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Midnight Drive to Save a Life: A Case of Fraud
墨書 Inktalez
In the dead of night, to be precise, at two seventeen in the morning, my phone rang like a sharp knife, piercing through my eardrum and yanking me from the warmth of my soft bed, as if I were a chick being grabbed by the neck and thrust back into the cold reality.
“Hello?” I rubbed my sleepy eyes, my voice thick with drowsiness. That damned ringtone was like a death knell, jolting me awake in an instant.
“Su Qing, we need you! There's a girl about to jump off a building!” On the other end of the line was Team Leader Wang from the A City Public Security Bureau, his voice urgent and rapid-fire like a machine gun, each word laced with tension as if it might explode at any moment.
Jumping off a building?! My heart tightened sharply, and I was suddenly much more alert. Such incidents are shocking at any time, let alone in the dead of night. I quickly ran through recent reports in my mind but found no warnings about any potential jumpers.
“Tell me the situation on-site, the more detailed the better.” I leaped out of bed, not bothering to put on slippers, my bare feet hitting the cold floor with a jolt of icy shock that shot straight to my head. As I hurriedly dressed, I analyzed the situation. This was no ordinary case of someone wanting to jump; for them to specifically call me in, it had to be serious.
Team Leader Wang was panting on the phone, clearly rushing to the scene himself. “The specifics are still under investigation; all we know is that the girl is extremely unstable and is already standing on the edge of the rooftop, ready to jump at any moment. We need you there to negotiate and stabilize her emotions.” His voice carried a hint of urgency but more so an air of helplessness. In such situations, they—the tough-as-nails police—were far less persuasive than I, a Negotiation Expert.
“Understood!” I quickly finished dressing, grabbed my car keys from the bedside table, and dashed out of my bedroom without looking back.
As I rushed downstairs, before I could even press the car key button, a shadow suddenly darted out from the roadside like a ghost appearing out of nowhere and crashed heavily onto my car's hood.
“Screech—” The tires screeched against the pavement with a painful sound that made my teeth ache. My heart sank as if it were about to leap out of my throat. I slammed on the brakes; the car swayed violently before finally coming to a stop—barely avoiding a collision.
I scrambled out of the car, my heart racing and cold sweat trickling down my back. As I focused on what had happened, I saw a man clutching his leg on the ground, groaning in pain.
“Ouch! You’ve killed me! You’ve killed me!” he wailed dramatically, his voice piercing and exaggerated like that of a slaughtered pig.
With the dim light from the streetlamp illuminating his face, fury surged within me. It was Zhang Qiang—the local thug who loitered around the neighborhood and lived off extorting passersby. He had tried to con me before but had been exposed on the spot; little did he know he’d run into trouble again today.
I suppressed the anger boiling inside me and tried to keep my voice calm. "Sir, are you alright? Do you need me to take you to the hospital?" I knew very well that this was not the time to argue with him; there was a girl on the rooftop whose life was hanging by a thread.
Zhang Qiang glared at me, his eyes filled with greed, showing no signs of injury whatsoever. With his filthy hands, he pointed at the front of my car and spat out, "Cut the crap! Pay up! If you don't pay, you can't leave! You hit me today; consider yourself unlucky!"
I glanced at my watch; five minutes had already passed. I was anxious, knowing that the girl was still on the rooftop. Every second felt like a race against death.
"I have an urgent task to attend to. Can we settle this when I get back?" I tried to soften my tone, hoping to reason with this thug, but my heart was in my throat.
Zhang Qiang grabbed my car door and held on tightly as if it were a lifeline. His greasy face was almost pressed against my window, and the foul language spilling from his mouth was unbearable. "No way! You pay up now! Five thousand! Not a penny less! My leg is broken because of you; if you don’t pay today, just wait for your prison sentence!"
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