A/N: Happy Christmas Eve Eve! Here's a little present for you guys. I probably won't update again until after Christmas Day, so I wanted to get this in before the craziness of baking, wrapping, and last minute gift-buying begins. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday. No trigger warning for this chapter, unless you're super squeamish about violent imagery. Thanks for reading and reviewing the last chapter, it's always appreciated. Oh, and last time I forgot to mention that someone in the comments raised the question of who the buyer actually is: it's Sondra Vaughn. That was established in chapter one. Sorry if there was any confusion; I just don't want anyone to be let down expecting a big reveal that never comes because it's already been revealed. (ETA: I wrote that note last night, but just now found a minute to sit down and post. Once again, I didn't have time for another close proofread like I'd like, so I'm just going to wing it and hope for the best.)

Chapter 27.

Ouroboros

. . .

It was so easy it was almost scary. No one wanted to believe you could simply walk a perp out the stairwell door of a police station, unnoticed and unquestioned, but that was exactly what Amanda did. It helped that she had a Glock jammed into his spine, his hands cuffed behind his back, and her long hair tucked under the dome of an NYPD baseball cap. The gun was hers, the cuffs were FBI issue (which made no difference, since handcuff keys were universal, and anyway, Dana had slipped hers to Amanda in the stairwell, along with Parker), and the hat was stolen from the crib. She didn't know or care who it belonged to.

Dana had tried to pawn off a different gun on her, but Amanda refused. She had her work firearm in hand and a drop in an ankle holster, and whatever needed to be done, she would do it with her own weapon and ammunition. Olivia's gun was tucked in the back of her waistband for safekeeping, until it was delivered, locked and loaded, into the captain's hands. The utility knife was just in case, its sheathed blade strangely comforting against her hip.

"Crazy fucking bitch," Parker repeated, though he kept his voice down this time. He hadn't believed her at first, but now there was a bloody gash in the back of his head from the butt of her gun, proving she meant what she'd said: if he didn't shut his goddamn mouth and cooperate, she would make him regret it. Little did he know it had taken all of Amanda's willpower not to finish the job and bash his brains in right there in the stairwell of the one-six. Or maybe he did, and that was why he was hissing over his shoulder at her. "You're not gonna get away with this. You're gonna get caught and thrown in jail. Just wait till I'm your CO, you dumb blond cunt."

The laugh that came out of Amanda's mouth sounded deranged, even to her. Like some creepy canned laughter in a carnival funhouse. She almost didn't care. It made her feel invincible. Here she was, walking to the parking lot in broad daylight with a criminal—one of her wife's rapists—whom she had just sprung from police custody, and no one was stopping her. She could have cackled in the face of God right then, she felt so powerful.

"Rollins. Hey, wait up."

Kat Tamin's brogues clapped the asphalt as she jogged across the street, approaching Amanda and Parker from behind. She slowed and fell back a step when Amanda turned sharply from the neck up to look at her, body blocking the pistol and Parker's attempt to turn. The officer looked like she expected Amanda's head to spin the rest of the way around. "What?" Amanda snapped, angry that her moment of triumphant euphoria had come to a screeching halt. "Spit it out, Tamin."

"Where the hell you going? I thought you wouldn't leave until . . . holy shit, did they find her?" Kat forgot her wariness, and stepped closer in her excitement at the prospect of Olivia's rescue. She'd been at Sealview Correctional for the better part of two days, trying to sweat answers out of Sondra Vaughn, and it showed in her appearance. She looked as though she'd been on a week-long bender, her normally sleek ponytail crooked and bushy, her clothes rumpled, mascara creating raccoon circles under her eyes.

"No. Not yet." Amanda tried to hustle Parker along, keeping the gun low at his back, out of view. One false move and she would probably quite literally put a cap in his ass. She dug the muzzle into his flank as a warning. Dana's black unmarked Lincoln was parked right where she said it would be, three spaces down from the fence. The only thing standing in the way of Amanda getting to her wife was Katriona fucking Tamin. "Gotta go."

"Go where? Who's he?" Kat trotted ahead, then did a double take when she turned to walk backwards in front of them, easily keeping pace with her long-legged stride. "What the hell happened to his face? Rollins, what's—"

"Let it go, Tamin," Amanda gritted, through clenched teeth. The scariest part wasn't that she could imagine pulling the trigger of her Glock, it was that, in her head, she saw herself pointing it at Kat when she did it. For a moment it felt so real, she almost dropped the gun. But she needed it too badly. She needed it to save Liv. "Let it go, and walk away."

"Huh?" Kat halted in place, dumbstruck, her hands spread in a pantomime of confusion and misgiving. Recovering quickly, she crossed her arms as if to bar the way until she got an answer. She stood directly behind the town car Amanda held the keys to, placed in her hand by Dana, with the lone instructions: Don't make me regret it. "Amanda, what's going on? Are you even supposed to be out here with this person?"

She stressed person like it might not be the correct definition for the man in Amanda's custody. It wasn't. He didn't have the humanity, the soul, to be called a person, and by the time Amanda was through with him, he would no longer be recognizable as a living, breathing human being at all. At least not on this mortal coil.

"Don't listen to her, she's got a gun on me," Parker interjected, trying to jerk his cuffed wrists from Amanda's grasp. He yelped when she held firm and twisted his arms up at an angle suitable for dislocation, maybe fracture if she was lucky. Just like his buddies had done to Olivia while they raped her on that filthy old desk. She tugged harder, waiting to hear that delicious snap. It was better than the sound of the ball falling into the right slot on a roulette wheel, better than dice on green felt.

But as loudly as Parker was carrying on, he'd have the entire precinct down on them at any minute. Amanda relaxed her grip, dropping his arms back to a level that drew whimpers instead of shouts, and she was about to lie her way out of the situation when Kat cautiously thumbed the hood guard from the service pistol on her hip. Preparing to pull her weapon, like Amanda was some scumbag street thug holding an innocent civilian hostage. Amanda beat her to the punch.

"Leave it," Amanda said, aiming at Kat's kneecap. It was the same command she used on Frannie when the pittie stole shoes to chew on behind the couch. Must be that savory down-home flavor, Olivia teased, each time Amanda bemoaned that the crazy dog liked her shoes best. And in a perfect Cajun accent, thick as roux, the captain would purr: Manda Jo étouffée.

How they laughed over that ridiculously corny joke. How sweet and sensual were the kisses that followed, and the lovemaking they inevitably gave way to. Tears pricked Amanda's eyes, blurring her vision and the target her gun was trained on. If she took the shot, hands trembling and breath hitching in her chest, she'd probably end up hitting Kat someplace far more vital than the knee. That wasn't what she wanted, but she had to get past the girl somehow. "Don't make me shoot you, Tamin. Just let us get in the car, and you go on upstairs like you didn't see any of this."

Kat extended her palms slowly and slanted toward the ground, as if she were balancing on a steep ledge or approaching a skittish animal. "You know I can't do that, Amanda. How about you put the gun down, and we'll both take him upstairs togeth—"

"There's no time! You ain't seen what they been doing to her while you were off at that prison." Amanda jabbed the Glock accusingly at Kat, making her blanch and back into the bumper of the Lincoln. Normally, her fear would have been enough for Amanda to tone down the aggression, but right then she didn't care. The officer should be afraid. Amanda was desperate and prepared to do whatever it took to get Olivia back, no matter who stood in her way. "He's one of them. He raped Liv, and he just tried to kidnap Tilly. Told her he's her new daddy." She sneered at Parker's downturned face, wanting more than anything to blow it off.

"Oh my God, is she okay?" Kat asked.

"She's fine. I caught him and beat the living daylights out of him. Ain't that right, Parker?" Amanda slapped him hard on the back. He coughed like he was hacking up a wad of gum stuck in his throat. "And now he's going to take me to my wife, or I'm gonna start shooting off his body parts one at a time until he does. So you need to step aside, otherwise I'll have to include some of your parts too."

"Amand—"

"They've been raping her for three days, Kat. Three. It's Liv. He went there to take his turn on her like she's the goddamn Wonder Wheel. After he left they hose— they hosed her down like she's in a fucking concentration camp. Now she's tied up with a belt they used to choke her with, and I'm pretty sure it belongs to this piece of shit." Amanda paused for the third or fourth time in the stilted speech, swallowing the slimy bile in the back of her throat. She would not throw up in front of this man, God help her. It was bad enough she'd just let him in on the part about the belt.

"She's not gonna make it another day. Not in the shape she's in. They're probably raping her again while you're here, slowing me down. If she dies because you think a prick like him deserves to sit up there in a nice little room, eating pretzels, drinking Sprite, and laughing at us chasing our tails, then you shouldn't even be wearing a shield." Her voice thinned out, a thread about to snap from too much tension. She resorted to brandishing the gun again, her eyes pleading with Kat to let her pass. The tears fell freely, and finally she understood how Olivia cried without making a sound.

When your heart had been broken too badly, never to be put back to rights, the cracks eventually began leaking, and all that sadness needed somewhere to go. It came from your shattered heart, your splintered soul, and out through your eyes, into the air around you, the atmosphere, the universe. After a while you breathed it back in again, that oxygenated sadness, and it was what kept you alive. The snake eating its own tail. An ouroboros of grief, Olivia's tears.

And now Amanda's.

"I have to do this," she said, shrugging the dampness from her cheeks with the shoulder of her sweatshirt. She didn't care if Kat or Parker saw her crying, but she wasn't keeping the clear head and clear eyes Dana had insisted on. Her heart, though split wide open, was the one thing in the right place. Saving Olivia was all that mattered, and she would do it or die trying. "She's my wife, Kat. The mother of my children. You have to let me go to her."

The silence seemed to stretch on forever, while Kat gazed back over her shoulder and past the fence that surrounded the parking lot, to the rear of the precinct. Dana would only be able to stall the others inside for so long, if they weren't already on the way down to apprehend their missing suspect and rogue cop. Amanda's finger twitched on the trigger of her gun, and she held her breath, milliseconds from firing. She could have done it while Kat was turned away, but when the officer suddenly faced forward again, she lost her nerve.

"Is this the car you're taking?" Kat asked, pointing vaguely to the Lincoln she guarded. Her apprehension was evident, her dark brow knitted into sinuous creases, themselves resembling question marks. But something had changed. Her fretful glances were directed across the street to their house, instead of at Amanda and her gun. Officer Tamin was making a decision. "Whose is it?"

"Lewis's. Handed me the keys herself. And this motherfucker too." Amanda elbowed Parker in the ribs before he could produce the measly two cents he opened his mouth to offer. He made a sound like a huffing bellows, flinching from the second bony jab she dug into his love handle. "Told me to do whatever I need to do to get Liv back. So what's it gonna be, Tamin? You gonna help me and Liv, or are you going to side with the traffickers who are keeping her locked up like an animal and plan to sell her for even more rape and torture?"

Kat sighed heavily, her shoulders sagging under the burden of choice. She was struggling with her conscience and her instincts as a cop, Amanda knew, from her own battle to suppress those same internal voices, those all-important guides. She couldn't do what was required of her with an angel on her shoulder, debating with the adjacent devil, so she had flicked aside the good and invited the devil in to make himself at home. She didn't even feel bad about forcing Kat to compromise her job and her integrity. None of that mattered while Olivia's life was on the line.

"Okay. Gimme the keys," said Kat, holding out her hand for the fob and the pair of keys that dangled from its ring. She gestured impatiently when Amanda hesitated, unsure if it was a trick or not. "You can't keep a gun on him and drive at the same time, you'll end up running somebody over or driving off a bridge. Hurry up before I change my mind and turn you in."

No time to weigh the risks of what she was about to do, Amanda tossed the keys at Kat. She would just have to trust another person for once, and see how it played out. It might come in handy to have some backup when she got to Olivia, anyway. The captain was in bad shape and would need her help getting around; Kat could stand guard while Amanda put Olivia in the car.

"Leave your phone so they can't track us," Amanda said, shoving Parker toward the back door of the town car. He fell against the wheel well, but managed to stay on his feet. It would have been more satisfying to see him go down on his knees. Maybe when they got to wherever Olivia was being held. Maybe she would make him go on his knees for Olivia and let her decide what to do with him. "You can tell them I forced you to give it up at gunpoint."

"Wouldn't be too far off," Kat muttered, digging the cell phone from her back pocket. She did a quick scan of the parking lot and trotted the device over to a concrete pole base under the nearest security lamp. She placed the cell on top, casting one last longing look back at it before returning to the car. Amanda could sympathize—she'd felt a physical ache leaving behind her phone, and by extension, the one tenuous connection she had to Olivia, but if the feds and the police descended on them too soon, she might never see Olivia again, period.

That was not an option.

"You know they're going to track the car too, right?" Kat hooked her arm behind the passenger headrest, turning to look out the rear windshield as she whipped backward smoothly from the parking space. There were few people whose driving skills fulfilled Amanda's requirements—and speed was really the only one—but Kat came pretty close. She had quick reflexes too, probably from the boxing. "This thing's got all the bells and whistles. There's definitely some kind of locator chip somewhere."

"Yeah, Tamin, I'm aware." Amanda gestured for the officer to keep both eyes on the road ahead, instead of compulsively glancing at her and Parker in the rearview. She didn't need a lecture in electronics from someone who hadn't even been born when NES first debuted. "Lewis said she would throw them off the scent for as long as she could, and she's got an app that tells her where the car is. She's not just gonna roll on us. In the meantime, pissant Parker here is going to tell us where to find my wife, and maybe he'll live to see Lewis's face again when this is over."

The man rolled his eyes, but they dropped warily to the Glock pointed at his face, and he opted not to respond. That was probably the wisest choice he'd made all day. Perhaps in his entire life. Amanda rewarded him by not bashing his teeth in with the butt of her gun, as she was tempted to do. She pressed the muzzle under his nose instead, crushing it into the squishy divide between his nostrils. If she remembered her semester of forensic anthropology correctly, it was called the columella. His was wide and off center, and pushing up on it gave him a pig snout.

"Will the real Matthew Parker please stand up," Amanda purred in his ear. Fleetingly she was convinced she could smell Olivia on him; on his breath that came out in short, spasmodic bursts; on his collar, the way a wife detected her cheating husband's mistress. She buried her face against his neck and inhaled deeply, searching for Olivia's scent somewhere below his coarse man-musk, skin tags, and five o'clock shadow. Had she the teeth for it, she would have torn his throat out.

She understood those chimpanzees in West Africa who fought for dominance and mating purposes now, one alpha male killing the alpha of another group and claiming the females. Olivia couldn't watch the video footage of the apes savaging a fallen leader ("Is it over yet?" she asked, hand shielding her eyes), but Amanda found it fascinating, the way the animals banded together, biting and tearing and using their fists like clubs, until the other chimp was dead. The things we do for love, she had teased, when Olivia peered through her fingers at the furry black mound, languishing in the underbrush.

"Hey. Hey, you." Parker jabbed the back of Kat's seat with his foot. "Get this bitch off me, she's out of her fucking mind. She's smelling me, man."

"You say Matthew Parker? That his name?" Kat asked, ignoring him altogether, though the urgency in her tone suggested she was eager to distract Amanda from her current occupation as well. She rapped the steering wheel with her fingers, then reached into the backseat and snapped them. "Rollins, hey. Is his name Matthew Parker?"

"Yes," Amanda growled, grudgingly retreating from the fleshy folds she longed to devour like those frenzied, screeching chimps. She'd lost Olivia's scent, subtle and bittersweet, to the revolting tang of Parker's flop-sweat anyway. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and jammed the muzzle of her gun higher, practically ramming it up Parker's nostril. "He's a CO at that rape factory of a prison you went to. Missed his chance with Liv years ago, so he cooked up this whole elaborate scheme to, what, fuck her and steal our kid?"

"It wasn't me!" Parker hit a shrill, girlish timbre, like a frantic criminal in a kids movie. Amanda's children laughed hysterically when Marv from the Home Alone movies unleashed his feminine shrieks. If they could only see their mama now, reducing the bad guy to quivering, whimpering jelly. Even better if he piddled in his pants like the spineless little bitch he was. Oh, how they would laugh!

Sometimes men pissed themselves when you blew their brains out through the top of their skulls too. The bowels might let loose, and a body could even ejaculate as the nervous system gave its final hoorah, sending out spasms to the oddest of places. Amanda wondered what would be the last part of Parker's body to stop twitching. Just a little more pressure on the trigger, and she could find out . . .

"That's not what your girlfriend told me," Kat said, speaking up to be heard over Parker's continued denials. She was weaving in and out of traffic with the ease of a ballerina flitting across the stage, and by the looks of it, she was heading toward Chelsea Piers, a perfect destination to enjoy the riverfront or to persuade an uncooperative suspect to start talking.

As a matter of fact, it was right next door to Pier 57, where Olivia had taken Amanda on her birthday last year, their desire for one another so strong that they hadn't been able to wait out the drive back to the apartment. They had made love in Olivia's Mustang, under a painted April sky, and it was the freest and most alive Amanda had ever felt. The rush of gambling, of a fistfight in a smoky bar, of rowdy sex with someone she barely knew—none of it could compare to that day on the pier with Liv, riding the waves of pleasure and the Hudson.

"Your girlfriend, Sondra Vaughn," Kat elaborated when Parker gazed sidelong at her in the rearview, not daring to turn his head. He squinted water from the corners of his eyes, which teared profusely each time Amanda inched the muzzle higher. "She's Vaughny, and you're Parks, yeah? See, 'cause she said you masterminded this whole thing. You saw Captain Benson and Detective Rollins' wedding announcement in the paper, and when you found out she had a score to settle with Rollins, just like you did with Benson, you forced her into arranging the captain's abduction.

"And how you obsessed over the two younger kids, thought you and she could raise them better than a couple dykes. That's not a very nice thing to say, Parksy. You a homophobe, on top of being a rapist and a kidnapper?"

Each new revelation from Kat's mouth unleashed a ladle of hot molten steel in Amanda's gut, through her veins. She had expected Vaughn to be lead in the shady collaboration with Parker, and she very likely was—the corrections officer did not have the brains or the balls to strategize something of this scale on his own—but if Parker took the rap, justice would still be served. And if he was just the scapegoat, they were one step closer to getting him to talk. That was the only thing that stayed Amanda's hand as she heard the plan laid out, from wedding announcement to the dykes comment. Her palms itched with the heat inside her.

"No! I got a gay cousin. And plenty of ladies at the prison are gay. I respect that." Between the snout and the rapid stuttering, Parker appeared to be doing a Porky the Pig impression. His eyes went crossed every time he tried to see the gun in Amanda's hand, and he hadn't stopped whimpering. "I'm not—"

"What does that mean, you respect it?" Amanda got tired of looking at the forest of dark nose hair in his upturned nostrils and jabbed the muzzle of the gun into his philtrum, hard enough to damage the gums underneath. "You only rape straight girls and bi women who pass, like my wife?"

"Ow! Jesus, okay, yeah! I mean no. I didn't rape your damn wife, and I'm only into sex with chicks who like cock." Parker tried to ease back from the pistol, his snot misting the tip as he sniveled and snorted in desperation. His bottom lip quivered uncontrollably, but the top was trapped by the gun, giving him a speech impediment. "Ask Vaughn, she'll tell you I never raped anybody."

"Actually, she won't," said Kat. "She told me the first time you guys had sex, you forced her. And every time since then, she's only given you what you want to stay on your good side. She's afraid of you, brah. Says you showed her video of what they were doing to Captain Benson as a threat that she was next."

For a moment, Parker forgot about the Glock and gazed into the front seat, wounded, unblinking. He almost looked like he was about to cry. While Amanda would have loved to see that, she wasn't going to give him the chance to process what he'd heard or talk himself out of the confession she sensed building up inside him. The good thing about spineless jellyfish was that they didn't like to go down for someone else's crime. Whatever the relationship between Parker and Vaughn, he would roll on her with the right incentive.

Amanda knew just the thing. He didn't seem to value his face too much, at least nothing in or around his big ugly mouth, so she relocated the gun to his crotch, nuzzling it in good and snug. It touched something with a little give, inciting her to push harder, until she hit resistance.

As expected, it got his attention, and he squirmed as if she'd poured a bucket of spiders or scalding hot water into his lap. "Hey, sit your ass down," she barked when he clenched his buttocks and thrust his pelvis forward, rising from the seat and bucking the gun away. "I said sit down, or you're about to get a real impromptu sex change operation."

"Jesus Chri— ow, fuck! Hey, call her off, she's gonna blow my dick off!" Parker screeched the order at Tamin, who studied his panicked reflection and opted to turn on the radio instead. Dana had left it on a classic rock station, and the Stones were singing about some Puerto Rican girls that's just dyin' to meet you. The tune was jarringly upbeat and jarringly loud when Kat cranked it up several notches, but somehow the chaotic tempo and chorus of vocal tics suited the situation completely. Jagger always found that hook.

"Thought that's what you liked," Amanda shouted over the music. She worked the muzzle in a little more, as if she were boring a hole to insert a screw. If she fired now, his scrotum would explode like a couple of eggs hurled against a windshield. She'd never seen it happen before, but the image was so vivid in her mind, she felt as if she had. Maybe in a past life. Perhaps she had been chasing Matthew Parker across centuries. "Girls blowing you off. And I know you like it rough, I saw how my wife looked when you were done with her."

"Hey, Rollins, you might wanna—"

"She looked that way when I got there," Parker howled, huddling sideways, his hip jutting out to shield against another jab of the Glock. His forehead smacked against the back window with a meaty thunk, and he groaned in misery at his own pathetic plight. "I didn't do anything the other guys hadn't already done to her. They're the ones responsible for all of this, not me. I had nothing to do with kidnapping her and passing her around like that, I swear to God."

"But you had no problem taking your turn with her, did you, you sick sonuvabitch? Huh? Did you?" Amanda prodded him in various vulnerable spots with the gun—behind the ear, under the arm, into the spine—as he danced and writhed to get away. Curled up in the corner, he had nowhere else to go, unless he managed to open the door with no hands and rolled onto the street. While she wouldn't mind seeing his brains splattered on the road below the Lincoln's tires, she needed him to give up a location first. She seized him by the collar and yanked him back from the door.

"Okay! I fucked her—"

He yelped when Amanda grabbed his pinky finger, which already poked out crookedly from his cuffed hand, and wrenched it backward until it snapped inside her fist. The closest she'd ever come to breaking someone's finger was rolling over her little sister's hand while strapped into a brand new pair of roller skates, and that had been accidental. Doing it on purpose was easier than she could have imagined, and deeply satisfying. Like popping bubble wrap. She wanted to do another, but he was talking again:

"I mean, I raped her! Jesus fuck ow! I raped her, okay? I didn't think it would matter, after all the other guys. And you weren't supposed to find her ali—"

The ring finger was much harder to break than the pinky, but Amanda gave it her best effort. She didn't have the strength for one-handed, and so settled on bending the digit as far back as it would go. "You didn't think it would matter? What the fuck is wrong with you? She's a human being, for Christ sake! She's a wife and a mother, and she cares about people. She matters, you bastard. You goddamn animal!"

"Amanda," Kat cried sharply. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, her eyes enormous in the mirror. It must have been the screaming; Amanda hadn't even realized she'd raised her voice until Kat shouted over it. Jagger oohed and ahhed his way through the final bars of his song, not the least concerned by the goings on in the town car.

"Didn't mean she doesn't matter." Parker heaved a sigh of relief, his body going limp, when Amanda let up on his finger. He sputtered for a moment, as if he might cry. "I just thought— I don't know. I wanted Sandberg and his guys to see me as more than Vaughn's errand boy. Thought I was proving myself."

"So, it had nothing to do with you missing your chance to rape my wife the first time? You're just a sensitive guy who gave into peer pressure. That what you're sayin' to me?" Amanda gripped his finger tightly, prepared to jerk it backward again, if she didn't like his answer. She'd arm-wrestled her fair share of drunken Loganville cowboys—and a few in Atlanta—back in her honkytonk days. All she needed was a little purchase and the right momentum, and she could bring a grown man to his knees.

"No! I-I don't know. I wasn't . . . I didn't think it through, I just did it. Yeah, okay, I don't like getting shot down, but that was years ago, I'm over it. Plenty of other fish in the Sealview sea." Parker tittered nervously at his joke about fish, prison slang for new inmates. When no one else joined in, and Amanda gave his knuckle a warning crack, he resumed his crybaby shrinking and mewling. "It ain't me who's out for revenge, it's Vaughn. Whatever she told you, sweetheart, it's a lie. This whole thing was her from the get. She's pissed that you dimed her, and she thinks it's your fault her kid's dead. She wants you to suffer like her."

All of the breath left Amanda's body at once. It was as if the car had been vacuum sealed, or all of the oxygen had spontaneously been sucked out of the atmosphere by some great cosmic force. It was being kicked in the gut—or watching your wife be kicked in the gut repeatedly, endlessly. It was knowing that you were the reason it had happened to her, every rape and every beating, and that your worst fears were one-hundred percent true. You did this to her. It's on you.

"She's the one who wants your kid, too. I was supposed to try to get the baby, but I already had Tildy—"

"Tilly, you fucktard," Kat shouted.

"Tilly! I already had Tilly by the hand, and she's a cute little thing. She won't be exactly the right age when Vaughn gets out, but close enough." Parker shrugged as if he had chosen a perfectly reasonable alternative.

"Right age?" Amanda heard herself ask vaguely.

He nodded, encouraged by the interest he was generating with his confession. "Yeah, the age her kid was when she died. Twisted, right? I was supposed to play daddy and tell the baby all about her mommy so that when Vaughn got out, the kid would never know the difference. Seemed kinda fucked up to me, but I always wanted to be a dad. I woulda been a good one to the redhead, I swear. She woulda had a good life with us."

In a daze, Amanda listened to him justifying stealing her child, and reassuring her that Matilda would be unaffected by the change. It seemed so unreal, she could barely make sense of the words coming out of his mouth anymore, let alone the action she took next. Like she was watching it unfold in a dream, she saw herself reach for the utility knife at her hip and flick the blade open with an expert snap. The gun, she reasoned, couldn't be fired inside the car without damaging Kat's hearing and her own, while likely also causing a dangerous motor vehicle accident.

The knife, however, was a moderately safe alternative. She hadn't accounted for the screaming when she stuck the blade into his thigh—it was easier than she expected, at least compared to her last attempt: stabbing Thaddeus Orion with a screwdriver—but Kat managed to swerve back into the appropriate lane after the initial shock wore off. To Amanda it was all background noise, like the sound of horns blaring outside the Lincoln, Kat's frantic shouts from the front seat ("Jesus Christ, Rollins! What the fuck are you doing?"), and Andy Gibb proving his Bee Gees heritage with a falsetto "I Just Want to Be Your Everything."

Blood oozed from the wound when she pulled the knife out. Ironically, that took more elbow grease than putting it in. It reminded Amanda of carving pumpkins with the kids last October; the chunks came out of the rind so much better if you followed the pattern and poked the holes in first (Olivia's advice always worked best).

But as much as she would have relished sticking Parker a few more times, and maybe carving out some chunks too, she wasn't ready for him to bleed out just yet. The wound in his leg was a gusher, red spurting onto his pants and hers, like rusty water from a clogged faucet. She wondered if she had nicked the femoral artery, but probably not—she'd gone for the outer thigh, not inner. At best, she had sliced through muscle and a superficial vein or two. If he died within the next couple of minutes, she would have her answer.

In the meantime, she needed some answers, and she angled the serrated edge of the knife under Parker's chin, instantly silencing his piteous wails and violent swearing. "You say another word about my kids, I'll cut your throat next," she warned, no longer surprised by how much she meant it. His blood was a thick, warm balm on her thigh. Arterial spray would be as inviting as a hot shower. "Got me? That bitch will never be their mother. She's gonna rot in prison for the rest of her life, just like you will if you don't start talking. Where is Olivia? Where's my wife?"

"Jesus," Kat muttered, and went on shaking her head and repeating the name under her breath. She appeared to be praying with her eyes open, the steering wheel as fluid in her hands as the blood on Amanda's.

From some ancient corner of Amanda's mind, a song from her past floated up, ghostly and slowed to a dirge-like tempo: There is power, power, wonder-working power in the Blood of the Lamb . . . She caught a glimpse of her grandmama on the organ, feet working the pedals as if she were riding a bike, body swaying gently with the motion; Andy Gibb was at the microphone, leading praise and worship, his falsetto bringing the congregation that much closer to their Heavenly Father.

She hummed the next few bars of the hymn into Parker's ear, concluding with a singsong, "In the precious Blood of the Lamb," as she thought about sawing the blade back and forth against his carotid. Would it feel like slicing through a Thanksgiving ham, or something less resistant, like tenderloin? There were a lot of cords and tubes to cut through, so maybe it was more of a bow strings drawn across the neck of a violin type deal. Whatever the sensation, at least it would stop his incessant whimpering. That was almost reason enough to make like Nike and just do it.

"I-I can't tell you," Parker whispered, barely audible over Gibb refusing to be some puppet on a string. He gagged, putting on a show of not being able to swallow around the sharp teeth at his throat. They nipped at his skin, drawing tendrils of blood so brilliantly red it was mesmerizing. Power, power, wonder-working power. "If I rat them out, I'm dead. You saw what they're doing to her. That'll be nothing compared to what they do to me. They'll probably string me up by my gonads and—"

"You're not gonna have any gonads left, you don't start talking." Amanda jammed her Glock into his crotch again, despite the awkward angle. It was overkill, a knife to the neck and a gun to the genitals, but it got her message across, loud and clear. "And don't you ever fucking compare yourself to her again, you sonuvabitch. What they'd do to you will look like a walk in Bryant fucking Park by the time I'm through with your disgusting rapist ass. Tell me where she is."

"It'll be worse for her if you kill me. Hey, hey, hear me out." Parker clamped his knees together, as if he were trying to keep a dog from nosing his privates. He couldn't squirm above the waist without risking a severe throat laceration, and his stiff upper body and craning neck made him look like he was in the stocks. "I've been the—what's it called, the liaivon for Vaughn this whole time. If I go missing and she can't communicate with them, they're gonna think the buyer punked out on them and that's gonna be real bad for your girl."

"It's liaison, you stupid fuck. You're not selling perfume door to door." Amanda's wrist was cramping from holding the knife in the same pinched position, so she drew it back suddenly and hit him in the forehead with the butt of the handle. He was lucky, she'd wanted to use the pointy end. "And you're giving yourself too much credit. If I have to kill you because you won't talk, Vaughn won't have you to pin this on anymore, so I'll make her talk. Either way, I'm getting an answer, and who knows, if you're the one who gives it to me, I might decide to let you live."

Lying had always been Amanda's strong suit.

And Parker did pause to contemplate the proposal, sweat and tears mingling on his skin for an oddly thick sheen that resembled KY Jelly. The thought turned Amanda's stomach, and she visualized shooting him point blank in the face to dispel the sickening imagery. She would rather look at his brains oozing from his forehead than his ugly bruised face covered in the lube-like mixture of fluids. When he shook his head, flicking beads of moisture at her, including one that landed on her lip, it was the last conscious experience her brain encoded.

That was what Olivia had tasted while he held her down and hurt her on top of that filthy mattress. Part of him was in Amanda now, the man who had raped her wife. If she transformed into a monster like him, he had no one to blame but himself.

"I can't, man. I don't really know how to get there any—" he was saying as the blade went into his shoulder. This time it scraped bone, and the sound from his mouth was enough to shatter glass. Andy Gibb had nothing on Matthew Parker. He sang out one long, high note that made Kat weave abruptly across the road and into oncoming traffic, if the chorus of horns was any indication.

No collision came, and Parker's screams intermingled with Kat yelling, "Oh my God, Rollins, you're gonna kill him," as Amanda continued stabbing. It felt like fifty times—the upstroke that almost touched the ceiling, the downstroke, so swift and penetrative it was orgasmic—but when she stopped to examine her progress, there were only four other gashes in his shirt and jeans. Widely spaced, frenetic. It was amateurish, but she would get the hang of it with a little more practice.

"Wait," Parker coughed, as if he were spitting up blood. He wasn't. Faker. He was panting, though, and he had undoubtedly pissed himself. The dark spot spreading on the front and inner thighs of his pants wasn't from his wounds. "Wait. I'll— I'll tell you. Please just st-stop."

"Is that what she said to you?" Amanda asked. She brought up the knife, leveling the tip near his eyeball, close enough that an unexpected pothole or speed bump would probably result in permanent blindness on that side. "Did you stop when she begged you not to rape her? When you undid that big manly belt of yours and beat her with it? That Jack Daniel's buckle tearing chunks out of her skin . . . "

Parker squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head hard. Like a kid trying to get rid of a nightmare. "I don't have a Jack Daniel's buckle. It's a P for Parker."

Heat flashed in Amanda's cheeks when she registered her mistake. This bawling little bitch wasn't the one who owned the Jack Daniel's belt—that was her daddy. Her daddy who beat the holy hell out of her mama with Old No. 7. Who tore out chunks of her with each lashing. No more than eight or nine years old at the time, Amanda had tended to the wounds herself, counting every one of the marks on her mother's body and vowing that she would make her daddy sorry for what he'd done. She never did follow through on that promise.

"I don't think she even felt it," Parker was saying, frantic, feverish, and tossing out whatever idiotic excuse came to mind. "Sh-she barely moved. I thought she would scream or something, but she j-just kinda laid there and grunted. I quit after a minute, since I wasn't getting much out of her. She was already pretty m-messed up by then, and you couldn't really tell where any of the blood was coming from."

Any part of that might have set Amanda off, but it was the way he could have been describing the beating or the rape that bothered her the most. He hadn't even cared what he got to do to Olivia, as long as it involved inflicting the most degradation and pain. Well, as Amanda's whiskey-lovin' daddy used to say, what goes around comes around twice as hard and covered in shit. She raised the knife again, ready to plunge it into his neck and put an end to his mindless blathering.

"Amanda, don't!" Kat ordered, and tapped the brakes, throwing the occupants of the backseat forward enough to prevent another stabbing. "He said he'd tell us where she is. Let's just get to Liv first, then we'll worry about what to do with him, okay?"

Caught up in the heat of the moment, Amanda either hadn't heard Parker offer to give a location, or she'd already forgotten. It was the only reason she didn't kill him then and there. "You gonna tell me where my wife is?" she asked, pointing the tip of the knife at his eye again, but this time touching it to the swollen purple skin underneath. With a little pressure and a scooping motion she could pluck out his eyeball. A tear of blood bloomed from the puffy bottom lid and slid down the blade, so very tempting. "No bullshit? You dick around with me, I swear to God—"

"No bullshit! I can lead you there, it's not even that far." Parker tried to glance out the window, but his fear of enucleation kept him from turning his head or making any sudden movements. "Could I just tell you how to get there, and you can drop me off somewhere before—"

"WHERE IS SHE?" Amanda shook the knife at him, screaming the question directly into his face, her hatred so all-consuming it left her breathless. Chest heaving, she sat looking down on him and seething. He had cowered from her the second she moved the knife, and now he was twisted at the waist and half-huddled against the door, the back of his head and shoulders pressed to the leather panel.

She'd always wondered how her father could look down on her weeping, battered mother and not feel anything but contempt and the desire to inflict more pain. Now she knew.

"Take Lincoln Tunnel," said Matthew Parker, slumping back on the armrest, his chin almost touching his chest. He was pale from blood loss, his eyes large and wild in his face. He didn't look so cocky anymore. "She's in a shipping yard in Jersey. We can be there in fifteen minutes."

. . .