Chapter 6

We headed to one of the universities. Danny and I had emailed all the lecturers at both universities with the composite sketch, and we managed to get a reply from two lecturers at the same university saying that they think they recognised the kid and that he goes by the name of Timothy Sade. It was surprising that the kid used his real name, albeit a shortened version of it.

The grounds were well kept, and students were milling about. We made our way inside and asked to speak with the two lecturers at the information desk. One of them was currently busy lecturing but the other came to meet us.

She showed us a photo of a student in her class, and he seemed to fit the description perfectly. When we asked for his schedule, we determined that he was currently taking a lecture by the other lecturer that we meant to interview.

Deciding to catch him, we made our way to the lecture hall. They had just finished, and students were coming out. That was when I saw him and at the same time, he noticed us. His eyes widened and he then bolted.

"Stop! We need to talk to you!" I yelled and proceeded chasing him. I knew Danny wouldn't be able to chase after him due to his bad back. He had injured himself four years prior while on the job. Chasing a kid on campus wasn't as easy as I had thought. There were lots of students about and while some had the common sense to get out of the way others didn't.

The kid then went all Assassin's Creed on me and started jumping over things and sliding down others parkour style which I managed to do as well mostly, but then he literally scaled a wall like a freaking lizard. There was no way I was getting up that wall without making a fool of myself and we both knew it. The brat had the guts to look down at me with a grin from the floor above before running off. I knew that if I took the stairs up, he'd be long gone.

I stood there catching my breath for a bit and eventually went back to where I had left Danny.

"So, there goes our chance of getting him unawares," I grumbled.

"Don't worry, we'll catch him eventually," Danny said while patting my shoulder.

When we got back to the office later Jenny and Stella came to show me a video some students took that was pieced together so it showed me running after the kid like we are doing some obstacle course, right up to the point where the kid scaled the wall. It had exploded on social media and now everyone knew we wanted to talk to the kid and he would no doubt not be going to campus for a while. The office was finding the whole thing hilarious, and Stella was reading some of the comments out loud.

"That guy had some wicked moves for a cop!"

"Is that how they train them these days? I don't think I'd be able to get up to that standard. There goes my dream of joining the force."

"I want his babies!"

And lots of heart and underwear emojis and the like. I was a bit surprised that the focus was almost entirely on me and not the student that literally walked up the wall. Miracles clearly no longer amused the youth. At least they didn't know who I was...

"Oh, and look, they managed to track you down Kai," Stella had to burst my bubble. Kids these days were quite scary. All my public information was regurgitated all over social media. My name, what police department I worked for. Some other photos of me that they managed to get hold of. This wasn't good. Next thing I'd have to deal with a bunch of stalkers.

"Please request that they take that down," I asked Jenny and went to my desk. Just then I got a message from August.

August: "I see you've been keeping fit."

Along with it was a photo of me jumping over a wall.

Me: "Groan...not you too." I included an exasperated looking smiley emoji.

He replied with a smiley emoji blowing a kiss.

I tried Cayenne's phone number again and this time she picked up.

"Hello?" she asked sounding very hesitant.

"Is this Cayenne?"

"Who is this?" the women asked suspiciously.

"I'm officer Kai Lane, I'm with law enforcement. We please need to ask you some questions about your boyfriend Albert Heinz. Is it possible for you to come into the police station or I can come to meet you?"

There was a long pause.

"He's dead, isn't he?"

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

"No, no, no!" she mumbled and then cut the call off.

Great, this case is just going swimmingly.

Her phone was back to going straight to voicemail. Danny and I went to her house again and there was still no sign of anyone being there and no answer to my insistent knocking on the door.

"Should we perhaps get a search warrant?" Danny asked as we walked around the house again. Just then I noticed one window was very slightly open. How did we miss this last time or was this a recent thing?

I lifted it the rest of the way and it gave way easily.

"I'll just take a peek and make sure she's not lying unconscious in there or something," I said as I climbed in through the window. "Tell me if anyone comes to the house."

The window led into a bedroom. The smell of marijuana hit me in the face. The bedroom was very messy, clothes just laid strewn about but not in a way that I'm sure it was ransacked and not just someone who just couldn't be bothered because they are too "high" to care. I took out my gun as I slowly walked towards the door.

"Cayenne?" I called out, "It's the police, we just need to talk to you."

There was just silence. Eventually I made it thought the whole house and other than it being absolutely filthy and smelling strongly of marijuana there was no sign of Cayenne or foul play. Feeling a bit disappointed I was about to head back to the room when my eye fell on a piece of paper lying below a kitchen bar stool chair. It had writing on it and thinking that it most likely was just another piece of junk I still picked it up anyway.

"You know what the consequences are. 10 High Street. 12 pm."

This was a threat. Consequences? Did this person or "they" blame Cayenne for the shootout? For Alfred's death? For the loss of drugs and money? This could mean that Alfred and Tim were involved with a Drug Cartel and not working independently. That...will make things a lot more complicated. The Drug Cartels weren't the kind of organisations you wanted to mess around with. The note didn't have a date.

"Danny, this is bigger than we thought," I was saying as I climbed back out the window to be met by two masked men holding Danny at gunpoint, the other gun aimed at me.

"Drop your weapon and put your hands up," a male voice ordered.

I removed my gun and dropped it to the ground.

"Okay," I said, doing as instructed.

"Fuck dude, we were supposed to get the bitch, not the fucking cops," the other male spoke, sounding flustered. This could perhaps work in our favour.

"We are actually also looking for her," I said trying to see if I can engage them with any sort of negotiations.

"Shut it!" his mate shushed me, "Both of you, walk towards the back gate," he said as he pushed Danny into me. I held him up to prevent him from falling and we then turned around and walked.

The back of the property had a gate facing a wooded area. The fence line was made of wood and didn't seem very sturdy from years of neglect. The gate was almost falling off its hinges. I knew that if they walked us into the woods, we probably wouldn't be left alive.

A plan formed in my head. They left a short distance between us and them while they had their guns trained on us. I pushed the narrow gate open as far as it would go, and it opened to the outside. I let Danny walk through first. I then followed and as we were both on the other side, I shoved Danny away hard to the left so that he fell down onto the ground, but hidden behind the fence and I dove to the opposite side.

A gunshot rang out and I heard cursing. I grabbed hold of the gate and as soon as one of them was about to come through I slammed it so hard into him that I think I heard something crack, but I was sure it wouldn't completely put him down and the other person would also still be around and had a gun. I knew that the fence wasn't bulletproof and them not being able to see through it was our only saving grace. I reached for my knife I kept hidden in my boot and waited, praying that they wouldn't just randomly shoot bullets through the whole fence line.

Danny was attempting to get on his hands and knees, but I signalled to him to stay down. It was the safest place for him right now. I saw Danny get hold of his phone and dial, I knew it would alert our department that we are in need of immediate assistance and ping our location.

We waited. And waited. And nothing happened. Were they playing with us? Waiting for us to peek out and get shot in the face? We waited what felt like a very long time before I slowly picked up a piece of broken wood from the fence and waved it in the opening, expecting at least one of the two to react in some way but there was just silence.

I ended up slowly reaching up and peeking over the fence instead of through the opening and was astonished. There were two bodies lying close to the gate and not moving.

"I think they are dead," I whispered to Danny. I walked over to him to help him up and he groaned.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't think of any other way to quickly get you out of harm's way."

"I know, but I think I may have hurt something in my back."

"Then it is better that you stay down, I will get an ambulance."

I fished my phone out and called for medical backup. It wasn't long before we heard sirens and soon the whole yard was swarmed by police. When they gave the okay, I came out from behind the fence. I led the paramedics to Danny and then explained about what happened. The two men were both shot in the head, right between the eyes. It didn't make sense since we only heard one shot and when I had rammed the gate in the one guy's face, they had still been alive. I didn't recall hearing more shots but realised it could have been from a silenced firearm.

Danny was loaded onto a stretcher and taken to hospital and I had to go and report to Watson what had happened. He was of course not happy about me deciding to enter the house without prior authorisation and now Danny was hurt, and we were no closer to finding Cayenne or Tim. And it is now possibly a case involving a Drug Cartel. Watson asked that I put the case on hold until Monday so that he'd have time to figure out how we would deal with this.

Friday morning was a bright sunny morning and the first signs that winter was about to end was showing up, little buds of flowers were popping out everywhere. It would get a bit of getting used to to leave the house now. The front door had a combination lock with fingerprint and voice recognition as well as a code. The same process had to be followed to get through the front gate. When I finally got out, neighbour nosy agony aunt was standing right outside, looking at me with suspicion, giving me a bit of a fright. I wasn't expecting the old lady to be here at 5 o'clock in the morning.

"Good morning Mrs Pierson," I greeted. "Sunny day, isn't it?"

She huffed.

"You must be up to no good," she croaked pointing her bony wrinkled finger at me, "them people with them high walls always have something to hide. I'm onto you."

She gave me the evil eye and then walked off like the nosy neighbourhood stalker aunt she was.

The yard had been given an extreme transformation. High solid walls were installed with electric fencing and cameras everywhere. A combination of beams, pressure sensitive plates and other security devices had been installed all over the garden and then landscaped into perfection with even a little koi pond which pops was very happy about.

The house was another story. The roof and outer walls and floors had...something done to them. All the glass windows had been replaced with the bulletproof type. Today they'd just been finishing off repainting and retiling and then they should be done.

I didn't want to know what all of this cost and still wondered when I fell down the rabbit hole since things are making less and less sense.

Since the creepy stalker dude in the park incident, I had made a point to take Hades with me on all my morning runs. When I got back pops was up early for a change and sipping on his coffee while looking at the koi pond.

"What's up pops?" I asked.

"Beautiful, aren't they?"

I stood next to him to admire the fishes and had to admit that they were. The pond was quite large and even had a little Japanese style bridge going over it.

"Do you want to tell me you just had to get up early this morning because you couldn't wait to see the koi fish?" I teased.

"Of course. And those people will be back here shortly anyways to torture me again so what's the point of trying to get some more sleep in. And...I forgot to tell you that your sister called yesterday. She wants us to come over for lunch on Sunday."

"Is she playing nice so she can put us on baby-sitting duty again?"

"Who knows...although it could have something to do with me mentioning that you are now engaged, and she wants to meet you fiancé."

I groaned.

"I haven't even thought of telling her yet. Things have just been happening so fast lately and work has been a lot to handle..."

"Don't worry, I'm sure she won't murder you completely for not telling her that not only is her baby brother engaged but moving in with his fiancé this weekend since she is quite ecstatic about having August Vale as a brother-in-law."

"I bet she is. And no doubt she's going to try to network him into her web of business associates. I better warn August...shit, I'd have to ask him first if he can even make it."

"Don't worry about that, I have already asked him, and he can make it just fine."

"How...when... wait, why do you have his number?" I asked with narrowed eyes.

"I asked him the night he came over to our place."

"And that is perfectly normal? Should I be worried about you two?" I teased.

"Perhaps if I was a few years younger I might consider...nah, I still think I prefer women."

I was about to head inside.

"Kai."

"Yes?"

"Things in our district have been taking a...darker turn lately. Please be careful out there."

"I will."

I went by the hospital to see Danny. He was recovering well and would be able to leave after the weekend. I felt horrible that he had hurt his old back wound again, but what could I have done differently in the circumstances? At least his girlfriend was fawning over him now instead of complaining about every woman coming closer than ten feet to him.

As I got into my car outside the hospital my phone rang. It was an unknown number.

"Hello?"

"Please," a voice sobbed, "please help me!"

I recognised the voice.

"Cayenne?"

"I'm so scared. If they find me they will kill me. I don't know what to do."

"Take a deep breath and listen to me. Are you somewhere safe?"

"I...I don't know. I'm at a motel, the one on Bright street by the beachfront. Please help me!"

"Okay, I'm coming over. Stay where you are. What room number are you in?"

"205."