Chapter 8: Welcome Home Party

Ethan and Nikki were well on their way by now. Ethan was trying to avoid the sidewalks this time so as to not attach any unneeded attention to his vehicle. After a while, eventually the police start to respond to the claims and it was getting harder and harder to stay out of trouble with the law these days.

Ethan broke the silence after a few minutes. "I swear that looks like a hand flapping up over the hood of the car every once in a while".

Nikki groaned. "That's because you ran over Amber's landlord as we were leaving."

"He would have wanted to go that way."

Nikki shook her head. "No I think he would have wanted her to pay her rent for once. I don't even know how she made it this long without a shooting spree from him. Speaking of Amber, she's called Anna and Millie over to her place."

"Tell me again sister how are you aware of their actions again?" Ethan inquired.

Nikki responded "I have some connections at the phone company that allow me to get transcripts of their phone conversations texted to my phone."

"Oh right, yet they're not aware of you tapping that network?" he asked genuinely interested.

Nikki laughed. "Actually no, I'm pretty good at doing things undetected. If they ever suspected anything, they'd not be dancing around excitedly in secrecy as they do. Anna was at the house gathering information and was apparently interuppted by Zane. I suspect that you may have given him reason to seek us out."

Ethan smirked. "Well you could say that." Ethan was already starting to feel the effects of being awake too long, letting out a deep yawn. "I can't wait to get home."

"Anna got a cleaning crew out there to make it appear like she wasn't there earlier."

"Those cleaning crews don't usually do that good a job, at least not the ones that Amber uses."
Ethan paused for a moment. "It's a shame I had to give Amber your key."

Nikki frowned. "Why, we have a whole bucket of them in the back seat. They're all identical and practically worthless." She reached in the back seat and grabbed the bucket pulling a handful of keys out.

"So we're pretty much just messing with Amber and her friends?"

"Yeah pretty much!" Nikki laughed.

The trip was almost over when they passed a taxi driver hitchhiking along the side of the road. Soon after, Ethan was pulling into the neighborhood and finally into the driveway. By this point Zane and Anna were long gone, leaving only a practically empty house. "Well its still here" he said.

"With the people we know, that's a small miracle" Nikki said sarcastically.

Ethan and Nikki climbed out of the vehicle and made their way slowly to the front steps. Paul the postman lay face down in a pool of blood on the porch. "Aw would you look at that" Ethan said sadly. "He was always so precise with his deliveries." They both tried to step over him without disturbing anything.

The house was completely dark and no sounds came from within. They turned on some of the lights and looked around the house eventually ending up in the kitchen. Ethan found a few pieces of glass on the kitchen floor though the window itself was still intact.

"Looks like the cleaning crew has already been here". Ethan looked around, "and the cats are missing too"

Nikki frowned. "Oh yeah I forgot to mention, Anna gave them to Zane for a couple days so they wouldn't be able to assist us any."

"Why would she do that, they're just plain old cats, what assistance could they provide us?" Ethan responded. Nikki just rolled her eyes. Ethan groaned. "Suki took my power tools apparently, we probably won't be hearing from Zane ever again then. He's good at spotting traps but Suki has like 100 ranks in Crafting Traps.

By this point, Ethan was getting hungry. "Should I throw something in the microwave for us?" he asked.

Nikki smiled. "Yeah please do."

Ethan grabbed a solid cube of spam from the fridge, placed it on a microwave dish and set the microwave to the vaporize setting for 2 minutes. The room was periodically filled with a plaid shadow as the composition of the spam was altered by temperatures reaching the surface of the sun. After 2 minutes, he opened the door to the microwave and pulled out the plate. The block of spam was no longer there, and in its place was something edible.

"We should watch the surveillance video before we go to bed" Ethan said flipping a switch underneath the kitchen counter. The fridge rotated completely around revealing a set of stairs leading down. Down in the hidden room, all of the monitors came on at once. Ethan started to review all the videos for the night with much interest. He already knew for the most part what happened already thanks to Nikki, but never the less watched Zane get mugged over and over again rewinding and replaying the same part till he lost interest.

Nikki said "Copy that to the internet and send it to everyone we know."

"I'm already on it" Ethan responded immediately.

Coming back up and closing the secret door, they both headed into the bedroom. Nikki said "They're going to be analyzing that key you gave them all night, and that should keep them occupied for a while. I don't figure I'll have to monitor their communications anymore tonight, so got room for one more in that bed?"

Ethan laughed. "You already know the answer to that!"

"I know" she replied.

Ethan added as he turned out the lights, "Tomorrow we'll take care of some loose ends."

Nikki whispered "Understatement."

"What?" Ethan asked.

Nikki laughed. "Nothing, good night"