Alex peered out his bedroom window at the car on the driveway. His father ran out of the house, carrying a black case as he adjusted his tie. He ran to the black car and looked around before jumping in. Alex sighed as he watched his father exit the driveway and down the street. Time to get to work.

His mother was out of town, some kind of office trip in L.A, which left the entire house to himself. Alex made his way downstairs and into his father's office. Alex knew it was a little too obvious to hide anything there and that he probably wouldn't find anything useful, but decided it was worth a shot.

Alex's father was a software engineer at some random company in downtown. That wasn't the important part. What was important was the fact that his father shouldn't have been able to afford a house like theirs. It was a mediocre sized house compared to the other ones in Ashwick. However, in reality, it was huge. The three story house managed to have a swimming pool, a seven acre field that was now his mother's garden and a full sized basketball court. Inside was a gaming room that his younger sister spent most of her time, a premium home theater and floor long bedrooms. A software engineer shouldn't be able to have all that, especially not if they weren't a manager, which Alex's parents weren't.

Which brought Alex back to his first problem: What was his father doing? Where was he getting all of the money from? Not to mention the fact that his late-night impromptu meetings were sketchy. His explanations were so vague that even a rooster could tell he was lying. Everything about his father became suspicious and he simply couldn't stop himself. Alex didn't know why but he needed to figure out what was going on. His mind was telling him that there was something weird going on but not that big of a deal while his gut told him that he needed to get to the bottom of it. And then his heart told him that he should stop cause he might not like what he finds. Eventually, his gut won out.

Alex shifted through files on his father's desk and looked through the bookshelf. He took out each and every book and put it back in to see if there was a secret door. Much to his disappointment, nothing happened. Eventually he wandered back to his father's desk. On it, he had been careful to place all of them exactly where they were. He didn't need his father on his tail.

There was only one thing he didn't check and that was his father's computer. The screen was playing its screensaver with the hypnotizing swirling colors. Alex stared at it before shaking his head and searching through the desk again. His father wasn't stupid, and, as loving as he was, he wasn't sentimental. His father knew better than to make his password something obvious like a birthday. Even if it was something obvious, Alex was sure that if his father was hiding something on there he would have it send him a notification when it logged in.

Alex kept sorting through files and putting them back. Most of it contained random boring gibberish. There was nothing there that stood out to him. Alex sighed and got up, feeling defeated when something hit him. Why hadn't he thought of it before? Alex had searched his office supplies desk but it was very brief and he didn't look closely enough before. He had completely forgotten his dad's habit of writing things on post-it notes but not actually ripping off the paper. Essentially he used it as a tiny notebook.

Alex dove back into the desk and pulled out the many stacks of post-its. Just as he had thought, there were many notes scribbled onto the tiny yellow paper. Alex flipped through the notes trying his best to read his father's cursive handwriting. Nothing made sense or stuck out to him. It wasn't until the second post-it note stack that he had found something worthwhile.

Alex was about to give up when he found it. It didn't look much different than all of the other post-its. On it was simply the name of a location, one that seemed so ordinary that he wouldn't have caught it unless he didn't go to high school. The location that was circled was one of the many famous drug trading sites that were spread out around town. The words on the post-it was a code for the place. Many people at his school talked about it or went there to recieve more things to consume or sell. It was supposed to be one of the best and hardest to track down. Not that Alex ever personally went there. He just seemed to be caught up on all of the latest gossip, especially the kind that could get you in trouble. And yes, guys did gossip, although they would never admit it.

Alex looked through the rest of the notes although he didn't find anything else. His father must've left this one there on accident. But what would his father want with a drug dealing site? Unless his father was dealing. It would make sense with all of the money influx. But if his father was a drug dealer, he would know, right?

Alex shoved everything back into the desk and ran out of the office. He grabbed his keys off the counter and left a quick note in case his father came home early. It was a lie, of course, but hopefully, it would be enough to keep his all-knowing father off of Alex's back. Alex ran out of the house and started his car. It was time to get some answers.

Alex expected to find many things in the warehouse. There could've been a drug operation happing at that very moment. Maybe he would find the police inspecting a cleaned out warehouse. Maybe he would walk into his father wearing a tutu and hot-dog packaging while dancing in front of Michael Jackson, Julius Ceasar, and Jeff Bezos with Mark Zuckerburg live-streaming him. But he never expected to find Jason.

Alex sneaked into the warehouse which was now completely empty. It must've been a non-shipping day so they erased any evidence of the warehouse's illegal activity. In fact, looked as if hadn't been used in years. Damn, drug dealers were good. Scary good.

In the middle of the empty warehouse was Jason. He stood straight, his arms crossed over his chest, his blonde hair glowing in the moonlight that spilled in from the high windows. It almost made him look like an all powerful angel. An angel standing in the middle of an empty warehouse that was responsible for shipping drugs in it's free time. Go figure.

"Man," Alex said as he hopped off the stairs and onto the ground, "I always knew there was something more to you. Now I will admit, I never thought that you were drug overlord, but hey," he shrugged, "it's good to have surprises."

Jason, who had tensed up when he heard Alex's voice, relaxed a little as he saw him and breathed, "Alex."

"I was going for 'our prime leader and ultimate emperor' but that works too."

Jason ignored his comment and said, "I'm not dealing drugs. I was just trying to find..."

"...crack?" Alex asked with a raised eyebrow and a mischevious smile.

"No," Jason started, "I-" then he puased before saying, "yeah, pretty much."

Alex studied Jason's face. He was around his father long enough to know that Jason was lying. Alex was tempted to pester Jason more about it but instead he said, "Nice. I knew you would crave the full high school experience eventually."

Jason rolled his eyes and said, "The full high school experience of dying in a ditch somewhere."

Alex, who was stunned that Jason throw his lie out the window that fast, asked, "Hmm?"

Jason looked back up and said, "I was asking what you were doing here." He clearly hoped that Alex didn't hear his original comment and Alex was fine with acting as such. He was also fine with lying to someone who had just done the same.

"Same as you," Alex responded. Jason gave him a curious look but nodded. He probably knew that Alex was lying but he didn't say anything. Instead, they both stood next to each other and stared at the empty warehouse in an awkward silence.

Finally, Alex, who couldn't stand the silence, said, "You know I was lying, right?"

"Yeah," Jason replied as he sighed and put his hand to his forehead, "I was, too."

"I know," Alex said. He paused for a moment before asking, "So, what are you here for?"

"You first."
Alex shrugged, "My dad was being suspicious so I decided to figure out what was going on. He wrote this place down so here I am."

"Huh," was all Jason said.

"What about you?" Alex inquired.

Jason hesitated before saying, "My mom went missing."

"Holy, sh-"

"I think."

Alex blinked, "You think?"

Jason nodded, "I haven't seen or heard from my mom and she never responded to any texts or phone calls. My dad is acting weird about it but he won't even call the police. And her office was told that she was going on vacation."

"Maybe she did," Alex offered. "She could just be super busy..."

"Busy enough to not even send a simple text?" Jason's eyes were burning inot Alex's. Alex waited a moment before saying, "When did she disappear?"

"Tuesday night, I think."

"Hold up," Alex waved his arms. "She went missing on Tuesday? Today's Friday!"

"I know."

"But, these past couple days, you didn't even seem..." Alex trailed off. Alex always lived in envy of those who could guard their emotions so well, but Jason took it to a whole new level. "You even went to a party."

Jason stared at a seemingly interesting blank part of the ground and said, "I decided to find her since no one else was going to do anything about it."

"And the first place you looked was in a drug dealing facility?" Alex asked. He noticed the ends of Jason's mouth tilt up a little before he looked at Alex and said, "This wasn't the first place I looked. I went to her office..."

"You broke into her office?!" Alex punched him lightly in the arm. "There may be hope for you yet."

Jason continued, "I found a hidden flashdrive. There was a bunch of stuff that was work related but she had this place listed in there. It seemed to stick out compared to the other stuff so I decided to check it out."

"Your mom had this place written down too?"

Jason nodded.

"Do you think their connected?" Alex asked. Jason sighed and said, "I don't know. I doubt my mom knows your dad unless they met momentarily at basketball practices. But..."

"... that shouldn't be a reason to talk about crack houses," Alex finished. Jason nodded again.

"What's so important about this place anyway?"

"I have no idea," Jaosn admitted. "I searched every corner of this place and I found nothing."

"Of course we weren't. The dealers must've cleaned this place out."

"And there is no one here to question. It's dead end."

"No it's not," Alex said.

"What are you thinking?"

"We can come back another time," Alex said.

"When? It's not gonna change anything."

"No, it's not," Alex said. A smile grew on his face as he imagined all the possible reactions Jason would give. "Unless we come on shipping day."