〚FEATURED + WATTYS SHORTLIST 2021〛
Someone tried to kill him. Someone nearly succeeded.
A traitor walks among them.
The question is, who?
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"A sky full of stars and he was looking at her."
He was a man with a deep and profound love for the stars...
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THEY ONLY STARE AT HER, AS SHE EXPLAINS HER THOUGHTS.
She tells them about all the dots that she managed to connect, all the clues, hints, and suspicions that had been in front of their eyes- remaining discreet and unassuming the whole time- but when pieced together, made sense.
The knives. The trolleys. The medical records.
Every other problem they had could have a way that led straight to him.
And when she finishes, not one person in the room moves.
They don't breathe, nor do they twitch- and the silence is so still that Stella almost felt like she could hear their hearts thudding over the sound of her own, and the sound of their blood in their veins and arteries.
"Well?" she says quietly, "What do you think?"
Axel wouldn't meet her eyes. His gaze was fixed on the wall opposite to where he was standing, his expression completely blank and undecipherable.
However, there was a certain dark hardness in his eyes- a look in them that she had never seen before, that told her that he was very, very angry. Furious even. There was a muscle in his cheek twitching, and he was clenching his jaw so tight that she could feel the tension up to where she was sitting.
Her eyes flicker to Corban, who was simply staring at the trolley blankly. From the minuscule expression that she could discern from his face, he almost looked like he didn't want to believe it.
He turns to her slowly, as if he can feel her gaze on him.
"You really think," he murmurs lowly, "that someone like Winston could pull something like this off?"
It was a question she had asked herself.
Winston seemed so innocent. So unassuming, quiet, shy- and jittery.
But maybe, that was what he wanted them to think. Maybe he had them fooled the whole time.
Even though she seemed to have it all figured out, there were a ton of maybes plaguing her mind.
"I don't-" Corban shakes his head when she doesn't answer, "I don't know what to think. Everything you said makes perfect- perfect sense, but how could he have done it all on his own?"
She had asked herself that too.
From what she knew of traitors in the history of times though, was that a traitor was never alone.
They always planned or conspired with or under someone else.
"A traitor," Bea mutters, a frown adorning her features, "A traitor always answers to someone else, so I don't think-" she shakes her head in thought, before looking up at them, "He had to have help- or-or someone who told him to do whatever-"
