Here's the next episode: Broken Mirror. You'll noticed that I skipped some episodes, I will do this from time to time because I will be adding more characters and taking some out. Enjoy!
New Haven, CT
A party with young college students was living strong. A boy was hugging his girlfriend from behind, getting ready to leave the party.
"Bye," the boyfriend said to a peer, he turned his attention to his girl. "You know, I really-"
"No, no, no," the girl, named Patricia or Trish for short, said to her intoxicated boyfriend. "Do not start with the 'I love yous'."
"I do."
"You only say it when you're drunk."
"That's not true."
"Oh, ok, I'm driving."
"I'm not drunk. I'm just buzzed a little bit."
"'Buzzed a little bit' is something drunk people say to convince themselves that they're not drunk. Yeah," the boy started kissing Trish. "No, no, no, no, no. Touch your fingers to your nose."
"What?"
"Do it."
"All right, come here," he grabbed her hands and used her fingers to touch his nose.
"Your fingers," she corrected him. He did what she said and he passed the first test, just as Trish was backing away from him. "Walk a straight line."
"Ohh! All right," the boy started walking a staring line to his girlfriend, he managed to walk straight, and straight into her lips.
"Ok, you can drive," she gave him the keys.
"All right," they walked to his car and started driving her home. They took a dusty, secluded country road. He was in the driver's seat and she was in the passenger seat. "Thank you very much."
"Slowly though. No speeding."
"Hey," he grabbed Trish's hand and kissed it.
"Eyes on the road, Casanova," she laughed.
"Just tell me you love me."
"I do love you. Now get you're eyes on the road-Jordan!" She stopped her sentence because she saw a large, black truck in the middle of the road. Jordan managed to see it in time and he slowed down and swerved out of the way. "Are you okay."
"Yeah," he replied. They both got out of their car to check and see if anyone was in the vehicle. "What the hell's he doing just sitting in the middle of the road?"
"Maybe he had a breakdown and he couldn't move it," they searched the vehicle but didn't find anything. "Jordan? Jordan We should go. We could just turn around and go back the way we came."
"Why didn't they just pull it off the side of the road?" Jordan was still looking at the truck in confusion.
"Jordan? Jordan, can we please just go? Come on," Trish was scared now. It was late and dark and they were on a road that was secluded. They went back to their car and Jordan was ready to start the car when he discovered something was missing.
"Do you have the keys?"
"No, didn't you leave them in the car?"
"Yeah, I think. I don't know."
"They have to be here somewhere," they started looking on the floor of the front of the car, thinking they might have fallen there. Suddenly Trish looked up because she felt a presence of someone else. She saw someone dressed in black on Jordan's side of the car, but it wasn't the person that caught her scared, it was the gun. She froze in fear.
"Trish?" Jordan looked up from the floor to see his girlfriend with a terrified look on her face. He turned his head to find a gun pointed at his forehead. It pressed against the front of his head and-
BANG!
Quantico, VA
Fiona Grenaway was headed to Shadow's office, with a file in her hand, to get him for the briefing that was happening soon. She found him talking to his wife, Maria, on the phone.
"So it sounds like bed rest isn't turning out to be very restful," Shadow said in the cell phone.
"Bed rest is more like bed agony. But in 10 minutes, I get to switch to my right side. That'll be a thrill."
"Honey, just try to relax and get a little rest, ok?"
"Of course. I love you."
"Bye," he hung up his cell and saw Fiona standing in the doorway.
"Everything alright?" Fiona asked.
"Yeah," Shadow replied. "The doctors are worried about Maria's blood-sugar levels. They're worried about pre-eclampsia and I'm worried she's not gonna last 6 weeks in bed."
"She wants out of the hospital."
"Yeah. Is it here?"
"Yeah."
They left Shadow's office and Shadow waved Knuckles and Tails over.
"Tails, Knuckles, document's up on the screen regarding the kidnapping of Trish Davenport."
They came up from their bullpen and went towards their team leader and new female recruit. All were headed to the round table room.
"Have you read them yet?" Knuckles asked Shadow.
"Yeah, got a copy from the document examiner," Shadow answered.
"What's it say?"
"That we've got until 8:00 tonight."
They walked inside the round table room to find Sonic already there, sipping on coffee. They gathered around the screen where a note was displayed on the screen; it was the ransom letter. Tails read the letter out loud.
"'You will follow instructions carefully. You will do this to ensure the safety of your daughter. You will wait for the call. You will answer the call at 8:00 P.M. You will write down the instructions and follow them to the letter.'"
"That gives us less than 9 hours to get to Connecticut, work up victimology on Trish Davenport and prepare her father for the ransom drop," Shadow informed his team.
"How do we know the letter's real?" Sonic asked.
"The handwriting is a match for Trish's. He dictated it to her, and they found saline on the paper," Shadow said showing a match of Trish's handwriting to the letter and the corner where the three drops of saline were.
"Her tears."
"He never says 'I,'" Knuckles said. "He doesn't say 'I will call.' He says, 'you will answer the call.' He's distancing himself from the kidnapping. If he said 'I', he'd be taking responsibility for it."
"There's also another missing element," Shadow said.
"No mention of the police," Fiona said. "Ransom notes almost always forbid police involvement."
"So is he expecting law enforcement to get involved?"
"Well, if he's expecting us," Sonic said. "Let's not disappoint him."
There's the first part. Sorry if this took long to put up, time and dedication and a lot of episode watching is in writing these for you. But I love all my readers and will endure the hardship to post these. It's a sacrifice but someone has to do it!
