Okay, the throbbing pain in the back of my head gave me the how.
I still didn’t know who, what, or why.
“Where am I?”
“Hell.”
Um…
I blinked rapidly until my eyes came into focus and I could look around without my head exploding. I was surrounded by a bunch of young kids.
Had I crashed my wheelchair again?
“Is this a basement?” Sure looked like a basement. The walls were made of plaster and old brick. Dark wooden beams held up the ceiling. The floor was dark and dingy cement.
Yeah, it looks like a basement.
“Yeah, sort of,” someone answered. “At least, I think so.”
I narrowed in on whoever was speaking. “Who are you?”
“Terry,” the young kid said. “And this is Jenna, Dave, Carrie, Donna, Jenny, and Carl.”
“Holy crap. You’re the missing kids.” I stared in wonder at each of them. “You didn’t run away.”
“They think we ran away?” one of the girls asked, the blonde one.
“Your parents, no,” I said quickly. “They all believe you’ve been kidnapped.” I shrugged my shoulders as I glanced around the room again. “Which I guess you have.”
The girl nodded. “We were called to the manor to meet with Councilman James concerning a scholarship for college. He offered us something to eat. None of us remember much after that, until we woke up here.”
“How do you know that? None of you were taken at the same time.”
“We’ve been here for a while,” the kid named Terry said. “We’ve compared notes.”
I would have done the same thing if I had been kidnapped.
“Did the councilman ever say why he took you?”
Terry glanced at the others before answering my question. “Um, I’m not sure Councilman James has anything to do with this.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because Donna was taken after the councilman was removed from his position. She told us all about it.”
Well, crap.
“Is this all of you?” I only had the seven files, but I had to be sure.
“There were a couple of others when I first got here,” Terry said. “But they got taken away. I don’t know what happened to them after that.”
“Who took them?”
“Conrad.”
Shock dropped my jaw. “The butler did it?”
Yep, I said it.
