Instantly, Spencer's face broke out into a beaming smile. Without thinking, he wrapped his arms tightly around Sarah in a hug–a gesture that left her momentarily rigid before she forcefully shoved him away and broke free.
"Please don't ever do that again." She said firmly as she took a couple of quick steps back in retreat.
Spencer just stared in confusion, wondering what he'd done wrong, only snapping out of it when Tony burst into laughter from his spot on the couch. "Yeah, I should have told you, mate. Sarah doesn't do too well with physical touch."
Hearing that, and noticing the slight blush now colouring Sarah's cheeks, a chagrined expression spread across Spencer's face. "Ah, sorry about that." He quickly apologised while awkwardly rubbing the back of his head.
"It's fine," Sarah replied robotically, looking to the side and avoiding eye contact.
Before the awkward atmosphere that had arisen could linger any longer, Tony swiftly jumped to the rescue, steering the conversation back to the topic at hand. "So now that you've decided to help, what's the first thing we have to do?"
"Right now, that's obvious," Sarah answered as she began pacing across the room. "Information. We need to figure out who's behind all this, and importantly, why.
"And how are we going to figure that out? We have nothing."
"Not exactly." She said cryptically as she grabbed the remote control that sat upon the cluttered coffee table. Then, without further explanation, she began to flip through channel after channel, only coming to a stop once she landed on a familiar news network.
"What? Are we supposed to be seeing something here?" Spencer asked in confusion, not seeing how this news could be in any way related to how they were going to find his daughter.
Sarah didn't reply, simply inclining her head toward the TV in response. Understanding her intent, Spencer let out an annoyed sigh and turned his attention to the TV. Yet no sooner had he done so than he was left frozen in shock.
Mayhem, that was the only word Spencer could use to describe the footage currently unfolding before him. Behind the reporters, burning vehicles, shattered storefronts, and terrified civilians filled the screen. But what left Spencer's mind reeling wasn't the devastation itself, but rather the apparent cause of such destruction.
A gang war. That was how the reporter described it, a conflict between the two largest gangs in the city, which had already resulted in multiple drive-by shootings and countless lives lost since it broke out that morning.
"Fucking hell." Spencer heard Tony mutter from behind him as the channel replayed shaky mobile footage of the most recent drive-by shooting. In it, a man leaned out from inside a speeding car, unleashing a rain of bullets on an unsuspecting crowd, adorned in a bright crimson jacket. The same kind the Ferrymen had worn the night before.
"Did I somehow cause this?" Spencer asked in an unbelieving whisper as he stared at the TV in rapt attention, unable to look away from the vivid and horrifying footage.
"What? That's insane! How could you have caused this?" Tony shouted incredulously. Yet before he could say anything more, Sarah spoke, her voice stoic and serious.
"I believe so."
"How?" Spencer was like a statue as he gazed listlessly at the still playing TV, trying to piece together how his actions the night before could have possibly led to the destruction before his eyes.
"You mentioned before that you were told to wear a dark grey bandana that was covered with small green crosses before you entered the building," Sarah stated
"Yeah. The kidnapper mentioned how it was the colours belonging to the Ferrymen, and it might help if I was accidentally spotted."
"Yet did you not find it strange that all the members of the Ferrymen were wearing bright red clothing just like the man in this video? How none of them wore anything even close to the bandana in colour or pattern?"
"..." Spencer was left speechless, mouth agape, unable to respond as he was suddenly struck by the glaring flaws in what he'd been told.
Instantly, his mind snapped back to the previous night, of the bright crimson jackets each of the gang members seemed to wear, none of which possessed a hint of grey or green. He recalled the kidnapper and how insistent he seemed that he wore the bandana despite the hesitation Spencer had shown towards it. He remembered the screams of the ferrymen as he fled for his life, how they had immediately believed he was someone from a rival gang. All these memories and more came rushing back and began to flood his mind.
"What the hell are you even trying to say? Stop beating around the bloody bush and just say it!" He shouted in an agitated fashion, not wanting to accept the conclusion everything seemed to be pointing toward.
Sarah just stared into Spencer's panicked eyes, uncaring in the face of his agitation and anger, her face a mask of stoicism. "I believe you already know the truth, Spencer. That bandanna wasn't meant to disguise you, at least not as a member of Ferrymen. It was meant to make the Ferrymen believe you were a member of Cross Roads, a rival gang and the one they've just gone to war with."
"Wait a second! You're saying that this kidnapper prick intentionally gave Spencer the clothing of a rival gang? Why in the hell would he do that?" Tony asked, seemingly just as lost as Spencer felt.
"I think we're seeing the very reason for that with our own two eyes." Again, hearing Sarah's comment, Spencer's eyes were drawn back to the TV, which was now showing the damage of yet another drive-by shooting that had happened on the other side of the city.
"That's insane! How could the kidnapper have possibly predicted that this would be the result!" Tony exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air.
"Not only that, but if this was, somehow, his plan, then surely there must have been an easier way to have gone about it! I mean, the odds of Spence actually managing to pull it off must have been a thousand to one! Honestly, it makes me wonder how he could have possibly expected you to succeed!"
By the end of his rant, Tony had gone red in the face, having worked himself up into a frenzy. Spencer, on the other hand, had the complete opposite reaction, having suddenly frozen halfway through Tony's tirade. It was only after a few seconds had passed in the subsequent silence that he finally responded, his voice chillingly quiet.
"That bastard never expected me to succeed." He muttered in realisation before immediately breaking into a manic laugh that echoed throughout the apartment.
"Now I fucking get it!" Spencer choked out in between bursts of crazed laughter. "I kept wondering why the silencer hadn't worked on my pistol–thought maybe I'd damaged it somehow. But no, it was never meant to have worked in the first place! It was insurance, on the off chance I actually made it to Ferdinand, to make sure I couldn't escape."
Eventually, as his laughter began to fade, a pensive and melancholic expression settled over Spencer's face as he turned to Sarah, who had yet to say a word. "I was never meant to have gotten out alive, was I?"
"No, I don't believe you were," She answered with a look of pity in her eyes. "I believe succeeding in the hit against Ferdinand was never the true goal. The aim was simply for you to get caught and increase the tension that existed between the Ferrymen and Cross Roads. It just so happened that by succeeding in the assassination, you did so to the point that an all-out war broke out between the two gangs."
"But why would the kidnapper want that? Who could possibly benefit from this?"
The more Spencer tried to wrap his head around it, the less it made sense. Glancing back at the TV, at the figures currently being displayed showcasing just how many people had died or been injured so far in this gang war, he felt a sickening twist deep in his gut. He wondered what kind of person would want such mayhem and destruction, and what their true goal could possibly be.
"It's hard to say," Sarah replied with an uncertain expression. "There are plenty of people who'd profit from these two gangs going to war. A rival gang, arms dealers, shady businesses, any one of these could be behind this, secretly pulling the strings."
"Wait, so you think that it might be an entire group of people who are actually behind this?" Tony questioned.
Sarah simply nodded her head in response. "It seems most likely. From what Spencer said about his daughter's kidnapping, that's not the kind of thing one person could pull off alone. No, I'm almost positive that it's a group behind all this, and an extremely well-trained one at that. Which was why I was so reluctant to get involved."
Upon hearing the idea that the kidnapper might not be working alone–a thought he hadn't even considered–Spencer was suddenly struck by memories of their earlier conversations. He remembered how the kidnapper had sometimes used words such as 'we' and 'us', accidentally hinting at the fact that he was not alone. It was a revelation that left Spencer kicking himself for not noticing sooner, and one he quickly shared with both Sarah and Tony.
However, despite the truth such a realisation brought, it only seemed to deepen the hopelessness Spencer already felt. As with every new piece of information they uncovered, it only served to highlight just how utterly screwed and out of their depth they truly were. It left Spencer spiralling into despair, struggling to imagine a world in which he could rescue his daughter. It simply didn't seem possible, a sentiment Tony appeared to share as he broke the terse silence hanging over the room with a defeated sigh and slumped back down onto the couch.