Havoc (Hostiles Sequel) 3/3

The Drop

Two days after stalking Liam to the private reclusive villa, Sao receives a video on his phone from an unknown number. It was a video of Dionysius Plutarch seated in a park talking to a blond who'd just handed him a note. It was surveillance footage from a street camera, so it was impossible to hear the words exchanged between them. The blonde had her back to the camera for most of the video and there was something both oddly familiar and strange about her. Who was this woman, the last person to see Dionysius Plutarch. What was even more moving was seeing Dio again, on the very day he disappeared, and Sao wondered through the footage over and again if there was any hint that Dio knew this was the day he'd disappear. If he knew this footage was going to be the last trace of his existence. Did the mystery blond know?

Sao instantly recognized the park as the one next to Sius HQ. It was a public-access park, so Dionysius could go there without his restraining order being breached, but why would he be there? Why would he be seating in a park with a perfect view of Sius, a sad broken look on his face? The blond wasn't Sophie Stanislavsky, or at least Sao didn't think she was. Her hair was lighter and she was in a business suit. She wasn't built like Miss Universe, and Sao had never pictured her to walk or stand or dress like the mystery blond in the video. 

He considered showing the video to Makenna but voted against it, he was already feeling so many things seeing the video himself. He could only imagine the kind of hell Makenna would feel if she caught wind of the footage, so he sent the video to Lachlan instead. If this was some grand plan by Dio to disappear and wreck this havoc in Makenna's life then maybe he wasn't worth finding. But who was the blond? What had she said to him? What was on the note she handed him? Was she a co-conspirator in all this? Or was she just one of the women who fancied him and had gone over to give him her number? 

"Where is he?!" Lachlan had barked accusingly when Sao picked up  his ringing phone

He should have sent a caveat with the video but had been so bereaved and confused that he'd forgotten to. 

"That's footage from the day he disappeared. They don't know where he is...yet." Sao says, feeling somewhat relieved that he wasn't the only one of the idea that Dionysius Plutarch might have faked everything for revenge

It hurt to think of his best friend like that, and he would need all the evidence before he said it out loud the same way Lachlan just did. 

"I'm sorry...I... I just saw him sitting at that park and my mind started drawing up the most cruel of intentions." Lachlan sighs tightly

He sounded tired and worn out, the exact opposite of how he sounded when he called Makenna each day to see how she and the baby were doing. Everyone was pretending to hold up perfectly fine and cracking under the pressure behind Makenna's back. Even Sao. 

"Look, I want to believe that Dio isn't...as horrible...as to pull a Gone Girl on Makenna in the same way I believe Makenna could never have killed him. So that's what we're going to believe. The sooner we find him, wherever he is, the sooner we'll have answers. Do you recognize the blond in the footage?" Sao pries, trying his hardest to believe in his best friend 

"Where would I recognize her from?" Lachlan throws back

Dionysius Plutarch and he rarely ran the same circles since the great rift of almost six years ago. 

"He smiled up at her as if he knew her, recognized her. I thought she might be someone's employee. An intern to one of the senior engineers, an assistant to one of the board members, someone he knew well enough to trust with whatever information she handed him." Sao points out

In the worst case scenario, Dio trusted the blond enough to have her help him plot this revenge plan, in a slightly more redeeming scenario, he trusted her enough to do whatever the paper said and that had led to his disappearance. The problem here was that Dio rarely trusted anyone in the first place. So who could she be?