by Alana Terry
Kennedy’s pulse was the only thing in the room racing faster than her mind. The picture was dated. She quickly counted back. Nine months ago. She stared at the family. Vivian was tall, a woman who was obviously aging but still trying to cling to the last remnants of her youth. She had her arm around her son, who stood with a half-smile that made Kennedy guess he would rather be anywhere than posing for one of his father’s campaign photos. The fingers on Vivian Abernathy’s other hand intertwined tenderly with her daughter’s wind-blown bits of hair. Kennedy looked at the name again. Jodie. She was quite a bit shorter and even more petite than her mom, as if a strong wind might erase her from memory. Her clothes were pressed and elegant, and her pearl earrings looked out of place on someone so young. Kennedy studied the smile and tried to guess if she was a happy child or not.
Jodie. Was it possible …?
There were footsteps outside her door. Voices. The sun was almost down, and Kennedy hadn’t turned on the lights. Her eyeballs were jabbing pain to the back of her brain after staring so much. How long had she been sleuthing behind her computer screen?
The door burst open, and Kennedy gave a little start. “Oh, it’s you.” She let out her breath when Willow came in. “I thought you were at rehearsal.”
“I will be.” Willow’s voice was always dramatic but now had a strange sort of drawl to it. She walked lazily to her dresser and pulled out some nightclothes. “Don’t wait up for me tonight, ok? I’ll just take what I need and see you tomorrow.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes when Willow burped.
“Don’t you want to know who it is?” Willow hunched over and slumped an arm on the back of Kennedy’s chair. “The RA from the other hall. I told you I was going to talk to him about that lock, right?”
Her roommate’s breath reeked, but Kennedy didn’t make any comments. It wouldn’t be the first time Willow spent the night away.
“Good-night,” she muttered as Willow hummed her way out of the room, leaving the door a crack open.
As soon Willow was gone, Kennedy started browsing Wayne Abernathy’s personal webpage. A lot of the information had to do with the upcoming election, but it did include a brief bio. Married to Vivian, a lawyer before she left the workplace to raise their children. The page didn’t say much about the kids but did give updated ages. Jodie R. Abernathy, 13 years old.
Something told Kennedy to exit out of her browser. This wasn’t going to lead her anywhere, all this speculation. What good would it do? She needed to get to work on her calculus. She tried to guess what Carl would say if he knew what she was doing, knew what she was thinking. She should stick to reading Russian crime novels, not inventing her own conspiracies. Was she really that desperate to find Rose?
Her fingers were as stubborn as her mind, however, and they refused to slow down. Jodie Abernathy, she typed into the search bar, leaning forward in her seat as she scrolled through the results. Halfway down the second page, she froze.
Jodie Rose Abernathy, daughter of State House …
Rose.
She didn’t click the link. She didn’t touch the mouse. She held her breath and felt like she might swallow her own heart. Suddenly, she wished Willow hadn’t left for the night. She wished her parents didn’t live on the other side of the world. She wished she wasn’t alone in her room. She reached down for her backpack.
She had to call Carl.
But she never got the chance.
CHAPTER 11
“Is this Willow’s room?”
Kennedy managed to swallow down a full-fledged scream and only made a little yelp when her door banged open. She had never seen the student before. He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt and stared around the room wildly.
“Who are you?”
“Dustin. Are you Willow’s roommate?”
Why didn’t Willow ever pull the door completely shut? Kennedy sighed. “Yeah.” She exited out of the webpages, and when a flush warmed up her face, she reminded herself she hadn’t done anything illegal or shameful.
The stranger’s eyes were everywhere at once and he scanned one side of the room to another. “There’s been an accident. Do you know where her wallet is?”
Kennedy stood up only to remember she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch except for some dry Cheerios. She put her hand on the back of her chair to steady herself. “What kind of accident?”
“She was hit by a car just a few minutes ago. The ambulance is on its way. They need her ID.”
“I’ll look.” Kennedy had no idea where it was, but she felt better about going through her roommate’s personal effects than letting someone else do it. Willow’s top drawer had a journal Kennedy had never seen her write in, some homeopathic cough drops, a few sticks of unburned incense, and a picture of her hiking with some friends up a snow-capped mountain back home in Alaska. No ID anywhere.
Dustin rummaged through the things on top of Willow’s desk. “Here. This must be her wallet.” He slipped it in his pocket. “Do you … I mean, she’s your roommate. Do you want me to show you …?”
Kennedy was already slipping on her shoes.
“She was at the crosswalk. The car came out of nowhere.” He bounded down the stairs two at a time.
“You saw it?” Kennedy had to run to keep up.
“Yeah. Wicked crazy.” Dustin looked back at Kennedy over his shoulder as they hurried past the dorms. “I hope she’s ok. Are you guys close?”
Kennedy wondered how to answer that question. Willow and she didn’t share any of the same moral values, but they respected each other’s space and so far had co-existed just fine. A few times they even streamed an action movie on Willow’s desktop to watch together. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, I’m really sorry.” He froze. “I don’t see the ambulance. Maybe they already got her to the hospital.”
“What was wrong with her?” Kennedy wasn’t sure she really wanted to know.
“I didn’t see everything, but it looked pretty bad.” Dustin pointed ahead. “I think I see one of the cars that stopped to help her. Let me go ask him what the paramedics said.”
Kennedy jogged after him. When she caught up, he was bending over, talking to the driver through the open window. “This is her roommate.” He turned to Kennedy. “There’s a guy in the backseat who wants to ask you something.” He opened the door, and Kennedy peered in.
“There’s no one back there.”
Before she could react, Dustin elbowed her in the ribs. She doubled over. He grabbed her shoulder. Air. She needed a little air. Then she would yell for help. She tried to gasp.
Strong, sharp fingers pressed into the back of her neck. She flailed out her arms, trying to remember those dumb self-defense videos her dad made her watch. How could she go for the eyes if she couldn’t even keep her balance?
Her lungs filled noisily with air. “Help!”
Dustin kicked her hard in the belly. She fell into the backseat and immediately stopped struggling when he brought a small knife just centimeters from her chest.
“Shut up.”
She took shallow breaths. Dustin put one leg up into the car, and she scrambled backward away from him.
“Hold still,” he ordered.
She bit her lips together to keep from squealing. Breathe evenly. She could almost hear her dad’s voice. Back when she lived in Yanji, she thought his emphasis on crisis preparation was one of his strange, morbid quirks. How many other girls at her high school actually had to role-play kidnapping scenarios? At the time, Kennedy thought it had something to do with her dad’s paranoia about being an American overseas. He seized the stories of one or two US businessmen getting captured for ransom and created a whole atmosphere of fear. Now, she was grateful for his words in her head.
Create as much noise as you can during the abduction itself. Well, that had failed. All she got out was one pitiful yelp. If making a scene didn’t help, the best thing to do was stay calm. They’re going to be tense. You don’t want to make them even more
nervous.
And so she sat as the car sped onto the road. When Dustin covered her eyes with a blindfold, she didn’t resist. She tried not to wince when he raised her hands over her head and cuffed her wrists to the neck-rest behind her. When the car made its first turn, she counted her breaths. Over and over and over. Someone would come. Someone would free her. This wasn’t China, with its corrupt police force and neo-communist justice system. This was America. God wouldn’t allow them to actually hurt her. He couldn’t. Her parents were missionaries. She had grown up singing praises in Sunday school. People prayed for her. People admired her. She wasn’t the kind of person who could just disappear.
She shut her eyes, which made her feel a little less powerless in the blindfold. If it was going to be dark, it was going to be dark because she wanted it to be. She clung to her dad’s words as if they were a personal guarantee of her own safety. If they want a ransom, they have no reason to harm you.
The car sped ahead as if nothing had happened. The man in the front said something to Dustin. Kennedy strained her ears. She had to pay attention. She could tell the police what their voices sounded like …
But what would that do? She remembered her 911 conversation last weekend. The people there couldn’t even trace a simple phone call. Besides, how did she expect them to rescue her when nobody knew she was gone?
The realization hit her in the gut like a cannonball, sending splinters of fear and dread and disbelief coursing through her being. Nobody knew she was gone. She took a deep breath.
This was going to be the longest night of her life.
Assuming she survived until morning.
CHAPTER 12
“My parents live in China. My dad has a printing business there.”
Kennedy knew she was rambling but couldn’t stop the torrent of words from flowing out her mouth. She wanted them to know she was a real person, not a nameless victim. And if they were after money, she wanted them to accurately estimate what her family might or might not be able to afford. She tried to keep from thinking about her mom and how freaked out she would be to get a ransom call from overseas.
“I have a roommate.” Kennedy was still blindfolded, but she turned to Dustin next to her. “She’ll wonder where I am if I’m not back tonight.” Did her voice sound convincing enough, or could he tell she was lying? Willow was out with her newest interest and wouldn’t be back until sometime tomorrow. Kennedy could be gone for twenty-four hours or more before Willow started to get suspicious.
“I have a boyfriend.” That was a lie too, but it sounded better than calling Reuben her lab partner. “We’re supposed to meet in half an hour to study for a test.” It didn’t matter if that wasn’t true, either. These men had to understand their plans would backfire. They had to understand she wasn’t the kind of person someone could pluck off the streets and get away with it.
“You’re going to text your roommate and your boyfriend.” The driver in front had one of those heavy Boston accents Kennedy had previously thought were only from movies. “You’re going to tell them your aunt in Maryland broke her hip and your parents begged you to go check on her.”
Kennedy’s blood froze and her hands chilled at the mention of her aunt Lilian. How could they know? She thought about when Dustin came bursting into her room and called Willow by name. They had obviously planned ahead. But why?
“I don’t have my phone with me.” Remembering all her dad’s advice, she tried to keep her expression neutral. She didn’t want to make them angry.
“We do.” Dustin’s voice was younger, not as gruff as the driver’s. He poked her in the side with something small.
“You have my phone?” How had they managed that? Dustin had stayed on Willow’s side of the room the entire time. Were these magicians and illusionists she was dealing with?
“It’s a copy, stupid.”
Flashes of the previous day flickered in her memory. Her lost phone. The fire drill.
“How can I text when I’m cuffed to the seat?” Kennedy tried to guess how fast the car was moving. If they freed her hands to write a message, could she dive out? And if she did, would she roll right into oncoming traffic?
“Don’t give her the phone, idiot,” the driver spat. “Do it for her.”
She listened while Dustin typed on her phone, or the copy of it — another curiosity she had previously thought only came from movies.
A minute later, the phone beeped. “Reuben wants to know if you uploaded your titration results to the class database yet. Whatever that means.”
“Yeah, I did it this afternoon.” Kennedy tried to picture her dad’s comforting face. Maybe if she pretended this was some role-playing test he had designed for her …
From the front seat, the driver grumbled something or other about traffic. It was rush hour. Were they going out of the city, then, stuck in a sea of commuters?
The phone beeped again a few minutes later. “Willow says do you mind if someone sleeps in your bed while you’re gone.”
Her bed. The one she wasn’t in right now. Would she ever see it again?
“Forget about that,” the driver called back. “Who else do you need to contact?” he asked Kennedy. She felt the car turn. Was this the second or third right so far?
“I have a calculus test tomorrow. Then I have general chemistry.”
“I don’t need your whole stinking schedule,” he interrupted. “Just tell me who’s gonna miss you if you don’t check in.”
The more Kennedy thought about it, the more she realized Reuben and Willow were the only people who would care if she vanished. Had she really spent two whole months at Harvard and not made any other friends?
“My parents.” Would her kidnappers let her call her parents? She tried to think of some sort of code, some way she could tell them she was in trouble. Her dad had come up with contingency plans in case the Chinese police raided their home in the middle of the night. Couldn’t he have dreamed up a secret phrase to signal distress? If these men let her phone Yanji …
“We already sent your mom an email,” Dustin said. “You’re incredibly busy studying, plus you have laryngitis so you can’t call. Easy.”
So they had access to her email, too. “Who are you?”
“Just shut up,” the driver mumbled.
She had lost track of the turns by now and wondered if they were driving around in circles. She strained her ears to try to detect any background noise that might clue her in to her surroundings, but all she could hear were the generic sounds of traffic. That, plus the roar of her own pulse in her ears. At one point, she was certain she heard the faintest hint of a police siren, but it disappeared faster than a lightning flash.
And so she was left alone with her thoughts. Her thoughts, her fears, her racing heart. Were they going to hurt her? Were they going to kill her? They knew her roommate. They had access to her phone and emails. Why? If her parents were billionaires or something, it would make sense for someone to go to such lengths to track her. Hunt her down. But all this for the daughter of an overseas printer? Could it have something to do with her parents’ secret missionary work in China, then? If it were a movie, she’d joke with her dad about how far-fetched and contrived it all was.
Her eyes were still shut, and she figured her dad would try to tell her to let her body rest. What was that about sexual predators and their first goal was to tire you out? But would these men really go through so much trouble just for …
“My pastor will miss me,” she blurted out. “We’ve been working on a …” She didn’t want to mention anything about the hotline phone. “We’ve been working on a big fundraising dinner for Thursday. He’ll be expecting to hear from me.”
“Not no more. You’ve already sent Carl a text telling him you have laryngitis and a research paper to work on all week.”
So they knew about her pastor, too? Who were they? Kennedy’s one ray of hope was that Sandy would see the text about the laryngitis and bring over some chicken soup or tho
se ridiculous cookies she kept talking about. Otherwise it could be days, maybe a week or more, before someone reported her disappearance. What horrors would she endure in the meantime?
Would they even keep her alive that long?
She guessed about an hour passed before they parked, but she didn’t know if the terror or the blindfold were playing tricks with her mind. It was breezy when they forced her out of the car. She strained her ears for clues about where she was. Why couldn’t there be a train? Something to tell her where she was? Were they still in Massachusetts? The ground was hard. Pavement. That was a good sign, right? At least they weren’t out in the middle of the woods where search parties could hunt for weeks and still find nothing. But if she got a chance to run, would there be any place to hide?
There were no sounds, no cars, no traffic. She imagined that some people in her position might call for help in case anyone was nearby, but she could hardly muster the strength to support her own weight. “Where are we?” Her voice was quiet, squeaky. She wondered if this was how Rose felt when she made that call on the hotline phone.
Rose. Was all that a dream? Had she made it all up? Could Rose really be Jodie Abernathy? Sitting behind her computer desk, Kennedy had been so certain. The age, the middle name, the homeschool connection. But now it all seemed so distant, so jumbled. Even if Rose was Wayne Abernathy’s daughter, that still didn’t explain why Kennedy was abducted, miles from her dorm, uncertain if she’d survive the night.
Unless …
They started to walk, and Kennedy shoved thoughts of Rose aside. She had one goal — to stay alive. Once she returned safe and sound to her Harvard dorm, she would talk to Carl about her suspicions.
If she returned.
She heard the sound of something lifting, a garage door or something as heavy. “Go on.” When it closed behind them again, the ground reverberated, and its thud echoed around the room. No, she couldn’t escape out that way.
Her hands were still cuffed, and she raised them to keep from bumping into anything. She tried counting how many steps they were taking her, but her pulse was roaring far too loudly in her ears and she lost track. A trained detective might be able to listen to her accosters’ footsteps and discern the exact size and style of shoe they wore, but Kennedy was clueless. Besides, how in the world would it help her escape to know if her abductor wore a size ten or size thirteen?