Page 88

Carrie woke.

I’m alive.

She blinked, her breathing keeping time with her heart. Struggling through the weakening vertigo, she knew she’d been abducted.

How long have I been here?

Shifting on a reeking mattress, she felt a subterranean dankness. She was adjusting to the weak light seeping from the letter-sized, chest-high slot in the thick, insulated door. It resembled a mail slot and was part of a one-foot square portal in the door. The door was locked from the outside. She was confined in a room no bigger than a public bathroom stall. In one corner, packaged sandwiches, junk food and bottled water. In another, a plastic bucket with rolls of toilet paper, wipes and sanitary products.

Emily!

Scrambling to her feet, Carrie tried the solid heavy door in vain, shouldering against it. It was locked from the outside. Slapping it, placing her head to the slot, she cried out.

“Where’s my baby? Help! Please!”

After pleading for several moments, Carrie listened.

The silence was absolute. No life elsewhere. Nothing. As if her small prison were isolated in a nether region. Turning, slamming her back to the door, she slid to the floor, sobbing.

Why is this happening?

She’d been abducted but didn’t know by whom.

The sequence leading up to it came to her in snatches: being told Luke was hurt, putting Emily into the car, rushing toward the hospital. The storm raging, a car slowing so close in front of her, forcing her to stop on the shoulder.

Carrie had waited, the car’s hazard lights flashing with urgency. Her wipers thrumming in the rain.

Then the driver’s door opened.

A lone figure got out wearing a dark hooded poncho with a ball cap. The rain’s intensity made it impossible to see details about them as they approached her like a specter, gesturing for Carrie to lower her driver’s window.

Reasoning there might be danger ahead, or someone needed help, Carrie opened her window. Instantly, a stranger’s hand thrust toward her, gripping a phone—no, not a phone—clicking, sizzling at her neck, convulsing, her muscles rendered helpless.

A Taser—she’d been Tasered.

She was taken from her car and put into the car ahead—the peel of tape, gagging her mouth, binding her wrists. A hood was placed over her head and she was immobilized, fearing for Emily. Taken prisoner in darkness, fighting to breathe against the crushing force of the tape. Driving and driving, finally stopping. Steadied, a viselike grip on her arm, blind under the hood, being guided slowly inside somewhere smelling like a gas station.

No words were spoken.

As she slowly descended steps into the cold, a door opened, the tape on her wrists was painfully removed and she collapsed on the mattress. After she’d removed the hood and her gag, she must have passed out.

Now, rubbing her mouth, the impact jolted her.

Where’s Emily?

Where’s Luke?

Carrie took stock. Afraid, helpless and cold, she reached for the blanket at the foot of the mattress. Tugging it, she realized it wasn’t entirely a blanket.

Clothing tumbled from the folds.

A note was fixed to them.

Remove your clothes. All of them. Put these on and you will not be hurt.

Examining the clothing, Carrie saw it was worn jeans, a shirt, underwear and a bra.

She swallowed.

Looking more closely at the shirt, she noticed stains.

Dark, reddish brown.

Dried blood.