Ruby Red Marionette

thirtythree | fragrance

"Clues about what?" 

"Our situation." 

We all looked at each other then. As much as it wasn't relaxing, we all wanted to do it. We all wanted to know more about what had been happening, or what was going to happen. The only thing we had in common was fear, and fear bred curiosity. 

We decided to split up. 

Isaiah and Yvette were going to go and look for information on Carlos' parents. Isaiah said that Carlos lived in a foster home for most of his life and only met his parents for the first time right before his eighteenth birthday when he would be free to leave the foster home. He wanted nothing to do with them and lived on his own when he left them. His biological and foster parents were still alive, so they were going to try to find them and see what they could get. 

Batul, Tyler and I are going to look for information on the bombings. 

This was the most perplexing component of the series of unfortunate events that had been taking place. All we knew was that it had happened three random, seemingly disconnected times. 

"Where did it happen the first time?" Tyler asked. We were walking to the library, since the others had the car. They claimed that they needed it in case they had to drive far if they found his parents' address. 

"At my job. I worked at that fish spot, Under the Sea." I told him. 

"After that, it was the building that housed the witnesses. Then it was that ice cream factory." He said. 

"The ice cream factory is the hardest one to figure out. I mean, it wasn't even opened yet. It was just an empty factory, we don't know who the owners were or what they were affiliated with." Batul said. 

"And with the others," I said, "we still don't know. The Asians who owned it had no conflict that I know of. The witness protection program is the easiest one to decipher. The police department itself has a lot of shady things connected to it, and then there were criminals being housed there." 

"So what do we do?" Tyler asked. 

"We look into the motives for the Witness Protection Program. We have to look at who was in there, who ran it, and who each of those two parties had beef with." I told him. "We can't really do the same with the other two, but maybe something we find with the WPP will help with the others." 

"Why are we going to the library?" Batul asked when we arrived in front of it.

I started up the steps. "To look at the general details." 

"Okay, wait. This sounds like great fun and all, but there's a lady selling ice cream sandwiches over there and I really—

Batul pulled two crumpled dollars out of her pocket and threw them at Tyler. "Hurry up."