Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Complete Box Set (Books 1-9)

CHAPTER 12

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, i***t,” 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 s****l 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 those 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 in front of her 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?

They descended a staircase, and the air grew even chillier. She guessed if they let her look she would see her own breath, choppy as it was. She tried to rub her hands together, but her wrists chafed on the cuffs. She couldn’t feel any railings to either side of her and was afraid of tripping.

“Watch your step.” She recognized Dustin’s voice and actually welcomed his hand on her bicep. His grip was forceful, but it almost felt as if he were holding her, supporting her quivering legs, preparing to catch her if she lost her balance.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the gnawing feeling in her stomach had grown until her entire abdominal cavity was a vacuum, void of life, void of emotion, void of matter. They slowed to a stop.

“Sit here.”

Kennedy’s shin bumped a couch. She felt the scratchy fabric with her hands and turned her face away from the musty smell. How long had it been rotting down here? How many other victims had used it before? Was she alone? She pictured herself in a room as cold and bleak and empty as the holodecks in those sci-fi shows she sometimes watched with her dad. Blackness. On and on forever even though your body was in a room, enclosed by four walls. She lowered herself carefully onto the couch, half expecting a rodent to come scampering out from underneath, ready to complain at whoever disturbed his rest.

Someone grabbed her wrists. His hands were warm. Didn’t he know it was below freezing down here? She might die of exposure if nothing else.

She let out her breath when he unlocked the left side of the cuff. She forced herself to thank him, but her voice was still so small, so scared. Had her dad known? When he dragged her through all those seemingly pointless training scenarios, when he grilled her about how she’d respond if she was ever abducted, did he know how small she would sound?

Unfortunately, the man with the warm hands didn’t take off her other cuff but attached it to something metallic sticking out of the wall behind. She wanted to argue. They could trust her. She would cooperate. She wouldn’t run. But they’d know she was lying. She reached up to finger her blindfold.

“Don’t.” It was Dustin’s voice.

She let her free hand drop to her lap.

“That’s better.”

Should she bother to scream? Other than the knife he pulled to get her in the car, she hadn’t noticed any other weapons. No guns to her temple like in a thriller novel. No long blades pressed up against her jugular. The men hadn’t talked to anyone else since they came in. Were they the only two guarding her?

She licked her dry lips. What did it matter? Two men or fifty, she wasn’t getting out of here. Not yet. But still, if they weren’t armed, wouldn’t that make a rescue attempt a whole lot more likely to succeed?

She heard the men shuffle away, listened to the rumble of their voices as they conversed in a low murmur somewhere far off. Were they deciding what to do with her?

She wished her father hadn’t told her so many statistics about abducted women and what might happen to them. Which horrible fate would she face? A lifetime of slavery in an underground s*x ring? Or would she end up in a freezer, cut into pieces and stuffed into bloody Ziploc bags? Would they find her next week at the bottom of the Charles River? What was the least painful way to be murdered?

She shook her head. She couldn’t go on thinking that way. Instead, she listed the reasons she still had to be thankful. They could have hurt her even more getting her into the car. Her stomach felt sore, but she didn’t think she was seriously injured. Bruised up a little, but what would that matter if she got out of here alive?

Who were they? Hired men, perhaps? Had the Chinese government heard about her parents’ clandestine missionary work? Was she some pawn now in an international conflict? She chided herself for watching too many spy shows with her dad. If only this were more like those. Then someone like James Bond would come and free her and kill her captors without breaking into a sweat or getting his tuxedo stained with blood.

“You hungry?” the man with the gruff voice asked. He sounded a lot older than Dustin, but Kennedy hadn’t gotten a good look at him before she was blindfolded.

The question startled Kennedy. What was this — a bed and breakfast for hostages? She was famished, and her mouth watered at the prospect of food, but she shook her head. Tell them what you need, she remembered her dad saying. But she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be dependent on them. She didn’t want to admit she would be here longer than a few minutes. She didn’t want to acknowledge she was miles away from her dorm, maybe even in a different state, and nobody realized she was missing. How long before Reuben or Willow would get worried and start asking questions? A week? If these men had a copy of her phone and access to her email, couldn’t they keep up the ruse of her disappearance indefinitely?

Maybe. But she wasn’t going to accept that as a possibility. Right now, she was going to swallow down her heart, which kept threatening to leap out of her chest. She was going to ignore the rumbling in her stomach that felt as empty as the earth’s upper atmosphere. She was going to think about pleasant things, like about the fact that God hadn’t allowed them to force themselves on her, and she was going to plan a way to get out.

“Then we’ll check on you in the morning,” Dustin said. Footsteps receded in the direction of the stairs. And then Kennedy — who had spent the last ten years in Yanji with its half a million residents, who now lived in a dorm with four hundred other students and shared her meals with nearly two thousand other college first-years — was left behind in stifling, deafening, soul-haunting solitude.