Page 4 of Dan

“No. I need her to give me these others, and then I’ll give her the big one. If she can tell me what those codes are, we’ll be able to wipe out the Gulf Coast, leaving the area stretching from McAllen, Texas, to the panhandle of Florida vulnerable. Mexico will be clear to move in and take back the southern states.”

“If you wait too long, we run the risk of someone finding out what we’re doing.”

“No one will figure it out,” he laughed. “No one cares where she is. Her parents are gone for months on end, and wouldn’t give a shit anyway. She has no siblings, and no boyfriend. She’s beautiful but as strange as they come. No man would want her.”

That comment alone nearly gutted Finley. She’d been told by numerous former boyfriends why they couldn’t stand her company any longer.

“You’re weird.”

“Why are you so strange?”

“Do you only talk in numbers? Geez, I feel like I’m in a math class.”

Finley couldn’t help being different. Her mind saw numbers, and what her mind saw stuck with her. Forever. She once was able to calculate the number of trees in a national forest, missing the number by only two trees. She was six at the time.

When she heard the men talking, she calculated the possibilities of what they were going to give her, and then she knew.

“The hurricane should arrive by Wednesday. If we get the numbers before then, we can remotely open every floodgate, every levee, every dam, and every lock in the U.S., creating mass flooding and death. This will make Katrina look like a swim party, and no one will see it coming.”

Finley kept her head down, just walking in a circle around the yard. She couldn’t do this for them. She just couldn’t help them murder Americans, or anyone for that matter.

There were dozens of open cells and rooms on the main floor. The bars had been removed, filled with crates of supplies or other items. Leaning against the wall in one room was a small, flat-bottomed boat. It looked as though it had seen better days, but if she could find a way to get to that boat, she could get out of there.

It would be days of calculating their movements, exact times of those movements, and when the most likely escape route could be had. Her break came when the old rusted lock on the cell disintegrated, and they replaced it with a combination padlock.

Foolish, at best. She watched and listened, remembering the sounds and numbers correlating to the sounds of the rolling tumblers.

2:47 a.m. That was her window. At 2:47 a.m., one of the guards would go for a snack, call his girlfriend, often having phone sex, and then get a few hours of sleep. With only one other man present, this was her best bet.

At precisely 2:47 a.m., she waited until she heard the man walking on the other side of the battlement. Synching the combination on the padlock, she hid in the dark recesses of the halls, making her way to the first floor.

With great difficulty, she lifted the heavy flat-bottomed boat, slowly making her way to the water. Sliding the boat into the water, she prayed it didn’t sink. Watching it for a few minutes to be sure it didn’t take on water, she was relieved to see it still floating. Using a two-by-four found next to the boat, she slowly paddled out into the Gulf of Mexico. With any luck, they wouldn’t notice her missing until the morning.

If her calculations were correct, the currents and tides would move her toward Houston and along the coastal area. If inclement weather were to pop up, she could be pushed further along the coast. Either way, she would rather die in the water than die in the cell. If she got really lucky, perhaps a ship would spot her and rescue her.

Knowing that she only had about four hours of lead time. She also knew that in her weakened state, she wouldn’t be able to paddle for long before her body froze up on her. Surprising herself, she paddled until dawn, but it wasn’t long after that a storm came up. It wasn’t the hurricane, but it was nasty enough.

Battering her small craft, she bounced back and forth, finally being pushed almost three days later into a smaller body of water. She could see the swirling clouds in the distance, knowing that the hurricane was headed in the opposite direction, but still leaving her taking on more water than the small boat could handle.

There were marshlands on both sides of her, but she had no clue where she was. With only the fresh rainwater to soothe her thirst, she was hungry, weak, and had all but given up hope.

Lying back on the boat, she stared up at the dark sky, praying for death. Doing the only thing that soothed her, she counted the number of birds that flew overhead.

“One. Two. Three, four.” Hearing the sound of a small motor, she closed her eyes, knowing that this was her end.

CHAPTER THREE

“Hey, Dan?” called Pigsty as they headed to breakfast.

“What’s up, brother?”

“We’re picking something up on one of our drones, and the alarms are going off. It looks like whatever it is entered our bayou from the southeast and is just drifting toward the main property. We think it’s someone in a boat, a child maybe. Can you head out and see what you find?”

“Yeah, send me the coordinates.”

Dan raced toward the docks, taking one of the small bateaus out to the coordinates. At first, he nearly missed it. Almost fully submerged in the water, a tiny little body lay on top of the remnants of the craft.

Dan grabbed the side of the boat, pulling it toward him and checking the pulse of the tiny female occupant. At first look, she appeared to be around fifteen, but when he pushed back the hair from her face, he noticed her features seemed older, maybe thirty. She wore a simple cotton dress, no shoes, and had no jewelry on her.

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