The dust storm on the horizon grew bigger each minute, swallowing up more of the earth and sky. It came from the north, rushing forwards as a solid wall. Nothing could be seen within it or beyond it. There was no going around it at this point, no escaping it.

  It was a good thing Lauren and Rachel’s plan involved being in its exact center.

  Lauren sat crouched on the corner of the roof of the QwikPit gas station, facing the vast desert that sprawled around the town of Callis. She drummed her fingers on the black binoculars held in her grip. Hot, gritty wind blew in from the desert, being driven before the stampeding storm. She wanted to put on the goggles resting on her forehead and the bandana looped around her neck, but there was still scouting to be done until the last minute. And discussion to be had.

  “Jesus. Have you ever seen one that big?” Lauren asked her twin sister.

  Rachel wasn’t watching the storm. She was further towards the center of the roof, carefully going over her makeshift set of thieves' tools: screwdrivers, wire cutters, files, and more all stored in a simple mat. The fourteen-year-old had been collecting implements for years, ever since the girls had been left on their own.

  “They’ve been getting bigger every year,” Rachel replied. “The rest of the town’s already in lockdown. That’s what makes today perfect.”

  It was true. As the girls made their way from their nest to the roof of the gas station, Lauren noted how Callis had become a ghost town. Not that it was normally a lively place, but on that morning, no one was seen on the streets or even glimpsed through windows. Storefronts were shuttered or had makeshift barricades in front of the entrances. Vehicles were moved to covered locations wherever possible. Everyone was trying to minimize cleanup after it was all over.

  “Eyes on the depot. Do you see anyone?” Rachel ordered.

  Lauren raised the binoculars. Their target was an old vehicle storage site some 200 meters outside the borders of town. Supposedly, among the trucks kept there gathering rust and dust was a white van with something valuable inside. Something Tommy Lucenko would pay them well to steal, van and all. It was the kind of job the sisters had been waiting for for quite some time. Enough money to spend not just on food, but on breaking out of Callis entirely. Enough to get started on having a real life and helping Rachel.

  Only, something didn’t feel right to Lauren. It hadn’t felt right since Rachel had told her about Tommy’s job, and the feeling only grew since. Through the binoculars she couldn’t spot the van, and she also couldn’t spot any people. But it was a big lot with plenty of crevices and corners, and an entire two-story building attached. There could be any sort of danger inside.

  “I still don’t see anything,” Lauren reported. She looked back at her sister. “Are you sure about this? What’s even in this van?”

  “Tommy didn’t tell me,” Rachel grunted. She was serious, not like her usual mood. Lauren wondered how she was feeling inside today. “He doesn’t want some kids knowing what he’s moving. But he must know it’s something good, the amount he’s paying us.”

  Lauren was silent.

  Rachel looked up and made eye contact. “Hey. This is real simple. We take it during the storm. Even if people are in there, they aren’t gonna be patrolling the yard. No cameras are gonna see us through the dust. No cops on the streets. All we have to do is haul it down to Greene Street and park it in one of Tommy’s garages.” She rolled up her tools. “Then we’re out of here.”

  Rachel crawled over to join Lauren at the roof’s edge.

  “He’s paying us a lot. That makes this feel dangerous,” Lauren said.

  Rachel shrugged. “You know Tommy. He’s just giving us that kickstart money he always said he would when we’re old enough. He may be a cheating, lying, gambling, smuggling, drug-pushing, porn-making piece of shit slumlord, but he’s always looked out for us.”

  Lauren smiled at her sister’s brutally honest description. Rachel smiled back. Some of her personality was shining through, even on a day like this. But up close, Lauren could see she wasn’t doing so hot; the bags under Rachel’s eyes were dark, and her skin was pale and waxy. Her chin was trembling. It was a bad day for her physically. Rachel was doing her best to keep up appearances, but Lauren saw right through it. There was nothing they could hide from each other.

  “We should use the money to get you treatment,” Lauren said. “We don’t know how bad it’s getting. You haven’t gotten any tests, since...”

  The absence of their parents hung over them both. Rachel wiped her forehead and looked out over the desert.

  “We need to be somewhere with testing first. There’s no future for us here. This is it, Lauren. And once we’re somewhere, we use the rest of the money to get established, make more money. It’s gonna take a lot to solve our problems.” She reached out and squeezed Lauren’s arm. “But I’m not going anywhere yet. I promise.”

  Lauren nodded. They had been over this before. Still, Lauren’s overwhelming instinct was to beeline it to the doctor and dump all their wads of cash onto the front desk. But Rachel was right. She was always the practical one. The planner.

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  “Are you sure you’re good to drive?”

  “I’m fine,” Rachel insisted. “Besides, you’re shit at hotwiring. I’ll be in and out in a minute. Stay near the entrance and keep watch.”

  The air was becoming translucent, saturated with dust. The sun began to dim above.

  “It’s time,” Rachel said. “Mask up. Let’s do this.”

  They put their bandanas up over their noses, securing them with goggles overlapping. Rachel led the way shimmying down the drainpipe on the side of the building a few feet, then dropping onto asphalt.

  Lauren followed her sister quickly behind. Losing pace at all could mean getting separated and losing the job. In just a few blinks, her surroundings went from translucent to opaque.

  As they traveled away from town and towards the depot, Lauren was sure each second that they were in the deepest part of the dust storm. Each second she was proven wrong, as the air thickened further and stole the breath from her lungs. She coughed into her bandana and pushed onwards. She could only imagine how Rachel was struggling. The wind howled in her ears, the world outside deafened. She only had Rachel’s back to follow, hoping she knew where to go. The trek felt like an eternity of wandering.

  Finally, Rachel stopped ahead. The wire fence before them jolted back and forth. The barbed wire atop it blew back towards the lot like a bad wig. That should make things a bit easier.

  Rachel gripped the fence. Before she could climb, Lauren grabbed her shoulder and stopped her.

  “I don’t think I’ll be doing much looking out!” Lauren yelled into her ear.

  Rachel pointed forwards. “The main gate is that way! Follow the fence until you find it. Wait for me there. I’m gonna crash through it. Get ready to hop in quick.”

  Lauren gave her a thumbs up.

  Rachel climbed the fence, then jumped past the wire and landed on her hands and feet on the other side.

  They split, Rachel heading into the lot through the maze of trucks, RVs, and other large vehicles while Lauren put her hand on the fence and walked forwards.

  The gate wasn’t hard to find. It was locked tight, meaning Lauren couldn’t pre-open it. She backed up and stood a good ways off to the side, not wanting to get flattened when Rachel came through.

  Moments stretched into minutes. The storm was relentless. Lauren tried to take shallow breaths. She also tried not to let panic boil over. Any second now, headlights would cut through the dust and the van would barrel past. Visibility was extremely low. Rachel probably had to be practically touching the van to find it. Then jimmy the lock if it was locked, then hotwire it, then not crash it. It was a process that took time. But this much time? Lauren’s bad feeling returned with a vengeance.

  She slowly counted to sixty in her head, hoping that each next second would be interrupted. But she reached sixty, still with no sign. This was officially taking too much fucking time. If she got lost in the lot when Rachel was ready to leave, then Lauren would have screwed the entire job. But Rachel wasn’t returning for a reason.

  Lauren grabbed the fence and climbed it. Avoiding the shaking barbed wire was harder than it looked. A piece of it snagged Lauren’s jacket as she fell. Luckily, it barely scraped her skin. She landed on a foot and a knee. She grunted as she stood and leaned on the nearest truck.

  Visibility increased slightly as a lighter pocket of air blew through. It would help Lauren search, but it would also cause her to be seen easier. She stuck close to each vehicle as she stumbled down the row on the lookout.

  There were white vehicles, and vans, but no white vans by the time she was halfway down the first row of the lot. And no sister. No anything, not even cameras attached to the posts she passed. Something was way too quiet about this place.

  Then, she spotted it: the front of a white van, in between two larger trucks across the main throughway of the lot. Rachel had to have seen it by now. So what was she doing? Checking what was in the back?

  Lauren limped across the drive and peered into the space between the van and the truck beside it. No one there, but through the wind she thought she could hear some kind of commotion from around the back. She crept forward, wishing she had remembered to grab her pocketknife that morning.

  There was a muffled scraping sound near the ground at the back of the van. Lauren turned the corner.

  A man was standing there, easily over six feet tall and bulky. He wore simple grey clothing and dark sunglasses wrapped around his bald head. At his feet was Rachel. She was hogtied, with duct tape over her mouth. She looked up at Lauren and began screaming in her throat.

  Lauren immediately turned and ran the way she came, not waiting for the man to lunge at her.

  Her knee ached, but she sprinted towards the opening out of the narrow space, back towards her path to the fence. She nearly ran directly into the chest of another large man who came around to block her path. He was dressed almost identically to the first.

  Lauren skidded to a stop. With both of her exits blocked, she dropped to the ground and rolled under the truck.

  Fuck, fuck, she thought as she scrambled to make it to the other side. The storm was lessening, but still plenty obscuring. All she had to do was make it over the fence and they’d never find her in Callis. She’d find Tommy. This was his situation to unfuck. He owned guns and he had friends who owned guns. Lauren would make him get Rachel back. She just had to escape first. Why the fuck were there people waiting to kidnap them?

  She thrust out from the other side of the truck and launched to her feet, bouncing off the next vehicle in the row and racing out of the corridor. No one was blocking her in yet, thankfully. It must’ve just been those two guys. She skidded as she turned around the vehicle and raced to the fence.

  It appeared through the smog. Fifteen feet, then ten. She braced to make a running leap to it. If the men were behind her, they moved quietly.

  Five feet from the fence. Almost close enough to touch.

  Just as she was about to reach out to it, something slammed into her side and jolted every bone in her body. She cratered into the gravel. Bits of it clung in stinging bunches to her forehead.

  The air knocked out of her, all Lauren could do was roll onto her back and cough.

  A third man appeared, standing over her. He was only a silhouette in the passing dust. He was smaller than the others, but clearly strong.

  “She almost got away, but I got her.”

  Whoever he was talking to, Lauren hadn’t the faintest clue. He wasn’t holding a phone.

  She coughed, her lungs aching.

  “I’ll bring her in.”

  The man knelt beside Lauren. His features became clear. He wasn’t old, but he had a sun-dried face. A black goatee surrounded his mouth. His hair was short and dark. He looked at Lauren with dark eyes, in a way that made Lauren feel like an animal in a trap. Her blood chilled in her veins as she breathed hard.

  “It’s okay. You can rest now. Your new life is about to begin.”