Time Stands Still

Chapter 01

 A runaway teenage daughter found dead. Surprisingly it hadn't been the first time that such a case passed by at Scarlet's agency. Although it was the first time that there was no body found. There was only blood. The case hit a little bit too close to home for my liking.

My colleague Rhys cleared his throat as he stared at Mr and Mrs Buhl sitting across from us. "Are you sure that we can be of help here? I honestly think that it would be better if you called the police. As private investigators, we only have so many resources available to us. I believe that the Seattle Police Department would be of greater help."

"We already contacted the police," Mrs Buhl hissed towards us as her blue eyes turned into snake eyes. "They told us that they have more urgent things going on."

Rhys nodded. "Right, the button killer."

"Yes, the button killer," Mrs Buhl spat out. Mr Buhl grabbed her arm but she quickly shook him off. "So we need more help than the incompetent police."

"Of course, we would love to help," I told them with a smile on my face.

Mrs Buhl brightened. "You will?"

"Of course, we will. We are always willing to help," I said.

"So much how will this cost?" She asked.

Rhys straightened up in his chair as he went off to explain the pricing system with a grandiose smile. His hands were moving wildly while his dark curls bounced around him. It was always nice to get a good paying job.

Mrs and Mr Buhl left, leaving us with five hundred dollars to conduct our initial research to try to find the person that killed their daughter.

"Now where to start?" Rhys asked me as he looked at the list of potential suspects that the Buhl family gave us.

"First we need to figure out whether or not she was actually murdered."

Rhys blinked a couple of times before he snorted. "Is that your weird attempt of a joke? They found five liters of her blood. There is no way that she could have survived."

"Except if she faked it," I pointed out.

"She faked her murder?" Rhys asked me. "I think that you have officially gone mental."

I smiled at him. "I mean that she could have been taking a bit of her blood and collected it over a couple of months until she had enough blood.

Rhys snorted. "Do I even want to know how you know this?"

"I might have looked into it," I admitted.

"And of course, this happened in your secret past," Rhys smirked.

"It did happen in my secret past," I smiled back.

Rhys rolled his eyes at me. "Of course it did, Mallory."

That was another thing part of my secret past. My name was Audrey in that past, but now it was Mallory. Not that I minded Mallory. I did choose the name after all, but I still preferred Audrey. It was the name that my parents gave to me. Audrey was something special, Mallory not so much. It still wasn't a bad name though. Honestly there were very few names that I didn't like.

"So we should probably head to the police station and see if we could get more details on her death," Rhys said.

I groaned. "Do we really need to go?"

Rhys sighed. "Trust me. It isn't like I really want to go visit Finn, but we won't get anywhere without more information."

"Great," I muttered.