Before I had a chance to contact Kat, Cristy called me and asked if everything was okay. She said Jennifer had been trying to communicate with me for half an hour and got no answer from me. She had sensed danger and was trying to warn me. That was kind of strange, I wonder if it’s because of all the battering I have received this morning.

She connected me with Jennifer and I filled her in on what had happened. “Steve, make sure those girls are kept safe,” she said, “I don’t like what is going on.” I told Jennifer about Misty throwing me around and wondered if that could affect my communication ability. “I doubt it Steve,” she said giggling, “oh, sorry about that, but it is kind of funny.”

“Thanks,” I said, “try communicating with me now.” She did so and it worked just fine. I told her to remind Cristy to contact Jazzy for me. She said she would do so right away. “Okay everyone, time to search this house thoroughly,” I said, and we all set off to do so. We hid Muffin and Tracker under the couch and I left Storm to guard them.

Jewel and Azura came with me and we searched Aileen’s bedroom. What a lot of stuff in there. She had an old trunk at the foot of her bed which I was unable to move. However, it wasn’t locked to I opened it and began tossing stuff out, mostly old clothes and some dishes, pictures and a few books. Nothing much heavy though, so why couldn’t I move it?

I still couldn’t move it. Then I noticed it had a false bottom. It wasn’t hard to figure out how to remove the bottom and under it were bricks. That made no sense. Then I remembered another case we had about a year ago, so I scraped the bricks and gold shone through. Nice. Still, I should have been able to move that trunk a little. Oh well.

I kept looking. Behind a picture was a wall safe, so I called Misty in to help. “Cool,” she said and she proceeded to tell me about the safe. “Can you open it?” I asked. “Should be able to,” she said smiling. Sure enough, she had it open rather quickly and it was stuffed full of money. “Um, any hidden places in this safe?” I asked.

“Nope, this one is just a normal safe, nothing fancy,” she said, “but that is sure a lot of money!” “Here’s a bag we can use for the money,” I said, and I dumped the contents onto the bed. Then I began to put the money into the bag, but Misty was looking at the things I had dumped out of the bag. “Hey Steve,” she said, “this looks like a code book of some kind.”

I went over to look at what she found but just then the cats looked at the bedroom door and began to growl. Misty had her gun out quickly and I took hold of her other hand, making us both invisible. Then the two brothers entered the room. “Finn, look, they found the safe,” said Garrett. “Yeah, but they didn’t take the money,” answered Finn.”

“They also found the gold,” added Garrett, “but they left that too.” “I wonder where everyone is,” said Finn, “their car is still here, but no one is around.” That made me curious, Carine wouldn’t be able to hide all the other girls, so what happened to them? I said something to Misty, then I made us visible again. “Whoa, how did you do that?” asked Garrett.

“Don’t move you two,” I said, “or you will be shot immediately.” “What a minute,” said Finn, “you have no right looking through mother’s things, we could have you arrested for that, and for stealing our money.” “Your money is all there,” I said, “we didn’t take any. It must have been those other two guys we scared away.”

“Two guys?” asked Garrett, “Finn, they’re after us now!” “Grab the money and we’ll head to England,” said Finn, “and don’t try to stop us PI.” “Put your gun away Misty,” I said, “they have two, so they win.” “Yeah, now move out of the way,” said Finn. We did so. “Be careful,” I said to Garrett and pointed to the floor.

He looked down and Misty kicked him right on his forehead, then to his stomach, then to his head again and he was down and out. While she was busy I punched Finn in his lower back. He groaned and turned so I punched him in the stomach twice, then kicked him, but he was still on his feet. Then Misty kicked his head and he was down and out too.

“You need to kick his head,” she said to me. “I can’t kick high like you can,” I told her. “You need to practice more,” she said. “That won’t help,” I said. “It won’t hurt,” she replied smiling. We picked up all the money and went to look for the others, but they were nowhere around. We then went to retrieve the cats who were still under the couch, sleeping.

“Wake up you 3,” I said, “did you see where the other girls went?” Meowr.= Not know they go somewhere, they searching house. “Oh, there you are,” said Carine, “I went up to the attic to look around and when I came back down just now, everyone was gone.” I looked outside and our car was gone too.

“I had sensed trouble,” I said, “but thought it applied to the two brothers.” “How could someone come in here and kidnap the others without them warning us?” asked Carine, “That makes no sense.” I called Dawn, but she hadn’t heard from the other girls. She said Aoife was okay and had been dismissed from the hospital, so they were all back at the hotel.

I told her to get everyone out looking for our car and to come pick us up right away. Amerie, Melanie, Melissa and Alizea arrived quickly and we soon joined the search for our car and hopefully find our girls with it.

We headed to an area of the city with some large, vacant buildings where they could hide out limousine. “Drive slowly past these buildings,” I said to Amerie. We drove past a few, then suddenly I told Amerie to stop just ahead.

I called the others and told them to meet us at that spot. These people had Sherry, Milena, Aasta and Brandy, so we had to be careful going into that building. I spotted our car inside that building we just passed, but that does not mean the girls are in there too, they may have been taken somewhere else…

To Be Continued.

©2025 Steve McLeod.