The Night She Disappeared Read Online Free PDF Page A

bookcase with a small TV on top. And past that there’s a toilet in one corner and a door in the other.
    A door!
    I rush to it. Or at least I start to. I take two steps. Then the dizziness overwhelms me. I fall to my knees, but I still keep moving, ignoring the blood that freckles the floor. I have to get out of here.
    But the handle won’t turn more than a half inch. I twist it the other way. It won’t move at all.
    “Let me out! Let me out!” I pound on the door. Then I stop to listen.
    Nothing.
    Silence.
    No one is coming. Maybe no one is even listening.
    “Help me! Help me! I’m alive! I’m alive, and I’m in here.”
    Holding on to the doorknob, I manage to pull myself to my feet. I kick at the door, as close as I can get to the handle, hoping to pop the lock. It doesn’t budge. I kick and pound and yell. The white door is smudged with rusty fingerprints from where I touched my head. I fall down and get back up. Again. And again. I cry and scream until I’m sick, dry heaving, strings of bile hanging from my lips. But as soon as I stop gagging, I start banging on the door again, shouting and calling.
    Finally, I have to lie down. I press my face next to the crack at the bottom of the door. It’s dark on the other side, like there’s nothing and no one there. Like I’m sealed away in a tomb.
    “Let me out,” I say, but now it’s a whisper. “Let me out.”

The Fourth Day
     
    “John Robertson”
     
    THE SCREAMS RISE again from the special room I built. Faint but still audible. I set down my X-Acto Number 11, pick up the TV clicker, and press the plus sign on the volume button. There. That takes care of that.
    Only it doesn’t. Not really.
    Things are not going according to plan. Didn’t I learn anything last time? But no, I was too eager. Again.
    Four days ago, all my plans were supposed to come to fruition. It was a moonless night. Moonless meant it would be hard for the pizza delivery person to figure out that the address I had given didn’t exist. Difficult for the few neighbors to notice anything on a road without street-lights. And it was a Wednesday, which meant it would be quiet. It also meant Gabie Klug would be the one making deliveries.
    Gabie is the one I chose for what I’m calling the Project. The Project, Part Two. She can be shy, but eventually she warms up and jokes with you. But only after carefully watching your face and figuring out if that’s okay. If that’s what you want.
    She would be perfect.
    Once I figured out that it was possible to get a girl to deliver herself right to me, it took me months to figure out which one I wanted. Months of greasy single slices, takeout orders, and watching the parking lot to see who made deliveries. Nine women and girls work at Pete’s Pizza. But not all of them make deliveries. And of those who do? Well, take Pete’s wife, Sonya. Forty, too much makeup, too much sass, too much ass. Not my type. Not my type at all. Or Courtney, with her small, hard eyes rimmed with black eye liner? Amber, with her harsh bray of a laugh?
    Most are unsuitable.
    My work has taught me that if you want something done right, you start with the correct raw materials. You don’t begin with the wrong components and try to force them to be something they never were and never could be.
    I learned that lesson again with the first girl. What was her name? Jenny? Jessica? Janie? I no longer remember. She was an experiment, that’s all. It wasn’t until I acquired her that I figured out she was all wrong for my purposes. It was much like when I was trying to decide between polyurethane and expanded polystyrene foam for modeling. You have to work with the expanded polystyrene before you realize it does not allow for as many finish techniques.
    And Kayla? Kayla is wrong in so many ways. Angry when Gabie would be sweet. Defiant when Gabie would be submissive. Ungrateful, damaged, dirty, disgusting. Gabie will be none of those things.
    When I saw the red Taurus with the