Page 1 of The Kidnapped

PROLOGUE

Heidi had these memories she’d never been able to fully understand or shake off. There was a woman standing in front of her, handing her a balloon. In another instance, the same woman, with blonde hair and blue eyes, sat next to her on the floor and helped Heidi stack blocks. There were more. Some of them had faded over time, but a few had remained, and she often wondered what they meant. As she stared into the employee bathroom’s mirror at age thirty-five, she could see those same blue eyes and the same shade of blonde hair staring back at her. She’d been thinking about that a lot recently. Every night before she fell asleep, she tried to put herself back inside those memories. She’d push her mind to its very limit, trying to interpret them and put them in their proper place. It was infuriating, but she had to do it. Something inside her was imploring her to figure out who this woman was, why she looked so similar to Heidi, and why Heidi felt such a connection to her.

She finished washing her hands and left the bathroom, walking back into an office she shared with the other staff members who worked at the small branch of the library just outside of Vancouver, Canada. She’d lived in Canada for most of her life, but they’d never stayed in one place for too long. Her dad had always had a bit of wanderlust, so they’d moved around a lot. Sometimes, they’d end up in a tiny town. Other times, he moved them to an apartment in a city. They would go camping for weeks at a time, and they’d also lived in a log cabin for over a year. Once, he’d even moved them all the way to the other coast, and they’d driven to get there. They’d taken their time, too. Over the summer, they’d stopped in small towns along the way to Milton in Ontario. They’d stayed there for a couple of years, but by the time Heidi was sixteen, he’d moved them again.

That was when it had started to bother her. Heidi had been a teenager. She’d made friends. She’d wanted to finish school with them and go to university with them. They’d been talking about where they could all go together, or, at least, how close schools were to one another and which ones they thought they’d get into, when she’d come home to their truck and attached trailer packed up, with her father ready to roll out of town.

Heidi had cried silently for most of the drive to the next town and then to the next. For two years, they’d moved almost every three or four months. Her father explained it away as an adventure, but she’d always suspected it had something to do with his difficulty keeping a job. He was a handyman of sorts, and when jobs in the area dried up, they usually had to move on. It made life difficult for her the older she got, but when Heidi finally graduated from what was her tenth school, she told her dad she wasn’t moving anymore. She’d gotten into the University of British Columbia, and her dad had decided to move close to Vancouver to be nearby. He’d stayed there for years. In fact, he was still here, only about a thirty-minute drive from her apartment. It struck her as interesting how he hadn’t moved since she’d left home, but he’d found good jobs and seemed to be fine financially, so maybe he really had just wanted adventures with his only child while she was growing up.

“We just got a new batch of donations in,” Sandy told her, wheeling the cart over to Heidi’s desk. “A lot of true crime in this one.”

“Maybe the person who donated them was done learning how to kill people?” she joked.

The donation box outside the library received a few books a day at most, but every now and then, they’d get a big donation, likely from someone who was moving or doing some spring-cleaning and needed to get rid of books they’d read or had on their shelves as conversation pieces. Heidi knew that for some people, e-books were the way to go, but she’d always loved holding on to her books. At times, they were her only companions. She’d stopped bothering to make friends, so the fictional characters she’d surrounded herself with were the only people she felt close to. The one thing she demanded whenever they moved was getting a library card. The moment they had a bill with their address on it, she’d march to the closest library, get a card, and she’d pour through as many books as she could before they moved on to the next town. Every now and then, her dad would give her money to buy a few books she could keep. Heidi still had all of them. She also still had every library card she’d ever gotten.

“Can you enter these in for me?” Sandy requested. “I’m going to take my lunch.”

“Sure. I’ll take care of it. Oh, the reader canceled for tonight.”

“Reading hour?”

“Yeah. She said she was sick and didn’t want to risk getting the kids sick.”

“Kids… That would imply more than one actually shows up. We’re lucky when we get two these days.” Sandy rolled her eyes. “They’re too busy playing games on their phones now.”

“I can stay and do it,” Heidi volunteered.

“No, it’s fine; I’ll take care of it. You got here first today,” Sandy replied.

“You sure?” Heidi checked.

“Yeah. I’ll pick out something to read when I get back from lunch. Do you want anything?”

“No, I brought my lunch. Thanks, though.”

Sandy nodded before she left the office.

Heidi logged into the computer and picked up the first book to catalog. She’d made it through ten entries before getting interrupted by a line at the desk. After checking out a few patrons and answering some questions for another, she helped a woman who wanted to use the computer but wasn’t sure how. Then, Heidi returned to her desk with a refilled water bottle in hand. She reached for the next book in the pile, flipped it to the back to get the ISBN number, and entered it into the library’s system. She flipped it back to the cover, noting in her mind how much she preferred hardbacks to paperbacks for their durability. Then, she saw it. The image was of a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked to be about four or five years old. She looked just like Heidi. Heidi stared at the image, the only one on the cover of the book. Then, she checked the title. The book was called ‘Unsolved: Missing Children.’

Heidi shook herself out of it. This was just another little blonde girl with blue eyes. Still, she couldn’t shake the fact that her dad had a picture on the wall at his house that was of her at six years old, and it looked just like this little girl. The memory of the woman handing her the balloon entered her mind then. Heidi took a long drink of water and leaned back in her chair as her heart raced. Something was wrong. Something was off. The woman held on to her hand as they crossed the street. Her dad was there, too. He was holding on to her other hand. Then, Heidi was with the woman again, and they were alone. The woman was crying. Her dad walked in. He was yelling. What the hell was happening? Heidi was having a hard time breathing. She stood up, pushing her rolling chair back against the one behind her, and didn’t even hear them clang together.

“Your daddy and I love you very much.” She heard a voice in her head say. “This isn’t your fault. We want you to know that, okay?” It had been that woman’s voice. “Hollis, do you understand, baby?”

“Hollis?” Heidi said out loud in the office. “Hollis.” She repeated it out loud again and then in her head a few times.

She could hear the woman saying that name over and over again. She could hear her dad telling her something, too.

“Heidi,” he’d said. “Can you repeat that for me? Heidi.”

“That’s not my name, Daddy. You’re silly,” she’d replied and then giggled.

She swallowed hard and crashed back down into her chair.

“Heidi is your new name, baby,” he’d said, smiling at her. “Isn’t it so pretty?”

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Sometimes, we change our names. I’m changing mine, too,” he’d replied.

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