Page 77 of Whispered Warnings: Part Two

“It was at the back of the car park, where the trees start,” she explains, “you should be able to recognize it from the video.”

“Thank you,” Evander smiles.

We all start to head back down the path when she speaks again, stopping us and making us face her again.

“I knew him, he was a friend,” she says, her voice tight with emotion, and her eyes fill with tears, “he was so gentle, he would never hurt anyone. I just can’t believe that he’s done this.”

I move forward, “It wasn’t him. Something is very wrong with him. It’s not him anymore. Your friend wouldn’t do that.”

She nods but doesn’t say anything, and I’m not sure that my words offered her the comfort that I intended them to.

“I’m sorry, one more question and then we will go,” Ransom says this time. She nods again and Ransom asks, “Do you know anywhere that he would go to feel safe?”

“There’s his flat in town,” she replies.

Ransom shakes his head, “It’s unlikely that he would go there. Could you give us the address just in case?”

She nods and disappears again, coming back quicker and with the pad and pen this time.

“There is one place he may go,” she says with a frown as she hands the address of the apartment or flat as they call it here to Ransom.

“Anything would help,” Evander says.

She sighs, “His parents own some land on the edge of the moors about a twenty-minute drive from here. They had a hut or something up there, it wasn’t a house, but it was tiny and made from stone. He hasn’t been up there since his parents died when he was a kid. It’s isolated and probably somewhere I would go if I was on the run.” She starts writing on the pad, “Here, this is the address. I can’t remember it exactly, but I do know it’s the only stone building out there, and it’s surrounded on all sides by nothing. There used to be a dirt track that led to it, but I doubt that’s there anymore.”

Van nods, “Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.”

She nods and then closes the door.

We all quickly head back to the van and the guys hand me the addresses.

“Where do you want to go first?” I ask them.

“Well, Ransom is right. It’s very unlikely that he has gone back to his apartment, especially if it’s in the middle of town, but I think we should probably check it out anyway just to make sure,” Evander suggests.

I nod, “Okay, well, that’s back the way we came. We can head to where she said it happened after that.”

The guys all agree, and we head back the way that we came into town, and to where the apartment is. We end up having to park around the corner since there is no parking outside. It’s cold, wet, and windy, so there aren’t too many people about, butI’m still pleased when it turns out his place is above one of the stores, but the entrance to his apartment is down a tiny side street, with no shops and no one passing by. It’s not like we have a key, and although we’ve got our badges, I imagine that showing them is not only going to have people asking lots of questions but also possibly make people start to worry about what’s going on, and this is a small town. Really fucking small. So, the rumor mill will go absolutely mad at the first sign of something happening.

“How many apartments are up here?” Raiden asks.

“Probably just his,” I reply. “The building doesn’t look big enough to have more than one.”

“Well at least there’s that, we don’t have to worry about running into anyone else,” River says.

Reed knocks on the door, and when it’s clear that no one is going to answer, Ransom’s magic flares and the door pops open.

“Well, that’s a lot easier than picking a lock,” I mutter as we head up the narrow staircase that opens up into his apartment.

The place is small, the room we come up the stairs into, is small and consists of a living room and a kitchen in one, but it’s nicely decorated and it’s clean. There are two doors leading off of this space and Griff heads into one room while Doc goes into the other.

Doc comes back out first, “It’s just a bathroom, there’s nothing of any note in it.”

“Same. This is his bedroom, but it doesn’t look like anything has been disturbed, and there isn’t anyone here,” Griff adds.

“Alright, well we may as well get out of here,” River says, “it’s a dead end just like we thought.”

“Yeah, come on, let’s go and check out the place where it happened,” Doc agrees.

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