Ariana was coddled up in the motel room she shared with Joseph.
She drew aside the curtains to look out of the window at the night and at the wild sea where the moon spilled itself onto the water like paint...
Their room was drowned in darkness as Joseph was sleeping, snoring, and she was standing there wearing only an oversized white shirt, bathed in moonlight.
Ariana couldn't sleep...
The ghost of Alexander Arseniev Jr. haunted her.
*
Two days later...
"So, we got reports back from the forensics lab and the autopsy medics." Michael walked in that morning energetically.
Archie Carolan had returned to London two days ago and things returned back to normal.
Ariana knew. She wasn't going to miss that blond, tattoo guy, despite how hot he was.
He touched her every opportunity he got...
She realized then how much she had missed the team leader, Mike the B.
"The death cause was determined to be an asphyxia, most likely by being directly suffocated. No water was found in his lungs so he wasn't drowned. Also, no evidence could be found on him."
"So we focus now solely on saving the five victims," Adrian mused.
"Yeah, albeit it would be highly strange if the culprit hadn't lied and they're indeed alive... They'd be loaded with information." Michael rubbed his chin.
"In any case, we have to locate them as soon as possible. There's that chance the murderer wasn't lying and if so, he left the victims tied up somewhere without food or water. We have to rush, team leader." Ariana jumped up.
She was excited. If they were alive she would've saved someone.
Of course, she tried very hard not to see it as a benevolence of the murderer but egos didn't matter now. Those lives did.
"Wow, you just called me team leader?" Michael approached her with his hands on his hips and a deep frown.
"Guys, you sure you brought the real Ariana back?"
"Should I call you idiot instead?" Ariana sneered.
"Nope, idi-I mean team leader would do."
Jacob burst out laughing.
"Last night I couldn't sleep so I re-read a copy of our criminal's letter, over and over again and I took some notes." Ariana came forward with a confident smirk, while Michael drew back as though she was the plague, but in a playful way.
"Fine. Go ahead."
"So, I believe his letter has hidden hints in it. I've outlined them here." She showed Michael.
The phrases that Ariana had outlined were: "take it to a whole lot different level", "As I'm writing this the five remaining victims are all behind me", "all five of them, alive", "they might just die...of dehydration".
Michael was very much confused.
"However in hell are those hints?" he inquired.
As she suspected, he was again, hard-headed.
"If you look at it deeply enough and think of the actions the criminal took beforehand, you'll see just how these snippets of the letter give out the location."
Soon, a few other members joined them to look at Ariana's theory. Ariana thought of how she stood up last night being haunted by the message the criminal left in the letter about Sammy: "Even little Sammy, albeit she's very scared."
"No offense but I just don't see it Ariana," Adrian scoffed.
"I do, in a way." Yamato took the copy of the original letter where Ariana did the outlining.
"A different level, behind me... I think he might mean a very high location. Dehydration... Usually, the higher the apartment or place, the harder water travels. Which might mean no water is accessible there to begin with." The Asian guy suggested, his face blank.
"So what you're suggesting is the victims aren't being held in a building or structure at all?" Michael gesticulated towards the paper.
Ariana bit her lip.
"I originally believed they must be held in a 5 star hotel, on the last floor since five sounds like a lie to me."
The attention turned onto her again.
"What do you mean a lie?" Carla inquired, squinting her eyes at the letter then Ariana. She always thought too much and her ideas seemed far-fetched.
Ariana sat on the edge of someone's desk, uncaring, albeit she was wearing a mini skirt.
"Somehow I don't think we'll find all five remaining victims there alive," she suggested. "I think it's a lie that hides another meaning. Like a five stars hotel you know..."
Ariana then, to everyone's surprise, opened her notebook again and flipped it to a different page. She gave them a big smile.
"Which, again, led me to do some research and I've listed here everything in London or Big Bucharest that contained five."
She handed Michael the notebook.
She listed there things like The Five Fields restaurant, Five Guys restaurant, the name of a few five star hotels, the tallest in London, and a lot of things that contained five.
She wouldn't go to all these places as they'll probably send field forces, but she wanted to contribute with her brain.
"I see, Ariana. Do you have anything to add?" Mike raised an eyebrow at her, eyeing her vigorously.
"I believe that, when the criminal was writing the letter he was sitting with his back at one of these locations, or another one that has something to do with a five.
He said "the five remaining victims are all behind me" but I don't think he was in the same place with them at all as he wrote the letter.
More exactly, he was standing with his back to one of these locations, facing towards the location where the victims are. Or, he was sitting inside one of those restaurants, close to a very tall building. I think they are being held indeed in a very high up place."
She breathed. She hoped she was right.
"You're really trying, aren't you?" Jacob smiled. "It'd be kind of hard to transport bodies in such a place, with a lot of neighbors you know."
"Yes, I've thought so, as well. I'm sure though he has help. Even so, I don't know if I'm right. I might be the fool of the year and an idiot and that letter might just be what it is. But trust me when I say that I can't read that letter normally anymore."
"I'll take this to the higher ups. I'll tell them to send forces to investigate all these locations and the highest spots around them. Also, there's another team who'll send their own notes regarding that letter, as a foolproof." Michael gestured with his pen and pressed his lips.
"If this doesn't pan out, you're all free to call me an idiot for the rest of this month. I won't complain." Ariana gestured with her hands defensively.
"Take a break, my lovely, would you?" Lily came bringing coffee for the both of them as she joined Ariana.
"Thank you. Which just reminds me, leader!" The blonde was suddenly excited, and stood up with the coffee.
"What is it?"
"Two weeks from now on 22th of August it's my birthday. I want a free day then."
"Mmh, nice. Big plans?" Ioana smirked at her.
"Can't you just celebrate your birthday on the Sunday just before, on 21st?" Michael spoke as he looked at a calendar on the wall.
"No Mike, I was born on 22 and I really care about that. Nothing else will do."
"Okay you can take a free day on 22-"
"Besides, you're invited too team leader." She smirked at him.
"Everyone here is invited! I hope you'll all come."
Ariana interlaced her hands, laced with gold rings and looked at her teammates.
"As long as I can get drunk..." Adrian shrugged.
"Free food, free cake? Where?" Lily joked. "I wouldn't miss your birthday for anything my lovely." Lily grabbed Ariana and hugged her excitedly.
"I'm in." Ioana smiled. "Damn, what should I wear..."
"Just don't wear too short a dress and you can count me in." Jacob winked.
"Fine. I guess I'll come as well." Team leader Michael rolled his eyes in the middle of all this.
Even cynical Yamato promised to come by.
Ariana was happy. She became fond of her teammates and she really wanted to party with them.
*
Sammy's Point of View...
Sammy tried to fall asleep, in vain, inside the darkness.
She didn't know much. She didn't even remember exactly how she got there, how she ended up the way she ended up.
She experienced a continuous dizziness, her head kept turning around and around, and she had fainted a few times...
It was dark around her and she was creeped out... Who was she?
Samantha Brianna Worth.
She remembered her name, she remembered her family. She remembered her best friend, Ann, and her 18 year old birthday party.
She remembered something awful had happened and she was gonna die...
She saw, clearly, the pit darkness around her and she felt the restraints keeping her from moving, the ties around her mouth, restraining her speech.
There was no help, she knew that.
She knew she had been kidnapped and she vaguely remembered that guy, too...
She knew there were others...
She wasn't alone, starving and dehydrated, in that pitch black room.
She remembered more people...
Starkest of all, she remembered a guy who was her age and who was very injured when they brough him in, suffering of a serious head injury.
She remembered blood.
But nothing else besides these things...
*
Unknown Point of View...
A few days earlier, before the Lighthouse investigation...
It was nighttime.
Tay returned to his Big Bucharest flat, up in the highest level of one of the highest skyscrapers in town.
The police were going to start field investigating soon and they were going to play right to his tune, to his letter.
They seemed content with the idea of simply deciphering his riddles and collecting the bodies, and some of them, not all, seemed to not realize that doing this they were practically killing the victims with their own hands...
Because the sooner they were rushing to find the locations from the riddles, the sooner they'd kill the next victim.
They were fools, these detectives, weren't they?
As of now he still had four victims at his place, but he was getting tired of babysitting them.
He held the fifth victim separately at his southern studio in London, but he planned of putting an end to him soon.
The fate of these other four persons depended more on those good-of-nothing investigators.
Maybe he should've just killed them all...
He licked his full lips and walked in.
His four victims were all lined up on his wall, restrained.
Every time he fed them he led them one by one in a different room because he didn't want them talking to each other, or somehow overpowering him.
He didn't take no chance.
He kept them in this flat on the last floor of this building so, in case of any police emergency, he could drag them all to his personal helicopter and vanish.
Tay knew how to pilot it himself.
It was all tacky, tedious stuff...
That's why he decided to change the game.
"Hello." He smiled as he passed by his innocent victims.
They used to struggle and mumble, but they had mostly given up by now. They witnessed six of them being taken away to never return, so they expected to die.
But it was good. He was gonna take away their memories soon.
He grabbed a paper and wrote the letter that he'd attach to Alexander Arseniev Jr.'s corpse. He imagined himself writing it from the included some hints within in but he wasn't sure if any of those clean detectives could rival him.
Maybe that Ariana Johnson only... He smirked. That woman was so clueless.
After he was done writing he pocketed the letter and went again to face his victims.
He looked at Sammy. She was the most terrified of all.
"You know what..." he spoke to them as he paced in front of them leisurely. He didn't care if they knew the color of his hair or his eyes or what his face looked like.
They won't remember...
"I've decided to let you live. You're not even worth killing, the bunch of you." He went to tower over Sammy who widened her eyes. "But I'm going to erase your memories... You should consider that a gift."
With that he grabbed Sammy's hand and lead her roughly to another room.
Now their fate depended on those petty detectives.
*
Sammy's Point of View...
As she sat there in the dark about to die from thirst, she realized that hope was useless.
She didn't have any hope for the future and when she heard the footsteps behind the door and the voices of people coming closer, she was inclined to believe it was all a halucination.
It was a hallucination, wasn't it?
"The UK police is here. You're all safe now, no need to worry anymore!" A female police officer announced as she felt her hands being freed.
"You'll be taken to a hospital and be given medical attention ASAP. You'll be alright."
She'll be alright?
She was, slowly, losing consciousness...
...