Detective Stabler awoke with a start. Jumping to his feet he allowed his eyes to focus and found his perplexed partner staring at him.
"Cragen wants to talk to us…" Olivia Benson chuckled. "I figured you'd rather me wake you up than him."
"I wasn't sleeping…I was eh…" Stabler searched for a plausible excuse.
"Resting your eyes? Come on, we got something to check up on…"Captain Cragen looked distressed as he hung up the phone. He waved the detectives into his office.
"Stabler, so glad you chose to join us in consciousness today."
Elliot wisely kept his mouth shut.
"Well, this is a little bit different than your normal case load, but I figured you two would be interested. You both remember Hope Perrington? Well…it's obvious that this entire unit has a soft spot for the girl. Brace yourselves…she's gone missing…"
Detective Benson's face dropped. Even Stabler's eyes began to tear thinking of Hope. A few months back a teenage girl took her brother to the ER. The boy's arm had been badly broken, and the girl was pretty beat up. A nurse suspected rape, and had called the office. Olivia spoke with Hope, Stabler with the younger boy. Benson remembered the look on the girl's face with the whispered answer when asked if she was raped. "You…you don't know how much I want to tell you…" Hope collapsed into tears and fell into Benson's arms. Maternal instincts spiked, it was needless to say that Benson wanted nothing more than to get the bastard But as Novak pointed to, there could be no conviction based on the look in her eyes. Stabler looked further into family record, and had discovered that the two had an older brother who died only a month before his eighteenth birthday. Taylor, the boy, had brought up his big brothers name many times when he spoke with Stabler…always getting very emotional.
The father picked the two up very late at the precinct, and told the detectives to leave his children very well alone. Benson had to hold Stabler back, when Hope's father yanked her hard by the arm and pushed her towards the car. Surprisingly the next day, around the time that public school let out there arrived young Hope at the door, just needing to sort some things out, about everything that happened. It was obvious that the girl just needed a safe place to be, but no one complained. She grew very close to almost everyone in the place, to the point where her nickname became "the irreplaceable intern." These daily visits lasted for a little over a month. One-day Hope came in visibly upset, her face pretty battered on one side.
She only stayed for ten or fifteen minutes running immediately over to Detective Stabler (Benson had taken the day off). "Kiddo…" He whispered "I don't…I don't want you to keep getting hurt. I want you to be safe…please let me help you." She looked up at him, her hands balled in fists, "…You don't know how much I want to. But I'm not only worried about myself…Can…can you just hug me right now. I don't want to talk anymore…" Stabler's heart almost broke but he pulled the crying teenager into his arms, and kissed her forehead. A few moments later, she calmed down, and after noticing the time jetted out the door. That was the last time anyone in the precinct had heard from her. The group had tried tracking the family down, Fin brought in one drunk after the other to try and find their father. But they seemed to have disappeared without a trace.
"What…what happened?" Olivia sputtered out finally.
"Well…no surprise it wasn't her scumbag dad that called her in missing, it was her kid brother, Taylor. Supposedly she's been gone for two weeks, and the only reason we're learning of this is because the dad is planning an out of state excursion."
"He's got somebody on his ass…" Stabler said softly.
"A whole bunch of somebodies it seems. Well, Taylor says his sisters done this a few times before, he just doesn't want to abandon her completely when she comes home. I know what your about the ask…we couldn't trace the call. This kid's smart, he's got the number blocked. I've already called Novak, there's no way to get Taylor away from his dad at this point. We have a chance to save Hope though…"
The three looked grim, but nodded slowly one by one.
"Well if we're searching the streets better get the other two on the case, right?" Benson added.
"Already done…and believe me they are some POed cops. I wouldn't want to cross them the wrong way today. I might find myself on the deserving end of something that would cause a long battle with the DA's office." Cragen ended.