The two of them looked at each other with dawning horror.
Molly woke up with the worst headache ever. For a time that’s all she could concentrate on; then gradually she became aware that the surface beneath her was hard and cold and that she was uncomfortable all over.
Fearing that any movement at all would sharpen the splinters of pain piercing her brain, she lay perfectly still, wondering why she felt so bad. The flu was going around at school. Had she caught it?
But then memory came drifting through the dense fog of her mind, and she remembered.
She had left the restaurant, furious at her mother, nauseated by the whole “new happy family” scene. She hadn’t had a plan other than to get away from that stupid cake with the sparklers flaring from it, and the people at other tables clapping and calling out well wishes. She’d had to escape the whole farce.
As she’d exited, she batted away the valet who’d approached her about retrieving her car. She’d seen that the nearest corner was half a block away. Fuming and upset, she’d walked toward it, wanting to get out of sight of the restaurant quickly, thinking that possibly either her mother or the loser would chase after her, demanding that she return to the celebration.
She’d rounded the corner and hadn’t gone far when a car pulled up to the curb and idled. The driver’s window slid down. “Excuse me, miss. I think you forgot this when you left the restaurant.” He opened the car door and stepped out, extending a purse toward her.
“Nope. I have mine,” she said, patting the small bag hanging from her shoulder.
“Oh, well, someone else’s then. My mistake.” And then he’d swung the purse at the side of her head. Her last thought had been, What just happened?
Something terrible had happened, she realized now. A woman’s worst nightmare had happened. Like Crissy Mellin and others who’d disappeared without a trace.
That couldn’t happen to her, though. No! Not to her!
But, oh God, if it had, it would positively kill her dad.
Spurred by that thought, she opened her eyes. She was dizzy, making it difficult to bring the wavering shape bending over her into focus and keep it still. But finally she did. She recognized the man who had smiled at her through the open car window. He was smiling now.
“Ah, good. You’re awake. I was afraid you wouldn’t come to before I have to leave, and I had hoped for a chance to get to know you, Molly.”
He knew her name? As muzzy as she was, she knew she’d never met him. She tried to sit up and only then realized that her hands and feet were bound.
“Don’t strain,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “You can’t get loose, and you could hurt yourself trying.”
She wanted to yell at him that she was already hurt. The purse he’d struck her with must’ve been packed with iron, and she wondered if the blow had in fact cracked her skull.
He was leaning down close to her, blocking most of her field of vision, but what she could see beyond his head and shoulders was a high ceiling supporting metal walls. It was an ugly enclosure. A garage? A boathouse?
She shuddered beneath his caressing touch on her shoulder. She detested his smarmy smile. He was looking at her like they were friends. Or lovers. That thought made her want to throw up. Shrinking from him, she asked, “Who are you?”
“Your liberator.”
She didn’t know what that was supposed to mean exactly, only that it sounded scary. “Get your hand off me.” Her voice warbled. She wished for more strength behind it. “My father will kill you.”
“I’m sure he’d want to. The volatility of his personality is obvious.”
She didn’t know the definition of that v word, but, if he knew her dad at all, he never would have done this to her. “If you value your life,” she whispered, “you’ll take me home.”
“You’ll be going home, Molly. To Luna.”
That sounded freaking crazy. She became even more frightened and decided to say nothing more. She got the impression that he wanted to engage with her. She would deny him that. She was expert at shutting people out. She did it to her mother all the time. She closed her eyes.
She sensed him standing up. His footsteps squeaked on the floor, which made no sense to her, so she reopened her eyes to slits. Plastic. The floor was lined with thick black plastic like heavy-duty trash bags were made of.
He was going to kill her, wasn’t he?
Turning her head slightly, she saw him standing at a crude workbench, his back to her. He’d pulled on latex gloves. It took her a while to figure out that he was using tongs to pick up stainless steel instruments and dipping them one by one into a shallow basin and swishing them around in some sort of solution.
Sterilizing. That’s what he was doing; he was sterilizing those utensils, which looked like they belonged in an operating room. After their dunking, each was lined up with its fellows on a white towel.
Unable to hold it back, she screamed in terror.
Startled, he turned around and said sharply, “Stop that, Molly. It won’t do you any good. Nobody can hear you.”
“Go to hell,” she sobbed, sagging weakly.
Her outburst had launched rockets of pain inside her head. Her stomach heaved. Bile surged into her throat, but, by an act of will, she kept from spewing it. She knew she must have a serious concussion, and struggling could jostle her brain and make it worse. So she lay still, in misery and fear.
He finished with the instruments, making small adjustments to their alignment on the towel, then peeled off the gloves and dropped them into an oil drum, also lined with plastic. He rolled down his shirtsleeves and buttoned both buttons on each cuff.
“Now. The final step.” He walked over to a hook, which had been screwed into the wall, and reached into a plastic shopping bag hanging there along with a sport coat.
He took a box from the bag, walked it over to the workbench, and opened it. He studied the contents as though taking inventory, then turned to her and smiled. “Want to see?”
He carried the open box over to her. She gasped when she saw what was inside: stoppered bottles of red ink, a bottle labeled as an antiseptic, a tube of salve, and needles of various sizes in sterilized sleeves.
She found it difficult to breathe, and it hurt her chest to try. This freak was going to tattoo her!
“I ordered several stencils,” he said in a conversational tone that mocked her horror. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and held it out to her. It was the outline of a crescent moon. “I hope you like it.”