A/N: I'm not actually superstitious about the number 13, but I like the idea of leaving it out of this story, and this chapter is a continuation of the previous one, so calling it 12b just works. I know the past several chapters have been really rough and everyone's anxious for Liv to be saved—that's some of why I tried to include other action outside of the shipping container, so it's not all just focused on the assault. At the same time, that is the crux of the story, so it needed to be there and it needed to be bad and not glossed over. I'm still really torn between where to put chapter breaks to give everyone breathing time (... no pun intended, with this chapter), but also not drag anything out. I hope y'all are hanging in there. *group hug* And I'll just get this out of the way now: TRIGGER WARNING for rape, sexual violence, choking, and references to child abuse.
Chapter 12b.
Tilt
. . .
"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus." Amanda glanced around the room in a panic, looking for a weapon to hit the man with, anything to get his hands off of— "Oh, Liv." She clawed at her own neck, as if she might somehow pry him away from Olivia by sheer force of will. By the supposed psychic connection that was proving to be a load of bullshit, just like the false sense of security they had let themselves fall into.
Or Amanda had, at least. Olivia wanted her and the kids close last night. She'd been on guard this morning in the bagel shop, too. Had she known she was going to die today? That it would be the last time she'd hold Amanda's hand or play with her hair until she fell asleep? The last time nursing Samantha or hearing Matilda say her sleepy goodnight I-love-yous to everyone, including the dogs. The last time getting a big, noisy smooch on the lips from Jesse, and a less demonstrative but extra tight hug from Noah.
"LET HER GO, YOU FUCKING ANIMAL!" Amanda screamed at the screen, the words ripping out of her with such guttural force she thought he might actually hear her. Wherever he was.
The Sandman went on choking Olivia, paying no mind to the useless blonde shouting at a laptop, X amount of miles away. He dodged the captain's outstretched hands, which shot up to push at his cheeks and chin, unable to find purchase enough to gouge his eyes or deliver an uppercut. He didn't even blink when she began slapping frantically at his biceps, her face turning a garish shade of red, her mouth open in a silent gag.
With a bit more pressure he would likely break Olivia's hyoid bone, an injury found most commonly in victims of strangulation. (Yeah, the dead ones.) It was oxygen deprivation that ultimately killed them, not the broken bone. Olivia could still survive, even with the fracture, though she might experience inability to swallow or airway obstruction. But she would be alive. Amanda didn't care what condition she got her wife back in, just as long as she was alive.
Olivia was fading fast. She gripped at the Sandman's hands, trying to pry his fingers away from her throat, but her eyes were beginning to flutter, rolling aimlessly behind the lids. Her face was the color of a ripe plum, the vein in her forehead startlingly prominent. Her arms sagged a little more with each second that passed.
"Come on, baby, fight," Amanda said in a small, whimpering voice she didn't recognize as her own. She briefly wondered who had let a child into the room, but the thought disappeared before it fully formed. Her only lasting thoughts were of Olivia, whom she was watching slip away.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. They were supposed to grow old together, outliving everyone except their children, and then going together, on the same day, in the same bed, their old lady hands intertwined. Amanda didn't know how to exist in the world anymore without Olivia by her side.
"Breathe," said the strange, childish voice, even more tearful than before. Amanda didn't care where it was coming from, as long as Olivia obeyed its request. Expecting her to fight in such a weakened state, to breathe when the air was being choked from her lungs, seemed unfair, callous almost. But she had to.
Amanda repeated the commands—fight and breathe—a second, third, fourth time, until she was practically yelling them at Olivia with the same fury she had directed at Gus. She picked up the laptop by its sides and shook it viciously, only catching herself at the last second before hurtling it across the room. "Goddammit, Liv, just— just—"
The captain closed her eyes and didn't open them again, her body going limp in Gus's hands. She drifted to sleep that way sometimes, nodding off in bed with her nose in a book, glasses on, dark hair bunched around her on the pillow like a sleeping princess. Or a body in a casket.
Oh my God, she's dead! He killed her, Fin! He killed Liv! He killed my— Amanda thought she must be screaming, but her ears were ringing like they had the last time she'd been shot. She couldn't make sense of what Fin was saying or how he had gotten there, either. He deposited the laptop on the table with one hand, the other arm looped behind Amanda, lowering her into the desk chair. His lips moved without sound, until he finally said the one thing she was willing to hear.
"She ain't dead."
"What?"
Fin nodded grimly to the screen, where Olivia was indeed stirring and the Sandman was undoing the front of his pants. "Wasn't long enough to kill her. He just wanted to put her out while he . . . " The sergeant swallowed hard and didn't go on. He shook his lowered head, drew back his fist, and drove it down against the tabletop with enough force to break his knuckles. "Goddamn. I hate this motherfucker."
The momentary rush of euphoria Amanda felt at seeing her wife move turned into a flood of guilt and despair when she realized what Fin meant. Gus didn't intend to kill Olivia—not with a million dollars on the line—just render her unconscious for the rape, which he began now, as smoothly as if he were entering a lover. Of course it was easier when Olivia wasn't struggling and had already been lubed up for him. He was more vulture than sandman, waiting for others to make the kill so he could swoop in and pick the bones clean.
A deep frown furrowed the captain's brow, her eyelids twitching rapidly but having difficulty parting. She mumbled something unintelligible, head lolling side to side, then gave a mighty cough and took a ragged, wheezing breath, like an asthmatic without an inhaler. At last her eyes squinted open, although perhaps it would have been better if they had stayed shut. When she brought Gus into focus, leaning over her and pinning both wrists above her head, she gasped and tried to jerk to back, succeeding only in bucking against the desk.
"G-g-get off," she croaked, barely above a whisper. So much damage could be done to the throat and larynx via manual strangulation, and Amanda had heard that telltale rasp in the voice of countless DV victims over the years. Including her own mother's.
She'd never expected to hear her wife sounding like that; it was bad enough imagining what it had been like for Olivia in the aftermath of being choked by Serena Benson. The bitch hadn't even taken Olivia to the hospital afterward to check for underlying injuries, opting instead to tuck the traumatized fifteen-year-old into bed with her and hold her until she cried herself to sleep.
Sometimes Amanda wondered if that incident—attempted murder, to be precise—had contributed to Olivia's change of vocal pitch in recent years. What would this one result in, assuming the captain survived it? Strangulation also had high incidences of stroke, brain injury, blood clots, respiratory issues . . .
"Try again," Gus told Olivia, gathering both of her wrists into one hand and returning his free hand to her neck. He forked it against her windpipe, bearing down hard, though she had barely regained enough consciousness or strength to resist beyond a few spasmodic jerks of the arms and shoulders.
Inches from the captain's face, he studied her intently as she slipped back under, his rocking hips picking up speed. It wasn't just about conditioning her to respond appropriately; the sadistic fucker was getting off on depriving Olivia of air. On having the power to end her life or restore it with the touch of a hand. Oh, Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream . . .
"Jesus Christ." Amanda gripped the armrests of her chair as if she were on a roller coaster. She pictured herself standing up and heaving it through the plate glass wall to the interview room. She thought about punching the table, as the sergeant had done, but if she started that, she probably wouldn't stop. It was like being in a straitjacket, this sitting here dreaming about all the actions she couldn't take. Soon she really would go insane. "I'm gonna kill him, Fin. I'm gonna fuckin' hunt him down and kill him."
Fin gave no indication whether or not he had heard. His jaw was clenched so tightly he probably couldn't have spoken, even if he wanted to. His fists were knuckle-down on the table, hard enough to leave indentations. In all the years Amanda had known him, she'd never seen him look so much like he might be willing to kill someone with his bare hands. And like he would succeed.
Ten seconds was all it took to render Olivia unconscious, ten more for Gus to revive her with a vicious thrust, a vicious squeeze at her breasts. (Fin looked away.) She whimpered this time and expelled a single feeble cough, but her terror at waking to find she was being raped had dissipated. Now she shook her head so faintly it was almost imperceptible. Air puffed from her lips until she managed to form one raspy word: "Please."
"Please what, Olivia? Please fuck you harder? Faster? You'll have to be more specific." Gus twitched the corner of his mouth in what must have been his version of a smile. It went no further on his dead profile. Amanda could tell he was conventionally attractive, hawk-featured and well-dressed, but to her, he looked like the worst monster of them all.
He looked like the sandman, bringer of nightmares and infinite sleep.
With a great deal of effort, forcing tears from her eyes and a few more fruitless attempts at speech from her lips, Olivia finally choked out a shaky no that sounded more like a question than a refusal. "Please no?"
The Sandman shook his head as if he had been let down by someone for whom he'd had high hopes. Someone who just hadn't learned her lesson yet. "Wrong answer," he said flatly, and lowered his hand toward Olivia again. Her eyes widened as it clamped heavily over her mouth, the thumb pinching her nose shut against the side of the forefinger. Her face looked so small beneath the large, unforgiving grasp.
"Fuck." Amanda muttered the curse below her breath, then held it in—the swearing and the breathing—not wanting to do either while her wife was unable to even gasp for air.
It took longer to suffocate than it did to die from lack of blood to the brain, but Olivia's panicked state and the previous choking had already drained her oxygen supply. She faded quickly, the frantic jerks of her head slowing to a sleepy nod, before Amanda's lungs even started to burn. Her huge brown eyes, twice their normal size in her frightened, partially covered face, rolled to white. Horribly, sickeningly, Amanda thought of the blank spaces between rotating symbols in slot machine reels. Her gorge rose without warning, and she would have vomited right there on the keyboard if Olivia's eyelids hadn't closed over the sclera.
"Stop," she gritted through her teeth, when Gus didn't immediately release Olivia and let her breathe. So many times Amanda had woken in the middle of the night and squinted through the darkness to see the rise and fall of her sleeping wife's chest, not content until she was positive the comforter had moved, that there had been the tiniest of sighs. So many times she had dreamed that she'd failed to resuscitate Olivia that day in the Mangler's lair. "Goddamn you, let her go!" She slapped the table on both sides of the laptop, ready to use her fists next, if Gus didn't listen.
"He will," Fin said, though he didn't sound convinced. "She ain't no good to him dead, or . . . "
Brain damaged? In a vegetative state? Drooling into a paper cup? Before Fin could elaborate, the other man took his hand away from Olivia's face, and finding her unresponsive, pumped harder. When that didn't work, he shook her by the chin, cuffed her lightly on the cheek, blew in her face. He muttered what sounded like, "Come on, bitch, quit playing possum," and butted the heel of his palm twice against her temple.
On the third blow, Olivia's eyes cracked open barely enough to part her lashes. Amanda sank back against her chair, clutching her chest and gulping at the air as if she were the one who had gone without it for at least fifteen seconds. Not long in the grand scheme of things, but a significant interruption after repeated loss of consciousness and respiration. She didn't know how much more Olivia could take without eventually not waking up at all.
"She's strong," Fin said, as if he were reading Amanda's mind. Or just her trembling hands and the tears that now came as spontaneously as blinking. Breathing. She wasn't even wiping them away anymore. "Liv's been through a helluva lot—"
"Please do not say she's been through worse," Amanda snapped. Fin was the last person she wanted to take out her anger and fear on, but he was also the easiest target right then. He'd been working with Olivia when Amanda was still an undergraduate and the police academy was just a distant twinkle in her eye.
He had been there to stop Lowell Harris as the CO orally sodomized Olivia; he'd been first on the scene with Amaro when they found Olivia in that beach house, shellshocked and clutching a bloody iron bar; and he had burst into the warehouse with EMTs and half the force behind him after the Mangler nearly succeeded in slashing Olivia's throat.
Always a day late and a dollar short was Sergeant Tutuola. At least when it came to protecting Olivia. Yeah, he had her back, all right.
"You don't know half of what she's been through, so just shut your damn mouth." Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to look at Fin—refusing to look anywhere but at the livestream. It felt good to be mean, especially in defense of her wife, whom she had failed so tremendously. "She shouldn't have to keep surviving this shit."
"That's not what I was going to—"
"Shh." Amanda waved her hand to silence the sergeant when Olivia, still not fully lucid after the last bout of asphyxiation, began to mumble something to the man above her, raping her. At first it wasn't loud enough to make out, but the captain kept repeating the same broken phrase until a few of the words were detectable.
"Mah . . . me. Suh-sorry. Um sorr— sorry, Mom. Me, I'm . . . "
I'm sorry, Mommy.
Amanda's insides crumbled then, the fury that had just bolstered her gone in an instant, and she clapped both hands over her mouth to keep a sob from escaping. Olivia was apologizing to her mother. The mother who had shoved her headfirst into a brick wall and, while she was on the floor, bleeding and probably concussed, climbed on top of Olivia to strangle her.
It was probably better that the captain had regressed to that moment, instead of being present for this one, but it tore so viciously at Amanda's heart she felt as though a bullet had ripped through her chest this time, rather than the shoulder or the abdomen. She clamped a hand over her heart, like that would stop the blood from pouring out. But the wound was too grievous, and she would surely die. She'd already died a thousand times since Olivia had been thrown into that van.
Her one consolation was that Gus and his merry band of rapists likely wouldn't understand what Olivia was saying. Amanda had only pieced it together because she was accustomed to her wife mumbling in her sleep. The captain usually spoke to her rapists at nighttime, mostly pleading, often crying, and sometimes apologizing, as she did now. But this was the first time Amanda had heard Olivia talk to her mother. She looked so small and frightened, as she must have at fifteen, with Serena choking the life out of her.
"What's that?" Gus asked, an ear inclined in Olivia's direction. He slowed his thrusting to a rhythm more suited to conversation. "You'll have to speak up, my dear. And I better not hear another refusal from these lovely pink lips." He squeezed Olivia's cheeks with the same hand he'd used to strangle and smother her, forming her mouth into a fishlike pucker. Another time, another place, it would have been cute, but now it was disturbingly sadistic and cruel. "Agreed?"
Olivia had regained enough awareness—specifically when the Sandman grabbed her face—to give a small, affirmative nod. "Y-yes," she said in a sandpaper-whisper, exaggerated by her bowed lips. They were indeed very pink, the skin around them puffy and inflamed from having two different dicks shoved into her mouth. (If you think that's bad, wait till you see the other pair, said a voice in Amanda's head; she cringed inwardly, desperate never to hear it again.)
"Smart girl. Now, what is so important you just had to interrupt our special moment to say?" Gus still had Olivia's wrists pinned above her head, her fingers loosely curled, like an insect that died on its back, legs furling inward. She didn't have any fight left in her. When he let go of her face, stroking the hair from her temples and forehead with the fondness of a lover—or a father—Amanda shuddered, her insides churning; Olivia didn't react at all.
"I don't . . . " The captain furrowed her brow as if she were studying a perplexing case file full of holes and inconsistencies. "Don't remember."
Amanda tugged anxiously on her bottom lip, praying that Sandberg would accept the reply. In all likelihood, Olivia truly could not remember what she'd been mumbling while half conscious and struggling just to stay alive. She was not a convincing liar at the best of times, and certainly not while suffering and terrorized, but if the Sandman couldn't detect her honest tone or, hell, just decided he didn't like her answer, he would use it as an excuse to hurt her even worse.
Luckily, it appeared he had already lost interest by the time Olivia looked to him with trepidation, obviously fearing a reprisal as well. She winced when he made eye contact, his hips hitching at a slow and deliberate pace, reminding her where he was and what he was doing. As if she'd forgotten. "Oh well," Gus said, with such phony good cheer it sent a shiver down Amanda's spine. Men like him only sounded like that when they were planning something. "I guess you just need a way to keep that mouth of yours busy."
The meaning was clear from his inflection and the way he grazed his fingers over Olivia's lips, slipping his thumb inside her cheek like she was a prize catch to be lifted, photographed, displayed over a mantle. But until he stepped back from Olivia and rolled her onto her side at the edge of the desk, she didn't seem to register his intentions. When she did, she began to cry weakly, a sound so frail it had less substance than Samantha's first cries as a newborn.
Chin quivering rapidly, Olivia followed the Sandman with her eyes, tracking his progress as he rounded in front of her. She kept her gaze trained on his face, never letting it fall to his waistline, where he was exposed and fully erect. "I . . . I just wanna go home," she rasped, when he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I want my family."
"Your family is dead. Your wife would never be able to look at you or touch you the same way again after seeing this. And your kids would never trust you to protect them anymore—not when you can't even protect yourself." Gus slid his hand behind Olivia's head, fisting her roughly by the hair. "My boys and I are your new family, at least until you go to your forever home. And any decent pet should be housebroken before she's sold."
The Sandman jerked on Olivia's hair, snapping her head back, her lips parting slightly in reflex. He rubbed the tip of his penis against them, trying to push his way in, yanking harder at her hair when he couldn't. "Open up like a good girl. This is your life now, Olivia, and you better get used to it."
She fended him off for only a moment more, her clenched jaw no match for his powerful grip as he wrenched it open and put his cock in her mouth. Simple as that. Hand in glove, sword in sheath, gun in holster. He took his time with it, more than the other men had, which meant he didn't pound away at Olivia's gag reflex and practically choke her to death. But it also meant he blocked her airway longer with each thrust, withholding the relief Olivia strained and wept and moaned for.
"Man, just let her breathe," Fin said, his voice distant in Amanda's ears. She had tuned out the sergeant and the rest of her surroundings, focusing so intently on the video feed that it overwhelmed her vision, narrowing the field around it like she was peering through a keyhole. Like Alice outside the door to Wonderland, first too large to get through, then too small. Perhaps if Amanda cried hard enough, her tears would become an ocean and carry her to wherever Olivia was being held. (And raped and tortured and strangled . . . )
It had worked for Alice.
"Breathe, baby, breathe," Amanda chanted under her breath as she watched Olivia fighting to stay conscious—and losing.
The captain's face had that same sickly purple hue as when Gus's hands were around her neck, squeezing, but this time she couldn't sputter or wheeze or mouth a silent plea. (Breathe, baby. Please breathe.) She simply faded out, like the end of a song, her hand dropping from where it had clutched at the back of Sandberg's jacket. It dangled lifelessly over the edge of the desk. (Breathe for me, Liv. Come on, baby . . . )
Amanda exhaled heavily, as if the blockage had been in her throat, when Gus eased off and shook Olivia by the hair to wake her. The dullness in her eyes as she gazed up at the man—he tilted back her head so that his face was the first thing she saw, upon waking—chilled Amanda to the bone. Olivia didn't seem to register what was happening anymore, and each subsequent fade out and fade in resulted in the same blank stare. Gus might as well have been giving her a routine dental exam rather than committing oral sodomy, for all the recognition in that look.
He put her out with his dick twice more, manly man that he was, and must have derived some sort of pleasure from it, because he was still hard when he withdrew from her mouth. "I think you're finally catching on," he said approvingly, when Olivia just lay there taking short, gasping breaths, and didn't attempt to speak. She hunched her shoulder to hide her breasts from view, but that was the only indication that Olivia Benson, as Amanda knew her, still existed.
It turned out that Olivia needn't have bothered with the modesty; Gus lifted her by the waist, drawing a hoarse cry as his arm tightened around something painful, and deposited her flat on her stomach, bent over the desk. She turned her face toward the camera, pressing her cheek to the desktop, and shut her eyes tight, as if she knew what was coming. And she probably did—Amanda knew, felt it in the pit of her stomach, like she was on a drop tower about to release. Her muscles clenched in preparation, but the bottom still dropped out, her stomach in free fall, when Gus stepped behind Olivia.
The proper term, used by hookers, porn stars, teenagers, and a couple of the guys Amanda had dated, was going "around the world": penetrating all three orifices during a single session of sex. Amanda had done it for fun once, but not with her wife. She doubted Olivia had ever done it at all, until now—Gus greased his fingers in the tub of Vaseline that was still open on the desk, swiped them between Olivia's buttocks, and entered her without ceremony.
He didn't grunt and groan like the other men. If not for the excruciating pain that twisted Olivia's features into a mask of suffering, it would have been difficult to tell if he was even inside. But as it always did, Olivia's face told the full story, and there was no questioning that she was being hurt again. Terribly hurt, though she didn't make a sound to express it, either. The silence was worse than the sobbing and the screams. Standing at the gates of hell and hearing nothing beyond was far more terrifying than any symphony of torture.
And yet there were no words to say when Amanda turned to Fin and saw her own helplessness reflected back at her. They watched in total silence as the Sandman completed the rape. He hardly broke a sweat, even when he burrowed his hands between Olivia and the desk, gripping her breasts and using them to pull her against him, her ass colliding with his pelvis; she bit into the side of her hand and never once opened her eyes as he jerked her back and forth, rattling the entire desk beneath them.
When he finally came, the only indications were a hunch in his shoulders and the ceasing of that maddening squeak from the rickety old desk. Beyond a faint groan, Olivia barely reacted to him pulling out, though it must have hurt tremendously. She tried to tuck in her bottom, winced, and sagged in defeat, looking as though she might collapse onto the floor.
Gus held her up with a hand on her back, the other producing a cloth from his pants pocket. He used it to wipe off his dick before zipping up, then folded the dirty side neatly onto itself and pocketed the rag again. Fastidious little fucker that he was. Meanwhile, his semen and that of four other men oozed out of Olivia, stained pink with her blood, and crusted on her skin like the glaze on a doughnut.
The vivid, vile mental image finally sent Amanda scrambling for the wastebasket. She snatched it up and stuck her face inside the brim just in time, though most of what she expelled was clear liquid and sticky saliva that had to be spat out forcefully. Globs of spittle clung to her lips and chin nevertheless. She brushed it off with the sleeve of Olivia's sweatshirt, dropping back into her seat and stowing the wastebasket next to her feet. Just in case.
That was how she knew the video was deeply affecting Fin as well. He didn't ask if she was all right, or even acknowledge that he'd heard or seen her puking into the garbage. His eyes were locked on Olivia, who lay draped over the desk like it was a life raft, and crying silently, the tears trickling from her unblinking eyes as if she was unaware they fell. She trembled uncontrollably, and each attempt to swallow was tentative, laborious.
"She's so cold," Amanda said in a broken whisper, her hand going to the screen on instinct, covering her wife's nude and battered body. She looked anxiously at Fin. "Maybe they've got her in some kind of refrigerated unit? Or— or a cellar? Have you checked that out?"
"She's probably in shock, Amanda," Fin said gently, resting a hand on her shoulder. It felt like he was preparing to break some difficult news ("I'm sorry, Mrs. Rollins-Benson, your wife didn't make it . . . "), and she shrugged him off at once. "You'd see her breath if it was that cold. And theirs. Plus, those big studio lights are hot beating down on you."
"Fine, if you're so all-knowing then you tell me—where the hell is she, Sergeant? You got any other ideas, or you just lettin' Garland do all the work for you?" Amanda infused the questions with every ounce of hatred she had for the men on the screen. It felt awful speaking to Fin that way, but it was better than the awful of seeing her wife be violently raped over and over.
"I don't know where these bastards took her any more than you do. But I got our best guys on it. Kat's hunting down that broad from prison you told her about. And I had to inform the chief, Rollins, you know that. I'm lucky he's even letting me work this case myself, being Liv's friend for so long." He cast a sorrowful glance at the laptop, swallowed hard. "I hate dealing with the Feds, but it'll be good to have—"
"The Feds? You brought the FBI into this? What the hell, Fin, they'll take over everything. And get in the way. They don't care about finding some cop." Amanda gestured to Olivia, shivering inside a featureless box (a garage, maybe? Another damn warehouse?) that could be any number of places throughout the city. Or beyond. "They don't care about Liv like we do."
"It wasn't my choice. Garland called them in. Told you that already." Fin said the last part so softly Amanda almost didn't hear. She did vaguely recall him mentioning the feebs getting involved, but she had been too preoccupied by the livestream—by watching her wife beg, suffer, bleed—for the information to sink in. "She's being held by a known sex trafficker who's moved vics across state lines, it's a federal case. And it's more eyes and better equipment. Trust me, they wanna get these fuckers, too. Anybody who sees this shit would."
Amanda gave a dull nod, pretending to agree so he would stop talking. He was probably right; the more people looking for Olivia, the better. And the FBI did have better tracking software and a farther reach than the NYPD. But something else Fin had said echoed in Amanda's ears and turned her stomach. "More eyes," she murmured to herself. She grazed the pad of her thumb along the onscreen image of Olivia's back, unable to move her hand away and expose her captain, her wife, again.
Too many people had seen Olivia being assaulted already. Each new pair of eyes was just one more person she would have to add to an already tragically long list of violators.
"Huh?" Fin asked.
"Nothing."
"You okay?"
Amanda tried to scoff, but it lacked conviction. "What do you think? My wife just got gang banged and strangled nearly to death. Would you be okay if it was Phoebe lying on that desk?"
"No. I'd probably be going outta my mind." Fin twisted absently at his engagement ring, then caught himself and made a fist with that hand. "That's why I'm asking. You didn't take the pills the EMT left—"
"I ain't taking some shit to calm me down when Liv can't even—" Amanda bit her bottom lip, unable to continue without succumbing to the lump in her throat. She shook her head instead, refusing the sedatives and the tears.
"Okay, I hear you. But you can't keep going on like this, either. It ain't healthy. What about . . . what about your therapist? I could call her for you. Someone should be here with you when I can't."
"Oh Christ, I do not need you to call my shrink like I'm some mental patient off her meds. Jesus, Fin." Amanda shot an incredulous look at her old partner, angry that he would suggest such a thing. He thought therapy was an even bigger sham than she did—or she had, at one time. "Besides that, she's out of the country till next month. Bali or somewhere. Must be nice."
If Amanda were in Bali right now, Olivia would be with her, instead of naked and draped over a desk, looking half dead and fully shattered. Fuck Hanover and her meditation retreat. No amount of spiritual guidance or special interview techniques was going to rescue Olivia from the hell she was in, and it sure as shit wouldn't make Amanda feel any better.
"You need to talk to someone, Amanda. What about—"
"Fine, I'll call Carisi," Amanda snapped, tossing out the first name that came to mind. She had no intentions of calling anyone, least of all the former detective who sometimes still looked at her with a bit too much longing. Talking would only distract her from Olivia, and the current conversation had already done too much of that. "Or Daphne. Just get off my back about it, I've got enough to worry about as it is."
Fin sighed and looked to the screen. He had more to say, that much was obvious just from the sound of his agitated breathing, but he kept it to himself. "Yeah, okay. I should get back out there. Are you gonna be all ri—"
"Go. I'm fine. Make sure you check out the Bronx. The Sandberg kid went to school there, so it's probably close to home." Amanda narrowed her eyes at the boy's father Gus, who had left off stroking Olivia's skin with admiration to huddle up with the other men, as if they were discussing football strategies. "Daddy might still be operating out of that area."
"Yeah, we're already on it." The sergeant was halfway to the door when he glanced back, prepared to add something he no doubt meant to be helpful, though nothing of the sort would hold much water at present. Whatever it had been, he never got to share, because two things happened at once: first, the men on the screen broke their huddle and converged on Olivia like a wolf pack on a wounded deer.
And second, a piercing voice Amanda hadn't heard in years and only recognized by the thick accent—nothing like the coarse ones in this city, but very much like the drawls of Atlanta—rang out in the squad room.
"Sweet baby Jesus. Who's in charge around here while that poor little girl is waiting on y'all to get up off your asses and bring her home?"
. . .