Terror in the Night

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Faye would admit that she thought Tate was telling a tale that he believed was real, but after actually meeting Mistress Holly and being told that there was a person calling herself Mistress D, she thought again about Tate's story.

When she wasn't hunting down the police's wanted list, she was researching all the latest kidnappings. In the last year alone, twelve kids were kidnapped and all twelve were safely returned home after the parents paid the ransom. If she included Tate and the creep that lived above her flat, there were four who had been arrested in the last year.

She went further back in the police records and the kidnapping in the city carried on growing, until ten years ago when the kidnapping of children where one a year; if that.

One afternoon while Faye was training with her wooden training sword against the several poles placed in a circle around her, Abby decided that Faye was becoming too obsessed with something that she wasn't telling anyone and it was starting to scare her. “Do you have an idea who you are going after next?” she asked as she watched Faye strike the poles around her in quick succession.

“I want to find him,” Faye panted and pointed with her sword at the mug drawing of her mum's killer that she taped to the computer screen she had been too focused on the kidnappings that she completely forgot her real goal.

Abby rolled her chair over and studied the image for a moment; she might worry about Faye going out to do all the fighting, and always loved having eyes all over the city, but she shot Faye a knowing look while she started striking again. “You're running after a ghost again,” Abby said over the clatter of wood. “You're the one who insisted that you crippled him but he's not in any hospital records.”

“We don't know his name,” Faye replied, if she at least had his name she could look through every record for him.

“We spent all our time after our exams looking for him and everyone we asked said they didn't recognize him.”

“He can't have just disappeared,” Faye shouted and threw her practise stick down and started using her fists against the poles. “Someone has to have seen him at some point; he's got to be somewhere.”

“Hey,” Abby shouted and stormed over to Faye to catch her hand after a few crunching punches. “Are you purposely trying to hurt yourself?” she asked but ran her thumb gently over Faye's knuckles that looked as if they were going to bruise.

“I've had a bad week,” she sighed and snatched her hands back; she had to say that Abby was right; she might have broken her knuckles if she wasn't careful.

“If you have problems at home, you know you can talk to me or you can talk to Thea, you know she's been trying to talk to you.”

Faye frowned for a second while she sat at the computer desk and stared at the photocopy. “Thea has her own problems she has to sort out, and if you think I'm going to listen to her whining about them you can think again,” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. Their friend had phoned Abby up freaking out because her rich boyfriend who loved her to pieces proposed to her and she didn't know what to do. “It's nothing at home; it just feels like I've abandoned my real goal.”

Finally Abby understood what Faye was really doing. “It has never been about keeping the city safe has it?”

Faye shook her head with a sigh. “When I first put on my belt and coat I was adamant that I was going to catch the guy who killed my mum. But lately I've been too fixed on this Mistress business with the kidnappings, it feels like I’m forgetting why I am really doing this.”

“Maybe it's a good thing,” Abby said trying not to sound mean about it. “I mean, if you kept chasing this guy you would have missed something big, something the police wouldn't have noticed. What if you find your murderer, are you going to leave and let the kidnapping continue?”

Faye didn't have an answer so looked down at her watch. “I have an appointment to get to,” she mumbled instead of answering.

“What appointment?” Abby asked as she watched Faye grab a few things she used under cover.

“Lock up behind you,” Faye shouted over her shoulder as she ran up the stairs, leaving Abby still wanting an answer.