It was late when Olivia realized he had left her alone again.She watched for the familiar signs—the vibrations fading, the movement outside gone still—and after crying herself into a fitful sleep, she knew this night had to be different.Tonight, she would escape.
When he did not return, she forced herself up and staggered toward the stairs.Though she had no clothing, she found a shirt and pulled it over her battered frame before making her way up and out of the basement.The door stood unlocked, and she feared it could only mean he would be back soon.With no time to lose, she slipped out of the barn and followed the road leading away from it, toward a place she had never seen before.
Seeing headlights in the distance, she was nearly caught when she realized it was him returning.Slipping off the road, she hid among the trees until she was certain he had not seen her.Watching the car turn toward the barn, she froze, terrified he might step out at any moment.But when he remained inside, she felt a fragile surge of relief.Moving toward the end of the road, she never took her eyes off the man in the car.
The sun was coming up when she realized that she’d been walking for a long time.The newspaper might have said her name and how she was missing.She was hoping that someone would see her and remember that she’d been taken.Moving along the road that had come off the little road she was on, she didn’t have any idea where she was or where she was going.She just wanted as much distance between him and herself as she could get.
She was so sore when she realized that she was lost.She might well have known that before, but as her body began to hurt more, she realized that she was going to be spending the rest of her life right out here in the woods, and no one would find her.Getting herself going, her body aching to the point of her being sick with the pain, she made herself walk until she couldn’t anymore.
She had fallen so many times she was sure she was nothing but a bloody mess.Getting up, making herself get going, all she could think about was her mom and dad.And that she had to get back to them.Seeing cars coming and going on the road, she was careful not to be seen.The shirt she had on was bloodied as badly as she was, and she wasn’t sure if she could take another step when one of the cars on the road did a sudden stop.She didn’t move.Knowing it was him, she made sure that she didn’t so much as blink when the light that he had shown over where she was hiding.
Watching the car, she was nearly ready to bolt again when the car suddenly had police lights turned on.Taking her time getting to the car, she was cautious of her surroundings, knowing that at any moment, Winchester was going to come out of nowhere and get her again.Crying when the officer came toward her, she simply fell to the ground when he wrapped her in his coat.
She didn’t know what to do when he spoke to her.She could read his lips, but getting him to understand what she was saying to him was difficult.He put her in the back of his cruiser and watched over her.She didn’t know what they were waiting on, but knew that on a very special level, she was safe.As safe as she’d been in the last week.
An ambulance arrived about the time she was really feeling the pain.He kept asking her questions, some she could answer, most she couldn’t.He asked her if she was Olivia James, and she was able to tell him that she was.Then he asked her if she knew the person who had taken her.Getting him to understand that was impossible, so she waited for someone to come and translate for her.As soon as she was in the ambulance, she was given something for pain, and it knocked her out.
When she woke, she was in the hospital.Her arm was in a cast, and her body felt like it had been run over several times.There were officers outside her door and a lady cop in the room with her.They never spoke, even though she had tried a couple of times.Wanting her mom in the worst sort of way, she started sobbing when she came into the room with her.
“My baby girl.I knew that you’d get away.”She held her mom tightly and told her how much she loved her.“I love you too, my darling child.Forever more.”
She never asked her who had taken her, and she didn’t care at that time.Wanting to go home but knowing on some level that she wasn’t going to be able to right away, she held onto her mom while her dad sat in the corner of the room and cried.It was more than she could handle at the time, and when they asked her if she wanted more for the pain, she took the drugs so that she could hurt less.
She was in and out of pain meds over the next few days.The police would come in and ask her if she could tell them anything, but no one ever asked her who had taken her.She was able to tell them that she’d been in the basement of a barn, but she couldn’t take them there, so she didn’t know what help that was going to be.As soon as she was able to sit up in a chair by herself, she knew that she was going to be getting better.However, her nightmare was just beginning, and she didn’t know how much longer she was going to be able to hide away from the truth of who had taken her.
Finally, when she was getting better enough to walk around a little bit, a police officer came into her room without her mom.She didn’t answer his questions that he put to her, but he was pissed off about how she couldn’t talk to him.When her dad showed up, he ran the man off with threats, and she was able to sit with her daddy for a little while.He told her that he loved her no matter what the newspaper said.He let her have a copy of it while her mom was gone.
It took her three months to leave the hospital.Much of the delay, she believed, was due to the severe injuries she had suffered during her captivity.Doctors told her the wounds were severe, and healing would take time.Nearly two weeks after she was admitted, they finally asked whether she knew who had done this to her.
“You expect us to believe that Mr.Winchester kidnapped you and took you by force?He’s an upstanding member of society, and you’re just a kid.”She told them that she knew who it was because she’d seen his picture around town.“That’s how you know it was him?Because of a few billboards around town.You’re not going to be able to work a day in this town if you keep telling lies like you are.”
That went on for several days at a time.They’d come in, ask her who had taken her, and she’d tell them.Then they would get angry with her when she told them who it had been.She never changed her story, nor did she say anything about how he was planning to kill her when she’d gotten away.
“By the time I was ready to leave the hospital, I was a mess.There were no drugs that could make it so that I could sleep at night.I had nightmares for years, sometimes even today, about the week-long captivity I was in.No one would believe me until I got a lawyer to sue the man.By the time I was ready to leave the hospital, I was already three months pregnant with his child.”Sidney said he was sorry.“So was I, but my mom convinced me to keep the baby, so I’d have proof of what he’d done to me.I’m so glad every day that I kept my baby.I don’t know what I’d do if not for my son.”
“You’re very brave.And smart.”She said she’d never had anyone tell her that before but her dad.“I’d like to meet him and your mother.They sound like a couple that I could really get to love.”
“Sadly, they’re both gone.When I was in court, my father had a massive stroke.My mother joined him several days later when she said that she couldn’t handle life without him.At seventeen, I was left alone with a toddler and no means of supporting myself.”She asked him what he thought.“No one is going to hold you to your being my mate.I will be all right, for as much as I’ve been since itall happened.I have a good job, a great son, and someone that I can love till my dying days.Thatcher is my world.”
“I’m going to love you until the day we decide to die.”She thought he might mean it too, but there was still more to tell.She would get to it sooner rather than later and tell him about how she’d nearly ended up in prison for taking Winchester to court.He and his money were no match for the evidence that she had on him.
~*~
Sidney’s heart broke for Olivia.Every time he thought about her, it would break just a little bit more.He knew there was more to the story; he remembered reading about it in the newspaper.It was hard for him to equate the little girl from the newspaper to the grown woman who had become his mate.No matter what had happened to her, he knew that he was going to love her forever.
The newspaper had made her out to be this wanton woman when she’d not even been a teenager.He hadn’t gone to the courtroom to watch the trial, but he had kept up with it every day that it was going on in the paper.
He remembered that she’d gotten the child’s DNA before it had been born, something that was unheard of back then, and had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the child belonged to Winchester.When the boy was born, once again, the child was subject to DNA testing, and it came back the same.There was a near one-hundred percent chance that the child was a Winchester.He tried to say that she had lured him into her bed, but once the barn had been found and the location put in the paper, it was hard for him to dispute her claims about him taking her from her front yard to the barn he’d planned on taking another little girl to.Toby Lea had been saved by the quick action of Olivia, and that was hard for anyone to get over.
“There were complications, too.”He looked around and saw his faerie there that had been with him for a while now, Tiger.“When she delivered the child, there had been complications for her.She can no longer have a child because she was too young to be having a child of her own.Some of us, me included, would go to the courtroom to hear her testimony and that of the monster.The faerie queen sent us to clean up the area that had been used for the girl while imprisoned, and we did the best that we could after she was rescued.The soil around the area was never the same, no matter what we did to make it different.Too much in the way of violence was there.”
“The child won the case, however.”He said that he remembered Winchester killing himself soon after.“Yes, he didn’t want to go to prison.They might well have killed him in there had he gone.”
“No doubt.”He looked at the clippings that he’d saved from the trial and read the headlines.“It says here that she won a large settlement.They even gave her child support for both her and her son.”
“That’s right.They said that he was to pay ten thousand dollars a month for each of them.She was nothing more than a child herself.And then they awarded damages of ten million dollars.I wonder what she did with all that money?”He figured that she’d never gotten paid.“Oh, but she did.It was the first thing that came out of the estate when he was dead.”
“She doesn’t have much.I’m wondering if she invested poorly or something.”He reached out to her mind and found that she had never spent a dime of the money awarded to her.She was saving it for Thatcher so that he could have a good life and go to the college of his dreams.He was even more impressed with her than he’d been before.“She’s one smart woman, my mate.I can’t believe that she’s all mine.”
