be so dumb. But you know what?”
“What?” I said.
She leaned in closer, “Love makes people do stupid shit.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “I’m not in love, okay? I just… I need to do this, Mandy.”
She let out a defeated sigh, and began playing with the biscotti. I wasn’t sure if she realized it was what she had ordered.
“So, can you at least tell me your plan for all this?” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “So on the way back, three rock songs were playing. Luckily, I knew all the songs except for one, so I made sure to memorize some of the lyrics, then I just looked it up online and found it.”
“You scare me sometimes, you know?”
“Why?”
“Well if it were me, the only thing I would have been thinking about was whether or not I was going to die,” she said while adding another packet of sugar into her coffee. “Anyways, never mind, go on…”
“Okay so I got all three songs—“
“Uh huh,”
“Then I added the time of all three songs together and it was roughly 15 minutes. I have the exact number written down on my phone somewhere.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Hold on! I’m getting there,” I said. “Okay, so I searched the address of the bus stop where they dropped me off, and played around with the online maps to see how far 15 minutes could take me.”
“That’s why you stank when I found you, huh? You were just in bed this whole time like some awkward dorky James Bond or something, playing with your phone like some detective,” she said, blowing her bangs again. Ten.
“Shut up. Anyways, after that I looked up all the auto shops within the 15-minute perimeter and wrote them all down. There were a lot so I saved the ones that specialized in motorcycles, so I’ll probably go to those first.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to go to each one…”
“Duh!”
“Won’t that take forever?”
“Not really, there weren’t that many motorcycle ones. Plus, I’m unemployed so what else am I going to do.”
“Okay, now I’m really worried. Are you sure they didn’t drop you on the head or something?”
“No they didn’t, I checked. The guy said he had me in a chokehold and gave me Xanax or something.”
“Ah, Xanax! That stuff will knock you out. We have some at the lab.”
“Yeah, I was a little groggy waking up, but that didn’t last long, anyways. I think the fear kind of kicked in harder than anything else.”
“Okay, so what are you going to do if you actually find them?”
“I don’t have that part figured out yet, but I guess I’ll see what happens when I get there.”
“I’m not going to wish you luck on finding them,” she said.
“I know, that’s fine.”
“And I’m not entirely convinced any of this even happened, I just know you’re acting different. Like, you’re not as reluctant about new things like you usually are. I mean, since you’re going out to find them and all.”
“Well it happened,” I said as I took another sip of my bitter coffee that was now cold. “And I’m going to find them, or at least try!”
“Alright, I believe you. Tell them I said hi and to make sure they kidnap the right person next time or else they’ll get stuck with stalkers like you.”
I smirked. “Shut up!”
“Anyways,” she said, blowing her bangs. Eleven. Mandy lifted a biscotti and stared at it for a moment, “What the heck is this?”
----
CHAPTER THREE
Rainer
“So you thought you could hide from us, huh? As if we’d let you get away that easily?” I said.
I loved watching this despicable piece of shit cry as she sat before me. Her name was Zella. Zella Painsley. Perfect name for someone about to feel a lot of pain.
I wanted her dead for what she did, but if I killed her now, then I’d be doing her a favor. Giving her an easy way out. She needed to suffer. She won’t get no mercy from me nor my brothers. I won’t let her off that easily, she going to
Donald Luskin, Andrew Greta