Try Begging - Chapter 144.1
As the door swung open, Blanchard, who had been lying on the bed in the corner, turned his head towards them.
His face lost color as his eyes met the Captain’s.
As he entered the room, the Captain sharply gestured toward the table in the middle, prompting the guards to rush over and pull Blanchard to his feet.
“Ugh…”
Blanchard groaned continuously, in as much pain sitting as he had been lying down. His prison garb, unchanged since the morning interrogation, bore large brown stains over the original gray. This morning, those stains had been red.
In contrast, the Captain’s shirt was immaculate.
Campbell promptly took the jacket the Captain handed off, placing the file he was holding onto the table before even being asked.
With the guards gone, only three remained in the room. The rustle of paper seemed especially ominous as the Captain slid two photos across to Blanchard. One of them, focusing on the stern of a motorboat, was labeled ‘Escape.’
An escape boat.
On any other day, the Captain would have joked cynically about the amazing coincidence. But now was not ‘any other day.’
“Castiel M1001 model.”
Leon noted the model of the boat and scrutinized Blanchard’s eyes intently.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?”
At the Captain’s affirmation, Blanchard chewed on his split lip.
A tacit confirmation.
“Found abandoned at the marina in Anderton just this evening.”
Just today.
It had taken a week of exhaustive searches up and down the river to finally locate the boat that the woman had used to escape. It had been only today due to that damned rat keeping his mouth shut.
It was clear Blanchard wasn’t staying silent to protect the woman who betrayed him. He had often cursed between grunts and blood, uttering, ‘D*mn you, Grace.’
The silence was purely due to a deep-seated hatred towards him.
The hatred was no less on this side. When the Captain first learned of the woman’s disappearance, he nearly lost his composure and came close to killing Blanchard.
In that brief moment, he thought she might have been quickly hidden somewhere in the village. However, as the search yielded nothing, he even imagined the worst—that perhaps she had been killed.
That was until he learned of the mysterious explosion that day, which turned out to be her doing.
While searching the village hall, a soldier discovered an entrance under the conference table leading to an underground bunker, prepared for emergencies with passages leading elsewhere. The path was blocked off and collapsed into a dead end, so they couldn’t immediately see where it ended.
The bunker’s vault was haphazardly emptied of money and weapons, perhaps in a rush. Clearing the passage revealed traces of dynamite.
As she was in a hurry to escape the military, she must’ve detonated explosives to block her comrades’ escape.
It was unmistakably her work.
Her calculations were spot on. In the underground bunker, a few old leaders of the rebellion, who had pushed the youth to fight and then tried to flee, were found injured from the explosion.
“This path leads to the river on the west side of the village. Grace Riddle must have escaped in that direction.”
The rebels, realizing who had collapsed the tunnel, spilled the beans on its destination even before they were asked.
It was less of a confession and more like a snitch.
Releasing tracking dogs to follow the woman was easy until the scent trail ended at the dock.
The river upstream went to a neighboring country and downstream to the sea, making escaping abroad possible. Between those points lay dozens of towns and cities, all connected by rail to thousands more locations.
In theory, there was nowhere she couldn’t go.
Narrowing the search required specific information like the boat model or fuel capacity, but Blanchard was utterly uncooperative.
The only unreliable information came from other prisoners.
“It was made of mahogany…”
At any marina, half the leisure boats were of the trendy mahogany type. This was as useless as saying the thief was male. Additionally, everyone remembered the boat’s name differently, which added confusion to the search.
‘I knew they were brainless from the way they planned their revolution, but I didn’t expect them to be this stupid…’
Ultimately, it took a whole week to pinpoint the accursed boat due to the inability to narrow down the search effectively.
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