American homeless people, surviving in the city

"Strange thing?"

"Yes, that's strange."

"What I'm about to say might be hard to believe, but it's true that strange things have been happening at the manor ever since I discovered the stalker."

"Strange signs began to appear everywhere, as if someone had sneaked into the manor and caused some damage. However, no one ever saw the intruder with their own eyes."

"Nobody knows how those marks appeared...it's like a ghost story."

As Sylvia slowly recounted the story of her family's events in her slightly trembling and weak voice, Lin Qi felt his heart leap into his throat.

"Like a ghost story? What strange thing happened?"

"It all started when my dog ​​suddenly died."

Sylvia reminisced softly, her voice tinged with a faint sadness:

"My family has many dogs, most of which are Rottweilers and Dobermans raised specifically for guarding the house; we also have pet dogs, such as a sheepdog named DouDou. DouDou is already ten years old, so it's considered an old dog. It doesn't like to stay indoors on weekdays, but prefers to live with the other dogs in a kennel that was specially built on the side of the estate."

"They all have very good temperaments and are gentle with people they know, but they bark fiercely at anyone who comes near them, except for my family and the keepers who are responsible for raising them. They usually roam freely throughout the estate and are an important part of the security system of my estate. I love them very much."

"Until the morning before yesterday, I woke up to find the manor unusually quiet. The soft barking that the dogs usually made when they wandered around and played had disappeared without a trace."

"Later, at the breakfast table, a security guard came to report to my father and me that all the dogs in the house, including my DouDou, had died in the kennel."

"When we rushed to the kennel, it was a mess. The dogs were lying on the ground, their bodies intact but stiff. There were no signs of violence at the scene, which made it seem like someone had poisoned their food. However, my father had someone examine the food scraps left in the dog bowls, but no trace of poison was found."

"After examining the dogs, the veterinarian told us that they all died from sudden heart attacks."

"What's even stranger is that despite such a terrible incident, no suspicious persons were found near the kennel in the surveillance footage from the previous night."

"The dogs were all suddenly awakened from their sleep, struggled to get up, but didn't even have the strength to stand up. They could only let out a few helpless growls before stiffly collapsing to the ground."

"Including my DouDou, they died that night, and no one noticed their struggles in their final moments."

Sylvia took a deep breath, as if suppressing her grief. Then, in a hoarse voice, she continued:

"Ah, I seem to have said too much by accident... Anyway, no one knows exactly how this happened. But this is where it all began."

"My father was furious about this and fired many security guards suspected of dereliction of duty and replaced them with new ones, but none of what he did could stop the strange things from continuing to happen in my house."

"First, the windows in the house shattered inexplicably, the clocks that were supposed to be repaired by professionals stopped working inexplicably, wet footprints of strangers appeared on the floor of the hallway, and strange noises came from the attic at night."

"Then someone reported seeing strangers, but the surveillance cameras were always broken, and we couldn't find any concrete evidence of their existence no matter how hard we tried."

"Those people were like ghosts, silently hovering around me, but I could never catch a trace of them no matter what I did."

As Lynch listened to Sylvia's story, he felt a growing sense of fear.

If we accept Sylvia's statement, the fact that her family owns a manor in the suburbs indicates that their assets are at least at the level of wealthy people in the Lakeside area.

Could it be that this cult has already managed to infiltrate the homes of Seattle's wealthy and evade all scrutiny?

If this is true, then it means that compared to the villa-area burglary, murder, and skinning case that Lin Qi had previously witnessed, the cult's ability to commit crimes has been further enhanced.

You should know that killing one person is much simpler than hiding in a house with professional security!

Sylvia continued, "After these past few days, even my father has become restless."

"He realized that the investigation was fruitless and that the manor was no longer safe, so he made a quick decision to send me to another place in my family home for refuge."

"result..."

She sighed helplessly: "This rear-end collision just happened on my way to a new place."

Lin Qi was speechless.

Sylvia shook her head: "Not only that, but there's something else that, thinking about it now, sends chills down my spine."

She gently raised her wrist: "I did have one of those fitness trackers that monitors your health, automatically alarms, and has real-time satellite positioning."

"But just after my father decided to send me to another place to live, the fitness tracker suddenly broke down before I set off by car."

"Looking back now... this was definitely not an accident."

Sylvia's eyes were vacant as she muttered to herself, her voice trembling more and more noticeably: "It was done by those people who have been following me...it was all them..."

"They...have been watching me for a long time."

Lin Qi listened in silence, feeling a storm raging within him.

He immediately thought of the photos he had seen in the secret underground room of the villa in the lakeside district—the one placed on top was a photo of Sylvia, with the words "Next Target" written on it!

Based on Sylvia's statement, there is no doubt that the cult has indeed made its move!

Everything matched up, but Lin Qi only felt a chill run down his spine.

The methods the cult used on Sylvia were far more bizarre than Lynch had imagined. They could make homeless people disappear without a trace, kill someone living in a wealthy neighborhood and skin him alive, and even silently infiltrate a rich man's estate and orchestrate a perfectly timed car accident!

Thinking this through, Lynch could no longer naively believe that the car accident was merely a coincidence. Clearly, everything Sylvia and her father had done had been part of this cult's clutches from beginning to end. Even his own car accident might have been part of the cult's plan.

It's very likely that the cult had already noticed everything he was doing sometime before!

But as he thought about it, Lin Qi suddenly realized that something was wrong.

...etc., but in the end, instead of kidnapping Sylvia in some way, they chose to cause a car accident?

If only Sylvia had survived, it could be explained by her good luck. But the fact that both Lynch and Sylvia survived the car accident suggests that the cliff's height isn't actually as exaggerated as it appears.

Given this, would a cult that could infiltrate a wealthy man's estate for days without being detected choose such a sloppy method of murder?

Lin Qi suddenly felt the hairs on his body stand on end.

If he's not mistaken, the cult is very likely to send people again to determine whether the two are alive or dead!

The two of them remained in danger from beginning to end!