Snatched

by Michael Arches

  Instead of chilling out, he pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. “I know all my neighbors. If you’re trying to serve more law papers, I’m warning you, they’ll never find your body.”

  Her headache intensified, and she waved both hands out the window, palms forward. “No, n-not me. J-just looking for Francis. Sorry to b-bother y-you. I’ll get going. So s-sorry.”

  He motioned with the shotgun for her to take off.

  Athena didn’t have to be offered a chance to escape twice. She backed up and waved goodbye.

  But the son of a bitch said something to his mutt. It hurled itself off the porch and dashed after her.

  She tried to drive straight, but her whole body was shaking so badly, it was hard to steer on the winding double-track.

  The dog ran up alongside her door and leaped upward. Before she realized what it had in mind, it poked its head into her open window, snarled, and snapped. The damned mutt barely missed as it tried to rip off the left side of her face.

  “S-SHIT!” she screamed at nobody in particular. A blast of adrenaline numbed her whole body. The truck hurtled directly for a giant ponderosa. Her arms wouldn’t obey her thoughts.

  But, at the last instant, she gathered her wits and turned the steering wheel enough to barely miss the tree.

  The crazed attack dog launched itself at her again, but this time, she moved quickly enough to roll up the window. The shepherd’s teeth clattered against the window, leaving a trail of drool on the glass.

  That was the mutt’s last jump, but it chased her all the way back to the county road, growling and barking the whole time.

  Without bothering to stop at the road, she turned right and headed back to the highway. Thank God, the dog stayed behind.

  Athena’s entire body continued to shake. She couldn’t drive for far like that, so she pulled over a few hundred yards away from the dog and leaned her head against the steering wheel.

  Finally safe, she drew in great gobs of air to catch her breath. I’m not cut out for this kind of bullshit. What a nightmare.

  When the pounding in her head eased and she could breathe again, she made a note of exactly where Shotgun Guy lived. She’d need to be able to find his property on a map, assuming she made it back to her apartment in one piece. And she was going to have plenty to say to Special Agent Frank Costello about her close call.

  -o-o-o-

  Misha Chekhov’s Compound, Northeastern La Plata County, Colorado

  As soon as one of the preggers, Jackie Humphrey, left Misha’s office, he leaned back in his massive leather executive chair. Her fury had thrilled him. For the first time, the bitch had told him exactly what she thought of him and his project. Obviously she didn’t care anymore whether she lived or died. That made her dangerous.

  If she hadn’t been so very pregnant, he would’ve stabbed her through her heart with a fencing foil. He owned a half-dozen, each had been shortened to about two feet long, and the point was needle-sharp. That made them a versatile tool for both smacking women to keep them in line and occasionally killing one without making too much noise.

  Jackie had survived this time, but she’d drop her load in a week or two. Then, he could get rid of her.

  In the meantime, he had plenty of time to come up with a particularly nasty end to her pathetic life. That realization gave him a warm glow. The thrill of the kill was better than cocaine. And he wouldn’t forget her spitfire eyes for a while.

  Luckily, he managed to keep control of his temper. Her baby would be worth a cool quarter-mil when it was born. And he’d already mentally added that money to his Cayman Islands account. Only a fool would give up that much money for the temporary pleasure of punishing the wicked.

  As he leaned back at his desk, he imagined flailing the skin off of Jackie with a bullwhip. That excited him. He needed his newest toy, Cici, who was down the hall in the game room. Misha yelled at a guy passing his office in the hallway, “Pete, tell Cici to come here and bring a bottle of Stoli.”

  The blonde bombshell had cost him twenty-nine grand but was worth every penny. And if he didn’t beat her up, she’d sell for just as much when he got tired of her.

  But that wouldn’t be anytime soon. She was a goddess with huge, natural tits, a tiny waist, and a curvy ass. Hard to believe she was only sixteen, but the Kentucky birth certificate that came with her looked legit.

  Best of all, Cici had a great attitude. She was his first slave who pretended she wanted him to hammer her night and day. What a package.

  But he wasn’t completely fooled. She probably wanted coke and booze more than him, but pretending to be crazy about him had earned her plenty of nice presents. Maybe she was training him to be generous. If he didn’t reward her, she might stop thinking up amazing ways to make his life better. He wasn’t going to take that chance.

  Cici’s long, lean figure soon stretched out across the opening to his office. She wore a lacy red teddy stretched to the breaking point. Gave him a sultry smile. Her long blonde locks flowed in waves down her front.

  He shivered when he heard her strong hillbilly accent. “I’s beginning to think ya didn’t like me no more. Ain’t putting up with any of that bullshit.”

  The hunger came over him again, stronger than ever. With both hands, he motioned her forward. “Lock the door.”

  The steamy bitch was a gift from God. She made this hellhole out in the middle of nowhere livable.

  Chapter 4

  After leaving Misha’s office, Jackie made herself a promise. Once she gave birth, she’d take advantage of any halfway decent chance to kill him—even at the cost of her own life. She was likely doomed anyway, so she might as well try to save the others first.

  She headed toward the dormitory. From the outside, it looked like a large metal garage. Inside, most of the ground floor was filled with four rows of small beds and four long cafeteria-style tables with benches.

  That was where the women and girls sat as Jackie filled them in about how Mia had been shot in cold blood. Thirty-one other preggers surrounded her, all with different-sized bellies. And their three surviving nurses also listened in.

  As usual, seven sex slaves were in the house with the men. Their loyalty was questionable because the guards often bribed them with fancy food, booze, and drugs into becoming informants. The sex slaves were all underaged girls and all gorgeous. Most had been bought and sold before, living in a secret world most Americans didn’t know about.

  The preggers and nurses didn’t have it as bad. The guards mostly left them alone. They took care of the dorm and each other.

  Jackie couldn’t understand why this prison was necessary. Lots of women were legal surrogates and were paid well for going through pregnancy for someone else. None of the women understood.

  Jackie didn’t talk to the larger group about the card she’d given away at the gas station in Durango. Their escape plan had to stay super-secret, or Misha and the other guards would go nuts. Only a few women were on the rescue committee and knew about the cards.

  When Jackie finished her terrible story, everyone walked outside, stood in a circle, and held a funeral service for Mia. Tears flowed in rivulets as they prayed for their lost friend. She’d given her life to save everyone else. A true saint.

  -o-o-o-

  After the ceremony, Jackie huddled with Maggie, another surrogate, and all three surviving nurses. They sat at a picnic table under an open-sided wooden gazebo.

  It was midafternoon, the warmest time of the day, but the breeze was still nippy. Jackie wasn’t looking forward to another Colorado winter. She used to live in St. Louis until she applied for a housecleaning job and was kidnapped.

  Tall and stout Maggie was their duly elected queen. She’d signed up for two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan working as a general’s admin. Maggie was used to telling battle-hardened colonels and other whiners to go fuck themselves in the nicest possible way—a natural leader.

  Toge
ther, the committee had come up with the card scheme. The nurses were all part of it because one of them traveled with the surrogates on every trip to the doctor. So far, they’d handed out four cards.

  The women listened carefully as Jackie described the wacky lady she’d given the latest one to. Remembering those details depressed Jackie even more. Courageous Mia had probably died for nothing.

  To Jackie’s surprise, Maggie said, “Don’t be discouraged. Just because the lady you met was obviously disabled, that doesn’t mean she’s heartless. All she has to do is to call the FBI. How tough would that be?”

  Jackie tended to be optimistic, but not anymore. “We’ve gotten nothing from any of the cards we’ve handed out. Maybe several people called the FBI, but it doesn’t care.”

  Maggie shrugged. “We do what we can. If anybody’s got a better idea, I’m all ears. Otherwise, I say we keep on keepin’ on. All of us are destined for the pit eventually. He can’t let anybody go because they’ll head straight to the cops.”

  The pit was a mass grave the guards had dug. So far, there were at least four bodies in it.

  Maggie leaned over and gave Jackie a big hug. “You’re a fighter. You and Mia both. We keep at it. No choice.”

  Jackie’s feelings overwhelmed her again, she sobbed against the taller woman’s chest. Maggie was their Rock of Gibraltar.

  “You’re right,” Jackie said. “You’re always right. I shouldn’t bring everybody else down.”

  The women stood in a tight circle and hugged each other. They had to work together on a rescue, no matter how long it took.

  -o-o-o-

  US 160, Bayfield, Colorado

  As soon as Athena picked up a cell signal, she called Costello. He didn’t answer, so she left him a message.

  “Frank, you son of a bitch, because you and your agency care more for the dead than you do for the living, I almost got my face ripped off by an attack dog. I obviously can’t do your damned jobs, and I can’t seem to make you or the assholes you work with do your jobs either. But I can make sure the public knows you won’t help find the women and girls I’m trying so hard to save.”

  Her voice cracked, but she hurried in case the voice mailbox ran out of space. “You have until noon tomorrow to make this case a higher priority or find some Fed who will. Otherwise, I’m going to call a friend at the Denver Post and tell him about you and your fucking buddies. I’m serious.”

  -o-o-o-

  Athena continued to drive back to her apartment. Second thoughts filled her mind. She’d been taught to always act as the lady, and ladies didn’t swear at morons. The rest of her message was well deserved, but she tried not to curse out loud.

  As she drove home, she took a series of deep breaths to relax. She’d done her best for Jackie and the others, had even risked her life. Tomorrow, she’d get the press involved to pressure the FBI. The reporter she knew was more than happy to ask lots of very uncomfortable questions.

  That decided, Athena’s thoughts turned to next steps. Her computer at her apartment would help her search for the prisoners. Electronics were her strong suit.

  The one secret she hadn’t told anyone was that the head shot had done her one major amount of good. The bullet had caused so much damage that it’d forced her brain to reprogram itself. By some miracle, the chemical rewiring process had transformed the logical part of her mind into a supercomputer.

  Athena could scan pages of computer code, and colored flowcharts would form in her head. She could understand computer code intuitively, like the way some musicians could read musical notes on a sheet of paper and hear the song playing in their heads. Her mind would convert complex distributed threads of code and display visual results in her head.

  Using this new talent, she’d obtained a low-level job with one of Google’s many security contractors. The work was so simple she could practically do it in her sleep, and it more than paid her bills. At the same time, she had to be careful to avoid showing anyone the extent of her talent. Best of all, the job gave her access to internal Google analyses of the latest hacking techniques.

  She wasn’t clear on how yet, but she hoped that in some way, her electronic skills would help her or the cops find Jackie and the others.

  -o-o-o-

  Athena expected a nasty call from Costello at any moment, actually hoped for it because it would give her another chance to rip him to shreds. No such luck. Radio silence.

  Maybe she’d misdialed, but no, she’d heard his gravelly voice before the beep. Asshole probably didn’t have the balls to communicate directly with a hormone-addled, lunatic female.

  To keep her energy level high, she stopped at her favorite coffee shop and bought a chocolate-double espresso milkshake. Why should meth heads have all the fun?

  At her apartment, everything was dark and dreary. She opened the drapes and turned on most of the lights to try to cheer herself up.

  After turning on her computer, she opened Google Earth. Had no trouble finding the cabin where the shotgun-toting asshole and his maniac German shepherd lived.

  Next, she identified his property in the La Plata County Assessor’s records. That gave her the owner’s name, Harold Rucker. Then she cross-checked with the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles records, hacking her way in.

  Rucker’s face popped up on her screen. Definitely the same guy who’d sicced his dog on her. To thank him for his courtesy, she added two DUIs to his driving record and terminated his license.

  For better or worse, Google Earth’s aerial photo of his property confirmed what she’d seen on the ground. His buildings didn’t match the pattern shown on the map Jackie had given her. Also, the roofs were the wrong color.

  Undeterred, Athena checked all four properties near where Rico’s Suburban had vanished. None of the aerial views matched Jackie’s map, and none of the properties were owned by anyone named Rico.

  It occurred to her that one possible reason might be that Google’s photograph she saw was four years old. A lot could’ve changed over that much time. The bottom line was, modern surveillance techniques had their limits.

  Next came the tedious part. She had to review all the properties in the area from the air. Athena compared Jackie’s map to every property within ten miles of Rucker’s place.

  Unfortunately, hundreds of folks lived within her search zone. How did these folks survive? They couldn’t all be working remotely like she did.

  When Athena finished her research, she’d turned up thirty-seven potential secret prison sites. Not good news. No judge would issue a search warrant to enter any of those properties based on such general information. Someone would have to visit each property personally to narrow the list.

  That somebody wasn’t going to be her, not after her nasty encounter with Rucker. At least not her alone. The guns and badges people could take over that part of the case, but if they asked for her help, she might tag along.

  But what if the Feds refused to help? An idea popped into her head. Over the last few months, she’d been considering buying a drone. She’d seen people using them in the mountains. They took great photographs, but good drones were expensive.

  That’d held her back in the past, but no more. She needed to be able to look down in real-time from somewhere above the trees so she could check out the various properties on her list.

  Not knowing anything about drone technology, she spent hours researching online. Eventually, she settled on one costing five hundred bucks on Amazon. Unfortunately, the shortest delivery time offered was four days, even if she paid fifty bucks for expedited handling.

  So, after more searching for retail outlets, she found a Durango store that sold a slightly better model for eight hundred bucks, and she could get it immediately.

  Fifteen minutes later, she arrived at the store and confirmed they had the one she wanted in stock. According to the sales guy, a fully-charged battery pack would give about thirty minutes of flying time. It wasn�
��t nearly enough flying time, so she picked up five extra packs. Three hours per day of flying time would have to do. Just to be sure, she picked up a charger that would plug into her pickup’s cigarette lighter.

  Athena didn’t get back to her apartment until after nine p.m. So far, nobody from the FBI had called. It was looking more and more likely that she’d have to search by herself for Jackie and the others. So be it.

  To process her anger, she wrote an email to the Denver Post reporter she knew from the good old days. The email explained Jackie’s problem and the FBI’s refusal to help. The temptation to send the message immediately was almost overwhelming, but she was a woman of her word. So, she saved it on her hard drive and went to sleep wondering what would happen tomorrow.

  -o-o-o-

  For the first time in months, Athena slept through the night. That told her she’d made the right choice in confronting Costello. He was no doubt outraged, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d tried to be nice about it at first. Now, if she didn’t do all in her power, the female prisoners would face the deadly monsters like Rico alone.

  In the morning, after getting cleaned up, Athena turned on her phone. Costello had left a voicemail.

  I know you’re looking forward to taking cheap shots at the Bureau, Ms. Nielsen, but the agency, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to send someone to help find the people you’re looking for. Special Agent Beauregard Boudreau is supposed to have experience with sex crimes and crimes against minors. His picture is attached. He’s scheduled to arrive at 9:43 a.m. at the Durango airport. Please meet him there. And Ms. Nielsen, don’t ever contact me again, no matter how much trouble you get yourself into. Regards.

  Athena tried to gauge how she felt about the news. First, relieved. It sounded like the FBI had recognized its screwup and wanted to make amends. All good. She was a big believer in forgiveness.

  Second, she was curious about this Boudreau character. Checked his photo—a tan-skinned man with a pleasant, round face and a pug nose. She guessed his age at about thirty-five, so close to hers. His hair was short and black, and laugh lines surrounded his mouth even though he wasn’t smiling. In other words, nothing remarkable. If she happened to see him on the street, she’d pass him without noticing.