Chapter 1046: Going to Africa? (Patreon)

After spending ten minutes visiting John, Professor Cahill spent another full three days evaluating Jack’s academic performance before finally boarding a plane back to Washington D.C., satisfied.

Once Jack finished writing a mountain of reports, he too boarded a flight back to New York.

After some careful self-reflection, someone decided to try to keep a low profile in the new year, mainly by staying in as much as possible unless absolutely necessary—to avoid adding to the body count.

He vaguely remembered that he had once planned a road trip along the interstate highways. Looking back now, he realized how naive he had been.

It wasn’t like he had never encountered corrupt cops before—he’d tangled with two from the NYPD alone—but it was the first time he’d taken out so many in one go.

Of course, the main problem had to be John. It had to be.

Back in New York, Jack took a few days to deal with some minor matters, like sending a few CEO-romance novels, personally signed by “Joan Doe,” to a girl in Hawaii who had recently been in danger—his autistic sister.

Although Jack had told Julie in the jungle that he didn’t know any “Joan Doe,” as an FBI agent and detective novelist, getting his hands on such items wasn’t exactly difficult.

This was also a little surprise Jack had promised Julie.

And this little surprise brought him a bit of trouble he was still unaware of. Even though he’d used his left hand and deliberately mimicked a woman’s handwriting when preparing the signatures, he had accidentally drawn Hannah’s attention.

When Hannah first found the two books while tidying Jack’s room, they were still wrapped in plastic. But by that afternoon, when she saw them on his desk, there were fresh signatures on the title pages.

Sweet little Hannah was certain that Jack hadn’t gone out or had any visitors that day, so it only took a bit of deduction to arrive at a seemingly incredible conclusion.

Naturally, JJ ended up learning about the little secret too. Since she knew a bit about “document examination,” a small “special task force” was born.

The two girls bought every novel under the name “Joan Doe” and began comparing them, line by line, with Jack’s only published novel, Detective Jack.

Unlike the public perception of “forensic document examination,” “document analysis” wasn’t just about handwriting identification—it also involved linguistics, philology, and psychology.

A writer’s habitual phrases and the order in which they organized their language left traces that could be followed.

While the two girls were secretly and enthusiastically investigating their newly discovered little secret, the second case from the International Division landed on the Most Wanted Task Force’s lap.

When Rossi arrived at the Long Island office with a middle-aged man whose hair was just as meticulously styled as his own, Jack, Aubrey, and Clay were in the garage tinkering with their newly acquired Audi R8.

Jubal and Alice were practicing shooting at the small range next to the garage. The mix of gunshots and engine roars made the place sound more like a gang hideout than an FBI facility.

“This is the new head of the International Division, Jon Michaels.”

Rossi gave the group a meaningful look as he introduced the man, and both Jubal and Jack immediately picked up on it—this guy didn’t seem easy to deal with, keeping a sour expression the whole time.

But it wasn’t their problem. They weren’t even in the same department. Although the guy outranked Jubal, department heads didn’t have authority over the Task Force.

Compared to before, things at the International Division were far from calm. Even some of Rossi’s old friends had been dragged into the mess, and there was clear tension among them.

This gave Rossi a bit of a headache. What had started as a favor had turned into a situation where he found himself stuck in the middle.

Then again, power struggles happened everywhere. For Rossi, it was just a minor annoyance—nothing a few “pumpkin” or “cookie” nicknames couldn’t soothe.

But for the Task Force, the case from the International Division was a bit of a hassle. Obviously, if it weren’t troublesome, they wouldn’t need outside help. On top of that, it was far away, and, most importantly, the clock was ticking.

“Tanzania?” The only impression Jack had of the country was that their military was considered pretty competent in Africa—for reasons everyone supposedly knew.

Jubal was more focused on the case itself. “Twenty-three American travelers missing, all from a missionary group in Texas.”

As Rossi explained the details, his brows were practically twisted into knots.

“Garcia barely managed to confirm the headcount. Locals don’t seem to be very precise with numbers. They’re still gathering information on the missing individuals, and at least half of them don’t seem to have any social media accounts.”

Jubal flipped through the thin stack of files on the table. “The last sighting was of them volunteering in a small town, then boarding a northbound train together.

The conductor reported seeing them at around 2:30 a.m. local time.”

He glanced at the global timezone chart on Alice’s computer, did some mental math, and continued, “Which would be about sixteen hours ago.”

“Have the local police—or military—searched the stations where the train stopped?” Aubrey asked, clearly not hopeful about the answer.

Rossi’s reply was both absurd and frustrating. “That’s the issue. The train reportedly never stopped. All 23 people just vanished from a moving train.

Every staff member on board claimed there were no stops along the way, and nothing unusual occurred. The local police are already preparing to close the case under the explanation of ‘ascension.’”

Everyone in the room frowned at the word. Clay even questioned his own ears. “Did you say ‘ascension’? Like, to heaven?”

“That’s exactly what they mean,” Rossi said with a bitter shrug.

“So our job is to investigate this on the premise that God didn’t personally collect His followers?” Jack joked, though his grin quickly froze at Rossi’s next words.

“Both governments agreed to wait 24 hours before issuing a press release about the incident, and that countdown starts when your plane lands.”

Jack clutched his head in regret, wondering how he’d been so foolish to let himself be tempted by the devil that was Rossi into signing that damn agreement to assist the International Division on five cases—completely forgetting how excited he’d recently been about the refitting progress on that Bombardier business jet.