Story One - The Telas Threat - Act One - The Fiancée Kidnappers

When Miles Anderson's fiancée, Selena Harris is kidnapped after a night out with a friend, he immediately starts looking for her completely unaware of the circumstances.

A day of many firsts shouldn’t start any other way than by answering a phone call made purely to inform you that your fiancée has been kidnapped. Selena was with her best friend, Brian Rigg whom apparently took her back to his car and knocked her out with a torque wrench. Naturally, her family wanted me to investigate and felt I should deliver the ransom. Now I know what you’re thinking. That would involve a ridiculous sum of money and would involve camping out in a field for half a day, but you’re wrong. Selena’s father, Michael Harris was the police officer in charge of cracking down on a large drug smuggling ring so naturally the ransom was all the files he had created whilst on the case.

My first goal was to track down Rigg and squeeze the truth out of him. The ransom could wait, just so long as it reached the leaders hands by midnight and seeing as it wasn’t even ten thirty and finding Rigg would probably only just reach into the afternoon, I could release a sigh of relief knowing that time was on my side.

Selena told me when we last spoke that they would be at Hang Park which is where all 3 of us met that long summer five years ago. The first port of call upon my arrival would be to ask a few of the neighbours if they saw anything unusual going on around eleven o’clock last night.

The most useful person on my list was old Mrs Sullivan who lived in the house facing the bit of road that some of Selena’s blood was found by a forensics squad.

My interview with Mrs Sullivan was relatively short and packed with information that would undoubtedly prove useful. The decent gentleman inside of me regretted even thinking of this but Rita Sullivan had to be by far the nosiest old crone in the country. She heard Selena screaming in terror which only encouraged her to part two blinds so she could see out where she watched Selena going into the boot of a car. Although in this case her curiosity gave me something of an advantage as she spoke to both Selena and Brian wondering how they were getting on as young adults and Rigg told her he was working as a technician in a science lab known as “Telas” which was no more than an hour’s drive away.

Telas was something built from the image of a science fiction writer. The building’s exterior was made exclusively from steel that had been painted a gaunt black and windows that had been tinted the same. If my unwelcoming feeling didn’t stem from the fact that someone who works here decides the most fun a guy can have is to clock innocent women with torque wrenches and drive off with them, it most certainly stemmed from this buildings appearance.

A quick scan of the lobby told me that barging through to get into Rigg’s office would have been both the worst and last decision I would ever make. Seven security guards all armed with Carbine assault rifles were waiting for someone like me so they could have a bit of target practice. It was madness, the only way I could get in was to perform a ruse and that’s exactly what I did.

Just last week, Telas was broken into by an infamous thief known as the “White Cougar” who stole a set of documents from Telas executive, Maria Fielding’s safe, an action that made me believe that she’d be wanting a new one and locating one was hardly a problem especially when you had a friend in a bank.

“No! You’ve got be crazy. I can’t just suddenly request for a safe from the firm, they’ll think I’ve gone cuckoo.” Bernard Little was a high school friend who played everything by the book, frequently to my dismay.

“Bernie. I’m going to explain it to you and hopefully you’ll see how important this safe is. Selena was beaten and kidnapped last night by Brian and the only way we’ll be able to find out why he took her and where is by checking his office and his house.”

“Jesus. This most certainly isn’t the day I thought it was going to be. First my supervisor gets replaced by some bull who wants me to work overtime five nights a week and now you come in and tell me Brian’s gone psycho.” Bernard’s look of disbelief paralleled mine. Brian had to be the biggest pacifist we knew, or at least thought we did.

“Listen. I’m not carrying you in a safe. That’s your most stupid idea yet for a way around things. But I’m willing to meet you half way. My connections will get me into Telas without having to lug a rented safe so allow me to check out what I can on Brian and you can check out his house. Meet me here in about two hours, after all. It’s an overtime night.” Having no objections to this proposition we both split off to discover what we could about Brian and his sudden descent into brutality.

Brian’s house was a place I regularly visited so all of the main rooms such as the study and bedroom had already been mapped out in my head, the former of which was the first room to be investigated.

Notable items in the study included: a laptop with the Telas logo which was a globe with the company font over it which indicated this was exclusively for work and a stack of envelopes from Telas, again the logo was on the stamp. On the laptop there was a stack of e-mails including a very incriminating one that was sent by Telas’ chief scientist, Luther Grey requesting Brian to capture the “Policeman’s Daughter” and bring her to the Mossbridge Construction Plant, a site that gained it’s infamous reputation from the number of drug deals that take place in the area. One of the envelopes were a little more clear that Selena was the target by simply stating her name and having two thousand pounds enclosed in it which Brian had already taken and stating that when Brian was making the ransom call, he had to request for any files even remotely linked to the “DT-5 Case, a drugs bust involving a very famous Telas scientist.

With the knowledge that Brian was involved in the drug smuggling my instincts were telling me to find Selena in Mossbridge before anything else could happen to her. The only trouble with that is the tight security that would be guarding her and this time even Bernard had to agree that it was high time for a ruse.

We met back at the bank and gave each other the highlights of what was found. Bernard brought back information of Brian’s current location which would stand me in good stead for that showdown when it came. When I mentioned Mossbridge however, Bernard began to shudder.

“You better have something good planned or you’ll wind up dead before you walk through the gate.” Bernard always did this weird eyebrow crunch when he was concerned. The little caterpillars bent over backwards and crashed together. It often brought light to dark situations and this time was no exception.

“You said you had contacts in Telas, right? I’ll assume that you know some of the security codes or can at least get to know them.” I was too obvious, Bernard knew my plan and I braced myself for the guffaw that came before his overly loud dismissal.

It never came.

“Wait a minute; I know what you’re planning. The fire alarm going off, safe’s cracking on their own, a total security meltdown that would leave them exposed, right?” This wasn’t good. He got excited which meant he would spontaneously combust with sarcasm.

“That’s kind of what I’m looking for, yes.” I never even opened by eyes. I expected him to be pointing and laughing at this point.

“Thank god you came to me! I was trying to come up with my own little plan against the new supervisor.” Bernard was being serious which he never was which really brought home just how much he hated his new boss.

Bernard went to his computer and punched in a few codes that allowed him to get all the codes we needed for the ruse. After he got what he needed he handed me one of his spare M9’s and told me to contact him when I was near Mossbrid

Author's Note

If you feel that there are grammatical errors especially with comma's etc please let me know as I'm trying to learn through experience more than anything else. Also share your views about first person novels or just this one in particular. It doesn't really matter as all feedback (positive or negative) will be gratefully recieved.