gentle, involving the birth of her youngest sister. Thank God Daphne had been able to field that question beforehand. Just the thought of it being blurted out in front of Olivia made her cringe.

"Hey, remember what we talked about?" Daphne poked lightly at Jesse's belly. It had lost most of that toddler pudge, flattening into a scant little stretch as the girl continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Amanda always teased that Jesse would be taller than Daphne by second grade. (Would they ever be able to joke like that again? So much of her friendship with both women revolved around laughter and silliness. What if that was over for good?) "About using indoor voices and baby touches with your mommy?"

"Mama too?" Matilda questioned, crinkling her lightly freckled brow. Poor thing was having trouble understanding why Amanda wouldn't want to play and roughhouse if she wasn't hurt. She kept asking if Mama had owies. Just her knuckles and her heart, Daphne thought each time.

"Yeah, your mama's going to need lots of calm and quiet too, gingeroo." Daphne ruffled the little girl's wild red curls—the one unruly trait she possessed—and brought her head forward for a peck. "She's very tired, and she'll need you guys to be on your best behavior and help her out as much as you can. If she seems kind of cranky, don't feel bad. She's not upset with you, she's just really worried about Oliv— your mommy."

"What happened to my mom?" That was Noah, the one with the hard-hitting questions that Daphne dreaded. At least Jesse's inquiries were humorous, Tilly's innocent, and Sammie's were confined to coos and bleating cries that could usually be answered with a bottle or a pacifier. But the eldest Rollins-Benson child and the only son was also the worrier of the group and the most serious eight-year-old Daphne had ever met. He seemed even more solemn now than he had days earlier.

The boy was testing her. She'd held the phone for the kids' video chat with Amanda and heard the detective struggling to tell them that Olivia was badly hurt. He knew that bad men were responsible, but must not have found it a satisfactory explanation. It was as if he sensed that Daphne knew more than she was letting on. Maybe her face had given her away, or her teary eyes when Amanda said Olivia couldn't join the chat, even though the kids begged to see her.

"Bad guys got her," Jesse supplied, knowingly. She put her arm around Matilda's tiny shoulders when the younger girl leaned into her, looking somewhat apprehensive at the mention of being gotten by strangers with ill-intent. "They were mean to her 'cause bad guys don't like cops, huh, Aunt Daph?"

Jesse had embellished that last observation herself, but the scary part was how close she'd come to the truth. Daphne didn't get the full story from Amanda yet as to why Olivia had been targeted by human traffickers, who Daphne knew through her experience in the judicial field didn't normally choose such high-profile victims; but she had picked up on some key phrases while talking to her detective friend. Olivia's kidnapping went "all the way to the top," and there were "lots of scumbags sitting in prison, dreaming up ways to get back at" the captain and Amanda for putting them there.

Then there was the attempt made on Tilly, the daughter of two cops. Definitely not attacks on random civilians. Daphne hadn't tried taking the kids out of the apartment since that day at the precinct. She'd been anxious enough just sending the older two off to school each morning.

"Yeah, nugget, that's probably some of it," she said, smiling sadly at Amanda's tiny carbon copy. She and Jesse loved to tease one another, and honestly, the six-year-old gave as good as she got, but when it came right down to it, Daphne was especially fond of the child who reminded her so much of her best friend. Baby Sammie was already showing signs of being the next Olivia Benson, and Daphne had so looked forward to having a hand in raising her little goddaughter. Now it all just seemed so uncertain. "The important thing is, the bad guys got caught. They can't hurt your mommy or anybody else anymore."

"Are they dead?" Jesse queried.Is it Thursday?she might have been asking, for all that ease of delivery.

At the same time, Noah spoke up in a soft voice that was eerily like Olivia's when she asked the hard questions. Or when she cried. "Did they rape her?"

Daphne sucked in a breath and held it, hoping for time to freeze, for Jesse to interrupt again, for the dogs to start barking, or for the other kids to simply ignore their brother's curiosity. He didn't seem fully aware of what he was asking as he sat astride the pouf ottoman, idly scratching a spot between his nose and upper lip. The picture of boyish innocence in his space-themed T-shirt and cargo shorts, that mop of brown curls swirling his head like an artful golden nest. He had pined so openly for the galaxy print Vans on his feet, Daphne couldn't resist buying them for him.

She had spent way too much money on all the kids her first couple of days as temporary guardian, and she didn't regret a penny of it. Their little hearts would be broken soon enough, their lives forever changed.

"Do you know what that word means?" Daphne asked the boy carefully, piecing at his curls with her thumb and index finger, like a small bird beak. Prior to spending much time with the Rollins-Benson brood, she'd had no idea how to show affection to children. She had nieces and nephews, but most were growing up in Connecticut and she only saw them at family get-togethers on the holidays. There was still some awkwardness in her mannerisms, but she had watched the kids' mothers enough to mimic their gentle touches.

And these kids were easy to love.

"Something bad." Noah shrugged his shoulders lightly, gazing down at his feet with a troubled expression. He wanted to look like a skateboarder, he'd said—that's why he was so taken with the colorful shoes. He planned to stick with dancing, though, that was his one true passion. "My moms say it when they think we can't hear them. It's usually when they're on the phone for work. I used to think it was a bad word, but I've seen it on signs at the precinct. Spelled like grape without the G. I think it's part of their job, and it's a bad thing people do to hurt other people."

Whether to be relieved that he had a very generalized understanding of the crime or anxious about how much knowledge to add to it, Daphne couldn't decide. It wasn't her place to explain something that Amanda and Olivia hadn't deemed appropriate to teach their kids about yet. Hell, Daphne tried not to discuss the topic herself, and she was in her mid-thirties.

"It is something like that, yeah," she said, proceeding with the utmost caution. Now was not the time to be the fun-loving auntie or the friend with no filter. "An act of violence that really hurts people, and it's illegal. But I don't think your moms would be very happy with me if I told you much more than that, okay, big guy? They probably want to wait until you're a little older to explain it to you themselves."

Noah thought it over for a minute, the gears turning in that curly head of his, and finally acquiesced with a small nod. "Yeah, you're probably right. I bet they don't want to scare Jesse and Tilly by talking about it. Maybe I'll ask them about it when I'm in fourth grade. I should be old enough for big kid stuff by the time I learn to add and subtract fractions."

You couldn't argue with that logic, and Daphne was eager to change the subject before Jesse, the STEM whiz, decided to master the addition and subtraction of fractions to get some big kid treatment as well. Using the excuse that they needed to do a bit of last minute tidying, though the apartment was virtually spotless already, she rounded the kids up to plump pillows, brush off dog fur, nudge furniture into place, and pull themselves together. Hair fluffed, clothes smoothed, smiles on.

Everything short of pinching their cheeks to add a natural rouge, and she contemplated doing that too, when minutes went by with no sign of Amanda or Olivia. Something must be wrong if it was taking them this long to get from the garage, to the elevator, to the sixth floor and down a few doors till they reached E. She had the sinking feeling they were taking their time because of Olivia's injuries, and if she was hurt badly enough to be moving this slowly, she was worse off than Daphne had hoped.

Just as the kids and dogs were starting to get restless, and Daphne was getting vertigo boring holes into the front door with her eyes, willing it to open, the knob jiggled.

"Hamilton, stay," she said sharply, sending the doodle back to his bed in the living room, head hung in disappointment. He would get his turn greeting the women, but he was too excitable for a group reunion. She had her doubts about Frannie too, hence the reason she'd put the pittie's collar on, just in case the dog had to be dragged away from her owners. Gigi would be no problem, her manners impeccable and her instincts almost preternatural. If anyone knew what to do for Olivia—or not do, it would be the ever-faithful golden retriever.

Expecting pandemonium as her friends made their entrance, Daphne was thrown by what really happened: no one moved or said a word, both groups separated by an invisible line even Hamilton didn't try to cross. For a moment, they all simply stared at each other like a bunch of schoolchildren that had never met on the playground and didn't know who was friend or foe.

Olivia looked terrible, her face—normally the closest to perfection in tone and natural beauty that Daphne had ever seen, with or without makeup—a mottled mess of purple and yellow bruising, her hair in desperate need of a brush and shampoo. Daphne almost gasped aloud when she realized part of the reason it looked so ratty was because several inches had been cut off, the ends as frayed as sailing line sawed off with a dull blade. Once enviable and luxurious, the tattered locks hung dead at Olivia's shoulders, like the pelts of animals hunted for their plush fur. Somehow, when Amanda had mentioned the shorn locks, Daphne hadn't grasped the severity of that simple word "cut."

Swallowing her shock and the sour taste that rose with it, she gave an audible gulp that felt much louder than it probably was. No one else seemed to notice, not even the dogs, who were poised like English pointers with their snouts toward the new arrivals. Gigi lowered her head and whined, waiting for permission to approach her owners, waiting for the awful silence to be broken by human voices filled with the warmth and good humor to which she was no doubt accustomed.

She knew better than the rest of them that everything was different now. Dogs, they say, can sense a seismic shift before it occurs.

The first to break ranks was Jesse. She stepped forward, hesitating only a moment at the invisible barrier separating her from her mothers, then marched straight through it to stand in front of them. Ponytail swishing out behind her, hands on her hips, she resembled the Fearless Girl statue from Broad Street so closely that it might have been created in her likeness. She stamped her foot on the floor as if killing a skittering insect. "I'm mad, Mama," she announced with all the animus a six-year-old could muster. "I'm so damn mad right now."

Daphne held her breath, afraid to find out where this was going. Her friends encouraged their children to express themselves and their emotions freely, but this probably wasn't what they had in mind when they said, "Use your words." More than likely Jesse had heard that word and witnessed a similar declaration of outrage from Amanda, whose spitting image she was right then, head to toe. But the anger was a new development, as far as Daphne had seen, and she worried at whom it would be directed.

When she made to usher Jesse aside and distract her with whatever was handy—her purse! The little girl loved rooting through the bag, stealing any loose change, eating all the mints, and smearing entire tubes of lipstick around her mouth in lurid clown smiles—Amanda lightly waved off the intervention, bending down on one knee in front of her daughter. She kept hold of Olivia's hand, resting it against her shoulder. The nails were chipped, some down to the nub, and the cuticles were cracked and painful-looking.

That almost bothered Daphne more than Olivia's hair; the captain's nails were always neatly manicured, her hands so expressive and lovely. Now the knuckles were torn, deep bruising around the wrists in a distinctive straplike shape. She didn't need to be a cop or a crime scene analyst to guess what left those marks. There was an identical one encircling Olivia's neck, hazy at the edges, but no less recognizable. God, what had those monsters done to her?

"What's got you so fired up, little bit?" Amanda reached around and patted Jesse's back, the way mothers touched their children just for the contact. When she moved higher to stroke the girl's ponytail, her hand faltered and went still, flat. "You aren't mad at me or— us, are ya?" She looked back at Olivia, but caught herself just in time to avoid insinuating her wife was at fault for anything. The kids might not have caught it, but Daphne did. And if she did, so did Olivia.

"Huh-uh. I'm mad at the bad people who hurt Mommy and made her look like that. Nobody should ever hurt my mommy, 'cause she's the nicest, goodest mommy in the whole world and we gotta protect her, right, Mama?" Jesse let her arms go lax at her sides when Amanda urged them from their combative stance. She sounded as if she'd heard something similar from Amanda in the past, but her feelings were no less genuine. Her hands stayed balled into tiny fists, ready to fight. "If I was big like Wonder Woman, I wouldn't let anyone be mean to her or you."

At first Amanda didn't seem able to answer, but after a few false starts she put on a wan smile and said, "I know you wouldn't, honey. It upsets me too. Mommy shouldn't have had to go through that, not ever—" Her voice broke off there, a breathy conclusion replacing the rest, although Daphne heard that too:again. Olivia shouldn't have had to go through that ever again.

Cupping her hand to the back of Jesse's head, Amanda pulled the girl in for a kiss on the forehead. She stood quickly then, and urged Jesse toward Olivia, patting her back encouragingly. "Hug your mommy. And apologize for cussing. You got good reason, but we still don't talk like that in this house, y'hear? You kids get over here and give Mommy some hugs too. She needs lots of them. Gentle ones."

As the other children wandered over, Amanda sniffed and pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing viciously at the corners of her eyes. She was holding it together, but just barely. "C'mere, son," she said, tugging Noah into a tight embrace when the boy stood facing her, hands tucked awkwardly into his oversized pockets.

"Will it hurt?" Jesse gazed up at Olivia, arms outstretched but not wrapping around her mother until permission was granted. She looked extra small, waiting there with her arms open. She was used to adults coming down to her level or lifting her up to theirs, and right now it was doubtful Olivia could do either. Even standing appeared difficult for the captain, who was huddled around herself, similar to the kids Daphne saw in the courthouse during DV trials and foster cases. "We can do air hugs, like in the panda-demic, if you want."

"Pandemic," came Noah's muffled correction, from the inner harbor of Amanda's embrace.

"Your mommy doesn't want air hugs, Jesse Eileen," Amanda said, popping a kiss to the top of Noah's head. She gave him a light swat on the rear, sending him forth like a baseball coach psyching a player up for the field. Next she scooped up Matilda, holding the little girl so tightly Daphne feared she might break. Matilda was dainty as a little bird—a hummingbird or a goldfinch—and Amanda seemed to have forgotten her own call for gentleness. "Give her real ones, and don't go asking a bunch of questions. She's tired."

Jesse frowned back at Amanda, whom she clearly did not accept as an authority on the matter. "Mommy says I can ask all the questions I want about anything. That's why I'm the smartest in class." She reached for Olivia's hand, still clasped in Amanda's, the arm seesawing back and forth with every movement imposed upon it, and untwined their fingers. Now the keeper of her mother's hand, Jesse cupped it to her chest like a sacred thing, and guided Olivia to the nearest dining room chair. "You should sit down if you're tired, Mommy. Come on, Noah, help me."

It was unsettling to watch Olivia, the strongest, bravest woman Daphne had ever met, being led around by her children. She wore an oversized beige sweat suit that must have come from the hospital, because Amanda had on one identical to it. They looked like prisoners without the shackles, although Olivia's shuffling step and stilted movements suggested her chains just weren't visible to the naked eye. She let the kids pull out the chair for her, and gradually settled onto the cushion, Noah holding her elbow, Jesse with an arm around her waist and a steadying hand on her hip, as if she were genuinely lowering Olivia onto the seat.

"Thank you, loves," Olivia said by rote, and Daphne could hear why the captain hadn't spoken up sooner. Whenever Daphne's ex-girlfriend Bobbie, the former-child star turned struggling New York actor, had done voice work, she came home sounding just like that. The worst had been a play where she portrayed a murder victim—lots of screaming.

Similar to belting songs without a proper warm-up, the strain of such intense vocals caused temporary, if not permanent, damage to the throat, resulting in hoarseness, soreness, and that telltale scraping sound. Part nails on a chalkboard, part broken glass, part asthmatic wheeze. Daphne cringed inwardly, thinking of all the times she'd gushed to Amanda about the sexy rasp in her wife's voice.

Not anymore. Maybe not ever again.

"Do you need a blanket?" Jesse petted Olivia's arm from the elbow to the cuff of her sweatshirt. She stopped short at the ligature mark on the wrist, but skipped over it without remarking, thank God. Instead, she patted Olivia's hand like she was patting her baby sister's back after a feeding. "You feel cold. I always feel better with a blanket when I'm sick."

"She's not sick, she's hurt," said Noah. He stood at his mother's side, a hand resting on her shoulder. When the shorn ends of her hair grazed his fingers, he slowly withdrew and slid them into his pocket. He couldn't look away from the short, jagged strands, and Daphne wondered if he had ever even seen Olivia with anything but long, lovely hair. If he had, it was before Daphne had met her, and probably not a clear memory for someone so young. For any of the kids.

A muscle twitched in Olivia's face, almost a wince, as she registered what her son had said. For better or for worse, it seemed to bring her out of the fog she was drifting through. She glanced around the room as if she were seeing everyone there for the first time, and there was a moment of warmth, of seeing friends and family all together in one place. A brief glimpse of the loving captain, wife, mother, friend they all knew.

The switch flicked again, and she averted her eyes, shrinking into herself. She was like a captive emerging from a dark cell, overwhelmed by the light and the freedom so longed for in the shadows. "I'm okay," she said to Noah, gazing past his shoulder rather than into his concerned face. She compensated by ruffling his curls, giving him a side hug, but she wasn't fooling anyone. Nothing about this was okay. "Just kind of banged up. I won't look so bad in a few days."

"You look okay to me. I like your clothes, they're like jammies." Jesse played with the hem of Olivia's sweatshirt, weaving it around her small fingers. "You and Mama are twinning. I'm gonna hug you now, but not too tight." True to her word, the little girl wrapped both arms around Olivia and leaned into her chest, no squeezing, only love. She might be a scrappy one who practically kept up with Daphne when they sparred, but that kid was all heart.

As for Daphne's heart, it skipped a beat when, at first, Olivia didn't react to the hug at all. Arms open at her sides, head hung low, it looked like she had just been doused in ice water, her body stiff with shock and the unpleasantness of sopping wet clothes. She was Carrie at the prom with the pig's blood, desperate to crawl out of her own soiled skin. Daphne glanced anxiously at Amanda, wondering if they should step in, but Olivia finally cocooned herself around Jesse, as if shielding her from a bomb blast. She hooked an arm around Noah's waist, tugging him into the little huddle, and the boy responded without hesitation, sheltering his mother and sister under his small but sturdy frame.

They clung together for several moments like wartime refugees about to be torn away from each other, no idea when or if they would ever be reunited. Even Jesse, the chatterbox and wiggle worm of the group, said nothing. At six years old, she understood there were no words for what had happened. Only the deepest sorrow, only the spellbound silence that accompanied profound loss, when the earth stood still and time had no meaning.

Discovering Meredith Ashton's mutilated body on the kitchen floor of that lodge in the Catskills had felt a bit like this. Now Olivia was the mutilated body, and in a way, she had been killed too.

The hug might have gone on indefinitely if Olivia hadn't suddenly gasped, sat bolt upright, and looked frantically around the room. "Oh my God, where's the baby? Where is Samantha? Why don't I hear her?"

It didn't occur to Daphne until then that she hadn't said a word to either of her friends since they walked through the front door. She was still frozen there beside the table, a death grip on Frannie's collar, though the pit had mostly given up tugging and sat whining at her feet. Gigi lay with her head on her front paws, also whining; and little by little, Hamilton was doing an army crawl toward the humans, his tail thwapping the floor. It sounded like a rapid heartbeat in the open-concept apartment.

"She's asleep in her swing, Liv," Daphne said, gesturing to the living room and the Fisher-Price swing that ticked steadily with each pass. A mobile of spotted puppy dogs spun automatically overhead, but Sammie was conked out, drooling on her shoulder, and didn't see it. Awake, the baby was usually more interested in the activities of her brother and sisters and the real pups, anyway. "See, she's right there? Snug as a bug. I fed her not too long ago, so she's good to go for a while."

Olivia struggled to turn and look at her youngest child, grimacing with every movement, but she held the awkward posture for quite a few seconds, eyes locked on the baby. They all gazed at Sammie then, as if expecting her to break the awful silence with a coo, a gurgle, a deep theological insight—anything but the unease that saturated the room, so even the dogs felt it. Hamilton had spotted Daphne's warning gesture to stay back and retreated to his blanket.

"She looks so much smaller than I remember." Olivia sounded far away, drifting somewhere out in the atmosphere. She barely had form anymore herself, what had once been her solid, vital presence now dispersed like a fine mist. Daphne longed to catch the scattering pieces and put her back together, restoring their beloved captain, saving her from total disintegration. If she kept on like this, soon there would be nothing left. "I thought she'd be bigger by now . . . "

"It's only been a few days, darlin'," Amanda said gently, though she gazed at their daughter with the same sadness and uncertainty. Since Samantha's birth, Daphne hadn't seen one or the other of her friends without the baby in their arms. Neither of them made a move toward the swing now, though, despite the long separation. Whether their expressions were of reverence or fear, it was impossible to tell. "I doubt she did much growing in that short a time. This little lug, on the other hand."

Amanda jounced Matilda lightly in her arms, pretending she was a hefty weight instead of teacup sized. "Regular Thumbelina, ain't ya, punkin?" She curled her lips around her teeth and chomped them at Matilda's neck, a playful trick that usually got them both giggling. It worked on all the kids—and Olivia, too—making them scrunch their shoulders and try to dodge Amanda's tickly love nibbles, but this time the tiny redhead pushed on her mother's chest, putting her at arm's length, well out of biting distance.

"Huh-uh, Mama. No more." Tilly shook her head gravely, and it was the closest thing to defiance Daphne had ever witnessed from the three-year-old. Not even defiance, but an adultlike declination of fun and laughter. Coming from a little girl who seldom wore anything but the brightest of smiles, it was disheartening.

Indeed, Amanda's spirits visibly sank, the glimmer of silliness gone in an instant. She looked paler, her hair lanker, than just a moment before, as if it had taken all her energy just to put on the happy front for a couple of seconds. The baggy beige sweats made her appear diminished in size as well. She was fading out right before Daphne's eyes.

"Sorry, Tills," Amanda said, failing to mask her dejected tone. She kissed the girl's freckled cheek in tender apology, nuzzling her curls when she didn't shrink away again. Tilly had clung to her mother after the kidnapping attempt, and it had taken quite a bit of coaxing to get her to return home with Daphne and the baby. Now her timidness had returned, and she chewed on her thumb while staring at Amanda, dark blue eyes wide as saucers.

Nodding in Olivia's direction, Amanda put on a falsely upbeat voice that belied her desperation, and said, "Bet I know who you been waiting to see. I know she sure missed her li'l pumpkinbelly too. Come on, let's go say hi to your mommy and give her some of those big lovins you're so good at." She started for the chair where Olivia sat, but as soon as she tried to deposit Tilly onto the captain's lap, the little girl twisted around in Amanda's arms and threw a stranglehold around her neck.

"Till— " Amanda cut herself off, equal parts stunned and short of breath. Her gentlest and most well-mannered child was actively throttling her. "Matilda. Cut it out, I can't bre— Hey! Matilda, no. Now, you stop that. You're gonna hurt your mommy's feelings. And my neck." She patted Tilly's slender arms, first trying for gentle, soothing extraction. When that failed, she prized the child bodily from her, gritting her teeth and swearing under her breath.

Daphne had never witnessed Amanda losing her temper with one of the kids, although she was aware her friend had a short fuse and she had been on the receiving end a time or two. But more surprising than Amanda's reaction was Olivia's: normally the first to jump to her children's defense, even if they deserved to be scolded, she sat watching the current scene unfold like a bystander, no say in the outcome either way.

When the child finally landed in her lap, Olivia gazed sorrowfully down at her as if viewing a puppy behind a pet store window. Something longed for, but beyond her reach. A darling creature she couldn't touch. "Hi, sweet girl," she whispered, so tentative she might have been a frightened little girl herself. It broke Daphne's heart, but she wasn't the only one fighting back tears. Amanda turned her head aside, blinking fiercely, swiping her nose across the shoulder of her sweatshirt.

Matilda glanced back and forth between her mothers, still mouthing the thumb hooked inside her cheek, like a fish on a lure. Daphne had never known the girl to be a thumb-sucker or a nervous chewer. The way things were going, they could all probably use something to gnaw on. Daphne felt the long-dead urge to bite her fingernails, a habit she had kicked as a teenager, upon discovering fashion, cosmetics, and proper nail care.

After a long hesitation, gazing around at each of the faces that looked back at her in expectation, Matilda cranked her wrist up and down, waving the fingers not secured in her mouth. "Hi, Mommy," she whispered to Olivia, as if it were a secret. "I misseded you. We played Landy Cand. Aunt Daphy threw poop at us."

Of course the clearest thing to come out of the child's mouth was that charming and deeply unspecific nugget. It was true—Daphne had engaged in a game of hot potato with one of Sammie's stinky diapers at changing time the other day—but taken out of context, it sounded rather untoward. "Wrapped up tight in a Pampers, not just brazen feces flinging like a chimp at the zoo," Daphne hastened to add, but no one was really listening. She was glad of it. Her cute and quippy one-liners were painfully out of place at the moment.

"You love Candy Land, don't you, baby?" Olivia ventured a touch to Matilda's springy curls, smoothing them against her head, behind the tiny shell of one ear. She turned her hand inward, stroking the curve of one cinnamon-and-cream cheek with her knuckles. It looked as though she were memorizing every contour, every freckle and ivory-inch, of her daughter's sweet face. Usually it was a practice reserved for emotional goodbyes or involuntary separations. For loss of eyesight or loss of memory, when the mind had faded but the body remembered.

Tilly nodded, and with the hand not in her mouth, she mirrored her mother's movements, caressing Olivia's face with the utmost care. She avoided the bruises, tracing her tiny fingers around them like she was skirting lily pads in a pond, making ripples that could have an effect none of them would live to see. The chaos theory didn't explain this tragedy, though. What minor agitation out there in the universe could possibly have led to this?

"Not Mommy hair," said Matilda, gliding her hand over the lifeless strands of Olivia's remaining hair without touching it. She drew back from the shortened ends and shook her head so adamantly her entire body twisted with it. Then she began to cry. "No, Mommy, I don't like it. Hurts you. Make it go bye bye."

The anguish in the little girl's voice, and in Olivia's face as she held her daughter and cried, apologizing for her mangled hair, was almost too much to bear. Daphne bit her lip and swiped away the tears that escaped, even when she nearly drew blood. There was a deep split in Olivia's bottom lip, and Daphne was willing to bet that hurt a lot worse than anything she was inflicting upon herself. She'd been bedridden for weeks with the two broken legs, and she had still never been as broken down in body and spirit as her friend was now.

"Mommy's hair will grow back, Tills," Amanda was saying, barely holding it together herself. She rubbed Matilda's back, her other hand behind Olivia, doing the same. Standing above them, casting down that empathetic look, she resembled a guardian angel in a religious work of art, guiding home a pair of lost children. "You just gotta give it a while, okay? By the time Jesse's birthday gets here, Mommy's hair will be long again."

Daphne did the math. Jesse's birthday was on Thanksgiving. The hair might very well be on the longer side by then, but there was no way Olivia could grow it out to its previous length in six months. But the kids didn't need to know that. Soon enough they would adjust to the shorter crop and probably come to consider it "Mommy hair" too. Poor Matilda just couldn't comprehend that, or the time required for regrowth, which might as well be decades to a three-year-old.

"I like it short," Jesse announced, mirroring Amanda almost exactly as she stood guard on the other side of Olivia, dutifully petting her shoulder. She was like a miniature goalie, ready to field any questions or critical comments and hurl them back at her opponents. No one would dare cross the captain on Jesse Rollins-Benson's watch. "It's like Mulan's hair, Tilly. 'Member? When she cuts it off with her sword to go fight the Huns. Mommy's ready for battle now, that's all."

There was no way the little girl could know just how close she was to the truth with that scenario, but Daphne sensed a collective holding of their breath among the adults in the room. Maybe even Noah, who lingered beside his mother and younger sister, and had watched with growing dismay as they both broke down in tears. He looked as awkward and uncomfortable as a teenaged boy right then, balancing on the sides of his Vans, hands in his pockets.

Honestly, Daphne didn't feel much different. Her old standby of cracking a joke to break the ice would get her nowhere now, and no words were adequate to express her sympathy or the terrible sadness she felt on behalf of her best friends. No, even more than that—they were her family. They had entrusted one of their children to her care, should anything awful befall them. Well, something awful had. Family should know what to say to family at a time like this.

"Did you . . . you sworded it?" Tilly asked, studying the snarled ends of Olivia's hair. Warily she grazed her palm underneath, as if seeing snow fall for the first time and reaching out to catch the powdery flakes. The brief crying jag had given her the hiccups, and her chest hitched every few seconds, accompanied by a sound like a squeaker toy. "To fight the Hums?"

The questions must have been hitting too close to home for Amanda, who scooped up Matilda from her mother's lap before an answer could be given. "Okay, guys, enough with the third degree," she said, and kissed the little girl soundly on the ear. Bending at the waist, she lowered Matilda to the floor, making sure she had her footing, but only just. She doled out more kisses to the top of each child's head, and didn't see her mistake until she had almost closed the circuit.

After Jesse's towhead came Olivia's, dark and disordered as an ink scribble. Normally, Amanda would plant a kiss there too, treating her wife as one of the brood—Daphne had watched her do it a thousand times before. This time she hesitated noticeably, then pressed her lips to Olivia's forehead without puckering them or making the loud smacking noise she used on the kids. When she started to ease off, Olivia caught her around the waist and hugged her close, face buried against Amanda's abdomen.

The captain was crying again, her shuddering frame the only outward indication of how vehement were her tears. She shed them in utter silence, under Amanda's arbor, but they were deafening in the small dining room. Daphne longed to cover her ears, or to say something, anything, to undo the horrible hush that hung over them like a curse. She was beginning to wonder if she—any of them—had a voice left at all, when Gigi finally couldn't hold back any longer.

With a distressed little yip, the golden sprang for her owners, nosing her snout in between them, her tail slapping the kids' across their legs, chests, and faces. An obedient dog with near-human intelligence, to be sure, but her master needed her. It was a duty she would fulfill, even if it got her scolded. Frannie Mae, who couldn't care less about punishment, ignored Daphne's protests and joined her sister. Unable to fit her head into the same space as Gigi's, she opted for throwing her weight against the women's legs, head and tongue lolling.

"Fran, Geeg," Daphne said in a stage whisper, snapping her fingers at the dogs. Neither paid her any mind, basking in whatever affection their owners bestowed on their furry heads, but miraculously, Hamilton did not flout her authority as usual. He heeded her warning look and plopped his curly rump back down on his big pillow. If they had been at home, he probably would have launched himself into the fray with his canine pals.

"It's okay, Daph. They're just saying hi." Amanda scratched the dogs' heads one at a time, though she did shoo them back from trying to lick Olivia's downturned face. "They missed their mommy too, didn't you, guys? Huh? Okay, now you've said hello, that's enough. Get. Hey, Noah, could you—"

Without waiting for the rest, Noah set to work rounding the dogs up by their collars. He met with resistance from both, although Gigi was, for once, the more difficult of the two. She refused to budge until Olivia stroked her muzzle and murmured, "Go on, girl." Snuffling her displeasure, she allowed Noah to lead her into the living room, where Hamilton wiggled and pranced in anticipation of his playmates' return.

They were in danger of slipping into another uncomfortable silence as they all waited—for Noah's return; for someone else to speak; for the bad dream to end, breaking the speechless curse they succumbed to every few minutes—and Daphne couldn't let it happen again. Not while her friends were struggling to regain their composure, the children gazing on in wonder to see their mommies behaving so abnormally. Matilda's eyes were still full of tears that threatened to spill over at the least provocation, and nothing but a science experiment, math equation, or joke about bodily functions had ever held Jesse's attention for quite so long.

"I know a great stylist whose number I can give you," Daphne blurted, inwardly cringing as soon as she heard herself. She had a feeling any subject she chose would have sounded too crass, and so she pressed on, ignoring her inner critic. Her friends knew she wanted only what was best for them; whatever else had changed in these last few days, that hadn't. "She's the one who cut my hair when I decided to go shorter. She'll get you evened right out, Liv. Once you feel up to it, I mean. No rush."

The hollowness in Olivia's eyes, her ghastly, bruised face, was terrible to behold, but Daphne maintained her smile. She would be damned if she'd let on how difficult it was to look at the captain and not imagine the atrocities that were done to her. Olivia dealt with cases like that every day—women who had been through the worst degradations life had to offer—and she never wavered, never put her own feelings before theirs. Never had to look away.

It was one of the many qualities Daphne loved and admired about her friend, and she wanted to repay it in kind. If only she could stop shaking.

"Thank you." Olivia said the words out loud, but they had such little vitality they appeared mouthed. She put a hand to her throat as if she were quelling blood flow, the way people in slasher flicks did when their throat got cut. Almost at once, she withdrew the hand like she could feel the ring of bruises around her neck with her fingertips. "Appreciate that."

"Yeah, Daph, thanks," Amanda echoed, and at first it was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic or not. She'd been so on edge since Sunday morning (who could blame her?), everything came out slightly sharp. But she followed up the remark with the faintest of smiles, suggesting she actually meant it. "Although, how you could go any shorter is beyond me."

Poking fun at Daphne's height was a favorite pastime of Amanda's, and Daphne took it as a very good sign that her friend might someday return to the snarky, wisecracking tough-girl she knew and loved. Someday.

Before Daphne got the chance to respond, Noah surprised them all by returning with his baby sister in his arms. She was still half-asleep, eyes rolling behind slowly blinking lids, her tiny mouth hanging open like she was shocked to find herself in the room too. Groggy babies bore an uncanny resemblance to drunk people, Daphne noted, but kept the observation quiet. Noah had an announcement of his own to make.

"Sammie really missed you," said the boy, standing next to Olivia but hardly looking up from the baby's face. When he did, it was only for a peek out from beneath his voluminous curls. He was always a bit soft-spoken, a little shy, although that didn't seem to extend to his mothers—until now. As the oldest, and the only boy, he was about to take on a whole new set of responsibilities. Did he know his childhood was ending? Did they? "She was worried you weren't coming back. I told her you would. Here."

Without waiting for Olivia or anyone else to object, Noah leaned over and placed the baby in her arms. He had become such a little pro at passing his sister around, remembering to support her head and ease away gently, she barely stirred as he slid his arms free. He stood back and looked at Olivia head-on now, as if examining her cradling technique, the way he'd needed to be supervised at first.

For several uncomfortable beats, it almost looked as if shehadforgotten how to hold her daughter. Her posture had gone stiff and unnatural, and she didn't instinctively draw Samantha against her, but rather, kept the sleeping bundle away from her body, like the blanket was dripping wet on her dry clothes. Gradually she let both arms relax somewhat, settling Samantha into the alcove of her breasts and inner elbow. Perhaps the baby caught the scent of her long-awaited mommy, because she chose that moment to open her eyes and gaze up at Olivia in awe.

"I'm here, sweetheart," Olivia whispered, fewer breaks in her voice when she didn't raise it. She kissed the pad of her thumb and touched it to Sammie's chin, her hand lacking the steadiness of her words. Daphne had an agoraphobic aunt who shook like that any time she got near a door that opened to the outside world. In the middle of her living room, shades drawn, she was perfectly fine.

Where was that center of safety when your own body was the battleground?

"I'm sorry it took so long. We won't ever leave you like that again." Olivia looked to Amanda, and though the setup for the question was rhetorical, she sounded as if she were really asking, "Will we, Mama?"

Each of the children, save the youngest, turned to Amanda for her answer. At the axis was Olivia, uncertain as the rest, doubting the security of home and family even while she was in it. Amanda started to speak, but nothing came out. She pressed her lips together firmly, and nodded, instead. She kept trying to stick her hands in pockets that weren't there.

"Uh, no," she finally managed, shakily, "we sure won't." Her resolve strengthened, jaw tightening, as she gazed at the kids in turn, ending on Olivia and the baby in her arms. "I'll do my damnedest to make sure of it. No one's ever gonna try to tear us apart like that again, I swear to God. On my life I swear it."

There was no reaction to the cursing, not even by Jesse, who was always eager to point out when an adult slipped up. But she and her siblings must have intuited that there was another level to the conversation they weren't in tune with, a frequency only adults could hear. Perhaps infants could as well—hadn't someone said that babies were born knowing everything, but forgot it as they grew?—because Samantha thrust a pudgy fist into the air and yowled in protest.

Something about the promise didn't sit right with the littlest Rollins-Benson, or so it seemed.

"Oh," Olivia uttered, as if it were a new development, her baby crying. She sat forward in the chair, poised to stand up but finding no leverage or energy to do so. She could barely bounce the little girl without wincing, her arms lacked so much strength. The best she managed was to prop Samantha higher against her chest and rock her own body slightly side to side. "Don't cry, honey. Please don't cry. I know I don't smell or look like Mommy right now, but I will again soon, shh."

She continued murmuring to the baby, everyone ready to intervene but not sure if they should, until her patience ran out. No longer than a few seconds, when, before, she hardly ever lost her cool with the children. At least not that Daphne had ever seen. "You have to take her, I can't . . . Amanda, please take her." The switch came on so suddenly, there was a lag before anyone realized it wasn't part of her comforting technique for Samantha.

Her distress hadn't quite reached full magnitude, but it amplified the baby's, and by the time Amanda scooped her up, Samantha was wailing at the top of her lungs. Used to the immediate gratification of being the youngest in a large family—all of whom cherished her and spoiled her rotten, Daphne included—the wait was too long. Red-faced, outraged, Sammie Grace said to hell with her middle name and her mothers' nerves. She flailed her plump little arms, fingers splayed and snagging Amanda's loose hair, pulling.

"sh*t, ow," Amanda hissed. She freed herself relatively quickly, though a few flaxen strands drifted like cobwebs from Samantha's fingers. The baby seemed disappointed with the sacrifice and writhed so vehemently it was a wonder Amanda could hold onto her. After all, she was her mother's daughter.

The detective did appear to be struggling, glancing down at the front of her sweatshirt, Samantha at arm's length. Daphne couldn't figure out why until she spotted the blotches forming on Amanda's chest, faint but expanding a little at a time, getting darker as the sweatshirt soaked up more of the milk. Before, they had laughed when that happened, one or other of them cracking a joke about milk cows, Milk Duds, the Milky Way—or, if Olivia wasn't nearby, a lewd remark about possible uses in the bedroom for what Daphne had lovingly dubbed "the one-woman freak show."

"Um, why don't I take her while you . . . yeah," Daphne said, about to point out the wet spots, but tapering off at an ambiguous gesture. The children were well-educated on breastfeeding ("You got to make her think it's Mama and Mommy's nipple, Aunt Daphy," had been Jesse's expert advice during Daphne's first attempt at bottle feeding. "It taste-es better to her that way.") and Amanda didn't embarrass easily, but there was no sense in making an already uncomfortable situation even worse.

Looking grateful, Amanda walked the outstretched infant straight to Daphne, as if Sammie were being propelled toward her. That did not suit Samantha at all, and she amped up the screaming when she landed in Daphne's arms. It was so loud Olivia could barely be heard muttering to herself, "She's afraid of me. It's my fault, she's a-afraid of me. She— she doesn't even know wh-who I am." The captain's head was bowed, shaking back and forth, her hands clamped to the sides of the chair like she was on a thrill ride, hanging on for dear life. If she didn't get her breathing under control, she was going to hyperventilate.

Amanda did an about-face and went back to Olivia, dropping to her knees beside the chair. She had to pry one of her wife's hands loose just to hold it. "Yes, she does. She knows you're her mama, darlin'. She probably just senses that you're hurt. Or she's hungry, or gassy, or whatever else makes babies scream like that—"

"Uh-uh, Mama," Jesse said above the din, "she ain't hungry. Aunt Daph already fed her. And she farted a whole bunch this morning."

"Shut up, stupid-o." Noah jabbed the back of Jesse's shoulder to make her stop talking. He seldom mistreated his little sisters—in fact, he stuck up for them most of the time—but his boyishly pretty face was twisted up in anguish at the sight of his mother falling apart, the other trying to hold her together. Younger siblings were the easiest target when you had nowhere else to unleash big feelings, Daphne knew that from experience. "No one asked you."

"Ow! Mommy, Noah poked my shoulder and called me a stupid-o!" Jesse turned and socked Noah a good one on the arm. It looked like it hurt, and indeed, the boy rubbed at the spot, wincing. The retaliation was a surprise, even more so than Noah picking on Jesse; she defended all of her siblings fiercely, including Noah, who never had to worry about being bullied for his love of dance with her by his side.

"No!" Matilda cried, taking her finger out of her mouth to shake it at the older children. The most good-natured of the bunch, she rarely got upset, let alone shouted at her brother and sister. She pressed both hands against her ears and twisted side to side in a vehement, full body head shake. "No, no, no, no!"

Red-hot fury rolled off of Amanda in a wave that swept over them all as she shot to her feet and bellowed, "Everybody shut the hell up! What the f*ck is wrong with you? Can't you see what you're doing to her? Can't y'all just be good and listen for one goddamn second? I need you to just— I need you to . . . " Slowly losing steam as she came back to herself, she gazed around at each of the stunned faces staring back at her. The ranting, red-faced woman was replaced by a pale, stringy-haired ghost, who looked every bit as gaunt and forlorn as you would expect from one recently dead.

At the sound of her mother's angry outburst, Samantha had actually quieted, taking the odd stuttering breath but no longer releasing it in an ear-splitting scream. The other kids were quiet too, though Tilly's chest kept hitching and Jesse sniffed like her feelings were hurt. Noah had crossed his arms, trying to be tough, but he just looked frightened and defensive. There had been some oppositional problems between him and Amanda in the past, but as far as Daphne could tell, those had long since been resolved.

Just when they seemed about to return full-force, Noah let both arms drop to his sides, nearly as defeated as Amanda herself. "I'm sorry, Mama and Mommy," he said in a voice small and soft enough to belong to his little sister, Tilly. He had a gentle spirit for an eight-year-old boy, and it was easy to imagine him growing into a sensitive, artistic young man who danced and painted and loved with his whole heart, the way his mothers did. He was about to get a crash course in the selflessness and understanding it took to love that unconditionally. "I didn't mean that. You're not a stupid-o, Jess."

"I know I'm not." Jesse huffed at the insinuation that she might have believed the insult, but she wasn't as hard-nosed as she let on, either. Underneath the sassy six-year-old veneer beat the heart of a true Rollins-Benson, fiercely loyal, deeply compassionate. She had her mama's quick temper and her mommy's willingness to forgive. "I'm sorry too. Is your arm okay?" To her younger sister, whose twilight-blue eyes were wide and alert for further signs of the family drama to which she was so unaccustomed, Jesse added, "Sorry, sissy, I won't hit big bubby no more."

"Okay." Matilda looked to their brother for confirmation.

"I'm okay. Didn't hurt." He was clearly downplaying the punch, his hand wrapped around his small bicep, but it was good enough acting for a three-year-old. Matilda accepted the white lie—"Okay, bubby"—and all three children exchanged uneasy smiles before turning them on their parents.

They always said kids were more resilient than adults, and it proved accurate right then, with the little ones making the effort to restore peace while Olivia and Amanda floundered, still in shock from their respective meltdowns. Olivia had yet to catch her breath, a hand on her heaving chest; and Amanda—well, the best description for her that came to Daphne's mind was torn. Torn between taking care of her wife and her children, torn between staying strong and falling completely apart, torn by the reality she was in and the horror she'd lived through during Olivia's abduction.

In the end, she went to Olivia and, kneeling in front of her, took several deep, calming breaths, guiding her through each inhale, hold, and exhale. When the threat of hyperventilation passed and Olivia could be touched without flinching away, Amanda helped her to her feet, the captain's arm slung around her shoulders for support. Amanda motioned the kids back when they tried to assist, but she waved them forward to hug Olivia about the waist and the legs once she was steady.

"Where's she going?" Jesse asked, ever suspicious.

"Mommy, hold me." Matilda released Olivia's legs and stretched up her arms, waiting for a lift.

"Mommy needs to rest," Amanda said, nodding for the kids to let them pass. She patted Matilda aside, steering her in Noah's direction when the little girl didn't willingly move. "I'm just putting her to bed for a bit, she's not going anywhere. She'll hold you when she's feeling better, Tillybilly. Won't you, sweetie?"

Olivia gave an automatic and distracted hum of agreement, as if she hadn't really heard. But before she was led into the hallway that connected the family's bedrooms, like the honeycombs in a beehive, she gazed back over her shoulder with profound sadness. "It's not your fault," she said to the children, stair-stepped together, watching after her like she was being led away to execution. Her hair was worse in the back than in front. "None of this is your fault."

Urging her wife on, Amanda signaled at the dogs as they passed by the living room. "Gigi, come. Frannie, you stay there."

As soon as the women disappeared into their bedroom, the golden retriever in tow, Jesse turned to Daphne with a question: "When will Mommy feel better, Aunt Daph?" Her brother and sister looked on with the same serious faces, the good humor that had made it easier to keep them happy and distracted the past several days now gone. Olivia was right—they looked bigger, older.

In Daphne's arms baby Samantha had started to drowse again, the pink-veined skin of her eyelids reminding Daphne of a featherless baby bird, blind and without flight. Sometimes there were no good answers, just lies you hoped came true. "Soon, munchkins. She'll be back in business before you know it. Hey, how about some Go Fish while we wait on your mama?"

Language was strange and cumbersome to the golden retriever, who wished her human family could communicate in the dog ways, but she did understand many of the word sounds they made to her:Gigi (her self sound, it tickled her ears more than all the others), sit, stay, bed, potty, park, no, and so on.

Most dogs didn't know half as many word sounds as she did. Her sister-animal Frannie, for instance, recognized several of the Good sounds (park,play,treat,go get it,McDonald's) and a few of the Bad ones (no,down,bath,what in Sam Hill . . .), but she only understood how isolated sounds connected to a specific thing, not how all of the sounds went together. Their friend-animal Hamilton was even less skilled at figuring out what the humans wanted or needed.

What they lacked, and what Gigi had excelled at since she was just a whelp, was the ability to listen to body words. Human body words were different from dogs', and even different from the word sounds they made. Lots of times they made a sound that didn't match up with their body words. Like when Olivia said she felt fine, but Gigi could smell the sad on her, heavy and musty as an old overcoat. The basem*nt of Gigi's first home had smelled like that when it rained, and on the night the Bad Man trapped her down there while he made her masters bad sleep. Humans didn't wake up from bad sleep, they were just gone.

The thing a lot of other dogs didn't get was that body words each had their own smell, and to complicate matters even more, there were types of smelling that didn't involve the nose at all. There was hear-smell, see-smell, brain-smell, lick-smell, and a host of others Gigi used on instinct. You were either born with it, or you went through life ignoring your humans' sounds and getting scolded.

Fortunately, Gigi was born with it, and in Olivia she had found the closest thing to a human being with her level of instinct as any dog could hope to come across. Olivia knew about body words and brain-smell, and she came home almost every day with an aura Gigi could see-smell from expending so much energy on other humans. Gigi always tried to stick beside her master on those days, sharing some of the spirit energy that had been lost. She had plenty to spare, and sometimes she worried Olivia would run out entirely.

Her heart word for Olivia was Love.

And now something was bad wrong. Not only had Olivia's body words changed, but her scent was so altered that Gigi barely recognized it. The baby had smelled it too, except her senses weren't as keen as Gigi's, and she hadn't been able to find her mother's scent under all the hurt. Hurt smelled like leaves burning in the fall, something hot and a bit rotten smoldering under the skin. Usually, Gigi was able to sniff out where most of the hurt came from, whether from one or multiple sources.

This time the hurt wafted off Olivia from everywhere. Gigi couldn't find a single point where it ended or began, although certain areas were worse than others. The neck was bad and some of the ribs were broken, grating inside of Olivia's torso like twigs and tree branches during the harvest time, when the moon was very bright. Her shoulder wasn't injured like it had been by the Bad Man, but her arms were weak, the muscles so strained they practically sang out to Gigi.

She was hurt in the female places too, like Amanda had been after Samantha was born. But there was no new baby to show for it, and Gigi knew for certain that Olivia had not been carrying a child. Amanda had the mother-smell when she was carrying, and even afterward there was a sweetness to her pain, a scent of warm milk and fresh-cut grass, that Gigi associated with happiness and love.

The smell on Olivia was not happy or love; it was crouching scared, shivering fur that shouted like the rabbits Gigi used to chase in Woods Home. Rabbits couldn't brain-smell, at least not in the dog ways, and didn't understand she only wanted to play, not rip and tear to make blood food.

Wolves ate blood food. There were wolves in Olivia's world too, and they ripped and tore at other humans instead of rabbits. The Bad Man, the self sounds Olivia made in her sleep (Serena, Daddy, Lewis, Calvin, Elliot), the girl-stranger who shot Amanda, the man-stranger who had tried to take Matilda a few days ago—they were the wolves, though they looked like regular people. Gigi tried to sniff them out before they got near her family, but sometimes she was too late.

Sometimes the wolves got in and you couldn't stop them.

Gently Gigi leapt onto the bed when Amanda signaled that it was all right. Amanda was Alpha in their home, at least when it came to protecting the family and fighting anyone who threatened it, and Gigi trusted her to do what was best for Olivia. She and Amanda were a lot alike in that way—their loyalty and love for the woman who had saved them, taken them in, given them home and family. Now Olivia needed them to take care of her and give her that same safe place she'd given them.

"Good girl," Amanda said, patting Gigi on the rump as she settled in next to Olivia. Gigi avoided resting her chin on Olivia's belly as she normally would, since much of the hurt originated there. Instead, she lay alongside her master, her head at hip level, close enough that snout and ears could be rubbed without reaching. She had often felt Olivia's body words go from tight and anxious to loose and relaxed with each stroke of her fur. Not only that, but it felt good to Gigi too. Her calm helped calm Olivia.

She nuzzled the woman's hand when it didn't immediately start petting. It came to life like a small creature awakened by Gigi nosing into its burrow, but it didn't massage her muzzle or make her ears do floppy dances, it just dropped to rest on top of her head, still as bad sleep. Her first family's hands did that after the Bad Man, only theirs were covered in blood that hurt-smelled. Olivia and Amanda had tried to drag her away from the bloody hurt-smell, to protect her from the Bad Man.

He'd gotten to her anyway. And so had the human wolves gotten to her master-friend, whose dreams and body words Gigi felt as strongly as she did in sleep: Gigi see-smelled human faces she didn't recognize, though they made mean word sounds at her, as if they knew her, hated her, wished her great harm. She always woke from those dreams to find Olivia smelling of anguish, which was salty like sweat and tears, but also giving off a subtle hint of unripe fruit. That was the way children smelled when they were afraid.

It had taken Gigi several of those strange awakenings to realize she was brain-smelling Olivia's dreams, and the unfamiliar faces belonged to Olivia's tormentors. The wolves in humans' clothing.

Gigi tucked her chin into the crook of Olivia's elbow and sighed. If she had the ability to make word sounds she would tell her friend she was sorry, that everything would be okay; but even the dog ways couldn't show that to Gigi for sure, and even if they had, she didn't have the language to express it.

Sad Love. That was her heart word for Olivia today. It smelled like summer raindrops, but weighed heavier on the golden's spirit than the worst of brewing storms.

. . .

Chapter 39: The Rose

Chapter Text

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun's love
In the spring becomes the rose

- Bette Milder, "The Rose"

Chapter 39.

The Rose

. . .

Her knee was throbbing as it often did when the forecast called for heavy rain. Or when she pushed herself too hard during a run. Last time that happened she had promised Olivia she would get it looked at by a doctor, but she never made the appointment. She was afraid of being told she needed surgery, and the toll that would take on her career, her body, her speed and agility. That all seemed so shallow and childish now. Why hadn't she just done as Olivia asked? Why couldn't she ever just shut up and get it right?

Whatever was causing the pain—the sky had been clear and bright, a beautiful spring day to bring her wife home from the hospital, and she hadn't run anywhere since recovering Olivia from the warehouse—Amanda welcomed it. It was deserved, and it was only a fraction of the pain Olivia was feeling. She couldn't even crawl into bed without Amanda's assistance, her body so weak and sore that their pillow-top mattress and plush comforter made her grimace as if she were lying down on concrete.

Most disturbing of all, at least to Amanda, was that Olivia made no attempts to remove her shoes. The captain hated street shoes on the bed. Once, she had stripped the entire bed, right down to the dust ruffle, and washed every piece of linen on it because Amanda had kicked off her Nikes too hard, accidentally landing them smack in the middle of the comforter. Now she curled onto her side, ankles crossed, the soles of her knock-off white Keds from the hospital mixed up with their clean dove gray sheets.

They hadn't finished making the bed that Saturday morning, a million years ago, when which bagel flavor everyone wanted was the most pressing subject on their minds. Amanda's side of the bed was still a rumpled mess, all co*ckeyed pillows and tossed covers; Olivia's side was tidier, though she must have gotten hot at some point and kicked aside her corner of the comforter, where it was currently bunched around her shoes.Think about all the filth we find at crime scenes and how much of that we track in just walking around the city, Olivia had said when Amanda teased her for being a clean freak.Now think about that—in our bed.

"Let's get these off for you," Amanda said softly, touching Olivia's ankle first, before lifting or removing anything. Her wife barely seemed aware of where she was, let alone what was on her feet. If Amanda started grabbing and tugging without warning, who knew the harm it might do.

As if proving Amanda's point, Olivia twitched at the sensation of fingers against her skin. It would have been imperceptible to the casual viewer, but Amanda felt it like a shock and had to force herself not to jerk back. "Your shoes, baby. I'm just going to take off your shoes so you'll be more comfortable. That okay?" She grazed her thumb back and forth underneath the cuff of the sweat pants, hoping to reintroduce skin to skin contact, no matter how slight, as soon as possible. They had to be able to touch each other. They had to.

"Um, yeah. Sorry, I didn't realize . . . " Without clarifying what she didn't realize, Olivia nodded for the shoes to come off. At the hospital she'd been adamant about not wanting socks on her painfully scuffed and cracked feet, despite the gauze dressing and the splinters that remained. Socks were too constrictive, she claimed, and the tearful edge in her voice had been enough to convince Amanda not to press.

Constrictive or not, having something besides the cheap insoles that felt like corkboard between bare feet and the stiff canvas shoes would have made removing the latter easier. Amanda undid the uneven laces and pulled at the tongue to loosen them more, but she still had to put some strength into peeling both tennis shoes off, wincing each time they didn't slide free smoothly. She dropped them on the floor and kicked them under the bed to be dealt with later.

"That's better," she said, as much to herself as to Olivia. It was the way you talked to a young child or a pet, letting them hear your voice and find comfort in your words, even when you weren't sure the words were right.

She eased Olivia's ankles back to the same position they had been in, trying not to fixate on how awful her feet looked. The rest of her body was covered in similar nicks, cuts and bruises, some far worse than others, and it wouldn't do either of them any good if Amanda kept brooding over each one she came across. They would never get out of this bedroom that way. Besides, somewhere out there was photographic evidence and actual video footage documenting every single injury Olivia had incurred during her ordeal. No need to commit anything to memory.

Trying to expel her dark thoughts, Amanda began fussing with the bedclothes, fluffing and refolding them even where it wasn't needed. She had the urge to tidy everything in the room all at once, putting things to right in hopes that they might stop feeling so terribly wrong. "Do you want the covers on or off?" she asked, drawing up the blanket before she got an answer. Severe hypothermia had been staved off at the hospital, and the fever probably burned away the rest, but Olivia still periodically shivered like she had a chill.

Without replying, or perhaps speaking too softly to be heard, Olivia nestled down into the bedding, her face nearly hidden by the puffy comforter. Her eyes were just visible over the top, and they searched Amanda's for a long time, until warmth and exhaustion set in and she turned drowsy, each blink heavier than the last. She was about to drift off when a thought occurred to Amanda.

"Oh, sh*t. Hey, Liv sweetie," Amanda half-whispered, checking the urge to pat or shake the comforter. A soft grumble from Gigi was warning enough, but she couldn't just let this one go, either. "You should eat something before you get to sleeping too deep. How 'bout I fix you something real quick? Egg and toast, maybe? Or I think we've got a can of chicken noodle soup. That and some crackers?"

Olivia shook her head, the rustling pillow louder than her response. "Not hungry. Tired."

"I know, baby, but . . . " Amanda fretted her bottom lip, glancing at Gigi as if waiting for the golden retriever to grant her permission to continue. The dog cared about Olivia's health, she should damn well be concerned about her diet as well. "You've barely eaten anything in, like, five days. You can't get better that way. Gotta eat something to get your strength back. Come on, let me heat up the soup for—"

"Ate at the hospital."

If three tiny bites of bread from a ham sandwich, a spoonful of applesauce, and one side of an Oreo cookie wafer—not all consumed at the same meal—could be called eating. Part of the problem was Olivia's shattered back molar, which caused her quite a bit of pain with chewing. But she also had a poor track record with food in general; that is, consuming enough of it to stay alive and conscious, especially when she was struggling emotionally. Without Amanda's gentle reminders, sometimes she just seemed to forget food existed.

And that tooth. Jesus, that was going to be a bitch getting taken care of. Amanda wanted to make the appointment as soon as possible, but there was no way Olivia could handle it right then, the state she was in. She hadn't liked anyone messing around in or near her mouth before this assault, how would she ever get through a dental procedure of any kind now? Or any kind of medical procedure, for that matter?

How would they get through anything?

"Hospital 'food' is a joke, e'rrbody knows that," Amanda said lightly, trying to press without making it obvious what she was doing. Olivia tended to push back when she caught on to that stuff. Or worse, she folded completely and Amanda ended up feeling like a control freak. As if she were relying on Olivia's history of abuse and manipulation to get her way. "'Sides, you hardly touched it, all that sleep you's getting. I bet you'd rest a lot better with something on your belly. Wouldn't she, Geeger?"

It was low, including the dog in her persuasion tactics, but if it kept Olivia from starving herself to death or resenting Amanda for hounding her about it, Amanda could live with that. She could live with anything, so long as Olivia wasn't suffering. "That's right, hooman," she narrated in a goofy high-pitched voice, more Mickey Mouse than noble Gigi. She gently pinched the dog's snout a few times, creating the illusion her lips were moving. "I always sleep better on a full stomach myself, O wise master number two."

The lame bit of puppetry didn't earn so much as a smile from Olivia, and Gigi sighed and moved her head in the opposite direction, muzzle tucked safely between Olivia's arm and side. They usually laughed when one of the dogs rejected their affection or humor. Amanda had always reasoned that they would be okay, as long as she could keep making her wife laugh.

"I can't eat right now." Olivia's hands became fists, balling up the bedsheets. For a moment it appeared she might stuff the gray wads into her mouth, blocking out food—or anything else that might want to get in. She didn't do that, thank God, but she did press her fists over her mouth, fingers curled in against her lips, as if lowering the sheet in a game of peekaboo. "My stomach hurts. And . . . I'm still so— It hurts. Going to the bathroom. I'll just feel worse if I eat. Please don't force— Don't make me."

Amanda felt the blood drain from her cheeks at that. Pain with urination and bowel movements was to be expected after the kinds of physical trauma Olivia had sustained, not to mention the hysterectomy and the sutures. She had taken much longer than normal in the bathroom at the hospital, but Amanda hadn't even considered that as a factor in her rejection of food. It made Amanda ill just thinking about it; no wonder Olivia couldn't stomach anything.

The real kicker was the plea at the end, though.Please don't make me. People had been forcing things into Olivia's body for days—drugs, dicks, tongues, fingers, swabs, blades—and Amanda would be just another in a long line of many if she forced her to eat. For now she had to let it go. For now. "Okay, okay. Shh-shh. I'm not gonna make you eat if you don't want to. Just promise you'll let me know when you're feeling up to it, okay? So I can stop worrying? I'll fix you anything you want, and if I can't fix it, I'll order in."

That at least brought the sheet down a fraction of an inch. The fists remained, but they parted enough for Olivia to speak without muffling her already diminished voice. "I promise. I'll eat soon. Just . . . not right now."

Amanda got the sneaking suspicion she'd be hearing that a lot from now on, about more than just food. And there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. You couldn't rush healing, you had to sit back and wait, and hope the other person was up for the challenge. A week ago she would have said yes, absolutely without a doubt, Olivia was the strongest person she knew and could handle anything. But then Amanda had watched that livestream. No matter how strong someone was, they didn't get through an experience like that unscathed.

"Okay. Can I at least get you some water? You said your belly's hurting you, how about some Pepto Bismol? I'll grab your pain meds while I'm at it." Amanda made to stand up from the edge of the bed, but Olivia dropped part of the sheet and caught Amanda's sweatshirt sleeve in its place. She let go right away, as if the physical contact was an accident, though it succeeded in keeping Amanda seated next to her. "Yeah, darlin', what do you need?"

She was prepared to jump up and fetch whatever Olivia's heart desired, no matter the difficulty level, but Olivia closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. "You don't have to get me anything. I just want to sleep some more. Maybe I'll feel more up to that other stuff when I wake up. My head feels so . . . "

Leaving the conclusion open-ended, Olivia faded—her voice, her breathing, her form underneath the covers. She was visibly retreating in front of Amanda's eyes, wilting into sleep like a dying rose, and she seemed already beyond reach when Amanda shifted her weight on the bed, uncertain of where to go from here. If Olivia woke up alone and frightened, it would only compound the trauma, but if she slept for hours Amanda might join her, and there was too much else to be done.

Then again, Amanda didn't know if she could even bring herself to leave her wife's side. Her body felt leaden, the thought of Olivia being out of her sight for more than a minute like a paralytic. After days of watching the unbearable images unfolding on that laptop in the squad room, she found she couldn't look away.

But it was Olivia who broke the spell, opening her eyes so sedately it was startling. As if a stone statue had come to life, the princess waking with no need of true love's kiss. In the closed-curtain bedroom light, her irises were as shiny black as buttons. Somehow, when she spoke, it sounded plastic and sewn-on, too. Not really a part of who she was inside. "You don't have to stay. I'll be all right. I'm too tired to dream."

Well, that wasn't true. Amanda had been woken from a dead sleep more than once because Olivia, exhausted and stressed by the day's work, was having a very vocal nightmare. The more depleted she was, physically and emotionally, the worse her sleep was plagued by devastating memories and imagery both horrifying and eerily prescient. But Amanda would not point that out. Why risk jinxing her if she had the chance for real rest, not the pseudo kind available only in hospitals?

"Are you sure? I can curl up with you girls for a bit, if you want some company." Amanda glanced at the empty spot on the opposite side of Gigi. She didn't realize she was holding her breath until she looked back to Olivia's solemn, watchful face, the features strangely enhanced by the bruises. She looked like a battered child, all eyes and puffy lips. "Daphne can hang out with the kids for a little longer. I could scratch your back or something, help you fall asleep faster."

"No. That's sweet of you to offer, but . . . I think I just need the quiet? And Gigi will wake me up if I need her to. I'm sorry, love. You should go be with the kids."

It was obvious Olivia expected her to be a little hurt by the rejection, no matter how smoothed over its delivery, and true, it did sting a bit. After days of keeping vigil at her bedside, she was choosing a dog to provide comfort instead of Amanda. But at the same time there was relief. Shameful, unbidden relief. Amanda had permission to leave the room, to leave Olivia behind with all that gloom and darkness, and she was going to take it.

She had to take it. For the kids, she told herself, without really believing it.

"You sure?" she asked, knowing full well Olivia would insist. Some things never changed, and the captain's tendency to isolate herself while she processed difficult emotions and experiences was one of them. Amanda's approach was much different—she ran headlong into the nearest distraction she could find, be it another person or a poker table, a hostage situation or a high stakes bet.

The gambling was not an option this time; she didn't even feel the urge, to be honest. And she'd had enough life or death decision-making in the past few days to last her a lifetime. Maybe focusing on the kids, Daphne, and the dogs, would help her restore some balance. She felt like she was teetering on the edge, about to fall without a net. "I don't want you to be lying in here alone and upset. Maybe Daph could come sit with you—"

"I'll be fine. Please don't send in Daphne. Not right now. I'd rather just . . . have some space." Olivia sent up an imploring look that assuaged some of Amanda's guilt. Not all, but some. She truly wanted to be alone, and who could blame her, after having no choice in the matter since being dragged off into that van? If you counted the video feed, her constant companion in that hellhole container, she hadn't had a moment by herself in at least five days. Even a nurse had accompanied her to the bathroom at the hospital.

"Okay," Amanda drawled, getting up slowly. Relief aside, she was still reluctant to leave her post. She wouldn't have gone along with it, if not for the fact that she would just be in the next room, and she could be back at Olivia's side in a flash if called on.

It was a small comfort, when her wife had literally been snatched away from her as they were walking side by side. But it would have to do for now. She couldn't stand guard over Olivia every waking moment for the rest of her life. They would both end up losing their minds. "Only if you're sure. And only if you promise to call me if and when you need anything. Oh sh*t, you don't have your phone, do you? Lemme go ask Daph where—"

"I can yell if I need you," Olivia said, her voice too scratchy to finish the sentence without clearing her throat. She did it compulsively a few more times, to no avail that Amanda could hear. "Or I'll just send Gigi out to get you. That will be simpler. I'm sorry, love. I just . . . I need some time."

"You don't have to apologize. I get it." Out of habit, Amanda leaned over to kiss Olivia's forehead. Halfway there she hesitated, wondering if she should back off, but worried it would come across as rejection or disgust if she didn't follow through. She hoped Olivia might rescue her from the awkwardness again—reach for her, draw her in—but they were too out of synch to read each other's signals.

Finally, she closed the distance and dropped a hasty kiss to her wife's forehead, near the hairline, mostly getting air and the wispy baby hairs that grew there like down. They smelled of sweat and something vaguely musty, as if Olivia had been held in a damp basem*nt instead of a sh*t-filled storage container. She'd been allowed to sponge off at the hospital, their pathetic attempt at providing a post-op, post-rape bath, but she was still in desperate need of the real thing.

Perhaps, later, Amanda could run Olivia a warm bath and help her wash out what was left of her hair. Perhaps she would suggest it. Later.

"Just rest, my darlin'. I'll be right out there if you need me."

Before she stood, Amanda mouthedI love youto her captain, lips grazing her brow. She couldn't tell if Olivia mouthed it in return, as was their custom, practically reading each other's minds in the darkness of their bedroom or when they weren't even making eye contact in the squad room. She hoped she had. They needed that connection now more than ever.

Olivia snagged the hem of Amanda's sweatshirt as she turned to go. The little girl had returned, her big imploring eyes so overbright it was almost frightening. Malnourished children had that look, their hunger so keen it shone out of them, sharp as knives. But this was a different type of hunger than for food. Amanda thought it might be related to love—or rather, the lack of it. How did the song put it? An endless, aching need. There were hints of that need in Olivia's face whenever she spoke of her dead mother.

"Tell the kids this isn't their fault," she said with the import of a deathbed wish. It was disconcerting—the voice of a dying woman coming from a bruised and broken little girl wearing Olivia's face—but nothing about the past few days had been easy to deal with or respond to. Nothing Olivia had experienced was tolerable. "None of it. That they didn't cause this and neither of us blames them. Make sure they know that. Please, Amanda."

The best they could rely on now was instinct, like they were novices to pain; indeed, like they were little children, lost and groping their way back to each other through the dark. Amanda did the only thing she could think of, reaching back to undo the clasp of the necklace with their children's names on it. She'd planned to return it when Olivia wasn't quite as vulnerable, her nightmare not as fresh, but maybe that made this the perfect time for her to wear it.

"I'll tell them," Amanda said softly, threading the necklace behind Olivia's neck, her head lifted slightly from the pillow, and fastening it on the other side. She straightened the charm in front, placing it as delicately along Olivia's collar as a tiny seed in the soil. "I won't let them think it, not even for a second. I promise. You rest now, sweet darlin'. If you need anything—and I mean anything—you send Gigi, okay?"

When Amanda was outside the room, the door cracked just enough for Gigi to nose her way out if necessary, she paused to lean against the wall and collect herself. She had never been so exhausted in her life, not just in body, but spirit as well. Getting shot had taken less out of her than this mess, and that almost killed her. But she would have traded the way she felt now for another round in the gut any day.

"Sleep," she whispered toward the door, unsure if she was casting a spell or praying. She put a hand over the St. Jude medal inside her sweatshirt. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could swear it had gotten hot against her skin when she took off the pillar necklace. It might be holy, after all, and though she didn't believe in those things anymore, it couldn't hurt to recruit as many as possible to Olivia's side, be they saint or any regular old Jude. "Just let her sleep."

. . .

Chapter 40: Served Cold

Chapter Text

Chapter 40.

Served Cold

. . .

Several deep breaths later, Amanda emerged from the hallway to immediately be greeted by Frannie and Hamilton, as if they had been waiting for her return the entire time she was gone. Say what you wanted about the two energetic dogs—they knew how to conduct themselves when it mattered. Neither of them jumped up for more pets, though they had been known to practically knock people over in the past, and they both retired to separate corners when Amanda sent them off with pats on the rump.

Noah was in the armchair, drawing a picture in the art pad balanced on his knees. His younger sisters were playing the mail game, invented by Jesse, who dearly loved mail, even though she never got any. Amanda and Olivia had been planning on getting her a monthly subscription to a children's magazine or something of the sort, just so she would receive mail of her own once in a while. "Here you are, ma'am," she said, handing a stack of envelopes and circulars to Tilly. "That will be forty-two dollars, plus tax."

She hadn't quite grasped the process of delivery since seeing Olivia tip the doorman of their building for holding larger packages behind the front desk. Marco was only too happy to oblige, even without the twenty. Amanda suspected he had a tiny crush on Olivia; she used to tease her about it, making kissy noises as soon as they were on the sidewalk or the elevator doors closed. In the Before time. That's where all their memories were now.

"Okay, sissy," Tilly said, always ready to go along with anything her big sister suggested, no matter how outlandish. She dug into the little pink coin purse that dangled at her side. It had a cat's face on the front and snapped close at the top like the coin purses Amanda remembered from childhood, from seeing them on the shoulder of every old lady at church. "Four and two. I don't has tacks."

Tilly placed the fee on the coffee table, as if she were at a fast food counter. She had paid with some of Noah's construction paper, torn into deformed green strips, plastic pennies from her grocery store playset, and a ring from a gumball machine at some bodega or another. The latter made Amanda inexplicably sad, and she almost interrupted the imaginary transaction to correct the girls' logic.

Thankfully, she stopped herself before she ruined their innocent fun. They deserved to have as much of that as they possibly could, until life snatched it away from them forever.

"Okay, well, tax is free today, anyway. I have to charge you next time, though. This ain't a charity I'm runnin', lady." Spoken like a true New Yorker, albeit one under the age of seven. Jesse swiped her hand along the surface of the coffee table, pushing the fake money over the edge into a plastic Easter basket that served as the perfect collection plate. When that was done, she scooped up the mail—quite a lot had accumulated in the five days since Olivia's abduction—and stuffed it into Tilly's arms.

Bills they had forgotten to transfer to paperless, coupons for takeout, a manila envelope, and a pink envelope that looked like a birthday card fanned out against Tilly's chest as she hugged them tight. Most of them fell at her feet on the carpet. "Thank you, I love you. I be back tomorrow. G'bye." She exited the makeshift post office through an imaginary door, leaving behind a trail of letters and fliers as she struggled to keep her tiny purse on her tiny shoulder.

Amanda almost turned around and tiptoed back to the bedroom. She might have if she could have gotten away with not disturbing Olivia, but she wouldn't risk scaring her awake. Besides, Daphne had already spotted Amanda lingering by the archway and waved her in to take a seat next to her on the couch. Daphne was still holding the baby, who was sound asleep on her chest, all scrunched up like a little inchworm, bum sticking out. Sammie had slept that way since birth, and it brought tears to Amanda's eyes to see that she hadn't outgrown it in her mothers' absence.

Blinking away her shimmering vision, Amanda stepped into view of her children while there was a lull in their activities—Noah had taken to drumming a colored pencil on the open page of his art pad, a sure sign he was contemplating his next masterpiece. He and the girls finally looked up when Amanda cleared her throat, and for a moment the four of them just stared at each other as if they were frozen on the spot.

"Okay, y'all," Amanda said, clapping her hands together once, not very loudly. She went over and gathered the envelopes Tilly had dropped, pitching them onto the coffee table, where she then took a seat. "Huddle up. Let's go, time for a family meetin'." She kept her tone light so they wouldn't think they were in trouble, but there was some initial hesitation anyway. It was Jesse who rounded the coffee table first, arms crossed and a skeptical look on her puckish features.

Once Noah and Matilda had joined their sister, Amanda lassoed all three in her arms and drew them into serious discussion distance. "First off, I owe y'all an apology. I shouldn't have snapped at you like I did—"

"You said bad words too," Jesse interjected.

"Right. I said some real bad words, and I shouldn't have done that, either. You kids didn't deserve it, and I want you to know how sorry I am. I'll do my best not to lose my patience like that anymore, okay? Just . . . try to be patient with me too. I haven't gotten much sleep this week, and I've been so worried about Liv. . . "

The two older kids exchanged a funny look at hearing Mommy called by her first name, otherwise Amanda might not have noticed her mistake. "I mean, your mommy. I know you guys have been worried too, though. I'm sorry for that, and for getting so mad. Can you forgive me?"

Now it was Matilda's turn to go first. She squeezed past her siblings and scaled Amanda's legs as skillfully as a spider monkey, snuggling into her lap and wrapping both arms around her as far as they would go. "I fordgive you, Mama," said the sweet toddler, the one Amanda could always count on to accept her, warts and all. Noah had been a challenge at first, but once he started to think of her as his "Ma," he became much more receptive. He was sensitive, though; his feelings were easily hurt.

And then there was Jesse—angelic and sweet as an apple dumpling when you were getting along, but if you got on her bad side, watch out.That is all you, my friend, Olivia liked to tease when Amanda complained about their eldest daughter's feisty streak. It couldn't be denied. The Rollinses were renowned throughout northwest Georgia for their hotheadedness. Or Dean was, at least.

The good thing about Jesse was that she had a soft heart to level out that strong head. She didn't keep grudges any longer than necessary, either, and instead of punishing Amanda any further, she unfolded her skinny arms and joined in the group hug with Matilda and Noah. The kids usually liked to turn it into a match to see who could squeeze all the air out of Mama's lungs first, but this time there was no horsing around, just several uninterrupted moments of holding each other tight.

Amanda felt her soul replenishing with that hug, after all the darkness, the hopelessness, of the past week. At the same time, it drained her emotionally, and it was all she could do not to weep onto the top of the trio's heads. If she broke down now, she feared she wouldn't be able to stop crying. That would only confuse and frighten the kids even more than they already were, and that wasn't an option. "Hey," she said, sitting back to look into the three sets of blue eyes gazing up at her, "you guys know none of this is your fault, right? What happened to your mommy—there's absolutely nothing you said or did to cause it."

With a solemn nod of her curly head, Tilly agreed to the pardon of guilt for herself and for her siblings. Noah, however, wasn't quite so quick to believe, and Jesse's skepticism had returned, though it was more childlike than before. As if she were questioning the existence of Santa Claus, not making the grown-up decision to forgive. She even defaulted to her brother, allowing him to voice his concerns first, testing the unfamiliar waters of doubt and self-blame.

"But you were getting us bagels," Noah said, wary as a kid correcting his teacher in class. He played absently with Tilly's curls, twining them around his fingers and watching them unravel when let go. He was showing talent as a hairstylist, and Amanda liked to joke it was because of all the long hair floating around the apartment. Of course the kid was a natural. She couldn't make that joke to Olivia anymore. "The men took Mommy while you were getting our breakfast."

What tore at Amanda's heart most—his regression to calling Olivia Mommy, hearing him talk about the abduction, or his distorted view of what had caused it—was hard to stay. They all had claws, his little boy reasonings. Claws and fangs, for shredding the kind of innocence you could only have at eight years old. "Is that what you think, bud? That Mommy got hurt because she was out picking up food for y'all?"

Noah shrugged. He had whipped Tilly's ringlets into a red froth about her head, his fingers probing lightly at her ivory scalp.

"Hey, look at me." Amanda lifted his chin when he remained transfixed by his sister's hair, the ultimate distraction. "Eyes front, soldier. There ya go. Now, I want you to get that idea out of your head right this minute. Mommy and me love doing stuff like that for you guys, and we were so happy before— before the men showed up. Those men . . . they had a plan to abduct your mom, whether or not we were out buying bagels. And it wasn't because of anything you did. Or you. Or you."

She chucked the boy gently under the chin, then both girls, oldest to youngest.Or you, she thought silently for the baby, just in case. "They were just really bad people who wanted to hurt your mommy and me. Because of our jobs."And because I f*cked a couple of them over—and another I just plain f*cked—before you were even crawling by yourself. See, son, you couldn't be to blame.

It's me. I'm the one who destroyed your lives. And hers.

"Are they dead now?" Jesse asked. She'd been a little preoccupied with death since Amanda and Olivia had readCharlotte's Webto the kids at bedtime. To be fair, she asked if most people over the age of twelve were "dead now" when their names came up in conversation. But it still caught Amanda off guard to hear it put so bluntly, and unless she had imagined it, with a tinge of hope as well.

"Yes, they're dead. I killed them—except for the ones Dana and Kat took care of. I killed them, and I don't regret it for a second. And the instant your father makes even the tiniest mistake, the very goddamn moment, even if he's halfway across the world when he does it, I will know, and I will find him and kill him too."

She didn't really say it, but she heard it inside her head just as clearly as if she had. It was a vow to herself, she realized, a contract she was signing. She was taking out a hit on Declan Murphy, aka Lucky, and that made her feel exhilarated and powerful for the first time in days. Like the rush of endorphins during a run. A goal she could work toward, and something she would have control over, which also gave her the chance to protect her family. Redemption served cold.

"Mama?"

"They're someplace where they can't hurt anyone ever again, bug."

"That means dead," Jesse said knowingly, nodding to her brother.

Amanda saw no point in correcting her. She wasn't wrong. But steering her away from the topic was probably for the best. Against Amanda's chest, St. Jude burned like a penny plucked from a blaze—a self-immolation that went on long after the blackened form inside the flames stopped screaming. He was a medallion-sized brand, the tip of a lit cigarette. She knew what kind of scar he would leave, because Olivia's body was pocked by them.

"You don't have to worry about those men, okay? You just concentrate on treatin' your mommy real special, and being the sweet, loving kids you already are." Here, she scrunched her fingers against Matilda's belly, just enough for a giggle and a squirm. Her little Pillsbury ginger girl. "She's gonna need a lot of that for a good long while."

"Baby touches and indoor voices. Aunt Daphy told us already." Always the mouthpiece and proud of it, Jesse crossed her arms like she was negotiating a business deal. She and her siblings would behave, as long as certain criteria were met. But she made no demands, simply accepting the responsibility of obedience and putting an adult's needs before her own. It was as though she had grown up overnight. "It's okay, Mama. We got this."

Kids were forever surprising you with their insights and wisdom, but Jesse Eileen astonished Amanda nearly every time she opened her mouth. Amanda blinked at her, at the other two, who were equally astonishing, just in different ways, and fought back the urge to cry again. Perhaps it was exhaustion setting in, but she had never felt more grateful that they were hers—baby Sammie too. They were what would get her through this. And with any luck, they would do the same for Olivia when Amanda could not.

For that same reason, Amanda left the baby cradled in Daphne's arms after suggesting the older kids go play quietly in their rooms. Noah had been the most reluctant, and she sensed that he was full of questions she didn't want to answer, but she needed to give her friend the bad news first, before she lost her nerve. Promises of pizza for dinner had finally gotten everyone moving, and Amanda edged around the coffee table to face Daphne, their knees almost touching.

Dark shadows pooled in the recesses of Daphne's eyes, aging her features, while also making her appear startlingly young. She looked like an ancient little girl, or rather, the poppet of one, for healing or hexing was yet to be determined. Amanda knew very little about the folk magic some of her Appalachian cousins were said to practice, and she had laughed off most of her grandmama's and great-aunt's special blend of Christianity, voodoo, and plain superstition years ago; nevertheless, she was leaning heavily toward hex.

For Daphne, being friends with Amanda was a curse.

The thought filled Amanda with hollow sadness that gnawed like hunger. Maybe that's what she was—a pit that fed on the despair of others, one of those mass graves littered with skeletal, wizened bodies, as gnarled as ginger root, that you saw in intangible black-and-white photos from the Holocaust.Run, she wanted to tell her friend.Run while you're still just on the periphery of my f*ckedness.

Too late, echoed the reply, her eyes falling on Daphne's cane propped against the end table.Too damn late. The clerk had finally made peace with keeping the cane close and the fact that she would probably always need it, but guilt still niggled at Amanda's brain every time she saw Daphne preparing herself to step up on a curb or not teeter in even the shorter heels. Things Amanda didn't have to think about much at all to achieve. What a lucky girl.

"Amanda, are you okay?" Daphne asked, right as Amanda was about to spew out the words like vomit. (Kat's dead, I got another one of your girlfriends killed, but hey, at least she wasn't viciously, sad*stically raped by multiple assailants over a three day period, so count your—) "You don't look well. Have you gotten any sleep since . . . . Or had anything to eat?"

They were just delaying the inevitable, but Amanda was glad for the interruption. She could breathe again, if only for a moment. "Off and on. I pieced at stuff from the vending machines, mostly drank coffee. I'm okay. It was like finals week in undergrad." Or a gambling bender, after the winning streak turned to losing, her anticipation to dread, her dreams to dust. If she could stay awake forty-eight hours for a bunch of cards and some dice, she'd sure as hell do it for Olivia. "Ain't had much of an appetite anyway, and every time I close my eyes I see her being tortured. So."

She didn't mean for the last part to come out until she had already said it, and by then she regretted it. Daphne looked ill at the mention of the images forever seared into Amanda's brain; it was easy to forget that laypeople weren't used to subjects like torture. Even a lot of cops weren't, some going their whole career without seeing a single case of such wanton violence and sexual depravity. Talking things over with Olivia had always made the work a little easier to process, knowing they were in it together and someone else understood. Who was Amanda supposed to go to now?

"I'm sorry." Daphne sounded as if she were apologizing for a wrong she had done, not the criminal acts of others. She gazed down at Samantha, either searching for answers or trying to block out whatever torture looked like to her. A corpse with the eyes gouged out, most likely. Focusing on something new, innocent, and pristine was a good way to dispel from your mind all the ugly in the world, that was true. But even the peach-smooth face of a sleeping infant couldn't solve some things. Some things were here to stay. "I can't even . . . "

The expression set Amanda's teeth on edge and she gripped the lip of the coffee table too tightly. Daphne tended to speak in pop culture references and Internet memes, to the amusem*nt—and occasional bemusem*nt—of her less trend conscious friends, including Amanda. But Amanda hoped the situation warranted a more serious tone than a social media post for the younger woman. Nothing could lighten her current mood, least of all a goddamn hashtag.

"I can't even imagine what that must have been like for you. For Liv. I can't imagine what you're—" Daphne made a gesture with one hand as if miming her guts spilling out. The baby slept on, unaware she was being doused in imaginary viscera. "You know, feeling. I'm just so sorry. Is there anything I can do? If you want me to stay and take care of the kids so you can rest, I will. I can order the pizza and—"

"Kat's dead."

Daphne blinked like Amanda had flicked water into her face. So much for a gentle, compassionate reveal that would, hopefully, mitigate some of the trauma. No one escaped Amanda unscathed, friend or foe. "What cat? Honey, I don't— Oh. Oh my God. Oh my God, you meanKatKat? As in Tamin?"

Slowly, reluctantly, as if she were one-hundred years old and every movement was a chore, Amanda nodded her head up and down. All at once she felt so unbelievably exhausted she could have closed her eyes and fallen asleep sitting up right there on the coffee table, among the mail she was too tired to make sense of. She barely recognized her own name on the envelopes addressed to her. Rollins-Benson. It didn't sound real inside her head anymore. "Yeah, Tamin. I'm sorry. I . . . didn't mean for it to come out like that. But I didn't want you to hear it from someone else, either."

"No. No, it's— I'm glad you told me. I just . . . " Daphne swallowed with effort, blinked with even more. The floodgates opened in spite of her, and she swiped at her cheeks and under her nose, which seemed perpetually in need of a tissue.You could use that thing as Kevlar, Amanda had teased her once, upon catching a glimpse of the white tufts practically overflowing her shoulder bag. Too bad she didn't really have a shield to stop the bullets. "How? I mean, what happened? Was she on duty?"

It occurred to Amanda that she didn't quite know the answer to that one. Everyone was pulling OT in the hunt for Olivia, many doing so off the clock, but if Kat had even been expected at the precinct the day of her death, Amanda couldn't remember. She went with the more heroic choice, the one that made the officer's death sound a little less senseless, if dying in a crossfire before the age of thirty could ever be anything short of tragic: "Yeah, she was, uh, actually she was trying to rescue Liv. We think. She found the warehouse where they were keeping Liv, and there was this— this big shootout. She took a few of them out with her, though. Might not have found Liv in time if not for her. For Kat."

One lie after another after another. Amanda felt half-sick with them, her bowels as loose as her lips and roiling inside her abdomen. She wanted to tell Daphne the truth—that she'd been there when Kat was gunned down; that she had made the bastards who were responsible pay; that she wasn't sure if she really had gotten to Olivia on time or not—but it was better if the clerk didn't know. That way she wouldn't have to lie for Amanda or perjure herself on the stand if the deaths
(murders)
went to court.

"I'm sorry, Daph. I know you cared about her. She still cared about you too. Asked about you a lot." Amanda reached under the coffee table and patted around until she landed on the Kleenex box. The spot had proven handy for tearjerkers on Netflix, sniffling schoolchildren, and the rare dog "nugget" that didn't get fully deposited outside during potty time. She handed the box over to Daphne without comment, where she would normally crack a joke about her friend's tissue fetish.

"Did she? I didn't know that. I thought . . . " Leaving the thought unfinished, Daphne took a deep, shuddering breath and wept it into a Kleenex. She wasn't a silent crier like Olivia, who only sobbed when the pain became greater than any one human could bear, but she didn't turn it into a production, either. It lasted no longer than ten seconds, and she resolved herself to sniffing and wiping away stray tears as they fell. She was careful not to drip on the baby. "I told her being a cop was too dangerous for me. That I couldn't be with someone I kept waiting to get that call about."

Which call required no further elaboration. It was the call feared by wives of law enforcement officers and mothers of soldiers alike, by the loved ones of any worker whose occupation put them at high risk for injury or death. The people who threw themselves into the fray for a living, for their country, for the very family they would devastate with their loss. Jesus, it was all so senseless.

"I think she understood," Amanda said, though she had no way of knowing if it were true. Kat had inquired about Daphne from time to time, but that was the extent of their discussions about the young officer's love life. Amanda didn't make a habit of nosing through her coworkers' personal lives, especially now that she had a family of her own. "We all do. The job, the risks that go along with it—it's a lot to ask another person to take on. That's why there's so many divorced and single cops out there."

"Yeah. Must be why you and Liv work so well together. You just . . . you get it, you know? I mean, how many people would have stayed together after Orion and the brothel thing and— " Daphne blanched, her face nearly as white as the Kleenex she clapped over her mouth. It was too late to take it all back, but that was the face of someone who desperately wished she could. "sh*t. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. You guys are amazing together, and I just meant—"

She just meant that it was a miracle Olivia had stayed with Amanda through all of the crazy sh*t life threw at them in the past few years, most of it Amanda's own doing; that they had beaten the odds time and again in the great cosmic gamble that was living and loving in a world where it could all be taken away in an instant, on a dirty New York sidewalk, the smell of warm bagels and scorched skin in your nostrils. And maybe, just maybe, she meant that their good luck had finally come to an end.

Always did, always would.

"Daphne. It's okay. You're right. She and I have overcome some huge obstacles together." Amanda gazed at her sleeping daughter, who looked so like Olivia, despite having none of her genetic makeup, and who bore the name Grace as a testament to what her mothers felt they had been granted the day of her birth. She didn't like to turn her children into symbols, nor did she expect them to magically fix what was broken—a lesson her parents had never learned—but Samantha Grace had to be proof. Proof they would endure and make something beautiful out of even the worst circ*mstances. Even this.

"What?"

Sucking in a deep breath, Amanda widened her eyes at Daphne as if she were just waking up but still riding the coattails of a dream. "Oh, um, I said we'll get through this one too. Somehow. You know, like we always do." Anxiously she gathered up the mail and started shuffling through it, separating it into piles of hers and Olivia's. Olivia usually had the larger, more official-looking stack, the majority of Amanda's correspondences limited to Amazon and whichever niche online boutique she'd purchased her wife's gift from this year. "What about you? You okay?"

Daphne started to nod, then caught her bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it back and forth. Her small shoulders twitched up and down, half shrug and half slump, and she shook her head no. Each movement was slightly robotic, as if she had a short circuit that was firing it out of sequence. "Not really. But I will be. Once I've had time to process. It's just so out of the blue. I was thinking of calling her the other day . . . "

Anger, unexpected and unwarranted, bubbled up inside Amanda, and it took her at least five times reading the name on the cupcake pink envelope to realize it was addressed to Matilda. Miss Matilda Rollins, to be exact. Grammy Beth Anne's birthday card had arrived early and minus the hyphenate of her granddaughter's last name. That was infuriating enough, but what really pissed her off was Daphne's acceptance of Kat's death. Didn't Daphne think she, Amanda, needed time to process too? Didn't she think Amanda had wanted to just call Olivia up the other day, and hear her say that this whole godforsaken mess was just a bad dream?

Why wasn't Daphne crying, screaming, losing her faith, losing her mind—all the things you were supposed to do when someone you loved was taken from you? Anything but just sit there.

To keep from lashing out at her friend, Amanda tore into the pink envelope sealed with a gold Hallmark sticker. Definitely Beth Anne. She disregarded the card, a who's who of Disney princesses on the front and a long handwritten note on the inside flap, no doubt a request for Tilly to tell her mama to call her mama, and pocketed the fifty that fluttered into her lap. One good thing about Beth Anne Rollins, she didn't skimp on birthdays. She had way overspent on Samantha's arrival despite not receiving an invite to the shower or to meet her new granddaughter. Kim was no doubt the one who spilled the beans that Amanda had delivered, and probably issued the reminder of Matilda's upcoming birthday too.

"Christ," Amanda uttered, remembering that she still had a four-year-old's birthday party to plan in a few weeks. She snatched up the card with the simpering princesses and ripped it in half at its width, cramming the pieces into the cubby where the Kleenexes had been, underneath the coffee table. If Beth Anne thought she could weasel her way back into their lives with cash and an apology she'd probably plagiarized from a Hallmark movie, she was sorely mistaken. Tilly would get her fifty dollars, but not with Grammy's signature attached.

Noting the silence that followed her tantrum, minor as it was—especially compared to what she actually wanted to do, which was smash everything in sight, like a co*ked up rock star demolishing a hotel room—Amanda sighed and said, "Sorry." Daphne's mouth was open in a small "o" of surprise and she stole a curious look at the envelope Amanda crumpled up, chasing the bisected Disney characters into their cubby. "My mother. I can't deal with her sh*t right now."

"Oh." Daphne's eyes lingered on the now conspicuous spot where the tissue box had been. Amanda was tempted to grab it and shove it back in the quickly filling space, so she busied her hands with the rest of her mail instead. "You're not going to, um . . . You're not going to tell her what happened? To Liv?"

The addendum was spoken too softly to hear without double-checking the expression behind it: faintly aghast, for Daphne never did quite fathom the level of dysfunction in the Rollins-Benson extended family, living or dead; and a bit timid, because she knew she was overstepping. She knew, and she said it anyway. "Don't you think maybe you should—"

"No." A slammed door of a word, Amanda threw it shut with all her might, barring her friend from going any further with the inquiry. The inquisition. She would have to face it with IAB, and more than likely be burned at the stake, but until then she didn't want her judgment questioned by anyone, even her best friend. "That woman ain't getting anywhere near my wife and kids right now. You remember what happened last time? She slapped Liv across the face and broke that expensive watch her mama gave . . . "

"Amanda? What's wrong?"

Amanda was holding a dead rat, that's what was wrong. Or at least that's what it felt like. Lumpy and knotted in places where bone and organ, once buzzing with life powered by simple, singular goals—eat, sleep, scurry, eat, defecate, scurry, sleep, eat, mate, scurry—jutted from its limp furry body. She couldn't tell which end was the head and which was the tail with her hand inside the manila envelope, but its flaccidness made her skin crawl, the beady eyes and worm-smooth tail alive in her imagination.

With no return address and Det. Amanda Rollins printed on the envelope front in a neat hand, Amanda had guessed that the package contents were something she'd ordered for work: a backup holster, a new badge clip, the business cards which she thought should read Rollins-Benson but Olivia argued that her last name wasn't necessary.We know we're married, love; everyone at the precinct knows we're married. Victims and perps don't need to be made aware.

It just seemed like paranoia after years of having her privacy violated by everyone from Serena to IAB to a pair of children she never could have been mother enough to save, because no one could. But had the captain known? Sensed, somehow, that flaunting their relationship would lead to this—a dead rat in the mail, sent as, what, a threat that Amanda better not rat anyone out? That she already had snitched and now must pay the price?

Only the rat wasn't a rat at all. Withdrawing her hand, Amanda stared, bug-eyed, at the frizzy plait she immediately recognized. In her palm, lifeless and strangely ashen compared to the color it had been while attached, was a braid of human hair, about seven inches long and crudely cut at one end. Her reaction was slow, like a bullet fired into ballistics gel, every part of her trajectory, every striation, exposed in what should have been a quiet, killing secret, death meant for no other eyes but hers.

There was no such thing as privacy anymore. No safety left anywhere in the world, not even in her own home. Wildly she wondered who had delivered the amputated braid, had they been in her building, did it arrive today, yesterday, when? She still couldn't get past the sensation that she was holding a rodent carcass, and the revulsion coupled with her fury at the men who sent it, her fear of what they had taken, culminated all at once. "Jesus f*cking Christ!" she shrieked, blindly hurling the hair away from her. She didn't care where it went, as long as she didn't have to see or touch it.

The braid thumped against the wall and dropped to the floor like a slug about to expire. "Jesus," Amanda repeated, wiping her palms on the front of her sweatshirt, down the thighs of her sweatpants. She did it several more times, invoking the name under her breath after each stroke. "Hsst," she said to the dogs when they trotted over to sniff the mystery clump. Hamilton's obedience skills were on the lackadaisical side, but even he backed away from the hair as if he smelled the evil on it. Tail tucked in, he returned to the dog bed and whined for Frannie, who paced a wide perimeter around the braid and growled, ruffling her lips, to join him.

"What the hell is that?" Daphne asked, shrill and breathy, like a woman encountering a mouse. Indeed, she had drawn her feet up from the carpet, hand splayed against her small breasts, preparing for whatever might scamper past. Sammie's tranquil face, creaseless and the color of creamed honey, scrunched in on itself at the disturbance. Two tiny fists thrust forward, ready to fight their way back to peaceful slumber, but the inclination faded without reaching the baby's eyes. They remained closed to the drama unfolding around her, and it was just as well.

At least someone didn't have to see the ugliness and the deep dark shadows that had crept into their lives, like a cancer or black mold. Spreading out of the corners, slowly at first, then gaining speed as it consumed everything in its path. Soon there would be only darkness, the hand Amanda always grabbed onto, counting on it to lead her back to the light—Olivia's hand, so steady, so sure—nowhere to be found.

"Was that—"

"Olivia's hair," Amanda said grimly. She didn't want to hear her wife's name coming out of anyone else's mouth right then, even Daphne's. Too many people had passed Olivia around in the last few days—there were parts of her still arriving, as if she needed reassembly—and it had to stop. Amanda had to stop it. Trouble was, she didn't know how. At this point, she was fighting ghosts. "f*cking bastards cut off her hair and sent it to me."

And when the surreality began to fade, "Jesus Christ, Daphne. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?"

The question echoed on in Amanda's mind long after her friend had gone home, long after the kids were settled in front of the television, and long after the braid had been collected off the living room carpet. What was she going to do?

. . .

Chapter 41: Operation Fix Mommy

Chapter Text

Chapter 41.

Operation Fix Mommy

. . .

It was the best idea ever. Better than eating Jillian's meals for her when she stayed over; better than teaching Frannie and Gigi how to bark "Jingle Bells" for Christmas (the closest they got was Frannie trying to bite the little bells off the reindeer antlers). It was way better than fishing in the toilet for the alligators Uncle Fin said lived in the sewers. Better even than selling enough lemonade to pay for a family vacation in Australia, where the Irwins lived with all the koalas and the kookaburras.

Jesse loved the Irwins, but she loved her own family more, and this idea was going to help them tremendously, she was sure of it. She had to break a couple rules to make it work, sure, but the end results were going to be so spectacular no one would care how she pulled it off—just that she had found a solution to her mommy's Too Sad feelings. That's what Mama called them, instead of decompression, because the littler kids couldn't understand that word. Mommy was Too Sad to get out of bed, Too Sad to have breakfast, Too Sad to walk Jesse and her siblings to school. The bad guys had made Mommy Too Sad about everything.

She was even too sad to go get her hair fixed. Jesse had overheard her mothers discussing it the day before, when they thought she was asleep. They didn't know she had started sneaking out of bed at night to check that everyone was where they should be. Her little sister Tilly was the easiest, since their beds were only about six feet apart. That, and Tilly kept dragging her blanket and stuffies over to Jesse's bed at night now, asking, "Sissy, I sleep witchoo?" so she wasn't hard to find. There were a couple close calls with Noah, but once he had just been in the bathroom, and the other time he was hiding under his bed. He was pretending to be camping out, he said, but Jesse knew better.

Daphne and the baby were a bit trickier because they slept in Mommy Room. Jesse had to be extra super quiet when she tiptoed in to check on them, otherwise Daphne sat straight up in bed and threw slippers at her. Then her aunt snapped all the lights on and said crazy stuff like, "Jessica Marie, you scared the bejeezus out of me! I thought you were that feral moth girl fromMama. You better maintain your corporeal form and put it right back in bed, lady."

"My name is JesseEileen, not Jessica Marie," Jesse had replied that time, never quite sure what to make of Daphne's absurd nicknames. She knew her aunt knew everyone's real names, but she still insisted on calling them made-up things like Jessica Marie and Sammie Faye. Usually it made Jesse laugh, except when it didn't. She hated getting caught, especially during something as important as bed checks. What made them such a vital component of her nighttime routine she couldn't say, only that, if she tried to skip them, she wouldn't be able to fall asleep. The first night her mommies didn't come home she hadn't gone to sleep till way past eleven o'clock.

They were back now, and that meant Jesse had to be about a million times sneakier just to eavesdrop outside their closed bedroom door. She'd had to lie and say she needed a glass of water that first night they returned from the hospital because Frannie heard her tiptoeing down the hallway and growled. It had scared Jesse a little when her mama jerked the door open, her face pale like Jack Skellington's, and looked mad to find her out of bed. "You're big enough to get your own water, Jess," Mama had sighed. "Don't make a mess, y'hear? And go back to bed when you're done—no horsing around."

That had hurt Jesse's feelings a bit. Of course she was big enough to get herself a bedtime drink, she did it all the timeandhelped Tilly get hers too. But the implications that she was messy and didn't stay on task were rather offensive. She was six years old, not a baby like Sammie! At least, before the door closed again, Jesse had spotted Mommy, or what looked like a Mommy-shaped ball huddled under the covers, and Samantha, asleep in the bassinet. That alleviated most of her fears that night. Everybody safe and sound. Snug as a bug in a rug.

But the next night she had to rely on her ears instead of her eyes. It was her only option, with the door shut tight and a thin line of light slashed across the bottom, her mothers' voices low and muffled on the other side. Something about those voices made Jesse sad, as if her mommies were way far away—even though they were right where they were supposed to be (and if they were in there, then so was Sammie)—and she'd almost knocked and asked for another glass of water. She didn't want to get scolded again, and neither Frannie nor Gigi had barked, so she forced her fist back down to her side and listened.

That's when she overheard them talking about Mommy's hair. They sounded stuffy, like they were crying or had been very recently.

"It'll grow back, darlin', you'll see. You always complain about how often it needs trimmed, I bet it will be long again in no time. Until then, well, you're just as pretty with short hair as you were last time it was about this length."

"That was different. I hacked it off on purpose then because I couldn't stand . . . There were too many bad memories in it.Hewas in it. I had no choice in this. I can't even— I can't even look at myself in the mirror like this. I'm not sure I even want it to be long again. I know you love it that way, but it's too— I'm too . . . "

"Hey, hey. Shh. I love your hair no matter what length it is. 'Cause it's a part of you, and I love you. So much. Come here, darlin', shh. You're more than just your hair." Mama had repeated that several times, her voice going in and out, too quiet to hear and then clear enough to make out every word, as if she were moving around the room or occasionally talking into a pillow. After a while she stopped moving and said the next part like she was taking a big breath, "You think you might feel better if you went and got it evened out? Maybe styled a little? Something that doesn't remind you of . . . that place every time you see it?"

"I don't know."

"'Cause Daphne left her stylist's card, and I could call and set up an appointment for you. Might, uh, might be a good first step toward getting back out there, you know? Something kinda easy, not as stressful as the dentist. Or work, or whatever."

"I can't go to the dentist right now, I told you that. It's too much, Amanda. I cannot sit there with my mouth open while some man puts his hands— No. I can't. I won't."

Her mommy's fear of the dentist was a revelation to Jesse, who hadn't stopped to consider that either of her mommies were afraid of anything up until that moment. Mama liked to tease Mommy for her jumpiness around birds (the sound Mommy made whenever a pigeon got too closewasvery funny, and the way she flapped her arms around like she was a bird herself, attempting to fly), and sometimes Mommy got the devil in her eye and made silly voices behind the heads of Tilly's dolls, so it sounded as if the doll was talking.

But those were funny things to be afraid of, the way Frannie cracked everyone up when she ran away from butterflies at the park. Jesse's mommies did not think being scared of the dentist was funny—she could tell by the strain in their voices. It struck a false chord in her ear, so that even though she wasn't able to name it, she recognized it at once. If only she could go in and tell her mommy that it was okay to be afraid of the dentist's office; Jesse wasn't, but she knew lots of kids who were, especially her best friend Jillian. Eavesdropping was really hard when you couldn't intervene.

"Okay, baby, shh. I'm not gonna force you to go to the dentist. Aw, Liv, please don't cry. As long as that tooth isn't hurting you none, I promise I won't hound you about it. I just don't want you to be in any more pain than you already are. Figured starting out small would take some of the pressure off, then you could build up to bigger things from there. The stylist's a woman, and I can stay with you while she works, make sure you're comfortable and safe . . . "

For a long time it got so quiet that Jesse thought they had gone to sleep—they dozed off a lot during family movie night and Sunday cuddles on the couch because, according to Mama, that's what happened when you were old and had a job and fifty kids—but Mommy must have been thinking of an answer, or been unable to give it. She was waterlogged and weary when she spoke again. Jesse felt like her own pajamas were soggy and dragging her down just listening in; she got the distinct impression that if someone squeezed her, all the feelings—the sadness, curiosity, guilt and anger—would run out of her like water from a sponge. Maybe everything else too.

"I've only been home for two days. Please don't say you expect me to just bounce right back from this. I barely made it through the other times. L-Lewis. I . . . that took me months. I couldn't even sleep with the light off. I don't— I don't know what I can handle right now, Amanda. I feel like I'm slowly being crushed, a little more weight added every few seconds. Every time someone calls to ask how I am or when one of the dogs bark or I think about th-those men. Their hands." Mommy had started to gasp for breath, making it difficult to understand everything she was saying. But Jesse got the gist. "More weight . . . I'm done . . . Please don't . . . "

Her mommy was saying the bad had gotten too big to be carried, just like Jesse herself. Both mommies still hefted her up onto their hips if she asked sweetly enough, if they were crossing the street in a hurry, or when they told her she'd been sleepwalking and put her back to bed, but it never lasted very long and they always moaned and groaned like they were lifting a baby elephant. They didn't do that with Samantha or Matilda, and Jesse got the message loud and clear: she had outgrown the shelter of her mothers' arms.

She didn't mind. It made her feel grown up and independent not having to be carted around and babied the way her younger sisters were. A girl who would be going into second grade in a few months had no business even wanting to be carried if you asked her, although she wasn't against lap-sitting or dozing off with an ear to a chest, Mama's jackrabbit heartbeat or Mommy's slower, steadier one lulling her to sleep. Nothing in the world felt safer than that. But the bad getting too big for Mommy to carry scared Jesse a little. That meant there were things her mother couldn't handle, couldn't fix, and those notions were radical, almost blasphemous in her six-year-old mind.

Jesse wanted to offer to take up some of the load. She was still fairly small, despite being one of the tallest girls in her class, but she was tough. Miss Plummer said so, and the gym teacher was as brawny and bulging as a man, a comparison that hadn't gone unnoticed by the older children, who called her Mister Plummer behind her back. She played all the sports, claimed the big kids, and lifted barbells that weighed as much as a car. If anybody knew about physical strength, it was Miss Plummer. And she thought Jesse was tough, so it must be true.

But how did Jesse convince her mommies to let her shoulder their too-big burden? (The men's hands? Lewis?What had they done to make Mommy so afraid? Was it the rape thing Noah talked about, grape without the G?) Punishment for snooping was a lot steeper than for minor offenses, like forgetting to pick up toys or calling her brother a stink-butt boy. She would probably have to clean her room for the whole summer if she let on what she had learned during the private conversation. Getting into trouble didn't faze her too much, but she wasn't crazy either.

"I'm sorry, darlin', I shouldn't've brought it up. It's too soon, you're right." Even through the door and without seeing Mama's face, Jesse could tell there was a but. When she sounded like that, Mommy always raised her eyebrows and asked real long and funny:Buuut?This time Mommy didn't play along or tease, though. She didn't say anything at all. "Just . . . I know how hard it is to get back in the swing of things. The longer you put it off, the harder it gets. And . . . babe, you ain't even showered since you got home. You've hardly left this bed. I'm worried for you is all. I'm just so goddamn worried."

Mama began to cry then too. Outside the door, biting her lip and squeezing her fists into tight little rocks she wanted to hurl at the bad men (one of them had a name now: Lewis!), Jesse forced herself not to. Her mommies said it was okay to cry, you didn't have to feel embarrassed or ashamed when it happened. It didn't mean you were weak or silly, and it wasn't something only girls did. But hidden there in the dark hallway, too heavy to be picked up and hearing things she shouldn't, she refused to give in. It was the first step in being tough for her mommies.

"It's not a horse I can just." Mommy did something light and halfhearted with her hands that bounced her voice. She wasn't angry, not quite. Blue. That was one of the vocabulary words Jesse had learned this year, and it wasn't like the color. It meant really sad, which her mommy definitely was—her mommy's sound was the bluest blue. "I know you're worried. I'm sorry. I'll . . . I'll try to take a shower or something. Tomorrow. Maybe I'll feel more up to a haircut after that."

"Okay, darlin'. We won't rush it. Maybe a bath instead of a shower, so you can sit?"

"I can't. The doctor said two weeks after the surgery."

"Oh sh*t, that's right. Goddammit, I'm sorry. Oh, Liv."

The conversation dwindled to heavy sighs and sniffling then, no distinguishing between whose breath was whose as they coasted on the edge of sleep, and Jesse had stolen back to her bed on swift sock feet. There she contemplated what she had heard and what it all might mean. She was aware of the gaps in what she knew, but not how to fill them. It was while she mulled over her mommy's fear of the stylist and the dentist that her idea struck. The one that pretty much certified her as an actual genius. She had almost gone to get what she needed right then, she was so excited, but the kitchen drawer was too noisy to mess around in without alerting someone to her search.

Tomorrow, like Mommy said.

Jesse had drifted off to sleep with the promise in her ears and all the unabashed hope of a six-year-old in her heart.

By the next morning the idea had expanded to include her siblings. As luck would have it it was the weekend—three whole days off because Monday was Memorial Day!—and she had plenty of time to convince them. Tilly would be easy-peasy since she already went along with whatever Jesse wanted anyway; Noah might be a bit more difficult, though. Sometimes he wanted to be a big boy and said Jesse's ideas were little kid stuff. Other times he joined in and made it lots more fun, like when he helped her get ingredients off the high shelves to cook breakfast for their mommies on Mother's Day. She would need his help with the baby for this project, so maybe that would grab his interest. He liked doing things she couldn't.

The only snag in her plans that she could foresee was if Mommies were around and got curious what she and the others were up to—they always did when "y'all are being way too quiet in here"—but even that worked out perfectly. After lunch, which Mommy didn't come out of the bedroom to eat, Mama put Sammie down for a nap in the living room and asked Noah and Jesse to watch their sisters while she talked to Mommy about something. Mommies' talks lasted for a long, long time now, so Jesse knew that was her chance. She almost had a heart attack when she was sneaking back into the living room from the kitchen and heard her mothers' bedroom door open.

They hadn't noticed her peeking around the corner of the hallway; instead, they drifted into the bathroom together, Mama's hand low on Mommy's back like she was walking her into school, and closed the door behind them. Jesse knew she was home free when the shower hissed to life. Their showers were even longer than their talks, and that had been the case way before Mommy got hurt and had to move like Jesse's favorite animal after Frannie and Gigi: the sloth.

If they had glanced down the hallway a moment later, they would have seen a Jesse-colored streak whizzing by, a glint of silver going snicker-snack in one hand. There might not be a real jabberwock around for her to slay, but she still believed she was on an urgent mission to battle back the scary monsters—the ones that lived in Mommy's head. She and Mama tried to hide them from Jesse, but Jesse knew they were there, just like when she knew there were monsters in her closet and under the bed. Her mommies always ran them off for her, now it was her turn to repay the favor.

"I don't know," Noah said, dodging side to side, his shoulders up by his ears as she circled him. Just as she suspected, he had agreed to participate when she sold him the idea as a joint effort she couldn't pull off by herself. But now that he was involved, he kept trying to get out of it. She had even gone first to prove there was nothing to it, and still he didn't seem to trust her. Didn't see the brilliance of Operation Fix Mommy.

Boys were such dum-dums. Scaredy-cats too. Noah might be older because of when he was born, but sometimes Jesse felt years ahead of him. The only thing he was better at was dancing; her mama said she had in-hair-ited Mommy's two left feet, whatever that meant. Personally, Jesse didn't think she was half bad.

"Maybe we shouldn't. They might be mad. We could ask them first and make sure it's okay? Let's wait until they're done in the bathroom, then we can ask Ma. She pro'ly won't care, she always says we need it anyway." Noah turned quickly, as if Jesse might spring on him from behind and go to town, giving her a hopeful look. "Come on, Jesse. We're supposed to be good right now so Mommy— so Mom doesn't get upset, remember?"

Jesse scoffed, even though she really didn't want to upset their mommy. That was the exact opposite reason why they needed to do this! Her brother just didn't get it, and that was disappointing. Once again she would have to explain to him why they should do things her way. "We can'taskMama, that'd ruin the surprise. And Mommy won't get upset, 'cause wearebeing good. We're showing her how to be brave again. But . . . "

She drew it out for dramatic effect the way their mama did when she dangled a tempting offer—takeout for dinner, an extra hour at bedtime, fifteen more minutes on the swings—in front of them, knowing they wouldn't refuse. "If you don't wanna help Mommy, it can just be me and Tilly." (After some debate, they had decided not to include Samantha, who might wake up and give them away if she started howling. Lord that baby could howl.) "We're big girls and we don't need you. 'Sides, if you're too scared, it'll mess everything up anyway. Right, Tilly?"

The little girl looked back and forth between Jesse and Noah like they were playing tug-of-war. She tended to side with whoever tagged her first, and sometimes she was too cute and sweet for either of them to fight over—they hated,hatedto make her cry—so they ended up calling a truce. Jesse was determined not to let that happen this time, though, and she breathed a sigh of relief when Tilly took a step toward her, bobbing the pretty red curls their mommies loved so much.

"Uh-huh. I a big girl. I be like you, sissy." Tilly played with a long lock of pale hair, twirling it around her finger as if it were her own.

It made Jesse feel a little bit guilty to trick her younger sister, whom she adored, and her big bubby for that matter, but not much. Once she got them on board, they would see how right she had been and they'd be glad they took her advice. She was just giving them that extra push kids often needed when they weren't as in-courage-ible as she was. That's what her mommies called her sometimes, and she had decided it meant really,reallybrave. Twice as much courage as the average first-grader. Incredible courage. In-courage-ible.

Poor Noah only had the regular amount of courage for a third-grade boy, and he hesitated right up until Jesse boosted Tilly onto the coffee table and began circling around her instead of him. "All right, I'll do it," he said, standing up from his cross-legged seat on the floor. He sighed and waved for Tilly to scootch over so he could plop down beside her on the heavy wooden table, which was short to him but not to her. Her little legs hung over the side, bare feet bouncing like they were splashing in a kiddie pool below. She was always excited to be included in her older siblings' enterprises.

"I'll go before Tilly since I'm older. You watch and make sure you want to do it." Noah pointed out to Tilly where he wanted her attention and she obliged him, gazing up with the rapt face of Frannie waiting for popcorn to tumble out of the kids' bowl on movie night. (Lots of times they dropped pieces on purpose, just to see the dog scrambling to gobble them up before Mommies said no. She looked like one of the hippo puppets from Hungry Hungry Hippos trying to eat all the marbles.) "If it's too scary, you can say no, okay?"

Ugh, Jesse thought, wishing the boy had a lever she could use to snap his mouth shut like in the game. He was going to jinx it and make Tilly change her mind about taking her turn next! Before that could happen—before either of her siblings could ruin the ingenious plot she had painstakingly put together and whose execution she was positive, absolutelypositive, would fix all her mommies' too-big bad stuff—Jesse separated the blades and snipped.

. . .

Chapter 42: Between the Crosses

Chapter Text

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

- "In Flanders Fields," John McCrae

Chapter 42.

Between the Crosses

. . .

The colors came to life under Amanda's light but diligent hand. She had played around with drawing in junior and senior high, typically producing nothing more substantial than cute doodles or graffiti-like lettering. According to her art teachers she had an eye, but she hadn't put in the effort to hone it or her pencil. As a result her talent remained a party trick, handed out on co*cktail napkins, Post-its, and the backs of DD5s to those who admired it. Picasso she wasn't, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd held a brush or an art tool of any kind.

But here she was, smoothing and forming as if she were working in clay, fingers trailing pigments of brown, purple, green, and in some spots an open-wound red that appeared as blood under the suds and water, but wasn't blood. She swept the veil of lacy white soap away to reveal all the shading and dark smudges she was trying to wash from the canvas. Some of it had come off—glitter-sized flecks that didn't sparkle, an outer film turning to crust, smears in white that ran clear and reds that wept red, an unidentified substance that clung like putty—most didn't. She couldn't undo the previous artists' creation.

That was the intolerable truth the water kept exposing, streaming in rivulets like vines that choked out life, roots that spread all the way to the heart of the matter: she couldn't. Couldn't erase the past or the pain, couldn't heal what was broken, couldn't even wrap her arms around the problem, kiss its back, press her chest against it until their heartbeats synchronized and soothed. None of her old tricks were worth a damn anymore.

The shower was supposed to help refresh Olivia and make her feel more herself, but so far she only stood below the spray like she had forgotten what to do. Head bowed as if she were being deloused. Amanda thought of war footage, skeletal prisoners in internment camps, hooded figures undergoing enhanced interrogation techniques that made the body beneath seem barely human. That's how they stood, waiting on the Zyklon B, the next round of waterboarding. Surrender, it was all that was left to them.

And so Amanda had taken over, soaping Olivia's skin in gentle circles and guiding her beneath the shower head as needed. They danced that way for a while, until Olivia finally took the lead and turned to face the jet. Amanda had hesitated then, hands out at her sides and pearly with Dove—it was the position they often made love in during their more intimate showers, Olivia's palm pressed flat to the wall, Amanda's hand snaking around one shapely hip—uncertain how to continue. The tears were evident in Olivia's shoulders, which shook in precisely the same manner when she laughed. If only it were a laugh.

"Should we stop?" Cautiously Amanda rested her palm at the nape of Olivia's neck. Exposed by the haircut and Olivia's lowered head, the patch of skin looked so vulnerable it pained her to see it. The men's fingers and the belt strap were still visible there, blending in with the NYC skyline tattoo like an ugly smog-and-fire sunset. The city was burning and the people in the buildings were trapped, nowhere to go except out the window and to their deaths. "We can try for longer next time if this is too much . . . "

Olivia shook her head, scraggles of wet dark hair flaring on either side. "It's not," she said, voice clogged by emotion and snot, salt tears and city water. She sounded like she was drowning in it—which one, take your pick. Her ribs rippled each time she moved or shuddered, for the disconcerting effect that something alive and slithery was trapped beneath her skin. Something to be excised and cast out. Or birthed. "Keep going. Just want to get it over with."

Since you forced me into it. She didn't have to say it, maybe didn't even actually think it, but it was what Amanda heard. Heard and deserved. She had pushed her wife into taking a shower for all the reasons she'd said out loud: Olivia would feel better about herself if she were clean; nothing would completely wash away what had happened in the shipping container, but a literal cleansing might in some small way act as a spiritual and mental one; it was basic hygiene and self-care 101; it would help her relax, the heat and spray-intensity easing her sore muscles, her days-long migraine; if nothing else, she needed to avoid infection by keeping her wounds clean. Amanda meant every word of it, she did.

But the part of her she kept under wraps, the selfish, bitchy side who dispensed criticism as if it were wisdom and spoke in a voice identical to her mother's, who had been such an insufferable brat no one back home would babysit "those Rollins girls," even when Mama was laid up from the latest beating, so that the task of caring for her fell on the slight shoulders of her hellcat daughters like the limp straps of their raggy sundresses—thatAmanda wanted to scream, the longer Olivia put off bathing. Every moment she failed to get out of bed, curled on her side, just a dark head above some blankets, it was all Amanda could do not to throw on the lights (as counterproductive as it sounded, after three days of constant light inside the torture box, Olivia craved darkness) and drag her to the bathtub.

Wasn't that what women normally did after a rape—showered obsessively and scrubbed their skin raw to get the man (or men) off? Of course, after hers, Amanda had stumbled home and slept for eighteen hours straight, no pharmaceutical or alcoholic assistance necessary. That came later. So maybe Olivia's decision not to slough off as much of the assault as she could wasn't that unusual at all. But it bugged Amanda that she didn't even seem willing to try.

No, not bugged. It f*cking terrified her. If she wouldn't even take a shower or get her hair cut, what else was she going to give up on? Amanda? The kids? Fretting about it to Daphne had earned Amanda the reminder that it had only been a few days since the trauma—forbothof you, Daphne kept stressing—and Olivia just needed time. But how much, was the question? And time was tricky; if you weren't careful it got away from you, it distorted what you knew, it turned itself against you. It grew fangs.

If she sat back and let it swallow Olivia up in the name of healing, of more-time, how would that be any different from letting her be taken away by the men? What if sleep went from eighteen hours to eighteen years, and one day she woke up to find a thing with fangs, vicious and rapacious, where Olivia had once been? Or just blood. Red lines between the bathroom tiles, following the grout like the straight lines you could only draw with an Etch A Sketch, not circles. You never came full circle, just dropped straight off. Maybe that was why Mama had tried to kill herself—that sheer drop. And now Olivia was in free fall too.

So Amanda had pushed a little more for the shower than she would have when her wife was grounded, secure, capable of making her own decisions. She'd forced it and made Olivia cry, which was all she seemed able to do now, when she herself wasn't crying. Together, the past couple of days, they had probably shed as many tears as there were drops of water in this shower. Was it ever going to stop, she wondered, but couldn't ask. Or would they just go on breaking down at the slightest word, the softest touch?

She soaped and rinsed Olivia's back and buttocks as thoroughly as she dared, pausing every few seconds, every few inches, to secure consent. There was a ruddiness at the inside curve of both cheeks that she tried not to see, afraid it was blood, more afraid that it wasn't. By some minor miracle the STD results had all been negative—though the HIV test would have to be readministered after the appropriate window period—but who knew what kind of havoc another infection could wreak in that area? She still felt guilty enough about what Olivia had lost in the first operation.

They weren't talking about it. The missing parts Amanda let them take away after the men had already taken so much. She almost wondered if Olivia had forgotten about it, until she mentioned not being able to take a bath yet. Amanda should have known her wife would never forget a thing like that, even while taking heavy painkillers, even while in shock, traumatized beyond belief. Olivia Benson remembered every one of the violations she endured, and Amanda's position on the list had risen significantly. It probably ranked up there with Serena's forced gynecological exam.

Shampooing the choppy hair was the worst part. Not because of its diminished length, although that was bad and Amanda's heart ached with each strand that slipped too soon from the comb of her fingers—but worse than that was the texture, coarse and so stiff in some places it felt like petrified gum. Blood, come, powdered sugar, and sweat created a paste that didn't wash out on its own and had to be firmly massaged to loosen it enough for separating piece by piece. Amanda's fingers still caught and tugged, and she cursed herself for not bringing an actual comb into the shower. Something to be blamed besides her own unskilled hands.

Detangling hair was Olivia's job. She had years of practice from Noah's fat, stubborn boy-curls and Tilly's finer, springier ginger ones. The kids sought Amanda out for braids and cool styles, but even stick-straight Jesse went to Olivia when she just needed a gentle touch and generously dispensed kisses to smooth her unruly pigtails. The texture of baby Sammie's hair had yet to be determined, beyond the obvious—thick as undercoat—but curly, straight, or in between, she would need her mommy's magic touch and unwavering patience to get it right.

That was the fairy story Amanda had told herself up until last Saturday anyway. Back when she still believed they were going to get their happy ending. Back before she was washing bloody sem*n from Olivia's hair and down her back, clenching teeth at the check marks she had only just now realized were partial P's (as in Parker, the owner of the belt that stamped the letters into Olivia's skin), and wishing the torture she'd thought would cleanse the torture were over too.

She could barely look down at her own unblemished flesh, save for the fading fanglike burns from the stun gun and a few minor bruises, after comparing it to the ravaged body in front of her. Initially, she'd debated whether or not to step into the tub nude, or remain clothed, standing outside the tub to assist. Neither seemed like a good option—naked she implied sex; covered and watching she was just another voyeur—but in the end she had undressed, making herself as vulnerable as Olivia. At least that was the objective. Seeing all the bruises, cuts, bite marks, burns, and scars up close, rinsed clean and vivid, like she was bringing them to life with her bare hands, also brought to Amanda's mind's eye the image of how each one was put there.

Maybe Olivia had the right idea postponing the shower for so long. Given more time to heal, the marks might not have evoked such strong memories. As it was, she and Amanda were lost in them, reliving their own separate versions of the experience, the nightmare, which had kept them apart for days and now kept them a million miles apart in their minds. If Amanda had secretly hoped, so deep down she didn't even know it, that their connection would be restored by the intimate setting and contact, she was mistaken. She was a fool.

As the shampoo was being washed away, she decided to skip the conditioner. Olivia didn't use it every time, and her scalp was so tender now, the less fussing with her hair, the better. She had hissed at the Pantene, the water pressure, but kept telling Amanda to continue through gritted teeth.Don't stop, she beseeched, splaying a hand against the shower wall beside her for support.Don't stop, she repeated after every wincing sound and shying bunch of her shoulders.Don't stop, she whimpered as Amanda lightly swept suds from her skin with the flat of her palm.

When the water that ran down Olivia's back was just water, no more soapy residue or rivers of pink blood, Amanda habitually went on stroking, as she always did near shower's end. Drawing out the contact for as long as possible. Incorrigible little thing, Olivia would call her (now, nothing), an affectionate hum to her voice as she revealed her stunning profile, the crescent moon curve of jaw and chin, the kittenish tip of well-defined nose. Her muscle and bone, the tendons weaving them together, were fluid in those moments; clay on the wheel, and Amanda the potter. Thighs, hips, belly, breasts—she molded them all with the love of an artist for her life's work and magnum opus.

Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop. And then, so suddenly Amanda broke from her reverie of love and only love, conveyed from the palms of her hands and surely going straight to Olivia's heart, with a jerk because thedon'tdisappeared, leaving a single weak cry on its own:stop. Olivia was sobbing and asking her to stop. She covered her face with both hands, hiding profile and all, and hung her head under the spray, water jumping off the macabre sunset on the back of her neck, drowning the city, and her red shoulders—they looked sunburnt from rough handling—like grease popping in a hot frying pan.

"Oh my Lord, I'm sorry. What did I do?" Amanda held up her hands as if she were staring down the barrel of a gun, not at the hunched neck and shoulders of her shattered wife. There was nothing sexual in the touch, she knew that without question, but she still felt like she'd gotten caught committing a crime. Her killing hands had been found out after all. "Liv, what'd I do? Are you hurt, do I need to . . . "

Stupid questions. Of course she was hurt. Of course Amanda needed to do something. "The hose," Olivia was saying, from what Amanda could decipher of the laments muffled by skin and flowing water. "Stop . . . the hose . . . . So cold. Thirst— make it stop. I'm soc-cold."

Despite the hot stream from the nozzle overhead, Olivia was indeed shivering, her ransacked flesh prickling with goosebumps. Her ransacked brain reliving a harrowing moment from the shipping container—they were all harrowing—so vividly her body reacted as if it were happening in real-time. Amanda had seen it before with too many victims to count, including Olivia herself, although her flashbacks were almost exclusively reserved for sleep. At least the re-enactments that left her huddled and crying. And that time at the hotel.

Had either of them used the safe word since then? Amanda couldn't remember, just that it waschurchand it was useless. In every sense. Everything was so goddamn useless.

"Aw, baby." It seemed like the only thing to say, and Amanda kept repeating it as she reached around Olivia and turned off the water. They were left standing in the dripping, draining tub, inches apart but not touching. An invisible barrier had gone up between them, and Amanda dreaded trying to cross it, only to be rejected. Neither could she just stand there watching Olivia fall apart.

Carefully she placed a hand on her back, in the center of her shoulder blades, and when that wasn't shrugged off or shrank from—reacted to at all, really—she rested the other on a shoulder. It was an unnatural pose, not at all like their normal physicality, which was so in sync and effortless they practically moved as one at times, automatically aware of where a hand should go, a step, a kiss. But it was something, and Olivia didn't pull away but sank into Amanda's arms when they turned and enveloped her. She dropped her forehead on Amanda's shoulder, heaving, gasping.

"What, baby? Can't understand ya," Amanda murmured, scooping aside the heavy black tendrils that hung across Olivia's face. Seaweed looked unnervingly like hair—dense and dark—when they fished corpses out of the Long Island Sound. The skin was pale like that too, pocked by things that nibbled away at flesh, exposing the bone underneath. None of Olivia's bones were showing, thank Christ, but that didn't stop Amanda from imagining the nicks and cracks they now contained. "Tell me again."

Olivia shook her head back and forth, grinding into the slope of Amanda's shoulder like a pestle. At the bottom of the mortar lay pain, sadness, hopeless despair, all the miserable herbs that couldn't be crushed. "Why'd it have to happen?" More distinct, but slurred by emotion. Merlot did that to her too on the rare occasions she overindulged. "Wha's wrong with me? All these years, fought so hard not to let them . . . not to letanyone do that to me. Too happy. Shoulda known it wouldn't lass— last. Never should've been born. Wish she'd killed me when she had the chance."

For one awful moment Amanda thought she was talking about Sondra Vaughn and her heart gave a wild kick. Then she realized the "she" Olivia wished had killed her was Serena Benson, whose failure to end her daughter's life—more than once—was not for lack of trying. Ultimately, she had chosen the more destructive and insidious route, by planting that seed in Olivia's brain, the one that grew day by day and told her how unworthy she was—of love, happiness, a family—how bad, how tainted. Killing her over and over for the rest of her days.

It didn't lessen Amanda's guilt any, to hear Olivia connecting the attack back to her mother. Not because she felt any sort of chivalry towards Serena or a need to uphold her memory. Blaming the dead woman was essentially just another way for Olivia to blame herself, since she believed she'd ruined her mother's life by even existing. That tore Amanda up inside. Partly because she was the one at fault, the tainted one, but also because she couldn't tell that to Olivia. Not right now. She was on the verge of hyperventilation, taking great gasping breaths, gasping again at the knife in her ribs, half-gagging on the air she heaved back out, unable to match Amanda's deep guiding respiration.

If Amanda set the record straight right now, it would, ironically, only be to assuage the horrible crushing guilt she'd been bottling up for days. How could she put that on her wife in the middle of a breakdown? How could she ever? "Breathe, baby, breathe. Breathe. You gotta calm down or you'll make yourself sick."

"I c-can— can't." Olivia, who seldom liked to admit she was incapable of doing anything, could not catch her breath. The air whistled in her windpipe as she sucked it down, coughed it up. Her back shuddered like a rickety shelter about to give way at any moment, no longer able to withstand the storm raging inside and out. Jesus, she even felt broken. "Cuh-can't bre— bre—"

"sh*t. Okay. Um." Amanda's own breath came quicker as she listened to her wife fighting to fill her lungs. She had to remind herself it wasn't like the livestream, when she'd been helpless to intervene. For the better part of her career—of her life, honestly—she had helped women through the after-effects of violent assault. Women she cared about. Women who weren't nearly as strong and courageous as her captain.

The toilet was too far away and they would have to step over the lip of the tub to get out. "Here," Amanda said, and eased Olivia back enough to fit an arm around her waist and guide her to the bottom of the tub. A non-slip gel mat cushioned the hard seat, making it just tolerable on the knees and tailbone. "Let's sit for a minute. You good? Okay, now, I want you to cover your mouth like this. Can you do that for me, darlin'?"

When Olivia's hand was cupped over her mouth, forcing her to breathe through the nose, Amanda demonstrated pressing one nostril shut. "Do this and inhale through the other side, nice 'n slow. Then switch—hold the left and breathe through the right. There you go, baby. Keep doing that until you can take normal breaths." She rubbed Olivia's back in a squeaky circle a few times before standing.

"Wh-where?" Olivia panted. "Where . . . "

"Just right over there to the medicine cabinet." Amanda pointed to her destination even as she headed for it, taking care not to hurry and slip in the wet spots she made, but not waiting to be held back either. "I'm gettin' the Valium. I know you don't like relying on pills, but baby, you need 'em right now. No arguments, okay? This is what the doctor prescribed them for, to get you through the rough spots."

Persuading Olivia to take the tablets was surprisingly easy—no persuasion was necessary. In fact, she plucked the little blue disks from Amanda's open palm and pressed them to her tongue so readily she probably would have accepted any dosage given, high or low. Amanda stuck to the recommended amount, of course, though one extra wouldn't have hurt, as worked up as Olivia had become. But that type of thinking was a slippery slope, and Amanda was no Dr. Lindstrom.

She did consider popping one of the pills herself and might have done, if not for the kids. They needed at least one mother who could drive them to the hospital in case of an emergency. Just the thought of returning to that place made her want to crawl out of her own skin, but she would if she had to; she'd do whatever it took to hold her family together.

With that in mind, she knelt beside the bathtub and rubbed Olivia's back until the Valium was down, and the hungry gulps of water Olivia took from Noah's rinse cup. The biggest of the plastic cups used by the kids for nightly brushing, it was still too small to quench the thirst Olivia was trying to slake. Her mouth always got so dry when she was upset, stressed, scared. Amanda could have turned on the tub faucet, and she would probably drink straight from it like a woman lost and wandering the desert. And wasn't that kind of what she was now, lost and wandering? They both were.

Amanda returned from the sink with another cupful of water and helped Olivia sip it this time, encouraging her to go slow, take deep breaths in between, and exhale steadily until her lungs were empty. When they found a rhythm, only interrupted by a few hitches here and there, she pulled one of the heavy bath towels down from the rack and crawled back into the tub. She wrapped the towel around Olivia's dewy shoulders, patting them dry with the terry cloth. Rubbing caused dryness and flaking, a fact she had learned from her wife, whose velvety freckled skin she practically worshipped, and who treated hers with the same reverence.

She hadn't really started taking care of herself, she realized, until Olivia showed her how.

"Wanna go back in on the bed?" she asked once the trembling and sniffing had subsided. Or seemed to have. Olivia took a sharp, preparatory breath as Amanda used the corner of the towel to gently, gently, gently blot her damp forehead and cheeks—one side vaguely resembled the hedge apples Amanda used to kick while cutting through backyards on her way to school—the dark crescents under both eyes, the little bobbin of nose swollen by tears and pressure from hands and rutting bodies.

But the anticipated nod turned out to be a barely perceptible shake of the head. "Can we just stay here for a while?" whispered Olivia. She sounded like a little kid in church, asking her mother for a stick of gum while the preacher waxed fire and brimstone. Her head slanted toward Amanda's shoulder as if it were too heavy to hold up. "Can you hold me?"

"Sure. Sure, darlin'. Put your head right here." And though Amanda didn't know how to make it work in the tight, concave space, she helped Olivia to settle against her side, under the gable of her arm, and twisted her own body accordingly. It was uncomfortable as hell and she would be stiff in the joints later, but her heart beat double-time at the small, hopeful sign that she was wanted, needed. She would have contorted herself into damn near any shape asked of her. "There we go. It's, uh, kinda cozy, I reckon. You okay, baby? I can . . . "

"No, don't." Olivia turned her face to Amanda's neck, discouraging movement in the shoulder below. In the aftermath of writhing, raging, bone-crushing violence she craved stillness. Calm. Not in a bed full of memories, more destructive than healing now, but in a cold hard cradle that promised safety, arms that held without expectation. And almost no chance of being observed. "Stay. Like this."

For the next twenty or so minutes they huddled together as if sheltering in place for a tornado. Amanda had plenty of experience: you didn't grow up in Dixie Alley trailer parks without hunkering down in your share of bathtubs. Usually while Mama screamed for Daddy to get his fool-ass inside before he blew away to Kalamazoo or somewheres.Loves his truck more than his family, she would inform her daughters over the winds that pummeled their single-wide on its cinder blocks like monstrous fists. Who would have thought the monster would come home thirty years later?

Amanda was considering a watered-down version of the story to break the silence—Olivia always loved to hear her reminisce about childhood, fascinated by the kid's-eye view of a real live family and unaware of the ugly parts being left out—when a small knock, made by a small fist, drummed at the door. Expecting Olivia to startle at the sound, she cupped a hand over the ear not pressed to her shoulder. When no reaction came she glanced down to see a pair of deep brown eyes drooping heavily, a pair of fissured lips gently parted. Valium made quick work of her wife.

Good. That was good.

"What, Jess?" she called softly when the knock sounded again. Only one of her children was that impatient. And that persistent.

"Are you and Mommy 'bout done? I got something to show you. And Noah's gotta pee."

A static of furious whispers followed, confirming that Noah was indeed standing outside the door with his sister, but it was debatable how badly he needed to relieve himself. "You were supposed to say Tilly has to pee, not me," he hissed, always a bit modest about his time in the bathroom. Olivia sometimes fretted that he had too few male influences in his life, growing up in an all-female household, but Amanda was pretty sure his behavior was that of a normal eight-year-old boy. All their kids were normal, happy. Good kids who were not going to look back on their childhoods remembering only fear and strife.

"Give us another minute, okay? Y'all work out which one of you actually has to pee while we . . . " Amanda sighed as she gazed around the room, from her discarded t-shirt and jeans, scrounged from the clothes hamper that morning because she hadn't time for laundry these days, and Olivia's hospital-issue sweats to the damp footprints on the tile to her drowsy wife half-asleep on her shoulder. There were cloudy streaks of blood that hadn't quite washed away from the gutters of the tub. She'd wanted to change the sheets before putting Olivia back in bed too. "While we pull ourselves together."

"Can you hurry up? You're taking forever and I wanna—"

"Jesse Eileen."

Jesse heaved an even bigger sigh than Amanda's. "Yes, ma'am."

Five minutes later they emerged from the bathroom into an empty hallway with an eerily quiet living room beyond. It didn't sit quite right with Amanda, the stillness that she had sought moments ago for Olivia's sake, but she chalked it up to boredom—whatever scheme her wild child had cooked up must have lost its appeal, and that's why the kids wandered off. Probably in the living room watchingStar Warsfor the umpteenth time with their headphones. Jesse thought she was Han Solo, of all characters to latch onto.

Amanda stripped the bed like a madwoman while Olivia sat in the armchair across from her, watching dazedly, still wrapped in nothing but a towel, hair falling in dark squiggles around her cheeks and shoulders. Wet like that it was harder to detect the asymmetrical strands. She looked almost like her old self sitting there. Except for all the bruises and the vacant stare, the uninhabitedness of her body. Not the old Liv after all, but a mistreated rag doll bearing an uncanny resemblance. It pained Amanda to think such things, and she snapped the clean fitted sheet from their closet onto the last corner of mattress as if that was her final word on the matter.

She spread the flat sheet and quilt with equal haste, skipping the hospital corners Olivia preferred. Those could be done later, and the quilt was just a spare from the storage bench at the foot of the bed; once she got the comforter dry cleaned, then she'd worry about tidying the rest. As for now, she needed to get Olivia into something warm but gentle on her harsh skin. She selected a pair of lightweight pajamas, long sleeves and long pants, that were a Christmas gift last year, chosen for their irresistible softness. Back when permission to touch was granted freely and almost always without reservation.

It was she who hesitated with the pajamas in her hand, afraid of their connotations. Olivia had laughed and accused her of buying them for her own enjoyment when she couldn't stop petting the plush material, on or off the warm body that filled them out so nicely (though on was highly preferred for tactile purposes), trailing her fingers over the skin below it, inching the top up, the bottoms down, tickling, toying, teasing. Loving. What if Olivia thought that was expected every time she wore the damn things? That she had to be a constant fulfillment of Amanda's overactive fantasy life?

One glance at her wife, shivering and glass-eyed, S's of hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks in a long dark hiss, Amanda put the worries aside. Neither of them had sex on their minds right then, and if Olivia started to fret about needing to please her anytime soon, Amanda would make it indisputably clear that she expected nothing they weren't both ready and willing to give. Whenever that might be.

"That's a girl," she said as every limb fitted into the pajamas with her assistance. The pants were the hardest, requiring Olivia to stand and hold onto Amanda's shoulder for balance as she skimmed them up her legs. A cinch to Amanda, whose joints weren't yet feeling the effects of the bathtub, but Olivia winced at any movement below the waist. And above, for that matter. Knowing the nature and severity of her injuries just made it worse. Amanda kept imagining the pain, until she nearly felt it in her own body: the dead space between her legs, the split-openness of abdomen, the metal-scraping-concrete sensation of broken bones, the rotten apple where a head should be. The psychic pain that hummed beneath it all.

She was glad of the opportunity to let the tears fall when she stood behind Olivia, seated on the bed, and combed the last of the knots from her hair. Muscle memory compelled her to braid it so it didn't dampen the pillow as much and cause Olivia discomfort while she slept, but after pulling her wife's severed braid from an envelope the other day—the braid she had plaited lovingly, alongside their daughters' shiny little-girl hair, laughing and chattering; the same one she had watched being hacked off by an evil, unfeeling man while Olivia wept and pleaded—she couldn't bring herself to do it. Probably would have tugged too much at the scalp, anyway, and she wasn't sure the hair even had enough length for a proper braid.

Of the hair in the envelope, Amanda said nothing to Olivia. She did not need to know about that, or how Amanda had almost vomited when she picked up the dingy clump she'd initially thought was a dead rat. Bound with string and pinched at arm's length, it more closely resembled a smudge stick for cleansing negative energy. Burning it would indeed have been better than what she did do, but something prevented her from hunting for matches and making the trek up to the roof of their building. (Afraid she'd get the urge to jump, perhaps?) Lighting it up inside the apartment was not an option either; the smell of burnt hair was impossible to get rid of, both in reality and sense memory, and a major trigger to herself and Olivia. Daphne had offered to dispose of the hank, an apprehensive look on her face the entire time, but that wasn't a responsibility Amanda could entrust to anyone else, even her best friend.

The responsibility for all this was hers alone.

Just as she was pulling the covers up beneath Olivia's chin, guiding her into sleep with gentle strokes to the brow, gentle words whispered like prayer—sweet babyinstead ofHeavenly Father,I love youreplacingAmen—there was a knock at the door. In the interim between bathroom and bedroom, minutes counted in tears, she had forgotten Jesse's request to show her whatever was so important it couldn't wait another second. She sighed and stood back from the bed, reluctant to leave Olivia, though she was balancing on the edge of consciousness, drifting further and further away like an ebbing tide.

"Okay, Jesse. Jesus," she muttered, turning quickly at the second, louder knock. They needed to have a serious talk about patience, she and Jesse Eileen, but the only sound out of her mouth when she pulled open the door was a horror-stricken gasp.

"Wha's wrong? Manda?" Olivia's head raised from the pillow and she struggled to sit up, the weight of sleep, Valium, and bone-deep exhaustion holding her down as effectively as an assailant. Even attempting to widen her eyes proved too much, and she squinted in the direction of the gasp.

"None— nothing, baby," Amanda said in the levelest tone she could muster. It took all of her strength not to push her children back into the hall, away from the open doorway and the possibility of being seen by Olivia, and start whaling on their behinds. She was against spanking her kids, she was; but in that moment, as they stood there grinning ear to ear like they were presenting her with a bouquet of Mother's Day flowers, she could have turned every last one of them over her knee. "Go on to sleep now. Here's Gigi. I'll be back to check on you in a bit."

Sending the golden retriever into their room with a swat on the rump, Amanda backed out and shut the door slowly, cautiously, as if trying to avoid a tripwire.

But the wire was inside her, and the moment the door closed, it was sprung. She caught Noah's arm in one hand, Jesse's and Tilly's in the other, and marched all three into the living room, out of earshot. "What have you done?" she fumed, spittle sparking from the pronounced whisper. "What thehell have you done?" Each word was accompanied by an insistent shake of their slender arms that vibrated up and across their shoulders like they were doing a hip hop wave. Locks of hair, some curly and some the color of corn silk, flitted off their t-shirts and onto the floor.

On the coffee table lay evidence of the crime: a pair of shears from the kitchen, used with equal opportunity for cutting frozen pizzas, snack bags, clothing labels and school art projects; and a small mound of hair like autumn leaves, buttery yellow, golden brown, and cinnamon red. It was ironically tidy, no other signs of the clandestine haircuts except what was on the children's heads. Or rather, what wasn't.

Noah and Matilda at least had the good sense to look remorseful—and startled by their mother's vehemence—but Jesse cranked loose from Amanda's grip and planted both hands on her hips. "It wasmyidea," she said proudly, still unaware she had done anything wrong. Or pretending to be, in hopes of staying out of trouble. She was a willful child who seemed to have inherited Amanda's motto of asking forgiveness instead of permission, though Dean Rollins wasn't around to teach it to her as he had his young daughters. Sometimes it scared Amanda how much of herself she saw in the six-year-old. It's what made her so careful not to repeat her parents' mistakes.

Alarmed by the sight of Noah's delicately muscled bicep and Matilda's dainty wrist, not much bigger than baby Samantha's, gripped firmly in her fists, Amanda released them with the abruptness of a jumper letting go of the ledge. But instead of the weightless, time-suspending fall that ended in a bone-crunch on pavement, organs liquified, brains splattered like overturned gelatin, the screams of eyewitnesses and the blare of car horns, all she saw was the dismay on her children's faces as they rubbed their arms and stared at her with big, wondering eyes. All she heard was her own heaving breaths.

"We wanted Mommy not to be scared about getting her hair fixed," Jesse said. She scrubbed a hand through her hair, once a ribbon of yellow silk, now more closely resembling a windblown haystack, and shed a number of strands that hadn't had the heart to let go the first time. She looked like a molting goose. "So I cut ours to show how easy and not scary it is. If Tilly can do it, Mommy can too."

Tilly had fared a little better than her sister; the only sign that she had participated was a couple of spots where curls stood out like broken jack-in-the-box springs, and those could be disguised by more curls. Noah, however, had taken the brunt of Jesse's snipping, his enviable mop of buoyant brown curls reduced to patchy spirals interspersed with the hedgehog spikes of newly shorn locks. Not quite a buzz cut, but no longer the full and lustrous ringlets that inspired all the little girls in his dance class to squeal with delight. Amanda and Olivia too. They played with his hair as often as he'd let them.

Used to. Amanda's present was turning into her past more quickly than she could keep up with. Soon, there would be nothing left. She was already on the verge of ruining her relationship with her kids, becoming the bully her daddy had raised her to be. It was as if the center of her life had dropped out when the men took Olivia away, her Liv. She was the center of their family, their everything. None of this made sense without her.

"Y'all got no business playing with the scissors like that," Amanda said, though it was so dull no one would be chastised by it, not even sensitive Tilly, who only needed the inflection of a warning to grab her attention. She started to reach down and muss the girl's hair, but her hand wouldn't complete the task and fell back lifelessly at her side. Kneeling was easier, all that weight pressing down on her shoulders, and she lifted Tilly's arm the way you handle a newborn kitten. A kiss to the wrist, on the warm inside, was the best apology she had in her right then. Anything else felt artificial.

Jesse gave an indignant huff. "We weren't playing with them, Mama, aren't you listening? We did it to help, and I was very careful. Like playing Operation careful. I didn't cut anyone's skin or anything, and I didn't go near Sammie with them 'cause they're too sharp. That's good, ain't it?"

Amanda's insides dropped at the mention of the baby—she hadn't even thought to check for locks of chestnut hair, darker and finer than all the others, amid the scraps on the coffee table—but she managed to hold her composure this time, instead of flying off the handle and racing over to the bouncy seat, where she could see Samantha sleeping peacefully. Nonetheless, the release of adrenaline and subsequent flood of relief left her lightheaded. She sank down onto the table, next to the puddle of hair, and took a steadying breath. "Um, yeah, that's, uh . . . that's good. Good thinkin', buddy. Glad you remembered that."

All three children were looking at her strangely, not that she could blame them. Shefeltstrange and detached from her surroundings, her self, and she wondered if this was the dissociation Olivia often experienced but rarely admitted to. True, the captain was skilled at hiding it and functioning more or less as normal, but when her color drained or she became winded for no reason and glanced around like she was reorienting to a place, though she hadn't left it, Amanda could tell her brain and body were not in harmony.

Sometimes life did that—knocked the needle from its groove and set the record to skipping and scratching, until it was put right. She didn't know how to put it right when the needle was her own, though; she didn't know how to finish the song.

"C'mere," she said to the kids, spreading her arms for them to step into. They hung back just long enough to make her heart ache, but Tilly, God love her, could never resist affection, given or received. She came forward first, wrapping both arms around Amanda's waist as far as they would go and nuzzling into her abdomen. The older two joined in a moment later, Noah giving in before recalcitrant Jesse, always the last to come around. They stood in the small huddle looking apprehensive, as if Amanda might still put them over her knee.

For the rest of her life she never forgot those expressions. Her children waiting to be beaten.

"Lemme see what you got going on here." She sniffed, and surveyed each child's head as if she were reading the fine print on a pill bottle, turning them in circles for a 360-degree inspection. Lord, they looked awful. Like puppies with mange. She expected to be heartbroken—and it was sad to note that Jesse's long hair, which hadn't been cut a day in her entire six and a half years on earth, could not be salvaged—but in the grand scheme of things, this was really nothing more than a hiccup. There were so many worse things that could have happened to her children; that might have happened if Sondra Vaughn had gotten her way. Their hair would grow back, but not their innocence. Once that was taken away it never returned.

Releasing a low whistle, Amanda feigned being heartily impressed. It wasn't a total lie—the absence of blood and lacerations in spite of Jesse's free-for-all technique was truly miraculous. Edward Scissorhands himself couldn't have doled out a more unique and painless crop than the three in front of her. "Hoo boy, those are really something. Y'all are gonna turn heads, that's for sure."

"You're not mad?" Noah asked, a tad suspicious, but mostly surprised. If ever there was a time for him to play the "you're not my real mom" card and reject Amanda's attempts to patch things up between them, it would be now. But he hadn't used that against her since before the wedding, and seemed to have accepted her as a fully integrated part of the family. His Ma. She almost wished he would call her out for bad behavior as he had in the past, instead of hoping to appease her.

"I'm . . . not happy. If you guys wanted to get haircuts, you should have asked me first. I would've taken you to a salon for a haircut by a professional." Amanda turned a pointed look on Jesse. "It's not okay to go sneaking around behind my back, even if you think it's for a good reason. But I'm not mad. Just, uh, caught me off guard for a minute there."

A disinterested nod from Jesse and a round of, "Sorry, Mama" from her and her siblings was probably the best Amanda was going to get. That, and the question she'd hoped to avoid above all others.

"Can we show Mommy?" Jesse, of course, wanting to exhibit her handiwork. The bangs she had carved out for herself looked like a row of uneven teeth against her prominent forehead. Thank the Lord her hair grew exceptionally fast. It was one of the few advantages passed down through the Rollins' dodgy gene pool—yards and yards of blond hair—along with blue eyes and a propensity for devilment.

"Not right now, monkey."

"Okay, but when?"

"Jess." The name included enough warning for all three children and discouraged any further requests to bother Olivia. She would find out soon enough, and Amanda was in no rush to speed the process along. Maybe this was what she got for being so gung-ho to set up a salon appointment for her wife. She wondered if Daphne's stylist worked on kids too.

"I asked for a high-top fade like Lil Nas X's," said Noah, in all seriousness, when the mood threatened to turn dark again. He smoothed his fingers along the sides of his weed-whacker curls as if they were the essence of precision. There were no mirrors in the living room, poor little guy. "Does it look as good as his?"

"I wanted-ed Annie," Matilda said, shaking her puff-cloud of red curls. That one was actually pretty accurate.

Jesse fluffed her brother's and sister's hair with the satisfaction and confidence of a licensed beautician. "And mine's like Taylor Swift, with the short pieces in the front." She scrubbed her fingers into her toothy new bangs, which she didn't even know the proper term for, and flashed an equally crooked-toothed grin. "Cool, huh?"

"Practically twins," Amanda agreed. She felt something bubbling up inside her as she ruffled their hair in turn—Taylor's, Annie's and Lil Nas's—but not until it came spilling out of her did she recognize what it was: laughter. Light and effervescent at first, it rolled out of her throat in contagious peals that made the children hold their jiggling bellies and double-up as if being tickled. It rang through the apartment, stirring Frannie Mae from her doggy dreams and Samantha from her baby ones, so even they seemed to join in the shouts of mirth—cooing, squawking, yawning, stretching. It rocked the whole sixth floor, their building, the city beyond that didn't sleep, nor slowed down for you to mourn the life you lost to it.

And when it turned hard and uncontrollable, Amanda's stomach convulsing as if she were having labor contractions, only silence coming from a mouth opened like a scream, the kids were unaware that their mama's spontaneous eruption of laughter had become a flood of helpless tears.

Where the cigar box had come from, she didn't recall. Maybe it had belonged to Granddaddy at one time, or it was a castoff of her daddy Dean's, from some failed experiment at taking up King Edwards instead of Marlboros. It was one of the rare mementos from her childhood that hadn't been lost in a move, destroyed in a trailer-park-leveling natural disaster, pawned by her younger sister, or simply tossed out as so much garbage. And the irony was, Amanda had no specific memories attached to the damn thing. She just liked how it looked and the faint whiff of cigar tobacco that waited under the cardboard lid.

Now it was a graveyard, the memories it did hold dead and restless as ghosts with unfinished business. In it she had laid to rest the cut-off braid she received in the mail, her final gift from Gus Sandberg, the sandman bringing a dream. Bought and paid for with Olivia's blood, her integrity, her humanity. Twined around the braid like a prisoner's transport restraints, the chain of the St. Jude medal Amanda stole off Riva kept the loose hair intact. No, not stole. If Native Americans could take the name of an enemy they had slaughtered—conquered—essentially owning that enemy's soul, then she could take the religion of her foe. Not to practice or respect it, but to possess it and know she had left him with nothing in the afterlife. Just the hellfire and damnation he so justly deserved.

To her small but growing collection, she added the locks of hair she had sifted from the kids' beauty parlor experiment and tied with three skinny ribbons from the girls' conglomeration of hair accessories. They looked like flower petals, the colorful trio of tendrils, like something you would see scattered down the aisle at a wedding, on the bed in a bridal suite, or fluttering between headstones, a la "In Flanders Fields": the slender, trumpetlike white lily; ruffle-headed marigolds in shades of russet; and the ubiquitous poppy, redder than the reddest rose. They would fade in the box, the same way Olivia's hair had lost its luster when hacked from her head, but they wouldn't whither or blow away like real petals.

They would always be there for Amanda to return to.

Quietly she closed the box and rearranged her sweaters on top, then eased the drawer shut and peered at Olivia through the darkness, confirming she was still asleep. Right now it was the best place for her. Soon enough she would have to rejoin the world outside their door, where sicko rapists wore saints around their necks and children sacrificed parts of themselves to a deaf, unfeeling god.

. . .

Chapter 43: Cat & Mouse

Chapter Text

Chapter 43.

Cat & Mouse

. . .

His dear sainted mother had always said he took things a step too far—"Decky, me boy, you've gone a step too far this time, you have"—and he supposed it was true. When you grew up dead center in a group of thirteen siblings, most of them male and mean-Irish, not the gently-brogued fellows who toned it down in the name of assimilation, you either learned to stand out or you died trying. The rest joined the priesthood.

So Declan Murphy did the only logical thing, or what had seemed like it in his then-nineteen-year-old brain: he became a cop. Never mind that he descended from a long line of Irish mafia, both stateside and in the motherland. His paternal relatives had been members of the Dead Rabbits and the Whyos before the five boroughs were even consolidated, and his dad, uncles, older brothers and countless cousins were all involved in the Westies (though they never actually called themselves that), at one point or another, during their nearly thirty-year reign over Hell's Kitchen. Until the dumb dagos, who multiplied like flies on the stinking carcass of the city, butted in. But that was a whole other story.

He'd been just a kid playing stickball in the streets, his hand-me-downs faded and dust-covered like an early settler's, when Mickey Spillane was killed outside his Queens apartment. He remembered well the controversy, the tense whispers, the curses uttered among the older men in his family during that time; he remembered, too, the corruption and the crime that ran through their veins—and his. None of them were more surprised than he when he joined the NYPD and pledged to be a clean cop. His dad no longer acknowledged his existence, a brother threatened to cut his throat if they ever met in a dark alley, and his mother cried whenever they spoke surreptitiously on the phone.

A step too far.

If he had taken up the badge to have inside influence and to look the other way when rumors circled of a Westies resurgence, maybe then they would have been proud to see him carry on the family name, even if it was pinned to a uniform. He did, after all, rise through the ranks exceptionally fast, thanks to his knowledge of the Manhattan underbelly and an uncanny ability to portray Irish crime lords. But like a thick bastard, he kept his hands clean for years, including the final few of his dad's life, his lovely mam's. They died believing he had turned his back on his birthright.

And then she came along.

He couldn't blame it all on her; he had started to slip before she showed up in Vaughn's little underground operation, looking like something blond and oversexed that the cat had dragged in. It was easy enough to blame on the job—he wouldn't make a convincing bookie and overall sleaze if he didn't break a few rules and a few bones along the way. Vaughn especially liked to up the ante, always dangling young, pretty bait in front of him just to be sure. Smacking around a drunken asshole who tried to skip out on his tab was not that far removed from police work; resisting an underage co*cktail waitress in a skimpy dress while she coiled his hair around her fingers and called him "O' Rourke" ("Daddy Dec," sometimes) was much dicier. At first he'd only partaken when it was absolutely necessary to maintain his cover . . .

He wanted to that first time with Amanda too. Perhaps, even back then, he had sensed she would be his undoing. It had been so tempting after ripping open her shirt and getting a look at what lay underneath—he had a taste for delicate bones and small breasts, although he'd been known to make exceptions—and he'd gotten hard when she went on her knees so resignedly, fingers plucking at his belt. They reminded him of small, preening birds, and he couldn't help imagining her technique, what she would have done with him in her mouth.

From that moment on, he hadn't stopped imagining until he found out for himself. After weeks of beating off to the visual of his large co*ck wrapped in her pink satin lips, all the way up to the scrubby ginger hilt of him, he had watched it happen in real-time, his eyes wide open, her throat holding him like a warm, throbbing womb. Inside and out she was as narrow as she looked, and Declan had f*cked her with everything he had, not caring that it went against all his rules.

His brothers—even his dad—would slap him on the back, call him "boyo," and congratulate him for jagging such a lovely wee lass, and a cop to boot. He'd be the laughingstock of Killarney, or at least Bushwick, if they heard her accent, but as long as he kept her mouth full he didn't have to listen to the trailer-park twang that offended every one of his senses. He shouldn't have been surprised when, true to her breeding, she wound up barefoot and pregnant with his bastard child.

Dirty, manky little girl, just as he'd predicted. He wanted to be wrong; had even tried calling her on her indiscretions with men in authority, thinking it might nip the flirtation in the bud. She had that way about her. Deal with enough victims and eventually you learned to pick up on the ones who put out the use-me-abuse-me vibe. To an extent he supposed they all did, but the earlier they were sexualized, the stronger the vibe became. And girls who grew up with abusive daddies were adept at charming older men. He couldn't totally blame her for what was likely a survival mechanism.

But he did blame her for the sultry blue eyes, the tail she was always twitching in his face like a doe in heat. It wore him down and, concurrent with the death of his estranged father, not to mention a conveniently scheduled snowstorm that froze the city, isolating them like figures inside an NYC snow globe, he had a moment of weakness.

A step too far.

And from there, compromising his integrity had gotten a little easier each time he did it. Perjuring himself in front of a grand jury on behalf of Olivia Benson? Tampering with evidence here and there to ensure the nastiest of the nasties got what they deserved? Snorting up with the other traffickers so he didn't get made? Accepting blowj*bs from teenage junkies who bore a vague likeness, underneath the crack whor* exterior forced upon them, to a pretty little blue-eyed blonde stamping around Manhattan in her ridiculous cowboy boots? Short steps, all of them.

Eventually he found himself at the top of the ladder, surveying a world laid out to him like the open legs of Detective Amanda Rollins. Just as he had been unable to refuse her, so simple, so smooth, he grabbed what was offered him by the hips and had his way. Regardless of age, race, and sometimes sex—there was a boyishness to Rollins' build and mannerisms, after all—though he was particularly fond of the Slavs, in whom fair features were dominant. Serbia had been a veritable wonderland, save for the damn Turk-descendants. They were more of the Olivia Benson stock, sweetheart to the William Lewis-types and, apparently, to manky trailer trash blondes as well.

He was prepared to turn it all around for his child. His worst behavior was mostly confined to a different continent, and the likelihood that word would ever get back to the states was slim, especially with the strings he could pull. More powerful than his dad, his brothers, his uncles, or any of the Murphys who once graced the docks of New York Harbor had ever been, he would give it all away for another wee blue-eyed blonde who called him daddy.

He dropped everything and flew halfway around the goddamned world to be there for her, and she turned him down. Said she didn't need his help; that she could do it on her own. Beyond the disappointment he felt at being excluded from his daughter's life, it had been embarrassing: here he was, establishing himself as one of the most feared and revered international crime lords in decades, building himself an empire, finally doing his family proud—and the little brasser had the nerve to blow him off, as if he had no hand in the conception. As if she hadn't ridden him seven ways to Sunday and come every damn time.

Pretending they were a family was easy enough. There were plenty of ways to watch them from afar, thanks to his ever-expanding network of traffickers, forgers, embezzlers, gangb*ngers, launderers, cops, and thugs. That was how he got back in touch with Vaughn, through the operation she had running from some women's prison in the city. She despised him, of course, though the brunt of her hate seemed focused mainly on Rollins. The silly allegiance to sisterhood women had turned dark and ugly when it was crossed. But their mutual, flourishing anger for the blond detective—Declan's and Vaughn's—became their common ground. Together they kept each other apprised of Rollins' comings and goings, and for a while it really had been like Declan was just frequently away on business, a pretty woman and a pretty baby waiting for him back home.

At what point he stopped being a cop, stopped owning a soul, and became the monster he impersonated, he couldn't say for certain. Had it been when he calmly executed two men who were trying to rescue their sister? All three were meth addicts, their skeletal bodies and rotten teeth making their pathetic attempt at escape look like a gross pantomime of human desperation; truthfully, he had despised them and felt as though he were putting down a pack of old lame dogs. Was it when he raped the twelve-year-old girl? He had no choice, she was a gift to him and if he had rejected the gift, they both would have suffered. The fact that he enjoyed the small frame, the smooth pink tulip folds between knobby-kneed legs, the hair soft as down was beside the point. Or maybe he had taken his final too-far step when he sold an infant whose mother had no other means of payment? The cries of mother and child were like banshee shrieks until he knocked the woman out to shut her up.

Then he got word of the marriage, the adoption. While he was hard at work procuring more inventory, most in the form of girls and young women who trusted the wrong person—usually a family member or boyfriend—and ended up bartered like cattle, his own two blue-eyed girls were stolen right out from under him by none other than Olivia Benson. He thought it was a joke at first; that Vaughn was just dicking him around (she had conveniently failed to inform him before the wedding and adoption were finalized). But a few calls to New York business associates corroborated Vaughn's account: the vows were exchanged March of last year, and his little girl's name became not Murphy or Rollins-Murphy but Jesse Rollins-Benson just a month after her sixth birthday.

Six years without ever meeting her. A full year of Benson f*cking the woman who should have been his wife. He'd always respected and admired the captain, even before she held the title and after the Lewis saga, when she was such a basket case he practically had to tackle her to keep her from walking into traffic. He had liked her all the more when he discovered that she actually did beat Lewis to a bloody pulp, then lied about it on the stand. Even the good ones were corruptible if pushed far enough. That was a comfort to him at the time, when he was struggling so against every vise imaginable. His very own temptation of Christ.

But the image of her hands on Rollins' body, of the two of them going down on each other, set his blood to boiling. What bothered him most, though, was the c*nt believing she could lay claim to his child. She had her own passel of illegitimate brats, whom she'd also appropriated from other people, she didn't need his. The more he stewed over it, the angrier he got, until he was so blinded by rage he agreed to the plot Vaughn laid out for him. Elaborate. Ambitious. Far from foolproof. But he could afford to take risks when he was deep in the heart of Belarus, where girls were ripe for the picking and they didn't extradite to the US. He wouldn't get caught holding the bag, no matter what happened. He was too damn good now.

Sandberg was fast becoming top dog in the New York trade, and Declan had his eye on the upstart. He didn't particularly like Sandberg's tactics, which felt a bit gratuitous and like a production. The man known as Sandman had gone into the business because he enjoyed killing, maiming, torturing and raping—with panache—unlike Mr. Lucky, who got it over and done with as quickly as possible. But they created an alliance in spite of their differences, and when Vaughn suggested Sandberg to get the job done, Declan gave the green light on Captain Benson.

He considered buying her himself, smuggling her out of the country, stashing her somewhere Rollins would never find her. That would be the humane thing to do, but he couldn't stand the thought of her sad-eyed, reprimanding face looking at him the way she would look at him. Maybe he could still feel guilt after all, but that wasn't a good thing. Guilt would get you killed in this line of business. It needed to be stamped out like a disobedient whor* the moment it made itself known.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have accepted the video file that arrived unbidden from the dark net forum where he, Sandberg, and a handful of other associates exchanged encrypted communications. Declan preferred the old school methods his family had been using for years, but if you wanted to remain on top of the game you had to change with the times—and the technology. And if he wanted to keep his reputation as the cold-hearted Mr. Lucky, who had no qualms with buying and selling humans, breaking in girls and boys of all ages, or killing someone while their family watched and wept and begged, he couldn't let a little thing like loyalty or a former colleagueship give him pause.

Benson hadn't when she took his family away. Rollins hadn't when she seduced him, screwed him, and stole his child. Women or not, old friends or not, they had to learn that when you double-crossed Declan Murphy your luck ran out.

"Poor darlin'," he murmured in the brogue he always spoke with now—the voice of the monster inside him. He pressed his thumb to Olivia's terrorized face on the computer screen, the proof of life he hadn't requested from Sandberg but found he wanted to see, craved even, and traced the contour of her cheek. With the other hand, he unzipped the front of his trousers and reached inside.

When his fist closed around him, he thought of her touch, her pink mouth. That and the sad*stic, writhing sights and sounds from the video, as lurid, as enthralling as a scene from Hell, made quick work of his exertions.

"There you are, you greasy mick bastard." Dana practically purred with pleasure at the notification on the screen, instinctively hunching forward like a cat about to pounce. The file had been accessed. Viewed in its entirety only once, so at least the slimeball didn't go back for any instant replays, but she still had a knot in her stomach from clicking send.

Perpetuating Benson's gang rape was not something she savored, and in fact, she had spent the past few days vacillating between euphoria at each firewall her IT expert brought down and despair that he was one step closer to opening what felt like the portal to Hell. The laptop encryption was some of the best he'd ever seen, said Archie. "Where'd you find a piece of equipment this sophisticated, Lew? Satan's RadioShack?"

Even Archie knew, and she had told him as little as possible. He was trustworthy and kid-brother loyal, but she couldn't risk the career of someone so young and promising. He would be a huge asset to the Bureau's Cyber Division—already was—just as she had once been for Undercover Ops. She was starting to slow down, make mistakes; this case had brought that painfully to the forefront. The carnage in the warehouse didn't bother her: you try living among Nazis, prisoners, and ecoterrorists with a penchant for blowing folks up, and not develop a strong stomach. The handicapped kid with half his face gone didn't even warrant a sigh of pity when she'd rolled him over for the staging.

But in the foul container where they had caged and raped Olivia and countless other women, Dana could sense the horrible energy as soon as she crossed the threshold. She didn't believe in that stuff—places and objects absorbing the evil that went on around them—until she'd been in that atmosphere, breathed the putrid air, saw the mattress that was more stain than yellowish padding, and nearly lost her lunch. Rattled by her findings (there was the desk they had spread Olivia on like the human target on a knife-throwing wheel; the floor still sloshed with water from the hose; enough hair to form a wig had accumulated next to the slop bucket and gave the disconcerting impression that someone was floating facedown in the overflowing sewage), Dana almost let Gus Sandberg get the jump on her.

Once located, he was surprisingly easy to take out. A little cat-and-mouse around the shipping yard, the rageful screams and erratic gunfire when he discovered both sons dead, the simple way he fell and did not get up after one bullet. Not a boogeyman who refused to die, just an ordinary man whose heart could be stopped like everyone else's. Anticlimactic, in a way. But no less satisfying.

Now Gus and the gun used to kill him—Amanda's gun, as promised—were gone without a trace. According to the crime scene, he had flown into a rage when Matthew Parker led a cop to his headquarters, gunfire was exchanged, another cop and several others were killed before he fled, leaving his captives behind to evade capture himself. It was a dodgy plot that Dana had enlisted some dodgy agents to help her flesh out with supporting evidence and special calls made to sources above her pay grade. Her time undercover had given her a knack for locating and befriending individuals who operated outside the law, and that included other Feds. Her winning personality took care of the rest.

Maybe that was an exaggeration. But she did know how to charm the right things out of the right people, and it hadn't been difficult to find willing participants for a coverup, or just those who would look the other way. For one thing, nobody felt guilty about the deaths and disappearance of Gus Sandberg and his Dreamlanders, a blight on their city. So a bunch of filthy criminals had gone crazy and shot each other up—good riddance. One less open investigation for the Bureau to waste its resources on.

For another, anyone who had witnessed the live feed of Benson's assault, or even just learned of it secondhand, was happy to hear Sandberg's ring had been taken down by any means necessary. Cop or not, the captain was well-respected in the field office, having worked with and made a lasting impression on many of its employees over the years. In an odd sort of way, her tragedy had leveled the playing field a bit. A fellow law enforcement officer, their sister-in-arms, was hurt; rank, agency and field of expertise no longer separated them. They were one mighty fist, ready to strike.

Dana was simply the part of the fist that found the target first. A prominent knuckle or a signet ring. The girls, she supposed, were the index finger that pointed the way. At least the ones who weren't too traumatized to speak, although it had taken some time to find them a translator as well. Most were Russian-speaking, but three of the girls, who clung together like conjoined triplets, only spoke Belarusian. The lone bilingual—for whom English was a secondary language, that is—was native in Polish and cursed profusely (Spierdalaj! Kurwa! Bitch!) at anyone that approached her after she and the others were liberated from a container at the opposite end of the shipping yard.

Despite the differences in dialect, they all shared a similar story: promised a new life in America, they had put their trust in a man called Mr. Lucky and ended up in a box, preparing to be pimped out by an Americanświnia—a pig—the angry girl explained. Then: "Zee cinnamon." Dana had puzzled over that one when it wasn't translated, but thankfully, realized it was "The Sandman" in heavily accented English before making a fool of herself asking.

Now the Bureau's main focus was reuniting the girls with their families or finding shelter for the ones who didn't have any (which was the majority). That pretty much gave Dana free reign to pursue her own avenues of interest, in the name of tying up any loose ends of the case. She'd met Archie outside the Cyber Division lab first thing the morning after disposing of Sandberg and confiscating the laptop. At the time, she hadn't known if the thing would provide any leads or not.

Maybe her instincts weren't failing her at all, she decided, because here she was, watching as a user in Minsk took the bait. He was a long time responding after the video, shortened to thirty minutes from hours of bloodcurdling footage, and she didn't want to think about why. An answer wasn't even needed now that she had his location, but she wanted to see what the dirty mick had to say for himself. "Come on, lucky boy, talk to me," she murmured to the idling screen. She had never met Declan Murphy personally, but by all accounts, he was not the type to beat around the bush. If he kept her waiting much longer, she might just explode. "Show me what you're made of, you stinking Irish—"

Her heart nearly leapt into her throat when his reply showed up beneath the thread she had started, entitled "New York's Finest brought to heel." And for a moment it stopped altogether as she read the words on the screen:Save some for me.

Sick bastard. Too disgusted to respond right away, and not wanting it to seem like she—well, Sandberg—was waiting with bated breath for his reply, she spat into the wastebasket beside her, then gave it a kick that dented in the aluminum side. She held off for fifteen minutes, staring daggers at the wall clock and cracking her knuckles compulsively. Finally, she let her hands take over, punching the keyboard a finger at a time until a message formed without her awareness of what she planned to say.

As much as you want. Very filling. She only read it once and sent it before she could change her mind, or vomit.

Minutes later, a new notification from the user in Minsk popped up and it was all Dana could do not to pull out her sidearm and open fire.

I can taste it already.

. . .

. . .

Chapter 44: Death in Small Doses

Chapter Text

Chapter 44.

Death in Small Doses

. . .

Fin placed the photo facedown inside his desk drawer. Kat's family had wanted most of the tchotchkes from her desk: the backup watch she kept "just in case something happened to the other one"; the weird little collection of pennies she added to at every crime scene, claiming there was always one to be foundsomewhere; the random troll doll with green hair that she blew on for good luck before performance reviews and Wednesdays (girl was crazy superstitious about Wednesdays); and her miniature courtesy badge, still snug in the black velvet lining of its display case. Her mother had cried when she learned she couldn't have the real one.

That tore Fin up because he might have prevented it. The girl was so proud carrying around her shiny silver badge, he hadn't had the heart to tell her most of the NYPD carried fakes. Very impressive but slightly smaller fakes that would get their ass in a sling if the brass found out, but at least if you lost it you didn't have to pay the penalty (ten days' pay, for Chrissake) or do a sh*t-ton of paperwork explaining why you were such a dumbass. Poor Kat had died wearing the real deal and it would probably sit in evidence somewhere for the next eighty years, tarnished by her blood, until the current SVU squad was long forgotten.

Liv was supposed to outlast them all and go down in history as the best damn cop the city had ever seen, but now he didn't know . . . Man, he just didn't know.

Maybe he had held the picture back on purpose, then. Not to be shady or selfish with the family, but for the memory. He was still pimped out for the wedding, pinching his lapel and acting fly as hell, as if the brides on either side of him were his entourage. Liv and Amanda were prettier than ever that day, and so damn happy they had both jumped at the chance to smoosh his cheeks with kisses for the camera. Striking a squatty hip hop pose in front of them, high heels and all, was Kat, flashing peace signs and an enormous grin. They had all been hitting the champagne pretty hard before Carisi called out that it was time for a shot of just the squad.

Immortalized together forever in that goofy picture, in a frame with dry macaroni noodles glued to the border by one or another of the Rollins-Benson kids, and now at home in Fin's desk drawer. The squad. Family.

"Is every unit as close-knit as this one?" Kat asked him once, early on.

"Nah," he had replied, "It's different here. More . . . personal. More'n just a job."

"Why?"

"'Cause of her, I guess." He'd tipped a nod toward Olivia's office, where she could be seen hunched over her desk, those chunky readers, as thick and black as electrical tape, balanced on her nose, poring over a case file. "She's been here since I got here, and the place has changed so much since then, everybody else coming and going. She's the only constant. Best I can figure, she's the heart of this place, and that's why it's so special."

Kat studied their captain for a long time after that, the wheels obviously turning in her nimble, impetuous brain. She reminded him of a Jack Russell Terrier, always looking for trouble. (Had. Had reminded him.) "What happens when she goes?" she asked, finally. "When the heart stops beating?"

He got annoyed with her then, goddamn him. Overeager young punk thinking she was going to come in and be the next generation of SVU, when he and Liv had practically built the place from the ground up, dedicating twenty-plus years of their lives to it. And giving up so much. "Man, what you talking about 'when the heart stops beating?' Liv ain't going nowhere. And if she does, well sh*t, I'll put in my papers too. After that, makes no difference to me how bad they f*ck this place up."

"Really? You're that loyal to her?"

"Yeah, guess I am. Get back to work, Tamin. Those DD5's ain't gonna write themselves."

Their last conversation had been about Olivia too, out of Amanda's earshot, though they could both see the detective in the interview room staring staring staring at the laptop screen. She was so still, seldom blinking, barely breathing, she looked like a department store mannequin. "I'm off to Sealview, Sarge. If that bitch knows anything, I'll get it out of her. You okay?"

Hell no, he wasn't okay. He had just watched a good friend and the most honest, trustworthy, and courageous woman he knew taking it up the ass again. He hadn't even witnessed sh*t like that in Somalia or anywhere else he was stationed as a Ranger. "Huh? Oh. Fine. Just, uh . . . try to get it fast, Kat. I don't know how much more of this she can handle."

"We'll get her back. We have to. She's the heart, right?"

No heart could go through what Liv had gone through and not be thoroughly, irrevocably broken. The captain had been home for days, with no word of a return to the one-six or a status update that he didn't have to hear secondhand from Carisi or that Daphne girl. Kat was dead, her funeral attended by only one of her squad mates—just the service, he couldn't bear standing graveside while her bright white casket went into the ground. And Amanda, his one-time partner and protégé, and the closest he'd ever had to a little sister, was now a killer. He understood why she did it, just like he knew he would do everything in his power to help cover it up. But he would have spared her the burden of such terrible and costly revenge if he could.

He would have spared them all.

"Nothing changes except what has to." It had sounded so wise, so profound coming from Cragen. From Liv. But Fin finally heard it for what it was: a bullsh*t excuse for a bullsh*t world that didn't give a f*ck who it destroyed, just chewed you up, spit you out and kept on turning.

. . .

Why?

. . .

One week. I still cry when I go. There's so much blood.

Serena stares at him, blank as slate. He probably thinks she is mildly retarded. Just a dumb slu*t got herself knocked up by a guy who didn't even have to marry her to coax her legs apart. (He keeps glancing at her nude ring finger, and she wishes she'd thought to wear the diamond her father gave her as a graduation gift.)

The cop had snapped his fingers in front of her face to break the trance she was in that night three months ago. She learned to hate cops that night. She learned to hate a lot of things. A bulleted list of her most despised subjects read as follows:

• Men
• Herself
• Sex
• Cops
• Irregular monthly cycles
• Dark stairwells/landings below street level
• Walking alone at night in the city
• Judgmental looks
• Whispers
• The fetus growing inside her, as much a stranger to her as the man who put it there

And now, doctors. For they delivered the news that you were carrying a monster's child, all the while treating you like the monster itself. Oh God, what if its DNA somehow leaked into hers and she became like the stranger with the sideburns and no face? Just a rutting, grunting beast in the dark.

She decided then to kill it. There were herbs and things you could take. One of her hippie friends would know. If all else failed, she had a closet full of wire coat hangers at home. A bottle of vodka too. Sterilized twice over, she thought, and almost laughed out loud.

"Is there someone you can call?" asked the doctor, doing everything short of recoiling from her in distaste, dirty girl that she was.

"No," Serena said, gathering her pocketbook and white lace gloves. She had worn the damn things to appear more ladylike, virginal. On her way out the door, she tossed them in the trash. "There's no one."

. . .

Amanda made an appointment for my tooth. She says I have to go this time. Can't stand to see me wincing with every bite. I think I'll stop eating altogether. What's the point?

. . .

I'm fading and the last sight I see is a shadow-man standing over me. Amanda gave explicit instructions that only the dentist and one female assistant, who would act as a chaperone and under no circ*mstances stand above me unless medically necessary, were to be in the room. The likelihood of me being aware of who stood where during the procedure was very slim, they assured her, but she was adamant. She offered to be here and hold my hand as I was put under—to be one of the faces above—but I couldn't bear for her to see me like this. Not again. I remember why as the light goes out, his hand comes toward my mouth, and I start to

'Scream. Scream, goddamn you!' I bellow the words at her, but she is too scared to listen. I know I should have compassion for her; that she isn't weak or pathetic for not getting up from the desk, fighting back, running(Jesus run please you have to—)Even if she did break free and make it out of The Box, they have her outnumbered and trapped God-knows-where. He'll just drag her back into the beach house and rape her again on those filthy mattresses in the basem*nt. And she's so hurt, it's no wonder she can't escape. She needs to go to the hospital, but her mother won't take her when it's bad like this—too afraid of getting caught.

Still, I can't stand to look at her lying there, waiting for the next one to take his turn. It makes me hate her. All those years on the force, all those years defending others and pretending to be so tough, so in control, yet she can't say 'stop' or 'no' when her time comes? She lets him put it in her hand, rub it up and down like she's greasing a pole or some f*cking thing, and doesn't move a muscle while he fondles her in return. How's that for father-daughter bonding? (Of course she knew who he was, she had to. If she denied it, she was a lying little bitch, just as her mother always said.)

I bet she wanted it all the other times too, even here in this den of piss and sh*t and come and blood, four five six guys at once. Otherwise, why would it keep happening? You didn't experience that many assaults—that much senseless violence—without inviting it on
(myself)
yourself, you know? I've spent my entire career telling people differently, but where she's concerned, it's the truth. It's how she was conceived, for Christ's sake, how much more proof do I need? You reap what you sow, and she has spent her life reaping the seed her father sowed all those years ago: her own self.

It would be better if they killed her. Just ended it now, before she passes on the curse of herself to her wife or kids. She came so close with Tilly.(Not my baby please God not her—)They're probably already damaged from experiencing her numerous traumas secondhand, but they're young enough that if they grow up without any more of her turmoil, they should turn out all right. Serena's abuse didn't really start affecting her—or at least get as bad—until she was around ten or eleven. She wonders sometimes if she would have escaped her curse if Serena had just given her away at birth, or in grade school, even.

She'll never know, and as I watch the next guy on top of her, holding her mouth open to put things inside(can't swallow my mouth is so dry I need water but why can't I move), I slip out of the rancid shadows, so thick I feel them on my skin, and put my gun to her head. The men ignore me and go on f*cking her, but she looks up at me with the saddest, most hopeless brown eyes I've ever seen outside of a mirror. Do it, the eyes say. Do it, goddamn you.

There's a dry(click)the first time I pull the trigger. The bullet vacates the chamber on the second try, I see his face, and then I am gone.

. . .

The damn thing had ripped out of her body like the demon child inRosemary's Baby. Horror novels weren't her typical literary fare of choice—the writing was much too pedestrian, the plots outlandish, the characters one dimensional and incompetent—but she had developed an appetite for the morbid during the first trimester. Some women craved pickles or potato chips while they were pregnant; Serena Benson had craved the dark and demented. The uglier, the better. She had even considered auditioning for the lead role when she read thatRosemary's Babywas being made into a motion picture late last year.

A woman impregnated with the spawn of a hideous monster. She would have made the perfect Rosemary because that was the exact story she was living. But by the time filming began, she was too far along to play early ante- or postpartum scenes. Yet another hope dashed by the small squawking bundle they placed in her arms. There was still a pinkish mixture of its vernix and her blood around the little monster's abnormally dark hairline and the eyelids like plump pink labia, squinting around sightless black marbles. She got the urge to lick the cheesy gunk off its face, taking back from it whatever parts of her body she could, but she restrained herself. They were already looking at her oddly as she avoided touching it any more than she had to.

"Congratulations, you have a little girl," said one of the nurses, probably trying to convince her the thing at her breast was a real baby. Her baby. No one had said anything positive to her about giving birth out of wedlock yet—whether or not they knew about the rape (she had only told Meg and her mother, the latter of whom accused her of having an affair with a married man and making wild accusations to cover it up)—and it piqued her interest just the tiniest bit to hear a woman, not much older than she, acting as if this were a joyous occasion.

"It's a girl?" She peered down in surprise, but hesitated at lifting back the swaddling to get a look at the evidence. For some reason she hadn't considered that the thing might be born female. She didn't think demons had a particular sex, and if it did come out human, it would surely be male, like its disgusting, grunting brute of a father, would it not? Girls were different. They could be shaped into almost anything, made to do almost anything they were told, and they didn't go around attacking other women who were walking home alone at night.

"Mm-hmm. She's a pretty little thing too. I've helped deliver my fair share of babies, but I've never seen a newborn with that much hair or eyes so striking." The nurse rounded the bed to stand beside Serena and gaze down admiringly at the infant, who was soothing itself—herself—by suckling her fingers. Everyone else had cleared the room with nary a word or glance back at the girl who had "gotten herself into trouble" and her bastard child. "Very alert. See how she's focusing on you already? Oh my, you've got a smart one on your hands, Miss Benson!"

That caught Serena's attention more than any comments on the baby's looks ever could have. More surprising than the sex was the possibility that the child might be intelligent. The father was a Neanderthal, a mindless beast that just wanted a place to stick it, whenever and wherever he took the notion. Serena had done her damnedest to kill his offspring in the womb, drinking heavily in the hopes that alcohol would flush out the clump of cells, where herbs and other "home remedies" (several involving street drugs, mostly psychedelics) had failed. She chickened out with the coat hanger; she had heard far too many tales of botched abortions, and knew far too much about her own anatomy and how easily she could perforate something and bleed to death or die of a horrific infection, to try it solo. If nothing else, she would have risked missing classes and bringing down her grade. She refused to do that—or to die—for him and his spawn.

In the back of her mind she had hoped, at the very least, for some brain damage. Then she could put the thing away in a home and forget about it, free of the responsibility, resting assured that it was not a part of her in any way. Any child of hers would be brilliant, driven, focused, a force to be reckoned with. They would forge their own way and change the world in the process. That was the kind of child Serena had always wanted: one who shared her aspirations, her vision, and her determination.

"You don't want a kid, you want a campaign manager," Meg had teased before the rape and the subsequent pregnancy. Back when Serena still laughed—and fully agreed. "A little radical feminist who comes out waving a copy ofThe Feminine Mystiquein one hand and a burning bra in the other."

The baby girl held neither, but shewaslooking straight into Serena's eyes and the nurse was right, you could see the mind at work behind those big dark eyes. Brown, not black as she originally thought. There was an intelligence and sophistication to brown eyes that she had always admired. And the face wasn't the angry, screaming prune she first glimpsed, either; it was indeed rather pretty, with long lashes to match the full head of hair, a tiny heart-shaped nose, and sweet pink lips that curved into a natural pucker.

Serena felt herself being drawn in by the baby's (herbaby's) charms and was powerless to stop it. When they brought her back later to nurse, she didn't look away or cringe, even as the little girl latched on and drank deep. The thick sable strands were soft as silk to her fingers as she played with them, watching the baby feed. No devil horns protruding from the scalp, no scales or fangs. After months of preparing for an abomination, she had given birth to perfection.

A perfect blank slate to be made into her image.

So when they asked for a name, Serena gave a longtime favorite of hers, Shakespearean and Old Hollywood—before the likes of Monroe, Mansfield, and Ann-Margaret came along and tarted things up—when women were strong and classy and didn't whor* themselves out for attention: Olivia.

Olivia was sophisticated; Olivia was bold and independent; Olivia was twice as smart as any of the men and didn't have to flaunt it. Most importantly, Olivia was hers and she would be whatever Serena told her to be. Her mother's daughter, never taking a man's name to be legitimized or seen as a whole person—Olivia Margaret Benson was already a whole person all on her own.

I am so broken. I don't know what day it is anymore and I can't brush my hair without shaking and crying uncontrollably. The kids look at me like I'm a stranger who frightens them. Amanda makes me take at least two bites of everything whether I want to or not. Last night I dreamed I was breastfeeding all of them—the Kid, the Crier, the Driver, Little Brother, the Sandman, P . . . (I know they have real names, but I can't stand to write them.) My children were starving and I didn't have any milk left for them. By the time the men finished, I was shriveled up like a mummy.

My phone says it's June now. Almost summer break. How am I going to survive this?

. . .

June 3, 2022

I guess each completed rape was to make up for all the almost-rapes that came before. I lost count of how many there have been altogether. What a strange thing not to be able to remember.

Maybe I should ask to see the recording. Everyone else got to watch it—why not me?

. . .

June '22

Everything aches. "Healing nicely," according to doc and dentist, but doesn't feel that way. I still can't pick up Sammie without feeling like I'm being stabbed in the side. I tried nursing her today, but she fussed for Amanda. Probably sensed how on edge I was. I've taken several showers since I got home, and I can still feel them on me. The thought of her putting her mouth where theirs were makes me want to vomit.

I managed breakfast with the kids this morning, though. Coffee and a piece of toast. They acted like I'd just won a triathlon, especially Jesse. She's almost as vigilant as Amanda. It's sweet, but it scares the hell out of me. I can't let them grow up like I did, taking care of their damaged mother. I would rather be dead than put them through that.

Amanda caught me counting Valium a little while ago. I think she's worried I'm going to swallow the whole bottle. She keeps double-checking the wine to make sure I haven't been drinking too. I feel like I'm on suicide watch.

. . .

Why don't you just kill yourself?Serena posed the question to her silent, hollow-eyed reflection, not surprised when it gazed back vacantly and didn't respond. The pathetic bitch was too cowardly and weak to answer her, let alone to take the out that she offered. She had dangled the bait numerous times in the past year, but the woman in the mirror never went for it.

There was her career to think of. She was just getting started with the work she had always wanted to do, poured so much time and effort into, slaved and sweated over vats of smelly, gelatinous cafeteria food for. It was that same devotion—and a late-night walk home from the library—which saw her in this present mess, a single mother to an infant who never stopped needing, wanting, taking, demanding, crying, puking, sh*tting, and always, always f*cking eating. Her nipples were raw and chapped from its gummy, voracious little mouth, reminiscent of the suckers on a parasitic worm. She wanted to stop feeding it altogether, but then the crying would become unbearable. She hated the sound of a squalling baby more than words could express, so it was either nurse or press a pillow over the child's face.

The first time she had thought about killing her daughter outside of the womb, it terrified her. She had almost broken down and gone to confession, a place she vowed never to set foot again after being dragged there on a near weekly basis for years by her devout Catholic mother. "While you're under my roof, young lady, you will go to Mass and confess your sins when I say so, do I make myself clear?" It was that rule that started Serena's propensity for tall tales—she had to havesomethinginteresting to tell the priest—and resulted in her mother accusing her of lying about the rape. Nobody believed the boy who cried wolf, and in 1968 upstate New York, no one believed the girl who cried rape. At least in a church she might find some mercy or a sympathetic ear. Maybe even some advice.

Then again, they might strap her to a gurney and lobotomize her for being a nymphomaniac and wanting to commit infanticide.

She had skipped the priest, and once she discovered she wasn't about to be struck down for entertaining thoughts of harming her baby, she began to entertain them more frequently and in greater detail. It should all look like a tragic accident, no way to be linked back to her. A fall from the fourth-story balcony, perhaps, though that would have to wait until the baby was toddling and could feasibly get out a poorly latched door. Accidental overdose on Serena's sleeping pills was a possibility, but also dependent on the child's mobility. An apartment fire would be convenient, as long as she didn't mind the inconvenience of losing the rest of her belongings. A gas leak, a freak drowning in the bathtub, a stray cat come in through the window to steal the baby's milky breath . . .

Those were all just hypotheticals, of course. She could never actually kill her baby girl. Even if she did drive Serena crazy; even if she was willful and intractable, not the malleable little carbon copy Serena had anticipated. Maybe as she got older she would grow easier to love, but for now she was an obligation Serena hadn't asked for. And Serena Grace Benson did not back down from obligations, no matter how they were presented to her.

Suicide remained an option, although she worried—ironically, she knew—what would happen to her daughter if she wasn't there to raise and protect her. Would Olivia get a good education? Would she be adopted by a couple who doted on her, lavished her with love, attention, gifts? Or would the father molest her on the sly, while the mother indoctrinated her with lies and religious mumbo jumbo, making her fear her own "sinful" seven-year-old body?

Like methods of murder, the list of possible ways her daughter could be f*cked up was endless. But just as she'd refused to give up her final semesters of college for a rape and unwanted pregnancy, she refused to let anyone else rear her child. The only person who got to f*ck Olivia up was Serena herself—she had earned that right with her body and soul.

"Maybe some other time," she told the mirror. Sighing, she collected the Smirnoff bottle and trudged for the living room. Olivia was crying again.

. . .

Crying again. It's all I seem to do now and it happens without warning, regardless of whether or not I want it to. Amanda took me to get my hair cut today, and I cried the entire time. I felt their hands and dicks in my hair, pulling, yanking, ejacul*ting. I couldn't lie back for the shampoo, so the stylist wetted my hair with a spray bottle and I jumped every time. She probably thought I was a basket case. I guess I am.

I barely looked at the results—can't stand my reflection—just saw an above the shoulder bob. Amanda had a picture from when it was short before. She and the kids keep telling me how great it looks, but it feels strange. Too light. It's like my head is gone, and honestly, there's been such a disconnect between it and my body since I got home, sometimes I have to feel for one or the other to be sure they're both still there.

I'm just so . . . numb.

. . .

I think Amanda is getting sick of me. I don't blame her. I told her to go back to work, but she won't leave me by myself. Not even with the dogs. Gigi has been on high alert for the past couple weeks. The poor thing could probably use a break from me too.

At least I'm not spending all day in bed anymore. I've moved out to the couch. The kids were missing me, Amanda said. She asks me to hold Sammie all the time now, like I'm going to forget how. I know she's just trying to keep me busy and get my mind off of things, but it doesn't help. Is this how my mother felt when I was born? No wonder she wanted nothing to do with me. I love Sammie Grace more than life itself; she is one of the best things that's ever happened to me (my three other loves and sweet Amanda fill out the rest of that list, of course). But it's hard being what she needs—they need—right now. I can't imagine trying to do that for a child you didn't want or love, who reminded you of your assault every time you looked at her.

I'm sorry, Mom. I wish I had helped you heal instead of making it worse. I wish I hadn't come into this world cursed. You should have had the option to abort. It would have saved everyone a lot of heartache in the end.

. . .

Chapter 45: The Prison of My Mind

Chapter Text

Chapter 45.

The Prison of My Mind

. . .

Our eyes only, she says, circling me like a prowling jungle cat. Hers have gone from blue diamonds, my favorite color, to the amber of a tiger's eye. Her breath is a deep-throated purr in my ear. I shiver and she smiles with wickedly sharp teeth.

'Is that a yes?'

'I don't know, Amanda . . . I'm not very comfortable with it. When that stuff gets out, there's no stopping it. And you know how I feel about p*rnography. Why do we need a video when we can see each other in real-time?'

'Okay, first of all, it won't get out. It can stay on my phone or yours for the rest of eternity. That's where the "our eyes only" part kicks in. And second, don't you think it'll be fun seeing ourselves in action? You ever get turned on at work or during a stakeout, you can just whip that puppy out and rub yourself off under the desk until I can take over.' She nudges my backside with her hip and winks wolfishly at me as she rounds in front.

It's difficult to resist her like this, down to just her bra and the jeans she pulled from the hamper this morning. I can smell how ready she is, and it makes my mouth water. What could it hurt to lay her down, rip off those jeans, and bury my face between her thighs for the camera? No one else will ever see the recording, and she's right: it might be kind of fun. Freeing.

'You trust me, don't you, babe?'

She has me there, because Idotrust her, implicitly. I trust her with my life and the lives of our children, and there is nothing I would not do for her if she asked it of me. Including this.

'I trust you.'

When her phone is perched on the dresser, lens side out and angled toward the bed, she announces, 'Lights, camera, action!' and scampers over to undress me. Something is off, though—she's ignoring my kisses and pawing at my clothes with such haste, it borders on frantic. I want to tell her to slow down, that it's not a race, but she pushes me back on the bed and before I realize what's happening, my wrists are bound above my head with a belt she pulled out of thin air.

I've seen the P-shaped buckle somewhere before, I just can't remember where. There's bits of blood and skin encrusted in the filigreed metal from which the P stands out in studded silver relief. It has teeth, that buckle, and suddenly I feel them sinking into my flesh, burning, biting. Looking down, I see that it's Amanda who's causing the pain: her fingernails, her slavering canine fangs. Those yellow eyes.

'What's wrong, kitty cat?' she asks, my blood dripping from her teeth and down her pale chin. There's gore in her sunbeam-colored hair.

'Please don't,' I whisper.

She palms my breasts and squeezes too hard, unresponsive to my cries. 'Nice for a bitch your age. Hate it when their titt*es hang down to their knees.'

'Stop. Don't do this!'

'Bet you still got a nice juicy c*nt too, don't you, slu*t?'

'Help, Amanda! No!'

From the waistband of her jeans she brings forth her service pistol and points it to my temple. 'Just wanted a taste of your big yummy co*ck before I sent you to hell with those other pricks,' she purrs. Grabbing me by the chin, she turns it toward the camera; her tongue is like sandpaper when she licks my cheek. Then: 'Say cheese.'

'Amanda, no please—'

The gun explodes in her hand, and I

wake sitting up, sobbing as she throws on the bedside lamp and launches back across the mattress, gathering me into her arms. It was just your regular, run-of-the-mill nightmare this time, not a night terror—I know because I'm aware of my surroundings; that it's Amanda holding onto me and stroking my head, speaking soothing words and rocking me, not the cat-eyed abomination from my dream. I remember every detail, down to the glint of her teeth.

"Shh, I've got you. It's me, baby. You're safe now. You're safe, shh."

This has become our song in the days After. I practically know it by heart now, and I allow it to lull me for a while, her small swift hands smoothing my hair, my back, as if I'm clay she is molding into something less broken.

"You killed them," I say when my tears and breath have finally calmed. She's been so careful not to let on, I feel a little guilty for breaking her cover. But I want her to know that I know, and she doesn't have to hide it from me. I can handle it. "Didn't you."

A long time passes in silence with no answer. I sense her thinking above me, wondering how I figured it out and if I'm making an accusation. Thankfully, she can tell that I'm not, and just as I'm about to explain that my memories are hazy and jumbled but I remember gunshots in the shipping container, a St. Jude medal hanging from her neck at the hospital, the weight in her tone when she tells me the men can't hurt me anymore, she finds her voice: "Three of them were mine. Kat took out one, another was collateral damage, and Dana did the rest. The official story is that the gang had a shootout and Sandberg fled the scene. It's . . . mostly true."

I'm not concerned with the validity of the report, I find. I who have been on a one-woman crusade for truth since discovering, at the age of five or six, how little of it there is in the world. What troubles me most is the way Amanda calls my rapists hers. Her kills. No matter how justified, blood on your hands will always eat away at your soul. Like those dripping fangs in my dream.

And Kat. It's awful, but I keep forgetting she's dead. Amanda only told me after I saw the funeral program mixed in with some papers on the table. She didn't want to add to my stress by telling me another of my officers was killed while covering my ass. A noble attempt on her part, but she needn't have bothered—there's no room for grief beyond my own, no mourning except for that of the life I have lost. I envy Kat in a way. She was set free and I was condemned to a prison with no escape. The prison of my mind.

"But they're all dead?" I hear the hope in my voice, and I'm certain Amanda has heard it too. It's the same hope that led me to the morgue to view Lewis' body (he's still so huge I thought he'd be diminished somehow don't they always say the dead look smaller because their soul is gone I guess it makes sense he had no soul), his ruined head where the brains came out. Even after that I sometimes doubted he was really gone. At night when the floorboards creaked; whenever a strange man got too close on the sidewalk; waking from a dream of him breathing and smiling on top of me.

My current rapists are most likely in the ground or reduced to ashes by now, so Amanda's account is all I have to go on. If only there was video footage of them taking their final breaths, maybe then I could be one hundred percent sure. As it is, I look to her with anticipation, needing her to say it out loud, as if she's reading me a bedtime story and I have to know the ending before I can sleep. She kisses my forehead so softly I ache, then puts me at arm's length for a serious talk. I've seen her do this a million times with the kids and know it means I'm supposed to "listen up good."

"Every one of those guys who laid a finger on you in the video is dead, Liv. I swear to you." Amanda brushes the hair back from my brow, ducking to keep the eye contact I let drift to the side in thought—and worry. (I can't seem to turn either off anymore.) "And anyone who arranged it or helped in any way, even if it's the f*cking bagel guy who served us that morning and made sure we were distracted, is going to pay." She holds my chin in her palm, impressing the words into my mind as fully as she can. Not much sticks right now.

I have so many questions. Does she know who arranged my abduction, as her grim tone just suggested? Does making them pay mean killing them too? Even the slow kid, the one I still think of as Little Brother—is he dead? By whose hand? And do I care? Why is Dana Lewis involved and can she be trusted? Am I ever going to recover from this and not feel like the world is crumbling down around me, burying me in skull-crushing rubble, soul-crushing terror?

What I say is, "Good." My questions can wait. After years of searching for answers, I finally don't need them anymore. If I begin a new quest, if somewhere within me I find a well of energy and strength to continue, it will be in search of peace. Truth and justice have failed me for the last time. "I think I can sleep now. Hold me a little while longer."

She does, her arms around me like a life vest, and it's the best sleep I've had in weeks.

The cracked door meant she was a good mother. It had to. She had done it on instinct as she left the room, easing the door shut behind her, except for those final few inches. That was the width of her maternal impulses, that two- or three-inch gap between the hall and the bathroom. That was how much she didn't want her baby girl to drown. Two or three inches worth.

Might not sound like much, but it was an improvement from the accidental death scenarios she had wished on her daughter in the first year and a half of her life. Meg had been the one who put an end to that by currying Olivia's favor; when Serena saw her child forming a stronger attachment to her best friend than herself, a competitive switch flicked on somewhere and she had spent the next year and a half trying to bond with the little girl. After all, it didn't matter how successful and brilliant she was in her career, if she failed at motherhood she would still be seen as somehow faulty as a woman, somehow broken.

It felt a little like being controlled by a three-year-old dictator, but Livvy was generally well-behaved and surprisingly self-reliant for one so small. She could dress herself (only in the clothes Serena picked out for her, of course), tie her shoes, pour her own cereal, and use the potty without much assistance. A couple more years, and she wouldn't even need her mother's help anymore—she'd be able to get herself to school and Serena wouldn't have to feel guilty for using work as an excuse not to spend time with her.

In the meantime, Serena would go on leaving doors open a crack and glancing in every few minutes to check that Livvy wasn't facedown in the bathtub. Of all things, the child loved baths and requested them almost daily. To a mother who delighted in her offspring's quirks and funny notions, it might have been endearing. To Serena it was a nuisance and she would rather be doing almost anything else than soaping up a squirmy toddler body, getting splashed by energetic little legs that never stopped moving, instructing curious fingers on the proper cleansing of genitalswithoutself-exploration, and rinsing baby shampoo from that dark hair of unknown (but easily guessed) origins.

As long as the kid didn't make a colossal mess, she could be trusted to entertain herself for a while. Mommy had more important matters to attend to, and they didn't involve combing tangles or fashioning perfectly parted pigtails.

She was topping off her third glass of licorice schnapps—much lower alcohol content than vodka, she reasoned, and it was the weekend, why shouldn't she indulge?—when she heard the crash. Musical at first, like the thump of a bass drum followed by shattering glass that tinkled like chimes; and then the thud of a small body, thirty-two pounds at the last pediatric visit, a vast improvement from the previous year when the doctor accused Serena of not providing adequate nutrition to her underweight toddler. After that, a silence so unnatural it made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

She's dead, Serena thought, and in that split-second before she leapt to her feet and ran, a calmness stole over her unlike anything she had found via her so-called outlets: journaling, literature, the bottle.My little girl is dead. (And it's my fault.)

Then she was sprinting down the hall, stumbling, tripping over her own feet, to throw open the cracked bathroom door—it collided with the back of the crumpled thirty-two-pound body and had to be shoved wide—on a scene that haunted her for years. Glass shards, sharper and shinier than knives, compounded her horrified reflection ten, twenty, thirty times, so that her scream bounced back at her from every direction; the blood was fantastic and, in her memories, covered nearly every surface of the small lavatory, though no three-year-old could possibly contain that much; best she could tell, the flow originated from Olivia's forehead, where a large chunk of the broken bathroom mirror, roughly the size and shape of a tomahawk, protruded from the skin on the right side.

"Oh my God," she gasped as the tableau came together in her mind, forming a more coherent picture. Olivia had crawled out of the tub and onto the counter, aided by the toilet, its closed lid dampened by small wet footprints, to stand in the sink and play in the medicine cabinet. She must have slipped on the slick concave porcelain and crashed face first into the mirror. "Oh, Livvy."

Sure enough, when Serena knelt beside her daughter and peeled away the veil of dark hair that clung to her face, there was another mask underneath. She was about to scream again, convinced the flesh had been flayed off by the jagged edges of mirror—she looked up expecting to see Olivia's face hanging from one like an animal pelt on a stick, still distinguishable as the creature it had once been—but she caught sight of the tube in the little girl's hand and coughed up a sob. Lipstick. The red stuff all over the mirror, counter, and coating Olivia's face was lipstick, not blood. (Well, some of it.) The little idiot had gotten into the cabinet to play with her goddamn makeup.

"Livvy, wake up. Olivia." Serena patted the girl's cheek briskly, squeezed either side until her lips puckered in a fishy pout, gave a small but insistent shake. When the dark brown eyes didn't flutter open and stare dazedly up at her, or even so much as twitch behind the closed lids smeared in Cherry Tomato and baby blood, some of her panic returned. She started to feel for a pulse, but couldn't remember where to place her fingertips.

No, she remembered just fine—it was the thought of touching her daughter's wet, naked body that made her draw back her hand in disgust. She helped Olivia dress, bathe, and use the toilet all the time, it wasn't as if she never came into contact with her bare skin, as velvety soft as lamb's-ear, but it was usually no more than a glancing touch, a quickly averted eye, supplication disguised as motherly encouragement that the child do things for herself. Even changing diapers had turned Serena's stomach, not because of the messes inside them, but because of the delicate pink vulva she sometimes had to clean, careful, careful, her finger encased in soft white cloth, or the Vaseline she had to spread on the furious red rash radiating from the cleft in Olivia's backside and between her pudgy legs.

Luckily, Olivia had been easy to potty train, and those days of wincing attempts to soothe and cajole a cranky infant were long over. Now, perhaps, the half-hearted maternal fumblings were over for good. It was everything Serena had wished for since that day, three and a half years ago, when the doctor informed her she was pregnant with her rapist's child. So why couldn't she stop shaking?

"Olivia Margaret, you're scaring Mommy. Wake up or you'll get a spanking." Serena didn't spank; didn't believe in it. But Olivia always straightened right up at the threat of being punished. Other than the occasional misadventure, she really was a bright, obedient kid. If Serena was too hard on her, it was mostly because she saw her potential.

Mostly.

"Livvy, please—"

"Mommy?" The goopy mix of blood and lipstick acted as a sealant and Olivia's lashes did not part right away. She squinted through them, a black-eyed ghoulish little thing, like one of the blood-painted boys inLord of the Flies. A regression to her primitive, animal self. It was in her, after all. "My head hurts. Did you bang it?"

Serena bristled at the accusation before remembering she recently had "banged" her daughter's head, quite by accident, pushing her away from a hot pan on the stove and into the kitchen table. She would let this one slide, disoriented and suggestible as Olivia was right then. "No, honey, you fell. Scared me half to death too. Come on, let's get you taken care of."

"I'm sorry," Olivia said as Serena fetched a large towel from the linen closet and wrapped the child in it, breathing a sigh of relief when she was covered. Serena didn't ask what the apology was for—scaring her, destroying the bathroom, dawdling in her makeup—but scooped up the thirty-two-pound bundle and clambered to her feet. She hadn't realized she was kneeling in glass fragments until that moment, and she'd bear the scars for the rest of her days. None of them hurt as much as the one in her baby girl's forehead, though.

On their way out of the apartment, Olivia wrapped her skinny naked arms around Serena's neck. She nuzzled into the curve, unaware of the bloody gash in her forehead or the reflective tomahawk sticking out of it, and inhaled her mother's scent. "You smell like candy, Mommy," she said, still a bit groggy but minding her manners: "May I have some?"

Serena cast a longing look back at her topped-off and untouched third glass of schnapps on the coffee table, then shut the door behind them. "Maybe when we get back home, little love."

. . .

Poppedsicle, she implores, giving me the big blue eyes that are just this side of Adriatic. She so seldom weaponizes her cuteness like that, I can't help but indulge her this once. Her mama and big sister have been a bad influence during my past few weeks of . . . in absentia. Again it occurs to me how much I've missed while wallowing in my own despair, and I have to look away from her sticky red face, oblivious of the neglect she's experienced, just eager for another "poppedsicle, please."

She will only eat the red, so I grab one of those and a purple for myself, then make a note on the magnetized pad stuck to the freezer door:popsicles. We'll need a fresh box once the other kids catch on to the remedy. Sore throats love frozen treats, and thanks to the end of the year strep going around school, my babies are raspy, irritable, and inflamed. Tilly got it first, as always, her fair complexion seemingly more susceptible to any sort of redness or irritation, even of the throat; Noah went next and has it the worst, poor little guy; and Jesse held out the longest, but now her lymph nodes are so swollen she looks like a chipmunk. Sammie hasn't gotten it, thank God, and Amandasaysshe feels fine.

As far as I can tell, I don't have it. For Amanda's sake I've tried to be vigilant. She's running herself ragged taking care of the kids while I recover from the attack, and if I fall ill on top of that, it will just be one more worry for her. She looked different getting the kids ready for their doctor appointments earlier, and it occurred to me how much she's aged in the past week or two. There are more worry lines around her mouth and she moves slower, as if she's too exhausted to go on. Some of the light has gone out of her eyes. I keep telling her to rest, but she won't listen.

Today is the first time she's left me alone with our two youngest. I don't blame her, I wasn't sure I could handle it either. She wanted Daphne to "visit" with us while she was out, but I told her I don't need a babysitter. Besides, Daphne already missed too much work helping out while I was gone. "Amanda. I can take care of our kids for a couple of hours, in the middle of the day, in our locked apartment." I had actually sounded confident on that one. Like everything else about me—my recovery, my returning mental health, my ability to focus, to function, to feel—the confidence was a façade that melted away the instant my wife left the apartment. I almost ran to the door and begged her to come back, but I was frozen to the couch.

Tilly was watching me then, as if she sensed my panic. I swear she's as in tune with my moods as Gigi (who put her head in my lap and wouldn't move until I petted her for a while). That terrifies me. All of my children are empaths, except for Sammie, whose only care in the world is for baby Sammie, as it should be. But Matilda doesn't have Jesse's gumption or Noah's inborn boy-confidence to counteract the constant feelings. I'm afraid my trauma is damaging her.Look away, Amelia. But Amelia didn't look away and it destroyed her. What if the same thing happens to my daughter—her daughter—because of this hell I pulled her into? The hell of Olivia Benson. The hell my mother suffered for thirty-two years.

And so I'll keep plying Tilly with red popsicles, in hopes that she won't feel the flames of my cursed skin, my walking damnation. A little sweet to cover up the sour.

That gives me an idea, and I toss the purple popsicle back into the freezer for my oldest boy or girl to enjoy later. I can't put it in my mouth without thinking of sucking Angel's big, yummy co*ck, anyway. From the rack on top of the fridge, I bring down a treat with no negative connotations whatsoever. None from my various assaults, that is. Even when Serena tried to kill me, to rid herself of the monster she knew I'd become (for "I'll never let anyone else have you" could also mean my evil would not be visited on anyone other than her), the attack was by vodka bottle, not wine.

Wines are much more durable and sedate, seldom causing any real harm. Not like the cruel, unforgiving hard liquors.

It's the lie I tell myself as I fill the glass to my typical one-third, or what was typical when I did indulge more regularly, prior to Samantha's conception. Now it's been so long I should probably cut back an ounce or two, but instead I find myself pouring to the one-half line in my head. It's not that much extra, and this way I won't have to get up for a refill or take the whole bottle with me. I refuse to limp around with a bottle in my hand in front of my children. They will not remember me the way I remember my mother: slurring, staggering, screwing. I've gotten most of my mobility back, except for sharp turns and deep knee-bends, but I can finally lift Sammie without needing Amanda or Noah to hand her to me while I'm seated. If I thought for one second that the wine would impair any of that, I would not drink it.

"Juice?" Tilly asks, as soon as she spots the Merlot. She's waiting for me on the couch, where she undoubtedly wants to cuddle. I'm ashamed of how difficult that is for me now—ashamed and afraid it will never return, at least not with the ease I had to learn at the age of sixteen. I didn't know how to touch or be touched with affection until then, and I was taught by my statutory rapist.

My first infant case Karen Smythe asked me, "Where the hell'd you learn how to hold a baby, Benson?" She laughed at my answer ("Edward Scissorhands"), but I spent several off-hours at a nursery after that, and what skills I didn't pick up there, I faked until they became second nature. "Good job. You almost looked human this time," she said when I handed the next baby off to ACS.

Their innocence makes close contact with little ones much easier, I've always thought. The old me. But the unpredictability of young children, even my own, puts this new version of myself on guard. She's afraid of what they will ask and how to answer; if she'll be triggered by their small curious hands, their heads wanting to rest against her pillowy breast; what she might say or do wrong that will stick with them for the rest of their lives. Amanda saw, and she knows where I can't be touched, sometimes better than I do, in this empty shell I used to call my body. How do you explain to a preschooler that Mommy can't breathe with a tiny thirty-two pound frame draped against hers?

"No, lovebug, it's not juice." I force myself to resume my seat on the couch and when Tilly snuggles in next to my hip, it's not as bad as I feared. My arm loops naturally around her and there's only a slight tightening in my throat as her little hand curls loosely on my thigh. "It's a big girl drink for mommies. You wouldn't like it."

She takes me at my word, trusting that I would never steer her wrong on such matters—my pickiest eater, who has only recently come around to the joys of processed sugar, though still in considerable moderation for a three-year-old—and nurses her red popsicle, mouth already stained in a big clown smile. I can't bear to watch. Her hand works against my thigh, fingers clasping and unclasping with the simple pleasure of enjoying her icy snack, her fingernails, not much larger than sesame seeds, scratching the linen fabric of my pant leg.

I take a huge mouthful of the wine and let it trickle down slowly, trapping any agonized sounds that might try to escape. It's my version of the balm Tilly has found in the cherry-flavored popsicles, soothing my screaming throat, calming my jangled nerves. I try to focus on the cartoon elephant galumphing across the TV screen, to not imagine the live-action male host participating in the violent gangb*ng of his female duet partner, and eventually I lose myself in the inane, repetitive soundtrack and overbright colors. Several swigs later, I barely even notice my daughter's restless hand, and my compulsive checking of Samantha's swing slows to an occasional glance if she stirs.

For the first time in weeks, I go whole minutes without thinking about the rapes. I almost feel normal cuddling with my little girl, watching over the other as she naps, and smiling at the television show that, although corny and obnoxious, poses little threat of triggering me. (Yesterday, during the kids' hundredth viewing ofMatilda, I had to leave the room when The Trunchbull threatened to break Miss Honey's arm.) It's plastered on, of course, and only possible because of the wine, but my Matilda doesn't know that. I hope to God she doesn't know.

Barely an ounce remains in my glass when Amanda, Noah and Jesse return home, the latter two pale, sniffly, and a bit catatonic from the medicine administered by their pediatrician. The short haircuts make them look even more sickly, like leukemia patients in a children's oncology ward. Some of Noah's curls were salvaged at the top, but the sides had to be buzzed—he loves it, and I'm trying. Jesse's chin-length bob, with the short bangs that sit too far back on her broad forehead, resembles a slightly askew wig. I didn't have the energy to cry over the lost locks at first, and now I have to pretend to like the new styles so I don't hurt the kids' feelings. They did it for me after all; to assuage my fears of going to the salon. But they don't look like babies anymore.

Amanda eyes the wine glass as she helps the kids get settled in the living room, tugging off shoes and wiping snotty noses. She doesn't comment on it directly, but she does finally ask me in a roundabout way, "Everything all right? The lil punkins didn't give you any trouble while I was gone, did they?" She makes a silly squinty face at Matilda, like she suspects her of running amok in Mama's absence. That earns her some giggles, sweet as fairy chimes, and she plays it up even more when she plants herself on the coffee table in front of us and acts shocked by Tilly's garish, cherry-flavored grin. "What on earth, child?"

"Poppedsicle! Mommy gived me a whole bunch!"

The sugar must be kicking in.

"Mommy onlygave her three," I correct gently, patting her little tummy with my palm, but mostly saying it for Amanda's benefit. Her surprise isn't fake this time, and I don't want her to worry that I've completely lost it. I can still be trusted around our children. (Can't I?) "Two that were stuck together and a bonus for being such a good girl. She and Sammie were perfect angels, as always. How were the big punkins?" I try not to look as evasive as I'm being, but I take an habitual sip of the Merlot before I even realize what I'm doing. So much for appearing casual.

Reluctant to change the subject, she glances at Noah and Jesse, propped together in the armchair like a pair of lifeless marionettes. Jesse's fair head rests on her brother's shoulder, his head against hers, as they stare at the television with glazed blue eyes. It's such a sweet moment, I almost reach for my phone to snap a photo. My hands won't cooperate, though. They stay cupped around the bowl of my wine glass as if they're frozen to it, and for a second I don't understand why. Why I'm breaking into a cold sweat at the thought of using a camera to preserve a special memory. Why I suddenly feel boxed in on the couch with Tilly snug against me and my wife sitting across from me, our knees practically touching. Why I feel hard hands and harder eyes on me, taking everything I have—of my self, my body, my autonomy and privacy.

"Liv? Did you hear me?"

She touches my knee and I nearly jump out of my skin. The irony is, I don't spill a drop of wine, and Tilly's too absorbed in her show to notice that Mommy is headed for a meltdown. As if I'm not living right at the edge of it every moment of every day. "What?"

"I said they were angels too. Exhausted ones with scratchy throats." Amanda sounds so tired and weary herself, I come back to reality a bit and find her smiling at me halfheartedly. I have never seen her as sad as she is right now, and all because of me. "But the doc said it should clear up pretty quick. In the meantime, they need to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and take their medicine. Ain't that right, y'all?"

Sometimes I scold her for teaching the kids improper grammar—it's part of our shtick: she butchers the English language, I do my best impression of a strict schoolteacher, neither of us taking it seriously—but I just don't have the heart to do it this time. Anything resembling anger or disagreement is too much for me emotionally, even in jest. I tilt my head in apology, for not keeping up my side of the bargain, and she responds with a light shrug. No big deal. She doesn't get much more than a couple of noncommittal grunts out of the kids, either. I know it's the strep throat that's putting them in this funk, but I feel responsible. My recent moods have to be affecting them too.

"Hey, who wants popsicles?" Amanda asks suddenly, as I drain my glass with a long final pull. She claps her hands together once when the kids look dully at her, and though it's not particularly loud or startling, I still flinch. "Look alive, guys, now's your chance to pig out. Go on and get you some. You can have as many as you want, but you have to eat them in the kitchen, okay? Sit at the bar and try not to get everything sticky. Go on, scoot."

"Do we hafta? I'm tired. Can't Noah just bring some in here?" Jesse peers up at her brother without lifting her head from his shoulder. "Please, bubby?"

"Huh-uh, none of that," Amanda says, wagging a thumb toward the kitchen. "Noah's tired too. And that chair you're sitting in still has a big stain on it from your grape juice, little miss. No more snacks in the living room, remember? Here, take Tilly with you and help her with the stool and the wrapper."

"That's not fair. Mommy gets to have her stinky drink in here. And there's a wrapper from Tilly's red popsicle right there."

It's been so long since she has mentioned my "stinky drink," I thought she must have forgotten about it. I should have known better—my Jesse girl remembers everything and then some. And she's absolutely right, it's not fair that she's relegated to the kitchen or dining room when I can roam about freely with a red that is notoriously hard to get out if spilled. Plus, I forgot about the new rule, inspired by Jesse's juice mishap and which applies to each of the children. Or did until I distracted Tilly, not quite four years old, with another of the worst culprits for stains: red dye.

Idiot. No wonder Jesse looks at me in disappointment (or is it disgust?) when Amanda gets sharp with her and sends the three children off to the kitchen, giving Tilly no choice but to follow, after she's plucked from alongside me and steered in that direction. I want to speak up for Jess, I do. For all of them; they shouldn't be forced out of the room because I screwed up and need a private talking-to from my wife. But I let them go, a little ragtag trio slogging off to drown their sorrows in frozen sweets, and gaze expectantly at Amanda. Ready to take my medicine.

"What's going on, Liv?" she asks, so gentle it hurts. I don't deserve it. Why can't she just yell at me like she does with the kids when they disobey? I seem to be exempt from her anger, from any expectations she has for me as a wife, mother, boss, or even a competent grown woman, and I hate it. It's infantilizing, as if I'm no more capable or responsible than Samantha in her baby swing.

I hate it because that's exactly how I feel.

"What do you mean?" God, listen to me. I even sound childish and stupid. Of course I know what she means.

"Well . . . " She nods to the empty wine glass and tries to take it from me, but I hold it against my gut, hands clasped around the bowl, like it's a small child whose head I'm protecting, whose innocence. "You don't usually drink in the daytime. Or in front of the kids. And we talked about not mixing the antidepressants and alcohol. It's just not safe, darlin'. What if . . . what if you had dozed off and something happened to Tilly? Or the baby? I wouldn't have been here to—"

She lets the conclusion fade, unable to meet my eye, but I know where she was headed with it. My mother used to do precisely that—drink until she passed out and left me to my own devices before I was old enough to look after myself, resulting in more than a few disasters—and Amanda thinks I'm on the same path. I haven't told her I'm not taking the Valium anymore. Ironically, I was afraid of becoming dependent, so I've been hiding the pills in the nightstand drawer on my side of the bed whenever she brings one to me. The panic attacks are worse, but I'd rather deal with that than a benzo addiction.

"It was just a little wine, love. Not even a full serving." I surprise myself with how smoothly I lie, though it's just a white one. Serena was a good liar too. "Tilly thought it was juice, and Sammie was asleep. I didn't think it would hurt to have a few sips. I should have waited for dinner. I'm sorry."

That much is true. I should have waited. I am sorry that I've caused her so much heartache lately. I'm sorry for the lies and the broken promises to protect her and our children from harm. I'm so sorry I tricked her into believing I would ever be okay. That I would ever make a decent wife.

"You don't have to apologize," she says, but her eyes are glued to the glass I'm shielding against me, and I can tell she's itching to reach for it again. Does she think merely holding it is dangerous? Like a pair of dice in her hands? "Why don't you give that to me to put in the sink, darlin'? You're squeezing it awful tight."

Am I? I hadn't noticed. Half the time my body seems to be moving independently of my mind, my consciousness, and I have to look down to see if she's given an accurate or exaggerated assessment. My knuckles are white, fingers intertwined around the wide bowl, pressing it to my middle in a grip that definitely qualifies as "awful tight." As her hand approaches, I reflexively squeeze tighter and watch—I'm on screen again, performing for the camera—as the glass cracks apart like an eggshell.

"Jesus!" Amanda cries, leaping to her feet and grabbing my wrists, shaking the shattered crystal away from my palms. One piece, the size of a paring knife blade and curved inward, sticks in the heel, blood seeping from its entry point like light around a doorframe. It's inevitable, the light and the blood. "Oh, Liv, why did you do that? Oh, sh*t. Stay right there, I'm getting some gauze. Don't move, okay? Don't touch it."

"I won't," I say out loud, though she's already disappeared from the room like a shot. Just wanted to feel something, I add silently to myself.

It didn't work. I'm as blank and detached as ever watching her clean up the glass and my hand, which bleeds profusely when she pulls out the deadly sharp curl. "That looks like a shark's tooth," Noah comments, he and his sisters having abandoned their popsicles in favor of observing the minor surgery being performed in their very own living room. "Does it hurt, Mom?"

"No. I'm fine, sweetie."

"Could probably use some stitches," Amanda says under her breath. She's unhappy with me, but she's not letting it show, especially not in front of the kids.

"I'm not going back to the hospital," I return just as softly. It's the first time I've said no to anything—other than food and visitors—in weeks, and for a moment I feel like I've finally regained some control over what happens to me. I don't care if my throat is getting sore, my skin feverish. If I choose not to subject myself to more poking and prodding, no one can make me. Not even Amanda.

Tonight, with dinner, I think I'll have another glass of wine.

. . .

June 15, 2022

Tilly's birthday is in less than two weeks. She wants a big party like last year, with the rented room and the castle and all those screaming children, but there's just no way I can handle that. I suggested sitting this one out—it's doubtful Tilly will remember turning four, let alone who was there to celebrate—but Amanda is insisting I have to be there. She says I'll never stop beating myself up over it if I miss it, and she's probably right. But.

It hasn't even been a month yet. By the 27th, yes, but unless I snap my fingers and magically improve in the next twelve days, I'll still be a wreck when the party gets here. It's not like I'm living in my pajamas and sleeping for thirteen hours at a time now, and I do shower regularly, on my own, too. I get up with the alarm, eat when Amanda reminds me, brush my teeth since they've finally stopped hurting, and I've even gone along a couple of times when Amanda walks the kids to school. For all intents and purposes, I am here.

So, why do I feel like a fraud? Like I'm just going through the motions, pretending to be my old self? How would the old me help plan her daughter's birthday? I don't remember.

Amanda's taking care of it all by herself: the venue (we agreed on the park, somewhere open and sunny, with the option of escaping to a quieter spot if the jungle gym is too crowded), the guest list, the decorations, the menu and cake. Just thinking about it all makes my head spin. A quiet celebration at home with just the six of us and the dogs would be preferable, but I can't become a recluse and drag the kids into it with me. I've seen that happen to too many rape victims. Starts out small, then builds up until they're petrified of stepping outside their apartment and their kids are convinced the whole world is out to get them too. Even the ones removed from those situations never truly recover.

Did I tell them they would? I lied.

There are ten little yellow pills hidden in the drawer beside my bed. I don't know why I'm saving them. I've lost eight pounds this month and drink more than I ever did, even after Lewis.

Who am I?

My dearest Olivia,

I'm so sorry for what happened to you last night. For what Ilethappen to you. I never meant to let it go this far, you have to believe that. Once I held you in my arms and knew that you were mine - and mine alone - I swore I would protect you from men and the evil things they do to little girls, to women.

After I failed you the first time, it became so much easier to turn a blind eye to everything else that came later. The drinking made it easier still. What you must have gone through these past fifteen years while I was looking the other way or just too drunk to see it. I won't say too drunk to care, because I have always done that: cared. I know you think I don't - I've given you no reason to believe it - but I do. You are an extraordinary person, Olivia.

That's why I have to do this. If I keep going the way that I am, I'll destroy you. I have already destroyed myself. Don't let them place you anywhere but with Meg; she will take excellent care of you and love you like you're her own. She always has. I see a lot of her in you. And sometimes, just a glimpse of myself. The best parts. You're the best parts of who I used to be, my bright, beautiful daughter.

Finish school. Don't depend on a man for happiness or security. Be stronger than I ever was.

Love, your mother,
Serena

. . .

She folded the note and left it on her pillow, where Olivia would be sure to see it when she entered the room in search of a dress for the burial. A tasteful blue tweed skirt and jacket were already hung in a position of prominence within the closet, so the fifteen-year-old wouldn't have to agonize over or guess what a woman in her thirties should wear to the grave. Serena had hung her one black dress behind the blue. It would be a bit loose on Olivia, especially in the shoulders and waist, but Meg could take it in before the funeral.

All that was left was a body for the casket. Her method of choice had first been a razor blade, which she'd lain out neatly on a clean washcloth on the side of the tub, wanting to keep it sterile. But at the last second she opted for sleeping pills, afraid she wouldn't be able to slice deeply enough and end up just making a huge mess of her lovely, steaming bath. This way she could drink her last glass of wine in peace and simply drift away, leaving behind a much less traumatic scene for Olivia to walk in on.

See? she was always thinking of what was best for her daughter, right up to the very end.

. . .

Chapter 46: Sins of the Mother

Chapter Text

Chapter 46.

Sins of the Mother

. . .

"Higher, Mommy, higher!" Jesse Eileen pumped her legs and rocked forward in the swing, creating for herself the momentum she wasn't getting from Olivia. At least not at a satisfactory velocity for a six-year-old daredevil who had completed first grade that very day. "I wanna go all the way to the top!"

She meant the center pole of the swing set from which several pairs of heavy parallel chains suspended, and she strove toward it with all the might in her small, slender body. She had Amanda's build, delicate-boned and lissome, but she played with the force of a rough-and-tumble boy about twice her size. Olivia had always loved that bit of incongruity—like a puppy who thinks it's a Doberman—and liked to imagine Amanda the same at that age. All courage and unbound energy. Maybe she really could touch the sky she was aiming for.

Back on the ground, Olivia could only see the danger. She was surrounded by children's laughter, early-summer flowers, June sunshine as playful as the youngsters, and the sounds of a city just waking from its winter nap, but she had never felt more inhibited and on edge. A little boy had bumped into her while she shadowed Tilly on the monkey bars, and she'd almost dropped to her knees on the rubbery tiles laid out in checkerboard formation under the playground equipment. Her instincts were to roll into a protective ball like a pill bug. For a moment Tilly dangled in midair with nothing supporting her but the bar overhead and her own spindly arms. She didn't even notice the difference, but Olivia did, and she retired from the heart of the playground to the outskirts—the swings—shortly thereafter.

Now her breath caught with each elevation of Jesse's swing, which really wasn't much higher than chest level and nowhere near the heights its rider envisioned. Luckily, Olivia had an excuse not to over-exert or stretch too far, the twinge in her ribs (neck, shoulders, lower back) still not fully resolved. The kids knew she had to take it easy and, for the most part, they honored her restrictions, sometimes even better than she did. But children at play were a whole different animal. Wilder. Fiercer.

"Not quite that high, Jess. We don't want you launching into outer space, okay?" Olivia slowed her pushing just a touch too, bringing Jesse down to a safer, more manageable speed that didn't quite take her breath away. "You'd miss out on the cake. We would have to send you up a freeze dried slice like the astronauts eat."

"Really?" Jesse looked over her shoulder, intrigued. Every time Olivia tried to ease off, the little girl threw herself forward at full force, driving further, faster. It was a constant push-pull that reminded her of something she couldn't quite put her finger on. "Okay, let's do that. I want freeze dried cake!"

"Will she really go into outer space?" asked Jillian, who had been content to swing herself in the seat next to her best friend. Now she stood in the groove created by thousands of children's scuffing feet, the plastic sling hooked under her bottom, and gazed up apprehensively at a sky as blue as an eye. "Isn't that way far up? I don't want you to go there, Jesse. I want you to stay here and eat real cake."

Olivia hadn't stopped to think how news of Jesse's one-girl mission would affect Jillian. The little girl was so sensitive and took everything so literally, it could be tricky to tease her without causing some confusion. She was quickly becoming distraught at the idea of Jesse leaving her behind for the deep reaches of space, her lower lip quivering, hazel eyes brimming with tears. "It's just a joke, sweetheart," Olivia said, giving Jesse a wide berth as she sidestepped over to Jillian. She wanted to kneel at the girl's level or hoist her up on one hip, but a dull ache in her groin and a knife in her lower back prevented either. Settling for stroking Jillian's fawn-brown locks, she offered an apologetic smile. "Until she learns how to steer a rocket, Jesse has to stay here on the ground with the rest of us earthlings."

"Aw, dang," said Jesse.

"Good," said Jillian. "Space is scary. There's nooxtigenand you can float away and it goesforever."

In space no one can hear you scream, Olivia thought, then quickly dismissed it, feeling a subconscious ripple of panic just below the surface, like muscle moving beneath the skin. She breathed in deeply through her nose—making sure there was still some oxygen?—and gave a vague nod, not wanting to confirm the girl's fears (or her own) nor dismiss them entirely. Jillian was one of the few people who knew nothing about the attack, and six years old or not, her presence was a relief to Olivia. Someone who hadn't watched her being viciously raped and tortured; didn't know, as even her own children did, that she'd been hurt in private places; looked at her no differently than she had a month ago, in the Before.

"But it's where all the stars and moons and planets are, Jilly." Jesse had finally slowed down enough to shuffle to a halt on the springy tile. No space launch for her today, thank God. "Don't you wanna go to Mars?"

"Huh-uh. I like it here. We have dogs. And babies."

You couldn't argue with that logic, and luckily, Jesse seemed to think it a valid point as well. She put aside her cosmic aspirations for the time being and invited Jillian to go play on the horizontal bars that stood in ascending heights at one end of the jungle gym. "Are you coming, Mommy?" Jesse asked, pausing with Jillian's hand in hers to look back at Olivia. Impatient as she was, the little girl was willing to wait on her to join them, but Olivia gazed at the bars with apprehension. They were surrounded on all sides by happy, screaming children.

Following Olivia's line of sight, Jesse studied the activity, which was like the inside of a busy beehive, the inhabitants abuzz and jostling and working toward some unseen common goal of the most output possible—for the bees honey, for the kids fun fun fun.

"Too noisy, huh?" She gave a disappointed nod at her own assessment, as if she knew the answer without being told and was resigned to it. A grownup response for such a young child, even one as precocious as Jesse. She was getting used to Olivia letting her down.

"Yeah, little love. Mommy better sit this one out." Olivia watched the two little girls race off, hand in hand, not fazed in the least by the chaos they waded into. It disgusted her to realize she was slightly envious of their fearlessness, especially Jillian's—half the time the girl was frightened of her own shadow, but with Jesse at her side she seemed ready to conquer anything. Olivia had felt that before, with Amanda. Now she barely had the courage of a shy six-year-old. "Be careful," she called to them, though they likely couldn't hear her over the joyful shouts, name-calling, and chattering outside voices. "Stay where we can see you."

Four sets of eyes comprised the adult "we" she referred to: hers, Amanda's, Daphne's, and Carisi's sister Bella Sullivan's. Phoebe Baker had been invited, but declined via Fin, who put it bluntly as always: "Pheebs don't do kids anymore'n I do." Jillian's mother Jules would be joining the group later to help wrangle the younger partygoers that, besides her daughter and the Rollins-Benson crew, included Bella's two children and their cousin, and two of Tilly's preschool classmates. The dogs were present too, of course, and watched the kids almost as vigilantly as Olivia and Amanda did. Even Hamilton was on alert for the little friends he'd made while he and Daphne stayed at the apartment.

Then there were all the strangers, any one of whom could step into Olivia's life, or Amanda's, or the lives of their children, and change their fate forever. Logically she knew the chances of another abduction were slim—the Sandman and his cohorts were dead, Amanda had assured her of it countless times since that first night she'd found the courage to ask—but she would have said the same thing a month ago, before she was abducted on the anniversary of her first date (so to speak) with William Lewis. And look how that turned out.

Amanda knew more than she was letting on about the impetus for this latest attack, of that Olivia was certain. Judging by the guilt eating her wife up whenever they talked around the subject, she had an inkling that it involved retaliation for some perceived wrong. She just couldn't figure out who the wronged party was. Based on the severity of the crime, she would have been willing to guess Gregory Yates, but he was dead. Besides, he only enjoyed personally torturing women. Henry Mesner was a possibility, but his revenge had been directed at Olivia herself, not at Amanda through her. Where Matthew Parker fit into the plot she hadn't deduced, either; he was a pig and a bastard, but hardly intelligent enough to hold onto a grudge for so long and formulate such an intricate scheme to go with it. Honestly, that part of it seemed more like something a woman would do.

But what woman would be heartless enough to set Olivia up to be kidnapped and repeatedly raped? She couldn't think of anyone she or Amanda had put away who was that evil. The mother or sister of a gang leader or cartel member, perhaps—they were into those Biblical forms of payback, where the sins of the father were visited on the son. Or wife on wife, in this case. That would explain why the men had planned to go after Olivia and Amanda's children as well. The sins of the mother.

Her eyes scanned the perimeter of the playground as she walked over to the picnic blanket spread underneath a huge oak a few yards from the equipment. Only a couple of dads were in attendance, and they were with their wives, so that cut back on some of her anxiety about her surroundings. But not much. A boy of about twelve or thirteen was seated on the wooden frame of a nearby sandbox, aiding his younger brother in building a sand fortress that took up half the box and left little room for the smaller children to play. The kid was big for his age, but immature, possibly developmentally delayed in some way. Probably harmless, yet Olivia wished he would leave. His younger brother was wearing a baseball cap, and something about the sight of the two boys together made her terribly uneasy.

This is where she was now: suspicious and wary of kids on the playground.Kids, for Christ's sake.

"Liv?"

"Huh?" Olivia snapped back to reality and sat blinking at Amanda, next to her on the blanket. How long she had been sitting there staring at the sandbox boys she couldn't say, but it must not have been too long—Jesse and Jillian were still on the horizontal bars, attempting to hang upside down. Neither knew how to let go with both hands, but Jesse was getting closer by the minute, natural born monkey that she was.Careful, careful, Olivia silently implored. And out loud: "What did you say?"

"I asked if you were ready for some of this scrumdiddlyumptious birthday cake," Amanda said, a note of false cheer in her voice. She sounded like that a lot lately when she talked to Olivia, as if she were trying to coax a reluctant child into eating more greens. Big, yummy
(co*ck)
greens. She held out a paper plate the size of a Blu-ray disc, a small square of white cake with white frosting centered perfectly in the middle like the samples they had tasted for their wedding. In the other hand she tick-tocked a plastic fork side to side, drawing out the temptation. "Cut this piece just for you. Well, okay, Daphne did, but I made sure she saved you a corner. I know how much you like your frosting."

"I saw her with that giant knife and knew I'd better intervene," Daphne put in, and indeed, the long, serrated knife was beside her on the blanket, cake smeared along the blade and stuck in its teeth. The slice on her plate was about three times the size of Olivia's, and as she spoke, she shoveled bite after enthusiastic bite into her mouth. "Otherwise Tilly would think Michael Myers hacked into poor Peppa."

She swished her fork at thePeppa Pig-themed decorations on the cake, which featured an edible image of the pink cartoon pig dressed as a fairy princess and a set of plastic toppers modeled after the entire Pig family. The latter had left coin-sized holes in the frosting where Daphne plucked them loose and, from the looks of it, licked the bottoms clean. The candles, blown out prior to recess, as well. Daphnereallyloved cake.

"You did a good job. Martha Stewart would be proud," Olivia said, surveying the neat little square she accepted from Amanda. It was very even, as were the rest of the pieces that were laid out on paper plates, free for the taking whenever a party guest decided to wander back to the blanket. Picture perfect and ready to eat, but beyond admiring the steady hand required to dole out such tidy servings, she had no interest in the dessert. She would have returned it to the small platoon spread out next to the sheet cake, except she was being watched
(always watched)
and couldn't get away with pretending she'd eaten.

She was embarrassed to admit she had picked that trick up from Jesse and Jillian, the fake eating, which proved disastrous in the hands of two six-year-olds, but had saved her, at fifty-four years old and lacking an appetite, from squabbling with her wife on several recent occasions. It also made her a hit with the dogs, who were more than willing to gobble down as many bites as she deemed fit to sneak under the table. Sooner or later she would have to give it up, or face the humiliation of explaining to the vet—and Amanda—why Frannie and Gigi's waistlines kept expanding, but for now it was the simplest solution. A win-win for everyone other than her dear, lion-hearted Amanda, so desperate that she stay healthy and strong during this so-called "recovery."

"Martha's a hottie, I'll take that." Daphne grinned around the forkful of Peppa's curlicue tail churning between her teeth.

With Bella off chasing her small brood, big brother Noah helping keep an eye on Tilly and her school friends, the inseparable power couple known as Jesslian (Jesse + Jillian) literally hanging out together, and her goddaughter too young to repeat after her, Daphne was free to be as unfiltered as she wanted. Still, her jokes had been mild today, and Olivia got the feeling the younger woman was toning it down for her sake. Not a single dirty joke or innuendo about her and Amanda's sex life in sight.

Amanda took no notice of the change. Her eyes hadn't strayed from Olivia's plate or the fork in her hand, held much too limply for an anticipated bite. "Aren't you going to have some? It's really good buttercream. Not that cheap whipped crap." She indicated the piece of cake in front of her, one corner shaved off for the taste test she gave every sweet treat before scarfing it down, delectable or not. "I saved mine so we could have ours together. Sam's been over here eyeballing it for the last ten minutes."

Actually, Samantha was in her carrier seat, pacifier firmly in place as she batted the soft toys that dangled above her, legs kicking happily. She had eaten lunch in the SUV shortly after their arrival at the park—Olivia had stood guard outside the vehicle, as if someone might intuit that her wife was inside, breast exposed—and wouldn't be hungry again for a few more hours.

"If you start her out on solids with cake, you're on diaper duty for the rest of however long it takes till she's potty trained." Olivia delivered the ultimatum with a winning smile, hoping to deflect from the rest of the question. That never worked with Amanda, of course, but it was worth a shot. Her smiles were infrequent these days, rushed and incomplete when they did appear, so she might get away with it this time . . .

"Nah, I told her she had to give it to you. She already ate more today than you have."

Or not.

Olivia clucked her tongue at the summation, but had no rebuttal. It was true. She had drunk a cup of coffee that morning, after tossing a couple pieces of buttered toast into the trash, claiming they were too soggy, then "forgetting" to grab something else before the party. In her defense, it had been a busy day, what with preparing for the party and picking the kids up from their last half-day of school. So she didn't eat breakfast; lots of people skipped that meal.

"You only picked at your pizza too," Amanda said, as if reading her thoughts and dead set on pointing out every bite she hadn't taken. "Pushing cheese around with your fork does not count as eating."

Damn, she had noticed that too. It was wonderful having an observant spouse, until it wasn't. But the pizza had made Olivia feel ill just by looking at it. The gooey, greasy cheese brought vague flashes to the back of her mind, where she couldn't grasp them or even articulate what was bothering her; the blackened edges on some of the pepperonis turned her stomach—and the shiny patches of skin where the cattle prod had touched her; the free-for-all when Amanda and Daphne lifted the box tops on the steaming pies and everyone dug in at once, snatching, grabbing, pulling. Consuming.

She wouldn't have kept the pizza down if she had taken a bite, so she'd pulled off some of the cheese and hidden bits of dough under the glob, swirling it around her plate like a magician making the ball disappear by rearranging the cups. Amanda had seemed preoccupied with the baby, the rest of the adults and kids preoccupied with their food, and no one commented when Olivia volunteered to do cleanup, her mostly full plate at the bottom of the pile she stuffed in the trash can by the parking lot. Right then, victory. Now she felt like a kid who got caught not eating her vegetables.

"Can we . . . not get into that here?" Olivia asked, avoiding a glance at Daphne, who was precisely the reason she didn't want to discuss her poor eating habits. At least that was her excuse. She always found one when the topic came up.

"Okay. I'll make you a deal: you eat some cake, and I won't say another word about it." Amanda laid the challenge down so lightly, it took a minute for the meaning to sink in. And the further it sunk in, the less Olivia liked it. Not because it was manipulative or controlling—Amanda meant well when she slipped into that behavior, and it was almost always done in Olivia's best interest—but because of the response it elicited in herself. She wanted to rebel. Against cake, of all things.

For the millionth time in the past month, she felt small and childish, every bit of agency she'd built up over the years, in spite of Serena, in spite of Elliot and all the other men who tried and failed to take it away, now officially gone. Cake or co*ck, she had no say what went into her body anymore. Fearlessness turned to powerlessness. Captain of what? Not even her own humanity, her own soul.

"Maybe I'll just, uh, take the doggos for a walk," Daphne said, upon noticing the stare-down taking place between her two best friends. She still had half a slice of cake left on her plate and no doubt wanted to finish it, but she set it aside to hastily gather dog leashes.

"No, Daph, you don't have to go anywhere. Stay and finish your cake." Olivia set hers, untouched, on the blanket as emphasis—and maybe partly as a sort of "throwing down of the gauntlet." Her heart raced at the thought; at the disapproving look it drew from Amanda. They were about to have an argument, their first since the rapes, and she was headed for a full blown panic attack. Why didn't she just eat the damn cake?

"Daph ate plenty of pizza. She can afford to leave the rest. You can't." Amanda glanced pointedly at Olivia's frame, from the shoulders down.

Okay, so, yes, shirts had grown considerably baggier on her since this time last year (God, had they really been down in Georgia then, newly pregnant and so deliriously happy even an unfortunate run-in with Dean Rollins hadn't dampened their spirits?)—pants too, for that matter—but it wasn't like she was emaciated. Her breasts
(nice for a bitch her age)
were in no danger of going flat anytime soon, though she sometimes wished they would. Her ass wasn't much different. She was a little surprised—and secretly pleased—by the new slimness of her hips and thighs, which she'd been convinced would remain thick forever after menopause. How ironic, to finally get back to the body she had wanted, only to have no use for it anymore.

"You know, I don't really think I'm comfortable being part of this conversation," said Daphne, though she made no attempt to move.

"I'm not six years old, Amanda. I don't need you telling me to clear my plate before I can leave the table."

Amanda huffed. "If I thought you were six years old, I wouldn't be giving you dessert when you didn't even touch your meal. Come on now, Liv, I just don't wanna see you get sick. You're supposed to be building your strength back up, not starving yourself and getting weaker."

Olivia knew the point her wife was trying to make, in her logical mind she truly did, but what she heard was: You're sick. I can't love you this way. You're weak now and it disgusts me to look at you. If you were my kid, I'd have hated you too. Forgotten to feed you for days on end, in hopes that you'd shrivel up and die or just wander away, holding a stranger's hand, as if you had never really existed.I'm working on it, Mom, she thought, gazing into the distance over Amanda's shoulder. She saw herself there, somewhere around Tilly's age, standing on a bench and talking to a friendly, smiling man who knew all about her, even that her nickname was Livvy and she loved ice cream.

In reality, or at least Olivia's recovered memory of the incident—her first meeting with her serial rapist father, Joseph Hollister—Serena had rescued little three-year-old Livvy from the monster's hands. But in this new version, conjured on a sunny June day, surrounded by the laughter and happy shouts of children, she watched her younger self take the smiling man's hand, hop down from the bench, and drift away from the playground, never to be seen or heard from again. It might have been better that way. Being his from the start, instead of running from the inevitable for so long and still having it catch up with you.

"Is this all too much?" Amanda asked when Olivia had stared into space for several moments without responding. She gestured to the teeming jungle gym, the wide open park grounds, the all-seeing eye of the sun. "If you need to go home, I can drive you back. I'm sure Daph wouldn't mind holding down the fort for a bit while I got you settled in . . . "

Daphne agreed right on cue, as if they had already discussed the contingency plan for just such an occasion: the total breakdown of Olivia's sanity in a public forum. (When had they talked about it? Why was it done behind Olivia's back? What other conversations were they leaving her out of?) "Go. It's been a dream of mine to be left in charge of fifty screaming toddlers for some time now. I've got cake and my cane. Both can be pretty persuasive in the hands of an angry lesbian."

Before Olivia could agree one way or the other—or come up with an excuse for leaving; one that satisfied not only them but herself—Jesse charged onto the blanket, dragging Jillian by the hand behind her. Both girls were frantic and out of breath, although Jesse's eyes were wide with exhilaration more so than distress. The opposite was true of Jillian, who kept glancing back over her shoulder as if she were being followed. Her slender little chest heaved like she was having an asthma attack, but Jules had never mentioned her daughter having respiratory issues.

"Y'all have got to come quick," Jesse announced, waving for the adults to follow her lead, like a tiny cop evacuating civilians during an emergency. Receiving three bemused blinks, she hopped into the air, demonstrating the action she was trying to incite from the seated group. "Hurry. Noah's beating people up!"

"What?" Olivia demanded in unison with Amanda, her pitch hitting the shriller note while Amanda's became a military bark. Their daughter had been known to exaggerate from time to time, and she loved being the center of attention, so it was likely an overstatement—Noahfighting?—but when Olivia scanned the playground for her son, she did spot a throng of excited children near the slide. Some sort of commotion was going on in their midst, that much was true. "Who's he beating up?"

"I don't know, some kids. Hurry, they're big! I think he needs our help." Forgetting her promise to take it easy on Olivia while she was technically still recovering, Jesse looped an arm around hers and tried to haul her onto her feet. She was strong for a six-year-old, but not that strong.

"You better not be pulling our leg, Jesse Eileen," Amanda said, plunking her cake plate onto the ground and pointing to the baby, with a brief look at Daphne ("Go. I got her," said the clerk). She crossed over to Olivia, taking her free arm and helping her stand. "If this is one of your tall tales, you're going to be in big trouble, missy."

"It's not, Mama, I promise. This way, come on!"

And in fact, Jesse's imagination had not run away with her, not even a little bit. Approaching the wide circle of children who, at closer range could be heard gleefully chanting "fight, fight, fight!"—yes, they really did do that—not calling out to each other in play, as it originally sounded, Olivia caught sight of a tangle of boys rolling around on the ground. A blur of arms, legs, inexpertly thrown fists, cargo shorts, and denim, they were almost impossible to separate visually. Then she spotted the galaxy Vans and the tight cluster of hi-top curls. Small, vicious fingers were snarled up in the latter, yanking.

"Noah!" she cried, too stunned by the revelation that itwasher boy in the scuffle to take action. That was her excuse for lagging behind and letting Amanda break up the fight, at least. Someone had to hold Jesse back when she tried to plow through the barricade of pint-sized bodies to assist her big brother, who was outnumbered two to one. She kicked fruitlessly at the air, landing imaginary blows with her little yellow Converses, but barely struggling against Olivia's hand splayed firmly at her chest. Her senses hadn't entirely left her, it seemed, and Olivia was able to relax her grip on the girl enough to scoop Jillian's hand up and hold it across Jesse like a safety belt. Poor Jilly wept openly.

"I'm gonna rearrange your teeth, boy!" Jesse called above the din, reaching few ears but her own, her friend's, and her mother's. "Give him a knuckle sandwich, Noah!"

Making a mental note to limit the kids' viewing ofAnniefrom here on out, Olivia silenced Jesse's trash talk with a hand over her mouth and a distracted warning toshh. She watched anxiously as Amanda nudged her way through the crowd, parting a few of the more stubborn onlookers by the shoulders, and seized two of the scrapping boys by their collars. One of them was Noah, the other a boy Olivia didn't recognize. She didn't know the third kid, either; he was bigger than her son, maybe a year or two older. Belly-down on the ground, he slapped the rubber tiles and shot a dirty look up at whomever had interrupted the wrestling match.

"What the fug—" He cut the rest short when he saw an adult standing above him, but he was in no rush to rectify his bad behavior beyond that. Scowling, he spun onto his backside like he was doing a breakdance move, his sneakers squeaking to a halt, and propped his elbows on his bent knees. "Who're you?"

"I'm this kid's mother. Who are you and what the hell do you think you're doing ganging up on my son?" Amanda addressed the two unfamiliar boys, glancing back and forth between them. She still had the slightly younger-looking one by the collar of his Tommy Hilfiger polo, which she shook like it was the scruff of his neck. A single tendril of blood ran from his nose to the curve of his top lip, or did until he swiped his arm across it, smearing the side of his face red.

"He started it," said the bleeder, sniffing so hard his sinuses stuttered. "We didn't do nothing. We were just playing and he got mad and started hitting us."

"Yeah," agreed the kid on the ground. His hair and clothes were disheveled, his cheeks ruddy, from exertion or budding bruises was hard to say, but he appeared the least worse for wear of all three boys. He looked rather pleased with himself, to be honest. Olivia disliked him immensely. "He's a crazy a-hole. You better take him home before I tell my mom."

Amanda glared at him, the desire to rip the kid a new one evident on her pretty face, at least to Olivia, but she kept herself in check long enough to get Noah's side of the story. "That true, son? Did you pick a fight with these boys?"

Noah mumbled something unintelligible and scuffed the toe of his shoe on the ground.

"Speak up, son."

"No, ma'am," he said a little louder. He had picked up the Southern form of address for his mama—his "ma"—from Amanda herself and Jesse, who had adopted many of Amanda's countrified sayings despite growing up in the city. It was endearing and somewhat troubling, given the South's dangerous history and blind devotion to certain authority figures. But teachers loved it, and Olivia did like her children to be respectful. "I just wanted them to leave Tilly alone. They were saying mean things and laughing at her. They made her cry."

Fear sliced through Olivia's heart like a hunting knife, spilling white heat and dark terror. It drained all the color from the world, until the entire playground was in grayscale when she looked around frantically for her baby girl. "Where's Tilly? Where is she?" she asked, so shrill she didn't recognize the voice as her own until several heads turned her way, including Amanda's. Her pale hair whipped back and forth when she too searched for Matilda's face in the crowd, panic setting in. "Tilly," she called out, on the verge of bellowing like she did while watching sports.

"Her name's Tilly?" The kid on the ground gave an ugly little snicker. "That's dumb. Piss-baby Tilly."

"Shut up, you . . . poophead!" Jesse kicked at the air again, nowhere near the boy's face, but clearly aiming in that vicinity. "Yourfaceis dumb!"

Pointing tentatively at the clubhouse section of the jungle gym, to which the slide was attached, Noah confided in a guilty tone, as if he was ratting out his best friend, "She's in there. She had an accident on the slide and they were making fun of her for it." He tongued the split in the corner of his bottom lip, frowning at the blood. His hair looked worse than when Jesse took the kitchen scissors to it. "I told them to stop, or I'd punch their lights out."

(One move, lights out)

Holding onto Jesse's hand just in case, Olivia stepped closer to the clubhouse and peered inside. The turretlike structure had a gabled roof and a tinted bubble window, neither very conducive to sunlight, so its inside was shaded and shielded from view if you weren't five-nine in sneakers. In the back corner sat Tilly, huddled in the shadows, the skirt of her pink dress with the rainbow striped sleeves pulled over her knees and the matching striped shorts underneath. She had chosen the outfit all by herself that morning, like a big girl. Practically all grown up at four years old.

A trail of urine had followed her when she scooted back from the slide. The original stream started at the top and left a telltale wet streak down the length of the slide. She'd released a full bladder. Tilly had been the easiest of the children to potty train; she didn't even have nighttime accidents and she never got sent home from preschool with notes about reviewing good bathroom practices. She was always so easy—quick to learn, eternally, effortlessly happy, and (everyone agreed) the sweetest child. Now she was alone and crying in the dark, her tiny lower lip pushed out like a plump pink worm, her forehead and chin puckered in places that only emerged on a canvas of baby fat. She looked destroyed.

All that was missing was a filthy mattress and a desk with a flat-tire slant to it.Open wide, puss*cat.

Olivia blinked the thought away and nodded at Amanda, confirming Matilda's whereabouts. With Jesse in tow and Jillian at their heels, she ducked under the jungle gym to look in the opposite side, where the clubhouse occupant wouldn't have to be ogled by the crowd in front. Most of the kids had gotten bored and wandered away after the adults intervened, but a few looky-loos remained, including the brats who had taunted Tilly. Olivia knew the importance of not having your humiliation trotted out for everyone to see.

"You should make her wear a diaper," the bloody nose kid said to Amanda. "Babies can't just go peeing on stuff, it's gross."

"Yeah, I'm telling my mom," said the bigger boy.

"Funny, I don't see your mom anywhere around here." Amanda's sarcasm was audible even from the other side of the jungle gym. She was most definitely throwing out a wide-armed gesture, surveying the area for this kid's mother, who hadn't stepped up to claim or defend her beastly little son. "Dudn't look to me like she gives two sh*ts where you are or what you're up to, buddy boy. Make you feel like a big man picking on a four-year-old girl? Whose moms are cops, by the way. Yeah, run home and tell your mommy I'm gonna throw your punk ass in juvie, I ever catch you messing with my kids again. Tattletale babies."

The last part was called out to the boys who, upon learning that they were in the presence of police officers, fled the scene like the budding criminals they were. The mouthy older boy tripped over his own two feet and belly-flopped onto the grass just outside the checkerboard tiling. He clambered up, hiking his baggy shorts with him as if they had fallen down too, and scurried after his partner, already yards ahead.

"Big dumb tattletale babies!" Jesse shouted in their wake, with the inflection of someone making an obscene gesture.

Instinctually Olivia knew she should discourage her wife and oldest daughter from yelling insults on the playground, but she found she couldn't summon the energy to care. She felt no sympathy for the boys, just a dry, barren sort of anger like a vast desert inside her. They had taught her little girl shame. Her beautiful little Tilly, who still believed the world was a safe and happy place filled with love and good things. Maybe it was, if she believed it. Maybe she would make it through life unscathed and unburdened by trauma.

Maybe not, Olivia thought sadly, holding her hand out for Tilly to take or not take, depending on how ready she was to leave her hiding place behind. She hesitated at first, as if she didn't fully trust that the face the hand belonged with was connected to the same person, the same mommy she loved and depended on, trusted with her fragile little life. (Didn't she?)

Then she grabbed Olivia's hand and held it tight, the two of them working together to draw each other in, until she was secure in Olivia's arms, neither of them willing to let go. It was technically more weight than Olivia was supposed to be lifting four weeks in, but she wouldn't permit anyone to take her child right then, not even Amanda. "It's okay, lovey," she soothed, stroking Matilda's curls and her back, still shuddering from the tears. "I've got you. You're okay."

"I had a assident, Mommy," Tilly whispered in her ear. She clung to Olivia's front, her head turned to avoid the eyes of any potentially jeering onlookers. Her sniffles came every few seconds, small and pitiable, though her grip was as fierce as a bear cub's. "Pee went all down the slide and those boys were mean. My pants feel ucky."

"I know, sweet girl. The boys are gone now, Mama took care of that."Mama's very good about that, she added to herself. "And everyone else has forgotten about the slide already. See? They're playing again like nothing happened. How about we find a restroom and get you cleaned up so you can go back to enjoying your party?"

"Sounds like a mighty fine idea to me," Amanda said with a cheerful lilt that didn't quite match the concern on her face when she ducked under the clubhouse. She checked on Olivia first, thumbing a lock of hair away from her forehead ("You okay?" she mouthed, and Olivia nodded), then placed a hand on Tilly's back and leaned in to peek at her, half hidden against Olivia's collar. "Can't have a sad birthday girl. That'd make me sad. You too, huh, Mommy? We'd start boohooing and then all the kids would start in too, and 'fore you know it, this whole park would be a big soggy mess from all us bawlin' babies."

She made the sound effects and faces to go with her woeful tale—the sniveling, the pouting, the whimpering. Boohoohoo. It got a giggle out of Tilly, which was its intended goal, but Olivia couldn't help wondering if it might send the wrong message: that it was Tilly's duty to be happy, otherwise her whole family would fall apart, especially her mothers. That was a whole lot of responsibility for a preschooler. For anybody. Was some of that meant for her as well? she mused. Did her whole family's happiness hinge on her own?

If it did, they were all seriously f*cked.

"There's that pretty smile." Amanda flashed another, and started to take the girl from Olivia's arms. "Come on, Mama'll get you cleaned right—"

Tilly surprised them both by shrinking from Amanda's reach and voicing an assertive "No!" that was unlike her usual easygoing manner. She turned her face back to Olivia's shoulder and wrapped both legs around her waist as tight as they would go. "I want Mommy to do it. You make the mean boys stay away, Mama. Can you?"

It must have stung a little, being refused like that by their child who most lived up to the pet name "lovebug," but Amanda put on a brave face. Despite being the jealous type, she had always shared their kids' love freely and wholeheartedly, never trying to hoard more for herself, and Olivia loved her for it. Some mothers couldn't stand it if you cared about someone else; some mothers would prefer killing you to letting anyone else have you. "I sure can, punkin. Those boys won't get past me, no siree. I'll throw them over the fence by their pigtails if I ever see 'em again."

TheMatildareference earned her another tearful giggle, and she winked in return at Olivia's grateful, slightly apologetic smile. "Anything else you need me to do?" she asked, with a meaningful look, giving Olivia the chance to opt out if need be. "Besides playground patrol, I mean."

"I could probably use the diaper bag," Olivia said, fanning out the fingers of the hand cupped under Tilly'suckybottom. With the other, she held the back of Tilly's head as if she were a young infant, her neck muscles not strong enough to keep her own head up yet. "Hopefully there's some dry underpants in there." She lowered the volume a pinch on underpants, not wanting to embarrass her daughter any further by announcing her predicament to everyone nearby.

"On it." And a few moments later, Amanda rejoined them by the shedlike concrete block that housed the women's facilities on one side, the men's on the other, a large quilted bag extended on her arm like a runner in a relay handoff. She looped the strap onto Olivia's shoulder, easing the bag into her possession as if it weighed a ton. Puffy and white, it did sort of resemble a fat sheep without legs, but it wasn't terribly heavy. "You sure you don't want me to?" She motioned between herself, Tilly, and the restroom, looking a bit dubious about the latter.

"We'll be fine," Olivia said with a tinge of humor, but facing the small stone structure, she sucked in a sharp breath and suddenly understood why her wife was so reluctant to send her in alone. From here it even smelled like the shipping container. "Maybe stay close, though," she said quickly over her shoulder. "Make sure no one comes in?"

Even with Amanda's guarantee that she would stand watch outside the entrance, Olivia's heart crept into her throat as she guided Tilly by the hand into the dingy restroom. There were three stalls, each no wider than an airplane lavatory, and a single grimy sink on the opposite wall. Other than that, it was empty and about as uninviting as a tomb. But at least there was no mattress on the floor, no kitty cat t-shirt with blood and who-knew-what-else stains on it. Olivia went to work fast anyway, eager to exit the smelly, stifling space, which had a negative energy she couldn't pinpoint or shake, as soon as possible.

"I sorry, Mommy," Tilly said, holding onto Olivia's shoulders for balance while, crouching stiffly, she peeled the soiled garments down the little girl's legs and helped her step out. It was a complicated process, especially trying not to touch any of the surrounding surfaces, but she managed to slip off her daughter's shorts and underwear without removing her tennis shoes. "I didn't mean to go peepee. I didn't mean to be bad."

"Oh, sweetheart." Olivia forgot about prissiness and sat back on her heels, the knees of her jeans pressed to the dirty floor. She hugged the diaper bag against her abdomen and wrapped the other arm around Tilly. "Oh, lovey, no, you don't have to be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. Anybody can have an accident, even grownups." Why, just last month I pissed myself to keep warm, came the thought, unbidden. She dismissed it at once, distracting herself with comforting her daughter. "It doesn't make you bad. Those boys just weren't very nice. They probably don't have anyone to teach them how to be as good and sweet as you are. I can't imagine what they'll be like when they get older . . . "

Matilda listened to the last part, an afterthought not meant to be spoken aloud, with a quizzical expression, then reached up to pet Olivia's cheek. The touch brought her back from the memory of other older boys who had never been taught any better. "I love you, Mommy," said her sweet girl. A love so potent it was almost painful swelled inside of Olivia, warming her chest, but only that. Since the attack, she'd experienced periodic numbness of the limbs, often staring down at them as if unable to recognize them as her own. She hugged Tilly tight with her stranger's arms.

"I love you too, precious one. So much. So, so much."

She held Tilly close for a long time, relishing the feel of a warm, harmless body next to hers. Not until her thirties had she learned to be truly comfortable with the physical affection she had craved all along, and now it was as novel to her, again, as the first time Serena hugged her in adulthood, after she graduated the police academy. "Well, you know I don't approve of the vocation, but I am proud of you for sticking with it. If you have to be a cop, then go be the best damn one you can be." A mother's words of wisdom.

"Can you tell Mommy why you had the accident, though, sweetheart?" Olivia asked when they separated—she and her daughter. She rummaged in the diaper bag for some baby wipes and plucked a couple from the plastic tub, gently swabbing the dried urine from Tilly's buttocks, thighs, and the pinkness in between. "Did you . . . get scared by the boys? Or was something else bothering you?"

Please don't let it be anything else, she thought, holding her breath as she lifted the hem of Tilly's dress—a unicorn with a rainbow-colored mane peeked out of one patch pocket, a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttered from the other—and patted her dry with a clean burp cloth. At home she encouraged her kids to take care of potty issues themselves, trying to help them develop healthy boundaries, but in public, in the middle of an odorous, suspiciously stained bathroom she couldn't wait to get out of, she didn't mind making an exception. It also gave her the chance to assess that nothing looked out of the ordinary on her daughter's pristine body. Tilly's skin was as pale and undisturbed as first winter snow.

"Huh-uh. I forgot to go potty. I wanted to go down the slide again with Kenzi and Emmaline. We were having so much fun! It's a fast slide. Faster than at school. Kenzi said 'go, Tilly, go!' and I couldn't hold it no more when I got to the top." Tilly's enthusiasm died as she recounted the moment of release, her shoulders sagging heavily. Olivia remembered that moment well—when your body betrayed you and gave up something so intensely private. For everyone to see. "The boys laughed and pointed at me, Mommy. I cried 'cause it made my feelings emmabarrassed."

"Embarrassed," Olivia said lightly, only correcting because Tilly was showing signs of being a perfectionist and disliked making mistakes, grammatical or otherwise. "Oh, sweetheart. I'm so sorry that happened. I understand how bad it feels to get embarrassed like that." She meant to be supportive and validate her little girl's feelings, but it was all a bit too close for comfort, the conversation and the emotions that went with it. She hurried on before the questions in the blue eyes that gazed up at her so attentively could be asked. "But you know what? Most of the kids out there have had accidents before, too. And your friends and family love you no matter what, no one's going to care or even remember that you had a little slip today."

"Really?"

"Really." Olivia patted the child's tiny undeveloped hips, giving them a slight twitch back and forth. "Now, let's get some pants on this girl so she can go run around like a wild monkey again."

Tilly's giggles and monkey noises ("oh-oh-oh ah-ah-ah") faded into the background as Olivia sifted through the contents of the diaper bag, pushing aside extra onesies, loose Pampers, ointments, powders, teethers, and more burp cloths, in search of a clean pair of panties. They had kept spares for all the kids in Tilly's diaper bag, which had only been retired about a year ago.I suppose you're right, she recalled saying when Amanda packed this one, expressing doubt that any of their highly continent children—besides baby Samantha—were suddenly going to "fill their drawers" anytime soon.

"sh*t," Olivia hissed, and crammed her hand further into the bag, feeling blindly. She unzipped every pocket she could find, turning them inside out like a CO
(like Parker)
patting down prisoners at intake. "No, no, no. They have to be in here. Oh my God. Please."

"Mommy?"

"You can't go back out there without underwear, Matilda. Not in a dress. Remember how we talked about keeping our private parts covered?" She was elbow-deep inside the bag, scrounging frantically through the dregs—nasal aspirator, binky, more cloths—and silently cursing her wife's disorganization, when her hand closed on the swim diaper. A baby shower gift from Kat, who was clueless about infant growth rates and went with the size she estimated a five- or six-month-old would be by midsummer (the trunks were more suited to a ten-month-old), they had languished at the bottom of the bag since February.

"Oh, thank Christ," Olivia sighed, too relieved to feel the guilt that inevitably followed memories of the slain officer now. She was short of breath, her heart hammering in her chest, brain hammering in her skull. The room seemed overbright for a moment, as if she had stepped from the darkness into blinding light, but she blinked her vision back to normal and looked at the floor around her in dismay. In her desperate mission to find the underpants, she'd cast nearly everything in the diaper bag onto the cruddy tiles, even Sammie's pacifier.

Her daughter was gazing at her like she'd lost her mind. And hadn't she? She hadn't realized she was ransacking the bag while she did it. All for a pair of reusable swimmers that might not even fit Tilly, tiny little thing that she was.

"You said sh*t," Tilly whispered. Her eyes were comically wide in her small, scandalized face. It might have been funny under different circ*mstances, but not here, not now. Olivia seldom swore in front of her kids, and the worst part was that she hadn't done it consciously this time. Whoever had hijacked her body during those days in the shipping container was still there at the controls. "That's a bad word."

"You're right, it is. I shouldn't have said that." Olivia swallowed dryly and began throwing items back into the diaper bag with shaking hands. "I guess I was frustrated. I'm sorry."

"That's okay, Mommy. Mama says that word sometimes too." Tilly bent down carefully, helping to pick up the rest of her baby sister's trousseau without showing what was underneath her skirt. "And some other ones."

The world's cutest narc turned out to be able to wear the swim diaper, which snapped at the sides, making it possible to stretch the elastic waistband and leg holes wide and snap them in place around her no longer baby-sized frame. It was a bit wonky and gapped in places, but it would do until they got her a real pair of underwear from the apartment. "Hey, bug," Olivia said as they departed the restroom, Sammie's pacifier and Tilly's bottoms rinsed under the hot water, the clothes bundled in her red fist. She had misjudged the temperature. "Do Mommy a favor?"

Matilda glanced up at her, squinting into the sun. And she almost did it, almost asked her sweet, innocent baby girl to lie to her mama. It wouldn't be alielie, just not the full truth about Olivia's meltdown over the panties. But in the end, she couldn't go through with it. Child abusers asked their victims to keep things from their parents too.

"Try not to grow up so fast, okay? Stay my little angel girl for as long as you can."

"Okay, Mommy. I'll try."

. . .

Chapter 47: Tinderbox

Chapter Text

Chapter 47.

Tinderbox

. . .

"Get everything taken care of?" Amanda asked when they met up with her by the water fountain, where she stood in the alert, wide-legged stance of a secret service agent. She lifted the diaper bag off Olivia's shoulder and onto her own before any objections could be made. Then she scooped up Tilly, keeping her skirt tucked modestly around her lap, as if she sensed Olivia's heart skip a beat at the thought of it exposing anything underneath.

"Um, yeah. We did. I had to improvise with one of Sammie's swim diapers, though. It's not very secure." Olivia reached over to fuss with Tilly's skirt, smoothing it against her downy legs, trying to iron out the crinkled hem. Amanda's hand closed around hers, stilling the restless motion, and she forced a wan smile. Her nervous hands were starting to give her away again, as they had in the Mangler aftermath, when she practically had to sit on them to make them behave. It had taken so long to get past all that, and here she was again, fighting the same tics and urges, but magnified by about a hundred. "I should take her home and get her changed into something more appropriate."

"Oh, I don't think we need to go that far, do we? Long as she doesn't go hanging upside down like a little fruit bat, nothing'll show." Amanda spread her palm open on Tilly's belly and gave it a jiggle. "And we'll be right here to watch her. She should be fine."

"We were right here watching her when the boys assault— taunted her too. Didn't stop them. I'm not comfortable letting her play without some kind of pants or shorts or something."

"Maybe Bella's got some backups with her. I can ask. Save you having to schlep all the way back to the apartment. And there's no sense in taking the birthday girl away from her party, huh, Tillster? It's her party, she can cry if she wants to, cry if she wants to, cry if she wants to." Amanda crooned the old Lesley Gore tune in her cute, twangy voice, bopping along with Tilly on her hip, red curls dancing like a flame in the sunshine. She pressed her forehead to the little girl's and co*cked her head back and forth, making them both go cross eyed to look at each other. "You would cry too, if it happened to you. Ba ba ba ba bum, da da da da."

It did happen to me too, Olivia wanted to say. All of it. Over and over and over. Just like that f*cking song, crying crying crying forever when would it ever stop why couldn't they just leave her—

"I'm not putting someone else's underwear on my child," she said, several octaves higher than intended. Everything seemed to come out shrill and panicked now whenever she spoke with any sort of emotion. Yet another thing she had lost control of, and it only increased her frustration and anxiety each time it happened. "She needs her own underwear and her own pants, Amanda. She shouldn't be out there in a dress and swimmers that don't even fit. Not with so many people around."

Any one of them a pervert. They were everywhere and you couldn't stop them.

"Okay," Amanda said quickly, brow red from rubbing against Tilly's and furrowed in concern. She took some deep breaths and exhaled slowly, their shorthand signal that Olivia should do the same. Sure enough, when she checked her respiration, she found it rapid and shallow, her chest heaving as if she'd just finished doing wind sprints. "Okay. You're right. She should have something on under the dress. How 'bout you stay here with her on the blanket, and I run home to grab some more undies and shorts? What do you think, Tilly girl, wanna hang out in Mommy's lap for a bit?"

It was a reasonable solution, and Olivia knew she should agree to it—would have in the Before times—but irrationality had taken over, her daughter's need for appropriate clothing (and the importance of Olivia being the one to give it to her) almost as dire as a medical emergency. They didn't care if you were wearing a skirt or yoga pants, they would tear into your ass anyway, but that didn't mean you offered your child up to them in her little pink party dress.

Fingers wedged in her mouth, Tilly gazed between Amanda and Olivia with uncertainty. She had never been much of a thumb-sucker, and she wasn't very shy, beyond the average four-year-old's stage fright in new situations, but right then she looked nearly fretful. "Umm, I wanna get my clothes with Mommy. These ones are pinchy. You can come too, Mama."

Any triumph Olivia might have felt about Tilly siding with her was overshadowed by Amanda's defeated sigh and their daughters uneasiness at choosing between them. It was an awful spot to put either of them in, and she silently chastised herself all the way back to the blanket, wishing she had stuck to her initial plan to stay home. They would have been better off without her there to spoil all the fun. Her slice of cake was still where she had left it, another reminder of what a party pooper she was, what a failure. She barely heard the explanation Amanda gave Daphne and Jules, who had arrived moments after the playground brawl, about where they were off to.

"—something dry. You guys mind watching the other kids while I take them back to the apartment?"

"Can I go, Ma?" Noah interrupted. Someone had given him a party napkin for his split lip, creating the unfortunate impression that Peppa was bleeding like, what else, a stuck pig. It was partly wadded in his fist, a cake fork in the other. His battle wound had not affected his appetite in the least, the plate in front of him reduced to a faint dusting of crumbs. "That way you can stay here with Jesse and the baby? I'll watch out for them real good."

"I dunno, son. I think it's best if I go with them. You should probably stay here and recuperate until I can get back and have a talk with you about using your words instead of your fists." Amanda's expression may have been subdued, but Olivia saw a glimmer of pride in her vivid blue eyes. She fretted over the boy's sensitivity sometimes—would defend it with the ferocity of a lioness protecting her cub, if need be—and whether or not he could stand up for himself. Today he had taken on two bigger, meaner boys all on his own to defend his little sister's honor: yeah, he was going to be okay.

"I can talk to him about that on the drive," Olivia said, keeping her voice as low and smooth as possible. No need to make it obvious how eager she was to escape the park, how each childish shriek or shout went through her like a buzzsaw, how she vibrated inside her skin as if she were trapped in some invisible energy field. "It's better if one of us stays here for the girls, anyway. In case Jesse needs her Epi or Sammie starts to fuss. And yes, I am sure."

She regretted not letting Amanda ask, but if she heard the question one more time she was afraid she might scream. And it appeared to work; Amanda regarded her long and hard before finally granting a reluctant nod. "Okay. But if anything—and I meananything—comes up, you call me immediately. And you take Gigi too. No arguments." Tongue curled behind her bottom teeth, she emitted a short, piercing whistle, top teeth set as if she were smiling, and brought the dogs wagging and clomping over.

"No arguments," Olivia agreed. She was so anxious to leave, she didn't even care that Amanda was issuing orders or treating her like she couldn't handle a simple trip back to their apartment on her own. Challenging her wife would just keep her there longer, and it was true—she was a basket case who probably didn't deserve to be in charge of two young children and a dog. But she couldn't be alone, either. Being alone was worse than having too many eyes on her, which she felt now from the group on the blanket, from her son, from her daughter. It would be less intrusive in the rearview mirror, their curiosity (What's wrong with Mommy?flashed through her mind like the sensationalized title on a schlocky noir poster:What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) contained to the backseat.

. . .

Or so she believed. Noah, her quietest, most pensive child, became a chatterbox on the way home. She suspected he was compensating for the scuffle, hoping to steer her away from the topic altogether, but the running commentary set her nerves on edge all the same. Why were they doing construction on this streetagain? Wouldn't it have been easier to walk back to the apartment? Or take a taxi? Or the subway? Could he have another piece of cake when they returned to the park? Were dogs allowed to have cake if it wasn't chocolate?

"I bet Gigi would take a big ol' bite out of Peppa Pig," he said in singsong, waggling his fingers ghoulishly across the backseat at his little sister. "That stupid pink snout. She'd be going around oinking like this." He made a muted snuffling noise through his nostrils that was about as accurate an impression of a snoutless pig as you would imagine.

"Nooo," squealed Tilly at a pitch too high to be artificial. She hadn't heard the good nature that was usually present in her brother's teasing, and frankly, neither had Olivia.

"Noah! Stop picking on your sister! And what have I told you about using that word?" Olivia spoke so sharply that both children's heads, and Gigi's, snapped to attention. She tried to soften her tone, but the damage was done. Matilda looked like she might cry again. "Tell her you were just kidding about Peppa. And no more screaming, Tilly, okay sweetie? Mommy's driving."

"Ma yells when she drives," said Noah.

"Yes, well." Olivia left it at that, shooting him a warning look in the mirror. "Apologize, please."

The boy heaved a tragic sigh and leaned across Gigi to pat Matilda's arm on the armrest of her car seat. His hand slid down to her wrist and held it lightly, almost daintily. "Sorry, Tilly. I didn't mean it about Peppa Pig. Gigi would never bite her nose. I shouldn't have called it stupid."

"That's okay, bubba. Dogs don't eattartoonsanyway."

Tartoons. Olivia nearly burst into tears at the childish pronunciation of cartoons, though it was the innocence and the glimpse of her children's reflections, so solemn and sincere, that really got to her. She wanted to pull the vehicle over and reach around to gather them into a fierce hug, tell them how dear they were to her, how precious, but she kept it on the road and kept going. That was all she could do—stay the course, keep going, breathe.

"Feel like telling me what's going on, sweetheart?" she asked, catching Noah's eye in the mirror again.

A small pout settled on his features, which had always been girlishly pretty beneath all those curls. He was getting that lean boy look now, the soft edges becoming refined, hardened in a way that made her slightly uneasy—it was the shorter hair, it had to be—though she'd never admit to it. God, it was all happening so fast. Soon he would be decidedly male, with all the characteristics and connotations that entailed. Long ago she had given up worrying about the genes passed down by his biological father, but what about the millions of years of evolution that had honed men's DNA down to a brutal, deadly sharp point? She couldn't undo what was hardwired into him.

No one could.

When he didn't attempt an answer, Olivia continued: "It's not like you to start fights and pick on your sister. I know . . . I know things have been a little tough lately, with Mommy being injured and . . . and sad, and both your ma and I at home 24/7, but sweetie, you can't take it out on others. It's never okay to hurt people, no matter how upset you're feeling. You should have come to me or Mama when those boys were harassing Tilly. We would have straightened it out."

Amanda would have. Olivia was fairly certain she would have clammed up and let the boys go with a weak, ineffectual warning, had she gotten her lips to move at all. That older boy frightened her if she were to be perfectly honest. Something about his malicious tone and demeanor reminded her of The Kid. Liam Sandberg. Sandman Junior. The most enthusiastic of her rapists.

"What?" she asked, not because she had blanked out again, but because Noah had mumbled his answer.

"I said I wasn't upset." He drew out the pause that followed, his voice dropping back down to a barely audible volume. "I was mad. And scared. I thought they were going to hurt Tilly. I thought . . . "

Olivia strained to hear the rest, and when she did catch the tail end, it required every bit of self-control she possessed not to slam on her breaks in the middle of West Street and turn to gape in horror at him in the backseat.

"I thought they were going to rape her."

It was something very like a near-death experience, hearing those words come out of her child's mouth. Time slowed down, even as images flashed in front of her with dizzying speed—not images of her life, but of sexual assaults. The majority were hers, but her mother's rape was there, strung together in vivid detail by the recording she had listened to obsessively, the case notes, and her imagination (it must have been like looking up from your own grave, looking up at the city from a landing below street level while a stranger was on top of you); Amanda's assault by Charles Patton came into view too, and though she had tried desperately not to imagine it based on what she knew, she could still smell the whiskey, feel the throbbing in her head from where he bashed it against the headboard, see the hot blood on her fingertips; whether it was real or not, she saw Dana Lewis's rape, which had played over and over in her head while she investigated it and then sat through the woman's testimony.

dark sideburns no face Amanda you know I don't take no for an answer a velvet throat bet yours is real pretty just like your mouth (red velvet) please God don't let him climb on top of me again

She saw them all. Felt them creeping up her skin like the legs of poisonous insects—thousands of them—ready to overwhelm her, filling her eyes, nose, mouth, until she was no longer visible, just a dark squirming cloud of bugs.

Her boy knew about rape.

"Wha-what?" she asked, too shaky to collect her thoughts and put them into a coherent sentence. "Where did you— why would— who told you about . . . what that means? Rrr—" The word died on her tongue, sounding like a breathy cough:rape.

"Nobody. I asked Aunt Daph about it a while ago, but she wouldn't tell me. She said you and Ma probably want to wait till I'm older to talk about it." Noah gazed earnestly into the mirror as he spoke, his eyes full of questions. If they were darker it might be easier to ignore, but there was no mistaking that inquisitive sparkle in his light blue eyes. "I know it's really bad and boys do it to hurt girls. I'm not sure how. But those guys were saying bad things and I thought they would do something bad like that to Tilly, too. The bigger one said he should puthispee-pee onherand see how she likes it."

Olivia gasped, the
(iron bar?)
steering wheel in a death grip in her white-knuckled fists. She could tell by the inflection and his use of the word "pee-pee," which he had never called the action or his genitals, even as a toddler, that he was paraphrasing, but the thought of another child saying something so sick in front of her children was appalling. She hoped to God the kid hadn't been referring to his penis (of course he had), although threatening to urinate on her four-year-old daughter wasn't much better.

"Jesus. Oh, lovies, I'm so sorry. No one shouldeversay things like that to you. That is totally inappropriate and completely unacceptable." Olivia had to take a moment to catch her breath; she was panting like the dogs after a run with Amanda. She almost missed her turn onto the street their building was on, and had to cut the wheel sharply to make it. A symphony of car horns heralded her impromptu exit, but her glance into the rearview was for Noah alone. "It's still not okay to resort to violence, unless you're defending yourself or someone else from a physical attack. Remember that. But I can understand now why you thought you had to protect your little sister. And I'm proud of you for that. You should always look out for her."

A small crooked smile inched up the corner of Noah's mouth, and he ducked his head shyly this time, instead of in shame. He nodded his agreement.

"Me too?" Tilly asked.

"You too, little love. You should always look out for your big bubby and sissy, and Sammie too. You guys are siblings and that's something really special. Not everyone has that. Try to always have each other's backs, okay?" Olivia was still rattled from the R-word—her hands were clammy, throat dry—and she wanted to know how and where her son had picked it up, but she couldn't have that discussion while driving. Not with Matilda listening in, wide-eyed and absorbing everything; not with cars on every side of her waiting to
(rape)
pass when she finally exited the turning lane. Besides, the mention of familial bonds was heartening. She had at least given her children one thing she never had.

"I've got your back too, Mom," Noah said, bolstered as well. His chest was puffed out the slightest bit. "I wish I could've protected you from the bad guys."

The wince started in her shoulders, an involuntary muscle spasm that hunched them forward, while her back arched in the opposite direction, like a stunt actor taking a fake bullet to the chest. She managed not to swerve into the turn as she angled her SUV toward the parking garage, but she was approaching the sharp dip that seamed the entrance and the road with some speed. It would be rough on the front tires—and the passengers—and she braced herself for the bronco-like jounce that every tenant in the building had issued complaints to the super and the city about.

But there was no bracing for Noah's next statement, uttered a moment before impact: "I wouldn't let them rape you, either. Did they—"

A solid crunch cut off the rest, and for one wild second she thought it was internal, that something had imploded inside of her so violently it could be heard on the outside. She tried to remember if brain aneurysms or ruptured organs caused such sensations, but all she could think of was the burnt toast smell that supposedly preceded a stroke. Although she didn't smell burnt toast, there was a scent of hot metal wafting through the air vents and she gazed past the windshield in dismay at her front driver's side bumper.

She had turned too fast and too sharp, colliding with the boom barrier that admitted tenants into the garage. The automated arm—"Why does it look like a candy cane?" Jesse once asked of the red and white striped bar—ascended jerkily toward the sky like a frightened hostage, hands up and quaking. In a daze she watched it rise and had the funny urge to salute. Then she remembered her precious cargo in the backseat, head whiplashing around so abruptly it awakened the mostly-healed injuries: her sore neck, fractured cheekbone, cracked tooth. (Something, she was privately convinced, had also been jarred loose inside her skull during her time in The Box, but she had no proof. Just the sense that pieces of her were no longer in the right place.)

(What if it wasshewho was no longer in the right place?)

"Oh my God, are you all right?" she asked her children, glancing back and forth between them. They were both strapped in securely and looked more confused than frightened, but her pulse was through the roof and she scanned them head-to-toe for injuries. Her heart clenched at the sight of Noah's split lip, until she remembered it was a souvenir from his first fistfight. Tilly's lightly scuffed knees were from play, and nothing more. "I'm so sorry, loves. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, Mom. What did we hit?"

"I'm okay too." Tilly craned her neck, trying to see over the back of Olivia's seat and the dash, but she lacked the necessary height.

Gigi whined, as if confirming her safety as well, though she sounded less convinced than her small humans. She shifted from paw to paw on the backseat, panting, a sign of agitation that usually accompanied one of Olivia's panic attacks or bad dreams. If they were in the apartment right now, she would be turning in circles and pushing her furry head into Olivia's lap. Right on cue, she hopped awkwardly into the footwell, which fit her about the same as a cat in a tissue box, and nuzzled into the crook of Olivia's elbow. Her eyes rolled upward, giving her a pleading sort of expression.Please calm down, Mom.You're scaring us.

"What did we hit?" Noah repeated.

"The gate thing," Olivia said, unable to pluck the appropriate term from her racing mind. She made a discouragingah-ahsound at him when he started to unbuckle his seatbelt. "Leave that on. If someone hit us from behind, you could get hurt."

"Is someone going to hit us, Mommy?" Matilda asked, craning to look out the back window now. The poor little thing's head didn't even clear the top of the seat.

Cursing herself for her own stupidity—she had always been so careful not to create unwarranted fears and anxieties in her children, and now that seemed like all she was doing—Olivia closed her eyes tight for a moment and shook her head. She could picture clearly in her mind's eye any one of the cars that sped by on the main road, just inches from the rear bumper, clipping her SUV and spinning them into traffic, where they would be clobbered head-on by a garbage truck and die in a fiery crash. Amanda, blissfully unaware as she played Ogre Under the Bridge and chased the kids around the park, would return home to find half her family dead. Burned beyond recognition. Why was it so easy to imagine?

"No, baby. It's just not safe to be unbuckled or out of our seats yet, okay? Mommy needs to make sure we're not blocking the street at all. Once we're parked—"

"Mom, who's that?"

No sooner were the words out of Noah's mouth than a knock at Olivia's window made her cry out, eyes snapping open, and instantly recoil. A man she vaguely recognized stood on the other side of the glass. Smiling, he spread his hands in sheepish apology for the start. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you. Looks like you're having some trouble," he said in a loud voice, nodding to the front of the vehicle where it kissed the boom barrier. "Anything I can do to— hey, you mind lowering this?"

He motioned for the window to come down, his hands still near the glass. Olivia watched them as if they were deadly snakes on exhibit, perhaps capable of striking through the walls of their enclosure. She knew what he wanted to do with those cobra-headed
(weapons)
hands he was waving at her. She could feel them on her body, fangs sunk deep, hot venom coursing through her veins. The tongue behind that devil's smile was forked too, she was sure of it.

"Step away from my vehicle," she said, her voice much too loud for the space she was in. Serena and high school drama class had taught her to project ("You can't get your point across if they can't hear you"), and years of yelling at perps on the streets of New York City had perfected the skill, but that was for the acoustics of lecture halls and skyscraper-lined boulevards. Her children never heard that voice; were never meant to. Gigi whined.

"Mom, what's going on?"

"I said step back." Olivia instinctively reached to her hip, but came away empty-handed. An entire month had passed since she'd carried a weapon, and it was still a natural reflex, that reach. Her mind went to the glovebox, where Amanda often stashed her holstered gun, but it looked incredibly far away. Olivia felt as if a spotlight was shining directly on her, and she was incapable of moving outside its ring of light. "Now."

"Mom?"

The man at the window gave her an odd look, lips and eyebrows slanted bemusedly. He shuffled his feet, as if to obey her request/order, but didn't budge more than half an inch. "Think you've got me confused with someone else," he said, his attempt at sounding good-natured belying a tinge of annoyance. "You're one of the cops in 6E, right? I'm the fitness trainer, 4B. We ride the elevator together, mornings. See your . . . wife running at the park sometimes. Haven't seen you in a while, though."

God, he was good. Even phrased the mention of Amanda as a question rather than a threat, but Olivia wasn't fooled. He knew their schedules, which apartment they lived in, their professions, and where Amanda liked to run. The longer she regarded him, the more convinced she became that shedidrecognize him—not as a neighbor but from a much darker, more sinister place than the elevator in her building. Had he been in The Box? One of her "gentlemen callers," so to speak? She thought all of the rapists' faces were burned into her brain like cattle
(prods)
brands, but maybe she'd forgotten one. She hadn't been completely lucid for all of it. Suppose other men had snuck in and used her while she was delirious with fear, dehydration, hypothermia, infection?

Suppose he was another trafficker, come to collect the merchandise promised to his buyer? She had told herself Amanda killed them all, but they were like co*ckroaches: you could never get rid of every last one.

Or maybe he really was just a neighbor, and now a fan, after seeing her live performance on the web. Maybe he wanted an autograph or a turn.

"I SAID MOVE," she bellowed, and threw the SUV into reverse.

"Hey, what the—!"

The gearshift was within her ring of light, of safety; so was the rearview mirror, although she forgot to check it before prying the front bumper away from the boom and narrowly missing a taxi that swerved to avoid collision, its horn shrieking in defiance. Tilly began to cry in high, hysterical wails that were unlike anything Olivia had ever heard from her before, even when the child was a teething infant. Noah kept asking Mommy, what's wrong, his distress slicing through her like a knife that sheared down to bone.

"Mommy, what's wrong?" she had always asked her mother when Serena behaved erratically behind the wheel, at the park, or during bedtime stories.

As she got older, it graduated to, "You're drunk," accusation and embarrassment outweighing concern.

Then finally "I hate you," screamed during the worst of their fights, when she could imagine no other escape but death—Serena's or her own.

"I think that guy was telling the truth," Noah said quietly. They had been parked—albeit a crooked, half-ass attempt, as Amanda would call it if she came across the SUV in a parking lot—for nearly five minutes in total silence. Almost. Tilly's occasional sniffles and Olivia's blasts of deep inhalation through her nostrils broke up the uneasy, suffocating quiet. "I think he just wanted to help."

No!she screamed inside her head.He wanted to rape me! He wanted to bend me over an old broken-down desk and make me beg for his big yummy co*ck. He wanted to call me kitty cat and ram me from behind until I choked on it. He wanted to shove a cattle prod inside of me and turn it on until everything below the waist was cooked, until smoke came out of my throat, scalding hot milk from my nipples. He wanted to hold his open mouth under me like a fountain and drink every last drop.

Her tongue couldn't articulate any of it. "I told him to back off," was what it eventually produced. "He should have listened to me. Men never . . . "

Noah and Matilda were rapt in the backseat, waiting to hear what men never did. She remembered hanging on every word of her mother's comments about men like that, too. Tearing her gaze away from the rearview, she checked her side mirrors for any sign of the so-called fitness trainer from 4B, but all she saw was an ominous stretch of dim garage, empty cars lining each side like participants in a gauntlet. You had to run in between and hope to God you survived each attack.

How Hell did imitate life. How life did become the hell you always feared it to be.

"We should call Ma," said her son, stalling as he helped Tilly out of her car seat at Olivia's request. "She said to, if something happened. She can come get us and—"

"No. We're not calling her. Everything is fine." Olivia's inflection brightened to mask the fearful catch in her throat, the tightness—she kept eyeing the mirrors, expecting 4B to skulk out from some hidden corner—but only near the end. "Grab Gigi's leash and hold onto her tight, can you do that for me? I'll get your sister out on this side. Try to keep up, okay? Noah, I mean it. No playing around."

. . .

"Why are we running?" he asked, trotting along beside her, his Vans slapping heavily on the cement as he tried to match her pace. "Mom, I'm kinda scared."

Olivia wanted to scoop him up too, hold his head against her other shoulder, hand at the back so it didn't bounce, same as she did with Tilly. But she could barely sustain her daughter's weight, let alone add Noah's sixty-odd pounds to it. He was safer on the ground where Gigi would fend off any attacker who dared get near her boy. On a cliffside in the Catskills, Olivia had witnessed the dog's extraordinary courage and willingness to fight to the death for her family. She trusted Gigi to protect the kids more than she trusted herself at the moment.

"We're not running," she said, shortening her stride but not her speed. She hadn't moved so briskly in a month or more, and she was already feeling winded. Not only that, she was lying directly to her son's face, gaslighting him as Serena had always done to her.Mommy didn't hit you.Why must you exaggerate everything, Olivia?Youknowthat's not what happened, young lady."I just don't want us to miss the elevator. I can't make it up the stairs yet."

That much was true. The empty elevator stood open to them a few yards ahead, its weird amber-lighting and limited capacity somehow reminding her of a nativity scene—close and inviting—minus the livestock and the virgin birth. She was determined to be on it before the doors closed, the feeling that otherwise she was doomed too overpowering to ignore. "Why don't you hurry and catch it for me?"

"Is that man following us? We should call—"

"Noah, just get in the damn elevator," she said too harshly. Matilda had lifted her head to look around for 4B, her heart giving a kick beneath the hand Olivia kept pressed to her slender back. Her little Tilly was learning the fear of men right before her very eyes, under the guidance of her own two hands. Serena's lessons passed down through the generations. Welcome to four years old, baby girl. "Sorry, sweetie, I'm not mad, I promise. Can you push the button for me? Hurry. Good boy."

Only when the four of them were enclosed safely within the elevator did she remember to breathe. If anything was said during the ride up, she either didn't hear it or didn't respond. When she finally did become aware of her surroundings again, they were inside the apartment, the door barricaded behind her (a dining chair she didn't recall putting there was wedged under the doorknob), her children and Gigi staring at her like she was certifiably insane. Or drunk.

"We're not going back to the park, are we?" Noah asked, after several moments passed in excruciating silence. He didn't sound angry or disappointed; instead, he was matter-of-fact, as if he had been expecting this breakdown for quite some time. Did he remember the others? After Sheila? The hostage situation in the townhouse? The Mangler? Orion?

How many times must her eight-year-old son have seen her like this, for him to know she would eventually fall apart?

"I . . . I don't think I can." Olivia stood awkwardly, tennis shoe hooked behind the heel of her other foot, fingers twisting into each other, as if she were the child speaking to a volatile adult. She recognized the shame from her school days, when teachers would ask why she fell asleep in class; why she was wearing last year's saddle shoes, which were so tight she developed a limp; why she didn't eat lunch in the cafeteria with everyone else. Why why why. "But I'll call Mama and ask her to come get you two."

Noah gazed past her at the chair tilted on its hind legs, the wavy crest rail cradling the doorknob. "Nah, the park is kinda boring anyway. It's mostly for babies. No offense, Tilly. You can go back if you want. I'll stay here with you, Mom."

Tilly's fingers were in her mouth again, and they came away shiny with saliva when she uncorked them from her china doll lips. "I want to stay here too, Mommy. I want newunnerwearand pants 'cause you said, and I need them."

Even Gigi seemed to be in agreement with the children, taking her weight off Olivia's legs where she had been leaning and settling onto her belly, chin on her paws. She was staying too, and the relief Olivia felt was so immense it almost made up for the guilt of taking the kids away from the fun—Tilly from her own birthday party—and locking them up in the apartment with her, turning them into prisoners of her own fears as well. But she couldn't force them to return to the park, nor could she be the one to take them there.

He knew their apartment number.

With a shudder, she pushed the thought away and ushered the kids to their rooms. Noah looked a little hurt when he tried to follow along into his sisters' bedroom and had to be sent across the hall to his own, but he needed to learn about boundaries, even a four-year-old's. He still wanted to shadow Olivia when she got Tilly into fresh clothes (a pair of tiny terry cloth shorts with white piping that reminded Olivia of high school gym class, a t-shirt with yet another unicorn on the front, and most importantly, underwear), but she encouraged him to teach Tilly his new dance routine in the living room while she journaled for a bit in her room.

She made it as far asI can't go on like this, I feel like I'm losing my mind before she laid the pen down, went to the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of red wine. The words flowed easily after that, her anxiety floating away, and by the time Amanda returned home, she had filled ten pages, front to back, and the empty Merlot bottle was tucked into the wastebasket by the bed, under a mass of tissues, maxi pad wrappers, a guest list for the birthday party, and an old pair of socks worn through at the heels.

. . .

Chapter 48: An Ocean of Noise

Chapter Text

Chapter 48.

An Ocean of Noise

. . .

"If you don't mind me sayin' so, hon, you look like something the cat dragged in. You been eating? Sleeping?" Dana dunked her tea bag in the hot water a few more times, then tied the string around the bowl of the spoon, squeezing out excess moisture. She wasn't much of a tea drinker to begin with, but she found the process soothing—pour, dunk, squeeze, sprinkle, stir, sip, and so on and so forth. It turned out to be a good choice; the detective had been tracking every movement, as if hypnotized by hand, cup, and spoon, since taking a seat in the booth across from her. "Bathing?"

"I just flew from JFK to Hartsfield and back again in, like, six hours," said Amanda, dead-eyed and dead-voiced. "Don't talk to me about food, sleep or baths. I don't even know what f*cking day it is."

"It's Thursday," Dana said, adding a dash of cream to her cup to match the dash of irony in her response. She stirred it in, only registering what Amanda had said on the third or fourth cycle. "Wait. Hartsfield as in Hartsfield-Jackson, the airport? Girl, what inhell were you doing in Atlanta? Besides sweating through that tiny t-shirt and frizzing your hair like it's 1989?"

Amanda glanced down at her bright yellow crop top with a detached sort of amusem*nt and ran a hand down her humidity-frazzled ponytail. She didn't look as if she had any idea what she was wearing, to tell the truth. She'd paired the shirt with some lightweight camo pants that were about two sizes too large and black Converses that had seen better days. "We sent our kids away." Same flat affect as before, but something else sneaked in at the end. A bitterness that was more expression than inflection. "Even the baby. She just turned five months . . . "

Not exactly a milestone birthday—or a birthday at all, really—but it was obvious Amanda took it very seriously, so Dana sipped her tea instead of commenting. The detective would probably be more apt to explain if she wasn't interrupted by sassy remarks, anyway.

"I flew with them down to Atlanta to stay with my mama for the summer. It's supposed to be this big, exciting adventure to introduce them to the state where I grew up, but I don't even get to be the one who shows it to them." Amanda reached for one of the empty Splenda packets Dana had poured into her tea and started folding it like she was making origami. "It's only until August, but that's still a month. Babies grow so fast. We switched her over to formula since you can't really ship breast milk. It was easy enough, I think 'cause she got used to bottle feedings while Liv was . . . gone, and for a while after. Who knows if she'll ever wean back on when they come home.

"I hate sending them there. Liv does too. There's bad blood with her and my mama. Well, me and my mama too, far as that goes. But she's good to the kids, at least. And I told her if they come home with smart mouths or any kind of attitude toward Liv whatsoever, she'll never get to see them again, not even school pictures." The packet had been folded over several times to form a long horizontal strip, and when the end was bent down vertically, its final shape revealed itself: a miniature yellow pistol. Amanda aimed it between her thumb and forefinger at Dana's water glass. Pew pew.

"I'd still rather have sent them anywhere else, but Mama's the only one with that kinda time on her hands. Short of packing them off to summer camp, there weren't many options. And last I heard, they don't do sleepaway for infants or preschoolers." She sighed and slapped the paper gun onto the table. A few seconds later she resumed toying with it, spreading it open like a minuscule map and tearing it to strips at the creases. "They couldn't stay here, though. Not after Tilly's party. And the Fourth."

Dana waited a moment, then slid two more empty packets across the table for Amanda to disfigure. "What happened after Tilly's party and the Fourth?" she asked as unobtrusively as possible. She could see that Amanda needed to unload. There was so much built-up tension in the poor girl's shoulders, she was lucky her blond head didn't pop right off like a dandelion flicked from its stem.

The question drew a small, nasally laugh that was pure exhaustion, not a trace of humor. "What didn't happen? I knew I shouldn't let her take the kids home by herself, but Tilly wet her pants at the park and she was panicking about her not having any underwear on in public. I knew she was triggered, I just— I thought if she had a moment away from all the noise and chaos to ground herself and breathe, she'd be okay. I mean, she had Noah and Gigi with her too . . .

"About half an hour later, I get a call from Noah saying Mommy got into an accident in the parking garage and freaked out when a neighbor tried to help them. A man. She thought— well, you saw the livestream, you can imagine what she thought. The kids had to let me in the apartment when I got home because she'd blocked the door with a chair. I don't know how much she had to drink before I got there, but she seemed kinda tipsy. That's not like her: drinking in the daytime when the kids are home and awake. What if one of 'em got hurt and she couldn't take care of them? What if the alcohol and the meds had a bad interaction?"

The second and third packets went the way of the first, a little pile of yellow kindling stacked in front of Amanda as if she were building a campfire. Granules of sucralose flecked the surrounding table like snow. "Her mama was . . . " Suddenly she visibly bit her tongue and swept away her little pyre with the edge of her palm. "Goddamit, she's not like that. She's ain't. But then, a week later—you know how loud and crazy the city gets on the Fourth. All them parades and people drunk off their ass. The kids were getting restless being cooped up inside while everyone else was partying. Frannie and Gigi, those are our dogs, they wouldn't stop pacing. Sammie just kept bawlin'.

"I's about to lose my damn mind, so I put the baby in her stroller, told Liv and the kids I was going out to grab some hot dogs, be back in twenty minutes. I didn't even wait for them to answer, just shut the door and took off down the hall like I was going to a fire." Amanda shook her head and gave another helpless, humorless laugh. "You believe that? I just left them all there because I couldn't take it anymore. Looking back, I guess I was probably triggered too. All those firecrackers going off really did sound like gunfire. I just didn't think she'd remember it, though. She was so out of it when I got to her in that shipping container, you know?"

Dana nodded behind the cup she was holding up, covering her own quick, shallow breaths as she listened to the story unfold. "I do."

"It musta . . . musta triggered a flashback, 'cause when I got home I found her huddled up with the kids in the corner of our bedroom. Gigi dragged me back there to show me. Frannie just kept running in circles. Noah and Jesse were trying to make it into a game, like Mommy was just teaching them what to do in case of an active shooter. I think they knew something was wrong. I could barely pry Tilly out of her arms, and now Tilly's sucking her thumb and asking for a pacifier like sissy's. And Liv . . . "

Head lowered defeatedly, Amanda waggled it side to side as if it was loose from her neck. Her ponytail hung over her shoulder like a ratty dead thing. "She's not herself anymore. It's not just the drinking. I mean, there's that, and sh*t, I can't fault her for it—I been needing something to take the edge off too. And I onlysawit happen. But I feel like she's shutting me out again. It took her so long to finally open up and trust me, and now she won't tell me what she's feeling or thinking. Feel like I barely recognize her." Elbows pinned to the tabletop, she rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes furiously. "Guess maybe she figured out I'm to blame for all of it. Guess maybe she's right to push me away."

It was a lot to digest.

Occasionally Dana wondered if her life had one of those sardonic narrators that you hear in movies who enjoyed making clever puns at her expense, so when her flapjack order arrived on the table at that precise moment, it did nothing to convince her otherwise. Well, there was only one way to conquer a large problem or a large meal, and that was a bite at a time. "That's the exhaustion talking," she said, unleashing a long golden stream of syrup over the plate. "You ain't no more to blame for what those bastards did than the man in the moon. You didn't turn 'em criminal, honey, even the ones you held acquaintance with prior. Liv's had people retaliate against her in the past, right?"

"Yeah." Amanda took her hands away from her eyes, folding them in front of her mouth. If she noticed the huge platter of food, she didn't react.

"We all have. Sometimes it's worse than others. My assault was payback by a damned white supremacist, for cripes' sake. It's the risk you take when you're dealing with lowlifes day in and day out." Dana chiseled a triangular wedge from the triple stack in the middle with her fork. All three layers went in her mouth at once, a droplet of sticky syrup trickling onto her chin. She swiped it with a napkin, which she pointed at Amanda right after. "You know it, I know it, and so does Olivia. Ain't no way she blames you for that."

"Yeah, but if I hadn't put myself in that position with Vaughn and Murphy—"

Dana drew the tines of the fork across her throat, signaling for Amanda to cut out naming names in public. Chances were slim they were being watched or recorded—she had taken advantage of every single precaution at her disposal as high-ranking FBI and covered their tracks so well not even the good Lord himself could trace anything back to them—but she hadn't infiltrated some of the deadliest terrorist cells in the country by being sloppy. "You never know whose path you're gonna cross, or how or when. He was your superior officer, so like it or not, he was the one who took advantage.

"As for her, who's to say you wouldn't have met her some other way and still ended up here? Playing shoulda woulda coulda will get you nowhere, Rollins. Maybe your involvement with them is what put you on the path to being with Olivia in the first place. You wouldn't change that, would you?"

"No," Amanda said immediately, indignant. She looked as though she were contemplating snatching the fork from Dana's hand and stabbing her in the jugular with it.

That day in the shipping container, when Dana had arrived to find Olivia and her little blond wife both so shattered, covered in blood and God knows what all, she wouldn't have been surprised if the little blond wife whirled around and blew her brains out—she'd been that unhinged. A hint of that was visible behind those bluebonnet eyes, even now, but Dana didn't believe the detective had a killer's spirit, not truly. She wouldn't have pulled so many strings doctoring up the crime scene if she suspected Amanda of murder for entertainment. A few, because those bastards needed to die no matter who was pulling the trigger or why, but not many.

"No, I wouldn't change that, ever." And less certain: "I just wish . . . "

Tucking a hearty, dripping bite of flapjacks into one cheek, Dana spoke from the other, poking the air with her fork as emphasis: "You just wish you could take back the awful thing that happened to her. Change that part of it and keep the rest. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, kiddo. Bitch of a thing. But you gotta keep going. It sounds like you're taking some good steps—figuring out your triggers, sending the kids to grandma's so y'all can work on healing, being there to listen if and when she needs it. And trust me, she will."

"Sure don't feel like it." Amanda sighed, but her resignation had softened a bit more. Or perhaps it was the hunger taking over. She was eyeing the golden brown islands in a sea of golden syrup on Dana's plate, practically licking her chops. Her voice turned inward, gaze following the journey of Dana's fork from plate to mouth and back again as if the hand holding it, the person attached to that, had ceased to exist. "Wish we could get away from this city. It's so loud and relentless. How's she supposed to heal—how's anybody supposed to—in a place where there's no goddamn peace?"

Dana contemplated that one for a minute, tines poised between her lips. She slid them out a moment later, decision made. She'd been the first one in her Quantico training to embrace the "shoot to kill" policy. "Tell you what. I got a little place up in Bridgeport, right on the water. Haven't been in quite a spell, so who knows, it might've gotten swept into the Atlantic by now. But assuming it's still there, you and Olivia should make use of it."

Spearing one last bite of flapjacks and liquid sugar, she pushed the remainder over to Amanda. Once the fork was cleared of every last crumb, she turned it face down on the edge of the plate too. "The tourists are a pain in the ass, but they're not allowed on my private property. It's pretty peaceful back there. Y'all could have some time to decompress. Reconnect with each other somewhere away from the big city. Got the keys right out in the glovebox if you're interested."

Which look was more skeptical, the one Amanda shot at the syrup-gilded platter or Dana herself, was difficult to say. The hesitation was short-lived, however; a single encouraging nod from Dana was all it took for the detective to scoop up the abandoned fork and dig into the lunchtime repast of breakfast staples. Her willingness to accept the Bridgeport waterfront stay, after a grunt of thanks around a mouthful of fried batter, was a bit harder to come by. "I dunno. Connecticut? Ain't they kinda highfalutin' up there? Buncha yacht club snobs in Breton stripes with sweaters tied around their shoulders?"

"Some," Dana said, smirking. She could attest to the vast difference between New Englanders and the Southern folks she and Amanda had grown up with, that was true. For one thing, the accents were atrocious, and all the boating apparelwasrather off-putting. And who on earth could eat that much clam chowder? Still, the northeast had its charms, the ability to get lost in quaint little seaside villages where sand and brazen gulls were the worst offenders you encountered chief among them. "But you'll find just as many highbrows in Manhattan and a damn sight more traffic. Crime rate's a lot lower in Bridgeport, too. I got friends on the force who can keep an eye on ya. There's lots of cute little shops to visit, some gorgeous lighthouses—"

If Dana were searching for the magic words, she seemed to have hit upon them directly with that last subject: the lighthouses. Amanda sat up straighter, a spark of interest in her dull-edged baby blues. They had been sharp as steel last time Dana saw her. "Lighthouses, huh? Good takeout? Neither Liv or me can cook worth a damn." She shoveled two forkfuls into her mouth, one immediately after the other. A shiny glaze coated her lips and she polished it away with her tongue.

"Honey, I haven't cooked my own meals since I failed home ec." Dana grinned against the brim of her cup. It was an exaggeration for the other woman's benefit, but not by much. You needed patience and a desire to stay in one place for at least an hour at a time if you were going to cook. She was already getting antsy just sitting across from Amanda in the diner for thirty minutes, give or take. "There's lots of good food in the area. You'll love The Little Goose. Their French onion soup is to die for."

Amanda wrinkled her nose at the meal recommendation, but thankfully, didn't seem deterred. She swirled another strata of flapjacks around the plate, drowning them in amber goop. "I'll be lucky if I can get her to eat a handful of oyster crackers," she said, her zestful chewing slowing to measured rumination. Improbable as it was, darkness settled over her fair, sunlit features like a black cloud. "I think she's lost about fifteen pounds since . . . everything. And she was already down a few before that. Eight, I think she said."

"Good Lord."

"Yeah." Amanda gazed forlornly at the last few bites on the plate, then pushed them away untouched. "Doesn't even feel like the same person sleeping next to me in bed at night. Not that she'll let me get anywhere near . . . " She put her hands up in a halting gesture, the heels of both palms butted to the edge of the table, and flexed her fingers. They unfurled as if releasing a crowbar or some other long and slender weapon. Dana could almost hear it clatter to the floor.

"That'll come in time," Dana said, though she had no way of knowing if it were true. Every woman handled sexual assault differently: some hopped right back in the saddle, so to speak, while others needed years to recover. Some never did. She herself was of the "get back on the horse" variety and had bedded a number of coworkers following her rape, just to prove she could. "You don't wanna rush her. Might end up traumatizing her even more."

"I know that," Amanda snapped. She butted her palms into the table ledge again, hard. "I've been dealing with the aftermath of her assaults for a helluva lot longer than you have, lady, so don't tell me how to handle my wife. I'dneverpush her into something she wasn't ready for. Never."

The vehemence of the denial suggested there was more to the story than Amanda was letting on, but Dana didn't pursue it. Her competitive side longed to remind the detective that she had known Olivia for years before her little ponytailed blonde self came trotting in from the backwoods of Georgia—she didn't ownallof Olivia's history, thank you very much—but Dana tamped down that one too. Amanda was probably suffering caregiver burnout, on top of the trauma of seeing her wife repeatedly gang raped; there was no victory to be had in one-upping her.

"Sorry. Sorry, I don't know what I'm saying." Amanda withdrew her palms from the table and scrubbed them over her face, ruffling her side-swept bangs into an arcing gossamer web. "Feels like I'm losing my damn mind half the time lately." Red-faced and inhaling briskly through her nostrils, she dropped her hands onto the tabletop, rattling everything on the surface. "Okay, why not? Connecticut it is. Lighthouses and million-dollar yachts for miles. She does love the water. I'll tell her the place belongs to an old ADA friend of ours, said we could borrow it for the summer."

The girl was talking to herself now, figuring out the logistics of a last-minute vacation. Dana hated to interrupt, but she couldn't hide her disappointment this time. "She's still gunning for me, huh?"

"We haven't really discussed it. Not since the hospital. She was pretty out of it when she ran you outta there. I think she just needs some time for it to sink in that you didn't murder a pregnant woman in cold blood."

Dana supposed she deserved that one. If she were being totally honest, she had enjoyed the game of cat and mouse between herself and Benson back then. It had felt like foreplay. Only later did it occur to her that the sexual thrill she'd experienced while they were close enough to kiss, the heat from Olivia's firm body, from Olivia's lovely inviting mouth, warming her inside and out, might not have been reciprocated or consensual. Until that day at the hospital, she had felt only mild guilt about it. Now it seemed downright shameful.

"I reckon you're right about that." Eyes averted, Dana took a lengthy sip of tea, though it had cooled enough to be drunk straight down.

"Speaking of incarcerated women who actually deserve to be behind bars. What is going to happen to Vau— to her? She can't just get off scot-free." Amanda's voice had a bitter edge, and sure 'nuff, when Dana glanced back up at her, there was a rigid set to her jaw and stone-cold hatred in her eyes. That must have been how she looked when she pulled the trigger, thought the FBI agent. "She'll come after us again, soon as she gets the chance. I want her—" Dropping to a snake-in-the-grass whisper: "gone."

The surprising part wasn't Amanda's openness in admitting she wanted Vaughn taken out, nor even Dana's readiness to make good on the request, but the natural flow of the conversation, as if they were discussing an uneventful morning commute. Traffic on the Williamsburg, construction on Canal, and oh, by the way, let's put a hit on this evil bitch in prison. "I'm working on it. She's been in solitary the past few weeks, I already saw to that. And they tossed her cell, found her creepy little shrine to y'all. Wecouldlet nature run its course—the judge'll throw the book at her, then we don't have to get our hands dirty."

"She greenlit Liv to be gang raped while she sat on her skinny ass in a maximum security facility and sent her f*ckbuddy CO to kidnap my daughter. A judge ain't gonna do squat sh*t to keep my family safe." The table clanged and shimmied when Amanda kicked the support beam at its center. She grabbed the corners to steady it, but also to lean forward as if grilling an infuriating suspect. "I want her to suffer like Liv did. Like I did," she hissed. "I want her to die in a puddle of her own piss and sh*t and blood knowing I was the one who put her there. And if you can't give me that, if it goes against your moral code or whatever bullsh*t ethics it is you live by when you're not lying through your teeth 'bout who you really are, I'll figure out a way to do it myself."

That vengeful rage and the opportunity to get the Rollins-Benson women out of the city before a certain rotten mick bastard showed his ugly face back in the states had been Dana's primary objectives when she arranged this tête-à-tête. If she was going to execute two more crime lords, she was going to make for damn sure Amanda was still on board first.

"Well," she said, a touch sardonic, tea angled at her lips, "so long as we're on the same page, Detective."

. . .

Chapter 49: Devil Inside

Chapter Text

Here comes the woman with the look in her eye
She's raised on leather, with flesh on her mind
Words as weapons, sharper than knives
Makes you wonder how the other half die

- INXS, "Devil Inside"

Chapter 49.

Devil Inside

. . .

My safety, my . . . something . . . ? My beautiful lighthouse in the storm.

Amanda had been repeating the verse to herself on a nonstop loop since leaving Dana Lewis at the diner, but she still couldn't remember the second "my" on the list. My haven? Homeland? Hideaway? None of those were right. Months had passed since she'd happened upon the lovely phrase, a reference to herself—ironically, while she was rifling through her wife's journal. Invading Olivia's privacy to the extreme, by reading her innermost thoughts and feelings, many of them about what a trustworthy and loyal partner Amanda was; how certain she was that Amanda would never betray her.

Some safety, some harbor.

Harbor. That was the missing word, and now that it had clicked into place on its own, she no longer needed to cross their bedroom in the four long strides it would take to arrive at Olivia's nightstand, unearth her journal from below several pairs of misplaced readers (a bottle of hand lotion, two tubes of Burt's Bees lip balm, a travel pack of tissue, and assorted ballpoint pens, some with lids, some without), and pretend it was all for the sake of her sanity: reminding herself of that gosh darn word. Whatever else she happened to skim along the way, well, that was fair game.

She no longer needed to, but she did it anyway. The shower head was running in the bathroom, and assuming Olivia wasn't taking one of her speed showers, which she only did on early mornings when the chief called her in unexpectedly—back when that used to happen—she could be a while. Her personal grooming time had gotten progressively longer in the weeks since the attack. At first Amanda had worried that she was having difficulty with her sutures or post-op bleeding, or perhaps the fractured rib she tried so hard not to make obvious. Then, when the responses to her name being called outside the door became more and more drawn out, Amanda's worries darkened, turning feral and vicious like beasts reintroduced to the wild. What if she was in there dissociating? Self-harming? Or worse.

What if Amanda kicked in the door and found her in a bathtub filled with blood, eyes vacant and staring, skin as pale as the tub itself, lips a sickly blue? The image was so vivid in her mind, she almost put the journal aside and went to the bathroom door right then, but if she banged on it or barged in, she might scare the hell out of Olivia, who probably hadn't heard her get home. They had spoken on the phone when Amanda's flight touched down, and come to think of it, Olivia had mentioned planning to shower. And come to think of it further, Amanda heard the faint interruptions in the spray as her wife moved beneath it, water falling in heavier cascades on one side and then the other. She was alive and okay. With any luck, she would be at least a few minutes longer, giving Amanda enough time to find some answers.

That's all she was looking for was answers. Maybe she had figured out the harbor thing, but she still couldn't guess what went on in Olivia's mind lately. When the captain wasn't sullen and withdrawn, she was tentative and quiet, practically jumping out of her skin at even the smallest noises. Amanda caught her blanking out often, a frighteningly far away expression on her face, and she had been absent-minded with increasing frequency since the incident on Tilly's birthday.

Getting that call from Noah had frightened the wits out of Amanda.Ma, can you come home? Mom crashed the car and she's being weird. She'd had to dump her poor daughters on poor Daphne to race home from the park in a cab—only mildly faster than sprinting on her own two legs would have been—and discover the "crash" was just a dent in the front bumper (albeit it a large one) and Olivia was being "weird" by leaving the kids to their own devices in the living room. That part was somewhat odd, but Olivia claimed she had just needed to decompress from the panic attack she experienced after running into the automatic gate of the parking garage. Understandable.

Even her anxiety about the guy who Amanda assured her really was their neighbor—he always found an excuse to jog alongside her at the park—wasn't totally unfounded. A strange man approaching your vehicle could and should put any woman on alert. The fitness guy was harmless, but Olivia had no way of knowing that, and Amanda fully supported the chosen solution: yelling at him. They were in New York City, for f*ck's sake, if he couldn't handle being hollered at by a random woman on the street, he should damn well move.

Thing is, Amanda was pretty sure her wife had been drinking when she found her in their bedroom afterward, scribbling in her journal about the run-in. There wasn't any physical evidence, other than a faint aroma she might have imagined because of her suspicions, but Olivia had looked a little flush and she kept folding and licking her lips, an unconscious habit that became more noticeable when she drank. A few days later, though, Amanda heard an empty bottle rattling when she dumped the wastebasket in their bedroom into a larger trash bag. The bottle was one she recognized as being about a third full in the rack above the fridge days earlier.

Amanda had tried to justify that, too, and truthfully, who could blame Olivia for needing something to calm her nerves? If she were getting sh*t-faced every day and putting their children in dangerous situations, that would be one thing. But Amanda couldn't be angry with her for coping in a relatively harmless
(she isnotan alcoholic goddammit)
way, anymore than she could be angry with Noah for his misinformation or Tilly for wetting her pants at the park. She couldn't be disappointed that Olivia wasn't able to share things with her after surviving such a horrific nightmare that no one would find easy to talk about. She couldn't be jealous of a f*cking notebook that her wife confided in more readily than in Amanda herself.

Sheshouldn'tbe.

And yet. She leafed through the pages with a bit more force than necessary, as if searching a fat dictionary for an elusive word, her lip unconsciously curled in a vague sneer. Her disgust was for herself, for what she had resorted to, and for the heartbreaking details she uncovered as she snooped, things she should have prevented or at least known about: the nightmares that woke Olivia almost nightly, leaving her trembling in the darkness and clutching Gigi; the lack of appetite and how well she hid it from her wife (she had indeed lost the fifteen pounds Amanda suspected, and two extra—five of which Amanda seemed to have found via little exercise and tapering Sammie off the breast); the pain in her pelvic region, both real (from the hysterectomy) and phantom (from all the rapes, reimagined), which sometimes doubled her over; the dead spots she felt throughout her body, what she called her "imposter's skin." As if she zipped herself into a suit of someone else's flesh before facing the world each day.

Not even the world, just her family. The birthday party was the most outside interaction Olivia had attempted in a month, and it had been a disaster. Amanda scanned through the entry on that date—June 27, 2022—heart sinking as she read, confirming all the fears she'd had in the weeks since. Olivia had been triggered at the park and tried to tough it out, she was afraid of the bullies who picked on Tilly, and felt like everyone who looked her way was picturing her, naked and violated, on a dirty shipping container floor. She knew she had overreacted to Tilly wearing the swim diaper instead of "real underwear" (It was the same feeling as when they tore mine off of me, she wrote), and that she was in no condition to drive when she hit the boom barrier.

What if it had been a person? A child? A dog? And I screamed at the man who tried to help us. At first I thought he was one of them. The men who . . . . But now I think he probably was just a neighbor offering a hand. (How many of them have seen the recording, I wonder? How many people in this city? Hundreds? Thousands? What if one of them comes into the precinct someday and recognizes me?) I'm sure he thinks I'm crazy now, and so do Noah and Tilly. They've witnessed me in a full-on meltdown, something I never wanted them to see. Thank God Jesse and Samantha were spared.

A skipped line, then:

I finished off the wine as soon as the kids were settled in the living room. It wasn't a full bottle, not even half. But it's happening again, like after Lewis. I don't needto drink, but everything is easier when I do. Amanda came home in a panic because Noah called her (probably the right thing to do, honestly), and I could tell she was frustrated that A) I hadn't, B) I lied about being fine and endangered two of our children, C) she had to leave the other two and come to my rescue over nothing, and D) she's sharp, there's no way I fooled her with the wine. I was almost disappointed when she didn't confront me about any of it. Cold sober I would have fallen apart if she raised her voice.

I don't want to become my mother, but this must be how it started for her. I've resented her for so long, believed I could never do the things she did—yet here I am, making scenes in public, scaring and scarring my kids, drinking to get through the day, and alienating the one person who's trying to be there for me in any way that she can.

Alienating was a strong word for Olivia's inability to open up about the assault, and Amanda's heart went out to the insecure and self-critical individual on the page. It was still so difficult to reconcile that woman with Olivia Benson, her wife, her boss, the strongest, most grounded person she knew. She shuffled pages again, hoping to find a glimpse ofthatperson, her Liv, somewhere in the lines of a more recent passage. What she landed on was some kind of poem that made her hold her breath until the end,

Hands
around my throat, no air
in my lungs, I scream
with no sound, the silence eternal.

The pain eternal, no
hands
to mend it, no
breath
to give life and warmth, to say,
"Enough."

I've had it; I am it; No more.
No more
hands
and no more
heart,
a soul without a soul, without a soul.

—then sigh, "Oh Liv, oh darlin'," out loud. Her eyes drifted to the next and latest entry, dated with today's date and probably written while she was chaperoning her kids through the airport.

July 11, 2022

The apartment is dark and quiet now. We've sent our babies away. It's so unfair to them. I'm the one who should have to go. I hope they can forgive me. I hope Amanda can forgive me. It would have been better for all of them if she had never found me. Or if one of them had killed me: the Kid, the Driver, the Crier, Little Brother, Gus. Even Matthew f*cking Parker. I had his goddamn belt in my goddamn hands, and I let them take it from me. If I hadn't, maybe

"You're reading my journal." It was stated so simply, as even and neutral as everyday conversation, Amanda almost forgot she was committing a cardinal sin of interpersonal relationships. She'd been so absorbed in pawing through her wife's most intimate confessions, like a thief pilfering only the priceless jewels, she hadn't heard the shower cut off. Nor had she noticed Olivia standing behind her, wrapped tightly in an oversized bath towel, another towel spread across her shoulders beneath her damp hair, watching Amanda snoop.

"Gah . . . damn!" she cried, too startled to pass it off as an innocent mistake. Oh, is this your journal? I thought it was a random book without jacket art or a title, which I came home and immediately rummaged from your drawer by mistake, to thumb through for no apparent reason. She had pulled some fast ones in her time and charmed her way out of just as many, but there was no getting around this one. They had to stop tiptoeing around each other sometime, anyway. It was going to destroy them.

"Liv, I— I, uh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't've—" She flipped the journal cover closed and steepled her fingers on top, like a businesswoman about to discuss the contents of an important document. "Ah, sh*t. Here. I don't know why I looked at it. Come take it." When Olivia made no move toward the outstretched notebook, Amanda laid it on the bed and stepped away from it as if they were making a money drop, the hostage and the ransom being released at the same time. She wanted it as far away from her as possible. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay. I didn't really see anything. Just, uh, just that little poem."

And the thing at the end that sounded like a suicide note. The hair on her arms still stood upright from reading that one, and she'd only made it halfway through.

Olivia regarded her for a long time (silence eternal), her expression blank and unreadable, then finally came to collect the journal. She skirted past Amanda, careful not to brush against her street clothes with bare, clean skin—that's all it was, right?—and scooped up the notebook, hugging it to her chest. She looked like the bashful high school girl from every teen movie ever, but her voice was devoid of emotion as she turned to the open nightstand drawer. "You could have just asked me," she said, and tried to slide the Moleskine into its normal slot. Something jammed it up and she wrestled with the book and whatever was blocking it, to no avail.

"Could I, though? You haven't exactly been . . . all that forthcoming lately." Choosing her words and movement carefully, Amanda stepped over to help with the drawer, but backed off quickly when Olivia jerked her hands and the journal away, as if expecting it to be snatched from her. Amanda deserved that, she supposed. But why Olivia felt the need to body-block her from reaching to dislodge the drawer, she didn't know. She put up her hands in surrender, leaving the task to her wife, who lasted only a moment longer before roughly kneeing the drawer shut like she was aiming for a perp's groin. "You're— Ifeellike you're keeping things from me. Maybe to protect me or something? But darlin', I don't need protecting, I just need you to talk—"

"And say what, Amanda?" Olivia spun on her heel, the one-eighty in stance mirrored by the one-eighty in her mood. A fire had ignited instantaneously under her skin and behind her eyes, restoring the natural glow that seemed to have vanished since the attack, leaving her skin tone flat and a bit jaundiced. She was beautiful angry, everything more vivid, more lively. There was a grace to it that didn't flow as elegantly—no, as fiercely, for she was always elegant—at a resting rate. "What could I possibly tell you that you didn't already see for yourself? That wasn't enough for you? Me lying there naked, spread out like a . . . f*cking glory hole for them to stick their co*cks in? You want a f*cking camera inside my head too?"

Seldom did Olivia speak so graphically about sexual acts, outside of the dirty talk she and Amanda occasionally engaged in (used to occasionally engage in), nor was the F-word a major part of her vocabulary unless she was royally pissed. Taken aback by the appearance of both in such close succession, Amanda cringed as if Olivia had struck out at her with fists instead of words. But worst of all were the implications that she had somehow enjoyed watching the horrors on that livestream; that she was hungry for more and would stoop to the most invasive measures to get it.

(That's not what she was doing, was it?)

"Christ," she spat, as if the name was bitter gall. The same thing they fed Him on the cross. "Christ, Olivia, of course I don't want that. How can you even ask me that? I was in Hell seeing those things happen to you, being powerless to stop it . . . " She had begun to pace, a sure sign her emotions were churning, swelling, building toward a climax that, given how much she'd suppressed in the past month, would be explosive. She balled her hands into fists and shoved them in her pockets as deep as they would go, trying to stave off the blowup. Breathe, she pleaded internally, just breathe. "Felt like my guts were being ripped out. Felt like I's losing my mind. Don't you dare make it sound like I wanted any of that!"

"Oh, I'm sorry." For a moment, head bowed, face cast only half in shadow by her shortened hair, it did seem as if Olivia genuinely meant to apologize. Then she looked up. "I'm sorry it was so painful for you to sit there in a nice, safe precinct with a clean bathroom and a hundred cops covering your six. I'm sorry you had to suffer the humiliation of seeing your supposedly badass wife being overpowered and degraded. Talking about sucking yummy co*ck." She blanched at the phrase, her balance wavering as if she might faint. The moment passed. "Crying and sobbing like a . . . like a . . . " Her extended hand cast around at the air, finding nothing to grasp onto.

How Amanda wished she could take it and be the thing Olivia caught on and clung to. That beautiful lighthouse in the storm. But right now she was the raging sea. "No one but you was humiliated by any of it, Liv. The only thing any of us cared about was bringing you home safe. If I could have kept every single person in New York from watching it, believe me, I would have. For you. Just you, baby. Because I know how much you value your privacy. And how f*cking hard you've fought— you fight not to be a victim."

Were they actually arguing over how much they hated to see the other person suffer? Dear Lord. Amanda longed to rewind, even for just five minutes or so, back to before she opened that f*cking journal. (Before the fender bender and the birthday party; before the widening gap between them and the resentment that seemed to have seeped in through the cracks; before the abduction and the assaults . . . but then where would it stop? She'd have to go back even further to undo all the wrongs done to Olivia, back to day one.) Deeply frustrated, she butted the toe of her tennis shoe against the foot of the bed, not thinking how aggressive it might look to someone who had been kicked while she was down. "f*ck," she muttered. It hurt too.

Olivia didn't gasp or shrink back in fear, but there was a faltering in her resolve, an unease, most visible in her eyes and her crossed arms, which fell open in a defenseless way that made Amanda heartsick. Like an animal exposing its belly in submission. "Obviously I didn't fight hard enough," she said, and cupped her elbows in both hands. She was so slender and vulnerable-looking, Amanda could have cried. "It keeps on happening. Like it's my goddamn destiny or something. I thought maybe this time was just to make up for the incomplete rapes, but it surpassed even those. Just kept going on and on, like it was never—"

Her voice faltered there and she walked into the embrace Amanda opened to her, head dropping onto Amanda's shoulder, whole body atremble. "Nev-never going to end," she choked out before the tears consumed her. "N-never going to en-end."

She repeated the refrain as she cried, Amanda stroking her hair and shushing her, rocking them gently side to side. "It's over, darlin', it ended," said Amanda. "And if I have to kill every son of a bitch who looks at you sideways, I will. If I could go back and wipe out all the others, I'd do that too. But they aren't your destiny, Liv, you hear me? Our family, our kids? That's destiny. That's what you gotta fight for now. Let me take care of the rest. I know I let you down this time, but that won't ever happen again. I swear to God."

You're so full of sh*t, Rollins. Why don't you tell her the truth—it's not her destiny that's the problem, it's yours. You put her in this situation and you're too much of a f*cking coward to admit it. You're so afraid she'll leave you, you're relying on a god you don't believe in.

Maybe she should have said it out loud—better to have out with it than let it fester, that's what she'd learned from Hanover when she was still going to therapy (she hadn't been in a month and couldn't envision herself going back at this point)—but she hadn't made that much personal progress, apparently. At least not enough to see her through the hard times. Next thing you knew, she'd be gambling and stepping out on her wife. Probably knocking Liv around like everyone already thought she did, and screaming at the kids just for being kids. Just like a Rollins.

Shaking the thought away hard, she cupped a hand to the back of Olivia's head, holding it the way you held a child's when you didn't want them to look up and see something scary or inappropriate. "Hey, I got an idea. We need to get out of the City for a while. Just the two of us. Well, and the dogs. How 'bout we go on up to Connecticut for a bit? Spend some time by the Sound. You always say how healing the water is, and how you'd like to live next to it someday. Let's try it out for a few weeks."

Despite the hand, which had no real pressure behind it, Olivia turned her head to look up at Amanda through a thin tapestry of their interwoven hair. "Seriously?" she asked, a tinge of hopefulness underneath the skepticism. Her nose twitched a little when she sniffled, thinking it over. "How, though? We'd need a place to stay, and a few weeks in an Airbnb would be so expensive, at least for a nice one."

Amanda heard the unspoken part: one that didn't remind Olivia of the hole where she'd been raped. She inched her fingers around to sweep the bangs from Olivia's forehead, clearing it for kissing. "I know a place," she murmured, pressing her lips to the spot and silently willing Olivia not to ask anymore questions. "Belongs to a friend, so it's free of charge. Might be kinda dusty from sitting for a while, but it'll just need some airing out. Shouldn't be too hard that close to the water."

"What friend? Daphne?"

It was the one question Amanda didn't want to hear, with a provided answer she hadn't even considered. She had completely forgotten their friend was born and raised in Connecticut.

"Oh, um, yeah. Yeah, Daphne. It's her . . . her grandmama's house. Left it to Daph in the will."

Usually Olivia's eyes narrowed when she spotted a lie, but this time they widened, her head slowly lifting from Amanda's shoulder until she stood fully upright. "You're lying to me," she said, no strong inflection one way or the other to indicate how she felt about it.

It came as no great shock to Amanda that she'd been caught, not with that lamely concocted story; she never was very good at making up excuses on the fly, especially not with Olivia, whom she was certain—even in those first years, when their relationship was a bit dicey—could see right through her. But being accused to her face of lying, whether she was or not, made her bristle reflexively. And so what if she did lie a little? She was only doing it to protect Olivia. "No, I ain't. I'm just jet lagged from flying our kids to Georgia and back at the crack of butt this morning." She stifled a fake yawn and still caught a whiff of pancake syrup on her breath.

"Daphne never said one word about a dead grandmother or a vacation house in Connecticut." Olivia was doing that thing where she read Amanda's face as if scanning the pages of a book and recording the pertinent lines. The old Liv was still in there after all. "She'd never be able to keep something like that to herself. She would have dragged us out there ages ago to go sailing or smoke pot or whatever."

"It's a recent thing."

"I saw her last week."

Amanda's leg began to jiggle. She was getting the urge to pace again. "Fine. Why'd you even bother asking if you're just going to shoot down everything I say?"

Another glimmer of the old Olivia Benson fire kindled behind those deep brown eyes. For a second the sparring almost felt fun, as it sometimes had before the attack, when Amanda knew there would be great make-up sex to look forward to later on. Not now, though. Not anymore.

"I wouldn't have to if you were telling me the truth." Olivia co*cked her head and slanted her gaze downward, using the height advantage as she often did at work. Barefoot on the carpet next to Amanda in sneakers, there wasn't much difference, and it was difficult to convey authority while wearing a towel, hair hanging limp and wet. "Whose house is it? Why can't you tell me? Is it Alex's?"

"Oh, good Lord," Amanda said, checking her volume just in time, but not her tone. She couldn't help it; the last question had come out of nowhere. (Not exactly—Cabot did hail from some hoity-toity New England state or another, and it was like the little trust fund princess to own multiple vacation homes for the summering, wintering, or whatevering rich people did with their piles of money. But, still.) Utterly ridiculous. "Here we go. It always comes back to her somehow, doesn't it? She hasn't bothered calling to see how you are, or dropped by to make another pass at you yet, so how would I even be in contact with her? 'Less there's something you're not telling me."

Olivia returned the expectant look with a dry, emotionless one of her own. Her narrowed eyelids were the only indication she had heard the accusation in Amanda's rebuttal. It was absurd too, of course. Even if she wasn't recovering from a horrendous trauma, Olivia still wouldn't encourage Cabot's advances or lead the ex-attorney on in any way—Amanda knew that without question. That had been a low, not to mention stupid, blow.

"I haven't spoken to Alex in well over a year and a half," Olivia said coolly.

"Yeah, well . . . you got me beat, then."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know," Amanda muttered, raking back the part in her hair with sharp, taloned fingers. Her scalp stung slightly in their wake, but she resisted the urge to hiss. She refused to invite sympathy during an argument, especially for her own dumb mistake. "Forget it. If you really wanna know whose place it is, I'll tell you. I'm sorry I even brought it up to begin with now." She paused in hopes that the reverse psychology—or at least her wife's pride—would take hold, making Olivia decide to relent as well, no explanation necessary.

But Olivia didn't budge, or so much as blink, just continued staring her down, waiting for an answer. One bare foot patted tersely on the carpet.

"Okay, fine. I'll tell you," Amanda said, and finally unable to draw it out any longer, added the rest grudgingly, "It belongs to Dana"—miserably.

The name didn't compute right away, and Amanda wondered if Olivia truly had forgotten about Dana's reappearance at the hospital. It probably did seem like some bizarre fever dream, the woman popping up out of nowhere after all these years, while Olivia was still in a profound state of shock. Maybe it hadn't even occurred to her to ask Amanda about it, and instead she had brushed it off as a post-op hallucination. But no, when she let go of her elbows, hands dropping open against her thighs in a disheartened gesture, there was an aura of betrayal to it. She hadn't forgotten at all. "Dana Lewis? You've been in contact with her? Again?"

"Yeah . . . " Amanda elongated the word, imitating Jesse when the girl was trying not to incriminate herself, as if slowing things down to turtle speed forestalled punishment. On their six-year-old it was cute; on Amanda it just made her sound more guilty. "I know you're still pissed at her, and I get it. What she did was kinda sh*tty. But . . . it was part of her job, Liv. She didn't do it to hurt you personally. And— well, she was sort of instrumental to me finding you in that shipping container. If not for her, I might not have been able to get Parker to bring me there. To you."

She also doctored my crime scene and killed one of your rapists—and has a hit out on another party (maybe two) involved. That, Amanda kept to herself, but she hoped the gravity of what she did say got the point across. For better or worse, Dana Lewis was one of the good guys. And she was on their side.

"Lewis is a self-serving, egotistical loudmouth who'll step all over you climbing her way to the top. If she offered you anything, you had better believe there are strings attached." Olivia was careful about passing judgment and usually held back on her unfavorable opinion of others; plus, there was that enormous blind spot she had for old friends and loved ones who had misused her. Not so with Dana. She didn't even flinch at the surname Lewis. "Why are you still talking to her, anyway? I thought I asked you to get rid of her."

For a split second, Amanda thought Olivia was saying she wanted Dana dead. Luckily she worked out the meaning before responding, though she forgot to bring her tone into line with it. "You did. 'Bout ran her out of your hospital room on a rail. Don't get upset, I'm not faulting you for it. That wasn't something anyone could've handled right then. But . . . she's been real good about checking up on you. I don't think she's as heartless as you're making her out to be. She cares about you, Liv. Today at the diner—"

"Diner?" Olivia looked up sharply, resembling one of the K-9 unit Shepherds scenting a dime bag or a victim's shoe on a wooded trail. If possible, she was even more shrewd now than she had been before the assault. It was exhausting, probably for her as much as Amanda. "You were with hertoday? When? I thought you were with the kids this whole time."

"I was . . . for most of it. She caught me between flights, asked me to meet her. She had some free time after I got in, so we met at that little place near the airport." Amanda hadn't expected to divulge the meeting at all, but now that she'd started, she found it hard to stop. "She just wanted an update is all. I's starving—you know how hungry I get when I travel—so she gave me some of her pancakes. Then she made the Connecticut offer, and . . . I don't know, call me crazy, I thought it would be good for us."

Olivia's entire posture changed once again, this time crumpling in on itself, her shoulders hunched defensively. Her eyes strayed to the nightstand, the drawer she had slammed shut on her molested journal.

"You talked to her about me? About us, our private business? What did you tell her?"

"I didn't—" Amanda made a disgusted noise, half scoff, half sigh, and fully out of patience. They should not be having this conversation while she was this tired and this cranky, but she didn't really have a choice, did she? Her wife was determined to drag it out as long and painfully as possible. "I ain't a blabbermouth. I didn't tell her anything personal, just that you've—we've—had a hard time adjusting since the, uh, the assault." They didn't have a shorthand for it yet. The thing so bad it transcended a name. "No big secret there. Then I mentioned that it's hard to find peace and quiet in the City, and that's why she suggested Connecticut. She doesn't want anything in return, Liv. Just for us to . . . get some semblance of our life back."

Olivia snorted, definitely not buying that Dana did anything simply out of the kindness of her heart. (Or maybe at the idea that they could get back to where and who they were before? Amanda couldn't tell.) "I don't want that lying bitch to know anything else about me or my life, Amanda, do you understand? If you have to talk about it with anyone, it should be me."

The urge to grab fistfuls of her own hair on either side of her head, and yank, seized Amanda. She gave a mirthless, withering little laugh instead. "How'm I supposed to do that when you'll barely say two words to me about it? Every time I try to bring it up, you shut me down and go—" Pour yourself another glass of wine, she wanted to finish, but she suppressed that too, gesturing vaguely as it faded away. "You won't let me talk to Daph about it. Fin and Carisi are too close to it. I can't go to the chief or Lamai. Kat's dead. Jules is too fragile. Dana's the only person Icantalk to about any of it. She gets it."

"What about Dr. Hanover?" Olivia asked, a bit anemic in her delivery. She had paled noticeably at the mention of Kat, which came out too harshly if Amanda were being honest. The change made her want to go to Olivia and offer a warm embrace—she looked like she was shivering inside the damp towel—but stubborn fool pride kept her in place. Pride and the fear of being rejected.

"When do I have time for therapy? I'm either here with you or flying the kids halfway across the country. Let's face it, sweetie, our parenting duties haven't exactly been split evenly down the middle lately." Amanda was getting nastier by the minute, her self-loathing rising closer to the surface, and with it a sharp tongue to counteract how wrong she felt, how like her daddy. The only difference between them was she used words, Dean used fists. Always beating back that devil they carried inside. "That's fine, I'm not complaining. But I gotta have some kinda outlet, too. You've got your journal and your reds, and I've got Dana."

No one had perfected the art of looking stricken, as if you had legitimately raised a hand to them, quite like Olivia Benson. The worst part wasn't the hurt—well, that was some of it—but the way she didn't turn away from it, afraid of what came next. If she could only be weak for once and let Amanda take charge (the victor, so to speak), maybe it wouldn't feel as awful, as shameful, as it did when she stood there and took it. And came back for more.

"That's so goddamn unfair, Amanda." Her voice was low, head shaking. Reflexively she checked that the corner of the towel was still tucked in tight near her left breast, though she had already done so half a dozen times. She ran her hands back over her damp hair, pulling it taut against her scalp. The short ends rained excess moisture onto her covered shoulders. She looked like a battle-weary soldier emerging from her armor. "So goddamn unfair. I tried to be okay for the kids. I tried so f*cking hard, but I felt like I was going crazy. Writing things down in my journal is the only way I know how to get them out of my head. Then, eventually, someday, I might be able to talk about them. With you, I hope. Or Lindstrom . . . "

She had skirted the issue of the wine entirely, Amanda noted, disgusted by the flash of smugness that came with the revelation:I'm not the only addict in this room, not the only one of us who's had a slip and tried to cover it up. Those were the old wounds from two years ago talking, and probably a bit of the old resentment (and guilt) from her early days at SVU, when she was still flouting Olivia's authority, confused by the mixture of jealousy and attraction she felt for the beautiful, accomplished, seemingly perfect detective turned sergeant turned lieutenant. And now, captain. But Amanda wasn't that same person anymore, and neither was Olivia.

"Better pick me, then," Amanda sighed. She had stopped listening to herself soon after her brain started its addiction to one-upmanship, but she should have held out just a little longer. Perhaps then she wouldn't have added: "He'll stick a needle in you if you get too out of control."

As the words sunk in—and the connotations came crashing down—Amanda wondered if she had really changed that much after all. Hadn't she told Olivia to her face that therapy was for suckers, despite knowing full well her then-coworker (and nothing more) was dealing with a major trauma? And here she was, doing it again, when Olivia needed therapy the most. Couldn't she at least have phrased it a little better than "stick a needle in you" for her wife, who had been drugged in the same manner and had all sorts of things stuck inside her? That was Amanda Jo Rollins for you, always going straight for the throat.

"What?" Olivia went a touch green at the imagery, but she appeared more confused than anything. In that moment her defenses were gone completely, and she looked like a lost child. Or an abandoned one. "What does that mean?"

"Never mind. Forget it," Amanda said, too hastily. Nothing made her sound half as guilty as when she dropped the accent and spoke faster. She tried to play it off anyway, knowing it was too late. No way could she look into those big brown eyes, filled with so many questions—so many fears—and lie.

"Amanda. Please. I don't understand why you would say that. Dr. Lindstrom's never done anything like that. He's not like Giacomo." Olivia folded her arms across her waist, hugging herself. She needed reassurance and to not have another piece of her carefully constructed support system stripped away, but Amanda couldn't give her that. Her trust in Peter Lindstrom was misplaced; maybe he would never drug and sexually assault her, as Giacomo had done, but he had no qualms with breaking the rules and overriding another's agency.

Amanda didn't trust him with her deeply fragile and highly suggestible wife, and she couldn't in good conscience allow Olivia to resume sessions with him, knowing what she knew now. "Liv baby, something happened while you were being held in that shipping container . . . "

"Tell me." Olivia sounded petrified. Her bottom lip was already quivering.

"I, uh, got pretty upset at one point. Hell, I was half outta my mind the whole time. But I really lost it when they cut the feed there for a while." Gradually Amanda edged closer to Olivia, hopeful she wouldn't be shunned, ready to retreat if she was. Some of the tension in the air had begun to decrease, and she thought she might be able to comfort her captain without being perceived as a threat. "Started pitching a fit, throwing stuff and yelling. Lindstrom was in the room when it happened. Fin had called him in because Hanover was on vacation, you remember? Bali?"

A queasy nod was all Olivia could muster.

"I guess . . . I guess he thought I was having a psychotic break or something. Fin was trying to calm me down— I, um, kinda headbutted him during the struggle. So, Lindstrom, he came at me . . . " Swallowing took effort, and Amanda's parched throat clicked audibly, as if the words were being pulled up and out of it on a slowly ticking chain. Link by excruciating link. "He had a syringe. Shot me up with a sedative, and I woke up in the hospital a couple hours later. I was so f*cking pissed." She gazed off to one side, remembering. The rage was still near enough to the surface, it took very little to call it back up; unfortunately, the gripping terror was there too. "But mostly I was just so scared. Felt like he'd made me leave you all alone in that place. Oh God, Liv, I tried to be there for you in whatever way I could, I swear. I know it wasn't good enough, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I let that happen to you."

It flew out in a jumbled-up rush before Amanda even knew what was coming or that she would burst into tears as soon as she finished. She had gone to Olivia expecting to be the shoulder to cry on, but she found herself being pulled into Olivia's arms instead, her head guided onto one towel-covered shoulder. Strokes at her back, whispers in her ear. Sh-shh-shh, it's not your fault. Sh-shh-shh, you don't have to be sorry.

But it was, and she did.

How long she stood there bawling and apologizing, she couldn't say, but the slightly damp terry cloth was soaked through when the tears began to taper off and Olivia nudged her face up by the chin. "I can't believe he did that to you," said Olivia, her own eyes red-rimmed and glistening. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, though the trembling was already detectable in her voice, her hands, her hitching chest. "I had no idea. My God. I'm so sorry, love. He had absolutely no right, the bastard. Do you want to press charges? He could lose his license for drugging you against your will. Heshould."

Once again Amanda's expectations were dashed. She should feel triumphant that Olivia was on her side, but it was hard to be victorious when she saw how much it pained Olivia to speak unfavorably of the man. The trembling had turned to a full-body shudder that could have been blamed on the cold, except the room wasn't chilly and Amanda didn't see any goosebumps. No, she had caused this tremor; she had caused that despondent expression on Olivia's beautiful, tragic face.

"No, baby. Won't do me no good to go after him in court now. Making sure you're okay, that's my main priority." Amanda caught Olivia's hands lightly as she started to protest, bringing them together at chest level. "Here, let's sit. Can I help you dry off?" She indicated the towel cape and Olivia's damp locks. There was a wide-tooth comb already laid out on the nightstand she had snooped in, and she took it up with an eager look, heart thumping in her chest. If she got the go-ahead, it would be the most intimate contact they'd had in weeks.

She fully expected Olivia to say no—hair-touching was still too much of a trigger, for obvious reasons, even for Amanda, whose mind drifted to the braid in the cigar box every time—whatever trust in her the captain had left lost to her thoughtless, intrusive curiosity. But Olivia must have sensed how desperate she was to make up for it and be forgiven; how she would pull every single blond hair from her own head, strand by strand, if it would be apology enough to assuage Olivia's hurt.

Hands cupped into a protective little shell, like she had captured a firefly, Olivia curled them over the small bit of cleavage revealed by the towel, took a preparatory breath, and assumed a seat on the bed, her face turned away, hair falling in Amanda's direction. Something about the pose struck Amanda as religious, as though a white dove with an olive branch in its beak should be perched on Olivia's shoulder. The scene could have been etched onto a pendant, just like St. Jude, for poor lost souls to clutch and worry with their fingers while they cried and prayed and begged not to be raped again. For killers to steal and hide away in a tobacco-stained box with their other transgressions.

Pushing the thought to the back of her mind with all the rest (she was accumulating quite a collection), Amanda sat down behind her wife, every movement slow and deliberate. Olivia had ample opportunity to object to anything she didn't like, but she almost seemed to luxuriate in the feeling of Amanda patting her hair dry and lightly scrunching the ends with the towel. Her head tilted gently to whichever side was being worked on, and when her face was in profile, Amanda saw her eyelids drift closed for long moments at a time. She had never been an especially vociferous person to begin with, but she was startlingly quiet since the assaults. Seldom did she sigh or hum her approval, and Amanda could barely hear her breathing at night anymore, even when they lay side by side. It was unsettling, the silence that had enveloped her.

"I shouldn't have brought up Lindstrom like that," Amanda said softly, trying and failing not to startle Olivia from whatever thoughts she was lost in. The captain's shoulders twitched forward, and she did take an audible breath through her nose, though it sounded more like a sniff than a gasp. Amanda patted her shoulders in apology, then continued on with the towel. "I know he's been there for you to talk to through . . . a lot. I don't want to take that away from you. What he did to me doesn't have to affect your relationship with him, okay? You just let him help you, and don't worry about me."

She didn't expect that to fly, and it didn't.

"It doesn't work that way, and you know it. If he'll do something that unethical to one person, what's stopping him from doing it to someone else? How can I ever go back to him, knowing he hurt you like that?" Olivia sounded husky with tears, but her face was turned away again, her back unreadable. The ripple of her spine stood out more prominently in the places where her hair—when it was long and so beautiful—used to fall, Amanda was sure of it. "I hate that he did that to you. And you were already hurt from being tased. What if the kids had needed you during that time? Why didn't he think of that?"

Amanda could hear her getting more worked up as she went on, envisioning all the possible outcomes. Quietly she slipped from the bed and rounded Olivia, kneeling down in front of her to peer up at her worry-pinched features. With her hair hanging in half dry strings around her face, eyes hollow above pallid, almost gaunt cheeks, she looked like the skeletal specters they ushered out of makeshift (or occasionally custom made) cages in basem*nts and cellars—sometimes even shipping containers—women, young and old, who had been held captive for weeks, months, years at a time. Part of her was still trapped in that hellhole Amanda thought she had rescued her from.

"Hey, it's okay. He didn't hurt me, not really." Amanda forgot herself and reached up to tuck Olivia's lank hair behind her ears. Encouraged when Olivia didn't shrink from her, she cupped a hand to her wife's cheek, stroking with her thumb the spot that had resembled a rotten crabapple until about two weeks ago. She could no longer make out the bruise. "Nothing compared to what you were going through. And look, I'm fine now. Let's just focus on getting you well, okay, darlin'? If you don't feel comfortable seeing Lindstrom anymore, we'll find you a new therapist. A better one. Maybe a woman this time, so you don't have to worry as much. How's that sound?"

Of course, Olivia had been abused by women too, so her guard would probably be up either way, but it might still be less frightening than putting her trust in a man.

"She's gotta be ugly, though," Amanda added, trying to lighten the mood. She couldn't bear that pained expression on Olivia's face, so much like their children's faces when they were hurt or broken-hearted. "I'm talkin' mud fence. That way there's no transference or any of that crap."

"Amanda," Olivia said, barely above a whisper. It was too weak to be called a scolding, which was exactly what Amanda had wanted to inspire—the false, flirtatious kind that were the captain's specialty when she dealt with her unruly detective—but the hint of a smile began to peek through on her lips, and that was better than nothing. She had recognized the joke and managed to find the humor in it, a big step in the right direction. If smiles were possible, then laughter might be too. Maybe even forgiveness.

"I'm just pulling your leg, little darlin'." Amanda tweaked Olivia's kneecap, trying on a gentle smile of her own. Not quite natural, for she was still smarting at being accused of . . . whatever she was being accused of with her lunch date—and that odd, needless mention of Cabot
(If only she had managed a few more minutes with the journal, just to see if Alex's name came up . . .)
but it was close enough. Maybe one day she would learn to switch her anger off as well as Olivia did, but it hadn't happened yet. "I'd trust ya, even if she looked like Charlize Theron."

"Daphne would probably dropkick me to get to her first if she looked like Charlize." Olivia gave a little hum of amusem*nt, too brief to be laughter. It was the first joke she'd made in a while, though. Baby steps. Then, when the moment had passed, her hand came up, tentatively, to rest at Amanda's cheek. "I do trust you, Amanda. If you think we should go to Connecticut, I'm . . . willing to give it a try. God knows this city has nothing left for me. Maybe it'll be a nice change of pace."

God knows this city has nothing left for me. Though offhanded and an understandable viewpoint after the awful treatment she'd endured from some of the worst criminals in Manhattan, it still saddened Amanda to hear Olivia denouncing the place that had earned her Amanda's favorite nickname for her: city girl. And if that's how she felt about New York now, what did that mean for her position in the NYPD? How could they continue to live here, knowing the streets Captain Benson had kept safe for the past thirty years held no loyalty in return? The city she had loved for so many years would never love her back.

Those were things to fret over in Bridgeport, with some distance between them and the unforgiving town. Some perspective. A nice change of pace, like Olivia said, and maybe even a bit of a fresh start—somewhere Amanda had never violated her wife's privacy and where Olivia didn't feel compelled to drink because every sight and sound triggered a flashback, if not to the attack itself, then to the time before, when life was normal and their crowded apartment was home. Safe, sweet home.

"Yeah, I think it will. I think we should." Amanda turned her lips to Olivia's palm for a sound kissing. She smelled like soap from her shower, a scent that wafted even more fragrantly from beneath the towel where it was warmed by her skin. The thought and the salty-sweet perfume that accompanied it would once have been enough to turn Amanda on, and indeed, she felt a pleasant stirring low in her belly, but no way would she act on it. Not while Olivia sat there looking so defenseless and uncertain. Anything they did right then would be of dubious consent and succeed only in complicating matters even more.

She cupped her hand to the back of Olivia's, kissed it again softly. "I'm really sorry, darlin'. I know it's not okay to invade your privacy like that. I guess I panicked and made a bad decision. It won't happen again, I promise."

For a moment Olivia didn't respond, her eyes on the nightstand next to Amanda, a bit glazed but not with disinterest. More like . . . remembering. Or wishing to forget. "I believe you. And I'm sorry too. I do tend to bottle things up until I can't hold them in any longer, and that's unhealthy. Old habit. From now on, I'll try to be more forthcoming. I promise."

The silence they settled into as Amanda resumed her spot on the bed and commenced running the comb through Olivia's hair was easier than most of their quiet spells as of late, contented almost, though neither of them seemed able to look away from the drawer that contained so many secrets. Amanda began to wonder if it wasn't so much that they were adjusting to the quiet, but that they were learning to lie to each other comfortably. Which was worse, she couldn't say.

Either one felt like a little death, and as far as she could tell, God was no longer in the resurrection business.

. . .

Chapter 50: Kiss from a Rose

Chapter Text

You remain my power, my pleasure, my pain, baby
To me, you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny
Won't you tell me, is that healthy, baby?

- Seal, "Kiss from a Rose"

Chapter 50.

Kiss from a Rose

. . .

If not for the water, everything would have been fine. Good, even. They were two weeks into their stay at the Airbnb (AKA Dana Lewis's Bridgeport house, which Amanda had dubbed an Airbnb to avoid mentioning the G-woman by name) before Olivia figured it out. The house itself was darling, styled like a cottage rather than a beach house, thank God, and decorated with a homey New England feel, though the Southern influence was unmistakable in places, particularly the kitchen where the theme was hens and fresh eggs signs. Beyond the underexposed picture of a woman in rock climbing gear stuck to the fridge with a hen magnet, Dana's smile on her shadowy face, nary a photo of the fed or any so-called family members adorned the walls. In a way it was comforting not having any strange—or distrusted—faces staring down at you from above.

But something had still felt off, some underlying, nearly subliminal thing that Olivia couldn't put her finger on for fourteen whole days. It kept her on edge during the daytime and awake at night, so that, by the start of week three, when she finally made the connection, she was too exhausted to feel triumphant. It was the f*cking water. They weren't directly on the shoreline, but close enough to hear the Sound, the way you could hear most large bodies of water in coastal towns, even if it was just the distant screech of gulls and honk of tugboats. The way she could hear it when she had been trapped inside The Box.

Once, she had found the gentle lapping of waves soothing, but now it reminded her of other lapping sounds that made her skin crawl, her entire body clenching up like a fist. At night she lay in bed, listening to the water lick the piers and the sides of boats, whether imagined or not, and it left her shivering uncontrollably in the dark, too numb with fear to press a pillow over her ears or put in earbuds.

There was no sense telling Amanda. She had her heart set on this vacation being some kind of journey toward healing, all their problems fixed in one month-and-half-long summer retreat. As long as Olivia didn't hyper focus on the harbor sounds, she wasn't noticeably triggered and she did enjoy the small-town atmosphere, so different from the big, loud, brash city. Bridgeport would have bored her to tears in the old days, but now it fit her slowed down, cautious approach to the world around her. Here she could drive without fearing another crash into a parking gate; she didn't hyperventilate at the thought of using a public restroom; she even felt okay to walk the streets downtown with Amanda, though they had to be holding hands at all times and she compulsively checked their surroundings for threats.

That said, much of their time was spent indoors. Parks were no fun without the kids, neither of them were particularly fond of anything more intensive than window shopping, and unless Daphne drove up from the City, their social circle was nonexistent. Antique stores and coffee shops did hold some appeal, but there were only so many dusty old collectibles to browse and cups of coffee to exchange tight-lipped smiles above before the novelty wore off. They had run out of things to talk about by the fourth or fifth day and resorted to binging old series on Dana's—pardon, the Airbnb's—sixty-inch flatscreen and playing endless rounds of UNO, Yahtzee, and Scrabble. Only lighthearted sitcoms for Olivia and only non-gambling games for Amanda.

A single glass of wine in the evenings, two on the weekends, was their unspoken agreement, and so far Olivia could live with that. The summer heat made alcohol consumption less appetizing anyway, or at least that's what she told herself when the desire to drink hit. Never mind that her coffee intake had more than doubled in an attempt to bridge the gap. She was taking it black now, the taste so strong that even Amanda, who claimed to have a cast-iron stomach and a lead pipe for an esophagus (the latter was in reference to the Tabasco sauce she doused her hash browns and scrambled eggs in), gave a wheezing cough the first time she tasted it. "That'll put some hair on your chest," she had rasped once she got her voice back.

The ritual of making the coffee, pouring it, then sipping it for however long she could draw it out before the piping hot elixir turned to cold sludge was what kept Olivia coming back. It had an anesthetizing effect that took her mind off of certain things, including the wine. There was no room in her hand for a wine glass when she was holding a coffee cup. The last thing she wanted was more liquid sloshing around in her belly when it was already full to bursting with Folgers dark roast.

But then Friday evening rolled around, and with it the impulse to kick back with a bottle of Merlot, maybe a plate of pasta, someGolden Girls, and no restrictions on how many glasses she poured. Force of habit, she supposed, though she hadn't really let herself go like that since the Christmas Amanda got shot and everything went to hell in a handbasket. The results were disastrous, with her ultimately drunk-dialing Alex Cabot, who then showed up and made a pass at her. She still blushed at the memory and shook her head at the stupidity of purging afterward, as she had done to be rid of the alcohol that brought her so much shame. She knew better than to make those same mistakes now, though; she had it under control, and that should be reason enough to indulge if she felt like it.

She was a grown woman capable of making that decision.

Nevertheless, she was hesitant to propose the idea to Amanda. Her wife already thought she was a lush, that much had been painfully clear during their argument over the journal, when Amanda accused her of relying on the Moleskine and the wine to get her through the rough patches. And perhaps there was a bit of truth to it, but having it thrown back in her face while Amanda was the one under fire had hurt. She wanted to put the entire incident behind her—especially the part where her faith in Amanda had been shaken—but if the plan backfired, it might set back even further what little progress they had made.

Another whole week passed before she worked up the courage to mention it, and even then she only found an opening because of Daphne's birthday. Their friend was driving up for the weekend. No special arrangements, just a couple of girls' nights in, quietly celebrating. All three women had agreed they weren't in the mood for anything rowdier than delivery pizza and some Netflix. Daphne was probably just humoring them, and Olivia had tried to persuade Amanda to at least take the younger woman out for dinner, but she and Daphne both insisted on staying in. "I ain't leaving you home by yourself so Daph and I can go out partying, darlin'," had been the final word.

It was hard to be supportive of your wife's friendships outside the marriage when she was adamant you be included. Olivia supposed she had brought it on herself by bitching about Dana. Things were different with Daphne, though. She had never lied to Olivia, tricking her into playing a role in an elaborate farce, then for years let her feel the pain, confusion, and self-doubt that always accompanied betrayal by a friend. (Olivia was well aware that her pride was what stood in the way of forgiving Dana Lewis, but she had to hang on to every little bit she had left.)

That stubbornness—of pride and autonomy—spurred her on, so when Amanda hemmed and hawed about including alcohol in their festivities, Olivia refused to be dissuaded. "I haven't had a drink in almost a month," she pointed out, securing the wine bottles in the child's seat of the cart. Her suggestions of Jack Daniel's and assorted flavored vodkas had all been nixed as they perused the spirits aisle, Amanda slouching along with her hands in her pockets, eyes averted from the inventory like a junkie avoiding the cops. "I think we've established that I'm not going to disappear on a weeklong bender. Besides, you'll be there to monitor my every drop. I probably won't even get a good buzz going."

No matter how lightly she put it, or how much humor she infused her voice with, they could both hear the underlying resentment, the bitterness at being watched like one of those drunks who was so enslaved to the bottle, she guzzled NyQuil for the alcohol content. They ended up leaving the store with three wines—two reds, one white—a case of Seagram's Escapes, and all the fixings for margaritas. It was enough to keep the three women in booze for an entire week, maybe two, but they had the rest of summer to spread it out over.

Not a child in sight.

The guilt was unimaginable. Olivia had taken trips without the kids before, but sending them away because she couldn't handle the demands of motherhood felt like the ultimate failure. Even her own mother had never shipped her off to relatives in another state just to get a break. Granted, there had been no relatives to ship Olivia off to, and it probably would have been better for both of them to have some time apart—without Serena leaving her by herself for days at a time, of course—but it was hard to look at it from that perspective. Especially when your wife blamed you as well. Amanda didn't need to say it out loud; it was in her sad glance at the empty chairs around the dinner table, in her sigh when she had to towel off because she was still expressing milk for a baby who wasn't there. They ate dinner in front of the TV now, something Olivia never allowed at home.

Tonight they were scarfing their way through a large taco pizza—or rather, Daphne and Amanda were scarfing, Olivia was picking at the diced tomatoes on top, occasionally crunching a tortilla chip for the sound effect of eating—while Daphne commented on the many attributes of Sandra Bullock, who had been traipsing through the onscreen jungle with Channing Tatum for the past hour. The movie was kind of funny, a romcom Daphne had sworn by ("Come on, it's got Sandy in it, what's not to love?"), but Olivia found it difficult to concentrate on the plot. The kid who played Harry Potter kept randomly appearing throughout the film, and each time she saw him she thought of her children and their love of the boy wizard.

"I'm getting a drink. Anybody want?" she asked, trying to come across as casual, confident. Just an off-duty captain relaxing with a glass of wine, as she had done countless times before. She was aware of Amanda's eyes on her, but she was getting used to that feeling now. There were always eyes on her, watching.

Always watching.

Daphne, keeper of the remote control, paused on a shirtless Channing Tatum. No doubt she would have preferred it were Sandy. Still, she looked up beaming. "Margaritas?"

"I thought we might save those for a bit later," Olivia said with more optimism than she felt. It was the voice she used to talk the kids into things they didn't want to do, framing the undesirable task as a positive so they would be more apt to concede. Jesse was the only one who never fell for it. "Kind of a dessert type thing. I don't know about you, but tequila wipes me out. I'll probably be zonked out over there before the lime wedge is dry." She hitched her thumb at the couch, where she had just been lounging. Amanda was seated beside it, an elbow on the cushion, a throne of accent pillows under her firm backside. She looked like a golden ring being presented on a little satin pillow.

"Ooh, midnight margaritas!" Daphne gave a slight shimmy of her shoulders, a wiggle of her eyebrows. Of everyone Olivia had spent a significant amount of time with since the attack, Daphne was the most able to behave as if everything was back to normal, God bless her. The jokes might not be as blue, but the spirit was indomitable as ever. "That's even better. Okay, I'll pretend I'm a classy thirty-six and sip some chard with you. Merlot's fine if you don't want to open both. Surprise me."

"Okay," Olivia chuckled, and for the first time in a while, she actually felt amused. Maybe inviting Daph up to celebrate had been a good idea, after all. She lightened the mood with her wacky sense of humor, gave Olivia and Amanda someone besides each other to roll their eyes at—affectionately, for the most part—and there was something about her presence that inspired an amorousness between them. In fact, their first make-out session had been on that doomed weekend in the Catskills, which was also their first ever outing with the younger woman.

Olivia had caught herself admiring her wife's physique a few times throughout the evening so far, too. For instance now, when Amanda stood up and brushed off the seat of her snug track shorts, preparing to chaperone Olivia to the kitchen, Olivia didn't dread the company, afraid she was about to get a lecture on alcoholism; she felt only a pleasant warmth that Amanda wanted to be near her—and a little flutter as the toned, golden legs strode her way. It was the closest she had gotten to turned on in nearly three months, or at least the closest she had gotten without panicking and immediately dismissing the sensation. Surrounded by their kids or alone with Amanda she'd been too frightened to pursue it. Maybe Daphne and her open attitude toward sex was just the icebreaker they needed.

"You sure you want to be in here?" Olivia nodded back to the living room when she reached the kitchen, Amanda still following behind her. "I doubt she'll be able to hold out much longer with all that brawn plastered across the screen. You might miss something."

The corner of Amanda's mouth quirked into a half smile. "Eh, I'm good. I kinda preferRomancing the Stonefor my kooky jungle hijinks."

"That's my girl." Olivia withdrew two wine glasses from the top shelf of the cupboard, turning them right side up on the counter. She could reach out for things now without getting a sharp pain in her side, as long as she didn't overdo it, but as she put a hand up for the third glass, Amanda skirted around her with a soft "I got it," and brought it down for her. She left her palm on the curve of Olivia's hip, where she had rested it to prevent an accidental collision on the way by. Just one of those gentle touches they had always shared so easily, speaking volumes without saying a word. I'm here. I won't let you fall.

They were separated by only a few inches, their faces within kissing distance, eyes locked on each other. It wasn't awkward, though, not in the way Olivia feared it would be at this proximity when they were being so careful to give each other plenty of space. Honestly, it felt natural enough that they moved in for the anticipated kiss, their lips just a breath apart, until Daphne ruined the moment. "Can you bring me another sour cream triangle thingy when you come back in?" she called, the movie kicking into gear before she got an answer.

Had Olivia really been thinking the little clerk was a good luck charm for romance? She'd meant a pesky little buzzkill with the worst timing ever.

"I could have managed," she said lightly, minus the irritability that so often snuck up on her in conversations these days. She slid the wine glass from Amanda's hand, the stem gliding seamlessly from between Amanda's fingers into hers.

"I know." Amanda's voice was as gentle as her blue eyes, as light and wispy as her fair hair. She had wanted to cut the golden strands, in an act of solidarity, when Olivia went to the hairdresser to get her bob evened out, but Olivia had begged her not to. It was hard enough adjusting to their children's short new styles, she didn't think she could bear losing a single lock of that lovely pale mane right then.

Her feelings hadn't changed in the last two months. Admiring, she reached for the strands that framed Amanda's face like a ribbon of yellow silk, and smoothed their length with her fingertips. As if reading her mind, Amanda mirrored the gesture, guiding the hair behind Olivia's shoulder, and said, "Yours is already getting long again. Looks so pretty."

That was a slight overstatement—the bob had indeed grown an inch or two, but hardly enough to be called long, especially considering how much of it had gotten hacked off. Years' worth of growth, down the drain. Or wherever the bastards had tossed it.

Her thoughts threatening to turn dark again, Olivia pushed them beneath the black sludgy waters she envisioned her subconscious as, holding them under like the head of a drowning victim. It felt good to deprive them of air, to watch them flounder, sink to the bottom, and die. The bones would collect there, poisonous and awaiting resurrection, but she could worry about that later. Here and now, she was with the woman she loved, who somehow miraculously still loved her, there was wine to be drunk, movies to be watched, and if she didn't concentrate too much, she felt almost like her old self.

For the time being, she had forgotten the estuary sounds outside, where Atlantic and river waters converged, unstoppable, reminding the Earth that the ocean didn't need consent. Her land could be taken and consumed without warning.

. . .

Two glasses of wine (apiece) under their belts, all three women were considerably more relaxed, bellies full of pizza, and spirits high after the Bullock-Tatum romp. Olivia had even developed a small appetite and eaten a whole slice of pizza, crust and all. Daphne was hungry for a savory snack of another sort, though;The Lost Cityhad put her in the mood for a Sandy marathon, she said. With nominal input from Olivia and Amanda, she made her selections:Bird BoxandThe Unforgivable, while exceptional films that showcased Bullock's acting chops, were both deemed too depressing, over-the-hill-birthday material ("Like fifty, when you're closer to death. Except you, Liv, you're gonna live forever"), andThe Netwas too '90s, which would make her yearn for her misspent youth.Ocean's 8andThe Proposalit was, then, in that order, to cleanse the palate of all the testosterone that poured off of Channing, before moving on to Ryan Reynolds.

Perhaps it was the cinematic estrogen injection known asOcean's 8that did it—or, more likely, it was the tequila, for they only made it to ten o'clock margaritas instead of midnight—but Olivia began to feel amorous again, even more than she had in the kitchen. Spending two hours listening to Daphne chant, "Neck! Neck! Neck!" during every scene in which she thought Sandra's and Cate Blanchett's characters should have kissed didn't help much. By the end of the movie, Olivia herself was disappointed that Lou and Debbie Ocean hadn't hooked up. They really were a dynamic pair, and she did have a soft spot for a hot blonde/brunette combo . . .

"What?" Amanda asked, squinting at Olivia when she caught her staring as the end credits rolled. They had gotten cozy for the movie, Amanda joining her on the couch, pulling Olivia's legs across her lap. The pillows were piled at Olivia's back now, propping her upright for a perfect view of the television and of Amanda's pretty profile. It was impossible notto stare.

"Just you." Olivia used her toes to tweak the sleeve of Amanda's ringer tee. A retro Rainbow Brite adorned the chest, the primary colors of her cute little dress and boots blending perfectly with the red terry cloth of Amanda's shorts. She had a sweet but sexy '80s girl vibe going, and Olivia was quite charmed by it. "You're adorable, in case you didn't know."

"You're just saying that 'cause you're drunk," Amanda said, despite dimpling at the compliment. She was rather rosy in the cheeks herself, and she kept grinning when nothing was funny, so Olivia didn't take offense.

The margarita chasers had hit them both pretty hard, it seemed. And if Amanda's initial reluctance toward buying—let alone consuming—the alcohol remained, she was doing a damn good job of hiding it. She might have eyed Olivia's wine glass a couple of times in the beginning, as if checking that it hadn't magically topped itself off, but glass number two was of far less interest, and she hadn't even batted an eyelash at the fishbowl margaritas she'd helped mix and serve. (Just as everything else about Dana Lewis was larger than life, her glassware was no different.) Olivia hadn't measured, but she was pretty sure her little slip of a wife, who had moped around the grocery store because of all the booze in their cart, was drinking her under the table.

Daintily she licked a dab of salt from the rim of her glass, folding it back in on the tip of her tongue, and grinned when a pair of intent blue eyes tracked the entire sequence. She never had trouble drawing Amanda's attention to her mouth
(or anyone's attention, for that matter)
(bet yours is real pretty, just like your)

"What's wrong?"

"Hm?" Olivia blinked back into reality. Until then, she hadn't been aware her internal struggle with the intrusive thoughts was playing out on her face.

"You looked like you were in pain there for a second." Amanda's eyebrows slowly ascended toward her hairline, her squinty eyes widening as if she were trying to get a better look at Olivia's expression, neutral now. Without much in the way of rowdy barroom stimulation, the alcohol made her groggy and turtle-like in her movements. Sure didn't affect her perceptiveness, though. "Ribs bothering ya? Maybe you should sit up instead of—"

"Put my feet back where they were, Rollins," Olivia said in her captain voice. She pointed to the end of the couch, where her ankles had been crossed, feet against the armrest, before Amanda lifted them up to get her better situated. "I'm happy right where I am. With you. If I looked like I's in pain, it's only because I wanna kiss you so bad."

That cleared away part of the fog Amanda was drifting in, her gaze coming sharply into focus, her lips plopping shut with comical finality. A second later she reciprocated the surprise by snickering at something, catching Olivia off guard. She hadn't expected one of her first attempts at flirting in a while to be met with laughter. "What's funny?"

"Oh, nuttin'. You just said 'I's' and modified a verb incorrectly. You're startin' to talk just like me now. Pretty soon you'll be saying 'fixin' to' and 'hanker' like a real Southern girl."

"Oh, excuse me, I didn't realize I was with the grammar police. Are you going to arrest me, Detective?" Olivia poured the honey on thick for the last part, the way the pros had, back in the days when she used to deal more with civilians than supervision. (Before she got soft and forgot how to be a cop, that is.) They used to come on to her with the same frequency they came on to Stabler. There were only a few times she was legitimately tempted, but she just took them back to the house for some bad coffee, takeout when she could swing it, and some eye-opening conversation, like all the rest.

Many of those girls had been broken in the same way she had by Gus and his boys. The majority came from backgrounds like hers too: recurrent verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse—the co*cktail that either turned you into a prostitute, a serial killer, or an officer of the law. Say what you want about the working girls, but some of them had it more together than Olivia, at least in regards to sex. If they could put their horrific sexual assaults behind them—most without the years of therapy she had to rely on—and provide love and companionship, why couldn't she?

Why the hell couldn't she?

"Might hafta," Amanda said of the proposed arrest. Her chest puffed up a little beneath Rainbow Brite. She was doing her tough-guy routine, which Olivia loved. Nothing cuter than a tiny blonde who thought she was Rambo. "You're giving me an awful lotta lip tonight. 'Course, you could just bring it over here and let me kiss it instead. Save me the paperwork. My captain's a real stickler for that."

"The paperwork or the kissing?"

"Toss up. Although, she does get pretty hot and bothered when I write my DD5's."

Whatever Amanda opened her mouth to say next was swallowed up by the kiss Olivia leaned in and planted there. Daphne had already been in the bathroom for a couple of minutes, and although she claimed all the alcohol, plus the water she'd been chugging to balance it out, made her feel like the entirety of Long Island Sound resided in her bladder, she would probably return soon. If they were going to sneak in a quickie make-out before she got back, it was time to stop talking and put their lips to better use.

She couldn't believe how easy it was, how her brain rallied at once to block out all the what ifs (What if I'm not ready? What if she's not attracted to me anymore? What if I have a flashback? A panic attack? Or I dissociate? Whatif). It felt safe and warm, and she wondered how she had been afraid to try it for so long. So goddamn long.

"Hang on, hmm— 'ang on," Amanda said around Olivia's eager mouth, her own still poised for kissing. She moved her head back just enough to look into Olivia's eyes, above her now, because Olivia had scooted into her lap, an arm draped across her shoulders. Another good thing about the recent weight loss: Olivia didn't have to worry about squishing her tiny wife anymore. Not that Amanda had ever complained in the past. "Is this okay? It's not too much, too soon?"

Probably.

"It's okay. I want this." Olivia toyed with the hair that had come untucked from behind Amanda's ear, her head at a sultry incline, but she hesitated on the way in for another kiss. She sat back this time, the wine and tequila mixture threatening to turn sour in her belly if she got the wrong answer. "You want it too, right?"You want me?Silent or not, they both heard it.

"Yes. Lord, yes." Amanda's arms went around her then, hands cupping her hip, her upper arm. Holding her securely, like an infant. The hands squeezed, but not so tight that it was frightening. Just the right amount of desire. "I miss just . . . feeling you. Your body against mine like this. So sweet. So . . . "

She was speaking into the kisses again, the words dwindling away on a soft, moaning sigh when Olivia focused on her tongue, drawing it in, suckling lightly. Their past foreplay had always included lengthy make-out sessions, which were often as equally passionate as the lovemaking itself, and Olivia sent up a silent prayer of thanks that none of the men had taken this from her. They put things in her mouth and got reactions from her body that she couldn't bear to think about—into the dark cerebral sludge the memories went—but they never attained the true intimacy of a kiss. The real arousal it produced, not what was forced upon her.

It brought forth the rays of a sun that hadn't shone in Olivia's mind for months, and giving herself no time to second guess, she dove into the clear, warm waters that were illuminated by the glow.

. . .

. . .

Chapter 51: Solace

Chapter Text

Chapter 51.

Solace

. . .

Daphne exited the bathroom humming the tune to "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," which had been featured twice inOcean's 8, once as a snappier remix of the original, then as a cover by an artist she didn't recognize. It was a catchy tune whichever way you cut it, but that wasn't the reason she kept replaying it in her head (and throat) while she washed her hands, and now, as she shuffled back to the living room, trying not to rush. At least not where her friends would see.

She'd been snooping in Dana Lewis's medicine cabinet when it hit her. She knew very little about the woman, except that she was an FBI agent and someone Olivia and Amanda had been acquainted with for a while. Not on great terms, though, judging by Olivia's unhappy expression whenever Dana's name came up. So Daphne had done the only logical thing and gotten to know Dana by going through her stuff. Just the linen closet, under the sink, and finally, the cabinet behind the mirror. Her hand had been turning a pill bottle around to read the label (nothing juicy, just an allergy medication) when she suddenly experienced déjà vu. But unlike the typically untraceable flash associated with the phenomenon, she knew exactly where the sensation came from.

That night at the lodge in the Catskills, she had been doing the exact same thing. Snooping in the bathroom cabinet while her girlfriend was downstairs being murdered. Then she had come across Meredith's mutilated body in the dark kitchen—everything was so dark—and life had changed in an instant. Three of the same people who had gone into the woods that night were in this house on the Connecticut shoreline, and here was Daphne, back in the same place the nightmare had started: the bathroom. She got the eerie feeling Meredith's eyeless corpse would be reflected in the mirror, staring over her shoulder from bloody black eye sockets, when she closed it.

She had pushed the door shut without looking, forgot rinsing her hands the first time and did it again, then hurried from the bathroom. Thankfully, the lights were on in the hallway because she never went to pee in the dark anymore, and she didn't have to go through the kitchen to reach the living room. The opposite was true in this house, and it was also about ten times smaller than the lodge had been. That was sort of comforting.

Before rounding the corner to the room where her friends waited, which was illuminated only by the light from theOcean's 8menu screen, she took a preparatory breath. And blew it right back out again when she stepped around the corner to see the aforementioned friends locked in an intimate embrace, an intense game of tonsil hockey being waged between them. Her creepy bathroom déjà f*ck-that-sh*t instantly forgotten, she very nearly squealed with delight at the scene, as if her OTP had finally hooked up on her favorite series (currently, she was living for Jen and Judy ofDead to Meand anticipating the third season like a fiend).

The only reason she held back was to avoid interrupting them and spoiling the moment. Amanda hadn't said much, but Daphne got the impression there hadn't been any bedroom action between the couple since May. That was understandable, after what they had gone through—were clearly still going through; she had to leave work early when she found out they'd sent the kids away, so great was her shock—and she was trying her best to stay out of their private affairs. Nevertheless, she'd held out hope that they could put the trauma behind them and mend their fractured sex life soon. Maybe tonight was the first step.

Growing up with four older brothers had taught Daphne a thing or two about sneaking around a couple necking on the couch. But unlike her brothers' dates, this was not a forbidden tryst to be spied on and used as ammunition with her parents (there was a chance that young Daphne had been slightly jealous of her brothers, who got to kiss girls all the time). Carefully she slipped from the room on tiptoe, alerting neither woman to her presence as far as she could tell. Hard to be sure with their faces hidden by each other's sensual head movements, evidence of the give and take occurring between their locked lips, but she didn't see an eye cracked open to glare at her, or a hand waving for her to get the hell out.

Heck, as preoccupied as they were, she probably could have grabbed a bowl of popcorn, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and settled in for the show. At least that's the joke she would have told later, recounting the tale for her mortified friends, if things were normal. She couldn't make jokes like that anymore, about living vicariously through their intimacy; not after what had happened to Olivia. And try though she might not to letthose images into her head, she had caught herself on multiple occasions imagining what it must have been like for the captain in that shipping container. Amanda had said it was like walking into Hell.

Shuddering at the thought, Daphne flipped the kitchen light on and went to the fridge
(not a dead body in sight)
intending to grab the ingredients for fresh margaritas, then realized she'd have to use the blender. Nothing killed a romantic mood like the melodious sounds of ice being ground into slush. She decided that would be her last resort, if the hanky-panky in the living room lasted too long. For now, she would sip one of the Seagram's—a pink thing with a title that made her giggle: Jamaican Me Happy—and hope the alcohol content wasn't such that she crossed over to intoxicated and forgot herself.

Then again, it was her birthday and she didn't have many years of being young and stupid left. None, actually. But she was just buzzed enough not to care.

An hour intoThe Proposal, Daphne was passed out in the wide armchair adjacent to the couch, and Amanda was glaring daggers at her tiny, sleeping form. No one that small and that cute should be able to snorethatloudly. She hadn't even made it to the part with Sandra Bullock spitting "Get Low," while she and Betty White dropped it like it was hot, her all-time favorite scene from anything ever, well, after the midnight margaritas scene inPractical Magic, obvi.

The snoring was almost as bad as the blender. "Oh my God, I'm gonna kill her," Amanda had grumbled when the appliance whirred to obnoxious, nerve-rattling life just as her palm was gliding from the waist of Olivia's paperbag shorts to the bare skin under her chambray top. She'd held her breath the entire time she inched the shirt out of the waistband it was tucked into—okay, not the entire time; she would have suffocated with all the pausing to be sure she wasn't moving too fast for her wife—and the very second she touched Olivia's side . . .Ggggggrrrrrrrreeeeee!

They had both flinched at the sound, but only Amanda was inspired to murder. Jokingly, of course, but once the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if she could ever say them again without needing to make the distinction. That's the price you paid when you killed a handful of people in cold blood, she supposed. She still felt surprisingly little guilt for her actions: an occasional niggling about the boy, but he would have ended up rotting in jail eventually anyway, and that would have been worse than an untimely death; a melancholy sort of heaviness when she thought of Kat, as if the girl's body was slung around her shoulders like wild game (and yet, she would still sacrifice the girl a hundred times over to bring Olivia home); and none at all for the men.

None at all for whatever Dana had in store for Vaughn and Declan Murphy.

(Were they dead yet? Things like that took time, especially if you wanted them to appear random and unrelated to another string of murders. But she was getting antsy waiting for the call from Dana to say "It's finished.")

Suffice it to say, Amanda hadn't actually killed Daphne for blending more margaritas while she was trying to get to third base with her wife; they had, in fact, straightened up their disheveled clothes and gone to help, no one mentioning the elephant in the room—that Daphne had to have seen them getting frisky on the couch on her way to the kitchen. Olivia was buzzed enough that she didn't seem to mind, though she hit that second margarita pretty hard. Amanda had no right to talk, her glass had been emptying just as fast all evening. She knew alcohol and trauma were a bad combination, and she'd discouraged the drinking after that incident on Tilly's birthday, but she had made an exception for Daphne's party. The kids weren't around, and she would be there to make sure Olivia didn't overdo it.

Problem was, who was making sure she didn't overdo it herself?

She wasn't drunk or anything, just sick and tired of being the level-headed one who kept everything and everyone from falling apart at the seams. It was exhausting. She hadn't really been able to cut loose and have a good time since the Springsteen concert back in April. Granted, she hadn't felt much like cutting loose in the months since, but that's what this break from the City was supposed to be about. Getting back to themselves and finding some normalcy, some happiness.

They had been halfway to it when The Snoring Wonder over there threw the switch on the blender.It's not Jamaican me happy, she'd said of the partially full Seagram's that was open on the counter,so I'm Jamaican more margaritas. Belly up to the bar, girls.

"Whaddaya think, babycakes? You wanna watch the rest?" Amanda aimed an imaginary remote control at the television in place of the real one that was probably crammed into the chair cushions somewhere under the lightweight asleep on them. She let her hand fall lightly back onto Olivia's hip, where it had been cinched since her wife snuggled in beside her, wedging between the couch and Amanda's side, head pillowed on Amanda's shoulder. She had scarcely dared to breathe after that, let alone move. And she hated to disturb their cozy, recumbent position now, but her arm felt dead from the prolonged pressure.

Should the night's previous activities resume, she didn't want her dexterity to be compromised. It would also put a damper on the romance if she was, you know, asleep.

"Nah, I've seen it before," Olivia said through a yawn. That was a tad discouraging, especially when her face turned up, as if for kissing, but revealed two drowsy, bloodshot eyes. Some of her most adorable moments were born of such sleepiness—Amanda's favorites were when she dozed off while sitting up, glasses still in place, then tried to cover by going straight into captain mode when you roused her—though it usually wasn't conducive to sex, either.

Amanda hadn't had her heart set on sex for that evening, or for any evening recently, but there had been a glimmer of hope during the make-out session. An old, familiar warmth unfurling deep in her belly. She'd thought her sex drive might be dead, having bled out right alongside the sick bastards who killed it in that rancid shipping container, on that rancid live feed. When Olivia kissed her with the same sweet mouth as before (even in spite of the liquor, she tasted the same; even in spite of the weight loss, felt the same), it all came flooding back. All the sensual, love-drenched memories.

It surprised her to find she could let it all go. The old Amanda would have pressed and cajoled; not exactly coerced, but awful damn close. The Amanda she was now—forty-something mother of four kids, two of whom she pushed out of her own body, and wife to the amazing but deeply wounded woman in her arms—didn't need sex to feel fulfilled, or to feel like she served a purpose, after all. Somewhere along the line, she had grown up without even noticing.

"I thought we might pick up where we left off before Hurricane Daph made landfall," said Olivia, her upturned eyes and face giving her that doe-eyed street urchin look Amanda was a sucker for. She traced a fingertip along the ridge of Amanda's jaw, then pressed the pad into her dimple like she was pushing an elevator button. Not hard, but not with the tentative touch she had developed after recent events, either. It was entirely possible Captain Benson was a little bit trashed. "Maybe someplace private, to avoid her path of destruction."

Grown up? Who said anything about growing up? Amanda's arousal suddenly cranked to eleven and she would have whipped off her running shorts right there, if Olivia requested it. She was forgetting something, though; something that nagged at the back of her brain (she did know she would prefer it to stay there), until it popped out of her mouth, unbidden: "I dunno, babe, we both had a lot to drink . . . I don't want to take advantage."

Olivia's eyes weren't nearly as doe-like when she rolled them. "If you're insinuating I'm drunk, Detective, you're wrong. For one thing, I just said insinuating without slurring. And if you had a breathalyzer on you right now—which I know you don't, because nothing else could possibly fit into those ridiculously tiny shorts—I'd take it and prove I'm under the limit. As it is . . . " Propping up on her elbows, she army-crawled backward off of Amanda and rose to her knees. "This will have to do," she said, and stretched out her arms at shoulder height. Head tipped back slightly, eyes closed, she touched the index finger of both hands to her nose three times each.

Nailed 'em all.

"Shall I walk a straight line?" she asked, dropping her chin, opening her eyes, and folding her hands primly in her lap.

"That won't be necessary, ma'am." Amanda couldn't hide a grin. It was by no means an accurate or reliable test of sobriety, but she would accept it because she'd drunk roughly the same amount as Olivia, and she felt fine. Buzzed, sure, but not too inebriated to know exactly what she wanted.

"I'm sorry, officer, I only meant to touch Sandy's Oscar," Daphne mumbled between saws.

"Oh, Lord. Let's get out of here before she touches anything else." Amanda swung her feet onto the floor, pushed up from the couch, and held out a hand to Olivia as if they were about to make a run for it, the law hot on their trail. In the background, Sandy was rapping about windows, walls, and sweaty balls. Probablynotthe role that won her the Oscar from Daphne's dream.

Olivia regarded the offered hand mildly, but didn't take it. "What about you?" She raised an expectant eyebrow at Amanda, tipping a nod to her messy ponytail, disheveled clothes, and shoeless feet (wherehadshe put her shoes?) when, at first, she didn't comprehend.

Oh. Feigning exasperation, Amanda sighed and dropped her head back like a dramatic teenager, eyes closed, to repeat the finger-to-nose test Olivia had just passed. With that out of the way, she showed off her unaffected balance by walking heel-toe in a perfectly straight line in front of the couch. Maybe she wavered for half a second on the reverse turn, but that was just a natural hiccup any non-tightrope-walker or woman over the age of forty who had given birth only six months ago might experience.

Or someone who was slightly drunk.

"Tada," she announced, arms raised like a gymnast sticking the landing, when she made it back to Olivia.

"Okay, Nadia Comăneci."

Together, they tucked Daphne in on the couch, which mainly involved draping her with a blanket and switching off the TV. It reminded Amanda of putting the kids to bed in a similar, practiced rhythm, co-parenting in harmony to the very same beat, and she felt a wash of sadness at the memories it stirred. A tiny foot poking out of the covers, a tiny hand curled against one cheek, that final pause in the backlit doorway for another over-the-shoulder glimpse of perfect contentment, perfect happiness.

"We should put her on her side," Olivia said, breaking into Amanda's reverie. They weren't standing over one of their little ones, after all. Well, she was little, but none of their kids had the lung capacity to snore like that. "Bacchus maneuver."

"Huh?"

Instead of explaining, Olivia demonstrated, rolling Daphne gently onto her left side and plumping the pillow under her cheek. She nudged Daphne's right knee up to prevent her from rolling any farther, tucked her hand under her chin so it didn't dangle over the side of the couch. "Just in case," she said quietly as she stood back to observe her work.

In case of what, Amanda didn't need to ask, nor did she question where Olivia had picked up the move. She supposed you learned a lot of tricks for keeping drunks from aspirating on their own vomit when you grew up with an alcoholic parent. You probably learned how to hold your liquor pretty early on, too.

Like the rest of her troubling thoughts from that evening, she let the observation fade to the back of her mind, where it was drowned out by Daphne the human freight train and some underlying sound she couldn't put her finger on.

(Ocean?)

"Good thinkin'." Lightly she reached for Olivia's hand, to lead her away from the couch and its occupant. They could worry if the snoring abruptly stopped or gave way to gagging, but Amanda doubted that would happen anytime soon. It wasn't like they had tapped a keg. "C'mon, babe, she's fine. The dogs'll let us know if something's off." She wagged a thumb at the dogs in question—Gigi, Frannie, and Hamilton—each of whom raised their heads to watch her spirit Olivia off to the bedroom. With any luck, they would all stay put in their cozy corner and not come whining and scratching on the door at an inopportune moment.

Once the bedroom door was closed behind them, Daphne and the dogs were forgotten, at least on Amanda's end. Some of it was excitement, but it surprised her just how nervous she felt to be alone with her wife, free of the distractions of children and friends who were a little too invested in your love life. You'd think it was her first time with Olivia, as shy and antsy as she felt; looking back now, she wasn't sure how she had ever worked up the courage to put the moves on her boss in the first place. (If memory served, there had been substances present on that occasion as well.) For a moment she just stood there, hands on her butt cheeks because her shorts didn't have back pockets, and gazed around as if she were on a street corner, waiting for the bus.

The pretty stranger in the rearmost seat was giving her the eye, and when she patted the empty spot beside her and murmured, "Come here, love," Amanda went. It wasn't every day a woman that beautiful invited you to sit with her. And she certainly didn't start stroking your hair and your body when you settled in, although anything was possible in New York City. But this was a bed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not public transportation in NYC, and in spite of the recent strain on their relationship, her wife was no stranger.

"Still feeling okay about this?" she asked, doing her best to keep a neutral tone. She didn't want to sway Olivia one way or the other, or put any undue pressure on her to continue their earlier explorations. That's what this was: new and frightening territory they were exploring. The sexual landscape after a great pillaging and a months-long drought. Restoration took time, you couldn't expect a brief rain shower to fix the problem, no matter how good it felt. How needed. "We can just . . . talk if you wanna?"

"That's sweet of you to offer," said Olivia, head tilted to the side, baring her neck in a pose both vulnerable and sensual. The scar from Calvin Arliss' straight razor caught the light, winking in and out of visibility like the ghost of a scar rather than a living, breathing one. She was covered in both kinds, and Amanda longed to breathe warmth over each one, to press her lips to them not in kisses, but in prayer. Not to God, but to Olivia's soul, which needed healing most of all. "But I don't want to talk. I have to try this, Iwantto. Otherwise it'll just get bigger and bigger inside my head."

Not her most articulate reasoning, but Amanda understood what she meant. She had felt it too, the little goblin of fear that kept growing the longer you ignored it. Until one day you turned around and it engulfed you. At present, she estimated hers to be about the size of a barn cat. Big enough to slink through the shadows and get fat off the smaller critters that lived there, but not large enough to take down a grown woman. Yet.

"Yeah, I getcha." Amanda coiled a question mark of brown hair behind Olivia's ear with her index finger. She probably shouldn't have been as pleased as she was by the tiny shiver that it elicited, making Olivia bunch her shoulders, arch her back. But getting her wife's body to react had always been a major turn-on for Amanda; there was no shame in that. At least there shouldn't be. "We'll just . . . we'll take it real slow, okay? And if you decide you need to stop—"

"I'll tell you. I promise." Olivia was so solemn, it seemed as if she might not be able to segue back into a sexy mood—which was fine. She had acknowledged that lack of communication was a problem for them in the past, and if nothing else came of tonight, at least there was the promise not to let things go too far again like that. But when Amanda leaned in for a pardoning kiss, Olivia deepened it, her hands at either side of Amanda's head, cradling it in her palms.

The heat returned full-force, overwhelming Amanda while her guard was down. Olivia was a fantastic kisser, that hadn't changed at all, though there was a new element, a ferocity that took Amanda by surprise, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. It also knocked out the apprehension and troubling thoughts in a way nothing else had in almost three months. Certain drugs had a similar effect, but she'd never much liked the false sense of wellbeing that narcotics provided. It wore off too soon and always left you searching for the next high (gambling was a whole other story, and one she preferred not to get into). But the drug that was in her system now—the one administered by Olivia's warm hands and warmer mouth—she could easily become addicted to. Her body was already crying out for more.

For a while she let Olivia do most of the work, deciding whose hands went where, how long each kiss lasted, how much skin was bared, until she realized Olivia was waiting for her to take over. Amanda had often been the slightly more dominant one in the bedroom, a role she'd accepted with swaggering confidence and pride. Now she wasn't so sure of herself, and she kept glancing up at Olivia to gauge her response with every touch. When it finally came time to start undoing the chambray top, which had never gotten tucked back in after Amanda's last go at it, her hands fumbled with the small white buttons. "Damn things are slippy," she said with a nervous laugh that only made it halfway out. Actually, it was their thickness compared to the size of the buttonholes that made them harder to maneuver, but she swiped her palms on her shorts anyway, and tried again.

"Maybe it's just you who's slippy," Olivia teased. Her touch was extra tender, though, when she moved Amanda's hands aside and took over the task on her own. She thumbed each button loose with a slow, practiced hand, revealing a flash of white bra, a sliver of skin several shades lighter than the face, arms, and legs that had browned prettily in the New England sun. There was no convincing her to bring along a bathing suit for the summer getaway, let alone a bikini, and her tan lines were much shallower—much more abrupt—than in years past.

Not that it mattered. She was still the most beautiful woman Amanda had ever laid eyes on. And as she nudged the shirt back on her shoulders, baring them, so that the collar sagged behind her, the rest wrapped low around her arms like a stole, she took Amanda's breath away all over again. They had seen each other unclothed since the assault, but this would be the first time it was for sexual purposes and that made it feel momentous. It also made the scars that much more vivid.

Most were burns from the cattle prod (and the old ones from Lewis's cigarette, of course), healed into puckers of whitish skin with ridges patterned vaguely like snowflakes. They fell in pairs, a light dusting that reminded Amanda of the rare occasions she had seen snow as a kid, usually during a drive through northern Georgia, up by the Blue Ridge Mountains. She had been fascinated by those icy flakes and watched them dissolve on the window of her daddy's truck, wishing they wouldn't disappear, they were so pretty and delicate. She wished the opposite of these. The thing about snow was, it accumulated; scars too.

"They're not so bad anymore," Olivia said, following Amanda's gaze to the marks. She sounded hopeful, doubtful, and very young all at once, a combination that tugged at Amanda's heart and made her want to pull Olivia close, hold her until they went away. But scars didn't melt like snowflakes. "Are they?"

"Huh-uh." Amanda's bottom lip jutted over the top one and she shook her head, forcing herself to stop staring. Right now she was supposed to be concentrating on her wife's beauty, which was considerable and on display for her (and no one else) with such openness and trust, she wondered at the strength it must require.

A horrible thought occurred to her—what if Olivia was just so used to violation at this point, she had become desensitized and learned to function like everything was normal (and what if Amanda was taking advantage of that?)—but she quickly dismissed it. Neither of them had functioned normally in the last three months. They were hiding out in f*cking Connecticut because of their inability to handle normal life, for Chrissake. And this was just the damn barn cat pawing at her brain again, batting it around like a frantic mouse. Both of them were here because they wanted to be, and no one was forcing or coercing anyone. Whatever transpired tonight would be about love and love only.

She conveyed it first with her hands, trailing them by the fingers up and down Olivia's arms, smoothing them over her shoulders, her chest where it was exposed by a plain white bra. No lace or designs, none of what Amanda would call "that fancy sh*t," but appealing in its simplicity and oddly feminine. She supposed what filled it out helped with the last part, and she instinctively wanted to go there next, to lavish the soft, lovely bosom with all the attention she would have in the past. But something told hernot yet, not while Olivia was still so fragile. They could work up to that, and maybe someday when the kids were back home, when Olivia was at home enough in her body to try breastfeeding Sammie again—then they could move on to more intimate contact. For now: touch.

Like the bra, touch was simple, unadorned and sweet beyond belief. Olivia had always taken to it as if she were half starved for a kind, loving hand—and hell, why wouldn't she be, after experiencing the opposite end of the spectrum for so long, so often?—and this time was no different. Amanda could almost see the protective walls she had built up since the rape sinking, and felt doubly encouraged by the realization that the walls were built on sand. Some of the older ones, the long-standing ones (Olivia's father, Serena, Daniel the statutory rapist), were built on bedrock and impossible to bring down entirely. They might never go away, but these Amanda could work with and prevent from becoming a full-blown barricade.

"Beautiful," she murmured with each caress. "So beautiful." And though Olivia didn't look totally convinced, she at least didn't discourage the praise as it was bestowed. Amanda's fingers played gently over her ribs (still tentative, and probably always would be) like piano keys, running scales without the resultant notes; they skimmed her sides, as light as dragonflies grazing the surface of a pond; they smoothed her soft belly, flattened by the loss of weight, but not quite scant enough to cause concern . . . yet.

Olivia helped remove her shorts, shifting side to side as Amanda pulled, until they rounded her knees and wafted to the floor. She cast a self-conscious glance at her panties, as plain as the bra, except for a pink tint so faint they looked off-white in certain light. Like a drop of blood in milk, Amanda observed in passing, without fully forming the conscious thought. Macabre things had a tendency to pop into her head when she least expected or wanted them; if it were a new development, she would think her conscience was weighing on her for the killings. But her brain had always done that.

(Foreshadowing what was to come?)

"Not my sexiest pair," Olivia said as if agreeing with a criticism Amanda had given out loud. A dark cloud passed over her face, belying the nonchalant scrunch of her shoulders. "If I'd known how things would turn out tonight, I would've dressed for the occasion." She smiled, but it was a tad too wide to be sincere. She was trying so hard to keep the mood light and normal for a situation that was anything but. They both knew the other was thinking about the star print underwear that had been ripped off of her during the assault.

"Nah, I like these." Amanda took a chance, skating her fingertip along the mid-rise waistband of the underwear. The whispery touch raised gooseflesh on Olivia's skin, and Amanda instantly wanted to apologize, remembering the way she had found her, naked and unbearably cold. She leaned in and kissed the knob of Olivia's shoulder. "You don't have to get all gussied up just to impress me. You're what makes the underwear sexy, not vice versa."

She dotted a few more kisses to Olivia's collarbone and shoulder blades, too exquisite to resist, and would have continued on that track except for the patch of rough skin she came across. The impression was too faded to tell, and she didn't want to be obvious by stopping to look, but she had seen it fresh, on camera and in the shower, anyway: teeth marks. A surge of anger went through her at the discovery, but without a proper outlet she could only bury it—she would have loved to wrap her hands around Angelov's throat (he was the biter, the tattooed freak), or Vaughn's, if she was still alive, to squeeze,squeeze—and move on.

Catching herself grasping Olivia's biceps a little too firmly, she relaxed her grip and plastered on her own counterfeit smile. It must have been obvious she was struggling to stay in the moment because Olivia gazed down at her partially clad body, back up at Amanda, and asked fretfully, "Is it me?" She looked like she wanted to disappear into a dark hole, possibly never to return, especially if the answer was yes.

"No," Amanda said too quickly. Now it would sound like she was covering up a lie, even though she spoke the God's honest truth. She wasn't faltering because of Olivia, but because of her own shortcomings, her own spectacular failure at protecting the woman she loved. "Nothing like that. It's just the tequila sneaking up on me again. I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Yup. Gimme another one of them kisses of yours, and I'll be ready and raring to go, you'll see." Amanda stroked the outsides of Olivia's thighs, slowly working her way inward, praying the distraction worked, praying that she could deliver, and praying that she didn't happen upon any other bites or rough spots in the velvety smooth flesh. She had stopped herself from cataloging the injuries below Olivia's waist for the mental file she kept on the case; there were plenty of pictures in the physical copy at the precinct if she ever needed reminding. (She never would.)

For a time, the kissing did seem to transport them elsewhere, driving out all the negative thoughts and images that waited just below the surface. Amanda's hands began to wander with a bit of freedom as well, coasting over some of the more intimate spots she'd avoided while gazing into Olivia's wide brown eyes—they were called doe eyes for a reason; when you looked into them like that, you felt like the hunter staring down the barrel of his shotgun at a deer.Please don't hurt me, the eyes asked.Mercy, they whispered.

She had successfully blocked the voice out, and was concentrating on Olivia's lower back, her smaller but still undeniably feminine hips, the spade of warm pelvis in the front, when she noticed that Olivia wasn't reciprocating. Her hands moved from place to place, according to Amanda's position—now, for instance, they were looped behind her neck, wrists propped near her shoulders—perhaps giving her room to maneuver. But she didn't think so. They were usually so in sync with each other's rhythms, they could form the most intricate patterns without getting tangled. What brilliant tapestries they had once weaved.

"I don't think I can do this," Olivia whispered, a second before Amanda opened her mouth to say more or less the same thing.I'm not sure we're up for this, darlin'. Something feels off. Let's give it some more time.

None of it played right in her head, and she breathed a sigh of relief that she'd been let off the hook. Unfortunately, her timing was bad, the sigh a little too heavy for the weight that lifted from her shoulders, and it sounded as if she were frustrated or annoyed. And yeah, okay, maybe she was a bit irked, but it was directed mainly at herself for going along with what she had known was a bad idea. She'd wanted to believe Olivia was ready; that they both were.

They just weren't. And for Amanda, who had dived headfirst back into sex after her own sexual assault, there was no reference point for how much time was enough. Plus, you had to factor in the sustained brutality of Olivia's attack, average out how long she waited to have sex after previous assaults (it bothered Amanda to realize she had no answers for that one), and divide by the amount of secondary trauma that came with watching your wife being tortured.

f*ck rape math, man.

"I'm sorry. Please don't be upset with me. I just . . . " Olivia made a helpless gesture with the hands she unclasped from behind Amanda's neck. She stuffed them into her lap, which was starkly empty without the touch Amanda had unconsciously withdrawn the moment consent wavered. The almost-pink panties had a flesh tone when you didn't look straight at them, and they blended in so well with her pale abdomen, she appeared nude from the chest down. "I can't. I thought I could. I'm sorry, Manda. I shouldn't have led you on like this."

The tears began to fall then, trickling onto Olivia's cheeks with so little warning, Amanda took a sharp breath, as if she had swerved into traffic. Preventing Olivia from having a total mental breakdown was the main objective of their summer getaway, and it had put Amanda more on edge than she realized. Of course she couldn't relax enough for sex when she was waiting for the dam to break. And now it had done just that. No sobbing or anything dramatic, but the tears were heavy and abundant. They wetted Amanda's palms when she cupped them to Olivia's cheeks, urging her to look up.

"You didn't lead me on. Hey, you didn't." Amanda ducked down, making sure Olivia saw the truth in her eyes, despite a weak attempt at avoiding eye contact. "We were both curious to see where it went, and we both found out we're not ready. Look at me. Please, darlin', look at me. I'm not upset. Actually, I'm kinda relieved and I'm real glad you spoke up before it went too far."

"You mean like at the hotel," Olivia said. She was hellbent on self-loathing, it seemed, her expression one of disgust as she gazed past Amanda's shoulder, remembering. She squeezed her thighs tight around her hands, as if physically restraining herself. "When I made you feel like a rapist. Made you tie me up, just so I could prove how adventurous I was. God, I'm so pathetic. How can you even stand to touch me? I don't blame you for not wanting—"

Amanda turned Olivia's face gently toward her. "Whoa, hey. That ain't even close to being what I'm saying. You didn'tmakeme do any of that stuff, for one thing. I'm a grown-ass woman and I went into that—and this—knowing full well what could happen. I shouldn't have said that about feeling like a rapist. Mighta meant it at the time, but that's just because I was scared and I hate seeing you hurt. That's not how you make me feel, okay? Ever. Before I met you . . . "

It was her turn to gaze into the distance for a moment, searching for an example. She went with the first one that came to mind—inelegant, perhaps, but effective. She hoped. "You know how Frannie scarfs her food down without even tasting it? We're always yelling at her to slow the hell down? That was me with sex. Before. You taught me to take my time and really enjoy it. Savor it, you know? That's why I want it to be right when we are finally ready again." She thumbed the moisture from Olivia's cheeks. "And, baby, you are not pathetic. You are the least pathetic person in this whole f*cked up world. And certainly in this Airbnb."

"Yeah, Daphne is kind of a sad sack," Olivia said, sniffling the throwaway line. Her smile was watery and wan, but it did soften her crumpled features into something like amusem*nt for half a second. Then it was gone. The doe returned, only now it appeared mournful, as if standing over the lifeless body of one of its young. "I hear what you're saying, I do. And it means everything to me. Truly. But what if . . . Amanda, what if I'm never ready again? What if I can't get past this? It feels so . . . " She made an expansive gesture in front of her chest, fingers hooked like claws.

In other words, all-consuming. Monstrous and overpowering. Too big to be named.

"I'm afraid I can't have sex anymore. And if that's the case, it's so unfair to you, love." A sad smile wobbled on Olivia's lips, fresh tears swimming in her eyes. Whatever she was building up to sounded an awful lot like a goodbye, and that nostalgic cant of her head did nothing to abate Amanda's mounting fear.

"What're trying to tell me, Liv? That if we can't have sex anymore, you want a divorce? 'Cause, from where I'm sitting, that's what it's starting to sound like."

Olivia's eyelashes fluttered rapidly. Moisture pearled there like dew. "What? Oh my God, no. Amanda. No. That's not— if I lost you now or, hell,ever, I wouldn't survive it. I was not talking divorce."

"Good." Amanda gave a nod of finality; that's the end of that. But it wasn't the end, she could see that much written all over Olivia's face, and based on what she read so far, the rest would not be to her liking, either. "What are you talking, then, couples' therapy? With someone legit this time? 'Cause I could probably work with that. Maybe even hypnotherapy or something, as long as one of us is there to supervise the other's sessions. Oh, and remember that article I showed you a while back, about MDMA treatment for PTSD? I know you said there's no way in hell you're ever using ecstasy to—"

"I think you should go to someone," Olivia said, raising her voice to be heard above the spiel. She cut it short at the end, looking almost contrite.

It turned out the confused blinks were contagious. "You think I should go to sex therapy by myself?" Amanda asked, unable to hide her incredulity. Not that she thought Olivia was the only one who would benefit from professional help—Amanda had actually taken to the idea right away, the both of them seeing a psychologist together; that way she would be able to watch over her vulnerable wife—but she also wasn't in this alone. Both their psyches were pretty screwed up, so how did it come down to one or the other of them needing to be fixed?

"I don't mean therapy. At least not in the sense that you mean it." Olivia spoke slowly, giving her words time to sink in. She did the same thing when she talked to victims and their families. Staying levelheaded and nonreactive while you delivered upsetting news was an important part of the job, but having it turned around on you led to heart palpitations rather than a state of calm.

That's what it did to Amanda, anyway. "What other sense is there?" she asked guardedly. "You think I should see someone who's not a therapist for our sex issues? I don't get— Oh good Lord." She clambered up suddenly from the edge of the bed, needing to be on her feet in case she was right about what Olivia meant. It wasn't the kind of thing you sat down for. "Are you telling me I should go to a hooker?"

The echo of her shrill question seemed to linger in the air, the silence, for a very long time. Olivia wasn't hiding from her anymore, but neither did she answer, and her steady, dispassionate stare was unnerving. Amanda fought the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake her—not hard, just enough to snap her out of it and, hopefully, out of the fool notion she hadn't denied proposing. Finally, she came back on her own, after watching Amanda pace out her frustration three or four times on the thick bedroom carpet.

"I'm not saying you should go pick someone up on the street corner tonight," she said, so gentle it was impossible to reconcile her tone with the suggestion she was making. "But there are other ways. Safer ways. And if the time comes when you want sex, and I . . . can't give it to you, then I want you to know that you have that option."

"Excuse me for disagreeing with you, Captain, but no, I f*cking don't." Amanda struggled to keep her anger—and the subsequent sarcasm—in check, but she shook with it as she paced.

All these years together, and Olivia still didn't get Amanda's disdain for prostitutes and the people (men, mostly) who utilized their services? She didn't comprehend that Amanda had waited in the car outside countless fleabag motels, trying to entertain Kimmie with coloring books and a total of three cassette tapes (Twitty, Jones, and Kristofferson), while their daddy was inside, entertaining the town floozies? That, until she blew out of Loganville like a bat out of hell, days after high school graduation, everyone had expected her to end up just like her old man—or the floozies he frequented? Just another Rollins waste case.

Of course Olivia didn't get it, because Amanda had only told her bits and pieces of those stories, never revealing the full picture. Still, you didn't encourage someone to find themselves a whor* to sleep with, unless you believed it was the kind of thing they would do. Unless you believed they were whorish themselves.

It was insulting, is what it was. Amanda could swallow a lot of crap—and she had swallowed quite a bit in the past few weeks, afraid of upsetting the delicate balance they had struck for this so-called vacation—but she couldn't choke down her wife thinking she had so little integrity. Some of it was probably the booze talking, in her case and Olivia's, and neither of them were in a healthy place regarding sex at the moment, but Jesus.

"It worked for Cassidy." Olivia looked and sounded crestfallen that her solution was being poorly received. Even that was frustrating, the desire to go to her and offer comfort, the guilt she felt for not going, twisting Amanda up in knots. If they stopped having conversations because of fear of conflict, they were doomed. If Amanda cracked every time Olivia expressed sadness, they would never confront and overcome the hard stuff. Together.

"I am not Brian f*cking Cassidy." Heated, but not loud and (by some miracle) not mean. Part of her hoped that Olivia would respond in kind and they could hash it all out right then. Maybe a good, strong disagreement was what they needed to get back on track and put an end to all the puss*footing; not a fight, just an airing out of the emotional junk they'd both recently been accumulating. Maybe it would have solved everything.

But they would never know, because instead of taking the Cassidy bait, Olivia turned her gaze inward and didn't appear to have heard the critical remark about the ex SVU cop and her ex lover at all. "For a long time after Lewis, I couldn't really . . . perform. Brian gave me my space, didn't push, but I could tell he was getting restless. Kept catching him watching p*rn. You know how bad guys are at hiding it." She laughed, though nothing was funny. She hated p*rn with a passion. "He'd jump and cover himself, get red in the face. Somehow always forgot to lock the door, though."

"Dumbass," Amanda sneered. Man, she hated that dude. Just the thought of his perpetually spitty lips getting anywhere near her wife made her want to hurl.

"He was a lost puppy. Something you rescue from the shelter. And I was . . . " Olivia folded her hands to her chest in a way that resembled crumpling, like an empty soda can under too much pressure. "I was too f*cked up to rescue anyone. Or even to care. I let him touch me, but he could tell I wasn't reallythere. So, when we did that UC bust and I had to sit there with Nick, listening to my boyfriend getting head from a prostitute, I figured . . . why the hell not? He got off, and I didn't have to have another dick in my mouth that night." Her bra strap drooped off the shoulder that lifted in a halfhearted shrug. "Win-win."

Such were the shame and self-loathing in Olivia's tone, her wilted-flower body language, Amanda felt her own knees threaten to give under the weight of it. "Baby," she said urgently, breaking every rule she had just laid down for herself and going to Olivia, to crouch in front of her once more. If anger wasn't the answer, then she would beg. She would beg until she was blue in the face. Until Olivia saw the search beam thrown out on the dark ocean waters, piercing the storm. "Baby, you gotta know I would never do that to you. I ain't some sex-starved man-baby who's gonna start beating off 'cause I can't get at you whenever I want. I know I been impatient a couple times in the past, but . . . things are different now. I'm different. Ain't I? Ain't I better than I used to be?"

Olivia touched Amanda's cheek like she was touching a delicate work of art, daring to graze the surface with her fingertips, as if it were the hand of God in the Sistine Chapel. She wore the rapt expression, too, of someone crossing a forbidden barrier, waiting to be struck down for it. "You're everything I ever could have hoped for, my love," she whispered. Her thumb traced the arcs of Amanda's eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, the bow of her upper lip. "My darling. Everything."

A shiver went through Amanda that she attributed to the featherlike caresses. Strange, she wasn't normally ticklish. But then, nothing about this situation was normal. She caught Olivia's hand and pressed her lips to the network of lines in the palm. "And that's how I feel about you. It was before, and it still is today. Liv, you're the only woman I want. In whatever form that takes. Don't ever talk to me again about going to someone else for . . . anything. Please."

When Olivia looked up, her nod was as slow and drowsy as her eyelids. Exhaustion had hit her head-on, it seemed, and she looked barely able to sit upright, let alone remain awake for serious discussion. The poor thing was swaying at the edge of the bed, fighting to stay alert. "I won't. I'm sorry." She breathed the apology rather than speaking it aloud, and took a long, juddering inhalation immediately after. "M'sorry," she repeated.

"You don't have to be sorry, darlin'. Come on now, no more crying tonight." There would be time for that in the days to come; they had the rest of their lives to cry. To confront their demons too.

For now, they needed sleep. It was creeping into Amanda's bones, overwarm and heavy-handed as the tequila, liquid as the waves in the Sound, with each drawn out blink of Olivia's thick lashes. Rising to her feet, she coaxed Olivia from the end of the bed to the pillows at the headboard, guiding her by the shoulders like she was walking one of their groggy children to the bathroom in the middle of the night. "What are you doing?" she asked when Amanda got her tucked beneath the top sheet and began stripping off her own shorts and t-shirt.

"Is this okay?" Amanda glanced down at her wireless bra in nude and striped hipsters. In between, the constellation of scars on her abdomen was visible, bunched together like a cluster of real stars. The scars from her first bullet and Jesse's C-section were partially hidden by her underclothes, but she was hyperaware of their presence and held her breath, hoping she had done the right thing bearing old wounds. It was supposed to signify her willingness to be vulnerable with Olivia, not trigger past traumas and new. "I thought we could just . . . be close."

After a moment's consideration, Olivia scooted to the far pillow and lifted the bedsheet for Amanda to slide under. Her skin was warm, as if she'd been out in the sun, and the places where her scars pressed against Amanda were like ruched silk. They slept with their heads together, deep thinkers, wrapped in the solace of each other's arms.

. . .

Chapter 52: Green Light

Chapter Text

Chapter 52.

Green Light

. . .

Cig Martin, whose real name was Wanda but who had started smoking at ten years old and gone by Cig ever since, tucked a Pall Mall behind her ear like a pencil. Many moons ago she'd entertained the idea of being a teacher and envisioned herself that way, with the cat-eye glasses, hair in a prim French twist, a No. 2 pencil forever slanting from the notch of one helix. (She had watched a lot of TV reruns as a kid, the black and white kind where teachers still wore sh*t like that.) Once she killed the first guy, though, her schoolhouse dreams went kaput. Now she was on her fourth bid—another murder, what a coinkydink—and the only teaching she was doing was training the fish to fear her.

And with good reason. She had no scruples and it was common knowledge she would do anything for a smoke. Why not, she was never getting out, and her Pallies helped pass the time. Each one she puffed on was about five minutes less of her sentence. When she smoked, she reminisced, and memories were pretty much all she had left these days.

So, when the guard everyone called Buzzy (there had been a tasing "incident" somewhere in his past) cornered Cig outside the john and said meet me in the yard, I got a present for ya, and flashed her a peep of the lovely white tip in the folds of his warty palm, Cig showed the f*ck up. He would want a favor in return, no doubt, but there were a hell of a lot worse things a guard could be flashing in here. If he'd wanted sex, he would have just whipped it out right then, not beckoned her to the outdoor equipment shed.

"You'll do it, then?" he asked, his lips blinking like a guppy's in the corner he spoke out of. He was taking this Secret Agent Man bullsh*t very seriously. Probably made him feel more important than he was, a lowly CO in a women's max security prison. Guys either ended up with that gig because they were puss*es and couldn't cut it in men's prisons, or because they were sad*stic misogynist pricks who enjoyed degrading women. Often, the two went hand in hand. Buzzy was pretty middle-of-the-road in every aspect, including that one, so being entrusted with relaying an outside message from some big cheese to someone on the inside probablydidpuff him up a little.

Heck, even Cig was flattered. According to Buzzy, there were plenty more Pall Malls where the one behind her ear came from, as long as she followed through with her assignment and kept her mouth shut if anyone asked why she did it. With a reputation like hers, they seldom asked "why?" anymore, and she was already doing life without parole, what was a few more years tacked on for manslaughter? (If they did push her on it, she'd claim it was a spur of the moment thing, brought on by repeated antagonization; the skinny bitch was well-known for stirring up trouble, particularly among those she considered beneath her—the ugly, less educated girls. Or the ones like Cig, who outweighed her by about eighty or ninety pounds.)

It was impressive that their reputations, Cig's and her bony-ass target's, extended outside of Sealview Correctional. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll do it," Cig said, leg jiggling. She was jonesing for the nicotine fix near her temple, but she'd take care of business first. A smoke after ending a life was extra sweet, but she wanted to savor this one in case her mysterious benefactor turned out to be full of sh*t. "Shouldn't I know why I'm taking the bitch out, though? Who for, at least?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Buzzy. His mission complete, he had lost interest in the spy routine. His eyes shifted to Cig's hefty tit*, snug inside the top of her otherwise shapeless fatigues. It looked like he was gauging if they were within grabbing distance. If so, that also put his arm within breaking distance, a fact of which he must have been aware, because he reluctantly pried his gaze away from her front. "I'm just passing along what my buddy from Bedford Hills told me. He remembered you from the stint you did there. Boy, does he have some stories about you. It true you blinded a chick with a pencil? And put another one on a ventilator?"

The pencil story was pure myth, made up by the blinded chick herself because she was too embarrassed to admit she hadn't worn goggles in shop class and got a wood sliver in her eye. The ventilator thing was sort of true—Cig had made the pruno that the dumb c*nt drank, but it was the botulism from the pruno that caused the paralysis and put her on a breathing machine for six weeks. It wasn't like she had died or anything.

Cig gave a noncommittal grunt. She wasn't afraid to take the blame for all the crazy sh*t people tried to pin on her—on the contrary, it just made her more of a legend, more feared, and that either kept others away or turned them into quivering sycophants—but somebody out there obviously knew what she was capable of and how to get her to do it. And it wasn't some jagoff guard from Bedford Hills Correctional. They didn't have to ask, they just told you to do it and you happily obliged so they didn't "accidentally" knock your teeth in during the next staged riot. This sounded more like a favor for a fellow inmate who had seen her handiwork up close. Who would have that kind of juice, though, to send such a ticklish request through the prison pipeline and have it heeded by COs and cons alike?

"Well, anyway," said Buzz, sounding disappointed that she wasn't in a more forthcoming mood. He twisted his wrist side to side, showing off the fancy watch he surely couldn't afford on his wannabe-cop salary. It looked brand new. "I was assured none of this would get traced back to me, so if you blow it, you're on your own, Ciggo. I suggest you don't. Oh, and that reminds me. There wasa message to deliver. I'm supposed to tell you some guy named Lou said . . . something about a queen and a bishop hooking up. You got a kinky side I don't know about?"

Barely listening, Cig had muttered a gruffsuck my dickto Buzzy before buzzing off herself, the information churning in her brain. She knew who was ordering the hit. It wasn't a man named Lou, as the sh*t-for-brains guard had assumed, but her former celly and old chess partner, Lew. They had almost come to blows over the popular move—scholar's mate, wherein the queen and bishop join forces to swiftly achieve checkmate; Cig had been a novice player at the time and swore Lew was cheating with the four-step win. She'd been ready to cram the pawns and her fist into the woman's smirking damn face (it reminded Cig of a sea lion's mug, with those upturned nostrils always staring at you) when Lew offered to teach her about strategy. "Honey, you gotta learn to play the long game if you're gonna make it in here," Lew had said, and she was right.

Rumor was that Lew, short for Lewis—Cig never did catch the first name—who magically got released without serving even half her sentence, had actually been undercover FBI. That seemed unlikely. Cig had spent countless hours with the woman, saw her participate in plenty of altercations, including with guards, laughed at her snide jokes, listened to her crying in her sleep some nights, and had an overall healthy respect for her. Law enforcement generally didn't fare so well in prison or with Cig Martin.

Then again, that would explain how Lew had managed to contact her, about ten years and two prisons later. A fed would probably have access to her information, but Lew also knew the inside scoop from being incarcerated alongside her. Technically, it should piss Cig off that she'd gotten played by the lying, pug-nosed c*nt, except it really didn't. She had obviously made a lasting impression on Lewis, who- or whatever she was, and Cig chose to take that as a compliment. Plus, there were the cigarettes, and she doubted the other woman would have sent along a message, no matter how cryptic, if Lew didn't trust her to do the job and keep her mouth shut.

Yeah, Lew was all right.

And when Sondra Vaughn awoke in medical—morning sickness; believe it or not, before Park f*cked up all her plans and got himself killed, he'd left her with the one thing she truly wanted—the two-hundred-pound, chain-smoking bulldyke sitting on her middle smiled placidly down at her. "No, I'm preg— " were her final words, a moment before the makeshift ice pick passed through eye socket and bone, and into the warm soup of brains beyond, with a single quick jab.

Cig was particularly proud of the shiv, which she had fashioned from a length of straightened chain-link fence, a handle-shaped wad of torn bed sheet, and the stretchy bands from the wrists of several latex gloves. For just such an occasion.

"Checkmate," she said, grinning widely as the blood started to flow. She could just bet the skinny, uppity bitch who convulsed underneath her had never guessed this would happen—that, in the end, her life would be worth so little. A few chess lessons and a pack of cigarettes.

She was walking into the belly of the beast. Not one given to dramatics, unless you counted some of her undercover personas (Star Morrison, for example, hadlivedfor drama), Dana checked the metaphor and found it to be completely true. From the weirdly hollow feeling of the air to the mosaic of sandstone-colored tiles, which blurred together in visceral shades, to the wet slap of her bare feet on the marshy floor, the place really could be the gut of some monstrous leviathan. There was a constant womb sound that seemed to throb from its veins, but more likely came from all the water that swirled and sploshed and flowed into its various cavities. It almost made her seasick.

Then there were the men. They were the real beasts inside the brick and mortar belly that churned around her. Some of them were probably harmless, just there to unwind after a hard day of whatever it was men did in this godforsaken country. Sit around in hammams, soaking or steaming, big white towels wrapped around their big round bellies like ill-conceived sarongs, apparently. Honestly, though, there weren't that many here today. She'd counted five total in her winding, squeaking trek through the bath house, and they were spread out: two were getting massages, one was being soaped up by a girl whose age Dana did not want to know, another was in the sauna, and the last was sound asleep on a benchlike ledge that hugged the wall in the pool area.

If any of them were traffickers—and according to her source, this place was frequented by the human parasites—Dana didn't know which ones. And it was their lucky day that she had a specific target to hunt down. He would be in the hot tub, if her information was correct, and she wouldn't have come if she weren't one-hundred percent sure it was. He came here every day when he wasn't trolling the countryside, looking for fresh, young bodies to sell, and his favorite room was appropriately one of the hottest, just as it would be in the hell Dana was going to send him to.

The one thing she hadn't counted on was doing it barefooted. It was kind of hilarious—she had managed to sneak her gun past the attendant, but not her shoes. Of course, she hadn't strolled in waving the piece around in plain sight, and the strappy sandals she'd worn through the front entrance were exceptionally loud on the tile. Turned out, the fussy little attendant, who hardly spoke a lick of English beyond "no shoes," had done her a favor; the less attention she drew to herself, the better. Besides, Southern girls knew how to navigate all sorts of terrain without anything between their feet and God's green Earth. Or, in this case, the tiles of a highly exclusive spa in Minsk.

It was so exclusive, she wouldn't have gained access without a seamless cover story, and for that she had relied on the one person whose abilities she trusted above all others: herself. You'd be surprised (and probably slightly concerned) how simple it was to fake a passport and jet out of the States, into the heart of Bumf*ck Europe. Once you hit the border of Austria, they mostly stopped caring who you were anyway; Poland could be a bit dicey for amateurs, Ukraine was still preoccupied trying not to be overthrown by Russia, and Belarus itself, well . . . it was awfully chummy with its neighbor, the big red Bear.

Dana hated to profit off the war, but it did make international payback a breeze. No one questioned the wife of a wealthy diplomat who wanted to pamper herself and soak up some local color—quite literally—while her husband was off negotiating peace deals. No one tipped off the bad guy's personal security about a suspicious woman on the premises, either. Nevertheless, she was grateful that Declan Murphy preferred his spa time to be private, one of the few public appearances he made solo. She was always prepared for the unexpected, but engaging in hand-to-hand combat with some gargantuan He-man named Fedor was not an ideal outcome. She'd stick to Murphy, whose file put him at a modest five-ten, and who would likely be buck naked for their encounter. That put him at a serious disadvantage and gave her plenty to aim for if it got physical.

She didn't plan to let it. This needed to be clean and straightforward, not a massacre like the shipping yard. Most of all, it needed to be untraceable, so she didn't spend the next thirty or forty years waiting for one of Mr. Lucky's disciples to hunt her down. He might not be Mexican drug cartel or the Brotherhood of Russia, but he had a helluva far reach and men like him, against all odds, inspired intense loyalty in their followers. Dana had already tangled with a sad*stic leader who trafficked in hate and violence, and she had paid the price. That wasn't going to happen again.

Reaching the final room in what felt like a mile-long tromp through a locker room shower, albeit an upscale one, she saw him. He was indeed in the hot tub, his large, shaggy head tipped back over the edge, arms extended along both sides in a vaguely Christlike pose. It angered her just to make the comparison in her head, and she thought about ending it right then. But she was no Judas, shooting a man from behind when he hadn't even seen her yet. And that would look too much like what it was—an execution. She had something a little more self-inflicted in mind.

"Could you bring me an extra towel, lass? And some more Belaruska." He pointed at the glass he lifted and drained of its clear liquid.

With or without the advertisem*nts she'd seen for Belaruska on nearly every bench and billboard in the goddamn country, she would have recognized the liquid as vodka. No way this guy sat around sipping tap water in a jacuzzi. Especially not the way he was holding out the glass, expecting to have it taken off his hands and returned in a timely manner.

He called her lass. Whodidthat?

Struggling to contain the rage and absolute loathing she felt for the man she'd never met, but whose handiwork had kept her in business the past few years, she stepped forward silently and took the glass. Maybe that's why he'd clocked her as female: her lighter footfall. She had entered the room as unobtrusively as one of the young women who worked here. She was a bit surprised he didn't sense the unadulterated hate that seethed behind him, because to her, it seemed to fill the entire space they occupied; the entire hammam, in all its humid, drippy tranquility; and the whole of Minsk that lay beyond. For a city with so many beautiful houses of worship, it was a godless place and Declan Murphy put most of the other sinners to shame.

"So, this is what selling innocent little children and brutalizing defenseless women'll get you, huh? A life of leisure with some pretty young thing waiting on you hand and foot? Goodness gracious, I must be in the wrong line of work."

He had whirled around the second he heard her voice speaking in the wrong language and most definitely the wrong accent. Her strong Southern draw could be off-putting to some, which was part of why she liked it so much and had made no attempt to drop it over the years (except when UC work required it). For a moment he looked like he had heard one of the banshees of Irish lore, whose terrible wail foretold the death of someone near and dear. Very near and dear in his case. But he hadn't risen to his position as America's #1 scumbag by being a coward. The initial fear wore off quickly, and he co*cked his bedraggled head at her with interest.

"And who might you be, darlin?" he asked in his own thick brogue. He paddled lightly at the burbling water with his hands, putting some more distance between them with a few discrete steps back. It was as if he knew she wanted to smash the glass upside his head just for having the audacity to question her identity.

"My name's not important." A set of three short steps led into the above-ground tub on either side, and Dana picked the farthest from Mr. Lucky, mounting each step at a snail's pace to set the glass on the landing at water-level. They were dancing now, and every movement needed to be unhindered, graceful. "You've never heard of me, anyway. I'm not an underage girl, a lowlife criminal, or NYPD, so I don't rank very high in any of your usual social circles."

He eyed her up and down, from the robe she wore over her bra, underwear, and the inner-thigh holster, to the burgundy polish on her bare toes. It wasn't the outfit she would have chosen to meet this guy in—for that, she had always envisioned tougher, more durable materials: denim, leather, and heavy combat boots, the kind with spikes across the toe—but it had been necessary if she were going to blend in. She could now say for certain, though, that she was wearing more than him. From her vantage point, looking down into the water, she had a mostly unobstructed view (besides the bubbling hot water) of his pecker. Just as bushy and ruddy as the rest of him.

"Well, you're American, and based on the accent I'd say you're just a generation shy of dirt roads, outhouses, and a bluetick hound sunning on the front porch. Appalachia, maybe?" He scrutinized her with startling blue-gray eyes. Not startling because of a harsh or piercing quality, but from the lack of either. They were almost kind, despite the grizzled face they shone out of. They were almost gentle. Those eyes, combined with that brogue, could easily lead impressionable young girls astray. Or a young cop with daddy issues.

Thankfully, Dana was neither of those things. It was unsettling how close he was to the truth, though. She might be concerned about that, if she had any intention of letting him walk out of here alive.

She doesn't, she thought, a big ol' smile spreading across her face. She could play the charming and disarming card too. City folks might enjoy giving her a flack for sounding like a dumb hick, but there were still plenty of people who associated a sweet Southern drawl with hospitality and down-home friendliness. Gullibility, too, and wouldn't it be fun to disabuse Mr. Lucky of that misguided notion?

"If anybody'd know about growing up hard-livin' in a place that gets a bad rap, I reckon it would be you," she said, her voice far more chipper than she felt. There would be plenty of time to celebrate after she wiped this guy off the face of the earth, but for now, she needed to have her wits about her. Slippery as an eel was Declan Murphy, and about as pretty as one too. "Can't imagine they took too kindly to a family of Paddys who multiplied like rabbits back in 1970s' Hell's Kitchen."

He lifted an eyebrow that was in desperate want of trimming, much like the hair, the beard and—let's be honest, folks—the man as a whole. A trim and a dye job. Coarse gray hair was at war with the drab orangey-brown locks that sprouted from his fat coconut of a head, and it had already won the fight for the bush on his face. It coiled from his chest like a confusion of springs, and made Dana wonder if there would be aboi-oi-oingnoise if they were tweaked. "We got along all right," he said. "But I don't think you came all this way to talk about me family, did you, now? Seems like you know quite a lot about me, and since international operations are a federal matter, I take it you're FBI?"

"Call me . . . someone with a vested interest in seeing you pay for your barbarism, luckyhoor66."

The use of his darknet screen name grabbed his attention, and for the first time, he looked vaguely concerned. He covered it well, but Dana saw the eyes flicker to the doorway, the muscles tense in anticipation of reaching for a gun that wasn't there. Hers was snug and warm against her thigh, and she felt an almost sexual charge with that knowledge: she finally had him. He was hers, at least for the next few minutes. She better make it count.

"You work with Sandberg?" Murphy asked skeptically. He was stalling while he glanced around for an escape route. It was possible the bathhouse acoustics would carry a cry for help, but the length of the building, the sound-deadening saunas, and the avoidance of "getting involved" that seemed to be a universal human trait, from the streets of New York City to the public baths of Minsk, made it risky. If no help came, he would look like a coward. Men like him would rather die than be seen that way.

Dana was counting on it. "Sandberg is dead," she said, point blank. After months of keeping news of The Sandman's demise under wraps to prevent this very scenario—Mr. Lucky learning that his Manhattan business partner, whom he was supposedly still communicating with, was actually Dana and a handful of other agents she had enlisted to catfish him—it felt strange and a bit jarring to say it so freely. The way the color drained from Murphy's face made it entirely worth it. "I should know, I'm the one who killed him."

"When?" He had gone into damage control mode, trying to compensate for the cracks that were showing in his armor by being pragmatic, dispassionate. All business. It's what Dana would have done in his place.

"Late May. A few days after he and his pack of wild dogs near 'bout tore Captain Benson to shreds. You know, after you greenlit her." Dana put her hands on her hips to hide their shaking. Fury, not fear, was the cause, but it was good that she hadn't brought out the pistol yet. She would have it perfectly under control when it came time to pull the trigger. "What'd that poor woman ever do to you, huh? I guess I can understand Vaughn's motive—her way of thinkin', she lost a child, thanks to Detective Rollins—but you? You abandoned your kid, then savaged the woman who's been her other parent for the past coupla years. A woman you were supposedly friends with and respected. What the hell happened to your soul, Murphy?"

"It was her!" he suddenly boomed, hitting the water as if he meant to slap it away. A small tidal wave washed over the lip of the tub and splashed Dana's feet. "That little wagon— she poisoned me. I resisted everything they threw at me until she came along. I had honor and integrity, then she wrapped her legs around me, and I lost sight of it all like a proper eejit. You want to blame someone for what I've become, blame that blond succubus."