Apprehended (Amber Alert Series Book 3)

by Sara Schoen

  “What the hell is this place?” I cried.

  “That’s just it,” a new voice, hoarse, but obviously female stated. “Welcome to Hell.”

  “Who said that?” I asked curiously as rustling and movement met my ears. There were soft slaps of skin against the ground, as if someone was barefoot and slowly moving across the floor in fear of being heard. “Who’s there?”

  “Shut up,” the voice came again. “Quiet down, if we are too loud he will come down, or worse he won’t feed us for days again.”

  “Who’s he? And who are you?” I asked again, suddenly relieved I wasn’t alone, but also guilty because I was pleased that someone else was in this just like I was.

  “My name is Tegan, I was taken who knows how long ago. There are a few other girls here too, but they are too weak to speak and sometimes to move. Casey was the last to arrive, but she’s still in shock and his visits don’t help her cope.”

  “Tegan? As in Tegan Richards? From Maine?”

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m one of the investigators on your case,” I explained. “I work with the FBI and was trying to find you, you were the last girl we heard about going missing.”

  “Missing,” Tegan scoffed. “More like taken, abducted, kidnapped, anything other than missing. I didn’t willingly come here!”

  “I didn’t say you did,” I tried to ease out of the conversation, but it didn’t work. She continued her speech and gradually increased her tone as she went, growing angrier the longer she spoke.

  “I was taken from my home, my life, and my friends,” she stated. “And to do what? Live in a basement with five other girls that were all going to die?” There was a cry from somewhere nearby. One of the other girls must be terrified knowing that they weren’t going to make it out of here alive. “I’ve been here for how long?”

  “Tegan, you’re being too loud,” another girl’s voice warned.

  “About three weeks,” I replied.

  “Almost a month of my life has been spent in this basement, and you wouldn’t believe what I’ve experienced so far. You don’t have any idea what it’s been like here—”

  “It’s been horrifying. You’ve seen things that you thought were only made up for television ratings,” I started. “You feel as if you have nothing, that you are nothing because you don’t know if anyone is looking for you. You feel hopeless because you are at the mercy of this man that you don’t know, and what’s worse is that you don’t have a choice in the matter, until now.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she huffed in annoyance. “You’re a cop and you were taken. The only reason they would find us now is because you’re here.”

  “That’s not true,” I stated. “They have been working on finding you girls for almost three months now. Well before I was called in, and they aren’t going to come looking for me unless they know something is wrong because I was heading back to Virginia and the team was going to take over the investigation. It could be a while before they realize anything is wrong or until they find the car to see that everything is still in it.”

  “That’s great, so we are stuck. What good are you if it means we won’t get out before he decides to get rid of us?”

  “Why would he get rid of you? You all play some role in his fantasy, and it’s important enough to keep you alive for so long.”

  “What are you talking about fantasy?”

  “Most of these people have a type, they are trying to live out some fantasy and so they look for a person that’s close enough to the person they want so they can relive it again and again,” I explained, hoping to bring them some kind of peace, but I should have known better.

  “This is for fun? For him to relive something about his live with some other person? I don’t see it, nor do I want to. I just want to go back home and see my family again before he decided that I’m not needed anymore, just like the other girls. I’ve watched them die, and the girl before me, one of the very first taken, told me everything she’s seen since she was taken.” Tegan scoffed lightly, clearly annoyed, before she rattled off some of the things the other girl had told her about. “He used to make them marry him, then he stopped that realizing that most of the girls weren’t what he wanted. He’d give them a ring that was too tight so they couldn’t take it off, then cut off their finger to get it back before they died. Then she told us of the massive death rate after the police angered him, but you’re right, she was important to him for a while. She was kept alive to pass down her knowledge to me before he killed her too,” Tegan growled angrily. It was easy to understand that she was distraught after what she had seen, heard, and been through. I hoped there was a way to calm her, before she caused a scene and forced the man to come downstairs to stop it.

  “Tegan, you’re getting too loud. We don’t want to push him to get rid of us; especially if she is a cop. We could finally get out of this,” a girls voice spoke up from somewhere near me.

  “Shut up, Nicole, we aren’t getting out of here. The people before us tried everything, there’s no way out of here without his help, and that’s not happening since then he’d have to worry about us running off to tell his secret. And when he’s done with his little fantasy,” she sneered, returning to our conversation, “we are as good as dead. So welcome to the club because you just killed another one of us. You’ll take our spot and we will take one in the ground.”

  “What are talking about, I took a spot?” I asked curiously, and suddenly fearful for the girls around me. Had I sent one of them to their death? If that was the case, then each of these girls must have sent another to their grave. They knew that by having another girl coming in, another would have to die. They must have felt awful for the girl that died in their place, but they shouldn’t. It wasn’t their faults; it was his.

  “There can only be five left alive down here, because that’s how many cages he has for us. He doesn’t want too many of us in one of them in case we try to escape. He’s told us now that you’re here our time is done. We aren’t useful anymore. You’re the one he has been waiting for, and now the rest of us are disposable!”

  I was the one he had been waiting for, what did that mean? I hadn’t been on this case except for the last two weeks. How had he known about me? There was rarely anything about me in the paper, and nothing on the news unless we had been recorded getting off the plane or arriving at the police station. Why would he have fixated on me? In the long run, I was no one. At least no one important in my job, just ask Callum I’m sure he would agree. So why wait for me?

  “What did you say?” I asked, but Tegan continued as if I hadn’t said anything.

  “Amanda Green, Grace Kaiser, Megan Rockwell, Melinda Crass, Ruby DeChirco and countless others. They were all here, and now they are dead!” Her voice echoed off the bare walls, and into my head until the only names I could remember were those girls. She was about to speak again when heavy footsteps started to get closer to us. The thud of the boots sent the girls into a terrified frenzy, all of them trying to get in the corners of their separate cages. “Always remember their names! They didn’t deserve this,” she said as the door creaked open and the lights turning on momentarily blinding us. A dark figure stepped into the room, and something told me this was just the beginning.

  Chapter 14

  The door opened to reveal the silhouette of a tall man, his face hidden in the darkness, but the full show of his physique was on display. I could suddenly see that the profile had partially been wrong. While he was strong, capable, and organized enough to take someone in a public area, it failed to mention that he was able to do it so easily because he was so muscular for someone they predicted in his early thirties. If I had to guess he looked around the age range they suggested even though age was the hardest thing to determine, but suddenly it struck me that while this man took girls in college, he was slowly progressing up in age. These girls all looked alike due to their physical descriptions and height, but they
were from different stages of life. The earliest taken as a freshman in college, and the oldest, me, was a college graduate working in the FBI.

  The light outside my cage flashed on, blinding me momentarily as I tried to force my eyes to adjust to the change in light. As my eyes slowly became acclimated to the change, I was terrified by what I saw. There was a link fence in front of me, but Tegan had been right, I was in a cage. Boxed in on four sides, and topped off with more fence links and plywood over the top to prevent me from pushing it up and escaping. The mattress behind me, the one I had woken up on, was dirty. Covered in stains and what looked like mud, and uncovered from the bare material that made up the soft pad. Who knew how many girls had been in my place, cried themselves to sleep on that mattress, and tried to escape without injuring themselves, and now it was my turn. I just hoped I was strong enough to make it.

  The girls cringed and backed away in fear, as the man started his walk down the aisle between the cages. There were actually six cages, one unoccupied and filled with another, much larger mattress. Something told me I didn't want to know what that was for, curiosity killed the cat, and it would surely kill me if I wasn't careful.

  I could see the four other girls, and my heart ached for them. All of them looked malnourished, even Tegan who had only been here a few weeks was looking thin in the face. Her skin was sagging and it was hard to tell it was her from the photo we had been looking at for the last few weeks. It was hard to tell any of them from their photos, I thought as I glanced between them all cowering in the corners of their cells. The girls that had been here the longest looked unhealthy, uncared for, and at the mercy of themselves from how frail they looked. One in particular was shaking with fear so terribly I thought that she was going to fall to pieces right in front of me.

  The footsteps stopped, pulling me from my thoughts as the man came to a pause outside of the cell I was in. I felt the fear rise through me, and the bile grew in my throat. I fought the intense sensation to be sick and beg for my life, as I looked up into his cold, grey eyes. It looked like emotion had never touched them; they were so dull, so lifeless. And now, they were focused on me.

  "I've been waiting to meet you for a long time, Jessi. It's been a while," he said with a smirk curling at the edges of his lips. I was fearful to ask what he meant. He made it seem as if I had met him before, but the only man he reminded me of was Steve Bennett. They had the same pale skin and lifeless eyes and soul, which is until they used the girl of their affection as he pleased. Then all bets were off the table, and there was no way of knowing how he was going to react or what he was going to do. He was unpredictable, just like the man before him, but on a worse scale. He had ruined more families' lives then Steve and the whole time was because of me.

  Suddenly Tegan's words made sense, they were now disposable because he had been waiting for me. He had been looking for me, trying to draw me out and he knew this was the way to do it. He had gotten angry when Callum’s team first called in for help because it hadn't been who he wanted to help. He had been pushing for me to join, and laid down the clues that led to them believing he had idolized Steve and that he was an exact copy. And who better to catch a copy, then a person that was with the original?

  "I'm thrilled you could finally join us, Jessi. I would hate for these girls to never meet the woman that made this a reality for them." I caught a few angry glares from the girls around the room. They had been taken because of me, he had just admitted that, and they had every right to be mad about that. If he hadn't been after me, then he wouldn't have needed the look-a-likes. He wouldn't have needed them to play out whatever his fantasy was. If only we had seen the connection before, but then again would anyone have believed it? I was already believed to be self-centered and uncooperative in a team setting, would anyone have believed me if I mentioned that the girls looked like me as I grew up?

  Tegan was almost identical to what I looked like as a junior in college to when I graduated and joined the bureau. The girls—all down the line—it was clear he had been keeping track of me for quite a while. For how long, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

  "Why have you been waiting for me?" I asked as I swallowed the bile that had risen in my throat. It was hard not to feel sick the longer his gaze was set on me, there was something evil about him and that made me wonder what kind of man Callum had been after. I don't even think Callum knew.

  "I've been waiting for a woman that is powerful and confident. It's two of the better qualities in a partner if I had to choose two. Who would be better for that then the woman that was made because of Steve Bennett?"

  "Excuse me?" The comment "made by Steve Bennett" made my skin crawl. I knew where this was going, Jason had talked about it with me. I couldn't remember the name for it, since he offered so many for the same topic, but I knew it was that he believed that without Steve taking me, without living the past I had, that I wouldn't be where I was today. He thought that without Steve I wouldn't have joined the FBI, and that I wouldn't be as successful as I was now, and because he idolized Steve so highly he wanted his idols legacy to live on. He knew Steve had done this for me, received little to no credit, except for the fact that every time someone met me, the kidnapping was the first thing that came to mind. And because of that he was obsessed with me, I was who he wanted.

  How could we not have seen that before? It should have been obvious, but it wasn't. There was no logical way to make that connection. We knew that he idolized Steve, but there was no way to make the jump to me or why he was after the girls that looked like me. He had been thorough in his planning to say the least; he made sure that there were no obvious connections. Callum had his work cut out for him on this one, and needless to say, so did I.

  "But now that you are here, I now longer need the stand-ins," he said as he glanced over his shoulders at the girls cowering in their cages. One of them let out a wail of a cry, another broke down, but they all looked horrified. They knew they were going to die, to never be found, and to never be reunited with their families, and it was all my fault. "Who's first, ladies?"

  "No, please!" I cried, as he revealed the knife he had kept concealed to the girls around him. "Please don't do this!"

  "I have to, Jessi, I can't have them all alive and running around. That would ruin everything," he said as he turned his ghostly gaze back to me. "You should remember that from living with Steve for so long. Even as a young girl you should have realized what was going on. Sure you tried to cope, but there was no getting around it. You could see where it was going. There could only be so many of you in that house, or everything got out of control. Isn't that right, Jessi?"

  I assumed that he was talking about when Garrett helped Anna and I escape. There had been too many people there, and Steve had lost control. He was trying to get rid of the things that could go wrong, he kept them locked up, separate from each other, and away from the exits. There was planning that went into this and he wasn't going to let it go to waste.

  "It is, but you don't want to kill them," I said, trying to find a way to keep them alive for just a little bit longer.

  "And why is that?"

  "Because if you do, then I won't come willingly." His eyebrows lifted in curiosity.

  "You don't even know what I want from you yet," he mused. I felt a shiver race down my spine at his words. He was right, I didn't know what he wanted, but I knew men like him and they always had some sort of game to play. I just had to play along.

  "It doesn't matter, if you keep them alive then I will do whatever you want." My words had been even, there wasn't a stutter or a shake in my stance while I spoke. There was strength lacing my words, in hope that it would win him over. I just had no idea what I agreed to, and I knew I was going to regret the second he agreed.

  "If you wish, and you'll behave," he stated. "Then I will leave them down here to starve instead."

  I felt my mouth drop open and the words rush from my mouth before I could speak them. He couldn't just leave them down
here to starve, that was inhumane, but what other choice did I have? I glanced at the girls, they looked terrified. Either way they were going to die unless I could think of something, but for now I could only buy them more time. Any more time that they had alive, meant that there was more time for me to think of how to get them out of here.

  I agreed, and immediately had my cell opened. He didn't wait for me to get up, grabbing my bicep as he yanked me off the ground. I was pulled along like a puppy that didn't want to go for its very first walk.

  He walked past the other girls without another word or stray glance. They looked at me with a mix of fear and worry. They were going to be locked down here, in the dark and alone until I could think of something or they starved. Whichever came first, and I could only hope that I came first, because the latter option wasn't going to happen if I had my way. I just needed time to think, I needed to find a way to get word to Callum. For now, all I could do was live, and play along.

  Chapter 15

  I sat on the floor, fearful of how many girls had been in here before me. Tegan had said that he used to have the girls marry him, but stopped doing that when he realized they weren’t what he needed. He had progressed, he had changed as he went through the girls. I just hope he changed from Steve Bennett.

  When he had taken me upstairs, I was immediately tossed into a room to live in isolation while he prepared the rest of the house. I had no idea what that meant, and I wasn’t sure I would know until it was too late. I could remember pieces of Steve’s house, I had been there about a month according to my father and the reports, but it was hard to remember. Time was non-existent in that place, there was just nothing, and no way of knowing how much time had or hadn’t passed. Sometimes it felt like seconds before he became angry, sometimes it felt like years while I hid in the small rooms.