Chapter 374 - Learn to Be a Good Kid in Your Next Life
It turned out that those kids had been led here by the bloody clothes which Annie had dumped to mislead them.
They were familiar with this area and knew that this was the only other place that had people apart from the hotel.
They had searched the hotel and discovered that Steve and his girlfriend were gone, and thanks to the bloody clothes, they had come to this cabin.
They found Wade Davis, and panic-stricken and aggressive, believed that Wade was hiding Steve and his girlfriend.
Not only had Steve discovered the weed which they had secretly planted, they had also hurt him badly.
There was no way they could let Steve and Janet go.
So, they tied Wade up and interrogated him, doing to him what they did to Steve.
After Luke was finished with his questions, the kid asked in a daze, “Can you send me to the hospital now? I feel cold.”
Luke sighed and shook his head. “There’s no point. You won’t make it to the hospital.”
The kid seemed confused. “Huh?”
Luke said, “You’ve lost too much blood, and it will take at least an hour from here to the hospital.”
Desperation flashed in the kid’s eyes. “HHelp me! P- Please!”
After a brief silence, Luke asked, “When you tied people up and cut them, they must’ve begged you too, didn’t they?”
The kid panicked. “No… It wasn’t on purpose. We… We were just scared…”
Luke sighed and stood up. “Learn to be a good kid in your next life.”
At that point, the kid stopped breathing. “So, you really couldn’t make it,” Luke murmured at the kid’s body.
Through his questions, Luke had confirmed that these kids had tried to kill Steve to keep his mouth shut.
The kids had a small weed patch nearby. That was the reason why they hung out here often.
It was just an excuse for them to harvest the weed and sell it.
Steve and his girlfriend, on the other hand, had barged into this location when they were looking for their car.
In other words, these kids had already become drug dealers.
Luke had been merciful enough not to kill them himself.
As for the other two kids who had been shot, one of them died on the spot from being shot in the head, and the other one died before Luke came back.
So, there were no survivors in this place.
After figuring out everything, Luke left the cabin and cleaned up certain spots in the woods, before he returned to Eden Lake Campsite. He made hot coffee in the kitchen and went out to the cabin porch to enjoy it, looking at the steel cables that jerked every now and then.
The woods were pitch black in the pouring rain, except when they were lit up by lightning. However, Luke’s heart was serene.
Two hours later, headlights broke through the darkness as several cars approached the cabin.
Luke rose and returned to the cabin.
A few guys got out of four black SUVs, and one of them knocked on the door. “Detective Luke Coulson?”
Luke said, “Please come in. It’s open.”
The man in a black combat uniform stepped into the cabin and observed Luke for a moment, before he flashed his ID. “FBI. We’ve been informed to take in the ‘target’ you found.”
Luke checked the ID carefully, only to discover that the guy wasn’t from the FBI’s 17th Division, but a sub-bureau called the Joint Advanced Research Unit.
He gave the ID back to the guy and said, “Agent Flegg. He’s outside. I’ve tied him up with steel cables.”
Flegg nodded and said, “Thank you very much for your cooperation.”
Luke reminded him, “Be careful; ordinary bullets basically don’t work on him, and I could only hold him down with steel cables.”
Flegg smiled confidently. “Rest assured, detective, we’re professionals.”
Luke smiled as well. “That’s great. I thought that the 17th Division would come since they have more experience with this kind of stuff.”
Flegg was stunned. “The 17th Division?”
Luke kept smiling. “Yes. Captain Wales and I have cooperated twice before. He’s a nice guy.”
Flegg’s smile vanished. He stared at Luke for a moment, then said, “In that case, things are much easier.”
He took a document out of his backpack. “Confidentiality agreement. You understand, right?’
Luke quickly flipped through the document; it was pretty much the same as the agreement which Luke had signed with S.H.I.E.L.D. before.
He signed his name on it and gave the document back. “It happened in a cabin behind the hills on the opposite side of the lake. The victims include a few kids who were camping and a few county officers. A fugitive suspected of murdering an officer was killed by that thing as well. I need the information about the death of the fugitive to close my case. Will that be alright?”
Flegg took back the document and said casually, “We’ll take over the investigation. A report will be sent to you in a couple of days.”
He then remembered that this detective had mentioned the 17th Division as well as Captain Wales.
After a pause, Flegg added, “The report will state that the victims were killed by unknown criminals. Do you understand?”
Luke nodded his head with a smile.
He knew that the description in the report would be the official conclusion.
He didn’t really care much about that, as long as he could close the case of the officer’s murder.
More importantly, he planned to spread the word about Wade Davis’s death.
He wondered how much longer Wolf Elsworth’s company could survive.
An hour later, Luke returned in the pickup to the motel near the hospital.
When he went upstairs, he smiled at the owner of the motel, who was clearly astonished.
The owner of the motel shivered and felt a little scared.
After Luke went upstairs, the owner dialed a number after a brief hesitation, but nobody picked up.
After a nervous moment of thought, he called 911. “Hello, there’s a suspect here…”
A few minutes later, the owner of the motel put the phone down in a daze, the operator’s reply echoing in his head: “… The county police never sent any men to your place. Please stop making prank calls. This is a line for emergencies. If you take it up again, we’ll record it down and send you an infringement notice.”
The owner of the inn was lost for words.
Recalling the faint smile on Luke’s face when the latter went upstairs, the owner felt that he had become involved in something dangerous.
Luke returned to his room and knocked on the door. “Annie, it’s me.”
There was the sound of hurried footsteps, and when the door opened, Annie’s face was full of panic. “Why are you here? Some officers were looking for you. Hurry up and hide, before they find you…”