After a few moments of sitting there feeling sorry for myself because of the pain, it occurred to me that I was in a completely unfamiliar environment tied up. Held hostage? Why would someone want me? I'd done nothing wrong recently. I hadn't even had the chance, with being at Tara's house during spring break and then my parents' death.
I squirmed in the splintery wooden chair I was in and fell over, still unable to untie the knots in rope binding my wrists and ankles together. I could feel bruises forming on myself where my body had hit the hard floor while falling out of the chair, and also from where the chair fell over on top of me.
I tried to shout for help, with the low possibility that someone could actually hear me, but my voice was muffled by several pieces of duct tape covering my mouth. Who would do this to me? Right then, as if my mind had been read, a man walked through the door, looking extremely disturbed.
Whoever did this got another victim? Why? I looked at him, though, and he didn't look like a victim at all. He looked perfectly normal, other than the expression on his face. Not to mention the fact that he wasn't tied up. If I had to guess his age, I'd say around 50 years old based on his graying hair and slowly forming wrinkles. He a quite skinny guy, to tell you the truth. The type I'd remember if I'd ever seen before. The man was completely unfamiliar to me, so why should he have reason to be kidnapped with me? Or to be the kidnapper himself?
The stranger looked to be a nice one, so I figured he must somehow be a victim in all of this. Hoping he'd help me out of the things holding me down, I started screaming through the tape, letting out muffled sounds.
"I don't think you're going to get outta there, missy," the man said through a thick southern accent. "I will, however take this off of yer face." He gently pulled the duct tape from my mouth, making sure not to hurt me. I felt relieved to be able to breathe through my mouth again for the first time in several hours, and momentarily forgot to ask what it was all about.
After touching around my mouth where the tape had previously been, I finally asked, "What am I doing here? I did nothing wrong!" The tone I spoke my words in was a mixture of frustration, anger, and fear. I honestly had no idea what to think right at that moment.
"It's nothing personal, really. But my little girl went missing some months back, and the place I got you from is where my daughter was last seen. Before she was found dead in an alleyway," the sullen looking man said quietly to me. "Now I need to find out what that place did to my girl so I can have them shut down."
"They couldn't have done anything! That's the best place I've ever been to in my life!" I shouted in pain as I once again struggled to get loose from the knots holding me to the chair. "Whatever you seem to think about NJTH is wrong. You've got the wrong idea, and you have to trust me on that!"
"NJTH? Now what would that happen to stand for, little girl?" He smirked a little as he shot me an eerie look. "Is that your little playhouse where my daughter got killed?"
A tear slowly slid down my cheek as I began to wonder if what he was saying was correct. "They would never do that... ever," I said in a quiet whisper. Not to convince him, but to convince myself. Everything was just so crazy since that night Jimmy brought me back to the foreign place. I had been kept unaware of where I was, what I was doing there, and what the purpose of the place was. After thinking about it, I realized that no one could possibly want to spend that much money, time, and effort on a place for other people. No one could be that generous.
"Ahh, so you doubt your own words? Wise girl. My daughter was a wise girl, but I guess not as wise as you. She might still be alive if she had been smart like you." His words were the definition of fear. I got shivers up my spine when he told me what I was like. He knew nothing about me, and he was trying to act like he knew every detail of my life.
"You shut up. You may be right about that place. But why do you think she went there in the first place? She ran away from you. So I'm not inclined to listen to what you say because if you were a crappy parent to her, you're a crappy person in general, not worth wasting my time listening to." My words came out stronger than I had expected. I didn't plan on speaking at all, and then I turned out to say something that took more courage than I realized I could ever have.
"I admit that I wasn't doing enough for her as her father. She needed a female influence in her life, and I just wasn't doing the job. We had just lost her mother to cancer and she just couldn't take it anymore, I suppose." He let out a loud sigh as a depressed look crossed his face. "But no matter what the reason for her running off, I most certainly am not the reason for her death. And I would like to find the people that are responsible for it."
He may have been my captor, but he had gotten me to sympathize. I honestly felt bad for the guy. And the fact that he was trying to find who was responsible for his daughter dying made him like a good father. A little insane, for having kidnapped me, but a good, caring father.
Before I could stop myself, I said, "I'll help you. I don't know if it's the home's fault that your daughter died, but I can help you find out. Trust me. I'm sorta in a relationship with someone there, he could help me get information."
There was finally a hint of compassion showing on his face, and it didn't really surprise me. He was a kidnapper, yes, but not a bad man. He was just a devoted father, which made me more inclined to help him. He reminded me of my own father, to tell you the truth. That made me like him more.
"I feel bad about having snatched you away, lassie, since you're such a good kid an' all... But at the same time I'm glad I did. You're a real good kid, and I bet yer parents are mighty proud of you, wherever they may be." He smiled, patted me on the back, and untied my things keeping me from leaving.
"Now," he pointed to the loose ropes, "I hope you still intend to help me, even now that I've let you loose." He raised his eyebrows as I just sat in the chair, not moving and not speaking. No more than five minutes before, I wanted nothing more than to be let loose and escape. Now that I knew what was going on, I didn't know what I wanted, or where I wanted to be. He was just a lost guy trying to fix his relationship with his dead daughter.
"Of course I will help you. I'm not the type to make up lies like that, even if I think my life depends on it. I'm honest, you can trust me on that." I let a small smile appear on my face, and turned away, not wanting him to see my slight happiness.
"Well if you were dishonest, you could be lying about being honest, so how can I be so sure?" He gave me a wink and walked with me to another room where there was a laptop. There were three chairs at the table with the laptop on top, and we each sat in one. He opened up a file containing large amounts of information I didn't understand at all.
"This is stuff that I had a private detective work on after my girl's body was seen. As much as he could find out about that horrible paradise you been staying at." He showed me some pictures of NJTH from the outside, where you could barely see in the windows. You could make out the figures of some of the teens and supervisors, and that's it. Nothing suspicious, which was the problem. You couldn't find out a thing with so little information.
"There is nothing wrong with anything in these photos," I said, "and if we want to see if those people are the cause for, uh, your daughter's death, we need to find a problem." I was now gloomy, because I was once again brought back to thinking about death. First my parents died, then I almost killed myself, and now this.
"Her name was Karrie," he said sadly. He then proceeded to show another photograph on his computer screen. "This is what makes me think it was their goddamn fault." There was a picture of a blonde girl leaving NJTH. Her face was covered by her long hair, so I wondered how he was so sure that it was his daughter.
"I know that hair, that body, the way she walks anywhere. That's definitely her." It was like he read my mind.
"Just wondering, what should I call you?" I asked him, unsure about what he'd say. Maybe he didn't want me to call him anything? Leave him unnamed? He could think that I'd turn him into the police if I knew his name. Would he even say anything at all in response to my question?
"Ray. My name is Ray." He turned to me and smiled, and then turned back to the picture on his computer screen. "Karrie always called me by my first name. Said it sounded more professional, and only ever broke out the word daddy when she really wanted something."
"Well, Ray, I hope we are able to find out what exactly happened to your daughter." I smiled sympathetically and stared back at the picture of the girl. She looked so familiar, but I couldn't possibly have known her since she was from Texas, after all.
"I do, too, Karin." Why was he calling me that? I wondered about this for a few moments until I remembered it was the name printed on my new ID. He probably searched for ID on me to see who it was that he had taken hostage of.
"If you don't mind me asking..." I trailed off, "where was your daughter's body found, exactly?" I looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes after asking such a personal question about a subject that he was so hurt by thinking about. I was afraid of the gruesome details he might provide to me in response to my question, and I immediately regretted having asked it.
"Well she wasn't actually found..." he said, making me immediately confused. He saw my confusion and then continued, "Somebody took a picture of her dead body and said they dumped it in a lake. The picture was sent to the police anonymously, and when all the lakes in the area were searched, she was still not found. She's been presumed dead."
"Aww man, that must suck," I said, only realizing how immature that sounded after I said it.
"Believe me, kid, it does. I can't even have a proper funeral for my baby girl, or even know for sure that she's dead. I just need to be sure." I didn't know how he wasn't in tears at that moment. I would've been crying harder than you could imagine if I were in his position.
"Yeah, well hopefully we will know all of this stuff very soon. Let me go back to the place for a while and I can find out some stuff... Some of the people there are bound to know about her," I spoke kindly and reassuringly. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to find out who killed his daughter, or to see if she was maybe still alive somehow.
He gave me a very happy yet gloomy smile and spoke to me saying, "I'll get you back there by the morning, and I'll think of something to get you back here after a while so you can tell me any new information you find."
"Sounds like a good plan," I said to him, shaking his hand. "When should we leave?" I honestly had no idea where we were, if we were even in the same state as I had been in before. I just knew I was being held in a nice hotel room several stories high.
"Well when I first got you, I didn't know if we'd be followed, so I drove for about 8 hours. so We'll have to leave around midnight to get there in the morning." He looked up at the clock and back to me. "If I'm going to be driving overnight, I should probably get some sleep now, so I don't fall asleep at the wheel. You just woke up, so I guess you'll just sleep in the car."
He could see the bored look on my face and then said, "You can play on my laptop or watch TV while I sleep, just try to keep it quiet."
"Okay," I said, and scooted the laptop to in front of the chair i was sitting in. I decided to look around on his computer and see what other things he had on there. I clicked on the folder labeled "My Photos" and my eyes went wide when I saw some of the photos that were in there.
"Emma..." I muttered under my breath.
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