Olivia found the running trail easy enough. Once she parked next to Bell's SUV she turned her key and sat for a moment. She needed to get herself together. She couldn't come flying in like the frantic loved one. She had to be collected. She had to be Captain Benson. Not Olivia. She let out a short breath, preparing herself what she might find before she hopped out of her car and started down the running trail.

Before long she came up on Bell, Jet, and a small gathering of crime scene techs. Sergeant Bell broke away from the group and met Olivia partway down the path. She didn't give Bell the opportunity to speak before asking, "What have you found?"

"Not much," Bell reported. "Just his phone, an earbud, and a couple spots of blood."

"Not a whole lot to go off on then," Olivia's voice came out more harsh than she intended.

Bell shook her head, "Not really, no."

Olivia began to pace nervously. "What's your team working on?" This had to be work related. Olivia couldn't count the amount of dangerous people Elliot had pissed off.

"We just finished a case in Chinatown. Gang related political corruption," Bell thought for a moment. "We started working a case with the feds, but we are barely in the preliminary stages on that one."

Retaliation for the Chinatown case could be a possibility, but the OCCB's list of enemies was long and powerful.

Ayanna surprised her when she asked, "What cases are you working on?"

Olivia had no reason to be secretive, but she doubted her cases would be at all relevant. "Mine have no bearing on this. He hasn't been involved with any of them."

The look on Ayanna's face suggested that she worried more about his involvement with her rather than any potential case. Olivia suddenly felt defensive. "Our cases have been fairly run of the mill lately. Not the kind anyone would seek retaliation for." Studying her caseload would only waste time.

Ayanna hesitated, and Olivia knew she had another question. Honestly she probably had a thousand questions, and the majority didn't have anything to do with finding Elliot. "What about BX9?"

Her stomach dropped at the mention of the gang, who for a time, seemed hellbent on her destruction. Still, she doubted they had anything to do with this either. "They're laying low, and haven't had much activity since Papa went in." Olivia shook her head emphatically, "And even if they were an issue they know nothing about my partnership with Elliot."

Again, Ayanna eyed her with skepticism. She was Elliot's sergeant, but she was also his friend, which meant she likely knew more than she let on. "Okay. Um, we will look for any red flags in our recent cases." She stepped away from Olivia, "Jet! Let's go!" Jet trotted over. Her large eyes focused on Olivia in a way that was almost disconcerting. "We're heading back to the office. I'm going to have my detectives pull files. We will keep you in the loop."

She didn't want to be 'kept in the loop'. Ayanna would be taking her help. "I'll meet you there," she said and started walking towards her car before Bell had a chance to say otherwise.

-000-

Olivia called Fin while she drove to the OCCB office. He sounded nearly as worried as she felt, but he promised to divvy out tasks to her detectives and keep everything running smoothly while she took care of this. He made her promise to keep him updated. They had been friends for a long time, the three of them. Elliot and Fin had their differences, but they respected each other and throughout the years became friends. This was difficult for both of them.

Once she parked, she followed both Jet and Ayanna into the OCCB headquarters. The two male detectives looked up I'm surprise when the women entered the room.

"What's going on Sarge?" She remembered the detective's name was Reyes. His eyes flicked between Olivia and his sergeant.

"Elliot's officially missing. Jet will text you the crime scene photos, but we have nothing to go off of right now. I need you three," Ayanna eyed her three detectives, "to go through the case files from our last three cases. Flag anything, or anyone that might have a score to settle with Stabler."

Whelan let out a long breath, "That might be a long list," he said under his breath. Ayanna glared at him, but didn't offer a reprimand.

Ayanna shifted her focus to Jet, "Can you unlock his phone? Maybe we can find some clues there or notes or something."

Jet nodded and pulled the phone from the evidence baggie it had been dropped in. "I'll have to run some software to get it unlocked. It might take a little while though."

Olivia held her hand out, "Can I see?"

Jet nodded and handed over the phone. She seemed skeptical, probably questioning Olivia's tech knowledge. Her tech knowledge was limited, but her knowledge of Elliot Stabler was vast. She swallowed a little emotion when the screen lit up, and a picture of his kids smiled back at her. Her stomach lurched at the obvious reminder of the people who still needed him.

It took two tries, but she easily unlocked the phone.

Jet's eyes widened in surprise when she gained access to his home screen. She handed the phone back to Jet. "Woah woah wait." Jet held one hand up. "How did you unlock that?" The answer was simple really. She knew him, and she knew what was most important to him. "Um," Olivia began, but Jet cut her off.

"The first try was his badge number. I caught that, but what was the second one? It wasn't his birthday or anything. Believe me, I know. Jamie makes us celebrate like everything." Her serious eyes flit over to detective Whelan who already had his nose pressed into a computer screen.

Olivia internally groaned, knowing her answer would probably ignite some suspicions among Elliot's team. Jet needed the passcode though, in case she needed to unlock it again. "4015. My badge number when we were partners." She swore she heard crickets chirping, and all the eyes in the room were fixed on her. "I'd check his notes first. He isn't great at keeping digital notes, so I'll check his desk for a notebook, but he probably has at least some of his case notes typed out on his phone." She spun on her heel and hurried towards her desk, leaving the women standing agape behind her.

-000-

Whelan and Reyes ended up camped out in the conference room with their laptops and case files strewn across the table. Jet sat at her desk, working through Elliot's phone.

"Okay. Something has got to be going on there." Jamie said in a hushed voice. He lifted his head to get a better look at Captain Benson who had begun looking through Stabler's desk. "I mean come on, Stabler drops off the face of the planet and an NYPD captain shows up to do grunt work. Something's going on there."

Reyes kept his eyes on the computer screen. "Listen man. Everyone knows something's going on there, but we don't talk about it. It's like some weird unwritten rule or somethin'." Reyes clicked through a few screens. "You really gotta stop digging around for information."

Whelan spun his office chair back and forth while thinking, but Reyes stopped him. "Dude. Stabler is missing like for reals. And I know you are just trying to make conversation or whatever, but we gotta figure this out.

Whelan nodded in understanding. His eyes just needed a break for a minute, and the whole Stabler/Benson thing made him so damn curious. He scooped up one of his files and tossed it towards Reyes, "Take a look at this guy."

-000-

Digging through Elliot's desk felt a little invasive. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before. Years ago their desks were fair game, and thought of a sort of common area between them. He kept her files organized and she stole all of his pencils. She was very familiar with the typical contents of his desk, and knew his notebooks with notes would be in the second or third drawer. He always used the top drawer to keep all his random office supplies organized and stocked. Especially after Olivia had raided it.

She pulled open the second drawer, and she was struck by the dichotomy of Elliot's life. The two sides, often warring, kept him in a state of constant conflict within himself. She lifted a familiar picture of Kathy from the drawer. Beneath her photo were two others. One of the kids, and one of her. She picked up the photo of herself, and tried to remember when it was taken, but she ended up tucking it back in the drawer with the others.

Elliot faced this battle everyday. Work and family. Kathy and Olivia. His two worlds. Worlds that ran parallel, but he kept separate. Worlds that occasionally collided leaving emotional devastation on both sides. She wondered if any of them had ever been truly happy with what they had. Both women only lived half a life with the man they cared about. The man they loved. For Olivia, she could never ask for more than what she had because she always felt like she had more of him than she should. When he left he stole away a piece of her very soul leaving her broken in a way she never quite recovered from.

She shook her thoughts away and pushed the drawer shut. She pulled the bottom drawer open and found a pile of dated notebooks. She pulled the latest three off the top of the pile. She couldn't contain the nostalgic smile crossing her face as she flipped open the first notebook. All the militant order of his desk balanced out the chaos of his notes. His handwriting was as hurried and atrocious as she remembered. The notes scattered all over the page without any real rhyme or reason. Some were even written sideways in the margin. She lightly chuckled at the familiar shorthand. She doubted any of his current colleagues had the aptitude necessary for decoding this mess of notes. Fortunately, she had more than a decade of practice.

It only took Jet twenty minutes to groan in frustration and throw his phone to her desk. "How the hell does he understand any of these notes? I literally have no idea what any of this means!"

Olivia hid her smile, and called for Jet. "Bring it here. I can help."

Jet hurried down from the platform her desk sat on and laid the phone on the desk in front of Olivia. "I literally have no idea. He must keep his autocorrect off or something because none of this makes sense."

Olivia held up a finger indicating Jet needed to give her just a minute. After reading through the first page of notes she pulled a blank sheet of paper from the back of one of his notebooks. She wrote out a sort of translation key for Jet, with one column detailing his shorthand and the other contained the meaning. "These are the most common shorthand you'll see in his notes. You might come across a few others, but just show me, and I can probably figure it out." She handed the paper to Jet.

"Oh my God thank you." She gave Olivia a grateful smile. "I can do advanced coding, but I couldn't understand this if I tried."

Olivia chuckled, "At least you got the electronic version," she held up one of the chaos laden notebooks, "I have to go through these."

Jet grimaced. "Good luck with that."

"I'll need it," Olivia said, after Jet walked away. She tried to focus and control her panic, but she worried they might be running out of time. He was somewhere, bleeding, and she had no idea how bad it was or who had him. The feeling of utter helplessness stole her breath as she continued to power through his notes, hoping, praying, that something would jump out at her.