Warning!! There are explicit mentions of sexual and physical assault in this chapter.
"Miss Mae," Mae looked up from the Jeep. She was heading into town to ask some of her contacts if they've seen Tate or heard of anything strange. She couldn't sit back and do nothing, not when Tate's life is on the line. She didn't tell anyone her plan, especially not John, Rip, Ryan or Charlie. They would have forced her to stay. She knew that in the meeting her dad wants to have with her and her siblings, he'd make her sit back and do nothing. She wasn't going to do that.
"Morning Cowboy, how can I help you?"
"I just came to say goodbye, a good cowboy knows when it's time to leave an operation but I couldn't without greeting you."
"Hop in. I'll drop you off in town at the bus stop," Mae smiled sadly.
"Always such a kind soul," Cowboy smiled as he climbed into the Jeep with her.
"So Yellowstone isn't for you anymore , huh?"
"I'm not as young as I once was Miss Mae and in order to be of any help or even to survive on this operation, I would need to be able to shave off some twenty odd years."
"I'm going to miss you, you know? I didn't think that I would ever see you again after Texas but somehow our paths crossed and I couldn't be more thankful. You saved my life back then and I never got to thank you properly so I hope you'd still be willing to accept one," Mae smiled sadly at the old man. She didn't want him to go but she knew, just like he now knew that Yellowstone wasn't for the faint of heart.
"No apology needed, Miss Mae. I can now see why you are as strong as you are. Anybody who grew up on that operation needed to be. It tests you every single day, trying to break you. I just hope that you never break."
"It does feel like that sometimes but in the end it always will be ho-," before Mae could finish her sentence a loud crash was heard as they were run off the road. Mae screamed and tried to get back control of the car but it was no use, it landed on it's head, in one of her father's fields.
She could make out men shouting at each other and a gunshot going off but her ears were ringing and vision blurry from the crash. Hands grabbed at her and she weakly tried to fight them off.
A sinister laugh cut through the ringing in Mae's ears, one she knows well enough by now, Malcolm Beck.
"Now we've got both of John's most prized possessions. Take her to the house, let the boys blow off some steam with her but don't let them hurt her too much. We already called him and he's coming down to claim her. It's going to be real entertaining when they reunite, she thought she could get away from him but that sick son of a bitch always gets what he wants and he's been fucking obsessing over her for years."
xxx
John asked all of his children to meet him in his office to discuss their next move. He noticed all of them there except for his youngest.
"Where's Mae?"
"Last I saw she was giving Evie her bottle in the nursery, giving Charlie some more time to sleep," Beth replied and John nodded. It was odd that she wasn't here but they could just fill her in later.
"What do we do?," Jamie asked.
"Firstly I need you and Mae completely clean of this, Beth."
"No one's clean of this," Beth replied.
"You can't know what we do, Honey. Tate's gotta come home to something. Give me this, please?," John couldn't protect his daughters before but he sure as well won't let anything else happen to them.
"I guess I'll go to tell Mae then," Beth sighed as she gave into her father's request and left the room.
"What he's doing is irrational, he's not considering consequences, maybe it's from arrogance?," Jamie tried to profile Malcolm Beck, trying to find a reason why he would kidnap an innocent child.
"Why does it matter?," John asked, "This is going to be the end of us but we're going to do it anyway."
"We can't find Mae!," Beth, Monica and Charlie carrying Evie ran into the office.
"I thought you said she was feeding Evie?," Kayce asked confused.
"That was an hour ago, she's not in the house and she's not answering her phone," Charlie explained.
"Maybe she's with Ryan?," Monica offered and they all ran outside to check but what they saw was Ryan and Colby on their horses running towards the house with someone clinging to Ryan.
"Mae's gone!," Ryan shouted at them as he brought his horse to a halt and helped a seriously injured Cowboy off of his horse.
"What happened?," John demanded from Colby and Cowboy. They all could see that Ryan was barely keeping it together.
"Ryan and I thought it would be a good idea to run perimeter one more time, to make sure we didn't miss something last night that could help us find Tate. We heard a loud crash and went to see what happened only to find him shot in Mae's Jeep that had been run off the road but she wasn't there," Colby explained and everyone turned to Cowboy waiting for him to explain.
"This morning I went to her to tell her goodbye but she insisted on driving me to the bus station, on the way there we were run off the road. I heard a lot of voices and then I was shot in the shoulder. I blacked out just as they took her, I'm sorry I couldn't save her, not this time."
"You never should have agreed! You should have told one of us, she would still have been here!," Ryan shouted as he grabbed Cowboy by the shirt.
Kayce and Colby grabbed Ryan off of Cowboy, they could all see the tears threatening to fall from the guy's eyes.
"We're going to find her son, we're going to find both of them but we need all hands on deck here, do you hear me? She needs you to remain calm," John told Ryan and the guy took a couple of deep breaths as he tried to do what John said.
They heard a truck pull up and John saw that it was the Sheriff.
"Jamie, Colby go tell Rip what happened, the rest of you try to calm him down," John ordered.
"Believe me now?," John asked as he approached Donnie.
"Now what?," the sheriff asked.
"Now you choose sides."
"They got me in a real fucking corner here, John," Donnie scoffed.
"I understand, Donnie, but they have my grandson and my daughter!"
Donnie's eyes flickered to Beth standing there and realisation struck him: "They have Mae too?!"
"Yes they grabbed her an hour ago, ran her and one of my dayworkers off of the road and shot him," John explained.
"Look I can't clean this up. How do we hide this?," John couldn't believe that he cared more about his own reputation than the lives of the two most innocent people in Bozeman but he sure as hell will use the sheriff's fear to his own advantage.
"Trust me every step of the way," John replied.
"They're never going to tell you where-" John cut off Donnie's sentence: "Yes, they will."
"There's no hiding this!," Donnie hissed.
"This isn't about what you have to hide. How long can you keep it quiet?"
"A day tops," Donnie shrugged.
"What kind of security do the Becks have?," John asked.
"These off duty officers from the department," Donnie replied.
"Are those officers your friends?," John asked.
"They're my cousins."
"Have them stand down," John replied.
"John I gotta-"
"Donnie, I- I don't have time to play this game with you. Donnie, have them stand down!"
"Alright, alright, okay. If you're going to do this, John, you've got to do this right. You've got to make it about cattle and you've got to get a warrant. It's the only way you can control the narrative here."
John nodded his head in agreement: "I know."
xxx
Mae woke up as she was roughly pulled out of the car and the bag was ripped off of her head.
"Welcome to hell pretty girl. We're going to take good care of you," she felt the guy behind her sneer as she's lead into the house.
She couldn't keep the disgust and fear off of her face as she took in the Nazi and white supremacy signage covering the walls. All the men had visible swastika tattoos but what scared her the absolute most was her nephew, her sweet little innocent nephew Tate being changed around the neck like a dog and forced to crawl on his hands and feet while the men kicked and spat on him. They called him racial slurs and a half breed waste of space.
"Tate!," Mae tried to rush forward, towards her nephew but the guy grabbed her by her hair and pulled her down to the ground.
"Aunty Mae!," Tate called but Mae could hear how hoarse his voice is, how painful it must have been. He tried to fight them but one of the guys delivered a swift kick to his ribs. "Shut the fuck up bitch boy," he growled.
"Let him go! Do whatever you want with me, just please let him go!," Mae screamed as she tried to fight her way towards Tate. He was screaming and crying, trying to fight his way to his aunt.
"Do it! Maybe then it'll get them to shut up," the guy that had a hold of Mae's hair shouted.
"You're going to sit and watch," he whispered menacingly in her ear as he pulled her down onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her to force her to sit still.
One man held Tate down, while another took a hair clipper to his hair. Mae watched in horror as they cut off his hair. That was one of the ultimate signs of disrespect towards an Indian. Tate's hair meant so much to him and to his culture. She watched as they shaved his head, not caring if they nicked his ear or his scalp.
"Stop! Please, stop," Mae begged as she cried for her nephew.
"He's a half breed piece of shit and an Arian beauty like yourself shouldn't care about him. You're family's a disgrace for allowing your brother to soil such a perfect lineage. I think it's about time we correct it," the man started laughing as another one approached and ripped open Mae's shirt.
"Not in front of him, please not in front of him," Mae begged as she couldn't tear her eyes away from Tate's terror-stricken ones.
"Oh but shouldn't he get to see what a bitch in heat his beloved Aunty is? How good she will look being used by real men? Being treated as the whore she is meant to be?," the guy asked as one of his hands opened the buttons on Mae's jeans.
"No! Don't touch her! Leave her alone!," Tate screamed as he fought to get to his aunt despite the numerous blows being aimed at him.
"Stop! Stop! Just take him out of the room and stop hurting him then you can do whatever the hell you want to me! Please, please just stop hurting him!"
"Now that sounds like a deal. Lock the brat in the bathroom and lets have some fun boys!"
Mae tried to drown out Tate's screams in protest as they lock him away. She felt cold metal around her neck as they placed a dog collar that's chained to the ground on her neck. She couldn't believe this was her life right now.
"If you try and fight or hurt us in anyway, we'll just go and use the boy. You're not the only one with holes little girl," Mae closed her eyes and let the tears fall as she felt them strip her. She kept repeating to herself that it was to protect Tate, for him she would do anything.
"Remember good girls don't use their teeth."
xxx
It had been three days since Tate was taken and two since Mae. Mae hasn't been dressed since they first started using her but she knew that as long as they were busy with her, sleeping or eating, they were leaving Tate alone and that was all she could hope for.
The few times she passed out, she would dream of being with Ryan, in their own home cuddled up to each other. He would tell his terrible jokes that always somehow made her laugh. It was relief and torture all in one. It made her wish that they would find them, sooner rather than later but at the same time she didn't want Ryan or her family to see her like this. She knew Ryan wouldn't leave her over this but that little voice haunted her, it kept telling her that she wasn't worth him anymore, she was dirty and ruined. She was already a broken person before but now she was a complete and utter unlovable train wreck that nobody could ever want. That voice kept telling her that her family would hate her as well. A Dutton not strong enough to fight? A Dutton being used like this, what a disgrace she was.
Mae could hear shots ring out and people yelling. The door to the room she was kept in was kicked open and she screamed as she saw four men standing there, she couldn't even recognise the Sheriff.
"Ryan!," she heard them call and someone ran in.
"Darlin', hey, it's me. It's Ryan!," he called out, hoping she would stop screaming. It took a while but eventually the face registered in her brain and she completely broke down.
"R-Ry-Ryan," she sobbed as she started tugging at the chain around her neck. She was in such a panic to get the fucking thing off that she couldn't comprehend that she was only choking herself further.
Ryan quickly took it off of her and took off his jacket to place it around her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around him and sobbed into his arms as he picked her up.
"Is Tate okay? Where's Tate?!," Mae shouted as she ripped herself from Ryan, not caring about the pain she felt.
"Aunty Mae!," Mae sighed in relief as the little boy pulled himself free from Kayce and ran towards her. She fell to her knees and sobbed with him.
It took a lot of coaxing from Kayce and Ryan but eventually they got the two into the back of the SUV. Mae and Tate held onto each other the whole time, each needing to feel that the other was safe, that this wasn't a hopeful dream.
Ryan couldn't stop himself from looking back at the two of them through the mirror. They were safe, she was safe, he had to remind himself of that.