An FBI Archive

Chapter Eight

"The house was a bust. She's on anti-depressants but she genuinely loves her daughter" Nia announced.
"A search of the families friends and relatives showed up no one who seemed fixated on Lila" Nadia announced.
"Most people who take a child are either fixated or they choose at random" Nia told them, remembering the day that Joe took her.
"I've put out an A.P.B, hopefully we get a good hit" Nadia sighed, the stress of trying to find Lila before she is completely lost was getting to all of them. Nia was remembering the pain of her past and everyone else was hoping that they would find her alive and well.
"Facial rec worked" Harper announced as she moved through the squad room "Madeline Grove. I'll send you her address"
"You're amazing Harper!" Nadia shouted to her as they all rushed towards the elevator.
They raced over to her apartment, sirens flashing and howling, all of them hoping and praying that Lila was alive.
Nadia headed in first, the others right behind her, they moved room by room searching for Madeline and Lila. They moved upstairs finally finding Madeline sat in a rocking chair feeding baby Lila her bottle. Nadia slid her gun back into her holster and went to move into the room but Nia stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"Let me" Nadia nodded and Nia slid her gun back in its holster before she headed further into the nursery, kneeling beside the rocking chair "She's beautiful"
"She is" Madeline smiled down at the girl in her arms.
"What's her name?"
"Poppy"
"Can I take Poppy? She needs her diaper changed" Nia spoke gently, hoping that Madeline wouldn't fight her and would just give up Lila easily.
"I did it not long ago"
"You know babies, blowouts strike when you least expect"
"Will you take care of her?"
"Of course I will" Nia assured her with a kind smile. Madeline handed over the baby easily and Nia took her out of the house whilst Nadia put Madeline in handcuffs.
Elliot drove them to the hospital so that Lila could be checked over then they drove back to the Stevenson house where Lila's parents were waiting for her. Nia moved into the house, sitting on the couch she handed Lila over to her mother, and something inside of Nia's heart ached.
"Thank you. Thank you for finding my baby"
"I told you that I would" Nia smiled.

Nia sat at her desk typing up her report as the others started collecting their things to go home for the night.
"Hey, do you want to join us for a drink?" Elliot asked as he leant against her desk.
"Not tonight, but thank you"
"Why not? Got something better to do?" He teased, earning a small laugh from Nia.
"I'm going to therapy tonight" Elliot nodded.
"Let me know if you want to get a drink after" Nia laughed lightly again as Elliot left with Wesley and Harper for the night. Nia finished up her report and headed out, hoping that therapy wasn't going to be as painful as it was the first two times.

Nia sat in her new therapists office, both of them refusing to speak first.
"You've been to therapy before so staying silent until your patient talks won't work on you"
"I've been to therapy twice before actually"
"Why didn't you stick at it?"
"The first one got too freaked out by what I told her, she broke. The second one, well, I was over therapy by then"
"You were thirteen when you first went to therapy?" She nodded "Why do you think that it broke your therapist?"
"I was thirteen, talking about years of violent sexual abuse. I could see it in her eyes, the fear, the disgust and something else. Utter terror. She couldn't believe that something like that could happen to a person let alone a child. The look got worse with the more I told her" Jill nodded.
"And how old were you when you quit therapy? Both times"
"When I was thirteen I did it for almost a year before the therapist suggested that I go to someone else so I quit. My mother convinced me to go again when I was fourteen but I skipped it a lot and she eventually gave in so I never went back, I didn't see the point"
"Wasn't the point to help you deal with your trauma?"
"I dealt with it everyday that it when on"
"What happened to you? In your own words"
"I was kidnapped when I was eight years old from my front lawn. They guy that took me, his name was Joe-"
"Go back to the front lawn for me"
"Why?"
"There's something you're leaving out isn't there?"
"I was playing on the grass whilst my five year old sister was on the porch. Joe was talking to me, he said I had pretty eyes. Cara tried to call me back to her but I didn't listen and he took me right in front of her"
"Do you remember that last thing that you sister called out to you?"
"She was screaming my name"
"And what happened next?"
"I was tossed into the back of a van and I was injected with something in my neck, it put me to sleep until..." Nia trailed off remembering flashes of the dirty corridors and the locked room.
"Until what?"
"Until he took me to my room" Nia could still remember the damp smell and the double bed that sat in the middle of the room that had little more than a pillow and a blanket.
"What do you remember about that room?" Nia closed her eyes and pulled backwards, she pulled her legs up onto her seat and wrapped her arms around them.
"I died in that room" Tears escaped her eyes, soaking into her slacks.
"But you didn't because you're here, right now" She closed her eyes again, more tears falling before she opened them again.
"My soul, my heart, my imagination, my ability to believe, everything died there. Everything I ever was, everything that I could've been died there, in that room. Who I am now is a shell that I stepped into, I be who my sisters need me to be"
"You have more than one sister?"
"Cara, she stopped feeling like my sister the day that I was kidnapped. Nora, Leah, Jade and Lacie are my sisters because that's what family does, love and protect each other. I don't care that we don't share blood, we all bled in those rooms, side by side, on our backs"
"Your sisters were with you for the duration of your kidnapping?"
"I was by myself for six months"
"You were alone in that place with Joe, what was that like for you?" Nia saw flashes of all the times he'd hit her and all the times that his drunken body climbed on top of her.
"Rough" She muttered, wiping away her tears.
"The thought of that room hurts you-"
"A room can't hurt you, I know that"
"When I mention Joe you open up but when you think of that room you hide yourself away, all of your bad memories are associated with that room"
"You want to hear about how Joe would get drunk and rape me on the bed? Or maybe how I drew on the walls when I wasn't 'working'? Or what about the first time I tried to kill myself at the little age of eight?"
"How did you do it?"
"What?"
"How did you try to kill yourself?"
"I had a sharpener for my crayons. I bit the eraser from the end of my pencil, flattened out the metal and used it to get the screw out"
"So you planned it?" Nia scoffed and rolled up her sleeve, showing him the lengthways cut she had made nearly twenty years ago.
"Yes. I planned to kill myself" She pulled her sleeve back down to cover the scar "I didn't cut deep enough because it hurt so he bandaged it up and I was fine. He took the crayons off me, said that if I couldn't be a good girl then I didn't deserve them. He gave me markers a month later, they looked better on the walls anyway"
"Do you think attempting suicide was worth the markers?"
"Yes. It gave me something to do when I wasn't being raped"
"I think that we should leave it there for this week"
"Was it worth it?"
"Was what worth it?"
"Was taking me on as a patient worth finding out that an eight year old is capable of killing herself and pimping herself out for markers?"
"You only attempted to kill yourself" Nia scoffed and stood up from the couch, leaving the room without saying goodbye.