As soon as Elliot had returned from upstairs, they escorted the girl out to his car and drove her to the nearest emergency room. Unable to provide the admitting nurse with any details, Elliot had to flash his badge twice before they were shown to an examining room to await a doctor. He then stayed outside as Olivia took the girl in and got her settled on the bed. Olivia wrapped the blanket from the bed around the girl's shoulders and attempted to explain why they were there.

"We're just waiting for a doctor to come see you. To make sure you're alright physically and find out what's wrong. There's nothing to be scared about, we're all just trying to help. I won't let anyone hurt you…I promise."

Even as she said it, Olivia realised that the girl didn't seem scared about it all; she didn't seem to be feeling any emotion. If the girl understood her she showed no sign and continued staring blankly at Olivia. Olivia smoothed her hair down across her head and sat beside the bed on the chair usually used for friends or parents or family. The only reassuring thing about it all was that the girl turned her gaze to her as she sat, showing that she wasn't totally gone – she still knew Olivia was there with her. They sat that way in silence for a good half hour waiting for someone to come and see them until, finally, a nurse came in and began taking her vitals.

"Olivia…"

At the sound of her partner's voice Olivia turned away from the bed to see his head peeking in the door, his expression unsure of whether to come in or not. She got up from her chair and, after stroking the girl's hand and telling her she would be right outside, she followed him back outside into the corridor.

"Liv…Fin just phoned to say they've found her. Her name is Eva Taylor and she's fifteen."

"She's fifteen? She doesn't look any older than twelve or thirteen. Are they sure that's our girl? How did they find her?"

"They took her fingerprints from the interview room we were in earlier and the lab just got a match off an old case from Missing persons. The girls disappeared…"

As Elliot was speaking, Olivia was signing off the medical consent papers for the nurse who had approached them mid-conversation. At his last words she stopped so abruptly she scrawled pen over the rest of the form. She jerked her head up to look at him, searching – hoping - for any hint that he had misspoken, or she had misheard.

"'Girls'? You mean 'girl' surely…"

"No, I don't. She disappeared with one of her friends – Rachel Stirling who turns sixteen tomorrow if she's still alive. The two of them were walking home from school together and just never arrived home. The file is being looked out for us as we speak and they're going to send the next of kin details up to the Captain. Fin and Munch can perhaps get started on that. Hopefully we'll be able to give Eva a familiar face to bring her out of this. "

Olivia looked through the window into Eva's room, watching the nurse talking away to herself as she worked in an attempt to bring Eva out of her silent state. As Olivia caught her unrelenting stare she tried to smile, to reassure her that everything would be fine whilst knowing that it may very well not be. She found herself thinking about the friend who should be sitting beside her, the pair of them safe with only the memories that fifteen year olds should have. There was a gnawing sensation within her that there was something even more wrong about the whole situation and was jolted back to reality with the realisation of what was amiss about it all.

"Elliot, why aren't their faces all over the news? Why have none of us recognised her? Surely two fifteen year olds vanishing should still make it to the front of the papers! Were they just dismissed as runaways? Where are the parents in all this – they should be kicking up a fuss and demanding their children found no matter what age!"

"It was on the front of the papers – only it wasn't two fifteen year olds. They were only twelve and thirteen when it happened. The case was from over two and a half years ago Liv. That's why Fin and Munch came up empty on their search of missing person reports. They were looking for recent cases – and ones that only involved one girl, not two. Now that I know them, the names ring a bell for me – I remember seeing their pictures plastered across the fronts of all the papers; their mothers begging for their safe return on each and every news channel. We didn't recognise her because she's changed – she's grown up. They've been gone for almost thirty one months and in that time there's been too many other headlines, so many more victims that they've faded away into the back of our minds. But she's back now, and the other one of them is still missing. Rachel's still out there … somewhere."

The two of them just looked at each other in silence, both trying to take in the information and make sense of it all. Not only did they not know what had happened to this girl, but they had another one still missing, still potentially being hurt at that precise moment – if she had even survived the past two and a half years. Suddenly the haunted look in the girl's eyes all made sense to Olivia and her heart broke anew for her. She now recognised it for what it was – it was not just the look of innocence destroyed as she had thought. It was that of a victim too broken to even know how to feel anything anymore – an empty shell.