A flashy sports car awaited my presence at the gate with the rigid form of Hot cop in the driver's seat. I hastily snatched the door open and got in.

"Where am I going?" I asked warily.

He started the ignition without bothering with a reply and the car immediately lurched forward. The tyres screeched noisily against the asphalt as a result of the sudden speed and I would have flown out of the windscreen if I hadn't clicked the seatbelt in place before Hot cop performed the stunt.

Bless God for the creation of seat belts!

The car sped on with its occupants engulfed in tense silence, I had a feeling that hot cop wanted to say something to me but something was stopping him.

I really should stop calling him 'hot cop'

"So..." I piped up in a bid to start up a conversation and lighten the tension evident in the closed space, "I never got to know your name."

Silence.

"You know what I've been calling you since we met?"

Nothing.

"You won't believe that I've been calling you hot cop!" I chuckled nervously at my lame attempt at a joke but the man still didn't breathe a word out.

After a few more minutes of listening to the sound of silence, I decided to try again;

"Uhm... I hope I'm not spending the night in a police station? Because that'll mean I got a literal detention!"

Surprise! Surprise!

Silence.

I noticed, by the ticking of his jaw, that he didn't appreciate my lame efforts to make him talk so I dropped it and focused on increasing the volume of the whispering radio to fill in the quietude.

It turned out that they were talking about the dangers of substance abuse. I stretched to change the station immediately. I wasn't ready to listen to such garbage.

After much tuning and turning, I settled on a music radio channel, Asa's moving had just begun playing.

I rested my head on the window, enjoying the symphony of the music and the scenery flashing by as the car rode on in celerity.

Despite the music being a love song of sorts, it'd always had the same effect on me whenever I listen to it.

I tend to reflect more about the past and today wasn't different. My reflection was on a not-so-distant past, along the lines of the drama that'd happened earlier in the day.

Somehow, I had been able to stand all the abuse and scorn thrown at me earlier, but now that it was just me alone with my thoughts, the emotions started to seep in. The words started to echo in my head and past and present started to interlude one another.

"...bitch..." it came back, the voice of those girls.

Bitch, was Liam's favorite nickname for me.

Bitch. Principal Lawrence had called me that earlier in the day.

"Bitch." I muttered to myself. It was beginning to sound like my name.

Where do you go
When you're by yourself
Who comes along
When you cry for help
I know I can't change the past
But as the river keeps flowing
I'll keep on moving on...

"Are you crying?"

I jolted in surprise at the sound of his voice. I really hadn't realised that the car had stopped moving until then.

I shook my head in denial, "something got into my eye."

"Yeah. Right."

Awkward silence reigned for a few moments.

"We're here," he informed with a silent murmur. I blinked away the tears blurring my vision and took in the surrounding.

We were parked by the road, in the middle of a market.

"I'm spending the night in a market?" I croaked in confusion, still not over the grief I was feeling.

"We make the rest of the journey by foot." His tone was calm and low, but leaving no room for argument.

I watched in a daze as he snatched my overnight bag and hurried out of the car like the seat was on fire. I could tell that the act was to avoid any further conversation with me.

When I made it out of the car and slammed the door, he was already over twenty metres away. He just turned for a bit to lock his car and continued striding on. I had to break into a jog to catch up with him so as not to lose him in the swarming crowd of the market.

Needless to say, the rest of the hike was made in ever-so-tensing silence.

By the time we walked to the ends of earth, where the market crowd had thinned out, into a storey building on the verge of collapsing, I'd finally had enough.

"Will you care to explain what the fuck I'm doing here?"

If only the groaning staircase didn't have to fill in for his ever-so-lovely muteness.

Yes. I knew he was mad at me, but had absolutely no reason to be.

He busied himself with unlocking the surprisingly sturdy door while I struggled, with utmost carefulness, to finish climbing the stairs that looked like they would cave if I as much as put too much weight on a single foot whilst on it.

I was even more surprised when I walked into a lavish but dim lit space.

"Where are we?" I asked in wonder, taking in the plush carpet that sucked my feet in and the heavily curtained window. Due to the almost-darkness of the room, I couldn't tell the colour of the wallpaper or the other intricate things in the room.

In my curiosity, I'd forgotten that the cop had still not answered my question.

"Where's this place? What are we doing here?" I questioned again but was met with silence.

After patiently counting to sixty with still no hope of a reply. I flared up.

"You know, I really don't know why you're like this. I told you from the onset to not think so high of me. I fucking told you!"

He simply dropped my bag on the poster bed and collapsed on it in apparent fatigue, deliberately ignoring all I've said without giving a single word in reply. I felt even more annoyance.

"So what if I slept with Badoo?" I began and his eyes flew open. Good. "So what if I'd sucked his shriveled cock and made him but inside my throat?"

I ignored the fact that he had stood and was giving me a warning glare. I didn't care at all. I wanted him to open his damn mouth to talk and not just glare at me!

"So what if I'd sat on him and rode his tan banana to a state of delirium? What has that got to do with you?"

I knew he was mad, this tightened knuckles were a testimony to that but he still wouldn't talk. I wanted to rile him up even more, I wanted to get a reaction from him. I wanted to shed more light on who the real me was.

"I enjoyed every single bit of it. I enjoyed it because I'm a whore, a bitch. That's who I really am ok-"

The rest of what I intended to say was cut short.

By a sudden sting across my right cheek.

"One more word from you Bella and I'll throw you over my shoulder and lock you up in a fucking cell. Is that clear?!" I could only nod, absentmindedly, in total shock.

Hot cop just struck my face with his palm.

Hot cop just freaking slapped me!

"You are very stupid okay?!" Another unconscious nod from my end before I shook my head vigorously, my right palm not leaving the throbbing cheek.

Hot cop just slapped me?

"Even after all you've been through, you're still so damn stupid."

"I warned yo-"

"Shut up! Just shut the fuck up okay?!"

He stopped pacing for a while and turned to face me ...I shrunk, for fear that he'll hit me again.

"You are not being careful enough Bella. A killer wants to get to you! a murderer is after you and you keep prancing around the area and sneaking into teachers room for a blunt of joint? Do you know how risky that is? What if something had happened to you? Were you even thinking of the consequences when you decided to get overly high? And you dare cry when insults are being hauled your way? You should be damn grateful that whosoever is behind these killings didn't get to you last night. You should be so damn grateful..."

I stopped listening whatever he was ranting about because I was shocked.

He wasn't angry because he saw me with Badoo. He didn't even believe that anything had happened between me and Mr. Balogun,

He was angry because I'd been careless. About my safety.

I plopped down a couch in awe, subconsciously rubbing my cheek in reminiscence of the entire ordeal.

He was the only one that believed, without me convincing him that I had nothing to do with Badoo.

I was startled when he suddenly sat beside me, his arms coming around my shoulder.

"I'm sorry for hitting you," he muttered solemnly, "I'm really sorry. It's just that you're not being careful enough. At this point the killer might do anything and I won't be able to forgive myself if something bad happens to you Bella. I won't."

He sounded more like he was talking to himself, his hold on my shoulder tightened a fraction as he gabbled on, but when noticed my discomfort, he released me and stood up from the couch, putting as much distance as possible between us.

"Next time you plan on telling lies, make sure you don't say it to me or you won't like the outcome. You're to stay here overnight and think about that. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out how and where to get your necessities without leaving this space. I'll pick you up after classes tomorrow."

After delivering his speech in a voice void of the emotions he'd exhibited just minutes ago, he snatched his keys from the table and left the room.

The double-click of the lock before the sound of his receding footsteps informed me that I wouldn't be going anywhere even if I wanted to.

I gave a small sigh of exhaustion and rushed over to the heavy curtains to catch the view of him leaving the compound.

Due to the position of the window, there wasn't a lot to see but the broken concrete floor of the compound and the pasture of overgrown grass that seemed to go on for miles.

Another sigh, one of disappointment this time, escaped my lips as I turned to explore the room.

With the brightness from the open curtains, I was able to see the room properly. There wasn't much to say about it.

The little space harboured too much extravagant stuff that it reminded me of my sister's corner at the dorm room.

Plush rug, expensive settees, vanity mirrors, and numerous beauty products on the dresser gave away the fact that too much had been spent on the tiny space.

And of course, it was a female space.

I didn't understand how or why Hot cop will have access to a female space.

Maybe it's his girlfriend's?

Somehow, the thought of that really bothered me. I didn't exactly like popping into someone else's private space like a weed.

I mean, what if she came over and met a stranger -me- here? How would I explain myself?

Shoving disturbing thoughts to the back of my mind, I slowly made my way to the only thing that didn't seem overpriced in the entire room; it was a small desk made of unpolished wood and it was littered by a heap of spiral-bounds files.

Due to my curious nature, I picked up the topmost and opened it.

'Willy's Detecting' and 'Case file 1027' was written on the first page in a boldface font. I turned to the second page with heightened curiosity.

My heart skipped a bit when I read the next few lines;
________________ ______________

Target:
Aderogba Olabode Micheal.

Agents on case:
Agent Ruby.
Agent Dami.

Information required:

Whereabouts, lifestyle and relationship status.

Details:

Micheal has been serving his eighteen-year jail term for attempted murder. Will be released on the twenty-seventh of September 2020. He is single and seems to have resigned to fate.

Investigation status:

Concluded and delivered to client.

Date of completion:
2nd of August 2020.
______________________________

All these wasn't what bothered me, the disturbing aspect of it all was what came last -the name of who had ordered the investigation;

It was Liam Adeoti Alabi.

That was the full name of the man my mother was married to.

I was astonished.

I wasn't shocked because he was ungraciously stalking someone, I was shocked because the person he was stalking had been in jail for a while. That person had to be really important to make him apply so much effort right? I was about to find out.

I dropped the file on the arm of the chair I'd been leaning on and tapped the pocket of my school blazer for my phone.

Whoever 'Micheal Olabode Aderogba' was would have been recorded by google if I wasn't wrong.

A thin piece of paper fell off from my pocket as I brought out the device. I'd initially chalked it up to a random paper that must have been handed to me by those people who share flyers and ignored it to continue my search.

But when my impatient eyes wandered back to it as I waited for the search results to load, I found out that it wasn't a flyer. It had the lines of a normal school notebook.

My heart suddenly began to race.

As I crouched to pick up the paper, I had the same unpleasant feeling of dread I'd felt when I approached the stall that day, the exact same feeling I had when I discovered all the previous notes and 'gifts'.

With my heart racing and shaky hands clamming up with sweat, I carefully unfolded the foolscap sheet to reveal its content;

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

-Meeting at night by Robert Browning.

________________________________

You all will be surprised right now😋

Yes, it's a double update😌

This is me saying sorry for the long wait and also thank you for 498 reads and a hundred votes😭

Yes, it's almost five hundred reads and I'm happy to a point of tears RN😭. Please don't stop showing the love, comment and vote 'cause it keeps me going😌 And recommend to your friends if you feel the need to😌😌

With that said and done, what do you think of this chapter😀?

Do you think someone's body is waiting to be found again?

Who do you think this Micheal is and why will Liam feel the need to privately investigate him?

The killer seems to have gone all artsy this time with the poem, don't you think?☺☺

PS: The poem is a riddle.

This chapter is for Prwince. He's a great supporter of my endeavors and has been reading this book for long, always asking me to send a new chapter until I found out that he's on wattpad.😍😍

Y'all please vote and comment your thoughts,even if I don't deserve it😥. It's what keeps me going.

Till the next time we meet, y'all busy yourself with cracking the riddle.

With love,
✌illusionistic.