by Val Welch
“We didn’t shoot Gabe, but we probably know the person who did,” Joaquin said emphatically.
“Really? Who was it? And who tried to kill me on the road from the power plant?”
“Someone in EFA was probably made to do it as a show of alliance. Dante is real big on showing alliance,” Troy said.
“Shelby, on the way there we’re going to have a long discussion about everything that’s gone on in the last couple of years. I’m sure once you understand how we got mixed up in this you’ll help us,” Joaquin said, offering her a bottle of water from the cooler at his feet.
She shook her head and glared at him.
Troy shrugged, started the jeep and they began moving down the trail again. About half an hour later, he pulled off the trail and into a dense stand of trees.
Shelby was curious about why until she heard and then saw the helicopter flying low over the tree tops. She scooted forward, and tapped Joaquin on the shoulder. “I need to pee.”
He held up his hand as he listened intently to a portable police scanner she now saw protruding from his shirt pocket. A few seconds later he stepped out of the jeep and lifted the seat forward.
She climbed out. Joaquin led her around to the front of the jeep and handcuffed one hand to the tubular brush guard. Wordlessly he and Troy walked around to the back of the jeep and looked away. She struggled with unzipping her jeans then squatted and tried not to pee on her boots. There was a fist size rock lying just under the jeep. As she squatted there she dug her free hand into her pocket and retrieved one of the rose petals from Gabe’s bathroom. She glanced back at Troy and Joaquin before sticking it under the edge of the rock.
“I’m done,” she called, struggling to zip and button her jeans with one hand.
Joaquin stopped at the jeep door, reached inside and came to the front of the jeep with a small spray bottle. He handed it to Troy while he unlocked the cuff from the jeep and helped Shelby back into the jeep. She watched Troy spray whatever was in the bottle on the wet spot she’d just left in the dirt.
Troy got into the jeep and handed the bottle back to Joaquin. “What’s in the spray bottle?” she asked.
“Bear urine,” Joaquin said.
The jeep started rolling again. “How did you get bear urine?”
“Very carefully,” Joaquin said as he and Troy laughed.
She suppressed the urge to laugh too. “Why did you spray it where I peed?”
Troy adjusted the rearview mirror in order to see her. “To throw the dogs off.”
“What dogs?”
Troy laughed. “The ones Gabe’s going to use to track us down because we took his woman.”
Shelby glared at him in the mirror. “I’m not his woman, and I don’t think you fully understand how much trouble you’re in.”
Joaquin turned and looked at her. “Come on, Shelby, I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. You’re going to be our cousin.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re wrong. He’s still in love with Eden.”
Joaquin grinned and shook his head. “Listen, this whole kidnapping thing is really your fault. Gabe went to Phoenix on Friday and told Eden he was in love with you and they were finished. She got pissed and told him that Troy and I had recruited William into EFA.”
“Which was fucking bullshit. William recruited us,” Troy said, slamming his fist down on the dash.
Joaquin ignored Troy and continued. “Friday night after the party, Gabe was drunk on his ass and told us both we had to get our affairs in order and turn ourselves in to you.”
“So, we just did.” Troy laughed.
“All right. I’ll play pretend with you. What if you did turn yourselves in to me? What can you offer me in exchange for my help in getting your families out of the country?”
“Dante,” Joaquin said. “We can give you Dante and the rest of the leadership that slipped through your fingers when you grabbed the lower level.”
“And the missiles, don’t forget the missiles,” Troy added, glancing over at Joaquin.
“Tell me about the missiles. I’m assuming they’re involved in the bad shit that’s about to happen.”
“Yeah. They’ve got eight hand-held surface-to-air missiles that they’re gonna shoot down airliners with,” Troy said.
“When?”
“It’s hard to say exactly, soon though.”
She shrugged. “I’m going to need concrete proof before I take this to the head of my unit.”
Troy and Joaquin looked at each other. “You’ll have it,” Joaquin said.
“Okay, let me call Doc and tell him I’m all right.”
Joaquin shook his head. “You know we can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“We’re not stupid, Shelby,” Joaquin said. “We know they may be able to trace your cell phone signal back to our location.”
“Doubtful. But, I guess I’ll give you that. Tell me, how did you get involved with EFA?”
Troy looked at her. “You ever heard of Downwinders?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“It’s a group of people who were exposed to radioactive fallout from the nuclear testing done in Nevada back in the fifties and sixties,” Joaquin said.
“Yeah, the fucking government actually nuked us. Now they buy off people who got cancer from the fallout,” Troy said. “How do you pay someone for never being able to have kids? For constantly worrying that it’s coming back and there’s going to be more treatment plans, more doctors and more fucking bullshit.”
Joaquin squeezed Troy’s shoulder then looked at Shelby. “My older sister Anna has cancer. It’s been a five-year battle to keep her alive. The form of cancer she has has been proven by army scientists to be caused by exposure to just the type of radioactive fallout that drifted across northern Arizona when she was a small child. She’s been through two remissions. Troy joined EFA when it came back the second time and the doctors gave us no hope.”
Troy looked at her in the mirror as he took up the story. “We filed a Downwinders claim, got fifty thousand dollars and paid for all of Anna’s cancer treatments. Then, it came back. There was no more money, the insurance wouldn’t pay for it and we lost everything. Everyone in the family pitched in to help us financially.
“I was mad as hell that our government had done this to Anna and that’s when the EFA got me. They’re experts at sucking you in. It started out with a conversation with some of my buddies at the bar about that fucking power plant we all got rammed down our throats. I mean, just what we needed, another way for the government to give the next generation cancer. So, I joined the group to protest the power plant and went on to do some little nuisance crap while they were building the plant. You know, letting the air out of heavy equipment tires, putting sugar in the gas tanks, stuff like that.
“But, protesting and being a pain-in-the-ass wasn’t enough for Dante. He came up with this crazy idea to bomb the power plant and send a big statement to the world about how powerful EFA was. I realized then what a fucking lunatic he was and I tried to walk away. But, they threatened Anna and my mom. Said if I didn’t get them the explosives they needed to do the job they’d hurt them real bad. So, they offered me a deal. I get them the explosives and I’m out. Nothing else required from me. Like an idiot, I did it. And that’s when I got Joaquin into this fucking mess.” He shook his head. “He was just trying to help me and Anna.”
“Hey, buddy,” Joaquin said with a shrug. “At the time, I thought it was the only way out for you too.”
Despite everything, Shelby was touched by how much the two obviously cared for each other. And, she understood on a very real level what had happened to Troy. She’d seen it over and over again in her line of work. Good, honest people, who make an emotional decision and cross a line they never normally would; by the time they realize what they’ve done it’s too late to go back.
“Let me guess. After the bombing, they reneged on the deal?” Shelby asked
�
��Oh yeah,” Troy said. “And that’s when things got out of control. Joaquin and me and a lot of the others got together and decided to go to the cops and turn ourselves in. Someone leaked it to Dante and he had Paul and Lisa Hunter killed. And believe me, anyone who watched the video of what they did to them had a very powerful incentive to stay put.
“Now they watch Joaquin’s kids and e-mail us pictures of them on the school grounds, walking home from school, even in their own backyard.”
“It’s been a living hell for all of us. We finally got to the point where we had to take a chance,” Joaquin said. “So, we decided that the only way out was if everyone in EFA got busted. Yeah, we’ll go to jail too, but our families will be safe. That’s why we sent you the e-mails and told you where all the cells were.”
She looked at Joaquin. “You two sent the e-mails to me?”
“Yeah. We’re Mogollon. We knew all about you from Doc, and we thought you’d be the one to help us.”
Shelby wasn’t surprised, she’d known that Mogollon was most likely a local and had begun to suspect it was one of them as soon as they began sharing their story with her. “I guess this all kind of makes sense. Except, why didn’t you give us Dante? Wouldn’t getting him out of the picture solve most of your problems?”
“We thought we did. But, we had bad information. He’s never where you think he’s going to be.”
“Whose idea was it to fake your kidnapping?”
“Dante’s. It was a big deal around town when Judith and Lydia sold some of the family property, and the new owner had it rezoned for apartments. Dante came up with the kidnapping scam as a way to get the money, and get back at Lydia and Judith for selling out to a developer. But, before it went down Eden told Gabe we were involved in the group. After that, he’d never buy the kidnapping story so they had him shot the next morning.”
“Yeah,” Troy said. “As soon as we heard that was going down we called the sheriff’s office, but we were too late to stop it.”
Shelby’s mind raced as she tried to absorb all the information. “So Eden told Dante that she’d told Gabe about the two of you, they decided to take Gabe out to protect the kidnapping scam and to intimidate the two of you into staying on course.”
“Yeah, that’s part of it,” Joaquin said. “But, I also think Eden wanted revenge after Gabe dumped her. She was looking forward to coming back into town and expanding the meth operation and Gabe’s always been the perfect cover for her.”
“Holy shit! I got her out of jail. She’s been involved from the very beginning, hasn’t she?”
“Oh yeah, she’s been right there with the rest of her family running the group. The scars on her face are from the razor wire at the power plant.”
“The rest of her family? You mean William? ”
They looked at each other for a long moment and then Troy shrugged.
Joaquin turned toward her and deeply exhaled. “Dante is Nick Malone, Eden’s father.”
“No way, I thought he was dead.”
Joaquin shook his head. “No, he’s very alive.”
“Who died in the car wreck with the mother?”
He shrugged. “Nobody knows.”
Shelby slumped back against the tailgate thinking as they traveled deeper into the forest. The trees were so thick around them she had no idea what direction they were going in. Finally, they pulled into a small clearing and Joaquin dug into the bag at his feet. “Shelby, do you need to use the restroom again? I have to tie you up and blindfold you for a while.”
“Sure, I could go.”
Joaquin stepped out of the jeep and they repeated the bathroom procedure. Only this time there was no rock to hide a rose petal under. Shelby set two petals on the lip under the jeep’s brush guard, hoping they would drop off onto the trail. She didn’t know if they would really help anyone find her, but it was all she had. When she finished, Joaquin helped her back into the jeep. He handcuffed her hands in back of her and tried to put a hood over her head.
“No, please don’t do that,” she said, pushing away from him into the corner of the jeep.
“Sorry, Shelby, I have too, it’s the only way. If they think you know the way in, they’ll for sure kill you. Don’t worry. We’re going to get you out as soon as we get our families safe. Just play it like you’ve been kidnapped.”
She sat helplessly as he slid the black hood over her head and tied it loosely around her neck.
“It’s going to get really rough for the next few miles. I’m putting a sleeping bag down and then I’m going to lay you on it. Just try to relax,” Joaquin said, gently taking her shoulders and lowering her onto the sleeping bag.
“Don’t be afraid. We know what we’re doing,” Troy said as they started moving again.
She felt them going down a long incline, swerving around at weird angles that made her slide all over the bare metal bed of the jeep. Twice Joaquin grabbed her legs and kept her from a head first slide into the tailgate.
She closed her eyes, lay in the dark and allowed her other senses to absorb every detail of their journey. She heard the increasing roar of rushing water ahead of them and felt the air becoming colder and damper. Troy cursed as they bottomed out more than once as they slowly crept over what she envisioned to be a boulder strewn river bottom.
After what seemed like hours they came to a halt and Troy muttered, “Where’s the fucking crossing?”
Joaquin shifted in his seat. “It’s right there. See the marker? Damn. I’ve never seen the water so high. Can we make it through?”
Troy muttered something unintelligible then they both exited the jeep.
She lay there frantically trying to think of a way to escape. She was positive, if given more time, she could turn the situation with Joaquin and Troy around and get them to take her back. Their plan to take her to Dante terrified her. She seriously doubted she’d be able to get out alive. When they climbed back into the jeep, she sat up and said, “Hey guys, let’s talk about this.”
“Shelby, it’s the only way. While they’re trying to ransom you, you can take a look at the operation. As soon as we know our families are safe, we’ll get you out and get the feds in to arrest them all,” Joaquin said.
“You’re crazy if you think that’s going to work. What’s to keep them from taking the money and killing me? They’re not exactly honorable people.”
“Shelby, we’re not going to let that happen. We’re armed. And if they take our guns for some reason, we’ve got more hidden in the jeep,” Troy said as the jeep began moving forward.
“Okay, stop. We don’t have to do it this way. None of us have to risk our lives. Just let me make a couple of calls. We can have your families picked up immediately. And then I’ll get a team out here to take them all into custody.”
“Shhh, Shelby, please be quiet. It’s too late, we’ve passed the point of no return,” Joaquin said.
“Okay, here we go. If we start floating, grab her and bail,” Troy said as the jeep accelerated toward the roar of the river.
Joaquin reached around and took her hand in his. “Shelby, sit up with your back here between the seats,” he said, dragging her into position as the jeep hit the water.
The roar of the water drowned out the tense conversation that was going on in the front seat. More than once the jeep began to drift in the water and somehow Troy managed to hold it on course. After several long minutes she felt them both relax and knew they had made it across.
“Damn, that was intense,” Joaquin whispered from the darkness as the jeep rolled to a stop.
She heard someone approaching. She sat still and listened.
“Troy, Joaquin, how’s it going? I’m really glad to see you two. Hey, who ya got back there?”
“We’ve got someone to talk to the boss,” Troy said.
“Hey, that’s a woman. Damn, I ain’t seen no women in months. Nice tits too. Take the hood off. I want to see her face.”
“Down boy, you’ll get to see her later. Whe
re’s the boss?” Joaquin laughed.
Shelby’s blood ran cold when she heard the laugh. It sounded so natural. It made her fear the story they’d told her during the long hours of their journey had been a total fabrication.
“He’s up at the top. I’ll see ya all later. Good-bye back there.”
Troy laughed as they pulled forward. “Good job, Shelby. Just hang in there for a couple of hours and then we’ll get you settled for the night.”
“Who was that guy? He sounded like a toothless, lice infected, incest spawned albino.”
Troy laughed. “You sure she can’t see through that?”
She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Shelby, try not to be frightened when we take the hood off. They can be a little overwhelming, but it’s going to be okay. I promise,” Joaquin said.
She started crying. “You sound like him too, you know.”
She heard him laugh. “I know, Rebeca says the same thing. A couple of times she’s almost kissed him by mistake.”
Troy laughed. “Are you sure about that? Gabe’s got the uniform and gun thing going. That makes women hot. Doesn’t it, Shelby?”
She laughed. “It’s definitely the gun. Women always wonder how big the caliber is.”
Troy laughed. “Damn, Shelby, I always thought you feds were pretty tight assed.”
“Are you kidding, I’m the only woman in my unit. It’s just me and thirty guys. I learned to talk the talk the first week.”
“That’s good to know, because, you’re about to need that skill,” Joaquin said as the jeep stopped again and Troy turned it off.
She swallowed hard when she heard them get out of the jeep and walk away. She strained to hear their hushed conversation from somewhere towards the front of the jeep. She could smell smoke and heard other noises beyond Joaquin and Troy’s conversation. There was the sound of pounding and also that of the river they had just crossed. She didn’t know how long she waited in the darkness, willing herself to remain calm.
Her mind turned to Carson and couldn’t believe that it was just this morning that they been together in Gabe’s house. She smiled when she remembered his unfaltering belief that he had gotten her pregnant on Gabe’s bed. How ironic would that be, she wondered, as she heard them finally returning to the jeep.