Gael and Brent were pulling on the chains, but nothing was happening. The calf was not budging. Gael didn't know why - it didn't seem exceptionally large. It was a breech birth, but the chains should pull it out. This was Becky's third calving and the first two had gone off without a hitch. So far, his prize winning cow had produced two bull calves. He was hoping for a heifer this time, to carry on her lineage in his milking herd. “Rissa, can you get in there and see what's going on? You have small hands.” He had texted Marissa when Becky was about to deliver and she and Chris had rushed to the maternity pen. The foster children were still there, watching intently. This was only the second calving they had seen as most of them happened in the middle of the night.

“Sure, Daddy.” She opened the gate and entered the pen. She put her crutches down and dropped to her knees behind the cow lying on the thick bed of straw. Carefully, she inserted her hand into Becky alongside the calf. She'd done this many times for her father when a calf was stuck.

“Try to see if it's alive, too.” Often, when a birthing took too long, the calf didn't survive.

“Should the kids be watching this?” Chris asked, concerned about how it would affect them if the calf was dead.

“Yep”, Gael replied. “They live on a farm - they need to know it's not always sunshine and roses.”

“It's alive, Daddy”, Marissa interrupted. “It just bit me.”

“Are you okay?” Brent inquired.

“She's fine”, Gael answered for her. “The calf just gave her a nip because she stuck her fingers into it's mouth to see if it would suck on them. They only have bottom teeth.”

“I see the problem, Daddy”, Marissa said. “It's front legs are folded under it.”

“Can you straighten them?”

“Already have one straight. Give me a sec. Okay, second one is done.” Marissa took her arm out of the cow and the men resumed pulling on the chains, which were attached to the calf's back feet. It slid out with ease now that it's front legs were straight. Gael checked and exclaimed with excitement “We have a heifer!”

Marissa had her hand back inside the cow. “There's another one, Daddy. It's alive.”

“Damn”, Gail wailed. “Let's hope it's another heifer. It would be just my luck that this one is a freemartin.”

“What is that?” Chris asked.

“It's a heifer born twin to a bull. The hormones get all mixed up and over 90% of them are infertile. There is a blood test we can do to check for the Y chromosome in the heifer's blood. If it's there, she's infertile. If it's not there, she may not be. It's better than the old days when we had to wait to breed them and see if they conceived.”

“Daddy, I have the calf in position. Do you want me to put the chains on?”

“Yes, please, Rissa. Becky is tired. We'll pull this one, too.” The second one came out without any difficulty and was also a heifer. Gael was relieved. And happy - he now had two heifers out of Becky for the price of one. Artificial insemination cost the same regardless of the result.

“I feel like I should buy you a cigar”, Brent said to his longtime friend. “You look as proud as if it were your own offspring.”

Gael got some towels and threw them into the pen. “Would you like to help dry the calves off?” he asked the children. They eagerly ran in and each picked up a towel. “When you're finished, it's off to bed. Your mother will kill me if I keep you up too late.” Even though they were foster children, the Brennans thought of them as their own. He wasn't worried about them being in the pen with the new mother cow - Becky had been raised on the farm and was used to children being around. She was very docile - Gael would not keep an animal that wasn't, as Shithead the bull had found out.

When the calves were dried off and Becky was up on her feet, they left her with her babies. Gael would keep them together for a few days before putting the heifers into a hutch. Since they were twins, he'd put them in one hutch - usually it was one calf to a hutch, but he'd found that twins did better if they were kept together. He couldn't sell a cow's milk for five days after she calved. The first milk of any mammal is colostrum, which contains antibodies to disease. If a calf or a foal didn't get it, he'd have to get Sam out to give it an infusion or it would likely get sick and die. For this reason, he milked off the excess during the first 24 hours, when it was the most rich, and froze it for emergencies, like when a cow died during or just after calving. Fortunately, those cases were rare - he'd actually given frozen colostrum away to farmers in need without leaving himself short.

“How's your knee, Marissa?” Brent asked her as she picked herself up off the maternity pen floor.

“It's sore, but I'll be all right.”

“Be sure to ice it when you get inside. You shouldn't have been kneeling on it.”

“I know, but Daddy needed me to help. You guys couldn't have got your hands in there.”

The next day, Chris picked Marissa up and took her to get her knee x-rayed. On their way in, he told her that he'd sort of found Braxton. “You have?” she asked, not daring to get her hopes up too much.

“I talked to a very helpful lady at the APA. She couldn't tell me where he is due to privacy, but she said he's teaching and she agreed to call him and give him my number along with a message that it's about you.”

“Thank you, Chris! If he doesn't call, then I'll know Logan was telling the truth that he wants nothing to do with me.”

After the x-rays were taken, they went to Brent's office to get the results which were to be emailed to him. It was his lunch hour, so he had time to spend with them. “There's a couple of small cracks on your knee”, he told Marissa. “Nothing is broken, though. I'd like you to try to stay off your feet as much as possible for a few weeks while your knee heals. Use your wheel chair when you can.”

“I'm having surgery next week, remember?” Marissa replied. She and her parents were leaving for Denver on Wednesday for surgery on Friday, if her kidney infection was healed by then. Dr Maynard would do bloodwork once she got there and she would stay with him and his family until it was gone. “I probably won't be doing much of anything.”

“They will want to get you up and walking a day or two after, Marissa. It's standard for surgeries - the sooner the patient is up and moving, the better for their recovery. I'll call Gideon Maynard and tell him you need to take it easy on that knee.”

On the way home, she talked a bit more about the things that had happened to her. She was feeling quite at ease with Chris and was beginning to be hopeful that he could help her.

The next night, Saturday, she was visiting with Charlie before supper. It was now getting dark well before their dinner time of 7:00pm. If it was still daylight when she went out to the steer's pasture, she didn't bother turning the light on. She was lying up against the huge bovine, talking away and didn't hear the sound of footsteps approaching. Charlie heard, though. The person didn't have the scent of his human family. He got up, ready to defend Marissa should she need it. He had noticed, in his limited way, that something had happened to her and she couldn't walk normally anymore. Unfortunately, he didn't get a chance to defend her. Something poked him in his hind end. He mooed and swung around to face his enemy but the person was running away. Charlie took chase. Normally, he'd have caught up to the human in no time flat, but he felt strange, like he couldn't get his legs to move. Then he went down and the world went black.

Everything happened so fast. Marissa was confused when Charlie got up so abruptly, but then she saw him running away from her and figured that he was chasing someone. She didn't have a chance to yell for help, she was grabbed and a hand clamped over her mouth and nose. Something was in the hand - a rag, maybe.

Next thing Marissa knew, she was in a moving vehicle. She opened her eyes. It was still dark but she could see the outline of two people in the front seats and felt someone next to her. She tried to speak, but duct tape was covering her mouth, preventing her from doing so. Her hands and feet were bound. She struggled to get free.

“I see you're awake”, a male voice said. It was the person sitting next to her on the floor of the vehicle. “Don't waste your energy. You won't get free.” She felt something against her temple. “This is a gun. One wrong move and it's game over. Capiche?” She nodded. “We are going to a private airport and when we get there, we will board a plane. You will be quiet and do as we say. Understand?” she shook her head. “What's that?” He slapped her across the face. She made noises beneath the tape covering her mouth. Her captor ripped it off.

“Ouch!”

“Suck it up, buttercup. You were trying to say something?”

“Where are my crutches?”

“We left them behind. You won't need them where we're going.”

“I can't walk without them. I can't board the plane.”

“We have a wheelchair for you.”

“My steer! Did you kill him?” she asked, terrified that they had.

“No, we just knocked him out. He will be fine. I'm vegan, I won't be party to killing an animal.”

“Hows did you get in? There's a locked gate.”

“Through that old entrance that is overgrown with weeds.” Marissa had forgotten about that laneway that led to the back of the barns. They hadn't used it in over 10 years. These guys must have done their homework.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You ask a lot of questions. We're going to New York.” That clinched it. She'd suspected they were from the Cartel.

“Just please don't hurt my family. You can do anything to me but don't hurt them.”

“That isn't for us to decide. You can plead your case to our bosses when we get there.”

A few hours later, they landed on a runway in the middle of nowhere a few miles from the Cartel's compound in New York State. One of the men carried Marissa off the plane and set her in a wheelchair. She heard a gunshot and turned to look, seeing blood on the windshield of the plane they had been in. Her heart seemed to stop. “What did you do that for?” she asked the man who'd just got off the plane.

“Never mind. You have enough problems where you're going.”

They took her to the compound and she was brought to a room that was bare except for a few chairs. The floor and walls were tile. It looked like the room the Cartel had beaten her in the first time she was at the Compound. Marissa surmised the tile walls and floor were for easy cleaning.

After a while, two men entered the room and told the others they could leave, thanking them for their good work in getting Marissa. When the door had closed behind them, the first, a tall man who looked to be in good shape, said “Well, if it isn't our little runaway.” Marissa was quiet. “Come on, darling, aren't you going to say something? Cat got your tongue?”

“Whatever you do to me, please leave my family alone.”

“I believe it was made clear to you that if you refused to work for us or if you left us, we would eliminate your family.”

“I know, but none of this is their fault. Please, I won't fight you, just leave them alone. Kill me if you must.”

“Oh, we must”, the other man, a shorter man with a pot belly said as he lifted the back of the wheelchair, dumping Marissa unceremoniously on the cold floor. He kicked her in the side and she rolled onto her other side, curling up. The tall man came in for some kicks and soon both were at it. Marissa took it silently until one of them kicked her in the back where her bad kidney was. She yelled out in pain.

“Finally, a sign of pain”, her assailant said smugly. “I have to say, you lasted longer than most women do.” He stomped down on her left hand, the same wrist Tomas had broken. She cried out again. Was this coincidence or did they know about the prior break?

“What's this?” the other one asked as he lifted her shirt, revealing her nephrostomy tube.

“It's draining my kidney, there's a blockage.”

“What happens if we remove it?”

“Urine will back up”, she said through silent tears. “And I'll die - if the infection doesn't kill me first, which it will without my medication.”

“Who's on call tonight?” the tall one asked his accomplice. “Dr Cardenas?”

“I think so.”

“Tally”, as Marissa silently dubbed him, took his phone out and called someone, she presumed the doctor. “Dr Cardenas, sorry to wake you but I need to know something. What happens if a tube draining urine from a patient's kidney is taken out?” He listened for a moment, then said “I need you to come here right now”, and gave their location.

The doctor came and was told to remove the tube and drainage bag. “I'm sorry”, he whispered to her as he complied with his boss' order. When it was done, Marissa was taken to a cell and left on the hard bed. She wondered how long it would take for her to die. She was sure it would be painful, given the amount of pain she'd been in when the blockage was discovered. She prayed for death to come fast.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Braxton lay wide awake, Amber sound asleep at his side. He looked at her in the moonlight and wondered what he was doing with her. She was not his type at all. Sure, she had a great body, but she was so fake with her hair dyed blonde, makeup caked on and a few plastic surgeries under her belt in an attempt to stave off the effects of getting older. She was a very intelligent woman, a fellow teacher at the University of California in Los Angeles. But she drove him up the wall with her incessant chatter and her constant loud gum chewing.

Why was he with her? he wondered. He knew the answer. She wasn't Marissa. She wasn't anything like Marissa. This was his attempt to put Marissa behind him once and for all. His therapist approved of him dating someone, though he'd not told Brayden much about Amber.

They had arrived the day before in Boulder, Colorado for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary. They both had given their Friday classes a lesson by email so that they could take the day off. There had been a big dinner and dance earlier this night. Amber had insisted on coming with him. She wanted to meet his parents. And she had insisted on getting a hotel room - together. They'd not had sex yet - Braxton hadn't been able to perform the couple times they had tried. She had tried to get him to try again tonight, but he pleaded too much to drink, which was a lie. He had no interest in consummating their relationship.

Around the same time that Marissa was being kidnapped, he'd had an awful feeling that something was wrong, but he could not figure it out. His parents and his sister were here and they were fine. He suppressed his worry for the sake of his mom and dad - he did not want to ruin their special celebration. He could tell they didn't like Amber and he didn't want to further upset them.

Late in the evening, the feeling returned stronger than before. Colorado was an hour behind New York, it was about the time that Marissa was getting beat up. He thought of her and wondered if she was in trouble.

Giving up on sleep, Braxton got up and dressed and went for a walk in the cold fall air. He made a couple decisions while he was strolling along - the first, to break up with Amber when they got back to LA on Monday. The second was to try to find Marissa, even if it meant hiring a private investigator, but he would start by calling Gael Brennan to see if she'd contacted her family - just in case Logan wasn't being truthful with him when he said he'd not heard from any of the Brennans.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Irene Brennan rang the bell, calling her family to dinner. One by one, they came to the table after washing up. Except for Marissa. They waited five minutes. Gael called her cell. There was no answer. He finally decided to go to Charlie's pasture to get her - he knew she had gone to see her steer. He put on his jacket and walked to the pasture. Charlie was on the ground, trying to get up. Marissa's crutches were on the ground, too, but he could not find her. Fear gripped him - fear that she'd been kidnapped a second time. He said a silent prayer asking for strength and called the RCMP.