The Mystery of Amethyst Jayden
Summary: On the way home from visiting Tracy in London, Mike came across a little girl lying at the side of the road, covered in blood. He takes her back to Elm Tree House, determined to get to the bottom of what happened. But can he solve the mystery of Amethyst Jayden?
Disclaimer: I only own Amethyst, nothing else.
Chapter One
"Goodbye, Tracy!" Mike Milligan called, waving out if his car window as he began to drive away from the block of flats, sighing as he began the long and tiresome journey back to Elm Tree House.
He had come to see how his former charge and colleague was settling into her new job at a newspaper in London. He would not have normally made the four hour round trip without being forced to, but he had always had a soft spot for Tracy. Heave knows why!
'Oh, well.' thought Mike. 'At least now I know that she's safe. I always worry about Tracy anyway. One day she's going to get herself into some big trouble.'
Shaking his head as he remembered the occasion on which he had met Tracy again, when he was picking Liam up from the police station only to run into the young woman, Mike switched the radio onto one of the 'Golden Oldies' stations. He had automatically done so when in the car ever since Johnny had told him that that was the very definition of him.
He was so caught up in the music that he almost didn't notice a line of ducks parading around on the winding country road he had taken as a shortcut. He slammed on the brakes, whipping his head forward as he stopped. He rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes shut as he tried to control the pain, and watched the ducks go past. Without meaning to, Mike began to laugh.
His laugh was relatively short lived though, as five minutes later, Mike saw something else at the side of the road. He slammed on the brakes once more, uttering a string of words that he would never do in the presence of the children as his head collided with the steering wheel. Still he carried on, opening the door and stepping outside, running forwards to the source of his worry. His theory had been correct. It was a little girl.
"Hello?" he asked the girl, moving her curtain of matted brown hair to the side to reveal her face. He winced as he did so, seeing the amount of cuts and bruises that covered it, but the child still did not move at all. It was only when he began to roll the girl over that she cried.
"No!" she yelled, her voice hoarse, yet the pitch of it high from fear and young age. Mike let her go, easing her gently back to the ground. He was truly relieved that she was conscious, yet still fearful of how scared she seemed to be.
"Alright, alright, I've let you go. I'm not going to hurt you." Mike said to the girl, his voice gentle, as it always was when speaking to fearful children.
"No." she said again, her eyelids drooping as her head lolled to the side, drifting back out of consciousness. Mike would usually have listened to the child, but when her eyes were flickering closed so dangerously, he would have to ignore the girl.
It was almost twelve hours later when Mike finally returned to Elmtree House. He was utterly exhausted, using almost all of his energy in order to keep his eyes open. After all, as he could see from the clock on the wall, it was almost five o'clock in the morning.
'At least I won't run into the kids while I'm down here.' Mike told himself in his mind, trying to make the best of a bad situation. 'Or if any of them are, they're in trouble.'
The moment he had thought this, Mike noticed that one of the lights downstairs was still on, with a slight shadow moving about. 'Someone's still up.'
His fatigued brain protesting at his need to investigate, the greying man proceeded to descend the staircase, making his way down to the kitchen, to find that the figure casting the shadow was not one of the children.
"I wondered what time you'd be back." Gina told her colleague, sipping at her cup of coffee, which, due to the lack of steam, seemed to have sat there for a while.
"I've been down at the hospital." he explained in response, extracting a gasp from the other.
"What've you done?" she asked him, half concerned and, true to nature, half reproaching.
"I haven't done anything, I'm fine."
"Oh, it wasn't Tracy, was it?" The thought had suddenly popped into the woman's head and so she had expressed it immediately.
"No." he replied. Once Gina had widened her eyes, which Mike took as a wish for an explanation, he continued to speak. "I found a girl by the roadside. She wasn't very old, probably about Tee's age. She had cuts and bruises all over her, and she'd badly broken her ankle. I couldn't believe it."
"Oh my God!" the brunette exclaimed, a hand on her head. "Do we know where she came from?"
"No. But I'm going to get straight onto Social Services in the morning. Someone must have done that to her, and if they did, she isn't safe."
In a private room in the city hospital, a young girl with golden brown hair lay awake, staring unseeingly at the ceiling of the room. She remembered very little of the previous day, other than the pace the car was going at and the shouting of voices. The click of the car door as it opened.
Turning onto her side with a muffled cry of pain, the child began to cry. She sobbed in silence, knowing that no one was coming. As she thought that though, she remembered the greying, balding man who she had sent away. 'Maybe he will come back for me' she prayed in her mind.
"Please help me." she whispered, crossing her fingers in pain. "Please, please help me."
A/N: I know it's not very detailed, but we will find out more about the girl next time. My first Dumping Ground fic, so please be nice.