The Fatal Uncovering

Chapter 5

"Wake up, Zara"

I feel someone shaking my arm. I don't want to open my eyes. I feel exhausted.

"Fine, I'm leaving" says the voice.

I slowly open my eyes and see Lucas sitting beside me on my bed with a bored expression on his face. "What are you doing here?" I ask him. I didn't know he was going to come over.

"I decided to just come over and your mom let me in. She said you were in your room, but I didn't know you were napping." He tickles me. "At 6 in the evening."

I move away from his grasp. "Stop, I just woke up." I plead. "I slept at three in the morning last night so you can't blame me." I feel something hard under me. I reach out for it and find another Nancy Drew book in my hand. I must've fell asleep while reading it. I sigh and place it on my night table.

"What were you doing up so late?" Lucas asks me.

I sit up on my bed and make space for Lucas to sit comfortably. "I was watching some Tv show" I say.

Lucas chuckles. "You look like a potato" he says, staring at my face.

I throw a pillow at him. "I'm not sleeping beauty, just an average girl" I say. 

"Sleeping Beauty, aren't those words familiar" he teases.

"Oh yes! The case. We need to work on it" I say, sitting up well. I had totally forgotten about it.

Lucas throws the pillow back at me. "Do you really think we can solve it?"

"Yes" I reply. I'm honestly not sure at all if we can solve it, but I like to act confident rather than hopeless. And even if we fail to, I want to have tried at least.

Lucas frowns. "I'm really not sure about this. We know nearly nothing about it and we're just teenagers. Why not let the professionals work on it?"

I sigh. I hate it when people try to discourage me from doing something I want. I have set my mind to work on this case and I'm not going to let anyone stop me from that, not even my bestfriend. "Didn't you say that your family hasn't attained closure yet? Don't you want to at least try to solve this for Jessica?" I ask him. This is not a simple crime case, it actually involves Lucas and his family. I would love to solve the mystery for my own passion, but it would also help my bestfriend and his family. The idea of this benefiting someone else than me, too, pushes me even more to work on it.

Lucas sighs. "I do want to. It's just that I don't think we have the right experience to do it Zara. That's all."

"But it doesn't hurt to try, right?" I say.

Lucas shrugs his shoulders. "I guess not."

Someone knocks on my half-open bedroom door. Before I can say anything, my brother walks in the room with two glasses of what seems to be milkshake. "Dad made strawberry milkshake and told me to bring you guys some" he says, handing us the glasses.

"Thank you, Jack". I say, taking a sip of the milkshake.

"Thanks bro" Lucas says, doing the typical guy handshake with Jack. "How's it going?"

"Not bad, you tell?" Jack walks to the door.

"Good" Lucas replies, but Jack is outside before Lucas' response. Lucas shrugs his shoulders.

I put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't take it personally, Jack is just so weird with everyone lately." I tell him.

"How come?"

"He's never home and when he is, it doesn't feel like it because he's either in the lounge, playing on his ps4 or he's in his room. He doesn't really talk to me or mom and dad anymore."

Lucas frowns. "That's weird. You two used to be so close. He'd always be hanging around in your room."

I sigh. "It's been a while since you came over. He doesn't come in my room that often anymore. I guess it's been more than a month."

Lucas looks at me. "I see that this saddens you. Don't worry, it's probably just a sad phase in his life. He'll get over it soon." he says. "So what do you want to do about the case?" he asks.

I smile.  "I say we find a way to find out about the other victims to find something in common that the victims have with eachother." I look down and think about how we could get to do that for a few seconds. Then, I look up at Lucas. "My dad told me about this case just a few days ago. Yesterday night, he told me that they were prioritizing another case for now so they aren't currently working on it, but they'll get to it next. So, dad must have it close to him. Since he can't bring any files at home, they must be at his office. I went to his office a couple of times when I was younger when mom couldn't care for me after school because she had meetings to attend. So, I could go again and sneak in and find the files".

Lucas nods. "That seems cool, but how are you going to sneak and find the files with your dad there?"

I bite my lip. "That's the problem, we have to come up with some sort of distraction so I could have his office place to myself for a few minutes."

Lucas scratches his head. I noticed he does that when he's thinking about something which I find cute. "Let's say you got hurt and you need your dad to fix it for you. Oh, your knuckes haven't healed yet so you could pretend they're bad".

I bite my lip. I feel uncertain about this because it would be kind of weird to show up at my dad's office just for that. I can take care of stuff like that by my own at my age.  "Maybe I can just pretend to feel unwell and say that this happened all of a sudden. I could make it seem more serious by saying that I feel dizzy."

Lucas thinks about it for a bit then nods. "Okay so you'll go to his workplace and you'll tell them that you need to see your dad because you don't feel well and they'll let you see him right?"

I nod. "They have let me in there a couple of times and I'm his daughter so I guess they will."

"Zara..."

I look up at him. "What?"

He has a worried look on his face. "I'm thinking that if this turns out wrong, maybe your dad can lose his job."

I have to agree with him. Solving this case is very important to me, but not at all worth my dad losing his job. "All I need though is the names of the victims, which isn't a big deal and once I got them, I will try to solve it on my own. If someone asks me how I got the victims' names, I can invent some story about how I was friends with one of the victims' relatives who told me about it. And I won't even have to let anybody know that I knew the names of all four victims." I pause. "I promise that I'll be careful and I won't poke in and try to find more information." 

Lucas sighs. "Okay then. So when do you want to go to your dad's office?"

"Tomorrow."