The Investigators, Inc. The Panama Case. Chapter 6. Day 5.

Rodrigo, one of Manuela’s top men had just come to her to let her know that Aari and his men had begun to move against Rico’s hideout. Manuela had just seen Rusty again and he gave her a message, letting her know that Rico, and this meeting, was making plans to destroy her and her cartel. Rusty had disappeared again by the time Rodrigo had arrived beside Manuela.

“By the way, who were you talking with?” he asked her. “That orange cat, the one I saw in my dream the other night,” she replied, “remember I told you about it?” “Yeah, I remember,” he said, “but I never saw any cat over here with you and I have been watching you closely.” Manuela just looked at him. “He was glowing, an orange glow,” she said, “you didn’t see that?”

“Nope, I didn’t see anything Manuela,” he said again. Aari couldn’t wait any longer for Manuela to make a move, so he took his team down to the building. It was a fairly large, abandoned, warehouse of some kind. Everyone that came to the meeting went in through a small door at the front, located beside two large sliding doors that would have been used for trucks to drive through.

They had already disabled the security alarm system for the building, but there are likely many guards inside the building they will need to deal with, and that is going to be the dangerous part. There’s a good chance that some of his team will be killed in this attack.

Meanwhile, back to us. We had to use this time to attack Rico’s mansion while he is distracted with fighting elsewhere. Our plans were made already, so off we went, driving as close as we dared, so we wouldn’t be noticed. Kat and her Wildcats were off helping Aari right now and Sky, with her Bad Girls, were with me. Angel was with us too and all the cats.

Angel turned into Courage to carry me, while everyone else walked along with us. It was a dark night, with just a sliver of the moon shining almost directly overhead. Sky, along with 2 cats, went on ahead to deal with the first guard tower and Melanie went with them too, though she stopped before getting to the tower.

Melanie has been practicing and is now an excellent sniper, she will take the guard in the tower on the mansion roof. Sky, Azura and Storm arrived at the guard tower and up the ladder they went. There was a large spotlight in the tower too which they kept shining in the field that we needed to use. “Hi guys!” said Sky as she reached the top of the ladder, “May I join you?”

“Hey, where did she come from?” asked one guard. Sky shot some electricity at the spotlight, effectively destroying it. Then, “Thwock! Thwock!”, and both men were dead. “Good job you cats,” said Sky, “now, down we go and to the house.” While going down Sky heard a bullet whiz past, hitting the guard in the tower on the house. “Hey, Melanie is good!” she said to herself.

The rest of us soon joined Sky and her cats along the east side of the house. There were no windows on this wall, not on the main floor anyway, there were some on the second floor. The third floor was really part of the attic and I imagine it is probably quite hot up there where Sienna is being kept, unless that room is air conditioned, somehow I doubt that it is.

There were no windows in that room, just a couple of air vents. Sky jumped up to a second floor window which, surprisingly, was open just a bit, but she couldn’t open it all the way either. She did get it open enough to get inside, so she went around to another bedroom and opened that window. Some of her girls already had a rope ladder up to the first window and were going in that way.

We soon had a ladder up to this window too and everyone was quickly climbing up. Sky grabbed me and jumped up to the window with me so I wouldn’t have to climb. Some of the girls, and most of the cats, stayed outside as guards. That was a good thing since 2 men came along to go replace the two tower guards, not knowing they had been killed.

As they came around the corner of the house, “Thwock! Thwock!”, and they were dead. Inside we looked for a way up to that room, but there was no stairs or any other way up there. We then went into a bedroom and there was a woman sleeping in a bed. Amerie woke her up and quickly put her hand over the woman’s mouth before she could scream.

I pointed my gun at her briefly, then lowered my hand. I could not believe who it was in that bed. “Please don’t shoot me Steve, please!” she pleaded, “I didn’t betray you, really I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, I thought I had died, then I woke up in a prison and a man named Rico bought me to be his, his…slave. Please take me with you, please take me away from that cruel man.”

She was crying so hard now that she could barely speak. “We will take you away from here,” I said calmly to her, “do you know how to get upstairs to where he’s keeping Sienna?” “Oh, the woman in the hot room,” she said, “that’s the door, but it’s always locked, some kind of electric lock. It hinges on that side, but it’s steel, heavy steel.” “Okay, Sky, can you open it?” I asked.

“Should be able to,” she said, and she did have it open quickly. I told Kitty to get up and get dressed quickly. “There are no clothes for me or that other woman,” she said. “Girls, look around and see what you can find,” I told them. Sky had gone up and brought Sienna down to us and when she saw me, she came over and gave me a big hug.

“I knew you could do it Steve, and this woman has been very kind to me,” said Sienna, pointing to Kitty, “can we please take her with us?” “Yes, I already decided to do that Sienna,” I replied, smiling. “All we could find are these big shirts,” said Amerie, “but they are better than nothing.” Soon we were going out the windows again.

Sky took Sienna and jumped down with her, then she took Kitty down. I was the last one to go down, which was my decision, but before Sky could get back up to take me down I heard a noise and turned around. Three men were coming into the room so I shot the first one. I had a silencer on my gun, they did not. The second man shot, hitting me…

To Be Continued.

©2025 Steve McLeod.