Jessica was supposed to disappear. Instead, her kidnappers returned her home.
Most people who get kidnapped probably don't expect their kidnappers to apologize for taking the wrong person.
Jessica certainly didn't.
It was an ordinary afternoon when she noticed the car following her.
At first, she thought nothing of it.
Ravenport has never exactly been the kind of city where seeing the same car twice is enough to make someone panic. But when Jessica turned onto a quieter street and the vehicle continued behind her, she began to feel uneasy.
Then the car stopped.
Two people got out.
Jessica barely had time to react before one of them grabbed her.
She was forced into the vehicle and driven away.
For the next several minutes, she had no idea where she was being taken or why she had been targeted.
The kidnappers didn't tell her.
They simply drove.
Eventually, the vehicle stopped somewhere in Ravenport, and Jessica was taken inside a building where another man was waiting.
Judging by the way the others behaved around him, Jessica quickly realized that he was their boss.
She expected questions.
Instead, the man looked at her for a few seconds.
Then his expression changed.
"No."
The kidnappers looked confused.
"This isn't the one I wanted."
Jessica had no idea what he meant.
The man asked them who she was.
When they gave him her name, his reaction became even more serious.
He hadn't wanted Jessica.
He had wanted her older sister, Mary.
The situation suddenly became considerably more complicated.
According to Jessica's account, the man became particularly concerned after discovering that she was a minor.
Whatever his original intentions had been, he apparently had no interest in keeping a child as his prisoner.
He ordered his people to take Jessica back.
And they did.
After being driven back through the city, Jessica was eventually returned home.
Her family was left trying to understand how someone could have been kidnapped simply because she looked enough like her older sister to be mistaken for her.
The incident, however, changed the family's life.
Jessica and Mary were no longer comfortable living where they had before.
The family eventually moved to Eastern Ravenport, hoping that the distance would provide some protection.
Police also became involved and arranged additional protection for the family.
For Jessica, the experience remains something she hasn't forgotten.
She was targeted.
Taken.
Driven to a stranger.
And then, bizarrely, returned because her kidnappers realized they had made a mistake.
The terrifying part isn't that they kidnapped the wrong person.
It's that someone wanted Mary badly enough to send people looking for her.
And somewhere in Ravenport, that question still remains:
Why?
