A/N: Gonna try to make this quick because I want to get it posted before 7pm. I did a read-through last night and I think I worked out most of the kinks. This was originally part of a single long-ass chapter that I split into three, so expect a trilogy of sorts from the next couple of updates. It goes to some very dark places, but the only warning I'm putting on this one is a hard R for violent imagery. I hope everybody had a merry Christmas, and I hope you like the update. :) Thanks for reading.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and Wisdom to know the difference.

- "Serenity Prayer," Gamblers Anonymous

Chapter 28.

Blood Moon

. . .

All that time, and Olivia had been less than four miles away, if you counted the tunnel. It was almost a straight shot from the precinct, and probably visible from Pier 57 on clear days. Today was one of those, the sun pouring down onto the asphalt and glinting off the once-colorful corrugated metal of hundreds of shipping containers. Most had a patina of age and disuse, although there were brighter, newer ones mixed in. They resembled giant Tetris blocks, stacked so high in some spots that Jersey seemed hellbent on keeping up with Manhattan's skyscrapers.

Farther down the riverside, glimpsed as they drove past, was a construction site for what appeared to be another warehouse like the one they were approaching. There were more containers inside, Parker had assured Amanda, when she expressed doubt that Olivia was caged in such a spacious building. The box in the livestream wasn't nearly as large, and Amanda had seen sunlight the few times the doors were open offscreen.

"The loading doors were open too," Parker said, indicating the row of garage-like doors ahead. "And there's lots of windows." He tipped his head at the massive squares of plate glass that lined the top of the building, above the docks.

"I can see that," Amanda snapped, giving him a shove forward, but not releasing the back of his shirt, in case he tried to run. Unlikely, considering he could barely stand erect, his body curved into a question mark, as if it couldn't quite comprehend why it was bleeding from so many places. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet with a rough yank backward. "You better hope to God she's really in there, otherwise you're looking at the last condemned warehouse you'll ever see."

"It's not condemned. It's a front company for Sandberg's . . . other operations." Parker gave a deep, bronchial cough that rattled his entire six-foot-plus frame. It sounded like a lung was coming up with the phlegm, and Amanda wondered vaguely if she had nicked something pulmonary during her tantrum with the knife. She didn't think she had gotten close to anything that vital, but she didn't exactly have full control, either. "Opens it a few months at a time as a legit biz, rakes in the dough, then he's free to use it for whatever business venture comes along next. Laundering, trafficking, illegal gamblin—"

"I know what a front company is, dipshit," Amanda growled, tempted to slap him in the back of the head just to shut him up. Not so long ago, this warehouse would have been the object of her single-minded obsession for a very different reason than today. In fact, it was in a place like this that she'd first encountered Sondra Vaughn and one of the men who would become Olivia's rapist. In a place like this, she had set Vaughn's demented, horrific plan in motion. And for what? A few cheap thrills.

I'm so sorry, Liv, she thought, fighting back a sob. I'm so goddamn sorry.

"Shouldn't we call for backup now?" Kat gazed up at the looming structure with uncertainty, surveying it like a kid outside a haunted funhouse. She looked like Dorothy on her way to meet the Wizard, each step tentative and creeping, except Dorothy hadn't wandered into Oz's throne room with her 9mm drawn and sweeping the vicinity for any approaching threats. She damn well should have, the dumb little Kansas hick.

"No," Amanda said flatly. The closer they had gotten to the port Parker mapped out for them, the more certain she'd become that she would not be calling for backup, no matter what the circumstances. No way was she waiting around for them to show up before she went looking for Olivia, and no way would she be able to handle the situation how she deemed fit if the entire NYPD and FBI descended on the warehouse. What was the point of Dana handing her full control, only to have Amanda hand it right back?

Kat didn't need to know all that, though. She just needed to stay alert, stay quiet, and watch Amanda's six.

"You are my backup, and besides, we don't have phones to call it in. Left 'em back at the precinct, remember?" Amanda kept Parker in the lead, walking him forward with a firm, insistent hand, the other pointing the gun at his spine. Snipers were unlikely in this setting, but armed traffickers could easily pop up out of nowhere and start firing. If that happened, her human shield could take the brunt of it, and there would be one less scumbag rapist for her to worry about. "Let's just get to Liv first, then we'll go from there."

"But we don't know how many of them are in there," Kat pointed out, as if it were Amanda's first time going in blind somewhere she might be fired upon or outnumbered. Of course the Labott standoff and the Mangler's lair both predated Kat's reassignment to SVU, and Amanda had been extra strict about letting the officer get away with similar behavior; yes, because of Mike Dodds' death, but even more so because Olivia would take all the blame onto herself if anything happened to another member of her squad.

Kat really didn't get just how far Amanda planned to go with this, how willing she was to do whatever it took to save her wife. But she was going to learn.

"We could be walking into an ambush. And if we get popped, then who's gonna help Liv?" Kat's voice faded as though she had glanced over her shoulder, but when Amanda looked back, she was retrieving something from her waistband. "I've got my radio, I'm calling it— hey!"

Before the walkie talkie made it to Kat's lips, Amanda swiped it from her hand and hurled it as far as she could across the shipping container lot, which was pretty far thanks to the Rollins' rocket-arm. Her aim came entirely from her mama, but the velocity and distance were all Mean Dean. The walkie collided with a grimy red container that looked like an old boxcar, and clattered onto the pavement. "I'm going in. You can either be my backup, or you can go fix your radio and give away our location to all the dirty cops the Sandman's got in his back pocket. Probably have half of Jersey PD here to pop us in five minutes."

"She's not wrong," Parker muttered. He peered up from his hunched posture like a dungeon captive with long, bedraggled hair and sensitive eyesight after years of confinement to the dark. Multiple stab wounds took a lot out of a person, it turned out. "Sandberg's got a lot of pull over here, that's why he does business on this side of the Hudson. Has friends in NYPD too, though. And believe me, they don't want him going down."

Amanda fixed an I told you so look on Kat, giving her no time to weigh options. "Can I count on you or not, Tamin?" She hated involving a rookie in her haphazard rescue mission, but she had already crossed so many lines in the last half hour, there was no turning back. She would undoubtedly lose her job, and Kat probably would too—hell, they might even both end up incarcerated themselves—but in the meantime they would find Olivia and get her to safety.

That was all that mattered now.

"Fine," Kat sighed. She gazed at the building warily. "Just don't go all stabby again. And don't shoot anybody unless you have to. Okay, Rollins?"

Amanda barely heard the request. She was already halfway inside the warehouse entrance.

. . .

Strange, the door being unlocked like that. Amanda chalked it up to powerful, arrogant men who thought they were impervious to arrest, and to the somewhat secluded nature of their headquarters. Parker's directions hadn't taken Kat and Amanda too far down the shoreline, but the stacked shipping containers created a soundproof—and visual—barrier around the warehouse, and the nearby construction added a wall of noise that prevented detection. It was the perfect cover for a major crime operation, hidden in plain sight, yet not so heavily guarded it drew suspicion.

"I don't see a container," Amanda said quietly, nestling the muzzle of her gun into the base of Parker's neck. Gunfire would likely attract the wrong kind of attention, but if this was some kind of wild goose chase, she would blow the bastard to kingdom come. She started to say as much, when he hissed over his shoulder at her.

"It's on the other side of those stairs, chill. There's nowhere to get in on that side, that's why we came in over here."

The stairs he tried to gesture to, forgetting his hands were still cuffed behind his back, and shrugging in that direction instead, were hard to miss. Straight ahead, they stacked upon each other in a scaffolding-esque labyrinth of steel bars and beams, and steps ascending and descending at every juncture. At the top, reaching to the lofty ceiling, was an enclosed room that resembled a stadium skybox. Amanda narrowed her eyes, not liking the looks of it. She didn't like the looks of any of this. But whatever she was getting herself into, it was bringing her closer to finding Olivia, of that she was certain.

"Okay, you first." Amanda poked the back of his shoulder with the Glock, guiding him toward the first flight of stairs. He balked at the foot of it, refusing to climb.

"I don't think I can make it," he wheezed, propping his elbow on the railing as if he might collapse at any minute. Most of his wounds had stopped bleeding, but one in his abdomen seeped a stringy tendril of blood so slender it looked like a red cobweb.

Amanda had firsthand experience getting stabbed—and shot—in the gut, and she knew how much it hurt. Not that she sympathized in the least with this prick. He'd gotten exactly what he deserved (actually, no; justice would have been fucking him with the knife, the way he had thrust into Olivia over and over . . . ), and Amanda didn't feel an ounce of guilt or pity. If she could yank a screwdriver out of her obliques and still manage to pull herself up cliffside, with Olivia's assistance, then Parker could drag his whiny ass up a few stairs. "You can, and you will, unless you want this gun up your ass crack as incentive."

Apparently, he didn't want that, for he slowly began to climb, his big clumsy feet slogging up to the next step, one at a time, making a noise like someone dragging a peg leg. His tragic groans were laughable, and Amanda chuckled bitterly to herself, prodding him ever higher, until they reached the landing that overlooked an arena-sized expanse of warehouse, large enough to fit multiple shipping containers, lined up end-to-end, or stacked to the ceiling. But only one stood in the middle of the room, windowless and sealed up tight from whoever might try to get in—or out.

It looked about the right size for the box Amanda had been staring into for the past three days, watching horror after horror unfold. Maybe twenty-feet long, eight-feet high, probably about the same in width. Plenty enough space to store one small, defenseless woman who was bound, bleeding, and broken, at least till you were able to sell her to the highest bidder.

The sight of it made Amanda's heart leap into her throat, and she felt the rest of herself springing into action along with it. No other thought in her mind but getting to Olivia, she shoved past Parker to descend the stairs, nearly knocking him down the full flight. He skidded past a few steps and fell backward—forward would have been much less fortunate for him—landing heavily on his rump.

"Watch him," she called to Kat, almost slipping on the same blood trail that caused Parker's wipeout. Thankfully, her reflexes were faster and her hands weren't cuffed behind her back. She stuffed her gun into its holster, grabbed the railings on either side of the stairs, and swung her legs up and over, vaulting Parker like a low fence or a rock. She practically zip-lined past the remaining stairs, feet barely touching the treads, and hit the ground running. As soon as she reached the container and chunked aside the open padlock, she threw its doors wide and said the name that went with the face she was conjuring: "Liv!"

But the box was empty, like the huge packages Dean Rollins used to wrap up for Christmas morning, laughing hysterically when his two screaming daughters tore into them—convinced they held a pony, a drum set, a dirt bike—only to find nothing inside. Occasionally he mixed it up and threw in the socks and underwear Beth Anne bought them each year. The Sandman and his thugs hadn't bothered with consolation prizes, though.

There was no sign of Olivia at all, not even the filthy mattress or the lopsided desk that were undoubtedly covered in her blood and sweat and tears. The interior didn't smell, either, not like the men had claimed Olivia's cell reeked. No way had they gotten rid of her and cleaned out the dingy container already. Amanda had been played. That's what you got when you made the mistake of trusting a man.

"She in there?" Kat asked, midway down the steps, steadying Parker while he swayed to and fro, his head drooping low, as if he had tied on a few too many.

Without answering, Amanda took her gun from the holster, fully intending to shoot Parker dead right then and there. She would make sure not to hit her fellow officer during commission, but she couldn't guarantee that Kat wouldn't get splattered. Blood and brain matter were highly unpredictable; that was why she had steered clear of CSU. Puzzling over spatter patterns and flecks of biological goop eventually would have driven her crazy. She needed to go out into the world and get her hands dirty, not be stuck inside some lab somewhere.

And she was about to get her hands very dirty.

Then a voice overhead clucked its tongue and sang out, "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" from the platform beside the skybox. Amanda recognized the speaker by his cocky, irreverent tone before she ever looked up into the face of Liam Sandberg, of the serial-killer eyes. The man she had laughed off Olivia's fear of at the bagel shop; the man she had watched raping Olivia multiple times over the past few days, including not more than an hour ago. The man who literally helped drag Olivia from her arms.

Carlos Riva was beside him, a Desert Eagle aimed at Parker and Kat. The silver chamber of the .50 glinted in the streaming sunlight from the plate-glass windows above. So did the sweat on Riva's bald head, giving him an otherworldly shine to go with his harsh Anton LaVey features. Lucifer was once the morning star too, the bright and shining one, before he was cast out of Heaven for trying to usurp God. Riva gazed down at Amanda, flashed her a sinister grin, and winked. Hey, ese, been a while.

Arms crossed on the railing where he leaned, Liam brandished his gun as well, a slightly more modest .45 that was sleeker than the Desert Eagle and probably wouldn't knock him on his ass with the kickback. He probably couldn't talk Daddy into buying him the big boy gun his sidekick was using, Amanda thought, sneering to herself. These fools always thought the size of their weapons was indicative of their power, but all it told her was that they were insecure about their ability to hit and subdue a target with normal ammunition.

She was not.

"If I'd known it was going to be a party, I would've brought snacks," said Liam, wearing his sleazy little smirk. Amanda couldn't wait to wipe that look off his creepy, bug-eyed face. Her plain old 9mm would be more than sufficient for the task. He cut his eyes sharply to Parker then, lip curled in disgust. "You gave us up to a couple of bitch cops, you enormous wang? Geez-us. I told Angel not to let a pantywaist like you in on a deal. And they call me the incompetent one."

"Christ, can't you see I'm bleeding here? That crazy bitch stabbed me, like, fifteen times," Parker wailed, kicking out his foot in Amanda's direction. He spat over the railing at her, but the loogie didn't even come close, just dropped to the floor below with a heavy splat.

"Please, it was five times, tops." Kat jerked him by the collar to shut him up, her Glock wedged between his shoulder blades. She threw wary looks up at Riva and his very large gun as she spoke, angling her body behind Parker as best she could with the limited space on the stairs. In all likelihood, a caliber that huge would tear through him and lodge itself fatally in her, a fact she undoubtedly knew, if her wan cheeks and saucer eyes were any indication. But she wasn't letting her fear outweigh her sass: "And she didn't hit anything important enough to shut you up, so quit whining, or I will make it fifteen. Bullets."

"Where is Angelov?" Amanda asked, interrupting Liam's wild laughter at Tamin's threat. The idiot kept waving his gun around like he was conducting an orchestra, and she fought the urge to duck each time it swung her way. Little by little, she edged toward the open door of the shipping container, prepared to fling herself behind it when the shooting started. "Get that tattooed freak out here, we're placing y'all under arrest."

Liam sobered at the mention of the tattooed freak, but only enough to shake his head. His off-center irises appeared to rattle in his eyeballs when he did that, a disconcerting visual that reminded Amanda of those plastic googly eyes they glued on sock puppets or greeting cards. "Sorry, Detective, no can do. He's, uh, playing with the kitty right now. She's kind of a bad little pussy, but if anyone can straighten her out, my man Angel can. He's got a real big—"

I can't wait to suck your big, yummy cock, Angel. Those were the words ringing in Amanda's ears when she took the first shot; those awful, vile words Nicholas Angelov forced Olivia to say before orally sodomizing her, one of many times that day alone. And then her ears really were ringing as the bullet pinged off the metal rail, inches from the spot where Liam Sandberg's arms were draped. Or had been, until he reflexively dropped into a crouch at the crack of Amanda's gun inside the hollow building.

"Dude, what the fuck," Liam shouted, his fingers laced together above his head, the .45 slanted at the ceiling. He looked like he had gotten caught in an unexpected bomb drill. Behind him, Riva had barely reacted to the shot, save to turn his face aside as if he'd been blinded by the glint off his own pistol. Liam peered out from under the cover of his large reticulan hands, a kid playing peekaboo. "We're just having a nice conversation, and you take a shot at me? Maybe Parker was right, you are a crazy bitch."

"If I was trying to hit you, you'd be dead, junior. I shot the railing to give you a chance to answer me like an actual human being, instead of a smartass punk." Truthfully, Amanda had been aiming for the gun he was swishing around like a magic wand, goddamned fairy princess that he was, but he didn't need to know that. She'd only missed by an inch or so, anyway. "Now, I assume you're talking about my wife, with that kitty cat bullshit y'all are on about. You're going to be answering to something a lot sweeter than that from your cellmates soon, so I'll let it go this time. But if you don't tell me where the fuck she is right now? I'll aim low."

Devilish grin returning, Liam grabbed the bar overhead and struck a simian pose, thrusting his head forward through the hoop of his spindly arms, his upper half dangling, bottom half squatting. Amanda thought of the chimpanzees again, and she knew then what she would do. She would kill the alpha to protect what was hers. "Hey, Parker," he said, chucking the name over the landing like he was unleashing a wad of saliva too, "tell her who started the kitty thing."

Head hung miserably, Parker made a lame attempt at glancing up to the landing, failed, then peered sidelong at Amanda instead. "Me. She went by Kat at Sealview. Short for Katrina or something. Just easier to think of her as that dirty little junkie whore I first met than as a police captain, I guess. No offense."

No offense. Amanda almost pulled the trigger again, out of sheer rage alone. Why on earth would she be offended that he had reduced her wife to street trash—NHI, no humans involved, that's how they labeled the case files for the junkie whores in other units outside of SVU—so he could fuck her, guilt-free? Who in their right mind would be offended by that?

God, she should have killed him back in the car. The expression on Kat's face, after hearing her own name used in such a degrading way, suggested she was thinking the same thing as Amanda. Her weapon wasn't visible from its position on the other side of Parker's fat head, but Amanda was willing to bet her finger had tightened on the trigger. Do it, Amanda silently encouraged her. Do it, or I will.

To the little Sandberg shit, she said out loud, "I don't give a fuck who started what, you're gonna tell me where my wife is, or I'm going to take you and this place apart piece by piece, you understand me? Your daddy and idiot brother are gonna come home and find your walleyed ass hanging from these rafters, and the family business in police custody."

Liam's smile slipped at the mention of his idiot brother—Riva sniffed with amusement at "walleyed"—and he stood to his full height, towering above like a dictator on a balcony, addressing the masses. "You talk a good game, Detective, but there's one itty bitty problem I see with your logic. There's only . . . one, two . . . " He put on a show of counting on his fingers with the muzzle of his gun. "Two of you ladies, and, what, like . . . four, five? Five of us big bad boogeymen. I don't see any backup."

He cupped a hand behind his ear. "Hark! I heareth not a siren in yonder dell. What about you, Reevs, you think she's got her cop buddies on the way, or is she full of shit? I vote shit."

"Shit," Riva confirmed.

"They got anybody coming to rescue them, Parker? Or is Mrs. Pussy Cat feeding us a bunch of kitty doody right out of the litter box?" Liam was grinning again, enjoying drawing the confrontation out longer and keeping Olivia's whereabouts under wraps. Amanda honestly didn't care if Parker revealed that no reinforcements were on the way or not, all she wanted was to hold Olivia in her arms, to take away all the pain and humiliation she had experienced in this terrible place, at the hands of these terrible men.

But Kat was not so eager to have their solo mission announced to the room. She snaked her arm around Parker's shoulders, clamping a hand over his mouth, and redirected her aim at Riva, though her eyes flicked back and forth between him and Liam. "There's three of them here," she said to Amanda, as if they were alone in the warehouse, not separated and outnumbered. "If the Angel guy's with Benson, who's the fifth? He said there's five. Who else is here?"

"Oopsie," said Liam, putting a finger to his rounded lips like he had let slip a guarded secret. It was infuriating how playful the psychopaths always were. Even Riva looked annoyed at his partner's antics. Under different circumstances, he would probably just shoot the kid in the back of the head and be done with it, but no such luck this time. Hardened criminal or not, killing your boss's eldest son—no matter how obnoxious he might be—was generally bad form all around. "Guess I let that cat out of the bag. See what I did there?" He tossed a wink down at Kat like it was a penny dropped into a wishing well. "Good catch, Officer. You still single, or—"

His attempt to hit on Tamin was interrupted by the skybox door opening behind him. From inside, the younger Sandberg boy, Xander, stepped onto the landing and gazed over the railing, tentative and curious. Number five. "Can I come out now, Liam? I don't like it in there, she just keeps crying. I want to say hi to the new girls. Hi!" He waved at Kat and Amanda, oblivious to the tension in the air and the pistol cocked in his direction. "Are you the other girl's wife? She tried to hit me. I don't like her anymore, she's mean. My brother says she's a lesbo and a cop, so she's a cunt twice over."

Amanda knew then that she had crossed a line she could never get back over. She felt not a single ounce of remorse, apprehension, or guilt for the decision she was about to make. She didn't see a boy with an intellectual disability in front of her, she saw only another monster who had violated Olivia, who laughed at her suffering and shame. It wasn't the dog's fault when it got rabies and had to be put down, but it still had to be done; Xander Bergström was no different.

She would give him one last chance, though. One final opportunity to prove himself better than his older brother, who was trying to usher him back toward the skybox. "Hey, Xander," she called, waiting for the rabid dog to stop and turn, "Where is she? Where's the mean lady who tried to hit you?"

Xander listened intently as Liam pulled him close and whispered in his ear. His brow furrowed in concentration—and confusion—at whatever the other man had told him, but he drew back sporting a big, inane smile when Liam nodded encouragement and slapped him on the chest, building up his confidence. Treating him like a real man, a brother in arms. "Probably still in the ground I drilled her into with my Mega— what is it, Li? Oh, with my Megatron clock."

"Cock," Liam clarified, beaming as brightly as his little brother. He ruffled the kid's hair like he'd just won his first peewee tournament, and they laughed together, trying to wrestle each other into headlocks, the better to deliver noogies in.

If they hadn't been horsing around, Xander might have survived, but at the exact moment Amanda took the shot, aiming for his shoulder, he jerked his head in that direction. The bullet tore through his lower jaw, which exploded on the skybox windows beside him like a rotten Halloween pumpkin hit with a baseball bat. At first he couldn't make sense of what had happened; no one could, including Amanda, who watched the boy's teeth scatter in ten different directions, and kept wondering where the white shrapnel had come from. Something dangled down the front of his shirt like a rubbery red fish on a line. His tongue, she realized, as he fumbled with the useless organ, attempting to stuff it back into a mouth that wasn't there.

"What the fuck," Liam shrieked, once he was certain the blood that went off in his face as if he'd detonated a dye pack in a bag of stolen cash wasn't his. He gaped in horror at Xander, who clawed at his own face and made frantic gibberish noises, then pointed at his missing jaw like it might go unnoticed. "What the fuck! You shot my little brother, you bitch! You fucking psycho cunt—"

Anything else that came next was drowned out by gunfire, as the shootout began in earnest, spurred by that first inciting and misplaced shot. Riva fired several rounds from his gleaming Desert Eagle, the pops as impressive as the gun itself, and disorienting in the enclosed building. Amanda imagined this was what a war zone felt like, as she leapt behind the open door of the shipping container just in time. Liam peppered the other side with a barrage of bullets, steel colliding with steel in a metallic drumbeat that sounded like the fist of God. His knuckles dented the door in with each punch, and Amanda pressed herself flat against the container, in case they broke through.

She felt the thump of each discharge vibrating in the wall behind her, transforming the box into a living, breathing thing. A huge and rumbling beast, with hot gunpowder breath, waiting to consume Amanda if she stepped an inch too far to the left or right. Luckily, Liam's shots were too wild and furious for him to hit anything below the door, where her feet were visible in the space between it and the ground. He roared as he fired, so apoplectic he could be heard above the deafening noise, the ringing in Amanda's ears.

Through the crack in the door, she saw him run across the landing, charging toward the flight of stairs where Kat had ducked behind Parker. It appeared most or all of the gunfire had been concentrated on Amanda's position, neither the officer or the CO taking any hits, despite the chaotic outpouring. No sooner had the thought presented itself to Amanda than another shot rang out, singular and deliberate, and Matthew Parker's head burst apart like a balloon with too much helium.

His body collapsed on the stairs, heavy but not yet limp, muscles still spasming as the last few synapses his brain had fired tried to complete their tasks. Those brains were now splattered all over Kat, his blood misting her skin and the railing like red spray paint.

Stunned and blinking away the blood, she squinted out of her garish mask in time to see Riva's Desert Eagle pointed directly at her head, ready for round two.

"No!" Amanda shouted, voice muffled in her own ears. She raised her Glock, prepared to step out from behind the cover that had just saved her life, in order to save Kat's. But the gun that went off in the half-second journey from one side of the door to the other was not the Desert Eagle—even partially deaf, the caliber was distinguishable from the blunt, less guttural pop of a smaller pistol—and she peered from her hiding spot at the same moment Riva stumbled backward, clutching his lower abdomen.

"Puta," he mouthed, sliding down the support beam he'd fallen against. He sat down hard on the metal plank below, the massive gun dropping to his side as he grimaced at his wound. Blood had already begun to trickle through the grater-like holes in the floor treads, creating a slow crimson rain. Gut shot was a particularly nasty way to go, Amanda knew from experience; she'd only survived it by sheer luck and by Olivia's fierce, unwavering love and determination to keep her alive.

I prayed, Olivia told her once, after that whole mess (a walk in the park, compared with this one). I don't even remember what I said, but I prayed and you lived.

Amanda didn't pray. She set her sights on Liam Sandberg as he ran wildly in Kat's direction, as if he planned to trample her with his size thirteen Converse. Kat had been quick on the draw with Riva, but she hesitated for a second too long with Liam—who could say why; perhaps his youth, or some fear response that froze her, like being charged by a lion—and the next moment he was bearing down on her.

Just as he pounced, Amanda pulled the trigger, clipping him in the shoulder. His opposite arm snapped up on reflex, pumping out two rounds in rapid succession, one that whizzed by Kat, and the other narrowly missing Amanda, the hiss of it audible in the ear it would have shorn off with another fraction of an inch. She dodged aside, firing blindly, and must have caught him in the thigh, because he grabbed it and staggered forward, still headed for the stairs.

The third bullet came not from Amanda's gun but Kat's, taking him full in the chest, and more than likely shredding his heart at that proximity. He stumbled back onto the platform railing, looking up at Kat like she'd betrayed him, then pitched over the side and plummeted at least twenty-five feet, landing face first on the concrete. Amanda imagined she heard his bones crunching on impact, but it was probably just her gritted teeth, the only sounds she could hear coming from inside her own head.

"Hey, Tamin, you good?" she called, not expecting an answer from the officer, whose eardrums were undoubtedly worse off than Amanda's, being in the midst of all that gunfire. She was surprised when Kat did turn around, a hand at her neck, mouth working, as if she were trying to speak and discovered herself mute. She looked on the verge of panic, and Amanda waved for her to calm down, to breathe. You'd think someone who wanted to be a detective would understand that hearing loss was normal when weapons were discharged and you weren't wearing protective gear.

Pointing to her ear, she mouthed, "Give it a minute," and stepped cautiously from behind the steel door, intending to check on Liam. It was doubtful he had survived that last shot to center mass, let alone the fall, but it was always a good idea to disarm the perps, just to be safe.

Then she saw the blood. Not the puddle that expanded beneath Liam on the hard, unforgiving floor, and not the gentle droplets that sprinkled the ground under Riva's seat on the landing overhead. Not even the gout that came from Xander's half-mouth like a fountain of blood, coating the Ghostbusters logo on his shirt and the crotch of his jeans as he stumped on his knees, still not comprehending that his life was over, that finding the lower half of his face was pointless.

No, this blood came from Kat, seeping between her fingers where they clutched at her neck. It was so dark and copious, Amanda mistook it for oil until her logical brain kicked in, and with it, the truth of what she was seeing: the bullet hadn't whizzed by Kat, as Amanda first thought—it had struck her in the throat. Someplace vital, judging by the amount of blood pouring from beneath her palm.

In the back of Amanda's mind, she recalled learning in one forensics class or another that arterial blood was much brighter than venous blood, so it probably wasn't the carotid. But you could bleed to death just as quickly from the jugular. Mere minutes, in fact. Less without applying pressure.

"Oh my God, Kat," Amanda said, and it might have been a whisper or a shout, it made no difference. She desperately wanted to remove the noise-canceling headphones that seemed to have muted any sound softer than a semi-automatic—it threw off her other senses and made her feel trapped inside her own body—but there was nothing to reach for, just lank blond hair that hadn't been washed in days. "No!"

She ran as if in a dream, her brain having an entirely separate experience from her body. The strange rustling sound effects and the metallic smell of so much blood and spent ammo was a bit like being on the Moon. The handful of people who had actually walked on the Earth's satellite all concurred: it smelled like gunpowder. What was the tagline from Alien? In space no one can hear you scream. Amanda was on a silent, bloody moon, running in slow motion while Kat fell down, down, down.

The officer landed at the foot of the stairs, gazing up at the ceiling almost serenely, though the rest of her body convulsed as if it were having a seizure. Amanda dropped to her knees at Kat's shoulder, frightened to find the floor already slick with blood. It soaked into the material of her pants, warm and viscous as syrup. And it was coming so fast. So terribly fast. "No, no, no, no, no," she cried, trying to pry Kat's hand from the wound, in hopes of providing more adequate pressure. "Let go, Tamin, I need to look—"

When the hand finally did come away, too slippery to sustain a tight hold, when Amanda did get a look at the damage to her fellow officer's neck, she wished she hadn't. If Kat did live, she would likely need extensive surgery just to be able to resume normal activities, such as breathing, swallowing, and talking. Knowing Kat Tamin, that would be a challenge she'd meet head-on and conquer with the same fierce determination she showed every day on the job.

Problem was, she would never get the chance to do it. She had lost too much blood already, anyone could see that, and even with Amanda's fingers adding careful pressure (too hard, and she risked cutting off air supply and who knew what else), at best she was just delaying the inevitable. By the time she fashioned some sort of tourniquet that slowed the blood loss but didn't block blood or oxygen to the brain, then found a phone and called for help, Kat would be gone. And if she stayed put, using her hands as a tourniquet, and praying that someone had overheard the gunshots and called 911 for her, Kat would still bleed out in the meantime.

Amanda knew because that was exactly what was happening now. Kat's skin had taken on a sickly white hue, cold and clammy to the touch. Her breathing was rapid and labored, coming in short bursts that didn't seem to be released, just that continual gasping like a record skipping. She couldn't focus enough to follow Amanda with her eyes, her gaze drifting aimlessly, the way Sammie's did the first few weeks of her life. "Oh no, Kat," Amanda said, and her pitch was so high and frantic, it pierced the stuffy feeling in her ears like a straight pin through a cotton ball. She must have been shrieking, though she was unaware of doing so. "Hold on, Tamin, please. Stay with me. Stay—"

Kat finally found Amanda's face above her, a moment of recognition flitting over her features, a bit of relief in all the confusion and dark red terror. She moved her blue-tinged lips, the only part of herself she still had control over, but Amanda couldn't pick out any actual words. The officer was close with her family, especially her sisters, and people generally wanted to say goodbye to loved ones at the end. Or maybe she was praying. People did that at the end too.

Try as she might, Amanda couldn't think of a single prayer to contribute, other than the one from GA. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. She cradled Kat's head in her lap, hands fumbling in the blood, trying and failing to find purchase, and she prayed that useless prayer. Serenity, courage, wisdom. Please let this be a thing I can change. Please don't let this kid die in my arms. Father, please take this cup from me.

And seconds later, another quote by Jesus: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Kat was dead, her eyes half-lidded, her lips still slightly parted—in prayer or goodbye, Amanda would never know. Without a heartbeat to control it, the blood no longer flowed from her neck in a rhythmic gush, but trickled out like leftover water from a faulty tap. The need for pressure had ceased, and so had the need for prayer. Amanda gave up on both, staring dazedly at her crimson-stained hands as if they belonged to someone else. She couldn't go searching for Olivia, covered in another cop's blood. It would scare the hell out of her, the way the mess at Kat's throat made her look dismembered to Amanda, like she was holding a severed head in her lap.

Shrinking back at the thought, she tried to slide her legs free and ease the dead officer's head onto the ground while using her hands as little as possible. "I'm sorry," she told Kat, unable to look directly into the vacant face that just minutes ago had been set with almost as much determination as her own to find Olivia. Now, Kat would never get to see that through, and if that was any indication what was in store for Amanda, she didn't want to know or acknowledge it.

But when she turned to go, she found herself incapable of walking away and leaving the young woman exposed on the floor, surrounded by several dead rapists. Kat deserved a better death than that. The body would have to be moved to get the lightweight blazer—now heavy with blood—off of it, so Amanda scanned the area nearby until she caught sight of a large blue tarp draped over a stack of boxes on some wood pallets, at least the length of a pontoon.

She covered Kat with the vinyl, fitting the stiff edges around her limp form, the same way she tucked in the kids at bedtime. Tighter, Mama, Jesse always insisted, wanting to be stiff as a mummy inside her Paw Patrol sheets. "I'm so sorry," Amanda repeated, cringing each time she touched a warm spot under the Kool-Aid blue shroud. It would be a good twelve hours before Kat grew cold to the touch, but feeling that deceptive heat, that one remaining sign of life, made Amanda want to tear the covering apart and check if the officer was somehow miraculously still alive.

Wouldn't it be something if Tamin sat up and looked around in a daze, marveling at all the blood she'd lost—damn, there went her favorite pair of pants!—and how she had managed to survive? She would razz Amanda for trying to get rid of the competition, and for years to come, the one-six would trot the story out at every police function: that time Officer Tamin was almost fitted for a toe tag because Detective Rollins couldn't tell the difference between dead and temporarily unconscious.

"Remind me never to fall asleep at my desk in front-a you, Rollins," Fin teased, drawing laughter from the entire SVU squad, including its captain, who snuck in a playful, punchline-worthy, "Again," and got another big laugh. Not a lot of people realized how truly funny Liv was, but Amanda knew. Her humor was quick and sharp, like a one-two punch you didn't see coming.

Amanda pictured it all so vividly in her head (Olivia was at her most beautiful when she let go and just laughed, a sight Amanda didn't think she would ever see again after the past three days), she chuckled along through her tears. In fact the whole situation suddenly seemed bizarrely funny, from the dead woman she had just rolled up in a tarp, like the worst genie of all time, to the man who had done a face-dive into concrete a few feet away, with a literal kersplat. There were headless bodies that had raped your wife the day before and dying boys who crawled through the muck of their mangled jaws, trailing streaks of gore while searching for their teeth.

It was worse than any horror movie imaginable, and Amanda could not stop laughing. She did it silently, head thrown back, no air in her lungs; she screamed with it, soundlessly bent over and clutching the stair railing, until her sides ached and she could barely stand, until the tears poured from her eyes as steady as rainfall. She laughed until she thought she might die. Maybe she already had died days ago—maybe when she hit her head on the sidewalk—and all this torment was her eternal damnation. An eternity of searching for Olivia, but failing to save her.

The thought was too awful to entertain, and it snapped Amanda back to reality at once. She didn't have the luxury of losing her mind right then. Not while Olivia needed her so. Later she could accept her newfound role as a cold-hearted killer, as someone who walked innocent people into bloodbaths and left them dead in a pool of blood (like Esther), covered by a tarp like wild game in the back of someone's pickup truck. Later she could agonize over the state of her brain, heart, soul.

Now she would find her wife, all morality and commitment to upholding the law be damned. She was going against everything Olivia stood for, and everything she tried to stand for herself, but she didn't care. If she had to tear New Jersey down with her bare hands and lay waste to every single man, woman, and child who got in her way, then that was what she must do. She'd shot an eighteen-year-old retarded boy in the face, and she would do it again if it meant getting Olivia back, alive. She was willing to sacrifice her own humanity for that.

. . .