“The next few years after that, we leisurely did the job he gave us. It was a rare experience in a slow-paced life. Also, Mr. Hawk disappeared from our lives; we didn't see him for a few years. Nevertheless, before he left, he reminded us to keep Theos in our hearts and that he would one day return to us with a task assigned by Theos. About two years ago, the missing Mr. Hawk came back. He didn't give us any tasks as I thought he would; he only made arrangements to get our graduation certificates before sending us to Linton Group to be accountants. Neither of us knew anything about accounting, and all our work was completed by Mr. Hawk's men.”
That surprised Zeke. “How could that be? You were accountants, but no one discovered that you outsourced everything for two years?”
Yoshua answered, “Money makes the world go round. All he needed to do was to bribe the person who discovered the secret. After all, money was something Mr. Hawk had in excess.”
In a frigid tone, Zeke said, “Write down a list of those who took the bribes later. These people must be removed from Linton Group as soon as possible. Continue with your story.”
Yannick went on, “Mr. Hawk still did not assign us any tasks after we came to work at Linton Group. It was a good life doing nothing, but that did not last long. Just a few days ago, Mr. Hawk came to us and assigned us to a task.”
At that, Yannick adopted a troubled look.
“Continue. I know what you've done. If you dare to hide anything from me, you'll have no mercy from me,” Zeke warned.
Yannick relented. “All right. Mr. Hawk gave us a pair of hand bones and told us to keep the bones in the drawer of Linton Group's office. The hands still had strips of flesh and blood on them, and they had a pungent smell. In fact, I vomited on the spot. It was only then we realized that the religion Mr. Hawk believed in was a cult, and the members of the cult even killed people. Our first response was to reject him and leave the cult, but Mr. Hawk threatened to kill us if we refused to do as he said. I told him that we were equally doomed if the police tracked us down by investigating the pair of hand bones. Mr. Hawk then told us not to fret over that, for he had already thought of a plan of retreat. Once we were done with our task, he'd bring us to Theos. With Theos' protection, we wouldn't need to worry about anything else for the rest of our lives. Mr. Hawk even allowed us to bring our families along to seek Theos' protection, and he even swore to me that my gravely ill mother would live a long life. We were tempted, so we did as Mr. Hawk said. After that... You know the rest.”
Zeke caught two keywords in their explanation—“Mr. Hawk” and “Theos.”
He then quickly asked, “The Theos that you speak of, what is it?”
“A god, of course,” Yannick responded.
“I'm asking about what Theos looks like.”
“We've never seen Theos before, and it was not like we had the right to. However, we've seen its sculpture; it was a large hand,” Yannick explained.
A large hand? So Theos is the mysterious large hand! If I follow them, I'll be able to find the mysterious large hand and rescue Lacey.
Thus, Zeke hastily said, “Bring me to Theos right now!”
However, Yoshua said, “Mr. Williams, we don't have any way to see Theos. We can only meet him if Mr. Hawk brings us to it. If you really want to meet Theos, we'll bring you to meet Mr. Hawk.”
Zeke nodded. “All right, let's meet him.”
Right then, Yannick pleaded, “Mr. Williams, can you let me meet Sherry one more time before we leave? She'll be devastated to find me gone without a word. Please!”
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