The Investigators, Inc. The Kidnapping Mystery. Chapter 1. Mandar’s Enemy.

Things have been nice and quiet around here for a week now, which is very nice. It is giving us some time to relax and giving the ‘bad girls’ time to adjust to their new home. They are actually doing very well and I now have 6 new sisters, which includes Katresa from before. I couldn’t very well leave 3 of them out, it seems they would have been very disappointed if they couldn’t be my sisters too. I’m not sure why, but for some reason they all like me very much, in a nice way.

Which is why they want to be sisters, not girlfriends. Annelie reminded me that she has 6 sisters and no brothers. Plus Bear, Penny and Patrick also have 6 sisters, so I guess it’s not terribly unusual. Later, Jennifer and I were lying on our bed, she was reading and I was thinking. “You know,” I said, “I have been thinking…” “No,” she said, while still reading. “But you didn’t let me finish,” I said. “The answer is still no,” she said, still reading.

“But really, this is…”, I began to say. “No is a simple word to understand, correct?” she asked, looking at me now. “But how can you say no when you don’t know what I was thinking?” I asked in return. “You were thinking,” she said, “and every time you do so, there are problems that arise. Therefore, the answer is no. That way we can all keep our sanity.” “Speaking of sanity,” I said, “how did you knock out those two fake ghosts by just touching their necks?”

She looked at me and smiled. “See?” she showed me her hands, “These two rings contain enough of a certain chemical that can instantly knock out someone.” “Cool, um, how come I don’t have rings like that?” I said. “Carolyn invented this,” she answered, “but she only had the two rings at the time. I probably shouldn’t be wearing them right now, although they are empty at the moment. This little needle comes out when the ring comes into contact with some object, like someone’s neck.”

I immediately called Carolyn and asked about the rings. She came up right away with one for me. “How come I only get one?” I asked her. “Well, guys don’t normally wear a lot of rings,” she said, “I know some do, but it’s not normal. And you already have 2 rings, so this makes 3, a better amount, I think. Oh, and I have been thinking about something else too.” “And what is that?” asked Jennifer. “Uh, wait a minute, why didn’t you say no to Carolyn?” I asked. “Oops, did I say something wrong?” she asked.

“No, Steve is just upset because I wouldn’t listen to his idea earlier,” said Jennifer, “he was thinking again.” “Oh, now I understand,” said Carolyn, “anyway, I was thinking that since our new girls keep referring to themselves as ‘bad girls’, that maybe you should start a new team and call it Steve’s Bad Girls.” She was all smiles when she shared her idea, which was the same idea that I had which Jennifer didn’t want me to talk about. Sigh.

“That was the same idea as mine,” I said. Jennifer sighed. “The answer is still no,” she said, “although it could work with one slight change.” “Such as?” we both said together. “We remove your name from it,” said Jennifer, “people might get the wrong idea.” “Really? I thought it would work nicely,” we both said together again. Jennifer sighed again. “Besides, they might not like it,” said Jennifer. “Carolyn, why don’t you ask them and see what they think about it?” I asked her, “But maybe do it without others around.”

“Sure thing!” she said excitedly, and off she went. It wasn’t long and the 6 bad girls were running into our bedroom and jumping on the bed, all of them talking rapidly, mainly in French. They did seem to be rather excited about something. I calmed them down and asked Katresa to speak for the group. Apparently they loved the idea of a team called the Bad Girls. But they wanted it to be called Steve’s Bad Girls, so I just pointed to Jennifer and they all looked at her. Jennifer sighed again and said “no”.

The girls all went “awwwwwwww”, and looked so disappointed. Jennifer also reminded us that all teams must have at least 15 members, so we would need 9 more. Just then I received an important phone call from Mandar so everyone had to leave. However, it was actually from Kristen, one of Mandar’s two personal bodyguards. Her and Krissy were looking after things now since Allen had been shot and killed just as he reached home yesterday.

Mandar was nearly back to normal again and put everything into the twins hands, giving them full control, something they had been trained for anyway. Then Mandar was heading home where he could relax better, but he never made it. Kristen then got a phone call from a man that Mandar knew, head of a large criminal organization and he had kidnapped Mandar. Kristen talked to Mandar and he said to contact me for this job.

However, the job was not to rescue Mandar, but the daughter of this man who kidnapped Mandar. She was kidnapped by the head of another criminal organization and would only be returned if the first man turned over his organization to the kidnapper of his daughter. He has 4 days to think about it, which would give us 3 days to rescue the daughter who is 12 years old. Kristen said she would give us everything we need.

The girl was being held in Belize, in a rather large mansion in the mountains, with only one road in which would make a surprise visit out of the question. Kristen sent all the information she had to Annelie for us to look at. Naturally we are taking the case. Baldwin told Kristen that he would help them out if any problems occurred that they couldn’t handle. The twins felt quite relieved to hear that. We have 3 full days, plus part of today, which is not much time.

It will take the most of a day to get to this location, so we need to leave quickly and do our planning on the plane mostly. It’s a small country and a place where we will stand out from the local population. So, we go as tourists and a smaller group, well, two smaller groups and we will arrive at different times. Since Rock and Bear are still in the USA, Rock will make reservations at a hotel from his place and we will make reservations from here for the second group.

That is just in case someone wants to check on us. Smaller teams are harder to pick sometimes and Jennifer didn’t want me to go along on this one. She said Matt could handle things this time. I thought about that, but decided Aari would be better to lead things, he knows the criminal mind better, especially in larger organizations. So I let him pick his team for the job after talking with him about it. Soon Aari and his team were in the air, flying first to Florida and then down to Belize. I sent another team to Florida as well, but they will wait until called upon to go and help.

Hopefully I won’t need to send them down to help, but they are fairly close, just in case. Aari and a team of men will arrive first, they will be from the USA. Kat and a team of girls will be going next, as a group of women from Europe. Hopefully this other criminal organization doesn’t know us well. All those going have been removed from our list of members, in case anyone tries hacking into our system. I really don’t like sitting back while my team goes into danger, but this time perhaps it is best.

To Be Continued.

©2024 Steve McLeod.