Chapter Five: Checking out a Random Warehouse...
"A warehouse... seriously?" Ella arched her eyebrow upwards, staring at the large dilapidated building in front of us. "Why did Ms. Salon tell us after the interview to check this place out?"
"The address..." I mumbled to myself, already pulling out my notebook, flipping it open to the address that F sent his letter from. It was the same as the address on the warehouse. "This is where F sent that letter from." I stated it like fact, my heart thudding loudly in my chest.
Ella blinked at me upon hearing that, a soft hum escaping her before she turned her attention back to the warehouse. "So she sent us somewhere were we could find a clue on who F is?"
"Looks like it. Come on let's go." I climbed over the locked gate, nimbly falling to the ground, coming out in a roll.
Ella spluttered at me for several seconds, before scrambling after me. "Star! This is breaking and entering!"
"Ms. Salon says that Dad owned this place... which means that it now belongs to us and thus we're not breaking and entering." I retorted back, before shoving open the heavy duty door, wincing as it squealed loudly in the dim evening air.
"Couldn't we have fetched the others first?" Ella whined as she followed me into the building.
I ignored her complaining as I pulled out my flashlight and flicked it on. Shining it around the large room, I determined that the only thing that possibly could let us know what Dad had used this warehouse for, as well as why F would use it for the return address, was the office that overlooked the entire warehouse. "Come on." I walked over to the office door, grasping the rusty handle in my hand. Locked. "Great... Did you by chance bring your lockpicking kit with you? I left mine in our bedroom."
"No... since I honestly didn't think we were going to do something like this!" Ella hissed as she gestured wildly around us. A loud bang suddenly came from the other side of the warehouse, causing both of us jumped at that, my eyes darting over to where the sound had came from.
"Hello?" I could easily pull the Elemental Alliance Member card on whoever it was if Ella's concerns about someone buying the place, which looking at it I highly doubted that was it. Someone else must have broken in.
Silence stretched on for what felt like forever... before a bullet whizzed far too close for my liking. "Duck!" Ella yelled as she dove to the ground, with just enough forethought to grab me and yank me to the ground next to her.
Voices immediately began to filter through the air, though they were still too far away for us to hear what was being said. Until a rather cold voice rose above the others. "Stop your yakking. F wants those girls in his clutches before next Saturday." That... didn't sound good.
Another voice, for some reason it sounded familiar. "How does F even know that the twins are even here? This place is far too beat up for spoiled children to hang out at. I mean wouldn't they prefer to be on a private island?"
I frowned, trying to figure out what it was the second voice, obviously male was trying to press. The first voice muttered something, though it was too quite for me to hear. A quick glance at Ella was all that was needed to tell me that she was confused as well. Footsteps suddenly filled the air as the large group suddenly surged forward in an attempt to find us. Heart pounding, I glanced around trying to figure out the best way to escape without being noticed. "Sir? What if they noticed that the air vent cover is loose, you know the one right next to the office? I believe it is on the left."
That was when it hit me. The second voice sounded familiar because it was Zane! And he was trying to tell us in a roundabout way how to escape! Crawling over to the air vent that he had mentioned, it was on the right, not the left, I pulled back the cover to find it extremely loose. Ella crawled into the vent first, before I squeezed in after her. Twisting around, I was trying to figure out if there was a way for me to place the cover back on, only for it to move seemingly by itself, a screwdriver appearing out of nowhere to screw it back into place, thus making it look like no one had been there to begin with. "Thank you Paleman.. and tell Zane thanks too." I whispered to my fellow elemental master.
"Just get out of here." Paleman hissed through the vent at us.
We quickly crawled away from the opening, navigating through the air vent towards a gentle breeze of fresh air. We had to get out of here quickly, or else Zane and Paleman's aid would be pointless.
I pushed my fork around, staring blankly at the dish in front of me. "Oh come on Star... I'm not that bad of a cook!" Kai sat his fork down, concern flashing in his eyes.
"I'm...not hungry." I didn't bring up the fact that Zane was now MIA. The girls that had been working undercover had confirmed that F had requested Zane's presence and no one had seen him since. Paleman had apparently followed us back to the Bounty, where he then reported that apparently whatever it was that F had, wasn't complete yet and he appeared to be obsessed with my sister and myself. But the lack of Zane was, in my opinion more concerning.
Pixal stood up abruptly, exasperation flooding her features. "I'm going to go over everything we have on F and his men... see if I can't figure out what it is that they might be planning."
"Look at Saturday." I blurted out without thinking, my mind still dwelling on the events that had occurred earlier today. Upon noticing that everyone was looking at me, I decided to clarify. "The henchman that Zane and Paleman were with mentioned something about Saturday. Next Saturday to be more precise. Something huge, something that rarely happens, must be happening that day."
"Now that you mention it, there is a strange obsession with the seventeenth of this month... which happens to be next Saturday." Skylor mused aloud, her brow pinching as her mind whirled at the implications.
"I'll look into it." Pixal promised, before leaving the table.
I just hope we can find Zane before something bad happens to him...
A/N: Still no reviews...