𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭

𝐬 𝐢 𝐱

I immediately got off the bed, switched off the lamp and scanned the room for any signs of life.

Good, I'm alone.

I opened the drawer from the nightstand, took out the money and name card, and stuffed it in my pocket. I put on a jacket as I had a strong feeling that I was going to make a run for it.

Boom.

I closed my eyes and cursed mentally. Viktor and Marlene. Please don't be dead.

It can't be a coincidence that right after someone tells me information about my parents' death, there are gunshots heard in the same place. Now I know that the plane crash wasn't a regular plane crash and someone powerful had orchestrated it. Someone powerful enough to still keep surveillance on Viktor even though the plane crash happened almost eighteen years ago.

I quickly tiptoed to lock the door and hid under the bed, hoping for some kind of rescue. Surely someone must have heard the gunshots, right?

On second thoughts, I would have to escape before the police arrived at the scene as being caught in the crosshairs of two different shootings in less than twenty-four hours did not put me in a great position to leave the police station without the company of the social workers or even to not be put in jail.

Then I heard someone rattling the doorknob.

Shit.

I was literally held in an impasse position as I frantically looked for any escape routes.

"The door is locked, should we knock it down?" I heard a man say.

He's not alone. That's bad.

I went into the toilet and saw that there was an air duct right above the sink so I stood on the toilet bowl and managed to reach the air duct. The intensity of the sound of banging the door increased as I quickly crawled into it. Thankfully I was small enough to fit into the air duct.

Once I was in the air duct, I heard a loud sound of a door being knocked down.

Don't move. Keep extremely still.

"Over here, someone escaped through the air duct," the same man said.

I heard a woman's voice say, "It must be him. Quickly look for any exits outside. He couldn't have gone far."

Wait a second, so they're here for Viktor. He was not joking when he said someone really wants the plane crash incident covered up.

"The police will be here any second," the man replied.

The women hit the mirror with something and I heard the shattering sound from pieces of the mirror falling onto the ground.

"Damn it."

And to my surprise, they started speaking in Spanish. So whoever orchestrated the plane crash must be from Spain. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when the sound of their footsteps faded away.

Focus. Your priority now is to find Viktor.

My elbows hurt from being rubbed on the metal by the time I reached someplace which was at the end of the air duct. When I got out of the air duct, I realised that I was in a sewer.

Ugh, it smells so bad.

The rancid smell filled up my nose and I pinched it whilst continuing to walk until I saw an exit.

When I climbed out of the sewer, I looked around my surroundings and realised I was behind a lamp post, about a hundred metres away from the restaurant. From the dim lights of the lamp post near the diner, I could see three figures walking towards a car parked right next to the diner.