Keeping Her Safe

Chapter 3

The next day at the precinct went about as well as anyone could've expected.

It was another slow, paperwork filled day, and at some point everyone insisted upon calling Nick to make sure Zara was okay.

From what they got, she was still scared to go to school, but besides that she was going to be okay.

Olivia had just gotten off the phone with him when her phone rang again. She didn't recognize the number, but she answered anyway.

She had to stop herself from gasping as a breathy voice came out the other end.

"Olivia?" the girl said, and Olivia tried desperately to recognize the voice. She couldn't.

"Yes, this is Olivia Benson, speaking," she replied.

"I'm, uh, Kayla Stone. Do you...do you remember me?"

"I'm sure I do, honey," Olivia, speaking as gently as she could to the soft, frightened voice on the other line. "I'm just having trouble putting a face to the name."

"You, uh, you worked on my case earlier this year," she said softly. "The guy who- did it to me- he never got caught."

Memories of the sweet, pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes suddenly flooded back to Olivia's mind. She was only 13 when she was assaulted, the man wearing a mask and blindfolding the terrified girl as he attacked her right outside the school parking lot in an abandoned alley. Due to the mask she was never able to see him, and with such little physical evidence it was nearly impossible to track the man down; the man who savagely assaulted a sweet little 13 year old, barely even a teenager. It still made Olivia sick to her stomach to think about it.

"I know it's been going slow, but that investigation is still open, Kayla," Olivia assured her. "I promise you we're still doing everything we can to track down the man that hurt you."

Olivia heard the girl take in a sharp breath.

"Thank you, officer Benson," she said. "But...that's not really the reason I called."

"Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Olivia asked. "Because whatever it is, I'm here for you."

Kayla sniffled a little bit, holding back tears.

"It...it happened again."

Olivia felt her stomach drop. Her throat felt tight as she struggled to breathe with this new information.

"You were assaulted?" Olivia asked quietly, hating that she had to verify it.

"-Yeah," she said quietly, and Olivia's heart ached. Such a sweet, shy girl...she didn't deserve this. No one did, but especially not her. Olivia figured that by this point in her career, these things wouldn't even phase her, that she wouldn't get so emotionally attached to the victims. But time did nothing to heal those wounds; and every case of involving a child still hit her right in the gut.

What made her heart ache even worse was the realization that the last assault took place in September.

It was February.

5 months. She had been raped twice in five goddamn months.

Olivia felt like she was going to be sick.

"Kayla, are you at a hospital? I'll meet you there as fast as I can. I-"

"No, no hospitals," Kayla replied.

"But Kayla, honey, you really do need to get checked out. The doctors have to preform some important tests-"

"No," she said quickly. "I mean...it would be pointless at this point. It- it happened a week ago."