Dark clouds loomed overhead, with a fine drizzle falling lightly. The typhoon had yet to sweep over, but the wind had already brought the scent of the ocean.
Jian Jing pondered the current situation.
As a detective, her method was to narrow down the range of suspects before making deductions. Zong Ye had a different approach - he preferred to strike directly and swiftly lock onto a suspect.
She had eliminated the nanny and teacher with a fair degree of certainty. Meanwhile, Zong Ye had deployed a honey trap (...) to identify the female guard and male bodyguard.
The difficulty was that the behaviors of the guard and bodyguard overlapped significantly with those of A's, making it hard to ascertain who the real wolf was.
"Do you have A's fingerprints?" Jian Jing thought of the most reliable solution.
"We collected some suspicious prints from his lair, but there's no way to know which belongs to A. Collecting them individually won't be easy either." Even Zong Ye felt helpless.
The lounge area was in a semi-open format. Taking their cutlery away wouldn't be difficult, but they couldn't remove the bowls beyond the boundaries of the kitchen without drawing attention.
If they deviated from the route, the female guard tailing them would likely grow suspicious.
She rested her chin in her hand. "Is there any other information available? Anything is fine."
"Just some unverified rumors," he said.
Something was better than nothing. "Let's hear them," she replied.
"I heard that when A first joined, the original leader took a liking to him and assigned ta several extremely difficult tasks, all of which ta completed very well, earning fame quickly. But even back then, ta was a recluse, rarely interacting with others, only following the leader's orders."
Jian Jing was puzzled. "A couldn't have known he would become leader. Why keep such a low profile?"
"Two guesses," Zong Ye said. "Either ta had personal reasons, like disfigurement, for avoiding people, or ta had an issue with identity - maybe a public figure or related to one."
She furrowed her brow in thought.
"So many speculate A is a woman closely tied to royalty, possibly someone's mistress. The assets ta accumulated actually flowed into the royal coffers. That's why previous crackdowns kept failing - someone tipped ta off beforehand."
Jian Jing: "Are the rumors credible?"
Zong Ye replied, "The leaks were real. The mistress claim needs verification. For those people, the background didn't matter as long as the front was clean. Consorting openly with an infamous character would end their political career."
He paused before continuing, "And I have reliable intel that A got in by masterminding an assassination of someone cooperating with the military."
"Assassination?"
Zong Ye briefly recounted the events.
In summary, a foreign senior official was visiting to send friendly signals, but another superpower didn't want the countries to align and hinted privately at cooperation with the local military top brass.
Burdened by diplomatic ties, they couldn't act openly and only voiced hints in private settings.
A got wind and plotted the assassination. The visitor died on the spot, directly rupturing the alliance.
The superpower was satisfied. The subordinates thought A's skills useful for handling unsavory business, so they took him in, forging ties unrelated to colorful rumors.
Jian Jing gaped in shock.
She'd never heard of such news - oh right, parallel world, anything could happen.
Regaining her thoughts, she analyzed, "So the wife is ruled out?"
"She has a complete foreign record. Likely not A," Zong Ye said. "Interrogations show A lacks higher education, mediocre cultural level."
A thought struck Jian Jing. "How many languages does ta know?"
"A lived in the Golden Triangle region - not just English, Thai, Burmese, Lao, even some Chinese," Zong Ye replied then asked, "Trying that angle?"
"Unless you have a better idea?"
"Riskier with low accuracy. Corporate security gets language training. Could alert them."
"Alerting them isn't bad. Wouldn't it be better if ta fled voluntarily?"
But Zong Ye said, "Ta won't run with diplomatic immunity."
As long as senior officials insisted A was an attache, part of the visiting team, local authorities couldn't arrest or detain them per agreements.
"The trouble was never A but those shielding ta," Zong Ye murmured. "We must discretely remove A before raising suspicions."
"Then what after removing A? Can't detain right?" Jian Jing was confused.
He laughed. "That's why I'm here."
She blinked in startled awe. "No way?!"
"To avoid rousing others, A and the target won't interact more than necessary. It's only a two and a half hour flight." Zong Ye was calm. "As long as I return in ta's stead, it gets resolved smoothly."
Jian Jing: "..."
Damn.
"So Miss Rabbit, can you help with anything?" he asked.
Unsure, Jian Jing hesitated. "Not that hard actually..." She cleared her throat. "Of course, pretend. Pretend someone died."
Zong Ye looked thoughtful.
"If someone died unexpectedly with all the attendants present, requesting their cooperation in investigating would be normal right?"
With crime rates so high in parallel worlds, it would be a waste not to leverage some local color.
"My criminal case knowledge is lacking," Zong Ye said.
"No problem. I'm an expert," Jian Jing replied.
Zong Ye put down the prop bar glass and sighed softly. "Well, looks like I'll be busy for a bit."
He removed his apron and walked smoothly away.
That afternoon, the typhoon arrived as expected, the raging winds and torrential rains battering the airport, grounding all flights.
Stranded passengers instantly crowded the terminals.
The VIP lounge had criteria but still saw vip customers trickling in.
First was a family of five - couple with three kids. The noisy children quickly disrupted the tranquil atmosphere.
The guards were extremely annoyed but recognized the celebrity couple and didn't dare offend them. They could only steel themselves against the unruly children disturbing their boss.
After a while, an ultra fashionable, rail-thin woman came demanding a lounge room. The staffer regretfully informed her there were no vacancies left.
Clearly unhappy, she unleashed a torrent of French.
The staffer had to call out a supervisor to politely dissuade her.
Finally, a besuited businessman lugging a laptop arrived. Seeing the noisy family and arguing woman, he chose to sit not far from the bodyguards.
Very quiet, he immediately opened his notebook and buried himself in work, occasionally sipping some coffee. After half an hour, he got up to use the restroom.
Five minutes later, the guards changed shift.
Soon, the businessman returned to his seat and took another sip of coffee.
Jian Jing got up, seemingly to use the restroom.
Their eyes met.
The next instant, the man collapsed, teeth clenched tight, limbs flailing as breathing grew extremely labored.
"Ah!" Jian Jing yelped softly and immediately knelt down. "What's wrong?"
Everyone there threw them puzzled looks.
She pantomimed examining him, busying about before telling the staffers rushing over, "Get me a jacket, he's hypersensitive to light." And, "Hurry, call an ambulance! It's poisoning!"
Even as she covered his face with the jacket, "Shh, quiet now."
The staffers panicked. "What happened?"
"Poisoned," Jian Jing stated firmly to gain trust, "Report it to the police too."
"What poison?" A bodyguard materialized silently. "How do you know it's poisoning?"
"The convulsions, opisthotonos, facial spasms, breathing issues - typical strychnine poisoning symptoms." Jian Jing held up the coffee cup. "Preserve this for analysis."
Jian Jing calmly sought help: "Does anyone have secobarbital? Short-acting barbiturate drugs are also okay?"
No one answered.
Fortunately, the airport's emergency team arrived quickly. They hurriedly carried the person onto a stretcher and sent them to the ambulance. The siren sounded as the ambulance's lights flashed, speeding away from the airport.
Half an hour later, the police arrived.
Jian Jing truthfully answered their questions.
Like countless previous case experiences, the police quickly learned through a brief investigation that the person who could have poisoned them was in the VIP lounge.
The suspects in order of time were:
The honeymoon couple, Jian Jing, the target's entourage, the celebrity family of five, and the fashionable woman.
The police were under tremendous pressure. They had just received a call that the poisoning victim was a subordinate of a business tycoon. The group had come to negotiate a project worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Government officials friendly with the target pressed the police to arrest the culprit as soon as possible.
But look at who the suspects were!
The couple were rich second generation. They had the least status. Jian Jing was now a famous writer with bestselling books. Her novels were even translated and sold in Southeast Asian bookstores. The European and American celebrity was quite famous. The fashionable woman turned out to be the Asian regional director for a magazine.
Nothing more needed to be said about the target's entourage. He himself was not important, but the man he protected was!
Yet the case had to be investigated.
It was impossible to take them back to the police station for questioning. They could only politely request cooperation at the airport.
With such a big commotion, there was no way the higher-ups hadn't heard.
He asked the guard, "What happened?"
The guard truthfully explained.
The superior was very vigilant and immediately said, "Verify it."
The guard immediately obeyed.
After a while, he reported back: "The hospital has indeed received a patient poisoned by secobarbital and is having their stomach pumped. The person's identity is also correct. He is the second boss of XX Company. They are negotiating with the government to build a railway, so they attach great importance to this."
The superior's tightly knitted brows relaxed slightly. It seemed this was not targeted at him.
But he couldn't help pondering. After all, this was not his own country. The police had not demanded his personal cooperation, only his entourage. If he adopted too tough an attitude, it might arouse suspicion instead.
The guard asked, "Commander, do you need us to cooperate?"
The superior nodded. "Superficially cooperate for now. Don't make them suspicious. If they want to take someone away, you know what to do."
The guard replied, "Yes, sir."
The wind and rain were bleak. Jian Jing finished giving her statement and leisurely sat by the window watching the downpour.
"Would you like some waffles?" asked the server who had disappeared for two hours and now reappeared.
Jian Jing readily agreed.
Zong Ye brought the waffles and hot tea and said, "We don't have much time left, at most four hours."
"But we still have to eat first," she said, cutting into a waffle. Curiously she asked, "No issues at the hospital?"
"The person sent away in the ambulance was indeed poisoned."
"Who?" Jian Jing was shocked. That was too big a sacrifice.
Zong Ye pointed at his own face.
She: "......"
"Don't worry, no one will die. They'll just suffer a bit," he said with a smile. "Also, this guy isn't only a server at the airport but also an inside man for drug smuggling."
Jian Jing immediately stopped sympathizing.
Well done.