Hope all of ya'll had a very happy and safe new years eve! Mine was so fun, I am probably wanted by the police in at least three states. Oh well.
Chapter 8
"I don't know why we had to wait until after midnight. It's dark outside by the time I finish my lunch." Jill grumbled as the girls drove toward Alaska Oil's main office. Kelly rolled her eyes gamely.
"Your life is one continuous lunch, Jill." she quipped.
Jill giggled and swatted her arm. "If it wasn't, you'd have a whole lot less to talk about." she shot back.
"If it wasn't, I'd have a whole lot less to clean up everytime you come over." Kelly replied, with a big grin.
Sabrina laughed and shook her head as she listened to Kelly and Jill zing each other back and forth. Those two had been at each other all evening. Not that she minded. People usually had to pay to be half as entertained.
Plus, if they weren't at each other, they would be at her.
Sabrina drove around the building and slowed to a stop behind it, looking around carefully for somewhere to hide the car. They couldn't get too close to the building, but couldn't afford being too far away if something went wrong. It could very well be the difference between getting caught or escaping. After careful consideration, she pulled the car into the parking lot of a deserted shopping center, making sure to park in the darkest and most shadowy spot possible. The car idled for a moment, the muffler sending plumes of steam into the bitterly cold night, as she made sure she had chosen a safe spot.
Charlie had rented each of them a car. Jill's was silver, Kelly's was navy blue, and hers was cherry red.
Why they had all piled into her highly noticeable car for this stealth mission was still a mystery to the three of them.
When she was certain they would be safe, she shut off the engine and turned in her seat. "Are we clear?" she whispered.
Jill was sitting in the back seat and propped herself up to look out of the rear window. It was 1:46 A.M. on an early Thursday morning and traffic was expectedly minimal. One single car rolled noisily by down the stretch of road behind their parking lot and disappeared out of sight. There appeared to be no one else coming or going.
"I think we're ok." Jill answered finally.
The girls got out of the car and crept into the shadows where they wouldn't be seen. They had purposely worn black clothing and donned black knit caps over their hair to make seeing or identifying them as difficult as possible. They stood quietly, surveying the area, rocking on their heels slightly from the cold.
An alley, an empty lot, and a rusty chain link fence separated them from the office building they planned to break into. The girls moved quickly through the alley and the lot, looking out warily for possible witnesses or passersby. So far, it appeared they were only people out and about on this cold night. The longer they spent in the cold, they more they began to realize how much sense that fact made.
They paused at the fence.
"You get your tetanus shot yet?" Sabrina asked dryly, running her hand over the sharp rusted metal of the fence.
"No, I was smart enough to wear gloves." Jill answered back, flashing her friend a teasing smile. She hopped up onto the fence and quickly climbed to the top, her friends steadying the flimsy structure to keep it from rattling too loudly. She perched for a moment at the top and then jumped off, landing gracefully in a crouch on the opposite side.
Sabrina followed her, quickly scaling the fence and landing in a not so graceful heap on the other side. Jill helped her to her feet, a huge grin on her face.
"Shut up, Jill." Sabrina warned, brushing the snow off of her pants. Jill put a finger to her lips and nodded happily. The two girls waited for Kelly to get over the fence and walked the twenty yards to the back of the building.
"You know, usually black is good for something like this. But right now I feel kind of like a fly in a glass of milk." Kelly remarked sardonically, looking around.
She had a point. Though it was dark as pitch outside, what little light that came from the overcast sky reflected off of the white snow that covered the ground, making them much more obvious than they had anticipated. They stuck close to the walls of the building and prayed no one would happen by.
"The best place to go in through would be a side door." Kelly whispered, as the girls crept alongside the building. "My guess is that there is an alarm system that we would trigger if we just picked a lock."
Jill and Sabrina followed, listening carefully. Kelly had plenty of practice in breaking and entering and they had full confidence in her illegally gained abilities.
"But the alarm system won't work if the electricity is out." Kelly continued. "We need to find the breaker and shut it off."
After making a right turn around the building, the girls stumbled onto what appeared to be the electricity and heating grids, housed inside a chain link cage.
"That looks promising." Jill quipped, as the girls moved towards it. Kelly quickly picked the lock to the gate and they went inside. The circuit breaker was sealed with a big, heavy padlock.
The lock to the breaker proved to be far more challenging and took Kelly nearly twenty minutes to unlock. She was forced to remove her gloves for the deed, and the cold made her fingers numb and the task even more frustrating. Sabrina and Jill shined their light on the lock and huddled together for warmth while they waited, blowing on their cold fingers with visible breath and hopping up and down to withstand the cold. Sabrina had seen on the news that it was -18 degrees outside before they left, but didn't dare tell Jill.
It would blow her naïve little mind.
Finally, with a triumphant laugh, Kelly clicked open the lock and threw it spitefully to the snowy ground. The heavy lock disappeared into the snow with a soft whooshing sound.
"I hate those new thief proof locks." she said with disdain. She creaked open the metal door, revealing an abundance of switches and wires that controlled the electricity to the entire building.
"Which one cuts the power, Jill?" she whispered, running her fingers through the mess of wires.
Jill gave her a piteous look. "How should I know?"
Kelly sighed. "Which one cuts the power, Bri?"
Sabrina stepped up to the circuit and eyed it carefully. Money had been tight growing up and she had followed her father into the basement to watch him fiddle with the faulty wires in the fuse box many times as a kid. It was cheaper to try to fix them than to replace them and over time, she had memorized certain aspects about circuit boards.
This was far more complicated though.
"Give me a second." Sabrina said absently as she fingered the switches and wires.
Kelly and Jill waited patiently for her. After a few minutes of deliberation, Sabrina pulled a pocket knife from the black carrying bag that was slung over her shoulder, flicked the blade out, and pried a cable out of its place.
"I think that did it." she said hesitantly, snapping the knife shut.
The girls ran around to a nearby window and peered inside. It was completely dark and still inside the building, the ever present hum of electricity silenced by Sabrina's handiwork.
"You did it, Bri!" Jill whispered loudly, clapping her on the back.
"Did you ever doubt me?" Sabrina answered back with a grin. The girls made their way up a handicap ramp to a side door hidden by the shadows of the overhang above it.
Kelly quickly dropped to her knees and went to work on the lock. "Ugh, my fingers are so cold." she complained as she fiddled with it. Luckily for her, it was not nearly as complicated as the padlock to the circuit breaker and within a few minutes, the girls were inside.
"Well, thank God." Jill said gratefully, rubbing her cold arms. "I thought I was going to freeze to death."
Sabrina and Kelly reluctantly agreed with her. It had been cold outside and by comparison the inside of the building was toasty warm. The girls took a moment to warm up and then dug out their flashlights from Sabrina's bag. They were in an unfamiliar part of the building and after taking a moment to get their bearings, they followed Sabrina to Adam McMurrey's first floor office.
"I see why all this secrecy was necessary." Jill remarked, looking around the building that only she was unfamiliar with. Adam's office looked out into the lobby of the building. Though it was dark and empty now, during the normal workday it would have been a center of activity.
The usually bustling and noisy office building had a much more sinister feel when it was dark and empty, their echoing footsteps the only sound that could be heard. The girls stuck close together, combining the beams from their lights to guide them through the gloomy darkness to Adam's door.
Sabrina aimed her flashlight beam at the doorknob to provide her friend with enough light too see what she was doing. Again, Kelly wearily dropped to her knees to pick what she hoped was her last lock of the night.
At least her fingers weren't cold.
She quickly mastered the lock and carefully pushed open the door. The three girls cautiously walked inside the office, shutting off their lights as they did just in case the curtain was open. Jill crossed the room and adjusted the blinds on the window so their flashlight beams wouldn't be seen from outside. Adam's window overlooked a busy street and they didn't want to warrant any unnecessary attention. Now safe from prying eyes, the girls turned their lights back on and took a look around.
Adam's office was amazingly neat and organized. There was no clutter on his desk and papers he had been working on were perfectly stacked and placed in a neat row. His shelf was also very precise. His books were lined straight instead of the usual leaning and careless stacking that occurred with everyone else's shelves. Even the trashcan had a plastic lining tied in a perfect knot. The metal container neatly covered an entire tile square.
The man was immaculate.
"I wonder if he'll clean my garage after we find him." Sabrina joked. Kelly and Jill giggled softly, their friend voicing their exact thoughts.
"So what are we looking for?" Jill asked quietly.
Kelly shrugged. "Not sure exactly." she said. "It might be a folder, or a binder, or a book."
"So it could be anything then?" Sabrina groaned. "Hopefully we'll know it when we see it."
Jill shrugged. "I'll take the desk." she volunteered, heading towards it with her light.
"Help me with the shelf, Kell." Sabrina said, kneeling down to rifle through the bottom two shelves.
"Why would you take the bottom two shelves?" Kelly asked, giving her foot a light kick. "You're taller than I am."
Sabrina looked up and grinned at her. "I know. Just keeping you on your toes."
Kelly groaned and shook her head sadly at Sabrina's terrible pun.
The three girls worked diligently for the next fifteen minutes, searching for anything that could contain information that would make Adam McMurrey a dangerous man. Having thoroughly searched the desk and come up empty handed, Jill moved on to the small coat closet in the corner. Once again Adam's organizational skills made her job extremely easy. Boxes were clearly labeled and held exactly what their label indicated. Jill sighed in frustration and wandered over to the shelf to help her friends.
"The man alphabetizes his rubber bands!" she exclaimed, flopping down next to Sabrina. "There's nothing in his desk."
Kelly suddenly sighed and slammed a book back into its place. "I didn't find anything either, Bri. Jill's right, the guy barely has anything to look through."
Sabrina stood up a few moments later and shook her head. "I struck out too." she said dejectedly.
"So maybe the kidnappers already have what we're looking for?" Jill suggested.
That certainly seemed to be the case. The girls sighed in disappointment and looked around the office once more in a desperate attempt to catch something they had missed. It appeared that they had gone to a lot of trouble for nothing. The office refused to reveal anything further.
Suddenly Sabrina froze.
"What, Bri?" Kelly asked quickly, seeing her rigid stance.
"Look." she whispered, pointing to the bottom shelf.
Kelly and Jill stared intently at the bottom shelf that she was pointing too.
They shared a look. Who would say it first? They waited for the other to cave.
Jill finally sighed. "What?" she asked with the confusion that both she and Kelly felt.
"The bottom shelf. It's not as perfect as the other three." Sabrina answered, pointing again.
Kelly shrugged. "Well, you've been pawing through it."
Sabrina shook her head. "No, no. I put everything back the way it was. Look at it." she repeated, waving towards the bookshelf. "The top three shelves are perfect. Every book is straight. Nothing is leaning. He put exactly the amount of things that would fit so his books would be straight." She pulled her knife out of her bag and reached up to the top shelf. "Nothing else will fit." she said, attempt to wedge the handle of the blade in between two notebooks. They wouldn't budge. She repeated her demonstration with the second and third shelf with the exact same results, then dropped to her knees and pointed.
"Now look at the bottom one."
Kelly and Jill gasped in amazement. Sabrina was right. The bottom shelf appeared to be missing something. The books and folders were still straight, but there was room for something more.
"You're right, Bri." Jill said in wonder, kneeling down. She stuck her hand between two encyclopedias and pushed them apart with her forefinger and thumb. The resulting space was about a half inch long. She narrowed her eyes.
"Good thing this guy is so nitpicky or else we would never have noticed." Kelly murmured.
"If we're right, whatever is missing is about this thick." Jill said, showing her thumb and forefinger.
Kelly nodded. "A binder? A book? A folder?" she said shaking her head in disgust. "We're back to what we started with."
"Well, someone came in here and took it." Sabrina said, fingering a slight groove in the wood of the bottom shelf. "He must have kept it right here. Look, it was a little bit too big for the shelf. Must have driven him bonkers."
Kelly sighed in frustration. "Either it's at Adam's house or someone here took it. Should we start with Piper's office? We're already all dressed up and at the ball."
Sabrina smiled at her friend's dry sarcasm and nodded. "That seems like a good idea to me." she agreed.
The girl's erased any trace of their visit from Adam's office and left, locking the door behind them.
Jill yawned and rubbed her eyes. "So where is this other guy's off-"
A shrill, ear splitting alarm cut her off. The girls clapped their hands over their ears and whirled around frantically as a bright red light rapidly flashed on and off with the pulsing of the alarm on the ceiling above their heads.
"The generator!" Sabrina shouted in a panicky voice, as the girls clambered into a dark hallway. "The backup generator must be set to turn on after a certain amount of time."
Jill stared at her in disbelief. "Why didn't you say that before?!" she yelled, over the piercing siren.
"I didn't know!"
Kelly grabbed their arms and yanked them into a sprint. "Let's just get out of here!" she yelled.
The girls dashed through the hallway, their thundering footsteps completely drowned out by the shrill wail of the security alarm. They skidded to a halt in front of an unfamiliar hallway.
"Where did we come from?!" Sabrina wailed in stressed frustration.
Jill looked around frantically. "There!" she shouted, grabbing someone's sleeve, not knowing or caring who, and taking off in the direction she was pointing in.
It was Kelly's.
The unexpected jerk on her sleeve pulled her off balance and she lost her footing and sprawled on the tile floor, sliding into Jill's shins and sending her crashing down on top of her.
"Get up!" Sabrina shrieked at them, jumping up and down in impatience as they scrambled to their feet. The three girls sprinted down the hallway until it forked in two different directions. Kelly was slightly ahead and slowed her pace, unsure of which way to turn under the current pressure. Jill and Sabrina crashed into her, sending all three girls stumbling forward.
"Left!" Jill shouted. The girls turned and raced down the hallway. A few seconds later, the door they had entered through became visible and with joy they made a mad dash for it.
All three girls crashed into it at the same time and fell onto the handle, Sabrina and Jill pulling and Kelly pushing.
"Get back!" Sabrina ordered loudly. Unaware of which of her friends was impeding their progress, she shoved them both back, and yanked open the door.
The first sight the girls were greeted to upon running out into the crisp early morning air was two squad cars, their blue and red lights washing over the pale white snow that covered the parking lot.
The girls let out three separate curse words of varying severity and clambered over each other towards the chain link fence.
They weren't fast enough.
"Police! Freeze!" an officer shouted, breaking into a run after the fleeing girls.
The girls raced frantically towards the fence and threw themselves into it, climbing the moment they were latched on, and not at all caring about the amount of rattling this time. Kelly reached the top first and threw herself down into a gymnasts roll on the other side. Sabrina landed next to her a second later with a cry of pain. Both glanced up at Jill. She was nearing the top of the fence, her wet sneakers squeaking in protest as she climbed up as fast as she could.
"Hurry!" Kelly shouted. The cops were rapidly approaching them, within a few seconds they would be upon them. Kelly and Sabrina began backing away into the darkness, ready to run to the car as soon as Jill landed.
She landed a second later.
On the wrong side.
With a cry of surprise, Jill's wet shoe slipped off of the chain link she had the majority of her weight on and she fell, her weight ripping her fingers away from the fence. She landed hard on her side, scraping painfully against the rusty fence on her way down.
Before she could get up, two policemen grabbed her arms and forcibly pulled them behind her back.
There was nothing Sabrina and Kelly could do. With pained expressions on their faces, they watched while the officers handcuffed their friend. A flashlight beam suddenly lit up the ground directly in front of them, the bright light dazzling on the white crystals of snow. Sabrina and Kelly jumped back to keep from being seen. With no other choice, they ran off into the night, their sneakers squishing through the slush that covered the empty lot.
Hopefully, Jill would find a way to get herself out of this.
