Chapter 354 A Discontented Man
Without even flinching, Courtney answered, “I was on vacation when you were there.”
Frowning, Felipe didn’t ask anymore because he assumed that a woman Fiona brought with her wasn’t worth his attention. What he was after was money, and Fiona simply wanted her son. However, he didn’t imagine that Fiona had managed to save up so much over the years and could easily come up with twenty million within such a short period of time.
Thinking of this, he felt a wave of regret. If I had known this earlier, I would have asked for more money.
A discontented man was akin to a snake trying to swallow an elephant. Seeing how greedy Felipe appeared, Courtney felt a crushing sense of disgust in her stomach. If it wasn’t for this man, Fiona wouldn’t have lived such a miserable life, and Alexander wouldn’t have developed such an aloof personality from growing up in a broken family lacking in love and attention.
The source of all evil came from this man, who was like a blood-sucking vampire.
It was a dark night. Courtney lowered her head to check the time. From the corner of her eye, she could see that the blondie was almost falling asleep while guarding Oliver nearby, yawning the whole time as he leaned against the wall.
Even Felipe was at his limit; he took a smoke once about every ten minutes to keep himself alert.
“Ahem, ahem.” Courtney coughed lightly a couple of times, and a voice came out of the tiny headset next to her ear. “Got it. We’ll prepare for action.”
Two squads of special forces soldiers wearing camouflaged riot suits crawled on the ground in the wilderness, surrounding the entire power plant so that even a fly couldn’t escape the building. The squad captain signaled with his hand, whereupon an athletic woman from the squad pressed herself between the wall and water pipe, climbing her way up.
“Ugh!” Before the man on guard duty on the second floor even had the chance to realize it, someone had already climbed over the wall, locked his neck, and injected him with anesthesia, then he fell limply to the floor.
Under the shady lighting, a face covered in camouflage makeup could be seen, and only the people who knew her could tell that it was Tessa.
She was very uptight because she had never been so emotional on a hostage rescue mission like today despite participating in actual combat exercises so many times before. Right now, her light footsteps were completely concealed by the rustling wind in the dark night.
Tiny dust particles floated around her boots, and after rolling around a few times, she successfully hid herself in a corner.
It was quite empty on the first floor, and there was an open space of about five hundred square feet in the middle. Besides the load-bearing wall, there was nothing she could use as shelter at all. If she got closer, she would inevitably be discovered by the ruthless kidnappers. Therefore, she shouldn’t act impulsively.
The sky outside was already bright. “Call Yogi and ask him how things are going.” Felipe had just come back from a smoke, and he put out the cigarette under his foot with an impatient look. “This place is freezing like hell. Tell that woman that I’ve changed my mind. We’ll kill the hostages right away and dump her son and this woman she brought along into the river to feed the fishes if I don’t receive the money before 10.00AM.”
“Okay.” The blondie hurriedly shuddered and woke up. Then, he yawned as he made a call.
“Sh*t.”
All of a sudden, Courtney heard a soft but anxious voice from her headset, and her heart skipped, fearing that the special forces who came to rescue the hostages had already detained the people close to the bank.
It took a long while before the blondie’s call was picked up, and he shouted rudely into the phone, “Yogi, why didn’t you give us a call after you were gone the whole night? How did it go? Is the bank open?”
After that, he put the phone on loudspeaker mode, and everyone in the building could hear Yogi’s voice. “We’re here, but the bank only opens at 9.00AM. So, we’re still waiting.”
Courtney breathed a sigh of relief, but she didn’t know whether it was the police who threatened Yogi to say those things, or they hadn’t acted on that side yet.
“Tell that woman that our boss has changed his mind. We’re only waiting until 10.00AM, and we don’t care how, but she has to come back with the money as soon as possible. We’re really going to die from the cold here.”
“I got it,” Yogi answered curtly.
On the other end, the blondie hung up and turned to Felipe. “Boss.”
“Okay.” Felipe nodded, but when he spun around, he suddenly stopped in his tracks. “That’s not right.” As he turned around to look at Courtney, his eyes turned solemn out of the blue. “Blondie, tie up this boy and that woman. Something happened to Yogi.”
Courtney’s face fell, and she took a step backward subconsciously. “What are you guys going to do?” Only God knows what Felipe realized from the call earlier, she thought.
As though realizing what happened, Blondie strode toward Courtney immediately with fury written all over his face. “How dare you call the police!” he said as he and another man grabbed her by her shoulders on both sides.
While she screamed and struggled, they dragged her all the way in front of Felipe.
“What are we going to do, Boss?”
After he said that, Courtney felt her scalp turning numb, and someone grabbed her hair before lifting her head. Although she shrieked in pain, she didn’t dare to struggle too hard.
With one hand, Felipe grabbed her hair as he scrutinized her from the left and right. In the end, he pulled out a tiny, round headset the size of a thumbnail from her ear, and his face turned livid. “I remember mentioning that I’ll kill this boy if you guys call the police.”
The black barrel of a gun was already pointed at Oliver, who was still unconscious on the side.
“Don’t shoot!” Courtney shouted in panic, and another voice echoed along with hers at the same time when she shouted. Standing about sixty feet behind her, Tessa was holding a submachine gun and aiming it at the subordinate who was holding the gun.
In a split second, the two squads of special forces on the first and second floor appeared at the same time and already had the entire abandoned power plant completely surrounded, leaving only Felipe and his three subordinates in the middle space on the first floor; all his other subordinates had already been taken care of.
By now, Felipe’s face had completely changed. “Don’t come over, or I’ll kill this boy!”
“Do you have the guts to do that?” All of a sudden, Courtney had recollected herself. “If you guys dare to even touch us, there’s no chance that you can make it out of here alive.”
Just then, Tessa took hold of a loudspeaker in the distance and her voice boomed. “Listen here. Release the hostages and we can negotiate.”
“What are we going to do, Boss?” Clearly, the subordinates Felipe brought with him were panic-stricken.
“What are you panicking about?” After spitting on the floor, Felipe grabbed Courtney and shouted back at Tessa in the distance, “Save me your acts. I want nothing less than twenty million. Also, prepare a car to send me to the pier. Otherwise, I’ll kill her right now.”
A shiver ran down Courtney’s spine. If they really did as Felipe wanted, she was afraid that he wouldn’t release her and Oliver even when he reached the pier. Including the fact that they had called the police, plus other disputes, he might really end her and Oliver’s life on the spot.
Fiona’s right, she thought. He is a ruthless outlaw.
“Calm down,” Tessa appeared a little nervous as she replied anxiously. “Okay, we’ll get it prepared now.”
While she was speaking, the loud sound of a car engine came from outside, and the blinding headlights shone into the factory like a rising sun, making it impossible for them to open their eyes.
Amidst the dust, the white Porsche drifted in beautifully, and with the sound of the sharp brakes, it left curved tire tracks on the ground before the rear of the car pointed at Courtney and the rest. Then, a tall, dark figure stepped out.
“I brought the twenty million here.”
