“Hey, listen,” I said, “ships, that means we are down at the docks.” “That’s why they put us out for the trip,” said Jennifer, “it must have taken a while to get here.” “How loud can you scream?”, I asked Jennifer. “If one of those rats touches me you’ll find out,” she answered, “and you won’t be able to hear out of this ear ever again.” “Thanks,” I said, “but please turn the other way, and…” She then screamed nice and loud! I am glad she turned the other way though, that was one amazing scream.

She told me later that a rat had run across her foot just then. Good timing. A guy opens the door and comes in. “Don’t you dare touch me again!”, yelled Jennifer at me. “What’s with you these days?”, I yelled back, “I can’t do anything!” The guy came over and Jennifer gave him a good hard kick to his jaw and he was down. I grabbed his gun quickly and we both went to the door. Another man was standing not far away. Fortunately there wasn’t much light in that place so we quickly and quietly came up behind the man. Jennifer said, “hi there”, and the man turned.

Jennifer then gave him a hard kick to his stomach, then his head and he was down. “Okay, let’s find our way out of here,” I said. It was a warehouse filled with boxes. We just followed around and finally found our way out. No one was in sight. Strangely, neither of those guys had a phone. So off we went to look for one. “Looks like a street out this way,” I said, so we turned down there. Then we came to an office in one of the buildings. “There must be a phone in here,” said Jennifer, “but it’s locked.

I look around a bit. “Just what I want,” I said with a smile. “You’re going to unlock the door with a piece of wire?”, asked Jennifer. Just as she finished asking I had the door open. “Are you sure that you have never been a criminal before?”, she asked smiling. “Just lots of practice,” I said, “a PI has to be prepared.” Sure enough there was a phone so Jennifer called Kat while I watched the area. “It’s called Simpson Street,” I told her and she relayed the info to Kat. “They’re on the way,” said Jennifer, “but it might take about 20 minutes to get here.

Hey, look at this, an old fashioned note book with phone numbers.” “That’s nice,” I said still watching. “Look at this one,” she said, “the name is Alex and it’s the right phone number too.” “Now that is interesting,” I said, “we’ll take that one with us. Call Kat again and give her a few of the phone numbers so she can check them. There just might be another interesting one in there. I think we have a big operation going here with these people.” “Yes, I agree with that,” said Jennifer and she called Kat again.

“And Baldwin will have to close his research facility until he gets things cleaned up,” I told Jennifer, “even his security people can’t be trusted. But he can’t do it right now or he will tip them off. We want to get everyone, right up to the top person involved.” “Do you think that’s the Senator?”, asked Jennifer. “Might be,” I said, “or there might be more than one at the top. If that’s the case we likely will not get all of them, but we will try.” “Did you drop that rat on my foot?”, she asked. “No, I most certainly did not,” I told her smiling, “that I definitely would never do.”

“Okay, I believe you,” she said, “I’m getting tired, it’s been a long night and it’s not over yet.” “Yes, we still have another stop to make,” I said, “so you can check some more files.” “Oh, that’s right,” she said, “this is where we get arrested.” “Hopefully not, providing we have the cats with us,” I said, “they will help us.” A car comes driving up, it’s one of ours so we go running out and it is our car that we had been using so the cats were in there very happy to see us again.

I gave the address to our driver and off we went. We arrived at our destination and I had already told the cats they were going undercover for this operation. So they would pretend to be stray cats that somehow got locked in the building. That’s providing we set off the alarm. We got in and disabled the alarm easily enough. There was a floor plan of the building in that room with the alarm system. Down the hall we went, MC unlocked the door and we went inside quickly, shut the door and, oh no…

To Be Continued.

Previous chapters of this story, and more stories, can be found on my home page under “The Investigators, Inc.”

©2021 Steve McLeod.