Like the limp body of a man drained of life, Eden, too, remained motionless. The sensor lights, unable to detect movement, had already gone dark, and only the light leaking from the room on the left resisted the darkness weakly.
Silence.
In the void of sound and presence, Eden merely blinked, as though dragged along by the weight of his long eyelashes.
Somerset shook awake his fading consciousness. He pictured him smiling beautifully after receiving the book and the childish note. The complacent desire to pretend this, too, had never happened—like some memory from long ago—overpowered any sense of reality.
Though if that were possible, it would mean Leslie was carrying out her mission somewhere else.
The sensor lights flicked back on.
They had detected Leslie charging at him with a knife drawn.
Blocking the blade with the book in his hand, Eden barely dodged the follow-up attack before shoving her away. He managed to shake off the staggering assailant from the unexpected counterattack and reached the back door, but while fumbling with the doorknob, he was chased down again.
“Bad luck.”
Muttering in a slightly hoarse voice as she swung the knife, Leslie abruptly paused. The sound of a car engine had come from outside.
In the instant Leslie let her guard down, Eden slammed the book into her abdomen and hurriedly opened the door.
As soon as he stepped outside, he saw a car with its engine already running.
The timing was almost too perfect.
Cold sweat soaked his body as he ran toward the car, fleeing the murderous intent at his back. There wasn’t time to check who the driver was. It was a reckless decision, but he got in anyway.
Without even closing the door, he turned to check the driver’s face.
It was someone he knew. But that wasn’t enough to reassure him.
Leslie had been someone familiar, too.
Eden remembered both of his names.
Theodore. And Jay.
Henry had accidentally called Theodore—financial expert working at a fund company—“Jay” twice before. The man who used to joke that not all financiers obsessed with numbers and graphs were boring carried an atmosphere completely unlike his usual self.
Bleak.
Urgent.
“The situation’s probably already happened. Which means that’s why you’re looking at me like that. But trust me. You can trust me.”
Quietly murmuring, Jay showed him the necklace hanging around his neck.
At that moment, Leslie emerged from the house and climbed into a waiting car.
Intense headlights illuminated the two of them, and Eden shut the car door.
There was no longer any room for hesitation.
The car launched forward so abruptly his body jerked backward into the seat. The sheer speed made his feet lift instinctively.
“Eden, if you feel like puking, just do it.”
After offering that thoughtful warning, Jay accelerated further with expert handling of the wheel. He looked far more suited to posing as a racing driver than a financial specialist.
Soon, Leslie’s car came into view ahead of them.
The silver sedan tore dangerously through the residential streets at night. Even as it swerved across sidewalks in dizzying near-collisions, the car never showed the slightest hesitation.
“That crazy bitch.”
Jay cursed under his breath and pursued her.
The two speeding cars blew past scenery so peaceful it felt unreal. Aside from the car directly ahead, everything outside the window blurred together. Eden pressed hard against his temples with his fingers.
It felt like skid marks were being carved into the center of his brain.
Would he really be able to forget this?
Could he erase it?
The fear itself brought on a headache.
Even now, he imagined getting out of the car and heading home. There was a corpse there. The book he’d meant to give Somerset would be lying on the floor slashed by a knife.
None of it was something he could possibly clean up on his own.
He couldn’t even explain the identity of the dead body.
“Goddammit!”
The curse that suddenly burst from Jay’s mouth perfectly reflected Eden’s tangled thoughts.
The situation had turned bad.
Just as they were about to catch up to Leslie’s sedan, a van abruptly entered from the right and blocked them. In the brief moment they were forced to stop, the sedan disappeared from sight.
Groaning, Jay slammed his fist against the steering wheel.
Though visibly agitated, he hadn’t forgotten his duty as an agent. While memorizing the van’s license plate in case it was an accomplice vehicle, he simultaneously searched for his communicator to request support.
There was a cold sharpness to him.
Watching him, Eden calmly explained what he had noticed.
“The second alley on the right. I think she went that way. I saw what looked like the car’s headlights.”
An unusual sharpness flashed through his emerald eyes.
“What?”
“Hurry, Jay. At this rate, we’ll lose her.”
Following his advice and turning the wheel, Jay asked,
“How’d you know that name?”
“I don’t think that’s the important issue right now.”
As they turned right, the sedan’s taillights appeared in the distance like a tiny red dot.
They locked onto the target again and sped after it.
“—Jay?”
Someone spoke through the communicator that had connected at some point.
“I’m chasing Green. That bitch’s driving skills have gotten even better.”
—Being in pursuit isn’t good.
“Send people to the scene and here too. Hurry. We’re about to lose her.”
—No matter what happens, keep chasing her.
“That’s not as easy as you make it sound. Oh, and I’m with Eden right now.”
—Why is that child…
—Eden? Jay, did you just say Eden?
—Eden? Eden!
Familiar voices cut into the conversation.
Henry and Serena.
“I’ll explain later.”
Before Jay could finish speaking, the communication abruptly disconnected. It seemed the other side had ended the call.
Probably to calm the two of them down.
Pressuring them in this situation wouldn’t help anyone.
Quietly, Eden let out a breath of relief.
At least it seemed neither of them had been harmed.
Someone had died in the house. And the murderer had been their former colleague. Of course he was worried.
The nerve-wracking chase continued for quite a while.
After weaving through alleyways and reaching the main roads, heavy traffic interfered with the pursuit. Breaking through Manhattan traffic jams was difficult enough, but chasing a car deliberately slipping through traffic lights at the very last second was even worse.
After several sharp turns spent clinging desperately to Leslie’s tail, they finally lost her.
The intense chase came to an end as red lights and massive trucks blocked the road ahead.
Jay contacted them again and requested assistance, but the answer that came back was hopelessly disappointing.
The other vehicles had lost her too.
“What about the trackers?”
—One hasn’t moved in a while, and the other one’s dead.
“So she noticed. See? I told you we should’ve planted more devices.”
—She knows better than anyone how we operate. I never expected that method to work in the first place.
The man dismissed Jay’s complaints with skepticism before speaking to Eden.
—What did you see? Who was there?
“Shouldn’t you explain who you are first? Why should I trust anything about you?”
Even with Jay sitting right beside him, Eden remained wary of the person presumed to be his colleague.
He knew his parents were with them, but since he hadn’t spoken to them directly, he still had to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
—Ha. You really do show that you inherited El’s genes.
The man on the other end scoffed, and Jay nodded in agreement.
“Where else would El and Luke’s blood go? Well, Eden’s got a point too. Only an idiot spills information to someone they don’t even know.”
By then, the car had turned into another alleyway.
As the speed slowed, Eden could finally take in the scenery around them. He pictured a map of New York City in his head, estimating their location while listening carefully.
He had no intention of speaking first.
Unable to withstand the growing silence, the man finally introduced himself by the codename Duke and stated that he was the person in charge of the operation.
The fact that he refused to explain what operation actually made him seem more trustworthy.
Eden might have gotten dragged into this somehow, but he was still a civilian. There was no way a CIA agent would willingly tell a civilian every little detail.
“It’s better not to know.”
Jay subtly backed him up.
—Now that the misunderstanding’s cleared up…
“I’ll ask the questions first.”
Cutting Duke off, Eden seized control of the conversation.
“Are my parents safe? You’re not forcing them to stay there, are you?”
—I wish I could’ve kept them there. But I couldn’t. Retirement, huh? Ha!
Duke seemed deeply dissatisfied that the two of them were trying to stay away from this line of work.
As the root cause of that decision, Eden figured he’d earned the man’s resentment.
He didn’t particularly care.
“So all I have to do is explain what I witnessed?”
—Right. As detailed as possible. Tell me everything you saw.
“It was Leslie. She killed a man. And I saw what looked like a human silhouette in the reception room. I only saw it briefly, so I can’t be sure, but I think there were two bodies. They were lying down, and the floor was soaked with water… and blood. Both of them were smaller than my mother and father.”
When he’d passed the brightly lit room, he’d caught only a fleeting glimpse of the horrific scene.
He hadn’t compared them to his parents until after he got into the car and calmed his breathing.
Closing his eyes, Eden replayed the image burned into his memory.
“I didn’t sense anyone else. I think Leslie and I were the only living people there.”
—That matches what was confirmed at the scene. Continue.
“Leslie stood behind the man and slit his throat. She held the knife in her left hand and wore black leather gloves. Before the man died, his lips moved. I couldn’t hear him, but judging from the shape of his mouth… Sherpa?”
—Sherpa. Did he definitely say Sherpa?
“I can’t say definitely… The entrance sensor lights turned off in the middle of it. After that, I was attacked.”
Eden remembered the glaring eyes fixed on him.
The red veins gathered around the corners of them visualized pure killing intent.
The woman radiated an atmosphere so completely different from the warm, humorous person who had once been kind to a child that it was difficult to believe they were the same person.
Dangerous.
Cold.
Still, Eden trusted his own perception and continued.
“But it was definitely Leslie. I saw her face before the lights went out, and the voice was her too. She spoke while swinging the knife at me. Said I had bad luck. When she stopped with her arm raised after hearing the car, I saw the gap between the glove and her sleeve. There was a rose tattoo underneath.”
After describing Leslie’s appearance perfectly, he opened his eyes.
If someone handed him a pen and paper, he could probably draw a composite sketch.
“Wow.”
Jay let out a lightweight whistle of amazement before asking Duke,
“You didn’t secretly drag Eden off somewhere for training without telling me, did you?”
—If I had, El would never have let me live. We’ll handle the rest in person.
“Don’t we need to return to the scene?”
—That side’s being handled. Come back. Carefully.
Half-listening to the two of them, Eden rubbed his face dryly.
His head still throbbed.
The situation he’d been dragged into made it impossible to feel at ease. Wasn’t this just like what happened when he was younger?
He’d ended up somewhere he never should have been. And seen something he never should have seen.
“What happens now?”
“We’ll have to talk things through. You’re exhausted, so rest. Relax a little. If you can.”
Unfortunately, Jay’s encouragement didn’t comfort him in the slightest.
Eden thought about the book he’d used to fight back against Leslie.
Even if he retrieved it from that blood-soaked scene, he wouldn’t be able to give it away as a gift anymore.
He couldn’t think of any explanation for the deep knife slash carved into the cover.
There was no guarantee he’d even get the chance to worry about what to write in the note.
Stopping himself from spiraling into worst-case scenarios, he leaned his head against the window.
Outside, the scenery gradually became more isolated and deserted.
As darkness thickened around them—just like the moment he’d silently witnessed the man’s death inside the house—Eden glanced sideways at Jay.
“Of all places to put the temporary headquarters, it had to be somewhere like this. Makes people suspicious for no reason.”
Sensing his gaze, Jay muttered the explanation aloud for Eden’s benefit.
“To clear up any misunderstandings.”
“We’ll arrive soon.”
“Okay.”
“Trust kind Mr. Theodore.”
“I wonder about that. Is Theodore even your real name? Someone whose name itself is uncertain…”
At that moment, Somerset’s words suddenly came back to him.
