Long honey blonde hair bound up in a ponytail, I watched as she set up right in front of me. The setter pushed the ball outside, and she was a blur of motion—running towards the net, jumping high. I watched her long lean legs, shapeliness accentuated by her compression shorts, propel her upwards. Then she swung hard with her right hand and the ball rocketed downwards and cross-court, cutting inside the block and landing fair for another kill. She accepted hand-slaps from her teammates as she returned to her position, waiting to do it again. I had been watching this graceful scene repeat itself time and again for years; I never got tired of watching her do it, and not just because I love volleyball. But my admiration—OK, my crush—wasn't even a blip on her radar screen, because for all intents and purposed, to her I didn't exist.

Brandy was the captain of the University Volleyball team. We had gone to the same high school, part of the same graduating class even. As freshman, Brandy and I had been pretty equally matched as players. But while I was just a half-inch shorter than she, that makes a world of difference in men's versus women's volleyball. She became an all-state outside hitter; myself, with virtually the same height and vertical leap, played varsity and got a fair share of playing time but wasn't a starter—and I was the shortest player on the team save the Libero. And since volleyball is a big collegiate sport for women but all but non-existent for men, while she was getting scholarship offers I was working 20 hours a week to pay for my own school. We both ended up at the state university; I was playing club volleyball while Brandy was playing Division I.

Since we had both been volleyball players in high school, we had often hung out in the same social circles; we could hang, no problem. We had even hooked up at parties once or twice, but things never progressed beyond talking and maybe a casual kiss—not because I wasn't interested, but because I somehow never measured up. Perhaps literally—she seemed only to date men that were taller than herself, which narrows the field somewhat when you're six-foot-one. But Brandy always had her choice of men—natural blonde hair, athlete's build, pretty face, and almost surreally blue eyes, she was gorgeous from her head to her impeccably manicured toes. She was our high school's prom queen junior and senior years. Don't get me wrong, it's not that she disliked me, it's just that didn't like me, at least not in the way I wanted her to. By the time we got to college, I'd given up on trying. If I'd happen into Brandy at the athletic center we'd say "Hi," but between my work and studying and her team practices and her own schoolwork, I basically never saw her. I started dating one of my classmates, although it wasn't anything serious—at least, I didn't think so. I heard rumors that Brandy was dating a basketball player, but I'd also heard rumors recently that things were shaky between them. For all intents and purposes, my life didn't intersect with Brandy's again until my junior year.

Playing club volleyball as a freshman, I had hurt my knee and had to go through rehab for three months to get it right again. While doing my rehab, I decided that this was something I could enjoy doing, so I changed my major to Physical Therapy—a five-year terminal master's program. In the third year of the PT program, students were assigned in pairs to be athletic trainers for one or another of the university teams to start getting hands-on experience. While most of my classmates fought over the football and basketball teams, I volunteered for volleyball. When my instructors learned I had played in high school, that's the assignment I got.

When my partner Heather and I were first introduced to the team as the new trainers for the year, Brandy said "Hey, I know you, you went to my high school. Your name is Will, right?" I nodded. "So you're going to be one of our trainers? That's cool," and turned to strike up a conversation with another player. By then Brandy was the team captain and a second-team all-conference outside hitter. Like the other players, I would tape her up and sometimes give her heat treatments, but she never showed the slightest interest in knowing any more about me than she already did. Being female, Heather of course got to go into the locker room and I didn't; especially when we were on the road, I spent a lot of time by myself with nothing to do, unless one of the players got tired of waiting in line for her to work on them and came out looking for me.

Our team was better than expected that year, though. We won our conference, and with it an invite to the NCAA tournament. We played in a sectional held at UC-San Diego, and made it to the regional semi-final before bowing in five games to one of the west-coast powerhouses. The girls were a little disappointed, but mostly they were pretty proud of themselves; they had done much better than predicted and exceeded their own team goals.

Our return flights weren't until after the regional final of course, just in case, so losing now meant the girls had a couple of days on their own in San Diego. And when the coach announced he had to leave right away—to interview for another job, we later learned—a few girls started hatching a scheme to have a major party. Since most of them were old enough to drink in the U.S., the suggestion was made that we go into Mexico instead. In no time, plans were afoot for a major beach bash in Mexico. Heather and I were brought in on the plan; basically, we were the only people who might rat out the team for having an illegal party, so they decided that they had better include us in the party in order to ensure that we'd keep it secret. Heather was a partier by temperament, so she was all game; I wasn't real hot on this idea, and I said so, but of course I had 11 girls all calling me a party pooper. Then a few of them, led by Brandy, turned on the charm instead. Seven or eight girls running their fingers through their hair, whispering into my ear with sultry voices, or touching my chest, and in spite of my better judgment I gave in.

One of the girls rented a 12-passenger van, while others arranged food and of course plenty of drink. We shoved everything in, crossed the border, and headed south. One of the girls had heard of a nice secluded beach about 20 miles south of the border, and we were going to try to find it. We got lost three times, but by 2:00 we made it. We parked the van at the edge of the path that wound its way down the bluff to the beach and poured out. Everyone hopped right to it, getting a fire going for our overdue lunch, bringing out the beverages, playing in the sand—and of course setting up a volleyball net. We got the tunes going, and soon we had a party.

I had lunch with the girls, sitting alone of course; a few girls played beach while most of the others concentrated on tying one on. You might think that being the only guy with 11-bikini-wearing volleyball players getting drunk on a beach might sound like paradise, and I suppose it could have been if any of them had ever shown the slightest interest in me. But none of them did, so the resulting display of youthful self-indulgence was more inclined to turn my stomach than to turn me on. I watched the bikini show for a while, but there really wasn't much I hadn't already seen in the trainer's room, and as they got more drunk (while I didn't), I decided to head for a walk down the beach to see what else was down here.

I walked perhaps a good mile until the beach ended; because of the curvature of the shore, I was out of sight of the party, and they of me. Having headed as far as I could go, I turned around and headed back. The first thing I saw as I approached was Brandy—she had ducked behind a rocky outcropping, out of sight from the party, to pee. I looked the other way but kept approaching; I was walking right along the water line, so I could see around the bend and back to the party before she could. And as the group came into view, I could tell at once that something was amiss. The music, which had been loud enough for me to hear from this distance earlier, was missing, and all of the girls were standing still. Then I noticed two jeeps had driven out onto the beach—uh oh, I though, perhaps the authorities? Or maybe some guys to keep the girls company? Closer now, I did make out three or four men, but they weren't hot guys, they were middle-aged locals. And with horror, I realized that the things they all held in their arms were assault rifles.

I quickly darted inland and rolled on the sand so I was out of sight again, hoping I hadn't been spotted. Brandy wasn't far away now, and saw me drop and roll. Bemused and with a slight slur, she asked "What the fuck are you doing, Will?"

"Get down, now!" I hissed.

"What the hell?" she asked, puzzled.

"Goddamn it, hit the fucking deck, now!" She had no idea what was going on, but she could tell I was deadly serious, and knew me enough to know I wasn't a practical joker. So she tentatively crouched down next to the rocks, trying to peer around the corner without actually getting closer to it.

I crawled towards her flat on my belly. "A bunch of fucking men with guns just showed up," I hissed.

"What!?" Brandy replied in alarm, although she was smart enough to keep her voice down.

"Get down on the ground and crawl towards the corner and see for yourself," I hissed.

Brandy did exactly that—she crept towards the edge on her stomach, trying to see around the corner. Suddenly she said "Holy fuck," and dodged behind the cover of the rocks where I now crouched. "What the hell is going on? Who are those guys?"

"I don't know, but you may have noticed those were not police jeeps," I said. "We're in fucking Mexico—who knows what the fuck goes on down here?"

It sunk in that "The girls could be in serious trouble!"

"No shit," I replied, "but we're not going to help them any by storming in there and getting held up at gunpoint right along side them. Let's see what happens. They probably are just going to rob everyone." I crept towards the edge again. I saw that two of the men were rifling through everyone's bags while the others were holding the girls in a line, hands behind their heads, at gunpoint.

"What's going on?" Brandy whispered.

"They've got the girls lined up and are going through everyone's bags," I whispered back. But then the two men watching the line gestured with their guns, and started marching the girls back up the access path, while the other two men got into the jeeps. "Oh fuck, this is bad," I said, suddenly a LOT more worried.

"What?" asked Brandy, frightened.

"They're marching everyone back up the path towards the van," I said.

"Oh man…what are they going to do with them?" she asked.

"I don't know…but all of the answers I can think of are really, really bad," I replied. Maybe they were just planning on robbing us, but when they discovered ten bikini clad, mostly hot Caucasian girls with not even one man for protection, they may have decided they had other uses for the girls as well. My mind flashed on stories I had heard of white slavery and mass murders; I forced myself to concentrate on what they were doing or I was likely to panic. The last girl disappeared from sight and with her the second gunman; the two jeeps turned and headed south, turning inland a ways farther down into an access road we hadn't noticed before.

"Oh my god…" cried Brandy, holding her knees, freaking out. "What if they kill them? Or what if they take them somewhere and rape them? Oh my god!"

I went over next to her, put one hand on either cheek, and held her face up to look right in my eyes as I stared into hers. "You know as well as I do that something terrible could happen, but it's not going to do them or us any good to dwell on what that might be. Here's what we know; the girls have been back towards the van. Maybe they just want to steal the car too, who knows. But I do know this: the men in the jeeps have made one mistake, in that they didn't nab either of us. And right now, you and I may be your friends' only hope. So pull yourself together, and let's figure out a plan."

To her credit, Brandy was immediately able to clear her mind and start assessing the situation with me. "My cell phone…" she said, "it's over by my bag."

I nodded "Probably not anymore. Besides, I have mine with me…" and I turned it back on to show that there was no signal. I turned it off again to save battery; we would have to try to find a cell signal regularly, but leaving it on in search mode quickly drains the battery. "I lost signal not long after we crossed the border, and haven't tried again since. But since there doesn't appear to be much in the way of population, I'm not expecting that we'll get a signal anywhere near here.

"Did you see any towns or police stations anywhere along the way?" she asked, thinking back. "I don't remember seeing one since we left Tijuana."

"Me either," I shook my head.

"We could try to flag down a boat?" she suggested.

"I hadn't thought of that," I admitted, "but I see two problems with that idea. One, I haven't seen a boat since we got here. Two, even if we could flag one down, we don't know that people on the boat aren't pirates or something just like the men in the jeeps."

"OK…so what do we do?" she asked.

"Priority one is for us to not get caught," I began. "Priority two is to see if we can locate where the girls are. And priority three is to get help."

"We may be looking at having to hike 20 miles for help," she deduced.

"Mostly through open desert," I added, deciding not to mention the snakes or scorpions if she didn't think of it herself. But I was impressed at how well Brandy was now able to rationally assess the situation when she had been freaking out just minutes before.

Without a word, we both crawled out to look around the corner. We hoped that the men would have just stolen the van, and the girls would come running back down the beach when they left. We watched for a full 10 minutes, but all we saw was the scattered debris of the ransacked party site.

"Well, I didn't hear any gunfire," I said finally, "so either they took them somewhere in the van, or they're still up there. I'll go crawl closer and see; you stay here in case they are still there and I'm captured too. Here…you take my phone just in case."

She looked at me wide-eyed with fear. Suddenly, all we had was each other. She didn't want me to go, because she didn't want to be left alone, but she also knew I was right—one person not captured is better than zero. She took the phone, saying "Please be careful." It was a completely unnecessary thing to say, but I understood that she said this not because I needed to be told, but because she was concerned for my safety. We needed to stick together if at all possible.

I nodded, then headed out, crouched against the rim of the bluff. My thinking was that if I stayed next to the base of the bluff, I wouldn't be able to be seen from above unless someone was standing right at the edge looking down. I hoped to move close enough to hear what was going on at the top. But I kept inching closer and closer to the path until I was at its base, and heard nothing. I got back on my belly and started crawling up the path. As I got close enough to see the top, I could see that there was nothing there. Getting up into a crouch, I walked the rest of the way to the top—nothing. The van was gone, and so were all ten of our companions.

I walked back down to the party site. When I got to the bottom, I waved towards Brandy to come out. She did, asking "What did you find out?"

"They're gone," I said matter-of-factly. "The van, the girls, the gunmen—there's no trace of any of them at the top of the bluff." As I spoke, I started sifting through the coolers that were left behind, picking out any bottles of water that were left and food that wasn't salty junk food.

"They're gone?!" she said in disbelief.

I nodded. "They must be taking them somewhere." Anticipating what she would be thinking, I intervened proactively, saying "I know, I know, but let's not let our imaginations run too wild—we need to find help."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Get the two biggest bags that are left. We need to fill them up with all the water and spare food we can carry," I explained. "A blanket or two might be good, too."

"You don't think we should stay in case they come back?" she asked.

"If they come back, it will be accompanied by at least two men with guns, so no," I replied. "In fact, they know there's more stuff down here; I'm worried that they'll eventually come back to search through it again—or maybe even just come back for the beer, since they seem to have left it for now. We need to be way the hell out of here if and when that happens."

For just a second she was frozen, eyes wide open, but then she snapped out of it and started collecting items as I was doing. We had some cold hot dogs, water, blankets; I also grabbed a bottle of sunblock and the matches and lighter fluid we had used to light the charcoal for lunch. Then I started looking around for a three-foot long or so piece of driftwood with a forked end. It took me a while to find one, such that Brandy was done and getting nervous about just standing there while I searched.

"Why do you need a stick?" she asked. As she spoke, she was putting her shorts and tank top back on over her suit.

"A walking stick, for one," I replied, "but if necessary, a torch or a tool for keeping a snake or scorpion at arm's length."

"Goddamn it, stop frightening me like that," she snapped.

"Sorry, just planning for contingencies," I said, finding a suitable piece and picking it up. I tossed the bag on my back and walked over the Brandy at the foot of the path. "Okay, we've got two choices. One, stick near the road. The advantages are we'll be less likely to get lost and more likely to find a cell phone signal. The disadvantages are we'll be running the risk of being spotted by those gunmen if they return, and it'll probably be the longest path to help.

"What's the other choice?" she asked, considering.

"Cutting through the open desert," I replied. "Advantages and disadvantages the opposite of following the road. Oh, and we'd be more likely to run into snakes or scorpions in the open desert, although it could happen either way." When I said snakes, she looked down at her feet, and I realized the only shoes she had were flip-flops; not good for open desert crossings. "Let's stay with the road," I said and started up the path.

It was after six when we left the beach. Problem was, being early fall, it would be dark in an hour or so. The sky was overcast; it was going to be pitch black out here in the middle of nowhere, and nobody had any sort of flashlight—traveling at night was going to be extremely hazardous. We started up the path and up the road. As we left the beach we immediately returned to desert; everything was sand and rock, with sparse cactus here and there. It was clear that if someone was coming up the road, we would have nowhere to hide. I suggested we try not being on the road itself, but try to stay about 50 yards off the road; we could venture back to the road when terrain demanded it. For the most part, though, the ground was flat and hard from lack of rain, so Brandy was able to walk in it despite her flip-flops. We walked single file, though, so she could follow in my footsteps.

We walked east for a full hour, which I estimated should be about three miles, without seeing any signs of human habitation. The sun was now very low in the sky, and I was starting to get concerned about being caught completely out in the open at night. I also knew that the desert gets cold at night, and Brandy especially wasn't dressed for it. All we had were terry cloth beach blankets—something, but not much thermal protection against temperatures that might dip into the 40s. But I kept my thoughts to myself.

"Let's try the phone again," she suggested. She was still carrying it from earlier.

"OK," said, stopping while she turned it on and hoped to find a signal. I took a drink of water while she watched the display anxiously. But then she frowned and turned it off. No dice, obviously.

"Figures," I said, "shall we keep going?"

"It's going to be dark soon," she said. Again I was impressed that she had been thinking ahead about nightfall; my girlfriend at the time wouldn't have. "We should find some shelter for the night."

"I know," I said, "that's actually what I've been looking for, for the last half-hour. Nothing has looked promising yet."

"Well, I guess we push on then," she said, gesturing for me to lead again.

About ten minutes down the road, I saw what might be a square shape in the distance, at about 11:00 from our current bearing. Not being mid-day, I didn't think it was a mirage, but it could just be a shadow cast from the low, setting sun behind us. "Look over that way," I said, pointing. "Do you see something square?"

She squinted in the direction I had pointed. "Yeah…what do you think it is?"

"I have no idea, but if it's a square there's a good chance it's something man-made. Should we head over that way?"

"Sure. Better than any other prospects we have."

I cut towards the shape. Following it took us out to and then across the road. As we got closer, it looked like it could be some sort of small building—but who knows what. As we got closer, it was definitely a building, but it didn't look inhabited. We were practically there before I figured out what it was—an abandoned gas station. We walked up to it and looked around—there were two pumps, probably at least 40 years old. A pole from what had once been a sign remained, but nothing remained attached to it. The concrete was cracked and crumbling, and tumbleweeds gathered in corners. It probably had been abandoned for twenty years.

"Oh look, a gas station…and here we are with no car," I cracked.

"Very funny," she pouted. "No chance of there being a working phone here."

"No, but maybe it'll give us shelter for the night," I said, turning to look at the building itself. There was a boarded-up front door leading to what presumably had once been the office—when this station was built, they probably still pumped the gas for you. To its right (my left) there was a solid wood garage door with two small windows near the top, where perhaps once they did basic repairs. Although, who? There wasn't a house within sight in any direction. It was, however, the crossroads between the road that we were following and a north-south street that was in much the same condition as the gas station. Both had probably become obsolete when the built the newer road a few miles east. There also didn't look to be any good way inside, not without a crowbar to pull off the boards covering all the doors.

I went around to the back of the station to look at it again (that has been the side we had seen from the road). There was a metal-clad locked door that presumably was a pit toilet, and a series of metal rungs running up towards the roof in the back corner of the station. My gaze followed them up to the top; I realized this building had a flat roof, and started climbing up to investigate.

"What are you doing up there?" Brandy called from below.

"Checking out the roof," I said, stating the obvious. The roof was tarred and surrounded on all sides by a short wall about two feet high. The roof was angled slightly so any rain that fell went down through a single downspout; looking down, I saw that the downspout ended about two feet from the ground; a collecting barrel still stood under the open end of the spout. There was also a medium-sized tank right above the door we presumed to be the bathroom; I realized they wouldn't have any kind of water service out here, so what water the bathroom had probably had been gravity-fed from the tank.

I took a step out onto the roof carefully, half-expecting that it would collapse when I stepped on it. But it didn't, and in fact it felt quite sturdy; I pressed down but felt no give under my feet. I couldn't see very well, but except for the tank it was a flat, open space—not a good habitat for snakes or scorpions, and I guessed that any spiders would be living towards the edges.

"Come up here," I called down, "this might be our best bet for tonight."

"What, are you nuts?" she replied, but started climbing to see for herself. She got to the top and looked around.

"I think we'd be safe from snakes and scorpions up here," I said. "But we may want to stay away from the edges until daylight—I'm no expert on local wildlife, but I'd hate there to be a tarantula or black widow and not know about it."

With that she quickly climbed up onto the roof and scuttled next to me, going "Ewww," waving her hand by her head in the universal sign for 'creeped out.' "You think this will hold?" she asked.

I half-jumped up and down on the roof again, saying "So far, so good. I don't feel any give in it."

"I guess it'll have to do," she said somberly. She put down her pack, took out the blanket, spread it out in the exact middle of the roof and sat on it. I followed her lead, the rooted around in my pack for some food.

"Cold hot dog?" I asked. She nodded and I handed her one. It's amazing how much better they taste warmed up. We sat cross-legged, across from each other, eating our hot dogs in the dark. There were occasional breaks in the clouds, which permitted starlight and the odd moonbeam to peek through, and allowed us to see enough to navigate. The temperature kept dropping now that the sun was down; Brandy was already feeling the chill.

"Brrr," she said, "I'm freezing already."

"Yeah, it's dropping fast," I replied. "We're going to have to sandwich between the two blankets to stay as warm as we can. If we stay close together, we'll help keep each other warm."

She started to lie down on the blanket, then gave me a sideways glance. "You're not going to try anything, are you?"

"I'm hardly in the mood," I replied, sounding grumpier than I intended. I brought out the other blanket and lay it over the top of us. We lay on our sides, face to face, propping up our heads with one hand.

"I'm sorry," she said somberly, "this is all my fault. If we hadn't come down for this stupid party, none of this would have happened."

"It's not all your fault," I replied, "the others seemed to want this as much as you."

"Yes," she answered, "but I'm the team captain. I'm supposed to make sure we all follow the rules—and we all knew we were breaking them. It was my responsibility to say no, and I didn't." Here eyes were downcast, and she was tracing random patterns on the blanket with her free hand. "I don't know how I'm going to live with myself if something happens to the others."

I was thinking to myself that most likely it already had. By the time we found authorities, it would most likely be a full day since the abduction—they could be anywhere in Mexico, or even outside it, by then. At this point, we were probably walking to save ourselves. "This looks like an old north-south road here," I said to change the subject. "Maybe if we follow it, we'll get to Tijuana faster."

"Maybe. But by then we'll probably be too late. Heck, we're probably too late now." Damn, I thought, she realized it. She turned to her stomach, crossed her arms, and hid her head in it. Soft sobbing sounds soon followed.

I put my hand on her shoulder to try to comfort her, although in truth I was still very angry at all the girls for insisting on this stupid party and thus making this nightmare possible. "You had no way of knowing that there would be armed bandits patrolling the beach, or that they would kidnap you. That's not your fault." I didn't sound very convincing even to myself, I had to say, and she didn't respond at all.

Then in the distant horizon I saw light. I watched for a second, and it didn't fade. I shook her shoulder and said "Hey, what's that?" I got up and walked towards, but not all the way to, the edge to see better.

She sat up to look, and said "Could that be a car?"

"It could be…" the lights started to differentiate into two lights as the neared…but then they became four. "Yes, there's two…no wait, there's four of them." Uh oh—there had been two jeeps this afternoon.

"Lets get down and flag them down!" she said anxiously and started heading towards the stairs.

"Wait!" I replied. "Let's wait and see if we can figure out what they are first…what if it's the two jeeps from earlier, coming back like I was afraid they might."

She hadn't thought of that—so much had gone wrong, she was just expecting that something would finally go right for a change. She froze, suddenly wide-eyed with fear. "Get down on the blanket; I'll keep an eye on them. If they look safe, I'll run down to flag them down." Brandy huddled in the middle of one blanket, wrapped herself in the other, and watched me fearfully for signs of what I might be seeing. As the got close now, the second set of lights illuminated the first, and the first was definitely a jeep. It was way too dark to tell if it was the same red and yellow jeeps from this afternoon, and jeeps were probably common here in the desert, but something about them had me fearing the worst.

I had to make a decision, quickly—I was still concealed by darkness, but any moment the headlights would start to reveal the building, and with it potentially us. It was just too similar—the only people we had seen in this area aside from ourselves were the gunmen, who travelled in two jeeps, and now two jeeps were heading this way. Without stopping to formally decide whether they were the same jeeps or not, I hit the deck, hiding behind the wall.

"Oh my god…is it them again?" Brandy whispered.

"Not positive, but it's definitely two jeeps heading this direction, and I'm just getting a bad feeling," I whispered back "Listen carefully, let's see if we can figure out what they're doing."

We lay motionless, she huddled in blankets, me face-down on the cold tar roof, listening to the sounds of two jeeps getting closer and closer. Stay beams of light shone over the edge of the roof from time to time as the jeeps bounced up and down on the rustic road. Then as the noise grew closer, it also grew quieter—it sounded like they were slowing down. Brandy's eyes grew wider. Then we heard the sounds of the jeeps pulling up to a stop, right in front of the gas station. Two voices speaking rapidly in Spanish pierced the quiet desert night. I was lying roughly above the old garage area, and I could hear something going on right below me, followed by the sound that might have been the garage door opening. The voices became distant, as if in a tunnel, and suddenly the sound of a small engine was heard, followed almost immediately by light spilling over from somewhere below. The voices became louder again, then I heard some rattling sounds. The voices sounded a few feet away, so I dared to raise my head over the rail for just a second. There were two men by the gas pumps, filling the tanks on a red and yellow jeep. Smart, I thought—what better place for a rendezvous and refilling point than what appeared to be an abandoned gas station.

I crawled silently towards Brandy, waiting expectantly as I worked my way close enough to whisper. With no other sounds except those the men were making, I crawled up to and then practically on top of Brandy, so that my mouth was right over her ear when I whispered in extra-hushed tones "It's the jeeps from this afternoon, although I only saw two guys. They must have a generator in the garage, which powers the lights and the gas pumps. This place may not open for business anymore, but it's still being used as a filling station."

"They're right downstairs?" she whispered, although in her fright not as softly as I would have liked. "Oh my god…" and she covered herself completely in the blanket. Not a bad idea, I thought—it would be warmer, plus it would help stifle sound. I tugged on the edge of the blanket and crawled under with her.

"Good idea, it's warmer here and sound is less likely to travel," I said, as if she had deliberately and rationally chosen to cover up and hide.

"What are they doing here?" she asked with a tremble in her voice.

"Gassing up, for one," I said. "Keep your ears open and let's see what happens." A little more clanking followed, and I expected that to be followed by the sound of the jeeps starting up. Instead, a minute later the sounds of salsa music coming from an old tinny speaker pierced the night. Now what? I heard scraping sounds like something being dragged on the ground, followed by conversation. I knew just enough Spanish to pass my language requirement, but even if I could have heard them clearly over the music I could have never kept up with their rate of speech. At one point, I clearly heard them say "Salud" in unison—a Spanish drinking toast (how I know that is a long story).

Brandy looked like she'd seen a ghost, and it had waved and called her by name. "What are they doing?"

"All I know for sure is that they just raised a toast," I said, "so imagine they've got some tequila somewhere. I guess they're having a party."

I should have thought through that last statement better. I just meant to be glib, to take the edge off the situation. I wasn't thinking about the fact that planning this party is how this all happened—but Brandy was. My statement was thus very ill-timed, and she could keep it together no longer—she started sobbing uncontrollably, a mix of fear and guilt. The music covered the sound for now, but the blankets would not—if the music stopped, they would almost certainly hear her, and start to look for us. I needed to get her to stop crying—but I expected that simply telling her to get a hold of herself or we'd get discovered would just make it worse. So instead I wrapped my arms around her and held her face in close to my chest to comfort her—and it dawned on me that it might help with the sound too. In need, she clutched at me and held me like her life depended on it—perhaps, at that moment, it did. "Sh, sh, sh," I hushed like she was an infant. "Quiet now, I'm here, whatever happens I'll be here by your side."

"No you won't," she said way too loudly—thank god the music was so loud, plus the two men were jabbering away themselves. "If they find us they'll just kill you outright, but they'll play with me first. Finding me would be like Christmas, Easter and Happy Birthday all rolled into one—they'll rape me and torture me and make me go through hell before they finally kill me too. Oh…."

The problem with Brandy was that she was too smart; I had been thinking exactly the same thing. If she hadn't been so quick to understand the implications of events as they unfolded, she would be easier to calm down now. Again I contrasted her with my girlfriend—it's not she's dumb or anything, but the possible implications wouldn't have just dawned on her like that. But Brandy thought of these things right away, and coupled with a tendency I was beginning to see of tending to focus on the worst, she would not be easily distracted and consoled. "Shh, we don't know that, and besides…we're not going to let them find us, right? So grab me and squeeze me as hard as you want, I can take it. But let's try to stay as quiet as mice until they leave."

Again to Brandy's credit, she was able to pull herself together. She did squeeze me, so hard it hurt, but in so doing she was able to stop the bawling and shortly after keep the sniffing under control, too. She was staring in the face of perhaps the worst fate a person can suffer, but as long as I held her and she held me, it felt like we were holding time and fate at bay, like nothing bad could happen as long as she held me tight. We clung to each other for dear life.

It seemed like we were on the roof for weeks, although in reality it probably was about two hours. From time to time Brandy would look up in the darkness to look into my eyes and see what I was thinking. I always looked back with genuine concern—I not only wanted her to feel better, I needed her to remain in control or her catastrophic predictions may come true. And as she clung to me, less tightly now so at least I could move, she derived comfort from me. She must have acutely felt like her life depended on me—a man she had known for years, and yet didn't know at all.

Finally we heard scraping sounds again and the music abruptly shut off. We looked at each other, trying not to breathe lest even that give us away. The lights went off, and the engine grew silent. Then the door sound again. The two men sounded like they were saying goodbye, then I heard an engine start and tires scrape for traction in the loose sand. As the sound indicated the jeep was leaving, Brandy looked at me and whispered "Are they gone?"

"Shh," I shushed and put my finger in front of my mouth—I was pretty sure I had only heard one jeep leave. Seconds later there was the sound of something banging on metal—something thrown in the back of the jeep was my guess—and then the second jeep started, bit for traction, and roared off.

I waited a second, then crawled out from under the blanket towards the front wall. I waited until the sounds were fairly faint, then peeked my head over the edge. I saw one light receding to the north, and another to the west. Finally they were gone. Still, I got into a crouch to head back to the blanket. "They're gone," I whispered as I approached.

Brandy popped her head out from under the blanket. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," I said, crawling back under myself because it was cold. "I saw one heading west and one heading north. I think we'll be safe here the rest of the night."

"Here? Don't you think we should get OUT of here?" she asked anxiously.

"No," I said, "because the situation hasn't changed—we still can't see the dangers of the desert in the dark, and there's still nowhere to hide anywhere out there. On the other hand, we just proved that if we hide up here and they won't find us, so I still think this is the safest place to be at the moment. But I do think we should try to get out of here at first light in case they come back in the morning."

Brandy looked at me, considering what I said, and realizing I was right. I imagine that she then must have thought about me, and the fact that I had been able to keep a cool head and make good decisions in the face of crisis—she probably would have made different decisions were she alone, and who knows what the outcome might have been. What happened next, while it caught me completely off guard, in retrospect made perfect sense if you understand about humans and the transfer of emotions. When her feelings changed from fear to positive sentiment about me, all of the energy that had been generated from the deathly fright became attached to the positive sentiment, and the result was intense passion. And that passion she unleashed on me without warning.

Next thing I knew, Brandy was holding me and kissing me with unbelievable urgency. I barely had time to react to her kissing and her tongue was in my mouth, and she was rubbing her hands all over my back. She rolled over on top of my and pressed her face into mine while grinding her pelvis into me; the intended audience responded at once. She reached behind her to unbuckle my belt and undo my pants; when successful she snaked her hand into them, grabbing hold of me and stroking me while kissing me lustfully. I reached for her shirt; she whipped off both the shirt and bikini top as if she was racing against the clock to get if off, then reached into my pants some more. OK, I thought...if she wanted me, I wasn't gonna argue. I had dreamt of Brandy since high school; this might be only chance to actualize those dreams. I rolled her over and whipped off my pants; she threw her bottoms aside before I was done. The urgency of our need for each other was such that there was no further foreplay; I knelt before her and we made love with the hunger of vampires thirsting for blood.

Afterwards, I lay on my back and she was curled up next to me. We had drawn up the second blanket against the cold, but our clothes remained strewn somewhere on the roof, out of sight in the darkness. By intertwining our bodies we kept each other warm. For an hour or more we lay like that; sometimes we talked a little or kissed, but mostly we just held on to each other.

In the fear-driven urgency of our initial lovemaking, I hadn't had a chance to explore parts of Brandy that I had imagined so many times. When I felt like I was ready for a second round, I started to touch her again. The second time we made love was completely the opposite of the first; the first time we made love with urgency, but the second time we took time for foreplay, exploring each other, stimulating each other, before finally joining together again.

I was tired after that. I checked my watch—it was 3AM. Brandy was even more tired; she could barely keep her eyes open. "I'm afraid to sleep," she mumbled.

"Hmm?" I asked.

"I'm so tired, but I'm afraid to let myself sleep. What if they come back while we're sleeping?"

I thought it highly unlikely, but so was most what had happened in the last 24 hours. And seeing as sunrise was in just three hours or so, I figured that not sleeping at all wouldn't be that different from sleeping—and we DID have to get out of there at first light. The worst thing would be if we fell asleep and didn't get up at daybreak; with just a watch alarm to wake us, it was easy to imagine that happening. So I said, "You sleep, Brandy…I'll stay awake and keep watch."

"Are you sure?" she asked sleepily.

"Yes," I said, kissing her forehead as she curled up to me, "We have to get up and get out of here in about three hours anyway, so you rest…I'll stay up."

She mumbled something, and in seconds she was asleep.

I thought I would have a hard time staying awake, but I didn't. I spent some time replaying the events of the day in my head, looking for any important information I may have missed. I spent some time feeling Brandy's wonderful, naked body at the places it touched mine. I spent some time trying to remember the terrain and the trip in to decide where to go in the morning. And I spent a lot of time just amazed to be here, to have just made love to the girl I'd been in puppy love with since 9th grade. I could have actually used more time to think, but a faint red light started to appear over the horizon. I shook Brandy awake and fumbled for my clothes. As soon as the red light over the horizon gave us enough light to see—long before actual sunrise—we packed up and hit the road.

We walked due north along the old road, checking the cell phone for signal every half-hour or so. At 10:00 in the morning—after walking for four hours—there was one hopeful little bar on the screen. I dialed 9-1-1, but whatever little burg this was connected to didn't have 9-1-1 service so I dialed zero. Of course I didn't speak very much Spanish, and between the lack of sleep and stress of the moment I couldn't remember the word for help. I kept saying "Help…I need help."

Eventually I was transferred to an English-speaking operator, who at least understood what help meant. But the first question of course was "where are you?" and I could only explain that we were stranded on some old road about 15 miles south of Tijuana and three miles east of the ocean. The operator patched me through to a local police department somewhere in the Baja, but again the first dispatcher only spoke Spanish. I waited five agonizing minutes for them to locate someone who could speak English. Finally on the other end of the line I heard "Hello? How can we help you?"

"Well, you may find this hard to believe," I blurted, "but yesterday we were on the beach when four men with guns drove up in two jeeps. Ten girls we were with were forced into a rented van and taken somewhere. My one friend and I were farther away and they didn't find us. We've been walking for almost a full day towards Tijuana looking for help…"

The voice on the line interrupted: "Is this Will and Brandy?" My jaw dropped open; how did he know who I was?

"Yes, this is Will." I replied.

Brandy, listening, thought this an odd thing to say and asked "What did they say?"

"Wonderful! We've been looking for you—we were afraid the banditos got to you" the voice said. He asked me to describe again where I was; when I described the abandoned gas station, he suddenly understood. "We'll send a squad for you right away," he said.

"You've…you've been looking for us?" I asked bewildered.

"Yes…your friends in the van, they were rescued yesterday, and they told us there were still two more of people out there, but we could not find you," the voice said.

"So they're all safe?" I asked, nodding for Brandy's sake.

"Si, they are spending the night at a hotel in Tijuana while their van gets fixed," said the voice.

"By the way, the gas station isn't abandoned—there's a generator hidden in the garage and the banditos are using it as a refueling station." The police were very interested and told them how I knew this. I explained about our sleeping on the roof and the two gunmen. By the time I was finishing up relaying that story, we could hear a siren in the distance. Brandy saw the car before I did, and started jumping up and down and waving. The police car stopped and we got in. Brandy was relieved; as many weird things as had happened this trip, I was half-expecting this to be a fake cop and that we had just walked into a trap. But this time that turned out to be just paranoia; the police took us all the way to the border, where the rest of the girls were waiting for us.

We all piled in to the van; as we waited in line at the border crossing, the girls told us what had happened to them. They had been marched up to the van and ordered to sit in it, but the gunmen didn't take the time to search if first. Two of the gunmen then got in the front seats of the van; one drove while the other kept his eye on the girls in the back. As they sat in the back, one of the girls remembered that she had left her cellular PDA in the van rather than taking it down to the beach because it would have been much more expensive to replace than a phone were it to get damaged. The gunmen had stolen as many cell phones as there were girls, so they naturally assumed that they had taken each girl's phone and they wouldn't have any way of communicating their plight to the outside world. They had no way to know that one of the cell phones they held was Brandy's.

As unobtrusively as possible she found her bag and retrieved her device. On cue they all made a lot of noise to cover the sound of the device powering up, until the gunman gruffly ordered "Silencio." With her teammates sitting in front of her to block the gunman's view, she watched for the device to pick up a signal, and a few miles east of the road we had take in from Tijuana she picked one up. She immediately started texting everyone in her address book that she and her friends were captives in a rented van in Mexico, and their approximate location and license number. She urged them to do whatever they could to contact proper authorities in Mexico. It helped that she was a practiced texter, able to type her messages without looking; peering down would have drawn attention to what she was doing.

Her urgent distress texts were quickly forwarded across networks of friends and relayed to IM networks. Within ten minutes it reached a user in Mexico, who proceeded to call Baja police and explain, in Spanish of course, what he knew may or may not be going on. Another user thought to call the border patrol, which had a helicopter already in the air looking for illegal entrants. They swung south, and saw the caravan of two jeeps and a white rental van heading east; they then contacted the Mexican authorities to cooperate, as often they did, in apprehending the van. The previously skeptical Baja police now jumped into action, and thanks to funding from the US border patrol, they were well-equipped to stop escaping vehicles. They guessed the caravan's route and destination and sent out patrols to put tire-puncturing strips on the highway. The gunmen were getting nervous, what with the helicopter now shadowing them; the two jeeps turned off the main road and into the brush, but the staid van wouldn't have made it 500 feet in the rough desert sand and was forced to remain on the road. Now alone, the van headed straight for one of the roadblocks; up went the spikes, puncturing all four tires, and the van started to slow. With a helicopter and now multiple units responding, the men realized the gig was up. They ground to a stop and came out with their hands up even before being ordered to do so; rescue accomplished.

The girls now told the authorities that there were two other people that hadn't been abducted, but with the van now undrivable, they couldn't come back for us themselves. The police said they would send a squad to look for us, but with the excitement over, if it ever happened at all it was long after we had left. The border patrol was nice enough to send one of the paddy wagons it used to bring illegal border-crossers back to Mexico to pick up the girls and take them to Tijuana, while a eventually a tow truck came for the van. The border guards told the girls how lucky they had been; most likely, they would have ended up as prostitutes somewhere in South America—after the gunmen had tested out the merchandise sufficiently for themselves, of course.

The girls spent the night in a cockroach-infested Tijuana hotel until they could get their van, with four new tires, the next morning. They wanted to drive back to the beach to look for us, but were strongly discouraged from doing so by the police. They hung out at the police station agonizing about what to do until our call came in to the call center; relieved, they went to the border to wait for us there.

Although our flight wasn't for until late that night, nobody felt like doing anything after our ordeal. We returned the van, went back to our rooms, packed, checked out, and just sat around the airport glumly until our flight. I was so tired, I slept on a hard couch in the airport all afternoon; Brandy rested her head on my shoulder and slept with me.

We were lucky that the party that went disastrous wrong hadn't turned into a tragedy—but even so, it turned out to be very expensive. Ten girls needed new cell phones because theirs were not recovered. We had to pay for four new tires for the van, plus a penalty for not having brought it back on the day we promised. The girls had to pay for hotel rooms in Tijuana with money that was wired to them from home. All of them were cleaned out of any cash, credit cards, IDs, bank cards, and even student IDs, which took significant time and money to replace. And all of the girls that hadn't graduated had to sit out rotating two-match suspensions the following season for breaking team rules. In most cases they probably would have been kicked off the team and lost their scholarships for what they did, but the athletic director decided there were extenuating circumstances—their coach had shirked his responsibilities by leaving us in San Diego unsupervised. Not only that, but the whole team was involved, and if all of them had been kicked off the team, they wouldn't have had enough players to play their schedule and would have had to forfeit their entire whole season.

But the steepest price of all had yet to paid—Brandy just didn't know it yet.