The Last Passenger

There were five people in our car, including the driver and four passengers.

The driver was a young man with dark skin. He was friendly and talked a lot.

He wasn't a full-time taxi driver. He was actually heading to Drakemoor for work, but he couldn't get a bus or train ticket. So, he decided to drive there himself and picked up a few passengers along the way.

Right now, he was shouting in panic. "Damn! Someone just died in our car, and you still have time to talk? I swear, I'm so unlucky! What if her family reports us? Do we need to pay them? How much would we have to pay?"

A pregnant woman in her 30s trembled as she asked, "Why would we have to pay? What does this have to do with us? The car breaking down wasn't my fault, and neither was the phone signal going out. I'm not paying a cent!"

I listened quietly and gave each of them a label in my mind.

The driver was a laborer. His hands were covered in calluses. In the trunk, I had seen work gloves and a safety harness.

The pregnant woman was an office worker. Just before this happened, she had still been working on her laptop in the car, preparing reports for her company.

But I couldn't figure out the identity of the last passenger.

He was tall and broad-shouldered. He wore a loose trench coat and barely spoke. At that moment, he was simply smoking by himself.

After the pregnant woman finished speaking, he flicked the ash from his cigarette and said casually, "Shouldn't we be trying to figure out how she actually died?"

His words made the driver's and the pregnant woman's faces turn even paler.

Once they remembered what the dead woman had looked like, both of them started shaking.

The driver's voice even began to crack. "I... I remember she was fine when the car broke down. She was still talking to us. She told us to go find another car and get help first. Then she said she was tired and wanted to sleep for a while. But how did she suddenly die in her sleep?"

The pregnant woman suddenly took several steps back.

She looked terrified as she moved away from all of us. "Wait... If she died from some sudden illness, she would have made some kind of noise. And I talked to her, too. She was very healthy. She even loved outdoor sports. She was going to Drakemoor for a skydiving course. If she had any serious health problems, how could she take part in something that dangerous?"

Her voice shook. "She was murdered!"

Fear spread through everyone.

The driver opened the trunk and grabbed a wrench. He held it tightly in his hand. "That's right. How could my car suddenly break down for no reason? And we couldn't even find out what was wrong with it."

He suddenly pointed the wrench at me.

"Was it you? She died, and then you suddenly made all of us introduce ourselves. Were you trying to distract us?"

But that wasn't what I was doing.

I was trying to find the killer.

From the moment the car broke down, I knew we were in danger.

And the killer was one of the other three people in the car.