If Only She Knew

16. The Riddle

Present time, London...

"I know that you watched your mother die, Ariana," Jacob admitted. "That's pretty heavy."

Ariana shifted in her chair uncomfortably.

She didn't like feeling vulnerable but that's exactly the way she was feeling when that part of her past surfaced.

She hated it.

"Don't dig that up for me, Jacob... Besides, it happened twelve years ago. I'm alright."

Jacob smiled. "You're very stoic, you know that?" He mused.

Ariana fluttered her eyelashes.

Was she?

"Funny, what came to my mind now was the time you actually took your shoes off while we were out investigating." Jacob was shaking his head, acting very informal at that time.

His papers were all strewn on the table between them and he was no longer interrogating her ; they were reminiscing the past.

"Yeah, I remember. It was after the supposed murderer killed himself, leaving us with all the work." Ariana flourished her hand.

She supposed she should be in so much pain then.

Her fate was in a balance... But she was reminiscing with Jacob, and it felt nice...

"You were a good detective even back then," Jacob commented while he pulled out a packet of cigars.

Ariana's face contorted strangely, the portion between her brows creasing slightly.

Was he actually going to smoke in there? Inside the interrogation room, across from her, the said suspect?

"You had a very keen intuition, Ariana. It's like you were a metal detector," Jacob praised her.

He put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it up.

He had witnessed her odd intuition first hand.

"Cigarette?"

*

Two years ago...

The next day, Ariana was staring at the list the criminal left attached to his letter.

That list officially and finally stated that the ten recent disappearances and murders were all related.

What sort of game was he playing?

The list provided the order in which they had to pursue the bodies of the victims, hidden by the criminal, and she guessed he was so adamant about following his rules because he was hiding the bodies according to the pace at which they found a body...

Which meant two bloodcurdling things:

The first one, he had his eyes on them all the time, so he probably had help, infiltrated spies, or was a genius.

And second, he was probably killing off the kidnapped victims regularly.

Which meant some of them were still alive, tied up somewhere, helpless...

Megan Keene had been confirmed to have been dead for a few weeks prior though.

Megan...

She remembered that girl...

When she was little she had been her best friend, always coming by her house and being amazed at how beautiful and huge it was.

Since her father was a CEO millionaire, Ariana lived in one of the best mansions in a residential area between Big Bucharest and London, which her father had sold when she was 15.