The Abduction

23

Kristen Howe is not afraid.

Flat on her back in a chilly basement on a too-soft mattress, she kept thinking that same thought over and over again. With eyes shut, the words fixed in her brain like a mantra, just like when she was five years old and afraid to sleep with the light off. Most of the time, the voice in her head sounded like her own. But when the demons ran wild, when her racing heart pushed her to the brink of panic, she would hear her mother’s calming voice.
Kristen Howe is not afraid. It’s only her imagination.
This time, however, she knew she wasn’t imagining. If it was all just in her mind, then how come she couldn’t talk? She had tried to speak aloud—to step out of her mind and actually tell herself she was not afraid—but the tape on her mouth was definitely for real. The metal cuffs digging into her wrist and ankle were real, too. The pain in her bulging bladder was real. The footsteps and strange voices she’d overhead were all too real.
Yet, at times, none of it seemed real.
She remembered walking toward the high school, taking her usual route from the college campus. She remembered the van following too close and stopping at the curb. The passenger door opened. The driver’s face was hidden beneath the rubberized Lincoln Howe Halloween mask. A man who definitely wasn’t Reggie grabbed her by the arm. The rest, however, was a total blur. Flying through the air and tumbling to the floor. A thick blanket of blackness over her eyes. A stabbing pain in her thigh like the jabbing of a needle. And finally, a weird, weightless sensation that numbed her body, the way she felt when she’d had her tonsils removed.
The next thing she knew she was waking up, her hands and feet bound, her mouth taped shut. At first, the blindfold made it impossible to discern whether she was really awake. When she closed her eyes, she saw nothing. Eyes open, nothing still. It was yesterday, or maybe the day before, when the blindfold came off for the first time. The sudden burst of brightness had overpowered her eyes, and when she finally focused she saw a man in a ski mask. She nearly screamed, but the gag prevented it.
By the fourth or fifth time it was becoming a routine, something to mark the passage of time, a ritual that reminded her she was still alive. The man would come and remove the cuffs. He’d lead her up a flight of stairs to the bathroom and remove the gag and blindfold, then leave her alone with soap and a washcloth, a toothbrush. Then he’d give her something to eat. It became a little less scary each time, but his ski mask definitely gave her the creeps. Even so, his voice wasn’t mean or anything. He was actually gentle and attentive to her needs, always asking if she was hungry or warm enough. After a few visits, she knew his voice well. When the men talked upstairs, she could distinguish his voice. So far, she’d been able to pick out three different voices. She couldn’t hear everything they said, especially when the furnace was running. But she’d heard enough to know that he was the only one looking out for her, making sure she was clean, fed, and comfortable. She’d even heard him threaten one of the other men, telling him no one was going to hurt the girl. Repo was his name. One of the men had called him Repo.
“Kristen,” she heard him say. “It’s morning.”
It was that Repo guy, and his voice made her shudder. She cringed as he gently removed her blindfold. Kristen opened her eyes slowly, then blinked at the ceiling. The dim light from the lamp on the dresser cast a nebulous glow across the basement. The shutter on the little window above the sink made it impossible to tell whether it was night or day. She had no idea if it was actually morning. She would just have to take his word for it.
Last night had been weird. He had talked for several minutes, exactly how long she didn’t know. The edge to his voice had made her nervous. He hadn’t said anything bad. But even if he weren’t a kidnapper, she would be inherently suspicious of any stranger who so desperately wanted her to believe she was safe with him.
Her eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling. Standing before the lamp, the man cast a shadow across the bed, darkening her torso. She didn’t dare look at him, couldn’t find the courage to turn her head in his direction again. Last night, when he’d removed the blindfold, she’d caught a glimpse of him without the ski mask, and she didn’t want to see more. But as the silence lingered, she felt compelled to look, the way the young eyes of curiosity eventually peer out from the beneath the covers late at night.
Kristen Howe is not afraid, she thought, repeating her mantra. Then she turned her head a smidgen to the left.
She caught her breath, containing her fright. She’d seen the same thing last night, but it still startled her. The ski mask was gone. He was wearing a towel or something over his face, letting her see the top half of his face. She looked away and closed her eyes tightly.
Her hands shook as she wrestled with confusion. He was changing the routine, acting more friendly—like he wanted her to talk. She never talked to strangers, never talked to snakes. And she knew that “strangers” weren’t just the perverts who hung around playgrounds with slimy drool dripping from their chin. “Say no, walk away, and tell an adult”—that was the rule her mother had drilled into her head. It was a good rule to live by before you’d been abducted. But what’s a kid supposed to do after it happens?
“I’m going to take the gag off now,” he said quietly.
Oh, God, she thought. Another switch from the routine. Did he expect her to say something? Do something? Her body stiffened as he tugged at the tape, freeing her mouth. She struggled to repeat her mantra and remind herself she wasn’t afraid. But she was too scared to remember the simple words, let alone believe them. She could scream, but that seemed pointless. The only people who would hear were the other kidnappers, the mean ones. At least this Repo seemed nice.
Her heart fluttered. Screaming was a bad idea. He might panic and hurt her. Maybe he’d stay calm so long as she stayed calm—or at least if she acted calm. Acting—yes! That was the key. People always said she could sell snowshoes in Jamaica if she put her mind to it. By turning on the charm, she’d even managed to talk Reggie Miles into letting her walk to the high school.
Reggie? she thought. What happened to Reggie? Sweet Reggie. The grandfather she’d never had. The simple but wise old man who’d said Kristen was twelve going on twenty-one and destined to be a heartbreaker who could talk her way out of anything.
Maybe that was true. Maybe she could talk her way out of this mess, too, charming the snake into letting her go home. To do that, she’d have to talk to him. She’d even have to be nice to him. She might even have to flatter him.
No way! She was too afraid to pull it off, too afraid to speak. She was lost for the moment, paralyzed with fear. Her mantra, she thought—say your mantra. But the words wouldn’t come. Finally she heard it—a message from within.
Kristen Howe, don’t be afraid, said the voice in her head.
Her spine tingled. It sounded different this time, nothing like her own voice or that of her mother. It was a deeper voice—peaceful and soothing, one that flowed like a friend’s embrace from a faraway place, a safer place, a place beyond. It was only in her mind, but it warmed her entire body and calmed her fears, giving her the courage to do exactly what she needed to do.
She heard the voice of Reggie Miles.
“Time for breakfast,” said Repo.
A lump filled her throat. Did she dare speak? Listen to the voice, she told herself. Listen to Reggie. Her mouth struggled to form the words—any words, the first thing that came to mind. “Could—could I maybe have some cereal today?” she asked quietly.
“Sure, what kind do you want?”
“Froot Loops.” She cringed inside. She didn’t even like Froot Loops, but it was all she could think of.
“I’ll get some for you.”
A noise rattled above, startling her. A door creaked upstairs, maybe the bathroom or another bedroom. One of the other men was definitely awake.
Repo said, “I gotta go now. No matter what happens, you can’t tell the other guys we talked. Okay?”
She nodded timidly, then held her breath as he gently replaced the gag and blindfold. As his heels clicked on the wood stairs, she counted his steps. The door opened, then closed. He was gone.
That wasn’t so bad, she thought. She’d taken the first step, started a dialogue. Maybe this Repo really was her ticket out of here. Maybe he wasn’t just pretending to be nice. After all, she’d overheard the men talking upstairs, through the old floorboards. She’d even heard Repo stand up to the others, telling them he wouldn’t let them touch her.
Panic suddenly gripped her. She realized her mistake.
Kristen Howe is not afraid, she told herself, shivering at the thought of what the other snakes might do when Repo went out to buy her stupid Froot Loops.


The limousine stopped at the traffic light near Pennsylvania Quarter. Allison sat alone with her thoughts as she glanced at the mix of condominiums, retail outlets, and restaurants that had rejuvenated a three-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol, the district’s most famous parade route. Her stomach was still in knots from the outburst at her campaign headquarters. She still wasn’t sure if she had simply sounded off or if she’d actually just fired her campaign strategist with less than five days remaining to the election.
The outburst, of course, was a cumulative thing, which had begun with the photographs. Maybe it was true that Wilcox had had nothing to do with that bozo-looking character snapping pictures of Allison down by the river in Nashville. But she was less convinced that the Lincoln Howe photos had leaked to the press with absolutely no help from Wilcox.
She shook her head, clearing her thoughts. One thing, however, wouldn’t shake from her mind: the bad joke her running mate had made about Allison, “the scarlet letter president.” Life had become such a whirlwind since Kristen’s abduction, she’d almost forgotten that her precipitous slide in the polls had begun with the bogus adultery charges. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed the two incidents—the adultery accusation and the abduction—were too proximate to be unrelated. And Governor Helmers’s joke had actually sparked a theory on how they might relate.
She picked up her phone and rang Harley Abrams on his cellular phone.
“Harley, there’s something I have to show you. Can you meet me at Justice?”
“I won’t be back from Nashville for another couple of hours or so. What is it?”
“It’s—I can’t describe it. You have to see it.”
“Fax it to me.”
“You have to see the original, and I don’t want copies floating around anyway. It’s too confidential.”
“I’ve been known to handle a few confidences in my career,” he scoffed.
“This isn’t entirely business. It has to do with me, personally.”
There was a pause on the line. “Can it wait until I get back?”
“Yes,” she said, reeling in her excitement. “Barely.”