(07
Robin’s sudden action caught everyone off guard. Before anyone could react, he had already dumped the contents of Lily’s bag
onto the floor.
A black can of paint rolled into view, instantly drawing everyone’s attention. Jacob’s fists clenched tightly, his eyes blazing with.
fury. His murderous glare was palpable.
With a single gesture from Robin, the police immediately restrained Lily. Her face turned pale, the makeup no longer able to mask
her fear and beads of cold sweat dripped down her forehead. There were a few white marks on her cheeks.
Faced with the evidence she carried with her and had no time to deal with, Jacob was still unwillingly making excuses for her. His voice trembled as he asked her, “You said you left something important at home. What was it?”
His eyes were filled with a desperate plea, as if hoping Lily could say something, anything, that would make him believe her once
more.
I watched this unfold with a smirk, unable to hide my contempt.
On the screen, the surveillance footage of my best friend buying groceries seamlessly transitioned to the neighborhood footage, showing her returning home just in time to discover the fire.
The footage revealed her saving me from the house, carrying my barely conscious body and jumping from the second floor to the ground.
Robin’s expression immediately became tense, his eyes darting to my best friend’s leg, which was still in a cast.
With a dull thud, the sound of our bodies hitting the ground echoed, followed by a pool of blood spreading beneath me. My best friend, hobbled on one leg, struggled to pull me up. Despite barely being able to walk, she didn’t stop, nervously glancing upward, afraid that something else might fall.
She gritted her teeth and dragged me away, ignoring the pain, until both our figures disappeared from the screen’s edge.
A heavy silence settled in the interrogation room, so thick you could hear a pin drop.
Robin’s face was filled with guilt and regret as he turned to my best friend, but she didn’t even spare him a glance. Her face was devoid of emotion, as if she had completely given up on him. Her gaze was cold and distant, fixed on the screen, as if the injured person inside wasn’t her.
But the slight tremor in her hand as she held mine betrayed her lingering fear. Only I knew how terrified she had been that day. Meanwhile, Lily, her hands now tightly cuffed behind her back, was drenched in sweat. Tears flowed freely down her face as she shook her head frantically, pleading silently with her eyes toward Jacob,
Even as the police dragged her out, she continued to act innocent, clinging to her charade.
If it weren’t for the paint in her bag, some people might have still believed her twisted version of events. But now, it was too late. The atmosphere in the interrogation room was tense and unsettling. After a long, awkward silence, Robin finally sent a team to recreate the scene of the fire.
Now that they knew paint was involved, they could remove it properly. The dispatched personnel quickly brought back new photos, which were exactly the same as the evidence on my phone. The intentional damage to the gas pipe was glaringly obvious.
The police not only photographed the bloodstains I had left behind the bedroom door but also documented the lock on the bedroom door, which Lily had deliberately locked from the outside. It was clear that locking it from the outside and inside used entirely different mechanisms.
Jacob held onto the new set of photos in silence for a long time before finally handing them back to his brother. The case documentation process took some time and by the time we left the police station, it was already dark.
As I helped my best friend down the steps, I heard two voices call out behind me in unison, Jacob called out to me and Robin to my best friend.
We stopped and they hurried over, almost speaking at the same time, I’m sorry…”
