We were about to give up when Cinnamon came back with her new cat. “Hey Steve,” she said, “Rusty here can tell us how to get inside the sneaky room.” “Sneaky room?” I responded, “and I guess you are Rusty, nice to meet you.” Meow.=Me happy see you too. See over by corner, small piece of white stuff?” Cinnamon took him over to a small piece of siding at the corner of the house.

Rusty said it comes off, so Mac tried, but was unable and he did not want to break it. Meow.=Need to push top and bottom in corner. Mac did so and the siding piece flipped open sideways. Underneath was a combination lock of some kind. “That may not be easy to open,” said Miles, ” we do not know how many numbers are used.” Meow,=5 numbers, 2, 5, 7, 3, 8.

Mac pressed the numbers as Rusty said them. Rusty had previously told us not to stand on the brick patio. No wonder, when the numbers were pressed, a door opened on that patio, with stairs going down to a room next to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs was a steel door, locked of course, but Miles had that one open rather quickly. In we went. “Strange there does not seem to be any alarm system in here,” I said.

“No need for it,” said Miles, “that number code lock would stop most anyone since it would likely lock permanently after 2 or 3 false tries.” Must admit, that made sense, and someone would have to know it was here too. Again, there was a ladder going upstairs, so Mac, Aari and I went up there with Storm, while Tiia stayed downstairs with the others.

There was a large safe downstairs, an older model, so Miles went to work. But his hearing was not good enough for that kind of work. Then Miles looked at Rusty. “Can you hear good little friend?,” he asked. Rusty’s ears went straight up. Meow.=He call me friend, he call me friend, not say I stupid cat like other humans around here. Yep, me can hear super good.

Miles showed Rusty where to put his ear and together they had that safe open quickly. Miles smiled at Rusty. “Thanks my little pal,” he said, “we make a good team.” Rusty was so happy to have found some friends at last. “I will take you home with us,” said Cinnamon, “providing Steve says it is okay, and I know he will, but he is the leader, so we need his permission.”

Now Rusty was a bit nervous, not knowing what I was like. Inside that safe was $50 million dollars, plus a lot of gems, including rubies, emeralds and diamonds. And a lot of perfect pearls too. Even better was a list of people working for Mr. Fenn, with addresses.

And there was a list of businesses that were owned by Mr. Fenn across Canada and a few in the US. Looks like it was mostly a Canadian operation. But there were also organizations listed where he got drugs and people for his organization. The people were basically slaves. He is coming down for sure.

Meanwhile, back at the chateau a white van drove up and stopped at the steps. Two of the girls were at the front door. “Hi,” said the man, “My name is Ted Corner, I was a friend of Steve in high school. Some friend and I are vacationing in Europe and since we were close I wanted to stop and say hi to Steve.” A voice comes through the speaker. “Everything fits,” said Tracy.

Then Sky came out in her new wheelchair. “Steve is not home right now and likely will not be back for days, I am sorry you missed him.” “You must be his wife,” he said cheerfully, “may I shake your hand?” The girls came and stood next to Sky. “Yes, you may,” she said. He came up the stairs and while shaking her hand he spoke quickly and quietly.

“I am being forced to do this,” he said, “these men are here to kidnap you for a Mr. Fenn.” Sky immediately pressed a button on her wheelchair and a loud alarm sounded along with “Code Red A, Code Red A”. The rest of the girls came out of the chateau and the remainder of the security team from Baldwin Corp came running from behind the house. Men jumped out of the van and began shooting.

Ted fell immediately, but everyone returned fire. Tracy, from inside, pressed a button and an explosive detonated under the van, flipping it over onto its side. After all was done, none of the men survived, and none on our side had been killed, but 2 security team members were wounded.

Back to us. Upstairs we found a lot of information about gambling and other things that Joshua was involved with here in the city. We took everything we could and went down the ladder. The others were already carrying stuff from downstairs to the vans. Mr. Fenn will not like this at all, and it should put Joshua in poor standing with Fenn as well. Perfect! Everything was locked up nicely and we were soon on our way…

To Be Continued.

©2023 Steve McLeod.