A/N: Betcha didn't think I was going to get this posted today, did you? I'll let you in on a little secret—I didn't think so, either. But here it is, just under the wire. I went ahead and split this chapter up because it was so long (40ish pages), so the next couple of updates will flow into each other. Putting a trigger warning for sexual assault on this one, too. Thank you so much for the comments on chapter 4! I'd like to say I didn't cackle maniacally that y'all were losing your shit, but I'd be lyin'. ;)

I can't remember anything
Can't tell if this is true or dream
Deep down inside I feel the scream
This terrible silence stops me

- Metallica, "One"

Chapter 5.

A Wartime Novelty

. . .

The van door slammed shut, cutting Olivia off from Amanda for good. She hadn't even been able to turn her head for one last look at her wife, whom the men had left lying on the ground like the litter for which New York City was notorious. At first her concern for Amanda outweighed the fear for herself, but alone with the three men (she thought there were three of them; two had grabbed her, and someone had to be driving the van, although she couldn't see him or the passenger seat), still conscious and yet unable to so much as lift a finger or blink an eyelid, her panic skyrocketed. She thought her heart might actually explode.

They had hurt her when they chucked her into the back of the vehicle. Luckily the floor had some padding, or it would have been worse thumping her head and smashing her back on the corrugated metal underneath. She didn't think anything was broken, but it was hard to tell with her adrenaline pumping as if she'd just swum the entire Hudson River. While paralyzed from head to foot.

It didn't dull pain, the drug they had injected her with; ketamine would have been her first guess, if not for that characteristic. Neither did it seem to impair cognitive function, for she was completely aware of her surroundings, almost to the point of hyperawareness.

Were there muscle relaxants that were also stimulants? She racked her frantic brain, trying to remember. Her only firsthand experiences with drugs were the kind that knocked you out, not ones that made you more alert. And she was familiar with most substances on the party scene, because so many of them were used to facilitate rape. Maybe it was a new designer drug, then. Lucky her, she got to be the first test subject. And that meant she had no clue how long the effects would last. Minutes, hours, days . . .

If she made it that long. Every muscle in her body was screaming at her to move, to do anything besides lie there and stare at the ceiling, while strange men hovered at the outskirts of her vision, leering. She thought of the Metallica song about the soldier, so grievously injured in a war that he can't see, speak, or move, praying for God and the doctors to end his life. Kill me, he begged them, jolting his limbless body in Morse code the physicians puzzled over, until they realized the awful truth. Kill me, over and over.

"One"—that was the name of it. How Olivia had hated that song and the music video, even at twenty years old. (What would she beg of God and these men, she wondered now. What desperate, dying plea would she make with her bones and flesh?)

Her heart really was going to explode. She was running standing still, and her lungs weren't pumping fast enough to keep up. At the very least she would go into cardiac—

"You wearing your weapon?" asked the guy with the teardrop on his cheek. He appeared above Olivia's limited vision, looking as though he were peering down into a well. First good look at him she'd gotten, and she already knew he had done hard time. Even without the tattoo, it was written all over his face.

She tried to shake her head, couldn't; she tried to say no, but wasn't able to lift her tongue, part her lips, form sounds. He didn't want an answer, anyway. With a cold little smile that so resembled Lewis it was momentarily him above her, taunting and terrorizing, he groped his way up and down her body, inspecting places she couldn't possibly hide a gun. She was wearing a light t-shirt and yoga pants, for Christ's sake. Any weapon would have made a noticeable bulge beneath her clothes, like the one he probably had in his pants as he ruthlessly squeezed her tits.

He reached into the V-neck of her shirt, rubbing his calloused hand roughly between her breasts like he was sanding the sides of a homemade boat. As he rummaged inside her bra cups, he fiddled his tongue piercing, flicking the little silver ball back and forth with his front teeth. Eyes locked on hers, he pinched her nipple so hard it tweaked a nerve at the bottom of her foot. He cocked his head, as though he were testing her reaction. Olivia gave him none.

Men had been ogling, commenting on, and grabbing her breasts without permission since they first developed. Her own mother had often glanced at them from the corner of an eye, first with apprehension, then as Olivia matured and surpassed her in shapeliness, with resentment and accusation. As if Olivia had any control over the matter. (She'd tried, hadn't she? Practically starving herself didn't make a bit of difference in the long run. She went down a full cup size her senior year, and Serena still hated her.)

All that attention, good and bad—mostly bad—had made Olivia despise her large bust for a time. Only when she had come into her own as a cop did she start to view it as a source of power, and not just in the bedroom. She had been young, strong, beautiful, and no one got to touch her breasts, her body, unless she said so. No one. That, she could control.

Then came Lowell Harris, William Lewis, Calvin Arliss . . . And a handful of others—no pun intended—in between and after. She didn't even know this guy's name, but he was already taking potshots at the armor she'd built up in the aftermath of those assaults, the armor her attackers had all but stripped away entirely. She longed to clench her eyes shut, willing it so fiercely tears swam into her vision and spilled onto her cheeks, though she still couldn't blink. Crying was not a good idea right then. She needed to remain calm so she didn't aspirate or block an airway. Doubtful anyone in this van would know how to revive her.

"They real?" asked the younger kid, whose smiling face wavered as if reflected in the surface of a pond as he gazed down on her and addressed his handsy partner. Nevertheless, she recognized him as the tall guy who had given her the creeps in the bagel shop. Her gut had told her something was off about him, but she never would have guessed this. And what this was, she hadn't figured out yet.

"Yeah. Nice for a bitch her age. Hate it when their titties hang down to their knees." The man with the teardrop on his cheek gave Olivia's breast one final wrench before withdrawing his hand from her bra. He winked at her, conveying none of the charm or good-nature usually implied by the gesture. It was the wink of a hunter sighting game with his rifle. "We're going to have some fun with those later."

Well, there it was. At least he hadn't kept her in suspense, wondering what their intentions were. It gave her some time to prepare, if she could just harness her racing thoughts and heartbeat, and maybe when they got to wherever it was they were going, the drug would have worn off. Maybe she could negotiate or escape. Unlikely she would be able to overpower the three men; the kid by himself, perhaps—he had the height advantage, but not a lot of muscle to go with it.

But the felon, though not exceptionally large, was strong. She'd felt it when he dragged her to the van, and now, as he opened her thighs, smoothing his palms up the insides, under her buttocks, over the hips, and (through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go) cupped her crotch roughly through the stretchy fabric of her pants. She said a silent prayer of thanks that she'd worn underwear, indifferent about panty lines while making a simple bagel run. It wasn't a steel barrier, but it was better than what she'd had when Lewis finger-fucked her in a beach house bathroom.

Better than red velvet.

The Crier had no intentions of using his fingers, though. Knocking her legs farther apart with his knees, planting a fist near either of her shoulders, he lowered himself against her like he was doing a push-up. She'd been right about the erection; it jabbed into her crotch when he thrust his hips, as if he could fuck her through the layers of material between them. Lewis had done that as well, crawling on top of her to simulate the various ways he would rape her (again). Sometimes molesting her with the muzzle of her own gun. And when he stood behind her in the granary, rubbing his cock against her ass and mashing her tits together, it had been as familiar as screwing an ex lover. Once Lewis' bitch, forever Lewis' bitch.

"Bet you still got a nice juicy cunt too, don't you, slut?" the Crier gruffed in Olivia's ear. He nipped painfully on the lobe, and for one second, Olivia forgot she couldn't cry out. She thought of the tagline to the movie Alien—In space no one can hear you scream. She'd been eleven the year that was released, and the concept had filled her with terror. Floating alone out there in space, forgotten, forever lost.

She still feared that was what death might be like. Like being mute and frozen on the floor of a dirty van while a man with a teardrop tattoo dry-humped you and murmured, "I been getting sick of kiddie pussy. 'Bout time I got to break in a real bitch."

"Boss said not to mess up her face," the kid warned, though he watched with fascination as the scene played out. Any closer and he would be nose to nose with his accomplice. "Buyer wants her pretty."

"Yeah well, her ear ain't her face, dickweed." The Crier shot a murderous glare at the younger man, but whatever the exchange meant, it had done the trick. He shoved away from Olivia and slammed her knees shut with a nudge that felt more like a kick. "And your boss daddy isn't here risking his neck to grab some bitch cop, is he?"

Okay, breathe, she told herself. Think about what you know, what you're hearing. Keep your shit together, he didn't rape you (yet). At most you've got a sore ear and probably need a tetanus booster, from the looks of him.

She took a deep breath and blinked. This is what she knew: None of these men were in charge; it was important to learn the power dynamic early on, so you knew to whom to appeal. Hadn't the kid mentioned something about boss's orders, too? She couldn't remember, but she tucked the information away in her brain, along with "boss daddy." Real daddy or just a dig at the kid was hard to tell.

Then there was the comment about a buyer. That frightened her more than anything else thus far, other than seeing her wife tased and dumped on the sidewalk. (Oh God, Amanda. Please let her be okay.) Buyer was trafficking lingo for someone who purchased a human being, usually for sex or forced labor. Or both. Occasionally the buyer simply wanted someone to torture, or in one case Olivia would never forget: as hunting practice.

Maybe it was the last name Byer, she reasoned. But she knew that wasn't what the kid had meant. The drugging, the van clearly equipped for transporting large cargo, the references to breaking her in and leaving her pretty for a buyer, the pawing and rutting she'd just endured, the group of assailants—this abduction had so many earmarks of human trafficking, it was almost laughably formulaic. Next thing, she would be tied to some filthy bed, being force-fed coke and cock, until there was nothing left of Olivia Benson but a hollow shell, frail and zombie-like. Wasn't that how these movies went?

Except it didn't make sense. Men like this went after young girls without families who would support or miss them. They promised young immigrant women jobs as nannies or maids, then turned them into all-American prostitutes in the land of the free and the home of the brave. She had never, in her thirty years on the force, and twenty-four of those in SVU, heard of a police captain in her fifties getting trafficked.

She supposed there was a first time for everything. A time to every purpose under heaven, like the song said. Turn, turn, turn.

Her eyes blinked again, and she realized she was able to move them around in their sockets, a natural impulse she immediately fought to suppress. The drug was beginning to wear off—she felt herself gradually regaining control of her faculties, one by one, as if a potent poison were being leached from her body through the feet; she felt like a draining bathtub—but the fear of what these men would do to her once she rallied was greater than her relief at being mobile. She might at least buy herself a few extra minutes to think, to plan, to breathe, if she could just hold still . . .

"Eyes are moving. Cryo's wearing off." That was the Kid, helpful little son of a bitch that he was. He leaned in so close Olivia smelled banana on his breath, momentarily reminding her of the Gerber banana-flavored cookies Matilda had loved when she was teething. Someday soon, Samantha would be ready for those as well. Jesse hated bananas; Noah loved them. Her sweet little monkeys.

It hurt to think about the children while she was in this predicament (would she ever see them again? Samantha was too young to remember her if she didn't make it out of this), but the Kid blew an experimental puff of air directly into her face, scattering her thoughts like leaves in the wind and grinning when she flinched. "Should we dose her again?"

"You wanna turn her brain to mush before we even make the docks?" The driver had finally spoken, calling into the back of the van in a faintly accented voice. New York with a bit of Latin flair. Spanish Harlem, maybe. Local. Olivia didn't know if that was significant or not, but she filed it away with the other intel: the drug was called Cryo (short for—?) and they were taking her to the docks. Lots of places to hide in New York Harbor. Lots of cargo coming in—and going out. "You give her another dose of that shit already, she'll have the same IQ as your retard brother. Nobody wants to fuck some special needs cunt, no matter how big her tits are."

The Kid bristled at that comment about his brother, forgetting Olivia for the time being and pushing himself upright to sit with his back to the van wall, arms folded petulantly on his bent knees. He was still part child, and he looked it at the moment, sulking in the corner. It hadn't been a joke, then; the boss was his father. No one acted that way around men like the Crier and the Driver (Olivia caught a glimpse of his beefy frame in the front seat as her eyes pinballed back and forth, trying to spot a familiar landmark through the windows) and stayed alive, unless he had a shit-ton of money, or his father did.

"I was just asking," he said, stone-faced and glaring at the opposite wall. He cracked each knuckle of his long, spidery fingers compulsively, and when he noticed Olivia gazing askance at him, he thrust his foot forward without warning, the heel of his Converse sneaker buffeting her temple.

An explosion of light dazzled her already inflamed senses, as if she had caught the sun's reflection glancing off a storefront window in passing, and for a moment her terror disappeared as pain ricocheted inside her skull. It settled somewhere behind her eyes, and she gave a feeble moan, wishing she could hold her aching head but unable to lift either arm. Extremities must take longer to restore than other parts closer to the brain. She hated that the first sound she made in the men's presence was weak and vaguely sexual; she hated that she reacted at all to the spiteful kick.

"Now who's breaking boss daddy's rules about not fucking up her face?" The Crier smirked encouragingly, in spite of the question. Olivia got the distinct impression that he would have enjoyed seeing the Kid give her a few more jabs with his foot, and it wouldn't have bothered him a bit if the younger man stood up and stomped her skull to bits, gray matter and bone shards kicking up like mud and stone from his black Chucks. In fact, the man with the teardrop tattoo would like that very much.

"Why don't you make yourself useful, junior, and help me tie this bitch up?" he said, clapping Olivia soundly on the thigh the way a farmer might show affection for a prized hog. "She's stronger than the skinny little skank-hos we usually bring in. Spinners practically snap right in half on my dick. This one's got some fight in her. Look at them eyes. Still thinks she's gonna get away, don't you, Mommy?"

"Afraid she's too much woman for you? Won't be able to keep her satisfied?" The Kid snickered at his own commentary while he dug around inside a dark backpack that sat open in the corner. It reminded Olivia of the duffle bags used by the robbers when she and Amanda were held hostage in the bank a year and a half ago. They had taken her engagement ring, almost killed Amanda. At least it wasn't the detective's life in danger this time. That was Olivia's one comfort so far.

But the Crier had called her "Mommy." It could have been mami, though she didn't think so. The driver was the one who spoke Spanish, that much was clear from his accent. Cry Baby looked like an average white guy—from what she could make out of his natural skin and hair color, under all the ink and bleach—and probably didn't know el jefe from la bolsa. But he did know she had young children at home, the way he affected a baby voice when he said "Mommy," and delighted in informing her that she couldn't get away. Even that small amount was too much information for her liking.

Before she could fret about what else he had on her, what else could be used against her, the other guy pulled a roll of silver duct tape and some zip ties from the backpack. Olivia's pulse spiked at the sight of them, and she tried to shout a resounding no, breathing from the diaphragm like she did when her words needed to project to the back of a squad room, an auditorium, (a prison basement), a noisy and agitated crowd. She managed little more than a whimper and a shake of the head that felt like it rattled her brain, though she'd barely twitched.

"N-no," she croaked, forcing the sound up her throat and through her lips with an audible puff of air. She thought of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, bleating for his oil can. Amanda always made her and the kids laugh by imitating the rusty axman, plank-stiff and uttering the squeaky request from the corner of her mouth, whenever they reached that scene in the movie. Olivia had taught their children that hugs and kisses worked just as well as oil at restoring Mama to her pliable, grinning self.

The men either hadn't heard, or chose to ignore the woman struggling and grasping for purchase—even the smallest of footholds to lift her from the mire of total paralysis—on the floor between them. "Never had any complaints before," said the Crier, grabbing his crotch with both hands and rubbing it lewdly. He kissed the air above Olivia, directing it at the younger man. "From bitches on the inside or the out. What about you, rich boy? You even had pussy yet, or you just jerk off to that kiddie porn your daddy sells?"

"I've had plenty of pussy." The Kid did a fancy trick with the wheel of duct tape, rolling it down his arm, launching it from the bend of his elbow, and batting it hand to hand with the skill of a trained juggler. Suddenly, he pitched the heavy skein at the Crier, who caught it against his chest at the last second and scowled darkly, looking as if he might take the Kid's head off in return. "My pops got me a hooker for my fourteenth birthday. While you were cornholing your buddies in Attica, I was getting real play. I'll fuck her right here if you need a refresher course, bro."

Olivia's fear of the duct tape, roughly that of spotting a shark fin approaching in dark waters, was swallowed whole by mind-numbing terror—the great white breaking the surface, its soulless black eye focused on her—when the Kid got to his knees and unzipped his jeans. No fucking way would she lie there and let that disgusting little bastard use her as a demonstration tool. No one other than Amanda was permitted to touch her. She didn't believe marriage offered a protective barrier against assault, nor did it make someone the property of their spouse, but she had come to think of herself as Amanda's, all the same. It made her feel safe, untouchable. Fighting for her own protection had so often failed; perhaps fighting for what belonged to Amanda would better serve her.

"No," Olivia said again, and this time the men heard. They turned to watch her flounder, with the dispassionate gazes of scientists standing outside the cage of a test subject—a monkey or a rat they had injected with an experimental drug not yet approved for human trial.

Other than mild surprise, they registered no emotion while observing Olivia's desperate struggle to prop herself up, walking backward on both elbows and shuffling her feet, just to gain a few inches of distance from them. "Don't touch," she whispered hoarsely, unable to dislodge the me that stuck like cotton in her throat, which had gone dry at the prospect of having her mouth taped shut. The burning aftertaste of vodka, a flavor similar to scorched tires, ignited on her tongue.

"I don't think she likes you, junior." The Crier grinned, turning even that typically pleasant expression into something sinister and trashy by licking his silver tooth, his eyes roving Olivia's retreating form. He reached down and grabbed her ankle, tugging her towards him and undoing what little progress she had made in her escape. When she tried to kick out at him with her other foot, he knocked it aside as easily as swatting a pesky insect. "Limp noodle probably doesn't do much for her. Bet a tough bitch like this makes that little blond wife of hers wear the nine-inch. The tough ones always like being put in their place with a good, hard fuck. Wait'll she gets a load of my nine inches."

As he spoke, the man gripped Olivia's ankles tightly enough to leave bruises, preventing her from doing much more than uselessly pedaling her knees up and down. She thought of Jesse, who was just learning to ride a two-wheel bike. According to Amanda, their daughter would have been buzzing around the streets at four years old—the same age Amanda had been when she taught herself to ride a big kid bike—if they lived in a small town, rather than the city.

But it still took Olivia's breath away to see her fearless little girl wobbling haphazardly through the park when Amanda, jogging alongside, released the bicycle seat. Would she ever get to see Jesse discard the training wheels for good and ride confidently on her own? Would Jesse ever forgive her for not being there, if she didn't make it through this? Would any of the children?

"Limp noodle, my ass. Give her here, I'll fuck her so hard she'll choke on my dick from the other end." The Kid clamped a hand on Olivia's arm, wrenching her sideways, and for a moment, the men engaged in a tug of war with her limbs, pulling her this way and that.

Had she been an old shirt, surely she would have been rent in two. Luckily she was made of sturdier stuff than that, and she let her body become dead weight, a much more difficult state to maneuver. She hoped. In the end, however, it was the Driver who rescued her from being yanked in opposite directions; from being raped on the floor of a van that smelled like a jockstrap and something industrial, metallic.

Later, he would prove to be as sick and heartless as the others, when she was suffering, bleeding, and crying out for mercy in a colder, filthier hell than this one. For now, he was her savior, calling over his shoulder, "Cut that shit out, fool. Both of you. Gus'll string us up by our cojones if we start sampling the merchandise ahead of time. You can't afford to make any mistakes, sonny boy. You screw up your first gig, you can kiss being a recruiter goodbye."

At first the Kid didn't appear to care whether or not he made recruiter, his hands still poised at either side of his open fly. He gazed down at Olivia with a mixture of longing and disdain, and for half a second, she expected him to spit on her, or whip out his penis and blow a wad on her face. He wanted to, of that she was certain. When he zipped up his jeans instead, she breathed a sigh of relief and felt as if some of her strength had been restored. Not a true escape, perhaps, but a reprieve nonetheless.

Then she heard the screech of duct tape separating from the roll and turned just in time to see the Crier tear a piece off, bringing it towards her lips. "Wait—" She tried to dodge his oncoming reach, craning her neck and twisting her head side to side, the way babies refused bites of strained peas or carrots (not Matilda, of course, she had loved—) "No, please!"

Grabbing the long braid that had slipped behind Olivia's shoulder, the Kid coiled it around his hand like an abusive husband preparing his belt in a tawdry Lifetime movie about domestic violence. He jerked it tight, snapping her head back in the other man's direction so abruptly her neck popped. One of her first vehicular homicide cases as a newly minted detective had been a woman whose thick French braid got shut in a car door during an argument, breaking her neck instantly when she sped away and collided with a tree. She could still picture the odd angle at which the woman's head lay upon her shoulder, severed from the spinal cord, like a bent match head, a top-heavy dandelion.

"I—" I, what? She had no follow up to the declaration (I'm a police officer, I have children at home, I can't be raped again, I don't want to die) and it wouldn't have mattered anyway, if she did. The tape sealed any and all conclusions inside her mouth, where they withered on her parched tongue. Operating on reflex, her hand shot up to pry the adhesive aside, only to be slapped away with such force, it flung her arm out wide, as if she were displaying a sprawling vista.

When she automatically reached up with the opposite hand, the Crier reared back a second time, preparing to drive his fist into her face. She cringed from the anticipated blow, sure it would break her nose, a cheekbone, an eye socket—or maybe all three—the way he was hitting. His strength was immense and terrifying. Earlier in the school year, Noah had done a report on honey badgers, the small but incredibly powerful and ferocious creatures that resembled skunks and were capable of taking down large mammals. So thick-skinned they could withstand arrows and machetes; resistant to snake venom and known to kill even the most deadly cobras.

That's what the Crier reminded Olivia of, those fiendish, foul-smelling weasels, right down to the stripe of white hair he styled like a mohawk. She gritted her teeth, waiting for him to shatter the bones in her face
(like you shattered William Lewis')
but the impact never came. Not from that angle, at least. "Turn her over," said one of the men—she hadn't distinguished their voices from each other yet, the blood and her heart pumping too loudly in her ears—and before she could force open her eyes, she was bodily lifted, flipped, and slammed onto her stomach by two sets of hands. Her abductors were finally working together, it seemed.

She tried to push up from the floor on flattened palms. For a woman in her fifties who had large breasts and a trick shoulder, she still had a great deal of upper body strength. "Damn, girl, were you a mountain goat in another life, or just a lumberjack," Monique Jeffries used to ask, when she and Olivia went indoor climbing together. It was the same strength that made it possible to subdue perps so efficiently, and the reason she was able to pull Amanda back from a cliffside in the Catskills. And it was absolutely useless to her, now.

Both men caught her by the wrists, one on each side, and wrenched them behind her back, crushing them together while the tape roll made several revolutions, thicker and tighter with every loop. There wasn't time to be afraid or triggered by the sound and sensation of the bindings; it happened too fast for her to process, and neither function nor feeling had fully returned to her extremities anyway.

She had felt cut off from the rest of her body before, but those moments of dissociation paled in comparison to the Cryo, which had the added effect of trapping her inside the body she was separating from. She wasn't outside, looking in; she was at the innermost part of herself, cocooned in duct tape like a chrysalis awaiting transformation. What would her body be when this was over? To whom—or what—would it belong?

"Think I like her better from this angle," said the Crier (Yes, Olivia thought it must be him, he had a harder edge to his voice than the Kid). He gripped her ass with rough hands, kneading and spreading until she gave a sickly little groan behind the tape and turned her face to the floor. A metal groove beneath the mat pressed painfully against her forehead, but it was better than what he was doing. It kept her grounded, yuk yuk. (I'm here all night, folks! Unless these fine gentlemen kill me first!)

The groping seemed to last forever, and Olivia was trying to summon the strength to buck him off—maybe if she whiplashed her lower half hard enough, she could use the momentum to swing over, hook her legs around his neck, and squeeze until he turned purple or she heard a telltale crunch, whichever came first—but the Driver saved her the trouble, slamming on the brakes and sending the other two men sprawling. Already flat on her stomach, Olivia hardly budged. She launched a few blind kicks, hoping to hit something, anything, and connected only with air.

"Red light," the Driver announced, by way of an apology, his partners cursing and grumbling about his shitty driving. "You want me to get pulled over by the cops? That'd really give you something to bitch about."

It occurred to Olivia then that she should have been paying more attention to her surroundings this whole time—counting stoplights, listening for familiar sounds or changes in road terrain, noting the direction of each turn. She'd seen those movies and didn't believe for one second that someone with a bag over his head could memorize the layout of a foreign city through auditory cues and an internal compass alone, CIA or not. But she had lived in Manhattan her entire life, and she knew the streets well, thanks to thirty years of traveling them in squad cars. Perhaps if she'd been more observant (Like when that guy was rubbing his dick in your crotch?), she would have figured out where they were taking her.

They were headed for the docks, she knew that much. It was too general to be very helpful—there were countless docks in a city surrounded by water—although she might be able to narrow it down a little, based on how long it took to get there. Had they been in the van for ten minutes or fifteen? God, she couldn't remember. Every second that passed with the tape over her mouth, hands behind her back, face to the floor, felt like an hour. They could be upstate by now. They could be in goddamned Jersey.

She had experienced that same time loss with Lewis too, her memory and consciousness glitching in and out while she was tied up in the trunk of a car, then the floor of yet another van. Day blurred into night, the living blurred into the dead, the assaults on her mind and body blurred into a waking nightmare, much like the current one. Maybe she had never really escaped at all. Maybe everything since had been the dream: Amanda, their children, the home and family she had always wanted. A beautiful, perfect, impossible dream . . .

No, Olivia scolded herself so sharply she grunted. She didn't get to check out like that. She had survived minutes with Harris, hours with Arliss, days with Lewis, years with her mother, and kept her sanity through it all. No matter how painful the reality, she had to face it head on, just as she'd done her entire life. Her wife and children were as real as the metal ridge pressing against her forehead, the tape cutting off the circulation in her wrists, and they needed her sane and whole.

She closed her eyes and pictured her family—all smiling faces and blue eyes, except for little Sammie Grace, brown-eyed and dark-haired, just like Mommy—so she didn't have to see the men gazing down at her. Their intentions were clear by the expressions they wore (the Kid kept grinning and winking at her, the Crier glared and licked his lips every few seconds) and the bits of conversation she struggled to tune out ("—she's ever been fucked by a guy before?" "—take a while to break a bitch like her in, but that's what the buyer wants, so . . . ").

Some of the meditative state was to block out their faces and voices, some to conserve her strength. She couldn't fight two of them in close quarters while partially hog-tied, but she would be damned if she'd lie back and take whatever they had planned for her at the next location.

And she knew, didn't she? No matter how hard she pretended not to, she knew what it meant to "break a bitch." It was slightly outdated street slang for what pimps did beforehand to the girls they turned out. They were calling it seasoning these days, traffickers and law enforcement alike, a term that referred to raw meat being prepared for consumption. Whichever nickname it went by, it all boiled down to the same basic methods: psychological torture, threats, rape, beatings, food and sleep deprivation. Anything and everything it took to make the victim docile and compliant. That's how Olivia's buyer wanted her.

She had a buyer. She'd been branded like livestock by William Lewis, now she was to be sold like it. Unseasoned meat, awaiting slaughter. That was all she was to these men.

Oh God, she longed for Amanda.

. . .