“Is something wrong?’ Jared asked Chris as they cruised down Old Turnpike
Road, “You´ve been quiet since I arrived.’
Chris hung his head. “You remember my sister Julia?’
“Yeah?’
“She´s got leukemia.’
Jared almost crashed the car. “What!?’
“Yeah,’ Chris nodded, “there´s no way we´ll be able to pay for the medical
bills.’
“Well, if this works out well, maybe it won´t be such a problem after all,’
Jared said optimistically. He pointed to the right side of the road ahead of
them. “That´s roughly the spot where they found her car, they said on the
news this morning,’ he explained, “They´ve taken it in for a more thorough
examination back in the capital. They also said they looked for a square mile
in every direction but were unable to find any footprints, so they´re
figuring…’
“…she took a ride somewhere,’ Chris finished it for him. “Any leads with
that?’
“Not when I last heard,’ Jared parked the car.
“So why are we stopping here, then?’ Chris inquired.
“Just to see if there´s anything the cops might have missed,’ Jared
explained, “They´re not always the most complete guys out there, you know.’
“True,’ Chris conceded. The two of them hopped out into the rain, which had
started the previous night and was going to continue at least through
tomorrow, the weatherman had said. They huddled around the spot Jared had
pointed out and began scanning the ground for anything that might give away
what had happened to Jennifer and Carol.
“Shoulder looks pretty clean; no signs of any struggle,’ Jared announced.
“Same here on the embankment,’ Chris called up from slightly down the
hillside.
“So nothing on nothing, perfect,’ Jared commented.
“Oh well, what else were we going to expect?’ Chris commented, plopping down
on the guard rail nearby. “That a happy ending would come about? Some people
may still believe in those kind of things, but…’
“There´s got to be something here, some kind of clue that nobody´s seen
before so far,’ Jared strode down the embankment himself and started combing
through some of the bushes, “A kidnapping scene is never perfectly neat.’
“Oh come on Jared, give it up, there´s no way we´ll ever be able to…’ before
Chris could finish his rebuke, his eyes fell upon a gray Buick that drove by
on the roadway next to them. Most noticeably, he noticed the rather
attractive black haired girl driving it—and the masked figure behind her with
a hand over her mouth as she drove. It took Chris a minute to register he´d
seen what he´d seen, but once it sunk in, it sunk in hard.
“Jared!’ he called to his friend, “get up here and let´s get going! I think
I just saw one of the kidnappers go by; they´re at it again!’
“You sure?’ Jared puffed as he came up the slope.
“You´d better believe it; I´ll explain on the way,’ Chris told him as they
jumped in Jared´s car, “Just follow the Buick ahead of us…but don´t be too
conspicuous.’
“And how conspicuous is too conspicuous?’ Jared wagered as he pulled out into
traffic after their quarry.
“Uh, I´d say about three-quarters of a mile,’ Chris wagered. “Just don´t act
like we´re following them.’
The boys followed the Buick for at least a good five miles. Their subject
didn´t go too fast, and it looked like the kidnappers´ latest captive wasn´t
putting up much of a struggle. Finally, at about the most remote part of the
road, it made an abrupt turn to the left and went up a hillside into the deep
woods. “Follow him,’ Chris urged.
“He seems to be stopping; any closer and I´d break your conspicuousness
rule,’ Jared argued. He parked the car on the shoulder again. “From here on,
I think we go on foot; he´ll be suspicious if he hears a car,’ he said,
hopping out again.
“I´ll buy that,’ Chris agreed. They sneaked up into the bushes opposite of
where the car now stood idling. From this new vantage point, they could see a
struggle of kinds going on inside; the kidnapper had something to the girl´s
face, apparently. After a while, the struggling stopped, and the man started
tying the girl up. Once he was finished, he hopped out and took several deep
breaths. Chris and Jared crouched down as far as they could, hoping to stay
out of sight. The man pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Base, this is Vince,’ he
said into it, “Prepare another place for a Miss Cassie Boyd from Vestal, I
estimate, oh, around forty million.’ After some silence he said, “Sure, I
understand, no more pickups till the Quinn business blows over. Makes perfect
sense. Right. I´ll be there in about five minutes, we´ll decided what to do
from there.’ He jumped back into the car and drove off down the crude dirt
road before them. Chris and Jared climbed out of the bushes once he was out
of sight. “Well, at least she´s still alive,’ Chris said, relieved, “I had a
nightmare last night that they killed her already.’
“You´re really that hung up on her, huh Chris?’ Jared asked him, almost
amused.
“I guess you could say that, Jared,’ Chris conceded, “I kept thinking about
her for hours before I actually did fall asleep.’
“Well, she awaits down the golden road,’ Jared pointed to the tire tracks
leading off into the distance, “If we hurry, we may have her out of there by 4
o´clock.’
“All right, but understand, Jared, no Chuck Norris stuff where we get there,’
Chris cautioned him as they started following the tire tracks, “The last thing
we want to do is get killed and ruin her chances of escape.’
“Hey, since when was the last time I let myself get out of control?’ Jared
posed. Chris rolled his eyes.
Three and a half minutes later, roughly, they came upon the sight of a cabin
of some kind, with several vehicles parked out front. “This is it!’ Jared
exclaimed gleefully, “Big reward coming in…’
“Get down!’ Chris pulled him to the side of the trees just as two men with
very large guns walked out; a second later, and they would have been spotted.
“Are you crazy!’ he berated Jared, “This is just what I was talking about…!’
“Relax, Chris, I see your point,´ Jared said, “And you´re right, we can´t
just go in. Fortunately, I came prepared for this situation.’
“How?’
Jared pulled out a cell phone. “Got it off Greg, said I needed it for an
emergency. Well, this is the emergency.’ He dialed 9-1-1. “Hello, operator,
get me the police. I think I might know the location Jennifer Quinn´s being
held at.’
Jennifer was crying. Crying harder than she ever had before in her life.
The fear was now almost unbearable, seeping into ever nook and cranny of her
being. She was throwing herself with almost demonic fervor against her bonds,
begging, pleading that they´d somehow give way. “Please, please, let me get
out of here!’ she thought frantically to herself. Again, she was screaming,
but absolutely no sound was coming out. It felt like steel had been welded
across her mouth now, and the silk scarf that had been forced between her
teeth was pulling almost intolerably at the corners of her mouth. The cloth
blindfold had been tied tight enough so that her head was now hurting from it.
And again there was the persistent fact that her belt was restricting the
depths of her breaths.
“Why did this have to happen to me!?’ she thought to herself, “Why couldn´t
it have happened to some spoiled brat who took her wealth and beauty for
granted; I´m not meant for this!’
Something brushed against her right shoulder. Although she could no longer
see anything, period, Jennifer knew it was Carol, trying her best to comfort
her. I worked, slowly her hysteria started to calm down. Carol had always
been a strong comforting force in her life. Whenever a pet had died, or a
relationship had gone sour, or when homesickness on campus had crept in, Carol
had always been there to perk her up. And Jennifer was now gladder than ever
that her friend was with her now.
Carol settled her head down on Jennifer´s shoulders. Jennifer in turn
lowered her head on top of hers. Relaxed, but still crying, she once again
turned her attention around the room. She´d had a pretty good look at the
positions of her fellow captives before she´d been blindfolded, and knew who
was where. Besides herself, Stephanie and Mandy were the most hysteric,
struggling and mmmfffing like there was no tomorrow. Michelle and Donna were
trying to scream but weren´t struggling. Rachel and Caitlin were struggling
but weren´t screaming. The rest of the girls were resigned to their fates and
not doing anything.
The pounding rain outside felt like the migrane headache rushing
through Jennifer´s skull. Time had slowed to a standstill; she knew hours had
gone by, but it seemed like only a minute ago that she and Carol had been
dragged into this God-forsaken place and tied to their chairs. Her arms had
lost all feeling from the ropes and tape, and also from being pressed up
against the back of the chair for as long as they had been. Her legs were
quickly going through the same routine. She didn´t know how much longer the
rest of her body could take.
“Think a happy thought,’ she thought to herself, “That´ll take your mind off
this mess.’ She took deep breaths through her nose and tried to relax her
mind well enough to do this. Eventually, she got the picture in her head of
when she was fourteen, and she and Carol were relaxing on the beach at Lake
Ontario with her high school friends Laurie and Sophie. That had been one of
the best summers of her life, and…
But it was to be short-lived, as the phone rang above. Jennifer´s attention
snapped upstairs. One of the kidnappers whose name she hadn´t heard yet
answered it. “Yeah?’ he said. A minute later, he yelled, “WHAT!!??’ After a
long silence, he went on, “Well, how long do you estimate we have?’
Jennifer´s spirits started rising; this sounded like help might be on the way!
“OK, we´ll get everything squared away as soon as we can,’ the kidnapper
said. After another long pause, he said, “Uh, not to question your authority,
but do you really think all that´s necessary in this case? I mean, she´s
not…’ A loud burst of sound from the phone convinced him to say, “Okay,
you´re in charge. We´ll do that.’ and hung up. “Hey guys!’ he shouted to the
other kidnappers, apparently.
“Is there a problem, Butch?’ came Larry´s voice.
“There sure as hell is!’ Butch exclaimed, “Somebody´s found out we´re here!
We´ve got to move the girls to the backup area and fast.’
“How fast?’
“Only thirty-five minutes.’
“We can´t get all of them loaded and away in thirty-five minutes!’ argued
another unknown kidnapper.
“Okay, you´re right,’ Butch said in resignation, “We´ll leave some behind.
Nobody too important, though; he´d hand us to the cops if we did that.’
“What about the new one?’
“Might as well leave her; she´s probably not worth too much,’ Butch said.
“Get everything ready and we´ll get loading done as soon as possible.’
The kidnappers started scurrying all over the upstairs floors. Their heavy
footprints drowned out any further speech they made. Jennifer was both
thrilled and worried by what they´d said. Help WAS on the way—and that
outweighed the bad—but would it be there in time? She´d been surprised when
she´d heard them say something about “the new one.’ Apparently Danielle and
Michelle had been right: they cycled girls in and out on a regular basis.
Now what was going to happen to all of them? They said some where going to be
left behind, but who? Jennifer knew well that she was too valuable to be one
of the lucky ones. She hoped she and Carol wouldn´t have to be separated.
The answers were coming, she knew, when the sound of the kidnappers coming
back down the stairs overshadowed the rain. “Good morning, girls,’ Dick said
as they came in. Jennifer heard the light come on, but was disheartened to
find the find her blindfolds worked perfectly and she was left in pitch
darkness. “Bad news,’ the kidnapper continued, “Our little extended stay here
is going to have to be cut short. We need to move to new quarters, and some
of you won´t be coming with us. The surprise is…’ it was here that Jennifer
heard Danielle to her left and Beth from across the room give muffled yelps of
surprise, followed by a long release—chloroform, “You won´t know until you
wake up whether you´re coming or going. Just wanted to make it more
interesting. Just so you know, you won´t be any more comfortable, though.’
One by one, the other girls in the room were chloroformed unconscious.
Jennifer steeled herself, waiting for the moment it would happen to her as
well. Carol was pulled off her shoulder, much to her dismay, and chloroformed
with a loud squeak. The dead silence in the room told Jennifer she was next.
She took as deep a breath as she could, hoping to hold off the total blackness
of unconsciousness, but a rag was pushed over her face before she could draw a
full breath.
But the substance on the rag wasn´t quite chloroform. It was something else.
Something that made Jennifer´s head start spinning like there was no
tomorrow. She was fully in charge of her functions, but yet at the same time
had no control over them. A feeling of—for lack of a better term—extreme
psychodelia—swept through her. Colors blared through her mind, and her
muscles relaxed far too much. It was a bad acid trip without any acid.
“We´re not going to knock you out just yet, Miss Quinn,’ Dick whispered in
her ear, “But we do want you confused and dazed enough so that you don´t fight
back. You see, our employer has made a firm request that you be made
incredibly comfortable for the rest of your time with us, even more so than
your friends here, so in a minute we´re going to fix you so that you won´t
have to waste your time and energy struggling anymore. It´ll be rather hard
to get used to at first, but you´ll like it. Trust me. Because you don´t
have any choice.’