Taken! Box Set - Books 1-6 Read online

  TAKEN! BOX SET — BOOKS 1-6

  by

  DONALD WELLS

  Also by Donald Wells

  A Blue Steele Mystery Short

  Blue Steele

  Blue Steele 7

  Blue Steele 8

  Blue Steele 9

  Blue Steele 10

  Blue Steele 11

  Blue Steele 12

  Blue Steele 13

  Blue Steele 14

  Blue Steele 15

  Blue Steele 16

  Blue Steele 17

  Blue Steele 18

  A Detective Pierce Story

  Monsters

  Blue Steele

  Blue Steele - Box Set - Captures 1-6

  Blue Steele - Box Set - Captures 7-12

  Blue Steele - Box Set - Captures 13-18

  Caliber Detective Agency

  Caliber Detective Agency - Box Set - Case Files 7-12

  Caliber Detective Agency - Box Set - Case Files 13-18

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #7

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #8

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #9

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #10

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #11

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #12

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #13

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #14

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #15

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #16

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #17

  Caliber Detective Agency Case File #18

  Hard-Boiled Shorts Series

  Caliber Detective Agency

  Taken! Box Set Book - 24A

  The Thirty-Nine

  Taken! Box Set Book - 24B

  Kidnapping The Devil

  Taken! Box Set Book - 24C

  Hit Squad

  Taken! Box Set Book 25 Masquerade

  TAKEN! 25

  TAKEN! Mega Box Set Series

  TAKEN! Mega Box Set 2

  The Reynolds Family Saga

  Reynolds Family Saga - Books 1-3

  The Reynolds Family Saga - Books 1-5

  The Many And The One

  Sins & Second Chances

  Dry Adultery, Wet Ambition

  Of Tongue And Pen

  All Good Things...

  Little White Sins

  Everything New Is Old Again

  The Light Of Darkness

  The TAKEN! Series of Short Stories

  Taken! Box Set - Books 1-6

  Taken! Box Set - Books 7-12

  Taken! box set - books 13-18

  Taken! Box Set - Books 19-24

  Taken! 1-12 Double Box Set

  Taken! Prelude!

  Taken! Box Set - Books 26-31

  Taken! Box Set Books 32-37

  TAKEN! Box Set Books 24A-C

  TAKEN! Mega Box Set - Books 1-24

  Taken!

  Taken! 3

  Taken! 26

  Taken! 27

  Taken! 28

  Taken! 29

  Taken! 30

  Taken! 31

  Taken! 32

  Taken! 33

  Taken! 34

  Taken! 35

  Taken! 36

  Taken! 37

  Standalone

  Whisper In The Pines

  Indie: A Humorous Look At Independent Publishing

  Dropping My Shorts

  Caliber Detective Agency - Box Set - Case Files 1-6

  Dropping My Shorts 2

  Sex Poems For Virgins

  Tomado!

  Anger Management

  Thrillogy

  Christmas 1984

  Watch for more at Donald Wells’s site.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  TAKEN!

  TAKEN! 2 – YOUNGBLOOD

  TAKEN! 3 - REGRET

  TAKEN! 4 – MIRROR IMAGE

  TAKEN! 5 – YOUNG LOVE

  TAKEN! 6 – RED, WHITE AND BLUE

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  About The Author

  COPYRIGHT

  TAKEN!

  It was pure luck that he found her, or maybe it was fate. Yes, it was fate. He was a big believer in fate. In any event, he knew he found “The One” the second he saw her.

  Her name was Karen Ryan. She was twenty-nine, white, 5’4” and weighed 118lbs. He had not weighed her, but knew from his vast experience of perusing the female animal that he would not be more than a pound off if she were weighed.

  She had reddish-blond hair and brown eyes. The other twenty-three, the dead girls, all shared her eye and hair color. If you put their pictures beside hers all in a row, you would think you were looking at twenty-four sisters, including a few that you would swear must be twins.

  He’d been watching her for nearly a week before he finally made his move, learning her patterns, while enjoying the tantalizing pleasure that can only come from stalking your prey.

  And she was prey as surely as he was predator.

  This morning, while she was out on her daily run, he broke into her apartment. Her security system was adequate, but he had watched her punch in the code many times, while sitting in his stalking post, in the apartment across the street.

  He knew that she would be gone for an hour and so he searched in a methodical, relaxed manner.

  In a small trunk in the closet, he found everything he was looking for.

  Hidden underneath layers of less interesting paraphernalia was a pair of leather panties. He also found a pair of handcuffs, among other things.

  He held up the leather undergarment and saw that they were crotchless.

  He smiled. Yes, you are a bad girl, aren’t you, but then, I’m a dirty boy.

  He has always been a predator at heart.

  The urge to subjugate women arrived even before puberty and has only gotten stronger since. He fought it, God knows he fought it, but when he was seventeen the urge overpowered him and he took his first victim.

  Wise beyond his years, he knew not to hunt in his circle and began searching for the perfect victim the next state over. He had a vehicle, an old van, and parental involvement in his life consisted of a mother who was drunk more than she was sober, and so he had plenty of time to stalk his first prey. He had gone in search of perfection and he had found it in the person of one Jessica White. Jessica was an eighteen-year-old senior in high school. She was blonde, blue-eyed and had the body of a swimsuit model.

  No brainless beauty was she though; Jessica was set to go to Harvard and dreamed of being a psychiatrist like her father.

  None of this mattered to him though; when he looked at her, all he saw was flesh, beautiful flesh that he must possess, must... experience, must humble, and ultimately, destroy.

  He took her one afternoon as she drove home from her after school job. Jessica’s formerly reliable vehicle sputtered and died as she drove through a nearby park, just as he planned for it to do.

  He approached from the opposite direction and pulled the van over behind her car. He got out of the van and Jessica’s nervous demeanor evaporated when she saw him. After all, he was about her age, tall, and handsome. If he had met her under different circumstances and asked her out, she would have probably said yes.

  But, he had no plans to woo her.

  The car had died in a secluded spot and the wind driven rain that fell that day ensured that the usual joggers and dog walkers were few and intermittent. He and Jessica were the only ones in sight.

  She explained her problem to him, and then, as she turned to walk toward the hood of the car, he made his move.
<
br />   As his left arm went around her throat, his right hand clamped a damp cloth over her nose and mouth. She struggled longer than he would have imagined, but in the end, she collapsed against him and he dragged her back to the van.

  After throwing open the back doors, he lifted her up and into the van, where he had placed an air mattress. He pulled the strips of pre-cut duct tape off the right wall of the van and bound her wrists and ankles, before applying the smallest strip across her mouth.

  After slamming the van doors shut, he looked around and saw no one. As he pulled away from the curb and back into his lane, a police car rounded the corner. As they passed him, he looked into the car and saw that the two cops inside were engaged in a lively conversation and hadn’t even given him a glance.

  He drove on with Jessica White, knowing that she was his, to do with as he pleased.

  At that moment, he was the happiest he had ever been.

  ***

  He placed the leather panties back in their hiding place, and, after resetting the alarm, he left.

  Karen Ryan would return and find everything as she had left it, but he would be back later, back to gather his prey.

  ***

  He took her just after two a.m., without a struggle. He knew her habits, knew that she ate a yogurt each night while she scanned the Internet. During his visit to her apartment, he discovered that she had four containers inside her refrigerator. He injected a tasteless, odorless, yet powerful sedative through the thin foil top of each container of yogurt. No matter what flavor she feasted upon, he would have her.

  He entered the apartment as if he lived there and scooped her off the bed and draped her over his left shoulder. After a quick glance through the peephole, he walked out into the corridor and closed her door behind him.

  Thirty paces later, he was walking down the back steps, and, after checking for potential witnesses, he hit a button on his keychain and the side door on his van slid open. He carried her over to it and placed her inside. He looked down at her and thought of his first, of Jessica White.

  ***

  He watched as Jessica White regained consciousness that day.

  She was naked and lying spread eagle atop an old mattress, her wrists and ankles bound by rope and tied to a bed. The building he took her to was an old abandoned foundry out in the countryside and rain leaked in everywhere. When she screamed, no one would hear her.

  He had disrobed her while she was unconscious and found that her body surpassed even his fantasies. He had never given God much thought during his seventeen years but he knew now with utter certainty that there was such a being. Who but a God could create beauty such as Jessica’s. He also knew just as surely that the devil was real, he knew because he was real, and who but a devil could have fashioned him and his sick desires.

  While she was still unconscious, he had touched her, explored her perfect flesh as he had so many times before in imagination. Imagination paled when compared to the softness of her breasts and the silky crevice between her thighs.

  But then, then as she stared at him with eyes wide with fear, he saw her as the person she was and knew that this was no fantasy, and that once he killed Jessica White, his life would never be the same.

  As Jessica began talking to him, begging him to let her live, he reached over and grabbed a long knife from atop a table, when he turned back towards her, he began cutting.

  ***

  Over a four year period, twenty-three women have been brutally murdered in this city and the police and FBI are baffled to say the least. Despite using their vast data and computer resources and troops of trained investigators to search for clues, no link has been unearthed that would connect the women to each other. However, the authorities are certain that there must be a link, must be some confluence of human behavior that links these women to each other. And yet, every inquiry into their lives leads to a dead end.

  Other than their obvious physical similarity to each other, nothing connects the twenty-three.

  And yes, there are connections here and there, such as two of the women having the same hair stylist and seven of them sharing the same e-mail provider, but there’s no thread to grab ahold of that will unravel the mystery of their killer.

  The police have failed. They have failed because the killer they search for is very smart, and unless stopped, will kill again, and again, and again.

  ***

  He had long since given up taking his victims to abandoned buildings.

  As intelligent as he is good-looking, he makes a small fortune developing Apps for smart phone users. However, application development is a sideline, what he plans to do with Karen Ryan this night, well, let us just say that it is his first love.

  After driving away from her apartment building, he soon arrived at a rented cabin on a lake.

  After moving in, he had soundproofed the spare bedroom. Karen Ryan lies atop a brass bed, she is naked and her wrists and ankles are manacled.

  When she finally awakens from her chemically induced slumber, she looks about the room in confusion. As he walks toward her with a cattle prod in one hand and his favored knife in the other, she screams. She will continue to scream off and on, for hours.

  ***

  Detective Karl Holmes and FBI agent Cero Jones stand before a large one way mirror and stare in at the killer. Both men give a slight shake of their heads as they ponder the circumstances that led to the killer’s capture.

  “One week,” Holmes says. “It only took her one week to find the killer after we’ve spent four years searching.”

  “That’s hardly her record. Last year in Detroit, she solved a series of homicides in one day. The woman must be psychic.”

  Holmes throws a chin toward the glass. “When is the lawyer getting here?”

  “He’s here, and been declined, on film. No lawyer, and a signed confession, plus we were given permission to search and found ‘souvenirs’ belonging to each of the victims.”

  “Case closed then, and oh look, here she comes.”

  Dr. Jessica White strides down the corridor, the overhead fluorescent lights causing her blue eyes and long blond hair to sparkle; walking beside Dr. White is her husband.

  She smiles at the men. “Gentlemen, I think we’re done here, but of course we’ll be available if you need us in the future.”

  Jones reaches out to shake her hand. “I don’t know how you do it doctor, but Karen Ryan is definitely our killer. We’ve found used underwear belonging to each of the victims in her apartment and her resemblance to the victims explains why our timelines for the murders were always so off when compared to the autopsy reports. While her victims lay dead in their homes, she would make sure to be seen coming and going. Unless someone got a close look, they would assume that she was the victim and report seeing them alive. Now I know why you wanted to search through the Motor Vehicle database; you were looking for anyone who might closely resemble our victims. I give you credit; I never would have thought that the killer was a woman.”

  “She’s confessed to everything,” Holmes says. “But she won’t give us a motive, what do you think her motive was doctor?”

  “They were surrogates.” Dr. White’s husband says. “It was her way of destroying herself, over and over.” He then walks up to the one-way glass and stares in at Karen Ryan, and although there is no possible way for her to see him, to even know that he’s there, she looks up at the mirror and flinches, a moment more, and she is crying like a child.

  He walks away from the mirror and takes his wife’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  They have been together since the day they met.

  As Jessica White begged for her life, he realized that he was more human than he believed, for despite the bloodlust and carnality that gnawed at him like hunger, he felt pity for her, and something more, love, he loved her.

  After reaching over to a table for his knife, he cut her free of the ropes that bound her. He then reached down to the floor, scooped
up her clothes, and handed them to her.

  “Get dressed and I’ll take you home.” He told her. “And then, and then... I’ll go have a talk with the police.”

  Fascination had replaced fear in Jessica White’s eyes, and after dressing, she began talking to him. Conversation led to a connection developing between the nascent serial killer and the future psychiatrist, and soon, a bond had formed.

  He never went to the police and she never left his side.

  Now, as husband and wife criminal profilers, they offer their assistance to law enforcement whenever called. She is the face of their team, but he, he is their weapon, a serial killer who has never killed, and yet, he knows their motivations and lusts as he knows his own. Lusts and desires that are only kept at bay, by the love of a woman.

  TAKEN! 2 – YOUNGBLOOD

  They were in the town of Eagle’s Bluff; a bedroom community situated just a modest commute away from the city of Denver.

  His wife, Psychiatrist and Criminal Profiler, Dr. Jessica White, had been asked to come at the request of an old family friend, Robert Hornsby, the mayor of Eagle’s Bluff.

  As they entered Hornsby’s office, he saw that there were three men present. All three sets of eyes widened in interest at his wife’s entrance, even the mature Hornsby, who had known Jessica White since she was a little girl.

  His wife was a beautiful woman and it was in the basic make-up of most males to lust after female beauty. This was natural behavior, and to be expected.

  What was unnatural, was the desire to possess that beauty at all costs, to disregard society and simply take what you wanted, as the killer stalking this town had done.

  As thoughts of the killer entered his mind, he felt his pulse quicken. The hunt was on.

  The men came forward to greet them and, after introductions, he took note that one of the men, an FBI agent named Stiles, studied his wife with something more than appreciation for the female form. It was jealousy.

  His wife’s reputation as a miracle worker rankled some in law enforcement because she didn’t belong to the “club”, wasn’t an alumna of Quantico, and was gifted with natural instincts that they could never hope to possess.

  With all pleasantries attended to, they sat at a round conference table and discussed the case.

  Three separate families at three different locations had been murdered. Each family had a teenage daughter, while the third family also had a pre-teen son. The boy, along with all of the parents, were shot dead while they slept. The murders took place only after the teenage daughters had first been beaten and gagged.