I call Erikkson and Gerald, but Gerald is in a super important meeting in another city, so he can’t make it. But Erikkson doesn’t have any appointments in the morning, so as soon as I tell him what we have discovered, he tells me that he would come by my place in a few minutes.“I’m the guy in the chair,” Mal says as Lemon and I run around to get supplies for a stakeout, “so I’m going to wait here. Unless you got a fully equipped vehicle with all the devices, I could get my hands on stashed around here somewhere, I’m going to have to stay here and steer you all from the distance. I suppose you all got some Air Pods available.”“Yep,” I tell him, “If not we’ll just buy’em.”“No need to spend your money on me, Mr. My-father-is-a-billionaire, I mooch from you enough,” joked Lemon as he breezes past me, “by the way, what car are we taking? It gotta be something nondescript right?”“I’m not taking that Honda Gerald found from God knows where. Just one of the black ones that don't look too
When we park in front of the internet café on the other side of the road so the chances of the kidnapper noticing us are less, I feel such a sense of déjà vu that all the hairs on my neck rise with the tension that seems to be in the air.Never did I think that I would have to be in this position, with two guns tucked into the waistband of my jeans, in a car with two guys and another speaking in my ear, waiting for a kidnapper to arrive so he could upload yet another video of my lover getting tortured.If Mal’s prediction is correct, then the kidnapper had a video he would be unloading. Another montage of him physically assaulting Coraline, or doing something worse this time, and I will have to watch it for the third time. I feel such a sense of hatred when I think about it, and when I see a policeman around the corner of the town square, we’d parked right next to, I feel positively murderous. If they had done their job correctly, then I wouldn’t have to be here, I they had not been s
“Move!” I immediately shove at the man bending over my side and opening the car door so I could get out. The guy looks stunned at my audacity until I manage to get out of the car. But the moment he recovers from it, he is furious.“Who the fuck do you think you are?!” he tries to grab me by the shirt collar, but I expertly dodge him, “You want to fight me? Is that what you want? Are you going to fucking fight me for this?”“No, but you need to get out of my way right now!”“Jace, what’s going on?” Erikkson and Lemon are both getting out of the car, and I point in the direction of the internet café where the black-clad figure wearing a pair of large wire-trimmed glasses, a black beanie, and a black mask.“That’s him!” I yell. Even the man who had been trying to get rid of us turns to look at what this fuss is about. “The kidnapper!”The guy’s eyes widen, “wait what?”The kidnapper suddenly freezes on the spot and turns right at us. What little we can make out of his eyes narrows and th
Detective Reverend sits next to me, fuming. I sit on the other side of a table to which I am cuffed, feeling like all kinds of shit and angry beyond words. The room is cool and there's a one-way glass dominating one wall, and I've never felt more like a criminal in my life. When I had not even committed a crime. “You went after him,” Detective Reverend says, “after everything I told you, after everything we did here to get to him, you took matters to your own hand, and you jeopardized the whole operation.”“Funny how you tell me that I jeopardized the whole operation as if there was an actual operation going on,” I reply, “when you couldn’t trace a video and find the kidnapper when I could.”“I will get to how you did that shortly,” the detective snaps, “but for now, I have to ask you, what the hell were you thinking?”“I was thinking that no one here is doing any fucking thing, and there seems to be no development in the case whatsoever, so at least I should do something about it.
Erikkson and Lemon are waiting in the parking lot when I walk out of the police station, feeling like a man who could just watch the world burn and want to laugh at the moment. The note that Detective Reverend gave me before is clutched tightly in my hand, and I feel like I’m going to have difficulty breathing soon because of the emotions that I am desperately trying to take control of but failing. There is just so much anger and fear in me that I feel like would end me if I just let it.And damned if I don’t want to let go.As soon as they see me, the two men rush towards me. Lemon reaches me first and tackles me in a hug which surprises me out of the rage stupor I had been building. As my arms automatically go around him, I can see that he is actually shaking.He isn’t crying or anything, in fact, I’m pretty sure that his face was inched in what looked like anger before he hugged me, but he is shaking.From fear or anger? I do not know. But as soon as I feel it, the most bizarre thi
“I swear I’m alright,” I tell both Mal and a frantic-looking Gerald, “the tasering did not scramble my brains, I promise.”“Dammit, Jace this is not funny,” Gerald replies in an exasperated tone. He’s still wearing the business suit I saw him in when I called him this morning just before leaving for the stakeout, and it looks crumpled. He looks like he could use a long night of sleep, and to be honest, everyone in the room looks the same. Mal has got his computer and dual screens running still one of the screens showed footage from the café while the other was screening my email account for a new mail so he could trace another video should we get one.“I did not intend it to be,” I reply, settling down into a chair with a sigh, “and it doesn’t matter, not really. We lost him. Thanks to those fucking cops, we lost the only chance of getting to Coraline.”I expect the tears to come then, but my body proves me wrong. No matter how my hurts, tears do not escape them. But there is such a h
The tears that I have been hiding make an appearance when I see Coraline, and I feel like I’ve been stabbed. I hear everyone around me suck in a breath, and Lemon lets out a broken sound. Mal curses under his breath. Gerald comes forward to put a hand on my shoulder which he thinks is comforting, but it makes everything worse because I realize that I’m here in safety while she's under some psycho’s mercy, looking like that.All her fingers are red and swollen, and fucking flies are flitting around them. Dark brown blood is crusted around them, and it looks like they are beyond repair. Her arm is bent in an impossible manner, and the same could be said for her legs. She's been stripped to her underwear which barely covers her, and despite the psychopath saying that he hadn’t touched her in that way, I can’t be too sure of that. But then again, considering everything else that had been done to her, I don’t think Coraline would’ve even felt what he was doing because of the sheer pain tha
Gerald tells me that we will be able to do this, that we would get to her before it would be too late.I try to believe him.We move into the house eventually, because, unlike any other day, the moon does not seem to be comforting. I realizes that I had only cared about my feelings only and had not even thought about the other when I see Lemon with his head in his hands and Erikkson, who had literally only met him scant days ago, trying to comfort him. Mal looks torn as if he wants to do it as well, but he focuses on his work while glancing at them with a soothing word or two. When I return to the room, every pair of eyes in it turns on me.“I’m sorry I stormed off like that,” I tell them, “Just needed some space so I didn’t do anything stupid.”“It’s alright,” Lemon sniffs, sounding hoarse as if he had been crying, “can’t blame you for it.”“Are you alright?”He shrugs, “How can anyone be alright after seeing that?”“Yeah,” I reply and go to take a seat next to him, “it was horrible.