Hell Hath No Fury

by Vivi Dahlin

Olivia & Amanda Rollins-Benson learned at young ages not to trust the good times because they always come to an end. But they never imagined how devastating that ending could be when the ghosts from their pasts seek to destroy them. Do they have the strength to survive, or will they succumb to the fury of old friends & foes? -Read the epic 4th installment of the Devilish series.

17. Hello From the Other Side

A/D: I'm so sorry, you guys. I really did think my rl schedule was about to improve, but the past two weeks have been some of the craziest and worst of my life: a breakup, betrayal, an autism assessment, pet death, a car accident (no one but my car got hurt), a really bad edible trip, less than two hours sleep in the past 24 hours, oh and I have to shop for and bake most/all the desserts for Thanksgiving. To say my head is spinning would be an understatement. I had planned to split this chapter up into three, but here's a double-feature to make up for the extreme lateness. Also, I made more cover arts for part 3, as well. Check them out on AO3. Trigger Warnings: Sexual assault and violence. (P.S. It's mentioned in this chapter that Liv isn't wearing her watch, even though in the Ch 3 I wrote her checking her watch behind Amanda's head; my explanation is that Liv was checking the time on her phone and Amanda just assumed it was the watch.)

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PART THREE: LOST GIRL

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Chapter 17.

Hello From the Other Side

. . .

It was a silly song and one Amanda didn't know all the lyrics to, but she warbled it at the top of her lungs anyway, just to get a rise out of her wife and kids: "We'll sing in the sunshine, we'll laugh every day . . . Oh, something-something the sunshine, then I'll be on my way . . ."

"I will literally pay you to stop," Olivia said, cringing as if she'd heard nails slashed across a chalkboard. She cupped a hand over Sammie's tiny ear, the other side pressed to her shoulder. "You're scaring the children."

"Hush up, you love my voice," Amanda countered in a lofty, self-important tone, though she knew for a fact it was true. Olivia often turned down the radio in favor of hearing Amanda's rendition of whichever track was playing. And the kids requested Mama songs all the time. As a matter of fact—

Amanda looked back at the path where, moments before, Noah and Jesse had traipsed along behind their meandering mothers, flanked by both dogs and chattering happily about some musical they couldn't wait to see. The little group was gone now, which seemed odd since they were walking through the park and the kids (and dogs) knew to stay within eye- and earshot. They must've gone home, she thought, satisfied with the conclusion.

"Looks like it's just you, me, and the babi—" She turned to Olivia, only to discover her arms empty, Sammie Grace no longer cuddled to her chest. Even the pink Carter's blankie that was draped around the baby had vanished into thin air. Something wasn't right here . . .

"Mama, I'm cold," said Tilly, the one child who remained. Indeed, her little hand felt like an ice cube in Amanda's, and when Amanda glanced down to check on her, she recoiled from whatever it was that walked beside her. It looked like her Tilly-Billy, sounded like her too, but the skin was a lurid shade of blue—it resembled the floaters who occasionally bobbled up in the Hudson—and the features were much too congealed, as if they were molded from wax.

The Tilly-Thing gazed up at Amanda with sightless, socketless eyes. "I want to go home. Carry me?"

It took all of Amanda's strength not to fling her daughter's hand away, grab Olivia's, and get herself and her wife as far from the child-shaped abomination as possible. "S-sure, peanut," she stammered, then bent to scoop the little girl into her arms. It was Matilda, after all; the sweetest little angel God ever put on Earth. (If Amanda believed in such things anymore. She couldn't remember why she did not.)

But when she stood, her arms were empty. The monstrous imitation of Tilly had disappeared, leaving behind nothing but blue vapor that winked out like a candle flame. "Where'd she go?" Amanda asked, then noticed Olivia walking ahead. She trotted to catch up, the sack of bagels in her hand extraordinarily heavy. "Liv, wait up! You didn't eat anything yet. Here, have one of—"

Suddenly, Olivia rounded on her, dark eyes flashing, dark hair fanning around her shoulders. It continued twirling, even when she didn't, and the strands were so long they wrapped around her neck like a maypole. Or a noose. "You let them take her," she accused, the fluffy clouds transforming to black thunderheads behind her. Lightning split the sky. "You were supposed to protect her! Why didn't you protect her, Amanda? She's so alone. Do you even care?"

The storm had whipped itself into a frenzy, threatening to destroy everything in its path, but somehow Amanda withstood the powerful wind, the pelting rain. It tore at her clothes one minute, plastered them to her body the next. Olivia only wore a soiled white t-shirt and a pair of ragged black panties. She must be freezing.

"Of course I care," Amanda shouted above the freight-train roar of thunder. "I'm sorry, Liv. I do care!"

"Then do something, goddammit."

"I will," Amanda mumbled, jerking from sleep at the sound of herself talking in the empty room. The only other occupant was the digital image of Olivia, curled up in the fetal position on a disgusting mattress, that filled the laptop screen. Amanda gasped, her head shooting up from the table, where she had rested it moments ago—except, checking the clock on the wall, she saw that three hours had passed—planning to watch Olivia's fitful, shivering slumber.

The captain had lost her battle with consciousness late the night before, drifting off while she was still seated upright. She hadn't even gotten the chance to cover up with the sorry excuse for a blanket she'd scrounged from the junk around the bed, once the bugs fled its folds. Instead, her head lolled the way Jesse's and Matilda's had when they fell asleep in their highchairs, her arms snapping out to catch her each time she leaned too far sideways. Amanda had yearned so strongly to guide her wife into a restful repose, she physically ached inside.

After a while, Olivia found it for herself, wilting bonelessly onto the mattress like one of those clocks in the Salvador Dali painting. Only, you couldn't see a clock's breath as the night drew on, or see its teeth chattering while it huddled into a ball, trying to find warmth. Amanda had willed her over and over to reach for the blanket—it wasn't the time to be squeamish of bugs—and finally, sometime after two in the morning, Olivia had felt around blindly for the ratty old thing, pulled it over herself, and slept again. It looked like she was covered in a morgue sheet.

That was around the time Amanda realized she hadn't peed in over fifteen hours, and hurried to the bathroom, doing everything one-handed as she watched the live feed from her phone in the opposite hand. Fin hadn't said a word, just followed her with sad, tired eyes as she came and went. She thought about telling him to go home to Phoebe, but why should he get to crawl into bed and hold his sort-of wife while Amanda had to watch hers probably dying of hypothermia or internal bleeding? Maybe both.

Now it was 7:30 AM, and Amanda had broken her promise not to leave Olivia alone for even a second, even if she was asleep and there was nothing else to be done right then. Angry that Fin, whom Amanda had asked to wake her if she started to doze, hadn't kept up his end of the bargain, she grabbed for her phone and fired off a snippy text:

Thnx for letting me go to sleep, Sarge. V. restful. She wake up at all? Any word from Kat & the Fed?

She noticed that the cell battery was low (not in the red yet, but less than thirty percent) and would need to be charged soon. More than likely she had an extra charger in her desk or locker, but she went through those things the way Jesse went through bobby-pins. A few short steps away, she was guaranteed to find a spare power cord—probably several, color coded and folded up neatly with rubber bands cinched around their middles—in Olivia's desk drawer. Amanda loved to tease her that the desk was her equivalent of Mary Poppins' carpetbag. One of these days you're gonna pull a penguin in a bow tie out of there, aren't you?

Then yesterday, instead of rummaging through a magical desk, Olivia had been raped on top of one.

It still didn't seem real or possible. The revelation from Dana Lewis that Declan Murphy might somehow be involved only made the whole situation even more surreal. Her brain wouldn't accept the information at first, but it had begun to make a strange and terrifying sort of sense the longer she let it sink in. She had known something was off about Murphy that February seven years ago, when they had hauled him in as a sex trafficker after nearly blowing his cover at a Super Bowl party fueled by sex, drugs, and underage girls.

Not only were the girls full of stories about the man they called Lucky (as in Charms, because most of them were too young and uneducated to recognize an Irish accent, outside of the one belonging to a cartoon leprechaun), who they claimed had pimped them out and in some cases, raped them himself, but Murphy had been far more intense than Amanda remembered from his turn as SVU commanding officer. She'd briefly wondered if he was hooked on one of the hard drugs that got passed around like candy by the men he was emulating, but outside of demanding a urine sample for drug testing, she wouldn't have gotten an answer.

Honestly, she hadn't wanted to know. She had still been coming off the Patton trial and the emotions and self-loathing it dredged up, plus getting back into the swing of things at work after the Joyful Heart Foundation yoga retreat Olivia had encouraged her to take. She might have overstated her recovery a little upon returning, but she had so wanted to see that pride on Olivia's face to hear that she was trying. And when she had it—when the sergeant smiled at her over their diner coffees and congratulated her on a job well done—then Amanda had known for sure what she'd started to suspect while meditating on the summit of that Costa Rican volcano: she was in love with her boss.

Of course, she had denied it and buried the feelings deep, never expecting all the disastrous and dangerous ways they would resurface until she finally let them out. One of those ways had been falling into bed with Murphy, whom she didn't love, care about, or even particularly like. He was a warm body when she couldn't have the one she really wanted. Olivia had been a new mother, her attention divided between Noah and work (and God help Amanda, she had resented that little baby for a while for stealing Olivia's focus), and didn't have time for a relationship. But Lord, she looked damn good during that Super Bowl sting, and Amanda had needed to scratch that itch.

Nine months later she had Jesse and wouldn't change that for anything in the world, but she had chosen to overlook some major red flags from Murphy back then, she saw that now. Stupidly, she'd told herself it was just his bad boy UC persona that attracted her, and she wouldn't really get excited by the prospect of sleeping with someone like that. Someone Olivia would disapprove of so heartily . . . Someone who would disappear back into the ether, never to be heard from again . . . .

Her need to rebel, to fill the emptiness inside herself with meaningless sex, and to get Olivia's attention, had caused this. She was the reason her wife was shivering on another bed, in another monster's lair, after the most brutal and sustained gang assault Amanda had ever seen. It was unfathomable. It made her wish she were dead.

And it wasn't over. A new day had dawned outside the interview room window, as bright and lovely as the day before, and that meant the men had gotten a full night to rest and recharge for their next visit with Olivia. Amanda found herself hoping they had more women to torture, just so they wouldn't have time to spend the day with her wife again. The thought was so shameful and so all-consuming, a vibration from her phone sent her pulse through the roof, as if it were a gunshot rather than a text message.

Looked like u needed it. I kept watch. She's been in n out, mostly out. K + fed still trying to crack Vaughn. IP a no-go. Lewis tracking Murphy.

And a second later:

U should eat.

Amanda squeezed her phone, fighting the urge to hurl it across the room at the one-way mirror. At first glance, she'd mistaken the Lewis in that sentence for William Lewis, not Dana. And what good were the feebs if they weren't capable of tracing an IP address, for Christ sakes? Amanda had done it many times, and when she couldn't, she damn well found another way in, even if it meant breaking down the door herself.

She didn't want any goddamn food, either. How was she supposed to stomach anything, knowing that Olivia hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours? If she had to fast until the captain was returned to her, then so be it. But oh God, oh Jesus—

Sammie. Amanda couldn't remember if her baby (our baby) had enough milk in the fridge for another full day. She thought so, but if this nightmare stretched on any longer than that, she might need Lucy to bring the baby to the precinct for feedings. She had the pump, and there were plenty of officers she could send out on milk delivery duty—the kids were not to set foot inside the precinct while Olivia was plastered on every monitor, not even baby Samantha—but Amanda didn't want to risk losing that connection with her youngest daughter. It was so important to Olivia.

Deleting the text she had already started (Not hungry), she thumbed in I need the spare to Liv's office and sent it to Fin. He showed up a few moments later, dangling his copy of the key Olivia kept on a keychain with Matilda's old teether and the peach charm she had bought during a bathroom break in a Georgia gas station. Amanda's knees were bouncing anxiously as she glanced between her dwindling cell battery and the computer screen. "'Bout time," she muttered, standing and swiping the key from the table when Fin slid it across.

Fin ignored the remark, nodding at the door that joined the interview room to Olivia's office. "Whadda you need? Something I can get for you?" He was eyeing her hands, which tremored while she tried to fit the key into the doorknob, its teeth skidding from the slot with each jab. She nearly lost her grip on the phone, turned sideways to view the livestream in full screen.

Rattled by the close call and frustrated that she couldn't even open a damn door, she threw back her head and released a sound that was part scream, part growl through her clenched teeth. "I just need a fucking charger for my phone, is that too much to ask?" she said, looking up at the ceiling as hot tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. She was addressing a god she didn't believe in again, but at the same time, there was nowhere for her anger at him to go if he didn't exist.

The quandary made her brain hurt and only added to her exhaustion. Bringing her head forward against the door with a soft thump, she slapped the palm holding the key against the wood and cried in earnest. "Is that too goddamn much to ask?"

"Nah, it's not. Here, give it to me. I'll get you a charger, Amanda." Gently, Fin removed the key from beneath her palm, turned her by the shoulders, and urged her back toward the table. (It reminded Amanda of a father sending his daughter off to bed, and that made her cry harder.) "Go on and sit down."

She wanted to protest, to say that she didn't need him to baby her, but he had the door open now, and even just the smell of Olivia's office—that cinnamon potpourri the captain liked, something floral, her—was too much. Amanda backed away, unable to look inside and not see her there. Instead, she returned to her seat at the table just in time to see what appeared to be sunlight streaming over Olivia from somewhere off camera. For a moment, she wondered if there was a window Olivia had overlooked during her search for a way out last night, but the sound of plodding footsteps on the floorboards stopped Amanda's heart.

"No," she exhaled. She swiped the moisture from her eyes with the back of her hand and leaned in, anticipating which one of the men would appear on the screen. (Please, not all of them again.) "No, no, no, no, no. Wake up, Liv." He had sidled right up to Olivia's bedside, and stood above her, gazing down with his head tilted to one side like he was studying an ant hill, teeming with activity, that he planned to stomp on with his heavy boots.

Nicholas Angelov, the one they called Angel. The one Amanda called evil incarnate. It was impossible to measure the cruelty of Olivia's five attackers and label one the worst, but if they were arranged on a pie chart, Amanda had no doubt Angel's slice would be the largest. He had been the one to enjoy hurting Olivia the most; oh, Riva and Sandberg Jr. had their fun, the special needs boy emulated what he saw, and Gus didn't even consider Olivia to be human. But Angel.

His objective was pain. Amanda got the distinct impression that the only thing he would prefer to do more than rape Olivia was kill her. That was the look he gave the sleeping captain now as he drew back a boot and drove it soundly into the mattress, just inches from where Olivia's dark head lay, hair fanned in uneven hanks around her. "Wake up, puss," he announced loudly, nudging her with the toe of his kicking boot. "Time for kitty to have her morning cream."

Cold, stark terror clutched Amanda's heart in its icy fist when her wife didn't immediately stir. Covering her mouth with both hands, prepared to scream into them if Angel rolled the body on the mattress over to reveal that Olivia was dead, Amanda instead choked out a sob. Groggy and disoriented, but very much alive, Olivia struggled to open her eyes and keep them open. She squinted at the man looming over her as if she had never seen him before. "Wha?" she rasped in a voice so thin Amanda could just barely hear it through the speaker. It sounded like the grooves that hissed at the end of a record.

As much as Amanda wanted Olivia awake, the fear of what Angel had planned made her wish the captain had stayed asleep. But it was too late now; the man crouched down beside the bed, his numerous piercings glinting in the sunlight that streamed in through whatever entrance he'd left open. (It wasn't underground, then, and the beams didn't waver, so they weren't on the water, either.) Sneering his silver-toothed sneer, he surveyed the scrap of blanket Olivia had huddled under all night.

"I don't remember anyone giving you permission to use that," he said, poking his finger into one of the holes probably chewed out of the material by mice. The damn thing resembled, in size and condition, the scraggly old baby's blanket Frannie had slept on while being crate trained, and still wouldn't allow to be thrown away. "Your little cockroach friends tell you it was all right?"

"I-I was cold," Olivia said, shying from the touch on the blanket. She forced herself fully awake, attempting to sit up, but making it no further than lifting her head and dropping it back again. The moan she exhaled was so weak it barely made it past her lips, and she winced as if even that small effort caused terrible pain. Her eyes remained squeezed shut while she breathed through it, mentally preparing to try again.

Before she got the chance, the platinum-haired monster squatting at her bedside grabbed the blanket and yanked it off of Olivia. He twirled it like a matador cape, making her flinch and cower from the flapping overhead, then flung it aside in a tangled heap. "You're cold?" he asked in a pouty, mocking tone. He reached for his zipper with the hand not holding the bottled water and another object Amanda couldn't identify. "I know just how to warm you up, little kitty. Why don't you turn over—"

That lit a fire under Olivia and she rolled onto her elbow, heaving herself forward with it, at the same time rocking upward and onto her backside. It all happened in slow-motion, her movements stiff and disjointed, and when she scuttled backward in a crab walk, she only found enough strength to reach the corner of the mattress. Dropping heavily onto her rear, panting as if she'd jogged up several flights of stairs, she gave her badly disheveled head an adamant shake.

"Not cold," she husked, speaking at the loudest volume she seemed able to produce. Still no more than a harsh whisper. It sounded like she was wearing a tracheostomy tube.

Despite the assertion, she was trembling violently and kept tugging on the hem of her t-shirt, trying to hook it over her knees to prevent Angelov from seeing anything tantalizing. The shirt wasn't stretchy or baggy enough to provide adequate coverage, and each time she pulled it down, the V-neck exposed more of her breasts. Even over the livestream, her dusky-rose nipples were visible beneath the veneer of the thin shirt. Angelov grinned luridly at her losing battle.

"That's not what them big titties are telling me," he said, with a pointed glance at Olivia's chest. He took a handful of his crotch and shook it at her, as if wielding his erect penis. "Unless you just didn't get enough of my wood yesterday, you filthy slut. That it? Finally got a taste of some real meat, and now it's what you crave, huh?"

Anxiously, Amanda twisted the wedding ring on her finger, turning the gemstones inward to dig into her palm as she made a fist and brought it down hard on the table. "Motherfucker," she said in a vicious whisper, angry tears pricking her eyes. If she ever got her hands on Nicholas Angelov, she would show him exactly what they did down South with live meat. Mountain oysters were a goddamn delicacy, served at many a Rollins family reunion.

"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Fin, striding back into the room at a speed he reserved for emergencies only. A power adapter dangled from the neatly folded white cord in his hand, prevented from unraveling by a neatly looped rubber band. He tossed it onto the table and leaned over Amanda's shoulder to see for himself when she didn't answer.

"N-no, please." Olivia hugged the t-shirt to her chest the way Matilda hugged her lovies—any one of a thousand stuffed animals the little girl couldn't sleep without—at bedtime. It left her lower half unprotected, save for the ruins of her underwear, hanging from her hips in starry black shreds. She pinched her knees together awkwardly, resembling a calf whose legs collapsed inward during its first steps. "I don't— don't want that."

"Don't want . . . what?" Angelov turned his head, ear inclined, prompting Olivia for more. As if they already had a rapport, or an inside joke she'd left out.

And the worst part was that she knew exactly what he expected of her. "Y-your big . . . your big, yum-yummy cock," Olivia said, mouthing most of it, choking on the rest. She visibly steeled herself for him to lash out at the denial, and reeled back so forcefully she almost toppled over when he threw something at her instead.

The package rolled down her thigh and fell dead on the floor at her knees. She stared at it in horror—and then, growing confusion. Whatever she had expected to find, a snack pack of powdered donuts was not it. She drew her knees aside as if it were a stick of dynamite she didn't want to risk bumping. Amanda couldn't blame her; it felt like a trick, this act of generosity from the man who had also delighted in rubbing his pierced cock on every inch of Olivia's body.

If a mangled roll of mini Donettes could be called generous. Amanda ate the things like they were going out of style—especially while she was carrying Samantha—but Olivia seldom did more than kiss the powdered sugar from her lips, with that satisfied little Mmm she gave even when their kisses weren't laced in confection. She claimed that actually eating the donuts made her teeth hurt. Amanda suspected that meant they were another of the foods Olivia had subsisted on as a kid, when she had to steal food or starve (before the starving was voluntary), and consequently couldn't stomach as an adult.

"I'm not hungry," Olivia said, and though it was a common phrase for her, there was probably some truth in it. Amanda's stomach was so twisted up in knots, her throat so constricted, the thought of food made her nauseated. "May I just have the water?" She gestured warily to the bottle in Angelov's hand, looking as if she was prepared to duck, should he launch it at her. "Please."

Something in the request struck Angel as funny, and he stood to his feet, laughing. "Boss sent me in here to feed you, bitch. Either you eat the donuts or my dick, it's up to you." He twisted the cap of the bottled water, breaking the seal. "Choose dick and I might give you a great big sip first . . . "

Olivia gazed longingly at the proffered drink, but she picked up the donuts instead and tried to peel apart the cellophane sleeve at one end. Neither her fingers nor the wrapper would cooperate, and after wrestling with it for several seconds, the package split partway down the side, expelling the first three donuts in opposite directions. Two landed on the floor, one on the mattress, and a misting of powder drifted into Olivia's lap like snow.

"Spoiled cunt. Quit wasting food." Angelov wandered around the mattress to inspect the scattered treats. He squished one beneath the toe of his boot, grinding it like a large, resilient bug. He swiped the sole against the floorboards, as if he were scraping off dog shit. "I oughta make you eat it anyway."

Thankfully, he didn't, and Olivia knew better than to respond. She took a small, tentative bite of the donut she'd plucked from the package and kept her eyes on it as she chewed, rather than look at the man standing over her. Swallowing appeared difficult and painful, an audible click coming from her throat as she forced the bite down. She chased it with another smaller nibble, then peered sidelong at Angelov's feet.

"Where are we?" she asked, and had to repeat herself when the first try was too rusty. Gingerly, she cleared her throat, though it didn't help much. "Are we still in the City?"

Amanda's heart began to hammer double-time, the blood in her ears matching it, beat for beat. Not for one second did she expect the man to answer, but she doubted Olivia did, either. Asking something like that, on the off chance that pertinent details would be revealed, might mean the captain was aware of the camera. "Good girl," Amanda said, giving the table a punctuating thump of her fist. "Oh, good girl. Tell me where you are, baby."

"What's it to you?" Angelov asked. He motioned at the open entrance and the streaming sunlight. "Planning to run? You won't get very far."

Olivia chanced a look toward the outside, which she had avoided so far. She gulped on donut mush and coughed behind closed lips a few times. "I didn't recognize the dock—"

"Hey." Angelov snapped his tattooed fingers like he was scolding a naughty puppy. "Shut the fuck up and eat your donuts. You talk about it anymore, I'll put your face through that wall. You'll have a great view, then."

"Of what, shipping containers? Construction?" A smirk was detectable in the remains of Olivia's voice, if not on her lips. The questions were definitely deliberate and, though they weren't much to go on (docks, shipping containers, and construction were prevalent throughout the City), Amanda felt a glimmer of hope at their asking. Triumph, even. Battered and traumatized as she was—bloody and bruised and shuddering convulsively—Olivia was still in there.

But the triumph was short-lived. Angelov moved quickly and savagely, springing forward to snatch the package from Olivia and empty the last two donuts into his hand; he smashed them into Olivia's face, smearing them back and forth like the old pie-in-the-kisser gag from outdated game shows. Ghostly white streaks painted her forehead and cheeks, the crumbly insides of the sweets clumping in her eyelashes and sprinkling down like large, ungainly snowflakes.

The captain took a deep whooping breath through her mouth when Angelov finally gave off scrubbing fried dough and powdered sugar against her lips. She spluttered on the paste it had formed, coughing and wheezing until tears and mucus traced ghoulish tracks down her new mask. She looked like the ashen victim of a volcanic eruption. The dead in Pompeii were forever frozen in similar defensive postures, their faces also twisted in agony and terror. The killer ash and gases of Mt. Vesuvius had nothing on Nicholas Angelov.

"I told you to shut your fat fucking mouth," he growled in Olivia's ear, a hand clamped to the back of her head to keep her from turning it. He reached out with his free hand and snagged the donut that had fallen on the mattress, threatening to cram it between Olivia's parted, gasping lips. (Water, she mouthed. Water.) "Are you going to quit asking annoying questions and being a mouthy bitch, or do I have to shove this down your throat and get the duct tape?"

Olivia shook her head as best she could with him holding it, her breath coming in fits and starts. "No more," she managed to croak between ragged, racking coughs. A sliver of blood from her split lip stained the powder bright red, and somewhere in the back of Amanda's mind, she remembered a conversation they once had about Snow White and how she'd been conjured with a drop of blood and a mother's wish . . .

Only to fall prey to evil and be sentenced to eternal sleep. And where was her one true love while it all transpired? Watching on a laptop, safe and warm in a police precinct.

"Wat— water." Tears streamed from Olivia's plaintive brown eyes, even larger and darker beneath all the powder, but it was difficult to tell if the moisture was a result of the coughing, the donut crumbs, or the captain's need for: "Water. Please."

"You want this?" Angelov picked up the bottled water he had dropped during the impromptu attack, and trailed the capped end to and fro in front of Olivia. When she nodded eagerly and grabbed for the bottle, he jerked it back and put the cap to his chin for a contemplative pose. "What'll you give me for it? Will you give me a kiss? Haven't been able to stop thinking about those pretty lips of yours since what they did to me yesterday, pussycat."

"Y-you forced—" The rest was drowned out by another round of hacking, so intense it set Olivia's cheeks aflame behind the powder and doubled her forward, clutching her side. When she peered up at her caretaker again, like a worshipper looking into the face of a terrible, vengeful god, her eyes strayed to the plastic bottle in his hand. She swallowed hard, but could not control the residual coughs that threatened to set her off once more.

"Kiss?" Angelov flipped the bottle impressively around his arm and caught it in his other hand, as if he were flair bartending. The bastard would be coordinated. "Or no kiss, no water? And I tell Gus about the mess you made with your breakfast. He doesn't like it when the girls—"

"Kiss." Olivia's voice was so small. The vowels were mostly silent, the consonants sticking in her throat and needing to be pushed out. Amanda's cousin Mindy had stuttered badly as a kid, and it had sounded a lot like that. Min eventually outgrew it, but how did you outgrow something like this? What if Olivia never did? Lewis had kissed her on the mouth, a detail Amanda gathered (like so many of the details from those dark days) by hearing Olivia talk about it in her sleep. Cry about it, and wake needing Amanda to hold her.

God, Amanda just wanted to hold her.

Nicholas Angelov, good old Nicky boy, sighed as though he had a big decision to make. He regarded the water and then Olivia, his lip curled in that non-smile he wore the majority of the time. "All right, I'll give you one small sip first. You gotta moisten those things up before I'll get near 'em." He uncapped the bottle, but pulled it away at the last second when Olivia leaned in, craning her neck to get at it. "Just one."

Nodding assent, Olivia groped at the bottle with her lips at its approach and gulped down the water as fervently as Sammie on the nipple first thing in the morning. It was the way a lamb suckled, its head tipped back, exposing a vulnerable throat, body poised to follow the food source wherever it went. Unfortunately for Olivia, hers departed much too soon, and she spurted out part of the mouthful she was left with.

"That's more than a sip, you damn camel," said Angelov, eyeing the barely depleted bottle. He shook his head in disappointment, first at the water level and then at the front of Olivia's shirt, stippled with moisture.

"You really want it that bad? More than the kiss?"

It was all too contrived for Amanda's liking. He wouldn't just give Olivia another drink and forget about his bribed kiss, and the captain knew it too. She gazed at him with uncertainty, not answering for several moments. In the end, though, her thirst was greater than her fear. "Yes," she mouthed, and licked her lips in anticipation. She was on her knees, face upturned, every muscle in her body tensed for that next sip. Poor little lamb.

With no more ceremony than a shrug of the shoulder, Angel upended the bottle over Olivia's head, dousing her hair, her face, and her t-shirt in a few expert flicks of the wrist. He snapped the leftover droplets at her like a priest dispersing holy water during an exorcism. Having grown up Southern Baptist, Amanda was more acquainted with the laying on of hands to get the demons out—and he did that, too.

Before Olivia had caught her breath, torn away by the cold deluge of water, Angelov was on her. He covered her open mouth with his, plunging his tongue so deep she gagged. Her fists went up reflexively, but after pounding and pushing at his shoulders to no avail, she tried to pry his arms from around her. His hands, splayed at her lower back and the back of her head, didn't budge, and she managed only to writhe in his ironclad embrace.

Amanda thought of the footage from wild animal documentaries, where the apex predator set upon smaller, weaker prey, sometimes consuming it in just a few large bites. She often wondered why the film crew didn't intervene on the smaller animal's behalf. What kind of heartless person just sat back and watched something like that? Now she knew that she was no different. When the lion attacked, she watched like it was a goddamned documentary. Sexual Predators in Action: Unrated Edition.

A moment later, Angel pinned Olivia to the floor and yanked down her panties. Then he was raping her again, with so little effort he might have been wrestling a stubborn fitted sheet into place. The sheet crumpled and curled in at the edges and eventually went still beneath him, yielding to his every move, his every thrust. Olivia either couldn't cry out or wouldn't, her silence lasting long after the kiss had ended. She didn't blink once, the muck on her cheeks from the wet powder giving the appearance of strange gray tears. She looked like one of those Mary statues that, according to the religious nuts, wept olive oil. Or blood.

"At least we know she's on a dock . . . somewhere," Amanda said thinly. She had forgotten Fin was still in the room until she noticed his hand on her shoulder, offering awkward pats as Angelov manipulated Olivia to maximize his pleasure. "With shipping containers and construction. That's gotta be helpful, right? You should send out some of those concerned citizens who are just standing around with their dicks in their hands out there to start searching. Make themselves useful instead of beating off to rape porn of my wife."

"Amanda. That ain't what they're doing, and you know it." Fin's voice was light, but his hand was heavy and so was the look he gave her. At least it looked that way from the corner of her eye. "Everybody's working hard to find her. And I get it, you're pissed that you can't help. I would be too. You just gotta . . . let us do our thing and trust that everybody out there's giving it their best. We can't search every dock in the city—"

"Why the hell not? And look. Look here at the sunlight." Amanda tapped her finger rapidly against the screen (in the upper right-hand corner, Nicholas Angelov went on fucking her wife on the wet and filthy donut-strewn floor), leaving a ghost-trail of imprints on the display. They evaporated in front of her eyes. "Can't we . . . I dunno, figure out what direction it's coming from and use that to pinpoint a location? What is that, like a forty-five degree slant, so northeast, which is probably somewhere near Hell Gate—"

"Hey. Rollins. Slow down." Fin gestured as if he were trying to prevent Amanda from speeding headlong off of a cliff, but he didn't return the hand she shrugged from her shoulder. He was acting like she was being irrational, or perhaps a bit manic, and it only made her angrier and more impatient. "I think you need a break from this. Why don't you go get some rack time, come back after you've had a chance to process a little?"

Rather than dignify the suggestion with a response, Amanda remained fixated on the screen, pretending Fin had in fact left the room this time. Angel was finishing with Olivia, tucking his penis into his pants and zipping up as he backed off of her, smiling like a john after a cheap roll in the sack. The captain folded in on herself like the pillbugs Amanda had poked with a stick when she was a kid, flicking them across the yard when she grew bored of their retiring behavior.

"Okay then, will you at least eat something from the vending machine if I bring it to you?" asked the sergeant, refusing to be ignored. As a teenager, Amanda had always gotten pissed when her mother dismissed her attempts at giving the silent treatment and talked to her like they were best friends. She huffed just as deeply now as she had back then. "How about some peanut butter crackers or—"

"Yes, peanut butter crackers are fine, Fin," Amanda said in a loud, hasty tone. She hated losing her patience with him, but at the moment she had a pretty damn good excuse. Olivia's rapist had left her alone again, shutting out the sunlight and taking with him the one source of warmth Olivia had found the night before: the shabby blanket. The captain was curled on her side, underwear still around her ankles. "And a coffee, I need some caffeine."

The dubious expression on Fin's face made it clear he did not agree with that assessment. "You sure about that? You seem pretty wound up as it is. Maybe lay off the caffeine for a while, you think?"

A second before she was about to say no, she didn't think so in the least, Amanda glanced down to see her knees bouncing wildly just below the table, her fingernails clacking like a busy typist's on the arms of the chair. She quieted her hands and her jiggling legs, folding them tightly together in an unnaturally stiff pose. Her posture was never that good at any other time. "Suit yourself. Forget the coffee, forget the crackers. I'll just wait for the next guy to show up and rape my wife, that'll keep me awake as well as the caffeine would."

Unable to tolerate Fin's troubled expression, even though she wasn't looking at him—she felt it boring into the back of her head the longer she sat there—Amanda occupied herself with the charger he had delivered. She could barely make her fingers cooperate enough to untwist the rubber band and let the cord spring free, crimped and unwieldy. It took several tries before she got the connector into the port of her phone, and she had wheeled her chair over to the nearest outlet when Fin finally spoke up again.

"I get that you're going through some heavy shit right now, Amanda. And I know you're just trying to hold it together. But I gotta do my job, and part of that is making sure you don't crack up. I'll bring you the crackers and the coffee, but you gotta gimme a reason to let you stay here watching this shit, otherwise I'm sending you home. I called someone for you. Either you talk to him when he gets here, or you're out."

"Him who? Did you call Carisi? I said I would—" Amanda sat up from plugging in the adapter and rotated the desk chair to face the sergeant, only to discover he had already gone. Oh well, she was about to lie, anyway. She no more intended to call Carisi now than she had when she first mentioned him as someone who could offer support.

They had a decent friendship since his move to the ADA's office, but their lives had gone in radically different directions these past few years. He was no longer her confidant, and she didn't want him anywhere near this. In some ways, he would always just be the boy with the silly mustache in her mind. Besides, without a badge, there wasn't much help he could offer for a case like this.

There didn't seem to be much help anyone could offer.

"I'll find you, baby," she murmured to Olivia, who had unfurled from her protective ball to pull up her underwear and drag herself onto the mattress. It reminded Amanda of one of her father's old hunting dogs that had gotten hit by a car and dragged itself home, unable to use its hind legs. Daddy had called the poor thing lame and put it out of its misery with a bullet between the eyes. "If I have to search every goddamn dock in the state myself, I'll find you. Just hang in there for me, darlin'."

"Amanda? What did you say?" a confused voice asked, and for a split-second, Amanda thought Olivia had responded to her. Then she realized it was Lucy answering the call she had sent without being fully aware of what she was doing. Maybe Fin was right; maybe she did need to talk to someone before she ended up completely losing her sanity.

"Hey, Lucy. Never mind, how are the kids?"

It should have felt good hearing about Noah and Jesse destroying the kitchen to make Sunday pancakes, and Matilda insisting she could change Sammie's diaper herself, but Amanda had to cover her mouth to keep from sobbing as she listened. She couldn't look away from the laptop screen. The mother of her children was seated in squalor, with blood-encrusted thighs, her hair and t-shirt soaked through as she shivered uncontrollably—and in the background, the kids were giggling. ("Is that Mommy or Mama?" Jesse called. "Tell them to come home for pancakes!")

"How's Liv?" Lucy asked in a hushed voice, after shooing the kids into a different room. "Have the kidnappers made any demands or anything yet?"

Only for the heart and soul to be ripped out of me, Amanda thought, stroking the livestream image of Olivia with her thumb. Only for everything that I have, and all that I am, so much of it because of her. Because of who she's made me and everything she's given. That's all.

She didn't say it, of course. Lucy had been told no more than was absolutely necessary for her and the kids' safety: Olivia had been kidnapped by some dangerous people, and no one but NYPD was to be trusted. If Jesus Christ himself came to the door, inquiring about the Rollins-Benson children, Lucy was not to let him in.

Amanda hadn't wanted to frighten the nanny with words like "possible sex traffickers," nor would she ever mention the live broadcast of Olivia's repeated assaults, but the girl was bright and she knew all too well the dangers that came with her bosses' jobs. The fact that she even knew to inquire about the kidnappers' demands proved she had a leg up on the average babysitter.

"There hasn't been much change since yesterday. We're still . . . " Amanda made a useless gesture that the nanny couldn't see or hear. She thought about how in tune she and Olivia were; so much so that Amanda could picture the captain's facial expressions and hand gestures, even when they were speaking over the phone. She knew her wife by heart. "We're still trying to figure out where they're holding her. I'm sure— we'll get her back soon."

A long pause from the other end of the line made it clear the nanny wasn't falling for Amanda's lame, stilted pep talk. But, on top of being a good nanny and savvy employee, the younger woman was also tactful and didn't ask anymore questions. She assured Amanda that there was plenty enough breast milk to last Sammie until the following day, and further plans could be arranged then, if it came to that—and it definitely would not, they both agreed with too much certainty.

"Hey, thanks, Luce," Amanda said, as they prepared to sign off. The kids were giggling in the background again, presumably at Frannie, who sounded as though she had the zoomies. Poor girl hadn't gotten her daily jog yesterday or this morning. "I'll call Daph to help with the dogs. She and Carisi are the only ones—"

"—I'm allowed to let in without a badge," Lucy finished lightly. "Don't worry, Amanda, I know the drill. I promise. Just focus on finding Liv."

The frustration of being able to see Olivia, being able to hear the soft hitches of breath that surely meant she was crying—she had turned her face away from the camera, almost purposely, as if she didn't wish to be seen at such a private moment, as if she sensed how many eyes were on her—but not being able to go to her, to find her, hit Amanda all at once. "Tell the kids . . . Give them a hug from me and mommy," she said in a strained voice, and ended the call abruptly.

Releasing a shaky breath, she tried all the tricks to stave off the tears: deep, calming respiration, looking skyward and fanning her bottom lashes, snapping her wrist with the rubber band from around the phone cord. She cried anyway, a brief torrential downpour amid the hurricane of emotions that had been raging over the past twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four hours without Olivia. Maybe only twenty-one or twenty-two at this point, but still too long. It probably felt like an eternity to Olivia herself, stuck in what was essentially a large cell, no windows to provide an estimate of the passage of time. People had psychotic breaks over less, sitting in The Hole and conversing with cockroaches just to have the connection to another living being that humans so desperately required.

"Of all the days for you to forget your watch," Amanda said softly, chiding the woman on the screen with fondness, the way she would have—in happier times—if Olivia could actually hear her. She forced a tearful laugh that came out as a nasal whine, and she cut it short immediately. What right did she have to sit around sniveling while Olivia was the one suffering? It wouldn't bring the captain home.

Neither would calling Daphne, but at least it gave Amanda a task and made it feel like she was participating in her wife's rescue. Even if it was only asking the clerk to help with the dogs, that still took some of the responsibility off Lucy's shoulders, in turn giving her more time with the kids and making their mothers' absences less pronounced. With the kids and the dogs taken care of, then Amanda could really concentrate.

She could find a way to get Olivia back alive.

. . .

The moment Daphne answered, her tone bright and chirpy, Amanda's throat closed up, eyes brimming with fresh, hot tears. For a moment, she cried soundlessly into the mic, her mouth open wide, the way a heartbroken child cried when their sadness was too big for words, sounds, breathing. She considered hanging up, letting her friend go about her day as if it were any other. As if the world wasn't crashing down around her.

It was too late for that, though. Daphne might be a jokester and a shameless flirt, but she was also perceptive as hell when it came to Amanda. The only person who knew Amanda better was Olivia, and sometimes they were so intertwined with each other it could be difficult to tell where one of them ended and the other began. Daphne had become a sounding board of sorts, able to offer a little perspective when blind love wasn't enough.

"Mandy Lou? What's going on? Are you— I can barely hear you. Hello?"

That stupid nickname succeeded only in making Amanda cry harder, and she held the phone away from her mouth, unable to respond. She must have made more noise than she thought, however, because Daphne's pitch suddenly rose by an octave and something clattered in the background as if it had been dropped or flung aside. "Amanda? Honey, are you crying? What's wrong? Oh my God, is it one of the kids? Is it the baby?"

The other woman's mounting panic had a reverse effect on Amanda, calming her enough to take a stuttering breath and find her voice under all the emotion that had choked it out. "Not the kids, Daph," she said, stuffy and waterlogged. She sounded as if her lungs were full of sea water. Come to think of it, watching Olivia be tortured, watching her weep—cold and alone, half-dressed and hurting—was like drowning on dry land. Being waterboarded couldn't be any worse. "It's Liv. She's . . . something real bad happened. I can't— oh, Daphne, it's so bad."

"Oh, God. No, no, no. Not Liv. What happened? Is she—" On the opposite end of the phone, Daphne's breath caught audibly. The connection she and Amanda shared went both ways, and Amanda knew that light gasp had prevented the clerk from asking if Olivia was dead, like Meredith. "Is she hurt? Are you at the hospital?"

"She's hurt." God, she was so horribly hurt. Amanda pressed her palm to the MacBook screen, covering Olivia's hunkered form, and bowed her head. The televangelists that seemed to be required viewing in the South, and who were as prominent as Fresh Prince or Zack Morris in Amanda's childhood television experience, had always encouraged the audience to stretch their hands towards the TV during prayer.

She'd tried it once, begging Jesus to make her daddy stop hurting her mama. Dean had sent Beth Anne to the emergency room the next day. Amanda didn't pray now, at least not to Jesus. To Olivia she silently promised, I'll find you. Please don't give up, I'll find you.

"She's hurt, but we're not at the hospital," Amanda said, wondering why her voice was so flat, then realizing her head was still bowed, eyes closed.

It would have been nice to stay like that forever, to drift off and wake in a few hours to find this was all just a dream—Olivia smiling at her from across the pillow, calling her sunshine, even though she was anything but in the morning. Instead, she opened her eyes in time to see her wife slowly limping toward what looked like the edge of a bucket in the corner of the screen. Partial view or not, it didn't take a genius to figure out what the receptacle was for, especially when Olivia clapped a hand over her nose and mouth, as if she were about to be sick.

"Why aren't you at the hospital? Where is she? Amanda, you're scaring me. Where's Liv?"

The captain turned away from the rancid bucket, squatted over it, and hissed loudly through her teeth as she released a brief stream of urine. Most of it took place off camera, just the sound effects and peripheral glimpses of movement telling the story. Apparently none of the men had a bathroom fetish, thank God.

"I don't know where she is," Amanda said, interrupting another barrage of frantic questions from Daphne. "Some guys jumped us on our way home. They took her. They just . . . took her right out of my arms."

Not entirely accurate, but that was how it felt. It was bereavement; Amanda was utterly, unimaginably bereft. ("Ow," Olivia cried under her breath, though she was alone. She couldn't even bear to hear herself reacting to the burning pain. Amanda knew it from giving birth to Samantha; it had hurt to relieve herself for weeks after.)

"What? Oh my God. What guys?" Static crackled on the line as if Daphne were on the move.

It crossed Amanda's mind to lie, to downplay the urgency of the situation and spare her friend the awful details, but she wouldn't minimize Olivia's experience that way. And Daphne was a grown woman who worked in the family courts and heard her share of stories about trafficked kids. She often asked Amanda how she dealt with similar cases day in and day out.

Someone's gotta help them, Daph, was Amanda's usual response. I just try to remember that I get to go home to my family after, and I thank the Lord they're all safe.

"There's a group of them." A heaviness settled over Amanda as she said the words. It was difficult to hold her head up, let alone speak. She felt like she could sink into the earth, become part of it—that field of ripening grain from the poem they recited at funerals. What a load of bull that was. Dead was dead, pretty lies didn't change it. "Five . . . so far. They're— they're traffickers. I think they took Liv as some kind of payback for me. For mistakes I've made."

A lengthy pause. Then: "Traffickers? You mean, like, the sex trade?"

"Yeah. That's what I mean. They're recording what they're doing to her. Sent— sent me the link so I could watch." Amanda's vision shimmered, her throat clenched. Olivia was shuffling from one wall to the next, holding her lower abdomen, wincing with each step, and searching again for some way out. Trapped in a box, probably bleeding internally (certainly externally), and brutalized beyond belief, the captain was doing more to aid in her own rescue than Amanda was, just sitting here wringing her hands. If she didn't get out of this room soon and do something to help, she really would lose her mind.

The thought instantly filled her with guilt. She could leave her cage, but Olivia couldn't leave hers; she could call a friend for help, but Olivia had no one. Even the cockroaches were long gone.

"—terrible. Are they . . . " Daphne didn't know how to ask the rest. As open and honest as their friendship was, Amanda still hadn't told the clerk about Olivia's multiple assaults. In fact, the only other person she had revealed them to was her therapist. She talked about them more and in greater detail than her own assault, or so Dr. Hanover had pointed out during a session. You seem to have a more vivid image of your wife's traumatic experiences than your own. Why do you think that is?

Gee, doc, I don't know, maybe because that's the nature of trauma—the not remembering. Amanda hadn't said it. Hadn't wanted to "explore" why she was so keen to unravel Olivia's issues, to replay the captain's worst moments over and over again, but barely acknowledged Atlanta, Patton, Daddy, or Mama. They had long ago forgiven each other for that awful night of Amanda's relapse, but sometimes Olivia's small, tearful words still haunted her: I think you like me a little broken.

Was that why she had let this happen? Did she need Olivia to be hurting and dependent on her in order to feel secure in their relationship? But God, no, not like this. She never would have wished for something like this to make Olivia need her.

"Amanda?"

"Yes, they're . . . assaulting her. They— they were with her for hours yesterday. And one of them came back a little while ago." Amanda longed to get up and pace the room, as Olivia was doing on screen, but the cord to the phone charger didn't stretch that far. It was as though everything she touched had conspired to keep her and her wife apart. "They're breaking her in for someone who wants to buy her, they said. They cut her hair, Daph."

Why that should be the part of the attack she focused on, out of all the sadistic things the men had done, and why it should be that detail that made Daphne burst into tears, Amanda didn't know. But the image of Gus Sandberg sawing off Olivia's braid and saying it would be a good souvenir for her wife was seared permanently into Amanda's brain. It raised a question she didn't want answered: what would the Sandman decide to cut off next?

"Oh, 'Manda, I'm so sorry. Oh my God, you have to find her." There was more, but it was unintelligible as Daphne cried with a fervency she normally reserved for laughter. She could be difficult to understand then too, racked by giddy, breathless amusement rather than the sobs that came through the phone now.

Somewhere amid the emotional outpouring, Amanda detected the name Mere, and then she understood why Olivia's hair being cut off bothered her friend so much. Meredith Ashton's gray, eyeless face and beautiful shorn locks had waited behind Amanda's closed lids for weeks after that night in the Catskills. It was still just below the surface for Daphne from the sound of it. "Why? Who would do that to you guys?" asked the clerk, swiping loudly under her nose. "Who'd want to hurt Liv like that?"

The father of my child, Amanda thought, unable to say the words out loud. And a woman whose baby I threatened to shoot. Either or, take your pick.

Maybe if she didn't put it out there, it wouldn't be true.

"I don't know for sure," she said, trying not to lie to her friend. Lies had gotten her here—gotten Liv into the hellhole she couldn't find a way out of, no matter which wall she pushed on, or rested her head on and cried—in the first place. Lies, gambling, and meaningless sex: a trifecta of vices that earned Amanda this grand fucking prize. "I've put a lot of people behind bars. Pissed off a lot of folks. There's a couple possibilities we're looking into."

"God. I just . . . I can't believe it's happening to Liv. Are you at the precinct? Should I come be with you or—"

"No. Don't come to the precinct." It was too sharp, but Amanda did want to sugarcoat it and chance Daphne deciding to stop by. The little clerk adored Olivia to the point of worshipfulness, and when Olivia got home (if she gets home, corrected an internal voice Amanda instantly shot dead) she would need someone who still treated her like that; who didn't see her getting piledriven by five men every time they looked at her. "They wouldn't let you up here right now, anyway. Place is full of cops and FBI. You could do me a favor, though."

"Anything."

"Would you go over to my place and take the dogs for a walk or to the park, or something? Lucy's there with the kids, and I don't want her dragging them out if she doesn't have to." Amanda explained about the security detail and why it was safer if the kids were at home. And, when Daphne agreed to look in on the dogs, it was with the stipulation that she behave normally around the children and their nanny, and make no mention of their missing mother.

"I promise," said Daphne, solemnly. "Find Liv, okay?"

"I will. Thanks, Daph."

Staring at her phone for several moments after the call ended, Amanda tried to remember if there was anyone else she should contact. Everyone who worked closely with Olivia already knew more about her abduction than they had any right to, and that also took care of the majority of her friends, other than Daphne. Barba would want to hop the soonest flight to JFK, but he only got to know if Olivia decided to tell him herself. And there was no way in hell Amanda would call Alex Fucking Cabot. The former attorney couldn't possibly have over a million a dollars just lying around—could she?—and even if she did, trying to renegotiate with Gus and his men might get the captain killed.

Suddenly Amanda understood the dilemma her wife had faced after the bank shooting that hospitalized her a little over a year ago. Except, Olivia didn't have an annoying, infuriating mother to reach out to; she had no family to pray for her safe return, to offer assistance in the aftermath, to reminisce with about the good old days—before all the rapes, all the unspeakable sadness. Amanda had never felt Olivia's absence of family as keenly as she did in that moment, holding her phone with no one to call. No one who cared.

"No one who cares," she repeated out loud to herself and sat forward, overwhelmed by a feeling that something was on the tip of her tongue.

No, at the tips of her fingers, not her tongue. She scrolled through the contacts on her phone, heart thudding wildly, until she came upon the number she'd only dialed once in the seven years since it was given to her. Toward the bottom, under M for Murphy. Last time she had tried it, while attempting to contact Declan about signing over his parental rights on Jesse, she had gotten a recording that said the number was out of service. But maybe now . . .

"We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error—"

"Fuck," Amanda exhaled, forcing out the breath she'd been holding in. She jabbed at the screen, ending the call, and let her phone clatter onto the tabletop. It had been a stupid idea anyway. What did she plan to say if he had picked up? Hey, pretty sure you're the kingpin of sex traffickers now, but could you tell your goons to quit raping my wife?

"You okay?" Fin asked, shuffling into the room with a steaming mug in one hand and several bags of chips and crackers clustered in the other, like a food vendor at Yankee Stadium.

"Dandy." Amanda watched him unload the coffee and snacks onto the table, feeling distant and removed from the scene, as if it were just another livestream she was sitting in on. But it must be real, because she could smell the coffee, earthy and piquant, and she felt a pang of hunger as Fin spread out the vending machine fare for a better look.

"Wasn't sure which you'd want," he explained, gazing on intently, as though she were IDing a suspect in a photo array. He had brought every type of peanut butter cracker available—the regular kind, the gross cheesy Keebler ones, and a bag of Nutter Butter bites—and several flavors of potato chips, including sour cream and onion, barbecue, and garden salsa Sun Chips. A pack of Skittles, Amanda's go-to dessert on working lunch days, lay among the selections.

She didn't want any of it, but if it got Fin off her back, she could choke down a few bites. Thinking of Olivia being forced to eat those fucking powdered donuts, which Amanda loved and ate on the regular, she plucked her least favorite snack from the pile—the peanut butter cheese crackers—and tore open the cellophane on one end. "Thanks," she muttered, nibbling the corner of a cracker she normally would have consumed in two bites. It tasted at least three years old. "Any news?"

"Tamin and Marquez are taking another run at Vaughn. Kat says . . . "

"What?" Amanda glanced up from absently turning the once-square treat between her fingers like a coin (or a poker chip) when the sergeant trailed off. "What did she say, Fin?"

Sighing, Fin swiped up the bag of barbecue chips, split the seal, and began munching. He had never been a stress eater to Amanda's knowledge, but he chewed nervously now, stealing glances at the laptop, and spoke with his mouth full. "She says Vaughn's having fun with it. Pretending she's all innocent and reformed. Acting concerned about you and Liv."

Amanda gave a dark, mirthless bark of laughter. "Please tell me they're not falling for that shit. That's what she does—bats those big brown eyes and acts like she's harmless, but she's really the one who's twisting the knife in your back. Even had me feeling sorry for her there for a while." On the screen, Olivia was taking inventory of her injuries, tenderly touching different parts of her body—lips, jaw, neck, ribs, thighs—and wincing away from each, her eyes closed for a long time. She did that when she couldn't bear to look or listen anymore. When it was all just too much.

"Sondra Vaughn is a fucking sociopath," Amanda said, and tossed the peanut butter cracker onto the table. It cracked down the middle and sputtered out orange crumbs. She reached for the coffee and held the mug at the bottom, letting it burn. "She was back then, and she still is now. Those kinds don't reform."

"Yeah, I know. And so do they, that's why they're still down there grilling her." Fin mulled on one of the aromatic crisps he was shoveling into his mouth from the dwindling bag. Chip shards and barbecue seasoning flecked his goatee and stained his fingertips, but he refrained from licking the latter. "You, uh, you know her kid died?"

The hot sip Amanda was trying to siphon from the mug a little at a time went down all at once, scalding her tongue and her esophagus. Beyond a reflexive cough, she barely noticed or reacted to the pain. It was nothing compared to the pain her wife felt. Olivia couldn't even sit down on the mattress without gasping as if it were a bed of nails she was lowering onto. "What? No. When? I never heard anything about that."

"Couple years. She and her uncle got hit by a drunk driver when the kid was six. Vaughn got more time on her sentence for almost killing another inmate after that." Fin stroked his goatee, not in thought but to shed the crumbs that had accumulated there. He dusted his hands together, sprinkling seasoning on the tabletop, then swiping it absently onto the floor. It was the most nervous Amanda had ever seen him. "She's got a reputation in the prison. You get on her bad side, you're gonna know it. They put her in the high-risk wing, but until she's ruled out as having anything to do with this—" He motioned to the video feed without looking at it. "—they're keeping her in solitary."

"I didn't know," Amanda said hollowly, staring at the screen through the steam from her coffee. It tickled her to no end when Olivia's hot drinks fogged up her glasses, momentarily blinding the captain and making her heave an exasperated sigh. At least it used to. Thinking about it now, Amanda couldn't even crack a smile. "'Bout her kid or any of it. Jesus, six years old. That's Jesse's age. Just a baby."

Fin's hand came to rest on Amanda's shoulder, and she caught another whiff of the barbecue chips he'd inhaled. "Hey. That ain't your fault. There's nothing you could've done about it either way. And it sure ain't no excuse if she's involved in this."

Glancing sidelong at Fin's engagement ring and his gritty, scented fingers, Amanda dropped her shoulder and scooted her chair away from him. "Think I don't know that already? I ain't looking for excuses for that crazy bitch. I don't care what happened to her damn kid. I should've put it down myself when I had the chance."

For several long seconds, Fin remained silent with his hand poised like he was still holding onto her, fingers slightly curled. Finally he balled them in a fist and dropped it to his thigh. "That's just your anger talking. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you'd done that." He sounded as though he wasn't entirely sure if that were the case, and Amanda made no attempt to answer one way or the other.

He was probably right, but at the moment Amanda didn't care about being the bigger person or the mother of an infant who couldn't bear to think about harming another baby. She didn't care about her vow to protect and serve. She was hurting, and if she could have taken something away from Sondra Vaughn—destroyed something the woman loved the way Olivia was being destroyed—she would have done it in a heartbeat. One of the few sermons from Amanda's childhood that had actually stuck was An Eye for an Eye.

"Has Lew— Dana found anything yet?" Amanda asked, when she was sure she could speak again without her voice trembling in rage. Olivia had reached for the plastic bottle Angelov left behind, and she upended it to her lips, trying to drain out any leftover drops of moisture. If she got any, Amanda couldn't tell, and the way Olivia sighed and let the bottle drop to the floor made her think not. "Anything about Murphy or his whereabouts?"

"She's following up on some leads from CIs. Feds have a few in the brothels around town, but you know how it goes with those girls."

Yeah, Amanda did know. They lived fast and died faster, most of them never making it out of the life before drugs or their pimp or a dissatisfied john's temper got the best of them. Five seconds later, a new girl was ready to take the old one's place, and no one ever noticed the difference. They weren't known for their honesty, either, or so Amanda had told herself when five of Timmer's girls had implicated Declan Murphy as one of the men who helped break them in. Their stories had been so similar, it was easy to dismiss them as scripted.

But that didn't explain how or when they had collaborated—they were kept separate after the Super Bowl bust—or why they would single out Murphy, whom they knew as just another pimp and not an undercover officer. Amanda had reasoned that it was like Brian Cassidy being framed for rape by a prostitute whose boyfriend was out for money. If Olivia could believe in Cassidy and support him through all that, and continue sleeping with him, why couldn't Amanda do the same thing for Murphy?

She had let her idiotic fucking hero-worship, not to mention her desire to get laid (and possibly make Benson jealous in the process), blind her to the truth once again. And just look at what it got her. Olivia was shivering harder than ever, her wet hair and t-shirt clinging to her face, her breasts. She flicked the heavy tendrils aside, wincing at the sharp movement, and peeled the shirt away from her chest compulsively. Every effort to huddle into a warm, safe ball was defeated by pain that made her flinch and whimper just tucking her legs in. Eventually she gave up, leaned stiffly against the wall behind her, and shut her eyes to the bleak surroundings—her only escape.

"Rumor is Murphy's in Belarus right now," Fin was saying, a dark quality to his voice and expression. He ducked his head for a moment, averting an intense gaze from the screen. From Olivia. "Dana knows someone in Minsk who might be able to locate him."

"Lemme guess, he's rounding up more girls to ship back to the states and do this to." Amanda nodded dully at her wife and set her mug aside, the coffee nearly untouched. She couldn't stomach it right now. None of it.

"Probably, yeah."

"Jesus Christ, Fin, how'd I miss it? It was staring me right in the face, and I just . . . " Amanda's gesture faded along with the sentence. She was so goddamned exhausted she didn't think she could keep going. Every inch of her body ached, most likely from tension and dropping onto the pavement while being tased the day before—but it was more than that, too. She was feeling Olivia's pain again; that had to be why she felt so bone-weary she could barely hold her head up. Something in her pelvic area burned as if she had a UTI. "Maybe if I'd paid closer attention, none of this would be happening."

"Nah. We all missed it with Murphy." Fin hesitated before softly adding the next part, "Even Liv."

"This ain't her fault," Amanda snapped, turning a ferocious look on her sergeant. Her anger was disproportionate to what he had said, she knew, but she had to let it out somehow. It scorched her insides the way the coffee had scorched her tongue. "Don't you put this on her."

"I'm not. I'm not." Fin's hands went up, palms open and empty, showing he wasn't a threat. It was the way you approached knife-wielding EDPs and snarling dogs. "It's not on her at all. But it ain't on you either, Amanda. You couldn'ta known he'd do something like this. And even if we had thrown his hairy ass in prison back then, there's still a strong chance this would have happened. If Vaughn's involved, she'd have found a way to get to you and Liv, with or without Murphy. Someone else would be running the show, that's all."

That very well could be true, but it didn't make Amanda feel any better—A) because Olivia hadn't dealt as closely with Murphy, and therefore had fewer warning signs to ignore than Amanda did; and B) she was responsible for putting Vaughn behind bars and, in some small way, for the death of the woman's little girl. Any way you sliced it, Amanda had a hand in what was happening to her wife. It was nice of Fin to deny it, but she knew the truth, ugly though it might be.

"Yeah." Amanda left it at that, not interested in hearing him defend her any further. Someone had to be to blame for this ongoing nightmare, and if you really thought about it, she was the common denominator it all came down to. She was the one who put Olivia in the worst danger of her life time and time again.

Just as Amanda was hoping the sergeant would get the hint from her silence and return to the squad room, leaving her to stew and self-castigate in peace, Olivia's eyes sprung open as if she'd just remembered she left the coffee pot running at home. She sat forward and appeared to listen to some distant sound the camera wasn't picking up on. Then she looked directly at the lens, an almost wistful expression on her tired, wan face, like she was preparing for a difficult goodbye.

"What is she doing? Baby, what're you doing?" Amanda asked, her throat tightening and producing a shrill pitch as she watched Olivia struggle to stand, to limp closer to the camera.

The captain still couldn't see a recording device, her eyes scanning whatever concealed it (a wall, Amanda presumed) and straying past the lens several times. Finally she settled on a general vicinity, and spoke. "If anyone's watching this, please send help. I'm in a shipping container. There's . . . so many."

Her voice was gravel and rust, a ring of dark bruises encircling her neck like a dirty noose. Her lips were so dry they were flaking, the split down the middle glistening with fresh blood. She kept both arms crossed in front of her chest in a protective X, hands curved over her shoulders. "Some kind of port near the water, I don't know which . . . " Tears of frustration filled Olivia's eyes and she gazed around helplessly, shaking her head.

"I couldn't see the skyline. There's a construction site nearby." The last part came out rushed, and the captain glanced over her shoulder, eyes gone wide and fearful, as if she expected to see a ghost. Or a sandman. "We went over some bridges. Jersey, maybe. Shit, they're coming. Please help, I—"

The rest was lost to a screech of door hinges and a flood of sunshine that spilled over Olivia like a holy light from above, blinding her with its glory. The figure that stepped forth from the light, though somewhat reticulan in shadow, was anything but divine; it was that tall, lanky piece of shit named Liam Sandberg, and he was carrying the same length of pipe or whatever the thing was that Olivia had been threatened with yesterday.

"Bitch, what the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, his tone harsh but strangely playful. He sounded like he was imitating an abusive husband from some dumb movie, about to yell at his wife to make him a sandwich. He smacked the pipe-thing against his open palm. "You better sit your rank ass down and shut your fat mouth, unless you want another taste of old Sparky here."

Old Sparky wasn't a very helpful description, but the connotations and the pipe-thing's overall shape made Amanda pretty confident she was looking at some sort of jury-rigged taser. It made sense. Little Liam Sandberg liked to shock women, and Amanda had the prong-shaped burns to prove it.

"I know you're recording me," said Olivia, backing away from the younger man too quickly. She bumped into the desk where most of yesterday's assault had taken place, and upon seeing what it was, shrank back from it like she'd wandered too close to a rabid dog. "They'll know where the video is coming from if you put it online. Wouldn't it be better to just let me go, and you can get out of here before they show up?"

Amanda longed to wipe the smug, shitty smile off the little punk's face as he taunted Olivia with false starts toward her, stamping his foot and twitching his shoulders while she dodged side to side, ready to flee in the opposite direction from which he came. "They? You still think you got friends out there who will magically appear and save you? Hate to break it to you, honey, no one's coming. No one gives a fuck about you. If they did, they would've been here yesterday to keep us from doing you raw and nasty. Over and over and over . . . "

"Don't listen to him," Fin said in a low, confidential tone, as if he were interrupting Amanda mid-interrogation. "He's just messing with her head. Wants her to feel hopeless so they can control her better."

"I know that," Amanda said sharply. Did Fin really think that, after all this time, she didn't understand how guys like this operated? Did he really think she wouldn't feel guilty no matter what he said to the contrary? Or that Olivia, alone and terrorized, after so many devastating experiences where no one did come for her, wouldn't believe every single word? "Don't you think I damn well know that?"

Before Fin could respond, Liam Sandberg took a running leap at Olivia, his open plaid shirt billowing out behind him like a cape. Or at least that was how it appeared from the angle of the camera. He had actually pounced on top of the desk in front of her, his checkered Vans squeaking on the metal. He struck a corny surfing pose, and when Olivia stumbled backward in an attempt to get away from him, landing heavily on her rump on the floor, he called out in an equally dumb surfer dude voice, "Whoa, bruh, wipeout. Where'd you learn to hang ten, man?"

If Amanda had her gun and could have shot him dead through the screen right then, she would have done it, no questions asked. Her next best option, besides heaving the laptop across the room, was to slam her fist down on the uneaten pack of cheese crackers, pulverizing its contents. She did it once, twice, three times, four—and on the fifth pounding, when she realized she couldn't stop, Fin cupped a hand over her fist, gently but firmly keeping it still.

"That ain't gonna help her," he said.

Will anything, Amanda wondered. Will anything help her when this is over? She thought she might have said it out loud, but Fin didn't answer, so maybe not. It didn't matter anyway, because this was far from over: the Sandman's son hopped down from the desk (it shuddered like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz) with the heavy, graceless dismount of a clunky teenager, and strode toward Olivia. Seated on the floor, she scooted backward on her hands, dragging her legs as if they were paralyzed, and cringed in agony every inch of the way.

Not that there were many inches to go. A few more, and she was backed against a wall, nowhere else to hide. With a Herculean amount of effort, she forced herself onto her feet by bending both knees and pushing up, her back sliding along the corrugated metal wall. Liam Sandberg watched as if he were impressed by the feat of strength, his head bobbing in approval. He opened his mouth for some sarcastic comment or another, but shut it in favor of staring down Olivia, whose gaze bore through him.

Gradually, his eyes grew wider and wider, until they bulged with fake horror. Then he jerked forward, throwing out his arms and yelling, "RAHHH!" like a kid trying to scare the willies out of someone. A very large, terrifying kid. And it worked—Olivia recoiled the way she sometimes did at the sound of a car horn blaring. Her knuckles clanged on the container wall when she threw her hands back in surprise, but it was Liam who got the real shock of his life when she kicked out at him, connecting high on his inner thigh.

It wasn't his groin, but it was close and he leapt back with a little shriek, clutching at his privates. Olivia wasted no time, skirting past him and hurrying for the open door at the fastest hobble she could likely manage in her condition. Amanda willed her to go faster, to push through the pain and just fucking run. It was the worst, most selfish feeling she could imagine, to be angry at her wife for not ignoring the probable broken bones, internal injuries, and extensive anogenital tearing that were slowing her down. And yet Amanda wanted to scream at her like Liam Sandberg had: RUN.

Olivia might have made it outside the container if not for Nicholas Angelov, materializing from inside a flare of sun. Ra, an angry god come to earth as man to smite the infidels. He had Olivia in his sights—she stopped short, her gasp an emphysemic wheeze—but it was the other man-monster who, recovered from his close-call, approached her from behind and cracked her skull open.

At least that was how it sounded when Sandman Jr. smashed the taser baton across the back of Olivia's head, sending her sprawling facedown onto the floor. Other than a muffled hmph she made no sound, though it hurt like hell to watch (even Fin gave a pained hum) and had to be ten times worse to experience firsthand. "Lord Jesus," Amanda whispered, holding the back of her own head. Her brain was on fire. She couldn't survive this. They had just gone for bagels, and now her wife was going to die right in front of her.

"Fuck," Liam Sandberg hollered, landing a sound kick to the middle of Olivia's back when she moaned and attempted to sit up, clutching her head. Laid out flat again, she didn't try to move this time, but the crazy bastard Sandberg pinned her to the floor anyway, one of his Vans planted square on her back. Size twelve, easy. "I was gonna be nice and let you off with a warning, but you had to go and get physical. And trying to run? Seriously? My mentally impaired brother can run faster than you. Learns faster, too. And we never had to beat it into him like I'm gonna do to you."

He raised the baton high, ready to bring it down on Olivia's skull again, in what would surely be the coup de grâce, but Angelov grabbed his wrist in midair. "Easy, junior. You kill her, your daddy eats a mill and probably kills you too. And if he doesn't, I will. You can zap her, you can fuck her, but you're not beating her fucking brains in like that other girl. Got me?"

Junior looked like he wanted to be the one who killed Angelov right then, visibly seething as he yanked his wrist free. For a moment, gaze flicking anxiously back and forth between the two men, Amanda was on the demented angel's side. The side of the man who had just raped her wife not twenty minutes earlier.

"Yeah, man, I got you," said Liam Sandberg, laughing off the murderous anger that disappeared much too abruptly. "We're good. We're copacetic. No kitty killy, just zappy fucky." He took his foot off Olivia's back—she exhaled heavily and coughed, but kept her face turned to the floor, a protective hand splayed behind her head—and he lowered his weapon, gesturing as if it had all been a big joke.

He was still smiling, his eyes empty (those buggy serial-killer eyes), when he jabbed the taser prongs into Olivia's exposed lower back like he was using a trash-picking stick and depressed the trigger. Olivia's entire body jerked and went rigid as the current passed through her, God only knew how many volts flowing out of that modified torture device. Amanda had gotten lucky, the shock she'd received was regulated for use by law enforcement.

Even so, her nerve endings tingled, an odd hot-cold sensation flooding her skin, as she watched the captain convulsing. The sound of the taser reminded her of those outdoor bug zappers that were the soundtrack of her childhood summers, along with cicada song and Dean Rollins' earth-shattering beer belches from the front porch. And Olivia was the pretty brown moth getting fried when she flew too close to the ultraviolet light.

"For fuck's sake, give her a minute," Amanda said, on the verge of shouting. She wanted to grab the stick and shove it up Liam Sandberg's rapist ass; she watched. "That's too much! She can't handle it, you fuck—"

Sandberg let up on the trigger and raised the charged end like it was the barrel of a shotgun, blowing across the pronged tip. If there were any kind of justice in the world, a stray current would travel through the mist of his saliva and orally electrocute him, but of course it didn't. There was no justice in this. Even if they got Olivia out of there alive and put all the animals responsible for her abduction and torture in prison, it wouldn't be enough. The men would go about their lives behind bars, probably bragging about the lady cop they did raw and nasty, and their misdeeds would live on forever through the Internet.

The only justice would be in Olivia rising from the floor, where she lay in a limp, motionless heap, wresting the taser from Liam Sandberg, and beating him and Angel to death with it; in her strolling from the shipping container, streaked in their blood instead of just her own, and hunting down the other men, picking them off one at a time; in her return home, resuming normal life, all the while arranging the deaths of Sondra Vaughn and Declan Murphy from behind the comfort of her desk, blameless. That's how it happened in the movies.

You kill 'em all, baby, Amanda urged her wife silently. But Olivia didn't move or make a sound, let alone get up and massacre seven people with her bare hands. The realization—Olivia had been still for way too long—sent a fresh wave of panic through Amanda, and she sat forward, palms flat on either side of the laptop, and strained to see if the captain was breathing. "Is she breathing, Fin?" she demanded, as if her sergeant had some inside information he was withholding. "Oh my God, I can't tell, is she breathing?"

"I don't—"

Olivia answered them with a dry cough when Angelov, holding up his hand to stop Sandberg from dosing her again, nudged her shoulder with the toe of his boot. In spite of the brief sign of life, he wedged the boot under her shoulder and used it to roll her over. "Better ease up for a while," he said, regarding her with a dispassionate eye as she lay there, half-conscious and panting. She moaned at the sound of his voice, but couldn't quite find his face with her wandering gaze. "You probably melted part of her brain with all that juice. Give her some time to recover before you do permanent damage."

"How the fuck is that fair?" Liam demanded, standing above Olivia on the opposite side and looking down at her with the same cold indifference. They might as well have been examining a dead rat in the subway, arguing over who should pick it up by the tail and toss it in the trash. "You get to come in here and fuck her skank ass, but I have to back off? Nah, bro, she needs to learn that, from now on, the only reason she gets to open her big mouth is when there's a dick in it."

That brought Olivia into focus, and she gave another feeble groan, slowly shaking her head as the young man undid his zipper. Her eyes scrunched shut against the sight, reminding Amanda of sweet little Matilda, who thought she was invisible if she closed her eyes during games of hide and seek. Olivia always acted so surprised when the three-year-old, in full view of the seekers, popped open her blue lilac eyes and squealed in delight that she'd tricked her mommies.

Nicholas Angelov shrugged and turned for the exit. "If you're into half-dead bitches sucking you off, go for it. Just don't overdo it and suffocate her. I'm not gonna run back in here to save your ass every time you lose it. You kill her, you're on your own with the Sandy Man." On that note, he ambled out of the shipping container like Alex and his droogs strolling away from a little of the old ultraviolence in A Clockwork Orange.

Heaving a disgusted sigh, Liam cast an accusatory glance at Olivia, as if she were ruining all his fun with her inability to withstand a more sustained torture. "The way my dad talked about you, I thought you'd be something special," he said, lip curled. "But you're as weak and pathetic as the rest of them." He hawked loudly, snorting nasal mucus into his throat, and spat a large wad of phlegm and saliva onto Olivia's chest where it was exposed by her V-neck t-shirt.

Then, almost boredly, he touched the fanged end of the taser to the slimy deposit on Olivia's bare skin, and gave her a short, parting zap. "Don't try talking to the camera anymore, or else I'll come back in here and drill you so hard I'll put a hole in this floor." He booted Olivia's feet aside on his way out, even though they weren't in his path. His whistling trailed from the room, silenced altogether when he closed the doors, blotting out the brilliant May sunshine.

"Oh, Liv," Amanda whispered, touching her wife through the screen. She looked so small and defenseless curled up on the floor like that. She was small and defenseless in that moment. It made Amanda ache, body and soul, to see her so alone, so defeated. The only sign that Olivia was still in there was a trembling hand reaching for a wadded scrap of cloth to wipe her chest. "Yeah, baby, that's a good idea. Go ahead and clean up."

"I'm gonna go back out there and make sure they're looking at ports in Jersey," Fin said quietly.

"By the water. With lots of shipping containers and a construction site nearby." Amanda kept her eyes on Olivia, who made no attempt to move onto the mattress once she had dried off the Sandberg kid's saliva. She merely lay on the floor beside the bed, like she was part of the surrounding trash. Amanda willed her to at least roll over onto the padding, but Olivia didn't budge. "Tell them to hurry, Fin. I don't think she can take much more."

The sergeant looked as though he wanted to say something, but kept it to himself, nodding instead. At least until he made it to the door. "Hey, um, Lindstrom will be here soon, so, uh, just a heads up."

"Lindstrom? Why the hell is he—" Amanda cut herself off, realizing her friend must have called Olivia's psychiatrist—the him who Fin had mentioned earlier—in lieu of the vacationing Dr. Hanover. She whirled around in her chair, prepared to tell Fin to call the man back and rescind the invitation immediately; to never presume they were close enough for him to make such decisions for her. But he was already out of the room, headed for the clutch of cops and agents gathered at one of the desks.

"Fucking hell," she muttered, because not only was Fin long gone, but she also spotted Peter Lindstrom wandering into the squad room at that precise moment.

Amanda could count on one hand the number of times she had spoken to the curious little man, though she didn't remember when was the last time she'd seen him in person. His appearance hadn't changed from what she could tell at that distance. He still reminded her of a tortoise without a shell. And now he was toting a leather medical bag like the ones doctors carried in the days when they did house calls.

Christ, Fin, what did you do?

. . .