Chapter 3ChicagoSadieSadie watched as people rushed past her, on foot, wheelchairs, and stretchers. This steady streamwould continue on for another three minutes, most likely, end and then return another hour later. It washer late shift, and the only thing keeping her at this hour was the promise of a bed when she got home. Asshe watched the people sitting in the waiting room, she turned to see a woman standing at the desk withtears streaming from her eyes, which were bloodshot and puffy. Her heart ached with empathy, and soshe handed the woman a box of tissues and offered her a water bottle. The woman looked up at Sadiewith gratitude in her eyes.“Thank you s-so much, m-my daughter…” the woman faltered.“Yes?” Sadie didn’t want to press, but she had to know what was causing this woman distress.“My d-daughter” the woman started again, “was hit b-by a c-car, and I-I d-don’t k-know if sh-she’s evena-alive!”The women collapsed into sobs, and Sadie walked around her desk to give her a comforting side-hug.“Now, would you mind telling me your daughter’s name?” Sadie questioned. She was hopeful that thedoctors would be sympathetic enough to let this woman see her child, who was in such pain.“M-Melanie A-Anderson” The woman stuttered as she blew her nose, quite loudly, into a tissue. MelanieAnderson. Sadie had heard that name before, but she didn’t recall where. All she could think about nowwas helping this woman find her child before it was too late. She knew all too well what that sense ofpanic felt like, when she had found out that her boyfriend had fallen, and was in critical condition at thehospital only five months ago. She had rushed to the hospital and made it there, just to find that she hadmade it there too late. She pushed those thoughts aside and searched the database for Melanie.“Melanie, Melanie, Melanie…ah!” Sadie had found her. She was still alive, thank goodness, in room 314, andwas eligible for visits. Sadie looked at the woman, now surrounded by a pile of used tissues, and spoke up.“Ma’am, your daughter is going to be okay and you will be able to visit her, as soon as you fill out thispaperwork and give it to my coworker,” Sadie informed her as she handed the woman a clipboard andpen. Sadie’s shift had finished a minute ago, but she felt emotionally unable to abandon the woman. Shewalked back to her office, grabbed her bag and headed out the door. Huh. That’s weird. Sadie thought toherself. Her bag was heavier than usual. She sat in the driver’s seat of her car, turned on a light, andbegan digging through the items in her handbag. Her hand found a cube shaped box and pulled it out.Scrawled in the neatest handwriting Sadie had ever seen, was her full name, Sarah Penelope Davis. Noone had called her Sarah in over two years. She pried open the box with her fingertips, careful not to its contents. Inside, she found a small toy car with an undefined figure in the second row to the left. Therewere four rows in total and two columns. All the other spots in the car were empty for a reason, one that Sadiewas unsure of. But the strangest thing was, the car was made out of pure sapphire. She knew this of coursebecause, when she and her previous boyfriend, Nathan, had started dating, he gave her raw sapphireearrings that complimented the blue in her blue-green eyes. Grief over Nathan filled her head as she startedto tuck the box away, but it was quickly replaced by the new information on the underside of the car. A date,a time, and an address. Who would want to give me an address? She wondered. She looked at it more closelywith curiosity, before tucking it away for good and driving homewards. It wasn’t like she was actually going togo. That could be dangerous! She warned herself, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was destiny,and that there was no other option.Chapter 4ChicagoXanderXander took a deep breath as he sat at his desk alone in an office. The light in the day was fading, and itwas almost time to go home. Home. If that was even a real word for him anymore. It hadn’t been home tohim for a long time. 10 years to be exact. Today was the 13th anniversary of his mom’s death, or whatever itreally was, and his father still hadn’t told him what had happened. One day she was there. And the next… Aloud banging on the door interrupted Xander’s thoughts. He didn’t even realize that he had been crying, hewiped away the tears and held his water bottle against his eyes in an attempt to remove any evidence thathe had been…Again the door shook from the force of a hand ramming into it. “Hold on a second!” Xanderyelled out. “Jeez…” he muttered to himself. He pushed back from his desk before walking towards andunlocking it. He opened the door to see his coworker, Rebecca, standing in the door frame. Oh my gosh, notagain. He thought to himself. This was the third time this week that she had shown up at his door after workhours. This time she was twirling a piece of her strawberry blonde hair in between her fingertips, and blinkingat him with her heavily mascara-covered eyelashes. “Hey Rebecca, what is it this time?” He asked her,already annoyed.“Yeah,” she started, “I was wondering if you wanted to come eat dinner with us.”Xander, wanting to be a respectable person, declined this offer as politely as he could.“But Xan!”Xander flinched inwardly at the nickname Rebecca had given him. She is the most aggravating person in theworld! He complained to himself. “Sorry!” Xander apologized, “I have a lot of work I need to get done,” not true“and I’m really busy these next couple nights,” also not true. Xander had absolutely nothing scheduled, andhe had absolutely no idea what he would even be doing the next couple of nights. “FINE” with as much melodrama as one could, she let out a sigh, and huffed herself out of the doorway, anddown the long, tiled hallway.He closed the door and turned around to see a small box sitting on his desk. On it was inscribed his full name,Alexander Ryan Torres. That was weird. He didn’t remember anyone putting a package on his desk, and itdefinitely hadn’t been there earlier. He opened the lid of the box to find a small toy car inside. The car wasmade out of pearl and had seven empty spots in it. One spot, the one on the second row to the right, had asmall figurine in it. He looked at it in confusion, before turning it around in curiosity. On the bottom of the carhe could make out a date, a time, and an address. He popped the address into his phone to see that it wasonly a five minute drive from his house. Perfect! However, the satellite image showed a grassy field, unlit andempty. He decided that he might as well go, since there weren’t any big sports events that he would bewatching with his friends. He tucked the small trinket into his briefcase, before leaving the building andheading back ho…to his house.Chapter 5DallasGwenGwen stared at her computer screen in frustration. Solving mysteries isn’t supposed to be this hard! She toldherself. Gwen had spent the last three days stuck on one piece of a single crime. None of the evidence wasfitting together. She took a deep breath and stood up from her chair. She pulled open her curtains and lookedoutside. It was a beautiful day. Wasn’t it always in Dallas? She shook those thoughts aside and stepped intoher kitchen. She was a detective, and had chosen that Wednesday as her work-from-home day of the week.She looked to her oven, reminding her of the cookies that she had yet to bake for her neighbors. Gwen storedthe thought on a mental to-do list in her head and walked out the front door. Sure enough it felt amazingoutside. She took a few careful steps down her walkway before turning onto the main sidewalk on her street.She could smell fall in the air, and could see the effect it had on the trees all around her. Piles of leaves in frontyards were slowly invading the street, being blown around by bursts of wind, and blowing her dark chestnuthair directly into her face. “Ugh!” Gwen spat out strands of her hair in frustration, before securing thetemperamental strands with a hair tie. As she walked, thoughts of the case filled her head. What made itworse was that “the case” was a cold case and had been for ten years. A woman had been murdered, shotactually, and they still hadn’t found who did it or how. She ran through facts in her head; they were whatgrounded her. Truth. Truth was always the answer, well at least it was in her department. Her thoughts wereinterrupted by a painful shove to the shoulder that caused her to fumble. She turned around, annoyed to seea man of about twenty-six running down the street. He looked back at her and she glared at him, only to bemet by sad, brown eyes. She quickly looked away, embarrassed and continued on her walk. That was so stupid! She reprimanded herself. She wondered how she had gotten so distracted, that she hadn’t even seen aliteral human walking, no running down the sidewalk towards her. She decided to turn back around and headhome, in hopes of baking the cookies that she had been meaning to. That would help her solve the case, sheknew it would. Keeping her eyes ahead, somehow Gwen made it to her porch without any more incidents. Asmall bag hung from her door handle. That was curious. She looked at it more closely. On the bag was writtenher full name, Gwendolyn Amelia Jones. No one had called her by her full name since, well since her bestfriend’s death. Stop yourself. Now is not the time to be thinking about that. There are more important things todo right now. She reminded herself. She gently pulled the bag off of the door handle and went inside, placingthe bag on the counter. She opened it to find a small car, made of…diamond. The small car had seven emptycylinders carved into it, and inside one cylinder was a small diamond figure. It was seated on the third row tothe left. She didn’t understand. Who would've sent that to her? She didn’t even like cars all that much. Sherotated it in her hand, inspecting it, when she found an inscription along what would’ve been theundercarriage. It was a date, a time, and an address. She scribbled all three down on a notepad, beforeplacing the figurine in her closet. She didn’t know what to do with it. She thought for a minute. Wait. Shehesitated, it could have to do with my case. She knew at that moment that she had to go. She had to know if itconnected to that woman. Kitty.Chapter 6DallasNicholasNick’s day had been going fine, until he had decided to go on a run. After that, everything was…welldifferent, that was one way to put it. He was proud of himself actually, he hadn’t thought once about Marion. Hehad gotten his work done and finished the plans for his next big project. He’d even surprised himself byplanning a bike trip with a couple of his friends. Maybe things will finally be back to normal. Is what he hadthought to himself that very morning. Things did not go back to normal. At all. He had gotten home, anddecided to go on a run, because after all, it was a beautiful day. He stepped outside and let the Dallas sunshine on his face for a second. Fall was here, which meant that swimming season was over, but it also meantwinter was coming, and winter was a bit too emotional of a season for him. He shook those thoughts of andbegan on his run, enjoying the crisp autumn air as it rushed past him. His pleasant thoughts didn’t last long. Hebegan to think of Marion, his best friend, who had died roughly five years ago. It wasn’t that he missed hernecessarily, he just didn’t ever know what to do with himself anymore. Ever. He often found himself sitting on hisliving room couch, just thinking about his life before she had been killed. Well he didn’t ever really learn whathad fully happened to her, but all he knew was that one day she was there, and the next she was found dead inWhite Rock Lake. Everyone had told Nicholas, it was probably an accident, she probably drove off of the road. But no, it couldn’t have been, he refused to believe it all, because he knew Marion never would have left him toface the world alone. He was shaken from his thoughts by a sharp push by his side. It was an actual person,and he had almost knocked her into the street. He looked back to make sure that she hadn’t, and he was metwith a harsh glare. The glare came from a woman, who looked to be about…twenty-four or so. She wasrelatively short compared to Nicholas, and had medium-length, straight, brown hair. She looked almostshocked for a second when she saw him looking towards her, but she quickly turned away, the tips of her earsred in embarrassment. He looked back ahead and continued to run, until he felt something fall out of hispocket. He stopped and bent to pick it up. It was a small parcel and on it, his full name was scrawled, in aloopy, cursive-like font. It read, Nicholas Benjamin Williams. He took the parcel in his hand, and made his wayback home, curious to learn of its contents. When he finally made it back home, Nicholas took out a pair ofscissors, and made quick concise cuts along the edge of the packaging. He deposited the item on thecounter. It was a small toy car, but strangely it was made of an odd amber colored gem. Topaz. The topaz carhad eight holes drilled into it, and only one of which held a small, topaz, undefined, figure. He looked at itcarefully, inspecting its shape and definition. This led to his discovery of a date, a time, and an addressengraved on the “undercarriage” of the car. He quickly realized that he was available that same day, becausea few of his co-workers were going to be out that same day. Not that it mattered. The invitation told him tomeet there at midnight. This is the kind of adventure that Marion would encourage me to explore, he toldhimself. That alone was enough to motivate him to mark it on his calendar.