kidnapping

We must clean our national psyche from all manifestation of evil, be it kidnapping, militancy, insurgency, murders or assassinations.

This just didn__ happen to girls like me. This just didn__ happen to anyone.

She doesn__ even have shoes on_ He was trying to reconcile something in his head while talking to Luke. __n all the time you spent in that shack, you forgot to pack her shoes?_ Luke asked rhetorically, shaking his head in both wonder and disappointment. __ook, we__e in the boonies. I am sure shoes are optional, as are a full set of teeth.

There was no mistaking her daughter's handwriting. And the words... "If you're reading this, I'm already dead.

Rachel slid inside her silver Kia and slammed the car door, grateful that the museum__ security guard was now watching from a distance. If he hadn__ been, she might have acted on a homicidal impulse and run Chase over, the manipulative jerk. In fact, it made her feel better just to imagine it.

Every woman wants a cowboy.

As Sloan approached the door, Paul Lyons lifted his eyes to watch her leave. He found himself wondering why after all these years they couldn__ manage to get along for a lousy twenty minutes. Perhaps it was the result of their inability to compromise__o give each other the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe they__ both simply lost the ability to trust another human being and believe anything good could come of this world.

That day wasn't the first time I had attempted suicide. Simply disappearing into the distant nothingness where there was no pain and no more feelings - back then I thought it an act of empowerment. Otherwise I had very little power to make any decisions about my life, my body, my actions. Taking my own life seemed my last trump card.

And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.

Do it double, because some can't do it at all.

Alexa's face whitens. The coil of hair loosens itself from her finger. "You did it for me. You never fought back. Because you thought you were keeping me safe."I pull up my gaze to meet hers. "Yeah.""I--" It's a strangled, high-pitched sound, laced with shock and grief. Then she bites her lips shut. Her chin trembles, just once, before she turns away.

I say to my sister, "I thought you were doing the things in our Dream Book. I was sure of it." "Why would I do that stuff without you?" "Because you could.""Well, you were wrong.

Something contracts in my chest. The air shifts, grows heavy and dense as mud. Alexa twists her hair around her finger and whispers, "Didn't you even try to escape, Charlotte?

My Keeper took everything from me: my home, my family, my voice. He made me powerless. But I'm home now. It may be split in two, but I have it back. My family may be broken, but I have it back. I have my voice back. I am not powerless anymore.

My sister has never not told me something before. We used to share every secret, every thought. While I was in the attic, it felt like we were forever far away. Now I'm with her again. We're so close that we're touching, but there's still a distance between us.

The only thing that gave me comfort in the attic was thinking about my family. Now I'm home, but it's not the home I imagined. Not the family I imagined. I'd convinced myself that they'd continued on with their happy, carefree lives without me, that they were doing it double, because I couldn't do it at all. I was wrong.

Each second of my four years, two months, and seven days in the attic dragged on forever, and nothing ever changed. But outside the attic, everything changed, and so violently fast. Destruction and devastation for all of us, whether we were in the attic or out.

It was a dark story.