AN: Slow few days at work ahead = more updates!
"Okay, where the hell is Rollins?" Liv sighed to anybody in the squad room who would listen, looking around at nine forty-five that morning. She didn't sound angry, just exasperated.
"I haven't heard from her this morning," Fin said from his desk.
"She left for the gym at five this mornin', said she'd see me here," Sonny offered as an explanation.
"Well, it's almost ten o'clock. This is bad, even for her," Liv replied.
"I tried textin' her, she hasn't responded," Sonny added.
"You don't think..." Liv trailed off, but everybody knew what she was implying.
"Nah, Liv. She's straight," Fin assured her.
"You sure about that?" Liv responded.
Sonny bridled visibly, defensive, but also growing increasingly more worried. "Trust me, Lieu, she's not gamblin'."
His tone was firm enough that Liv didn't challenge him. "Somebody find her," Liv concluded.
Once their lieutenant walked away, Fin looked expectantly over at Sonny. "Where would she be?"
"I dunno. I mean, she likes the gym, but not that much. And she knows Liv is always on her ass about bein' late," Sonny murmured. Concern was beginning to etch itself on his face. Isn't that where she said she was going that morning? He had still been half asleep, not nearly as ambitious as she was when the sun wasn't up and he hadn't had at least two cups of coffee...
Fin shook his head, but he agreed, "something's up."
Sonny's phone vibrated in his back pocket and he quickly retrieved it, anxious. He had hoped the message was from Amanda, but instead it was Audrey, confirming that Amanda hadn't returned to the apartment that morning. He tossed his iPhone onto the surface of his desk. "This isn't right. She's been totally obsessed with this case and she'd never just not show up."
Fin stood up and grabbed his coat from the back of his chair. "Why don't we go down to the gym, see if they know anything?"
That's what solidified Sonny's fear: to get Fin uneasy was a feat, but he was putting on his jacket and heading for the door without a word to Liv, like this was too urgent to waste time asking for permission.
"You know her?" Fin held his phone up for the tan, toned girl at the front desk at BFX Studio on 6th Avenue of the Americas. Amanda's photo looked out at her from the screen.
"Oh yeah, that's Amanda. She's been coming here for years," the bubbly trainer said.
"She here today?" Fin asked.
"Yeah, my five forty-five boxing class. She's badass, one of my best," she replied enthusiastically.
"Did you see her leave?" Sonny asked anxiously.
The trainer's brow furrowed. "Yeah. She looked like she was dressed for work, around seven. She said 'bye' to me on her way out, she always does."
"Go, Mandy! You're smokin' those girls!"
She was running. Sprinting. Flying. She was twelve years old and racing toward the finish line, her competitors pounding the rubberized pavement in her wake. They should have known better than to challenge her that day: her father was in the stands and she'd be damned if she would disappoint him.
Just a few more feet. Eyes narrow, lungs on fire, her long legs made huge strides toward the end of the track. She almost collapsed with joy when she knew her toe crossed the line before all of the others, but she skidded to a stop to watch her competitors join her, all of them appearing dismayed, defeated.
On the sidelines, her father wrapped her skinny frame up in a big, bear hug. He smelled like whiskey and cigarettes. "That's my girl, that's my Mandy," he told his oldest daughter proudly. "A winner just like her daddy."
Amanda was in Loganville - and then she wasn't. She wanted to hold onto the warmth of the memory, but it slipped away quickly like she was trying to keep water in cupped palms. Slowly, she became more aware of her body: one side of her head was in searing pain, all of her limbs sore. Her vision slid in and out of focus; it was making her dizzy trying to get her bearings. She tried to move to rub her eyes, but her hands were behind her back, wrists trapped in handcuffs - her own handcuffs, she gradually realized.
She was sitting down against a cold concrete wall. The room was dark and musty, like a basement. Whose basement? How did she get there? Where was her coat? And her gun? She shook her head to try to get some clarity, but that only made her skull throb and she was immediately nauseous from the pain. She wasn't quite alert enough to be afraid, not until she heard the creak of footsteps coming down the wooden steps. Adrenaline rocketed through her veins, forcing Amanda's eyes wide open.
"You're awake," a female voice observed.
A light came on over head, illuminating the woman who now stood before her. Carol Garner smiled down at Amanda Rollins.
"What... what the hell are you doing?" Amanda heard herself sputter.
Carol crouched to Amanda's level. "Your head looks like it hurts," she observed, her voice dripping with faux sympathy.
Terrified and confused, Amanda pressed her back further into the wall, keeping space between her and Carol. Her instinct was to scream, but could anyone hear her? She had to think like a police officer but it was so hard, she was so foggy and disoriented. She pulled big breaths into her lungs, trying to keep her facial expression neutral. "What am I doing here?"
Carol stood up and began to wander around the little basement. "I looked at your phone before I tossed it," she said casually, as if she hadn't heard Amanda's question. "You have a very pretty family."
Amanda's heart was beating so fast she thought she would be sick. This was revenge. This woman, a nurse and a mother of two, was angry enough at Amanda to take her hostage. She had underestimated Carol's desperation that night at the precinct; she had written her off as just another distraught family member, just another helpless spouse.
Now it was Amanda who was helpless.
It didn't take long: the squad quickly determined that Amanda was missing. Liv was fast to mobilize the rest of NYPD and put a trace on the detective's phone, which was tracked to an apartment in Brooklyn rented by a man by the name of Adam Merrill.
There, a 20-something-year-old sat alone on a dingy couch, his laptop on the coffee table, Amanda's phone plugged into the USB port. He leapt up as police broke down his front door, appropriately stunned by the violence of their unexpected entrance.
"Where is she?" Fin demanded loudly as the other officers spread out in the tiny apartment.
"What, what are you-" Adam sputtered.
Sonny grabbed Adam by his stupid plaid shirt and slammed his back against the living room wall. "That phone. Where'd you get it?"
Adam put his hands up in surrender, his body trembling in Sonny's grip, eyes wide with fear. "I found it! I found it! In Manhattan, it was sitting on top of a trash can. I thought I could delete the memory and sell it!"
"Do not lie to me," Sonny threatened angrily, teeth gritted and jaw clenched.
"I swear! I swear, man, I just found it this afternoon," Adam stammered. "You can take it, I don't want it!"
"Let him go, Carisi. All the rooms are clear. She's not here. This punk doesn't have her," Fin instructed Sonny.
Sonny's eyes narrowed on Adam. For a moment he wondered if it would feel good to punch him, like that would serve as a sufficient outlet for his mounting anxiety. Slowly, he released his grasp on Adam's shirt, and with one final, unnecessary shove, he let him go.
He snatched the phone off of the charging cord connected to the laptop. Jesse and Frannie's faces grinned up at him from the home screen. Sonny couldn't help himself: he started thumbing through the device, looking for any clue as to where Amanda was. Kim had texted her sister a bible verse that morning, then Audrey said she was running late. Sonny's messages - he was still 'Carisi' in her contacts, just like she was 'Rollins' in his - were followed by Fin and Liv in her inbox, all of them unread. Her e-mail was filled with SVU correspondence and store advertisements. His heart sunk in his chest.
"Get this to the lab for prints," Sonny told a uniformed officer distractedly, handing over the iPhone. He almost didn't want to let it go, like it was his only tangible link to Amanda, but he watched the officer seal it up in a plastic evidence bag anyway.
"What's your daughter's name?" Carol asked her.
Amanda glared at her in silence.
Carol reached into the pocket of her jeans, pulling out a small, orange-capped syringe. She rolled it through her fingers while eyeing Amanda. "I'm a nurse, you know. At Bellevue," she explained. She appeared thoughtful before reciting, "Jesse Rollins, born December thirtieth at 4:01 p.m. Seven pounds, two ounces. You both almost died on the operating table, you from loss of blood, Jesse from lack of oxygen." She smiled. "No father on the birth certificate. Just you."
Her jaw clenched. If she hadn't felt violated before, she certainly did now. She swallowed hard. "What do you want from me?" Amanda asked quietly, her eye on the syringe Carol was toying with.
"I remember when my first son was born. Jacob. Such an easy baby. Same with Christopher," she went on. Suddenly, a shadow crossed her face. "They are good boys. They deserve more than this, better than this. Better than what you did to them. You get to live your happy little life while ours is turned upside down. While I have to raise my children without a father." Amanda watched Carol's chest rise and fall rapidly as she became more and more agitated. "I lost my job, you know. They don't trust me working with people anymore, they think I knew something about what my husband was doing. Nobody understands how I couldn't have known, nobody understands that I could never even imagine that the person I've been married to for ten years is capable of... of what he did."
For a fleeting moment, Amanda felt badly for her. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you have to go through-"
"Shut up," Carol interrupted, her voice tremulous. She held up the syringe shakily. "See this? It's pure insulin. Do you know what happens when a non-diabetic gets a shot of this? Extreme hypoglycemia, your blood sugar plummets. Then you go into shock, then a coma, then... you die."
Amanda's first thought wasn't a fear of death, it was a fear of surviving after that injection potentially did irreversible damage to the child she was currently carrying. She tried not to let her panic show on her face. "Look, please, you don't have to do this. I can help you and your kids. Let me help you," Amanda said levelly. "But you need to let me go."
"Oh, you're going to help me, alright," Carol snapped. "You're going to get your D.A. on the phone and you're going to have him make a deal with my husband's lawyer. No prison time, he needs psychiatric help."
Her eyes widened in disbelief. "Mrs. Garner, you and I both know that's not going to-"
"Shut up!" Carol shrieked, stamping her foot like a child. "God, you are so stupid. I have you in your own handcuffs and nobody knows where you are. I could kill you right now and nobody would have a goddamn clue-"
"Okay, okay," Amanda interrupted quickly. She was willing to do anything to buy herself more time. "But without my phone, I don't know his number..."
"Don't you worry about that, I got everything I needed out of your phone. See, I think ahead, unlike you. You thought you could do this to my family and get away with it."