DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and all characters are property of NBC and Dick Wolf.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Kimly for her geographical assistance. Any discrepancies (hereby deemed 'creative license') in that respect are mine.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.

Driven
By D.S.

"Where the fuck are you?" Olivia didn't care if she sounded panicked. She was panicked.

Finally – straightaway. The speedometer needle edged up to 110. Liv could still make out the distinctive red glow in the distance, but the damn S-curves were keeping her from gaining enough ground. Someone familiar with the terrain – like the driver up ahead, apparently – would have caught them by now.

"Fuck!" She dropped the cell phone into her lap to wrap both hands around the wheel for a sharp turn. When she had safely negotiated it, she reached for the phone. "We just turned again," she reported. ". . . I don't know. I didn't see a sign. I don't have fucking GPS. I don't fucking know!"

I wasn't paying attention, all right? For the whole goddamn trip. That's why I don't have a fucking clue where we are, OK? Olivia couldn't bring herself to say it. Units from Saranac Lake to Albany were searching for them, if Detective Benson could just tell them where to look.

"Did you check with 911 again?" Hadn't that clerk heard her? And why didn't that Honda driver turn them in? Probably because Olivia had managed to edge around it with a couple of inches to spare; except for spitting a little gravel from the side of the hill that she drove up on and scaring the businessman behind the wheel, she'd left the Accord unscathed. Now Olivia wished that she had scraped along the whole length of the car. That would have gotten the cops called.

"What about the chopper?" she asked. A helicopter should be able to pin them down. There wasn't much traffic. How hard could it be to find one vehicle chasing another down a winding road?

She shook her head at the response. "Do you understand that an assistant district attorney and a young girl are in that van?" A van believed to be involved in two abduction-murders in Connecticut and a third in New Jersey, according to reports relayed soberly to Olivia by the sheriff. If she lost sight of them again, Alex and that little girl could be . . . .

Apologetic murmurs reached Olivia's ear. "Yeah, I know it's windy," she said dully.

"OK, woman, we are–" Alex's head whipped around. "Damn it – that was my favorite!" Another gust propelled her into the passenger seat of Olivia's car, and she drew her leg inside before the door slammed against it. "Did you see that?" she complained. "My scarf just took off for The Bronx. The lavender one."

That sucked; Olivia had given that scarf to Alex after a big win a few months ago. "There it is!" In a flash, Liv was out of the Ford and off to the races. The chase lasted almost two blocks. By the time she made it back to the car, purple prize firmly in hand, she and Alex were both laughing too hard to speak.

"Should we call this off?" Alex finally asked. Her happy grin suggested otherwise.

"Hell, no," Olivia declared. "Neither snow nor rain nor hellacious wind shall keep us from our appointed vacation."

It wasn't too windy to drive, but it was too windy to chance a helicopter so soon after the crash of a LifeFlight chopper only three months earlier. They were sorry, it was just too risky.

Olivia let the phone drop again before she said something that she knew wouldn't be fair. They were sorry.

It wasn't their fault. If she pointed a finger at anyone, it would be herself. What kind of detective didn't keep track of where she was driving?

Only sixty-nine miles to go, Alex announced.

"Sixty-nine?" Olivia repeated. "That sounds good." Not very subtle, Benson, she chided herself. Like she cared. With every minute that she sat in this confined space beside the enticing ADA, Liv felt her inhibitions dwindling.

She glanced over at the attorney, who seemed to be enjoying her navigational assignment. Good. That left Olivia free to concentrate on other things (namely, the attorney in question). Alex could have steered the two of them to Timbuktu and Olivia would have kept it floored the whole way. Wouldn't have cared, either. Not when she could spend the time fantasizing about taking Alex Cabot in her arms. Kissing her. Unbuttoning her blouse.

She might be assuming too much about this trip, Olivia acknowledged, but she didn't think so. If her travel companion didn't have romance in mind, Detective Benson's deductive skills were way out of whack.

Alex neatly refolded the map. "Should we stop for gas?" She peered over at the gauges.

"Nah; we've got almost a quarter tank. We'll make it." Olivia had no desire to stop. At the moment, her world had shrunk to the size of the small hand that Alex was resting casually against her thigh. Boldly, she laid her own hand on top of it.

Alex was still turned toward her. You are stunning, Olivia thought for the hundredth time.

"You poor baby. So tense." Alex leaned in. "We'll have to work on that when we get there."

Oh, God. Olivia had never been this turned on in her life. If she eased that hand up about eight inches, she wouldn't last ten seconds. Ten, hell – three. She was about to embarrass herself.

"That was actually a hint, Olivia."

I know that.

"I mean the gas."

What? Oh – Alex wants to stop. Focus, Benson. On something other than the throbbing of your heart, among other things.

From the offramp, she drove to the lone two-pump station. "I take it the super grande Diet Pepsi that someone ordered on the way out of town is making its presence known?" she asked.

"None of your business. Besides," Alex unbuckled herself and turned clear blue eyes to Olivia's. "We don't want to rush things, do we?"

She knew.

Slowly, almost painfully, Olivia emerged from the car, leaning against it, letting the evening breeze do its best to cool her off.

She didn't see the small pothole soon enough and the front tire dropped into it, sending another spray of laminated glass toward her face and into her right eye. Don't rub it, Olivia reminded herself. She cautiously worked the eyelid open. Ow. Just her luck. If the fucker shooting at her from the passenger side of the van had dropped his gun five seconds earlier, the Ford's windshield would still be in one piece instead of a thousand.

She brushed a chunk of glass from her hair. The eye was watering now, providing some relief. As long as she could still see out of her other eye, that was all she needed. She knew exactly what that van looked like.

"Hey." Alex gestured toward the black van at the next pump. "Wanna do a drug stop?"

"Nah," Olivia replied. "A broken tail light would make it a legitimate traffic stop. I don't know how to do one of those."

"And I don't know how to defend one." Alex strutted her form-fitting jeans into the convenience store.

Brown eyes followed Alex's backside until it was no longer in Olivia's line of sight. She raised her watch at different angles, straining to read it by the glow of incandescent lighting.

Alex deserved some kind of reward for insisting that they take off from work this afternoon instead of heading out Thursday morning. Maybe the wind was keeping people indoors; maybe it was leaving midweek at a slow time of year. Whatever the reason, this trip had been nothing but smooth sailing. After breezing through the Holland Tunnel and negotiating light traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, I-87 was straight cruise control. They would easily make Saranac Lake before 10 o'clock, and Olivia sure as hell wasn't sleepy . . . .

She reached back into the car to grab her wallet. Let's get this over with. If Olivia didn't climb on Alex Cabot within the next few hours, she would honestly and truly die.

Sliding out her credit card, she approached the pump. For Christ's sake; no fast pay? You're in the boonies, Liv. Oh, well; there were other advantages to being miles away from anyone they knew. She slipped the plastic square back into its holder and went to Prepay After Dark.

She met Alex coming out, a stuffed grocery bag tucked under the attorney's arm.

"Damn, Cabot, expecting a flood?" she laughed.

"I thought we might get hungry in our room."

Olivia stopped directly in her path. "I think we probably will," she said.

Alex's eyes widened. Either she was a mind reader, or it didn't take one to interpret the brunette's heated gaze. "Hurry back," she murmured.

Something was different. Olivia risked a glance at the dashboard.

No . . . . "NoNoNoNoNo!" She slammed her right palm against the steering wheel. "No!" Had she been following these bastards that long?

Another quick look at the warning light confirmed it. Damn it!

According to page 14 of the Owner's Manual, she had at least 60 miles before the tank would run dry. Olivia was aware of that information because, approximately six weeks after buying the car with her department discount, she returned to the dealership for the sole purpose of informing the salesman that said paragraph was complete and utter bullshit. And that as a result of said bullshit, Detective Benson and an assistant district attorney (she gestured toward Alex, who stood nearby, arms crossed, while Olivia jabbed at the manual) had found themselves stranded in not the best part of Queens at not the best time of night.

The fact that the monumental humiliation seemed to have produced a turning point in her relationship with Alex was beside the point.

Once the detective exhausted her impressive four-letter vocabulary, Alex joined her in leaning against the side of the car to watch for approaching vehicles. "Good grief, Detective," she said. "The old 'ran out of gas' technique for getting a girl alone went out years ago."

Olivia recognized the humor for what it was, an attempt at calming her fury. She smiled grudgingly. "Well, you know, it worked in high school," she joked.

"Really. Too bad you didn't go to my high school."

Now, what did that mean? That if they had gone to high school together, Alex would have liked getting "stranded" with Olivia? Unlike some of Cabot's more ambiguous comments, there was only way to interpret that statement, wasn't there? Or maybe not.

To hell with it; time to push things.

"Every car at your school probably cruised around on empty, just in case you needed a ride," Olivia said. With only a moment's hesitation, she added, "Mine would have been."

"Then how could you have driven me to a motel?" Alex asked lightly.

Olivia laughed. "We obviously ran in different circles," she said. "The Back-Seat Motel would have been more my style."

"That would have worked, too–ah, I do believe that your handsome partner has arrived. Now, don't get uptight, Liv; I'm sure he's not going to give you a hard time about this."

She hadn't been back yet to get the stupid gauge fixed; it was one of the things on her to-do list when they got back from their trip. As Olivia had learned the hard way, she had 16 miles, give or take, before her piece-of-shit Ford sputtered to a halt.

She reached for the phone resting on her lap. "Where the fuck are you?" she shouted. "I'm out of time!"

With no warning, brake lights flashed up ahead, and the van veered sharply to the right. "Shit!" As Olivia hit the brakes, the phone flew from her hand into the darkened interior of the car.

The driver ahead clearly knew this area well. This was the third time he had almost sent his pursuer into the trees with a last-second swerve. And it was only by pure luck, Olivia knew, that she had even found them again after screeching to a halt at a fork in the road early on. Left or right?

Fifteen sickening minutes later, Olivia had been convinced that, by choosing left, she had just killed her friend. There was no sign of them. Amid rebuking herself and debating whether to turn around, Liv nearly sobbed with relief. There, disappearing around a curve in the distance, was a single red triangle. It hadn't been long out of her sight since.

Olivia pressed down on the accelerator. Her eyes shifted briefly to the clock. 9:47. They should have been unpacking right about now. Or something a little noisier that Olivia had been fantasizing about since the ADA's unexpected phone call.

Elliot plopped into his seat. "Anyone up for lunch?" he called out. "I'm runnin' on fumes."

Olivia glared at him. "Keep it up, Stabler," she warned. Her desk phone rang, and without taking her eyes from her smartass partner, she snatched it up. "Benson."

"Hey."

The detective straightened in her chair. "Hey, yourself."

"How's it going?" Alex asked.

"Other than a serious injury to my partner, fine," Olivia replied.

"Elliot? What happened?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Oh, I see." Alex sounded more amused than she should. "Well, Loflin just took the plea."

That was news. "You're kidding," Olivia exclaimed. "I thought his lawyer told you to go fu–"

"He did. Loflin got cold feet, apparently."

That meant no trial next Thursday and Friday. No prepping with Alex over dinner Wednesday. A completely wasted trip to Queens with Alex yesterday to reassure a nervous witness. Olivia couldn't complain, though; it was a good deal. Loflin would be the State's problem for at least ten years.

"So, anyway . . . ."

Liv waited. 'Anyway,' what?

"Since we both blocked out those days, I thought maybe we should take advantage of it."

A hand appeared in front of Olivia's face. The guys were ready for lunch. She waved them off, her instincts telling her that the importance level of this phone call had just shot up.

"Branch's secretary just got back from a trip to Saranac Lake," Alex continued. "She says it's terrific. Have you ever been up there?"

No, she hadn't. Olivia typed in the website address for the resort that, to her surprise, Alex announced she had already booked. "Wow. Looks nice," she said, scrolling down to check out the features. "You thinking about kayaking?"

"Not really," Alex replied. "I think we're out of season for that."

True. "Mountain biking?"

"If you want."

"Swimming . . . hiking . . . star gazing . . . ."

"Whatever you want," Alex said.

"No air conditioning," Olivia noted. "Probably won't be too hot, anyway."

"We can always take something skimpy to run around in if it gets sticky," Alex said.

It took a moment before Olivia could speak. She wondered what Alex's idea of 'skimpy' was. "'Restoration of the soul,' huh?" she read. "No phones. No TV. What did your friend do when she was up there?"

"They were on their honeymoon."

"When do we leave?"

Where was that cell phone? Not on her lap. She shoved her hand into the space between the console and the driver's seat. Not there. She scraped her left foot along the floor. Nada. If it landed in the passenger area, it might as well have been on Mars; she couldn't fumble around over there at this speed. Great. On top of everything else, they were incommunicado now as well.

Olivia gave up on staying in her own lane; hugging the middle, she gradually crept up on the van. The detective had only a few miles left to figure something out.

She wrestled with her thoughts. There probably weren't any seat belts in the back of the van. If it went badly, Alex could be seriously injured, or worse. And if she didn't try, her friend would likely die. "I'm sorry, Alex," Liv uttered, reaching behind her for her gun. One way or the other, she was about to put an end to the chain of events set in motion back at that damn gas station.

Were those shoestring potatoes? Olivia had loved those things as a kid. She approached the counter, impulsively grabbing one of those single-use cameras from a plastic rack next to the cash register. She might want something to remember this trip by. She sure hoped, anyway.

The door flew open, and an anxious woman rushed in, a boy maybe four years old in tow. "Where's the restroom?" the woman asked.

"Mommy!" the boy whined.

"Hang on, honey," her mother begged. "Restroom?" she repeated.

The clerk jerked his thumb toward a floor-length curtain in the opposite corner of the store. "Key's on the nail," he told her.

A moment later, the woman re-emerged from behind the curtain. "It's not there," she exclaimed.

"Sometimes it falls behind the shelf," the clerk said. His eyes flickered from the woman to Olivia. The dilemma was clear: Cleaning up a puddle in the back, or leaving a potential shoplifter alone at the counter.

Liv drew aside the blue button-up she was wearing over her white tank top, revealing the badge clipped to her belt. "I'll wait," she said, smiling at his relief.

She could hear them together in the back, a perturbed clerk and a distraught parent trying to find the errant key. She popped open the can of Pik-Nik sticks and chugged a mouthful of the snack. While she chewed, Olivia peeked out the window, figuring on a nice opportunity to ogle Alex unobserved.

What . . . ? Olivia moved away from the counter for a better look. The door to the passenger side of her Ford was wide open. What's Alex doing? Liv walked to the door. There she was, standing beside the van, one arm draped protectively around the shoulders of a young girl, talking to a couple of–

To Olivia's shock, one of the men suddenly grabbed Alex in a choke hold. With the other's help, he shoved her and the girl into the back of the van.

"Hey!" Olivia yelled back to the curtained area. "Call 911! Kidnaping in progress!" Bolting from the store, she jumped into her car and tore after them.

She was firing low, but the third and fourth bullets finally hit their target, punching a hole in the hot rubber. Olivia slammed on her brakes as the van careened out of control before her, rolling wildly off the roadway, finally coming to rest on its side.

When her own vehicle skidded to a stop, Olivia was out the door instantly. Two shots to the chest took out the man who pulled himself out the driver's side door with gun in hand. Stepping around him, she poked her head around the side window to check the cab. The passenger wasn't a threat any more.

Olivia hurried around to the back of the van and reached for the handle.

The captain stepped out of his office with pink message slip in hand. "Rape-homicide on 82nd," he announced. "Stabler, you're catching." When Elliot and his partner began to rise, Cragen added, "With Munch."

Olivia stopped mid-motion. "What's up?"

"I've been informed that you're not available," Cragen said.

Excuse me? "What do you mean?"

"I mean that, at precisely 1:45, Alexandra Cabot will be arriving here expecting to see your smiling face in that chair," Cragen replied.

Alex? Here? Olivia checked her watch. It was already 1:45. What was– "Alex!" Liv dragged a chair over beside her desk. "Sit down."

"Hey, Cabot," Munch called out. "What happened to that cast we all autographed? That 'M' was a work of art."

"I've got it up on eBay," she replied drolly.

"Congrats," Elliot said. "You must have been getting sick of that thing."

"That, and lying around on my couch watching Oprah," Alex said. "I never thought I'd be desperate to go back to work."

Olivia gestured toward the chair. "Sit down, Alex," she urged her again.

"I'm not an invalid, Olivia," Alex said. Her tone, while a bit exasperated, was not unfriendly. "The doctor says I'm as good as new. I even went for a jog this morning." She stepped closer to the detective's desk. "I'm here for a ride to your place."

Liv was confused. "My place?"

"To get your stuff," Alex said. At Olivia's blank expression, she added, "Road trip. I left you a message."

"I thought you were joking," Olivia replied. "Go back up to Saranac Lake? After what happened? No way."

"Liv," Alex said, lowering her voice, "when we decided to make this trip the first time, we didn't exactly talk about it, but . . . I thought we both had the same plans." She didn't need to elaborate.

"We did," Olivia confirmed. "I would still like to . . .," she glanced around to see if anyone was listening to what had become an extremely personal conversation, "be with you."

"I want that, too," Alex said. "And I want it to be as we originally planned. I kept thinking about it when I was lying in that hospital bed. Why should we let those two men dictate our lives?"

Because . . . because . . . . because it was freakin' obvious. The last thing Olivia Benson wanted to do was relive any part of that night, including – especially – any damn curvy roads.

"I talked with Paula Badger," Alex continued. "She and Remi would like to see us."

Paula Badger. Liv remembered her, although she hadn't learned the name until later. They'd met, sort of, while Liv was waiting in line at a convenience store and Paula was trying to get her little boy into a bathroom, not realizing that her daughter hadn't followed her in from the car as instructed.

"To see you, maybe," Liv disagreed. "I'm the one who almost killed the kid and you. If you hadn't wrapped her in those blankets–"

"Don't start that again," Alex said. "You did what you needed to do. What do I care about a broken arm?"

"Ruptured spleen, strained neck–"

"I want to go back up there, Liv." Alex tried a direct appeal. "Only this time I want to end up in front of a fireplace with you, not in the ditch on some county road in Vermont. The resort's throwing in a free cabin," she added.

Olivia sighed. "That was one of the worst nights of my life," she said quietly.

"Then let's turn it into one of the best," Alex replied.

Could it really be that simple? Staring at the blonde, blue-eyed woman that she loved, Olivia smiled. Yeah, it could.

"Come on," Alex urged. "You're clocked out already, and I'm packed. We just need to hit your place and then hit the highway." She turned and started for the door.

Olivia trailed closely behind. "And then hit a gas station," she corrected her. She wasn't taking any chances. They might stop at every damn station between Manhattan and Saranac Lake, as far as Liv was concerned.

"Good idea," Alex said. "Watching you siphon gas might get old."

"OK; we can be on the road by 3:00." The detective slipped into planning mode as they stepped out into the daylight. "And you are not leaving my side," she insisted.

Alex slipped an arm around Olivia's waist. "I can live with that . . . ."

The End

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