Detour

19

Jisoo

My eyes fluttered slowly, panic rose all over my senses. The effect of the chloroform subsided, and my eyes were starting to adjust inside a dark room. The lingering feeling of Smith's punches on my stomach were still here, and I could feel my cheeks aching bad where the other punch landed. For sure, a notable bruise will be visible on my face tomorrow.

I quickly scanned the place, pretending to be sleeping. A man wearing all black, from head to toe, a black bucket hat mostly covering his face, was standing next to one of the windows facing left, and a very minimal light was coming through from the windows to the right, the one close to the door. He was on his phone, talking to someone. I still feel dizzy and hazy, and I can hear things, but very faint.

Hack the traffic division monitoring queue and delete my car's entry and exit of Namwon.

If you can penetrate Namwon Estates security system which I perfectly knew you could, delete the front gate videos between 6PM to 8PM. Do not look or save anything, delete all and make sure non-recoverable by any security technicians.

Don't ask anything for now. Just do as I say.

I peeked over my lashes to see if he had moved position, but he remained standing in front of the window. If my analysis of the room is right based on my quick scans earlier, we were inside a Travelodge, almost similar to the hostel Jung and I stayed in Andeok.

Where exactly, I don't know. But if he had been requesting for deletion of CCTV records and had been lurking around Smith's house unnoticed, him knocking Smith in the head and carrying me out, chances he's the killer and not Smith.

What are the chances then?

I needed to escape. I knew Jung had warned me many times about sneaking in and its a hard No, and I admit my judgement was entirely wrong about this case compared to the past cases we handled in Juveniles Division, and I learned this lesson a very very hard way. It almost cost my life. He was about to pull that trigger to my head.

If my Dad would just knew what I did or what happened, I'm sure I'll be quickly withrawn from the case, moved back handling kids, or maybe Jung would threw me out permanently from the police force. Just realizing what I did, I compromised the entire team, their safety, the entire case.

I calculated my distance from the door, his distance from me, and if I could move discreetly, I'll be able to reach the door before he could reach me, and I could run. He won't be able to chase me outside since it will alarm people.

I checked myself again. I still feel weak with the hits I received earlier, will I be able to escape from him? But then, if I won't try, I don't know what danger am I facing right now.

I could slightly see the light of his phone from the bed where he laid me. Good thing he did not even bothered to tie me. I think he's planning to make another phone call.

When his phone reached his ear, I got up from bed the most silent way possible, my feet almost half floating as I approached the door.

I hold the knob and turned it, and the door opened, only to be slammed back, lock clicking, and an arm coiled me from the back, lifting me up on my feet and dragged me back inside the room. I could hear his teeth gritting, his hard grip intensifying the pain I had on my stomach earlier. His scent was familiar, but I don't know if my senses are actually working well right now, or maybe I'm on a near death situation I kept on imagining things.

He pushed my body next to the window, and his cold hands gripped both my wrist, pinning both of them at the top of my head. Metal cuffs braced both my hands, locking me against the windows grills.