I use the time to inspect my surroundings, but there isn’t much to see. The room is small. Nothing on the walls. Just a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. And the door.
After what may be another five or ten or sixty minutes, that door opens again.
I expect Dolph to step inside, a hammer or pliers in hand, intent on doing more damage, but instead a young woman is shoved forward.
“No, please, please stop,” she cries, tears all over her face. She’s white and blonde, no older than twenty-one, wearing tight shorts and a T-shirt, much like I’m wearing, only she still has on sandals. Her hands are bound behind her back, but her ankles are free, so she stumbles forward as she’s pushed into the room, still sobbing, still begging for them to stop, three of them now in masks following her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I did but I’m sorry, please just stop, please don’t—”
Dolph backhands her, shouts, “Shut the fuck up!” and grabs the metal chair he’d been sitting on and drags it around so it’s directly behind me. The two others grab her arms and drag her forward, the girl really going at it now, screaming, begging them to stop. Dolph backhands her again, and then she’s shoved down onto the chair and I can hear them tearing off strips of duct tape and using those strips to bind her to the chair.
“Please stop, please stop,” the girl keeps saying, and Dolph shouts, “I should put this tape over your mouth too,” and like that, she goes quiet.
I can’t see the girl, and I can’t see Dolph, and I can’t see the other two, but I can see the door. It’s open. Bright light streams in. My first instinct is to shout for help, but then I remember that this girl was shouting the entire time and that didn’t change anything. So I sit there, quiet, and wait until the three men leave and it’s just the two of us, the girl continuing to sob quietly behind me.
Two hours thirty minutes to go.
Eleven
“What’s your name?”
The girl doesn’t answer, still quietly sobbing.
“Hey,” I say, pushing back in my chair to nudge her. “What’s your name?”
The girl keeps sobbing. I don’t think she’s going to answer me, but then she sniffs and says, “Brooke.”
Of course her name is Brooke. A petite blonde like her, I wouldn’t imagine any other name. Her parents are probably members of a country club, and she drives a Mercedes or BMW, and—
What the hell am I doing? Shit, I need to keep my priorities straight. Escape first, unfairly judge the girl second.
“Hi, Brooke. My name’s Holly. How old are you?”
The question seems to catch her off guard. “How—how—how old am I?”
“Yeah. I’m seventeen. How old are you?”
“I’m—I’m—I’m twenty.”
“Do you go to college?”
The sobbing has stopped, but her voice still continues to tremble. “Yes.”
“Where?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Brooke, where do you go to college?”
“Here,” she says, her voice still trembling, and then sobs, “I don’t even know where I am!”
I twist in the chair, but I can’t see her, so I stay seated facing the door as I speak.
“What happened, Brooke? How did those men take you?”
She sniffs again. “I … I was out with friends. We’re nursing students at the university, and—”
“Where?”
“What?”
“Where is the university?”
She sniffs again, and when she speaks next, the tremor in her voice is almost gone.
“Here,” she says. “At least, I think this is here. I just—I don’t know!”
“That’s okay. So what happened?”
“The Burns School of Medicine,” Brooke says. “That’s where we go. It’s part of the University of Hawaii.”
She seems to just be rambling now, her focus gone, so I try to keep her on track.
“Okay, so you were out with your friends, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you?”
“We went to some bars.”
“Do you remember which bars?”
“Not really. I had a lot to drink. But we were in Honolulu, I do remember that.”
“Okay, so you were drinking at some bars in Honolulu. How did you end up here?”
“This guy started flirting with me, buying me drinks. He talked me into leaving with him. Next thing I know, these guys in masks show up and beat him up and grab me. They threw me into a van, put a bag over my head.”
“How long were you in the van?”
“What?”
“Do you remember how long you were in the van?”
“I … I don’t know. Why?”
“Because if you started out in Honolulu and remember how long it took to get here, it would help us try to figure out where we are.”
“I’m sorry,” Brooke says, and she sounds genuinely sorry, like this is all her fault. “I just—I was so scared. I am scared.”
“I know. Me too.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
Brooke says, “What happened to you? How did you get here?”
“I was out with a guy who turned out to be a douchebag.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was in on this, whatever this is. He took me someplace where men in masks came and grabbed me, just like they did to you. I hate to say it, but there’s a good chance whoever the guy was who got you to leave your friends was probably paid off to get you alone.”
“Oh God,” Brooke says. “But—but—but why?”
“I have no idea.” I pause, thinking. “Brooke, where are you from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Were you born and raised here on Oahu?”
“No. I was born in North Carolina.”
“Where in North Carolina?”
“Fort Bragg.”
And like that, the mystery of why this girl was abducted starts to make more sense.
“Which one of your parents was stationed at Fort Bragg?”
“My father.”
“Were you an army brat?”
She snorts, clearly less endeared by the term. “Yeah, I was. Why?”
“Where’s your dad stationed now?”
“Here on the island.” She utters another distressed noise. “Assuming we’re even on the island anymore.”
“What base, Brooke?”
“Schofield Barracks.”
Another piece of the
