Original Suspense Novel: 《ℬ𝓁𝒾𝓏𝓏𝒶𝓇𝒹 ℳ𝒶𝓃𝑜𝓇》 EP19

Unless— "Unless what she recorded wasn't the case," Old Zhou chimed in, "but something else." "Like, the 'reactions' of others at the scene. Who screamed first, who ran down first, whose expression was off. She was observing us too." Fang Guodong had been listening in silence. Now he spoke, "So now, any one of us could be the killer, and everyone is suspecting each other. In this situation, the most dangerous thing isn't the killer, it's panic." "You have experience?" Chen Mo asked. Fang Guodong glanced at him. The firelight carved deep shadows on his face. He wasn't old, but the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the lines around his mouth suggested he had been through far more than he should have. "During the raid three years ago," Fang Guodong said, his voice even, as if recounting someone else's story, "when I ordered the assault, the suspect had two hostages. My intel indicated he only had one handgun with five rounds, and had already fired three. But the reality was—he had two guns, one hidden behind a hostage. As my team stormed in, he fired the first shot, hitting my second-in-command's bulletproof vest. Then he fired the second shot, hitting the hostage in the head." He paused. "The post-mortem investigation said I 'made a poor decision' because I hadn't confirmed the intel about the second gun. But that wasn't the reason I retired." He looked up. "It was the hostage's eyes. He looked at me in the final second, that expression... I can never forget it. Not fear, not anger. Disappointment. He felt I should have saved him, but I didn't." (To be continued)