The Girl Who Was Taken

Chapter 20 returns to Livia’s third-person perspective as she continues her ride-along training and explores new cases. In her free time, she searches for more information about the missing girls from Casey’s folder of articles. Although some of the girls were found murdered, she is able to get in touch with Diana Wells and arranges to meet with her.

Diana tells Livia about the Capture Club, and Livia is shocked. Diana reveals that she and Casey met online and chatted about their shared interest in missing person cases before Casey invited her to join a secret club. Diana says that while she agreed to chat with Casey and check out the club, she had no idea that it required abduction as initiation. She had also never met Casey before that night, and she had no idea he was the person she had been messaging online.

Following her abduction, Diana felt traumatized and filed a police report. When Livia asks for more details about the experience, Diana mentions that Casey was with a female friend who pulled the bag over her head. She tells Livia that she heard Casey call his friend Nicole.

Livia tries to learn more about Casey and his involvement with Nicole. A bit of online research reveals that Casey used to work with a handyman service with another man named Nate Theros. Livia searches for Nate’s address and meets with him to ask about Casey. Their conversation reveals that he and Casey were good friends and that Nate was also part of the Capture Club. He informs Livia that Casey and Nicole ultimately took joint leadership over the Capture Club and ran it together. Nicole was responsible for organizing Diana’s abduction, and it was Nicole who masterminded a kidnapping creepy enough to traumatize her. Livia feels sick and wonders if she ever truly knew Nicole at all.

Livia continues her ride-along training. She gets to know Kent and Sanj better and learns that Kent has a very unhappy home life. He and his wife were high school sweethearts, but they have long since fallen out of love with each other and only stay married for the sake of their children. Kent mentions that he will be on vacation for the next week, spending time at his fishing cabin in Tinder Valley.

Livia goes back to her research into Casey’s folder of missing girls. She arranges to speak with a medical examiner in Virginia who autopsied the body of a girl named Nancy Dee. Livia isn’t sure why she feels so compelled to learn more about Nancy, but she has a strange feeling that her case may give her more clues about Nicole. When she meets with the medical examiner and reviews her notes about Nancy, she discovers that Nancy’s body contained strong traces of a drug called ketamine. Livia cross-references Nancy’s toxicology report with Megan’s firsthand account of her abduction and learns that Megan was also drugged with ketamine. Livia thinks that she has discovered a crucial aspect of the abductor’s pattern and concludes that this clue will help her investigation into Nicole’s disappearance.

This chapter returns to Megan’s third-person perspective as she undergoes another hypnotherapy session with Dr. Mattingly. Megan wants to use these sessions to find more clues about where she was being held. She is hoping to find a key detail that she can share with the police—something they can use to identify the bunker where she was imprisoned.

Her therapy session causes her to relive her time in the bunker, and she notices multiple details but nothing that can help. Dr. Mattingly assures her to take it slow and be patient with herself, but Megan leaves the session feeling frustrated.

Chapter 24 returns to the third-person perspective of the unidentified man as he visits the “love” chained to the bed. He is looking forward to spending a full week with her, but he is disappointed that their visit is not going as well as he had hoped. Although he wants her to be happy to see him, she has made multiple escape attempts. Each time, he has punished her and made adjustments to her living quarters, restraining her while he tries to escape-proof the space. Today is the final straw. When he enters her room, he finds that she has broken a window and attempted to crawl through it. The chain on her ankle has prevented her from escaping completely, so she is stuck, her body hanging half in the window and half out. He decides that their relationship has come to an end and spray-paints three black Xs on the wall.

Chapter 25 introduces Casey’s third-person perspective and occurs two weeks before Nicole’s abduction. Casey reflects on his brother Joshua’s kidnapping, which occurred when Casey was seven and Joshua was nine. The day Joshua was kidnapped, Casey witnessed the abduction, but he did not call for help or alert his father. Instead, he simply continued to eat his cotton candy and watched as a man with greasy hair carried Joshua away. As an adult, Casey is haunted by his memories of that day. He does not know why he failed to intervene, but he views that day as a defining moment in his life—the day that proved he was simply an evil person. Casey now feels compelled to reenact that fateful day by kidnapping people himself.

Alone in the woods, Casey reflects on Nancy Dee, a girl he abducted from a small town in Virginia. Although Casey was responsible for kidnapping Nancy, he reassures himself that this was okay because he did not physically harm her. Instead, he abducts girls on request from someone else and tries not to think about what is being done to them.

As he reflects on his self-loathing, Casey approaches a bunker in the woods and finds a backpack leaning against the door and a red bandana tied to the door handle. The presence of these items means that a new abduction is being requested, and he rummages through the backpack. He finds a piece of paper outlining the girl’s physical characteristics. Casey’s job is to stalk and select a girl who matches the criteria. He takes the request and walks away. The hunt for a new victim silences his guilt and replaces it with excitement.

This chapter is narrated from Megan’s third-person perspective in the past, one week before her abduction. It’s the summer after her high school graduation, and she is waiting for news of her acceptance to college. As she reflects on her accomplishments so far, Megan feels proud of herself and her life. During her time in high school, she played varsity basketball, was the captain of the cheerleading squad, and led her school’s debate team. She had the highest grade-point average in her school and created a leadership retreat for incoming freshman girls to ease their transition from middle school to high school. Megan feels that she has many accomplishments to be proud of and is looking forward to her future. She discusses this with her father, Terry McDonald, the local chief of police. Although her father wants her to stay close to home and commute to a local college, Megan is excited to explore a bigger city and apply to medical school. Her father admits that he will miss her terribly, but he is proud of her and wants her to be happy. The chapter concludes with Megan daydreaming about the bright future ahead of her and the loving family who will support her along the way.

Chapter 17 is set one week before Nicole’s and Megan’s abductions and follows Nicole’s third-person perspective. In the aftermath of Diana’s disastrous kidnapping, Casey has warned Nicole that it is too risky to keep the Capture Club going and that they need to lay low for a while. Nicole is annoyed by this, and she disagrees but complies with Casey’s directions. After clearing out the abandoned brewery and burning all evidence of the Capture Club’s activities, they drive together until they reach a Goodwill store. Casey gives Nicole a shopping list and tells her to purchase the items for him. Nicole finds the request odd, but she goes along with it.