Devil's Whisper Chapter 119: Shadows of Deception

"Mr. Harper, I'm warning you not to interfere again. If you do, I will have to remove you," Jason turned towards Harper and said in a stern tone, his voice carrying an unmistakable edge of authority.

He then shifted his gaze toward Juan, his face unreadable. Juan, however, did not return his look. Instead, his eyes were locked onto the intricate patterns of the bedsheet, his expression void of any emotion.

"Tell me, Juan," Jason’s voice rose with controlled intensity. "Why did you forbid your enemy's daughter from posting on social media and then abduct her?"

Still, Juan remained unmoved, his fingers gripping the edge of the bedsheet ever so slightly, his eyes scanning the fabric as if the answers lay hidden within its threads.

A soft rustling of paper drew Jason's attention away from Juan. Charlotte, her expression calm yet firm, stepped forward, holding a file in her hand.

"Look here… this is Juan's medical record, and it clearly states that he's suffering from depression, which is why he's stopped speaking," Charlotte explained as she handed the file to Kate.

Kate took the file, flipping through the pages with measured focus. The reports painted a clinical picture of Juan's condition—depression that had supposedly rendered him mute. But Kate was not so easily convinced. She handed the file to Jason but continued to study Juan with keen eyes.

While the medical record confirmed his silence was linked to psychological distress, Kate sensed something more lurking beneath the surface. She observed the slight tremble in his fingers, the restless shifting of his gaze, the flicker of something that looked eerily like fear. Anxiety. A deep, gnawing dread.

Before she could voice her thoughts, a sudden call rang out from the dressing area.

"Sir, come here!" Oliver's voice carried urgency.

Jason’s sharp gaze darted toward the dressing room. He cast Juan a final piercing look before striding toward the adjoining door.

"What happened?" Jason inquired as he reached the threshold.

"Sir, come here," Oliver repeated, his tone insistent before disappearing into the dressing room.

Jason followed without hesitation. The room swallowed him whole for several minutes, the silence thick and foreboding. Then, at last, he reemerged, his expression grave.

"Kate, come with me," Jason ordered. Turning toward a sergeant stationed at the door, he issued a firm command. "No one leaves this room."

Kate exchanged a brief glance with Jason before stepping into the dressing room. Her eyes immediately fell upon the eerie display that had captured Jason’s attention.

Three handcrafted statues of Satan stood enclosed within a glass case, each one distinct in its coloring. One gleamed a deep, ominous black, its polished surface reflecting the dim light. The second shone in a golden hue, its presence almost regal. But the third… the third was red, as if it had been bathed in blood.

Kate felt a shiver crawl up her spine.

Then, her gaze shifted. Oliver stood with a photo album in hand, its pages open to a particular image. A photograph of Sasha Paula.

A sinking feeling settled in Kate’s stomach as she took the album from Oliver, her fingers tightening around its edges.

Ryder.

Jonathan Miller.

Pauline Miller.

And several others—faces she did not recognize, but ones that undoubtedly held significance.

It’s all the victims in this case! The names, the faces, the lives stolen—they were all here, captured in Juan Luu’s hands, a macabre collection that tied every loss back to this room, this man.

“Why does Juan have these photos?” Kate murmured, confusion lacing her words as she gestured toward the statues, her voice trembling with barely concealed unease. “And these satanic artifacts,” she added, her hand sweeping toward the glass case, the red statue’s gleam catching her eye like a fresh wound.

“Because he is the killer,” Jason declared, his voice as steady as steel.

Kate’s eyes snapped up to meet his, the album slipping slightly in her grip as their gazes locked. The weight of his declaration settled over her, suffocating yet clarifying, and she saw the fire in his eyes—unyielding, fierce, a mirror to the resolve burning in her own chest. She wanted to reach for him, to let her fingers brush his, to feel the warmth of his skin and know she wasn’t alone in this nightmare, but the truth he’d spoken held her still, a revelation too vast to grasp.

She turned her attention back to the photo album, flipping through its pages once more, her mind reeling as the faces blurred into a single, haunting question.

So, Juan is the killer?

He is the nightmare behind all my suffering and my parents’ death? He caused all this? Her father’s stern voice echoed in her memory, her mother’s gentle touch a ghost against her cheek, and Sasha’s lifeless body flashed before her eyes—each loss a wound reopened by the photos in her hands.

Her chest tightened, a sob threatening to break free, but she swallowed it down, her grip on the album whitening her knuckles as she fought to hold herself together.

A sharp vibration broke the silence. Jason reached for his phone, his expression darkening as he scanned the notification on the screen. His jaw tightened. He turned the screen toward Kate, showing her the message.

Her blood ran cold.

"He's the bastard we've been looking for all over Adelaide," Jason stated.

Kate felt the pieces of the puzzle falling into place, a mosaic of horror snapping into focus. Juan Luu—the killer, the shadow behind her pain, the architect of her losses—was real, tangible, within reach. But something wasn’t right, a discordant note screaming in her heart, a whisper of doubt she couldn’t silence.

"Jason, it's baffling…" she said, still trying to process the information. "Remember how the forensic team searched Sasha Paula's room when she was abducted? They found nothing but her parents' and the staff's prints. But now, a new report suggests Juan Luu's prints were all over the place—on the window, on the side table, and even his blood was found on the window. How could this happen? How come Juan Luu's fingerprints weren’t found at the crime scene when Sasha Paula was abducted? And now, this forensic report suggests that Juan Luu must have visited Sasha Paula's house before the abduction."

Jason took a deep breath before answering.

"Two days ago, Oliver was rechecking the CCTV footage of Shawn Paula’s house from previous days. We wanted to see if some stranger had entered the house before Sasha Paula’s abduction, possibly to scout the place. That’s when Oliver found something—footage from the day before the abduction. A man was seen jumping over the back wall of the property. That man was none other than Juan Luu."

Kate's pulse quickened.

"Juan entered through the back lobby, which led him to the rear side of Sasha Paula’s room. He slid open the window and disappeared inside. The lights were on. After almost ten minutes, he emerged and left the house the same way he came in."

Jason’s voice dropped slightly, his next words laced with certainty.

"While opening the window, Juan’s hand was cut by broken glass. His blood was left behind. Yesterday, Oliver and Dr. Agastya returned to Shawn Paula’s house and collected samples. They matched the fingerprints on the fiberglass of the back wall and the blood on the broken glass of the window with Juan Luu's."

Kate inhaled sharply, her chest rising as she turned to Jason with a fire sparking in her eyes. “When we went to Shawn Paula’s house, didn’t your team collect samples from the back of the house?”

Jason hesitated, his eyes flicked to hers, dark and conflicted, before darting back to the photos. “Some samples were destroyed during transit…” he admitted, his voice low and reluctant, each word dragged out like a confession he didn’t want to make. “That’s why we couldn’t determine earlier that Juan Luu had visited the house before the abduction.”

Kate’s frustration boiled over, her voice snapping like a whip as she leaned even closer, her hand slamming lightly against the console, inches from his. “How could your team be so irresponsible that critical fingerprint samples were destroyed, and they didn’t bother to collect them again?” she demanded, her eyes blazed, locked on his profile, and the intensity in them made his pulse race—not just from the sting of her words, but from the way she looked at him, fierce and unguarded, her passion a flame he couldn’t help but want to touch.

“If those samples had been analyzed earlier, we could have uncovered Juan Luu’s involvement in Sasha’s abduction much sooner,” she continued, her voice trembling with the weight of what might have been. “Maybe we could have saved her.” The last words broke slightly, a crack in her armor that laid bare her grief, and it pierced him, a silent ache echoing in his own chest.