But my siblings are correct. I’m a loner. Always have been. I don’t really have friends—especially not female ones.
Motion under the beam of a streetlamp surprises me, and I jerk the wheel.
It’s a girl.
A normal one.
I don’t realize my heart is racing until I feel my heartbeat strangling me.
Keep driving. Go to Brooklyn. There are probably normal girls in Brooklyn, right? There are clubs there.
I made my money on risk management in technology.
I know it’s highly unlikely I’m going to find what I need in Brooklyn.
And with this rain—there’s going to be flooding.
But there’s a girl right here.
Sitting. Waiting. Just for me.
To take her.
No.
But it’s too late.
Something sick and dark has taken over me.
That thing I’ve been fighting my entire life.
It wins.
It slows the car.
Lets it trawl alongside her as she fights the wind for her umbrella.
Opens the door…
And delights in how she screams when it squeezes its hands around her neck.
3
DANI
The hands on my neck.
The harsh, muffled breathing of the man as he drags me backward toward the waiting car.
This isn’t happening!
I struggle, ineffective, weighed down by my totes and laptop bag and purse. I try to elbow him, try to wrestle away from the other hand that’s a vise in a glove on my upper arm.
I’m so out of shape.
I should have started my New Year’s resolutions earlier.
Part of living my New York City dream is that I need to be thin. But it’s hard when you can just go buy a giant cookie down the street, and then on the way you pass the best Italian place you’ve ever had, and then there’s pizza, and it’s only a dollar—and suddenly you can’t save yourself when you’re being kidnapped.
