8.

~ 'Plumber came by last week, looked under the kitchen sink, did nothing and still charged me $150. He said he would come back on wednesday to fix the hot water.'

~ 'Finished moving the last of Ariadne's extra furniture into the two free bedrooms. Only took two weeks to clean out three large storage rooms.'

~ 'Updated the alarm systems. I want a dog, but I don't think Ariadne is a dog person.

~ 'I wish we could sell this house right now, and move to an island somewhere. Some how I don't think Ariadne would go for it.'

~ 'Had ourselves a little scare yesterday. Ariadne took a home test and it came back negative. I must admit, I was a little disappointed. Is that bad?'

~ Got the final bill from the plumbers today. Over five grand and I still hear the pipes running at odd hours. The guy said it was nothing. Then, the asshole charged me another fifty bucks just to tell me it was nothing. I should have been a plumber.

~ All we do it watch home improvement shows. We both agree that redoing this house will test our relationship.

~ What if we just decided to stay here? I think her sister could live in the basement apartment and we could have the rest of the house. As soon as she's done with school, we won't be so worried about money.

~ I worry about Ariadne. All she seems to do is worry. She won't confide in me, but that's nothing new.

~ Ariadne is working on the restoration of a painting. She thinks she isn't working fast enough.

Arthur leafed through his little notebook at the the trivial snip its from his daily life. Normally he recorded things two or even three times a day. These were just a few sentences, never to be looked at again.

It was a deeply rooted habit he had. Recording things. Too many times he had to rely on memory and taking notes helped him keep things strait.

He needed to write now. Needed to record that Ariadne went missing this early morning. The phone calls, the confrontation with Lake.

He raised his pen to the new sheet of paper.

~ 'The very worst thing. I was called away from home this morning to a reported bombing at the museum. Bomb turned out to be a sort of hoax. A means to divert me away from home. To lure me away from Ariadne for a few hours.

While being interview by the FBI, I received a phone call be a person unknown claiming they had Ariadne and to not alert the FBI.

I remained calm and returned home to find clear evidence of a struggle and no sign of Ariadne in the house.

The front door was locked and the alarm was re-set. I have no idea how the intruder gained ingress into our home.

I was called a second time but the assumer perpetrator. He said he would cut off her finger to prove she was alive.

I managed to discreetly contact Agent Lake whom I meet at museum only a few hours ago. We are going to look through the house and hopefully find out how Ariadne was taken.

Arthur paused and looked over what he had just written. He had soft petaled the truth of how he had contacted Agent Lake and the whole almost shooting him.

It didn't matter.

"What are you doing?" Lake asked.
"Taking notes." Arthur said sadly. "It's been a busy day."

"So this is your house?" The agent nodded to the town house coming into view.

"Yes." Arthur said sadly.

"Fancy digs for a rent a cop and art restorer." Lake added.

"We're fixing it up. Going to sell it. Ariadne has an eye for interior decorating."

He felt a pang f sadness and scribbled in his notebook.

'One of the last things I said to her was that I didn't like the wallpaper. I wish I had just lied and told her it was wonderful.'

"Still, it must be expensive. The mortgage and the restoration." Lake said.

"It is, but she has money." Arthur said.

"Had being the correct word." Lake said.
"What the hell are you getting at, Lake?" Arthur said darkly.

"I did credit reports on all employees at the museum. She seems to have sunk every last cent into a bank loan for this place, payments to a adult care center for a woman named Elizabeth Richards and another home improvement loan of fifty thousand dollars."

"That last loan is in both our names." Arthur corrected him. "It takes money to fix up an old house."

"Money that you two no longer have. So, why would anyone want to kidnap her? You aren't solvent enough for a ransom." Lake said.

"Vengeance." Arthur said.

"Can't be vengeance alone. If it were just about vengeance, he would have just killed her."

Arthur said nothing. He didn't like the way Lake so casually said someone could kill Ariadne.

"Forgot to ask." Lake said just as casually. "What the hell made you think I was involved?"

"Because he mentioned you by name." Arthur told him.

"That's a neat trick. I only moved here a month ago. I've been living in a motel room this whole time." Lake said.

"Drive around the block. We can park the car and walk through the ally ways. There's more cover. We can get in though the basement." Arthur said.

"Why not just go through the front door?" Lake asked.

"He very specifically said not to involve you. If he sees you coming, he will kill her." Arthur said coldly.

"Check. What makes you sure he didn't gain entry though the house through the basement?" Lake asked as he drove his own government issue car around the block.

"Alarms never went off." Arthur said calmly. I secure the entire house before I contacted you. No glass was broken, no doors forced. It was just like she…vanished." Arthur said bitterly.

"I read her profile. She was a victim of a deranged stalker before. Could our new guy have planted cameras in the house?" Lake asked.

He pulled into a shady lot a few houses away from the back of Arthur and Ariadne's town home. This area was unique in that it had back gardens to the towering town homes. They could walk almost unnoticed through the alley ways.

"There has been no new lamps, clocks or furniture in the house. No one comes or goes in the house without my being there."

"Alright." Lake said. "You know the drill here. We check for possible ingress into the house. Check for video equipment."

Arthur nodded and looked at the town house.

"Just stay calm. He'll call you again soon." Lake said. "I've installed an app on your phone that can track calls using nearby cell phone towers.
"They have those?" Arthur asked looking at his smart phone.
"They have apps for everything." Lake said.

~ The Point Man let himself and the FBI man back into the house. He noticed for the first time how stuffy the basement felt compared to the rest of their home. It was unfinished and remained another storage room for Ariadne's stuff.

"Sorry about the mess." Arthur hissed as the two men maneuvered around the carefully covered furniture. "The guest rooms are worse. Just warning you now."

~ It was quite again in the house when Arthur unlocked the basement door and they came into the living room. Even when he had been alone in the house, he never remembered it being this quite.

Both men casually looked for video surveillance equipment. It was hard to believe that kind of thing would have escaped the Point Man's notice. He just always noticed these things. It had annoyed Ariadne to no end the way he inspected the lamp she got at a flea market. The painting she had pulled out of storage. He was always suspicious of everything. It was why so much stuff was covered with packing sheets and kept in shut off rooms. Less to maintain.

How could anyone be spying on him and he not notice?

The Point Man checked lamps and light fixtures. He checked the ceilings for holes, but since the town house had no unfurnished attic, there wasn't much point. He looked behind paintings and felt under tables.

After two hours, Arthur had enough.

"There's nothing." he growled out loud. Breaking the silence.
"Wow! Define covert ops again?" Lake said in a whisper. "Keep your voice down and keep looking!"

Arthur was about to shout at the agent again when his phone rang.

He saw the blocked number and felt his heart race.

He didn't wait for it to ring again before answering and put it on speaker phone.

"I want to speak to Ariadne." Arthur said without preamble.

He waved to Lake who mutely engaged his own smart phone.

"Right to the point." the voice modulator said. "Why did you leave the house?"

"I was looking for you." Arthur said bluntly. "Put Ariadne on the phone so I know she's alive."

"That's not the rules of the game." the voice said.
"This isn't a game." Arthur growled. "You want me, come here and talk to me. I won't go anywhere. I told you, let's settle this between us."

The voice said nothing and Arthur felt he suddenly had leverage.

"What's this all about?" the Point Man asked.
"You know what this is about, secret service." the voice said darkly.

"You keep calling me that." Arthur said. "You got some beef against the government? The unit I worked with? President Winter?"

"No." The voice said. "Just you."

There was a click and the voice was gone.

"He hung up." Arthur said to Lake.

Lake let out an annoyed grumble.

"Well, while you two were arguing over who's prettiest, I was tracking the ping from the cell phone towers. The good news is, it's close. Bad news is, it's within a three block radius." Lake said softly.
"He would never leave her. He needs to keep her close." Arthur said in an equally lowered voice.
"It would be risky to keep her in the neighborhood. This place is pretty populated with the school. Are there any empty buildings around here?"

"No. A lot of people have basements." Arthur offered.
"We go knocking door to door, he'll know." Lake said. "Shit, his the floors always creaked so much?"

"What?" Arthur asked.
"Are you walking or clomping?"

"It's the hardwood floors. I guess we don't notice it anymore." Arthur said feeling annoyed. Both men had been walking down the hallway, and Arthur had forgotten how noisy things were in this house. Sound seemed to carry; especially with no rugs or carpet.

"Hang on a second." Arthur said. He left Lake at one end and walked along the upstairs hallway again to his bedroom.

He was loud. Even when he was trying to be quite he was loud. How many times had Ariadne complained about the noise? How many times could he tell when she was coming upstairs? When she was in the kitchen or bathroom. The old house creaked like a wooden ship when they were home. It was a noise they had gotten so used to, they blocked it out.

Even when Arthur was home alone, the house still creaked slightly. The house still creaked even when no one could be upstairs.

Today. Today the house didn't creak. It was silent and still. It only made noise now when they were upstairs.

The kidnapper didn't know where Arthur had gone. The kidnapper only knew when the Point Man came back.

'He's in the walls.' Arthur thought irrationally.