Break in

I am not someone that is known to follow and uphold the law to the letter. I often find that it is restricting in so many ways, but I do appreciate that it is there for a reason. It separates the bad guys from the good guys and gives everyone the opportunity to choose which side of it they wish to be on; or if they want to jump between the two like I do.

When it comes to those who uphold and enforce the law, there should be no choice between good and bad and definitely no jumping back and forth between the two. Those in law enforcement should be impeachable bastions of honesty, justice and would sooner die than break the law that they serve. This is why I despise individuals like Gary Rogers, Richard Ellis and Ross Turndune as they have thrown aside all decency and loyalty when accepting money from criminal organisations whilst they are serving members of the police force.

Yes, another reason I find them so unbearable is the number of times they have tried to get Fred and Harry, but mostly Fred, fired.

Equally I find myself feeling the opposite of this vile repulsion when it does come to Fred and Harry, mostly because they have chosen life in the police and they do uphold the law without compromise - at least that's what I thought.

I spent an entire week coming home to my office and apartment to find things were not quite right. Yes the place was still decked out in the ridiculous decor that Fred and Harry had chosen when they had forced themselves upon me as house guests, but that wasn't what made it feel strange.

It felt as though someone had been there and had been moving things around as though they were looking for something. Items were not missing, but several things were not where I had left them as I had gone out earlier in the day.

I decided that the only way to find out if someone was coming into my place or if I was just becoming wildly paranoid, was to set up a surveillance point in the abandoned building across the street. The first thing I did was retrieve my sniper rifle from the super secret weapons stash and the second thing I did was break into the abandoned building.

I spent three nights not sleeping and watching my apartment through the sight of the sniper rifle without seeing anyone and I honestly began to think that I was possibly as crazy as most people assume I must be. But on the fourth night I was rewarded with someone breaking in.

Oh all the people I had thought it might be, Fred was the last person I would have named, though in hindsight, with the number of times I have broken into his place, I should have expected it. Never-the-less he stood there, as clear as day and began to carefully search my apartment. I would say I was speechless, but I was too angry with him to be speechless.

I picked up my phone and called Fred, I watched him look at his phone and answer, I then screamed at him down the phone for at least ten minutes before taking a breath and when all he did was laugh in response, I fired a warning shot through my window.

I should really start to think before shooting, especially when I am firing at Fred in my apartment...

I didn't hit him, but the bullet may have gone straight into my bathroom and shattered the toilet bowl. Now my apartment is flooded and I am having to stay at Fred's whilst the damage is being fixed - and when I say being fixed, waiting for me to have the money or leverage to blackmail someone into fixing it for me.

The worst part is, I still don't know what Fred was looking for or whether he was just breaking in and moving things to drive me up the wall.

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble. For more information about the Nicolette Mace universe please visit the wiki.

Fred

So it has been a number of years since Fred first saved my life and yes, I still won't admit to his face that he did indeed save my life, but that is beside the point. I realized that I know very little about Fred's early life except for the little family anecdotes that Ryan, his younger brother, has told me.

Though these precious tales of misspent youth are entertaining (one does involve Fred being chased up a tree by two Chihuahuas, which is a particular favourite) they don't really tell me anything about the man he is.

Yes, he is annoying, more annoying than any other individual on the planet. And yes, he does seem to have a habit of turning up just in the nick of time to save me from horrible villains. And yes, he is incredibly kind and generous and all of these things that make men ideal, but that isn't really knowing him - it's knowing what he's letting me know about him.

So in an effort to learn more about Fred I decided that it was about time to break into his apartment and look through his belongings to see what I could find out. Okay, most people would think that just going out for coffee with him would be a much easier way of finding out what I wanted to know - but then I would have to sit opposite that smug face of his and listen to the glee in his voice about me spending time with him.

Clearly my only option was to break into his house.

And when I say break in, it's hardly breaking in when I have a spare key. And when I say have a spare key, I know where Fred keeps it (on top of the door frame is not really the most secure place to leave a key). So I was merely trespassing when it comes down to grounds for prosecution.

Trying to find out information that helps you get to know people better is surprisingly difficult. Fred doesn't have a whole lot of pictures of family decorating his place. There are lots of pictures of me, Harry and Ryan alongside Fred but none of his parents or wider family.

I'd heard rumours that he'd been married or close to being married, but I'd never seen Fred with any woman and he never spoke about them in front of me. I once asked Ryan about it and then Harry but both of them said the same thing "he's in love with you, why would he be married to anyone else?"

That was something I didn't really appreciate.

After an hour of snooping around his apartment I found a shoebox in the bottom of his wardrobe that didn't have any of his handcrafted Italian footwear in. It was crammed full of letters and pictures of Fred with different women in cuddly poses. The letters were written by him and to him and also were incredibly sweet and cute and all the words that most women would associate with their dream man...

I spent what seemed like five minutes, but was more like three hours, reading through all the letters and notes and discovering an awful lot I didn't know about Fred, including the fact that he was engaged to a girl called Jessica Beach about three years ago. The ring was even in the box complete with engraving but there wasn't any information as to why they weren't married.

It was just after I discovered this that Fred may have come home and found me sat on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by ALL his love letters and looking at the ring...it wasn't the best situation to be honest.

It took about forty minutes for him to stop yelling at me, to snatch the ring out of my hands, stuff the letters back into the shoebox and throw it back in the wardrobe. When he'd done all that he did spend a further fifteen minutes ranting "how dare I invade his privacy" and telling me to "get out of his house and never come back" - it's amazing how bent out of shape he was over it all. I never thought he'd be so upset, if I had then I would have just emptied the shoebox and read it all back at my place and snuck all the papers back later.

Still, after all the shouting and ranting was done and I may have apologized, he didn't seem too mad about it, but it is hard to tell if people are angry with you when they are kissing you.

Author Note: If you enjoy the blog entries of Nicolette Mace: The Raven Siren then check out the new Siren Wiki, the kickstarter project. Books of the adventures of Siren are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, Diesel and many more.