Rich or Poor, A Lottery Winner's Adventure

Rich or Poor, A Lottery Winner's Adventure - Chapter Two

Chapter Two

With bright rays of sunlight streaming through the large bedroom windows, I awoke on Saturday morning without the usual nightmares. Perhaps, after the knowledge that all my friends were behind me to help in any way they could, my paranoia had finally left me. I awoke with a thundering and gritted determination to get to the pair of kidnappers as fast as I could and to get Mom and Dad out of there!!

I got cleaned up and just as I was walking down the stairs towards the kitchen I heard the familiar sound of the doorbell.

I took a peek through the small peephole in the centre of the front door and saw all five of them standing there. I invited them all in and we walked towards to sitting room to try and figure out what our next step should be? I was also thinking that perhaps I should go to the bank and fill out the forms to withdraw the $5million.

Walking past the kitchen, Todd looked in with a concerned and shocked look on his face and asked, “Ryan, what the hell happened in here dude?”

“Oh… yeah I forgot about that. No biggie, I just forgot about the popcorn last night and it just kinda exploded everywhere” I said, with a half smile. “Anyway I’ll clean that up later. We need to sit down and talk about this situation.”

“No, no, no!” Becky barged in with her usual smile and bright eyes that seemed to shine with the daylight sun as she looked at everyone. “This won’t take long if we all help to clean up. We have all day after all, I don’t have to be at the pizza parlour until seven this evening.”

We started to clean up and Becky asked how I forgot about the popcorn? Then I realised, it was because of the video clip. Should I play them the clip? Would they be able to spot something… anything?

After only a couple of minutes cleaning I heard a seriously loud noise. All the pots and pans went flying everywhere; Jim had slipped over on some of the popcorn on the kitchen floor, pushing the pans off the shelf. He seemed ok but I told him to maybe sit down for a few minutes. We were almost finished anyway.

After our team effort to get all the popcorn off the kitchen floor, walls and worktop, I told them about the video clip and Becky insisted that we all watch it - someone might notice something… just some tiny piece of anything that could give us a lead.

We all went up to my bedroom to watch the video clip. Poor short arsed Tony standing at the back couldn’t really see very much. Much to my relief, after the video had finished and the screen went blank, I didn’t hear the loud **Bang**. Not this time. “They don’t look too bad Ryan.” Becky said. “Just a little upset, but that’s understandable. They must be scared, but they both know you will definitely get them out one way or another.”

We all went back downstairs to the sitting room to work out our plan of action for the day. Eventually we all sat down on the large ‘L’ shaped leather couch but before I could even open my mouth to get this much needed conversation started Becky gave me a stern look. “What are you looking at me like that for Beck’s?” I asked, still feeling weak at the knees, like I do whenever she gave me even the smallest amount of her attention.

“Ryan, this just isn’t right. I don’t think we should discuss anything in here, not in the house,” she said. Then she told us all that it wouldn’t take much know-how, or time, to install a listening device somewhere. If we made any plans at all it could easily be heard by the kidnappers and could endanger Charlie and Jackie’s lives. Even outside near the pool wouldn’t be safe. “These tiny microphones can pick up sounds from quite a large radius,” Becky was very concerned, I knew she was right. I looked at everyone and, after a small discussion, we all agreed to go someplace else. Tony mentioned that his old mans pasta joint is always bustling on a Saturday evening but usually quiet on Saturday mornings. It was actually leaning more towards lunchtime as I had overslept.