A/N: Well, this is horrendously late, but I really wanted to update on the first day of the new year. Actually, I'd hoped to treat you guys with an early, end-of-2023 chapter like you were asking for, but I could not get it done. Partly because of RL stuff and partly because I was working on new cover art for part four. (Check it out on AO3. I wanted to make more, so it's possible chapter 30 will have some random extra art attached.) I guess that fail was in keeping with '23 being a total suckfest—for me at least. Hopefully this chapter will start 2024 off right. Thanks for sticking with me this far. Happy reading and Happy New Year! (ETA: Shit, I got so anxious to update, I forgot the trigger warnings for rape and graphic imagery. I'm sorry!)

PART FOUR: SAFE & SOUND

Chapter 29.

The Killer in Me

. . .

Liam Sandberg hadn't moved a muscle since plunging over the banister. Amanda nudged his head to one side with her foot, leaving no question about his status. It looked as though every bone in his face had been crushed by the fall, his serial-killer eyes wide open, almost lidless, in the curdled remains of his skull. It reminded her of a bag of jacks rattling inside a leather pouch. One swift kick would probably leave an indentation of her shoe in the gelatinous flesh, but she refrained, kicking his .45 away instead. Better to be safe than sorry, no matter how unequivocally dead he appeared to be. Orion had nearly taken her over that cliff with him when he was all but dead from being stabbed, shot, and mauled.

Giving it a second thought, she did kick Liam swiftly in the side. And again, just for good measure. It was the least he deserved, after what he'd done to Olivia. After what Amanda had watched him do. She kicked him a third time, a fourth, and felt herself starting to lose control, a torrent of curses flowing from her mouth with each connection of her foot to his ribs. She might have stood there pummeling the corpse for hours if she hadn't heard groaning from the skybox platform.

Her ears were still ringing, certain sounds a bit muffled, as if they came to her underwater, but she could hear herself swearing ("—fucking rapist prick!") and recognized Riva's grunts from their similarities to the noises he made while raping Olivia. Each of the men had their own particular sound in those videos, and it was something Amanda would never forget. Just like she would never forget that Carlos Riva was the first of the men to rape her wife, calling dibs on Olivia as if she were the passenger seat of someone's truck or the last piece of leftover pizza in the fridge.

And the motherfucker was still alive.

Cautiously she mounted the stairs, tracking Riva's progress with frequent glances upward, her Glock at the ready. He was in too much pain to do anything besides reach for his huge gun, which had tumbled just beyond his grasp during the melee. Without the slug in his gut, he easily could have snapped up the weapon and unleashed a hail of bullets on Amanda, but as he was, his fingertips barely grazed the glinting silver barrel. Desert Eagles were ridiculously expensive and impractical, the kind of piece you bought to show off, rather than make a serious stand.

Riva did neither as she neared him, their eyes locked on one another through the gaps between stairs and the serrated treads. She felt like a jaguar in the brush, stalking its prey, each flicker of leaf or branch bringing her one step closer to the kill, the play of light and dark no match for her singular focus. Clearing the top step, she stared down at him for several moments, her aim as fluid and predatory as her ascent up the stairs. He didn't look so big and muscular from this angle. He looked weak, clutching his abdomen and wincing as if he were experiencing contractions.

"Didn't th-think you h-had it in you, blondie," he said, after a long silence. His breath shuddered as if he were cold, reminding Amanda that, somewhere nearby, Olivia was alone and shivering just like that, very possibly hypothermic from spending the night in nothing but a thin, wet t-shirt, when the overnight low had dropped into the mid-forties.

Even with the sun shining so brightly all afternoon, it was still a crisp day outside, and the warehouse interior held a mild chill. Imagine what it must be like in a metal box with no windows and no heat source, beyond a couple tripod lights. God. Hang on, Liv, I'm coming, Amanda thought as loudly as she could, trying to be heard over the cacophony in her brain.

For three days, she had felt the inexplicable connection she shared with her wife growing weaker by the hour, almost to the point of disappearing completely. But now that she was this close, she was convinced she could make out Olivia's heartbeat, wild and panicked as a hunted doe's, thrumming in the air around her. Pounding inside her head, keeping time with her own primal, beastly heart. It was crazy—most of her thoughts were, since walking out of the precinct that morning to discover Tilly missing—but she felt as though she could follow that sound, and it would lead her directly to Olivia.

"Sh-shooting a retard's pretty h-hardcore." Riva coughed out the final word, expelling a mist of blood and spittle from his coarse-looking lips. (The things he had done to Olivia with that mouth. The profane, sadistic things.) He slurped the runny red saliva off his chin, back into his wolfish mouth, and bared his white, white teeth. He looked like he had just finished devouring a rabbit or some other small creature. "You musta g-grown some cojones since I saw you last, little canary."

"Where is she?" Amanda asked, no interest in reminiscing with him about their days together as Sondra Vaughn's lackeys. His idea of power and having cojones was to rape innocent, defenseless women just to send a message to the spouses. She would be damned if she'd let him compare her to himself. She pointed the gun at his leg and repeated in a commanding tone, "Where."

Riva smiled, the underlying taunt quickly turning to a pained grit of his teeth. Still, he wore a sickly smirk when he recovered enough to open his eyes and refocus on Amanda. "Who? Your pussy-loving wife? Last time I popped the b-bitch, she was sprawled out on that bed like a Playboy centerfold, waiting for me. You s-sure she's not into dick?"

He stopped smiling when she shot him in the kneecap, pulverizing the joints and bone within. She could almost sympathize with his shout of agony as he grabbed the singed hole in his pants, where black blood welled like crude; knee injuries were a bitch, she knew from personal experience. If he somehow made it out of here alive, he would never walk the same again. They put down racehorses with a lame or broken leg like that, and it was considered a mercy. Playing the ponies had taught her one or two useful things, after all.

"Where. Is. She." Amanda aimed at his other kneecap, a hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger again. She exhaled forcefully, exercising every bit of self-control she still had to not fire too soon and chance losing a confession. His face was so red and twisted, he appeared to be wearing a kabuki mask, as if he were portraying a vengeful demon, but he had to be on the verge of giving up Olivia's location. Everyone had their breaking point, and being shot twice would be it for most, vengeful demon or not. "I've got the balls, you know I do. Tell me, Riva, or I'll fucking kill you."

Sweat poured down his bald head in buckets, darkening his eyebrows, beading in his lashes, dripping from the end of his nose. It turned his goatee an oily black that gave the hair a synthetic look, as if it were pasted on. He squeezed his eyes shut spasmodically to keep out the salty moisture, hissing like cooked bacon at the sting of it. That's what happened when you were a pig. "B-b-big talk. You think be-because you knocked boots with Lucky a f-few years back, you can g-g-g— get away with this? That fucker's cold, man. D-doesn't care if you're his baby mama or j-just her dyke wife—"

Amanda shot him in the other kneecap, though it was at more of an angle than the first. The bullet went clean through, shredding cartilage, ligament, and flesh like so much tissue paper. He still howled and made a fuss, but he had to have known what was coming. His confidence that she would get her comeuppance from "Lucky" was unnerving. He acted as though they had never lost touch after she and Declan Murphy put him in prison, and perhaps the two men hadn't. It would explain how Riva had served so little of his sentence and how he conveniently ended up working for a second-tier trafficker who did Murphy's top-tier bidding.

Lucky, my ass, Amanda thought. Or she might have spoken it out loud, because Riva gave her a funny look, halting his weeping and moaning to gaze at her through a sheen of tears and perspiration. The whites of his eyes were yellow, like pit stains in a white t-shirt. He was going to make a very sweaty, reeking corpse.

"You really d-don't know who you fu-fucked, do you, canary?" he asked, more in disbelief than with any sort of gloating or jeering. He seemed to be marveling at her naïveté, as if she had questioned the influence of Jesus Christ on Good Friday and Easter. "If you think Sandman is b-bad, just wait until Lucky f-f-finds out you blew up an op-operation." He made the expression of dragging a finger across his neck—the signal for cutting one's throat—without the gesture itself. His hands wouldn't go that high.

"Funny, looks to me like it's y'all who blew it," Amanda said, with an indifferent shrug. Just let Murphy try to get anywhere near her or her family again after this. She would be ready and waiting. "Let a couple of women take you down in about five seconds. Can't be that great an operation."

"That's that f-fool Parker's fault." Riva turned his head and spat in the dead man's direction. A hefty glob with plenty of momentum, it still left a string of bloody saliva slashed across his chin in its wake. He swiped at it defiantly with his bunched-up shoulder, and missed. "I told Angel to k-keep that rat bastard outta this, b-but he had some fucked up idea about loy-loyalty. Gus ain't gonna care wh-who he was friends with as a k-k-kid—Angel's dead as the r-rest of us, man."

He was right about one thing: Nicholas Angelov would be as dead as the rest of them soon, but it wasn't an angry boss he needed to watch out for. It was Detective Rollins-Benson. "Where are they? Angel and Sandberg?" she asked, letting her aim drift for a moment, the muzzle at an oblique angle. This clown wasn't going anywhere. Whatever he juiced up on, it didn't help him walk through bullets like some of the 'roid ragers she had encountered on the job. "And Murph— and Lucky?"

Riva gave a rough shake of his head, losing patience with the game of Twenty Questions while he was racked with pain and drenched in sweat. "Nobody knows where he is. He c-comes to you. You w-won't find Gus, either. There's a r-reason they call him Sandman." He coughed wetly, holding his stomach and hunching forward, bloody drool dangling from his lips. He didn't try to suck it back in anymore. "Angel's with your girl, but I suggest you let h-him finish, or he'll be pissed. And that's bad n-news for wifey. Muy mal."

"Where?" Amanda waited only a few seconds for an answer before raising the Glock to his temple, close enough for him to feel the heat from the two most recent shots. Close enough to burn. "Don't make me ask again, ese."

"Okay. Okay." Riva put up his hands at elbow height, attempting surrender but barely succeeding at keeping his palms turned out. He let them drop heavily into his blood-soaked lap, and looked askance at Amanda, unable to sit fully upright from the humped over position he'd assumed. With his gaze, he indicated the skybox behind her, where the men had been congregating before the shootout began, and where Xander made the fateful decision to join his brother on the catwalk.

The boy lay there now, twitching, still feeling around weakly for the lower portion of his face. He really wasn't very bright if he hadn't figured out by now that his jaw was never coming back, that his tongue wouldn't stay inside his head without a chin, bottom lip, and teeth to hold it. His death would be a kindness, like those lame racehorses.

"She's in a c-container out back. You'll know it when you see it. Might w-wanna take a look in there first, see what y-you're in for," Riva said of the skybox. He made a sound similar to a military ten-hut! when Amanda grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt and tugged, sitting him up straight. His Catholic medallion—some saint or another whose name she couldn't make out and didn't care to—swung loose from his cheek, and stuck to his sweaty collarbone with an audible splat. "She's not gonna be m-much use to you now, w-w-way we w-worked her over. Bosses might go easy on you, if y-you leave her."

Amanda emptied the last ten bullets in her magazine into Carols Riva's chest without flinching, her heart rate barely going above its usual seventy beats per minute. She worked up more of a sweat chasing pigeons off the sidewalk on the way to work, because they freaked Olivia out.

Killing a man was much easier than frightening a flock of street-hardened birds who were defending a pizza crust. She had noticed that before, too, when she shot Jeff Parker to death in her old apartment. How easy it was. How guiltless. Even when she broke down and sought counseling afterward, it was due to the pain her sister's betrayal had caused, the old hurtful memories of being used by her family, their complete disregard for her safety and happiness acutely devastating. Jeff never really factored into it.

The difference was, she'd actually killed Jeff. She had only fired on Riva in her head, she realized, disappointed by the revelation. But maybe it was a sign that she wasn't completely out of her mind—she still had enough wits about her to recognize that she couldn't justifiably shoot an unarmed, immobilized man. He looked down in confusion when she nudged the Desert Eagle with her foot, bumping it against his thigh and putting it well within reach.

"Pick it up," she ordered. And when he continued to stare dumbly, first at his weapon and then up at Amanda, she kicked the side of his knee like she was punting a football. "Do it, Riva."

"I can't," he panted, winded by the fresh wave of pain and his lame attempt to lower a hand from his leg to the gun. For such a big, macho guy, he had surprisingly little ability to muscle through an injury, and almost no dignity whatsoever. He was whimpering now, tears mingling with his sweat, as he prepared for what came next. To his credit, he didn't beg, at least not with words. His eyes stayed locked on her, silently pleading for mercy.

Amanda had none. He was the same man who had torn Olivia's yoga pants from her body and forced her to look him in the eye during that first awful rape; he held her for the other men, laughing and taunting as if they were a group of rowdy boys competing over a basketball on the playground; and hours ago, Amanda had watched him choke Olivia, a belt around her neck like a dog collar, while he raped her, doggie style, one brawny arm supporting her middle, the other jerking the belt. No. There were only two people who could show mercy to a man like that: Jesus himself and Olivia Benson.

Amanda was neither of those.

"Pick up the gun." Slowly, emphasizing each syllable. And when Riva failed to comply again, she brought her heel down hard on the knee she'd already kicked, grinding it in. "PICK UP THE FUCKING GUN!"

His reflexes were quicker than he was letting on, or else the adrenaline gave him an energy boost. He snatched up the gun so fast, Amanda reared back, her spine colliding with the handrail, the only thing that kept her from toppling off the catwalk to a swift death—either that, or a very slow and excruciating one.

But all those quick draw games she used to play in the backyard with Kimmie, their daddy's old lighters substituting for six-shooters, had paid off. That, and Riva's flashy Desert Eagle, which probably cost as much as a year's tuition for one of her kids, suddenly jammed. It was all the time she needed. "Shoulda stayed in prison, Reevs," she said, and pulled the trigger, one hand still supporting her on the railing.

If her aim was off, you wouldn't know it from the smoldering black dot that appeared in Riva's forehead. The hole was oddly tidy, no brain matter or blood present, not even a glimpse of skull fragments at the entry site. Bastard must not have had a brain for her to obliterate, she thought, as she reached down and snapped the chain from around his neck. She remembered Olivia staring at the medallion in abject horror—there, but not really there—as Riva sweated and grunted on top of her. Saint Jude, Amanda saw now, holding it up by the chain, the little silver pendant suspended like a teardrop frozen in midair. Patron saint of lost causes (you didn't have to be Catholic to know that much). Also the namesake of a great song.

She didn't know why she even wanted the damn thing, but she tucked it into the pocket of her track pants as if it were a lucky coin. Some talisman to rub when you were playing the tables and the chips were down. She preferred to smoke while she gambled, feeling like it upped her game—although that was probably just the nicotine—but if she ever did place a bet again, she would have good ol' Jude on her side. In a way, just the weight of it in her pocket was comforting.

Muck the color and texture of afterbirth finally leaked from Riva's forehead when Amanda released him, his chin dropping to his chest. "Whadda you know, something in there after all," she said absently, swiping a hand on her pant leg to brush off the moisture from the necklace. And just as easily, she turned from him and walked away. His death meant no more to her than scraping dog shit off the bottom of her shoe, and she doubted it would to anybody else, either.

Xander Bergström was another story. His brother had loved him, his father probably did too. Somewhere, he had a mother waiting for him to return home so she could fix his favorite meal, naturally pizza, just like Noah, and snuggle with him while they watched Ghostbusters or some other adolescent-boy movie for the umpteenth time. Her forever baby. It would break her heart to see him this way, crawling aimlessly along the landing, making strange porcine noises instead of coherent words, his tongue holding on by a sliver of meat no wider than Amanda's pinky finger. It would break his mother's heart almost as much as it had broken Amanda's to watch what he and the other men did to her wife.

Trying not to think about them—the mother or Olivia, who could never understand what Amanda was about to do—she stood looking down on Xander with a cold, detached glare. She sensed herself making a momentous decision, one that would change who she was forever, her place in the world and how she existed in it. But that had already changed three days ago when Xander's brother and the man they called Angel tore Olivia from her arms. They had ripped away something essential that made her Amanda Rollins-Benson, and even if she got it back, it would never be the same.

She would never be the same.

He looked up at her with wide, terror-filled eyes, the boy she had disfigured, and clutched at her pant leg like a vagrant in the gutter, begging for bread, water. (Water, Olivia had rasped, over and over, until they turned the hose on her.) He had no clue who she was, or that she'd been the one to inflict his monstrous injury, only that she might save him from his pitiable state. Once again she thought of Esther Labott: the big, needy eyes and the desperate grasping, wanting to be fed, wanting to be rescued.

Esther had been a victim of her father's fanaticism and psychological abuse, though. She had deserved Amanda's help. Perhaps this boy was no different, with his sadistic father and brother who encouraged him to commit unspeakable acts in the name of family bonding, but Amanda couldn't frame it that way, no matter how hard she tried. All she could see was Olivia looking off-camera, alone and petrified, pleading for Xander Bergström to help her, moments before the initial gang rape began.

He had done nothing but watch as Riva took the first round. Laugh at his brother's antics. Participate when encouraged to do so. Nothing, not even a tear shed or a word spoken in kindness. That was what Amanda would give him now—the same nothing he'd given Olivia.

It was a quick, quiet death, the bullet entering at the base of his skull, execution style. The lividity on his cheek and chest would be an odd waffle pattern from the serrated floor, where he dropped, facedown, and did not get back up. Whatever blood he had left would pool in those parts of his body, giving CSU and the ME a relatively accurate idea of how long he'd been dead. Ballistics and gunshot residue would identify Amanda as executioner, but that was okay. Cross that bridge when you come to it, Mandy Jo, said a voice that sounded a lot like her daddy's. The ultimate pro at dodging responsibility for his own actions.

For now, she crossed the bridge in front of her, vaulting over Xander's lifeless body via handrail, and approaching the skybox at a long stride. She paused outside of it to steel herself, but only for a second. She'd already lost precious time rescuing Olivia, thanks to the dead men who littered the warehouse like drunken frat boys passed out after an all-night kegger. Time in which she might have spared her wife a few moments of torture. Seconds in the grand scheme of things; a lifetime to someone who was suffering.

And she was suffering. The video feed played on a monitor here too, surrounded by a lot of tech equipment Amanda was too amped up to recognize. Killing Riva and the boy had sent her adrenaline skyrocketing, and she felt as though she could take on an entire army by herself, but reading brand names or identifying an electronic device by its shape were impossible tasks right then. She couldn't make sense of anything other than what she saw on the screen: Nicholas Angelov with his hands all over Olivia, his mouth, his big yummy cock.

He had it in her, just warming up to the hard, punishing thrusts that were his signature move. He hadn't bothered to free her hands from Parker's belt, and the rough rocking jiggled her breasts and sawed her wrists back and forth on the metal ledge beneath them. She made no attempts to get away or shield her fully exposed chest, her t-shirt—the one article of clothing she had managed to hold onto this entire time, the one thing that hadn't been snatched violently away from her—torn up the middle and hanging loose at her sides. Olivia herself looked as split apart and ragged as the shirt, and it terrified Amanda that she wasn't reacting to the rape at all. Amanda had to squint to see if she was even still breathing.

The plan formed itself, as so many of Amanda's plans did, haphazardly and literally on the run. If she caught Angelov during commission of a rape, she could shoot him without consequence, and she'd have the element of surprise on her side as well. It was difficult to pull a weapon when you were busy sexually assaulting someone else. Nevertheless, she ran at full tilt from the skybox, leaping over the corpses whose blood may have quit pumping but hadn't finished flowing from multiple orifices. It pattered like rainwater, Amanda's feet the thunder that shook the heavens above.

She pelted down the stairs, nearly wiping out on the blood slick that painted the steps and rail where Parker's head exploded and Kat caught one in the throat. That all seemed like a dream now, though the evidence was right in front of her: the bodies splayed out like paper dolls, hands clipped from each other's, breaking the chain; the brain matter as sticky as boogers, already hardening in grayish clumps and flecks; the big blue tarp with dark stains that resembled spilled wine.

The images came at Amanda viscerally, leaving no imprint and following no logical pattern. She might as well have been running an obstacle course from that show Double Dare she watched as a kid. But it didn't slow her down, and it took her all of five seconds to find the exit door she hadn't noticed before on this side of the warehouse. Hard to get a good sense of your surroundings during a shootout. She knew she was on the right path, though, because of the electrical cord threaded under the door, thick and black as a snake.

Sure enough, when she punched out on the other side, the cable fed several feet across a lot filled with more storage containers, most stacked a mile high in every direction. She was only interested in one, which stood on its own amid all the rest, like the "cheese" in a game of Farmer in the Dell. A series of cables connected to this cheese, making it possible to light and record the horrors within. On the outside, it didn't look nearly as sophisticated as she had imagined. Not much different than getting a peek backstage at a theater, finding only ropes and pulleys and canted ladders. Center stage was where the real magic happened.

Amanda was about to make her debut.

Just not for the whole world to see. At least not the part of it connected to the dark web. Differentiating between the power cords and the Wi-Fi antenna was as simple as looking up (the extender was perched on top of the storage container, its antennas akimbo like devil horns), and she hurriedly snipped the slim wire that hung from the electronic box like a strange blue vine with her utility knife. The blade was encrusted with Parker's blood, but it seemed appropriate to end it this way. Breaking a curse usually required a blood sacrifice.

Her hand froze on the long rod that ran vertically up both double doors, part of whatever locking mechanism kept the unit sealed when it wasn't in use. It was unlocked now, one side not fully closed, and required no effort to open. But for one terror-fueled second, she couldn't bring herself to do it. Dread swallowed her up, a big fish consuming a guppy, and she felt certain that the world—or at least her world as she knew it—was about to end with whatever awaited her on the other side.

So be it. Her hesitation, whether outside the Mangler's lair or inside the office of Doctor goddamn Giacomo, had already cost Olivia too much. Far, far too much. No matter how hard her world came crashing down, she owed it to Olivia to take the final steps. They could rebuild a new world together. They could put all this behind them and start again. They could get back the fragile happiness they had finally pieced together from their broken lives and broken childhoods.

They could.

Even if she didn't believe it, it got her through the door. She entered the way a cop was supposed to enter an unfamiliar room with potential hostiles, slowly, quietly, checking corners and keeping her back to the wall. Fortunately, it wasn't a very large space and there were few spots for a perp to be hiding. None, in fact, with the tripod lights illuminating most of the box, and only a bucket and piles of garbage in the shadows. The dilapidated desk was in the middle of the room, smaller in real life than it had looked while Olivia was being brutalized on top of it. The place smelled like an outhouse that had been baking in the summer sun for weeks.

A few feet away, split open like a raw and weeping wound, was Olivia, her head cradled in the halo of her arms. It was a pose reminiscent of crucifixion, although most of the people in those paintings weren't being raped by a man so tattooed his skin looked reptilian. She was oblivious to Amanda's presence, even though they were facing each other, and the only sign of consciousness she gave was a slow, unseeing blink. No tears, no whimpering. No soul.

"Hell's all that banging out there?" Angelov grunted, tossing the question over his shoulder. He was aware that someone had entered the container, just not that it wasn't one of his rape buddies. He went on plowing into Olivia as if he were engaged in a strenuous but socially acceptable activity—working out at the gym, playing an intense sport, fixing a carburetor. "Sounded like gun . . . shots."

The strained pause was too much, considering what had inspired it, and Amanda exhaled slowly, preparing to fire at the back of his head. At the last second, she realized it would traumatize Olivia even further if the pig died on top of her, and she eased off the trigger with a great deal of effort. She didn't lower her weapon, though. No fucking way.

"It was, dipshit," she said, her voice unnaturally calm. As a matter of fact, she felt calmer than she had since the minutes before this bodymod freak first appeared in her life. Maybe calmer than she had ever been. She was right where she was supposed to be, and she knew exactly what she needed to do. "Your scumbag friends are all dead, and if you don't get the fuck off my wife, you're next."

Before she could finish with her planned threat to shove the gun up his ass and pull the trigger, Angelov uncoupled from Olivia in a whiplash of his body that spun him around to face Amanda. He tried to spring to his feet, but even his catlike reflexes were no match for hers, and he sat back on his heels when she stepped closer—"Uh-uh," she said, harsh as a rejection buzzer—bearing down on him with the gun. Daring him to move a muscle.

"The fuck are you doing here?" he asked. He sounded annoyed, but not especially frightened. More like she'd woken him too early from a pleasant nap. "There's no way you got past that encryption. CIA itself couldn't get past me."

So he was the one behind all the dark web chicanery. Amanda would have guessed Liam Sandberg, or even Xander if he was some kind of savant, but not this punk-ass, fauxhawked sonuvabitch. You never could tell about a person, even if he did have a teardrop tat on his cheek and a dick piercing, she supposed. But she didn't want him getting any high-minded ideas about himself, either. Let him die believing he was a failure. "You're not as clever as you think, Nicky. I had a little help from your buddy Parker, too. He gave you up like that." She snapped her fingers loudly, and immediately regretted it when Olivia flinched.

She wanted to go to her wife then, to comfort and care for her in any way she could. First, though, she had to take care of Nicholas Angelov, and the prick was still too close to Olivia to fire on him safely. Amanda's hearing was still partially muted from the shooting in the warehouse; if she unloaded a couple of rounds inside this metal box, she risked permanent damage to her ears and Olivia's. It was possible that Olivia was so shut down mentally that she wouldn't register the shot, but even if her mind didn't absorb it, her body would.

"Dumb bastard," Angelov spat, shaking his head at his friend's stupidity. He hadn't put away his cock since jerking it out of Olivia, and the ugly organ pointed up at him, slimy and pop-veined, like a sightless underground creature striving to the surface. Sonuvabitch hadn't even fully lost his erection yet. Both silver balls of the Prince Albert piercing were visible, tempting Amanda to find out just how much of a deadeye she really was. "He never did know how to keep his damn mouth shut."

"That's not going to be a problem for him anymore. Your pal Riva blew the fucker's head clean off his shoulders." She watched for any sign of shock or dismay at hearing about his so-called good friend's grisly demise, but Angelov didn't bat an eye. Cold motherfucker looked almost like he was smiling as a matter of fact. It didn't seem to be a facial expression he wore enough to do it properly. "Then I popped that Satan-looking steroid between the eyes. Now the question is, where'm I gonna pop you?"

He snickered at the description of Riva, unfazed by the threat that followed it. There wasn't much that did faze this guy—certainly not Amanda and her Glock, no matter how accurate she claimed to be as a markswoman. The only way to convince him was to show him firsthand, and that was just fine by her. "Aren't you worried you'll lose your job when they find out you went all Death Wish on us? How you gonna support your bitch here and all those little bitchlets at home if you're in jail for murder? You know how much more therapy her tore-up ass is gonna need now?"

If the barbaric questions and his complete lack of empathy hadn't done it, the smack he reached out and delivered to Olivia's hip, as close to her buttock as he could get, did. Amanda stooped down and grabbed the cushion she'd stepped on a moment ago among the trash that surrounded her feet. It looked like an old chair cushion, the sort you found around the kitchen table at your grandmother's house. This one was so flat and worn—and still damp from the previous night's assault with the hose—it wouldn't have offered much padding for sitting. But she had no intention of using it for that.

"I think they'll pin a goddamn medal on me for wasting your lowlife asses, is what I think, " she said, folding the cushion around the muzzle of her gun. It wouldn't work as a silencer, the way Hollywood led most people to believe, but it would muffle the sound enough to preserve her and Olivia's eardrums. She hoped.

As for his inquiries, she didn't have the answers and she didn't care anymore. Let them fire her and put her on trial. As far as she was concerned, everything she'd done to rescue her wife was completely justified. Anybody who argued differently should have to watch their spouse or someone they loved more than life itself being raped and tortured for three days straight. Then they could get back to her and see how concerned they were over a few dead creeps. They might not actually pin any medals on her, but she had a pretty solid case for justifiable homicide and possibly a temporary insanity plea. One look at Olivia, no jury would convict.

"And if I do go down, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing I took you and your piece of shit friends down with me." Amanda returned his nasty little sneer, happy to see it fade from the inkblot he called a face as her sincerity sunk in.

They hadn't reckoned on her willingness to kill for Olivia, to die for her if necessary. They were used to trafficking in young girls and women without families, or, if they had anyone, it was usually those same loved ones turning the girls out to begin with. No one came for those girls, and they certainly didn't take out an entire crime ring almost single-handedly. Angelov was beginning to realize just who he'd fucked with the moment he crossed Amanda Rollins-Benson.

"Take her," he said, casting a dismissive look and shrug at Olivia, who had retreated behind the barrier of her arm, face hidden against the side of her bicep. Anything to separate herself from her current hellacious reality; anything to escape. "She's no good to us anyway. Too old, too flabby. I told Gus she'd be more trouble than she was worth, especially if the deal went south—and it did. So, take her. I'll say I wasn't here when you showed up, and you can go on your merry fucking way with your little wifey. What's left of her."

The offer was almost too good to pass up. Finally having Olivia back in her arms and getting her out of this hell pit was everything Amanda had hoped for since the moment Olivia was taken from her. Maybe it would be better to cut her losses now, and leave with the winnings while she still could. But how could she or her wife ever have peace knowing the Sandman was still out there? Wondering when and from where the retaliation would come for the death of his sons?

How could Amanda live with herself letting this demon Angelov get off scot-free?

She shook her head, silently answering her own question. It didn't matter how much of a head start Angelov gave her, or how much time it shaved off her sentence by not killing an unarmed man, she was going to finish what she started. Anyway, he wasn't entirely unarmed—he was tucking the weapon he'd used mercilessly on Olivia into his pants, as if he had just done his business at an airport urinal and planned to dash off to catch his flight.

Think again, shithead, Amanda said. In her head or out loud didn't matter, it was all the same right now. This whole thing still felt so surreal, she wasn't entirely sure it wasn't some strange, elaborate nightmare she couldn't awaken from. Out loud and silent were one in the same when you dreamed. But in case he was real, not a mind-reading figment of her imagination, she spoke aloud: "Get away from her. Over there, against the wall." She showed him where with a gesture of the cushion and gun.

"So you can shoot me in the back? Nah." Angelov scoffed, not budging from where he knelt on the floor. He was within arm's length of Olivia, and just the idea that he was close enough to touch her made Amanda's skin crawl.

If there was any justice in the world, he'd die among the rest of the filth by the bucket in the corner. He'd be chopped into little pieces and used to chum the waters surrounding the port. His numerous piercings would litter the bottom of New York Bay long after Amanda herself was gone. But she had seen justice fail time and again over the years, and if the best she got this time was watching the gleam go out of his serpentine black eyes, then she would take it. Eventually the worms would take care of the rest for her.

"I ain't shooting nobody in the back, angelface," she said, a taunting inflection at the end. He and his boys weren't the only ones who could make up cutesy nicknames for their victims. Amanda knew how to play the game with the best of them. Though loath to admit it, her stint as a runner for Sondra Vaughn had been an invaluable lesson in thinking and operating like a criminal. "I wanna look you in the eye while I give it to you. Isn't that what you said about her?"

"That was Riva, the Latin lover. He's the one who gets off looking into their eyes." Angelov pulled a face, as if the mere concept of such intimacy were off-putting. He held no illusions about what his job entailed, and it certainly wasn't romance or pleasure. Not even for himself. "I'd have done her with a bag over her head, makes no difference to me. They all start to blend together after a while, anyway."

"Funny, I could say the same about shithead rapists like you." Again, Amanda gestured for him to move toward the opposite wall. One last chance to do the right thing before he died. It was more than he deserved, but at least it would benefit her and Olivia as well. "Now move your ass. I'll give you to ten. One . . . "

The counting trick was highly effective on her kids, just as it had been on herself and Kim when they were little, and for a moment, it seemed as though it might work on criminals too. Angelov put both palms flat on the floor like he meant to push to his feet, but at the last second, Amanda saw what he was really doing: going for a weapon half-hidden under the mattress, probably stuffed there while he raped Olivia.

His hands flew to his genitals instead when the gun went off with a comical whoomph that sounded like a tire popping under several layers of blankets. Before the pain registered, he gazed at Amanda in astonishment, a sentiment she returned wholeheartedly. She hadn't expected a direct hit—somewhere in the general pelvic region, perhaps, since he'd moved just as she squeezed the trigger. But blood blossomed at his crotch, darkening the cloth around his cupped hands.

"What the fuck?" he asked, his tone barely elevated. He sounded more like she had committed some minor but annoying infraction—running a traffic light or cutting in line at the grocery store—rather than blown his dick off. It was the shock most likely, but his understated reaction was disconcerting. Most guys would be screaming their fool heads off by now; Nicholas Angelov was holding his crotch like Michael Jackson, and shooting her a murderous look. "What the fuck?"

"Just wanted a taste of your big yummy cock before I sent you to hell with those other pricks." Amanda regarded him for a moment, head tilted as if she were studying a Gauguin. And not a particularly impressive one at that. She was considering letting him live on as a eunuch, pissing through a catheter and never feeling like a real man ever again. Even with extensive surgery, he would probably always suffer erectile dysfunction. So much for that big yummy cock then.

But the thought had barely crossed her mind when Angel sealed his own fate, full of hubris and a misplaced sense of power, much like that angel of long ago, that bright morning star. He tried for the weapon again, surprisingly quick for a man with a grievous injury. Another half-second and he would have had it in his grasp, but he fell backward, empty-handed, when Amanda pumped two rounds into his chest.

She would have gone for a creatively placed third if Olivia hadn't started to whimper, her entire body trembling violently. She muttered a few incoherent phrases, the only recognizable word among them a weak, ineffectual "no." Still using her arm as a blindfold, she didn't see Amanda check on Angelov, whose knees were bent underneath him, his upper body thrown back, arms flung wide. He had died, eyes open, in the same pose as Led Zeppelin's fallen angel.

His weapon turned out to be the stun gun the men had used on Olivia, and whose pronged electrodes had left multiple burn marks all over her body. They looked like especially nasty bug bites, as if she'd fallen asleep in the Amazon without a mosquito net. "Son of a bitch," Amanda muttered, rolling the device into the closest pile of trash, where it wouldn't accidentally go off. She was vaguely disappointed that it wasn't a firearm—her Glock against a taser, no matter how tricked out, did not equal a fair fight—but she wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

This time she didn't take a trophy. She would have had to pry any of his jewelry directly from his corpse, feeling it worm its way out from under the ink-scaled, still-warm flesh. Her aversion was less about being squeamish, and more about wanting to focus on Olivia and forget Nicholas Angelov had ever existed.

But the moment she turned back, it was to that same hesitation and fear she'd experienced at the container door. What if there was nothing left of her Liv inside the broken shell of a human being in front of her? What if that vacant look she had seen in Olivia's eyes before they were covered never went away? What if she and her wife were both so changed, they didn't recognize each other anymore?

There were too many what ifs, and Olivia needed her. That was all that mattered right now.

. . .