A/N: Okay, y'all, here's the follow-up to chapter 20 a little early because I'm weak and you talked me into it. :P Seriously, though, thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to read and review (and shoot down the anon trolls) with me. I'll just get the Trigger Warnings out of the way right now: gang rape and torture, although not quite as graphic or sustained as in some of the previous chapters. Don't lose heart, guys, I scrolled ahead this time to be sure and we are quickly approaching an inflection point to this part of the story. Deep breaths. We're almost there.

Chapter 21.

Talking to Ghosts

. . .

The interview room was eerily quiet compared to the squad room. No one had removed the laptop that Amanda smashed, and it lay in the middle of the floor like a black cat that had curled in on itself to die. Dana went to it, picked it up, transferred it to the table. Thinking better of it, she pushed closed the cracked, equally dead screen a second after opening it. "Dr. Kevorkian?" she asked, hiking up an eyebrow. She hadn't heard that name in years, and Amanda didn't look old enough to remember the case.

"Huh? Oh. It's all I could think of." Amanda glanced up from her cell phone, on the table where she'd left it before getting ambushed. She shrugged and resumed scrolling through a cascade of messages that looked like email. "Goddammit," she muttered, reaching the bottom and starting over again. She held up her finger for silence, despite the quiet of the room. The messages ticked by like numbers on The Price is Right wheel. Landed on a big red zero. "Goddammit."

"They'll get back with you. These guys are all the same." Dana tried to sound more confident than she felt. The only thing men like the ones holding Olivia captive had in common was their unpredictability. And so far, nothing about this case had been common or predictable. Luckily, Dana was a better liar than she was a comforter. "Just give 'em a minute, they're probably chomping at the bit to be showing off again."

Amanda let her phone thump against the tabletop. She picked it back up a second later, scrolled some more. "Yeah, and in the meantime, they're doing God knows what to her. The livestream was bad enough, what are they doing to her now that even they won't show?" She opened an email and muffled a sob when the photo attachment displayed on the screen—Olivia, wide-eyed and frightened, thick duct tape slashed across the bottom half of her face.

"You can't think like that, Rol—"

"Can't I?" Amanda demanded, holding the cell phone image out for Dana to view up-close. She snatched it back quickly and held it to her breast, protective, as if she had revealed something precious and secret. Something that was hers alone. "You think these are the nice sex traffickers? Yesterday and this morning were just a fluke, huh, and now they're treatin' her like she's at some fucking resort?"

This kid had a lot of sass. Dana got the feeling they could have been good friends, had they met under different circumstances. "No, that's not what I meant. But they're saving the worst parts for you. If they turned the cameras off, it's because they want some downtime. It's their intermission. I know it's hard to believe, but Olivia's probably safer with the cameras off than with them on."

Most of that was true; nevertheless, Dana held her breath as she waited for a response. She really did want to say something to put Amanda's mind at ease, or as at ease as it could be, but so far nothing seemed to come out right. It just reinforced Dana's belief that she wasn't meant to be close with other people. The only truly significant relationships she'd had were with people who didn't even know her real name or occupation. And Olivia Benson.

"Yeah." Amanda looked doubtful, but she did place her phone on the table and stack her hands on top. Though most of her color had returned and she didn't appear jittery anymore, her eyes had a hangdog heaviness that made it seem like the lids were weighted. If she rested her forehead against her folded hands, she would be out within seconds. She sat up straighter, cleared her throat, blinked. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Can't make torture porn if you don't film it, huh?"

The corner of Dana's mouth quirked with sympathy, rather than humor. She eyed one of the other office chairs congregating around the table, and decided to take a chance. Wheeling the chair around to Amanda's side of the table, she settled in next to her, hitching her trousers at the knee, and propped her elbows on the same spot. "Tell me something," she requested, tapping Amanda's knee with her knuckle. "Anything. Let me hear all 'bout them babies you and Liv got at home. What is it, ten of 'em? And a newborn? Y'all are crazier than a shithouse rat."

That actually earned a small chuckle from Amanda, but she cut it off, swift as the head of a chicken on the chopping block, her expression gone sullen and dark. But mostly just unbearably sad. "I don't want to talk about them right now. Can't. Not while their mama's . . . " She let the conclusion fade, along with her focus, staring off into the middle distance. "I haven't even seen or talked to them since yesterday morning. What kind of mother does that? Just ups and bails on her kids? I'm as bad as Serena."

"I don't know who that is, but I'm willing to bet she never went through half of what you're going through right now. Doesn't make you a bad mama." Dana was no authority on the subject—her mother had been a saint; no, really, she had her own church pew at the First Assembly dedicated in her name, Dotty Lee, everyone called it The Dot—but it didn't take an expert to see how devoted Amanda was to her wife and kids. "It wouldn't do them any good to see you this upset anyhow. You're protecting them by not exposing them to it."

Amanda gave a noncommittal shrug, a noncommittal grunt. It didn't even seem like she was listening, until she heaved a sigh and said, "Shoulda protected her better, is what I shoulda done. None of this would be happening if I'd done my job and not let them get at her. Shit, I just keep failing her."

"Hon, they tased you. Doesn't matter who you are or what the job description, they still woulda grabbed her up—"

"You don't know! You don't get it, I . . . " Amanda slumped back in her seat as if she'd suddenly deflated. She swiveled the chair away from Dana and spoke in the direction of the opposite wall. "I vowed to keep her safe. I went to her damn dead alcoholic mother's grave and swore I'd never let anyone hurt her like that again. 'Course I just found out that bitch sexually assaulted her too, so maybe the vow doesn't count now?"

This time her laugh was bitter and not a laugh at all. She took a bite of the words, spat them out like rotten fruit. And then that laugh. "How stupid am I? Kept worrying about all the men I needed to protect her from, and it turns out to be another woman."

Dana found it difficult to follow along with Amanda's narrative, but she didn't want to interrupt while the detective was venting. Lord knew the poor child needed to let off steam somehow. The part about Olivia's mother sexually abusing her and being a damn dead alcoholic was shocking, though, and it must have come across loud and clear. Without turning for a glimpse of Dana's curious expression, Amanda went on as if she were talking to herself.

"'Bout a month ago, during an undercover gig with a therapist, Liv remembered her mother attacking her and simulating her own rape on Liv. She was only eight years old. And her father . . . the one time she met him, he sexually abused her, too. She was raped in that prison and by Lewis, even though she said she wasn't. Too ashamed. Melia and Calvin sexually assaulted her. Them an' Lewis, that was on my watch." Amanda jabbed her index finger on the table, bending the tip back painfully. "And now six other guys've done her. Probably more by the time this is over."

That was a hell of a lot of information to process all at once. It had taken Dana's breath away, especially the part about Olivia's parents. Years ago, Dana had picked up on Olivia not having any family—something about a brother she didn't meet until adulthood, maybe?—but Dana assumed she was a former foster kid or something. Hadn't wanted to pry. You were supposed to reciprocate when someone shared details about their family. Or, in Dana's case, lie your ass off.

"Jesus." She couldn't think of a worse swear than that. Taking the Lord's name in vain either got your mouth or behind smacked, where Dana came from. Sometimes both. "Her own mama did that to her? That's awful. I heard of plenty of daddies doing that to their kids, but not mamas. What a hellacious bitch."

Amanda nodded, head turned just enough for the twinge of irony to be visible at the corner of her mouth. She sighed or gave a huff of amusement under her breath, hard to tell which. "Right? And despite it all, Liv still loves her. You believe that? I've tried to get her to be angry and stand up for—" Her throat caught and she cleared it abruptly, flicked the hair from her eyes, shot Dana an accusatory look, as if she'd been lured into revealing too much. "Anyway. She just doesn't have it in her. That hate."

That, Dana could absolutely believe. She might not know anything about the captain's tragic family, but you only had to spend a few moments with Olivia Benson to see she was all heart. Dana had expected it to be annoying at first. Instead, it had made her respect Olivia all the more. It was a dangerous way to exist, though, being that empathetic and accessible to everyone. You got used, cheated, abandoned. In the end, other people always let you down.

"Sometimes I think if her daddy had ever showed up again, she would've even forgiven him," Amanda said, the faraway tone returning to her voice. This time the sigh was unmistakable. "Wish she was more of a bitch, like me. And Vaughn. Maybe if she was a little meaner, these things wouldn't keep happening to . . . "

Amanda inhaled deeply through her nose and shook her head hard, as if dispelling the thoughts inside it. "Nah, that ain't true. I'm mean as a snake, and this is happening to her because of me, so." She gestured for Dana to fill in the blank however she saw fit.

"I'm sure that's not true," Dana said. She tried to be as soft and sincere about it as Olivia would be, but it felt false. She opted not to reach over and squeeze Amanda's arm reassuringly. "You had no way of knowing that Murphy would do something like this, especially when he ran off to Serbia and left you high and dry, his baby in your belly."

"He didn't, though. Not really." Amanda turned to gaze out the windows that lined the back wall, her eye glazed over in profile. She appeared to be watching the scene she described. "He came back while I was pregnant. Stood right out there and offered to help in whatever way he could. However much I'd let him. I thought Jess would be better off without him. Thought we all would. Liv tried to tell me different, but I ignored her. What's she know about having a daddy, right? God, I'm such an idiot."

"I still say it's not your fault." Dana shrugged, as if it were just fact, though Amanda didn't glance around to see it. "He was half a world away, and y'all tried to hunt him down, didn't you say? He's the one who was off selling young girls into sex work. Nobody in their right mind would think that's good daddy material. Even him."

Amanda raked the hair back from her face with such vehemence it looked painful. "I wasn't talking about Declan fucking Murphy, okay? I'm talking about Sondra Vaughn. She did this to get back at me. And don't try to explain it away. I appreciate that you wanna let me off the hook, I do, but that's not what I want or deserve. Vaughn wouldn't even know who Liv was if it weren't for me and my damn habit."

"Habit?" Dana ventured. The detective was still staring out the window, talking to ghosts. But Dana hated being in the dark, and she still couldn't make the connection between Olivia, Amanda, and a criminal like Vaughn.

"Gambling." Amanda tossed the word over her shoulder like she was spitting out tobacco juice. It hit with a similar splat, brown and ugly and pungent. "I'm an addict. Recovered. But back then . . . Vaughn was running an underground casino, and I got dimed as a cop. That's how I met Murphy. He was working undercover, and when Vaughn wanted to blackmail me into being her errand girl, he made me part of the operation. I got friendly with Vaughn, got her to trust me, then I sent her to prison while she was eight months pregnant. Now her kid's dead and she's taking it out on me and—"

The last part was a breathless, soundless Liv. Amanda swallowed hard several times and shoved up from her seat to go pace in front of the windows. "Maybe they're working together again, or something? I don't know. But I do know this is Vaughn's MO—rape the wife to get back at the person who wronged her. And I sure as hell did."

It was one heck of a story, and Dana wished she had more time to process and refute it. She wasn't sure how sending Vaughn to prison made Amanda responsible for a kid's death, but criminals—especially the women—didn't need much incentive when it came to seeking revenge on the person they blamed for their troubles. Dana had seen it plenty in prison, sometimes had it directed at her (on one occasion, she'd been the instigator against a highly unpleasant and handsy CO), and knew that law enforcement officers were twice as likely as civilians to fall victim to it. It's why police and Feds needed special protection when they were incarcerated.

"Vaughn's not gonna crack, even if this is all her," Amanda murmured, sounding a bit like a mad scientist working on a complicated formula out loud. "No matter how hard Kat and your guy lean on her. She's got nothing to lose now. She was pregnant, with a Kahr K9 pointed at her belly, and she still tried to play me. They're never gonna break her. We need someone she's working with to give 'er up. A weak link. But who? Who's the patsy here, Lewis?"

An excellent question, and one Dana didn't have an answer for. There was no way in hell Murphy was the fall guy, if he turned out to be involved—and she didn't doubt for a second that he was—but there had to be a go-between, or several, who did the dirty work for him and for Vaughn. These guys didn't like to get their hands dirty; they were the gods who commanded the scurrying cockroaches known as Gus Sandberg and his Dreamlanders. But even those filth-loving, pestilence-spreading insects had underlings.

Amanda was right: they needed to find out who answered to the cockroaches.

. . .

Four hours later, they had made very little progress. Vaughn's visitors log and LUDs proved useless. She'd had only one or two visitors since the death of her brother and child, a handful of calls from her sister-in-law (most of them hang-ups on Vaughn's end), and no mail since turning down the grad student who wanted to interview her for a dissertation on women giving birth in prison. That meant the person who ranked below even the cockroaches was probably employed at the prison, or another inmate. With close to one thousand women housed in Sealview and upwards of two hundred and thirty correctional officers, not to mention regular staff without badges, it was a helluva dung heap to sift through.

They had narrowed it down to a pile of possibilities, which included several guards, an overly friendly member of the kitchen staff, a clergyman, and a slew of inmates who were known Vaughn lackeys, when Amanda got an email. An unceremonious ding, an intake of breath as the detective opened the new link, a frenzy while agents and cops synchronized all available electronics to the feed on Amanda's phone.

Finally they had Olivia back, but it was such a grim sight, Dana wondered which was worse—seeing her or not.

Although impossible, it looked like she had shed ten pounds in the past few hours. Her shirt, no longer white, hung in tatters like a castaway's or a corpse whose clothes rotted right off its body. The dirt and blood were caked so thickly to her skin, she resembled a burn victim, charred around the inner thighs, the buttocks, the hands, the neck. If any of it were fresh, Dana couldn't tell from where she sat, but it definitely did not appear as if the men had treated Olivia to a spa day while the cameras were off.

Honestly, the captain seemed to have given up. For a solid hour, she did little more than stare at the wall and tap her knuckle ceaselessly against the wood floor. An occasional raspy request for water was the only other sound she made, and those were met with a deep silence, a stillness that made her location feel even more remote. Trapped in the small, featureless room with no sunlight and no outside noise—no indication of life on the other side—she might as well have been floating in deep space or that uncharted part of the ocean known as the abyss. Out where only the strangest, most alien creatures could survive the pressure, the cold, the lack of oxygen. Places man wasn't meant to go.

"Just breathe," Dana whispered to the screen. She was unaware she had spoken out loud until Amanda glanced up with a questioning grunt. Hm? Dana shook her head, not wanting to explain that the longer she watched Olivia confined inside that box—the shipping container or the darknet browser, take your pick—the harder it was to take a full breath. She didn't usually experience claustrophobia, but she was pretty sure that's what this was. Her pits were soaked through.

She fanned herself with one of the files from the No pile, a woman Vaughn had sent to the infirmary with a filed-down toothbrush in her gut, and peered at the dossier Amanda was currently engrossed by. Some doofy-faced guard named Parker, probably couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. Dana had almost tossed him onto the No's, based on that mouthbreather expression alone, but Amanda intercepted the employee record at the last second and had been poring over it ever since.

"He good for something this involved?" Dana tilted her head, squinted. The photo ID still just looked like Gomer Pyle to her.

"Huh? Oh, I don't know. Maybe?" Amanda licked the pad of her thumb and shuffled absently through the pages. "He's got some priors, a DV charge and possession. Couldn't hold down a job till he got to Sealview. He'd've been there when Liv— when she was undercover at the prison, but it's a big place. Odds of him knowing her are pro'ly slim. But . . . "

"But?"

Amanda extended the black and white picture, only a step removed from a mugshot itself, her fingers angled low on his brow. She had been the one to request hard copies of the Sealview records, unwilling to use her replacement laptop for anything but watching over Olivia. "What do you think? Pretend it's a MAGA hat instead of my hand. He could be the other guy, right? Number six?"

"Hmm." Dana was reluctant to answer one way or the other. If she agreed, she might be giving Amanda false hope, telling her what she wanted to hear. And if she said a flat-out no, she'd be ripping that hope away. Trying to settle on something halfway in-between, she gave a light, noncommittal shrug. "Could be, I reckon. Although, every one of them sonsabitches looks alike, so I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket just yet."

"Not putting my eggs anywhere," Amanda mumbled, chucking the file onto the Yes pile. She heaved a sigh and studied the livestream intently, though nothing had changed. Olivia was still curled up on that sorry excuse of a mattress, tapping out a metronomic rhythm on the floor and periodically requesting a drink of water. Amanda kept time with the tapping, her fingernail ticking the tabletop like a dripping faucet. "Wish she was here," she said, after a while. "She'd have this all figured out by now."

That was unlikely, considering they had half the cops in the city and some of the best field agents Dana had ever worked with on this case—and Olivia's location was still unknown—but she held her tongue. Amanda's longing was for her wife's return, not some magical detecting skill only the captain possessed. "You really are crazy 'bout her, huh?"

The pronouncement took them both by surprise, Amanda for its seemingly random delivery, and Dana for her own interest in someone else's private life. Years of UC work had taught her how to keep things on the surface. You didn't ask personal questions and you didn't get close to the people around you, unless the investigation required it. The last was a lesson she'd learned from Olivia, actually. She had caught herself missing her detective friend after sending Olivia off to godforsaken Oregon, and again, while trying to return to normal life after the rape. She'd buried herself in her work until the feeling eventually subsided.

Amanda hesitated for no more than half a second, then said with complete conviction, "Yeah, I am." Her lips twitched up momentarily in a sad, nostalgic smile. "She's the best thing that ever happened to me, 'sides my kids. And I only have them 'cause of her. She— she saved my life in so many ways, showed me what a good mama looks like . . . " The smile faded, Amanda's eyes glistening with fresh tears. Grief turned her irises to brilliant sapphire.

"She deserves better than this," she concluded, her features set in stone. A tilt of her head toward the laptop was the only indication she hadn't hardened to marble, like that bust of the veiled Virgin Mary in some cathedral up north somewhere. "I owe her so much better than this. She trusted me to protect her, and all I do is keep letting her down again and again. Why didn't they just take me instead? I could've gotten away from them and—"

Whatever came next dissolved into tearful gibberish that Dana didn't need an interpreter to understand. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression. The detective was running the gamut of the five stages—minus acceptance—and returning to the starting line each time, to begin anew. She would be going in circles for all eternity at this rate.

Dana wanted to say that the Olivia Benson she knew would never depend on someone else as fully as Amanda made it sound; that it didn't matter how clever or strong or fearless you thought you were, sometimes you just couldn't get away. But it wouldn't have done much good, not with the frame of mind Amanda was in. And besides, at the exact moment Dana parted her lips to speak, the door to Olivia's cell screeched open.

The rape was short and perfunctory, as if they were carrying out an everyday task. Washing their hands before dinner, taking the dog out to piddle on the lawn. Three men this time, Riva holding Olivia for the older Sandberg kid, while the younger boy, the simple one named Xander, stood back watching and grinning inanely. Then vice versa, Junior giving Riva and his fat mushroom dick a turn. Xander applauded his efforts, which produced a fat wad of come the color of cheese curds. It seeped down Olivia's stomach, gathering in the creases where thigh met groin. She looked as if her limbs had broken off and been glued carelessly back on with too much Elmer's.

What worried Dana the most was the hose. It was just your regular garden variety, the glossy green kind her mama had used to water the clematis and her prize roses. If there had been a pressure wash attachment, or if it were a fire hose, that would be real cause for alarm—those goddamn things could strip off skin straight down to the bone. This one had a power nozzle, but nothing to suggest a robust water source. And yet. There was a lot of damage you could do with a hose like that, and it didn't necessarily involve high water pressure.

"What are they gonna do with that?" Amanda asked, voice muffled behind the fingers she had interlocked over her mouth as she watched her wife being assaulted yet again. (Dana had already lost count of how many times.) "What the fuck are they gonna do with that, Dana?"

Waterboarding was a strong possibility. Rectal rehydration, lashing the soles of the feet, douching and forcing the detainee to hold their water, Dana had seen it all. One man had been hung upside down and sprayed with a hose until he nearly drowned in his own vomit. Another had simply been strung up by the neck with the hose and died, his feet swaying in a graceful dance long after he stopped kicking. Oh, the things they could do with that simple garden hose. Amanda had no idea.

"I dunno, honey," Dana replied, realizing her hand was on Amanda's shoulder. She left it there and wasn't shrugged off. They were both watching the screen too intently, the woman lying limp at the men's feet, her grimy t-shirt barely covering her breasts, everything below the waist fully exposed. Olivia turned onto her side, legs together, and pulled up her knees, hiding as much as she could. "It's hard telling with these shitbirds. Maybe you shouldn't be here for it. Go on, get you some fresh air. I'll stay with her."

It came as no surprise when Amanda ignored Dana completely, refusing to budge. She decided not to press, though. She might end up with something more vital than her nose broken if she pestered the detective any further. No doubt Dana could tough out whatever Amanda threw at her—possibly literally—but it was better not to stir the pot. Besides, the men were preparing the hose for whatever nefarious purpose they had in mind, and neither she nor Amanda could look away.

"Bad news, Cap," said Liam Sandberg, who wielded the nozzle, a urine-like flow of water trickling from the holes in its snout. Of course the little punk was controlling this. Had to show off for Daddy and prove himself a worthy successor. He tossed the nozzle playfully from hand to hand, posturing for Olivia, though her face was turned to the mattress, hidden from view. "Your buyer is playing hard to get. Hasn't contacted us all day, just sent that rat-faced flunky you cozied up to earlier. My pops is getting impatient, thinks maybe the guy's gonna renege."

Damn fool mispronounced renege as re-nedge. Dana bit back a scornful laugh. Now was not the time.

"And if that happens?" Liam squatted down beside Olivia, gathering a clump of short, stringy hair like he was sifting through loose soil, and guiding it away from her face. It revealed her eyes, black as boreholes in the center, the sclera startlingly white around them. Her terror had gone beyond mere mortal fear to someplace primal. Someplace it had taken thousands of years of evolution to drain out of us. "After all the trouble we went through to get you?"

Liam clucked his tongue rapidly. "Oh, poor little Livvy. You see, my dad? He really likes you, but he likes his money a lot more. And if he has to eat one million dollars because of you? Man, there's no telling what'll happen. I mean, he'll still sell you, but it'll be to some third-rate dealer in whatever country there's a demand for old white ladies. Guess we could thin you out some, that'd probably help."

"Nah, don't want her to lose any of that tit," said Carlos Riva, his sole contribution so far, besides his parchment-colored stump of a penis. "That's the best part of her. Well, okay, second best." He licked his lips wolfishly, his tongue as ugly and blunt as his manhood, and winked at Olivia's wide, unblinking eyes.

"I like her face," Xander chimed in, the tone of the conversation completely lost on him. "She's pretty. Just not when she tries to kick me. Then I get real mad and want to call her bad names."

The older Sandberg listened indulgently, smiling at his little brother. "Oh yeah, bud? What kind of names? Pretend she just kicked you and called you 'retard,' what would you do to her?"

"Like the big kids used to. And Uncle Lars." Xander balled his hands into fists at his sides, his slack, boyish features clouding over with darkness. He looked even more like Liam in that moment. An identical rage brewed within them, practically turning them into twins. "He hit me and said, 'Retards don't belong in this family.' Remember that, Liam? Dad was so mad! Me too. And then Uncle Lars didn't come around anymore 'cause Dad took care of him."

Dana made a mental note to check on Lars Sandberg. She wouldn't be surprised to find him in death records, his manner of departure listed as several thousand gallons of water and a pair of concrete shoes. If the body was ever found at all. Violence within crime families was rare—they had some kind of strange code when it came to blood relation—though not unheard of. Brother killing brother was one of the oldest stories in the book.

"Yeah, bud, I remember. But what about her?" Liam nudged Olivia's protruding backside with the toe of his Converse sneaker, eliciting a small yelp. Olivia reached down to cover the spot with her hand, in turn eliciting a laugh from Liam. "She thinks you're a retard too—"

"I don't," Olivia rasped.

The strong, assertive voice Dana recalled her friend having was gone. It had always amused her how someone so resonant, so commanding could turn it right around, speaking more softly and soothingly than a lullaby. She'd never quite mastered that art herself (Dana had only two volumes: loud and louder). Olivia would probably never have that same vocal control again. "I don't think that," she half mouthed, half whispered.

Overriding the objection, Liam shoved his brother forward, disguising it as a brisk clap to the shoulder. "Tell this bitch what you think of her, Xandman. Come on, she's just like Uncle Lars. Don't let her get away with it, tell her." He repeated the inciting tell her several times, thumping Xander on the back of the shoulder after each repetition.

"She's— she's stupid!" the boy finally erupted, hurling the insult like an axe. But it was an unwieldy throw, sailing past the target to bury its head in the ground. Olivia didn't even flinch.

Amanda, on the other hand, held the sides of her head, elbows sharp as tent stakes on the table, and made a miserable sound that was part moan, part whimper. "She hates that word," she muttered, shaking her head, fretting her lower lip. "God, she hates it so much."

"Aw, come on, you can do better than that," Liam said, jabbing his index finger into Xander's ribs. The son of a bitch was literally prodding the kid into violence, and Dana longed to reach through the screen and throttle him by his skinny, reticulan neck. She didn't much sympathize with the younger one, either. Slow or not, he was a rapist like the rest of them. "Stupid isn't even a swear, unless you're a little preschool baby. Are you a little preschool baby, huh, Xan? Do you wear diapers, little baby?"

"No!" Xander began to pace in front of Olivia's crumpled form, fists battering his thighs and hips. "I don't need diapers no more, not even when I sleep! I'm not a retarded preschool baby, d-dammit. Dammit! Did this . . . this bitch say that about me? Stupid mean old bitch." He halted midway in his stride, glaring down at Olivia in sheer hatred, his chest heaving with it. "I oughta kill her."

His first kick was tentative, the way you tested a dead body, just to be sure. When there was little movement from Olivia—she turned her face against the arm curled beneath her head, spread the fingers of her other hand to shield her kicked belly—Xander took it as the go-ahead he needed. He began pummeling her with his Velcro sneakers, losing more control with every blow he landed, until he was raging like a toddler stomping on blocks that wouldn't stack.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he screamed, driving his foot in again and again with such force he lost his balance and fell onto his backside.

The other men crowed with laughter while he floundered like a turtle in an overturned shell, unable to rock himself upright. Eventually, still giggling, Liam helped him stand and splayed a hand on his chest to keep him from charging Olivia. It looked like a scene in a zombie movie, the lead guy holding back a snarling, snapping undead thing as it reached for the quaking damsel. "Whoa there," said Liam, pushing Xander back with a grunt. "Sorry, pal, but I can't let you stomp her to death. We still gotta make some money off her skank ass."

He slapped the nozzle of the hose against Xander's chest, holding it there for him to grab onto. "Here, I'll let you do the honors of cleaning her up. She smells like a dumpster someone shit in and died. Dirty little whore's even got come in her hair. You hose her down nice and pretty, okay, bro? Make her shine."

In the end, all three of the men took a turn spraying Olivia with the hose, the older two experimenting with the pressure settings and their target's response. The misting option made Olivia blink profusely, dewy-lashed, and turn away; the single high-pressure jet left red splotches on her skin and made her beg for them to stop. They didn't, not until Liam looked her over, from her mop of wet dark hair to her bare, dripping feet, and declared, "Fresh as a daisy."

Dana realized that some of what she'd thought was dirt were actually bruises. The captain was covered in them, her arms and legs a weather map of purples, blues, and sooty black. Rivers of blood were threaded throughout the painful landscape, some flowing anew, others draining off in watery streamlets. The t-shirt was translucent now, molded to Olivia's breasts and abdomen, leaving nothing to the imagination. She peeled it away from her chest, only for it to suck back to her skin like shrink wrap.

"Bit nippy in here, wouldn't you say, boys?" Liam commented, tossing an impish wink at Riva. The older man laughed at the inference, cupping his hands in front of his chest to imply a pair of plump female breasts. He tweaked the nipples like they were radio dials, vocalizing the fluctuating, insectile whine between stations.

The joke was lost on Xander Bergström, who had become distracted by the hose. Like a man casually watering his lawn in his Sunday pajamas, he sprayed down various objects in the room, including the fossilized remains of the ancient desk, the bucket brimming with human waste and black mold, and the rat nests of trash built up in the corners.

Olivia's mattress was already as soaked through as she was, otherwise the inch of standing water might have worsened conditions. She didn't seem to notice or care, her main concern concealing the hazy dark areola and erect nipples that so mesmerized—and entertained—the other men. She held the ropy gauze of her stretched-out shirt over her breasts, like a woman in a Raphael painting. Dana was surprised the men had let Olivia keep that article of clothing, but now she understood it was the visual aspect. They got a kick out seeing her try to hide inside of it.

"Why," Amanda said thinly, her fingers pressed to the screen, to Olivia's huddled, shivering likeness. The captain could barely keep herself seated upright, her body convulsing with pain and chills, but she wavered side to side in Amanda's hand, refusing to collapse in front of the men. "Why is this happening to you?"

The question was rhetorical, and Dana opted to keep quiet, though she knew the answer. That was the other form of water torture she'd forgotten—dousing a prisoner in cold water and cranking up the A/C. Very effective at inducing confessions and hypothermia. She doubted there was a functioning air conditioner in the shipping container, but there certainly wasn't a sufficient heat source, either. May in New York could be as cold as winter, come nightfall. Particularly on the waterfront.

Bastards were trying to freeze Olivia out, and to what end? She had no information for them, nothing of use except her body. Perhaps there was no answer to Amanda's question after all.

Why?

"Let's get him outta here before he electrocutes us," said Liam, socking Carlos Riva on his brawny arm and waggling a thumb at Xander, who was indeed inching the spray closer and closer to the tripod lights. He held the nozzle against his crotch, pretending to piss a hefty stream, as Liam had shown him while they hosed down Olivia.

At least they used water instead of the real thing, that was the one consolation Dana could think of. It was a common practice among rapists to urinate on the vic, like dogs asserting their dominance. She supposed these men didn't want to wallow in their own piss, since they were keeping their vic around for a while. A don't shit where you eat type of situation.

Once the men were gone, taking the hose and sloshing much of the water out with them, Olivia let herself sink against the wall behind her, head drooping like a top-heavy dahlia. The sun was a pallid bar on the wet floor as the door opened and closed on screen, and outside the precinct windows, it hung low in a sky the color of white eggplant. There was no warmth in that sky, and soon it would be a cool, moonless night. Inside and outside the container.

"She's gonna freeze to death," Amanda said, making Dana question whether or not she had spoken her own concerns about the temperature out loud. But Olivia's teeth were chattering, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she was only going to get colder as the evening wore on.

"Nah, she's strong, healthy. It's not like they've got her locked up in a refrigeration unit, then I might worry." Dana sounded much more confident than she felt. The chances of the captain actually freezing to death were slim, but she could get a nasty case of hypothermia, and she was already suffering enough as it was. She looked like a bedraggled refugee, lost and bobbing on a makeshift raft in vast, open waters.

"Well, excuse me for not dancing a jig that she'll probably just freeze to death more slowly, then. And if you say it's a peaceful way to go, I swear to God, lady . . . " Amanda shot a death glare at Dana that left little doubt what the unspoken conclusion of that sentence entailed. A black eye to go with the broken nose was in Dana's near future if she didn't quit trying to look on the bright side. It was a relief, to be honest. She was getting on her own nerves with all the pussyfooting and sugarcoating.

"Tell you what, Rollins," she said, rubbing her palms together and giving a brisk clap, like a gymnast chalking up before hitting the uneven bars. "I'm gonna get me something to eat. Whadda you want? My treat."

"Ain't hungry."

"Nah, I'm not buying that excuse. When's the last time you ate something? Yesterday? And what, just a few little old bites?" Dana made a tsking sound with her tongue, but didn't overdo it too much. She wanted to get a rise out of Amanda—the child had to eat, for gosh sakes, she was as skinny as a whippet—not get a fist in the face. Again. "I heard your belly gurgling earlier, you need to put something in it. So, what'll it be? Chinese? Pizza? Hamburgers?"

"I am not hungry," Amanda said, overpronouncing every word. "I can't eat while she's . . . I won't."

"Well, that's asinine. You're breastfeeding, right? And you got tased and sedated, all in the span of about twenty-four hours. Your body needs food, and not eating because she can't isn't gonna help either of you. You'll just be that much weaker when it's time to help her." Dana pointed at the fingers Amanda was still extending to the screen and Olivia. "Look at you, you're as shaky as she is. That poor girl is gonna need every bit of strength you got when she gets outta there, so you damn well better keep it up."

At first it didn't seem to have worked, and Dana sighed, preparing to go. The tough love approach had been successful earlier, but perhaps the detective was too far gone now to reach. Her hand was on the door handle when Amanda called after her, "Fine. Jesus. I'll eat your goddamned food. Just get me whatever you're having, I don't care."

. . .

The pizza was good, greasy and oozing cheese like a delicious infection. Dana scarfed down two large slices herself, although she did find it difficult to look at Olivia while she chewed. Amanda picked at a slice, rolling the soft dough into balls between her fingers, then placing them on her tongue to be swallowed like pills. She lost interest in the odd birdlike method about halfway through, finishing all but the crust in three enormous bites that bulged in her cheeks and her throat.

"Happy?" she asked around a final laborious mouthful. She tossed the crust back into the pizza box as if it were a chicken bone she'd sucked clean. A hearty belch which she didn't excuse herself for resounded in the smallish room.

Dana plucked up the discarded crust—the best part, in her opinion—and polished it off, nodding. She caught a glint of amusement in Amanda's eyes, but it vanished just as nimbly as it had appeared. Olivia remained in their peripheral vision, her deep, shuddering breaths growing progressively louder. Night had fallen, and though her hair and t-shirt were mostly dry now, the shivering had not subsided. She talked to herself occasionally, mumbling things Dana didn't quite understand, but Amanda seemed to. They had their own secret language, the two policewomen.

"For now." Dana wiped garlicky grease from her fingers with a napkin the size of a playing card, swigged her coke. It was lukewarm and diluted, the ice slush long since melted by the heat from her palms. Yeah, well, people in Hell want ice water, she thought, her gaze wandering to Olivia. She decided not to complain about the drink. "Don't suppose I could talk you into getting some shuteye now, could I?"

Amanda didn't appear to be listening, but after a few moments of staring at the laptop, her eyes glazed over and unblinking, she spoke just above a whisper. As if she didn't want to disturb her wife, whose head kept lolling on the wall she was propped up against, eyelids drooping. "Doubt I'll ever sleep again."

Sleep deprivation, now there was a nasty interrogation technique. You could get someone to tell you anything—confess to anything—if they were tired enough. It only took a day or two for their cognitive function to break down, and by then you could convince them to walk into traffic if you were feeling particularly fractious. Not that Dana had ever done such a thing.

"Well, I don't know if I can make it that long, but how's about I keep you company for a few?" She purposely didn't specify for a few what—minutes, hours, days. No sense in reminding Amanda that they didn't know when or if Olivia would be returned to her; the detective definitely hadn't forgotten. "I can keep watch if you need a break or just want to rest your eyes. Any change, I'll sound the alarm first thing."

As expected, Amanda didn't relent on the matter of sleep, but she did nod her head for Dana to stay. "She'd hate it if she knew all those people out there were seeing her like this," she said, inclining her head at Olivia, at the officers and agents in the squad room. "Probably be upset if she knew I let you stay in here and watch with me. I just can't seem to give her the privacy she needs."

Dana didn't get the reference, and she didn't ask. It wasn't any of her business. "It's best to have every set of eyes on this right now. The more people involved, the better our chances of finding her. She understands that, same as I would. Same as you would." Never mind that testifying on the stand about her own rape was one of the hardest things Dana had ever done, almost as devastating as the violation itself. She couldn't imagine how it would feel finding out that her attack had been recorded, passed around, consumed like junk food.

"I guess," Amanda said, not sounding the least bit convinced. She pulled on a dripping scallop of mozzarella, stretching and snapping it apart like taffy. She mashed it between her fingers, contemplating the gummy wad as if she might take a bite, but smeared it on the inside of the pizza box instead. "Anyway. Thanks for staying. If somebody has to watch, pro'ly better it's you than a friend or someone who cares."

That one stung a little bit, Dana had to admit. But she let it go, reminding herself that Amanda wasn't thinking or speaking with much clarity at the moment. And she wasn't entirely off base, either—Dana hadn't been a friend to Olivia for quite a while now.

She hoped Olivia lived long enough for her to rectify that mistake.

. . .