Vincent I wanted to call her, but work got in the way. Just like every other day, there was this urge to hear her voice. Today was stronger than usual. I don’t know if it was because I didn’t call her during lunch, but I felt like it’d been ages since I last heard her voice. We conducted three different surgeries today. The first was on a little girl who was the only survivor of a car accident with her parents. The other two were scheduled surgeries. All three surgeries lasted for hours. I was so exhausted. I couldn’t even have a proper lunch. Before the third surgery, which was by 2 pm, I had to bite down on two chocolate bars then heading into a surgery that took 4 hours. By the time I got out, it was already 6 pm. It'd been like this yesterday. I came back home, exhausted and hungry, and had quickly plugged my phone into its charging port, then went straight to the bathroom and had my bath, ate food prepared by Anny, and went to bed. It was in the morning that I realized I hadn’t
Anne The police were already at the address before I arrived. There were two of them, a male and a female, coming out of the five-story building. I rushed towards them, introduced myself as the distress caller, and asked after Jane. It shocked me they weren’t carrying her out of the apartment already. There were no ambulances in the area. People did not gather around as they should at a time like this. ‘A time like what?’ my brain asked me. The two officers told me it was a false lead. That I had given them a wrong address, or I was playing a prank on them. Something that, according to them, had been going on lately. I played the call I recorded to them. After listening, they confirmed that the individual truly sounded like someone in trouble, but could also be acting just to make me believe she was really in danger. Nonetheless, the address she’d given clearly was the wrong one. Just to be sure she’d not confused the buildings, they’d gone to several other houses, inquiring about
Vincent I hated that my time with her felt like an old memory. It felt like years, even though it was just two days since I last set my eyes on her. Two days of hell if you ask me. “Sir.” I couldn’t sleep a wink, and neither did I have the appetite to eat anything. I felt like a ghost living in an alien body. “Sir… sir!” I shot my eyes to the detective standing like an unpaid male model. No offense, but they were beginning to get on my already messed up nerves. My dad highly revered him for all his accomplishments, but all they’ve done since we reported Anne’s case was to ask loads and loads of questions, some of which sounded irrelevant. It might be vital to finding Anne, but I felt we were wasting a whole lot of darn time. Anything could be happening to Anne as we speak. “Sir, we need to ask you a few more questions, if you don’t mind,” said the annoying detective. “Are you serious right now?” I asked, slowly rising from the couch. I could feel my anger boiling inside, ready
Anne “Well, well, well! Who do we have here?” he said, pulling up a chair and sitting on it, then crossed his leg and leaned backward. “If it isn’t the famous Anne.” He let me see him. I knew it was him all along, but for him to make himself known to me didn’t bode well for me. I didn’t let him see the fear I felt. I just stared at his face with what I believed to be a stoic expression. “Are you happy to see me, sweetie?” he asked in a high-pitched grandma voice. I didn’t respond. I just stared at him whilst my mind wheeled, searching for anything that’ll be of help to me. I needn’t act rashly. That’ll be a death sentence. I just needed to wait it out and observe. The whole place was dark with just a single light dangling from a rope at what I guessed to be the centre of the room. From in here, I couldn’t tell what day it was, or how many hours had gone by, but I estimated it to be about six to seven days. The room looked like a dungeon because chains were hanging from diff
Andrew My brother was a mess. I was a mess. Pamela was far from being sane. We were all scared of the same thing. We all had the same thought. Joshua! But the police were being careful, or more like scared of being sued if it turned out that apprehending Joshua was a dead end. Vincent had long since begun conducting his own investigations with my help and a private detective he hired, but strange as it may sound, we were closely watched by the police. They’d come around Vincent’s house and would tell us not to interfere with their investigations. This always drove Vincent crazy and, on several occasions, he had driven himself to the edge and almost attacked the police if I hadn’t been there to stop him. As frustrating as it was, and with countless dead ends, we started seeing results. We knew our target, so we focused on him. He had shown himself in public going about his business from the time Anne got missing, and the Private detective, Henry, had kept a close eye on his movem
Vincent Andrew had wanted to do this as he had recently been involved with Fiona, but I refused. I didn’t want him to jeopardize his relationship with Pamela. I pressed the bell again at Fiona’s penthouse, but got no response. Downstairs, the security had called her up and informed her of a visitor, and she had allowed me up. I didn’t know why she was taking so long to come to the door. For a split second, it had run through my mind that maybe, just maybe, she held Anne captive up her in her penthouse, but sniffled the thought because it was a careless move. Fiona might act all stereotypical blond and empty-headed, but I knew it was all a façade. She had adopted that behavior to fit into her acting career. She was a cunny brainiac. If not anything, the stunt she pulled that day with the sleeping drug would convince all Judases that there was more to her than meets the eye. After what felt like ages, she slowly opened the door. “What a pleasant surprise!” she exclaimed. She had on
Anne “What are you doing here Fiona?!” Joshua barked at her. “I’m here to see sweet Anne, of course,” she said with a shrug. Joshua went over to her and said something in a hushed tone. I could only make out, “you’re jeopardizing everything” from all he said to her. “Calm down, brother,” she said, touching his cheeks. “No one saw me. I was as discreet as possible, okay? I just came to say my final byes to Anny,” she said with a cheeky smile. Although Joshua was not convinced, he didn’t push it. He just kept mute and went behind her, then quietly left. Fiona took a few steps toward me and looked me over. “Ugh! You are a complete mess,” she said with utter disgust. “And you stink too!” she exclaimed, scrunching up her face and covering her nose with her palm. “Whatever. I wasn’t planning on staying long. I wonder why this dude,” she said, referring to Joshua as dude, “hasn’t wasted you already. I was waiting for him to call and inform me it was over already,” she said, scrunching
Anne I saw different emotion play on her face all at once. There was shock, confusion, then anger. She wasn’t expecting that at all. That was my aim. I needed to rile her up before I entered my next plan of action. There wasn’t much time. I knew Joshua was already fed up and was going to enter and put a bullet through my skull. I had to act fast and maybe buy Vincent some time to get to me. Immediately she told me about Vincent visiting her, I knew it was set up. Thank God Joshua wasn’t here when she said that. He would have figured it out and ended me way sooner. “What so funny?” she asked in annoyance. “Poor you,” I began as calmly as possible while trying to get my hands out of the chains. It hurt like hell, but I fought the urge to scream. I wasn’t going to jeopardize my only chance at freedom. “You’re too blind to see what’s right in front of you,” I said calmly, slowly shaking my head from side to side. “What do you mean by that?” she asked in both confusion and annoyance,