Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
There are two sides to every man, woman, and child. The parts we see, and the parts hidden from the world. If Nikolai did this, I would need to accept that. If he didn’t, I am going to do everything to help him. I can’t accept this at face-value, yet. This is not denial. I am fully aware of just how horrible mankind can be. But it just doesn’t add up…
She slowly pulled away from the curb and headed to her house to look over some more information. Time was fast slipping away. The longer it took for her to find the culprit, the more it looked like he was guilty. That was just the nature of the beast.
When she arrived home, her stomach began to growl. She hadn’t eaten in quite some time, and due to the depression resting in her gut and festering like a stomach virus, trying to nibble at her heart and darken her world, she refused to feed her body. A sort of sacrifice, like a gift to the gods for the truth… A hunger strike born of rebellion. Born of need.
If it’s him I’ll throw up. I’ll spend God knows how long hating myself. If it’s him, I’ll cry for a million years. I’ll cry for Ava. I’ll cry for myself and everyone else he hurt, too… But my heart tells me this is a mistake. I can’t shake that feeling.
Her soul had been ripped from her body. But she couldn’t lament that for much longer—she had to find out…The what. The how. The when. The why.
She sat at the dining table in total silence, legs crossed. Lights shining down on the photos and reports. All she heard was the tick and tock of her productivity app on her laptop that helped her stay focused. Turning her laptop towards her, she curled her legs beneath her on the chair to delve into Nikolai’s police records once again. But all she found was a speeding ticket and a couple parking tickets from over five years ago.
She sighed, and looked over at a box on the table, sitting among the chaos, that contained some of the surveillance videos taken of the beach on the night when a number of victims went missing. Now she had even some of the redacted footage that Chief Lewis had asked to be destroyed, thanks to Captain White recovering it on her behalf. Getting up, she pulled it over to her and began rummaging through it. She’d seen the majority of these tapes a million times, but she was human. Humans made mistakes and missed things.
She sat down and her fingers glided over the various USB thumb drives, all labeled with a unique code depending on what camera the footage came from. She pulled the one for the evening when Clark Thompson was last seen at the beach. Placing it in the computer, she sat back with her large cup of black coffee, and yawned. She watched him leaving a bar with a bunch of people, then disappear out of sight. She fast forwarded. Rewound. Again and again. Most of the people with him that evening had been identified. They all checked out. There was nothing spectacular about the footage. Nothing out of sorts, or surprising.
She yawned once again, made her way to the bathroom to take a much-needed bladder break, then returned to her seat. Polished off her coffee. Got up and refilled, then returned and rewound the last part of the tape. She watched hours of people leaving the beach that slowly drained of all visitors.
She got ready to remove the thumb drive and put in another. That was when she saw a flicker of something on the far right of the screen.
…Hold on. What was that? What was that flash?
She rewound it. Again and again. Then paused it. The image was blurry, so she enlarged it. It was somewhat pixelated, but still visible.
What is a car doing right there, and who is that?
Almost completely out of camera shot was what looked like a tussle between two men—about a couple of seconds’ worth. One was taller than the other, but they both were big, broad-shouldered individuals. She couldn’t get a good look at their faces because one only offered a side profile as he gripped the other’s shirt, and the other was faced away from the camera altogether.
Why would they be there at almost four in the morning? The bars and restaurants are closed. That doesn’t look like Clark though… No, neither are Clark. Clark was much shorter and had a stockier build.
She zoomed in closer, then grabbed her magnifying glass. Her heart beat right out of her chest. The men’s profiles, though extremely blurry, looked eerily similar, almost as if she was looking at a man fighting with himself. Chills went down her spine when she compared how similar they looked. Not identical, but definitely similar. One was just a bit shorter, his hair a little longer…