Taken Read Free Page A

right.
    Thought: I hoped she had called the cops. I hoped they were looking for me.
    Thought: I hoped she didn’t think I ran away again. If she did, she’d have the cops looking in all the wrong places. They wouldn’t find me until it was too late—assuming they ever found me.
    Thought: Someone grabbed me and brought me here.
    Thought: The two girls who disappeared must have felt the same panic that had gripped me and was squeezing me so hard I thought it would crush my heart.
    Thought: Whoever took me and brought me to this place must be around here somewhere.
    Thought: Maybe he—it’s always a he when a girl is missing—was outside right now. Maybe he was reaching out with one hand to push the door open. Maybe he was about to step inside.
    Thought: When he did, he was going to do to me what he did to those two girls.
    Thought: I’m going to die.

THREE
    I lay on the gritty wooden floor of the filthy shack, frozen with terror. For weeks I had been hearing about the two girls who had disappeared, but I had never in a million years thought that anything like that would ever happen to me.
    But here I was, tied up, groggy, panic-stricken— and waiting. Waiting for whoever had taken me to return. Waiting for whatever had happened to the girl who had been found “not alive” to happen to me. Waiting for whatever had happened to the other girl to happen to me. And the whole time my brain kept screaming, This can’t be real! It just can’t be .
    But it was real.
    I lay still, holding my breath and listening for any sound of movement outside the shack. But all I could hear was the hammering of my heart in my chest. What if he was on the other side of the door? What if his hand was on the knob and he was about to turn it?
    I fought back tears. I told myself that this was no time to cry. It was the time to do something. I don’t know what those other girls did when they were taken, but I knew what I was going to do: I was going to fight back. What choice did I have? What did I have to lose?
    I forced myself to breathe. Breathe and think.
    I listened again—and heard nothing except for the occasional call of a bird. Minutes ticked by. Maybe he wasn’t out there after all. Maybe he had left me tied up here and had gone…to do what? To get supplies? I tried not to think what kind of supplies a man like that would want or need. Or maybe he had left because he had to cover his tracks. Maybe there were people who would notice if he disappeared all of a sudden. Maybe he was making preparations to get away from whatever his regular life was and to come back here, probably at nighttime. Bad things always happened at night, when it was dark.
    I suddenly realized that I had no idea what time it was. Allison and I had gotten off the bus just after dark on Saturday, and I had been grabbed right after that. Sunlight filtered faintly through one of the shack’s filthy windows. It was daytime, which meant that it had to be at least Sunday. But when on Sunday? Please let it be morning. Please.
    Bit by bit it got dimmer inside the shack. It got colder too, and I started to shiver. It wasn’t morning after all. It must be Sunday afternoon—probably late Sunday afternoon. Oh my god. If he was waiting until nightfall to return, he would be here soon.
    Don’t panic. Think. Panicking gets you nowhere. If you think, you have a chance.
    If it was Sunday night, my mom had definitely missed me. She definitely knew that something was wrong. And she had definitely called the police. That was all good. But then what? Had the police recruited volunteers to look for me? If they had, where were they looking? Where was I?
    Minutes crept by, and still the man didn’t return. It got gloomier inside the shack. I had to do something before it was too late.
    I struggled with the ropes around my wrists and ankles, but they were too tight. My mouth was dry. My stomach rumbled. My head