Free Along Came A Prince by Carlyn Cade

one.’ They
started arguing again. ‘Let her go,’ one man demanded. ‘She wasn’t supposed to
be the target of the kidnapping. You should have left her at the theater.’ ‘Yeah,
and have her identify us?’ the gravelly voice retorted. I was shaking so hard
by this time that I had to stick my finger between my teeth to keep them from
clattering together. I was afraid they’d hear me.” Helen began to sob.
    “It’s okay now.
It’s all over. You made it through your story. They didn’t win.” Stacia moved
her patio chair next to the older woman and put her arm around her.
    As if rejuvenated,
Helen sat up straight. “But, I’m not finished yet,” she said, her voice strong
once again. “There’s more.”
    “Are you sure you
want to go on?” Stacia leaned back in the chair and put her hands in her lap.
    “I must,” Helen
stated bravely as she continued her story. “After what seemed like forever, but
I know it was only seconds, one of the men said, ‘I’m not goin’ in there. We
don’t need her. We can try for a ransom without either one of them. Who’s to
know one of them is dead?’ One of the others agreed with him. ‘Right. Maybe the
mountain lions will get them both. Dump the body and let’s go.’    
    “I heard the car
drive away. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed quiet, hoping the men
wouldn’t come back, and the animals wouldn’t find me. I don’t know how much
longer it was, but I heard a car come down the road and stop. I crept closer to
the highway so I could see, and an elderly man and woman were standing by a
truck. They must have seen Audra’s body in their headlights and stopped. I ran
out of the woods and headed straight for the woman. She saw me and opened up
her arms for me to run into. She stroked my hair and kept trying to comfort me for
I was crying hysterically.
    “They loaded me
into their car and took me straight to a hospital in some little town. The
sheriff came, then my parents, then the FBI and the president of Starlit
Studios and several of their lawyers. We were all cramped together in my small
hospital room. But I felt safe for the first time since the men kidnapped us.
    “As is well-known,
the studios had immense power back then. Not a word was leaked to the media.
There was nothing about what Audra went through. Probably because of her image,
they didn’t want anyone to know how she’d died. Everything was about image back
then, so the newspapers simply said she was killed in a car accident in the
mountains going around a curve. Because of my age, I wasn’t mentioned at all.”
    “No wonder you
don’t want to tell your story. I almost wish I hadn’t heard it.” Stacia felt as
if she was being strangled from learning about the grotesque happenings. She
covered her neck with her hand, as if she was protecting it from harm.
    “Mark came back
from their cabin the next day. I didn’t go to the funeral, but my parents did,
and I guess Mark looked close to death himself. He hung around Hollywood for about
two weeks until their scheduled wedding day. Then he disappeared. No one knew
where. Again, this was hushed up. Winter came and went. Then the caretaker
checked the cabin and found Mark’s body. Beside him was a journal. It described
his last days. He had brought no food or water with him to the cabin for he
didn’t want to live without Audra, and he said so in his journal. His last
entry was three weeks after he’d arrived there, and so they estimated when he
died. The journal was filled with love letters to Audra as well as the daily
entries of his condition, his thoughts on dying, and his strong desire not to
live without her.”
    “Where is the
journal now?”
    “No one knows. It
was rumored at the time to be in the vault at Starlit Studios, but the studios
didn’t confirm it, and why should they have? They had no one to answer to.” By
now, Helen had completely regained her composure.
    “Years later, my
mother told me this part of