Abducted (Lizzy Gardner Series #1) Read online

  ABDUCTED

  T.R. Ragan

  Copyright 2011 Theresa Ragan

  ABDUCTED by T.R. Ragan

  http://www.theresaragan.com

  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Theresa Ragan.

  Beta Readers: Cathy Katz, Janet Katz, Sandy Scrivano

  Copy Editor: Faith Williams

  http://www.theatwatergroup.com

  Cover art: Dara England

  http://www.mycoverart.wordpress.com

  Formatting: LK E-Book Formatting Service

  http://design.lkcampbell.com/

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank every writer I ever met, on-line or off-line, who inspired and encouraged me along the way. Years ago I critiqued with Caroline Fyffe, Susan Crosby, Susan Grant, and Brenda Novak, not necessarily in that order and not all in one group, but I learned something from each of these writers and I am thankful to have worked with them. I have also learned so much from various organizations and writers' groups including RWA, The Wet Noodle Posse, The Sacramento Valley Rose, and The Pixies Chicks. Thank you all.

  About the Author

  Theresa Ragan is a member of RWA and the Sacramento Chapter of RWA and has garnered six Golden Heart nominations in Romance Writers of America’s ® prestigious Golden Heart ® Competition for her work. She lives with her husband, Joe, and the youngest of her four children in Sacramento, California.

  Chapter 1

  Sacramento, California

  Saturday, August 17, 1996 6:47 PM

  Tall, dense oleander provided cover within the shadows of the night as he watched the front door to the Anderson’s house. Behind him lay a field of tall dry grass which would be useful in keeping him hidden when it came time to get to his car parked on the other side. The dry grass was a fire hazard. If this was his neighborhood, it would have been taken care of already. One thing he’d learned from watching the area for the past two months was that the people who lived here were complacent. No Neighborhood Watch signs. No regular meetings. No communication.

  Idiots.

  Didn’t they know that the best protection against crime was an informed public? Be vigilant about what’s going on in your community, people. Be observant. Be alert for strangers or unfamiliar vehicles. He shook his head.

  The media “experts” insisted the recent killings were about control and playing God. It wasn’t about that at all. It was about patience. Not only did he have the patience of a saint, he was a saint. He wasn’t a maniac or a lunatic or any of the things the reporters liked to call him. If he was a “crazy lunatic” he’d go after each and every one of those so-called “experts” and call it a day.

  Retired FBI agent and now author, Gregory O’Guinn, referred to him as a loser, asserting that he was an outcast...a failure who thrived on torturing the innocent. Gregory O’Guinn gave Harvard a bad name.

  But what did he care what O’Guinn thought? He knew the truth. He knew what he was doing and why. He knew the difference between right and wrong. If the author spent more time investigating the lives of the dead girls, he’d see that they were far from innocent—they were bad girls. They were disrespectful teenagers who had forced him to take action when no one else would. If O’Guinn knew the whole story, he’d be calling him a vigilante, a hero, a man obligated to ignore the due process of law and execute justice on his own terms.

  He kept his gaze fixated on the Anderson’s front door. Glancing at his Rolex, an Oyster Perpetual Sea-Dweller, he swallowed the irritation nipping at his insides. Despite having an aversion to all forms of water—sea, ocean, pool—he’d always wanted a Sea-Dweller. His dad used to wear one just like it. With thirty one jewel chronometer automatic movement, the watch was water resistant at 1220 meters. It was solid. Not as heavy as those beefy Omegas. The watch had been milled from a solid block of ridiculously expensive 904L stainless steel. The dial was easy to read, even in the dark. A gift to himself for doing a job well done—three girls in three months—all menaces to society.

  He narrowed his eyes. Where was Jennifer?

  For the past eight weeks, like clockwork, Jennifer Anderson’s parents went to dinner and a movie every Saturday night, leaving their sixteen-year-old daughter home alone. What they didn’t know was that within five minutes of leaving the house their daughter crept out the front door and walked to the neighborhood park to meet her boyfriend. Shame on her.

  Convinced she would sneak out eventually, he decided to wait as he thought about the other girls he’d recently disciplined. The experts had speculated that he got his kicks out of torturing the girls, which was ridiculous. He got more out of the morbid curiosity of the public than he did out of taking the girls home and doing whatever he had to do in order to teach them a lesson.

  Was he the only one who refused to let insolent spoiled teenage girls rule the world?

  Saturday, August 17, 1996 7:00 PM

  Lizzy Gardner crept down the stairs, hoping to escape unnoticed, but when she reached the landing, her sister’s lipstick dropped from her hip pocket and slid across the tiled foyer.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Elizabeth?” Dad asked from the kitchen.

  She sighed and looked his way.

  Mom stood behind Dad and waved a dismissive hand through the air, letting Lizzy know it was okay. Dad was just blowing off steam like he always did before she went out with her friends.

  “It’s my last night with my friends,” Lizzy lied. “Emily and Brooke are leaving for San Diego tomorrow.”

  “It’s a good thing,” he said. “You need to start hanging out with people your own age. Who’s driving?” He opened the front door and looked outside.

  Emily waved from her convertible VW Bug. “Hi, Mr. Gardner!”

  Dad grunted and shut the door. “You don’t need to go out tonight. There’s still a killer on the loose.”

  Not this again. The notorious teenage killer hadn’t struck in months, but after killing one fifteen-year-old and two sixteen-year-old girls in a three month period, the maniac had managed to turn perfectly normal parents into fearful worry warts.

  “Dad. Please?”

  “I want you home by ten.”

  “Tom,” her mother interrupted. “I told Lizzy she could stay out until eleven thirty. This is her last night with these girls. After the bowling alley they’re all going back to Brooke’s house. You’ve met Brooke’s parents before. She’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t like it,” Dad said, shaking his head.

  “Go ahead,” Mom said with a wave of her hand. “We’ll see you later tonight.”

  Lizzy didn’t need to be told twice. Forgetting all about the lipstick she’d dropped, she ran out the door and didn’t look back.

  Saturday, August 17, 1996 11:25 PM

  Lizzy didn’t want the night to end. As Jared drove toward her house, she looked out the front window. It was a dark and wonderful night...a perfect night.

  Jared took a right on Emerald Street.

  “Do you mind pulling over up there,” she said, pointing to the curbside at the end of the block. “I’ll walk the rest of the way. If Dad sees you dropping me off, he’ll kill me.”

  Jared drove his dad’s Ford Explorer to the side of the road and shut off the engine. Lizzy unlocked her seatbelt. She leaned into him and pressed her lips to his. When she pulled
away, her eyes watered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just hate this feeling...like I’m never going to see you again.”

  Jared pulled her close and kissed the tip of her nose, her cheek and chin, and finally her lips. Every kiss felt like the first. And now he was leaving for college. Life was so unfair. “I wish tonight would never end,” she said.

  “Me, too,” he said before kissing her again, deeper this time.

  She loved everything about Jared Michael Shayne: the way he looked, the way he made her feel, the way he smelled, and the sound of his voice.

  “Jared?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re not going to forget about me, are you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  There was a long pause before he laughed and said, “Look at us, acting as if we’re never going to see each other again. I’m going to Los Angeles, not Mars. A five or six-hour drive tops. All you have to do is call me and I’ll be there.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” He kissed her again.

  The clock on the console read 11:25 before he parked the car. Dad was probably already in a frenzy. “I better go.” She turned away to open the car door.

  His hand stopped her. “I love you, Lizzy. This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.”

  She managed a smile. “You’re right. I love you, too. Call me in the morning before you leave, okay?”

  “I will.” He looked at the street ahead of them. “Let me take you closer to your house. It’s too late for you to be walking alone.”

  She liked that he worried about her but he did have a tendency to treat her like a little girl sometimes. She had spent enough Sunday night dinners with Jared and his family to know that his father could be bossy and controlling. She didn’t want Jared or anyone else telling her what to do. Besides, Dad would ground her for a month if he saw Jared dropping her off when she was supposed to be with Emily and Brooke. Lizzy planted a quick one on his mouth, then turned and climbed out of the car. “I’ll be fine,” she said before shutting the door and blowing him a kiss.

  He threw an invisible kiss back at her.

  Feeling better, she headed for home. Before making a right on Canyon Road, she looked over her shoulder, but Jared was already driving the other way. She waved anyhow.

  Her house was at the end of the block.

  She could see the silhouette of the willow tree her dad had planted in the front yard.

  The clicks of her shoes against pavement sounded loud enough to wake the dead. She stopped and slipped off her shoes. Now, the only sounds were the croaks of a zillion frogs looking for a mate in some distant creek.

  Zap.

  A streetlight went out. She looked up at the light as she passed by. She hadn’t thought it could get any darker, but she was wrong. Even the stars had abandoned her tonight. God, she’d forgotten how much she hated the dark. The only thing she hated more than the dark was being alone in the dark.

  Jared was right. She should have let him drive her closer to her house, or maybe she should have just let him take her home and walk her to the door like he usually did. She could have told her dad that Jared had picked her up from Brooke’s. Dad would have believed her. He always believed her. Her stubbornness was the reason she was out here now...alone...beneath an inky black sky.

  A rustling noise sounded near the side gate of one of the neighbor’s houses. Chills crawled up her arms. She stopped and listened, hoping to see Fudge, the chocolate brown lab that loved to lick everyone to death. A couple of steps later she heard it again. The thump thump thump of footfalls.

  “Jared? Is that you? It isn’t funny, you know.”

  She swiveled about on her feet. The street was empty behind her. The neighbors’ lights were off; no one was peering out their windows as far as she could tell. No dogs barking.

  That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing.

  She started off again, one foot in front of the other. And yet the sensation flowing through her was the oddest thing. She could feel it...sense it...somebody was watching her.

  Her father always said, “Trust your instincts, Elizabeth. If something doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t.”

  But then again she’d also been told she had an overactive imagination.

  A cool breeze grazed her arms. But there was no breeze tonight, was there?

  She should run. She should have started running the moment she’d felt as if she was being watched.

  Thump, thump, thump. She whipped around so fast she nearly lost her balance. A man charged straight for her. Her brain shouted RUN. Too bad her legs wouldn’t listen. It was as if her feet were glued to the cement.

  Whack! Whack!

  Something solid hit her leg and then the left side of her head. A hot searing pain shot through her skull. Her knees buckled and all she saw was black: black jacket, black mask, black sky.

  Chapter 2

  Sacramento, California

  Monday, August 19, 1996

  Lizzy opened her eyes. An intense pain ripped through her skull, making her wince. She was on her stomach with her hands tied behind her back. The rope was thick and coarse. Her wrists felt raw. She could hardly move. The bastard had taken the time to wrap the upper half of her body in rope, around and around; pulled so tight she could hardly move, let alone breathe. Her ankles were also tied.

  Where was she?

  It was difficult to see clearly. Her head, all the way to her eyebrows, was wrapped in gauze. The man had bashed her in the legs and head and then covered her head with gauze? He’d talked to her, too, through some sort of weird microphone that made his voice sound like the Robinson’s robot on reruns of Lost in Space. The voice had sounded eerie, especially coming from a man wearing a mask straight out of an old Batman movie.

  How long had she been here? A few hours, a day, two days?

  As her eyes adjusted to the semi-dark room, the pain became more of a pounding on the top of her head and less of a sledgehammer crushing against her skull. Shapes began to take form. The room was about the size of her bedroom. Dark blinds covered a rectangular window, but light squeezed its way through tiny slits. Cobwebs, with an array of silky designs, stretched from the corners of the window to the ceiling.

  Chills crept up her spine.

  Fear threatened to swallow her whole, but she knew she didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting out of here unless she stayed calm.

  A pile of cardboard boxes was stacked high to her right. She tried to wriggle her arms. It was no use. She didn’t want to die. How many girls had been reported missing? Two? Three? More importantly, how many had been found alive?

  A big fat zero.

  A creepy crawly worked its way up her leg. She could feel it moving. She stopped breathing. Whatever was on her leg stopped moving.

  Why did it stop? To take a bite of her?

  A shiver shot up her spine. She wanted to cry out but that might get the maniac’s attention, and then what?

  The creepy crawler was on the move again. A spider with the body of a cockroach, she decided, since she could feel its heavy belly against her skin as it moved along, slow and steady.

  She fought with the ropes; tried hard to wriggle her arms, her legs, her hips. It was no use. Her stomach heaved and gurgled.

  You are not going to be sick, Lizzy. Stay calm. Breathe. Just because the other girls couldn’t find a way out that doesn’t mean you can’t.

  Think.

  Focus. She had watched Oprah recently, a show about what to do under extreme situations, like if your car went under water. The number one thing to do was stay calm.

  She shut her eyes, inhaled, then slowly exhaled. The stab of nausea left her. When she opened her eyes again she saw a spider skitter across the wood floor within an inch of her face. And then another...and another.

  What the hell was going on? Where were they coming fr
om?

  She turned her head as far as she could. Shit. Only a few feet away was a giant aquarium filled with insects. Not just spiders either—scorpions and centipedes, too. The insects all climbed on top of one another trying to find a way out. Just like her, they were trapped.

  Whatever was on her leg had inched its way past her knee. It’s just a bug...a stupid bug. Get a grip, Lizzy. At least it’s not dark. More than anything she didn’t want the maniac to come back. She didn’t want to die.

  Images of the other girls came to mind. She squirmed like a fly caught in a web, ignoring the white hot pain as she tried to get a feel for where the ropes intersected behind her.

  Suddenly, an eerie calmness settled over her. Her will to live was bigger and stronger than the monster who had tied her up. The maniac, now and forever dubbed Spiderman, obviously didn’t know she was double-jointed. She could bend her limbs and joints in ways the sick bastard probably never imagined. The smell of her own stale blood made her stomach churn. She couldn’t pass out now. She needed to get untied and get out of here before he came back.

  Forget about Spiderman.

  Concentrate.

  A little more pressure on the left shoulder should do the trick. She had popped her shoulder many times to impress her friends at parties. The doctor called it Positional Non-traumatic dislocation. If she could do this...if she could maneuver her arm just so...and a little farther to the left... Focus, Lizzy. Crack.

  A tear dripped down the side of her face, across her cheekbone. Thank you, God.

  The throbbing ache from dislocating her shoulders was nothing compared to the agonizing pain in her head and the burning sensation in her leg where he’d hit her with something hard and solid. She slid around on the floor to loosen the bindings, then bent her chin into her chest and used her teeth to pull on the rope. It was working. The ropes loosened. She pulled her right hand free. Yes! The rest was easy.