Richard Anderson burst into the conference room like a storm, his face red with barely controlled rage."Where is my daughter?" he demanded before Martinez could even introduce herself properly. "It's been over twelve hours! What are you people doing to find her?""Mr. Anderson, please sit down," Martinez said firmly. "I understand you're upset—""Upset?" Richard's voice rose. "My daughter is missing! She could be hurt, or worse, and you're sitting here conducting interviews like we have all the time in the world!""Mr. Anderson," Martinez's tone hardened. "Sit. Down. Now."Something in her voice made Richard comply, though he continued to glare at her with undisguised hostility."Now," Martinez continued, "I need you to tell me exactly when and why you came to TechNova today.""I came looking for Alice," Richard said tersely. "She didn't come home last night. I went to the house where she'd been staying—Professor Crane's place—and he told me she'd gone to this company to look for Har

Detective Martinez led a team of officers through TechNova's sprawling building, systematically checking every floor. They moved through open offices, conference rooms, supply closets, and locked storage areas. Each door opened revealed nothing but empty spaces, office equipment, and the mundane remnants of a workday."Third floor clear," Officer Chen reported into his radio. "Moving to the fourth.""Nothing on two," another officer's voice crackled back. "Just offices and cubicles."Martinez stood in the main hallway, frustration etched on her face as she watched her team work. Hours of searching and they'd found nothing—no sign of Harry Solomon, no evidence of a struggle, no clues about where he or Alice Anderson might have been taken."It's like he vanished into thin air," Chen observed, joining Martinez. "No physical evidence, corrupted security footage, no witnesses.""Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this disappear clean," Martinez replied. "The missing camera footage is

Michael Chen stood beside Detective Martinez in the security office, his arms crossed tightly as they reviewed the footage for what felt like the hundredth time."I don't understand," Michael said, frustration evident in his voice. "The security system is state-of-the-art. It should have captured everything.""Should have," Martinez agreed grimly. "But someone clearly tampered with it. Let me see the footage from the parking lot again."The security guard rewound to the timestamp when Harry had left the building the previous evening. They watched the grainy footage in silence.Harry appeared on camera, walking through the parking lot toward the taxi stand. The timestamp showed 5:32 PM. Then, exactly as Martinez had seen before, the footage showed Harry being approached by Samuel Walsh, the confrontation, and Harry being drugged and loaded into a car trunk."Wait," Michael said suddenly. "Go back. Show me the parking lot footage from earlier that day."The guard complied, pulling up fo

Detective Martinez leaned forward in her chair, her notebook open in front of her. "Mr. Chen, I need you to think carefully. Did Harry have any enemies? Anyone who might want to hurt him or see him disappear?"Michael Chen was quiet for a moment, his expression troubled. Then he nodded slowly. "Yes. There was someone. Samuel Walsh.""We already identified Samuel from the security footage," Martinez said. "Tell me about their relationship.""Samuel worked here for five years," Michael explained. "He was the manager of the technology development department. But his performance had been declining for a while—missed deadlines, poor team management, technical errors. We were considering letting him go when Harry joined the company.""And what happened when Harry arrived?" Martinez prompted."Harry was brilliant," Michael said simply. "Within weeks, he'd identified inefficiencies in our systems, proposed solutions, and started implementing improvements. The team responded to him in ways the

Mona Anderson stood in the TechNova lobby, her arms wrapped around herself as she watched police officers move through the building with urgent purpose. The atmosphere was thick with tension—employees whispered in worried clusters, security guards spoke into radios with clipped voices, and somewhere upstairs, she could hear Detective Martinez giving orders."This is wrong," Mona muttered to herself. "All wrong."She wasn't worried about Harry because she cared about his safety—not really. Mona was worried because Harry's disappearance was destroying her carefully laid plans. Ever since she'd learned that Harry was going to inherit one of the biggest tech companies in the region, Mona had been strategizing. She'd gotten herself an internship at TechNova, positioned herself where Harry would notice her, started planning how to make him forget about Alice and fall for her instead.But now Harry was missing. Gone. Possibly dead. And all of Mona's ambitions were crumbling along with him."