Hackers and Hotties -a serial

Police to the rescue. Maybe.

Oh yes, Tina was gonna die. She was so dead it wasn't even funny. In a few minutes she would be no longer breating, feeding plants, sleeping with the fishes. Any moment now the pale Japanese man in the nice suit holding her purse was going to pull out a gun and shoot her. He probably already knew she was up in Ken's little secret attic. Yes, Tina DiAngelo was going to die.

Celine was latched on the Tina's arm, and both of them were staring into the little peephole they found in the attic floor. Ken was staring at the pocketbooks, dumbfounded, and his father had a very dangerous glint in his eye. The other man Tina couldn't see, but she could imagine him being just as enraged.

<Well Ken?> Yomoto spoke up. <What are these doing here?>

<Uh...> Tina couldn't see Kenny's face, but he was wringing his hands and drawing those circles with his foot again. <The hookers must have left them.>

Hookers? If Tina hadn't been so terrified, she would have gone down there and punched him.

<Oh. I wonder if there's any money in them.>

Tina's ID was in there, and so was Celine's. Yomoto put the purses on the kitchen table and dumped Celine's.

<Let's see. Lip stick, a telephone..here we go.> Tina tried to see what Yomoto was holding. Trying for a better vantage point, she shuffled over to another hole. It was a bit smaller, but she could see the kitchen table better. Yomoto was holding Celine's purse.

Suddenly, there was a soft bump on the other side of the attic. Tina jerked her head up to see what had made the noise, and the room under her was deathly silent. Celine was there. Holding her head under a low beam with an expression of pure terror.

<What was that?>

<Uh, rats maybe?>

<Do you have an attic Ken?>

<Uh..well...I...>

There was no hope. Tina was dead. Gone. Hopeless. She was going to die, and right after the end of term to! Yup, there was the gun. Yomoto had pulled it out, and Tina only assumed the other two men had as well.

<Where's the door?>

<It's...it's...> Ken was stalling, Tina could see him fumbling around. It wouldn't help though, the attic was totaly windowless, there was no way to escape.

<Akimura-sama!> It was that Tanaka guy. <Akimura-sama, police!>

<What?>

<Police! Three cars in the front!>

<Shimatta...Ken, you get rid of this evidence. Tanaka, stall them. Where is your escape door.>

Ken led the men away from Tina's eyehole, and for the first time in ten minutes she breathed a sigh of relief. The doorbell buzzed again. Tina could hear someone running down the stairs.

This sucked. At least a little while ago Tina knew she was going to die. Now she had no Idea what was happening. The monster machine in the middle of the room was buzzing, and there was shouting downstair. Tina crammed her neck in every position possible over her impossibly small peephole, but she couldn't see anything but the kitchen table.

Suddenly the shouting escalated, and a gun went off. Within seconds there were gunshots everwhere, and Celine had flashed from her perch on the other side of the attic to Tina's arm. She was squeezing it like there was no tommorow, and there probably wasn't, the way things were going.

There were a bunch of footsteps up the stairs, and Tina heard the first English words in what felt like ages.

"OK pal. Hand's up, move slowly. You understand? Get your damn hands up!" The police were riled. "Move away from the computer. Come on! Get up!" Was Ken not listening? What was that idiot boy doing? There was some movement, and Tina cringed as she heard punching.

"Do you speak english? Hey! Do you understand me?" The officer let off a string of curses. "OK, you have the right to remain silent, if you chose to waive that right, everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." They were dragging Ken away, Tina could hear his feet on the ground.

Finaly something showed up in Tina's tiny feild of vision. It was a police officer, and he was looking at the purse guts strewn accross the tabletop. "Hey John. Look at this."

Another cop came by, apperantly the one who was yelling at Kenny a minute ago. "What is it?"

"Donno."

"Do they have IDs?"

The smaller cop shuffled through the to purses and produced the girl's student cards. "Yup."

"OK, run a profile check on the when we get back, and get Duke over here ASAP."

"Yes sir." Lackey cop went running off, and John paused a while to look around before mumbling something about a promotion and walking away too.

If Tina knew anything about police protocal, and she didn't, there would only be a small window of time before the house was swarming with cops. Grabbing Celine's arm, she crawled out of the attic, waited for the police cars to leave, and rushed out of the house as fast as her legs could carry her.