A/N: I'm sorry I missed yesterday's update, guys. I was feeling crummy and ended up sleeping most of the day. Now that I'm alive again, here's a new chapter for you. I suppose it could have been split in half, but I wanted to keep the chapters a bit more substantial this time, since there's so many. That said, I don't want to rush through it either, 'cause I put so much work into it, and I like hearing what y'all think each time. So, yeah... keep the reviews a-comin' and happy Friday to you all!
Chapter 4.
Exit Light, Enter Night
. . .
The coffee, a generous term for the dark and watery brew swirling around in the mug Fin had blown into prior to filling ("Sorry, habit. Got open cabinets at home, sometimes the dust . . . " If he explained further, Amanda hadn't heard it), was hot as blue blazes. That term she had learned from her grandmama. "It's hot as blue blazes out there, Mandy. Come on in for some lemonade."
Grandmama Brooks always knew how to make everything better, whether it was a skinned knee, the unbearable Georgia heat, or another knockdown drag-out between Mama and Daddy. Absurdly, Amanda caught herself wishing her mother's mother was there now, to tickle her back with nimble pianist's fingers and sing a few stanzas of "You Are My Sunshine," until Amanda was smiling again. Her sweet grandmama, who couldn't even bear to kill the pests that invaded her garden, and who had remarked on Olivia's gentle spirit, likening it to that of a doe or a white dove, just last summer. Grandmama loved Olivia.
"This tastes like shit," Amanda said, and took another swig of the coffee, scalding her tongue and probably her esophagus with the bitter liquid.
If it hurt, she didn't notice. The sensation had not returned to her body since being tased. Fin kept trying to persuade her to get checked out by a doctor, and he was most certainly correct in his assessment that she was in shock from that street corner ambush, but once they had arrived at the precinct, she refused to leave it.
She couldn't feel her body without Olivia there. After Charles Patton held her down and raped her in a cheap motel room, she'd stumbled into the hall ("No need to rush off, pumpkin," he had called out to her), hunkered in the back seat of a cab, and fled to her apartment door, locking it behind her, as if she were being chased, all the while unable to feel anything below the shoulders. Something was taken from her back then—something vital and sustaining, a tether between mind and body—and today it had been torn away from her again. Only this time she couldn't just burn her clothes, skip town and pretend it never happened.
"Christ," she said, coughing into her fist after the next slug of hot java definitely did burn her throat. "Who made this?"
"Uh, sorry." Kat raised her hand sheepishly, then ducked behind her open laptop like she wanted to disappear underneath it and the file-strewn table. She was the one who had set up a command center in the interview room, complete with laptops, tablets (electronic and paper), a landline, and the coffeemaker, where the SVU officers could escape the growing circus in their squad room. It was a nice gesture, but it also meant she expected to be there for a while. Officer Tamin did not foresee her captain being returned any time soon.
That upset Amanda, and the bad coffee only added to her already frazzled nerves. The younger woman might be a certified health nut who preferred coconut water to caffeine, but if she wanted to make it in this unit—and two years in, she was still the newbie—she should learn how to operate a damn Keurig. Sometimes coffee was all that kept her squadmates going. "Oh. Well, pro tip for next time: more grounds, lower heat setting. Maybe something not quite so comparable to the surface of the sun, y'know?"
Amanda.
As clearly as if Olivia were seated in one of the other chairs hemmed around the table, Amanda heard the gentle reprimand. The captain was always getting on her to be nicer and more patient with Kat, the youngest and most inexperienced member in the unit. Amanda preferred the tough love approach, at least with a fellow cop, but she couldn't go against Olivia's wishes. Not right now.
"Sorry," she said to Kat, without much conviction. She sighed and put the mug aside, raking back the bangs from her forehead with several compulsive sweeps of her fingers. She longed for a ponytail ring, then remembered the one she'd twisted onto the end of Olivia's braid less than two hours ago, and abruptly let her hair fall in a heap around her face and shoulders. "I'm . . . going crazy just sitting here."
"Don't sweat it." Kat re-emerged from her hiding place, lips folded into a sympathetic smile. Her head tipped to one side, dark eyes soft and almost misty. (People had to stop looking at Amanda like that, or she would lose her mind.) "I get it. Totally."
Amanda dug her nails into the thighs of her track pants and tried counting to herself like Dr. Hanover had suggested. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. By the time she reached ten, her anger was supposed to have dissipated enough for her to give a calm and rational response to whomever she was addressing—at least in theory. But there were no theories that suited this situation. And there was no way in hell Katriona Tamin understood anything Amanda was going through.
Oh really? she wanted to demand of the younger woman. The twenty-seven-year-old had never even been married. Did you get tased and have to watch your wife be drugged, thrown into a van, and driven off by three strange men, for God only knew what purpose? I must've been out sick that day, Officer.
Those men hadn't been careful, either. Amanda wasn't concerned about what they had done to her; she hadn't hit her head that hard on the sidewalk—even if it was still throbbing and tender to the touch—and the quaking in her muscles was mostly gone. But the way that kid and the second abductor had manhandled Olivia made it clear she was not precious cargo to them. The second guy worried Amanda the most. Teardrop tattoos were prison ink, and they usually signified a murder conviction. An outline of a tear stood for attempted murder; this guy's was filled in, black as a seed. He had killed someone in the past. Planned it, followed through with it, and now he walked free. And now he had Olivia.
Ten Mississippi.
"Not that I've ever experienced anything like what you're going through," Kat was saying, her voice distant and meaningless to Amanda's ears. She might as well have been speaking Mandarin, or one of the other fifty-seven languages she apparently had at her disposal. Too many, if you asked Amanda. Sometimes plain old English worked best. "I just mean it's gotta be tough, with Garland ordering you off the case. I get that it's a conflict of interest, since she's your wife and all, but come on, if anyone's gonna bring her home, it's you."
Being taken off the case (officially) had been a slap in the face, that was true. Amanda might have punched the deputy chief when he made the pronouncement, if not for her sergeant holding her back. She had taken a menacing step towards the smartly dressed commander, who was to "fill in" for Olivia during her absence, though his time would be divided between SVU and his regular chiefly duties. Technically, Fin and Kat shouldn't have been allowed to work Olivia's case either, given their close relationships with her, but Christian Garland had ordered all hands on deck to find the missing captain—all, except Amanda's.
"Easy," Fin had cautioned softly, holding her by the shoulder. Somewhere in the back of Amanda's overstimulated brain, she'd been reminded of Jiminy Cricket playing conscience to the little wooden boy Pinocchio when her friend whispered in her ear. "He ain't gonna hang around and dirty up his nice clean suit. Wait till he leaves, then you can help look for her."
That was over an hour ago, and Amanda still hadn't turned up any leads. The squad room was filled to capacity with officers from different units, including Missing Persons and Major Crimes, most of them eager to find Captain Benson, whom they inevitably referred to as "the real deal" or "good police." Even the cops who had butted heads with Olivia in the past—usually the men with reputations as good ol' boys, or those with excessive force complaints in their jackets—were fired up about someone coming after one of their own. Their sister in blue, they were calling her.
Seeing them all gathered near the white board, watched over by the 8X10 photo of Olivia in her captain's uniform, made Amanda heartsick. She vividly remembered putting together a similar murder board and presenting it before her colleagues when Lewis had abducted Olivia the first time. God help her, she'd felt energized and alive back then, adrenaline pumping at the thought of her coworker in the hands of a monster like William Lewis. She had been concerned for Olivia, of course, but there was also that heady rush—almost a thrill of excitement—at the thought of taking Lewis down and saving the day.
This time she didn't feel excited, just shell-shocked, hollowed out, and desperately afraid. Beyond a couple of blurry shots captured from the bystander's cell phone footage, they didn't even have any profiles of the perps to display on the board. Just vague physical descriptions cobbled together from Amanda's admittedly compromised viewpoint: Perp One was early 20s, slim build, brown (Leave It to Beaver) hair, green or blue (serial killer) eyes; Perp Two was mid- to late-30s (plenty of time to become a hardened criminal), muscular build, dyed platinum hair, eye color unknown (something mean). She couldn't even wager a guess at the driver, other than a resemblance to a brawny Anton LaVey. Satanist on 'roids was not a useful descriptor for an APB.
Amanda thought the younger guy was around six-four, a detail she'd repeated incessantly, until someone finally wrote it under the photo in which his bulging eyes were focused on an unpictured Olivia. The other guy was harder to tell, because Amanda had been lying down and only saw him sneaking forward with squatted knees, but he seemed close to Olivia's height when he hauled her upright. Height had little bearing on strength, though. Quite often the most violent criminals were of modest stature. Amanda herself could lift Olivia off her feet if she put enough muscle behind it. Why had that always filled her with such pride, like it was proof of her physical superiority?
Now it just made her nauseous. As did Olivia's personal information being splashed all over the murder board for everyone to see. Female brunette, brown eyes, 5'9" (5'8½" at her last doctor's appointment, a decrease for which Amanda had teased her mercilessly, crowing, "Who's the short one now, baby?" and poking her while she squirmed), 154 lbs. Most of the cops in attendance knew Captain Benson on sight—she had made a strong impression throughout the New York Police Department over the years, not just at the one-six—but if the FBI was called in to assist, they would need a physical description to aid their search. At first, Amanda hadn't understood why, the impulse to protect Olivia's privacy overruling her logic and all her police training. Then it clicked: bodies were often too disfigured to ID by facial features alone.
Jesus God.
"Don't worry, Rollins, we're gonna find her." Kat didn't reach over to pat Amanda's hand, but her voice sounded as though she had. "Hell, knowing the Cap, she'll probably rescue herself before we even—"
"What've you got?" Amanda asked, indicating the back of Kat's laptop with an abrupt nod. She appreciated the attempts at reassurance, but if the officer backpedaled any harder, she was going to break an axle. Amanda had neither the time nor the patience. "Anything?"
Kat's shoulders sagged, giving her a slightly chastised appearance. She gazed at the screen in front of her with a dubious expression, then askance at the squad room, where Fin was conferring with CSU about the Taser that had been left at the scene. The kid must have dropped it when he helped drag Olivia to the van.
"I'm not really supposed to . . . "
"When has that ever stopped you before?" Amanda asked, fixing the younger woman with a hard look. It wasn't right to lord that over Kat, especially when her own motto had always been that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, but Amanda didn't care about right or wrong just then. She only cared about getting Liv back safe and sound. "You said yourself I'll be the one to find her. Garland ain't even here, and Fin's letting me help. So, tell me what you've got, Tamin."
After a brief hesitation and some chewing of the lip, Kat relented. She swiveled the laptop in Amanda's direction and wheeled her chair around the table, leaning in to operate the media player that engulfed the screen. "I still can't make out the full plate number," she said, and cautiously pressed play, as if slow movements might lessen the pain of viewing the video for the fortieth or fiftieth time. As if Amanda hadn't experienced it in living, breathing, brutal color. "And the van blocks most of the shot. But there is this guy. Over here in the red hat."
Somewhere between the ride to the precinct in Fin's department issued car and taking down the contact information of their eyewitness—a tourist from London who was visiting her granddaughter at university and accidentally caught Olivia's abduction on camera while recording a Facebook story—Amanda had forgotten about the man in the MAGA hat. She followed the accusatory line of Kat's finger as it pointed him out in the throng waiting to cross the street. Other than the outdated cap, he seemed fairly innocuous. An Average Joe clinging to an extinct administration, as men so often do. "What about him? Bastard didn't even stick around to help."
"Right. Didn't think much of him at first. What kind of asshole records something like that and doesn't offer it over to the cops, you know?" Kat tapped the screen emphatically, right on the man's side-turned face, then did the same to the rewind button. "But watch this. If I take it back to where Mrs. Lockhart leaves the café and starts filming . . . "
For several moments, Amanda didn't catch on. She stared intently at the jerky slo-mo images in the video—a blinding flare as Mrs. Lockhart conveyed her cell phone from dim café to bright sunshine, the old woman's sandaled feet moving along the sidewalk, the seasick whirling while she figured out where the camera lens was located, and a sharp pan to the left when the action broke out—growing more frustrated with every second that passed. "Just tell me what—"
She cut herself off, all at once spying the small detail that her brain had tuned out after studying the footage too many times. Kat replayed the moment, pitched forward and eyeing Amanda coaxingly, like a speech therapist struggling physically to encourage a stuttering pupil. There it was, a split-second before the van screeched up, before the kid had emerged from under the scaffolding and pulled the trigger. If you insist, he had said. Sorry, lady . . . A blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse (and all the other cops had, up till now) when Mrs. Lockhart turned the camera towards the crosswalk, at the very same moment Olivia and Amanda approached on the other side. At the very same moment MAGA Hat zoomed in on their progress.
"Sonuvabitch," Amanda muttered, bringing her fist down so hard against the table a tidal wave of coffee crested over the brim of her mug and splatted next to the laptop. "He was already filming us when those pricks showed up. He was pro'ly in on it too, the fucker."
"Yeah." Nodding eagerly, Kat clicked through the scene again and again, each time taking it back to that single frame where Olivia was smiling, before all hell broke loose. A candle-flame flicker in the fires of eternity. That was how quickly life could change. Finally, Kat paused it there—The After—and Olivia smiled no longer. "That's what I'm thinking. He was there to get it on video for . . . whatever reason. Proof of life? I dunno. Then he bolted during the commotion. Like a bitch."
Tentatively, Amanda pushed play on the video window and watched herself fall into her wife's arms, watched Olivia drop to her knees and yell at the kid pointing the Taser. The video was muted, only traffic and the umbrage of the onlookers surrounding Mrs. Lockhart discernible in its audio, but Amanda heard the words perfectly when the kid moved his mouth. "Sorry, Cap, boss's orders," she narrated for him, glaring at the lanky, bug-eyed figure on the screen. A moment later, the van blotted him out like an instantaneous solar eclipse. The last clear shot in Mrs. Lockhart's video was of Olivia, expressionless and limp as a dishrag, being hauled into the back of the vehicle.
"What?" Kat asked, breaking into Amanda's dark reverie, a quizzical expression on her bold features.
"That's what the younger guy said to Liv after he tased me, and before the other guy tranqed her." Amanda poked at the rewind double arrows, backtracking to the scene she spoke of. She was only now remembering his exact words to her wife, who had demanded to know why he'd hurt Amanda. That distraction had ultimately gotten Olivia drugged and kidnapped. "'Sorry, Cap, boss's orders.' I forgot till just now. He definitely called her 'Cap,' though. He knew who she was. And there's someone else calling the shots. 'Boss's orders.'"
"Shit, yeah." Kat chewed at her bottom lip some more, casting an uncertain look at the laptop and another at Amanda. "What are you thinking? Drug cartel or something? Those guys are always making threats when she puts them away. Or maybe that douchebag lawyer she locked up a few years ago. Didn't he have it out for her, too?"
Amanda shook her head, but try as she might, she couldn't pry her eyes from the screen and that final glimpse of Olivia's face. Blank though it was, due to whatever paralytic she'd been shot up with, she had to be absolutely terrified. She had to be, because Amanda was, too. "Miller's a blowhard. Ain't heard hide nor hair of him since he went to Rikers. You know how chickenshit rapists do in prison," she said, tugging her shoulder up in a dismissive shrug. "Probably got his hands full with gangbanger cock right now."
Ex-attorney Rob Miller wasn't the only one who was all bluster, Amanda thought. Despite her confident and callous tone, she felt a large weight settle onto her chest at the mention of his name. The truth was, she didn't know if this was him or not. He likely still had ties on the outside, men willing to do his bidding for the right price. It would be foolish to think a rat bastard like that didn't have some of his riches hidden away in offshore accounts never uncovered by the NYPD. Rat bastards always did. And there was the man with the teardrop tattoo, unquestionably an ex-con . . .
She made a mental note to check up on Miller, even as she shot down the drug cartel theory. This one, she was sure about. The cartel—from Sinaloa to Juárez—did not waste time on tasing a cop and abducting another off the street. Vengeance was swift and cruel with drug lords; they would have entered the apartment late at night and slit the throats of each family member as they slept, right on down to baby Samantha and both dogs.
Amanda said as much, all the while fighting the urge to vomit. She left out the part about her baby. "It's about more than just retaliation," she concluded, reaching to trace her finger along the outline of Olivia's face. She drew back at the last second and returned the video to its dark and featureless beginnings. "That would be too impersonal. This felt more like—"
"Uhh, Rollins?"
Annoyed by the interruption, Amanda hiked an expectant eyebrow at Kat and waited for the younger woman to spit it out already, instead of gaping at the front of Amanda's t-shirt as if the Just Peachy slogan was morally offensive. "What?" she snapped, and immediately regretted the harsh tone when she glanced down and saw for herself the wet spots darkening her ringer tee. Two of them, right in the vicinity of her nipples. No wonder her chest felt warm and heavy a moment ago—her milk was letting down.
"Aw, Christ." Reflexively, Amanda peeled the shirt away from her breasts, but the damage was already done. Both cups of her cotton bra, the one reserved for lazy weekends and midnight bodega runs, were soaked through.
They had laughed wildly one evening when Olivia commented that she "probably couldn't fit one whole boob into that dinky thing," and Amanda spent the next few minutes trying to arrange the cups over her wife's ample and uncooperative bosom. She never did manage to secure it properly and with adequate coverage.
"I forgot to pump," she said, gazing at the damp spots in bewilderment. She flapped her shirt uselessly and looked around the interview room, for what, she didn't know. Only when her eyes fell upon the toy box in the corner did she realize she was searching for her infant daughter. "I was going to feed Sammie when we got back home . . . "
"Do you, um, need to go? I can call you if—"
"I'm not leaving." Amanda stood, the abrupt shift sending the chair rolling out behind her. The undrunk coffee shimmied in the mug, close to overflowing again. Olivia had been after her not to consume too much caffeine while they were breastfeeding, convinced it made Samantha fussy. (How could she have forgotten that? How could she have forgotten their baby needed to eat?) "I've got a breast pump in my locker. And there's extra bottles in the fridge at home. Lucy knows the routine."
She said it as much for her own peace of mind as for Kat, who appeared rather dubious though she nodded understanding. If she was doubting Amanda's mothering skills right then—well, sister, get in line. Amanda had felt like a louse calling up the nanny to relieve Carisi of childcare duties, but even if it made her a bad mama, she couldn't go home to her kids yet. She couldn't bear to look them in the eyes and lie when they asked where Mommy was.
"I gotta go take care of this," Amanda said, gesturing to her soiled t-shirt and edging towards the door. She peered out the glass partition wall at the busy squad room beyond, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. She wasn't particularly self-conscious about her body, but no female cop wanted to parade past her male colleagues with leaky tits.
Just Fucking Peachy.
"Here. Take this." Kat shrugged out of her blazer and walked it over to Amanda before she could object. "I'm getting overheated from the laptop anyway." The officer kept a safe distance and averted her eyes from the milk stains; for someone who enjoyed a bloody contact sport like boxing, she was awfully squeamish.
"You sure?" Amanda held the jacket away from herself for a moment, as if it might be rigged to explode. She'd never been the type to share clothes with her female friends when she was younger, for fear they would find out she wore her cousins' hand-me-downs throughout most of grade school and junior high. By high school, she had a job and bought her own clothes, only to have them constantly stolen by Kim.
Now, though, Amanda was the thief, pilfering from Olivia's wardrobe whenever she got the chance. It was the smell. She loved donning one of Olivia's old shirts and finding her wife's scent trapped in the fabric, like whiskey that got absorbed by the wooden barrels in which it was stored. The devil's cut, they called it. Amanda never felt safer or more at peace than when she wrapped up in that scent, the devil's cut of her Liv.
She'd held onto Olivia's discarded hoodie until CSU bagged and tagged it as evidence. Logically she knew that was the best place for it—a stray hair or a wayward print on one of the grommets could be enough to identify the kidnappers, to bring Olivia home. Sometimes cases broke wide open with far less. But Amanda couldn't help wishing she was slipping on that jacket now, rather than the blazer Kat insisted she borrow.
"Thanks," she said distractedly, pausing to glance back at Kat from the doorway. She pointed at the
(black void)
blank media player on the laptop screen. "Get someone from TARU to run that guy through facial recognition. And find out what Rob Miller's been up to lately. Doubt it's him, but it's a place to start."
"On it."
The sounds of Kat's furiously clacking keyboard followed Amanda into the squad room, as did several pairs of curious eyes, a few belonging to cops she didn't even recognize. Someone had tipped them off that she was The Wife. So much for keeping a low profile. It might be a good thing, though. People were sometimes more willing to do their job well if they knew who would be benefiting from their hard work.
Amanda's forced smile fell short at a grimace as she skirted past the uniforms, arms folded tightly over Kat's blazer (it smelled like granola, a snack Olivia detested), and made her way over to Fin at the conference table. He stood at one end, fists pressed against the tabletop, his face a study in concentration and something Amanda seldom saw there—worry. It sent a stab of fear to her heart, and her voice came out a breathless quaver when she asked, "Anything?"
She must have looked as anxious and pitiful as she sounded, because Fin's features softened considerably the moment he turned to her. More troublesome than yet another sympathetic expression was the reluctance with which he answered her. If the sergeant couldn't shoot straight with her, something was terribly wrong.
Of course something is terribly wrong, you idiot. Your wife is missing. She's in the hands of total strangers, their intent unknown. (Who are we kidding? Intent is always known in situations like this.)
"Oh, God. Is she dead? Just tell me, Fin." Amanda hunched forward, leaning on the table for support, the other hand forked at her side, a habit she'd acquired after being shot in the abdomen and frequently getting winded with the least exertion. "Is Liv—"
"It ain't that," Fin said in a hushed, hasty tone, taking Amanda by the shoulders and steering her into the break room area, away from the whispers and surreptitious glances. She was already proving why a spouse shouldn't be allowed to work her partner's case.
"I'm good. I got it." Amanda shrugged off his hands, straightened out her blazer with a jerk at the sleeves, and sidestepped the chair he tried to guide her towards. No more sitting. She'd sat on her ass on the sidewalk, bawling because Olivia had been taken from her. She would be damned if she behaved that helplessly again. "Just tell me what you know. Pussyfootin' only makes it worse."
Fin set his lips in a firm line that brought out his dimples and made it seem like he might deliver a lecture on conduct unbecoming, instead of the information she sought. But after an excruciating pause, he spoke with the matter-of-fact drawl he was famous for around the precinct. (If my sergeant gets anymore laidback, I'll have to install a napping couch next to his desk, Olivia had once joked, gazing out of her office at Fin nodding off in front of his computer.) "We can't trace the Taser. They tampered with the cartridge, so there's no serial number to go on."
That much Amanda had figured. Police tasers like the one she'd been shot with contained anti-felon ID tags that resembled confetti with the serial number printed on each fleck, to help identify which weapon was fired by which cop. Or criminal. Poor man's ballistics, some called it. Looks like a rave, said others. Personally, the colorful, scattered dots had always reminded Amanda of the exit toss at a wedding.
She and Olivia had opted for bubbles on their big day. And Amanda didn't recall seeing any confetti today when the stun gun was fired, or in the aftermath. In shock or not, she would have remembered something like that.
"We did get a hit on the plates, but the owner reported the van stolen four months ago. He seems clean, just a couple parking tickets. We'll keep an eye on him, though . . . "
The false optimism in that last statement and the way it drifted off, as if Fin were mentally preparing for what came next, alerted Amanda there was more. That was a cop's segue—deliver the good news first, then drop the bomb and run—if she'd ever heard one. And she had; it was usually she who held the detonator. "And?" she asked impatiently. Her arms were crossed again, shielding her heart (it felt horribly vulnerable and exposed) as well as her breasts.
"And we got a print off the Taser." Fin swatted his bobbing knee a few times with the folder in his hand, and that simple, unconscious gesture, which Amanda recognized from her own store of nervous twitches, filled her with more foreboding than anything he'd said. Sergeant Tutuola did not fidget. "Ran it through AFIS and got a match. So far just some misdemeanors, mostly for dumb kid stuff. But one of the guys from vice recognized the name. Liam Sandberg."
A couple more swipes of the file, and then, with the deep remorse of a long-awaited apology, Fin added, "Rollins, his dad is Gus Sandberg."
From the import of his words, Amanda knew she should be familiar with the name, but it held no significance for her, whoever it belonged to. Any other time, she would have blamed her cluelessness on postpartum brain. Right now she didn't have the energy or the patience for motherhood jokes. "That supposed to mean something to me? Who is he, Fin?"
The sergeant sighed and proffered the manila folder begrudgingly. "They call him the Sandman. Sprinkles dust in your eyes to make you sleep, but all he brings is bad dreams. And no one can catch his nasty ass."
That description did ring a bell, though it was faint and sounded more like a death knell. Amanda grabbed the folder, taking a shaky, preparatory breath before opening it and surveying the contents. One page wasn't a very impressive rap sheet, she reasoned; the list of infractions in her NYPD jacket was much longer than that. But the blood drained from her cheeks and she slumped a hip against the table, feeling momentarily faint as she read over the suspected crimes of Gustav Sandberg (Known aliases include Sandman, Gus Sanburg, Gustaf Bergmann, August Sanderson, and Stavo Bergström), age 51:
Drug smuggling and distribution, money laundering, arson, kidnapping, homicide, child pornography, procuring, and human trafficking.
"Sweet Jesus," Amanda whispered, reading and rereading the list until the words bled together, no longer legible except for the last four offenses. And of those, it was human trafficking that flashed at her like a neon sign and made the blood run cold in her veins.
Homicide was bad, but if murder had been the objective, why stage an abduction? A drive-by would have been cleaner and more effective. Child pornographers were the scum of the earth, but they didn't kidnap grown women, either. On its own, procuring didn't frighten her much—Olivia was no whore—although it put him in the sex trade, and combined with the trafficking, it painted a scary picture. Men who sold human beings were some of the most vile criminals SVU encountered. Those men did abduct women and what happened to those women, the ones who survived to tell their story, was often the stuff of nightmares.
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream, Amanda thought, gazing at the distorted surveillance photo that must have been the only available image of good ol' Gus. Crappy as the quality was, she could still see the resemblance to his son, Liam. Tall, lanky. And those cold, penetrating eyes looking directly into the camera. Boss's orders, Liam had said.
"You the big boss, motherfucker?" Amanda murmured to Gustav's picture.
"Huh?" Fin ducked his head for a glimpse at Amanda's downturned face, his own features knotted with concern. "What'd you say?"
"Nothing. Why the hell haven't we collared this guy?" Amanda stood, pushing off from the table, which gave a shriek of protest when its feet scraped across the floor. The cops in the other room probably thought she was having a breakdown, but she was too distracted by the head rush she got upon standing to care about the noise or its reception.
"Because he's good. Been operating for years. And he gets other people to do the grunt work for him while he sits back on his pretty little ass and rakes in the dough. Some people think he's got dirty cops working for him." Fin examined her carefully as he spoke, stepping closer to peer into her eyes like a doctor with a pin light. "You all right? You don't look so hot. Let me see your pupils."
Falling back a step, Amanda shooed the sergeant away with the Sandman file and tossed it onto the table. The single sheet inside glided from between the manila folds, coasting across the table on a breeze. It reminded Amanda of the puck in a game of air hockey. And the first point goes to Gustav Sandberg, she thought darkly, turning aside from his poor excuse of a mugshot. "Man, piss off. I'm fine. I'm just drained because my body is literally a milk factory." She gestured at her breasts, uncomfortably damp and sticky within her bra. "And, oh yeah, my wife is probably being sold to some Saudi prince right now. How much you think she'll go for? I hear American women bring in top dollar. 'Specially the pretty, white ones. And a cop? Shit, that's gotta be a few hundred thousand right there."
Fin's patience as he waited for her rant to finish was infuriating. He gathered Sandberg's page into its folder and tucked it under his arm, hands dipping loosely into his pockets. God, just once could he not be so damned easygoing? "You know that's not how it works," he said, and in spite of his relaxed posture, there was a grim note in his voice. "They turn 'em out right here on home turf. And it ain't to no princes."
"That supposed to make me feel better?" Amanda asked, trying for incredulous and just sounding tired instead. In a strange way, his acknowledgement that the situation was dire had defused her mounting temper. She shouldn't be taking her anger out on Fin anyway. He was on her—and Olivia's—side, always.
"No. Just saying." Fin gave a light shrug. "This ain't some Liam Neeson flick, there's no seventy-two hour window, or whatever. If they did grab her for that—and how many women in their fifties you know get trafficked for the first time? But if they did, it means she probably won't leave the city. And that means we'll find her."
It was a good speech and it almost did succeed at making Amanda feel better. Women didn't have to travel outside the United States to be trafficked, and it wasn't like in the movies, where a gang of Albanian marauders dragged some cute teenager kicking and screaming from her hotel room. Girls were in far more danger of being forced into prostitution by a relative, a friend, a boyfriend—and most of them were young, anywhere from adolescence to late twenties. Olivia did not fit the typical trafficking victim criteria. And yet.
She had still been snatched off the street in broad daylight by at least one man with ties to a known trafficker. Nothing about that was typical, and frantic wife or not, Amanda knew her fears weren't unfounded. Somebody wanted Olivia badly enough to stage a risky ambush, and with the kind of enemies the captain made—the kind of men Amanda had seen in the van and read about in the file under Fin's arm—there were no good scenarios to choose from. Even if Olivia never stepped foot out of Manhattan, finding one woman in a city of over eight million, with barely any leads to follow and a sandman sprinkling his magic dust, was damn near impossible.
"Yeah," said Amanda. She caught herself pinching the bridge of her nose, and immediately jerked her hand away, dropping it against her thigh. Olivia did that when she had one of her migraines—squeezed the bridge of her nose to alleviate the pressure in her skull. Massaged her temples. Took off her glasses and scrubbed both hands over her face.
Headaches had never been a problem for Amanda, at least not excessively so, but she had one now. And if she had one, Olivia probably did too. That reasoning gave her more comfort than anything else had so far, as if it proved some sort of psychic connection between her wife and herself, a connection rooted in pain. As long as Amanda felt it, that meant Olivia was still alive.
It wasn't much to go on, but it was all she had.
"Yeah, we'll find her," she said thinly, unable to muster the confidence the words implied. She gave Fin a distracted nod, only half aware he was still there, and headed for the door.
"Hey," he called after her, "If I get an EMT up here, will you let them check you out? You know I'll get my ass chewed if I let you run around without medical clearance."
"Fine. Do what you gotta do." Amanda couldn't help noticing he hadn't mentioned who would chew him out, a job that usually fell to Olivia. Maybe he wasn't so convinced of her swift return, after all. At all. "I gotta go pump. Tell people to stay outta the crib, and call me the second something turns up. I mean it, Fin. No matter what it is, I wanna know."
Without waiting for a response, Amanda stormed out of the break area and past the multitude of eyes that followed her through the squad room. She wanted to yell at them all to mind their own business and find her wife, goddammit, but she kept her head low and quickened her pace, feeling oddly exposed. Being the center of attention didn't bother her one way or the other—she'd never been shy, although she hadn't hungered for the spotlight like her mother or sister, either—but she knew what some of these assholes thought of her and Olivia. That they were drama queens who invited dangerous situations on themselves. That they were soft from working sex crimes too long.
Most of those same macho pricks wouldn't last eleven days in SVU, let alone the eleven years Amanda had spent there. Never mind the twenty-four that Olivia boasted. But maybe it was too long, if things like this kept happening. Maybe it wasn't worth it.
She shoved through the door to the crib, slammed it shut behind her, and delivered a vicious kick to wood that would have broken some toes if not for the sturdy construction of her chunky sneakers. "Motherfucker," she snarled under her breath, though whom she was addressing, she couldn't say.
It felt good to swear, though, and she continued to do it as she flicked the lock on the doorknob and went to her locker along the wall. Fin had thought it was hilarious to scrawl Hers on two pieces of tape and stick them to her and Olivia's neighboring cubbies. "I's gonna get ya towels, but I went with Hers and Hers lockers instead," he'd announced, smirking. A year later, the tape still hadn't been removed.
"Motherfucker son of a bitch."
Amanda started to open her own locker, then reached for Olivia's at the last moment. She knew the padlock combination ("40-21-35, just like your measurements, hot stuff," she liked to tease the captain), but no one kept the doors secured when they were off duty. Not even her extra cautious, by-the-book Liv.
She felt a little guilty nonetheless, as if she were violating Olivia's privacy even more than it already had been today, and she almost closed the door back up. But a small bundle—neatly folded—deep inside the storage compartment caught her eye, and she withdrew it with something like reverence. Ever practical, Olivia kept a change of clothes at the office at all times. Amanda laughed it off whenever it was suggested she do the same, but now, unraveling the navy blue sweatshirt with the NYPD crest on the left breast, she thanked her lucky stars that her wife was such a square.
After double-checking that the crib door was still shut, the lock on the knob still horizontal, she leaned her back against the lockers, bunched the sweatshirt to her nose, and inhaled. It took some searching, but she located Olivia along the back collar, faintly, fleetingly, and stood there breathing her in for several moments. Too soon Amanda lost her again, and with tears in her eyes, the sweatshirt clutched to her chest, she retrieved the breast pump from her locker and slogged over to sit on a bottom bunk.
Two minutes went by with no milk flowing into the bottles, even after she adjusted the breast shields and the suction speed. The longer she waited, the more agitated she became, fretting that the electric jolts she'd received from the Taser had somehow affected her supply. And if she did manage to squeeze something out, would it even be safe for Samantha to drink? Had enough breastfeeding women been tasered for there to be a study on that particular motherhood quandary?
Olivia would know. She had read all the baby books from cover-to-cover in preparation for their youngest's birth, despite already having brought up two babies herself, and what she didn't have an answer for, she researched on the Internet until she found one. "Once an overachiever, always an overachiever," she said sheepishly, when Amanda had commented on her study habits.
Sniffing, Amanda scrounged the phone from her pants pocket and typed Does Taser affect breast milk into the Google search box. As she scrolled the results, which were mostly about the dangers of tasing pregnant women—"No shit, Sherlock," she muttered as they drifted to the top of the screen and out of sight, like so much smoke—an email alert pinged in the background. At the same moment, Amanda felt a familiar tingling in her breasts and breathed a sigh of relief when two streamers of milk spiraled through the tubing and trickled into the attached bottles. That part always reminded her of drinking through a Krazy Straw.
Putting her phone aside, she focused on the steady pull of the pump and trying to determine if the milk looked discolored or abnormal in any way. She didn't think so, but maybe it was a good thing Fin wanted to bring in an EMT. Amanda could ask the medic about the milk.
Fifteen minutes later she was bone dry, except for her bra, which she stuffed into her locker, along with the Just Peachy t-shirt and the breast pump. She hadn't gone braless at work since those late nights out at illegal gambling clubs saw her rolling in for early shifts, with only a few winks in the backseat of her car, no clean underwear, and not a toothbrush in sight. Back then, she hadn't really needed the support, but her tits were huge right now—to her, anyway—and she would have been uncomfortable without the undergarment, if not for Olivia's baggy sweatshirt. She kept shrugging her shoulder to smell the fabric, a compulsion she either wouldn't or couldn't cease.
A text message trilled through on her cell phone while she was screwing the cap onto the second bottle of milk. The plan was to store both bottles in the break room (her colleagues were well aware to steer clear of the mysterious containers of white stuff that regularly appeared in the fridge) until she could get them to the nanny, but she never made it that far. Sent from an unknown number, the message read:
You've got mail.
It had been at least two decades since Amanda last heard that AOL greeting; so long ago, in fact, she first wondered why someone was texting her the title of an old Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan romcom. Then she remembered that the movie was named after America Online's ancient email herald. Then she remembered the email alert she'd gotten just as her milk let down.
"No," she whispered to her phone, head shaking as she brought up the mail app and thumbed her Gmail inbox. "No no no."
A wave of nausea, as strong as any she had felt during her first trimester with Samantha, came crashing down on Amanda when she saw the subject line of her newest message.
Bagels Bagels Bagels
She reached for the top bunk to steady herself, but her legs were rubber, wobbling beneath her until she sat down heavily on the bottom bunk, the bottles of milk tipped over, forgotten. Her finger trembled above the subject line, which claimed to have No Sender. She'd encountered that plenty of times before on the job—it usually meant the message came from an anonymous account, lots of encryption, an untraceable IP address. The sort of safety measures taken by someone who wanted to remain a ghost. Or a sandman skulking around in the dark.
And there were only a handful of reasons people like that made contact in abduction cases. Ransom demands were the most common, but sometimes the sickos got off on sending photographic evidence of death. The worst was when they sent actual body parts to the family members. Ears and fingers were the favored "gifts" among your run-of-the-mill kidnappers, although Amanda had once interviewed a man less than an hour after he opened a box containing his wife's tongue. He'd filled the wastebasket with the partially digested remains of their anniversary dinner seconds after the interview concluded.
With a silent prayer of thanks that she wasn't opening a small—or large—box, Amanda held her breath and tapped the subject line. She didn't want to look. She didn't want to look, but she had to. For Olivia, she must face whatever lie ahead.
The body of the email was a single line, reading, Did you lose this, corner of 58th and Grand? and for one blessed moment, she thought she'd been wrong. That it was just a kind New Yorker (believe it or not, they did exist) attempting to return something she'd dropped during her ordeal. Hers and Olivia's. But there was nothing absent that she could recall—other than her wife—and it didn't explain how this imaginary New Yorker had gotten her email address and phone number.
All of that was forgotten when the attached picture loaded. The entire crib melted away, taking with it the bustling squad room beyond, every cop therein, and the precinct itself, until it was just Amanda, suspended in some hazy, gray NoPlace where time and space didn't exist. Nothing did, except for Amanda and that picture.
Olivia's frightened face filled the screen. Whatever drug they injected her with had since worn off, her features mobile once more and capable of expressing
(pure and utter terror)
fear. From the red-rimmed, watery eyes, Amanda could clearly see she had been crying. And no wonder—the bastards had duct taped her mouth.
That was a huge trigger for Olivia since spending four days with Lewis, her mouth taped shut for hours, maybe even days, at a stretch. Amanda had stopped by Cassidy's apartment in the aftermath of that abduction, to drop off some flowers for her recovering colleague, and she'd found it difficult not to stare at the rectangular rash that spread from one side of Olivia's face to the other, like the perfect impression left behind by a latex Band-Aid. That splotchy red stripe had filled Amanda with guilt—along with the injuries she couldn't see but had no trouble imagining, after getting an up close and personal look at Lewis' handiwork on Mrs. Mayer—and she'd left quickly.
No looking away this time, Amanda Jo.
There were no bruises on her wife's face yet, she noted with some relief. They hadn't beaten her. (At least not where it's visible, Amanda's brain chimed in. And it's not a full-body—) She appeared clothed, the shoulders of her white t-shirt still in place at the bottom edge of the shot. Behind her was a grungy, colorless wall of nondescript makeup. Hard to identify. Impossible, really.
"Oh God, Liv, where are you?" Amanda whispered, tracing the outline of Olivia's face. The picture was soft and shimmery through a glaze of tears she blinked back furiously. She had to keep her shit together right now. Find Olivia, then fall apart, not the other way around.
She took a deep breath, heart in her throat, and pressed the link below the picture, which invited her to "Click for more" and pointed the way with a string of motivational arrows. What waited on the other side left her choking back sobs and fighting to hold onto not just her composure but her sanity.
. . .