"You can't possibly think you can catch me, Keelan." Lucy said, checking her green watch for the next minute to go by.

Her captive growled, then struggled through his binds. If he could just get to his phone, he could get the recording to work. "You'd be wrong about that, Baker. Once the Yard gets word of my disappearance, they'll come right after you. Especially my daughter." His grimace became a grin at the thought of his precious child avenging him, nabbing this woman of her freedom to kill.

That was a fine thought. Indeed.

Her laughter came to his ears, snapping him out of his daydream. "Your daughter is nothing but a constable! DC Diane can't get to me even if her mutt of a mentor paid her to!"

Keelan cringed at the statement. Why was what she just said true?

"'Cause ya can't raise a brat like that to fight! You put a bit too much in her 'ead to make 'er believe that she can. Now Papa's going to die." Lucy walked over to the chair he sat in, the began dragging it and him to the edge of the building. "Any last words before t' chair tips?"

"You will never get away with this, Lucy Baker!"

"Typical. I guess that's wot the Yard is." She crouched down next to the edge, doing the unthinkable.

Before Keelan could comment on it, the murderer shoved him off the edge, forcing him to plummet to his doom.

Were it not for the rope digging into his ankle and the chair leg it was tied to.

Lucy's high perch was the perfect view for what happened next. It took the citizens a while to get her cat toy down, with them batting at him and searching for easier ways to get to him. So much fun.

No. He won't die yet. Not until I give him the message.

He'll come. Soon enough.

High heels clicked against the floor of the hallway and seemed to take their time making it to the destination. When they finally ceased, the girl shook the handle and opened the door.

"She's done it again!" Immediately, she broke the silence of the office with her loudness. Hardly the time to whine, but this was a decent reason to do so. She tossed the case file onto her mentor's desk and slammed her hands on top of it. "When are they finally going to catch that woman? She hurt Papa again and I don't like her!"

Alfendi coughed and quickly turned his chair around to see his assistant. "There's a difference between wanting her arrested because you don't like her and of what she's actually done, Diane. Neither of those reasons are getting us anywhere closer to finding her." He took the file and opened it up, then shut it when he saw the first two words he was looking for. "Of course, since she's our most infamous criminal, she does get top priority on the to-do list." He sat back, another cough leading him to his new position. "Who did she kill this time and how many does this make so far?"

The young blonde tapped the side of her head in thought, processing the large amount of information she had of the subject. Her eyebrows hopped when she was through, and Diane smiled. "Well, this is the fourth murder in a short time, when papa went to stop her. The victim in this case is Laverret Pullurd. His murder involved an antique guillotine that he was ready to donate to the museum. His head was found tied by a lock of his hair to a rope hung from the ceiling, while his decapitated body was stuck on a lever that apparently opened a secret passage to his family fortune." As she explained, her mentor began pacing about the room. She focused on his expression, wary only because of his other personality, the side more interested in murder. Diane knew well that Lucy's killer antics have more than once gotten the other man's interests and attention. Sometimes they twenty-one year old feared the worst.

He stopped and shifted his gaze from the floor to her. "No connection to the last murder?"

"Not a thing. Everyone looking into Lucy's murder rampage this month haven't even found anything to relate the last murder to the first one." She answered, checking her nails for a second as she spoke.

"There has to be a connection. Anything." Alfendi mumbled, then turned to the board behind him with his many notes sprawled on it. "We need to connect this murder to the ones from the other four months, then. Rather than just keeping our sights on a few recent murders, we put in all of the woman's killings."

Standing next to him, Diane thought aloud, "The first for murders were at a holiday party, they barely knew each other, and they weren't together when they were killed. Caroline Bells, novelist; Oren Nament, the pianist entertainment of the party; Melcom Chior, a second rate actor; and Eve Ovday, who was dating the host of the party before her death.

"In January, the next two victims were costars of an opera. Trebla and Octavius Cliff, recently married too. February had one murder, Mea Dowling, the owner of a popular flower shop in London. And then there were the three murders from last month, Albert Dayin, Fenny Bown, and Diatha Dayin, a party planning group for kids." She finished, noticing then the fascinated gleam in her mentor's eyes.

The way he looked when a murder was mentioned, like a child getting exactly what he wanted for his birthday. And it was usually Lucy's murders when he came out most often.

"Each person ranges in importance, it's almost impossible to see a link. Unless…" Alfendi put a hand to his chin as his hair became that light shade of red Diane disliked. His eyes widened as recognition sunk in, then he chuckled. "Oh, well isn't that an amusing set up. Baker is quite picky when it comes to her victims, isn't she?"

Diane shrugged, unsure of where this was going.

He picked up a sheet of paper and began writing something on it. "It varies between every person, but if you list all of the victims and capitalize a few letters in their first names, Lucy's message appears." Turning the paper when he was done, he laughed again as shock settled on Diane.

COME TO ME, ALFENDI

"I can only assume Lucy is going to spell out my last name with Laverret so the number of killings she would have left for this month would range from two to four."

Why on earth would Lucy want Alfendi? Was it just to mock him? Though it had been a while since she had done mass murders, but none this organized and precise. After escaping from jail the only time she was even there, it took a few weeks just for her to appear on the radar again.

Diane tapped a finger to her lips. "Do you think its a sign?"

"More than just that, Diane," He replied with an evil grin, "Lucy has something special planned for me."

And Diane didn't like the sound of that. Not one bit.