“To my world. I promise you’ll love it there. You’re the only one who would.”

He pulled Nicole up the stairs and through the house and into the hot summer night, leaving Megan McDonald alone and unconscious in the cellar that would haunt her dreams. He pulled her as they ran, the flashlight bouncing through the night. Holding hands, fingers interlaced, they hurried past the house where he had deposited the Dee girl the previous year. He knew it would be empty. The next house came. Above the entry was the number sixty-three. He pushed through the door and stood in the entry foyer, listening. His pulse was up, and had his hand not been locked so tightly to Nicole’s, he was sure it would be shaking. He knew not to dote now, just have a look. Show Nicole. Prove to her that it was real. Let her see the power he possessed, and allow what they had just done to the girl from the beach party to fully sink in.

He pushed open the cellar door and together they descended the stairs, led by the narrow beam of his flashlight. When they reached the basement, Casey peeked around the wall and brought his light up, pointing it at the corner. And there she was. The Georgia Tech girl he’d deposited long ago named Paula D’Amato.

It was a genuine startle, where nearly every muscle in his upper body jerked, when Nicole screamed. She stared at the girl in the corner, curled on the bed and staring at them with glowing eyes blinded by the bright white light Casey shined on her. In an instant, Nicole pulled her hand free and ran up the stairs.

She made it to the top of the stairs and into the foyer before his hands came around her waist. She let out a fierce scream as he grabbed her hard on the upper arm and lifted her off the ground, her legs still flailing. He finally corralled her, wrapping his arms around her so his chest pressed against her back.

“Shhh,” he whispered into her ear. “It goes away. That feeling of filth and guilt. It leaves you, I promise. And eventually all that’s left is the need to do it again. You’ll see. You’ll feel it, too. I know you will.”

“What’s down there?” Nicole asked through her tears. “What did you do?”

Casey put her down but kept his arms wrapped around her. “She’s one of the girls I took,” he said into her ear. “Not a take for the club. Not as an initiation. A real take.” There was a moment of silence. “Paula D’Amato. We talked about her in the club. Do you remember?”

Nicole shook her head as she cried. “No, Casey. What have you done?”

“And soon, people will be talking about the girl we took tonight. People in this town and around the state. The whole country! They’ll be talking about us, Nicole. You and me.”

He finally unclasped his arms from around her chest. Nicole turned slowly, saw Casey’s shadowed eyes alive with venom, some toxic stare that looked straight into her soul. In a quick, violent motion she pushed him away and ran. She pulled open the door and cut across the front yard that was strewn with clay and gravel. Without the aid of the flashlight the dark night disoriented her. She took several strides in the wrong direction until the silver tarnish of the moon reflected off her car and she righted herself.

Her legs hit the steering wheel as she scampered in and started the engine. Shifting into gear. The car jerked forward as she stepped too heavily on the accelerator and maneuvered around Casey’s Buick in front of her, narrowly missing it. As she did, her headlights caught a glimpse of Casey as he appeared from around the front end of the Regal. Just a brief blur of his green shirt. She felt a thud as the front bumper struck him, and then the sickening sway as the wheel displaced upward when she continued over his fallen body. The rocking stopped as the wheels settled on the gravel. Nicole couldn’t see much in her rearview as she twisted a U-turn and sped away, back up the long, dark road she’d followed into this haunted place.

The sedan rested in the darkness beyond the last home and crept slowly forward after the girl had hit the man. The driver rolled down his window as he pulled next to the body writhing on the ground. A quick assessment told him the man’s femur was badly broken, bent as it was at a hockey-stick angle. A fortunate bonus. Had he needed to expend time subduing this one, the girl might be impossible to track down.

He stood from his car and stepped over the moaning man who begged for help, reached into the man’s car, and removed the keys, just in case a lucid moment came over him and he controlled his pain well enough to start his car and drive for help.

“Please,” Casey said.

Stoically, the man reached into Casey’s front pocket and fished out his phone. He dropped it, along with the car keys, onto the passenger seat as he climbed back into the sedan. The taillights of the girl’s car were still visible in the distance, far down the winding road that led out of Stellar Heights.

Nicole was breathing heavily as she tore out of the abandoned subdivision, her adrenaline so powerful she was barely able to control her hands as they gripped the steering wheel. Her mind was incoherent and unable to process what had just transpired. Running would get her only so far. She needed help, and checked off the people she knew she couldn’t ask. Calling the police was not an option. There were so many reasons for this, but after considering only two—that she had assisted in kidnapping Megan and had also been involved in a hit-and-run—she stopped looking for more. She couldn’t call her parents, for obvious reasons. Her friends, soft and hysterical, could handle none of tonight. Nicole knew she needed someone smart and level-headed. Someone who would look past her failures. She needed Livia.

The wheels screeched as she turned out of Stellar Heights and headed back to the beach party. She watched her rearview mirror for a few moments, but she knew there was no way for Casey to follow her. Colliding thoughts of guilt and disgust came over her. She cried as the thud echoed in her mind from when she’d hit Casey, and her stomach rolled at the thought of Megan waking in the black basement. The image of Paula D’Amato burned her eyes and was there every time Nicole blinked. God, how long had she been missing?

There were no good solutions to these problems, and peeling back the events of tonight would be impossible. Still, she would try. It took twenty frantic minutes of speeding to find the frontage road that would lead back to the beach party. Twenty minutes to gather her thoughts. She’d go back to the parking lot, wait for Livia. She would do everything Livia told her.

As she approached a stop sign, she grabbed her phone. She dialed.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up. Please, Livia, pick up your phone.”

As Nicole rolled through the stop sign, all her plans changed. She looked in her rearview mirror and knew nothing would be the same. The red-and-blue lights of a police car filled her mirrors.

CHAPTER 57

November 2017

Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

“I have to see for myself,” Megan said, standing at the back of the house. The plywood covering the windows still bright under the glow of her flashlight. “Come with me, Livia. Come with me so I can be sure.”

Megan was off again, headed toward the front of the house. Livia followed, stumbling in the dark over the uneven ground and chunks of concrete. At the front door, she hesitated before she followed Megan into the dark house. She caught a glimpse of the number sixty-one above the door. The interior was a hollow cove of high ceilings and vacant rooms barely visible in the rushed glow of Megan’s flashlight.

When Livia caught up to her, Megan stood at the door to the basement. She noticed the beam of the flashlight quivering. Livia reached out and put her hand on Megan’s arm to calm her tremor.

“Megan, stop and talk to me.” Livia took Megan by the shoulders, the beam of the flashlight falling to their feet. “You said you know who took you. Tell me.”

With the cellar door open, the staircase was a shadowless portal to a different world.

“During my last therapy session, I got further than ever before. He came down the steps and I heard it. I listened during that session, more closely than I ever did before. I heard it, Livia.”

“You heard what, Megan?”

“And then, during my dream the other night when you were in the passing train, when you waved to me . . . I heard it again, just before I woke.”

“Tell me, Megan. What was it?”

“That sound I know so well. That sound I’ve known from childhood.”

Livia waited.

“Leather,” Megan said. “I heard the leather holster of a belt.”

CHAPTER 58

August 2016

The Night of the Abduction