Page 89 of The Girl Who Was Taken

Casey reached in and pulled Megan—floppy-armed and bobbleheaded—out of the car and over his shoulder. He clicked on a flashlight and headed toward one of the houses.

“What are we doing with her?” Nicole asked.

Casey didn’t answer, just walked ahead. After a moment of hesitation, Nicole followed.

Away from the headlights it was pitch-black. Casey shined his flashlight onto the house numbers above the front door.67.He’d delivered Nancy Dee, a year before, to the house next to this one. And a year before that, he’d brought the Georgia Tech girl named Paula D’Amato to the house two doors down. He’d never had the courage to revisit those homes to see what remained. He knew the Dee girl was gone. But the others . . . he never gathered the nerve to check.

He walked through the front door with the unconscious girl over his shoulder and Nicole following.

“What are these empty houses doing here?” Nicole asked.

Casey kept moving. Toward the cellar door, which he kicked open with his foot and then started down.

“Casey, stop! This is screwed up.”

But he was gone a moment later. Swallowed by the dark stairwell.

CHAPTER 55

November 2017

Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

Megan took off, heading with her flashlight to one of the empty homes. Livia followed. Toward the dark house up the road from where Livia had parked, adjacent to the home bathed by the car’s headlights.

“You ran from that bunker,” Livia said. “The police know you were there. Your prints were found on the door handle. The burlap bag he placed over your head was found in that bunker. Your hair follicles were in the bag. That was a real thing, Megan. You did escape that night. You ran through the woods until Mr. Steinman found you on Highway Fifty-Seven.”

Megan, a few paces in front of Livia, spoke over her shoulder. “Yes. The bunker was real. It was all real. The forest, the highway. Mr. Steinman, too. But not the escape. The media created that. Dante Campbell and all the others, they wanted the sensationalism. The whole country took that myth and ran with it. I did,too. Embellishing the details in my book until I believed the story myself. But it’s not true.”

She continued walking toward the house, the beam of her flashlight widening on the brick exterior. Megan jogged to the back of the house and shined the light onto the English windows of the basement. The light shined straight through the windows and into the empty basement. No plywood. She redirected the light to the next house, across two acres of construction and clay and rubble. She ran for it.

Livia worked to keep up, stumbling over the rubble as she finally came alongside Megan. “Tell me about the bunker, Megan. What’s not true with your story?”

“Ididn’tescape. He left that bunker door open. He did it so I would run.”

“Why? Megan, why would he do that?”

“Because there was no other way.”

“Slow down and help me understand.”

Megan made it to the rear of the next house and shined her flashlight onto the English windows at the base of the foundation. The light stopped at the yellow-brown plywood that covered the windows. Livia saw the boarded windows and remembered immediately the section inMissingthat described such a thing. An eerie feeling came over her.

“This is it,” Megan said, bewilderment in her voice. “I found it.” She looked at Livia, locked eyes with her. “I know who took me, Livia. And this is where he kept me.”

CHAPTER 56

August 2016

The Night of the Abduction

Casey’s flashlight illuminated the bed in the corner, and he laid the girl onto the mattress. A chain slithered along the bare concrete, one end attached to the wall and the other to a thick leather cuff he fastened to her ankle. He pulled a knife from his pocket and snapped loose the zip ties that bound her wrists. She lay on her side, a deep, wheezing breath heavy with sedation expanding her chest every few seconds.

By the time he turned, Nicole had made it to the bottom of the stairs, staring at him in the darkness.

“Before you say anything,” he said, “I have to show you something. Promise, then we’ll talk. We just don’t have lots of time.”

She was shaking her head. “This is too sick. She’s gonna freak out down here.” Nicole looked at the boarded-up windows that were scantly visible in the residual glow of Casey’s flashlight.

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