Nearly twenty years had passed since that day at the fair, and still it lived inside him. He could sometimes go days without thinking of it, but that was rare. There were too many triggers in daily life that brought him back to the fair—sugar and sun and gravel—for him to forget what happened. That day had long ago stopped being simply an event in his life. That day defined him. It was what brought him now to the bunker in the woods. He tried to avoid this place, to resist its lure. But to go without filling the void brought misery on a scale immeasurable. Taking the girls, he knew, was the best worst option.

A very dark time came in the months after he took the first girl. From up north in Virginia, he’d never forget that first girl. Weeks of planning and hours of tedious strategy preceded his trip. And then, so shocking was the ease of it. The simplicity of locating her, and the smooth, carelessness of the take—no more difficult than walking a nine-year-old across a gravel parking lot. He knew instantly he could do it a hundred times over without growing bored of it. For a full week he sucked on the marrow, inhaled deeply the initial high from taking his first girl. But then remorse found him, descending like a black thundercloud. He stayed in his dark apartment and skipped work and didn’t eat. He lost weight and gave up motivation to do anything but stare at the television. When days turned to weeks, he lost the urge to live. She ran through his mind, that first girl, and he was helpless to corral her.

Salvation finally came from a slow-building urge, a craving he came to rely on. It was the only thing that brought sanity. Inside him, like a small glowing ember in a smothered fire pit, was a growing hunger that needed feeding. Demanded it. That impulse lured him from his depression. The need to hunt and stalk and find the next girl. The thrill of the take and the execution of the delivery provided unexplainable contentment. Leaving the girls—bound and scared and helpless—for the one who requested them filled him with euphoria. The ritual was all that saved him.

He was not psychotic, he reminded himself. He never harmed the girls he took. Through the news he kept close track of them. Thus far, only one had surfaced. His first. The girl he so easily took from the streets of the small Virginia town, whose image ran wild through his mind during his first spell of misery. She had been found buried in a Carroll County forest a few months after he delivered her. The other two girls were still missing. He knew they were still out there, maybe in the same place he had left them, and this idea sparked an eerie feeling in his gut that even Casey Delevan was too timid to explore. He didn’t want to examine whether this notion excited him or saddened him, so he left untouched that quiver inside him that begged for answers to where those girls were and what was being done to them.

To quell his need to explore their stories, he made the club aware of the latest details and joined in the discussions when the members speculated on who took the girls and what might be happening to them.

He parked his pickup now in the lot off Highway 57 and loitered around the rest stop. He used the bathroom and purchased a Coke from the vending machine. He paged through a few advertising brochures that rested by the front entrance, then took a seat at the picnic table out back. He waited thirty minutes until there was a lull in traffic and only one other car sat idle in the lot. Then he slid off the bench and walked into the woods. There was a trail he followed, and halfway along the beaten-down dirt path, he veered off into the dense forest.

The heavy foliage lasted for three hundred yards, all downhill, until he emerged from the thorns and the burrs to find the small ravine he followed for a mile and a half. It was August and muggy, with mosquitos plump and ripe after a summer of stalking. He swatted them from his neck and arms as he walked. Finally, he saw the bunker door. Dense brush and a pair of twin blue spruce trees camouflaged the entrance. Evergreen pines provided shade, and the thick wooden door the color of the land—brown and green and dirty—bled into the forest in a way that could be missed by a hundred people a hundred times. A casual glance would never pick it up. But obvious today was the red bandana tied to the door handle. A request, he knew, was waiting. Excitement flooded his chest, as though his heart suddenly filled with a bolus of caffeine and nicotine and pumped it all at once into his system.

Casey calmed his body and sat on a fallen log. He watched the bunker and the woods, listened for anything out of the ordinary. Convinced after an hour that he was alone, he approached the door and pulled it open. Heavy and thick, the door served several purposes. If someone got to screaming while they were in this place, the door and the three other walls made from earth would mute their cries. The fat door also allowed hinges to be secured with three-inch carpentry screws that could not be whittled loose. And the massive bar that slid over the entrance to the bunker was certainly enough to stop anyone from escaping.

With the bunker door open, Casey saw the backpack and an urge overcame him, too powerful to quell. He entered the damp-smelling bunker and unzipped the pack. He ripped through the cash. Then, on the bottom, he found it. A single piece of white computer paper. He unfolded the request and read:

BROWN HAIR, SHOULDER LENGTH

THIN AND ATHLETIC, LATE TEENS

TALL

Casey read it again and again. He looked around, stunned by tunnel vision. He was, at last, here again. The desire boiling and tickling that part of him he knew no one else possessed—an eerie pond of dark and jagged emotions that made up his being. A black swamp in his soul he despised, formed years ago at the state fair when he ate sticky cotton candy and silently watched the greasy-haired man put his hand on Joshua’s shoulder and lead his brother into the gravel parking lot.

The memories from that day—the sugary treat, the humid summer air, the stale smell of petting-zoo urine and pony manure—all mixed together over the years of his adolescence. Different concentrations of guilt bled into those memories. Remorse for his inaction that day. Shame for watching the stranger lead his brother away while Casey stayed mute and chewed on cotton candy. Those images and thoughts and memories all gelled together to form his humanity. He hated himself for allowing that dark swamp in his mind to define him. Hated when it boiled over and spilled from it banks. Hated it for controlling him. Hated it always. Except for the times he loved it.

He looked back at the page in his hand, read the request again. The hunt was on.

CHAPTER 26

August 2016

One Week Before the Abduction

Megan McDonald finished her senior year at Emerson Bay High with an impressive résumé. She captained her cheer team since sophomore year and took them to the state championship three times. A leader on the debate team, she played varsity basketball, and was ranked first in her class in grade point average. She spent part of the previous summer in South Africa assisting at a makeshift hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, a bullet point for her medical school application in the coming years. Her greatest achievement, however, was her effort in spearheading a mentoring program during the summer after sophomore year that, in total, included 80 percent of the incoming freshman class, and was created to help arriving first-year girls make the transition from middle school to high school.

Her determination to make the program perfect earned a write-up in the local paper. Teachers and administrators praised the mentoring program and the environment it created for freshman girls. Parents sent letters describing how well adjusted their daughters were during such a big changeover year. The superintendent spread the word about the program’s success, and neighboring high schools reached out to Megan for advice on creating their own summer platforms. Soon, an overachieving young man from a high school in New York called to ask for Megan’s help in creating a similar program for boys. All the attention led to an article in Events magazine featuring Megan McDonald and how she was taking the anxiety out of high school for not only the incoming class at Emerson Bay, but—as her program became widely adopted—for thousands of kids around the country.

She walked now from the high school where she had graduated valedictorian three months earlier. With her was Stacey Morgan, an upcoming junior who would take over the mentoring program this summer when Megan headed off to college.

“We’ve got another week to finish things up,” Megan said as they walked across the parking lot. “I know you’re stressed, but you’re going to be fine. You’ll likely do a better job than me, people like you more.”

“Ha! Not true,” Stacey said. “The younger girls idolize you.”

“They’ll feel the same way about you. You’ve just got to put it out there, you know? You’re the leader of this event. Everyone during the weekend has to see it and feel it. If you do that, everyone will look up to you. Even the seniors. You’re going to do great.”

“Thanks.”

They stopped at Megan’s Jeep. “I’ll miss you next year, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Stacey said. “Me too. But you’ll be making new friends and joining a sorority and you’ll be on your own.”

“Maybe,” Megan said. “I’ll only be in Raleigh. I’ll be back on weekends and we’ll hang out.”

“Promise?”