Sonny Carisi awoke with a throbbing head just to find himself zip tided to a stairwell. Disregarding his disorientated state, he looked franticly around for Barba, but saw nothing but a small pool of blood and no ADA. Since he was stuck to the stairwell and couldn't go anywhere he began yelling and hoped someone could hear. Though at first Carisi found it odd that he would still be tied to the stairwell after the sound of gunfire, but perhaps that sound was common for the residents of this apartment building and they chose to disregard it. After a few minutes, a child who looked about 10 years old popped into the stairwell to help the detective. Having convinced the child to find a knife to untie him, he got up to discover that both his phone and apple watch has be removed from his person and discarded. He quickly turned to the kid and asked if he could barrow a phone. After phoning Benson about the situation, and getting a frantic earful about Barba being kidnapped, Carisi made his way to the witnesses' apartment. Carisi found the apartment unlocked with nothing inside, nothing except for a ransom note for Barba and a burner phone.

Benson and the squad arrived within 15 minutes of Carisi calling Benson. While the EMT's were treating Carisi's head, Fin and Amanda were busy looking into possible security cameras that could have picked up anything. Meanwhile, Benson was interrogating Carisi to Barba's physical state the last time Carisi saw him. "How bad was he shot? Is his condition life threatening? Did you get a good look at the men who did this?" Benson asked anxiously. Asking questions wildly, in fear of possibly losing another SVU squad member after Mike Dodd's unfortunate death.

Fin and Rollins came back with no security footage in the apartment building, but the local bodega had picked up video of a cleaning van leaving the apartment alleyway just 17 minutes after Barba and Carisi had made their way to the apartment building. With the van being the only led that SVU had, Benson ordered for the van to be located.

"I want all of the NYPD looking for that van!" shouted Benson. "I'm not losing another squad member" she muttered under her breath. While SVU and the NYPD were looking for further clues in the building, Benson received a call on the burner phone.

"This is Lieutenant Olivia Benson" she answered the phone call with.

"Ah, Benson. Good to speak with the boss then. As you may now know, your ADA Rafael Barba is in BX9 care, and we don't intend on giving him up without a deal."

"What do you want?" Benson replied while snapping at Rollins to have the call traced.

"We want our BX9 brothers in jail released, or else we will kill Mr. Barba. If you don't cooperate we will have no choice but to put a bullet in Mr. Barba's skull. You have 12 hours until our next call, Lieutenant Benson."

And with that the line went dead.

"Where you able to trace the call?"

"No, the line went dead before we could get an exact location, however, we are picking up that caller isn't in Manhattan. Instead it's pointing us towards Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Rafael Barba arose to a strong damp smell of rotting wood accompanied by a salty breeze. While trying to adjust his eyes to figure out where he was he could hear the sounds of seagulls in the distance. Wherever he was, it was not Manhattan. As his vision came back fully he realized he was tied down to a cheap plastic beach chair in the middle of a living room. The room appeared to have been a vintage living room with a fireplace mantel accompanied by the loud sound of a heavy storm with high winds. As Barba was looking around his setting, a man appeared in the doorway. "I hate the sound these old buildings make. It sounds like a fucking hurricane is ripping through the area, but when you walk outside you realize the breeze is normal, just flowing through the damn wooden building like a freight train." Barba instantly tensed up when he got a good look at the man before him. Nothing overly exciting, a Latino male, average height and average built but with a long deep scar running from the top of his hand to his elbow. The man noticed Barba's line of sight and smirked a little. "You should have seen the other guy, he ended up in far worse condition and in the bottom of the Hudson, if you know what I mean. See if you and your lieutenant don't cooperate, I'll be forced to kill you. Or better yet, torture you to remember what BX9 can do to you and your loved ones in the future." Barba tried not to look scared, keeping a stern look on his face, but inside he was genially worried. Hopefully Carisi was safe and Benson and SVU were searching for him.

"What do you want from me, what can I do to help?" muttered Barba while trying to maintain his cool demeanor.

"Oh you damn well know what BX9 wants. We want our brothers released from jail. Released from the sentences you gave them."

"You know I can do anything about that now, it's out of my hands."

"Not unless you come forward and clam you were being paid by another gang to put an end to BX9 members."

Barba had to laugh a bit over the absurdity of the request. "Who in their right minds is going to believe that I took favors from a rival gang to get BX9 off the street? An ADA would gain nothing from such a petty low level gang." With that response, Barba received a painful blow to the nose. "Fuck" Barba nasally garbled out. "I think you broke it." Barba instinctively tried to reach to hold his bleeding nose, but couldn't since his hands were tied to the beach chair.

"You talk shit about BX9, you are going to suffer for it. But just wait you haven't seen anything yet."

And with that, the unnamed BX9 member left the room, and left Barba bleeding tied to the beach chair.

"Great." Barba mumbled. Not only was his pants and tie ruined from blood but now his dress shirt had blood spattered from his bleeding noise. Though he instant Barba realized he was more worried about his wardrobe than his life, he had to laugh to himself. "The great Rafael Barba died, a fashionable crime."

What seemed like hours went by and Barba remained tied to the beach chair. He had contemplated trying to get out of the chair, but realized he would look like a fool knocking the chair over and being awkwardly sprawled out on the floor, so he decided against it. More hours passed by and his nose had stopped bleeding. As for his leg, it too had stopped bleeding, but didn't feel good. It didn't smell bad per say, but it also didn't smell like roses. The blood had stiffed around his tie and his leg was feeling rather uncomfortable.

Even more hours pasted until the man returned. "Say Rafael, we are going to play a little game with you and your partner Benson."

"She isn't my partner." Barba whispered with a huff

"What was that?"

"Nothing. I'm just saying we are equals and we don't have a connection, nothing is there. She has a boyfriend. And doesn't care about me."

Barba was trying to downplay his friendship with Benson, trying to derail Olivia's relationship with Barba, and although it had recently been strained, they were still good friends.

"Yeah, yeah, you lying bastard. We've seen you two going out for drinks together. Don't try and fool me."

"No, you have it all wrong. She is with the IAB Captain, not me."

"Shut up, I don't care. She is your friend, and if anything happens to you believe me, she will come running. Ah, speaking of which its time."

The man was soon accompanied by two other goons, in fact the two men who had attacked Barba and Carisi in the stairwell. The blurry of the two men, instead of carrying a gun this time was carrying a wooden stair case railing support. Barba knew that object couldn't be good news.

"It's time for us to call your friend Benson."