Certain guns for hire who operated under the name of a security or defense company were very close to Stark Industries.
As long as Stark was willing to fork out some money, or even without it, many people wouldn’t hesitate to help him out.
Luke remarked, “Who knows? There are idiots everywhere. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to Stark, but nobody has ever succeeded, not even these two. They were quite capable, however.”
Those two would-be kidnappers managed to hurt quite a few of Stark’s bodyguards. Two of them even had to be sent to a hospital.
One of the two bodyguards had almost been strangled to death with a noose. Because of the injury to his throat, he could only communicate with Luke and Selina by typing.
The other had a broken arm. It would take at least three months for him to recover.
It was a good thing that they were all first-rate bodyguards, and Stark had fitted them out with all sorts of equipment.
The moment the attack happened, their colleagues had noticed something was wrong and hurried over to back them up.
Otherwise, the two bodyguards might have been killed instead of just wounded.
While driving to the supermarket, Luke prompted Selina, “Don’t you feel that there’s something wrong about the two kidnappers?”
Selina asked, “You mean something wrong with their heads?”
Luke chuckled. “That’s a real possibility, but what I wanted to say is that one of the bodyguards was hung with a rope and the other had his bones broken. Does that ring a bell?”
Selina instantly got it. “Are you talking about the two bank robberies?”
Luke nodded. “It looks like a coincidence, but the techniques are a little similar.”
In fact, he had seen the ligature mark on the neck of the bodyguard who had almost been strangled with a rope, and it was similar to the one on the dead bank robber.
This was even more of a coincidence.
“I’ll compare the injuries on the two robbers with those on the bodyguards right now.” Selina took out the case files for a look.
Luke left her to it.
Selina and Dollar stayed in the car as Luke went to the supermarket and came back out with a massive load of ingredients and snacks.
Throwing his purchases into the trunk, he got into the car with a bag of chips. He opened it and had one chip, but then frowned and tossed the bag into the backseat.
A moment later, there was the sound of crisp crunching from the backseat.
Selina heard the noise and turned around. ‘”Gold Nugget, you’re eating all of them! Hm, spicy garlic? What sort of flavor is that?
Dollar’s big head moved closer as it tried to lick her.
Selina quickly backed away. “Take your smelly mouth away! Haha! It stinks!”
Luke drove off with a smile.
Garlic breath on a dog was pretty gross.
When they got home, Luke started to make dinner.
Selina examined the photos she had taken of the bodyguards’ injuries and read the reports.
After comparing them for a long while, she walked into the kitchen and showed Luke the results on the tablet. “You’re probably right with your guess. The ligature mark on the robber in the bank robbery case is almost identical to the one on Stark’s bodyguard. Also, it’s possible that it was the same weapon which broke the security guard’s arm and smashed in the back of the other bank robber’s head.”
Luke didn’t stop cooking as he looked briefly at the tablet and then nodded. “So, we should look into the bank robberies first. That way, we’ll also be able to close the case of the attempted kidnapping of the wealthy Mr. Stark.”
Selina looked at him suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re not looking into the bank robberies first because you just lost half a million bucks?”
Luke chuckled. “I won almost three million from him last time. I still have a net profit of more than two million.”
But Selina was still puzzled.
She knew Luke too well. This guy had never suffered a loss, and he would never lose half a million for no good reason.
The most important thing was that he didn’t look like someone who had just lost a fortune.
No matter how suspicious she was, Luke didn’t explain anything. He didn’t pretend that he was heartbroken either.
That was because… his heart really wasn’t broken.
Leaving aside the cash, gold and jewels that he had looted in Rio, the accrued interest on Hernan’s accounts alone totaled more than half a million dollars a month.
Moreover, it hadn’t been easy for Luke to find an opportunity to lose to Stark.
It had been really hard.
Earlier, he had forcefully prodded Stark’s last dice with Curve Shooting, which could alter the trajectory of a flying object, so that it turned from one to six, and he finally achieved his goal of losing two rounds to Stark.
He had been sweating only because it was far more difficult to control the dice that Stark threw out than to control the trajectory of his own bullets.
As for why he had to lose to Tony Stark twice, that was because he had secured two victories against Tony in their previous bets. Every person should have a bottom line.
Luke had obtained a heap of important practical abilities from Stark, and he would continue to use them in the future.
Secondly, Stark had lost 2.85 million aboveboard to him, which was money that Luke could be openly extravagant with.
Finally, intentionally or otherwise, Stark had given Luke and Selina strong backing, which paved the way for their careers as police detectives in Los Angeles. Tony Stark was annoying, but that was his own business. In any case, Luke had never been injured by this playboy’s doings. Since Luke had profited a lot from the man, he couldn’t continue to swindle him.
So, Luke had to make Tony’s luck return to normal.
But he had never had the opportunity to do so before this, so this time, he finally made Stark win two rounds.
He certainly didn’t want this bigshot to die in some incident when he should’ve only been wounded.
Earth still needed this man to save it once the scales fell from his eyes.
Even though Stark’s abilities became temporarily unavailable, Luke wasn’t really bothered.
In the system panel, Elementary Craft, Elementary Repairs, Elementary Electronic Development and Elementary A.I. Development were all on Luke’s own list of abilities.
Luke had also learned all of Tony Stark’s basic tech knowledge, which had cost him slightly more than ten thousand credit points. At that moment, those basic abilities, which were close to a hundred in total, were all on Luke’s own list of abilities.OT
It was close to half a year since Luke obtained these abilities, and he made frequent use of them when he crafted items every night; he had long added these abilities to his own list.
The main function of the Super Learning Mode had always been to learn and not copy.
Seeing that Luke didn’t plan to continue talking about the half a million, Selina stopped asking about it.
Luke always knew what was best, and there was no need for her to worry.
“Those two guys were pretty cautious, but they underestimated the power of Stark Industries.” As she spoke, Selina pulled up a video. “But if we don’t catch them in the next few days, who knows how long they’ll be able to live for.”
Luke turned his head and looked at the video taken by the mini cameras which the bodyguards had been wearing.
While the image was shaky, his eyes were keen enough to clearly see how the two kidnappers attacked.
