Natara Williams woke up to the rising sun shining through the sheer blue curtains of her small townhouse. She rolled over to face her alarm clock. It read 6:37 in glowing green numbers. She sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes. Just another day on the Special Agent job- or so she thought. She prepared for the day as she normally did, and was just about to pour milk into her bowl of Cheerios when her phone rang. Startled, she jumped, spilling milk on the counter. "Oh, come on!" she muttered to herself before answering.
"Hello, this is Natara Williams speaking. How may I help you?" There was a brief rustling of papers on the other end, before a voice said, "Hey, Natara, this is Mal. Sorry to call this early, but we need you for a case that came in this morning. It's urgent." Mal Fallon was a Detective, and Natara's partner. They had met years ago with the Maskmaker case, and since then solved many cases together. She had a hunch that he secretly harbored feelings for her beyond just working together, but maybe she was just being a little narcissistic. Or wishfully hopeful.
"Okay," she replied while cleaning up the milk she had spilled, "I'll be there as soon as I can. Give me fifteen." After they hung up, Natara abandoned the cereal and grabbed a granola bar instead, unwrapping it as she hurried to her car. She drove quickly yet safely, and arrived at the office thirteen minutes later. "Hey, Mal," she greeted as she walked in, "What's the urgent case you were talking about?"
"Oh, hey! Thank God you're here," Mal said as Natara sat down at a chair across from him. "We got this case in early this morning, but I just received it an hour or so ago from Captain Yeong. Apparently late last night, some strange man broke into this couple's house and killed two of their three children. They were bound and their throats were slit. The third child somehow escaped with her parents. Unfortunately, the murderer escaped, too. Mr. Wilson, the father of the kids, was the one who called the police initially."
"Oh my God," she stammered in shock, "That's terrible. Do you have any information on the kids?"
"The two who were murdered were a 9-year-old boy named Aaron and a 16-year-old girl named Brynne. The one who survived, Taylor, was the middle child. She's 13. Both parents and Taylor somehow escaped through a back window and ran a couple streets over to one of Taylor's friend's houses, which is where Mr. Wilson phoned the officers."
"Why did they run without checking on their other two kids? Did they know they were dead already, or...?"
"I thought about that, too. It's been puzzling me since I received this case. But I'm truthfully not sure. We're going to be talking to the family later today, so we'll get some more information then. Captain Yeong thought it would be better for you to talk one-on-one with Taylor, without me there, while I talk to the parents. Captain Yeong thinks Taylor will open up more with you than me."
Natara nodded, taking all this foreign information in the way she had been trained. "Okay," she replied, "That's fine. When are we heading over, then?"
"We should probably leave soon," Mal responded, "We were asked to inspect the crime scene as well."
"Let's go," Natara replied grimly. "The sooner we do this, the sooner we can figure out who this guy is."