�Come back here!� a man shouted after the girl. His scream pierced the deserted forest.
The girl kept running, trying to elude her captor. The full moon lit her way. She looked around as she ran, trying to determine where the voice was coming from, but she couldn�t.
It was so cold. The branches whipped her as she ran from the man. The rocks were digging into her bare feet. She was in so much pain. The drugs were starting to kick in. She began to feel sluggish. All she wanted to do was stop, but she couldn�t because if she did he would get her.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the man tackled her and the two tumbled down the hill and into a ravine. He pinned her down to the ground.
She looked up at her captor. His face covered with a mask, so all she saw was his cold black eyes. He pulled his knife out of its sheath. The knife glimmered in the moon�s light. She pleaded with him. �Please, don�t� she whimpered, weakly.
�Tell me why I shouldn�t,� he said, caressing her face. He moved her raven black hair out of her face as she struggled to keep herself from crying and her eyes open. �Tell me what I want to hear,� he said, pressing the knife against her throat, slightly piercing her skin and drawing her blood.
She looked up at him with fear in her honey colored eyes. �I- I,� she stammered.
�You what?� he said, pulling her to her knees by her hair.
�I-� she started as she saw the knife go up. She screamed, expecting to get stabbed and feeling pain, but all that came was blackness.
James woke up in a sweat. �It was a dream,� she thought, relieved. The room was pitch black; she couldn�t make out anything. She figured her new room was making her feel out of place and disoriented. She reached over to her nightstand to turn on the lights, but she just hits something hard. She figured it was her nightstand, but terror came over her.
She tried to sit up, but her head hit met with another hard surface. She plopped back down and her head hit a lumpy pillow, which didn�t really help cushion the hard wooden surface. She felt all around. She felt nothing but hard wooden surfaces.
She heard a faint noise on top of the container she was in. She started pounding and pounding, but the noise didn�t stop. As she pounded, something slipped through the cracks and fell into her mouth. She realized it was dirt. She quickly spit it out and kept pounding and screaming away.
�Some one!� she screamed, �Help me! Please!� she started sobbing, pounding on the cover with all her might. She started panicking. Her heart rate quickened and she struggled for her next breath. As she laid there, she kept thinking that she was going to die there, alone, in the middle of nowhere, without anyone she loves around. No one was coming to her aid.
Out of nowhere, there�s a continuous beeping. It was only getting louder and louder as it repeated. It was her alarm. She sat straight up, breathing hard as. She quickly examined herself, absent-mindedly checking for injuries. She leaned over to her nightstand and turned off her alarm and plopped back down in bed.
�Not again,� she said, breathlessly. The dream had haunted her for quite a while. Ever since the first abduction, she had had this dream. Each dream revealing more and more. Each dream getting worse and worse for her. Each dream, perhaps foreshadowing her own demise.
But then again, maybe the dreams were a result of her overactive imagination. It�s not like they just cam out of nowhere. She knew why it was happening. It was because she had known her, the first woman taken. She was the first woman that Dale had introduced her to at her first race. She didn�tknow what had happened to her ever since she�d been taken.
Katie was Matt Kenseth�s wife and she was one of the sweetest people that James had come to know. From the first time they met, it felt like she and Katie were old friends. In the short time that they had known each other, the two had become best friends. Now, to have her gone, to have her abducted from her own home was to say the least, shocking to James. She was the one that notified police about Katie.
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Flashback:
She and Katie were suppose to go out to a movie, while Matt was on an appearance for one of his sponsors and Ross was at his grandparents for the weekend. She immediately knew something was wrong. She could feel it. Call it women�s intuition, call it ESP, call it whatever, but she knew. She rang the doorbell and knocked continuously, but there was no answer.
She went to a nearby potted plant and grabbed the hidden key. Katie told her where it was in case of emergencies or when she, Matt and Ross were away. She put her hand on the knob and found it unlocked. She knew Katie would never just leave the door unlocked like that. She started to worry more for her friend.
She called out for her as she slowly entered the house. �Katie? Katie, where are you? Are you here? Katie?!� she yelled, but there was no answer. She made her way to the family room. She smelled a familiar scent, which caused her breath to speed. She placed her hand over her mouth and nose. With her free hand, she picked up the nearest heavy item, a statue, in case she needed to defend herself. She knew what the smell was. She had smelled it enough during her time in the ER.
She shivered as she cautiously turned the corner of the to the room and nearly fainted at the sight. The room was a mess. The love seat was turned over. The pictures and vases, which were usually placed with care on the mantel of the fireplace had fallen to the floor and had broken.
The wrought iron glass top coffee table was smashed to pieces and there was blood on the broken glass. The blood stained the wood floor and the area carpet under the table. A trail of blood spots led to the sliding glass door. There was bloody handprint on the sliding glass door as well as the white gossamer curtains, which was open, letting a cold breeze in.
She dropped the statue, which smashed into pieces. She ran out the way she came and called the police.
After the calling, she began to feel nauseous. She felt like throwing up. There was so much blood, that she imagined her friend out there, somewhere, going into shock for loss of blood. Or worse, her friend�s body lying somewhere, going unnoticed.
The constant thoughts of the worse made her numb. She felt like she was having an out of body experience over the next few hours. She felt like it as the police had questioned her, when she called Matt to tell him what had happened.
It didn�t hit her until she got home and saw a picture of Katie, Matt, Ross, Dale and she at the Coca-Cola 600 race. In that moment, she realized what had happened. She realized that she might not see her best friend again.
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There was no ransom note demanding money for her return, nothing. James volunteered in the search for Katie. All her free time went into looking for her and helping Matt with Ross. She was seeing what it was doing to them, what it was still doing to them.
Matt was at a loss without Katie, but Ross kept him focused. Matt knew he needed to take care of Ross and couldn�t just break down. Ross was his salvation from becoming like poor Jimmie Johnson. As time passed, the police had just about given up hope. They were expecting her body to turn up somewhere. She was missing for almost three months before the abduction of Chandra, Jimmie�s fianc�.
Unlike Matt, Jimmie broke. He and Chandra were suppose to be married a week after her abduction. Chandra was taken sometime after she got off the plane till the time she was suppose to meet up with Jimmie for the Bristol race. The car that had met her at the airport was found abandoned on the side of the road in a ditch.
The scene in the car was much like the one at the Kenseth household. There was quite a bit of blood present according to the police. Jimmie couldn�t help but think the worse when they had told him that especially after what Matt was going through.
It goes without saying that their personal problems were affecting their racing. They weren�t there, at least in spirit, heart, and mind. The abductions were also affecting the other drivers and their loved ones.
It effected the other people the way most major crimes effect tight knit communities. Many said that both the women were �nice and couldn�t imagine anyone wanting to harm them.� Most of the people were like James, in shock that something like that could happen to people they know, that something like that could happen where they live.
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