Heather would not allow herself to be toyed by Leon this time. Motionlessly staring at him, she intended to determine whether he was telling the truth by carefully studying the subtlest detail on his face.
After relying on all his cards, he had finally calmed her down. Among the rescue teams, the firefighters were the first to arrive. Intrigued by the fire, more residents and passersby stopped by to observe the incident. It was the first time that the quiet area became so lively.
Accordingly, the police arrived and brought Leon and Heather to the police station to file a report, although the duo didn’t share any information that was deemed useful. Seeing that she hid the text message from the police, he matched her actions with lies and stated that he had invited her over for a visit.
After clearing their doubts toward the duo, the policemen eventually dismissed them in the middle of the night. Since bomb detonations were one of the deadliest crimes, the police claimed that they would assiduously look into the case. Investigations for crimes like this shouldn’t be delayed or it would be categorized as an unsolved case.
Since it was already late, Heather accompanied Leon to look for a hotel to stay in. However, Leon had a bad habit, which was being picky with hotels, or rather, he simply hated staying in hotels. With that, she braced herself, preparing to spend her night looking for hotels with him. Since she chose to respect him, she might as well respect his uncanny perfectionism.
To her surprise, Leon was unexpectedly considerate. Without his usual fussiness, he decisively booked a room at the first hotel they arrived at.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s already so late that you should quickly get home or you’ll miss your beauty sleep,” Leon urged Heather to return home, worried that she would catch a cold, given her thin layers of clothing under such unforgiving weather.
Then, she observed the room as he seemed to be getting ready to endure a night. Since he didn’t make a rant about it, who was she to complain? On the way home, she was driving in a daze when her phone suddenly rang. She turned her phone to face upward and saw Matthias’ name on the screen. Why would Matthias call at such a time? She skeptically answered the phone and heard his feeble voice.
Instinctively, she frowned at Matthias’ words. The Langstons hadn’t even heard about the incident yet he was already asking about it.
“Let’s meet,” he requested.
When he was told that she was involved in an accident, he became so worried and instantly wanted to see her. Nevertheless, as she was on the move, no one other than herself could give accurate information regarding her whereabouts.
Although he thought of waiting for her at the gates of the Langston Residence, he knew how she didn’t like him to show up at her home. Since he had no other choice, he decided to initiate a rendezvous.
“I’m not in the mood for that.” Without a second thought, Heather turned his request down. After encountering such a tragedy, she did not have the desire to see anyone. Despite the dilemma of feelings she had toward Matthias, she couldn’t bring herself to rely on somebody else’s shoulder like a little girl.
At that moment, what she wanted to do was to collect herself and mentally organize everything that had happened to her to the point where she didn’t even want to go home. In order to keep herself awake, she opened the roof of her car, allowing the night’s chilly breeze to brush against her face.
Instead of taking the direct route home, she decided to take the long way around and drove by countless places. Sadly, no trouble could be solved by merely thinking of it. All of a sudden, her phone vibrated again. Upon seeing Matthias being this persistent, she reluctantly answered the phone.
“I’m behind you.” His words were rather cryptic.
Looking at the rear-view mirror, Heather saw a familiar car—one that Matthias had always driven—and was taken aback by his presence. After all, she had even taken a detour to avoid bumping into anyone, so how did he manage to find her?
Since he was already here, she didn’t try to shake him off and found a place to stop her car. After parking her car, she alighted from her car while he parked behind her.
It was a while later that Matthias exited his car, but Heather couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark. Although they weren’t far apart, she didn’t have the intention to walk over to him. Thus, he walked up to her. As he approached, he would soon reveal his boney face to her. While they were staring at each other, he tried to be closer toward her but she avoided his approach.
“Please stay away from me!” Heather had her back against her car. In fact, she didn’t have any other thoughts when she said those words. She simply didn’t want Matthias to get too close to her.
“Are you okay, Heather?” He came even closer, wanting to check whether she was hurt, but judging from her condition, it didn’t seem like she was injured.
“I’m fine.” Knowing that she couldn’t hide anything from him, she couldn’t help but wonder how he knew everything about her. Had he planted a bug on me?
“How did you know about the explosion?” Due to Heather’s abhorrence toward the fact that her movements were being tracked, she intended to figure things out with Matthias.
Upon seeing Heather’s hostile expression, Matthias decided to open up with her at this moment.
“A reporter whom I know went to the scene and forwarded a set of photos to me.” When he saw Leon and Heather hugging, he almost lost his sanity. If it weren’t for the accident, he would have unleashed hell upon Leon.
As of then, Matthias had recognized Heather as his own woman and no one was allowed near her. After having observed how she was getting closer with Leon, Matthias could feel a gush of resentment surging in his heart.
“A reporter?” As she was previously in the heat of the moment, she failed to notice the reporter secretly taking pictures of them. Curious about the contents of the photos, she told Matthias, “Show me the photos.”
Obediently, he turned his phone on and presented the photos to Heather. From the album, she found a photo of her tightly hugging Leon. As she continued to scroll through the album, she stumbled upon a video and immediately clicked to play it.
The footage evidently included everything—from the moment she rushed out of her car to the embrace that she and Leon shared after the explosion. Oddly, even the scenes before the explosion were recorded. Given how every shot was a close-up of her, she was obviously the main target in the video. It was all too fishy!
Upon returning Matthias’ phone to him, Heather approached closer to him and instructed, “Tell me who’s the reporter. I wanna meet him.”
“I’ve already asked him beforehand. He disclosed that he was told about the explosion in advance and was directed to film the process. After waiting for a long time and seeing no explosion, he would have given up if you didn’t show up. Your presence was merely a coincidence and he would never have expected the driver of the car to be you,” he laid out everything in detail from beginning to the end.
“Can you arrange a meeting with him tomorrow?” She insisted to personally meet the reporter as her intuition told her that it was too much to be a mere coincidence. Perhaps the reporter would have the information she could use.
“Of course. He’ll do anything as long as he’s paid.” In fact, the reporter had approached Matthias for money, and of course, Matthias had to fork out a sum to obtain the photos and videos. Moreover, he paid an extra sum to buy the reporter’s silence and suppressed the spread of the news. Given the scale of the incident, it was bound to make the headlines the next day.
Because of that, Matthias paid a great sum of money to contain the news. With how fishy everything seemed, even Matthias could feel something off about the incident. Nevertheless, he couldn’t find a breakthrough.
“Before the explosion occurred, an anonymous person texted me, warning about a bomb detonation that was to happen in Leon’s apartment. At first, I didn’t put much thought into it, but on my way home, I decided to turn back to look for Leon, who could have been fatally injured.” Even until now, Heather was still shaking from the tragedy. Had Leon not taken his time making it back to his unit, only God knew what would have happened.
“It’s okay. You’re both fine now.” Matthias was solely focused on comforting her and was not jealous whatsoever.
Under the moonlight, Heather appeared rather frail, so he removed his coat and placed it over her.
“Don’t take it off. Things are gonna be complicated soon. You mustn’t be sick by then,” he urged with an intimidating, overbearing tone.
With an understanding, she accepted his goodwill. Wearing the garment, she could feel his warmth and scent lingering on it. Now that she wore the coat, she was shielded from the harshness of the cold wind while Matthias only had a thin shirt on him after removing his coat.
“Aren’t you cold?” Heather queried with worry. At that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to reject anymore of his kindness.
“Men are physically stronger,” he claimed as if he wasn’t troubled by the cold. However, with the freezing weather and adding to the fact that he was only sporting two layers of thin clothes, how could he not be?
“Let’s go home! This isn’t a place to chit-chat,” Heather jokingly stated, not wanting Matthias to fall sick. No matter how fit he was, there was no way he could withstand this chilly temperature.
“You don’t mind me driving behind you, do you?” Matthias tentatively inquired.
“You want to escort me home?” As she spoke, Heather removed her jacket. Since she would be returning to her car soon, the heater in the vehicle would warm her up.
“Is there a problem?” Naturally, he couldn’t let her drive home alone in the middle of the night without worrying for her, so he had to make sure she safely arrived home with his own eyes.
“Not if you wear this.” She handed the coat to Matthias as she granted his request, but under one condition.
He hastily grabbed the garment and quickly wore it, to which Heather responded with a satisfied beam. After opening her car door, she slid right into the driver seat while he walked back to his car. Upon hearing the start of her car engine, he increased his pace for fear that he would be shaken off by her.
On the road, both Heather and Matthias were driving quietly as none attempted to converse with each other. Although they weren’t that far from each other, they would still require a phone call to speak to each other with the distance. While he didn’t want her getting distracted while driving, she didn’t have the intention to call him as well; hence, both of them navigated their respective vehicles in a straight line.
After some time, the two cars stopped before the Langston Residence. Rolling down her car window, Heather ordered the security guard at the gate, “Let me in.” Since the Langstons always had a face recognition scanner at the gate, the guard was able to memorize and recognize each of their faces.
Meanwhile, Matthias didn’t follow any further as she should be fine from there on, given that it was only a few steps until she entered the gates. Besides, he remembered how she disliked him showing up at the residence; thus, he stopped his car outside the gates to avoid displeasing her.
This time, Heather had the security guard park the car for her while she waved at Matthias, who was outside, as she reminded, “Drive safe now. Drop me a text when you get home.” Thankfully, everything he had done up until then gave her no reason to despise him.
