Maybe, With Conditions

by Mariella Starr

  "Nicole and Christina haven't returned, yet," Mrs. Jackson answered. "They said they would be here before school was out. The school called to say no one had picked up the boys, so I went to get them. The girls still aren't here and neither one is answering their phones."

  "Stay with the boys, please," Dalton ordered hanging up immediately. He dialed Nicole's phone, but it went to voice message. His next call was to the sheriff's office.

  * * *

  Nicole and Christina locked the truck doors, but the men banged on the windows and yelled at them to open the doors.

  "What are we going to do?" Christina cried.

  Nicole gunned the engine and smashed into one ATV and then another as men scrambled to get out of the way. The truck's bumper caught in the metal of one of the ATV frames and she dragged it along until one of the truck's tires stuck in the mangled machinery. She kept going for as far as she could, but the engine was making a horrible noise. Suddenly, the truck jolted and stopped.

  Both women screamed as one of the men shattered the passenger-side window, reached inside, and unlocked the door. The man dragged Christina from the truck.

  "Get out!" a man ordered Nicole. He wore fatigues and pointed a large handgun at her, so Nicole slid across the seat and got out on the passenger side.

  Two of the men dragged the women to the side of the road and shoved them to the ground.

  Nicole clung to Christina as the men swore and shouted at each other trying to pull the ATVs out from under the truck. She realized she still had the ignition keys in her hand. She also thought, if the men hid the truck, no one would ever find them. When the attention of the man guarding them with the gun was diverted, she dropped the keys behind a cactus and covered them with a swipe of sand.

  Their guard watched the other men, shouting at them as they dragged the damaged ATVs aside.

  "Where's the keys?" one of the men demanded of Nicole since she had been driving.

  "I don't know," she stammered. "I must have left them in the truck."

  "Where are the goddamned keys?" he shouted, dragging her to her feet and twisting her arm behind her back.

  "I don't know!" Nicole screamed in pain.

  "Fuck it," the man shouted and he swung his fist.

  * * *

  As Nicole regained consciousness, Christina leaned over her protectively. Everything in Nicole's body hurt. Her face throbbed. When she tried to move, she realized her arm was broken. She shifted and drew her legs up out of the way only to see a steer standing over them.

  "The guy with the gun hit you and knocked you out," Christina explained. "They threw us in the back of the truck along with the stolen cattle. Be careful, or we'll be trampled."

  "Did they hurt you?" Nicole demanded.

  Christina shook her head no. "One man threatened me, but the guy with the gun told him to get over and help the other men with the ATVs." She closed her eyes and shivered. "He told the men there would plenty of time for us, later. He was awful mad because you wrecked three of their ATVs. They had a hard time pushing the truck out of the way. The one with the gun kept yelling and swearing at the other men because they were leaving evidence behind. They dumped gas over the ATVs and the truck, and set fire to them."

  "Good, there will be a lot of smoke," Nicole said. "Someone will spot the smoke and come to find out what happened."

  "I read somewhere that the Army Depot is more than 150,000 acres," Christina said. "I don't know what it translates into miles, but unless someone was driving in the right direction, I doubt anyone will notice until the next person takes the shortcut."

  "Well, I'm not giving up without a fight," Nicole exclaimed.

  "What're we going to do?"

  Nicole took Christina's hand and squeezed it. "I have no idea."

  * * *

  Dalton was doing his fair share of swearing. He had called the sheriff's office, the Hawthorne Police, and the state police. Every one of his Double C men was in a vehicle scouring the highways. Dalton called the Silver Legacy Resort Casino and talked to Nicole's client, but she had left his office at ten that morning. Her agent, Dick Chambers, verified she had been there and left before noon. Since then, no one had seen either woman.

  With all the crimes and attacks on them, Dalton would not take any chances. He called Roy Mac. His grandfather called in the big guns. He went straight to the source and called his long-time friend, the Lt. Governor of Nevada. From the top down, through the chain of command, it took exactly an hour before a five-state alert went out on a possible kidnapping.

  * * *

  It was still daylight when the cattle truck slowed before bouncing along a rough path. It finally came to a stop. Someone opened the back door and shouted at the two women.

  "Hey, you two, get back here!"

  Nicole and Christina carefully worked their way past the agitated steers.

  The man with the gun came to the back of the truck. "Out!" he ordered, waving the revolver. He didn't bother helping them down. As soon as their feet touched concrete, he shoved the women in front of him into a cavernous hangar-like structure. As the man marched them across the building, Nicole saw part of it was filled with what looked to her like large shipping boxes, except they were enormous. He opened a door to a room, shoved them inside, and threw the bolt.

  Christina flipped a light switch, but nothing happened. They struggled to see in their surroundings. The only light source was a series of small windows high on the wall about twelve feet above their heads. The room must have been used as an office at some point. It was furnished with a large gray desk, and gray metal cabinets lined one wall.

  "We have to find a way out of here," Nicole said pacing the room. There was only the one door. She made a slight move to turn around and a lightning streak of pain shot through her arm. It was the wrong move. She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes, again, Christina was watching her anxiously. Nicole took another deep breath before going to the desk and rummaging through its mostly empty drawers.

  "What now?" Christina asked.

  "I'm making this up as I go. I know these men are not going to let us go voluntarily and they plan to hurt us before they decide our final fate.

  "Dalton told me a full grown steer is worth over a thousand dollars. There were at least sixty head of cattle in the truck with us. I heard the man with the gun swearing about my wrecking their ATVs before they could round up more. "Over the last few months, they have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of cattle from the surrounding ranchers. Help me check these cabinets."

  "What're we looking for?"

  "Anything we can use as a weapon," Nicole advised. "Do you have any idea where we might be?"

  "I don't know for sure. I think we are inside one of the bunkers at the army depot. I did a little online investigating before we came here. I wasn't bringing my kids to a place storing nuclear bombs," Christina said.

  "What do they store here?" Nicole asked.

  "Military ammunitions. The general category covers a broad range of possibilities. The websites don't give a lot of details. The fuzzy aerial pictures showed building after building lined up all in neat rows. There are supposed to be over twenty-five hundred of them. They resembled the World War II Quonset huts you see in old movies, except larger. I can only imagine what might be stored in these buildings."

  Nicole opened another cabinet. "If this is an army base of sorts, why don't we see military personnel running around town?"

  "Only one military officer is in charge. The entire base was turned over to a private company who hires civilian employees from the surrounding area."

  Nicole raised one eyebrow at this detailed information and Christina shrugged. "We've moved around a lot. I like to check out where we're going ahead of time."

  "Ha!" Nicole exclaimed pulling a large wrench-like tool out a cabinet.

  Christina produced a lead pipe about three feet long. "You should take this. You can barely lift the bolt cutters
with one arm. How bad is your arm?"

  Nicole grimaced as they swapped tools. "I'm pretty sure it's broken; half the time I think I'm going to vomit any second. It's my left arm, though, and I'm right handed."

  "So, what's the plan?"

  "We wait," Nicole said succinctly.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dalton looked in on the boys as he passed Matty's bedroom door. He had gone to his bedroom to shower and change, and grab extra clothes for Jimmy Morse. Both of them had been awake all night. Various law enforcement agencies had taken over the ranch house as their temporary headquarters. Dalton had bunked all three boys in Matty's room for the night.

  An FBI agent by the name of Dan Marshall was there. He was not officially on the case until the possible kidnapping victims were missing for twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, the agencies had wired the landlines and all their cell phones for recording, in case a ransom was demanded.

  News bulletins of the two missing women had been picked up by the national news services. Three network vans were parked outside the ranch house. They had swarmed the ranch, hungry for details about the disappearance of a recent Reno casino's instant-millionaire. They milled around bothering Dalton's men for interviews. Every time he stepped outside, they were on him like vultures, demanding answers when he didn't know the questions, yet. He found one odious woman trying to interview Matty in the backyard. He ordered her and her crew off his property. He warned the others, if they came anywhere near the boys or his men, again, all of them would be kept outside the property lines.

  The sheriff's department and even the FBI agent advised Dalton to not alienate the press. They could be useful. Dalton didn't consider the splashing of his and Nicole's private lives over the news at all helpful. They had even released details about his so-called marriage to Barbara, putting it out there for all to see.

  He looked at his watch for the thousandth time, as he passed Jimmy the clothing and pointed him to the bathroom.

  "One hour and forty minutes," Jimmy said his voice sounding hollow and scared.

  Dalton nodded gravely. The sun was rising. It was one hour and forty minutes until twenty-four hours had passed from the time Mrs. Jackson said Nicole and Christina had left for Reno. Every inch of the highway between Reno and Hawthorne had been searched. No one had seen either woman since they left the Reno art gallery before noon. Technically, it hadn't been twenty-four hours, yet. There was a six-hour gap when their whereabouts were known, but Dalton wasn't going to split hairs with law enforcement. Especially, when it worked in their favor.

  His grandparents were on their way home. They were already on a plane, but it would be late afternoon before they could arrive.

  The only good news was the arrest of Barbara Ruiz. Nicole and Christina's faces were on every television screen in every bar across the West. Barbara's picture was also splashed everywhere as a person of interest in the case. Someone who saw her on the news reported Barbara's whereabouts. She had taken up residence in a run-down motel in a seedy section of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Metro Police had arrested her before midnight. Sheriff Shifflett told Dalton she would be transported to the Mineral County jail system within the week. Barbara would probably be denied bail. She had existing felony warrants out on her, and was considered a flight risk.

  Where he would have welcomed the news the previous day, now, Dalton could care less. Nicole and Christina were missing, and the police could not tie Barbara to their disappearance. It left a haunting wide-open question. Where were the two missing women?

  * * *

  Nicole and Christina sat in a room paneled in corrugated steel. They had tried using their weapons to pry open a section of the wall where they found a loose piece, but neither of them had the strength to more than dent the metal. They tried shoving the desk under the window, but neither of them could reach the window even after attempting to climb up each other's body.

  They didn't have much of a weapon arsenal. They had found the piece of iron pipe and the large bolt cutter, along with a small screwdriver and an aerosol can of black spray paint. With nothing better to do, they formulated a plan of sorts.

  "What if they leave us locked in here?" Christina asked after they exhausted all possibilities of breaking out. She broke into tears. "Those men will rape us and we'll die of dehydration or hunger. I'm so sorry. We wouldn't be in this mess if I didn't suggest taking the shortcut."

  "Are you responsible for global warming, too?" Nicole asked, rolling her eyes.

  "What?"

  "No one is at fault for our being in here, except those goons outside. I do not plan on dying! I am marrying Dalton Calloway. He may be a hardheaded, ornery man, but he is my man. We are going to raise our son together. I'm getting pregnant, again, maybe several more times. You have two boys. What's it like to raise multiple children?"

  Christina smiled through her tears, "Loud, busy, and wonderful." She placed a hand on her abdomen. "I'm looking forward to a new baby."

  "So am I," Nicole answered before whispering, "Do you hear something?"

  "Someone's coming," Christina whispered.

  "We have to do what we planned," Nicole said, getting to her feet and sucking in her breath from the pain.

  "What if it doesn't work?'

  "At least, we tried!"

  Nicole hurried over and lay down on the floor, facing away from the door. Christina stood to the side of the wall where she would be hidden when the door opened. They heard a rattling noise as the bolt released and the door swung open. Christina moved quickly behind it.

  "What the…" the man stepped into the room. He had the revolver in his hand and he looked around hastily trying to spot the second woman. He bent over Nicole and she blasted him in the face with the spray paint.

  "Ahhh," he screamed as he was blinded. He raised the gun in his hand as Christina swung the lead pipe and hit him across the back of the head.

  Dead weight dropped onto Nicole and she struggled to get out from under the large man.

  "Oh God! Oh God!" Nicole moaned as she was sucking in her breath and trying to get to her feet. The pain in her arm and shoulder was excruciating. It was all she could do to not pass out.

  Christina picked up the revolver from the floor and tugged at her friend on her good side. "Come on, we have to get out of here!"

  Both women stood blinking in the doorway looking out over the long building. All they could see was the semi-truck and what seemed to be hundreds of large shipping boxes.

  "Get in the truck!" Nicole ordered. "Maybe it has a two-way radio."

  They climbed into the truck cab. There was a radio, but when they turned it on, it was dead.

  "Maybe we have to start the engine," Nicole said.

  "Switch places with me," Christina exclaimed. "The keys are in the ignition."

  "Can you… duck!" Nicole whispered urgently. The large bay door opened and a man came in and walked toward the office.

  "Switch places," Christina repeated. She flipped a few switches, turned the ignition, and the engine roared.

  The man began to run toward the truck, but Christina seemed to know what she was doing, rapidly shifting gears. The man jumped on the passenger-side running board and pounded on the window.

  "Shoot at him," Christina screamed.

  Nicole pointed the gun at the man on the other side of the window. He was close enough for her to see the terror in his eyes and he jumped a fraction of a second before she pulled the trigger. More men streamed into the bunker trying to stop the semi as Christina drove it out the bay door.

  "Shoot!" Christina screamed.

  Nicole fired out through the shattered side window. She could see the rustlers running for cover as the truck cleared the bay door. With a determined look, Christina sideswiped a pick-up truck and literally ran over a line of parked ATVs.

  Nicole pulled the trigger of the gun repeatedly, eight or nine times until the weapon discharged nothing except empty clicks. Her ears were ringing and she couldn't hear what Christi
na was yelling. She looked out her side window to see one man still running to catch up with them, but the truck was gaining speed. They left everything behind in a cloud of dust including a total of six large domed bunkers.

  Suddenly there was a loud BOOM, and then another boom as a ball of fire exploded into the air. The noise was so loud it left their ears ringing, but Christina kept driving. Another explosion rent the air as a mushroom cloud of black smoke and fire rose several hundred feet into the sky. The women could feel the blast of searing heat behind them even though they were already a good distance away.

  Nicole and Christina looked at each other their faces blanched with fear and shaking in their boots. They both grinned.

  * * *

  Dalton and Jimmy argued with Agent Marshall of the FBI. Nothing new had been reported. As far as they could tell, nothing was being done. The news people were still camped on his front lawn annoying anyone who came within walking distance.

  Sheriff Shifflett slammed into the house issuing orders to his men who gathered their equipment and headed for the door.

  "What's going on?" Dalton demanded.

  "There's been an explosion out at the depot, on the north side."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "I don't have any details," the sheriff said. "I got the call from the fire department. According to them, eyewitnesses saw fire shoot four, maybe five hundred, feet in the air and they felt the ground shake. More than likely, one of those bunkers exploded, again. I'm sorry, Dalton, but I have to get out there. You still have the FBI and state police here doing whatever they can."

  Dalton watched helplessly as the sheriff's personnel left. Soon after, the state police followed them with the news crews hot on their heels as they sniffed out the latest story. He was left alongside Jimmy wondering if anyone was looking for Nicole and Christina. He felt powerless, but the FBI had told them to stick close to the house in case a call came in from the abductors.

  * * *

  Christina gripped the wheel of the semi-truck and kept driving. There were more explosions behind them, as they kept looking in their side mirrors in case someone was following. When they reached the highway entrance, Christina took the turn so fast she almost lost control over the truck as the empty trailer swayed close to the edge of the shoulder. She straightened out and floored the accelerator. Soon, a stream of oncoming traffic of emergency vehicles converged on them. Fire trucks, ambulances, rescue squad trucks, and a slew of police cars all whizzed by them at high speeds sirens blaring.