Chapter 4

The next two weeks passed quickly. My mother’s health took a down turn, and, though she didn’t say it, she was concerned about missing our wedding. So, Hollis and I decided to marry the following Saturday. In the meantime, I’d taken time to obtain the new magneto and install it on the One-Fifty. We’d checked a level patch of ground for a runway, and I took the plane into the air for the first time in two months.

I flew into Miles City, refueled the plane, and parked it in Hollis’s hangar. When I told Rollie about my radio issues, he insisted that he would fix the problem at no charge, even saying that he had a tagged radio in storage he’d trade for my old one. I accepted his help as graciously as I could.

That was on Monday, and by Thursday evening, the wedding preparations were in full swing. Hollis’s true social and business status became apparent as the guests began to arrive. The Miles City Airport ramp was full of business aircraft, both turboprops and small jets; our parking lot at the ranch was full, as were our resort rooms. Every hotel room for miles was taken, and we even had four helicopters parked in the yard.

I had been carted off to Denver on Tuesday to have my dress made and fitted, where I was also pampered, cut, washed, dried and otherwise manipulated into the best bride my country girl self could be. Through it all, I was in a fog of anxiety and anticipation. Hollis kept in touch, assuring me that everything would be just fine. I arrived back home with my wedding dress, and a woman from the dress shop whose sole duty was to help me get dressed, and then care for it after the wedding.

The wedding was set for Saturday morning, with lunch to follow. Hollis had hired people to handle the wedding, and they grilled me for all the details I wanted. Mother pitched in when she was asked, but her declining health prevented her from participating as much as she might have wanted. Honestly, all of the detail was overwhelming in that a lot of it was just not that important to me. As long as it looked nice, I didn’t care how the tables were decorated, or what color the flowers were. So, I escaped by taking Pennyworth out for long rides.

I was pleasantly tired when I walked into the house and turned down the hallway toward my room. My mother’s room was two doors down from mine, separated by a guest bathroom. I was about to open my door when I heard Hollis’s voice from my mother’s room. A sense of mischief took me, and I crept down the hallway to see what they were talking about. I really didn’t want to pry, but I was curious. As I approached, I could hear them more clearly.

“ ... need to marry her to get her father’s farm and the money. Her uncle is coordinating everything, with my associate’s help,” Hollis was saying.

What? I crept closer.

“Thank you for helping us with that,” my mother replied. “Two million is a lot of money.”

“Once we’re married, everything will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and I backed away from the doorway. I ducked into my room, and took deep breaths to regain control of myself. Tears ran down my cheeks like lava down a mountain, and I clenched my teeth in anguish. Hollis had given me a luggage set for our honeymoon, so I picked up the suitcase and dropped it on the bed.

A few minutes later, I’d packed my belongings, and I peeked out the door. There was no one there, so I took my bag and stepped outside. When I opened the door and stepped outside, I spotted one of Hollis’s pilots checking their leased helicopter. I’d chatted with the man earlier in the day, and I pasted a smile on my face and walked up to him. “Hello,” I called out. “I need to make a quick trip to Miles City. One of the other guests had to leave, and they forgot their bag. Can you give me a ride?”

“Sure,” the pilot replied. We climbed into the helicopter, and, thirty minutes later, we touched down at the airport.

“I’ll catch another ride back to the ranch,” I told the pilot. He nodded, and I climbed down to the ground. My plane had been moved to a smaller hangar, and I towed my bag across the ramp as the chopper lifted off and turned away. There was still an hour of daylight left, so I had time to fly off before dark.

I had no idea where I would go, but anything was better than staying here. Somehow, I’d have to get back home to deal with my uncle, since I had no idea that there was anything left for me. I had some money, now, at least until Hollis canceled my bank account. I shoved the hangar doors open, and, opening the door, settled my bag into the compartment behind the Cessna’s front seats.

I ducked under the strut, and nearly ran into a large man. He was dressed in jeans and a work shirt, and there were two more men with him. None of them looked friendly.

“Hello, Melody,” the closest of them said. “Your uncle misses you, and he asked us to bring you back home.”

I tried to run past them, but they grabbed me roughly as I darted past. “Ow! Let go!” I shouted.

“Get her packaged before we get spotted,” one of them said. They surrounded me, and soon had me handcuffed and gagged with something that tasted like old rubber. Someone put a cloth bag over my head, and strong hands yanked at me as I stumbled along. I heard a car door open, and they guided me into a seat. One of the men scrubbed at my breasts as he fastened my seat belt.

“It’s too bad your uncle said we had to leave you alone,” he said with a laugh. “You’re sure a sweet little piece of ass.”

“He said we wouldn’t get paid, so lay off,” the first man said. “Let’s get out of here, and call for the jet. We’ll take her out late tonight.”

We drove for a few minutes, and then I was taken out of the vehicle, a SUV, I think, and led into what smelled like a cheap hotel room. They shoved me down on the bed, and one of them slapped me hard on my right butt cheek. “You behave yourself, girl. Fuck with us, and we will turn you into a party favor, money or no money. We will rent your ass out to make it back, you understand?”

I nodded spastically, and tried to pull in air around my gag. I was too terrified to move, much less attempt to speak. I curled up into a defensive ball, and waited for something else to happen. The cuffs cut cruelly into my wrists, the thing in my mouth mashed my lips against my teeth, and the cloth hood made it hard to catch my breath. I could still hear, though.

“What do you mean the plane is broke down?” The apparent leader sighed. “Fine, eight tomorrow morning. We can get her aboard without anyone seeing her.”

The following hours were the longest of my life. The men let me up once to use the bathroom, but they only removed the cuffs while I went, and then they put them back on. I was crowded into the bed between two of them, and they grabbed me everywhere through my clothes before they tired of the game and went to sleep. Their bodies stunk of cigarette smoke and stale sweat and it was all I could do to not vomit.

I lay there, trying not to cry, as the conversation I’d overheard played through my mind. Hollis somehow knew my uncle, and they had some kind of deal going between them and my mother. Everything he’d told me had been a lie, and I cursed my own stupidity for trusting some man I didn’t know. It was all a twisted mess, and I was too rattled to figure it all out. I settled down as best I could, and, finally, I fell into an exhausted slumber.

Another slap on the ass woke me, and the men announced that it was morning. They let me go to the bathroom again, and one of them gave me a bottle of room-temperature water. I drank all of it in one long pull, and then they put the gag and cuffs on me again. I was herded back into the vehicle, and we set off again.

The faint smell of jet exhaust came to me, and suddenly they yanked off my hood. We were approaching the Miles City Airport, I saw as I blinked in the sunlight. It was sometime in the morning, and the man seated to my left leaned menacingly toward me. “Now, we’re going to get out, and get on the plane. If you try to run, I will personally blow your brains out all over the ground. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said in a hoarse whisper. I swallowed. “I won’t run.”

“That’s a good bitch,” he grinned evilly. “Too bad we can’t play with you. Now,” he handed me a brush of uncertain vintage. “Straighten your ass up, so you look halfway decent.”

I did what I could with the brush using my reflection in the window, while the SUV drove through the gate and around a hangar, away from the FBO. The jet, a Citation, was parked next to the hangar, with another SUV beside it. We drove around the left wing from behind, and I could hear that at least one engine was already running.

The SUV stopped, the front passenger stepped out and opened my door, while the man to my left pushed me out and followed me. “Move, bitch!” I moved, and we walked quickly to the door. I stumbled up the steps, where a large, vaguely Asian woman waited.

She had tattoos all over her arms, and she looked at me like a hawk sizing up a mouse. “Sit down, buckle in, and shut up,” she ordered.

I didn’t argue; I dropped into the indicated seat and fumbled with the seat belt. Two of my original captors also boarded, and then the driver closed and latched the door. Then, he trotted back to the SUV, and moved it further away from the plane’s left wingtip. The engine throttled up, and we started moving. The runway was less than a hundred yards away, and we would soon be airborne.

We turned onto the taxiway, and I looked out my window at the dry and rocky landscape. I had never felt so utterly helpless and hopeless in my life. I’d gone from being a high school kid, to a kidnapped heiress, and it was terrifying. If my uncle was willing to have me kidnapped in broad daylight, then what else was waiting for me back in Missouri?

The plane slowed as it entered the runway threshold, and then the power came up again as we lined up for takeoff. We started to roll more rapidly – and then I grunted as the plane braked heavily and swerved to the left, throwing me forward as the left main wheel left the pavement. The people in the plane shouted at the pilots, and they shouted back something about cars and cops.

The jet shuddered to a stop, and the engines whined for a minute, and then the flight crew shut them down. I saw a uniformed deputy step up to the door and pound on it as he shouted for the crew to open it. He held his slung rifle’s grip with one hand, and he shouted at the pilot, and brought up the rifle.

The woman opened the door, and stepped out at gunpoint. Two more deputies appeared, and they called out for all of us to exit, one at a time. I went last, staggering with exhaustion. I made it down the steps with a female deputy’s help. “You’re okay now, Mizz Freeman.”

She led me away from the plane and up onto the runway. I heard someone call my name, and I looked up to see Hollis running toward me. I turned to the deputy, and pointed at him. “Arrest that bastard; he’s involved in all of this!”

Hollis skidded to a stop and gaped at me. “I’ve been looking for you since last night? What are you talking about?!”

The deputy looked back and forth between us. “Are you sure, Ma’am? I’ve known him for years, and...”

I cut her off. “I heard the sonofabitch talking with my mother about marrying me for my money. My uncle stole my father’s property, and he said I had a trust worth two million dollars!” I whirled on him. “You knew all about my mother, didn’t you? That’s why you were so damned eager to go see her! Well, you know what? Fuck you both! You can both rot in jail for kidnapping!”

Hollis went still as the deputy stepped up to him. “You’re under arrest, Hollis, for kidnapping, conspiracy, and whatever else we find.” She recited his Miranda rights while she cuffed him, and asked if he understood.

He nodded. “I understand. Melody, you are dead wrong about your mother, and about me.”

I bared my teeth at him as my temper flared in the way that even gave my father pause. “I hope you enjoy prison,” I said with icy calm. “Haul his creepy ass out of my sight.”

Lunchtime found me still at the sheriff’s office. Since I was the victim and the star witness, I couldn’t go anywhere until charges were filed. Two detectives sat down with me, and we went over my story from the time I was born until when, where, and what I ate for breakfast that day. They let me go long enough to eat, and the deputy who’d arrested Hollis took me out to a local eatery.

“I just can’t believe Hollis would do something like that,” she said. We’d picked an isolated table where we could talk, and she could see the door. “I’ve known him since we were young, and,” she sighed.

“I heard him talking,” I said morosely. “I was about to marry him. What I can’t figure out is how the hell he and my asshole half-uncle even know each other.” I took a bite of my hamburger. “And, why the hell kidnap me? We’re, well, were, getting married tomorrow. What was the point?”

The deputy nibbled on a fry as she thought for a moment, and then she leaned forward. “Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think I have to. During the ride to jail, Hollis kept telling me that he’d heard about your uncle from one of his pilots, who’d heard it from a pilot that worked for a man Hollis and your uncle both know. He said the man’s son was going to marry you so he could get control of a trust your father left that’s worth a lot of money. Hollis didn’t say how much, only that it was a lot. He was telling your mom about it when you left. He said he called the sheriff, and I know for sure that we’ve been out all night looking for you.”

My head spun, and I looked at her. “Why the hell didn’t the detectives tell me this?”

She shook her head. “It’s their job to find the truth first.”

I grasped the table with both hands to keep from falling over. “Oh, my God, I’ve put Hollis in jail for kidnapping and God knows what else!” I stared at her. “What do I do?”

“Nothing. “ She held up a hand to forestall my incredulous response. “I told the detectives what Hollis said, and the whole conversation is on my car’s camera. The sheriff is talking to your mother and everyone else that’s been anywhere near Hollis’s ranch in the last week. I promise you, the truth will come out before supper.”