Motivation for kidnapping mid-20s women?

The baddies are members of a cult and want to brainwash the women as "extra wives."

The baddies want them to be drug-couriers. I'm told the authorities don't bother searching women as diligently as men. Or, you could have them assume so.

The baddies plan to rob a bank, or a series of them, and plan to use the young women as human shields.

The baddies are major sickos and want them for The Deed. They would probably dispose of them after taking them somewhere. Squick.

I think Deb covered the most obvious 'uses' for the twenty year old women. Depending on how twisted you want to go - they could be planning to 'harvest' them for organs - so keeping them alive till they are ready for the transplant is good. A larger organization that manages the operations and such - part of a global ring - fly them off to Bangok or China or some such.

Snuff videos, BDSM videos and pics

Breeders. They're being shipped to an isolated island where mad scientists are using them in bio experiments. They're going to bear babies with a jelly-fish gene and glow in the dark. (It's been done with cats and rabbits.)

Mistaken identity - thought one or the other was "someone" else and had to take both at same time for their being together.

One of the baddies loves one of the gals (from school/store/work) and thinks this is the way to her heart

Sell into sex slavery in foreign country

They think one (or both) saw them commit a prior crime

Just for the hell of it for the baddies are sociopaths

To get back at someone else in either/both girl's families (if they did something)

Rape/murder

Sport of hunting 'human game' at some undetermined local - girls are the "game"

Unintentional kidnapping during another crime as the gals were needed as hostages

Set up prostitution ring in another state/country

Cult or devil worship sacrifice and it is these three's turn to pick out the "altar" girls to be killed

ummmm, need more?

researchers pay these hoodlums to find human "lab rats" for experiments

someone hired them to do it - explained later (could even be family)

the hoodlums are canibals - young female flesh tastiest?

ummmmm, need more?

I will leave off for now

Good luck!



Christine

One of them is pregnant and they want to steal the baby.

Or... one of them is a nursing mom, and they need a wet nurse.

And they took the other one so that she couldn't stay and be a witness.

Or... the other woman (not the one who works in the cafe) is a bank manager and knows the combo to the safe.

Or... the kidnappers are really aliens and they're trying to learn our secrets.

The other woman's husband/boyfriend is the manager of a bank (or the kidnappers think she is). The kidnappers grabbed her to get him to hand over the contents of the strongroom. The MC was just in the wrong place at the wrong time so they took her too.

Did they have lotto/lotteries back in those days?

True story in this country - a woman was kidnapped and held for ransom because a newspaper article appeared in the paper listing enough personal details and how much she won for the kidnappers to work out who she was and where she lived. It didn't end well, unfortunately.

Because of this, laws were changed preventing personal details being published in media articles about lottery winners.

That was in the fifties or sixties, but maybe you could use something like that in your story.

One of the women unknowingly had her memories altered and is reality a sleeper agent who will be awoken by a code word. But no one knows which one it is. None of the women want to be used as a weapon but they also do not want to be imprisoned.

The kidnappers are evil aliens and they are going to do experiements on the women -- or are benevolent aliens and are going to innoculate the women with an antidote that will make everyone they come into contact with immune to a terrible disease. (AIDS? Bubonic Plague?) Otherwise, the entire population of the Earth will be wiped out.

Or the women are aliens and the kidnappers have captured them. Or both are aliens and assume the others are human.

The kidnappers are working for a menopausal female villian with really, really bad hot flashes who plans to harvest their hormones. Or deserately wants babies, and is going to have the women artifically inseminated and force them to bear children for her.

Or the kidnappers are going to use the women to produce babies to sell to unsuspecting adoptive couples. They have a farm of similar women already set up.

The kidnappers are zookeepers who are running out of fresh meat for the tigers.

The kidnappers are protein-starved vegans and have concluded that if breast milk is vegan, the flesh of humans must be vegan (variation on cannibalism, already suggested.)

Most realistic: the kidnappers don't have any idea why they kidnapped the women...it just seemed like a good idea at the time. (True! A cop friend of my says, "Whenever you look at a crime and ask yourself 'what were they thinking?'... they weren't.")

One male kidnapper is psychotic, experiencing hallucinations and hearing voices, and the other (male) kidnapper has a major crush on him. One day the psychotic forgot to wear his tinfoil hat, and voices told him to take the women.

One of the women has a flashy piece of costume jewelry on, and/or a faux designer handbag, and the scumbags mistake them for the real thing. If they find out the women don't have any money, they'll kill them both for sure.

But in real life, sex. Or torture and sex. Or money, torture and sex.