But Luke frowned a moment later. Why was there a familiar scent? Hm, was it Bell?
Luke scratched his head. Why was his landlord/driver here?
Except for the fact that her driving was as good as theirs, she shouldn’t have anything to do with the robbers, right?
Luke didn’t enter the building. He sniffed the air again, before he stepped onto his bike with a weird look on his face and peeped through a window.
Inside the body shop, two unlucky people, one man and one woman, were being held at gunpoint.
Two other women were arguing. Luke couldn’t understand them. They seemed to be speaking Portuguese.
It did make sense when he recalled that the robbers were from Brazil.
It was the gorgeous lady driver from that morning who was pointing a gun at Bell and the man.
Judging from her argument with her partners, however, she didn’t seem inclined to pull the trigger.
Luke thought for a moment, and aimed at her from the window with his own gun.
If the woman really was going to shoot, Luke had to take action even though he wasn’t authorized to.
He couldn’t allow Bell to be shot; she wasn’t a bad person.
Raising his gun, Luke observed the man who was standing next to Bell.
It was a young, white man, who looked frustrated and somewhat familiar.
Luke finally recalled that he was the person who had stopped Luke that morning, only to cause a car pile up. How had he run into Bell?
Wasn’t Bell a cab driver? However, her treasured car was nowhere to be seen.
A moment later, the young man grimaced at Bell and gave a long speech. Eventually, he grabbed a gun by force and hid in a back room with Bell.
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The four women outside shot wildly at the room, forcing the man to stay behind cover. They then looked at each other and got into their car.
Luke was greatly relieved.
He wouldn’t have to deal with the four women right now.
While he wasn’t worried about the power of law enforcement anymore, the four women might be connected to Sergei, so it was better to keep them alive for now.
However, Luke heard a noise a moment later and smelled something burning.
It was a strange smell, as if it was a mix of different things being burnt together. Luke was reminded of the car that he had set on fire in Thurmeier.
In the meantime, he heard Bell and the young man laughing in the room, but it was hoarse and weird.
Thanks to Luke’s Sharp Nose, he also smelled something sweet, which he couldn’t recognize.
He then heard Bell laughing while cursing the young man for being an idiot. She said that it was nitrous oxide, known as laughing gas.
Luke was amused. The young man was truly a genius, to regard laughing gas as regular gas.
More importantly, the four women had left, and Bell and the young man were alone in the room. Why would he release laughing gas?
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Luke was lost for words; the young man struck him as a harbinger of disaster.
In the next moment, the doorknob broke.
While laughing, Bell cursed the young man for being stupid enough to break the door.
Luke was speechless at the young man’s bad luck.
Thinking for a moment, Luke decided to open the door for them.
However, the moment he was about to jump off his bike, he heard someone slamming into the door. Then, Bell laughed and yelled again, “Are you seriously an idiot? This door is meant to be pulled, not pushed. Why are you slamming into it?”
After that, they left through a back door.
Luke didn’t know what to say. He had known Bell for a few days now, and she had never been this unlucky.
However, since they had already left the room that was full of laughing gas, Luke was no longer worried about them.
He jumped off from his vantage point and was ready to ride his bike away.
He had barely left the alley when he saw a police car approaching.
While the lights on the car were still flashing, two officers got out and pointed their guns at the alley. “Drop your weapons now!”
Luke couldn’t see clearly, but he knew that the officers had to be shouting at Bell and the young man.
He couldn’t help but wonder if those two had been blessed by the God of Misfortune.
A moment later, there was a major explosion, and the officers hurriedly dodge the flying debris.
Bell laughed and cursed again. “Hahaha! My car has blown up as well! Run, if you know what’s good for you!”
Then, the two of them ran away while laughing hard.
Luke made up his mind to stay as far away from the young man as possible. It seemed that the young man brought bad luck to anyone around him.
Riding the bike slowly, Luke tracked the four women.
After two kilometers, Luke’s receiver detected a signal again. “Target acquired. Three hundred and thirty meters up ahead and to the left.”
He rode the bike to the location, only to discover that it was a warehouse.
It was close to the outskirts of New York, and the place was littered with warehouses and factories.
Luke thought for a moment, and fiddled a little with a new phone that he had modified, before he approached the warehouse.
Suddenly, his nose twitched.
Another acquaintance? Luke found it odd, but he couldn’t quite recall whom the scent belonged to.
Eventually, he found a window, and hopped onto the bike to have a peep like he had done earlier.
Luke secretly cried “bingo” in his heart when he saw who was inside.
His “acquaintance” was in fact Sergei.
No wonder Luke had felt that the scent was familiar, though he couldn’t recognize it.
He had smelled Sergei in Katie’s villa before, and at the port a few days earlier.
Now, Sergei was talking to the four women with a stiff smile on his face.
They were speaking English. Given Luke’s higher Strength level, he was able to hear them even at a distance of twenty meters.
A moment later, Luke finally figured out why Sergei had welcomed the four women in person, and why they had gone their separate ways after their first meeting.
To put it simply, the four women were able to rob the two banks thanks to Sergei’s support.
Hideouts, cars, maintenance tools and sites, and intelligence on the banks – all of it had been provided by Sergei.
Sergei was going to launder the looted money. In the end, the four women would take thirty percent of the loot, and Sergei, seventy percent.
It wasn’t that Sergei was greedy.
He might have only asked for fifty percent if he was just laundering the money and nothing else.
He had also provided so many other services, however, so he was absolutely justified in taking seventy percent of the money.