The Drifter

C H A P T E R 1 0

C H A P T E R T E N
An Appeal

"Have you heard?" Arianna asked me.

She was perched on my window seat, seemingly engrossed by something occurring outside in the estate. She hadn't even glanced back at me whilst uttering her question. Instead she allowed herself to mumble and her voice to trail off, her attention occupied. It was a little frustrating occasionally. Honestly. It was just another one of her mannerisms. Just like when she squashes her lips to one side to refrain from voicing her opinion that differed to whoever she was conversing with. Typically it was her opposing opinion of mine.

I questioned whether she was watching out to detect any movement inside Aidan's mansion. To see if she could spot him engaged in an activity that could incriminate him further in her warped mind. She didn't trust him wholly, despite knowing he saved me during the break-in at the cinema. She just found something "creepy" about him. Frankly, I ruled it down to the fact that he dubbed himself as a drifter. There was a mystery to be had there.

"Heard what?" I replied.

I was on my bed with my laptop, scrolling aimlessly through various social media platforms. I even went onto my Facebook messages to find the message from Delia still present. Still delivered. Still unread. And her online status changed frequently. Frequently enough that either the digital forensics team were constantly surveying her messages and online activity for any amendments to catch out her abductor, or to figure out whether it was the abductor who was accessing her accounts.

DELIA QUENTIN
Last Active: One Hour Ago

Here's a fact about me – I message so little on social media (specifically Facebook) that even my summer chats to Robbie Jacobs were visible by only scrolling marginally down in my inbox. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago now. Well, it sort of was. It was the summer after freshman year before converting to a sophomore.

After I stupidly confessed my entire life story to him and before he found a different group of guys to be around. He joined the baseball team. And that was the finishing point of the Robbie Jacobs I previously knew. He even shortened him name occasionally to "Rob" because "Robbie doesn't sound too cool – I need something that girls will think oh, he sounds like a man, I need him" and they're his exact words, quoted. I caught the confession once when I was hiding behind a corridor corner not too long after sophomore year commenced and I was caught up in a hazy crush on Robbie – sorry, Rob – Jacobs. Lucky for me, it wasn't long until I was over that crush.

"Isla Isaac – you remember her?" Arianna asked, finally turning around to face me and enunciating every syllable distinctly.

How could I forget?

She had been currently dating Stephenson Daniels at his untimely demise. She must have dated him for a year, approximately. When it came to the funeral – I'd met his parents back when we dated so I felt compelled to be present at his funeral, though I did not attend the wake and Arianna joined me on that plan – she'd been so cut up about his death. She kept asking people, "Why would someone want to murder him?"

Blunt force trauma to the head. The back of the head. Not pretty.

Just like with my parents' deaths and the first status of Delia's case and even the break-in at the cinema, it was a closed case. Unsolved. But the police were adamant that his death and the cinema break-in, despite occurring on the same day, were wholly unrelated. It was a wonder that the population in this town hadn't lost faith in the police just yet. Two death cases (three deaths in total) and both of them unsolved? It wasn't looking good for our police department.