try begging
As the door opened, Blanchard, who was lying on the bed in the corner, turned her head this way. The moment her eyes met the captain, the color drained from the face of the man with no visible wounds.
As the captain entered and glared fiercely at the table in the middle, the soldiers on guard ran to Blanchard and helped him up.
"Ugh... ."
The man, whose body was as shabby as his face, continued to groan as he sat on the chair. His clothes had not been changed since the morning interrogation, and his gray prison uniform had large brown stains. Even in the morning, the stains were red.
In contrast, the captain's shirt was spotless. Campbell promptly accepted the jacket he offered him and placed the folder he was holding on the table before he could even ask for it.
The soldiers left, leaving only three people in the room. The sound of paper being turned became particularly ominous, and the captain turned over two photographs and pushed them in front of Blanchard.
Among them, the photo taken of the stern of the motorboat focused on the boat's name, Escape.
Escape room.
If it were any other time, the captain would have made a cynical joke about the incredible coincidence, but today was not 'any other day.'
"Model M1001 manufactured by Castiel Corporation."
Leon doggedly observed the gaze of the man sitting across from him as he named the boat's model.
"It's yours."
He chewed his chapped lips at his assertion. It was an impeccable affirmation.
"I found it abandoned at the marina in Anderton this evening."
Only today.
After a week of searching up and down the river, we finally found the boat the woman used to escape in today. That was because that damned rat kept his mouth shut.
It was clear that he wasn't going to keep his mouth shut to protect the woman who had betrayed him. As he beat him, he would occasionally utter curses like, "Fuck, Grace." mixed with his moans and blood.
This is purely because the hatred towards him is much greater.
Hatred is no less intense. When he first found out that the woman had disappeared, he lost his mind and was on the verge of killing the bastard.
I thought that she had been stolen and hidden somewhere in the village during that short period of time. However, no matter how much I searched the village, I couldn't find the woman, so I began to imagine the worst: that she might have been killed.
That is, until we learn that the mysterious explosion that shook the earth that day was her doing.
A soldier searching the town hall discovered an entrance to the basement beneath the conference room table. Beneath that was a bunker for emergencies, as well as a passage leading somewhere.
It was not immediately clear where it led because it had collapsed and was a dead end.
The bunker's safe was empty in places, as if someone had hastily taken the money and weapons. Clearing the passage revealed traces of dynamite.
When it is urgent to escape from the military, you must detonate a bomb to prevent your comrades from escaping.
Anyone could see that it was that woman's doing.
The woman's prediction was right on the mark. In the underground bunker, several old leaders were hiding, having sent the young men into battle and tried to escape, only to be injured in the explosion.
"This road leads to the river on the west side of town. Grace Riddle must have run away that way."
The guys had already figured out who had collapsed the passage and told him where it led before he could ask.
No, it was more of a whistle-blowing than a confession.
It was easy to release the sniffer dogs and track the woman down, but it became difficult when the scent stopped at the dock.
The upper reaches of the river led to neighboring countries, and the lower reaches led to the sea. In other words, immediate escape overseas was possible.
There were dozens of cities and towns in between, and anywhere by rail was connected to thousands more.
So theoretically, there was nowhere that woman couldn't go.
The search area had to be narrowed down. But to do that, they needed information about the model of the boat the woman was on, such as the fuel tank capacity, but Blanchard was not cooperative at all.
The only thing he could rely on was inaccurate information he got from other prisoners.
"It was made of mahogany...."
At any given marina, half of the recreational boats were made of the latest fashion, mahogany, which was as useless as testifying that the robber was male.
In addition, since no one remembered the names of the boats properly, they gave different names, which caused confusion in the search.
'I knew they were brainless when they started a revolution like this, but I didn't know they were this stupid...'
It took a week to find that one damn boat because we couldn't narrow it down properly.
Leon, who had wasted precious time because of that, wanted to kill that bastard in the most painful way possible right away. The reason he couldn't do that was because he needed information.
Leon suppressed his impulse and opened the map. Anderton, downstream, was already circled in red.
As soon as we heard that the boat had been found, we hired a boat and rushed to Anderton Marina. We searched and inquired thoroughly around the area, but all we could find was that the boat had been anchored empty since Christmas morning.
Because they happened to anchor on Christmas Eve, no one saw the woman.
The fuel tank was almost empty. I couldn't understand why the woman abandoned the boat instead of refilling the tank and heading out to sea.
I wonder if there was somewhere to go nearby.
"Addresses of the city of Anderton and its surrounding areas."
Leon tossed the fountain pen in front of Blanchard. The man, who had been glaring at him while he took a cigar from Campbell and smoked it, slowly shook his head.
"doesn't exist."
Leon's patience burned like the end of a cigar.
When asked to name any relatives or acquaintances of the woman, or any places she might visit, other than Jonathan Riddle Jr., the bastard responded in this way:
Leon decided to wait until the little patience he had gained from a puff of cigar ran out.
"Look, I'm giving you a chance. Didn't you see it with your own eyes this morning?"
Since a shooting was scheduled to take place at the camp, I gave the bored man in the windowless solitary cell a good view.
"You probably don't know that you'll end up looking like a rag."
The guy shut his eyes tightly as if he remembered that scene.
"My point is, if you help find that woman, I will give you a chance at avoiding the death penalty."
The guy let out a long sigh with his eyes closed. He must be calculating with his walnut-sized brain. When he saw even a hint of hesitation, Leon added a word in a rather generous tone.
"Captain, it may sound funny, but I have that kind of ability. So think carefully."
But Blanchard remained silent until the cigar burned down by nearly a third, as if his walnut-sized brain was too slow to explode.
"If you don't want to live, I can ask other guys. Do you know how your comrades play? Just by mentioning the name Riddle, they start to blurt out things I didn't ask."
They were all burning with vengeance, just as he intended.
Moreover, for those who were desperate to find their own way out, Grace Riddle was the perfect opportunity to assist the military without betraying their comrades.
The problem was that they weren't that close to the woman.
When they ran out of information, they would start reciting useless things about the woman's crimes. It was obvious that they were trying to drag her to hell with them.
How much of that is true, anyway?
From forgery of official documents to infiltration of government agencies to bombings and assassinations, if you listened to it without thinking, it seemed like she alone had carried out the 'revolution' of dozens of people.
Their 'active cooperation' only made him more angry. He didn't know what they had stolen from the king's villa. All he wanted to know was the woman's whereabouts.
Blanchard finally opened her eyes.
"Then I'll tell you the only place I know."
Was all this sabotage a tactic to increase my price? He picked up a fountain pen, as if he had agreed to the deal.
Leon's face suddenly hardened as he stared at the tip of his fountain pen, forgetting to even extinguish the ash from his cigar. The large letters he had scribbled in the middle of the map were neither someone's name nor an address.
hell.
"This is the only place Grace can go."
A brief burst of laughter escaped through his teeth that were clenched as if he were crushing a cigar.
"I think you're mistaken...."
Leon shifted his cigar to his left hand and reached out his right hand to the man. What he was snatching was not a cocky little rat who didn't know his place, but a fountain pen.
"Ugh... ."
"I am God here."
The sharp tip of the pen dug into the back of his hand.
"Hell is where you are right now...."
The suppressed groans and the sound of the pen nib scraping against skin continued incessantly.
"I would send the whole world to hell, but I would never send that woman."