Tori's heart slammed repeatedly into her ribcage, beating so loud that she was certain that her father had to be able to hear it as he jogged to her and embraced her tightly.

"Are you okay?" he asked anxiously.

Tori wanted to be able relax, to melt into the hug of her father, of all people, but she couldn't. Not here, not yet, and certainly not when she knew that her lies were going to come crashing down at her feet. They were all going to find out what the man had done to her – right here, right now, even her closest friends were going to hear everything.

"Tori?" David Vega repeated, leaning away from his daughter so that he could look her in the face when he didn't answer his simple inquiry. "Are you alright, sweetheart?" It was then that the cop side of her father kicked in, and in one swift sweep of his gaze he took in her stiffness to his touch and the state of her dress and expression before finally landing on the man that she had fatally stabbed. He left one arm around her shoulders as he turned to his partner, saying, "Hey, Michaelson? My little girl's pretty shook up; I'm going to go sit with her in the patrol car and get her statement there, okay?"

Michaelson glanced over at them from where he stood, already asking Andre and Beck questions, and nodded. "Fine by me."

David sighed, steering Tori towards the cop car. A medic from the ambulance that had just pulled up stopped father and daughter, saying that they needed to check her out before she went anywhere. Officer Vega explained that he was just going to let her sit in the patrol car and calm down while he got her statement, and then she would be right back. Thus, the medic moved out of their path and Tori found herself sitting in the back of the patrol car in one seat while her father sat directly beside her.

"Tori," David said, his tone heartrendingly mellow as he stated softly. "Sweetheart, what happened out there?"

"He wanted my purse," Tori lied for the third time.

"Regardless of what your friends might fall for, I know that crooks don't make you walk a block away – much less into a dark and secluded alley – just so that they can take your purse and run." He ground his jaw for a moment, eyes unreadable and dark as he gazed at his hands, before stating matter-of-factly, each word obviously painful to him, "Whoever he is, he didn't want a purse. He wanted you."

Tori flinched, unable to hold back more sobs as they grated against her throat. She wasn't sure how she got back into her dad's arms, whether he gathered her to him or she flung herself into them, but one way or the other she ended up there, hands fisted in his navy blue uniform shirt, face burrowed in his shoulder. Speaking around her bouts of crying, she poured out the whole awful story from why she had been called upon to sing at Maestro's, to going back for her abandoned purse, to the moment when the police car had pulled onto the scene. By the time she was done telling her story, she realized that her dad was crying into her hair.

"Daddy," she couldn't remember the last time she had called him that, but she did it now, still hiding her face in his shoulder, too exhausted to even try for any semblance of normalcy between them. "I want to go home now. Please. I need a shower."

Officer Vega sighed wearily, and when Tori sat up and looked at his face, he appeared to have aged ten years while he listened to what had happened to her. "I know you do, baby, but I want the medics to check you out before we leave."

"Won't they be able to tell what he did to me?" she murmured, finding it easier to keep her gaze on her hands rather than his pained expression.

He paused, skirting the question with the answer of "I just want to know that you're okay."

She could've easily told him the answer to that question. No, she wasn't okay. Of course she wasn't okay, not after the events of this evening.

"If you don't let them check you out," he said, seeming to see straight through to the shame and fear that shrouded her. "It'll seem more suspicious then whatever they find when they do check you out."

Still, Tori couldn't move. She didn't want to leave the comfort of her father, the security of the small back seat of the car.

"No one outside of the police, the medics, and maybe some doctors will see anything that the medics write, Tori. The medics may ask you to go to the hospital, but even if they do, unless there's something that I don't know about, you should be able to come home tonight."

He paused before adding, "Sweetie, there's going to be some more cops showing up here now, a lot more people actually, since there's a dead body here. Do you want to get out of here before they all start showing up, or do you want to sit here for a couple more minutes and pull yourself together?"

Tori took a deep breath, forcing herself to "get it together" as he had phrased it, and then said, "I'm ready to get out."

"Do you want me to come with you now, or at all, or in a few minutes?"

She glanced at him, realizing what the answer that he needed her to give was, and giving it accordingly. "In a few minutes is just fine, Dad."

Officer Vega nodded and then watched his daughter as she climbed out of the car, making her way straight to the ambulance, her very stance giving off a stay-away-from-me vibe to the five pairs of eyes that simultaneously swung to watch her as she made the short trek from vehicle to vehicle. Her poor friends were obviously worried for her, but he knew from seeing an atrociously countless number of victims of this particular crime that she was going to be slow to let at least the better half of those five friends know what had gone on, if she ever did. Andre, Beck, and Robbie might very well never know the truth, especially since Tori seemed to think that they had bought her purse-snatcher story. It seemed a small enough chance that she would tell Cat and Jade what had happened to her, let alone the male of the species, which she was currently trying to avoid as a whole, he noticed.

David Vega hung his head, breathing heavily. Yes, his daughter was seventeen. No, it wasn't necessarily a stretch to believe that she might soon lose her innocence, so to speak – but it wasn't supposed to have ever happened to either one of his children like this. Yes, he was a cop in Los Angeles. Yes, he saw things like this far too often. But never, not ever was he supposed to have to see his daughter go through this.

He put his head in his hands and wept.

Okay, this may well have just become more than the promised three-shot, I'm not sure yet. Reviews make my day full of sunshine and spur me on in my writing! Thanks!:)