Montana Unbranded

by Nadia Nichols

  Caleb approached the vehicle and Joe spoke to both of them. “That was Marconi,” he said. “He said if we brought the cops in, he’d kill Molly. He wants to trade my sister for me, which is what I expected.”

  “He’ll kill you,” Dani said.

  “He’ll kill Molly if I don’t do exactly what he says,” Joe said. “Make no mistake, Marconi’s in complete control here. He’s calling the shots.” He thought for a moment. “He knew we were at the car. Wherever he is, he’s watching us.” Joe lifted his eyes to the wall of mountains that cradled the darkness. “Somehow he got Molly to pull over and get out of her car. He took her without a chase, without a struggle. How? And how did he get up into those mountains high enough to be watching us right now when there are no drivable roads at that elevation?”

  “My guess is, he has a chopper,” Caleb said.

  “Right,” Joe said slowly. “He knows Molly will eventually lead him to me, so he stakes out the house. When she takes off down the long road this morning to bring Luther Makes Elk that blanket, he hijacks a pilot to fly him out here and nab her. We might want to find out if that pilot who flew us yesterday from Yellowstone Helotours has turned up missing.”

  “I’ll make a call,” Caleb said.

  “So let’s suppose Marconi hijacks this chopper and forces the pilot to land smack-dab in the middle of the road. Molly stops and gets out of her car because the chopper’s blocking the road. Maybe she thinks we’re in it, Dani and I, because we were up in a chopper yesterday. She knows that we knew she was coming out to the Bow and Arrow for a visit, and we spot her car and land in the road to intercept her. She stops, thinking it’s us, and that’s it—Marconi has her. He leaves her cell phone in the car and now has a way to communicate with us. He’s holding her up in the mountains, someplace where you can land a chopper, get cell phone reception and see us all standing around her car.”

  Joe was speaking his thoughts out loud, slowly piecing the puzzle together.

  “What else did he say?” Caleb said.

  “He told me to take Molly’s car, head due south on the dirt road outside Katy Junction and keep driving until he calls me again with further instructions. And he said to make sure I’m not followed and no cops are brought in or it’s game over for Molly.”

  “If you do what he’s asking,” Dani said. “you won’t get out of this alive. We have to call the police.”

  “That’s the last thing we should do. This is my fight, Dani. I put you all in great danger by coming here.”

  “None of this is your fault, Joe. Let the FBI handle it!”

  “She’s right,” Caleb said. “You can’t give yourself up to that monster.”

  Joe stripped the gloves off his hands. “I don’t know how else to get Molly back except to do exactly what he says. Marconi wants me. Period.”

  “Molly wouldn’t want you to risk your life,” Dani said. “And what about your son? He lost his mother today. He can’t lose you, too.”

  “Don’t sell me short,” Joe said. “It’s not over till it’s over. The feds can put together quite the posse, but don’t call them in until Molly’s safe. Marconi plays hardball, and he plays for keeps.”

  “Joe, please don’t go. Don’t do this,” Dani pleaded.

  Joe shook Caleb’s hand. “I’m sorry I brought this trouble on you.” Then he turned to Dani. “Today should’ve ended differently for us, and I’m sorry it didn’t,” he said. “You’re one helluva woman, Counselor, and you’re going to make one helluva rancher.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he stopped, broke his gaze and turned toward Molly’s car, keys in hand.

  “Wait!” Dani returned to the Subaru, gathered up the red-and-black-striped wool blanket that Luther had given them and handed it to Joe. “Luther said it would be cold in the high places tonight.” Then she pulled his head down and kissed him, hard. Tears stung her eyes and her throat closed up, making it hard to speak. “You come back to me, Joe Ferguson. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

  * * *

  AS JOE DROVE Molly’s car away from Dani and Caleb, he headed into the darkness, and the darkness became so thick he could find no way out of it. It filled him with despair. He kept Molly’s cell on the console, and dialed Rico on his own phone. Rico answered on the third ring, his voice terse.

  “We think we’ve found your son,” Rico said.

  “What do you mean, you think?” Joe snapped. “He’s either at the school or he isn’t.”

  “Not that simple. It’s school break and the kids are all over the place—some stayed at the academy, others are with their parents. According to school officials, Ferg’s with your parents and they went to the cape on vacation. They picked him up yesterday. We have a trace on their credit card and agents are going to the hotel as we speak. Hang on a second, there’s another call coming in.”

  The headlights illuminated the dirt road he was supposed to turn down, and he swung Molly’s car to the left just as Rico came back on the line. “Ferg’s okay, we’ve got him,” he said. “They’re all okay, a little startled at being woken up at one a.m. We’re going to assign two agents to them until this situation is resolved. Now fill me in. What’s happening with Molly? Did you find her?” Rico listened while Joe spoke, then said, “Don’t hand yourself over to Marconi. We’ll get the feds out there to negotiate for Molly’s release. We can stall for time, offer him a reduced sentence, amnesty if he gives us the whole cartel...”

  “No,” Joe said. “He said he’d kill her if the cops showed up. And you know he will, Rico. Give me time to get her out of there.”

  “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “Promise me, Rico.”

  “Listen to me, you lamebrain idiot. As long as he’s using Molly for bait to lure you in, she’s safe. You give yourself up to Marconi and he’ll kill her first, nice and slow, so you can watch, then he’ll kill you, then he’ll hide himself in Mexico for a while and have a good laugh at what a dumb cop you were. Don’t play by his rules. We’ll get a SWAT team and some snipers, a negotiator...”

  “I don’t even know where the hell Molly is. They took her out of here by chopper. Give me until noon tomorrow, Rico. Another twelve hours.” The call was breaking up as he moved out of cell phone reception. “Then you can bring in the cavalry.”

  Rico said something but Joe couldn’t make it out, and the call was lost. He drove another mile and then stopped where the dirt road pinched off into a brush-choked cattle trail. The headlights illuminated a jackrabbit on the side of the road, sitting up and staring into the headlights with a startled expression. Joe turned the car around, drove two miles back the way he’d come and then stopped again. Retrieving Molly’s cell from the center console he redialed the last caller on her phone, Marconi. The phone rang and rang. Joe became aware of another sound and rolled down his window. He heard the deep whop-whop-whop of night air being beaten into submission by an approaching chopper, and a few moments later he saw the landing lights switch on, illuminating the rutted dirt road.

  Joe ended the call and thought furiously about what Rico had said, that there would be no dramatic rescue of Molly unless he played by his own rules and got the hell out of here. He laid the phone down. Molly’s car was a Mercedes sports coupe, small but built like a tank, and it had a powerful motor. He might be able to outrun the chopper, even over this rough road. He gripped the wheel and floored the accelerator just as Molly’s phone rang. He slowed enough to grab it without crashing and answered it.

  “Where’re you going, Joe?” Marconi asked. “I was just about to hand over your sister.”

  “I don’t even know if she’s still alive,” Joe said, not slowing down. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Oh, I’ll do better than let you talk to her, Special Agent Ferguson. If you’d slow down a little and let us get ahead of you, I’ll show her to you, and
if you don’t do exactly as I say, you can watch me throw her out of the chopper. What do you think—would she survive a drop of fifty feet or should we get a little higher?”

  Joe hit the brakes and the chopper overshot the car, turned and hovered in position a few moments before rotating sideways. The side door slid open. The Mercedes’s headlights dimly illuminated the redheaded woman struggling between two men. Joe’s heart constricted. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you say. Just land the chopper and let her go.”

  For a few moments there was no response from Marconi as Joe watched his sister being dragged to the very edge of the open doorway. Joe threw the phone aside, cut the ignition and got out of the car. He walked toward the chopper a few steps, holding his arms out in surrender.

  “Let her go, Marconi!” he raged, knowing they couldn’t hear him over the chopper. “It’s me you want!”

  The chopper descended slowly until it was on the ground. Molly was jerked back inside and Marconi jumped out first, followed by one of his men, both illuminated in the car’s headlights. With a pistol in his hand and a sneer on his face, Marconi’s man approached Joe cautiously and patted him down. Took his Glock and cell phone, found his knife and his GPS tracer, and pocketed all of it. Marconi stood to one side, watching with an impassive expression.

  “You’ve got me. Let Molly go,” Joe said over the chopper wash.

  “Now, why would I want to do that?” Marconi said. “Pilot told us a bad storm was coming and he can’t fly us out till it passes. Your sister can provide me with some juicy entertainment tonight while you watch, and I’ll kill you at dawn myself, execution-style, or maybe I’ll throw you out of the chopper. I haven’t decided.”

  “You son of a bitch. You told me you’d let her go.”

  “And you believed me. That’s how stupid you are. After what you did to me, I’m going to make you suffer, and nothing will hurt you worse than watching what I do to your sister.”

  “You lay one finger on her and you die,” Joe said. He was still looking at and talking to Marconi when he lunged at the man holding a gun on him. He moved so quickly the goon didn’t have time to react. In three blinding moves fueled by fury and adrenaline he knocked the gun hand up, stepped in and delivered a kick to the groin that doubled the gunman over. Then with both fists clenched, he landed a blow to the back of his neck that dropped him to the ground as if he’d been poleaxed. The pistol fell and Joe lunged for it, scooping it off the ground, raising the weapon, aiming and squeezing the trigger in one motion and with one singular thought.

  Marconi must die.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTED, Molly forgot all about her terror, the awful paralyzing fear that had gripped her. All she saw was Marconi pulling a gun on her brother. She heard shots over the swooshing of the chopper blades, saw multiple muzzle flashes in the dark and then she saw them fall, both of them.

  “Joseph!” she screamed, and the hand clamped painfully around her arm was nothing. She struggled furiously, wrenched free and jumped from the chopper, running toward her brother. “Joseph!”

  Joseph was struggling up on one knee, still holding the pistol. Marconi was lying flat on his back. He wasn’t moving but the big man on the ground was, and the one who’d had a hold of her in the chopper had jumped out and was in pursuit, while a third hovered in the open door, pistol drawn.

  “Get in the car!” Joseph shouted to her as she raced toward him. “Get out of here!”

  Molly bent when she reached him and tried to help him. “Get up, Joseph! Get up!” But he was too slow. She grabbed the pistol from Joseph’s hand for self-defense. The man on the ground was already on his feet and in her face, dazed but functioning. He slapped her hard and the pistol tumbled to the ground.

  “Get ’em in the chopper!” one of them barked, scooping the pistol up. They lifted Marconi and carried him to the chopper, while the third jumped out of the chopper and grabbed Joseph, jerking him to his feet.

  “No! Let him go!” Molly shrieked, attacking with her fists, but she was knocked down again. On her knees, she watched her brother being dragged away.

  “Joseph!” she screamed.

  “Molly, get out of here!” he repeated. “Get in the damned car and go!”

  Molly raced to the car’s open door and jumped behind the wheel, putting it into gear and driving toward the chopper. The two goons had stuffed Marconi into the helicopter and were now hauling her brother inside. “Joseph, get in the car!” She braked beside the chopper, got out, ran around, grabbed on to him. Grabbed his jacket. A blow to the head pushed her backward and she staggered against the car, the breath knocked out of her. The chopper’s side door slid shut and almost immediately it lifted into the air. Molly crumpled to the ground, sobbing.

  The chopper rotated as it rose into the dark, and just as it began to fly away, the storm cut loose. First came a powerful gust of wind that tipped the chopper up on one side, then came the torrential downpour, the thunder and lightning. For a few moments she could still see the chopper, the dark bulk of it, the light blinking on the tail, the beam of light streaming from its nose, and then the sight and sound of it were swallowed by the fury of the mountain storm.

  She sat sobbing until she had the strength to pull herself to her feet again, then she got inside the car. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. Water dripped from her hair and clothing. She tasted blood on her lower lip. “Oh, Joseph...” she wept. Minutes or hours later, while the storm still rocked her car, her phone rang, rousing her from her shock. She snatched it up. “Help us, help us, please help us! They have Joseph! He’s been shot and we need help!” she screamed into the cell, not knowing or caring who the caller was.

  “Molly!”

  “Steven! Where are you? Please help, please help. They’ve taken Joseph. They landed in the chopper and took him!”

  “Molly, where are you?”

  “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here! On a dirt road—I don’t know where. Please help, Steven, please help! They have Joseph!”

  * * *

  STEVEN WAS SITTING in his Wagoneer on the road to the Bow and Arrow, phone in his hand, surrounded by a darkness his headlights didn’t begin to penetrate. The rain was coming down in buckets, creating a deafening roar on the roof of the vehicle. The hand that held his phone was shaking. When Molly had answered his call instead of Joe, he’d almost driven right off the road into a ditch the shock had been so great. Molly! She had to be sitting in her car. The same car Joe had driven off in, following the kidnapper’s instructions. Joe had found her and rescued her and now she had her own phone back and was pleading for help to save her brother.

  They had Joseph, but she was safe! Molly was safe! She couldn’t tell him where she was, but he knew someone that could. He held the phone to his ear, struggling to connect with her. “Molly,” he said in a voice that broke, so great was his relief that she was alive. “Listen to me. Stay right there. I’m coming to get you. I’ll be there soon. Just stay inside your car and lock the doors. I’ll call you back in a couple minutes.”

  Then he made two calls, the first to Pony, the other to Sheriff Conroy.

  * * *

  MAPS WERE SPREAD over the kitchen table at the Bow and Arrow, and all the adults were bent over them, except for Ramalda, who was making another pot of coffee. Caleb, Pony, Dani, Badger, Charlie, Jessie and Guthrie. Roon and Jimmy were the only boys in the kitchen, and nobody was paying any attention to them. Jimmy was working on his goat cheese because it made him feel better to stay busy. He was upset that Molly was missing but determined to make a good batch of goat cheese for when she was found. Roon was standing on the edge of the ring of light around the table, silently listening to everything that was being said.

  “This is where we found her car,” Caleb said, pointing to a spot on
the map. “Not five miles from here, just before you reach the ranch road.”

  “That’s more’n five miles,” Badger said, bending closer and tracing the map with one gnarled finger.

  “Joe was told to take that dirt road just this side of Katy Junction,” Dani said. “I think we should go after him. Call the feds, the state police and the local sheriff, and go after him. We can’t wait until noon tomorrow. We need to do something right now, before he’s killed!”

  “The road you’re talking about is here,” Jessie said, tracing with her finger. “It gets rougher and climbs up into the foothills. Local ranchers used to use it to access the high pastures. I don’t think it’s drivable for very far, but if that’s where he went, that’s where Molly’s car will be. And I agree with Dani. We can’t wait and do nothing. We need to call in the cavalry.”

  “If they were traveling by chopper they could be anywhere in these mountains,” Caleb said. “We need to contact the authorities, you’re right about that. If there’s a chopper flying around out there, it had to have come from somewhere. I couldn’t get an answer from Yellowstone Helotours, just their answering machine.”

  Pony’s cell rang and she answered it, spoke briefly, listened for several long moments and said, “Steven, it’s the road this side of Katy Junction, the only one that leads up into the foothills. We’ll contact the authorities and head out there ourselves to meet you, too.” She ended the call. “Steven’s almost to Katy Junction. He just called Molly’s phone thinking he might get Joe, but Molly answered. She’s all right. She’s been released.” Before everyone could break into cheers, Pony quickly added, “She told him they had Joe, he’d been shot, they took him in a chopper and she couldn’t tell Steven where she was. He’s going to call Sheriff Conroy and tell him what’s happening, and then he’s going to drive down that dirt road, find Molly and bring her here.”