Chapter 238: POWER OUTAGE
Adrian tried to release himself from Ethan’s tight grip that circled around his neck, wanting to end his life. For some reason, a person who had been weak and had been in the hospital—trying to recover, his grip was quite strong, which baffled Adrian.
"Where’s Erika?" Ethan repeated, spitting on Adrian’s face as he demanded an answer. Despite his banging headache, he’d ignored it to face the jerk that he wanted an answer from. The other men quickly rushed to get Ethan away from Adrian before he did something that he might regret later on.
"Ethan, let him go."
"We still need him alive, remember?"
After several attempts of wanting to get Ethan away from Adrian, they finally succeeded. Ethan let Adrian go, leaving the latter huffing and puffing for air.
"You shouldn’t have let me go, you son of a bitch!" Adrian taunted as he tried to catch his breath. For a moment there, he thought he was going to lose his life due to how strong Ethan had gripped his neck earlier.
Due to the commotion, Mr Brown came out of his office to find two men holding Ethan while Adrian tried to breathe properly again.
"What happened here?" Mr Brown asked and Adrain didn’t waste a single moment and spouted quickly as if his mouth was on fire,
"Ethan Anderson just tried to kill me because he also thinks that I’m the one that kidnapped Erika Walters."
After hearing Adrian, Mr Brown didn’t know what to say anymore. He couldn’t reprimand Ethan or anyone because he understood their struggle. Instead, he said,
"The fingerprint results are already out." He brightened out the envelope and Ethan snatched it from his hands.
Instantly, sweat started to drip from Adrian’s face as if he had just run a few marathons before being locked up in jail. They had taken his real fingerprints and now, he was going to be jailed after the read that it matched, he thought to himself.
"What’s this?" Ethan demanded from Mr Brown as he threw the paper away. "It still says that it doesn’t match," he added as he turned to glare at the stunned Adrian who had been waiting to be strangled again.
He couldn’t believe that his fingerprints still didn’t match. This was good news to him.
"I told you that I wasn’t the one who owned that gun," he said in his defense.
"Shut up!" Daniel snapped at him.
This was the second time that they had taken Adrian’s fingerprints but it still didn’t match. What was going on? They all wondered.
Mr Brown, who also found it hard to believe it himself, went quiet. The machine takes a full day before the results come out and he’d left this in the care of the officers. They knew how important the case was and they wouldn’t dare to mess things up, he thought to himself.
"Mr Brown, it’s impossible that Adrian’s finger didn’t match the ones on that gun and you know that because we are sure that it’s his gun that we found in the area of that burnt mansion," said Felix.
"What mansion are you talking about? I have no mansion. I don’t have the money to buy a mansion, talk more of burning it. Do you think that I grow money from trees?" Adrian questioned Felix and the intimating glare he received afterwards only made him keep quiet and not spout out the remaining words that wanted to slip out of his mouth.
Things became obvious to Ethan now. Someone was helping Adrian and the person was the one that changed the result of the fingerprints, Ethan thought to himself.
Turning to the officers who had been watching them since they arrived inside the station, Ethan questioned them, "Did anyone else come to the station after the fingerprints had been taken?"
Instantly, they shook their heads, "We are not sure about that sir. You see, we are the morning shift and our captain also wasn’t around. The ones who were here for the night shift had already returned home," one of the officers replied, wanting to sound as calm as possible and not show how intimidated he was.
"Did Adrian make a call?" Edward questioned. There could only be one possibility at this moment and that was if Adrian had made a call.
"We are also not sure about that sir but we can check through the call histories." Without wasting a single second, the next officer who was beside the one who replied opened his computer and started checking for any new call records.
Adrian who had been listening to them instantly became frightened and this didn’t bypass everyone without them noticing it.
’I made a call to Mamba yesterday asking for help. Could they have been the ones to change the reports? But how did they do it without coming inside the station or any of the officers spotting them?’ He wondered. They hadn’t even bothered to ask him anything because it was obvious that he would deny it.
"Did you find anything?" Mr Brown pressured the two officers.
"Yes sir. There was a call made to an ordinary number about 26 hours ago," replied an officer.
"Call that number right now," Ethan ordered and the officer immediately obeyed.
After several attempts and the receiver didn’t pick up, they concluded that the number could not be reached anymore.
"Dammit!" Daniel cursed.
"Who did you call?" Ethan questioned Adrian but from the nonchalant look that Adrian pulled up on his face, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to reply honestly.
"Not anyone important," he shrugged. Deep inside, he was rejoicing with joy but he couldn’t reveal it else he would be questioned more. Not like he wasn’t going to be questioned anyway.
Facing Mr brown, Ethan ordered, "Call the officers who worked their night shift and tell them to come to the police station as soon as possible. I have some questions that I need to ask them."
Mr Brown left to make the phone call.
"Why are you people trying so hard to pin this kidnapping on me? You don’t have any proof and you are pinning everything on me," said Adrian. He was tired of staying behind bars but he should have known better. "I’ve told you several times that I wasn’t the one who kidnapped Erika but you people don’t listen to me. Are you sure that it wasn’t your business rival who did this?"
Having had enough of Adrian’s ranting, Ethan walked over to his cell grabbed him by the collar forcefully, and glared holes into his eyes.
"You’d better start digging your own grave now Adrian, because If anything ever happens to Erika, I will make sure that I kill you and bury you myself," Ethan threatened. From his dilated pupils, it was obvious that he wasn’t joking one bit.
It annoyed him so much that Adrian pretended that he wasn’t the one who shot him in the head and as if he also wasn’t the one who kidnapped Erika. Adrian was just making his blood boil the more he continued to spout nonsense. It was infuriating.
"I don’t think that’s going to be possible since I have no idea where Erika is," Adrian denied for the nth time and it only frustrated Ethan more.
Out of frustration, Ethan released Adrian’s collar and stepped away from him while the latter grinned at him.
"With all the time that you’ve wasted here, I’m sure that you have already interrogated at least one of your business rivals Ethan," Adrian spouted as he continued to rub salt on Ethan’s wounds.
The latter didn’t respond to him and instead, he waited for the officers to arrive first. His head was banging so much that if he yelled anymore, he could just collapse right there.
The officers didn’t waste any time and arrived earlier than expected. As soon as they saw their commissioner calling them, they knew that it must have been a very important question that they needed to answer.
"It’s good that the four of you have arrived. We need to ask you some questions," said Mr brown.
The officers didn’t get the chance to greet them before the questions were bombarded at them.
"Did something happen when the four of you were here? Like something odd happened? Did you let another person inside the station?" Ethan demanded so many answers in one go, making the officers stunned for a moment not before they recovered.
His throat, the one that seemed to be the oldest was the one to speak first,
"Nothing happened Mr Anderson. We were all here monitoring the place and we didn’t see anyone or anything odd."
"Except for the power outage sir," the other one who seemed to be the youngest interrupted. "But no one entered the police station. We checked the cameras and no one appeared here," he added.
Flabbergasted, Adrian could only wonder when there was a power outage. He had been sleeping and didn’t even notice the power outage that occurred earlier that morning.
