Against everyone's advice, Melanie went to work the next day. She had meetings to reschedule and she needed to catch up on her work.

She used makeup to cover the bruises on her face from the attack, and as soon as she got into work, everyone rushed her.

"Melanie, are you alright?"

"I can't believe you got mugged."

"I always take a cab home."

She suddenly wanted to scream. She spent most of her life making sure people were afraid of her, yet now she felt petrified.

She grumbled that she was okay and made her way to her office quickly. I think I need a Xanax.

Something about this case got to John. Instead of going home and going to sleep, he stayed in the precinct, going through all of the evidence they had.

Their perp picked the perfect place to attack Melanie. There was no good footage for them, no witnesses, and had it not been for the boy taking out the trash, who knows when they would have found Melanie.

The detective wondered if it they had a serial rapist on their hands who scouted out the perfect places to attack and waited for his victims, but the MO didn't fit anything they had on file. He didn't want to wait and see if the bastard struck again.

When Olivia got to work, she could see the fatigue in Munch's eyes. She used to look like that pretty much every case when she first got to SVU.

"You stayed all night." Olivia could smell the coffee. Her spine twitched since she couldn't have any.

"I didn't have one … I mean two girlfriends to go home to."

"Touché, find anything."

"It's more about what I didn't find." He didn't find any evidence that someone had been following her, and he didn't find anything to suggest that the guy was lying in weight.

It can't just be serendipity that she and her attacker were in the same street at the same time and there were no cameras. There are cameras almost fucking everywhere in this city.

If you are a fan of horror or suspense movies, then you know that moment where the victim in the film realizes that he or she is about to die. They don't see the killer yet or even hear him necessarily, but they know something isn't right.

This must be the worse feeling in the world. They didn't realize it soon enough to escape and if they hadn't realized it at all, they wouldn't have had that daunting horror before they died.

Melanie never cared for horror movies and could not recall one of these iconic scenes, but she felt the horror when Patrick came to see how she had been doing.

"It must have been terrible, being mugged. Did the guy take anything valuable?"

Other than my self-esteem and piece of mind, "I'll survive." Something about his tone of voice made her very uncomfortable.

"I wish you a speedy recovery."

She spent the rest of the day wondering what to make of the encounter. Ordinarily, she would have written it off, but something told her that this was significant somehow.

She took out her cellphone and called the number. "Is this Detective Benson?"

"…"

"It's Melanie. I think one of my coworkers might have had something to do with my attack."

All they had was a hunch, but the 1-6 had solved cases with less than that to start. The motive was a bit hazy. She and Patrick weren't in direct competition, but he had been a vocal advocate of Adam, the guy Melanie beat out for her new position.

"It's the way he spoke; it was like he was mocking me."

Munch growled. They had their fair share of cocky rapists who think no on can touch them. His favorite was the one whose wife blew him to hell once she learned what he had done.

Olivia went to the white board. "What we really need is a motive."

They did a background check on Peter, and although he had no criminal convictions, there had been several complaints made against him in the past.

"One ex-girlfriend got a TRO against him in 2003." She decided to leave the city instead of filing for a permanent order. He also had a DUI arrest, a couple of noise violations, and "a neighbor accused Peter of vandalizing his car and peeing in the driver's seat."

"What a gentlemen," Munch said coolly.

He may be a drunk. He may be a violent drunk, yet somehow he never had to pay any consequences.

"Let's chat with the officers who dealt with him in the past," Cragen suggested. "He keeps slipping under the radar, how."

The detectives worked late into the evening trying to put the pieces together. By the time Olivia got home, she was worn out. Physically, her day had not been grueling, but she was mentally tired. How do people keep doing this kind of shit to each other?

She came home to find Casey nose-deep into her case briefs. She had a trial coming up in August.

Olivia slid the file out of Casey's hand and gave her a kiss. "I missed you today."

"I got stuck in meetings. How was work?"

"Not so great," the detective admitted as she slumped onto the couch.

"Was it the morning sickness?" Casey started to rub small circles on her back.

"I wish that had been the only thing making me feel sick. I hate that people suck!"

Casey knew exactly what she meant. Live victims were the worst, so much suffering all around. "How about a light dinner and then we go soak in the tub?"

"It sounds good. Where's Alex?" Usually the blonde comes out to greet Olivia when she comes home.

Alex had been crunching numbers ever since they decided to try for a baby. She factored in the costs of private school, extra curricular activities, college tuition and even inflation all into a complex spreadsheet. She really was her father's daughter, and she wanted to make sure their baby had everything.

She was so in tune with what she was doing, that she didn't notice Casey's knocking.

"Alex …"

No response.

Casey crept up behind the blonde and pulled her chair away from her computer.

"What the …" Alex looked up to see Casey.

"You were lost to the world."

"Oh, what's going on?"

"We're about to get in the bath and wondered if you wanted to join us."

"Olivia's home?" Alex hadn't heard her come in.

"What has you so busy?"

"Just doing some accounting."

Alex followed the redhead out of the room.

When Casey saw a glimpse of the spreadsheet, she knew she saw a typo. No way was Alex setting aside 250k for their baby's college education, how ridiculous.