A/N: sorry it took me so long to update!

Ch.11

In the car on the way to Mrs. Lin's house Olivia kept staring out the window. "What's on your mind?" Elliot asked. He could always tell when something was bothering her. He wasn't going to let it go – he never did. In a way she was glad.

"It's nothing, really," Olivia insisted.

Elliot's eyes told her that he wasn't buying it.

"I'm just confusing myself, okay?" Olivia said, and it was the truth – it just didn't include the details. Right now she just wanted to take her life back – pretend that nothing ever happened. If only it were that easy.

"You know that you can tell me anything," Elliot said.

"I know," Olivia said, still staring out the window. The dark green leaves stuck on the trees swayed back and forth with the wind. The sky was a sullen mix between blue and gray. Olivia was so lost in her inner psyche that she didn't realize it when the car stopped.

"We're here," Elliot said, and they got out of the car and went on like nothing even happened. They did what they did best – solving cases.

Olivia knocked on the door. She wasn't prepared for what she saw when Hannah opened the door –

A pale faced Hannah, still in her blue nightgown. Old tear stains splotched across her face. New tears still forming.

"I'm not in the mood," Hannah said, "For more questioning." Her voice was sharp, tired, and acidic.

"Mrs. Lin, we need more information to help us locate Mae," Elliot spoke.

Hannah Lin stared at the ground. "So you're telling me that you're not going to be able to find her? Great, just great," Hannah said sarcastically. "Now all I need is for Karl to die and then I lose everyone," Hannah said.

"We're going to find her, Hannah," Olivia said in a soft voice. "I promise." But how could she make a promise that she didn't know if she could keep? She would do her best to find Mae, but what if whatever psycho who had her chose to end her life before Olivia, Elliot, and the backup arrived at the scene? What if?

"I told you everything I know," Hannah said.

"Do you know if anything strange happened in the past week preceding your daughter's disappearance? Maybe Mae told you that someone was following her…" Elliot asked.

"If I had seen any signs I wouldn't have let anything happen," Hannah said. Why did she feel the need to keep her guard up, to remain so stubborn?

"I didn't notice anything, okay?" Hannah said. "Mae was there one second, and the next second she was gone. She was screaming, I tried to run after her but a hand pulled her into a yellow car…."

"Did you see the attacker's face?" Olivia asked.

"I think I would have told you guys if I did," Hannah said.

"We're going to find her, Hannah," Elliot assured her.

"Why haven't you found her already?" Hannah asked. Her voice resonated with tired sorrow, something deep in her inner core that shook every ounce of her being. Olivia could tell that Hannah knew that Darren had attempted to kill himself. Olivia realized that she didn't really know what condition he was in at this point, or if he was dead or almost dead or in a coma or something like that. She hated it that she even cared, but she also hated seeing a person torn in two the way Hannah was, so much happening at once. It was obvious that Hannah wasn't a person who didn't know pain, but it was almost as if she had been away from pain for so long that it came as too much of a shock, and that she couldn't carry the weight of it this time around.

That at least Olivia could relate to – years of being told she was nothing by her mother, shoved around by a drunk, raging madwoman who tried so hard to love her but couldn't. Olivia had been a lonely teenager, no friends, trying to bury the pain by cutting herself, letting the pain be absorbed by the crimson blood, sink down somewhere deep inside where she wouldn't be able to reach it. And then putting her pain aside completely, and standing up for the weak; standing up for the victim's rights by becoming a special victim's unit detective. And then in one night all of the stability that she had worked so hard for had collapsed, and right now even though it was against everything she was taught she desperately needed to know how Darren was, but she didn't say anything.

"We're doing our best, Hannah," Olivia said, trying to hide the tears that were threatening to fall down from her eyes.

"We'll call you if we have any leads," Elliot said before they left.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Back at the station, Olivia sat at her desk after going through every yellow car seen passing by the night Mae went missing. They made phone-calls and got more information and hopefully there were witnesses - that someone else who hadn't been panicked had taken down the license plate of the yellow car. They decided to go with a press conference so that anyone who had any clues would come forward.

They had gone through with the press conference and right now the only thing they could do was wait for phone calls that actually were solid.

"Did you hear the news?" Elliot asked.

"What news?" Olivia asked.

"Darren attempted suicide," Elliot said.

Olivia tried to fake a reaction. How was she even supposed to react, anyways? How was she supposed to feel, anyways?

"Yeah, I knew about that," Olivia said nonchalantly.

To be continued…