“Holy shit!” George exclaimed as he glanced at the money and then stuffed it in his pocket. “Yeah, man, I can help. Be here at nine and we can get everything going.”
“Thanks, George. We might be up all night with this mission. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, sir, I can,” he said with excitement.
“See you at nine.”
“That guy seemed overly excited,” Nate commented as we returned to our van.
“He’ll do fine. I think he’s been waiting for some excitement in his life.”
“You think we can sneak up on his property with a giant Duck Tour boat, Jackson?”
“Like I said, he will do fine. The boat will do fine. Everything will be just fine as long as the women can keep their end of things going. We better get back to the monitors and make sure they aren’t beating each other up,” I said as we climbed back into the back of our van.
Luckily, from the Duck Boat Tours office we were still able to get reception on PJ’s video. But we would have to drive around to the other side of the island if we wanted to get to the road that led to the neighborhood. I was happy we had arranged to work with George because I was certain our signal wouldn’t hold out if we had to go that far on the other side of the island.
The women were all downstairs, and PJ was by herself as she walked around the area and looked into each of the rooms so we could see the layout. Although each bedroom had a window in it, when PJ walked up close, the windows appeared to be screwed shut. As far as I could tell, there were only two ways out of the basement. One was through a door to a back patio and the other was through stairs that let up to the main living area. There was a security guard at both those entrances.
“Do you think PJ could take those guys?” Nate asked as we watched PJ walk up near one of the guards.
“Well, if she can take them down and if she should are two different things. Those two guys both have guns and she doesn’t have any backup. None of those other women are going to know how to fight. We need her to wait until we can be in position to help out.”
“Tell me again why you didn’t want her to wear an earpiece?” Nate asked.
“Just because no one checked her for a wire doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have if we had given her some communications. This is what we have – don’t be an ass about it, just work with it.”
Nate liked to give me a hard time, but we had worked together in the military and he knew exactly why I had made the decisions I had so far. The brotherly side of him just insisted on trying to second guess me and make me look bad in front of Chase. But when all was said and done, we were going to work together and get those girls all out safely, including PJ and Roxanne.
“Roxy, give the girls their meds and then I’ll have dinner brought down to them. Get Ilsa in the shower and clean her up good for me,” Stephano bellowed into a speaker that was in the wall.
Through PJ’s glasses, we watched as Roxanne ran over to the speaker and pressed the button to respond.
“Pills again?” Roxanne asked.
I cringed at her questioning anything that Stephano was doing. It was not a good way to deal with a man like him. She should have just told him yes and then not give the girls pills or something like that.
“You take one, too. You’re getting a little too full of yourself, Roxy. And remember, I have cameras all over down there so I will see if you refuse.”
It didn’t surprise me that he would have surveillance surrounding the women, but I doubted he had very close observation of it. We had only seen two security guards come back with the girls and they were both downstairs. Unless Stephano was monitoring the screen all night long, we seemed to have a good opportunity for an escape.
My stomach churned as I watched Roxanne grab the bottle of pills and the girls come up to her to get theirs. It made me sick to watch them and I could hardly stand it. The girls already looked like they were zoned out, another pill was just going to make it that much harder for them to participate and help in their own escape.
As Roxanne and PJ took their pills, I watched in the mirror to see if I could tell if they cheeked the pill or not. PJ’s glasses were more focused on her own reflection and I was pretty sure she hadn’t swallowed the pill, but I couldn’t see Roxanne well enough through the camera to know if she had taken it or not.
Suddenly, one of the guards was in the bathroom with the women and pressed Roxanne up against the wall. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I thought it might have been the same guy who had strangled Roxanne the night behind the club.
“Don’t ever talk to him like that again,” he said as his arm
pressed against her windpipe.
PJ came up behind him and tried to pull him away from Roxanne, but he didn’t move. He kept his arm against her and I couldn’t look away. I was thankful that PJ was there so we could at least see what was going on, but I flashed back to the night I had found her being strangled and I worried that the guy was going to do the same thing again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Roxanne said as she kept her cool. Her voice was muffled and I saw tears in her eyes. Oh, how I wanted to be in that room at that moment. I would have killed that guy for sure.
“Do it again and I’ll shoot you myself,” he said and then turned to leave the room.
Chapter Twenty-Two