“My mom’s current boyfriend. He shaves his head, and he’s got blue eyes. And the way you’re describing Sir, it sounds like Tim.” I remembered the rage in his eyes when he had accused me of sassing him, of talking back. Maybe kidnapping a girl and forcing her to call him Sir was his dream come true.

“Sir looks like a million guys.” Jenny waved one hand dismissively.

Suddenly I remembered the conversation—had it only been yesterday?—at the cafeteria table about a girl who had been kidnapped. “Hey, were you working at a tanning salon when you got taken?”

Her eyes went wide. “Yeah. Island Tan. I think he thought we were going to play house. That I was going to be his perfect girl.” She smiled her torn smile. “But then I had to go and spoil everything.”

“What happened?” I asked.

She took a deep breath. Her eyes filled with tears as she began to speak.

JENNY DOWD

My words came in fits and starts as I described that last night to Savannah. The last normal night of my life. I tried not to think about it very often. It wasn’t a night I wanted to relive.

I’d been in Island Tan’s tiny office, getting ready to close up, when the front door buzzer sounded. I groaned in annoyance. I’d already cleaned all the tanning beds and the spray-tan station. I’d counted the money and put it with a deposit slip in the black zippered bank bag. When I left, I would drop it in the night deposit at the bank next door. But since it wasn’t quite nine o’clock, technically we were still open for business.

When I opened the office door, I was surprised to find a middle-aged guy at the counter. Most of our clientele were teenage girls.

But Sir looked boring and safe. That was, if you even noticed him. He was easy to ignore.

Later, after he took me and I had nothing to do but think, I remembered that I’d actually seen him several times before that last day. Seen him, but never paid attention. In the car next to mine at Safeway. Parked along a route I ran almost every day. I even realized he’d come into the tanning salon on a busy evening a week earlier, disappearing before I had a chance to wait on him.

He was scanning the walls. I thought he was looking at the posters listing our prices and specials. Maybe getting ready to buy our ten-tans-for-the-price-of-eight package for his wife or daughter. So they’d be ready for winter formal or a beach vacation.

Now I knew he was really looking one last time for a camera.

There wasn’t one.

Without saying a word, he took something from behind his back and pointed it at me. It looked like a gun from a science fiction movie. Plastic, chunky, black and yellow. I didn’t know whether to be afraid of it.

Still I lifted my hands in the air, feeling like I was playacting. Like this couldn’t be real. “I already cleaned out the till. You can have the bank deposit. It’s in the office.”

“That’s not what I want,” he said.

As I realized what he meant, my blood turned to ice. Could I scramble back into the office and slam the door closed? Did it even lock? In my panic, I couldn’t remember. Could I get to my cell phone and call 9-1-1 before he hurt me?

And then he pulled the gun’s trigger. Immediately, I felt two stings, one in my chest and the other in my left arm.

My head jerked back, and my legs stiffened. I didn’t remember falling, just being on the flat gray carpet, the current scrambling my thoughts and nerves.

He slipped behind the counter, leaned down, and hit me twice on the head with the side of the gun, which was just as hard and unyielding as a real gun. Later I learned it was actually a Taser. He yanked up my wrists and duct taped them together. Despite his claim that he didn’t want the money, he darted into the office and came back with the black deposit bag as well as my purse. Then he yanked me to my feet. Half supporting me, he marched me into the cold night.

Only Muchos Tacos, on the far side of the strip mall, was still open. But when I managed to loll my head in its direction, I didn’t see a single patron inside. The only cars on this side of the lot were my old Mazda 323 and a dirty, windowless white van. When I realized that was where he was taking me, I tried to drag my feet.

“Come on,” he growled. When I still resisted, he pressed the end of the Taser against the side of my neck. My muscles didn’t spasm, but the pain sucked every other thought from my head. I couldn’t even scream, only whimper. But God help me, after that I willingly crawled into the back of the van. Anything to make it stop.

As I did, he slapped another piece of duct tape over my mouth. A second later, the rear door closed. And then he got in the front and drove me away.

I lay in the back, screaming into the sealed space of my mouth. I was in no way ready to die, but I feared I would smother because it was harder and harder to breathe through my nose, stuffy from crying. The thought began to loop through my mind that that might be for the best. Because it was clear that nothing good was going to happen to me whenever he opened the van door again.

I wasn’t sure how long he drove. The last bit was slow and rough, like he was maneuvering over broken ground, not a road.

Finally, the van stopped. I heard him get out. He was yelling at someone in a hard language I couldn’t understand. He sounded angry. Then he opened the van’s back door. My eyes had adjusted to the blackness. It was a clear night. The stars were like holes punched in the sky. A full moon, like a closed eye, hung over a wall of compacted cars.

The wall of crushed cars wasn’t a straight line, but rather a ring surrounding a muddy open space. The space held me, him, the van, a ramshackle house, and an old tan motor home. The RV’s windows were covered by giant silver tarps.

There was also a dog. A huge black dog that whispered a growl, low in its chest. Sir flung a guttural Bleib! over his shoulder, and the dog quieted. But its eyes never left me.

Holding my arm, he marched me forward toward the motor home. I turned my head. There was a narrow gap in the wall of smashed cars, a gap he had driven through. Past the gap were rows and rows of junked cars. Some so old trees were growing through them. And past all the cars, I caught a glimpse of a chain-wire fence.

“I think we’re in the back of a junkyard,” I told Savannah now. “Like a wrecking yard for old cars. And of course a junkyard needs a junkyard dog. Rex just roams around, probably to stop anyone who might be thinking about stealing parts. But he also stops us from getting out.”

With her head, Savannah gestured at the door. Rex had finally stopped barking. “Is that the same dog who bit you? The one that just tried to get in?”

I nodded, remembering how Sir had let go of me so that he could fit a key in a padlock. The lock held the ends of a metal chain he had bolted to either side of the door. Once he put me inside and fastened the lock, I would not be able to get out.

“I tried to run before he even put me in here. But my wrists were duct taped together. I only made it about a hundred yards before Rex got me. He could have killed me. And he almost did.”

I fell silent, remembering. Sprinting across the muddy ground toward that gap. Not really knowing where I was going, just that I was.

And then ahead of me was the dog. He crouched, gathering himself to leap. Time slowed down. His jaws were wide open, aimed right at my throat. I tucked my chin.

I protected my throat from Rex with the only other thing I had to offer him: my face.