A/N: Update time. Trigger Warning: References to suicide and rape.


Chapter 22.

Autopsy of the Living

. . .

"Woman, how are you so damn toasty?" Amanda asked in a slightly accusatory tone, as if she suspected Olivia of false representation, or perhaps, witchcraft. Even though she was the one crawling under the covers with hands and feet as cold as death. Witches were abnormally cold in all the fairytales. "I swear you got a space heater hidden up in here."

"Manda!" Olivia's voice hit the closest octave to a squeal that it could reach. She pushed down on the icy hands Amanda had slid under her pajama top, clasping lightly at her breasts with fingers like icicles. It was like being felt up by Elsa of Arendelle.

Warm-blooded or not, Olivia got the shivers from that touch, her nipples pricking to attention. They were a bit tender from feeding Sammie, and even the satin of her Chinese pajamas was enough to trigger a reaction. Amanda's fingers practically sent her through the ceiling of their three-bedroom apartment. Which put her somewhere in the vicinity of their upstairs neighbor's hall closet. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack or just carbon-freeze me like Han Solo?"

Amanda went still as a statue herself, pausing her playfully bratty attempts to get at Olivia's warm bare skin. "Did you just make a Star Wars reference?"

"Don't look so surprised," Olivia said, showing off a little. There was more to her than penal codes and police stats, after all. "I saw the original releases before you were even born, Flyboy. And thanks to our oldest children and Disney Plus, I've watched every Star Wars movie, animated series, and documentary there is. Multiple times. I'd beat the pants off you at Star Wars trivia. I'd beat the pants off George Lucas at Star Wars trivia."

"Better not be beating off some old Obi-Wan-looking dude's pants," Amanda grumbled, feigning disapproval. When she had sulked her way close enough to steal a kiss, she snuck her hands down Olivia's pants, warming them on her backside as if it were a cozy wood stove, each cheek a plump burner. She nudged her feet in with Olivia's, soaking up the heat there too. "Didn't realize my wife was such a nerd. Such a hot, sexy nerd . . . "

They spent the rest of the night trading Star Wars-related banter and saucy quips, and making love until they both needed to kick off the covers, bodies slick with sex and sweat.

It was a sweet memory, a warm one, and Olivia held it close as she trembled like a Parkinson's patient on the wet mattress. Most of the water left behind by Little Brother's unsupervised turn at the hose had since seeped through cracks in the floorboards, leaving the wood soft and dank as a marshland. Not that she had tried it out; she hadn't moved from the spot where the men dumped her after they finished. Some of it was the near-catatonia she slipped into whenever they raped her now, but it also hurt terribly to move.

The best she could manage for the time being was sinking onto the padding below, letting it cradle her in the fetal position her body naturally assumed in this fearful, lonely place. The kids still had their Bible pop-up books from Grammy Beth, and Tilly loved the story of Moses in his floating basket—pull the tab, and he bobbed right along on the page. That's how Olivia felt, infantile and abandoned, like baby Moses in the bulrushes, waterlogged, helpless. Waiting for someone to find her . . .

But she was going to freeze to death before that happened. She had never experienced cold like this. She'd quaked uncontrollably after Lewis—both times—but that had been shock more than an actual chill. Even winters in New York weren't this pervasive. True, they could kill you, but it would be quick and dirty, like getting hit by a Mack truck. This cold was a snakebite, spreading insidious through the bloodstream, shutting down organs as it went, a slow and excruciating death.

It stiffened her limbs, exaggerating the pain from having them wrenched and pulled into unnatural positions that even Noah's flexible frame couldn't replicate. She really should move them, it would help relieve some of the stiffness and might get her blood flowing enough to stave off hypothermia till morning. The storage container was warm approaching stifling during the day. (Thank God they hadn't abducted her in July or August, she would already be dead of heatstroke.) But just the thought of dragging herself upright and trying to stand was exhausting.

She would never make it as far as the bucket, let alone squatting over top of it. How her body had even produced enough urine for a full bladder, she couldn't say. Perhaps she had swallowed more water than she realized when they were hosing her down. It certainly wasn't from their generosity where sustenance was concerned. No one had fed her since the Crier and his powdered donuts this morning. Not that she could have kept anything down, anyway. Her stomach was a mess, gurgling and churning as if she had food poisoning.

What the hell, she was naked from the waist down, lying on a bed of filth, from which her last several rapes had probably been broadcast to God only knew how many people. She had no pride left. And maybe it would help her get warm.

Relaxing her pelvic floor muscles was no easy feat—whatever her injuries, they prevented her from passing urine normally. Her anticipation of the intense burning she had felt last time didn't help. It took several tries before she was able to let go, heat searing her groin, making her hiss. She was glad her face was turned away from the wall where the camera must be hidden, otherwise they would see her pained expression and might be able to guess at the cause. Still, she bit the heel of her palm to stifle a cry and to distract from the fire between her legs. It wasn't worth the fleeting warmth that trickled down her thighs, absorbed by the mattress before she could really benefit from it.

Now she was just lying in a puddle of her own piss, teeth chattering and a feeling like alcohol poured on paper cuts emanating from her privates. She didn't even try to keep at bay the memories of her mother, who wet herself more than a few times while passed out drunk over the years. Whether Olivia was eight or eighteen, it had fallen to her to clean Serena up, get her fed, get her sober.

Hell, Olivia was still doing it at twenty-eight. She would probably go on doing it until she was sixty-eight if her mother lived that long. She didn't know her family medical history, just that her grandparents had died in an automobile accident in their late fifties. Longevity could be hit or miss for her and Serena.

The thought of taking care of her mother for the next thirty-odd years, cleaning up vomit and piss that smelled like burnt tires, tolerating the abuse, both verbal and physical (Serena still slapped the hell out of her during arguments, despite their similar sizes), and wondering how the woman who birthed her could possibly hate her so damn much, made Olivia want to tear her own hair out at the roots.

It was hard enough being a rookie and waiting for the day the drunk woman stumbling into your squad room turned out to be your mother. Her one comfort was that Serena hated police precincts and probably wouldn't pay her an unexpected visit, unless she had an alcoholic blackout and didn't know what she was doing.

Unfortunately, that happened sometimes. Olivia had been eleven years old and relieved beyond words when Serena's Gremlin, a lemon-yellow rust bucket that almost gave you tetanus just looking at it, finally went to that great big junkyard in the sky. She'd sat in the passenger seat—back in the days when little kids could ride shotgun, no seatbelt—many times as Serena swerved down the road, unaware of her destination or even that she was driving. Certainly not conscious that her little girl was in the car, and terrified.

Then again, maybe she did know and just didn't care. Olivia's safety had never been her priority, and in fact, there were times when Olivia was pretty sure Serena actively wanted her dead.

And why not? Nobody wanted a constant reminder of the worst day of their life hanging around. Needing them, always needing. A few times, Olivia had considered doing Serena a favor and killing herself—specifically at age thirteen, when puberty struck, and with it Serena's disdain increased sevenfold; and at fifteen, after the choking, the man in the kitchen, Serena's suicide attempt, but before Daniel. Most recently she had wanted to die when Becky Hendrix threw her out of bed after Wilson walked in on them, then more or less accused Olivia of forcing herself on her.

The betrayal had been so acute, so steeped in all the worst things Olivia feared about herself—too aggressive, too needy, a drunk like her mother, a predator like her father, unnatural, damaged—she didn't even look at her reflection in the mirror for two weeks. She easily could have ended it right then, and probably would have, if not for the promise of graduating the academy and joining the force. She spent a brief time as a rookie acting reckless, indifferent to her own safety, and taking chances that paid off (she'd risen to detective quickly) but working with a partner meant having the other person's back, and you couldn't do that if you were wearing a target on yours.

This new guy Stabler seemed promising. He had an ego the size of Yonkers, but he was good police and had something like fifteen children. Olivia was still learning all their names, which were all very long and very Catholic. She liked to rib him about it, and especially about how whipped he was by his wife, though secretly she envied his big family, his happy marriage. Too often she caught herself hanging on every word of his stories about the twins, about the oldest one's brand new braces, about the middle one's scathing sense of humor. He didn't talk about the wife much, but Olivia liked that he didn't air their dirty laundry.

A real honest-to-God family man. Olivia hadn't known such a thing actually existed, and it fascinated her. Of course, she would never have that perfect family—mistakes like her didn't get them. But she loved her new job working SVU, the unit she'd aspired to be a part of since Karen Smythe first recommended it to her. You've got a way with the vics, Benson, especially the women and children. Use that.

As long as she had this job, she would be okay. She wasn't going to be one of those cops who got burnt out on the horrific nature of the crimes and transferred out after two years. She had spent her whole life living with that kind of trauma, and someone had to stand up for the people still trapped in it. So the job would be her spouse, the victims her children, the trauma what she ate, slept and breathed. And it didn't matter if she went home to a lonely, empty apartment for the rest of her life; SVU would always be there, welcoming her back with open arms, like what she imagined church was supposed to be. A place to atone for your sins.

Olivia's hand closed around something then, and it dropped her back into reality so abruptly she felt the return like a crash-landing. Parker's belt. It was tucked away under the mattress where she'd hidden it after he raped and beat her. Other things came back to her a little at a time as she squeezed the buckle, imprinting the P into her palm: her mother was long dead, more than twenty years now; Elliot was long gone too, eleven years and counting; and she was far closer to fifty-eight than twenty-eight.

She mourned none of it. The worst part, the one thing she absolutely could not abide, was that she had momentarily forgotten her wife and children. Even just for a second was too long. She must be going mad, for it to have happened at all. SVU would always be important to her, and it was the reason she had a family to begin with. But the job was no longer her whole world and one true love. She had those things in human form now. Their sweet names adorned the necklace that the Sandman had torn off of her yesterday. The necklace that was a gift from her one true love.

Amanda, where are you, she wondered as hard as she could, trying to send the thought out through the metal walls of the container. Rising into the nighttime air, to skitter along the wires that adorned the city like garland, pinging off the skyscrapers like hail on a tin roof. She imagined it striking the one-six in a dazzle of lightning and sparks, throbbing in the walls, in Amanda's sharp, intuitive brain. If anyone could follow her SOS and find her here, Amanda could. Please come get me, love. Please, I can't hold on much longer. I need you.

She might have spoken the words aloud, but it was difficult to tell. Besides the trauma, the injuries, and the cold, being trapped in a box without so much as a window to the outside was disorienting. She couldn't sense her body anymore, though it ached and shuddered all the same. She felt like one of those brains in a jar from bad sci-fi, sending impulses through electrodes and believing what they generated in her subconscious was real, that she was real.

She'd become that limbless, sightless, voiceless soldier from the Metallica video. Blown to pieces by heartless men. Except she had a way out that the soldier didn't. Clasped in the hand she couldn't feel was Parker's belt buckle, the leather strap beneath it a promise. A way out. If Amanda didn't come for her soon, she would use it. How she would find the strength to get it around her neck, around something else that could bear her weight, she didn't know. But she'd figure it out, she was good at that.

For the fourth time in her life, Olivia made up her mind to die. More than anything, she wanted to see Amanda and the kids again, but the longer this went on, the less likely it was she would be any good to them when she did get out. She might be too far gone already, lying there in her drying piss, contemplating suicide with calm detachment, relief almost.

Oh, Amanda, please hurry.

Sleepiness was a bad sign when you were hypothermic, if she remembered her survival training correctly. But she didn't fight it as it crept over her like smoke. Invisible and odorless as carbon monoxide. She breathed it in deep and let it carry her into oblivion. If she never woke up, at least it would spare her family the devastation of knowing she'd killed herself. At least they wouldn't hate her for leaving them.

. . .

On the third day, God was busy creating land and sea, calling forth the plants and trees from thin air; fruit and seed dripped from his divine tongue, dotting the earth like jewels.

On the third day, Jesus cast off his shroud and rose from the tomb, first appearing to Mary Magdalene, who some mistakenly believe was a whore. But former prostitute or not, he entrusted her and his disciples to spread the Good News.

Then there was Three Dog Night singing "Joy to the World" and helping Jeremiah drink his mighty fine wine.

A lot could happen in three days (or nights), but on the dawn of the third morning of Olivia's captivity, Amanda felt no closer to rescuing her wife than she had lying on the sidewalk, watching her being dragged away. The image waited for Amanda in her dreams, and once again she hadn't slept more than a few minutes at a time, despite Dana's continued offers to relieve her for some rack time.

How could she sleep after listening to Olivia ask for her, plead with her to be saved? I can't hold on much longer. I need you. Oh, Amanda, please hurry. The voice was ravaged and vaguely slurred, but Amanda had heard it straining through tears like that before. She'd heard it slurred by alcohol, and uninhibited in sleep. The words were as clear to her as if Olivia had enunciated every syllable. She was losing hope of being found, which also meant losing hope in Amanda.

It was like watching Olivia drive off a cliff, the car bursting into flame on impact. It was like being sliced open and having your guts scooped out in front of you. Final. Irreversible.

Amanda had gone to the restroom, expecting to toss back up the one slice of pizza she'd eaten to placate Dana. But her stomach didn't revolt strongly enough, and she refused to make herself vomit. That was for bulimics and accidental overdosers. People who wanted to kill themselves slowly. No, if Amanda were going to do it, it would be too fast for anyone to stop her. A leap off a building, or a barrel under her chin. Final, irreversible.

An autopsy of the living.

She'd washed her hands raw to rid them of the greasy garlic that reminded her of working pizza joints in high school, trying to save up the cash for a car. Something to get her out of Loganville the second she graduated. Back then she had thought her life was hell. Now she knew the truth: hell wasn't something you went through yourself, it was seeing someone you loved suffering for you.

Returning to the interview room had proven difficult, Amanda's feet balking like stubborn saddled animals at carrying her there. Once inside she hung back at the exit for several moments, catching her breath as if she were about to do a deep-sea dive, when all she was really doing was approaching the laptop screen again.

Olivia hadn't moved from the position she'd been in when Amanda stepped out, half curled on her side, her garishly bruised neck at an odd angle. Her body the swirl in a conch shell, the mysterious Fibonacci pattern that could be found in everything from tree branches to galaxies. It shivered like the fragile light of a star, reaching out from a thousand years ago, already dead before its luminescence winked out of our night's sky.

By six in the morning, she still hadn't moved from that same golden ratio of sleep, that perfect balance she struck even now. If not for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, Amanda would have been certain she was dead. It would be just like Olivia Benson to die in a pose of absolute symmetry, as if divine hands had placed her just so. That was the way she lived.

But the breathing. Amanda held onto that, watching until her eyes ached and she could practically see through her sleeping wife's back. She held onto it when the trembling stopped too, a bad sign. Yes, it might mean a rise in body temperature—the sun was the color of watery egg yolk in the sky—but shivering also ceased when hypothermia increased from mild to moderate. So did the ability to stay conscious, and Olivia hadn't opened her eyes since ten or eleven o'clock the night before.

Now it was seven AM, and Amanda was torn between desperately wanting someone to rouse her wife and not wanting the men to go anywhere near her. Any time one of them entered the shipping container another rape occurred. It filled Amanda with guilt just wishing for the door to clang open. She'd taken to holding her breath for long intervals, and waiting. Waiting for the sound of the door, waiting for Olivia to unfurl in a catlike stretch, the way she did on lazy mornings.

So intent had Amanda become on the breathing exercise, and on the screen in front of her, she didn't realize it was her phone ringing until Dana answered it and elbowed her, a hand covering the microphone at the bottom. "Someone named Daphne," Dana whispered. "Says it's important. Want me to blow her off?" She ticked the cell back and forth in an eeny-meeny gesture.

Amanda was about to agree, when she remembered Daphne was currently taking care of the kids. A revolving door of babysitters had come and gone since Saturday, with Lucy and Daphne being the most consistent. It hadn't even occurred to Amanda that her best friend was probably missing work today, or that she should have asked the actual nanny to relieve Daphne. She couldn't think clearly enough to take care of her own damn kids right now.

"What's wrong?" she asked, grabbing the phone from Dana and bringing it to her ear so hard it was painful. "Are my kids okay?"

"They're okay," Daphne said quickly. She sounded startled by the abrupt questions, but there was nothing frantic or frightened in her voice. In fact, she was downright calm compared to Amanda, a disorienting reversal of their usual dynamic. "Everybody's fine, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to let you know that we're running a little low on, uh, breast milk. There's enough for today, I think, but I don't know if you need, like . . . time to prepare so you can make more, or what."

Poor Daphne was so clueless about breastfeeding and baby-related topics in general, it was laughable. Under normal circumstances, Amanda would have busted a gut at the suggestion in those words, as if she had an internal switch to flick and a warm-up period like a coffee maker, before she could produce her infant daughter's favorite brew. She recognized the humor now, but couldn't find the emotions to go with it. Just more sadness and maybe a little anger mixed in. She didn't have time for jokes.

"I'm not a cow who's gotta be milked at sunup, Daph," she snapped, too tired to worry about hurting her friend's feelings. Daphne was a grown woman, she could suck it up. "But yeah, I'll pump, make sure there's plenty, in case . . . " In case this dragged on for another three days or more, she was about to say. The words wouldn't come. I can't hold on much longer, Olivia had said. Please hurry.

"How is she?" Daphne asked quietly, her pitch lower than normal.

Something about the bright, bubbly clerk speaking so sedately made Amanda tear up, unable to respond for several beats. She swallowed hard, sniffed, flicked the hair off her shoulders. "She's hanging in. 'Bout as good as you'd expect, considering." On the screen, Olivia didn't move a muscle. Amanda squinted until she was certain the graying t-shirt was expanding and contracting, albeit infinitesimally. "They've left her alone so far this morning."

It was only 7:05 AM.

"Oh. That's . . . that's good." Daphne's end of the line rustled as if she were nodding. It went on much longer than needed. "How are you?"

Amanda didn't have to think about the answer at all, just opened her mouth and let it fall out: "Fine. I'm fine. Are the kids okay? They're not giving you too much trouble? How's the baby?" She would have continued, but her voice gave out on baby. She'd gone almost forty-eight hours without holding her three-month-old daughter, without kissing her perfect hands and feet, without breathing in her pure pink scent, like undiluted innocence. That baby smell only lasted so long, and then it was gone forever.

Forty-eight hours and counting of Olivia missing out on Sammie's smell, Tilly's angelic giggles, Jesse's ridiculous sense of humor, Noah's thoughtful and artistic nature. The kids were such good medicine for her, a balm to so many of the wounds Amanda could never hope to soothe on her own. They were Olivia's chance at a childhood she'd never had, at experiencing a mother's love, and giving so freely what was denied her at their age. But would they ever be able to help her heal from this? Would they ever even see her again?

"—all okay. They've been perfect. Well, Jesse did use my lipstick to draw all over the shower walls, but it was a picture of me covered in hearts, so I couldn't be mad. At least I hope those were hearts." Daphne started to laugh, then remembered herself and cut it short at a single huff of air. "Sammie is the best goddaughter an aged lesbian with no childbearing prospects of her own could ask for. She likes Lucy more than me, but I'm okay with it. Wait till she discovers who takes her shopping."

A sad smile pulled at the corners of Amanda's lips, but the cables snapped loose like a kite string, the frayed ends drifting back to earth. The kite sailed away. "She loves you. They all do. Sam's just a mommy's girl." If she hadn't clamped her lips shut at the last second, a sob would have escaped and those would be the last coherent words she spoke for who knew how long. She had to hold it together. She couldn't crack up like she had done yesterday, otherwise they would probably strap her to a bed in Bellevue this time.

But it took every ounce of strength she had not to break down when Jesse's piping voice filtered through the speaker, demanding that Aunt Daph let her talk to whichever mommy was on the phone. "Hello? Is this Mama or Mommy?" she asked, as Daphne protested in the background, too late. ("She grabbed my phone, Amanda, I'm sorry," Daphne said somewhere nearby.)

"Jess—" Amanda cleared her throat, the first attempt too weak to be heard. "Jesse, you're not supposed to grab things from people. Be a good girl and give the phone back to Aunt Daph."

"Hi, Mama. I got to tell you some things first." Jesse took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say were of the utmost importance. She prefaced everything that way, and Amanda could easily picture her expression, straightforward and dead serious. "Frannie pooped in the kitchen, and Aunt Daph said a bad word. It was the s-h-i-t one. The 'partment was stinky all night! When are you coming home? I don't think she knows how to clean poop right."

"Thanks a lot, narc," said Daphne.

Chances were slim that Daphne, who had a rambunctious goldendoodle that "shits like a man," didn't know how to clean up after a dog. And more than likely, Frannie was having accidents because of the sudden change in routine, but that only made Amanda feel worse. Either she neglected her children and pets, or she left her wife alone in hell. There were no good options.

"I'll be home just as soon as I can, peanut," she said, her throat constricting around the not-quite lie. Even if they got Olivia out, there was no telling how long she would be in the hospital after the brutality she'd endured so far. When Amanda was finally by her side again, she didn't think she would ever be able to leave it. "The smell will go away, okay? Ask Daphne to spray some Febreze, and try to help her keep track of when Fran needs to go out. Can you be a big girl and do that for me?"

Jesse sighed. "Okay, Mama. But when's Mommy coming home? Me and Tilly want her to play tea party. You can play too, but you have to dress up. And Noah wants her to walk him to school 'cause Lucy doesn't scare the big kids. I said I'd protect him like Supergirl, but he said I'm just a little kid. That's not right, though, is it, Mama? 'Cause girls can do anything, even if boys are bigger and stronger, huh?"

If only that were true, Amanda thought, gazing at her motionless wife. She'd thought she was Supergirl too, able to swoop in and rescue Olivia from any danger that crossed her path. The bigger, stronger boys. How wrong she had been. How stupid and arrogant. "You stay away from those boys, y'hear? Tell Noah to go to a teacher if the big kids bother him. And don't give Aunt Daphne anymore trouble. Now, put her back on the phone, and you get ready for school. Hey, Jess."

"Uh-huh?"

"I love you, kid. Lemme talk to Daph." Amanda added the last part hastily, the hot lump in her throat flaring, hot tears welling in her eyes. Olivia was freezing to death, but hey, at least Amanda was burning on the inside. She felt as if the heat might be visible beneath her skin, like E.T. and his glowing finger, blazing heart. Ouch. But when she glanced down, she saw only pale white and blue veins. The colors of winter and corpses.

She had ignored the question about Olivia on purpose. She could no more answer it than she could put her hand through the laptop screen and pluck Olivia out, bringing her to safety. But it rang in her ears, repeating like a cave echo that didn't fade away. When's Mommy coming home? We want her to play tea party.

The woman on the screen wouldn't be having tea parties for a very long time, if ever again. Amanda loved to watch her playing like that with the girls. She'd often stood in the doorway to their bedroom, grinning and eavesdropping on the make-believe games that Olivia became so invested in. Dolls were spoken to as if they were real human beings, someone inevitably turned into a four-legged pet, even though two very real dogs were in attendance (they were unicorns, mermaids, trolls—anything but canine), and tiaras must be worn at all times.

Oh, how the captain laughed when she played. The years melted away, and she was no more than seven or eight herself. About the age she had been when her mother sexually assaulted her, holding her down and using a knee to simulate being raped by Joseph Hollister. Olivia's rapist father, who would go on to sexually abuse Olivia as well. God, the fact that she could even laugh at all, that she could love her daughters so wholeheartedly and so purely, was a miracle in itself.

Maybe you only got a certain number of miracles in your lifetime, and Olivia and Amanda had both met their quota.

"Amanda?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

The next few minutes were spent arranging the breast milk handoff, with Daphne making most of the suggestions and, encountered by silence from the other end, confirming them aloud. Amanda would pump, and not leave the bottle sitting out this time. Daphne would wait until Lucy took the two eldest children to school, where a security detail was in place, and then, the babies and their own detail in tow, Daphne would come to the precinct to retrieve Samantha's dinner.

"And under no circumstances do I bring the girls past the main lobby, where you will meet me with the milk," Daphne said, solemnly repeating Amanda's warning like she was swearing a sacred oath. She murmured it again, as if she were jotting down an important address. Her boldness around cops didn't extend past Olivia and Amanda, or at least not to the male officers, of which there would be many when she arrived at the precinct. But she was to stay put, taking no chances of exposing the little ones—or herself—to the livestream splashed all over the one-six.

Samantha might not be affected, but little Tilly was almost four, and so sensitive. She showed the most compassion of all the Rollins-Benson children, and seeing Olivia in her current state, even if she couldn't comprehend it, would scar the little girl for life. Amanda couldn't bear to think about that happening. It reminded her of what she said time and again in the squad room, when cases involved a leaked video: once something was on the Internet, it stayed there forever. If Tilly didn't see the footage now, she still might someday. Any of the kids could. They could be forty years old and click a link that shattered their memories of Olivia forever.

But who was Amanda kidding? Those memories had already shattered the minute Carlos Riva forced himself inside of Olivia. Then each of his friends, one after the other, over and over, until she had been raped by six different men, at least twice apiece. More for Angelov and Sandberg Jr. How many times would Amanda have to kill them for it to be even? It didn't seem fair for it to only be the once. They needed to suffer and die, over and over, at least a dozen times. A hundred. Ten thousand. It would never be enough.

"Just be careful, Daph," Amanda said, before they ended the call. She knew sending a uni to the apartment with the milk would be the better option, but she didn't want to lose a single unit of manpower in the search for Olivia, especially not over something so personal. She wasn't squeamish or embarrassed about breastfeeding, but now that her wife, who shared in the feedings—who cherished them—had been so horribly violated for all to see, she felt protective of the act. Like she was somehow exposing Liv further.

Plus, she really wanted to see her kids. Noah and Jesse would have far too many questions, but the babies would have only love. That was something Amanda was in desperate need of right then.

She said goodbye to Daphne after several more promises from the little clerk to guard the girls with her life and sic Hamilton on anyone who looked at them funny. Gigi or Frannie would be the better option. Female dogs were more loyal and aggressive about protecting their family, or so Amanda had heard. She'd seen it in action a few times with Frannie, and even gentle Gigi had fought ferociously out there in the woods, before she was even an official Rollins-Benson.

Amanda was considering calling Daphne back to tell her to bring the retriever instead when Dana suddenly sat forward, leaning past Amanda's shoulder and peering intently at the laptop screen. "I think . . . is she—?"

There was no need to finish, Amanda saw it too. Olivia had begun to stir, the mattress rustling beneath her as she attempted to undo her body from the tight knot it had slept in. Though her face wasn't visible, her struggle was obvious, a weak moan accompanying even the slightest progress she made at unbending her knees and straightening her spine. She opened like a strange, arid plant on the desert floor, like the shriveled brown boll of a cotton blossom. The sharp, brittle bolls shredded your hands if you weren't careful picking the cotton, and by the end of the day, you had a blood-red crop to show for it.

"Manda?" she said, her voice thick with sleep and confusion. Failing to sit up or even lift her head more than an inch from the bed, she let it loll back in defeat and turned it gradually side to side on the padding, taking in her surroundings. Several moments passed when she clearly didn't know where she was or what had happened to her.

As painful as it was to see her so disoriented, Amanda hoped she would stay that way. It was better if she couldn't remember, wasn't it? She'd been spared some of the trauma of Lewis and the Mangler by being drugged, and she didn't even know that Dr. Giacomo had groped her breasts while she was passed out on his couch during the undercover op. Amanda hadn't the heart to tell her. Why traumatize her even more?

But it wasn't better, not when reality began to sink in. Amanda watched it play out on Olivia's face, just like she had watched every one of the rapes (except whatever the MAGA hat man had done while the cameras were off), and this was almost as bad. Olivia lay there reliving all the horrors done to her in the past forty-eight hours, wading back into the dark, uncharted waters until they were at her elbows, shoulders, chin.

Then she slipped under completely, sobbing without tears for the next ten minutes straight. She only stopped when exhaustion won out and she dropped back into sleep, heavy as an anchor tossed overboard. One hand clutched at the collar of her shirt, keeping the stretched fabric from sagging too low on her breasts; the other was wedged under the mattress like she'd been interrupted mid-reach. It was strange to see her dodge in and out of sleep so effortlessly, when she sometimes took hours to nod off at home and seldom shut her eyes again after waking.

So acute was her exhaustion, Amanda felt it through the screen, felt it in her own bones. She longed to rest her head on the table and sleep alongside her wife, who was there but not. Maybe when she woke up, this would all be nothing more than a bad dream. The worst she'd ever had. But that couldn't be—the drugs had already put her out, and the nightmare still raged on, all these hours later.

God, she was tired. Several moments passed while she tried to remember what it was she had intended to do before Olivia proved she wasn't in a hypothermic coma. It took a tap on the shoulder from Dana to reorient her, and to remind her that the other woman was even there.

"Sorry." Dana flashed a hand in apology when Amanda jumped. "Why don't you go do the, uh, pumping thingamajig so you'll be ready when your friend shows up? I'll stay here and keep an eye on her."

Amanda nodded dully. She hated that Dana had overheard her entire conversation with her daughter and Daphne. It wasn't as if she was being spied on by the FBI woman, but watching her wife be repeatedly violated made everything else feel like a gross invasion of privacy. She hated it for Olivia, who was intensely private about her personal business, and for herself, because she wanted nothing more than to make Olivia proud, to follow her lead. She hated that she might never get the chance.

There wasn't a lot she didn't hate at the moment.

"Yeah, okay." Amanda stood abruptly, getting a head rush from the sudden drop in blood pressure, and swiped her phone off the table as if she suspected Dana of plans to pocket it while she was gone. She pulled up the live feed on the device, showing it to Dana, lest she get the impression Amanda was entrusting Olivia to her alone. "I can watch from the crib. Shouldn't take me very long. Maybe when I get back you could put a little more effort into finding her, 'steada just playing lookout."

Unfair, rude. Amanda didn't care. She had much more important things to worry about than Dana Lewis' bruised feelings. What was left of her bruised, unconscious wife in hand, she exited interview one and headed for the crib, where at least she would be able to do something useful for her baby.

. . .