“Paw . . . paw . . . it,” he managed to mutter. “Paw . . . it.”
“
Paw it
? What does that mean? Theo? What’s
paw it
?”
But this time there was no reply.
The bastard died before he could finish his final message.
ON the eastern side of the island, far from the plantation house and the western dock, lay a small inlet, filled with warm water from the nearby gulf. At first glance, it seemed like an impassable marsh. Bald cypress trees clogged the waterway in sporadic groves. Jagged stumps and fallen timber, remnants of Hurricane Katrina, rose from the water like icebergs, waiting to shred any boat that dared to float by. But appearances were sometimes misleading. In this case, the water wasn’t impassable. It was actually a path to freedom.
“Where the hell are we going?” Greene screamed from the back of the truck. “There’s nothing back here but swamp-land.”
Holmes answered cryptically. “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”
“So why are we going here?”
“You’ll see soon enough.”
Greene didn’t like the sound of that, but he realized he didn’t have much choice. Holmes was currently in control of the situation, and he was just along for the ride. “Fine, but keep something in mind. I’m armed.”
“I know that, Levon. And so do Theo and Harris.”
Greene grinned as he thought about his two fallen partners, but his smile turned to a grimace when he felt the truck slowing. “Why are we stopping?”
“I want to show you something,” he said through the back window. “But before I do, I think you and I need to reach some kind of an understanding.”
Greene instinctively raised his gun. “The ball’s in your court, huckleberry. Just make your move, and we can dance.”
“I’m not talking about violence. I’m talking about our partnership. If we’re going to stick together, we need to discuss what each of us is able to contribute.”
“Contribute? What exactly does that mean?”
Holmes got out of the truck to explain. “For this to work, each of us has to contribute something of value. I, for instance, am going to get us off of this island and out of the country. Once we get to Africa, I’ll be able to provide us with a wide network of contacts that will set us up with fake identities and a place to stay.” He paused for a few seconds to let Greene absorb all of the information. “What about you?”
“Me? What the hell
can
I contribute? All my money is tied up in my house and this place, and I’m gonna have to abandon both of them.”
“True, but you’ll be able to get some of your cash back.”
Greene grimaced. “How do you figure?”
“You never did anything illegal in your house, did you?”
“No.”
“Then the FBI won’t be able to take it. When Payne and Jones tell them that you were involved, they’ll be able to search your house, but they won’t be able to seize it. A year from now you’ll be able to sell it through a local Realtor and have all of the money wired overseas. Several million, if I’m not mistaken.”
Greene hadn’t thought of that, and the realization that he still had some assets made him happy. “But this investment is down the tubes, right?”
“Not necessarily. If you play your cards right, you might be able to collect insurance money.”
“Insurance money? For what? The burned log cabin? My deductible is more than that thing was worth.”
Holmes shook his head. He’d planned for this contingency from day one. “I’m not talking about the cabin. I’m talking about the entire house. You’ll be able to collect on that.”
Greene raised his eyebrows. “How do you figure? With the exception of a bullet hole or two, that place is in great shape.”
“If you want an explanation, just follow me.” Holmes walked into a grove of trees and removed a small metal box from underneath an azalea. “Take a look inside. It’ll answer most of your insurance questions.”
Greene held the box with childlike fascination. He couldn’t imagine what Holmes had stored so far away from the house in a tiny crate. “Actually, I’m not really in a trusting mood.” He laughed. “Why don’t you open it?”
Holmes grabbed the box and pulled out a small radio transmitter, one that was commonly used for mining detonations. “Think about it, Levon. We wore masks the entire time we were here, but we didn’t always wear gloves. Our fingerprints are all over that house. If we don’t do something about it, the FBI will be able to gather enough evidence to put us at the top of their hit list.” He shook his head decisively. “And there’s no way I’m gonna let that happen.”
“But won’t it happen anyway? With Payne, Jones, and Blount still alive, won’t they be able to tell the FBI everything?”
“Yeah, but without physical evidence, there’s no way they’ll be able to convince an African government to extradite us. At least that’s what Harris told me. He said the testimony of witnesses won’t mean dick in a situation like that. Plus, if you follow all of the safeguards that I’m going to teach you, the American government won’t even know where we are. We’ll disappear from their radar forever.”
Greene smiled. He liked the sound of that. “What about the money? Won’t they find me when I try to collect on my house?”
“Not a chance. Theo set up a number of offshore accounts using the names of bogus corporations. If you use them to filter all of the funds, the FBI won’t be able to touch you.”
“Are you sure? That sounds risky, especially without Theo to walk me through it.”
“Hey, it’s your money, not mine. But if I were in your shoes, I’d try to collect every cent that I could. If you don’t, you’re gonna be forced to work for the rest of your life.”
Greene grimaced at the thought. He was accustomed to a life of luxury and didn’t relish the thought of returning to the workforce-especially the one in Africa.
“Either way,” Holmes continued, “I’m blowing this joint up. The explosives are set, and I can do it with a touch of a button.”
“Bullshit,” Greene growled. “I paid for it, so
I
get to blow it up. At least I’ll get some enjoyment out of this place.”
Holmes smiled. He was glad Greene wasn’t going to fight him on this. “Good! You can do it in a minute, but before you do you still need to answer my earlier question. I need to know what you’re gonna contribute to this partnership.”
Greene rolled his eyes. “You’re obviously looking for something, so just tell me. What do you need from me? Money?”
Holmes nodded. “I was expecting us to make millions off the current batch of slaves.” He turned back toward the truck and pointed to Ariane and Susan. “Now we’re down to two. Granted, they’re exceptional and will get top dollar, but it won’t be enough to live on for the rest of my life. That’s why I want some guarantees from you, right here, right now.”
“Octavian, if you expect me to give you millions, you can fuck off. But if we’re talking about a reasonable settlement for getting me to safety, then there’s no problem. We’re good.”
Holmes extended his hand, and Greene shook it eagerly.
“There is one thing, though, that confuses me. As far as I can tell, we still have almost a dozen slaves left in storage. Why don’t we take them with us? It would net us a lot of cash.”
Holmes signaled for Greene to follow him again, and he did so willingly. The two men walked ten feet farther into the woods, where Greene saw their getaway vehicle buried under some brush. It was a hydroplane, capable of seating no more than four people at one time.
“If we had a way to transport them, I’d be all for it. But at this point, we’ll have to settle for what we have. My boat for escape and your money to live on.”
CHAPTER 53
SEVERAL
minutes passed before Blount and Jones returned to the house with three ATVs
. Blount drove his unattached while Jones lagged behind, towing the third one.
“What took you guys so long?” Payne asked. “I thought maybe you ran into trouble.”
Jones shook his head. “It just took a while to figure out a towing system.”
“Well, while you were busy playing engineer, I was stuck here talking to Webster. You should’ve told me he was still alive before you left.”
Blount and Jones exchanged glances, then looked at the dead body near the porch. Webster was lying in the same position as before. “Jon, are you feeling all right? You took a blow to the head. I think you might be hallucinating.”
Payne denied the suggestion. “I’m fine, D.J. My arm hurts, but my head’s fine.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yes!”
“And he talked back?”
“Yes! He was alive, for God’s sake. I swear!”
“You know,” Blount admitted, “we never checked. I think both of us just assumed that he was dead.”
“He wasn’t dead,” Payne insisted. “I’m telling you, he was alive.”
Jones removed the towing cable while he considered Payne’s statement. “So, what did Lazarus have to say? Is the light as bright as they claim?”
Payne ignored the sarcasm and answered the first question. “That’s the strange part. He kept repeating the same thing over and over, but it didn’t make any sense.”
Intrigued, Blount spoke. “Maybe it will make sense to me. What did he say?”
Payne frowned as he thought back on the urgency of Webster’s statement. “
Paw it
. He kept repeating the phrase
paw it
. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not off the top of my head, but give me a second.”
“Are you sure he didn’t say
Rosebud
?” Jones joked, recalling the mysterious word whispered in the famous death scene of the movie
Citizen Kane
. “Maybe
Paw It
was the name of his sled.”
“I doubt it,” Blount countered. “Louisiana isn’t known for its snow. Heck, I can’t even remember the last time I had to put my hands in my pockets, let alone a pair of gloves.”
Blount’s statement triggered a smile on Payne’s face. In a moment’s time, he had gone from confused to enlightened, and all because of Bennie. “I’ll be damned! I think I got it.”
“Got what?” Jones questioned.
“The point of the message! I bet Webster was trying to say
pocket
but couldn’t pronounce it! I bet he has something in his pocket that he wanted me to see!”
Blount was the closest to the body, so he reached into the dead man’s clothes, looking for anything of value. Even though it was soaked with blood and tattered with holes, he probed the garment for clues, trying to avoid the liquid that saturated it.
“Nope,” he said. “Nothing.”
“If you want to be completely thorough,” Payne added, “check to see if he’s wearing an undershirt with a pocket. He might’ve kept something there for safekeeping.”
Blount slowly unbuttoned Webster’s dress shirt, pulling back the blood-soaked garment like he was peeling a bright red apple. Once he exposed the undershirt, he placed his hand on the pocket and felt for anything of value. “I think there’s something in here!” With newfound excitement, Blount reached into the pocket’s inner lining and removed a portable hard drive, which was two inches long and a half inch wide. “I’ll be damned! You were right! He wanted you to go into his pocket.”
Jones, who’d just finished his work on Payne’s ATV, rushed over to Blount’s side. He was eager to see what had been found.
Blount stared at the object in the dim light. A look of absolute joy engulfed his face. “It’s his computer drive. One day I overheard him talking about it. I walked into his office while he was on the speakerphone. He said if anything ever happened to him, he wanted the guy on the phone to search through his belongings and look for his travel drive.” Blount showed it to Payne and Jones. “He said the drive would contain financial records that were crucial to their business.”
Blount stared at the drive for a few more seconds then handed it to Jones. “The other guy, whoever he was, asked him what type of records he was referring to, but Theo assured him that the information would only be important if he died.”
Jones studied it, making sure that the blood from Webster’s wounds hadn’t seeped inside. “Well, if Bennie’s right, then we hit the jackpot, because one of these drives can hold a couple gigabytes of information. There’s no telling what we might get from it.”
Payne smiled, finally understanding the significance of the find. If they were lucky, they had just acquired the evidence they needed to nail anyone who was associated with the Posse. Holmes, Greene, Jackson, Terrell Murray, and the slave buyers themselves.
All of them could be linked to the crimes of the Plantation through Webster’s data.
AS he drove the truck across the island, Octavian Holmes shook his head at his own stupidity. He couldn’t believe that Greene had convinced him to trade passengers for their journey to freedom. They already had enough money to live on for the rest of their lives. If they had left the Plantation immediately, they would have escaped from the island. So why take the chance of getting caught? To him, it just didn’t make any sense.
But Greene was passionate about it. In fact, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “I’m not leaving this place without
my
prisoner,” he had said. “Without him, I’m not giving you a cent.”
And that had done it. Holmes’s greed had taken control of his common sense and convinced him to switch Susan for Nathan. He was threatening his own life, his freedom, everything, for some extra cash. Holmes shook his head repeatedly, thinking of the mistake he was making.
“You’re a greedy bastard!” he said to himself.
As he pulled his truck to a screeching halt, Holmes studied the concrete shed in front of him. It appeared to be in the same condition that he’d left it in. The door was still locked from the outside, the ground was unblemished with fresh footprints, and Ndjai’s dog could be heard patrolling inside. Just like it should be.
The sound of Susan’s whimpering and Holmes’s jingling keys caused the dog to erupt with even more ferocity than before. The barking, which had been relatively restrained, was replaced by bloodthirsty howls as the canine flung itself against the door in an attempt to strike. Time after time, the creature repeated the process, hoping to quench its cravings with a savage battle, trying to get at the intruder before he had a chance to step inside.
The dog’s effort made Holmes smile.
“Hey, Tornado, it’s your Uncle O. How are ya doing?” The Ibizan hound, which had been bred with a larger breed in order to increase its size and strength, responded quickly, going from a ferocious killer to a friendly pet in less than a second. “That’s a good boy. Your daddy trained you well, didn’t he?”
Holmes cracked the door slightly, allowing Tornado to smell his hand.
The inside of the structure was filled with darkness and the overwhelming stench of imprisonment, created by the bodily functions of eleven terrified prisoners. There weren’t windows, vents, or toilets, which meant the unsanitary conditions were bound to get worse as the hours passed. The majority of the room was enclosed by a large cage, made from thick barbed wire and massive wooden posts, that had been placed there for two reasons: to keep the slaves from the exit and to keep Tornado away from the slaves.
Before he stepped into the room, Holmes grabbed a flashlight from above the door and shined the light into the huddled group of prisoners. He moved the beam from slave to slave, studying the dirty faces until he saw the man he was looking for. The chosen one.
Nathan was standing in the back corner of the room, far from the others, his face covered in layers of coarse facial
hair. If it wasn’t for the prisoner’s 6’5” frame, Holmes never would’ve recognized him. He was a shell of his former self. His body weight had dropped by at least fifty pounds in the preceding weeks, and his face was haggard. But his failing health was easily explained. He had arrived long before the current crop of slaves and had spent most of his time within the sadistic world of the Devil’s Box. It had taken longer than anyone had expected, but the harsh treatment had eventually broken him.
One look into his eyes revealed it. Nathan was no longer the same man.
The peculiar thing, though, was the reason that they had brought him to the Plantation. He wasn’t kidnapped because of his ancestry or his race. He was there to fulfill one man’s obsession with revenge, nothing more, and as long as the Plantation continued to flourish, his imprisonment would never end.
And thanks to Levon Greene’s orders, Nathan had never been told why.
CHAPTER 54
EVEN
though he had a hole in his left biceps the size of a quarter, Payne wasn’t about to give up. If he was going to rescue Ariane, he knew he had to endure whatever physical pain he was feeling. He simply had to, for he realized the agony in his arm could never approach the sorrow he would feel if he lost Ariane forever.
The body mends quickly. The mind and heart do not.
“Bennie,” Payne groaned over the roar of his motor, “where do you think they took her?”
Blount started his ATV, the lead vehicle in the pack, then answered. “One day when I was exploring the island, I found a boat hidden in the weeds. I’m not sure if the Posse put it there, but I think there’s a chance they did. It was in pretty good shape.”
Jones started the middle Yamaha, completing the thundering chorus of engines. “That sounds like a good place to start.”
With a twist of their accelerators, the three machines sprang into action, tearing up the soft ground in long strips and tossing it high into the air. After getting accustomed to his controls, Payne increased his speed until he was nearly even with Blount, choosing a position near Bennie’s right shoulder. Jones, on the other hand, swung wide and settled on the opposite side, hoping to protect Blount from any outside threats.
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