Chapter 392 Where Are You Hiding Her This Time
Elijah’s punch was swift, and Alexander didn’t expect the man to hit him, so he failed to dodge it and got punched—hard—in the right cheek. After that, though, the two men fell to the ground and began wrestling with one another.
Everyone in the house—Harry, the servants, the bodyguards, and Lilian, the secretary—was stunned. Since none of them dared to stop the fight, they let them struggle on the ground. One minute Alexander was having the upper hand by pinning Elijah down and punching him twice, and the next Elijah threw Alexander to the ground and punched him right in the eye. Every punch they threw was brutal, and they beat the hell out of each other, pulling no punches.
Lilian couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore, though. “Stop fighting, you two! Stop!” she urged. Then, she yelled at the bodyguards upstairs, “What the hell are you waiting for? Come downstairs and pull President Grant away!”
Only when Elijah’s men had made a move did those working for Alexander dare to come forward. With that, the two groups of people forcibly pulled the two men—who were tussling with each other gracelessly—apart with a man at each side.
As soon as the bodyguards pulled Elijah away, Lilian stood firmly in front of him and said to Alexander, “You kidnapped Courtney again and again! If the reporters out there learn that Sunhill Enterprise’s president just hit and injured someone, I’m afraid that your company’s stocks will hit a limit down right away.”
Upon hearing this, Alexander shook off Harry grabbing him from behind and replied coldly, “You’re quick to frame people, aren’t you? Too bad my home’s got CCTV installed. Everything’s captured on the CCTV, so it’s obvious at a glance who landed the first punch.”
As soon as he finished his sentence, the wailing of police sirens thundered outside—the police arrived just in time. Lilian said, “Well then, the police have arrived. We’ll see what they’re gonna make of your repeated kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Alexander furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
“Stop pretending.” Elijah wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth with a surly expression. “Courtney’s been missing all day. She’s never been anywhere else except to see you this afternoon. Where are you hiding her this time?”
Alexander’s expression slowly changed when he recalled the nurse at the hospital telling him that Courtney had never been there all day long.
Meanwhile, the police had come in, but they merely asked a few questions. After seeing the big mess of smashed items on the floor, the leading police officer judged it to be a case of ‘large-scale fight’ and had everyone on both Alexander and Elijah’s sides taken back to the police department to have their testimonies recorded.
The previous case where Alexander had hidden Tina in the hilltop theme park was also handled by the police department in this area, and Alexander was considered a public figure, so everyone in the police department knew him. Upon seeing him, everyone in the police department felt somewhat ill at ease, not knowing how to deal with him.
“Mr. Duncan, how did you…” The policeman in charge of recording Alexander’s testimony scratched his head uneasily. “Let’s skip the questions about your basic info. Just tell me how you got yourself here today.”
“You should’ve asked them the question. I wish to know the answer too.” Alexander frowned. He’d been pondering over Courtney’s disappearance on his way to the police department. Elijah wouldn’t blame Courtney’s disappearance on him for no reason, but Courtney hadn’t turned up all day. So where on earth is she? he thought.
The policeman was startled by his reply. “I’ll go ask them about that, then,” he said. After a while, he came back with a message. “They said they went to your home with their men to search for their friend because you kidnapped her.”
“Well then, did they find her?”
“No, they didn’t.” The policeman shook his head. “Which is why they asked where you’re hiding her.”
“So they searched my place right away when someone went missing?” Alexander’s face darkened. “Do they honestly think my place is some kind of human trafficking den?”
“No, that’s not it,” the policeman replied gingerly. “Well, it’s because you’ve done it once before, isn’t it?”
“Oh, so I’ve got a record, huh?” Alexander stared at the policeman with his deep and fathomless eyes. “Well then, just check the case files in your department and see if I’ve got a record here.”
“Of course you don’t,” the policeman replied with an apologetic smile. “Didn’t you guys settle the matter privately before?”
Alexander replied, “Yeah, we did, which means that the matter’s over. So what’s the point of them picking on me again and again? If they really couldn’t find their friend, they should be filing a report with the police. Why were they searching my place instead? Do they even have brains?” He was somewhat worried, though. After all, if Courtney really was missing, they would be wasting the most critical time window for search and rescue at this very moment.
The policeman had a troubled expression on his face. “They did file a report with us, but there’s no way to place the case on file. The person in question is an adult, and she’s been missing for less than 24 hours. Perhaps she’s held up by something for the time being.”
“Held up by something?” Alexander was speechless with exasperation. “Why the hell are you detaining me here for someone who’s just held up by something?”
Upon hearing his words, the policeman was astonished. Did I just play into this guy’s hands? he thought.
Meanwhile, Gale arrived after getting a phone call telling him what had happened. He had a friend pull a few strings for him, and besides, there was indeed no evidence at present to prove that Alexander had kidnapped someone, not to mention that his face was covered with bruises. As a result, the man was released from custody.
“There’s no need to release the one in there and his secretary from custody in such a hurry,” Alexander said to Gale in the car. “Tell your friend at the police department to lock them up as long as he can.”
“Hey, you’re abusing the public service to get back at a personal enemy, you know?”
“They asked for it to begin with.” Alexander pressed the bruise around his eye, and the resulting spasms of pain made him even more sober. “Just lock them up for a couple of days to give us a moment’s peace. Have you looked into Courtney’s whereabouts?”
“Yeah, I have.” Gale took out a tablet. “I told Oliver right away when you called me, and he used the GPS of his school’s laboratory to track Courtney’s location. This is the last location Courtney was at before her cell phone signal disappeared completely.”
The tablet showed a map of Melrose City and its surrounding areas, and the location Gale pointed at was in the middle of the river on the outskirts of Melrose City. “She disappeared from the river?” Alexander’s face froze with a look of puzzlement. “When?”
“Just half an hour ago. The signal started to weaken right after we located it, and it disappeared completely afterward.”
Alexander thought of the worst-case scenario at once. “Was it cut off abruptly?”
“Nope.” Gale shook his head. “Oliver did a data analysis and said the signal wasn’t cut off. Instead, there’s no signal in the area.”
“Why would Courtney go to a place with no signal?”
Gale’s face grew grave at the mention of this. “Oliver said the reason there’s no signal in the area might not be because there’s no signal coverage in the area, but because a signal jamming device is placed there. Also, he said…”
In other words, it wasn’t likely that Courtney had gotten there on her own. Furthermore, judging from the trail of her cell phone’s signal, she got there from a remote fishing village on the outskirts. There was no means of transportation on the river other than small fishing boats.
Alexander was taut with anxiety. “What else did he say?”
“One of the drug dealers that ganged up with James earlier was a ringleader named Dragon, and he’s never been caught so far. Just before the turn of the year, two of the students who had taken part in the drill to destroy the drug-dealing den back then were retaliated against—along with their families. The high-ups buried them in secret for fear of causing panic among the public…”
Alexander’s expression changed. “What does Courtney have to do with the incident at the time?”
Gale took a deep breath with a grave expression. “Do you think she’s got nothing to do with it? If you hadn’t quarreled with her, she would’ve been Oliver’s sister-in-law by now.”
