This journey to West Bay was Nicole’s first meeting. Her only association with the club prior to her abduction had been through e-mails with Casey and the chat rooms where they sometimes went back and forth all night typing about the latest abduction in the news. Nicole obsessed with Casey over the details of these disappearances, her fetish for missing-persons cases birthed in childhood when Julie disappeared shortly after her ninth birthday.

There had been commotion and crying and hysteria that summer, and Nicole remembered going with her family to Colorado for the final time. Julie was not there, and no one would come right out and say where she was or what had happened to her. Instead, the adults used big words and promised one another Julie would be back. But besides in her dreams, Nicole never saw her cousin again. Thoughts about what happened to Julie became a festering curiosity Nicole secretly harbored. Livia had never showed much interest in their cousin. Julie was an only child and there was never a reason for Livia to tag along on the week-long trips out west, so when Julie disappeared it was sad and disturbing but affected Livia in a different manner than it had Nicole. A freshman in college then, Livia was older and smarter and understood things more completely than Nicole. What Livia never comprehended, however, was the loss Nicole felt after Julie was gone. Julie had no siblings of her own, and with ten years separating Nicole and Livia, the cousins considered each other sisters. There was a mutual understanding that they were learning things together, not simply being taught by an older sister or parent. And when Julie was gone, so too was Nicole’s accomplice. She was left by herself to figure it out.

The Cuttys never talked about Julie, and only lately had Nicole’s mother reconnected with Aunt Paxie. The sisters’ relationship was difficult for Paxie because seeing Nicole was a reminder of every milestone missed with Julie. With no one willing to answer Nicole’s questions, she took to the Internet for information about Julie. Years had passed, though, and what little she was able to find about her cousin’s disappearance was neither interesting nor pertinent. What Nicole did manage to locate was an online community just like herself—people obsessed with abduction and not afraid to talk about it. They spilled their secret thrill when someone went missing, offering theories about who took them and what was happening to them.

One night she met Casey in a chat room, and after two months of private messaging, Nicole was initiated into the Capture Club while she smoked a joint in the park. It was the craziest thing she’d done in her short life, trusting a stranger to abduct her and blindfold her and stick tape across her face. It was traumatic and thrilling. She still got chills now when she thought of that night. Like a gold nugget hidden away in a tiny satchel, those thoughts were all hers. New and unripe, they played over and over in Nicole’s mind. The sense of danger that told her she had taken things too far. That she had allowed her fascination to overcome her judgment. In the dark of night, alone in her bed, she held on to the moment when she sat still and frightened in that shed behind Coleman’s Brewery and felt real terror. She finally was able to relate to all the girls she had read about. She finally knew how Julie felt. For a brief moment, Nicole had reconnected with her old friend.

She parked, as instructed, at the train station and followed the freight tracks for half a mile out of town until she saw the old Coleman Brewery building down in the Cove. She took a path that led through the brush and down the gentle slope, hearing a train approaching from the north, running wood down from Canada. She wondered if this was the path they had dragged her through while the burlap sack was over her head. She made it to the intersection in front of the abandoned brewery just as the train chugged behind her, blocking the light that came from the streetlamps situated on the far side of the tracks.

A hundred years after the beige bricks of Coleman’s Brewery were laid, they still stood. Mostly. She noticed one area toward the back of the building that was crumbling. Likely, it was where deliveries used to happen and one too many trucks had backed into the delivery bay and banged the foundation to rattle the bricks and jar the rebar, loosening joists to the point that a generation later the walls sagged and cried away the bricks.

Never having met anyone from this group before the other night when they all stood with flashlights under their chins and stared into the shed, Nicole wasn’t sure what to expect from her first Capture Club meeting. She walked to the front entrance, past the debris on the ground—fast food Styrofoam and beer bottles. From inside she heard voices. Through a small atrium first, then past the open door, Nicole found a decrepit-looking room she assumed had once been a tavern. The waist-high bar still stood in the spot patrons used to sit and receive drinks across mahogany. No stools now, but Nicole noticed the group had brought two long folding tables and a dozen mismatched chairs. Two Igloo coolers held cold beers.

She spotted Casey standing near the head of the table. He smiled when their eyes met.

“Our lost girl has returned home!” he shouted.

Everyone looked toward the front of the brewery and cheered when they saw Nicole. She smacked her gum like this was the reception she had expected, then raised her hand. Casey came over and hugged her.

“Welcome to your first meeting. You’re in for quite a treat.”

The way he touched her, grabbed her like she belonged to him, sent a current through her body. He was so different from the boys at school, who broke eye contact if held too long, and who would never commit to anything for fear of rejection. Couldn’t even take what was offered, like Matt the other day on the boat, too scared to act even when she was prepared to give herself to him. Casey, she was certain, took things even before they were offered.

For an hour Nicole stood by Casey’s side as he took her around to each of the small factions and introduced her. She met guys with long hair and tattoos, girls with shaved heads and pierced everything—from noses to lips to eyebrows. They all drank canned beer and talked about random kidnappings from around the country. A college freshman was missing from Georgia and her boyfriend was suspected. A high school junior’s body had just been found in the Florida Everglades. Another newlywed had gone missing from a cruise boat, and on and on. After she and Casey made it around to each group, he took Nicole’s hand and pulled her into the barroom, sat her at the table as everyone gathered around and slid chairs to take their spots. Casey sat at the head of the table. Behind him was a chalkboard illuminated by a droplight, its large metal cone looking like a dog’s surgical collar. A long extension cord ran to a gas generator outside. The hot summer night was thick with humidity, no breeze inside the old brewhouse.

“Okay,” Casey said from the head of the table. “Listen up, people.”

Slowly, everyone quieted and took seats.

“First, she’s already done the tour tonight but let’s formally welcome Nicole.”

Everyone applauded and cheered.

“As we all know, Nicole took the overnight challenge, and despite pissing herself . . .”

A couple howls and a few screams of laughter.

“. . . She passed with flying colors. So Nicole caught a glimpse of what it’s like to be abducted. It’s something we’re all fascinated with, good or bad, creepy or not. Is it a fetish? I don’t know. Is it morbid? Probably. Would people outside the club understand? Fuck, no! Are they all liars who are just as intrigued as each of us? You bet your ass!”

Casey stood from his spot at the head of the table and picked up a piece of chalk. He tapped the chalkboard several times. “New business. For the last week we’ve spotlighted Reagan William Beneke. Serial killer from west Texas. Copped to sixty-four kills, implicated in thirty-eight. All women, snatched from Louisiana and Texas. Mostly young women, teens to late twenties. Stalked them at night, usually meeting them at bars and then seducing them. He took them to his house where he . . .” Casey looked around the room. “Use your imagination. When he was done, he strangled them and buried them in a Louisiana bayou, admitting to authorities that some of the bodies were taken by crocs. This accounts for the discrepancy between how many he copped to, versus how many were found.”

The club listened with focus.

“From his confession, corroborated by witnesses during his trial, we know he never took a victim by force. They all willingly followed him home. This reminds me of someone else who deployed a similar tactic. Anyone?”

There was silence in the barroom until Nicole finally spoke. “Dahmer.”