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