She pulled the burlap from her head and gasped for air. It took time for her eyes to adjust while amorphous shapes danced in her vision and the blackness faded. She listened for his presence but all she heard was the splattering rain outside. Dropping the burlap bag to the ground, she tiptoed to the bunker door. Surprised to see it opened a crack, she put her face to the crevice between the door and the frame and looked out into the dark forest as rain pelted the trees. She imagined a camera lens trained tightly on her eyeball as she peered through the splinter in the door, and then the camera’s focus backing out in a slow reverse zoom that captured first the door, then the bunker, then the trees, and eventually a satellite view of the entire forest. She felt small and weak from this mental picture of herself, all alone in a bunker sunk deep in the woods.
She questioned whether this was a test. If she pushed through the door and stepped into the woods, there was the chance he would be waiting for her. But if the open door and the moment free from her shackle were an oversight, it was his first misstep and the only opportunity she’d had in the last two weeks. This was the first moment she found herself untethered from the wall of her cellar.
With her hands trembling and still bound in front of her, she pushed open the door. The hinges creaked into the night before the slapping rain overwhelmed their whine. She waited a moment, held back by fear. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to think, tried to push away her grogginess brought on by the sedatives. The hours of darkness from the cellar came back to her and flashed in her mind like a lightning storm. So, too, did the promise she made to herself that if an opportunity for escape appeared, she’d take it. She decided days before that she’d rather die fighting for her freedom than walk like a lamb to the slaughter.
She took a hesitant step out of the bunker, into the thick and heavy rain that ran in cold streaks down her face. She took a moment to bathe in the downpour, to let the water clear the fogginess from her mind. Then, she ran.
The forest was dark and the rain torrent. With tape binding her wrists, she tried to deflect the branches that whipped her face. She stumbled on a log and fell into the slippery leaves before forcing herself up again. She had counted the days and thought she’d been missing for twelve. Maybe thirteen. Stuck in a dark cellar where her captor stowed her and fed her, she may have missed a day when fatigue sent her into a long stretch of sleep. Tonight, he moved her to the forest. Dread had overwhelmed her as she bounced in the trunk, and a nauseous feeling told her the end was near. But now freedom was in front of her; somewhere beyond this forest and the rain and this night, she might find her way home.
She ran blindly, taking erratic turns that stole from her all sense of direction. Finally, she heard the roar of a semi truck as its wheels splashed through the wet pavement. Breathing heavily, she sprinted toward the noise and up an embankment that led to the two-lane highway. In the distance, the truck’s red taillights sped on, fading with each second.
She stumbled into the middle of the road and on wobbly legs chased the lights as though she might catch them. The rain pelted her face and matted her hair and drenched her ratty clothing. Barefoot, she continued in a push-slap, push-slap gait brought on by the deep gash on her right foot—suffered during her frantic march through the forest—which trickled a crooked line of blood behind her that the storm worked to erase. Driven by panic that he would come from the forest, she willed herself on with the sensation that he was near, ready to fast-step behind her and pull the sack over her head and bring her back to the cellar with no windows.
Dehydrated and hallucinating, she thought her eyes were deceiving her when she saw it. A tiny white light far off in the distance. She staggered toward it until the light splintered in two and grew in size. She stayed in the middle of the road and waved her bound hands over her head.
The car slowed as it approached, flashed its high beams to illuminate her standing in the road in wet clothes and no shoes, with scratches covering her face and blood dripping down her neck to dye her T-shirt red.
The car stopped, wipers throwing water to each side. The driver’s door opened. “Are you okay?” the man yelled over the roar of the storm.
“I need help,” she said.
They were the first words she’d spoken in days, her voice raspy and dry. The rain, she finally noticed, tasted wonderful.
The man walked closer, recognized her. “Good God. The whole state’s been looking for you.” He took her under his arm and led her to the car, carefully seating her in the front passenger seat.
“Go!” she said. “He’s coming, I know it.”
The man raced around to the other side, shifting the car into drive before his door was closed. He dialed 911 as he sped along Highway 57.
“Where’s your friend?” he asked.
The girl looked at him. “Who?”
“Nicole Cutty. The other girl who was taken.”
The Book Tour
Twelve Months Later
New York
September 2017
8:32 a.m.
Megan McDonald sat spine-straight in the chair and watched Dante Campbell read through interview notes without a hitch while a stylist dabbed her nose with a powdered brush, and general chaos occurred around her as producers shouted orders and lighting changes and the time remaining in commercial break. The shoulder shrugs and the deep breaths had done nothing useful, and had actually caused a knot to form in her trapezius, which was starting to spasm. Megan startled, a quick flinch, when a different makeup artist touched her cheek with a brush.
“Sorry, sweetheart. You’re too shiny. Close.”
Megan closed her eyes while the woman ran a brush over her face. A voice off in the darkness, beyond the television cameras, began counting down. Her mouth went cotton-dry and a noticeable tremor took control of her hands. The makeup people melted away and suddenly it was just Megan sitting in the bright lights across from Dante Campbell.
“Five, four, three, two . . . you’re live,”
Megan stuffed her shaking hands under her thighs. Dante Campbell stared into the camera and spoke in the practiced pitch and varied cadence perfected by morning-show hosts, among which her show was the top rated.
“We all know the harrowing story of Megan McDonald. The all-American girl, daughter of Emerson Bay’s sheriff, who was abducted in the summer of 2016. One year later, Megan is out now with her book, Missing, the true-story account of her abduction and courageous escape.” Dante Campbell pulled her gaze from the camera and smiled at her guest. “Megan, welcome to the show.”
Megan took a hard swallow of dry nothingness that nearly made her choke. “Thank you,” she said.
“The country and, of course, Emerson Bay has wanted to hear your story for more than a year. What inspired you to finally share it?”
Since booking this interview, Megan struggled with the answers she would give. She couldn’t tell the great Dante Campbell the truth—that writing the book was the simplest way to tame her mother’s sorrow and buy some breathing room. It was a way to get her mother, neurotic with worry and angst, off her back for a few months.
“It was just time,” Megan said, deciding finally on the answers that would best get her out of the bright lights. “I needed to process everything before I was ready to tell people about it. I’ve had a chance to do that, and now I’m ready to tell my story.”