Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
“So, how did they come up with this place?”
“From reading through the shit they found on the computers. Apparently, this place is where they have their sick parties where they pass the kids around or some shit.”
The good thing is we’d found more kids that we didn’t know about, more than the ones that had been taken from the concerts, and had they not been herded together in this place, some mansion in the hills of Tuscany, we wouldn’t have known they existed. So, instead of seven or eight kids, there were fifteen.
“There’s only one problem with her little plan; where the hell are the perps?”
“She said she sent them somewhere.”
“I know that, but where?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. Said she wanted to run the Op herself. We just have to do the grunt work.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Before I could dig him a new asshole, there was static in my ear.
“We’re clear.” Logan’s voice came through the headpiece, and I spoke to him for the first time since we split up.
“Move them out.” I finally opened my eyes and looked at the screen on the wall, where I could see the end of the Op being carried out.
I didn’t need to see them breaking into the mansion and taking down the staff that had been tasked with watching over the terrified kids who no doubt feared that they were there to be used and abused as they had been for the sick pleasure of the assholes who had stolen their lives.
It was the anger of imagining that shit that had led me to order my squad to kill every adult on sight, which from the infrared images, I could see had been carried out. There were four bodies on the floor inside and two on the ground outside, deceased from the looks of it. All headshots are good.
“Copy!” Logan answered before signing off. Mancini and I had been guarding the perimeter from a van we’d parked out of sight at the bottom of the hill in case of any hiccups, but there were none, and the coast was clear. Since it was under cover of dark, there wasn’t much foot traffic, and things had gone as easily as possible.
Thorpe was waiting at a nearby airfield with part of his medical team who would take the rescued kids back to his place in the States to be looked after until it was time to send them back to their homes.
It’s not as simple as just taking them back home; sometimes, it takes months for those kids to be ready to face life and get over the trauma of what had been done to them. It’s a long, grueling process, but thankfully, we were equipped to handle it from beginning to end.
I wanted to wait at least until she became an adult to let my kid get involved in this mess. I’d long stopped hoping that she’d find an interest in something else and set a different course for her life, but I at least wanted her to have a few more years of innocence. But I’d forgotten how like her mother she is, how fucking stubborn and set in her ways.
Mancini’s computer dinged, and he switched gears. “What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. It’s from Catalina. She’s sending live feed.” He sounded way too excited as he pulled up something on the screen on the wall, which he switched to picture in picture mode.
“What the fuck is that?” The scene came in a bit cloudy at first, but once it cleared, there was an image of a yacht in the middle of the ocean. Mancini tapped some keys, and the words Seychelles with the coordinates appeared.
“What the hell is going on?”
“International waters,” Mancini answered. In the background, the sound of an aircraft could be heard before it came into view. On the screen, the people on the yacht, who looked to be having some kind of party on deck, looked up at the plane as it came into view.
We couldn’t hear what was being said as they pointed, but there was obvious panic as the craft got closer and lower to the aft of the ship, away from the partiers, some of whom I recognized as the perps I was just asking him about. “Is that a military aircraft?”
“Looks like, maybe out of commission.” That twitch in my eye got worst.
It ramped up some when the hull opened up, and something was lowered to the deck. Since it was covered, there was no way to tell what it was until a figure roped itself down low enough to remove the covering to reveal a cage. The figure scampered back up the rope into the aircraft, and a latch was opened on the cage to reveal three large animals.
“What dafuq are those?”