We were driving across Rimona's outskirts, pretty slowly too. Neither Mika, Akito nor I were familiar with how to get to the capital, and much less the specific parts of it.
“We're lost,” Akito muttered next to me in the backseat for the tenth or so time, the Toyota temporarily taking the space of a bus stop.
“No, we're not.” Mika retorted, leaning over the wheel with her hands in her hair and her eyes narrowed at one of the roadsigns. “I've been here millions of times and all we need to do is keep driving until we get out of this slightly confusing web of streets.”
“Where are we, then?” He groped for the road atlas in the the glovebox, rummaging through whatever stacks of paper and torches there were. Finally, he pulled the heavy book out, laying it on his lap beside me.
“Capital.”
“Specifically?” There was a slight eye-roll to Akito's tone, his fingers flipping through the pages of the atlas. And when Mika gave no answer, he pressed on. “... You don't know either, do you? We are lost.” He furrowed a brow, tilting the map for a bit once he found the page to get a proper look at it. For a minute or so, the silence swelled inside the car, Mika obviously seething to herself. Then, Akito snapped shut the heavy book, leaving it there on his lap. “Alright, I'm happy now. Take the next left, Mika.”
The engine whirred to life, the car lurching forwards and turning slowly at the crossroads. We came to another stop at the traffic lights, and Mika sighed. “You're such a control freak. It's not like we know where in the capital to look for all these people anyway, so why not start here?”
“I'm not a control freak, I just don't like being disorientated.” He brushed her question off.
“Ah,” Mika smirked in the rear mirror, “not just a control freak, a defensive control freak.”
Akito didn't say anything in response to that. After all, there wasn't much to say. He continued to study the atlas, or pretended to, for the remaining of the ride, and I dozed off against the window.
An hour or so later, I was woken as the engine switched off. As I opened my eyes, I noticed that the Toyota was parked on the curb of the road, the shops lining both sides filled with clutters of children and teenagers. It was a total contrast from the quiet area of Rimona.
“Where exactly are we?” I asked, trying to swallow down my second thoughts in regards to being a few hours away from home. “And where are we going?”
“Off to the lair of this old geezer who considers himself to be a detective. And oh, did I mention? He considers himself to have adopted Aki and I, too.”
Oh...
She continued without pausing for my taking in of that fact. “We believe that Henryk wasn't just randomly chosen to be one of the dead bodies that turned up, but instead he might have known something that he shouldn't have,” Mika said in a cold yet certain voice. She climbed out of the car, slammed the door and stood on the streets.
“That always happens, yeah?” Akito mused, pulling his lips into a smirk of sorts. “Dead men tell no tales.”
“Yeah.”
With that we started walking,
~*~
Hiding in plain sight. That's what he called it, walking down L Street at five in the afternoon. He wore a black shirt with jeans and combat boots, the knife and cyanide capsule concealed on the inside of his leather jacket. Guns would be too easy to track down, and he disliked being tracked down. It was irritating to exterminate law enforcement officers.
YOU ARE READING
Requiem
Mystery / ThrillerThree years ago, Anneke committed suicide. Her body was never found, and there was no suicide note. Those appear three years later with even darker secrets, when Sage arrives at the city of Rimona.
