Abducted (Lizzy Gardner Series #1)

by T. R. Ragan

  i2Hotti: Why? Did you miss me?

  Brit35: no

  i2Hotti: admit it...you missed me

  Brit35: ok I missed u

  i2Hotti: Have u bought a webcam yet?

  Brit35: mom said she’d think about it

  i2Hotti: Don’t u have $$ of your own?

  Brit35: i have a b-day soon

  i2Hotti: i know

  Brit35: how dyk?

  i2Hotti: dyk?

  Brit35: LOL acronym for “do you know”

  i2Hotti: i know a lot of things about u

  Brit35: Facebook?

  i2Hotti: ya

  Brit35: ROTFL

  i2Hotti: swim practice today?

  Brit35: yeah lame

  i2Hotti: Why?

  Brit35: new coach is a creeper

  i2Hotti: what does he do?

  Brit35: he stares

  i2Hotti: because u r so pretty

  Silence

  i2Hotti: r u there?

  Brit35: yes

  i2Hotti: u should get a webcam

  Brit35: why?

  I2Hotti: cuz I want to see u at when we chat

  I2Hotti: then i can dream about u

  Silence

  i2Hotti: still there?

  Brit35: i’m here

  i2Hotti: anything wrong?

  Brit35: i have braces now

  Brit35: i look like a freak

  Brit35: i don’t want u to see me

  i2Hotti: i like girls with braces

  Brit35: liar

  Brit35: hold on

  Brit35: i have to shut my door

  Brit35: brb

  i2Hotti: brb?

  Brit35: LOL

  Brit35: “be right back”

  Brit35: see, already back

  i2Hotti: that was quick. parents r fighting again?

  Brit35: yes

  i2Hotti: about?

  Brit35: lizzy

  i2Hotti: lizzy?

  Brit35: my aunt

  i2Hotti: why?

  Brit35: dad thinks she’s a loony bird

  i2Hotti: what does mom think?

  Brit35: mom wants to help her

  i2Hotti: what do you think?

  Brit35: i like her

  Brit35: she’s hecka fun to be with

  i2Hotti: i want to be with u

  Brit35: my parents wouldn’t like it

  i2Hotti: they don’t have to know.

  Silence

  I2Hotti: think about it?

  Brit35: i better go now

  i2Hotti: tomorrow night, same time?

  Brit35: i’ll be here

  i2Hotti: sweet dreams

  Brittany logged off and walked to her window. She hadn’t wanted to end her conversation with i2Hotti but she could hear Mom walking around upstairs. Mom liked to randomly pop in to see what she was doing. She didn’t allow Brittany to lock her door. If Mom knew she was talking to an older boy she’d go ballistic.

  Brittany met i2Hotti on the Internet about a month ago. She’d never met him in person, but he sent her a picture after asking her to friend him on Facebook. If she ever did get in trouble for talking to him, it would be worth it. He was hot with a capital H.

  She didn’t know why he liked her. She wasn’t beautiful. Certainly not the sort of girl who stood out in a crowded room, although Mom told her she was a natural beauty and could easily be a model—something all moms said.

  Outside, the wind was blowing so hard Brittany thought the oak tree in the front yard might fall and crash right through the house at any moment. She peered into the dark, scanning the street below to see if the SUV was there tonight. For the past three nights she’d seen a man sitting in a blue SUV parked across the street. She rubbed her arms, glad to see he wasn’t there. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was Coach Sullivan. Next time she saw the car she planned to figure out exactly what kind of car it was so she could compare it to Coach Sullivan’s car. Creeper.

  Monday, February 15, 2010 9:32 PM

  He looked at his watch. Time to get back to Sophie. Just one last look before he left. The light was on. He knew she was in there. Come on, show yourself. Too bad she was on the second floor. It would be quite challenging when it came time to take her home. He could use a challenge. Taking Sophie had been anticlimactic, but she would be waking soon and he wanted to be there when she opened her eyes.

  Excitement rippled through him as he recalled the first time he realized he could make a difference. It was twenty-one years ago when everything had become so clear, and he’d discovered his life’s purpose. He was a senior in high school—a young man trying hard to put his past behind him—when fate stepped in and made him watch Shannon die. That was the day he’d seen the light.

  Shannon Winters, a sophomore in high school and the girl of his dreams, had consumed his every thought back then. Wanting to impress her, he had taken his time finding out things about her: her favorite food, preferred music, what she liked to do in her free time, etcetera. Once he knew her well enough, he waited for her after school. She always took the shortcut behind the school building, cutting through the baseball field and then taking an alley to get home. He waited for her in the alley, surprising her with flowers and her favorite candy. Her brows had furrowed upon seeing him and that had confused him. Once she stopped frowning, she brusquely told him to keep the flowers since she didn’t want to carry them home. Then she took the jawbreaker from him, her absolute favorite candy, and popped it into her mouth.

  He told her he had something important he wanted to ask her, but she wouldn’t stay still. She was already headed home, and she wouldn’t slow her pace. He followed close on her heels. He was nervous, his palms sweaty. But he had prepared for too long to give up, so he spit it all out and told her how he felt about her. Then he asked her if she would go to a movie with him.

  That did the trick. She finally stopped, spun on her heels, and gave him a you-must-be-joking look. It didn’t take long for her annoying giggles to turn to full-out laughter.

  She was laughing at him. She laughed so hard, she began to choke on the jawbreaker. He couldn’t believe it. He’d bought her the big round jawbreaker because he loved her and now she was choking on it. At first he figured the jawbreaker would pop out of her mouth, the mouth he’d fantasized for too long about kissing and sticking his tongue down. Assuming the candy would pop out eventually, he watched her face turn red. He knew she might yell at him for not doing anything to help her. Whatever.

  Instead of feeling angry or scared, the whole crazy situation fascinated him. He especially enjoyed the way her big brown eyes bulged from their sockets as panic set in. He couldn’t believe it when she pointed at her throat. The bitch wanted him to do something about her problem. She actually wanted him to help her after she’d laughed at him, humiliated him. That’s when the whole wild scene began to make his insides tingle, especially his balls. He’d gotten hard quick. The redder her face got, the harder he became until he could hardly stand it. Then she turned blue and three shades of purple. She made some crazy garbled noises that made him want to pop the candy out and put something else in her mouth instead. He was hot. Nothing had ever affected him like that before. Not porn on the Internet, not Dad’s Playboy magazines, nothing. By the time her fingers grasped onto his shirt, and her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, he was as hard as granite. She died right there in front of him.

  He’d never forgotten Shannon.

  Chapter 5

  Monday, February 15, 2010 9:36 PM

  Lizzy leaned into the steering wheel and tried to keep her eye on the divider. The road was curvy and slick from a light rain. Fog and a starless black sky weren’t helping matters. She pulled to the curb, turned on the overhead light, and looked at the map again.

  Even with the windows shut, Lizzy could hear around-the-clock traffic zooming across four lanes of freeway in the distance. She looked out the window, squinting to read the street sign in front of her. Vermont Street.

  A cold chill crept through
the crevices of her car. See you soon, Elizabeth. His voice kept creeping back into her subconscious. Damn him. She didn’t want to think about the call she received earlier. She didn’t want to think about him. Spiderman hadn’t come back. He couldn’t come back. He was either dead or in prison.

  “Louie, Louie” belted out from the backpack she used as a purse. She shook her head at the new ringtone. Brittany, her niece, liked to play little stunts on her, like setting the alarm on her cell phone to go off at random times or reprogramming her ringtone to play goofy songs. She dug around in her bag until she located her cell at the bottom. It was her sister. “Hi, Cathy. What’s up?”

  “Where are you?”

  Damn. Cathy was on to her. She knew Cathy would worry, but she couldn’t lie. “Lost in Auburn.”

  “I saw the AMBER Alert. That’s why you’re there, isn’t it?”

  “It was on the news?” Lizzy asked. “Damn. I was hoping to beat the crowd.”

  “I forbid you to visit the crime scene, Lizzy.”

  Lizzy snorted. “You sound like Dad.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because Jared Shayne is handling the case, and he called to let me know the kidnapper left me a personalized note. Either Spiderman is back in business, or I’m just really popular with the whole serial killer crowd.”

  Silence.

  “I’m a big girl, Sis. I’ve been writing in my journal every day,” she added with sarcasm. “I can handle this.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  Déjà vu. It was as if Dad had taken over her sister’s body. “Okay, you’re right,” Lizzy said. “I’m sorry. But if Spiderman is back and he’s leaving me personal notes, I can’t very well turn my back on these people, can I?”

  “I’m sorry for the little girl; I really am. It’s tragic, but you can’t do this to yourself, or to us. You’ve made tremendous progress over the past ten years, Lizzy. Just because you’re the one who got away that doesn’t mean you’re forever indebted to society and its victims. You’ve done your part, Lizzy. You’ve done all you can. It’s over.”

  But I didn’t save the girl without a voice. Hell, Lizzy thought, she couldn’t hear an unfamiliar sound without seeing the girl’s face in her mind’s eye: big brown eyes and that horrible garbled scream. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the images away. “Cathy, listen to me. I can handle this. I’ll be fine.” And yet the truth was, not even Lizzy was convinced of that.

  More silence, long and drawn out, until Cathy said, “What about Friday?”

  “What about it?”

  “Brittany is looking forward to seeing you.”

  “I wouldn’t miss picking her up from school and spending the evening with my favorite niece for anything.”

  “She’s your only niece.”

  “And my favorite.” Lizzy glanced at the directions on her lap and realized she was closer than she thought. She pulled away from the curb and made the next left on Picadilly. She could see the house at the end of a cul-de-sac. With all the emergency lights flashing it was hard to miss. A row of police cars served as a barricade and three unmarked sedans took up most of the sidewalk. She pulled up to the curb and turned off the ignition. “I’ve gotta go, Cathy. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  She clicked her phone shut and dropped it into her bag. Outside, a thick fog clung to the sidewalk. Neighbors peeked through their curtains as she passed by. She walked toward the Madison house and found herself imagining the kidnapper walking this same path.

  A breeze rattled the branches of the trees. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

  There were a few scattered bushes, but no fence around the perimeter or tall hedges to keep him hidden. Why would he pick this neighborhood? At the top of a hill? With only one escape route? Did he have a car? An accomplice? She’d seen enough of these cases from start to finish to know the kidnapper was probably in his early twenties or thirties, unless it was Spiderman, in which case he would be closer to forty by now.

  If it was a serial killer who had taken the girl, statistics stated he would not be married. Most serial killers were alienated, lonely, and withdrawn. And yet there were always exceptions to the rule. One thing was certain: if the perpetrator picked a house on the top of a hill with hardly any tree cover, then he’d been studying the house and the neighborhood for some time now. The perp probably spent so much time here that by the time he broke into the girl’s room he felt extremely confident and in control of the environment.

  The houses lining the cul-de-sac all looked alike; each dotted with a square patch of grass and lined with the same narrow walkway leading to the house. Lizzy made it as far as the front porch without being questioned, but that’s where the fun stopped. A young officer, about five foot seven, muscular and compact, square jaw, stood before the front entrance, unwilling to give her the slightest peek inside the house.

  She flashed him her PI license. He wasn’t impressed, not until Jared made an appearance on the other side of the doorway.

  The sight of him nearly took her breath away. Jared looked good in his dark suit, crisp white shirt, and dark tie. Standard fed attire. He should have mixed right in with the rest of the agents scouring the grounds, but he didn’t. He stood out like Gerard Butler in a gay bar, or any bar for that matter.

  “I’ve requested Ms. Gardner’s presence,” Jared told the officer. “Let her through.”

  She held her head high and walked inside, but not before giving the officer a smug look as she passed.

  The outside of the house looked like it could use a new coat of paint but the inside had an ultra-clean, recently remodeled appearance with wood floors stained a rich black walnut and cushiony furniture straight out of a Crate & Barrel catalog. To her left was the living room. A woman, most likely the mother of the abducted child, sat on an oversized couch lined in tailored navy and white-striped slipcovers. She looked somewhat familiar, but Lizzy couldn’t place the face.

  An agent, or maybe a police detective, she wasn’t sure, had made himself comfortable on a matching ottoman facing the woman. He had pen and paper in hand and he was taking notes. To Lizzy’s far right was the kitchen where a couple of crime-scene technicians dusted for prints.

  Jared gestured for Lizzy to head farther inside. Then he shut the door and stopped long enough to give her a quick once over before he said, “Thanks for coming.”

  What could she say to that? ‘Thanks for inviting me’ didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances, so she nodded and said, “Not a problem.” Her gaze fell to his ID clipped to his front pocket. “Special Agent. I had no idea.”

  “Understandable, considering we haven’t talked in a while.”

  She thought she detected a hint of hurt in his voice, and that surprised her, although it shouldn’t have. Twice she’d let him down. After her disappearance, he’d put off going to college right away because he wanted to help find her. According to her parents, he spent every day for the two months she was missing in the volunteer center answering phones, distributing flyers, and calling the media to make sure they didn’t forget about her. And then, against all odds, she returned and cut him out of her life as if he were a cancerous cyst. The flashbacks, the horrible cries of anguish, the torture, the mutilation, the blood: at the time, the images wouldn’t stop coming—they suffocated her. Fearing she was losing her mind, she told Jared to go to college, get a life, leave her alone.

  And after a few months of her continuous abuse, he did exactly that.

  For the next ten years, Lizzy teetered on the edge of insanity. Hell, who was she kidding, she was still teetering; only now everything that had happened to her was a blur...unless she was sleeping. That’s when shadows and faces came alive, just long enough to keep her from getting a good night’s sleep and moving on with her life. Seeing Jared tonight made her wish things could have turned out differently between them. But such was life. Shit happened.

  Jared was on the move, heading toward the back of
the house. She followed him. He still had a nice ass. And she still remembered how the tightness of his buttocks had felt beneath her fingertips when they made love for the last time all those years ago. She could easily count the number of times she’d had sex since—and she only needed one hand. It didn’t take long for the few guys she had dated to sense she had “issues” that needed to be dealt with before she could have any sort of meaningful relationship. Seeing Jared reminded her that nobody would ever compare to him. Apparently, he only got better with age. Pathetic. “Can I see the note?”

  “This way,” he said. He didn’t turn around, didn’t glance her way; he just kept walking, staying the course. One thing was clear: he hadn’t invited her here for idle chitchat. This wasn’t a reunion. He was a professional. He probably had a wife, two kids, and a house with a white-picket fence. It was no business of hers, but that didn’t stop her stomach from churning at the thought.

  Shoulders straight and tall, she followed him down the hallway and into the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Another FBI agent was in the room talking on his cell phone. He was a few inches taller than Jared and at least two decades older. He used his chin to gesture a hello. He must have known she was coming because he handed Jared a note, which had been sealed within a plastic bag, and then he continued with his conversation.

  Jared handed Lizzy the plastic bag. “That’s Jimmy Martin. He has a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

  Lizzy looked at the bag and tried to stop her hands from shaking. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about the note until this very moment. If she’d learned anything from being abducted and subjected to some of the worst acts of extreme cruelty, it was how to swallow all the bad shit whole, tamp it down, and pray it didn’t surface.

  She busied herself with looking around the bedroom since she wasn’t ready to read the note. The walls were painted a periwinkle blue with a funky chartreuse color accenting the wall space around the window. The window trim was painted a crisp white, with all the colors combining to give the room a fun, high-energy feeling. Brittany would love this room. There was a white built-in vanity with lots of space for makeup and other paraphernalia. In the far corner was a built-in desk with a large work surface and three deep storage drawers. The ceiling was covered with two rows of track lighting fixtures with halogen bulbs that shed a pure, white light around the room, which contrasted heavily with what had happened here in the past twenty-four hours. The cover on the bed was bunched up on one side and made of a white waffle-textured fabric. Throw pillows in shades of blue, chartreuse, and white were on the floor. A bedside table was littered with teen magazines and an open bag of potato chips. A magnetic board showcased the girl’s myriad ribbons and awards for various school activities. The window treatments were modern Roman blinds topped by arched valances made from a checked fabric that included all the colors of the room.