Escape

Where is Vic?

Emily Karlos expected her sister at half past eight and she was excited about the dinner the whole day. Her sister was very busy to have dinner with her during the election campaign, so this would have been a special occasion. Emily wanted to tell her sister that night that she's done with all her exams and her exam works will be exhabited in the Museé d'Orsay (in Paris) in a few months and she would like to travel there with her sister after the election campaign is over and she can get away for a few days from work.

Yes, Emily prepared and imagined everything. She planed to announce her exam results first and then Vic would gratulate to her, but she would stop her before they would toast because she hasn't finished yet. She invite her sister to Paris she says yes then they actually toast.

Emily went to shop in the morning, after lunch she started to prepare the dinner, picked the perfect wine for the occasion, changed the flowers in the vase, lighted a candle in the middle of the table, set the table at 8 o'clock and waited for Vic to arrive.

She was still waiting for her at quarter to nine, but at nine o'clock she angrily pulled out her phone and called her sister. She didn't pick up, but Emily didn't give up, she called Vic's office. Vic's secretary (because she has that one too) answered the phone and said that Victoria left the office at half past seven and she hung up the phone.

Emily looked at her blackout phone screen confused.

This is impossible. It's almost quarter past nine and she still isn't here. There's no such traffic jam, not even in the rush hour that she can't be here by now she thought and redialed her sister's number. No answer. She tried to call Vic's best friend, Aida, because she run out of ideas.

"Hey, Emily! What's up?" Aida picked up the phone.
"Hey, is Vic with you right now?" Emily asked immediately.
"No, I didn't met her for a week and a half. Is everything alright?" she asked worried. "Did she get hurt?"
"No, nothing like this, I'm sure she's just late" Emily said without conviction. Aida stayed in silence thinking for a few seconds.
"Victoria is not the tipe of person who likes to be late. She rather arrives half an hour earlier instead of being late. Are you sure everything's alright?" she asked now seriously worried.
"Yes" Emily replied instantly. "Sorry about bothering you this late. Good night!"
"Nothing happened and call me when you find Victoria so I can know that she's okay or call me if you need anything"
"Alright, I'll call you. Bye"
"Bye" Aida said, but Emily didn't hear her anymore because she hung up the phone. She was worried about her sister. She always says to Vic that if she doesn't careful enough she'll get into trouble because of her job, but she didn't listen to her and chose to be a politician with a lot of enemies.

Emily decided to wait another ten minutes and if she still won't arrive, she'll clean up and won't wait for Victoria. She surely has so many things to do that she forgot about the dinner and she's already sleeping.

Ten minutes passed and Victoria didn't arrive. Emily got up from the couch with a big sigh and started to clean up than went to bed.

Next morning, the first thing she did was to check her phone for messeges from her sister, but still nothing. She reassured herself that she's probably working, so Emily ate her breakfast peacefully, pulled herself together and she was ready to go.

Emily had to meet her best friend and classmate in a café near to her appartment today. Her friend, Georgina Walsh, daughter of Richard Walsh who doesn't really like Victoria, they never agreed in anything when it came to their job, but Emily and Gina didn't care about their conflicts. They didn't care about politics, they liked to paint.

She picked her comfy training shoes, took her keys and she almost left when she stopped at the front door and looked at her reflection which she could see in the door's glass part. She almost looked like her sister, but she had short hair and green eyes instead of Vic's browns. Vic has the same eyes as their father had while Emily inherited her eyes from their mother.

For a moment, she started to worry about her sister again, but she hold back her tears and stepped out on the door. She walked down on the stairway then out to the street. She lived in an eight stories high condominium where her sister helped her move in in her first year of university.

Her sister was her only family member who was alive and she loved and she might be in danger.

No! Don't even think about this! she scolded herself and she almost get moving when she noticed something on the sidewalk. It was a broken wine bottle and next to it was a little puddle of...
"No, this can't be" she turned pale like a wall. "This can't be blood. I'm sure it's just the wine from the broken bottle. It must be it"

She tried to calm down and focus on something else, but she couldn't fool herself. The label on the bottle said 'white sweet wine' not red, so the thing on the concrete couldn't be anything else but blood and Emily knew this too.