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. “
. He kept repeating the phrase
. 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
?” Jones joked, recalling the mysterious word whispered in the famous death scene of the movie
. “Maybe
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
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
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
