Page 21

Two Weeks Before the Abduction

Out with two friends tonight, the flirting had started an hour before.

First, the guy ordered them a round of lemon drop shots and waved when they all looked over.

Then, he’d said hi on the way to the bathroom, ignoring all of them but Diana.

With her two best friends, both size two and the ones who usually captured guys’ attention, Diana loved the spotlight tonight .

He was older. Maybe a grad student, and Diana was happy to expand outside the circle they always hung with.

It was a drag to see her two friends flirt with a group of guys and casually pick the ones they thought were cutest. Diana was left with the scraps.

The quiet guys who also hung in the shadows and waited for the end of the night to see what was left. Diana was it.

Tonight, though, things were different. She was finally living the college social lifestyle, crushing on a guy who was into her from the beginning, not by default.

He was with another couple, a guy and a girl who were sitting next to him at the bar. They both were obviously in on what was happening.

“Are you going to talk to him,” one of her friends asked.

“I don’t know,” Diana said. “He looks older.”

“Probably a grad student.”

In the middle of their discussion, he waved his arm, inviting her over. Diana’s eyes widened, and he waved harder. He gave her a look. Come here. I gotta beg you?

Her friends laughed and pushed her out of their circle. “Go! Lover Boy calls,” her friends teased.

Diana, drink in hand, walked shyly toward him.

“I’ve only been buying you drinks all night,” he said when she was close enough.

“Thanks for the shots,” Diana said.

“I’m Casey,” the guy said.

“Diana. ”

The bartender lined up four shot glasses and poured them full with a sticky red concoction.

Casey pulled them over. “Fuzzy navels. Here.” He handed a shot to Diana.

The couple next to him grabbed the remaining shot glasses and held them up.

“These are my friends,” Casey said. “Nate and Nicole. This is Diana.”

“Cheers,” Nicole said, and they all tilted their heads and slammed the shots.

“I’m so friggin’ buzzed,” Diana said. She took the shot in one swallow and laughed. “God, that’s good.”

“I could drink these all night,” Casey said. “Or those lemon drop shots.”

“Yeah,” Diana said. “Those are good, too.”

“Sit down with us.”

Diana took a seat. They had to yell over the music. “You go to school here?” Casey asked.

“Yeah. You?”

Casey nodded. “I’m a grad student.”

“Really?” Diana asked. “In what?”

“Math.”

“Oh God! I hate math.”

“Me too,” he said.

Casey ordered more drinks and they talked for thirty minutes.

He was so unlike the other guys she’d met at school who talked mostly to their friends and never directly to her.

Casey asked all about her. When Diana had to use the bathroom he went with her, then waited when he was finished so they could walk back together.

After another twenty minutes, Diana’s friends came over .

“We’re taking off,” they said.

“Okay,” Diana said.

Casey cocked his head to the side. “Total drag. But if you’ve gotta go, maybe we could hook up next week or something.” Casey looked at his friends, then back to Diana. “Unless you wanna hang for a while here. I’ll make sure you get home okay.”

Diana smiled at Casey, then looked at her friends. “I’m gonna stay for a while.”

It felt so good to be here at the end of the night, to be the one staying behind to talk with a guy while her friends headed back to the dorm.

“Cool,” her friend said. “See you when you get back.” Their faces carried smirks as they walked away.

“If you gotta go, that’s cool,” Casey said.

“No,” Diana said, brushing a hand at her friends. “They’re just going to get burritos.”

Casey held up his beer and Diana clinked her vodka. “Cheers,” he said.

Diana took a sip. God, he’s gorgeous.

One o’clock came in a hurry. The bartenders hollered last call and a rush of students lined the bar to order one final drink before they spilled into the streets and headed to after-hours.

There was talk of a Theta Chi late night.

Diana laughed as the crowd squashed her and Casey into the bar to place their orders.

“We’re gonna get trampled,” Casey said. He took her hand and pulled her away from the bar, off her stool and toward the door.

Diana felt his fingers intertwine with her own, the way she always saw couples on campus hold hands.

She allowed him to pull her out the front door.

The summer air was thick and sticky. Buzzed and dizzy from the shots, she felt herself walk the sidewalk with heavy, wobbly steps toward the end of the building and into the walkway that separated the bar from the dry cleaners next door.

Casey pulled her into the narrow space. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to get outta there.”

“Yeah,” Diana said. “I needed some air.”

“You thinking about going to the frat party?”

Diana shrugged. “I don’t know. You want to?”

Casey came close to her, until her back was against the bricks. “Not really.”

His face was close enough to smell the beer on his breath. Cigarettes, too. As if he could read her mind he said, “You smell like fuzzy navels.”

This made her laugh. “That’s ’cause you bought me, like, four of them.”

Casey moved closer. “Smells good.”

Diana stared at him until she closed her eyes and felt his lips on hers.

She opened her mouth and their tongues explored in a sloppy, drunk kiss.

She grabbed his head, ran fingers through his hair the way she always thought she would when she found a guy she really liked.

They kissed on and off for fifteen minutes until the bar started to empty.

Diana rubbed her nose back and forth on his. Stared like a puppy dog into his eyes. “Wanna go to that party?”

“Not really,” Casey said, giving her a quick kiss. “ We could go back to my place. My roommates already headed home.”

“Those were your roommates?”

“Yeah. Three of us live in a house on Park Street. They’ll probably have people over, so we could hang for a while. Unless you wanna do something else.”

Diana kissed him. “No. Let’s go back to your place.”

He grabbed her hand again and they found his car. Casey opened the passenger-side door and Diana climbed in and fastened her seat belt. Through her buzz she knew she shouldn’t be in a car after so much to drink.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” she asked when Casey climbed in.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s not far.”

They pulled from the curb and headed to Casey’s apartment. They stopped at a light and he again took her hand, held it while it rested on the console between them. The light turned green and he took off, then slowed and squinted his eyes.

“My roommates,” Casey said, lifting his chin toward the windshield.

Diana saw them strolling on the sidewalk. “Oh, yeah.”

He pulled to the curb and Diana rolled down her window. Casey leaned over, placed his hand on Diana’s knee. “Hey, drunkos. Wanna ride?”

“Thought you were headed to the frat party?” the girl named Nicole said.

“We decided to go back to the apartment instead. Get in.”

Casey’s friends climbed into the backseat and Casey took off .

“Diana,” Nicole said from the backseat. “Did this guy really convince you to come home with him? He’s a total pervert who likes really strange things.”

“My best friends,” Casey said. “Throwing me under the bus.”

“Ah,” Diana said. “He seems trustworthy.”

“If you believe that, then you’re a very stupid person,” Nicole said in a sullen voice. Serious. The drunkenness gone like it never existed.

Diana looked at Casey with a furrowed brow. Casey stared back with dead eyes and a solemn face. It was last thing Diana saw before the bag came over her head.

She cried uncontrollably until the duct tape covered her mouth and muted her whimpering.

During the brief scuffle in the front seat, they managed to secure her hands with zip ties, pulling them behind her back and clicking them tight.

The car ride was fast and nauseating as Diana rocked back and forth under the momentum of sharp turns and sudden acceleration.

Without her seat belt, and with her hands behind her back, she had no control over her body and she heard them laugh when she banged her head on the passenger-side window during a hard left turn.

Finally, the car screeched to a stop, skidding on gravel.

“Get her out,” she heard Casey say in his new voice. The sweetness was gone. “Bring her around back.”

Doors opened, hands grabbed her under the arms and pulled her from the car .

“Come on, stupid,” Diana heard the girl say. What was her name, she couldn’t remember now. “This is gonna be fun.”

Still buzzed, if not outright drunk, Diana felt them drag her.

She tried to keep up, tried to get her feet underneath her, but they were pulling too fast. She recognized the terrain as rock or pea gravel.

They roughly sat her in a chair and quickly wrapped her with something, securing her to the chair.

The material spun around her calves and arms and chest. Then the bag came off her head and she took a second to gather her setting.

Maybe a warehouse, or an old building. She wasn’t sure.

The bricks were crumbling and there was a hole in the roof.

Casey stood in front of her. He stared with those dead eyes, his head tilting to the side. “You said you wanted to come home with me. Welcome home.”

Diana tried to talk through the duct tape, tears spilling from her eyes.

Casey shook his head. “I don’t want to hear you talk. It might ruin it for me. I want to keep the sweet voice in my head from back when you were digging me. It helps me through the difficult time you and I are about to have.”

Diana looked around. The other two were out of view but she could feel their presence behind her. She noticed a ratty mattress on the ground.

Casey’s face took on a devilish look. “But one thing I can’t tolerate is snot and tears. So I’ll give you ten minutes to get yourself together. When I come back, I want my sweet girl back, you understand?”

He turned and walked through a door at the far end of the room. When he was gone, Diana looked down at her body and realized the material they had secured her with was plastic wrap—clear cooking plastic wound tightly around her torso and legs. It looked eerie and disgusting and suffocating.