The following contains spoilers for Law & Order: Organized Crime, Season 2, Episode 20, "Lost One" which premiered Thursday, April 14, on NBC. This article also contains descriptions of assault.
The Law & Order crossover begins seamlessly, with Sgt. Ayanna Bell telling Detective Elliot Stabler that Preston Webb still wants his head and whoever rented last week's creepy van in Stabler's name has a lot of intel on him. Enter Stabler's very best friend Captain Olivia Benson to anchor the crossover event! She's here to help track down Sarah, the kidnapped daughter of Brotherhood officer Santos. Benson and Stabler share a loving look and a "partner" and get to work. As they review the footage, they see Sarah was lured away by a dog and then taken by a man in a baseball cap and a second man with an obscured face forcing her into a car. Professionals. Could this be the work of Marcy Killers? After all, Webb does think the Brotherhood (the unofficial legion of corrupt buddy cops) stole a million dollars from them. Sarah's on borrowed time, though, with all her health concerns.
Bell storms Cassandra Webb's gallery; she plays innocent with at first a smile and then an outraged reaction. Benson and Stabler speak with Sarah's mom Rosaria, but she doesn't recognize any of the suspects in the footage. Benson assures her that her team is keeping inhalers on them so Sarah can have access to one immediately when they find her. Do they have something with Sarah's DNA on it though?
SVU Detective Joe Velasco makes his crossover appearance to comb through suspects with Detective Jet Slootmaekers and they may have one: a sketchy janitor named Ted. As Benson leaves to take a call, Rosaria Santos turns on Stabler -- yelling at him that it's his and Frank Donnelly's precious Brotherhood that's brought all of this on her family. Benson comes back and shows her Ted's picture and Rosaria recognizes him instantly, saying he's especially friendly with Sarah. Bell and Jet investigate Ted's house and find a creepy box of girls' underwear... and also Ted himself, who tries to escape before being taken down by Jet. He claims he doesn't know where Sarah is, though.
It's time for a classic Benson and Stabler interrogation! Ted has a ton of alibis, though he's a registered sex offender who took a job at an elementary school with a creepy box. If he helps them find Sarah, they might help him, so he says that a few weeks ago he saw Officer Santos get beat up by a guy with a flame tattoo on his neck across from Sarah's school. Jesse bribed him to forget he saw anything, though. Just then, new footage shows the woman with a puppy who distracted Sarah arriving a full hour before the abduction, proving it was planned. She's got some limited-edition sneakers, though, and Malachi points Benson in the direction of a store. Malachi also missed four calls from Jet and she's pissed.
Stabler visits Santos in jail; he's desperately upset over Sarah's abduction. Stabler asks him about his beatdown, but Santos says it was just a gambling debt. He genuinely doesn't believe it would have anything to do with his daughter. He swears there's nothing else he's keeping from Stabler either; all he cares about is getting his daughter back. Stabler then gets a text that Donnelly wants to see him and Santos shares a cautious thought: could Donnelly be involved?
Elliot goes to visit Donnelly and assures him that Benson working the case is actually a good thing because he can redirect her interest if she asks too many questions. He casually asks if the Brotherhood could have anything to do with Sarah's disappearance but Donnelly says no. And there's a surprise for Elliot -- Donnelly's new baby has been given his name: Frank Elliot Donnelly, Jr. Great, more internal turmoil for Elliot, who's supposed to be undercover investigating Donnelly for his ring of corruption but -- true to Elliot -- has formed a bit of a real bestie relationship with his mark. As he leaves, though, he plants a tracker under Donnelly's car.
Bell and Jet hit up the sneaker store and the clerk is reticent to share his receipts. As Jet takes his laptop to find the receipts on her own, a pair of red kicks catch her eye. Meanwhile, Stabler and Benson are driving together when Benson prods Elliot to admit that he actually likes Donnelly. Worse, he says, he kind of admires him. When he tells Benson that Frank named his kid after him, she's taken aback. "The older I get, the more I understand that people are complicated," Stabler muses before sharing with Liv that he believes his father staged a shooting while on the job. Complicated indeed but his oldest friend will support him.
The tracker shows Donnelly heading to the Santos house and Bensler quickly follows. After Frank leaves, they ask Rosaria why he was there and she tearfully says that Donnelly is not the problem, but that an hour ago she got a text from an unknown number that sent her a video of Sarah with a gun pointed at her head and said that if Rosaria didn't pay them $100,000, they would kill her. Rosaria called Frank and he dropped off the ransom money. In the video, Sarah's breathing is clearly labored.
Jet dives in to work on identifying the geolocation of the video and narrows it down to Queens. Bell comes in with a match for the sneaker-wearing little-dog-walking girl: a woman named Stacy. They go to search for her at her mother's house. While she's not there, her mother says she knows her new boyfriend, Ramon Sosa, would get her involved in something. She shows them a photo of Ramon and he has flames tattooed on his neck -- matching the description of Santos's attacker. He's part of a gang who launders their money through real estate, and one of their properties in Queens matches the location markers of Sarah's hostage video.
Benson and Stabler rush to the scene. Bell says she's ten minutes away and asks him to wait for backup. Welp. Stabler's never done well with waiting; he and Liv rush the building. It looks deserted at first until they hear noises coming from upstairs. They rush up and a man named Eddie walks out with his hands up but says he doesn't know anything about a kidnapped girl. He works nights and is never home, but the building has squatters and transients. As they walk, Benson notices a breaker and flips a switch labeled "kitchen" which lights up a room behind boards. Eddie tries to run but Stabler nabs him as Benson breaks through the barricade and gives Sarah an inhaler. Someone fires at Benson and she runs after another woman: Stacy herself.
Sarah is shaken but going to be OK as they take her to freedom. They then let her run to hug her dad in prison and Santos is overwhelmed with happiness. He can't thank Stabler enough -- but Stabler asks him angrily why he was covering for Sosa in the first place. Why did he say that beating had nothing to do with it? Because he thought Ramon would kill Sarah. Donnelly was the one who ripped off Ramon. He knew that Ramon would and was coming after his family but he didn't care, he only cares about Donnelly. With that realization, Santos volunteers to wear a wire. Finally, Law & Order: Organized Crime might be taking down Donnelly.
Liv asks Elliot how it felt to work an SVU case again and he says it feels good to work with her. She then asks how his search for his dad is going... but their chat is interrupted by Donnelly. He thanks them for finding Sarah and Benson says she's glad to help out a fellow cop. Then Organized Crime switches back to Jet. She's got a box in her hand and she's at Malachi's. She apologizes for being weird but thought that he had been blowing her off. He avoids answering the door so she leaves him the box: those sneakers he really wanted. Feel bad, dude, for missing her calls and now purposefully not answering her at the door. Feel. Bad.
On his own, Stabler hops a fence, going about his Stabler business. It's the old yard where his dad once taught him to shoot as a kid, using the gun he would later stage a crime with. Stabler's back to dig the bullet he shot that day out of the tree, now potential evidence in his quest for the truth about his dad all these decades later. An old woman then walks up and asks if he's from the demolition crew; everything's all being torn down soon. Have things changed a lot in the last 20 years? More than you could imagine.
Cassandra comes to her husband Preston, upset about the police presence at her gallery event. She's humiliated. He says he can't help it if the police do their job and she says that never used to be a problem. He's let millions be stolen from them and now the police do whatever they want and he's not the man she married anymore. Webb makes a call: "It's time." And it's not over for Stabler, either. He gets one last major news flash: the squad matched the serial numbers on the logged cash and it's confirmed: Donnelly robbed Ulrich and is setting Elliot up to take the fall. So much for being corrupt best friends after all.
New episodes of Law & Order: Organized Crime air Thursdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.