before i go - the hangover IIII

part 5

It was 2:57. All of us were sitting in La Fontaine, a small coffee shop, just 20 minutes away from the castle.

"So this Claude guy," Phil asks, after sipping his coffee. "What does he want?"

"Well, funny you ask, Phillip," Chow laughs. "He wants me. Of course. I brought you guys here to kill him."

"No," I slam my hands on the table. "I'm sorry but we're not murderers. Maybe Alan is, who knows. But not the rest of us. We're finding Doug, and we're leaving."

"I could help you guys too," Chow drags out, stirring his tea.

"How?" Stu asks.

"I'll help you retrace your steps and then find Doug. But you have to help me," Chow states.

"Fine. We're not killing anybody. But we'll help you out," Phil agrees.

"Phil? Can I please speak with you," I say getting angry. "Outside."

"Ooooo," Chow smirks, dragging out.

As Phil and I walk outside, I hit him on the chest. "Are you insane! Do you know what you dragged us into?"

"Listen. We need to find Doug. And we can find this Claude guy and just hand Chow over to him."

"We need to retrace our steps first. Find out what happened," I say.

"I agree. But Chow put us here, so he'd be the first person to know what happened."

"I'm not killing anybody," I say angrily, going back inside.

As I make my way inside the shop, I aggressively sit down and tried not to make eye contact with anybody.

"You look happy," Chow smirks.

"Oh, I'm ecstatic," I sarcastically grin, folding my hands. "Alright, bitches, where should we start?"

Before anyone could answer, Colin got a phone call. He abruptly gets up and walks to the front of the door to speak in private.

After a few moments of waiting, Colin comes back, sits down, and sighs. "Okay, bad news. My security searched the castle up and down. No sign of Doug."

"Well, fuck," I exaggerated, slamming my head down on the table.

"Let's check out the gun range, see what they say, and see if Doug was with us," Stu stated, taking one last drink of his coffee and standing up.

We all stood up, Colin putting money down on the table to pay, and walked out.

All of us, besides Colin and Chow, looked like we had just been through hell. We groggily made our way back to the Ranger Rover as Chow drove us to the gun range.

In the back, I sat in between Phil and Stu as I thoroughly looked at the note with the numbers on it that was in my pocket. "What do you think these numbers are for?"

"Maybe it's a phone number?" Phil suggested.

"No, it's too long to be a phone number. Maybe it's like a password to something?"

"Why would it be a password?" Alan speaks up.

"I don't fucking know, Alan. Just shut up," I say, getting annoyed.

The car drive was about twenty more minutes until we reached an abandoned road and a small shop that had a sign "Shawnie's gun range" on top.

"Hurry up you assholes, I don't have all day," Chow says, folding his arms and leaning against the car.

I roll my eyes, hitting into Chow purposely as I walked into the store first. The rest of the group followed suit.

Inside, we were faced with a dingy shop that reeked of an old spice smell. There was one man working who sat upon a wooden stool, reading a Sports Illustrated magazine. He was chewing gum furiously and had on all camouflage.

"Excuse me. Hey. Do you remember us from last night?" I say, waving my hands, trying to get the 30 something year old man to look at me.

"Vanessa!" He says, excitingly, coming out from behind the counter and hugging me. My confused face sent a wave of concern over to Phil as he walked over.

"Um," I say, trying to get away from the man.

"'Ello, Phil," the man smiles, shaking Phil's hand.

"Buddy, I hate to break it to you. But we don't remember anything that happened last night. We were roofied and we're trying to retrace our steps."

The worker laughed and stepped back. "Well, you guys seemed like you were on something. After Vanessa shot Stu in the leg I knew that there was something up-"

"I'm sorry what did you just say?" Stu asked.

I stood there, half in shock, trying not to laugh. "You have to be joking."

"I mean the bullet just grazed you, thank god. But it was bollocks. We were all laughing so hard. I can show you the security tapes if you wa-"

"Show me that shit right now," Phil laughs eagerly, walking over to the computer. The worker with the name tag, Nigel, on it, typed something into the computer system, bringing us to view with the security tapes.

It showed me, Phil, Stu, Alan, Doug, and Nigel all with head gear on, holding pistols, trying to shoot the dummys that were far away from us. Alan ran back and forth with his gun, while his pants were off. Typical.

I watched myself uncontrollably laugh as I pretended that the pistol I was holding was my dick and swinging it around. I guess something malfunctioned because the gun fired and grazed Stu's leg.

As I watched the footage, I covered my mouth in shock, but tried not to laugh. I knew that I could've seriously hurt him, but I couldn't help snickering.

Phil laughed hysterically as Stu looked shocked and scared. "You shot me... You shot me!"

"Hey you're fine now," I try to calm him down. "At least we know Doug was with us."

"What time was this at," Phil asks, trying to put the pieces together.

"At 12:47 last night," Nigel read the tapes, before shutting them off since there was no further footage.

"Did we say where we were going?" Alan asked, taking charge for once.

"Well, you guys said you wanted to sight see in London and I called a tour bus for you guys to take you," Nigel remembers. "I can call them again if you want, I know the driver."

"Yeah, you know what, call them, we'll see what the driver says, and if we have to go to London, we will," Phil suggests.

"Claude is in London," Chow says, standing with his arms crossed in the doorway.

Startled, I jumped a little. "So?"

"We can take him down there?" Chow says, leaning against the doorway.

"Why do you need us?" Phil asks, screaming.

"Because you're all I got," Chow says.