Chapter 3:
The dot moved steadily across the screen of the device as she followed from a distance on the main road. Secretly she had been hoping to see her detective stalker at the scene again. This was the only way to get a lead on him and find out who he really was under that fedora.
The rain had toned down to a drizzle that sprinkled the tracking device, making her have to occasionally wipe the screen with her sleeve. In one of these wipes the dot suddenly stopped moving. She thought maybe she had clicked something, but then she realized it had stopped in an abandoned apartment complex on 3rd Street. Sketchy place for a detective...
She reached the brick building that had once housed a multitude of low income familes, now covered in moss and grime. The doors, once well painted and shining, we're now peeling and mildewed. As she opened them she noticed that they didn't creak at all, as if someone had been oiling them. Britannia moved further into the building and took a look around at the first floor. Paper on the walls were torn and tattered from years of tenants and their children. The ceilings were spotted with water damage and mold and who knows what else.
Continuing down the hall was a steep cement staircase that went all the way up to the 9th and last floor. She looked back down to her now dusty device and moved the image around on the screen, making it 3D and more apparent on which level John was. It seemed to be the fourth floor. Not too far up, but not too close to the first floor. The stairs, like the door, did not creak. Someone's been doing some remodeling. She took out her gun once again and walked slowly and carefully without making a sound. Once on the fourth floor she made her way to the farthest room on the east wing. As she approached the apartment, her pistol still leveled up, she noticed a light shining in through a door that was left ajar. Her heart was pounding in the silence with only a soft humming sound to interrupt her, like a television set on low volume.
Crack.
She stepped on something on the ground and time slowed down. It was the tracker. She wasted no time in ducking into an empty room as the light in the hall turned off abruptly. She could sense someone entering the hall, raising the tension in the air.
But the pounding in her chest and the dripping of mildew from the ceiling made up for the lack of noise.
Ba bump.
Drip.
Ba bump.
Drip.
"Detective Valentine... I also detest people following me..."