Haunted by the Past (Original)

Chapter 30

"No, you'll respond for me," I frowned. "Elijah Frost, are you shy?"

"I don't exactly get along with them," he argued.

"Uh-huh," I arched an eyebrow.

"I'm not you, it'll only add confusion," he continued. "It's better if you just talk to them."

"How about I tell you what to type?" I mused.

"Fine," he grumbled as he shoved my phone back into the cup holder.

For the next fifteen minutes Eli tossed and turned in the passenger seat, trying to find a comfortable to sleep in. Just when I thought he finally got to sleep, he sat up abruptly and turned to reach into his backpack on the floor behind us. Before I could even begin to wonder what he was up to, he spun back around and opened his laptop onto his knees.

"Are you kidding me!?"

"I can't sleep!"

"You barely tried!"

"There's a chance the investigation will turn up nothing!" he argued. "I need to be ready for the next call."

"Your trojan?"

"Yeah."

As much as I didn't like it, as much as I wanted him to get whatever sleep he could, he had a point. There was every chance that the others come up with nothing. Then what? Triple-6 kills whoever lives there and starts again with the next target? We couldn't keep playing the defensive if we wanted to stop Triple-6. We needed an offensive play.

"Do it," I sighed. "But you are sleeping as soon as it's ready."

"It's going to take me a while," he admitted.

"Just get it done!" I snapped.

Eli put a pair of earphones in and within seconds he had some heavy EDM beats blaring through them. I wouldn't have minded it so much if it was through the car speakers, but listening to it secondhand with the sound of Eli's fingers striking the keyboard in a fury was getting on my nerves so I tapped on the car's console to access Spotify on my phone and played my favorite playlist instead. It wasn't ideal, but it let me focus on the driving rather than the hacker next to me.

As mile after mile went past, my mind drifted back to the mysterious door 47. What were we missing? If we didn't get a breakthrough soon, someone was going to meet a horrible fate. The timing for all of this couldn't have been worse. How could we possibly work out this puzzle while on the road travelling interstate? A person, someone's loved one, was going to suffer a horrible fate and I felt like all I could do was watch it happen in slow motion.

**

"Shouldn't you be out there looking for her?" a ghost of a man greeted me at his apartment door.

All the care Cameron normally put into his appearance was gone. His chin length hair fell to the sides of his face loosely, his five o'clock shadow had progressed into a day old shadow, while the shadows under his eyes had darked into solid rings. He had told me that the cops were taking him to the station for further questioning sometime around 3 am, a few hours after Heather had been taken, but what I didn't know was he wasn't let go until almost noon. Vic mentioned it in the chat after she had visited the station herself to organize a search party.

"I could ask the same of you," I pointed out.

Cam clicked his tongue and shook his head, "I've been told I've done enough damage already."

"It's not your fault," I frowned.

"Yeah, well, not everyone sees it that way. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who thinks that way," he chuckled.