A/N: Last chapter was brutal, I know. I just want to thank everyone who's reading and reviewing this fic. It's turned into my baby and I'm really enjoying writing it. Thanks for reading and sticking in there with it, even if I'm playing with your feelings :D

December 6th – 4:53 p.m.

"Offed himself."

Carisi looked at the corpse of Nate Havisham draped over the tub, eyes wide open and blood dripping from a bullet wound. Half of the contents of his head was splattered along the wall, brain matter and skull fragments decorating the tub floor. Fin just shook his head and nodded for CSU, who'd immediately come in once the house was cleared to begin investigation.

Carisi left the room, following Fin back down the short hallway just in time to see Amanda waving a few CSU agents down into the basement.

"No Barba?"

Amanda shook her head, waiting for them to pass her by and join Liv downstairs before she turned to Fin and Carisi. Her face was grim and both men knew the news couldn't have been good.

"Puddle of blood. His crucifix is down there, too…," she trailed, "We were too late. They took him."

Carisi cursed and laced his fingers behind his head while Fin hung his, crossing his arms over his chest and letting the news sink in. They hadn't jumped soon enough. Even with all the quick action planning and a shaky, but clear objective, they'd still been too slow.

Which reinforced a theory the NYPD had been investigating for years.

BX-9 had eyes and ears on them. If not on the inside, they were watching them from the outside. They had lookouts and they'd been warned when they'd left the precinct.

"Liv's…not taking it well. She's pissed and upset and…just don't say anything. Let her talk," Amanda said, specifically looking at Carisi. Fin knew Liv like the back of his hand, but Carisi had a hard time knowing when to approach people. He had a knack for wanting to comfort people when they just wanted to be left alone.

Liv wasn't in the right state of mind to receive comfort and Amanda understood. She didn't have the same type of feelings towards Barba, but he was their friend (reluctantly) and she and the rest of them weren't going to stop until they found him.

Alive?

That was the question that was going through all their minds. When they did find Barba…was it going to be alive or dead?

Amanda couldn't help but think the latter was going to be the outcome. She tried her best not to think negatively, remembering the dressing down she gave Carisi when he uttered the same kind of idea. She quickly cleared those thoughts from her mind and lead Carisi and Fin downstairs, listening to the reason they were called into the bathroom.

Honestly, she didn't think much of the man. From what she could gather from Lexi, he wasn't an outstanding father. He was a junkie who was too focused on his drugs and not focused enough on the welfare of his own child.

Amanda was going to have to call Lexi soon and break the news. Somehow, she didn't think it was going to be all that heartbreaking for the girl. She'd moved out, in her head at least, a long time ago.

"Jesus," Carisi said out loud, looking at the large puddle of blood, spotting the cross laying in the center of it. He dragged his eyes over to the far-left corner of the room and spotted Liv. She had her head down in her palm, looking blankly at the floor under her feet. The tension was back in her body and it was easy to see. It made her look more ridged and worried; she looked as if the entire weight of the world was bearing down on her shoulders again and her team was powerless to help her.

Fin walked around Carisi and Amanda, shuffling straight up and looking over the CSU techs as they dusted for prints and collected samples. They all watched as one of the techs gently pulled the crucifix out of the blood, the dark matter dripping down into the puddle with loud splats. It was sickening to hear. They bagged the necklace a moment later and handed it off, ready to pass it off into their evidence bag, but Liv charged forward and took it from them without asking.

Amanda waved off the confused tech and simply averted her gaze, waving Carisi over to the shelved walls where numerous boxes sat. They needed to be looked through quickly, just in case, before the uniforms came in and did a full investigation.

Meanwhile, Liv stood still in the center of the room, ignoring the activity around her as she stared down at the bloody gold cross. She ran her thumb across the crucifix, trying to find a connection to him in anyway. The blood was terrifying, coating the immaculate gold, like a reminder that they were too late to save him. He was out there hurting, injured, in pain somewhere and she'd spent too much time talking.

She bit back tears again, wanting to be pissed at herself for being such a cry baby. They had been so close to finding him and they hadn't, so now they had to canvas and do some more work to get him back.

He wasn't dead.

He couldn't be dead.

Rafael Barba was tough and strong and didn't take any shit. She believed he was a fighter and he would fight his way through this alive. He was waiting on her and she had to get moving. Liv took one last longing look at the crucifix before she plopped it down in the evidence bag and turned to talk sternly to her squad, surprising them with her renewed determination and vigor.

"Set up a perimeter. Talk to neighbors, see if they saw anyone leave the house or anything suspicious at all. Someone had to have seen something and we're not leaving until we find them. Move out."

Liv made it halfway up the stairs with her crew in tow when an officer rushed into the doorway, calling for her and holding a tablet in his hand. He seemed excited, waving her up and into the living room and pointing at the screen of the electronic device.

"This house is bugged," the officer, Sawyer, said, adjusting his glasses as he walked over to two computers set up on the kitchen table, a tech bent over and typing several lines of code into one laptop while the other displayed several different black and white screens. Liv bent down to get a better look and almost immediately spotted herself moving in one of the screens. She looked behind her quickly before turning back, seeing Carisi, Amanda and Fin walking out from the basement staircase.

"Cameras?"

"Yeah," Sawyer nodded enthusiastically, taking a finger and swiping through several video feeds, "We went to sweep the house for any electronics and our sensors found these hidden cameras in every room."

Sawyer held up a tiny black speck in an evidence bag. It was extremely small, but Liv had seen smaller ones, damn near invisible to naked eye. They were expensive, though and hard to install. NYPD had access to them, using them in investigations or undercover agents that needed to be monitored.

"And you hacked into the feed?"

"Not only that," he said and put the evidence bag down so he could gesture at the tech working steadily next to him, "But we hacked into the IP address of the computer and pulled all the saved data from the cameras. I extracted the video from just before we pulled the data and rewound back a couple of hours…"

Liv exchanged a glance with Fin before she moved to stand by Sawyer, who was tapping away on the tablet. He pulled at the time bar and tapped the play button, a familiar figure showing up on the screen and Liv could feel her heart jump to her throat.

Seeing him in black and white, silent and in obvious pain, was heart wrenching. She hadn't seen him in days and now she was watching him being pushed out of the basement stairwell and towards the backdoor. He had a large bandage wrapped around his arm and two men on either side, pushing him along while a menacing figure brought up the front, holding a gun and yelling orders at them.

The feed cut off as soon as the back door opened and Liv stood back, hand on her chest and feeling like she was going to be sick. Sawyer tapped a few more times on the screen, "Luckily, they installed an outdoor camera just above the doorway."

Sawyer turned the tablet around and showed them shoving Barba into the backseat of a car, two of the men climbing into the front and the other climbing in next to Barba. The whole scene played out in less than a minute and they watched the car peel out from around the house.

"License plate. Start tracking it," Liv barked, a tiny spark of hope in a total fog of darkness that had settled around this entire investigation. Carisi turned on his heel, already headed out to a squad car to run the plate number, Fin following with his phone out and ready to call TARU. They were going to need traffic cams, store cams, anything that could possibly pick up the location.

"Good work, guys," Amanda said, "Since you have an IP address I'm assuming you have a name that came back attached to it?"

"No luck finding anything. Wherever this feed is going and being backed up with, it's secure and not easily hacked. They have all kinds of high tech spyware on this thing. Every Jeremy tries getting in," he pointed back at the tech, "…they shoot him down."

"We're going to have to get the experts in on it. Until then, thank you. Keep combing through those videos and find me anything with Barba in it. The more video evidence we have of him the better. Also, I want close images and facial recognition working now. I also want time stamps recorded to the very second."

Sawyer nodded and turned back to the screen, intent to get back on working with the tech. Liv and Amanda quickly made their way outside, spotting Carisi climbing out of a cruiser and Fin barking into his cell phone.

"Put out a city-wide alert and we've got traffic cams in the works right now. The license plate comes back to a Victor Maldonado. Served ten years on a drug charge, acquitted of a first-degree murder charge back in 2007. He's a known boss in BX-9."

"Good," Liv said, cracking a smile at the progress being made despite earlier, "Let's hope he was one of the dumb asses we just caught on camera."

December 6th – 6:23 p.m.

Lexi dropped her phone on the bathroom counter and sat down on the edge of the tub, tears rolling down her cheeks but she didn't sob.

Amanda had told her to stay close to her phone and she obeyed, checking it every 15 minutes for an update that hadn't come until just then. When she got back to the hotel room, her grandmother had chastised her for ignoring her texts and calls.

Fortunately, she could lie her way out of it and blamed the loud music in the department store on the fact that she couldn't her phone. She apologized profusely and put on a happy smile, feeling on edge and nervous the entire time they ate dinner and walked through the heart of the city.

They'd only gotten back to the room ten minutes before, intent on resting before going to a late movie that night and ice cream later. She'd been excited about the idea before this entire thing happened. Now? She couldn't even stomach the thought of having a good time.

Her dad was dead, her tip lead the detectives nowhere and now she was a parentless 17-year-old, shoved in the middle of an abduction investigation with a target on her back.

Lexi stared at her reflection in the mirror, wrapping her arms around her middle as more tears continued to fall from her cheeks and onto her hooded sweater. On some level, it disturbed her that she wasn't more upset about her father's death. It was ruled a suicide. Death by his own hand. Instead of feeling sorrow and loss, she just felt incredibly sad for him. She would mourn the loss in a different way from people who'd lost their parents before.

It made her feel terrible, but she couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. For the first time in a long time, she felt like a burden wasn't hanging over her head. The possibility of never having to go back to that house was filling her with something akin to happiness and it was sickening. How could she be like that? How could she be sick enough to be thankful she wouldn't have to go back to that house or see her drug addicted father again?

There was a small knock on the door and her grandmother called for her, excitement in her voice as she read off movie times through the door and commenting on what she wanted to see the most. Lexi didn't hear any of it, staring herself down in the mirror and trying to decide if who she saw was the person she truly wanted to be.

She was a snitch now. She told on dangerous people. Her father was dead and she wasn't sad about it. Lexi wiped her tears on her sleeve and stood up. She fixed her make-up and responded to her still talking grandmother behind the door. She wiped at her runny nose and plastered a fake smile on her face before she opened the door.

This may not be the path she wanted to take, but it was what it was and there was nothing to stop it now. She would have to break the news to her grandmother later when the police inevitably called on her again. She would have to identify the body (thankfully Detective Rollins was able to put that off until tomorrow) and explain to the older woman talking animatedly in front of her that she was parentless and not sad about it.

But all that would come tomorrow. She would deal with the consequences of her choices tomorrow, when things would be better and clearer.

She hoped it would be better.

December 7th – 12:07 p.m.

The car came to a stop on a dark patch of dirt by a river. It was a well-hidden patch, the overgrown brush covering it from the darkened road next to it. The road itself looked like it went on for hours and they were in the middle of nowhere as far as Zeke was concerned. They'd been driving for a good four hours, stopping to eat and pick up some more drugs, all while the lawyer was passed out cold next to him.

Zeke subconsciously wiped his hand against his jeans, still coated in the man's dried blood after he'd been forced to staple the long cut on his arm closed and wrapped it with gauze. The screams of pain were still ringing in his ears. The number of times he uttered apologies between the gasps of pain and pleads were going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

"I'm sorry," Zeke said quietly, ignoring the demands for him to hurry up from the doorway at the top of the stairs. He poised the stapler over the cut again, trying to drown out the pleas for him to stop as another staple was lodged into his skin. The man cried out in pain, hot tears spilling from his eyes as more blood flowed from his arm.

The staples, although torturing and harsh, were working and reducing the blood loss. It was painful, he understood, but the sooner he got this done, the sooner they could leave and end this poor man's pain.

"I'm sorry," Zeke whispered again, locking eyes with him before he shoved another staple in, stomach rolling and clenching at the pained grunt through gritted teeth. He was still trying to be brave, even in the face of utter defeat. He knew what was coming. He had to know that Zeke stopping him bleeding was all in vain.

Whatever they had in store for him was going to lead to his death and nothing could be done. Zeke could see it in the way his shoulders shook as he cried. He could hear it in the half-hearted cries to stop and spare him the pain. Zeke wanted to burst into sobs, knowing he wasn't strong enough to survive this. He wanted to quit and runaway and never look back.

"I'm so sorry."

Victor pulled completely off the road, parking next to the patch and flashed the lights twice before turning them off, but leaving the car running. There was a moment of complete silence before two darkened figures appeared from the thick brush in front of a line of trees.

Zeke peered out into the darkness, trying to make out what the two men looked like, but he couldn't tell. They were both tall and bulky, with guns strapped to their hips. Victor and Romero got out of the car, meeting the men halfway. A few whispered words were shared between the two before a loud laughing cut in and flashlights lit up the area.

Zeke strained to hear what they were saying, but the group of men walked further away towards the open patch of land. He glanced over at the still knocked out man next to him, pulling the spare blanket further up his body and noticing his bandages were starting to bleed through again.

There was a sudden flick of light and a roaring fire licked up towards the sky, casting the light over the patch of land they were on. For the first time, Zeke took in the appearance of the two strangers and didn't expect to see what he saw. He gulped as he took in the logo's. Dark pants, heavy jackets and caps on their heads.

Uniforms.

He'd seen those logos before. He was familiar with them as was every BX-9 member. The badges clipped to the jackets shined in the light of the fire as the men stood around it, lighting up cigarettes as they exchanged words, laughing and smiling with Victor and Romero like they weren't sworn enemies on the streets of Manhattan.

These were the very men they were taught to run from. The men in uniform they avoided at all cost. Sure, there were dirty cops everywhere. BX-9 had deals made with the lowest on the totem pole all the way to top of the food chain and everything in between. It was staggering how many cops bought drugs or stole and cheated and lied their way through their everyday activities, but these men looked…different.

"Hey, cabron," Victor called to him from the clearing, waving at the car, "Come out here. Be a man for a second."

There were a round of laughs from the other men, finding his insult funny. Zeke curled his hand into a fist, sitting there for almost a full minute in contemplation. His eyes took in the awkwardly positioned form of the man next to him, watching the way sweat beaded his forehead in his fitful sleep. He turned his head against the door handle, uncaring in his current state of the hard plastic he was resting against.

Zeke slid out of the car finally, closing the door as gently as he possibly could. The car sputtered a few times, the engine desperately trying to stay alive. The long drive they took had taken a lot out of the old beater and he was honestly surprised they hadn't broken down before they arrived. He cast a long look back at the car as he moved through the brush and made into the clearing.

Romero slapped his back, offering him a cigarette to which he declined. He tried not to gag on the smell as cloud billowed out into his face, but his eyes were focused entirely on the two strangers in front of him.

The closer look revealed they weren't exactly police officers. The uniforms were clearly correctional, proudly stating them as officers at Ryker's across their caps. BX-9 had contacts crawling over that place, in cells and out. There was a reason so many of their men on the inside received their packages. Phones, drugs, money…all slipped in by the officers who were sworn to keep them locked in.

"Anyway, did you he give you a lot of trouble?"

Zeke watched as one of the officers, a tall man with brown hair and blue eyes, looked over his head and at the car for a second, licking his lips as he pulled out a flask from his jacket pocket.

"Smart mouth, but we took care of that," Victor said, nodding as the man handed him the flask of liquid.

"Yeah, we've heard he's got a real trap," the other man, who was short and Hispanic. He broke off from the group and stood next to the roaring fire they started minutes ago, squeezing more lighter fluid on the flames. They billowed up to the sky and Zeke took a cautious step back, refusing a drink from the flask being handed at him.

He took after a second glare from Victor and sipped it, forcing the burning liquid down his throat and into his stomach.

"Alright, I want a hole right here," the tall man pointed near a patch towards the river, where the dirt was thick and wet and covered in rocks, "Make it deep but narrow. Give the K-9's an easy job."

Victor nodded towards Romero, who cursed under his breath and reluctantly picked up the shovel closest to him.

"Zeke," Victor called to him, breaking his concentration from Romero shoveling rocks and dirt, "Go wake his ass up and bring him out here."

Zeke nodded numbly, turning back and starting a slow walk to the car. He could steel feel the burning liquid bubbling in his stomach, twisting his insides. He could feel bile rising in his throat as a gun clicked behind him and he turned his head, stopping halfway to the car. He could see the tall officer peering down his sights, checking the gun out as he talked with Victor.

"They want a tongue and a few fingers. Proof that it's him."

"Done."

Zeke's eyes grew wide and he turned back around, his steps stuttering as he shuffled towards the car. The brush under his feet crunched into the cold night air, growing louder the further he got away from the desolate patch of land and closer to the car.

"Send another picture to that one detective. After he's dead of course. They've probably got her phone tapped after you sent the last one so we'll have to bug out quick."

"The money?"

"Transferred as soon as the boss see's the proof."

"Good. Hey, puto! Dig faster. I got shit to do in the morning!"

Zeke swallowed down the puke in his throat, fingers brushing against the cold metal of the car. It was still running, coughing and sputtering as he came to a stop in front of his door. He could see the outline of the lawyer, still passed out cold. He moved while they'd been standing there, the blanket having slipped back down his chest.

His seat belt was still on, keeping him strapped to the seat on the long drive down there.

A lightning bolt struck Zeke in the moment and time slowed down. His hand, that had grasped the handle to the door, slipped and fell limply at his side. He looked to his right, back towards the flames and the men, guns and cigarette smoke and laughter in the distance.

They stood around like they were friends, hanging out after work. They didn't look like they were ready to kill someone and cut out their tongue. This wasn't a movie; this was real life. Real people were about to commit murder and he was about to witness it. He was about to see a man, who as far as he was concerned hadn't done a damn thing to deserve any of this, get his tongue cut out and fingers cut off.

Unless…?

Before Zeke knew it, he was sliding into the driver's side door and slamming it shut. His hand had pulled the car into reverse and his foot pushed down on the accelerator, shooting them out of the dirt and onto the road. The car jumped and groaned, jostling the two bodies in the car briefly as the wheels found purchase on the pavement.

Zeke pulled the car into drive and slammed his foot on the accelerator again, turning the wheel fast and heading in the opposite direction they'd come from, hitting the headlights and propelling them down the unfamiliar street.

The shouts and resounding gun shots jumping off the pavement fell on deaf ears. All Zeke could focus on was the dark road ahead of him, the adrenaline pumping through his veins and the man groaning and sitting up in the back seat of the car.