I’d been called out in dreadful weather so that I could stand around waiting to get picked up. The clouds hadn’t started rumbling just yet, but the immense noise of the heavy rain hitting every surface around me made up for it. Standing under the porch of a disused shop I began to wonder whether it was all just a wind up, play pranks on the new girl, it wasn’t unheard of. Taking my hands out of my coats pocket and folding my arms tight over me, I peered out at the sky and decided to risk getting drenched, I was bloody hungry. Just as I was pulling my gloves over my hands the ultimate cliché black saloon car stopped at the kerb in front of me.
As the electric window whirred down on the passenger side, someone leaned over and shouted out of the window toward me, “Theo?”. I looked once more at the sky, and gave the driver a solemn nod before walking over and getting into the back of the car. I have never been good in passenger seats, it always made me nervous that I couldn’t control it all, at least the in back seats I can’t see what could be going wrong. As the car pulled away I noticed a man of the other side of the street, he seemed to be watching intently with notepad in hand, not out of the ordinary nowadays, but something that it pays to notice.
The driver said not one word to me, or I to him, as we drove, though I occasionally caught him watching me through his rear-view mirror. It was as if he was examining me, maybe rating me against previous people he’d driven in my position, I’d heard there had been a few.
We drove for at least forty-five minutes - we seemed to be heading nowhere specific - before I managed to re-discover half a packet of mints in one of my numerous pockets. This periodically distracted my stomach from the fact that it was getting very impatient and demanding food. I did wonder where I was being taken, but I’ve learnt that a lot of the time it’s best to just shut up and stay that way.
We must have driven for about another half an hour after that before we finally pulled up in front of an old dilapidated warehouse. I got out of the nearside of the car, closed the door behind me and stared up at this very large very plain building. I heard the whir of the electric window behind me again; I turned to see the driver leaning slightly out of his window. “Just go in, wander around, someone’ll find you.” He turned back to the wheel as if to drive away,
“Wait. How am I going to get back?” I enquired,
“Well, we don’t even know whether you’ll be coming back yet.” And as if this comment didn’t unnerve me he decided to add, “Good luck, mate.” I watched him drive off and leave me standing there, in the middle of nowhere, with instructions to go into an abandoned warehouse on my own. This was becoming far too like a bad American gangster movie for my likings. But seeing as I had nothing else to do, and nowhere to go, I turned back to the building, strolled toward it, took one last look around and pushed open the door.

As I had expected, the warehouse was utterly empty, with the exception of a few scaffold rods, why exactly they were here eluded me, just as the reason as to why I was here. I peered through the dust and half-light down the length of the vast room, I couldn’t see anyone. I could see several four foot square support pillars; they were all around me, and a door that was presumably to an office, but no people. My immediate response was someone was either hiding, but I dismissed this as mere paranoia. I walked forward to the middle of the room, and peered down again toward the office, it seemed to be lit up but through the windows I could still see no one.
I felt a chill on the back of my neck, I shivered and looked over my left shoulder, nothing, I looked over my right shoulder, still nothing. I looked back toward the office, something. Not just something, someone, in the shadow of one of the pillars, leaning on his left shoulder against the pillar, facing me. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or looking down, I couldn’t see his eyes, all I could tell was he was a tall and well built man. I opened my mouth to call to him, when I heard a click in my left ear, my eyes widen with realisation.
As the gun was pushed into my temple it gradually forced my head to lean at an angle, over my right shoulder. I closed my eyes and rolled them back in my skull, how could I have been so stupid? I opened my eyes and looked back down at the floor. I felt this second man lean in to my ear,
“Scream for me.” He whispered, his breath shifting my hair slightly. He circled around to stand right in front of me, pointing the barrel of the gun right between my eyes. I saw the man by the pillar straighten up and walk out of the shadow; he had been looking at the floor, but was now staring straight into me.
I heard somebody new coming up behind me, I tried to look as far right as I could without moving my head, I saw nothing. I looked back to the one with the gun in his hand, he looked edgy, and he was a handsome enough guy; dark hair, deep eyes, though this wasn’t the time to be admiring his looks. Something didn’t sit right with him; I looked him straight in the eyes, hoping to see why he felt uncomfortable.
“You’re not a gun person, are you?” I said very matter-of-factly, it obviously rang true; he lowered the gun.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m not.”
At that very instant I was grabbed from behind with a left arm restraining me, and the other hand holding a soaked cloth over my airways. I panicked, which caused me to inhale faster, which in turn just made the chloroform work quicker. All the time I was staring straight into the eyes of the handsome captor in front of me. As I clawed at the arm restraining me, I began to feel weaker and weaker. The last thing I saw before I passed out was the dark haired gunman gazing back at me, with a glint in his eyes, and a smirk on his lips.