Searching For A Home

Chapter 3

"Wait, shouldn't we at least try to find them first?"

"We should have called the police the moment we saw them sneak onto the property. Now if they hurt themselves, we could be at fault."

"They're probably just messing around."

"Enough Celi, I'm calling the police," said Papo as he made his way to the exit. "You can look for them if you want, but I'm going to have a cruiser come here at least."

Celi watched as Papo went outside. "Shit, this is going to get worse."

Celi made her way to the entrance lobby and stood in the middle of the room. She listened to see if she could get a hint as to where the teenagers could be, hoping for another scream or maybe even a bit of movement. There was none. So she made her way to the stairwell.

She made her way up the stairs, one slowly step at a time, listening for any hint of the teenagers. On the second, nothing. Third floor and no sign of them. Fourth floor, nothing but her breathing. She stopped at the fifth floor, no where else to go. She listened for any reason to enter its halls, but the noise that came was one she didn't care for, the sound of police sirens.

Celi made her way back downstairs and outside. She found Papo opening the entrance gate and letting the police car onto the property. Papo went over to the police officer as he exited his vehicle.

"Thank you for coming," said Papo as he offered his hand to the officer. "I'm Papo. I'm the security account manager."

"The account manager," said the officer. "You guys aren't usually at their sites at this time of night."

"I was doing a post check. It was brought to my attention that this site could have some trespassers tonight due to the holiday. Seems my officer was right." Papo took a step to the side so the police officer could see Celi.

Celi read the police officer name tag. "Thank you for coming, Officer Tirado."

"So what are we dealing with?" asked Tirado.

"We have some teenagers who snuck into the building and now we're having trouble figuring out where they're located," said Papo. "We didn't want to search for them without the assistance of the police."

"Are you sure they're teenagers?"

"Yes, we saw them on the cameras."

"How many of them were there?"

"Four," answered Celi.

"No, it was five," said Papo.

"Was it four or five?" asked Tirado.

"It was five. I believe they're between the ages of 15 to 17."

"Alright, I can do a sweep of the building but I'm going to need one of you to accompany me since I don't know the layout. One of you does know the layout of the building, correct?"

"Sure," said Celi. "I'll accompany you."

"I'll watch the cameras to see if they sneak out while you two are inside," said Papo.

"Sounds like a plan," said Tirado.

Celi and Tirado made their way inside while Papo went to the guard shack. Tirado walked forward as they made a sweep of the first floor of the building. They repeated this for the second and third floor and found no sign of the teenagers. They entered the fourth floor.

"There's too many places for these kids to hide," said Tirado. "I don't like this."

"I don't think we missed them," said Celi. "They must be on the fourth or fifth floor."