Author's Note

And so it is that time once again. We don't get a lot of Liv in this chapter, it's all actually in Owen's POV, but that's because it's time to get the ball rolling to get Liv away from Vic.

And who better to help than Claire?

I'm kind of conflicted in how I feel about this chapter. A part of me wanted to show the attraction between Owen and Claire more, have them flirt or whatever, but another part of me felt that it would have been out of place at a time like this. Liv needs help and that's what's important right now. I tried to blend the two so hopefully it turned out well.

Also, just to warn you, and I've said this in other fics before, but my understanding of law is not that great, even after doing research. And I did do research, but yeah, I probably got some of this stuff wrong. Okay, a lot of it. Please don't hate me for it. Remember, this is only fanfiction.

Okay, go onward and enjoy!

Finally

The past few hours have been so emotionally exhausting that Owen isn't surprised when Liv passes out when all is said and done. He carries her to his bedroom and tucks her into bed. She looks so small now, curled up in his huge bed and having bled her heart out for him and Barry to see. She also looks a lot bigger, too, because that couldn't have been easy. He knows she's still really scared about the future and of her dad, but Owen plans on doing all that he can for her.

She's going to get a happy ending. Even if he has to tear Vic apart with his bare hands to do it.

So he doesn't wait, even though he'd like nothing more than to get some sleep too. He leaves Liv with Barry to look after her and then goes to the only other person on this island he trusts to help him.

Claire isn't exactly happy to see him, she's still a little sour about how their date turned out, but when he says it's about Liv she agrees to squeeze him in between two meetings.

"You only have a fifteen minute window, Mr. Grady," Claire informs him, sitting behind her desk. "Make it count and make it good."

He settles in the seat across from her, taking in a deep breath, and just jumps right in. "Vic is abusing Liv."

Claire's eyes widen and she straightens in her seat, any ill feelings towards him pushed to the back burner. "Do you have proof now?"

"Liv finally came to me and Barry and told us herself. We don't have any physical proof, but that's why I came to you. I need your help to get what we need and file charges against her dad, maybe her mom too if we can."

"And you're sure she wasn't lying? Kids make outrageous claims sometimes when seeking attention."

Owen glares at her. "Do you really think Liv would lie about something like this? Does she really seem like the type to do something like that?"

Claire frowns. "Well, no-"

"Exactly. I told you before, I've had my suspicions about the abuse ever since I met her but I could never get any proof and Liv wouldn't tell me about it until now." He crosses his arms in front of his chest, leaning back in his chair. "Come on, Claire. Are you really still not seeing it? How could you not, after all this time?"

Claire sits there in silence for several minutes, looking numb. He doesn't mean to blame her or anything. Just make her realize what's been right in front of her all this time. She helped him with the internship, but nothing really came of that, at least not right away, so she probably pushed it all to the back of her mind. But now, she needs to face the truth, that Vic has been abusing Liv right under her nose all this time. She needs to be on board with this or it'll be a lot harder to succeed. Vic is powerful, the head of InGen security, but here on the island, Vic answers to Claire.

When she finally meets his eyes she picks up her desk phone, pushes a button, and says, "Zara, cancel all of my appointments for the rest of the day. Yes, all of them. Even that one; reschedule it for tomorrow morning. Something urgent just came up."

She returns the phone to its cradle with a clunk and Owen can't help but smile a little victoriously. "So you'll help?"

By way of answer she pulls her tablet closer to her on the desk, taps a few things, and then starts to write with a stylus. "Obviously, in order for this to work, we need proof, just like in any other police investigation. Child abuse cases are tricky. Getting the proof necessary to separate a child from his or her parents can be difficult. Any witnesses we can gather would help; anyone who's actually witnessed something that can be constituted as abuse."

He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously. "You seem to know an awful lot about child abuse cases. I thought we'd have to do research or something."

Claire shifts in her seat a little uncomfortably. "When you first mentioned your suspicions I may have…taken it upon myself to do the research already. Just in case."

His mouth falls open in shock, heart swelling with such gratitude that she would do this for Liv, for him. She had no reason to believe that any of this would become necessary besides his word, but she did it anyway. "You are a beautiful, wonderful person, Claire Dearing."

"Thank you," she says with a blush, something that makes him smile and want to make her do again. "So is there anyone you have in mind for a witness?"

Filing this moment away in his mind, Owen returns to the task at hand and thinks her question over for a moment. "No one really jumps out at me. Vic's always been really careful while out in public, which is why I didn't jump on this sooner. Not to mention, everyone's kind of afraid of him. I'll ask around though. Someone may have been scared to come forward before, but if they know we're moving to put him away now, they may be willing to help. No one else has ever really gotten close to her before because of Vic, but I know everyone here loves Liv."

Claire glances up at him with a small smile, stylus never pausing in her writing. "Yes, that is true, even for me. She's the only kid I've ever actually been able to stand."

He lets out a small chuckle. "She definitely grows on you. So what else?"

"Well, besides witnesses, there's the physical proof. Medical records would be a big help."

Owen cringes. "Actually, they wouldn't."

None of Liv's medical records are going to show signs of abuse, not even x-rays. Her mutation would have taken care of all of that, healing her like new.

"What, do you think Vic has done something to them?"

Owen hates to lie, but he promised Liv he wouldn't tell her secret without permission, so he builds on Claire's own suspicions. "Something like that. Vic has a lot of pull through InGen and all of Liv's medical needs have been taken care of here, on the island. He probably bought out the doctor or at the very least got rid of all the evidence already. Either way, he's careful. He knows how to hurt her without leaving a permanent mark."

Not exactly true, but not exactly a lie either.

"You're probably right." She huffs in frustration. "Well, besides medical records, we may be able to find something on surveillance. This island has cameras everywhere. If Liv can recall a time and date when he did something that could have been caught on camera we can pull those records. If we can catch him on film that would be a big help. We wouldn't even need medical records.

Owen's eyes widen. "Yesterday, at the paddock. He beat her last night in the cage. There are cameras in there."

Claire grins, the smile almost predatory. "Let's go see what we can find."

She leads the way to the elevator and together they head down to the Control Room. It's full of people busy with the daily operations of the park but Claire goes to one man sitting in the back row closest to the elevator, a man with dark, wild hair, a thick mustache, and thick-framed glasses perched on his nose. His desk area is cluttered with odds and ends, little dinosaur figurines, and is the only decorated desk in the entire room. Owen's never met him personally but automatically decides he likes the man.

"Lowery," Claire says quietly, attempting to get his attention without anyone else noticing, but he doesn't appear to hear her. She bends down and speaks directly into his ear. "Lowery."

Lowery jumps, startled, and swivels in his seat to face them. "Oh, yes, hi, Ms. Dearing. Is there something that I can…." He straightens his glasses, glancing at Owen with a little trepidation. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Claire sighs, mostly exasperated but Owen swears he hears a little fondness in there. "Lowery, this is Owen Grady, our head researcher for the Velociraptor behavioral studies. Mr. Grady, this is Lowery Cruthers, one of our lead park operators."

Lowery straightens in his chair a little proudly at the title. Owen suppresses a chuckle and holds out his hand to him. "Hi, Mr. Cruthers. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," he replies, shaking his hand with a surprisingly steady grip. "So is this a social visit or…."

Claire plasters on that fake business smile of hers, eyes casting around to the other people in the room. They need to keep this as quiet as possible so Vic doesn't find out what they're up to. "I need you to pull up the video feeds from the Velociraptor paddock last night but I need you to do it without leaving a trace so no one else finds out."

Lowery shifts in his chair a little uncomfortably. "And why do you need me to do that?"

"It's for Liv," she answers, more emotion in her voice than Owen has ever heard. She really does care about Liv.

"Well, in that case," Lowery turns in his chair, fingers flying over his touch screen, "count me in. I like that kid. Never actually talked to her cause her dad's worse than an angry pachy and I don't have a death wish, but she seems cool." After a few more touches all of the video feeds for the raptor paddock appear on his screen. "Can you narrow it down more than just last night? If not, this may take a while."

"We just need the feeds from inside the cage," Owen says, leaning in behind Lowery for a closer look. "And start at around nine p.m. What we're looking for happened sometime after that."

"And what are we looking for exactly?"

"You'll know it when you see it."

Lowery looks at him over his shoulder nervously, sensing Owen's foreboding, but then gets to work, pulling up the two feeds from the cameras inside the cage and fast-forwarding through the footage. They see Liv standing just outside the cage and Owen tells him to slow down. They watch for a few minutes, waiting for Vic to show up, when the footage turns to static.

The feeds for both cameras during the time Vic beat Liv, they're gone.

Owen swears under his breath. "Of course he would have gotten rid of it already. He was covering his tracks just in case Liv died last night, so no one would find out how she got in there and then see what he did."

"Wait, Liv almost died last night?" Lowery asks but they both ignore him.

"Is there any way to recover the footage, Lowery?" Claire asks a bit desperately.

Lowery gives them a crooked smile and cracks his knuckles dramatically. "Please. Remember who you're talking to." His fingers fly over the computer again, pulling up a black dialog box and entering in some code. "From what I can tell, whoever did this is an armature at best. They left a few crumbs behind. Restoring them is easy and it should give us a couple minutes of video." In no time, Lowery has the two video feeds pulled up again, this time showing Liv on the ground and her father looming over her threateningly. Lowery looks back at them wide-eyed, starting to realize what this is about, and pushes play with a shaky finger.

They watch as Vic kicks her repeatedly. Claire gasps in horror, turning away, but Owen forces himself to watch, his entire body strung tight like a wire about to snap.

This is what Liv's had to endure. This is what he wasn't able to protect her from.

But that is about to change.

The feed turns to static again and Lowery stops it, turning to look at them with an ashen face. "He's…he's been doing stuff like that to her all this time?"

"Yeah," Owen says quietly.

"I never knew. I mean, I knew she and her dad never really got along, but I never thought…." He rubs a hand roughly over his face, displacing his glasses. "I never imagined this."

"It's okay, Lowery," Claire says softly, turning back to them. This is the least composed Owen has ever seen her. She is truly shaken, but then again, being told something and then seeing for herself that it's true, it's different. "I didn't know either. But at least I should have figured it out. Vic Hoskins is one of my employees, I should have-"

"Hey," Owen says, placing his hand on her shoulder. "None of this is your fault, not any of ours. The only one we should be blaming is Vic. Anything else is only a waste of time. Right now, the best way to help Liv is to get her away from him as fast as possible."

"Where is she now?" Lowery asks. "Is she safe?"

"Yeah, she's back at my bungalow, sleeping. Barry is with her." He suddenly remembers they expect her to be hurt and adds, "She was pretty banged up but she's healing fine."

Lowery nods. "Good."

With a deep breath, Claire calmly recomposes herself, face going back to gentle neutrality and running a hand over her clothes. Owen recognizes it for what it is now, battle armor, a shield against the world, but he's seen what's underneath now, a kind, caring woman, and it makes him smile a little. She nods to him and he lets her go, not needing his support anymore. "Alright, Lowery, I need you to send that footage to me so I can put it under lock and key until we're ready to go to the police. After that, try looking for more…incidents, anything else we can use against him. The more we have, the better."

"You got it," Lowery says with a grin. "Just promise me she's going to be safe now."

"Don't worry," Owen says. "I'll make sure of it, no matter what."

No matter what. That's his mantra now, until this is over.

No matter what.

"Tell me about her mom," Claire says once they're settled in her office again. "You said you wanted to get Liv away from her as well?"

"Yeah," Owen says. "Liv is miserable with her mom, too. She says it's rare for her mom to actually be at home."

"Alright, that definitely sounds like we have the potential for child neglect. How is she as a provider? Food, shelter, basic needs?"

"Food and shelter she's actually decent at. According to Liv, there's always food in the fridge but she has to make all her meals herself and they live in a nice apartment building. Her mom has a really nice job, but that's the problem. She only cares about her work. She hardly speaks to Liv to where it's practically outright ignoring. She doesn't even remember Liv's birthday, neither of them do."

Claire hums thoughtfully to herself. "This one will be a bit trickier but I don't imagine there will be many problems. The social worker should be able to work with the police to get security footage of the building to prove that her mom is never home and the rest can be said by Liv, maybe even some neighbors. The hardest part will be doing this in two different countries."

Owen's brow furrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"This may be Masrani's island but he only rents it, not owns it. It's leased to him through the Costa Rican government and it's their government that has jurisdiction here, not the United States."

"So Liv's mom will be charged in the United States but Vic will be charged in Costa Rica?"

"Precisely. But don't worry. The Costa Rican government is no more lenient to child abusers than the U.S. and I hear a Costa Rican prison is a lot worse. He'll pay for what he's done."

"Good," Owen says grimly and with a good helping of satisfaction. "So what's our next step?"

"We take care of Vic first since he's the immediate threat. I have some contacts on the mainland through Masrani Global, including at the National Children's Hospital. They have some social workers there who can help us. In the meantime, we stay calm and act like everything is normal. Vic isn't stupid. If he hears even a whisper of what we're up to, he'll run."

"What about Liv? She can't go back to him."

There's no way he's allowing that, not ever again.

"Don't worry, she doesn't have to. She can stay with you. Vic has actually left the island." Owen blinks in surprise at that. "He left early this morning saying he had some business to take care of at the mainland branch of InGen and will be gone for a couple of days."

"It's probably just an excuse," Owen says. "He probably wanted to be close enough to see what would happen after last night but far enough away to where he could run if he needed to."

"That's what I was thinking, too. He should be back in time for when we have everything ready though. It'll probably take us a week or two and we should do this when Liv is on the island anyway."

Claire is so quick and efficient that it blows Owen's mind away. When she used her organization and managing skills on their date it was a pain, but now it is a lifesaver. He can't imagine trying to do all of this on his own. And there's one more thing he needs help with. "Hey, Claire, can you…." He thinks it over one last time and yes, this is definitely something he wants to do. Liv is definitely worth it and he doesn't want to lose her. "Can you also help me find out what I need to do in order to adopt a sixteen-year-old?"

He expects her to be surprised but she's not. Maybe she saw this coming and planned for it too, because she just smiles and says, "Of course."

He wishes their date had gone well, because right now he could kiss her.

It's late by the time Owen gets back to his bungalow, even more exhausted than before. Barry is conked out on his couch so he heads towards the bedroom to check on Liv. She's awake, surprisingly, sitting up in bed and looking down at something in her hands with an unreadable expression. He pauses just inside the doorway, unsure what to do or what to say.

"This was taken the day I was born," Liv says without looking up, her voice sounding flat, almost dead, and it scares him a little bit. She's always so full of life. "It's the only family photo I have, of probably the only time they both actually acted like my parents."

Owen walks closer, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and takes the picture from her. It's a picture of Vic and a woman Owen has never seen before, with long brown hair and brown eyes a lot like Liv's. The woman is sitting in a bed wearing a hospital gown and holding a baby in her arms, a little baby Liv. Both she and Vic are looking down at Liv with soft smiles on their faces. It's the kindest look he's ever seen on Vic.

How can her parents go from this to not caring about her at all?

"This is probably the only good moment we had together as a family and I can't even remember it." She takes the photo back and places it almost reverently on the nightstand. "They're my family but now I want nothing more than to get away from both of them." She looks up at him, broken, lost, tears brimming in her eyes. "Did…Did I do something wrong?"

Owen's heart breaks and he slides over on the bed, resting his back against the headboard, and pulling Liv into his side. She clings to him, burying her face in his shoulder, and he can feel her shake as she cries. "No, no, honey, you didn't do anything wrong. They did it wrong. They're your parents. They're supposed to love you unconditionally for the rest of their lives. They're supposed to take care of you and help you grow, but they didn't do any of those things. They failed you, not the other way around. They let their own selfish desires get in the way and that's not fair to you. That's not what parents are supposed to do, so they lost the right to be your parents." He sweeps his fingers through her hair and places a kiss on the top of her head. "And since they don't want you, I guess that means I can have you."

She pulls back abruptly to stare up at him. "What do you mean?" There's hope in her voice, but it's more like she's afraid to hope.

"While you were sleeping I went to Claire."

She bites her lip. "You told her?"

"Had to, Liv," he tells her gently, hoping she won't get mad. "You want to get away from your parents, we needed to tell someone, and there's no better person to help us than her. She and I got everything set up. There's a social worker who's going to come in tomorrow on one of the boats and she's going to look into your case. Once we take care of Vic we'll see what we can do about your mom and then…."

"And then what?" she asks, barely above a whisper.

He smiles. "I'm going to adopt you."

Her eyes grow almost comically wide and it looks like she's hardly breathing. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really. Your parents may not want you but I do. I want you to be a part of my family." He cups the side of her face with one hand, wiping her tears away with is thumb. "I want to be your dad. I can't be your dad by blood but I can be your dad in all the ways that matter. So, what do you say?"

A part of him is kind of afraid she'll say no, even after everything they've said and done, but his worry kind of grows when she doesn't say anything. That is, until she's sitting up on her knees and throwing her arms around his neck in a hug. It's almost too tight but he doesn't care, just hugs her back as he feels that little knot in his chest loosen.

"Thank you," she says, sniffling loudly. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Shh, shh. It's okay. Everything's gonna be okay."

No matter what, he tells himself again. No matter what.

When Liv seems to be all cried out and drifting off to sleep again, Owen lays her back down on the bed, pulling the blankets up to her chin. He moves to leave, intending to try to get comfortable in his armchair, but she grabs his hand.

"Please stay," she says, voice groggy as sleep starts to slowly descend on her. "Please…Dad."

He fights with himself for a moment. A father and daughter sleeping in the same bed isn't a weird thing. It happens all the time, especially when the kid needs comfort, like after a nightmare. Still, Owen is keenly aware that he isn't actually Liv's dad and, to outsiders, he could look like a creepy pervert.

But he is her dad. In all the ways that matter. It's not like there really are any creepy, perverted feelings involved. He just wants to comfort her, to take care of her, and she needs it right now.

He squeezes her hand. "I'll be right back. Promise."

Gathering what he needs, he changes for bed in the bathroom, opting to wear a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt. He then climbs into bed beside Liv, getting under the blanket but leaving the sheets for only her. She's mostly out of it by now but she's awake enough to snuggle against him, letting out a content sigh as she drifts off the rest of the way into sleep. He chuckles softly, wrapping her in his arms and curling around her, like he's trying to protect her from the rest of the world.

It's what a real father would do.

Author's Note

*sigh* So many feels. Claire is now fully on board with this thing, we got a bit of Lowery, they got security footage so Liv is definitely getting away from Vic, they're all set to try to get her away from her mom, and Owen is going to adopt her. I'm sure you saw that last bit coming.

Next chapter will be on Sunday. They'll be all set to move in on Vic, but will things go according to plan?

Hope you enjoyed, PLEASE REVIEW, and see you all next time!