I waited a few minutes just to make sure that Harvey was actually asleep. His snoring may fill the room as a signal that he’s asleep, but this man is one light sleeper. He kind of needs to be for his job. That means I can’t just bolt away without him noticing. 

So, I waited. And waited. And waited. I waited for nearly half an hour with my mind drifting to random stuff here and there. Once I felt the time was right, I carefully stood from my chair and laid my blanket over the seat. It won’t do much, but it might buy some time if he thinks I’m still there.

I tiptoe toward the hallway and toward Ty’s door. I couldn’t hear Harmony sleeping, but she’s probably just a silent sleeper. That’s my hope, at least. Carefully opening the door, I step inside and close it behind me. The computer was shut off, and no light made its way into the room. As soon as I closed the door, the room bathed itself in darkness.

In response to the ever prevalent darkness, I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight. Fuck you, darkness. It turns out you’re just incredibly weak.

I move toward the computer and sit on the chair. I was about to turn on the computer, but doubt worked its way into my mind. My biggest weakness is that I find it hard to focus on pretty much anything for a long period of time. That’s the reason I asked Harvey to do this. Unlike me, he’s able to stay focused on his job. If I was in his position, I’d get bored incredibly quickly, then find something else to do. 

However, now I am in his position. I’m sitting on the chair he sat in a few moments ago. The computer may be off, but it’s still sitting in front of me, ready to play a disk that may contain evidence of what happened to Ty. As far as I’m concerned, I already am in the same position.

What if my mind drifts away the moment that I see Ty on screen and I miss the big moment? Then again, do I want to see what happened to him? What if it’s something so brutal that the moment I see it, it’d give me life long scars? I already have way too many of those. One more would just be pushing it.

But, if I don’t do this, then what would happen to Harmony? What if Harvey misses Ty in one of them? What if he doesn’t complete them in time? There are so many possibilities that would lead to one of the two people I care about so much dying. I don’t want any of that. I just want life to continue on like normal.

When did things get so complicated? It feels like yesterday that I met Ty for the first time. Granted, it was barely a month ago, so we haven’t really known each other for that long. I want to go back to those moments. Enough of the drama. Enough of everything. After this all ends, we’re going back to normal. I swear it upon the Illia name.

Harmony’s words whisper in my ear, almost like she’s right next to me. As I look back and forth, I don’t see her anywhere, so it’s all just in my head. I can still hear those words, though.

Can I count on you to find Ty while I’m out of it?

I don’t think this is what she meant, but I’m going to take her words and twist them to mean what I want them to mean. The internet does it all the time, so it’s not like I’m doing anything new. I’m technically doing what she wants me to do, though, so I can justify it. 

I press my thumb on the power button of the computer. It boots up and goes to a desktop screen that depicts two half naked 2D girls hugging each other. I froze, looking at the screen in weird abandonment. 

What’s the point of having this as a desktop wallpaper? I’ve seen cartoon girls before, but none that’s looked like this. Does this excite him or something? If it does, how does someone get sexually excited by a drawing? If it was the same picture, but of pornstars, now that I would get. But this is just a drawing.

Wait, I’m doing it again. Stop it, brain, and focus. You have one fucking job to do and that’s paying all your attention to the videos. 

I think I’m good now. Taking a deep breath, I spot the piles of CDs that are separated into two piles. The one on the left is the ones he has yet to watch, and the one on the right is one that he has already seen. I’ve seen him go through the piles before, which is how I know that.

Taking a CD from the left pile, I put it in the computer, and a new tab opens. I open the tab and the video plays from the start. I turn up the speed by three and the cars turn into lights. My brain explodes from the amount of stuff going on screen that it finds it hard to keep track of everything. 

I slow it down by point-five, and the lights slow down by a tiny bit. Was that what Harvey has been staring at all day? How in the hell could he keep track of everything happening? I malfunctioned as soon as it started, and yet he could pay attention to it for quite a while. 

I shake my head and focus on the screen. I don’t have time to focus on not focusing. The thing that I should focus on is the camera and not my brain being an idiot on me. It does that way too often and I would very much like it to quit for right now. 

I sat there for way too long, watching as cars passed by at rates that made my brain fuzz up. More than once I had to pause the recording just to give my brain some rest. Once I put in the second recording, a headache began to form. It wasn’t anything major, but it added some more unneeded distractions. I can’t get a break for the life of me.

Each recording session lasted half an hour. I started watching at around ten at night, but once I reached the fifth CD, one o’clock was staring at me straight in the face. My headache steadily grew from annoyance, to distraction, to a pain in my ass. I tried to focus on the screen, but it was hard to with the pain my head was putting me through. 

The fifth recording was nearly over, and not once did I see anyone show up. It’s at night, however, so people walking by are rather rare. It would be stranger seeing someone walk the streets at night than not. But Ty is one of those people that did. 

Harmony said he went to meet someone, and if only we knew who that someone was, then it’d be infinitely easier to track him down. We could pinpoint the most likely path he’d have taken by now, and all we’d need to see is what happened to him while he walked down the streets. 

As the recording came to its final minute, I spotted something. Someone was walking along the sidewalk? Since the recording went by so fast, I missed who it was. Thankfully, as I said before, this is a recording. I can just rewind and slow it down with no problem. 

I rewind the footage at just the right time, and slow it down and pay as close attention as possible to the screen. Someone’s foot enters the frame, and then their entire body comes into view. I see him and gasp. Ty walked on screen wearing a suit and walking with his head down. He looks like he’s in deep thought about something that took a huge toll on him, both physically and mentally.

Butterflies rise up in my chest now that I’ve seen him. I found him, and I know what street this is. All I have to do now is search for the street that he’s heading to next, and watch as he goes by.

I remove the disk from the computer and scavenge through for the right street name. Spotting several of the correct street names, I search for the right time, and I open the correct case with shaky hands. I slide it into the lot and the video begins playing from where it left off. Speeding it up, since it started at just under the time I saw Ty pass, I scan through the recording. 

Ty appears shortly after and he does something new in this one. At the right side of the recording, there’s a narrow alleyway. For some reason, he looked at it for quite some time, shrugged his shoulders, then walked to the alley. Why would he do that, though? Big city rule 101: Don’t look down some random alleyway at nighttime. Especially at nighttime. Anyone who does that kind of deserves whatever happens to them cause at that point it’s just Darwinism. 

He peers down the alleyway, and after a second, I could see his face twist into one of horror. Why did it happen? I don’t know, but I should shut up and pay attention cause I’ll probably see in just a few seconds.

In just a few seconds indeed, as he fell on his ass and scooted away from the alley. He didn’t scoot away fast enough, as someone exited the alley and kicked him in the face, knocking him out instantly. 

My breath froze as soon as I saw the person who knocked him out. My hands shook even more wildly, and my headache grew so strong I could barely think. The person who knocked him out has to be the last person I’d ever expect to see again, much less doing something like this. 

As she dragged Ty’s body down the alleyway, I repeated her name. 

“Tiffany? What are you doing here?”

There was a saying that Lucas told Eisha in Ty’s story. It was something about the past haunting people in the most obtuse and out there way possible. An example he used was that if someone were to throw a boomerang so far that it reached space, eventually it’ll come back and hit them upside the head twenty years later. It was an awful analogy, though hilarious, but it portrayed what he meant well enough.

My past is coming to haunt me once again. What do I do with this information exactly? I can’t just use this as an excuse to hurt her even more than I already have. Because of what happened, I’ve never had a good night’s sleep ever again. My conscience just wouldn’t allow it.

Do I just wait until Harvey wakes up and we can go hunt her down together? Although that’s the safer option, and probably the one that I should do, it doesn’t feel right. She’s probably doing this because of what I did, so it would be cowardly of me to appear on her footstep with a bodyguard. 

I need to face this alone. Even if it might risk Harmony’s wellbeing, and even my own safety, I want to do it by myself. 

I take out the disk and set it back on the desk. I open google and even though the first thing on there is 2D tits, I don’t let that distract me. For once in my life, I’m more focused than I’ve ever been. 

Tiffany’s family isn’t too big on the totem pole, but they’re known by a good few people. Her parents are high up managers of a chocolate making company known for their extremely sweet chocolate. Some would say too sweet since they’ve gotten on the FDA’s bad side a few times for applying way too much sugar into the recipe. Sugar is incredibly addictive, and the more of it in a sweet, the more likely dumb people will buy the chocolate. 

As I looked up Tiffany’s family, the first search result that popped up bothered me. I didn’t know what I was seeing until I actually took time to read it. 

Her parents were murdered, and she was the only witness to it. According to her, during one of their vacations, Tiffany’s parents invited her to come to their summer home lodge on the other side of the country. She went, only to find her parents dead, and saw the killer escape. But before she could call the cops and run away, the killer saw her and nearly killed her until a truck driver picked her up, scaring the killer away in the process. 

Both her and the truck driver were put under witness protection, and beyond that there’s no information about her or where she is now. It just ends with her being on witness protection and that’s it. 

However, that’s a fantastic lead, because I just so happen to know a redhead in the police department. And I just so happen to have the perfect blackmail material, too. 

***

The phone rings once. The phone rings twice. And there’s a click.

“What do you want? It’s nearly one o’clock.” Jessica asks.

“You don’t sound too tired.”

“Well, for your information, I’ve been up all night trying to pinpoint the next potential murder.”

“And what if I said that I may know where that is?”

“I’d tell you to tell me or I could arrest you for obstructing a case. Or I could assume you’re lying to me.” 

“Except I’m not lying to you. Also, if you arrest me, it’s not like I’ll stay. I’m rich. I can buy my way out.”

Jessica groaned. “Where do you think the murder is? I can go there myself to check. I’m starting to get worried that we could go dry soon.”

“I’ll tell you, if you tell me something.” 

I could hear the intrigue on the other side. I got her hooked on the end of my rod. “What is it?”

“What is Tiffany Brooks’ address?”

“Tiffany Brooks? You mean the witness to the Brooks family murder? Why would I give you such fragile information? If it gets leaked online, then she could end up in an extreme amount of danger and would need to be relocated.”

“Do you want to know where this murder could be or not?”

She contemplated my offer while I tapped my fingers on the desk. It was so aggravating, having to wait for someone else to decide what I can and can’t do. After half a minute of contemplation, I decided I had enough.

“You want to take the offer or not?” I rush her along.

“What are you going to do with this information?”

I sigh and decide that I should be at least truthful with her. If I’m not truthful with what I say, she’ll pick up on that and the deal could ruin itself. I take a deep breath and go over everything in my head.

“We know each other from Juxten Peak School.”