The police officer's air condition seemed to be set to the lowest temperature that Yden and the rest of her friends shivered to their bones, freezing.
Or could it be they are simply nervous, not knowing to anticipate what will happen next?
Yden hasn't got a chance to talk to her friends since they're in the hospital. She hasn't even got a chance to thank them for bringing her to the hospital since she was sitting in the front seat while in the back with one of the police officers.
She also wondered why Leira was not with them? She doesn't want to think that Leira just simply left them and went home, leaving the rest of the girls alone to help her. She didn't want to assume that unless she had talked to them and asked them.
However, even when they were already sitting side by side with each other, Yden still couldn't ask them. The police office seemed too silent at a wee hour. Most of the police officers were crouching towards their desk asleep, aside from the two officers who brought them there and who at the moment was already in the pantry room having some coffee and the lady officer in the front desk who was still busy on the computer and always ready to answer calls.
With just the clicking of the computer keyboard and the seldom sounds of passing vehicles on the highway that was not far enough from the office, the girls hesitate to talk to each other, thinking that everyone in the room can hear even their whispers.
After several minutes of sitting in awkward silence, the girls and everyone in the room turned their heads to the door as the sound of a rushing vehicle came to a sudden halt in front of the office.
That sound made the sleeping officers get up. However, by the moment an unfamiliar girl came in at the door and found out that it was not much of an emergency they went back to sleep.
The police lady at the front desk stood up to accommodate the lady.
"Yes, what can I do for you?" The police lady said.
"I just came here to take my girls home," In her proprietary voice, she said.
All four of them looked at her with creases in their brows, wondering if that lady was talking about them. Since none of them didn't have any idea who this woman was, but she had that five-star tattoo and the italic letter V in her back at the topmost part of her spines that they had seen in all the sorority sisters, made them know that she was one of them.
That same moment Dennise's phone beeped with a message from Leira.
[I'll see you in the parking]
That message confirmed more that that lady was here to take them out from there.
Putting back their focus on the lady officer and the sorority sister, they wondered how the officer simply nodded to every word the sorority lady told her.
Not long, she turned to them as she said with a smirk, "Let's go, girls."
With a gaping mouth and glancing towards each other for a moment, they then followed her out of the police office.
From the entrance alone, they already spotted Leira's car in the distance. She parked in the other building's parking lot, not exactly in the police office building. But Leira came out of her car the moment she darted her eyes on them and ran to meet them.
"Leira! I thought you had already gone home and just left us." Yden asked, relieved enough that she had finally spoken a word.
"No, I got this feeling that this will be coming just by the moment I saw the police car, so I stopped Zara's attempt to call Leira in the car. Instead, I texted her to inform her about the situation inside," Dennise stated.
"Yeah, that's right, and I abruptly informed the sorority, thank god, they listened and took immediate action," Leira recounted.
"But have you noticed how the lady officer acted in front of her? Like it's weird. She looked like she was compelled," Zara hushed out her observation to everyone, made all of them stop to contemplate.
"Yeah, you're right. I noticed it too. I think this happens a lot in the sorority, and they already know what to do and how to respond in this situation. There's something behind everything about this that will be hard to perceive with just our own eyes and ears," Ella commented.
"Wow, that was deep," Zara reacted, trying to make a pun out of Ella's seriousness.
"Like, what did you mean by that? Algo como, under the table kind of stuff? Como, they pay the police to hide all the sororities' discrepancies?" Yden attempted to explain the situation by putting every assumption straight.
"Well, probably, we know so well how well-heeled this sorority is, right?" Leira backed up, and it seemed all of them agreed with everyone's assumptions and simply dropped the topic off.
Before they had even got out of the police office vicinity, Leira's eyes had darted to a wall that seemed to serve as a bulletin board. There are many photos of girls pasted on that wall and above each photo was their information. At the top of the wall is a Label that says Missing Individuals.
"Wait!" Leira stopped and went straight to the board. Her hand reached straight to one of the photos.
"Who's that Leira? Do you know that girl?" Dennise asked.
But, Leira shook her and pressed her forehead with her fingers.
"Are you okay?" Ella asked, something odd in the way Leira acted and that made her worried.
Leira looked back again in the photo of the girl she just pointed and more creases came out from her forehead together with the veins that started bulging out.