Page 36 of The Girl Who Was Taken

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 verystupidperson,” 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.”

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