American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

That wasn't the main passageway leading to the unloading ramp, but a narrower, old maintenance corridor, with a sliver of natural light visible at the end. A mountain breeze was blowing in from that direction.

Elena was less than twenty meters ahead. She wasn't running fast, but she ran very nimbly, as if she had calculated the landing point of each step in advance. She was still carrying her small black bag in one hand, and her other hand was on the wall for support as she turned. Her shoulder line was very straight, and she still retained a bit of the ever-present politeness of a front desk manager.

"Stop!" the sheriff shouted.

Elena didn't stop.

She rushed to the end and kicked open an outward-facing maintenance door. Outside the door was a lower stone drainage platform on the east side of the villa, connected to a hillside forest and a narrow driveway that was almost never used.

A gust of wind rushed into the passage, dispersing some of the powdery mist.

Lynn almost rushed out after her.

Outside, dusk had completely fallen, and the treeline and mountain shadows were low. The platform outside the maintenance gate was small; to the right were stone steps leading down, and to the left was a narrow fenced passage, beyond which lay the darkened generator room and the outer wall of the oil depot.

Elena ran to the left.

"She's going to the driveway!" the deputy sheriff shouted as he chased after her.

Elena stopped halfway through her run, as if assessing something, and then abruptly turned to the narrower section of stone steps on the right.

"She changed the route at the last minute," Lynn said in a low voice.

The sheriff noticed: "Someone didn't respond to her text message."

Lynn didn't answer, but kept pressing on.

The stone steps were covered in damp moss, and the wind carried the smell of pine needles and cold mud. The narrow path below was probably only used by repair trucks and oil tankers; half of the lights were broken, with only one working every ten meters or so. As Elena ran down, her foot slipped, and her shoulder hit the stone wall with a dull thud, but she didn't stop and immediately braced herself to keep going.

"You can't escape," Lynn said.

She coldly tossed back a sentence from ahead: "I'm tired of hearing that all day."

Suddenly, a car headlight flashed ahead.

A black short-wheelbase SUV suddenly swerved in from the other end of the narrow road, its tires crunching over gravel, its headlights piercing through the air, turning everyone's vision white.

The sheriff immediately ducked behind the stone wall: "There's a car!"

For the first time, a genuine hint of relaxation appeared on Elena's face. Not relaxation, but a brief, almost vicious, certainty.

"It seems some people still remember me," she said.

Before the SUV had even come to a complete stop, the passenger door had already popped open. A man yelled at her through the wind, "Hurry up!"

His voice was deep and slightly hoarse.

It wasn't Thomas, it wasn't Raphael, and it wasn't Ben.

Lynn only had time to see half of the man's face. The brim of his hat was pulled low, his cheekbones were sharp, he had a bit of gray stubble around his mouth, and he was holding a short gun in his hand.

"Dows!" the sheriff roared.

The gunshots rang out in the narrow passage, the echoes making eardrums tingle.

The bullet struck the stone wall, sending a flash of sparks.

Elena lunged towards the passenger door. Instead of retreating, Lynn advanced, using the wall as cover as he rushed down the last few steps, aiming directly at the front of the car. The driver clearly hadn't expected him to do that; he jerked the steering wheel, and the front of the car scraped against the stone wall with a piercing metallic sound.

The deputy sheriff fired a shot from behind, but it didn't hit the car; instead, it hit the stone ground in front of the front wheels, forcing it to stop.

"Get out of the car!" the sheriff shouted.

The man in the car ignored him completely, turned the gun back, and fired two more shots while keeping it low.

Elena had already stepped one foot into the car, but her other hand was still tightly gripping the black bag.

In the chaotic shadows cast by the car headlights, Lynn saw her bag flip open, and something the size of a card fell out and slid to the side on the stone ground.

It's a room key.

507.

Something in his mind suddenly snapped.

Violet gave Ben a key card for a detached cottage, so why is the key card for room 507 in Elena's hands?

Unless she had been inside 507 before, or had been carrying a physical card that allowed her to enter 507 before the remote unlocking at the front desk.

The front desk supervisor can certainly issue supplementary cards, but if the person who entered 507 a second time after 11 p.m. last night was indeed her, then what she deleted was not someone else's trace, but her own.

"Elena!" Lynn shouted.

She turned around instinctively.

In that instant, Lynn had already grabbed half a piece of gravel from the ground and smashed it hard against the windshield of the off-road vehicle. The stone hit the glass, and although it didn't shatter completely, it created large cracks. The driver's vision blurred, and the vehicle shook.

Taking advantage of the jolt, Lynn lunged at the passenger door, grabbed Elena's forearm, and pulled her out.

Elena retaliated by throwing her bag at his face with surprising force and accuracy. Lynn dodged, grabbing her arm and twisting it downwards. The man in the car cursed and pressed the gun barrel against him.

"Lynn!" Gwen's voice came from above.

At the same second, an empty metal toolbox, which seemed to have flown from nowhere, crashed onto the roof of the car.

A loud bang.

Everyone was stunned.

The man in the car instinctively turned his head, and Lynn seized the opportunity to yank Elena out of the car door. The two fell to the ground together, rolled once, and crashed into the drain. Elena groaned in pain, but quickly reached for his neck, her fingers gripping a small, thin piece of metal.

Lynn grabbed her wrist and slammed it against the stone ground. The metal piece bounced off with a "clink" and landed in the ditch.

"You really do prepare everything," he said through gritted teeth.

Elena gasped beneath him, her eyes chillingly cold: "Because people like you always believe in luck on the fly."

The man inside the car had already gotten out and was raising his gun.

The sheriff emerged from behind the stone wall: "Put down your gun!"

The man retaliated with practiced ease. Gunshots rang out in quick succession, sending debris flying. The deputy sheriff, accompanied by two officers, rushed in from behind, and the narrow alley instantly descended into chaos.

Gwen rushed down too, and the policewoman couldn't stop her. She didn't run towards the gun barrels, but instead charged towards the rear wheel of the SUV. The car wasn't completely off, and the tires were spinning and slipping on the rocky ground. She grabbed a metal wheel chock from a nearby repair pile and, gritting her teeth, shoved it under the rear wheel.

"Gwen!" Lynn shouted at her.

"Get back to what you were doing!" Gwen said without looking up.

The man caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye, his expression changed, clearly knowing that once the car was completely stuck, it would be even harder to escape. He raised his hand to turn his gun towards Gwen.

Almost simultaneously, Lynn released one hand, grabbed a slippery pebble from the edge of the drain, and flung it at the man's eyes.

Mud smeared half his face, and the man cursed as his gun veered off course. The sheriff seized the opportunity to advance, a bullet hitting near his feet and forcing him to retreat. The deputy sheriff pounced from the side and behind, and the three of them crashed into the car door.

In that split second, Elena swiftly pulled out one hand and thrust her elbow towards Lynn's ribs. Lynn groaned, her grip loosening, and she immediately flipped over, lunging towards the black bag that had just fallen.

"Don't let her take the bag!" Gwen shouted.

Lynn lunged forward, but was a fraction of a second too late.

Elena grabbed the bag, zipped it up, and pulled out not a weapon, but a roll of very thin transparent film and something that looked like a pen. She flicked her finger, and a short, silver needle-like tip popped out from the "pen".

Lynn's mind instantly conjured up images of the bedside in room 608, the grille, the thin wires, and the smell of burning.

It's not steel wire.

It is a miniature thermal cutting device.

"Back off!" he shouted.

Elena raised her hand and pressed the short end against the side of her neck.

Lynn crashed into her, and the two of them fell over. The needle grazed Elena's ear, leaving a faint smell of burning flesh. She gasped in pain, but her hand wouldn't let go; her other hand was already reaching for the rolled-up transparent sheet.

"She's going to destroy things!" Gwen rushed over and kicked her wrist.

The kick was both accurate and powerful. The hot pen flew out of his hand, rolled twice on the stone ground, and then the red light went out.

Elena finally blurted out, "Get out of here!"

Gwen, instead provoked by Elena's ruthlessness, grew even colder and bent down to snatch the black bag. Elena held on tightly, and the two froze for a brief moment. Lynn grabbed Elena's shoulder with one hand and tried to pry her fingers open with the other, but felt something hard clutched in her palm.

"Let go!" he shouted.

Elena looked at him and suddenly laughed. The laugh was utterly devoid of warmth.

"You think I'd leave this to you?"

The next second, the thing in her hand cracked with a "crack".

It was a transparent capsule about the size of a thumb, filled with a dark liquid. The liquid emitted tiny white wisps of smoke upon contact with air, carrying a pungent chemical smell.

"Damn it!" came an angry curse from the sheriff's end.

Lynn instantly understood and reached out to pinch her wrist. But a drop of liquid still splashed onto the front of her shirt, and the fabric immediately made a soft corroding sound.

"Sour!" the deputy sheriff roared.

Gwen reflexively pulled back, her face turning pale for a moment. Lynn forcefully twisted her wrist away, throwing the remaining half of the capsule into the drain with a splash, causing the dirty water in the drain to rise into white mist.

"Are you crazy?" Lynn pressed down on her, his voice deep.

Elena was pressed down onto the cold, damp stone floor by him, half her hair down, her cheek slightly scraped, but she still looked at him and smiled: "What else can I do? Like Thomas, sit there waiting for someone to misspell my name on the dossier?"

Lynn didn't answer, but simply and firmly twisted her hands behind her back. The deputy sheriff had also finally pinned the armed man against the car door. The man was face down, his hat off, revealing a face that was more ordinary and older than he had imagined, with deep-set eyes, an old scar on the left side of his nose, but a stiff back and shoulders, clearly the work of a well-trained man.

The sheriff stepped on his wrist and kicked the gun away: "Name!"

Men don't say it.

The deputy sheriff grabbed his hair and forced him to look up: "I'm asking you your name, you fucking idiot!"

The man spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, his voice hoarse: "Weren't you all looking for R?"

Lynn pressed Elena down and looked up at her.

The man grinned, blood seeping from between his teeth.

"You've finally found them."

For a moment, the narrow passage was so quiet that only the sound of the wind and the vibration of the engine idling could be heard.

The sheriff stared at him: "Your name is Raphael?"

"I called out," the man said.

"Raphael Thorne is a pseudonym," Lynn said.

The man glanced at him, his eyes almost showing approval: "Smart."

Gwen, panting beside him, frowned at him: "That detached house isn't you."

"Of course not," the man said. "That's just the guy who keeps an eye on half the module to prevent it from being touched. He's good at putting on a show; I rarely meet guests in person."

The sheriff said coldly, "I told Violet to send him to R, who lives in a detached house."

"Because she's never seen my face in person," the man said. "She only knows where the communication port is."

Lynn looked at him: "So Raphael is a position, not a name; R is the title for the recovery, delivery, and elimination line. Rachel, Elena, and Thomas are just different levels within your line."

The man's smile faded slightly: "You could say that."

The sheriff kneed him in the back: "Real name."

The man was silent for two seconds, then surprisingly stopped pretending: "Rowan. Rowan Kyle."

"What are you doing?"

"Now?" He tilted his head slightly, as if thinking for a moment, "as a freelance consultant."

The deputy sheriff cursed, "Bullshit."

Rowan ignored him and looked only at Elena: "Didn't you say the route had been cleared?"

Elena was pinned to the ground, her face turned to the side, her tone as cold as a blade: "I also thought you were at least capable of being on time."

"I arrived on time; you're just too conspicuous."

"Am I conspicuous?" She chuckled. "Who insisted on going into room 507 by themselves last night?"

Lynn paused.

The sheriff immediately turned around: "You went into 507 last night?"

Rowan's expression remained unchanged, but he did not deny it.

"You went into her room within ten minutes after she went back," Lynn said. "Elena deleted the record of the second door opening at the front desk. You went in to look for something, but you couldn't find it."

Rowan looked at him: "Pretty much."

"Violet was still alive then," Gwen said.

"Of course," Rowan said calmly. "If she had died then, how could we have put on this show this morning?"

The sheriff's eyes darkened: "So what were you doing inside last night?"

"Let's discuss terms," ​​Rowan said.

"She refused."

"right."

"You've decided to take her in today."

"It wasn't my decision." Rowan's lips twitched slightly. "She decided to drag everyone in the manor into this mess."

Gwen seemed stung by those words, taking a half-step forward: "Non-related? You hung someone in the reflux grating and then planned to pour dirty water on the first person who saw the body, and you call that non-related?"

Rowan glanced at her, his gaze indifferent: "Because she looks most like the kind of person who would say the wrong thing in a panic."

For a moment, Gwen seemed genuinely about to kick him. Lynn raised his hand to stop her.

The sheriff said coldly, "Tell me everything you talked about in 507 last night."

Rowan was pressed face down, remaining silent for a moment, as if trying to figure out where to begin. The wind flipped his collar up slightly, making the hoarseness in his voice even more noticeable.

"You already know that she split the document in half," he said. "Originally, the buyer only wanted the data, and the seller just wanted to confirm that she hadn't made a backup. But she discovered midway through that there was a list that wasn't just about military outsourcing and experimental transportation; there was also a section about domestic transit points and financial flows. Once that information gets out, there will be people who will want her to shut up even more than if the blueprints were lost."

"So she contacted you?" Lynn asked.

"They're not looking for me," Rowan said. "They're looking for someone whom both sides can trust to some extent, and someone they both want to use first. That's the position."

"You're making yourself out to be a neutral referee," the sheriff sneered.

"I wasn't originally either," Rowan said calmly. "I'm just a little more expensive than Rachel, who's purely into dirty work, and a little more efficient than Raphael, a former employee who's afraid of dirty hands."

"And what about last night?" Lynn asked.

"Last night she wanted me to take her away from the manor to the outskirts of the state to exchange people. I said okay, but she had to hand over the complete vessel first." Rowan paused. "She didn't." (End of Chapter)