Mystery Loves Company

Chapter 19 - File #3.11: The Break and Through

Rhett

When I decided to go with this man, I never thought someone would know where I was. Given my bad luck, it was possible that I would go missing for a certain time and no one would ever find out. My body could end up in a lake or somewhere worse, but nobody would realize that it was me because my body would already be decomposed and couldn't be identified.

My negative thoughts turned out to be wrong. Yes, I did get kidnapped by a hit-and-run suspect—but 'kidnapped' here was actually an overstatement. Seriously, even in movies, I'd never seen a kidnapper so stupid. Well, maybe in Baby's Days Out, but those guys succeeded in what we knew as 'kidnapping'. They actually took a baby, demanded a ransom, and had some sort of a secret place—while all the thing this big guy had done was forced me to get into his car, only to bring me to small alley behind the 12th Street. From the line up of the retail shops, I knew he brought me to the back of the antique shop.

"You could've just use the front door. You're wasting gas," I finally spoke. "Do you know that Bridgewald is one of the towns in the country with most energy consumption? Tsk, tsk. Moreover, global warming is still an issue. People are just ignorant about our environment, that's sad."

He didn't respond. His left hand was still grasping my arm, afraid that I would run away. His other hand was struggling with the key to the back door. Now I remembered where I had seen the silver lotus—it was hanging on Mrs. Chang's keys. They couldn't have had matching keychains if there weren't something behind it.

Were they mother and son? Unlikely. Maybe he was adopted? Could be. Or... Were they secretly lovers? Creepy, but possible.

He turned back so suddenly, made me jolted back. "You're a journalist, right?" He asked with a serious face.

Was it the right time to tell the truth? Or was it just a trick question so he could beat me up?

"Why?" In the end, I asked back.

"Answer me!" He raged, but kept his voice as low as he could.

"N-not really," I stuttered, and I repeated, "Why?"

His jaw hardened. "I want you to put me out of my misery."

My mouth gaped open. "You want me to kill you?"

"No!" He chided. "Just do what you journalists usually do."

He then pushed me to a room full of antiques—the shop's storage. He locked the back door and left through another door that supposedly connected to the front part of the shop.

Hearing the door locked, I laughed quietly. He just locked me in a room with two doors, one of which leads to outside directly! He didn't even take my bag to check what I brought. To top everything, he still thought I was a journalist. What a fool.

I had a set of lock pick and I could get myself out any time, but now that I entered the devil's lair, it would be a waste not to find out more things about this place.

I wandered around the room. It was quite big, but with these many antiques stuffed here, I couldn't walk freely. There were cobwebs in every corner and some of the antiques were covered in dusts. I coughed and moved my hands frantically when strands of webs between two cupboards caught my head. Damn. Even spiders hated me.

After taking a round, I stopped at the drawer next to the second door. There was a small wooden box on top. I swiped my finger around the box—there weren't that many dusts. Without thinking twice, I opened the box and found a handful of silver lotus keychains, along with numbered tags on them. The keychains. There might be at least thirty of them in there.