The next morning at Ana and Kate's apartment, Kate was pacing nervously back and forth. She had barely slept a wink the night before. Kate was worried sick about her friend Ana, who had never come home that previous night. Ana was not responding to any of Kate's phone calls, nor was she replying to any text messages. Finally, Kate couldn't stand it anymore. After logging onto her laptop, she did some digging around on Elena Lincoln, and eventually found the her phone number and the address to her residence. When she tried calling the number, it went right into Elena's voicemail.

"Elena, this is Kate Cavanagh," she said when beginning to leave Elena a message. "I don't know if you remember me from Christian's birthday party, but I'm Ana's friend and roommate. She had left me a message last night, saying that you had invited her over for dinner, but she never came home last night. Can you give me a call when you get this? I'm really worried about her."

After leaving the voicemail, that pit in Kate's stomach seemed to be growing larger, telling her that she was never going to receive a return call back from Elena. There was only one thing left for Kate to do. After logging off of her computer, Kate grabbed her purse, and left the apartment. She then buckled herself into the front seat of her black Audi, fired up the engine, and began making her way out to the exclusive suburb north of Seattle, where she believed Elena lived.

In spite of how awkward it might be to show up at Elena's house unannounced this early in the morning, the circumstances certainly warranted it at this point. Kate cared so much for her friend Ana, and she had to find out what was going on with her before it was too late. Something was definitely not right.

When Kate located the address she had for Elena, she pulled up to the gate at the entrance to Elena's driveway and rang the buzzer. Unfortunately, there was no answer. However, Kate could clearly see Ana's car on the other side of the wrought iron gate. It was parked in the roundabout portion of the driveway just in front of the pillared entrance to Elena's large white brick house. Kate tried calling Ana's cell once again, but still there was no answer. After ringing the buzzer one more time without any response, Kate parked her car just down the street a little bit, and she hopped out of her car.

After looking around to make sure nobody could see her, Kate quickly scaled the brick wall at the perimeter of the property and hopped over to the other side. Once she was on Elena's property, Kate continued looking all around her to make sure nobody would spot her trespassing, as she carefully approached the front of the house. When she got to the front door, she tried to open it, but it was locked. Kate then snuck around to the back of the house and tried a few more doors leading to the first floor of the home, but each of them were locked as well.

The next thing Kate noticed was the spiral staircase leading to a balcony that wrapped around the second floor of the house. After quietly climbing the stairs, Kate tried yet another exterior door, which also was also unfortunately locked. While walking along the balcony, she decided to start peering in the windows to see if there was any sign of Ana. The first window, she saw nothing. Same thing with the second window. However, after looking through the third window she came upon, Kate had finally found Ana.

Through the window, Kate saw that Ana was tied to the bed and gagged. Kate could clearly see the pair of black silk scarves still keeping Ana's wrists tethered to the bedposts, while the third silk scarf tied around Ana's ankles was still connected to the footboard. Ana's pretty eyes suddenly lit up with excitement when she looked over towards the window and saw Kate standing there. Even though she could tell that Ana was gagged, Kate still placed her finger up to her lips from outside the window to urge Ana to be quiet.

When Kate tried to lift up on the bottom portion of the window, she was relieved to see that it was unlocked. After Kate crawled in through the open window sill, she rushed to the bed where Ana was tied up. The look on Ana's beautiful face showed how thrilled she was to see her friend Kate coming to her rescue!

"Are you okay?" Kate whispered, after she reached into Ana's mouth and removed her gag.

"I'll be fine, but wow, are you a sight for sore eyes!" Ana whispered excitedly, as soon as the scarf she had been gagged with was down around her neck. Kate quickly went to work at untying the scarf from around Kate's left wrist, before making her way to the other side of the bed so that she could start to untie her right wrist. "I can get this scarf myself," whispered Ana. "Just get my feet untied. We have to move quickly!"

Kate then moved to the foot of the bed and worked at getting Ana's bare feet untied, while Ana reached over with her left and loosened the knot to the scarf around her right wrist until she could pull her right hand free. When Ana was finally loose from her bindings, Kate helped her up from the bed and quickly gave her friend a warm, close hug. "I'm so sorry this happened to you!" Kate said to Ana. "What was Elena planning to do with you by kidnapping you?"

"You won't believe this, but Elena is involved in some sort of sex trafficking ring," Ana revealed. "She's turning me over to some rich asshole from South America. This guy is supposed to be here this morning to take me back to his country."

"Oh my God!" said Kate. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

After each of the girls climbed out through the bedroom window, Ana followed Kate, as they both quickly made there way along the balcony towards the spiral staircase that lead to the large patio down below. "My car is parked just out front on the street," Kate said to Ana while the rushed down the stairs. "We just have to scale the wall and then were outta here."

"Nobody's going anywhere!" said Elena Lincoln, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere when they got to the bottom of the spiral staircase. Elena now stood there with her gun pointed at both Ana and Kate. "Put your hands up where I can see them!"

Ana and Kate had almost made their escape, but it was too late! Elena proceeded to direct them through a set of French doors that led to the large kitchen back inside the house. Once they were inside, Elena pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table and ordered Kate to sit down in it. She then reached into one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out the same two pieces of thick white rope that she had used on Ana the day before. Elena handed the rope to Ana.

"Tie her up!" Elena said to Ana, while motioning her head towards Kate.

When Christian arrived at this corporate headquarters that morning, he was immediately greeted by his head of security, Jason Taylor. "I reviewed all the security video footage from yesterday like you asked me to, and I have something to show you," Jason informed Christian. The two men walked into the security room where all the video monitors were staged on the wall. "Here's footage of when Ana places that letter on your windshield," Jason said. "But is that really Ana? This woman seems taller. And who wears a trench coat with the hood up in the middle of July?"

"Back it up and zoom in closer for a second," Christian requested, as the video footage taken from inside the parking garage was dark and grainy.

"Whoever this woman is, she knew the location of the cameras inside the garage because she knows not to turn her face towards them," said Jason.

"Yeah, but that trench coat looks all too familiar," said Christian. "Elena Lincoln has one just like that."

"Why would she be delivering a Ana's letter to you?" Jason asked. "Why wouldn't Ana just deliver it herself?"

"Because Ana wasn't the one who wrote that letter," Christian replied with a look of grave concern in his eyes. "Let's go! We have to get moving right now before it's too late! Ana could be in danger!"

"Where are we going?" asked Jason.

"To Elena Lincoln's house," Christian responded urgently.

Author's Note: Hope you've been enjoying the story so far. Will Christian be able to get to Elena's house before it's too late? What will happen to Ana and Kate? Stay tuned for the next update, which I hope to post soon.