I own nothing.

It was the first time in hours the kidnapper had let Janey see his face.

After shooting Maureen he had grabbed her, spun around her so her back was to his chest, slammed his hand over her mouth and put the gun to her head. The box dropped from her frozen fingers. "We are going for a walk, Maureen," he whispered. "You are not going to make a sound. You saw me shoot your friend. I will shoot anyone you speak to. Do you understand me?"

Janey was so shocked fear didn't set in right away. This guy had just shot Maureen, his gun was touching her ear, and in the adrenaline rush burning through her body the only coherent thought that came to her was: He's not using contractions.

Then he pulled her to his side, pressed the gun into her stomach, and started to move. And she started to feel.

Maureen, he shot Maureen! Just pulled out a gun and fired, out of nowhere…she tried to hear screams or anything coming from their room as they moved down the hall, but the man's shirt was rustling right by her ears and her heartbeat was drowning out all other sounds. Had he killed her? One shot, just like that? She didn't even know where Maureen had been hit; there hadn't been time to turn around before he grabbed her.

If I hadn't lied about my name, would he have shot me and taken Maureen?

This isn't real, this isn't real, it's too fast. It was inconceivable that a few seconds and a white lie could have put her here.

But his grip on her arm was waking up her stunned senses. His body radiated heat. She was horribly aware of his height and strength; she had never realized before how small she was.

He pulled her down the stairs and out the front door. She was silent as ordered; the front desk girl hardly looked up. When they faced the empty quad a gust of freezing air hit her in the face, and she shrieked and gasped out quietly, without thinking, "God, help me!"

As he dragged her around the back of the dorm her legs suddenly weakened. When she stumbled, he yanked her and she flew forward onto the ground, scraping the side of her head. She was crying now, as silently as she could. She could hear him coming at her from behind, and she crawled forward in a weak attempt to run, forgetting about the gun, but he slammed her shoulders into the ground. A black pillowcase was yanked over her head and pulled into a tight knot at the neck.

The man was on his knees straddling her back, and after tying off the pillowcase he hesitated. They were both gasping for air. She could feel a shaking tension in his thighs. Then, to her horror, he leaned forward slowly, laying his upper body against hers, pressing her into the ground. His face was right by her ear, his hot breath burning through the thin cloth. Her whole body shuddered.

No…no, not this, not this, please, please, please no.

But he seemed to recover himself; he suddenly stood and jerked her up. A few more steps, and she was rammed into a metal wall – a car?

He let go of her long enough to open the door, and wild terror took her over.

She turned and stumbled blindly, crying "Somebody! Somebody help me!" But her voice came out a reedy whisper, like in nightmares where you need to scream and can't, and he was on her again in a second.

"I told you to be quiet. There is strong incentive for you to obey."

Another odd thought: Complete sentences.

He had picked up rope from his car. As she sobbed he tied her hands behind her back, then her feet. Almost effortlessly he picked her up and threw her into the backseat.

Now she was in his home, she guessed. After a long drive during which she exhausted herself crying, he removed her from the car, carried her down two flights of stairs, and set her down against a cold wall. He cut the bindings from her hands, then immediately fastened them to the wall above her head. The clamps he used felt like handcuffs.

"I hope you are comfortable, Miss Stabler."

And he left her. Almost. She heard him move to the far side of the room (basement?), where he breathed loudly and rustled once in a while. The sound seemed about level with her. She developed a horrible mental image of him crouched in the corner, rocking and panting, like a fetal monster. There was a tense wait.

Was it only this morning she had been watching The Princess Bride with Maureen?

Finally, when Janey felt a body-shaking scream of desperation welling up inside her, something happened. She heard him shuffling towards her. She jumped as he touched her shoulders… and untied the pillowcase. When he lifted it off her head, she was met with a set of shockingly luminous green eyes staring unblinking into hers. The man had taken off his uniform jacket and was now in just a white tank top and pants. He was barefoot. His hair was slightly shaggy, brown. The way he was posed on his knees in front of her, she could see every ropy line of muscle in his upper body, and she knew he wanted her to see.

Still, he didn't move. They stared at each other in silence – he with the intense scrutiny of a scientist, she with desperate fear of looking away – for a long time.

After Maureen woke up from surgery and was able to tell them what actually happened, Elliot, to Olivia's relief, seemed to recover himself. His eyes were focused, he was standing tall, and he was ready to work. After making Maureen repeat her description of the perp several times, he pulled Olivia into the hall.

Kathy watched them through the open door. She had been upstate at a conference, and hadn't been able to arrive until four hours after Maureen's 911 call.

When she first ran up the hall, face tearstained and hair askew, Elliot had caught her up in a hug and rocked her for a while, whispered, "She's gonna make it, Kath," and kissed the top of her head; Olivia, trying to be unobtrusive, had sat silently pretending not to watch. Kathy had absorbed Elliot's comfort for a minute, but then recovered herself and pulled away. She had gone to sit with Maureen and hadn't said a word since, other than to ask about Maureen's condition.

Olivia resented Kathy quite a bit for putting Elliot through the divorce. He was a deeply emotional man; that was what made him so good at his job, the ability to feel the pain of victims without going numb himself. No matter how angry he got, he loved his wife – still loved her. The divorce had hurt him badly. Now, when he needed his wife's support more than ever, she remained cold.

Kathy's gaze had to be eating its way into Elliot's back while he and Olivia whispered, but he didn't mention it.

As usual, when things got too harsh, he was all about the job.

"I know the guy, Liv. His name is Lionel Sachet. He was released from Sing Sing last month," here his jaw tightened with anger, "After eight years. He raped and tortured at least four teenage girls to death, and was working on a fifth when we caught him. But we only got one conviction, on the last girl, and then only on rape. He's out on good behavior."

"You collared him?"

"Caught him in the act. The girl would have been dead in another day, she was...The guy's a monster. He keeps them chained up for days, strips them, cuts their hair, starves them, puts Windex in their water to weaken them...Liv, we've got to find him now. Janey's got maybe a couple days before he does anything permanent."

"How can you be sure it's him?"

"He fitsthe description. Maureen kept saying he had big eyes, it was the first thing she noticed. Sachet's got huge eyes."

Olivia frowned. "You know that's not enough, Elliot."

"Then get Munch and Fin down here with a photo lineup!" he snapped loudly.

He winced, glancing back at Maureen and Kathy, who looked away. He breathed hard for a second while Olivia waited in silence. She knew her partner; this was how he dealt.

"Just call his parole officer, he'll be gone. The timing can't be a coincidence, the M.O. fits…

"He hates me, Liv. I caught him on top of the girl, naked, pulled him off her, kicked him in the balls…and I broke his nose. And drove him to the station that way."

Sounded like Elliot. Olivia remembered what Munch had said about Elliot making enemies, and tried to push it out of her mind. "That would do it."

"He's got a thing about being humiliated. Part of his neurosis, he wants to be seen as perfect. He takes care of himself, works out, goes to salons. And he's trained himself to speak really carefully, perfectly. You'll hear it if you watch interviews with him: No contractions, no cursing, nothing. Probably why he got the good behavior let-up: he doesn't look or sound like a criminal."

"Well, he's all we've got. We'll start with him."

SVU had already put out a missing persons alert on Janey Christopher. They used her picture, but no name. They didn't want to endanger her by cluing the perp in to his mistake. Fin had called Janey's mother in San Diego, but it would be a day or so before she would be able to make it to New York.

Elliot and Olivia didn't tell Kathy that the perp hadn't been after Janey all along. Maureen was safe in the hospital and technically, as a civilian, Kathy wasn't on the short need-to-know list. Olivia had actually asked Maureen not to tell her mother; the fewer people who knew, the better, for now, she said, and Maureen had tearfully nodded.

Before heading to the station, Elliot checked on her. He hugged her lightly, as well as he could without touching her injured chest, and she whispered in his ear, "Daddy, it's my fault if anything happens to Janey. You've got to find her."

His stomach clenched nauseatingly. It wasn't Maureen's fault. Everyone involved knew whose fault it was…except Janey Christopher, who he had never actually met.

"We'll find her, baby, I promise," he said. Because if he didn't…

Lionel Sachet was truly a monster. Elliot hadn't yet told Olivia everything about the collar. The girl Sachet had chained to the wall – a lovely sixteen-year-old honors student named Siabhon – had survived in his basement three weeks, longer than any of the others. When Elliot found her she had been unrecognizeable. Her face was covered in uncleaned razor cuts; her breasts, in human bite marks. Her tongue and lips were so damaged she couldn't speak for days.

She killed herself several weeks before the trial. It was part of the reason they couldn't get the conviction on the other girls; Sachet had told Siabhon all about murdering them, but without her testimony anything the detectives knew was hearsay. Her testimonies were out for the grand jury; death by suicide nullified witness validity under New York law. And they had no proof.

Now it would be a race against the clock to keep Janey Christopher from becoming that proof.

Elliot strode past Olivia in the hallway, leading the way to their squad car.

They began the search for the friendly little redhead chained to a wall in Maureen's place.