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For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
It was a long flight home, but we made it. Even though we all slept on the plane, we were still tired when we arrived home. There were four ambulances and several vans equipped with everything we needed for our wounded girls. It was nice that none of us had to do any driving from the airport to our chateau. The guys will be arriving a bit later and will go straight to their chateau, except for dropping off Carine and Kitty with us.
I keep hoping that Aari will start to show some interest in Carine, because she sure likes him! Maybe we need to enlist the help of Aasta for this one. Well, we did have several of our girls wounded on this trip, but no one was killed at least and that part is good.
We rescued Visty plus 2 other women that had been held in solitary confinement for months. They had been beaten and starved, but on the way home I heard them talking and giggling with our girls. That was so nice to hear. They are friends, both are 22, single and live at home with their parents. Both are the youngest of the children in each family and we will be getting in touch with their families just as soon as we can. I hope their families will welcome them back.
So many of the women we have rescued have not been welcome to return home, which is so sad. As it turned out, their families were overjoyed that we rescued their daughters, so we will be sending them back home on one of our jets, and some of our girls will accompany them. Visty will be staying with us, it seems her parents were both shot and killed just 2 days ago.
Her two brothers don’t want her around their families because the same thing might happen to them or their children. They might be right, still, it seems kind of sad that they don’t want to help her. Misty and Cristy are happy she will be staying with us. The woman from the little shop in Mexico will be staying with us for now until she decides what to do. She has no parents now and she was an only child.
She is afraid to go back to L.A. where she is from originally. Her name is Shelley. We also have the two women from Koffman and they too are not sure what to do at the moment, so they will stay with us temporarily too. The one has no family, the other one does, but they don’t want her around. Sigh. We will need to make an addition onto our chateau if this keeps up.
Our wounded girls will all live and be back to full health eventually. Some sooner than others. Samantha wants me to stay in the clinic for “observation” she says. For some reason she thinks there is something wrong with me. I finally had to concede that there might be something wrong after that blast. I can’t tell who my wife is, and that is a big problem.
Apparently I think that Dawn is Jennifer and Jennifer is Dawn. But when I saw that Dawn had a twin, which I know she doesn’t, that’s when I knew there must indeed be a problem. So, here I am, in bed with nothing to do. Samantha won’t let me use computers, or my phone, right now. Time goes by though and the two we rescued with Visty are now back home with their families.
Shelley has decided to stay with us, so we will need to give her a new identity since Ramon just might want to hunt her down. Cristy is working on that right now. She is also working on new identities for the two girls from Koffman since they, too, have decided to stay with us. I think that Visty should also have a new identity, since Ramon just might want to get her back as well.
However, the three girls want their names to rhyme, just like they have since they were kids. Sigh. Sometimes it’s hard to get the message of safety across to people. Vlora might be coming back to us as well. I sure hope so anyway. If she does, then she will take over my team and I won’t have a team. I will just be in charge, in a general sense, over all the teams.
I will still go on cases though. We found out before that staying at home all the time just didn’t work out for me. We will be taking on fewer cases perhaps, although that can be hard to do as well. But we need more rest time for our teams and team leaders, or we will wear ourselves out. That could lead to more casualties on our teams in the future, which would not be a good thing.
Suddenly there is a head peeking in the door. “All clear,” she said. Then Misty, Cristy and Visty came running inside, after closing and locking the door. They all jumped on the bed, spread a checkered cloth on top of my legs and brought out donuts, 4 each!
“And, they are sneaked donuts,” said Visty, smiling. “Those are the best kind!” I exclaimed. They all said “yep” together. Well, another case is done and we are all recuperating right now. I wonder what is next for the Investigators?
The End. A new story will be coming out soon. ©2025 Steve McLeod.
While we were in the ladies part of the prison, our guys were on the men’s side, first blasting a hole in the wall, then the wall of the building. Then Carine and Kitty went inside, broke into the office, took a master key for the cells and began to call out “Mauricio”. Prisoners began to hold out small pieces of cloth, purple and white, signifying their gang colors. So, Carine began unlocking the cells of those men and Kitty tossed each of them a gun.
Then Carine handed the key to one of the men and said they had to leave quickly. “Did Mauricio send you?” he asked. “No, Fernandez,” answered Carine, “but Ramon is going to attack Mauricio very soon and he needs men to fight.” Then Carine and Kitty disappeared right in front of the men and they ran as fast as they could and then reappeared outside the wall. The helicopters dropped ladders for the girls and up they went quickly and the helicopters left just as quickly.
The prisoners were shocked by the disappearance of the girls, but then one man said, “they must have been angels sent to help us.” That seemed to get the group settled down again and they continued to release more men, then they all ran speedily out the hole in the wall. Carine had given them a key for a van as well and soon those men were speeding away down the road. Although it was a 7 passenger van, they managed to get 16 men in it.
Well, our side suffered 8 of our girls being wounded, three of them seriously enough that if we don’t make it to the jet quickly, they won’t live. That would be hard on Misty and Cristy, since it was their friend that we rescued. Well, plus two others that Sky decided to bring along. When she saw them there was no way she could leave them behind. They were obviously being starved and beaten and probably would not survive if left in the prison.
Then there is me. For some reason they think there is something wrong with me, like a concussion or something. I don’t know why they think that though, I know who I am and what we are doing. Plus I know who everyone else is as well. So why the fuss? But Jennifer and Sky want me checked out anyway, just to make sure there are no lasting problems from that explosion. I guess they might be right, it doesn’t hurt to be careful about these things.
I just hope our jet arrives at the airport on time so we can get out of here before Ramon catches up with us. Just then Fluffy said something I didn’t want to hear. “Me Fluffy, motorcycles catching up to us, not ours, me say danger!” “Make this car fly Fluffy!” I yelled, “Evasive maneuvers!” “Fluffy make car fly!” And he sure did! Not only did we move fast, but Fluffy took us on quite the tour of the city! He even went down one way streets the wrong way a couple of times.
“Oops, Fluffy make mistake, me sorry.” But he did get us out of the way of traffic before any accidents occurred. I thought that was nice of him. Sometimes I forget that Fluffy is a repurposed toy. Sherry treats him like a real cat. I really do need to get Sherry her own cat. Six of those cats we picked up before can’t talk. They came from that farm and Jennifer just couldn’t resist bringing them home with us. So, they will just be stay at home cats for now and maybe our cats can teach them, they just won’t be able to communicate with us and that part is essential for going on cases.
Anyway, back to the present. Sienna has sent us a brand new jet which has a very complete surgical room and two recovery rooms, which won’t be enough on this trip. There is also the Leader 1 room and 2 other smaller bedrooms. And on this trip they sent Dr. Jorgenson, which is good since he is our surgeon and we certainly need him for our wounded girls. Whoa! We nearly flipped over on that turn! Fluffy apologized once again. I told him he would get a treat for getting us to the airport in one piece.
He got excited about that. So did Sherry. I’m worried about Sherry. Then as we turned down a lane, there were motorcycles blocking it about half way. “Keep going Fluffy,” I said. “Me know, we squash them!” “Yeah, get’em Fluffy!” yelled Sherry. And he did. Those motorcycles went flying through the air! We had rented the helicopters locally, so the guys returned them, got on their motorcycles and headed north to the border.
None of them were hurt, but the helicopters did get a few holes in them. Maybe I could tell the owners that it’s a new air ventilation system? Hmm, I don’t suppose they would believe that. I wonder if Sienna will notice that part in the bill she receives? Probably not, is my guess. It’s a good thing there isn’t much traffic on these streets this time of night.
As we turned onto one street, our car and the 2 vans following us made it okay, but then a van of Ramon’s men cut in line and our last van smashed into the side of their van, causing both to flip onto their sides. We quickly stopped and backed up to get our girls. There were 8 in that van, but none of our wounded girls. However, each of these girls had some cuts and bruises from that accident, but thankfully no serious injuries. We had to squeeze the girls into our remaining vehicles and then off we went.
We really shouldn’t leave the scene of the accident, however, there were extenuating circumstances this time. We finally arrived at the airport and we had to crash through one barrier to reach our jet which had been waiting for us and was nearly ready to leave without us. That was part of the plan if we didn’t arrive in time. They were to wait no more than 10 minutes past our designated arrival time, but they waited 20 minutes.
This was one time I didn’t mind them disobeying orders. It took us a little while getting everyone on board the plane, but we finally had everyone on the jet. Kat’s Wildcats boarded their smaller jet along with some of our girls to give more room on our jet for the wounded. Soon both of our jets were in the air and heading first to Florida to refuel before heading back home.
Aari and his team will be heading up to Houston, TX and will fly on a regular commercial flight to New York, and then home. We had to do it that way since we lost one of our jets. Sky quickly communicated with Jennifer to let her know what had happened to me and that I was convinced Dawn was her. Jennifer laughed. Loud and long…
To Be Continued. ©2025 Steve McLeod.
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