Page 88 of The Girl Who Was Taken

“Megan, tell me what you’ve learned.”

“I know you think my kidnapping is related to Nancy Dee and Paula D’Amato,” Megan said. “I know you’ve tried to find ways to link them and find all the similarities between us. And there are, Livia. So many things are the same. But only when you pointed out those similarities did I notice the differences. The startling ways our cases are unalike.”

“I don’t understand,” Livia said. “What are you talking about, Megan?”

“The book,” Megan gave a disgusted laugh. “It’s such bullshit. My celebrity? Fake. Based on a lie. All the girls the book has helped? Nonsense. I used to help girls, back when I ran that retreat. I helped girls fit into high school. That was real. This? Everything I havenow from that book, none of it helps anyone. It’s all a lie.”

“What’s a lie, Megan? What lie are you talking about?”

“Nancy and Paula were both abused. Sexually assaulted, for months and years. It sickens me. Paula was beaten until she died.”

“I know, Megan. It’s awful.”

“Yes. But why was I never touched?”

Livia squinted in the darkness.

“He never assaulted me, Livia. Never physically touched me. Dr. Mattingly initially believed I suppressed the abuse, hid it under the effects of the ketamine. But that’s not it, Livia. The physicians who examined me confirmed there was no sexual abuse. No sexual intercourse. Dr. Mattingly speculated that I repressed the memory of other sexual abuse, and he has worked carefully with me during therapy sessions to tease these buried memories from me. The problem is, they don’t exist. He never assaulted me, Livia. So much is similar between Nancy and Paula and me. But so much is different.”

“I believe you, Megan. He never assaulted you. I believe that. But you never claimed he assaulted you. Not in your book or your interviews. That was never part of your story. You don’t have to defend this point with me or anyone else. There was no lie, Megan. You didn’t lie.”

“Yes, I did. Not about the abuse. But it helps explain everything else. It makes everything else line up. It exposes my lie for what it is—a goddamn farce that’s taken on a life of its own. For a while, even I believed it.”

Livia walked closer. “Tell me. What lie, Megan?”

“About the bunker.”

Livia waited as Megan continued to play the flashlight over the ghost houses around them. Clearly, her mind was confused and overloaded, processing too many things at once.

“No, Megan. Youwereat that bunker. There’s proof of your being there.”

“Iwasthere. He brought me there. But I never escaped.”

Livia watched Megan. Tried to read her eyes through the darkness and diagnose if this poor young girl had gone mad from the recent events and the possibility of her abduction being tied to Nancy Dee and Paula D’Amato, two girls who had turned up dead.

“Of course you escaped, Megan. You are here now. You’re safe. There is no lie.”

“No,” Megan said, finally taking her eyes off the houses and staring at Livia. “You don’t understand. I am here. I am alive. Nancy and Paula are not. But I’m alive not because Iescapedfrom that bunker. It’s because he let me go.”

CHAPTER 54

August 2016

The Night of the Abduction

The headlights of Nicole’s car shined into the backseat of the Buick Regal. The girl had settled down now. She no longer kicked at the door or pounded her shoulder into the window. Casey was certain she was lying on the backseat, sleeping in a coma-like slumber. He’d seen it before.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s time.”

He climbed from Nicole’s car and opened the back door of the Regal. The girl was indeed unconscious, lying like a drunk in the backseat, burlap over her head and zip ties securing her wrists behind her back, one leg splayed across the torn vinyl seat and the other limp on the floorboard.

“What’s wrong with her?” Nicole asked. She and Casey were bleached by the headlights from Nicole’s car, which also highlighted Megan’s unconscious body.

“Just taking a little nap.”

Nicole hesitated. “You give her something?”

“She’ll be good as new in about an hour.”

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