Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The instant Lv Chao began running, Tina started counting. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. All right, ten seconds are up. The Cats may begin hunting the Mouse!”

Naturally, everyone had kept their eyes fixed on the direction Lv Chao fled during those ten seconds. They saw him run to the right, toward the elevators. The moment the head start ended, the entire group surged after him as if a marathon had begun.

Sharp-eyed Shu Ke, the high school student, shouted, “He took an elevator!”

Everyone looked at the floor display above the doors. An elevator was rising from the lobby. The number changed from 2 to 3 and continued upward before stopping at 5.

“He’s on the fifth floor! Hurry, we can trap him up there!” The man in the cap immediately pressed the call button. The hotel had four elevators. Only one had risen to the fifth floor; the other three were still in the lobby.

“Wait. Don’t panic,” Che Dongming said. “If all of us charge upstairs and run around like headless chickens, we’ll have a hard time catching him.”

“But at least we know he’s on the fifth floor right now,” the man in the cap argued. “If we don’t chase him immediately, he could take the stairs to any other floor, and finding him will be even harder.”

“It’s already too late. Unless he’s an idiot, he won’t ride to the fifth floor and wait obediently for us to catch him. Even if we take an elevator now, it’ll take at least ten seconds to get there. He could already have used the stairs to reach another floor. The hotel has ten floors, and the fifth is in the middle. He could go up or down. How would we know which floor he’s on?” Che Dongming asked.

“Why don’t we start on the second floor and search each floor on the way up?” the round-faced college student suggested.

“Not everyone should search. We need people to stand guard,” Che Dongming said. “If all the Cats concentrate on the same floor, the Mouse can wait for an opening, take the stairs or an elevator elsewhere, and keep circling around us. We’d never catch him.”

“I understand. We need to assign some Cats to guard the elevators and stairwells and cut off his routes,” the round-faced student said.

The curly-haired student grinned and snapped his fingers. “Exactly. Guard the elevators and stairs on every floor so Jerry can’t move between them. No matter which floor he’s hiding on, all Tom has to do is search them one by one…”

Tang Ying interrupted him. “It’s a good idea, except I don’t think we have enough Cats.”

The curly-haired student froze as he realized the problem.

“We don’t actually need someone guarding every elevator landing,” Tang Ying continued. “There are four elevators. If four people each stand inside one elevator, the Mouse won’t be able to use any of them.”

“Right! Then we only need to guard the stairwell on each floor,” the round-faced student said.

“One guard at every stairwell, plus four people inside the elevators, uses thirteen people. That leaves seven. No, only six. I don’t imagine Miss Lu Qian will help us catch her husband.”

Tang Ying and the others looked at Lu Qian.

She gave a cold laugh. “Of course I won’t. We’re here on our honeymoon. You can’t expect me to help kill my new husband with my own hands.”

“I understand,” Tang Ying said, then continued her analysis. “The six remaining people can start on the second floor and work their way up. That way, we’ll find the Mouse eventually.”

Che Dongming frowned. “It’s a decent plan, but having all six Cats move together wastes too much time. Searching every floor one after another will take more than an hour. It might be better if we split into groups…”

Before he could finish, the crude and heavily built Hong Long waved one huge hand and cut him off impatiently.

“Enough! How long are you going to keep analyzing this? Standing here discussing it is a waste of time. I say we leave two people guarding the elevators and stairs in the lobby while everyone else moves randomly between floors. Someone will catch the Mouse eventually. The longer you keep blathering, the less chance we have!”

He moved to board an elevator.

Che Dongming shook his head and sighed. “All courage and no brains. If you ruin our entire strategy, don’t forget that you could face random elimination too.”

“Who are you calling brainless?” Hong Long glared at him.

“Aren’t you? Do you think these newlyweds spent all day and night planning nothing? That they’d let us catch the Mouse without any trouble? Every floor of this luxury hotel is enormous. Floors three through nine each contain twenty or thirty guest rooms divided between two sides, with corridors branching in every direction. Searching any one of them thoroughly won’t be easy. Floors two and ten are especially complicated. They contain the buffet, heated pool, card room, reading lounge, arcade, private karaoke rooms, massage rooms, the Sky Garden, and numerous public restrooms, storage rooms, changing rooms, and more.

“If we don’t devise a strategy and simply run between floors, several people may search the same places while all of us overlook others. We’ll gradually exhaust ourselves too. More importantly, our phones don’t work here. We have no way to communicate and could easily become a disorganized mess. An hour will pass quickly. If we fail to catch the Mouse, every one of us risks random elimination.” Che Dongming’s expression was grave.

“Then what do you suggest? The plan you were discussing didn’t work either!” Hong Long roared.

“If you hadn’t forced me to give that explanation and had allowed me more time to think, I might already have a better plan.” Che Dongming gave the big man a disgusted glance.

“Everyone, five minutes have passed already. We really can’t waste any more time!” Xiang Meiling said anxiously.

“Let’s stay calm and eliminate possibilities first,” Chen Nuo said.

“What possibilities?” Xiang Meiling asked.

“The first thing we need to determine is whether the Mouse is actually upstairs right now.”