Daffney walked down the path with a large flashlight in her hand. She was a pretty girl of about 21 and was heading towards her garage to get something very important out of it. The darkness closed in on her from all sides and she shivered. And it wasn't because of the cold night.
                                         
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"Shh, don't be so noisy!"

"Same to you, loudmouth."

The two shadowy figures moved about, searching above and under shelves, on top of tires and just about everywhere in the small building.

"Are  you sure it's here? Maybe she moved it."

"Of course it's here! When I heard her talking she said it was nearby. Logically, it wouldn't make sense to move it."

"Maybe she's not logical."

"You don't know her like I do. She's the definition of logical."

They continued rummaging around until, suddenly, they heard footsteps. They stared for a moment and then quickly found hiding places. The noise of the soft footfalls grew closer and closer until finally the garage door was slowly opened, making a long 'creeeaaaaakk' noise, and a powerful light flooded the building. Daffney walked slowly into the garage and started moving her flashlight about. One of the intruders started making hand signals towards his partner (for it was a 'he' and a very tall one as well) suggesting that they should surprise the girl, and the other one made a gesture of understanding. The tall man carefully got out of his hiding place and took the plunge.

"Hello Daffney," he said boldly. "Fancy meeting you here."

The girl swung around quickly in alarm, but relaxed, recognizing who it was. 

"Not really a surprise, Jack, when you consider that this is my garage. Now may you be so kind as to tell me what in the world you are doing here?"

"Well, you see, me and Ashley here," as he said this he gestured towards a girl who had just come out to stand behind him, "We didn't have anything to do tonight so we thought, why not pull a joke on Daffney? It was just a little gag."

"You certainly did give me a bit of a fright. How did you get in? I locked the door last time I left here. At least I though I did," she said wryly.

"Well it wasn't locked when we came."

"That's strange. Maybe the lock is broken," she muttered to herself. Then, out loud, she said, "You're not talking a lot Ashley."

"I don't really have anything to say. Anyway, Jack explained everything."

"That's the truth, Daffney. And you know Ashley doesn't talk much." Then, changing the subject, he continued, "Is it okay if we come into your house to get a hot drink? I'm frozen to the bone. We'll only take a minute."

Daffney hesitated for a moment and then mentally shrugged. She thought it was kind of weird that Jack and Ashley had tried to play a joke on her on such a cold night, but she wasn't going to turn them out into the freezing weather. Anyway, Jack was her friend, not a very close one, but a friend and she had seen Ashley a few times in the nearby town. What possible harm could come from giving them a hot drink?

"Okay, follow me. Can you close the door on the way out?"

She turned around and walked out the door and onto the dirt path that led to her house. She felt slightly uneasy, like she was doing something very, very stupid. Then she shook the feeling off. People were right. She was too logical. But what about the money? She'd just have to wait until Jack and Ashley left. The kitchen light shown through the screen door and she opened it and walked through, holding it ajar for Jack and Ashley.

"Come in, come in. Have a seat. I'll get some hot coco."

They shuffled through the door and sat down by the wooden kitchen table. Daffney proceeded to bustle around the room, grabbing some mugs and putting a pot of milk on the stove.

"I hope you like hot chocolate with milk, because that's what I'm making," Daffney said. She stole a glance at the two of them sitting quietly and was a little unnerved to see that they had just a exchanged a surreptitious look. 

"Umm, well hot chocolate is good and all, but can't we have something that warms you up more on the inside?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why don't we have some wine?" Ashley said abruptly.

Jack shot her a glance that said 'Haven't you ever heard of tact?' Before he could say anything in words, Daffney protested.

"I don't think that's a good idea. A hot drink will do."

"Come on, Daffney. We're all old enough. Just a little drink," Jack said in a needling tone.

"No."

"Well,  you don't have to get it ready. We'll get it ourselves."

"We're not having wine, and that's final."

"Are you sure that's what your sticking with?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry to here that. Well then..." 

Jack made as if to turn around and walk out the door but right as he was passing by Daffney he turned around and grabbed her left arm. At that moment Ashley took her cue from him and quickly snatched her other arm.

"What- What are you doing?!" Daffney cried in surprise and anger.

"Now, now, why don't you just calm down?" Jack said soothingly.

"Are you kidding?! Let go of me!"

"We just want to ask you something. Can we ask you something?"

"Ask away!"

"Okay. Here it is. The other day when we talked at the store you said your deceased grandma had left you a lot of money. Is that true?"

"Why would you want to know?"

Ashley squeezed her arm a little tighter. "Just kindly answer the question," she muttered softly.

"I'm not just going to give out that kind of information."

"I take that as a yes," Jack said. "Now we just want to know where it is."

"Well too bad!"

"Tisk, tisk. Why don't you cooperate?"

Daffney closed her mouth and said nothing, although she had a definite determined look on her face. Determined not to tell these two hooligans, whom she had thought were her friends, anything.

"I guess she isn't going to help us," Jack sighed in a defeated tone of voice. 

For a brief moment Daffney felt a faint glimmer of hope, but it was soon put out. Before she could protest about it, she was dragged over to the table and forced to sit down. Ashley let go of the arm she had been holding and started to open the cupboards and search through their contents.

"Where do you keep the wine?" 

"I don't have any."

Ashley turned to look at her, and then looked at Jack with a question in her eyes.

"Oh, I'm sure she does. You just need to look harder. Why don't you go look in the pantry."

"Where is the pantry?"

Daffney sighed. She knew it would do no good trying to hide it's location. Anyway, she wasn't lying. She didn't have any wine.

"Go down that hall there and turn to your right."

Without another word, Ashley headed down the short passage and turned to her right as she had been instructed to do. There was a narrow door and she opened it, finding inside peanut butter jars, bananas, various canned goods and many other food items. She rummaged around for a few minutes but found no wine. Giving up in aggravation, she turned around and was about to leave when her foot hit something. She looked down and was surprised to see a bottle of wine. No, not wine. Just apple cider. Nonetheless, she leaned down and picked it up to examine it. As she took it from it's place it revealed another bottle of the same shape, but instead of a label  that said 'Sparkling Apple Cider,' it said 'White Wine.' Ashley smiled to herself. So miss goody two-shoes did have wine in her house. She left the pantry holding the bottle, and entered the kitchen still wearing a smile on her face.

"Here it is!"

Daffney actually jumped a little in surprise when she saw the wine. "I could have sworn I didn't have any wine," she thought to herself. "But, of course! Mr. and Mrs. Dodson insisted that I took some home with me on my 21st birthday. I had completely forgotten about that!"

"I thought so,"Jack said, interrupting her thoughts. "There was no need to lie to us, Daffney. All you have done is waste our time."

"I really thought I didn't have any. By the way, what do you want with a bottle of wine?"

"What else do you do with wine other than drink it?"

"So we're just going to sit around the table and drink wine," Daffney stated flatly.

"No, no. You're going to sit around the table and drink wine."

"Why should I do that?"

"Well, you're not helping us find that money so we need something to loosen your tongue, and everybody knows that wine loosens the tongue like nothing else."

"I'm not going to. And if you are thinking of forcing it down me you'll find out it's not as easy as it sounds."

"We might as well give it a try." And without further ado, Jack grabbed her chin from behind and jerked her head back. While he was doing that Ashley uncorked the wine bottle and brought it up to Daffney's mouth. The girl struggled, but she was overpowered by the combined strength of both Jack and Ashley. Daffney spluttered as the bitter wine flowed into her mouth and down her throat. She jerked her head to one side when Jack's grip slackened for a moment and made the wine bottle fall to the floor with a loud 'CRASHHHH!!!' Daffney was off balance from her sudden movement and when Jack cuffed her over the head she fell to the ground and hit her head. She lay there, unmoving. Ashley and Jack stared for a moment and then for the first time that evening, Ashley raised her voice.

"You idiot! How is she gonna talk now?" She yelled.

"Calm down! No good will come out of panicking!"

"Panicking! No, I'm not panicking! You've just knocked out, maybe killed, are only source of information to the most money we'd ever have in our lives! Why should I panic?"

"Okay, okay. Maybe there is need to panic a little bit. I'll check her pulse to make sure she's not dead"

Jack leaned down and put his forefinger on Daffney's temple. He nodded to himself and straightened up.

"She's alive, alright. Her pulse is a little weak, but she should be fine. But I don't think she'll be in the condition to answer our questions after she wakes up. That is, if she wakes up soon. It might take hours. Maybe even a day."

"What do we do then?"

"Well, let's think about this. She found us because she came over to the garage. Why would she head over to her garage, in the dark, on a cold night like this? Certainly not to get a rake. So she was coming in there for a different reason. When I heard her talking on the telephone, before we hid in the garage, she said to someone (I think it was one of her relatives) that she had hidden the money somewhere safe and close by, but not in the house. And the only other building she has besides the house is the garage. So, unless she hid 920,000 dollars in the woods, the money is in the garage."

"Alright then," Ashley said, her voice tight with excitement. "Let's go look in there."

They walked out of the door, unaware that Daffney, in her half conscious state of mind, had heard the last two sentences of their conversation.

They opened the creaky door of the garage and turned on there flashlights, which they had brought with them. Since they did not need to look in the places they had already searched, it took very little time for Jack to shout and lift a small parcel triumphantly.

"Here it is! I've found it!"

"Let me see! Let me see!" 

"We're filthy rich! Look! Almost exactly 920,000 dollars!"

Ashley eagerly grabbed the parcel from him and looked a little bit like a person in a trance.

"920,000 bucks!" She whistled softly to herself. 

Jack grabbed it back from her with reproach in his eyes. 

"Okay, okay, that's enough gawking. We better get out of here." 

They both ran out the door and headed for the woods. Jack led the way and jogged onto a deer trail, with Ashley close behind. He opened his mouth and spoke across his shoulder.

"We'll go to the bank to get this money deposited into smaller bills. The cashier might find something suspicious about it, but we'll get out of the vicinity before he can do anything about it."

On through the dark woods they went, never stopping until they were at the other side and came upon a road.

"If we turn right here we should be at the car in about five minutes," Jack said.

Ashley said nothing. She was rather out of breath from all this running. Her companion was in much better shape than she was. After five minutes, just as Jack had said, they came upon a little Corolla, bathed in the ray of light from a lamppost. The tall man pulled out the keys from his pocket and hopped into the driver's seat. Ashley ran around to the other side and took her place beside him. The motor started with a roar and then settled down to a low purr.

"We're off!" Jack exclaimed as he turned the car all the way around and took off at a good 70 miles per hours. The dark trees flashed by the windows and soon signs of the approaching town began to show. There were lights ahead and also the sound of more vehicles than just their own.

"You'd better slow down. The last thing we want right now is to be pulled over," Ashley cautioned Jack.

Now driving at 25 mph, Jack and Ashley saw a sign that said 'Welcome to Sycamore Valley' and an orange light looming ahead. The car came to a halt as the light turned red. The two thieves felt a little nervous as they saw a police car pass them, but it was going in the opposite direction of their current course and they soon shook off the worry and drove on.

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Despite a splitting headache, Daffney summoned the strength to grab the table edge and pull herself up. Slowly, ever so slowly, she stumbled towards the telephone, knowing with a grim determination that she had to stop these two criminals from making off with her inheritance and her only hope for a future. Even though an unsuspecting bystander would not think that Daffney was poor, she really was absolutely broke. She had come to the end of her tether and had not known what to do until she came into all the money that her grandmother had left her. Not to say that she wasn't sad that her grandma had died. She was devastated, but that didn't change the fact that she was rich. Daffney was going to do something good with all that money, and she hated to think what Ashley and Jack would do with it. Certainly nothing good. She managed to reach the phone and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. Slowly and deliberately she picked up the phone and dialed three simple numbers: 911. Weakly, she spoke to the voice on the other side. 

"Hello? ... Please help... Somebody's stolen my money."

"What's your name, miss? And what does the person who stole your money look like?"

"Daffney... Daffney Hollens. Two persons. Young women, blond hair, and a tall man, light brown hair. They should be in the bank... soon."

"Alright, got it. Do you know the names of the thieves? Hello? Miss Hollens? Miss Hollens? Are you all right?"

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"We'd like you to change this money into smaller bills."

"Alright... let me see. Woah! That's a lot of cash to be carrying. Why don't you deposit it?"

"We don't want to deposit it, we just want it changed. Now please hurry!"

"Okay, okay," the cashier muttered. He looked up rather suspiciously. "What are your names?"

Jack gave an exasperated sigh. 

"I'm Jack Oswald. Do you also want my phone number?"

"No, we just need your name. Excuse me for a moment. I have to go into the back."

The cashier turned around and walked through a door. Jack rolled his eyes and drummed his fingers on the desk. 

"Why don't we just take the money and go?" Ashley suggested. 

"Everyone would be wondering who we were and why we were in such a big hurry and then they'd probably call the police - " Jack's sentence was cut short when he saw flashing lights outside the window. Grabbing the money off the desk, he ran in panic to the nearest window. 

"Wait for me!" Ashley screamed. She ran after him but it was too late. The front door crashed open and a very large police officer , holding a gun that was pointing at her, blared in a voice like a ship horn for her to lay down on the ground. With no other choice, Ashley complied. Jack was halfway through the window and made a leap for the outside. It was a very bad mistake. Shouts carried into the bank and there was a gunshot. Fortunately for Jack, the bullet hit him in the leg, but it was nonetheless excruciating. 

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"So the cashier immediately called us when he saw that they were the two people he had been given the description of." Police officer Jerry Williams finished telling the story of what had happened at the bank to Daffney.

"Well, I'm glad it's over. To think, Jack had been my friend. I wonder if the greed for money just blinded him to that fact."

"Maybe. Anyway, I think you should rest for a while and forget about all this."

"I will definitely rest, officer, but don't ever make me forget about this. Jack forgot about friendship. Ashley forgot. Maybe they thought I'd forget. But I remembered. Everything."