Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I get on the bus and sit close to the front. It heads off, and at the next stop we pick up a couple of men.
They look familiar.
It’s the guys from the restaurant. They get on without looking at me and sit somewhere behind me. I don’t dare turn around and look. I feel like a kid in bed who just heard something go bump in the night. If I don’t make them real, then they won’t be real.
I look out the window. Maybe I’ll catch something interesting in the reflection. That’s when I notice that we’re not on our usual route. We’re not even in the right neighborhood.
“Um, driver?” I ask. “Is this the right bus? Is it the 4…”
I don’t even get to finish the question, because the driver looks around from his seat and I recognize him. It’s not the usual driver. It’s not a person who looks anything even remotely like a normal driver. Instead it’s one of the men from the restaurant wearing a driver’s cap.
I don’t know what to do. I try pressing the button for the next stop, but all that does is make the man behind me chuckle.
I can’t pretend that this is normal anymore. I’m being abducted in a city bus.
I pull out my phone, planning to call Sam.
It is smoothly removed from my hand with a relatively gentle touch. “I don’t think we need you doing that, do we?” one of the suited men asks.
The spell is broken. We’ve talked to each other. We’re all openly acknowledging that each other exist.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re going to talk to you about your boyfriend,” they say.
“Dave?”
“What? No. Who the hell is Dave? We’re talking about the man currently posing as Samuel Rollins.”
“You mean my… psych lecturer? He’s not posing. He’s really a psychologist. He’s famous. What is this? Is this for extra credit or something?”
I am just saying anything I can think of to seem and sound innocent. Playing dumb is the best way. If I so much as admit there’s anything intimate between Sam and me, there’s a real chance they’ll kill me. People capable of an elaborate plot to kidnap a coed with a city bus are capable of anything.
“We know he is in your apartment. He was followed there.”
“If you followed him there, why don’t you just get him?” It’s a disloyal thing to say, but I don’t want them thinking I am loyal. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have a test in the morning, and if I miss it I’m going to be down twenty percent on my grade in history, and I’m already down in English, and I don’t have the money to be re-sitting papers, so…”
“Quiet,” the man behind me says.
“Did you buy the bus? Did you rent it? Is it a city bus, or did you get one and make it look like one, because that has to be expensive as all hell.”
“Quiet,” he repeats.
“Can I have my phone back? I was watching some reels about narcissists,” I say. “I had just got to the part that tells you what you’re supposed to do, and I really want to know.”
“No contact,” the other guy behind me says. “Only way to deal with them.”
“Is that right?”
“Yep. Had to do it with my…”
He gets a nudge in the rib from his other suited friend. They’re not supposed to be talking to me about anything. It’s the youngest of the three who had something to say about an ex, I bet.
But that’s the end of the conversation in this weird, overly engineered abduction.
A few minutes later we drive into a warehouse that makes the bus look relatively small, and then I am disembarked out of the bus to a chair that faces a desk on which a lamp is placed.
I thought these men were criminals. Now I’m starting to think they’re something worse: government agents. This plan is completely over engineered and could have been done in an office. There’s drama here that doesn’t need to be here. They’re making a show of power, making it clear I can be plucked from my life without anybody knowing.
I try to be more impressed because I know they want me to be, but right now all I can think of is how pissed Sam is going to be about this whole situation. Is he going to be mad at me for not calling him right away when I first saw them?
I’ve got to start paying more attention to my gut instincts, I think to myself as they guide me to the table and sit me down. One of the agents—I am almost certain they are agents now—sits down in front of me.
I say nothing. I know they probably want me to act all wild and afraid, but I recently witnessed a murder that literally nobody seems to care about, and Dave is still missing. I tried to report that second one as a crime, but nobody seemed interested. Point being, I’ve been on the wrong side of the law, or completely outside of it for a while now.