J.M.J.

Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing! It means a great deal to me. I especially love reading your guesses about what's happening/going to happen, so keep them coming! God bless!

Chapter 15

The plane had set down very briefly somewhere up in the mountains before it took off again, but without its passengers. Then Katie and Audrey were hustled into the backseat of a pickup truck. One of their kidnappers sat in the back with them. Fortunately, it was the one who spoke to them a little nicer. He had said his name was Rod. Katie didn't like him for helping to kidnap her and Audrey, but compared to the others, she almost liked him. The other two were named Lucas and Jordan. Neither of them said much to the girls, but whenever they did talk, they were always snapping at them and telling them to stop crying.

It had been so long since they had been kidnapped that Katie couldn't cry anymore, anyway. Audrey kept, every now and then, starting to sob again, but for the most part, they both just sat quietly, holding each other's hands and wondering what was going to happen. The pickup started down a dirt road, and nobody said anything.

"Are…are you going to call our mom and dad?" Katie asked eventually, her voice quivering a little.

"I want to talk to Mom," Audrey added, coming close to crying again.

"We'll call them, but we can't till we get to cell reception," Rod told them. "It'll take a few hours. Just be patient."

"I want to talk to Mom," Audrey repeated tearfully.

"Well, you can't, so just shut up," Jordan told her, looking back from the front seat.

Audrey started crying again, and Katie was glad that she was sitting between Rod and her sister. She didn't want any of these men anywhere near her.

Jordan groaned. "I have had about enough of these whiny kids. If it had been up to me, I would have forgotten this part of the plan."

"We couldn't do that," Lucas told him. "We need the insurance, so we'll just have to put up with them."

Katie glanced between the men in the front seat, and then she looked at Rod. She tried to whisper a question to him, but he didn't hear her, so she tapped on his elbow. That finally got his attention.

"Are you going to kill us?" she whispered, only slightly louder than she had the first time.

"Of course not," Rod told her quickly. "We aren't going to hurt you at all. At least, I'm not, and I'm going to make sure the others don't either."

"Is that true, or are you just saying it to keep us from being scared?" Katie countered.

"It's the truth. I promise that we won't hurt you."

"Even if we try to run away?"

Rod shifted uncomfortably. Obviously, he hadn't expected a response like that from a seven-year-old. "No," he said slowly. "No, we wouldn't hurt you even then. But please don't try to run away. It's hundreds of miles from anywhere that you could get help, and it's very dangerous out in the wilderness. You'd get lost, and about the best thing that could happen to you is that you'd eat something poisonous and die. I wouldn't want that to happen to you, especially since if you just do what you're told, we'll let you go home to your parents, safe and sound."

"But didn't you kidnap us so you could tell Mom that if she doesn't stop investigating, then you'll kill us?" Katie insisted. "What if she doesn't stop?"

"Your mom wouldn't do that."

"She won't let you get away."

"She would if it's the only way to get the two of you back safely."

Jordan snorted with laughter, and Rod shot him a glare. Before they could start arguing, Lucas interjected, "If there's one thing more annoying than listening to those kids bawling, it's listening to this conversation. Just drop it."

The other men did what he told them, and neither Katie nor Audrey dared to say a word.Be brave, be brave, be brave, Katie repeated in her head over and over. She didn't think she was brave at all. She was always afraid of getting hurt or of something happening to her parents or Audrey. But she could at least pretend to be brave. She didn't want these men to know how scared she was, and maybe it would help Audrey if she didn't think Katie was scared.

They kept on driving for hours. It was early morning by the time they stopped. Katie and Audrey looked around them. It didn't look like the sort of place that there was any use stopping. There were no buildings or anything; just a little pull-out with a moving van parked in it. Two men got out of the moving van and came toward the car. Lucas and Jordan also got out, and the four of them talked while Rod and the girls stayed in the car.

"What's going on?" Audrey asked. "What's that truck for?"

"We're going to ride in that for a while now," Rod told her. "But first we're going to call your mom and dad. There's good enough reception here. You can't tell anything except that you're okay and you're scared, though. Is that okay?"

The girls nodded slowly. If they could talk to their parents, then just about anything would be okay. At least, that was Audrey's line of thought. Katie was thinking something a little different. Rod had promised that he wouldn't let anyone hurt her. What if she said something more on the phone, something that could help her parents find them? Would Rod keep his promise then?

Katie thought hard about it, and the idea of taking such a risk almost made her feel sick. At the same time, she thought maybe she should take that risk, if it would at least help Audrey, and the strain of two such competing ideas finished making her feel sick. By the time one of the men came and shoved a phone in front of the girls, katie could barely say a word.

Audrey didn't have the same problem. "Mommy?" she said immediately. "Mommy, are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here," their mother's voice came over the phone, which was set to speaker. "Are you okay, Audrey? Is Katie there?"

"I'm okay, but please come and get us," Audrey said. "I don't like these guys."

"I'm here, too," Katie finally spoke up.

"Rod said we couldn't say anything except that we're okay and we're scared," Audrey added.

The man holding the phone said a bad word and snatched it away before Audrey could say anymore. "You'd better start minding your own business," he practically shouted into the phone before he ended the call. Then he turned to Audrey. "What's the big idea? You weren't supposed to say anything besides what we told you!"

"Hey!" Rod broke in. "It's okay. She's, like, five. And out of all the thousands of guys named Rod in the world, I doubt they can track me down from that."

"If this was some ordinary soccer mom, I'd agree with you," the other man said. "But this is Nancy Drew we're dealing with, and slip-ups like that could ruin everything."

"You don't honestly think that these girls aren't going to say anything once they're back home," Rod argued.

"It won't matter then," the other man said. "We'll be in the clear. Well, maybe you're right. This whole thing just has me jumpy. Let's just get these kids in the van and get moving."

He reached in as if he was going to grab Audrey and pull her out, but Audrey screamed and held even tighter to Katie's hands.

"We can walk," Katie said, a bit heatedly.

She and Audrey were allowed to walk the short distance to the van, and the back was opened. Katie stopped in surprise as she looked inside. Two men and a woman were sitting inside, their backs against the sides of the van. They looked like they were tied up, and when they saw the girls, all three of them started to protest.

"Shut up!" the man who seemed to be in charge shouted.

He and Rod lifted the girls into the back of the van, and then someone shut the gate, plunging the occupants into complete darkness.

NDNDNDNDND

"It was good to see you again, even under the circumstances," Iola said. She was standing in the parking lot of the hotel as Callie was getting ready to leave. Chet had carried the meager bit of luggage that Callie had with her for her, and Callie had just finished buckling Martin into his booster seat.

Callie smiled sadly as she turned to look at Iola. "Yes. Maybe we can see each other again soon."

"We'd better," Iola told her. "We've still got a lot of catching up to do."

"Yeah. Well, I'll call you one of these days. I promise." She reached out and hugged Iola. Then she looked at Chet. "Thanks for helping me with my bags."

Chet shrugged. "No problem. It wasn't all that much to carry."

"I still appreciate it," Callie said. "I'll see you both again, really."

She hastily got into the car before she could act even more awkward and backed out of the parking spot. Martin didn't say anything as they left. He was normally a quiet child, but since Callie had brought him into all this, he had been even more quiet than usual. Maybe it had been too much for him. It must have been such a long, boring trip for him, unless it had frightened him too much to see her such a mess. If only Marty had been here, he would have known what to do. Callie frowned and surreptitiously wiped a tear from her cheek. She was just going to have to be strong, even if she was alone. She would just have to act like everything was normal, because once they had crossed the border back into the U.S., everything would be normal again. It would be just her and Martin again, and that would be enough troubles for her. She would have to try not to think about Frank's or Iola's problems; she had walked away from that world.

She drove silently for a while. It wasn't far to the border, and so practically before she knew it, she saw the border station up ahead of her. Washington sounded so dreadfully lonely now. She wondered in spite of herself how this was going to end. Would Joe and his parents be found? If they weren't, she knew well how hard that would be for Frank. She really hadn't even talked to him, not when he was awake. She hadn't gone back to visit him after that first time as she was nervous about how he would greet her. But maybe it didn't matter. If he didn't want to see her, she couldn't blame him, but maybe it would mean something to him for her to be there.

Suddenly making up her mind, she signaled and turned into a parking lot instead of going on to the border station.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" Martin asked.

"We've got to go back," Callie told him. "I forgot something."

NDNDNDNDND

"You'd better start minding your own business!" The phone call was cut off immediately. Nancy's hand shook as she lowered the phone into her lap. Ned reached over from where he was sitting next to her in the back seat of Calvin Mace's SUV and held her hands.

"They really did sound like they're okay," Ned told her. "That's the most important thing."

The call had been on speaker, so all three occupants of the car could hear it. Ned hadn't had a chance to speak to the girls, and Mace wouldn't have tried to say anything. It wouldn't have been wise to tip the kidnappers off that Nancy and Ned were working—however reluctantly—with a Network agent.

Nancy nodded wordlessly. For a moment, she couldn't find any words. In some ways, it really was a relief to know that her daughters were alive and apparently unhurt, but at the same time, getting a phone call from the kidnappers made it all seem even more real than it had before. She squeezed Ned's hands, trying to draw strength from him. Finally, she was able to ask Mace, "What do you recommend that we do?"

Mace had pulled over to the side of the road when the call came in so that they wouldn't lose reception as they drove through the mountainous area. Now he had started driving again. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel for a few seconds before responding. "You could do what they're asking and stop investigating. I wouldn't blame you at all if you did. But I doubt you need me to tell you that cooperating with their requests does not guarantee that they will let your girls go. Getting into the U.S. and kidnapping two girls in broad daylight and possibly smuggling them into Canada just so that they can try to threaten you into giving up the case seems like a desperate move to me. That tells me that you've been on the right track. The fact that they called you now, while you're with me, tells me that they have no idea where you actually are, so they're not tracking your movements. If the intelligence I got that the Hardys are in central British Columbia is correct, I'd give it good odds that we can get to them before these people have a chance to harm your girls."

"But it's still only a chance," Nancy said.

"No matter what you do, it's only a chance," Mace replied. "I think if you stay with me, it's the best chance, but you have enough experience in this sort of thing to make up your own mind."

Ned glanced at Nancy and then asked Mace, "How much longer will it take to get there?"

"About four more hours. I've already had reports from the other agents that the roads are good, so that won't hold us up."

Ned looked back at Nancy. "I think we should keep going."

Nancy nodded slowly. "Okay. Let's do it."